Where Have All My Morals Gone

Washed Away With The Bottle

How Did This All Go Wrong

It was always one thing after another. No matter where he went, someone would find him, and when they did he was always left coming away from it with a screaming migraine and the feeling that he had forgotten more than he had learned. As if his mind couldn't handle all the information at once, all the while there was this aggravating tiny voice screaming when his mind fought against him. He'd blame it on sleep deprivation except he didn't really need to sleep anymore and he was always woken from his nightmarish dreams with the feeling that someone had just yelled in his ear and thundered their fists against his ribs. Yet he couldn't ask Raymond for more help as he'd already taken enough from his old man, and to continue to badger him for his aid was disgusting, really. He'd had the man done for horrific abuse and someone else had dealt him in as being the Dark Lord's leak in the Ministry, so he'd been incarcerated for nearly a decade. He'd already had enough from him. No... no, he had to be stronger now and learn to get past this by himself. Somehow. Without the aid of anyone else.

Not that he had all that many people that he could go to with this problem as it was. He wasn't going near any healers if he could absolutely help it, and it wasn't like he had any friends. He had no use for friends. They were just people to be there for funerals and weddings, sometimes to fill the spaces in between if you weren't productive enough with your time and found the need to occupy it somehow. Some would argue that they prevented loneliness and solitude, but what if it was solitude he sought? What was loneliness but another shackle to other people. Damion had long rid himself of such binds. His life was his, to do what he wanted with, and that was his plans. Today, for instance, he had neglected to open the gallery for he didn't want to stay inside. Not for any particular reason other than the fact that his migraines seemed more frequent the more he was inside the building, had taken to locking the workshop through the back up near permanently for it seemed to be the biggest culprit for them. As if his mind was shrieking at him, fighting the inside of his skull to get him to see something that wasn't there. Whatever it was, it wasn't coming to mind these days, and he could do without the need to be necking down potions left, right, and center, in order to get through his daily life.

Pale eyes roamed his surroundings with a calculating, dispassionate gaze, as he took in everything from the people to the grass. Ironic, that he would find himself inside a garden when he had been so close to killing a man inside a bar not even an hour before.  Damion had already forgotten what had happened between the pair of them, only knew that at some point between gripping his wand with murderous intent and backing the man against the wall... he had taken his leave and wound up here. Leaves sticking to his shoes. Fenced in on all sides by walls teeming with life, with other visitors wherever he looked. No idea why he was here and no reason to be here either. Black shoes turned, and he left the main path to take the one dotted with sporadic slabs, heading for the exit. He had been here an hour already and nothing had changed, not really. The urge to take a life may have left for the moment but he didn't particularly care about that... only on what to do next. Find some company for his evening so he could pretend to the outside world that he was fine and they could all stop approaching him and trying to get him to believe their sordid tales. Perhaps take a walk along a cliff edge perched precariously over toiling waves and see where it took him. 

Midway along the path, his stride was intercepted by a woman on a collision course, yet Damion only realised once she was upon him rather than in advance. His arms gently came up to catch her arms and he stepped sideways from her gait so they didn't collide. Eyes now focused before him, he was struck by the familiarity of the features that faced him and he paused. What was her name? Something told him she had been there in Hogwarts... yet it didn't tell him much else. What was the damned name?! Surely, after it being nearly a decade later, he could be forgiven this once for forgetting it? This one among the many others he apparently didn't know either. A smooth smile alighted to his face and he feigned a sigh, shaking his head. "Careful... these slabs can be rather unforgiving if you lose your balance," Damion said silkily, dropping the pleasantries of a typical greeting. It was enough that he recognised her. Only time would tell if she'd turn out to be as irrational as dear Colemet had. 

TAG: @annabanana | WORDS: 887 | NOTES: *cough*

MEL @ ADOXOGRAPHY

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[attr="class","lyric1mungo"]one in the chamber

[attr="class","lyricbgmungo"]

[attr="class","lyric2mungo"]How did this all go wrong
It wasn’t my intention
but there’s no redemption

[attr="class","textbodmungo"]She... she was magic-less. Half of herself. A hole in her heart. Anna felt horrible about it. She felt like her life was incomplete, and she felt absolutely disappointed with herself that she felt that way in the first place. Merlin, what a mess. Anna had never imagined she was that reliant on magic. She thought she was good about that. Always aware of who she was and grateful for everything she had. And yet, without her magic, it was staring Anna in the face in an undeniable way. She was incomplete. The idea of going back to work next week was already hanging over her head. Being a nurse didn't technically require magic, but Anna already knew how horrible it would feel. Like a knife twisting in her gut, to have to stand there and watch everyone else do everything with magic. To feel like she wasn't putting her best foot forward for the people that needed it. And then, on the other hand, she was disgusted with herself for thinking like that. For thinking that magic had to define who she was. She... she knew better than this.

But it was one thing to preach it and a whole other thing to actually have to go through it.

Anna just wished it could all be some bad dream. That she would blink or wake up from a really long nap soon, all in one piece. No sickness, no magic loss. Just her, Bee, and Kase in the apartment having a girls' night. With lots of popcorn and hot chocolate. Anna could prod Kase for more details on her mystery man, Bee would be mooning over Louis like usual, and everything would just be normal. Anna didn't need an extravagant life. She just needed one where she was happy. Where she was healthy and with her favourite people in the whole wide world. But now it was starting to feel like the universe would give her anything but that. She wasn't healthy, and she had been apart from Bee and Kase for the last few weeks in Pyxis, because they hadn't been able to get a hospital room together. And now, sure, they were all back in Dublin Square but... they were all in pieces. Bee didn't have Lufkin to go back to for the next little while and Kase was... well, she couldn't fly. And that was a problem.

She needed to clear her head. Remind herself that life was still all right, even if it didn't seem like that. Abbotsbury was one of her favourite places, in all honesty. Well, second only to Phoenix Park in Dublin, but that was only because Anna had grown up there. That was a Peters place, a beautiful area riddled with childhood memories. But Abbotsbury had been her home away from home while she had been studying at Lufkin. It was the one place that was her own, where she could go and relax with a book by some lovely rose bushes and with a steaming cuppa in hand. It was a place that would hopefully remind her she was still the same Anna Peters, even without magic. She could still make kids smile in a matter of seconds and had an impeccable knack for gardening. Magic or not... she was still herself. There was no amount of sneezing and coughing that could change that.

Anna was wandering around the gardens for now, her eyes lazily scanning for an open bench with a book in one hand and a paper cup filled with steaming tea in the other. It was a muggle one, but an all-time favourite. Whimsical, in its own way. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne - something that sounded absolutely ridiculous to anyone magical... but Anna felt like she needed a reality check about magic, so it was a good fit. The gardens were the kind of place she could get lost in, the kind of place where time stood still. She was a little lost, Anna realized as she glanced around absentmindedly, her legs moving without much input to her brain. And then in the next moment she felt her balance going as she collided with something - or someone? - that towered above her. Her hands instinctively clenched a little tighter to hold on to the tea and her book, but they thankfully survived as the other person steadied her. Anna looked up with a nervous laugh, feeling completely embarrassed with herself, but it subsided as she took in the familiar features. The name came to her all too easily... he had been a Gryffindor, a year below her, but Anna knew him better through Cole. "It unfortunately wouldn't be the first time I've taken an embarrassing tumble," Anna admitted jokingly. "Didn't think I'd run into you here, Damion. You're looking put together for a day in the gardens," she observed. Part of her wondered if he even remembered the Head Girl that could never find it in herself to give anyone a true detention.

@ damion | 839 words | outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF GS + WW

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It Wasn't My Intention

But There's No Redemption

For Those Who Take Away

The Lives Of Innocents

Just when he thought that he was past this, that he had it all under control, he stumbled yet again and was reminded of what his situation was. Torn apart and put together so haphazardly that he still forgot the common and remembered the rare, and a nauseating pain or disorientation was always there to chime in if he pushed it too far. Raymond had told him there was no point of going to St. Mungo's for there was nothing they could do for him besides admit him to the Janus Thackery ward until he regained his memory; The problem was that that wasn't even a guarantee. So he hadn't went. Not even close. He was not about to trade his freedom and his life to be stared at on a daily basis with pitying looks and sympathy. He was functioning, wasn't he? He was walking, talking, thinking clearly all the same... he just... had a few stumbles to get past. Finding his emotions again wasn't a high priority as he seemed to be doing more than just fine without them. Finding his memories again wasn't all that important to him as he could make more. If he chose. Damion just didn't care enough to go looking for either.

And that seemed to be the biggest problem, didn't it? Everyone he was 'supposed to know' was getting 'concerned' because he just didn't care on blind bit about anyone or thing besides that in which would benefit him. Selfishness at its rawest but didn't he deserve to be a little selfish now after apparently dedicating these past years to a band of misfits who didn't even care enough to find out how he was? He saw them once, then poof. Gone. Like a grade A vanishing act. So clearly for people who were so adamant that they were his 'friends', what had actually transpired was that he had collected a band of liars and cling-ons that had fallen to the wayside once he had shown that he was no longer going to play into their interests and help them out anymore. At least, that was what he was assuming he had been doing. He certainly wasn't a promiscuous man, although these days he'd given the idea some thought. Just anything to distract him from the... everything currently going on that he didn't understand. Fitting in a few witches to his schedule of new job, new house, new him, sounded like a grand idea. Maybe he'd move country and continent. Maybe a few of them would die and then the rest would get the idea that he didn't want to be bothered anymore. Whichever came first. He wasn't fussy.

Curious, thinking about death in a place so abundantly filled with life and its living things. Full of people, plants. Trees. All just living and not giving a shit about the rest of the world at large. Such narrow track minds. So monotonous. No drive to do more, just content to be the simple organisms they were. Most of the people in here probably treated a trip to the Botanical garden as a day out, as having spent a day well, when in reality all they had done is look at their surroundings up close in a place where there was nothing inherently man-made. No doubt they were all extremely emotional people too, the thought coming to him as he watched a couple bend in half to sniff an orchid or three with bright smiles in place on their faces. If one were to die, they would all react as if a single unit, achieving little to nothing in the process. If this garden were to go up in flames, they'd mourn its loss regardless of the fact that there were plants and trees elsewhere and there were other public gardens. They wouldn't see past the immediate. The fact that burned organisms fed soil and in doing so the soil became richer with more minerals that would feed more with less input. Nature at its finest. Resilient. It didn't stop because a person died, or they forgot someone. Time was irrelevant. People were irrelevant. Yet it was the people who couldn't see that and it was the people that tended to cause the problems. They were certainly causing a few of his. Had he still had the capacity to give a shit, he might even have been bothered by these thoughts of what was, blatantly, murder.

Once she was steadied he dropped her hands from her arms but didn't step back, not necessarily seeing a reason to as she replied to him. Her demeanor was familiar. He knew her. She was-

Then it hit him, slowly, and a smile crafted itself on his face in a mimic of recognition. One of Colemet's - the unhinged Witch from the other month - friend. Possibly... Head Girl? Yes... something like that. Or Prefect. He wasn't sure. At her implication of his state of dress, he spared himself a glance then allowed himself to give her a once over in turn as if comparing the two of them. What was it that he had been brought up to do? Ah yes, act accordingly. Yet she was dressed so casually... as if she didn't really care about what she was wearing. Strange. "I make a conscious effort to dress up, these days. I used to spent too much time in jeans or joggers. Besides... it means I'm pretty much set up if work calls," he replied blandly, evading the first part of her question, voice staying low so it didn't carry. He really didn't want anyone else to recognise him and come to join. One person was enough as it was. "However, I suppose compared to you I'm overdressed. What is it you do these days... Anna?" He asked in turn, eyes all but boring into hers as he did so. Peters. That was it. Annabelle Peters. He'd worked with her father a few years ago...

TAG: @annabanana | WORDS: 997 | NOTES: Just remembered part II oops

MEL @ ADOXOGRAPHY

[attr="class","backgmungo"]

[attr="class","lyric1mungo"]ONE IN THE CHAMBER

[attr="class","lyricbgmungo"]

[attr="class","lyric2mungo"]HOW DID THIS ALL GO WRONG
IT WASN’T MY INTENTION
BUT THERE’S NO REDEMPTION

[attr="class","textbodmungo"]This was all... madness. Anna couldn't wrap her head around it. Losing magic just like that. It didn't seem natural. It couldn't be natural. But as far as Anna could figure out, it was just some horrible virus going around. She knew enough about medicine to understand that... but not much more. Anna's specialties had been Herbolgoy and Psychology, back when she had been at Lufkin, and as nurse, bedside manner and quick-thinking tended to be a whole lot more important. So Anna felt like she was facing some mystery demon. One that was just at her fingertips... but entirely unreachable. And she hated this feeling, because Anna was used to being the one that could solve other people's problems. The one that could put a smile on anyone's face, no matter what was happening. But there was no way she could make people look past this. A hot toddy and a smile would only go so far.

Anna tried to put it out of her mind, as best as she could, and just do what she was good at. No matter what, she could always be there for her sisters, and she would be returning to St. Mungo's soon--and being a nurse was something that Anna was really good at. It would be hard to adjust to the workplace without magic, but Anna was ready to take on the challenge. She needed this. Being a nurse had been her life's dream for so long. There was no way she would give up on it just because she was feeling under the weather and she had lost her magic. Maybe... she just needed a pick-me-up. She needed to reconnect. There was Liam--she had promised him a coffee, before all of this had happened. Merlin, and Anna hadn't even gotten back to him about that. No, she would fix that. She would send him an owl and follow through with that coffee. Anna knew she couldn't wallow in the loss of her magic. She had to keep moving forward and doing things that reminded her she was strong.

Anna's face was an easy smile as she looked up at Damion. She knew that, as far as prefects went, she had been one of the sympathetic ones. There was... oh there was a muggle saying for it. Good cop, bad cop. There had to be someone with a soft look and an understanding nod, and someone that wasn't afraid to recite facts and make decisions. That was why her and Keegan had been a good match as Head Girl and Boy--alone, they would have been disasters. But Anna liked to think they had raised the bar for that position, in their year holding their posts. And Damion recognizing her made her a little hopeful that that was actually true. She watched him carefully as he talked--Anna had always been good about keeping her body language open and attentive--and her smile faltered as he talked. She remembered him being so much more... charismatic. "I suppose that's admirable," Anna replied kindly. "Work? What do you do nowadays? I remember you used to be at Hogwarts, before..." she trailed off, then shrugged as her smile turned a bit more sad. Hogwarts was tough to talk about.

Anna's brow furrowed for a moment at his next words, but she tried to recover and pushed her smile back up on her face--it was a little more forced this time, though. "Yeah. I guess so," she simply said in reply to his... was that a jab? "I'm a nurse at St. Mungo's, actually," Anna answered him, her smile softening a bit at the topic. Work--that was good for her to talk about.

@ damion but meaner | 614 words | outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF GS + WW

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I'm Inebriated, I'm Dangerous 

I Can't ( I Can't Live On)

So There's One In The Chamber

Just Waiting For Me To End It 

All

The one thing that he had going for him was that while everyone around him seemed to be joining a mass queue into the hospital and its consequent overspill building in Pyxis, suffering from whatever the hell this epidemic was, he had remained unscathed. He doubted that he'd have felt it much considering he didn't feel much of anything anymore, though, even if he had gotten infected. Perhaps it would finally have jigged something loose. Maybe he'd finally have slept in some semblance of normalcy. Fill his days up with something new since his very existence now boiled down to doing anything and everything and giving zero shits about any of it. He'd hurt people, threatened others. Taken enjoyment from their pain even when it was a verbal or mental wound. Everything was both alien and familiar to him. The migraines were the strangest as they came out of nowhere and left as suddenly as they came- So, perhaps not a migraine... but then what other word could be used to explain the disorientating pain that hit him like a cruciatus to the brain every time he tried to remember a person or a thing that seemed on the cusp of his reach? It blindsided him like a migraine would, he imagined. He had never had one before this year.

Strangely enough, though he couldn't find it in him to care, he'd never heard of long term alcoholism causing all the things he had experienced since the tailend of the previous year. Short term amnesia was a thing, sure, but not long term. Shortened or nonexistent emotional range definitely hadn't been a thing he had heard about before. Or the all encompassing insomnia, where his mind never tired but his body felt ready to crumble from exhaustion. Or the flashes of memory that left too soon for him to fully comprehend or recall. Or the sound of someone, somewhere inside him, pleading so pitifully to be heard... when he was talking or nearly asleep. Hell, the whole 'waking up like someone had been screaming in your ear' thing had gotten old fast and he was well over it now.  He was seriously considering selling his gallery at this point and moving onto other things that held his interest more effectively... but he couldn't sell without the signature of permission from the co-owner, some Wizard called Hammond that he thought he could almost remember teaching at Hogwarts once... but no one knew where he was. No letter he wrote ever found its mark, or he was being ignored. So, the alternative option for him was to move onto other things regardless and keep the gallery running in the background. He had more than enough time to do both Pigment and another business on the side. He barely slept, then he'd blackout for half a day to maybe two days max in the middle of every other week... then it resumed as normal. He was accepting that this was his life now.

Witches, murder, getting his life back from the brink he'd pushed it to for whatever reason; It was all in a day. As far as he was concerned, the ties of his 'past life' had been cut dead and he was free of them now. And maybe it was the newfound freedom that he had for the first time in his life that was throwing him, stopping him from taking the step into the next chapter of his life, because he didn't know what to do with it. Without people expecting or demanding things from him, without making those ties with people that happened when emotions got involved... the whole world was open to him now. He just had to decide what he wanted from it. Getting out of Great Britain seemed like the best deal currently, as everyone was so invested in the bloody mudbloods and their titles and whatever epidemic this was that was eating up people's magic and spitting them out the other side. Once the borders opened, then, he would take his leave. Sign his responsibilities for Pigment over to the highest bidder so someone else could be saddled with Hapless Hammond who had done a disappearing trick and vanished. Leave the ghosts of his past behind him, move somewhere that he knew no one could know him from and try to coerce him into 'remembering' things with them. Raymond had done so much for him already, he wouldn't follow his father to Russia. Maybe he'd pick up his roots in Italy, or forge somewhere entirely new to him and his name... like Cyprus. He could do with a tan. These days he looked almost like a corpse, albeit a well dressed one.

Her smile slipped, and his eyes latched onto the action almost immediately, dropping from her eyes. Interesting. Had his referral to their different states of dress so upsetting? "... Before the late Aurora Wentzell suddenly decided that anyone under thirty was too young and couldn't have enough experience to teach there, you mean?" he asked playfully, head tilting a little to the side as he forced his gaze back to her's. Smiles were inconsequential, but he did his best to keep an easy one in place regardless. It turned away more questions than it caused, he'd found.  Still, he turned away from his rhetorical statement and gave a sigh, "I now co-own a large art gallery in London called 'Pigment of the Imagination', though I'm debating moving on to greater heights..." he replied, lifting a shoulder before smiling at her again, "Well, then Saint Mungo's has added a valuable member to their staffing, I trust..." Yes, it slowly trickled back to him like a broken faucet. She had been a prefect. She'd... looked out for him, when he had been weak willed and weak minded. A nuisance. She had wasted her time on him then, but he was not the same person anymore. That Damion was dead. That Damion had tried to kill him. His eyes dropped down again at her strained smile and his own tightened a little. What was the problem here? What had been said to trigger such a nearly sour expression on such a delicate face...

"At any rate, I daresay you're far more comfortable walking around a garden and able to appreciate it more than I, currently. Even if you seemed in a bit of a rush there- is everything alright?" His tone firmed a tad, his chin lifting a little as his warm- or at least, as warm as he could muster - smile slowly began to slide. His eyes widened a tad from their lazy stance and he stood a little straighter too, and he even went so far as to inflect a tone of concern. Indeed, if there was one thing he had learned for sure this past year, it was the tiny idiosyncrasies of another person's expression when they spoke to him. And for Valerie - or Anna, as she had gone by - Peters, a strained smile was not good news. But that about summed up all he knew about her and honestly he didn't care much about how she was 'feeling' right now. He just wanted to avoid drama or someone else stepping in. Merlin knew that he'd dealt with enough people today.  

TAG: @annabanana | WORDS: 1217 | NOTES: --

MEL @ ADOXOGRAPHY