Whey for crossovers! A Harry Potter/Narnia venture feat. Edmund/Minerva because the timing is more appropriate for a London meeting. Post-VDT.
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"exceptions"
roll away your stone, and I'll roll away mine
together we can see what we will find
| roll away your stone ; mumford and sons |
England pales in the eyes of one who has seen Narnia; the landscapes are less bright, the trees sadly small, and the houses too uniform – in Edmund's mind it is a frail imitation of the beauty of his magical kingdom.
It's been four months since the great lion Aslan returned Edmund and his younger sister Lucy to the land of their birth; four months since he has last looked upon Narnian soil or felt the coolness of the seas that lap at their country's shores. It has been four months since he ceased to be a king.
Aslan has told the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve 'once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen', but it is hard to remember the sentiment when London presses suffocatingly in on one – for England is Edmund's reality, and England is everything that is not Narnia with its motor cars and factories which belch out black smoke.
The dark-haired youth swings a leg astride his bicycle, the groceries deftly strapped onto the back, and weaves between Londoners with surprising ease. There are too many people here, he thinks privately as he dodges men, women and children attending to business of their own. And it is all so very ordinary, so very unlike Narnia that it makes him unaccountably irritated.
He turns the bicycle into the laneway where he and his family live, the six of them finally reunited, and begins to slow, thankfully, when a most peculiar thing happens: a girl appears.
That isn't to say that she stepped out from one of the little gates, or from behind the lamppost; she simply wasn't there one moment, and then she was. Edmund swerves, almost toppling the bicycle in his effort to avoid colliding with the slim figure, but once he regains control he plants one foot on the ground and turns, quite rightly astonished. Even in a land like Narnia teleportation is a rare occurrence.
The first thing he notices, aside from her being female, of course, is the rather odd fashion of her dress, though, really, he is somewhat more inclined to call the garb 'robes'. They drape delightfully over her slender figure, the long sleeves reaching all the way to her hands, in one of which is held a smooth stick of dark wood. His quick internal inventory adds to that her dark hair, restrained in a firm bun, intelligent eyes set behind a pair of square-rimmed spectacles and a tartan trim along the bottom edge of her forest green outfit.
For all the expressions of apology, embarrassment and alarm battling for supremacy across her face, she looks a rather uncompromising sort of girl; the sort who becomes a school marm at the age of twenty-two and would be inclined to stay in that role forever and a day.
She seems, too, to Edmund, very unsure about being flustered. A few strands of hair have managed to escape their tie and she brushes them behind her ear as she cries out ruefully, "I do beg your pardon!" and stows the unusual stick somewhere on her person, looking just about ready to flee.
She's Scottish, by her accent, but Edmund is rather more interested in her extremely rapid emergence out of nothingness than her nationality. "I say," he expostulates. "That was a sudden appearance." It's a very fortified response for somebody who hasn't ever seen a person materialise out of thin air, but Edmund is no average Londoner – he's Edmund the Just, a king of Narnia, and it will take more than that to set him on edge.
"Oh, please don't tell anyone!" the woman frets, wringing her hands anxiously, torn between darting away and checking to make sure her abrupt arrival hasn't damaged him or his transport. "I'll be in ever so much trouble if you do. You really mustn't!"
She can't be much older than he, seventeen at most, and she seems so honestly distressed that he agrees without hesitation. "I won't. We all have our secrets, after all." He doesn't mean to say the second part, for all it is the honest truth. "What's your name?"
"Minerva," she tells him nervously, biting her lip. "Minnie, if you like."
"Edmund." Wistfully he adds in his mind, 'the Just, King of Narnia'. It's fickle, he knows, but today especially he has been positively aching for the days where he ruled with his brother Peter, the High King, and their sisters, Lucy and Susan, and his acquaintance isn't to know the words that play through his thoughts. "I don't suppose you can tell me how the devil you did that just now?" he adds curiously. "Was it by magic?"
"You- you know about magic?" demands the girl, Minerva, astonished. "Muggles aren't supposed to know anything about our world."
"Muggles?" Edmund repeats bewilderedly.
"Non-magic fo-" she pauses, paling as she realises something. "I really shouldn't be telling you about this if you don't already know. I should be trying to work out how to get back!"
"Back to where?" Edmund asks, probing in spite of himself.
"School." It's an evasive answer, one she clearly doesn't wish to elaborate on – whether it's because she can't, or just won't, is hard to determine.
"Will you be able to manage it?" If her adventure is anything like his were in Narnia she might well be stuck here.
She looks around. "This is London, isn't it?" she asks him; he nods. "Then yes. I can find help here."
"You know, I'm no stranger to magic. Or, at least, to things that aren't what they seem," Edmund tells her impulsively. She smiles.
"I thought as much," she responds. "You were far too calm when I arrived – and in such a startling manner, too!"
When she marches purposefully away a little while later – having told him nothing of import – Edmund watches her progress until she disappears from view (in the rather more customary manner of walking). He wonders what the whole of her secret is in the minutes after, and wonders late that night whether he'll ever meet this no-nonsense girl again. He doesn't mention her to his siblings, and certainly not to his parents. She's his enduring mystery: Minerva, the girl who can appear out of thin air!
He never forgets her intriguing appearance, and it comforts him to know that Narnia isn't the only place where magic grows. Even if he has no link to it here, the knowledge that it exists, somewhere, to someone, is enough to remind him of humility – Edmund the Just he may be, but he is not exceptional. Uniqueness is a gift common to all.
Please, read and review responsibly – ta!
Feel free to point out any errors, as this is un-beta'd.