How’s it going to be [Dahlia]

[Marisol Leandra Lobera Navarre]

November 2025

For the first time since she’d switched out the jungles of Castelobruxo for rainy England, Diagon Alley looked like an interesting place to be. But could anyone blame Sol for thinking that? She’d spent most of her first year after graduation stuck in Wales, holed up in a museum with ancient Merlin artifacts that only slightly predated her grandparents. She’d have thought that anywhere would look better than a musty basement filled with boxes of files that were mostly dust by that point, but her first trip to London had been seriously underwhelming. Diagon Alley in the middle of a pandemic was…depressing. There were barely any shoppers and some stores had closed down altogether. Wherever she did go, even the slightest hint of a cough or breathing fire would make everyone in the vicinity jump.

So yeah, the place actually looked alive now that all the restrictions had been lifted. Sol parked her bike (her quarter-life crisis had kicked in a little early) and moved to find a comfortable spot to wait near Gringotts’ entrance, out of the way of the continuous foot traffic flowing in and out of the bank. She watched the ambience with interest – commuters heading home from work, shoppers traveling in pairs as they weaved between shops, and only a small percentage still nervously holding handkerchiefs or masks up to their noses. Her eyes couldn’t seem to settle on one point for longer than a few moments before her gaze was traveling again – more of an indictment of Wales’s nightlife than anything else. She crossed her arms and tried to look inconspicuous, although the occasional goblin shot an annoyed glance her way if she maintained eye contact for too long. She tried not to stare, but even though her mother had worked at Gringotts for all of Sol’s life…well, she’d never gone to visit her mother at work.

She was finally distracted again by a tug at her sleeve, and she watched her bowtruckle climb out of her pocket, up her jacket sleeve and onto her shoulder. “What, you see her? But how do you know…” Sol trailed off as she saw what Indy had seen. Yeah, that was definitely her half-sister – she had the same piercing blue eyes as Rhys, and apparently as their deadbeat dad. If Sol had been a nervous wreck before meeting Rhys, she couldn’t seem to find the same angry nervous butterflies now. Meeting one estranged half-sibling seemed to have broken the tension, she supposed. How different could the rest be? Instead she studied Dahlia critically as she came closer, looking for some magic sign that would confirm they were related, and this wasn't some weird cosmic joke being played on her by the universe.

dahlia jade greyback

[dahlia jade greyback]

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Was frustration even the right word to describe what Dahlia felt after finally being allowed back into the UK for work? It had only been a little while now, and the bank had unilaterally decided that her actions during her time stuck outside meant her training was to be slowed down and evaluated more closely. Because it was her fault that they didn’t give her anything to do throughout the lockdown caused by Hag’s Fever. Dahlia had frequently sent correspondence to the French branch of Gringotts, only to be met with responses telling her to be patient. That would have been all well and fine if it hadn’t cost money out of her pocket to keep herself busy while they took their sweet time. At least she’d managed to have some fun on her own. Knowing Marseilles certainly helped in her getting around, both with places to stay and people to meet.

But now it was back to reality and Gringotts was being stingy. Everyone knew that they needed a constant resupply of Cursebreakers; things had been tough in recent years with a contingency retiring early due to injury. The sooner they fast-tracked her training, the more goods they’d have in their possession. It was as easy as that. Apparently, they didn’t seem to see it the same way as she did. Her exuberance to work was not matched nearly as much as she’d hoped.

Today, like many other days since getting back in the country, had started and ended early. A couple of meetings and training sessions, classes that she had already taken but had to redo because the bank decided putting her with the next group of trainees was a better choice. Suffice to say, she was frustrated when she stepped out into Diagon Alley. Dahlia was, unfortunately, known to have a permanent scowl plastered onto her face at times. That much had never changed, even before she’d become a werewolf, and everything went wacky in her life. Shielding her eyes as the sun blinded her briefly, she let out a sufficient huff as she descended the front steps of the bank.

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[Marisol Leandra Lobera Navarre]

Sol pinched her fingers so she could gently lift her bowtruckle and set him down on the railing. “Come back in five minutes,” she suggested, almost whispering to him as he glanced around at his new surroundings. She didn’t elaborate any farther at his puzzled glance, but watched Indy shuffle off anyway. Sol wasn’t much concerned about her pet. He could take care of himself, and she liked not having to constantly keep an eye on him. And there was something about this first meeting that she wanted to have some privacy for. Maybe it was stupid, and maybe a bowtruckle didn’t quite count as company, but Sol didn’t want a million pairs of eyes on her as she stiltedly introduced herself to her half-sister.

“Dahlia Leloup?” Sol asked as the girl in question steadily moved in her direction. Dahlia cut an intimidating figure, with a scowl on her face and a confident step that looked like it wouldn’t change whether she was walking on eggshells, cobblestones or skulls. It felt a little like moving to stand in front of a giant boulder (that rolled down its path and didn’t care what was in the way), but Sol did so anyway. Because she’d come all the way to London for this, and had nervously rehearsed in front of the mirror and Indy quite a few times about what she might say…even though the nerves seemed to have stayed behind in Wales. No, all Sol felt now was the same kind of wooden determination that she tapped into whenever her boss tried to break her spirit by giving her impossible tasks at the museum. She stepped forward so Dahlia could see her better, although she’d chosen a good place to wait. The crowd continued on into the alley and left the two girls somewhat set apart from the flowing stream of people.

Sol uncrossed her arms and let her arms dangle, fighting the urge to smooth out the creases on her blouse. Nobody would think the bike was hers based on the way she dressed – imitating the preppy style she’d seen the other archivists at the museum wear, doing her best to fit in and wear subdued colors and styles. She studied Dahlia for a moment, noting the same piercing blue eyes that marked her as a Greyback, along with Rhys. Thankfully, Sol had always taken more after her mother. “My name’s Sol,” she began, although she cut herself off before she could finish the rest of her rehearsed sentence. My name is Sol and we have something in common. It sounded so stupid now. Maybe something glitched in her brain. Or maybe she was never going to be elegant and graceful about this like she’d hoped to be. Instead the next sentence came out abrupt, straight to the point, maybe kinda awkward. Because that was Sol, ultimately. “We should talk about Fenrir Greyback.”

dahlia jade greyback

[dahlia jade greyback]

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Being approached by strangers wasn’t exactly uncommon in Diagon Alley. Opportunistic witches and wizards trying to sell their inventions or wares, unaware that she was dirt poor. Just because she was leaving Gringotts didn’t mean she had money to spare like they assumed. They usually meant well; it was hard out here. Once she got actual jobs, she could maybe tender the idea of looking at what was being shoved into her hands. As for now, Dahlia was running on steam, having blown through everything that the bank pity paid her during her unscheduled vacation on swanky seaside hotels and overpriced drinks back home in Marseille. It had been the only time she truly enjoyed where she’d grown up.

”I am not interested in whatever you are selling,” Dahlia tried to wave the young woman off before hearing her name said. That made her stop and turn back to face her more directly. Her first thought was that the woman was some kind of auditor for the bank, only because she had been grilled over the last few weeks about several of the items she had collected on her last job before the lockdown. There were no discrepancies in what she was supposed to be bringing back, but the bank still had plenty of questions. Everything she had heard about the auditors came from stories making them out to be boogeymen. They appeared when one least expected it apparently.

What actually came next was not what Dahlia expected in the slightest. The girl introduced herself as Sol, and that the two of them needed to talk about Fenrir Greyback. Narrowing her eyes, Dahlia tried to figure out what was going on here. It wasn’t exactly a secret that she was a child of Fenrir, her chosen last name was in reference to the murderous werewolf. Maybe she was a reporter then? Another attack made by daddy dearest always made the journalists go crazy. They loved death and violence. Craved it, even. ”Okay? I only know what others seem to already know about him. And I am not talking to a strange person about how he turned me.”

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[Marisol Leandra Lobera Navarre]

It looked like Dahlia wasn’t going to stop for a moment, and Sol wondered what she’d do if the cursebreaker just ignored her and kept walking. Things had gone differently with Rhys, what felt like a million years ago, but Sol didn’t want to do that again. An arranged meeting where everything felt staged, two estranged siblings meeting for the first time in what everyone expected to be an emotional natural reunion (even though it definitely hadn’t felt natural at all). She’d built up so many fears and expectations in her head before meeting him that’d left her biased and working with incomplete information. In the end, she’d only gone because her mother had been oddly pushy about it – and the stark difference from her usual passive attitude had sent Sol to see what the fuss was.

But now? Sol just wanted to do things on her terms, not because anyone was forcing her to play to their tune. She didn’t want to approach cautiously, her hands held up in surrender. And she definitely didn’t want to rely on Rhys, acting as the go-between and doing everything for her. So here she was, flying blind and taking a chance that maybe Dahlia would be curious enough to hear her out. Despite the fact that she felt like she’d been carved out of stone, Sol still preferred it this way. She didn’t bother correcting the assumption that she was some sort of traveling saleswitch – because fine, she didn’t have second-hand cauldrons in her bag but Sol supposed she was sort of trying to sell something. The same wayward idea Rhys had pitched to her years ago that they could be something even without Fenrir looming large over them.

“I guess that’s fair,” Sol said, avoiding the urge to scuff her shoe against the pavement and ruin her heels as Dahlia refused to dive into her Turning with a stranger, “I don’t like to talk about mine either.” Despite the fact that she’d rehearsed a million ways this might go, none of her preparations felt like enough for the real thing. It still didn’t feel completely real that Dahlia was an actual person, and not just a vague notion of a half-sister. Sol took a moment to consider her next words, then just plunged in. She’d gotten good at imitating an American accent and letting her Spanish accent fade away. Still, sometimes it bled through when she was nervous. “I couldn’t even say his name three years ago. Um anyway, Rhys has mentioned you a few times and I guess I just wanted to meet you. I met Elias once before he…anyway, it was nice. So I thought I’d introduce myself.” Hi, my name is Sol and we have a deadbeat dad in common. Surprise. She waved slightly to show that she’d finally finished talking, but studied Dahlia warily. She still wasn’t convinced that Dahlia wouldn’t turn on her heel and walk away.

dahlia jade greyback

[dahlia jade greyback]

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All she wanted to do was move on with her life now that she had a job and found family members that seemed to understand where she was coming from. The random gawkers that appeared from time to time to ask intrusive questions were originally met with actual answers; now she brushed them off aggressively. Amongst her confusion about what this girl wanted from her, whether to sell weird, and probably illegal, potion ingredients, or to start in on strange theories about where her father was currently lurking in the world, Dahlia wanted none of it. The bank had already pissed her off enough today and all she wanted now was a drink or ten. Except she didn’t really have the money for it, so finding Rhys and bumming one off of him was the easiest way to get liquored up.

Dahlia paused when the young woman explained that she didn’t like talking about her turning either. So that was what this was. Fenrir had turned plenty over the years, at least to her understanding, but his proclivity for returning to his offspring was apparently much higher than the rest of his turnings. The girl then namedropped Rhys and Elias, saying she had met both, and the pieces to the confusion puzzle all fell into place. Another sibling.

She stopped where she was and swallowed nervously, though it was drier than she had expected. Was this how Rhys had felt when she suddenly appeared in front of him the year prior, declaring she was his half-sister? Dahlia had always known there were others out there. Some were werewolves, others weren’t. She desperately hoped that those that hadn’t been turned yet stayed that way, safe from the other outcome.

”Oh…” she finally said after a moment, trying to figure out what she was supposed to say next. ”Rhys never told me he found more.” Maybe that was a trust thing. She understood that she came across the way she did. Dahlia wasn’t exactly the poster child of happiness, and she was absolutely ‘wilder’ compared to him and Max. It definitely put things into better perspective for her though, especially on her position as a Greyback child.

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[Marisol Leandra Lobera Navarre]

She could see the moment that Dahlia realized who she was. It seemed to flip like a switch in her head and Sol’s eyes narrowed in an equal mix of caution and curiosity as Dahlia suddenly stopped moving. That actually made her more nervous than when she’d wondered if the cursebreaker was going to stop at all or just keep walking. The silence lingered between them for a moment, but Sol wasn’t in a rush to break it. She figured maybe she’d just dropped a bigger bombshell than she’d initially realized, and this was a hell of a surprise to drop on someone after work. Like, you finish your last piece of paperwork, start the commute home, meet a random half-sibling on the way out. There wasn’t exactly a manual for how to navigate a situation like that, from either end.

“Oh. Yeah.” Sol nodded slightly as she wondered how Rhys was going to react when she told him about this later. He’d probably been waiting for some sign that it was the right time, but she hadn’t consulted with him before making the decision to introduce herself. In fact, she usually didn’t. They did talk after the fact, but Sol wasn’t in the habit of consulting people. She was more likely to copy whatever she saw that she liked, but she didn’t need people to tell her what was best. “I think he probably…wanted to do this differently. Set up a meeting or something. Except, he’s abroad and never mentioned a timeline, and…” And there hadn’t been anyone to tell me no.

She shrugged a bit, because Sol already knew she wasn’t going to apologize. There were things about Rhys that struck a chord in her sometimes, similarities that told her they were actually related and this wasn’t all a big joke. It comforted her whenever she found one, because it’d been impossible to see at the beginning and it did make them a sort of family. But also – he wasn’t her keeper. They didn’t have that kind of relationship where he made decisions for her, even though he was a good bit older and definitely had more experience with the whole being-a-Greyback thing. So yeah, she’d made the decision to do this her way and she wouldn’t apologize. Although maybe Dahlia did deserve something better than ‘oops I did it again.’ “In his defense,” Sol began, still processing the fact that things had changed to the point where she’d ever come to his defense for anything, “I’ve been abroad too. Castelobruxo. I just graduated and came here for work and…I’m still trying to figure everything out.”

dahlia jade greyback

[dahlia jade greyback]

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Dahlia didn’t doubt that Sol was a child of Fenrir; someone didn’t just claim such a horror like that and try to convince the others that they were one. With the added part of having already met Rhys too, it was quite a bit easier to understand despite having it suddenly thrown at her like this. Dahlia listened though, moving out of the way of a group of goblins that were heading into the bank. ”That sounds like something he would do,” Dahlia confirmed. Rhys would have loved to have been the facilitator for a grand meeting of the Greybacks. Being the oldest (that they knew of), it made sense that he would want to be the one to find them and then bring them all together in some grand party. ”Now that we are allowed in and out of the country again, we are all trying to get back to work,” she explained, as if that bought him a reason for never once mentioning this additional sibling before.

Sol went on to further explain that she had only just graduated, from Castelobruxo, and decided that coming to London for work was her next step. Dahlia continued to nod her head as she spoke. It had been the same for her. She had never felt like France had anything left for her by the time she had graduated. Plus, they didn’t really want her there any longer either. That much had been made clear by the time she had left Beauxbatons.

”It was the same for me,” Dahlia said, maybe trying to find some common ground between the two of them. ”I…do not know what we do next,” she admitted. This was probably why having Rhys as the intermediary would be better. He could talk endlessly and bridge that gap. Dahlia knew she wasn’t always the most forthcoming with everything.

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[Marisol Leandra Lobera Navarre]

Sol sighed to herself slightly as they both seemed to recognize that Rhys would’ve done this in a much more organized (and controlled) way. It probably would’ve gone the same way as her first meeting with Rhys, actually. Showing up insanely early to the meeting point while she tried to settle her nerves, trying and failing to read a book while the words didn’t quite stick in her mind, and repeating the internal script to herself over and over again that she wasn’t obligated to do anything. Not to welcome a stranger into her life like they were family, not to cut him a break for navigating an insanely difficult situation full of mines and traps, and definitely not to agree with anything he said (and even deciding ahead of time to be contrary just because she wanted to be). Maybe that had been cringey enough that she’d decided to try and find a different kind of awkward with Dahlia.

“The lockdown was driving everybody crazy,” Sol agreed, fiddling with the strap of her bag as she shook her head at the thought. It must’ve been maddening for the cursebreakers not only because their careers depended on it, but because the job attracted the sort of people who’d be wanderers in the first place. Sol was okay with staying inside for unhealthy amounts of time, but even she’d started going slowly insane with never leaving the musty archives of the museum. Her own adventures had come to a halt for all of Hag’s Fever, stuck in her imagination while she dreamed about all the things she’d do once the government’s leash came off again. “It’s interesting that you both work together,” Sol volunteered, although she wasn’t sure if they actually did or how the bank chose assignments for their cursebreakers. But it was still quite a coincidence, she supposed. ‘Interesting’ was always the word she used when she hadn’t made up her mind about something yet. It didn’t inherently mean anything good or bad, just something worthy of noticing. She might die if she had to see Rhys every day at work, though.

She was used to answering quickly, since her mind tended to shoot off into a million different directions immediately. Sol opened her mouth, but then paused as she realized she didn’t know what to say to Dahlia’s observation. Because…she also didn’t know what to do next. It would be weird to just say goodbye and leave it at this. But, what would they even talk about? Their lives? Fenrir? Compare bite marks? “Um…I don’t have any plans right now.” Because she’d written this as her plans for the evening. Reveal herself to a new half-sister, check. “We could go somewhere. And talk...about things.” And drink, she added to herself. That’d probably do the trick better than even Rhys could, although Sol had to admit that he’d probably have a better idea of what to do next after making first contact. She was doubly embarassed by the fact that on their very first meeting, she'd poked fun at Rhys for being awkward and vague. He'd said something very similar about the conversations he had with other Greybacks...talking about things and stuff. Merlin's beard, was she turning into him?

Sol hadn’t thought too far ahead (as usual) and tried to recover the flow of the conversation. “This is my first time in London,” Sol said with a self-conscious shrug, “So I’m not sure where anything is. But...I’ve parked over there. If you're free.” She nodded over her shoulder at her bike, where her bowtruckle had settled after wandering off to who-knows-where to do who-knows-what. Indy waved a little leafy arm at her as if he could hear them talking. She smiled a bit at that (because even Sol and her wooden heart couldn’t resist the gooey cuteness of a bowtruckle). She turned back to Dahlia to study her reaction. It'd been apparent from the first moment that the cursebreaker was somewhat hard to read, since she always had an overall grumpy look of being somewhere she didn't want to be. So it was hard to tell how she was really processing all of this.

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