She felt the wind subsiding before noticing that her sledding boat was slowly as the loose wisps of white hair were no longer beating wildly against her cheeks and instead hung, as though exhausted, over her scarf and draped over her shoulders. Another hint she was meant to interpret on the air? Ought she prepare those sticks and perhaps set them ablaze to watch the smoke patterns? That was one form of Divination she did recall something about. Even if her foundation was just about as vague. Valerie waited until she had come to a complete stop and untied the cotton scarf which she then wrapped around her waist and tied in a knot in case it may be of use later. “Ugh this is so aggravating,” she muttered to herself as she climbed out and stood lightly atop the surface of the snow. A swish and a flick of her wand (and accompanying nonverbal Levitation Charm) later and the coracle boat was floating alongside her just in case she may need it. Even if said need was purely to blow it up.

It did not take long to see why the wind had brought her to this spot and she slowly began approaching the cage set out in the middle of the snow. At first she could not make out what was held within, but as the Wampus proceeded the small trembling shape of a small dirty blonde boy. There was something unsettling familiar about him and not in the same sense that the abomination that had been the first task had been. But then her grey eyes met his blue ones and it was as though she had been stripped down and exposed to the freezing temperature and was paralyzed in place until the shock had saturated her bones. Her blood ran cold and then came a shrill shriek as she took off at a sprint across the remaining distance between herself and the cage.

"RYAN!"

No. Why was he here. Surely this was a trick. Another dream. Another dummy. Please let her be manipulated again because she could not bear the thought of her No Maj cousin who had already endured so much at the young age of eight being traumatized and used as a pawn like this. It had to be. It had to be. But at the same time this was one assumption she could not risk.

It had not even been a year since the swimming accident that had taken his older brother right before his bright blue eyes, turning the boy all but mute in the process. There were very few that he would utter even the softest of whispers to and Valerie was among them. She had come to live with her aunt and uncle before he been born and thus he had become like the little brother she had lost, always by his side from birth and the embodiment of everything good in this world. He was exceptionally kind and she was suddenly struck with the guilt she had felt when she had left for school after the accident after spending the entire summer with him sleeping with her in her bed because he was afraid of doing so alone. His irrational fear of drowning in his sleep had brought him there, as had his nightmares, so his therapist had suggested making a dreamcatcher to hang above his bed as a way of making him feel empowered and in control of things in some way. They had made it together, her stringing beads and feathers onto the twine while he wove things with his clumsy unfocused fingers, but it had been their project and she could still vividly remember kissing the top of his head and swearing to him that she would never let anything hurt him.

And now here he was. In a cage and practically freezing to death.

Crumbling to her knees in front of it and fumbling with her wand a moment to get it pointed in the right direction, she locked eyes with her cousin in an almost rabid desperation. “Ryan, do not worry. I will get you out of there. Just hold on,” she tried to assure soothingly, but her tone was last with panic and thickly woven together with an almost murderous rage. At least it would have been that level had she neglected her Calming Draught that morning which, thankfully for the administration, she had not. “Ventus! Ventus!,” she demanded, waving her wand intricately before the cage and at the ice frozen to the bars to cast a Hot-Air Charm that would hopefully both melt some of the ice (enough that she should slip him a jacket and blanket that she would transfigure in just a moment) and give him some warmth.

While administering the charm, her eyes flicked around the cage for a clue as to how to unlock it or destroy it, so it was then that her grey eyes fell on the dotted box and, without giving it a second thought, had her wand pointed at it with every intent of blasting it off assuming that a simple Alohomora would get her nowhere. “Bomba----”” But another glance at her cousin and the look of cold fear in his eyes steadied her wand. As much as she wanted to, she could not risk it. Surely there were repercussions for deploying magic (particularly of the explosive kind) on this unusual box. Frustration bubbling over, she instead thrust her wand towards her sledding boat and unleashed her Bombarda upon it. KABOOM!

The satisfaction that came from watching the smoldering splinters shower down upon the white snow was temporary (approximately five seconds at best) and soon she was focused back on freeing her cousin. It was only then that she properly noticed the unusual dotted pattern upon the box and she peered at it closely. The design was obviously an artistic representation of the Milky Way, but what about it? “What must I do?” she mostly pleaded with herself while glancing back to Ryan, speaking to him but not expecting him to be able to answer. “Push...trace over the correct combination of dots?” Trace the outline of a constellation? But which damn one was she meant to trace in that case among this seemingly haphazard dotted display? “Arithmos Revelio Scindo,” she said on an exhale as she traced her wand in a clockwise spiral flowing upwards until she came to a stop somewhere around her shoulder.

Now work and give her back her cousin, her brother. Now.