Dorcas woke up with a series of knots on the right side of her neck. She had seen a man crack his skull during whichever series of spells that had been cast in his direction. Part of a wall had been torn down and trapped others underneath it and, this time, Alastor had not been there to hold it up. She had seen people die before but not like this. Not this many people at once. No one seemed nearly as disturbed as she felt. She pictured the man falling and that she could hear him even if she would have been too far. The sound of his head hitting the floor. She heard it. Her memory had the right noise at the right place. And the number of people under the wall- She decided fairly early in her training to do more harm than good and this confirmed that choice. She could not live with the idea that she could be so cavalier, so unintentional with her magic. That she would send a spell flying off and hurt someone that way and she didn't have to because she had not. The man floated in the air and Emmeline let him fall. She was already onto the next spell, the next person. It was only the spell that Dorcas cast too late and that someone on the man's side caught his foot and angled his body so he fell with the top of his spine and head hitting the floor first not from a great height but was loud enough for Dorcas to hear from across the hall.
Dorcas went downstairs to find Emmeline eating a jam sandwich and speaking with Edgar at the table.
"Morning." Chipper as she could manage, as if nothing had happened.
"Sleep well did you?" Edgar asked over a plate of late breakfast.
"Not really." Dorcas admitted. The color of the jam made Dorcas crane her neck.
"It will get better," he said. He nodded to emphasize as if her expression had betrayed her. It had. He was talking about the crick in her neck.
He had never experienced this but he saw it in other people. Same with Emmeline. She didn't think ill of Dorcas, though she didn't like her, or even that she wasn't a fighter, she was, she saw it but she worked too much on the defensive. The people they were fighting called for offensive strategy, to be proactive and to approach each event with the same and equal amount of energy, as she had said during a briefing. Dorcas thought the word she had meant to use was violence. She didn't approach to hurt anyone, Emmeline claimed when one of these briefings had devolved, as they more recently had, into loud shouting matches. Sirius and her at each others throats. Sirius being the only one who disliked her for the same aristocratic upbringing that he himself had. Emmeline insisted that the point was always to disarm or slow down the opposing side but Dorcas witnessed as much "energy" from her as anyone else. She witnessed a man lose consciousness, his coat collar squeezing at his neck, blocking his inability to say the counterspell to let him loose. A piece of window flying at a foul speed lodged in someone's chest that insisted, by magic, that it make it through to the other side of this body which it did until it sought out another and then another. Then this. This one. Dorcas craned her neck mashing at her shoulder. Edgar gazed at her and felt a deep affection for Dorcas. She really was sweet. He continued to look at her standing there, her very obvious desire to just be around other people as a distraction while she gazed into the air not paying attention to anything in particular still trying to fix the soreness in her neck and her neck getting more sore for her trouble. He went back to his meal, smiling at his food. Emmeline caught him looking at her. It was a second. It was nothing really. He looked up, smiled and returned to his food smiling even harder.
"Your neck, is it alright?" Dorcas didn't answer. They both looked at her.
"Dorcas," Emmeline said irritated. Edgar looked at her.
She really could be like this sometimes. He knew that and made a type of peace with it. Dorcas looked at them, Emmeline's eyebrows raised in inquisition. Had they said something? She couldn't have told you what it was or how long she'd been standing there.
"Your neck, Dorcas?" Emmeline must have repeated the question. Dorcas nodded and walked away realizing she hadn't actually said anything.
"I'm going to lay down." She smiled in an absent-minded way.
Dorcas bumped into a wall on her way back up the stairs where she went straight to the bathroom. From downstairs, they could hear the sound of the water heater creaking to life refilling the pipes that would fill the tub. After what felt like an hour, Edgar eating slower than usual to not have to meet Emmeline's gaze, the faucet went off. Upstairs the tub had been expanded in several direction so that Dorcas could submerge herself and stare through several inches of water above her.
His plate cleared, nearly licked clean, he looked at Emmeline saddened. And she knew what it meant, what it could mean, that sappy puppy look. Which was absurd! This tall, huge-shouldered, muscular man really had some nerve to allow his face to ever attempt to look like anyone's baby anything! That wouldn't work! Anyway, Dorcas was a damn goody-two robes. She wouldn't dare in a million years and for all the world. Emmeline had half a mind to call her a weakling though she knew it wasn't true. She understood why Alastor and Dorcas got along, they would stop a battle to help the helpless, block or rebound a spell before casting one of their own (she knew that to block a spell one would have to be cast but that was not the point).
Emmeline's mind raced. Churned. Dorcas really hadn't even looked at Edgar like that. She had barely noticed either of them and Edgar's smile had no effect on Dorcas the way it did on h-. Hmm, she thought. Dorcas wouldn't but he very much would. How did she know that? She wondered. She snorted to herself. She looked up to catch him glancing up at her and smiling sweetly and it made her sick and angry.
"Why don't you check on her in the bath? Ask if you can rub her shoulders?" she questioned. His smile widened one side then the other.
"Why would I do that knowing how angry it would make you, my love? Why don't I rub your back instead?" he said in between clearing the table, raising his eyebrows in a rhythm. It made her angrier. He really thinks he is so adorable.
"She's not my type." Edgar said facing the sink, his back turned to Emmeline while he waved his wand to start doing the dishes.
"Which is?" Lies from Merlin's dusty beard! She wanted to see his face when he said that.
"Kind, sweet, easily disturbed…"
"She's a mouse." Emmeline snapped loudly. Dorcas didn't hear her, underwater as she was. Alastor hadn't heard her, on watch as he was. Alice Longbottom, didn't care as pregnant as she felt. Her husband didn't mind as smitten with Alice as he was. Lupin didn't either, sleeping as he was. Sirius had already woken up but planned on insisting on telling her later to not wake the house when she knew how busy it had been for all of them the evening before ready to argue as he was.
Edgar's chuckle caught him off guard. A dish plopped back into the soapy water in the sink. She really was angry. He turned and walked to the table, kissed her on the cheek.
He wouldn't dare.
"I wouldn't dare." he said lowering his voice in earnest and in contrast to Emmeline's voice moments before.
He couldn't. Dorcas didn't look at him twice and she was very easily disturbed, that was true, and his hands were tied, Emmeline made sure of that. Truth was, Dorcas was very much his type but the position had been filled. Emmeline, too, was his type and, well, she wasn't going anywhere and wouldn't let him act up any more than he did. Emmeline would keep him honest, so to speak and they both left the matter at the table and when he said he wouldn't dare, she knew he was telling the truth because for as much as a mouse as she believed Dorcas to be, she knew and saw the day before that she wasn't stupid and, even worse, that Dorcas, fortunately or unfortunately for Emmeline, wasn't at all that desperate.
