When: 11th November / 9th December 1980
Where: In captive / St Mungos
Who: @dorcasmeadowes
It had, perhaps, been the biggest test of trust the young couple could have gone through. Any couple, really. The days had blurred into one long awful one. Their captors somehow got worse once Maeve escaped, hammering up the window. They were crueller when they were there, fed them less. It was a sick kind of psychological torture, just waiting for the shoe, or the bullets, to drop. The only solace was that they hadn’t been alone. They had each other. To lean on, to fight the cold, to pass the time. But as time went on, even that became difficult. Because at the core of it all, they were simply two terrified twenty-year-olds.
But it had been trust that had saved them. Not magic. Not the downfall of their muggle captors. None of the ridiculous plans they’d discussed. No. During a critical moment, when they heard the doors opening, James had turned to Dorcas and asked maybe the most important question he’d ever asked her – “Do you trust me?”
The response had come in the form of a yes, and then there wasn’t much more time to think. James was telling her to jump on his back when the time was right, absolutely leaving more confusion than was necessary, and then the door was open. Two muggles, holding two wands, pointed at the face of a fully grown stag, and one shell shocked witch who was frozen to the spot.
No longer able to use his words, James had to stamp his hoof to snap Dorcas out of it, and she was soon pulling herself up onto his back. It all happened so quickly, and the muggles were too stunned to react as James charged at them, Dorcas hanging onto his neck for dear life. But the wands. They’d need the wands if they had a chance against the guns.
Giant horns steered towards the first one, knocking him back and causing the wand to fly into the air. Just like he’d asked her to trust him, James trusted Dorcas to catch it, and she did. The second muggle though began to run, snapping the wand clean in half in the process. If a stag could wince, he would’ve, but they couldn’t dwell on the lost wand in the moment. Not when this was probably their only shot.
That was how it went, getting out of there. Through a few tunnels and into the glaring light of day. They’d had the element of surprise at the start, but the muggles still had their guns, and those at the exit had been warned, guns drawn. It was all James could do to continue on his way and run through them, hoping Dorcas had the sense to stick low.
He thought they had made it. The shots that had been ringing around them, bouncing off trees, were dying down, and they hadn’t been hit. Soon they would be far enough away that the muggles would need time to catch up, and they’d be able to apparate safely away, until he felt a sharp pain in his side, the ringing of a final bullet echoing around them.
He staggered, letting out a roar of pain, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. He was lucky he was so large, the bullet wedged in the muscle of his side, inches from his heart. Lucky until they reached a spot James deemed safe and he sunk to the ground with exhaustion, Dorcas sliding off his back. Lucky, until he shrunk back down to his human form and all of a sudden the bullet wasn’t inches from his heart anymore, it was mere millimeters, grazing his aorta and starting a flood of internal bleeding that would soon plummet him into unconsciousness.
Not before he got the chance to look up at Dorcas with a weak smile and get out, “Pretty cool, huh?”
He’d been awake for a few hours now, when Dorcas came in the room. Of course, the boys had gotten the whole story, but to the doctors James pretended it was all too blurry still – he needed some time. He couldn’t exactly admit he was an unregistered, and therefore illegal, animagus. It was a shock he’d been able to transform so well at all.
Really though, he just wanted to see her. To make sure she was okay before they were forced into all the bureaucracies that came with a crime – especially a crime in this new world where muggles had been involved. The smile he gave her when she came in was akin to the last one he gave her, although he felt a lot stronger this time around. Surgery and a whole month of rest would do that to you, despite the fact his body had deteriorated to a state that would take months of rehab. “Hey you.”
“Hey you?” Dorcas repeated, first incredulous, then furious, then full-on crying, somehow packing this rollercoaster into two simple syllables. One month, one month of having to ball up the panic of his hospital stay and what had happened and her wand, and of course the first thing James would say was something quippy.
“What are you, indestructible?”
