The morning of the day before my birthday, all of the Hufflepuff from fourth year up were called into one of the large, empty classroom for some sort of important announcement from Professor Sprout. When we walked into the classroom, we found Professor Sprout fiddling with an old-fashioned record player and for once her robes were free from dirt and plants.
"Welcome, chaps!" she said happily when everyone was in the classroom. "Now you are probably wondering why I have you call here. And I am excited to tell you about a tradition that has been part of the Triwizard Tournament since the very beginning, the Yule Ball! And yes, to those girls with an excited look on their faces, it is a dance! The Yule Ball is held on Christmas Eve and let me tell you now; good old Professor Dumbledore has a few surprises instore for all of you!"
Looks like Dad was right, it was a prom after all, I said to Danny.
I know, Mum said the same thing and I said she was crazy.
"Now, we are a proud house here at Hufflepuff and I wanted to make sure that we all know how to dance correctly before the actual night. So that's what we are here today to do, we are going to learn how to dance!" Professor Sprout said, making Henry start to laugh. "Thank you, Mr. Chang, for volunteering to help me teach everyone how to dance!"
"I did what now?" Henry asked in a confused voice.
"Just get over here, Chang," Professor Sprout laughed.
Henry shrugged and walked over to Professor Sprout as one of the younger students turned the record player on and to everyone's surprise, Henry could actually dance. He was leading Professor Sprout in a waltz for the entire song like a pro. When the waltz ended and a faster pace song came on, Henry went off on his own and did his own thing as the rest of us watched in shock.
"Okay, who knew that Henry was basically a professional dancer?" Hamish asked as he watched Henry dance with a look of shock on his face.
"I didn't," Maggie said in awe.
"Me either," I added.
"I'm starting to think he has a double life that we don't know about," Danny joked.
"Me too," Cedric said, agreeing with Danny.
Professor Sprout let Henry continue his solo dance routine for a few minutes before she finally stopped him.
"Okay, that's enough Chang. Well done, though. A perfect example of how those of us in Hufflepuff can adapt to all kinds of situations," Professor Sprout said happily. "Now, everyone partner up. It's time to practice."
"May have this dance, Lady Elsa," Cedric asked formally using one of my many Asgardian titles.
"Of course, kind sir," I said, trying not to laugh as I put on my royal voice that I only used when I was in Asgard and taking his hand.
As soon as the music started to play, I started to smile. It was a song I knew well and a song that Dad used to dance with me to when I was little and still was in my Disney Princess obsessed phase. It brought back so many good memories that I couldn't help but sing along quietly.
"I'm assuming you know this song," Cedric said, smiling at me.
"Yeah, I do. It's the theme song from Beauty and the Beast which was my favorite movie growing up. I can't count how many times I made Dad watch it with me when he came back and forced him to dance along to the song with me. But of course, it wasn't really dancing, it was me standing on Dad's feet," I laughed.
"I would have loved to have seen that," Cedric told me.
"Oh, I'm sure there is footage of it somewhere. Mum pretty much recorded everything back them, not taking having Dad back in our lives for granted," I said.
"Diggory, Rogers, well done!" Professor Sprout called out as she watched everyone dance, to make sure no one was messing up.
"Tale as old as time
True as it can be
Barely even friends
Then somebody bends
Unexpectedly"
"Certain as the sun
Rising in the east
Tale as old as time
Song as old as rhyme
Beauty and the Beast
Tale as old as time
Song as old as rhyme
Beauty and the Beast"
"Where did you learn how to dance so well? Was is from your dad?" Cedric asked when the music finally stopped.
"Oh, hell no!" I laughed. "Until Dad met Mum and they got married, Dad had no idea how to dance. Mum had to teach him. It was my uncle from, um, Norway who taught me. Dancing is kinda a big thing when I go back to visit them. They're very formal about those type of things."
"Yeah, tell me about it," Danny sighed. "I may have fallen on my face once and our great uncle was not happy about the attention I drew to myself."
"No offence, but your great uncle sounds terrifying," Cedric said.
"Oh, trust me when I say..."Danny said as we fell back into our old 'twin' routine of finishing each other's sentences.
"He is more than a little terrifying. He can be downright cruel."
After the dance lessons were over, we were all dismissed to go back to class and the last class of the day was with Moody. I don't know what was with him, but he seemed to be getting even more paranoid with every passing lesson. He was shouting 'constant valiance' at random times throughout the lessons while banging on random desks as he yelled. And let's just say he didn't take to Cassy yelling him 'that's mahogany!' when he stabbed his desk with some dark arts detector he was holding. Apparently, he was not a Hunger Games fan because Cassy ended up with a weeks' worth of detention with him.
"I swear that guy is getting crazier every day," Cassy said as we walked out of the class.
"Guess all the years of hunting death eaters has finally caught up with him," Hamish suggested.
"I know but he's giving Nick Fury a run for his money in the whole paranoid thing and Nick Fury literally faked his own death," I said thinking back to everything that happened in Washington.
"And he had the Avengers Towers bugged with tech so advanced that it even took Dad six months to figure it out," Cassy said.
"And he got so much good information from the whole thing," I laughed.
"Why, what did he record?" Cedric asked.
"Let's just say Cassy was going through her Little Mermaid phase and only spoke like Sebastian the crab with a Jamaican accent for, like, two months," I said as I laughed more.
"Hey! It's not like you weren't singing Part of Your World the whole time as well," Cassy pointed out.
"Oh my god, Part of Your World," I said as something fell into place. "That's it, that's the answer."
"Elsa, are you okay? You have kinda drifted off there," Cassy said as she waved her hand in front of my face.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Ced, I need to talk to you," I said as I grabbed Cedric's hand and pulled him away from out group of friends.
"Elsa, what is it," Cedric asked me, confused about what was going on.
"Can't explain now, but get the egg and something to go swimming in and meet me in the prefects' bathrooms after dinner. I need to search Loki's personal library for something and I don't know how long I'll be."
Before Cedric could ask me anymore questions, I quickly gave him a kiss on the cheek and took off running towards Loki's rooms. If I was right about my theory, Cedric and I had a lot of work ahead of us.
It was well past dinner by the time I worked my way through Loki's library trying to find the books that I was looking for. After getting Loki to cast a spell on the books to keep them dry, I gathered the pile in my arms and ran down to the prefect's bathroom. When I walked in, I found Cedric sitting with his feet in the giant pool sized bath and had the egg sitting on a towel next to him. He looked up with a confused smile on his face when I walked in and jumped up to help me with the pile of books that was almost half as tall as I was.
"Okay, can you please explain to me what is going on?" Cedric asked as he put the books down.
"Ariel, she the answer to the egg," I said excitedly.
"Who's Ariel?" Cedric asked, more confused than ever.
"She's the main character in The Little Mermaid. In the movie she saves Prince Eric, falls in love with him but her father forbids her to ever see him again because he's part of the human world. But Ariel defies her father and goes to talk to the sea witch, Ursula and make a deal. In return for human legs, she gives up her voice. The catch is she has two days for Eric to fall in love with her or she belongs to Ursula forever. But the problem is the only thing that Eric remembers about the girl who saved him is her singing voice. Long story short, Ursula tries to screw everything up, bewitches Eric in to marrying her by using Ariel's voice all to get back at Ariel's father, Triton for banishing her. But it all ends well; Ursula dies and Ariel and Eric live happily ever after. Unless you're reading the original and then Ariel turns to sea foam because Eric doesn't realise in time."
"Okay and what has that got to do with the egg and the second clue?" Cedric asked making me realise I didn't make the connection clear enough as I excitedly explained the movie.
"Ariel is a mermaid and she can't be heard when she's not under the water for a good part of the story and what lives in the black lake?"
"Mermaids! Elsa, you're a genius!" Cedric said as he kissed me.
"No, I was just a Disney obsessed kid," I laughed. "So, what are you waiting for? Open the egg under the water."
Cedric pulled off his shirt that he was just on his boardshorts, making me blush and thanking Odin that it was dark enough in the bathroom that he couldn't see how red I was. While Cedric climbed into the pool bathtub, I pulled off my shoes and socks so I could sit with my feet in the water.
"Well, here goes nothing," Cedric said as he took a deep breath and dived under the water with the egg in his hands.
I pulled my robe off so I was in my school skirt, shirt and tie while I watched Cedric open the egg underwater. Even from where I was sitting, I could hear music coming from the egg and it looked like there was a glowing center to the egg as well. When Cedric came up from the water, his was smiling as he pushed his hair out of his face.
"You were right, Elsa! Now I just have to figure out what the clue means," he told me.
"Well, what was the clue," I asked him excitedly.
"You should probably here it for yourself," Cedric said with a smile so mischievous it could rival Loki's as he grabbed me around the waist.
"What are you doing?" I asked as he laughed as he held me above the water. "Cedric Amos Diggory, don't you even think of dropping me in the water! I'm in my uniform!"
"Really, Elsa. I would never drop you," he laughed. "But pull you under the water with me on the other hand."
"No, don't you dare!" I laughed as he pulled me under the water with him.
Cedric kept an arm around my waist when we were under the water as he opened the egg again so that I could hear the clue as well. As soon as he opened the egg, one of the most beautiful voices I had ever heard began to sing.
"Come seek us where our voices sound,
We cannot sing above the ground,And while you're searching ponder this;We've taken what you'll sorely miss,An hour long you'll have to look,And to recover what we took,But past an hour, the prospect's black,Too late, it's gone, it won't come back."
When the song finished both Cedric and I came up from under the water to get some air. My curls were plastered to my face but I didn't care one bit. My theory was right, who knew that loving Disney growing up would end up helping so much.
"That was amazing! Now the only question is, what the hell are they going to hide under the lake," I said as I swam over to the side of the pool and sat down on the ledge that was just below the water and pulling the books open to the pages on mermaids and sirens.
"We have plenty of time to figure that out, the task isn't until February," Cedric said as he stood in front of me and held my hands. "What's more important now is that it's past midnight and that means it's now your birthday."
I looked up at the old-fashioned clock was on that was on the wall and saw that it was five minutes past midnight. I hadn't even realised that I had been with Loki for that long as I looked through all the books as I tried to find the ones I needed.
"Oh, it is. I didn't even realise," I shrugged, even since Mum had been in her Odin's sleep birthdays hadn't been the same without her early morning call, singing me happy birthday.
"Happy birthday, Elsa," Cedric whispered as he pulled me over to him.
I closed my eyes and wrapped around my arms around Cedric's neck as he leaned into kiss me. I don't know how long we stood there, with Cedric's arms wrapped around me as he kissed me but eventually, we both her someone giggling and I knew exactly who it was.
"Myrtle, get out here and stop spying on us like a creep," I called out, making the ghost girl make herself visible.
"Hiya Cedric, Elsa. What are you two doing here this late at night," she giggled.
"Working on the second task clue which no one else is meant to know about. So, if you don't mind, could you please let the two of us work it out in peace," Cedric sighed.
"Oh, working on the clue you say. I wonder if Harry's figured it out yet. You know, if anything terrible happened to him in the tournament, he could always spend the rest of eternity with me," she said in a dreamy voice.
"Nothing is going to happen to Harry, Myrtle," I snapped at her.
"Well, that's what you think," she wailed before diving down one of the pipes and started sobbing.
"I really don't like her," Cedric said.
"She's made one of the girls' bathrooms pretty much unusable, which frustrates the hell out of all of us. So welcome to the club."
The next day before classes started, Cedric and I went to look for Harry to let him know what he needed to do with the egg to get the clue. After searching the castle, we found Harry with Hermione on the bridge to Hagrid's hut. They seemed to be disagreeing about something which resulted in Hermione sighing and walking off.
"Go tell Harry, I'll watch out for any teachers," I told Cedric while I looked around the area for anyone who may over hear them talking.
"Hey, Harry wait up!" Cedric called out to him.
"Oh, Hi Cedric," Harry said, sounding up set.
"How are you going with it all?" Cedric asked him.
"Spectacular," Harry said sarcastically. "Hermione has spent the last ten minutes lecturing me because I still haven't figured out what to do with that egg."
"That's what I'm here to talk to you about," Cedric said, pausing for a second as he looked at someone behind Harry that I couldn't see. "You know the prefect's bathroom on the fifth floor. It's not a bad place for a bath. Just take your egg and mull things over in the hot water."
"Um, sure. I, uh, do that. But I have to get down to Hagrid's apparently Rita Skeeter going to show up at one point and I want to make sure that everything goes okay," Harry said to him as he waved goodbye and walked down to Hagrid's.
"You're an idiot," I said as I hit Cedric on the arm.
"What did I do?" Cedric laughed.
"'It's not a bad place for a bath'," I quoted. "Why didn't you just tell him what to do? You know what Harry's like. Unless you tell him to do something directly, he won't do it."
"It's because of Rita Skeeter, I saw her down on the hill watching us and I didn't trust that she wasn't listening somehow," Cedric said.
"She probably was but if he hasn't figured it out by Christmas, I'm dragging that boys butt in to the water and forcing him under the water to listen to the clue," I sighed.
"Don't worry, love. I'll help you if he hasn't listened to it. I'm not letting him go into the second task unprepared, no matter what the stupid rules are."