The remainder of the Christmas Holidays were a flurry of activities. Bagsy forced herself to rise early every morning to practise quidditch. At first, it had been difficult. Her bed was so warm and Bagsy was in the habit of staying up late. It was good, then, that at some point Bagsy couldn't remember, she had decided to stay in the Slytherin common room for the rest of the holiday. Unlike herself, Mezrielda was early to rise, and also unlike Bagsy, she was very willing to force others out of bed.
'Get up,' Mezrielda's cold voice cut into Bagsy's comfortable dreaming. Bagsy groaned in protest only to find herself tugged off the bed and into the air by her ankle as Mezrielda cast a jinx on her. She was wide awake after that.
Forced to wake early every morning, Bagsy would be dragged outside by Mezrielda, who'd sit to the side of the quidditch pitch and practise wand movements without saying a word. Bagsy was still confused what use that would be.
'What are you doing?' Mezrielda asked one morning. Bagsy had set up a pole in the dirt and was hitting a ball at it over and over again. She was trying, and slowly getting better, at making the ball spin once hit with her bat, curving it through the air to hit the pole.
'Why are you waving your wand around without speaking a word?' Bagsy shot back at her friend.
'Touché…' Mezrielda trailed off, still not telling her why.
After lunch time, Bagsy would either unfold her forge out on the lawn to work under the cold but beautiful winter sun, or have the forge form as a trap door in the floor where she could huddle in the warmth as she hammered away. Blueprints were splayed on the floor around her. She slowly made progress learning the basics of smithing and, once she got the hang of that, she set straight to work on her wand training wheel and the weather machine. Her designs were intentionally simple whilst she got the hang of metal work, and she may have gained a few small burns from splash-back here and there, but all things considered, it was going very smoothly.
'Mezrielda!' Bagsy chimed one morning, 'look!'
Mezrielda placed her spoon delicately down, pausing in her consumption of cereal, as Bagsy imagined she'd describe it. 'What has you so… exuberant this morning?'
'Exuberant?' Bagsy paused, not recognising the word, then shook her head. 'Whatever, forget that. Look!' She held a perfectly smooth, perfectly formed, thin silver band out to Mezrielda.
Mezrielda frowned. 'I'm too young to marry,' she said plainly.
Bagsy flushed, then flustered over her words. 'It's n-not a wedding ring, you dolt! It's a wand training wheel.'
'This looks very official,' Mezrielda murmured, taking the wand training wheel and turning it over in her hand.
Bagsy, feeling impatient, snatched it back and slotted it over her hornbeam wand. 'Let's see how it does!' she cheered excitedly. She was finally going to be able to cast a spell, after all these years!
'Bagsy, are you sure–'
'Lumos!' Bagsy's wand vibrated dangerously for half a second before there was a bright, uncontrollable flash. She found herself thrown backwards and onto the floor, letting out a cry of surprise.
'–that's the best idea…' Mezrielda finished slowly, looking with concern down at her. Bagsy propped herself up on her elbows and let out a sigh. Even with a perfect wand training wheel, and she just knew it was perfect, she still couldn't cast spells.
'It's useless,' Bagsy grumbled, the sounds of crying edging into her voice as she tore the wand training wheel off and chucked them angrily away onto the floor by her feet.
'What was that light?' Maisy said from across the hall. Killian and Fiona were looking over as well.
'There wasn't any light, Maisy,' Mezrielda snapped back. 'Find a hobby and stop lying.'
Maisy didn't look bothered by Mezrielda's harsh words and went back to her breakfast. Fiona and Killian seemed to accept it was a fib and ignored them too.
Bagsy felt bad for painting Maisy in the light of a liar, but she didn't want others to know about her constant failures. 'Oh well,' Bagsy sighed, picking the wand training wheel back up again. At least it hadn't broken. 'Back to the drawing board.' She stood up, steeling herself against the bitter disappointment, and sat down next to Mezrielda, who spared a brief spell to fix Bagsy's smoking hair.
'You move on quickly,' Mezrielda commented.
'I'll just have to keep trying,' Bagsy responded, forcing determination into her heart. 'One day… one day…' As she was muttering to herself, Eldritch swooped down and deposited a letter in front of Bagsy, who seized it and tore it open.
'Any news?' Mezrielda asked curiously.
Bagsy scanned the letter. 'Griffin says he couldn't find Bontie anywhere,' she read aloud, fear seizing her, 'but when he asked the Ministry they said she had been pulled into a classified operation…'
Mezrielda's brow knitted together. She said, softly, 'That sounds dangerous.'
Bagsy gave a small nod, pursing her lips. She crumpled the letter up in her hand and shoved it into her pocket. 'She would have told me,' Bagsy breathed in confusion. 'Any operation she's on must have been suddenly announced or she would have let me and Griffin know. Right?'
'Agreed,' Mezrielda said. 'I wonder what kind of operation it is?'
Bagsy tilted her head in thought, but nothing sprang to mind. 'I need to do something else,' she said after a pause. 'I don't want to think about this. It's making me feel all worried.'
'What do you want to do, then?' Mezrielda asked, adding with a wicked grin. 'How about another game of one-word stories?'
'What, so you can make up more words?'
'None of those words were made up!'
'Disseh-stabby-men-tear-ear-is-him,' Bagsy tried. 'That's got to be made up.'
'Disestablishmentarianism,' Mezrielda corrected her. 'And no. It's not.'
'I swear you look these up just to annoy me…' Bagsy grumbled. 'Did you look for a book on the longest words in existence or something?' Mezrielda's defensive yet abashed face said that yes, she had. 'I think I want to go for a walk,' Bagsy said suddenly, moving on from the subject.
Mezrielda looked out the windows miserably. 'Sounds like an idea,' she mumbled. There wasn't snow outside and, as Mezrielda had mentioned earlier, she had really hoped it would snow over Christmas.
Bagsy held back a grin, gripping the bronze cube in her pocket tightly. 'Let's go,' she said calmly, trying her best to hide the excitement in her voice. Her wand training wheel hadn't worked, but she was certain her other invention would, and though Bontie was missing on some abrupt, important Ministry operation, Bagsy found Mezrielda was, as usual, the best cure for her concern.
They walked along, discussing Bontie's disappearance only briefly, before moving onto quidditch, tag and exams, which was a good distraction from Bagsy's worry.
'I have my Ministry examination after the school exams, as well,' Mezrielda complained.
'Ministry examination?'
Mezrielda nodded. 'Towards the end of Summer, before the start of a new school year, the Ministry conduct some silly little tests on me to check that my parents are raising me correctly and that I don't need to be taken away from them.'
'You mean if you fail those exams they'll take you away from your parents?' Bagsy was appalled. Mezrielda nodded again. 'That's awful.'
'I've never failed,' Mezrielda bragged. 'Given my sheer talent, I don't reckon I ever will.' Her confidence soothed Bagsy somewhat. That, and the fact they'd reached the spot Bagsy was aiming for. They had been walking up an incline away from the castle and now they stood on top of the hill looking down at the rolling fields surrounding Hogwarts. The edges of the forbidden forest loomed behind them and to their right, and the hill continued up into mountain-like summits to their left. During term time, there would be too many eyes for what Bagsy was about to do.
'Twiddle diddle,' Bagsy pronounced smugly. Mezrielda shot her a confused look abruptly at her words. Tossing the bronze cube onto the floor, Bagsy watched as the foldable forge unfolded. 'Open-air,' Bagsy informed it. It kept unfolding along the ground until the forge had appeared neatly in front of them, sitting atop the hill. In the middle of the forge was the other invention Bagsy had been working on; the weather machine.
Mezrielda's eyes zeroed in on it instantly. 'Ridiculous…' she breathed, sounding more amazed then incredulous.
'Now that I've had access to metal work,' Bagsy began explaining, her words running away from her, 'I've finally managed to complete my design.' She scuttled happily over to the weather machine. It was large, about the size of Bagsy herself. Looking like one, big, brass barrel, the weather machine sat impressively as she pointed to all its different components. 'I repurposed the solidifying liquid I tried to unlock locks with. This clamp holds the little jars with weather phenomenons inside still,' Bagsy explained, referencing the three small jars she'd gotten from Pepsini's shop in Hogsmeade. 'Then, with a pull of one of three cranks, a needle of varying size will pierce the jar's lid and let a small sliver of the weather out.' Bagsy had tested how potent the weather phenomenons were. After some uprooted trees and nearly uncontrollable winds, Bagsy had decided the answer was very. A small hole pierced into the re-fitted lids of the jars was enough for a significant weather change. 'Then, once you've got enough of the weather effect out, a pull of this crank shoots the solidifying liquid, the sealable substance, onto the hole and seals it immediately.' Bagsy beamed at Mezrielda, whose face was entirely blank. Bagsy rubbed the back of her neck. 'My Christmas presents were kind of lame compared to yours, so I figured this could be a belated one, if that's okay?'
Mezrielda seemed speechless at first. '…Of course, that's okay,' she said at last. 'Your Christmas present was perfectly adequate, though…' she added in a voice Bagsy struggled to hear it was so quiet.
'Well, either way, you've been complaining about a lack of snow…' Bagsy smirked, spinning the inside mechanism of the weather machine so that the snow filled jar slotted in below the needles. Whilst the weather phenomenons were potent, Bagsy had added a magic magnifying glass she'd had lying around. It was like a thick contact lens, about the size of her hand. As a child she'd asked for one thinking it would amplify her magic. That hadn't been the case. Now, though, it would help amplify the weather effects, making the jars last even longer than they would have otherwise. With a pull of the smallest crank, the scrape of a needle could be heard as it pierced through the jar's lid. She pulled the crank back up, the weather machine whirring into life, and then white crystals shot up out of the magic magnifier and into the air. The force of the wind blustered Bagsy's and Mezrielda's hair out behind them, and the warm winter cloaks they were wearing billowed out sharply. They held their arms in front of their faces as the weather ascended aggressively into the sky.
'Is it meant to do that!?' Mezrielda called in concern above the roar of the surging snow.
Bagsy took a struggling step forward and pulled the lever that released the sealable substance. Within a few seconds the weather jar was resealed, and the snow flurry finished. They stood in silence, before a healthy deluge of snow tumbled down around them, slowly dying down to a peaceful procession of soft snowflakes dancing to the ground.
Mezrielda looked around herself wide-eyed and gaping. 'Snow,' she said simply. Above their heads, and stretching out over Hogwarts, was a light dusting of white, like sugar being sieved onto a cake. Bagsy nodded happily, instructing the forge to fold back up again and placing the bronze cube into her pocket. The ground around them was covered in white that crunched satisfyingly beneath their feet.
Bagsy leapt in shock when something hard and cold broke across her face. Letting out a gasp she turned to see Mezrielda smirking dangerously at her, her hand dusted with snow. With a quick movement Mezrielda had collected more and squashed it into a firm snowball.
'Don't compact it so much!' Bagsy protested, starting to move away from her.
'I've been waiting for this…' she growled. It suddenly struck Bagsy just why Mezrielda had been so keen on it snowing.
'Hey, hey, now, there's no need for violence,' Bagsy reasoned but Mezrielda was already winding her arm back. With a grunt she lobbed the snowball at Bagsy. It just managed to hit her shoulder, spreading a spurt of coldness along her body. 'You don't want to do this,' Bagsy warned, lowering down to collect her own handful of snow, the feeling of challenge thrumming within her.
'Oh?' Mezrielda hummed disbelievingly. 'What could you possible do to me?'
Bagsy pulled her bat from one of her many pockets and threw her very compact snowball into the air. Mezrielda's face paled a second before it was plastered over with snow. Bagsy laughed triumphantly, resting her bat on her shoulder. 'See?' she teased. 'You should give in. You're looking at Hufflepuff's best beater.'
Mezrielda was wiping snow off her face with a pinched expression. 'Is that so? I'll be sure to let Teresa know.'
Bagsy's jaw dropped. 'Ah! No! I didn't mean it like that!' she protested.
Mezrielda produced her wand from her sleeve, flipping it around her fingers in a show-off motion that Bagsy was sure she must have spent hours practising, before pointing it squarely at her. With a flash of determination in her eyes, Mezrielda waved her wand, and spoke an incantation. It felt like half the snow on the ground rose into the air and curled itself into a massive ball.
'Oh no,' Bagsy gulped, turning and sprinting away from the madly cackling Mezrielda.
'Where's Hufflepuff's best beater running off to?' she called maniacally.
'Anywhere but here!' Bagsy shot back over her shoulder as she tumbled down the hill. She didn't make it far before she was buried below an avalanche of cold snow. With a huff, Bagsy forced her head back into the air, feeling thoroughly trapped below the weight of the stuff.
With satisfied crunches in every step, Mezrielda slowly sauntered over to the restrained Bagsy. 'Need some help?' Bagsy didn't respond, merely grumbled testily as she tried to wriggle her way out. It didn't seem to be working. 'Don't feel too down, now,' Mezrielda added, pacing around Bagsy. 'It's only natural I would reign victorious. I succeed at everything I try.'
'Have you tried not being a jerk?' Bagsy shot back.
'Once.' Mezrielda crinkled her nose in disgust. 'It was dreadful.' She shot a joking look at Bagsy out of the corner of her eye, before muttering teporiem and melting the snow encasing her. Suddenly warm, dry and free, Bagsy couldn't help a relieved smile. 'See? That was dreadful. I feel the need to insult you to make up for it.'
'Go on, then.'
Mezrielda thought for a time as they walked back towards the castle.
'Don't think too hard now,' Bagsy cautioned when she had yet to produce an insult. 'I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself.'
Mezrielda opened her mouth in offense. 'Well I never,' she muttered. Bagsy giggled.
They were settled in their nook that evening, their bellies filled with warm stew, Bagsy trying not to think about her missing sister, when Mezrielda piped up.
'Your weather machine,' Mezrielda said suddenly, daintily closing the transfiguration textbook she'd been flipping through. 'It can produce electrical storms, yes?' Bagsy nodded. 'And it has a strong wind mode, which could theoretically clear clouds?' Bagsy nodded again. 'In that case.' Mezrielda reached into her bag and produced a small pamphlet. 'It's about time I shared this with you.' She slid the informational hand-out over to Bagsy, who picked it up and gave it a quick read. It was from St Mungo's hospital for magical maladies and injuries.
Mezrielda leant over and tapped the corner of the final page, where there was a section on the magically mute. 'Some individuals, due to unfortunate curses and hijinks, end up incapable of speech.' Bagsy didn't follow and furrowed her brow in confusion. Mezrielda breezed on, sensing her puzzlement, 'You may recall that in order to become an Animagus, I will need to keep a mandrake leaf in my mouth for an entire month. If it is removed or swallowed I have to start from scratch. To avoid this, I have devised an ingenious deception.'
Bagsy side-eyed her. 'Which is?'
'I shall be taking a vow of silence,' Mezrielda announced. 'To raise awareness for the magically mute, of course.'
'Of course.'
'If that happens to allow me to become an Animagus, that is a wonderful added bonus. If it also, perchance, raises my social standing by demonstrating my selfless sainthood, well then what a happy set of coincidences I may have found.' Mezrielda's lips quirked devilishly as she held back a smirk. 'On the night my vow of silence finishes, the full moon, I will need the sky to be clear of clouds, or I'll have to perform it all again.'
'That's why you need my weather machine to clear the clouds, then,' Bagsy checked.
Mezrielda nodded. 'Precisely. Then, I'll need you to assist me in some brewing. Once we've finished our tasks for the night of the full moon, we should place the potion in your secret room until the following night when, to minimise risk between brewing and casting, I'll perform the Animagus spell during an electrical storm and become an Animagus at last.'
Bagsy nodded along, smiling. It was all very exciting – and unlike their other adventures, her life wasn't in mortal peril. Or, at least, it didn't seem to be.
On the last night before students would return to Hogwarts, Bagsy relished every moment she had in the Slytherin common room. Even the parts where Maisy and Mezrielda descended into bickering.
'She was a famous actress,' Maisy was fuming. 'Or, at least, she was trying to be, and had come a good way towards being one! And then she was kidnapped!'
Mezrielda threw her arms up into the air. 'No matter how many times you tell this lie, no one will believe it. You don't have a sister, let alone a nearly-famous actress sister, and there is no big actress-stealing conspiracy.' Mezrielda folded her arms and tapped her foot impatiently on the floor, breathing harshly through her nose. 'Your usual fibbing is infuriating but tolerable. Lying about having a kidnapped sister to get attention, however, is beyond reprehensible.'
'I'm not lying!' Maisy shot back, storming away from them without another word.
'Maybe,' Bagsy said sheepishly to Mezrielda, 'she isn't lying.' Mezrielda looked like she'd never believed anything less.
The next morning, Bagsy found for once she enjoyed Mezrielda forcing her to rise early. Unlike Mezrielda, Bagsy was a night owl, and certainly not an early bird, and every morning she's been dishevelled and bleary eyed as her friend ripped the warm duvet off of her. Now, though, she awoke without difficulty and fixed Mezrielda with a smile in greeting.
Mezrielda did a double take. 'Who are you?' she asked in concern. 'What have you done with Bagsy?'
'Nah, it's me,' Bagsy breathed dreamily and stretched with satisfaction. 'Haven't been stolen away and replaced by a doppelganger or anything,' she joked. Mezrielda didn't seem to find it funny in the slightest, her eyes narrowing and a pensive look crossing her face, but Bagsy was in too good a mood to care. 'I'm just glad I got to have such a nice Christmas.' Mezrielda didn't seem to know what to say to that.
Bagsy collected the small number of her things that had found their home in the Slytherin common room and headed back to her own. Before she left, Mezrielda had placed the mandrake leaf below her tongue, closed her mouth and held a finger to her lips.
Bagsy nodded in understanding. 'Good luck with your vow of silence,' she joked. Mezrielda rolled her eyes and, satisfyingly, was unable to respond. It was a full moon tonight; a month from now Mezrielda would be able to speak again but until then, Bagsy realised there were plenty of tricks she could play on her.
As hundreds of students were slowly filtering back into their dorms and classrooms, Bagsy was outside, as far away from the crowd as she could be, practising quidditch. She'd hit one ball up into the air with her bat then, as it fell back down, she'd hit a second ball, aiming it at the first. This manoeuvre had taken her many hours of practise over Christmas, and she was slowly but surely becoming more consistent with it.
'The – best – quidditch – player – in – school,' she muttered in determination to herself as she hit the ball up over and over again. After finishing that exercise, it was back to learning to spin the ball. It was through this method that Bagsy successfully avoided all social contact with the arriving students.
