A/N: Thank you to Magical Maeve for her wonderful betaing!
Chapter 4
Sunrise, Sunset
"Ravenclaw!"
Lanette's eyes shone with ferocity in the fading light. The name had been drilled into her memory from her classes in British Magical History, but it was not one that she had expected to hear in such a context. Her own veins, boiling with Ravenclaw's blood! Her mind couldn't fit around such a thought.
"You recognize the name, Lanette. This is good," said Grandmother quietly. The copper-clad witch was not looking at Lanette, but rather searching the abandoned courtyard's crumbling walls for something.
"Of course I recognize it! Rowena Ravenclaw, she was responsible in part for the ascension of western magic. She helped found Hogwarts" — Lanette spoke the ancient school's name with a powerful longing — "and she was supposedly brilliant… invented all sorts of spells, and potions, and theories. She was a marvelous magical theologist. A genius, I hear."
Lanette's voice finally faded into silence when and she waited for her grandmother to tell her more. The elder seemed to find what she was searching for. With a flourish of her wand, a rope of ivy peeled away from the wall to reveal an old archway. A twisting stairwell was visible behind, and it was to these stone steps that Grandmother led her young namesake.
The steps were terribly old and corroded, and Lanette was quite sure they were not safe. She squeaked slightly, the rock crumbling beneath her feet as she made her way up the stairwell. There was no railing, but the walls on either side of her were just as weary with age as the stairs themselves. Dust flew from beneath her fingers as she held onto the walls for support. In front of Lanette, her grandmother continued without stopping.
"Yes," Grandmother said, as they ascended. "Rowena was truly a brilliant woman. If not for her, the western wizarding world may have died out completely long ago." They emerged onto a rooftop. Lanette had never been so high above the school before. She rushed to the edge and looked over the low stone wall. They were in the southern part of the school, and below her was spread the sweeping, ivy-clad grounds of the Institute. The tops of the buildings were bathed in the glow of the swiftly sinking sun, while the rest fell into deep, daunting shadows. It was as if the school was filled with hollow crevices embedded with only the darkest secrets known to wizarding kind.
The sky above them was purple, and the stars blinked into existence even as they watched. To the west lay the ocean, an endless expanse of thrashing waves. Grandmother joined Lanette at the ledge and look toward it, her face creased with the lines of age, accomplishment, and hardship.
"She was brilliant, but she was dangerous too." A heavy cloud swept over the school from the north, dulling the brilliance of the sinking sun. "She had her pride, and a lot of it. Many say she became arrogant, obsessed with the thought of being perfect. The ideas of age and beauty enthralled her. She became obsessed with time itself, and eventually invented a way to warp and manipulate it – a Time-Turner, though I doubt you've ever seen one as they're very rare.
"She never stopped seeking knowledge that would let her discover the secrets to the universe. Rowena had a wild, driving passion, which led her to accomplish many things. But that pride… it was her undoing.
"She took many lovers, it was said; not necessarily for the sake of love, but for the sake of understanding how passion manifests itself. Eventually though, she did find someone who stole her heart. Their affair was said to be a secret, but a burning, glorious one. He shared many of her views, but presented her a great many challenges as well – and she could not ever turn away from a challenge. His name was Salazar Slytherin, a co-founder of Hogwarts, and quite brilliant in his own right.
"Then, with all the suddenness of a flash of lightning, he turned from Hogwarts, and with it, he turned from Rowena. It broke the heart that she had so unwillingly given him. She went nearly mad then, too proud to admit to her broken heart, but also torn between him, and the school she had cultivated with her ideals."
Grandmother went silent, and Lanette grimaced with sympathy for this woman of old. "How awful," she whispered. "What happened then?"
"The remaining three founders," Grandmother continued, "banded together. Though Rowena had been the only one so deeply involved with Salazar, the blow to the school was terrible. Hogwarts was divided already, in many ways, but his leaving and final pronouncement almost led to the school's closing then and there – only years after its founding."
"His final pronouncement?"
"Ah, now we're getting to the root of my tale. Salazar's pronouncement was that one day his heir would rise and finish what he had once began."
"What was that?"
"To purge the world of any wizard with impure blood. Muggleborns."
"But we need them," exclaimed Lanette, "in order to survive as a whole! At least, that's what we've been taught. I mean, I know they're hardly what you can call great wizards. We only have two or three here at Salem, I think. Most go to Cathaven. But they are important to keep around; otherwise wizards will die off completely. There aren't enough of us purebloods anymore."
"Rowena's sentiments exactly. Godric Gryffindor and Helga Hufflepuff believed that Muggleborns had as much potential as any to become great sorcerers" — Lanette scoffed — "and Rowena herself believed that even if they didn't have this potential, their presence in this world was vital if it were to stay alive. Salazar's own views might have seemed more reasonable if he had presented them differently… but it was not so."
"What do you mean?"
"He tortured, killed, or had killed, potential magical students that were born into Muggle families."
"Just," Lanette gasped, "so Hogwarts could remain strictly pureblood? Why didn't Rowena get rid of this dark sorcerer of hers sooner?"
"Love does funny things to people…" Lanette's grandmother looked thoughtful.
"Like my father. Why else would he have married mother?"
Grandmother chuckled softly. "Your mother isn't such a bad sort, Lanette, just much different than you or I."
"I don't feel like I'm connected to them at all – any of them. Hyde and Nat are exhaustingly aristocratic. I love them, they're my brothers after all, but I often wonder how I'm even related to them. You're the only one I feel I can relate to."
"That's because you and I have Ravenclaw blood running in our veins, my dear."
"Tell me," Lanette said after a long moment of staring into the stormy sky before them, "why Rowena's history is so important to us? I mean, except for the sake of knowing our family's past. There's more to it, I know; you've been dropping these ominous hints all night, and I'd rather just hear it."
"Then you shall have it." Grandmother drew a long breath.
"When Salazar disappeared, the three remaining founders were left with a tough choice: do they close the school, or do they find a way to secure the safety of future students and keep Hogwarts open? They hardly wanted to close the school – something they had worked a normal man's lifetime to create – so they worked relentlessly on finding a way to nullify Salazar's prophecy. They soon found that they would not be able to completely prevent Salazar Slytherin's heir from coming to be, but they did have another idea. Instead, they created a complex weaving of magical spells that would activate when Slytherin's heir threatened to commit the evil his predecessor demanded.In the time of the heir's height of power, Godric's own heir would be born, the only one with the power and courage to vanquish the Slytherin evil once and for all."
"I get it! Lord Volemort in Europe!" Lanette gasped. They may have been leagues away from the horrors that Great Britain had experienced in the last century, but America was not ignorant of them. "He's Slytherin's heir! That must mean…" her eyes widened, "…Harry Potter…"
Lanette spoke the boy's name with a quiet reverence. He was a living legend, and the fact that he lived across the Atlantic Ocean just made him even more untouchable. Her fellow sixth-formers swooned after him in all the magazines. It was tiresome. Did they even know all "The Chosen One" had accomplished? Lanette did, she'd read up on him – and not just the articles with pictures of boy wizard battling dragons on a broomstick.
"…is Gryffindor's heir, yes." Grandmother nodded, glad Lanette was catching on.
"Then this means that Harry Potter will succeed! That all that junk overseas will end once and for all!"
Grandmother shook her head sadly.
"There can be no absolutes like that, Lanette, for Godric himself couldn't know if his own heir would be able to truly defeat this Dark wizard, even if he had the ability." Lanette looked crestfallen, but Grandmother held up her finger. "So to ensure his – Harry's – success, Helga and Rowena added their own strengths into the mix. Helga created a mystical map, whose contents were only known to her, Rowena and Godric and presented it to the people she trusted the most in the disguise as a piece of artwork. The map was said to be able to guide the true heir of Gryffindor, and only the true heir, to whatever he needed to defeat Slytherin's heir, including the last weapon – knowledge."
"Knowledge?"
"Knowledge of the truth," Grandmother smiled grimly, "In the form of Ravenclaw's descendent, or heir, if you will."
And as the sun finally set behind the hills in the west, the comprehension dawned in Lanette's blue eyes.
"That's… complicated," was all she could manage.
"Very much so."
"But why must this all be a secret? Why isn't this just common knowledge?"
"Slytherin's heir is no more stupid than Slytherin himself," half-snarled Grandmother. "What do you think he would do if he discovered his ancestor's nemesis' plan?"
Lanette paled. "He'd wipe us out. We'd be of as little use to Harry Potter as a fish in a desert." She chewed on her lip, trying to grasp the enormity of the situation, and not quite getting there. Lanette pulled the cloak tighter around herself. With the fall of the day, the temperature had dropped almost instantly. The heavy clouds above grew more massive by the instant, and seemed to shake their fists at her in fury.
"A storm is brewing," said Grandmother rather obviously.
The two of them watched the clouds swell with moisture, ready to set loose their droplet prisoners at any time. The sun was almost gone now, but the last rays of light turned the stormy sky magnificent shades of orange and plum. The colors reflected in Grandmother's eyes, giving her a fiery, almost frightening appearance. Lanette would never be scared of the older woman, but the story she had just heard was finally doing the trick.
"Grandmother, what does this mean for me?"
"I didn't want for it to be you," her grandmother sighed. "I never wanted it to be you. The knowledge that our line carries is beautiful, and terrible, and dangerous. In short, it's a great burden. I was hoping something would happen before now, a sign that would tell me that my time is here. But today, today you turn seventeen. Today, the knowledge passes to you, and I carry the burden no longer."
Lanette took the elder's hand and gripped it tightly, so that some of her warmth flowed into the older woman. She had a million questions, and every one of them seemed too silly to ask.
"What about father?"
"Your father?" her grandmother asked, confused.
"Did he carry the prophecy while he was alive?"
"Of course not. Rowena's blood only flows true in the female line. To the first daughter." Lanette was taken aback by the abruptness in her grandmother's voice. "She cursed us, Rowena did. Unknowingly of course."
"Cursed?" Lanette asked, shocked.
"The women of our family lead amazing lives, filled with adventure, spirit, passion, learning. It is our blessing, being her descendents. But Rowena, when she was scorned, her heart was so broken that unknowingly she poured that part of her into the spell as well. For hundreds of years, our women have been great, but have never found true happiness."
Three drops of rain sprinkled Lanette's nose. She forgot to flinch, so wrapped was she in this history of hers.
"No, never happy, because Ravenclaw women can never love."
"Never… love?" Lanette echoed, taken aback.
"Oh, they can fall in love," Grandmother said darkly, "but by doing so, they set their loved one into perilous danger. Have you ever wondered, Lanette, why I do not have a husband?"
"Well, yes… but I thought he passed away many years ago."
"'Passed away' – what a pretty term." A barking laugh protruded from her throat, seemingly causing the rain to fall in even more abundance. "I borne two sons of that man, a man I cared for deeply, and then he had a terrible accident."
"Two…"
"Oh yes, the first one 'passed away' when he was only a fifth-form at Harold University of the Wizarding Arts. And you know what happened to your father."
Lanette's throat twisted into a knot. "So this is our legacy?" she asked her grandmother bitterly. "For any man to enter our lives to be doomed to a terrible death? Well, that's rather harsh."
"So you see, Lanette; our road is not an easy one. With the blood we carry, we also harbour a secret knowledge, and an ugly legacy."
"Aren't we lucky?" Sarcasm bit into the young witch's voice. Her grandmother snorted, her features hardened and contorted – not nearly as lovely and calming as the Grandmother Lanette was used to.
"Luck has everything and nothing to do with it," the older woman said cryptically.
The rain fell freely then, soaking the duo thoroughly before Lanette's wand flew up to raise a protection spell. Grandmother reached out quickly and grasped the hand that gripped the wand.
"No, let it rain. Let nature show us its tricks. We use magic too often to hide and control the only things that are truly beautiful in this world." She turned her face to the heavens and let the rain wash over her silver hair, her wrinkled flesh, her copper cloak. "Let it cleanse and purify. Let it drown, let it heal, let it create new life. Let yourself feel every drop, become part of every molecule. Let the rain be a channel for your emotions."
So the girl in blue shed her shields and did as her grandmother had directed with such conviction. She wasn't exactly sure what Grandmother had meant by 'becoming part of every molecule', but she tried that too. And as the droplets rolled down her smooth cheeks, she let the tears join them. She cried for her father, who was destroyed by their family's curse; she cried for her grandmother, who had been living with this burden for so long; she cried for her ancestor Rowena, who had been driven mad when scorned by her lover; and she cried for herself, for she knew that her whole life was about to change. Lanette turned her face downward and thrust her head into her arms, where her tears quickly turned into heaving sobs.
It isn't fair! It isn't fair! she screamed against the walls of her mind.
"No, it is never fair."
Lanette was stunned out of her distress and looked up, blinking. She turned from the wall and looked around her. It hadn't been Grandmother's voice to mutter those words, and true enough, it seemed as if Grandmother had slipped away back down the stairs during Lanette's hysterics.
"Over here."
Lanette snapped her head around, trying to spot the owner of the voice. The rain was pouring from the sky as if an avalanche, and it was hard to see anything beyond a few feet. A misty figure appeared in Lanette's peripheral vision, and Lanette stepped toward it, apprehensive but curious.
"Hello?" she called out to the figure. But it didn't come any nearer, in fact it disappeared around the entrance to the stairwell. Lanette bustled after it, feeling a slight annoyance bubble in her chest. "Hellooo, who are you?" She rounded the corner and found herself immediately out of the torrents of the rain. And staring directly into her own eyes.
"I am Lanette."
Lanette – the real Lanette – stared wide-eyed at the imposturous face before her in confusion. It had her nose, her eyes, her ringlets. But its chin was rounder and more stubborn, and the facial bones were defined with age. Its skin was pale – almost transparent. No, it was transparent. A ghost! It must be--
"Don't stare, it's impolite," the face said in a voice that reminded Lanette of something in a dream.
"You're the first Lanette! You're Lanette Ravenclaw!"
"Very good, you've been paying attention." Its – her – hand reached out to graze the living Lanette's pale cheeks. At contact, Lanette shivered profusely, feeling as she had just been touched by ice. She stood her ground, though; no spirit was getting the better of Lanette Little.
"I'm a quick learner," she said curtly. The ghost nodded.
"As it should be. Come inside, you'll catch your death out there, and that would hardly do, as you're the last of the Ravenclaw blood."
Lanette suddenly realized she was standing at the threshold of a belfry, though there was no bell in sight. It had been hollowed out to accommodate a range of artifacts that looked as they had been accumulated over the course of a few hundred years. She stepped forward to look closer and gasped as she realized that what she was looking at was a treasure room. She momentarily forgot about the ghost as she swept her eyes over such exquisite things, which included everything from sapphire-crested swords to strange magical instruments made of solid gold. As she examined the room, she ran across a rack on the wall with a series of beautiful wands. Some were cracked or splintered, but otherwise seemed to not have been worn down with age at all. A smoky hand appeared beside Lanette and tried to grasp the very first of the wands, to no avail.
"Our first wands," the ghost said sadly. "Our last ones are always buried with our bodies, as you know, but our first ones… they always come here."
"What was yours?"
"9 inches. Alder wood with three unicorn hairs. Such a pretty wand… my hands got too big for it, though. I needed something a bit snappier once I left school, as well, since the unicorn hairs were rather wishy-washy when it came to powerful spells."
"Unicorn hairs!" Lanette exclaimed. "I've never heard of those being used in wands. How awesome!"
"It wasn't such an unusual core at Hogwarts, though it's said to be rather more expensive—"
"You went to Hogwarts?" said Lanette with awe.
"But of course," the ghost cocked an eyebrow. "That, though, is a story for another day. Look around, little Lanette, and tell me what you see."
"Treasure."
"Yes, and can you guess as to whom it belongs to?"
"You?"
"All of us. It is the Ravenclaw treasure."
"You mean all of this was hers?"
"Oh goodness no! It is the product of each of her descendants' contributions. We all must add something to this room. We all have, since I created it at the time of my death." It struck Lanette that this ghost-Lanette was rather pompous. "It is the reason there is so much of it, and why it means so much to our line – because it shows the great achievements Ravenclaw women have made."
Lanette Little couldn't help staring in wonder, though she remembered with a pang at what her grandmother had told her. "What about the men? What do they accomplish?"
"Men?" the ghost scoffed. "All they're good for is planting us with babies. They can never appreciate us for what we truly are; they can never know who we truly are."
Lanette was struck with a thought. "Is that why you came to America and changed your name? To protect us from the Dark wizards who would destroy us?"
"Yes, but that too is a story for another day. There is one particular artifact here that I must find… ah, here it is." The ghost beckoned to Lanette. As the girl came closer, she knew immediately what it was that the ghost wanted her to see.
Lanette Ravenclaw pointed a smoky finger toward a glistening item lying alone on a wrought iron stand in the centre of the room. Lanette Little looked closer and saw it was a brooch, with a centrally set magnificent opal – a black one, with blue lights that shimmered just underneath the surface. It was inlayed in a complex design of diamonds and twisting gold tendrils. It was a beautiful thing to look at, and Lanette could feel the power radiating from the opal. She reached out to touch it but snapped her hand away, afraid to touch something so exquisite.
"No, take it, it's yours," said the ghost.
"It was hers, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"I couldn't! I'd lose it, or step on it… or…"
"You'd never. It wouldn't let you. Besides, you have to take it." She took it. "It's her only way of reaching across the ages for you."
Startled by this pronouncement, Lanette let go of the beautiful brooch and she watched terrified as it fell to the floor. The cringe-inducing crash never came. Instead, the brooch hung in the air as if connected to a string tied to Lanette's first finger. With wonder in her eyes, Lanette flicked her finger and the brooch flew to her hand.
"Keep it always, young Lanette. And remember that it is not just a pretty thing, but a tool. Now come," the ghostly woman said as she flew to a set of cushions on the side of the room furthest from the door, "we have much to talk about."