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❉━━━━━━❈✾❈━━━━━━❉
'𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐀 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐀 𝐓𝐎 start a snowball fight,' Fernrose said to Giulia, the sarcasm dripping off her voice.
The legs of her jeans grew stiff and rigid as the water in the fabric froze and her skin burned from the cold. Painful stings shot through her body every time she moved and her red nose dripped in a not so charming manner. Fernrose was glad Ron walked behind her and not next to her.
'Oh, please,' Giulia scoffed. 'You were all thinking the same. It's hardly my fault.'
'Besides,' Phoenix added, 'I didn't hear you complaining when you rolled through the snow with Ron, Fern.'
Fernrose grumbled something under her breath and flicked her frozen ginger hair over her shoulder before she started to move again.
The group wrestled through the snow of the winter scenery. The forest had felt like a fairy tale before, but now that they knew that their magic didn't work it felt more like a nightmare.
The sun sunk already towards the horizon and the shadows of the pine trees grew longer whereas the temperature dropped.
'How do you know you're going the right way?' Nevada wondered, walking a few feet behind Elodie who tried leading the group out of the forest ─ or at least, to shelter.
Elodie halted in her pace for a moment, stamping on the ground in an attempt to get some feeling back in her toes and she blew in her hands. 'I don't,' she answered.
'So we could be going around in circles for all we know?' Nevada said with a suppressed sigh. 'Great.'
The forest looked the same all around them with the snow being awfully disorientating.
Elodie, however, shook her head and reached for the bark of the tree next to her, wiping some snow away and uncovering the moss. 'Moss always grows in one direction, so as long as we keep the moss side behind us, we're going in a straight line.'
She raised an eyebrow when everyone stared at her. 'What? Muggle studies can be useful.'
'Girl,' Wanda said, 'I am muggle born but I didn't know that.'
Elodie grinned but then turned forwards again ─ to what she hoped was the south-side of the forest and towards civilization. 'Come, let's get moving before we cannot move anymore at all.'
'She means before we all freeze to death,' Phoenix clarified. 'Let's go, icicles.' He snickered but stopped when no one joined him in his laughter; instead they followed Elodie as a heavy silence fell over them.
'Too soon?' he asked Giulia in a whisper who rolled her eyes as an answer. Phoenix too feared they might not get help in time, but he always tried to mask his emotions with jokes.
