[DtMD] [H&Co.] Put my feet back on the ground. [Hadley]

It had been a week since magic had ceased to exist and it was like the world had been turned upside down. Nessa, by definition, hated when things were out of order. She was losing her mind without her magic and it seemed the rest of the world was too. It was chaotic and she did not handle that well. Having to lock her door by hand behind her she looked far different than she usually would. Her hair was a bit frizzy, not the classic silky smooth that it was normally, and she had it tied up on top of her head. Without the use of magic, which she had been using her whole life, Nessa didn't have the foggiest idea of how to style her hair. She looked a mess really. Magical products had been introduced to her at a young age and she had no idea how to use muggle make up. Her cheeks were pinker than normal, the result of having to physically lug around a big cardboard box of thick tomes. The books inside the box were heavy and normally she would of just used a weight charm or put them into a magically enhanced purse but none of those things worked. She was roughing it and boy it showed.

Normally clad in leather jackets and boots she was dressed much differently. The sun was shining and it was hot and she didn't have any charms to keep her cool she was forced to go out in public in just a tank top and shorts. In total Nessa looked like a shell of her normal self. She was usually very refined, sophisticated, and beautiful but today she was looking haggard. She had dark sunglasses on her face to hopefully help keep anyone from realizing it was her as she stalked toward the bus. Travelling had to be one of the worst parts of this whole disaster. She was forced onto the subway and had to get off and switch trains multiple times before she finally got to London. She wondered how the heck she was going to get into Diagon Alley but luckily it seemed like the wards were down and the magical brick wall had been broken through. She was pretty sure at least a few patrons in the Leaky Cauldron were muggles, the charms that kept them from wanting to stop by for a pint no longer working. She stuck her nose up at them as she passed through the dingy pub and the box grew heavier and heavier as she did.

By the time she reached Holmwood and Co. a few beads of sweat had built up on the back of her neck. She hated this, she was tired, and warm, and hungry and not a very happy person to be around... not that she ever was. She burst through the door, using the heft of the box to push it open in a hurry and slammed it down on the counter. "HADLEY GET OUT HERE!" She nearly demanded, pushing hair that had fallen from her hair tie away from her face with a huff of frustration. She tipped the box over on the counter, ignoring the fact that the books were heavy and the counter was glass, and waited for the other witch to appear. "We have work to do!" As the box tipped books began to waterfall out of it and land on the counter with increasingly loud thuds. Nessa had been to the shop before and she hoped that the other potioneer would be able to help her suss out what had happened to the world. If magic was never restored Nessa was certain to become the next serial killer on the worlds top wanted list. She was not cut out for a life of real work, dealing with muggles, and nothing being easy. She would not survive, and she'd take down anyone who got in her way with her.

They needed to fix this.

Hadley sometimes wondered why she even bothered coming into work.  The first few days after magic stopped functioning, Diagon Alley had been a madhouse.  But now, when most people had resigned themselves to the situation, it had become a shadow of its former self.  What use was there in coming in to buy a broomstick when, in all reality, it was just a glorified twig now?  Why come in and buy potions when most of them were now messes that tasted terrible without any bonus effects?  The few pubs in the area might be doing a brisk business, but even they had suffered because most could not afford to spend hours traversing muggle areas just to get a bit of drink.  But here she still sat, because Hadley honestly couldn’t afford to stop coming in.

The highlight of the whole ordeal was that now Hadley could organize herself to a certain degree.  Muggle transportation ran on strict schedules, so she had to be ready and out the door at specific times in order to go out and do anything.  She fervently wished she had taken her parents up on the offer to learn to drive, but at the time it had seemed a ridiculous pastime.  Now that apparition and the floo network weren’t operating, Hadley took the bus every morning.  Luckily, she lived relatively nearby and didn't have to change her schedule too much. 

The day had proven to be quite warm, although Hadley had a warning of this beforehand.  Her flat’s walls were incredibly thin-a feature she had previously hated, but now allowed her to eavesdrop on her neighbors with ease.  That morning, they had been discussing the unseasonal warm front moving through the area and Hadley had chosen her clothing to reflect this.  Still wanting to seem a tad professional, she opted for slacks instead of a skirt or shorts, but put on a breezy top and pulled her hair up into a smooth braid.  She finished off the look with a wide headband to keep her hair out of her face, and brought a bag of vegetables into work with her.

Hadley seldom slacked off at her job, but recent circumstances had basically forced her into spending her time doing something other than brewing potions.  She set herself to preparing vegetables, carefully mincing garlic and mushrooms, chopping onions and celery, and cutting the rest of the ingredients she used in her vegetable soup.  The soup itself actually tasted better chilled, but unfortunately there wasn’t a way around that at the moment.  She dumped all the components into an empty cauldron, and set it onto a hearth that was placed in the room for cooler weather.  With a few strikes of some matches, she had a fire lit, and before long the soup was bubbling beautifully.  Stirring it with a large wooden spoon Hadley had also brought from home, she heard the door open.

Quickly following this were a succession of loud thuds and a familiar voice yelling for her. Hadley hurried from the back room, forgetting she had the spoon in her hand.  “Nessa, you’ll wake all the ghosts in the world if you don’t hush,”she began, stopping with amusement when she spotted the other witch.  The past two weeks obviously hadn’t been kind to her.  Hadley couldn’t ever remember a time when Nessa hadn’t been groomed to perfection, but indeed, it was like they had switched places overnight.  She was careful to stop from smiling at the thought because Nessa would be quick to flay her with her sharp tongue if she even guessed what Hadley was thinking.  She bent to pick up some of the large books Nessa had so unceremoniously flung onto the counter, reading some of the titles and raised her eyebrows.  “What exactly are we working on here?”  She suddenly remembered the spoon in her other hand and turned red.  Cooking while she should be working wouldn’t precisely help her keep her job.  Hopefully Nessa wouldn’t mention it, but still… she casually laid the spoon on the counter and drew her attention back to the matter at hand.  “You don’t mean…magic?  Nessa, that’s ridiculous.  I’m sure that they have top people working on this, not that..er…we’re not considered top people.  Plus, I’m really busy here.”  Obviously she wasn’t, but being drawn into what seemed a hopeless cause somehow didn’t appeal to her at the moment.  Then again, if matters didn’t fix themselves soon, the whole wizarding community would collapse even further. Hadley sighed with frustration and pulled a stool over, plopping down on it with no ceremony.

Her dark eyes glanced by the doorway leading to wherever Hadley had just come from and then they tightened when they caught sight of the other witch. She shot daggers are her, glaring with a clear look of frustration and jealousy written on her face. How in the hell did Hadley look so formal in this situation. Nessa ran her hand over the top of her head nervously, almost self consciously, and tried to tuck down the fly aways. She was not usually like this and it was making her blood boil. She felt uncomfortable in the presence of the other witch now but she had to push that way way down, they had work to do. She sneered at Hadley and replied with a bit of venom. "The ghosts don't care Hadley, their dead." She nodded her head, emphasizing her point and her frustration before she plopped down on a small stool at the front of the counter. She flipped open the first of a very large stack of books and let the hard cover slam down on the glass counter top without hesitation. She ran her fingers along a few lines of the index, finding the chapter she wanted and then started digging into the book as Hadley spoke again.

Mid-sentence Nessa's eyes were back on the girl and a frown seeped across her features. "Yeah, you look real busy." Sarcasm dripped like poison of her words and she rolled her eyes before turning over half the pages in the book, trying to get to the chapter the index had called on. "What are you doing anyway? Practicing to be a good house wife?" She eyed the spatula on the counter and then the clean pressed outfit Hadley was wearing. "Is that your fall back plan if we don't get our magic back?" She stared at the other witch, clearly frustrated and not leaving an ounce of friendly tone in her voice. She liked Hadley, she was one of the few witches Nessa actually trusted to ask for help. She had come to the shop months ago and the other potioneer had actually been able to help her with a rather nasty problem. For that Hadley had joined the tiny list of people Nessa didn't despise, unfortunately that didn't grant her any politeness when it came to Nessa's demeanor. She was a nasty witch, snarky and kind of a brat, she couldn't help it. She didn't get along with many people but of course she just assumed that was because there was something wrong with them.

After staring at Hadley for a few moments she turned back to her book and exhaled loudly. She had found the page she was looking for and it references planetary alignments in wizarding history. Celestial events held a lot of power and Nessa had uncovered that the day they lost their magic there was a full alignment of all the planets in their solar system. She assumed that was important and had gone to the library at the Regan's estate and pulled every historical text referencing planetary alignments she could get her hands on. "The night magic went down the planets were aligned Hadley. That only happens every few centuries, I think it has something to do with this." She pushed the book toward the other woman and spun it around so she could read the short intro to the chapter outlining what kinds of things could be linked to a celestial event of this magnitude. "And don't get any of your good housewife goop on these books or my cousin will kill me." She arched an eyebrow, meaning business. Sure these weren't books from the archives or the vault but they were important enough to be in the Regan collection so Nessa knew to take care of them.

Nessa’s words triggered a response deep inside Hadley, and she struggled to control the emotions on her face.  The witch was right; all of the mundane things she had been occupying herself with in the past week suddenly flared up in her mind as being outright embarrassing.  Cooking calmed her, it was true, but she shouldn’t have let that and her other pastimes lull her into a state of stagnation. Now slightly angry with herself, she carefully picked up her spatula and wiped it down before setting it further away from the pages of the books scattered everywhere. “It was…easier,” she paused before continuing, “I think I didn’t really want to come to terms with it, with magic being gone.”  She was suddenly struck by the implications- the full consequences of spells not working anymore.  Magical creatures would be running wild, Hogwarts would be visible...she was surprised that the Statue of Secrecy hadn't been breached yet.  But then again, she could faintly remember her muggle friends as a child, brushing off her childhood magic as bad luck or circumstance.

Perhaps her muggle upbringing had failed her in this respect.  Slipping into a rut, Hadley had basically become what she would have been, had she never found out about magic.  Nessa had obviously been working on the issue while Hadley had just been muddling along.  She scanned the page being thrust at her.  “Um, Nessa?  You do know that we can’t move planets, right?  Even before we lost our magic, it would probably have been impossible.”  She was still intrigued, however.  The witch had obviously done her research.  Placing a finger to mark her spot, she flipped further into the book. 

“Does it say anywhere about what happened in the past? If it happens every few centuries, it’s got to be documented somewhere.  Some of these books look old enough to have been around with Merlin.”  Reaching for another book, she stuck her useless wand in between the first one’s pages so she could free up both hands.  Hadley was beginning to grow on the idea.  It reminded her of the year before she started working, when all she did was research potions and various plants when not going on interviews.

“Look, in this one, the Mayans believed the world would end when the planets aligned.  And this one predicted natural disasters… but that hasn’t happened.  Yet.”  She glanced up at Nessa carefully,  "And I'm sure it won't if it hasn't happened already."  The other woman already seemed on the tipping point, and Hadley didn't want to trigger even more rage than she was already exhibiting. 

She rolled her eyes at Hadley's implication of moving planets and quickly followed it with an enthusiastic frown. "Yes Hadley I know we can't move planets." The tone of her voice was both dismissive and sarcastic, two things she was a master at combining. She continued to flip through the pages of her book, leaving pages open as she moved on to another book. She remained seated for only mere minutes before she had hoped up, shuffled the stool away from the counter, and began digging in again. With fervor Nessa moved from book to book, referencing things back and forth and nodding as Hadley spoke. "I agree." She mused allowed, her finger trailing along a particularly old bit of text as she pondered what the other witch was saying. "It's not the end times, you're right. If it was things would be a hell of a lot worse...." It was hard for her to think about what could possibly be worse than not having her magic but she had learned long ago not to ask the question. Things could always be worse.

"You got anything to drink back there that doesn't contain some kind of decapitated creature?" She asked looked at the bottles and jars on the shelf. "Something stronger?" Nessa did her best work sober but she was in need of a stiff drink. She might throttle the next person who looked at her funny if she didn't get some alcohol in her blood. She was hot tempered and kind of crazy on a good day and this definitely was not a good day. "A recurrence!" She nearly yelled as she looked at Hadley with the closest thing resembling a smile that she could manage. "Your brilliant sometimes!" She hadn't thought of that before but it totally made sense now that it was said out loud. And now that it was said out loud Nessa was a bit jealous that she hadn't thought of it first. "Then again sometimes you burn the crap out of whatever the hell it is your cooking back there." She said, shrugging her shoulders and scrunching up her nose as the smelly smoke began to flood the main room of the potions shop. She was pretty sure something was on fire, but its not like she could do anything about it. Without her magic she was basically useless and being useless made her feel all kinds of murderous.

Smoke quickly filled the air in the shop, thick and scented with the smell of burning vegetables.  Hadley jumped up off her seat, paying no attention to the books she had held.  If a fire started, there were multiple herbs and potions ingredients stored in the back area that could prove hazardous to the health of anyone breathing in the vapors.  The cauldron that had been sitting on the hearth smoked ominously, spewing clouds of fumes into the enclosed area.  Hadley coughed, covering her face with her arm, and instinctively reached for her wand to find it missing.  At this time, she missed magic more than ever.  It would have been simple to cast a spell to extinguish the flames under the cauldron, and dispel the smoke.  She cast her eyes frantically around, and grabbed a bag of sand lying abandoned in the corner.  Pouring it directly into the fire, the flames sizzled for a few seconds more, and then went out, smothered by the grit.  Tugging on a pair of gloves used to handle the more dangerous ingredients, Hadley moved the cauldron to a section reserved for disposing of potions.  Hurriedly, she cleaned out the mess she had made and observed the now-cool bottom of the container. If she was ever able to actually make potions again, it might still be useable. 

Hadley’s hair was now slightly singed at the ends as a result of leaning too far into the open flame.  After forcing open a small window in the back, the smoke streamed out and left her able to see more clearly.  Smudges dotted her face and clothes, and her thrumming heat beat rapidly in her chest.  This could have turned into a disaster, if she hadn’t remembered how her father had put out fires when they camped as a family.  If Hadley had attempted to use water to quell the flames, steam would have erupted around her and she more than likely would have been scalded badly.  Without magic to aid in healing, the recovery period would have been a long, painful process.  Taking a few deep breaths to calm her pulse and clear her mind, Hadley grabbed a bottle of nettle wine used in cough potions and stamped back out to Nessa.

“Here,” she said with more anger than she intended, bringing the bottle down on the counter with an audibly smack.  “We don’t often use alcohol in potions, so this is all I could find.”  Hadley was angry, now- angry at the loss of magic, angry at herself for forgetting her soup, and mainly furious that she had almost caused a disaster in her place of work.  It wouldn’t do.  This needed to be fixed, now.  “Why don’t we look for recurrences and see what they did in the past?”  Belying her anger, she hissed this last through clenched teeth.  Pulling an abandoned book towards her, she flipped through the pages, ignoring the other witch for the time being.  If Nessa wanted to cloud her mind with spirits, Hadley couldn’t very well convince her otherwise.  Confrontation had never been her best suit, but her state of mind made her rather more aggressive with her movements and belied her feelings in the matter.  She stopped, suddenly, seeing a passage containing the mention of the absence of magic.  Shoving the book towards the other witch, Hadley jabbed down at the page.  “What’s this about the witanagamot?  It says something about a gathering…” she trailed off and saw her clothes, which she hadn't looked at since racing to the back.  “For the love of Merlin!”  A trail of smoke stains and splotchy soup residue covered her shirt.  For the first time, she considered getting a glass of the wine, but restrained herself. 

A small smirk flickered across Nessa's features as Hadley ran to put out the fire that had started in the back room. Somehow the misfortune of the other witch had lightened her mood a little but that was just Nessa's way. When the other witch returned Nessa nearly laughed out loud at her appearance but she managed to keep it inside. She had been jealous that Hadley had looked so neat even in these dark times and the stains on her shirt made Nessa feel a little less like a slob. On a normal day she might of outwardly laughed and poked fun at the other woman but today was not a normal day. Today Nessa looked worse than Hadley, even after the catastrophe that had just occurred, and she knew she had zero room to talk. Plus she kind of needed the other witch so she was trying to not irritate her into not helping. Trying being the key word. "Do me a favor and try not to burn down Diagon Alley before we get our magic back yeah?" She said sarcastically, the smirk still playing on the corners of her lips, before she grabbed the bottle that had just been placed in front of her.

"Nettle wine?" An eyebrow raised incredulously and she shook her head slightly but she pulled off the stopper non the less. There was no time or reason to bother with a glass so the dark haired witch took a long swig of the thick liquid and nearly gagged at the over powering cherry taste it left behind. It wasn't exactly whiskey, but it wasn't poison either, though... Nessa was starting to wish it was. Not having her magic would truly drive her mad, if she wasn't already there. She did not understand how muggles could live without it, they were so... primitive. She set the bottle back down after she took another, much smaller, sip and then went back to her book. She was surprised when Hadley basically threw a tome in her face and pointed to an excerpt of text. Nessa read the lines and then reread them slowly and more carefully before she turned toward her friend. "This happened in 1000AD..." She was both speaking to Hadley and to herself, thinking out loud because these were tough times. "...That is exactly a thousand years ago." She snatched the book away and flipped the page to continue reading what the text was about.

"King Æthelred the Unready, his Witan, and a group of powerful wizards used a powerful spell to bind a dark witches magic..." Her manicured nails traced the words as she read aloud to Hadley. "A spell of this magnitude would need to draw power from a naturally occurring event of a cosmic scale..." Her brown eyes shot up and she smiled, big and bright, in a way that was rarely seen on her dark features. "Hadley this is it!" She nearly jumped for joy because they might have found the answer to all their problems, but then reality quickly crashed back down over her. She slumped back into her chair and pushed the book back toward the blond before taking another long drink from the cherry syrup and frowning. "Even if that was the event that started this whole thing there is nothing in there about reversing it... and even if there was... we have no magic to actually reverse it." She pushed back the little hairs that had fallen out of her hair tie with frustration and slowly a look of desperation crossed her face. This was not like Nessa. She didn't wallow, she didn't give up, and she certainly didn't ask for help... she wouldn't survive in this world.

Nessa didn’t do a particularly good job of hiding her glee at Hadley’s appearance, and it infuriated her even more.  Just because Ness usually didn’t normally have a hair out of place didn’t give the other witch cause to laugh at her own misfortune.  Then again, the entire debacle was Hadley’s fault, not Nessa’s, so perhaps she shouldn’t judge.  For the first time since the other witch entered the shop, Hadley really looked her over.  Nessa was a mess, not her normal self at all.  Hadley started to pity her, carefully hiding her glances.  That pity dissolved into amusement as Nessa grabbed at the bottle she had set in front of her, her earlier irritation with the woman disappearing.

In spite of everything, Nessa remained Nessa.  Apparently the wine wasn’t exactly to her taste, as she almost gagged upon taking the first swallow.  “I’d be more afraid of the fumes from your breath igniting the air,” she said jokingly, then wincing.  Nessa wasn’t exactly looking to be in a humorous mood, and Hadley didn’t want to tip her over the edge.  Even without magic, she was sure Nessa could probably cause her permanent harm if she felt so inclined.  Thinking this, she edged away from the other woman ever so slightly, just out of arms reach,  She didn’t want to imagine the amount of damage one of these books would do to her face if Nessa took the opportunity to throw one at her.  Of course, once she considered it, she immediately began picturing herself with a broken nose or a black eye.

Her attention was claimed by the matter at hand when Nessa exclaimed and began reading from the passage Hadley had barely skimmed.  Her initial excitement dimmed considerably when Nessa’s eyes took on a look of frantic desperation, and Hadley was sure her own mirrored the same.  Hadley took the book and began reading what came after, flipping pages quickly and skimming down the words as fast as she could.  She could accept that they couldn’t change things are they were right now, but obviously something had happened in the past that caused magic to return, or else no one would have any in these days.  In fact… she gave up on the book and decided to point out what she had mused over while Nessa continued to drain the bottle.

“Do you have an almanac in here somewhere?”  She asked, then promptly began searching the books herself.  “Planetary alignments only last so long….”  She found one, a battered old thing that was certainly not to the standard of the other tomes.  She took the lead from Nessa and began voicing her thoughts as she searched.  “Obviously this takes a certain kind of alignment to happen, or else we would lose magic every few months.”  She remembered a scrap of knowledge gleaned when attending Astronomy classes back at school.  “Don’t the centaurs generally use planets in their predictions?  So the planets can’t stay in the same place forever.  And…ah!”  She stopped and smacked her hand on the page she was looking for.  “Complete alignment… length of time…”  she muttered random words as she read, then looked up at Nessa, judging her next words carefully.

“It’s going to be a few more days, maybe a week, before we get our magic back.  If it’s connected to the planets aligning, and if we’re reading this right.”  She didn’t want to either overexcite the witch by giving her false hope, or drive her into one of her infamous rages.  She considered both of the two outcomes, and gingerly began talking again.  “If you, you know, want some help… I could lend a hand.  With muggle things.”  She didn’t really know if Nessa would accept her aid at all.  It was highly unlike the witch to ask for anything, but then again, she had come in here today, so perhaps she would take the offer.