Chapter Text
Febuary 2008; Portland, Oregon
Dorea Rose Potter, now Juliette Silverton, was rushing down the sidewalk from her house toward her office. She knew would arrive early, but Juliette loved arriving earlier than her shifts just because of her desire to help animals. After Hedwig, Juliette had been heartbroken for her oldest friend and knew she wanted to make sure people didn't have to go through the heartbreak she went through. Admittedly, Hedwig died from magic and not from something natural or a disease, but it still stood that Juliette always wanted to do her best to make sure others didn't have to feel that pain for a long time.
Pausing at the stoplight and bouncing on the balls of her feet, she felt the magic and could almost feel like something was about to happen. Looking around curiously as the 5 am traffic was almost nonexistent, she thought about just walking forward and ignoring the red wait sign that's opposite of her, and was about to do just that, when the man opposite of her seemed to do just that and started walking forward.
Suddenly, there was a red Toyota suddenly came around the corner and smashed into the man. Juliette felt her pause rise as the car seemed to just keep moving forward. Looking at the car in shock and seeing the license plate behind it, she ignored it and ran to the man that had been in a hit-and-run.
The man had a deep gash at the top of his leg and was bleeding profusely where she knew if she didn't stop the bleeding he was going to certainly bleed out. As she continued her assessment she quickly pulled out her phone and just remembered to do 911 instead of 999 and shoved it in her ear as she shrugged off her light grey zipper sweatshirt and pressed it against his wound to slow the bleeding. Using the sleeves of the jacket and tightening it around him, she started relaying information to the operator while finally looking at the man's chest and could see the deep bruising already developing.
Hoping he didn't have any broken bones that puncture his lungs, she grabbed the belt around her waist and pulled it off, knowing her sweatshirt wasn't going to help too much, she wrapped the belt just above the man's wound on his leg and tightened it down, hoping to stop the blood flow and decrease his chance of bleeding out.
With the wound more or less taken care of between the belt and her jacket pressed against the wound, Juliette carefully felt along his ribs and could feel at least three were slightly broken and one fully broken along with seeing a shoulder that was definitely dislocated.
She debated about doing anything else when the sound of sirens reached her ears and she stood up, knowing the ambulance is going to want access to the man easily enough.
Soon the duo from the ambulance was there and getting the man in the back of the truck as two police cars arrived as well.
"Hi, I'm Detective Griffin, this is my partner Officer Burkhardt, mind telling us what happened?" A black male asked with two golden hooped earrings in both of his ears.
"I was waiting for the stoplight to turn so I could walk across, as I was about to ignore it, the man seemed to have the same idea and was already crossing when a red Toyota Camry came from that way," Juliette explained pointing toward the street with the stop sign on it, "it seemed to ignore the stop sign and barreled its way through here. It hit and the man and took off down that way. It didn't pause at all and didn't even seem to acknowledge that they just hit the man. I'm a Veterinarian Doctor and ran to the man while making sure his wound wasn't going to bleed out, I called 911."
"Alright, thank you for your help," The younger man said with a charming smile as he and his partner started turning away.
Juliette felt amusement dance inside her magical core as she raised her eyebrow, "Detective, Officer?" she called out and saw them turn around wondering if there was something else, "Did you want the license plate?" she inquired almost innocently.
"You got it?" the younger of the duo seemed to ask, seeming slightly surprised.
Nodding her head, she rattled off the number and letters that she remembered, which was over half of them but not the full plate as she had maybe a second before the car disappeared. It was almost easy-ish to remember after Moody had grilled into her didn't police procedures should she have to disappear into the Muggle World when the war first broke, not that she liked remembering those days.
The older of the two men seemed slightly suspicious, "You from around here?" he asked.
After living in the United States for roughly eight years already, her accent was still strong enough to be 'exotic' to the yanks around here, and while the 25-year-old knew it was certainly helpful in getting asked out, it was certainly annoying for the most part as she wasn't really looking for a relationship much to her colleagues' chagrin.
"I've lived here for eight years, moving from Britain when I was seventeen," Juliette told them.
The goblins had recommended staying as close to the truth as possible, so her history was being an orphan since being a year old and was originally allowed to be emancipated at fourteen and had only moved away from England at seventeen with the money her Godfather and parents had left her when she was fifteen when she 'fully' inherited it. In truth, she would've inherited the money when she was seventeen had the ministry not forced to her compete in the Triwizard Tournament, a Tournament that meant the contestant had the magical parents' permission or was emancipated. No one but those two options had she known that then she fully could've gotten out of it. So being emancipated meant she got her full inheritance, she remembered staying in various hotels that summer after Sirius died and staying away from the Order just out of spite and not wanting to go back to her relatives.
"That's awfully young," the younger one said but didn't sound like an accusation but rather concern. It seemed he had a soft heart, which made Juliette think he would do well as a job, but eventually, his heart might get torn with his mind.
Smiling regardless, thinking the younger of the duo was cute, Juliette moved the hair out of her face and behind her ear, giving them a slightly awkward smile. "It's just what ended up happening. Anyway, I need to get going, I need to be at work soon. If you have any more questions for me, you can call Roseway Veterinary Hospital and ask for me, or you can visit almost anytime during the week."
"Thank you for your time," the older gentleman said as he practically dragged his partner away to talk to the officers that secured the scene.
With that, Juliette was on her way and tried not to think about the younger of the two, the Officer she recalled, dazzling and cute smile.
Juliette was working in the back on the British Shorthair that had come in with his ears cut off ruggedly from a couple of kids who had chopped them off as some type of joke. Remembering there wasn't anything she could do now, she could practically feel the anxiety flowing through the cat as she started wrapping the bandages around his head to keep the infection out of the ears, her magic flowing through her fingertips to further calm the cat, when one of the assistants came to her. "An Officer Burkhardt has come to see you."
"Let him on back," Juliette said as placed more anti-infection carefully around the ears and checking on their healing process, already seeing some of the inflammation swell down and some healing has started.
"Woah, what happened to him? Her? Him?" The brown hair man asked his soft grey, almost green, eyes shining with shock.
"He happened to get his ears cut from a couple of kids," Juliette said as she softly pets the cat under his chin, causing him to purr softly even as he stared cautiously at Nick.
"Did they get caught?" the officer asked in concern as he hesitantly reached out and let the cat sniff her fingers before he let the man pet him slowly and not near his ears.
Juliette nodded as she started putting her tools away, having already rewrapped her patient's head just before the officer came in. "Was there something you needed, Officer?" Juliette asked with a faint smile as she picked up Mr.Whiskers, as the Office called him, and put him back into his kennel to keep away from anything that would set back his progress.
Turning back around, she saw a faint blush around his cheeks as he rubbed the back of his head. "Uh, yeah. We got the guy, seemed someone hired him to hit Mr.Bridges. He sends his thanks, by the way, claims you saved his life, mostly because I think the hospital told them that you had since if he lost more blood he could've died. Just...thought you should know and that the license plate really helped," the man said.
"Thank you, it's nice to know the man won't be hurting anyone else," Juliette said with a faint blush herself, realizing the two seemed to be in awkward silence.
Juliette observed the officer in front of her and could feel the blush almost worsen as she realized he really was cute. It still happened to be slightly dark out when they initially met, and having that meeting be nearly a full week ago made her almost forget what the officer looked like. Under this lighting though, she thought he looked really pretty.
"I uh, had something else to ask too," the man almost mumbled out, his blush definitely worsening as he looked away from her.
"Yeah?" Juliette mumbled out her eyes staying on the man's face.
"I was, uh, wondering if you wanted to have dinner. With me, that is," the man fumbled out and Juliette could feel her heart quicken.
The response to almost turning him down on the tip of her tongue. "Sure," she said instead and nearly shocked herself with accepting, but what could one date harm?
After all, her magic seemed almost eager to meet him, might as well see what the fuss might be about.