Chapter Two; Dragon memory.

You know what you have to do. Do not disappoint me.

Were the words running through her mind, over and over as Emilia paced the small apartment, the parchment crumbled up in her hand as she tried desperately to let everything go away.

The night had bled into the day, yet she couldn't force herself to leave the tent so that she could join all the other people living on the reserve in the dining room. Emilia just couldn't face all those kind faces.

They'd welcomed her in, like she had always been one of their own and had given her a home, a place to work and an income for god sake and what was she going to do?

She was going too…Emilia couldn't think about that and threw the parchment into the fire, watching with satisfaction all over her face as the hungry embers ripped over and tore at the paper until it was nothing more than ash amongst the bright flames.

It was funny, because all through school, Emilia and her friends had always boasted that if the deal Emilia had made was offered to them, they'd deny it. That all seemed like a thousand years ago, filled with young, stupid and arrogant school girl giggles.

Saying no had been the hell of a lot harder than the girl would care to admit as she ran her hands through her dark hair in frustration, yanking at the strands as she thought an internal war filled with images and voices that were not from her own mind's eye.

The images and voices continued, getting more dominant and loud as she struggled to reign it back in, to gain some morsel of control. But she couldn't break away. It was physically exhausting and she'd never been that good at Occlumency. Her body felt cold, so cold, despite the fact that she was growing closer and closer to the hungry flames coming from the fireplace.

Her attention was jerked back into the present as strong, calloused hands seized her elbows and yanked her away from the flames, snapping the thoughts away the second she'd come in contact with another human.

Blue eyes met brown, worry buried to the core as her mind tried to process everything. Who had grabbed her. Who was now talking to her and looking at her as if he expected an answer.

Charlie Weasley.

Her mentor.

"You right there? I've never seen a girl wrestle with herself. It was quite eye opening as to why there is usually more than one person engaged in the fighting."

She tried not to laugh as she took a step away from him and ran yet another hand through her hair, trying to figure out how to proceed.

"Just, freaking out, you know. New place, new environment." Emilia finally said, mentally cursing herself about how absolutely pathetic she was. Here was a guy her brother's age, her mentor, for god's sake and she was just babbling on about how she was freaking out.

He probably thought she was weak and pathetic.

If she wasn't here, she'd probably get a punch across the jaw for even voicing the opinion, if she was lucky.

A punch across the jaw wasn't as bad as the…the…

"It's fine. We've all been there, kid. Don't worry." Charlie said, giving her his biggest, warmest smile that didn't seem forced in the least.

He must've had good practice, was all Emilia could think as she remembered why he was there.

Until any patients were admitted to the clinic, she'd be out in the field training with Charlie.

Which was exactly why he was in her tent in the morning while she was still in her pajam-

Emilia looked down, hazel eyes widening as she looked from her cow patterned pajama pants to Charlie's amused face.
"Took you long enough."
He called after her in that teasing voice of his as she bolted into her bedroom, slamming the door closed as soon as she was over the threshold.

Note to self, lock door.

But it had been locked…which probably meant she'd have to Charlie-proof her door. Who would've thought she'd have even had to think about that her first official day on the reserve.

"Help yourself to some tea!" Emilia called out as she yanked on a pair of jeans, a plain t-shirt and heavy-duty boots that she'd nicked off her brother a while back. If she was going into dangerous territory, she definitely was not wearing her good boots.

When she emerged, Charlie had a cup of tea on the table, with a whole lot of notes on dragons spread out across the table, his forehead furrowed as he scribbled on a piece of parchment.

"Raven! Brilliant! Come here, come here! We'll be training here today, well for most of it, I'm afraid. You need to learn your dragons before we let you anywhere near them."
A small sigh of relief escaped Emilia as she sat at the table, her legs crossed underneath her as she accepted the tea Charlie nudged her way.
On about every piece of the paper was a drawing of a different dragon; all it's body parts labeled while underneath that was instructions, habitats and things like that.

"You want me to remember all that? And there's doubles." Of course the bookworm had picked up the doubles within seconds but Charlie just lightly smacked her hands away and smirked at her.

"You're going to play memory."

Memory.

"You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me." Emilia said slowly, looking up at her mentor with a slightly disgusted expression as he magically made all the papers turn themselves over and shuffle into new, unknown positions.

"Nope. Now do it."

So, most of the day was spent playing dragon memory while Emilia recited multiple things. Uses for their blood, scales, endangered lists and numbers of dragons and why they were slowly depleting.

Despite his teasing, lighthearted nature, Charlie Weasley was definitely strict when it came to handling his dragons. But throughout the whole game they laughed, teased and Emilia felt as if she was a seventh year again. All carefree and optimistic.

The final game was the most important, yet another one of memory. Charlie stood behind Emilia, his fingers lightly resting on her shoulders as she played along.

The objective was to pick up the picture of the dragon, recite basically all there was to know about it and then to find its matching pair.

So, in short, a long, tiresome game.

His fingers would occasionally massage her shoulders, as it was now. Both of them were stressed and the pressure was on. If she didn't get a passing mark for this game, yes, he happened to be grading her on the piece of shit; both of them would be stuck in doors for the next two months as they did the traditional course.

None of them wanted that.
For different reasons, Emilia supposed.

Already spending a lot of time with the bloke made her feel beyond guilty and learning about all the dragons…that just made what she would have to do that much more difficult.

After about an hour, ten minutes of which it took Charlie to calculate the scores he slowly stood up and looked at her, his face extremely serious.

"Emilia Bryne…you've…' He paused, considering. Then a grin split across his face and the young, carefree Emilia was back as she had been for most of the game, and she'd jumped into his arms with a yelled, "YIPPE! I did it! I did it!"

Charlie just laughed and spun his student around, replying back just as happily. "You did it! You did it!", glad that she'd passed and that now that the bookwork was done, he could really get down to impressing her.