It wasn’t the first time something had crept up on Jez in a dark alley. It was the first time that the something had turned out to be a hat, which was now sitting on her head as if it had every right to.

"That's really nice language to use when talking to an old Hat! I have looked for you all over the place, Jezebel Bain, and to find you in this place, of all places! I'm not surprised that you think you alone mourn this day.”

Not only was it sitting on her head in a proprietorial kind of way, but it was insulting her. Jez did not warm to this. The Sorting Hat belonged in Hogwarts, ruins or no ruins, and most assuredly did bloody not belong on her head where it could snidely comment upon her own, entirely private, sadness. She squinted up at the brim, mutinously. A bloody hat had just accused her of being self-involved. A magical hat, sure, but the operative word remained: HAT. This was one of the odder experiences Jez had gone through lately, and last week she had fought a veela using nothing more than a rock, a pointy stick, and an inability to understand Bulgarian.

"There are better monsters for you to fight, if you're up for it, at Hogwarts."

Jez stilled a bit. Her blood began to run cold; an unpleasant, tingling feeling that she often felt when something on a hunt was going rather wrong. Go back to Hogwarts? Again, she saw the black-haired man falling, vanishing into the debris as the Entrance Hall came down.

"You know, if you're done poking the monsters in your own head!"

The temperature of her haemoglobin aside, Jez was not about to be goaded by a fashion accessory. After a forced breath, she set her jaw and spoke in a level tone. “First of all, stay out of my brain. It’s where I keep all my stuff.” Breathe, breathe, breathe… This was a distinctly Muggle alleyway, and she didn’t want a passerby to wander in and find her shouting at an old hat. Particularly not when she was still wearing it.

“What I do is none of your business.” Why didn’t this go without saying? “Let the monsters have Hogwarts. Maybe they’ll starve.” After all, nobody lived there anymore and hadn’t done so in a long time. Ten years, to be very precise. She would be more use chasing down practitioners of the Dark Arts and creatures predating on humans. And, of course, she wasn’t going back there. Let it rot, she thought, coldly. “Why don’t you go find one of the bazillion other mourners, eh? Get them to give you a lift home or whatever.”

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Last Edited By: shiny lady Aug 2 15 11:12 AM. Edited 1 times.