Lydia could hear Dorcas barreling up the stairs. She knew everyone in the house by the sound of their footfall but Dorcas was always followed or preceded by what sounded like distant cheering. People chattering and the sound of happy commotion, laughter. If Lydia lay very still, she thought, she could will herself to die and that Dorcas would give her a good funeral. She might not be too happy about Lydia dying in Dorcas' borrowed clothes but she would understand. Instead Lydia stayed very much alive as the door swung open and Dorcas beamed as she was wont to do which Lydia saw as she inclined her head back and shut her eyes.

"Your day?" Dorcas asked.

"Long." Lydia said. She hadn't moved but for the motion Dorcas created by jumping on the bed flat on her stomach. "Yours?" Lydia said, eyes still shut.

Dorcas took in an exaggerated, deep inhale. Lydia opened one eye when she didn't hear Dorcas let out her breath. Dorcas exhaled through her nose making a pinched, closed-mouth smile and they both laughed.

"Really? I don't know if I'm cut out for this". Dorcas said exhaling again. Tears welled in her eyes. Lydia read the requirements for auror training and it was brutal. Lydia could sympathize in her way, no one made her use the imperius curse on any of her colleagues. She didn't have to endure the cruciatus curse for any amount of time to get her own certification. She thought about the number of times she apparated that day, how she imagined that the interns were this close to draining the Thames for all the hot water they boiled for tea morning till evening. She felt foolish and embarrassed that, for the most part, all she had had to do was read sheafs of parchment which she might have done anyway for free but, these were really dry and boring and then she had to sort them. The text was really dry, alright? Lydia, didn't know if she actually wanted to know but she felt guilty that her worklife was relatively easy, boring and paid well but she still hated it.

"What happened, Dorcas?"

Dorcas propped herself up on her side. Lydia patted the side of the bed while scooting over. Dorcas grabbed a pillow to herself. She did not want to talk about her day but stared straight ahead of her and, by some force, spoke anyway.

"We set a man on fire today."

Dorcas could feel Lydia tense next to her so she turned and smiled a wan smile. She strangely no longer felt like crying so she continued.

"We were on a hill and at the top of the hill there was brush and the wizard ran into the brush. He dropped his wand so we thought the difficult part was over."

"So you set the brush on fire?"

"Yes," Dorcas said nodding. "Someone said to get him out that way, force him out, so we set the field on fire."

Lydia slumped back into the bed.

"I'm sorry, Dorcas" She really had had a bad day. To think that someone died that way…

"Then he walked out and he was on fire."

"Excuse me?" Lydia retorted she sat up. "I thought you said he died"

" I said we set a man on fire." Dorcas was speaking to the opposite end of the room still holding the pillow to herself.

"So he's at St Mungo's then?", even worse, Lydia did not add.

Dorcas shook her head. He's being held in the department of mys-

Dorcas stopped herself. Even though Lydia worked at the ministry she didn't know how much she knew. Lydia could fill in the blank with multiple places in her mind and learned too that she was not the only one in the house who knew of the ministry's secret places but she thought she might find clarification.

"Where?", Lydia ventured.

"Nevermind." Dorcas said. Lydia thought it better not to press the point further. She would find out in time the details concerning ministry matters, which was to say, at some point she would read a report on part of this eventually.

"He's alive then?"

Dorcas shook her head yes.

"Well that's good then!" Said Lydia who now watched Dorcas as Dorcas stared across the room at nothing in particular.

Dorcas muttered a noncommittal sound of agreement.

"We couldn't kill him." Dorcas continued

Now Lydia was very confused.

Here is what happened: the aurors in attendance were called to capture this wizard. Once they arrived, another auror had remarked absently at how beautiful a day it was. Cool and bright. They had not very far to look for the wizard but had chased him a short ways when he dropped his wand. He ran into the field at the top of the hill and the aurors set the hilly field on fire. The man walked out of the fire as a fire (or on fire, how to describe it) and started to descend the hill slowly and methodically. Someone shouted to put the fire out and an auror at the edge of the fire they had started found that he could not and fire felt like it was getting hotter even as it was not that wide or tall, nor did it seem to spread. They tried to extinguish the flame on the man and found they could not. They cast spells to stop him, lift him, trip him and nothing worked.

Now Lydia understood but couldn't believe it. She sat up looking at Dorcas, Lydia may not have blinked for a full minute as she understood. There was no way what Dorcas said actually happened and Lydia might have said as much but a question squeezed the thought away.

"Please tell me no one tried the killing curse…", Lydia's voiced dropped in pitch and volume as she asked.

"Yes." Lydia tensed again.

"Mason, someone, shouted not to." she squinted as if trying to peer into the memory she was staring through, trying to remember the details. "Anyway I wouldn't have cast it."

"Well, then, how?" Lydia asked.

The man continued walking and Dorcas could hear people talking in the background, arguing. The man would get away eventually. Could he apparate like that? According to what Lydia knew, he could have but that maybe did not matter since he had been stopped beforehand. Dorcas had dug a patch in the ground. She knelt and placed her left hand in the dirt and with her wand in her right hand draw a circle around all of them: the wizard, the aurors and herself. She then pointed her wand at the man and started to chant. To cast a spell and several things happened. First the grass in the circle became greener, darker. Then it started to move towards the wizard on fire. But not just the grass itself but part of the earth underneath it moved also so that the aurors had to run to not be pulled into the wizard's orbit. She built a tunnel around the man with the earth from the circle. It slid over itself and as it moved Dorcas had to move awkwardly on her knees and moved her hand to maintain contact with the ground because she and the patch she had made was moving toward the man also. One of the other aurors understood and cleaved a trench around her so that she could stay still and have her hand on the ground. The land formed-

"A chimney." Lydia said in her lowered voice. Now out of awe instead of fear.

Dorcas shook her head again and sighed.

The top of the mound was sealed off. The grass on the outside of the mound started to turn color and dry up before falling to the ground burnt. A hole was made at the top of the mound smoked and then the smoke turned black and billowed out and still Dorcas stayed chanting. The first incantations to move the earth, the second to make a container and the third, which took all her concentration, to keep the wizard inside it from cooking.

The aurors had several options. They could open the mound and find that the wizard had other tricks, he could burst into flame again, he could disapperate. It was better that he be dead and turn him over to an expert than to risk him being alive and still dangerous. Another trench was made around the mound to loosen it from the surrounding dirt using levitation. Dorcas instinctively grabbed a handful of dirt, it might not make a difference but-

"It did. It did." Lydia insisted.

The wizard was transported by broom with Dorcas concentrating on maintaining her incantations that she barely noticed precariousness of the ride even as she balanced with her wand arm wrapped around the auror doing the flying, the other hand clutching a handful of dirt and her eyes never leaving what looked like a giant cracked over clay ball streaming acrid black smoke all the while. Whoever stayed in the field was able to put the fire out and the wizard survived the trip to the ministry and was relatively unharmed.

Lydia stared , he mouth agape. She closed her mouth, breathed out through her nose and shook her head; she closed her eyes and then asked,

"How did you know to do that?"

"Do what?"

"That!"

"I didn't. We just make it up most of the time. We do what we can without hurting anyone."

"But how did you know he was immolata"

Dorcas hadn't known. She didn't even know that word.

Lydia knew she was smart, you could not have told her she wasn't and, if you had, she would not have believed it because it was untrue. Dorcas had said as much how much of a genius she was and that everyday Lydia taught her something new, which was true. After supper, Lydia would go over "the report", things she had read or learned while working that she would share with Dorcas and Dorcas would often as not, even though she was qualified to be an auror, have not heard or studied a full nine-tenths of whatever Lydia mentioned. But it was through one of these after meal reports that started the argument that gave Dorcas the idea.

All of the flatmates had an argument about the Trace. They were all convinced that it was real to which Lydia rebutted that magic would not only be difficult but impractical. You have muggles born to wizards, wizards born to wizards and then wizards born to muggles. How would the ministry be able to keep track of all of these people? It would require touch magic at the least. Lydia maintained that the trace was a rumor and a way for wizard-born wizards to not advance so far ahead of their peers. Lydia had no interest in the stories of a person who was cousins with a butterbeer salesperson who knew a dragon tamer who was in Azkaban because they did magic that one time before they were of age. Might they be in Azkaban because of the dragons? Lydia retorted.

There were so few immolata that Lydia had only read about them once. If the wizard had died, he would have created fiend fyre. If he had apparated he risked killing himself and leaving behind fiend fyre.

"What would you have done?", Dorcas asked.

She meant it as a genuine question which Lydia understood.

"I don't know. I might have just followed him around until he got too hungry or tired to continue. We don't know what happens if they fall asleep or if they even need to." Now Lydia had pulled herself up to rest on the headboard and she too was staring at nothing in particular in front of her. "Their bodies aren't just on fire, it's everything so to speak. You mentioned he was walking slowly which leads me to believe it takes a great act of will, that it's difficult, it's taxing."

As Lydia explained, Dorcas realized how she could not articulate as quickly as Lydia could what she understood about taking the dirt with her, about having her hand in the soil. The auror, whoever it had been, who had said to hold the killing curse must have understood something about the nature of the fire but couldn't articulate, or didn't have time to, why something was or wasn't a bad idea. They were trained to assess and act and did. They were trained to trust each other and had. As aurors, the latter, at least, rarely failed them and if it did, their understanding of the former lead them to forgive each other quickly. Lydia was not an auror but helped her articulate and understand. They both sighed for different reasons staring before them before Lydia started to speak out loud, mostly to herself, to brainstorm and build out what might be included in "the report" which would have been ready by evening's end if it hadn't been for a visitor.