Where Dark Meets The Light

Chapter 7: The Phoenix Brothers

It was once again the best time of the week.

Weekend.

This weekend, however, Jay had something more planned as her, and now Neville's, training. She'd let him choose a wand from the limited selection of wands she'd found while scavenging and it worked like a charm for him. Never before had casting spells been so easy now that he had his own wand and no longer the one his father used. He progressed leaps and bounds and Jay had decided that they needed to get him field trained.

There had been an abundance of new bounties put out by the ministry, and Jay was intending to make good use of it. There were many things that she still wanted to teach him before she took Nev out with her on a hunt, but time was running out and she had to make sure he was field ready.

Besides, she'd be there the entire time. She'd given Nev a portkey in case things went south in the worst possible way. She'd made sure his armor was the best she could do. She'd made sure he knew all spells he should.

And she was still worrying like crazy.

She knew he was as prepared as he could be for the time being, but there was still something nagging her. She didn't want to do it, but time was of essence and he had to be field ready by the time she had to leave.

Nev was nervous as well, but for different reasons.

What if he screwed up? What if he weren't good enough and Jay had wasted all that time teaching someone that couldn't be taught?

What if he got Jay hurt?

This was a thousand times worse as when they broke into the old death eater house, in his opinion. Back then, all he had to do was pay attention and let Jay take charge. Now he was going to take charge.

He knew in theory how it would go, they'd planned it to the very second. They had back-up plans for their back-up plans and he was sure Jay had even more that she hadn't told him about. It was, however, always the fact that theory and practically things were never on the same page. Or even in the same library.

They were once again at Hogsmeade ready to apparate away. This time Neville would apparate himself. They'd been practicing in the forest and he was honestly quite good at it.

This time it wasn't just jumping half a forest though, but half a country. "Ready?" Jay asked, checking one last time if her bag was tightly attached to her.

"Ready."

They apparated.

Neville landed a bit of a way away from London, exactly where he had planned to land. Once he checked himself over, he concluded that while he was tired from such a far jump, he wasn't splinched in the slightest.

Win.

Jay would meet him at the building he was at, so instead of moving he stripped himself of his normal clothing and started to put the pieces of armor on.

It was but a minute later that Jay came in through a window. "You good?" Is the first thing she asks.

"Yeah. Not a scratch." He's quite proud of it as well.

"Good." Jay hops down from the window still and begins to strip as well. By now, they are so used to changing in front of one another that it isn't the slightest bit awkward. It actually feels kind of normal. He'd been training in full armor the second he had it and putting it on felt like a habit nowadays.

He still took longer as Jay to get ready, but then again she'd been doing this for years while he'd been doing it for a few weeks at most.

While spring had arrived it was still cold during the nights. Jay had told him about one of her first stake-outs and how she'd been mentally cursing herself for not making her gloves warmer. He guesses he's lucky that he didn't have to make those mistakes and then sit in the cold for hours.