Chapter 15
“It’s nothing…” Elsa seemed to sink further into her robes as she glanced evasively away from Anna, her face drained of what little color it had as teal eyes searched it for answers to that burning question.
“It’s not nothing! Elsa, don’t lie to me–”
The pale blonde visibly flinched, as though she had been physically burned by those words. But Anna’s flailing mind failed to register it.
She didn’t understand…all she had seen Elsa do during her nightly detentions was writing lines…
It took a moment longer, before the realization hit her like a cold shock to her senses, as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her. “That black quill…”
The cold silence that met her spoke louder than words.
“We have to go to the Headmaster!” Boiling anger poured through her. “You can’t let her keep doing this to you!”
That foul, odious woman! If Anna didn’t already hate her with every fibre of her being, then she most surely did now. It wasn’t enough to hurt Elsa, she had to brand her with those mutilating scars too!
“Professor Scathach could have had me expelled, if she so wished.” Elsa shifted in her seat, so minutely that Anna nearly missed it. “That’s almost certainly what the Headmaster would have done.”
Her head was tucked down, as though Anna’s gaze was like the searing sun, or the sting of cold rain on her cheeks. “Besides…it’s nothing I don’t deserve.”
The icy knife in Anna’s heart twisted once more.
More like plunged in full to the hilt.
It was all she could do not to grab the indurate girl by the shoulders and shake her hard enough to set her straight…or just pull her in close and hold her tight. Though she managed to fight down both of those dueling urges.
Somehow, she didn’t think Elsa would be partial to warm hugs. Or anything that involved physical contact, really.
No, this was an aloofly beautiful creature that led a reclusive existence, shunning human interactions. And right now, it was already exhibiting signs that she was much too close for comfort, her presence causing it undue stress and anxiety.
Even the other Slytherins would have best found her to be frigid and austere, perhaps even strange and dangerous. Like a frost-breathing dragon that no one would be fool enough to approach, knowing it desired to be left well enough alone. Nor did it appreciate piffling ‘human’ things like friendship or affection.
Once, Anna would have felt that way too. But slowly, she had come to see–through the mask that the girl wore too well, until it had become her. She was tightly guarded, yes. As closed off as Anna was open. And stiffly formal in manner, as though it had been inculcated into her that emotions were a sign of weakness.
Was that why she was choosing to suffer in silence, night after night, stubbornly refusing to breathe a word of this to anyone?
Her thoughts filled the silence of their walk back to Gryffindor Tower.
“Anna, you…you won’t tell, will you?” Elsa bit her lip, blue eyes beseeching as her fingers worried at the corners of the bandage that Anna had transfigured from a scarf to bind around her hand.
As much as she was loathed to, Anna gave a begrudging nod, taking no comfort from the brief flicker of relief across Elsa’s face.
The older girl bid her a soft goodnight, before taking her leave. Disappearing into the shadows, back to the isolation that she had imposed upon herself.
Like a punishment.
Anna watched her go, feeling almost sick.
.
Sleep eluded her as she lay in bed, tendrils of infuriation and frustration coiled around her chest like the vines of a Devil's Snare.
Doing nothing, ironically enough, was the hardest thing she had ever done.
It was an entirely rotten feeling, and she hated it. Almost as much as she hated the Professor right now. Hated how it left her feeling as hollow and helpless as watching Nix quiver through yet another nightmare. Hated how she was just giving in, letting the woman get away with what she was doing.
Was there really nothing she could do?
“Damnit…” Hands balled into white-knuckled fists as she muttered another curse under her breath. Though it wasn't clear even to her whom she was cursing. Herself, or that awful…word that rhymed with witch!
“Hoo-hoohoohoo-hooo!”
“Nix!” Anna’s face lit up like the Great Hall at the Start-of-Term Feast. In two bounds she had crossed to the window, sliding the catch and opening it wide enough to let the owl in. “Am I glad to see you, girl!” The snowy was most definitely a sight for sore eyes, after a night that hadn’t gone downhill so much as fallen off a cliff.
“What’s wrong?” She frowned, when the snowy hung back, not coming up shyly for pets as she ought. “I know that look…what are you blaming yourself for this time?”
Nix gave a low hoot, looking at once guilty and ashamed.
“C’mere, you silly floof!” Anna held out her hands.
The snowy’s blue eyes glistened. With a flutter of wings, she dove into her human’s embrace, as though she lacked the will to stay away any longer.
Tears prickled in Anna’s eyes as she stroked her owl’s soft feathers, pressing the small body tight to her chest while murmuring soft words of endearment and reproach. This little creature was her strength, her world, her heart. And Anna didn’t know what she would do if she ever lost her.
She could feel Nix instantly relax in her arms with the softest sigh, though her mind was still half on the pale blonde.
“She doesn’t like hugs, but you do, don’t you?”
“Hoo?”
“Just…someone I met tonight.” Anna exhaled her own sigh.
I wish there was more I could do to help her, just like I wish there was more I could do to help you…
Just like Nix, Elsa seemed to be walking on thinning ice, and Anna didn’t think she would survive the fall.
.
“Merlin, Anna! Did you leave the window open again? Its baltic in here!”
The curtain drapes around her bed were pulled apart, revealing a shivering Rapunzel.
“Shhh, she’s just fallen back asleep!” Anna gestured for her to keep her voice down, well, as much as she could gesture while lying perfectly still, so as not to wake the owl currently asleep on her chest. “Last night was rough on her. She could really do with a bit of a lie-in this morning.”
Said owl stirred faintly and quivered its wings.
Rapunzel was less disposed to be sympathetic. “Then it’s a good thing that she’s an owl, not a student who has FIF-TEEN-MI-NUTES–” She made sure to enunciate each syllabus. “–to get her shit together or come up with a better excuse to be cutting class.”
Ever a light sleeper, it didn’t take much to rouse the snowy. Wearied eyes flickered open, blinking dolefully up at Anna, looking far too much like a small, scared child with traces of tears on her cheeks.
“Anna!” Rapunzel usually gave her up to three ‘Anna-s’ before resorting to other means, like grabbing an ankle and yanking.
“Okay, okay, I’m going, I’m going!”
“Are you going to be okay, Nix?”
At the owl’s nod, she reluctantly pried herself out of bed, a hard enough thing to do on cold mornings as it were.
Nix was gone when she came back from the girls’ bathroom, having scrounged up a change of robes and in the midst of pulling on a clean pair of socks.
“I let her out, your owl. She seemed desperate to leave.” Rapunzel shrugged. “Flew off in a great hurry as soon as I opened the window. Though I can’t imagine that she has anywhere to be. Unlike–cough–us–cough.”
“But it’s gusting out there…” Anna glanced out at the wuthering winds, a frown on her face. Rain was starting to tip down. And Nix was still favouring her wing a little.
“I’m sensing deeper issues here…”
Anna bit her lip as she caught the satchel that had been tossed at her.
“I just can’t help worrying about her.” How could she not? Bloodfeathers and nightmares aside, it was clear that something had Nix all torn up inside, the capricious autumn storms that brought icy sleet and frozen rain in between fitful spells of clear weather a veritable barometer for her fraught and frail emotional state. And her tenuous hold over her magic remained just that. “She’s been through the wringer lately.”
More like putting herself through it. And then some.
Another pair of haunting blue eyes flitted to mind. The thought of Elsa diligently writing her lines–with only the slightest tremor to her hand as proof that she wasn’t inured to the pain, still burned like coals in her chest.
“Again, this is an owl we’re talking about, right?” Rapunzel arched a brow as she prodded Anna down the winding mahogany staircase, across the common room, and out the portrait hole, the latter dragging her feet the whole way.
“Look, I’m sure she’s already back at the Owlery, looking put out over a few wet feathers, and fretting her little head off about you getting to class on time. Really, Anna, if you spent half as much time studying for your OWLs as you do worrying about that little headcase…”
“Do you think Nix might be better off with someone else?” The words slipped out unbidden, but perhaps the thought–the fear–had always been there, like a shard of ice in her heart.
Rapunzel looked quite stupefied by the question, staring at Anna as though she had been Imperiused, or perhaps Confunded. “Now you’re being ridiculous. That owl only has two looks–the one that says ‘please leave my presence’ and the one she gives you.”
“Oi, you two!”
“Huh. If it isn’t Tweedledee and Tweedledum.” A snide voice drawled out, drawing a scowl from Rapunzel. “Engaging in model Gryffindorian behaviour of tarrying along hallways during class hours.”
“I could say the same for you, Cass!” Rapunzel shot back, to which Cassandra merely smirked and made a show of adjusting her prefect’s badge.
Rapunzel scowl returned, and she muttered a few choice words about what Cassandra could do with that prefect’s badge under her breath.
The Slytherin for her part, looked about as smug as a cat licking up fresh cream, giving Rapunzel a final smirk for good measure, before turning her sights on the canary–that is, Anna. “You seem to be missing something. Ah yes, where is that ruddy befeathered thing that can wontedly be found clinging to your arm?”
A heavy lash of rain whipped in from the courtyard, pursued by a thunderclap of lightning.
The scowl on Rapunzel’s face deepened. “Ugh, look what the rain washed in.”
The soddened and dripping figure stiffened at the sight of them, though the icy aura emanating from her was no less palpable. Her school robes clung to her thin frame while her wintry plumes of hair were plastered down in clumps, and she was looking rather windswept and harried, as though she had been out flying in this weather.
“Where were you last night?” Cassandra eyed her with censure. “I know you weren’t in bed. Or at least, not in your bed.” Her gaze darted cuttingly toward Anna before returning to her fellow Slytherin. “And for Salazar’s sake, dry yourself off. You look like a wet owl.”
That she did. Nix never liked getting her feathers wet, not least from the indignity of how sorry-looking she and other owls looked when soaked through.
“You don’t have to be such a sasshole all the time, you know.” Anna stewed at the raven-haired girl, while being left to wonder where Elsa could have gone after they had parted ways last night.
“And you don’t have to be so willfully dim and stubbornly obtuse, but I guess we all have our faults.” Cassandra retorted snidely, with a sneer worthy of Scathach.
“Leave her alone, Cass.” Anna’s heart may have missed a beat, not just from those words but from how they were spoken–low, with a trace of huskiness, soft, but penetrating, whisking through her like an icy draft.
Elsa’s pallid face betrayed a hint of colour, her breath coming a little heavier as Cassandra regarded her with faint surprise. “So it does have talons.”
Her voice took on a sardonic tone. “I always knew you were hiding something behind that prim and proper act. Tell me Elsa, do you enjoy playing that poor fiddle for a fool. Perhaps you are a Slytherin after all.”
Whatever those words meant, they had their intended effect. Even Cassandra seemed to regret them, her features twisting into a scowl as she stalked off, leaving Elsa looking like she had been gutted through the middle and left to bleed out on the spot.
“Elsa?” Anna approached her cautiously, disregarding Rapunzel’s vocal opposals.
Elsa didn’t look up, nor did Anna wait for her to. She didn’t know what had come over her, only that she couldn’t leave her like this. Or maybe she was just grasping for something she could do for her, because damnit if Elsa wanted her to keep her secrets, then she was going to accept her help.
Before Elsa could demur, she had drawn her wand, pointing it at the older girl. “Recaleo.”
A sort of rasp-like hitch escaped Elsa’s lips, and Anna could practically sense her body tautening with a tingling shudder at the unexpected warmth coursing through her.
Her face remained downcast, but the eyes that lifted to meet Anna’s were faintly scrunched, like someone who was staring right at the sun, only making it a few seconds before having to look away again with a tight grimace.
“Anna, come on! Let’s go!”
“But I–” Anna opened her mouth to protest, barely managing to get a word out before she was half-dragged half-hauled away.
.
“I just thought that – Protego!” The hastily conjured barrier barely deflected the first spell that was sent at her, only to be shattered by the next.
Anna bit back a curse as more shouts of ‘Protego’ filled the DADA classroom. The class had been broken up into two–Gryffindors on one end and Ravenclaws on the other. Professor Scathach wanted them working on their Shield Charms, which in her words, “wouldn’t stand up to a weak stunning spell”, and Anna for one was determined to prove her wrong. Of course, what she really wanted to do was to hurl the nastiest hex she could at the woman, or maybe a couple of bewitched snowballs.
“That she could use a little warming up?” Rapunzel hazarded a guess, not sounding remotely amused. In fact, she sounded like she thought that was the most preposterous thing she had ever heard, and proceeded to opine as much. “Are you out of your bloody mind, Anna!? You couldn’t defrost that walking icicle even if you set her robes on fire.”
“Yes, warming up.” Anna contended, still not seeing anything wrong with it. “She could’ve gotten a – Protego! – cold from the cold.” Though even that might not be a bad thing, if it could get her out of those awful detentions.
And as for setting fire to robes…
If Scathach felt her glare on her she gave no indication of it, barely sparing Anna a passing glance as she continued to observe the class with her usual dispassion, stepping in when needed to deflect a stray hex or jinx, or issue a word of warning to students who were tossing around more dangerous spells.
The blasted–and wholly inexplicable–thing was, that even with the Professor’s back turned to her, Anna couldn’t shake the feeling that she was fully aware of her machinations and was waiting for–no, daring her to try something. Each wordless flick of her wand a subtle message that she knew every thought in Anna’s mind, that she could read her like an open book.
“Look, I know you have the self-preservation of a cookie. But for once, can’t you at least try not to do anything stu–Protego!” Rapunzel’s shield charm fared better, and she countered with her own leg-locker jinx.
Anna made a mental note of that one, half-imagining a certain Slytherin’s attempts at bunny-hopping away from her with her legs bound together. An underhanded play perhaps, but if a little persuasion was needed to convince Elsa to stay and talk, should she continue to be so disinclined, then Anna wasn’t above resorting to such means. She would have to follow it with a quick disarming charm, before Elsa thought to effect a counter-jinx. That would truly leave her with no way of getting away. Not unless she could turn herself into an owl.
In her mind’s eye, imagined-Elsa made one last awkward hop, and then she was shifting, taking on the form of a resplendent snowy owl, an incarnation of winter in all of its majestic beauty, with eyes that were––
A streak of light whizzed past her shoulder, ricocheting of a wall and shattering the ceiling lamp above her head in a shower of glass fragments. Anna threw herself sideways, snagging Rapunzel with her as she did, both of them hitting the floor with a grunt and a head-splitting thud.
“Anna! Anna…hear me?……hit…head…pretty hard…” Rapunzel’s voice registered somewhere between her ears.
“I…I’m fine. Thick skull, remember?” Anna sat up slowly, bracing against the starburst in her vision that left her feeling rather woolly-headed as she struggled to recollect her thoughts–before she had gotten more closely acquainted with the floor that is. She couldn’t say why, but it felt important, somehow.
“Professor…I think she has a concussion.”
She refused to flinch as a cold, scarred hand grasped her chin, tipping her head up to inspect the damage impassively.
“She’ll live.” Scathach’s voice dropped a pitch. “A pity. Perhaps next time you will do us all a favour and rid us of your ineptitude.” With a motion of her wand, the broken shards rose up into the air, mending themselves back together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Anna slapped her hand away, anger rippling through her so fiercely that her entire body shook, while her own hand was clenched tight around her wand, something that did not go unnoticed by Scathach.
The woman leaned in further, voice close to Anna’s ear. “I’ll make you an offer. A little…duel, if you will. If you can block a single spell from me, I’ll let Arendelle off.”
Anna waited for her to continue, her breath suspended, knowing it couldn't be that simple.
What she wasn’t prepared for, was the Professor’s next words, and the ice they sent down her spine.
“But if you lose…you’ll have to give me that owl.”