Chinese Restaurant in Soho
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As subtly as possible Janna and Orion snuck to the Gryffindor tower to stay inconspicuous so that they would not be caught in suspicion, Peeves was chased by Filch to distract the cleaner by taking Mrs. Norris prisoner.
Inside the Gryffindor common room Orion and Janna bundled into the squishy old armchair under a quilt, chuckling as they warmed their feet at the fire, listening to the chaos below the tower. "Ya wanna quickly get to the presents?" Orion asked, getting up next to Janna who was still sunk into the armchair "I'm famished"
Janna looked at Orion, not knowing whether to tell him about Ash, yet "but how am I going to get up the stairs to the boy's dorms?"
"Tha' elf that'ad helped us," Orion snapped his fingers "she seems to like you"
Then Janna saw the little elf sitting on the headrest of the couch in front of the fireplace, there was a large smile under her squashed tomato nose where her eyes were nearly completely covered by a green fluffy, floppy hat. The elf jumped to Janna when the two children noticed her "Mistress! Winky come! Winky come! Winky will help!"
"Alright Winky" Janna smiled as the small elf hugged Janna's chest with small little arms that barely went past Janna's arms "I need to get to the first year boy's dorm"
Snap!
There was a squeak as Janna landed with Winky on one of the boy's beds, the mattress under her bounced under her with the quilt still on her knees "Thanks" Janna smiled, the small elf wrapped her hands around each other before hiding in her shoulders "No need to thank Winky, Winky always helps"
Orion came through the door "Look at that, wouldn't mind seeing you in my bed, Miss Black" Orion grinned, teasing Janna.
"This will be the only time," Janna mocked as she stood on his bed then jumped off, Winky hung on Janna's arm tightly during the jump "thanks again Winky, I'll call you if I need you"
"Winky will come," Winky leapt off of Janna's arm to the floor "bye bye" with a snap! the tiny house elf was gone.
The two sat at the Christmas tree in the corner of the room, there were a couple presents "Oh, there are about three packages for you there" Orion nodded to the easily different packages, Janna tugged a pile of books wrapped awfully in cheap wrapping paper that was obviously not handled with care, under the paper she found a note with Mr Winslow's splotchy, tight-knit handwriting waving along the lined paper Janna's Christmas.
Janna was yanked back down to earth when Orion leaned his head on her shoulder "Lemme guess, tha's from Mr Winslow" Janna nodded, placing the paper carefully on one of the knees of her crossed legs "C'mon then see what's there! Maybe there's something about lost treasure or something"
"Mr Winslow enjoyed cooking books more," Janna chuckled, peeling the paper off the books "he also liked gardening shows but he never did anything to the garden, that was Mrs Winslow's domain"
The two of them looked at four books, one was a thick notebook that looked nearly as battered as Janna, then a dull sea blue book with golden framing, a formal looking paperback and lastly an uncovered book that seemed to be a cheap and rushed attempt at publishing.
Orion opened the notebook "Esoteric Lesser? Who comes up with titles like that? Shouldn't these people be creative, make it less like werewolves are bad people".
"You don't like werewolves?" Janna watched him, Orion stared at her.
Orion shrugged "I don', everyone thinks that everyone else hates them so they all hate werewolves too. It must be scary to see one in my path, imagine"
A shiver came down Janna's neck "would you kill it, you know, if-if you saw it?"
Orion scoffed "what's this? Sixty-three? I won't kill a werewolf. Gnarly business, killing people—"
"You think they're people?" Janna's voice was full of surprise, not knowing someone actually thought that her kind were human.
"Aye! Why the hell not? They don't look like wolves, well, maybe not a few of them. If they were wolves we would hear more of them, see them more often" Orion looked back at the scrapbook again "Aphotic fragments? What was Winslow into?"
"This applies to me..." Janna said, leaning to Orion and pouting at the underlined words "you know my ability to make dark magic dust stuff? Well this is how I know some of the alleged spells, some just came from Winslow" but Janna now suspected they had come from Professor Potter "others from these articles, wizards and witches experimenting with... very... very dark stuff, but at least I can bring things to life, these abilities are said to not apply to the laws of Transfiguration" Janna turned a few pages, remembering a page Mr Winslow read to her "'Obfuscous Fascination of Meddling with Vicissitude Limitations' this is the one that proves the theory Winlsow was working on"
"This chap was sharp wasn' he?"
"Well, squibs aren't idiots, Mr Winslow knew so much about something he couldn't even create." Janna smiled softly at the note on her knee "we can use this to see if we can resurrect him, but we want to get to breakfast to see what carnage we caused so let's hurry up"
Compared to Janna Orion got the usual gifts a child would: jumpers, a funny pair of dangly things Janna thought looked like skinny worms with large heads, but socks was the one Janna grinned at while Orion shrugged and tried the thick woollen socks on. Janna received a pumpkin orange jumper with a white J on the chest, the letter read from Potters and Weasleys, then on a separate note Grandma decided to knit you a jumper since you are technically in the family, she loves knitting so don't worry your head off, James. In the same package was a short colourful rope with knotted ends, this was from Teddy with a letter saying With love, Teddy Janna smirked to herself; Orion struggled to understand a joke that Janna explained as too complicated to figure out.
They both revived gifts from Hagrid, Janna received a mouse skeleton incased in some sort of clear tree resin, this creeped out Orion, so taunted him with the mouse for a bit, just to tease him. Orion revived a handful of unicorn hair in an empty polish tin "this stuff is valuable, I'm not sure what to do with it though"
Under the last package there was a piece of a mirror, at the back of it was a scribble Mistress Julianna. The mirror didn't have a reflection, though, it was like a view into an other place of some sort, it faced up to a stone roof that let bits of wall fall into the glass.
"This is a strange mirror, do you feel that? It's like some sort of dark magic" Janna let Orion feel the edge of the mirror, "you feel that?"
Orion held the mirror "Naw, you must be feeling your own—"
"Let me maybe hold it too" Janna placed her fingers on the glass "now, do you feel it?"
"The pulse?"
Janna nodded "That's a great way to put it, like this thing has its own soul, like it's living" she pursed her lips "do you know where this is?"
"Naw, it's too stony to be anywhere near where I've been"
"Have you even left Scotland?" Janna paused "Other than King's Cross, have you been anywhere in England?" Orion shook his head, then she told him "We need to go to Soho, it might be a bit dodgy but there's a good Chinese restaurant, I'm not sure if they are Wizards but their beef are quite good, they also do takeaways, that's how I know of them"
Soon afterwards the two went down to breakfast, becoming ravenous because of Janna's reminisce of Chinese food, they went to the Great Hall she chaos ensued, shadowy creatures in chainmail chasing each other, the smaller one were sleeping in the Christmas trees like shiny ornaments themselves, making it impossible for people to admire them. When the two came across McGonagall they saw she actually enjoyed the strange metal Santa Claus who strut around singing carols at the top of his chest plate, attempting to make self-portraits from people's breakfasts, delighting in the bacon making up the hat and a bun forming the nose of his namesake's face.
At the table Ash had a doppelgänger ferret who moved like him but didn't have the ability to transport himself via flakes, Orion watched the horses huddling at the table sitting like people. Yeh ol' Hippogriff came from the Saint Claus armour, Janna smiled at the odd words of the song while Orion tried to shoo the Santa from meddling with his breakfast.
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