Mara's Magic

ii - dragons

My summer between Fourth and Fifth Year was spent in Romania with my favorite dragonologist - or dragon tamer as Charlie insisted he be called. He claimed it was cooler that way.

I spent almost the entirety of the summer working for Charlie in Romania. Given that he was just starting off his career there, Mum and Dad sent him money to keep me fed, and the extra he gave to me for helping him out. I trailed after him around the Reserve, more often than not getting stuck with the job of mopping up the slaughter house, cleaning after Charlie himself, or spraying down and cleaning out old cages that were covered in dragon droppings and other nasty things. But, I was happy to even just be there, so it was no problem. It was even better that I got paid - and much more than I got working for Ollivander.

"Charlie," I groaned, plopping the mop I carried back into its bucket. "Why can't you just magic this all up?"

"Because it's good for you. You want to earn money, don't you?" He asked with a grin. 

"Well sure I do, but I thought it'd be more like organizing your things and helping you with the dragons," I replied, nodding at the emphasized word. He laughed.

"Mara, you know that I can't let you be with the dragons," he said. "I'm sorry, but it's policy."

"No, actually it's not. The policy is that untrained and unsupervised minors cannot be with the dragons. Luckily for you, I'm incredibly trainable and you can supervise me," I chirped, sending the same lopsided smile that he'd sent me earlier right back at him. He sighed and stared ahead of him, contemplating my words. He stayed this way for several seconds before sighing.

"Go ask Ferg. If he says yes, then sure, I'll train you," he replied. I gasped eagerly and pushed my cleaning supplies into the corner of the messy slaughter house and began to run in the direction of the head cabin. "But, you will be finishing this when you return!" He called after me.

His boss, a gruff man by the name of Chris Ferguson (nicknamed Ferg), had caught onto the fact that I was staying with Charlie and even hired me to be his own personal assistant when I wasn't with Charlie. I took floo calls for him, filed away papers, organized his things, and was even allowed to look over and mark some of the documents regarding the dragons. They tagged them, you see, and so a large part of my job with him was making sure that the tags stayed organized and orderly so we could ensure the dragons' safety and continue to learn about them.

"Ferg," I called. I heard him grunt from the other side of the room, allowing me to continue. "That Ironbelly we tagged a few weeks ago isn't showing up on the map. Do you want me to call in Walsh?"

"Yes, please do," he replied, sending a nod my way, his lips twitched up ever so slightly into the smallest hint of a smile. You'd think that I'd be saddened by the lack of  a full smile, but I was one of the only people he even tried with. I thought that it was because I was the youngest, but I appreciated it nonetheless. 

I nodded and swiped my hand through the air in the direction of the floo only two feet to my left. A small basket of blue floo powder dipped down and ignited in the fireplace, a short indigo flame bouncing up from the wood. 

"Yuri Walsh," I commanded in an overly professional tone. The fire sizzled for a few moments before I heard the man sigh into his portable floo. Each of the workers had one - it was a new piece of technology that just had a compact set of vocal floo powder inside what looked like a compass or a stop watch. It was convenient for when we needed to reach them immediately, and given that they're always out wrangling dragons, owls simply would not work.

"What's up, Mara?" He asked, his Irish accent making my name sound funny.

"Hey, you remember that Ironbelly that we tagged a few weeks ago?"