[heidelberg] green grass and colored lenses [elsa]

Conrad’s father had insisted on taking him upstream on his way out to the island, either to save money or to torture him. It wasn’t terribly far, but by the time they’d gotten to Heidelberg, Conrad was claustrophobic and cranky anyway. He got out first to tie the boat down -- only because his father had spent half the ride telling him he never helped out, which wasn’t even true -- and spotted, only a bit away, his cousin getting up and approaching them.

Oma must have sent Elsa to meet them. He hoped she hadn’t been waiting long -- he was in a mood and didn’t need her to be in one too. “Good morning, Elsa,” he said in greeting, before his father called him back to unload his things and his dog, to lean closer so he could be warned not to be difficult in a voice low enough that Elsa wouldn’t hear it.

Fortunately, he had no intentions yet of being difficult.

His father waved them off -- give your Oma my best, and I’ll see you in two weeks -- and Conrad gratefully grabbed up his bulky suitcase and clicked his tongue at his dog; they set off toward Oma’s house. Conrad had been cramped for the whole morning, so even though Oma was expecting them, he was tempted to meander, to let Käsekuchen piss on half the trees they passed. He liked Heidelberg; he liked the Muggel sides of cities.

He didn’t want to bring up their exams -- not until he knew his scores -- so instead he said, “How was the end of the Quidditch season?”

@Elisabeth Sturm

Elsa got up from the wall she’d been sitting on, watching boats drift down or power up the Neckar, legs swinging idly. She saw Conrad emerge from below deck and she jumped onto the jetty in time to watch as he fastened the rope to moor the boat while he unloaded his things. “Morning,” she replied, a degree more cheery than her cousin because she was finally going to have someone to share chores with, and because she was mostly talking to his dog.

She crouched and gave Käsekuchen a good scratch behind both ears and under her chin, letting Conrad say his goodbyes -- brief as they were -- then stood up and called out “Goodbye Uncle Johann!” as she trailed after her cousin.

“Do you want me to carry that for you?” she teased, a wicked grin on her lips. “You know you’re only coming for two weeks? Not a month?” She laughed, rolling her eyes. They were attracting odd looks from the muggels -- Elsa’s (and Conrad’s, for that matter) clothes always stood out a little for being so dated and plain, but with Conrad lugging a suitcase and his dog in tow, they were blending in even less than usual.

“We lost,” she griped, a frown flashing across her features at the memory. “I hope they don’t give Captain to Severin again, he doesn’t deserve it and he doesn’t even care if we don’t win. He doesn’t want to play professionally.” She sighed, checking under her fingernails for dirt as they turned up one of the many streets that led into the hills, towards home.

Elsa was greeting his dog more enthusiastically than she’d greeted him, when Conrad started paying attention to her again. She seemed happy to see them (almost too happy; he was in a poor enough mood that her pleasantness was grating.) “I can carry it myself,” he said, mulish; “Maybe it’s so big because I brought you and Oma presents, did you think of that?”

(He hadn’t; it was just the only suitcase he owned -- Conrad left his home infrequently enough not to need better, and hadn’t wanted to ask, so to fill the extra space, he’d wedged Käsekuchen’s favourite blanket into the space left.)

It was unwieldy, having his suitcase bumping against his legs as he walked, but he was grateful for the weight tugging at his arms, and grateful for the nice weather. He hadn’t been in Heidelberg in a long while -- his parents had opted to sit out the last few Sturm gatherings -- and he was surprised to realise he’d missed it here. It cheered him significantly, being out in the city. It’d been a while since he strayed anywhere near Muggels; he’d been so afraid his parents would cancel this trip that he’d been good as gold since the holidays began.

Conrad gave Elsa a glance, not missing the expression that crossed her face when she mentioned her teammate. “What a pig,” he said, “They’d better make you captain next year, if he’s got your team losing everything.” Doubtless Elsa shared some of the blame for losing the cup -- as did the rest of her team -- but there was a thrill to scapegoating someone else for no reason.

“Are you going anywhere this summer?” Last year she’d spent part of her summer in Brazil honing her Quidditch skills; surely if she wanted to go professional, she’d need practise during the holidays; from experience he doubted that the island Sturms would indulge her.

She raised a sceptical eyebrow at him and his mention of presents. “Did you?” Didn’t seem likely -- or maybe for Oma, from his parents, but that didn’t really count.

They walked up the hill (the first of many) towards home. It was weird to think that it might be the last summer she spent here, and as a result she was trying to appreciate it -- made difficult, of course, by the many chores she was being given to do by Oma.

Elsa smiled, appreciatively, at Conrad automatically taking her side. “He is a pig,” she agreed. She didn’t voice her opinion on the rest of his statement, not wanting to get too ahead of herself despite desperately hoping that she would be made Captain. Oh, it was Conrad -- who was he going to tell? “Hopefully. They usually owl out before term starts so I’ll let you know.” Was she jinxing herself? “But I’m not holding my breath,” she added hastily. “He’s just—” she pulled a face, “— an einzeller.” There was more she could -- and would, if Conrad wanted to humour her -- said about Séverin but there were two whole weeks to bring her cousin up to speed.

They turned up another street, each less populous with other pedestrians than the last as they got further out of town, elevated higher in the hills. “No, if I’d thought about it maybe I should have gone this year instead of last but Oma wants a bunch of weird jobs done this summer -- I think she knows I’m going to move out and this is her last chance. And she probably knows you won’t come back without me here,” she smirked, “so I hope you’re ready to earn your keep,” she said, affecting Oma’s stern voice.

She reached to give Käsekuchen another scratch behind the ears, then turned her head to look at Conrad. “What are you doing after your stay?”

“No,” said Conrad, and grinned over at her for the first time. His smile was too wide for his face, so he always felt like a fool using it; Elsa had seen him look like more of a fool than this, in seventeen years, but he dropped the grin quickly anyway. They were heading up a hill and he had a trunk to haul; he switched it to his other hand and walked behind Elsa, came up on her other side. Elsa was trying her hardest not to sound like she thought she was going to be made captain next year, but Conrad knew his cousin and he knew her ego. “He sounds useless,” he opined. “What’s his deal, anyway, doesn’t he take it seriously? It should be an honour to be appointed captain. It is at Durmstrang.”

Not that Conrad concerned himself greatly with what Durmstrang considered honourable; he concerned himself only barely with what Durmstrang considered passable.

“Ugh,” he said. He’d known, going into this, that he was going to be given all manner of irritating chores (and worse ones than Elsa got, because he was taller and stronger) but knowing what to expect didn’t make him any happier about it. “What does she want me to do?” he demanded. “Do you know yet?” The last two times he’d visited Oma and Elsa, he’d fixed the fence; the damned thing had probably broken again, just to spite him.

After his stay, he was going back home, and he was discarding the good attitude he’d been strenuously maintaining ‘til now. “I’m going to work with the Muggels again, in the city,” he said; she knew where, so he wouldn’t say. “My father’s just stopped caring, he says if I want to throw my life to the dogs he can’t stop me.”

It’d been a hard-won stalemate, and one he should be grateful for, but it was one that Conrad still wanted to bitch about, so he twisted his mouth sourly and said, “What a fucking ordeal. Tell Uncle Karl thanks a lot.”

’No.’ Elsa smirked back at him.

An honour. Elsa had never really thought of it like that. “He definitely takes it for granted,” she said, though she wasn’t entirely sure she would feel honoured to be Captain of a school team. Of a professional team, absolutely -- but then she had no grand dream of captaining the German National Team or anything… Not that she’d ever admit to, anyway. “He wants to win, but that’s not enough.” She wasn’t sure what was enough, but that sounded about right, and she’d been reading books on leadership and sports teams in her spare time (when she had any), which she didn’t think Severin had bothered to do. He was a good player -- very good, really -- he just hadn’t translated that into his Captaincy.

“I think she said something about the roof,” Elsa answered, “or maybe it was the attic. I can’t remember.” Could have been both, really -- Elsa’s head had been inside the oven (scrubbing, no magic allowed) when Oma had been rattling off her list. It was almost like the woman left things all year specifically so that she could teach her grandchildren the ‘value of hard work’. Elsa may have done one or two jobs with magic when her Oma wasn’t there to supervise, and then spent the rest of the time it would have taken exploring the town.

“Really?” She knew it was weird to find Muggels so interesting, but she did nonetheless. She technically lived among them, here in Heidelberg -- if living on the very outskirts of town counted as ‘among’, but it wasn’t like she could talk to them. She also knew that, in theory, they were just like wizards -- less smart, perhaps, or maybe ‘observant’ was the better word; they were intelligent enough to work out how to fly without brooms and had come up with countless other inventions, some that even wizards hadn’t harnessed (electricity, for example).

Elsa rolled her eyes at Conrad’s father’s opinion of Muggels. “They’re not that bad, are they?” she asked, mostly rhetorically. Her grandmother obviously didn’t hate them enough to live deep in the woods, but she had practically forbidden Elsa from having anything to do with them (outside of buying food, when she was sent to the shop to fetch something Oma had run out of).

Elsa stopped, mid-way up the hill, her brain catching up with Conrad’s words. “What do you mean? What did he do?"

“I thought winning was the only thing that mattered in Quidditch,” said Conrad. “Nobody cares about fair play.” For the first time he realised he had gossip from his own school’s season -- “The Klyk Vampira Seeker broke her arm in the middle of the game. Honest.”

He gave his cousin a critical look, trying to gauge if she was making fun -- the roof? he’d fall to his death -- but unfortunately she seemed to be earnest. “Ugh,” he said again. “I told you she’d make me reshingle the roof.” He’d meant it as a joke; he would have to be careful what he joked about. Sometimes he thought things happened just to spite him -- it would explain a lot about the last seventeen years of his life.

At least he had his wand with him -- for six years his father had been confiscating it during the summer to keep him out of trouble. (Trouble Conrad wouldn’t have gotten into anyway -- he wasn’t an idiot.) Finally, he could do what he suspected Elsa did, and cheat when Oma wasn’t looking. Hopefully Oma would pay closer attention to his cousin anyway -- she was much meaner to Elsa. “If I fall and break my neck, you can keep the dog.” He paused in the street and stooped over to scritch his dog behind her ears; Käsekuchen, ignorant to what he was saying, snorted cheerfully.

They set off again.

At least Elsa was siding with him over his father. “The Muggels are fine,” he agreed sourly. “He’s just --” his father was a lot of things.

Conrad didn’t notice at first that he’d left his cousin behind -- he turned slightly to tell her to hurry up (he wanted to put his trunk down and he did not want her to offer to carry it for him again) and frowned down at her. “What do you mean?” he said, baffled. “He ran off with some Muggel bitch and now I can’t even talk to a Muggel without catching hell for it.”

“No— I mean, it is, but you have to prepare to win. You can’t just want it, you have to work for it.” Ugh, she was starting to sound like Oma. Elsa turned to look at Conrad, eyes wide. “Really? Ouch,” she grimaced sympathetically. Elsa hadn’t broken any bones of her own (yet) in Quidditch, but she’d caused one or two in her time. It wasn’t her fault if someone fell or collided with another player -- it was all part of the game.

“I’ll help you if she doesn’t give me something else to do,” Elsa offered. Her version of ‘help’ would probably stop at levitating roof tiles up to him -- though if they were doing it during the day she supposed she might have to carry them up herself just in case the neighbours saw. “Do you think she’ll let us do it in the dark?” she asked, knowing full well the answer would be ‘no’.

She smiled at him awkwardly -- half-smirking at the joke, at getting the dog, half-wry because they ought not to joke about him falling and breaking his neck after what happened to great-cousin Klaus.

Elsa remained standing still, a few paces behind where Conrad had continued on without her. She stared at him unblinking. “What?” she asked, though she’d heard him quite clearly. Her father had done what? With a Muggel! Is that why he wasn’t with her mother anymore? And all this time Elsa had thought she was the one to blame, given the way Oma was about it all ('We don’t talk about that woman' replayed in Elsa’s head, as did the memory of the harsh smack she’d received to go with that particular rule).

“When?” she asked Conrad. “Did he…” The distress was plain on her features; she didn’t see her Dad often but he was still her Dad. She loved him, looked up to him -- always wanted to earn his love and admiration in return. How would she feel to learn he’d been the cause of their broken family? But she had to know. “Did he cheat on my mother?” she asked her cousin -- she’d come back to how he knew and she didn’t once she’d gotten the facts.

Elsa looked dumbfounded; if Conrad hadn’t been so set on being bitter, he’d have found her expression a little amusing, and a little satisfying. It was rare that he said something that shut her up; usually it went the opposite direction. He jerked his head a little, trying to signal her to hurry and catch up with him instead of standing in the middle of the walkway like she’d been hit on the head. What? she asked; “What?” he mimicked. “Come on, this is heavy.” He gave his suitcase a little wiggle to illustrate the point.

“Your mother?” repeated Conrad, confused for all of a moment before it sank in: Oma hadn’t told her. His face went a little slack. “No, the Muggel was your mother.”

He couldn’t very well untell her, now, but it certainly wasn’t his place to explain it to her. He felt a little tug of annoyance toward their grandmother for keeping the secret -- and, worse, never telling Conrad that he was also supposed to be keeping the secret. Not, he supposed, that he would’ve -- didn’t Elsa deserve to know? -- but at least he wouldn’t have been standing here in Heidelberg trying to wrap his head around how to tell Elsa seventeen years late what had happened to her mother.

Oma was going to be furious with him, too, he realised belatedly -- he let out a frustrated groan. He’d been here for ten minutes and already ruined his holiday. He scowled, but then glanced back at his cousin, realised with a sting of pity that he’d probably also just ruined her holiday. But he knew better than to let her know he felt sorry for her. “Are you going to pester me about this or can we keep walking?” he said, already turning to set off again. “I don’t know who she was or what her name was.”

Elsa felt like she was underwater -- she could see Conrad’s lips moving but his words weren’t making any sense, and her chest was tight like she was holding her breath. Was she?

“What?” she asked again, though she had heard him plain enough: her mother was the Muggel her father had run off with. But what did that mean? Did she find out about magic and want nothing to do with it? Did she abandon them? Or -- foolishly optimistic -- was that really where her father was, living somewhere as a Muggel with her mother and keeping it a secret from Elsa and the rest of the family? There were too many potential scenarios and each seemed less likely than the last, and of all of them she didn’t know which would be better or worse.

She was staring into space somewhere between her and Conrad and Käsekuchen, breathing in short, shallow breaths, but lifted her attention to her cousin after a moment. Elsa’s outward appearance was perhaps a little misleading; aside from her mouth hanging slightly ajar, everything seemed somewhat calm. Inside, it was rather a different story.

Elisabeth glowered at Conrad suddenly. “Pester you?!” she asked, incredulous, rounding in on him. “My mother is a Muggel and nobody told me.” She shoved at him, regretted it somewhat in the immediate aftermath, then realised she had every right (she thought) to be mad at him. “You didn’t even tell me!” That probably hurt the most -- he obviously had known. Did everyone know? Oma—

Oma.

Elsa shot Conrad one last look of disgust, turned on her heel and began sprinting up the hill towards home.

[ out ]

What? said Elsa again; Conrad, his stomach now sinking unpleasantly, said, “Shit!” The magnitude of what he’d just accidentally done was becoming sickeningly apparent -- their grandmother, Elsa’s father, everybody else in the entire family had been keeping this quite for seventeen years, and now he’d ruined it, and within half an hour of getting here too. He felt pale; guilty and nervy. Goddamn it.

(Beyond that, he was appalled -- Elsa was seventeen years old and still didn’t know who her mother was; when had their grandmother been planning to say something? Had she meant it to stay a secret forever? Surely not -- Conrad’s father had been making cracks about this for years.)

Elsa generally didn’t like pity, which was why he’d tried not to sound too sorry, but it was obvious immediately that it hadn’t been the right thing to say. He fell a step back but regained his footing quickly, rounded on her and opened his mouth, his face hot and his head suddenly buzzing with adrenaline.

“I didn’t --” he said, but he couldn’t defend himself under pressure. She gave him one last glare before she fled; Conrad was left like a fool in the middle of the walkway, starting to breathe shallowly, not entirely sure he’d processed any of the last minute.

Then there was a wet nudge at his hand; he looked down at his dog and she wagged her tail in a kind of forlorn way. Conrad gave her an obligatory scratch behind her ears, but there was nothing else that either of them could say. Elsa would make it home to their grandmother’s house long before Conrad would. He blew out his breath, his chest already starting to ache with offense, and resumed his trudging path up the hill.

- end -