"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts."
Films About Ghosts
Chapter 20: Paradox
"For some time I have known of this, but it was only tonight when I had any real proof of its validity. One of the Death Eaters captured in the Department of Mysteries last summer gave a hint of it when he was questioned with Veritaserum, but he knew so little about it that his information was of no real use to us at that time," Dumbledore began. "We—I—dismissed it as another of Voldemort's plans that would never come to pass. It was too wild, too crazy for even Voldemort to attempt."
"What was crazy, Albus?" Professor McGonagall ground out, her patience obviously worn paper-thin.
"This Death Eater—Nott, his name was—seemed to think that Voldemort was going to try and go back in time and eradicate the major families that had opposed him in his rise. Voldemort's plan was to get rid of my family, the McKinnons, the Prewetts—anyone who stood against him. His main goal, however, is to make sure that Harry Potter never existed. That way, he would have no one powerful enough to oppose his rise to power."
A stunned silence followed this pronouncement, broken only by Professor Connor's labored breathing.
"Are you saying," Bill whispered, "that he's going to try to change time?"
"Change is a rather mild word," McGonagall replied. "He's corrupting it!"
Mrs. Weasley was very pale. "How would he go about destroying families, Dumbledore?" she asked tensely. "It seems like a rather difficult thing to go about."
"Not if you've kept detailed records of your ancestors, like your family and the McKinnons, Molly. Of course, Voldemort must be careful, as your family shares multiple ancestors with a few of his own Death Eaters."
"What about you, Albus?" McGonagall queried. "Surely a family as great as yours must have records?"
Dumbledore raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "Earlier in my life I made several efforts to collect records of my genealogy, but alas, I believe there to be none. Family legend has it that a distant ancestress destroyed all records of our family in an effort to protect her own descendents."
"Remarkable foresight," McGonagall remarked drolly. Professor Connor made a muffled noise and tried to paw a trickle of blood out of her eye with her mangled hand, then cried out with pain as she put pressure on those broken fingers. With uncharacteristic tenderness, Professor McGonagall redirected the blood around her niece's left eye, which was still half-open.
"Mr. Weasley then, apparently, had an epiphany. "If He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named gets rid of the Prewetts, I'll lose my family! Molly's a Prewett…" he trailed off, leaving the air full of implications.
Ariane swallowed hard and though of Ron, Ginny, Fred and George, Bill—and Percy too—they were all half-Prewett. Not to mention Charlie and his son Jerome, who were also descendent of the Prewett family. The consequences that sprung from Voldemort killing only one or two ancestors were vast.
"Last night, Voldemort opened a portal in time," Dumbledore said gravely. "Angharad was there when he did it, fulfilling her usual position as one of Lucius's bodyguards, and saw all the preparations before she was beaten. Voldemort and seven of his Death Eaters are somewhere in our history now, and what they plan to do is anyone's best guess." Dumbledore stopped for a moment, took a deep breath, and then smiled broadly.
Everyone around the table looked at him like he had run mad and told them all he was planning to invest in a wardrobe made entirely of vinyl and carpet Hogwarts with Astroturf. It was Bill who managed at last to choke out, "Why on earth are you smiling?"
"Because he didn't succeed," Dumbledore said simply.
Mr. Weasley cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Really, Dumbledore—this isn't the time for puzzles. It's the early morning and there's a mangled woman on my kitchen table and you just got through telling us how Voldemort's going to obliterate my family in one fell swoop." His mouth made an effort to smile appealingly but he couldn't bring himself to do it. "Just tell us flat out: how do you know this?"
"Well, to start with, we're having this conversation right now," Dumbledore replied, his eyes twinkling once more, but his face very grave. "So that stands to reason the Prewetts and the other families were never wiped out."
Bill put his head in his hands. "I loathe time paradoxes."
McGonagall tucked her frazzled hair back into its accustomed knot as her forehead furrowed in thought. "The real paradox is where Voldemort went, and what stopped him from succeeding?"
"What if You-Know-Who just made a mistake with the time and appeared in the middle of a battle?" Bill offered. "That would finish him off, and the Death Eaters, and they'd never return."
Mr. Weasley made a dissenting noise. "I don't think he'd make a mistake. Changing time is a very shifty business, but going back can be calculated precisely." Dumbledore nodded in agreement.
"How would we get rid of him, then?" Mrs. Weasley asked desperately. "We don't know when he went, or where, for that matter."
"Do you know, Albus?" Minerva asked sharply, her gray eyes flicking to the Headmaster. "Did Angharad tell you anything?"
"No, I don't know," Dumbledore told her, "And I don't think Angharad knows either. But there is someone who knows the where and the when." His eyes passed over Mr. Weasley's head and looked straight at the side of the doorway where Ariane and Percy were hiding. Everyone else turned to stare too. Ariane swallowed very hard and waited until Dumbledore ordered her out.
"Ariane, I know that you're there. That mind-trick you used on me at Hogwarts reaches both ways," Dumbledore said cheerily. "I can sense you as well as you sense me."
Percy gripped her shoulder and gave her a questioning look. Ariane sighed, shook her head and indicated he should stay where he was, and stepped down from the fireplace hearth and into the kitchen. "Sorry," she told the four adults and Bill, "I was awake and heard voices." She didn't look down at the table, but instead met Dumbledore's blue eyes.
"Do you know when Voldemort will go?" he asked her.
Ariane bit her lip. "No," she said after a short pause. "Not specifically."
"Come here."
She obeyed hesitatingly, aware that Dumbledore thought she was lying and also that she was telling the truth. Where Voldemort was going was as much of a mystery as the next day's weather. Ariane knew that she wasn't a Seer. The Headmaster put his hands out when she reached him and placed his hands on either side of her head, as though he were going to kiss her forehead or bless her or something. His hands were wrinkled and soft, like tanned leather.
"This won't hurt," he said softly, and, almost imperceptibly, Ariane felt her thoughts begin to slide just as they did when Harry pried about for information. It took effort not to shove back. To her surprise, her dreams surfaced, all of the variations on the single theme: death. There were around seven in all, six ending with Ariane's death, the seventh with the beheading of a dark-haired person. A few others she hadn't though of were also mixed in: the few dreams she had had about running through a wood, away from something terrifying or being pursued, she couldn't tell which.
A headache began behind her eyes, then, suddenly; Dumbledore was standing next to her in the snow, watching the dream-Ariane scramble away from the axe man through the snow.
"None of those are right," Ariane burst out, her voice sounding hollow. "They're all the ways it shouldn't happen."
"What do you mean?" he asked her, peering up at the man as he brought his axe down on the dream-girl's neck with bone-slicing force.
"Well, in almost all of these, I die," she sputtered. "Is that what's supposed to happen?" The scene flipped, and they gliding along beside the silver-haired runner as she dashed madly through the woods. Ariane folded her unreal-arms over her chest and tried not to frown. I don't want to die.
Dumbledore shrugged and stroked his beard. "I would not assume to know your fate, Ariane," he said thoughtfully, "But I would not have you resign yourself to one of these just yet."
Dumbledore lowered his hands from her temples and Ariane opened her eyes. McGonagall was staring at them both with her mouth slightly open, though she closed it immediately. Mrs. Weasley said in hushed tones, "Does she always glow like that?" Ariane looked down at her arms and discovered that they did have a fading silver glow. As she watched, the light disappeared into her skin.
"Only when her thoughts are being read," Dumbledore smiled tightly. "I think, for now at least, we shall assume that we do not know when Voldemort has gone, but Ariane seems to be dreaming up possibilities that may add up to an exact time and place."
"I know when it is," a voice said from the living room. Six sets of eyes, two blue, one gray, one hazel, one brown, and one violet, all snapped to a thin boy still in his striped pajamas. Angharad, who looked as though only one of her eyes would work properly even if it weren't swollen shut, waved a left hand sans thumb in an infantile way.
"Harry?" Ariane asked blankly.
"What are you doing out of bed?" queried Mrs. Weasley in an equally bewildered but also maternal way.
"Sir, I don't know if Ariane told you this, but while she was still in Slytherin House she found her brother's old workshop," Harry said quickly, as though afraid Ariane would head him off. "And in it were all these really weird things, like instruments and a Pensive and papers, and she found the paper that told how Salazar Slytherin had raised her from the dead, and it had the name of her father on it but she didn't make it that far,"—he took a deep breath—"because she didn't want to know how Slytherin had killed anyone. She tried to throw it away, but I took it while she was helping Tuyet Qui-Minh back up the stairs. Sir."
Ariane blinked at him stupidly. Of course Harry would have picked it up, she berated herself, he wouldn't be able to just let it sit without knowing all the gory details.
"Do you have this letter?" Dumbledore said sharply.
"It's not really a letter, more like a journal entry—but I do," Harry affirmed, cutting his reply short under Professor McGonagall's stare. He held up a piece of paper that had been crumpled, folded, and stuffed in a pocket. He unfolded it and walked by Ariane to give it to Dumbledore, making sure to give her a wide berth. Dumbledore took it, smoothed it on the table, and indicated with a vague gesture that Harry should stand near Ariane.
Harry still looked afraid of her, but Ariane wasn't really angry. She was sure Dumbledore would have found out sooner or later, and if the case was this serious—if what had happened to Professor Connor could happen to others—she preferred sooner. She also couldn't really blame Harry for being his nosy, prying self, even if she did wish he would warn her before he pulled stunts like this. Experimentally, she gave him a small smile. He looked surprised, but smiled back.
Dumbledore read the paper hand over hand, his eyes flashing back and forth at a speed twice that of Hermione's. His lined face was expressionless until he got to the bottom of the page, which Ariane hadn't read. His eyebrows contracted and he glanced up at Ariane, then at Harry.
"Have you read this?" he asked, his voice very tight. Ariane shook her head, but Harry nodded. "Do you know what it means?" Harry shook his head.
"What does it say, Albus?" Professor McGonagall demanded.
"Salazar Slytherin goes through the whole process of resurrecting a human, down to the most minute detail. He worries excessively that—and I quote—'my dear sister may be robbed of the one joy of womanhood—childbirth' and wonders if necromancy interferes with pregnancy." Dumbledore's blue eyes fell on Ariane, who turned bright red not only because the last thing she wanted to discuss with her teachers and her friend's parents was her period, but because Harry and Percy were listening too.
"He also speaks of his father, who seemed to have been living in the southwest of England," Dumbledore continued blithely. "Salazar doesn't do a very commendable job of explaining how he found him, and never uses his real name, referring to him as 'the Draconigen' multiple times. He also has a few riddles among this information, including a lot of synonyms for 'riddle' and 'greed'." He got to the very bottom of the page, the part that had surprised him before. "Salazar claims that he didn't kill his father. He refers to a troop of 'unholy forest-dwellers' that, for some reason, wanted the Draconigen dead, and specifically to a girl and boy. The boy is dismissed as 'a dark-haired trollop, probably another of the Draconigen's bastards' and the girl is 'obviously a mere vision sent to spur me on in my weakening moments'."
Ariane could barely breathe. All of her dreams, every single one, took place at the edge of a wood, with a group of people she knew from the present time period. 'Unholy forest-dwellers'. Inwardly she smiled at Salazar's description.
Then Dumbledore read out the sentence written at the bottom of the page, the sentence Ariane had written herself in bold black ink.
"Percy sees truth about," he paused, and then looked at the final word at the bottom of the page. "Riddle," he finished, and everyone around the table exchanged looks of confusion or understanding or worry.
"Percy knows the answer to a riddle?" Bill asked, very confused.
"What does this have to do with my son?" Mrs. Weasley demanded at the same time, a quaver in her voice.
"It may not refer to your Percy," McGonagall reassured her. "After all, this was written before his time. Wasn't it?"
"Oh, I have no doubt that this was written in Salazar Slytherin's time," Dumbledore said lightly, his gaze passing from Ariane to Harry and back again, then passing them by to fix on the doorway where Percy was standing, just out of sight. "But I have a sneaking suspicion that a few of the people in Salazar's account were not of his time."
"Riddle's a person," Percy said from the other side of the room, obviously deciding not to wait until Dumbledore called him out. "Not a puzzle."
As always, when he was around his family he was a little stiff, holding himself different and apart. The more time Ariane spend around Percy the less she understood his duplicity. She liked his family—well, Fred and George were borderline—and didn't understand what could have made Percy grow up so different from all of them or make him dislike them. She filed it away and pulled her attention back to the present.
"How do you know?" Bill asked.
Percy shrugged and tucked his hands into the pockets of his trousers. "I just do. Riddle must be a person's name, otherwise why would Slytherin have tried to hide it with all those synonyms?"
Professor McGonagall inhaled sharply, and everyone turned to stare at her. "Tom Riddle," she half-whispered. "I went to school with a boy called Tom Riddle."
"Tom Riddle is Voldemort," Harry blurted. Everyone in the room but Dumbledore and Ariane jumped and twisted to look at him. Angharad, who had been nearly forgotten, made a burbling noise and tried to pull herself to a sitting position, her good eye wide open. Gently Professor McGonagall held her down, her stern face chalk-white.
Dumbledore turned to Ariane, his face grave and yet—amused? "Ariane, do you understand where this is going?"
She blinked, then inhaled sharply and pressed a hand to her temple. "God," she whispered. "It's horrible." Percy had made the connection too, judging by the horrified look on his face. The room twirled around her slowly, as though she were standing in the middle of some sick carousel.
Mr. Weasley was the first to say it. "Are you telling me," he said slowly, "That You-Know-Who went back in time and fathered his own ancestors?"
"What?" Mrs. Weasley cried, completely disgusted.
"Let's not make a bunch of hasty assumptions," Bill protested weakly.
"Yes," Dumbledore cut him off flatly, still watching Ariane's face. "Salazar and Ariane Slytherin are both children of Voldemort." Harry swore very badly.
At this point, Ariane meant to say something. Protest her innocence, proclaim her disgust, or perhaps ask for a glass of water. Instead she saw only a cold gray fog as she passed out with a thump on the Weasley's kitchen floor.
She dreamt of flying, the swift and silent flight of winged horses. Ariane had her fingers twined in the silky mane of a palomino mare, its speckled white neck inches from her nose as she flew over the sea. Around her swooped other winged horses, a veritable herd of flying horseflesh, all the colors imaginable. Ariane relaxed and peered down, seeing the rough waves and the silver glints that were fish. Once she saw a boat, the fishermen stunned by the herd above them, and she laughed at the expressions of the men as they dropped that day's catch back into the sea.
A huge old mare with copper wings swooped by, its withers streaked with sweat, also bearing a rider on its back. It was a small boy, blonde-haired, his face full of wonder. He clung on with one hand because his other was heavily bandaged.
"Where away?" Ariane called over the wind.
The boy smiled. "Back home!" he replied. "Come with me!"
"I can't," Ariane shouted as the wind grew louder. "I don't know where I'm going!"
"That's odd. It was your idea to flee on horseback."
Suddenly the world flipped and the wind screamed, and Ariane was lying in bed in her nightshirt and trousers. She opened her eyes warily and found herself barely two inches away from Percy's sleeping face. He had apparently been sitting on the floor next to her bed in Ginny's room and fallen asleep leaning on the mattress. His face had once again taken on that boyish quality it had when he was sleeping; the few pockmarks barely visible in his freckled skin. His coppery eyelashes made twin crescents beneath his eyelids, and his mouth was open slightly, as though he'd fallen asleep talking to her.
He was different and yet the same. Ariane studied his face hard, as though she would never see it again. There was no doubt in her mind that this man was the one she loved, but he was different than the man she'd loved when she was a girl at Hogwarts. I've changed, she reasoned, I'm hardly that innocent little creature anymore. It makes sense that Laramy would have changed too. I'm shell-shocked instead of ignorant, he's one person around me and another around his family…
Percy frowned at a dream he was having and then exhaled softly, his face going still again.
Ariane smiled despite herself and reached out a hand to smooth his hair, letting herself drink in the unique sensation; it was coarser than her own and slightly springy to the touch. Still in the thrall of her dream, she continued her caress down the side of his face—he wasn't wearing his glasses—and past the seashell curve of his ear to his neck, then back up along his jaw and, briefly, up the curve of his nose. Softly, so that she wouldn't wake him up, Ariane leaned in the two inches and kissed him lightly on the mouth.
"Can I pretend I'm still asleep?" Percy murmured, opening one blue-green eye and gazing fuzzily at Ariane. "Not that that wasn't the best way to wake up I can think of."
"I didn't mean to wake you up," Ariane apologized, rolling onto her side and propping her head on her left arm. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I'm glad I was at least partially awake to experience it," Percy replied, "Otherwise I would have been afraid it was only a dream. Then I wouldn't have let myself wake up." He straightened up and winced, rubbing a crick in his neck. "What happened? Why did you faint?"
"Believe me, I didn't plan on passing out," Ariane muttered, slightly ashamed. "Took me entirely by surprise. How long was I out?"
"It's about nine o'clock," Percy said, squinting at his watch. "Don't quote me on that, though. These numbers are far too little for me to read."
Ariane looked at his watch. "It's a quarter after six. Your watch is on upside-down." She propped herself up and saw that Hermione and Ginny were both out of their beds. "Where's everybody?"
"Mum sent them upstairs, told them you were sick. She didn't want them to come downstairs until that Healer had seen to Angharad." He swallowed visibly. "He saw to you too, but he said the best thing to do was to make sure you were comfortable and wait for you to wake up."
"Is Professor Connor going to be all right?" Ariane asked him, lying back down. She did feel a little groggy, but she wasn't sure if that was because she'd just woken up or because she'd hit her head on the kitchen table going down.
Percy reached out to stroke her hair. "The Healer said she'll be back to teaching by tomorrow, but it took him an hour just to fix all the broken bones. I think he said she's lost one eye for good, and maybe a finger or two. Otherwise, she'll be fine." He smiled at her in a way that was meant to be encouraging, but he only looked worried.
"What's wrong?" Ariane asked, covering his hand with hers. "You look sad."
He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking a lot like his father. "Budge up," he requested, and she complied, scooting over so that he could lie next to her. Ariane rested her cheek on his shoulder and inhaled, loving the way he smelled—clean and warm, with a slight vanilla undertone that she suspected came from crouching on Ginny's floor for a few hours.
"I'm afraid," he whispered, his breath stirring the hair on the top of her head. "I'm scared that I'll lose you again."
"I'm not going anywhere," Ariane replied.
"What if you don't have a choice?" Percy asked, slightly desperately. "What if you've got to go to save the world?"
She laughed, though a little bitterly. "Percy, I think that Harry's the one who does the world-saving, not me." She smiled up at him, and he grinned weakly back. "Don't worry about me."
"That's something I can't do," he said, squeezing her a little tighter around the shoulders.
They lay in silence for a few more minutes, and then Ariane spoke the question that had been lingering in her mind for days. "Percy," she paused, unsure of how to ask, then blurted: "Do you love your family?"
He twisted awkwardly to look down at her. "Yes. Why?"
Ariane shrugged. "I don't know…you seem like you want to stay away from them as much as you can. It just seems a bit odd to me, that's all."
"You can love people and not like them," Percy said stiffly.
"But why?" Ariane persisted.
Percy held very still for a moment, and then shifted so that he was lying on his side. "I suppose," he said slowly, "That ever since I can remember, I was lumped in with my family. I was 'a Weasley' and half the time people got me mixed up with Bill or Charlie or George. I never felt like a unique person, just a part of some collective batch of notorious red-heads."
Ariane nodded. This is what made him different, she decided. This is what makes him different than Laramy Ferrer. Laramy never had to prove himself, he just was the sort of person that Percy would be if he had been born to another family.
"When I got to Hogwarts, I finally had a change to prove that I wasn't a clone of my older brothers. I don't remember when I started trying too hard," he admitted. "Last year it all sort of came to a boil and I went on a rage at my father, angry that I couldn't escape my family, angry that no matter how hard I tried to separate myself from my family they were always right there waiting in my shadow."
He was very tense. Ariane smoothed an errant curl back from his temple. "I'm sorry I asked," she told him. "You don't need to tell me all this, you know."
"You should know," Percy replied, sounding slightly irritated. "I wouldn't want you to love me if you didn't really know me, warts and all."
She smiled, ducking her head so that he wouldn't see. "Any more warts I should know about?" she asked.
"I could ask the same."
Ariane frowned a little. "All right," she muttered, thinking. "What do you hate? I hate sour things," she told him. "And I put sugar in almost everything, including vegetables and spaghetti."
He laughed. She could hear it start in his chest and erupt from his throat like a bubble in water. "Okay," he smiled. "I hate wearing glasses. I always lose them and then I can't see anything, and I can't find them either. For example, right now I can hardly tell what I'm looking at."
"Me," Ariane informed him. "Your turn to ask a question."
"What's your favorite color?"
She made a face at him, forgetting he couldn't see. "Blue," she told him. "What's yours?"
"Green." Percy trailed a finger down her face, tracing the arc of her right eyebrow lightly. "Your turn."
"Er…do you like flying?" she asked, thinking of her winged horse dream.
"I hate broomsticks," he emphasized. "I never felt secure enough on one to really enjoy myself."
"I've never been on a broomstick," Ariane mused. "I've ridden a flying horse though."
"Really?" Percy asked with interest. "What was it like?" He twisted and grouped around on the floor for a second and came up with his glasses. After he hooked them around his ears, his sea-green eyes came into focus. "Was it scary?"
"At first," Ariane said, her mind flashing back to Caelestis and Godric and Salazar. "But then it was just beautiful. There's nothing like it in the world—its like growing wings and riding a horse at the same time. It's like going to heaven. Though, now that I think on it, I suppose if you aren't used to riding horses it would be quite a different experience."
"I would want a saddle," Percy muttered staunchly. She giggled. "Is it my turn?"
She frowned and cast back. "I think so."
He shifted so that he was looking right into her eyes. "In your opinion, what's your worst flaw?" he asked, very serious.
Ariane thought about refusing to answer, then realized she didn't even know what she would say. She frowned and bit her lip, then leaned back against Percy's shoulder and sighed. "There's too many to chose from," she demurred.
"I'll tell you mine," Percy offered. "I'm an asshole." She shook her head, but he stopped her with a gentle hand under her chin. "I am. I know that I am. When I'm around you, I get shamed into being a better person, but before I met you I was a pompous jerk."
"Percy," she protested. "You can't have been that bad."
"I was," he said ferociously, and Ariane actually started away, scared by the viciousness in his voice. "Last year I wrote a letter to Ron, telling him to stay away from Harry. I wrote it even though I knew Ron and Harry were the best of friends, I wrote it even though I knew Ron would show it to Harry. It was a petty, mean letter and I convinced myself while I was writing it that I was doing it for Ron's good." He shook his head. "I wasn't. I was doing it for my own good; I did it because people I worked with knew that Ron and Harry were friends and that Harry was nearly a part of my family. Don't you see?" he asked desperately, turning to her. "I wasn't a good person before we met and I'm not even sure I'm a good person now…Ariane, I don't deserve this."
A question that had been pacing like a tiger in the back of Ariane's mind leaped from her lips. "Were you ever approached by the Death Eaters?" she asked. She had never felt more serious in her life, as though her next breath depended on his answer.
He shifted uncomfortably. "I was," he admitted. "I wouldn't have joined willingly, of course—but I entertained fancies about it. I thought about how powerful Death Eaters are—how their name makes people shiver. But I knew that they would kill my family, and I couldn't have lived with that on my soul."
"Professor Connor told me that there's nothing more dangerous in the world than being the loved one of a possible Death Eater," Ariane told Percy, still quite grave.
"She's almost right," Percy said with a bitter laugh. "The only thing more dangerous than that is to be the loved one of a possible Death Eater and the friend of Harry Potter."
His face looked so hard-edged, so very cold and unlike any expression Ariane had seen on Percy before, that she sat up so that she wouldn't be so near it. Percy sat up too, his face altering to guilt and hurt. "Ariane," he pleaded. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He looked like he was on the verge of tears.
"Why are you sorry?" she shot back. "You told the truth. What more could I ask?" Her hands were rubbing her arms unconsciously, as though she were cold.
"I didn't mean to scare you. I don't want you to be afraid of me." He reached out hesitantly and put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't be afraid of me."
"I'm not afraid of you," Ariane told him honestly. "I'm terrified of what you could become."
"I shouldn't have told you—" Percy muttered to himself, but Ariane cut him off.
"No," she murmured back. "I want to know everything about you. I just want to learn it slowly so that it takes a very long time. I want you to love me despite myself."
"Ariane, you haven't got any glaring flaws," he said with exasperation. "You're practically perfect."
"I'm a coward," she shot back. "I didn't confront my brother about his dabbling in the Dark Arts. I didn't stop Pansy from trying to gouge out Tuyet's eyes. I never told Salazar—I never told him that I loved Laramy." Her voice cracked. "If only I could have mustered the courage to speak up, it would have been so much different."
Percy gripped her shoulders. "Let me tell you a secret," he said, then leaned in close so that his lips were an inch from her ear. "Everyone can be a coward." She frowned at him, but he persisted. "Everyone can be brave. Everyone can be hardworking, or compassionate, or whatever you like. Some people just have to work harder at it, you know."
"I have a hard time believing that Harry could ever be a coward, or that Voldemort could ever be compassionate," Ariane remarked dryly. "People can't help what they are."
"There's this thing called a Golden Mean," Percy said. Ariane made an irritated noise and made to move away but he held her still, his glasses an inch from her eyes. "To have achieved it means that you have no distinguishing characteristics. You are just as brave as you are cowardly, just as compassionate as you are ruthless. I don't know about you, but that Golden Mean always sounded to me like a working definition of a boring person."
"You're saying that if we were all perfect we would be boring?"
"I don't know about perfect, but yes." He kissed her lightly on the cheek. "I love you because you are smart and lovely and loyal, and I wouldn't love you less if you were the most cowardly creature in the world." Leaning to one side, he kissed her other cheek. "I've loved you for lifetimes."
"You can love people and not like them," Ariane echoed him softly, feeling rather young and forlorn.
"That's true," he allowed. "But I feel as though I don't know you very well yet. Liking would be presumptuous."
"And declaring your undying passion isn't?" Ariane demanded, but she was smiling. "I think you're mixed up."
"Undying passionate love shouldn't be kept under wraps," Percy said, so very seriously that she actually began to laugh. "Undying passions should be broadcast on radios and burned in fiery letters in the sky. Liking should be slower. More private."
"I'll keep my eyes open for those fiery letters," she giggled, tickled by the sudden mental image of Percy in hose and a tunic, professing his 'undying passionate love' to herself dressed as Juliet on a balcony. (Romeo and Juliet was, of course, after Ariane's time, but she had read it at Ginny's advice.)
Percy had moved in to kiss her—and not on the cheek, either—when a throat cleared behind them.
Author's Note: Gah, I had to cut it off there, otherwise this chapter would have been about 10,000 words long because...uh, because I was on a roll I guess. Lol. Okay, insert the usual review spiel here, and read the review written by Something Washed Ashore. It is like the uber-review. I can'tbelieve someone put that much thought into a review(!) and though I don't really expect all reviews to be that long and detailed that one was the biggest inspiration for me.
Ariane's name can be pronounced two ways that I've found: Aree-ahn (the anglicized version) and Ah-ree-ah-nee. I don't really know which one I prefer, but I usually use the first (and much less pretty) pronunciation. You can use whichever floats your boat, or make up a new one. Tell me what you've been pronouncing it as!