"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts." -the Counting Crows
Films About Ghosts
Chapter Two: Hospital Wing
She was speeding down an airless tunnel, knocked this way and that, rocks bruising and cutting her white skin, and all the while water rushed into her lungs. Ariane saw the bubbles vanish behind her head, round and silver like coins in the weird blue light that was growing steadily darker, and just before she lost consciousness she was released and shot into a dark, bitter stillness that pressed the last air from her lungs.
Then, just when she thought that at last she would die, she was being pounded on the back and what felt like the whole underground lake forced itself out of her mouth and nose. Hacking and sputtering on a dead leaf, she shook her hair out of her eyes and looked up at her tormentors, a solemn woman with a strange white cap on her head and a man who was easily ten feet tall.
"I died after all, then?" she said faintly, and then went back to sleep, her skin itching and burning with new feeling and raw scrapes.
Her dreams were many, as though her sleeping brain had gone on a cleaning binge to rid itself of the white fog that still lurked where memories had once been.
She walked alone beside a huge hole in the ground—big enough to put a castle in. Big enough to put Hogwarts in. Ariane smiled as she always did when she though of the name, such a silly name for such an important place, but she liked it. Better a silly home than a grim fortress. It wasn't very big yet—there were the four houses, each designed by its owner: Godric's squat round hut, Rowena's slender tower, Helga's businesslike square, and Salazar's brilliant cavern that was carved right into the bedrock—and a wall to enclose them all. The wall was tall, but not imposing, being about three times Ariane's height.
She glanced down into the hole and thought that it looked like the footprint of a god. The sides of the hole were sandstone, smooth and straight where Rowena had lifted blocks of it out with Godric's help: Rowena was there for finesse and Godric for brute strength.
Thinking of the older man and woman brought her thoughts to the basket she held loosely, full of herbs for Salazar and some wild vegetables for Helga. Ariane also had some long black feathers that she hoped might serve as quills for Rowena. The brown-haired scholar went through many quills every week, sometimes more than one a day.
Ariane's sunburned face broke into a grin at the thought of Rowena, whose aristocratic pale skin was the result of too much time indoors and whose hands were always flecked with ink, chasing the geese around the yard in pursuit of a new pen.
"Oy! Get away from that edge, now!" A tall man with broad shoulders and thick blonde hair came running out of the southern roundhouse. Ariane didn't need to see the sword glinting at his side to know that it was Godric. She wasn't fond of him, though she couldn't pin it on a reason. He was just so boisterous and bold and careless that it made her sensibilities ache. Salazar was his best friend, however, so maybe she was just being overly sensitive.
"I said get away from the edge!" Obediently Ariane stepped away from the quarry, both hands clutching the handle of her basket. Godric slowed to a trot and wiped his forehead with a slab of a hand, then smiled with all his teeth. "By all the Gods, Ariane, don't do things like that! You know that Salazar would go mad if anything were to happen to you."
"I do know," she replied quietly. "Is he home right now?"
Godric scratched his chin, which was bristly and unshaven. "I'm not entirely sure—last I knew he was inside making some adjustments to his house." Ariane broke into a trot, as much to see her brother as to rid herself of the man she did not entirely trust.
Abruptly she was elsewhere—another gap in her thoughts! Signified only by vague colors and shapes, time flickered past, leaving Ariane bewildered and upset. "Calm down, dear, you're safe now." A hand steadied her head and poured something warm down her throat. Ariane sputtered and swallowed, and then relaxed onto the pillow, her mind once more entertaining her with clear dreams.
She was wearing clothes similar to what she'd found in the trunk in her tomb: gray skirts, black bodice, and a white kirtle with long sleeves. Winter was coming, lending the air an extra nip and the ground added firmness beneath her knees as she helped Salazar transfer his beloved plants to pots filched from the kitchens. Ariane hoped fervently that they would be finished with the transfer before Helga realized that her best iron stewpot was now holding fourteen different herbs and what seemed like a horse's weight of earth. The dirt, black and moist thanks to Salazar's spells and tender care, stuck to her bare hands as she tried to heap it into the smaller pot that she'd placed the mint into. Her cold-clumsy fingers had crushed a few of the leaves, giving the air a scent of mint.
"What day is it, Ariane?" Salazar asked suddenly, his face hidden by his long hair.
"Tuesday," she replied, tucking more dirt into the saucepan. "Sometime in the tenth month, probably." With a sigh she sat back on her heels and eased the knot in her back.
"The sixteenth," he replied, rocking back on his heels as well. "You'll be thirteen in a few days." Salazar brushed his black bangs off his forehead, his gesture half-concealing the troubled look in his eyes.
"I know that," she replied, tucking a loose strand of silver hair into the kerchief she wore over her ears. "And why did you ask me the date if you already knew?"
"I just wondered if you knew," he muttered into a large clump of sweet pea as he worked a trowel around its base, separating a shoot to save. "Curious." With infinite care he lifted the sprig of the plant and transferred it into a water jug half-full of earth.
She bent back over her section of the garden, breaking apart clumps of earth so that they could put it in the other jugs. Suddenly Ariane knew why Salazar looked so worried, why his dark eyes were troubled. "Thirteen is marrying age," she said triumphantly; glad to have found the source of his troubles. "That's why you're so worried."
"Does that please you?" he asked flatly, still not meeting her eyes. "Are you glad to be so old?"
Ariane looked at him, her brow wrinkling in concern. "What's wrong with you? Do you think I'd be happy to leave you?"
"Would you?" His eyes glared balefully up at her from beneath his level, dark brows.
She stood up so quickly that she tipped over the jar of mint, scattering soil and a fresh scent everywhere. "Don't think it. I'll never leave you, Salazar."
Ariane groaned as her mind shifted once more, and she heard a hiss-shuck and felt a sharp pain in her shoulder. A distant voice cried out "Ariane!" in an agonized voice and she felt herself crumpling, blood spurting around the arrow shaft that had pierced her chest. Someone knelt over her, face indistinct, and hands held her head and said "Bite down on this" and with a wrench the arrow was gone and she was bleeding all over her blue dress and into the earth and she felt the life draining until her whole world was black, black, black and there was no one near her, not even Salazar. Ariane screamed aloud and sat up, eyes wide open.
Someone dropped something and swore as it clanked metallically on the floor.
It was morning, and she was in a sunny room that bore no resemblance to the shadowed, stifling rooms she'd visited in her dream-memories. She was wearing a white gown that was open in the back, and her hair was once more pulled back in a restrictive, itchy style. A boy was gazing at her in surprise from across the room, an oddly shaped metal thing at his feet. He was tall and fair, with an aristocratic sneer on his face and groomed pale hair that glistened in the light from the window.
"Shit," he said in an extraordinarily cultured voice. "Don't do that."
Ariane stared blankly at him. She hadn't a clue what he was saying. It was English—or at least it vaguely resembled it—but it wasn't spoken in any accent she'd ever heard, and half the words she didn't recognize. Realizing that he was waiting for some sort of reaction, she replied "Do what?" while her fingers sought a way to free her hair from its braid.
"Do—"he paused, lost for words, scooped the metal thing off the ground and plopped it into the water in the basin where he was washing the—pots? "Scream like that."
She didn't have a reply to this, and he didn't seem to want one, since he went back to scrubbing the pans in the sink with evident distaste. The room she was in contained several other beds and was very clean. The floors were paved with stone and were as free of dirt as the snowy-white blankets that Ariane had shaken loose during her nightmare.
"Where am I?" she asked politely, tugging at the ends of her hair and finally loosening it, allowing it to shake down over her shoulders and over her purple eyes, giving her a shield between her and this strange boy. "Is this your master's castle?"
His shoulders stiffened. Apparently she had offended him in some way, because he turned and spat, "I'm nobody's servant, and this isn't my home," and then turned his back on her, as twitchy as a riled cat. She shrugged and ruffled her fingers through her hair, peeking under the gown as she did so to check on her scrapes. To her surprise, her skin was unmarked, except for the white scar on the left side of her chest. That was distinctly odd.
"So the mystery girl awakens!" Ariane looked up in surprise to see a man with very long silver hair and beard advancing on her. "Draco, leave the bedpans, you are excused. I'll tell Professor McGonagall that you completed your detention." His bright blue eyes did not leave Ariane's face. She was confused, half-naked, and in a strange place. The old man wouldn't stop looking at her, and he kept using words she didn't know—detention, bedpans. Ariane was only faintly aware of Draco stalking across the room and closing the door forcefully behind him, so pinned was she by the glare of blue eyes.
"There's no need to look so frightened," he said, seating himself at the foot of her bed on a chair that looked too delicate to hold weight. "I'm not going to hurt you. My name's Albus Dumbledore."
"It's a pleasure," Ariane said faintly, still holding the blankets like a shield between her and Dumbledore. "Where am I?"
"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Dumbledore replied. "Hospital wing." She stared at him blankly. "Are you a Muggle, dear girl?"
"No," she said, feeling a little offended. "I'm a witch. But you must be mistaken—Hogwarts isn't anywhere near finished, at least not the last time I saw it." The girl shook her head to dispel the creepy feeling that had settled over her, sending silver curls flopping onto her shoulders. "They haven't even finished the outer wall."
Dumbledore put his fingers together to form a church steeple, his eyes very grave. He wore small pieces of glass over his eyes that rested on shiny bits of metal. "I think," he said seriously, "that you'd best tell me when it was you last saw Hogwarts."
Hiss-shuck! Her shoulder jerked involuntarily. "Not long ago—I was hit by an arrow and then I don't remember anything for a long time—and then I woke up in my room—but it wasn't really—and then I crawled and swam and—" Ariane waved her hands, trying to connect her words, then failed and said, "I don't know, exactly."
"What's your name?" he asked, leaning forward in his chair as though she were about to tell him a great secret. "First and last, if you don't mind."
"Ariane. I've not got a surname," she told him reluctantly. Only bastards did not have surnames, only children that wandered the streets and slept in pig-barns had no memory of their parents. "The villagers used to call me and my brother 'Morgana's Children' or 'Caer Arianrod'," she volunteered when he looked mystified. "That's where my name comes from, actually. Arianrod."
"Your brother?" Dumbledore breathed, the heat of his hands fogging the glass in front of his eyes as he cleaned them. "What was your brother's name?"
"Salazar," Ariane said after a short pause. She didn't think this man would harm him, but she knew that Salazar despised and mistrusted strangers. When Dumbledore's face didn't change, however, she was almost offended. Her brother was one of the greatest wizards in all Britannia! How dare this old man not know his name! "If we're in Hogwarts now he should be here," she wheedled. "After all, he's head of his House."
That set off a veritable explosion of movement in Dumbledore's still face. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that he's leader. He picks his own students, keeps up with lessons and makes sure no one makes too much trouble—isn't he here now? If this is Hogwarts, then where is my brother?"
"The man you seem to think is your brother has been dead for over a thousand years," Dumbledore said abruptly, standing and pacing to the other end of the room. "You must either be addled or a very clever liar."
Stung, Ariane clambered out of the bed. "I am not addled and I'm not lying!" she said heatedly, advancing on the older man, only too aware of the flimsiness of the gown she wore. "I don't know what happened. I woke up in an underground chamber—a tomb!—and spent a good few hours trying to remember where I was and who I was and know that I know who I am, you are not going to make me doubt myself."
Dumbledore's eyebrows raised. "A tomb? Where?"
Ariane gulped. "Underground. I went out a back way—it was supposed to lead to a quarry, but somehow I got lost and ended up in an underground lake, and when I tried to swim out the current got me." She gripped his sleeve in an attempt to make him look at her, to make him believe that she wasn't crazy. "You've got to believe me."
"Your story is indecently hard to understand," Dumbledore said coolly, "and you still haven't explained how your brother was alive a thousand years ago and yet you are here now." His eyes moved downward to the hand gripping his cloak, and his eyebrows lifted even higher.
"What?" Ariane snapped, releasing his cloak.
"You have some interesting calluses on your hands."
"Oh. I play," she said, waving her hand vaguely. Weariness was making her stupid. "I mean that I play the flute. Salazar made it for me." The thought of the flute reminded her of the letter—the letter! That was proof that she wasn't mad, wasn't some peasant Muggle who called herself sister and witch. "I had some things with me when I left the tomb," she said confidently, "A flute and a letter—have you found them?"
"No," said Dumbledore, "When you were found you had only the clothes you were wearing."
Ariane's heart sank, realizing that her story still sounded as ludicrous as ever. Her legs became inexplicably weak, and she sat down on the bed again, her head throbbing. "Are you all right?" Dumbledore asked in concern, one of his aged hands going to her shoulder.
"I'm tired," she said, waving her hand carelessly, then hiding it in her lap self-consciously. It was a half-truth. Though she was tired, her mind was starting to teem with images again, like pictures she wanted to see. They wouldn't come into focus until she was sleeping, Ariane was sure of it. In fact, she rather hoped that she would remember who had killed her, for whether it had been an accident or a murder she was very much irritated with them.
"Are you awake?"
Ariane looked up and saw Salazar's face, thrown into harsh angles by the light of a fire's embers, his eyes reflecting gold at her. "Yes," she whispered back, tugging her blanket more tightly around her against the night's chill. In fact she was probably more comfortable than her four companions, being the only one small enough to curl up on the horse's blanket that gave her protection from the rocky ground. Ariane tucked her feet under her blanket, aware that she was beginning to grow too large for it. "Salazar, I'm scared."
Salazar shifted on the rocky ground, pushed his hair back from his eyes, looked at the three sleeping forms around the fire, and then replied. "I'm a little nervous about it as well," he confided.
"It's been getting colder these past few weeks," Ariane said, rubbing her feet against each other for the warmth. "But the people have been nicer."
"They don't burn witches up here in the north," Salazar replied, and his golden eyes hardened.
Ariane knew that their mother had died at the hands of religious zealots who had frowned on her herb garden, two children and no husband, and also her pet owl, but it had happened when Ariane was very small and she couldn't remember their mother at all. Salazar didn't like to talk about her, but once, offhandedly, he had mentioned that Ariane was as pretty as their mother had been. She held on to this description, feeling most flattered but also very lonely when she thought of the woman whose face she bore but whom she would never know.
"Do you remember her at all?" Salazar rested his head on his arm, letting his hair flop back over his forehead. It blocked the firelight and the glow in his eyes.
She shook her head a little remorsefully, hoping that he wanted to talk about her. "I wish I remembered her as well as you do," she said softly, praying her flattery would loosen his tongue.
"She was very pretty—dark hair and dark eyes—and very smart. She used to give me magic lessons when I was your age." Salazar smiled a little, the harsh planes of his face softening in the firelight.
"Say her name for me," Ariane requested, propping her head up on her hand.
"Arsinoë," Salazar said, relishing the syllables as they rolled off his tongue. "She never told me her surname, always said that it wasn't important."
A silence fell, punctuated by the crackle of the fire as it settled lower. Ariane twisted a strand of her loose silver hair around her fingers, waiting for Salazar to speak again. She knew that he didn't like to think of their mother as the woman who had left them in the world with no name to call their own. Ariane didn't like to think of Arsinoë that way.
"You look so much like her," Salazar said softly. "Except for your hair." He reached out and wound one of her curls around his index finger, the golden firelight turning it the color of molten bronze.
"Did our father have silver hair?" Ariane asked recklessly, forgetting that one of Salazar's taboo subjects was their father. She froze guiltily as Salazar drew back his hand so fast that he snagged her hair and she gasped in pain as he accidentally ripped out a few strands. Without speaking a word—he didn't need to, because the reproach in his eyes was more than enough to sting—he turned over and buried his head beneath his blanket. "Salazar, I'm sorry," she whispered, horror-struck. "I didn't mean—"
"Go to sleep, you two," said Helga sleepily from the other side of the fire. "I won't be waiting for you come morning."
Ariane's eyes fluttered open, and she stared at the ceiling in bewilderment before she remembered when she was. With a sigh she rolled over onto her side and dabbed at her hot, watery eyes with the edge of her blanket, wishing that Salazar were there with her. She closed her eyes tightly when she heard someone else enter the room. They puttered around for so long that another dream began and she was swept up by it so quickly that she didn't have time to see whom it was.
She was hiding.
It wasn't exactly clear to her at this point why, but Ariane knew that she must stay where she was with no questions asked. The dreaming Ariane guessed that this memory was from when she was very small, perhaps only two or three years old. There were other people in this wet, earthy hiding place, but they were much older than she and much less frightened because they knew what was going on outside. They wouldn't answer her questions when she asked, and mostly ignored her as she sucked her thumb in the corner of the cellar.
She was alone; for the first time in all her memories she had no idea where Salazar was.
Ariane was very alone and very, very scared.
Hiss-shuck!
An arrow protruded from her shoulder, the brown feathers that flighted it waving before her eyes as she staggered. Someone had her hands as she toppled to the ground, someone cried "Ariane!" as the world spun itself into a knot and hid from her sight.
Ariane screamed and fell out of bed, tangled in her white sheets. She hit the floor with a loud thump that she was sure would rouse every man, woman and child in the building—Hogwarts?—and grabbed at her shoulder, certain that she would feel blood spouting from her wound, sure that in a moment sticky blood would being to flow over her fingers.
"Good god, girl, what's the matter?" A woman in a flowered smock and white nightshirt came tearing out of a back room, her hat on askew. "Did you have a nightmare?"
"Yes—but I'm fine. I'm sorry," she apologized without being sure what she was sorry for. "I didn't mean to wake you up." Clumsily Ariane tried to disentangle herself from her blankets. The woman helped her to her feet and straightened the white shift she was wearing in a motherly fashion, and then ordered her back into bed.
"You may feel fine, but you've just had an extraordinarily traumatic experience!" she scolded, pushing Ariane down onto the pillow and tucking the blankets so tightly that Ariane couldn't move her legs. "Now just drink this. Tomorrow we'll see if you're up to walking about." She gave her a cup with something that steamed invitingly inside it. The girl hesitated, wondering if she ought to drink something offered by a woman she did not know. "Drink up, dear," the woman said kindly. "I'm Healer- certified."
Healers? That was all right then. Salazar had wanted to be a Healer himself, but had become more interested in the herbology aspect of it than the others. Ariane obediently took a sip, making a face at the flavor, then lay back down. "What's your name?" she asked sleepily as her eyelids pressed down.
"Madam Pomfrey," the Healer said, smiling and patting her shoulder. "Go to sleep, dear."
Her dream picked up where it had left off, with Helga bent over her. Her red hair was undone and damp from the bath she'd been taking, and when it fell around her face it made her look almost pretty. "Fetch the healer from the village," she ordered a man beyond Ariane's vision. "This is beyond my skill to heal."
Ariane looked around wildly, her chest seemingly frozen, her ribs shattered by the heavy arrow. "I can't breathe," she gasped. Helga flipped her hair over her shoulder and became once more uncompromisingly plain with her eyes squinted in fear.
"Godric!" she cried. "Godric, help!" It wasn't Godric who arrived next, but Rowena, black ink flecking her white skin like a pox. Her hair was tightly bound back as always, with an extra quill pen thrust into the braid above her right ear. It was amazing how clear everything was becoming, how the whole world was so sharp and defined it made Ariane's head hurt. The iron band around her chest would not let her breathe, and as the seconds ticked by she became more and more desperate.
With a snap Godric appeared out of thin air, accompanied by the village Healer and his box. "We've got to get the arrow out or she'll suffocate," the Healer said immediately. "Someone hold her still."
"Here, Ariane," Rowena whispered into her ear. "Bite down on this." A sky- blue leather bookmark Rowena had bought in London was fitted between her teeth, before Ariane could protest. Salazar was holding her hands tightly, his hair wild and his face hollow with fear. Ariane could not remember when he had gotten to her—but then again, she had been more than a little distracted—but then, the thought bothered her mind. Why hadn't Salazar been with her? They were always together, but for some reason she had been hiding away from him. Had she been doing something that he didn't approve of?
"On three. One, two—" and the Healer pulled it out, with a wrench that made her scream the last air from her lungs as her ribcage expanded agonizingly and blood began to trickle, then to flow freely down the front of her dress. The dress was blue, but rapidly turned the brownish-red color of the mud in the hut where she'd first met Godric and Rowena, and she began to cry for the dress and for Rowena's precious bookmark that was now marred by the imprint of her teeth and for the terrified tears flowing down Salazar's face.
"Get something on there to staunch the bleeding!" Rowena ordered. Without saying a word Helga removed her black shawl and doubled it up into a pad, which she pressed against Ariane's chest. It was soaked through in minutes. Ariane's arms and legs were starting to feel weightless and detached; her head was as heavy as a millstone. She was incredibly thirsty.
"Salazar," she whispered from her low position on the ground. "What's happening? Who shot me?"
"One of the Muggle hunters," Salazar replied, venom in his voice. "His shot went wide." His eyes behind his hair were red-rimmed and hard as obsidian. Ariane was frightened of him this way, and she wanted to tell him not to worry, it was only an accident, but then the blood loss caught up with her and she began to faint.
"Water," Ariane mouthed soundlessly as her vision tilted and swirled. "I'm so thirsty."
Ariane's eyes rolled uncontrollably, giving her views of the inside of the outer wall and of a young man she had never met before in any of her memories, with dark, coppery hair and a well-formed face that was contorted in fear for her. His eyes were his best feature, a green-blue medley that reminded Ariane of the sea, but his skin was pitted from the spotted sickness. This man—boy really, he couldn't be much older than sixteen—bent over and kissed her forehead, his long hair brushing her bloodless cheeks. It was a nice feeling. Ariane remembered being kissed by him before, not on her forehead, and she had liked it. No matter how hard she strained her memory, she couldn't remember his name.
With a snarl Salazar pushed him away, his sorrow turning into rage. "Never touch her," he warned. "I'm the one who looks after her."
Ariane's eyes snapped open, and she sighed in frustration. She had finally been learning something pertinent to her death and then her stupid body woke up. Not only did she not find out who had shot her, but she also couldn't remember the boy's name. She tried to close her eyes again, hoping the dream-memory would start up again, but she was only greeted by the insides of her eyelids and a totally awake mind.
"Awake again?"
Ariane sat up, hoping that it was Madam Pomfrey, but instead it was Dumbledore. He was sitting at the foot of her bed, his eyes once more very grave. "Hello," she said shyly, pulling her blankets up to her chin.
"I'm afraid I have to ask you a few more questions," he told her without preamble. "I've done some reading while you were asleep, and I've found out that, according to legend, Salazar Slytherin had a sister who died when he was twenty-four. She was buried off the Hogwarts grounds in what later became the Chamber of Secrets."
Ariane blinked at him, trying to understand. "Chamber of Secrets?" she asked quizzically. "I've never heard of such a place."
"Well, you wouldn't have been around for it's building, since you were apparently dead," Dumbledore said, a little harshly. "It's located under the shallow northern end of the lake, which would explain how you ended up washed onto our shores. However, it does not explain how you are alive over a thousand years after you died."
He still thinks that I'm lying about who I am. Ariane gritted her teeth. "I'm not addled, and I'm not a liar. In my—my tomb, everyone left things. It's sort of a tribute to the dead, to bury them with things precious to their souls. Salazar left me a letter that explained what he'd done, and it said that he'd 'caught my soul before it passed to where he couldn't go' or something like that. I don't know how he did it. He was always much smarter than me."
Dumbledore cleared his throat and continued. "That form of magic is called necromancy, and it usually requires a deal with a demon. Salazar must have loved you very much."
"He did," Ariane said simply. "And I loved him very much."
They studied each other for a long minute, and then Dumbledore refolded his hands and cleared his throat again. "I've asked a colleague of mine to help me determine the truth behind your story. Severus, please come in," he called, and another man entered the room. He was not tall, but he looked it, dressed in black from head to foot and standing very straight. His hair was long and black, and his eyes were as black as the holes in Ariane's memory. "Severus is a master of Legilimency," Dumbledore explained.
"What's that?" Ariane asked apprehensively, drawing farther back behind her bedcovers. "I'm telling the truth, I swear it."
Severus said nothing, but stared at her impassively. "Legilimency reveals thoughts that are hidden," Dumbledore explained. "So this may cure your amnesia and show us whether or not you are who you say you are." It was clear from their faces that neither man believed her story. Ariane flushed.
Madam Pomfrey chose that moment to burst in, wearing practical blue robes and her odd headdress, her face full of wrath. "For pity's sake!" she cried. "Headmaster, she hasn't even had a full meal yet!" She walked purposefully over to Ariane and flung her arms around her patient, who recognized an ally when she had one. The silver-haired girl huddled into the protective circle of the nurse's arms.
Dumbledore sighed ironically, and Ariane nearly laughed. This Headmaster knew when a battle was lost. "Madam Pomfrey, I'm quite sorry. I don't know what I was thinking." He stood and nodded to Severus, who had not spoken yet. "We'll be back in an hour." The two men left, leaving her alone with the nurse.
"Thanks," Ariane said, swinging her legs off the side of the bed.
"It's for your own good," Madam Pomfrey replied, supporting her as though she were a cripple. "Now, would you like a bath first, or breakfast?"
Author's Note: Madam Pomfrey knows who wears the pants in her wing of Hogwarts...and Ariane's about to get mind-read--oh, excuse me Professor Snape--she's about to have the complex art of Legilimancy practiced on her. Review.