auroras & sad prose;

Hestia Jones; Gryffindor, year two; Cambridge 1978; lover of charms, classics, tea, and tequila. Despiser of knickers. "I am, I am, I am."

[hestiajones]

BASICS

NAME: Hestia Jones

AGE: 20 years

PRIMARY: Cambridge Academy, class of 1978

HOGWARTS: Gryffindor, September 1978 - Present

OCCUPATION: Intern Archivist at the Banchory Museum of Magical Art

BLOOD STATUS: pure-blood

TRAUMA DUMP

Hestia’s family is a little unconventional---but then again, whose isn’t? In her case, the black sheep of the family was her biological mother, who fell pregnant with Hestia after a whirlwind affair with a married man. But the man was a pureblood wizard, so the sin was forgiven, and Hestia was adopted by her aunt and uncle, who raised the young witch as their own daughter, alongside Hestia’s cousin-turned-sister, Euphemia. You’d be hard pressed to find a family as happy as the Joneses in the pureblood community, and it’s because of this that Hestia radiates compassion and good spirits to everyone she meets.

Hestia’s sister, Mia, married Thorfinn Rowle the summer before Hestia started at Hogwarts. She assumes her sister is happy with her husband, but there is one shadow that discolors her view of the marriage: the fact that it was arranged. Hestia is bisexual, but she has allowed her parents to believe she only likes women. She hopes that the small pool of pureblood women who also like pureblood women will prevent her parents from mapping out her future the way they did Mia’s.

Grandfather Borgin -- her mothers’ father -- is co-owner of the Knockturn Alley shop Borgin and Burkes. A shop that Hestia once thought was mystical and exciting has since soured in her eyes. More of the artifacts there are cursed than not, and the trading her grandfather does on the black market is anything but honorable. Rather than confront her family about their dishonest and shady business dealings, Hestia has made a habit of turning a blind eye.

Not that Hestia is perfect. She has a knack for turning up at illegal broom street races from time to time.

Ironically, the next point is that she served as Discipline Chair for the Junior Witches League this past year.

Her grandfather’s reputation landed Hestia in a bit of trouble in the summer of 1979. While abroad in South America on a Curse-Breakers’ study program, she and Sturgis Podmore were kidnapped and held hostage by a cast of shady characters, the names of which Hestia never did catch. The only way to escape with their lives was to rely on her grandfather---and to obliviate Sturgis of the summer’s memories. Hestia started the school year late last fall, and it wasn’t until the spring that she moved back to campus. It wasn’t until the end of the school term that she returned Sturgis’ memories to him, deciding with great reluctance that the potential to stop their attackers from doing something like that again outweighed the risk to Sturgis’ life.

I KNOW WHAT SHE DID THIS SUMMER

Hestia spent most of the summer hosting a radio programme about Cryptids with Doris Purkiss.

Initially, Hestia was in the running for President of the Junior Witches League. After seeing the list of other candidates, she rescinded her bid, choosing instead to run for New Member Educator. She hopes she can protect the new members from people like Rosalind Nott this way.

Eager to try out for the Gryffindor quidditch team this year, Hestia has been taking quidditch lessons with Emmeline Vance.

LOVE TAPS

Dorcas Meadowes: primary at some point

first kiss, under the bleachers at a quidditch match between Cambridge and Caerphilly

[hestiajones]

DORIS PURKISS​

“Yes, but what happens when I spiral?” asked Doris. “Then I just bring you down with me and we’re both in a pit of madness that just never ends.” 

.

“If misery loves company, then I would say the same is true for madness.” Maybe even more so, by quite a long shot, in Hestia’s experience. “But we’ll have some real problems if you don’t pull me along out of the pit with you!”

~ fin ~

[hestiajones]

DORIS PURKISS​

“This is why I always treat my owl kindly. After all, I’m basically the center of his world, aren’t I?” she nodded. “Why? Because I take these thought experiments too far or because you might spiral if you think too much on it?”

.

“Because of the latter, although I’m not so opposed to the former. I don’t spiral quite as quickly if you’re the one guiding the conversation.” Hestia had always made for a better follower than a leader anyway, in her opinion. In a house full of Gryffindors, that had been an easy roll to fill, and she quite enjoyed it. It was why she fell so easily into the co-pilot seat beside Doris with their show.

[hestiajones]

YARI PALMER​

The stack of books Yari was carrying was almost as alarming as the bright neon colored shirt they had donned that morning. These days they had gone for bright colors, refusing to fade away into the greyscale that the world had found itself in. Suffering. Fear. Yari only ever lived in color, and even with their own concerns for the future, the books in their hands was proof enough that they were fighting their own fight.

Their head turned, used to people being lost, just never quite used to people being lost and looking like that. Put together and beautiful where normally confusion might have washed it all away. “I think that depends on what you’re referring to. If it’s God, then, I’ll be of no use to you. If it’s where to go for the best and cheapest cup of tea, then I can be of assistance.” 

.

Hestia blinked, thrown for a loop by the stranger’s goodnatured wit. Her shoulders relaxed, and she smiled gratefully at them. “I’m actually looking for the, erm---” she pulled out a tightly folded pamphlet, wanting to get it right “---the Christ Church Picture Gallery.” As she slipped the pamphlet back into her pocket, Hestia shrugged. “I’d be just as happy to hear your tea recommendations, on a day like today especially.” Whether or not she made it to her original destination, she could do with a warm cuppa for her trouble.

[hestiajones]

[hestiajones]

WHEN: Wednesday, 8 December, 1980 WHERE: somewhere in Oxford WHO: Hestia Jones & Yari Palmer ( @yaripalmer​ )

It was not often that Hestia felt foolish. The rarity of it flustered her even more, picking up in the click of her heels as they clacked against the street. If she’d exercised any sense that morning, she wouldn’t have gone out to the Muggle community of Oxford alone. She certainly wouldn’t have gotten lost then, or if she had, she would have had someone else there to help them find their way.

When Hestia rounded yet another corner that she was sure she had seen three times already, her frustration reached an all time high. Frustration gave way to anger, and desperation, neither of which led to anything but recklessness.

“Excuse me!” It was a risky move, but it also seemed to be her only hope. Hestia rushed the nearest person, who, quite luckily, looked as though they belonged. She greeted them with a smile, one as kind as she could make it whilst feeling as though she had a scarlet W pinned to her coat. “I was hoping you could help me find my way?”

[hestiajones]

STURGIS PODMORE​

In a rare moment, Sturgis heeded her advice, finishing wrapping her hand with urgency. Admittedly, part of him felt bad that Hestia found herself injured—but he had told her to leave, and she followed him to the flames at her own volition. People got hurt, and he couldn’t be blamed for that, even if he did feel some semblance of responsibility. He shook off the feeling, though, wanting more than anything to wade through the crowd and find Marlene. He released Hestia’s hand, gave her a nod, and then turned to leave. 

As he folded into the masses, he bid her adieu with one final reply. “Next time, don’t follow me.” Sturgis didn’t wait for her response, disappearing into the crowd a second later. 

[ fin ]

[hestiajones]

STURGIS PODMORE

Sturgis huffed as he held her wrist, inspecting the bruises gingerly. A bump began to form. “It’s clearly broken.” At least, he assumed so. Healing wasn’t exactly his specialty, but he knew his way around a few spells. He had to, given the amount of times he found himself injured on the job. Sturgis resigned to not healing it, but still reached into his pocket for a piece of paper shoved in there eons ago. He transfigured it into a long cloth and began wrapping her wrist. 

“If you won’t let me fix it, at least keep it stabilized until you get back to Hogwarts.” 

.

“I wish you would hurry.” With the swarm of DMLE officials had come a new sense of urgency. Her heart pounded as though she were still running. Her vision blurred out of focus. Whatever was happening here, she didn’t want to be part of it. She wanted to be back in the Gryffindor common room, drinking hot cocoa, laughing with Lily and Doris as though nothing like this could ever happen. Hadn’t they already seen enough?

Hestia took a deep breath through her nose, soothing the ache in her lungs, the dizziness in her head. She’d had enough panic attacks since returning from South America to know when one was on the horizon. Sometimes, with enough deep breaths, she could turn and run the other way.

“Don’t do anything they tell you not to do.” Her warning was firm, signaling the end of the road, the place where they parted ways. At her wit’s end.

[hestiajones]

STURGIS PODMORE​

“The healers and mediwizards are going to be overwhelmed with injured people.” People who had far greater injuries than Hestia’s swelling wrist, but he decided not to add that, thinking it unkind. Despite the animosity that had sprouted between the pair, they made a good team. And did something good. Sturgis wasn’t keen to ruin that quite yet. “Let me take a look, and then I’ll go look for her.” Sturgis extended his hand, hoping she would place hers in his. 

“If I make it worse, you have permission to break both my wrists.” 

.

“I’m not going to do that,” Hestia scoffed. Reluctantly, she offered Sturgis her hand. But she was too cautious to keep up with a game of chicken. “Don’t use magic,” she hissed at him, her arm stiffening. “If I need it, I’ll simply go to Hogwarts, to the Hospital Wing.”

[hestiajones]

STURGIS PODMORE​

Sturgis tore his gaze away from the fire for a moment as Hestia collided into him, but he regained focus within a couple of seconds. He wiped a few more beads of sweat from his forehead. “It is, yeah.” The fire on this side of the building—or rather, what remained of this side of the building—was nearly fully contained. With another flick of his wrist, water shot from this tip of his wand, extinguishing the few flames that remained. Now, only dark smoke rose, carried away by the chilly breeze. “Good job with the pipe.” It pained his arrogance to give Hestia a compliment, but Sturgis did believe in giving credit where it was due. 

With the flames now extinguished, he saw a few hit wixen rush into the building. They didn’t so much as look at the pair, but that hardly bothered Sturgis. He didn’t need recognition nor gratitude. He was more than happy to bask in feeling like himself for a few moments. That somehow, between the roaring flames and burst pipe, he was able to remember what it felt like to be someone who didn’t walk through life under the crushing weight of his grief and addictions. And it felt good. 

“Let me see your wrist.” 

.

Now that she had watched trained professionals rush the building, and continued to watch more of them flood the scene, Hestia could finally tear her eyes away from the terrible, tragic scene. She might have thought it would make the sight of her hand easier to stomach, but she would have been wrong. Already it was swollen, and bruising like an expired apple.

“It’s nothing they can’t fix at St. Mungo’s.” A simple solution, but the panic set in as she said it. Hestia would be one of many, surely, to sit in the hospital’s waiting room because of this, and she would be the luckiest one there. “Should we ask the hit wizards about your friend?”

[hestiajones]

STURGIS PODMORE​

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hestia dash closer to the wreckage. It was too late to say anything, to do anything but focus on the dash at hand. With all his might, Sturgis wielded his magic around the thick flames and began pulling them further away from the broken pipe. With the fire contained, he sent a watering conjuring spell its way. Some of the flames began sizzling, reducing in size. Their plan was working—but it would be futile if Hestia couldn’t remedy the pipe and stop gas from leaking. A gas that seemed to encourage fire. 

Sturgis couldn’t be certain how long he worked at containing the flames, only that sweat dripped from his forehead despite the November chill. Suddenly, he noticed Hestia falling, but he didn’t pull his focus away from the task at hand. He glanced over quickly. 

“You alright?” 

.

A curt nod was the only answer Hestia gave, too preoccupied to care whether it could even been seen. Some strange alchemy had replaced her blood with adrenaline. She couldn’t remember how to stop running.

“Do you think—” She winced as she ran right into Sturgis, braking with both hands, irritating her wrist. The rest of her body curled in around her hand whilst her lungs retaught themselves to breathe. “Does it seem to be working?” Hestia finally gasped. She wasn’t sure what it would mean if it wasn’t, but she was sure that she didn’t want to find out.

[hestiajones]

DORIS PURKISS​

“Yes, it might not be so fun if you didn’t have other people around to keep you company. I suppose it would also depend on how we would be entertained as a pet, you know?” said Doris thoughtfully. Was this thought exercise going too far? Possibly. But it felt appropriate for the way Doris and Hestia’s friendship always seemed to work. “Would they be thoughtful enough to give us books or have a telly around so that if they can’t entertain us, we can entertain ourselves?” 

.

“Oh, dear.” Hestia playfully put a hand to her head. Owls and cats belonging to the Joneses had always had excellent treatment from her, but she teasingly said, “I’m starting to think too hard about the way I’ve been treating my pets over the years. This is why I should leave the Membrall account to you.”

[hestiajones]

STURGIS PODMORE​

Sturgis nodded, fixing his gaze onto the flames that obscured the line of sight for the broken pipe. He pointed his wand to the fire, flicked his wrist, and nonverbally sent a barrier charm upwards. The magical blasted from the tip of the wood in hues of light purple, wrapping around the flames, suffocating them. Sturgis hadn’t been certain it would work, but given how often he used this exact spell to protect him from poisonous gasses emitted in cursed tombs, he figured it was worth trying. With the bulk of the flames around the pipe contained, Sturgis moved on to other patches of the building on fire. 

.

A gifted wizard though he was, there was still no telling how long Sturgis’ magic could hold back the fire. Whatever it was made of, whatever it might have come from--- Hestia had no time to ponder the answers to those questions. She took a deep breath through the nose of her mask, and darted into the danger, precisely as she had prescribed Sturgis not to do.

The pipe was higher off the ground than Hestia could see, even if the air had been clear. She stepped onto a metal chunk of debris and levitated herself closer, higher. Beads of sweat manifested in her hair like icicles, shockingly cool in the face of a raging fire, the last thing Hestia noticed before she tuned all her focus into fixing the pipe. A clean break, a missing segment, building on fire that she couldn’t dig through, and who knew what sort of shape that missing piece would be in, if she found it?

With her wand, Hestia began to gather and bunch metal at both ends, then stretch it out thin towards the gap. It was not unlike pulling up tights, except that fire and gas were not usually blazing in her face when she was getting dressed.

That, and she always had enough material in her tights to wear them comfortably. By now, Hestia had thinned the metal as far as it could hold without snapping under the pressure. A gap remained, only the width of a centimeter. “Damn it,” Hestia cursed. She wiped the sweat away from her scalp, lighting a bulb above her head with the same motion. The noise was unbearable, but Hestia managed to slice a piece of metal off her makeshift flying carpet without falling off. She began to mold it around the remaining gap in the pipe, a victorious grin nearly knocking the mask from her face---and her confidence knocking her from the air. Just as the metal locked into place, Hestia lost balance, hurling towards the ground face first---

It was a short fall, thank Merlin, but not without consequence. Her wrist burned bright, the star inside it exploding with the raging heat of a broken bone. It made it more difficult to climb to her feet, but not to run back to Sturgis---fast.

[hestiajones]

JENNIFER BURKE​

“He’s been to Kent. He could have been in Banchory yesterday. He could be here now.” Jennifer did not hide truth from Hestia, because they were two capable witches. Two witches from different sides of the same coin. 

She did not know if it was the climate of the world or her life that’d poisoned the crisp autumn air, because it hurt to breathe with every inhale. “I need to know, I needed to know how far he would go, but this was a horrible, horrible mistake.” Jennifer wanted to survive, but not if it meant drowning people with her. “I’m sorry for asking you here, after everything going on.” A cold hand wiped at her stray tears and she about cursed herself for leaving in such a hurry, she’d forgotten her gloves. She’d about forgotten her mind, too. Too much, too fast. It’s how she lived.

“Can we go to the cottage?”

When wouldn’t it be a prison? She hadn’t learned anything about Olin’s whereabouts today, but she now knew how great her fear was.

fin.

[hestiajones]

STURGIS PODMORE​

With clear eyes and a somewhat subsided anger, Sturgis looked around the buildings—flames still roaring. It became obvious quickly had the best chance to get inside was to contain the flames as much as possible, which would aid in wixen attempting to flee. A shiver shot down his spine, at the thought of surviving an explosion only to die inside because there was no safe exit. This, Sturgis could help. His shields had contained magic of curses centuries older than him; surely, he could mold his abilities to capture uncontrollable flames. 

It was then that Sturgis began coughing, as if something billowed within his lungs, making it harder to breath cleanly. His gaze landed on an exposed pipe. With his wand pointed, he sent a spell its way, transfiguring what he correctly assumed to be gas into a different color, making it easier to spot. 

“That pipe there. I don’t know what’s coming out of it, but I’m going to take a guess and say it’s why the fire isn’t controlled yet.” He paused for a beat. “How are your metal-charming abilities?” 

.

A less kind person in Hestia’s shoes might have rolled their eyes. She had been a prodigy of sorts in Charms of all sorts. By the time she had reached Hogwarts, Hestia was already enrolling in second level Charms courses. A less kind person would have rolled their eyes, but a less proud person would not have been so easily motivated.

With some Transfiguration of her own, Hestia fixed her scarf into a mask and goggles. “Do you think you can keep up a barrier for the flames whilst I put it back together?”

[hestiajones]

STURGIS PODMORE​

“And you’re infuriating.” Sturgis wondered how he could have ever enjoyed this woman’s company. Merlin, he would have rather splinched off every nail on his right hand than spend a moment longer speaking with Hestia Jones. And yet she remained there, keen to keep him from his reckless tendencies. Worst of all, he loathed that she was right, that he hadn’t checked the perimeter yet. But Sturgis had no interest in swallowing his pride. “Maybe if you stopped shrilling at me for more than a few moments, I would be able to actually do something.” It was harsh, more so than it needed to be; he only regretted it a little. 

“You either help me, or you leave me alone.” And never think of me again, he wanted to add. 

.

That had always been the plan--- Hestia bit down into the middle of her tongue, sucking in her cheeks until there no was no room left for air. There was no time to argue with Sturgis, not when there were clouds of smoke multiplying over the roof.

“Why don’t you start shrilling, then, and tell me what to do.”

[hestiajones]

DORIS PURKISS​

Doris sat up straighter now, giving it some serious thought as if they might be discussing a topic far more weighty than the thoughts of a Big Foot on humans. “Well, it depends on how they’re first encountering us, you know? Because humans have all sorts of weapons, so that’s definitely cause for caution. Once you get bitten by a poisonous snake, you’re going to make sure to let everyone else know about it. But if I were a Big Foot and I saw someone like you or me just wandering, I might think they might make a cute housepet, you know?”

.

“Oh, can you imagine it?” Hestia all but swooned, leaning into the pedestal her hands had created for her dreaming face. “I would spend all my time curled up in front of the fire, in the coziest part of his cave. If that’s even where he lives---but surely he wouldn’t take in a human for a pet if he couldn’t keep them warm in the winter, would he?” She shuddered, the daydream turned sour, as she imagined being drug through the woods in wet socks by a creature as large and hairy as Big Foot. “I suppose it would get boring if the others didn’t have pet humans to socialize with, wouldn’t it?”