The Marauders: Year Seven Part One

Ladies Are Present

For days - ever since she had arrived at Fallengunder - Elva had fallen in and out of her shock-induced sleep. The world felt blurry and far away, as though a dream. Indeed, Elva told herself it had to be a dream because what she remembered from her waking times were impossible things - things like the wound being gone completely from her shoulder, as though she'd never been pierced with the arrow at all. Impossible. And there was a fleeting vision of the man - the man whose name she could not recall, but whose face was gentle beneath his thick, unruly beard - brandishing a stick to open and close the window coverings. She recalled trays of food, and a funny cat whose eyes glowed as though it understood the English words being spoken in its presence. She'd seen the boy - the one with the scarred face that reminded her of her brother's - aim a stick at the hearth, which blazed into a warming, perfectly stoked fire instantly. There had been a moment, too, when she had woken to a commotion and seen what she believed were two men emerging from the fire that had been set in the hearth in her room.

Now, Elva was awake, and had been for a couple hours. She stood in front of the long window that looked over the cliffs that pitched deep into a deep, green ravine that had been chiseled in the mountain side over centuries of the river at the bottom flowing through. The sun reflected off the leaves and needles of the trees, shimmered off the elements in the rocks, and far, far below gleamed on the surface of the river, which looked like a blue ribbon.

The door opened behind her and she turned to see the man enter, carrying a tea tray, the funny cat at his feet as he backed into the room. When he turned, the man stopped short. "You're up," he said in surprise.

Elva nodded.

The man came in tentatively, a limp to his gait, and put the tray on the little table beside the bed carefully. The cat had jumped up onto the bed and laid down, staring at Elva with his wide, lamp-like eyes. "How do you feel?" the man asked, carefully staying on the opposite side of the bed from where she stood, his hands shoved into his pockets.

"Well. Thank you." Elva asked, "Why do you limp?"

"Bad hips, bad knees... Bad everything, really," the man replied.

"A defect from birth?" She was being blunt - as usual. Her father would have spanked her for such a question when she was a child. But her father wasn't here to keep her in check any longer.

The man's lips quirked into a smirk of amusement. "Unfortunately, no," he said.

Elva looked around.

"Are you comfortable? Do you need anything?" the man asked.

Elva's eyes turned to meet his. "No."

The man nodded. "I brought you lunch. I'd hoped you'd wake today." He gestured at the tea tray.

Somewhere deep in the castle, there came a loud banging that echoed off the walls and was such a loud sound that some of the plaster of the ceiling and wall loosened and fell in small dusty billows to the ground. Elva's eyes diverted to it nervously.

The man sighed, agitated, "I told them to put a silencing charm on the room..." he muttered.

Elva looked back to him.

His eyes met her. "I'm sorry," he said, seeing the panic in her eyes. "I assure you, it's okay. That sound? It's nothing."

Elva looked at the door. "It sounds like something."

"Yeah, I reckon it does," the man answered. He paused, then pressed his palm to his chest, "I apologize, I haven't reintroduced myself. I am Ned. Ned Veigler."

She stared at him.

"I own this castle, I bought it from the previous owner a couple years ago. I intend to make it into a school," he explained.