Chapter Six
The Letter
It was a freezing bitter, brutal, beautiful winter day. Bella was cold even in all of the thick, warm wrappings she'd decked about her body. It was all she could do to keep her nose from freezing off her face and the shivers were starting to kick in. But that couldn't spoil her mood.
The sky was arching above, pale blue and mocking the earth with chilling winds. There was snow on the ground from the night before, and she kicked her cold feet gleefully in it as she walked. She hadn't known it was possible to be this happy about an exam announcement. Even its promised difficulty made her grin. It was a confirmation, a triumph.
The letter had come earlier that day, soaring in on the foot of a big brown owl. It was from Gawain Firth at the Ministry, telling her (five months in advance, no less) that she had tested at a sufficient skill level to take the O.W.L.s at the end of this school term, and that she was now on a level with other wizards her age. It was hard to pin down exactly why it elated her so. Perhaps it was simply the pride that she would have felt in the Muggle world at receiving a good grade on a test or being accepted to a prestigious university. But it was more than academic pride. Bella had found, since her rude awakening to the wizarding world almost two years ago, that there were people here who believed in her abilities. She felt she had somehow beaten out the odds. In the Muggle world, she had had nothing and been nothing, a statistic, and a tragedy case. School had had no meaning to her because she knew that she meant nothing to it. She had grown up surrounded by low expectations, and had not felt it worth her while to prove them wrong.
But now, she was part of this other world, a world that she could learn from, a world that was glad to have her back. The Malfoys were as good as a family now, Death Eaters or no. The old Spiky would never have believed she could be this happy. She had risen, or at least that was the best word she could think of for it, out of the endless quicksand tar pit death trap she had believed herself born into. She was Horatio Alger turning cups into mice and flipping the middle finger in a shower of wand sparks at anyone and everyone who had ever expected her to drop out of school, get hooked on heroin, and wind up dead in an alley before her twenty-first birthday. Bella grinned. Gonna make it after all, old girl, she thought to herself.
She had thought of taking a piece of parchment and writing her manifesto, a statement of her triumph over whatever it was she had beaten. It was true that she wasn't quite sure what it was, but that didn't seem to matter just now. What mattered was that she had passed the first test. She had mastered five years of material in just two years of bending her nose to the grindstone and working her arse off, and she was damn proud of herself. Maybe it was just the perverse desire to spite the world she'd grown up in. But whatever it was, the difficulty of the tasks ahead of her gave her chills of excitement. She liked a challenge, after all.
Bella picked up a handful of snow and rolled it into a snowball. She took pains to roll it well, making it as near a perfect sphere as she could. Regarding the snowball for a moment, she tossed it up and caught it gently, before whipping it as hard as she could at the nearest tree trunk. She laughed aloud at the silly thing she'd just done. You, thought Bella, are much too cocky for your own good. Was it such a bad thing?
The Letter
It was a freezing bitter, brutal, beautiful winter day. Bella was cold even in all of the thick, warm wrappings she'd decked about her body. It was all she could do to keep her nose from freezing off her face and the shivers were starting to kick in. But that couldn't spoil her mood.
The sky was arching above, pale blue and mocking the earth with chilling winds. There was snow on the ground from the night before, and she kicked her cold feet gleefully in it as she walked. She hadn't known it was possible to be this happy about an exam announcement. Even its promised difficulty made her grin. It was a confirmation, a triumph.
The letter had come earlier that day, soaring in on the foot of a big brown owl. It was from Gawain Firth at the Ministry, telling her (five months in advance, no less) that she had tested at a sufficient skill level to take the O.W.L.s at the end of this school term, and that she was now on a level with other wizards her age. It was hard to pin down exactly why it elated her so. Perhaps it was simply the pride that she would have felt in the Muggle world at receiving a good grade on a test or being accepted to a prestigious university. But it was more than academic pride. Bella had found, since her rude awakening to the wizarding world almost two years ago, that there were people here who believed in her abilities. She felt she had somehow beaten out the odds. In the Muggle world, she had had nothing and been nothing, a statistic, and a tragedy case. School had had no meaning to her because she knew that she meant nothing to it. She had grown up surrounded by low expectations, and had not felt it worth her while to prove them wrong.
But now, she was part of this other world, a world that she could learn from, a world that was glad to have her back. The Malfoys were as good as a family now, Death Eaters or no. The old Spiky would never have believed she could be this happy. She had risen, or at least that was the best word she could think of for it, out of the endless quicksand tar pit death trap she had believed herself born into. She was Horatio Alger turning cups into mice and flipping the middle finger in a shower of wand sparks at anyone and everyone who had ever expected her to drop out of school, get hooked on heroin, and wind up dead in an alley before her twenty-first birthday. Bella grinned. Gonna make it after all, old girl, she thought to herself.
She had thought of taking a piece of parchment and writing her manifesto, a statement of her triumph over whatever it was she had beaten. It was true that she wasn't quite sure what it was, but that didn't seem to matter just now. What mattered was that she had passed the first test. She had mastered five years of material in just two years of bending her nose to the grindstone and working her arse off, and she was damn proud of herself. Maybe it was just the perverse desire to spite the world she'd grown up in. But whatever it was, the difficulty of the tasks ahead of her gave her chills of excitement. She liked a challenge, after all.
Bella picked up a handful of snow and rolled it into a snowball. She took pains to roll it well, making it as near a perfect sphere as she could. Regarding the snowball for a moment, she tossed it up and caught it gently, before whipping it as hard as she could at the nearest tree trunk. She laughed aloud at the silly thing she'd just done. You, thought Bella, are much too cocky for your own good. Was it such a bad thing?