#edgeofnicky

One minute Edgar and Nicky were chatting from their vantage point. The next his ears were ringing, and Edgar found he was lying on the ground.

Edgar tried to pull himself to his feet but hissed and fell back as he attempted to roll onto his hip. Edgar looked down. There was blood seeping from under his shirt. Pushing it up and aside, he hissed. A tree branch must have gouged his side, though thankfully it seemed to be on the surface. By some small miracle, it had got in right at the edge and not through him. By another miracle, the med kit was still clinging to him, the strap half wound around his shoulders. Edgar scrambled into it, digging until he found the small bottle of dittany. With a hiss, Edgar let two drops fall onto his wound. As it knitted itself together, he tried to move again. His head hurt a bit, and there was an ache in the arm he’d landed on. But nothing else seemed in need of mending. He stood up and looked around, the breath knocking out of him as he looked ahead.

This hadn’t just been an attack on the orchard, on Nicky and himself. He looked out onto the street and saw chaos. A few faces peered out of windows or had stepped out onto the street. Well shit.

Edgar spun around to find Nicky, then stopped. They couldn’t do this alone. If they didn’t already, headquarters needed to know. 

Closing his eyes, Edgar let his mind wander. He thought back to a freshly seventeen-year-old Amelia blowing bubbles with his wand. He was a little too old to chase them, but he did anyway, partially because it was fun and partially because it was her. He remembered collapsing half on top of her giggling, Amelia scooping him up in his arms like he was still a baby. He was, Hogwarts still a couple years away, but it didn’t feel like that then.

As he felt a tingling in his wand, Edgar thought the message to HQ and let the spell slip from this lips.

A small burst of light fell forward, and his ferret hopped around him a couple times before taking off toward the Prewett estate. There. All Edgar could hope now was that someone would listen.

They’d only been home for about half an hour and already Dirk had pulled out parchment and quills to work on his plans. Moody and Hestia had pulled himself aside to say they’d send a time in the morning for their meeting and he wanted to be ready. But Nicky wanted to talk. That wasn’t surprising - usually she did - but Dirk had work to do.

Then again... he sort of did want to tell her about Emmeline’s kiss. If only to get it off his mind enough to be able to fully focus on his plans. He didn’t know the next moves. She’d kissed him - did that mean it was his turn to ask her out? Nicky had spent the last fifteen minutes telling him she wanted to have a party for some of the younger crowd in the Order. Maybe that was where Dirk could hang out with Emmeline next? She had said she wanted to stand on the sidelines with him, after all.

“You think we have enough space?” he asked Nicky, proof he’d been listening this whole time despite his fingers deftly drawing up plans at the same time. He tapped his wand to the parchment and the lines he’d drawn sprang to life, rearranging themselves into perfect straight lines and circles.  He wrote headquarters on one circle and field agent on the other. “When do you wanna do this? Are you sure? We’ve never thrown a party like that before. Remember what happened to Dearborn’s place at the last one?”

LOCATION: Diagon Alley, Nicky Edgecombe & Dirk Cresswell’s Flat DATE: June 30th, 1984 @edgeofnicky

Elliot was not generally much of one for parties. He attended them, of course, when he was invited; it would be rude not to, and mother would be cross with him besides if he didn’t go, and so he was careful never to decline too many. He rationed his refusals, saving them up like rare coins to doll out against the most egregious invitations or boorish hosts. Fortunately for his wallflower tendencies, he wasn’t a particularly popular guest, so his invitations hardly arrived in a deluge and tended to be more of an obligatory nature than an enthusiastic one—he was an unmarried heir of a certain age, after all—which meant that he could make the corresponding obligatory appearance and then find a corner that gave him a good view of the room and its dramatics, and count to be relatively undisturbed there for the bulk of the evening.

He had a feeling that this party was going to be of a rather different sort. For one thing, he remembered Nicola Edgecombe from school, and while they hadn’t retained close social bonds in the years since, he doubted she had suffered a drastic shift in personality or temperament. For another, there was the address. This wasn’t the first time he’d been invited to a party in a flat, no, but he had a feeling this was going to be a rather different sort of flat than the ones he’d been to before. Both of those factors had been enticements in favor of attending when he’d weighed the unexpected invitation in the days following its arrival, but...

Well, there was really only one factor that mattered. He was in the Order of the Phoenix now and it was on that basis that he had been invited. Hence, there had never been any question of whether or not he was going to attend. After all, he didn’t just want to meet the people he was going to be fighting alongside, for which this gathering would surely be of great use; he wanted to impress them. Which meant showing-up and socializing. A trial, to be sure, but one that he was determined to excel at. Or at least not run away from.

He still got there late, having dithered over what to wear (it didn’t seem like a dress robes sort of event, but he didn’t want to show-up underdressed and thus risk offending everyone by making it seem like he thought them low-class) and changed his mind completely seven times before finally settling on one of the natty but casual modern half-length open-front overrobes that mum hated in a natty plum color. If he got there and found everyone dressed too casually, he could always divest himself of the robe in favor of the loose-sleeved tunic and trousers he wore underneath with no one the wiser.

He appeared on the appointed street with a sharp CRACK and revolved in a slow, disoriented circle as he tried to get his bearings—ah, there, an address! Relieved to have found the right number, Elliot mounted the steps hurriedly before he could change his mind and rapped on the door. To his relief, it was answered by a familiar face instead of a stranger to whom he would have to summon the courage to introduce himself.

Emme had barely slept, but there was work that needed to be done, so she had found herself in the Infirmary. She had agreed to take this shift last night, but she almost wished that she would have taken a later one. But in retrospect, Emme didn’t sleep all that much on a normal night, so she was hoping that maybe when she got home later, she would actually sleep for once. Emme couldn’t stop thinking about Dirk, and about how he hadn’t seemed upset when she kissed him. What did that mean? He had a girlfriend. Why had he kissed her back and why hadn’t he...said something. She thought that Dirk was a nice guy, but now...now she was thoroughly confused.

And what about Nicky? Emme actually liked her, which made this whole thing even worse. She couldn’t believe that she had betrayed her like that. It wasn’t who Emmeline was. She didn’t do things like this. It was all so confusing. And it hurt because she liked Dirk and didn’t want to see him with someone else. But...she was going to have to accept that things were how they were and just...move on.

She had been lost in her thoughts when she heard someone behind her. Turning around, she nearly dropped the potion that she was holding. “Nicky! Hey! Um, are you okay?” 

Wila had been waiting for this moment since joining the Order and it had finally happened. Of course it took Frank Longbottom taking a tumble for them to finally recognize her brilliance, but after tomorrow nobody would doubt it again. She had sent owls to Lily, Edgar, and Nicky and told them to be at the estate promptly at eight, but she had arrived early to wrap her head around it all and to get herself situated. She had spread out the maps of London across the table, and she had marked off where Wilma Pierce and her family lived. Getting thrown in at the last moment after a few days of upheaval with their team, she knew that she had her work cut out. Their location was going to be the most challenging in terms of making sure none of the Muggles saw anything that they shouldn’t, but all of the people would make it easier for them to hide out of sight. 

​Dirk’s face was covered in soot that the smoke had left over. If it had been red, it would’ve been reminiscent of being in this same estate covered in Benjy Fenwick’s blood. Then, he’d been sitting on the blood chair in the Entry Room - now, it was in the corner of the infirmary on an uncomfortable wooden thing that had been clearly thrown in last minute after everything went to shit.

He couldn’t stop coughing as he leaned forward with his head dipped, closing his eyes as he tried to catch his breath. They’d done it - they’d stopped the Fiendfyre and kept the family safe - but now his bones ached with exhaustion. There was something different about this feeling than just being tired on any other day. As though his magical energy had been drained from him today.

The burn on his arm stung painfully, but the smoke in his lungs and the dryness in his now-red eyes and the pure debilitating fatigue outweighed that. He looked up when someone came over to him, bending down at his level, and he wanted to see Emmeline, who he’d noticed was frantically working when he’d staggered in. But it was - Nicky!

Edgar practically bounced as he and Nicky apparated in. He immediately moved closer to the trees since Nicky had suggested it would be a bad idea to be seen by the neighbors. From here, they had a pretty good vantage point, and Edgar felt a small sting of pride that this location had been his idea. They could see part of the street and the house itself from here, and Edgar was confident that whatever was coming their way, the team would handle it. 

Emma:

(I was going to find something more specific but discovered I've sent it to you twice in our dms, so there you go.)

Nicky: