Disclaimer: Still too poor...curse that JK Rowling
A/N: And here we meet people we actually recognize!
Pretending To Live
Chapter 2: Fate
Fate is a pretty interesting thing.
Often misunderstood as a form of confinement, a cage of sorts, it is one of the most liked and hated theories since its conception.
Fate directed your life, and Fate would end it.
The Threads of Fate ran entwined around the Strands of Time, and mostly, it ran according to the Strands' directions—after all, what is Fate but the inevitable outcome of your life over an extended period of Time?
Fate had always been dependent on Time, or at least, appeared so.
It had been this way for so long that even the Keeper had forgotten—that Fate was its own entity, and a separate force—that it moved in relation to Time rather than because of it, and that He alone controlled a person's future, or destiny, if you will.
Snip.
Until that day.
Snip.
The Three Fates did not like being subordinate.
Depicted sometimes as young women, or as old crones in Greek mythology and art, the Fates were the forces that truly molded a person's life; they alone recorded the events that would ultimately lead to one's creation, or to one's demise.
Each Fate had a different responsibility—the First Fate drew out the life Thread, fabricated it, and brought it into existence.
The Second Fate measured the life Thread and decided the events that would occur throughout that person's life—it was this Fate that was always considered to be the most important.
But it was the Last Fate, the Third,that was the most feared.
The Third Fate, upon witnessing her sister's measurement of the thread, cut it, when it was the person's time to die, and ended them.
Snip.
The Fates were patient. Although Time had been their so called 'Master' for many long years, they continued to wait until the Time was right before what they knew was The Keeper's eventual usurpation—they were the ones who had dictated it, after all.
And so they waited.
They waited until her life Thread had been drawn and measured.
Death always brings new possibilities whenever it visits, although most people fail to see this. With death comes rebirth, and vice versa, and the cycle stretches on forever.
The Third Fate knew this, and as she cut off the unusual Thread of Fate that belonged to Ariadne de Lioncourt, she did it not with the intention of truly ending her, but with the knowledge that the girl would end up where she was required.
So, technically, on that chilly 23rd of August, Ari died.
Snip.
Kronos's silent scream of fury echoed throughout existence causing Time to shudder slightly; the Fates smiled in unison.
Snip.
In another world and another time, Ariadne opened her eyes.
Snip.
And Ariadne began to scream as well.
"—somebody get the Headmaster—"
"—where in Merlin's most patched up pair of bloomers did she come from?"
"—does anyone recognize her-?"
Hot, salty liquid bubbled up in my throat, cutting off my air supply and clogging my nose. I tried to take a breath, but only succeeded in taking another lungful of the strange, sticky substance instead, and my head spun crazily.
I was ninety-eight percent sure I was choking.
"—damn, she's choking—"
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
"—hang on—Anapneo!"
My throat cleared suddenly and I gasped, taking as many lungfuls of the cold, slightly musty air as my heaving chest would allow. It was dense, and tasted vaguely of mould, but it was oxygen to my starving brain, and I continued to suck in whooping gasps.
"—dammit, where is that old crackpot—"
"Ron!" I heard a slight bossy sounding girl's voice say, shocked. The name dimly registered in my mind, but I pushed it away distractedly.
"What? Fine, sorry..."
My head was still spinning, but at least the thunderous roaring in my ears had quieted down some, although my head was still doing its best impression of a jackhammer.
Hey, at least you actually still have a head, right? The part of me trying to be optimistic offered, and I growled at it mentally.
I felt something warm lay itself on my arm, and instinctively, I skidded backwards away from it, eyes flying open and snarling.
A line of fire ran through my back as I collided with something solid and heavy behind me, but I ignored it, focusing my attention to the thin, palish boy in front of me who wore an expression that was a strange mixture of wariness and concern.
He had deep, inky black hair that seemed to stick up in all directions, as though each lock was its own appendage, and flopped especially at the front, covering his forehead. His eyes were a dark, brilliant forest green, partially hidden by a set of round spectacles that held a slight dent at the bridge, as though it had been broken before.
I let my eyes dart around my surroundings once I'd looked at his face for long enough—I appeared to be in a large, extremely dusty living room, filled with what seemed to be antique furniture that was slightly moth-eaten, and whose colors were undistinguishable by the thick, grey layer of grime that covered it. Light was provided by an old-fashioned chandelier above my head—the kind with beeswax candlesticks on it—and the carpet on which I was currently positioned was thick with dust.
I sneezed three or four times, much to the green-eyed boy's surprise—honestly, what did he expect—and when I opened my eyes I was faced with the sudden and mortifying realization that this random boy and I were not the only people in the room.
Behind him were around six or seven people whose expressions ranged from anger (in the case of the sallow-faced man at the front with the particularly greasy curtains of hair) to polite interest (the dirty-blonde haired girl with what seemed to be vegetables growing out of her ears).
It felt...odd.
I'd never seen any of them before in my life, and yet I felt an unpleasant sense of lingering familiarity the more I looked on, as if I'd known them before.
But first thing's first: where was I?
"Who-who—"My throat appeared to still be raw from my asphyxiating activities, and it took a few tries before I could finally force the words out of my mouth.
"Who are you?" I addressed the green-eyed boy in front of me.
Said eyes widened infinitesimally at my question and his expression morphed into one of disbelieving incredulity. "You don't know me?"
I stared at him blankly. Wha..? "Am I supposed to?"
The boy just stared at me for a second, shock flitting across his features as he shook his head a few times uncomprehendingly, and he opened his mouth to say more but was interrupted by the sallow-faced man I had noticed earlier.
"Obviously, Potter, she is lying. Your self-proclaimed celebrity status," he sneered the last part, his cold eyes glinting with barely concealed malice as he looked me over, "is enough to ensure that all of your great deeds are not unheard of, willingly or no."
The green-eyed boy's eyes darkened as he heard this, and he swivelled around on the spot, not getting up, to face the man.
His equally acerbic reply was missed, however, as I struggled to digest the new information given by the man—who, now that I mulled it over, reminded me irresistibly of a sort of overgrown vulture-bat creature.
The boy in front of me was somehow famous; there was no doubt about that. And yet, I had never seen him anywhere in my entire life—and I was pretty sure I would've remembered his unusual eyes.
What, was he some sort of teenage icon? That would explain how I'd managed to miss him, and his considerable surprise once he discovered that.
He didn't seem like the conceited type, though...
And the Batman (who I'd fondly dubbed in my mind), I could practically taste the paranoia rolling off him in waves, but I'd given him no reason not to trust me, have I? Apart from break into his house unannounced, that is.
"—could be a spy for the Dark Lord—"
Their argument, which had steadily begun to increase in volume, broke into my thoughts; my ears pricked up.
"Wait, Dark Lord?"
The boy in front of me froze before slowly turning back around to face me, his face guarded.
"What Dark Lord?"
My voice was suddenly too loud for the room, and even my breathing seems to register in my mind as a shocked, disbelieving silence descended on us a few seconds later.
The slack jawed faces of the people in front of me were starting to unnerve me quite a lot, when finally, one of the people behind the green-eyed boy broke the silence.
"You can't be serious," a tall, gangly, ginger haired guy with a heavy smattering of freckles on his slightly gormless looking face said, aghast. "Where've you been, lately?"
I shrugged at him, not knowing what to reply.
I hear someone clear their throat awkwardly and I looked up to meet the emerald stare of the untidy-haired boy, whose inky hair color was so similar to mine. It took all of my strength not to look away as the passing survey lengthened into something longer—I had to show them that I was trustworthy, or at the very least, sane.
Finally, just when I couldn't take the intensity of his stare—of which he was seemingly unaware of—any longer, he broke the moment.
"Who are you?" he murmured carefully into the foot- gap between our faces.
Just as I was about to reply, the door (which I hadn't noticed earlier, or I would have gone barrelling through it long ago) flew open, and I flinched at the sudden interruption.
"Ah, there you are Miss de Lioncourt!"
This time it was my turn for my jaw to hit the ground. For in front of me, was one of the most unusual looking figures I'd ever seen.
The man was majestically tall, with unbelievably long, flowing white hair and beard (which he had appeared to have tucked into his belt).
A pair of crescent shaped- glasses rested on his slightly crooked nose, and behind them, the kindest, bluest, most...sparkly eyes I'd ever seen. The man simply radiated sheer power, it was almost tangible, and yet it was dampened down by something else, I sensed...humility?
He was looking down at me, and in his eyes I saw both happiness and concern for me, me, and my throat constricted—how long had it been since I'd been looked at like that? My foster parents, nice as they were, sometimes attempted to pull that kind of stuff on me, but it didn't have the same genuinely real kindness, or love in it. More like...as sense of duty, I suppose. Pity, most likely.
But this man...
He knew me, I realized suddenly, but all I could do was stare dumbly at his impressive, powerful figure in contrast to my own, shivering form on the dusty, carpeted ground.
I felt safe.
The green eyed boy scrambled to his feet hurriedly, turning to face the man.
"Professor Dumbledore!"
My breath caught in my throat. Did he just say...?
No, I told myself. It's not possible...
The greasy haired man—who now seemed all too jarringly familiar to me—raised an eyebrow disbelievingly at the old man, who was still staring at me with gently twinkling blue eyes. "Do you know this person, Headmaster?" he asked, a slight sneer curving on his mouth as he glanced back disdainfully towards me.
The old man's eyes twinkled mischievously. "Indeed I do," he replied, striding further into the room, "but unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Miss de Lioncourt, here."
He knelt gracefully down in front of me, so that his lined face was in level with my own.
"Ari, my name is Professor Dumbledore," he said gently, peering at me over his glasses. "I am the Headmaster of Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
I only blinked at him, my mouth opening and closing like a bad impersonation of a goldfish.
The man waited patiently for my temporarily speechlessness to subside (though I couldn't say the same thing for a certain other hook-nosed person in the room) before I finally gave my stuttering reply.
"Th—this can't be possible," I said, drawing a breath shakily and staring wide eyed into the cornflower blue eyes of the professor. "This isn't even sane. I—I—no. No. How—how is this even happening?"
Professor I-Refuse-To-Believe-That's-His-Real-Name surveyed me gravely through his crescent shaped spectacles.
"This is happening, my dear, simply as any other event occurs within the universe. You are meant to be here, Ari, and nothing and no one can change that, not even the boundaries of Time itself." He sighed heavily. "This is Fate."
"So... this...this is real?" I murmured almost to myself. "All of this?"
Dumbledore nodded. "Yes," he said simply, and as my head spun with a thousand realizations and half-hidden truths, and I felt my body plummet to the ground, the last thing I saw before everything went black once more were the startled, emerald green eyes of none other than Harry James Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived.
Whispers echoed throughout the room, the ends of conversations fluttering at the edges of my consciousness like moths across paper.
"—been asleep for ages—c'mon Hermione, what happened, exactly?"
The sound of the familiar name stirred me back into reality, or fantasy, and, drowsily, I focused on the conversation, my eyes still closed.
"Well..."
There was a silence, and the quiet ticking of a grandfather clock seemed to fill the room before Hermione resumed.
"I don't understand it, Ginny," she said finally, sounding as though she was quite unwilling to admit that piece of information (which, I snickered in my mind, she probably was). "How could someone just materialise out of nowhere? It goes against all the charms, all the laws of Dimension and Space that I've ever learnt, completely defies all the anti-Apparition wards the Order's set up around the place, and it is virtually impossible! For matter to form completely out of nothing, from nothing..."
"Whoa, wait," Ginny interrupted, cutting her off. "From the beginning, Hermione."
I heard Hermione take deep breath, before starting, as if to let herself calm down first. "Alright."
"Harry, Ron, myself and a few others were scouting around, looking for an old book on wandless magic that Ron had accidentally Vanished, and we came across one of the locked rooms at the back of the house-"
"Wait, the room that no one could open?" Ginny asked.
"Yes, that one. Even Snape couldn't open it." Hermione replied seriously before continuing with her story. I was wide awake now, my ears pricked up and listening intently to their conversation. Though they were still talking in hushed whispers, the muted sound of their voices still cut through the dusty air, as clear as the peal of a bell.
"But when we came across it this time, the door was wide ajar. Just to be safe, Harry thought we should investigate the room—to check that nothing was hiding there, so people could use it for meetings and stuff.
"And then..."
She trailed off.
"And then?" Ginny pressed.
"And then she appeared," Hermione sighed and when I snuck a peek at her through my eyelids, I saw her tangling her hands through her wild frizz of curls frustratedly. "You'd think that the magic of the person who brought her here would at least have left a trace..."
"Hang on a minute," interrupted Ginny, her fiery red hair bouncing as she shook her head, confused. "Did you just say 'the person who brought her here'?"
Hermione chewed on her lower lip nervously. "It's...a little theory that I have," she said evasively.
"Go on."
"Alright. Erm," she paused hesitantly before continuing. "I've been mulling over what just happened in my head, lately, and I think that I have managed to reach some kind of conclusion, based on the limited information we've been given."
Hermione's voice grew stronger and less uncertain the more she talked, I noticed.
"When she arrived, she breached all the wards and defences set up around the place. Now, it takes a very, very powerful wizard to do that—which I doubt she is- and even then he would've needed the help of someone else."
"How powerful?" breathed Ginny.
"Someone on par with Dumbledore and Voldemort," Hermione stated gravely, and I heard Ginny's muted gasp.
"But then...is she...one of them?"
Hermione sighed. "Well see, that's the thing. It would be logical to assume that she is a Death Eater, and that she was sent here to spy on the Order by V-Voldemort—the most logical of all my theories, in fact.
"But several things don't add up. If she was the person who managed to break through the wards, it would still leave behind a trace of their own magic; it's one of Ravenhook's Laws of Manipulation. Even wizards like Dumbledore or Voldemort—
"Will you please stop saying that name?"
"—can't get rid of their magical trace completely—they can hide it, yes, to the very best of their ability so that it is nearly undetectable—but it would always remain.
"After Harry took the girl up here, I went back downstairs and performed every magical revealing charm that I knew on the entire room—and there was nothing. Absolutely nothing, Ginny. Which leads me to two choices: that she is extremely powerful, and probably should get shipped off to Azkaban immediately...or that she was telling the truth, and that someone else sent her here."
"But why?" Ginny's awed whisper echoed round the room. "Why would someone do that?"
"I don't know. She seemed to have no idea where she was, who we were, or who Harry was, and acted like she didn't even know there was a crazed Dark Lord running around rampant..."
"Herm!"
"—and she's not a Muggle, I could feel her magical aura the moment she got here. So whoever, whatever she is, she was brought here unwillingly...and for a reason."
A/N: Okay, edited again. Tell me, what do you think?