Chapter 34: Masquerade, Part 1
Despite the detour into Ariadne's personal life, she, Priya and Sophie were finally ready to head downstairs for the masquerade party, mostly on time. Ariadne at last affixed her mask, a sleek arrangement of black, navy and peacock- blue feathers with gold trimming. Her dress robes were simple: an iridescent layer of blue-purple gauze over regular black robes. Priya's mask was of stunning filigreed gold, while Sophie's was covered in delicate, pretty floral patterns.
Ariadne descended the staircase from the girl's dormitory with her friends with an unusual sense of expectancy weighing on her. She couldn't tell if it was mainly a feeling of her expecting something, or a feeling that she was being expected, or both.
Even though it was just past a few minutes past nine, the masquerade was already in full swing. Ariadne heard voices, laughter, and haunting organ music. She ran her hands along the black, gold and orange tinsel wrapped around the bannisters, and was soon walking through a cloud of magically generated fog. It smelled faintly like pumpkin. When she emerged from the fog at the bottom of the staircase, the scene of the masquerade opened out before her.
Black and white webbing hung from every corner of the walls and furniture, and floating candles illuminated what was otherwise a very dark common room (Ariadne prayed that someone had the foresight to enchant the spiderwebs to be flame-proof.) Someone had kicked the Gryffindor décor up a notch with golden chandeliers burning black flames. Much of the traditionally gold-and-red sofas and armchairs had been draped with black lace. Pumpkins carved with ornate, arabesque patterns decorated the tables laden with food and drinks- spiked pumpkin juice, of course, but also black licorice liqueur and bloodred Firewhisky. Not only students, but ghosts and poltergeists floated among the packed room, almost blending in with the magical fog. This was no hastily put together Quidditch victory party.
Waiting at the foot of the staircase, as if he didn't intend to join the ball until her arrival, was Sirius, the upper half of his face covered by a black velvet mask with silver designs. He offered his arm and Ariadne permitted him to take it.
"Color me impressed, Black. Was this all your doing?"
Sirius smiled but otherwise barely acknowledged the compliment. "Look up, Ariadne."
Ariadne obeyed. She gasped.
The ceiling of the common room was no longer gray stone hung with red and gold drapery. That had disappeared and been replaced with a view of the heavens above. But unlike the ceiling of the Great Hall, which accurately reflected the night sky outside the castle, this was like the view through a powerful magical telescope: nebulae and galaxies swirling in the milky blackness.
Ariadne turned back to Sirius. "But how…?" Sirius held up an ancient, nearly crumbling leather-bound book. She grabbed his arm. "Tell me everything."
…
Ariadne and Sirius were so engrossed in their conversation that they had hardly spoken to or interacted with anyone else at the masquerade. Nestled in a corner next to the staircase to the boys' dormitory, Sirius ensured that Ariadne had a drink in her hand at all times, but otherwise seemed perfectly content with this arrangement.
"But no one has ever quite figured out how the enchantment of the ceiling of the Great Hall works. It's thought to be founder's magic that lived and died with whichever founder discovered it."
"Gryffindor, obviously," said Sirius at the exact moment as Ariadne said, "Most likely Ravenclaw."
There was only the briefest of pauses before they launched into it.
"Godric Gryffindor was clearly the most powerful of the four founders, only he would have been capable of this type of magic."
"One, that statement is entirely disputable, and two, Ravenclaw was an astronomer who was obsessed with studying the cosmos."
"Ravenclaw's 'talents' were in arcane and mostly useless branches of magic, like logic and transfigurational law. She didn't have the raw magical ability to pull off something like the Great Hall ceiling."
"Thank you for alerting me to which topics I should test you on the most before our Transfiguration exam, as you clearly haven't studied them."
"All I'm saying, Morrigan, is that I did this," he pointed to the starry ceiling, "without needing to know any of the fundamental exceptions to transfiguration law."
Ariadne frowned. "But how can you responsibly wield powerful magic if you don't understand how it works?"
"Have I ever seemed particularly responsible to you?" said Sirius, leaning back in his armchair and sipping from his glass of straight Firewhisky.
"Truer words were never spoken under the influence of Veritaserum," muttered Ariadne into her own glass. "So, are you ever going to tell me how you irresponsibly turned the ceiling of the common room into an astronomy textbook?"
"This was the secret," said Sirius with a gleam in his eye, holding up the small, tattered leather volume. He handed it to Ariadne and she thumbed through it, looking at the unfamiliar shapes and symbols.
"I've seen this before. It's held in the ancient manuscripts collection in the library," she said, frowning. She closed it. "It's written in some kind of obscure dialect of ancient runes. No one has been able to decipher it. The codex needed to translate it must have been lost."
"It's not," said Sirius, his lips turning up ever so slightly
"What do you mean? You've found it?"
"No. It's not written in ancient runes at all." Sirius allowed Ariadne to sit in her confusion for a moment. He leaned in closer. "This manuscript was attributed to an ancient Greek wizard, possibly Falco Aesalon, which is why the symbols are assumed to be runes. But what if it wasn't by him—what if the manuscript was actually more recent?"
"And what evidence do you have for that?"
Sirius shrugged. "Just a hunch. Some of the symbols seemed to form patterns when I looked at them from far away. Patterns that almost reminded me of our last Arithmancy homework."
"You did the Arithmancy homework? I thought homework was a waste of your precious time."
"No. But I did look at it. Enough to glean that we were supposed to be learning about the mystical properties of recursive sequences. And sure enough…" He tapped the cover of the manuscript.
"It's not ancient runes at all. It's an arithmetic sequence."
"Precisely. The symbols correspond to numbers, and if you understand how recursivity works, you can crack the code."
"But that would just leave you with a string of numbers."
"Again, some guesswork came into play here. But a sequence this old and elegant…I went back to the greatest Arithmancer of all."
"Bridget Wenlock."
"Naturally. Her journals proved quite a useful resource. If you recall from your studies, the appendices contain indexes matching certain numbers to incantations…"
"Because she theorized a connection between particular numbers and certain types of magic," Ariadne finished. "So you translated the symbols into numbers, and the numbers into spells."
"And as a result, I produced…this," Sirius finished triumphantly, gesturing to the glittering, swirling ceiling.
Ariadne fought the most peculiar urge to jump him right then and there. She attempted to hide this particular feeling, but from the way Sirius's dark eyes seemed to grow even more intense with a hint of suggestiveness, she guessed that he could sense the general direction they were taking.
"I remembered how much you liked the model of the solar system in my room," murmured Sirius, gazing at her from above the lip of his glass.
Ariadne was transported back to that night, and remembered that tiny detail, too—but surely, Sirius hadn't gone to these lengths merely to impress her?
"Have I succeeded?" he asked, as if reading her thoughts.
Before Ariadne could answer, an arm descended around each of them and a gold and scarlet mask, fashioned like a lion, emerged between them.
"You lot seem like you're discussing something brainy and smart, so, could you put your collective intelligences together to explain why two of the most attractive and charismatic students Gryffindor House has to offer are off in a corner ignoring everyone during the biggest party of the year?"
"I was just explaining my little party trick to Morrigan, James," said Sirius somewhat pointedly.
"Well, I'm sure she was absolutely captivated by that raggedy little scrapbook and will be proposing marriage shortly," answered James, clapping Sirius on the back. "But now, my friends, is no time for geeking out over math and dead sorceresses. Tonight is no ordinary night. This is the night when witches' and wizards' powers are at their highest. This is the night when spirits and ghouls and other friends come out to play." James wiggled his eyebrows behind his mask. "Tonight is Halloween, and this is the Hogwarts Masquerade."
A/N: Ugh I'm terrible at getting to the point. I promise more stuff will happen in the next chapter. It's all planned out, I just need to write it!