"It's cognitive dissonance," Waverly says, trying to help Nicole study for Transfigurations.
"No," Nicole says, "it's a chair that doesn't want to be an iguana."
"No, why you can't do it." Waverly brushes her hair back over one shoulder. "It's like… you know you can change the chair into a lizard, but you don't know it."
Nicole glares at the chair. "So?"
"Try closing your eyes." She puts a palm over Nicole's eyes and Nicole sighs. Her eyelashes flutter against Waverly when she blinks. "Now just… will the chair to turn. Make it turn."
Nicole screws her face up and moves her wand, feeling the thrum of the spell up her arm. The chair squawks. She opens her eyes. It's a chicken, pecking at the grass. She groans. "I'm going to fail."
"You're amazing at Charms." Waverly is trying to cheer her up and Nicole does feel a little flash of pride that Waverly's noticed, because Nicole is amazing at Charms, but mostly she feels morose that her whole life plan is in jeopardy over cognitive dissonance, of all things. "Aren't chickens and lizards related? Like… distantly?" Waverly has switched modes to supportive, but she's also clearly hiding a giggle. Nicole rips up a tuft of grass and throws it at Waverly's face. Waverly smiles then frowns, the joy leaking away. "Has Wynonna… talked to you lately?"
Nicole shrugs. "Just the usual."
Waverly's frown deepens. "She's being weird. I was hoping she'd talk to you if not to me."
"I'll keep an eye on her."
Waverly's still frowning. "Promise?"
"Yeah," Nicole says, because she itches to get Waverly to stop feeling so blue. "I promise." She's done this promise before, the other way, and it seems only fair to promise Waverly the same way she'd promised Wynonna.
/
Nicole follows Wynonna at night. She layers charms on her shoes and her robes, soft-steps and notice-me-nots and look-aways, and it takes her only a moment to convince the room of requirement to let her in. She has a moment of triumph before it dilutes into horror.
"Oh, gross." She spins around to face the wall.
"You're the one walking in," Wynonna says, hopping back into her pants, flushed. "Doc-John Henry was just leaving." He fades through the wall.
"He's a ghost? How do you even-" Nicole shakes her head. "Nevermind. I don't want to know. What's going on with you?"
Wynonna looks indignant. "Just because Dolls doesn't want me doesn't mean I'm, what, unfuckable-"
"Oh for Merlin's sake." Nicole props her hands on her hips. "You know what I mean. And he does want you."
Wynonna scoffs, chewing on her lip. "Okay. C'mere." She drags Nicole outside, closes the door, and screws up her face in concentration. Then she opens the room again and Nicole follows her inside.
"Woah."
The walls are layered with old clippings, moving pictures, pages of notes. "When we were little," Wynonna says, tracing over a picture of a man and three girls, "Death Eaters came to our manor and killed my sister." Nicole knows, but not because Wynonna'd told her, so she stays quiet. Wynonna turns at her, fire burning in her eyes. Her wand glows under her sleeve. "I'm going to find them all."
"Okay." Nicole taps her fingers against her leg. "Yeah, okay. We should tell Waverly."
"No!" Wynonna glares. "I'm trusting you, okay? To keep Waverly safe. Will you help me do that?"
"You know you can," Nicole says, meaningfully. "We made sure of it."
/
"I think Waverly's getting suspicious," Nicole says, tromping after Wynonna in the dark.
"Yeah, well. She's smart." Wynonna stops. "Wait here?"
"I know the drill." She watches Wynonna duck and weave, avoiding the thrashing limbs, until she cheerfully punches the right spot on the trunk and the Whomping Willow freezes. She flaps a hand and Nicole trots after her.
They emerge in the Shrieking Shack, and Wynonna takes down the ward hiding her bag of holding. Nicole sits against the wall, pulling a binder towards her. "She's better at this than both of us put together. We might have actually gotten somewhere with her."
"I get it, we're both idiots and the sun shines out of Waverly's ass." Wynonna opens a folder of pictures at the table. "When I asked you to look out for her, I thought you'd be her friend, not her personal cheerleader."
"I can be both." Nicole squints at an arrest photo. "This would be easier with Muggle photos." The man twists, hiding his face and making rude gestures. She flips the page and stops. "Hey, hand me that picture again? The one of the seven?"
There's a dark red X through one of their faces. Wynonna sees her looking. "Died in Azkaban last week. Fucker."
"Mm." Nicole holds the picture up to the book she's referencing. "I think-" She feels the ward give out, a bell ringing in her head, and she sucks in a gasp, the book falling from numb fingers. "Earp-" Wynonna's wandtip presses against her temple.
"Episkey." Her voice has dropped to a tense, cautious murmur. "The wards?"
"Yeah." Nicole shakes her head rapidly and slips her wand into her hand. "Please don't point your defective wand at my brain."
"Shut up. Peacemaker fixed your headache, admit it." They shuffle, pressed together, whispering.
"I hate that nickname," Nicole mutters, and the wall next to her face explodes. Wynonna jerks her back and Nicole throws a Protego up just before jets of red light flash against it. They split, scrambling to find cover. Nicole hears wings, beating fast and angry. "Conjured somethings," she hisses, and Wynonna nods.
Wynonna sticks her wand out from the rotting sofa: "Impedimenta."
As soon as the last syllable is out of her mouth, Nicole pops up from under a table. "Oppugno. The sounds of the wings change, and then she hears two distinct voices, yelping and swearing. She grabs Wynonna by the hand and drags her toward the back wall.
Wynonna resists. "What? We can take them."
"We are sixth years," Nicole hisses, yanking on Wynonna's arm. "They are Death Eaters."
"I'm a seventh year," Wynonna mutters, but she stops trying to pull them around. "There's no back door."
Nicole can't hear wings anymore. "We'll make one." They cast blasting curses at the same time, and when they go through the hole at a run, the jagged edges cut Nicole's skin, ripping her robes. They burst out onto the cold, abandoned road, the snow up to their calves. "Tell me you know how to Apparate," she pants.
"Haven't gotten around to it." Wynonna says.
Nicole tightens her grip on Wynonna's hand. "How hard can it be?"
"What?" Wynonna's eyes go wide, then she screws them shut. "Think of Hogsmead," she orders. "Remember, you can't Apparate to Hogwarts. The Three Broomsticks."
"Okay." Nicole takes a deep, steadying breath and tries to focus on what she's read about Apparition. Destination, Determination, Deliberation.
/
She remembers feeling like she's been stretched out and she remembers feeling the muscles and the skin tear and she remembers being surprised at how warm her blood feels and how dark it looks, soaking through her robes and spreading over the snow. She remembers screaming.
/
She wakes up and Waverly bursts into tears. "I'm really glad you're okay," she says, and Nicole reaches to comfort her even as her vision stays blurry, pain thumping through her body.
"What happened?"
"You-"
"You're awake," a man says, stepping forward. "Good. Come with me."
"No," Waverly protests, "she has to-you should be out looking for Wynonna!"
"Stand aside girl, this is Ministry business."
They march her, limping in a hospital gown and Waverly's hastily gifted cloak, to a hearing. She stammers out the truth on the stand, over and over, until she realizes no one there is interested in the truth. She meant to explain exactly what they were doing there until she sees Waverly in the gallery, shaking her head, eyes pleading. Nicole swallows it back and focuses on their run through the shack, trying to Apparate to safety. They press her on it, demanding why she and Wynonna had snuck off school grounds, and she lands on a believable excuse on the fly.
"I'm gay," she blurts, for the first time in her life, and the witches and wizards blink at her apparent non-sequitur. "We were…" she fumbles, watches comprehension dawn.
The wizard questioning her rallies. "Why would you have to leave Hogwarts to…" he can't even say it, and Nicole takes a gamble.
"I'm muggleborn. And the wizarding world isn't known for its progressiveness." She sees the truth of her words as soon as she says them, and it hurts, in a faded way. Whatever hope she'd had that her new world would be better than her old one, she'd lost the third time someone had tripped her in the halls and hissed Mudblood. People are people everywhere, and people hate.
Another wizard stands to question her, and she bursts. "I'm sorry, but don't I get a representative? You're treating me like I did something wrong."
"The school has waived your rights to an advocate," the witch acting as judge says.
"Those weren't their rights to waive."
"Muggle guardians are not recognized by the Ministry for criminal hearings. As such, Hogwarts stands in place until you're of age." Nicole grits her teeth.
"I didn't do anything criminal."
"Maybe not. Maybe Wynonna Earp did."
"What?"
"Maybe she coerced you. If she used an Unforgivable, you wouldn't be held accountable-"
"Accountable? We were both attacked. You should be trying to help her right now, instead of treating me like a criminal!"
They excuse her, and an Auror witch walks her into an antechamber, standing at the door like a guard. Nicole paces, fuming. Her shoulder hurts persistently, burning, and she's on lap six of the room when a bolt of red light hits the Auror in between the shoulderblades and she topples. Nicole's in a defensive stance, wand at the ready, but it's just Dolls, hands raised appeasingly as he comes in the room.
"They're not going after her," he says. "Will you help me?"
Nicole gapes at him. "You just stunned an Auror. You're Head Boy."
"I'm aware." He stares her down. "I think you remember something. I think you can help."
Nicole shifts, her wand still up. "Why should I trust you?"
"Because I do." Waverly slides through the still open door, face white but determined. "Do you trust me?"
"Yes." The answer comes so quick, so automatic, that she sees Dolls blink in surprise. "But I really don't know anything. I don't remember anything."
A blue beetle, glinting darkly, flutters in and hovers next to Dolls' ear, buzzing in short sharp bursts. "Not here," he says. "How do you feel about a jailbreak?"
/
Dolls Apparates them into a dusty kitchen, and Nicole sits down hard on the floor. Waverly conjures up a paper bag and gets it to her just in time. "Apparating so soon after splinching isn't a good idea," Waverly frets, rubbing Nicole's back in soothing circles. "We should have portkeyed."
Dolls hands Nicole a bottle of water. "I didn't have a portkey. She'll be fine in a minute. Is it ready?"
"Almost. We didn't even ask her yet."
"I'm sitting right here," Nicole says weakly. She grabs the counter and pulls herself up. "What's going on? Where are we?"
"Earp Manor." Waverly takes the bottle from Nicole's hand before she can drop it.
"I'm pretty sure they won't say she's a Death Eater," Dolls says, "but they won't send anyone to look for her, either." He goes to the couch and touches a stack of papers. "This is Waverly's research. We think we've narrowed it down to five places."
"Waverly's research?"
"Yes, my research." Waverly is at the stove, stirring something bubbly and shimmery. "I know this could be bad for you," she says to Nicole, "you can tell them we kidnapped you, if you want. We kind of did."
"Of course I'll help," Nicole says. "But I really don't remember anything."
"Splinch trauma." Waverly does something that makes the pot screech and burp blue flame. "This'll help. Just give me a minute to finish it."
Dolls pulls Nicole into the living room. "I could use some backup, once we've figured out where she is. You're good in a fight, right?"
"Not good enough to help Wynonna." Nicole's fast twists, bitter. "How do we even know she's still alive?" Waverly drops the spoon with a clatter, then picks it up again.
"Are you willing to try?"
Nicole chews on her lip. "I'll take the potion. And I'm going with you. But I have a condition."
"A condition? For saving your friend?" Nicole lets her eyes slide to Waverly, filling an eyedropper at the stove.
"Already planned," Dolls says. They shake on it.
The potion has the texture of silly putty and tastes like sour milk, Waverly bent over her on the couch, three drops on her tongue. Nicole closes her eyes and focuses on swallowing. "Give it a minute," Waverly says, apologetic. "If I was better at potions it wouldn't taste as bad."
"Only fifteen wizards in the country right now could brew that," Dolls says briskly, "and none of them are fifth years." Nicole slumps abruptly to the side, against the arm of the couch. "Okay, she's ready."
Nicole feels dissociated; the world has taken on an eerie, otherworldly hue. She brings her hand up and moves her fingers one by one. "She looks high," Dolls says.
"Yeah. Well, I had to add some other ingredients, to help with remembering. And substitute some ingredients I didn't have. Also, it's supposed to be brewed under the gibbous moon-" She catches sight of Dolls' face. "-uh, but it's fine. It should work." She rubs Nicole's knee. "Nicole? I'm going to ask you some questions now."
"Okay."
"What's your name?"
Nicole frowns. "You don't know my name?" She sighs deeply. "Nicole Haught."
"Where were you born?"
"Colorado."
"What's your mother's maiden name?"
"Miller."
"Ask her to lie," Dolls says, "see if it's really working."
Waverly puts her hand on Nicole's cheek, turning her head to catch her eyes. "I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to try and lie, okay?"
"Okay," Nicole agrees. She cants her face into Waverly's hand, nuzzling, and Waverly withdraws, blushing.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Three," Nicole says immediately. She frowns, licking her lips. "Wait, let me try…" She clenches her fists, grits her teeth. She sucks in a shaky breath. "I can't-I'm sorry, I can't-" She groans, her head thumping. "Sorry."
"It's okay," Waverly assures her, "it's good."
Nicole smiles, tentative, "You're not mad?"
"Promise," Waverly says, and Nicole gets distracted by her eyelashes against her cheek, her pretty eyes.
"I want you to give me butterfly kisses," she says seriously, and Waverly chokes, coughing.
"Let's get to it?" Dolls asks.
"Yes," Waverly says, her voice pitched high, "let's."
Dolls clears his throat, settling on the coffee table in front of her, and she keeps looking at Waverly until he clears his throat again, louder. Nicole casts him a quick look then goes back to Waverly. "Hi."
"Hi," Waverly says, her face very bright red.
"Haught," Dolls calls firmly, and she turns to him, sighing. "You and Wynonna were researching the attack on her family."
"Yes. We found a picture of the group that was attacking pure blood Auror families, and Wynonna recognized a few of them. We were trying to match them to court documents, family trees, newspaper clippings."
Waverly snorts. "I already had five of the seven identified, if either of you had bothered to ask."
Dolls ignores her. "Let's talk about that day. Think back. What do you remember?"
"Waverly," Nicole says, soft, "smiling at me, over breakfast." Waverly makes another choking noise, so Nicole hands her the water bottle on the table.
"Thank you," Waverly says, faint.
"Fast forward a little," Dolls instructs. "You went to the Shrieking Shack."
"The wards," Nicole says. She remembers waving her wand, chanting. "I put up the wards and-I thought I'd found one of them. I asked Wynonna to give me the picture."
"Good. What happened next?"
"I felt the wards go. It hurt." She winces, the memory of pain lancing through her temples.
"You were attacked."
"Two people." Nicole furrows her eyebrows. "We blew out the back wall. Wynonna wanted to fight, but I told her to run. We tried to Apparate."
"You splinched because someone grabbed you. Someone pulled Wynonna away."
"I don't remember. My eyes were closed."
"But maybe you opened them," Dolls wheedles, "maybe just a little-"
Nicole flinches. "I tried to Apparate, it hurt." Her voice pitches higher, "it hurts, I'm bleeding, I-" She sucks in a shuddering breath, seeking out Waverly's eyes. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," Waverly says, her eyes spilling over, her voice breaking. "I know you tried."
"Sight isn't your only sense, Miss Haught." Dolls leaps to his feet, drawing his wand, and Waverly shrieks, shocked. Nicole tips her head back and peers at the ghost in the corner.
"Hi, John Henry."
"Hello, Nicole."
"He's okay," Nicole tells Dolls. "He loves Wynonna. They're fornicating."
"They are?" Waverly yelps. She recovers quickly. "I mean, I knew that. But also, how-"
"I know who he is," Dolls interrupts, low and angry. "We don't need him."
"We need all the help we can get," Waverly snaps, "so everyone shut up and get back to helping Nicole remember."
"What did he smell like?" John Henry asks her. "Close your eyes."
Nicole complies, obedient. "I didn't feel anyone grab me, but someone was there, close to us. He smelled like…" she frowns.
Dolls interrupts her attempts at remembering. "How'd you know it was a he?"
"I heard them, when we were fighting."
"He smelled like…" John Henry prods her back on track.
"Musty. Like-" she frowns, something on the tip of her tongue, fighting to get free. She swings herself into Waverly's lap, ignoring her startled squeaks, and tucks her nose into Waverly neck.
"Help," Waverly hisses. Dolls lays a cautious hand on Nicole's elbow and she growls.
"Maybe she's remembering something."
"She's smelling me."
Nicole noses down Waverly's neck into her robes and down her arm, Waverly's sweater soft under her skin. Then she slides back into her seat, triumphant. "Like books. Old books, and tingle."
"Tingle?" Dolls asks, at the same time Waverly sputters:
"I smell like old books? Musty?"
"Magic tingle," Nicole explains.
"Okay," Dolls says, shuffling through the files. "Old books, magic-there's a research hospital here, and a library."
"Bleach," Nicole remembers, the sharp sting in her nose when her skin was ripping itself apart.
"Hospital it is-where'd he go?" Dolls stands. "Doc?" He goes into the kitchen, then curses, slamming a fist against the counter. "He took her wand."
"What?" Waverly rushes to the kitchen, ruffling through the trash on the counters, the equipment and ingredients. "Shit. Well now we know he's definitely a poltergeist."
"It's fine," Dolls says, taking a breath. "We can use blood magic, now that we have a location. And I still have her necklace." Nicole rolls the back of her head on the couch and hums. "Can you do something about her before we leave?"
"Me," Nicole agrees, and giggles.
/
Dolls is looking into her eyes, frowning. "Your face is going to get stuck that way," she tells him. Her mouth still tastes like the peppery red potion Waverly'd made her drink a minute ago, and she feels a little more like a real person.
"I don't want to wait any longer. Are you functional, Haught?"
"Yes," Nicole rasps, the answer pulled from her chest. "Good enough to fight." Waverly moves her wand over the bandages on her shoulder, murmuring: Episkey, Episkey. "Your potions don't taste as sweet as you," Nicole tells her, and Waverly slips on the third repetition of her healing chant. Dolls cuts them a look.
"She's never tasted me," Waverly protests, "she's just high."
"No," Nicole agrees, wistful, "not ever." Dolls lobs a jelly legs hex at her and she blocks it, absentminded.
"Good enough," he says. "Let's go." He grabs Nicole's elbow and she yanks herself away.
"We had a deal."
"So we did," he agrees. "Stupefy." Waverly crumples, the stun hitting her square in the chest, and Nicole lunges to catch her, ease her down to the rug. Then she grabs Dolls by the collar and slams him into a wall, snarling. He shoves her hands away, keeping a tight grip on her wrists, and Apparates them.
/
"You're a dick," she groans, but manages not to throw up again. They're standing in what looks like a reception area, the wood desk all rotted. Dolls points at the footprints in the dust.
"Stealth charms?" he asks, and she casts them quick and careful, on their clothes, their shoes. She taps her wand against his vocal cords, then hers. They separate to the opposite walls. "Test," Dolls says, the barest whisper, and Nicole can hear him like he's talking directly into her ear.
"Test," she says back, and he nods. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, dotted with Waverly's blood, Wynonna's necklace glinting, and moves his wand in a quick complicated motion, murmuring. A tiny green orb rises from Waverly's blood and rolls in the air once before starting a slow floating crawl through the door on the left. Nicole takes a deep breath, steadies her sweaty grip on her wand, and walks, shoulder to shoulder with Dolls, down the hallway.
The dust lies heavy in her lungs and she thinks she understands, for the first time, why Muggles shy away from magical places. She can feel the magic here, sinister and greasy and cloying on her senses, and it makes her heart rabbit, fear a thick taste on her tongue. The orb leads them into what used to have been an operating room. There's a body on the table, covered by a sheet that falls oddly on the torso, soaked through with blood. Brown hair tumbles past the sheet, hanging off the table, and Dolls hesitates before yanking the sheet off in a single motion, letting it flutter to the floor.
The first feeling that hits Nicole is relief: it's not Wynonna. The next is empathy, grief. Horror. The dead girl's face is twisted in a grotesque mask of fear and pain. Then Nicole looks at the rest of her body and has to turn away, the breath shocked from her lungs. The girl is split open, her ribs jutting up white and pointed and Nicole never thought the inside of someone's body would be that pink, the organs that big, not once in her life. She fights back the urge to vomit and doesn't look at the table again, the girl a blur in her periphery vision. She grabs Dolls by the sleeve, whiter than she's ever seen him, and they stagger through the next doorway, the orb floating serenely in front of them, Wynonna's necklace tight across his fingers like a brass knuckle rosary.
/
They've been walking for another ten minutes, through windy[,] dusty hallways and rooms strewn with rusted metal and stained linens, when John Henry flies in front of them, through one wall and out of sight through another before zipping back into their field of view. "Hurry," he says urgently, "Wynonna-" a boom shakes the facility, rattling Nicole's teeth, and she takes off after John Henry, Dolls hot on her heels.
It takes longer than it should, because Dolls took the straightest line to them and now has to trace his way back for people who can't move through walls, course correcting with a litany of curses, but eventually they burst into a room, the door rebounding off the wall with a bang. A blasting curse streaks towards Nicole, and she redirects on extinct, sending it hurtling through the window to her left. She's midcast on a retaliatory curse when she realizes it's Wynonna in front of her, in a hospital gown and panicked eyes, and she changes it to a defensive spell just in time to block another curse, her brain thumping at the abrupt reversal.
"Earp," Dolls says, soothing, and steps out from beyond the blue shimmer of her shield. "It's okay. You're safe." Wynonna just stares at them, shaking. Her arms are bleeding, manacles still dangling from her right wrist, and her wand is clutched too tight in her fingers. Dolls moves to step forward and Nicole throws an arm across his chest.
She jerks her head at a pile of jumbled chairs and bedpans in the corner. "Transfigure her something to wear." She drops her shield and makes her body language soft and non-threatening. "Hey, Wynonna. You okay?"
Wynonna blinks at them once, twice. Her wand falls to her side. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." Dolls hands her thin sweatpants, a t-shirt, his own hoodie, and turns his back. Nicole helps Wynonna dress, careful not to touch her, then pulls her into a loose hug, releasing as soon as the embrace begins.
"I'm glad you're okay," she says. "I love you."
"I'm glad you're okay," Wynonna echoes back, after a confused pause, "I thought… how did you find me? Why is it just… you two?"
"Blood magic," Nicole says, the potion yanking the truth from her before Dolls can soften it. "We're alone because the Ministry thinks you're a Death Eater who's faking it for attention, and Dolls stunned Waverly."
"What?" Wynonna whirls on Dolls. "You stunned Waverly?" Peacemaker rises, threatening.
"He also stunned an Auror," Nicole says. "And broke me out of a Ministry hearing. And stole evidence. And had Waverly make controlled, illegal potions-"
"Thank you, Haught," Dolls snapped, "that's enough."
"We're all wanted by the Ministry," Nicole finishes.
Dolls nudges her back. "We'll explain everything later. Where's-" Wynonna points to the small door behind her. "I'm really glad," he says quietly, "that you're okay." She leans her head on his shoulder and he lays a cautious hand on her hip. They stand like that, stiff and touching, until the tiles in the hallway creak. Dolls pushes Wynonna behind him and she shoves back to beside him, Nicole moving out of their line of fire. They aim three wands at the door, threatening, jaws set.
A small coyote trots in, nails clicking. It shoots a poisonous look at Dolls then shifts midyawn, bright white fangs, into Waverly, who throws herself at Wynonna. Wynonna catches her, dragging her close.
"You can Apparate?" she asks.
"You're an Animagus," Dolls says, overlapping and shocked.
Waverly ignores their questions, peering close to Wynonna's eyes. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. Doc gave me Peacemaker, helped me. And then these two-" she gestures at Dolls and Nicole. "-my personal heroes."
"I got here first," John Henry mutters from a corner, half in the wall. "I came to save you first."
"I saved myself," Wynonna says, familiar steel in her tone. "What the hell do we do now? And when did you become a wolf?"
"Coyote," Nicole corrects. She reaches out and pets Waverly's hair.
Waverly pulls back, her hands on her hips. "Yes, I can Apparate, and yes, I'm an Animagus. Which you-" she jabs Nicole in the chest, "-would know if you weren't chasing girls who don't deserve you, and you-" she shoves at Wynonna's shoulder "-would know if you weren't sneaking around with old books, poltergeists, and our friends behind my back! I'm so mad at all of you." She hugs Wynonna again, tight. "Now we're going to call the Ministry and say that piece of shit kidnapped all of us from the hearing, and let the poor dead girl back there and the Dark Mark on his arm back us up."
"You have the best plans," Nicole says into the faintly shocked silence that follows. "You're the best." She pets her hair again.
Wynonna pulls Waverly slightly away. "Did the splinching affect her brain?"
"Waverly's sweet," Nicole explains, "but her potions are not."
"Ah. You should go," she says to John Henry. "Thanks, Doc." He tips his hat, throws a last glare at Dolls, and fades through the floor.
"I'll call the Ministry," Dolls says. He leaves.
"You're really okay?" Waverly asks, anxious.
"Yeah, but I uh," Wynonna tucks her hair behind her ears, clearing her throat. Her eyes are suspiciously watery. "I killed him, Waves."
"As long as you're okay." They hug again, leaning their foreheads against each other.
"Good," Nicole says. "I'm glad he's dead." They both look at her and she shrugs. "What? I'm high."
/
Waverly undoes the bandages winding around Nicole's shoulder and armpit, and opens her wounds back up with big apologetic eyes, and Nicole doesn't feel much pain, not with Waverly's hand around hers, comforting. Dolls and Wynonna and Waverly talk to the Aurors with Nicole tucked behind them, too 'aggravated from her injuries' to be questioned. "Good thing Hogwarts has a long sordid history of shit going down during the school year," Waverly says while they're waiting to be transported. Nicole reaches for her hair again and Wynonna slaps her hand out of the air.
They're suspended until the start of the second term, after Christmas, and there's only two weeks before the beginning of the winter holidays, so that all works out pretty well. Dolls gets released to his parents, leaving with a nod to them and without his Head Boy's badge, and a cranky looking woman shows up to collect Waverly and Wynonna. There's some arguing around Nicole, who's been made to drink another potion by a proper Healer, which reacted oddly because they hadn't confessed to what she'd already taken, and she misses all of what's going on regarding her guardianship because she's having the worst migraine of her entire life, breathing shallowly, her stomach cramping, her eyes screwed up against the light. She may be whimpering. All she knows is that Wynonna drags her to a portkey, one hand clapped helpfully over her eyes, and then she's being tucked into a bed, the lights finally extinguished. She sleeps.
/
Nicole wakes up tucked under a quilt that feels homemade, faded and worn and warm. She groans. It takes her fifteen minutes to stagger into the kitchen, where Waverly's at the stove frowning at a frying pan and Wynonna's facedown at the dining room table. She looks as bad as Nicole feels. Waverly looks up, sees Nicole, and is opening her mouth for a greeting, probably, when Nicole dives for the sink and vomits, groaning again. "Ew," Waverly says, her nose wrinkled up. "But also, huh." She peers at the sink: Nicole's puke is a swirl of bright colors and smells like cotton candy.
Nicole turns the faucet on to wash it down the drain. "Sorry."
"No breakfast for you, I guess."
"Too bad," Wynonna mumbles against the table. "I could murder a stack of pancakes."
Nicole thinks about pancakes and throws up again.
They hash out the puzzle pieces over pancakes, which Nicole doesn't ever want to look at or think about ever again, and coffee, which she drinks determinedly until Waverly takes her mug away. Nicole had made it to the Three Broomsticks, it turns out, bleeding and babbling about dark wizards, and Waverly'd been dragged out of bed and questioned. Dolls had found her after, and spurred their impromptu jaunt into criminal activity: stealing evidence (Wynonna's necklace and her wand) and absconding with material witnesses (Nicole) from the Ministry. After Waverly'd woken up from the stun she'd Apparated to the hospital and used her coyote nose to sniff them out. No one's really sure how John Henry found out anything, or even how he's able to leave school grounds.
"Go team," Wynonna says, and takes a long drink from a whiskey bottle. Waverly doesn't take it away, and Nicole reaches for the coffee pot-it's nudged firmly out of her reach. Waverly hands her a glass of orange juice and ignores her disgruntled pouting. She hunches her back and tries to look pitiful and wounded. Waverly pats her good shoulder.
"Drink your juice."
Nicole meets Gus at lunch, when she shows up with groceries and judgement and tries, unsuccessfully, to take Waverly with her when she leaves. "Technically," Wynonna says while Gus and Waverly argue on the porch, "she's your guardian now. Disappointment to the family shot?"
"Yeah, okay." Nicole takes the bottle, which is noticeably lighter than it was at breakfast. She takes a slug and coughs. "Jesus Christ."
/
For the first three days, Nicole falls asleep every time she sits still for longer than fifteen minutes: the couch, the chairs, the porch, and once, embarrassingly, in a bowl of soup. On the fourth day she makes it until five before slumping into the guest bed and passing out, on the fifth she feels almost normal. She spends the three days after that watching Wynonna do her level best to drink herself to death, and the next morning she pries the bottle out of her hand and drags her outside for dueling practice. It ends with her physically and magically exhausted, with pink hair and dust in her mouth, but seems to help Wynonna.
"I'm really glad you're here," Waverly says quietly one night, doing dishes together the Muggle way.
"Me too." When Waverly smiles at her Nicole drops a dish, suds slopping into her mouth.
Nicole wakes up early to the sounds of someone blasting outside her window, shattering glass. Waverly's cussing in the kitchen, slamming around and muttering about stubborn assholes, and Nicole edges around her to go outside. Wynonna's flinging curses against glass bottles lined up on the fence.
"I didn't know wizards could be so Western," Nicole says, squinting around. "More of a Homestead than a Manor."
"How would you know? Muggles don't know anything." It's unusually prejudiced, and Nicole stands quietly to let the guilt trip across her face. "Sorry."
"Do you need an intervention?"
Wynonna laughs, a short sharp bark. "Not yet. I'll let you know." She sits on the ground and bows her head between her knees. "I didn't think it would feel like this."
"Being tortured?" Nicole ventures, and Wynonna flinches. Nicole swallows hard.
"Killing someone."
"Oh." Nicole is getting the distinct feeling of being out of her depth. "Wanna come inside and let Waverly yell at us some more?"
"Yeah." They go inside and Waverly throws them lethal looks while serving them sandwiches and they eat too much and listen to something mindless on the wireless and fall asleep all over each other, in a pile.
/
Waverly sits them on the couch and a does a thorough, in depth presentation on the Seven. There are dossiers, and pictures, and a quiz at the end Nicole does poorly on because she was distracted by the way Waverly bounces on her toes when she's passionate and the path of her hands in the air while she gestures. Then Waverly gives them their homework.
"No," Wynonna grumbles, "I got suspended! No homework is like, the only perk."
Nicole raises a hand. "What about the improper underaged magic thing?"
"We're warded," Wynonna says, still sour.
"After you finish for today, we can practice Apparating," Waverly chirps. Nicole groans. Then she sighs, dragging a Potions book into her lap.
Waverly takes it away. "Nope." She reaches into her bag of holding and comes up with an iguana, which she drops on the coffee table. "Chair," she directs Nicole pointedly.
The iguana glares at Nicole. She glares back.
/
"I'm going crazy," Wynonna says, slamming into Nicole's room. She yelps, surprised, and Wynonna looks at the iguana on the bed, one leg partly wooden. "Crazier," she continues. "We've gotta get out of here for a while."
Nicole frowns. "Aren't we on house arrest?" The iguana turns brown, a wood pattern appearing briefly over it, mocking, before going back to normal green. Nicole throws her pillow at it. "Nevermind, let's go."
Wynonna collects Waverly from the barn, where she's brewing something Nicole probably doesn't want to know about, and floo to a house Nicole doesn't recognize, but Dolls is there to meet them, so she figures it must be his. They eat pizza on the floor of his immaculately organized bedroom and talk about what to do next.
"I don't think we have to do anything," Dolls says. "I was going to owl you. My contacts say they know you're looking, and they might be eager for confrontation. This might have just been the beginning." Nicole puts down her paper plate, no longer hungry.
"You have contacts?" Wynonna asks. "You're seventeen."
"I've already sat for my NEWTS and accepted a position with the Department of Mysteries. I'm not returning to Hogwarts."
"Good," Waverly says. "That's good, right? We'll have an Auror on our side."
"Will you?" Wynonna's got her closed off, defensive look on. "Be an ally? No hard feelings if you want to jump off the Crazy Earp Train," she lies, playing with her crust. Dolls just looks at her. "Okay," she says, clearly fighting a smile through a mouthful of dough.
"Why now?" Nicole muses. "I mean, we were researching, but come on. We're kids. I can't imagine we posed anyone a real threat. They could have killed you when you were babies, why wait?"
"I turn seventeen soon," Wynonna offers. "Legally of age. And I don't think anyone in the Ministry would shed a tear if I turned up dead. Or missing."
"Someone in the Ministry would," Dolls says, and they smile at each other again. There's another beat of silence.
"So we don't know anything," Waverly says. She sighs. "Fuck."
/
"It's not hard," Waverly assures. "Just jump from here to the porch. You can even see it through the window."
"I know," Nicole says, gritting her teeth. "Just… give me a minute." She breathes shallowly. The long thin silvery scars that wrap around her shoulder ache.
"You did it right before," Waverly says quietly. "You only splinched because someone tried to stop you." She takes Nicole's hand, her palm soft and dry, and Nicole stares at her while the world swirls and twists around them. They reappear on the porch and Waverly's smile is the sun, beaming at her.
Wynonna and Nicole go to the Apparation licensing test together, with Gus as their guardian. Nicole still hasn't shared more than two sentences with the older woman, and she's perfectly happy to keep it that way. But when Wynonna goes to take the test they're alone, and Gus pins her with a sharp gaze. "You're close with them, my Earp girls."
"I guess."
"I love Wynonna," Gus says quietly, and she doesn't look intimidating so much as softly regretful. "But she's as broken as they come."
"She's not," Nicole says, fiercely loyal. Gus looks at her for a long moment and Nicole meets her gaze, defiant.
"You'll look out for Waverly?" Nicole nods, but drops her eyes, and something must pass over her face because Gus catches it between two palms, locking their eyes, and her pupils go shimmery and gold for a few seconds. "What did you do?" she asks, sharp and almost panicked. "You fool girl, what-"
"Gus?" Wynonna is approaching them, the triumphant smile sliding away as she takes them in.
Gus whirls to face her. "Did you make her do this? Of all the stupid ideas-"
"We both agreed," Nicole snaps, yanking herself away and to her feet. "There's nothing you can do about it now." She stomps off and is unforgivably rude to the poor wizard in charge of testing her, but passes easily.
When she returns Gus and Wynonna are sitting apart, stiff and angry and hurt, and Gus signs all the forms without looking at them. "Think about what I said," she says to Wynonna when they're outside, and Apparates away.
"What's she talking about?"
"Nothing." Wynonna reaches for Nicole's hand. Nicole takes it, but gives her a sharp yank before she can Apparate.
"Don't make me splinch you."
"She gave me money," Wynonna admits. Her free hand fishes in her robes and comes out with a pouch, jangling. "To take off." Nicole snatches it away. "Hey!"
"No problem. I'll hold onto this for you."
"Did you just rob me?"
"Yeah, go ahead and report me." Nicole Apparates them into the kitchen, where Waverly is waiting to either cheer or commiserate. She brightens when she sees them.
"You passed!"
"Yup," Nicole says, accepting Waverly's congratulatory hug and ignoring Wynonna's poleaxed expression. "Dinner's on Wynonna."
/
Nicole settles into a sort of routine. She wakes up, has coffee with Wynonna while Waverly tries to convince them to switch to tea, then drags herself through her academics so she won't be completely behind when she gets back to school. Then she and Wynonna hex the hell out of each other while Waverly cheers one or both of them on, depending on who was snarkiest at breakfast, after which loser makes lunch. Wynonna goes off with Dolls and Nicole skulks around the barn while Waverly works.
"You need a side project," Waverly tells her, when Nicole is poking around her carefully organized equipment and muttering darkly about asshole iguanas. "You're smart and you're talented, go do something helpful. You can use our owls to order materials."
"Your owls?"
Nicole hangs out with the owls for a while, feeding them treats from her palm, and does order a few things. Second hand books, ingredients, and some other things. When Waverly opens the first package, she scoffs at the state of the books, and presses money into Nicole's protesting hands.
"You're basically an Earp," she says, and Nicole carves out a space in the attic to experiment.
One night Wynonna and Dolls go off to meet his contacts, so Nicole and Waverly eat dinner alone, feet brushing under the table, and Waverly shifts into her coyote form and lets Nicole pet her silky soft ears before running figure eights in the yard, tongue lolling while Nicole drinks a butterbeer on the porch with her feet kicked up on the railing.
Nicole turns the iguana into a chair and whoops so loudly Wynonna and Waverly kick her door down, wands raised. "Aw," Wynonna says, "I kind of liked him." The chair looks old and creaky and still smells like lizard shit, but it's a chair.
"We're going to celebrate," she says firmly, and Apparates them to a big city. She takes them to the movies with the last of her Muggle money and laughs when they gape. Wynonna eats all the popcorn before the trailers are over and Nicole splits chocolate candies with Waverly. It's some action movie, brainless and ridiculous, and Wynonna and Waverly stare up at the big screen, transfixed. Nicole works up her courage in the dark and takes Waverly's hand during a big explosion, her heart thumping. She doesn't have to let go until the end credits roll.
/
Nicole braves the barn with a bandana tied around her nose and mouth. "Don't shoot," Waverly says, her hands raised. Nicole blinks at her. "Because… you look like an old-timey bandit?" Nicole takes the bandana off.
"I wasn't sure if it'd be toxic in here or not. I've been on the wrong side of your potions before."
Waverly huffs. "I told you, it was supposed to be brewed under a gibbous-it worked, didn't it?"
"Yeah." Nicole crowds her against the wall, moving slow enough Waverly could walk away if she wanted to. She doesn't.
"You were pretty out of it. And you were kind of… handsy. With me. My hair."
Nicole shrugs. "I see something I like, I don't wanna wait." It's a pretty good line, even if she had to practice for fifteen minutes in front of the mirror.
"We've known each other since I was eleven. You've been waiting almost six years."
"You're assuming I liked you at first sight," Nicole says, and Waverly arches a challenging eyebrow, which cuts a little too close to something she doesn't want Waverly to know, not yet, so she switches tacks. "And I wasn't about to hit on an eleven year old."
"No, just… Kylie." Waverly sneers when she says the name, and Nicole can't help her grin.
"I didn't know her when I was eleven. You sound jealous."
"A little," Waverly says, and goes on her tip toes to catch Nicole in a kiss, black tea and the sharp cheese they had for breakfast, and Nicole clenches her fists by her sides before curling a hand on Waverly's waist, the other around her wrist on Nicole's shoulder, anchoring.
/
Nicole falls asleep in her attic work space, and wakes to thumping on the ceiling. She sticks her head out the window. "Wynonna?" A hand drops down, and Nicole lets Wynonna haul her up with a grunt of effort and a mild floating charm. "Why aren't you asleep?" Nicole asks, when they're sitting shoulder to shoulder on the roof, their legs dangling off.
"There's a prophecy about me," Wynonna admits. "That's why Dolls knew I'd really been kidnapped. Probably the only reason he's interested in me."
"I don't think so," Nicole says while she tries to absorb that. She remembers how pinched Dolls' looked while Wynonna was missing. Wynonna lights a cigarette, puffing with little sad breaths. She offers it to Nicole. "Sure," she agrees, taking it. She tosses it off the roof. Wynonna glares. "Prophecy?"
Wynonna blows out a big sigh. "Something about killing those seven Death Eaters, the Earp Heir. That's me. Should have been Willa, but…" she trails off and lights another cigarette. Nicole lets her take a single drag before snatching it from her lips and sending it the way of the first. "You're annoying, you know that?" Nicole shrugs. "You might start a fire."
"We're big bad witch bitches with great asses, we could handle it."
"We do have great asses, don't we?"
"Top shelf." They sit in silence for a few minutes. Nicole looks at the stars. She wonders if this sky is different than the one above the Great Hall.
"You and Waverly have been close. You two best friends now?"
"Sure," Nicole says, "just like you and Dolls."
Wynonna snorts. "I don't think it's exactly the same." Nicole doesn't say anything, and their breaths puff out in clouds, mixed together before disappearing. "She'll be mad, when she finds out what we did. If Gus tells her."
"Probably." Nicole's been trying not to think about it, personally. "Nothing to be done now."
"I shouldn't have asked you."
"I could have said no."
"Why didn't you?" Nicole struggles for an answer and Wynonna lights another cigarette. When she offers it again Nicole takes it, inhales, immediately coughing. It's hot, and it burns, and it's gross, and Wynonna takes it from her fingers while she's regretting all her decisions. "Sorry," Wynonna says, and Nicole's not sure which thing she's talking about.
"It's okay," she says finally, and they sit up all night to watch the sunrise.