Chapter Text
Their emerald robes were a crackling flag of triumph loud enough to be heard over the thundering stands that erupted anew in the wake of their echelon lap of the field. As they passed their house box, fireworks exploded into glittering green and silver snake spectres that followed them down to the centre of the pitch to meet the lavender-clad losers.
Every lock of hair that had managed to escape her braid was now sweat-plastered against her face and neck, and she clawed her cheek with chilly fingers to drag a particularly irksome curl from her mouth. Pushing the damp strands back to join the rest, she brushed her hand against her robes, then held it out to the side as the two lines of players met at the centre to slap hands.
The Savant team’s thin-faced captain, a boy with jet black hair and a particularly lumpy roman nose, lead the rival line, his expression and tone carefully neutral. “Bien joué, good game.”
“Good game, bien joué,” Merida echoed to each of them as she passed, even the severe, raven-haired seeker whose sneer suggested she’d have sooner scratched their eyes out than shaken hands, if the choice were up to her.
Silk uniforms gleaming in the sunlight, their opponents arced across the pitch towards the exit, leaving the field to the victors for one final celebratory lap.
Merida whooped and pumped her fists in the air. Immediately, the cheer was taken up and carried, first by her own teammates, and then through the high stands as well, as hurrahs rippled through the usual Slytherin chants.
Riding down in a wide crescent, the Slytherins’ shadows darted across the grass as they followed the Beauxbatons faction through the exit, where a crowd was already gathering to meet them. Merida stood in the stirrups and abruptly pulled up her broom. Dismounting without breaking pace, Merida jumped the few feet to the ground and turned to find two familiar witches in head-to-toe emerald-and-silver regalia breaking from the cluster of well-wishers and hurrying towards her.
“Congrats, Mer!” A silver-haired Aurora said, holding still the binoculars that hung around her neck.
“Go, team!”
Merida’s jaw dropped. The girl with vibrant emerald hair and full face-paint was Snovita.
While Snovita and Aurora often made an effort to come and watch her matches, Merida couldn’t remember ever having seen them so done up before. Even for championship matches, they’d shown their support with small, handheld green flags and in more recent years, matching emerald green scarves that Snovita had knitted herself.
As Merida gawked at her, Snovita wilted, holding a quidditch rule book tight against her chest with both hands like she hoped to disappear behind it entirely. A pink flush in her ears and neck told Merida that Snovita was either blushing, about to cry or perhaps both at once.
“Is it too much?” Snovita asked in a small voice, as though expecting Merida to shout at her. “Oh, I was worried it would be.”
“No! Not at all!” Merida said quickly. Studying the careful silver and green snakes painted on her friends’ cheeks, she decided that there was no way her mother would have ever put them up to this. Perhaps that meant they weren’t quite so treacherous after all. It was a thought that made her smile, her freckled cheeks glistening in the afternoon sun. Earnestly, she said, “It’s brilliant, really. Let’s see it, then.”
Merida stepped back for a better look at her friends’ attire. Aurora wore a silver blouse with flowing sleeves that matched her charmed locks, and some sort of green velvet dress with a fitted bodice and calf-length skirt, while Snovita wore a flowing dress in a deep green fabric with silver stripes that looked nearly identical to the curtains off Merida’s four-poster bed. Both of her friends donned some sort of lace shoulder cape pinned with coiled snake brooches, Snovita’s cape in shimmering silver and Aurora’s in a gleaming green.
Slinging both arms around her friends’ caped shoulders, she nearly managed to clock Aurora in the head with the end of her broom, although the blonde swatted it out of the way just in time. “Careful, Mer!”
“Still think you’d make fer a good beater,” Merida said teasingly. “And I’d much rather face you than that rattlebrain Dingwall.”
“You know, I often think about knocking you off that broom with a big stick,” Aurora said archly. “But I simply draw the line at having witnesses.”
Merida scoffed and lightly swung the head of her broom towards her again as she steered them both back towards the castle. Aurora gracefully sidestepped the playful strike and stuck her tongue out.
“Shall we get some lunch, then? I’m starved.”
“Eugh, Mer ,” Snovita wrinkled her nose and ducked out of reach. “You’re awfully sweaty.”
At this, Merida couldn’t help but cackle.
Jack didn’t have much time. North would be expecting him any minute, so he had to be quick or North would suspect he’d been up to no good. Jack was always up to no good, of course, but North certainly didn’t need to know about his latest misadventure - especially not when he still had a week of detention to finish out from the last one.
This time, though, he was fairly confident that he wouldn’t get caught.
North himself would be providing his alibi.
Shrugging his backpack from his shoulders, he tugged open the zip on the main pocket and couldn’t help a small, self-satisfied grin at the collection of faintly purple snowballs huddled in the bottom, little chicks all in a nest.
His latest prank was quite brilliant, really. He’d mixed a touch of Zonko’s magnetic powder into the snow this time - hence the purple hue - and had the rest of it in a pouch, mixed with sticking glitter and ready to hang above the doors in the great hall. Anyone who walked through the doors of the great hall would get a barrage of snowballs to the back the next time they walked past one of his caches.
If he was careful to steer clear of his caches all day, he might even get away with it, too.
Jack thought it was ingenious, even if he did say so himself.
His snowy shenanigans were always a big hit - even Aster’s snowy bedroom had turned into a victory, with Aster’s little brother Roo regarding Jack as something of a hero when he’d eventually risked returning to the Mund’s home.
And besides, who didn’t love a good snowball fight?
With a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure he hadn’t been followed, Jack quickly tucked himself out of sight next to one of the suits of armour that resided in the corridor and knelt by his backpack. Jack reached a hand into his hoodie pocket - carefully emptied of all sweets wrappers to ensure maximum stealth on his mission - but before he could draw his wand, there was a soft scuff of leather against stone.
Jack froze in place.
From his hiding spot, Jack could just see a tall, dark-haired man carefully step around the broken tile, and he pressed himself as far into the corner between the armour and the wall as he could without making any noise.
But the stranger looked up from the tiles, and his pale eyes found Jack’s.
“My, my,” the stranger halted in front of him. “And what have we here?”
Slinging his backpack over one shoulder, Jack rose. “That depends who’s asking.”
“Ah, let’s just say I’m a… nostalgic former student.”
Jack quirked a brow, but before he had a chance to question the man further, he heard the familiar footfalls of a well-worn set of brown-black dragon-hide work-boots. Instinctively, a knot formed in the pit of his stomach, although technically, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. This time, anyway. The stranger’s arrival had seen to that.
Jack’s eyes flicked to the man’s face, just as the stranger’s returned his gaze to Jack’s from something behind his back, and Jack wondered if he, too, knew about the hidden passageway that lead into the village.
“Jack Frost,” North strode towards them, frowning. “And Pitch Black.”
“Good morning, Professor North,” Jack said brightly, despite his creeping dread that the so-called nostalgic former student would rat him out.
North crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you doing here?”
“Why, Professor North, what a pleasure to see you again. And such a surprise to see that you’re still teaching, after all these years.”
“Why are you here, Pitch?”
“Ever the same, I see,” Pitch’s voice was black silk. “I have an appointment with the headmaster.”
North hummed his disbelief. “Last time I checked, Jack Frost was not headmaster.”
“It’s been such a long time since I’ve been in these hallowed halls, I got turned around,” Pale eyes met Jack’s once more, and Pitch gave the faintest hint of a smile. “This good Samaritan was just helping point me in the right direction.”
“I see,” North glanced at Jack, frowning. “Lucky I am here. I will escort you to headmaster’s office.”
“My appreciation, Professor,” Pitch nodded and turned to Jack. “And thank you for your assistance, Jack Frost.”
“This way,” North gestured to the hall beyond Jack, and the men stepped around him. However, before Jack had a chance to dash off down the corridor, North turned back with a meaningful look. “Reindeer are waiting.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jack waved a hand and set out towards the front door. “I’m going.”
His breath was a hiss between his teeth as his quill jostled, sending an arc of ink in a direction entirely contrary to where he’d intended, and then again as Toothless launched himself from Hiccup’s shoulder. Wrapping what he could of his stump tail around his paws, the tomcat sat stiffly and turned his green stare on Hiccup.
“What’s got your tail all in a twist today?” Bridging his fingers under his chin, Hiccup propped his elbows on the desk. “Hm?”
Toothless only sniffed disapprovingly. He’d been a pest all afternoon - headbutting Hiccup’s elbow, batting the quill, and even flopping down right onto the parchment itself. Hiccup’s latest work was adorned with specks and smudges aplenty as a result.
“Am I not giving you enough attention?” Hiccup reached out a freckled, scarred hand to stroke under the cat’s chin. “Is that why you’re pouting, big baby boo?”
In response, Toothless bit him.
Gritting his teeth, Hiccup squeezed his hand, putting pressure on the indents that Toothless’s teeth had left - not hard enough to draw blood, but certainly hard enough to send a message - although exactly what that message was anyone’s guess. Leaning back in his chair, Hiccup sighed through his nose. “That was not very nice, sir.”
In the distance, the clock tower began its hourly chime, and almost on cue, Hiccup’s stomach grumbled.
Hiccup sighed again. “Well, I suppose I should grab something to eat before I meet up with Astrid-”
Oh no .
Astrid!
Hiccup’s chair hit the hardwood floor with a loud THUD!, nearly taking him with it as he scrambled to his feet and swept his works from the desk right into his bag, and Toothless gave an exasperated chirp as though to say finally ! Almost tripping over the chair a second time, he hardly paused long enough to pick it up, and sent it clattering under the desk on his way out.
As he sprinted down the corridor towards the library, Hiccup counted the clock chimes, and wondered how long past the agreed meeting time Astrid would wait. He had a feeling that it wouldn’t be very long. As it was, he was almost certain that she’d stayed after class to ask North for a different partner after the assignment had been given out.
The assignment itself was almost definitely Hiccup’s fault though, a response to his recent misadventure with the Nøkks. Somehow, North knew, although he hadn’t addressed Hiccup directly about the incident - either because he just didn’t have enough hard evidence to give him detention for it, or because he felt that being dragged to the brink of drowning so many times was punishment enough.
It was the only reason that would explain why, after years of an almost entirely hands-on curriculum, North had suddenly opted to make the switch to collaborative research assignments. Although, exactly what Astrid had done to earn him as a teammate, Hiccup couldn’t fathom.
Catching a glimpse of his reflection in a nearby window, Hiccup ran a hand over his mussed hair, and tried to rub the ink smudge from his cheek with the heel of his hand.
“Wish me luck, bud.”
Under the black cat’s supervision, Hiccup strode into the library with as much confidence as he could muster - then promptly ducked his head to avoid the judgmental gaze of Hogwarts’ Librarian.
There was no sign of his partner at the desks in the main lounge area, so Hiccup headed into the stacks. As he passed the rows of tall shelves, he craned his neck to peer into the assorted reading nooks and study areas set throughout the library.
Finally, he found Astrid at a desk near the back of the main section of shelves, and gave her a tentative wave as he approached. “Hey, Astrid.”
She didn’t look up from her work. “Nice of you to finally show up.”
“Sorry,” Hiccup said softly, claiming an empty spot on the bench. “It, ah, took me a minute to find you-”
“In the beasts section?” Astrid gestured to the signpost above them. “For our assignment on magical beasts? For the last hour ??”
“I, uh, lost track of time.”
Astrid didn’t reply, although she did spare a moment to roll her eyes.
Hiccup flipped his satchel open and fished out several bits of parchment, selecting the cleanest, least crumpled one and smoothing it out on the desk. “So-“
“The Van Helsing Method,” Astrid slid a piece of parchment across the desk towards him, with a list of books written in her tidy, narrow scrawl.
“The Van Helsing Method?” Hiccup skimmed the proffered parchment. “I was actually thinking-“
Astrid didn’t let him finish. “Well, you weren’t here, so I got started.”
“Right. That makes sense.”
Giving his satchel a firm shake, Hiccup contemplated dumping the contents onto the tabletop. Surely he had to have it in here somewhere . Instead, opting to draw out the contents by the handful, he piled his things beside him until he ran out of room, but neither his quill nor his inkwell surfaced.
Leaning back against the wooden panels, he sighed.
He’d left his quill and ink on the other desk.
Stuffing his things back into his schoolbag, Hiccup scooted towards the end of the bench and cast an apologetic look back at the blond witch. “I’m so sorry, I’ll be right back.”
Astrid’s quill stilled as she finally looked up at him, with a stare that could have struck him dead seven times over. “ What ? You’re leaving ?”
“I, uh,” Hiccup swallowed thickly. “Left my ink upstairs.”
Astrid scoffed and rolled her eyes, but as she turned back to her work, she pushed her own black glass inkwell across the table towards him.
“Oh, um, thanks, Astrid,” Hiccup lowered himself back onto the bench slowly, rubbing the back of his neck with a free hand. “You don’t, ah, have a spare quill too, do you?”
“ Seriously ?” Hiccup flinched from the bile in her tone. “Did you even come here to work?”
“Of course I did-“
“Are you sure about that?” Astrid demanded, and the slap of the pages ricocheted off the shelves as she slammed her tome closed. “Or were you hoping I would just do the assignment for you, since you’re so important now?”
Even important sounded like an insult from Astrid’s lips.
“Oh, sure, my life’s been great since they pulled my name out of that stupid cup,” Hiccup rolled his eyes. “Just peachy freaking keen.”
Either she didn’t catch the sarcasm dripping from his tone, or she chose to ignore it entirely.
“Why even put your name forward in the first place? Why even volunteer to be in the tournament if you don’t care? Just so you can rub it everyone else’s faces?” Astrid’s blue-grey eyes were glinting steel. “Look, I have tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. I actually hoped that getting chosen for the tournament would change you, make you pay attention and actually care about something other than yourself for once. But maybe even that was too much to ask.”
“Care about something other than myself-“ Hiccup echoed, gobsmacked. “Do you even hear yourself? I think you’re mistaking me for Snorri.”
“You’ve got more in common than you think,” Astrid shrugged. “ I can see the family resemblance, even if you can’t. And as much as it pains me to say it, it says a lot that, somehow, he’s the less insufferable one.”
Hiccup opened his mouth to reply, but found he’d run out of words.
Suddenly, the stout auburn-haired librarian suddenly materialized by their table with an enormous hiss. “SSHHHH! If you’re going to be disruptive, you’ll have to leave.”
“Don’t worry,” Astrid answered, her steely eyes not breaking from his own. “I was just leaving.”
“Yes, well, see that you do,” Calliope nodded, before her eyes came to rest on the crumpled and smudged parchment in front of Hiccup and she adjusted her round glasses, frowning. “I do hope you keep your books in better condition than that .”
“Y-yes, Ma’am,” Hiccup managed to say, although he didn’t.
With a disapproving sniff, Calliope went on her way.
“You know, Hiccup, some of us have been working our asses off for years for an opportunity like this, and you can’t even be bothered to show up for it. Of all the people at this school who deserved to be named as Champion, I still can’t wrap my head around how or why it chose you,” Astrid picked up her tidy stack of books from the desk. “North asked me to partner with you on this project as a favour, that perhaps I could help prepare you for the tournament. Even he thinks you don’t have what it takes.”
Hiccup could only gape at her.
“Good luck, Hiccup. You’ll need it.”
Every time she closed her eyes, she heard the echoes of black glass groaning and crunching underfoot, saw the spiderweb of cracks streaking through it like breaking ice. Even the air was thick and impenetrable, making it hard to breathe and harder to flee the malice that awaited her at the bottom of that suffocating abyss.
I shouldn’t keep staying up so late to practise magic, Rapunzel thought to herself as she fought against the enormous weight of her eyelids. She’d had all manner of strange nightmares from the stress of it all, and no matter how many hours she spent studying, her magic still hadn’t worked.
Surely, Hogwarts couldn’t have made a mistake when it sent her that letter?
But the longer Rapunzel spent within the castle walls, the clearer it became that that was exactly what had happened.
And at this point, she was relieved.
Surely, since she was at Hogwarts as a result of some simple mistake, then she could leave Hogwarts just as simply. She could return to the cottage she shared with Mother, where nobody called her Ratpunzel or pretended they couldn’t see and hear her or cast muffliato on her if she called out or cried in her sleep. She could go back to painting and tending the garden and doing chores instead of staining her wrists grey-black trying to keep up with seven years of school all at once. She could even sleep in her own bed, and perhaps then she’d actually wake up feeling rested.
Rapunzel sighed. She wanted to go home.
She missed her house, she missed her bed and most of all, she missed Mother.
As the end of class bell rang through the halls, her classmates began to file out of the room. With an exhausted sigh, Rapunzel shuffled her own things off the desk and into her bag, including a partially-unrolled length of parchment - her class notes from today, still unfinished.
“Miss Gothel,” Called a voice near the front of the room. “A word?”
Rapunzel didn’t want to talk to Professor Finster, or anyone else for that matter. She wanted to leave school, crawl into her own bed, and stay there until the constant ache left her body. She wanted to burn her notes, give up on school and get rid of all the books. She wanted to be left alone to grieve for her hopes, her dreams, her magic.
But instead, Rapunzel just ducked her head politely. “Yes, Professor.”
Somehow, her satchel felt heavier every day, and the muscles in her back twinged in protest as she swung it over her shoulder. Heading to where the curly-haired Professor awaited her, arms crossed over her chest, Rapunzel couldn’t help the sense of dread hanging over her, and part of her almost expected the floor to shatter under her or sharp black rocks to burst through the walls like enormous spearheads and turn the castle to rubble, just like it always did in her dreams.
“This way,” Professor Finster lead the way through an arched doorway off the classroom, and into a smaller office with a fluffy sky blue carpet, and gestured to a pair of wooden armchairs with thick, dark turquoise padding. “Have a seat, Gothel.”
“Yes, Professor.” Rapunzel did as she was told, and couldn’t help a yawn as she settled onto the indicated seat, which was far firmer than it looked.
“Late night?” She set about rummaging in one of her desk drawers. “You look terrible.”
Rapunzel wilted. “I’m sorry, Professor. I’ll try harder… do better… somehow.”
“That’s just it. You keep saying you’re going to work harder, but you’ve yet to make any improvement in my class as far as spell-casting ability.”
Here it was. Professor Finster had figured out that Rapunzel was here by mistake. Now, they’d snap her wand and send her home to live in exile.
Or worse.
She’d heard people all over school complaining about how cantankerous and mean Professor Finster was. And Mother had always warned her that if people knew she was a squib, they would try to snuff her out. Was that what Professor Finster meant to do now? Punish her for being an interloper, for intruding at a magic school when she herself had no magic?
But what could Rapunzel even do if Professor Finster meant to harm her? She had no magic, and she was so tired, she wasn’t sure she could outrun the elderly witch if she tried.
Returning with a large, silver tin in hand, Professor Finster set it on the circular table with thin metal legs that stood between them. “Have a biscuit.”
Rapunzel eyed the contents of the box, with its uniform rows of smooth, baked golden-brown dough. Did Professor Finster mean to poison her?
“Don’t worry, poisoning students is against school policy,” Professor Finster said with a sigh, adjusting her black cat-eye glasses to sit higher on her large nose, before reaching for a biscuit herself. “They’re just fig newtons with a bit of girding potion.”
“Thank you, Professor,” Rapunzel whispered, before cautiously taking a biscuit from the tin, and nibbling a tiny piece from the corner.
“Now, I’d hoped it was just stage fright, but, I’ve suspected since the very beginning,” Professor Finster knit her fingers together at her chin. “You haven’t been able to perform any magic all term, have you?”
Rapunzel’s stomach crashed through the floor and plummeted into the abyss below.
Should she run?
Professor Finster seemed to take her silence as confirmation. “No need to be embarrassed, we see this sort of thing every so often. Your wand is new this year, isn’t it?”
With her heart thundering so loudly against her rib-cage, Rapunzel was worried that she’d misheard. “I’m sorry?”
“Did you just get this wand before the start of term?”
Rapunzel’s breath caught in her throat, but she nodded.
“Mm, I thought so,” Professor Finster said thoughtfully. “How did it work at the time of purchase?”
“I-I don’t know,” Rapunzel said, sitting up a little straighter as the exhaustion began to melt from her body, ever so slightly. “I wasn’t there when my Mother bought it for me.”
“Wasn’t there ?” Professor Finster echoed, before shaking her head. “Well, now you certainly know what not to do. Magic folk must choose their own wands - or rather, be chosen, depending on which school of thought you follow. But even so, you ought to have some amount of mastery even with an imperfect match… May I see it?”
As her brain desperately attempted to process exactly what was happening, Rapunzel drew her wand from her robes.
Professor Finster took the proffered wand in her right hand and pushed her glasses higher on her nose once more. After holding the wand up to the light at various angles with a frown, Professor Finster pointed it towards an unlit candle on her desk. “ Lumos .”
Rapunzel had never be so happy to have her wand fail to create even a single spark.
“Miss Gothel, I think we had best go speak with Headmaster Grimm,” Professor Finster put the lid back on the biscuit tin and rose from her seat. “It seems you are in need of a new wand.”
And for the first time since she’d arrived at Hogwarts School, the tears that stung at her eyes were ones of relief.