November 16th, 1978
Who: Eliza Alderton and Dedalus Diggle
What: Dementors in Hogsmeade!
"Miss, have you decided?" the man behind the counter of Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop asked Eliza, who had been staring at the blue and pink ink for quite some time now. She simply couldn't decide on which she wanted to buy, and she knew it was a silly thing to be focusing on, but she wasn't meeting Dedalus for another half hour, so she was really just wasting time.
She opened her mouth to respond, but out of the corner of her eye she spotted outside the window a rush of people running down the street. The man behind the counter huffed and went to the door, and when he opened it the freezing chill made him drop his ink, and Eliza backed into the shelves.
"Dementors!" the man squeaked and with a crack he disapparated, leaving Eliza alone in the shoppe. Her mouth dropped at suddenly being abandoned, but she pulled out her wand and warily made her way to the door. She couldn't just run, she could sort of do a patronus---
She couldn't see the dementor, but she could feel it, at the defense meetings, they'd talked about them, and Eliza knew right away that the sounds of the water running in her mother's bathroom was because of the dark creatures presence.
Dedalus had been staring at the colorful cakes on display in the Hogs Head for a good five minutes, a little bit spaced out. This wasn't anything new for him, but he had just been so distracted by the bright frosting. Seriously, how did frosting get that bright? Oy. It was starting to hurt his eyes.
Turning away from the desserts, he looked across the room as Emmeline started shouting at James, and couldn't help but smirk at how difficult it was to make out something simple like the time over the loud music. He perked up a bit at the mention of Fireworks, and rose to his feet, taking a final sip of his water before his attention was drawn to the doorway, borws furrowing in confusion at all of the commotion. When he finally understood what was going on, his eyes got wider and his hand went directly to his wand, looking around to see what everyone else was doing.
Okay, he needed to stay calm...he needed to focus, and he needed to breathe, and he needed to think. He needed to think of something happy, even though he felt horrible as his mind was forced to recall the worst of his memories. His eyes shut and he tried to shake it off, but it wasn't working. Focus. Focus. His eyes opened and he pointed his wand at a Dementor that was floating nearby. "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" A large silvery turtle escaped from the tip of his wand, snapping at the dark flowing creature that was nearing in on him. Looking around, he saw that the rest of the order had called thier own Patronus, and that they had to help the people outside. The pe--
Eliza! Oh God. He suddenly began to breathe heavier, running out of the bar, his Patronus following behind him, 'swimming' along, snapping more at any Dementor that tried to get near him. He looked around frantically, trying to help as many people as he could along the way...but there were only so much you could do with one patronus. Thankfully, it was only a matter of time before more Order members were out, and it was then that he took off to look for her. "Eliza! Eliza!" he shouted over the screaming crowd, trying not to get knocked over.
"Expecto patronum!" she shouted, but the rushing of water in her ears, it was too much, and all she got was a small sliver of light. Eliza frowned at herself, not able to hear the screaming or the chaos going around her so she knew the dementor was close, but she couldn't find it. They couldn't turn invisible, right? No, no she was sure they couldn't. Standing in the middle of stampede of terrified people wasn't the best of ideas, and she was pushed out of the middle of the street back to the quill shop, where she pressed against the wall to catch her breath--
---there, oh, bleeding hell, there it was and it had a third year backed up against---Eliza's arm shot out, pointing toward the overhanging of the shop,
"Diffindo!" the sign cracked and fell onto the dementor, giving the third year time to run away, even if the dementor just slithered up from underneath the wreckage and toward her. Bugger. The rushing of water clogged her ears even more, and Eliza was sure she was screaming the spell, but it sounded just above a whisper, "Expecto patronum!"
It was luckly that Dedalus was close enough to the shop to hear the sign fall, which caused him and half of the crowd to look in that general direction. "Eliza!" he shouted her name once again as he saw her, trying to fight against people to get over to her. It was hard to do when you had a rather small frame and about 50 plus people were trying to shove you in the other direction. But, because he saw she was in trouble, it made him that much more determined to get over to her.
He broke free of the crowd, and was pretty much sprinting at this point to get to her, almost flying forward as he stopped himself suddenly so he wouldn't run into her. The silver reptile followed him once again as he grabbed onto her hand, pulling her into the shop, closing the door behind him. It was empty, and because he had his Patronus, the Dementors outside couldn't get to them. "You're alright?" He asked this as his hand moved back along her cheek. Before she could respond, he looked out the window as he heard someone else scream. As much as he wanted to stay in there and keep her safe, he knew that he couldn't. They would have to get out of there quickly.
Once again he turned to her. "I know you're probably scared right now, because...well, it's normal to be...but we need to go back outside. It was probably a really bad move on my part to lock us in here in the first place, but I just...I don't know, I needed to make sure you were okay..."
She couldn't hear him. Eliza moved to tell him, that she couldn't hear anything but the rushing of water, but she saw the people screaming outside and part of her wanted to drag Dedalus to the back of the shop and hide because now that she saw Dedalus, could feel him, the idea of him getting hurt out there was more terrifying than staring down the dementor like she just had been.
But, she forced herself to follow him, making out some of his words, and--really, there was only one reason to go back out there and it was to try and defend against the dementors. Dedalus' turtle (oh, how nice--) gave her some hope as they made it back out into the streets.
Think Eliza, think of a happy thought, a happy memory, get rid of the water, stop thinking about your mum lying in the water---think---being in the garden with Lucy, laughing with Brianna, playing with her nephew, ah--she caught sight of Dedalus again and her mind rushed back to
that morning, and she let out a soft laugh before her expression turned serious and she thrust her wand out at the dementor, "Expecto Patronum!"
A fish flew out, swimming through the air and smashing the dementor back. "A pudding fish," she murmured, randomnly, unsure of how she knew that.
There wasn't any time to waste, so as soon as he thought she was ready, he gave her hand a gentle squeeze before he unlocked the door again with a flick of his wand and pulled her along behind him, keeping her close. He could see his breath in the air as soon as he stepped outside, and his skin had gotten cold as well. He had read about Dementors a million times, but he had never really expected that he would ever encounter one. They were in Azkaban, weren't they? They weren't supposed to just be...roaming around. But, he knew there was more to it than that. He knew that Voldemort had something to do with this, because of the Order. He could only imagine what everyone else was thinking right now...
Well, he could find out, but he was sure that that would give him one hell of a headache. And right now, he had to concentrate. He looked around, trying to see if there was anyone who needed his help, even though it was very hard since people were running around. It was hard to apparate since there was a terrible risk of splinching. And besides, it wasn't like any of the Hogwarts kids could do it anyway. They didn't have anywhere to go.
At one point, he pulled Eliza beside him, pressing his back against the wall of a shop to try and get a better look around, only to look back to her as she laughed. His brows furrowed for a moment, but he wasn't going to say anything since she had just produced a Patronus. The corners of his mouth raised into an amused smirk as he watched the fish float around, looking back to her as she explained what it was. "A pudding fish..." he repeated, sort of in awe. "Have you ever done that before?" He asked, still looking for Dementors out of the corner of his eye.
"Nope." Eliza jumped in surprise, turning to Dedalus with wide eyes, "I can hear you!"
Her grin widened, even if she was freezing, and there was a part of her that wanted to grab his face and kiss him hard, but the voice in her head told her that dementors thrived on happy memories, and it would only draw the dementors closer.
"What should we do? I mean---" there were kids crying and screaming everywhere, and, "We can both do it, we should split up."
Her throat closed at the idea, that heavens forbid they split and she never saw him again, or if she did that he'd---he'd have been attacked and---but the more people out here who could perform the spell, the more who should help. Eliza's grip on Dedalus' hand tightened, trying to build up the courage that she was verbally spouting.
"Good! I mean, wait, you couldn't hear me before?" He looked rather confused for a moment, but he quickly shook it off, pressing himself further against the wall to get himself out of the way of people who were rushing by.
"What should we do? Yeah, split up, right...okay, listen, this is what we're gonna do." He turned to her, feeling her hand squeeze tighter around his own. "I want you to stay very close to the buildings. Try and get them away from as many people as you can, but just...don't try and do more than you can. I want you to meet me at Honeydukes in 10 minutes, and I want you to stay up against the walls. Don't cross the street because right now people are panicking, and when people panic, they lose all sense of logic and they won't think twice about shoving you out of the way." He looked to the side, and his eyes widened as he saw something fly towards them. He tugged her close to him, getting her out of the way as a chair from a shop came crashing into the wall where she had been standing just a moment ago. He stared at it for quite a long time before he looked to Eliza and pulled her into a tight hug.
"If anything happens send up sparks, I'll come." Pulling back, he moved and gave her a kiss, which lasted for longer than he intended. But, he had to pull himself away from her. They had to split up, but...damn it, this probably wasn't a good idea. "Be careful...please." he gave her hand another squeeze, and then, with a lot of effort, he pulled himself away to go in the other direction, waiting for an opportunity to cross the street so that he could take care of that side.
