"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts." -the Counting Crows
Films About Ghosts
Chapter 6: Alone Without her Thoughts
Once she gained the peace and quiet of the empty dormitory, she vaulted to her favorite spot on the window ledge and watched the water make shifting patterns of light on her knees, for once more preoccupied by her present time than by her memories. Tuyet's tale about her missing tongue echoed in her ears, followed by grim speculations about which part of her body would be missing after Pansy was done.
To Ariane's surprise, it didn't feel like a new experience, hiding a kiss from someone.
Laramy smiled at her, then kissed her hand lightly, his lips brushing delicately over her palm and making every nerve in her body tingle. The rough stones of a wall brushed the back of her dress, which she had chosen that morning very carefully. It was the delicate blue of a summer sky, and it made her eyes stand out in a very attractive fashion, or so she thought. Laramy was wearing green; his red hair was loose on his shoulders, and he looked very handsome against the stony corner that they stood in. The inside corner of the outer wall hid them from sight at she returned the kiss on his lips, closing her eyes for a moment, and then opening them.
"Will you marry me, Ariane?" he asked. Laramy had asked more than once before, when they were still playmates and not a girl and her suitor, and he had smiled each time in a teasing way. Now he wasn't smiling, but the look in his eyes betrayed hope and nervousness and fear all at once.
"I'd love to," she whispered. "Nothing could make me happier."
They kissed again, and Laramy picked her up and twirled her around in glee. His sea-green eyes were smiling happily, and they were both laughing.
Hiss-shuck! Once again, the arrow was protruding from her chest, and the world spun and twirled. Her laughter choked off like a fist had closed on her throat.
Her head jerked involuntarily, bumping against the window. "God," she mumbled, borrowing a phrase from her new classmates' vocabularies. "When will my mind stop surprising me?" She made herself look back at her thoughts, at the arrow and Laramy, and tried to determine if there had been a gap between the two events. As far as she could tell, however, she had been shot almost directly after Laramy had proposed. There was no way to be sure, except for the Pensieve.
The Pensieve that was in Snape's office.
Only her obsession with her own death could have made her make the journey through the cold stone passageways, despite her fear of Draco and Pansy and her dread of the man who knew more about her than she did herself. It was a short trip, made shorter by her preoccupation with her new knowledge—she had been practically betrothed at her moment of death.
Snape's classroom was empty, but it still bore a stink of hellebore from the Invisibility Salve her Potions class had constructed that day. She paused at the office door and rapped tentatively. Ariane listened nervously for a moment then pushed open the door before she could lose her nerve. The room was empty; the Pensieve sat on the desk. It was exactly as she remembered, a shallow stone bowl with etchings all around the rim. For a moment she traced them with a shaking finger, wondering what she would see if she touched the swirling silver mist inside, the mist formed from bits and pieces of sixteen years of her life.
Tentatively she shook the bowl as though she were panning for gold, and blinked in surprise as a rough copy of the Great Hall she'd ate breakfast in that morning formed before her eyes. It was emptier and a good deal smaller than it was now, but the dais was the same. Ariane's eyes rounded as she recognized herself seated on the dais with twelve other people. They were Godric, Helga, Rowena, Salazar, Laramy, the blacksmith's son, and six other students, each bearing some sort of ribbon or sash that indicated their primary teacher. Ariane herself wore no sash, but Laramy wore blue and the blacksmith's son red.
Ariane leaned in to listen to the conversation taking place.
"This cannot go on!" Godric shouted, pounding his fist on the table with a force that made the other diners grab frantically for tipping wine goblets and tilting plates. "This is the third time this month that that bloody IDIOT of a Muggle has tried to drive us out. I say we should be rid of all of them once and for all."
The others nodded, replacing their dishes on the table with the ease of long practice. Rowena replied, "Godric, we cannot get rid of them. We buy food from them; we trade services. They are not expendable." She was slender, with a heart-shaped face and brown eyes that looked far too big for their sockets. Taking another sip of her wine, she added, "We can always arrange for Ulrich to have an accident. We've done that before."
"Rowena, dear," the other woman interjected, "Ulrich is related by blood or marriage to half the people in the town. They will be very suspicious if he falls from his horse." The students watched their teachers silently, knowing better than to burst in on what could possibly be a very entertaining conversation.
"Or if a tree falls on him," Godric said humorously. The blacksmith's son looked a little hopeful at this—Ulrich had put his father in the stocks a few months before for witchcraft, even though his father couldn't muster a Hiccupping Hex if he tried.
"Remember that old ninny who was 'kidnapped by mermaids'?" Rowena asked, smiling into her goblet.
"What if we have him try to fly off a cliff and fail?" Salazar said sarcastically around a piece of meat. "Admit it, the only way to get this moron out of the picture is to kill him outright." He was rarely in a good mood at mealtimes.
"Are you volunteering, Salazar?" Rowena asked, raising her thin eyebrows.
"Much as I would enjoy it, no. I think Helga would just jump at the prospect, don't you?" Salazar shot a sideways look at Helga, who raised her eyebrows. He shrugged and went back to his food, brushing aside his shaggy hair.
Helga cleared her throat and refilled her wine goblet with a long, elegant white hand. Ariane fancied that the head of Hufflepuff House had beautiful in her younger years, but as she grew older her hair grew from fiery red to sandy gray-auburn, her perfect alabaster skin became spotted with freckles and lined with wrinkles. Her eyes remained the same, big and shifting pools that ranged from an angry green to calm blue.
Salazar glanced at Godric. "You know, you could always challenge him to a duel of honor," he suggested. "He'd have to accept."
"Yes," Godric said, stroking his beard thoughtfully. He was blonde and fair, with light blue eyes and a nose that had been broken several times, including once by Salazar and twice by Rowena (though both times she had were accidental). "But what if he wins?"
Rowena choked on her drink. "Whom are you trying to fool, Gryffindor?" she asked, shaking her brown hair back over her shoulders. She had let it down from its usual restricted style for dinner, but now fussed with it until all her companions anticipated her putting it up again. "There isn't anyone within fifty miles that's half so good with a sword as you."
"There isn't a sword within fifty miles of this place besides the one hanging from Godric's belt this very instant," Salazar pointed out, gesturing with his leg of lamb. "The best Ulrich could pull off is a sharp rock on the end of a short stick."
"And I, being a man of honor, would have to use a weapon of similar caliber," Godric said, frowning.
Rowena shrugged. "Get a sharper rock and a stouter stick," she said dismissively, refilling her wine glass and Helga's as well. "And make sure it is he who challenges you. That way we will be blameless."
"Less than blameless," Helga said. "But I think we'll all be silver as Ariane before Ulrich decides to challenge Godric." She smiled kindly at her pupil, who blushed. Rowena raised her hand, but Helga cut off her sentence before it had begun. "Nobody would dare go against Rowena, for fear she'll turn them into a tree."
"I only did that once," Rowena said crossly, drinking deeply from her goblet and lowering her heavy eyelids aggressively. "And I meant to turn the bastard into a squirrel." Suddenly she looked very thoughtful and began to gaze into the distance as she pondered her idea.
Salazar started to refill his glass again, thought better of it, and took another serving of lamb. "I'm not so awesome and almighty with weapons myself, but I think that if Ulrich offended our dear Lady Helga in some way I could muster a decent defense of her honor."
Rowena smiled, her round eyes creasing as they focused once more on the present time. "I will be your second. You'll not lose."
Ariane leaned back from the Pensieve with a small smile on her face. Her heart had remembered, even if her mind had not—she loved all these people dearly. Ariane tapped her fingers on her chin and tried to remember if Salazar had ever challenged Ulrich, and to her delight she could recall that not only had he not challenged him, but Ulrich had gone mad and begun baying at the moon and burying walnuts in the town square. She was too excited to stand still, so instead she skipped on the spot, humming her happiness in a little tune.
For a brief moment, she loved her memory better than anything in the world. Then she remembered why she had come to the cold dungeons in the first place and sobered. Ariane didn't know how to direct the Pensieve to the memories she wanted to see, but instinct took over and she gripped the sides.
"When I died," she whispered, and automatically her mind filled with 'hiss- shuck' and faces looking down and the arrow's feathers waving in front of her face as she staggered. The liquid light swirled without being touched, moving continuously until it cleared on a close-up view of Ariane's left eye, which was rolling uncontrollably. Ariane jumped back from the Pensieve in surprise, but then steeled herself and clamped her hands black onto the rim. "I want to see back a little, maybe to about two or three minutes before I was shot."
The silver mist swelled and then faded, showing a girl and boy standing very close together against the wall, hands touching. Once more the angle was very bad, but Ariane discovered that if she leaned forward and tilted her head she could watch herself and Laramy talking quite easily. She bent forward even more so that she could hear the words. A long curl of her hair, worn loose as Ariane always had it, swung forward and hit the silver mist, blending instantaneously with the sparkling thoughts.
The world tilted and her body slid into the Pensieve.
Ariane hit the ground lightly, as though she had been set there by a giant hand, and for a moment she was confused: she could not see Laramy, and he ought to be right next to her. Someone giggled behind her and she turned to see herself being proposed to. She moved very fast and stood right next to herself, watching Laramy hungrily, absorbing every nuance of his lovely pockmarked face. He was beautiful and real, taller than she was, and his hands were under her arms and swinging her around and they were both laughing. Ariane felt her stomach twist—she knew what was coming. Laramy put the memory-Ariane down on the ground and, with a silly grin, dropped to his knees and kissed her hand.
The arrow hissed by Ariane's head and hit her memory-self with a sick noise like a knife plunged into raw meat. Ariane watched herself stagger, the brown feathers that flighted the arrow swaying, and then the girl's knees crumpled and she topped sideways to the ground in front of Laramy, who had not yet recovered from his kneel. "Ariane!" he cried, still clutching her hand in his though her dead weight dragged him to a crouch.
Helga came bounding over at his cry, her long red hair sending water droplets all over the place. "Fetch a healer!" she called to no one in particular. "This is beyond my skill to heal," she muttered to herself, her hands feeling the placement of the arrow. Laramy was dead white, his eyes tortured.
The real Ariane stared fixedly at herself, lying in the grass with thick red blood staining her blue dress rusty brown. The injured Ariane was gasping, her face turning first white, then gaining a bluish tint until her lips turned a sick violet. "I can't breathe," she whispered. The Ariane standing unseen nearby began to feel slightly ill.
Helga's eyes snapped up to the blonde man bounding across the grounds. "Godric!" she screamed, a note of panic in her voice now. "Godric, help!"
Someone raced by the real Ariane to knee by her dying self: Rowena, her face twisted with a helpless fear that made Ariane's heart hurt. Rowena had always like to be in control; had always known what to do. Even now, when the situation was beyond her control, Rowena grasped desperately for some idea of what she had to do. She rummaged in her ink-flecked robes and came up with nothing but a few spare quills, her wand, and a leather bookmark that was Rowena's favorite shade of blue. Rowena threw the quills at the wall in frustration, and then sunk into herself hopelessly. Ariane wanted to put a hand on her teacher's slumped shoulders and reassure her that it would all turn out all right in the end.
Godric appeared with a startled-looking man clutching a healer's case clutched in his big hands. The older male Founder looked like a lion that had attacked while sleeping. The healer went a little pale when he saw Ariane lying in the grass with an arrow protruding from her chest—he probably specialized in childbirth and the occasional broken bone. He recovered and addressed the small crowd calmly: "We've got to get the arrow out or she'll suffocate." He knelt down, pulled Rowena and Helga aside, and in a low voice explained what must be done.
Ariane moved closer to them, momentarily ignoring her own death on the grass. "—there's very little hope," the Healer was saying. "The arrow must have penetrated many vital organs, and it has broken too many bones in her chest for it ever to heal properly."
"I will do everything in my power to keep this girl alive," Rowena said, her heavy-lidded eyes determined and angry.
"As will I," Helga added. "We are powerful witches."
The Healer, who was a fairly talented wizard himself, shrugged. "Even the most powerful witch cannot stop Death's coming."
"Death hasn't come for her!" Salazar said in a low voice from just behind Ariane. She whirled to face him and saw him looking wildly disheveled and confused. He was behind her dying body, where Ariane, Laramy, and Godric couldn't see him.
"Here Ariane. Bite down on this," Rowena shoved her blue bookmark between the prone girl's teeth. Salazar rushed over, bumping Laramy aside in his haste to clasp her hands as a reassurance against the pain.
"On three," the Healer said, placing his hands firmly on the arrow. "One, two—" And the Healer pulled it out with a wrench that made everyone within sight wince, and the injured Ariane screamed so horribly that the real Ariane clapped her hands over her ears to keep the marrow-freezing sound out. Blood spurted from the wound, soaking the carefully chosen blue dress.
Rowena leaned in and tried to cover the wound with her hands, face set. "Get something to staunch the bleeding!" she commanded. Without a word, Helga removed her black shawl—which was made of the finest wool imported from Italy and had been a marriage gift—folded it up, and pressed it against the now-gaping wound.
Ariane was in shock, standing on the outskirts of her death with her hands pressed over her mouth. She only half-heard Salazar tell the prone Ariane who had shot her, instead running from the scene. Without any instructions, Ariane was trapped in this memory, doomed to watch her own death over and over again. Her eyes were dry, but she could feel her unreal limbs shaking, and the world was beginning to sway. She was going to faint if this didn't stop soon.
As if the Pensieve had heard her, the scene twisted. She was standing near her body once more, and the arrow was still protruding from her chest—from this angle she could tell that the arrow had pierced her lung and possibly her heart. Ariane realized after a few moments that she was not alone in watching. Dumbledore stood with her, his hand on her shoulder. "Ariane, why did you want to watch this?"
She shrugged as Rowena fished frantically through her pockets. "This is the last thing I remember. Everything ends here."
Dumbledore watched as the Healer held a private conference with the two female Founders. "Do you think that the archer meant to hit you?"
Ariane glanced up at him, surprised. "I thought it was an accident," she said, "I thought that it was a hunter's arrow gone astray."
The silver eyebrows arched; the withered old lips pursed in thought. "A hunter of animals? Or a hunter of humans?"
"Animals, naturally. We're too far north to have to worry about assassins," Ariane was a little disconcerted by these questions. "Are you suggesting someone was trying to kill me?"
"They may have been trying to hurt your brother by killing you. When we first met you told me that your brother loved you very much."
"He does," Ariane said, flatly refusing to use the past tense in describing him. She glanced at him, his dark hair falling over his violet eyes, and hoped that her death hadn't been a strike at him. Dumbledore's argument made sense to a point—she was the only one Salazar had ever loved. He had married a lovely woman barely a year before, but he treated her as a lady and not a loved one. Ariane couldn't recall her name. "But—sir." She waved a hand at her brother. "Salazar doesn't have any dire enemies."
"Really?"
"Honestly. I would have known if he had."
They watched in silence as Laramy bent and kissed her on the forehead, his skin pale with fright. The dying Ariane smiled at him with her bloodless lips. With a snarl Salazar pushed him away, his sorrow turning into rage. "Never touch her," he warned, eyes glinting in the way that had frightened Ariane. "I'm the one who looks after her."
The scene faded into the swirling silver mist.
"Is that it?" Ariane nearly shouted. "I need to see more!" Dumbledore grabbed her arm and pulled her up through the mist until they reappeared in Snape's office. She yanked away from him as soon as her feet had settled on the floor. "You stopped it, didn't you?"
Dumbledore didn't look at all perturbed by her behavior. "As a matter of fact, I did. I thought you'd seen quite enough for one night. You look dreadful if I may say so." Self-consciously Ariane smoothed her mussed curls, her stomach roiling with anger. "Do you have any enemies, Ariane?"
She looked at him as though he were as mad as Ulrich, the villager Rowena had driven to insanity. "Me? Sir, I'm sixteen. That's hardly old enough to be collecting enemies."
He shrugged again and prodded the Pensieve with his wand. A figure rose out of it, rotating with its feet still in the bowl—Salazar. "If you tell me that you have no enemies, and that your brother had no enemies, then the only option remains is that the assassin missed his real target."
"But there wasn't an assassin!" Ariane threw her arms up in disgust. "It was a hunter's arrow gone astray."
"I took the time to observe your surroundings while you were watching those involved. You're inside school grounds, inside the main wall, where a huntsman outside would have found it very difficult to hit you. And if you didn't notice, it was barely even springtime, and no animals would have been worth hunting yet. There wouldn't have been a hunter nearby."
"There could have been," she clung to her story, though she was aware of the gaping holes in it. She banged her fist down on the table, making ripples in the silver thoughts. "Whom would he have been shooting at?" There was a testy silence, then the Pensieve threw a shape from its depths, a boy with long hair and a long nose and eyes the color of the sea. Ariane pressed her hand over her scar, shook her head.
"He was with you at the time. The only one with you."
"I have to go," Ariane told him, and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her and leaving the Headmaster alone with her thoughts.
Author's Note: Now that was confusing. But anyway--don't stop reviewing! I love reviews (but will continue posting without them...it's just that I post faster with them).