Chapter Text
“Twenty-seven,” Dawnbright said, inspecting his parchment. “Turning to fifty-one.”
“One hundred and two,” Harrolds called out in return.
Those numbers weren’t unusual. The monitoring of the Veil was as much of a dead-end investigation as a seasoned Unspeakable could imagine. The rookies were sent there to learn basic safety procedures and note-taking, and the supervisor had probably pissed off their colleagues.
Or, at least, Jane had.
She’d much rather go back to her prophecies and time turners than be stuck babysitting those two, but she hadn’t had much of a choice.
“Jane, the newbies really need someone to make sure they don’t get killed,” Farley had smiled at her, eyes almost screaming ‘get the fuck out of my sight’.
“Then get Parker to do it. He certainly hasn’t been pulling his weight around here.”
“No can do, Parker’s already lined up for the brain room. There’s only you who we can reasonably swap around.”
And unfortunately, Farley was a petty bitch that hadn’t forgotten Hogwarts and somehow managed to get higher up in the Department, and so Jane was sent to the idiotic chamber where idiots could kill themselves if they tripped.
“Give me a reading of the alpha-southern quadrant,” Jane ordered over her papers.
Dawnbright scrambled to take measurements, wand alight. “Eleven,” he shouted, and Jane winced at the echo.
A more unusual number, 2 units too big, but not too much outside of the expected amounts. Better for Jane – she was trained in time magic, not death magic. She had no interest in dealing with any death-related emergencies.
They continued with the measurements well into the afternoon, noting it all down for the Farley bitch, and then the shift was over. Jane threw the parchment towards the Unspeakable-authorized paperwork blackhole, a neat little bit of spellwork, and got ready to get out and go get drunk.
“Senior,” Dawnbright approached her, “how long will it take until we get to pick a specialization?”
“Uh-? I dunno, that’s up for whoever has an opening.”
“But surely, after these four months we’d be interviewed about it, at least.”
“Ask Farley,” Jane glared at Dawnbright, annoyed. “If I were the one responsible for it, you’d already be out of my hair.”
“Uhm, ma’am?” Harrolds called from near the veil, “I don’t- I don’t think this is normal.”
Jane snapped around to look at Harrolds. He was kneeling down near the arch, pointing his wand at it and intently reading the results on his parchment. Jane stomped up to him and grabbed it from his hand.
Alpha-southern quadrant, 291 Perls
Jane’s eyes widened, and she pushed Harrolds behind her.
“Protego totalum!” she shouted as the Veil of Death all but exploded.
It was dark in a moment, so slight that she couldn’t almost tell that it’d happened. Not warm nor cold, but not… anything else, either. Just like falling asleep, quick and painless.
And then she woke up with a gasp.
The floor underneath her was cold. Stone, from how it pushed into her back, against the bare skin of her arms and the skin that peeked from the ripped shirt. The air above her was cold, freezing her throat with every inhale, and then forming a cloud above her as she exhaled, soothing her ache.
But even despite her understanding of all the signs that proved she was there, alive, Poppy knew, as clearly as she knew that the sky was blue and the sun was a star, that she was dead.
She woke up with a gasp regardless.
She sat up, slowly, trying not to irritate her wounds. Her broken leg wouldn’t let her stand, not for very long, at least, and she was sure she had at least one broken rib. She remembered it pocking out of her chest, piercing her shirt in the process. But now it was inside of her, she noted, patting down her chest, and all the places she’d been bleeding from before had similarly disappeared, despite the blood on her clothes remaining.
“Merlin, it’s alive,” someone muttered behind Poppy.
She turned around as far as she could. A woman, tall and around her fifties, crossed her arms at Poppy, a strange carved stick in her right hand. Two other people were kneeling behind the woman, one helping the other up.
“What-” Poppy whispered, looking around the room. It was a large chamber made of dark stone. Its only light source was the strange archway in the middle, right next to where Poppy was sitting. “What’s happened?”
The woman furrowed her eyebrows. “I’m Jane Bonnet, Senior Unspeakable at the Department of Mysteries. You’ve just come out of the Veil of Death, so, if anything, I should be the one asking that question.”
“Veil of Death? I- No,” Poppy shook her head, “I did die. I was hit by a car, wasn’t I? How did I get here?”
Bonnet didn’t answer, but kneeled down next to Poppy, taking out her stick and waving it in front of her. “Seems relatively alright. Minor fractures, easily fixable. Miss, I’ll be taking you to St Mungus. Is there anyone you’d like to contact?”
“You’re taking me to a hospital?”
“Hospital? Ah, I see, you must be a squib. Never been to magical places then? What’s your family name?”
“Squib? Magical? What do you mean?!”
Bonnet froze. She looked at the two people behind her. “Dawnbright, get Harrolds out of here and call Pence. We’ve got a code fuchsia on top of a code emerald.”
Dawnbright, Poppy assumed, nodded and helped Harrolds out of the room. Bonnet then turned back to Poppy and smiled at her.
“Not to worry, Miss, this will all be sorted out soon. For now, let’s get you somewhere more comfortable, shall we?”
It was just her luck, Jane thought. Not only did an accident happen today, it had to be one of the more impossible ones, and it had to drag a dead Muggle of all things for her to deal with. Jane didn’t even like Muggles. They were loud and annoying and stupid, and she honestly thought it was a waste of time to try and learn from them, unlike what that fool Weasley liked to claim at Ministry dinners.
At least she could lord over Farley that she witnessed the Veil of Death bring someone back. Merlin knows that woman always wanted to witness something of the sort.
The Muggle was at least complacent enough when Jane was moving her to her office. She looked around in curiosity and mild fear and confusion, but didn’t fight the levitation nor the charm that Jane put around her broken leg until she could get the Muggle to a proper healer.
“Tea?” Jane offered, grabbing her emergency stash of black tea and whiskey.
“No, thanks.”
More for her, Jane reasoned. She brewed a cuppa and mixed a shot in, alongside copious amounts of sugar. She’d need the alcohol and energy, that’s for sure.
The Muggle played with her hands, while Jane drank.
“So…” the Muggle said, wringing her fingers, “what- what happened?”
“You died,” Jane told her bluntly.
“I know that. I remember it. I was talking about the whole large magical arch thingie.”
“Hmm,” Jane pondered. She probably wouldn’t get in trouble for a breach of the Statute. The Muggle had already seen too much, and she was dead to boot. Perhaps the whole business with the Veil meant that the Muggle could no longer fall under that rule.
“There’s a hidden society of wizards and witches,” Jane decided to open with the truth. “We separated from the wider world at around the time of the witch hunts. The place you’re in is called the Department of Mysteries. We study all kinds of magic, including death.”
Jane paused to give time to the Muggle to process the information. She’d really rather not repeat herself.
“The room you were in houses the Veil of Death. It’s a passageway, essentially,” Jane said, and then sipped her tea. “Some have gone through before, but none have ever come out.”
“Until me.”
“Until you.”
The Muggle bit her lip. From the state of it, she probably made a habit of it.
“Am I… still dead?” she finally asked.
Jane shrugged. “I honestly have no idea.” Again, death magic was not her field. “My colleague, Pence, might have a better idea of it, but I wouldn’t count on him either way. Your situation is unprecedented.”
The Muggle bit her lip again.
A knock sounded. “Senior?” Dawnbright’s voice sounded from behind her office door. “I brought Senior Pence.”
Bonnet’s colleague was a short man with round glasses that made his eyes seem larger than humanly possible. He contrasted oddly next to his tall, bony colleague, and, unlike her, didn’t put alcohol in his tea.
“Fascinating!” the man seemed to say every minute or so, pulling his glasses up to better inspect Poppy, as if he was inspecting a particularly interesting bug instead. “Are you truly sure you are not a witch, my dear? Or that you don’t have some kind of magical ancestry at all?”
Poppy bit her lip. “I didn’t know about magic at all, Mr.”
“Even then, surely you must have a squib in your family. Otherwise, you’d never get through the Veil.”
Bonnet rolled her eyes. “You said it yourself, Ambrosius, no one has ever left the Veil. As far as we know, the girl could have nary a drop of magic and still go through.”
Dawnbright coughed into his fist.
“Nonsense! My dear Jane, the Veil is magical, of course even this young lady would have to use magic to go through.”
Poppy didn’t really appreciate these people talking about her like she wasn’t in the room, but she’d rather not call more attention to herself. Bonnet didn’t tell her exactly what magical folk could do, but Poppy had a few suspicions that they could probably do quite a lot of harm.
“I’d love to study this case, of course. The fuschia issue can be easily glossed over – not the first time that the Department has worked with Muggles, after all.”
“I think the Muggle would probably like to go back to her family, Ambrosius.”
“And why should that impede our work? Worry not, worry not, I’ll speak with Richardson. We’ll figure something out.”
“So long as you get this out of my hands.”
Pence waved his stick around – perhaps Poppy could actually call it a wand, now that she thought about it – as if to dismiss the subject. “No promises, Jane. You know how the higher-ups are.”
“You seem awfully confident that you’ll get what you want despite telling me I won’t be able to get her away from me.”
Pence smiled, but did not otherwise say anything in response.
“Welp,” he breathed, getting up from his seat, “I should get going. Take the Muggle to Mungus, Jane. Figure out some backstory, and then I’ll get it straight.”
And then he left.
“Grab my arm,” Jane told the Muggle. She hesitated, but complied nonetheless, hanging her weight on top of the witch. “I will be performing Apparition. It is uncomfortable for first-timers, but becomes better with experience and proper breathing.”
“Apparition?” the Muggle mumbled, but Jane didn’t give her any time to elaborate on any questions before she quickly turned, disappearing from the Department of Mysteries and reappearing at the entrance hall of St Mungus.
A healer came up immediately to them.
“This is my squib cousin, Cassandra Bonnet,” Jane promptly told them, ignoring the look of pity directed at the Muggle. “She had an accident with one of the brooms. I closed the wounds, but I can’t set the bones.”
“Oh, dearie,” the healer cooed. “Worry not, Cassandra, was it? I’ll get you fixed up in no time.”
The Muggle didn’t seem all too pleased by being dragged away by yet another unfamiliar wizard, but Jane shrugged at her. “Just play along,” she mouthed. Hopefully the Muggle would have the sense to go along with the fake name and story.
The healer came out after a few other minutes. “Miss Bonnet?”
“Yes. How is Cassandra?”
“Her bones are set, and I’ve treated some internal wounds. I’d like her to spend the night here. Would you mind filling the paperwork?”
Oh joy. More paperwork. At least she doesn’t have to deal with the Muggle for the night.
“Of course,” Jane nodded. “Would you happen to have a quill with you?”
The healer took out a quill and ink bottle from an expanded pocket, and the parchment floated over to Jane. At least she didn’t have to make up things like the nonsense that Muggles have for a bureaucracy. So far as she said that ‘Cassandra’ was her squib cousin, they’d get her off the hook for pretty much anything.
Hopefully Richardson and Farley wouldn’t make her take responsibility for the Muggle indefinitely.
“I’ve got a few questions for you, actually,” the healer told Jane, after she handed the parchment back. “Cassandra has a few things about her – I was simply wondering if her parents perhaps never bothered with bringing her to a healer?”
“That would be the case,” Jane shrugged. “Aunt and Uncle never quite recovered when Cassandra- well, you know.”
The healer nodded in understanding. “If my own daughter… I wouldn’t know what to do!”
Jane smiled, trying her best to make it come across as sympathetic and not annoyed. “So, what is it that Cassandra is missing then?”
“A few childhood spells – some basic eyesight correction for simple deviations, allergies… and Friedson’s.”
“Friedson’s? Are you sure? Cassandra seems- well, she’s always seemed normal besides the magical part.”
“Quite sure,” the healer pursed her lips. “It was an immediate match. I’m assuming you’re her closest family member?”
Jane grimaced, but the healer seemed to take her disgust as confirmation.
“Would you like to-?”
“There is no need,” Jane shook her head. If the Muggle had Friedson’s, then it was her own problem. Jane didn’t want to have to deal with that. Let the woman be strange, surely Muggles liked it if it was tolerated in their society.
At least wizards had the common sense to remove it from children, unless they were odd in other ways or poor.
“I’ll be going, then,” Jane nodded at the healer. “At what time will Cassandra be allowed to leave?”
The doctor (nurse?) that waved her wand around Poppy came back after dinner, sitting down on her bed and looking at her like she was a particularly pitiful animal.
“How did you find dinner, Cassandra?” she asked, taking one of Poppy’s hands into her own.
Poppy winced.
“It was fine,” she said, trying her best to get the conversation to end early.
“Hm,” the witch (Poppy decided to give up on trying to figure out her job title) mumbled. “Are your hands always this cold, Cassandra?”
Not really, she thought. Maybe it’s a side-effect of dying, or something.
“Yes,” she answered simply, not wanting to elaborate and be caught in a lie. Then, she tried her best to look sheepish and child-like (she’d figured that wizards tended to see her as childish, and treat her as they would a child). “You- you can call me Cassie, miss.”
It wasn’t very good acting. Poppy had never been good at it, but the witch didn’t know her, and seemed to be under the impression that Poppy was something she was not, so playing into it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Maybe she’d learn something about what had happened to her.
The witch seemed to fall for it, smiling gently. “How sweet you are, Cassie. How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” she lied, going back a few years. She still looked somewhat like a teenager, and had never bothered with trying to look older. “I’m an adult, miss.”
“Of course you are,” and yet the witch didn’t seem to change her attitude. “It’s quite a pity. I’m sure that if you had magic, you would have been a formidable witch.”
“Some things can’t be changed.”
The witch patted her head. “Would you like some chocolate, Cassie? I’ve got some with me.”
Poppy nodded. The witch handed her a square of chocolate, which she popped into her mouth.
“I heard you saying that I had some blood? But I’m not bleeding,” she said, playing dumb.
“It was in the inside, Cassie. You must have hit the ground pretty hard.”
“Oh,” she mumbled, as if she didn’t know that internal bleeding was a thing before the witch told her. She bit her lip, wondering how to approach the topic she wanted to talk about. “There was… a lot of blood. She- my cousin, she must have told you.”
“She did.”
“I was really scared,” Poppy whimpered. “I thought I was going to die, but then my cousin helped me.”
The witch gave her another square of chocolate.
“Miss, what if I died? Would my cousin bring me back?”
The witch smiled patiently at her. “Death is natural, Cassie. Not even magic can stop or reverse it, so thinking too much about it is a recipe for disaster. Think about happy things instead! What do you like?”
Probably things that would ruin whatever disguise that Bonnet had made for Poppy. Shit, what was the most universal hobby she could think of?
“Uhm,” she mumbled, trying to buy time, “I like to… read… books?”
The witch didn’t seem to care about her odd inflection, but just started to talk about some book series she liked (with titles like ‘Holidays with Hags’, Poppy wasn’t really sure if the woman was talking about documentaries or really weird erotica), and Poppy was sure she couldn’t steer the talk back to the topic she wanted.
She’d just have to wait for Bonnet and her colleagues. She didn’t exactly trust them, but they were her only realistic hope of getting back home, or even figuring things out.
Either that, or she took an even bigger shot in the dark and tried her luck with new random strangers.
Damn, what shit luck, Poppy thought.
“Senior Unspeakable Jane Bonnet, reporting, sir,” Jane mechanically said, straightening her shoulders when she entered Richardson’s office. Farley was already in there, playing with a fairy, and so was Higgs, hunched over some paperwork.
Pence was standing next to Richardson, who himself was sitting in front of his desk, the scritch-scratch noise of his quill sounding constantly as he kept up with all the calculations he was doing.
“Report on situation fuchsia-emerald-one,” he said, not even looking up from his work.
“Subject has been admitted to St Mungus under the pseudonym of Cassandra Bonnet, squib cousin to Jane Bonnet,” she started, looking at Farley from the corner of her eye. “Subject will be removed in the morning, and returned to the Department, under the Department’s jurisdiction.”
Richardson hummed, and finally looked up, clicking his tongue. “Higgs,” he turned towards Dorothea Higgs, “what was it that we said about placement?”
Higgs grabbed her monocle off her face, and rubbed her eyes. Then she returned the monocle to its place, and stared down at her paperwork. “Subject will be studied by the Department, until the situation is properly studied. Subject may be returned to the Muggle world by then,” she grabbed another parchment and squinted at it. “In the meantime, subject will be under the care of Senior Unspeakable Bonnet.”
Jane frowned, in a barely-concealed attempt to not scream in frustration. “My apologies, sir,” she smiled acidly, “but I cannot take the subject in. Besides, there are many more adequate for the task of taking care of a Muggle.”
“Sir,” Farley piped in, “I wouldn’t mind taking Bonnet’s place. My house elf can take care of the Muggle when I’m away, and my speciality falls under the relevant categories.”
Richardson huffed. “No. Bonnet, you will accommodate the Muggle. Farley,” he turned towards the bitch, “you have a project that you have yet to finish. I want no distractions from your part. Understood?”
Farley grimaced. “Yes, sir.”
“Bonnet,” he turned back to Jane, “use the same identity for the Muggle. Paperwork will be provided if needed. You will continue your work with the Veil of Death and determine the cause of this incident. Dismissed.”
Jane wanted to scream, but she simply swallowed it and let it fester inside her. “Yes, sir,” she muttered, and left.
She walked back to her office mechanically.
Fuck Pence. Fuck Richardson. Fuck Higgs. Fuck Farley. Fuck that little fucking Muggle, she grumbled in her head. Mum was right, I should have gone to the DMLE instead.
Jane closed the door of her office, cast a silencing charm, and screamed her lungs out.