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I've got so many ideas for this character, but I really have to take it slow, otherwise i'll botch the entire plot up. I do love the idea of Frost being this sinister middle-of-the-road evil character, until the final chapters where i'll good-ify him (well...to a point). He is, like Caithion, a bringer of death, but the whole point of Caithion and Frost is that they are forces of nature; that is to say, they are not the cause of death.
Anyway, I don't know if I've managed to pull this off or not and I'm terrified that I've screwed the whole story up with this, but ach, here goes:
TVPD, Chapter 14, Jack Frost's Intro
Nox. Now there was a topic. One of the things Fred found so intriguing about the gangly, short, Muggle detective was something he would have found equally off-putting in anybody else. Nox was serious and not in the way some diligent hard-working pencil-pushers like Percy were serious. Nox was serious, not just about her work, but about everything, even the mundane chores like scrubbing the toilet or hanging out the washing. You could tell from the look in her eyes – dark, grey and always one hundred percent focused; the look of someone who was forever pouring all their brainpower into discerning not only why a raven is like a writing desk, but whether it was the chicken or the egg that came first, what really killed the dinosaurs and the real cause and solution for global warming.
When Fred had first met her, he had been fully convinced that Nox’s serious outlook on life was due to an empty bank account and a rather dull personality, but now he knew better. Every now and again you meet someone who pours their heart and soul into every little thing they do because they genuinely care and live by the old adage, if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. Once he had realised that, he realised he had more in common with Nox than he had initially thought possible. She was as passionate about your common attic ghoul as he was about explodeable toilet seats, and he wondered, for the briefest moments, if Nox cared so much about the silly things, like taking the garbage out and picking his twin’s hairs from the plughole in the bath, how much would she care about something that really mattered, such as…?
Fred stopped there. That was dangerous territory, even for him. The idea of his gangly Muggle detective in any sort of romantic situation was a strange and alien thought, rather like walking through the rain in sandals – a new and unfamiliar sensation that was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but best not to dabble in again lest you get…pneumonia.
“Oi, god, cor and blimey!” snapped a prickly voice, close to his ear. “Christssake, you folks don’t half think a load of bollocks. If you talked as much as you thought, even at half the speed, you’d ‘ave lived two bloody lifetimes before you’d come to any sort of a fecking outcome! Not that you’ve got any living left in yeh, but we’re talkin’ metaphorically now, ain’t we?”
Fred blinked and looked around, peering into the snowy apple orchards behind him. After a minute of searching the still and silent trees, he began to wonder whether or not he’d imagined the voice. The accent was strange – he couldn’t quite place it. At first he had been sure the voice rang with a thick cockney accent, but now that he played it back in his head it sounded almost Australian… or had there been a German twang to it?
Fred took another look around the apple orchards, floating in and out of the trees. The drifting snow made the orchards seem deeper, darker and all at once he was reminded of the old tree at Rosewood Estate.
The silence felt absolute. Fred had to break it. “Anyone out there?” he called. There was no echo, and the darkness seemed to swallow up his voice.
Then the prickly, disembodied voice spoke again, “Oh? You expectin’ a conversation from me, ay? Hmph. That’s wizards for yeh. Typically presumptuous and all mouth, no trousers. No troubling themselves with a simple ‘how’d yeh do’. Really, ah can’t stand the lot of yeh.”
“No, disembodied voices aren’t my cup of tea either.” Fred’s face melted into a smirk. He propped his hands on his waist and continued to look around. “Where are you?”
“Ain’t the brightest star in the sky, are you, mate? Or ghost, as it looks. How’d that happen, then?” asked the disembodied voice, sounding vaguely amused and now with a thick Scottish accent.
“A dirty big wall fell on my head,” Fred answered simply.
“Houses just ain’t built like they used to be,” the voice said with a distinct shrug. “Insurance pay back?”
“No. Doesn’t cover acts of insane, menstruating witches bent on carnage. Look, I’m not about to stand here all night talking to my shadow…”
“You ain’t got a shadow,” the voice flatly pointed out.
“That’s neither here nor there,” said Fred impatiently, waving an airy hand, “as am I, which you’ve been so kind to point out, so it stands to reason that you can clearly see me, but I can’t see you, which makes you, in my book, pretty damned suspicious. So unless you fancy revealing yourself any time in the next twenty seconds or so, I’ll be off.” He waited a moment, counting the seconds off in his head. Then, when it appeared that the disembodied voice had no intention of embodied, Fred gave a half-hearted shrug. “No? Well then, guess I’ll be going. Toodle-pip!”
He turned to float back down the snowy path towards the house, when the voice came again.
“Ghosts. I hates folk like you, I do,” it said sullenly. “Can't decide whether you're comin' or going. You’re the bane of my sort. Anyway, look up."
Fred, his curiosity getting the better of him, did as instructed and found himself looking at the most extraordinary young man crouched, frog-like, amongst the branches of the tree he had been floating under. The creature, or man, he was faced with looked quite elfish in appearance and the very personification of sinister. The first thing Fred noticed were his fingers: long, bony things, like winter branches, and sharpened at the end in what looked like pieces of glass (or was that ice?). His silver hair shot back from his forehead in strange, spiking tendrils, as though he were wearing a crown of icicles, and while the overall effect was reminiscent of the late Nymphadora Tonks, Fred was sure the elfish man, whose delighted eyes were ranging over him, was not a Metamorphmagus.
“Look, do you mind? You’re thoughts is spilling into my thoughts and it’s givin’ me a ruddy headache,” said the man, disdainfully, and now with an accent that was caught between East Londoner and Liverpudlian.
Fred shivered. There was a nip in the air, but he didn’t stop to think why or how he should be able to feel it. “Not that I want to point out the obvious or anything, but how can you hear my thoughts?” he asked. “Aren’t there rules against that sort of thing?”
“What’s he think he’s human, or something? HA!” The man threw his head back and gave a harsh crow of laughter. “Ghosts ain’t like humans are they? Ghosts are made of memories and bits of soul all bunged up together in a mirror reflection. They ain’t like humans – humans has got nice thick skulls to keep all their thoughts bottled up in, but you, you’ve got nothing but cold air so all your thoughts go flying about and smacking innocent bystanders like me in the face. So try and think a bit quieter – or better yet, not at all.”
“All right, fair dos. That makes a quarter of an eighth of sense, which is more than enough for me, but,” Fred floated closer, “that doesn’t go as far to explain what you are. And why you’ve been following me. So tell me, you a goblin, vengeful, what –?”
The sinewy man reared back in disgust. "’GOBLIN’, he says! GOBLIN!" His electric blue eyes flashed angrily. "Feh, a goblin indeed. Cheeky bugga'. Thought wizards were a level smarter than your average Muggle. No –" He hopped down from his tree branch and made Fred a great sweeping bow. "– Jack Frost, mate, if you don't mind; Winter Solstice elf at yer service."
Fred stared at the elf for a long moment. Then he said, "Bleeding nutter,” and turned to drift back towards the Burrow, but the moment he did, he found himself nose-to-nose with the peculiar creature.
"No? And ah don't suppose vampires and dragons, and ghosts don’t exist neither. Arrogant little sod." The elf took another step forwards in an alarmingly jolty manner, as though his wiry body was held up by invisible strings attached to his arms and legs. Fred instinctively recoiled. His skin was so pale it was almost blue and there were deep, dark shadows underneath his icy eyes. On closer inspection, the elf looked more like an Inferi; a corpse controlled by Dark wizard’s magic, but one look at his eyes told Fred otherwise.
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exhausted
sore
morose
frustrated
accomplished
bored
nerdy
indifferent
hungry
Ruddy flu!