Prologue: Escape from Alcatraz the Wizengamot

They reached the atrium, now sprinting full out. Luckily there was no one around at this time of night and the hall was darkened.

“Sofia, wait!” He said skidding to a stop.
“Wendell! What are you doing we have to get you out of here!”
He shook his head. “No, you’ve done enough Sofia. I’m on my own from here.”
“What?”
“Look, I just want to say- thanks. For everything.” He glanced over his shoulder towards the lift that was still mercifully silent. It would only be a matter of time before someone came running after him though. He needed to get out of there as soon as possible. He needed to leave, but for some reason he couldn’t make his feet work, couldn’t draw up the focus and energy required to apparate. He was glued to that spot on the floor staring into Sofia’s confused brown eyes.
“I-“ But for probably the first time in his life Wendell Darrow didn’t have something say. Instead he took that last step that separated the two of them, and kissed her.

[author’s note] Due to our inability to write mushy romance scenes we will skip over a description here. Feel free to imagine them kissing passionately…or whatever.[/authors note]

Follow, said passion-filled embrace of romanticness, Sofia won the race to regain though first. “What was that for?”
He glared at her as though the answer was obvious. “Well, that’s just when it’s supposed to happen isn’t it?”
“What?!”
“In the stories the guy always kisses the girl at the height of the drama, before he disappears into the darkness to fight his demons!”
She started to giggle. “Are you kidding me?”
“Hey! Don’t laugh! My grandma always used to listen to those soap opera programs on the WWN when I was a kid.”
“Oh God!” She continued to laugh hysterically. “That explains soo much!”

Wendell gave her an affronted look. This had clearly not gone according to his plan. She should be swooning in sorrow not laughter! Didn't she know it would be their last meeting? Instead of saying anything along those lines he gave a cheeky grin. "Just don't replace me too fast."

“Goodbye Sofia,” He said and disappeared with a loud crack which successfully covered his last few whispered words. “I’m sorry…”

When he reappeared he was standing in an Alley somewhere in the midst of muggle London. The first stage of his disappearing act was complete.

Part One: Suicide…Sort of

It was a dark and stormy night. Not that this was particularly unusual for this time of year (or any time of year really). And a man in a dark blue jacket strolled into The Bedraggled Ptarmigan, he had a hat pulled down low over his eyes and swagger to his walk. Reaching the bar, he sat down and ordered a firewhiskey, the best stuff they had. It wasn’t a cheap drink, but he didn’t seem off put by something as paltry as price. He downed it like a glass of water and motioned for the bartender to pour him another. This one he took at a slightly slower pace and he scanned the folk around him, a light but pleasant buzz overtaking his senses. Beside sat a large man, who was loud and had an altogether unpleasant looking countenance.

“Give me another for my friend here!” Our dark-blue jacketed hero said cheerily. “I feel like celebrating tonight! And this bloke looks like he could use a better drink. A better face too but I’m sure a couple more glasses of this stuff and he won’t look so bad!”

The ugly, and stupid man looked over at his new neighbor and seemed unsure how exactly to take a comment like this. It was an insulting statement under any circumstances, but then…this crazy little chap was buying him a free drink. His minute amount of curiosity was peaked, and accepting the free firewhiskey he turned to the new guy.

“Whatcha celebrating?”

“Independence! Freedom! Liberty! And the greatest justice system on this Earth!” He proclaimed with a happy slur.

The Ugly-and-Stupid man looked confused. And so Wendell decided to elaborate a little for his benefit.

“Just got out of prison mate! They let me go! Ain’t nothing they won’t do for you if they think you’re spilling all your secrets.”

“You some sort snitch then?” The man said, staring at Wen with a look of disgust. He didn’t like snitches and traitors, one of those little rats had gotten his older brother put in jail recently.

“Nah, I wouldn’t do sumtin like that!” Wendell hurriedly assured the man. “I just lie! Made a damn good profit too, see. I run drugs, and potions and that sort of s--- around, yeah? Well, I only get a small cut see, cause the dealers they are fecking skinflints, and the manufacturers squeeze you dry. So on my last run, I just decided to leave the manufacturers out of the deal altogether eh? Said I lost the whole shipment, rain got into it see? And no one wants doxy powder paste, if you catch my drift. Course the big man wasn’t too pleased, sent a couple of thugs after me. Idiots the lot of them, decided they’d take a fancy to rearranging my face. ‘Cept they thought they’d do it in front of an Auror.” He paused to start laughing drunkenly. “So we all got hauled in. And all I had to do was tell them damn Aurors, about how these blokes were part of a drug operation and they mistook me for their drug runner! Told me everything they did! Those Aurors were than willing to overlook my participation to catch the big guys. Now I’m free, and rich to boot!”

By the end of his story Stupid-and-Ugly was clearly enraged, and Wendell was looking quite pleased. Why? Well, simply put Stupid-and-Ugly was the younger brother of Silent-but-Ugly. And he had just found the snitch, who ratted on his brother was free and living it up, while Silent was rotting away in a cell. With a roar of fury, he reached for his wand and pointed it straight at Wendell’s face.

“That’s my brother you got locked up, you S.O.B.! And now you’re going to regret what you did!”

“You don’t say?” Wendell replied nonchalantly, though he eyed the wand that was pointed directly at his nose closely. This was of course the part where his little plan became dangerous. He threw what was left of his drink right in Stupid-and-Ugly’s face. Now anyone who has had firewhiskey thrown in their face before, knows that this in fact burns your eyes quite a bit. Enough so that Wendell was able to retrieve his own wand, from his pocket and put a little bit of distance between the two of them. Now even more angry, SaU began firing off hexes at a rapid pace, but due to his blurry vision his aim wasn’t very accurate. Streaks of magical light flew past Wendell’s head in all directions, but did not seem in any particular danger of actually hitting him. Wendell shot a few back at him, nothing particularly serious, just enough to torment the fellow further. It was a bit like he was a pesky fly, and SaU a large horse trying to swat at him with his tail: lots of power, but not very much precision. However, horse gets lucky sometimes, and a bright red streak of light struck dear Wendell right in the chest. He went flying backwards, and crashed through one of the windows, landing in a heap in the alleyway.

By this point, every patron in the Bedraggled Ptarmigan was watching the fight gleefully. They rushed over to the window and looking out saw Wendell’s crumpled form, a look of shock still etched onto his cocky features. He was dead, his skull bashed in when he hit the brick wall of the next building over. And as SaU, and the rest of the bar were busy looking at the corpse of Wendell Darrow, no one noticed a man in a dark blue jacket and a hat pulled down low over his eyes, slipping away into the stormy night.


Part Two: Body Shopping

Leaning against a wall alongside a busy muggle London, Wendell surveyed the people passing by. Shopping for a new body was a bit of an interesting experience. It was a lot like shopping for a new suit. The first thing you had to make sure was that you were getting a suit of good quality. You didn’t want to buy a cheap one and then have it cop out on you after only one or two wears. Next of course the suit had to suit you, you might buy a really expensive suit that looked excellent on that mannequin in the store, but it looks absolutely rubbish on you. Many of the people that strolled by fell into the first category. They were too short or too fat, too old or too young; they weren’t attractive enough or they looked too much like Apollo (too pretty for their own good). He was briefly interested in one man that strolled by. He wasn’t extraordinarily tall, but he had muscles the size of basketballs, and a demeanor that practically screamed ‘Mess with me and I’ll rip your head off to use as a bowling ball.’ Ultimately however, Wendell decided that he probably couldn’t rock the no-hair look. Well that, and he was a bit too intimidate to try stunning that guy. Supposed he missed? He’d never get a second chance, because he’d probably be dead. Of course, another problem he encountered was that his eyes just kept naturally being drawn to the pretty women in short skirts. He was sure that he had missed several potential bodies, while he was distracted in such an agreeable manner. However, after what seemed like hours a man strolled down the street and Wendell instantly knew he had found his new body. He was tall, well built with out being overbearing, and he had the sort of aristocratic features that one might expect to find in a wealthy pure-blood family. But he also had this amazing presence, as he walked down the street nearly everyone stopped to stare. Women swooned, and men just stared at him in this sort of jealous amazement.

Yup, this was definitely going to be his new body. He slipped into the crowd behind the man and followed him as he continued down the street. He was a bit too large to take on in a physical fight. Wendell would have to find a way to get him off this crowded street, and then he could simply stun him and steal a couple of hairs. Although, how he would manage this he wasn’t quite sure. However, he was spared the trouble of corner the man on his own because an especially besotted young woman started harassing him.

“CHRISSY-POO!! I LOVE YOU!!! MARRY ME!!!”

The man, “Chrissy-poo,” glanced back at the terrifying woman and instantly began to pick up his pace. This did little to dissuade her however, as she just continued to run after him screeching her willingness to bare his children. Looking slightly, desperate to escape the crazy woman he dodged down an alleyway and Wendell saw his chance. He tripped the woman, who went sprawling over the sidewalk.

“Oops, sorry about that,” he said cheerily and then left her to be enveloped by the unsympathetic crowd. Wendell slipped into the alleyway to find the man

“Don’t worry, I think she lost track of you when she eh…tripped.”

“Oh really? Thanks for that. The fangirls are the worst really. They just can’t take a hint.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Wendell nodded sympathetically. Chrissy-poo stared at him quizzically.

“Who are you?”

“Well, my name isn’t really important.” He glanced around to make sure no one was around to see. “Sorry about this mate. Don’t worry though, it won’t really hurt. Well…the fall might twinge a bit.” Wendell said pulling out his wand.

“Excuse me?” The man said staring at Wendell as though he were an insane person. “What the hell is that?”

“Stuperfy!”

He instantly froze up, and fell over to the ground. Wendell reached down and pulled out several of the man’s hairs. Then he turned and walked casually back out of the alley, pausing at the end to whisper a quick Ennervate. He wouldn’t want that crazy woman to stumble across the poor man in such a state. Then he had disappeared into the crowded street before the man was able to sit up and get his bearings.

Part Three: A Brand New Me

An anxious face stared back at him in the cracked, dirty bathroom mirror. He had checked into a hotel, with a credit card he had pick pocketed off of a muggle tourist. It certainly was a nice place, but he had chosen it because he assumed, if things went poorly there probably wouldn’t be too many people poking around. In his hand was a vial of inky black potion. Some people believed that the color of your polyjuice potion said something about you, he wondered what exactly ‘black’ meant and why this “Chrissy-poo” character’s happened to be such a dark color.

There was a certain level of danger involved when you were about to try an experimental potion, especially one that you bought off of a mostly-deaf beggar apothecary in Knockturn Alley. But he was a genius when it came to potions of questionable legality. You see the problem with your standard polyjuice potion is that it only has a last time of about an hour, an hour and a half if you’re really lucky. So if you want to impersonate someone, you have to find an excuse to sneak off and take more potion every sixty to ninety minutes. And if someone happens upon you unexpectedly while you’re sleeping, well you can kiss your alias goodbye. That was why a potion that allowed you to keep your borrowed form for an extended period of time was such a valuable commodity. It was still new, new enough that it hadn’t caused big waves yet and he was fairly certain that the auror’s hadn’t heard about its existence yet. If they did, it would only be rumors quickly dismissed as outlandish. However, Wendell had been assured by the mostly-deaf beggar apothecary that not only did it exist, it worked quite well. His last customer, he claimed, had purchased the potion three months ago and was still happily existing in his same body. So Wendell had forked over the outrageous sum that the old geezer had demanded, and waved away the finally warnings about the transformations being a bit more extreme than in the normal version.

He stared at his reflection intently for a few moments. Then with a heavy sigh he lifted the ebony colored potion to his lips and swallowed all of it in one large unpleasant gulp. It became very quickly apparent that the transformation that occurred when taking concentrated doses of polyjuice potion was indeed more intense than the typical version. Normally, there is this unpleasant burning sensation coupled with the feeling of snakes crawling around under your skin. You can feel your bones, muscles, and skin slowly expanding or contracting shifting around until you no longer resembled yourself at all. Concentrated doses of polyjuice potion produce a similar feeling only magnified about a hundred times, sort of like a cross between lighting yourself on fire and being hit with a couple crucios. The last thing he was aware of was the sound of his own screams of pain before he blanked out.

He awoke several hours later, with his face plastered to the dirty tile floor of the bathroom. When he finally was able to get his limbs to work properly and he pulled himself up to look in that dirty, cracked mirror the person staring back at him was definitely not the old Wendell Darrow.