Tell me the answers [Nolan]

Linnet had thought she would feel better once she was standing in front of the earth shrine. She'd been feeling nervous ever since her meeting with Professor McGonagall, not a constant feeling that was distracting her from her classes, but something that niggled in quiet moments and crept up on her when she was trying to get to sleep at night. It was something she could have avoided by simply resigning herself to struggling through transfiguration classes for the remainder of her fifth year, but the thought of failure - no, the knowledge that she was sure to fail - wasn't something that she wanted to live with. So here she was, out of school on a non-Hogsmeade weekend with special permission to ask for support from the council in her desire to drop the subject.

Except she really had no idea how to go about such a task. Given that Linnet hadn't heard of elementals until a year previously, it was obvious that they kept themselves fairly secret, and she had a nasty feeling that nobody was going to be willing to back her up in front of the Hogwarts board of governers. Until today, she had convinced herself that there was no harm in just going and asking, but now she was here, the question was, who should she ask? The obvious person would be Harbinger Madin, but actually approaching such a high-ranking elemental made her feel horribly nervous. Which was why she was here, dressed in her Hogwarts robes, sitting in front of the earth shrine and trying to pluck up the courage to go and find...someone she could talk to.

That was easier said than done, though. For now she was alone, so maybe a bit of meditation would help? Certainly she'd got a lot better at it in the past months, though right now the 'emptying her mind' part wasn't working too well. She was seated with her eyes closed, and hands dropped loosely in her lap, secure in the belief that she wasn't going to be disturbed. Without really thinking, she began to speak softly, talking to the shrine, and to her own element "Can you help me? Will you help me? Is it really so much to ask? All I want is to drop one little class, and it's not as if I'd ever be able to pass it anyway. I won't even need a wand in a couple more years, so it's silly for me to study transfiguration, right? Especially when I should be learning gaelic or runes or..." she sighed again, and the words trailed off.. It didn't cross her mind that anyone might have heard her.

Oh, what was the use? It was all very well sitting her and feeling comforted, but the shrine was still just an inanimate object, not a friend who could help her. She wondered, not for the first time, whether Iuliana would be a good person to ask - not to approach the board of school governors, but for help in making her case to the elemental council. The trouble was, actually asking someone for help scared her, because she didn't feel as if she knew enough of how the whole system worked yet to know what her chances of success were. maybe she should just give up, go back to school...

The sound behind her made her jump visibly, a little gasp escaping her lips as she spun around, still on the ground, her school robes catching beneath her and tangling up around one foot. Linnet stared up at the speaker, a man she was sure she'd never seen before, beginning to feel rather panicky. This wasn't at all how she'd hoped to end up speaking to someone. In her imagination, she had found a sympathetic older elemental, preferably a woman and someone of her own element, someone who had experienced similar troubles at school and would be more than willing to help her out, not a strange man who frankly didn't look as though he was particularly approachable. Her eyes widened as she tried to disentangle her foot from her robes and scramble to her feet at the same time, an act that was doomed to failure in the worst possible way. In the process of standing up she managed to stumble, fall over her own feet and tear the hem of her robes, all in the space of a few seconds.

Her cheeks were flaming as she faced the man. "Yes, I mean, hello...oh!" belatedly, she remembered to perform the elemental greeting, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her and having no inkling that her current companion was more than capable of making that wish come true. At the same time though, at the back of her mind was the part of Linnet's personality that was - if not exactly devious, then certainly a little on the sneaky side. Her eyes dropped briefly to her damaged uniform - not badly enough that she wouldn't be able to fix it herself with a needle and thread in a few minutes, admittedly, before she forced herself to meet the man's gaze.

"Yes, I go to Hogwarts - now. Last year I was at Beauxbatons. I'm muggleborn, you see, so I had to...anyway, that was where I found out I'm...well, when I found out I'm not like my friends." "Yes you are" a little voice at the back of her mind whispered "Allana and Kyle are just like you are, and Thea...well, she's different too, she doesn't even know anyone else who can do what she can..." Linnet ignored the voice of her conscience, as well as the fact that her explanation of why she was here was thoroughly disjointed. "All I want to do is drop transfiguration, but I have to persuade the board of governors, and there's no way I can do that all by myself." Here, she managed a rather pleading smile, before remembering that she hadn't introduced herself. "My name's Linnet. Um...you went to Hogwarts too?" Despite harbouring a vaguely-formed hope that this man might be able to help her, she didn't quite have the courage to ask an adult their name.

Eyes wide, Linnet listened to the man carefully, not quite hanging on to his every word but giving that impression nonetheless. Somewhere at the back of her mind the girl had already deduced that this was not one of the elemental harbingers. Had that been the case, he would either have said as much or already told her that she wasn't to tell the full board of school governers about elementals. The slight twinge of unease was easily ignored though as a means towards an end and besides, she was already rather fascinated by the man. Something about the way he said "all those long years ago" suggested that he was a good deal older than he appeared to be. She felt curiosity, and something else she couldn't put a name to. What had happened while this man was a student to make him want to forget it?

Of course, Linnet had heard tales about Hogwarts in the olden days, not just from reputable sources but also late on a winter evening when she and her housemates had huddled around the fire trying to scare each other with increasingly lurid tales. She hadn't quite believed any of the embellished stories of students who had been chained in the dungeons and starved, but at the same time she had felt as though it might have been true. She shuddered slightly, imagining still worse things that might have happened that would make someone want to forget - things that had been a direct result of people discovering that someone in their class could perform a different kind of magic than they were capable of.

Linnet didn't feel like an outcast, but those words made her feel as if her imagination was in fact correct. She decided not to mention that she actually had a lot of friends, and some of them would happily help her scrape through her exams if she wasn't allowed to drop a subject. That wouldn't be fair to someone who had been made to feel as if they didn't belong. She realised she was nibbling thoughtfully on a strand of long hair, and pulled it away from her mouth self-consciously, blushing slightly as she did so. That turned out to be a good thing though, because when the man stepped closer he wasn't going to notice that she didn't know at all how to react. She simply stood, a deer caught in headlights her mother might have said, but the next words sent a surge of hope through her.

She tried to look up, meet the man's gaze, but he was far taller than she and before her eyes had found his, they had dropped again, staring at the ground. Swallowing hard, Linnet knew what she wanted to say, it was simply a case of finding the courage to voice her thoughts. It would have been far easier to turn away, to forget why she was here, but there was the strong lesser part within that insisted she couldn't do that. She'd survived the war, survived the school transfer, and now she could survive the discovery of what she really was. "Yes. I thought I should ask the Earth Harbinger, but..." I think she'd tell me no was the unspoken end to the sentence. There was a pause, and then the hand was removed from her shoulder. Dare she? Yes, why not. There was something in the man's words that made her believe he didn't necessarily follow rules to the letter. "Do you know of anyone who...might be able to help me?" she asked, finally daring to look up...up further to meet his gaze. That wasn't exactly what she wanted to say, but Linnet definitely lacked the nerve to ask a stranger for help in such a blatant fashion.

Her heart was pounding so hard that the fifth year felt certain the man must be able to hear. She'd been nervous enough about coming here - rather dreading it, in fact, but had forced herself to visit Inverness because...why, exactly? Oh, yes. Because she didn't want to spend the rest of her life running away from things that scared her. Right now running away seemed like the best thing imaginable though, because Linnet was absolutely certain that she was going to be told to go away, address a huge panel of stern council members -oh, and of course they weren't going to help her. Maybe she should just go back to Hogwarts now...

The teenager's eyes widened as the man responded. That wasn't what she'd been expecting at all! It was immediately reassuring to be taken seriously, even by a stranger who she wasn't sure she ought to be talking to, let alone trusting with her deepest fears. Linnet considered this for a moment, then decided that surely all elementals should be automatically trusted. There were the rogues of course...but they weren't part of the council. So that meant that anyone she met here was fine to talk to, just...old fashioned. She nodded, trying to make sense of what she'd been told.

Was he going to help her? Linnet's mind was racing, trying to work out what the right way to deal with this situation was. She sensed that maybe this man wanted to modernise the elemental council perhaps - or at least do something that they wouldn't entirely agree with. Maybe...maybe he would even have been a harbinger if he hadn't done something that the rest of the high-ranking elementals had disagreed with? She actually grinned when he mentioned how useless it was to try and force elementals to study wand classes. "Yeah, it's..." she began, and then stopped quickly as he continued to speak. Her situation? Well, that was easy enough, wasn't it? It was just a question of how to make herself sound in need of aid without being rude about anyone at Hogwarts.

"I already went and asked Professor McGonagall if I could drop transfiguration" she began "I mean, it's not the only wand class, but I can probably scrape an A grade in the other classes just on the theory work, so I don't mind those. I guess...I think she was surprised that I asked. I mean, it's her subject and everything, and maybe she thought I just didn't like it. I offered to take another class in its place - I thought I could study ancient runes instead, something that would be useful. She didn't say no outright but she said I'd have to ask the board of governors and that I needed the support of the Council in order to have any hope of success." She had said all this without really stopping to think what she was saying, and finished rather lamely with "So I guess I just need to do that next, Mr..."

Except she still didn't know his name.

She didn't think it strange that he only offered a surname. It somehow suited him, the name somehow matching the man who stood before her, though she couldn't have explained why. Nor did the fifth year consider that he was once again putting himself in a position of power, whether consciously or not; by leaving her with no choice but to address him as "Mr." Of course, such a thing wouldn't seem strange to an ordinary young witch who was brought up to respect her elders, but neither did it occur to Linnet that the hierarchy between elementals might be different from that which she had known previously.

All she knew was that she felt a surge of hope and pride. He though she was brave for not just doing what was expected of her. It was the first time someone had told her that since...well, probably ever, unless you counted Thea when they'd had the ice skating party on Hogwarts lake. She'd been brave to try skating, but really, the worst thing that could have happened there was falling on her backside. This time - it felt different - heck, it was different, because she was standing up for something that could affect the rest of her life. It wasn't as if she was trying to just drop a subject because she didn't like it, she wanted to devote her time to studying things she could succeed at, rather than something that was inevitable she fail.

Independence from non-elementals...yes, that sounded reasonable. If wizards were independent from muggles, then it made sense that elementals shouldn't necessarily be answerable to the Ministry of Magic, at least not completely. "Isn't that why we have the Council, Mr Cairns?" she asked, thoughtful now "I mean, so that we can be independent from other witches and wizards - at least, in some ways..?" Even as she spoke though, she knew that couldn't be entirely true. There was secrecy, so nobody really knew about elementals, but if they did...would that be a bad thing? She could see the need for muggles not knowing about magic, but really, to have to hide what she was for the rest of her life from almost everyone...

Linnet realised she was frowning, and forced her face back into a more neutral expression, in case Mr Cairns thought she was annoyed at something he was saying. "Yes. I know I'll have to do that." she said "But I'm not brave. I'm scared, and I know there's a good chance they'll just say no right away. I don't know if I dare to come right out and say 'I'm an elemental, I'll never be able to pass this subject so I want to drop it and do something useful instead' because...well, what if they don't believe me? That's why I need the Council's support. Or somebody to speak up for me so I don't look like some lazy kid who doesn't want to try. Do you think anyone's going to be willing to help me, or should I just give up now and pretend to be like everyone else so we don't get exposed?" She stared down at the ground, hoping she hadn't said too much.

Her heart was pounding, and she had to force herself not to look up as she waited for a reaction. Linnet hadn't been entirely honest - she was proud of herself for daring to ask what no elemental had before, and she also considered herself to be somehow special, simply because of her late discovery. There was something tragic and romantic in thinking of oneself to be disadvantaged; and how much worse could things have been than to discover you're a witch, spend years believing that your spellwork is borderline incompetent and then find out the only reason for that was because nobody noticed you were something much rarer and potentially more powerful? Didn't that make her somebody worth fighting for?

Look down she admonished herself as he started to speak Now up, slowly - don't smile! There... It felt as if she was playing a role, one designed not to entertain an audience but to get what she wanted - no, what she needed. There was nothing selfish in what she was doing, not really. It wasn't as if she was hurting anybody. Now she was looking up again, her eyes wide and trusting and drinking in every word. She nodded slowly at the suggestion of a school at the Council, though the idea made her feel chilled to the bone. She wasn't sure she liked it here, with the quiet shrines and rules that she didn't yet understand, and she would miss her friends if she didn't get to study with them. But she wasn't going to admit any of that.

The whole conversation was making her uneasy, in fact. She had already heard of how powerful an adult elemental could be, had seen a little of it firsthand, and was afraid of spending time with anyone who could...well, kill her with a rune and a spoken word. And yet - hadn't she spent a whole year at Beauxbatons because there were ordinary wizards wanting to kill her, just because of who her parents were? She shuddered.

"I'm sorry. I was just thinking..." she mumbled, but didn't continue, for he was speaking again. At the word Voldemort she flinched again, this time doing her best to hide it and hoping that Mr Cairns hadn't noticed. She'd forgotten about playacting now, about trying to gain assistance. All of this just scared her, even if she was proud of how far she'd gone. Maybe that was enough, just challenging the system was enough for now...

She blinked in surprise. Was he really offering to help her? It certainly sounded like that, particularly when he talked of how a regular wizard would cope with trying to learn some of their talents. That pulled an unwilling smile from her. "Yeah...but I can't morph yet, either" she said, immediately knowing that was precisely the wrong thing to say. She drew herself up to her full height, which made very little difference given that she had only just topped five feet.

"But I will, and they won't, no matter how hard they might be expected to try. That wouldn't be fair." Right, time to ask what she had come here to find out, even if it was from an entirely unexpected source "You said I'm brave, so I suppose I should prove that. Mr Cairns, will you help me explain things to the Hogwarts Council, please? I-I'd really appreciate it if you could spare the time..."

Success! He was actually going to help her, and she didn't have to go and find anyone else and spill out the whole tale again! Linnet had conveniently forgotten the fact that she knew very little about this man, that he didn't share her element, that she didn't even know exactly what his council position was - all these things she skimmed over in her mind by telling herself that it would be rude to ask someone who was willing to help. Besides, if she was too nosey he might withdraw the offer, and she didn't want that. She hadn't expected it to be so easy - in fact, had been quite certain she would be turned down and sent away in disgrace for wanting to reveal what she was - that she didn't want to do anything that would spoil things. Now her main thought revolved around getting back to school as soon as possible before anyone noticed she had been gone.

it was quite the wrong way of going about things, of course. Had she bothered to think about it, Linnet would have realised that generations of elementals had struggled at Hogwarts with their wandwork, battling through classes they had no hope of passing and simply turning to each other for support, rather than trying to avoid their difficulties. The fact was, it was simply that she had been discovered so late that made Linnet believe she was alone, that she had to accept help from any source, no matter how little she knew about it. That, and the desire that lurks within the soul of almost every teenager to believe she was different and special.

But, none of that mattered now. She had got what she wanted! She offered the man a beaming smile, and thanks which stopped just the right side of being gushing and overenthusiastic. As for his final question "They...they didn't give me a date yet" she admitted "I guess they didn't know if I was going to really stand up for myself or if I would just...give up." That wasn't true at all, Linnet knew somewhere at the back of her mind, but the more she played the poor me card, the better, she decided. She hadn't even asked when the governors met, or whether it would be a special meeting; because she hadn't thought that far ahead. It was something she would need to find out now, though - just so long as her housemates didn't know what she was doing.

"Can I send you an owl when I know the date, Mr Cairns?" she asked "It'll find you here, won't it?" She didn't want to send a letter only to find that he was away for the next month and wouldn't hear of the date until weeks after. What she did want was to get back to school. One or two difficult subjects were far less daunting than the endless meditation practise and arcane studying that this place made her think of.