"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts."
Films About GhostsChapter 17:
Branches tore at her clothes as she ran: stupid clothes for running, a long dress and a bodice that was too tight to breathe properly in. Sharp pains flared on her scalp when her long hair got snagged on branches, but she couldn't stop running. If she stopped, they would catch her.
Abruptly Ariane became aware of someone else running alongside her, about ten feet away. He or she was taller, had longer legs, and they couldn't have been running flat out or they would have outstripped Ariane easily. Were they waiting for her or playing with her? She tried to look through the brush and see their face, but it was no good: she couldn't watch the other person and keeping running as fast as she had to. Ariane gasped another ragged breath and pushed herself harder. Her whole lower body felt numb; she couldn't run this way for much longer.
There was a ghastly scream, the same horrible dying-animal scream Ariane had heard before, but this time it had words:
"Don't take me! I didn't do it! I didn't kill him! Oh God, be merciful!"
Something that wasn't human laughed, and the scream began again, longer than before. Ariane ran faster than she had ever known she could, aware that now there were people coming up behind her in the woods. Her face burnt as sweat ran through her scratches.
A thought jolted through her head: Where was Harry?
Ariane sat up in bed, shaking ferociously. She felt as though she were going to be sick, and icy sweat had soaked her nightshirt to her body. Gulping for air, she staggered over to the window and opened it outwards, feeling the freezing air bathe her sweaty face and fill her burning lungs. She couldn't deal with these nightmares, not when she didn't know if they were really from her past or not.
It was very early in the morning or very late at night. The sky was pitch black except for a tiny strip of dark violet along the eastern horizon where, in several hours, the sun would make an appearance. Ariane closed the window, feeling much better, and pressed her sweaty, matted hair away from her face. She avoided her rumpled bed and instead grabbed a comb from Ginny's night table, meaning to go downstairs and sit by the fire and think a bit while she untangled her hair. Silently Ariane pulled on a pair of trousers under her nightshirt (who's they were, nobody knew—the three girls had spent nearly all the Christmas holiday thus far wandering about in one another's clothing) and crept down the creaking stairs.
The living room/kitchen/dining room downstairs of the Burrow were fairly deserted: only one person was sleeping down here because a lot of people had gone to stay with their relatives Christmas evening. Ariane peered down at the person curled in the old armchair and realized that it was Percy; the brother that Ron had thought wouldn't show up for Christmas. From the brief, mostly negative sentiments from other Weasleys and Harry, Ariane knew that Percy was quite ambitious and a workaholic.
He didn't look like such a workaholic when he was tucked in an old quilt, his horn-rimmed glasses pushed onto his forehead because he'd forgotten to take them off before going to sleep. He looked much younger without his glasses on, and much less serious when he was asleep. The nosepiece was digging into his face just beneath his dark red curls. Ariane tucked the comb into her back pocket and reached forward to take off his glasses without really considering her actions.
Percy awoke with a start when her fingers brushed his temples, unfolding his long legs and arms all at once and nearly knocking himself out of the chair. "Who's there?" he asked in a panicked voice, hunting about blindly for the glasses that Ariane held in her hands.
"Here," she said, mortified, her face burning scarlet. Ariane wouldn't have been surprised if she were glowing in the dark. "I'm sorry, they just looked so uncomfortable."
Percy took them uncertainly from her hands, his bluish eyes unfocused. "Eh? What's that?" he queried, politely confused.
"Your glasses, they were digging in to your face. I didn't mean to wake you," Ariane apologized. "I'm Ariane, by the way. You met me—"
"Yesterday, yes, I know. Why are you awake?" Percy made an effort to smooth his sleep-riled hair and lifted his glasses again to scrub at his eyes. "What time is it?"
"It's early," Ariane told him. "And I'm awake...well, because I woke up."
Even in the dark, Percy looked skeptical. He straightened the neck of his sweater and stretched his arms out, working out the kinks. Though he was obviously a bookish type, there were still lean muscles in his forearms that stretched fascinatingly. He looked strong. Ariane realized that she was staring and looked away, digging the comb out of her pocket so that she could begin untangling her hair. She could feel Percy watching her as she crossed to the raised brick hearth and arranged herself on it, pulling a section of silver curls over her shoulder to start on.
"Was it a nightmare?" Percy asked.
Ariane started and accidentally pulled hard on a knot. "Ouch! Well, to be honest, it was," she confessed. "I have them a lot, so it's not really a big deal."
"Oh. What was it about?" he inquired, pulling his legs onto the chair so that he could sit cross-legged. "Falling?"
She pursed her lips and shook her head, contemplating whether she should tell him the truth or not. Though they didn't seem to have problems talking to one another, Ariane still realized that she knew very little of Percy. Maybe it was because it was so dark, and she couldn't really see his face in the dim firelight, but Ariane told him.
"I have dreams that I'm running," she began. "Through a wood. I don't know if someone's chasing me—sometimes there are people with hoods on, sometimes not—and there's someone else running next to me. I don't know if I'm running away from the hooded people or from the people behind." She paused, the comb stuck in a tangle.
"Go on," Percy said in a low voice, clearly fascinated.
"Behind me—I don't know what's happening. There's a man, and he's screaming horribly. It's like the noise a dying animal makes, like a rabbit when a hawk comes. Almost a squeal." Ariane shivered, lost in the remembered sound. "He's begging not to be taken."
"Taken by who?"
"I haven't got an idea," she told him, jerking the comb to the ends of her hair. "Damn it all. Sorry."
"Here," Percy said, unfolding his legs and coming over to her. "Let me help."
She paused uncertainly. It was one thing to let Hermione or Harry touch her, they understood what might happen if they did. It was another thing to let some other strange boy—young man, really—sit close and comb her hair. What if he picked up a memory? Would she be able to explain it to him? Another thought, so random that Ariane couldn't believe it even occurred to her, crossed her mind: what if she drove him away? She wanted to get to know Percy more than she'd ever wanted to know anyone before. Anyone except—but no, that wasn't possible.
Percy misunderstood her hesitation. "It's all right," he reassured her. "I used to help Ginny with hers when she was younger. I'm pretty good at it, if I do say so myself."
His pompous tone made her laugh, and that if nothing else prompted her to hand over the comb to him. He sat down behind her and began to gently work the teeth of the comb through her sleep-matted hair. Percy hadn't been lying: he was good at combing hair. It didn't hurt at all. Ariane relaxed.
Meanwhile, Percy was absolutely thrilled, though he took great pains to conceal it. He was sitting next to her, he was touching that gorgeous hair—not so gorgeous now, because she had managed to twirl it into all sorts of impossible knots—he was talking to her! If only she would turn around and say—maybe with one of those lovely smiles—"Percy, I love you," he thought he might be able to die happy.
She turned her head so that he could see her delicate profile and her long eyelashes, highlighted by the fire. "What is it you do, Percy?" she asked. "I know that you work at the Ministry, but that's rather a broad scope of careers." A shadow of a smile flickered across her mouth, though her eyes were still looking into the distance.
"Right now I'm an assistant to the Minister of Magic," Percy began, and then paused. If anyone else had asked him what he did, he could have gone on for hours expounding on how important a position he'd been given only three years out of Hogwarts, and how much he liked his new boss, and how hard he worked to improve his position in the world. With Ariane it seemed obnoxious. Maybe it was obnoxious. Whatever the reason, he didn't feel that it was worthy enough to take up her time. "It's nothing really, just a desk job."
"Do you like it?"
"I like that it pays fairly well," Percy confessed frankly. "I would rather be the Minister of Magic." But, he added silently, I would gladly give up any chance of being the Minister if it meant that I would be able to comb your hair every morning.
His bald statement startled a laugh out of Ariane. "You aim high," she observed, shifting a little so that she was more comfortable. "Wouldn't the responsibility be a headache?"
"I don't know. I like having responsibilities, I suppose. It's more fun to worry after other people than it is to worry after myself all the time." He almost-accidentally ran a finger down the soft skin on the back of her neck as he was separating another section of silver hair to comb. It was a little like receiving an electric shock. To take him mind off it, he swallowed hard and then asked, "So how do you like Hogwarts? What's your favorite class?"
Ariane shrugged. "I like Hogwarts. It's been a little awkward of late, because of me switching from Slytherin to Gryffindor. As you might expect that didn't make me many friends." She laughed a bit bitterly. "But I suppose I like it all the same. Your sister and Hermione kind of adopted me when I first got into Gryffindor because nobody else would talk to me."
"Their loss." Ariane laughed again, tucking one of the silky-smooth sections of her hair behind her ear. Percy fought the urge to grab her hand and memorize its feel, the shape of it, the creases in her palms. Mentally growling at himself, Percy shook his head to clear it. He was beginning to find these random desires to commit all that was Ariane to memory rather irritating. It was like trying to walk a dog on a lead when the stupid creature keeps trying to dive into the road or wrap its lead around a tree. "So which class do you like best? I bet its not Potions."
Ariane rolled her eyes, a gesture she must have picked up from Ginny. It didn't look natural when she did it. "Professor Snape has gone from polite hatred to open loathing of every aspect of my being in the past few months," she growled, a burr of irritation in her voice. "I can't believe Dumbledore lets that sadistic man teach, let alone head up an entire House. Salazar Slytherin would give birth if he knew that his House was being headed up by that git." She looked a little surprised at herself and fell silent, looking down into her lap and slumping a bit so that she was leaning against his knees.
Percy wisely decided to change the subject. "So...I don't know. Have you got a boyfriend?" The moment the words left his lips he cringed, nearly jerking on the comb. If she has a boyfriend, I'll hunt him down, he promised himself, then laughed inwardly at his own idiocy. If she has a boyfriend, it's none of my business. But he knew that he would be crushed if she said yes.
Ariane glanced back at him and half-smiled in a confused way. "No, I haven't got a boyfriend," she said, the irritation replaced with something like amusement. "Why?"
"I don't even know why I asked that," Percy berated himself aloud for her benefit even while his heart leaped, "But I just thought—that since you're here with Harry and Ron, that maybe one of them..."
"Harry and Ron? No way. Ron's been helplessly in love with Hermione for years, and Harry...Harry's just Harry. He doesn't have room in his life for a girlfriend." She flinched guiltily. "Don't tell Ron that I told you. Nobody's supposed to know that he likes Hermione as more than a friend."
"I won't breathe a word," Percy promised. He was beginning to run out of hair to comb in the back of her head. "Turn a bit, won't you? I can't reach the bits in front." For a tense moment he didn't think she would, but then she propelled herself around with her hands so that her back was to the fire. He had full access to the left side of her hair, which was still delightfully tangled. It would take him a good half-hour to get through her hair if the right side was still this way.
Ariane wasn't sure why she was sitting there; letting someone she had met yesterday run his hands through her hair. Sure, he was wonderfully good at it, but she wondered why she didn't feel awkward at all. If she thought hard about this problem, she felt as though she had known Percy for years. The thing was, she wasn't sure how she would have known him—or could have known him.
She was so lost in thought that at first she didn't notice the light touch on the side of her face. It was Percy, tracing a delicate line down her jaw with one hand as his other hand worked diligently away at a tangle by her left ear. His finger traveled back up, lingered for a moment in the curve of her ear, and then went back to her hair, so smoothly that Ariane wondered for a moment if she'd imagined it. If it weren't for the tingling awareness of him that had suddenly swept her being, she would have brushed it off as a fancy. She sat very still, unsure of what to do. Would it be entirely too forward to request him to do it again? Ariane couldn't think of anything to say.
Percy leaned in closer so that he could see the workings of a difficult knot, face intent. Behind his glasses, his eyes were half-squinted in concentration, eyes caught halfway between blue and green. They reminded her of the sea.
Once again Percy's hand seemed to separate itself from the rest of him and began an agonizingly slow path from her temple down her jaw. This time his fingers dallied a bit on her neck, and unconsciously she tilted her head to allow him better access. After a moment Percy moved back up to her ear, tracing one finger behind it so lightly that Ariane thought all her hair must be standing on end. It was an indescribably perfect sensation, something she'd felt before...
Ariane turned to face him, and he jumped away as though afraid he had frightened her. "Wait," she requested, catching him around the wrist. For a moment she wasn't sure how to phrase her request, then it just leaped out of her, as brazen as she'd even been.
"Would it be terribly forward," she began nervously, licking her lips, "if I asked you to kiss me?" Percy opened his mouth in surprise, the firelight reflecting off his glasses so that she couldn't read his expression. "Wait, there's more of a reason why I'm asking this. A girl in my dormitory made a prophecy about me, that I would find the person that I loved before New Years, and I think it might be you—and this is the only way I know how to be sure that it's really you," she finished lamely.
"That you loved? The past tense?" he asked softly. They were sitting so close together that she could almost feel his voice in waves through the warm air.
"It's hard to explain. It's almost like a previous life that I still have memories of...and there was this boy, and I loved him, and then I guess I must have died or something because for some reason we were separated for a really, really long time." Ariane felt herself blush and looked away. "Like lifetimes long. And Parvati told me that we would find each other again really soon, almost like we were reincarnated or something. Is this sounding insane to you?" she asked plaintively. "I think I've stopped making sense."
Percy shook his head slowly from side to side, frowning a little. Ariane hoped that the frown wasn't for her. "You've just put everything I've felt in the past day or so into words nearly perfectly."
"I have?" she inquired, confused.
"Yes. When I met you yesterday, it was a bit like we were being reintroduced—but we've never met before, I was certain of it. Your version makes sense, you know." His lips curved into a smile. "I suppose you want to make sure?" he teased with mock-seriousness.
Ariane smiled, still a little red in the face. "I suppose," she said after a mock-deliberation. "But I think that you'd be rather disappointed if I had said no." She felt silly, as though her brain had been infested with moths.
Percy laughed under his breath, then, hesitantly, as though were afraid she might shatter, he put his hands on her shoulders and lowered his face down to hers. Ariane stared for a moment into sea-green eyes with red eyelashes, but then she closed her eyes so that she wouldn't feel so self-conscious sitting on a hearth in one of her friend's houses with his older brother, kissing of all things. After a few seconds exchanging nervous, awkward pecks, they both relaxed a bit. When Percy tried to deepen the kiss, Ariane let him, just as she had many years ago let Laramy do when they lay alone together in the grass, stargazing.
After a few minutes they broke off to breathe properly.
"So," Percy asked in a breathless voice that didn't lack irony, "Have you decided?"
"Don't be a fool," she grinned up at him giddily, playfully swatting his arm. "As if you didn't know."
He reached out and pushed her hair out of her face. "All my careful handiwork," he mourned with a grin on his lips. "I've ruined it."
Ariane lifted up a tangled strand and let it fall. "Well, there'll be other times when keeping it looking nice is a priority."
"This isn't one of those times?"
"I should say not!"
The mantle clock struck five after a short time and startled them apart again. Percy swore under his breath when he looked at the time.
"What?" Ariane asked curiously, twirling her hair into a knot and thrusting a few hairpins that she'd found in her trousers into it. "Something the matter?"
"No—well, sort of," he grumbled, half to himself. "It's just that I'm supposed to go into work today and for the first time in my entire life I have a reason that I don't want to go." Percy ran his hands through his coppery curls, looking cross and more than a little younger than he was.
"Don't you get a Christmas holiday?" Ariane jumped off the mantle so that she could peer up at the clock. "It's only five in the morning!"
"I'm usually in my office by six," Percy confessed. "And yesterday was my Christmas holiday."
"That's quite early."
"I don't get paid if I don't work. I don't advance, either." He carefully reached out and tucked one long silver ringlet behind her ear, stealing another caress as he did. It was taking a lot of self-discipline to make himself let go.
Ariane smiled cheekily and reached up both hands to straighten his glasses. "You look a little too tousled for the office," she informed him. When she went to lower her hands, Percy impulsively grabbed one and kissed it in a thoroughly thespian way. The inner part of him that was still deadly serious rolled its eyes.
"Percy?"
They leaped apart. By the time Mrs. Weasley had lit the lamps with her wand, Percy was fixing his wiry copper hair in the mirror and Ariane was sitting in the armchair across the room holding a book she'd seized from the side table.
"Aren't you two up a bit early?" she asked, her eyes still sleep-blurred. "I was just about to start breakfast for Kingsley and Remus, but if you two want some...?"
"I'm actually not very hungry, Mrs. Weasley, but do you need any help?" Ariane offered, putting the book back on the side table and stretching out her legs as though she'd been sitting there for hours.
"That would be lovely, dear. Percy, I don't suppose you have to work today?"
Percy looked genuinely disappointed when he said, "Yes, Mother. I'm supposed to be in the office by six." His mother smiled at him fondly as he straightened his sweater again and tried halfheartedly to smooth the creases out of his pants.
Mrs. Weasley clucked to herself as Ariane followed her into the kitchen. "Such a good boy," she said, "Maybe just a bit too in love with his job, though."
"Maybe one day he'll find something else that he loves," Ariane replied cautiously, unsure if Mrs. Weasley had been talking to her.
The kindly woman laughed and shook her head. "I'm afraid not, dear. Percy loves his career. Would you mind mixing up some eggs for me?"
Harry, Ron, Fred, and George were next down the stairs at six-thirty. Percy had left for work forty-five minutes earlier, and Ariane was fighting a sense of depression that was actually quite irritating. She had been just fine yesterday morning; she had never been miserable because of a boy like Parvati or Lavender or Hermione. Granted, she was pretty sure that this was the boy. Laramy. Just as Rowena and Parvati had predicted. Weird.
But, Ariane argued to herself as she picked at her toast and marmalade, Percy wasn't at all what she'd expected. She'd expected a copy of Laramy transplanted into the 20th century, not one of her friend's estranged older brothers. Though he did have Laramy's green-blue eyes, she conceded, and when they had kissed—it was like a fairy tale. How very corny, Ariane commented mentally, but entirely fitting how I feel at this point.
There was a crash that startled her back into the present day. Tonks, Remus Lupin, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Professor McGonagall were all seated around the table, and Tonks had just dropped the platter of pancakes. "S-sorry Molly," she yawned, tightening the jet-black ponytail on the back of her head. "Night duty was j-just b-beastly tonight." A huge yawn nearly split the sentence in two.
Mrs. Weasley made a sympathetic noise and helped Remus and Tonks pick up the mess. "I thought it would be," she said in a low voice. "With the Azkaban escapes and all."
At the other end of the table, Ron and Harry straightened up in their seats. Remus, who had his back to them, didn't notice and responded to Mrs. Weasley. "Dumbledore is very concerned about the escapes—apparently, a lot of key Death Eaters broke out. Malfoy, Dolohov, Mulciber, and Bellatrix Lestrange. There are others." Remus's face, normally so calm and good-natured, flickered, for the first time, into a wolf-like snarl, but almost instantly it was back to his expression of polite concern. "Dumbledore is especially worried about the escape of Mulciber and Dolohov, as they have the potential for the most serious damage within the Ministry."
"Mulciber," Tonks muttered to Kingsley. "Imperius Curse expert, right?" Kingsley nodded, his thick gold earring glinting.
Ariane would have been eager to hear more, but a regular 'tink' noise was coming from the other end of the table and distracted her attention. She turned and saw Harry bringing his fork down into a stack of pancakes with quite a bit of force, his face mask-like and angry. Ron looked torn between listening to the adult's conversation and pulling Harry away from the table before he did serious damage to the plate or himself. Ariane decided for him.
"Come on Harry, lets go wake up Hermione and Ginny," she ordered, getting up and pulling on his arm. She made no progress until Ron joined her, then he rose, grudgingly, under their combined forces.
"C'mon, mate," Ron said, half-under his breath. "Don't let it get to you."
Harry looked as though he were about to grab Ron and shake him until his teeth rattled, so Ariane pinched him, hard, on the back of his arm where she knew it would hurt the most. When he turned around she nearly quailed under his furious stare, but instead gestured that whatever reaction he was about to have, it would be better to do it upstairs.
As she followed Harry and Ron up to Ginny's room, she remembered where she'd seen such green eyes before. They were a lot like Verity's, Godric's horribly honest wife. She made a mental note to inquire after Harry's ancestry once he'd calmed down a bit.
"What's up?" she asked him once they were safely out of earshot. "Is it about the Death Eaters?"
"Yes it's about the bloody Death Eaters," Harry snarled at her. "You think you're so clever, don't you? Who'd you have to lift that off of? You sit there all smug because you've mastered some real brain-reading trick but you don't have clue what it's like to lose someone you love, do you? You just have to experience it through someone else like it's a picture show!"
Ariane was speechless, first because she didn't understand where Harry was finding a reason to yell at her like this, second because it was so unjust.
"I watched him die! Bellatrix Lestrange killed my godfather, and I had to watch, and I couldn't do a thing! You can't have any idea what it's like, because you've got no bloody memory, just some pieced-together version filtered through other people's lives. You haven't got any feelings of your own, just ones you've borrowed off people. "
"I'm sorry," Ariane said meekly, though anger was beginning to fizzle behind her cheekbones. "You've got the wrong idea, though."
"How have I got the bloody wrong idea—"
"Shut up!" she snapped at him. "How dare you say I don't understand what it's like to lose someone? I've lost everyone, Harry, everyone that I ever knew, my parents, my brother, my friends, everyone. They're all dead and their bones are dust, and I will never, ever see them again. And how dare you insinuate that I have had to lift my memories off other people? You taught me how to do it! I remember nearly everything now, thanks to Snape and Dumbledore, and I wish I could forget most of it. Do you realize what happened to Salazar? Can you even comprehend it?"
Harry stared at her, looking as though he were trying to formulate a reply cutting enough to shut her up.
"He was pursued by the Furies—I don't suppose you know what they are. They're demons, sent to punish people who kill family members, and they're women who weep blood with great scaly wings and snakes for hair. Do you know what they did to him?" Harry and Ron both shook their heads. "They tied stones to him and forced him to walk into a pool of water until he drowned. It was a slow death, step by step by step."
"He killed you and you're sticking up for him?" Ron asked, confused.
"It was an accident!" she shouted. "Completely and thoroughly an accident!"
Harry snorted rudely. Almost of it's own will, her hand flew out and caught him on the side of the face. Ron stared aghast at Ariane, who stared aghast at her hand, which Harry was looking at warily. Before he could recover, Ariane pushed past him into Ginny's room and slammed the door. She was shaking, and she wasn't sure which emotion was causing her tremors.
"What's wrong?" Hermione asked blurrily, raising her sleep-frazzled hair away from her eyes.
"Nothing at all," Ariane said dispassionately, dove onto her bed and closed her eyes resolutely. If she kept her eyes shut, then all she could see was Percy, and he blocked Harry out entirely.
Hermione and Ginny didn't make her get out of bed until it was almost noon. Ariane made a great business of getting dressed in clean clothes and brushing her tangled hair to lengthen the time before she had to explain why she and Harry weren't on speaking terms. She even put on some of Ginny's extensive collection of makeup, which nearly rivaled Daphne's. It was quite fun to experiment with different colors on her eyelids and on her lips (her eyelashes were already dark, so she avoided the mascaras, which looked dangerous). It was even more fun to wonder if Percy, or Laramy, or both of them, would like it.
Ariane wondered if Percy knew about who he'd once been—who he still was. Should I tell him about everything? she wondered, then answered herself with an eye roll. Of course I should tell him. But how?
Meanwhile, Ginny was trying to teach Rupert to sit on her shoulder, which resulted in a lot of scratches and Rupert napping on her lap. Hermione was experimentally curling her hair around her wand, a long and laborious process that was at least half done. They must have been in the room for at least three hours.
"What do you think?" Ariane asked in an attempt to sound normal.
Ginny peered at her. "Close your eyes for a moment," she ordered. When Ariane obliged Ginny wiped the pads of her thumbs across her eyelids. "Better. You had a bit too much of that frosty blue eye shadow on."
"You look quite pretty," Hermione complimented her. "I don't remember ever seeing you with make up on before."
"Yeah, well, they didn't really have it back in the Dark Ages," Ariane smirked. "Just some nice mercuric oxide to get rid of freckles."
Ginny laughed aloud. "Isn't that dreadfully poisonous?" asked Hermione.
"Oh yes, it was banned at Hogwarts because it causes insanity and we had quite enough of that without help." Ariane smiled and pulled one of Ginny's old cream-colored sweaters on over a blue sweater and jeans. "Let's go outside and have a snowball fight." She picked up her scarf and snapped it at Ginny, her mood suddenly lighter. "Come on, or I'll tell everyone what your real name is."
Ginny's eyebrows shot skyward. "What? You were eavesdropping?" Ariane wrinkled her nose. She hardly ever peeked now that she knew more, and accidents were much more rare.
"No, I just found it written in one of your books...Iphigenia." Ginny's, or Iphigenia's, face went a color best reserved for Ron's sweaters.
"Oh, you'll pay for that," she howled, and from a seated start she managed to chase the lankier Ariane down three flights of stairs and out into the snow.
It was a glorious day. The snow was crisp and crunched under their feet, and it packed very well—as Ariane found out quickly. Ginny was an excellent athlete and had a good arm from playing Quidditch. Her carefully untangled silver hair was soon sleet-gray and soaking wet; cold water was dripping down her back. The sun was out, making the clear air sting their lungs as they chased each other all around the Burrow.
At some point, once their lungs were burning too badly to continue for a moment, Harry, Ron, and Charlie piled outside in various knitted gear and coats to provide back up. Harry and Ron joined Ginny in pelting Ariane with snowballs, but Charlie took Ariane's side and together they drove the two Weasleys and Harry around behind the chicken coop.
"Hermione, save us!" Ginny bellowed, pushing a half-frozen strand of hair out of her face. "Get down here!"
The addition of Hermione had Ariane and Charlie on the run. An icy ball hit Ariane in the side of the face, and, howling with helpless laughter, she threw one back and managed to hit Harry right in the ear. He swore and stopped to paw it out of his ear while Ron dashed past, aiming for Charlie, whom he thought had thrown the snowball. Just then, Ron was hit full in the face with a powdery handful that turned his hair white and frosted his eyebrows, which were sky-high.
Ariane turned to Charlie to congratulate him, but he was looking behind him to see who had thrown it. She turned a little farther and saw Percy in his overcoat gathering up another snowball, the bright sun glinting off his glasses.
"What are you doing here?" Ron asked bluntly.
"I took the afternoon off. There's nothing at the office that I can't finish up tomorrow." Percy shrugged, packing the snowball and letting it melt in his hands so that it would be easier to throw.
This sounded perfectly fine to Ariane, but she saw that everyone else was floored by Percy's statement. Ginny was mouthing to Hermione "Percy never takes the afternoon off." Percy wound up again and threw completely at random, hitting Charlie squarely in the chest. His stocky brother stared at it for a moment, then grinned and threw one back.
It was a free-for all from there on out until they all collapsed in the snow, panting and laughing like fools. Ariane found a clear patch of snow and scooped up a handful, letting it melt on her tongue and trickle ice-cold down her throat while she stared up at the painfully blue sky.
"Hey, Ariane," someone whispered next to her. She turned her head in the snow and saw Percy, glasses fogged over and pushed a little up so that he could see her. His dark red curls were filled with tiny snowflakes. "You want to go for a walk?"
Author's Note: Man this one was a nightmare to finish. I felt like I couldn't really concentrate on anything until I got Percy and Ariane off alone together again (what an oxymoron, alone together. How did that creep into our vocabularies?) In case anyone isn't a Greek mythology buff, Iphigenia is pronounced (at least by my Classical Humanities teacher) If-ah-gin-eye-ah. I don't know why anyone would name his or her child that (or even if it's shortened to Ginny) but I thought it suitably embarrassing to provoke a snowball fight. I hope I got Percy right (or at least right enough not to put him entirely OOC).
In answer your question, Mockingbird, I didn't have only Percy as the idea from the beginning because the Laramy-incarnate thing only really gelled when I wrote the chapter about Rowena and Helga. I came up with the idea of Percy/Ariane while I was on holiday this summer (plane flights...not good for a person who can barely sit still for five minutes) but I didn't know how to work it in to Films About Ghosts. But now...it's here. Yay for that.
I usually have to have an inspiration for my characters, like a base for how they'll act. I don't remember who I used for Ariane. Tuyet is based off me and my friend Alison, Daphne is several girls in my year at school, and for a while I didn't have anyone for Percy. Then I watched the Alamo and was just floored by Patrick Wilson's performance as the young, stuffy, good-hearted William Travis. I love moments like that when things just click into place, because then I had a mold to base Percy off of (because I know that he's got good points, even if they don't show up in JK's books so much...oh well, I would never change anything about her books, so I can't complain.)
Enough of that. Review please!