“I was already out by the forest all day,” Anna retorted, dragging Todd through the halls with new found purpose and determination. “Didn't see a bloody minotaur out there. Or a – a, what's it? - a manticore? I didn't see that, either. Whatever the hell it's supposed to be, I didn't see it, and I don't want to go looking for it now,” she told him. She hadn't been looking for one, and she didn't think there had been one looking for her, considering she'd been sitting a bit defenselessly by the trees bleeding all over herself for a good long time. There was a good chance that, like dementors, manticores were frightened off by Anna. Even pond scum tended to avoid her when possible. She hadn't been ill recently because the very bacteria of the earth cleared her a path when she walked through. Even if that wasn't the case, Anna's strength wasn't stalking animals. She didn't even like animals. And she didn't like stalking. Or being quiet. Or – if we're being honest - anything Todd wanted to do. So that was out. 

There was something she did want to do, though. Today she felt vulnerable. Today she felt weak. Today she felt exposed and cowardly and, against all odds, completely and utterly self-conscious. And this boy named Todd had once asserted that she was afraid to do a certain thing. She wasn't afraid, but he thought she was, and that was what mattered. Today she needed to do what people said she couldn't to combat everything else that was going on. She didn't want to be the person the whole school now thought she was, and this felt like a good way to resist it. “I wanna go to Hogsmeade,” she told him. “We're going to sneak out. We might even see a manticore. You never know, yeah? So come on.” 

She lead him down a flight of stairs and around the bend, but she stopped in front of a place they'd both been together before. There hung a dusty mirror on the wall, which presented a slightly distorted reflection of the onlooker. She looked at Todd's reflection in the mirror and grinned a huge, mischievous grin at him. He knew what she intended. They'd found this passage months upon months ago, but a close call with getting caught exploring lead to a hiatus in passage snooping, which lead to an influx of OWL work, which lead to Todd getting boring, and that passage had slipped her mind. Until now. “I'm gonna take it all the way,” she told his reflection. “See if I don't.”