"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts." -the Counting Crows
Films About Ghosts
Chapter 14: The Furies
Ariane stood frozen between the two werewolves. She had thought Professor Connor was a big werewolf, but the new one was a good four inches taller at the shoulder. A part of her brain that found the situation ironic wondered if she would be able to ride him like a horse, but the rest of her brain was screaming in fear and drowned out most of the nervous giggling that was bubbling in her throat. Rummaging in her pockets to find something to defend herself with, she found only her wand, a flask that was left over from Potion class earlier that week, and the wad of parchment that was Salazar's curse upon Gryffindor. She didn't know any werewolf spells, so Ariane closed her fingers over the flask, knowing that she might as well just sit there and let it bite her.
Slowly she turned so that she could see both werewolves. The one that had been behind her was mostly silvery-gray, with a few tufts of brown hair. It moved stiffly towards her, as thought it was not quite used to its form yet. That wasn't the case with the red wolf, which had begun a leisurely pace towards her, golden eyes glittering with an animal instinct. The gray wolf made an odd strangled noise in its throat, half-growl half-yip, and the red wolf stopped and peered at him. Ariane looked at the second wolf too, wondering why he'd made that noise.
It looked at her. She had never seen such sad eyes, quiet and hazel and filled with immeasurable fear and despair. They were not the eyes of an animal, but of a man. The red werewolf, Professor Connor, did not have human eyes. Normally Connor had green eyes, a dull bottle green that somehow made her look almost pretty in her snappish way. Now they were yellow and animal, yet malicious in a way that true animals weren't.
The grey werewolf got very close to her, its strange human eyes locked on her face. It stopped a bare foot away from Ariane and stood calmly at her side as though it were a pet or a guardian. Then, very slowly, it turned to the red werewolf and growled low in its throat. Connor snarled defiantly, baring glittering white teeth, and broke into a gallop. The sight of a giant red werewolf launching itself toward her was enough to unfreeze Ariane, who turned to run. The grey wolf didn't try to stop her; on the contrary it got in Connor's way.
As Ariane sprinted back to the safety of her common room, she heard the pained cry of the second werewolf echoing after her, and she wondered if a werewolf would kill one of its own kind.
She arrived out of breath at the common room seconds later, and had to wait a few moments before attempting to speak the password. When Ariane finally had enough air in her lungs she panted 'Slatero' and entered the crowded room. Tuyet was noticeably absent because Blaise was noticeably silent, and Pansy was curled up by the fire with a copy of the Daily Prophet spread on her lap. Draco was next to her with his Transfiguration homework in front of him, a quill poised in the air as he turned to ask her something. Whatever he had been going to say was lost forever, because when his eyes fell on Ariane his mouth closed into a smug grin.
"Hello, Ariane," said Pansy with a simper that signified nothing good for her classmate. "Where've you been?"
"Well, I nearly got chewed on for skipping Professor Connor's class today," Ariane deadpanned, her red face breaking into a grin despite herself. It was too funny not to laugh, now that she was safe.
"You mean chewed out, right?" Daphne said, busy disentangling her curly hair from the hoop earrings she was wearing. "Not really chewed on?"
"Well, it is full moon," Ariane said, jumping over the back of a couch and sitting cross-legged next to Blaise. Everyone looked horrified except Pansy, who looked slightly irritated and went back to the Daily Prophet, rustling it loudly on the pretense of straightening it. A few people looked at her, and, sensing her audience, Pansy began to read the article aloud.
"Your reporter has discovered a connection between the prestigious Boy Who Lived and this girl Ariane who ought not to exist. Little does Harry Potter realize that this new friend of his claims to be a relative of You-Know-Who, and may even be passing information to him as you read this article. Though Harry Potter has had little luck with love in the past, one hopes that he will escape the grave error of falling for the temptress that claims to be Salazar Slytherin's sister." Pansy looked up at Ariane, who was numb with shock.
"Where is that? I didn't read that!" she snapped.
Pansy flipped to the first page of Rita Skeeter's article and pointed to a footnote. "Continued on pages 17 and 18. Lots of juicy tidbits on page 18." A truly evil look on her face, she continued to read. "Harry even seems to have broken away from his long-time friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley to chase this silver-haired snare of a girl, even following her to the clock tower where your reporter overheard this fascinating conversation."
Too angry even to flush, Ariane sprang off the couch and tore the paper out of Pansy's hands, wadded it, and flung it into the fire. It flared brightly, throwing Ariane's furious expression and Pansy's smug grin into sharp relief. All the Slytherins were watching them, anticipating a very good fight that would be a welcome distraction from their homework.
"Good thing that Daphne scalped you after Rita wrote that," Pansy said coolly, "otherwise she would have been able to point out how ugly you are as well. I suppose you were so hidden behind it before that she couldn't tell what you looked like."
"I suppose it's a really good thing I don't look like you, otherwise she'd be able to sense my grotesque face beneath any amount of hair." Ariane felt her cheeks beginning to go bright pink and really missed her hair. She supposed she looked quite ridiculous, a girl with tiny short curls and a glowing face. "Wait, do you really think I'm that unattractive?"
"I find you as lovely to look at as a dog's ass," Pansy smirked, "especially when you turn all red like you are now. Thinking about Harry, are you? Oh, look, she's getting redder..."
"If I'm so unattractive, then why did Draco blow you off to chase after me?" Ariane demanded. Draco stiffened on the couch, and Ariane was aware that she had been very stupid to bring him up at all. In for the wool, in for the sheep, she thought, and added, "He seems to find me, a dog's ass, much more attractive then you." Daphne was looking for something to hide behind. "Has he always been of such poor taste?"
Pansy made an ugly noise and shouted a spell that Ariane didn't know, but she'd been expecting an attack after her foolish statement. "Protego!" Ariane shouted at the same time, whipping her wand out of her pocket, and she felt Pansy's hex skim over her mouth like a faintly grasping hand. "I'm not Tuyet," she shouted at Pansy, "and that won't work on me!"
"Speaking of Tuyet, why do you even pretend to like her? We all know that you pushed her down the stairs so that she wouldn't be able to say that she saw that you let Potter into the common room."
"How could I have pushed her down if she fell on me?" Ariane asked tersely. "Shut up, Pansy, I don't need to listen to what you have to say."
Pansy looked triumphant. "No, I think it's you who should shut up, Ariane," she said sweetly. "Silencio semper."
Ariane couldn't block it in time; she hadn't expected Pansy to curse her then. For a moment she thought that it hadn't hit her, but as Ariane swore at herself for letting her guard down, she became aware of a very curious sensation in her throat. It felt like a belch, but when her mouth opened a tiny cloud of white mist left it. Ariane grabbed for it and her hand went straight through it, but as it continued to flow towards Pansy Ariane became aware that she didn't want Pansy to have that white mist. Fumbling in her pockets, she pulled out the flask and shooed the mist inside it, holding her thumb over the top.
She opened her mouth again, meaning to tear strips off Pansy, but when she made to speak nothing came out. The mist in the flask turned bright red, the color of anger, but Ariane made no sound. She took her thumb off the top of the flask for a moment, and her voice came out: "YOU PUG-FACED, ENVIOUS—" and then Ariane put her thumb back over it and the voice was silenced.
Ariane was caught between outrage, fear, and amusement. She put a hand to her neck and tried to speak, but nothing happened. Her throat vibrated in all the proper places, but her voice just wasn't there. It was in the flask that Pansy was eyeing covetously.
Without thinking Ariane turned and left the common room, still clutching her bottle full of voice. Once she was out in the hallway she realized that she had just walked back into a hallway that could possibly contain two fully-grown werewolves, one of which was likely to bite her and the other which may have gotten itself ripped into little pieces by the first. She stood shivering in the damp hallway for a moment, then decided she'd rather be bitten then go back in and face Pansy again. Ariane set off with her voice in a jar and her heart in her throat.
It seemed that God had finally smiled upon Ariane, because she didn't see or hear a werewolf the whole time she wandered the halls. By nine o'clock she was getting desperate: she couldn't find the Hospital Wing or the Headmaster's office, which were her preferred destinations. She wanted her voice back and she wanted to see Pansy do slave labor. Preferably floor scrubbing or something equally hard and dirty.
Ariane passed a set of armor that looked very familiar and paused to survey her location. Certain that she was only a few floors above the hospital wing now, Ariane took a staircase down. Not only did it not lead to the hospital wing, it led to a completely unfamiliar corridor carpeted in red.
Letting out a scream of frustration that nobody heard, Ariane kicked a marble pillar and then spent a good deal of time silently cursing everything that came to mind. It was actually a relief to shout it all out, and she spent the next fifteen minutes letting her thumb off the top of the flask so that her voice came out in bursts.
"AHH—RRGH—I hate—idiots—rot in hell," the jar said, and then Ariane stuffed one of her socks into the stopper, realizing that no matter how funny she found it, the werewolves could still hear the noise and she didn't know if they were still inside. Once even the echoes of her voice had faded, Ariane's thoughts began shouting inside her silent head.
Salazar. Pansy. Her father. The Gryffindor Curse. Harry. Tuyet. The girl whom Salazar had petrified. Laramy. Ron. Professor Connor, and the unknown werewolf who had saved her life.
Completely lost and overwhelmed by her thoughts, Ariane sat down in the hallway cross-legged and cried silently, occasionally blowing her nose on the hem of her robes. To her slight disgust, her nose still made a sick, snotty noise when she blew it. She guessed she'd been there for about a half-hour when she heard footsteps from far down the hall, along with a faint mental impression.
Ariane was beginning to recognize when her mind was intruding in other's minds—and vice versa. Each person had a different sort of feeling about him or her; sometimes it felt like a color, other times like a sound or even a smell. For example, Harry's mind had a sort of dark, busy feel to it, as though someone had turned out lights in a crowded room but some light was still streaming through the windows. Ron's was more like a sort of warm scratchy feel, like wool carpeting, and Draco's mind was like a metal maze: smooth yet twisted, full of the unexpected, yet everything seemed the same. Ariane hadn't been near Hermione enough to get a feel of what her mind was like, but Ariane knew that she had never been exposed to this mind before.
It was bright, vivid blue, and it felt fast, as though it were working at speeds unheard of to mere mortals. The man—for this mind was unalterably masculine—had an electric energy buzzing about him that made Ariane feel small, pale, and stupid in comparison.
"A natural Legilimens!" Dumbledore said as he came abreast of her. "You're very subtle, I hardly noticed you reading my thoughts."
Ariane sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve again, made to tell him that Pansy had cursed her, and then realized that she couldn't tell him because Pansy had cursed her. Instead she showed him the glass bottle with her sock stuffed in the top as she stood up. Dumbledore's eyebrows contracted, then he took it from her as delicately as he could, as though it were made of butterfly wings.
"Follow me, please," Dumbledore said quite firmly, and they walked along the corridor at a brisk pace. He was very angry about something, Ariane could tell, and she didn't feel a bit guilty about ratting Pansy out. As they walked she tried out her newly named Legilimency on him, doing as Harry had described: letting her mind relax and breathing with Dumbledore until she felt a little of that sparkling blue energy. She began to concentrate on what was making him angry and came up with a vague, distorted image: a cup still full of steaming liquid, the bright white moonlight, a young man with sandy hair and a downtrodden expression. Suddenly everything vanished, replaced by a slippery mental wall that blocked out all her attempts to penetrate it.
"Though I am pleased that you've learned how to control your mind, it is considered very rude to read other's private thoughts," Dumbledore said sharply, and Ariane blushed. "I was just off to find you anyway, but you should realize that it is considered very dangerous to roam in the halls after dark."
She didn't bother trying to defend herself, there was no point or means. Instead she listened as he talked, watching his silver-white hair gleaming on his back as they walked past various torches and lamps.
"As you probably have discovered, there is a werewolf wandering the halls tonight. Professor Connor is not safe, nor is she tame." Ariane tugged his sleeve and held up two fingers to indicate the second werewolf. Dumbledore nodded slightly but didn't explain the presence of another werewolf inside Hogwarts when there was in fact only one acknowledged. "I wrote to one of my acquaintances at the Ministry of Magic about you, and he sent back a document that I'd like to have you read, if you don't mind." He passed her a lengthy scroll.
Ariane shot a frustrated look at his back, but it did no good, so she began to read. It was, to all appearances, a letter.
Dumbledore:
Upon your request that I search my department for any clues about the purpose of the girl Ariane in the great scheme of time, I came upon this document from the personal records of Helga Hufflepuff. I took the liberty of translating it for you. The writing style is very distinctive, as is Helga's tendency to refer to herself in the third person.
I suspect that her personal scribe added certain details, such as the descriptions of Helga and Rowena, in order to make it a better story. This may have had three or more sources, judging by the references to things Salazar had done in the past and by the vivid descriptions of Rowena's advancing illness. There is enough information here to credit many authors, but it is all true as far as I can tell.
There was no doubt in Helga's mind: this was the end.
Helga was not a young woman: thick white streaks turned her red hair to a rusty iron-gray, and her jaw wasn't nearly as firm as it had been when she'd first come to Hogwarts. Deep lines carved by smiles surrounded her mouth and eyes, and her once skillful hands were veined and gnarled by arthritis. She had never been a beautiful woman, but the motherly kindness that radiated off her plump figure made people think that she was prettier than she really was. Now, however, the deep sadness in her blue-green eyes stripped all her loveliness away and left only an aging, wrinkled woman dressed in a rough black dress that would have fitted someone heavier.
The figure in the bed stirred, long eyelashes fluttering as the woman they belonged to made another effort to pull herself back from the brink. Rowena looked a great deal younger than Helga, and in fact she was only thirty-seven to Helga's fifty-one. The thick brown hair that she had taken such pride in had been shorn in an effort to stem the fever that ate away at her body, leaving only a few inches of brown waves around Rowena's deathly pale face. Her white, aristocratic complexion had the feel of a peeled apple: moist and hard. From where Helga sat she could feel the heat radiating off her friend's still form, as though Rowena had become a kiln in her final hours.
The younger woman's cracked lips parted. "Water," she whispered. "Gads, I've never been so thirsty."
Obligingly Helga reached for the water dipper and filled it, letting a few drops trickle down Rowena's throat, and then using the rest of it to sponge off her feverish face. "You've been sleeping for awhile," she said quietly.
"You're using that voice with me," Rowena lectured breathlessly. "I'm not dead yet, Helga." She attempted a weak smile, but it only opened a crack in her lip and she cringed halfheartedly. Wordlessly Helga blotted the blood with her sleeve. "How bad is it?"
"We weren't sure you'd wake up," Helga told her bluntly. "The fever looked likely to cook your brains."
"I doubt they would have been a tasty dish," Rowena made a noise that might have been a laugh, but it burbled horribly into the silence and Helga had to busy herself with the water pitcher to hide the tears that had sprung into her eyes.
Another silence stretched. Helga blotted the feverish sweat off Rowena's brow.
"Has Godric gone to find Salazar?" Rowena asked, looking back towards the head of the bed. "I thought he'd gone."
"He's gone to find him, yes," Helga said, not meeting Rowena's unsteady gaze. The truth was that Salazar had all but vanished into his workshop after his younger sister had been killed, and, after a fight with Godric about something that neither man would discuss with Rowena nor Helga, the youngest Founder had left Hogwarts for what looked like forever. "I don't know if he'll have success."
Rowena's long white fingers twitched as though they longed to twirl the ends of her hair. "I don't think he'll find him. Salazar's as good as dead."
"What makes you say that?" Helga asked sharply, taking Rowena's clammy, hot hand in hers. "Rowena, why do you say that?"
"His seven years were up before I ever got ill," she said vaguely. "The Furies came for him." Her eyelids fluttered, but Rowena managed to say awake.
"The Furies?" the older woman gasped. "I thought that they were only a legend."
Rowena shook her shorn head from side to side. "Real. Sent by the Maker to punish those who—"
"Murder," Helga whispered. "Who did Salazar kill?" She became aware that the hand she was holding onto was shaking. Rowena's teeth were chattering though she had been doused in ice-cold water, but it felt as though her body would char the sheets upon which it lay. Helga pulled another blanket over Rowena's legs, and the shivers slowed. "Who did Salazar kill, Rowena?" she asked softly.
"His father," Rowena said, her teeth rattling. "And Ariane."
If Helga hadn't been sitting she would have collapsed. As it was, she gripped the bedrail very tightly, seeing the strikingly thin and silver-haired girl crumple to the ground with an arrow stuck nearly all the way through her small ribcage. "He killed Ariane?" she asked hollowly. "Why? He loved that girl better than he loved life."
"It was an accident," Rowena gasped, one of her hands fluttering to her dry lips. "Water, please Helga. I've never been this thirsty." Obligingly Helga refilled the water dipper and held it so that Rowena could drink. "God, I wish this would end," she whispered to herself once she'd sated her thirst. There was nothing Helga could say to this.
"It was an accident? Whom was Salazar aiming for?" Helga asked casually, as though it were truly an accident in target practice. Deep inside her heart, the part that knew Salazar's true nature, she knew that Salazar had been trying to kill someone.
"Laramy," Rowena breathed, her voice so quiet that Helga had to lean in to hear it. "He wanted him dead, because Ariane loved him. The Furies didn't come for him until after he'd killed their father in an attempt to bring her back."
"Laramy...he was a student of yours, was he not?"
"Handsome fellow, had the pox when he was a child. Red hair."
Helga blinked, recalling a tall boy with a long nose. He had been apprenticed as a tanner before he'd come to Hogwarts, if her memory served her well. "He's still unmarried?"
"Foolish boy. He always clung closely to the fairy-tale perception of things."
"True love does exist, Rowena," Helga told her friend firmly, rehashing an argument that they'd had before. "I suppose that Laramy and Ariane will find each other in the next life if they were separated in this one—what?" For Rowena had begun to shake her head back and forth limply on the pillow.
"Water," she pleaded, her overlarge brown eyes unfocused. Once she had drunk, she began again. "Salazar tried to bring her back to life," she whispered. "When he left after her burial it was to find their father. He found him and killed him, but bought off the wrath of the Furies because he was using it to bring back an innocent..." Rowena trailed off, sweating profusely and tugging at the extra blanket Helga had placed over her legs.
Helga folded it down and sponged off the clammy white forehead tenderly. "Don't wear yourself out," she said quietly. "Godric will want to see you again."
"He won't get back in time," Rowena said bluntly, her normally brisk voice strangely faint. "I want to get Salazar's sins off my soul before I go."
Patting her white-red hair into place with hands that shook, Helga said calmly, "I'm listening."
"These secrets are yours now," her friend murmured. "To keep until you're dying or take them to your rest."
"I know. Tell me, Rowena." Gently she pushed back some unruly hair from Rowena's face. "Tell me."
"Salazar used his father's bones to raise Ariane from the dead," Rowena burst out, her feverish eyes tortured. "But something went wrong with the spell, and the Furies came for Salazar...Godric threw him from the school because he didn't want the Furies anywhere near Hogwarts. You know how fond Godric was of Ariane."
"I daresay he would have married her if Salazar would have let him," Helga said. "But then, I suppose, if she had to be married..."
"Godric petitioned for Ariane on Laramy's behalf." Her voice was a strangled gasp. "Salazar never forgave him for it." A single tear leaked out of Rowena's right eye, sliding over her eyelashes already glued together with sweat. "I'll never forgive myself for letting it happen."
Automatically Helga gathered up Rowena's rail-thin form and held her, letting her cry her few red-hot tears into the horrible black dress she was wearing. "It's not your fault," she said soothingly, rocking her long-time companion and friend. "Laramy wouldn't have asked for your consent." Rowena sobbed dryly, too weak to protest again Helga's 'mothering' her. "There was nothing you could have done to prevent it."
"I'll never forgive myself for being helpless, then," Rowena whispered hotly. "Those two boys need looking after. But now Salazar can't be looked after by any of us."
"What have the Furies done to him?" Helga said softly.
Rowena allowed Helga to blot her sweaty face before she struggled weakly back into bed. "They'll do to him what the law demands," she muttered under her breath. "He killed his sister. Therefore, he will be hung with weights and marched into a pool of water—"
"Where he'll be drowned until he is most certainly dead," Helga finished, shivering. "God have mercy on his soul."
"It's out of God's hands," Rowena breathed, her voice rasping. Without being asked Helga gave her more water, but Rowena could barely swallow it. The end was near, just as it had been for the village boy Rowena had nursed.
Helga had promised herself that she wouldn't cry, but in the face of her best friend's death she felt tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. Rowena saw them. "Don't cry, Helga dear," she said with an attempt at her usual wicked grin. "I've still got one more thing to say before I drift off."
"Do you?" She didn't think there was anything more to say about Godric or Salazar.
"Yes. Laramy knows that Salazar stopped Ariane from entering the Underworld."
"I thought he brought her back to life."
"He did, but now she sleeps in her tomb, the deepest of sleeps. She's only a hairsbreadth away from death." Rowena smiled once more. "She's even closer to death than I, but the difference between us is that I am getting closer to death, while Ariane draws slowly away. It could take a hundred years for her to regain full consciousness."
Helga thought about this. "So Laramy has no hope of getting her back?"
"He does now," Rowena said. "I worked a magic on him at his request, so that he would be reincarnated with each new generation until he and Ariane were united once more."
"Rowena Ravenclaw!" Helga cried in dismay, abandoning her bedside manner. "How dare you dabble in such black arts?"
"I dare it for love," Rowena replied, the crack in her lip opening again. "I believe in true love, Helga, despite all my book learning. It defies nature and magic and sometimes even God's will, but it does exist."
"I know that! But this is your immortal soul, Rowena!"
"Laramy would have tried it himself if I had not done it for him. Then he would have been damned without ever seeing Ariane again." Her eyes darted around wildly, her face no longer sweaty, her skin so parched that all the elasticity had gone. "I'm going, Helga."
"No, more water's what you need," Helga refused to believe that Rowena could be dying, and twisted to get the water bucket. "What will happen to Laramy? He won't have all his memories when he comes back, will he?"
"No," Rowena gasped, thick red blood running from the cracks in her lip. "But he'll know Ariane. And she'll know him. And they will get their chance for happiness."
Rowena's last words were the first recorded in the Hall of Prophecy.
They were also the first to be completely forgotten, apparently, until I found them a few days ago, after you wrote me. Concerning the girl Ariane, she is fated to find the reincarnated Laramy, and he to find her. He may not look like the Laramy she knew, and his name in all likelihood is not Laramy. If you require any additional information, please contact me. I am always happy to help.
Augustus Croaker, Department of Mysteries
Dumbledore stopped walking and Ariane ran into his back, feeling as cold as though she'd just come alive after her thousand years in the tomb.
Salazar had killed her. She let out a silent sob of disbelief that echoed faintly from within the jar, but it was her only outward sign of grief. Deep down, in her heart, she knew that Salazar had had something to do with it. She knew that he had wanted Laramy dead. It was the thought of her brother, lost in failure and despair, being chained to stones and wading into deeper and deeper water until his head vanished and he was pulled to the bottom, that was what made tears roll down her cheeks.
"I read the letter," Dumbledore said, his kind old face crinkled with sympathy. "I am very sorry that your brother wasn't as good a human being as you thought he was."
"So am I," Ariane whispered mutely, again the flask echoed her.
Author's Note: Ahh, more confusing time things to deal with. Well, time has so much to do with the next couple of chapters that they'll be confusing, but not to the point that people are scratching at their heads and going 'What the hell?'. That's my job, while I'm writing. Review if you don't mind.