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The thing about the ambiance of the A.I.D office was that the room was designed to make the people who came in feel comfortable. The entire room was set up to create a comforting and inviting environment.
It had a lot of elbow room to make the clients feel that the room was spacious and not stuffy. At the same time, the number of knick-knacks, decor, and paintings gave the illusion of being in a small space that made the room feel cozy and safe.
The walls were painted in a light blue to make the clients more agreeable and relaxed. The plants placed in the room were carefully chosen to provide a fresh aspect to the ambiance, making the room feel more organic.
The room's entire purpose was to make the person who came in feel comfortable enough to open up about their troubles. To provide a safe space that put them at ease. And the things that tied it everything in the room were the main focus in the room; the host, the person who owned and operated the place.
And currently, that host was totally focused on maximizing the comfort level of the people sitting in front of him.
"Please make yourselves comfortable," stated Quinn with a calm smile on his face. "Do you girls want something to drink? I have butterbeer, gillywater, soda, or milkshakes. I have lots of fruits that you can choose from."
The eyes of two of the three girls sitting in front of Quinn shined. They spoke up.
"I want a butterbeer," asked Tracy with a shine in her eyes and joy in her voice. She had some butterbeer for the first time at Hogsmeade and enjoyed it very much. So when Quinn offered, she jumped at it.
"Gillywater, please," replied Astoria from her chair, looking at the various knick-knacks and paintings.
The third girl sighed at her two companions before replying.
"Nothing, thank you."
Quinn stood up from behind his desk and walked to his workshop. When he came out with a bottle each of butterbeer and gillywater.
"Daphne, are you sure you don't want anything," asked Quinn as he put down the chilled bottles on the coasters on the table in front of Tracy and Astoria. "I can brew a pot of tea if you don't want something cold. I have a variety of tea leaves that you can pick from."
"I would like to know what were you doing in the Great Lake" asked Daphne, making clear eye contact with Quinn.
"... Straight to business. I can respect that," said Quinn sitting back down on his barstool.
"Ahem, what I was doing in the Great Lake? Well, I was swimming," replied Quinn after clearing his throat, hoping that this would clear every doubt. But Quinn knew that he was kidding himself.
"In late January?" persisted the blonde Greengrass, with a tone laced with skepticism. She didn't believe Quinn would go for a simple swim in the icy waters.
Quinn matched eyes with Daphne and answered with a straight face. "... Yes, one warming charm, and I was all set for a nice swim."
"What about the gills beneath your ears? Why were you using magic that isn't taught until the sixth year?" asked Daphne, pushing for more information when she heard the short answer from Quinn.
Quinn snorted and scoffed at those words. He bragged with self-confidence laced in his tone, "I'm the smartest student at Hogwarts. Year restrictions have never stopped me and never will. I wanted to go deep diving, so I gave myself a pair of gills, nothing complex."
He took out his fake wand with his right hand and waved it to perform magic on his left hand. The digits of his left hand twitched, lengthened a bit, and gained another joint.
Flexing his fingers, Quinn showed the girls his fingers with three interphalangeal joints and a thumb with two joints.
"I have enough mastery over magic to perform partial human transfiguration over limited parts of my body," boasted Quinn.
Even if he was boasting, Quinn was still holding back what he was capable of. He was more advanced than what he was letting on.
'Now that I think about that. I need to improve on that thing,' thought Quinn. He needed to make certain changes before he went back for another confrontation with the Kraken.
The younger Greengrass was holding the bottle of gillywater with both her hands and was looking at the bottle's label when she asked.
"Then why did you crash into the glass?"
All three girls remembered the shocked expression on his face when he was pressed against the glass. Quinn was clearly not expecting to be there nor wanted them to see him, so something had happened when he was swimming, and with Astoria's question, all three stared at Quinn, expecting an answer.
'The little one knows how to talk. Of course, that would turn in the other direction,' thought Quinn with a straight face before speaking.
"I kind of got flicked by the giant squid when I was running away from a flurry of grindylows. The giant squid took me by surprise, so I ended up casting a spell at it, and then it flung me away with its tentacle because of that spell..."
To keep his story believable, Quinn decided to stick to the facts that he had experienced. He regularly met grindylows while he practiced his water magic and ran away from them to practice his speed, and the Kraken did push him away because of the ice magic.
By spinning his actual experiences into fake explanations, Quinn was making sure to establish a believable story, plus it allowed him to present it believably and confidently.
"... And since this could be seen as dangerous, I asked you three not to tell anyone," finished Quinn, rolling his eyes as he air-quoted the word dangerous.
Quinn was handing the girls the initiative, but anything that followed was under control. He waited for any question because that allowed him to answer questions they bothered to ask and not anything extra that he might speak about if he took the lead.
"Can we also go swimming? That would be fun," suggested Tracy, thinking about playing in the water, having fun.
Quinn grabbed the opportunity when he saw it and steered the conversation in the presented direction.
"Sure, I can teach you a simple bubble-head charm that would allow you to breathe underwater, but whether you're able to learn it, it is up to you. And if you guys do learn it, let's do this when the weather gets warmer; I don't want you guys to get sick."
"Eh~, but you went for a swim in the cold, why not us?" whined Tracy, slightly frowning towards Quinn.
"It will take you a lot of time to learn the bubble-head charm if you are able to learn it; the spell is a sixth-year charm," reasoned Quinn ignoring the glare from Daphne.
He knew the glare was because he had just said that year restrictions didn't hinder him, and now he was saying that they wouldn't learn it because it was a higher-year spell.
"If you want to go for a swim at the surface, that doesn't warrant the bubble-head charm. The water is freezing, you know, even with the warming charm, you still feel the cold against the skin. Believe me, most people don't like it; I didn't mind it, but I'm not sure if you'd like it."
Quinn wasn't lying about the cold against the skin. He felt the bitter chill against his skin the entire time he was inside the lake. Quinn didn't heat the water envelope around him to make himself comfortable because he just didn't mind the cold and was used to it, but not all could stay in that cold.
While saying that, the workshop's door pushed open, and Luna came skipping out with a large sheet of old parchment in her hands.
"I did it!" she exclaimed, looking at Quinn, unrolling the parchment and showing a detailed map drawn on the parchment. "It was mud rue-based ink! It reacted with pidecory and efameg tarring potion."
Luna giggled as she pushed the parchment near Quinn, showing it to Quinn. The blonde Ravenclaw wasn't even looking at the three Slytherin girls.
Quinn took the map parchment from her and gave it a look over. From Luna's excited reaction, Quinn knew that she had gotten the correct potions and herbs. He still observed the parchment to judge the quality of her brew, as he wanted to determine her progress in potion brewing, and he was pleased to see that she had done a more than decent brew for her first time brewing the potion.
"Good job, Luna," praised Quinn, smiling at the parchment before smiling at his friend/junior/assistant. "And you are right, it was pidecory and efameg tarring potion."
"It was in the riddle. It was so clear when I finally noticed. You hid it so cleverly," beamed Luna, swinging with joy in her spot. She was so happy that she couldn't contain herself.
Quinn handed the map parchment back to Luna and spoke, "How about you go and explore with the map. Revealing the map was only step one; you still have to find the treasure."
"Really!" exclaimed Luna, but then she looked back at the workshop and spoke. Her voice didn't have as much excitement as before, "But I still have to clean up the equipment I used."
Quinn chuckled and responded, "I will clean it. You go and have fun."
Luna squeed and gave Quinn a tight hug before turning to the office entrance. She was about to rush out when she saw that Quinn had company.
"Hi!" greeted Luna when she saw the three girls, immediately following the greeting with: "Bye!"
And with that, she rushed to the door.
"Don't run in the hallways!" shouted Quinn just before she exited.
"Okay!" was all Luna said before she was gone.
Daphne, who had turned her head to look at Luna, who had rushed out, turned it back towards Quinn and inquired, "She was in there the entire time?"
"Hmm? Oh yeah, she's been spending a lot of time in there, brewing potions," answered Quinn as he walked back to his barstool after closing the workshop door.
"And why does she brew potions in there and not in the potion wing?" asked Daphne, looking between the workshop door and Quinn.
The potion wing in Hogwarts were multiple classrooms with potion workstations where students could practice potion brewing.
"Oh right, not many people know it, but Luna is my employee. I hired her as my assistant," answered Quinn. He was still smiling because of Luna's progress with the learning quest he made for her. "She gets to use the space behind the wall."
"What is behind the wall?" Astoria chirped in, curiosity evident in her eyes as she looked at the workshop's red door.
"That's a secret," smiled Quinn in response.
Many people had asked Quinn about the area behind the wall. And all of them had different ideas about what was behind there. Some thought it was a storage room because Quinn brought out their orders from inside; others assumed it was empty because they never saw Quinn go back there.
Now some people like Daphne, Tracy, and Astoria knew that there was at least a potion workstation inside.
But no one except Quinn, Luna, Ivy Potter, and whoever she told knew what was actually knew what was inside.
"Oh, come on, tell us!" inquired Tracy. Now that Quinn refused to tell them, it stirred her curiosity.
"Maybe another day. I'll give you a tour of what is behind the wall. I will say this, though; behind the wall, you'll find something enjoyable and of your liking," grinned Quinn, enjoying himself as he increased the allure of the unknown place behind the glass wall and watching how a three girls' became even more curious.
Tracy and Astoria shifted in their seats, while Daphne narrowed her eyes at the red door. The three wondered what there was inside and had a mental image of what was behind the wall.
'Phew, at least now they aren't thinking about what I was doing in the lake,' sighed Quinn, feeling relieved that he was successfully able to divert the whole situation. 'I somehow need to thank Luna and her timing. What does she like... Ah, she likes to paint! Okay, then I need to find out what kind of paints and brushes she uses and get a new assortment for her.'
To make sure that they don't return to yesterday's incident, Quinn shifted the topic of conversation.
"So Astoria, tell me what Daphne is like at home..."
The younger sister's eyes shined as she opened her mouth, and things flew out. The older sister was quick on the outtake and tried to stop her sister.
Tracy and Quinn sat back and laughed at the sisters.
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- (Scene Break) -
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In a cursed building that looked like no one had occupied for years, as there were broken windows, stripped paints, exposed bricks and cracks creeping across the outside, making the building unpleasant to the eye.
If the building's facade was in bad shape, then the inside was worse; there were broken tiles, paint falling from every wall, exposed pipes, broken and left behind furniture, mold, and spider webs in every corner. The insides were so dusty and covered with fallen building material that no patch of the floor was empty.
It was a building that even the most impoverished squatters would avoid.
In that same building lied a man; a dangerously skinny and skeletal-looking man. The man looked sickly and pale like he hadn't eaten properly in months.
The man was exceedingly short, no taller than the average thirteen-year-old child with pale grubby waxy skin, small watery eyes, a pointed nose, sunken cheeks and eyes, yellow teeth, and a balding head of reddish hair.
If someone looked at the man at the very moment, they would think that the man was a corpse that had died in the building.
But the man was no corpse; This man was the greatest betrayer in recent history.
Peter Pettigrew.
Peter Pettigrew was called by some of his former friends as 'Wormtail'. He began attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1971 and was sorted into Gryffindor House after the Sorting Hat pondered over which house he belonged in for over five minutes, a true Hatstall.
During his years at Hogwarts, he became one of the Marauders; he was best friends with Sirius Black, James Potter, and Remus Lupin, and together they created the Marauder's Map.
During the First Wizarding War, Peter was a member of the Order of the Phoenix but became a spy when he got forced into joining Lord Voldemort. He was made the Secret Keeper for the Potters when they went into hiding with the Fidelius Charm. But he betrayed James, his wife Lily, and their children Harry and Ivy to Lord Voldemort. Leading this to the death of Euphemia and Fleamont Potter, the parents of James Potter.
After Voldemort's fall, he tried to fake his own death and frame Sirius for betraying Fleamont and Euphemia, as well as for his own murder and those of the twelve Muggles he killed during his escape. But Sirius Black was sharper and more magically capable than Peter and saw through the deception and caught the 'rat.'
Peter was arrested by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and sentenced by Barty Crouch Senior to life imprisonment in Azkaban. He was charged of twelve crimes of murder with the killing curse and for giving the information about the Potters' whereabouts, which lead to their death by the hands of Lord Voldemort.
Peter was placed in solitary confinement at the mercy of the Azkaban guards, the Dementors. But the 'rat' was persistent and had cockroach-like tenacity; that tenacity to live could not be detected by the Dementors but still allowed him to maintain a sense of self and regain enough strength to transform into his Animagus form in his cell. Since Dementors have difficulty sensing the less complex emotions of animals, he could remain relatively unaffected as a rat. It was not trouble at all to the amortal guards, though, since they thought it meant he was losing his mind like every other convict in their custody, including Bellatrix and some of her fellow Death Eaters.
Peter spent twelve years living in his Animagus form in Azkaban. Just a few months ago, he seized an opportunity and became the only known person to escape the prison unassisted. He did it by transforming into his Animagus form of a rat.
The decision to escape after twelve years of imprisonment was the news he had heard from the guards. A new terrorist group had been causing chaos outside in the real world. The group had caused stress on the Auror's office to deploy Aurors to patrol muggle areas to guard the unaware muggle population from any surprise attacks.
For the first time in a long time, Wormtail mustered whatever courage he had and decided to escape the hell of the place he was living.
The motivation of that escape wasn't to better his own life but to make someone else's life miserable.
In his twelve-year incarceration, his former 'friend' Sirius Black had regularly visited him to gloat and give him regular news about how great his and his other friend's lives were.
Peter couldn't help but hear what Black would tell him about the fame, prestige, and happiness they had gotten after the war. He bragged about how everyone knew about them while he was dumped there in filth, forgotten by everyone.
In twelve years, Peter developed an obsession and hateful loathing towards his former 'friends.' He hated Sirius because of his regular visits and hated James and Lupin because they didn't even bother to visit him. He thought that the latter two couldn't even be bothered to visit him because of their glamorous lives.
Obsession wasn't something that Dementors could detect and that was why he kept his sanity even when the Dementors sucked everything worth living for out of him.
So for the first time, Peter took action without knowing what laid in his future. He escaped Azkaban to get back his former master to the top so that Voldemort would burn down his former 'friends' to the ground and he could be there as Voldemort did it.
He didn't know if Voldemort was even alive, but spending a lot of time in Azkaban with nothing but his thoughts made him convinced that Voldemort was still alive.
The sole aim of his life became to see the Black, Potter, Lupin, and therefore,the Order of Phoenix to be destroyed. He wanted anyone who opposed Voldemort to suffer because it was their fault that Voldemort had fallen and robbed him of a glorious future.
In the broken-down building, Peter Pettigrew opened his gaunt eyes and in them was a strong fire of hatred.
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Quinn West - MC - Master conversationalist.
Luna Lovegood - Assistant - On an adventure of her own.
Daphne Greengrass - Witness #1 - Surprised to see Quinn working closely with someone.
Tracy Greengrass - Witness #2 - Curious like a cat about what is behind the wall.
Astoria Greengrass - Witness #3 - "So Daphne has this small blanket that she hug-" *Mumph* Muffle* *...*
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