Lads Barracks Two (Four Occupants)

This room is the same size as Barracks One, but only has four beds. While not quite as spacious and fancy as the dorms of Hogwarts, this room easily supports sleeping space enough for the boys/young men within, provided there is at least one cot built into the wall in a bunk bed format. Each bed has either a nightstand or a detachable shelf that serves a purpose similar to a bedside table. The color and feel of bedding varies as much as the individuals inhabiting the room.

A sheet of parchment affixed to the door lists those staying within:




The two small rooms leading off from these barracks are where Jamie and Caleb sleep: the left-hand side one for Caleb S. McConn, the right-hand side one for Jamie B. Addams. Each have their name on a plaque upon the appropriate door.

Demyan was reclined upon his cot, surveying the distance between himself and the floor. He was by no means afraid of heights. Quite the contrary: he loved the feeling of being up in the air... so long as he was in control of whether he was falling or stationary.

For the moment, the barracks were completely devoid of other forms of life. The young half-Russian wizard was at a point in his life where he wanted to just be left alone, but didn't want to be all by himself either. Being in this miniature community of like-circumstance kids, and in some cases young adults, helped perhaps a little. At least he and his sisters were relatively safe here. There was hardly any safety above-ground these days.

Pain, insanity, tears and despair existed above ground. Or rather that's what he saw when he surveyed their living conditions. Some maniac wanted them dead, just as they'd gotten what they wanted in killing off the prominent members of their own families.

A very heavy sigh escaped the lad as he retrieved a small bound book from under his pillow. The book was where he'd kept his thoughts and poetry, and a few pictures. It was the pictures he sought...

Opening the book, Demyan smiled at the image affixed to the inside cover: there his mother sat with him in Kaminski Manor, enjoying a cup of hot chocolate and laughing happily at some anecdote he only vaguely recalled now. His grandmother, Praskovya Kaminski, had managed the snapshot when neither were looking. It was times like this that Demyan was glad to have the photo...

"I miss you, Mom..." Demyan mumbled to the photo, voice cracking slightly from an emotional strain that for once had nothing to do with puberty. "I don't know how, or when, but we will go back to the past and save you and the others. I swear it, Mom."

On his search to find one Darius Casillas, Fitzwilliam found himself opening the door to the Lads Barracks Two where he encountered Demyan having a private moment. Now usually, Will would leave the boy alone, however, rather preoccupied with his set task, and rather bothered not knowing exactly where his younger brother could have gone, Will's sensitivity went out the window and he decided to intrude on Demyan.

"Hey, Demyan, you haven't seen Darius, have you?"

Demyan started when he heard the masculine voice, and crammed his journal with its photographs back under his pillow. "Um... no, I haven't. Why?" he asked, taking a moment to survey the older wizard's appearance. "Something wrong?" The teen immediately sat up, cross-legged, on his cot as though Fitz hadn't interrupted anything.

Fortunately, Will was completely unaware of the younger boy's actions as he glanced under the cots and into knooks of the room looking for Darius.

He stood up and ran his rans through his hair. "Umm... no. He just took my motorcycle keys. The first thing I'm going to do when I get my hands on him..." Will trailed off.

"Why he insist on doing these things, I shall never understand." Will sat down on a nearby cot, exhausted.

Demyan remained on his figurative perch, watching the other wizard. "Maybe he's just doing it to annoy you? Or he's afraid you might leave and not come back? Hard to say..." he suggested, though in the end had nothing concrete for Will to assume in regards to Darius.

"While you're here, can I ask you something?" Demyan asked curiously. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "What's your take on ghosts?" The lad climbed down from his own bunk to sit at an even level as Will while he awaited the answer.

"I try to avoid them really..." Will said unaware of what Deyman was refering to and instead thought about the ghost at Hogwarts. "... I mean at Hogwarts, the majority of them just mope about, while the other tend to scare you to death - forgive the pun there - but why are you asking?"

Demyan nodded, attempting to figure out a way that Will could learn what the rest of 'his recruits' learned from the ghosts without actually approaching them. And then he mentioned he was referring to the ones at Hogwarts. "Um... well, y'know that rumor that started spreading about the pipe organ in the chapel? I'm not really one for rumors, or ghost stories, but it's true. Well, most of it.

"The ghosts actually want to teach us the stuff we didn't get a chance to learn before Hogwarts... fell. And I think there's some extra stuff they wanted to teach, too... to give us a fighting edge in our battle with the purgers. Rossalyn, Lara, Michelle and me are going for it... and I'm not sure about Val, but he knows now too. ...What do you think?" Demyan explained, concluding his tale with a question.

"Wait, wait..." Will said trying to digest what Demyan was saying. "You mean to say, there are ghost who want to be our Professors?"

He sat back on the cot so that he could lean on the wall. "Well that's something..."

He sat forward again to look at Demyan better. "What exactly do they want to teach us?"

Demyan had a habit of talking fast when particularly excited, unnerved, or agitated. In this case, it was the first of the three circumstances. "I guess that's one way to put it..." he said with a nod.

'Hmm...' the teenager mused. That was certainly a good question. Now all he needed was a thorough, equally good answer. "Well, they didn't gimme anything [i]precise[i] but I'd imagine it'd be like advanced combat magic or something. They said it would give us a fighting chance for when we go toe to toe with the purgers. And they said something about centuries old magic... magic exclusively pertaining to their clan," Demyan explained to the best of his ability.

Centuries old magic had a somewhat forbidding tone to it, Will thought. Fobidding for whom he wouldn't exactly say. He supposed it was pretty good news, afterall, any help was very much appreciated. Just as long has these ghost didn't mean any harm he was on board... Wait a second.... "Who are these ghost anyway?"

"And why do they want to help us? I mean..." Usually when someone, or something in this case, offers help, there was a catch to it. This sort of seems too good to be true, and if there was one thing he knew, maybe not from experience, but his Grandfather said it often enough, if it was too good to be true then it probably was. "I don't see what the ghosts get from it... if they do get something... I mean, not to be blunt or anything, mate, but they're dead. They aren't exactly risking anything here. It's all us, and the last thing we need is someone getting hurt because this 'centuries old magic' turns out to be... a little obsolite."

"Um... their names are Malachite, Lucifer, and Maximus. They didn't gimme a surname," Demyan replied.

The teen listened to Will's inquiry and the reasoning behind it. He didn't mind the bluntness, nodding after a moment to think about it. "They seemed rather intent on making sure their 'clan' doesn't get entirely wiped out... so I'm assuming they must be related to someone here or else they wouldn't be offering to help us, now would they?

"They said something about wanting to obtain physical forms again..." the boy paused to shift uncomfortably, remembering how Lara had reacted to that particular bit of news, "but the eldest one seemed adamant on helping even without it for now... Malachite, his name is. He, at least, remains in the chapel at night. Not sure about the other two."

"The only way to know for sure is to try... right?"

Will nodded. That seemed reasonable enough. "I suppose so... I mean, any help really is greatly appreciated and it would definitely give us an edge if it works."

"So this Malachite you say," Will said digesting what Demyan told him. "Is he always at the chapel? Do you think I could go there and talk to him or whatnot?"

It wasn't as if Will didn't trust Demyan, he did, it was just, Will wanted to hear this from the very mouths of the ghost themselves.

Demyan felt the corners of his mouth tug upward slightly. Another recruitment, it seemed. Maybe... If so, his task was looking to be rather easy. Why the ghosts insisted on the secrecy of their offer was beyond him... of course his companions would like to have an edge in their upcoming errand to change the past!

The teen nodded his head in a yes. "He said he wouldd be in case anyone should approach him there. You might even end up meeting all three... Though, I should warn you, Luci... fer... I mean, Lucifer - sorry - is a rather mean son of a... well, I think you know where I'm going with that," Demyan answered honestly. Because Will was older, and because Demyan wasn't exactly angry at the moment, the teen didn't feel the need to be verbally vulgar right now. He offered the older male a half-sheepish grin.

Will nodded at the news that Lucifer was a... little devil. "Well that does make sense dunnit? I mean with a name like Lucifer..." He finished the sentense with a grin.

He made a mental note to investigate the chapel later on in the day. Perhaps convince someone else to go with him... he wondered if Eliza would volunteer... Or maybe...

"So who else knows about these ghost?" Will inquired generally. He leaned back, meaning to look nonchalant. He asked, not because he was interested in what everyone else knew, but only because he was interested to know of another Kaminski...

Demyan couldn't help but grin at Will's statement. "Yeah... does make sense," he said with a laugh. "Though, I don't suppose I helped matters any by saying everything that happened to be on my mind..." While the lad normally would - or should - have looked repentant, there was no such emotion on his face.

Emerald eyes blinked in surprise. Was Will feeling left out of the loop or something? That certainly wasn't the case... they were all equals here. Demyan supposed not, given the generic tone in which Will had asked. "So far I've told Rossa, Lara, Michelle, Val... and now you," Demyan informed him, still grinning slightly.

"Think you could help me spread the word to the others? The sooner we know who all's in, the sooner they'll teach us."

"No, I don't believe that helped at all." Will chuckled at the thought of Demyan giving the ghost a word or two. Demyan was rather hot-headed when he wanted to be, and Will usually enjoyed watching an episode.

"Brilliant, I can tell Eliza and Darius... unless the others have already beaten me to it..." Will wasn't really much bothered if the others did beat him.

"So Lara knows does she..." Will said thoughtfully. It wasn't meant to be aloud.

Demyan chortled along with Will. He was about to say that riling Luci up could be rather fun, to a point, but decided to hold his tongue. Figuratively. Will would probably discover that all on his own if he indeed was going to head to the chapel and see for himself what the ghosts wanted.

The teen nodded. "I'm not really sure how successful the others have been in spreading the word..." he offered. "Suppose twice informed is better than not informed at all. Or, at least, that's how I feel."

Emerald eyes blinked at the pensive statement from Will. "Umm... yeah. She didn't... take to it quite as well as I'd hoped at first," Demyan admitted, lowering his eyes briefly as he remembered the conversation. Her spoken first, thought later remark still rather creeped him out about the whole exhuming corpses thing. But he wouldn't tell her about it. She didn't need to know, and he'd already told her it was okay.

It was his job now to keep his sisters as safe, and make sure their morale did not sink too low. He would do the task his mother entrusted to him, even if it killed him in the end... No, Demyan supposed these weren't exactly teenager-thoughts.

But circumstances made such thoughts necessary, and one-hundred-percent true.

"Umm... yeah. She didn't... take to it quite as well as I'd hoped at first," Edan heard as he entered the room. Seeing Demyan and Will, he chuckled.
"What are you two up to?" he asked, teasingly. "More mischief?" Hardly one to talk to others about mischief, as he was a master of the former...

"Either of you seen Rossa? or Tav, for that matter?" He sat on his bunk and bounced up and down, smiling at the squeaky sounds that emitted from his actions.