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December 12th, 1897, Manor Cape, Scotland.
Collecting payments was not always the simple task it should have been, but Lina Breen never seemed daunted by places such as these.
She strode through the camp, seemingly unaffected by the cold as she twirled her dagger between her fingers. It was a busy, wretched smelling place for poachers and dark wizards alike, nestled in the ruins of a once great castle on the Manor Cape.
She needn’t be here for long though, at least.
She was looking for one man, Abram Carlisle.
He wasn’t a particularly clever man, nor talented or fearsome, but he had wealth... and information.
“Ah, just in time,” Abram hiccupped, stumbling toward Lina and dropping his empty bottle of fire-whiskey onto the dirt below.
Lina inspected the bottle as it rolled.
At least he had good taste.
Abram reached into his pocket, procuring a small but heavy hessian sack; its fabric straining with the weight of many galleons.
“This ought—hic—to suffice.”
With no shred of grace, Abram dropped the sack of galleons into Lina’s hand before gesturing toward a large tent at the back of the camp—closest to the crumbling outer walls of the castle.
“That Hungarian Horntail you enquired about,” Abram started walking, letting Lina follow close behind.
The way Lina walked was... commanding. Confident and effortlessly imposing in a way a man like Carlisle could never quite manage.
“My poachers had located its nest as you’d asked. However, when they arrived there was a... complication.”
Lina’s brow furrowed; she clutched the hilt of her blade. “Complication or not, Carlisle, my services are not free.”
“Which is exactly why I corrected it.” Abram opened one side of the canvas flap of the tent for Lina.
With a mocking smirk, she shoved aside the opposite flap and breezed past him.
When she walked in though, her smirk dropped in an instant.
“As it happens, those dragons you wanted had been re-homed.” Abram stumbled further into the candlelit tent.
There were only two other men in there—guards, Lina presumed—who stood idle in the corners. At the centre of the room though, a young woman; head down with her limbs bound by rope to a rickety wooden chair. Her hair: a long waterfall-like mess of wild copper curls adorned with twigs and leaves.
“You want those dragons?” Abram’s hand fisted into the young woman’s hair, wrenching her head back cruelly enough to make her hiss and groan at the pain.
Lina’s blood turned to ice.
Elizabeth Quinn.
Of course it was.
She was barely conscious. Her face was bloodied and bruised; dirtied from what had no doubt been an unfair fight. Her hair was no longer braided like Lina remembered either—not that it seemed to be her choice.
“You’ll have to ask her.” Abram shoved Elizabeth’s head back down with brute force—enough to make the chair creak beneath her. “We thought a witch with your...” he sucked in a sharp breath, choosing his next words with caution, “talents... might have more effective ways of getting this little witch to talk.”
His eyes flickered suggestively to Lina’s dagger.
Bastard.
“Are you suggesting I interrogate her for you, Carlisle?” Lina sneered. “One should think you owe me enough for your fuck up.”
Abram scoffed. “I made no promises as to what—hic—condition you’d receive your information in; I just promised—hic—information. But I’m not letting you walk out of here with my precious prisoner, if that is what you’re suggesting.”
“Oh,” Lina took a step forward, a wicked smirk tugging at her lips as she spoke, “it is exactly what I’m expecting.” She corrected him. “You told me you would tell me where to find that nest. You couldn’t even do that... so I’m taking the ‘information’.”
Abram’s hand tightened around Elizabeth’s chair. “Oh no,” he shook his head, “this bitch has cost me far too much in lost beasts to just hand over—”
In a blinding haze of blue light, Lina surged forward—swift and lethal. The blade of her dagger pressed into his throat.
“I would consider your next words very carefully, Carlisle.”
The guards in the corner of the room stepped forward, but Lina had her wand trained on them in an instant.
“You’re making a mistake, Breen.” Abram croaked, trying to covertly reach for his wand.
It only made her push her dagger in harder.
Abram swallowed.
“A mistake, is it?” Lina’s eyes flashed with a glint bordering on crazed.
Before Abram could cast a single spell against her, thick enchanted ropes wrapped around all three men’s legs like hungry tendrils of devil’s snare.
All three of them screeched as the ropes dragged them mercilessly across the tarps, then up.
The trio of goons groaned as their heads bounced off one another with a comedic thunk. They were bound by their ankles to the wooden beams of the tent.
“You little— urgh!”
Growing tired of his pathetic wining, Lina’s fist cracked into Abram’s cheek, knocking him unconscious. She couldn’t help but cackle at the man’s expression. Mouth agape like a panting Dugbog in summer.
His subordinate idiots beside him panicked, flailing about as they tried to reach their wands.
Morons. They were already on the dirt below.
Lina grabbed the back of their heads and yanked them closer, knocking them into each other to stop their incessant whining.
Like bats from a cave, all of them hung by their feet.
Lina turned back to Elizabeth pointing her wand for the enchanted binds.
“Diffindo.”
Elizabeth landed with a soft oof, one arm hanging bonelessly over Lina’s shoulders as her legs threatened to buckle.
“Lina?” Elizabeth croaked, blinking several times. It looked as if it were painful just to keep her eyes open.
“Evening, Little Fox.” Lina grunted as she tried to pull Elizabeth higher onto her chest. “Can you stand?”
“I can’t see—”
“Not what I asked,” Lina smirked, helping Elizabeth to her feet, giving her a moment to test her legs.
Though she tried to laugh, Elizabeth hissed as her feet met the ground. If it was pain or numbness, Lina wasn’t quite sure, but she tried to stand anyway.
All she knew was that Elizabeth couldn’t disapparate like this.
Fighting—although it was tempting, given how much she loathed the people who “worked” here—wasn’t an option. Elizabeth was far too weak, and Lina refused to risk making it worse.
Confident healer or not, this was beyond her.
“So,” Elizabeth sucked in a sharp breath as she tried to smirk, “do you come here often?”
Lina scoffed at her comment, wrapping an arm around Elizabeth’s back. “Shut up.”
A pained wheeze—an attempted chuckle—escaped Elizabeth, but it only made her wince.
Lina tried to take a step forward with Elizabeth, but Elizabeth’s feet failed beneath her. She almost sent them both tumbling.
“Fuck,” Lina held them both up, but it was a struggle, “any ideas on how to get out of here, Little Fox?”
No response. Elizabeth’s eyes rolled back.
“Lily?” Lina nudged Elizabeth with her shoulder, coaxing her from the brink unconsciousness.
Pain stole Elizabeth’s breath, one hand clutching her stomach as she exhaled sharply. “Floo network,” she panted, “there’s a—hiss—fireplace in the castle.” Elizabeth gestured weakly to another exit. “Through there,” her head rolled onto Lina’s arm, “it’s—ah—quiet… should be… safe.”
“Alright,” Lina reached for her wand, “do you trust me?”
Elizabeth’s head lifted.
Lina knew why.
It was a question far deeper than it should have been.
Trust. The idea was almost laughable given their history. They hadn’t seen each other since Hogwarts, and their time had been... turbulent, at best.
But as their eyes met, as silver met larimar, Lina felt that shift.
“Yes,” Elizabeth breathed. Her voice weak but sure. “I trust you.”
Lina stilled, staring into those glassy eyes she remembered so well, like she hadn’t expected that answer.
Without another word, Lina pointed her wand at Elizabeth.
“Mobilicorpus.”
Elizabeth sighed deeply as her body was lifted from the ground, levitating at Lina’s waist height. Lina moved her to let her lay back. It was the most comfortable position she could think of—despite knowing Elizabeth’s limbs would hang limply beside her.
“Looking good, Little Fox. I should have had you on your back for me years ago.”
Elizabeth let out a short, amused breath as they started moving, her body following Lina’s out of that Godsforesaken tent.
Lina pushed the flap of the tent aside.
Thank Merlin Elizabeth had been right.
There was a small breach in the stone castle, a hole large enough to climb—or levitate—through.
“Alright Fox, where is this fireplace?”
Lina turned back to Elizabeth for a response.
She was unconscious, barely breathing.
Shit.
Lina’s eyes widened as she went to check for her pulse, pressing two fingers to her neck.
It was weak.
She was cold.
“Damn you, Quinn!” Lina cursed, looking left and right through the ruins.
She felt a gust of wind from the right.
Left it is.
She paced through the decrepit hall at speed, keeping Elizabeth close to her hip before finally—finally—she saw it. A fireplace at the far end of a former dining hall.
Lina ducked inside of the fireplace first, crouching onto the ash before letting Elizabeth float over her knees, cradling her body in her arms.
There was only one place she could think of going. One person who could possibly help her fix this, and more importantly, know how to take care of her after this.
“Brocburrow.” Lina said urgently, letting their bodies be engulfed in a flash of green.
A harsh Scottish wind bit at Lina’s fingertips and cheeks as they arrived—but there was no time to waste.
Casting her spell over Elizabeth’s limp body again, Lina trudged through the thin layers of snow to a small cottage just beyond the hamlet's centre.
Lina shamelessly pounded on the wooden door, determined to awaken anyone inside.
A great sigh of relief escaped her when firelight suddenly poured through the windows.
The door creaked open slowly, the smell of herbs washing over Lina, revealing a yawning—and highly agitated—Aliria McLeary.
Aliria’s eyes met Lina’s first. She groaned.
“You’d best have a very good excuse for—” Aliria gasped suddenly. All drowsiness disappeared from her face as her expression twisted into a horrified grimace. “Crivvens!”
Lina pushed through the doorway like she had so many times before. Elizabeth’s body followed close behind.
“Is that—?”
“Quinn. Yes. It’s her.”
Aliria’s eyes scanned over Elizabeth’s body.
“The table,” Aliria pointed to the wooden preparation table in the middle of the kitchen before rushing to grab her wand, “put her on the table.”
Lina obliged, setting Elizabeth gently on the table, keeping one hand on the back of her head.
“What in Merlin’s name happened?!” Aliria exclaimed, checking Elizabeth’s pulse.
“I don’t know! I just found her like this!” Lina’s free hand gestured to the gashes in Elizabeth’s clothes.
“Found ‘er?” Aliria’s head snapped up.
Her Scottish lilt was always strongest when she was worried and tired.
“Where?!”
A wry smirk tugged at Lina’s lips.
Aliria didn’t look impressed. “Where?” She pressed as she started working on the injuries on Elizabeth’s stomach.
Lina felt a seething rage bubbling deep within her chest at the sight. Elizabeth’s abdomen—soft and freckled—was littered with cuts and bruises.
“Lina,” Aliria’s voice pulled her from her trance, “far shelf to the right. The purple potion there. And the pipette.”
Lina turned, grabbing the purple liquid—and the Wiggenweld beside it—and setting them on the table beside Elizabeth’s head.
Aliria grabbed the purple bottle and pipette; the kitchen was immediately filled with lavender and thyme. Slowly, she let the potion drip into Elizabeth’s wounds.
It made Elizabeth flinch and writhe in her sleep.
“What are you doing?” Lina reached for Elizabeth’s temple.
“Cleaning her wounds. I can heal them after.”
“Are you sure?”
Aliria scoffed, “Am I sure?” She echoed sarcastically and shook her head. “I am a healer, Lina. Of course I am sure.”
“So... she’s alright?”
Aliria didn’t respond, she only looked up at Lina for a split second before getting back to work.
A long moment passed before she finally spoke again:
“She’s lucky you found her when you did, Lina.”
Lina looked back down at Elizabeth’s freckled face—pale and sunken—before running a hand through the girl’s thick ginger curls.
“You really are trouble, Little Fox.”
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December 13th, 1897, Brocburrow
Despite Aliria’s insisting, Lina refused to sleep on the couch. She stayed in the armchair in the guestroom by Elizabeth’s bedside all night, only allowing herself to rest when she heard Elizabeth start to snore softly.
As beams of warm sunlight bled through the curtains, Lina’s head slowly lifted from the chair, her black hair tousled by her own restlessness.
She turned to Elizabeth.
She was still sleeping soundly, hugging one pillow on her side like a childhood toy.
Cute.
As if she could feel Lina’s eyes on her, Elizabeth stirred, her eyelashes fluttering as her eyes began to open.
She blinked once, twice, allowing her eyes to adjust. She held up one hand, blocking the light before pushing herself up.
“Good morning, Little Fox.” Lina leaned forward, one leg draped over the other, her head resting on her fist as she grinned—smug.
Elizabeth blinked again, finally lowering her hand to look at Lina.
Her lips parted in shock. Her lungs—and mind—seemed to fail her at that moment.
It only made Lina’s grin wider.
Lina stood, standing beside the bed, looking down at Elizabeth.
“You know,” Lina smirked, “one would normally say thank you after being saved from—”
Lina’s smirk vanished as she felt Elizabeth’s warm hand on her wrist. Her touch was so… gentle.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth smiled, letting a small huff of amusement escape her when she spoke again: “bruiser.”
Ah, Lina’s smirk returned. So she did remember their nicknames. Though Lina was sure she’d never heard it sound so pleasant, or grateful, for that matter.
As Elizabeth’s hand began to slip away, Lina caught it with her own.
“It’s good to see you, Lily.” Lina’s smile softened.
“It’s good to see you too, Lina.”
For a moment, they let the silence hang in the air.
But, when Elizabeth tried to sit up more and push her back against the headboard, she hissed through her teeth and clutched her stomach with the hand that had been holding Lina’s.
Lina didn’t know where the instinct came from, but within mere blink, she moved; wrapping one arm around Elizabeth’s waist to lift her further up the headboard, the other hand under her knee farthest from her. “Easy, Little Fox—”
Lina’s head tilted upward, and she suddenly found herself much closer to Elizabeth than she thought she was. So close in fact, she could feel the heat radiating from Elizabeth’s cheeks as a blush lit her freckled cheeks.
That blush made her eyes look even more blue.
“Careful, Quinn,” Lina’s lips curled teasingly, “you might give me the wrong idea.”
Elizabeth’s blush darkened even more.
Lina chuckled as she slowly let her hands drag their way off Elizabeth’s leg and back.
“Now…” Lina sat on the bed beside Elizabeth, “are you going to tell me how you ended up tied to that chair?”
Elizabeth laughed breathily, turning her head away for a moment.
“You already know why.” Elizabeth turned her head back with a wry smile. “They told me someone was looking for those dragons… they just didn’t tell me who.”
“I’m not interested in that, Quinn.” Lina’s eyes traced the line of Elizabeth’s jaw down to her neck and shoulders, counting every bruise, every scar. “I’m wondering how you managed to get caught.”
“Hmm,” Elizabeth hummed, her smile slowly disappearing as memories visibly flashed in her eyes. “I uh,” she hesitated for a moment, “I went back to the nest because I’d lost my locket when I was trying to move the dragons. The locket my parents gave me when I left for Hogwarts. It just so happened that those poachers were there at the same time and…”
Elizabeth’s eyes wandered over to the coatrack in the corner where her robes hung.
Lina looked at the robes, then at her. And again.
“Right coat pocket.” Elizabeth sighed.
Lina sat up—albeit reluctantly—and tentatively reached into her coat pocket. When her hand settled on the item inside, it didn’t take long to understand.
“Oh,” Lina pulled Elizabeth’s wand—snapped in two—out of the pocket.
“They attacked me before I even saw them,” Elizabeth sighed.
It sounded like pure disbelief and frustration. Like she couldn’t believe she let it happen. Like she blamed herself.
“I didn’t even hear them coming. I wasn’t even thinking about anything but that bloody locket.” Elizabeth held her head in her hands. “All I remember is standing there one moment then… hitting the rocks. My wand shattered on impact.”
Lina placed her wand back into Elizabeth’s pocket and slowly made her way back over.
But as she did… something caught the light. A flicker under Elizabeth’s collar.
Lina reached for her, stopping just shy of Elizabeth’s skin like she was asking for permission.
She didn’t say no.
Lina’s hand pushed Elizabeth’s collar away just slightly, and sure enough…
“You almost died,” Lina laughed, pulling at the thin golden chain until the locket popped out from under her shirt, “for this?”
“You make it sound like I did it on purpose—”
Lina held up a hand to stop Elizabeth from talking any more than she already had. “It is a great mystery how you are still alive.”
“Well,” Elizabeth reached out, plucking her locket from Lina’s hand, “not so mysterious anymore now, is it?”
Elizabeth shook her head. There was a look of happy bewilderment on her face. “Who’d have thought, the illusive Lina Breen coming to save my sorry arse.”
“Perhaps I just wanted you to owe me a favour.” Lina smirked devilishly.
Elizabeth’s eyes thinned like she already knew what Lina was going to say.
Slowly, Elizabeth shook her head, looking up at Lina through her lashes with that cheeky smirk she always despised.
“You’re not going to tell me where those dragons are, are you, Little Fox?”
“No.”