"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts."
Films About GhostsChapter 21: Cards and Letters
Ariane started so badly she nearly fell off the bed. Percy straightened up, half his hair on end, and smiled politely, his face slowly turning a pink to match Ariane's. "Hello, Professor," he said clearly. "Is everything all right?"
Dumbledore smiled, equally polite. "I believe so, though your mother may think otherwise. If you two wouldn't mind coming downstairs, we're having a short meeting over breakfast. Good morning, Ariane."
"Good morning," she replied faintly, trying to pull on a sweater over her thin nightshirt casually and failing.
Dumbledore looked at her just long enough to make her horribly uncomfortable, then looked back at the ceiling and smiled again. "I'll wait for you two downstairs," he said, his voice even as he walked out.
Ariane put a hand to her steaming face and muttered, "That man manages to pick the worst times to walk into a room."
Percy grimaced in agreement, then straightened his collar, patted his hair, and tried without success to smooth the creases out of his pants. "He does have a gift that way," he said with a slightly ironic smile. He bent and kissed her very lightly on the lips. "We should go see what he wants."
What Dumbledore wanted, it seemed, was to go over the situation with everyone in the Order, plus all the younger Weasleys but Ginny (who Mrs. Weasley had taken firmly upstairs as Percy and Ariane descended), Harry, Hermione, and a middle-aged man called Augustus Croaker. Ariane vaguely recognized the name.
"For those who have just come in, this is Augustus Croaker, my good friend and an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries. Croaker works in the time travel and history section of the department." Croaker, who was shorter, balding, and had round, rather protuberant green eyes, smiled and nodded.
Ariane realized she knew who Croaker was, even if she'd never met him before. It was Croaker who had sent Dumbledore that record that had documented the death of Rowena and confirmed that Salazar had killed Ariane. She decided she wouldn't hold it against him.
"Dumbledore, how can he relay any information?" demanded a plump, stately woman in a green shawl. "Unspeakables are called unspeakable because when they agree to work in the Department of Mysteries a charm is placed on them that doesn't allow them to speak about what they know to anyone else."
"We know that," said Tonks irritably. It looked as though she had been on night duty once again and it was not suiting her well. "Hello, Croaker."
He smiled and nodded again. Ariane wondered if he was a fool—or possibly mute.
Dumbledore cleared his throat. "I would like to introduce another person to the Order: Ariane Somerled, a friend of Harry Potter's. She possesses an extraordinary gift: she is a natural Legilimens and has vivid dreams of the past."
Several people twisted in their seats to look at Ariane, who was made horribly aware of her snarled hair, her slept-in clothing, and the fact she hadn't taken a shower in at least two days. Percy rested a hand on the small of her back, and she felt a little braver. She met the looks, but most of the Order quickly looked back at Dumbledore again.
Croaker flailed his hands in the air to get attention, then waved his wand in a complicated fashion so that glowing words began to issue from its tip.
I CANNOT SPEAK TO YOU OF THE MYSTERY OF TIME, BUT IF I WRITE IT UP HERE YOU'LL KNOW AS MUCH AS I DO.
"Brilliant," Hermione muttered under her breath as the letters faded. "A magical loophole."
Croaker began to wave his wand once more. This time the words came thick and fast, so that Ariane was hard put to keep up with them.
DUMBLEDORE HAS EXPLAINED TO ME THAT IT IS NECESSARY TO SEND MEMBERS OF THE ORDER BACK IN TIME TO STOP YOU-KNOW-WHO AND HIS DEATH EATERS FROM KILLING IMPORTANT WIZARDING FAMILIES BEFORE THEY'RE BORN. THIS CAN BE DONE, BUT THE EXACT COORDINATES WILL BE NEEDED TO TRANSPORT THE GROUP SUCCESSFULLY. DUMBLEDORE SEEMS TO THINK THAT THIS GIRL, ARIANE, CAN BE USED TO FIND THE COORDINATES.
"That's true," Dumbledore added. "Ariane, you have been dreaming of this confrontation, yes?"
"I've been dreaming all the ways it shouldn't happen," Ariane replied, a bit irritated at being referred to like a useful tool. "I don't have anything exact."
CAN YOU LOOK UP AT THE SKY IN YOUR DREAMS? Croaker asked. USUALLY THE POSITIONS OF THE STARS ARE USED AS A TIME GUIDE.
"I've never tried," she said honestly. "I can try next time."
"Dumbledore, do we have time to wait on the dreams of a girl?" demanded a thin man with rather prominent ears. "How much time do we have?"
"Enough," the old man said, his tone final. "I have faith in this."
"But—but what if I can't see the stars?" Ariane asked, suppressing a nervous quaver in her voice.
Croaker smiled, his round eyes creasing. THEN YOU WILL BE THE STAR WE GUIDE BY, his wand wrote. YOUR DREAMS—YOU REMEMBER THEM ALL?
Ariane saw where this was going. "Yes," she said warily, her mind full of her six deaths and that ghastly beheading. "Do you want the memories?"
YOU'RE QUICK, Croaker wrote with approval, miming applause. I WOULD LIKE NOTHING BETTER.
Percy's hand tightened on her shoulder, and she glanced sidelong up into his eyes. "Don't promise anything," he whispered.
Ariane ignored him. "I'll need a Pensieve," she told Dumbledore and Croaker. "So you can see it too."
"And some quality sleep," Harry muttered behind her. Ariane suppressed an eye roll with difficulty.
As it turned out, much to Ariane's disgust, Croaker's master plan to help her dream up more possible encounters was to shut Ariane up from everyone else in a shed on the outskirts of the Weasley's property. To be fair, it was a nice shed, with a fireplace and some furniture and her bed from Ginny's room, and she was allowed to leave it if she wanted, but every time Ariane ventured outside she caught the tense, worried mood of the people around her and faced their accusatory glances. 'Why aren't you working on this?' they seemed to say. 'Don't you care?' Well, Ariane knew that most of them didn't think it was her fault—after all, how many of them could sleep on command? Only Mundungus, by her reckoning. But still, she felt that she owed them something that she couldn't repay, so she kept out of sight.
"I'm trying to repay it," she muttered to herself as she paced the packed dirt floor. It was so tramped down that it was almost like stone, and she could only dent it if she pounded the heels of her shoes into the ground—something Ariane tired of after five minutes.
In fact, she was very bored. Nobody came to talk to her, perhaps on Croaker's orders. "I wonder," she said to her only company, a mouse that had probably lived in the shed for its entire life, "If they think that talking to me will influence what I see in my dreams." The mouse's whiskers twitched and it chattered at her.
Ariane beckoned to it from where she lay on her stomach by the fire. "Come here," she told it. "I've got a bit of toast. Its got jam on it." She pulled the rather furry corner of bread from her pocket, broke off a bit, and set it on the floor where the mouse could see it. It didn't hesitate, but scampered over. The mouse looked rather old—it was shaggy-haired, part white and part gray, with beady black eyes and a ragged left ear. Its tail was very long, with a curious tuft of white hair on the end that Ariane had never seen on any other mouse. She laid down another crumb and it came closer, snatched it up, and began chewing industriously, whiskers vibrating as its cheeks worked.
Nearby, Ariane felt someone get near the shed. She'd been practicing her Legilimency while she lay alternately by the fire or paced about, and discovered she had a range of about twenty feet in all directions. That wasn't too impressive, but she had the feeling that, like other things, it might get better with practice.
She knew this mind, though. It was dark and busy, as though someone had turned out the lights in a beehive or a room full of industriously scribbling quills. As she had expected, the door to the shed swung loosely open and admitted nobody, then closed firmly. Her mouse squeaked and ran under the bed.
"Harry, when the wind blows open a door it doesn't close it too," she said idly, glancing back over her shoulder. There was a ripple of empty air a few feet away, and then Harry appeared, looking cold and bothered about something.
"I wish you'd at least pretend to be surprised," he said gruffly. "Then I might give you your letters."
Ariane sat up. "Letters? Who wrote me?"
Harry reached inside his winter cloak and pulled out two letters, one bearing Daphne's round print, the other in Tuyet's cramped script. Ariane held out her hands, but Harry didn't give them to her. "You have to promise me something first."
"I don't know about you, but I think it's a bad idea to promise anything right now," Ariane shot at him, brandishing her hand.
"It's something I know you know. Do you want me to have to dig for it?"
She scowled. "No. Fine, we'll talk. Give me the letters and let me read them first." Harry handed them over, and Ariane tore into the first, from Tuyet.
Ariane—
I'm writing you because frankly I think you're the only sane person in the world because you transferred out of this stupid House. Everyone's mad here, and I mean everyone. Pansy's going spare and hexing first years and things because Draco's off and left school. You're probably making a shocked face right now, but that's not the end of it. We haven't gone back to classes yet, obviously, but there's some other Slytherin missing too. Professor Snape apparently either eloped with Draco or decided to move to Bermuda or something else, because I haven't seen him in two days and Draco's been missing for almost a week. Ugh, the idea of Snape in a bathing suit makes my inner eye burn.
Drat. Pansy's just tried to hex a mirror. Idiot forgot what reflective surfaces do to curses. Salazar Slytherin would shit himself laughing if he could see what his House has come too. But, then again, the sight of Pansy with half her nose cracked off is enough to inspire bitter laughter in anyone. I don't know what her problem is, but I bet it's hard to pronounce.
This letter has another purpose, besides updating you on Pansy's latest stupidity. I was wondering if you knew what happened to Draco and Snape. I don't know why you would know, but at least you're outside school. And you're with a wizard family that's pretty thick with Dumbledore, and I get the sneaking feeling he knows where they went. It's not a fun feeling. Nott knows something, but he's being irritatingly quiet and gloomy about it. Even Daphne can't make him tell, and Nott's been wild for her for ages. He went home yesterday-his grandfather came and picked him up.
God damn it, Blaise just got in Pansy's way. If shit were explosive, his head would be like dynamite. I've got to go help him or I'll have to clean up his gory remains with a broom. Hope you had a happy Christmas, and I hope that you and Potter haven't hooked up over break because I'll have to clean up your gory remains too as soon as term starts again.
With love from the idiot pit,
Tuyet
Ariane smothered a laugh at the thought of anyone's shit being explosive, and wondered at her sharp-tongued friend's way with cutting words. The rest of the letter made her frown. She wasn't sure what expression these two conflicting thoughts gave her, but it confused Harry.
"What's up?" he asked, for once being polite out loud and mentally. Harry had formed am irritating habit of brushing her mind whenever he asked her anything, as though double-checking for lies. Now Ariane felt no mental touch at all.
"Apparently Draco Malfoy's gone missing," she said lightly. "And so has Snape."
"What?" Harry sputtered. "They've gone? Did she say where?"
"She had a few suggestions including Bermuda and a possible secret romance"—Ariane waited until Harry looked as though he'd overcome his urge to vomit before going on—"but I think that I know what's happened to them. Tuyet says that Snape hasn't been seen for two days." She folded the letter, sharpening each crease with her fingernails, while she waited for Harry to bridge the connection. "Two days, Harry. What's happened in the past two days?"
"God," Harry swore lightly, running a hand through his hair. It was getting out of hand, Ariane noticed, and badly needed cutting. "You don't mean to say that Snape and Malfoy went back in time too?"
She pulled herself into a sitting position. "That's what I thought—but why on earth would either of them do that? I mean, I know that Draco's dad's about as thick with Voldemort as you can get, but why would Snape go too?"
"Snape's a Death Eater," Harry told her, looking surprised that she hadn't known. "Of course he would have been there."
Ariane blinked at him, aware her mouth was hanging open and abruptly closing it. "I feel like an idiot," she muttered to herself. "Harry, I asked him about Death Eaters and Voldemort and other things after I arrived. Because I didn't know. Because everyone knew and they looked at me funny when I didn't know who Voldemort was. And he asked me why I was asking him of all people."
Somehow Harry managed to grasp the general gist of this fragmented confession. "Well, not a lot of people knew, but I thought you'd have guessed. Snape's a slimy git."
"If Voldemort made every slimy git in the world a Death Eater, he wouldn't be able to count his followers."
Harry made a noncommittal noise. "So what if Snape and Malfoy went with Voldemort? It's not that big a difference." He looked at Ariane to see her reaction, then frowned. "What are you doing?" he asked in a bewildered tone.
Ariane had leaned over and was softly but rhythmically thumping her head with her fist. "Thinking," she replied calmly.
If Snape and Draco both went back in time, then I could find the right time by looking for them in the dreams. Briefly she paused, her hand resting on her forehead, and scanned her brain to think if she'd seen Snape or Draco in any of them. No, they haven't been there. Good, now I've got proof that none of my dreams are right. I don't much fancy dying. She resumed her gentle abuse of herself.
He watched her for about another minute, then requested: "Stop that, will you? It's starting to really scare me."
She complied so that she could open Daphne's letter. It contained nearly the same message as Tuyet's: Draco had gone missing, and Nott seemed very upset about something. Also, in a postscript, she added something that made Ariane raise her eyebrows so high her forehead hurt.
P.S. You were sent these sometime after holidays began, but for some reason they were just sent to the Slytherin dormitory instead of to wherever you're spending Christmas. Tuyet wanted to play Snap with them, but as they don't explode nobody else saw the fun in it.
Ariane tilted the thick envelope and watched as all the playing cards Madam Pince had given her at the beginning of the term tumbled onto the hard-packed earth. The gaudy painted faces looked blankly back at her, one or two actually standing on edge in the floor due to the Strengthening Spells cast upon them. She picked up the Slytherin cards and looked at them hard. "Harry. What does Voldemort look like?" she demanded in a monotone.
"What?" he asked, shocked. As clearly as though a door had slammed, a mental shield went up behind Harry's green eyes. "Not—not at all like you."
"No, what did he look like when he was young? Tell me, Harry."
"No," he refused flatly. "Dumbledore probably made a mistake. There's no way that Voldemort could be your father."
"There is a way," she snapped. "He went back in time once, got the date wrong, slept with a pretty woman in a nearby town. Tried again, got the date wrong again, fooled around with the same woman. Tried again, got the time right, got killed." Ariane made a final gesture with her hands as though she were chopping something. "It's pretty simple, Harry."
"Time travel is anything but simple," he shot back. "I'll tell you what he looked like," he offered, "but you've got to answer a question for me afterwards."
"What?"
Harry shook his head, his black eyebrows drawn down in a stubborn scowl that reminded Ariane painfully of her older brother as a teenager. "Agree to it," he ordered.
Curiosity struggled with apprehension and won. "All right. Show me."
As if by some cue, they both shut their eyes. Ariane tried to clear her brain in preparation, but only succeeded in stirring up her already muddled thoughts into a whirlpool. Harry took a deep breath and, suddenly, Salazar appeared in Ariane's head.
Well, after the first glance, he wasn't Salazar, but the likeness was shocking. Tom Riddle was tall, slender, and fairly good-looking. His dark hair was cut short, where Salazar's had been left long, and his eyes were a slate blue where Salazar's were darkest violet, but that bridled defiance, the gleam in their eyes, was so identical that Ariane shivered. She tilted her head; eyes still closed, and compared Tom Riddle's face with her own. Salazar had been right when he said that Ariane resembled their mother, Arsinoë, more than their father, but the shape of her eyes was indeed the same as Tom's, and her arched cheekbones seemed to have an influence from her father's strong bones rather than her mother's smooth oval shape.
She opened her eyes, not sure if she was happy to finally know who her father was or not. All her life she'd lived in the shadow of a title that hadn't been her making: bastard. Now, Ariane supposed, she could take her father's true surname. She would rather have her fingernails pulled out than do it, though.
Harry was looking at her, a hungry expression in his eyes. "My turn," he said, and Ariane's stomach dropped with fear of Harry's curiosity. "Am I going to die?"
Halfway through recoiling, Ariane froze and cricked her neck. "Ouch. What?" she asked, confused. "How would I know that?"
"You're having dreams about it," he pressed. "One of those dreams has to be right."
An icy fist closed around Ariane's throat as she tasted a spray of blood, saw a dark-haired head roll across the frozen mud at the edge of the wood. "I haven't had the right dream yet," she said hoarsely. "Besides," she attempted a cheerful grin, "If my dreams were prophecies you would be playing your next Quidditch match against snowmen made of custard."
"You're a dreadful liar, and you don't have dreams like that. You told me you've never had a normal dream."
"What? When?" she demanded, irritated. Ariane knew that she turned red when she lied, usually, but that time she hadn't blushed at all.
"Just before Christmas, when we were playing Truth or Consequence with Ginny and the twins," Harry explained. "You said that so you wouldn't have to drink whatever was in that bottle."
"Oh," Ariane said, remembering the bottle of suspiciously shifting brown and purple bubbles that Fred had procured as the punishment for a lie in the game of Truth or Consequence they had played on Christmas Eve. It had seemed quite innocent at the time, for Ginny to ask what Ariane dreamed of, but now she had the sneaking suspicion that Ginny and Harry had plotted out this scene ahead of time. "You bastard," she accused without any real anger. In his place she would probably have done the same, and she admired his subtlety in any case. Subtlety was not Harry's strong point.
"I'm not the only one," Harry pointed out. She glared at him and he looked away. "Sorry. Forgot that it had already been pointed out."
"What would you do if you knew you were fated to die?" she shot back, trying to put him off balance. "You'd probably just try to avoid it."
"I would not!" he protested.
"What about Ron? Or Hermione, or Ginny, or one of your other friends? What about then?" He flinched as she spat each name at him. "I can't tell you anything about what's going to happen, Harry, because you'll try to change it. It's in your nature, you can't help being a stupid hero."
"I don't know why the Sorting Hat put you in Gryffindor," Harry half-shouted, slamming his fists into the ground. "You're the most heartless person I've ever had the misfortune to be friends with."
"There's a difference between heartlessness and practically, Potter," Ariane yelled back, jumping to her feet. "I want to end all this trouble and I'll be damned if you're going to mess it up for everyone because you feel some crazy obligation to Dumbledore to kill Voldemort."
"I don't have some crazy obligation," Harry snarled, also getting to his feet. Though Ariane knew she was the taller of the two, somehow Harry seemed to be bigger in his rage. "There was a prophecy made that either Voldemort will kill me or I'll kill him, and I've had it hanging over my head for months and I'm sick of waiting for some big final confrontation or whatever's coming." He was breathing hard, his green eyes positively sparking with rage and frustration, like a caged young lion within moments of freedom—or death at the hands of a gladiator.
Ariane swallowed hard. "I told you the truth, Harry. I don't know what's going to happen yet. In most of my dreams so far, I'm the one who dies, but there is one—there is one were you might have died. I don't know for sure." Her mouth felt like she'd been drinking vinegar. "Any of us could die, but it seems you and I are the most likely to go."
Harry took this in and nodded, rubbing his face with an unsteady hand. "What about Ron and Hermione?" he asked in a quieter voice. "Are they going to die?"
"Not by what I've seen so far," Ariane replied, choosing not to tell him about the dream where Hermione had killed her. "I've never seen Ron in any of the dreams."
He took a deep breath, and then faced her squarely. "Ariane, are you waiting for a dream that shows you not dying?"
"Am I trying to save my own skin, you mean?" Her temper flared again. "I must admit that I don't much fancy dying, but then again I don't know anyone who does. Unless they're insane. Or stupid. Or heroic."
"Well that last one rules you out," Harry said maliciously.
Ariane shrieked in rage and stomped her bare foot down hard so that she wouldn't be tempted to bash Harry's head open against the mantle. Unluckily, her foot came down on the edge of the seven of clubs and the reinforced edge of the card sliced open the sole of her foot nearly to the bone. She bit back a squeal of pain and hopped on the spot, and then sat down more carefully, avoiding the dangerous playing cards.
"Sorry!" Harry exclaimed, kneeling down with equal care for the cards. "Wow, that's some deck of cards."
"Bloody," Ariane swore with disgust. "Well, I suppose that's rather accurate." Her foot was leaking blood at an alarming rate. "Ugh, I'd better go up to the house and get someone to look at this."
Harry offered her his shoulder to lean on, which was nice of him considering that Ariane had been ready to smash his head like an overripe watermelon a minute before. It was something Godric Gryffindor would have done. She hobbled out, leaving a trail of bloody footprints.
"Harry," she panted, halfway to the Burrow, having just remembered something she'd been meaning to ask away from everyone else. "What do you know about your family?"
"Very little," he said shortly. "My mum was Muggle-born and my dad was a pureblood. My dad's parents both died before I was born."
Ariane summoned her fuzzy mental image of Harry's parents—she'd seen pictures of them before. "Your mother had green eyes too, didn't she?" she queried.
"Yes."
"Was she the only witch in her family?"
"Yes," Harry ground out, obviously wishing that he could be done with this conversation. "Why do you care?"
"Well, in all likelihood your family could be directly descended from Godric Gryffindor," she said lightly, wincing as her bleeding foot made contact with a buried obstacle of some kind.
Harry nearly let her drop. "What?" he asked, nonplussed. "How would you know?"
"I don't. Your eyes just look rather the same as Godric's wife." And my brother cursed Godric's family to be Muggles until his heir came to kill Gryffindor's heir. The curse that Salazar had scribbled out before the Furies came for him lay folded and quiet inside Ariane's school trunk, but the one who was referred to in it might be helping her across the yard right now. Ariane had meant to tell Harry about the curse, but after hearing that he was already the subject of a prophecy she doubted it would be kind of her to tell him he was possibly the subject of a curse too.
Harry shrugged it off. "I'm probably not, but it's kind of cool to think about." Even so, the corners of his mouth lifted a little as he pushed the Weasley's kitchen door open with his foot.
"Oh my God!" shrieked Mrs. Weasley at once. "What happened? Is anyone else hurt? Ariane, are you all right?" She bustled over and nearly lifted Ariane off the floor. As it was, before she had entirely grasped what was going on she was seated on the kitchen table with her foot bleeding on Mrs. Weasley's apron.
"I'm fine—I did something stupid," she mumbled, aware of everyone in the crowded kitchen looking at her and Harry as though they were aliens.
"Good God, Ariane, 'something stupid' hardly covers this; what were you thinking?" Not waiting for an answer, she called into the next room; "Smethwyk? Smethwyk, can you take a look at this?"
"He's gone," said a familiar raspy voice. Leaning very heavily on a crutch, Professor Connor came into the room. She was altered almost unrecognizably from her former self: Angharad Connor might have once been called pretty, but no longer. Her bronze hair had all been cut until it was barely longer than Harry's, and one of her bottle green eyes had been put out and was now covered with a gauze patch. There were innumerable white scars over her bare arms and shoulders, and the hand not holding the crutch was nearly a claw from all the healing breaks within it. The other hand was missing the thumb and all its fingernails, and all the unscarred skin Ariane could see was bruised black and green.
"Yes, I am quite ugly," Professor Connor said, nodding vaguely to Ariane and Harry. "I expect that my classes will be much quieter now." She turned to Mrs. Weasley. "Molly, ask Remus about it. He's fairly good with cuts." With another off-center nod she wandered out of the room.
"She's not right in the head, is she?" Harry asked warily as Professor Connor's back vanished around the corner.
"Was she ever?" Ginny asked from near the fireplace, but very quietly. If Professor Connor had indeed lost her grip on sanity, then it wasn't wise to provoke her, since originally she'd had all the human compassion and kindness of a barbed wire fence.
"Ginny, don't make smart remarks. Do me a favor and go find Remus, please." Ginny made a face but complied to her mother's request, weaving under and over people and vanishing upstairs. With a critical eyeMrs. Weasleycast a look at the cut, then said "Accio!" and began dabbing it with the pale green liquid she'd Summoned. Ariane bit her lip as the cut burned and stung.
Remus Lupin stumbled over Crookshanks and into the kitchen a moment later, looking hassled and exhausted. "What's the matter, Molly?" he asked, unfailingly polite.
"Ariane's got a nasty cut on her foot and Smethwyk's gone back to St. Mungo's. I was wondering if—"
"I'll take care of it," he assured her, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles.
Ariane had only seen Remus Lupin in his human form once or twice, counting Christmas. He had the same rawboned, haggard appearance as Professor Connor, which made Ariane wonder if all werewolves looked somewhat alike. His face was lined and his hair was graying, but something in the way he held himself or the way he smiled was still young. He took her bare foot without flinching and peered into the cut.
"What happened?" he asked in quite a different voice than Mrs. Weasley. Lupin was shy around Ariane, perhaps because he'd inadvertently saved her life or because she knew that he was a werewolf before she'd known him as a human. Whatever the reason, he spent a lot of time looking at the ground when he talked to her.
"I stepped on a playing card," Ariane said, her voice sagging with irony. He glanced up at her for a moment and smiled shortly, apparently choosing not to question this. Harry rolled his eyes.
"It's not infected, and the cut is quite straight. If I stitch it up, it will heal in a week."
Ariane nodded compliance, but Mrs. Weasley started. "Stiches?" she snapped. "Remus, can't you just heal it magically?"
Ginny giggled. Lupin shot her a warning look, then smiled placating at the small, angry red-haired woman. "Stiches are much more reliable for simple cuts than an out-of-practice wizard," he told her. "They will work well in this case."
"Arthur's didn't work!" she sputtered, but trailed off when Lupin raised his eyebrows. "Oh, fine. Have it your way!" Mrs. Weasley stormed out of the room, calling over her shoulder, "Ginny, Ron, Harry! Come and pack your things."
"What for?" Harry asked, confused. Ariane shot an equally bewildered expression over her shoulder at Mrs. Weasley's back.
"To go back to school, of course!"
"Is tomorrow really the end of the holidays?" Ron asked. "Seems like they've been really short this year."
Ariane had to disagree, though privately. She felt as though the holidays had lasted a thousand years; felt like that the events contained in those two weeks could span a decade. Suddenly her foot went entirely numb, and she looked down in surprise. Lupin waved a spray bottle at her.
"It's so that you can't feel the stitches. It's a rather creepy experience to feel the thread pulling through your skin." Biting his lip in concentration, he threaded a fine needle in two tries. Ariane wasn't sure she could have done it in ten.
"Do you practice on yourself?" she asked as he pulled her foot onto his lap so that it was at the proper angle.
"Mostly," he admitted. "Also, recently Angharad's been coming to me instead of letting her cuts heal on their own. And her—her friend, as well." He tied a knot into the end of the thread.
"How many werewolves are there here?" she asked, wondering if one of the Aurors she'd seen going in and out of the Burrow was hiding a furry secret as well.
"Only two," Lupin said shortly, poking the needle through the skin at the edge of the wound. Ariane leaned forward with interest as he took careful stitches, tinier than her own, each barely visible against the clean white skin of her foot. "Doesn't it make you queasy to watch?"
"No," she replied. "I've seen it done before." Her mind threw forth an image of Salazar when he was only eighteen; his face furrowed in concentration as he repaired the damage a heavy scythe had done to a boy too small to be wielding it. "My brother once had ambitions to be a Healer."
"Salazar Slytherin wanted to be a Healer?" Lupin glanced up at her, his voice only a little disbelieving. "How did he begin wanting to save lives and end trying to take them?" He held her foot firmly so that she couldn't jerk it away. "It's a question."
"It's rude," she grumbled, holding still. "I don't know what made him change." That wasn't entirely correct. It had started innocently, trying some black magic on the side, but had only intensified when he had tried to raise Ariane from the dead. "Well, I suppose it's my fault. He got really into black magic when he raised me from the dead."
"That was brave of him," Lupin said calmly, taking another tiny stitch. "Black magic has a nasty habit of killing those who wield it if it's done improperly."
"He was a great wizard." Ariane lifted her chin defiantly, but found it much harder to watch her foot being sewn up with her nose in the air. She shrugged it off and leaned forward again. Changing the subject, she asked, "Where's Professor Connor's friend?"
His grip on her foot tightened, but Ariane couldn't feel it. "We don't know," he said, still calm, but the heavy lines on either side of his mouth deepened with—anger? Worry? "He was also one of Lucius Malfoy's bodyguards, and hasn't been seen since the night—well, not for two nights, at the least."
"Was he in the Order?" Ariane pressed as Lupin drew near the end of the cut.
"No, he wasn't," said Tonks from just behind Ariane's head. The girl twisted to look at her. Tonks had come to the Burrow that morning wearing her favorite disguise of a heavy-set tweedy woman, and though she'd resumed her normal form complete with concert t-shirt and jeans, her short hair was still gray. "They were quite close though, eh Remus?" Tonks winked cheekily and Lupin made a face.
"Very good friends," he said dryly, tying off the thread. "All right, this thread is a bit magical, so you'll only have the stitches in for two days or so before it heals and the stitches melt." He pulled a roll of bandages out of his pocket and wrapped it around her foot twice, cut it neatly with a flick of his wand, and tied it off deftly. "Try to keep it up as much as you can," he advised. "You can walk on it, but don't if you can help it."
"Okay," Ariane agreed, pulling her still-numb foot onto her lap so that she could examine the wrapping. Lupin shot Tonks a 'don't bring up awkward subjects' look and Tonks rolled her eyes. Ariane hid a smile and filed away the news that Professor Connor had a lover who had vanished with the Death Eaters to dangle over Harry's head later.
"Oh bloody hell!" Ginny swore as Mr. Weasley maneuvered the van into a parking space outside Kings Cross.
"What is it now, Ginny?" Mrs. Weasley asked, exasperated. "Have you forgotten something?"
"Rupert!" she wailed from the seat next to Ariane. "I've left Rupert at home!"
"Ginny, there's no time to go back," Mrs. Weasley lectured. "We'll try to send him by owl—"
"No!" Ginny half-shrieked. Ron, who was sitting behind them with Harry and Hermione, put his hands over his ears. "Errol will drop him!"
Tonks, who was sitting on Ginny's other side, winced as the van windows reverberated.
This argument went on for some time, in which Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ariane all unloaded their things, found trolleys for them, and played a game of euchre with Ariane's deck of cards. They were halfway through their second game (Hermione and Harry had won the first) when Mrs. Weasley stormed out of the car, looking like the human embodiment of a thunderstorm.
"Here, you two go with Arthur and find that blasted cat!" she snarled, and Harry and Ariane, who had been indicated in that furious sweep of arm, nearly leaped back to the car. "You two come with me—we can take their trolleys." Hermione and Ron, looking rather worried at their own fate, waved to the other two as they climbed back in the van. Mr. Weasley slammed the car into third gear without using the clutch, making the gears crunch and rattle.
"Blasted cat!" he muttered.
Ginny snuffled pitifully into her sweater sleeve, but Ariane was fairly certain that the youngest Weasley hadn't been crying. Being the only girl in a family full of boys had advantages, and the liberal use of tears in a family unused to them could grease hinges and buy favors.
Mr. Weasley swore as the clock above Kings Cross chimed the half-hour before eleven and nearly drove into the back of a smart red car he was following too closely. With another crash of gears he pushed the van into second gear and the passengers lurched so violently Ariane and Ginny knocked heads.
"Ouch!" they exclaimed just as Harry drew in his breath sharply from hitting his shoulder against a window.
"Dad, you've got to use the clutch!" Ginny gasped as her seatbelt nearly strangled her.
"Ginny, don't be ridiculous!" Mr. Weasley shouted over his shoulder as the van stalled halfway around a roundabout. "I don't need a small purse to drive a car!"
Harry and Ariane both made noises like muffled firecrackers. Then—
BOOM!
The world rocked, and it wasn't just because Mr. Weasley couldn't drive.
Ariane twisted in her seat to see a cloud of putrid yellow smoke rising from Kings Cross Station.
Author's Note: Dun dun duh…more to come! I'm in a good mood at this point because I've finally mapped out all the specifics for the climax and ending…and I've written the last chapter, in true JKR style. Of course, my last chapter doesn't end with scar…of course, I could still stick it in…
Originally the Percy/Ariane scene at the beginning of the chapter was longer and juicier, but, to my saddness, it didn't fit in. It was dragging down the storyline so I chopped it. Don't worry, you didn't miss out on anything too good.
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