𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 [𝐏𝐉𝐎 𝐗 𝐇𝐏]

ix: ariana gets a cool map

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chapter ix

(prisoner of azkaban)

ariana gets a cool map

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MADAM POMFREY INSISTED ON keeping Harry in the hospital wing for the rest of the weekend, while she let Ariana leave after only one night. She had taken some nectar and ambrosia that had healed her quickly. Though her ears still hurt from Annabeth's yelling as soon as she found out. The girl had gone ballistic when she realised that the Ariana had fallen down through the stands.

Harry, on the other hand, had a stream of visitors, all intent on cheering him up. Hagrid sent him a bunch of earwiggy flowers that looked like yellow cabbages, and Ginny Weasley, blushing furiously, turned up with a get-well card she had made herself, which sang shrilly unless Harry kept it shut under his bowl of fruit. The Gryffindor team visited again on Sunday morning, this time accompanied by Wood, who told Harry (in a hollow, dead sort of voice) that he didn't blame him in the slightest. Ron and Hermione left Harry's bedside only at night. Ariana would too, but whenever she sat near Ron, he looked at her as if he were expecting her to kill him any second. But nothing anyone said or did could make Harry feel any better, because they knew only half of what was troubling him.

He hadn't told anyone but Ariana about the Grim, not even Ron and Hermione, because he knew Ron would panic and Hermione would scoff. Harry told her that it had now appeared twice, and both appearances had been followed by near-fatal accidents; the first time, he had nearly been run over by the Knight Bus; the second, fallen fifty feet from his broomstick. Was the Grim going to haunt him until he actually died? Was he going to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for the beast?

Ariana thought he was being slightly dramatic, but she understood his fear. Many people at camp had become superstitious or developed OCD due to their trauma. A similar thing was happening to Harry. She told him that it was probably a coincidence, but that he could be right. This seemed to both reassure him and calm him down.

And then there were the Dementors. Ariana felt sick and humiliated every time she thought of them. Everyone said the Dementors were horrible, but no one else (other than Harry) collapsed every time they went near one. No one else heard echoes in their head of their friends and family.

Because Ariana knew who that screaming voice belonged to now. She had heard the words, heard them over and over again during the night hours in the hospital wing while she lay awake, or in her dorm, after a bad nightmare. When the Dementors approached her, she heard the last moments of her aunt's life, her attempts to protect her, Ariana, from the lady in the ground, and her laugh before she made Ariana....