"If dreams are like movies, memories are films about ghosts."
Films About Ghosts
Chapter 25: 997"Lumos."
"Whoa. This is cool."
Harry's voice echoed as they finally broke through the crypt door into the marble tomb and Ariane lit her wand.
Ariane remembered her time in this room as clearly as though it had been yesterday. It was a big, square room, made almost entirely from white marble. The walls were plain, but the ceiling was a black, matte rock set with thousands of tiny crystals. A marble slab in the middle of the room was empty of the corpse it had been made for. The five trunks left for her were open, their contents scattered by a frightened girl searching for who she was. And I didn't find it, did I, she mused as she picked her way across the portraits. It's taken me months to find out who I am.
Without hesitation she picked her way to the paper-stuffed trunk, Rowena's last gift to her. The papers were in total disarray, because Ariane had pawed so hastily through them, but they were there. Proof of what Ariane had to do. She took a seat and began riffling through the paper, blessing Rowena for writing legibly for once.
Harry looked at the portraits, lingering the longest over Godric's. "He's not how I imagined Godric Gryffindor," he said finally.
"What did you think he would look like?" Ariane asked distractedly, scanning another document. Memoirs. She tossed it aside and grabbed another.
"More like Dumbledore. I always sort of thought that Dumbledore might be the Heir of Gryffindor in the same way that Voldemort's the Heir of Slytherin. Because they were always fighting each other, even from the beginning." Harry squinted at the picture, then at Ariane. "But you seemed to think that I'm the Heir of Gryffindor."
She peered at him through her hair. "Harry, I don't know. Salazar cursed Godric's family so that they would all be Muggles until his heir came to kill Gryffindor's heir." Looking resolutely down at the paper she held, she discovered it was a record of Salazar's decent into what Rowena termed 'a carefully hidden insanity'. Ariane began to read it. It was very, very hard to read. Half the words she didn't know, and the half she knew meant pretty much nothing except that Salazar was a few bricks short of a load.
"But both my parents were magical."
"I don't know, I suppose the curse lost strength over the years. Anyhow, it would be your mum's family that was descended from Gryffindor. How did she die, again?"
"Voldemort killed her," Harry said, sounding as though he'd said these words many times. "He only wanted to kill me, but she wouldn't let him. So he killed her."
Well, that makes a bit of sense…Salazar cursed Godric's family to be common until his heir came to kill them. That could mean that once that happened the Gryffindor line would become wizards again, so Harry's mum could have been a witch because she was fated to die at Salazar's heir's hands. I think. And that would have broken the curse, so Harry would be a wizard even though he's the heir of Gryffindor. Ariane decided not to share this with Harry just yet. He probably wouldn't want to think that his mother had been fated to die from her very birth. "Look, can't you give me hand with this?" she asked, tossing the paper she held onto the 'useless' pile.
Harry sat down beside her and picked through the trunk. "What is all this rubbish?"
"Rowena's attempt to help me, I think. She knew that Salazar had tried to raise me from the dead, and she wanted to give me a bit of information to go on." Ariane laughed. "Though she was true to form and gave me far more than I needed." She thought of Hermione's homework and all of its excessive detail and smiled to herself.
"She and Hermione could start a club."
Ariane didn't hear him. Her eyes had fallen on a long scroll, beginning with the phrase, "Laramy Ferrer died today." She snatched it and began to read.
One of my students, Laramy Ferrer, was killed today in a laboratory accident. He had already finished his Hogwarts education but stayed on to assist me in magical matters, such as the building of the walls of Hogwarts. Laramy has always been very good with Charms for levitation and flying, and because he has never married (nor has any desire to) he continues to live in Ravenclaw house, monitoring the students when I could not. I suppose he would have taken my place as Head of Ravenclaw when I died, if he had not preceded me to the grave.
Helga thinks that Laramy took his own life, because he convinced himself there was no reason to live. I blame myself for this. At his request I cast a powerful magic on him that will allow him to be reincarnated with each new generation (in a new body, naturally, as the reuse of his old one would soon attract attention) until he is alive at the same time as Ariane. I didn't believe in true love until I saw it in Laramy and Ariane. They were made for each other, two parts of one whole.
Salazar, who has rendered himself nearly incapable of loving anyone, clung to Ariane as though she were trying to get away, though in truth she loved him innocently and never once doubted that he would always be there for her. Salazar's insecurity is what undid him in the end, I think. He made an attempt on Laramy's life that took Ariane's, and, guilt-stricken and mad, he delved deep into the Dark Arts to bring her back to life for his own selfish purposes. I believe I am the only one who knows of the flaw in his spell, the flaw that caused Ariane not to rise to life at once. Well, actually I am now the only one who knows. For I told Laramy as well. I told him that Ariane may not rise in our lifetimes, or that of our children or our grandchildren. (Or should I say, rather, Helga's children and grandchildren, as Laramy and I are both childless.)
He died three days later, his body burned by a jar of Gubraithian Fire that had not been sealed properly—or that had been unsealed carelessly. I believe that he ended his own life, rather than face the time until his natural death without the woman fated to be his wife. I wish he had not. I foresee many unhappy lifetimes for the man I knew as Laramy Ferrer before he and Ariane are reunited.
Ariane crumpled the paper up and threw it aside, her mind reeling. He killed himself. She though of Laramy proposing to her, of Laramy talking to her in Slytherin house, of kissing him under the stars. But I have Percy now, Ariane reminded herself. I love him. But the thought of Laramy ending his own life out of despair made her want to cry.
"Hey, this one's got Hermione's name—and—who's that?" Harry pulled the paper out, squinting at Rowena's cramped handwriting. "What's that say?" Ariane leaned over, her stomach doing its best imitation of a lead weight.
"I have seen Ariane," the silver-haired girl read from the top of the page. "She is no Inferius, nor is she a ghost, but flesh and blood, living and breathing. Apparently she awoke almost a thousand years from today and"—Ariane's voice cracked—"now seeks the death of her own father by the hands of a boy she calls her friend. He is not tall, with dark hair and brown eyes, and has a seriousness beyond his years."
Harry continued: "She has brought others from her new life: two werewolves, a girl who could be Helga as a child, another girl named Hermione who I would have liked to have in my House, and the boy who Ariane says is fated to kill her father."
Ariane elbowed him in the ribs. "That would be you."
"I don't have brown eyes." Indeed, Harry's eyes were not a shade anywhere near brown—they were a shade somewhere between grass green and bottle green.
"Well, we'll have to change them. I suppose we'll have to change a lot of things, because I'm pretty recognizable."
Harry snorted. "I'd say. Between your hair, your eyes, and the fact that you're—er—sort of pretty, you'll have to change a lot." His face went slightly pink. She stuck out her tongue at him and continued reading.
"Those two werewolves—they'd be Lupin and Professor Connor, right?"
"Seems logical," Harry made a face, presumably at the idea of Professor Connor accompanying them anywhere. "But she's mad, isn't she?"
"Well, she's always been dangerous—" Ariane gasped as a towering flame appeared on the marble block in the center of the room. A man stepped out of the fire, which consolidated itself into a swan-sized bird perched on his shoulder. "I—Professor?" she asked, bewildered by the sudden bright light.
"It would reassure me greatly, Ariane, if you would not spontaneously disappear from Hogwarts. It would also please me if you didn't lure other students with you." Dumbledore's voice was just as light and polite as always, but something about the way he was watching her made her feel like an insect.
"He came by himself," she muttered resentfully. Harry glared at her, but it was as much as an excuse to not look at Dumbledore as anything.
"You two are, if you've forgotten, our hope for ending the reign of terror Lord Voldemort has imposed upon the witches and wizards of this nation," he continued in the same marrow-freezing tone. "Though, considering your remarkable memory, Ariane, I doubt you have."
"I had to go—" she began, gesturing at the reams of paper surrounding them, but Dumbledore cut her off.
"I don't suppose it occurred to you, then, to let someone know where you were going? Madam Pomfrey is very distressed by the fact that one of her patients has vanished from the hospital wing; Miss Granger, who I daresay shouldn't be upset now in her delicate condition, is quite distraught; and I am very, very worried about your apparent lack of respect for your positions."
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," Ariane admitted, her temper still up, "but I had to come down here, to look at these papers!" She grabbed the one that she and Harry had been reading. "Here's when we should go!" she snapped, pointing at the date at the top of the paper and thrusting it at him.
"997 AD," Dumbledore read, his expression not changing an iota. He looked like a statue of some Norse god, standing on an altar, about to exact a fearful judgment on his worshipers. "Do you know when in the year?"
Ariane thought. Not during the winter, she mused; all the deaths seemed to happen in the winter. But it's still cold outside, and there are leaves on the trees. "Fall," she decided. "Early fall, during an unseasonable cold."
"I'm glad you know when to go," he said, his expression for the first time altering into something like worry. Dumbledore offered Ariane, and then Harry, a hand up onto the marble block. "It's urgent we return to Hogwarts now."
For a moment Ariane felt the same as she had when she first set foot into the Gryffindor common room, alone, with a tingling fear running along her spine. "What's happened?" she whispered. "What's wrong?"
"Please take hold of Fawkes' tail, Ariane, Harry." Harry did so without question, but she grabbed the Headmaster's sleeve.
"Professor," she asked, her eyes beginning to fill. "Is he dead?"
Neither of them needed to ask who 'he' was. Dumbledore shook his head. "There is no way of knowing, just now." When Ariane stood very still for a moment, swaying on the spot, Dumbledore seized her slim wrist in his hand and murmured to Fawkes, "Take us back to the Hospital Wing, if you please."
The three of them vanished in a long tail of flame.
"No!" Ariane cried as her feet hit the ground. "He can't have gone!" Her legs gave out and her knees hit the floor with a crack.
"Harry!" Hermione cried at the same time. "Where did you go?" She looked around frantically and saw Ariane crouched on her hands and knees, white as a ghost, Dumbledore standing looking down at her, Harry looking shocked and pale. "What's wrong? Who's gone?"
"Miss Granger!" Madam Pomfrey nearly shouted. "Please calm down!"
Hermione sat back in her bed, bushy hair rumpled and face flushed. "Who's gone?" she asked, her voice trembling.
"Percy Weasley vanished from the Ministry this morning, leaving behind only an overcoat and the knowledge that a Time Turner had been stolen from the Department of Mysteries that morning, set for the year 997 AD." Dumbledore pulled on a scrap of cloth in his pocket, and it doubled and redoubled in size until it was the old brown overcoat Percy had always worn.
Ariane rested her forehead on the cool stone floor, her eyes brimming with tears. Gone. He's gone someplace far away, and I might never see him again. "You know," she whispered, "He came to the Burrow in that coat. He took the day off work. Percy never takes the day off." A shaky sob tore its way out of her throat.
"Oh, get a grip," a new voice said, crisp and cutting. "You're not doing him any good by sitting on the floor and whimpering like some kind of derelict dog." A foot snaked out and caught Ariane under the shoulder, flipping her onto her back. Professor Connor towered over her, her bronze hair regrown to below her shoulders. "You're one of the best damn students in my class, Somerled, and if you think that whinging is going to get you anywhere after half a year with me, I should resign right now." Her sole bottle-green eye flicked to Harry and Hermione in turn. "Of course, I'd say you're number three after these two. But if they're coming as well, why worry?" With a flick of her head, she adjusted the bandage over her missing eye.
"Couldn't have put it better myself, Angharad," Dumbledore said lightly. "Now. We need a plan."
"Who's going?" Harry asked, without preamble.
Ariane thought back in her memories. "You, me, Hermione," she drew a deep breath and nodded at Professor Connor, "Professor Connor, and—er—Mr. Lupin."
"Not Ron?" Hermione asked with a quaver in her voice.
"He's far too ill to be moved for at least two more weeks," Dumbledore stated flatly. "And even then he is not up to a full-scale adventure."
Harry offered Ariane a hand up, and on the pretense of levering her to her feet whispered, "Ginny'll want to come. She'll be impossible if you don't let her."
"Do you mean you want Ginny to come, or Ginny wants to come with you?" she returned, a grin flickering across her face. Harry rolled his eyes at her and went faintly pink under his glasses. More seriously, Ariane whispered, "I have seen her in a few of the possible endings."
"But they weren't good ones, were they?" She shook her head. "Are you just saying that?"
"I'm saying that if Ginny comes because we, as a group, decide she should, it will go wrong." Ariane stared Harry down, a clash of grass green and pre-dawn violet. "Please don't value the means over the end, Harry."
"I could say the same to you," he growled back.
"Are you two quite finished?" Professor Connor demanded. "We need to get started now if we want to leave soon."
Two hours later, Ariane looked at herself in the mirror and saw that a stranger looked back. Her hair had been dyed an improbable brown, and thanks to a few smelly magical creams her skin was dark too, almost Mediterranean-like in color. The stranger's eyes were still light, but now they were a pale jade green. With shaking hands she braided and pinned her hair in a crown around her head, aware that she looked a great deal like a Gypsy or a Jew, two despised people from her time. She hoped that she didn't run into anyone hostile.
She pulled on the clothes given to her with a little more ease: they were what she had grown up in. Kirtle, skirts, bodice, a cloth to cover her hair, all in shades of green and cream; brown leather shoes. It took her awhile to lace the bodice because her fingers weren't used to the work, but when she finished and glanced in the mirror again, she decided there was nothing about her that could be remarked upon, especially not by anyone who thought that Ariane had been dead for seven years. With a critical glance at her reflection she added a broad band of freckles across her nose and cheeks, making her deep skin color look a bit less false.
Stepping out of her preparation room, she was greeted by the sight of Hermione and Harry, both looking very awkward in their medieval clothing and rather odd, especially Harry, who had been forced to trade in his glasses for temporary vision-adjusting spells. His eyes looked small and lost in his face without his glasses to pen them in. Hermione was wearing a version of Ariane's clothing in red and green, and was having a hard time lacing the bodice.
"What a stupid piece of clothing!" she burst out. "Why would anyone submit to these?"
"Because bras won't be invented for another nine hundred years?" Ariane suggested, finishing the lacing for her. "Don't worry about it. Its only temporary."
Harry looked a little more at ease in his tunic, shirt, and breeches, though he had the impression of being dressed up rather than dressed. Someone had grown his hair longer so that he'd fit in with their group, and it was tied in a short tail behind his head, the bits in front sticking up of their own free will. His hair had also been lightened to brown, nearly the same color as Ariane's. They could have been brother and sister, something Ariane was certain was intentional.
"I feel ridiculous," he told her, making a gesture that might indicate his lack of glasses or the spells that made his eyes brown.
"I look pretty silly myself," she replied. "I feel like I'm wearing a stranger's body."
"Are you all dressed?" Remus Lupin came in the room, his clothes as brown and battered as he was. "That was fast." He was probably the least changed out of all of them, his hair having been long enough to pass all along. His quiet gray eyes were a little amused at the change in all of them, but he did a double take when it came to Ariane. "Good Lord," he said with a smile. "I hardly recognized you."
"That was the general idea," Professor Connor remarked dryly, coming towards them with the aid of her cane. Her bronze hair served as a shield for the worst scarring on her face, neck, and shoulders. Her missing eye couldn't be replaced in time, but a strip of linen that wound around her head neatly covered it. Her clothing was all grays and blacks, longer and more concealing than the younger girls', hiding her mangled hands and also the fact that she was carrying at least five knives on her person. Ariane only knew about the knives because she had seen Professor Connor sharpening them while the silver-haired girl was becoming a brunette.
She gave Ariane a long look. "Maybe you should be the one with the eye patch. Your eyes are too much the same."
Lupin pulled a length of white cloth out of the pouch he carried by his side. "I've got that covered. This is spelled to not obstruct your vision, but you'll only have to wear it if we're in Hogwarts. You'll be a blind woman."
"I don't think that will help," Ariane objected, tucking it into her pocket. "The only thing I'm worried about is someone recognizing my voice."
"Then don't talk," Professor Connor said with exasperation. "There, that's easy, isn't it?" With a false (and quite irritating) smile, she tossed long black cloaks to all of them.
"Those are woven through with Disillusionment Charms, and while you're wearing them, most people should ignore you," Lupin explained, pulling two more out of his bag and handing one to Professor Connor, who took it without thanks. "But really we should just try to stay out of the way of anyone we don't know."
"There's a Muggle village about twenty minutes walk from Hogwarts," Ariane informed the group. "But they're quite used to seeing magic, so don't panic if they see you Apparating or anything." She smiled inwardly as she recalled the headman of said village who had once approached Salazar for her hand in marriage. "I'm not saying that they're allies—because they aren't—but they aren't enemies either."
Professor Connor shifted her weight impatiently, wrapping a strand of bronze hair around the fingers of her thumbless hand. "When do we leave? I'm sick of all this planning, this exchange of theories. Our mission is simple: we go, we kill Voldemort, we kill his Death Eaters, we come back." She banged her walking stick on the floor and glared at Lupin with her remaining eye. "The question of how can be settled once we're there."
"Angharad, if I am not mistaken this hasty attitude and lack of concern of the 'how' is what nearly lost you your life on multiple occasions," Professor McGonagall poked her head through the door, her normal brisk attitude a welcome relief from Professor Connor's rising temper. "Not in the least is the occasion on which you were bitten." The one-eyed woman flinched as though she'd been struck, but her stubborn expression didn't change.
Professor McGonagall drew Lupin and Professor Connor aside, but made no effort to lower her voice as she told them: "We do know that Fenrir Greyback has been confirmed as one of the Death Eaters who jumped back in time with You-Know-Who." Both werewolves tensed, Lupin looking worried and pale, Professor Connor even angrier, her scars white against her livid face.
"Who's Fenrir Greyback?" Ariane asked.
Professor McGonagall looked at the slight brunette, confused. "Who—oh, Ariane. My goodness, they have done a thorough job disguising you." She hesitated, her eyes on Professor Connor. "Er—Fenrir Greyback is a Death Eater."
"So are all the other people with Voldemort—" Ariane began to protest, but Lupin interrupted her.
"Fenrir Greyback is a werewolf—a savage werewolf. I don't believe there's a speck of human decency left in him." He looked gaunter than ever, his eyes sunken and surrounded by hair-fine pleats. "Voldemort uses him as a weapon against families that resist him, to make them do what he wants. Fenrir bites children, mainly, but its been rumored that he's begun to bite people even when he isn't transformed."
"Greyback bit me," Professor Connor said in a flat, empty voice, staring just past Professor McGonagall. "When I was thirteen. I was told, in St. Mungos, that it was because my auntie Minerva had stopped my father from slipping supplies to Voldemort and his Death Eaters." Her single green eye turned on Professor McGonagall, whose pale face flushed. "I had always been her favorite niece."
"Angharad," Lupin said repressively.
She glanced at him, frowned, and muttered, "I forgot that you were bitten by him as well." It was the closest Ariane had ever heard Professor Connor come to an apology.
"The Headmaster sent me to bring you five up to his office," Professor McGonagall said, straightening her shoulders and resuming her normal stern expression. "We'll be going to the Ministry of Magic by Flu Powder."
"Flu Powder?" Ariane asked Harry in an undertone as they followed Lupin and Hermione out of the room.
He rolled his brown eyes. "I'll explain it while we walk."
By the time the party arrived in Dumbledore's office, Ariane was very suspicious of the huge fire burning in the grate. If she hadn't trusted Dumbledore, she would have fled the school rather than step into a blaze, no matter what Harry said.
The Headmaster blinked in surprise as Ariane and Harry came into the room. "My goodness, I wouldn't know either of you. Very well done." Harry and Ariane exchanged exasperated looks. Being unrecognizable was growing old very fast. "The Minister of Magic has granted us special permission to use the Flu Network after the crisis two days ago. All other Flu Network travel has been suspended until the necessary staff are reassembled.
"We'll go over more specifics once we are at the Ministry. Remus, if you would like to begin?" The graying werewolf nodded and gathered a handful of Flu Powder. One by one their whole party went through the fire: Lupin, Professor Connor, Professor McGonagall, Hermione, and Harry, who tripped entering the grate and nearly set the office ablaze. Only Dumbledore and Ariane had yet to go, and Ariane felt icy sweat trickling down the back of her neck at the thought of stepping into the flames.
"I took the liberty of seeing what Mr. Weasley was carrying in his pockets when he entered his office," Dumbledore said, his voice kind. "I believe that this was to be yours." He held out a hand and she opened hers to accept the ring that was dropped into it.
She took in the slim gold band; the two diamonds tinted with yellow, the emerald leaves around them, and looked up at Dumbledore, speechless. He handed her a chain to thread the ring on. "I have every confidence that you will find him," he assured her. "I wish you luck on your journey." Gently he led her to the fire and threw a handful of the glittering Flu Powder on it. "The Ministry of Magic," he said, and pushed her into the roaring green flames.
Ariane spun like a top, her hands clutched to her chest, watching fire after fire after fire flick past her eyes. She held the ring in her hand, the chain whisking around her. I'm going to find him, she decided, and when I do, I'll let him give me this ring.
She hit the marble floor in the Atrium of the Ministry with a thud muffled by her layers of clothing. Harry helped her up. Ariane peered at the ceiling, covered in squiggling golden symbols, then around at the small group of serious Ministry employees, all who were staring at her as though they expected something vastly different. "Hello," she said to them, and they shuffled and muttered as one.
"She sounds too modern," said one very frazzled, gray-bearded man. "It won't work."
"It will be fine," Dumbledore replied as he swept out of the grate. "Ariane knows what she's doing."
Well, I'm glad he's got that much faith in me, because I haven't, Ariane though, tugging on the end of one of her brown braids. Harry elbowed her in the ribs. "What?" she whispered as she fastened the chain Dumbledore had given her, along with Percy's ring, around her neck.
"I caught the that."
"That's odd."
"Bit useful though." He smirked at her and she elbowed him back.
Several throats cleared in unison and she jumped guiltily.
"We will now proceed to the Department of Mysteries," said one of the more serious types. "If you all would follow me?"
It wasn't what she had expected, this method of time travel. Ariane had imagined complicated loops and coils, puffs of smoke and flashing lights. She had imagined a forcible bending of time, warping and twisting it until it melded to meet their needs.
Instead, she found something almost disappointingly simple: a doorway.
It was three pieces of wood, two set into the floor, another across the top. There was nothing special about it, it wasn't even polished. If they hadn't seen a faint shimmer in the still air around it, it would have been utterly unremarkable.
"How do you set it?" Remus Lupin asked curiously, his gray eyes scanning its dimensions. It wasn't a big door—he and Professor Connor would both have to duck a bit to make it through. "Is there a corresponding mechanism?"
"She sets it," said a Ministry official (Ariane couldn't tell them apart), pointing at Ariane. "She must walk through the door knowing where she must go, and you all will follow."
"What if she gets it wrong?" Professor Connor demanded, her voice a growl. A woman with heavy black hair gave the werewolf an uneasy look; the one-eyed woman leered back, her smile quite disconcerting.
"We can't ensure anything," she said nervously, her hands going to her dark hair, "but we do have Time Turners for you all that will bring you back to fifteen minutes from now. In case—something goes wrong."
The Time Turners were passed around to everyone: tiny golden hourglasses marked with a date. MCMXCVI. Ariane looped hers around her neck and felt it settle next to Percy's ring on her sternum. Her heart ached, but it seemed fainter. I'm coming, Percy. I'm not giving up on this again.
"Right," said Ariane, her voice surprisingly steady. "I'm ready. The year 997, in the fall, during an unseasonable cold."
"Do you know where you'll go?" the first Ministry official asked, smoothing his beard. "The 'where' is equally important as the 'when'."
Ariane closed her eyes and thought of Hogwarts—her Hogwarts. Brown stone, three times her height, Godric's roundhouse, Rowena's spindle-tower and workrooms. Long grass, a forest partially cleared for its wood. In the distance, a village. A chilly wind teased her hair and she shivered—
"Look!" squeaked Hermione.
Ariane opened her eyes. There, through the rough wooden doorway, was Hogwarts. A thousand years ago. She could see the four pendants snapping above the four houses in a brisk wind, saw a few telltale patches of frost that marked a cold night, an explosion of green and gold leaves in the forest beyond.
Without a second thought, Ariane sprinted headlong into her past.
Author's Note: As always, so, so sorry for the delay. A thousand apologies. You'll be happy to know, however, that Chapters 26 and 27 are already partially written, and shouldn't take (what, 6 months? Ye gods, I don't recall) as long as this one did. I hope beyond hope that it was worth it. I didn't want to end this until I got them on their way back to pre-Hogwartian times. Or, rather, during Hogwartian times, but in Godric-Helga-Rowena-Salazar time. Oh, I'm so excited about this ending!
I'll cut myself off here. As always, I love reviews. Please tell me what you thought. If you stuck with me in my delays, that is.