PART FOURTEEN: THE DOLPHIN
Nora's P.O.V
xXx
The Cody house was alive. The air was so thick with smoke and quivering Nora felt as if she could have been underwater if not for the roar of muggle music throttling right through her ears and rattling her bones. Cold glasses and beer bottles were sweating in the remaining evening heat, and as Nora stood at the edge of the kitchen, she heard conversations thrumming around her, some too deep for the alcohol present, debating the meaning of life or the limits of love, all going nowhere fast, or bellowed greetings going half-heard over the bass.
"Holy mother of Merlin."
Pope had disappeared somewhere between the garage and the front door in search of Smurf, and Nora had made it as far as the kitchen with her overnight bag before J had joined her side, grinning.
"Yeah, no one quite has a party like the Cody's."
Nora turned her head, frowning, shouting, teeth vibrating with the music.
"What?!"
J tried to speak again but it was muffled, contorted under the woman warbling in the song about a tattooed man. Seeing the blank look clearly present on her face J tugged her arm, beckoning her down a side hall, the one that lead to the bottom floor bathroom, which Nora gladly followed, squeezing through the bikini and swim short clad masses.
It was a tight pinch, even with how big the Cody house was and how comparatively small Nora appeared to be in its walls.
"Do the Cody's know all these people?"
J hunkered down by the wall keeping the music at bay, still chuckling. At least Nora could hear him now.
"Know them? No, but they all know the Cody's."
"Because that doesn't sound fuckin' ominous."
J shook his head, hoody off under the heat of snugly packed figures, waiting for a woman and a man, hand in hand with dubiously coy eyes, to crush on passed.
"Nothing like that. Deran is big on the whole beach scene, Craig in the clubs, and Baz has his fair share of… Friends."
It doesn't escape Nora's notice that J didn't mention himself or Pope, as if, by exclusion, they simply just didn't do friends. Nora pressed herself up against the wall flat as a stumbling drunk with, when the night had barely begun to settle in the sky, an already split lip came tumbling through the hall.
"When Smurf said she was having a party, I thought more popcorn and TV and less…"
J's slanted eyebrow struck high sardonically.
"Less poppers and suntans? Welcome to America, redcoat."
Nora snickered.
"Land of the hangover, right? Let me just drop my bag off and we can go get started on having one of those tomorrow-"
The bathroom door down the hall opened, and although Nora didn't pay much attention to it, J did. The smile fell from his face with a slip and a slop, like mud washed off in the rain.
"J?"
But Nora was already turning, and Nora saw what J did too. Nicky came slinking out the bathroom door, followed by two men.
Nora had never seen muggle drugs before. Never really learned about them either, having spent most of her childhood either in a cupboard, up in the Highlands, or running for her life. She thought there might have been one called Grass or something green, another, perhaps, called Co-something-lane or some shit. Nevertheless, she had seen wizarding drugs, had witnessed a Wizard off his head on Pixie Dust that one time she had accidentally sent herself to Knockturn Alley and not Diagon.
Shimmery blue dust had been left on his upper lip and nostril as if he had a glitter mustache, his pupils blown so wide they were black, and he had been facing a brick wall, nearly shivering out of his skin, muttering to it about the spiders than lived in skin moles.
Twelve-year-old Nora had merely turned away and sped up in her stride, alone in an unknown, dark and dingy place covered in floo soot, and when she had told Fred and George about it that night under the cover of the stars and childhood sleepovers they had explained to her what it was.
That's Pixie Dust. Carvin Lubon, you know our sixth year Beater who left last year, he told us he had some once, said he saw his own death and rebirth as a garden Gnome. Now he believes in something the muggles call Reincarnation and has never touched it since.
So, when Nicky came out the bathroom with a trail of white still sprinkling her left nostril, finger scraping gums, Nora had a pretty damn good idea that it wasn't caster sugar on her tongue.
A jerk on her bag strap pulled Nora out her musings. J looked at her with barely concealed hurt.
"Give us that and I'll drop it off in my room."
"I can-"
But J had already heaved her bag free from her shoulder, slung it over his own, and was marching down the hall the opposite way Nicky was coming with a giggle. Nora watched him disappear between the bodies of dancing men and women, and slowly rolled back around.
That was when she felt it, that sensation of a switch inside being flipped, nothing new but still strange on its own no matter how many times it had happened.
She had felt it when she had chased after Bellatrix in the Ministry. She had felt it when she had cornered Malfoy in the third-floor bathroom. She had felt it the time she had sat in Dumbledore's office, half-out her mind and half-in Tom Riddles', yelling at the headmaster to listen to her.
A sight, a sound, and then a single, irreversible shift of enough is enough.
It normally came moments before Nora did something reckless, incredibly reckless, Gryffindor style reckless, the Black sort of reckless with a capital R.
Nora doesn't quite know what set it off this time. Fred's memory, Nicky's not-caster-sugar, J's smile breaking on his face like glass at the sight of her and the drugs and the men. Or maybe it was visiting her mother's grave just an hour or so ago, and knowing what had put Julia Cody there, knowing that J had been here, all this time, that he had seen it, lived it, and now Nicky, Nicky with her not-caster-sugar smile, who he clearly still cared for, was putting him through the same shit so soon-
The switch is flipped, and Nora was moving, had Nicky's frail arm in her tight-fisted grasp before either girl could blink, and was shoving her back into the bathroom to the chorus of the men's yo, bro, slamming the door shut behind her and locking it with a resounding click.
Nora's P.O.V
xXx
"You and me, we're going to have a little talk."
Nora kicked back against the locked door, watching as Nicky seemingly came to her senses, came to herself from one moment being in the hall, laughing and cresting on a high, and now in a cold blue tiled bathroom with Eleanora of all people staring her down. She moved towards the sink across the room, keeping her distance.
"Can this wait? I want to go see Crai-"
"You know, the last time I backed someone up in a bathroom a teacher had to rush in and stop the bleeding before he stopped breathing."
That shut the brunette up, just as she hoped it would, and Nora crossed her arms over her chest.
"Look, Nicky, I don't know you, you don't know me, and normally I'm all for self-destructive cycles. Trust me, I've been through my fair share of them, but this cruel shit?"
"I don't know what you're talking about-"
Nora pushed off from the door, stalking closer, voice down and low like the belly of a big cat before it pounced on its prey.
"Yes you fuckin' do."
Because Nicky did know, as Nora knew, as J fuckin' knew, as they all did. They must have. You didn't pull this sort of stunt, didn't sleep with someone's uncle and snort blow in their bathroom with strange men, and try to place yourself in every corner of their house every damned day so there wasn't any other option but to be seen, without knowing what you were doing.
Trying to take down as many people with you.
Yet, Nora didn't know Nicky. She didn't know the girl's story, didn't know what she had gone through, didn't know what the fuck she was dealing with, because everyone everywhere was always dealing with something, and Nora wasn't the type of person to press on someone for their vices, Morgana knew Nora had her own fair share of them, mainly running until she couldn't run no more and swinging bloody knuckles at a boxing bag, but-
But it doesn't really matter, either. Nora also knew what J was going through, knew enough of it, and Nora couldn't let that slide. She didn't need to be mean about it, but she did need to get her point across. Self-destruct all she want, but Nora wasn't about to let Nicky implode with J in the blast radius.
"I get it, alright. You're hurt and in turn you want to hurt someone back. Whatever went down between you and J, I'm guessing it wasn't pretty."
Nora was trying, Merlin, she was trying, J cared about this person, and Nora wasn't about to start swinging or shooting off spells on someone J leant on despite how much she wanted to, and she really fuckin' wanted to because Nicky wasn't making it easy. Not with the way she stiffened and sneered, finger's clasping on the ridge of the porcelain sink.
That was the same glare Petunia would give Nora when she burnt the toast. The same way you look at something you've trod in. Shit you wanted off the bottom of your boot.
"J tell you that, did he?"
Breathe. Nora and this girl, they were around the same age, but, fuck, Nora had lived thrice as much already. She'd fought a war, lost a father, been hounded and hunted and had bloody died, and that gave her, along with nightmares and complexes, experience.
The worst kind, really, but experience all the same.
Nicky, plainly, didn't have that. She was young, and confused, and lashing out at the world and anyone who stepped to close. Nora understood that. She understood that better than most. She also understood that if Nicky kept going down this path she'd only hurt herself in the end, as Nora had done, and had wished, on more than one occasion, she had had someone to call her out on her bullshit.
"He's told me enough."
With one last step, Nora closed the distance, standing toe to toe with the brunette.
"And I've seen enough. This petty little peep-show you're doing? Showing up everyday where he can see you, trying to flaunt fuckin' his uncle in front of him, hitting up drugs in his bathroom when you know exactly what happened to our mother-"
Nora shook her head.
Maybe this was hitting too close to home for her too.
"It ain't cute. It's laughable, really. So here's my advice, you like J, you still want to have some form of relationship with him left after you've blown your pride through your nose? Cut this crap. Cut it out now. Either talk to him and sort this out, or fuckin' move on. Don't come around here and act like a ghost. Don't crash at his house. Don't do bloody drugs in front of him. And, and, for the love of whatever dignity you have left, don't fuck his bloody uncle in hearing range."
"Me and Craig are just having fun. I don't know where you get off telling me what I should or shouldn't do, this isn't even your home, J isn't even your full brother-"
Nice wasn't cutting it, then. Nice meant patience and Nora, Gryffindor, too-much-like-Sirius Nora, had never had very much of that to begin with. And like Sirius, who had led Snape out to meet a werewolf at midnight because the sullen boy had tripped him in a hallway and chuckled, could, when angered even by the seemingly littlest things, become a vindictive bastard.
A vindictive bastard with cold blood and a penchant for going too far.
Fine, Nora thought. Fine.
"Alright, seen as playing nice isn't working with you, how about this?"
Nora had Nicky's top twined in her fingers before the brunette could stumble back and out of reach, and with a yank and a heave and a thwack of a skull against tile, Nora had the slightly taller girl thrown back against the wall and pinned.
"You keep rubbing this in J's face every chance you get, and I'm going to throw your face through the nearest fuckin' fifth story window. Let's see how well you can snort that powder through a broken nose and a jaw wire then, yeah? I'm sure you'll find a silly-straw somewhere for dinner time. Maybe if you ask Craig real nicely, he might chew your steak for you."
Nicky spluttered and tried to push off from the wall, wringing at Nora's wrist like she wanted to give her a friction burn, but Nora pushed back harder, felt the tell-tale creak of a rib nearly cracking underneath her knuckles, knew if she pushed just a little more, just a little further, one would hear a snap by the way Nicky wheezed suddenly.
Nora had to valiantly fight down the urge to do just that.
It was the Black in her, Sirius had once said as he tended to her split knuckles in Grimmauld Place's kitchen after another fight at Hogwarts had seen her come back on holiday with bruises and a mean looking black eye. When a Black got shoved, they threw that person off a cliff. They didn't do half-measures. When it came to House Black, it was either too much or nothing at all.
And that, Sirius had told her, was what she had to be careful of.
"Elsie... Us Blacks… It's not our money or our homes or our wit we're known for. It's our anger. As black as our name, right? A foul thing that is as dark as it is cold-... It's gotten many of us killed or worse. I don't want to see you go down the same path as Cygnus or Bella-… Just promise me one thing?"
"What?"
"When you feel that dark anger… Do something bad. Break a nose, burn a hole in the wall, curse and swear and scream to the sky. Do something bad so you won't do something worse."
It wasn't until Nora was older, and her Godfather gone, that she truly understood what Sirius had been trying to tell her. Bad or worse... Black's, they either came out one of two ways; like Sirius or like Bellatrix.
The bad and the worse.
Pinning Nicky Belmont to a bathroom wall seemed, to Nora, when what she really wanted to do was reach up and curl a fist into her hair and slam her face into the porcelain sink and not stop until that terrible Petunia sneer was off her face along with her teeth, to be the bad to doing that worse. The Sirius thing to do and not the Bellatrix.
"Do you understand me? Don't speak. I'm sick of your voice. Nod."
Nicky nodded, and Nora let go after a shaky inhale, stepping back in spite of the hasty desire to do just what she had threatened. She doubted J would see it from her side of things, what with his ex embedded with glass and mouth full of broken teeth.
That wasn't part of the evenings agenda.
And didn't that say all that needed to be said about Eleanora fuckin' Potter?
"Stop trying to string my brother along. This hot and cold bullshit has gone on long and far enough. Craig, J, fuckin' pick one and move on."
Retreating to the bathroom door, Nora twisted the lock free and swung it open, keeping her arm braced against the frame.
"Now get the fuck out my sight before I change my mind and there'll be no teacher here to stop your bleeding."
Nicky rushed to get passed but Nora didn't move from the door. An old trick she had learned from Snape. To get by, Nicky, as Nora had to do when Snape used to berate her after class, would have to squish herself down, submit, just to get through.
It worked, Nicky did just that, bending down to slip underneath Nora's arm, breaking eye contact and bolting into the hallway like an antelope when a lion came prowling out the savannah.
Nora took a deep breath through her nose and counted to ten.
"Hey! You finished in there or what? I need a piss."
Nora steadied herself and slipped from the room, leaving the door swinging for the person who had been queuing outside, who promptly dashed in and slammed the door closed.
Nora lingered in the hallway surrounded by strangers.
Today had been… a lot. Learning she was related to Alphard Black, that he was her grandfather, the only other Black apart from Sirius to be blasted off the family tree, unsure why or how Alphard had ended up here, in Oceanside America of all place to even have a 'thing' with Smurf, a muggle, meeting family and uncles, having her magic outed, visiting her mother's grave-
A lot.
She needed a drink.
Or two.
Maybe twelve.
Slipping her phone out and hitting J's contact as she made her way down the hall, sure in this packed environment she had about as much luck of finding J in the masses by herself as a Witchfinder general of discovering an actual Witch during the Salem trials, Nora waited for the line to pick up.
And waited.
And waited.
His voice mail clicked in.
"Shit."
By the time she made it to the kitchen again, apparently the hot spot of the Cody house, a text had come bleeping through.
Gone to get some fresh air. Back soon. Stay and have fun :)
Nora got to the counter, shouldering passed two couples dancing, and dashed her phone down.
Fantastic. She'd just threatened a muggle girl with defenestration in her estranged grandmother's home, was still reeling from the days happenings, and her drinking buddy had just gone on a walk-about.
Perhaps twenty drinks, then.
"You alright, baby?"
Nora cocked her head and spotted Smurf by the sink, bloody Mary in her own hand. Nora tried to smile back, voice raised over the music, but was sure it came out more a grimace than a grin.
"J's gone out for a bit, and I don't know where he's put my overnight bag."
Smurf nodded as if she had expected just that, for J to pull a Houdini, there one minute and gone the next.
"Leave the bag for later, sweetheart. Your uncles are out back. Why don't you go out and say hey?"
No J, no whisky, no sense.
"Which ones? There's a fuckin' brood of them."
That made Smurf smile, lopsided, soft, but still somehow sharp.
"Craig and Deran. They're by the bar across the pool."
Bar.
Bingo.
Plus, if Nora had already ragged on Nicky for her part in twisting J's arm, she may as well as go kick tall and dark where it hurt too while she was at it. Poke one wasp, and you may as well as shake the entire nest.
And that was her Black blood speaking again.
"I'll see you later."
Smurf nodded and wished her goodbye, and Nora had her back turned, heading for the patio door-
She didn't see Smurf move forward, swiping Nora's forgotten phone from the countertop and pocketing it.
Deran's P.O.V
xXx
"Here comes trouble."
Slouched over a stool by the bar in the back, Deran tipped his beer and glanced towards the house, motioning over for Craig, currently the one taking head and making the drinks for the guests, to look too. Nicky, wide-eyed and slightly pale, came stumbling over for Deran's giant of a brother, and Deran… Deran stayed absolutely silent.
This, whatever this was, wasn't his problem, and being a Cody you learned to pick your battles wisely.
"Can we go?"
"What?"
Craig asked over the speakers perched over to the side, pounding in the air.
"The party's just started."
Nicky huffed, and shrugged on her jacket that she had been white-knuckled carrying.
"J's sister is a psychopath. She just locked me in the bathroom for no reason and told me she was going to throw me out a window, and that I would have to eat my food through a straw."
Deran scoffed around his swig of chilled beer. Nora? The five-foot-nothing-all-smiles-over-cherry-pie Nora? The one who made a butterfly appear for Lena to play with?
Nora who was a Witch.
Shit, Deran was still trying to get over that. Magic, man. Real fucking magic existed. Who the hell knew? Definitely not him, and Deran was still trying to figure out where that placed himself now, how much wider the world suddenly felt, how much-
Bigger and meaner.
Craig, superficially of the same mind as Deran about Nora, frowned at Nicky.
"Why would she do that?"
Nicky's case wasn't helped by the fact that Deran, and if Deran could see it then Craig could see it too, the white dust on her nose. Blow likely bought from Rob, who cut his shit with who knew what.
Weed killer, most likely.
"What? You don't believe me?"
Craig huffed, and handed a shot to Deran, who downed it in one.
"That's not what I said-"
But the damage was done, Nicky was swivelling and going for the garden gate exit.
"Fuck this. I'm out. You can suck your own dick tonight."
"Nicky? Nicky!"
Craig called after her, but she didn't turn back. In truth, Craig didn't do much more to try and get her back. Instead, the bigger brother snatched up his own opened beer, downing half in a swig, side-eyeing Deran.
"What the fuck was that about?"
Deran shrugged lopsidedly.
"No idea man… But it looks like trouble comes in doubles."
Tilting his chin towards the patio door, Craig followed Deran's line of sight just as Nora, freshly kicked out in black jeans and a leather jacket far too big for her frame, came thudding out.
Her mass of loose ginger curls looked like amber spice in the starlight… And she was frowning darkly. Deadly. The scar on her forehead a mean looking tear in the pallid glow.
Craig, nevertheless, didn't seem to pick up on that little tit-bit of information though, leaning over the bar as he did, waving her over.
"Hey, Elsie! Over here!"
Deran wearily finished off his own beer as those green eyes darted over, locked and loaded, steps faltering slightly at the nickname, and Nora, Elsie by Craig's tag, came stalking through the crowd. The frown was gone, but there was definitely no smile to seen peeking out between the freckled cheeks. By the time Nora reached the two brothers, Craig was already throwing a light beer in her direction. She caught it without a flinch, reaction speed quite startling, eyeing the label and scoffing heartily before-
Before heaving herself up and over the bar in a sweep.
"Move aside, Treebeard. If I'm drinking, it's not going to be this piss-water shit."
Craig held his hands up in surrender, stepping back to make room behind the cramped pool-side bar as Nora dipped behind the counter, down to the bottom shelves, out of view from Deran's eyeline. When she came back up, she had a bottle of rum and a tumbler glass. She popped the bottle cap and flicked it away, the metal bouncing across the pavement to be lost underneath someone's foot, and began to fill the glass to the rim.
"Are you sure you should be drinking that, and that much-"
Nora ignored him, and downed it all in one go.
She didn't splutter.
She didn't grimace.
Not a single wince.
"Alright…"
Deran hazarded. Apparently she could hold her drink. Good.
Good.
"Where's J? Thought you would be with him by now."
Nora shrugged as she filled her glass again, this time taking a sip rather than a gulp. Craig, of course, ditched his own light beer, now that the charade of being responsible adults was well and truly over, and reached for a clean glass, taking the bottle to pour himself, and at his nod, Deran some rum.
"He said he was going to get some fresh air and dipped."
Deran straightened in his chair, taking the offered drink from Craig.
"You just missed Nicky… saying you cornered her in a bathroom and threatened to throw her out a window."
Nora snorted into her drink.
"I didn't threaten any such thing."
She took a pensive taste, and Deran nodded over to Craig.
"See-"
And he was promptly cut off.
"I said I was going to throw her face through a window. I never made mention of whether that face would still be attached to her skull or not. Which reminds me-"
Nora placed her glass down gently, slowly, and turned politely towards Craig, and for a moment, a beat, Deran was left wondering why she was smiling like that, softly but sharply, what was-
And she kicked out, scuffed metal-capped boot striking shin.
Deran was pretty sure the people from the other side of the pool could he the thwack it made.
Craig, all six-four of him, crumbled with a hiss and a hop, glass of rum spilling over the counter of the bar as he dropped it in his shock.
"That's for being either a spiteful bastard and fuckin' J's ex to… I don't know, play some animal kingdom shit, or for being as dumb as a bag of bricks and sleeping with J's ex and doing blow right under his nose just weeks after our mums death without thinking how that might have bloody affected him. I did fuckin' warn you about your kneecaps, Treebeard."
Craig straightened, hair in his face and starlight in his eyes, still hissing and spitting like a feral cat, but all Deran could do was laugh over the rim of his glass.
"Dumb. When it's Craig, and there's an option, always pick the dumb one."
"What the hell, man!"
Craig slowly lowered his leg, wincing as tender heel struck pavement, rolling his shoulders in the aftershock of pain.
"Alright… Alright. I may have deserved that one."
Nora glared fiercely back.
"Yeah, next time you want to mess with my brother remember your balls aren't far up from your shins, and remember just how hard I can kick. I heard if you hit them just right they pop."
Craig winced at his quickly bruising shin and the imagery, running a hand through his long hair to fling it back from his face, and Deran chuckled, reaching for the overturned glass, snatching up the bottle of rum to pour his brother another round, eyeing Nora who was slowly relaxing.
She was a Cody alright, no doubt about that.
"Sit down, have a drink and stop being a little bitch, Craig. You had it coming and you know it... You know what, you ain't half bad, red. So… Magic-"
Nora swiftly cut him off.
"Is something we do not, ever, discuss while surrounded by a garden full of possibly eavesdropping muggles."
"Right, yeah. Makes sense."
"Tomorrow."
Nora gave as a single worded promise. Still, Deran pushed just a little. He couldn't help it really. He was a Cody after all.
"At least tell me if dragons are real or not?"
Nora snorted into her drink, and Deran eased a bit. At least he didn't have to fear a giant flying reptile zipping through the sky any time soon-
"Oh yeah, they're real. Nasty bastards too. Trying to out-fly one is a real bitch."
Or Deran had spoken too soon.
Fuck.
Witches, magic, dragons… Tomorrow. Deran would save his existential crisis for tomorrow, and instead, he took a satisfying guzzle of his rum. Craig, nevertheless, appeared all the more transfixed as he turned his back on the bar counter, using his arms to pitch himself up to sit on the stall, staring down at Nora.
It was kind of a funny thing to see, Deran thought. Someone so big caught in the orbital hook of someone so small, like watching the earth gravitate around the moon and not the other way around. Strange, and funny, and a little, just a little, disconcerting.
"Jesus, you outflew a dragon? You can fly?"
Nora snatched up the bottle of rum, topping off her glass.
"Yes, yes, and once. I wouldn't recommend it. The other one wasn't so bad, but that might have been because I was on the back of it and more concerned about running from the Aurors-"
Nora's mouth clamped shut, the betraying warning someone had spoken just a little too much. Deran leant over the bar, voice dropping conspiratorially.
"Aurors? What are Aurors?"
Nora blinked at him, rolled her jaw, and smiled toothily.
"Umpires. It was a game like… Baseball. That's a muggle sport, right? Harmless. We call it… Gringotts. Nothing major."
And that was a lie. Deran could practically smell it coming off the younger Cody in wafts, the innocent inflection of a lax face, the dead-ahead stare, and she might have gotten away with it if she was speaking to anyone else, anyone but another Cody, who knew, due to their own lies and tells, what to look out for precisely.
She lied like Pope lied, as if daring the other person call them out on it.
Deran glanced to Craig, who in turn popped a curious brow his way, but both kept quiet on the matter. They'd ask Smurf later. She seemed to know more about this whole Witch'ing affair than them, and might just know what an Auror was. Nora clearly wasn't about to start speaking on it, not by how she pointedly looked away, putting a heavy, deaf full stop to the conversation.
Craig shuffled, tenderly rubbing at his shin mindlessly.
"So, not withstanding flying on or from dragons, what else do you do for fun?"
Nora brightened back up.
"I-"
And floundered right before Deran's eyes when she went to give an answer that just wouldn't come. Mouth popping open, and then closing, frown sinking down severely between her eyes, she outwardly searched for something to say, anything to say.
Problem was, Deran saw, she couldn't find anything.
"I.. Uh, didn't have much time for hobbies growing up. I was a bit busy with… School."
Deran smiled at her.
"Bookworm like J, then?"
Nora glanced at him, and there was a suppleness to her intense eye, a thankfulness at the out Deran at subtly given her. Deran, unlike his brothers, wasn't as blinded by words or fronts, the leather jacketed devil may care shell Nora had seemingly encased herself in, and he knew you didn't get scars like that by learning to fucking crochet.
On the back of a dragon or not.
Nora was also, so fucking obviously, a Cody. You pushed her, she'd push back, and no one would get anywhere but down on the floor with a concussion.
Craig swung his long legs over the bar and hopped down beside Deran, drumming his hands on the counter excitedly.
"Nah, fuck that. You ever been surfing before, Elsie?"
"Surfing? Isn't that a muggle fabric detergent? What would I do with that? Put it on a cupcake? Please tell me muggles haven't began to eat washing tablets now."
Deran snorted, but he also understood something more unexpectedly and irrevocably. As difficult of a time as Deran was having trying to wrap his head around witches and magic, Nora was clearly having the same difficulty with their world, with cars and phones and poolside parties. And some-fucking-way, Craig, Craig had seen that. Had seen it enough to offer a hand out.
"Oh, no, we can't have that. Pack up, bring a bottle of rum, we're hitting the beach. I'll get the boards."
"Boards?"
Nora questioned wearily, but Craig was already finishing off his own drink. Deran shrugged.
"You two go. I'll stay here and hold down the bar. Who else will sort the drinks out? Pope?"
Craig shrugged.
"Your loss, man. Hey, Elsie, you have a wetsuit?"
Nora blinked, still rooted behind the bar.
"No, of course not. Do I look like a person who wears a tie? And all my clothes are dry, thank you very much."
Deran laughed, snorting up the alcohol in his mouth, wincing at the burn up his nose and motioned over to the garage.
"I think we might have one small enough for her in the garage."
"On it."
And on it Craig was, strolling away.
"J said he'll be back soon and I should wait-"
Deran shook his head, slipping off his stool.
"I'll let him know where you are, and I'll bring him over once he gets back."
Deran cocked a brow when Nora still wouldn't move from behind the bar.
"You know if you don't start moving, Craig's just going to come back and sling you over his shoulder."
Nora scoffed, rising to the bait.
"I'd like to see him try."
Deran pointedly glanced around them, to the crowd.
"But would the muggles? Face it, red, you're handicapped in this arena."
One… Two… Three.
"Fuck you."
But Nora was laughing, and she was moving now, slinking out from behind the bar and making way for the garage, where Craig had ducked into.
Deran shuffled a hand into his pocket and threw the contents at Nora, who swiftly, again, caught it.
The Scout keys dangled from her index finger. Deran kicked back.
"Tell Craig I'll dent his face if he dents my car."
Nora didn't look back.
Twenty minutes later, just as Deran was beginning to really get into the flow of the party, rum on his tongue and Adrian's number on his phone screen, a mistake just waiting to happen, J came swaying out the house towards him, frowning.
"You seen Nora? I just got back from running an errand for Smurf and she's disappeared."
Deran shook his head.
"Haven't seen her all night."
Nora's P.O.V
xXx
The beach at night was something else. Everything was dark and deep, and it seemed even the air had some special magic to it, old magic from a time before time, as soft as the water lapping at Nora's bare toes, one foot scarred and one foot not. The stretch of coast was nearly empty, so unlike the time she had visited this place with J during the daylight, only the rhythmic sounds of waves disturbing the silences like the ocean had a heartbeat. The moonlight from above created simmering reflections on the water, and with the tide, the ebb and flow, it looked like tiny fragments of light were moving towards the shore only to never reach it.
"I don't know about this."
Craig, already sitting on the back of a strangely shaped board a few feet out of the sand, in a matching wetsuit he had handed Nora after parking the Scout just across the road before they split to get dressed in the changing rooms by the toilets, grinned at her from the ocean, teeth white and shining brighter than his face, another set of lights moving towards the shore, towards Nora.
"Don't tell me you're afraid?"
Nora couldn't help it, she stiffened, bolstered, and scowled. She wasn't afraid-
She was just… Jaded.
"The last two times I was in any large body of water for any given time, I was attacked by Mermaids and Inferi."
"Mermaids?"
Nora rolled her eyes at the clear excited tone in Craig's thick voice.
"I know what you're thinking, and it's less Little and more tentacles, sharp teeth, and tridents that can skewer a man from fifteen feet away. Not a single clam-shaped bra in sight."
Craig bobbed along with the wave that washed up to Nora's ankles, the water connecting them no matter how far they drifted apart.
"Well there goes my childhood fantasy. Cheers."
Nora didn't know she was laughing until she was already deep in the pit of it, not as much cynical about a possible Inferi attack if she swam out, and maybe that was what Craig had wanted by the shot, cracking the tension like one would crack eggs.
"Are you really going to stand out there all night?"
It was nothing less of a dare, a challenge given on the wings of a diffident provocation, and who was she, Eleanora Potter, if she didn't rise to it?
Not herself, that was who.
Nora huffed, and finally began to wade into the water.
It was warm, warmer than any water Nora had been in before, there was no dark Inferi hands grabbing for her, dark as the black lake too, and when the warm waters came up to her waist, she kicked off from the soft sand below and swam full pelt for the bobbing board.
Her lips tasted salty in the sea spray.
When she was just a stretch out from the board, readying to stop and bob in the water, two large hands folded around her ribcage, and suddenly she was moving up and out the ocean, pulled onto the head of the board by a grinning Craig.
"There she is."
Nora doesn't know what it is, that nearly too wide smile, the dimple she could see lurking underneath a saltwater beard, the moonlight or the burning hands still on her ribcage, but her stomach lurches at Craig's voice, a flip and a flop and a… Odd churn as if she, somehow, has the ocean in her belly too, inside and out, up and down and everywhere.
Craig's smile does a strange twitch, she saw it ruffle underneath his beard, and maybe he felt the dark sea dip in his belly too because his hands snap back to himself and he shuffled further back on the board, further away.
"Let's go catch some waves!"
And then they were moving-
Out from shore.
"Catch a wave? What do you mean catch a wave? It's water, a lot of water, you can't hold it."
Craig was laughing, rich and thick like burnt honey, and normally this would be where Nora bit back, hit back, sizable pride bruised at being on the other end of someone's laugh, but, extraordinarily, she knows it's not at her but more in anticipation about what was coming.
The hairs on the back of her neck danced.
"You'll see."
They're still going out, and the waves were getting stronger, greater, Nora grasping onto the end of the board she sat on, and then she sees it. A wave, bigger than all the rest, just a few strokes out-
"Hold on tight, Elsie!"
They weren't changing course.
"Are you insane!? We're going to go over-"
But Craig wasn't listening, he was moving, standing up on a flimsy bit of waxed fiberglass clothe in the middle of the ocean at night, where it was dark and deep and little pieces of light drifted around them, just like his laughter, sending them sailing right for the bloody wave that would, surely, overturned the board and send Nora spiralling into the ocean-
At last second, just before Nora was going to snag Craig's foot and apparate them both away from disaster, Craig's feet braced on the back of the board and it turned sharply, fin end hooking in the water, rising, high, higher, highest-
And then they're flying.
It was a single moment just caught at the right time, the perfect time, the wave carrying them on a ride not quite like anything else, and in the swell of the water, high at their flank, Nora laughed, hand stretching out, fingertips skimming in the wall of the wave they danced along.
It felt like flying.
It felt like touching starlight.
"Not quite dragon riding, but not bad, right?"
Nora's hand pulled back as the wave began to die, so short lived, just a minute of existence, one possible blink for a journey, and she shook her head as the board, she and Craig, were sent swaying back towards the shore.
"No."
Her voice was small, thin but somehow fat, high on something more than the water.
"Not bad at all."
Nora was already paddling back for the outer waves by the time Craig sat back down on the end of the board.
"We gotta go catch another."
Craig chuckled but began helping her paddle them out. And they did catch another. And another. And another. The rhythm of the waves became the markers of time, counting the swells of the water until it all bled together in one hazy exhilarating instant, until moments became like the sea, ebbing and flowing and frothing with seafoam scented laughter.
Nora learned to stand somewhere between the waves, and Craig had fell off the board with a laugh among another when she had gone full pelt and shoved her face into the side of the wave to see if she could see through the water to the moon, and by the time the pair made it out the ocean and back to the Scout, Nora's bones felt like jelly fish, and her lips tasted like seaweed, and her chest felt as light as driftwood.
She could get used to this.
Similarly, by the time they had made it back, out of the wetsuits and with the board stashed in the back, Craig's phone was ringing.
"Ah, fuck."
He swore before answering it, kicked back on the driver's side door.
"Hello. No… She's here with me… What? How am I supposed to know that?... No, we went surfing… Deran's just winding you up. Yeah, we're heading back now. Catch you later."
Craig hung up, tapped away at something, and slipped into the car, putting the key into the ignition as Nora huddled in the passenger side.
She'd left Sirius's jacket back at the house, afraid what the seawater might do to it if it got damp, but now, at… One in the morning according to the car radio, she was regretting her decision.
"J said he's tried ringing you."
Ah, so it was J on the other end. Nora patted her pockets-
And came up short.
"Shit. I think I've lost my phone."
Craig glanced at her as he pulled the car out of park.
"You've likely left it back at the house, but, by the looks of it, your phone isn't the only thing you've lost. You've gone and misplaced your common sense too. Your face is fucking blue. Where's your jacket?"
One arm shrugging out his own coat, Craig shuffled the leather off before blindly throwing it her way as he turned the car down the road.
"I left it behind because I didn't want to ruin it with sand and seawater. I don't need this, I'm fine, take it back before you freeze in your cut-offs-"
"Take it or it's going out the window. Your choice."
"You wouldn't throw-"
"Try me."
Nora was tempted to. Really, just for the hell of it … But she was also freezing her tits off, and Craig was bigger than her, used to the ocean, and had more body warmth to spare.
His hands had been burning on her ribcage, after all.
And so she shrugged it on, the leather swallowing her in a cloud of clove and smoke and something tangy like gasoline. It was almost fuckin' comical how much the coat dwarfed her, skimming her bloody knees when sitting down.
"Uh, Craig-"
"Yeah?"
"You've taken the wrong road. Smurf's house is that way."
Craig took a gander from the road to turn his attention to her, and Nora watched him freeze momentarily, eyeing her strangely, darkly almost, at her sitting there in his coat, but the look was gone before it was really on his face, and maybe Nora had too much saltwater in her eye still, because Craig seemed fine in the next blink, grinning.
"Nah, nights still young. We're heading out to the bar."
"You told J we would-"
Cutting her off, Craig had his gaze dead ahead again to the rather empty roads, blindly dipping a hand into his back pocket to pull his phone out once more, tapping in the code to open it before he handed it over, screen lit.
Nora took it, eyeing the text message he'd sent to J.
Change of plans. Heading to the Cove. Meet us there. Get Deran to drive you. Bring Elsie a coat while you're at it. She's turning into a blueberry.
"A blueberry? I'm not that round!"
"No, but you're about the same size as one."
Nora locked the phone back up and threw it on the dash board.
"I might not be able to kick you from here, but I can still punch you in the kidney with your hand on the steering wheel like that."
Nora remembered the text.
"And me and J we… Sort of, kind of, maybe can't go to the Cove anymore. We got… Barred last time."
Nora expected Craig to snap over to her, frowning, scowling, angry at Nora for making life more difficult, but he did none of that. He laughed, flinging his head back, wet hair trailing down his back with moonlight in his face.
"You and J been tearing the town up while we've not been around?"
He shook off the dying chuckle.
"And shit, girl, you're a Cody. We don't get barred from places, and we most certainly do not listen to the fucker who said we were. Live a little. Come on, what's the worst that could happen?"
Well… It was just one little bar. A muggle bar. A muggle bar in the middle of the seaside.
Nora couldn't get into much trouble there, right?
Right?
Plus, tonight had been nice. The open ocean, the waves, the easy-breezy feeling in her chest, the night wind in her wet hair drying it off.
She hadn't thought about Tom Riddle or the war in… Hours. That was new. That was new and… Freeing. And Nora didn't want that over and done with just yet.
One more wave to catch.
Eleanora Potter was a Black, whether that was through Alphard's blood or James Potter's mother, and with a Black it was always one more.
"Okay… One drink."
Craig smirked at the open road.
"Atta' girl. I knew you had it in you."
The engine revved, the speed picked up, and soon there was just asphalt, moonlight, and burnt honey laughter.
No One's P.O.V
xXx
Smurf stood in the middle of a war-zone living room, stepping over the form of a passed-out blond, picking up the discarded plastic cup to chuck into the bin bag in her hand. J, dressed and in his coat and carrying another, trailed by Deran with car keys in his hand, passed by the living room entrance, stalling to poke his head around the bookcase.
"Craig and Nora went surfing and are going to the bar. We thought we would meet up with them."
Unlike any other grandmother who would undoubtedly look at the clock and sigh and say wasn't it a bit late? Or, in J's case, you're too young to go to a bar, Smurf threw an empty paper plate into her rubbish bag and grinned.
"Have fun! Oh, and J?"
J hesitated under Smurf's watchful eye.
"Don't you or Nora get caught with your fake IDs, and if any of you come back roaring drunk and wake Lena up, you'll all be sleeping outside by the pool."
J smiled back.
"We won't."
And then the boys were gone, and good timing too, for Smurf's back pocket began to ring. She dropped the bin bag, and pulled out the offending ringing, eyeing the name flashing on the screen of Nora's missing cell.
'Mione.
Smurf answered it, chirping with a pleasant hello despite the time of night.
"Uh… Hello? Who is this? Is Nora there?"
British accent, on the posh side of the line. Explains the late-night call. The Time difference. It would be around… Nine O'clock in the morning in England.
Which meant this 'Mione either didn't care, or, more likely, didn't know about the time change.
"This is Janine Cody, I'm Nora's grandmother. Sorry, but she's out at the moment and left her phone behind. Can I help you?"
Silence, long and drifting, before a baffled squawk came from the other end.
"I'm sorry, did you just say grandmother?"
Next Chapter: Craig's P.O.V has finally arrived!...
A.N: I have a huge soft-spot for the head cannon that Fem!Harry wears Sirius's old leather jacket after his death. This chapter I really wanted to start putting hints towards Nora's darker side, and her adrenalin junky ways, as I think this fits with Canon Harry, as not only does he try to use the Crutiatus curse once or twice but three times, the last one successfully against Amycus Carrow, and we know he too likes chasing highs from his love for flying and how recklessly hot-headed he is at times. This, in turn, fits with the Codys, as Pope said last chapter, they were all addicts in their own way, and highlighting Nora/Harry's temper, which he had in Canon too, draws a further parallel between them and Pope, a sudden switch that sees them just lose their shit, and in this story, traces that back to the Blacks.
I also wanted to start laying in the beginnings of sexual tension this chapter, subtly but quite strongly too. I really wanted Craig's and Nora's first one to one interaction to be sort of tender? And easy in a sense. Simply because Nora/Harry has never had anything easy in their life, it's all been one giant dog fight for even the simple things, and I think Craig offering that, and Craig's more free-natured spirit, would really draw someone like Nora in. A don't think, don't plan, don't worry, just do sort of thing that would be highly appealing to a war-torn Nora.
Thank you all for the follows and favourites, and if you could, drop a review and let me know your thoughts.
