U N O B S E R V E D

harry james potter. ministry agent. the lost boy.

[luna-skips]

Blood in the Drains

[theinvisibleboi]

luna-skips:

Luna listened attentively as Harry talked about running and football, enjoying his recitation of his hobbies – not that they were much of a surprise, Luna knew Harry liked to move around a lot – but as he wound down she shook her head and said, “I don’t know, actually. When you turned out to be what?” She stared at him unblinkingly, unabashed at admitting to ignorance. Luna had never understood why people so often pretended to know things they didn’t; didn’t that get in the way of them actually learning the answers? “I would like ti imagine it I’m sure, if you don’t mind explaining.” She smiled dreamily.

Her smile faded into a distressed, confused frown as he talked about unregistered wix and rebels – two groups that Luna had always understood were not necessarily the same people, but who certainly overlapped. The main difference, to her eyes, had always been that unregistered wix were people who had made a mistake – often several – while rebels chose their actions deliberately. “But if someone wants to not be registered – on purpose, you know – then that makes them a rebel. It’s the choice that makes the difference, Harry. People can’t be blamed for things they don’t understand, but making a choice – that’s what decides what kind of a person a person is going to be.” She shook her head, still frowning – not at him; at the ideas – and added kindly, “Of course I hear lots of reasons, and some of them are even true, but when someone gives a reason like, ‘I chose not to,’ or ‘I didn’t want to,’ or ‘I decided not to,’ that’s when we know they didn’t just make a mistake, or forget, or get scared or confused. That’s when we know they’re a problem.” She shrugged, then smiled again. “Besides, I don’t see where hiding what you are is any kind of freedom.”

Her gentle smile widened in response to his grin – Luna knew that it was a purely biological response: that seeing other people happy, especially when they were people one liked, had a tendency to make one happy as well, but that knowledge didn’t make her appreciate the feelings any less – and she nodded eager agreement, keen to get started on assembling the assortment of details Harry would need to justify a prompt return to the streets. When he refused the offer her smile faded, but not because she was offended; in fact, she was delighted to hear that Harry liked her reports, even though they were full of tiny little boxed-in facts that had no room to breahte. “Why are you in trouble?” she asked. “I didn’t know you were in trouble. Whatever happened? Is there anything I can do to help?” She didn’t say that she was sure it was all just a misunderstanding; she knew better than that – but she was still sure that whatever it is, it could be fixed so that Harry could promptly go back to doing the kind of work he liked instead of the kind he didn’t, as much. Just because Luna understood the necessity of doing even the unpleasant parts of a job – like writing reports and cruelly pinning-down narrow facts – didn’t mean she wanted anyone else that she liked to endure the parts they didn’t like, as well. Especially if they’d gotten in trouble.

(One nice thing about being the bosses’ daughter: while trouble landed on her head a lot, it was usually a lighter weight than that suffered by most people, and certainly lighter than she earned. Not that Luna had noticed that – she thought that everyone shrugged off scoldings that easily.)

Luna stared, nonplussed, at the jacket he held out to her. “All right,” she said obediently, taking it one-handed by the collar, “I won’t argue. But what am I supposed to do with it? I already have a shirt. It’s nearly dry too, look.”

"When I turned out to be wixen," Harry responded, and his brow furrowed a little as he said it. He couldn't blame her for not knowing what he'd meant. "Well, specifically one of the Ministry's poster boys. I knew I had to come and work for the Ministry then, so football wasn't really an option." He tried not to sound bitter about it. He was grateful for the opportunities he'd had in life, and the fact that he wasn't living in a dirty caravan constantly on the run from the government. Still, better to leave that subject alone and move on.

"There are a lot of ways to look at it," Harry agreed. He didn't necessarily disagree with her, but it was his job to think like rebels and unregistered wix, to figure out why they did what they did so that he could find them and follow them. That often meant thinking about these issues in less black-and-white terms than the Ministry suggested. "No, I don't think hiding provides them with any freedoms," he agreed. "I can't imagine living out there like they do. I wouldn't give up my job and apartment for what they consider freedom."

Harry couldn't help but smile at her reaction to his comment about being in trouble. He really was helplessly fond her, even when he was trying not to think about how good she was at her particular job. The fact that she would immediately offer help, especially given her position as the bosses' daughter, gave him a little fluttering in his chest. It was always nice to know you had friends. "It was an exaggeration, I promise," he tried to assure her. "Not real trouble." He wasn't in danger of losing his job or anything, just being assigned to his desk so he would actually get all the paperwork done. And to keep him from running into dangerous situations without backup. "I'll just get a slap on the wrist for not following protocol." He laughed, then quickly added. "A metaphorical slap on the wrist. You know how they are about admin." He'd thought it was clear that he wasn't being literal, but you could never be too sure with Luna. Better to explain it now than fall down a whirlpool of misunderstandings and find themselves turned around and unsure of what the original subect was.

Her cooperation about the jacket was appreciated, but he'd thought that the reason for the offer was obvious. Then again, he happened to miss things that other people thought of as obvious, and it was likely that Luna wouldn't think twice about walking around the office with a blood-stained shirt, no matter that they weren't as dark and prominent as before. Harry tilted his head from side to side, considering. "There's still -- a fair bit of blood," he started to explain. "I'm just thinking it's best not to go walking around in the corridors like you've just -- er, interrogated someone. It might make people -- uncomfortable." He hoped that didn't sound horrible. "Not me," he amended quickly. "But some people."

[theinvisibleboi]

On the Job | Open

[theinvisibleboi]

suturesandstitches:

Starting a row with Harry Potter in the middle of a busy market was quite possibly the most foolish thing Draco had done since Pansy was taken. The incident really had been an accident, Draco was so shocked that he very well may have reached for the wrong drink. Perhaps everything would have been fine had Potter not started to notice his stitches. Instead, caught off balance by the strange turn of events Malfoy fell back on his old habits and cursed the man out before quickly leaving the shop. It had been humiliating, going home wet and hot and reeking of coffee in the summer sun. It was that humiliation that drove his stupidity now.

“I did no such thing,” snapped Draco. “I reached for my drink, which was closer to me. See how that works?” It wasn’t fair of him to be this nasty with Potter, it probably looked a little off from anyone watching them. Still, he openly scoffed at the insults to his attire. While his instincts told him to walk away from the Ministry’s walking talking puppet his mouth kept moving. “Just because I don’t select my clothes fresh out of a sweatshop does not mean I’m overdressed.” Merlin, he needed to stop talking.

"You must be bottling up some real rage to get this angry about one spilled drink," Harry said. He could understand being pissed off at having a drink knocked into you, but the venom from this guy was ridiculos. The fact that he'd been so angry he remembered Harry even a week later and was willing to keep the fight going... Harry was starting to regret engaging this bloke. Especially since it was entirely possible that he'd been the one to reach for the wrong drink at the cafe. He'd been sure at the time that he'd been reaching for his own drink but the further he got from the event, the less sure he was about it.

"A sweatshop?" Harry's hand twitched towards the coat pocket that concealed his wand. He was this close to arresting this bastard and taking him in for harassment of a Ministry Agent but -- fuck working this job was more important than the few hours of satisfaction that might give him. Whatever it was about this bloke that put him on edge -- he needed to pull himself together and handle it. "Are you done insulting my clothes?" He asked. "This may be the highlight of your day but I've got more important things to do."

[praesum-blog1]

Pandemonium

The Market always had Remus on edge. Avoiding Ministry officials was one of the staples of being part of the Caravan. It was something they taught their children at a very young age. Keep your head down, don’t get caught. But the Market went against all of that. They invited those officials, opened their doors to people outside the community - albeit it was doors away from their actual living spaces. And, in the past ten years, since Remus had officially started to lead, they even started inviting Muggles. It was something he’d gotten push back from some members, especially those older, the ones who remember his father well. But it was something that had to be done. They could not grow without trying to understand the world they were growing in.

He never ran a stand himself, instead choosing to constantly walk through the crowd. He liked to stop at the shops, check the parameter, keep his eyes guarded on the wards. They were incredibly exposed here and it was something that could nearly break him. Under his calm exterior, his dangerous heart beat against his chest as he gave a small smile to a shopkeeper. She was one of his favorites, creating potions that no one had ever known. For that, her stand was often one of the more popular and so Remus liked to check on it frequently to make sure everything was going smoothly.

He backed away to move to the next stand for a check-in when it happened. There was a loud BOOM! and Remus was knocked off his feet. It took several seconds before he was able to sit up, his ears ringing, vision swimming. Around him, there were hoards of people on the ground with him. In the distance, more were running - their open mouths indicating they were screaming, though Remus could not hear it due to the blast. He managed to stagger to his feet, standing frozen, watching the chaos. He didn’t know where the bang had come from, but he’d been in this war long enough to know that it was a bomb.

And then he saw them. The Ministry officials in their matching attire. Visions swam to a time so many years ago. Lily and James - Harry left behind. His father, gone. No… No!

Remus sprung into action, turning to the nearest Caravan member. “The children - we need to get them out first” His voice seemed faraway. He could nearly hear the words springing from the papers. How the children of the Caravan were raised by rebels. By the evil. He pulled out his wand and tightened his grip. “Aim at anyone from the Ministry you see! Try not to kill, we can use them if captured. But don’t hesitate if you must!” And he through a Cutting Curse at the first Ministry-attired individual he noticed.

[theinvisibleboi]

The recorded phone message was one of the more suspicious things Harry had ever recieved. It wasn't officially tied to the Ministry but he couldn't think of anyone else who would unfficially sanction a raid on the rebels' caravan. He'd been at his desk reading the newspaper when he'd received the message; reading about the new Children 's Support Act and staring at his photograph on the front page. If there was one thing that Harry hated, it was being made an example of. It made his job harder and it made him stand out. Both irritated him, so he was already on edge when the message came. And there was no way he could avoid checking it out, no matter how suspicious it sounded; it wasn't the kind of information you could ignore as a Ministry agent. If it turned out to be something important and he didn't go? The boss would have his arse, even if he was friends with the boss' daughter. Besides, with the strong implication of there being danger, it was a foregone conclusion that Harry would jump right in.

Things were already chaotic when he arrived but that didn't deter him. He took a moment to ground himself, to assess the situation. People were running in all directions, some were trying to gather the items at stalls, others he recognised as other agents of the Ministry. He disregarded them, and the people collecting their items. He wasn't looking for sellers at the market, he was looking for the organisers. Harry also made a point of not looking for children to take into custody. The Ministry's goal may have been to take in as many rebel wixen children as possible, but Harry's priority was to identify and capture leaders, to get into the thick of the action. After only a few seconds of assessing, his wand was out and his pulse was thrumming.

"Expelliarmus!" He had disarmed the nearest wand-wielding adult just as they pointed their wand at him. "Stupefy!." The second spell had the woman unconcious and on the ground before she could react. Harry ducked down and pulled her out of the way of the crowd before diving back into the action. As he looked up, his gaze fell on a rebel man who seemed to stand out amongst the crowd for Harry, though at first he wasn't sure why. Then it clicked. Recognition flickered across his face. Lupin.

It would have been hard not to recognise the face from all the posters around the Ministry, not to mention the files Harry had read on the Caravan's folks. Lupin was more than a rebel, he was a ringleader. They weren't really supposed to take on powerful wixen like Lupin without back-up but Harry had spotted him across the path, and instinct was kicking in. He was two -- three -- steps across what had quickly become a battlefield, pointing his wand and shouting: "Impedimenta!" in Lupin's direction. He didn't even wait to see if the spell hit as he hurried closer. "You're under arrest for failing to register as wixen and -- a whole lot of other things!"

[luna-skips]

Blood in the Drains

[theinvisibleboi]

luna-skips:

Luna beamed at Harry, delighted at the – admittedly presumptive – compliment. “I’m not sure if it is or not,” she said. “Art is terribly subjective, don’t you think? But it’s pleasant either way, and that’s what I like about it.” She gave the bloody shirt a hard, twisting squeeze and then released her grip to let it slowly uncoil in the roiling, foamy pink water. “I like that it’s a way to capture thoughts or feelings or even memories of things that have happened without having to be as…as concrete as you do in reports. I always feel like I’m driving pins through my thoughts, stabbing them wriggling and wailing on the page, when I have to write down something for sure.” She wrinkled her nose up in dismay. “There aren’t many things in life that are certain, that are absolute, I don’t think. Drawing or painting something is a much nicer way to write something down than writing. There’s more room for those things to breathe, then.”

With barely a pause for the change of subject, she asked in a much more chipper voice, “What hobbies keep you from going spare? I like that way of describing it – going spare. It’s a lovely phrase. I’m not sure some of us aren’t already, mind you, but there’s nothing wrong with that if so either.” She stared at him wide-eyed, a child eager to hear a story – or an artist mentally cataloging an expression for later portraiture. She hadn’t been lying when she’d said that Harry was a favorite subject – Luna didn’t much bother with lying, didn’t see the point – with his bright green eyes made so much brighter in contrast with the lovely layered tones of his cheeks and brows. Even more importantly than how he looked, though, was how he felt.

Luna enjoyed working with Harry. He rarely got upset about things she didn’t understand and when he did, he was usually gracious enough to try and explain – not that she could always follow those explanations, but she appreciated the effort regardless. It was pleasant talking to him, almost like talking to Ginny, although not actually in any way that was truly similar. But it was like talking to Ginny, even if it wasn’t at all the same sorts of conversations they had. There wasn’t anyone in the office that Luna disliked – she wasn’t sure that she had ever met anyone she disliked – but Harry was someone she liked more than most people, or at least liked spending time with more. There was something about him that was just comfortable. A curious feeling but, as with most curious things, one she liked. 

She lifted her shirt out of the sink and raked it with a not-particularly-critical eye as it dripped. The light blue was still visibly colored with great red smears but they were paler, diluted; there wasn’t enough blood left to get stiff when it dried and that was the important thing. “I wonder why people don’t just come in and register, when they realize they aren’t registered,” Luna mused. “The ones who aren’t rebels, I mean – I suppose for them, not registering is deliberate.” She wasn’t sure why, but that was one uncertainty that she regularly sought satisfaction for by demanding answers from any rebellious wix they captured. They always gave so many wonderful and varied answers; it was one of her favorite questions.

She had to raise her voice almost to a shout so that Harry could hear the answer to his question over the roar of the hand dryer as Luna held her shirt out in the hot gush of air. There were spells to dry things of course, but TRAUE had never encouraged its students to think about magic as an easy fix to turn to in ordinary circumstances, and it didn’t occur to Luna to cast one. “He said a lot of things,” she explained cheerfully, “but most of it was threats and vulgarities. Interesting, certainly, but not very ‘useful.’ He died before we got to the point at which people start being ‘useful.’“ She rolled her eyes, showing her scorn for official policy and what they considered ‘useful’ versus ‘pointless’ information. To her, no information was pointless – that was the whole point. “I do have to write up a report, stab all those words from thoughts to facts. I’ll make sure a copy ends up on your desk first thing if you want a transcript,” she offered. “Unless there’s any specific information you want faster – something that might give you an excuse to leave the office before we’re done with processing, maybe?”

There were a lot of obvious things Luna was oblivious to. Then there was everything else.

"Er - my hobbies?" Harry made a face. He wasn't good at talking about himself, especially under pressure. As the question left Luna's lips, Harry immediately forgot every hobby he had and everything that he liked outside of work. "I -- run." Well, that was stupid, but he couldn't exactly tell her that he liked to practice combat magic, search for dogs that may have followed him during his childhood, and run around under his invisibility cloak in his free time. He liked Luna, but she would definitely have to report that. "I'm crazy for football," he added. "Might have ended up playing it if I hadn't turned out to be -- well, you know." He laughed and reached back to mess up his hair nervously. "Just imagine that. Better that I'm not though; I'd have nothing to wind down with." He was going to kick himself later for not mentioning something more interesting, like how he'd started kickboxing, or that he was really enjoying the current season of Masterchef and liked to curl up on the couch with takeout and a beer to watch it.

"I don't think they have to be declared rebels to want off the system," Harry replied, as he watched her pull her dripping shirt out of the sink. His instinct was always to grab for his wand, and he'd wanted to cast a cleaning charm the moment he'd seen her shirt, but not everyone thought like that. Casual uses of magic weren't even really acceptable around other wix, let alone around the office. "Once they're registered; that's it. They're on the system forever and they can be traced. Many of them, especially wix on the street, want to avoid that as long as possible. It's a kind of freedom to them." Whether he agreed with them or not, Harry was paid to think like rebels and other unregistered wix. It was his job to observe them and consider why they did what they did, and how to find others that did the same. "There are plenty of reasons; I'm sure you hear a lot of them when you're working."

Harry's face split into a grin. Her offer was not unappreciated. It was no secret that being cooped up made him antsy but even if it was, Luna was trained to look for people's tells, especially when under pressure. That only made her offer more appreciated. The truth was, he had to get that damn paperwork done today. He knew that he could wait until she finished her report. "You have no idea how much I appreciate that," he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "But I'm in enough trouble already without you enabling me." He said it with a bright smile, to indicate that he was joking. "I'll have a look at your report when you're done and see if it warrants going back out there. I do like reading your reports." Another truth.

There was the small matter of her ruined shirt though, which jarred Harry out of his grin. "Hey, you should borrow this." He slipped out of his brown jacket and offered it to her. It would be a bit too big on her frame, but it would cover either her naked top half or her blood-stained shirt long enough to get back to her office. He didn't want her walking out there half-clothed or covered in blood, despite the possibility that no one would blink an eye. “Don’t argue with me, now. I’m determined.”

[theinvisibleboi]

On the Job | Open

[theinvisibleboi]

suturesandstitches:

The London Market was one of the easier places for Draco to walk through undetected. People were too focused on the goods and selling the goods to ask about flashes of light coming off his wrists. Here he could find goods that might seem odd to acquire together or simply some food to mix things up back home. Mostly, he enjoyed walking through muggle London like he belonged.

This illusion only lasted so long as no one bothered him by speaking to him. So, when a man stopped him, Draco was forced to remember who he was and where he was. He let the man speak and as soon as he got a good look at him, he lost all patience with him.

“No,” said Draco firmly with a thinly veiled glare. But maybe you have seen the clumsy twit that spilled his coffee all over me just last week. He’s about your height and wears the most out of date clothes you’ve ever seen.”

Shit. Harry could have hit himself. Of all the people to run into on the street while he was working. He was supposed to be observant, to look before he leapt. Clearly that had failed him this time. He'd only spent a large portion of the last week thinking about the encounter at the coffee shop. About the coffee that had ended up all down this bloke's front. He'd been thinking about how the man had seemed to glow, about how that sounded like something out of a bad romance novel.

"Look," he said. "It was an accident. Besides, you reached for my coffee." He may have been thinking about the encounter, but he wasn't about to let some blonde prat tell him off in the middle of the street.

His nose wrinkled at the insult, and even though he didn't put much stock in his appearance, he heard himself snapping back: "Just because I don't dress like some kind of gentry wannabe."

[luna-skips]

Blood in the Drains

[theinvisibleboi]

luna-skips:

“Oh I ‘took up’ painting ages ago,” Luna retorted cheerfully. “That is, if by ‘took up’ you mean, engage regularly in. Just for fun, you understand; not as a career. I don’t know that I should like painting, if I had to do it. But I don’t have to, so I do. Like it, I mean.” An earnest nod accompanied the statement, as though she felt the need to physically underscore her words, perhaps to make up for the fact that she had been quite unintentionally hiding her hobby from her colleagues – not through deliberate action or embarrassment, but simply because there really weren’t any good places in the office to hang pictures like that, and Luna didn’t bring her paints to work so her desk was not decorated the way most of her furniture at home was – with spirals and swirls and colorful flowers. All very amateurishly painted, but sincere as well. It mostly balanced out.

“You’re very nice to paint,” she informed Harry. She sounded not at all abashed at making such a personal statement, nor by the one that followed: “You have lovely coloring.” She looked down at the sink again and added, “Very different from this, although it’s lovely too of course.” She sighed and agreed, “But you’re right, probably this one isn’t sustainable. For one thing, daddy would frown if he saw me walking around the office without my shirt on. I’ve done so well at not forgetting to wear one, I would hate for him to think I’d slipped-up now.”

She looked over at Harry while he spoke, her hands going still in the warm reddish water as she listened. “Soap, yes, that would be a good idea,” she observed, her voice tinged with wonder as though Harry had just made a great intuitive leap. “Thank you.” She lifted one hand from the water and pressed out two heavy pumps from the nearest dispenser. She didn’t notice the faint bloody print her palm left behind. Swirling the soap in with the running water and the stained shirt, Luna watched as suds rose up to add themselves to the very transitory canvas of the sink.

“I’m glad he wasn’t a difficult one to catch,” she said. “I would hate to think of you going to a lot of work for such meager results. You and your chin both.” Luna did not, personally, consider the results of the dead man’s short-lived interrogation inconsequential – but she knew that officially they were, and Harry would probably agree with the official assessment. Most people seemed to, for some reason, even when those assessments were terribly boring. She paused in her scrubbing to ask, “Oh, you probably came in here to do something other than help me with my shirt, didn’t you?” Since he had not, after all, known that she would be in here washing her shirt – probably – it seemed a safe assumption to make. “Please don’t let me interrupt whatever that was.” She gestured vaguely with one streaked and soapy hand in the direction o the stalls and urinals opposite the row of sinks at which she worked. “We can talk while you’re taking care of whatever it is I’m sure, if you like. How odd that he would have hit – clocked – you rather than trying for a curse or a hex. Did he seem like an isolated case?” she asked, hardly pausing for a beat in between the sharp juxtaposition of subjects. “He kept calling out for somebody named Marcus and someone else named Artie – but he hadn’t gotten around to telling us if they were wix too, or just people he knew.” She shrugged and added brightly, “They may even have been figments of his imagination!”

"Oh, well that's nice," Harry said. Maybe Luna had mentioned painting before and he'd missed it, or forgotten? That was highly unlikely, but not impossible. He was less alert (some would say paranoid) when he was at work in the building, but he was by no means relaxed. Though he was utterly useless at keeping up with anything that could be regarded as office gossip, prominent hobbies were not a detail he would have missed. Especially with Luna. "Like I said, I don't know much about art but I'm sure yours is great." He meant it, too. She was nothing if not creative in her work, and he was sure that bled (no pun intended) into her personal life as well. "It's good to have hobbies outside of work," he told her. "We'd all go spare if we had nothing else to think about."

The identification of himself as a subject made Harry pause. He could feel the tops of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose darken with heat which he quickly tried to shake off. "I -- uh -- thank you." It wasn't the usual sentiment expressed when someone took the time to comment on his "colouring". At least he was saved from truly having to respond to her statement when she decided to follow his advice and add soap to her water. He nearly said something about the bloody hand print she left behind on the soap dispenser but decided that it was a battle for another time.

"It happens," was his response to her comment about meager results. "They won't all be gems. Half the folks I bring in aren't worth the time anyway. More likely to be street urchins that never got registered than rebels." If his job relied on only catching rebels, he'd be working at the local supermarket by now.

He blinked. "Oh. Uh -- yeah." In truth, he'd only come in here to waste a little bit of time before going back to his desk, but he didn't want to admit to that now. Then again, the alternative was to either whip it out at a urinal or lock himself in a stall and hope she left before he did. Neither of those seemed ideal. "Just came by to kill five minutes, actually," he admitted, trying to keep up with the turns in conversation. "I'm fine. Actually, I snuck up on him and disarmed him before he could cast anything. Training 101. Left him one thing to resist arrest with."

Harry leant his hip against the nearest sink, crossing his arms over his chest. "He did seem isolated, but it sounds like he might have had friends. I can always go back to where I found him, check around and see if anyone knows him. Might be nothing, but it could lead to a group of them. Unregistereds tend to run in packs." More accurately, it was a reason to get back on the streets and away from his desk. He'd take any opportunity to get back out there, even if it might lead to nothing. "Is that all that he said?"

[lilyevncs]

Moodboard; Harry James Potter   ↳ “i don’t go looking for trouble, trouble usually finds me.”

for @newtonscabander

want one?

[theinvisibleboi]

On the Job | Open

Often the best thing to do after bringing someone in was to follow up. Check with people who may have known them in the places they hung out in. It was always best to do this out of uniform, Harry felt, and to keep his status as a field agent out of the conversation unless completely necessary, lest it tip off the kind of people he was looking for.

Today, it was following up on the unregistered wix that Luna had lost, since they weren't going to be getting any information out of him. Harry had observed the man on the outskirts of a London market, though he'd never found out whether the man was buying or selling. In his street clothes, Harry quietly asked around about the man."

"Hi, I'm looking for a friend of mine. About this tall, black braids, nose piercing. Hangs around here a lot.”

[luna-skips]

Blood in the Drains

[theinvisibleboi]

luna-skips:

Luna looked up from her contemplation of the blood spirals dancing through and then draining out of the sink. It wasn’t the door closing that caught her attention but the sound of her own name being spoken – a sound that a long childhood of distraction had trained her to recognize and respond to, even when her thoughts were a million miles away.

She smiled dreamily when she recognized the confused face of Harry Potter peering out at her through spectacles beneath tousled black hair. “Hello, Harry,” she said in her usual vaguely cheerful voice, not at all nonplussed by being seen in little more than her underwear by a work colleague. “Come and look at this.” She pointed at the sink, half-full of water and soaking shirt and spiraling bloodstains. “Isn’t it pretty? It’s almost like a painting, except of course you can’t hang it on a wall, and it won’t last very long before it’s gone so I suppose it’s nothing like a painting at all – well, not unless you made a painting out of watercolors and then spilled a pitcher across it before it dried, I suppose…” Her voice wandered off for a few minutes as she contemplated the scenario, then resumed with a speculative, “I wonder if that would make the piece more or less valuable? From an artistic standpoint, I mean,” she hastened to clarify, knowing that people often misunderstood what she was saying when she didn’t take the time to explain what she meant, and she definitely hadn’t been talking about monetary value.

Then a frown crossed her features and she added, apologetically, “Oh, that fellow you brought in for us? The one with all the pretty braids?” She shook her head, unconsciously swirling the shirt and its seeping bloodstains around in circles with her hands while she spoke, although as she still hadn’t remembered to add any soap that had little affect on the shirt overall. “I’m afraid he won’t be answering as many questions as we had hoped he would. Daddy says he must have had poor blood-pressure. I hadn’t thought to check for that, first. I’m sorry. I ought to have, but he seemed so healthy that it just didn’t come up.” She shrugged then met Harry’s green gaze, earnest concern beaming in her own overlarge grey eyes. >

“Was he terribly difficult to apprehend? He did give us some very lovely screams, though,” she added hopefully, as though that might cheer Harry up despite the loss of such a recently-acquired information source.

It was that strange smile of Luna's that put Harry at ease. Others may have cited it as the thing about her that made them the most uncomfortable, but after working with her for a time, Harry realised that it wasn't her smile that should worry him. That didn't make him any comfortable about seeing more of her bare skin than he'd ever expected he would. A quick glance over her torso confirmed that the blood was not hers, which removed the immediate need for concern, then his eyes were on her face again. He stepped forward to look at the bloodied water in the sink; blood he was familiar with. Half-dressed colleagues, not as much.

"Not thinking about taking up painting, are you?" Harry asked, watching the blood circle through the water. It wasn't unusual to see someone from their department covered in blood, but it was strange to see such an uncontrollable amount of blood, and on such nice clothes too. That, coupled with Luna's appearance in the men's room, told Harry that it had been unexpected and she'd been in a hurry. He didn't really want to ask but he got the feeling that he'd be hearing about it soon enough. "I don't know much about art," he admitted, as though that might not be obvious. "But I'd think that blood would either make the art worthless, or priceless. Depending on whose blood it was." Blood certainly made things like crimescenes and murder weapons important; it all depended on who had done the bleeding. "Not sure this one's sustainable as an art project."

He motioned to the sink with his head. "You know there's easier ways to clean blood out of your shirt, right?" A trip to the staffroom may have even been better. But -- no. Maybe she liked to watch it, to touch it with her own hands.

His head snapped back up to observe her face as she talked about the man. Harry remembered him, had only picked him up a few days ago. An unregistered wix with a concealed wand that he'd been observing for a week had finally messed up, so Harry had brought him in. He didn't like to think about what happened to the people he brought in. He knew they went to Luna and the other people of the department for questioning, he just didn't want to know the specifics.

"He wasn't hard to grab," Harry said, instead of commenting on the blood-pressure or the screaming. "Clocked me in the jaw once but he went down pretty easy after that." He cleared his throat again. "I'm sorry you didn't get anything out of him. He might have just been an isolated case anyway." His gaze was drawn to the blood in the water again. "Do you at least want to add some soap to that?"

[monstrousthingsrp]

 ჻  MONSTROUS THINGS ~ THE INVISIBLE MAN

          HARRY POTTER   ჻   24   ჻   MUGGLE DEFENSE

 ჻  BIOGRAPHY

Harry Potter isn’t someone who ought to be easy to ignore, but somehow – he has a knack for going unnoticed. Maybe it’s the oddly-effective Invisibility Cloak he inherited from his father; maybe it’s the unruly hair and brown skin that make people look the other way so they can pretend they weren’t staring. As a desi boy who was raised by white guardians after his own troublemaking parents were killed resisting arrest, Harry knows what it’s like to be stared at by people who don’t want to admit they’re staring – and on top of that, there’s the stars by his eye and the wand at his belt to make people squirm.

Part of him likes the squirming, but he keeps that to himself. He’s supposed to be the poster child for the Ministry’s reeducation program after all, and taking glee in making ordinary people uncomfortable doesn’t fit his image.

Of course, all the commendations he earns for his stealthy and sharp-eyed work as an agent of the Ministry make everyone who really knows him laugh out loud, so clearly one’s image doesn’t always have much to do with reality. Expert at observation, his superiors say, patting him on the back – and his friends snicker. “Expert at being oblivious,” they joke, and it’s not really a joke – but it’s also not really true, either. Maybe he doesn’t notice the same things as other people, the things that inspire gossip around the office cooler like who’s kissing whom or when the boss got that terrible new haircut, but when it comes to spotting threats and enemies his green eyes work just fine. Perhaps it was all the teasing that kept him from saying anything when he thought he was being followed by a dog that wanted to talk to him – or maybe that was just his idea of a childhood imaginary friend. It’s been years since he’s seen that dog after all, and Harry’s not someone who’s ever been curious about the past…so why does it suddenly feel so urgent that he find it now?

 ჻  CHARACTER TIES

GINNY WEASLEY | SOMETHING ELECTRIC  there’s something different about Ginny lately. Harry has known her for ages thanks to his friendship with Ron, but there’s something now that doesn’t quite feel like “Ron’s Little Sister” spinning around Ginny. Harry thinks he might like it, but there’s also something that feels rather wrong about it, too.

NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM | OH BROTHER  it’s taken Harry a good couple of years but he’s almost determined that Neville’s little shop might not be as innocent as he once assumed. Maybe he could even be into something nefarious… but it’s Neville. They’re brothers. And Harry will do almost anything to keep them both out of trouble.

 ჻  SUGGESTED FACECLAIM: Avan Jogia ჻  ჻ {CONNECTIONS TAG}  

[theinvisibleboi]

♥ - STAKED - a jarring event, something that changed their life/outlook

The first time that he kicks that black and white ball across the field, something ignites inside him. It's not so much the connection of ball and foot but what comes after; running at top speed across the grass with the wind against his face and his hair whipping around his head in a frenzy. It felt like something close to freedom. It wasn't it, but it was close enough.

His guardians allowed him to join the football team and Harry played up until it was time to attend the Academy. He loved the sport and he loved the social element of working in a team; being good at it and winning games a lot helped as well. Little eleven year old Harry wanted to play professionally. There was no doubt in his mind that it was what he wanted to do when he grew up.

When they sat him down and told him he'd never be allowed to play, Harry's heart broke. He had a responsibility to the community, they said. He had to be an example of how wixen children could become upstanding members of society. He couldn't waste the chance that they had given him by playing football; his destiny was to learn how to use his magic to keep the bad wix at bay. He had to be apart of that team, they said.

Little Harry was devastated but he understood. He understood the importance of working in a team now, of following the rules and winning the game. He liked being in a team, he wanted to be a team player.

He stopped playing football and started telling people he wanted to join the Ministry when he grew up.

[theinvisibleboi]

♦ - HOARD - something that is precious to them

The cloak is just a means to an end.

Harry can be twice as effective at his job when he's invisible, sneaking into places that he woudn't otherwise get into. It's just another tool of the trade, like his wand or his cellphone or his badge. Just because he hasn't notified his superiors and had the cloak logged with the Ministry -- that doesn't mean anything, it's just that he doesn't want the cloak to fall into the wrong hands. An invisibility cloak in the hands of a rebel or unregistered wix would be devastating for the Ministry, so the fewer people who know about it, the better.

It's got nothing to do with the fact that the first time he'd held the cloak it was left with a note saying that it had belonged to his father. He'd buried his face in it and inhaled, trying to imagine the smell of his parents, wondering what his father had done with this cloak, imagining if his parents had been holding this cloak the night they were killed.

It's got nothing to do with the fact that throwing the cloak over his shoulders makes him feel that little bit closer to his father. That it represents the kind of link to his magical heritage that no star on his face or graduation certificate in a frame ever could.

It definitely has nothing to do with the fact that when he slips under the cloak and from sight, Harry feels unobserved for the first time in his life. That invisibility is the one thing that allows him freedom, the peace of mind that he's not being watched, judged, monitored. It's the one thing he has for himself that doesn't belong to the Ministry or his job.

No, Harry tells himself, the cloak is just a means to an end.

[luna-skips]

Blood in the Drains

Blood was not quite as common a sight in the Department of Unnatural Interrogation and Information Gathering as people tended to assume it was – but it certainly wasn’t an uncommon sight, either. (Magic might have a lot of very effective ways to hurt people without making them bleed, but the people in charge of the Ministry of Magical Regulation weren’t magical and they liked to see things they understood, sometimes.) So nobody stopped Luna to ask if she was all right as she ambled down the hallway with crimson bursts flowering across the front of her skyblue blouse.

It was almost pretty, save for the fact that where the stains were drying they were turning an ugly, rusty brown that did not compliment the color as well as the bright wet reds they had started as.

Luna wouldn’t have minded the stains except that she knew that they would get stiff as they dried and on a diaphanous, flowing blouse like this, that would be itchy and uncomfortable. So she sailed into the nearest loo – paying no more attention to the designation of the sign outside it than she ever did when her mind was distracted with other thoughts – careful to keep her hands elevated, nudging the door open with her elbows instead to avoid leaving red handprint smears behind. She made straight for the row of sinks, not bothering to look around and see if the room was empty before she started pulling her shirt off over her head and stuffing it into the nearest basin. That left her in a cream bra patterned with purple stars and the too-small blue tank that half-obscured the bra and had kept the stars from showing (too much) through her shirt.

She hummed a little, tunelessly, as she turned the water on and watched the swirls of red twist and writhe under the deluge. “How pretty,” she murmured, too transfixed to remember to grab the soap and start scrubbing. “Like watching an Impressionist painting in motion. Or watching one die, I suppose. Hmm.”

[theinvisibleboi]

Paperwork days were the worst for Harry. There was nothing more mind-numbing than sitting at a cubicle all day and filling in reports, especially when he'd slept in late and hadn't had time for his morning run. That always meant that he had extra energy, that he'd be tapping his foot or running his hands through his hair restlessly. It made him twitchy and that made him irritable, which never ended well. Nevertheless, there was nothing to be done about it. He had a stack of paperwork that he had been avoiding for weeks and was now a feature of his desk.

A day of paperwork meant sitting at his desk and drinking coffee. The only way to break the monotony of the day was to walk the floor every hour or so, and according to Harry's watch, that hour had just ticked over. He walked the length of the floor first, saying hello to a few other Ministry workers, then headed for the loo. He could kill five minutes in there and fix his hair, which had become unruly from running his hands through it, and then he could get another coffee. That would be ten more minutes of somthing before he went back to doing nothing.

Harry stopped just inside the room and let the door swing closed behind him. He blinked. He blinked again, then flickered his gaze around the room to check that he'd walked into the right bathroom. He had. It was the blonde across from him at the sink that was out of place, shirt off and from what he could see, covered in blood.

He cleared his throat. "Uh -- Luna." It wasn't hard to recognise the hair and face of Luna Lovegood, agent of the Departent of Unnatural Interrogation and Information Gathering.

"Do you need a hand?"

[monstrousthingsrp]

Monstrous Headcanons:

Because we can’t all just put brains in jars to see how they tick.

♦ - HOARD - something that is precious to them ✿ - DECAY - an old memory, from childhood perhaps ⚔ - DUEL - a meeting or relationship that was important to them ♥ - STAKED - a jarring event, something that changed their life/outlook ∇ - TOMBSTONE - who they are versus who they appear to be ☼ - DAYSTAR - a secret they don’t want coming to light ☂ - THUNDERSTORM - a difficult or miserable time in their life ⚖ - SCALES - how well they balance their good and bad impulses ϟ - LIGHTNING - something they thought they’d left in the past, returned ☢ - BIOHAZARD - the most dangerous thing about them to others ♬ - DIRGE - a habit, hobby, or obsession they can’t seem to shake ■ - LAIR - where they live, work, or spend most of their time ☠ - DEATH - the closest it’s come to touching their life

Ask on-anon or off!

[monstrousthingsrp]

Welcome to Monstrous Things, Mille!

“Sometimes Harry has to explain away the fact that there is a rapid fluttering of his pulse, the thundering beat of his heart, a spark at the base of his spine that propels him forward into dangerous situations. It makes him feel alive, and that’s not something he can explain to his superiors, or his friends.”

We are excited to accept your application for Harry Potter and, of course, can’t deny our own excitement for seeing the path Harry takes in moving from good government stooge to raging against authority! We look forward to seeing both how familiar, and how unfamiliar, he will become and look forward to little touches like that “lightning bolt joke” making us all smirk!

Your FC change to Avan Jogia has also been accepted.

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