"If dreams are like movies, memories are films about ghosts."
Films About GhostsChapter 24: What's Right
"I think you've gone mad," Harry informed Ariane as they walked down the hallways near the Hospital Wing.
"I've never been saner," she shot back. Her hair was crackling with electricity and stood out around her head like the rays of the sun. "I feel invincible."
"You've just had your soul sucked out your throat," he replied, matching the blistering pace she'd set easily. "I'd think you'd be a little less energetic."
She inserted a leap into her stride that nearly sent her tumbling down the stairs and giggled. Harry rolled his eyes, and, for the umpteenth time, tried to find out why she wanted to go to the Chamber of Secrets. Ariane resisted, intent on keeping it a secret as long as she could. "I don't think I like you," he snapped at her, frustrated.
Ariane shrugged and grinned as she pushed open the first-floor bathroom door. "You're just as curious as I am, though." Harry shrugged back and followed her.
"Ariane?"
She spun, not recognizing the quavering voice that hailed her. The girl standing at the end of the hallway was tall and small-boned, with her usually sleek hair pulled haphazardly away from her face. Her already slanting eyes were tear-bloated to slits.
"Tuyet?" Ariane asked hesitantly. "What's wrong?" The taller Slytherin girl stood, shifting from foot to foot, her face becoming more bloated from behind with tears she was still waiting to cry. Ariane went to her and tried to catch her blue eyes. "What's wrong?"
Tuyet burst like an overfull balloon and slumped on Ariane's shoulder, crying so hard that she gasped. Behind them, Ariane heard Harry slip into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, his thoughts churning with awkwardness. Ariane patted her back until Tuyet managed to find her voice again.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice muffled in Ariane's sweater, now quite damp.
"It's all right. What happened? Was it the platform disaster?" she asked, quoting the event as the Daily Prophet had charmingly dubbed it.
"Y-yes," Tuyet hiccupped, her eyes flooding again. "Blaise—he—I saw…" she burst into loud sobs again. Ariane felt the bottom of her stomach drop out. She had never been particularly close with the curly-haired Slytherin boy, but he'd never been cruel to her, even after her switch from Slytherin to Gryffindor.
"God, Tuyet, I'm so sorry."
"Daphne too," Tuyet wailed. "All the good Slytherins are gone!"
"What about Millicent and Pansy?" Ariane asked hesitantly. While she didn't have anything specific against Millicent, Pansy had done her best to make Ariane's life a living hell. She rather hoped that Pansy'd met the same fate as Blaise and Daphne.
Tuyet's face flushed red, and an odd expression crossed her face. "Oh, Pansy," she said with what Ariane eventually recognized as a smile, "Pansy's alive. Pansy's got inside sources. She told all the Slytherins she likes—all the Slytherins Draco likes, that is—not to come back to school on the Hogwarts Express. That's not me, Daphne, or Blaise obviously." Her face twisted and she began to cry again, leaning her head on Ariane's shoulder.
Ariane prodded Tuyet's swirling mind and came up with an entire scene, blazing red and vinegar in her friends anguished mind:
"I knew what was coming, of course," Pansy whispered to a group of third-years. "Draco warned me—he told me to tell only those selected. He knew that something was planned to rid the school of Muggleborns and the filth that associate with them—like that Ariane Somerled. You know that she's Muggleborn, don't you? No? That's why she was put in Gryffindor, because the House of Slytherin always recognizes Mudblood filth."
"That isn't true," snapped Tuyet/Ariane. "You're a liar, Pansy." She was sitting in an armchair by the fire, her legs pulled up to her chest, an awful hollow feeling within her ribs. "You're a spiteful little bitch, Pansy, you just don't like Ariane because she's pretty and Draco fancied her."
Pansy's face flushed. "She's an ugly little Mudblood, and you think I envy her? She's probably dead."
"Well, that's not my fault," Tuyet snarled. "You killed innocent people just so you could get the chance to get back at her, didn't you?"
"I don't care if she's dead," Pansy shot back.
"Well, she's not. She wasn't even really hurt, she's just in the hospital wing for a day or two." Tuyet's voice was thick with rage. "Do you realize that you killed two Slytherins, Pansy? Tell those little leeches that."
"I didn't kill anyone," she said coolly. "Well, not anyone that mattered."
Tuyet launched herself from her seat and at Pansy in a spectacular flying leap. Her hands had almost closed on Pansy's throat when Pansy shouted "Protego!" Her hands bounced off a wall painfully and she hit the floor, winding her. That didn't stop Tuyet: she closed her hands around Pansy's thick ankles and jerked her off her feet.
"I hate you!" Tuyet screamed, her throat already raw with tears. "Why didn't you tell Blaise? Why didn't you tell Daphne?"
Pansy sneered. Tuyet's temper, already burning, flared to new heights. Not thinking, she snatched up her wand and shouted the first spell that came into her head.
"You turned her into a camel?" Ariane asked Tuyet, incredulous.
"Yes," Tuyet said, a hint of a smile on her lips. "And then I Banished her somewhere. I don't know where, exactly, I wasn't particularly specific."
"I think it was someplace camels don't usually go," Ariane grinned. "You're going to be in such trouble."
"I don't care. I wish I'd killed her."
Behind them, Harry cleared his throat. Tuyet stared at him, her blue eyes incredulous. "Please tell me you two aren't going together."
Ariane and Harry exchanged mortified glances. "No!" Ariane exclaimed as Harry blurted, "I don't even like her."
Tuyet almost smiled. "Well, if you say so," she said in a slow, irritating way. Ariane turned a shade of maroon that Ron would have admired. This seemed to brace the cutting Slytherin up a bit, because she said, "I'm going to see what I've missed of McGonagall's class. See you two later." She winked and walked away with an infuriating sort of smirk on her face.
Ariane turned to Harry, who was quite pink in the face himself, and he muttered, "Slytherins are gits."
"For once, I agree," she told him fervently, and they went into the bathroom.
It was a miserable, dimly lit room with cracked mirrors and mildew in the sinks and on the floor. The only noise in the room was dripping water. Ariane turned to the door that they had come in by and said, "Colloportus." The door sealed itself, and she turned back to Harry. "So. You want to say the password, or should I do it?"
The underground tunnels that led to the Chamber of Secrets were just as slimy and filthy as Harry remembered.
Ariane, however, had had no idea that they would be trekking through a sewer. She restrained a shudder as her foot crushed a rat's skeleton.
"Not what you expected?" Harry smiled grimly, kicking the bones out of his way.
"Well, not entirely," Ariane admitted. "I didn't expect a cheery tea room though."
"When are we going to leave Hogwarts?" he asked casually.
Though she would have dearly loved to say "after our seventh year, silly" and watch Harry's temper flare, she stepped on the urge. "Soon," she said simply, her mind flickering through what was to come. "Very soon." They had reached a cave-in in the tunnel, and Ariane led the climb over it.
She slipped on loose rock and Harry steadied her, asking calmly, "How will you know when to go?"
Ariane frowned and shook her head slightly. "I need to think about it. I don't know how to say it."
Down the tunnel, through the antechamber, into the Chamber itself. Ariane paused at the entrance and looked Harry straight in his eyes. "I don't want you to think I know everything that's going to happen from here on out. I don't. I don't know if I'm going to get hurt, or if any of us are going to get hurt, and I don't know if we'll all make it home. I don't know if this will be a happy ending. What I do know that is if we want to end Voldemort once and for all, this is the way to do it."
He nodded, his dark hair falling over his green eyes, then frowned. "But how will you know when to go back?"
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her thoughts roiling. "Because when that time comes, I won't have any other choice."
They observed the Chamber in silence. Ariane admired it; it was truly a masterpiece of architecture. Harry remembered it, and waited patiently for her to tell him where they were going. The floor was slick with water, and their wandlight made a glossy sheen on the stones. Ariane could see their reflections: Harry, dark and solid, and herself in her pajama shirt and jeans, pale and ethereal. "I'm not of this time," she said, half to herself. "But I know this place." Her voice caught in her throat and came out as a sob.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked.
Ariane licked dry lips, and swallowed. "I was wondering…just wondering…if this is what he looked like before he died." She swallowed again and looked away, determined not to cry anymore on Salazar's behalf. "He would have only been—thirty-one. Barely thirty-one." Salazar's likeness stood across from her, gaunt-faced and monkeyish, his beard touching the floor between his great stone feet.
Harry put a hand on her shoulder and said simply, "I'm sorry." But it could never be simple between two minds that open. Ariane saw, though the bridge of thoughts that was Harry's arm, that he pitied her in the same way that he pitied himself, that he wished both of them knew less of their families. He wished he could have known his parents, and he knew that she missed her mother in the same way he did: the loss of a person they had never really known, only heard of.
Harry didn't say anything. She cleared her throat and told him, "I think we'll have to go along to the side of the statue to find a stairway."
"What would be at the top?" he asked warily.
"My tomb," Ariane whispered. "I need to go back there and see what Rowena left me."
The Ministry was very quiet when Percy went in to pick up his things. His hands, which had been coated in salve and bandages two days before by Madam Pomfrey, were now once again whole, unmarked by the unadvisable physical handling of a soul. He kept flexing them, as though to test that they still worked.
He also kept running his hand over the corners of a tiny envelope that was tucked in his coat pocket. His mother had given it to him on his last day in the Burrow, with a knowing (if somewhat teary) smile. In it was a ring small enough to seem meant for a child: two diamonds the color of champagne set in a slim gold band, surrounded by four tiny emeralds shaped like leaves.
"It was your great-grandmother's," his mother had explained. "Nobody else in the family could ever wear it—Grandma was built like a bird—but I think it would fit Ariane very well, should you want to give it to her." She had sniffed heartily when Percy hugged her as tightly as he could, the only possible response.
Percy had been transferred, to his mild surprise, from the Department of International Relations to the Department of Mysteries. He'd gotten a letter that morning, which had been very brief and informed him that he needed to clear out his desk at the earliest possible moment. With a sigh, realizing that this was probably the first of many demotions until he reached the equivalent position his father held in a meaningless department, Percy unlocked his office door and went inside. It was a mess, and he sighed as he hung his coat up and got to work.
It took quite awhile to clear out the office, mostly because Percy had let his organization slide in the days after Christmas, and also because there was a lot of paperwork to go through. Nearly all of it would be left behind for the next person to fill the office and post Percy had, but there were a few letters, papers, and photographs Percy wanted to keep for himself. He started with the drawers of files, alphabetizing and ordering things by date until his brain was numb.
Then he turned to his desk. As usual, his 'In' box was stacked full of forms, letters, newspapers, and other random paperwork that (in some way or another) was Percy's job to settle. He plowed through it in about ten minutes, sorting and reading until he'd reached the last form.
It was a single sheet of parchment, totally blank. Suspiciously, Percy pulled the 'In' box towards him and peered at the paper, checking it for the signs of a prank from Fred and George (who, despite being successful entrepreneurs, were still playing pranks on him whenever they felt the need to test a new product), and, seeing none, lifted it from the box and flipped it over.
There was a single word printed in bold black handwriting:
'GOTCHA'
Percy frowned, then gasped.
The paper melted, shifting form and color until he was holding a miniscule hourglass in his hand, its fine gold chain looped tightly around his wrist. It had a tiny engraving on its gold face: CMXCVII. The sand was trickling down into the lower bulb of the hourglass.
Abruptly the world shifted, his desk slid away from him, and the second office in the Department of International Relations was very, very empty.
Gotcha.
Author's Note: This chapter is not up to my personal standards for myself. I wanted to get them back in time in this one but the plotline just wasn't cooperating with me. HOPEFULLY (emphasis on the hope) the next chapter should go more quickly than this one, which was another "type two words, delete one, type one word, delete two, type three, delete a paragraph, type a paragraph, delete the draft and bang head on desk" sort of job.
On the plus side, the whole back-in-time thing is shaping up to be totally wicked, so at least I have that to look forward to.
Review! Reviews are good and lovely and make me think I'm writing for a purpose!