"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts." -the Counting Crows
Films About Ghosts
Chapter 10: Heliopath
"Please take your seats," Professor Connor said, and everyone sat as quickly as they could. Her reputation as a hard teacher had taken root in the first week of classes and continued to blossom. She had a low, gravely voice and stinging wit that she didn't hesitate to dole out to those who displeased her, and had made it clear in the first class that anyone who had not achieved 'Outstanding' on their O.W.L.s had best clear out of her class because she didn't want to take the time to throw them out. Professor Connor had lost a whole class in that fashion.
Ariane took a seat next to Tuyet in the back, half-hidden behind her text. She didn't want Professor Connor to recall her face, due to the circumstances of their last meeting. The Defense Against the Dark Arts class was without question the largest Ariane had yet attended: thirty students, mostly Gryffindor with a few Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. She and Tuyet were the only Slytherins in this class, and they had raised some eyebrows when they had come in. She could see Harry up front with Hermione and Ron, looking very much at ease despite being within slashing distance of a female werewolf.
That was another thing that bothered Ariane: how could she expect to be safe when a monster was teaching her? She could tell that Professor Connor would be quite a dangerous person even if she weren't changing into a bloodlust-driven wolf at full moons.
The professor pushed her thick bronze-colored ponytail over her shoulder and addressed her class. "Today we'll be learning about a sort of Magical Creature that you lot haven't covered yet—heliopaths. Can anyone tell me what they are?"
Nobody spoke for fear of giving a wrong answer. Hermione Granger, however, was undaunted. "They're people who can control fire in all its aspects," she said, sounding as though she were reciting it from a textbook she had memorized.
"Maniac brainiac," Tuyet muttered under her breath.
"That's right," Professor Connor said, "They are people. Heliopaths are notorious for their bad tempers, red hair, and occasionally spontaneously combusting." A few people grinned at Ron, who looked thoughtful. A round- faced boy with a nose that had been broken at least once shivered. "Because you lot are supposed to be the best and brightest of your year, I expect you'll know that you should always be polite to heliopaths unless you like being burned crisp. If one of you insults Charly and gets fried, then I will not intervene. It's your own damn fault."
"Who's Charly?" a girl with shiny dark hair asked her twin.
"Charly Toril is a friend of mine," Professor Connor answered, blinking her sleepy green eyes at the twins. "She's a heliopath, the only one in England, and she's doing me an enormous favor by parading herself in front of you lot. She's waiting in my office, so compose yourselves and get out some paper. We're taking notes, but don't be obvious about it."
Ariane was wondering how on earth they were supposed to do this when the door to Professor Connor's office swung open and all the torches that lined the room abruptly extinguished themselves. She stifled her gasp with her hand as the room went black, and then she saw movement by the teacher's desk. The torches re-lit with a 'pop'.
Charly Toril was about nineteen years old, short and stocky with chin- length pale red hair that stuck up all around her head. Her skin was slightly pink, as though she were sunburned, and she had bright blue eyes the same color as the middle of a flame. She was dressed in curious Muggle clothes and didn't look at all capable of burning a city to the ground.
With a slight air of drama, she placed a cigarette in her mouth. It lit itself with another 'pop', and several people in the front row jumped.
"'Ello," she drawled with a wicked smile. She looked like a fox that had just raided a henhouse.
A few of the bolder people in the class returned her greeting, and the class proceeded from there.
To be fair, it was an interesting class. Ariane learned a lot about heliopaths, including the reason why Charly was the only one left in England: the Ministry had killed off all the others (a law was in existance that allowed the killing of dangerous or criminal creatures). Charly gave several displays of her skill, including making the ends of her hair glow like sparks in a high wind (she refused to show them what a full combustion looked like on the account that it would ruin her clothes), burning a quill pen to ash while Professor Connor was holding it without scorching her, and for a finale she made all the torches' flames shoot to the ceiling so that the students were enclosed in a dome of fire. It was frightening and wonderful at the same time.
Once Charly had bowed out to applause from the class, Professor Connor took up her stance at the front once more. "Thank you," she told Charly, patting her arm in a companionable way, and then turned to the class, which fell silent almost immediately. "Now that we've actually met a heliopath, we're going to really learn about them. Get ready for some real notes."
Professor Connor began to lecture at a speed that cramped up Ariane's hand and when the class finished just before the bell, the whole class was massaging wrists and flexing sore fingers. Only Hermione Granger had gotten it all down without any difficultly, and most of the Gryffindors were casting envious glances at her neat notes. Tuyet and Ariane compared their notes during lunch and filled in missed spots with a little difficulty.
Draco peered over Ariane's shoulder, standing a little closer than was necessary so she could feel his breath in her hair. "Heliopaths?" he said with surprise.
"Yes, it was a very interesting lesson," she said blandly, not looking up.
"It was cool," Tuyet told him. Her left eye was still quite swollen from where Pansy had hit it with the Conjunctivitis Curse, and it was rimmed with yellow and green bruise shadows that Madam Pomfrey hadn't managed to get out. It made Tuyet's already slanted eye look like a slit.
Draco noticed. "What's wrong with your eye?" he asked, not sounding very concerned at all.
"Oh, I was clumsy," Tuyet said lightly, not meeting Ariane or Draco's eyes. "It'll heal soon enough."
"Why didn't you tell him the truth?" Ariane asked Tuyet as they walked to their afternoon class, double Herbology with the Gryffindors. The sun was already too warm on her silver head, and she shuddered to think how hot it would be inside the greenhouse.
"Because in Slytherin the truth won't set you free, but it'll more than likely give you boils," the blonde grumbled. Ariane didn't want to know what that meant, so she sped up and entered Greenhouse 4 ahead of her friend.
A plant immediately attacked her.
She screamed without meaning to and pushed it away so that it fell to the floor, scattering dirt and shards of pottery everywhere. The boy who had knocked the plant into her apologized, grinning, as the rest of the class sniggered into their dragonhide gloves. Ariane bent to help him pick up the bits of plant (which was leaking an odd purplish sap onto the packed dirt floor) and promptly got her hands pushed away from it by a dirty boot on the end of her professor's foot.
"Gloves, miss...?" reminded a dumpy sort of witch with flyaway hair.
"Somerled. Ariane Somerled," Ariane said, blushing and pulling on her gloves. She ought to know better than to go and touch strange plants without protection. The sandy-haired boy helped her pick up the plant and the remains of the pot, but it was useless to try to revive the broken leaves and stems—the purple sap had all leaked into the dirt, leaving odd reddish stains where it had been.
"Finnegan, if you would please refrain from tipping my best asphodel plant over? All right, class, lets get started."
Professor Sprout didn't mess around with a lot of explanations, simply pairing them up and assigning them each a bed of curious looking plants with tufts of purplish leaves. Ariane squinted at them, and then blinked, her mouth falling open in shock. "Mandrakes," she whispered to Tuyet, whose eyes rounded.
"Yes, Somerled, mandrakes. These are in the embryonic stage and cannot be disturbed or they will die. You're task today is to weed them. Ten points will be taken off your grade for each mandrake disturbed." Professor Sprout tugged her hat further over her ears and began to patrol the class, watching as they began to pull weeds very gently.
Ariane looked at her bed in dismay, then across at the Gryffindor working on the other side. Harry was tugging on his gloves, looking a bit grim. "This is nearly impossible," he told her glumly.
"Don't be so cheerful, you might crack your face," she replied, taking a hold of a plant that wasn't a mandrake and tugging it lightly. It didn't budge. When she pulled harder, however, the nearest mandrake's leaves turned dead, powdery white.
"Ten points gone, then," Professor Sprout said as she strolled past.
It took Ariane about fifty more points to figure out how to get the weeds out without killing her mandrakes. It took a careful combination of gentle pulling and a bit of twisting and wiggling. This weeding was tedious, mind- numbing work and it helped to think of other things while doing it.
As was typical, Ariane was soon lost in a new memory as her hands worked on the weeds.
"What's that?" she asked Godric as he stood outside the new addition to his House. It didn't seem to be a kitchen or a new living area for Godric and his new wife, Verity. "That new building there."
He chuckled and smiled down at her from his height of six foot four. "That's a stable for the winged horse that I've bought."
Ariane looked up at him, all fear and suspicion of him forgotten in her moment of wonder. "A winged horse?"
"Aethonan," he said proudly, naming the breed. "A mare. Would you like to see her?"
"Yes, please!" she said eagerly.
Godric led her around to the other side of the stable, where a horse stood munching hay peacefully. She was as tall as Ariane in the shoulder and gleaming chestnut from nose to tail, with white socks on her forelegs. Her eyes were brown and soft, and the feathers in her huge wings were a coppery brown that shimmered in the afternoon sun. "Wow," Ariane breathed, reaching out and running a hand over the horse's long nose. "What's her name?"
"Caelestis," Godric said with relish, letting the name ring the way it ought to, since it belonged to such a magnificent creature. "Would you like to ride her?"
Ariane hesitated, wondering what Salazar would say when he realized that his fourteen-year-old sister was wheeling up in the sky beyond anyone's reach, and then nodded. By the time her feet next hit ground, she wouldn't care what Salazar had to say.
Godric picked her up by the waist and lifted her easily onto Caelesitis' back, his hands so large that his fingertips met around her waist. "Should I have a saddle?" Ariane asked hesitantly. She wasn't sure how to act around Godric when they were on friendly terms.
"No, just ride astride and hold onto her mane." She laced her fingers in the horse's chestnut mane and shifted a leg across the wide back, her cheeks pinking when the new seating position pulled her skirts above her knees. Ariane peeked across at Godric, who glanced at the bare leg nearest him for a moment and then back at her face without blinking. "Hold on with your legs," he told her, and led the horse out of the stable.
"What are you doing?" someone yelled from far across the grounds. It was Salazar, and Ariane could tell from this distance that he was furious.
Godric hesitated for a moment, his hand still on Caelestis' lead.
Ariane buried her face and hands in the horse's mane and kicked its sides with her heels as she'd seen Muggle horsemen do. Immediately coppery wings flapped open on either side of her, throwing Godric to the ground, and with a downsweep of fifteen-foot wings Ariane was in the air.
There were no words to describe the flight. It was smooth and fast and oddly quiet. The wind was rushing by her ears and tangling in her hair, and they were soon so far above the ground that even Salazar's roars of protest were left behind them. Caelestis seemed to enjoy this nearly as much as Ariane, and was taking great pleasure in flying higher and doing wide turns and once a tight spiral that left Ariane gasping for breath. Hogwarts had shrunk until it was smaller than a single stone, and the fields around the village of Hogsmeade were a patchwork of gold and green and brown.
It was the most wondrous thing she'd ever done in her life.
After an hour or so, Ariane began to feel the creeping feelings of guilt. Salazar and Godric would be worried, not to mention they'd probably be at each other's throats. She could hear their arguments in her head already:
"Your sister has stolen my horse!"
"Your horse has flown off with my sister!"
Ariane leaned forward on Caelestis' back, meaning to tell her that she wished to go down, but the mare seemed to understand. They began to descend on a slow slope towards the growing blocks that were Hogwarts. It seemed to Ariane, however, that the flying horse was descending too shallowly—they would miss Hogwarts at this rate.
Then Caelestis dived straight down, folding her wings so that coppery feathers surrounded Ariane and she was looking between the chestnut ears at the ground, which was rushing straight at her. Before she could scream, the hooves of the mare hit the ground, and she lurched forward, her face pressed into the coarse hair of Caelestis' mane.
"What were you thinking?" Salazar demanded from her left side, his voice harsh with anger and worry. "You could have died!"
"Not to mention that you can't control that blasted nag if it decides to dive like that," Godric added from her right, all his admiration for the lovely creature gone. "Why did you kick off?"
Ariane looked from one angry face to the other, one dark and stricken with worry, the other fair and frowning disapproval. "I apologize," she said calmly, "I promise that next time I try to fly her I will know what to do." This placated Godric, but Salazar still raged on.
"Next time? What do you mean, next time?" She hesitated, unable to describe the feeling of flight to her brother, feeling her stomach clench with the slightly disturbing knowledge that here was another thing that separated her from her brother, another thing that she could never make him understand.
Like how she felt about Laramy.
"Potter, where is your mind? That's over eighty points gone!" Professor Sprout's shrill voice snapped Ariane back to Herbology class.
Harry was gazing in a slightly shocked way at the bed of mandrakes in front of him, most of which were white and dead. He looked as though he had just been awakened from sleep. Ariane glanced down at her plants, worried, but most of them were still healthy and purplish.
"What's wrong?" she asked him, for he was as white as his mandrake plants.
"I just had the weirdest dream," he whispered, still appearing shaken. "I was riding a flying horse."
Ariane made herself keep weeding, though her hands had just gone icy. "That seems an odd thing to think about," she said lightly.
"It was really clear though," Harry insisted. "Someone was showing me his new flying horse, and he let me ride it, and—I was in a skirt," he finished, looking very puzzled and a bit disgusted at the same time. "Why—" he broke off, and then continued. "It was like a memory, but it never happened to me."
Her hands jerked, and two of her mandrakes went ashy white. It was happening to someone else. Harry had seen her memory, just as she had seen Draco's—and Harry's, now that she thought. I'm not going mad after all, Ariane thought, and then amended, well, if I am, at least someone else is as mad as me. Harry looked so distressed that she couldn't let him think that he was going mad. "Harry," she whispered. "Was the horse's name Caelestis?"
His green eyes rounded. "Yes! How did you know?"
Ariane looked down her row and saw Hermione Granger watching them from Harry's right and Daphne leaning a keen ear to Ariane's left. "Is there anywhere I could talk to you where nobody will overhear us?" she asked as quietly as she could. She realized how she sounded after she said it, and bit her lip in irritation. Ariane had no desire for any other male at Hogwarts to get ideas about her.
Harry was concentrating on salvaging his last few mandrakes and didn't notice her phrasing. "The clock tower," he replied after a moment's thought. "There's a flight of stairs that leads up inside the gears and such. Nobody ever goes up there."
"All right," Ariane said slowly. "I'll meet you there at eight."
"Right," Harry said, his forehead furrowed. "And you'll explain...this?" He shot a look at her, and she quickly turned her purple eyes to the ground, hoping that he wouldn't see inside her head again.
Finished with her tray, Ariane pulled off her gloves and stepped away. "I'll try," she promised, still not meeting his eyes.
Author's Note: Nothing really to clear up in here, so thanks in advance for reviewing.