Beauxbatons [Charlie Weasley]

Injured

It's towards the end of the second month of searching for a Hebridean Black that the eight students finally find something.

Isabelle and Charlie are busy searching for any type of clue that will lead them to the dragon when they see green sparks shoot up into the air from several kilometres away. They look up, their hearts beating faster as excitement rises in their chests, and they rush over to each other, grabbing the other's hand before they apparate over to where the sparks shot up from.

They arrive just as Elena and Daniel do, all of them gathering around Christopher and Luca, who seem to have found something on the ground. The other two students arrive alongside Florin, all nine of them staring down at a patch of dirt on the ground, littered with droplets of blood.

"At first we thought it was just some poor injured animal," Luca explains breathlessly, "but then Christopher tasted a bit and said it was definitely dragon blood. I dunno how he knows, but..."

He trails off as Florin puts his finger into the blood, before bringing it up to his mouth and licking it himself. Isabelle frowns at him, but her expression clears as his eyes light up.

"Oh, well done, you two! It's definitely dragon blood, alright," Florin announces, looking excited. "And there's quite a lot of it, too. That means the poor thing must be injured badly, and couldn't have gotten very far. In fact, as there's a water source nearby—" he gestures to a large lake not too far from where they're all currently standing "—the dragon is almost certainly very close by."

Isabelle, still holding Charlie's hand, squeezes it tightly, excited. If Florin's not wrong, soon she'll finally get to see a real-life Hebridean Black! How cool is that?

"Spread out, everyone, and start searching the area!" Florin exclaims, and none of them waste a moment before splitting up, heading off in each and every direction individually.

Isabelle heads towards the lake, starting to slowly search around it near the water's edge, for any sign of blood, struggle or footprint. She finds nothing, but after about an hour of searching, she comes across Charlie just up ahead, frozen on the spot.

Frowning, she heads over to him, quietly appearing by his side.

"Don't speak," he breathes, his voice so quiet she barely hears it. "Just... look."

She follows his gaze up in front of them, where there's an assortment of large rocks. Isabelle frowns, squinting, not entirely sure what she's supposed to be seeing.

But then her eyes widen and she has to clamp her hands to her mouth to stifle her gasp. A dragon. Hidden amongst the boulders, lying down in a heap, is the unmistakable shape of a Hebridean Black.

She goes to grab Charlie, to exclaim in quiet triumph, but then she stops. And she stills. Just like Charlie did.

Because the dragon's barely moving. In fact, it's barely breathing. Isabelle stares at it; she stares at the rise and fall of its chest, so minimal that it hardly appears to be moving at all. She stares at its face, at the dragon's eyes, and Isabelle stills even more.

Its bright purple eyes are half-open, as if it doesn't have the energy to open them fully... And it's looking directly at them.

Isabelle blinks. The dragon's seen them, it knows they're there, and yet it doesn't do anything about it. It doesn't try to attack them, it doesn't try to defend itself. In fact, it doesn't move at all. As if it doesn't have the energy. As if it's in too much agony to move at all.

Because that's what it looks like, alright. As Isabelle stares at its face, the way its snout is scrunched up slightly in what many people would assume is a snarl, but looks more to her like a grimace of pain. She stares at the way it's breathing in through its mouth, as if it can't even get enough air in through its nose. She thinks about the pool of dragon blood Luca and Christopher found earlier.