gooseberryhigh | AFTERMATH & DEPARTURE

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AFTERMATH & DEPARTURE

AFTERMATH & DEPARTURE

Mr. Merrill, still half-asleep, hikes up the hill to Azurcrest to run the last middle-of-the-night headcount. Inconvenience turns to fear as he discovers that half of his students are missing, and the other are in a sleep so deep he can't rouse them.

The unresponsive students are taken to the atrium for Healer Mufferaw to tend to, and Agent Larke is already contacting the MACUSA. The government descends on the school, with Aurors and Hitwizards to lead search parties. They head out immediately to scour the woods for the missing students. Heads of House confer with one another and the agents about the emergency, and decide parents need to be informed about the situation immediately.

There's no sign of any missing students for hours. Furthermore, there's no response from the apparently comatose children in the lodge. Not until 7:14 AM, anyway. The students that weren't taken begin to stir, and within minutes Agent Larke bursts in, clearly having ran all the way there. She announces that the missing students have been found, and are being escorted to the lodge.

Agent Larke had been organizing a new search party when Ivy Templeton stumbled out of their cabin, still half-asleep. It was discovered that inside the cabins, all the missing students had mysteriously reappeared in their beds.

All of the missing students are taken to the lodge by Aurors and Hitwizards, and a thorough headcount is done. Meanwhile, emergency Healers and Healer Mufferaw do thorough checks. The MACUSA representatives interview all the students individually. Students are only in the lodge for about an hour and a half before the order comes down: evacuate students and staff. Students are to be released to their families immediately. Personal belongings will be delivered to their homes at a later date.

The school buses are familiar, but the mood of the bus ride home after summer break isn't quite the same. They don't deliver students to their doorsteps or international stops, but to a staging area in Logan, hidden from Muggle eyes, where countless fearful relatives wait to take their children home.

HOW THIS WORKS:

All dreamers have been rescued. All rescuers have reunited with their friends.

The seven students who took part in the Finding the Heart adventure also wake up at the same time. To their friends, it will seem like they disappeared for 15 minutes max before everyone wakes up. To the seven students, it will seem like they were gone for hours.

Everyone will wake up after 7:14 AM. Ideally, they all wake up at the same time, but if you'd like to put it a bit later for dramatic purposes, you may.

Your character will be picked up at a staging area in Logan by a legal guardian, or escorted by a MACUSA agent to pre-arranged international transportation. If your character has only Muggle relatives, MACUSA will transport them to and from home.

If you are a rescuer or dreamer:
- You will wake up in your own bed, unless for some reason you want your character to wake up in someone else's bed. e.g. Gabi can wake up in the Ribbonfin soph girls' cabin, or she can wake up in the Ebonhide soph boys' cabin with Bash and Wyatt, since she was with them.
- You will keep all injuries you incurred during the event. However, you will not have any traces of ghost blood on you! Or ghost viscera of any kind.
- You will be wearing what you had on when the event ended, i.e. your pajamas and the clothing given to you by Brother. If you gave something away to another student during the event, e.g. a jacket, that other character will be wearing it instead.
- You will have all objects you started the event with, i.e. things in your pockets, unless you dropped them or gave away those items to an NPC. Then they're gone forever, sorry!
- You will not have any objects you picked up during the course of the event. This includes rocks, twigs, and personal items like Diego's crucifix, Sy's captain's badge, etc. All that stuff was imaginary! Those objects still exist in the real world.

If you are a non-participant:
- You will wake up on a cot in the Atrium. Please assume you are decently dressed. You will see Healers checking on other students, and government Aurors guarding the room. Your Head of House will tell you that you were moved here for observation because you were discovered in a state of deep sleep and no one could wake you. If you ask about your other friends, your teacher will admit that they've gone missing and the MACUSA is here to find them.
- Mere minutes after you've woken up, you will all hear from the Aurors that the other students have been found in their cabins.
- You have no memory of your roommates leaving the cabin, or being moved to the Atrium. You slept straight through the night. You did not have any dreams.

» MORNING: You wake up. You're in, well, a bed. It may or may not be your own, and the people you were with when you were in the other world may be with you.

» AFTERMATH: As soon as the staff realize that all the missing students have been found, everyone is promptly escorted to the lodge. Campus is crawling with MACUSA presence, and hitwizards and Aurors alike lead the students to the lodge. Everyone is looked over by emergency healers, and give quick statements to the authorities.

» BUSES: Understandably, everyone's families are impatient to get their children back. Students are hurried onto buses to be taken to a relay point outside of the anti-apparition zone, where their families will be to take them home.

» OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS & CONCERNS

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yes ma'am

It's just like passing through another door, another teleportation, except this time it happens when Lucas opens his eyes. He stares at the ceiling of his cabin. Sees sunlight creeping through the hem of his privacy curtain. Hears the birds outside.

Clearly, he's dead.

Lucas rolls over carefully. He's not sure why precisely because you probably don't need to exercise care when you're dead, but anyway, it's what he does. He pushes aside his privacy curtain and finds not the ruined remains of his cabin but, just, his fucking cabin, and Essie on the couch.

"I'm not dead," he says to the room, to himself, to Essie, as he climbs out of bed. "You're not dead, either!"

Wilde still felt like he was in a dream, even after waking up in the cabin, fiercely hugging his friends. Being poked at by the emergency healers. Giving a testimony that felt like recounting the events in a book, not anything that had actually happened to him. He has a vague sense that he might be in shock, but he can't be sure. What's that even like? The feeling is: relieved, but numb. Time seems to be passing so slowly and so quickly all at once, so that by the time agents begin rounding everyone up for the buses, it truly seems like he's only just arrived at the lodge.

It's okay, though.

He hasn't had time to find Saira yet, and he knows she'll be on this bus. Absolutely. Safe, sharp, well-rested. He waits at the end of the line to board, trying to sort out his emotions, if he wants to say anything to her, if anything he'd say makes sense, but his thoughts keep drifting and he just ends up smoothing Sid's little head with a finger instead until the hedgehog curls away from him, deeper into the pocket of his pajama bottoms.

Then Wilde climbs up the steps and into the bus. He makes his way down the aisle with exhausted but single-minded determination until he finds Saira. He spends a weird moment holding up the line just looking at her, overwhelmed, then takes a seat without saying anything. It feels like the first time he's been off his feet in forever, and he hadn't realized exactly how worried he was that he'd never see her again.

"D'you think they're--" Lucas starts to say to Essie, wondering about the friends they haven't reconnected with, yet. But he loses his train of thought when a particularly gruff-looking auror walks right past them. He gawks, obviously awed and a little bit intimidated, inching a bit closer to his much smaller, much braver companion. Gosh, the lodge sure is crowded.

Once he has to crane his neck to follow the auror's path, his attention snaps away and he scans the sea of people in search of a particular set of faces. "They've got to be okay, right?"

Saira is...well, honestly, she's pretty frustrated. She does not like not knowing things, and answers have been few and far between.

What she knows: she woke up not in her bed but in the Atrium, with a handful of other students, with no recollection as to how she got there, and was told very little except that half the school was 'missing.' And then were all promptly found again, varying degrees of injured, hysterical, and obviously traumatized, and none of them with a coherent story as to where they'd been.

What she does not know: literally anything about what happened last night.

It's extremely frustrating.

She spent some time asking questions, trying to figure it out, but it's been hopeless, and clearly no on is in much of a mood to talk about it without some sort of obvious emotional breakdown. Which are not helpful in the least.

She has, then, retreated into silence and a book, which is both sensical and informative, as opposed to everyone else around her. Because she is not busy hugging everyone and crying over people, she gets onto the bus quick and early, stakes out a seat, and glares at anyone who tries to join her in it.

Saira may in fact be waiting for Wilde- she did not fail to notice his absence in the Atrium, thank you- but she doesn't think it's something that needs to be mentioned.

But when he sits, she sets her book to one side and reaches for his hand without comment. He looks exhausted. It's troubling.

Jeffy opens his eyes and wonders WHAT in the WORLD he was eating or reading or WHATEVER before he went to bed to give him dreams like THAT. Like, there was a GHOST? That ATTACKED him and his friends? And then when they were trying to go somewhere else, Essie just DISAPPEARED? Dude, it was nuts, what a nuts dream.

He throws open his own curtain, throwing himself down to the ground, and... whoa, he still has splinters in his hands. And his pajamas are kind of dirty. And there's a growing bump on his forehead.

Oh, and Essie's on their couch.

Maybe that wasn't just a weird dream.

"Dude," he says, his mouth a perfect O. "DUDE!" Second verse, same as the first, but with more feeling. "WE'RE NOT DEAD!"

Wilde laces his fingers in hers, slouching into the seat. He angles his body toward Saira so that he can pretend no one else on this bus exists. It helps. He's here, for real, with her.

A long moment passes.

"Hey."

"Holy fucking fuckballs, YOU," Robin shouts, his hands slipping as he clambers off his bed, only barely keeping his balance as he hits the ground.

"I fucking knew it, I fucking KNEW it, I fucking knew it," he repeats breathlessly, a grin pulling annoyingly at the corners of his mouth. He throws his arms around both Chris and Dimi, smearing them with oil and gunk. "I fucking KNEW you weren't gettin' the FUCK away that easy." You didn't actually know, Robin, stop lying.

Ferdie still has a headache. It's not as bad as it was in the mines, but there's a lingering echo of it, somewhere in the back of his head. He doesn't bother telling the emergency healers that. It's not like they can do a lot. And right now it's only that, and the small hole in his sweater sleeve that he caught on probably a rock in the mines. His fingers keep circling that, breaking the threads farther apart. He's also staring at the window a lot, because Ferdie never really imagined there'd be sun again.

Which is stupid. The rays of light through the window are so warm now, thinking the other way seems crazy. Surely, there was not a time when everything was dark. Maybe this never happened. He rubs at his temples, and the throbbing pain there is reassuring. And then Ferdie makes himself as quietly busy as he can, ushering people away from Aurors if they look like they're about to annoy them; Prefect stuff like that. He's a Prefect again. He's glad for it, though. He can't quite stop yet. That seems like the most frightening idea of all.

Someone who doesn't belong here peeks out from behind Dimi's curtain, sees what's going on, and awkwardly ducks back under cover.

"Merlin, and here I was so ready to be rid of both of you," Dimi exclaims, not sounding remotely sincere. He wriggles free enough of Chris' ... extremely friendly hug to throw his arms around both of them.

His hand touches the oil on Robin's back and slides down.

The sensation reminds him of a squonk.

Dimi gags loudly.

"Hello," Saira says after another long moment. She looks at him, and doesn't say anything more, and doesn't ask. He'll tell her if he wants to. When he wants to.

If it were anyone else, she would probably start grilling them. But. This once, she will try to refrain.

"General reaction to hugging Youngblood, you'll get used to it," Chris says readily because if you can't joke when somebody gags, you just can't joke. But Chris moves his arm around Robin all the same, as if he hadn't just spent what feels like a year with him. "Wait, that means Tess should be here too." They're not gonna abandon Dimi for Tess, but they might abandon Dimi for Tess.

Wilde half-smiles; it's worn out and faintly incredulous, but affectionate. He closes his eyes, tuning out the rumble of voices and jostling in the seats around them.

"I'll tell you everything," he assures her, after a moment. She hasn't asked, but if he were her he'd be wondering.

Then he says: "I missed you."

That's probably not the most accurate term for the feeling, but he's not sure how else to describe it.

"Don't rush, now," Saira murmurs; it's just incredibly dry, but she's actually trying to be sincere rather than sarcastic. It just...doesn't entirely come out that way.

"I can't say the same," she adds, smiling a little. "But don't take that too hard, Jonathan, as, as far as I can tell, I was only sleeping."

There's a pause- lengthy-ish- and then she tries one more time. "You can sleep now, if you need to. I'll wake you in Logan. And you may tell me when we happen upon each other quite by accident in a book shop over the summer."

Micah wakes up for what seems to be too many times in one night. Three, technically. Four, if he wants to count his forest-magic-induced dream. First, when Hazel covered his eyes and told him not to freak out. Second, in the freaking mines. Third, right here and now, in his warm soft cabin bed. And fourth...

No. Stop thinking about that.

Micah hears voices, and makes out Jeffy's clearest of all. He forces himself to get up. "Okay, gents, let's actually do a head-count before we start celebrating," Micah says as he pushes his bed curtain open, but it's hard to sound world-weary when confronted first thing in the morning with Jeffy Key's beautiful face and Lucas Kowalski's beautiful hair.

It feels like weeks since he's last seen them.

"Lucas... dude. Jeffy." They look terrible. They look wonderful. Before he even knows what he's doing, Micah launches himself at Jeffy, throwing his arms around him. "Oh god, oh man, oh god, oh man, oh god. Dude. You're not dead!"

Wilde laughs, brightening a little, but there's something a little odd in his manner when he asks, "Did you ... dream about anything?"

You can sleep now, she says, but he opens his eyes instead, shaking his head.

"I don't know if I can. It's ..." Trailing off, he shrugs. "Hard to explain. You'll understand, when we just happen to visit the library on the same day and time."

"No," Saira says, peering all the more intently at Wilde. Something about dreams, then. She'd heard something about that, in the chatter, but it was hard to tell-

"No. I didn't dream at all. I don't remember a thing from when I laid down in my cabin until I woke up in the Atrium." She pauses, thoughtful. "I take it that you do. But you'll tell me about that. Presumably when I am next in the market for pastries."

Casey returns to the waking world by stretching—or trying to stretch, as he's surrounded on all sides by things. Squishy things. Fabric things. Hair things.

He spits blue hair out of of his mouth with a loud BLEH. Hey! He knows that hair! "Stamps, did we, like–" He wiggles a little against Cameron's chest. He was about to say get trashed or some shit but instead he just says, "Oh. 'Sup." Yeah, they definitely got trashed last night. And he had the weirdest fuckin' dream.

"Good."

She's ... lucky? That seems like the wrong word, somehow.

He nods at her, smiling again. Definitely. Definitely, definitely. They'll look for explanations together in books about metaphysics and hermetics and whatever else, and he'll get to hear what she thinks, what she would've done in his place, all the ways she would've fucking destroyed those monsters and puzzles. Yeah. And this is real already -- not a dream, or the wrong version of reality. Definitely.

"I know it shows in my, like, absolute glow right now," he jokes, "but... I'm happy. To see you." Which she knows already, he already basically said it, but. Whatever.

Saira nods and returns the smile, a small, weirdly hopeful thing, though what she's hopeful for she couldn't say. That he is, maybe. That sitting here is somehow making him feel better. She has very little clue what happened, and it's sort of killing her, but that everyone went through something awful is clear.

Though she doesn't care about everyone. Just a few people. Just Wilde.

"I am happy to see you too," she offers, haltingly, because this Admitting To Caring thing is still for the birds in her book. "Do you want to read with me?"

It's a freshman-level Hermeticism text that she scrounged from behind something in the Atrium, far below either of them but better than nothing when you've been packed into a bus without most of your things.

Jeffy has never hugged anyone so tight in his life, but pretty much everyone is about to get one of these big old squeeze-hugs this morning. He swings Micah around as he probably breaks like one or two or more ribs.

"MICAH!" he shouts, unnecessarily, because Micah knows who he is. "BRO! Holy crap, holy COW." They're all such poets this morning.

"Yeah. I'd like that."

Wilde's too tired and starry-eyed to feel very shy. He scoots closer to rest his heavy head on her shoulder.

Riley does not remember much from last night. Like, Cecil and Levi woke her up? In the woods? Cecil definitely carried her out of there. Fuck man, there must have been one HELL of a graduation party.

"Mmmmnnnnngggghhhh," she mumbles into her arm. "Why're smushing me?"

Generally speaking, Bash isn't really the sort of person who lacks the words necessary to properly express himself. If anything, he usually has too many of them. But his interview had pretty much been a disaster - he'd been fidgety and nervous, wringing his hands together in the absence of Gabi's and just waiting to be finished.

He's been waiting to find people, not participate in a tell-all. Or even a tell-a-brief-and-annotated-version-of-shit.

"Oh, thank fuck," he breathes when he spots a familiar set of curls some distance away (sparing a quick second to wince, shoulders up around his ears, and mutter an apology to the man still standing behind him) before he's cutting his way through the crowd a bit too hastily. "GUYS!"

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Page 6 of 15

AFTERMATH & DEPARTURE

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