Chapter 4
Nora found herself in the Ministry Department of Transportation sitting in a chair in front of the desk of another Weasley, Percy Weasley to be exact. The original tea cup that Nora had used when she traveled from Norway to Diagon Alley was sitting on the desk. Percy was overlooking her application for a portkey to Romania. At the Seminar, she learned they have different types of dragons there instead of one type of them and it seemed bigger.
Charlie had avoided her during the remainder of the seminar as well. Not that, it bothered Nora. Charlie was an enigma, and it seemed like Percy was the same. There were a few pleasantries that were exchanged between Nora and Percy but it was silent as he looked over her application. It was so quiet, Nora could hear the muggle clock ticking behind where she was sitting. She tapped her fingers nervously on her knee caps. She was never turned away for traveling by portkey, but then again, no one ever did.
Percy cleared his throat. "So, you're looking to get a portkey to Romania?" He asked. "Are you going to the dragon reserve?"
Nora straightened up in her seat. "Yes I am."
"Oh I know someone from there, I read on your file that you have been to quite a few." Percy observed. "Maybe this one will be your home?"
Nora chuckled to herself quietly. "Well I doubt it, but I will let you know."
Percy set down her paperwork and pulled out his wand. "What time are you looking at leaving?"
"Oh, um, anytime! I already gave notice to the Norwegian sanctuary of my resignation and the Romanian sanctuary of my arrival." Nora replied, bounding her knee in anticipation. Percy nodded and tapped the tea cup with his wand.
"This should be ready by 3 pm this evening. Do you need a portkey to pack up your belongings in Norway?"
Nora shook her head. "No, I don't have much and I already have everything that I need."
"Wow, you don't waste time." Percy commented.
Nora shrugged at him. "I consider myself a leaf in the wind." She spotted a piece of lint on her knee and she picked it off. It stuck out like a sore thumb on the fabric of her black pants. She looked back up at Percy and smiled at him shrugging again.
Percy raised his eyebrow. "Alright then, well you know the drill, make sure no muggles are around when you use the portkey. You will be transported fairly close to the Romanian sanctuary, there will be a marked path."
That was odd, Nora had never been portrayed off location before. "You can't just get me right on location?"
Percy shook his head. "I'm afraid not. There will be a giant building, you'll meet who you will be training with there and you'll be shown your dorm. You'll have the night off to unpack, your trainer will set you up with when to meet him."
So she will be meeting with a man. Not that Nora was surprised, it was a male dominated profession. She hoped he wasn't a jerk. Nora nodded, taking the teacup in her hand. "Thank you."
"Good luck." Percy said.
Nora got to her feet and moved to leave the office. She pulled open the door just enough to slip out before it shut on its own. The chairs across the hallway from her were taken from other witches and wizards looking to travel by portkey. She nodded to them with a smile and turned down the hallway the way she came.
She wanted to leave the ministry and get back to her room at the Leaky Cauldron and pack up her belongings. Nora couldn't just disapperate, but there were multiple fireplaces on the main floor to floo to the Leaky Cauldron. There was an elevator at the end of the hallway, she pressed the button to call it. It was a very fast elevator that moved all ways to get to the different levels to the Ministry of Magic.
Nora had never really been to the different areas of the Ministry herself, but she definitely knew her way around the Department of Transportation. Percy Weasley wasn't the head for very long, he was the assistant to the minister for a while. After the war he eventually took over. That's just what Percy told her when she first met him when she transferred to the Norwegian sanctuary. She wondered what it said in her file that Percy had. For sure he had her application, but there must be some information on the different places she traveled and for how long. Nora wondered if it had all her past applications in there. Percy seemed like the type of bloke who was quite meticulous in that sense.
When Nora got to the main floor, she steered in the direction of the fireplaces, dodging between the other people going to and from work. She couldn't imagine working in an office, she liked how she didn't know what to expect.
She grew to love the smell of fire.
There were cups by every fireplace full of floo powder. Nora grabbed a handful and stepped into the fireplace.
"The Leaky Cauldron!" Nora said as she tossed the powder at her feet, and she was swallowed up by the bright green flames. She held her breath as they came to her face and after a moment, they died down and she was standing in the large fireplace of the Leaky Cauldron.
It looked somewhat busy, probably the lunch rush. Nora debated on getting lunch, but she didn't want to make it worse for them. She had some sort of snack food up in her room anyway, she could snack maybe until it calmed down. It was still early anyway; the portkey wouldn't be ready until 3 pm. Nora had to pack anyway so maybe that would kill the time until she had to leave.
She was somewhat nervous about traveling to the Romanian sanctuary, well, she was always nervous starting in a new place. She was especially nervous when she traveled to China. She barely knew any Chinese and it was very different compared to London. At least within the sanctuary, there were other people there that could speak both English and Chinese, like Zihan, that would help her out. It was no different in Norway.
On the bright side, she would be staying in a dorm, so she wouldn't have to worry about finding her own housing.
Nora placed her duffel bag on the bed and opened it. Was an undetectable extension charm placed on the bag, so she had more stuff in the bag than how it looked. She folded up the clothes she wore over the past few days and put them on top of the piles of clothes. She didn't want to wash them at the moment, but she would have time to do that after meeting with her trainer.
After her bag was repacked, Nora had nothing to do but wait. The one window in the room was large and it gave her the view of a busy muggle street in London. Perhaps she could kill time by muggle watching. But that wasn't interesting to her. Muggles were terribly dull.
At a quarter to three, Nora slung her bag over her shoulder and shut the door to her room behind her. She made her way to the bar with her key, there was a different person working.
"Hi, here is the key to room 4," Nora placed the key on the bar.
"Do you need anything else?" The bartender asked. Nora shook her head and turned to an empty table. The time it took for her to give her key back didn't take as much time as Nora hoped. Which left her to sit alone and kill ten minutes.
A male waiter walked up to her. "Is there anything I can get started for you, love?"
Nora shook her head. "I'm just waiting until my portkey is ready." She took the portkey out of her pocket and placed it on the table. There was nothing going to be wrong with taking the portkey out of there while she was still sitting at the table. There was the dull roar of multiple conversations that were happening in the room. Nora couldn't focus on a singular conversation.
It would have been nice if she could focus on a conversation so she would have something else to take her mind off of being awkward. Nora was only able to be herself around dragons. The nicest thing about dragons is they don't judge someone by how they acted.
Nora glanced at her watch, bouncing her knee as she did. She had one more minute left. Keeping an eye on the watch, Nora all but counted down the minutes with her hand hovering over the teacup. Once the watch read three pm, Nora placed her hand on the cup and felt like she was being sucked into the cup.
Then she found herself standing on the start of a hiking trail in the woods. In her time working with dragons, she knew it was never a good idea to hike alone in the woods where they lived. Nora herself wasn't sure which way was the Romanian Sanctuary, she looked over her shoulder to see if anything looked different behind her.
It didn't.
Nora sighed. "Perfect." Her very first day in the new sanctuary, well technically outside the sanctuary and she had no idea which way to go. It would have been easier if her trainer would have waited for her, but apparently, she was going to have to come to him. The trail was gravel and it sloped downhill slightly, it didn't look bad at all. Nora rolled the sleeves of her jacket up to her forearms and started down the trail in the direction she was headed.
What started out as an easy hike, sloped even more and there were rough stairs carved into the ground. "They couldn't have let me portkey into the sanctuary, I'm going to have to hike with my luggage." Nora grumbled to herself as she started taking the stairs. It's not like the bag was heavy by all means, because it was non detectable, the weight was quite deceiving compared to how much stuff was in the bag.
A dragon flew in the sky above her head, and she stopped walking to admire it in the sky. Nora shielded her eyes from the sun with her hands cupped as a visor at her forehead. She always envied them with their freedom to fly through the sky. Nora used to daydream that she could fly alongside them and never come back. It seemed like they were from another world.
The dragon circled the forest a few times. She could hear the roar echo off the trees and feel the earth shake with the power behind its voice. Nora couldn't tell how big it was with how high it was in the sky, but she must have guessed that it was at least a year old to have the power in its voice. Butterflies erupted in Nora's stomach as she imagined herself flying with the dragon.
When she lost sight of the dragon, Nora released the breath she didn't realize she was holding. Dragons were truly amazing. Even though Nora knew so much about dragons already, they never ceased to stun her. Everything they did made her jaw drop in shock.
Nora sat down on the step to give her knees a moment to stop shaking. She always had the same reaction seeing a dragon, which was similar to the first time witnessing one. That is typical when someone comes across something they are passionate about.
After Nora hiked for what seemed like forever, it turned out where she was walking in the right direction. She emerged from the woods to find the Romanian dragon sanctuary was surrounded by a mountain range. Nora did not know anything about Romanian georgeraphy to know what mountain range surrounded the area, but it did act as a natural barrier. She could see a cluster of buildings that acted as a small town. There were people out and about but Nora wasn't interested in that. Her eyes were drawn to the few dragons who were basking in the warm sun. It was still pretty chilly, they were taking advantage of the sunny day.
She realized that she wasn't told which building to report to. All Percy had told her was that it was a giant building. She decided to head towards the biggest building among the cluster, either way if she was wrong, someone would be sure to point Nora in the right direction. Which would have been nice if Percy had done that a little bit better in the first place.
Nora adjusted her bag to a more comfortable spot on her shoulder and started walking to the building. It seemed to be an administration and also had dorm rooms. Nora pulled the door open and walked inside. The cool wind gusted inside with her, it ruffled papers that were on the desk that was very close to the door. There was also a cork board behind the desk and the papers that only had push pins in the top also got ruffled due to the gust of wind. The first room was fairly small, with the desk closest to the door and then a hallway leading further into the building. Nora couldn't see very much down the hallway, but she imagined that's where the housing was along with offices. There was someone else in the room with Nora, he had his back to her, and he was standing at the desk, which had a lip that was slightly higher, so he wasn't leaning over to have a hard surface to write upon.
His red hair was tousled and hung down his back and shoulders. The last time Nora saw the hair, it was up neatly in a bun. She let out a stunned breath. He didn't seem to notice her as he continued to fill out the paperwork. Nora took a couple steps towards him until she was standing at his elbow.
"You didn't tell me you worked at the Romanian dragon sanctuary." Nora said, looking up at him. He continued to ignore her; he didn't even glance up at her to acknowledge her presence. She watched his thick, ginger eyelashes flicker as he read the paperwork. She couldn't stop the jealousy as she admired his tangle of lashes.
Nora shifted her weight impatiently. "Charlie?" She asked, trying to get his attention.
"How did you find me?" He finally asked casually, not looking up from the paperwork.
She was surprised for a moment, finally she found her voice. "Parden?"
Charlie finally looked up at her, the corners of his lips tugging down in a frown. "I said, how did you find me?"
Nora raised her eyebrow and breathed the air in and out of her nose. "I was already planning on leaving the Norway sanctuary, I just chose this one on whim, I had no idea you were here."
Charlie mimicked her and raised his eyebrow. "If I find out how you found out I was here and assigned yourself to me someone will pay. Follow me."
Charlie turned away from Nora and began walking down the hallway. Nora yanked up her bag and had to run to keep up with him. "I'm paying for it now." She said under her breath hoping he couldn't hear her. Charlie stopped suddenly, causing Nora to run into his back. The muscles that made up his back were hard, almost as hard as running into a wall. There was no give that bodies tend to act, and it didn't feel all soft and fleshy. She gasped and jumped back. He turned towards her with a frown on his face, his jaw clenched and unclenched. Like he couldn't decide what he wanted to do with her. He tilted his head and looked at her standing before him. Even though Nora was average height for a woman, the heels she was wearing before deceived him of her real height. She was nearly as tall as him during the seminar and now she came to his shoulder. All of the Weasley children were tall, except for Ron and Ginny of course.
Charlie watched the steadily increasing rise and fall of Nora's chest as her breathing picked up. Both of her hands grasped the strap of her duffle bag that was slung across her torso and settled on her hip, the opposite hip from the shoulder. For a moment Charlie felt bad for frightening Nora, but then he remembered his heart of stone and blew the air out of his lungs with his nose.
"Careful," he warned sternly. "Try to keep up."
Charlie turned away from Nora, leaving her confused and frightened.