I am, yes, I am
Hands red
hands red just like he said

@remington - outfit

Sera wasn't completely sure about being in Knocturn Alley. Not that it was frightening, she didn't think she found anything at all particularly scary. It also wasn't as crowded as Diagon Alley, or as noisy, and the perpetual darkness it was in made it much cooler than summer in London normally was. The filth also didn't bother her, particularly. After having been elbow deep in a corpse at the age of eight, she didn't think there was anything at all that could make her stomach churn. Perhaps childbirth, that sounded particularly disgusting, but she wouldn't be having anything to do with that any time soon. Especially because, thankfully, Greengrass and her whelps didn't live at Stygian Hall. Either because Theodore knew better than to let them live where she could get her hands on any of them, or because he himself didn't want to be bothered by them. She hadn't asked. She wasn't talking to him yet, not as much as she used to, even if her anger had been somewhat mitigated at the birthday present he sent her. Well, birthday. That was the date on which she estimated she had been born. Tatiana didn't much care for calendars and Sera hadn't either, at the time. They'd needed a date to register her as his adopted daughter, however. Hence the birthday present. The only proper conversation they'd had since she'd come back was about her hair. The summer was too hot for her, she hated it and made sure to keep her own quarters at very low temperatures. Theo said that shorter hair would keep her cooler. She... figured it wouldn't hurt to try, so she cut it. So far, it had helped some. Then, somewhat later, he had commented over dinner that he had a friend with a shop specialised in necromancy and that she should visit it if she ran out of material at Stygian Hall.

She hadn't run out of material. There were hundreds of books on everything she needed, there were rare artefacts, and she could also make use of her cousins' libraries if she asked ahead. Sera preferred to continue with her work, especially after having to spend so much of her time studying for useless other things. Those useless OWLs. At least something good had come of her studies; if she passed the year she would be allowed to officially take part of the internship Minister Lestrange was setting up for her. Only for her, there wasn't such a thing as an internship for the department of Mysteries. Yet, now there was. It had been a pleasant surprise. So much so that she didn't even mind her growing solitude. Not that she was lonely, she preferred to be alone. It was just a sudden change. After a year of being almost constantly accompanied by Rhea or Caerus or LJ or James, she was now alone. It was a pleasant change, though by the end of things she hadn't minded all that much. She liked her cousins, she liked James, and she liked LJ. They were comfortable to be around, really, even if half of them talked too much about a sport she didn't really give a damn about. At least she could follow the chatter well enough. That didn't mean that she necessarily participated, but Rhea said it was being considerate of other people's interests. Whatever. It was useless.

Just because she was still bothered with Theo, however, didn't mean that she was going to ignore the possibility of finding something useful at his friend's shop. She had plenty of money, Theo gave her all the gold she might want. Besides, she was a bit worn out of so much thinking, for a while. So much research tired her mind, and it was the only thing she ever did. She figured she might as well take the afternoon. Explore Knockturn Alley like she had the Forbidden Forest. So far, it was fine. Nothing overly interesting. She had, however, found Pucey's shop just fine. She'd entered and started browsing the shelves. Slowly, reading the titles in English and Latin and runes. There were some texts that she could not understand, in some sort of Arabic on occasion, and some in Hebrew and all sorts of other tongues. Thankfully, however, there were translations. How accurate those were, she didn't know. Probably couldn't be trusted all that much but the alternative was to learn the entire language... or buy a dictionary. Yes, that sounded like a better idea. For now she would keep-

Oh.

With slow steps, she approached a board. Covered in velvet. On it were... necklaces. They were probably cursed, that wasn't what mattered. The most simple one of them. That was... she knew the sign. That was the sign of the deathly hallows, she'd read about the stone in her research. To her, however, it wasn't that which the triangular symbol represented. Her grandparents had been followers of Grindelwald, admirers of his work in the field of necromancy. They'd burned this sign on one of the walls of their living room. In the crowded little house, nothing could be set before that sign, nothing may cover it. Grandmother had owned a necklace just like this one, handed it down to Tatiana when she charged her daughter with the task of killing her. Tatiana didn't get to give it to Serafina. She died before that. The Fiendfyre had left nothing but ashes.

Swallowing, she took out her wand and levitated it, so as not to touch it with her bare hands as she examined it more closely.

I am a little wicked

OUTFIT

It was her first day of work. Technically, she started in a few hours, but Remy was early….extraordinary early. So much so that by the time she arrived in front of Anicka Wentzell’s office, she had promptly turned around and returned to Diagon Alley for fear that the woman might think her too eager to begin her internship. It was a dream come true. She would be writing for HOME Magazine. Or…she would be picking up lattes and making food runs for the writers of HOME. But who knew? Perhaps by the end of all of this, she would be sitting pretty with a job offer for the summer after her seventh year at Hogwarts. That was the plan, anyway.

Standing at the edge of the street, Remy watched as the crowd ebbed and flowed through the alleyway. It was all so…boring. They were all so vanilla. So entirely average. She wanted more. She wanted a little bit of excitement. She wanted to go into her internship refreshed — with story ideas and motivation. Ducking her head, she took a few steps into the nearby alley and passed from the light, bright, and airy streets of Diagon Alley into the darkness of Knockturn Alley.

There were days when she liked to imagine that she was her mother, Integra Echoes. She liked to imagine a dark past, an unspoken allegiance, the passions of love. She liked to imagine that she was more than just Remington Monroe. So she held her head high on these dark streets. Perhaps she looked like she belonged…like she was meant to be a part of the darkness in these parts. Then again, perhaps she looked like a lost little girl meddling in things she didn’t understand.

As she slipped into the nearest building, The Coffin House, as it were, Remy could feel her heart pounding and adrenaline coursing through her veins. The shopkeep looked up just as Remy lifted her sunglasses and she gave him a wink. Pretending to be her mother was far easier than she imagined. “What are you in the market for?”

“Just browsing,” Remy said, looking around the shop. It was obvious it was focused on the dead: the skulls, bones, and gloomy looking atmosphere made sure everyone knew that. “Though I’ll let you know if I have any questions.” And with that, she began walking around the store, pausing every so often to read a placard that denoted what was in the boxes below.

The sight of someone else in the store made Remy pause. A small smile crossed her lips. The strange little Nott. What things she had heard about her over the last few months. There was one thing that traveled faster than mononucleosis at Hogwarts, and that was gossip. Especially the gossip about Serafina Nott. People said outlandish things: everything from she ate pig hearts for every meal to the mundane she probably killed her parents. And Remy ate all of it up. Though, she couldn’t help but wonder what exactly the truth was. Sure, she had asked Caerus before and he had given her vague, veiled answers that amounted to nothing more than ‘she’s adopted,’ but Remy craved more. She wanted to know everything about the strange Serafina Nott. Maybe today was her lucky day.

As Caerus’ cousin, she had a vested interest in Sera and her family…after all, they were the ones who housed her for the summers and breaks. She had the Notts to thank for the beautiful view of the garden and the warm, house-elf cooked meals. “Pretty. It might look good on you,” Remy said, raising one of her eyebrows as she came to a stop next to the Ravenclaw girl. Her eyes scanned her expression, trying to figure out what she was so focused on. The necklace, obviously, but was it more? She didn’t linger long on Sera’s strong features, instead focusing her attention on the necklace, instead. "Or it might kill you. Who knows."

There had been Tatiana. Her mother. She was dead now, she had let her mind consume her and her magic had done the rest. They dealt with dangerous things, in their home, and the second Tatiana stopped studying death and tried to cure it, that was when she had died. Even if she kept breathing and moving and thinking, she had been dead long before the inferi got out of her control. They ripped her to pieces and all Sera could do was run. Get out of the house and burn it all to the ground, inferi and books and clothing and inferi-grandparents and mother. It was winter in the Krai. At least she had a wand and a single notebook she managed to grab on her way out. Tatiana was dead and Sera's world had ended. The second world she had ever existed in was the whiteness of Krasnoyarsk Krai. At the very north there was polar dessert, then there was tundra and that was where Sera had lived. Above the arctic circle. She had survived, but she had never thought about that. If she lived then she did, if she didn't then she would never feel regret. Dead people didn't feel anything, after all. Her death would have been like that riddle about the tree in a forest. If nobody was around to hear it, did it fall? If nobody was left that knew of her existence, did she truly exist? Now she did, now that she was here. In a way, she was glad to. She wouldn't have minded dying, really. This was still more interesting.

Steps sounded beside her and she turned her eyes to look at the figure. Oh, that was... Caerus' ex girlfriend. According to Rhea. Sera couldn't remember her name, she only ever saved useful information. The girl never truly seemed important. Rhea kept talking about how she find it funny that Caerus would bring an ex to live with them, but Rhea liked to gossip. Sera never paid much attention to anything about such matters. She just found it strange that someone would like Caerus like that. Not that he wasn't conventionally attractive, she supposed, but Sera had never looked at him that way. Or at anyone. Even things with LJ had been more of a natural progression and regression of things. Rhea thought it was wonderful. Sera wasn't sure about Rhea's opinions on... something with an R, wasn't it? This girl. From her appearance, Sera would say that she was uncomfortable. The glint in her eyes, the slight tension in her throat. Her clothing.  Rhea would have said it wasn't lady like, Sera didn't much care. She wore whatever she liked. Others should too. This girl- Sera had seen a lot of true, real emotions. People were usually very honest when they were about to die and the bodies for her inferi came from somewhere. This comfort wasn't honest, Sera could smell a lie from miles away. She wondered why R was lying.

Raising an eyebrow, she cast a charm on the necklace and a few colours and symbols shone around it. To see if it was cursed. It wasn't a recent spell, passage of time usually made them lose their subtlety. "Curse inducing necrosis and habdomyolysis. Unpleasant way to die." Her voice was a drawl and she put the necklace back down, shaking off the hole in her stomach. Not an uncommon curse. A pendant with such big political connotations was a typical target for these curses. To rot away the skin and muscle once touched, and the location around the jugular, spine and main arteries made for the perfect target if one wanted to kill Grindelwald supporters quickly. "Easy enough to lift."

i am a
little wicked

❧

Things would never be as they once were. Remington had been left fatherless by her mother and motherless by the regime that had held power before the Death Eaters. She had been alone.

At least, until she’d met Caerus. They’d shacked up a few times, snogged more times than that, but at the end of the day, both had decided that they were better off as friends. Friends meant she had somewhere to go…she had somewhere to call home. The Notts saved her the embarrassment of returning to the Orphanage every summer and every holiday from Hogwarts. The Notts protected what little of her dignity she had left. She owed the Notts more than she could ever possibly repay them.

And yet, there was something about Sera that put Remy ill at ease. Maybe it was the way the girl’s eyes always seemed to linger just a second too long. Or perhaps the way that she never smiled. She was gorgeous — that much Remy was certain of — but she was also terrifying. And not in the way that Remington considered herself to be intimidating. No, Sera’s mannerisms rendered her one of the strangest human beings she’d ever encountered. Usually, she’d write story upon story about someone like this. But of course, there were promises that she had to keep. The Notts had given her everything and one thing Caerus had asked was that Remy kept her quill away from Serafina Nott.

Her eyes lit up when the Ravenclaw levitated the necklace higher into the sky. The runes and colors surrounding it meant little to the Slytherin girl. Remy paused, dissecting the words Sera threw around like they were nothing. Necrosis she understood — she wasn’t an idiot. But Habdomyolsis. That one had her stumped. She didn’t want to probe any further. Doing so would make her look like an idiot to Sera. She didn’t know much about Caerus’ cousin, but she did know that the girl was weird. Weird, but hyper-intelligent. “I’d rather neither of us dies,” Remington said, hoping that Sera caught on to what she was saying. She didn’t want that necklace anywhere near her lest it induce necrosis and whatever the hell habdomyolsis was.

Caerus had made her promise to be nice to his cousin. That was the reason she hadn’t run off as soon as she’d seen Sera. She was trying to be nice. Nice people usually asked for details, didn’t they? Merlin’s Beard, Remington felt like she was putting on some sort of show. She didn’t need to pretend to care about Sera, did she? The girl was Caerus’ cousin. She could just talk to her like she was anyone else. “I don’t know that we’ve ever been properly introduced,” it wasn’t like the Notts arranged family picnics every summer. They weren’t that type of family. “Remington Monroe. Resident fixture at your cousins' manor. And you’re Sera, right?” She offered her a thin smile. Her hand twitched as she considered extending it towards the girl, but something stopped her. Perhaps it was fear. “Are you shopping for something?”

@petrova

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                                                   No one calls you honey
                                when you're sitting on a throne

                                        @remington - same outfit

    Over the years, she had gained quite some experience reading people. While she didn't truly understand most people's motives or why they found what they found important, she could see when they were feeling a certain way. It was a logical thing to notice when she could see truly honest and uninhibited emotions. The only moment in which one could trust a person to be completely open was when they were dying and she had seen many people die. Mostly by her hand, directly or not. Fear was an emotion she was very familiar with, no matter how anyone tried to hide it. Fear was natural to human beings, it came in the moments when they realised how truly futile it was to struggle against that which was inevitable. Usually, it was death in the shape of Serafina herself, but it could be any sort of thing, really. She didn't much care what people feared or why, she understood that they just did and it was their own business. She was always terribly amused, however, when they were afraid of her. At first she had found it normal, because it happened when she was killing someone. Then she found it puzzling, as she had stopped those activities and new people still occasionally feared her, or at the very least, were uncomfortable around her. She had not meant to frighten anyone, so she really hadn't understood why they were or what she could do about it. Now, however, she merely found it to be awfully amusing. If she had to live with it, she would make the most of it. Besides, what did she care if Remington was afraid of her? She had no interest in the girl's comfort, no matter what Rhea tried to tell her.

    "Perhaps. Better leave that for later on, I suppose." She thinks she might buy the necklace, even if she didn't remove the curse. Sera wouldn't forget about it, but it might be amusing if someone else touched it. She hadn't actually seen such a curse in action before, though she'd thoroughly studied it. Perhaps she should find someone to try it on. Not Remington, she had the feeling Caerus would find that more than a little upsetting. She didn't know much about the girl, really, she hadn't heard anything at all other than the basics. She was a halfblood living with her pureblood family. Well, Sera herself was a halfblood as well, but people didn't know that. Most people didn't know she was even adopted, her cousins didn't go about telling everyone that and Theo had never publicly announced it. Sera didn't care either way but she knew that her father got a kick out of fooling everyone. It was one of the many jokes he needed in order to amuse himself, a bored Theo was a very dangerous Theo. "I know who you are."

    Well, not exactly, but she knew the only things that mattered as far as Sera cared. Whatever Remington had heard about her was really not of any interest to her either, but she supposed that socialising was what they were doing now. How she hated when it was imposed upon one, she quite detested smalltalk and didn't see the point in formal introductions if both of them knew each other's identity. "Serafina." Her eyes fixed on the shorter girl's face, studying it. Yes, she was still afraid. That was more than a little funny to her, but she didn't mention it. Some people were perturbed by her eyes, being very light, and how she looked at everyone so searchingly. Well, she wondered if Remington would be more frightened if she did say it. That would be quite something. She almost smiled in amusement. "Just browsing, father is a friend of the owner."

i am a
little wicked

❧

Remington rarely considered herself to be frightened of anything. She had grown up in an orphanage…there was more than enough shit there to make anyone disillusioned to fear, she supposed. Just the same, it was something about the small smile and darting eyes of Serafina Nott that put her on edge.

She almost envied the girl. Serafina was the type of person that could make a whole room go silent as soon as she walked through the door. She was the sort of girl that could make a man quiver in their very boots. And while Remington sometimes had that effect, she wasn’t sure that it was for the same reason. Remington chose to wield the power of the quill over her enemies, making them fear what she could write about them. Sera, on the other hand, seemed more poised to leave people questioning what she would do to them. Maybe she had murdered someone. Or a lot of people. Remington didn’t know and she knew that she had promised to stay out of Sera’s past. No digging. She was family — she was a Nott. And they were the closest thing to family that Remington would ever get.

Perhaps she would ask Caerus about it later. Surely he would tell her the truth about his strange cousin. Perhaps there was nothing wrong with her at all.

She knew she would never fully fit into this world. She wasn’t a pureblood — it wasn’t that she had herself that disillusioned — she knew that. But she also knew that she was the daughter of two Death Eaters and, in the current regime, that had to count for something. That at least put her a step above the other halfbloods that she knew. Still, Remington couldn’t shake the feeling that she would never entirely fit into Caerus and the Nott’s world. Remington paused, raising her eyebrows. She knew that Theodore Nott had adopted Sera, but beyond that, she knew very little about the man. There weren’t family reunions for them to get to know one another.

She was killing time before she had to be at HOME magazine for her first day of work. It was both exciting and anxiety-inducing. Remington supposed she had thought this would make her feel better, but somehow, being in this enclosed space with Sera wasn’t doing much for her nerves. She could only hope that things would equilibrate when she finally got her on her way. “So am I,” she answered, her eyes finally moving away from the girl and resting on the strange trinkets that decorated the shelves. “I’d actually never been in before, but I have a few hours to kill before I’m due at work. I start at HOME Magazine today,” she paused, taking a look at a particularly beautiful pair of ruby earrings that were tucked into a display case. Based on what she now knew of the necklace, she could only imagine that these, too, were lethal.

She wanted to have a conversation with Sera — it was the proper thing to do — but she couldn’t help but feel that it was difficult to get through to her. Still, she pushed on. She’d be happy to report to Caerus that she’d at least attempted to have a sort of conversation with his cousin. “Did you end up taking a summer job?”

@ sera

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no one calls you honey
when you're sitting on the throne

@ remington - outfit

    When Theo had brought her home, he had claimed that she would be a Lady and that there were certain rules ladies had to follow. It had both to do with how she dressed, how she acted, who she spent her time with, and what she did and which interests she showed. In a way, she knew he had been testing her. Did she hear those rules and comply to them like an obedient little sheep, or did she use them to get her way? Yes, she dressed like someone worthy of the Nott name ought to, Pansy had seen to that, and she didn't do any of the so called 'dishonourable' things that would make her be publicly criticised. She did whatever she wanted by making it seem like she was obeying those rules ladies had to live by. That made it so much easier to do her research about whatever she wanted, nobody bothered her or tried to think less of her. Yes, she wasn't exactly sociable or charismatic, but that would be boring. Sera could get away with it selling the orphan from Siberia card. Besides, Theo himself was never normal so it wouldn't surprise anyone that she wasn't either. It only worked to her advantage, she could mostly be herself and she was left alone, unbothered by expectations that she had no interest of fulfilling. 
    Sera knew that Remington was living with uncle Lester's family. She was close to Caerus and because of that, she was a permanent guest. Sera didn't really understand it but she also didn't care. It was amusing to see Theo be casually displeased with the whole thing, however. He seemed to maintain that Lester was losing his mind, allowing a halfblood to stay with them. Never mind the fact that Sera was a halfblood herself, Theo was of the opinion that intelligence and power made all the difference and he wasn't at all impressed with what he'd heard about Remi. Sera herself had heard more about the other witch than he had, but she also wasn't impressed. After all, she seemed to be quite easy to scare. As entertaining as it was for herself, she didn't think her family would benefit from it. Then again, these were just observations she made when she cared to pay attention to pureblood politics, which was rare. Mostly, she couldn't care less. It was boring and petty and more than a little frivolous. The kind of company that she preferred was that of people who could contribute something to her interests, everyone else was but temporary amusement without actually being useful. Unfortunate, but she was an honest person... usually. To herself, not to others. What would be the point of that? Yes, Theo had influenced her quite a bit, which she begrudgingly had to admit. 
    "A job?" Summer jobs, yes. She'd heard that other students were actually quite eager to get themselves work. Probably to have more money to spend or to prepare themselves for a future career. Sera didn't need to work, Theo had more than enough money and he didn't mind giving her as much as she wanted whenever she wanted. The jobs that were available had nothing to do with her interests, it was absolutely a waste of time. Sera would prefer to stay home and read her own books and do research independently, like she had done the first several months after her arrival in England. However, going to Hogwarts was still obligatory. If that was ever lifted, she would be the first to leave. Why would she waste her time with all that useless drivel? She preferred to decide what she learned by herself. It was why she was doubting that she'd attend university at all. Perhaps she would find some necromancer or another to study with. In the mean time, Andromeda's solution for her boredom was quite effective. "No, I don't need to work. The Minister will be creating an internship in the Department of Mysteries for me." There was no such internship just yet, but Andromeda had seen her potential and she seemed quite happy to help provide her with tools to improve herself. "And you?"