welcome to chimera!

[Victoria Summers]

The deaths she'd witnessed clearly not being all that traumatic for her, as she still had her whole family in tact, talking about it would none the less reveal the fact that her family was entirely illegal. She wasn't sure how that'd sit with Hogwarts (maybe they already knew?) but she didn't exactly want to find out. Why telling Janus equated with the whole of Hogwarts knowing was a bit of logic even more years and hindsight would not ever let Vicky explain.

"It'd be a downright sin to cross anything but a Malfoy with a flobberworm,' she answered casually. Of course she had no great love for Purebloods, but it was entirely reserved to those special caliber of Purebloods who viewed her as filth of several different categories.

[Janus Thickey]

Her answer startled a laugh out of him. It was lucky that he'd been tapping the ash from his cigarette instead of inhaling, because he probably would have choked embarrassingly. He didn't know if sudden loud noises - not that his laughter wasn't one of them, anyway - startled herds of thestrals, but he'd prefer not to have invisible creatures that only one of them could see stampeding all over the place.

"You're right," he said once he'd stopped laughing, taking a drag on the cigarette, "or maybe a Warrington. Do you think they count as magical creatures, then? If Kettleburn likes you, maybe you could wrangle permission to include them in your experiment next year." Janus didn't have any particular distaste for any purebloods, since all of them seemed to look down on what his father had given up with his marriage, but rather did his best to avoid any of them too concerned with blood status.

[Victoria Summers]

"Or a Black,' she added in happy agreement. Janus was turning out to be surprisingly easy to be around. Not that getting along with boys was a foreign thing for Vicky, but getting along with boys who shared her interests and were actually willing to talk with her outside of shallow banter was rare, perhaps even unheard of. "I don't think Kettleburn would need much prompting."

She swished her ash off her cigarette and blew the smoke out to the side so it didn't bother him, "Do you think you'll leave England for curse-breaking? I bet whatever education you could get here would be awful. We haven't got any really unexplored magical wonders anymore."

[Janus Thickey]

"See," he said, laughing, "I think adding a Black to the mix would only turn out something awful, don't you?" He didn't often indulge in the past time of saying terrible things about the people he was sure spent quite a while saying terrible things about him, but the fact that he'd found someone to say them and smoke with was rather nice. It was rare that he was anything more than aloof and dry with people, but the fact that he wasn't with Vicky - and was, in fact, showing more excitement over something than he had in a while - didn't really strike him as odd.

When people were interesting, Janus responded well to them.

"I'm hoping it'll be with Gringott's," he said casually, tapping off the ash form his cigarette, as well, "and they send their trainees to Egypt for most curse-breaking training." He shrugged and added, "Or else I suppose I'll find another bank or museum looking for curse-breakers, if Gringott's isn't hiring. I don't plan to stay in England or Scotland long past graduation, really." The cigarette had vanished surprisingly quickly; Janus flicked aside the stub, although he didn't light a new one. Maybe if Vicky wanted one later - and speaking of, he looked down at her again, draping his hands lazily over the fence that lined the thestrals' pen, looking easily at nothing. "What about you? Do you know where you want to wrangle dragons?"

[Victoria Summers]

"Oh boy, Gringott's certainly would be neat,' not for the first time Vicky found herself happily struck by just how many amazing things there were to do in the Wizarding world and had she a million life times she didn't think she'd tire of any of them. "Romania, I think, or Egypt. They've great breeds - so does China. British dragons are weaklings compared to most." This was likely a matter of personal opinion, but still a wonderful excuse to get away when she graduated. She didn't want to stay in England or Scotland or, to be honest, anywhere near her family. She loved them, she did, but her parents were heavy and tired and stuck in their ways and didn't fully understand the world of opportunities before her.

"And you're probably right, a Black crossbreed would probably produce something malformed and inbred." She snickered a little.

[Janus Thickey]

His laughter was a bit more pronounced than her snicker. "It'd be right terrible," he agreed, smiling, tapping his fingers on the wood of the fence, leaning back slightly, digging his heels into the loose, muddy grass so that his body was at a wide acute angle to the fence. Janus didn't look over at Vicky, though, his gaze fixed on the empty-looking field in front of them, half-distracted with thoughts of how invisibility like that could be selective in terms of the viewer. "I doubt it would last a week. Kettleburn would probably give me a T for the whole term, I'm sure, and that's the end of enough NEWTs for curse-breaking."

It was probably something to do with magic; he shrugged and straightened against the fence so that he was standing upright again. Merlin, that was a sticky puzzle, wasn't it?

"China sounds fascinating," he added appreciatively, "although I'm sure I'd break my teeth trying to say anything in that language. You have any plans for learning how to speak Chinese, then?"

[Victoria Summers]

Victoria was, of course, already bilingual. Her Ukrainian only got practiced at home, however, and the rare occasion her mother insisted she write to her in it, just for the exercise. "Ha, no." The idea of learning a language was a rather tedious one, but she supposed necessary for her travelling ambitions. Academia seemed almost worth it, in the light of what it would allow her to do. "I suppose I'll have to think on that. Maybe there's some sort of translation charm."

There damn well should be, if there wasn't. How difficult could it be for magic to make the language leaving one person's mouth arrive in the ear of the listener as something else entirely?

[Janus Thickey]

Janus, on the other hand, was stolidly uni-lingual, and rather happily so. He'd never really felt the desire to expand his linguistic abilities beyond English - and, of course, spells, but that was different. There was no grammar when it came to spells, only rote memorisation and constant practising until he could cast them properly. "I think there is," he said casually, leaning back again momentarily before rocking forward on his heels until his knees hit the fence. "I can't recall the incantation, but I'm rather certain I've heard about one before." This time he did turn to face Vicky, his grin taking on a rather cheeky air. "Why, are you planning on using it instead of learning the actual language, you cheat?"

He absolutely did, and felt no shame about it. There was no point, in his mind, for a wizard to spend his time learning languages when there were spells to perfect and curses to break and tombs and barrows to make safe for the unwitting tourist or museum curator.

[Victoria Summers]

"With everywhere I'd like to go, I'd need to learn several languages,' she justified, but not because she was actually insulted by the slight. "I'd be an old bat before I got to dragon wrangling and somehow I think that'd put a hamper on my career."

That was another massive difference for Victoria. Not only the excitement inherent in a career in the Wizarding world, but the opportunity for one at all. No one in the Muggle world would think it possible for her to be anything but a housewife. There were no opportunities there that she wouldn't have to struggle enormously for. At the end of which, what? Some job that looked sickly and boring in comparison to the avenues she could follow magically.

[Janus Thickey]

"You've a point," he allowed. "But it might be interesting, to see an old bat wrangle dragons. I imagine most of them get eaten before they reach that age, don't you?" His question wasn't meant to frighten her or deter her from dragon wrangling, or even to point out the high mortality rate that accompanied the profession. Rather, it was just a joke, and Janus's sense of humour had never exactly been light. Besides, the both of them were going into careers where danger lurked around every corner - and wasn't that exactly why the both of them were doing it?

And to get out of England, of course. It was rare to meet someone so disinclined to stay in the country as Janus was, and here was Vicky standing here at the thestral pen with him, clever and - in a good sense - crude and remarkably willing to take incredibly stupid risks. Merlin, it was too bad it was his seventh year already; Janus suspected that he might have found someone whose sense of experimentation, when it came to magic, at least, finally matched his.

[Victoria Summers]

"I think it'd be a particularly good way to go,' she replied jokingly. Not that she was crazy enough to feed herself to a dragon in some circle-of-life nonsense. "Old lady wrestles, and loses, to Hungarian Horntail,' she read it like one might a headline and grinned again, pushing off the fence and glancing past it. "What else do you think he's got on hold?"

She thought she could see the outline of a small hill where she was sure there had been none previously and the realization struck her that it was, instead, something quite large and hunched over in the dark. Her grin widened. "I think there's a troll over there."

[Janus Thickey]

"Murder," he said appreciatively, peering off in the same direction that she was. He'd never had the best night vision, but now that he was actually looking, it was clear that there was a lumpy, hunched sort of shape where there hadn't been one before. "Trust Kettleburn to find a bloody troll. Come on, let's go." Without really considering whether or not it was polite, safe, or any of the above, Janus grabbed her arm and starting moving towards the place where she'd spotted the troll. "Do you think we need a Disillusion Charm or anything? I can't remember what Kettleburn said about trolls seeing in the dark."

His voice was lowered, though, in an attempt not to disturb the creature they were approaching at a pace that wasn't quite as fast as the one at which people usually ran from trolls. Any pace that lead towards trolls, though, was generally considered to be too fast. But then his steps slowed as they approached; the shapes in front of them coalesced clearly enough for Janus to judge distance, and the grin faded just a little.

"Er, Vicky," he said. "I'm not sure that troll is actually behind a fence."

[Victoria Summers]

Not minding the arm-grab or generally being towed along, since it was in the direction in which she wanted to go, even she gave pause at the idea that the troll was in no way restrained. She peered as hard as she could and then nodded slowly, "I think you're right."

The next smart move would be, of course, to turn around and leave and just hope the troll did not notice. It had probably been attracted by the great amount of new animals penned up about the grounds and was in fact standing outside a Hippogriff pen, supposedly with its back to them. Honestly it was so lumpy it was difficult to tell which side was its backside. Instead, Vicky found herself torn. "I don't think there's a way to scare it off without upsetting everything else here."

[Janus Thickey]

They stood there in the dark, staring at the troll. Janus had been tempted to turn around and leave without catching its attention, but trust Vicky to be interested in trying to drive it away from the other magical creatures that Kettleburn had collected for experimental breeding. He bit back a sigh; he supposed that even the most interesting girls couldn't escape feminine soft-heartedness towards animals, even animals like thestrals and hippogriffs that could probably defend themselves from a single forest (well, it had come from the Forbidden Forest, anyway) troll.

"Can you cast a Patronus?" he asked softly on the terribly slim off-chance that she could. "We could try to lure it away with an illusion or something, but I can't cast a corporeal Patronus. Or maybe sparks into the forest? Or Relashio against one of the bushes or something?" What worried him was his inability to remember how well trolls could smell: he and Vicky both reeked of cigarette smoke at the moment.

[Victoria Summers]

A powerfully happy moment for Vicky had been receiving her letter from Hogwarts. The understanding that she'd be taken away from squalid slums and house-cleaning along side her mother to somewhere amazing had been so exciting she hadn't slept properly for days. Holding it in her head now, she nodded and slipped out her wand. Whispering the incantation harshly, she just hoped trolls didn't have particularly good hearing. She figured their smell would be easily masked by all the different sorts of musk and animal dung that surrounded the place.

The patronus, for being whispered, wasn't the strongest; a vaguely formed winged thing slithered towards the forest - but it was enough to catch the trolls attention. It creaked upwards, lumbered to what she supposed were its feet and took a few steps towards her Patronous before something akin to really fucking bad luck struck. A thestral, possibly spooked by the same spell, made a loud, ghastly noise that struck the troll as more interesting. So it lumbered towards that pen - namely, really too close to where Vicky and Janus were standing.