"Eyebrows a bit lower…" Oleandra muttered, studying her reflection in the mirror of a public loo in Charing Cross station. "…There. Got it. That's definitely my face."
Satisfied with her looks, Oleandra strode out of the station and down the street and nonchalantly walked into the Leaky Cauldron. There were even fewer people in the pub than there had been during her last visit, all of them hunched over their drinks and swathed in cloaks with hoods drawn low over their faces.
"Welcome to the Lea—" began Tom the barman, looking up from the mug he was polishing.
Tom's face blanched the second he recognised the face plastered all over the walls of his pub. Oleandra glanced at the wall behind him. Her old wanted poster from the previous administration had been left up, but a few familiar faces had since joined hers on the wall of undesirables.
"Just passing through," said Oleandra lightly. "Need to purchase a few supplies for the school year."
Oleandra sensed a few pairs of eyes looking up from the depths of their mugs at her.
"Y-you do know you're wanted for questioning, yeah?" stammered Tom. "T-they say you k-killed Dumbledore."
"I'm well aware," said Oleandra dismissively. "Well, don't let me keep you."
And with those parting words, she strode across the room and exited through the backdoor, hearing the scraping of a chair as the door swung close behind her. As she approached the brick wall that concealed the entrance to Diagon Alley, she drew her wand, ready to tap the appropriate bricks, when the Lethifold concealed in her clothes gave her a slight tug.
Oleandra tilted her head slightly to the right, narrowly avoiding the bolt of red light aimed at the back of her head, which continued its flight past her and struck the red brick wall, leaving a black, singed mark where it hit. The Helm of Terror sigil on her forehead flared to life, burning hot in reaction to the surge of absolute terror rolling off her would-have-been assailant.
"Oh yes, let's attack the woman accused of murdering the greatest Wizard of the century," said Oleandra mockingly, not even bothering to turn around to face her cowardly attacker. "Yes, that's quite clever."
Ever since the blame for Dumbledore's death was pinned on her, Oleandra had struggled to invoke the Lokk of Ægishjálmur under its aspect as the Helm of Awe, symbolising invincibility in combat. Because of the instinctive fear her face inspired, the darker side of the sigil kept coming to the forefront of its own accord.
Three wand taps on the wall later, her attacker had fled without even looking back, and the bricks were pivoting and folding in on themselves.
Oleandra stepped through the hole in the wall into Diagon Alley.
The first thing that caught her eye was the gleaming silver cages set every few shops, each holding a few rail-thin, dull-eyed people dressed in dirty, torn Muggle clothing. One such cage stood in front of the cauldron shop near the entrance of Diagon Alley, so Oleandra walked up to take a closer look.
"Tell Atkins I'm running late for the board meeting," a tall Muggle in a chic suit with the sleeves torn off at the elbows mumbled into his cellular telephone. "I can't seem to find a way out of this ruddy thing."
His mobile phone had clearly run out of batteries, but the man didn't appear to have noticed.
"First time in Diagon Alley in a while?" asked the owner, coming out of his shop to greet Oleandra at the door while she was staring at the prisoners. "A few lucky Muggles got trapped in some dead zones between the Muggle-Repelling Charms when they went up all around London. A few of the lads thought they were hilarious, so they brought them back here to laugh at."
"Don't you mean unlucky?" said Oleandra, frowning.
The Muggles appeared to be caught in a perpetual loop. The Muggle-Repelling Charm placed on Diagon Alley kept reminding them of some urgent task they needed to attend to, so they could scarcely register the fact that they were locked inside a cage and couldn't actually go anywhere— and thus, the magic would refresh again and again, urging them to do the impossible.
"Yes, lucky— at least in there, they're fed somewhat properly," said the shop owner, a tinge of pity in his voice. "They're almost like animals, aren't they? A mere Muggle-Repelling Charm, and they turn dumber than Trolls…"
It reminded Oleandra a great deal of the Ogham runic circle Dumbledore had placed on the ceiling above the Goblet of Fire. The more she had wanted to approach the Goblet, the less she had wanted anything to do with it.
Ogham, the runes of the earth— the nemesis of the Futhark, the runes of the stars… she knew next to nothing about them, but what if they could be the solution to her Loki problem? If she could trick him into such a magic circle…
"Wait, aren't you…!?" the shop owner yelped in fright, finally placing where he'd seen Oleandra's face before.
Oleandra rolled her eyes.
If everyone she met was going to react like this, it was going to be a very long shopping trip indeed— but as it turned out, she wouldn't have to wait overlong for a proper reception, as two stops into her shopping trip, she was ambushed as she exited Flourish & Blott's by no fewer than ten Aurors.
"HANDS IN THE AIR!"
"Well, if it isn't Dawlish and his jolly band of incompetents," said Oleandra snidely, folding her arms in front of her. "I almost didn't recognise you, with all your bones under your skin and your snot in your nose."
The last time Oleandra had seen Dawlish, he'd been standing at Umbridge's side, just before she and Harry were expelled. But before that, she'd found him lying in a bush with all his articulations and lower jaw missing, and the time before that, he'd been beset by snot bats, courtesy of Ginny's Bat-Bogey Hex.
Hmm… now that Oleandra knew Ginny was the true Heir of Slytherin, could it be that Dawlish's misfortunes were linked somehow?