#aurorx

[theaurorfileshq]

E D E N   B L U E  /  A U R O R   O F F I C E R

AGE:  Thirty-Seven

BADGE NUMBER: S91X22

BLOODSTATUS: No-Maj Born

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Agender, They/Them

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: Hamsa tattoo on forearm, several other tattoos on chest and back, Russian accent, pretty eyes, always carries tea leaves somewhere on their person. 

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Sight, Empathy, Nonverbal Magic

(-): Disregard for the System, Fear of the Future, Combative Magic

BACKGROUND:

Volkan Şimşek doesn’t realize that the dreams they have aren’t dreams for a long time. Their parents have more to worry about than their middle child’s vivid imagination, after all, so they grow up assuming everyone has them, but no one talks about them. That’s just how it is, keep quiet unless it’s something serious. There are too many mouths to feed in the Şimşek house, seven children, not enough work to get by easily, they don’t have time for the trivial. Their parents talk about the glory they thought they would find when they left Turkey, swept up in the promise of a utopia, a notion that was quickly assuaged when they arrived in the Soviet Union, and found themselves stuck in a worse position. Everyone talks about change as the years pass, about things looking up, the streets becoming less dangerous, but he has dreams about his family, he sees what their future is like. Change like that for doesn’t happen when you’re poor.

When the strange woman comes to tell their parents that they have magic, and that there’s a school for them where they can hone their skill, their parents are shocked, never having seen any signs of it before. Volkan’s surprised, too, still not making the connection. The dreams are dreams, vivid and realistic, but nothing more than that.

When a second stranger shows up a day later, offering the same, but with the promise of power, mentioning they’ve seen them in visions, what they can be if they come with them instead, they all start to take it seriously. Suddenly they’re afraid of what the bad dreams mean. Their parents, though, see it as an opportunity for one of their children to have more. Any chance to get away is a good one, even if none of them can fully wrap their heads around a world existing where a flick of a wand can change everything in an instant. Their parents want them to take the second offer, Durmstrang. It’s far, an escape from this reality. But they’ve seen who they become if they follow that path, even if they hadn’t realized it until hearing the name of the second school. The words had just been gibberish to them, shouted in their nightmare. Sturm und Drang.

(Later, they’ll call it the difference between a small vision, and a big one, never having had anyone to explain it to them. The small ones are literal, a glimpse of a concrete future, no room for questions, possible to dissect and reverse with the right critical eye. The big ones, they’re full of symbols, and fantastical images. They feel like dreams in a way the others don’t once they’re more aware, and sometimes they happen with such intensity they can’t even remember them, a blank spot in their memory. But they always leave them with a sense of dread.)  

They choose Koldovstoretz, the first offer, the school too close to home. They beg, and they cry, and they make their parents’ lives hell, until they relent and agree, so afraid of becoming who they are in that nightmare. Divination isn’t a subject taught there, brushed off as archaic, not enough actual seers alive to make it worth it, so it takes their own research to begin to understandthat they’re a seer. They know they should tell someone, but that’s part of the nightmare. People knowing. (They were surrounded by crowds in the dream, chanting about eyes, about being seen.) They may have managed to keep their education from the ones who want the nightmare for them, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find them. So they don’t tell anyone, and none of their classmates or professors seem to look at them for long enough to notice. Unlike in the vision.

They teach themself to hide it, to control it, their Sight. Most of their Sight involves dreams, but they’re good at the more traditional methods, too, tea leaves, crystal balls, reading the stars, as foolish as they feel doing it at first. Over the years, on their own, they learn how to trigger the visions, although they have little control over the subject matter, even if they try to focus it as best they can. A certain concoction of herbs made into a tea, with the right ones burning at the same time, and it’s like falling into a trance, or a sleep filled with someone else’s dreams.

When they have a vision of their father and both of their oldest sisters being dragged away by the government, for crimes that weren’t even crimes, it feels like a jolt of lightning. There’s something horrifying about working so hard to change your own future, and realizing you can’t change the futures of those you care about the most.

After that, there’s only one possibility, stop that from happening to anyone else they can. They think the best way to do that is to stay in the Soviet Union, but too much in their vision is uncertain, and they’re afraid if they stay close to their family, they’ll be putting them at risk, too. The pain that comes with looking in any of their eyes, knowing they had seen what happened to their father and sisters, but did nothing to stop it, helps make the choice easy.

They do what their parents wanted, the go far, far away, all the way to America, accepted to Wizard Harvard Law, without anyone knowing about their Sight. They change their name to something lighter, less powerful sounding, hoping that might keep anyone from finding them, and keep them from becoming their nightmare. And it’s easy to get comfortable in the skin of Eden Blue. Everything is so simple with their visions. They don’t mind leaning on the tea leaves, the crystal balls, the stars in private to make it through, and they learn a thing or two about the system they’re walking into being just as awful as the one they had come from and with less excuse for it, magic and freedom making it so much simpler to be good, in their mind.

From there, it’s New York, because there doesn’t seem to be a better place to do their work. Mentors throw around words like prodigy, and when they’re in their own firm, the prosecutors they face like to shake their heads about how they could get even the devil off. They only take cases they’ve seen, that’s the thing. A lot of them are cases they see other defense attorneys screwing up, costing the lives of those either innocent, or simply guilty of breaking laws that shouldn’t even exist. They steal clients, and make enemies of a lot of people, but the people who matter always thank them, and that’s what matters. They’re not going to let any more of their nightmares become a reality.

They’re suspiciously good at what they do, but it takes a long time before anyone realizes how they can have such a perfect record of getting their clients off. The only reason anyone does is because one of the big visions happens unexpectedly, in the middle of a deposition. It catches them off guard, hitting so suddenly they can’t stop it, the sort of earth-shatteringly fierce visions that they don’t remember afterward. The bigones are few and far between since they started making a living off of the small ones, so it’s a shock. And looking around the room, when they come back to themself, it’s clear that it’s a shock to everyone else, too.

Even now they’re not sure what that vision was, and it’s always in the back of their mind, that they might’ve been able to help whoever it was about. They do it differently in America, apparently, collect visions, prophecies, they call them, and keep them safe for only the ears of those involved, so that’s where it goes. There’s not necessarily a law against what they’ve been doing, but once it’s in the open, as it goes through the system, apparently everyone seems to agree it’s not something that should be allowed. They’re disbarred, and suddenly it feels a whole lot like maybe they’re hurdling towards the nightmare they had as a child, as they watch all of their cases thrown out the window, everyone they helped suddenly in danger of the futures they had been trying to prevent again.

(That’s the problem with the future, they learn, and it terrifies them to realize it; too much is up for debate, there are too many choices people can make, even the smallest thing changing an entire life, there’s no way to guarantee they can ever do enough to stop something from happening, when they can only control their own choices.)

But there are other ways to help, they have to believe that, so they put themself on the other side of the system, with no indication of what else to do. They’re accepted into the Salem Academy with a dozen warnings; they make it through, and they’re offered a place on the Central Squad. The condition of their employment is that they can’t use their Sight the way they had during their years as a lawyer. The thing about that is that they have no way to know. The smallvisions, no one catalogues them, no one puts them in a little crystal orb, and files them away in some governmental department few people are allowed to enter. It probably says something about how poorly the rest of the legal system, and the aurors actually communicate that they don’t give them any other restrictions. But then again, maybe the reward of having a seer on the team outweighs the risk, of what they could do, as just one person.

The problem is that they can’t choose their cases, they can’t play this system to make sure they’re only on things that they’ve seen, things where they can try help. It feels a whole lot like they can’t make enough of a difference here, but they try, they spend a hell of a lot of time trying to force visions on the cases they do end up on, but it rarely works, and when it doesn’t, they do it the old fashioned way, like every other auror. And it makes them realize something strange, when one rough night they try to force a vision of their own future, to see if they’re on the right track here. They haven’t seen their own future since that nightmare nearly thirty years ago.

They made a choice when they were a child, afraid of finding themself in the future they had seen, and every decision they’ve made since then has been trying to be the opposite of who they were in their dream. Somewhere along the way, they might’ve gotten something wrong. To choose to try avoid what they’ve seen, means being in the dark, but to give into prophecy means choosing the nightmare. Their mind’s been filled with everyone’s choices but their own for so long, that it makes them worry that they changed their future so wholly that they won’t have one at all. In the meantime, all they can try is to help the ones who do.

[theaurorfileshq]

B E N J A M I N   N O R W O O D /A U R O R   I N S P E C T O R

AGE: Fifty-Two

BADGE NUMBER: P12H47

BLOODSTATUS: Pureblood

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cis Man, He/Him

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: Dragon tattoo on right wrist that tends to travel throughout right arm. Three roses tattooed on left arm. Stiff right ring finger. Surgical scar on right knee. 

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Magizoology, Combat Magic, Thirty Years of Experience

(-): Stubborn, Experiences Vertigo After Apparating, Prefers Working Solo

BACKGROUND:

If you asked him today, Jim isn’t quite sure what exactly brought him to the aurors. To be honest, it was the last profession he ever expected falling into. Growing up with a father as an auror, meant he knew the less glamorous side of the profession. He knew the precious time it would ultimately steal away from him. Saving lives and “protecting the innocent” was fine and good, but he knew the cost would be becoming more a ghost than a person to those he loved. 

That is what happened to his father after all. Becker Savage was- and still is a well respected auror, a damn good one as many would say. But a father he wasn’t. Jim was raised mostly by his mother, who held a love so fierce for the man who was barely at home, that made Jim wonder if that truly what love was. If it was then he wasn’t sure if he wanted to ever be involved in such a thing, to spend his days missing someone who was never there, and making excuse after excuse for them when they weren’t.

Becker Savage was an enigma to Jim. A man he never fully understood but still felt some pull towards. Perhaps that was why he joined the aurors, not to be closer to his father, but simply to understand him better. If one thing about being an auror for thirty years has taught him though, is that he understands just as little of his father than he did when he was a zit-faced preteen. 

The grueling hours and dedication to the job he felt he understood more, sure, but everything else was still a mystery. There was the older man’s loyalty to his brother, a man that scared Jim as a kid, and only more so as he grew older. Camden Savage had a darkness in him that seemed to only grow deeper as the years wore on, and yet Becker had seemed more than willing to drown in that darkness alongside him. 

Jim doesn’t know the exact cause of his father’s affliction as it were, but he knows Camden is to blame. Camden was forced to face eternity alone, and Jim’s father decided that was his burden to take on rather than the responsibilities of fatherhood. 

The Savage brothers and their twisted fates became eventually a part of Jim’s past though. Life wore on, and he didn’t want to spend it entrapped in the rage his father had planted in him. And so he decided to become the man he wished his father always had been. He juggled life and work to the best of his abilities, finding love eventually in the form of a magizoologist by the name of Grace Norwood. 

Marriage was still a scary thought to Jim, having seen the cost it’d placed on his mother. She had spent her life chained to a man who loved his job and brother more than his own wife and son. Jim may not have been his father, but he wouldn’t allow Grace to become trapped in a one-sided marriage if it ever came to that. Instead the pair would move in together at her farm outside Booker, Texas, where she raised longhorn cattle and looked after the neighborhood pets both magical and non. 

It was a quiet life, and one that Jim found he’d always been looking for. Two or three times he considered leaving the aurors and devoting his time fully to the farm, maybe even expand it, but try as he might he still felt a sense of loyalty to the department. Children would not be part of the equation at first, but would come eventually in the birth of his daughter. He’d give her her mother’s name, not willing to let the burden of being a Savage weigh on her. 

His own name change would come ten years after he moved into the little farm house in the middle of the plains, nearly a year after his mother’s death. Savage had become a name that no longer felt like his own. The Savage brothers had continued to bounce from department to department to the point the connection was almost impossible to separate between himself and the two ageless men. Savage was a name that bore with it decades of distrust and separation, Norwood was a name that meant home for him. 

Shortly after this, Jim would earn his promotion from the Texas Auror Divsion, to that as a member of the Central Squad. It was a promotion he nearly turned down, but Grace had pushed him to take it. Serving an entire timezone was a behemoth of a task, but one he’d earned after decades of service. The Central Squad would come with it a whole new set of challenges but despite it all, Jim found himself enjoying the work. With a farm and a job like that as an auror, travelling wasn’t much of an option for him, but a job in the Squad allowed him to see parts of the country he hadn’t since he was a boy. 

Grace would get sick four years later, in 1994. The two of them had been chain smokers since adolescence and for Grace it had finally caught up with her. After suffering from back pain for the previous two years, she would discover her back wasn’t the root of the problem, but rather the disease growing and festering in her lungs. Jim would eventually take the majority of 1995 off, and Grace would pass that fall. 

It would have been so easy to leave the aurors for good, and he nearly did. But staying at home all day, staring at nothing but the four walls he and Grace had once shared was much scarier a thought than putting in another decade at the department. So he sold off half the cattle, leaving just enough to still warrant having the farm, but not so much he could no longer handle it on his own. 

Three years later, Jim is still at the central squad. His father and uncle’s newfound presence within it has been a complication- to say the very least, but he’s dealt with it in the same way he’s handled the Savage brothers for the last thirty years, by ignoring them. He knows he can only do it for so long, but for now it’s helped the days pass by easier. 

[theaurorfileshq]

H A D E S   F A L C O N E R - Q U I N N  /  A U R O R   C O R P O R A L

AGE: Thirty-Three

BADGE NUMBER: R91J56

BLOODSTATUS: Pureblood

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Trans Man, He/Him

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: Magical flower tattoos on arms, that change and bloom depending on mood.

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Natural Low Grade Legilimency, Potions Talent, Hardworking and Focused almost to a Fault.

(-): Often Blinded by own Emotions and Ideas, Bad at Protective/Shield Spells, Claustrophobic

BACKGROUND:

He always felt that somehow, he had been born wrong. Something in him was flawed beyond fixing, a jagged edge that meant he would never fit where they wanted him to. The youngest child of the Falconer-Quinn empire, a family that had been built for greatness. Old, well respected, powerful, cuttingly intelligent, masters of all trade. He wasn’t like the rest of them. Too slow, too emotional. Too many feelings that spilled themselves out in too many tears, an ever present sorrow and worry that his parents didn’t know how to sooth. He never knew the answers, he never knew how to make the magic come out easily, he never knew how to be the prodigy they wanted him to be.

Squib. A word thrown around when they thought he wasn’t listening, when the twins were tucked away on their own to play their little games. He hadn’t always known what it meant, but he knew what it sounded like: damnation, proof of his inherent flaws. Even at a young age, he can practically taste their unhappiness on the air. Their longing for a different child, someone stronger, someone braver, someone better. All he can do is latch on to his lifeline, his twin, his beloved and cherished sister. Athena is a bounty of love, of affection, reciprocity in the way he’s always longing for it. She doesn’t always put it into words, her silence is an ever present thing in the early years of their life, but somehow he understands exactly what she means. He might have been born wrong, but he was born with her, and they were meant to be together.

He feels loved, undeniably, the first day the magic comes. His mother’s smile. His father’s laughter. Far too old for comfort, ten years old the first time it decides to show up and burst out. It’s odd, to have been the lost cause and suddenly to gain acceptance, pride, some small fraction of adoration. It’s an addictive sensation, something he wants to hoard greedily and never let go. Their approval is a bright and vicious thing, all he yearns for is more of it. So the dance begins, the delicate game of figuring out what people want and becoming it. He has a sparkling smile, polite manners, a delightful attitude constructed out of cheer and optimism and hope. A devoted child, blue in the face until he can make the magic happen, held up only by the steady determination and belief that he’ll get there in the end.

The flighty, awkward feeling in his chest never really goes away. His dazzling smile never quite replaces the uncertainty he feels, the uncomfortable feeling he gets when he inhabits his own skin for too long. When he ties back his delicate curls in ribbons and bows, when he slips into another party dress. He feels buffeted by the storm inside himself, left stranded on a lifeboat quickly taking on water. He tries to bail himself out with his pretty smiles, with good posture and bright eyes. There is an awkwardness he can’t escape, an unhappiness that will never leave him. Coming out helps in a way he never imagined it would, embracing who he is and who he wants to be, and saying damn everyone else.

His carefully crafted persona takes on a drawl of sarcasm, borrowed deftly from his sister, and he manages some confidence, finally. He blooms in his later years at school, though he still feels caught up in a whirlwind. He sits in class, a lot of the time, and can’t focus. Feels overcome by a hundred little things, feel compelled to pass notes and offer comfort to those he thinks needs it most. He’s always felt too much, always felt too much for and from other people. Empathy, raw and true, propelled by magic –– though he doesn’t know it yet, and won’t for years.

It makes sense to him, if not to anybody else in his life, that he wants to become an Auror. He approaches the idea with steely determination, a stubbornness that never fades. He knows he isn’t the smartest, or the fastest, or the toughest. But he knows he’ll get there at the end of the day, he knows he’ll work himself to the bone if it means getting where he wants to go. He wants to help people, he wants to make a difference in the world, he wants to be a force for good above all else. Life is hard at the Academy in Salem, but he approaches it with a single minded edge, pushing nearly everything else to the side and almost obsessive about learning, pushing himself harder. He knows he’ll never be the best auror, but he’s fairly sure he could be a good one.

Hades works well with people. It’s a perk, undeniable to all who see him. He understands people at their core, feels some small sliver of what they do. Legilimency, they tell him, at the Academy. Low grade and naturally occurring. Other people’s thoughts and feelings bleed into his own without him even noticing. If he practiced, he could use it like a knife. He tries to stifle it instead, tries to find a way to hone it yet keep it gentle. He doesn’t want to be a blade in the minds of others, but if he can use it to help, to solve a case or make a victim feel comfortable, he’ll do that.

[theaurorfileshq]

A T H E N A   F A L C O N E R - Q U I N N   /  A U R O R   C O R P O R A L

AGE:  Thirty-Three

BADGE NUMBER: R91J55

BLOODSTATUS: Pureblood

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Trans Woman, She/Her

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: black clothes, scar on left forearm, silver watch. 

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Animagus Form (Red-Shouldered Hawk), High Intelligence, Spell Invention

(-):  Social Skills, Emotional Intelligence, Fear of Heights

BACKGROUND:

When the Falconer-Quinns had twins—one boy, one girl, a perfect matched set—they were perfectly satisfied. It was what was expected, one boy, one girl, all at once so they needn’t worry about a messy second pregnancy. The children were given attentive nannies and, as they grew, the best tutors money could buy until they were old enough to start school. The trouble, however, began when it became clear that one child was less apt at magic than hoped—and the other was less apt at everything else.

Athena, you see, didn’t speak until she was almost nine years old. She didn’t need to: her brother spoke for her, most of the time, intuiting her thoughts, needs, and feelings, and she preferred to let him. The Falconer-Quinns brought in special speech tutors, special doctors, but it wasn’t that Athena couldn’t speak, just that she wouldn’t. When, eventually, the twins were a little older and she started to talk, and her brother started to do magic, the Falconer-Quinn’s were satisfied again. They washed their hands and packed the kids off to school and called their job done, heirs secured. Athena came after her brother in the sorting ceremony at Ilvermorny, and though the Horned Serpent statue moved the most when she stepped forward, she followed her brother into Pukwudgie,

Her teenage years were quiet. She studied hard, worked hard. She spoke infrequently: she spent most of her time with her brother, who understood her without her needing to speak. Most of her classmates only heard her voice in class when professors called on her in class. Over the holidays, she went to her parents’ parties and introduced herself to all the right people and let her brother take the spotlight. As she moved towards the end of school, her parents started to talk of nice girls with marriage potential and she listened and nodded and didn’t argue.

When Athena was sixteen, the Falconer-Quinns found themselves once again disappointed: their perfect boy-girl pair was suddenly not so well matched. When she followed her brother out of the closet a year later, their parents were satisfied again, one boy, one girl, though it would have been nice to only have to make one messy announcement about the mix-up.

But she was tired, by then, of this conditional kind of love. Tired of the fact that now the marriage conversations grew more and more frequent as her parents attempted to find her a husband. She had so much promise, so many paths to pursue: she was smart, after all, a brilliant witch with a knack for understanding new spells, and her parents thought she out to set all that aside as soon as she graduated and focus on society life. So when her brother, late one night, said he’d decided to become an auror, she went along with him, attending the auror academy in Salem.

And she set about making her life comfortable, no more of the trappings of their parents’ expectations. A cozy home, a nice chair by the window to read in in the mornings. A good job, on the Central Squad. Time, at the end of the day, to do work of her own. Her own decisions, for her own life, and her brother at her side.

[theaurorfileshq]

B E C K E R   S A V A G E   /  A U R O R   L I E U T E N A N T

AGE:  Ninety-Three (Appears in his early 50s)

BADGE NUMBER: E88U41

BLOODSTATUS: Pureblood

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Trans Man, He/Him

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: blue eyes, prosthetic right leg, slight limp, reading glasses.

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Dueling and Combat Magic, Decades of Experience, Nonverbal Magic

(-): Firm Moral Code, Physical Combat, Weaker when not in Proximity to Camden

BACKGROUND:

Becker Savage becomes an auror because he wants to do what’s right. He becomes an auror because he wants to be a hero. He becomes an auror, in the mid 1930s, on the Eastern Squad, and he becomes a damn good one. He was always good at protecting others—protected his brother Camden, growing up, defended the weak, assisted the helpless. He knows, without a shadow of a doubt in his mind, what is right at all times.

He works hard until he is hurt, in the field, a cursed artifact taking his leg from him. And Camden comes to his side, abandoning everything to step up to the plate, to protect him, to stop him from getting hurt again. They work well, together, once Becker has recovered. Side by side. They always made a good team.

They’re on a case, he and Camden. A coven of vampires causing trouble in Bowling Green—or maybe someone causing trouble for the coven. The details, in his memory, are blurry, not significant enough to be remembered, up until the exact point that Camden is bitten. Bitten by a vampire, and Becker is almost quick enough to save him, would have been quick enough if it wasn’t for his damn leg, how it never healed right around the prosthetic, how he didn’t dedicate himself fully enough to the physical therapy the mediwixes recommended. Camden is bitten. Camden is a vampire. Camden is damned to immortal life, to an eternity of facing prejudice, and if Becker knows his brother he knows that it will eat Camden up inside, that Camden won’t make it without someone to protect him. He knows that it is his turn to step up to the plate.

Becker won’t become a vampire, won’t damn himself to that. But he finds another way to make sure he’ll live long enough to stay by Camden’s side. It’s simple enough, academically: to carefully place a piece of one’s soul inside an object to extend your lifespan, to overcome the inconvenient obstacle that is death. It is as easy, in practice, as it is academically: he places his soul inside a family heirloom, their mother’s old ring, and he hands it to Camden on a silver chain. He feels right; he feels just. This is just what it takes to be a hero.

They stick together, side by side. They change squads, a few times—people are increasingly uncomfortable with Camden’s unsettling presence, though he ensures that no one’s prejudice get in the way of allowing them to do their job and do it well. His wife ages; his son grows up. His son becomes an auror, too. His wife passes, sometime in the late 80s, and he grieves in his own way. Camden stays by his side, wearing their mother’s old ring, and he feels stronger with him there. He is an experienced auror, and a damn good one: a mentor, to any number of young recruits with strong moral codes over the years, glowing praise for many, many years of hard service. And if the fact that he doesn’t seem to have aged more than a handful of years since the late 50s strikes anyone as strange, they tend not to ask—Camden, he assumes, has something to do with that.

[theaurorfileshq]

I G N A T I U S   Y A X L E Y  /  A U R O R   C O R P O R A L

AGE:  Thirty-Three

BADGE NUMBER: S14E59

BLOODSTATUS: Pureblood

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Trans Man, He/Him

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: Scottish accent, curse scar from fingertips of right hand to crook of elbow, great hair, always wears nail polish and poorly made friendship bracelets.

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Combative Magic, Memory Charms, Ability to Remain Detached from Cases

(-): Indecisiveness, Inability to Take Things Seriously, Just a Little Guy, Formerly Rich Heir

BACKGROUND:

Everything is simple, for a very long time, that’s just the way it is for people like him. Ignatius Yaxley learns this very early on. Families like theirs don’t have to worry about the sort of things others do. That’s what mum and dad teach, and that’s what he believes. Sometimes he wonders, though, if it’s normal to be afraid of your father, and feel closer to your nanny than your mother. He wonders if it’s normal for dinners to be silent, for parents to sleep in separate rooms.

(He learns from friends with surnames like Rosier and Dolohov, late at night in the Slytherin common room when no one else is listening, that his family isn’t so special in that regard.)

There’s a set path for people like him, so he follows it. He graduates with a handful of NEWTS, and a laissez faire attitude even other purebloods find annoying. He takes a job training as a hit wix in his father’s department, because what else would he do? And he ignores any of the doubts simmering in the corners of his mind that maybe he doesn’t want to become his father’s spitting image.

(Ignatius Yaxley is not a moron, no matter what anyone else might say. The whispers about what his parents were allegedly involved with, he knows what they mean. Doesn’t matter that they’re not in Azkaban, all that means is they were smart enough not to let themselves get caught. If he had to guess, he would’ve said the allegedly part need not apply. Now he’s certain.)

Sometimes, he thinks maybe he would’ve realized how royally fucked all of it is sooner if he hadn’t realized the other rather important thing about himself when he was so young, if he’d been on his mother’s path, instead of being told he could have his choice of spouse, a knowing smirk on his father’s lips. It almost makes him wish he waited longer to let his father have a son, maybe until after he was out in the world.

Because that’s when it happens. Not for him––no, he’s already been out of Hogwarts for years, made a name for himself in the Ministry as one of the best young hit wizards in the department––but for her. Travers. It’s a good surname, a pure one, but he doesn’t know her and she doesn’t know him, too young to have overlapped much at Hogwarts, when his parents tell him they’re having dinner with her family the following week, since he’s failed in his job of finding himself a wife, when he’d been too busy focusing on his actual job.

Ignatius Yaxley is engaged to Isabella Travers within the month, without ever having a conversation with her alone.

There’s a party to celebrate, and during it, he tries to change that, for both of their sake’s, the creeping fear that none of this is right, none of this is fair, becoming less creeping and more real every moment. He puts a hand on her arm, leans closer in the hopes no one else will overhear what he wants to say, and she flinches back, before he can even speak, eyes wide with a fear he’s seen before in his mother’s eyes. That moment, something in him breaks. Maybe not in the expected way, certainly not in the noble way, but all the same.

After that, he doesn’t try again.

Instead, Ignatius develops a habit. After work, he wanders the streets of London, and he goes into Muggle pubs. He orders a drink, he talks to no one, and he thinks. Thinks about what it might be like if he was strong enough to say no to all of this, or to try harder to be something different, or anything else but this. It’s his silent rule, think and drink and don’t talk to anyone else. Savor the feeling of no one watching. It works for a long time, until a stranger slides into the seat next to him one night and asks, “Are you a tourist? You look very out of place,” and he laughs a little too loudly, and answers the question, caught off guard in just the right way.

She keeps asking questions, and he keeps answering. It’s strange, because it’s not strange at all. It just feels normal, talking to her, doesn’t matter who he is, or who she is––she’s Sawyer, she’s his age, she’s a playwright, she’s a Muggle––it’s just the two of them, talking. First a few nights a week in that pub, then on weekends, too, then in the middle of the night, in her flat, in her bed.

It’s a strange to realize you’re in love with someone you’ve been taught all your life to hate.

He’s able to force both families into a long engagement, buys himself time to figure out what to do, but it always comes back to Sawyer. It’s longer than is fair before he tells her who is really is, tells her about the world she’s unaware of. He practices memory charms for weeks before, in case she reacts badly, in case she decides she doesn’t love him anymore after he tells her.

He tells her everything. She shrugs, and smiles, and tells him she’s pregnant.

Suddenly, there’s another choice to be made. His wedding to Isabella is the same weekend the Muggle doctor’s tell Sawyer she’ll have the baby. They spend nights sitting awake discussing, and he wishes sometimes she would make the choice for him, just like every other choice in his life has been made by someone else, but she refuses, insists he make it himself. She asks questions, and he answers.

It’s unsettling, Isabella’s lack of reaction when he tells her, but then he reminds himself that this sort of thing is expected. She simply nods, and asks if it’s someone she knows. When he says no, she just nods again, and says that as long as it doesn’t get in the way of their marriage, their duties, there’s no reason it should matter. And he’s staved off the real decision again. The problem is, the Muggle doctors know more than expected; Sawyer goes into labor the day before the wedding, and the choice is again made for him.

Their daughter is born ten hours before the wedding, healthy and beautiful.

They name her Emerson after Sawyer’s mother, and it feels good to be able to make that choice, not to be forced into following tradition. For ten hours, it’s bliss, the three of them there together, no care for the outside world. It’s easy to see clear answers looking down at the soft bundle in his arms. She’s so small, so good, untainted by the world yet, and for ten hours, so are they. The bubble’s burst when the doctor discharges mother and daughter, after the wedding was meant to take place. Idly he wonders what excuse they used, but only in passing, the bliss of new parenthood clouding his thoughts. And for once, Sawyer seems content to live in that world where no questions need asking.

It lasts longer than expected, and the peace isn’t broken how he’s expecting. No, he knows he’ll have to face his family when he takes the trip to collect his belongings from the manor, but he doesn’t expect to have no trouble putting a bag together, seemingly no one around until he’s getting ready to leave again. His father’s voice is casual, like they’re talking about the weather. He gives him an hour to get rid of the problem and return alone, or else he’ll take care of the problem himself.

Instinct is to run, but she’s always been braver than him, and she can’t run, she’s always preferred finding answers instead. He’d joked once that if she had magic, she would’ve ended up a Gryffindor, but it’s not so funny anymore. For once, her decisiveness is a curse, and time runs out.

Four masked figures apparate into the flat, and for the first time, he’s not fast enough on the draw. The curse hits her like a puff of smoke to the face, only he realizes instantaneously it’s not a curse. He’s been practicing too long not to recognize a memory charm when he sees it. And that second is just enough for a curse to hit him in the arm. If he hadn’t been trained by the very hand that cursed him, maybe it would’ve been over there. His father’s Imperius nearly hits him right after, before he’s snapped out of it and fighting. It doesn’t take long, in a blind rage like he’s never felt before or since, to knock them all on their arses, to cradle little Emmy in his arms, and get to Sawyer, cowering in the corner, looking at him with horror.

When he gets close, though, she flinches, backs up as far into the corner as possible, eyes wide with that familiar fear.

But he tries this time, over and over again he tries, waiting for the recognition to wash over her face. It never does, though, whatever charm they’d case, too strong, too catastrophic for him to undo.

(The irony of spending so much time perfecting memory charms for her, but being unable to undo one will never escape him.)

It washes over him slowly, just like the tears that come, that he’s not going to be able to fix this, and maybe she’s safer like this anyway, as much as it hurts. For once, he makes a choice with ease. He adds his own memory charm, to make certain every trace of him is gone, and then he does the same to the attackers before getting them out of the flat. Emerson is wailing as he cleans up the damage, as he adds her baby things to his already packed bag, as he erases every trace of himself, of her from Sawyer’s flat. He adds protective charms around the place, and leaves, only goes a few blocks before apparating to the first place he can picture clearly that feels anywhere near far enough away.

There’s a few days at the beginning after he’s found a room in a shitty hotel in the South Side, where he considers giving magic up; it might be easier to live in Sawyer’s world not just to keep her and their daughter safe, but because the betrayal stings too deeply, all he was taught suddenly turned on him, blood meaning little as soon as he stepped off his father’s path. But no matter what he’s done to stop the curse that his father hit him with, the black tendrils creep higher and higher up his forearm, and the white hot pain keeps his awake when the baby doesn’t.

It doesn’t hit him how in a haze he is until the mediwix asks for his name, and their eyes flick oh-so briefly from him, to the baby fast asleep in the carrier. The curse is halted near the crook of his elbow, but the mark’s been left, and worse, the moment the mediwix leaves, the aurors appear. A rude awakening, to realize all his name gets him here is interrogated, every bone in his body screaming to fight the downright disrespect from the American aurors, except that for once he’s not thinking of just himself. He’s thinking of the baby, and he’s thinking of what Sawyer would’ve done, anything to keep Emerson safe.

So he cooperates. He bites down every insult begging to come out, and he answers them, imagining Sawyer’s the one asking the questions, instead.

It’s made abundantly clear that he’s going to have eyes on him, even if his surname isn’t nearly as tainted as others, at least at first. So he uses those eyes to begin picking up the pieces and rebuilding, always happy to take advantage of connections. If they want to keep an eye on him, then it might as well be easy, and he might as well use it. The eyebrows raised at the suggestion parallel even his own, why. And he simply shrugs it off, says some shite about sticking to what he knows, not wanting to admit that maybe he feels like he needs to do something good, for all the people he hurt the first twenty-seven years of his life; that’s the only way he’s going to feel even slightly okay with what he’s done, and with choosing to leave Sawyer behind.

The adjustment isn’t easy by a long shot. It’s not something he likes to admit out loud, but he never learned how to take care of himself, always someone else to do it for him, even at twenty-seven years old, yet alone taking care of a baby, too. Even worse that he’s suddenly being put through training all over again, like he’s seventeen. He rolls his eyes through it all during the day, then sells more and more of the family heirlooms he took on his way out once the money he’d saved runs out paying for babysitters and rent, pushes through sleepless nights up with Emmy, but he does it. And when he finishes, he’s given an offer he never would’ve expected. The MACUSA Central Squad.

It’s almost hilarious, considering the very clear distrust that only grows with every year considering the whispers crossing the Atlantic. But then, he gets it; he knows a thing a two about keeping his friends close, and his enemies closer. It’s mutually beneficial, they keep him safe, and he gives them what he knows, which is to say very little. All the better that he’s not an enemy, and that he can maybe find some perverse sense of catharsis by doing something good. And maybe even better to be around aurors constantly just in case the day comes that his father comes looking.

And the thing is, it’s a good life, better than he could’ve imagined, and he never would’ve imagined this for himself. His daughter is safe, and well-adjusted, all things considered, and they’re pretty bloody close to happy, even on their own together. He tries not to think of Sawyer, tries to remind himself he made the right choice. He ignores the fact that Emmy still hasn’t shown any signs of magic, even though by her age he’d already transformed his first owl into a kitten accidentally plus a dozen other things. It doesn’t really matter all that much, not yet, not for plenty of time, he tells himself.

What he can’t ignore, though, is that every day everything he ran from creeps closer and closer. Ever watchful eyes on his back, waiting for a slip up. It feels easier to revert back to old ways, and take the hands off approach; he does what he’s asked, no more, and no less, head down, holding it all at a distance.

The issue is that that’s not enough anymore. Not for anyone else around him, not for Emerson, not for him.

[theaurorfileshq]

A B E L   M O N T E R O  /  A U R O R   S E R G E A N T

AGE:  Thirty-Seven

BADGE NUMBER: R21X66

BLOODSTATUS: Halfblood, (No-Maj Mother)

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Nonbinary, He/They

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: 6′4″ in height. Lateral scar, cutting through left brow and extending to mid scalp. Virgin Mary tattoo on exterior right arm. Two black bands tattooed around left forearm. Scorpion on right wrist. Partially burned wand. 

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Cursebreaking, Dark Magic Knowledge, Wards & Defensive Magic

(-): Combat Magic, Transfiguration, Below Average in Wand Magic

BACKGROUND:

"You’re so lucky” has been a phrase Abel has heard often throughout his life. 

He was five when the political waters began to shift within MACUSA, and the law that made him a product of the crime his parents committed by loving one another, would be abolished. History tends to make events much cleaner than they really were though. When the centuries long law was abolished it didn’t go out with a whisper, those who looked down on his bloodtype didn’t suddenly change their minds, and wipe away generations of ingrained bigotry. 

No, Rappaport’s was a beast that didn’t die easily, it clawed and bit at anything that dare to defy it, even as it lay dying from its wounds. Abel was five when MACUSA determined he was no longer a bastard, but instead a normal full blooded wix. He was six when someone tried to prove him wrong. 

“You’re so lucky, you grew up after all of that nonsense.” 

He was attending a one year celebration of Rappaport’s abolishment with his parents when it happened. The party was held in a local community center, hundreds of no-maj/wixen couples celebrated together under a ceiling littered with red, white, and blue balloons. Abel was sitting square on his father’s shoulders, trying his best to grab one of the elusive things, when suddenly the doors to the center flew open, revealing a large group of masked wixes, wands raised. 

Being so young, Abel doesn’t remember much, but what he can is a sharp pain hitting the center of his chest as a bright red light came hurdling towards him. Everything goes black then, until what he later finds out to be two days later, when he awakes in a hospital bed at Calderon’s Memorial Hospital in it’s Unknown Curses and Jinxes Ward. 

He can recall his parents worried glances, and flurry of questions that didn’t make any sense to him at the time. “Do you remember us?” “Do you know who you are?” “Do you feel any different?” Other than a sore back, and a weird metallic taste on his tongue, he felt completely fine, if not confused just why everyone seemed so worried about him. 

It was later when he discovered that that bright light rushing towards him, was in fact a curse... or jinx... or something fired from one of those masked wixes’ wands. The mediwixes tried for days to determine just what had hit him, but every test they gave him he seemed to pass. 

“You’re so lucky the wand misfired.” 

And for the next couple months that was the story the Monteros, and every other family at that celebration accepted. Whatever the assailants had fired upon them simply didn’t work. But then rumors started swirling, some of the halfbloods who were hit were having trouble with their magic. They hadn’t lost it, but it was suddenly unstable, wickedly volatile with strange outbursts of energy. 

Eventually, after several rounds of blood tests on all affected victims it was determined that a blood curse had been inflicted. Given the nature of the wixes involved, the best theory was that the blood curse was intended to remove magic from those halfbloods, who by some extremists, didn’t think should have magic in the first place.The Monteros held their breath, and watched as Abel grew older, waiting to see what form their son’s magic would take. 

Months would become years, and as time wore on Abel’s magic still didn’t reveal itself. Soon it was feared the worst, that due to Abel’s young age at the time of the attack, the blood curse had worked on him. They were wrong though. 

Two months after his tenth birthday, just around the time he should be receiving his letter for Ilvermorny. Abel was at a local park with some friends, playing gobstones for chocolate frog cards, when suddenly a group of neighborhood punks moved in on the younger children. The exchange wasn’t much out of the norm from a standard school yard. The older wixes teased and harassed the smaller ones, making fun of everything from their “stupid little kid game” to their awkwardly long limbs and bent teeth. 

Abel, having always been a reserved and shy child, had done what he usually did, and ignored them. That was until the taunts grew more personal, hitting a nerve that’d been struck several times, but for some reason especially stung that day. The moment the older children brought up his mother, calling her a “no-maj lover” and other words intended to mar her virtue, Abel stood up. Balled fists shaking, he screamed at the older children, louder than he ever had in his life, “JUST GO AWAY.” 

He’d screwed his eyes shut when he did it, and when he opened them again, the gang of bullies were easily twenty yards away, crying out in pain, and laid out on their backs. Looking behind him, he saw his friends in a similar state, looking at him in confusion between sharp yells. 

“You’re so lucky you found your magic.” 

His magic, if he even could call it that, because it certainly didn’t feel like his, had indeed presented itself, but in a manner much more wild than any others his age. It seemed that while the masked wixes’ bloodcurse hadn’t completely worked as intended, it had indeed affected his magic. As with those others who were affected, Abel had held on to his magic, but it was a wild and reclusive thing, difficult to tame, and even more difficult to muster. 

Despite the complexity of his magic, he did indeed have it, and so Ilvermorny would be next on his path. It would be there when he would fully come to understand the complex nature of his abilities. While his peers came to quickly master simple spells, such as levitating stones, or transforming mice into coffee mugs, Abel struggled immensely. What took very little energy output from most students, took a great deal of it for him. So much so that he quite literally burned through a wand in just his first year, the immense energy he had to channel through it exhausting the core to the point it burned through the wand’s wood, leaving only charred pieces behind. 

It was in this first year when Abel learned that what came easy to most was going to be much more difficult for him, and no amount of practice or repetition would change that. And so instead of pushing himself to be something he wasn’t, he did his best to perfect what he had. He began to learn both his and his wand’s limits, reserving his magic only when it was deemed absolutely necessary, and preparing himself for the kickback he’d in turn experience. 

He had to study and train harder than most students, to receive grades that were deemed minimally passing, and he had learned to accept that. There were some subjects of course which he excelled greatly in. Defense the Dark Arts didn’t involve much wand work, mostly studying and understanding the dark arts and the many curses that came with it. Curses- that was his passion. Being a victim of a blood curse, he desired to learn everything he could about them, from how they were made to how they were passed on. He knew his curse would be one that he’d bear for the rest of his life, but he still yearned to learn more about the thing that pumped through his veins. 

Wards became another great interest of his. Wards, both in creating them, and breaking them, didn’t take an immense amount of magic at once, more so small amounts over an extended period of time. A perfect match for his magical ability. And so he consumed all he could about them, yearning to have at least one thing he could do just as well, if not better than others his age. 

By the time graduation came and went, he was still viewed as a slightly below average student in terms of his marks, but he’d grown to master his unique abilities, even if it meant he had to buy a new wand every few years. 

“You’re so lucky you made it through.” 

After graduation, the potential career paths that lay before him were minimal given his low marks, and largely required little to no magic. Becoming a shopkeeper or a janitor, certainly would have been easy options, all leading him into a life with little difficulty. But that wasn’t what he wanted for himself. He’d spent the majority of his life quietly accepting the fate his curse had given him, but he didn’t want to waste his life away because of it. No, he wanted to make something for himself, leave some kind of impact behind more than the kid with the curse. 

He took the Auror Academy Entrance Exams three times before he finally made it above the passing threshold. 

The Auror Academy was in many ways just as challenging as Ilvermorny. The classes, which were tough to begin with, were even tougher for him. And once again he found himself burning through wands like they had done something to offend him. But just as he did in Ilvermorny, he learned how to navigate in the world that wasn’t exactly designed for someone like him. 

After he broke a fellow student’s hand with a simple expeliarmus in his first month, he learned that dueling for him didn’t mean firing spells until the other person yielded, but rather to quickly disarm them then subdue them physically. His magic was not a tool like it was for so many others, but simply a hurdle to get around, before he could properly address an issue. Once he accepted this, his marks swiftly began to change for the better. Suddenly he was no longer at the bottom of the pile, but much more closer to the middle, a win in his book. 

When this graduation came, it did not bare with it a haze of uncertainty, but a future that suddenly seemed attainable. He was hired in his home state of Florida’s Auror Division, working out of their Miami offices. There he would continue to do well using his particular style of work. Five years later he would gain enough recognition for his efforts, and he would be asked to join the Central Auror Squad. 

“You’re so lucky for where you’ve gotten, despite it all.” 

Abel does not believe he’s lucky. Luck did not get him to where he is now. It did not nurse the blisters he used to get on his hands from his wand that always burned a little too hot, or tutor him through hours of simple spell textbooks. What success he’s found he credits his parents, for not pushing him into doing what was easy. He credits those teachers he’s had that helped him work through the disability his curse proved to be. And lastly he credits himself, for not accepting the fate luck seemed to have afforded him. 

[theaurorfileshq]

R I V K A   W A L D R O N  /  A U R O R   C O R P O R A L

AGE:  Thirty-Three

BADGE NUMBER: R38N11

BLOODSTATUS: Pureblood

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Gendervoid, She/Her

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: blackwork sigil tattoos covering back, shoulders, arms, & feet ; usually wearing black (or red, on occasion) ; hair never longer than shoulder-length, rarely brushed ; constantly has sweets in pockets ; always looks like she’s slept six hours or less

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Dueling/Combat Magic, Occlumency, Wandless Magic

(-): Protective Magic (Cannot Conjure a Patronus), Touch Aversion, Maledictus - Raven Form (Beginning to Lose Control of Shifting Episodes)

BACKGROUND:

CW: implied domestic abuse, child abuse  

Rivka grew up deep enough in the Mississippi swamps that it would be difficult to pinpoint exactly where on a map. It was a place so drenched in old magic that it was palpable in the very air and water, and seemed to make the environment around them constantly shift. She and her mother - Delvene, father - Gil, and paternal grandfather - Lochar lived in an old manor house that had previously belonged to her mother’s proud Pureblood parents… Leaving them the place in their will was just about the best thing they ever did for their daughter, a squib, who otherwise would have inherited nothing. That they died only months after a short & sweet little wedding on the front porch wouldn’t arouse suspicions for many years.

Contrary to her mother, she displayed her magical abilities early, around age four. Young Riva left a trail of mayhem in her wake whenever she went tearing off into the swamps to play. And when she came back it was with all manner of critters and trinkets she shouldn’t have been capable of collecting herself while she was so small… She had a knack for making things move without touching them, going so far as to levitate some crawdads right out of the river. At age five, a particularly bad argument between her parents in the kitchen resulted in a lot of upturned chairs and broken dishes, as well as one dark-eyed toddler up a tree in the shape of a raven. They couldn’t manage to get her down again until she fell asleep and naturally shifted back in the middle of the night. But by then the damage had already been done… she had gained her father’s attention.

Her wild ways would only continue to intensify as time went on, especially after Gil decided in a fit of devilish inspiration he was prone to that he needed to harness the raw potential of her magic as soon as possible. He set Rivka to task running errands for him, usually to harvest potion ingredients, but sometimes to sit in certain places to listen and watch, sometimes to carry little packages or scrolls back and forth… He twisted what should have been a carefree and adventurous childhood into a rigorous training regimen. And the more she tried to resist his lessons, the crueler and more insistent Gil became. He demanded absolute obedience and deference and, brilliant little thing that she was, Rivka realized quickly enough that it was better to do as he said rather than risk the consequences. But, instead of controlling her, as he anticipated, his abuses only made her find every possible route of escape and every reason to buck authority. It made her elusive and feral, incapable of letting anyone in close enough to touch.

The one exception to this rule came in the form of Fidel Romero, a local auror in Mississippi who had been tasked with monitoring large-scale truancy & neglect cases of newly school age magical children in the area. Despite the many messages sent to the manor house in the swamp, the last officially known address for Rivka, now eleven, none of her Ilvermorny letters had been opened, nor had they received any indication she would be attending. When Fidel visited, he found that only Delvene remained, among a mountain of unopened envelopes, in a crumbled shell which had formerly been a stately Pureblood house of some repute. And all he could get out of her as she sat nearly catatonic on the porch in an old grey rocking chair was that a demon had crawled out of the swamp and swallowed her whole. With no other clues to go by, he ended up encountering Riva by chance… when he caught her stealing a handful of candies from a corner store in town. Once he plied her with a sundae the size of her head, Fidel got enough out of her to determine that her father clearly had no interest in her attending Ilvermorny. And so, he didn’t hesitate. He took her into protective custody that very evening.

Riva may have put something of a target on her back when she loudly declared in the entrance hall upon first entering Ilvermorny that she was not afraid of any bullies. That she did so while single-handedly dispatching of one such bully before ever laying hands on a wand did nothing to dissuade the particularly vicious or determined among them; but all the same, she took to Thunderbird house and to her studies like a lightning bolt to the tallest tree in the forest. Contrary to what her wild demeanor and odd social habits outwardly suggested, it was an environment that she thrived in. She was even capable of being attentive and quiet during class, although her reputation of wildness suggested otherwise. All it took was a good teacher to recognize her struggles and advise her to redirect her anger and frustrations elsewhere. After Riva became captain of the dueling club, there was a decided shift around her. The bullies that once targeted her were suddenly less eager to engage when she challenged them to a formal duel, in the proper arena.

In the summers between school, she would return to Fidel’s care briefly before vanishing again into the swamps she loved so dearly. He worried over her constantly, always concerned she was with her father. He had grown to distrust and despise the man over time, after gleaning what he could from Riva about his cruelties. Every time she left, he almost expected to never see her again, but miraculously, about two weeks before the end of summer, she would reliably arrive on Fidel’s doorstep again like clockwork, as if nothing had ever happened. He learned to be content with that for a while, until she came home one year with tattoos on her hands and back. Seeing red, he tore through the swamps looking for Gil for days and found nothing but a low, faraway sound like an echoing laugh taunting him. Despite his best efforts, Fidel couldn’t keep her away from him, as no lock or barrier would keep her. She flew through his fingers time and time again like a bird slipping through the bars of a cage. But he didn’t want to cage Riva… he only ever wanted to protect her.

She managed to hide any new tattoos or bruises she came home with after that, not out of fear of her father, but to protect Fidel and his big stupid heart as best as she could. She knew he wanted to tear Gil apart, that if he could he’d spend his whole life hunting through the ever-shifting landscape of the Mighty Mississippi bogs until he brought him to justice. But as much as she wanted to, Riva found herself unable to resist each time Gil summoned her to that old house constantly moving through the swamps. Somehow he held Dominion over her thoughts and actions, so much like that name she always overheard coming in hushed whispers from the darkest corners. The summer before her final year was when everything came to a head, when one night she returned unexpectedly early, in strange clothes, scratched and bruised and bloody, hands and feet and hair all torn from her flight… She would never fully explain to Fidel what happened, but what she saw that fateful night would come out in pieces, in nightmares, in long silent stares into the darkness. There had been fire, blood, and shadow, ancient tongues, and strangers in the woods. In the end, although she managed to claw herself out of her father’s grasp, she would never feel truly free of him.

The Mississippi River had always been her deepest & truest love, and the most comfortable home she had ever known. And so it only made sense that she’d follow it to its end. Living with Fidel and getting close to his family had helped guide her there, to the NOLA auror academy. Riva knew it was an opportunity, not only to improve her skills, but to further distance herself from the life with her father she had escaped. However, this time had its own share of challenges… It was in the academy that she finally had it explained to her exactly what being a Maledictus meant. To say that the diagnosis devastated her would be an understatement. In many ways, Riva felt that her world ended right there. In others, she knew she needed to do what she could for the people she loved in the time she had left. Becoming an auror was suddenly so much more important and urgent for that reason, and because she wanted to follow in Fidel’s footsteps while still walking her own path. But as it turned out, protecting him would also eventually mean deceiving him.

In her first year as an auror, Fidel got too close to finding Gil, close enough that she took it upon herself to throw him off the trail. Riva knew the swamps better than anyone, knew how to get to her father wherever he was, like her life depended on it. And so she also knew exactly how to keep Fidel away, this man that she had somehow grown to love more than her own blood. She followed him, carefully manipulating the clues as he came upon them, throwing her voice here or there, making just the right noise at the right time to get him to turn and miss something. She always kept just out of sight or out of reach in the dark, her heart pounding in her throat whenever he grew within arm’s length. It was one of the most difficult things she ever had to do, and not just because of the emotional toll it took on her, or the hurt she knew it would cause if he ever discovered the truth; but also because Fidel was damn good at what he did. It would be a few years before she saw him set the case aside, and even then she understood that it wouldn’t be forever.

Despite her adventurous nature, Riva was content to stay in Mississippi for a long while, perhaps because she found it difficult to miss out on even one moment with the ones she loved, knowing she would eventually run out of time with them. Instead of pushing to climb the ranks as quickly as possible, she focused on making herself like water, flowing easily along her path, trying not to rush too quickly towards or away from anything. She worked this way for ten years, collecting cases under her belt but largely avoiding anything that might draw too much attention to herself. But fate, as always, demonstrated that it had other plans for her… that it was not content to see her wasting away in one place, however comfortable she was to stay there. About a year ago, fate quite literally snatched her away in the middle of a case. Her superiors knew for certain that something was wrong when they didn’t hear from her for a week. But as soon as they mobilized a force to search for her, she turned up with a fuzzy memory in northern Minnesota, prompting investigation into the incident from MACUSA (since she had been transported over state lines such a significant distance). In the days following her recovery, she fervently worked on a list of codes that would not stop running through her head, insisting to anyone who would listen that they were significant to her abduction. Finally, about five days after turning up on the other side of the country, she saw the strange messages for what they were: a set of clues she had left for herself. Once she deciphered them, she was able to lead MACUSA to the northern branch of an Animagus trafficking ring operating along the Mississippi River, where they managed to take five or six smugglers into custody. This prompted her superiors to recommend her to MACUSA, after over a decade of solid work for them. And after meditating on it for a while, and receiving some vital encouragement from a certain gruff father figure, she agreed to apply.