The flier wouldn't go away.
It was stuck to the bulletin board at the back of the store with some sort of powerful charm. Allard wasn't sure who had posted it—it had appeared sometime during the day, before Allard's shift. The dusty bookstore didn't get much traffic these days. Stacks of spellbooks sat on old oak shelves, their spines uncracked, their pages bright white. Allard's supervisor had blamed the drop in sales on the new bookstore that had recently opened up further down the street, but Allard suspected that it had something to do with the way Allard's supervisor glared at anyone entering the shop.
Allard tried another spell on the flier. This one, a Disengaging Hex, made the paper flutter and strain, but the back of the page remained firmly fastened to the wall. Frustrated beyond belief, Allard reached up and tried to manually rip the thing from the board. Allard's fingernails dug into the cork on either side of the flier. The paper, which, Allard could see now, had been doubly enchanted, didn't tear. Allard's muscles strained against the charmed flier, the bulletin board pulled forward on its suspensions. The paper stuck fast. Allard didn't want to rip the bulletin board off the wall, and so stopped, panting, and stepped back.
"I told you, take that thing off the wall!" Allard's supervisor opened the door from the basement storeroom with a shoulder. The supervisor was carrying another crate of rather evil-looking spellbooks. The badge on the supervisor's chest, which had been granted glamour so as to sparkle winningly at customers, read "Dacey Schtein". Dacey didn't much like Allard, from what Allard had gathered.
"Trying. It's stuck on with some kind of semi-permanent charm. Not sure if I know the counterspell. I was looking it up on the computer when the electrick went out again…" Allard trailed off as Dacey shot a withering glance from beneath ginger eyebrows.
"That damned computer," Dacey muttered. "We got on very fine without them in my day. Damned boxes, never working when you tell them to, always needing new pentacle-casts and ports and Merlin knows what else. Now, Ms. Finnigan, you are in a shop full of reference books. Please tell me you can look up a simple countercharm on your own without me having to help you."
Allard, whose last name was Finnigan, looked around at the piles of disorganized stock on the floor. Finding anything in this mess was a daunting task, especially as the only other employee had quit last week just as the shop was starting inventory. "Why do we have to take this down again?"
"Sends the wrong message to our clientele. We don't want to be seen endorsing this kind of thing, particularly in these troubled times."
Allard glanced back at the flier. On a pale yellow background, purple ink spelled out:
Disenchanted with Anti-Muggleborn, Anti-Wolf, Anti-Elf, Anti-Centaur, Anti-Queer, Anti-Switchbody and Anti-Person Government Propaganda? Come to weekly 7 pm meetings Fridays at 9 Dungwater Street and help fight the purebloodist elite!
"Oh, well," Allard said. "I guess it is a bit childish."
"Childish? It's practically revolutionary! I may be liberal, but that kind of thing is just too much. "Anti-Elf", really. Take it down."
"I really need to start working through this stack of cookbooks," Allard said, and began to count copies of Spider-Free Pumpkin Recipes.
At nine, when Allard's shift ended, the flier was still there. A single light illuminated the window display at the front of the store, and Allard waded through piles of books to the door at the top of the stairs.
"Leaving."
"Dammit, Allard," Dacey's voice said from somewhere in the basement.
"Leaving." Allard turned around to go out the door, surveying the shop one last time. Allard's eyes flicked to the flier.
9 Dungwater Street.
Friday was only two days away.
Dungwater Street was a narrow alley jammed in between two Muggle office buildings. It wasn't visible to non-magical people, or if it was, it wasn't appealing enough for any of them to walk down. There were several wizard residences that had been constructed in the narrow space between the tall buildings, and a few tiny ground-floor shops. It was dark on Dungwater Street—the light never reached the ground completely because of the cement monoliths on either side. Olivia lived in number 9. She paid twenty-five Galleons a month for a tiny wood-paneled room on the fifth floor of the rickety Wizard building. Not exactly a perfect location, but it wasn't as if Olivia was allowed to be particular. Last year she'd been kicked out of five consecutive apartments in Diagon Alley before she gave up trying. Each time the landlords gave her some excuse— their daughter was moving in with them and they needed the room, or they had to replace the floors and didn't want to inconvenience her, or they were thinking of taking up owl breeding and wouldn't the smell just be too much for Olivia. Olivia wondered why they bothered with excuses, since each time she was forced to leave, it was just after the landlords found out about her stood up from her armchair and looked at the clock. A quarter to six. She walked to the bathroom and leaned in close to the age-spotted mirror. Olivia's eyes were dark brown, and her hair just a shade lighter than black. Her nose was slightly crooked. Olivia turned sideways and looked at her silhouette in the mirror. Vanity wasn't exactly a favorable trait to have, but it was better than revulsion. Since her time in St. Mungo's the previous month, Olivia could look at herself without cringing.
At six the bell buzzed. Olivia glanced out the window and waved at Rupert, who was standing on the stoop, before going downstairs to let him in. The stairwell smelt of cigarettes, sulfur and dragon guts, and the paint on the walls was a peeling greenish yellow. Rupert wrinkled his nose as he stepped inside.
"We need to find a better location for this. It's like a nest of manticores set up shop upstairs a year ago and never cleaned up after themselves." Rupert adjusted his hat, a mustard-colored beret that was in rather questionable taste. Rupert insisted on always wearing a hat, since at three foot two, everyone was always looking down on him.
"Could've happened, for all I know. Hey, when you find a better place that's okay with having a switchbody for a lodger, give me a damn call."
They went upstairs. Olivia settled herself on a quilted armchair and Rupert perched himself on a small wooden seat which Olivia had found behind a dumpster a week ago. With the addition of a cushion, it was no less horrendous than anything else in the apartment.
"I saw your letter to the editor in the Prophet this morning," Rupert said. "Very well-written, even if nobody will take it seriously."
"The policies that the St. Mungo's staff have around switchbody magic are disgraceful. Anyone can see that. The Prophet's article was not only poorly-structured, it completely ignored the facts of the matter. No matter how 'forward-thinking' the doctors are, the patients have no privacy and are offered no protection from malicious nurses or even visitors to the hospital. I told you about that witch who screamed at me when she looked over at the clipboard at the foot of my bed. It's—"
"You've told me, sweetheart," Rupert said. "No need to prove to me that the Prophet's a liar and the hospital's full of trash. I'm just saying, letters to the editor don't convince anybody else." Rupert fiddled with his ear gauge. Rupert's huge, translucent elfin ears were full of piercings and jewelry. "Got any tea, or are we broke again?"
"Broke, definitely, but I've got some English Breakfast left." Olivia got up and went to the kitchenette. She brought back an empty mug with a teabag in it and a half-empty box of wafers.
"Thanks." Rupert took the cup, adjusting his grip as it filled with boiling water and sent steam up into the air.
"Hope you don't want milk or sugar."
"No, I'm quite all right. What was our itenerary for tonight?"
"T-shirts, money for more fliers, and the march—that's what I've got down." Olivia leaned over the arm of the chair and picked a clipboard off the floor. "Theo said they were bringing the screen-printing stuff today."
The dim lightbulb overhead flickered, making scratching sounds as it sputtered. The dim light of the afternoon was already fading beyond the windowpane.
"Have we got the T-shirt designs all laid out and finished?"
"I think so. We picked the slogan last week, yeah?" Olivia turned the page on her clipboard and handed it to Rupert. There was a drawing of a T-shirt on it, emblazoned with words in bold print: All Is Not Well.
"I like it," said Rupert.