"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts."
Films About Ghosts
Chapter 15: A Snake Sheds its Skin
Ariane left the Headmaster's office later that night with her voice, but with no desire to use it. Her face was quite pale, her eyes downcast and a little red. Her mind was ticking like the clock. In one hand she clutched several scraps of material, in the other a striped scarf in the colors of her new House.
"We do not make it a practice to move students from House to House," Dumbledore had said sternly. "In your case, however, since you were not Sorted by the Sorting Hat, we can make an exception." He reached for the tattered old hat that looked five times more ancient than he was.
"Why did you put me in Slytherin?" Ariane remembered asking him listlessly, her voice still muffled and hoarse from its trip from her body. "Because I'm Salazar's sister?"
"No," Dumbledore had sighed. "It was because Severus wanted to keep an eye on you. I must confess that I wish he had allowed himself to do a better job."
Ariane frowned slightly as she paused halfway up a flight of stairs. What on earth had Dumbledore been on about? Snape had never shown her anything but polite dislike from the moment they had met. Well, occasionally he had showered her with impolite dislike, but he had never let on that he was trying to look after her. He hadn't really saved her from Pansy's wrath, nor from her own idiocy in provoking it. Then again, maybe nobody could have prevented what had happened.
Ariane continued walking, rubbing her thumb along the warm wool scarf, wondering what the Slytherins would be whispering among themselves when she wasn't sitting with them tomorrow morning. They would probably make Pansy the victim and herself the coward—for even among Slytherins who would save their own skin first, a coward was looked down upon.
"Good evening, Ariane."
She jumped in surpirse and looked up into Professor McGonagall's stern face. The Transfiguration Professor looked both irritated and sympathetic, and her eyes kept wandering up and down the halls, as though she were waiting for someone.
"Hello," she said shyly, not sure what she should say.
"You're in my House now," she said, "and you are also under my protection. The fact that you chose to wander about looking for the Gryffindor Common Room when there is an unsafe werewolf wandering about is rather distressing to me. Do you think to prove your bravery?" Her gray eyes behind their square spectacles narrowed, surveying the slight girl before her anew.
"I forgot," Ariane said numbly. "I thought they had gone outside."
"Well, from what the Headmaster tells me your are extraordinarily lucky that Remus Lupin was at Hogwarts tonight. He's the second werewolf," McGonagall explained, seeing Ariane's confusion. "And he, also very luckily for you, remembered to take the potion that makes him safe. Professor Connor did not." Her thin mouth tightened, and it was clear she was restraining her criticisms of her fellow professor.
Ariane didn't have any response to that. She was drained emotionally and physically, and all she wanted was to go to bed and not wake up for another ten centuries. Professor McGonagall glanced down the hallway again. "Follow me." Ariane followed her up four more flights of stairs and along a very open, cheerful corridor lined with all sorts of paintings. It was in front of one of these paintings that they halted: a fat woman wearing pink satin, her bulbous face very cheerful. Ariane recognized her.
"Patience?" she asked, stunned even through all her weariness. "What're you doing here?" Godric's middle daughter, who didn't have the dark beauty of her elder sister Elaine nor the blonde charm of her younger sister Winifred, had long resigned herself to being a maiden cook. Whether she had spent more time eating or cooking was debatable, but she had always been very nice. To be truthful, Ariane had last seen Patience when she was ten and about a hundred and ninety pounds lighter, but some people are easily recognizable.
"Guarding the Gryffindor tower, dearie," she said kindly. "You'll be wanting in, then?"
"The password applies to Ariane as well," McGonagall said firmly. "It's 'scrabble'." The Fat Lady swung open obligingly, waved at Ariane as the girl stepped inside a round room that had changed very little from the last time she'd been in it. It had changed, though, when she had first stood on the ground that it was built on a thousand years before.
"I'll put the girl's dormitories on the right," Godric said half to himself. Ariane was perched on a boulder that had not yet been removed from the grassy ground where Godric was going to build his house. "And the boy's on the left. What do you think of that?"
"Wouldn't it save space to have them together?" Ariane asked, picking a loose thread from the hem of her skirt. "Wouldn't it be more practical?"
Godric laughed heartily. "You are still too young to understand the siren call that is women to men," he muttered cryptically to himself. Ariane ignored this as she did most of the things Godric muttered about. He was always talking about men and women in ways she didn't understand. Instead she stood and jumped off the rock in one smooth motion and landed crouching in the grass. Godric's eyes followed her but he didn't make a move to stop her from jumping, as Salazar would have.
That was probably the one thing that stopped a seven-year-old Ariane from disliking Godric entirely. He gave her some freedom to do whatever she liked.
She pushed her thick silver plait over her shoulder and climbed up the low stone wall that marked the round boundaries, walking around and around it until she knew exactly how big around the roundhouse would be: three hundred and twenty-seven of her steps.
"Would you like to live in my House, Ariane?" Godric asked from the center of the circle. "I think you would like the other students."
"I must stay with my brother," she said placidly, ignoring the panic rising. He wanted to take her away from Salazar!
Godric muttered to himself again, Ariane just catching it. "How could she think that she's anything like her ass of a brother?"
"Aren't you and Salazar friends?" she asked.
"Yes, but I know what he is. He's an ass, stubborn and ambitious. I'm just as stubborn, but I've not got the ambition, just the courage to stand up to him. I'm more of an angry old badger."
This made no sense. Ariane ignored it and began once more to walk around the low wall.
Ariane blinked hard and snapped out of her memory into a new one. A cold draft crept up the back of her shorn scalp as she stood in front of an assorted crowd of Gryffindors, some her age or older, quite a few younger. They stared horribly, their eyes creeping from the hems of her robes—still trimmed in green and silver—to the top of her short cloud of curls. A look of iron dislike settled on all their faces. She was a Slytherin, and to have a Slytherin in the Gryffindor common room was nothing short of sacrilege.
"This is Ariane Somerled," Professor McGonagall said from behind Ariane, settling a firm, ringless hand on her shoulder. "When she first came to Hogwarts she was placed in Slytherin by the advice of one of the staff. Today, however, she was sorted by the Sorting hat into Gryffindor, and here she will remain until graduation. I believe her things have already been moved into the sixth-year dormitories." At this statement, two girls that Ariane recognized from her Herbology classes began to whisper to one another behind their hands. McGonagall glared and they stopped at once, but gave each other very significant looks.
"Despite her origin, I expect her to be treated the same as any other Gryffindor. Anyone who bothers her will answer to me, and if she bothers anyone she'll answer to me," McGonagall proclaimed sternly. "Good night."
Ariane felt the draft-full force as Professor McGonagall exited the common room, leaving her alone in the center of the room. Whispers began around the room until Ariane felt like a bare tree in the middle of a grassy plain, with the wind whistling around her lonely form.
"Ariane!"
She turned and saw Hermione, who had just cleared away a pile of books so that she was visible, sitting hunched over at a fireside table. Her bushy brown hair caught the firelight and for a moment she looked as warm and friendly as Helga Hufflepuff. Hermione beckoned Ariane over and she came, sitting limply in the abandoned chair next to the Gryffindor girl. The rest of the Gryffindors were still whispering, a few sneaking up to their dormitories to tell classmates already in bed that there was a Slytherin in the common room. Others just stared at her until Ariane went red again and looked at the floor.
"Ignore them," Hermione instructed. "So you're a Gryffindor now?" Ariane nodded mutely, still looking at the floor and clutching her red- and gold-striped scarf in a shaking hand. "What happened?" Ariane shook her head, and, to her intense shame, blinked back tears. Hermione patted her warmly on the arm, her brown eyes wide with concern and held-back interest. "Would you like me to show you where you're sleeping?" Ariane nodded again, resolutely wiped her nose on her sleeve, and stood up with the bushy-haired prefect.
They walked towards the right-hand staircase and took it upwards, ignoring the hissing whispers from the two other girls that would be in their dormitory.
"Don't worry about Parvati and Lavender," Hermione said once they were out of earshot. "They come off as rude and gossipy but really they're quite nice. I'm sure they'll like you once they get to know you."
"I hope so," Ariane muttered dryly as they turned into the dormitory marked 'Sixth Years'. It was round and red, with thick plush carpeting and four four-poster beds with thick velvet drapes. The windows were narrow, deep set, and looked out towards the Forbidden Forest, which was rather leafless already. It was nearly October, Ariane remembered, and those trees had always lost their leaves early.
"I sleep over here," Hermione said, pointing to the bed farthest to the right, which was surrounded by a lot books and an occasional ball of yarn. "And this must be your bed because it's new." She walked over to the bed on the far left, which indeed had a small box with all of Ariane's things in it placed on the exact center of the quilt and her trunk pushed up against the foot of the bed. "Oh look, someone's brought up all your things."
Ariane reached into the box and pulled out, among other things, her school bag, books, a handful of mostly bent quills, three bottles of ink, and a smoothly carved wooden flute. She picked up the flute with trembling hands, feeling the scratches and small nicks it had picked up from its journey along the underground river and the lakebed. Raising it to her lips almost automatically, she blew lightly so that the pure note came out wispy and insubstantial, like the sigh of a ghost.
It was almost like a release, after all that time in Dumbledore's office trying not to cry, and all the Gryffindors staring at her as though she were an alien, and the fresh knowledge that the scar she bore and her death had both been caused by the one of the only two men in the world that she had loved. The only other man that she had ever loved was half-gone, trapped in a new body and she feared that she would never see him again.
She sank down on the bed and sobbed heavily, her whole body shaking. Ariane clasped her hands over her face as though she could veil her hysterics, but there wasn't any hiding from Hermione. The bushy haired girl made a sympathetic noise and sat down on the bed, patting Ariane on the shoulder.
"It must have been terrible for you," she said compassionately. "Will you be all right?"
Ariane meant to nod, but another sob bubbled out of her throat. Hermione put her arms around her and hugged her tightly. For a moment, Ariane relaxed, letting the other girl support her.
There was a bang on the front door that shook the house. The herbs that hung drying from the rafters trembled, sending a sweet herbal scent over the family within. The whir of the spinning wheel slowed as the woman operating it stopped treading on the pedal. On the one table a wand sat—it belonged to the woman. Instinctively she reached over and swept it out of sight, behind the earthenware pots partially full of grain and wine.
Ariane sat on a pallet of blankets, surrounded by herbs and dyes, playing a game with Salazar, who looked strangely young. He must have been barely nine years old. A young woman with a pale oval face and masses of black curls bound back with a brightly colored ribbon stood up from her spinning wheel, stilling its motion with her hand as she did so. Her face was also strangely familiar because it was quite a lot like Ariane's, thin and white and graced with wide purple eyes. Her dress, the same vivid blue as her hair ribbon, swirled around her as she strode over to her son and daughter.
"Salazar, you must do as I say," Arsinoë ordered in a low voice. "Take Ariane and hide under the bed. I must go with these men for a short time, but I'll be back as soon as I've heard them out. Go!" She brushed a kiss across Salazar's dark and brooding forehead, smoothed Ariane's downy silver curls, and stalked over to the door.
"Hello, good sirs," she said in musical tones. Salazar seized Ariane and pulled a woolen blanket over their heads. It was hot and close, and she struggled to get away. Salazar was seven hears older and stronger, so he held her fast.
"You've been accused of witchcraft, Mistress Arsinoë," a rough male voice said. He sounded bashful, and well he might. Arsinoë had that effect on men of all ages, though she was nearly twenty-five and well past her prime. There were men as old as fifty and boys as young as fifteen that made a point to walk by their house and ask if Mistress Arsinoë needed anything done in hopes of winning the fair lady's favors.
"I am no witch, sir," she said with royal dismay.
"That's for the priest to decide, begging your pardon." Arsinoë stepped outside and closed the door.
Salazar began to cry silently under the blanket. Ariane wiped the tears off his cheeks with her chubby two-year-old hands and kissed his cheek, as she had seen their mother do hundreds of times. He hugged her so tightly that she squeaked in dismay.
A break in the memory, and then an ungodly scream split the air, the scream of a woman who is terrified and in pain. Interspersed with those shrieks were the low moaning howls of a boy as he fought the goodwife who held him fast, stopping him from going to the aid of his mother. Ariane sucked her thumb miserably, not understanding, one fat tear rolling down her cheek.
Ariane came to herself and jumped away from Hermione. "I'm sorry!" she cried, rubbing her face dry with her sleeve. "I'm so, so very sorry!"
Hermione was dead white. "Was that your mother?" she whispered. "Arsinoë?" She was rubbing her arms as though she were cold, though the room was warm. "Why did they kill her?"
"She was a witch," Ariane replied. "Hermione, I'm sorry."
"It's all right," she said quietly. "Harry told me that this sometimes happens when he's around you. I understand why he looked so shell-shocked after you told him about life before you came here." Hermione made to pat her on the shoulder, but apparently thought better of it and returned her hands to her lap.
"I won't let it happen again," Ariane promised, putting her things back in the box and setting it on her bedside table. "I'll be careful."
Hermione laughed. "Don't worry about it. It was rather educational, in a way." Ariane stared at her incredulously then began to giggle helplessly. She blew her nose and felt a bit better.
Apart from a few mishaps, settling in to her new House wasn't as horrible as Ariane had feared. Just as Hermione had said, Parvati and Lavender were very nice—a lot like Daphne, really. Lavender was the quieter of the two, with mouse-brown eyebrows and luminous bleached blonde hair that was fake and yet looked almost natural on her. Parvati was very pretty, but also very noisy and more than a little irritating sometimes.
For the first two weeks the only people who would sit anywhere near Ariane at the Gryffindor table were Ron, Hermione, Harry, and sometimes Ron's younger sister Ginny.
Ariane didn't mind that, but her first class with Tuyet was a blow. Tuyet didn't speak to her at all, and when they had to partner up to grade each other's vampire essays Tuyet deliberately ignored Ariane and partnered with a Ravenclaw. The rest of Slytherin House was worse. Any time Ariane passed a student in green and silver, she had to watch out. She was tripped, shoved, elbowed, hexed, hissed at, and pinched quite frequently. Only Daphne and Tuyet refrained from doing these things, and they wouldn't talk to her or make eye contact. Ariane understood their sudden change: if they showed that they still liked Ariane despite her new red and gold colors, they would be ostracized from Slytherin. She wasn't sure she could forgive them, nor was she sure if she could ever really be angry with them.
After a month, people seemed to get used to the idea that Ariane had been placed in Slytherin by mistake. She didn't attract as much negative attention in the halls or in classes, but it looked like Slytherin House would never forgive her. Snape in particular treated Ariane as badly as he treated the other Gryffindors if not worse: she had taken her place with Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom as the most loathed students in Potions class.
By the time winter had started, Ariane was comfortable among the Gryffindors. She had no close friends besides Harry, Ron, and Hermione, but she didn't mind. Her acquaintances with most of the other students suited her well, and she had enough on her plate with schoolwork and memories without a large social circle.
Another worry on Ariane's mind as December began was about the prophecy Rowena had made before she had died. "They will get their chance for happiness," Rowena had predicted, and it must be true. Ariane just wanted to know where and when she would find Laramy. She wanted to know who it would be, because Rowena had said that Laramy wouldn't look the same. What if Laramy was someone at Hogwarts? What if he was in another country? What if she couldn't find him?
A strange thing happened just before the Christmas holidays that fanned the fire of Ariane's interest. She had been studying her Herbology text before bed, sitting on her bed in her pajamas, when she felt a touch on her shoulder. Surprised, she jerked away: Ariane was reluctant to let anyone touch her after what had happened her first night in Gryffindor to Hermione. Parvati stood at the side of her bed in her pale pink nightdress, her face strangely blank.
"You'll find his love before New Years, Ariane," she said in an unreal voice, her dark eyes staring into a beyond. Ariane blinked dumbly at her like a fish. The voice that had come out of Parvati's mouth was unmistakably Rowena's.
"Parvati?" she asked helplessly. "Hello?"
The near-black eyes snapped back into focus. "Oh my god!" Parvati whispered. "Did I just prophesize something?" Her face lit up. "Oh my god! I'm really a Seer!" she cried. "What did I say?"
Ariane repeated it for her. "I don't know what it meant," she lied.
"But it's quite romantic, isn't it?" Parvati sighed. "Oh, just wait until Professor Trelawney hears that I made a real prediction!" And she raced out of the room in her nightdress, positively glowing with joy.
"Hey Ariane!"
Ariane paused with her quill at the top of the list to stay at Hogwarts for the Christmas holiday. So far no one had put his or her name down; hers would be the very first. Ron was running towards her across the common room, only tripping himself twice. "What?" she asked curiously.
"We were wondering—that is to say, Harry and Hermione and me—if you wanted to come to my house for Christmas. Seeing as you haven't got any relatives or anything," Ron said awkwardly.
"And you shouldn't be all alone on Christmas," Hermione said from behind Ron.
"Would you like to come?" Ron said. "It'll be a bit crowded because all my brothers'll be there, and loud—"
"I'd love to!" Ariane exclaimed, barely restraining herself from hugging him. "Thank you so much."
Ron's ears went pink and he muttered something about how it wasn't any trouble as he extricated himself from her grip. Harry grinned at Ron's embarrassment and Hermione smiled in a way that made Ariane sure that she was the one who had suggested Ron invite her in the first place.
"But I haven't got you all any presents!" Ariane remembered.
"It's all right," Hermione reassured her, "We're off to Hogsmeade this weekend, you can get some things there."
Author's Note: Ha it lives. That excites me terribly. Not that you could tell by my punctuation. Chapter 16 was actually completed before I finished this chapter and is being hacked to bits by my editor as I type this. This chapter did not go through the usual editing process that most of my chapters go though, so if there are any really grievous errors I hope you'll let them slide. Chapter 16 should be up in less than a week.
As always, reviews are my candy. Please review.