Ariel and her father barely speak for the next few days.
Which is fine — it's fine. Ariel is so angry with him — so angry with herself — that she reckons she needs this time alone to come to grips with what happened, or rather, what didn't happen. She'd waited all night for her Mum to come back, and every night after that, but she hadn't. The closet had sat empty and normal and silent.
She'd never hated a closet so much in her life. Ariel has come to resent it for existing, has half a mind to take all of her belongings out of it and render it useless, to remove its purpose, but that's stupid. If she did that, then she'd really be going around the bloody twist.
Regardless, Ariel hadn't slept a wink since. Now, Ariel's angry at both of them — at her Mum and her Dad — which only makes her feel terrible and awful, like her insides have all been shriveled up and scooped out. She wonders if it's possible to feel so angry and empty, all at the same time.
Ariel tries to distract herself — tries to start a crab uprising against the seagulls, who stole her hair tie and dropped it into the ocean — the tossers. The crabs click and clack in response, though Ariel isn't sure if they're just doing their crab thing or actually rallying to her cause. When one of them scuttles towards the water, she chooses to believe it was the latter and that she has successfully begun a revolution.
She walks up and down the coastline, and sometimes, when she looks back to the flat, she can see the shadow of her father watching through the window. Ariel tries not to stare back, but there are times where she wishes he'd stop or come and join her. Besides the fact that she misses her old life, there is a gaping loneliness that eats away at her — chips away day by day until sometimes, Ariel doesn't recognize herself anymore.
Ariel can only imagine how Dad is feeling, without Mum. They'd always been — happy. The happiest Ariel can ever remember Dad is around Mum, how he always seemed to relax into the moment when she was near, when he heard her coming down the hall or found her already bustling away in the kitchen every morning, like he'd woken up without her and was afraid she'd gone. They'd known each other since they were children, and Ariel can only imagine that the absence of that — what it feels like — not having someone who's always been there — is brutal.
No, she can't. She's not Mum. That — what they had — is different. They'd been her Mum and Dad, yes, but what Ariel had always admired is that they'd seemed more like partners. A team.
She knows, just a little bit, why Dad is being the way he is about Mum. Not enough, but some things Ariel can guess. Maybe it's for the best. It's times like these where she wishes Remus were here, again. Ariel misses him more and more with each passing day. Remus would've believed what Ariel heard in the closet. There would be a second set of footprints in the sand beside hers, streamlining her thoughts, trying to figure out what that had been all about.
It could, of course, just have been her fever — her wild, untamed imagination — but Mum had felt so real — and that was what Ariel just couldn't reconcile. She'd felt her —
Ariel ends up dragging herself — defeated — to dinner that night, when the sun begins to dip below the horizon. Dad hasn't eaten with her the past three nights. Tonight, however, he's waiting for her. He's got an untouched plate in front of it — it looks like some kind of grilled fish. She wrinkles her nose — she doesn't like fish much, but they eat a lot of it here.
Dad stares her down, his eyes two glittering black beetles. Ariel glares right back, and hopes her eyes hold a mite of what he can. Mum used to laugh until she'd cried, when Ariel tried to impersonate Dad's glares, because the only thing Ariel seems to have inherited physically are his eyes.
After a minute, he gestures to the empty chair across from it. Ariel pauses for a beat and stalks over, hops into it — makes a big show of scooting the chair close to the table, makes it screech along the tile floor — jostles the table so it sways.
Then Ariel clears her throat — tries not to make a disappointed face at the fish — this isn't about the fish. She presses her hands together and sets them in front of her, like she's in an important business meeting.
Dad looks — annoyed. Actually, he looks like he's trying not to smash his head into the table, but that's what Ariel was going for — being a royal pain in the arse.
"Have you come to your senses?" he asks, then. He's using that tone of voice that used to make Mum really mad. It's like he's really asking "are you done being stupid?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ariel says coldly. She picks up her fork and pops a green bean in her mouth. Chews. Doesn't break eye contact.
Dad's eyes narrow. "Don't play coy, my girl. You're not nearly as accomplished at it as you think you are."
Ariel swallows the green bean, but it catches in her throat — a lumpy, unwanted intruder. She reaches for her glass of water and chugs it, and then sets it down with too much force.
"I'm not playing anything," she snaps back.
He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, "This petulant behavior is beneath you."
She stabs at her grilled fish. "If I am being petulant , maybe I learned it from you."
His gaze is sharp, as though he's seeing Ariel for the first time, and it makes her squirm in her chair. He rubs his forehead with an exhausted hand, his dark eyes never leaving her face. "If that's the case, then I've failed you more than I thought."
"You haven't failed me," Ariel mutters, struggling to keep her voice steady. "Unless you're talking about when you called me a liar."
His hand stills in the air, his face like a marble statue. "I didn't call you a liar," he corrects her, but the words are hollow.
"You said I didn't really hear her. That's calling me a liar." Ariel insists, her anger bubbling up. She shoves her plate away so hard it shakes the whole table. The water glasses slosh about. "Why would I lie about that? Why would I — I wouldn't do that!"
She's still holding her fork with the fish on it, like a spear. Dad is eyeing it. Ariel almost doesn't catch it, but he glances at it warily, just for a fraction of a second. She lets it drop to the table with a clatter and shoves herself back, nearly toppling the chair over in the process.
Without another word, Ariel storms off, slams into her bedroom and throws her door shut with such force that she knocks some of her books off her shelf. Then she takes one of the books and flings it at her door, and she's partially hoping her father opens it just in time for it to hit him instead, but the book clatters to the floor.
Ariel follows suit. She buries her face in her arms and she does not cry, because her Mum told her to be strong, a light, you must always carry your light and be brighter —
How long Ariel sits there — not crying — she does not know. After a while, she looks up.
The closet is staring back at her. She's left it open this whole time, waiting and praying to whatever god was listening, but she kicks it shut with her foot.
In the stillness of her room, away from the sea that seems just as angry as Ariel, the weight of her father's words wrap around her like a suffocating cloak, pushing her anger aside and replacing it with a nasty feeling of guilt. She might be strong, but she is also only ten. And for once, she doesn't want to be stronger or brighter. She just wants things to go back to normal, but the more time passes, the more she ponders everything, and Ariel has begun to believe that her life had never really been normal — not really.
She wonders if this — what happened to Mum — if this was what they'd been running from, all this time. Her parents had tried, but they hadn't been able to hide everything from Ariel, and Mum had always been more forthcoming than Dad. The little of the War Ariel had heard about had always reminded her of ghost stories, tales to be told underneath blankets with only a candle for light.
Her mother's voice echoes in her mind, " We do what we have to, Ariel. For you." The words were always spoken hurriedly, as though she didn't really want to say them.
She thinks of words that were begged from the bottom of the stairs while Mum threw furniture in front of the door — take me instead, I beg you —
Dad's voice, a hollow echo, pleading with Voldemort — or perhaps, in the way of desperate men, bargaining with him. The memories crash against the walls of Ariel's mind like a tempest against the shore. The rolling thunder of his voice — take me, take me instead — his words soaked in anguish, had been wrapped in a stone-cold resolve.
The pleading now sounds like whispers on the wind, each syllable bonding with the marrow in her bones. His words were once drowned by her own sobs and screams so much that Ariel wished to rip them from her heart, but now, they return unbidden in the quiet moment she's having with herself, the take me reverberating through every shadowy corner of her room.
His insistence. His desperation. It claws at Ariel as though it were trying to pull her heart out through her bellybutton.
Ariel finds herself pulling her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around herself as if she could squeeze the pain out. She presses her forehead to her knees, vision blurring as tears begin to prickle at the corners of her eyes.
It all seems so stupid, then. Being mad at her father over a nightmare when they'd survived one together.
She picks herself up, dusting off her knees and begrudgingly straightens the scattered books on the floor. Puts them away gently — falls short of apologizing to them, feeling bad about throwing inanimate objects. Feels smaller than before, and makes a decision.
With one last glance at the now-shut closet, Ariel leaves her room.
Dad hasn't moved. He's got a hand across his forehead, like he's nursing a horrible headache. He's all bent up and crumpled together like a used napkin, his limbs and neck taut with tension.
Ariel walks right up to him, so close that their knees knock together. "I don't care if you believe me or not. I don't want to fight with you anymore."
He lifts his head to look at her. His face is completely blank, devoid of any emotion, and the longer Ariel stares at it, the more she's got this horrible sinking feeling, like she's crossed a line and now she can't get back to where Dad is. They've never argued like this — never.
He rubs his temples with his bony fingers, and the silver ring he has yet to take off glimmers faintly in the dim light. "I concur."
Then, with a long, drawn-out sigh, Dad straightens, unfolding himself like a bat stretching its wings in the dark. He looks down at Ariel, his eyes utterly weary and haunted by something she can't quite fathom.
He cups her cheek. Ariel leans into it, like it's the most natural thing in the world — and it is. She leans into him, pressing her nose into the crook of his neck and buries herself there, relief crashing through her like a damn giving way when his arms wrapped tightly around her back.
"Ask me," Dad murmurs against her hair. She doesn't need to ask what he's talking about.
Ariel sniffles against his shoulder. "How much?"
"How much what?"
"Do you love me?"
He kisses her brow. "Enough to endure, and adore you for it."
He tucks her in that evening. Normally, Dad doesn't do this, but he brings a copy of Lord of the Rings with him and reads it aloud to Ariel, and he only makes four snarky comments, which is impressive because he's always got something to say about how magic works in Tolkien's world.
After two chapters, Dad sets the book down. Ariel's got herself squished between him and the wall, her head resting on his chest. This is the closest to normal he's been in some time, and it makes Ariel feel like she can breathe again.
The dark folds around them, and the house begins its slow crawl towards night. Dad sits up and starts to leave, starting the closing shift on their flat.
Ariel watches him check the Wards in her bedroom — he even makes a point of checking the stupid closet, lingering around it for a moment too long. It's as though the closet draws his gaze, and for a split second, Ariel swears she can hear whispering coming from between the floor and the gap at the bottom of the door.
If there is any, her father doesn't hear it, and Ariel rubs at her eyes tiredly, dismissing it as her imagination, again — she's completely knackered. She doesn't say anything when Dad stops beneath the threshold of her bedroom door and meets her bleary eyes, doesn't say anything when something ripples across his face, like a rock skipping in a pond.
Dad takes her by surprise when he crosses the room and sits down beside her again — smoothes her hair back from her face, still tinged with salt from the sea. There's probably sand in it, but Ariel hadn't wanted to take a bath tonight, hadn't wanted to be alone, anymore.
He sighs deeply, studying her face. "I am — regretful of my actions the other day. Deeply. I know you were not well, and I should have exercised more patience."
Ariel just stares at him, her mouth hanging open like a fish. She can do little else but gawk.
Dad rolls his eyes at her reaction. "I realize you're not accustomed to my groveling, but I assure you, it's nearly as taxing for me as it is for you."
Ariel's mouth snaps shut and she swats at him lightly. "Git. Of course I forgive you."
He looks surprised for a moment, like he hadn't expected it to be that easy. Then his usual, sarcastic self takes over and he quirks an eyebrow at Ariel.
"Well, I'm relieved," Dad says dryly. "I was not sure how much longer I could maintain this level of humility. It's rather exhausting." He then glances at the clock hanging on Ariel's wall. His gaze stays there for a moment too long. "And it's past your bedtime."
She scowls, feeling as though ten is too old to still have a bedtime, but she doesn't argue. Instead, when he stands to leave again, Ariel grabs his hand — squeezes. "About the other night — you know I wasn't just saying all of that. I wasn't trying to —"
"We need not speak of it," Dad interrupts, his hand goes to the nape of her neck, briefly tightening in there. "We will not speak of it again."
His expression tells her this conversation is done, his face closed and shuttered. He's about to stand — his third attempt, now — when Ariel does something very brave, or very, very stupid.
"If you're really sorry," she says. "Then you'll tell me what's going on."
Her father bows his head — closes his eyes. Ariel holds her breath and waits. The edges of her vision are starting to shimmer when Dad finally looks up again. To Ariel's surprise, he kneels down beside her, so that he's eye-level with her. Her heart fills with something like starlight.
"I know this has been difficult for you," he grips one of her hands in both of his. "There is much you don't know, and I have found it increasingly difficult to find a fine line where protection becomes ignorance. You're too smart for that sort of nonsense, but sometimes, knowing less is the safer way."
Ariel wants to ask about ten million questions in response to — that. She can feel them flooding her brain like a dam bursting, feeling the pressure mounting behind her eyes as they beg to be freed. There's just so many and this is the first time — possibly ever, since everything happened — that her father is opening up in this way. It's not even enough to be call a crack, but the fact that Dad is acknowledging that there's something — that something happened — is —
She nods, wanting him to know she's heard him, that she's listening more than she ever has in her entire life. "I know you're trying to protect me — that you always have — but," she swallows, her voice breaking with uncertainty, "Sometimes, I feel like — like I'm living in a fog, and I can't see where I'm going anymore. We just left."
Dad's gaze doesn't waver from hers, as though he's trying to commit every detail of her face to memory.
"I understand," he says, the tension in his voice betraying the calm facade. He looks at their entwined hands then, eyes tracing the lines of her small fingers against his larger ones before adding in, "It's not my intention to make you feel as such."
Ariel tightens her grip on his hand — she won't let him go — won't let this go — not when she's so close. "Can't you tell me anything , Dad?"
He seems to wage a silent battle within himself, his jaw clenching tight enough that a vein in his temple pulses visibly. Ariel remains quiet, giving him the space that he needs, her eyes never leaving his face, searching for any signs of surrender or defeat.
Then Dad asks: "What do you want to know?"
There's a thrill of victory that surges through Ariel, and she suddenly feels like she's got this secret power in her hand, like she's wielding some magic that can unravel their knotted past, piece by agonizing piece. The question hangs heavy in the air between them, a beacon and a barrier all at once.
She knows very little: she knows You-Know-Who found them on Halloween. She knows for some reason, he didn't kill Dad — not right away, she'd heard that much from their brief exchange — and then he'd come upstairs — murdered Mum.
Everything was — bright and jagged, after that. Ariel could gather little bits and pieces when she tried, but some things she just didn't want to remember, but there had been a blinding green light and a searing pain, like she'd been branded with a hot iron and the feeling of coming completely apart —
"I'd like to know why it happened at all." Ariel says then, very quiet, very soft, like she's trying not to wake a dragon. "All of it — we were hiding from the beginning, weren't we?"
Dad's jaw goes quite rigid, and she can see the bottomless depths of his eyes dredging up something painful, something he's tried to bury. His face becomes a mask of stone, hard and impenetrable.
"We were," he says, his tone clipped — final.
Ariel bares down. "From — him?"
He nods — once. His eyes are so distant that the black is another solar system, another universe altogether.
She wants to ask why — she is burning for it — for that thing that has always hovered just out of her reach. Ariel's heart races, a hummingbird trapped in her chest. She reaches for understanding, like one might grope for a hand in the dark. "But why? Why would he want us?"
"There was a — Prophecy," he spits the last word, like it's stuck between his teeth and he can't wait to get it out. "The Dark Lord believed you were its intended recipient."
Ariel's fingers curl into the fabric of her oversized sweater. It feels like a lifeline. "Me? Why me?"
"You met the criteria," Dad says flatly. "As did we, as your parents."
"It — it mentioned you too?"
"In a manner of speaking," he replies, his voice a low growl of resentment. "Prophecies — and those who believe in them — have a way of entangling lives without concern for the outcomes."
Dad's fingers twitch as if he's holding back from smashing something fragile. Ariel senses the fragility is not in the room, but inside of him.
Ariel considers this, quietly. "So he wanted me dead."
"He wanted all of us dead." Dad snarls.
"Right, but — but you said —"
"I do not need you to dictate what I've just stated." His voice is a thunderclap in the silence of the room. He's breathing heavily, now, like he's just run a marathon. "He did not succeed, and he never will."
She chews her lip. "Then why are we still hiding? Why can't we see anyone?"
Why can't we see Remus? Why did we leave him like that —
Dad shakes his head, like Ariel's missed the point entirely — has she? "The aftermath is best to wait out. Once the dust has settled I will — consider options."
Consider? As in — it wasn't even certain they'd go back? Ariel felt like she was going to throw up, the realization taking root deep within her.
"It does," Ariel insists, because she died — Mum died because of me. "It matters a lot, actually. If You-Know-Who is gone, then why are we stranded in the middle of nowhere?"
His eyes flash with something like desperation, the sharp glint of something broken. "Do not ask me to risk you again — I will do no such thing. I cannot — I will not."
"But what risk?" Ariel says this a little louder than she intends, and she can see the warning in her father's face, but she ignores it. "He died — I felt it."
Ariel hasn't thought about that moment — she tries very hard not to. All she can hang onto is the sound of her mother's lifeless body hitting the floor in front of her, like a marionette having its strings cut, and Ariel's own wail as she'd desperately tried to get her to wake up again. It's that thud that replays over and over, and when You-Know-Who had walked over, the red of his eyes the only thing visible beneath his dark hood, Ariel had looked right at him and held his gaze.
He had looked — confused. Ariel remembered that, the way his eyes narrowed just slightly, but then he'd given a low, sort of laugh, like he was in one some private joke, and raised his wand.
"Your father is a fool," he'd said. "You were hardly worth it."
And then —
Splintering coming apart she was splintering down the middle
Mum it hurts Mum it hurts
Hot searing needle hot pain please
Make it stop make it stop
And then Ariel's father says something that chills her to the core, makes her wish she hadn't asked in the first place.
"I was under that impression," Dad says. "But — he didn't."
Ariel falls asleep quickly that night — too quickly.
Shouldn't have. It's a mistake.
She'd wanted to lay there and digest what her father had said, but the hour had been late and her father had sat with her a while after, and she hadn't been able to resist the pull of sleep this time. Ariel is ninety-three percent sure he used some sort of wordless spell to put her out — an easy way to get him out of their conversation. He'd cheated.
Her dreams are disjointed. Ariel hears things she doesn't remember, doesn't know if they're real or an echo of a memory. Bright colors bouncing off walls in uncomfortable darkness — a ragged breath in her ear as shouts ring out from below. The floor shakes beneath her and when it stills, she can hear a high, cruel voice cut through the dark like a comet.
"Severus," the voice is cold, a shard of ice in her dream, "you cannot possibly be this foolish."
"My Lord — please." Her father's bellows are raw with desperation and rage, a caged beast clawing for escape. "I will do anything —"
"Your life, Severus? A fair trade for the Mudblood and the child?" The high, cruel voice laughs. It reverberates off the unseen walls of her dream, a sound that makes it hard for Ariel to breathe. "No, you see, this is a particular torment I have been savoring for you. You will listen — listen as I rip them from your world, as was always intended."
"No — my Lord — take me instead, I beg you —"
The high, cruel voice cackles again, and it's like a dagger sliding through her chest. "You overestimate your worth. No — you have chosen betrayal. I think it is fair that you witness the consequences. Incarcerous!"
She wakes to the sound of her name.
"Ariel."
Ariel — Ariel look at me, her Mum had whispered in her ear, then, her arms tight like a vise.
"Ariel, wake up."
She sits up quick — so quick she makes herself dizzy. Straining, Ariel keeps still — listens — her heart pounding in her ears.
It comes. "Ariel."
The closet is open, just a crack, just as she'd left it before. From the crack, there is a dim, green light, so faint that Ariel can't tell if it's her eyes playing tricks on her or if it's really there.
"Mum?" Ariel throws off her blankets and scampers to the edge of her bed. "Is that you?"
"Yes, my girl," and Mum says it the way Dad does, sometimes, with a fierce tenderness, like he's almost proud — my girl. "It's me."
She throws on her bedside lamp, the room engulfed in a soft, yellow glow.
Ariel's heart is a fireworks show. "Where have you been?" she demands. "Where did you go? I've been waiting for you! Dad wouldn't believe me, and I waited and you left."
"I'm sorry, darling," Mum sighs, the green light pulsating softly as Ariel draws closer. "But I'm here now."
"But why?" she presses, her small hands clenched into fists at her side. "Don't you miss us?"
I miss you, I'm sorry you died because of me.
"Of course she does," The green light blinks, like a heartbeat catching its breath. "Why wouldn't she?"
"Then why didn't you come back?" Ariel's voice trembles with desperate anger and grief.
The voice sighs gently, a sound like wind whispering through the leaves. "Because she wasn't ready yet."
Ariel is about to ask what that means when she pauses — actually listens to what her mother is saying, because — she — she wasn't ready yet — not —
She wasn't ready yet —
Her mother is dead. Her mother is dead and no spell can wake the dead, and even if it could, Ariel knows her mother would never leave her again. This one did. This one left and doesn't seem to care —
Because it's not Mum.
Ariel swallows, hard. She counts backwards from ten, and then counts backwards from five, because she is very much trying not to come completely apart, and the darkness is thickening like soup, its tendrils reaching towards the bed from the closet. Ariel can't even see the door to her bedroom anymore.
"Why are you talking like that?" Ariel asks quietly, the unease seeping in deep, mingling with the growing pang of doubt in her gut.
A soft chuckle echoes from the closet, a sound that lifts every hair on Ariel's arms. "Like what, darling?"
"That… that's not how my mum talks," Ariel's lip wobbles as she fights to keep the tears at bay. "You — you're talking like you're someone else."
The green light flickers erratically. "Well, perhaps it has been so long that… you've forgotten."
That — that makes Ariel angry.
"No." Ariel snarls. "No, I remember everything about my Mum."
"Do you?" Not-Mum asks, and it sounds like it's laughing at her, now. "What do you remember, Ariel? Do you remember the look on her face when she realized she was going to die?"
It's a wonder Ariel's heart doesn't give out right then and there. It feels like it's breaking —
The green light in the closet goes out. There's a long, rattling breath that fills the room up up up —
"She wishes things could be different." Not-Mum's voice curdles at the end, like bad milk.
A jolt of something so cold, it borders on painful, spasms down Ariel's spine.
That's — not Mum. That's not her Mum, but it sounds like her, only distorted, like a radio that had picked up a conflicting signal. The pitch is bending and dipping lower and then back up again, and it's laughing now, laughing at Ariel for being so stupid.
Ariel throws herself atop her pillows so that she's touching the headboard, pulling her sheets up to her chin. She doesn't know what good that'll do, but the idea of any part of her being exposed right now feels risky, all of a sudden.
"Little witch — little Ariel —"
No, Ariel thinks, shaking her head as if to physically reject the sound infiltrating her room. Not Mum. Not even a little bit. Her heart rattles in her chest, and a terrifying thought begins to envelop her. All this time, she's thought it was Mum's — ghost, spirit, essence, whatever — but then she remembers the burnt photograph and everything starts to feel very, very wrong.
Fear swells in Ariel's chest. She calls out, her voice trembling, "Who are you? What do you want?"
From the closet comes a low chuckle, the sound scraping against her ears like branches on a windowpane. "You stupid girl. What did the Dark Lord want?"
The Dark Lord — that's what Dad called him — You-Know-Who.
Ariel lifts her chin. "He wanted me, and he didn't get me. He couldn't."
"That's right, but I can. I have you right here, right where I want you."
Keep them talking — Ariel thinks to herself — keep whatever the bloody hell is threatening her from inside her closet talking so it can't do anything else.
"Tell me who you are," Ariel demands again, but she's unable to keep the tremor from her voice.
"An old friend, a forgotten secret…"
"Forgotten? Why are you here?" she probes.
"Awoken by your presence, drawn to your blood, your power…" Not-Mum's voice grows darker, more sinister, sending shivers down her spine. "The blood your father owes."
Ariel's heart thumps in her chest. She wonders if the voice can hear it. "What are you talking about?"
"Secrets," Not-Mum muses, a sound like grinding stone. "Your father harbors many."
Suddenly, the sem-comforting light of her night lamp flickers, and Ariel's heart misses a beat. The room plunges into darkness for a moment before the warm yellow glow returns.
"Ask him what the price of his daughter was," Not-Mum purrs. "Ask him if it was too high — if he regrets the choice that he made. Does he regret living in defiance in exchange for you?" The last word was stretched out, elongated like a string pulled taut. "Is it worth it, without the Mudblood? I can feel him now, Ariel. Your father regrets it more and more with each passing day."
Her breathing hitches. "He — he does not."
"Doesn't he?" Not-Mum croons back, its tone laced with amusement. "Ask him yourself, little witch. Ask him why he keeps you locked away in this house, tucked away from the world. Is it protection, or is it guilt?"
"Go away," Ariel whispers, her voice breaking. "Go away —"
"But we've only just begun. You are so much like your mother — fearless, yet fragile. But your father ," Not-Mum pauses, and when it speaks again, Ariel can hear a wicked smile. "His sins run through your veins, little witch."
"Stop talking about him," Ariel snarls, struggling to keep her voice steady. "You don't get to talk about him. You don't —"
The closet door creaks — long and loud, and Ariel flinches. The sound is nails on chalkboard, bone against bone. The room grows colder with every inch the door opens, as if winter itself was leaking out and filling the room.
"— know him," Ariel finishes weakly.
"Wrong, little witch." Not-Mum's voice sounds closer now, seeping from the inky blackness. "I know him more than you think, more than you might ever know. I know the agony that claws at his soul, the guilt that gnaws at his heart."
Ariel clamps her eyes shut, willing the voice to disappear, to recoil back into the horrid darkness it emerged from, but it only continues to laugh.
"Do you want to see? I could show you." The words slither across her skin, wrapping around her heart with an icy hold. "I could show you the truth about your daddy."
A hand slides out — no, not a hand. The fingers are too long, too pale, too spindly to belong to a hand. It's a claw, the fingernails digging into the wood —
"Don't you want to see it for yourself, Ariel? The truth?" Not-Mum whispers as its form edges forward, each word falling like a sledgehammer against her resolve. "Your daddy's secrets? His sins?"
Ariel feels her chest tighten, the words catching in her throat. She dares not speak, dares not move, but her mind races with images of her father —
"Stop it," she manages to whimper, but Not-Mum only cackles at her plea.
"Too scared to face reality, little witch?" Not-Mum sneers. "The reality that your daddy traded your mum for you? That he let her die so that you could live? He would have known — could have brought you to the Dark Lord himself — and now he regrets it. Doesn't it make you feel special?"
She's about to scream something — throw the lampshade at it — but —
— but then a face begins to peek out.
It's not a face Ariel recognizes. The skin is milky white, too smooth to be real, and it's stretched and twisted into a grotesque mockery of a human face, the features elongated and distorted. The hair, matted and tangled, falls in clumps around the creature's shoulders, the same shade of auburn that Ariel sees every time she looks at herself in the mirror. The eyes are completely white — devoid of any soul — and they stare at her, unblinking.
Ariel can feel her blood turn to ice — to slush. It stops moving, freezing her limbs from the inside out. Her breath is short and quick now, and now matter how quickly she inhales she cannot get enough breath in her lungs.
The face is —
It smiles.
And that's when Ariel starts screaming.