Deep Freeze

Chapter Ten

Nym curled in her little alcove. It was a comfortable spot, and no one ever bothered her here. Except that one time when Sirius had found her after Regulus picked on her. She wasn't sure how he'd found it. No one else seemed able to.

The light from her wand, jammed in a crack in the wall above her head, illuminated the book in front of her. She hadn't been able to return it to Remus just yet. She wanted to read it again and again until she knew every word by rote. It was such an amazing book. Like a story, almost, except even better because it was true. Except the part about werewolves. That still scared her terribly.

She was reading that part now. She wanted to remember it particularly, because Remus had said that it was the only piece he'd found that was entirely accurate and complete when it came to werewolves. He'd seemed very sure about it. She wanted to ask him about that, to see if it really was all true, but he was off sick again. He seemed to have the worst immune system she'd ever encountered, which was odd because she'd never seen him so much as sneeze, even when the whole House had had the flu, right down to Peter, who had been quarantined in the hospital wing.

A single phrase caught her eye. She'd always skimmed over it before, hating what it implied. Now it seemed to stand out in neon, and she couldn't pull her eyes away.

"Oh, but it would be such fun," Remus said. "I can just see your darling mum now."

"Blood traitors," James chimed in, his voice a shrill falsetto.

"Half breeds," Remus added, in an equally piercing voice.

Sirius grinned. "Shame of my house." The three doubled up laughing.

Half breeds. Werewolves. Nym closed her eyes, but the traitorous words still burned in her vision. Half breed. Werewolf. Remus.

The book slid from her limp fingers and landed open on a picture of a man transforming into a werewolf. The look of absolute pain on his face was too powerful to be imagined. Nym turned away and hid her face in the stone corner, willing the words and the image out of her mind. No, she kept thinking, not Remus. Not a werewolf.

Nym woke to a hand on her shoulder. James was crouched next to her, his face skeletal in the flickering light of the torch down the corridor. "You really shouldn't be down here Nym," he said quietly. "It's too close to the Slytherin Common Room."

She looked him full in the face. He didn't know. Not him, nor Sirius. They thought Remus was just like everyone else. How could Nym tell them he wasn't, that he was a… a… she started crying again. James looked pained. Glancing both ways down the corridor, he scooped Nym up and pulled her under his cloak. He really was much bigger than her, Nym realized as he shifted the cloak to cover them both completely. "Silencio," James muttered.

Nym kept crying – she couldn't seem to stop – but she was no longer making any sound. She was so surprised she hiccoughed, then started crying again.

James set her down with a sigh. For the first time since he'd picked her up, Nym glanced around. She was back in the Common Room, on one of the squashy couches in front of the fireplace, which had been banked for the night. She looked around for James, but couldn't see him anyway. "James?" she asked softly.

There was a swish of fabric, and James appeared in front of her, his invisibility cloak over his arm. He settled into a chair facing her. "What's wrong Nym? If it's Regulus again, I swear you could have come to us. We would have done everything…" he stopped, because Nym was shaking her head. How could she explain? Remus was his best friend. She half hoped he wouldn't believe her if she told him, because then he could go on being friends with him. He wouldn't be her friend anymore, though.

"Remus is a werewolf," she gasped, then clapped a hand to her mouth. Fresh tears poured out. She hadn't meant to let it out like that, but it had just popped out. At length she risked a glance at James, afraid to see his reaction.

James sat calmly, expressionless. "Is that what's bothering you?" She managed to nod.

"James?" came a voice from the dark somewhere. James swore softly.

"It's nothing, Lily," he called quietly. "Really."

"Are you sure? Do you need any help?"

"No, I'll be done in a few minutes."

"This had better not be a prelude to another of your pranks," the voice warned.

"Honest, Lil. I'm being a good little boy, really I am. I'm doing all the things a Head Boy is supposed to done and none of the ones they aren't." Nym saw him roll his eyes.

"Well," Lily sounded doubtful. "Alright then. Goodnight James."

"G'night." He turned back to Nym. "Really Nym, that's what you're upset about?" Nym nodded again.

"Stupid," James muttered. Nym shrank back into her couch. "Not you," he said hurriedly. "Us. We were much too open around you. We didn't mean for you to find out."

"Then you know?"

James's mouth quirked into a bit of a smile. "Have for years. It's not a big deal, but don't go spreading it around. You dropped this, by the way." He tossed Remus's book into her lap. She couldn't bring herself to look at it, but stared fixedly at his face.

Nym felt herself smiling in return. "Uh, James, how did you find me? No one else seems to go down there."

"They don't, do they?" He grinned, the sort of grin the promised mayhem. "Perhaps I'll tell you some day. For now," he stood and stretched, "I promised to meet the others in Hogsemeade. Not a word to Lily, right?"

"Right." James winked at her and disappeared. Nym turned and made her way slowly up to the dormitory.

"Nym?" Nym lowered her book to look at the speaker. Mandy was looking up at her, her eyes wide. Nym looked down at her friend from her perch on top of one of the library bookshelves. She wasn't sure why she liked it up there so much, only that it was rather peaceful, and people didn't seem inclined to bother her over much. Not even the librarian. "Zack's looking for you to go flying."

Nym's heart caught in her throat. It had been a week since that disastrous Hogsemeade trip, and she hadn't seen Zack since. But the time hadn't done anything to prepare her for the inevitable confrontation. If anything, it had made her more apprehensive.

Mandy saw her to the front doors. "I'm not going outside," she said, when Nym asked. "It's too cold." Nym shrugged and made her way to the broom shed on her own. It was very cold, and the snow was a foot deep in places, but it wasn't as bad as all that. Paths had been worn into the snow, crisscrossing the grounds in a sort of convoluted web, on which some of the bullying older students preyed. Nym couldn't see any of them just now, thankfully. She hurried along the muddy paths, drawing her cloak closer about her head.

"Hey," Zack said when she ducked into the broom shed, thankful for the small warmth it provided. Someone, Zack she supposed, had conjured a little blue flame, which was flickering contentedly in a corner and adding a little warmth to the otherwise unheated hut.

"Bit cold for flying, don't you think?" she asked, pressing her hands to her cheeks, which burned from the wind. Or humiliation.

"It's not so bad as all that. Thought we could take a quick jaunt over the forest. I need the practice anyway."

"And I'm the only one crazy enough to go flying with you when it's this cold," Nym muttered. She wouldn't mind flying with him so much, but it really was cold. He didn't seem mad at her about Hogsmeade, though. That was something, at least.

"Come on Nym. It's not that cold out. It's only, what, minus twenty?"

Nym raised an eyebrow at him. "What scale are you on?"

Zack shrugged and laughed. "My point is, it's not that bad."

"Well, alright," Nym muttered.

I'm an idiot, she thought as she kicked off. It was hardly ten paces from the door of the hut to a decent kickoff point, and already the freezing wind had cut through her cloak. Zack was grinning, but Nym couldn't be sure if his face hadn't frozen that way.

Once off the ground, when the speed of her flight added to the already driving wind, the cold numbed her to her broom in a heartbeat. She forgot it all, the cold and the worry and the discomfort, when she really started to fly. The air was so thin, so empty. It rushed in to fill her lungs and was snatched out again almost before she finished drawing the breath.

"I think we should head back," Zack called. He needn't have, really. She could hear him just fine. Every sound seemed magnified and perfectly crystal, even over the howl of the wind and the snapping of her cloak.

Nym staggered into the hut, every part of her frozen. She hadn't realized until she landed just how cold she was. In the hut, which was probably even colder than it had been before they headed out but which now seemed tropical, she collapsed into a pile in front of the little blue flame. She rubbed her fingers, trying to coax a little warmth into them.

"Not like that." Zack sat down in front of her and took her hands, putting them together and putting his own on top. "Rubbing them could cause tissue damage."

"How do you know that?" His hands felt warm, although they must have been nearly as cold as Nym's own.

Zack blew on them, his hot breath positively burning her frozen hands. Which, now that they had started to warm up, had ceased to be numb and now hurt like anything. "My uncle in Switzerland takes us skiing every Christmas. I've had frost bite before." He opened his hands to show Nym her fingers which, she assumed, must have frost bite. She'd never had it before, although her mother had warned her about it every cold day that she went outside to play. It hadn't sounded nearly so bad as this.

No description or motherly warning could have done justice to what greeted her. Her fingers were white and waxy, like one of the marble statues that dotted the Hogwarts halls. Spots that seemed suspiciously grey dotted them, along with one that looked rather purple.

Zack's face was very red, with little white spots on each cheekbone, his nose and ears. From the burning of her own face, Nym assumed hers must look similar. Something of what she saw must have shown on her face. "It's pretty bad, isn't it? I guess flying today wasn't such a great idea."

Nym smiled at him. Flying hadn't been so bad, really. Freezing had been, but the flying, what little they had done, had almost been worth it. "It wasn't so bad. I mean, it was sort of fun."

Zack smiled back, and released her hands. He put his palms over his cheeks instead, and Nym copied him. "You put too happy a face on things," he said. "Don't rub." Nym held her hands perfectly still. "Thanks for coming anyway, no matter how bad it turned out."

"Really," Nym tried to assure him. "It wasn't as bad as all that. I didn't mind."

Zack just smiled and shook his head. "Think you can make it back to the castle? I have the perfect way to finish this all off."

"I think I can manage," Nym said. The perfect way? she wondered. What could that mean? Together they bundled under their cloaks and raced along the paths, Nym in the lead. Zack should have been the faster runner, but Nym's hurry to get back to the warmth of the main building lent her speed.

Until she barreled into something tall and solid. At first, for some reason, she thought she'd run into a rain barrel. Although what one of those would be doing on a path through the snow in February was beyond her. The she looked up, up past the pointed chin and the nose with its big, gaping nostrils to a pair of black eyes that glared at her. "Well, well, what have we here?" the boy sneered.

Nym was through with being scared of Regulus. Maybe James and Sirius had only been teaching her for a month and a half, maybe she was just a first year, but Regulus was just a bully. Besides, according to Sirius, he was a lot slower on the draw than Nym. "Leave me alone, Regulus," she snapped.

"Or what? You'll run crying to the twin saints?"

Nym just glared at him. She wouldn't tell Sirius or James no matter what he did – well, unless it was something really mean, because then he'd deserve whatever he had coming to him. He was reaching for his wand. Nym ripped hers out of her robe. "Expelliarmus," she yelled. It wasn't as good as it had been when she'd practiced with James. He'd taught her that one, because he said it was easy enough for a second year, so she'd be able to manage it no problem. It had been funny trying to learn it, because it was so different from the carefully controlled spells the first years normally did. Now she saw what it was really like, when there was no control to it. Her voice had quavered, and her hand had shaken.

She hadn't thought of that just then, of course. It had been 'do something now and get out of here'. Which was what she did. All the thoughts about technique didn't come until after, when she was pelting across the school grounds. She had the vague sense that Regulus's wand had landed somewhere in a pile of snow, but she hadn't stopped to look.

There was a ragged breathing behind her. Nym made herself run faster, although her lungs were screaming already. So close. The doors were thirty feet away. Twenty. The breathing was getting louder. She wasn't going to make it. Regulus was going to catch her, and that would be the end. Fifteen feet.

A hand closed on her upper arm, spinning her around, off balance. Nym couldn't suppress the small scream that slipped out of her lips, before it was muffled against thick fabric. Her cheek pressed uncomfortably against someone's shoulder.

"Damn you Nym," a voice whispered, husky and tight. Dirty blond hair just missed brushing her face. "You gave me such a scare."

Zack, Nym thought. Not Regulus. Zack. Her life wasn't over. No one was going to hurt her, bully her, curse her. She relaxed, letting her shoulder rest a little against his shoulder, which heaved from his heavy breathing. She was panting too, but she caught her breath quickly. When she trusted herself to speak without her voice quavering, she stepped back from him. "I thought boys didn't get all sentimental like that."

Somehow, his blush made her feel better. "I wasn't getting sentimental. I was…" Nym nodded as though he was making perfect sense. Zack stopped, looked up at the sky, and went even redder, if such a thing were possible.

"Where were we going?"

"What? Oh. You sure you want to go there still? You're okay and all?"

Nym smiled at his concern. Boys didn't get sentimental. Right. "I'm fine. I was just a bit scared. I'd prefer it if you didn't talk about it."

Unfortunately, that seemed a little too much to ask. "I mean, I know Regulus had got it in for you. You only have to see how he looks at you to know that. I thought, I dunno, I thought you were scared of him." Like everyone else, his voice said. "But then you just… jeez, Nym, where'd you learn that?"

Nym bit her lip, unsure of how to answer. Zack was her friend. She trusted him, really she did. Yet she found herself oddly reluctant to tell him about this. "Well, that is…" and it all came out in a breathless rush. "Remus and James and Sirius have been teaching me. Ever since Regulus really starting picking on me in January. They've been teaching me all sorts of stuff, helping me out with my homework, stuff like that. Only please don't tell anyone. Promise."

"Promise," Zack said, doing something funny with his two index fingers. Nym vaguely remembered doing something like that in primary school when she and her friends had made secret pacts. Then he whistled. "You mean Potter and Black and Lupin, don't you? Of course you do." He shook his head and whistled again. "Man, those guys are incredible. Coolest guys in school, top in all their classes." He paused. "Seventh years."

"So?" Nym asked. Sure, they were all those things. But they were more than that. They were Prongs and Padfoot and Mooney, Marauders. They were like Nym's big brothers.

"Nym, they're big league. Amazing, you know? They're…" he shrugged, unable to find the words. "That's like being personal friends with the queen or something."

"They aren't like that," Nym protested. "They aren't stuck up or anything." Well, James and Sirius sort of were, she conceded, but that was natural arrogance. It had nothing to do with James's position as Head Boy or anything like that. More like natural talent, and a knowledge of it. "You never seemed that impressed with them before."

"I didn't think… I dunno. Anyway, here we are."

Nym wasn't sure what she'd expected, but this wasn't it. In a castle full of mysteries and old elegance, the door seemed out of place. Or perhaps just a bit too old. It's surface was pitted near the bottom, as though several someone's had kicked it, and the wood was warped and splintered. It was set in shadow, as though to hide its presence. Hooks were set above it, as though something had once hung over it to hide it further. Not that it was really needed. A more nondescript, uninteresting door Nym had never seen.

Zack opened the door to a wall of noise. Students sat on cushions or sagging armchairs, talking, laughing, playing cards or doing whatever else they seemed to feel like. "Hey everyone, Smith's got himself a girlfriend," one of them called. There were a few laughs around the room, and Nym felt herself flush. She wasn't his girlfriend, just his friend. Couldn't people understand that, or did they have to be immature?

"Guess that means you'll never have a chance with him, eh Ern?" There were a few more laughs this time, and the boy called Ern flushed a little.

"Come on Nym, they won't bite," Zack said, grinning at her as he entered the room, pulling her in with him. "Where's the hot chocolate, you lot?"

"Up your ass, Smith," Ern snapped.

"Then you'll have to kiss it if you want some, won't you?" Zack asked him with an malevolent grin.

"Um, Zack, maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Nym muttered.

Zack grinned at her, a kind, cheerful grin, completely unlike the one he'd sent Ern. "Relax, Nym, it's alright, really. Ern's a bit of a pill, but most of them are okay. Stay here with Jimmy and I'll find us some hot chocolate." He gave her a nudge towards a mended beanbag next to the second year Gryffindor. Jimmy nodded in greeting but kept playing his guitar, stopping every so often and shaking his head.

Zack soon returned bearing two chipped mugs, and settled into the huge beanbag next to her. "I can't believe you're nervous about this lot, not after facing up to Regulus," he commented quietly.

"That's different," Nym muttered. She wasn't really sure how, but it was. "What is this place?" she asked to change the subject.

"This," Zack said, waving the hand that didn't hold the mug expansively, "is the refuge of the second years. They're too young to go to Hogsmeade, but they're too old to be stupid little first years. They're not even teenagers yet."

"I'm a stupid little first year," Nym muttered.

Zack looked surprised. "Oops, forgot about that." His grin returned. "But you don't exactly fit as the stupid little first year. I mean, you attacked Regulus. Most would have fainted in fright. And I think," he added, "you know more magic than most of the second years. So don't think like that."

Nym smiled at him, a little uncertainly. "So what're you doing here?"

Zack assumed a lofty air. "Associating with the lower classes of course. It is trying, but it must be done." Then his smile was back. "Really, I just like it here. None of that 'did you hear about this guy and that girl' and 'what is she thinking, wearing that?'" He shook his head ruefully. "I really shouldn't talk about my year like that, but most of them are just a little too much to stand."

Jimmy murmured something, and Nym turned towards him to hear better. Whatever he'd been saying, though, he was done, and had turned back to his guitar. Zack shook his head. "I dunno why he doesn't practice in his dorm. It's probably quieter there." But Nym wasn't listening to him. She stared at the little grey body curled in Jimmy's lap, apparently asleep.

"Jimmy?" she asked. The boy turned towards her, apparently startled at being addressed. He didn't say anything, though. "Where… where did you find that kitten?"

"She follows me around sometimes." His fingers stroked the grey hair lovingly. "I think she's a bit lonely. I've never seen her with an owner."

Nym flushed. She was so unused to having a pet, the kitten sometimes slipped her mind. Not that that was any excuse, and if anything it made her feel worse. "She's mine," she muttered, flushing to the roots of her hair. "My dad gave her to me for Christmas, but I've been so busy and all…" there was no excusing what she did to her little pet.

"What's her name?" Jimmy asked. He didn't seem to mind that she didn't pay attention to the kitten. If anything, Nym would have said he hadn't really listened to her. "I call her Morwyn."

"She doesn't have a name. But Morwyn sounds nice." She wasn't even sure Jimmy heard her.