crawling in the dark | cas

[rhys alexander greyback]

is there something more

than what i've been handed?

April 2028
Casimir Elias Karkaroff

”Do we have any boggarts?” Rhys asked, arms crossed as he stared at the scale model on a table before them. Along with classroom study, Vector included practical training for the students. It was apparently part of his curriculum when teaching them about traps. Rhys had observed a lesson with the first-year trainees involving quicksand, which had proved quite entertaining. This model focused on heights—a pervasive and simple fear among most people.

When he hadn’t heard an answer, Rhys finally looked at his old mentor and colleague. ”What? They’ll cross any rope bridge to get away from their boggart.” Rhys added confidentially. It wasn’t common in most parts of the world, but there was always the chance one did not end up in a tomb or cave but something more open but far more dangerous for the available space and heights. He thought of the dragons in South America flying at the altitudes of the Andes, where one may be quite exposed. But again, with the right spells and awareness of one’s surroundings, it was easy to manage and traverse. Much like the trainee who struggled to pull the inner power needed for a Protego Maxima spell in Rhys’ other course, they simply needed motivation in the form of something large and heavy thrown at them. Not that Rhys would ever let said item actually land on the student, but they didn’t know that.

template by vee

[Casimir Elias Karkaroff]

April 2028

Cas didn’t usually second-guess his decisions – but then again, his choices usually didn’t lead him deep into the hormone-infested halls of a school he’d never actually gone to. The idea had sounded simple enough when Archie had come to Borgin and Burke’s to suggest it, and it had appealed to Cas’s senses as a world-weary mentor who’d seen one too many troublesome trainees in his cursebreaker days. But reality was much different, and Cas struggled not to fidget with the treasure trove he’d brought to entice the students to the finish line – and which of course was heavily enchanted, so they’d also learn a lesson about snatching shiny things without running a spell check or two first.

Speaking of troublesome trainees…Cas didn’t immediately answer Rhys’s question as they studied a model of the training course they were designing for the cursebreakers-to-be. His former trainee had always been prone to finding flashy solutions, even if he’d grown into a capable cursebreaker over the years. His survival rate was still 100%, which was impressive among the veterans of the career path. But Cas didn’t like to rely on actual living beings to do his work for him (especially if they were his siblings, because then they came with sarcasm and sass attached). Not when he could simply enchant an item to do the same thing. “We don’t need a boggart,” he suggested while he moved some pebbles around on the model so they were near the start of the rope bridge. “I have some amulets that can animate objects in their immediate vicinity. They can cross the bridge or try and out-run the boulder.” That seemed like enough motivation to him.

rhys alexander greyback