Chapter 28: Ariel
Ginny looked at the mirror, and sighed. “Ariel?”
When her Papa Tango had ‘completed’, after those three days, she’d concentrated on red hair as soon as she’d recovered from the searing pain of the final transformation stage. As a result, when she checked herself in the mirror after leaving the Infirmary, she’d expected to see red hair.
She hadn’t. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t even seen herself. Instead, a strange girl had looked out of the mirror at her… and waved, timidly.
This time, she watched as her own reflection melted into that girl, just a little shorter than she was. “Ginny,” Ariel greeted her, curtseying. They had spoken very little the first time- Ginny had panicked, and Ariel had disappeared, to be replaced by Ginny’s red-haired reflection. The second time, they had spoken through the bathroom mirror in the dormitory. Ariel’s voice was oddly distorted, floating through the glass- but she had revealed that she didn’t know anything, including her own name- only that she was irrevocably tethered to Ginny, and that apparently Ginny could ‘summon’ her at will. She’d willingly gone into some kind of hibernation to wait for Ginny to find a good time and place for them to have a conversation at length.
“So,” Ginny began, scowling. “I’ve… I’ve been thinking. You’re… bound to me, right?”
Ariel nodded. “And named Ariel, I guess?”
She blushed; it was a name she’d selected while Ariel was hibernating, so she’d have something to call her. “Y-Yeah. Until we find out what your name really is, at least.”
She chuckled softly. “No problem. And yes, I am, ah, bound to you. That’s… That’s actually why I appeared in the mirror that first time- I was trying to get out of you, and…” She sighed, looking around at the edges of the mirror. “I mean, this is a mirror, right?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Because…” She sighed. “To me, at least, I’m surrounded by total blackness, looking at you through a window of light.”
She scowled. “That’s… interesting.” She looked down, at the taps. “And here I was going to ask how come you appear in the mirror.” She looked up. “You’re sure you know absolutely nothing?”
She nodded. “Though it does seem like I can access some of your memories… but only mundane things. I wonder if it’s specific to the memories you wouldn’t mind me seeing, or if it’s something else?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, I wonder.”
Ariel sighed. “Anyways, because I know nothing…” She looked down, and back up. “I can’t even see myself- only my silhouette. But anyways, I imagine there really isn’t much use talking to me, is there?”
“You know what a mirror is,” Ginny observed.
She nodded. “I also know what a sink is. But that’s not going to be of much use, is it?”
Ginny smiled. “I… Hmm.” She sighed. “That kinda crosses out everything I wanted to talk about.”
Ariel looked down at the sinks in front of Ginny. “How about that book?”
She looked down at it.
It was Tom Riddle’s diary.
“I… If you knew anything, I was going to ask you about it.”
She tilted her head. “You were going to ask me about it?” she asked, surprised. “It’s a book. Does something happen if you write in it or something?”
She let out a laugh. “Actually, yes. It’s… It’s a diary. Tom Riddle’s diary. And if I write in it… he writes back.”
“He… writes back? Do you send it to him or something?”
She shook her head. “No, he just… writes back. It’s like he’s in the diary itself.” She reached out to flick the cover open- and Ariel let out a shriek of alarm.
She jumped back, looking around wildly. “What- What is it?”
Ariel, breathing very deeply, stumbled against the sinks in front of her, slipped, and repositioned one hand to the counter instead of the inside of a sink. “That… I don’t know. When you…” She gestured towards the diary- which, Ginny noticed, did not appear in the mirror, while everything else in the room- including her bag- did. “When you touched that… The darkness grew… darker, almost. It… It felt like it was draining my soul.” She looked up. “What would do that? Did you feel anything?”
She shook her head, looking apprehensively at the diary. “No. But… That confirms my theory if anything does.”
“Your… theory?”
“This… Do you know about the Chamber of Secrets?”
She blinked. “Oh, that. Yeah… You need to be a parselmouth to open it, though. As a matter of fact…” She leaned closer to the mirror, peering around the room. “This doesn’t happen to be the second floor bathroom, does it?”
She blinked. “Uh… it does, actually.”
“Oh. The entrance is on the end sink.” She pointed to Ginny’s left. “But as I said, you can’t open it without parseltongue.”
Ginny stared at her. “How do you know that?”
She blinked, looking stunned.. “I… er… I don’t know. How do I know that…?”
Ginny scowled, rubbing her chin. “Hmm. That suggests that what you’re missing isn’t knowledge so much as memory. But… you don’t know your own name?”
She looked up. “Ariel,” she stated, then shrugged. “But before that, I got nothing.”
“So we just have to find out who you are- er, were,” Ginny smiled.
Ariel nodded.
Then Ginny looked down at the diary. “So… this Diary.” She took a deep breath. “I think it’s been possessing me to open the Chamber of Secrets.”
“And whenever you touch it…”
Ginny reached forward a tentative finger, and touched the diary, watching Ariel.
Ariel, evidently expecting it, shuddered and crossed her arms across her chest, eyes tightly closed. It looked almost like something immaterial was touching her quite inappropriately.
It went away the moment she drew her finger from the diary.
“That… That’s going to complicate things,” Ariel muttered, gasping for breath and leaning on the sinks again.
Ginny took another book from her bag, and prodded the diary with it. She even prodded the closed cover with a quill.
Ariel shuddered a little, but shook her head. “Nothing. I keep expecting it to…” She trailed off.
Ginny put down her quill, seized the diary, raised it over her head, and threw it, as hard as she could, across the room. It vanished overtop the stalls, and she heard a thunk as it hit the opposite wall, then a rattle as it landed on one of the toilets.
When Ariel recovered, she looked through the mirror at where the diary had laid. “Where… Where is it?”
“I threw it away,” Ginny answered.
“What-!? You threw it away? It’s evil! Destroy it! Burn it!”
“I can’t!” Ginny cried. “I can’t! I’ve tried! I just… can’t!” She took a deep breath, and put her hands to her temples. “I think it’s blocking me from hurting it, the same way it’s blocking me from telling anyone.”
“You told me.”
Morning Sun looked up, from where she was doodling idly. Most of the nobles would have preferred to call it ‘fine art’, but that was neither here nor there. “Hailey,” she greeted.
Hailey, who had just entered the unused classroom and closed the door behind her, smiled. “Morning Sun,” she greeted.
Morning tilted her head. “So what did you want?” Hailey had slipped her a note during the last Student Instructor Program Management Meeting, with the date, time, and place on it, but nothing else.
“First of all,” Hailey answered her, “are we actually alone?”
She blinked, taken aback. “Uh-!” She doublechecked her empathic sense, and used a quick thaumic pulse to check for recording spells as well. It was a good thing her Equestrian magic still worked on this side of the Gate. “Yes, we are.”
“Well,” Hailey muttered, sitting down in the chair next to the one Morning had picked, at the same desk- the room was set up for students to work in pairs. Finally, she looked up at Morning, and smiled. “I noticed you seem to be very sensitive to the moods of those around you,” she stated.
She blinked, and deliberately tasted Hailey’s emotions. She generally avoided doing that outside of class, where her empathic sense was one of the fastest feedback loops she could have had; unlike the infiltrators, she wasn’t all that skilled at reading emotions without responding to them. Then of course, her empathic sense was far, far sharper than even Captain Empathic Sense himself, who had died nearly two hundred Equestrian years before, making it suspiciously sharp to any pony that paid attention.
She was especially careful around Hailey, Draco, and Hermione Granger- their emotions always carried certain undertones that she simply couldn’t resist responding to. There were three more, but she hadn’t actually identified them yet.
Hailey’s emotional spectrum didn’t actually let on much, which surprised her. There was a deep undertone of love, which made her blush, and another underlying emotion she could only describe as ‘gender euphoria’. There was also a little worry- but it felt more like the classic Imposter Syndrome than genuine worry. Aside from that, there was a small chunk of curiosity, a large amount of calm, dispassionate evaluation, and a little bit- just a little tiny bit- of secrecy. Oh, yes, and a bit of amusement too, though that was new and visible on her face as well. It must’ve been brought on by the blush.
“I-!” She flinched at her own hesitance, and took a deep breath, closing her eyes to take a deeper sampling of Hailey’s emotions. This actually took effort to do- and, just like the normal surface emotions she got bombarding her empathic sense all the time, it didn’t hurt anyone- pony or, as near as she could tell, human- to do it. Going a step further would cause harm, as forcible extraction of the emotional energy- but she actually didn’t know how to do that.
And she certainly didn’t need to, either. Not at Hogwarts, at any rate- the place was packed full of emotions of all sorts, and it was trivial to filter out the ones she could feed on and, often, to do so passively.
Her deeper scan found a much more complex spread of emotions, but one which really only told her what she already knew. However, in so doing, it confirmed that she could trust the girl.
“I-!” she repeated again, and paused to think. “Can… Can you not tell anyone?”
Hailey tilted her head, concern coloring her surface emotions. “Is something wrong?”
“I- It’s-!” She sighed. “Yes, I’m… sensitive to emotions. But…” She looked up. “It’s because of what I am. And if any of the others find out what I am…”
Hailey put an arm around her shoulders, and she felt her face heat up. “Okay, I can keep it quiet. So what is it?” Curiosity was now the predominant emotion, though she clearly understood the need for secrecy- and Morning could tell she meant to keep the secret.
“It’s…” She sighed again. “I’m not just empathic, I’m telempathic. I can… taste the emotions of those around me, to a very high degree of precision- I don’t even have to see them, either. And it works through walls.”
“Sounds convenient,” Hailey muttered.
“But… I’m also not just telempathic. I’m…” She took a deep breath, and let it out. “I’m an emotovore.”
She tilted her head. “What’s that?”
“That means… That means I eat emotions. Literally! I eat emotions! And…” She sighed, looking away. “Just a few years ago, a vast majority of my kind attacked and nearly took the p- er, the foreigner’s capital city. We’re on most of their KOS lists after that, and even the ones that won’t…”
Hailey hugged her, making her face feel like she could light a match just by touching it to her cheeks. Physical contact, especially intimate physical contact, always had an amplifying effect on her empathic sense. “You’re not on anyone’s KOS list here,” she said. “Bonbon would never have made you an HSI if she thought you might be a danger- or in danger."
She looked at Hailey, hugging back, only partly involuntarily. Not only was it the largest single meal she’d had in years, but she genuinely liked it- a significant departure from her past, where she distinctly recalled hating ‘love collection’ duty. “But I am,” she told her. “They just don’t know it.”
Hailey tilted her head. “How do you hide it?”
“Very carefully,” she stated. Then she shuddered. “I’m… I’m also a shapeshifter. It… It helps. A lot.”
She laughed. “I bet.” Her emotions shifted suddenly, a spot of creativity appearing. “I… I wonder, how free is that shapeshifting ability?”
She looked at Hailey, and wordlessly morphed into her identical twin.
Hailey flinched in surprise, then stared. “... Okay then. Um… How… Hmm.” She paused. “Well, I’ve been trying to teach Ron how to talk to girls, but me and Hermione are… ah, not a very good sample size. Silver and Sorelia are going to be a wonderful addition, but what we really need is, like, fifty, one at a time, a few days apart, probably.” She glanced up at Morning. “Assuming we took pains to keep it secret, would you be okay with that? Meeting him for the first time fifty times over, I mean.”
Morning snickered, flashing back to herself. “Sure, why not? I even have a natural talent for deception.”
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Threw the diary away? Hmmm... that's gonna complicate thing. But if Tom's juvenile soul already been converted into Ariel, then what was left in that diary?
Ooh, this is getting even more interesting!
Poor Ron, he'll never know what hit him
11027626
The Soul itself. I believe Ariel is not a piece of Voldemort but a part of Ginny that got the diary's knowledge somehow. Destroying a Horcrux is not that simple, and just transferring said soul would turn her into one.
This is likely more complicated than we imagine.
11027740
Hmm…. Have you read The Gate, by any chance? Ariel is a recurring character.
11027626
I doubt conversion is what happened (and not just because I've read the first versions of this story). "Ariel" reacted to the diary's soul feeding the same as any separate person, which means she's a separate soul from the soul in the diary. If she was Tom Riddle converted she would have grown stronger from Ginny touching it.
11027761
I have, I kinda remember her, but as readers it falls to us to theorize crazy stuff.
11027873
Yes, yes it does. And I'm seeing some fun stuff on this chapter already- some going in the right direction, some... not so much.
Yes, the whole Ariel situation has been tweaked, and quite a bit at that, since Gate or even OtIoPW; I wasn't satisfied with the way it worked in either of the above. But the core idea remains the same...
11028344
You need to make sure that this current story can standalone. Do not require people to have read a previous story to understand who Ariel is.
11029118
I don’t. Ariel will be explained in here- as is necessary because, as mentioned before, the whole situation with her is different this time. The story characters- including Ariel- just know very little about her right now.