May 4th, 1890 - Alfred's Flat

Lay me down under a blanket of stars
And watch as they illuminate all our scars

Zelda took the floo after work again. She had the earring she wanted to use in her pocket; she had been working on it all day. The Picts carved using sandstone, so the body of the earring was made of sandstone; they used silver in their metalwork, so the hook was silver. With careful wandwork, she had copied some of the patterns from the original chest - patterns that had appeared on Alfred's hand - onto the sandstone. She wanted the curse to feel at home.

She was nervous. If this didn't work, things could backfire very badly - not just onto Alfred, but onto Zelda, too. Zelda and Julian had both accumulated more than a few bruises working on the Voyager, and the magic in Alfred was nasty, too. But she was as confident as she would ever be, and it was not as if they had many other options.

Of course, Alfred had to agree, first. And she was going to have to pierce his ear. That was nearly as stressful as dealing with the curse itself.

She arrived in a rush of green flames and stepped neatly out of his fireplace. "I'm here," Zelda called, always feeling awkward announcing herself when she got here.

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J. Alfred Darrow

  

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AMAZING set by MJ

For each day that had passed in between the receipt of her last letter and the unexpected announcement that Zelda was standing in his parlor, Alfred's feelings had oscillated between being rather annoyed at the delay and relieved. The Ministry, after all, had been sending him some incredibly mixed signals regarding the entire curse situation, and it seemed Zelda in her capacity as a Ministry employee was no exception. This curse was so dangerous that it could kill him in fifteen minutes, and it might strike at any time, and so he ought to be careful (but careful of what, careful how, had never been specified) — but, on the other hand, she might have to put off addressing it until early next week, because she had other projects to catch up on. Other projects that were, apparently, more important than his life.

On the other hand, he still didn't know what she was trying to do, and so having a bit of time where he didn't have to confront it — whatever it was — was something he couldn't manage to properly complain about. He'd thought about writing to her and asking more questions, or asking why the delay, but ultimately what it came down to was that for the moment he was alive and well, and while that was still the case he could put off mentally coping with whatever was going to happen next.

"Hey," he greeted as he entered the front room. "Guess you're caught up on everything, then?" he asked as he took a seat on the sofa. His tone wasn't hostile, by any means, but it did have a twinge of underlying sarcasm that he simply couldn't help.

  

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

Zelda's mouth twisted; she didn't know what to make of his sentence, although her instinct was to be defensive. She stood with that feeling for a second before she actually replied to Alfred.

The pause did not actually help the feeling, although at least, Zelda thought, she was not being impulsive in response.

"If I was too behind on my other assignments my bosses would wonder where I went," she said, trying to take some of the confused feeling out of her tone. "And there's - some other Pictish things going on." There was the bird with the Dumbledore child, although at least no one had died in Ottery, and that didn't count some of what other people were working on.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Her response made sense, on the surface, but Alfred wasn't entirely convinced. His situation was one of her assignments, too, so why not just say that if anyone asked what she was doing with her afternoon? It wasn't as though she was sneaking away from work to come and cuddle on his sofa, or something. She could have just said, without even lying, that she was taking a few hours to tie up some loose ends regarding the whole cursed chest debacle, and no one needed to know exactly where she physically was while she was doing it. That being said, he didn't want to argue about it. She was here now, so best to just move forward.

"Yeah, alright," he said with a small shake of his head, because he had exactly zero interest in hearing about any of the 'other Pictish things,' as she'd put it. It would essentially just be an itemized list of things that she had chosen to prioritize over him — over intervening in the curse that was lurking in the background waiting for an opportunity to kill him. He didn't need to hear that. On the one hand, there might have been things on the list that really shouldn't have come before saving his life, since most of what he'd heard about the Pictish curses in rumors had been decidedly more tame than what had happened to him and to the Voyager. On the other hand, and almost worse, they might have been things that absolutely should have been prioritized above him, from a detached Ministry standpoint. People had died from some of these curses, after all... he just didn't know whether Zelda had been working with any of those particular cases.

He wasn't really ready to let go of the annoyance he felt, though, and if he let her talk about her other assignments and it turned out her delay had been justified, he'd have to. Instead, he steered the conversation forward by asking a bit brusquely, "So what's the plan, here?"

  

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

Zelda bristled at his tone, a visible twist of her lips, but was deferred by his question - she was actually quite pleased by the magic she'd put into this, and she really wanted to share.

She plucked the earring out of her pocket and walked over, holding it in the palm of her hand. She had been thinking of the explanation for a while; part of selling Alfred on her idea meant explaining why it was a good one.

"It's a container," Zelda said, "Made of the same sandstone material as the curse's original house, and the hook is silver, which they also worked with. Essentially I'm building the curse a house - it wants to be in similar materials, rather than in your body, and by having this attached to your body you can give it that home."

She paused, took a breath. "And once it's in this solid, unchanging environment - rather than your body - you won't be at risk."

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred saw the thing in her hand as she walked towards him, but it took him a moment to figure out what it actually was. By the time he'd processed it, she was already halfway through her explanation. Was this what she'd meant when she'd written that cryptic line about an earring? He'd never imagined that the earring was for him. Did she know that he didn't have anywhere to put an earring? His tattoos were common knowledge, at least to anyone who read Witch Weekly, and Alfred supposed that for most of society tattoos and male earrings existed in the same sort of shadowy realm of impropriety. Perhaps she'd just assumed.

"So... I just hold it?" he asked uncertainly. "And you'll do some magic thing to draw it out?"

  

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

Oh, right. She had forgotten to mention that; not for the first time in their relationship (or whatever), Zelda thought that she could communicate a little better.

"I sort of need to pierce your ear," Zelda admitted, looking sheepish. "This is one of the most effective ways to do spellwork like this -- I know it's not convenient, but..."

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred blinked at her. "You're not serious," he said flatly. It was initially a statement, not a question, because he didn't think she possibly could be serious. If this was really her plan, she would not have introduced it this way, he was sure. She would not have described it as simply not convenient.

Looking at her expression, though, he wasn't quite as sure. She didn't look like she'd been joking, and honestly, if it was a joke it was one that wasn't particularly funny. "I'm going to look like a pirate," he said with a forced chuckle, still rather hoping that she was trying to be funny and had just sorely misjudged the atmosphere in the room.

  

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

You already look like a pirate, Zelda thought, but did not say, because she did not think it would go over very well under the circumstances. Pirate-looking people could be handsome, as long as they were not actually pirates.

Instead, she bit her lip at him. "I'm serious," Zelda said, equally flat.

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred opened his mouth to respond, but closed it again when he realized he had nothing to say. For a moment, he was silent, contemplating this new development. It wasn't exactly the way he pictured himself; he'd never exactly tried to be unconventional. Someone who only knew him after his return from the Sycorax might not realize that, but he'd once been quite perfectly respectable, if a tad too adventurous. The tattoos and the hair and the peculiar habits hadn't really been conscious choices so much as things that had just happened to him while living in the wilds. This felt different.

But, as he'd been telling himself repeatedly since he'd gotten her first letter on the subject which hadn't inspired much confidence, it was hard to argue against anything she wanted to try when the alternative was sitting around and waiting to die. Given the stakes, even Evander was likely to grudgingly come around to the idea of an earring.

"How long will it take?" he asked eventually. "Before it's... uh, gone enough to take it out?"

  

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

"I'm not sure," Zelda said, because she was not in the hobby of lying to Alfred, even when it might make him more likely to agree. "It could be a very long time. But the upside of having it contained is that it would also be easier for a cursebreaker to take a look at it without hurting you."

He could have the earring forever, although Zelda did not want to think that way. The important thing was that - once he had it, they could breathe again.

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AMAZING set by MJ

The uncertainty of the situation was in no way surprising, given how little was known about Pictish curses and their effects, generally speaking. That being said, every time he encountered something like I don't know in response to one of his questions, it was jarring all over again. It really drove home how low his expectations for any of this ought to be; no one knew what they were doing, and it was just about all he could hope for to survive this ordeal.

"Alright," he said with a resigned sigh. He wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea yet, but there wasn't anything else to say about it that would make him feel any better, most likely. He reached one hand up and experimentally tugged on his right earlobe, wondering how it would feel to have a curse lodged there. "Have you ever pierced someone's ear before?"

He expected the answer to be no, but as he certainly didn't have any experience with this he could only hope that she had at least some inkling of what she was doing.

  

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

"No," Zelda admitted. She added quickly: "But I know how to. It'll hurt a little, but it's easy to do." If little girls could pierce each other's ears for jewelry then Zelda could for sure pierce Alfred's; this wasn't the part she was afraid of.

It was the follow-up, the incantation to draw the spell into the earring; she knew exactly how it should work, but what if it didn't? If it didn't work, if there was something wrong - they would be left at the same wall they were at now. Or, worse, Alfred would die. Zelda didn't think she could handle either option.

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AMAZING set by MJ

There was nothing about this situation that Alfred particularly liked, and his conversation with Evander from the previous weekend drifted back to mind. Do you think Miss Fisk is really the best person to be working on the curse for you? Alfred had never thought he would have cause to complain about Zelda coming over to his flat, but in his particular scenario he wondered why they were doing this instead of going about things in the usual way. Having him come in to some nondescript Ministry room would have been a bit clinical and stiff, sure, but the formality might have added a certain something that this was decidedly lacking. Confidence, legitimacy, something — there was no word he could pick for this that would not have offended Zelda, though, so he wasn't sure how to bring it up. At the very least, they might've had someone involved in the process who had actually pierced someone's ear before.

He didn't want to imply that he didn't trust Zelda, or that he didn't think she was fully capable of solving problems that she encountered in her work. If the stakes had been lower, he could have just pushed his doubts about all of this aside and gone along with what she suggested, for the sake of keeping the peace and remaining polite. But he wasn't going to die for the sake of politeness.

"I don't know," he admitted uncertainly. "This whole... Has this been done before? This sort of process? I know you told me about the ship and the door, but..."

  

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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 at him. "In some capacities," she said after a moment, tapping the fingertips of her free hand against her thigh. "The preference is obviously to break the curse, but when that's proven difficult or impossible - a vessel can be used, instead." She spun the sandstone charm in her hand. "Most often here it's been done with Egyptian curses, because there aren't many Pictish objects left. There was a case with a Hadza curse and a necklace in German East Africa a few years ago."

She was trying not to be annoyed, as she rattled off the research; perhaps it was too much to ask Alfred to just trust her. His life was in her hands, after all. But - she was competent, and she knew this would work, as long as she stayed confident about it.

Mistrusting herself - that was dangerous.

"I've never used an earring, but I've moved curses from one object to another."

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AMAZING set by MJ

Well, there was some precedent, at least, and that was something. At least this wasn't some hair-brained scheme she'd come up with by herself several hours after she ought to have clocked out and gone home, born out of desperation when it seemed that there really wasn't any viable solution in sight. That made him feel a little better. And she was trained to do this, he reminded himself. She wasn't just some hobbyist who had an interest in trying to get him curse-free. She was a professional, and someone at the Ministry had assigned this to her — meaning, in their estimation, she was qualified to handle it.

"Alright," he said, although his insides were still squirming with nerves. "Let's, uh... let's do it, then, I guess.''

The following 1 user Likes J. Alfred Darrow's post:1 user Likes J. Alfred Darrow's post
   Zelda Darrow

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