EVENT: The Leaked List
LOCATION: Burns Farm, Wiltshire
DATE: June 24th, 1984
FEATURING: @helloxhestia
incorporating: @emmaofvanity @ofdorkass @mfletcher @dogstxrsirius
After disarming three traps and nearly being disarmed by a fourth, Alice was in no mood to be patient with the fifth one she came across. Her team had found plenty in their searches too, enough so that Alice had lost count of just how many of the vile things had been littered across the farmstead so far. (Hestia would want to know later, she was sure; Alice would just have to hope that everyone’s memory would be keen for the debriefing afterward.) It seemed like overkill, especially when the targets were simple Muggles—and one muggle-born who hadn’t even yet held their first wand—which led her to conclude even more firmly than she had before that these had been set for the Order rather than the family.
(Alice was just glad that her team had come early enough to start disarming the traps before the family found them the hard way—although didn’t farmers start their day very early? So where were they? Maybe they’d already found one, and retreated to the safety of their house? She hoped it wasn’t because they’d already found some traps and perished.)
Her terse warning to Hestia—”Reached Wiltshire site without incident. Triggered a booby-trap on arrival. No injuries. Searching the area. Will update when we know more”—dispatched by her silvery skunk patronus minutes after Emma had almost immolated herself at the hands of a gnomish decoration was seeming less and less sufficient the longer they searched and the more such traps they found...but so far, no one was dead or dismembered, so there was no sense calling for additional back-up and endangering others. Not when there was still every chance that Death Eaters would be popping-out of the woodwork all around the country at any moment. Alice’s team was doing just fine—mostly—so the only thing to do was to keep doing what they were doing and hope things didn’t get worse.
Alice should have taken her own advice and not let her focus drift, but too late—her attention wavered and the spell she was unknotting with her wand snapped loose with an ugly snarl before she could catch it. Alice jumped backwards out of the way as hungry mint leaves suddenly shot-up to half human height and stabbed towards her like jagged steel blades. One of the spears caught her ankle, slicing a thin line through the soft leather deep enough to draw blood with a sharp flare of pain. Alice yanked her leg away, glaring at the razor-edged mint leaves, as she snarled “Episkey!” at herself. The wound closed, leaving a dull throbbing behind; Alice ignored it, knowing the pain would fade quickly on its own and quicker as she focused on other things.
Like the damn mint. Who booby-trapped a bunch of herbs? Arseholes. The sharp-sweet smell of the mint mingled with the coppery reek of the blood they’d spilled. Alice jerked her wand in a brutal cutting motion and the enchanted over-grown mint fell, sliced-off near the roots. She leaned in cautiously and cast a Discernment Spell, checking to make sure there wasn’t more danger lingering in the roots, but the magic came back clear. She gave the bloodstained leaves another glare before limping away to search for the next danger.
