February 21st, 1889 - Alfred's Boat

J. Alfred Darrow

The thing about Magical Accidents & Catastrophes was that sometimes they were a slow burn.

There were the explosions, the collapsing buildings, the bodies in the streets. And then there were the drawn-out disasters, the spells that slowly sapped the life out of people when they weren't paying attention. This curse, the curse that had seeped into the hull and the mast of this sailboat - that was one of the latter. But the thing with curses was that there was always something that could set them off - some tick that would set off the complicated, often-ancient spellwork, and bring things to that tipping point. The collapsing buildings. The trick was to duck around that line.

Zelda was focused. She was kneeling on the deck of the ship, towards the bow. Next to her an open notebook documented her progress and notes on the curse, and on the case - there was a reason that actual cursebreakers often trained for years, and this curse was just under the line of 'over her head.' She had the quill tucked behind her ear, and her wand was in her hand. She was still mapping out the boundaries of this curse - how far it had spread on the boat, how deep the rot went, and where it was rooted. Some careful spellwork from the other day was keeping it from expanding further, but she was going to have to deal with the curse itself sooner or later. And that was where the really difficult work started.

The sound of footsteps on the dock startled her, but not enough to look up. She was writing in her notebook - the curse had not quite made it up the mast. So it was not necessarily consuming the whole boat yet, which was good - felt good, at least, for her work. "This area is under Magical Accidents & Catastrophes lockdown until further notice," she said blandly.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred was on a mission to figure out what the status of the Voyager was. He'd been able to furlough the crew when the Ministry swept in, which was good in that he didn't have to keep paying them to just lurk around in port waiting for the word to leave. Men who weren't being paid, however, were only likely to stick around so long, and he felt he was approaching the upper limit of that time frame with each passing day. Merlin knew that the Ministry hadn't been exactly forthcoming with any of the details, and it was impossible to talk to anyone at Ministry headquarters. No one knew anything. No one knew who to talk to. Everyone had a different idea about what piece of inane paperwork he ought to fill out and which office to leave it with in order to hopefully get a response back.

Today he was going straight to the source: the actual cursebreaking team, whoever they were. No one had given him a clear answer on what department they actually worked for, but regardless he knew where to find them: his ship. And if he walked on board and he didn't find them, he might be angry enough to just set sail the next day out of spite, cursed or not. If he did find them, he was ready to raise hell until he got some answers about this whole situation, because somebody had to know something.

Upon arriving he spotted a set of Ministry robes immediately, and he walked straight towards her. He didn't realize that this was a familiar Ministry figure until she spoke.

Oh. Shit.

He stopped short, but resolved quickly that he wasn't going to let the fact that it was Zelda here deter him from getting his answers. Magical Britain was a lot smaller than he thought, he supposed, because she kept popping up any time he wasn't inclined to want to see her, and he was going to have to get over it sooner or later. She wasn't going anywhere.

"If you say so," he responded, sticking his hands in his pockets. "But I own it, so. I'm staying."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda, who was in the middle of a very difficult tracking spell, froze. Her wand was attempting to 'point' to the boundaries of the curse, moving down from the mast and continued to move independently in her hand, slowly scaling downwards. But her focus was broken - her chest panged at the familiar voice. She looked at his shoes, as if those would provide any indication to his identity - shoes didn't help her. Zelda looked up.

Her chest panged again, and her cheeks flushed a faint pink. Of all the boats in wizarding London, of course his would be the haunted one - even though he was supposed to be in India.

He wasn't in India.

Zelda opened her mouth, and closed it, catching herself before she said something wildly unprofessional. Her wand fluttered in her hand. She was used to J. Alfred Darrow disappointing her, but the depth of her hurt still surprised her - like jabbing at an old bruise and finding that it still ached.

"Your funeral," she snapped. Still unprofessional, but a phrase she felt she could justify to Mr. Umbridge, should it be quoted back at her later.

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   Amelia Evans

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AMAZING set by MJ

Although his response to her had been equally short, he was a bit irritated that this was all she had to say. He'd put everything out there for her, his whole heart in full display — more than once, in fact, and once it had been more or less on display for her entire family — and this was the response that he had earned? Not so much as a hello? No acknowledgement of anything that he'd written, no hint of where she thought they stood now?

That was the answer, though, wasn't it? Not writing back was answer enough, really. She wasn't interested in continuing thsi conversation that he'd started, and so they didn't stand anywhere at all. Metaphorically, anyway. Literally, they were standing here on his ship, and she was ostensibly doing some sort of work on it, and that was the only thing left to talk about. Well, fine, then.

"Is it?" he asked with a surly frown. "Because according to you all she's been cursed since the minute the chest opened, and we sailed her back to London after that without a problem. And then my whole crew lived and worked on her for a month while we were waiting for someone from the Ministry to deign to tell us what was going on, and in all that time, not a single 'cursed' thing happened. And if you fixed my flat in an afternoon —" he added, "I don't see how it could possibly take weeks to handle something that isn't even acting cursed."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda leaned back on her calves and frowned up at him, mirroring his expression. "Some curses are easier than others," she said. She had wanted to return to the bland, professional tone, but found she could not manage it. There was a hint of irritation she could not shave off.

"That curse dated to - early 1800s, probably," she said, "Familiar magic. Easy work. This is over a thousand years old and has aged and warped in countless ways since the spellcaster died." Zelda's wand, unnoticed, began to move a little faster and a little more erratically in her hand.

She did not owe him an explanation. She did not often want to give people explanations when she was solving their problems, finding it more distracting than anything. But - Alfred had always been sort of impressed by her, or at least had never doubted her. That he apparently did now - well. It pushed on that same swell of hurt. Alfred was supposed to be in India, but he wasn't, and he no longer believed that she was competent. So. Everything was great.

"And I hope I'm not the first person to tell you that there could be any manner of things wrong with your crew that just haven't shown themselves yet," Zelda added, a bitter afterthought.

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred was in no way qualified to contest any of the information she was offering on the nature of curses, which made her explanation all the more frustrating. He wanted to be right — or at the very least, he wanted someone from the Ministry to acknowledge that they were not exactly handling this very efficiently. He'd been stuck in port nearly two months past his expected departure date, and each day he lingered here the chances of his ever making good on this voyage smaller and smaller. Not to mention that it was increasingly expensive — journeys by ship were planned at the times they were for a reason, taking into account weather patterns and winds over the whole world, and leaving in a different season threw everything off. And then there was the whole issue of maintaining the ship and paying the crew... none of which anyone seemed inclined to acknowledge. In fact, every interaction he had with someone from the Ministry seemed to be framed on the assumption that he and his ship were being a nuisance — including this one.

And this was Zelda. This was a girl he had asked to court — a girl he had at least pondered the idea of having a future with — and this was the first time they had talked in months, and she was explaining, with clear irritation in her voice, some mumbo jumbo about curses that he couldn't hope to argue with. It was frustrating, mostly because he felt so unexpectedly impotent. Well, no; mostly because it was Zelda. But the whole situation and the powerlessness that had been forced on him by the Ministry certainly didn't help.

Her last comment struck him in a particular way, partly because of the way it was said. He wasn't sure if this was still on the subject of curses (and therefore something he ought to be concerned about) or whether, as her tone sort of suggested to his ears, this was some sort of implied insult attacking sailors, and therefore his profession. If that was the case, it wouldn't be the first such comment he'd heard, but it would certainly be the first from Zelda, and it stung more than he would have expected. "And what's that supposed to mean?" he asked irritably.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda tilted her head. She hadn't tried to be irritating, although she knew that she could have been - so she was not exactly sure why Alfred sounded clearly irritated. "That curses are real," she said, confusion leaking into her tone, "And this is a nasty one. That's about it."

All of her conversations with Alfred, ever since he had first asked to court her, felt like they were speaking different languages. This one was no different, but it was frustrating - because she did not know what he wanted from her anymore, because she was trying to do her job, because he got to leave and have adventures and move on. She didn't.

Her job, though - her wand was flickering back and forth in her hand, now, soft little beats. Zelda looked down at it and frowned. "Shit."

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred didn't really have time to draw up a retort for her words before her wand started doing a thing that could no longer be easily ignored. He didn't know what it meant, of course, because he didn't know what she was doing in the first place — and even if she'd explained it, he had never really been good with this sort of magic, anyway.

"What?" he asked, shoulders tensing slightly. "What's that mean? What it's doing?"

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"I'm trying to find out where the curse started spreading," she said - it wasn't worth getting into the tracking or mapping of it. She gave her wand a tentative tug but it kept flickering as if pulled by an invisible string. Mapping spells were tough, and Zelda honestly didn't know whether this meant she was close or whether the curse was just messing with her. Picts. Next assignment, she was requesting to spend a week chasing mildly haunted objects in Diagon Alley.

"It's being - cranky."

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   Amelia Evans, Melody Crouch

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred wasn't sure at first that he understood her explanation, which was not, in an of itself, surprising. He had never had much in the way of innate magical talent, and most of what he'd learned in Hogwarts he'd hardly used since. What Zelda did, specifically, was about as far removed from anything he could consider an area of expertise as possible. She could have explained almost any facet of her job, either generally or as it related to the de-cursing of his ship, and he probably wouldn't have understood exactly what she was getting at. There was another reason that this didn't quite click for him, though, which was that she really should have already known that — and the fact that she was apparently doing some tricky bit of magic in order to deduce it lead him to believe that maybe he'd misunderstood what she meant entirely.

"Like, where on the ship it started?" he asked, frowning. "I, uh... do you want me to just show you?"

He had, after all, actually been there when it started — as he had explained to the Ministry at least three times, twice in an official be-interviewed-and-have-people-take-notes capacity. Where had those notes gone, if no one had read them before sending a cursebreaking team out to his ship? Had they just spent the last however many days trying to figure out things he could have just told them (and, in fact, already had told them)? Merlin, how did the Ministry ever get anything done? He'd be stuck in port forever, at this rate.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"Sort of," she said, "It's - um - trying to find out where the curse is thickest. Which is probably, but not definitely, where it started. But - can you show me?" Being shown around by J. Alfred Darrow on boats was, generally, something she should avoid. If it saved her some time, though - or if it at least convinced him she was doing something - then maybe this entire situation would be a little less awkward. Perhaps she should have read her assignment onboarding for this a little more carefully; she had, however, become distracted as soon as she read Pictish curse.

Wait. Zelda didn't know a lot about boats - and had stubbornly avoided learning about them for the past months - but this was Alfred's boat. If this was Alfred's boat, which she had not actually seen in daylight in a very long time, then it was probably the boat they had had sex on.

Great. Zelda didn't want to jump directly into the river at all.

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AMAZING set by MJ

"Sure," he agreed easily, focused for the moment just on the task. He wanted her to succeed at de-cursing his ship, after all, because it was his livelihood, and because in its current condition he wasn't being permitted to actually sail it, which was fairly problematic for a sailor. He turned to lead the way, and that was when he realized that what he had just offered to do, and what he had then agreed to, was taking Zelda Fisk on a tour through the bowels of his ship. Just the two of them, in an enclosed space on an abandoned vessel — which had happened before, to disastrous effect.

Not that he had to worry about ending up in a similar situation. If she wasn't even returning his letters (his painstakingly written and heartfelt letters that he'd been sitting around waiting for a response to for actual months before he'd decided to give up hope and get out of town), the likelihood that they'd end up in bed together before the day was over seemed slim. Still, there was the optics of the thing to worry about, if anyone was around to see them disappearing belowdecks together or heard about this later. More worrisome, at least for Alfred, was the fact that once they were down in the cargo hold together it might be difficult to keep their conversation this... aloof. And he didn't really want it to get any more personal. If he'd wanted some sort of closing statement from her where she came right out and said she wasn't interested anymore (and maybe never had been as interested as he'd thought in the first place), he could have sought her out for one. Instead, he'd planned a trip to India, which was about as far away from seeking closure as he could have gotten.

"There're three cargo holds onboard. We found it in the midships hold," he mumbled in explanation as they preceded down the first ladderwell. There wasn't any going back on his offer now, he figured; he'd just have to take her there and explain what had happened (for the fourth time) and hope she didn't feel inclined to bring up... anything else. "It's three levels down from here."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

This was very bad. Zelda's cheeks were already a faint pink. But. She was an adult and Alfred did not like her anymore, so. "Finite incantatem," she muttered, stopping the wavering of her wand. She popped it into her pocket and picked up her notebook and quill, which she picked up, writing as he explained. If the curse had started in the core of the ship, that was - less than ideal, given that it had spread at least partially up the mast. But at least she stopped it from leaking into the surrounding waters.

"Did it spend any time on deck before the midships hold?" Zelda asked. She followed Alfred down the ladderwell, stepping carefully. It was even more vertical than she remembered it being.

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AMAZING set by MJ

"Well, it was smuggled in," he explained. This was not the first time he had mentioned this, but he was past being irritated about repeating himself to the Ministry as a general entity. He'd much rather talk about this with Zelda than talk about anything else, so he didn't mind filling up the air with this re-explanation. "So it's hard to say exactly where it went. When we on-load cargo there's typically a working party from the pier to the deck, and then once everything's onboard everyone moves it from deck to the hold. But if I were trying to smuggle a chest somewhere, I wouldn't leave it on the pier for the working party," he said with a shrug as he continued guiding her belowdecks. "I'd bring it on after everyone else had left for the day and take it directly down. After all the rest of the cargo had been loaded up."

Did it matter where it had been before it had been opened, though? It had seemed so innocuous when he'd first found it, not like it was actively cursing everything around it. "It, ah — it didn't start... leaking until it was opened, though, did it?" he asked tentatively. "It was in the hold when it was opened."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

If Zelda could do anything, no questions ask, to make the world work better, it would be to end the smuggling of random magical objects. Between this and the flying tigers, she had never had a good time with it.

"That's part of why I'm trying to map it," Zelda said, "I'm not sure. It seems to have been spreading pretty pervasively, so it's hard to tell exactly when the curse hit certain areas." For Alfred's sake, she hoped that most of it had been after the boat had already been docked here - but she couldn't tell yet.

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AMAZING set by MJ

"Right," Alfred said distantly. The uncertainty in her answer was not particularly great news for him or his crew. He knew exactly where the chest had been after it had been opened, and he could more or less walk a direct step-by-step path with her or someone else from the Ministry, if that was what it took to get this thing under control. He had no idea where it had been before being opened, or even how long it had been on board before he'd found it. If they needed to start that investigation from scratch (and handled it about as efficiently as they'd handled the investigation so far), then it seemed likely the Voyager would be dockside for months. Ugh.

One more ladderwell brought them to the door of the cargo hold, which Alfred opened for her. The room inside was crowded, since they hadn't unloaded hardly anything except the perishable food they'd had on board. Crates and boxes were stacked as high as the ceiling would allow, then strapped down tightly so that they would stay put during a roll from a heavy sea. There were aisles between the rows, but just wide enough for a single person to walk through.

"So it was back here," he said, moving towards one corner of the hold. "Stuck out right away because it wasn't tied down the right way. We tried to open it here, then stopped when it — uh, started doing that thing," he said vaguely. He realized that if he was going to continue this narrative, the next place the chest had gone wasn't particularly somewhere he wanted to stand around alone with Zelda. They'd taken the chest up to his cabin after it had become clear it wasn't a normal chest — which had made perfect sense at the time, when his goal had been to keep anyone onboard from meddling with it and making it worse. How was he supposed to know that he'd be touring a Ministry official through the track the chest had taken in the near future? And how was he supposed to know that Ministry official would be Zelda?

"And, uh — then we moved it to my cabin," he mumbled awkwardly. "Which, uh... you know where that is."

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   Jupiter Smith

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER