Too Relieved to Grieve || Self Para/Choice
Elsa stood anxiously outside the Great Hall as the students were filed properly behind her. This was it. She had managed to get through her entire education at Hogwarts, expose her powers, and nothing bad had happened to her. She had survived. It shocked her--it almost didn't feel real. Standing there in her cap and gown, she wondered how she had managed to finally get to this point. How, after everything that had happened in her life, she managed to survive to graduation. Managed to find someone she cared about and that cared about her...how she managed to salvage something with Anna.
Just was the thought crossed her mind, she felt a sudden chill run up her spine. That was entirely bizarre. Cold never phased her. She looked over her shoulder but found nothing odd. It was when she looked back that her world seemed to snap entirely. She was back in the ice palace she had built for herself--yet still in her cap and gown. She felt vaguely ill. This wasn't possible. Only the strongest magic could apparate in or out of Hogwarts. She took one step backward and her heel clicked on the ground. The place was real enough.
"What?" she began, before she heard footsteps.Â
And a familiar voice.
"I thought you would appreciate a little something familiar. You never were a fan of me."
Elsa turned quickly on her heel and came face to face with a blond woman--the likes of which Elsa had never seen before. She took one step away from the woman and braced herself. "Who are you?" asked Elsa briskly, feeling her power prickle beneath her skin.
"Oh, please. Don't even try," the woman said, waving a hand. "Just shut up and listen. Well, watch, really. I have something to give you."
Before Elsa could question it, her mind was accosted with memories. It almost lined up perfectly with her life at Hogwarts but then it didn't. She was a princess? A Queen?! Yet the power remained in all of her memory. Oh God, she had almost killed Anna! She thought she had. The memories were terrible. The sudden loneliness crushed her spirit and she stumbled slightly. She shook her head and looked up to the woman. "What was that?" she snapped at the woman.Â
"Your memories. You know that. You feel it. Long story short, Frosty, I got bored and moved you from your own world here. And now I'm offering you a choice." As she spoke, three doors of ice rose from the floor behind her. "You can stay here in this world. Go off and graduate. Marry that boy like you want to. But I'll take away the memories I just gave you." The woman crossed her arms and looked Elsa over. "Your second option is you go back to Arendelle. But you will lose all your memories of this place. Your third, well." A small, almost cruel smirk played across the woman's face. "You will be transported somewhere entirely different. You'll be someone or something entirely new, but you keep all your memories."
Elsa's brow creased and she tried to study the woman closely. "You're Margo," she said finally, still brewing over what was happening in front of her.
"How very astute of you. Now, what do you choose?"
There was a world of possibilities before her. She could go be Queen. She had Anna were truly patching things in that world...or she could go and be something entirely new. A brand new world...but none of those options had just what she was thinking of--no matter how much she didn't want to dictate her actions entirely on someone who wasn't her family. But Heath was only in one of those options. She ran her fingers over the ring and looked down toward it. How could she leave him now? Just as she had grown to understand that she loved him. She straightened herself and stared at Margo hard in the eye.
"I'm going back to Hogwarts."
As she said it, the door farthest to Margo's left opened, a light coming from it. The woman before her nodded her head in the direction of the new light source.
"Then go."
Elsa walked toward the doors but stopped in front of Margo. "I won't remember any of this, will I?"
"Not even a little hint of it."
"Then I'm still going to try and find you."
"I never doubted it."
With a nod, Elsa headed toward the door. Toward Hogwarts, her home, Anna. To Heath. There was still just as much adventure awaiting her there. Who knew what was going to happen, but she would much rather continue to live her life the way she had chosen. The Universe would find a way to work with Arendelle. To keep it safe. She had spent far too many years living the way someone else had told her too. She wasn't about to go back to it now.
Elsa stepped through the door and suddenly she was back waiting to graduate. The same nerves, though she had a vague feeling that she had just spaced out slightly. She shook her head and straightened her shoulders. Today started the rest of her life. She wasn't about to let it go to waste by spacing out every few minutes. A professor came out of the double doors and beckoned her forward. Elsa nodded and began the procession into the Great Hall. On to graduation and the future.
