Annie

[Jez Cuthbert]

((All this is being done by post, which is why I decided to put it in the Owlery... there will be a bit more RPing than is usual in Owlery posts though as mostly objects rather than written messages are being sent.))

Jez wasn't the most compassionate individual on earth. It wasn't something that he was incapable of; indeed he did have at least the average capacity for it. One could, however, be easily forgiven for thinking his 'organ of compassion' must be severely underdeveloped, because he didn't often show it in situations where it was the most appropriate response. For example, his behaviour towards a certain girl in his house and year betrayed his considerable stubborness and his lack of a sense of proportion. He could complain of no heinous crime against him, no injury inflicted upon him greater than wounded pride and temporarily wounded privates. But in retribution, he'd persecuted the cold, unmoveable perpetrator of this insult for almost an entire year already.

He had no intention of giving up anytime soon.

It had been easily done. It would be satisfying to be able to say that, anyway. In truth, this small triumph hadn't been easy at all. Getting hold of the device needed for it hadn't been too difficult. In manufacturing a particularly nasty variety of weedkiller, the difficulty of transferring an even nastier intermediate stage from one vat to another had arisen because it needed to be done almost immediately to avoid explosions. That was where these devices had come in useful: they instantly transferred a set weight of substance from one space to another, or rather swapped places with their own weight in the other substance. They were not, however, very easy to use. Jez had learnt that Easter how to use them for manufacturing purposes, and he'd taken a couple back to Hogwarts to practice further. Now he was going to part company with one of them. And Ariane's luggage was going to part company with her.

That part really had been laughably easy, since he'd already had plenty of practice with the device that had made it possible. The weight had been inside an empty trunk that he was carrying. At the bottom of this trunk, a note read: 'Have a good summer.' He'd simply had to lurk a little way behind her in the queue for carriages to take them to the station, cast a focusing spell (perhaps a little tricky) and then the spell that actually exchanged the weight for the contents of Ariane's trunk. Since her trunk still weighed the same, she hadn't noticed. Mission of causing Ariane some amount of stress accomplished.

He didn't, however, wish to steal or inspect her belongings - he had enough of his own - so he'd made arrangements for the now filled trunk (if it had worked) to reach the Gryffindor's home about a day after she herself reached it (the trunk conveyed by a giant owl he'd hired from the post office). Perhaps it was an abuse of knowing Aurora's address. But that part hadn't occurred to him. He simply wished that he could witness Ariane's reaction. Some reaction, that would be an achievement.

[Ariane Chan]

The end of another year. Ariane, an ice-cold statue, gazed at the front door, silently struck by the fact that this door was the door to her home. Home. Yes, it had been home for over a year, or was it two? Ariane had lost count. And judging from Harmony's expression as she lugged her trunk past her motionless figure, she had completely, or maybe seemingly completely, moulded herself into this new environment. "Not 'new'," Ariane chided herself. "It's not new at all." And yet somehow, she found it hard to familiarise the building as home. Ariane decided for certain she would not voice her opinion out loud to Aurora, as her best friend passed her also, momentarily stopping to cast a questioning, concerned stare upon her.

"Everything all right?" Ariane nodded her assent, leading Aurora to reluctantly continue after Harmony into the house, Leo and Mr and Mrs Chan bringing up the rear. Stifling a sigh, Ariane followed the family stiffly, sparing her surroundings a cursory glance. The same hallway, the same flight of short steps. Not much had changed in the Chan household. At least Ariane found its constant atmosphere comforting. Like an aeroplane set on autopilot, Ariane ascended the stairs and headed to her room, levitating her trunk in front of her with a steady hand. Harmony would be waiting for her assistance downstairs once she had stowed her own trunk away since they shared a room, so Ariane tried to make her actions swift, but she had never been one to be rushed.

Depositing the trunk by her bed, Ariane gazed upon it wistfully. Packing for home had been the same as always. Ariane had stood by her four-poster bed, wand in the air and trunk open by her feet; she'd cast her usual spell, whereupon all her items magically slotted themselves into the large space (much larger than the outer appearance gave it credit for). The organised little spell had eventually laid the last item atop of the not-so-vast pile, and Ariane had been ready to snap the lid shut with a swing of her wand. Only her arm had frozen in place when her eyes fell on the last placed object, lying innocently on a set of her Gryffindor-embroidered school robes. It was a single rose. A single rose given by a single boy. Man. Boy. Men didn't run away, so... Boy. Ariane had frowned. A frown that had eventually settled into an expression of apparent lack of emotion and a front of coldness. Guarded walls had returned. Ariane should've known it wouldn't have lasted. She had been foolish in thinking she would find her soulmate in him.

Ariane couldn't bring herself to throw away the rose though. Her fingers itched to tear it apart, burn it, stamp on it, anything to get rid of its existence. For it only tore holes in her heart as she stared at its wilting form, preserved only by a simple spell, as simple as her heart had been when she had loved him. Frustrated with her weakness, a weakness Ariane had still failed to admit to Aurora in her shame and secrecy, she had slammed the trunk lid shut, locking it aggressively and forgetting it for an entire day. Now, in need of unlocking her trunk to retrieve obvious items such as clothes and toiletries and the like, Ariane knew she had to face the haunting memory that was Tristan MacCay. After several ticking, tired seconds, gritted teeth and fisted fingers and a trembling bottom lip finally allowed her to cast the spell desired to unlock the trunk.

And then Ariane stepped back in horror, only just swallowing a scream of disbelief and dismay.

Her trunk was as empty as her heart.

No books. No stationery. No clothes.

"No rose," Ariane's mind breathed raggedly.

"No." Choked, her shaking fingers extended to reach into the empty, vast space, void of any phsyical objects. And especially no dying rose. Instead, Ariane's fingertips brushed against a piece of parchment, and she hurriedly drew it out, still quivering from horror and shock and utter rage. Someone had to be behind this. There was no way her trunk's contents would just disappear like this...

'Have a good summer.'

Ariane's eyes scanned the note once, twice, three times. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten--

And then the penny dropped.

And all that was left was utter revulsion.

"Him." Ariane's growl reverberated in her chest as she stared a hole into the piece of parchment that would soon be burning cinders. "That little--" Allowing a scream of frustration, Ariane flung the note into the air and grasped at her hair. "GIVE ME BACK MY THINGS, JEZ CUTHBERT!"

[Jez Cuthbert]

If it is any comfort to the reader, Jez might have felt some remorse for his deed had he known what distress it had caused. However, of course, he was blissfully unaware of the initial impact his prank had made. He imagined, from experience, that Ariane was cold and invulnerable, untouchable by anything Jez might throw in her way. Although he would be loath to admit it, he had a grudging respect for her for that very outward composure and seeming inner strength. Unaware of her recent heartbreak, he imagined that the limit of the emotion caused by this very invasive prank would be annoyance and frustration, the latter showing only momentarily on her face before it was replaced by anger. Anger that probably wouldn’t fade for a while after she got her possessions back. He knew this prank was drastic enough to touch the untouchable. But, as aforementioned – and the reader may wish to bear this in mind if they find this insensitive teenager’s actions disturbing – Jez had no conception of what the actual reaction had been. If he had had any idea, he would perhaps not have persisted in tormenting Ariane. Perhaps.

The reader will no doubt think Jez very immature, and they would be right. But there were some responsibilities he was just about ready to bear, and work was one of these. He’d been taking a role in the public face of the business, negotiating with small, new distributors who weren’t worth a great deal to the Cuthberts either in terms of big money or loyalty. It was a good place for him to start practising, ensuring that he didn’t annoy anyone hugely important and cost the family lots of money. The count of people offended so far only stood at one, anyway, and no one had threatened to sue, so he wasn’t causing large problems. His father had even told him that he was doing well – high praise. However, all this didn’t mean Jez had forgotten about the Gryffindor he bore a particular grudge against. He wouldn't be letting her expectations down... he had a few more things planned.

This particular surprise was organic. He'd placed the spores of some rare, but rather resilient magical toadstools in an envelope. They were closely related to the much more common, well-known magical toadstools - they had the same red-with-white-spots pattern that Jez had spread his fingers over as a boy when playing in a neglected part of his garden, the same pattern that any child from a Muggle background would be familiar with from their storybooks. However, these toadstools were not suited for the outdoor life. They had a particular niche of settling in carpets, quickly growing their characteristic spotted apotheciums and then somehow feeding, rather than by breaking down the carpet, off the frustration and panic that they caused. That was quite clever, in Jez's opinion. Because they were rather rare, no weedkiller was generally available for them. So he was going to try them out on Ariane: he hoped that it would stress Ariane out a little bit.

Of course, he was assuming that she had a carpet or a rug in her bedroom. But it seemed like a fairly safe assumption to make. He'd be sending an envelope containing the spores by owl - his own owl. His hand wavered a moment as he addressed the envelope. He'd written an 'A' already in the calligraphic writing that he'd been taught but usually neglected to use, preferring his own more unique style. Then, before he'd really thought about it properly, came an 'r'. Once it was written, he paused, his pen poised mid-name as he frowned and pondered. It could be easily turned into an 'n'. But that didn't seem right, somehow. An 'i' followed, and then the a, n and e, each letter increasingly shaky as his will battled with his instinct. His instinct seemed to be in control at the moment. It was strange, that he seemed unable to bear paying her the discourtesy of knowingly calling her the wrong name, but yet he was in the process of inflicting vandalism (remotely) upon her room. This troubled Jez. He fastened the envelope to his owl's leg, told her to find Aurora's friend, and opened his window to let her fly free.

He spent the rest of the day trying to forget about his deed. And his doubts.

[Ariane Chan]

Suspicious… Very… very… very suspicious.

Ariane’s eyes narrowed and curved, latched onto the crumpled face of the creature, with its glossy brown feathers and glittering, patient eyes. Owls, Ariane had decided, were now an object of apprehension, fret and paranoia in her life. Besides Atalanta, any sign of a bristling wing, any low hoot resounding in the night as she tried and failed to fall into a dreamless sleep, would alert her senses, cause hope and bitter anger to rise and fall, fluctuate against her chest as its steel wrapping bent and broke, kneading all the breath out of her. But why? After all, Ariane had never had a problem with animals. Their lack of a human voice and mind saved her from the pressure of interacting with them, growing close and dependent on them, getting hurt by them. But now, owls represented human contact, contact Ariane was, as usual, desperate to avoid. The truth was, every owl reminded Ariane of Tristan – would he send her a letter? Keep in contact with her? Would she ever hear from him again? Ariane knew she was acting like a typical girl in love, the type she had always scorned, and sworn she would never become – for no man could reduce her to such a dependent, needy wreck. But here she was, and finally, Ariane understood with bitter irony the feelings Aurora had attempted to describe to her about her relationship with Daniel.

Even though it was over – even though Ariane had told herself that even if Tristan came crawling and begging on his hands and knees back to her she would never take him back, because he wasn’t worth it, he didn’t deserve a second chance, because she was better than that, and she wouldn’t let her heart be penetrated again so foolishly – she knew that what she would really do is collapse into his warm arms, sobbing, praying it to not be a dream, that she wasn’t hallucinating with ridiculous hope she’d never held for anyone else. She’d beg for him not to ever leave her again; Ariane wouldn’t beg to anyone, but Tristan… he was special, and it made Ariane so frustrated that anyone could have that sort of hold over her – and now she was paying the price. Tristan created within her a hope she had always hated harbouring, because she knew eventually everyone would let her down. Tristan had proved her theory right. But still, Ariane still held a slight germ of a hope that he would reappear in her black-tainted world, return to her from the U.S.A. from, ironically, where she had come from. How silly that she had arrived from America, to meet and fall in love with him, only for him to leave her to live in her birth country.

That was why owls, to Ariane, caused her to twist her heart in the insane hope that Tristan would contact her. They symbolised hope – a hope she couldn’t afford to have, because it was slowly but steadily killing her. Ariane couldn’t look at an owl without envisaging Tristan’s handsome face, his sparkling blue eyes and soft blonde hair – the traits she had fell in love with so long ago.

Ariane snapped painfully out of diluted memories and once again trained her moist eyes on the small, innocent shape of the owl perched motionlessly on the windowsill, as though gravity had no say in the matter of its position, defying both gravity and the gentle breeze floating in from outside – a world Ariane was totally cut off from. Tentatively, she crept towards the owl, afraid she’d startling it away, but also afraid of why it was in her room. Maybe it was him; maybe Tristan had decided to grace her with a proper explanation and apology after all, and she’d be able to move on and let go or forgive him. She hadn’t received mail since the start of the summer, and since she lived with Aurora, it could only be Tristan, right? Who else would send her a letter? Ariane’s hungry eyes watched the envelope attached to the owl’s leg like a hawk. What did it contain? Hope, that’s what – that awful, painful, cruel entity that refused to leave Ariane’s life until Tristan was gone from her haunting conscious. Whatever this owl carried, it now brought either pain or salvation.

Atalanta’s impulsive hoot resounded as Ariane reached the stranger owl. She cast a silencing expression at her black-feathered owl resting lonesomely in her cage before gingerly, with shaking fingers, removing the letter from the owl’s leg. Once it had been properly detached, it seemed to nod its solemn head at her and launched itself into the evening glimmers of sunlight, lingering and grappling to stay as night’s darkness pushed through determinedly. Ariane held the fragile, thin piece of paper between her fingertips and breathed in deeply. “Tristan, is it you?”

It took five minutes of silence – punctuated only by the distant growls of traffic and haunting birdsong – for Ariane to gather the courage necessary (usually it was so easy to summon) and still her hopes (usually so lacking) to open the letter. Finally, with unstoppable trembles along her wrist, the seal broke. However, what greeted Ariane wasn’t another slip of parchment, the letter she’d been aching to read, to raise her spirits and fulfil her undying hopes, but… an empty envelope. Ariane stared blankly into it, confused and frustrated. The letter. The letter! Where was her letter? What was Tristan playing at?! At that moment, she began to notice something strange and disturbing – and Atalanta’s sudden bursting into hooting alarmed her even more. As if by magic, mushrooms and toadstools began sprouting up all over her carpeted bedroom floor, flooding the entire area and crawling along the bed legs and corners of the walls. Ariane mouthed a silent ‘What the—?’. As the truth sank into her mind, the treachery tearing her hope apart into little shreds, her anger gnashing at her guilt, Ariane let out a soft mix between a scream and a sob, and letting the empty envelope fall from her fingers to land upon a few mini toadstools, she bent to her knees in the middle of her bedroom, burying her shaking head between her legs and weeping freely tears that seeped into the budding fungi as her cries carried into the growing night…

[Jez Cuthbert]

Jez hadn't had an easy conscience since he'd played that last prank. He kept on wondering whether Ariane had sorted out the chaos yet, and when he was being honest with himself, could only conclude that she wouldn't have. He didn't think that he was underestimating her. He just wasn't aware of any effective weed killer: none of them were specific enough. And he had more knowledge about - and access to - these things than most people.

Well - he had to admit it - one and a half weeks was quite long enough for anyone's bedroom to be invaded by magical fungi. He also had to admit that his conscience had forced him to work on a solution to the problem: he'd found something that would kill the strange toadstools. It wasn't a conventional weed killer. He'd had trouble finding anything that would kill them off, which was probably why there hadn't been anything for sale in the first place - there wasn't much profit in it because of the rarity of the problem, and it wasn't even easy to develop. Jez had tried a few different concoctions without any effect. He'd used an extremely deadly poison with some trepidation - that had worked, since it was effective at killing off pretty much anything, but he didn't think it would be suitable for Ariane's carpet.

He considered the eventual success to be a flash of inspired genius (not that he was going to get conceited about it: it was the sort of thing he was going to have to be good at). Since very little seemed to be poisonous to the fungi, he'd tried draining them of what they fed on. That meant finding something that could combat unhappiness and panic. He'd reckoned that simply water would do to combat the panic. A bubbling fountain, the steady drip of a tap into a bath, tiny waves lapping at the edge of a lake: water certainly had a calming effect. Then again, that wasn't reckoning on the less than calming effect a raging torrent or leaking ceiling could have – simply pouring water on his own (under control) sample of fungi hadn’t worked whatsoever. So he’d tried combining the water with something else: light. A lamp, a burette dripping at a controlled rate, and a tricky and possibly slightly dangerous charm, and the two humours were combined together in a stable state, like a faintly glowing glass bead. They worked, as well, melting away and taking the toadstools with them.

Once he had enough to send, he loaded them into an envelope, which again bore Ariane’s name – this time in neater writing (his normal writing) – and slipped the following note in with the beadlike objects. ‘Drop a couple on each toadstool.’ He watched as Aluca took off with the envelope in her beak, and then turned away, shrugging his shoulders. Well, he couldn’t have left her with a fungal infestation in her bedroom forever, could he?

[Ariane Chan]

A week and a half.

Ten days.

Ten. Days.

Ten whole days had passed and she still couldn't get rid of them.

Yes, she'd tried. She'd tried everything. From shrinking spells to plain muggle weedkiller, Ariane had utilised every possible method to rid her bedroom of those infested toadstools. They were everywhere and they hadn't moved for a week and a half. Ariane went to bed with them crawling up the side of her bed, and she woke up to them every morning. Ariane had never hated mushrooms so much in her life.

She still didn't know who'd sent them. All she knew was, this culprit had thoroughly upset and angered her. This criminal, this good-for-nothing ingrate, had not only messed up her bedroom - her haven; had not only caught her at a weak moment; had not only brought her so much trouble she was near the end of her tether... This person had left their mark on Ariane's life in the most indirect way possible that she couldn't track them down and punch the living daylights out of them. Because there was no way, if Ariane knew this culprit, she would let them get away with it. No. Way.

Ariane had considered Tristan... But no. Tristan wouldn't ever do that to her. She still had that much faith left in him... Or rather, she knew him well enough to know he would never pull such a childish prank. Ariane didn't trust Tristan MacCay any more, but she could still claim she knew his personality, his character. Plus, that handwriting on the envelope; when she had examined it, that was definitely not Tristan's penmanship. She had received too many owls and notes from her ex-boyfriend to know it wasn't him.

So it wasn't Tristan. And in a way, that was the end for Ariane. At least this moron had helped her get over something - that Tristan would ever contact her. It was halfway through summer and still no word; just an envelope containing spores of mushrooms that had infected her bedroom for a week. It had caused both her and Harmony much trouble... Everyone in the Chan household had tried to help get rid of them. But George had said it was something only a herbologist would understand, and if Ariane, the most talented and learned Herbologist in the house, couldn't do anything about it, no one else could. Aurora, after all, was awful at sciences, and Harmony and Leo weren't as advanced as Ariane was. George and Jenny hadn't done Herbology for years and they had never specialised in it. So Ariane was alone... fighting mushrooms. It was ridiculous! She had been reduced to attempting to pull them from the ground with her bare fingers, she was that desperate!

But after a few days, Ariane's persistance had worn off, replaced with nonchalence... as though she didn't care. Like a balloon, after a while she had deflated, given up. She didn't have the strength to fight it... these mushrooms. She'd let them be and she'd live on... without joy, without a goal... without Tristan. He was truly gone from her life and Ariane was now moving on... moving onto an emptier, greyer world.

When a familiar-looking owl fluttered onto her windowsill, though, Ariane started violently, causing her book to fall onto the floor, bouncing off a few toadstools. It lay forgotten, however... Her eyes were trained suspiciously on that owl who had visited her almost a fortnight ago. It was the creature who had brought the spores with it. Ariane had never despised an animal quite as much as she did now. However, after a while she decided she couldn't leave it sitting there, staring at her eerily. She stood up and slowly neared it. The envelope came undone in her hands and the owl flew away again. Ariane watched it disappear, a black speck in the sky, before looking down at the envelope in her hands. It was addressed to her again. Same handwriting. And she could feel that it contained small, hard objects... Suspicious but curious, Ariane formulated a swift plan. She stuck the envelope out of the open window and proceeded to open it. She waited. Her breath paused. Her heart stopped.

Nothing happened.

Still, Ariane didn't release her breath. Her fingers shuffled into the envelope and a note slipped out. She brought it to her face and read it with growing incredulousness.

Drop a couple on each toadstool.

[Jez Cuthbert]

How very funny. How witty, how clever. Actually, you had to hand it to her, pranking him back. It did increase his respect for her a little bit. It might even have made him laugh at himself, admit he was thoroughly beaten and leave her be - had he not been so offended by it. It wasn't just that he was displeased with the state his owl had come back in. Barnabas was exceedingly sensitive about his name - so much so that very few people knew it (his parents, wider family and childhood friends) and even fewer people called him by it (his parents and other family members who didn't know better, and childhood friends wishing to annoy him). So, actually, he was a bit bothered that Annie knew it. A bit perplexed, as well. How exactly did she know it? He didn't remember telling Aurora, and he couldn't really imagine Annie tying Oscar up and refusing to release him until he'd revealed an embarrassing secret belonging to Jez. And those two people were it as far as Jez's close friends went. He had other friends of the present and a few friends-no-longer, but none that he had ever shared such a secret with.

Surely she hadn't gone and looked it up on someone's class register? That would be a bit stalkerish - though here was a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Perhaps she had received a list of people's names to memorise in her role as a Prefect? Seemed a bit unlikely. Well, somehow she knew, he thought as he glumly tossed the purple soft toy onto his bed. Not something he would ever have given her credit for had the evidence not been there in all its hideous reality. Barney. Barney the Dinosaur. The purple dinosaur. His dreams - his nightmares - tonight would be full of soft purple (and lurid green) fabric smothering him, soft-toy stuffing prickling him... and the blistering scorn of a little girl.

She could have all that back. Plus a bit extra. Jez stepped up to the side of his bed determinedly and tapped it with his wand. "Engorgio," he ordered, and it started to grow in size, until it was the size of his bed. "Reducio," he shuddered. It was even scarier like that... utterly scary in the manner of all giant soft toys which some people misinterpret as 'cute'. (There was a common misconception that something vaguely 'sweet' would be even cuter as a giant version. Jez wasn't convinced). It would have to get bigger than that to have any chance of terrorising Annie, though. That could be managed - 'Magnopere Engorgio*' would do the trick and was pretty simple to bring about. Delaying the spell until someone touched the evil toy would be a bit trickier, though. Jez went and fetched a heavy spell-book.

Twenty-five minutes later, he'd found the right combination of spells, practised them, tested their efficacy on other unwanted items lying around his room (an old paper-chain was now long enough to stretch round the outside of his house), and the finished product was ready. If Jez had taken a very unlikely leap of imagination and realised that Aluca had been intercepted on the way back from Ariane's house, whilst flying over an all-too-familiar property, then he might have sent the insult and the prank back to the right girl, and in doing so returned the scorn of a now not-so-little girl. As it was, he didn't have second sight and he based his assumptions on the most likely explanation, which was usually quite a successful strategy. On this occasion, it led him to assume that Ariane was the one to send the horrible toy back to.

He gingerly poked the cursed toy onto some brown paper with a stick, and wrapped it up securely, if not very neatly, with plenty of parcel tape. He didn't want any person at the post office to touch it, or indeed for an owl to rip the package and find itself, suddenly weighed down, tumbling out of the sky. Oh yes. He would be sending this by a post office owl. He'd been worried when Aluca's return had been delayed, and she hadn't been properly fed or groomed (the tawny owl was now contentedly asleep on her perch in the garden shed, thank goodness). He was absolutely not going to subject Aluca to animal cruelty at Annie's hands again. It had been very wrong of him to chance it, but he had actually thought better of Ariane than that. There, her full address was written on the front of the parcel now. He'd take it to the post office this afternoon.

((*Magnopere Engorgio = 'I greatly enlarge' in Latin.))

[Ariane Chan]

When the neatly packaged brown parcel fell with a rattle on the floor by her window, Ariane jumped about a feet. No sound arose from her open mouth, for she restrained her surprise, but it had still frightened her enough for her to have retreated in a matter of seconds across hers and Harmony's beds to the door at the corner of the room. Ariane was only able to take a quick glimpse of that familiar brown owl before it dropped out of her window for the third time this summer. Blinking and frozen to the spot, Ariane remained where she was for a few minutes, before deciding there was nothing dangerous enough in that package for it to burst out. Still, her fingers remained tightly wrapped around her wand in her pocket. Slowly she advanced upon it.

Several days later, the mysterious package remained unopened and untouched on her desk. Ariane had used a levitating spell to leave it there, abandoned and forgotten, an object to be feared. She had given Harmony strict instructions not to touch or move it, and although her sister had asked her many times what was in it and who had sent it, Ariane had continued answering with the same firm answer: "I don't know who sent it or what's in it. All I know is that it is dangerous and you must stay away from it." It was the longest sentence Ariane had spoken to Harmony in weeks, and that in itself had the younger Chan leave the questioning at that.

The truth was that Ariane had quite a good idea as to who the culprit who was sending her all these things was... Yes. Most likely it was the same idiot who had seemingly stolen all her belongings from her trunk at the beginning of the summer - Tristan's rose and all. Eventually she had gotten it back, but Ariane had not forgotten that terrible feeling of thinking she had lost everything.

Two weeks later, she burned the rose.

Jez Cuthbert. She was pretty sure it was him. And that was another reason why she just could not confide in Aurora. Jez was Aurora's friend - very unfortunate but frustratingly true. Aurora was friends with everyone and Ariane had never begrudged her that, but this was one occasion where she wished her best friend wasn't so... friendly. Ariane had no evidence either to pinpoint her accusations on Jez Cuthbert, but it was him, she was sure of it. That guy had been out to wreck her life since Day One. Okay, so not ever since they had joined Hogwarts almost seven years ago, but ever since she had met Tristan, Jez had decided to make her life living hell. It had been bad enough with one man who couldn't make up his mind - but two? God must really hate me, she had decided. Whatever had she done to deserve this?

Ariane did not intend on opening Jez Cuthbert's 'present' to her ever. She planned to burn it one day when the other Chans were out, in a similar way she had destroyed the last remnants of Tristan's rose, but as of yet she had not found such an opportunity. Unfortunately for her, although she had briefed Harmony very clearly about the disasterous parcel, she had not thought of warning anyone else - such as Aurora. That was the problem with Ariane's lack of communication with her best friend nowadays. So, when Aurora entered her bedroom as she was working one afternoon, the last thing Ariane expected her best friend to do was grab the package with a delighted and curious "Oh!" and proceed to ask what it was and what it contained. Before Ariane could protest or even turn around in horror, Aurora had begun unwrapping it. "Is this that present you were telling me about for Leo's birthday that you bought three months early, Ari?" she asked ignorantly as she carefully but speedily shed the packaging off.

"Aurora, no, don't--" Ariane had no time to finish her sentence. The moment the wrapping was off the two girls got the surprise of their lives. Whatever was inside the package suddenly began to enlarge and grow as though sucking in air. The brown paper fell off to reveal a furry purple... monster, was how Ariane could only describe it as. It grew so quickly it was soon pushing against the ceiling, and had knocked Aurora backwards onto the floor. Ariane stared up at it in horror and shock. It seemed to her that it was a giant plushie or soft toy of sorts, with rather large teeth. It was no scary creature, but what exactly was the point of it? With growing irritation, Ariane sat there and wondered what on Earth Jez Cuthbert was up to. That boy was out of mind, evidently; going crazy with innovative ideas to 'spice up' Ariane's dreary life.

Ariane had been shocked into silence by the idiocy of the situation, but as usual Aurora was soon voicing herself; the knock had done nothing to shut her up. "That's a Barney, isn't it?" she asked out loud in wonderment, standing up again and staring at it strangely. She then glanced at Ariane questioningly. "You do realise Leo grew out of liking Barney quite a long time ago, right? Though, the enlargement spell will catch him by surprise."