The Raven and the Snake

The Third Book

Ariadne took the Knight Bus back to London within the week. She sent an owl out of The Leaky Cauldron with news of where she'd moved to the twins. She exchanged the small sum of money she'd inherited from her grandparents into galleons and opened her own account with Gringotts. It wasn't enough for her to get a vault, so she got something like a safety deposit box.

The money wasn't much, but she was glad that Valentine hadn't taken it. Valentine wanted her out of the house as soon as possible. She didn't question anything Ariadne did, even advising Ariadne to keep to herself, leave the house at all hours, and lock up everything she wanted to keep. When Ariadne returned from London several hours into the night, Valentine didn't say a word though she'd still been awake playing poker with a couple of gal pals.

Valentine really wasn't much a parental figure, more like a very noisy roommate. She ran a palm reading/ massage parlour out of the first floor of her house so all manner of oddballs came in. She had not been kidding about her gentleman callers. Ariadne suspected that was where Valentine's money really came from.

Ariadne hadn't bothered to take divination, but even she felt she could do a better job reading peoples' fortunes. In the first week, Ariadne had needed to spend more time outside of the house than in it. Valentine had not adjusted her schedule to make room for Ariadne at all.

It was the second week of living with Valentine when Ariadne settled into a routine. She took a small bag with her books out to the park. Even though it was summer break, no children seemed to ever enter the little playground. The benches for parents had all been vandalized, but that didn't matter much. She would sit and complete her homework or take some time to exercise.

The swings, oddly, seemed to be the only thing maintained in the little park. Ariadne closed her eyes, enjoying the light whooshing of the breeze. She thought back to the memories she had. She probably ought to feel some sort of guilt that she couldn't remember much of her past life. She didn't remember where she'd grown up or the faces of her family. She hadn't even been able to picture herself.

All she remembered with clarity was the last few hours of her life. She'd been a stage hand that was helping to clean a theater after a show about the witch trials and there had been a fire.

The only one other thing she knew for sure were the books. How many times had she read them or listened to them? How many hours or years had she devoted to being a fan of the series that had been a cultural phenomenon?

She must have known them quite well, because the details were coming easily now. This very park she was in had been a part of the books. Spinner's End had been when Severus Snape grew up. This park was where he'd met the love of his life, Lily Evans who played here on these swings with her sister, Petunia.

Ariadne waited until the swing was nearly high enough to flip and let go. She'd done this many times as a child, much to the delight of her mother and fear of her grandfathers'. When she had her eyes closed like this, she could almost imagine she was flying. Flying like a bird, not as someone clinging to a broom.

She drifted slowly back toward the earth like a feather, eyes still closed. The dirt ground was dusty and gross, she knew, but when she pictured it in her head, it was full of dark green grass and little flowers.

Ariadne hadn't meant to perform any sort of magic. She wasn't even sure if what she did had a spell. It was just one those things that wizard children did when they were little, protecting them and bringing their childhood imaginings to life. Most children seemed to forget or channeled their magic so completely through a wand that they couldn't still do things like this, but Ariadne had never liked being reliant on her wand.

When she opened her eyes, to the darkening evening, the ground she was laying on did indeed have lush green grass now, flecked with small purple flowers. She flipped onto her stomach and watched the fireflies start to come out with a sigh. She wondered if she was going to get into trouble for this. She wasn't even sure how she'd done it. She supposed she had to just be grateful that the streetlights hadn't been repaired in this area for years and that no prying eyes could see what she'd done.