nope.

Sergeant Margot Brendanawicz / MACUSA Eastern Squad / she/her current points: 225 current cases: Murder at Wizard Broadway Kidnapping at the Giant Caucus

[eleanorbrendanawicz-blog]

Where: Margot’s apartment When: a few weeks after Eleanor moved back to NYC, late evening Who: closed to @margotbrendanawicz

What’s the perfect gift for the mother she no longer spoke to, who loomed so large and intimidating in her memory that she cringed from recollecting specific moments shared with her? She formed her mouth around the syllables of mom, the ghost of a sound rarely spoken in many years. Margot was just Margot to her now, the voice in her head that kept her head down, the measuring stick she held against her accomplishments. Acknowledging Margot as a human being felt wrong, somehow. Eleanor’s mother, and not a creature larger than life itself.

She thought she was going to have more time before confronting Margot. Time to move back, get settled into her new job, establish a routine–and then write to her mother, explain that she’d moved back to the city and maybe set up a chance to…catch up, for lack of a better term. Eleanor had expected to have at least two weeks of peace before having to consider seeing Margot again. The last thing she’d expected was striding into the new office and right into her mother’s cloud of smoke. In an instant, Margot’s disapproving eyes burning a hole in her skull, she’d felt reduced to a child again, vying for her mother’s nonexistent approval.

Her offerings for tonight’s dinner felt deficient in some way, as well. A bottle of wine, an apple pie from the bakery–not the same one she’d visited as a child to press her nose against the glass shielding the sweets from her fingers, but in the same general location. Pie was pie, right? Suppressing a tremor in her head, Eleanor knocked on the door to her mother’s apartment, willing herself not to be nervous. Dinner with her mother–it shouldn’t be that hard to get through, right?

[margotbrendanawicz]

It was hard to tell whether inviting Eleanor over for dinner was a welcome gesture of generosity, a chance to judge the woman her daughter had become in the interim since they’d last seen one another, or a guilt trip for not even bothering to owl her mother and let her know she was moving back to the city. A healthy mixture of all three, in all likelihood, with perhaps a dose of habitual intimidating thrown in for good measure. 

She’d been surprised to see Eleanor in the office, even more surprised that her daughter was an officer now, by the start of her 30s, and there was a feeling of something like pride in knowing that she’d done well enough to get this far, to get Snow’s attention and finally make it onto a federal squad. Margot had been 27, when she’d made her first federal squad, but that was neither here nor there. 

The radio was on, when Eleanor arrived, a cloud of cigarette smoke filling the living room and a glass of whiskey in Margot’s hand as she answered the door, giving her daughter a quick once over before letting her inside. 

      “Is that from Abrams’?” she asked, eyeing the pie in her daughter’s hand. The bakeries around the area had been the same for forty-something years, for the most part, and she’d developed strong opinions on all of them, even though she hadn’t needed to buy pastries of any kind since her new and generous neighbors moved in. “You should have gone to the Greek one, down the block. Better crust.”

[margotbrendanawicz]

daniellobo‌:

“Who all would have had access to her costumes?” Daniel asks, not knowing enough about the workings of a production such as this to know himself.

“Well, they were kept in her dressing room for the majority of the time, unless she had to do a quick change, then they were taken backstage to save on time. Anyone would have had access to them during that time.” Hmph, not exactly helpful then. Still though, it stood to reason that whoever destroyed the actresses’ costumes was likely the one who had cursed her.

“And what do you know of her relationship with some of the other actors? Specifically her understudy and then her costar, Mr. Whitewood?”

“Oh, her and Mr. Whitewood, got along swimmingly,” Mrs. Sheffield pipes up beside her husband. “He was so patient with her in the beginning when she was still learning her lines and everything. Being such a seasoned actor himself, he knows all too well of those first big show jitters.”

“And did they keep their relationship strictly professional?”

“They said as much”, she answers, but her coy smile seems to say she didn’t quite think so herself. “I wouldn’t blame her if she did though, if I were in her shoes- and unmarried of course, I probably would have tried my luck with him as well.”

     “And her understudy?” Margot prompts the woman -- the information about Whitewood and the dead girl possibly having a romantic relationship might be helpful in questioning him, but the last thing she wants to hear is this woman commit mental adultery with her husband standing right there, and she seems like the type to fantasize aloud. 

      “We were afraid there would be issues...” Mr. Sheffield cuts in, quietly, and then clears his throat to bolster himself once Margot’s turned her eyes his way again. “We’d been planning for Sophia to play Isolt, before Alana’s audition. It’s... rather embarrassing, really, we’d all but told her as much already when we decided to go another way. She was devastated, as can be expected, but after a while seemed a rather good sport about the smaller role we gave her, as well as her understudy work. As far as I can tell, there was no bad blood between the two over it, but you never know... She’s a quiet girl.”

Possible jealousy, then, overblown revenge... she doesn’t like it, as far as answers go, but they’ll at least need to talk to the understudy and get her take on things.

     “Do you know where we could find either of them, right now?”

     “Their dressing rooms, likely -- our stage manager asked everyone to stay there until we can get all of this sorted out. Sophia will be in the general cast dressing room and, well, Max has got his own, just down the hall. I can show you?”

[theaurorfileshq]

– Kidnapping at the Giant Caucus 

CASE LEVEL: Two

POINTS REQUIRED: Two Hundred

OVERVIEW:

Every four years, the Caucus of Appalachian Giants meets in Asheville, North Carolina in order to vote on their new leadership, as well as to assess and approve new proposed bylaws to their Code of Conduct. This year, the Caucus was to be an unusually contentious one, for two major reasons. The first is that the Leader of the Appalachian Giants Coalition, a giantess named Zemfira, was to run opposed for the first time since her first election twelve years ago. The second was the proposal of a controversial bylaw which would shift the Coalition from a democracy to a demarchy, in order to promote diversity of opinion and opportunity within the coalition.

Just hours before the first debate between the two candidates, Leader Zemfira reported that her six year old daughter, Herkela, went missing, and that about an hour later she received a ransom note insisting that she elect to withdraw from the election in exchange for the safe return of her child. Zemfira contacted MACUSA for further mediation and to find her missing child while putting the rest of the Caucus on indefinite hold until the issue is resolved. While some of the giants have seen this as motherly distress, others have seen it as a well-calculated plot to allow her more time to prepare for the debates.

PERSONS OF INTEREST:

Zemfira: the current Leader of the Appalachian Giants Coalition, Zemfira is the mother of the missing giant child. She claimed, in her initial reports to the aurors, that she believed the kidnapping to be a ploy to distract her from the contentious campaign and the debate that was to take place later that day, but worries that her daughter might come to harm if not found quickly.

Ragnar the Larger: the first giant in twelve years to campaign against Zemfira for the position of leader. According to reports, he served as her assistant for her first two terms, but the two had a falling out while mediating some territory disputes about four years ago, causing him to step down from that position. This is, allegedly, the first time the two have seen each other in public since their falling out.

Tormod and Håvard: two well-known giant activists who, for the past several years, have been trying to build support for a revision to the Coalition’s means of election – the two have finally gained enough support to propose a bylaw which would shift the Coalition’s leadership from a democracy rather than a demarchy, in which a random citizen is selected for leadership every four years.

Heloise McCartney: the current Junior Undersecretary for the Body for Protection of Magical Species, Heloise was present at the Caucus as MACUSA’s representative to oversee the revision of the Giant’s Code of Conduct. Heloise reported that her primary concern this year was that a proposal to expand Giant territory in West Virginia into an area currently occupied by a small no-maj town would go overlooked due to the high-profile bylaw revising the election system.

CHIEF’S NOTES:

The last thing we need right now is an all out war between our various giant sub-populations. With that in mind, it’s paramount we track down this missing kid, and try to help restabilize the caucus. We’ve run into little issue with Zemfira as leader, so any thing you can do to keep her in power would be the best for our community. 

Good luck out there, 

-Allen Snow

CASE STATUS: TAKEN

| RPG HOME | PLOT | WANTED CONNECTIONS | OPEN CASES |

[margotbrendanawicz]

daniellobo‌:

Daniel visibly stiffens as the woman’s hands take hold of him. He’d never particularly been a fan of unwanted physical contact, a distaste which only worsened after his near death experience several years ago. Not wanting to push the woman any further into hysterics though, he chokes down the urge to pull away until finally her husband steps up next to her, and she removes her hands from Daniel and back to the arm’s of her husband. 

“Oh no, everyone absolutely adored her,” the woman sniffles, and begins to dab under each eye carefully with a handkerchief so as not to ruin her mascara, “she would have fans lined up at the backstage door every night just to see her. I can’t imagine anyone would want to do her harm. She was such a lovely girl.” 

“And what about the actors, and everyone else that worked on the show?” Daniel asked, this time in the direction of her husband, hoping they may get more helpful information out of him. 

“As far as we know, everyone got along well with her,” he nods, “there were the incidents with her costume, but we were never able to figure out who it was. But that’s not exactly unknown in this business, rivalries are common, but this… I don’t know why anyone would do something like this.” 

She let herself smirk finally as she turned her face downwards towards her notepad -- a show, really, she wasn’t taking notes but liked to look like she gave a damn, and it gave her the perfect outlet to express her amusement at the woman’s conduct. Margot was certain she was about to burst into tears before her husband took over answering Lobo’s questions.

     “Incidents with her costume?” she repeats, when he sounds like he’s finished. She doesn’t believe that Alana had no enemies, but it’s a toss up between whether the director is protecting someone intentionally, or is just oblivious. “I’m gonna need you to elaborate on that, a little bit, if you could, Mr. Sheffield.”

He shrugs, as he answers, and Margot sees him put a hand on his wife’s back to comfort her as she continues to sniffle and dab at her eyes.

     “Just, you know... she had a few quick changes, in the show. Between scenes, where she would have to rush to get into her next costume. Only a handful of times she rushed off stage to find that her next costume was torn to shreds, beyond wearability. We had to replace them a few times, but we never figured out how they’d ripped -- if someone had done it deliberately, or why...”

[margotbrendanawicz]

camdensavage‌:

He listened with a frown, cigarette hanging between his lips burning away slowly. It wasn’t a surprise to hear that that’s what it was like with the unholy creatures. Even the very reason this case was sitting on his desk in the first place sounded like trouble. Why else would they have called MACUSA to send in aurors for help, other than to stir up trouble. Something wasn’t right about the whole thing, and he was glad to hear that she had the experience to prove his assumption right.

Still, the idea of having to kill, even a soulless creature, wasn’t something that he wanted to consider too deeply. Whatever it was that they really needed them down there for, he planned on solving it with firm words, and a bit of holy water, if necessary, nothing more. He trusted in God’s strength to protect him and his brother from harm, but that wouldn’t change what the devil’s beasts did in return.

“Maybe I should borrow a stake, then,” he said, eyebrows raised. “Although, if it did come to that, I’m certain Becker would have the better aim. I doubt he’ll let it get that far, though. In and out, with enough time to spare a visit back home, no dirtying of the hands. God will be watching over us in the den of the devil, after all.

She wasn’t sure which was going to be worse for the Savage brothers -- Camden’s self assured idea that some God was gonna protect him from whatever the worse the vampires could do was, or what she was sure was Becker’s twisted position about morality and immorality when it came to part-humans.... she was exhausted just imagining the two of them trying to plan for something like this. A case like this needed decisive action, and if she’d been a better person she’d have insisted on going with them, just to make sure they didn’t both get themselves killed.

Luckily for her, she wasn’t a better person, and she had no plans to pick up more work than Snow was already piling onto her just to make sure some quaint southern gentlemen didn’t get half the blood drained from their bodies by being idiots. At least Camden sounded prepared to take advice. 

     “You’d better hope so.”

[margotbrendanawicz]

camdensavage‌:

He was halfway to bringing his cigarette to his lips as she spoke, but he stopped, when what she was saying actually registered. “Stakings,” he repeated, eyebrows raised. In all honesty, he hadn’t actively considered the possibility that things might turn south on this case, seeing it more as a nuisance than a real danger. The annoyance at being given a case like this had been blinding to any real issues that the case might bring up until now. But these were vampires, soulless, unpredictable, selfish, there was no knowing what they might do even if things were going seemingly well. 

The thought of killing, even if what he might have to kill was a being of evil, was odd, to him. He had been confronted with many sins in his time as an auror, but those were the sins of others, being forced to commit something so atrocious was different. He had no love for creatures like vampires, but there was a difference between disgust and murder. And yet, he knew that if doing so meant the difference between keeping Becker safe, and putting him in harms way, he would do it in a heartbeat.

“We’re going in to solve a problem before it becomes a problem, you think it’d come to that?” Camden asked. Before she answered, though, he went on. “You ever had to stake a vampire before?”

     “Oh sure, the best laid plans of mice and men. If you ask me, there’s no before a problem with vampires. They’re always looking for trouble. I had a case with some running foul of the law back when I was a cadet, and let me tell you, it’s all problems.”

She’d been assisting on a case, some murders somewhere near Montauk, and when her lead auror, a Lieutenant, had realized it was vampires who were responsible for the bodies that were piling up he’d almost pulled her off the case and had someone more experienced step in. Luckily, it seemed to only be one vampire, but unluckily, she ambushed the two of them before they had a chance to call in for backup.

Ever since, she’d been wary of vampires, even more wary that they were allowed to live in big groups and govern themselves. To her, it just seemed to spell obvious disaster. But who knew, maybe a talking to from Father Savage would be enough to set ‘em straight. 

     “Not personally, but trust me, it ain’t a pretty sight.”

[margotbrendanawicz]

daniellobo‌:

“Sounds like a plan,” he nods. With the place on lockdown there was no rush to get to any of the more suspicious suspects first. Sheffield should have the most information out of the three when it came to the inter-workings of the place, he very much doubted the actors knew the stage hands all that closely. That is of course unless they had a particular reason to, such as for the replacement of a prop. 

“Well, while you two do that, I’m going to take Alana back to headquarters to do a more closer examination. If I find anything out I’ll shoot you a message on your telekits.” Ortega says, then chuckles lightly as she looks between the two aurors, “Try not to make too many people cry, yeah?”  With a wink, and flick of her wand, both Ortega and Alana vanish from the stage, the whole scene looking a bit like the morbid final act of some no-maj “magic” show.

When they make it out into the lobby, a wizard, who Daniel can only assume to be Truman Sheffield is leaning against the counter of one of the several ticket windows that align the wall. Standing beside him is a glamorously dressed woman, who appears to be wearing his suit jacket, despite the fact it was just a tad too short on her much lankier frame. “Mrs. Sheffield?” Daniel mutters, as he looks over to Margot. Their case file said she was home sick during the play, which begged the question- how on Earth had she managed to get in here, despite the lockdown Ortega had mentioned? 

As they near the couple who appear deep in conversation, Daniel clears his throat before holding up his badge. “Mr. and Mrs. Sheffield? We’re the aurors Dr. Ortega called in, do you mind if we ask you some questions?” 

     “Oh, thank god,” the woman says, her voice tinged with hysteria. There are tears in her eyes, Margot notices, big fat ones, threatening to spill over her heavily mascaraed eyelashes, and in her despair, she reaches forward, stumbling on several inch high heels -- a surprisingly outfit choice, for someone who had allegedly been too under the weather to make it to the show for the night, and for someone who had managed to get here so quickly -- until her hands find Lobo’s arm, seeming to clutch onto him desperately.

Margot stifled a chuckle, at the image, her mind conjuring the disgruntled look she was sure had crossed Lobo’s face, even as she was behind him and couldn’t see it. 

     “Finally. We were afraid you’d never arrive. It’s awful, just terrible, I can’t bear it, can you? On stage and everything? She just... she had so much promise, you see, I can hardly believe she’s done. It feels like some massive mistake in the universe, and to think that it happened during our production...”

She steps forward, finally, to rescue Lobo from the woman, moves up between the woman and her husband to go ahead and cut to the chase before anyone’s melodramatics earned them an goddamn acting award. Actors, Merlin, it really couldn’t get much worse than this. She’d lock them all away just to get them to stop talking, if she had the choice. 

     “Could you tell us a little about Alana? If she had any enemies, or rivals? If her behavior had been erratic or unusual lately?”

[annaharvey-deactivated20191104]

location: midtown apartment complex.

time: seven thirty-three pm.

( @margotbrendanawicz )

the elevator rattled as it ascended, and hazel shifted from one foot to the other, grip tight on the handle of her suitcase. she looked a mess, hair frizzy from the weather, and her hands shook with adrenaline despite her deep breaths. hazel brendanawicz was not usually the kind of woman who bought a plane ticket on a whim — yet here she was, in new york, with only a single suitcase and a bag of takeout to her name. her stomach grumbled at the smell of the food, but she could only think about reaching for it before the doors of the elevator slid open. an older man waited on the other side, and he didn’t return hazel’s polite smile as she passed him out onto the corridor. lovely.

nothing seemed to have changed, at least on the outside of her mother’s apartment. it had been over a decade since she’d been here, at her childhood home, but memory had served her well. the chip on the wall near the front door was still there, a reminder of game of tag ( gone wrong ) from twenty-five years ago, and the skirting was just as dusty today as it was back then. 

she’s nervous and unsure when she knocks on the door. she and her mother had never been great at communicating ( hazel considered it a family trait ), but arriving at her house with no warning - after a decade of not seeing each other - was strange, even for them. what if margot didn’t want to see her ? or worse, what if she had someone sleeping over ? merlin’s beard, hazel had not thought this through.

still, it wasn’t as if she could turn back. she had nowhere else to go … and in truth, there wasn’t anywhere else she’d rather be. there weren’t many times she’d felt like she really, truly needed her mum, but this was one of them. forget hugs or comforting words: she needed cigarette smoke and huge glasses. the small uptick of lips on a face prone to scowls. 

the door opened, and hazel straightened. despite her uncertainty, she found herself smiling. “ hi mum. ” she held up the bag of takeout, a little breathless. “ you fancy dinner ? ”

[margotbrendanawicz]

She was sitting in her favorite arm chair -- the old worn down one in the corner, just by the radio set -- when the knock came, only just audible over the drone of the news report playing on AWBN. A glass of whiskey, her eighth or ninth cigarette, it was a normal night except for the fact that on normal nights no one ever knocked on her door except for maybe Rafael. But she could always smell the rich scent of butter and sugar through the wall when Rafael’s been baking, so she knew it wasn’t him.

Still, when she pushed herself up out of her chair and made her way to the door, the last person she expected to see was the witch standing there on the other side of it. Ten years since her daughter had moved across the ocean to escape her, and she’d long ago accepted that she was likely only going to see her again on her deathbed.

     “You sound British,” she said, her voice retaining its usual snap, abrasive and blunt, as she looked her daughter up and down, taking in the changes in addition to just the fact that she was there, holding takeout, like no time had passed at all. “I don’t care how long you lived there, you’re not British. What ever happened to ‘mom,’ huh?”

She took the bag of takeout from Hazel’s outstretched hand, lips pursed, and then moved inside, leaving the door open behind her for her daughter to follow her inside. Over to the table, to put the food down, and then back to her armchair by the radio, to pick her half-smoked cigarette up out of the ash tray and take another drag.

     “I hope you weren’t expecting a welcome home party. Then again, you didn’t owl, so it’d be your own damn fault if you were.”

[margotbrendanawicz]

camdensavage‌:

He rolled his eyes grandly as she picked up the file and looked over the first page of it. It was perverse, to him, just how much all the others seemed to get off on dealing with horrific crimes, soulless creatures, anything that was less than good and holy. A lot of the time, it made him wonder if a lot of the aurors he spent his time around weren’t nearly as unholy as the criminals they dealt with on a day to day basis. He sure as hell had seen plenty of sins around the office, it felt like in a way taking on worse and worse cases was a way to satisfy some morbid craving for what they couldn’t do. Go in, indulge in a little violence themselves, solve the thing and file it away. Wash their hands of it as necessary.

The fascination with the unholy was not a surprising thing, after all, there was a reason the devil made his ways so appealing, but that didn’t mean he was ever going to let himself start feeling that way about cases like this.

“Have I ever struck you as havin’ any real desire to call myself an auror? I’ll stick with my disgust and my crucifix, thank you, though,” Camden said, with a humorless laugh, harsh and less than inviting of a sound. “We’re playin’ peacekeepers, don’t know if it’s his idea of an exciting case. Probably a good thing I’ll drag him along, though, he might actually be willing to listen to their complainin’. I say let the damned damn themselves.”

She’d never understood, really, why Camden even bothered to be here. He spent half his time complaining about being an auror and the other half lusting after the priesthood he’d abandoned and, frankly, Margot couldn’t imagine choosing to be an auror if you didn’t want to be a damned auror. Half the time, she was pretty certain she’d quit except that there wasn’t anything else in the world she could see herself doing. It wasn’t the kind of job you half assed -- well, okay, maybe one or two members of the squad did. But she couldn’t imagine risking life and limb to do this job if you didn’t really want to. 

Camden did it because.... hell, she didn’t know, but it sure as hell seemed like he was a reluctant school boy and his brother had made him try out for the school play and now he was stuck. Except, so far as she understood it, he’d voluntarily given up the cloth to come play superhero with Becker and was just too stubborn to admit that it’d been nothing more than an idealistic mistake. 

     “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Still, I’d put money down on at least one or two good stakings before your paperwork’s wrapped up.”  

[margotbrendanawicz]

daniellobo‌:

“No, not that anyone has reported to me anyway. Alana was the only one I tried to give any medical assistance to. If someone else was effected, no one made any attempts to alert me.” 

It would have been hard to hide a sick or dying stagehand backstage, he thinks, he didn’t have much experience with the theater, but he can only imagine the amount of people running around back stage. No, there would have been too many eyes for something like that to go by unnoticed. Which meant whoever handed her the item must have took some kind of protective measures as they did it. 

“Who all was on stage when she collapsed?” 

“Just her costar, Max Whitewood, he played James Steward”, she replies, and then, seemingly picking up on where Daniel was going she adds, “He appeared pretty shaken up from what I could see- there have been rumors of the two of them taking their onstage romance offstage, so I think they were pretty close.” 

Whitewood was definitely someone they should look into, if just to get an idea of what all was going on in Alana’s life leading up to tonight. Kneeling down towards Alana, Daniel does a quick check around her body, checking to see if anything on her could have held the curse. From his experience cursed items tended to be small, not anything as large as a dress, where multiple people could have been affected. And given the fact neither Max or Ortega seemed to have been affected it must have been something that neither of them came in contact with. 

“Have you seen anyone else around the body?”, he asks as he begins checking her hands, hoping to find something clutched within them, only to come up empty. If someone else was on stage, then whoever gave Alana the item would have wanted to make sure it was gone by the time he and Margot arrived. 

“Um, yes. Let’s see… Truman Sheffield rushed on stage with me, he’s one half of the director team, he’s out in the lobby if you want to see him. And then Sophia Fowler, Alana’s understudy, ran on stage shortly after, she screamed when she saw her, and started sobbing so hard one of the stagehands had to take her backstage, I don’t know where she’s gone off to now, but the whole building is under lockdown, so she’s in here somewhere.” 

With no clear evidence on Alana’s body, it was looking more and more like they were going to have to start hunting down witnesses, and shake each one just to see what falls out. Now the only question was, who should they start with first. 

“Well, what do you think?” he asks, looking back toward Margot. “Anyone of ‘em grab your fancy?” 

While the prospect of interviewing at least two actors and one director wasn’t the most promising way to spend an evening -- she had honestly been hoping for some easily-bullied stagehand with a practical mind and less of a dramatic flair, but you couldn’t win all your battles -- she knows Lobo’s instinct is right: if the cursed item, whatever it is, isn’t on the body, someone had to take it off, and if no one else was cursed, whoever it was had to have known that it was cursed, had to have been in on the plot if not entirely responsible for it. If only three people other than Ortega had been close enough to the body to discreetly remove an item, then they had three possible leads.

It was just a matter of where to start: the shaken-up paramour who had been onstage at the time; the hysterical understudy who, frankly, sounded a little dramatic even for an actor; or the director. All of them would have had an opportunity to take something off the body, and any of them would have had time in between to stow it away somewhere safe and out of sight during the minutes it took them to arrive on the scene.

     “The understudy sounds suspicious to me,” she says, letting her first instinct guide her. “We should get more on her, see if the screaming and sobbing sounds like it was for show. At least one hypothetical motive is pretty obvious there.”

It would be a mistake to go into questioning Fowler blind, though. They needed a fuller picture of Alana’s social relationships to know what to ask: who liked her? who didn’t? who had she pissed off recently? It’d be easier to start broad and work their way into specifics, and only one person was guaranteed to have a wide view of what was going on amidst the life of the cast as a whole.

     “Let’s start with Sheffield, see if he’s got anything to say about Fowler. He can give us a list of who was supposed to be backstage, too, stagehands or anyone who might have been likely to hand her a prop.

[margotbrendanawicz]

camdensavage‌:

Margot was good for a lot of things, in his humble opinion, but the chief to him was her temperament; an unfiltered honesty that was rare to find, with just enough deadpan to make it entertaining. He let out a scoff that came out with a puff of smoke at her advice, and another at her questions.

“The fishmonger, now there’s a new one. I appreciate the creativity. But, no, I’ve got a rosary in my drawer if you’re keen on a few Hail Marys, and I’ve committed no sins recently that need confessing. Not just yet,” he hummed, raising an eyebrow. In all honesty, he hadn’t been to confession in much longer than he cared to admit, but for no lack of sins. Perhaps part of it was a fear of saying those things out loud, of admitting just how far he was from what he had been. 

More than that, though, the thought of giving someone else that power over him, of telling someone just as mortal as him, someone who believed they had the power above him to forgive, was sickening. He already had his penance, his salvation, straight from the Lord, Himself.

“The devil’s servants. Snow has decided it’s for the best to send in the holy guns to solve already damned squabbles.”

Curiousity piqued, she picked up the file he’d been grumbling over all afternoon, glanced at the first page of it just to see what was pissing him off so bad. She wasn’t surprised, looking at it, that he was irritable, but she was surprised to see vampires -- in all the years she’d been here, she hadn’t had to deal with any of the vampire covens. They mostly kept to themselves, not wanting to get wix, or humans of any kind, involved in their personal unholy brand of politics. But of course Father Savage wouldn’t want to deal with all of that. 

     “Oh, come on, Savage. You call yourself an auror and you can’t even get it up about a coven of vampires down south? Half the squad would get on their knees for Snow to give ‘em this case. You wanna borrow my stake?”

She dropped the file back on his desk, unceremoniously, and took another drag of her cigarette, tapping the ash out into his ashtray before folding her arms over her chest.

     “Anyway, at least your brother will have a good time. He needs to, far as I’m concerned; it’s gotten so boring listening to him drone on about moral relativism or whatever. Vampires are easy. No morality where they’re concerned.”

[margotbrendanawicz]

jerusalemblanchard‌:

They waited for a second, staring intently at the kettle, watching it the steam start to rise from the spout. In a way, it sounded like she actually approved of them speaking up and saying something, even if a lot of the time it felt like she took delight in having someone afraid of her, just for the sake of being able to toss around the judgement. Even if it wasn’t real approval, and they didn’t necessarily even want her approval in the first place, it did make them think that maybe they were getting a little better, that maybe everything that was happening would change them for the better.

“Well, uh, a lot has happened recently, I guess…” they muttered, with a little shrug, as they finally picked the kettle up and poured the hot water into their mug. 

That wasn’t a lie, anyway, even if maybe not in the sense that someone would guess. The promotions, the cases, the horrifying events at the gala, they would all be good reason for an attitude to change. But that wasn’t it, for them; the confidence was coming from a specific someone, and that thought made them smile to themself as they stirred their tea.

For a legilimens, their face was surprisingly easy to read: clearly, they’d neither ever learned occlumency or bothered trying to hide their own emotions, and so the practically-teenaged hormones were glaringly obvious, even with the I’m-so-shy mutter-and-shrug act they put on as they went about making their tea.

She practically spit her coffee out, too, as she watched them, looking for a sign that they might be fucking with her. And yet, it was clear as day: they weren’t fucking with her, but they were, apparently, fucking someone. Great. That was exactly the mental image she needed to deal with today, on top of the headache. 

     “Merlin, I didn’t need to know that you got laid,” she said, once she’d stopped coughing. She poured the rest of the coffee down the sink, put off of it now, and rinsed the mug out halfheartedly -- she was only going to refill it with coffee later in the afternoon, so it wasn’t worth washing it or putting it away. “But, you know what? Good for you, Blanchard. Enjoy your tea.”

[margotbrendanawicz]

daniellobo‌:

“Good, the less actors I have to talk to the better,” Daniel chuckles as he opens the door for her. The irony isn’t lost on him that out of all the aurors who could have answered the call that evening, it was two of the least likely to ever find themselves in a place like this on a regular Saturday night- sans the murder. He can already hear Burke moping and groaning about how wasted the case had been on the two of them. Smiling to himself at the thought, he follows behind Margot as they make their way to the stage, where Alana still lay, and Ortega kneeling right beside her, dressed in a flowing black floor length gown, one clearly not chosen with the thought her night would end in a murder. 

“Well, would you look at that,” Antonia smiles as her eyes land on the two aurors, “I ask Snow to send me whoever he can get, and I get two sergeants. I must be doing something right.” She stands up from her spot beside Alana, clutching the hem of her dress in one hand so as not to disturb any evidence surrounding the body as she steps towards the two of them. 

“You look nice,” Daniel comments, nodding his head in the direction of the form fitting gown. “You have yourself a hot date tonight or something?” 

“‘Hot’ being the key word, dear, but unfortunately duty calls,” she sighs. “That’s the life of a medical examiner for you though. Death never takes a holiday, as they say. Now, would you like me to tell you about our poor Alana? Oh, and you might want to put on your anti-curse gloves in your telekit, I’m fairly certain that a cursed object may be our culprit here.” 

Following her recommendation, Daniel takes out his telekit, opening it up to the small storage compartment where he stored some of his more miscellaneous tools of the trade. “You have any idea what kind of object could have done it?” 

If every case she worked for this damned department involved Lobo and Ortega, there wouldn’t be any crime left on the entire East Coast -- they were efficient, the both of them, no messing around and making things any more complicated than they needed to be. They were both the kind of colleagues she didn’t mind having, and if everything else tonight cooperates the way they were, she’ll be back in bed before midnight with the radio on and a drink in her hand, easy as that.

     “Can’t be certain, but my bet would be on a prop of some kind,” Ortega answers. “She was in the same costume for few scenes, so I doubt it was something she was wearing -- maybe something handed to her backstage, before she went on?”

She pulls her gloves out as well, slipping them on before tucking her telekit away in the inside pocket of her jacket and crouching down to get a better look at the body, to see if there was anything on her that looked like the usual suspects for cursed objects: necklaces, brooches, rings...

     “Was anyone else affected by it? Any of the other actors feeling ill or looking pale? Any stagehands missing?”

She says it half to Ortega and half to Lobo, less a genuine question and more of a note for when they started questioning around -- if it was a prop or something like it, someone else might’ve handled it, which would give them a clear trail of who did and didn’t come in contact with the thing without knowing it was dangerous. If a stagehand handed her the prop, they were either sick or half dead right now, or they’d been wearing protective gloves, too, and knew it was cursed before they handed it off.

[margotbrendanawicz]

camdensavage‌:

There were very few people in the office that Camden felt any sort of fondness for besides his brother; from the moment he had arrived, it had been clear that these were not his people. Still, there were a few who had managed to find that balance between utter annoyance and sometimes amusement, and Margot was one of them. He had a strong feeling it was because of her own attitude towards most of the other, younger aurors; taking no amount of nonsense, not caring so much what anyone might think. It was refreshing, if not at times a little more vulgar listening to her than he would’ve preferred.

“Language,” he tsked lightly, raising an eyebrow, as he watched her sit down across from him. A good distraction from the hopeless case that sat in front of him, that was certain.

A scoff escaped his lips as she took the cigarette from his hand. “I do, luckily. And you’re welcome,” Camden said, pointedly, before pulling the silver case from his pocket, and taking another cigarette out for himself. “Did you come over to lecture me about the grumblin’, or just to steal my cigarette?”

Language her ass, quite frankly: the priest cursed twice as much as she did when he was in one of his moods, and he hardly acted like a holy man should, but then again, that was largely part of his appeal. If he’d been a decent priest she probably would have hated him more than half the office. As it was, there was an ironic contradiction to him, a sort of cognitive dissonance that made him at least halfway interesting.

     “See, the trick to being a decent auror,” she replied easily, picking up the cigarette again and gesturing at him with it, a vague stabbing motion in his direction, “is multitasking. What kind of short-sighted cadet would I be if I’d made my way all the way over here and only thought to do one or the other?”

She took another drag, sitting back in the chair as if waiting for him to go on, but kept speaking again before he had a chance to.

     “What’s all the moaning and groaning about, anyway? Forgot your rosary at home? Missed confession? Didn’t make it to the fishmonger before fasting on a Friday?”

[margotbrendanawicz]

jerusalemblanchard‌:

They were tempted, as they were often, to reach forward, and prod at the surface of her thoughts, but that was an urge they ignored, knowing it would only end badly. After all, it was easy to guess what she was thinking about them, and it was also easy to guess what her feelings towards them rooting around in her mind would be. Neither of them good things in the slightest. So instead, Salem finally came forward and took the kettle, filling it up quickly squeezing in next to her, before stepping away and pulling out their wand, tapping it to heat up.

Her words felt a little like a threat, not that they thought that she was going to be the one to bring out whatever it was they wouldn’t be able to mouse around. But she was probably right. And in a way, they wanted that to happen, wanted something to force them out of the worry, the nervousness. They wanted to tell her that they didn’t want to be like this all the time, but they had seen too much cruelty in the world not to worry more was always on the horizon.

Instead, though, they just pulled out a clean mug, putting a tea bag in, and shrugged a little. “I, uh, well, maybe that day’ll come sooner than expected,” they said, glancing at her.

She almost expected them to back down on the whole tea thing, but to her surprise they actually made their way over to the sink, filled the kettle, committed to the thing they’d came in here to do before her presence had scared them into silence temporarily. An improvement, probably, from the last time they’d run into each other. 

     “Oh? They speak?” she said, halfway feigning surprise. She’d expected a meek little yes or a whisper in response, but somehow they managed to only stutter out one um in the middle of an entire complete sentence, a feat she wasn’t quite sure she’d witnessed since their original transfer to the squad from wherever they’d been before. “When did you grow a diaphragm? I can actually hear you this time.”

Whatever Blanchard was going through right, now, it seemed to be doing them some good, however slowly. Good, she thought; maybe it’d make them bearable to have around the office finally. 

[daniellobo]

location: wizard broadway

time: 11pm

status: closed to @margotbrendanawicz​

On cases like these, ones that required an immediate response, it always tended to be the first aurors to pick up their telekits were assigned to respond, with no regards to rank or current case load. With all of this Children of Morgana mess, on top of what happened at the Gala, picking up another case was the last thing he necessarily wanted to do at the moment- but duty called that night. He was just hoping whoever he got paired up with for his lead, would be competent enough to help him solve this thing in a timely matter, preferably in the next forty-eight hours.

Before going in to greet Ortega, and get caught up on the night’s events, he waits outside the back of the theater, away from the flashing bulbs of the newspaper photographers out front, and gawking onlookers. He’s hoping whoever he’s paired with has the same idea, and it’s only moments later when he gets his answer, as he hears the familiar pop up of someone apparating nearby.

When he looks up, he can’t stop the small grin that spreads across his lips at the sight of Margot Brendanawicz. “Well this feels like old times,” he chuckles as she approaches. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d worked as lead over him, but it had been at least six years and three ranks ago for him. “Shit, I was hoping to get this thing solved in the next forty-eight, but I bet with the two of use we could get it solved in the next three. You think we can break our last record?”

[margotbrendanawicz]

Wizard Broadway was not a place that Margot spent a lot of time. Anyone who’d ever met her -- hell, anyone who’d ever seen her -- could have told you that. But she’d been the first person to pick up her telekit, and so here she was: mentally preparing herself for the boresome job of interviewing theatre professionals about some fuckin’ starry-eyed actress kicking the bucket on stage in front of hundreds of people.

Not exactly her idea of a good night, but that’s what she got for keeping her only cigarettes in the telekit, and for happening to want one at the exact moment Snow had put out a call for someone to rush over to the theatre to meet up with Ortega. At least, she thought, spotting Lobo as soon as she’d apparated in, she’d be dealing with tolerable colleagues this time around. Lobo and Ortega were the kind to make things efficient and easy, hopefully enough to make up for what was surely going to be a perfect storm of impossible witnesses. 

     “Three? You getting soft in your old age, Lobo? I’ve already questioned half the witnesses,” she replied, deadpan, as she brushed past him towards the stage door, but there was an edge missing from her voice that only came with a decent dose of respect, the likes of which Lobo was one of the few people around the damn office to have actually earned in the many years she’d been there. 

[camdensavage]

wednesday, late afternoon, eastern squad offices       ( open. )

He wasn’t very fond of spending more time than necessary in the offices, the lighting oppressive, the mood of the company even more so, constant reminders of all the sin and evil in the world in not just the cases being discussed, but the people themselves. When he was young, when Becker had made him play aurors as children, he had always imagined noble heroes, white knights with strict moral codes upholding the law, but that wasn’t the reality. Not that it was a surprise, considering what he’d seen of the world, what this world had done to Becker. So he held no amount of love for any of it, really, and it wasn’t a fact that he made an effort to hide; in his mind, it was all a necessary evil of doing what he felt was right. If he had to live among sin, so be it. 

But he had a case, so here he was, sitting at his desk, cigarette in bandaged palm, mulling over if there was any possible way to pass it along on someone else. He had complained about visiting home, but this wasn’t what he had in mind. Either way, Camden could feel the eyes on the back of his head, and even trivial conversation felt like a better option than staring at the file.

“You can say hello, if you want. I won’t bite.”

[margotbrendanawicz]

     “Why on earth would I ever want to say hello to you, Savage. I’m not your fuckin’ parishioner,” she said, pulling a chair out unceremoniously from someone else’s nearby desk, shoving it across the floor with her foot to the other side of Camden’s desk. “But you’ve been sittin’ over here grumbling to yourself like a kid in time out for half an hour. I can hear you twenty feet away.”

There was nothing Margot admired more in a colleague than not giving a shit. Not the kind of not giving a shit that made for shoddy aurors, but the kind that made for unselfconscious people, the kind who didn’t beat around the bush, who didn’t hem and haw over getting people to like them. She’d had enough of that ass-kissing stuff when she was younger that now it was the last thing she wanted to deal with. The Savage brothers were, of course, a welcome relief from it -- though she preferred Camden’s general unlikeability to Becker’s knight-in-shining-armor schtick. 

     “You got another one of these?” she asked, plucking the cigarette out of his bandaged hand and taking a drag herself before dropping it into the ashtray on his desk.