Chapter 7

Incantation and Realization

All day Rapunzel kept thinking about Hiccup. She wanted to see him as soon as she could, but she never had the chance. Because their Flying lesson ran long, she only had ten minutes to eat lunch and then be off to the next subject.

As she sat through history of magic, she thought about skipping class, but what would everyone think? What was the punishment for such a thing? So she bided her time for the right opportunity.

Dinner came so fast she barely realized that the school day was over when the Ravenclaws were walking together toward the Great Hall. Perhaps this could be her chance to go see Hiccup.

Once the food was served and Rapunzel had something to eat, she got up from her seat and headed for the great oak doors, a little faster than she would normally, and checked over her shoulder uncomfortably. Her large braid was so heavy it almost hurt to do so, but she just felt terribly nervous. She was looking back mostly at the staff table to see if anyone was watching her. Professor McGonagall and Professor Bunny were in deep conversation, and Professor Yzma was staring lazily down at her plate. Then her eyes found Professor Dumbledore. He was wearing a purple robe with stars and moons on it, with a matching purple hat to boot, his eyes starring directly at her from behind his half-moon glasses that were perched on his crooked nose.

Something inside her jumped and she walked as fast as she could out of the Great Hall. She was walking so fast that she accidentally bumped into someone just outside the hall.

She looked up and saw a tall (well, tall in the sense that she was short at the time) scruffy-looking old man with disturbingly beady eyes. There was a frazzled tabby cat standing at his feet.

"And where are you going, first year?" he asked in a sort of growl.

Rapunzel gulped. The hospital wing and the common room where both in the general direction.

"The, uh, Ravenclaw common room," she squeaked. "I, uh, wanted to get a head start on my homework!" She gave an unconvincing smile.

The strange man grunted and little as she walked slowly around him and then made off at a run the moment she could. That had been close. She never wanted to see him again.

As she walked the ever darkening hallways, she came to realize something that her mother had failed to tell her: there were good and bad people in the world. Hiccup, Jack, Merida, Eugene, all of them. They had to be the nicest people she had ever met. And yet, there were still some bad people, but they were never as bad as mother had made them sound. Well, except for that man, whoever he was. But Professor Bunny, though his quarrel was mostly with Jack, was still very strict bordering on mean, but he wasn't savage, and certainly didn't have pointed teeth or want to steal her hair. Maybe mother was wrong?

All thought, however, was driven from her mind as soon as she came upon the torch-lit hall that led directly to the hospital wing. She started to walk very quietly, hoping that no one, especially Peeves, would appear out of nowhere and catch her.

She came up to the door, opening it ever so slightly so she could see inside to make sure no one was watching.

There was a lady in there, busying herself with all kinds of things that were unfamiliar to Rapunzel, and doing a bit of cleaning as she went. She could hear her muttering under her breathe, "First week back… already they feel the need to break every bone in their bodies… when did children become so irresponsible?"

After a little while she left and went into some kind of side room. Rapunzel could see Hiccup lying just four beds down. Apparently he had eaten an early dinner, then gone to bed. This was perfect. Now he would never know it her.

She opened the doors just enough to let her through without trying let it squeak, then tiptoed ever so carefully over to the bed. Hiccup was snoring softly. If she sang the incantation quietly, he might not wake up.

Very delicately, she placed the end of her braid on his injured leg, then she softly sang, "Flower gleam and glow… let your power shine… make the clock reverse… bring back what once was mine…. heal what has been hurt… change the fate-" she gasped. She had heard something fall over in that strange room that woman had entered and she nearly jumped ten feet in the air. Her heart pounding very fast she turned back to Hiccup. She had to hurry.

She watched as the last bit of light slithered away down her hair and then vanished. Surely that had been enough. His leg would be fully healed.

"R-Rapunzel?" Rapunzel jumped at the name, even though it was spoken more groggily than she had ever heard it. She looked around and then her eyes fell on Hiccup. He was looking right at her, his eyes half open. She ran as fast as she could to the door. "Rapunzel?" came her name again, slightly more awake and more quizzical than before.

She wrenched open the door, squeezed through it, and slammed the door behind her, panting slightly. She took a deep breathe and closed her eyes. But when she opened them, her stomach lurched and her eyes popped out of her head.

"P-Proffesor D-Dumb-bledore?" she sputtered suddenly sighting the headmaster standing right across the hall from her. "I'm so sorry!" she wailed suddenly. "Please don't expel me! I won't ever do it again!"

"My dear child!" said Dumbledore with a smile. "It is not illegal to visit people in the hospital wing!"

Rapunzel looked at him for a moment, with his broad grin and jolly apparel. How could she be so stupid? It wasn't past bedtime, everyone was still at dinner! She didn't have to be sneaking around this whole time at all!

"Oh," was all she could manage to say back. She just now realized that she was shaking with fright. Maybe she should have been placed in Gryffindor, then maybe she could learn to be brave.

"Now why don't you run back to dinner?" said Dumbledore. striding over to her. "Perhaps you can still have some desert? Oh, and do watch out for Filch this time,"

"Filch?" she repeated. "Is that who that old man was outside the Great Hall?"

"Yes. He's the groundskeeper. He's never been very fond of students. Well, off you pop," he said, smiling again.

Rapunzel felt much better now. As she walked back down the corridors she felt like skipping. That is until, she heard something rather peculiar ahead of her. It sounded like voices.

She followed the sound down a dark hallway and turned a corner only to immediately jump back behind the wall of the last corridor and peer around the corner at what was going on. There were two large boys bending over a smaller one. Rapunzel had to squint to make out who they were, but stifled a gasp when she realized that the small boy was Eugene. The other two, well they might as well be peeves pretending to be two people. She had never seen them before in her life. It was even hard to make out what they looked like in the moonlight.

"Come on, Rider!" said one of the boys gruffly. "Where is it?"

"I-I don't have it," said Eugene.

"Lier!" shouted the other boy grabbing Eugene's collar. "You were the only one there with us! Hand it over!"

"I don't have it anymore!" said Eugene more loudly.

"Well, you'd better have it real soon!"

"Yeah. We'll give you till the end of the month!"

"If we don't have the crown by then…"

"We'll have your head instead!"

They let go of him and then walked away slowly down the hall. When they were completely gone, Rapunzel dashed out from her hiding place at once.

"Eugene!" she cried softly. Eugene looked like he was about to run for it, but Rapunzel had him wrapped in a hug before he could think. "Are you all right?" she asked breathlessly.

"Rapunzel?" he asked.

"Yes, it's me. What did those two thugs want with you?"

"Oh, uh… they, um… I just owe them a bit of money, that's all," he said lamely.

"That was awful the way they treated you!" Rapunzel went on. "You should report them!"

"What? And then have every other Slytherin after me? No way!" Eugene said.

Rapunzel didn't know what else to say. Everything seemed to be wrapped up in that one sentence.

"Why were over there?" Eugene asked suddenly, tilting his head over to Rapunzel's hiding place. "Where you following me?"

"What?" Rapunzel said. "Oh, I um… wanted to go visit Hiccup in the hospital wing and on my way back I… sort of stumbled onto your conversation," She gave an attempt at a chuckle but if anything it only made the mood worse. They didn't say anything for a while. They just starred at each other's feet, too embarrassed as to why neither of them were at dinner to say anything. Rapunzel felt like Dumbledore was going to turn the corner any second and find out what Eugene had been up to, and she knew that would upset him. So she said quickly, "Why don't we head back up to the Great Hall. There must be some food left,"

"Yeah. Yeah dinner sounds good." Eugene said distractedly.

They began to walk together down the moonlit hall, no one breathing a word. They still did not speak even when they reentered the hall. They waved at each other and smiled weakly, but aside from that, they hadn't spoken that much at all.

Rapunzel sat back down at the Ravenclaw table to find that she was, indeed, just in time for desert.

She started helping herself to some treacle tart when she spotted two large, brute-like boys sitting together at the Slytherin table conversing with another young boy with a round nose, messy brown hair and very large hands. They looked almost identical, and where seated around the more generally considered third-year area of the table. She watched them for a time, just wishing that they would stop looking so brute-like.

Dinner ended soon, and everyone hurried up to their dormitories. Rapunzel was one of the last ones up, which didn't really say much as most of the Ravenclaws liked to get to bed on time if they could, but nevertheless, she was last to reach her dorm. She was still shaking a bit with some of the excitement of that night's happenings. She was getting much braver now, far more brave than she ever would have become under her mother's roof. She just wished there was something she could do about those two Slytherins.

The next day was Saturday, everyone was out and about enjoying the early fall sunshine, and Hiccup was out of the hospital wing. He, Rapunzel, Merida, and Jack were walked across the grounds talking together. There was something about Hiccup that day, too. A certain spring in his step, a sort of glow around him.

"But why did Madam Pomfrey want you ter' stey over night?" Merida asked Hiccup.

"Well, she fixed my leg almost at once, but she didn't want me to get it hurt again, so she made me stay there under her supervision, just for one night, so that she was sure that it was healed completely. And I gotta say, I feel great!" said Hiccup with a broad smile.

Rapunzel frowned at this at first. The school nurse had fixed his leg already? So she wasn't responsible for his leg working again? She let out a sigh which was barely noticed as the others conversed.

"Aye, he does seem a wee bit too chipper for eh healed leg," said Merida.

"Are you sure you didn't accidentally take a euphoria potion instead of a healing elixir?" Jack asked. They all laughed, even Rapunzel.

"Or meybe, he just needs to not crash his broom on the ferst dey!" Merida laughed.

"I can't help it, I'm just a bit clumsy," said Hiccup, his smile fading away for a second. "But you know, it's the strangest thing. When I was in the hospital wing after dinner, I had a really weird dream." Rapunzel was listening carefully now. "I dreamt I saw a glowing haystack beside my bed that ran out the door,"

Everyone laughed, especially Rapunzel. She had no idea that to a half asleep person she bore the resemblance of a walking haystack.

They kept on walking together for a time talking about all the homework they had, showing each other their wands and telling everyone about their own crazy life outside of Hogwarts.

Merida had three little brothers at home each of them apparently more troublesome than the last, even though they were only about six years old.

Jack came from a pureblood family in Europe. He was the first in his family to be accepted at Hogwarts. Apparently, his family had been homeschooling their children for generations, never quite reaching Hogwarts level.

He also had a younger sibling at home: Flee, his little sister. She was nine. He spoke very fondly of her.

Hiccup was convinced that he was a muggle born. After all, his family had no records of any magic blood. Then again, he had mentioned something about his mother possibly being a witch, but said that he never had the chance to meet her. Something about a dragon.

When it eventually came time for Rapunzel to say something about her home, she hesitated. But eventually said, "I live with my mother. I never met my father, and I don't know weather I'm a pureblood, or moogle born, or whatever,"

"Muggle," Jack corrected.

Not much was further stated on the matter and they went on talking about someone named Stoick the Vast. She wasn't listening, though. She was thinking about an idea she had just had about how she could really help the school.