The Wonder of Rwjuvenation
Chapter One
"Magic carpets were once common family affair," Dexter Chang told Anna as they dined in Durmstrang's coldest room, which had no roof. Anna only took small bites of the half-cooked food. She didn't want to be poisoned.
"That sounds quite interesting," she said, before putting her fork down and deciding she had enough..
"The first magic carpet was discovered by a Muggle named Aladdin. He also found a magic lamp of the old sort that enslaved genies, but it was taken nfrom him by a meerkat."
"You sem to know a lot about this."
"Professor Kettleburn had me do research on it. Now this fellow Aladdin was a very distressed young sultan. His wishes had been used with the genie so early…and then tragedy struck his doman, causing the death of his beloved wife, Jasmine, and all those around him, till he was the only one remaining."
"That's extremely sad."
"A redhead came into his life, though, when he was in his mid-twenties, and she made life so pleasant for him…she was the best friend a guy could wish for, as Aladdin wrote in a scroll after she disappeared."
"What happened to her?"
"They never could discover that. But after she vanished, Aladdin's spirits were at an all-time low."
Suddenly at the far end of the room, a boy got up and hurled a coconut in their direction. Dexter shot at it with his wand, causing it to split in half and tumvble onto a table. A platter of shrimp went flying. It his a girl on the shoulder and caused shrimp to squiggle down her cloak. She began zapping at everything around her. Soon ajinxes and curses were spiraling everywhere. All Anna could do to avoid it was crawl on the ground on her knees toward the exit. She was sure she's make it scot-fre when a shot of blue light hit her elbow and her left arm turned into an umbrella. She scooted the last inch out of there, stared at the bumbershoot she had acquired for a limb and suddenly wished she had a long glove that could cover the whole thing…
"If it isn't Dexter's girlfriend."
Anna saw a boy with matted black hair approach her.
"What do you want, Krum?"
"Vot I alvays vont. You."
"Back off. I've got an umbrella and I'm not afraid to use it."
She points her left arm at him. He guffaws.
"Looks like you received Moglus' llueve-protego hex. Not a fun thing to experience. I could remove it, though, if you'd lock lips with me."
"Blackmail really doesn't suit you, Krum."
"Everything that vill lure my precious Anna into my arms suits me."
"Nothing will induce me to find myself there."
"Except a certain umbrella on your arm."
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you had Moglus cast that hex at me on purpose."
"As if I'd speak to riffraff like him. Though your boyfriend isn't much better."
"Just because Dexter isn't an all-star Quidditch player doesn't mean you can bash him." Anna neglected to add that Dexter wasn't her boyfriend, feeling it would deflate her argument.
"Quidditch is a champion sport, baby. All wizards of any moment are good at it."
"What about witches?"
"They can cheerlead."
"Well, that answer proves it. I'm not ever going to let you kiss me, Krum."
"I didn't mean it in reference to you. You're a princess, after all."
"I don't usually do thingas like this, but you seem deserving of it," she said. She walked toward him with love in her eyes, and he was almost convinced she would kiss him after all. She begins whacking him on the side of the head with her umbrella-arm She has just gotten him into a corner when a hex from a girl in her pajamas cause her shoes to turn into oddly-shaped lamps.
"No one picks on Senkin Krum while I'm arounbd," the girl said, as Anna turned to look at her.
"?You can take him. And get him as far away from me as possible."
"Gladly," the girl said. "But first, I have a gift for you."
She fastens an hourglass attached to a necklace around Anna's neck. "This is a Time-Turner. It is set to go back 8, 132, 060 hours, or approximately 928 years. There you qwon't be bothering my Krummy-bear!"
Anna had no experience with this kind of thing before. She felt herself spiraling backward dizzily. It felt like she had flown down a flight of stairs. And where she had been in a rather dilapidated castle before, she now fpimd jerself in an arid area with little vegetation. She looked down to reach for the hourglass, but her lamp shoes caused her to trip on a rock. The hourglass tumbled to the ground. Anna started to reach for it when a moose ran forward and stomped on it.
"Great, now how am I to get back?"
She gazed about her when she heard a voice approaching from the air.
"The lamp! He continues to ask me to seek out that blarkin' lamp, when he knows the meerkat or beaver took off with it. Gosh, that battle with the raven…wel, guess what, Aladdin? I've flown all the way to listering NORWAY and I still haven't located that damn lamp!"
It was a rather ruffled parrot with bright plumage. Anna waved to him but he took no notice of her. Though his eyes did brighten when he saw her lamp-shoes.
"Oh yes, yjey look very like, don't they? I'll tell him the genie is housed in one of these, captured there by a great sorceress who will not let him leave until someone she deems handsome kisses her. Then he'll seek out the sorceress and by the time he discovers it was a bluff, well, parrots don't live to be a hundred."
"I think parrots live quite a while," Anna said. "At least a trader who brought one to Arendelle the day before I left told me so."
"Who are you?"
"Anna. I'm a princess."
"Of this country?" the parrot asked, eyeing the umbrella she had in lieu of an arm.
"Er, no. Of Arendelle."
"Never heard of that place. Though I come from a distant land, so I wouldn't know the locality here."
"If you wish to take the lamps, I won't grudge you. I was using them as shoes though I'd prefer sandals."
"Well, I suppose I should thank you, then. Would be nice to see Agrabah again."
"I wish it were as simple as flying in the air to return meto Arendelle."
"If either of these lamps actually held a genie, you could get your wish granted."
"Could I come with you?"
"With me?" The parrot looked as if what she asked were insane. "It will be much faster if I have a sky-viewm see? I won't know where I'm going, flying close to the ground."
"You can fly up and return to me once you've seen the direction we need to go."
"And when we come to a waterway you would drown in if you attempted to cross?"
"I could rent a boat."
"Yeah, and how are you going to return it?"
"That's silly. If you rent one from a boatshop on one side of the water, there ought to be a place on the other side to leave it."
"?There might be. I just hope you know what you're in for."
"Look around. Do you see anyone here besides you and me?"
"No," the parrot said.
"And in Agrabah there are people, right?"
"Quite a few, I'd reckon.
"Then you can see why I'd wish to go there."
"Wouldn't you rather be where you came from?"
"I would love to return to Arendelle. Somehow I'm certain that being stranded in this barren wasteland isn't going to get me there."
"Perhaps if we find ourselves at Arendelle along the way, I can drop you off there."
"Would be nice, though I don't anticipate that happening."
"Well, can't blame a parrot for trying."
"So you'll let me come with you?"
"So long as you'll back up my story about the sorceress imprisoning the genie in one of these lamps."
"For all I know, there could be a genie in one of them, and a witch did zap tjhem onto my feet, so I suppose in a way that's true, though it's still a bit of a stretch…"
"/You'll do wonderfully, then. Shall we get started?"
"Certainly," Anna said.
"There's just one thing, though," said the parrot. "Although I can carry one of the lam[s here in my claws, I'd have to lift the other one by the beak, and that wouldn't be so pleasant."
"I can continue to wear them as shoes until we come across some other form of footwear, Then I'll carry them in my hands or fashion a pouch out of leaves or something."''
"That settles it then. Off we go."
Anna slips her feet in the shoes then watches with amazement the direction the parrot has chosen to take.
"Um, didn't you come from the other direction?"
The parrot looks around. "Hmm. Perhaps I did. This terrain is so strange."
"Let's try not to get lost in the first five minutes. "
"If anyone else said that to me, I might not have taken it kindly. But from you I sense it's well meant."
"Thanks," Anna said. The parrot then began flying in the direction he came from, and she followed, wonderingwhat adventures awaited them, and what would happen when they arrived in Agrabah.
