A Bad Feeling About Anna Karenina (OPEN)

[Deleted]

September 2025

Priscilla Rosier never thought that there would have come a point where she actually missed Hogwarts, but having lived her life virtually confined to her family's manor since her expulsion from school meant that just about anything seemed more exciting than sitting around at home. She wasn't allowed to use magic because she was still underage, which pretty much made void anything that she could have done to entertain herself besides reading. Housework was out of the question—and of course the Rosier family had elves for that; they were too proud to do things the "Muggle" way—and the closest that she had gotten to socializing was the conversation that she had had with Ambrosia Hong in the early weeks of the summer that had since passed.

She had taken Ambrosia's advice, which was about the only other thing that she could do. Receiving a criminal record at sixteen for having attacked another student wouldn't look good for her or her family name, and it was bad enough that she had already been scorned by one fiancé; she didn't need that to happen again. It was boring doing nothing at all, and Priscilla itched for someone to give her something to do.

In another time, she wouldn't have thought about Flourish and Blotts much at all. It was where she bought her schoolbooks, of course, but she didn't spend much time there. She had better things to do. Well, she used to have better things to do.

It was amazing to Priscilla how empty the bookstore was during the school term. She had only been there when it was crowded with other students, and so many of them weren't people with whom she would associate outside of Hogwarts, if at all. She was able to stand in front of the bookshelves and read without a single disturbance, at least for as long as it took for her mother to return from her errands. It was almost like being in the school library again, though there was a slight difference: She couldn't check out the books without purchasing them, but there was no Restricted Section.

OOC: OPEN!

[mina pandora oliveira]

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Dead. Every September at Flourish & Blotts was exactly the same. Mina had already fronted the entire store twice, which was more work than she was usually committed to doing right after the school rush ended, but it was that quiet today that she felt like it was her only choice other than falling asleep at the counter. Once upon a time she probably would have been sneaking sips from her flask to keep herself enjoying the work. These days it felt more like an accomplishment not to day drink. That and she had been caught a few times by her boss. Apparently she was too valuable to let go, because that let them go on vacations and not have to be in the store nearly as often as they should have been. She was fine with that. By this point, she knew where everything was and had a solid grasp on what the regulars were always looking for.

The girl that walked in while Mina was sifting through the reserved books barely caught her attention, despite being one of the first potential customers to walk in so far. She was too busy trying to figure out if any of the ancient bats that despised her would be in today or not. From the slips sticking out of the books, it looked like she was in the clear. They really didn’t see eye to eye with her. It made her wonder what they would have thought about her if she was covered in tattoos and piercings like some of her friends were. Just because she liked to look the type that got around and went clubbing often didn’t mean she was that bad. She still knew books and how to keep the store running despite being hungover most weekend morning shifts.

After a few seconds, she decided to figure out where the girl had wandered off to, mostly to see if she needed any help finding anything. As Mina walked by row after row, she finally found the girl, and cleared her throat from the end of it. “Need any help?” she put on her most helpful tone. She called it her customer service voice, and if she mocked it endlessly whenever she was around friends that had happened to catch her at work.

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[Deleted]

September 2025

Hearing the sound of footsteps followed by the sound of someone's clearing their throat, Priscilla looked up from her reading material, half expecting to see her mother standing there to point out that they really did need to be getting home. The woman she saw wasn't her mother, though, luckily, which meant that she still had some time to read. It was just one of the employees at the bookshop, whom Priscilla vaguely recognized from somewhere—probably just from having purchased her schoolbooks at Flourish and Blotts over the years.

"Need any help?” the young woman asked her. From her tone, Priscilla assumed that she was trying to be helpful to her, though she didn't need any help with anything. She was just reading, in the way that she might have done in the school library. That was all. If she had needed assistance, which she didn't, she would have sought it out.

"No," Priscilla replied. As with the salesgirl's voice, she kept hers more polite than the way in which she might have spoken otherwise. She even forced a smile. "I'm just looking. Thank you." If she stayed polite and cheerful, she figured, it would get the employee out of her hair that much sooner, and she could go back to reading.

mina pandora oliveira

[mina pandora oliveira]

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It didn’t immediately click in her brain that the girl standing in front of her was Hogwarts-age. Mina was so used to the crowds over the last few months, that, aside from orders for school books, she had grown used to seeing students wandering about on their own. Even with the girl declining her offer of assistance, Mina didn’t put two and two together. What she did recall though, was that the girl definitely looked familiar. She couldn’t remember where, but it definitely wasn’t from the last few months. If this had been a few years earlier, Mina would have assumed the only reason she could remember the girl’s face was because she hadn’t been intoxicated during whatever conversation they had. Which meant it had either been while at school (and that felt impossible to her because she had blocked those years out already), or it happened when she was around work.

“Do I know you? I feel like we’ve met somewhere before…but it wasn’t here,” Mina stated, not deterred by the younger girl’s determination to get her to leave. That was a lost fight from the very start. Mina had no problem overstaying her welcome, and talking people’s ears off was her third favorite hobby behind drinking and playing with her dog. It used to be number one, but things changed once she was free from Hogwarts. Or was the school free from her? That was a debate for another day, because she realized that the girl was definitely student-aged, which meant she had no business being in Diagon right now. “And how did you manage to escape? Because I tried for years, and they always got me once I reached Hogsmeade,” she admitted, oversharing like usual. In her opinion, it was silly not to let the students roam Hogsmeade whenever they wanted outside of class hours. They would eventually get bored to death of the shops there. Zonko’s could only keep her attention for a few minutes once a month as it was. Letting students break free of their studies more than one trip per month made sense to her. Then again, she and Hogwarts never saw completely eye to eye, and they would have gladly been fine with her getting kicked out.

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[Deleted]

September 2025

Priscilla had largely kept away from public spaces, but she got the occasional odd glance while in Diagon Alley. She knew that it was relatively uncommon for people of her own age not to attend Hogwarts, which would have attracted enough attention on its own, she supposed, without the very public expulsion to which she had been subjected. The young woman who worked at Flourish and Blotts didn't immediately comment on any of that, though, and seemed to be willing to leave her to her reading… until she spoke again.

"Do I know you?" she asked. "I feel like we've met somewhere before…but it wasn't here."

Now that she mentioned it, Priscilla thought, she looked familiar to her, too. Obviously, it was hardly a secret that she had been betrothed to Riley Fudge, nor was it a secret that she had been expelled from Hogwarts. While it was entirely possible that that was the reason why the bookshop employee recognized her, Priscilla thought back and realized that the publicity she'd received wasn't the reason for it. It had been a while—the previous summer, she supposed—but wasn't it the same girl whom she and Ondina Weasley had encountered in Knockturn Alley?

"And how did you manage to escape?" she questioned her, to which Priscilla gave her a bemused look. Escape from where? She didn't think that she'd been locked up in Azkaban, did she? The prison was obviously no more, so that was a silver lining as far as Priscilla was concerned. "Because I tried for years," she added, "and they always got me once I reached Hogsmeade."

Oh, Priscilla quickly caught on; she was talking about Hogwarts, not prison—not that Hogwarts hadn't often felt like a prison, but that was different. She was sort of impressed that someone had jumped to the conclusion that she had managed to sneak out of the castle and all the way to Diagon Alley to go to Flourish and Blotts, of all places. She had been in Ravenclaw, but Merlin. If it had been the case that she had just escaped from Hogwarts, Priscilla guessed that she would have gone somewhere else, somewhere where she couldn't be found so easily.

Although tempted to concoct some epic about how she had managed to break out of the castle, Priscilla found herself giggling. "I was expelled," she corrected her, still laughing. Her voice wasn't at all as sullen as it might have been, not when the notion that she had somehow gone into Hogsmeade and then Diagon Alley totally undetected was so funny to her.

mina pandora oliveira  

[mina pandora oliveira]

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It had to have been a really elaborate plan of escape, maybe on par with some of the old muggle prison break movies she had seen, from the way the girl was laughing about the question. Mina thought it was a pretty valid one to ask, considering the situation. She wasn’t a narc either, so the girl was fairly safe for the time being when it came to wandering around the store. She honestly deserved a reward for it, because it was pretty difficult to get all the way from Hogwarts to hear unnoticed by a worried adult. Probably a lot of floo powder was required, because disapparating would have someone on her trail immediately. Once again, Mina had tried that and failed.

The only other option that she could think up was that the girl had been sick and missed the train. That seemed reasonable enough, but she also didn’t look sickly. Hag’s Fever had made the rounds for sure, but once the symptoms were gone, you were basically back to normal apparently. She was about to ask her about that, all while the girl was laughing at the prior question, when she was corrected about the real reason.

Expelled. Well that made sense too. She should have thought of that first, mostly because she had once been in a similar situation, and Sarah too. Her dumb optimism struck again. “Ah. Well, that happens I guess,” Mina reasoned, nodding her head that she understood. “Grades? Or did you try to kill someone?” she asked, before continuing for context, “Because I almost flunked out, and my sister got the boot for trying to kill someone. Y’know, same old same old at Hogwarts these days.” It was almost scary how par for the course that seemed lately. Too many dead students and crazy shit going down at the school. And for once, they couldn’t blame her for any of it.

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[Deleted]

September 2025

It was surprising to Priscilla how casually the bookshop employee reacted to her having been expelled from Hogwarts, as she knew that most people probably would have been more disbelieving of her than anything. Instead, though, she said that that happened, as though expulsion for school were virtually the same as receiving a bad mark on an exam after preparing for it for hours. "Grades? Or did you try to kill someone?" That was a large jump, Priscilla thought at first (and visibly widened her eyes), but the shopgirl continued from there. "Because I almost flunked out," she added, "and my sister got the boot for trying to kill someone. Y'know, same old same old at Hogwarts these days."

"No," Priscilla replied, albeit more intrigued by what the young woman had to say about her sister than with sharing the reason behind her own expulsion from Hogwarts. "I was just trying to take back something that was mine," she explained to her, her tone similarly casual. In her mind, that was all it had been. It hadn't been her fault that Kinsey Bainbridge had been unwilling to give up what was supposed to be hers. Then again, Priscilla supposed that it was rather unfortunate that she had wasted her time on Riley Fudge, since he had turned out to be nothing more than a blood traitor in the end. People like that always ended up revealing themselves, didn't they?

She continued thinking, though, trying to pin down who the sister must have been. Expulsion wasn't actually a common punishment at Hogwarts, and Priscilla had only heard of its having happened a handful of times over the years. Maybe it was more common hundreds of years before, but it was far less so in the school's more recent history. While she was tempted to ask to see if her sister was someone she had come across for herself, she knew better than to put herself out there like that. There wasn't much of a reason for her to know anyone who hadn't been in school at the same time as she had been without an obvious connection, and the elite only ran so deep and trickled down so far.

"Was your sister sent to Azkaban?" Priscilla asked, which was, she felt, a reasonable question to ask. It wasn't only that she had actually found herself in a similar position, but Azkaban was, itself, a hot topic. With the destruction of the prison, there were criminals who had undoubtedly ended up far beyond the Ministry's reach. It was likely, therefore, that her sister, had she been imprisoned, was among them.

mina pandora oliveira

[mina pandora oliveira]

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“Ah, a thief then! Well, I can sort of see old McGonagall getting pissy about that,” Mina sniffed as she thought back about it. She had never had the current Headmistress as that or a professor, but the old bat still made an appearance in person and in enough conversations to know what she was all about. Professor Longbottom had been a massive pushover, which was probably why Mina had received as many warnings as she had. That literally saved her hide more than once. Sarah was the exception, like she was for most rules, so it was a no-brainer that she got the boot for what she did. But being a stickler for taking something back that was hers? Mina really didn’t care all that much and was bound to forget by the end of the work day anyways, so she decided not to push anymore on it. All that really mattered was that the girl got kicked out, and it was kind of funny.

It wrapped back around to Sarah though, which was hilarious as well. Mina let out an explosive laugh, before trying to get serious about it. “No, not for that one. She killed our older brother though, so she got tossed in for that. Which was after she dropped her kid off with our parents and abandoned him,” she explained. “Yeah she’s a real piece of shit. Unfortunately she’s out now because of the whole breakout thing, and because she played nice, the Ministry thought they’d give her a new lease on life if she helped them. Kind of fucked up if you ask me.” Mina added, completely oversharing her family’s current ongoing problem. Callisto would kill her if she found out she was telling a stranger, especially a kid at that, all about their family problems. But having zero filter meant things were going to slip out occasionally. Especially when she was bored. “So yeah…even if you’re her, you can still get out of jail free.”

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[Deleted]

September 2025

Priscilla maintained her expression as the girl who worked at the shop assumed from her comment that the reason for her expulsion had had to do with some sort of thievery. If only it had been that simple, Priscilla thought to herself, though a part of her did find it amusing that that was what the employee's mind had jumped to. What at Hogwarts would have been worth stealing, truly? She knew that she would have to think about that. Maybe the gems in the hourglasses that were used to represent the House points, she pondered; those might have some value, anyway.

Any amusement on Priscilla's end was eclipsed by how much the Flourish and Blotts employee laughed at her question about her sister and whether or not she'd ended up in Azkaban. As it turned out, she had killed her own brother, apparently, a revelation at which Priscilla raised a brow. "Which was after she dropped her kid off with our parents and abandoned him," the young woman noted, calling her sister "a real piece of shit" as she explained that her sister was presently out of prison because of the breakout. Some of that sounded vaguely familiar to Priscilla, though everything with the prison had occurred not long before her expulsion. Because of that, she had been forced to lie low in terms of her involvement with the Purifiers, and that was unfortunate.

Either way, the Flourish and Blotts employee summarized her sister's case by saying, "So yeah… even if you’re her, you can still get out of jail free."

Priscilla nodded her head intently, trying to appear as though she had been listening completely to what had just been said to her. "Oh, I'm sorry. That must be really hard for you," she spoke in sympathy, albeit feigned. She didn't think that it would take her too long to figure out who the sister was, not that she could let on that she had an "in" there.

mina pandora oliveira

[mina pandora oliveira]

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The girl seemed to be really taken in by the life story that had just spilled out of Mina’s mouth, which only made her want to divulge more. Sarah was…awful. There wasn’t an easy way to explain her oldest sister than that. Mina had always chalked it up to the rage of the werewolf, but Dakoda hadn’t been that way and none of the other werewolves she had since bumped into seemed like inherently bad people. Bad apples always found their way in, and Mina didn’t think that had anything to do with the lycanthropy. That was definitely used as her excuse though, and keeping Sebastian away from his mother as much as possible was sort of the goal right now.

“Oh god, the bender I went on after I found out she did it…” Mina said, wide-eyed and immediately mentally reflecting on how bad it had actually gotten for a while there. The only other time her parents had been that worried was when she disappeared to New Orleans with Rue after graduation and didn’t contact them for a month. In terms of alcohol consumption, they were about equal. “But yeah, it was hard,” she nodded her head slowly, still staring off into some distant corner of the store instead of the girl. “Absolutely do not recommend being cool with siblings that try to kill people. Especially other siblings.”

Her little story seemed to be waning though, as Mina continued to nod her head, as if that helped her understand everything she’d gone through over the last year or so better than when she had experienced it firsthand. “Anyways,” she cleared her throat, “I can’t remember if you needed help with anything? If you’re looking for anything new in this section, it should be at one of the ends. They stand out better that way.” And it made them easier to restock. That had been one of her genius contributions, and she was still pretty proud of it.

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[Deleted]

September 2025

Priscilla was a little bit surprised by how much the girl working at the bookshop was oversharing about her life. (Did she really need to know about the "bender" she'd gone on, for instance?) Fortunately, she was spared the details of what had happened there and wouldn't have to find a way to Obliviate that from her memory later on. Merlin, this was something else, especially since she appeared to have sold the older young woman on the idea that she had any interest in what she had to say. Now, sad though it was, she had to keep up with it.

"Absolutely do not recommend being cool with siblings that try to kill people. Especially other siblings."

Trying to play her part, Priscilla nodded slowly while also trying to figure out how the average person would respond to all of what had just been overshared with her. She couldn't exactly say, "Cheers," and leave after that without seeming awkward herself, or Priscilla knew that she probably would have.

"Anyways," started the Flourish and Blotts employee, "I can't remember if you needed help with anything? If you’re looking for anything new in this section, it should be at one of the ends. They stand out better that way."

Priscilla nodded again, glad that the change of subject hadn't been something completely bizarre. "I'm only looking," she replied, making an attempt not to sound disinterested all of a sudden. "Thanks."

mina pandora oliveira

[mina pandora oliveira]

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Only looking. That’s right! The girl had already told her that a few minutes ago, right before Mina went on her tirade of explaining about how she had almost been expelled as well but managed to pull it all back together in time. Jokes on Hogwarts though, because she absolutely did not give a shit throughout her last few years there. They thought it was just acting out and poor grades that she was doing, but they never found out about her secret garden in the woods or the constant smuggling of booze and cigarettes into the dorms. Her parents knew about all that though because Callisto had once overheard her discussing all of this with a friend during a Hogsmeade trip. The sneaky bitch had heard it from across the aisles at Zonko’s. Why Callisto was in the joke shop to begin with (if it wasn’t to snitch on Mina) was quite the mystery. But yeah, getting in trouble at home was absolutely preferable over getting tossed out on the curb like Sarah had. Her actions did not have consequences for any of it, which only emboldened her even more until she finally, and barely at that, graduated.

“I wouldn’t touch any of those ones, if I were you,” Mina sniffed, then pointing at the row of books on the top shelf. Neither of them were quite tall enough to reach them as it were, but she had seen plenty of students notice them sitting on their own and try to climb the shelves to see what they were. “Cursed. Sort of. Not like anything you could find in Knockturn obviously, but they’re nasty enough if you don’t know the counter-curses before opening them.” Flourish & Blotts had no reason to hold onto books like these, except for the fact that every once in a while someone would come in and ask for one. She personally had no idea what the contents of each were, only knowing what the spells to ‘deactivate’ each were before pulling her stepping-stool over so that she could get them down. “But if you were interested considering you have nothing better to do now that you’ve gotten the boot from old Hoggywarts, I may be persuaded to get one down,” Mina shrugged before starting to turn away from the girl to walk away. “I’ll be at the front if you need me.”

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[Deleted]

September 2025

Priscilla hated to think that her conversation with an obnoxious bookshop employee was some of the most extensive socialization she'd had with someone outside of her own family in months, though it really was. Desperation wasn't a good look on her, so she didn't want to beg the girl to say something interesting for a change. Listening to her boring family drama was only enjoyable for a few seconds at best, and not having a proper intellectual conversation with someone was eating away at her brain, Priscilla felt.

Just then, however, she was cautioned not to touch a certain selection of books on the shelf. They were sitting far above her head, meaning that they were out of reach unless she were to get someone else to summon them down for her. That was a shame—and even more so when she was informed that she shouldn't touch them because they were cursed. Oh, it was tempting. Priscilla didn't want to curse herself, but her eyes widened. Her curiosity had been piqued.

And it faded away again when she was told that the cursed books weren't anything like what she might find over in Knockturn Alley. (The other alley wasn't very far at all, but being seen over there wasn't too good for her reputation, especially not at that moment.)

"But if you were interested considering you have nothing better to do now that you’ve gotten the boot from old Hoggywarts, I may be persuaded to get one down."

The temptation was back as the young woman shrugged her shoulders. It was nothing too Dark, obviously, but just enough of a pain…

"I'll be at the front if you need me."

"Wait," Priscilla called after her sharply. "What's in those books?" She wanted to know if they were actually worth her time, though wasting money on them was far less of a concern.

mina pandora oliveira

[mina pandora oliveira]

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Hook, line, and sinker. If Mina knew how to actually fish, she'd be a damn good angler. Leading others into trouble was her forte, and laying the bait out like she just had was the only way she was going to be able to keep this mundane conversation going. It killed time that she otherwise would have spent fronting the shelves or dealing with nearly deaf, thick-spectacled old crones that thought she was the child of an owner that had been dead for three decades. Yes that happened, and in a frequency that told her that they really enjoyed that girl's company when she'd been working there. Mina should have started a career in improve because her lying was on par with the best, never failing her around the elderly. A little white lie would never hurt them and it was technically their fault for assuming she was the other person.

The cursed books and the younger girl were a different situation though. Mina didn't know what was inside the tomes, and she said as much, "Haven't the faintest." Mina hid the huge grin that had formed on her face when her back was turned to the girl, returning to her regular, working demeanor. This was too much fun! "But I have the counter curses at the front, so I can get them down for you once I've taken care of that?" There was no way either of them were opening those books without slapping a spell on them first. Two of them were heavily chained, which would require a key that she had strapped to her chain at her waist. This was the perfect excuse to finally take a peek inside without having to purchase them or explain herself to her boss. If a customer was curious, then she could get away with it.

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[Deleted]

September 2025

Regrettably, the employee told her that she didn't have the faintest idea about what was in the books that she had just mentioned to her, though what she had said previously made it sound as though she had some idea. Priscilla hadn't thought that an ordinary bookshop like Flourish and Blotts would carry books that probably belonged in the Restricted Section at Hogwarts. Priscilla might not have been seventeen yet, but she knew that her mother would be perfectly capable of purchasing them for her, if that was what the employee was so worried about.

Though she might not have known what the books did, the young woman added that she had the counter-curses up at the front. "…So I can get them down for you once I've taken care of that?"

Was the employee actually offering to take the curses off of the cursed books so that she could look at them to see if they were worth buying? It sounded too good to be true, but that wasn't going to stop Priscilla from trying. "Oh, could you please?" she requested innocently. That was absolutely brilliant.

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