linnea quinn larsen

“Last night I lost the world, and gained the universe.”

[linnea-quinn]

Are you a spontaneous person?

"I prefer to think of it as being qualified to react in an infinite number of hypothetical situations."

[linnea-quinn]

FMK: Freddy, Tierney, Linden

"Marry Freddy, my dearest darling, without a shadow of a doubt. I'd do it tomorrow after Charms class if she asked. And, listen...I'm aware that T and Lin are currently in the 'off' portion of their on-again-off-again epic romance, but...I may have recently caught them in a compromising situation in a very interesting secret subterranean dungeon chamber, and...well, who of sound mind and body would turn down an invite to be the cheese in a sandwich like that?"

[linnea-quinn]

kyrie-ravie​:

Kamala raised her brows, nodding slowly at the librarian’s instructions, “You’re like, really freaking me out.” She admitted, trying to chuckle off the intensity of her stare while taking her hand back. In a further attempt to push away the drama, Kam turned back to the glass, rearranging her hands in the tut.

“Can you get us those pages, then? The ones on the..” She inclined her chin toward the paper she’d shown the girl earlier. Distracted and excited by all of the new information as she was, she really didn’t want to fuck up her first real, proper request from her friends.

Kam snorted at the girl’s description of her sister, finally pressing her fingers down into the table, where the molten glass settled, extinguishing the fog completely. Unable to keep her hands completely still after executing any real piece of magic, Kam reached for her neglected mocha and held it with both hands, drinking greedily. She raised her brows, shrugging, “She got an implant,” Kam said this as if it was obvious, “Didn’t she tell you?”

What Kamala didn’t know, was that her sister had spent most of her Summer working on invisibility runes. Lani, while desperate to experience the world of her Hearing friends, was deeply ashamed of the desire- and deeply afraid of what would happen if her brother found out.

[end]

[bunnywrites]

kristine froseth - 11/2/2021

[linnea-quinn]

tierney-smudgling​:

When Quinn’s eyes flicked up to meet hers, there was a sharpness to the look that was new but familiar. A razorblade kind of curiosity that Q got when she’d latched onto something, like Heavy or Brownie with a chew toy when they wouldn’t let go until it’d been torn apart. Tierney always thought of it as a sign of intelligence. It spelled trouble, most days.

She hadn’t yet told Linden about the strange events in Advanced Magical Theory. Yet. She planned to. Linden had been very clear about wanting total involvement. The trouble was that Tierney wasn’t yet—yet!—sure exactly what there was to say about it. She wouldn’t be sure until she went home over break and investigated.

“You want to know so badly that you’ll chase me across the castle? Fuck’s sake, could have just asked at breakfast. I’ll fuckin’ tell you. It’s from a lake behind my home,” Tierney said. Her grip tightened on the strap across her chest. “How? I have no fuckin’ idea.” She had a quarter of an idea. It was one thing to think to herself: you know how I’m pretty sure I died? Well, I think that I’m—possibly—

“But it wasn’t the same lake, I’ll tell you that.” Tierney hefted her leather bag over her head. “So that’s it; that’s that on that, and we can talk more in class. But this?“ She gestured to the room, shaking her head. "Can’t tell you anything else. Not without putting you in seriously deep shit. Q, I mean hypothetically illegal shit, and—”

Tierney thought about Q taking her hand at the bookshop and saying, if something is up with you…you can trust me…I’d help you with anything, T. She thought about Linden saying, you can either tell me how badly you need this and what exactly would be in it for me, or you can leave.

Only one of their offers made sense to her. The other made her want to go for a long, long walk. Tierney squashed down the instinct to shake Quinn hard by the neck like one of her bullmastiffs back when they were small—drop it! don’t eat that! it’s not good for you!

“I’d rather not have to messily Obliviate you,” she said instead, with a grin. “God love you for caring, though! Thanks for checking in.”

@linnea-quinn

The cerulean in her eyes churned like a maelstrom along with her thoughts as she processed Tierney’s suspiciously nonchalant explanation, turning it over and round inside of her head. A mirror realm, perhaps? Q pondered silently, A place where reality is malleable enough to be molded by a singular strand of memory, to reflect one soul’s experience…

It was tantalizingly intriguing, to be sure. But it would have to wait.

Quinn scoffed, offended by the notion that an illegal endeavor would discourage her. “And what am I, a Prefect?” She folded her arms and dug in her heels, standing her ground. “Besides—the law is just another variable, my dear. Highly conditional, and dare I say, flimsy…”

Tierney seemed to hesitate, just for a moment, and Q seized the opportunity to sidle one step further into the chamber. “Ah, so Little Miss Hex’s most decorated medalist is performing ‘messy’ wandwork, now?” she quipped back, light but sharp-edged like a pin bone, even as she coiled her fingers around her wand held down at her side.

But an impasse was bound to be tedious, and frankly inefficient. So Quinn tried another angle: “Look—the particulars of whatever experiment you and Linden are about to attempt are really beside the point. The fact is you’re doing untested and, by reasonable deduction, dangerous magic—which makes it exactly the same as what you and I do on a weekly basis, from a practical standpoint. You need a spotter, to do some quick thinking and damage control in the not-unlikely event that things go belly-up, and I’m the best there is. Or need I remind you that I could have left your leg to steep in that astral lake for eternity?” 

Resolute in the knowledge that she was staying no matter what, Q sat down on an odd little bench that she would have no earthly way of knowing was meant for spanking, and said with a smile, “You don’t need to divulge anything remotely incriminating, if that’s your hangup. Just carry on as if I’m not here."

[linnea-quinn]

tierney-smudgling​:

necromancy for beginners [linden, tierney, quinn]

Footsteps echoed in the stone corridor. Tierney started, squirmed, sat up straight as if yanked by invisible strings. That same old defensiveness. Couldn’t let anyone see she wasn’t all made of iron. What kind of fucking bizarro world was she in, waiting in their favorite sex dungeon, not even about to get naked but still feeling more exposed than ever before in this room? Tierney swallowed.

Outside the castle’s sphere of light, across the wet, windswept void of the grounds, the lake was chewing up the shore, a mouth frothing in darkness. A few hours before, she’d perched hunchbacked on a window ledge in Gryffindor Tower, staring out until it was time to meet Linden. The urge to move had kicked inside her. Run!

But from what? And to where?

A fire was dancing over a stone brazier in the center of their dungeon chamber, thin blue flames whose heat made the air shimmer. Behind this shimmering curtain of hot air arrived a Linden, at first just a slow movement, a summoning. A face that emerged from darkness. Tierney gathered up her dignity and stood, thumbs tucked in the waistband of her tight black pants beneath her tight black turtleneck.

“Hey babe. Brought the strap,” Tierney said, gesturing to the crossbody bag slung across her chest. “Kidding. Got everything on the list you sent.” No need to mention Quinn’s assistance with the shopping, or the small fortune spent. “The, uh, ‘bone marrow of a deer fed on snakes’—finding that was murder.” Now they had about an hour to work while the rest of the school—importantly, the rest of Slytherin—was at dinner. Did necromantic rituals take more than an hour? Did necromancy respect the natural goddamn flow of time at all? Tierney looked past the enormous slabs of stone that made up the fire pit, on which sat a corked bottle and two canvas pouches, both of them half-full. “I reckoned we’d—oh shit. You’re not Linden.”

@linnea-quinn

“No, you’re quite right, I'm not. An astute observation, T…”

The flames seared to an icy tundra blue, licking the walls of the brazier as Quinn stepped out from within them, after which they subdued back to a deep, dozing indigo. She glanced around, taking quick stock of the room, its illicit contents (the ones hanging on the walls and sitting posed on shelves were even more questionable than the deadly contraband from the shopping list Q had helped Tierney shop for before they’d returned to school, though Quinn could see the latter was here as well…), and its sole inhabitant. “Mind filling me in on what you’re up to? And don’t insult me by saying you just came in here to bang…” As she said this, Q’s eyes landed on a particularly menacing, phallic contraption that brought a prudent pink to her cheeks, and she quickly refocused on Tierney instead. “…because this room was clearly already well-stocked for that, and yet you’ve brought every single thing from that treasure-hunting list—which I also know was written by Linden, by the way, because I recognized their handwriting.” She raised her brows in a the jig is up so don’t fuck with me kind of way.

It wasn’t the list, that had sparked Q’s suspicion. That had been one puzzle piece to reconsider later, but it was really that afternoon in Advanced Magical Theory that had done it—when their experiment had gone slightly off the rails and Quinn had partially-projected into that watery plane to get Tierney’s leg. And it wasn’t the error itself, either; multi-dimensional anything was an uncertain academic pursuit, and it was almost statistically impossible that they would have pulled it off without any flaws.

But Tierney had been unfocused, since then. She kept finding excuses not to try anything practical in class again, which Q knew wasn’t anything to do with being afraid, nor was it trauma from the temporary leg separation; Tierney was foolhardy to a fault, and Quinn had never known her to be even slightly squeamish.

And then, of course, there was the hair.

A single strand of that wet hair from the other plane had caught on Quinn’s sleeve, and that night after Q had showered and her clothes were in a little pile to be collected for laundering the next day, she’d heard that hair whispering, calling out for Quinn’s attention. She’d coiled the hair into an empty potion vial for safekeeping and had puzzled over it up in the Ravenclaw Tower for hours, for days, trying to determine what it was this object was trying to convey. Quinn had never brought back something from an astral jump that belonged to another plane, before. It was fascinating, from a purely intellectual standpoint, and Q was hopeful it would provide her with some valuable insight in her study of Travelling, if only she could learn how to hear the object’s story.

But every time she gently emptied that strand of stringy hair into her palm and she listened, every time she watched the gears and dials of her open pocket watch swivel and shift in response, Q was pointed back to Tierney.

So here they were. Quinn pulled the stoppered vial with the hair inside of it from a pocket of her robes and held it up. “Let’s start easy—where did this come from? The plane where I grabbed your leg, the other day during class…And why was that plane so tethered to you, when we adjusted the other variables? Because being in proximity to it didn’t splinch you, like a distance-based separation would have. It’s like it…switched out a negative-space copy for the real thing, filled in the empty void with dark matter…” She frowned, glancing down at where Tierney’s leg had been reattached in the Hospital Wing, and then back up. “…so? Spill it.”

[linnea-quinn]

tierney-smudgling​:

“Y-yeah,” Tierney said, barely able to get it out around her tremulous laughter, a heh-heh-heh-heh-heh wheezing from her. Like she couldn’t draw enough breath to get it out. She elbowed Q in the side, still breathless. “Hey, could really go for some f-f-fish, eh?”

She slapped the wet mattress, using the momentum to pull herself to sitting with a grunt. “But you’ve got to give me a hand.” She stared at her own pale limb in Quinn’s hand. It needed a shave. “Leg? Fuck, levitate me if you can do it without giving everyone a look up my skirt. I’ll hold that for you, come on. Thanks for getting it back, Q. You’re a real one.”

Perhaps it would have been more disturbing if there was pain or a loss of something in the limb where it had been severed, but it was as if the leg had never been attached to her. Or no—it was more like handling toenail clippings, or washing hair off a razorblade. Besides, things tended to happen to your body during duels, and you had to have a strong stomach when they did. In any case, it wasn’t the first or the last time she’d felt disconnected from her body.

For example: her body struggled to standing, but Tierney mind was a whole country away, in the lake behind her home. She had no doubt that was where she’d gone when she was falling, or at least to a version of it. There’d been no mistaking the fleshy, deep water lily roots all around her, trailing through the dark, still water.

She should tell Q. It was relevant to the results of today’s so-called lesson. They could extrapolate from it. Maybe it would even lead to a breakthrough. Maybe they’d even get written up in the Prophet: “Brilliant young scholars discover new way to apparate! Every Old Farty Wizard Jealous of their Beauty and Brains.” It was a grand vision, and Tierney could appreciate it for about five seconds. Then she thought: nah. This felt personal and secret for reasons Tierney couldn’t explain. Not, at the very least, until she had been home again and swam in the lake and figured out—something to say about it.

“Shiiiiiiiiiiiteee. Pomphrey’ll be all—” Tierney hobbled to pick up her bag, making a face like a gargoyle smelling something really foul. “Prayers that we make it to the Hall before they stop serving. We can’t let her really get going, alright?”

[END]

[end]

[linnea-quinn]

[ Partially recovered text from ██████████; translated from Old Church Slavonic ]

Archived for further study by The Librarian’s Consortium of Higher Magical Theory, Narrative Preservation, & Knowledge Procurement

Edited by: Rsrch. Lbrn. Britt Larsen, Translation & Interpretation Officer, Inter-Realm Procurement Division {editor’s notations in braces}

“From where do we come?” asked a child {a Veela} to their Mother.

And so the Mother said, “Listen close, my Child, as I sing you this sad tale

Which has drifted through our Broods on the winds of time, as the cottonwood snow;

We once shared a home with our cousins most Fair {translations indicate this to mean Fae}

In a paradise where the Mother’s magic blossomed and thrived {the Faerie Realm}

Our People believe there is power in Unity, and only by nourishing the Garden of the Collective with your solitary Blood can you truly be Whole {see also: Veelan Link of Kin}

Our Fair Cousins condemned our teachings, they thought us weeds to be rooted out,

‘A Blight!’ cried They, and so Blight we became {?? meaning unclear; further analysis recommended}

There could be no peace with their self-serving deals and bargains {faerie deals},

Nowhere for Chaos and Uniformity, for the Individual and the Sacred Shared, to coexist

Our People were persecuted by our once-trusted Brethren, forced to flee our Fertile Lands

But the Merciful Mother saw fit to Bless our People

And from forth the strong Roots of our Belief, the Bond of our Blood, 

Our Selfless Sacrifice, came Fruit–

A new world in which to lay down our Seeds and settle

Until such a time when we might reclaim the Soils of our Homeland

When there is {remaining text indecipherable}

[ Missing pages damaged beyond recovery ]

[femalestunning]

kristine froseth | sbjct journal | 2022

[linnea-quinn]

tierney-smudgling​:

There was a peculiar shift in which the world doubled—and then there were two Tierneys. They weren’t totally separate, was the thing. Her perspective was suddenly wider and higher, and it was like she was watching two views of the same scene taken from different angles.

In one, she was watching Q move around her with a look that was so patently Quinn: Tierney could splatter everywhere and it wouldn’t throw Q at all, would it? She would just keep working the angles, doing that mumbling thing she did when she wasn’t really in the world anymore. Things could happen around her or to her, sure, but the only thing real to her anymore was her own head, her own mind.

And in that other angle Tierney felt patchwork and unbounded, macro instead of micro, hearing what sounded like—whispering? Chatter. Not so much hearing a voice as feeling a stream of impressions and feelings. She could smell water, faintly, feel something brush softly against her hand. She didn’t know what was happening. It didn’t exist in the lexicon of knowledge she’d learned from schoolbooks and research papers. But she knew it was real, and she could add one plus one and make a guess.

Quinn’s voice was in her left ear (Left? she thought, scornfully. What was left?), buzzy but clear. Tierney hadn’t realized she’d been laughing the whole time, and she shut one of her two mouths up. The other continued to make slow booming noises, like distant thunder. There was a moment in which the universe(s?) paused, stretching a little, and Tierney was caught in the pliability of the moment. Quinn had slowed things down somehow. Tierney was still falling, but now she felt like fruit chew being sloooooooowly stretched out. It didn’t feel great. It felt like a very, very, very short-term solution.

In a panic, Tierney reached—

—it was a lot more fucking complicated than that, actually, fuck you; she had to run the equations for flow velocity, she had to imagine—no, she had to theorem—that she was reaching through churning water and classroom air simultaneously and compensate and reconcile the difference which was like waging multiversal war—

—for Quinn’s dirty socks.

Turning socks into a mattress was the easy part. Tierney even managed a nice firm one. Timing it so that she—all of her—landed in the classroom was not. Tierney would later round her attempt up to 85% successful. That is to say that when she landed flat on her back on a mattress on the classroom floor, she had temporally located about 85% of herself before making the cast. In calculations, that had seemed an acceptable amount.

The difference was made up of one (1) freshwater fish raining down on her and a hunk of long wet hair clasped in her hand. Her left leg was badly Splinched off mid-thigh, but maybe it was more accurate to say her leg was damaged, because she’d never seen a Splinch like it before. It was as if a rubber had been dragged over her leg, her leg from the knee down erased, leaving nothing behind. “What the—what the—I cal—but—I—fuck, I moved the entire protective enclosure, my leg should at least be here with me, where the fuck would it even—” Gasp. Sob. Oh, shut up, Tierney. She was shaking hard.

As soon as Quinn heard Tierney land with a thud on the mattress, she grabbed a crystal and chucked it off to one side to dismantle the barriers of the testing zone. Tierney was making horrible, suctioned moaning sounds like she was in pain, like she’d been revived after drowning—

Q rushed to her side, her bare feet slipping on all the—puddles? Had it been raining in the chamber? Had they mixed up an equation somewhere and accidentally tampered with an Atmospheric Circumstance—?

She didn’t really have time to think about the math when most of Tierney’s leg was missing—yet seemingly, still operational and intact, somewhere, since there was no blood to be found anywhere; the sight of Tierney’s leg, looking like someone had just snipped off the bottom of a two-dimensional drawing with a pair of scissors, was somehow more unnatural and grotesque than if there’d been bone and muscle and gore everywhere.

Was that even possible—for one part of a whole to exist out there, somewhere, simultaneously and in parallel to the rest of it?

But hypotheticals weren’t important, right now; they had maybe fifteen seconds at the most before the rest of Tierney drifted along with the current of whatever dimension the leg had been launched into, down the winding cosmic river of infinity to be lost forever. Or, at least, not retrievable by two enthusiastic but untrained teenagers with no instructor to supervise them.

When astral planes infrequently interacted, Quinn knew, they orbited around each other for a short while as they overlapped, like two stars sharing one center of gravity in space. But their magnetic charges of magic would mingle and change before ultimately repelling each other, disappearing into the myriad of multiversal layers that surrounded them on every dimensional side, like so much lasagna.

And that was going to happen in roughly ten seconds.

Thinking fast and acting on impulse, Q grasped onto the soaked seaweed-like hair that was wrapped around Tierney’s hand, which had to have come from there because it didn’t look at all like T’s dark bob.

“Don’t let go, please!” she barked at Tierney before she made the astral jump. It wasn't a full projection, this time; the plane she was hopping into was catapulting away from them at an unknown but assumedly fast as hell velocity, and Quinn would have no way to get back to her body if she got lost. So instead, she kept part of her consciousness tethered, the part that resided metaphysically down near her ankles, to the mattress in their Earth plane.

And her mind she shot out, pulling and stretching it like taffy, until she felt like a ribbon of carbon matter and temporal essence, using the residual planar gravity within the stringy hair around her fingers to steer her.

Quinn could see the shape of the plane she was chasing, half-corporeal in the distance; she was gaining on it, but she was stretching herself too thin. Any second now she would snap—

Emitting a high-pitched scream, she grabbed the leg and then allowed the taut elasticity of her consciousness to hurl her back through non-space, snagging on the edges of dimensions until she snapped back into her own fleshy form, sprawled on a damp mattress.

Being suddenly stationary was vacuously quiet, and Quinn’s ears were ringing as she slumped against Tierney, clutching the Gryffindor’s severed leg to her chest like a stuffed animal. Her face and arms and torso, really, were wet with sweat and that strange, viscous other-planar water. After a moment, with some effort, she relearned how to put air into her lungs and she panted, “Hospital Wing—then—dinner?”

[freddy-ryland]

[ 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐌 ] ― Quinn calms Freddy down from a vision-related panic attack in a loud place

What's holding up her face? Nothing but blue skies Passageways to windows That don't close

There were blasts of green shooting off. The body weaved and ducked, curling beneath and under tapestries. Then a flash of yellow caught somewhere beneath her neck - air what was airairair - the Body was going airborne, eyes finding a portrait, horrified while the oil was slicked over with red so much red paint, like a prank gone wrong.

The crack echoed around in the Body's skull, coming from its ears.

There was something soft beneath the body, all warm and plaint, all covered in fabric and barely stirring. The rush of bodies before them was growing ever larger, piling through the door and meeting giants and flashing spells as they went down down down.

The Body needed to breathe, and as it slid off the body beneath it another spell caught it in the arm spinning it sideways and into the stone wall with a thump lost in the din of battle.

The spine was cracking, bits of bone shooting out of its back and slingshotting. Vertebrae and muscles flaying, skin peeling from its back, a hooded figure laughing as the Body died and faded against the ground. They were laughing.

Pointing and laughing.

Laughing so loud it sounded like joy, crowning, victorious over Freddy's crumbling body and wilting figure. She hit the stone wall with a soft thump, sliding onto the ground with a hushed cry as the Hufflepuff buried a cry into a bitten tongue, long limbs tucking around her body as the coppery tinge of blood filled her mouth. It was pounded in her chest, in her ears, plugged with only laughter and her heartbeat going faster than any hummingbird's wings could.

Hands latched around her palms, pulling at her nails that came free from her flesh with a low painful moan.

"--ars, come back to me sweet one," Freddy felt legs trap her own, slinging around her thighs while her legs sprawled forward, still twitching, feet wiggling with phantom pains while sharp short breaths entered and exited her lungs. But her vision was spotting over, head tilting back to explore the array of black sparkles and blackholes that threatened to overtake her.

"Please," the Voice was close to Freddy's ears, a palm covering one, Freddy could feel their skin stick to her own, blood slick and congealing, "breath deep."

The breath got caught in her chest, and Freddy let out a choked bellow as it expelled out.

It was so fucking hot; Freddy pulled at her clothes, limbs jerking as the fabric stuck against her sweating skin, hair matting behind the knob of her skull. Hands pulled off her jumper leaving it balls onto the floor and tugging down her thigh highs, cool air slinking around sweat-soaked skin like a cat.

But her heart kept going, sharp tictacktiktacktip - faster and emptying into her skull - blaptakcitkkslaptaktiktaack - all wrong and beating - clinktactikptaptaptippptaaack - wrong and ringing against her ribs as she balled up her fists as another sheen of green spells covering her left eye and the right found a swirl of bodies in front of her, dressed in spring game wear. Where was the blood? When was she?

"She's having a fuckin' panic attack!" The cry cut through the mixed-vision-real-life din that was echoing around Freddy/Body.

"Madame Pomfrey--!"

"--with the beater--"

Snips of conversation around Freddy, coming through the screams and curses flung around the body.

"...oh fuck it all then-- 'land get UP!"

Blood was coming from her mouth, dribbling off from her bitten tongue. It was coming from her ear; the delicate inner workings had broken again, the words coming in bursts and slips.

"Stop yelling!"

It was blessedly silent for a few moments, Freddy blinking away the blackhole spots to find eyes, and a voice, lips so close to her own. The sound coming from them so loud and clear it found purchase in the space Freddy/Body carved out into the universe. They hovered, jilting into place as the Voice continued to bark it's orders, and the tiktapsliptaackblahblahtiktaack of her heart was the only sound left as Freddy/Body focused on the Voice, heavy across her thighs.

It lasted a minute as a shouting cry came through the Voice's orders, the vibrations of stampeding feet rushing around the two forms pressed against the wall to avoid them, Freddy twitching incessantly as she felt a hand pressed against her poorly working lungs.

"Listen to my count--" the Voice guided her, a siren, an angel, a chorus, dragging Freddy in and out of the blackhole threatening to swallow her whole, "--ne-- ree-- " the voice was getting caught, as the past came back, with a screech as the wall beside Freddy blew apart, debris crashing into her prone body, pebbles finding a home in her flayed half-corpse not yet dead, "--ive." But the world was slipping apart, in and out, Freddy not quite in either, stuck in the throes of her unstable magic.

"Li-- -arm" The Voice rang through the shattered hallway, above the din of laughter and screams; Freddy blinked open her eyes that she was sure had popped and jellified onto her skull. The spell had been one of flaying and melting, so why was she still breathing? Why did they need an arm?

"Make it quiet -- noise," Freddy's jaw tried to form words even as the body deposited her in the present, but the laughter was still around her, pointing at her prone figure, slaughtered on cobblestone. Sweat soaked through the Hufflepuff jersey sticking to her bones still encased in blood and muscles, and a comforting weight is thrown across her thighs. The vision released her with an uncomfortable pop, but her heart didn't know that as it continued to stutter stop then restart in sharp, unrelenting hard beats. The world was spinning and unsure, but gravity made a person as Voice/Quinn's fingers ground into her temples.

"I'm going to vomit." Freddy attempted to say. But it came out garbled and spluttering as she violently twisted to her side, a cool hand gripping her hair and cupping her chin, as she vomited the rest of her treacle tart, sips of spiked butterbeer, and blood until it washed the stone with bile - yellow-green-red. Deliriously, Freddy thought it needed a bit of blue to round it out.

But as the bile spread, soaking Freddy's skirt she began to shiver and cough through the tremors in her chest while her overworked lungs expanded with oxygen, a headache growing from her nose and spreading across her head.

There were still bodies in the corridor, pounding rushing feet and crowds, but there was silence in the bubble. Quinn's face hovered an anxious few inches from her face, fingers coming up to wipe away the blood and vomit from her lips. Linden was above them both, with T and Des behind their shoulder, standing just outside the silencing bubble's shimmer.

"Can I have some chocolate?" She asked trying to steady her breath, but her heartbeat hadn't slowed still holding the time signature of a rave. Quinn dug some out from a pocket and pressed it between her lips.

"Oh my darling, can you stand?"

Freddy didn't answer, instead locking her shaking muscles around Quinn's shoulders, burying her dirty face into her collarbones, soaking in a heartbeat a tad too fast, the sweet candy melting in the heat of her mouth.

"Can we sit, quiet for just a while?" it came out jumbled, mumbled, and through the blackspots still hovering in her eyes waiting for a moment to drag her beneath again. Freddy held Quinn like a child would a loved stuffed toy, fingers playing with loose strands of hair, rubbing over the knobs of their spine.

"Yes of course my Sun and Stars."

[ichimakesart]

You're conducting an absorbing research.

Remember to go to sleep.

[linnea-quinn]

kyrie-ravie·:

Kamala blinked stupidly at Q’s caution, nodding knowingly- but the understanding was more aligned with a 17 year old tired of being lectured about the same thing. All she ever heard about was different Circumstances, really. It was more complicated than Physics- memorising all sorts of odd shit like the phase of the moon, the ambient temperature in the room… Some of the molecular-level spells that Kamala was working through were even picky about the time that she had woken that morning. 

She frowned at the librarian’s line of questioning. Wasn’t it obvious? “… Uh, I told you? The Daughters, everyone’s gearing up for the big fight, when they eventually decide to attack,” She shrugged, “I personally plan on being so far away when that happens. I think they’re taking it way too seriously.”

She turned her focus back to the cup, which not melted as though it was back to its molten state. The temperature of the glass hadn’t changed at all, though, so the clear liquid glass was slowly pouring in on itself, trapping the fog underneath it. “So what’s my sister like at Hogwarts?” Kam asked curiously as her pinky fingers rolled, encouraging the glass to liquefy, “We share a room, y’know, so I totally get how she can be. She’s barely talked to me the whole Summer break, except when we went to the Cochlear appointment together? And that was only ‘cause she can’t drive.”

Ignoring all her careful Lib-Con training that cautioned against involving oneself personally with research subjects, and despite Kam’s naive nonchalance over the Daughters, Quinn found herself compelled to reach forward and grasp Kamala’s wrist with gentle care, pausing the hedge witch mid-tut as Q said seriously, “Kam, listen to me—if the Daughters of Tituba do make a move on your coven, and you get the feeling that the Free Traders are in over their heads…if you find yourself in need of help, then promise me this—you’ll go to the British Library. You’ll find a book called The Girl Who Told Time, flip it upside down, and put it back on the shelf. Then you’ll wait for me to come up and find you and I give you my word, that if I can, I will get you what you need. Just remember you have a friend in the Library, okay?”

Q gave the other girl a somewhat disarmingly sincere smile, squeezed her wrist lightly once and then returned her hand to resting atop the blank file on the tabletop. And, as if she hadn’t just given Kam a grave and cryptic warning, Quinn watched the matter changing form before her eyes with a meditative sort of interest. She blinked at Kam’s question, distracted by what was truly a captivating bit of magic. “Hm?” she said, and then: “Oh, Lani? She’s brilliant, truly. But I suppose she can be a bit…” Q considered her words very carefully, before landing on: “…self-governing, to be sure.”

Her lips pursed together as another thought niggled at her. And then finally, Quinn had to press: “…what was the appointment for? At Cochlear."

[linnea-quinn]

freddy-ryland·:

.

The Light Dust felt like it wormed its way beneath her skin, spreading warmth and heat against her bones, tangling into the fibers and cords of her muscle. Quinn always at home with the puzzles and brilliant oddities that LibCon raised her within, but every moment with a new magic sent Freddy reeling and rushing to explore more of the fantastic world. Freddy lifted her knuckles, studying how the dust seemed to etch and rush around her skin. This was more magic than anyone at Hogwarts taught, and as the Dust settled down it reminded her of the Elf Champagne on New Years during Shacklebolt celebrations, rushing between her toes and up her skin.

So focused on the feeling of the Dust in her veins she missed the portal opening - one of her favorite parts - and ushered herself closer to Quinn admiring the swirling colors and veins of magic. Given enough time Freddy could stare forever, trying to find pattern, meaning and puzzle her way through it’s depth. 

But there really was never enough time for Freddy, so when Quinn stepped through she follow just a half breath after.

The only thing Freddy could compare the Doors to were apparation or floo, but it wasn’t that at all. For less than a second Freddy and her body were weightless before hopping out the otherside, too short a period for the Hufflepuff to comprehend it’s feelings for affects. Like magnets Freddy found Q’s shoulder again, finding her footing in step as Freddy craned her head back to admire France in the lowlight.

Freddy hummed as her feet tapped against the cobblestone, gas lamps being lit while folk bustled quietly up and down the street. She could peer into the windows and find a couple kissing over a dinner, and another one screaming. Here two siblings reading in the same bed, a father and mother opening glasses of wine as the children giggled. The heavy sigh Freddy let out was one of longing, to see and enjoy other people’s lives, a willing glance. For more than a few they passed Freddy’s eyes flashed, her knees buckling for a millisecond before popping out of her visions of their marriage or loves, past spots of war and majesty past. Quinn kept their walk up, their hands grasped tight and Freddy didn’t fear popping in and out of the past/present/future as long as Q held her tight. They reached the Louvre in a timely manner, while Freddy’s visions spat at her images of the Mona Lisa being brought it, the sculptures of Rome and Egypt. 

Freddy was breathless as, willing her magic to stop, the visions dissipated with petulant sigh and bubbled between her ears and behind her eyes. 

“Aaliyah,” their name came out closer to a prayer or even a devotion, Freddy for a moment was starstuck by their statement, “I have admired every door you’ve ever fashioned me, each one better and more spectacular than the last,” Freddy kept her grip light, brushing her fingers along the back of their palm, “I’m grateful for your talents - your magic is beautiful.” She kept her tone soft, welcoming, as  Aaliyah’s magic seemed to live within their fingertips, a fine dust and speckles staining her palm until they parted. Freddy rubbed her fingers together where they had touched, and admired the magic until it slipped away and only her own remained.

Hedges, she thought, must be a marvelous type of wix to prompt such a sudden and bright feeling of magic in my veins. 

Q beamed triumphantly as she watched her best friend interact with the hedge; Freddy had seemed scattered inside her own mind on their walk over, likely bombarded with psychic frequencies in a foreign city—but of course, there really was nothing like standing in the presence of a beautiful older wix to keep you grounded within your own mind, was there?

Aaliyah gave Freddy a gracious nod—tongue-tied as ever when faced with praise for their work—and then ducked inside the Louvre as silent as a splash of refracted rainbow light moving across the wall. “You are such a flirt, Freds!” Quinn teased in whispered tones against Freddy’s ear before pulling her friend gently inside by the elbow.

The inside of the museum loomed echoingly quiet and dark in its after-hours splendor. But amidst the shadowy cavern before them it was easy for their eyes to train on the painted cartoon arrows in unique designs that lined the floors, bright and beckoning with enchanted illumination to show them the way. Quinn threaded her fingers back with Freddy’s, then followed the trail the Painter had left for them.

The path led them to a Door that was painted in austere greyscale to look like a PI’s office in a pulp noir comic book. Blocky letters on the Door’s ‘window’ read ARTIFACT INVESTIGATION. Quinn smirked at Aaliyah’s quirky sense of humor and opened the Door.

French wix in styles of dress ranging from Ministry robes to scholars to art curators (and even one unfortunate man who’d been roused from bed in striped flannel pajamas without bothering to change) bustled about the room. At their entrance, a no-nonsense witch wearing big wiry glasses and salt-and-pepper hair tied back in a neat chignon approached them and said, “Ah, welcome—from Lib-Con?” Quinn nodded and the woman led her and Freddy to one of the many paintings that lined the room. It was Vermeer’s “The Astronomer,” and the woman asked, “And what do you make of this?” 

Q stepped up to the painting and pulled a magically-porous latex glove over one hand before reaching out to very, very delicately touch the tips of her fingers to the oil-painted canvas. She closed her eyes as whispers filled her mind—but before she could make out any of the story the painting was trying to tell her, a white-noise sound like static blanketed over everything else inside her mind’s eye (or ear, rather). Quinn frowned, opening her eyes and dropping her hand to her side. “Very strange…” she mused aloud, turning back to face the others. “…the wix who created this went to great lengths to be untraceable—beyond mere illusions and your standard charms for misdirection. Fascinating work, I’ll admit—it’s almost like they’ve jumbled the very substance of the artifact—confused it, muffled its voice, perhaps even rewritten its history…” 

Aaliyah, who had drifted over to join their group and looked uncomfortable not to be shielded by a wallflower’s shadows, added quietly, “The paint is unlike anything I have ever worked with or encountered before.”

Quinn nodded at them gratefully, and then looked to Freddy. She pulled her own glove’s mirrored twin from her pocket—the complement for one complete pair, for the other half of Q’s own soul—and held it out for Freddy. She gave the Seer a look that said you can do this. “Well, Supernova? Care to take a crack at it?”

[linnea-quinn]

tierney-smudgling·:

Best case scenario? They finished labwork in time for dinner and Tierney still had a mouth to eat with. Worst case? They missed dinner because she was Splinched into a different dimension. The dimensional pleating theory of Apparition did not care about her skipped meals and hunger pangs.

Tierney kept one eye on Quinn’s progress as she cast her own layers of protection, swaying slightly as waves of magic buffeted her, like a warm breeze blowing up her skirt. She could feel the ends of her hair lifting as if before a storm.

The shieldwork she’d elected was a glorified container. A one-way mirror, porous, allowing magic in but—hypothetically—keeping her from going all over if she went splat or melted in the electrical field. Someone would be able to put her back together.

“We—” she started, a clipped little sound. The rest of the thought collapsed in her half-open mouth. Her neck snapped back, catching a glimpse of the twinning runic diagram they’d traced on the ceiling as she fell through the floor—

—and the ceiling—

—and the floor again. Over and over she fell, her choking laughter distorted by the Doppler Effect as the floor swallowed her and the ceiling spat her out in an endless loop.

Quinn started as the sound of a long, loud held note ricocheted around the room, distorting and oscillating like some kind of siren—despite all evidence thus far this term to the contrary, perhaps there was in fact an emergency alarm system in here that they’d managed to trip with their unmonitored experimentation?—before she realized that the sound, as well as the blur of flesh tones and black robes whizzing in front of her, was Tierney.

“Oh. Well…Helvete…” Q muttered, and after a moment of consideration she tried just slowly lowering her wand to gradually slow and then cease the flow of magic. Except, of course, that they had been perfectly competent in creating a self-contained test field that sustained its own magical power, now that it had been charged. Score one for executional proficiency and minus one for—well, for the ringing in Q’s ears, for one thing; the Frequency of Tierney-Cackle was very shrill. 

She crouched down next to one of the perimeter crystals and observed it thoughtfully, being careful not to touch. She certainly couldn’t displace one—that would crash the whole circuit system and who knows what kind of chain reaction that would have on poor T’s valuable innards, and so forth. 

Q straightened to stand and did a perimeter of the testing area, muttering under her breath as she mentally parsed through a lot of mental math and theories of electro-magical physics, before finally arriving at a half-thought-out decision—which had to be better than nothing. She rubbed her frigid palms together and said, “Hang on, T!” More to reassure herself than Tierney, as she was fairly certain the latter couldn’t hear anything inside that Echo Chamber of Chuckles. 

Quinn slid out of her shoes, then pulled her socks off and bundled them up into a ball, hissing a breath through her teeth when her bare feet touched the icy floor. Carefully, she threw her ball of socks at a gentle underhand into the testing area, where they started to fall along with Tierney. Then she sat down on the floor and placed her wand loosely in between her hands, pointed at the test space but not performing any spells. She closed her eyes and let her consciousness detach from the physical anchor of her body…

When Q opened her eyes she was hovering incorporeally just inside the testing perimeter like some pop culture misrepresentation of a djinn from a lamp. She winced; Q’s astrally-projected ears weren’t even sending signals to her actual brain, and yet still Tierney’s unhinged shrieking seemed ten times louder in here. “Would you mind pausing your in-depth character study on Helga the Hyena for a moment so that I can think?” said the projection of Q. She eyeballed some quick mental dimensional parameters, and then blew a stream of air that didn't really exist from between her astral lips. The objects in motion needed to be slowed down, but the Circumstances inside this thing were insane; trying to cast anything while separated from your body was tricky to begin with, and anything more complicated than very basic magic inside this unpredictable pinball machine of magical theorems was sure to be, like—99.98% chance of Tierney exploding in a dazzling blast of blood and freckles and hormones. Which might be kind of cool, but would definitely put a damper on the evening.

Quinn suctioned her consciousness back into her seated body with a gasp of hyperborean breath that burned her lung lining. She squeezed some feeling back into her fingers around her wand and sniffled her running nose, then she grabbed a piece of the pressed-powder chalk they’d used to trace the runic floor diagram and scribbled out some equations on the floor. She checked her math, then crawled back to their diagram and scrawled a long string of tiny runes along the curving edge of a larger one. Tierney’s voice deepened and distributed until it sounded like a slow-motion recording. 

Testing gravity and motion velocity effectively tweaked to a workable level inside the test area, Quinn instructed aloud—as slowly as she could, so that it might sound normal to Tierney—“Okay, can you try to grab my socks and transfigure them into something you can land on? Like a feathery mattress. Dimensions should be at least 200 square centimetres so it doesn’t fall through…”

[linnea-quinn]

ajairamesh·:

AJ opened his mouth to say something else, but snapped his mouth shut as he felt a shift in the magic around them that made his ears pop and watched the Knut Quinn pulled from her pocket turn into the key that finally released the restraints around his wrist. The static current he had felt buzzing under his skin was gone too and he released a quite sigh as he rubbed his wrist.

“I never promised a meeting.” He narrowed his eyes and slightly shook his head, but he was tired. He was fucking exhausted after spending the night in a ministry cell so while that coffee sounded amazing. There was a coffee shop a block from here, he turned and started in that direction, fully expecting Quinn to follow, she never did give up that easily.

Quinn’s smile curled up her cheeks victoriously. Sure, AJ hadn’t agreed to a meeting—but he wasn’t explicitly saying no, either; to Q, that was a win.

She bounced along after the Traveller, a chipper skip in her step, in stark contrast to AJ’s weary slump. She followed him into the coffee shop and waited until after he’d given his order to step up to the counter and ask for her usual—a “Honey Stardust,” or an earl grey latte with soy milk, honey, and vanilla that was served in swirls of cream and iridescent gold. She handed enough notes to cover her own order and AJ’s to the barista.

She received her drink and then sat down, peering at AJ over the lid. She had about a million questions for him, give or take; natural-born Travellers were a rarity, and Q had been wanting to pick AJ’s brain for a long time. But after a brief period of consideration, the question she landed on—her tone fully of cheek—was: “So, Ajai Ramesh—Travelled into anywhere dangerous lately, by chance? That active volcano certainly was memorable…” 

She took a sip of her drink, smiling lightly.

[linnea-quinn]

tierney-smudgling·:

ㅤ

Tierney scoffed. “Uhhhhhhhhhhh, by doing it, Q. Obviously,” she said, in the most nasal, obnoxious tone her vocal cords could produce. “Let’s have it here.” She squared off her shoulders and put her hands on her waist. The sharp ends of her hair quavered as she stared into the bowels of their worksheet.

She snorted. Then sniffled. Fucking freezing “temporary” classroom. Fucking, shitting, “temporary” professor who’d left ten minutes ago and never returned. Her hands were a mottled white, and she resisted the urge to stick them up her armpits.

Q was forever overcomplicating assignments. “Why do we need to stabilize it?” Tierney finally said. She drew her wand with numb fingers. “Run the bloody thing. I’ll get out in front and cast a shield, and if anything happens, I’ll deal–”

Quinn laughed at Tierney’s antics, and the mist of her breath was visible around her nose in the frigid room. Somehow Tierney always managed to be obstinately delightful to be around, even when she was blatantly making fun of you.

She folded her arms, quirked a brow, smirked. “I was simply under the impression that you wanted all your atoms to maintain their structural integrity—but, if you’re not bothered about that, by all means…” 

Q grabbed the last crystal and tapped her wand against it to charge it; it glowed and warmed inside her palm, enough that she was reluctant to have to put it into place atop the final converging point of the giant runic diagram they’d traced onto the floor. She did set it in place, though, and then she backed up nearly to the door to observe the experiment, grinning wide in anticipation. The enclosed space of the diagram wherein Tierney was stood hummed with magical charge, like an electrical field. “…let’s run the damn thing.”

Quinn took a breath, and then traced an exhaustively precise path with her wand through the air, muttering a string of morphemes and then holding her wand arm out in front of her to maintain the steady flow of magic into the space. She looked up at Tierney to observe the results.