Thaumaturgic ~ Harry Potter One-Shots

The Dragon and the Phoenix

The streets of London, which were normally packed with tourists and locals at any given time of the day, were abnormally empty.

There were only three people on this particular street. A passing bicyclist, an elderly woman watering the flowers outside of her shop, and a woman who was hidden from everyone but herself.

Marissa Hemmingway, most commonly referred to as Rissa, was on duty for the fourth day in a row at this location. The blonde headed woman stood in the shadows of the building at her back. She had been standing there for three hours keeping an eye on the store three doors down and across the blacktop.

Sweat pooled at the collar of her cotton shirt. It was an astonishing 26 degrees in downtown London that day. The entirety of England had been in a heatwave for the past month with no end in the near future.

A Death Eater by the name of Jacqueline Brownstone was known for frequenting the muggle establishment. Numerous reports of dark magic had been made at the location over ten times in the past two months. But any time that an Order member was present, there was not so much as a peep.

The wrist watch on her tanned arm let out a three toned ding; watch duty was over. Rissa walked over to the next street before ducking into a side alley that did not have any people. She took her mahogany wand out of her jeans pocket and cast the counter for the disillusionment charm she had placed upon herself hours earlier. She quickly checked to make sure no muggles were around before spinning on her heel and apparating away.

Even after doing it for five years, the feeling of her body being contorted through time and space never got easier. There were still a few times that the feeling of her intestines being rearranged had the contents of her stomach making a reappearance upon arrival, although it was less common the older she got. Luckily for her this was not one of those times. Although that was most likely due to her forgetting to eat before leaving the house that morning.

Rissa landed in a clearing between giant bushes in the small garden park across from Grimmauld Place. This is where she had been staying for the past six weeks. It was different from her home back in Romania. Different in the fact that she was living there with her boyfriend's family, along with two other members of the Order; Remus Lupin and the owner of the dreadfully awful home, Sirius Black.

The weirdest part about this living arrangement was that her boyfriend was not there with her. Charlie had to stay in Romania for his job. He worked as a Dragonologist at the Romanian Dragon Sanctuary. His job was to study the large reptilians and figure out what made them the way that they were. It was his avid determination to make them more of a commonplace topic in mainstream wizardry that drew Rissa towards him.

It was there at the Sanctuary where the two had met. She had just started working as the correspondent for all dragon sanctuaries in Europe. Her job was to travel between the colonies, making sure that they had when they needed and see that everything was running smoothly. Although she traveled a lot, she maintained a permanent residence just a few minutes from the Romanian colony.

She was working from her office about a year ago when a bruised and bleeding Charlie had stumbled into the administrative building looking for paperwork. After patching him up and finding the correct forms for him, he asked her out on a date. Being new to the area and not knowing many people, she happily agreed. Within a month the two were dating and have been happily together since.

She had been stuck in London for the most part, but still had to travel every ten days to check up on her job. Being in the Order and traveling constantly made it hard for her and Charlie to talk, but they made it work. It was a struggle trying to balance everything, but Rissa wouldn't give up either of her jobs for the world.