Mind Games

The staff all equally seemed to have a certain distaste for Ariel. He didn’t know whether it was because of Fenrir or because it was becoming increasingly obvious that Ariel wasn’t entirely human. No longer did the plain, over-used excuses work. At some point he’d have to tell someone – but definitely not his head of house – who would sympathise with him. He didn’t want their pity, though. He wanted their ignorance. He didn’t want anyone to have to know unless it was vital to his own survival.

Werewolves killed off those who knew because after a while, those people became threats to that particular wolf’s way of life. Ariel didn’t know why it happened all he knew was that it did and there was often nothing other werewolves could do to prevent the slaughter. It was cruel but often necessary for their survival. They were walking, talking Dark Creatures, all of whom could be banged up in High Security cells at a moment’s notice. Ariel was pushing his luck as it was, even with just his name. The fact that he had Lycanthropy infected blood cells running through him made his already precarious situation all the worse.

Turning the topic to Doyle had never been Ariel’s intention. He was out of the dungeons just to avoid the limping maniac. Ariel rolled his eyes and drank some more of the wine when Amelia commented on Doyle. The man was insufferable, ignorant and, overall, a bastard. It was safe to say that Ariel had little no respect for the man. Ariel continued to drink his wine. He leaned forward after a moment and set it on the table. He picked up the bottle and topped Amelia’s up before filling his own.

“Doyle is a man, I don’t doubt, of many talents. Those talents do not include people skills, however. Not that many of us have the patience to deal with some if not most of the population of Hogwarts.”

Ariel put the bottle back down and picked up his glass. He sat back and watched her as she responded to his words from before. He wasn’t being derogatory as such but she seemed to bristle at the comment. Another set of parental expectations. Yes, that sounded about right. His mother had shrugged off the expectations her family had of her. It wasn’t that easy for Ariel though. Fenrir was a powerful man whether his son could accept that or not. The bonds which tied Ariel and Fenrir could not easily be broken; Ariel couldn’t just up and leave. He realised this but so did Fenrir. There were expectations, a path for him to follow. He had paw prints to follow in just like some had footsteps. There were others behind him though; ready to take over when he fell. He didn’t want to fall, though. To fall meant death nine times out of ten.

“My blood is my problem,” Ariel said matter-of-factly after taking a sip of his wine. “Why would it matter to you whether or not I wish to shirk the annotations attached to my bloodline? Does it honestly matter? People hear ‘Greyback’ and run in the opposite direction. I’m used to that, now. Heck, I encourage it because it’s better letting them assume than trying to prove them wrong. If you try then you’re just going to hit a brick wall. And believe me; I gave up trying a long time ago. It is no claim to fame, more of a shadow looming over head. If I could drain it all out and replace it, I’d be happy. But I can’t. I’ve got to live with it haven’t I? I have to live with the sideways looks, the poorly-hidden glares and the word ‘no’ every time I apply for a job. So yeah, I adore my bloodline. It’s most definitely my claim to fame.”

Ariel went to refill Amelia’s glass of wine, mostly empty now from what she had been drinking of it, and she should have made motion to stop him. She was not accustomed to drinking – she really only partook in it once in a while, and even then it wasn’t in excess – and she didn’t know how having more wine would affect her. She did know, however, that because she felt uncomfortable in such a blatantly social situation that she would likely fidget and find something to do with her hands. That something had a high probability of being ‘drink wine’, and if Ariel continued to fill her glass, she might end up drinking more than she should.

Just exercise some self-control, Amelia, her subconscious responded to the thought Amelia had, though the Ravenclaw didn’t think it would be that simple. Drinking the wine thus far had been an absent-minded task, and unless she consciously focused on it, the self-control she might have been able to appoint wouldn’t be of much use.

Ariel did not seem to have any such qualms about the wine, and he drank from his glass as he responded to her comment about the headmaster, surprised to find that she agreed with him. He had a valid point; if she had to deal with everyone in the school on a daily basis, people would likely get the same perception of her as they did of Doyle, if not worse. Her barbed tongue would have a significantly harder time staying in check if it had the possibility of being unleashed on every single student and staff member in the castle.

That same barbed tongue and lack of social filter got Amelia into a tricky situation after she went on what might best be described as a small rant, telling Ariel off for bringing up bloodlines. When she finished speaking, Amelia immediately felt timidity creep into her and blush rise to her cheeks, and she reached subconsciously for the glass of wine in front of her and took a sip, if only for a way to hide her reaction to her own words. In the moment before she had spoken, Amelia had not thought to weigh Ariel’s comments more carefully, to plan a cohesive response. Instead, she had just started talking, which was usually where her downfall began in social situations. This situation was no exception.

It should have come as no surprise that Ariel was ready with a response as soon as he lowered his wine glass from his lips. It was also unsurprising that his answer was so honest. How many times had she seen him be brutally honest with their peers and even their professors? It really shouldn’t have been so surprising that Ariel was honest with himself, but perhaps the reason it was unexpected from Amelia’s perspective was because she had such difficulty being honest with herself. She was all about denial, telling herself things were different than they were, creating an inner monologue that told a different story than the life she was living. She was an outward realist, but she was an expert at lying to herself.

Ariel seemed to have accepted his fate, that being Fenrir’s son came with expectations and assumptions and judgments that could not be escaped. Is that was Raoul had realized and run from? That being the son of Antoinette and Frederick Lyons meant you were never going to be anything but their offspring, no matter what you did? That you were in fact being raised to be just that? If that was the case, then did Amelia’s staying mean that she was accepting her fate, or did she stay because she still believed she could change it?

There were no easy answers to these questions, and though Amelia let her mind whirr in circles for a few silent minutes after Ariel stopped speaking, she could think of nothing to say. There was no rebuttal to what he had said; everything was true. Amelia was too logical to play optimist to his realism; Ariel had to live with the sideways looks and the denials at every job interview just the way she had to put up with the dinner parties and etiquette lessons and clothing she never would have chosen for herself. Undoubtedly, these were two very different versions of life’s expectations, but still, the situations stood in parallel: they were both trapped.

In their silence, Amelia had raised her glass to her mouth several more times, quietly draining the wine from her glass until it was nearly empty again. When she realized this, she set the glass down on the table, mentally kicking herself for completely ignoring her own advice about not drinking too much. Oh well, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen this coming. But what she said next was not something she had seen coming. In fact, she didn’t even know she was thinking it until she said it aloud.

“Do you think you could teach me?” Amelia asked in a highly vague change of subject after more than five minutes of complete silence aside from the swallowing of wine.

“To cook, I mean,” she added by way of clarification, slightly embarrassed now. By asking, she had admitted that she needed teaching, and also opened herself up to the possibility of looking highly incompetent in front of someone who would not hesitate to scathe her for it.

“It can’t be too bad, right? Just like potions?” Amelia asked the blond boy hopefully, though simultaneously wishing she could swallow back these words and go back to sitting quietly inside her own mind, leaving Ariel out of the equation entirely.

Blood was blood at the end of the day but it was what was in it that made the difference. For Wizards it was the supposed purity of their blood. Ariel had yet to meet a Muggleborn with genuinely dirty blood. It was all the same crimson and, to his limited knowledge, it all tasted the same. For werewolves it was a case of whose genes you shared. If you were Fenrir’s offspring then you were the luckiest – or the unluckiest depending which way you looked at it. Ariel had resigned himself to his fate a long time ago, deciding that it was better that he have the burden of leading the pack when Fenrir died than any of his siblings. One didn’t seem to agree though. Naomi was jealous as far as Ariel could tell but the mind boggled as to why. It was no great pleasure to be a werewolf, if anything it was like being dipped into hell itself and yanked back out again, especially if you were Fenrir’s spawn.

Giving his thoughts leeway to continue their ministrations, Ariel dug into the food between them. The pregnant silence needed to be filled with silence even if that was only the sound of cutlery banging against ceramic. After washing down the last forkful he decided to take with wine, Ariel sat back, spent. His chest lurched upwards as he began to breathe again and he looked at Amelia curiously, his smirk creeping back onto his lips. Ariel picked his glass up and drank from it, smacking his lips together when he pulled away. He was agitated now and was having trouble finding something – anything – that would quell it and calm him.

Then of course, Amelia spoke.

It was a question, tentative at best but a question none the less; and it was one that made Ariel’s smirk melt ever so slightly. The beginnings of a real smile twitched at the sides of his lips and he opened his mouth to reply. Instead of words, a low rumble of laughter escaped his mouth and he looked at Amelia, mirth shining in his eyes. He was soon silent when he realised that she was serious, though. Then a small smile, a real one, erupted onto his face. He put his glass of wine down and leaned forward, searching her face for any sign of deception. There was none.

“You want to learn how to cook?” He asked her, looking for clarification in her eyes. He found it, too. Ariel smirked at her and picked up his fork. He speared a piece of fish and some asparagus before holding it out for Amelia. “It is the same as potions with timings and such but there is a lot of difference. For example, taste this and tell me what you’d change. We'll start with your favourite dish I think. We should have the ingredients for it...depending on what it is. It's always easier to cook what you like."

Ariel’s initial response to her request did not put Amelia immediately at rest. His characteristic smirk slipped from his pale, thin lips and Amelia considered for a moment whether he was about to yell at her, and her body tensed at the thought. Although she had never seen Ariel be physically violent, tonight’s interaction had clearly proven how little she knew about the boy. He generally chose to wage battle with his words, but who was to say he couldn’t throw just as hard a punch?

But a moment later, Amelia realized that physical violence didn’t seem to be Ariel’s next move. Where his smirk had rested previously, something that looked curiously like a smile began to emerge. This was nearly as unsettling to Amelia as the thought of physical violence had been, though in a completely different way. She had never, in all the classes they had had together and the times she had seen him around the corridors of school over the past six years, seen Ariel smile. It simply was not part of his emotional repertoire, as far as Amelia could have guessed. But she was proven wrong – again – when Ariel not only smiled, but laughed, and not the usual derivative type of laughter he gave when someone said something particularly stupid. Rather, he seemed to be genuinely entertained by her question. Amelia only blushed deeper at this, trying and failing to laugh along with him to show that she wasn’t taking this too seriously – although she took everything too seriously – but instead, her attempt came out something more like a cough and a sigh.

Ariel paused in his laughter for a moment, looking at her quite seriously, and then the smile that had been tugging at the corners of his lips came out full force. It was enough of a surprise that Ariel was actually capable of that facial expression, but even more surprising to Amelia was the fact that, with him leaning across the table to look at her, searching her eyes for she didn’t know what, Ariel actually looked attractive. Not just in the porcelain-skinned, high-cheek-boned, fortunate genetics kind of way that Amelia and the rest of the world had noticed already; that wouldn’t have been a shock to anyone, most of all Ariel himself. What Amelia saw in that moment was something different, a kind of attractive glow that had everything to do with the fact that he was smiling. It was such a curious observation that Amelia struggled to hold his gaze, but she sensed it was important that she did, so she didn’t look away, even as she felt further blush rise to her cheeks.

Amelia took a deep breath when Ariel repeated her request back to her in question form, nodding sincerely after a second’s delay, not breaking their eye contact even now. That was her chance to back out of this, but she didn’t take it. There had been so many opportunities since this all began for her to leave, and she hadn’t taken any of them. Ariel must really have been as much of a puzzle as she had thought, or perhaps it was the fact that the more she learned about him, sat in his presence, the more puzzling he became.

After a moment in which Ariel seemed to make up his mind, the blond boy picked up his fork and speared a piece of the asparagus and fish and held it out in front of her lips, instructing her to critique the food. He intended it as a casual request, but to Amelia, this was more of a mountain than a molehill. The food dangled in front of her lips, and Amelia didn’t know whether Ariel intended to feed it to her, or wanted her to take the fork from him. What was she supposed to do? What should she say? She already thought the food tasted good, and had no conception of what could be done differently in order to improve it. She didn’t even know what had been done to it in the first place.

Several painstakingly long seconds later, Amelia finally managed to make a decision, and reached out a lithe hand to take the fork from Ariel, delicately putting the cuisine into her mouth and chewing slowly, so as to really taste the flavors. It was very rich, and she could taste the butter that had been used. As she chewed, she still thought the dish tasted amazing, even to her palate that had tasted the finest cuisines in Europe thanks to her globe-trotting parents. Still…

“It could use some acidity,” Amelia finally said after swallowing the salmon and asparagus.

“Lemon maybe?” she added, though completely unsure if that was even a viable option with the ingredients already in the dish.

This is going to be a long, embarrassing process… Amelia’s subconscious chimed in, demonstrating just how uncomfortable Amelia was with trying new things, especially new things she already had a good feeling she would be demonstrably bad at. Attempting to distract herself from this thought, Amelia put her fork down and picked up her wine glass, taking a sip and stopping midway, putting the glass down quickly.

No more of that! Amelia ‘s subconscious demanded, That wine is to blame for all this nonsense. Cooking lessons and looking into Snake boy’s deep blue eyes. This is why I should never leave you in charge.

To cover for the fact that she had just treated her wine glass like it had fangs, Amelia leaned back in her chair and quickly recalled what her favorite dish was. It was something that Justin, their chef at home, prepared only on special occasions, or at her mother’s request. Amelia wasn’t the only one who couldn’t say no Antoinette.

“Cornish hens stuffed with brandied figs,” Amelia said, her hands fidgeting in her lap until she clasped them together to quiet them, “That is my favorite dish. Though I think we may want to start with something a bit easier… for my sake, and your sanity,” Amelia admitted, cringing internally at the fact that this endeavor was going to mean admitting over and over again her own naiveté.

Ariel hadn’t been entirely sure of his intentions but before he had time to hesitate or make some sort of silent innuendo, Amelia took the fork from his hand and placed it between her lips. Ariel blinked and allowed a smirk to pass onto his own lips. He reached forward and plucked the glass of wine off of the table. He raised it slightly before bringing it to his lips. He sat back, once again throwing his legs up onto the chair beside hers and he waited for her critique.

When her words met his ears, Ariel nodded. He knew what it needed and acidity was it. He felt the need to replace the fish with pork and drown it in soy sauce but that probably had something to do with the fact that the weekend was on its way and his taste buds were hankering for some Chinese food. Ariel drank some more of the wine before bringing it down to rest the foot on his thigh. He hummed a verse of an old lullaby before opening his mouth and giving his own opinion.

“And perhaps some lime...”

Ariel smirked again when Amelia showed some concern for his sanity. If there was any left to get rid of then Amelia certainly wouldn’t be the one to destroy it. Jack seemed to be intent on doing it for some bizarre reason. Nethertheless, her ‘concern’ amused Ariel. He cleared his throat and drank some more of the wine before giving the dish some thought. It shouldn’t have been that hard to reproduce. Still, if she didn’t believe she could do it then maybe they should start with something simple.

“Okay so how about Ratatouille?” Ariel suggested, looking around the kitchen. He looked at Amelia again and gave her a half-smile. “I am sure you are not adverse to pilfering vegetable patches? It’ll give you a fair few skills I’m sure. It’s easy. Muggle twelve-year-olds make it in their cookery classes.”

Maybe it was the wine but something made Ariel jump up from his chair. He put the wine glass down and wandered over to the door of the pantry. He opened it up and walked inside. The lights flickered into life on the wall and he looked around, seeking out the ingredients he needed.

“Well, they’ve got everything...” He announced. “Bar..you know...stuff we actually need. Would you prefer to pilfer a veggie patch at day or at night?”

Amelia breathed a sigh of relief when Ariel nodded at her assessment of the dish. She had been worried that her critique of his food, even though he had requested it, would somehow convince him that she didn’t know what she was talking about (which she didn’t) and put him off of talking to her. In actuality, Amelia didn’t know why Ariel was still talking to her at all. The boy seemed to be just as efficient as she was at getting people to leave him alone – though their tactics were admittedly different – so either Amelia was immune to his “get away from me” powers, or he just wasn’t using them.

The Slytherin boy smirked at her comment about starting with an easier dish than the Cornish hens, but after giving it a few seconds of thought he seemed to agree with her. He pondered for another few seconds, subconsciously tempting Amelia to drink more wine by drinking some of his own, and then came up with a dish he thought was more appropriate.

Ratatouille… Amelia thought to herself, recognizing the dish itself as something she had eaten, but definitely nothing she would have thought resided in the realm of “simpler” cooking. She knew the word was French, and in Amelia’s experience, the French didn’t do anything simply.

But Ariel’s question seemed to have been rhetorical, because he was already looking around for the ingredients to make said dish. Then he was doing something even more terrifying – giving her another smile, which Amelia automatically took as intimidating, though he didn’t seem to mean it as such. The fact that he followed it up with a comment that pitted her skills against those of muggle twelve-year-olds, however, made her question his motivations.

“Pilfering vegetable… what?” Amelia responded hastily as Ariel bounded from his chair, moving toward the pantry and shuffled around the ingredients on the many shelves, presumably looking for the ingredients they would need for Ratatouille. He didn’t answer her question – maybe he hadn’t heard it, or understood her stuttering – but he seemed to have discovered that there wasn’t much of anything of use in the pantry. Following that snarky statement, he mentioned the pilfering bit again, and Amelia was forced to figure out what it was he was talking about so as to answer the question that was hanging between them.

Pilfering… Amelia turned the word over in her mind. It wasn’t that she didn’t know the vocabulary, but rather than the idea of what Ariel was proposing was so preposterous to her that it took her several seconds to put it together in her mind.

“You want to steal vegetables?” Amelia asked aloud, incredulously. It was an accident, saying this aloud, which naturally made Amelia blush when she heard them outside her head. The words had merely slipped out of her mouth as she came to the obvious conclusion. The fact that she hadn’t immediately realized this, combined with the fact that the moment of realization had to be shared in front of Ariel made Amelia’s blush deepen even further, and she found herself stuttering to try to cover, which was only making things worse.

“I mean… that seems a little… I don’t know… extreme, I mean…”

Stop talking. Say something smarter. This isn’t working. You look stupid. Full sentences! Coherent thoughts!

“… couldn’t we make something else…. Or… I’ve never, um… I don’t really have pilfering preferences seeing as I don’t… um… pilfer.”

Not an improvement, Amelia’s subconscious thought as Amelia trailed off, knowing full well how stupid she looked. At this point, it was probably best to just sit at the bottom of this hole she had dug and put down her shovel.