[PV] Going postal

[Luke Campbell]

3rd April 2026

The picturesque red brick building at the edge of Wyrdlan was, in Luke's opinion, highly deceiving. The window display showing various rare stamps had looked so promising! At last, a shop that took its business seriously! He had imagined someone neat and orderly behind the counter, someone who knew the difference between a misperforated stamp and a miscut stamp, someone who didn't give him odd looks when he asked if they had a penny stamp. The owner, he had thought, would be someone knowledgeable and serious: probably wearing a monocle and a fitted suit, and they would be very keen on talking to him, and they also would be very impressed by how much he knew about stamps.

With his hands folded neatly behind his back and his chin at a hopeful tilt, Luke entered the Post Office, ready to display his vast and detailed knowledge of stamps dating all the way back to the Victorian era.

Perhaps if he had looked down a bit more, he would not have tripped over the large parcel that had been parked near the entrance. He yelped, then immediately jumped back a step when a large barn owl, perched on a crossbeam, hooted loudly at him. There were several more in various corners, none of them caged, and all of them now looking at him with their eerie, gleaming eyes. Startled, Luke took two hasty paces back, ready to flee, but hesitated just long enough for the proprietor to notice him.

"Don't mind them, they means you no 'arm," a voice sounded from the back of the shop. It was rather dark and gloomy inside, but Luke thought he could make out the shape of a man that could have just as well been a walrus, if he'd been a little fatter.

"Harm," Luke corrected stiffly. "Not arm."

The man behind the counter paused his riffling through a stack of letters and looked up. "That's what I said, innit?"

"Is it not," Luke said. "You said arm but you meant to say harm because you did not enunciate properly and-"

"You coming in or what? And close the door, would ya?-"

"You. Would you-"

"-it gets drafty if youse keeps the door open standin' there gawking an' all"

Luke's retort died in his throat. Some people just refused to be educated. Reluctantly, he shuffled into the shop and closed the door behind him. The owls stopped hooting, but they were still staring at him, and a couple of them were rather large and had sharp beaks and talons.

"So what can I 'elp you with? Expecting a package? Sending one? Muggle post just came in this morning." The postman tipped his cap toward one of many piles of letters that had spilled off his sagging desk and onto the floor. Luke honestly couldn't be sure which of the bundles he meant, but nodded anyway, a hopeless attempt to be agreeable.

"Is it always like this?" he piped up after a short while. He scrunched up his nose when he noticed there were a few owl droppings on the beams, though he could not spot any on the stacks of post that almost reached the ceiling.

"What?" said the owner.

"I meant your shop. Is your shop always like this?"

"Aye, we're always busy. People's lazy these days, you wouldn't believe how many cauldrons we get delivered every week, not the small size ones either, I've gotta send out half a dozen owls for the big uns and-"

Luke let out such a deep and profound sigh that the man stopped talking. "That's not what I meant. I meant the state of things. I nearly tripped over that parcel as I came in, I could have seriously injured myself you know."

The man gave him a slightly stunned look, then burst into laughter and smacked him so hard on the back that Luke tripped over his feet and barely managed to stay upright. "Don't touch me!" he hissed through his teeth.

The jovial postman shrugged and mumbled something under his breath about "are you always like this?" while he continued sorting the post, effectively ignoring the tiny blonde nuisance that had entered his shop.

If not for the stamps he'd seen in the window display, Luke would have turned and left. Instead, he briskly walked over to the window, eyeing the stamps up close. Price was no real concern, but whether he wanted to support a business ran by someone so unserious posed a real dilemma. At least the man had been smart enough to place the stamps in this particular window sill, out of direct sunlight, or they would have faded otherwise.

Soon enough, Luke was lost in thought by the window, pondering which of the stamps he would get for his collection. Not even the occasional hoot of an owl could break his concentration. The same, however, could not be said about the two boys who were making their way to the cosy red brick building on the edge of town...

@Devon Fondatore @Tristan Verona

[Devon Fondatore]

【 devon fondatore 】
—3 april, 2026— @Luke Campbell & @Tristan Verona —x

Marion had broken down in tears when she read that Devon had been storing his old contact lenses in his nightstand so that his roommates wouldn't see them. The weight of what had happened to her poor boy was often too much for her to handle, and she hardly knew anyone she could genuinely process the incident with.

She had found out through a series of letters exchanged between the two (she did quite like that part) that was essentially the following:

Can I bring my old lenses home for Spring Break and keep them there? They're taking up kind of a lot of space...

Darling, you can just throw those away, no need to bring them home! x

There aren't really bins here.

... What have you been doing with them?

They're in my nightstand right now, I can't think of any other place to hide them.

Cue the pang of heartbreak for someone you love.

Marion’s response had arrived not long after, tucked inside a letter that smelled faintly of her flowery perfume.

Devon,

I've found a mail-in service for recycling your lenses. You'll need to send them via the post office nearby, so I've enclosed some money to cover the postage.

Please ask them if they will accept pre-payment. If they do, I'll set it up for you to have credit with them to send them every month for the remainder of your year.

I'm very excited to see you very soon!

All my love,
Marion x

Marion’s letter had come a while ago, but like most twelve-year-olds, Devon had not exactly leapt at the chance to spend one of his afternoons running errands. The little parcel had sat in his trunk for days, wrapped neatly and accusingly, until he finally ran out of time, as he headed home for spring break tomorrow.

When Tristan asked what Devon was doing after class today, he responded honestly. "Have to send something at the post office." And then Tristan asked what Devon was sending, and his stomach sank. For one brief, shining second, his mind produced absolutely nothing. Then, in a panic, he heard himself say, “Hair.”

...

HAIR!?

“Like,” Devon added quickly, trying to dig himself out of it, “from a haircut.”

He'd only dug deeper.

“Marion wants it. You know... grandma stuff."

This was his grave. Now he had to lie in it. Devon had committed to the story that he was mailing a lock of his own hair through the post like some lovesick Victorian child. To his own grandmother. Perfecto.

And of course Tristan, being a good friend, tagged along to the post office with him.

Devon was expecting a small but almost clinical building like the posts back home.

He found quite the opposite when he opened the door. The shop was chaos. One of the owls turned its head toward him with the slow, dreadful precision of something that definitely knew when it was being judged.

Devon straightened at once. “Sorry to bother,” he muttered.

His eyes kept moving through the room, taking in the state of it all, before finally snagging on the small blonde boy looking at... stamps? Surely not. Probably whatever was under the stamp display. Luke Campbell.

"Heya, Campbell," he greeted. He didn't particularly know the boy, but he seemed... okay.

His grip tightened around the parcel he'd been carrying, suddenly less thrilled about having to walk up to the counter and announce his business to whatever sort of person ran a place like this. Still, he had Marion’s money and no plausible excuse to back out now.

With a quiet exhale through his nose, Devon started farther into the shop, already preparing himself to ask whether they accepted pre-payment for Muggle deliveries without sounding like a prat.

[Tristan Verona]

Tristan Verona

Starring: @Luke Campbell & @Devon Fondatore

2026/04/03

Tristan wasn’t really close to his grandmothers so the idea of sending hair was peculiar, but not impossible. Maybe it was a knitting thing? Although a sweatshirt made from your own hair did not seem appealing. He considered which other body parts might have interested grandmothers around the world. The idea of packages full of teeth being posted across the country had changed his line of thought fairly quickly.

He had wanted to get out of the castle for a moment now, so accompanying Devon to the post office seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. He was also curious to see if his parents had written him anything as well. If so, he would have a reason to come back later… on his own.

The walk had made the boy terribly hungry, so he decided to grab a snack at the Scuffed Satchel.

“I’ll catch up with you in a sec, Devi. Want something?”

What was supposed to be a quick stop and shop went on for a few more minutes than planned. This shop literally had everything. That was Tristan’s mistake and not the first time he had made. Every time he entered the store, he would lose track of time cause he would spend too much time staring at the weird, magical concoctions and contraptions that populated the shelves.

Ms. Fitzgerald had all the coolest stuff. The bag of crisps she gave him was weightier than the ones he had back home. So when he opened it and some crisps fell out of the overflowing bag, he became even more convinced that Wirdlan was a truly magical place.

Tristan entered the post office with two magical family-size bags of crisps, one open and one for Devi. It was way more than they should have eaten before dinner, but that was besides the point.

He realized the error of the open bag when he heard a short succession of inquisitive hoots.
The boy looked around at stacks of letters, packages and stamps before finding the awaiting eyes of multiple owls scattered around the post office. Still, the first mistake couldn’t compare to the second. Entering a room that contained Luke Campbell.

[Luke Campbell]

Devon's greeting was answered by a glance instead of a simple 'hey' or 'hi'. It was a sort of dismissive, almost haughty glance, like Devon was hardly worth paying attention too. Luke didn't usually mind the simple ones, it would be a waste of time and effort to even learn their names, but this one's name he already knew. Everyone in first-year did. Devon Fondatore was infamous for the stunt he'd pulled at the start of the year.

Detention on your first day? Just the thought of it made Luke scoff lightly, though he had fortunately already turned his head away from Devon when he did. How reprehensible. Why were children like that allowed to study here at all? They did not take anything seriously and had absolutely no regard for the rules. Did he even know how to read? Fondatore's only redeeming quality was that he was surely costing house Dranaga points daily - what with all the usual sniggering noises that tended to come out of him. Luke was quite certain that Devon got up to no good. It was that very thought which made Luke look up from the stamps again, his eyes narrowing as they zoned in on the parcel Devon carried.

"Excuse me," Luke said. He folded his hands behind his back as he approached and tilted his chin slightly upward, as though he might better avoid the stinking badness radiating off of Devon that way. "Excuse me," he repeated. "What is that?"

A parcel of dungbombs, most likely, or worse - whiz-bangs. Horrid little inventions that made the most terrible noise when they exploded. It was utterly mystifying why people cheered when setting off fireworks, which were very dangerous and smelled bad. "You do know that you're not allowed to have stinkpellets at all, right? Never mind sending them. And they might very well go off mid-transport with how poorly you've packaged them. You might just get an owl killed."

He made it sound as though doing so was the highest achievement Devon could ever hope to accomplish.

Without skipping a beat, Luke strode past Devon, cutting in front of him, holding a stamp pressed between two thin glass plates and gingerly placing it on the counter. "How much?" he asked of the moustached man behind the counter, eager to leave the premises before Fondatore's simplemindedness could rub off on him.

The bell above the door chimed, not a sound worth paying attention to, but Luke's head turned anyway because of the crinkling noises. He recognized Tristan immediately, even though half of the boy was hidden behind two bags of crisps. Even after eight months, Luke still wasn't sure what to make of him. He'd seen Tristan hang around Devon and the Modron boy still had that same rumpled, droopy look about him, as though he could hardly be bothered to put on his uniform each morning. Under normal circumstances he would have classified Tristan as another rotten apple in a basket overflowing with rotten apples, but Verona wasn't quite rotten to the core at least. For one, he could definitely read. For two, he seemed to actually study and coming to the library. For three, he was knowledgeable about Blaze of Emrys and coincidentally shared a name with the author of that rather good book.

That third boon was doing a lot to speak in the Modron boy's favour and so Verona was richly rewarded with a curt nod of recognition in greeting.

The man behind the counter, seemingly eager to move on to take Devon's parcel, mumbled the price of the stamp, prompting Luke to pay the man by laying each required coin, one-by-one on the counter so that anyone who bothered to look could see that he was paying the correct amount.

"Thank you," said Luke when the transaction had been completed. He was rather keen on leaving too, and not just because of the staring owls. "Have a nice day." He spun around and made for the door, not even to bothering to look at Devon, but circling around him like he was roadkill. Yet just before he made it out the door, he stopped, one hand on the doorhandle. He had one more piece of sage advice to hand out to his acquaintance, Tristan.

"Did you know crisps are very unhealthy? People think it's the salt, but it's not the salt that you've got to worry about, it's the acrylamide. You'll die of cancer."

@Devon Fondatore @Tristan Verona