I fly like paper, get high like planes
*The plane is something called a Beech C-99, a bizarre and zippy little thing that seats fifteen. Dearborn has always liked airplanes, the smaller and more rickety the better. It’s such a production, so foreign and hilarious: the noise of the tarmac, the Muggles in funny clothes running two and fro and operating machines and waving glowing things and shouting back and forth in Portuguese, the bells and whistles and switches, the roar of the engines. It may be residual intoxication from the night before, but as he mounts the stairs and enters the belly of the thing, he’s almost ebullient...but his good mood doesn't last long.
It seems at first like an impossible coincidence, the two of them seated next to one another on a Muggle airplane in a tiny foreign island, until Dearborn realizes in the next moment that it isn’t so impossible after all. He and Dorcas Meadowes are both in the habit of using Muggle transport, he due to a certain penchant for thrill-seeking and she because of her filthy blood-heritage. He and Dorcas Meadowes are in in overlapping fields that necessitate keeping one’s ear to the ground about the passing of the eccentric wealthy. The eccentric wealthy in question had been Irene Gamp, a hundred and eighteen years old, disgustingly rich and very eccentric: eccentric enough to retire to a tiny volcanic island off Portugal, eccentric enough to amass a lifetime’s worth of curios and books and enchanted artifacts. Eccentric enough to remain childless.
Eccentric enough to leave it all to her fucking housekeeper. The trip had been a bust.
Consequently, he and Dorcas Meadowes have both been recently disappointed enough to catch the first available morning fight to London. So perhaps it isn’t that impossible of a coincidence after all. As he stares down at her there is a brief urge to unclasp his leather suitcase, remove the collapsible broomstick within, and simply beat her about the head with it. But it didn’t do to neglect one’s manners, and it would certainly delay the flight. So instead Dearborn squashes his long frame into the seat, all safari tweeds and the stink of expensive cigar smoke, and smiles nastily.*
What a pleasant surprise.