Recovery

The luminous lights in the Hospital Wing burned his dark eyes and he found himself shying away from their intense glow. He whimpered and found his breathing was starting to even out. He'd got through the worst of his affliction and as far as he was aware he just needed to rest and get well again.

As nice as the thought was he knew it would be a while until he was confident enough again. He was shaken and didn't expect to be still sat in the Hospital Wing after at least a week. He was sick of staring at the white walls and his hands were beginning to seize up and he could feel his fingers tracing over the sheets on his bed. Elijah was desperate to have a pencil in his hand and do something. He was having art withdrawal symptoms.

He shouldn't have crossed the ice. He knew he should have just walked away but that wouldn't have gone down well with his conscience - especially if she had died. He wouldn't have forgiven himself but lying in the hospital wing now, he wished that he hadn't chosen to go outside. Someone else would have saved her. But then again he'd still have been in the position with Pneumonia.

Eli sighed and slowly eased himself up in a sitting position. He reached over and picked up a pencil off of the side that the healer had left. He slipped back down and lifted his arm up. From there he began to doodle on the wall. He’d probably be scolded for it but he was devoid of all paper and he could have cared less. Maybe he could come back and paint the wall as well.

Amelia sighed as she rode the staircase she was standing on shifted beneath her, carrying her in a different direction for what felt like the fifth time already. She waited patiently as the staircase moved, stopping her descent once again as it came to a stop because it had placed the base of the stairs facing a solid stone wall.

Rolling her eyes, Amelia heaved a sigh and sat down where she was, extending her legs and covering four steps from the one she was sitting on. She had left the Ravenclaw dormitories nearly an hour ago, and a trip to the hospital wing that ought to have taken no more than five minutes had extended far past what she had expected. In actuality, Amelia hadn’t really expected to be making this trip at all, but then again, most of her expectations had been proven wrong of late.

The moving staircases seemed to have joined forces with her mind, changing direction each time she questioned her motivations for leaving the dormitory in the first place. Amelia had known about Elijah being in the hospital wing for several days now, but she had taken that time as an opportunity to successfully avoid him and think about all that had happened between the pair of them over the last few weeks. Needless to say, Amelia still had not settled on a firm conclusion about the situation involving Elijah, which resulted in her indecision about actually making it to the hospital wing and – at least she thought – the stairs’ attempts to thwart her.

You should really just go back to the dormitories, her mind instructed, You would be so much better off. You are unpredictable and irrational when you are around him. He’s no good for you.

He’s the only good thing I have right now, her subconscious volleyed back, frustrating Amelia with her ability to have a two-sided conversation while sitting utterly alone on the stairs.

Well, if you’re insisting on doing this, you’d best get it over with, Amelia’s mind finally conceded, pulling Amelia to her feet just as the staircase began to move again, this time giving her an escape route that placed her only a few feet from the door to the hospital wing.

Get in, give gift, get out, Amelia chanted mentally, training her to expect no more from this than that. If she allowed her expectations to rise she would be giving in to the opportunity Elijah had presented, the one which would put her in unknown territory: dependence, no matter how slight, on another person for her happiness.

With a deep breath, Amelia gripped more firmly the gift she had tucked under her arm, wrapped only in brown paper and tied with twine. Amelia hadn’t bothered with fancy paper, because she had no other gifts to wrap and didn’t see the point in purchasing an entire roll for just one gift. This paper she had gotten from the post office free of charge, and it would have to suffice.

Upon entering the room where patients were kept, Amelia immediately spotted Elijah. He was the only person in the whole place, leaving seven empty beds. It took her a moment to realize what he was doing, but she soon came to the realization that he was drawing on the wall. Smirking, Amelia cleared her throat to announce her presence, still standing just inside the door, leaving ample space between herself at the boy who had been dominating her thoughts for the past few days.

“I trust visiting hours aren’t over yet?” Amelia inquired, her voice more meek than she had intended. It seemed her lack of conviction in coming here at all was betraying itself via her voice.

The Hospital Wing was a place a pyromaniac would have loved immensely. If Elijah was in that state then he would have kept a box of matches on him at all times instead of a pencil. However, he had no desire to anger the Headmaster; especially not in the state he was in. Burning unopened letters and Howler’s from his mother he would prefer but once again he didn’t think that setting something alight would please anyone - let alone the new headmaster. But he would relent eventually and perhaps set his mother on fire and watch her burn. That would be a preferred thing to do and he would enjoy it immensely just to watch the flames devour her body and turn her to ash. Perhaps he’d then get a Muggle vacuum and suck up the ash before setting the bag alight and doing the same three more times before finally burying the last ashes in the ground.

Elijah had so far finished drawing a the base of a tree in some kind of garden along with a picnic blanket and a basket no doubt filled with interesting foods. He planned on drawing a river and some other things if he could successfully propel his bed around the Hospital Wing. If anyone else was in there then they could have had races down the corridors but there would be a higher risk of them flying down stairs and staying in the infirmary even longer than anticipated due to broken bones among other things. But Eli was alone, without art supplies and the healer had taken the bottle of Fire Whisky away from him after telling him something about how students shouldn’t be drinking and that he was underage or something. That fell on deaf ears.

Elijah’s head pricked up at the sound of a voice and he saw Amelia stood just inside the Hospital Wing. A grin spread across the Slytherin’s face and he sat himself up. He wasn’t used to lying flat on his back seeing as he spent half of the time wrapped up in the covers of his bed with limbs haphazardly in, out, up in the air or touching the floor. He usually had Snoop sitting on his head as well, snoring away as he usually did. Now all he had was Nachash who was more interest in commenting on everyone that came in and out complaining of headaches, stomach bugs and the odd one was told that they were with child. The crying was a bit much for Eli if he was honest but now it was quiet and Nachash had gone to sleep.

“Hey.” Eli said with a small smile. “Visiting hour hasn’t stopped all bloody day.” he frowned, thinking back to the fools that came in and out all day getting diagnosed and running out crying as loud as possible. “None of them have come to see me though which is fairly insulting. A quarter of the school must have a stomach bug while another quarter have headaches. Two exploded a cauldron and one set someone’s hair on fire and came to apologize as the Healer was growing it back.”

Elijah didn’t take long to notice her, and in a moment his face turned her way and his hand dropped from the wall. Amelia noticed his smile first, but then the exhaustion in his voice. She could tell he was tired, which just gave her another reason to question whether or not she should have come in the first place, but it was too late to leave now, even if she wanted to. Seeing Elijah was difficult – it made her remember all the emotions she felt the night of the Yule Ball, and the more embarrassing display from Madame Puddifoot’s – but it was also a blessing. The smile which crossed his features, small though it was, seemed to cast a light around him, warming Amelia’s icy castle just a little bit.

Amelia smiled a bit herself when Elijah launched into the events of the day, which seemed far more exciting than what she had witnessed in the library. Though the infirmary looked quiet and restful now, apparently it had not been that way all day. Even though Elijah seemed frustrated by the whos and whats that had occurred over the course of the morning and afternoon, Amelia found it rather hard not to find them at least a little amusing from where she was standing. If their places had been reversed, Amelia was sure her annoyance would have matched, if not exceeded, his, but as it was, a smile tugged at the corners of her lips and helped to dissipate some small part of the stress she was feeling about being in the same room with the boy who managed to confound her usually well-defined ideas of reality.

Taking his conversation as an invitation, Amelia pulled her feet from where they had been frozen to the floor and crossed the room slowly until she reached the bed adjacent to Elijah’s. She set herself carefully upon it, perching only on the edge of the mattress, both to avoid messing up the crisply pressed sheets and to remind herself that this visit was intended to be short.

From this proximity, Amelia could better see what Elijah had been drawing on the wall. Across the whitewash he had spread pencil lines which strung together into a somewhat coherent, but unfinished picture. The stump of a tree – perhaps the branches were too high for him to reach while laying down? – and a checked blanket spread beneath it. The wicker basket he had drawn proclaimed the scene as the beginning of a picnic, and Amelia was surprised at his choice of subject. Most people, after being confined to a hospital bed for days, would likely have drawn a darker scene, but Elijah had chosen a brighter, more lively vision. Then again, most infirmary patient would not be likely to draw on the walls, so that alone put Elijah in his own category.

Having exhausted all her options of prolonging her conversation with Elijah, Amelia allowed her eyes to fall slowly to meet those of the Slytherin boy. If it would have been possible, Amelia would have wanted to look anywhere else, for when she met his gaze, Amelia’s train of thought always seemed to run off track. She was careful to steel herself against this before she spoke, running the words through her mind first to make sure that she wasn’t about to say anything she would regret.

“I take it you have grown jaded with hospital life?” Amelia inquired rhetorically, needing no answer because the proof was in his words and the sketch on the walls, “I suppose that is understandable. I just thought I would check in on you, you know, to see how you were doing.”

Stick to the script… Amelia’s mind reminded her as she began to improvise, never a good thing when your conversation skills were as poor as Amelia’s.

“The word around school is that you fell into the lake,” Amelia said, reverting back to what she had rehearsed back in the dormitory, “You don’t seem to be blue, though, and as far as I can tell all extremedies are still present, so either the healer is a miracle worker or the rumour mill, as usual, doesn’t quite have their facts straight,” Amelia finished, raising an eyebrow at Elijah as a way to make her statement into a question.

Elijah raised an eyebrow at Amelia and thought about what the gossip chain was riddled with. Perhaps they thought it was some form of suicide or perhaps the Krum heir was just unlucky. Whatever they thought or were saying it didn’t please Elijah at all. He would have rather just been left alone and not spoken about in such a way. If he had to deal with them later then he would, nothing short of detentions and points deducted would set them straight so that is what he planned on doing. He knew it wouldn’t take long but the whole thing would be rather useless though. Not that it would stop him.

“I’m fine.” he replied off-handedly. “Just a mild case of pneumonia. They have a cure for that. I’m fine. I’ll live.”

The matter of life and death wasn’t particularly important to him at his moment in time. He would do it to spite his mother. She wouldn’t actually go to his funeral but he wanted to outlive her just so he could dance on her grave and stuff. Perhaps that was too mean but it wasn’t far off from what he wanted to do. In short he wanted to dig her corpse back up again, blast the gravestones apart and set fire to her semi-decomposed body and watch her burn! Pause for evil laugh.

He should have probably gone to see some sort of therapist years ago but the child bereavement on top of being a wizard and having a snake living under his skin … problems. Elijah did pause to think that perhaps if he went to the Ministry then his parents would be arrested and he could watch them burn see them go to Azkaban. It would make his day more or less but he’d have no where to go. In short it would be a race - how fast can he outrun the Ministry and go back to Paris at the same time?

“The rumour mill is a waste of time. Why listen to it when all you’ll get is a Rita Skeeter version of events. But I suppose they have, for once, got it right. The lake is rather cold but the good thing is there is no ice.” he looked up at the ceiling and bit his lip, wondering if he could be like a spider and hang from the wall. Perhaps Hospital life was finally getting to him. Elijah The Insane!

Elijah’s response was slow in coming, though whether that was a result of lethargy or contemplation Amelia couldn’t be sure. He insisted he was fine, and from what she could tell he looked it, but then again, they wouldn’t be keeping him here for no reason. Amelia resisted the urge to check him over herself; she was a self-taught healer in only a few remedial spells, so she wouldn’t do much good, and was likely to lose her concentration if she got too close to Elijah. She had come in here with a game plan and she was trying very hard to stick to it.

Amelia nodded at Elijah’s explanation of what had afflicted him, thinking she might have guessed pneumonia would be involved considering the temperature of the lake this time of the year. In all honesty, Elijah was lucky not to have gotten frost bite and lost a few fingers or toes – or worse. Amelia had seen the pictures in the muggle medicine books showing blackened digits, and once again her curiosity was peaked about what lay beneath the thin sheet that covered Elijah.

Something tells me if you lift that sheet the toes won’t be the first thing you look at… Amelia’s subconscious chimed in slyly, smirking to itself as Amelia blushed outwardly at her own inner monologue.

Amelia hoped that Elijah had been distracted by his minor rant on the rumour mill and had failed to see her blush; she hated the rumor mill as much as he did, but she had a feeling she cared less. Amelia was quite accustomed to gossip about her, everything from ice queen to fembot circulated the school on a weekly basis, but Amelia thought so little of the opinions or feelings of others that it was easily shaken off. By the way Elijah’s voice increased in volume and tempo at the subject, Amelia had a feeling he didn’t shake the remarks off so easily.

“I…” Amelia began, but Elijah turned his eyes from her and looked to the ceiling. Amelia wasn’t sure if this was meant as a dismissal, or if he was just thinking. Whatever the case, she needed to carry through with her plan now or be forced to come back here later. With a deep breath, Amelia reorganized her thoughts and perched herself even more preciously close to the end of the bed next to Elijah’s.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Amelia finally said, after determining that this phrase did not harbor any emotions that would be too revealing; any sane person would be glad to hear that a student was recovering well from what was a potentially dangerous situation. She paused here, fingering the edges of the brown paper, feeling now that perhaps she should have sprung for the fancier paper.

Too late now, she reminded herself, looking down at the rectangular package and then lifting her eyes back to Elijah’s profiled features before forcing the words from her mouth.

“I brought you your Christmas gift,” she said, rather more monotone than she had intended, probably from the number of times she had rehearsed it before coming down here, “I know it’s late, and for that I apologize, but you…” Amelia smiled a bit here, thankful that her voice seemed to take on at least some form of human intonation. “You are hard to shop for,” she finished, extending the package across the gap between herself and Elijah’s bed.

“Go ahead, open it,” she encouraged, wondering why she felt such anticipation about what his reaction would be to the gift.

((When you open it, you will see a rectangle made of white marble with smooth edges. It is cold to the touch, like Amelia’s skin. If you just describe that, I will explain what it is in my next post ))

He turned the little brown package over in his hands and smiled a little. It reminded Elijah of when he used to get magazine subscriptions to a vine and when the mail wizards were off duty because of snow they’d send him all of the magazines with an apology note as well as a few in advance. The paper was like this except it had more of a sheen to it where it had been freshly cut from the roll and there would be a mail stamp as well as an owl holding it if the snow was especially bad. There was no difference with the string, though. The bow was nice the way it was sort of tied there but he didn’t really know what to do with it. Elijah didn’t particularly like gifts if he was honest.

Anything in the way of fur and stuff he was okay with because animals were fun to look after but material things with value wasn’t something he got along with. He burned custom made brooms for goodness sake! He loved giving gifts though. He’d spend hours, willingly, in a dress shop with Julia or someone if he could buy something for the girls. He hated sitting there with money burning a whole through his pocket but it was probably one of his mother’s trait’s the way he obsessed over shopping. He lost count how many sales assistants he snapped at as he knelt in front of the glass display cases putting each necklace onto the drawing of Amelia he’d done.

Eventually they threatened to throw him out but just in time really because he’d found the perfect one. It made up with the amount of money he spent. Evidently the women weren’t going to let a dirt-broke artist use their shop to sketch necklaces. In a sense it was true. At the time he had next to no money on him but he was alright. He flashed a few galleons around and they took the money faster than a student could take the pebble from the master’s hand or whatever the analogy was that a drunken bum told him. Apparently they were as desperate as a lion trying to get water? Oh whatever. Drunken Bum Analogies were faulty.

Finally Elijah pulled on the string and let it fall away from the package. He pulled back some of the paper and peaked inside. It was white whatever it was and now the white rectangle-thing had sparked his interested. It annoyed him that he wasn’t able to do anything with a huge amount of speed due to the sub-zero temperatures of the lake that had all but frozen his muscles and joints but he’d gotten used to the sloth pace and so far it was proving to be a lot more useful. When you did things too fast you overlooked small details and missed things out, ultimately giving the whole thing a flaw and showing a weakness. Slow and steady really did win the race.

He pealed back the last of the brown material and studied what was there. It was cool, white marble that reminded him a little bit of the chill that Amelia’s skin had. However it held none of the warmth that she did, probably because there was a drastic difference between the both considering one was pretty much alive and the other was decidedly… not. It was slightly confusing and Eli was tired but that didn’t matter; not now. Mia was there with him and he actually felt in the land of the living. Human contact had yet to be an experience for him apart from the gentle but coarse hands of the Healer and the touch of a woman was something he needed quite badly; it was soothing and would sooth him considering his body was still fighting his ailment.

The block of marble confused him and he was sure that his face showed it. He was exhausted and despite seemingly at ease he really wasn’t. There was still a lot of fluid and junk in his lungs or whatever the Healer said and it still hurt him to breath but ever so slightly. Elijah knew that if he was to get pneumonic plague then that would probably be the end of the young Krum. Even if he did survive there would be extensive scarring to his lungs and that would help nothing and no one.

“I really don’t get it.” he admitted finally, biting his lip as he turned the marble over in his hands. “Do I hit someone with it?” he asked wearily.

Amelia felt her anticipation building as Elijah turned the package over and over in his hands, examining it. He didn’t mention the wrapping job, for which Amelia was grateful, and he seemed to take his time getting to the actually opening of the gift. She wondered for a brief moment if he was going to turn it away and hand it back to her, finding it unfit without ever seeing it, but she pushed the thought aside.

Even though Elijah had far more disposable income than she did – as evidenced by the necklace he had bought her, which she was wearing around her neck now. True, it looked far too formal with what was left of her uniform – after removing her sweater and tie Amelia was left with a white button down, pleated gray skirt, and black tights – but Amelia had found herself strangely attached to the object. She didn’t usually bother with jewelry, finding it to be more of a distraction than anything else, but she had put the red-stoned necklace on before leaving her dormitory today, if only to have it serve as a reminder as to why Amelia had gotten Elijah a gift in the first place. Or least to convince herself that that was the only reason why she had gotten him a gift.

After what seemed like an eternity – was he intentionally trying to make her anguish over this? – Elijah pulled one of the strings of the twine bow and it easily came undone. Amelia felt anticipation welling within her, even though she already knew what lay beneath the brown parchment paper. His removal of the paper was slower than she might have expected, and she was presented with further evidence that he was not in peak condition after his fall into the lake. Although she had seen it in his expression earlier, it was something else entirely to see it in his movements.

As the parchment paper fell to the floor beside his bed, Amelia watched Elijah’s eyes fall onto the white marble slab that was wrapped within. Elijah turned the rectangular thing over and over in his hands, the confusion showing on his face. Naturally, Amelia had expected an element of confusion about the object because it truly was one of a kind. There wasn’t another of these anywhere; of that she could be sure because she had made it herself.

Amelia hadn’t been lying earlier when she told Elijah he was difficult to shop for. Although her parents were well off, Amelia was not independently wealthy. She had always been a horrible liar – most of her personal defenses were based on avoidance rather than lies – so she could not have falsified her reason for needing money, and therefore could never have asked her parents. If Antoinette and Frederic knew she was buying a gift for a boy they hadn’t approved, she’d have bigger problems than sticking to the script while giving said gift. Her income from playing piano at the leaky cauldron wasn’t bad – with tips it was actually quite good – but nowhere near good enough to buy Elijah something he didn’t already have or couldn’t afford on his own.

And that is how Amelia had arrived at the decision to make a gift instead of buying one. It actually turned out to be the best choice, she decided, after giving some thought to what Elijah might actually want in a gift. After having received innumerable useless gifts over the years, Amelia knew that whatever she got Elijah would have to be something he would actually use. Competing with the necklace was not easy, but she had done her best.

“You could hit someone with it,” Amelia responded, her stony face showing some hint of a smile at Elijah’s comment, “though it does have some other, less violent uses.”

Amelia hesitated for a moment on the edge of the bed she was sitting on before lifting herself from it and moving to kneel on the ground next to Elijah’s bed. Sitting on the bed with him would have been more comfortable, but she wasn’t sure her already heightened awareness of him would survive the idea of them being in the same bed, no matter how un-intimate the circumstances.

From the waistband of her skirt Amelia pulled her wand, gingerly taking the slab of marble from Elijah’s hands. Holding it in her left hand, Amelia ran her wand down the side of the rectangle, whispering, “Aperio,” as the tip of her wand drew a straight line down the side. As her wand moved down, the solid white marble disappeared, revealing a series of drawers which held different art supplies: pencils, erasers, charcoal, brushes, India ink; everything an artist might conceivably want. Though the drawers appeared small, they held copious amounts of supplies.

Though the concept of the gift was Amelia’s, the magic contained within the gift was not purely her own. She had taken great care to put as much of her own magic into it as possible – she was the one giving the gift, after all – but she knew to get help on certain aspects. She had gone to the house elves to find out the magic which was used to replenish the food at dinner, casting a similar spell on the supply drawers so Elijah would never want for more of anything. Her father’s work came in handy as well, because he had been teaching Amelia compaction spells from early on, which explained how she had managed to fit so many supplies into a thickness no greater than an inch.

The true magic of the gift, though, the part which she would now explain to Elijah, was her own doing. It had taken a lot of research and spell manipulation, not to mention several broken bits of marble, but she had finally captured in the cold, white stone the magic which made this gift one that Elijah might actually appreciate. At least Amelia hoped he would.

“I call it an EverEasel,” Amelia said quietly, sliding open the drawer which held pencils and drawing one out with her nimble fingers. Setting her wand on the bed, Amelia held the pencil between her fingers and drew what she hoped looked like a bird on the surface of the marble (her artistic skills had yet to improve greatly.) The sketch was still rough when Amelia set the pencil down and replaced it with her wand, but this was truly only a demonstration of the usefulness of the gift. This time, she drew the wand down in a vertical line across the surface of the slab, this time whispering, “Memor.” The sketch disappeared as her wand slipped down the marble, but a moment later Amelia set the slab down on Elijah’s lap, facing him, and placed the tip of her wand to the surface of the slab and, after a few seconds, pulled up on the wand, simultaneously pulling a faintly silver bit of mist up from the surface, which hung in the air momentarily before swirling itself into a ghost of the sketch which she had just drawn.

“The magic is similar to that of a pensive,” Amelia explained, for the first time returning her eyes to Elijah, allowing the ghost bird to hang in the air between them, “It will store every drawing you make, and it has no capacity limitations. I have set it up to respond only to your wand and my own, though from here on out I will leave it in your capable hands. I thought it might be easier for you to carry around so you can take your art wherever you go. The hospital staff might like that too,” she added with a small smirk, trying to make light of the gift even though his reaction meant a lot to her. Even now, she was trying to read his reaction to the gift, though Elijah was a difficult person for her to read because she found herself swayed by her own feelings, a problem she didn't have with others.

Please like it, please like it… Amelia repeated mentally, trying to convince herself that she felt this way because of all the work that she had put into it, rather than all the feelings she was harboring for Elijah.

The little block of marble which he was originally quite confused with turned out to be pure magic – or at least that’s what it seemed like to Elijah. It was wonderful and he felt guilty almost that he hadn’t put so much time and effort. He knew that spending nigh on five hours in a jewellery shop with four women drilling holes into his back with their eyes wasn’t the best way he could have gotten the gift but Nachash had pointed out numerous times when she realized that it wasn’t for her – he spent double that putting useless protective spells on the damn thing. He’d gotten one for every offensive spell ever made but the Unforgivables were a bit trickier seeing as those reacted badly with the others.

There were some serious flaws in the item but it was nothing that couldn’t be worked on. It was like a self-recharging Muggle video game and there were only so many times one spell could be used and the necklace could protect the wearer. He knew it was at least five times but it might have gone up since then. He wanted Amelia protected, he could take care of himself and he knew that. Elijah had been doing it for years and he wasn’t going to rely on some self-made necklace. There was probably a better chance that the whole thing would blow up in his face but he would work on it. Maybe when Mia was sleeping he’d send Nachash up to ‘borrow’ it.

There was some intense magic going on with that thing and eyeing it now he realized just how much. But she was wearing it! That was great of course but there was that nagging feeling, perhaps a gut feeling, that Eli should have spent just a tiny bit more time on it. Anyone could cast an unforgivable. Even a bloody first year could for goodness sake. He had to research some more on entwining magic together. He knew he’d done it himself many times and that was to himself and his own body but he was rusty and this was a piece of cold ruby and diamond that had cost him more than he had anticipated. It did irk him a little bit and it annoyed Nachash as well but there were piles of Galleons in his vault and it wasn’t as if he’d made a dent or anything. It wouldn’t be missed.

There was something else that irritated him greatly. How the hell could he play with the magic of the world and alter his own magical core without blinking an eye but he could barely cast offensive spells. Alright that was a lie and he was quite talented when it came to the more dangerous spells and he could probably do a lot more than the average fifteen year old but it seemed to only work for sadistic uses. That time in the teashop when he hit Amelia… he wanted to really kill someone – preferably himself – but he couldn’t understand why his magic didn’t work. He was good at Transfiguration but it always seemed to be cats. As per the Death Eater kitties they seemed okay; a bit dim but otherwise alright. Snoop hates them with a passion but then so did Nachash and Ziva wasn’t too fond. He knew Ali would have loved them. Ali…

Elijah swallowed and made himself focus on the ‘EverEasel’. It was an impressive piece of magic and it reminded him greatly of a pensieve but those he did not get on with. As much as it was a relief to rid himself of awful memories he would always leave it somewhere and he’d randomly be pulled into it and he’d have to relive the pain. Or he’d spill it on his bed and by the time he went to sleep his dreams were full of those memories. Those memories were all now bottled and sitting in boxes somewhere. He didn’t want to see a strand of them ever again but he knew he’d have to. They were far too valuable to just be left and ignored in a Muggle warehouse somewhere. Elijah knew he’d have to make a trip soon and get all of it back.

He took a pen from one of the drawers and put it to the slab. He sketched out a bird of his own design, sure it was a little more detailed but it got the job done. He took his wand off of the bedside table and pressed it onto the slab, muttering the charm Amelia used. He pulled his wand back and watched as the two birds joined each other. He slowly put his wand back on the slab and twisted it, making the birds move together and appear to be dancing. He smiled to himself and put his wand back down, leaving the birds to dance.

“I love it.” Eli murmured, leaning over to kiss Amelia on the cheek. “Thank you. It sort of makes my gift a bit crappy but I didn’t think this was even possible.”

Amelia found herself holding her breath as she waited for Elijah’s response, though judging by how long it was taking him to observe her handiwork, she would likely pass out before she got the answer which would allow her to breathe easier. Elijah’s eyes raked over the marble slab, watching what she had done, and only after nearly a minute of observation did he reach into one of the small drawers and pull out a pen.

The pen looked more comfortable in his hand than the pencil had looked in hers, though much smaller in comparison. He made quick work of putting the pen to the cold stone on his lap, bringing to life a bird which was far more detailed than her own. Where Amelia had drawn a basic sparrow, Elijah drew an ornate cardinal, apparent even without the distinctive red colouring. It had taken him about the same amount of time as her sketch has, but his put hers to shame. As he touched his wand to the slab, the cardinal rose from the surface to join its less-lovely brethren.

Amelia’s eyes moved from Elijah’s face to the birds which now hung in the air between them, ghost copies of the drawings the two of them had made. As her eyes followed their progress, the rise and fall of their sketched wings, she couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the birds and the two people who had created them. Elijah’s bird had been drawn with a more sure hand; it was more defined, more full of life and beauty. It was drawn through the eyes of someone who was in touch with their feelings. Amelia’s sparrow, on the other hand, was just a bare-bones drawing. It was a physical representation of a sparrow, but it held none of the life of the actual thing. A shadow of life, like Amelia often felt. It could go through the motions of a bird, but it would never be the real thing.

When Elijah finally expressed his feelings on the gift, Amelia was able to let go of the breath she had been holding, a sigh of relief. The kiss he left on her cheek burned against her cold skin, throwing her off kilter as only Elijah could do. Although she had come into the room with a set of perfectly organized plans and a rehearsed speech, they all seemed to be swept clean from her mind as soon as his lips brushed against her skin. Her hand rose subconsciously to her cheek, covering the spot of the kiss and feeling the heat of her blush against her icy fingers. It was hard to believe that she still blushed every time he showed her a bit of affection, but in truth, Amelia didn’t think she would ever get used to his touch.

“Your gift is wonderful,” Amelia replied after a minute of recovery, now forced to speak without her script since she hadn’t anticipated this situation. Her hand slid down from her cheek onto the necklace, lingering on it for a moment before lowering her hand again, considering for a moment placing her hand on top of Elijah’s, but instead setting it atop the bed sheet.

“The necklace is the reason this gift even exists,” Amelia continued, gesturing to the EverEasel, “I’m just trying to keep up with you. As usual,” she added with a shrug and some semblance of a smile.