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.