It was neither dark, nor stormy on the fifteenth of June, and it was not yet night. Brooding clouds hid the sun and promised a moonless night, though, while the oppressive humidity threatened an evening of lightning and thunder. It was too hot to do very much, and those young enough to have the luxury lay still and hoped for a breeze to cross their faces, or swam in cool water to take the heat from their bodies.
Arianna Helen Soholdre lay in the cool grass outside her house, her blue witch's robes open around her to reveal cutoff jean shorts and a loose black t-shirt. Her eyes were closed, and her expression was beatific as she soaked up the coolth.
Mum would have a fit if she saw me, the girl mused. She hates me to be in Muggle stuff anyway. I can hear her now... "Ari! Close up those robes! What if the neighbors saw?" Like they'd care, anyway. Half their kids wear Muggle clothes anyway.
Despite her scornful thoughts, she still sat upright and clutched her robes around herself as she felt a touch on one bare foot. "I was only lying there for a minute," she began to protest, then saw the chocolate-point Siamese sitting at her feet.
Crystal-blue eyes blinked, secure in their nest on a cream-furred face. After a moment of silence, Raksha miaowed and walked up Arianna's legs to bump her in the chest with her head. Arianna sighed with relief and held the cat closer to her. "You scared me, Raksha. I thought you were Mum, come to scold me."
Raksha miaowed again and wriggled out of the girl's embrace, running a few yards before turning back, as if expecting Arianna to follow. Arianna looked at her familiar for a moment before wrapping her robes back around herself and snapping the clasp shut, sticking the wand that had lain beside her into her belt. "I'm coming, mousebreath. This had better be good."
Three pairs of bare feet walked along the grass beside the cobble-stone road. Raksha's paws were intended for such abuse, and she scarcely noticed the texture of the ground. Arianna's had once been soft, but thirteen years of going barefoot as often as possible had toughened them to the point that shoes were often uncomfortable, so she was just as oblivious as her cat. After five minutes of walking, Raksha crossed the road and waited impatiently beside the northern well.
Arianna followed, doubtfully, and peered down at the cat. "Raksha, this well has been dry longer than I've been alive."
The cat remained motionless, though, so Arianna turned to look inside. She squinted, for it seemed as if the walls were shimmering. "If you've called me here because one of my bloody neighbors tried to charm more water into this well, it's hopeless, furface. I've only completed three years at Hogwarts, remember? 'How To Fix Your Neighbors' Idiotic Mistakes' isn't until fourth year."
Raksha sneezed in disgust and bumped her head into Arianna's ankles. Arianna looked more closely. "What am I supposed to be seeing?" she yelled into the well, enjoying the way that the cat jumped at the echo. After a moment, though, she heard a faint call. "Help me!"
"Aw, no," Arianna groaned. "No! Raksha... fry you... I can't use magic outside of school, or I get in Trouble, that's capital-T trouble, you know, the kind that has your Head of House saying, "Arianna, I expected better from a Ravenclaw." You want me to be hearing that from Professor Flitwick? The poor guy sounds like he's one of those castrated choir boys anyway, but his scolding voice sounds like my godmother. I don't need that."
Raksha hissed, and Arianna sighed. "You're right. I just... I've never..."
Her disjointed pleas were broken by another shrill cry. "Mommy!"
Arianna gave her cat a pointed look. "It'd be nice if you'd get me someone else, you know. Someone like, say, an adult? Maybe this kid's mum?"
Raksha twitched her brown-tipped tail and scampered down into the village. "Great," Arianna replied, and leaned into the well. "Could you, er, wave, or something? There's all this shimmering weirdness," she called down.
But the only response from the bottom was another ear-piercing cry.
Arianna rubbed at her ear, ruefully. "Yeah. Help. Right. Okay... I can't see the kid... I think that rules out most spells on the target... well, I could try. Nothing says you have to see it, just know what it is." She stretched both hands into the well, her left hand holding her wand, the right hand palm-down.. "Accio!" she called out.
But instead of the shrieking child, rocks flew from the bottom and smacked into her waiting hand. "Ow," Arianna grunted, and threw them away from the well. "Okay, let's try... Accio captive!"
Nothing.
"Accio child!"
Still nothing.
"I think it's the shimmer that's causing all my problems.... Finite incantatum!"
An ominous rumble shook the well, and the sides began to lean towards each other.
"Impedimenta!" Arianna cried, desperately. The sides shook a little more, but held still.
"Okay, Ari-babe, what do we know?" the girl asked herself. "I can't figure out how to summon whoever's down there, they can't seem to do anything other than cry for help, and whatever enchantment I just ended was holding the sides up. If I could see them, things would help, a great deal..." She frowned and stuck her wand into the now-much-narrower well mouth. "Lumos!"
The wand obediently lit up, revealing the sides of the walls... and refracting into rainbows as it hit the shimmering haze.
"Well... toads. I thought at least I'd ended that." She withdrew her wand and muttered, "Nox," and it went dim. "Right. No summoning, no lighting up the well, no ending enchantments. Hmm... mobilicorpus, but I think the victim has to be immobile. I'm not good enough at Levitation yet to lift anything much heavier than Raksha... hmm, banishing. Relego!"
A rock zoomed out of the well and thwacked Arianna's collarbone. The girl crumpled to the side of the well, rubbing her neck and groaning. "No banishing, then. Merlin's petrified balls! If I ever studied over the summer, like half the other Ravenclaws do, maybe I'd know a rope spell by now. But at least Gail's in my dormitory... that's one thing the Slyths don't get. Muggle-borns are useful, if only to teach you mundane ways to do things like this."
Arianna stood up, still rubbing her neck. She began to move some of the stones away, piling them neatly to one side. Then she stripped off her robe and knotted it tightly to her belt. She moved away a few more of the well-stones to give herself an opening. Then she dropped one end of the makeshift rope into the well and affixed the other to the ground with a Sticking Charm, finally stacking two stones atop it. "Not that I don't trust my own skill with Sticking Charms, but the worst possible time to find out that I need more practice is when the cloak just pulls free..." She cast another Sticking charm on the remaining stones. "I would also not like to have stones rained on my head, thank you."
With that, she stuck her wand into the waistband of her cutoffs and began to climb the makeshift rope down into the well. Arianna had been climbing for a few moments when another, worse thought hit her.
"My cloak's not gonna be nearly long enough, not even with the belt at the beginning of it!" She paused, clinging to the rope. "No good worrying about it, I guess... I gotta get the little kid out."
With those brave words, she began to climb down again. As she descended, she noticed that the walls were definitely glimmering, as if she were seeing a heat-shimmer around them. As she reached the very end of her cloak, she noticed that the air below her had the same weirdness to it.
"Well, in for a Knut, in for a Galleon," Arianna muttered, and stretched out her feet to touch the shimmer. Pain, unlike any she'd ever experienced, shot through her body. Her hands released their grip on her cloak and she began to fall, screaming. Finally, she passed completely below the level of the shimmers, and the pain stopped, as if a switch had been turned off. Arianna gasped with the sudden release, but she was still falling. She bent her knees, waiting for impact with the bottom of the well. When that impact came, it was swift, brutal... and brought dark unconsciousness with it.
Arianna opened her eyes, slowly, feeling something wet under her head. Must've had a cold washcloth on my forehead, and rolled over onto it... am I sick? My head certainly hurts enough...
She tried to sit up and almost passed out again from the pain. Her eyes began to focus, painfully, on the well walls around her, and she moaned. After a moment she touched the wet place on her head and looked at her hand, which was now liberally smeared in blood. Right. Head wounds bleed... why... oh. I dropped down to the bottom of the well. She slowly turned her head to look around, seeking the source of the voice that had called to her, but the movement made her head ache worse. She retched, then tried to keep still, but it was too late -- she vomited, convulsively, onto the dry-caked mud next to her. When there was nothing left to heave up, Arianna wiped her mouth and leaned back against the cool wall.
"You done making a mess?" a voice asked her then. Arianna slowly shifted to look in the direction of the voice, and saw a small girl, perhaps three years old, sitting cross-legged against the opposite side of the well. Surprisingly, the toddler seemed unharmed, and her rose-colored robes weren't even torn.
Arianna tried to nod, only to find that the movement made her retch. She gritted her teeth and took several deep breaths through her nose before replying, "I hope so."
The toddler smiled brightly. "Okay. I'm Moira!"
Arianna managed a wan smile in return. "You can call me Ari."
Moira handed Arianna's wand to her. "This fell out before I saw you falling, so I grabbed it."
Arianna accepted it, gratefully, and stuck it into her belt. After a moment, she asked, "How did you get here?"
"I fell," the toddler replied, her expression becoming sad. "And I cried. And I saw a face looking down and then there was pretty rainbow light and then I heard someone making noise and I cried for help and then you fell in too and then you slept and then you woke up and then you got sick."
Arianna rubbed at her eyes, heedless of the blood that smeared over her face. "Someone must have seen you and decided to use you as bait, or something." She winced. "Or just leave you to die... or be crushed by someone ending the enchantment... nasty piece of work. But if I could fall through, a rope could come down, and you could be carried up..." She trailed off, trying to think past the pain.
Moira poked at Arianna's arm, impatiently. "I wanna go home."
The wait for help seemed like an eternity, though it was only an hour. Arianna was awakened from a light doze by an incoherent yell. She looked up, but could see nothing through the shimmering curse.
She yelled out, "Can you hear me?"
The only response was another incoherent yell.
Arianna frowned and thought for a moment. "If you understand me, throw down a hat!"
After a moment of silence, a pointed witch's hat drifted down through the barrier and landed at Moira's feet. The toddler put it on, happily. "We gonna go now?"
Arianna managed another smile. "I'm trying, sweet."
She thought for a little longer, then called out, "Moira and Arianna are down here! Don't climb down, send a rope!"
There was another garbled shout, then silence. A moment later, the end of a glowing violet rope fell through the shimmering hex and landed at the bottom, piling up a little. Arianna crawled over to it. "Okay, Moira. Come over here."
Moira followed, obediently, and held still as the end of the rope was tied around her chest. "Hang on to the rope as they pull you up." Then she shouted, "Pull her up slowly!"
The glowing rope began to retreat, pulling the toddler up with it. As the child reached the shimmer, she began to scream in agony. Then her head crossed the level of the barrier, and the screams became -- to Arianna's ears at least -- incoherent noises.
The teenager slumped against the wall. She'd been running on adrenaline, but now all her scrapes and bruises made themselves known, along with the smell and taste of vomit, the blood on her face and hands, a throbbing headache and a shooting, crushing pain in her left ankle. As it all hit her, she screamed. Drawing that much air into her lungs caused her chest to hurt, and she whimpered, unable to even try to take in that much air again. Tears mingled with the blood on her face and streamed onto her stained, torn t-shirt. Finally she looked up from her misery and saw the glowing rope hanging near her, and her wand lying on her lap. She reached out for the wand, stuck it in her belt, then tied the rope just below her shoulders, clumsily. She reached up, wrapped her arms around it, and called out, hoarsely, "Pull me up!"
The rope began to ascend, showing no difficulty in raising Arianna's greater weight. But then she passed through the pain-inflicting barrier. She wriggled in pain, like a worm on a hook, unable to draw in the breath for a scream. Unconsciousness took her before more than her arms had passed through the barrier, and she lay limp as the villagers above raised her to the surface.
She did not regain consciousness once out of the well, and didn't notice the rain pouring down and washing the blood, dirt, and tears from her face. Thunder shook the air as Moira's father raised her body into the air and ran to the mediwitch, her unconscious form floating along beside him.
Arianna woke two days later in the mediwitch's house. The mediwitch herself was watching by her bedside, and smiled as she opened her eyes. "Good to see you back with us, Arianna."
Arianna groaned. "I hurt, Mrs. Rowan."
Mrs. Rowan nodded. "We couldn't give you much for the pain while you were unconscious. She unstoppered a vial and poured some into a mug, then added water to fill the rest of the way. "Drink this down, dear."
Arianna dutifully drank the bitter concoction. After a moment, not only did her injuries stop hurting so much, they stopped hurting. She sighed with relief. Release from pain brought back her recollection of the event, and she asked, "Is Moira okay?"
Mrs. Rowan nodded. "Aye. No physical harm at all. Passing through that nasty barrier nearly killed her -- it was a trap with Cruciatus as the hex, quite difficult to set up, really -- but she was fine after some restoratives."
Arianna struggled to sit up, and the mediwitch placed a pillow behind her to help. "Thanks," she said, then rubbed at her eyes. "Did someone fix the well?"
Mrs. Rowan shook her head. "No, they just collapsed it and set a ward around it. Some curse-breakers from the Ministry are supposed to be down tomorrow."
Arianna nodded. "Does... does anyone know who set it all?"
Mrs. Rowan sighed. "You should go back to sleep, dear, your body's still healing, despite all I can do for it."
Arianna refused to lie back, persisting, "Who did it?"
Mrs. Rowan sighed again. "You're stubborn, girl, but that's good for you, I'm sure." She paused for a moment. "One of the Ministry's Aurors is here, trying to find that out."
Arianna subsided against the bed, and willingly drank the Dreamless Sleep potion she was offered.
Arianna never did find out who had trapped the well. The Ministry sealed up that information from those without a high clearance.
The one thing she did make sure to find out, though, was how to make a magical rope.