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• man with a minor god complex rami dagworth • (extemporise) wrote in valesco, @ 2016-07-11 23:43:00

WHO: SCREAMING
WHAT: this was a magical gift I hope everyone enjoys it
WHERE: ? ? ? MYSTERY
WHEN: EARLY MORNING


She felt it before she saw it. A dark, spindling feeling deep in her chest, one that sought and immediately struck a painful stab into her side. The trained instinct to ignore all that felt miserably wrong kicked in, and alert, Kera drew her wand.

Rami stopped the auror from rushing past him with an unwavering blockade of his arm. He firmed his grip across Ryan’s shoulders.

“Watch,” he instructed.

Across the field, in the dim light, Hestia straightened her stance. While thoughts of loneliness, abandonment, and hopelessness attempted to swamp her, she instead stayed focused. Concentrated, raising both her hand and her wand high into the air, she thought of… two months ago. Beside Kendrick, in the beautiful dress Joaquín had given her, seated with his brother and sister experiencing the night. So much wonderful color and warmth, she couldn’t remember the last time she had been so happy…

Unadulterated joy filled her chest, and after a gentle call, a silvery and bright great gray owl burst from the tip of her wand. Diving for the encroaching dementor, it drove the creature away with little effort.

When the air turned normal again, Hestia emitted a noise of delight, Rami raised one brow as he dropped his arm, and Kera balled her hands into fists.

“She is quite competent,” he remarked, a subtle shade of pride in his tone. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the witch beside him grow furious.

“What are you doing here?!” Kera demanded, “That was no boggart, how could yo---!”

“Kera!” Hestia interrupted, appearing in front of the duo with a crack (and after waving goodbye to her patronus). Oblivious to her friend’s anger, she bounced to hug the other witch. “Did you see? I did not hesitate! It gets easier every time! And I think I had very good form too, not that that is the most important, but---”

“Hestia.” As Hestia babbled, Kera tried to look at her eyes. They were clear, but she was behaving too animated to grab her for a close inspection.

“----and I’m so glad you’re here! Are you going to help with my training?”

Kera stopped, her hand on Hestia halting while the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. A pregnant pause, an uncomfortable one spread among the little trio. For very different reasons, both Hestia and Rami looked upon Kera with delicate (or feigned) curiosity.

Turning her head, she beseeched a hefty and fierce glare on Rami as she spoke to Hestia.

“What are you training for?” she asked in response. Nostrils flared, grasp tight on her wand, she did not to take her gaze off the unspeakable.

Confused for a moment, not understanding this shift in emotion, Hestia tilted her head to her shoulder. Her eyes jumped, in hesitation, from Kera’s heated face to Rami’s cool one. One of her hands played with the other.

“Mr. Dagworth hasn’t told you? I want to b----”

“Hestia,” Rami interjected suddenly. “I need to speak with Auror Ryan privately.”

Feeling odd, but unsure what else to do but comply, Hestia released Kera. Wandering back the way she came, she began to produce flowers from the tip of her wand to pass the time. She offered Kera a smile before turning away from the pair completely.

A beat passed, and after Rami waved a muffling charm, Kera hissed through her teeth.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing with her,” she began, stepping closer to him. Rami Dagworth may have been taller than her, but not by much. “But it ends right now. No kind of training demands live dementors.”

Did Chambers know about this? What was Hestia being trained for? Could she arrest Dagworth for dementor… what? Possession? Negligent exposure? Undoubtedly, the Department of Mysteries controlled an army of them. Why had he brought her here? What kind of backlash would such temporary custody spill out? Kera tightened her gaze.

In response, Rami looked back at Kera with his face almost entirely blank.

“Hestia needs someone to duel her,” he responded simply. Very purposely ignoring Kera’s words, Rami shuffled his robes.

“What?” Kera snapped.

Rami repeated himself word for word.

“Then send her,” Kera gritted, “to a dueling school.”

“She is far past that,” Rami waved, the ends of his lips pressing down for a moment as his gaze trailed from Kera toward Hestia’s back. “She needs real-world experience now. Opponents that will challenge her instinct.”

“What kind of----?”

But Rami Dagworth had dropped his gaze back to Kera, and in such a way that it struck a dark, peculiar feeling within her gut. As he stared at her, and she glared at him, it took Kera a few slow moments to piece together the answer to her own half-formed demand. Rami Dagworth had wanted to show her how surprisingly strong Hestia was because he wanted Kera to understand the other witch’s magical capability. However, this was not under the pure premise as he lead her to believe. Dagworth did not want to help Hestia, he had no reason to teach her out of the goodness of his heart (did he have one?). Considering the way he looked at her, like a tool to be used, it was clear that he only, truly, wanted to know how well Hestia would fare against an auror.

Why benefit did Rami Dagworth gain from answering that question? It was an absurd and dangerous answer, one that had Kera choking out a laugh over.

“I’m not training Hestia Jones how to duel people,” she said. It would be better to feign ignorance than confirm aloud what they both knew he was saying.

Interested by this shift, finding Kera Ryan much more interesting now, Rami tilted and turned his head to stare at her a little more closely. Ryan wasn’t an idiot, easy to manipulate and predict because of her own emotional reservations, perhaps, but not stupid. It was why he had very specifically chosen her as the departmental contact for all cases involving magical law enforcement, and why he had chosen her, now, to take the next step in Hestia's... training.

“No,” Rami said, “I've taught her how to duel. Your role would be something a little more like… upheaval.”

Kera knew she should have waited to respond, and she knew she should have responded differently, but suddenly, she felt unwilling to play along any longer.

“You’re shitting mad if you think I’m going to attack Hestia Jones under some flimsy premise of training.” Kera’s face contorted so severely it hurt. “Who do you think I am?”

Rami smiled. He slipped his hands out of his pockets and his shoulders rose a little in pretended thought.

“I think you will,” he explained slowly, head nodding just a little. “Because then, I will owe you a favor.”

Kera stopped her hand from slashing away the charm around them. She had been intent on ending this conversation, no further good would come from it, but his words stopped her. Thinking quickly, thinking over what she knew and believed Unspeakable Rami Dagworth capable of, her response was uncharacteristically cool.

“I will never want anything from you.”

Rami looked down upon the young auror with mild intrigue. Or, perhaps, like a creature resisting pre-destined fate. It was interesting, for he had not been expecting those words from her. He had been expecting… He readjusted his thoughts after a silent moment.

“I know about the problems you are having,” he responded, idly. “Wouldn’t you like to fix them?”

Already still, Kera felt her breaths become heavy in her chest. Her healer had resolved the issue of her injured side (improper initial internal healing), but… It was true, she still experienced excruciating pain upon attempting to connect with her animagus form. And after so long, she found herself… desperate for answers, a solution as to how to fix herself. She found herself curious when she knew she shouldn’t be, the words falling from her mouth aggressively, but doing so nonetheless.

“What do you know about that?”

Rami’s lips pressed upward. He closed the gap between them suddenly.

“You are disconnected,” he said, and without warning, tapped her forehead once with his middle finger. “I can help you with that.”

Like the kickback from a bad portkey, Kera was immediately reminded of the last time a morally unsound colleague of hers had touched her forehead like that. A scream, one settled in pure self-preservation, passed through her limbs, and she did not keep Rami Dagworth waiting for a response.

“Fuck off,” she spat. With a swiftness hailing from the Auror Department, Kera grabbed his hand to snap it. Immediately, she broke three of his fingers. When his face lit up in painful surprise, she lurched forward to press her wand to the middle of his chest.

“Do not toy with me,” Kera seethed, twisting his remaining thumb and index finger back unnaturally.

Because Rami did not seem to be understanding her, now, Kera knocked the wand out of his twitching other hand to the ground. Certainly about conveying a message, she pressed it into the grass with her foot.

“You have miscalculated, and for that, you are done with Hestia. You will not owe me favors. You will no longer appear in my life outside of official Ministry capacity. If you do not comply, I will inform Chambers what I saw here, as well as what Hestia will inevitably tell me after we leave.”

Because of the way she warped his arm, in addition to how forcefully she pressed her sparking wand to his heart, Rami was forced to bend at the knee.

“I would be interested to find what he thinks about all this.” For, if he approved, wouldn’t he be here now? Would Dagworth care what enough to be controlled by Joaquín Chambers’ opinion of him? Kera doubted it, so she pushed further. “Will your partner be pleased? What about your department? The Wizengamot is not below the Department of Mysteries. You do not fear me, but you should.”

Rami Dagworth continued to find himself too stunned to respond. Kera Ryan’s fury was his own doing, so he continued to watch it unleash, rather helplessly. She was correct, he had miscalculated. An inkling in the back of his mind reminded him that, most likely as cued by how she spoke, she was in some capacity recording or copying this conversation, so even if he attempted to modify her memory...

“Because if I cannot stop you,” Kera hissed, her chin dipped very low now as she roughed him, “I will not cease in finding someone or something that will.”

When he took in a sharp breath, something of his mind preparing a cool rebuttal, she snapped his thumb in half.

“You are done talking. That is how this works now. Am I clear?”

When Hestia realized the charm muffling her ears stopped, she looked up from her hands. Blinking, she turned back to glance over her shoulder. She was met by a flushed Kera Ryan (who had popped the distance to stand before her now) and---

“Is he alright?” Hestia asked, peering over Kera’s shoulder to look back at the kneeling and stationary form of Rami Dagworth in the grass.

“Yes, of course,” Kera responded without a look back. Hestia watched her pocket her wand.

“But---”

“What’s that?”

Eyes brightening, Hestia brought up her hands to show Kera.

“It’s a flower crown. Do you like it?”

When Kera nodded and commented it was very pretty, Hestia dropped it on Kera’s head. She had, of course, been making it for her while she waited. Mr. Dagworth, of course, had been entirely unreceptive to her gifts thus far, but Kera...

Reaching to brush her fingers along the petals, Kera faintly smiled.

“Thank you, Hestia.” Kera paused for a moment, thinking briefly that she did have a contact in the Irish dueling academy. “Listen, I spoke with Dagworth, and--- here, take my arm. Let’s go somewhere a bit less dreary to talk, yeah? I’m starved, do you think anything is open yet? We can talk about your... training...”