Chapter 8
“Another day, another reminder that our OWLs are one day closer.” Rapunzel plopped herself down beside Anna with a yawn, still smoothing out the morning tangles from her gold-spun tresses.
“Time for the shears, perhaps?” The redhead winced in sympathy, watching her friend assault a particularly gnarly knot.
“I tried! It! Just! Keeps! Argh! Growing! Right! Back!” Rapunzel scowled, eventually giving up and bundling her trailing locks into a giant French twist. “It has to be that no good Cassandra, I know it! Must have cast a hex on me…ooh that smells lovely…”
Anna swatted her hand away from the cup of piping hot cocoa, brimming with a generous topping of mini-marshmallows as it steamed quietly on a saucer, waiting to be sipped.
“Get your own hot cocoa. This is for my owl!”
“Oh I see how it is.” Rapunzel crossed her arms over her chest. “Owls before mates, huh?”
Anna ignored her, giving the concoction a gentle stir, and casting a cooling charm on it.
Perfect.
“Pass the bacon, would you?”
Huffily, the blonde complied with the request, and Anna added a strip of honey bacon to her plate, carefully dicing it into little bits with a knife and fork in hand.
Rapunzel’s brow twitched. “Is that…for your owl too?”
Anna nodded. “Nix won’t eat her food unless I cut it into little pieces. She can’t swallow them if they’re too big. Oh, and she hates throwing pellets! Poor thing would look so miserable after…”
Rapunzel looked like she wanted to tell her that knocking back her breakfast in one gulp and hacking up the bony and furry bits after was precisely what the snowy should be doing, but she was interrupted by the sudden flurry of owls streaming through the windows, hooting raucously as they circled the Great Hall until they spotted their owners, then swooping down to drop off their letters and deliveries.
The skies had mostly cleared of falling mail by the time Nix appeared, flying in with the last of the stragglers. She spotted Anna at once and hurried over to her, landing with a soft flump between the milk jar and the sugar bowl and holding out a leg wearily.
Anna quickly untied Gerda’s letter, a few fuzzy feathers coming away with it, as well as a small but heavy drawstring pouch that jingled as she set it down on the table.
The first weekend trip to Hogsmeade village had just been announced, and there was already a giddy sense of anticipation in the air. It had also set off a slight panic amongst those who had forgotten to get their permission slips signed before the start of term, and had to hastily send an owl home to do so.
‘Your father’s been tied-up with some hush-hush business for the Ministry. But I’m sure he’d be only too happy for me to sign your slip on his behalf.’ Gerda’s letter wrote. ‘Take care of yourself. And Nix. The poor thing was looking a little tired and bedraggled when she arrived. I meant to have her rest for a day but she insisted on flying back.’
There was a final line at the bottom of the parchment. ‘P.S. A little penny to spend on your trip.’
Little? Judging by the weight of it, Anna wouldn’t be surprised if there were enough galleons in that pouch to afford half of Honeydukes. It had to be enchanted with some sort of extension charm, like the Hogwarts school trunks and even some wardrobes and robe pockets, allowing them to store loads more than they normally would in their capacious depths.
What was Gerda thinking sending her this much money? Had she scooped the grand prize at the Daily Prophet’s monthly draw? Anna turned the letter over in her hand, finding no further explanation for the extravagant gift.
She was still frowning over that when she felt a small tug at her sleeve.
“Nix?”
The snowy’s little face peered up at her, and she tugged again at Anna’s sleeve with a large fuzzy foot, as if asking if something was wrong.
Ugh, she’s just so fluffing cute.
She gave the owl a placating pet. Nix was a sensitive reader of emotion, though perhaps a little too sensitive at times.
“Here Nix, look what I’ve got for you!” She held up the large mug and its chocolaty contents. “Drink up before the marshmallows melt!”
The other owls had already retired to the Owlery. They had travelled far, and were expectably worn out and eager for some well-deserved rest. But Nix always stayed till the end of breakfast, doing her best to look regal and dignified while being coaxed to eat little morsels of food, and having her beak cleaned with a napkin after.
At one point she let out a squeaky little yawn, and Anna took the opportunity to shove the last piece of bacon in.
“Poor baby…let’s get you back to the Owlery for a nice long nap.”
Nix mustered a low hoot of protest, sounding no less tired than she looked, but stubbornly denying it.
“Alright, alright. I’ll pet you for a bit. Then it’s off to bed with you!” Anna gave in to her softly imploring gaze, secretly pleased that Nix was learning to ask for things, even if she was still so shy and diffident about it.
The snowy hooted again, this time in acquiescence, turning her head toward Anna as she stroked it, and even closing her eyes blissfully.
Despite that, Anna couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt.
Between the burgeoning amounts of homework that the Professors had been doling out, and Mulan waking them up at arse-cracking dawn for Quidditch practice, she hadn’t been spending as much time with her owl as she’d like.
But this weekend it’ll be just us two, spending the most beautiful day at Hogsmeade together.
“Mollycoddling your owl again, Anna? Tsk, you Gryffindors treat everything like it’s a fluffy little bunny. Makes my gorge rise just looking at it. Oh look, it’s fallen asleep. The diddums.”
Anna turned sharply at the disparaging voice. “Cassandra? What are you doing here?”
“Being an insufferable git, obviously.” Rapunzel muttered under her breath, with a few more choice words for the Slytherin.
The little fracas had roused the snowy, sleep-leaden eyes blinking blearily until she spotted the uninvited company, causing her to start and retreat to the safety of Anna’s lap.
“Look, if you’re just here to tickle your own fancy, then you can bugger off. You’re upsetting my owl.” Anna said tersely, shooting the raven-haired girl a glare while stroking Nix’s back, smoothing ruffled feathers.
“Am I now?” A corner of Cassandra’s mouth lifted and she arched a sardonic brow as her slitted gaze slid from the bristling redhead to the snowy, who gave a little 'eek' and shifted her wings nervously. “Well it just so happens that my star Seeker was missing from practice this morning. I thought perhaps I’d find her here.”
Anna blinked. She had no bloody idea what the older girl was on about. And evidently neither did Rapunzel.
“How are we supposed to know where Her Royal Frostiness is? Seriously, have you’ve taken one on the head too, Cass? Because you’re a few sandwiches short of a picnic if you think she would be breakfasting with us.”
Annoyance flashed across the Slytherin’s face, and she gave a derisive sniff as she turned to leave, muttering something about ‘dumb Gryffindors…thick as logs…bunch of muppets’ and ‘we’ll see how long you can play this game, Arendelle.’
Rapunzel flicked a piece of toast at her back.
“You don’t suppose something could have happened to her?” Anna wondered out loud.
“Apart from a bad case of schmuck-itis?” The blonde scoffed drolly.
“I mean to El–” Anna bit her lip. “To Arendelle. Missing practice and getting into detentions…she doesn’t seem like the sort to be remiss about stuff like that.”
“You aren’t thinking of looking for her, are you?” Rapunzel levelled a gaze at her. “Anna, you don’t have to worry about everyone, you know?”
“I don’t worry about everyone.” Anna objected with a frown.
“Oh? Just the troubled but cute ones, then?”
“I can see that Cassandra is rubbing off on you.”
That drew a scowl from the blonde. “Don’t pass the Quaffle, we’re talking about you and your weakness for damaged, emotionally repressed creatures with tortured, brooding eyes and more issues than Witches Weekly.” She made a case-in-point gesture at Nix.
“In any case, I suggest you steer clear of that walking glacier. She isn’t an aloofly beautiful owl that will eat out of your hand and graciously allow you to pet its feathers.”
Anna bit her lip. She couldn’t deny that a part of her had been hoping to meet the pale blonde again, even actively seeking her out, though her efforts thus far had been unavailing. The furtive girl hadn’t been anywhere she had looked, from the cloistered courtyards to the disused dungeon chambers to the coldest corner of the library.
Not even at the Astronomy Tower on the nights that she had snuck up there, a reproachful Nix in tow. The snowy hadn’t approved of Anna’s late night sojourns, and had made her feelings on the matter quite clear with lots of ‘oo-hoo-ing’ and an admonitory nip on the wrist. But it hadn’t stopped her from fluffing up her feathers to keep her human warm, like an oversized muff.
In all honesty, Anna didn’t know how to even begin deciphering the enigma that was Elsa Arendelle.
Beyond her wintry beauty and chilling blue eyes that resembled chiselled chips of ice, the Snow Queen was a paragon of self-possessed grace and poise, without a trace of emotion in her sharp inscrutable features and an almost tangible icy aura that seemed to emanate from every fiber of her being. The latter Anna could personally attest to.
But the girl she'd happened on that night had been…different.
Sure, her conversational skills had been dryer than wood, her smile more strained than those awkward silences, leaving little doubt that she was used to keeping her thoughts and feelings under wraps. But for a moment, it was as though her mask had slipped, allowing Anna a glimpse of the girl behind it.
A girl who looked like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.
“I–I’m taking Nix back to the Owlery.” Not waiting for a reply, she gathered up her owl and sped off down the hall.
.
Getting through her classes was a slog. Despite willing herself to focus on her spellwork and lectures, Anna just couldn’t get her heart and mind into it.
It didn’t help that they had a double-block of Transfigurations after an already trying morning of History of Magic and Divinations. By the end of the period, she still hadn’t any success at vanishing her gerbil, and was the only one assigned with extra homework practice, on top of all the essays and readings that had been piling up like a snowdrift.
“Maybe I’ll feed it to Nix. At this point, that’s the only hope I have of vanishing it.” She muttered glumly, as they trotted down to the dungeons.
Rapunzel snorted. “That saturnine little goose wouldn’t eat it even if it was a frozen ratsicle. She’d probably give it the cold shoulder, or that frigid ‘don’t-come-near-me-or-my-human-ever-again’ stare.”
“Wands away, textbooks out!” To Anna’s surprise, it wasn’t Professor Gothel addressing the class, but Cassandra. “Today we will be brewing the Wit-Sharpening Potion. Which some of you are no doubt in need of.” Her eyes glittered in their direction.
“Where’s Gothel?” Rapunzel nudged Anna in the side as they took their seats.
“Professor Gothel is indisposed, and has left me in charge of conducting this class.” Cassandra interjected sharply. “Now, if there are no further questions from you two, we will begin…”
With Gothel’s suspicious absence adding to everything else on Anna’s mind, her potion was doomed from the start. Still, it didn’t make it any less mortifying when her cauldron had bubbled over, gurking out its contents with an acrid belch. Cassandra had given her a ‘really, now?’ look, scourgifying the mess with a flick of her wand and having Anna re-do it from scratch.
“Finally, I thought the day would never end.” The redhead groaned, slumping down at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall and licking her lips at the pork chops, pumpkin pies, and oooh pudding!
“Did you forget about homework?” Rapunzel quirked a wry brow. “You shouldn’t put it off if you want to go to Hogsmeade this weekend.”
Anna held back a pout, but she grudgingly joined the blonde in trudging off to the library after dinner, fully expecting to work late into the night.
By the time she finished her essay on the second–or was it the third–Goblin rebellion and moved on to the one on Doxies, her eyes were starting to water and her writing had deteriorated into an almost illegible scrawl.
“That isn’t right.” Rapunzel pointed to the line Anna had just written. “Doxy bites are highly venomous, not poisonous.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Anna, we’ve been through this before. If it bites you and you die, it's venomous. If you bite it and you die, it's poisonous.”
“Right. I’ll be sure to remember that the next time I’m cleaning out a nest of the nasty little buggers––Nibbles, no!”
Nibbles was of course the beady-eyed gerbil who had somehow chewed his way out of his carrier, and was presently enjoying a nibble at the corner of Anna’s essay. She reached over to scoop him up, only for the gerbil to turn tail and scamper off before she could apprehend him.
“Hey! Get back here!” Lurching to her feet, Anna sprang after him, leaving a flummoxed Rapunzel staring after them.
A lunge and a miss. Nibbles scurried down a corridor, with Anna following in hot pursuit. Good thing it was getting close to curfew so the hallways had mostly emptied of students, and the few that were making their way back to their dorms were smart enough to get out of the way.
Swearing under her breath, Anna hurtled up a flight of stairs, narrowly avoided a collision with a suit of armour, rounded a sharp bend…and came to a skidding halt.
Abruptly, as though someone had cast a Freezing Charm on him, Nibbles had stopped moving. The gerbil looked utterly petrified, trembling on the spot like a cornered prey that was moments away from being snatched up by a pair of flashing talons.
And standing a little ways off, looking perfectly put together as always in a knitted monogram sweater over a crisp dress shirt tucked neatly into tailored trousers, green and silver tie cinched at the hollow of her neck, snowy bangs slightly (read: perfectly) mussed–was the unmistakable figure of Elsa Arendelle.
Just skulking around the corridors, scaring the living daylights out of unsuspecting Gryffindors and gerbils.
The older girl seemed no less surprised to see her, though she kept it contained to an owlish blink, head tilting down at just the right angle to make her gaze appear even more raptorial than usual.
No wonder Nibbles had been scared stiff, as any small defenceless creature would be under that soul-piercing stare.
“Here, Nibbles. It’s okay. I got you.” Dropping to a crouch, Anna held out a hand to the gerbil, who wasted no time in scampering up her sleeve.
“I apologise. Small animals don’t exactly like me.” As always, Elsa’s manner was one of stiff politeness, but there was a slight edge in her voice. “I didn’t mean to scare your new pet.”
It might have been her imagination, but Anna thought she detected a flicker of hurt, and dare she say jealousy, in those austere blue eyes.
“Oh, Nibbles isn’t my pet! He’s my um…extra homework practice. And besides, I already have my hands full with my owl!”
Elsa’s pale, hollow cheeks flushed. “Has she been a lot of trouble for you?”
“A whole lot! She’s a stinker, always making me worry about her…whether she’s eating or sleeping well, whether something bad’s happened to her, whether she’s had another accident with her ma––I mean, she’s definitely given me more than a few strands of hair to match her feathers!”
She grinned up at the Slytherin, hoping to see her crack a small smile. But the older girl’s jaw was set in a tight grimace.
“You’re too good to her.” Downcast eyes fluttered shut for a moment as Elsa wrung her hands together, as though unsure of what to do with them. “I’m sure she feels deeply indebted to you, even if she’s hardly in a position to repay your kindness, apart from ferrying your letters. I’m sure she’ll understand if you…deem her to be more trouble than she’s worth.”
“You sound just like Nix! That’s exactly what that silly floofball would think!” Anna bristled indignantly. “She just needs a little more care and affection, that’s all. It isn’t her fault that she’s been conditioned to keep her feelings hidden, to believe that she’s a cur–” Her throat clenched.
“If you only knew what she’s been through…” She broke off, voice trembling slightly. If only I knew…
Nix’s past was still a mystery to her, and what little she had gleaned had only brought more questions than answers.
At first, all she had wanted was to give her a warm and loving home, though with each passing day, those questions swirling at the back of her head were only growing louder and louder, her worries gathering like snowflakes in a blizzard.
She had done her best to care for her, and the snowy seemed genuinely happy to belong to her, taking the utmost pride in carrying her letters and delighting in her reward of pets and praises. But there was still a dark cloud hanging over her head, a sadness that resided in her eyes.
More than once, Anna had caught them looking at her with a confluence of conflicted emotions. And she was losing weight again, barely touching her food unless Anna was there to coax some into her. She didn’t dare think about how thin the snowy was underneath all her glorious feathers.
Elsa had lapsed into silence, mouth still drawn taut in a grimace, her ashen face a stark contrast to the dark circles of accrued fatigue under her eyes.
“Are you having nightmares still?” Anna frowned at her. “You look like you’ve been losing sleep. And Cassandra said you weren’t at Quidditch this morning.”
“I’m fine.” Elsa gave an unconvincing shake of her head.
“Don’t be thick, you’re paler than a ghost!” And that was only a small exaggeration. “I mean, you look like you could do with a pepper-up potion, or at the very least a potent sleeping draught. Belle always keeps a flask of it in the infirmary, I can get–”
“That wouldn’t be necessary.” Elsa demurred, fronds of snowy blonde hair brushing low against her brow. “You don’t need to waste your time worrying about someone like me.”
From the cold finality in her tone, she might as well have said ‘go away, Anna’.
“That’s not–” Anna opened her mouth to argue, but Elsa’s sharp look made it clear that any further protests would only be met by another ‘polite’ rebuff and the Slytherin’s stock phrase of ‘I’m fine’.
Why does she have to be so bloody-minded and contrary all the time? “What are you doing up this late, anyway?” It was almost certainly past curfew by now. No doubt she was going to get another earful from Rapunzel when she got back to the dorms.
Elsa’s lips thinned. “I had detention.”
Again?
“At least it’s not on the weekend, so you won’t have to miss the Hogsmeade trip!” Even Elsa had to enjoy sipping on a hot foaming tankard of delicious Butterbeer, though Anna wouldn’t be surprised if she preferred it chilled, even on a crisp autumn day. She tried to give her a cheering smile, but the older girl didn’t look heartened.
“I’ve…never been to Hogsmeade.” She spoke in a murmur.
Never been to Hogsmeade?! Anna couldn’t keep her surprise, and horror, from being written all over her face.
Elsa had clamped up again after that admission, allowing the silence to once again settle between them, and Anna had to bite her lip to keep from asking more. It was obvious that the Slytherin was extremely reticent about her personal affairs. Perhaps she was just physically uncomfortable in crowds?
She drew a deep breath, before saying in a rush. “This may sound crazy, but would you like to go with me? To Hogsmeade, I mean. Not as a date! But like, you know, as umm…”
“Anna–”
“Of course you wouldn’t want to. Forget what I said…I was just thinking…”
What was she thinking?
“Anna!” Those glacial blue eyes were suddenly inches from hers, and Anna nearly startled as she felt icy fingers closing around her wrist. “Shhh, someone’s coming.”