Spiderwebs of steel and stone [Dorcy!]

[Dimitri Mikhail Zolnerowich]

Spiderwebs of steel and stone
Subdivide our given home
Rememberance of ancestrial sage
Thorns and brambles of a different age


The concept was easy - almost too easy. Dumbledore had heard of a certain dark artefact Voldemort was after, so they had to get it before he'd let someone pick it up.
It would probably be shipped to Borgin&Burke's, simply because they were the most notorious when it came to objects of dark magic and Voldemort couldn't be bothered to fly under the radar - apparently, he was under the impression that no one would just walk into the shop located in Knockturn Alley and take it, or he'd have taken more precautions. He should have.

Their plan was so simple that it would either be wonderfully effective or it would end in inevitable disaster.
Dimitri would go in first, pretending to be some foreign, antisocial dark wizard who just wanted to be left alone as he browsed the shop. As Dimitri was, in fact, foreign and slightly antisocial, he guessed (with a bitter smile) that he was cut for the part perfectly. Either way, he would shuffle around the shop a little (Minerva would age and disguise him with some clever spellwork), mumbling to himself in Russian, picking up this and that, putting it down there and everywhere, and generally making a mess of the shop to begin with. That was part one.
Part two would be Dorcas walking in, about half an hour to forty-five minutes later (once the shop owners had decided the Russian lunatic wasn't going to listen to their smart little sales-talks and only needed looking after to see if he didn't mess up too much) - enough time for Dimitri to locate the item, or find a way into the back storeroom to search for it there. Dorcas would be the distraction. Dimitri wasn't sure how she'd go about it. After all, hardly any of the shops in Knockturn Alley seemed inviting for 'just a nice chat' or 'asking the way'. Dimitri trusted fully in his partner's creativity - he didn't have much choice, anyway.

As for the item they were going to try and take - it gets trickier, mainly because it looks so terribly damned ordinary. Dimitri had heard of it and read about it in a volume of 'Magick Moste Evile', but there wasn't much information about it, as its workings and objectives were a lively debate among scholars. Or it would be lively, if people didn't get killed while trying to find the damn thing.
It looked like nothing important. A quaich, a traditional Scottish drinking cup, usually used for whiskey. Legend had it that this particular Quaich started the Battle of the Clans in 1396 (also known as the Battle of the North Inch), eventually leading to centuries of feuds between the two parties. To this day it was unknown what had triggered the first battle and who the "Clan Kay" were, the opponents of the victors. More importantly, no one knows how this Quaich could've started the feud between the two families, but it is said that the quaich was able to predict the future and that a fight over who could drink first started it all.
Dimitri wasn't so sure. Foretelling the future was tricky business that often require elaborate guesswork and dark artefacts such as these were not to be trusted. If Voldemort thought he had find a way to manipulate the quaich to show a path to victory, however, that was enough of a risk to try and intercept it. He knew what it looked like. It was a wooden quaich, elm to be exact (a tree marked as sinister since before Vergil), though lined with a silver band and painted dark. The dark colour made it work like a black mirror, Dimitri suspected, combined with the material it was made of and, no doubt, the spells it was lined with. There were no distinguishing marks on it, which made it so hard to identify because one would expect there to be runes or something of the kind to enhance the magical abilities it had, and Dimitri suspected these markings to be hiddin under the smooth silver band - reflectiving and amplifying the magical properties, or binding it to the unfortunate owner if touched, perhaps, like a perverted wedding band.
Either way, it was a dangerous thing, no matter how low profile it seemed, and Dimitri had taken the precautions he thought he'd need and he still didn't feel quite ready. For now, he just hoped Dorcas felt more prepared than he did.

[dorcas]

This was her first actual task ever! Well not really, but Dorcas didn't really include escorting people from point A to point B to point C without any danger as a task, more like a chore, but all her chores had paid off because now it was the school christmas holidays she was hooking up with the cute defence against the Dark Arts teacher. Dorcas had fantasised a few times about him when she'd been a student, however this was not the sort of hooking up she was really wanting to do, this was getting down and dirty and stealing something or other from Borgin and Burkes. She didn't really have any idea what it was that Dimitri would be taking. Ha! She thought to herself. He was no longer Professor Zolnerowich, he was Dimitri! Anyway, She had no idea what he would be taking, all she had to do was cause a fuss and there was only one way to do it really, use her natural God-given talents to cause a nice big distraction, though she had to be careful how she did it.

Dorcas had done her research and knew the layout of the shop. She'd used some polyjuice potion on a number of different occasions and purchased various items from the store and just browsed about, all in different forms and purchasing different things, mostly useless, some that could have a darker meaning and use but mainly she just wanted to get the feel of the shop and the feel of the shop was what she now had and a plan to go with it.

Dorcas looked down at her watch, Dimitri would have been there by now, settled in nicely as a crazy Russian that wasn't doing much, she had to make sure she left it long enough between his arrival and hers so they didn't get suspicious and not long enough that they kicked poor Dimmy out. Dorcas chuckled to herself inside of her head. Dimmy. What a name.

Leaving her home, Dorcas disapparated and apparated all over the country before finally landing in a dark alley of London. If anyone was following her or wanted to follow her magical trail then they'd have a tough time figuring out where she'd been and where she'd ended up. She'd certainly give them the run around.

Dorcas had her cloak wrapped around her tightly and her hood up. To muggles it would have looked like a long anorak or something, not that they tended to notice anything bless them. Not to mention the weather was pretty horrid with all the snow they were getting so people in the streets barely looked up from which way they were going unless they were about to cross a road but even after a while the roads looked more and more like the paths with the amount of snow that was built up on them all. Still the occasional car would come past and nearly slide of the road while Dorcas snuck into the Leaky Cauldron and straight on out the back to the Diagon Alley entrance.

Dorcas walked through the alley, it was heaving because of everyone getting last minute Christmas shopping, Dorcas however managed to squeeze through them all without knocking into anyone or drawing attention to herself. She took the turn down to Knockturn alley and slipped into Borgin and Burkes.

The bell to the shop rang as the door opened and closed. Dorcas stood herself up tall with the sternest of faces and dusted the snow from her shoulders. This was all about acting and Dorcas knew she couldn't break her character. She had no polyjucie potion left as it had gone off, but her face wasn't known in this shop anyway and she'd never had a one night thing with either Borgin or Burke lest she'd kill herself.

Slowly she looked about the shop, not letting her eyes rest on anything, not even the figure she assumed was Dimitri. She conducted her scan and then looked to the counter of the store and waited to be greeted by the shop owners, though as far as she was aware, only one worked at a given time so they could have complete control over the store between them and keep an eye on any staff they may hire, but that didn't mean that every now and then one wouldn't just pop in or sometimes there was a point where their shifts overlapped. Dorcas just waited, silently, standing tall and looking stern and royally pissed off already. Hopefully this would not last too long.

post status:
.finished.
tag:
Dimmy!
word count:
782 // ...
outfit:
check .it.
comments:
............

[Dimitri Mikhail Zolnerowich]

It was not Dimitri's first task, but it was his first task with a former student of his! Not that he minded very much. He liked Dorcas, he liked her big mouth and the energy that seemed to hang around her. (Although he might not admit it and even if he'll be very shocked should Dorcas admit that he had been the focus of her high school fantasies!) At the moment, though, what he liked about her most was her sense of drama - because the plan pretty much depended on that!
No one had told her what the object was on purpose, to really make sure Dim-in-disguise and Dorcas would seem like total strangers with no common goal whatsoever. Just imagine what might happen if Dorcas had known about the quaich and had thought she saw it - an impulsive act due to such a miscommunication could be disastrous.

No, Dimitri quite trusted on Dorcas to be wonderfully dramatic. She hadn't at all seemed nervous, the last time they spoke, and he had advised her not to buy anything if she didn't have to. If she made large enough a scene, she could just storm out the shop without buying a thing. However, should things go a little wrong, the scheme shifting so that not purchasing something was out of the question, in that case, Dimitri had said, she ought to buy something simple. Some complex artifact would very probably only cause more trouble. No, in such a case a cursed comb or a venomous teacup or something would do. Something that was straightforward in its use and could be easily destroyed.
Of course, he had assured her, he would cover the costs if needed. After all, she was fresh out of school, and he didn't want her to be evicted from her home or anything just because of a mission.

He had been in the shop for some time now, brushing off the helpful shopkeepers with rudely muttered Russian and broken English sentences and noisily browsing the shop. The act came more natural than he had anticipated. Then again.. it was just a matter of pretending he was one of his uncles.
Dimitri was loud and noisy on purpose. At first, Borgin and Burke had looked in his direction often, frowning a little worridly, hoping the customer was not destroying their wares, but by now, they had sort of slipped into a less consciously worried state. After all, Dim had been handling objects roughly since he'd come in and nothing had been destroyed yet - he probably wasn't going to break anything (although they did sort of hope he would end up on the wrong end of one of their wares, they didn't like him at all).
More so, it was lunch time, and Borgin had retreated to the back of the shop, to the office next to the store room, to eat. Burke's would have his turn in half an hour. The store would be manned by only one person for the next hour, if things went right. If things didn't go as they were supposed to, Dimitri trusted Dorcas to keep both the shopkeepers busy as he searched.

Caractacus Burke leaned on the counter, drumming his fingers, and apparently bored out of his mind (and very annoyed with the one unsatisfying customer they had at the moment). Foreigners and their attitudes.. he'd have a word with his colleague in a moment, see if they could coax him out of the shop, so to speak, unless he started showing some gold soon. Dumbledore didn't say Burke was not famed for his generosity for no reason. Customers were there to pay and that was that.
His train of thought was broken, however, as the shop bell rang. Now this looked like a better customer than the lunatic rummaging around in the back. Caractacus glanced over his shoulder at the hunched figure for a last time before directing his undevided attention towards this new customer.
"Good day, good day-" He smiled, or thought he did. Burke didn't like the way she kept hanging around the entrance, as though she was about to leave again. "Do come in, how can I help you?"