Chapter 12
“Anna…please…it’s not what you think…” The frost in Elsa’s eyes was fractured, mirroring the crack in her voice.
Her robes fluttered around her like a pair of wings as blustery winds continued to lash violently about her whip thin frame, and Anna could see that they were torn and ripped in places – presumably from getting snagged on a branch or bough, while her face and arms bore an assortment of cuts and gashes, some of which looked like they might have come from a talon-bearing foot.
Anna could only continue to stare in aghast. Her entire body felt numb, her mind still reeling as it scrabbled to make sense of the scene before her.
“Elsa, what–what is going on?” She forced herself to breathe, searching that pale visage for answers.
Why would Elsa attack a fellow student? What were the two of them doing in the forest? And how did they managed to get this far into the dark, impenetrable woods? Anna was starting to get the faint inkling that there was more to this than meets the eye.
The Slytherin’s shoulders tensed, and she looked away with a tight grimace, her face not pink from cold but devoid of any traces of colour.
Say something! Anna willed desperately. But the girl kept silent, gnawing on her bottom lip until it drew blood. She wouldn’t even meet Anna’s eyes.
A soft groan at her feet roused Anna to action, swallowing back the thousand demanding questions as she sank down beside the limp form, shaking him urgently by the shoulders.
“Olaf! Olaf, wake up!”
“…is he alright?” Elsa edged a step toward them, her voice little more than a tremulous whisper.
“Sta-ay away!” Anna warned her off with a glare. “Don’t come any closer!”
Elsa stopped short at once, physically flinching at the abrasiveness in Anna’s tone, as though she had lashed out with a hex or curse instead of heated words.
Like a statue of cold white marble, she looked at once beautiful and fragile, allowing Anna’s anger to wash over her, arms that had been wrapped around herself falling to hang limply by her sides, as though she didn’t deserve even that small comfort.
Despite herself, Anna felt something clench in her chest.
Just as she heard the crunch of footsteps through the snow, coming towards them at a run, followed by a joint gasp.
Belle and Rapunzel both looked mortified beyond expression, the former dropping to a crouch beside Olaf, pulling out her wand and with a mutter of “Ennervate”. The boy stirred feebly, head lulling to the side.
Scathach was an entirely different story.
Anna had seen her anger look darkly terrifying. Once or twice, even crazed and unhinged. Often it was like molten magma–quiet and dangerous, bubbling and boiling deep beneath the surface, just waiting to burst through. And sometimes, there would be such an incendiary look in her eyes, as though she wanted nothing more than to burn the world to ashes and herself along with it.
But she had never seen the woman look all those things at once.
“What did you do?!” The Professor’s features were a mask of cold fury, that low whisper more chilling than the gelid air itself, raising goosebumps on Anna’s skin.
She couldn’t be certain if she imagined the small shiver–no, not a shiver but a shudder, for the girl never shivered–that rippled through the Elsa as she stood abjectly still, as though frozen inside.
Her silence only seemed to enrage the Professor more.
“Answer me, girl! Or do you need to be fed a few drops of Veritaserum to start chirping?” Teal irises darkened, their blistering gaze not leaving the stricken girl’s face for even a second, eyeing her like a ravenous beast would its prey.
Elsa’s eyes were glistened and suffused, finally looking up with a choked sob to reveal the frozen tears on her cheeks. “I’m sorry…”
“You don’t get to say that!” Scathach practically snarled, seizing her by the wrist, grip tight enough to bruise, and yanking the waxen-faced girl up to her.
Elsa staggered, struggling desperately to get away from the Professor’s vice-like grasp.
Temperatures plunged, the cold almost choking Anna’s lungs. Snow and sleet were falling hard and fast all around them, and the winds had picked up dramatically. Icicle-encrusted branches creaked as icy gales buffeted them from every direction, stirring the swirls of white flurries into a full-on maelstrom.
And they were right in the thick of it.
‘No! Please, no…’
Through the roiling snowscape, she caught a glimpse of the waifish Slytherin, crunched over on her knees in a trembling fit from head to toe, as though the squalling winds and blinding snow were responding to her overwrought emotions. If not her will.
It felt like her heart had iced over. Something about this was so achingly reminiscent…of a little snowy owl who harboured an unfathomable secret…and of that fateful night when Anna had pushed and Nix had cracked, nearly turning her room into something out of a frozen apocalypse as a result.
“Elsa, please! You have to stop this!”
Glazed eyes flickered open, and Anna found herself looking into an inexorable blizzard, and she was just a hapless snowflake caught in it.
“ANNA…!” The rushing winds roared in her ears, carrying Rapunzel’s alarmed cry away.
The last thing she saw was a burst of ice shooting out from Elsa’s fingers.
.
“…memories…erased…won’t be able to tell us anything…may have caught a chill from being out in the cold…otherwise unharmed, by some small miracle…”
Anna awoke from a nightmare that she remembered little of, save for the darkness. And the cold.
The clean walls and sterile sheets of the Hospital Wing greeted her as she pried open her eyes. Despite the gentle crackling of the firewood in the hearth, all she felt was cold.
“…still out cold…bound to kick up a fuss when she comes to…will never hear the end of it, not unless Elsa has cooled her head enough to…” Belle’s voice trailed off.
Gingerly, Anna lifted her head a few inches off the bed. Her brain was still a foggy haze, and her head was absolutely splitting, like the time she had come off second best in a head versus bludger collision.
“…could have lost an arm, you realise?” The Healer murmured, looking admonishingly at the patient she was tending to, who was sat Petrifically still.
Beside her, Scathach gave an insouciant shrug, the slightest movement of her shoulders, as though the thought had never crossed her mind.
The woman’s right arm looked frozen stiff, the blanched skin gradually turning a dreadful shade of purple toward the palm and fingers, which were covered in large blebs and blisters.
“I think its thawed enough…” Belle set her wand down after a minute.
The Professor gave no indication that she had even heard her, not even the faintest steeling of her face against the pain as the Healer began coating the extensive frostburns on her arm in a thick salve.
But it was the look in her eyes that made Anna’s blood run cold. Without the anger burning in them, they looked almost like dead embers, staring unseeingly ahead.
Belle pursed her lips, conjuring a swathe of bandages around the other woman’s arm with a prod of her wand. “What were you even thinking? Anyone with a shred of sense would have just let go.”
Glassy eyes blinked. “If I could, I would have done that a long time ago.”
The room lapsed once more into a strangled silence. With a heavy sigh, Belle gathered up her things, producing a flask of merlot liquid that looked suspiciously like firewhisky and pressing it into the Professor’s good hand, before turning to leave.
“It was her.” The croaked whisper stopped her cold. “She took it from me.”
The glass vessel shook in Scathach’s white-knuckled grasp, some of its contents sloshing onto her robes, giving the impression of a blooming blood stain from a stab to the heart.
The heavy double-doors of the infirmary creaked open, a visibly shaken Rapunzel sidling in behind them.
“Professor, Belle, the Headmaster wants to speak to you.” She said quietly, waiting till the adults in the room had taken their leave, before glancing worryingly toward Anna.
“Anna! Thank Merlin you’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“Like I ate it on a patch of ice…” Anna winced, pushing up on an elbow and willing the pounding in her head to cease. A chill shivered up her spine and she tugged a fleece blanket tighter around herself, trying to warm up after being out in that freak snowstorm…
Wait. Freak snowstorm?
She squeezed her eyes shut, thinking furiously.
The Forbidden Forest…Elsa…Nix. Everything came back to her in a rush.
She was on her feet in a second, flinging off the covers.
“Nix! Did you find her? How did we get back? How long have I been–?” She blathered out, looking anxiously to the blonde to fill in the gaps in her memory that led to her waking up in the Hospital Wing, nursing a throbbing head.
“No, we––I’m sorry, Anna.” Rapunzel swallowed thickly. “After we found you and Olaf, Professor Scathach, she sort of went a bit mental––and then that blizzard just came out of nowhere––and Elsa nearly killed you––the thestrals got us back safely to the castle, I couldn’t see them, so I knew you weren’t dead––”
“What are you talking about?” Anna scrunched her brow. “Elsa would never hurt me.”
“––Belle says it was lucky that it was your head and not your heart––What are you doing? You can’t go back out there!”
“But Nix–”
Tap-tap.
She broke off mid-sentence. Had she just imagined…? No, there it was again. The soft tap-tap-tapping of an owl's beak on a window. Anna’s head snapped around so fast she almost gave herself whiplash.
Through the thick paned glass, she could just make out a sorry-looking figure perched on the windowsill.
“Nix!” Anna exclaimed, feeling giddy with relief, and almost tripping over herself in her hurry to let the owl in.
Never had she been so elated to see an owl outside her window, not even the time she had woken up to the incessant pecks of a little tawny, her Hogwarts acceptance letter clutched in its beak.
“Promise you won’t do that again! You had me worried sick. I couldn’t bear it if I…” Had lost you.
She reached for the sad bundle of fluff, only for Nix to shy away from her touch. She looked almost like a wilted flower, head drooping low as though she lacked the strength to hold it up.
It was hardly the emotional reunion that Anna had envisioned. From the snowy’s despondent demeanor, one could almost be mistaken for thinking that she was on trial before the Wizengamot, about to be meted with a life sentence to Azkaban.
“Nix, please. Look at me.” She pleaded.
The snowy raised her head dispiritedly, looking up at her with no light in her eyes – eyes that had always looked at her with so much love and gratitude, but were now mired in a wrenching mix of contrition and guilt, twisting the knife in Anna’s heart.
She had expected Nix to be stressed and traumatized after everything she had been through tonight, having her greatest fears come true and losing control of her magic. But seeing her like this was beyond heartrending, making her eyes prickle with unshed tears.
“I know it was just an accident. I know you were just trying to protect me.” She breathed, trailing the back of her finger over a soft cheek.
Nix looked away, refusing to be consoled. A few snowflakes whirled through the air.
Anna set her jaw, trying not to shiver in her thin cotton gown as a cold draft flicked at her bare arms. “Fine. Stay out there if you like. But I’m not closing this window until you come in.”
Still the snowy hesitated, fighting herself. Guilt and fear weighed too heavily on her, as much as she wanted to give in to the overwhelming urge to fling herself into Anna’s arms.
But she came back to me…
Right now, that was the only thing that mattered.
The impasse between girl and owl might have carried on till the dawn, if not for the infirmary’s doors bursting open with the force of an anvil.
“Oh good, she’s with you.” Belle’s expression was one of stark relief as she glanced from Anna to the owl that she had snatched up and was now clutching protectively in her arms.
Professor Scathach looked them up and down, eyes darkening, before turning and sweeping out of the room like a dark storm cloud.
Anna tried not to flinch at the loud slam that shook the walls.
“She’d make a good Beater with that arm.” Rapunzel remarked dryly.
Belle had them all stay the night – “yes, Nix too”, checking once more on Olaf – “his fever is down, no need to look so worried”, and tipping a restful potion down their throats – “yes Anna, it’s safe for both humans and owls”.
True to the Healer’s word, the draught did work like a charm. After she had petted Nix to sleep while humming an old lullaby of Gerda’s, Anna’s eyelids were already growing heavy, and it didn’t take long for her to drift off to a dreamless slumber.
.
Even with the reassurance that she was afflicted with no more than “a state of post-traumatic amnesia from a bad concussion”, Anna was kept under observation in the Hospital Wing for the entire weekend, confined to her bed. Belle fed her a thick broth of chicken soup along with a dozen other potions, and had her rest most of the day.
“But I’m fine, really!” She protested when Monday rolled around. “I’ve got a thick skull.”
Belle arched a dainty brow. “So I’ve heard.”
No doubt from Professor Scathach. Anna thought with a sulk. She had already missed morning classes and quidditch practice, but most of all, she missed Nix. The snowy was uncomfortable around most people, but she had been close to a nervous wreck around Olaf, who was back to being his usual perky self, chatting their ears off and looking like someone had cast a permanent Cheering Charm on him.
No wonder Nix hadn’t paid her a visit all day…probably holed up in the Owlery, doing what she did best – brooding.
“Plus, I can’t afford to fall behind in my classes, especially with the OWLs coming up!” She wheedled, with what she hoped was a guileless smile. But the ploy seemed to work on Belle.
“Hmmm, keeping up with schoolwork is important…very well, you may leave after you’ve finished this.” She set a tray of potions down beside Anna, who practically gulped them down and skedaddled off to the Gryffindor Common Room before the Healer could change her mind.
And that was where Rapunzel found her a short while later.
“There you are, Anna! What are you–”
“Not now Punzy, I’m trying to catch my owl.”
“You’ve not lost her again!”
“No, I haven’t! She’s right under this bloody couch! Ugh, if I can just––reach––a little––further––” Anna rasped, dropping down on all fours, one arm extended underneath the sofa, straining as far as she could.
“Owlcat.” The Fat Lady’s portrait swung open again and in strode a raven-haired girl. She caught sight of them and marched over, giving them a pointed once-over with narrowed eyes.
“I see you’re both looking alive and well.” She drawled. “Clearly, the rumours were greatly exaggerated. To think that I was almost getting worried for a moment there, when you two failed to show up for Potions.”
“Cass!?” Rapunzel squawked at her, mouth flopping open and close like a fish out of water, as though she was too outraged to speak. “What–you–you can’t–what are you doing here!?”
“Why can’t I be here?” The tension had lifted from the Slytherin’s shoulders and she shrugged one of them offhandedly, an infuriating smirk plastered back on her face.
“This is the Gryffindor Common Room! Students of other Houses aren’t permitted entry!” Rapunzel steamed, voice quavering with indignation. “Slytherins most of all!”
“Oh?” The interloper gave an unapologetic sniff. “Well, I don’t see you giving Hooty McHoot face over there the boot.”
She pointed to the floofy mound of feathers that had seized its chance to slip past Anna’s cordon, scuffling across the room on oversized fuzzy feet, leaving a trail of white downy feathers in its wake.
“Why you fluffing little…!” Anna sprang after her.
“What in Merlin’s name are you doing to that poor bird?” Rapunzel stared after them in stupefaction, eyes darting from a red-faced Anna to the owl fluttering about frantically, and back again. “Never mind. I’m not sure I want to know.”
“She won’t let me see her wing. It’s got a broken feather with blood in it.” Whilst unable to fly away, the snowy had managed to evade all attempts at capture and had now taken to ensconcing herself atop a light fixture on the ceiling. “Come down here you silly goose! You’ll bleed to death!”
“Oh, for Salazar’s sake!” Cassandra scowled, whipping out her wand.
“Apriori Animagus Reverte!”
A streak of white-blue light whizzed toward the snowy. With a shriek, the owl tumbled off her perch, plummeting to the ground like a de-charmed broom, and landing in a flump with her fluffy feet sticking in the air, in rather undignified fashion.
“What did you do that for?” Anna cried out in alarm, but she did not miss the chance to throw a blanket over the flailing form.
“Tch. Thought that’d have worked.” Cassandra’s wand hand rose once more, stilling only at a warning glare from Rapunzel.
By contrast, Anna had her hands full – quite literally. Despite Nix’s renewed struggles, she managed to get the bundled-up owl onto her lap, pulling the ‘hood’ of the blanket back to uncover a thoroughly nonplussed face, staring up at her with those enormous blue eyes, beak slightly agape.
“None of that!” She admonished lightly, as the snowy took a nip at the offending blanket. “Hold still for a bit. It’ll only take a––There!” She held up the blood-tipped shaft in her hand. “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
The snowy gave an indignant hoot, tucking the wing back to her side and turning her tail to Anna once she was free, making it expressly clear that she did not share those sentiments and had not appreciated being trussed-up and manhandled like that.
“Well, it had to be done. So there’s no use pouting over it.” Anna told her, stroking the owl’s back as she coaxed her to step up to her wrist. “There’s a good girl.”
Cassandra’s eyelid twitched and she muttered a few choice words under her breath. Anna caught the words ‘bloody headcase’ and ‘getting in a twit over a broken feather’.
“For the last time, Cass! Out!” Rapunzel hissed at her, and the two glared daggers at each other while Anna went back to fussing her owl, who was still looking tremendously sorry for herself.
Honestly, she was still a little perplexed by Nix’s odd behaviour. The snowy could be a little twitchy when it came to beak and talon care, but she had always tolerated it with good grace. Far be it for her to act like this.
Somehow, she had the gnawing suspicion that Nix was hiding something, but what she couldn’t decide.