The Wilderness Years

Chapter 13: Runaway Home

Carpathia was alive with colour. As the weather warmed, the valleys had bloomed with flowers of vivid fuchsia, and the mountains had burst out in every imaginable hue of green, from the grassy slopes, to the forest-covered ridges and the peaks, which cut into the cloudless azure blue sky.

It was beautiful here. Beautiful, wild, and rugged.

Artemis smiled as she took in the view, and raised her camera to her face. On the other side of the valley, something was moving in the trees. She held her breath, and waited with her finger resting on the shutter. Moments later, something emerged from the pine canopy, large, winged, and covered in scales the same bright shade of green as the grass that sprawled down the cliffside to the valley below, contrasting with the dark emerald of the trees.

The dragon threw back its head and released a burst of flames directly skywards. This was the moment Artemis had been waiting for. She pressed down on the button and heard the click of the shutter, and not a second too soon, either. An instant later, the dragon took flight and disappeared behind the trees once more, its fiery breath replaced with a melodic roar. If it were not for Artemis having captured it in a photograph, no one would have known that it had been there at all.

She continued her journey over the mountain path until she reached a rocky plateau, one where the sides of the mountains had cave-like inlets, inside which several fires were burning.

"Hello, everyone," said Artemis, removing her rucksack and walking across to the fires. "How are you all doing today?"

No answer came other than the crackling of the fires and the noise of scurrying feet within them. There was a lot of movement, from the sound of things, which was good. She set to work, opening her rucksack and pulling out the dried pieces of wood she had brought with her, and taking them over to the fires, inside each of which a small group of salamanders was living.

She worked swiftly, stoking and feeding each fire and casting her eyes over the salamanders in each one, checking that they all had the correct number of limbs and no wounds. Once she had finished, she left and descended back down the path, her hands already itching to develop the photo she had taken.

At the bottom of the mountain she turned and made a beeline for the area of the compound where the dragonologists had their accommodation, a set of wooden lodges, most of which were a lot smaller than the ones used for work purposes. Among the smallest of the small was the one Charlie called home, where she had also been living for the past year, ever since the day she had arrived on his doorstep, exhausted and bedraggled after flying there on a broomstick all the way from Scotland.

It had not been the easiest year, not by a long way. Back in England, their loved ones were engaged in a silent and secretive war against Voldemort, whose return the Ministry of Magic had been fervently denying. They had been on the other side of the continent as they received news good and bad: Arthur's near-fatal snake attack, the loss of Chiara's job at St Mungo's, Penny's unexpected pregnancy, Bill's blossoming relationship with Fleur Delacour, and Chester's with Badeea. From a distance of a thousand miles there had been sadness and bitterness, laughter and joy, and guilt that none of it was being experienced firsthand.

And yet, Artemis had needed that distance. When she left, she had been wracked and wretched with guilt and fear and loss, and though she still felt all of those things, her emotions were less oppressive now. She may not have been free of them, but she could at least breathe freely.

She was greeted on her arrival back at the lodge by Fergus' loud purrs and ginger body winding around her legs, covering her shins in the brown dust of the track outside, where he had clearly been sunbathing, and a cacophony of barks from inside. Charlie must have already returned from his morning Crup walk.