Must Be the Season of the Witch

[el_desheredado]

When; October 27^th - October 30th
Rating; PG and up--please be careful and tag your character's nightmare visions if necessary!
Characters; Members of the Anonymous Movement, volunteer residents of the City, and YOU!
Summary;
The Anonymous Movement has identified the source of the extra trouble in the City this month--as if the curses weren't enough, right? Beings that they're calling "witches" have torn a portal into the City and are using magic to stir up the fear, anxiety, and negative emotions on which they feed.

Concerned for the well-being of the Cityzens and knowing that they'll all likely end up either mad or dead if this isn't stopped, the Anonymous Movement has decided to take the witches head on. They're marching up the mountain, armed with salt, blue beads, witch hazel, and other traditional witch-repellents, along with more conventional weapons.

But the witches aren't going to go without a fight. And they have their magic on their side...

Notes; Want to join in? If your character joined in the ad hoc volunteer witch-hunting army, feel free to start a thread for your character's nightmare vision or toss your character. Mingle threads are also welcomed!

Please see this post for more information but know that making a final sacrifice is optional.

We'll be making another post on the 30^th to wrap up the plot and tie up some loose ends, but backdating is always awesome.

Log; It's a foggy morning when everyone assembles in Misery Square. It was short notice, perhaps. But there seems to be a decent number assembled for it.

A girl with curly black hair passes through the crowd. She's carrying a basket and she passes small objects to those assembled: a sprig of witch hazel, a packet of salt, a string of blue beads, a sprig of rowan, iron nails... There are other weapons to be had too, if they're needed.

There's little to be said because so little is known. But members of the Anonymous Movement speak, briefly and perhaps a little quietly under that strange weather, about how little is known but now necessary it is to make a way--by foot or by force--up to that cottage. They admit that it will be difficult and that much is unknown, but that they will do all they can to be sure everyone makes it. It's an explanation less than a rallying of the troops.

The battered trucks are there again, for those who wish to ride in them. This is hardly a splendid morning out. Trees, some bearing colorful autumn leaves and some nearly stripped bare, loom out of the fog as they proceed up the mountain. Boulders hunch and branches reach--like witches themselves, perhaps.

They drive as far as they can. After that, it must be by foot.

It's a rough path--tumbled boulders, gnarled trees, and the undergrowth has yet to die back completely, to say nothing of the fog. But there are hands enough to catch someone who stumbles or to pull someone over a fallen stone.

They pass into a clearing. The fog is thicker here, though the sun makes an effort to burn through the clouds.

It isn't long thereafter that the first screams start...

Comments

ginny weasley | nightmare.

[hexuality]

[ You've stepped out of the forest and into the corridor of a castle. You can imagine its size from the high walls and grand stone ceilings but there's no time to admire it nor the moving paintings or the exquisite tapestries—because all of it is shaking, crumbling, burning, thundering under a barrage of spells, of giants' fists. The school is under siege and you are trapped in the thick of it.

You may recognise the redheaded young woman who comes running out of a passageway, clothes torn or burned away in places, bleeding but alive and angry and frightened all at once. She has a wand in her hand but she isn't the witch you're seeking (is she?). When the castle shakes again, she turns and shouts to you, sharp and unintelligible in the din, and gestures—come with me, we can't stay here.

If you follow her, you might be drawn into a raging battlefield, a smoky corridor filled with brightly flashing lights, screams and cries, bodies on the cracked and bloodied flagstones (some in pyjamas, some are children, and others are men and women in black robes and masks). Ginny lifts her own wand and plunges into it, tries to cut a path through the combatants to safety, the maddening tempo of family, must find my family, and suddenly she isn't that sweet English girl everyone seems to know but a soldier in her own right, vicious strokes of her wand and precisely aimed hexes.

The vision continues like this. Bursts of battle followed with eerie lulls in silent, empty hallways. Welcome to Hogwarts. ]

[candothat]

[Even though he knows that this can't be real--that this Ginny can't be real--Pavel follows her to the battlefield. He's momentarily stunned into inaction by the view. Fighting in space is so sterile compared to this. He has seen people die, of course, but mostly from a distance, sucked through breeches into the vacuum of space. Not this. Not children.

This isn't real.

He shakes himself out of thought and catches up with Ginny, phaser out and set to stun, unsure if he should shoot. This is an illusion, after all. Perhaps he should be trying to get through to Ginny...]

[hexuality]

[She doesn't know if it's real or not. She sees the battle at the school almost every time she closes her eyes so the memories mix with the nightmares and this is where it always leads. It makes her an easy target in a lot of ways. But Ginny can't figure that out now, lost as she is in the vision, running with her wand out, dodging a spell with a twist of her body and firing her own in return, a bright bolt of scarlet.

In a gap in the crowd, she spots Pavel, and she should think he doesn't belong but she doesn't.]

Pavel, get out of here!

[candothat]

[Pavel finds himself ducking and dodging. These visions might not be real, but he's not about to learn whether or not they can cause injury. Knowing the City, the visions are probably lethal.]

You should also leave!

[He has to shout to be sure that he's heard. Ginny can't be left behind. These dreams--nightmares--won't disappear on their own; maybe they have to be fought.]

[hexuality]

[The suggestion is absurd, the logic of it clashing with what's happening around them. Her parents tried to get her to leave, to abandon the fight for her safety. She fought that and she'll do the same again.]

I can't! [The walls start shaking and she freezes, looking up at the ceiling like she expects it to crumble. Then she looks to Pavel and runs straight at him, grabbing onto his clothes and dragging him along, stumbling over the uneven floor.] There's a passage, it leads out of the castle, you have to take it, you have to go—

[candothat]

[Pavel stumbles after her. As soon as he regains his footing, he grabs Ginny's hand.]

Come with me? This isn't real, Ginny. Remember? We are on a mountain. This is not happening.

[hexuality]

What? No, you don't understand.

[If it were a dream, she'd find a way of breaking free of it. But it clings too close to reality, the horror of it so vivid that how can it be anything else but the final battle? Harry is nowhere to be seen, her brothers are gone too, her parents, everyone she holds dear. The longer she stays with Pavel, the sooner they'll fall into trouble, and she needs to usher him to safety before she can guarantee theirs. She doesn't care about her own.]

You're Muggle, they'll kill you if they find you. [She hauls him into an alcove where a suit of armour once stood, breathing hard, blinking the trickle of blood from her eye.] They might spare me, that'll be their mistake, but you can't be here. You can't be here.

[candothat]

No, Ginny, stop--

[Or maybe don't stop. She's keeping him from being killed, so maybe she has the right idea and Pavel's incorrect in thinking that these visions can be reasoned away.]

They won't, this isn't real... [He frowns and brings a hand up to her face, almost unconvinced that there's blood there. But no, it's real enough.] Stop and think, please. Is there a way out of this?

[hexuality]

[She doesn't stop, she doesn't think, until he touches her face and she flinches back from his hand out of instinct—but it's enough to jar her out of the confusing jumble in her mind (because that's what this is, it's all in her head) and properly breathe through the panic and adrenaline and flashbacks.]

A way out of... [She's never considered it because she always wakes up and fights her way through until then, until the bodies around her aren't just Fred and Tonks and Remus but the rest of her family, Neville, Harry—everyone. No one's spared in her nightmares.] I don't know. [Quiet, strained.] No, the castle's surrounded. I've never tried.

[candothat]

[He withdraws his hand and hopes that the slight shift in her demeanor means she's with him, or at least not fully immersed in the nightmare.]

Try now. [It might be a nightmare, but there is an all-out war going on and Pavel would rather die in a proper reality than in a dream. Time is of the essence.] All of this--this is your memory and your fear, and you can make a way out.

[hexuality]

I can't leave them.

[She may understand, on some level, that this isn't real. But the fear and love for her family are strong and it makes the whole thing so much harder to shake, makes her so much easier to trap. Another blast shakes the castle around them, a wall down the corridor breaking apart, and rising above the din is a cry like a wounded animal—

Her brothers.

She knows this part of the nightmare well, knows that if she leans out she'll find Fred under the rubble and the rest of the family trying to dig him out but it'll be too late, it's always— ]

I can't. [And she pulls away from him and starts running again, clambering over stones to get to the knot of Weasleys that always seems to move far away, just like the cabin of witches they're trying to get to.] Fred! FRED!

[candothat]

They aren't there, this is a dream.

[He's interrupted by the blast and the chaos it causes. Pavel and Ginny are going to have very stern words if he dies in her nightmare.

And she's off. He takes runs after her, hoping that being the fastest marathon runner at the Academy will keep the war around him from killing him. Maybe if he can catch her, he can talk some sense into her.]

Ginny! You and I are the only real things here--we need to leave!

[hexuality]

[He is fast, he keeps pace with her but just short of being tackled to the ground, she isn't going to stop running. A part of her does know it's pointless to try, knows that nothing she does will change the outcome of what's happened, but the corridor seems to stretch infinitely and the spells are flying through the air (a sickening bolt of emerald narrowly misses her and hits the wall behind her, it's singed off some of her hair) and she can't get to her family.

Sharply, desperately,]

They're real—

[And then the air explodes in front of her and Ginny's thrown back at Pavel's feet, the breath knocked out of her but maybe some sense knocked back in.]

[candothat]

[Pavel's spared the brunt of the explosion and is quick to crouch by Ginny and grab her wrist. She can't take off again; it's only a matter of time before these near misses stop being misses.]

Ginny? Are you hurt badly?

[hexuality]

[She can't breathe. There's an alarming few seconds where she can't catch her breath because of the way she's landed but then she sucks in a ragged one—and that hurts more, somehow, so does the cough that follows, but she isn't bleeding (any more than she was when he first found her, anyway) so there's that. Ginny winces as she pulls herself up to sitting, bracing a hand against her left side as she takes another careful breath—bruised, she thinks, brilliant—and finally answers, ]

I'm fine. It's fine, I just... [The cobwebs clearing, looking around at the chaos, seeing it finally as the hallucination it is.] This isn't Hogwarts. You're right, it's— [Using him as leverage, trying to stand,] Damn, but it feels like it.

[candothat]

[At least it seems that she's been shocked into her right mind. Bruised ribs are an unfortunate price to pay for clarity.]

These nightmares are convincing. Will you be able to walk?

[He's trying to determine whether or not he could carry her if push comes to shove. Probably. If he can support the combined weight of Kirk and Scotty, Ginny shouldn't he a problem.]

[hexuality]

Pavel, I'm fine. [A little sharply, only because she doesn't like needing the help. She reaches for her wand on the ground and stands, wincing.] Are you?

[She tries not to look down the hall though she wants to, the distant cries of her family and friends, the rumble of battle, but it's already faded a little like it's happening behind a glass wall.]

I'm sorry. I— [She almost wants to cry but she's too angry for it.] We're on the mountain?

[candothat]

Okay, okay. [If there positions were switched, Pavel wouldn't be much better.] Slightly damaged by shrapnel, but fine.

[He's relieved when the nightmare begins to fade. For a moment, he wasn't sure that they would escape. The face of the mountain might be grim and cloaked in ominous mists, but it's better than a wizard battle.]

Yes, we are now. [She might be too angry to cry, but it's still obvious that she's upset. Pavel gives her a careful hug.]

[hexuality]

[She accepts the hug because it is a comfort, but she hates that she's been tricked by the City again, deceived by something inside her head again. But people will always ground her, good friends and family, and she would much rather have it all real than be trapped with a nightmare wearing their faces.

And somehow, with that gesture, the castle shrinks away and the battered doors to the Entrance Hall are suddenly right in front of them, swinging open to reveal the grey mountainscape. There's no sunrise now to herald the end of the battle, not like home, but it isn't over yet. Not here.]

Thanks.

[candothat]

[The sight of the City has never been so welcome, even if there are evil witches waiting on the top of a mountain. At least the City is real.

Pavel waves Ginny ahead, half afraid that she'll run back into her own nightmare.]

It's nothing you would not do for me.

[hexuality]

[She isn't going back because she'll revisit it when this is all over, the next time she's safe in her own bed. But that isn't what matters now. She presses a hand to her left side again, almost absently, and she looks around to Pavel and flashes a quiet smile.]

Or for anyone else here. Let's go.