WHO: Nora Peakes and Nicodemo Penrose
WHAT: A lot of running for their lives
WHERE: Wilderness of Inverness!
WHEN: TODAY!!
It was scary how incredibly easy it was to lose a dragon.
Nora slowly made her way between the trees, focused on every minute detail. Though, it didn’t get by her that they were less than a mile away from the loch in Inverness, famous in muggle lore for being the home of the Loch Ness monster. Any good magizoologist knows that ‘Nessie’ was just the world’s largest Kelpie (and the biggest show off, at that), but the muggles would definitely take notice of a Herbridean Black sailing above its town.
She didn’t have all the details, but the Beast division had called upon anyone and everyone with dragon taming experience to hunt this big boy down. There were obliviators circling the nearest towns, evacuating the nearest muggles with spells that made them think the loch was flooding. The area had so many spells on it because of the tourist attraction of Nessie that apparation was nearly impossible in the woods, so that doubled the work and labor.
Traps were being set, curse breakers who’ve handled the dragons of Gringotts were on the prowl, the dragon tamers of the north were out in all their redheaded glory, and then there was Nora, who had scampered off on her own because tracking dangerous animals is what she did. She
thrived on it and she was damn good at it.
While everyone else was preparing for a fight, Nora knew that they needed to
find the dragon before capturing it. There were ways to tame the creature, keep it at bay, and storming through the forest was not the best way to go about it. She had no idea how it had escaped its transport, there were rumors of some sort of
attack...but Nora didn’t have time to think about it that way. She carefully slid down a not so steep hill, having spotted some broken tree branches. It seemed like the dragon had gone this way, and as soon as she came around a rather large boulder, she knew she was right.
The dragon sat, chewing up what looked like a deer. Peaceful, for a dragon. Nora pulled out her compass--she was going to send her coordinates to the nearest dragon tamer, and they’d be able to lure the dragon back into its cage with a sequence of precisely performed maneuvers and spellwork---
A jet of purple light shot out from over Nora’s head and straight into the dragon’s side. The roar it released sent a shiver throughout the entire forest, and its fire-breath turned a sycamore into a match stick. The dragon turned its furious head toward her and the culprit. Its purple eyes blazed with anger and the dragon bared its teeth. It started to bat its wings, dropping the deer like a rag doll. Nora turned, spotting the---the
curse breaker who had sent off the spell, and wasted no time in getting the hell out of there.
“RUN!
RUN!” she shouted, feeling the wind from the dragon’s wings begin to blow her down. She grabbed onto the sleeve of his robe and high-tailed it through the brush.
The strangled sound Nicodemo made when some mad woman grabbed him and started towing him along at an impossibly high speed was somewhere between a bellow and a yelp. He couldn't spend much of his focus on the witch, as there was a dragon intent on flambeing him to within an inch of his life quite literally hanging over his shoulder, but he could make out hair. A lot of hair, and a build that impeded not at all on her ability to run like the fires of hell were licking at her ankles.
Not as much of a metaphor in this case as he'd have liked.
Nico didn't have quite enough breath in him to lambast this meddler for—well, meddling, given that two others from this slapdash assembly the Ministry ordered (breeders, he thought they'd said?) had suggested they work together. They had goblin-forged silver-netting to restrain the beast, but it required the two of them to work it properly. With a third addition to their hunting party, should they happen upon the dragon, Nicodemo could cajole it in their direction, where the two (names? He was rubbish with those) wizards could swiftly capture the dragon. Not being overly skilled with anything at all involving dragons besides some basic tips (mostly being "wave your Clanker and run really fast") from his year in Gringott's employ, but quite adept in the art of provocation, he agreed.
They'd found the dragon, more by chance than skill, Nico thought, and he'd scaled a tree, fired a particularly nasty stinging hex, just enough for it to feel like a giant bee sting, and jumped down from his vulnerable perch to wait for his hastily accrued team to perform their magic.
Then he'd been mowed over by the mad woman, and was currently running for his life in an extremely off-course direction. Of course, as they'd been running, they passed by one of the fallen logs the talkative wizard with the net was supposedly hiding behind and he hadn't seen a sign of him, so,
wonderful. Having been presumably
deserted, he'd likely have been roasted alive if he'd stayed where he was supposed to have been, had it not been for his present survival companion, which was for whatever reason grating on his already-thin nerves.
The sound of swooshing over their thunderous trampling through branches and over brush suddenly seemed impossibly loud, and Nico chanced a glance over his shoulder to see the beast bearing down on them, opening its snout and—
"MOVE!" he yelled, needlessly, as he bodychecked her to the right in a sort of flying side-tackle anyway, hearing more than feeling the spout of flames issued just feet away.
She hit the ground rolling, as the hills of the forest seemed to pop out of nowhere. Nora couldn’t think straight or figure out what was rightside up or upside down, and it felt like she’d (they’d?) been tumbling for a good hour before she finally was put to a halt by the large trunk of a tree. She blinked a few times to regain some focus and immediately spotted the dragon sliding its way down the hill behind them. Nora scrambled to her feet, slipping on the fallen leaves and sticks, wobbling because her head was still spinning. The curse breaker had ended up a few feet beside her, and in her dizziness, Nora turned and spotted the mouth of a cave, a small one, one that might not be able to house a dragon of this one’s size.
“Cave, cave!” she tried to shout, her words sounding slurred. Nora had taken her bumps before, she had the scars to prove it. In Tanzania she had been sideswiped by a Nundu and had been knocked unconscious for two weeks. A pissy dragon really shouldn’t be
too much of a hassle, save for the the attempts it was making to roast the two of them to smithereens.
Nora started toward the cave, unable to run upright and noticing there was a
sharp pain that shot up her leg with every step. Cave, get in the cave and throw up a shield, there were hexes that could prevent a dragon’s flames from breaching----not for long, but it would give them
enough time to send out a call for help.
Or, who knew! Maybe the dragon lurching to life and roaring its head off would give the search party an idea as to where it was.
If ever there was a reason to be meticulous about cutting hair, it was certainly running an obstacle course through a forest in an attempt to evade an angry dragon. Being half blind was more than a hindrance at the moment.
Managing to stop himself from rolling all the way down hill, probably straight into the loch, by grabbing onto a protruding root on the hillside, he shook the hair and its collected debris out of his eyes, forcing himself to ignore the dirt, pebbles, and splinters that had gotten into various unpleasant places of his person as he righted himself. He saw the mad (now potentially life-saving) witch hasten to her feet and then shout and gesture to the cave, which he picked up on. Nico saw her limping and cursed up a storm in his head, his own shoulder looking rather shredded and bloody.
The dragon had escaped from his field of vision momentarily, not that he spared many moments to look. Whether it had wandered off in search of more fauna to gorge itself on or was circling back for a second attack, he didn't stop to find out as he followed close behind.
Just in case everyone was blind, deaf, and stupid to miss the roaring and fiery jets expelling from the dragon
all the people in the forest were searching for, he issued a veritable fountain of purple sparks from his wand (also possibly attracting the dragon back, but—!) before spotting a sizeable boulder he rolled over with his wand to partially cover the mouth of their cave as he slipped all the way inside. Partial cover, if possibly only for a moment.
Thoroughly winded and not being able to find a lot of motivation to get off the one knee he'd sunk to, Nicodemo kept a wary eye on the sliver of opening visible to him as he sort of sank his bloody shoulder back against the cave wall, breathing heavily.
"You all right?" he asked the witch, tearing his eyes away momentarily to search her out. "Your—leg, is it?" He paused and couldn't help pulling the slightest of faces. "You didn't gore yourself, did you?"
A boulder! A boulder was a good idea. Nora herself was flattened against the cave’s wall, breathing heavily as she watched the cursebreaker levitate the giant rock. Thank goodness for that boulder, huh? Nora let out a breath and allowed her body to relax slightly, even if it meant putting pressure on her leg.Holding back a yelp, she slid back against the wall and to the ground.
“No, not gored.”
Broken, she concluded as she gazed upon her foot, which was twisted at a strange angle. Nora yielded her wand and performed some quick numbing spells, but just the sight of her foot made her queasy. Hopefully they wouldn’t be here in here long, though she really did want to send out a distress call, even if the dragon was doing a very good job of that himself.
She heaved a deep breath. They could be in here for hours, depending on how fierce the dragon decide to be. Nora had heard the thuds of its footsteps outside the cave, letting them know that it had landed and was waiting for them to try and sneak out. The light would cut away as the dragon passed by, staring one purple eye through the crevice to try and find them. Dragons were rather smart creatures; she wondered if it would come up with the idea of pushing the boulder away. Curious.
Though---she rather hoped it didn’t.
“
Lumos,” she said, breathless. Nora held out her wand toward the cursebreaker, feeling weary but not
rude, “I’m Nora.. How are you holding up?”
He didn't answer her right away, staring at the cave's mouth with a wrinkle in his brow, wondering what the fire-breathing beastie was up to. The whole time they'd been out here--really, from the moment he'd gotten the owl, he'd felt something was off about the situation. The whispers didn't help, the murmurs that it was intentional. The entire thing smacked of the sort of far-fetched lunacy he'd spend more than enough time growing up around.
There was always the off-chance he was wrong, of course.
Although somehow, he didn't think he could be so lucky.
Nicodemo looked back at
Nora and cocked his head in an unobtrusive study. Pretty, when removed from harrowing, life-endangering situations. He didn't think she was a curse-breaker, having never come across her in the field before, and seemingly free of the perpetual dust and grime that coated most people he knew, but she obviously had business being here. His gaze then fell to her foot, and he was beyond grateful that the person with the most blood seemed to be him. It wasn't being
squeamish, per se, it was more the resignation to usually being the one treating such injuries as a stopgap, and
hell, they were nothing too pleasant to look at, particularly when spurting blood or leaking innards, or that sort of thing.
Not that that happened a lot. Rarely, really. Very minimally.
"It'll be all right," he barely spared a glance at his shoulder, "but I can help set your foot—if you want." Nicodemo managed to rise just long enough to shuffle three-quarters of the way over to her and took a knee to better get a look at her—and her foot, of course. There was a loud thud just outside their safe haven, and his head automatically jerked toward the boulder-covered entrance. Nothing moved, so he hoped it was an experimental but ultimately fruitless swat at their makeshift barrier with the dragon's tail, or maybe it was just having a bit of a lie-down, sated from its carnivorous exploits of the day. Optimism, yeah?
"Nico. Nicodemo." He flashed her a grin.
He had a very nice grin. It almost distracted her from his bloody shoulder. She could probably close up the wound...but he didn’t seem too disturbed by it right now, and Nora found herself smiling back at him.
“Well, Nico,” she said, pulling her gaze away because she had been staring at him for much more time than was appropriate. She shouldn’t be blushing when there was a dragon lurking just a few yards away and her foot was disjointed. “I’ll take you up on that foot-setting business, and then we’ll treat your arm.”
Because of how often Nora got into these scrapes, she had a lexicon of quick-fix spells. They were in no way complete cures, but they managed to giver herself and whoever she was with time to get out of their mess and find some real help. She should probably invest in some healing courses at the hospital, but, lectures and exams just did not seem worth it. Who wanted to be stuck in a stuffy room when you could be stuck in a cave with a dashing curse breaker with a terrific smile?
Trusting a complete stranger to put your broken foot back into place would probably be the strangest part of someone’s day, but Nora managed to put it into perspective and just clenched her teeth as Nico set her foot. After her shout of pain stopped echoing off of the cave walls, she was able to look at him with a tired gaze. She gestured for him to come closer.
“Let’s see your arm and then get the fuck out of here, aye?” she said, her vocabulary often slipping into a Kenneth-like state when in dire positions.
His grin widened at that, but it dropped abruptly when her wand-point turned to his shoulder. He even raised his hand to swat the weapon away, but being that it was the bad arm, and it no longer appeared to work anymore, he mostly just made a better target out of it. "Oh, you don't have to--it's not—I—" He grunted (or more like roared) from the pain of cauterising the long wound, gritting his teeth as it was quickly and tightly bound with the tattered remains of his robe sleeve.
Hanging his head forward a bit, Nicodemo's breathing slowed marginally and he cocked a dry look at her from the corner of his eye. "Retribution for your foot, I wager."
Straightening, he leaned back and against the wall of the cave and took a good look at Nora, thinking that in spite of the slightly fatigued air about her, she was much too excited about a the fact that they were penned in a cage by a dragon that would happily roast them alive and make chew toys out of their bigger bones. Perhaps she was one of those nutters that cared for the Hebrideans on the islands, he thought, taking in her rather glorious hair. Since that explanation suited him nicely, he took it as fact, and propped his mended arm on an upright knee as he twisted to better face her.
"So, Nora of the North," Nico said, reaching his other hand out to pluck an errant leaf from her behind her ear, no doubt a souvenir from the torrid running for their lives earlier. "I have what will most likely amount to an extremely stupid, ill thought-out, and reckless plan to get us out of here in more or less one piece."
He flicked it away casually and smiled at her. "If you're game."
She couldn’t say she understood his nickname, but she enjoyed it. Maybe she had been a little rough on his arm to make herself feel better about the pain her foot had/was in, even if he wasn’t
really to blame for it. It was good to have a sense of humor when was was so close to death. Nora found that these sort of adventures, planned or inadvertent as they were, left her feeling happier and more excited with life than anything else in the world. Maybe it was the thrill of the chase or feeling more alive because she’d made it
out alive, but Nora would be the first to admit that she was addicted to the adrenaline of her chosen career path.
It left the rest of life feeling rather boring. Who wanted to wear heels and stand around drinking when she could go toe to toe with a bloody dragon?
He’d given no hint of what this foolhardy idea would consist of, but she was already nodding and pushing herself up. The ache in her foot was still there, but at least it was back in place and not causing her to go blind with pain. She dusted herself off and wiped some dirt off of Nicodemo’s face while she was at it as well. Nora grinned, her wand twisting hungrily in her hand.
“Extremely stupid, ill thought-out and reckless plans are my absolute favorite kind,” she said, eyes bright.
While Nicodemo enjoyed reckless running for his life, encountering dangerous beasts and only just surviving, triggering eons-old hexes and curses and spells, and sometimes battling the landscape itself, he also got a hefty fee at the end of his adventuring for his troubles. Being that this whole tumultuous exploit was being done out of the goodness of his heart and to settle his curiosity about the group he suspected of perpetrating it, he could not
wait to get out of this cramped hole and as far away from the Highlands and their crazy, unpaying dragons as possible.
But the company could've been much, much worse, he assumed, not being able to hide the snicker as she helpfully dusted him off. A futile effort, given that he probably had never actually been clean in about seven years. And the hair, well...
"Well, in that case," he began, casting a quick glance out the cave's mouth. Then, smirking lazily, he leaned over to snatch a goodly-sized twig and began tracing in the dirt. "Let's say this is the boulder..."
