Buggar

"I am," Michael said, choosing his standard dark clothes for night work. He tried to cover as much of his skin as possible. Black slacks, black turtleneck, black boots, black backpack with equipment and room for the doodahs they were assigned to retrieve.

He had actually needed help to dress, and he'd gotten it. Robert had stopped by to find out how the night had gone, and had found out that, for the first time in longer than Robert could remember, Michael had not merely not gotten the goods, but he'd been badly hurt.

Robert had found Millie's work to be more than satisfactory, but he had bound Michael's fractures even more securely to help support him through the night's work, and he made sure Michael had pain potion in his system and some in his pack. Then he'd helped him dress for the evening. All but Michael's black jacket that laid beside him.

Michael pointed to a tiny bottle of port that he'd gotten once on a muggle airlines flight. "The port key," he said. What better way to remember a portkey than a bottle of port? "I presume you can port us?" he asked, struggling to find a way to get the jacket on with his right shoulder and right hand recovering from fractures.

"Buggar," he sighed. "I'll be amazingly helpful, won't I?"

The blonde witch had been glad for some renewed subtlety in her style of dress, able to recall a time in which she’d scurried through windows in long skirts and floppy hats during that long, bitterly sweltering summertime. Black was definitely more appropriate, she felt. It made her hair stand out starkly, somehow, and she was quick to pull up the hood of her jacket. She was glad to be in the brightness of Michael’s house again when she finally arrived back in Hogsmeade. It took some of the chill of anxiety out of her bones.

Raising a wry eyebrow, she laughed at him, impressed with the word association. Shaking her head, the witch picked up the bottle of port, absently looking at the label. It was a decent one at least – typical, really, considering there was so little of it. She twinkled it between her fingers as she made her way back to Michael and gave him a genuine, reassuring smile. They were going to make for an interesting team, at least. She took her wand from behind her ear and tapped at the port. Then, with a familiar tug, they were off.

“It’ll be fine,” she promised.

Michael had given up on the jacket, had tossed it back to the sofa and had opted simply for the turtleneck. The winter wind was bitter during the port, and he soon figured out why. The wind had kicked up at the estate where they needed to work tonight, and it was blowing the snow around. However, there was some benefit in it. It had erased his footprints.

He couldn't help himself. He walked around the side of the house to see the window that he'd fallen out of was still open, the tattered curtains still blowing in the night wind. The hole he'd created in the snowbank where he'd fallen was almost totally erased now as well.

Standing on the ground, looking up to the window now gave him a different perspective. He was used to climbing much higher distances. However, the going up didnt bother him. Now, tonight, the distance from the third floor seemed a damn long way down.

Before he'd caught himself, he sighed heavily, feeling like he was perhaps getting too old for this. Maybe he was going to have to face his second worst fear--losing his touch. As if to jar him out of self pity, a packed pile of snow from the gutter above him fell and splatted him in the face, a cold harsh draw back to the fact that he had work to do. They had work to do.

"I actually just got straight in through the front door," he said to Millie, pointing back around to the front of the abandoned mansion. "But up there," he pointed to the third floor window. "That's where we need to get into with all our limbs still attached. The enchantments are in that room, and no doubt open some little hidey hole in that room."

He looked at her and saw what he thought, unless he was mistaken, the same familiar light in her eyes of the love of mischief and the love of adrenalin that beat in the core of his own heart. There wasn't a bat's chance that she would back out on this adventure. Wasn't going to happen.

He laughed before he'd thought about it. "I know this is a really stupid question," he said, "But you know I have to ask. You sure you still wanna do this? You can back out if you want. No harm, no foul. Or shall we head for a door?"