Magpie to the Morning

Ursula thought that this wasn't exactly what you would call a -hmm, classy way of travel, but things like this could not wait until morning, when the next elephant or what ever animal it was was out of it's beauty sleep.
She wasn't even sure that animals had beauty sleep. Maybe that was just the tour guide having a laugh at her expense. It wouldn't be the first time.

The woman had never liked the night. Night seemed too solitary and, in a way, sort of intimidating. In a way, the shadows, but in another way, just the fact that silence always presided darkness. Unless you were at a two week strong continuation of the Quidditch World Cup game (Ursula knew only too well to the point that the only thing she saw when people said Good night was a pair of Wizarding Sparklers exploding into mini broomsticks and a man with a questionable length of trousers gawping at Ursula gawping at the sparkler) and the only thing you didn't hear was silence. She was sure if she tilted her head a little to the left her head would stop ringing now just thinking about it, but she didn't want to throw herself too badly out of balence.

Honestly. Broomsticks were for sleuths, children and general bad asses. None of those categories merged, either. Why in Merlin's beauticious name was she on one now? She could've easily walked- ah. No, not so easily. Wearing heels permanently is an occupational hazard, and not just for your instep. Stupid tour guides saying this holy ground was sacred. Magic Carpet, flying elephant or broomstick only, he said, you touch the floor and my wand'll touch your-
And surprisingly, it was the innuendo which had scared the Transfiguration Professor more than anything.

Against her predujice of the night and all things soundless, the sky did look quite silky. She would've said duvet, but it looked too far away to see the depth you'd have in a duvet. She thought of the phrase Patchwork sky and thought that sounded much too fanciful. But against her predujices, and the distinct hatred for broomstick travel because of the way it sent her posture all out of whack, Ursula was quite enjoying the view. Not usually a women for looking at landscapes or what ever you called them, but it did look quite quaint and pretty. Yes, silent too. You could have smelt the silence a mile off though, which is exactly what she did the minute she had apparated here earlier on in the day. In the day, but in these kinds of places it was always quiet.

Emily had better be holding up at home, she thought hopefully as her rent-a-broom slowly unwaveringly descended. The temperature she noticed had suddenly grown a lot warmer, to the point she realised that she had been shivering. That may or may not have been down to her scantily clad suitcase being quite fanciful. She liked thinking of those two words together. Quite fanciful. The words in themselves were quite naming of themselves. Quite fanciful.

Never had she been one for history. In actual fact, if she ever heard a whisper of a tome of History in the Flourish and Blotts bookstore in Diagon, she'd hum quite loudly and take a few steps left over to the Transfiguration publications. If they had been graceful enough to accept her multiple requests to host a dancing section in the store she might have swirled in that direction too, but alas. So it had come as quite a shock to the close knit group of friends and indeed her niece Emily when she had declared she was going to spend some time away.

It was a great crying shame that you couldn't walk on this sacred ground. Stonehenge had always seemed like a stage. Why couldn't she just put one foot down and...
But before Ursula could close that small gap of about three feet from the floor and place her feet on soil that had not been touched by a human's in countless years, Ursula felt something grabbing at her wrist, holding the front end of the broom. A gasp mixed in with a sucking of air and a profanity filled the air around her ensemble and echoed. The stone almost-statues offered no comfort and as the grabbing feeling on her wrist covered the entirety of it, then slowly began to work its way up her arm to keep her almost as stonily in place as stonehenge itself, she tried to yank. Nothing.

"What in Merlin's-"
And then it started to hurt. She hadn't felt this before. It was like- what is this like?!
Ursula had never experienced an unforgivable before, much less one centred wholly on a body part. But what pain she felt now could be equated to this.

Her legs hung loosely on the broom. The broom was sat waiting for it's owner to survey the Stonehendge in order for it to finish it's job and then take her back to the Wizarding Multiplex Hotel. Through scrunched eyes Ursula could see the bristles to the side of her making small sparks and rising like heavy smoke, turning into a time.
2:59:56...
In three minutes, the broom would disapparate back (the fast way back, because who likes trudging through heavy cloud paths on the way home?) to it's stable, taking everything the broom touched with it.

But Ursula's arm wouldn't move.
"Help?"
How stupid of her. Not stupid asking for help in a completely barren area, but more rather even daring to think to put her feet down on the grass of Stonehendge. She really hoped this was just some retaliation. Retaliation implied thought. Thought implied mercy.
2:11:20...

Her wand. Her wand. She could feel it digging into her ribs in her quite fanciful coat pocket. On the side that her arm (and slowly, her shoulder feeling that sharp ice attack feeling dragging over her left side like a shadow) was losing feeling. Her heart sank. Ursula's lip wobbled a little. The woman was a Gryffindor, true, but in danger, her sort of courage was null. What if she placed her hand close to her left and it contaminated her right hand too?

All this hesitation was going to do her no good. So she took a leap of faith and whipped her wand out. She could feel her heart race increasing. If she was a quite fanciful woman she would have said it made an audible quickening but she wasn't. She was just a petrified woman with her arm and now her shoulder and now- yes, her left leg entirely frozen.

"Merlin's monkey..."
A puff of spark caught her attention and her head spun awkwardly to the bristle side of the broom. 1:34:56..

What was she to do now? She had her wand in her hand but not a clue on how to use it. The feel of it in her hand she could sense no creature. Otherwise a barrage of spells would have been readily at her lips before she had even realised. She had a knack for that. Knowing what spell to use. In normal situations only. And this, Merlin this, this was not a normal situation.
And in non-normal situations, Ursula panicked.

1:12:30..
"Oh Merlin, Merlin," she said brokenly as a sob caught in her throat. She thought about the sob for a small moment thinking if that a sound would alert anyone to her being here, but that was stupid. They would have heard her earlier.
How about a signal?

She licked her lips almost excitedly. The woman had thought of something to do, something constructive, and non procrastinating. Slash worrying. Slash panicking. Moreover non worrying. Thick golden fireworks in the Multiplex Hotel's colour spewed up in the sky. It felt so stupid that only a few short minutes ago she had been worrying about how cold she was.

Her other wrist seized up with this different kind of cold meshed with panic (or maybe that was just Ursula's response: she was too bothered to second think) and as she felt the broom begin to hum, ready for it's final journey back to the Multiplex, Ursula opened one eye, feeling herself shiver in her thoughts.
The worst thing that could happen? She'd be ripped limb from limb in the disapparation, or what ever had taken hold over her partly would take over finitely and do what ever it did. The best outlook? She didn't want to think of one yet.

Ten seconds.
Merlin.

The broom started to shake violently, to tell it's user that it was ready to set off, and the bristles re-organised themselves into a streamlined formation. How could it be working so in tune, when Ursula was sat there with-
She sobbed audibly as the numbers broke into single figures, keeping her eyes closed.

Ursula was going to let out a strangled cry- infact, she was just past the wailing beauty of the 'r' in the 'argh' until she had opened her peepers to see and examine her fate. After all, she was a backwards person or a forwards Gryffindor. Facing danger head on. Facing fear. Not neccessarily how she was normally, but like she had supposed eariler, now wasn't a normal situation.

It took Ursula approximately a minute to realise she still had the blessed power of cognative thought. This brightened her mood immensely. Although...
Why wasn't she smiling? It was then that her thoughts became very strained. She tried to think about how cold she was, or to open her eyes. Her eyes didn't feel open; she couldn't feel any muscles tensing. So that couldn't be it.

A sudden jolt of something not half as painful as the icey shock up her arm as the think slunk over more of her, a pleasant, almost lifting feeling pressed around her, and she could feel her hands again. Blurring sights of grey and dark blue swarmed around her, and startled, disorientated, but moreover in disbelief, Ursula lost her sense of gravity, and fell to the floor.
Just as lucky that she was only a few feet from Stonehenge.

The Transfiguration Professor lay there crumpled for a while, a little in shock and a little in relief. She kept her thumb and forefingers on each manicured hand digging into each other. They reminded her she was still there and not in that extemely confused state she was in a minute ago. Sitting back up, she accio'd the broom back to her level. Why hadn't it left yet? Why hadn't it left for the multiplex?

Toying with fate and asking why it had not dealt her the death card seemed to be a pretty stupid idea in her eyes now, and so she brushed her knees excessively and stood upright. Yep, still disorientated. She grabs onto the thick wood. Solid make, she actually was surprised at the Multiplex- she remembers distinctly her eyebrows going about a mile up her forehead- that the best of the makes were left. It had been quite a while since there had ever been some competition towards the Firebolt.

It felt only fair that seeing as she had been spared (the mystique and enigma of Stonehenge definitely did nothing to her flawed logical explanation as to why she was not dead/splinched within an inch of her life right now) that she disembark from the place. After all, they did say not to touch the ground. It was a stupid imposed rule, but Ursula might or might have not learned in the past few minutes (had it been minutes? It felt like so much longer, really) that some rules were there for some vague and mystic reason.

"Thank you, stones," she said in a hushed voice. You could almost hear the energy seeping out of her voice with every syllable. She'd been travelling for a long time. Funny, she had never expected herself to be a traveller. She hated travelling. And there she was.
It was odd to say that given that the past two years she had been at Hogwarts as a teacher. Suppose that's if you think about travelling being only physically...

As she mounted her broom and readjusted the dogtooth handles on her luggage around the magic-imposed hands that held them as if they were weightless from the end of the broom, she bit down on her lip and made a sollemn vow to never come near here again. There were so many places she had returned to in her time. Not all of them welcoming any of the times she had been there. Most of the time, actually, it'd be the most infathomably isolated and dangerous places she'd venture back to eventually. Like a blind person knowing the only way because of a special map. That was how it is, and that was how Ursula found most things people didn't. Like with knowing what spell to use with Transfiguration and some Charms (although she couldn't cast one of those to save her life, nevermind find an interesting and active holidaying place) Ursula just had a knack for those kinds of things.

It was odd as her mind dwelled across this that she realised she was still shaking, and that she hadn't stopped shaking from the minute she'd been able to feel her eyes scrunched shut. The woman made a firmer grip on the front of the broom and took extra care manouvering around- well, nothing. But it felt good to find her hands and her mind something to do.

A myriad of blues and deep purples swirled above her. Odd how fast the cloud pattern kept reassembling tonight. She'd never seen the skies change so quickly, or maybe she hadn't just noticed. Not one for watching the sky; the people in front of you on a day to day basis were always so much more interesting than mere fluffy things in the sky.

"Another day, another galleon," she said fondly, seeing a patch in the sky turning an odd mixture of lavender and in the corner, a very slight white. Morning wouldn't be far coming, and for that she was relieved. For what ever reason the broom had ignored it's primary function to take her back via Portkey/ disapparition, she was one goblin worth a lot of thankful. She made a mental note to not only avoid Stonehenge, but to avoid the very objects of brooms, portkeys and anything resembling the two on top of that as well.

Her eyes began to droop, and Ursula tried to do a good estimate as to how long she had left on the broom until she reached the multiplex. To be perfectly honest, with this brush of what certainly felt like the verge of Death, she was going to leave a day early and spend another day with Emily. Moments like that sort of jiggled your priorities about. She should probably talk to Ariel and the others too, although that sounded a little preachy and a little too difficult for Ursula and that high hippogriff of hers.

I'll just close my eyes for a few minutes, a few minutes... it's not like there's anything I can bump into... I'll just close my eyes for a few minutes, a few min- it's not like there's...

Minutes later, Ursula bumped into something.
((my thoughts have turned to drivel and it is 8pm. woop.))

David had no sooner stepped out of his fireplace of his home, dropped a bunch of files on his desk before grabbing his broom and headed for the front door. He hadn’t even bothered to get changed other than shrugging of his work cloak and putting on a rather warmer muggle jacket.

Swinging his leg over his Firebolt 13 he kicked off into the night sky, feeling the wind in his face. Whenever David needed to escape from the world and the chaos and complications that it brought with it, he would take to the skies where there seemed to be nothing that could bother him. In the sky he was free, and it allowed him to clear his thoughts and free himself too, forget about everything and nothing if he wished.

The sky had become a more frequent friend of his over the past couple of weeks; work had become more and more stressful, with nothing going to plan and more and more trouble cropping up in every department. Goblins were going on strike, the Hogwarts thestrals had disappeared and even more recently there dementors had been playing foul.

He had just returned from a personal visit to the awful island where Azkaban was situated to see for himself what was going on. He couldn’t understand what was causing all the problems but the whispers that were spreading throughout the offices were beginning hard to ignore, the prophet was getting feisty as well, sticking its nose in and rubbing it around until they found a nice truffle of news or rumour that they could feed to the public.

It wasn’t just the papers that were causing trouble; magical creature activist had started to riot and protest. What did they expect him to do about it? He wasn’t exactly Dr Dolittle or whatever that film was he had seen when he was younger. He couldn’t talk to the creatures to find out what was wrong. He had no idea where they were all disappearing to either. It wasn’t as if he had a large warehouse with them all piled up, keeping them out of the cruel British weather.

David shook his head trying to clear his thoughts, he hated visiting Azkaban, and it always made him feel awful for a couple of days. He would always get depressing thoughts, and it seemed to make him angrier than usual. Normally he would be calm and collected, dealing with everyone with a bit of patience and politeness, but he had snapped at his secretary as he had left the office. Given it was the early hours of the morning and she was still there working, but there was no need for her to act like his bloody mother. He could take care of himself. He was rather pale because he had just returned from Azkaban not because he wasn’t eating, or ill, or any of the other multitude of explanations that he had offered him.

He sighed. Closing his eyes, he shot across the Wiltshire landscape, taking several deep breaths as he emptied his head.

The collision with his side, made him feel like he was back, Captaining the Ravenclaw quidditch team and had been hit by a high speed bludger. The impact sent him spiralling off course, luckily his many years in the skies meant that he was able to stay on his broom. He spun it around to see what on earth it was that had hit him.

If Ursula was really being the defeatist pessimistic she knew and hated that was personified in the form of her sister Ariel today, then Ursula would have played this next pain above the other one. And to think, a minute ago she thought she was a goner!

But now, her head, really really hurt. Her eyes unsticking together, she refocused and tried to get yet another grasp on the reality and yes, gravity of the situation... what ever situation this was.

"I don't bloody believe it," she grumbled under her breath, rubbing her forehead.
The Minister for Magic.
David.
She gushed (not only because the imprint left on her forehead felt suspiciously like the three dimensional metal logo on her hand luggage)

"Did- did you just--" and before she could finish her haughty accusation, she caught herself and bit down on her lip. It wasn't like she was in the middle of nowhere anywhere now, there seemed to be quite a few residential areas in the distance like shadows. Infact, where she was now seemed to be something similar to a field. Or a pitch. Something. It sounded plausible.

But Ursula had had enough oddity for one short expanse of twenty minutes on a Tuesday morning, and it wasn't even raining sweets like that really odd time when she was twelve. That had been a long day.

Rain made her think of water and water made her think of cold and cold made her think of twenty minutes ago and she shivered, the broom skittering nervously.
"Might I ask what you're doing out here, Minister?" she said with her cheeks pinkening. What a compromising situation. She'd think the words quite fanciful but somehow they didn't seem to fit here, no matter how much she wanted to mention them.

His head must have been really messed up. How on earth could he have bumped into one Miss Ursula Sparrow out in the middle of nowhere several hundred feet up in the air for that matter? It was unlikely to have met her out anywhere at this early hour of the morning but it seemed that strange things were starting to occur and he guessed that this was another one of those things.

He removed his goggles from his face, and allowed his broom to hover in midair. Running a hand through his hair he then rubbed his face and pinched his nose. He must have been tired and dreaming for this to happen. He would soon wake up to find himself passed out on his sofa in his living still with his cloak on and the pile of files in his hand.

But no.

She was still there. Looking at him.

“I am so sorry,” he began to apologise, “It seems that the only way that we seem to meet is in these strange situations, the world doesn’t want us to meet in any normal way, like bumping into each other in the street, or fighting over the last issue of the Daily Prophet.”

He rubbed at the ache in his side, but tried not to show that it had caused him any pain, he had been stupid to close his eyes, but it wasn’t as if he expected anyone else to be out at this time of night, on a broom for that matter.

“Well I was trying to clear my head,” he answered, he felt he needed to explain to her, he didn’t know why, but an explanation was good. “Work at the ministry isn’t going to well, and with everything that is going.” He paused and shook his head. “Never mind that, I could ask you the same thing, but I would rather invite you to have a drink and ask you where it is a lot warmer and not hanging in mid air. What do you say? Let me apologise.”

How could this morning feel any more surreal... and embarrassing, although that emotion might have just been flung in willy nilly in the last few seconds. Ursula could feel the features on her face adamant to stay in deer-caught-in-headlights mode, no matter how much she tried to rearrange them. Why was it impervious men always got hold of her charm and twisted it to the core so that she couldn't function normally?
Maybe it was having no control on the norm, or something.

Seeing the minister in goggles though...
Seemed to put all her tiny little...ideas all together and made her flail a slight bit on her broomstick. It stuttered again.

Ursula dismissed the apology quite quickly. Against all her airs and graces she was quite stoicly sure she had been the one in the wrong here. She was the one with her eyes shut. Wasn't quite sure how she had managed to keep them shut for more than a minute, actually. Was quite petrifying once you thought about it.

The woman had nothing to say about his comment on their meeting. The last time they had had been quite... her fault. No better word of putting it. Damnit. This time sort of was, too.

In a meek voice that wasn't hers, she said, "I'm sorry to hear the Ministry is doing one on you." She left out a name because the last time she had said Minister he had resented it, and she still felt too awkward- like a little child, yes- to say David.

His offer was tricky. It was sticky and laden with lots of treacle. It could be implicating, but only because Ursula was sure today was an odd and important day that was going to stick in her head for a long time and those kinds of days made her a little reckless (in order to let the day follow as it is wanted too. Ursula has a grip on those kinds of days which isn't a grip, more like hanging on). For that reason she would say no but there was some sense of reason running through her.

Only a small beat had passed after David's question.
She nodded slightly.