Chapter 33: Poison to common antidotes

Elsa tipped the vial and swallowed it in one go. Heat ran down her throat and spread in her stomach. She doubled over. She could hear Jack and Snape saying something in the background, but the sound was drowned out by a ringing in her ears. All of her senses were screaming at her. An intense pain gripped her insides, and she fell to her knees.

Jack pressed a glass to her lips. "Drink," he said urgently. "Drink, Elsa."

She swallowed the warm liquid and gagged.

"More," he insisted when she squirmed away from it.

Her insides were burning, and her mouth tasted like a sewer. He forced her to drink the rest of it, and she would have retched, but paralysis was taking hold. She laid down on the floor in a fetal position and breathed through her mouth as her body convulsed in pain. Jack kneeled next to her, smoothed the hair on her head while saying something, but she was too busy dying to listen.

There was no flash of memories as death drew near. It was only pain, a fire that obscured every thought, that grew larger within her, and consumed the world around her. She hoped the world burned with her. The world deserved it. The world was cruel.

Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the burning subsided and was replaced by a vile feeling, like her stomach was slowly being painted in the nasty potion she was forced to drink. She took a few shaky breaths and was glad that the convulsions were replaced by queasiness.

She shakily sat up, and Jack hugged her.

"Your potion is disgusting," she tried to chuckle, but it took too much effort.

He held her so tight, she felt as if her bones would break, but she needed it. She rested her forehead on his neck and took comfort in the coolness of his skin. The heat was going away but the foul aftertaste lingered on her tongue.

"I can't believe he gave you aconite," he whispered in her ear. "I wouldn't have let you drink it if I knew. I'm so sorry. This wasn't worth risking your life."

She squeezed him back in response in a gesture of assurance that he wasn't at fault. It was her decision to drink the poison. She could barely believe that it really happened and just moments ago, she was so close to death.

"This is all very touching," Snape said sarcastically. "I suppose it worked. Rather fast too. A normal antidote would have taken at least twenty minutes, by which time she would have been unconscious already."

Jack trembled in rage.

"Control your anger. He's testing your nerves," she whispered.

Jack released her and touched her face. "How are you feeling? Can you get up yet?"

"Yeah."

He helped her up, and she hung onto his arm for support, ready for this mess to be over. Meanwhile, Snape's face was expressionless as if nothing unusual had just happened, as if he didn't just nearly kill one of his students. They waited as he examined the potion in more detail and barely glanced at her to confirm that she was in fact cured.

"This will do," he declared in a bored voice. "You may practice your experimental humane methods in my class if you wish, assuming you accept the consequences of your likely failures. It would be most foolish to think that today's success is guaranteed to be repeated each time. I don't care what you worship. You will not get special treatment if your unorthodox methods fail. A fail is a fail."

"I understand, sir," Jack said through his teeth.

"I am most curious about where you learned these methods. Who was the author of that elixir book you spoke of?"

"I don't know, sir. It was handwritten."

Snape's brow twitched. "A family recipe book then? I'm not familiar with the Nix family line. Any known potioneers among your ancestors?"

"I don't know, sir."

Snape put a hand on Jack's shoulder. "You show adequate potential in this discipline, and I recognize a lot of Slytherin characteristics in you. I wonder if you were sorted right."

Jack looked Snape in the eye. "The Sorting Hat considered Slytherin."

"It did with me too," Elsa said, remembering the Sorting Ceremony.

The Hat had sounded rather cryptic in her head when she'd put it on, and she worried that it could read her mind. Whether or not it was able to tell that she wasn't human, it didn't betray her but sorted her just like human children, allowing her to become a part of this school.

"With your ambition, Ms. Nix," Snape now looked at her, still holding Jack's shoulder, "likewise, I think you would have done well in my house. The Hat should have put you both in Slytherin, and you wouldn't have been separated. This could still be arranged."

Elsa blinked rapidly and tried to wrap her head around what he just said. She wondered if it had ever happened before that students changed their house affiliation after two months into the term, and more so if Professor Snape had ever been the one to arrange it. Did her brother manage to charm the most unlikeable teacher in their school? Or did her wit win him over?

"Thank you for the offer, Professor," Jack said, "but it will be easier if we stay where we are."

Elsa agreed with his wish. She was proud to be in Ravenclaw. However, it was a curious idea to imagine how different their school experience would have been if they were both in Slytherin.

"Oh, well. Leave then," Snape said and patted them both on the back.

They walked out of the dungeons with much better spirits. She couldn't believe that they managed to convince him. Jack led her to the courtyard where they sat on the grass. He knew what she needed.

"I'm so sorry you had to go through that," he said. "And thank you. No one else would have done for me what you did."

"You would have done the same for me."

"In the blink of an eye. And I do owe you. Name your favor whenever you're ready."
"I'll save it for a special occasion."

She took her time absorbing the power of the Earth beneath her and felt like herself again. The air was crisp and refreshing, and it smelled like the beginning of winter. Samhain had passed, and about now, their mother was starting to get her winter powers again. Would they extend all the way to Hogwarts? What would she do once she found them? She had never punished them physically, she always threatened so, but in the end, she would only resort to punishment by fear and separation. But they had never defied her in this way before. They crossed the line of misbehavior, and she might just cross the line of appropriate punishment as a result.

"It's a shame we don't have Potions together." Jack was playing by drawing frost on the ground. "I'll make notes when I'm brewing, so you could use them when it's your turn. That's if you want to do it my way?"

"I'll gladly take your notes."

He smiled lopsidedly, clearly satisfied with himself.

"Snape is your fan now," she joked.

"Jealous?" he smirked at her.

She shoved him playfully, and he shoved her back and soon they were wrestling on the cold ground. When she pinned him to the ground, his eyes sparkled wickedly. "Want to make an early winter with me?"

How could she refuse a request like that? After a day like today, she badly needed some fun.

She focused on lowering the air temperature while he called in snow clouds. Once it started snowing, they ran around, spreading their magic in the courtyard. Jack adorned all walls with his frost, and it climbed up in beautiful tendrils. She started icing over all surfaces and crafting beautifully carved icicles. Then, she locked her eyes on the fountain in the center of the courtyard.

The fountain was rectangular in shape with four birds of prey guarding each corner and four columns that supported an arched roof. The water was turned off for the season, but she didn't need it. She recreated the water coming from the center of the frozen pool in majestic frozen streams which curled at the ends. Her ice was pure and translucent, and it shimmered with magic. Jack caught up to her plan and waved his hand to clear the dusting of snow from the stone sculptures and replaced it with frost which coated the stone like beautiful white lace.

They continued working on the fountain together, making it grander, more intricate, and magnificent. She had been hiding her ice magic for so long now, it was the most freeing feeling to let it out and create something this beautiful with it. She kept adding more details to the fountain until she ran out of space. She walked a few steps away to where Jack sat cross-legged in the snow, admiring her creation. It was the largest ice work she had ever done.

"It's beautiful," he said.

"Honestly, I wish the fountain was bigger, so I could do even more."

"Maybe next time, you'll ice the whole castle?"

She laughed. "I don't think everyone inside would've liked it."

"Then, make your own ice castle."

Her heart skipped a beat at the thought. She didn't have the confidence to build something that large, but a vision of a majestic ice castle formed in her head, and she wanted to make it come true one day. It wouldn't be as large as Hogwarts, it didn't have to be, but it would be tall and ornate. There would be a giant chandelier with thousands of sparkling ice crystals, and a double staircase leading to the bedrooms inside. Everything inside would be made of her purest ice. She could manipulate it to have a varying density that resulted in different shades of blue and white. That castle would scream Ice Magic.

"Maybe one day," she mused.

Jack got up and stood with his legs apart as if he was bracing himself to hold something heavy. "I want to try something."

She watched and waited as he concentrated. He spread his arms out and turned his palms up, and all the snow in the courtyard lifted off all surfaces. Even the snowflakes that were previously falling down heavily, hung suspended in the air. She clapped in approval. His winter powers always seemed so gentle and nonthreatening, but he was becoming a force of nature. Ever since they'd left Mother's mountain, their powers grew tenfold.

Upon seeing that he achieved what he wanted, he smiled lopsidedly and released the snow which fell down with a dusty poof.

"Your powers are growing," she said and threw herself in his arms. She felt proud of her brother. She hated it when their mother always called him weak. No one would call him that now.

He swung her around while holding her tight. "So are yours. Isn't it amazing? Can you imagine what we will be capable of when we grow up?"

"We will become as powerful as Mother."

Jack's face became serious. "No, Elsa. More powerful," he pulled out a wand from his pocket, "because of these."

》《

Albus looked down from his tower upon the courtyard below, where two children released extraordinary winter magic without the help of wands. He planned to go down there once they left to see in detail what they had done.

Back in the summer, when he recommended for Minerva to bring them to Hogwarts, he expected child prodigies. Getting to know them was supposed to be one of his pre-retirement treats. Now, however, he had a hunch that the twins were much more than what met the eye. Their wandless magic was without precedent. Unless...

He left his office and climbed the stairs to the small room which was home to the Book of Admittance. No one alive fully understood the magic it was imbued with. The Quill of Acceptance had no ink, and yet it could write. Pages magically added themselves as needed, and there were thousands of them by now. What was understood was that the book considered the population within a certain radius (although that radius seemed to change to an unknown pattern), which included Northern and Western Europe, and recorded names of children who exhibited magical abilities.

On the day when he'd received Minerva's letter, Albus came here, curious why the twins never got their invitations, and he found the Book and the Quill in an odd sort of argument. The Book snapped shut, and the Quill tickled it to get it to open. The Book withstood the torture for as long as it could, but eventually, it gave in and allowed the Quill to write:

Elsa,

Jack,

And in the most peculiar fashion, it did not list their last names.

The Book and the Quill were the gatekeepers. No child had ever been admitted to Hogwarts whose name was not in the Book, and Albus had always thought that the child's name was inscribed by the Quill of Acceptance on the first occasion when the child used magic. Yet the twins' names did not appear in the book until the day when Minerva had found them. Maybe his understanding of how the Book worked was inaccurate?

Dumbledore approached the ancient book, flipped the pages by magic, and landed on page five, where one of the names was:

Merlin,

The quill wrote his name when the Founders were still alive and teaching at the school. Merlin was around five hundred years old then. Albus deduced that the name was written when Merlin decided to attend the school. Just like with the twins, the Quill and the Book made an exception for him. These magic objects understood the connection between the twins with the immortal sorcerer better than Albus did.

Albus remembered back to his youth when he'd met Merlin and asked him to teach him Old Religion spells. No matter how hard he tried, Albus could not make them work.

"Don't beat yourself up," Merlin had tried to console him. "Nowadays, I rarely ever find anyone who's born with the ability. It's worse than looking for a needle in a haystack, Albus. It's more like finding one specific snowflake in a blizzard."

Merlin had to have recognized something in the twins as well since he chose to teach them Old Religion, but did he fully understand that there was something larger at play here? The twins weren't what they seemed. Albus was glad to know what hid underneath the nonthreatening facade that Merlin presented, but what powers hid inside these children? More so, what hid within their hearts?