"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts." -the Counting Crows
Films About Ghosts
Chapter 9: Queen of Spades
Ariane was the first one in the library the next morning, though it wasn't for personal research this time. She had looked at her schedule and realized that first thing Mondays she had double Potions (again!) with Snape. The essay he had assigned on Friday was due then, and Ariane hadn't so much as looked at it since Friday. Admittedly she had been distracted, but she still needed to get it turned in. It wouldn't do to start her year without an assignment.
A few hours later she was deeply immersed in her book, 'I Haven't Got A Body (a Quest for Invisibility)', when someone sat down right across from her. For a moment she considered not looking up, but then her curiosity got the better of her. Peeking over the top of her book, she saw Harry, a red-haired boy she didn't recognize, and Hermione Granger taking seats across from her.
"Do you mind? Everywhere else is full," Harry asked. Ariane shook her head and moved her papers off their side of the table; Hermione smiled politely, Ariane waved back amiably, and they sat with their books in silence for a half-hour before any of them talked.
The red-haired boy was trying to read a very old text on Transfiguration, but was stumbling over the Latin that the author had used to describe the Transfiguration. He had pulled out an immense Latin-English dictionary to aid him, but he seemed to have no familiarity with Latin at all. Finally he slammed the dictionary shut and growled "Squamosusa? What the bloody hell does that mean?" He shoved the book off the table, and Madam Pince glowered at them.
"Scaly," Ariane said automatically, forgetting that she had no idea who he was. She lowered her book and saw that Harry, Hermione, and the red-haired boy were all staring at her. A familiar heat rose in her cheeks. "Sorry," she apologized, bringing her book up again. "Didn't mean to butt in."
"You read Latin?" Hermione asked curiously. Ariane nodded shyly over 'I Haven't Got A Body'. "That's fascinating! Where did you learn?"
"My—my mother, I suppose. She was my first teacher." Ariane apologized silently to Rowena, who had in reality been her first teacher. "I haven't done any in ages though."
The red-haired boy showed her another line of Latin in the musty old book. "What's that say?" he demanded, a little rudely.
"The serpent should now have a skin made of paper-thin gold," Ariane read without hesitation.
He frowned. "Well then all this is wrong," he mumbled, tracing a slightly disheartened finger down his page of sloppy notes. "I've mistranslated something, because I've got down that 'the gold should have turned into some sort of newspaper' and 'the snake ought to be up your pants'."
Harry laughed, Hermione rolled her eyes at the ceiling, and Ariane squinted at the book. "Well, it's not a very good dictionary you're using," she told him. "But couldn't you ask your Latin teacher or something?"
"We don't have a Latin class here," Harry told her. "Oh, I forgot. Hermione, this is Ariane. She's in our Potions class." Hermione and Harry exchanged a look that Ariane hoped had a lot to do with the class and nothing at all to do with her. "Ron, this is Ariane Somerled."
"Hi," she said, and Ron nodded in a distracted sort of way, crossing out most of his Transfiguration worksheet. She had just found her place in her book when an ominous silence fell over their section of the table. With a creeping feeling of dread, Ariane pushed her fringe out of her eyes and looked behind her.
"My office, five minutes," Snape snarled at her. He turned in a swirl of black robes and unwashed hair.
"God," Ariane muttered, slamming the book closed. Ron was staring at her with his mouth slightly open. "Is there something you'd like before I go to my death?" she asked, too irritated to be polite.
"I have never seen Snape look that angry with a Slytherin," he told her solemnly.
"I have," she replied gloomily, "See you all in class." Ariane swung her bag over her shoulder and tramped off, quite miserable, certain that she was in for another lecture of magnificent proportions.
The sight she saw upon entering Snape's office wasn't promising: he was stalking around behind his desk and nearly upset the Pensive when she came in. He looked as though he had not slept well, and his normally lank hair was mussed. "Am I in trouble?" Ariane asked before he could say anything, eager to get her bearings in this situation.
"Despite your display last night, no," Snape told her, an ironic note in his voice. He stopped pacing, braced both hands on his desk, and peered at her intently. She met his stare, reminding herself that she had very little left to hide from this man. "I have been asked to council you on your findings in the Pensieve."
"Actually," Ariane drew in a breath, praying for the nerve to go on, "I was hoping you could help me with some things about the present day, if you don't mind." She pulled her list from her pocket and handed it to him. Snape looked at it and his eyebrows plunged down to make a single line over his black eyes.
"Why are you asking me about Death Eaters and the Dark Lord?" he asked her.
"Because I do not know who they are, and people who mention them expect me to understand," Ariane replied, baffled. She had thought that her reasons were obvious.
Snape chuckled bitterly. "I mean, why are you asking me?"
"I can't ask anyone else, except Dumbledore." Ariane was very confused now. Snape was not reacting as she had expected, in fact he was behaving distinctly oddly. A fragile silence stretched as Snape seemed to gather his words, his surly face paler than the girl had every seen. Ariane waited nervously, shifting from foot to foot, one of her hands tangled in her curls.
"You can't know why it is such a big thing to ask," he said after a few minutes, drumming his fingers on his desk. "But the fact is that there is a wizard alive now that is so feared that nobody refers to him by his name. He has killed many people, Muggles and wizards alike, and he is a direct descendant of your brother, Salazar Slytherin."
"What is his name?" Ariane pressed.
"You'll usually hear him called 'You-Know-Who' or 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be- Named'. Sometimes he's even called 'The Dark Lord'." Snape took a deep breath, his sallow face very pale. "His real name is Voldemort." He looked as though saying this name had cost him a lot of energy, and remained silent for a full thirty seconds before continuing. "The Dark Lord considers Muggles, Muggle-borns, and half-blood wizards to be inferior, and his goal is to rid the world of them so that the purebloods will not be hampered by them." Snape met her eyes, expression unreadable. "He does this to fulfill Salazar Slytherin's mission to destroy Muggles."
Ariane flushed with anger. "You mean to say that this idiot believes that he is doing what my brother wanted? Do you think that my brother wanted to kill all Muggles?"
"Most people think that was your brother's idea. The Dark Lord certainly has helped enhance that view, but many pureblood families have always considered themselves superior to Muggle-born witches and wizards."
"That's the biggest load of horse shit I've ever heard in my life!" Ariane exploded. "Not only is that a ridiculous thing to think, it's a total corruption of what Salazar believed!"
"You'll often find that in the course of history, what is true is not always popular." Snape smiled grimly at her rage. "There's a saying I'm fond of: 'God cannot change the past, but historians can'. You'll find that the beginning of Hogwarts is blurred beyond what you'd know."
"Do you really think that my brother would have encouraged the killing of innocent people?" she raged, "Salazar never would have considered—what's the word—wiping out an entire race of people!"
"Genocide," Snape offered calmly.
"Yes, that," Ariane said, her anger boiling behind her cheekbones. "How would that even be connected to him?"
"You forget that he became a very different person after you died. Would the Salazar you remember have left Hogwarts or fought with Godric Gryffindor?"
She paused, the heat falling away from her face. "No," she said after a long silence. "I suppose he was terribly angry with the hunters who killed me, and if they were Muggles..." she trailed off. Snape was giving her an almost pitying look, which was quite as alarming as his usual sneer. "What?"
"Don't you realize that there's no way Muggle hunters could have shot you?" Snape asked bluntly. "You and your friend were inside school grounds, right smack up against the wall." He stalked over to his desk and pulled out a sheet of parchment and ink. "Look," he told her, "you two were in the northeastern corner, because Hogwarts is built like this"—he inked a square—"and the forest is down here, in the west and southwest"—he drew a bumpy shape to represent the trees—"and the flat plains come to the walls on the north and northeast sides, leaving no cover for nearly a mile. In the south, there's the lake, which was a huge quarry when you knew it." His sallow, bony hands sketched the dimensions of the quarry and wrote 'LAKE' over it.
Ariane blinked at the swiftly assembled map, bewildered by the hard logic of it all. "How do you know all these things?" she whispered.
"The Pensieve," he replied, looking pained. "I've been through the memories quite a lot." She remembered how he had looked after reading all her memories, as though someone had tried to take off his head with a blunt axe, and felt a little sorry that he had to bear her whole life on top of his own. Not that she'd willingly deposited all her memories in his head, but no matter.
She licked her dry lips nervously. "So—who do you think did it?"
His face was hidden behind a curtain of greasy black hair, but his tone closed their conversation. "I suggest that you research that on your own time, Somerled."
Ariane frowned but let him usher her out the door, solidifying her opinion that this man was the most irritating human being in the universe. One moment he was practically guiding her towards her murderer, the next he had stopped short of the goal and was closing his office door in her face. It was frustrating, and she walked back up to the library in a black mood, congratulating herself for escaping from a lecture but still wary. Did Snape know and just not want to say?
She walked back to her table to finish her essay and found that Madam Pince, being a highly organized person, had returned all her books on Invisibility to their shelves. It would take her at least ten minutes to find them all again. Ariane bit her lip and went to find them, only to discover that they were not on their shelves after all. She barely suppressed a growl of frustration when she couldn't find one of the books that she'd originally based her essay on.
It was only after she returned to her spot that she realized that Harry's things were still there. Perhaps she would be able to borrow his books when he returned. She spent a boring five minutes correcting the beginning of her essay. Ariane was halfway through looking up the proper spelling for 'Abyssinian' when she became aware of someone looking at her. She glanced up and found Madam Pince peering at her essay.
"There's two 's's," she said briskly. "I was going through some very old files and I found these. I thought that you might find them interesting." To Ariane's bewilderment Madam Pince extended a pack of tattered playing cards bound together with a piece of string. "I've got duplicates of all of them on file, so you can hold onto these for awhile. Don't get them wet, don't tear them, and don't you dare lose them." Ariane nodded dumbly and accepted the cards, which felt like rectangles of paper-thin metal from all the Strengthening Spells cast upon them. "Good luck with your essay." She stalked away, and Draco's description of a starving vulture floated to the top of Ariane's mind.
Wondering why Madam Pince would give her playing cards, Ariane undid the string and spread them across the table. They looked very old and were done on yellowed parchment, but the hand-made paintings remained bright. Each suit was a different color: red, yellow, green, blue. The face cards were painted in a style that made Ariane think of stained-glass windows, each done with meticulous care and bearing a different face.
Ariane blinked hard and peered at the minuscule writing under the Queen of Diamonds, who was done in shades of yellow with coppery hair. The tiny script read HELGA HUFFLEPUFF. She dropped the card in surprise, but quickly retrieved it. Sorting through the other yellow cards revealed that the King of Diamonds was Helga's late husband (his portrait contained more black than any other card) and the Knave was the great badger with black and yellow stripes that made up Hufflepuff House's shield.
Her fingers fumbled through the cards. The King, Queen, and Knave of hearts were Godric Gryffindor, his pretty wife Verity (whom Ariane remembered as honest to a fault and not very popular), and the Gryffindor lion, respectively. Rowena was the Queen of Clubs, but her King card was blankly blue. Ariane smiled a little bitterly, remembering her teacher's disdain for the male sex. She had believed that no man was good enough for her to marry, and had probably died an old maid. Putting aside the Knave of Clubs (an eagle), she reached for the King of Spades, her brother. Salazar was painted in green with a silver crown upon his black hair, and only one of his violet eyes was visible due to the profile view. She put aside her brother, put aside the green and silver snake that was the Knave, and picked up the Queen.
Ariane had half-expected this. Part of her thought that Salazar would conform to whatever the other Founders had done and put his wife on the card, and the other part of her knew that he wouldn't.
She stared at the Queen, who was turned only slightly away from the painter. Her silver hair was loose and took up most of the background with its metallic curls, and the thin circlet that lay on her forehead was made up of braided green cords. The tiny script read 'ARIANE'. Ariane gazed at her own violet-eyed likeness and felt a cold shiver run down her spine. Here was solid proof, apart from her own memories, that she was not lying.
Someone sat down with a clatter of books that startled her and sent her playing cards flying. "Sorry," Harry said, sounding a little distracted. "Let me help you with those."
Ariane crawled about on the floor; trying to round up all the cards and hoping that Madam Pince hadn't seen her ancient deck go flying. She had nearly all of them when she sat back down and began to count them out by suite, praying that she had all fifty-two. Once she'd gotten through the clubs and hearts, she realized that she was still missing most of the spades and quite a few of the hearts.
She looked up and saw that Harry was looking at her in a distinctly odd way. "Where did you get these?" He held out the missing cards with the Salazar and Ariane cards on top.
"Madam Pince," she said warily, taking them from him and shuffling them under the rest of the spades. "She's helping me research my family."
"Oh. Why are you doing that?" Harry asked curiously.
Ariane looked away and tried to think of a reason that was good enough to satisfy him and would kill any other questions. "I'm trying to find relatives," she said, giving her voice a sad tinge, "Because my mother died last year and if I don't find a cousin or something I'll have to go to a home for—for girls who haven't got any parents," she finished lamely, having forgot the word.
"An orphanage," Harry supplied for her. He didn't look as though this had stopped his questions; on the contrary he was looking at her with increased interest. "Be careful which relatives you go to, though. I live with my aunt and uncle, and they're quite horrible."
"Are your parents dead, then?" Ariane asked, her own curiosity getting the better of her.
"Yes," Harry replied. "They died when I was a baby."
"It's too bad that you never got to know them," she said considerately, counting out the cards again and finding that she was still missing the eight of hearts.
Harry nodded, and then said, "Why would you find relatives on a deck of cards? Was your family famous?"
"Sort of—but this is kind of an obscure branch of my family. We've had to go pretty obscure to find any relatives," Ariane said, a plan forming in her head, "So this woman is like my mother's great-great-great aunt's cousin's father's mother or something like that." She fished around in the deck and, chilled by her own nerve, handed him the Queen of Spades. "She might not even be related to me, but we look quite a bit alike so there's no telling."
Harry peered at the card through his round glasses, then up at her. "That's weird. And your names are the same as well."
"Bit weird," Ariane agreed, taking the card back, shuffling the deck together, and binding it up with string. She decided that she'd been reckless enough for that day and changed the subject: "How far have you gotten with Snape's essay?" she asked, tilting her head so that her hair swung behind her shoulders. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Draco Malfoy enter the library, see her talking to Harry, and freeze. Ariane quickly looked back at Harry and continued her conversation, leaning forward so that Draco wouldn't be able to overhear. "I'm finding the bit about the dragon scales horribly difficult."
Apparently she was not through with being reckless.
Author's Note: Gah! This is fun. Next chapter we learn more about the murderer, Professor Connor, and a heliopath named Charly. More fun in Hogwarts...
Films About Ghosts
Chapter 9: Queen of Spades
Ariane was the first one in the library the next morning, though it wasn't for personal research this time. She had looked at her schedule and realized that first thing Mondays she had double Potions (again!) with Snape. The essay he had assigned on Friday was due then, and Ariane hadn't so much as looked at it since Friday. Admittedly she had been distracted, but she still needed to get it turned in. It wouldn't do to start her year without an assignment.
A few hours later she was deeply immersed in her book, 'I Haven't Got A Body (a Quest for Invisibility)', when someone sat down right across from her. For a moment she considered not looking up, but then her curiosity got the better of her. Peeking over the top of her book, she saw Harry, a red-haired boy she didn't recognize, and Hermione Granger taking seats across from her.
"Do you mind? Everywhere else is full," Harry asked. Ariane shook her head and moved her papers off their side of the table; Hermione smiled politely, Ariane waved back amiably, and they sat with their books in silence for a half-hour before any of them talked.
The red-haired boy was trying to read a very old text on Transfiguration, but was stumbling over the Latin that the author had used to describe the Transfiguration. He had pulled out an immense Latin-English dictionary to aid him, but he seemed to have no familiarity with Latin at all. Finally he slammed the dictionary shut and growled "Squamosusa? What the bloody hell does that mean?" He shoved the book off the table, and Madam Pince glowered at them.
"Scaly," Ariane said automatically, forgetting that she had no idea who he was. She lowered her book and saw that Harry, Hermione, and the red-haired boy were all staring at her. A familiar heat rose in her cheeks. "Sorry," she apologized, bringing her book up again. "Didn't mean to butt in."
"You read Latin?" Hermione asked curiously. Ariane nodded shyly over 'I Haven't Got A Body'. "That's fascinating! Where did you learn?"
"My—my mother, I suppose. She was my first teacher." Ariane apologized silently to Rowena, who had in reality been her first teacher. "I haven't done any in ages though."
The red-haired boy showed her another line of Latin in the musty old book. "What's that say?" he demanded, a little rudely.
"The serpent should now have a skin made of paper-thin gold," Ariane read without hesitation.
He frowned. "Well then all this is wrong," he mumbled, tracing a slightly disheartened finger down his page of sloppy notes. "I've mistranslated something, because I've got down that 'the gold should have turned into some sort of newspaper' and 'the snake ought to be up your pants'."
Harry laughed, Hermione rolled her eyes at the ceiling, and Ariane squinted at the book. "Well, it's not a very good dictionary you're using," she told him. "But couldn't you ask your Latin teacher or something?"
"We don't have a Latin class here," Harry told her. "Oh, I forgot. Hermione, this is Ariane. She's in our Potions class." Hermione and Harry exchanged a look that Ariane hoped had a lot to do with the class and nothing at all to do with her. "Ron, this is Ariane Somerled."
"Hi," she said, and Ron nodded in a distracted sort of way, crossing out most of his Transfiguration worksheet. She had just found her place in her book when an ominous silence fell over their section of the table. With a creeping feeling of dread, Ariane pushed her fringe out of her eyes and looked behind her.
"My office, five minutes," Snape snarled at her. He turned in a swirl of black robes and unwashed hair.
"God," Ariane muttered, slamming the book closed. Ron was staring at her with his mouth slightly open. "Is there something you'd like before I go to my death?" she asked, too irritated to be polite.
"I have never seen Snape look that angry with a Slytherin," he told her solemnly.
"I have," she replied gloomily, "See you all in class." Ariane swung her bag over her shoulder and tramped off, quite miserable, certain that she was in for another lecture of magnificent proportions.
The sight she saw upon entering Snape's office wasn't promising: he was stalking around behind his desk and nearly upset the Pensive when she came in. He looked as though he had not slept well, and his normally lank hair was mussed. "Am I in trouble?" Ariane asked before he could say anything, eager to get her bearings in this situation.
"Despite your display last night, no," Snape told her, an ironic note in his voice. He stopped pacing, braced both hands on his desk, and peered at her intently. She met his stare, reminding herself that she had very little left to hide from this man. "I have been asked to council you on your findings in the Pensieve."
"Actually," Ariane drew in a breath, praying for the nerve to go on, "I was hoping you could help me with some things about the present day, if you don't mind." She pulled her list from her pocket and handed it to him. Snape looked at it and his eyebrows plunged down to make a single line over his black eyes.
"Why are you asking me about Death Eaters and the Dark Lord?" he asked her.
"Because I do not know who they are, and people who mention them expect me to understand," Ariane replied, baffled. She had thought that her reasons were obvious.
Snape chuckled bitterly. "I mean, why are you asking me?"
"I can't ask anyone else, except Dumbledore." Ariane was very confused now. Snape was not reacting as she had expected, in fact he was behaving distinctly oddly. A fragile silence stretched as Snape seemed to gather his words, his surly face paler than the girl had every seen. Ariane waited nervously, shifting from foot to foot, one of her hands tangled in her curls.
"You can't know why it is such a big thing to ask," he said after a few minutes, drumming his fingers on his desk. "But the fact is that there is a wizard alive now that is so feared that nobody refers to him by his name. He has killed many people, Muggles and wizards alike, and he is a direct descendant of your brother, Salazar Slytherin."
"What is his name?" Ariane pressed.
"You'll usually hear him called 'You-Know-Who' or 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be- Named'. Sometimes he's even called 'The Dark Lord'." Snape took a deep breath, his sallow face very pale. "His real name is Voldemort." He looked as though saying this name had cost him a lot of energy, and remained silent for a full thirty seconds before continuing. "The Dark Lord considers Muggles, Muggle-borns, and half-blood wizards to be inferior, and his goal is to rid the world of them so that the purebloods will not be hampered by them." Snape met her eyes, expression unreadable. "He does this to fulfill Salazar Slytherin's mission to destroy Muggles."
Ariane flushed with anger. "You mean to say that this idiot believes that he is doing what my brother wanted? Do you think that my brother wanted to kill all Muggles?"
"Most people think that was your brother's idea. The Dark Lord certainly has helped enhance that view, but many pureblood families have always considered themselves superior to Muggle-born witches and wizards."
"That's the biggest load of horse shit I've ever heard in my life!" Ariane exploded. "Not only is that a ridiculous thing to think, it's a total corruption of what Salazar believed!"
"You'll often find that in the course of history, what is true is not always popular." Snape smiled grimly at her rage. "There's a saying I'm fond of: 'God cannot change the past, but historians can'. You'll find that the beginning of Hogwarts is blurred beyond what you'd know."
"Do you really think that my brother would have encouraged the killing of innocent people?" she raged, "Salazar never would have considered—what's the word—wiping out an entire race of people!"
"Genocide," Snape offered calmly.
"Yes, that," Ariane said, her anger boiling behind her cheekbones. "How would that even be connected to him?"
"You forget that he became a very different person after you died. Would the Salazar you remember have left Hogwarts or fought with Godric Gryffindor?"
She paused, the heat falling away from her face. "No," she said after a long silence. "I suppose he was terribly angry with the hunters who killed me, and if they were Muggles..." she trailed off. Snape was giving her an almost pitying look, which was quite as alarming as his usual sneer. "What?"
"Don't you realize that there's no way Muggle hunters could have shot you?" Snape asked bluntly. "You and your friend were inside school grounds, right smack up against the wall." He stalked over to his desk and pulled out a sheet of parchment and ink. "Look," he told her, "you two were in the northeastern corner, because Hogwarts is built like this"—he inked a square—"and the forest is down here, in the west and southwest"—he drew a bumpy shape to represent the trees—"and the flat plains come to the walls on the north and northeast sides, leaving no cover for nearly a mile. In the south, there's the lake, which was a huge quarry when you knew it." His sallow, bony hands sketched the dimensions of the quarry and wrote 'LAKE' over it.
Ariane blinked at the swiftly assembled map, bewildered by the hard logic of it all. "How do you know all these things?" she whispered.
"The Pensieve," he replied, looking pained. "I've been through the memories quite a lot." She remembered how he had looked after reading all her memories, as though someone had tried to take off his head with a blunt axe, and felt a little sorry that he had to bear her whole life on top of his own. Not that she'd willingly deposited all her memories in his head, but no matter.
She licked her dry lips nervously. "So—who do you think did it?"
His face was hidden behind a curtain of greasy black hair, but his tone closed their conversation. "I suggest that you research that on your own time, Somerled."
Ariane frowned but let him usher her out the door, solidifying her opinion that this man was the most irritating human being in the universe. One moment he was practically guiding her towards her murderer, the next he had stopped short of the goal and was closing his office door in her face. It was frustrating, and she walked back up to the library in a black mood, congratulating herself for escaping from a lecture but still wary. Did Snape know and just not want to say?
She walked back to her table to finish her essay and found that Madam Pince, being a highly organized person, had returned all her books on Invisibility to their shelves. It would take her at least ten minutes to find them all again. Ariane bit her lip and went to find them, only to discover that they were not on their shelves after all. She barely suppressed a growl of frustration when she couldn't find one of the books that she'd originally based her essay on.
It was only after she returned to her spot that she realized that Harry's things were still there. Perhaps she would be able to borrow his books when he returned. She spent a boring five minutes correcting the beginning of her essay. Ariane was halfway through looking up the proper spelling for 'Abyssinian' when she became aware of someone looking at her. She glanced up and found Madam Pince peering at her essay.
"There's two 's's," she said briskly. "I was going through some very old files and I found these. I thought that you might find them interesting." To Ariane's bewilderment Madam Pince extended a pack of tattered playing cards bound together with a piece of string. "I've got duplicates of all of them on file, so you can hold onto these for awhile. Don't get them wet, don't tear them, and don't you dare lose them." Ariane nodded dumbly and accepted the cards, which felt like rectangles of paper-thin metal from all the Strengthening Spells cast upon them. "Good luck with your essay." She stalked away, and Draco's description of a starving vulture floated to the top of Ariane's mind.
Wondering why Madam Pince would give her playing cards, Ariane undid the string and spread them across the table. They looked very old and were done on yellowed parchment, but the hand-made paintings remained bright. Each suit was a different color: red, yellow, green, blue. The face cards were painted in a style that made Ariane think of stained-glass windows, each done with meticulous care and bearing a different face.
Ariane blinked hard and peered at the minuscule writing under the Queen of Diamonds, who was done in shades of yellow with coppery hair. The tiny script read HELGA HUFFLEPUFF. She dropped the card in surprise, but quickly retrieved it. Sorting through the other yellow cards revealed that the King of Diamonds was Helga's late husband (his portrait contained more black than any other card) and the Knave was the great badger with black and yellow stripes that made up Hufflepuff House's shield.
Her fingers fumbled through the cards. The King, Queen, and Knave of hearts were Godric Gryffindor, his pretty wife Verity (whom Ariane remembered as honest to a fault and not very popular), and the Gryffindor lion, respectively. Rowena was the Queen of Clubs, but her King card was blankly blue. Ariane smiled a little bitterly, remembering her teacher's disdain for the male sex. She had believed that no man was good enough for her to marry, and had probably died an old maid. Putting aside the Knave of Clubs (an eagle), she reached for the King of Spades, her brother. Salazar was painted in green with a silver crown upon his black hair, and only one of his violet eyes was visible due to the profile view. She put aside her brother, put aside the green and silver snake that was the Knave, and picked up the Queen.
Ariane had half-expected this. Part of her thought that Salazar would conform to whatever the other Founders had done and put his wife on the card, and the other part of her knew that he wouldn't.
She stared at the Queen, who was turned only slightly away from the painter. Her silver hair was loose and took up most of the background with its metallic curls, and the thin circlet that lay on her forehead was made up of braided green cords. The tiny script read 'ARIANE'. Ariane gazed at her own violet-eyed likeness and felt a cold shiver run down her spine. Here was solid proof, apart from her own memories, that she was not lying.
Someone sat down with a clatter of books that startled her and sent her playing cards flying. "Sorry," Harry said, sounding a little distracted. "Let me help you with those."
Ariane crawled about on the floor; trying to round up all the cards and hoping that Madam Pince hadn't seen her ancient deck go flying. She had nearly all of them when she sat back down and began to count them out by suite, praying that she had all fifty-two. Once she'd gotten through the clubs and hearts, she realized that she was still missing most of the spades and quite a few of the hearts.
She looked up and saw that Harry was looking at her in a distinctly odd way. "Where did you get these?" He held out the missing cards with the Salazar and Ariane cards on top.
"Madam Pince," she said warily, taking them from him and shuffling them under the rest of the spades. "She's helping me research my family."
"Oh. Why are you doing that?" Harry asked curiously.
Ariane looked away and tried to think of a reason that was good enough to satisfy him and would kill any other questions. "I'm trying to find relatives," she said, giving her voice a sad tinge, "Because my mother died last year and if I don't find a cousin or something I'll have to go to a home for—for girls who haven't got any parents," she finished lamely, having forgot the word.
"An orphanage," Harry supplied for her. He didn't look as though this had stopped his questions; on the contrary he was looking at her with increased interest. "Be careful which relatives you go to, though. I live with my aunt and uncle, and they're quite horrible."
"Are your parents dead, then?" Ariane asked, her own curiosity getting the better of her.
"Yes," Harry replied. "They died when I was a baby."
"It's too bad that you never got to know them," she said considerately, counting out the cards again and finding that she was still missing the eight of hearts.
Harry nodded, and then said, "Why would you find relatives on a deck of cards? Was your family famous?"
"Sort of—but this is kind of an obscure branch of my family. We've had to go pretty obscure to find any relatives," Ariane said, a plan forming in her head, "So this woman is like my mother's great-great-great aunt's cousin's father's mother or something like that." She fished around in the deck and, chilled by her own nerve, handed him the Queen of Spades. "She might not even be related to me, but we look quite a bit alike so there's no telling."
Harry peered at the card through his round glasses, then up at her. "That's weird. And your names are the same as well."
"Bit weird," Ariane agreed, taking the card back, shuffling the deck together, and binding it up with string. She decided that she'd been reckless enough for that day and changed the subject: "How far have you gotten with Snape's essay?" she asked, tilting her head so that her hair swung behind her shoulders. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Draco Malfoy enter the library, see her talking to Harry, and freeze. Ariane quickly looked back at Harry and continued her conversation, leaning forward so that Draco wouldn't be able to overhear. "I'm finding the bit about the dragon scales horribly difficult."
Apparently she was not through with being reckless.
Author's Note: Gah! This is fun. Next chapter we learn more about the murderer, Professor Connor, and a heliopath named Charly. More fun in Hogwarts...