Keep Your Eyes Peeled
@mmckinnxn
The night was dark, and cold, and somehow strangely hollow under the cold light of distant stars and a sliver of a moon. Or maybe that was Ainsley’s nerves speaking. It was strange; she was never this nervous when she was walking into a battle, was never this nervous when she was trading spells designed to maim or hurt or even kill. She was often afraid in such situations, yes -- but not nervous. It was so much worse than fear, somehow. Fear was a tightness of the limbs, a quickness of the heart, a sharpness of the eyes; fear was the metallic taste of adrenaline on her tongue and a buzz of energy in her veins.
Nervousness was just...antsy. Her skin felt itchy, ill-fitting, and her heart skittered and jumped in her chest, unpleasant as a frozen toad. Ainsley made a face.
She wondered if the others felt the same way, skulking around the edges of the Nott home. Getting in had been less difficult than they had feared; perhaps Nott kept the wards on the grounds low to enable easier access for his Death Eater allies, or perhaps the elderly wizard had simply let those wards decay the same way he had the garden they enclosed. Regardless of the reason, breaking through them had been the work of only a few moments for their little band of burglars and lookouts, and now the searchers were all inside while Ainsley and the rest paced the grounds on high alert, wands out and ready for trouble.
After separating from Remus and Mary at the gate, she and Marlene had made a slow and cautious counterclockwise circle of the house. They had found nothing but tangled plants and worn statuary: the remnants of a once-grand garden now falling into neglect and ruin. It made Ainsley sad, somehow, to see it in such poor condition...sad, but mostly nervous.
“You’d think he’d at least hire somebody to take care of the place,” she muttered to Marlene. It wasn’t the most relevant of conversational topics, perhaps, but the silence was grating on her nerves and she had to say something. “Merlin knows he can afford it.” She flapped a hand at Marlene -- her free hand; her wand-hand, of course, she kept at the ready, weapon already drawn and a whole host of spells waiting on the tip of her tongue for the first sign of danger. “Your family certainly keeps your place in good condition, and everybody knows the Notts are practically swimming in gold. What’s his excuse, do you know?”
The McKinnons didn’t more in quite the same circles as the Notts, of course -- but they brushed elbows, Ainsley knew; were certainly more in the periphery of the old man’s sphere than the Abbotts, anyway. And while pure-blood gossip wasn’t usually high on Ainsley’s list of topics of interest, anything beat walking in silent waiting.
