"Ari… ake up… it's ti… get o… f bed…" a distant voice was saying things in her ear and her eyes opened slowly. She was still in the dress she had on the previous night, and she sat up suddenly.

"Oh my… I forgot, humans need sleep," she said groggily as she ran a hand through her hair. Dumbledore was standing by her bed, looking down through his half-moon spectacles and pressing his fingertips together in a steeple.

"I did think, after you stayed up all night, that your goddess attributes made sleeping redundant. Obviously I was wrong, and even if sleep was unnecessary in the heavens, you must abide by our human body's rules. This may not extend to all aspects of humanity, so we must wait and see," Dumbledore said. Ariadne only took in about half of it, still groggy.

"Sleep wasn't just unnecessary up there. Can you imagine what we would miss if we slept? We didn't have time for sleep," Ariadne slurred. She needed a bath, badly, but didn't want to be rude and make Dumbledore leave.

"What will happen to your responsibilities?" Dumbledore asked out of the blue.

"My boss, the god of seasons, will do my work for me until they let me back in. It will be no problem for him – he is always complaining that he has nothing to do," she said. Dumbledore nodded and left, causing Ariadne to breathe a sigh of relief. She could finally bathe.

-----

Once she had dried her beautiful chocolate coloured hair, she chose a dark blue dress with tiny white flowers patterned on it. Looking at the time, she saw that it was about an hour to dinnertime. She giggled to herself at the thought of the students who had had to go to classes today. Suckers, she thought to herself. She wandered down to the doors that led outside, thinking vaguely of taking a walk in the woods. She was barefoot as always, the rough ground didn't bother her, another residual goddess effect. She walked along the pier at the lake and admired the scenery before noticing with a pang of irritation that the squid was splashing around again. "Hey! That's very annoying!" She called out. But it wasn't a squid that replied. It was most definitely a human, because on hearing the loud gurgling noises, the human shouted.

"Help!" It cried. It was definitely a female voice and was clearly exhausted, using the last of her energy to call out for help. Ariadne sharpened her goddess' sight, realizing that it was indeed a human drowning. She quickly weighed her options. She could call some aquatic creature up to help the girl. But that would take too long. She would have to count on someone hearing her through the water, then coming up to see what was the matter, then she would have to explain it all to them. By that time it may be too late. There was only one thing she could think to do. She pulled off her dress quickly and dived into the water. Before she hit the water, she underwent a huge transformation. Her body elongated and widened, her nose lengthening and becoming narrow. Her arms shrank to her sides to become fins, and a grey dorsal fin sprouted from her back. Her feet flattened and became a grey tail fin. She hit the water as a bottlenose dolphin and swiftly zoomed towards the drowning girl.

She reached her in seconds and swam underneath her, rising up between her legs so that the girl could hold her dorsal fin and ride her to shore. The girl put a weary arm on either side of Ariadne's head, carefully avoiding the blowhole, and pressed an exhausted face against the body of the dolphin that had saved her. When they reached the pier, Ariadne flicked her rear half upwards, sending the girl flying onto the pier. After a second or two, Ariadne reached a human arm up onto the pier and pulled herself up to join the girl. She was completely soaked, her dress clinging to her legs. She wrung it out a few times but it was still damp so she just decided to let it dry in the hot afternoon sun. The girl was lying on her side in the foetal position, coughing up water. She had shockingly red hair and when she opened her eyes blearily, though bloodshot, they were identical to Ariadne's vibrant green ones. Ariadne swept the girl's soaking her off her face and after a minute or so, when she had regained some of her strength, she sat up to stare at Ariadne.

"Who are you? And what happened to that dolphin? I didn't know there were dolphins in the lake," she said croakily. Ariadne rolled her eyes.

"I'm Ariadne Evadine, former goddess of spring, but you can just call me Ariadne if you want," she replied. "That dolphin was me; I can morph into any creature I want."

"You?" the girl said, surprised. "You saved my life… thank you so much. I'm Lily. Lily Evans, goddess of being awesome."

Ariadne laughed. "Eh, I wasn't about to watch someone die in front of me and do nothing," she lied. Privately, she thought she wouldn't have given a flying monkey if she saw yet another human die, after all, she had witnessed an infinite number of deaths during the ages. She was just hoping to get her karma back up so that she could get back into the heavens quicker. "What were you doing out there anyway?"

"I thought I'd have a swim before dinner… but I swam too far out and by the time I realised I couldn't get back, I was already exhausted," she said. "It's all very embarrassing."

"Meh," Ariadne replied. "Let's dry off, then get some dinner. I've barely eaten in days, I'm starving."

-----

Ariadne had just eaten fit to burst and was going to leave for the Gryffindor common room with her new friend Lily when they were approached by four boys. Two were quite handsome and dark-haired; one rather bookish with sandy-blonde hair, and another seemed the odd one out, quite small and portly.

"Hey, Lily," one of the dark-haired boys said. He had glasses and attractively messy hair, which he ran a hand through to mess it up even more. "I was thinking, maybe you want to… study with me later?" The other dark-haired boy tried unsuccessfully to hide a snigger.

"Hey, James," Lily said acidly, copying him. "I was thinking, maybe you want to… go away and leave me the hell alone?" At this, the dark-haired boy could no longer control himself. He burst into laughter, a loud laugh that stayed with the two girls until they turned a corner and were too far away to hear it.

"Who were they?" Ariadne asked curiously, a smile on her face.

"They call themselves The Marauders. Stupid, right?" Lily replied. "The one that was talking to me was James Potter. He never leaves me alone. It's quite annoying, I've said multiple times that there will never be anything between us, but he doesn't get the hint."

"And the others?" Ariadne prompted.

"The laughing one was Sirius Black. Him and Potter are inseparable, like twins. They're both as idiotic and evil as each other. The little fat one was Peter Pettigrew. He's pretty invisible most of the time, I don't know what he's doing with them. He doesn't seem like the type to delight in pulling cruel pranks like the others, but he pretends to. It's quite pathetic."

"And the other one?"

"That's Remus Lupin. I like him okay. He doesn't pretend to enjoy a lot of the things that they do, but he never protests at them. He's usually just reading or keeping to himself unless the other three take him along for the ride."

"I see," Ariadne said.

"I wonder why James hit on me today?" Lily thought out loud. "I don't exactly look the picture of the perfect girl." Ariadne looked at her. She was right. Her mascara had run from the water and her hair hung in odd-looking curly tendrils from the water. Her eyes were still bloodshot.

"It is a mystery that will plague us until the end of time," Ariadne murmured thoughtfully, drawing a laugh from Lily. "Look, we're at the portrait. I think it's time for a bath, we're covered in lake water."

Lily nodded in agreement and the two girls stepped through the portrait hole leading to Gryffindor Tower.