"If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts."--the Counting Crows
Films About Ghosts
Chapter 3: The Girls Dorms
An hour later, Ariane was quite clean, her hair was damp and shiny from her bath, and she had polished off four slices of toasted bread with sugar and butter, two eggs, and four small sausages. Madam Pomfrey had also given her a glass of something orange that Ariane had never tasted before, but she didn't much like it for it was very tart. To her relief she had also been provided with clothes, though they were more than a little indecent by her standards. She had been given a gray skirt that barely reached past her knees, a gray wool vest, and a shirt with a lot of buttons up the front. Feeling more than a little self-conscious, she tugged the hem down to the tops of the stockings that she now wore.
There was a knock upon the door. Ariane gulped as the fifth piece of toast turned to ash in her mouth, swallowed, then shot the door a panicked look. Madam Pomfrey patted her reassuringly on the shoulder and let Dumbledore and Severus back in.
"Are you ready?" Dumbledore asked kindly.
"Ready for what?" Ariane returned defensively.
"I'm going to take a look inside your head," Severus said, speaking for the first time. His voice was low and controlled and frightened her with its lack of emotion. "It won't hurt."
Ariane gripped the arms of her chair, but said nothing. Severus approached her with his wand out, paused directly in front of her, then turned to Dumbledore. "If this should go wrong, snap both of us out of it," he said.
"Go wrong?" Ariane cried, but it was too late. He had muttered "Legilimens!" under his breath, and her mind was flowing past like a brook, full of images.
She was hiding in a cellar while the villagers burned a witch above, running through a wood with Salazar while a shouting farmer chased them away from his fields with a scythe, climbing up an apple tree to steal the fruit of another farmer in another time. She was three; seven, nine—and then the images began to speed up as she relaxed into the feeling. Eager to get the experience over with, Ariane opened her mind all the way, and the thoughts and images became a blinding rush of white.
Her head began to throb as faces flicked past: she recognized Rowena and Godric, saw Helga as a flash of red hair and an apron stained with blackberry juice and saffron-colored paint, and then the boy from her dream flashed past with a smile, so close she thought that he was about to kiss her. Her head burned with a pain so intense that it felt like molten metal had been poured into her ears.
Someone was yelling in pain, but it wasn't her. A voice commanded "Snap them out of it!" Ariane saw a slow-motion memory of Salazar being dreadfully angry, storming around and slamming things, then her sight jolted and she was staring at the ceiling of the hospital wing from her back.
"Good Lord," someone said from behind her as Ariane pushed herself to a seated position. She rubbed her sore head, wincing as it pounded once again, and squinted across the room. The dark-haired man, the one who had cried out, was crouched on the floor with his head in his hands. "Severus? Severus Snape, are you all right?" Madam Pomfrey bent over him, a furrow between her eyebrows.
"I'm fine," he snapped, pushing her hand away from his face. "Just overloaded." Snape shook his head as though to rid himself of the thoughts he had extracted from Ariane and rubbed his temples. He looked straight at her, his face grim. "She's not lying, Dumbledore. I've seen it all."
"But I haven't," Ariane protested. "I don't remember much more that what I did before."
"Be glad that you haven't," Snape told her wryly as he got to his feet. "You were murdered, and it wasn't an accident."
Hiss-shuck! Ariane pressed a hand to the scar on the left side of her chest. "Who did it?" she whispered.
"I don't know," he replied. "I caught a few ideas from your mind though."
"But when will I know all that I've forgotten?" she asked, yanking one of her silver curls in agitation. "I know that it doesn't matter much to you," she began heatedly, "but I'd rather like to know as much about myself as you do."
"I have no doubts that all your memory will come back," Dumbledore said soothingly. "It's probably for the best that it didn't all come back at once." He stroked his silver mustache thoughtfully, his blue eyes twinkling at her. "There's also the question of what's to happen to you."
"Can't I stay here?" she asked, glancing at the ward's walls. "At Hogwarts?"
"You'll have to, for the time being," Dumbledore told her. "But we'll have to make arrangements for you during the summer."
Ariane shrugged. "That's fine," she said, trying to remind herself that she knew no one in this world. Salazar, Godric, Helga—they had all died long ago, and by now even their bones were dust. "I think I'll have to get used to relying on strangers," she said shyly.
"That's probably true," Madam Pomfrey said with a concerned look. "I'm sure that the staff could pool enough together to get you some second-hand school things." Snape looked as though he would rather part with both of his ears before giving her a dull quill pen and an empty bottle of ink.
Dumbledore, shooting a glance at Snape that held more concealed humor than Ariane preferred to see. "I'm sure that I can get that money from the Ministry of Magic, Poppy," he said with a kind smile. "They keep a reserve for magical orphans."
"She'll need a surname if she's to enroll, and it can't be Slytherin or it'll raise questions," said Madam Pomfrey, planting her hands on her hips.
Snape answered before Dumbledore. "Her surname's Somerled." He didn't explain this, but stated it as fact.
Ariane suppressed the urge to ask what on earth the Ministry of Magic was and how in heaven or hell he knew her surname when her own brother had never known and simply smiled, seething with the desire to know as much about her past as this complete stranger named Severus Snape.
Ariane stared at herself in the mirror of the tiled room that lay off of her new bedroom. The bedroom was very nice, though a little crowded since she was sharing it with four other girls, but the bathroom was wondrous. Not only was it like a privy and a bathing house in one, it contained the most perfect mirror Ariane had ever since. It was huge, as tall as she was. The only mirror Ariane had seen before was the hand mirror Helga had inherited from her grandmother, and it was dinged and chipped.
She waved at the girl in the mirror, who waved back. This girl was thin and pale from her time underground, but her skin tone promised a good color once the sun came out. The face was not particularly lovely, for though it had good bones the mouth was too small and the eyes too wide-set for any semblance of beauty. She had very pretty hair—her hair was long and the same shiny silver as the faucets in the sink—and her eyes were wide and violet, surrounded by dark eyelashes. Ariane prodded her collarbone critically where it showed through her blouse, distressed by her unhealthy appearance.
The door to the bedroom slammed. Ariane now knew what a dormitory was: it was a room shared by the students of Hogwarts. So now there were other people in the dormitory, and she would have to go meet them.
"Hey Pansy, what's this?" asked a slightly nasal voice from the other side of the door. "There's five beds in here!"
"I know, Daphne, I can see it well as you," said another girl's voice. "I didn't think we were getting a new student."
"They didn't bring much," said Daphne critically. Ariane could hear the other girl's shoes clicking together as she fidgeted, and wondered when she should leave the bathroom. It wouldn't do to have Pansy or Daphne throw the door open and see her crouched here like a fool.
The door banged again, and a third girl joined them: "This is new," said the third in a low, wry voice. "Has Millicent gotten so large that we need an extra bed for her as well as her own?"
"Don't be too cutting, Tuyet, or you'll slice off your own tongue," Pansy told the third girl with a tinge of irritation in her voice. "I wonder if she's from Durmstrang."
There was more shuffling around in the dormitory, and Ariane was just working up the courage to open the door when it was opened for her. A tall, small-boned girl with almond-shaped blue eyes and straight dark blonde hair started, her eyes widening. "Daphne, tell Millicent she can have the extra bed, our guest prefers the bathroom."
"Hello," said Ariane nervously. "I'm Ariane Somerled." The surname rolled awkwardly off her tongue, but the other girl didn't seem to notice.
"Tuyet Qui-Minh," she said. "Where are you from, anyway?"
"I was home-schooled until a few weeks ago," she lied, using the story Madam Pomfrey and Dumbledore had helped her think up. "But my mother died so I was sent here."
"Really?" said Tuyet, raising her pale eyebrows. "Sounds like fun. Welcome to Hogwarts."
A shorter girl with thick brown hair and an unfortunately squashed-looking face peered around Tuyet, her small eyes flicking up and down Ariane in an instant. "So you're the new girl."
"No, really," drawled Tuyet, brushing her fringe out of her eyes. "Back up, Pansy, I want out of this bathroom. It's certainly clean but I'm not ready to pitch a tent on the tiles."
Ariane followed Tuyet out into the bedroom, where she saw Daphne. Daphne was a pretty girl with even features and gray-blue eyes set perfectly in an oval face the color of coffee with cream. The hair that fell in tight, springy ringlets around her face was a golden brown, and she moved gracefully. Her main fault was the constant wrinkle in her forehead. She looked as though thinking was a full-time job and not a pastime as it was for everyone else.
"Your hair is so usual," she gushed, "Whatever do you use to dye it?"
Ariane raised a quizzical eyebrow. "I don't dye it."
Daphne looked confused for a moment, but let it pass, choosing instead to flop down on her bed and sigh dramatically. "I can't believe all the homework McGonagall set for us. I'll never get it done."
"You don't need to strain your pretty little head," Tuyet said in mock- sympathy, patting Daphne on the head. "Just flutter your eyelashes at Nott like you did last week, and he'll gladly do your homework. Blow a kiss at him and you might be able to get a foot massage in with the deal."
"Are you a pureblood?" shot Pansy, whose eyes had not left Ariane this whole time. The look on her face left no illusion that Ariane was as unwelcome as the plague.
"I'm a witch, aren't I?" Ariane replied. Pansy's small eyes narrowed further, but she simply flounced over to her own bed. Tuyet was just opening her mouth to ask another question when the door banged open for the third time. The last girl to enter was head and shoulders taller than her four roommates and as broad as the wall behind her. She was ugly with no words to spare her from the truth: her face was as contorted and pockmarked as an old crone's, and her sparse, dirt-brown hair was cut in a short, unflattering style.
"Hallo, Millicent," Tuyet said jovially. "Nice to see you in motion."
Millicent grunted and flopped down on her bed with a crash that shook the portraits on the wall. Ariane waited for a moment, to see if Millicent was going to say anything, but there was simply an uncomfortable pause and then Daphne and Pansy began talking again.
"Have you had any thoughts about the next Quidditch game?" Pansy asked, perching on the end of Daphne's bed. "It's Hufflepuff versus Ravenclaw."
"Yes," replied Daphne with a grin. "I really hope that Michael Corner doesn't wear trousers beneath his robes."
"That could cause some uncomfortable chafing, seeing as he's mounted on a broomstick," Tuyet observed blandly, then turned to Ariane who was completely lost. "You want to meet some other Slytherins?" Ariane, eager not to be left in the room with Pansy, nodded and followed the taller girl out of the room. They walked down a curved staircase to the oblong Common room. Ariane had smiled when she first saw it, for it spoke of Salazar's architecture from its serpentine pillars to its low ceiling. Now that it was full of other people her own age, it didn't bring a smile to her face—more like a feeling of impending doom to her stomach.
"Hey there, Tuyet!" a tall boy with springy black curls called from his reclined position on a low couch. "What did you get on—hey, who's your friend?"
"What, no cozy greeting for me?" Tuyet said flirtatiously. "This is Ariane—Somerled. She's in our year. Ariane, this is Blaise Zabini."
"Weird hair," said someone Ariane couldn't see. "Where's she from?" asked another.
"Budge up," Tuyet ordered a couple of younger girls that had taken over another leather sofa. They moved without complaint, though they gave Ariane inquisitive, somewhat hostile looks. "All right, ready to go through everyone who matters?" she asked her silver-haired companion.
Pansy appeared behind the couch opposite Ariane and Tuyet, dangling her arms possessively over the shoulders of a handsome boy with neatly groomed blonde hair. She shot Ariane a look reminiscent of a territorial dog. "All right," Tuyet mused. "That's Blaise Zabini, who isn't nearly as handsome as he thinks he is—"
"Knows he is, my silver tongued friend," Blaise interjected, running a hand over the top of his springy curls.
"—And this odd little fellow is Theodore Nott"—a skinny boy with raggedly cut brown hair that hung in his eyes nodded unsmilingly—"You've met Pansy and Daphne, of course, no doubt their wittiness has made permanent brands in your mind"—Daphne smiled in an amiable way that made Ariane certain that she'd already forgotten her, and Pansy narrowed her eyes—"And this two trolls are Crabbe and Goyle." Two boys seated on either side of the handsome boy blinked blankly at her. Ariane blinked back, unsure if they were really as dumb as trolls or simply looked it. "This is Draco Malfoy," Tuyet said simply, waving a hand at the handsome boy.
For a moment Ariane wondered if Tuyet was going to follow up this statement with another of her typical stinging remarks, but there was a blank silence broken by a nervous giggle from one of the second years Tuyet had kicked off the couch. "So," said Blaise into the silence. "Does anyone know what the odds are for the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw game Satuday?"
"I think it's three to one in favor of Hufflepuff," said a third year boy with a grimace. "Surprisingly enough."
"I thought Ravenclaw was pretty strong last year," Daphne said, vaulting over the couch and taking a seat on the floor, her arm propped on Draco's lap. Pansy didn't move, but her hackles rose almost visibly as her eyes snapped to the prettier girl.
"Considering that we were slaughtered—" Tuyet began, her curiously almond- shaped eyes wide with innocence, but then she caught a look from Draco and changed what she was going to say. "Which was, undoubtedly due to luck on their part." Her eyes narrowed, a little resentfully Ariane thought, but she kept her face cheerful.
"But this year they've got the most abysmal Beaters I've ever seen in my life—worse then those two louts the Gryffindor team glued on broomsticks last year," Blaise protested. "Hufflepuff has a fighting chance even without Diggory."
"I didn't think there were worse Beaters," Pansy said with a grin. "Though I do know that there aren't any worse keepers than the one Gryffindor has."
Smiles were exchanged around the group. "Although," Daphne said airily, "he did manage to get Gryffindor the Quidditch Cup." There was a pause, and then Draco laughed.
"Weasel King and his luck," he said in his cultured voice. "I'm sure we can bring that to a halt, he's far too easy to mess up." The other Slytherins laughed.
"Should we add more to the song?" Pansy asked, her eyes sparkling with malice so that she looked almost pretty in a cruel way. "We never got to that verse about his mother."
"Come on," Tuyet said in bored tones. "We can't add on, we've got to start afresh. New song for a new year, eh?"
"And I'm sure we're creative enough," Blaise added.
"And we have enough dirt on the Gryffindors," Nott added quietly. Ariane jumped; she had forgotten that he was there. He flicked his hair out of his eyes and smiled thinly. "You will not believe the things we've got on Hermione Granger."
"When Nott says 'we' he means 'I'," Tuyet explained to Ariane. "He's so unnoticeable that he picks up the oddest things." She blinked across at Nott, who shrugged, apparently not offended by his nondescript appearance.
"I didn't realize that nobody knew who I was until fourth year," he said. "And then I realized the possibilities."
"So what do we have on Hermione Granger?" asked Pansy Parkinson eagerly. Draco twisted his head to smile up at her without really smiling. His lips didn't part, and Ariane began to wonder if he had bad teeth, but so far everyone she had seen had remarkably good teeth compared to those she remembered from her pre-Hogwarts days. It didn't make sense that the most influential person in the group of Slytherins would be lacking in any way.
"Pansy, we don't just have things on Hermione Granger, we have the maniac brainiac herself. She's locked in our wardrobe," said Tuyet with a straight face. "I had to tempt her with thoughts of Weasley, however, so I feel much too ill for questioning."
Everyone in the group shuddered and made a face. One of the second years actually gagged, though the next moment she dissolved into giggles. "Weasley the freckled wonder," said Draco lazily, "And Granger the Beaver. There's just enough truth in this to make Weasley start dropping the Quaffle again." Pansy smiled, and Ariane was very glad that she wasn't Hermione Granger.
"It's pretty true, though," Nott said with a shrug. "They're like an old married couple."
"That's nothing," Blaise scoffed. "Tuyet is a married couple unto herself." The blonde girl with the acid tongue threw a pillow at him, and then grinned suddenly. She gave Blaise another flirtatious sideways look.
"So," she said, resting her chin on her hands. "What about those odds, Blaise?"
Author's Note: Ariane doesn't talk in Old English because typing it gives me nosebleeds and it's devilishly hard to understand. Since nosebleeds short out my keyboard, please understand me when I don't insert thee, thy, thou, and forsooth every other word.