Anitra's Dance

Disclaimers: Damn! Didn’t I forget disclaimers in the first chapter? Well, here they are. J.K. Rowling owns everything, except Anitra, and I mean no offense.

A/N. The story is progressing – promise. :-) For those of you who has never heard of Grieg: Norwegian composer. Otehr than that, sorry if I have got the Latin spells wrong. Oh, and I invented one, so don’t tell me, cuz I already know. ;)
Happy reading – and remember to R&R, please.

What’s in a Name?

The morning to follow was a complete antonym to the night that had passed. The sun was blazing from a cloudless sky, and though the morning dew took its own sweet time disappearing, the freshness that lingered was no threat to the warmth that soon graced the rich nature of the Hogwarts grounds.
Harry Potter woke and stretched his lanky and muscular body like a lazy dog that just needed those 15 extra minutes of sleep. An indulgent smile spread enigmatically over his lean face as he scratched his head and made his unruly hair stand out even more. Seventh year at Hogwarts. He had successfully reached the seventh year at Hogwarts and by the end of the school year, he would be a graduated, bonified wizard – and soon after, of age – free to use magic without expecting the Ministry of Magic dumping a threatening letter at his doorstep....
.... he would be able to add those pig ears to that pig tail of his cousin’s. He chuckled into the sheets, and the muffled sound did not go unnoticed.
“Oy,” a sleepy and slightly hoarse voice demanded, “what was that snigger about?”
Harry turned to watch the face of Ron Weasley, his roommate and best friend through all the years at Hogwarts.
“It was about the lovely thought of what to do to Dudley when I graduate.”
Ron sniggered with him.
“Or the artful hex we’ll cook up for Malfoy,” he contributed. Harry laughed out loud.
“Or the spell we’ll cast on Goyle... or the...”
And thus the two young men almost missed breakfast in their eagerness to come up with the most imaginative and medieval scheme – to be continued after graduation.

“Where were you fellas?” an annoyingly chipper Hermione Grangers interrogated them as Ron gave her a hasty morning kiss.
“Planning the terrible fate of Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle.” Harry grinned.
“Without me? Not fair.”
Both boys laughed. Hermione had come a long way from the first year when she appeared to them nothing but a miss-perfect-follow-the-rules-bookworm-pain-in-the-butt student. Indeed, she sometimes scared the snot out of her boyfriend, Ron, by her evil suggestions and ruthless solutions to present problems.
“You’re bloody brilliant, you know that?” he said in a low voice, leaning over for another kiss.
“Euw,” wailed their mutual friend, “honestly, you people, get a room!”

The scene was quickly interrupted by Neville Longbottom, who leaned in and whispered earnestly:
“Have you heard what happened tonight? Something really sensational.”
“Um – Snape smiled?”
The Gryffindor table burst out laughing.
“No, no,” Neville chuckled, “he found a girl! A girl in the woods.”
Ginny Weasley gasped. Ron’s lip sought refuge on the floor, Harry shot his eyebrows in the air, but Hermione’s brow furrowed.
“Really – that’s probably just a rumour, Neville. Who told you? Goyle?”
“No, it’s for real, you know,” Crevey intone, “she’s in the hospital wing right now.”
Crevey was usually a very good source of information, so Hermione wiped the supercilious expression off her face.
“Who is she? Isn’t everybody here?” Harry wondered and looked around.
“Apparently she’s not a student, - that’s the sensational part,” Neville said eagerly.
“Then she can’t be here,” Hermione reasoned in her best Sherlock Holmes mode, “if she’s not a student, she’s a muggle, and muggles can’t enter the grounds of Hogwarts unless they come by special permission.”
“But Hermione,” Ron argued, “what if she went for a walk and just – well – stumbled onto the woods?”
“Some day,” Hermione said, exasperated, “you will read “Hogwarts- A History” and you will understand that the outer limits have been charmed to show nothing but a deserted ruin and half dead plants. If a muggle even as much as considers exploring, the person in question will suddenly need to be somewhere else.”
“Give it up, Hermione,” Harry grinned, “we’ll never read “Hogwarts – A History” – particularly not in our seventh and final year.”
“Nah,” Ron agreed, sulkingly, “as if we hadn’t enough to read with all our NEWTs curriculum and all.”

At the long table up front in the dining hall sat Dumbledore and McGonagall in close conversation. Dumbledore was sporting one of his flat hats while McGonagall was faithful to one of her extremely pointed hats with a wide brim. Both hats were, at this point, dangerously close to the extent where they could be swept off any minute.
“Should we announce it, Albus?” McGonagall whispered.
“No,” the Headmaster replied, “First we need to decide what to do with our visitor.”
“They,” she said, tilting her head discreetly towards their students, “may already know.”
“Decidedly they already know, Minerva,” Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. “But it would not do to announce the arrival of an enigmatic guest without the staff having a plan they can actually announce.”

*

Professors not teaching morning lessons were assembled in Dumbledore’s office right after breakfast. The room was full of light compliments to the glorious morning, the portraits of former headmasters had all their faces turned to the window with their eyes closed. One might wonder briefly if they ally lly expected to get a tan? Even Fawkes, The Phoenix, stretched its long beautiful redgolden wings and rustled them softly as if to bathe them in the cornucopia of warm sun rays.
Little Professor Flitwick was talking, and everybody was looking down on him in the strictest sense of literal semantics.

“It is vital that we keep her here at least long enough to find out who, how, what and why,” insisted the miniscule Professor, his usual jolly demeanour replaced by a serious frown.
“I concur, Professor Flitwick. If this is the work of Voldemort, it is important to discover his intents. And if it is not Voldemort,” Dumbledore continued, ignoring every flinching face in the crowd that surrounded him, “we must still determine what wizard was powerful enough to cast spells that are intraceable and impossible to penetrate without identifying the source.”
“I have no means of bringing back her memory unless I know which spell caused it,” Madam Pomfrey interjected.
Dumbledore nodded, pensive, and said, anticipating the tall dark man:
“Before you speak, Professor Snape, I am convinced that she is not acting. You and I both know enough Occlumency to see through a deliberate act like that.”
Snape grudgingly concurred. Suspicious of nature, he had a hard time believing that any youth would be innocent of deceit.
“Madam Pomfrey,” McGonagall’s soft, mature voice intoned, “do you know what muggles do when one of them is struck with amnesia?”
“Yes, Professor, or rather... what they do not do.”
They all looked at her attentively, waiting for her to continue.
“They treat this condition by ... not tingting it. They have no means of restoring a patient’s memory on will. According to theory, the recovery must come from within the patient him- or herself. The only actions they can take is having family and friends juggle the patient’s memory by showing him or her memorabilia, stimulating certain memory flashes by going through the family album – that sort of thing.”
“But we do not know who this young girl is, and we cannot turn her over to a muggle hospital,” Snape argued.
“Indeed we cannot,” Dumbledore acquieshed, “what do you suggest, Madam Pomfrey?”
“Her sense of self and memory of the past might be lost, but the brain remembers. She will automatically do things out of habit and take actions that will help define her as the person she has become over the years. If, for instance, she is a pianoplayer, her hands will automatically start playing when introduced to a piano. If a gifted mathematician, she will remember how to solve the most intricate problems. Her gifts will reveal her true nature. At some point, all this will jog her memory and everything will rush back at her. That is, at any rate, the muggle theory.”
“And... is it any good?” Minerva McGonagall asked curiously.
“I believe that the memory does eventually return to the patient, but whether or not that process is speeded up by the reported method, nobody seems to be able to prove.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Dumbledore cleared his throat and concluded:
“Very well. We shall do so. It is my decision that the girl must join the classes,” (here he held up an arresting hand, anticipating Snape’s protest) she may be a muggle, but getting started nonetheless in a school-orientated routine might trigger some memories. We can only hope.”

*

“What’s your name, dearie?”
She was getting tired of hearing that question. Didn’t they get it yet? her mind was wiped clean.
“As my mind is a *tabula rasa*, I wouldn’t know,” she answered just a little testily. She had been at the sick ward 24 h24 hours, and she was keen to leave it.
Pomfrey cocked her head and Dumbledore eyed her.
“An interesting choice of words, my dear. *Tabula rasa*. Not a common foreign word for a 15-year-old girl to know.”
She stiffened with the realisation. And then leaned forward eagerly.
“No? What does it say about me?”
Dumbledore smiled. She had already got the drift. “It says that you are a very well educated young lady,” he beamed, “but to return to our question. Allow me to rephrase Madam Pomfrey’s words: what would you like us to call you?”
“Oh...” she fell silent for a while. Then she said slowly, “Aren’t people with amnesia called Jane and John Doe?”
“Would you like to be called Jane?”
“No,” she murmured hesitatingly, “it sounds so.. flat. Not my fav name.”
“What is then, dear?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “I will think about it, okay?”
They nodded their consent and left the ward with friendly smiles glued to their faces.

The girl slid out of her bed when they had left. The floor underneath her almost virginal feet felt oddly warm despite it’s stony appearance. Did they have floor heating? Surely not; the place looked strangely quaint, in accordance with their choice of clothing, but highly in discord with the rest of the world, she decided. It was like she had stepped back in time. The treatment administered by Madam Pomfrey hadn’t exactly been up-to-date either. More than once had she wrinkled her nose at some foul-smelling susbstance that her healer had insisted she swallow. No needles, no IVs, no blood sampling – nothing that even faintly resembled the procedures of a modern hospital. How very odd.
They had told her that she had ended up at a school, but they hadn’t been very specific as to what kind of school. Boarding school? Grammar school? Elementary? Complimentary? Private school? Location? They had been more than vague. At times, she had wondered who of them was the real amnesiac.
Her legs shivered a bit, but she felt confident enough to walk a little. They brought her to one of the tall windows that most of all looked liked the windows of a cathedral with its pointy top, small, beautifully shaped glasses framed by old-fashioned metal. Looking out she could just see the outlines of a very old-fashioned school yard with interesting gargoyles in the middle as decoration of a fountain. Judging by this, the place was a frigging castle. She emitted a soft laugh. Perhaps she had been kidnapped by a bunch of dungeons and dragons weirdos? Nothing was impossible.
Turning from the window she started humming a little tune. It was still with her when she reached her bed, and she kept repeating the tune as she tugged in – and fell asleep.

*

The next morning was another sunny one. The hungry sun rays reached through the tall ecclesiastical windows in an attempt to touch her bed with their golden might. She stretched and decided that she felt good. She wouldn’t think of a name just yet, and she wouldn’t let her amnesia bother her. She had spent plenty of time just being in shock over this, and it was time for her to get on. Find a cure for herself. She started humming.
Madam Pomfrey came in, followed by the sinister young man, Professor Snape and that headmaster of theirs.
“Good morning, dear,” exclaimed a chipper Pomfrey. “Up so early? And humming that lovely tune again, I hear.”
“Again?” Dumbledore stiffened with interest. “Yes, Headmaster. It was her favourite yesterday as well.”
“Which is it?” he asked their patient kindly.
“What, this?” she whistled it. “I’m afraid I don’t recall.”
“*Anitra’s Dance*,” Dumbledore murmured. Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1, Opus 46 No. 3 by Edvard Grieg. What young girl would know this classical masterpiece?
“Anitra?” the girl said in a ghostly voice and her entire body semeed to freeze. Pomfrey leaned over eagerly.
“Yes, dear. Does it mean anything to you?”
The girl almost didn’t breathe. Her brow was creased in an immense effort to remember, and her tawny eyes were fixed at a certain leather polstered chair between two of the windows.
“I..,” she breathed, “I... think so. It fills me with ... joy... and sorrow.”
Her visitors held their breath.
Then they all relaxed as they saw her close her eyes in regret. Whatever had flashed through her mind in a split second was gone.

Dumbledore permitted himself to sit on her bed. “Never mind. You have plenty of time. Now, however, I wish to discuss your arrangements here with us.”
“Arrangements?”
“Yes, dear. As I told you, this is a school. We will help you jug your memory back in place by including you in our classes.” He paused to allow the information to sink in.

She felt annoyed. School? He had to be kidding her. School! For her?
“What... kind of classes do you teach here,” she asked tentatively, trying to hide her annoyance.
Snape, Pomfrey and Dumbledore exchanged glances.
“Well... aye... there’s the rub.”
She looked at him with annoyance, this time not bothering to hide it. “Instead of going Shakespeare on me, you should perhaps just tell me!”
They exchanged looks again. The comment on Shakespeare was not lost on them.
“Now don’t get scared, my dear. We are.. have you? You see...”
Her eyes had begun flashing dangerously. She definitely did not like being held at bay. The golden flashes gave Dumbledore the push he needed to decide which approach to take in the hopeless explanation.
“Have you heard of magic?”
She smiled unexpectedly. “Life is full of it.” she said softly.
“Yes – ahem. More than you realise, perhaps. You see – we are wizards and witches. And this is a special school for wizards and witches.”

She stared.
Then she laughed.

“Good one,” she chuckled, “okay, you had your daily joke – *now* tell me what this place is, please?”
Dumbledore looked at her and understood that words were of no use. Instead, he took out his wand, pointed at the napkin on her bed and said softly:
“Wingardium leviosa.”
- And the napkin started to flow in the air, flapping its sides in a graceful flight right in front of the eyes of their guest.
Her eyes widened, pushing away the soft shadow her lashes had cast over them.
“Cool!” she awed, “how do you *do* that?”
“Magic,” Dumbledore said simply. She turned a face of disbelief.
“Yeah, right!” she said, far from being convinced. She reached out a hand and moved it underneath... then above... beside... (she hesitated, her brow creasing again),... then all around the flying table cloth.
She had stopped smiling.

“This is impossible!”
Suddenly Snape’s wand came iactiaction. He pointed his black tool at the napkin and said, “aviator!”.
And the napkin turned into a blackbird.
With an uncerimonious thud, the girl’s jaw hit the floor where it remained a hazard to traffic.
“Impossible, impossible,” she repeated herself.
Dumbledore completed their demonstration by waving the bird to sit on the patient’s shoulder where it was transformed into a warm scarf.

She just sat there for a second. Then she stroked the scarf tentatively, jerked a bit as if she expected it turn back into a blackbird any second. Still no word passed her lips. She kept stroking it for a while until the present company seriously suspected she had gone off her rockers. Then she finally reacted. She broke out in a huge smile and said the profound word:
“Coooool!”

Dumbledore spent about an hour informing the girl of school classes and routines. Obviously she couldn’t take it all in at once, but it didn’t matter much. All she had to do once she had chosen a name was to join them for the first coming breakfast for a belated sorting ceremony.
“Sort...?”
“You will see,” he assured her kindly.
Then she would be given her timetable and she could begin.

They left her by the tallest of the regal windows, and her voice arrested them just as they were on their way through the doorframe.
“Headmaster,” she called in an oddly far-away voice.
Dumbledore and Snape turned. Snape couldn’t suppress a highly irritated sigh. She ignored it, but continued staring out of the window.
“I have chosen a name.”
“Yes?”
She turned to look at them, abandoning the view, and her glance was clearer than ever before.

“I have chosen *Anitra*.”

*

TBC