"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts." -the Counting Crows
Films About Ghosts
Chapter Five: Memories not Mine
"You are now in N.E.W.T. Potions, which means that you are not only very serious about potion making, but also that you received a grade of no less than Outstanding on your O.W.L.s. Though some of you, due to favoritism or sheer good luck, are in my class despite fulfilling neither of those requirements."
The class snickered, Ariane felt herself turning red again. I should be immune to blushing by the end of the year, she grumbled to herself, glancing across at the other unwilling recipient of Snape's sarcasm. It was a dark-haired boy, skinny and short, with round glasses and very green eyes. He wasn't blushing, but instead shot a curious look at her. Ariane looked down and away, pretending to be searching in her bag for parchment. His eyes reminded her of Laramy Ferrer's, only they were more green than blue.
"Settle down," Snape growled, waving his wand at the board. A list of ingredients and some notes on the potion materialized in practical handwriting on the board. "I'll be assigning partners to work on this potion, a fairly simple Invisibility salve. It requires a light hand," he said idly as he watched to see which people were silently partnering up so that he would be able to split them apart. Ariane made an effort not to look at Tuyet, though she suspected Snape had already split them up mentally.
He wound his way through the classroom, partnering a few people who looked relieved, splitting up the dark-haired boy and a pretty brunette by partnering the girl with Tuyet. As Ariane's friend gathered up her bag and books to move across the room, she whispered, "We'll see what Nott thinks about this—I'm partnering Granger the Beaver." Her blue eyes twinkled ironically. Ariane looked at the girl again, but failed to see any marked resemblance to a beaver among the girl's even features, though her thick hair might be considered a pelt if one was really groping for insults.
"Somerled and Potter," Snape said in a grimly happy voice, cutting through her search for beaveresque features on Hermione's face. "I'll put the misfits together where I can watch them, shall I?" He pointed at a table in the very front row, dead center. Ariane swung her bag over her shoulder and took the right-hand seat at the table, and shortly after was joined by the boy.
"Hullo," he said in a tone that defied her to make the best of their situation. "I didn't catch your name."
"Ariane Somerled," she replied, busying herself with her bag. "What's yours?"
"Harry Potter."
"Nice to meet you," she said distractedly, finding a quill that wasn't bent. I'm going to end up needing a new quill every day at this rate. How on earth do people keep their things in order in these blasted bags? She was halfway through copying the notes from the board when she realized that Harry was staring at her. "Is there something you want?" she asked a little rudely.
Harry didn't look away. "Don't you know who I am?"
Ariane raised her eyebrows and glanced at him. "I've only been at Hogwarts a few days, I haven't had time to memorize all the faces yet. I'm not going to take notes for both of us, you know." This Harry obviously thought a lot of himself if he thought a girl only two days into Hogwarts would already know him. Ariane made a mental note to get Snape for this (though she had no solid idea of how) and focused on her notes.
He sputtered, silenced himself, and dug out some parchment. Harry was about halfway done with his when Ariane finished. "Do you know the date?" she asked him. Her quill slipped from her fingers and she had to dive under their desk to retrieve it.
"Er...September 5th, 1996," Harry replied.
She whacked her head against the bottom of the desk as she was getting up. "Ouch!" she hissed, rubbing what would probably become a lump. The pain was nothing compared to her shock. She'd been locked in a tomb for over a thousand years! Boy, she thought giddily, Salazar, you need some serious work on your necromancy. The time lag is terrible.
"If you haven't finished the notes by now, you're obviously lagging," Snape drawled as he walked past their table. "Begin work on the potion now." Ariane glanced at Harry, who had just finished his, and then looked up at the board to see what they would need first.
"All right," she said into the awkward silence between them. "We need some Graphorn horn."
"Got it," Harry said. "And the Demiguise hair is here. The instructions say we need to trim off the split ends." He gave her hopeful look as he held out the hank of silvery hair, probably wishing to be free of such a tedious task.
Ariane didn't mind—while she was doing something easy but irritating he would have to assemble the rest of the potion. She took the hair and a very sharp knife and began going through it strand by strand, cutting off the forked ends. It was absorbing work that allowed her to sit and think of nothing, and the class passed by very quickly. In fact, she was so absorbed in her work that she didn't notice another memory unfurling its dream-wings in the back of her mind.
She was surrounded by chaos in a curious room that had tiers like a Roman amphitheater. Bright lights were streaking everywhere, people were running by, screaming and shouting spell-words and making furious wand gestures at each other. She was holding a boy around the shoulders (he seemed to be unable to walk due to a hex) and trying to heave him to the uppermost tier of the room.
"Come on!" she shouted above the noise, a desperate edge to her voice. "Just try and push with your legs—" Ariane pushed hard again the boy and his robes ripped down the side, sending a glass ball flying. His foot kicked it and it smashed on the next tier down and a ghost rose from it and started talking. Nobody could have heard it, for the noise in the room was so loud. It floated and mouthed silenced words, and then vanished. Ariane watched it in horror. The prophecy—for that was what the glass ball had been—was lost.
"Harry, I'b sorry!" the other boy cried through a broken, bloody nose.
Ariane started and accidentally pricked herself with the knife. The sharp pain in her finger dulled the shock of the memory. She peered sideways at Harry, who was absorbed in counting hellebore leaves into the bubbling potion, aware that somehow his memory had just gotten inside her head. That's it. I'm going mad, she thought, and returned to the hairs, sucking on her finger. She would just have to forget this memory before the madness took root in her head.
She returned to the common room after her double History of Magic Class, which, despite the teacher's droning voice, riveted her. So many things had happened since she'd last seen the sun! Ariane rested her head against one of the many serpentine pillars, letting the cool marble sooth her aching head.
"Ariane."
Her purple eyes flicked to the other side of the room, where Draco stood with his hands casually in his pockets. It wasn't quite fair of him to look so perfectly handsome standing there, especially when he was clearly off-limits. Ariane managed a smile. "Hello there," she said in what she hoped was a normal voice—it was hard to act normal when it felt as though her brain was being forced through a strainer. He walked towards her purposefully; a few strands of blonde hair fell across his eyes; and Ariane realized in an instant that the common room was very, very empty. "Where is everyone?"
"Classes," he said simply, and paused a few feet from her and looked her up and down with a gaze that scorched. "You're really not that bad looking, you know."
Ariane was taken aback by this forwardness, and stuttered, "Thank you—I think. You're not really bad looking either," she blurted, and then dug a hand into her curls to hide her irritation. She wasn't sure if she was irritated about what he'd said or irritated by the way he made her insides twist when he looked right into her eyes. Either way, she was blushing again, and he saw it and grinned. Abruptly she was fixated—his smile was perfect—mesmerized by the way it changed his face from threatening and cold to almost human.
"You blush a lot," he observed, moving closer.
"You smile very little," she returned, putting a hand on her red cheek. He was getting far too close, especially for a boy who Pansy Parkinson had claimed for herself. One of his hands passed her peripheral vision and then he was standing with a hand on either side of her head and his face was so close to hers that she could see very light freckles on the bridge of his aristocratic nose. He had short, pale eyelashes.
And then he kissed her, and Ariane got lost, for the second time that day, in a memory that was not her own.
"And Harry Potter gets the Snitch!"
She was furious, furious with herself for being on this stupid Quidditch team, furious with her father for insisting that she be on the team in the first place, furious that she had had to buy her way on to the team and ashamed that everyone knew it. As she watched the Snitch's silver wings beating on Potter's hand, she knew that she would like nothing more than to smash her broom in half over her knee and pound that Golden Snitch into Harry Potter's smug, smiling face.
Draco moved away, watching her closely as though expecting some sort of a reaction. She licked her lips and smiled shakily. "Should you have done that?" she asked tentatively. Her mind was roiling with Draco's memory and had not noticed the kiss at all. Ariane wondered if Draco was half so good a kisser as Laramy, then chased the thought from her head. She should never, ever know whether he was a good kisser or not.
"You seemed to like it," he replied. "What's wrong with it?"
"I thought that you and Pansy—"
Draco cut her off. "Pansy has ideas," he explained in a bored voice. "She thinks we're going to be married or something. Really, she's not half as pretty as you."
"There are other things besides being pretty," Ariane pointed out. "For all you know I'm a horrible person." Draco shrugged as if to say so what? "I just don't think it's a great idea for you to kiss me."
Draco simply smiled, tucked his wayward hair behind his ear, and sauntered away in a confident fashion that made Ariane want to wring his neck or kiss him back—she wasn't sure which. What she did know was that she had to keep this from Pansy by all means necessary. Ariane fled to her dormitory in a swirl of robes and silver hair, her head aching worse than ever.
-I'm sixteen right now, but I wrote Girl From the Past when I was eleven. So there's a very large gap in the writing style, because I like to think that I'm a little more prolific at sixteen than at eleven.
-Italics (except in my notes g) denote thoughts, dreams, and memories that Ariane is experiencing. I think that it's pretty clear in the story but it's always nice to put down in words.
-I don't exactly hate Gryffindors. I love Ron, Fred, and George (who doesn't love them), but I've always been kind of attracted to the way people behave—and I know why (or I can guess) why the twins and Ron act the way they do. The Slytherins—they've always been a sort of mystery—and they're not always wholesome, nice people. Nice people are great, but they're usually less interesting than the sneering Slytherins that have been waltzing through my story. Since the story is kind of a pro-Slytherin story (or at least mostly told from their points of view) Gryffindors are shown in a negative light, whereas in the actual books Slytherins are shown as evil and nasty because Gryffindors are the main characters.
-The Counting Crows ROCK. That is all that needs to be said. The quote at the beginning of the story is from the song 'Mrs. Potter's Lullaby' and is from their CD This Desert Life. I heard it in my friend's car while I was working on the first couple of chapters of Ariane's story, but I didn't have a title yet. And the song played, and I yelled 'that's it!' and I kind of freaked my friend out, but it's all good now because I have a title. Serendipity, I tell you.
-Raquel