DRAGONFLY
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,181
Characters/Pairings: Ariana Dumbledore (and other Dumbles mentioned)
Summary: What happened to Ariana that fateful day on Mould-on-the-Wold?
Disclaimer: Ariana et al belongs to JKR.
Warnings: None.

Author's Notes: For knockturnelle in the DH exchange! She asked for a lot of interesting things that I couldn't even wrap my innocent mind around, so it's a good thing she's okay with genfic and likes the Dumbledores. She promised bonus points for broken glass, absinthe, glitter, and playing cards and I think I've delivered, but maybe not in the original way she may have intended.

This scene was a lot more difficult to write than I thought it would be. I hope I did it justice. Enjoy!

A dragonfly breezed slowly past the tall dry grasses at Mould-on-the-Wold. The summer day was hot and dry as usual and Muggles and Wizards alike were fighting the thick heat in the air in the usual way. With a flit of its wings, the dragonfly slipped past the women gossiping around pitchers of warm lemonade and towards the local pond, where the children splashed to keep cool. Landing on a crisp leaf, it watched, bored, as the boys impressed each other with more and more extravagant cannonballs deep into the centre and the girls submerged themselves into the deepest, coolest parts of the pond, laughing and splashing at each other.

As time passed, the sun rose higher into the sky and shone brighter in the mid-day. The mums of Mould-on-the-Wold began pulling their children into the shade of their homes and as the playing children slowly disappeared, the dragonfly, on its part, flew closer to the ground and away from the sun. As it settled on a leaf under the shade of a low-hanging branch near the pond, it noticed that not everyone had hidden from the sun: in the warm caking mud sat a young girl with glitter in her hair, wearing a once-bright sundress, muddied up to her knees.

The girl hummed happily as she dangled her feet in the water and created mud-pumpkin-pasties for her mum to eat when she returned. "And this one's for Albus," she sang, as she plopped a particularly large mud pie beside her, "and this one's for Abe'forth." Carefully placing down one last pasty for her father, Ariana grinned proudly at the line of four beautiful pasties that she had created for her four most favourite people in the world. With her hands on her hips, Ariana was ready to guard these pasties with her life. Looking up from her masterpiece, she noticed the dragonfly watching her curiously from its leaf. "No sneaking a taste!" she admonished, shaking a pudgy index finger at the dragonfly. "These aren't for you! My mum will be back soon!"

As she continued on – something about how her mum had dragged her brothers back home by their ears for telling some local Muggle girls that they could do real magic – the dragonfly quickly grew bored and flitted its wings to leave, uninterested in sneaking some mud-pumpkin-pasty. It flew to another leaf, closer to the water and was about to settle down once more when it heard Ariana call after it. "Hullo! Don't go, I'm quite lonely!" she laughed, chasing after it.

Buzzing in feigned annoyance, the dragonfly flew a bit higher, out of her grasp. She giggled loudly when she tried to catch it and failed. "Don't you want to play?" Cheekily, it flew around her head quickly in response before flying to a higher altitude, just out of her reach. She jumped at it once, twice – and the dragonfly briefly considered leading her into the pond, so distracted from her mud pasties as she was – but on the third jump, the dragonfly had flown near the top of the highest tree next the pond, and so was considerably surprised when she managed to tug on its tail and trap it in her hands.

"Got you!" Ariana sang, not realizing she was now floating four, five metres above the ground. Opening up her fingers a bit to peek into her makeshift cage, she was so engrossed in the buzzing dragonfly that she failed to notice the three boys down below staring up at her in horror.

The three local Muggle boys had come stumbling up the path reeking of alcohol, just having been kicked out of one of their homes for nipping into an uncle's bottle of absinthe at the ripe old age of 12. They had been flicking playing cards at each other as they wobbled towards the pond, and when the short fat one pointed up at the sky, muttering, "Whuz that?", they had all thought, at first, that they may have drank too much. But no amount of shaking their heads or rubbing their eyes would remove the image of the strawberry-blonde girl floating in the sky, laughing to herself.

"D'you see that?" the scrawny one asked in hushed tones.

"Course I do!" the leader of the gang of boys whispered. He drew himself to his full height and called out to Ariana. "OY! Oy, you!" When she showed no signs of hearing them, he lowered his voice to a whisper again. "Wha'd'you think she's doin'?"

Before the scrawny one could answer, the fat one started stuttering, turning white. "M-Me- me mum told me about her kind! She's a faerie witch, that's what! Cursing our town, drying our crops!"

"A witch?"

"WITCH!"

Alcohol making them quick to agree and easy to scare, the scrawny one drew himself to his full height, narrowed his eyes, and shattered the empty glass bottle in his hand on a nearby tree trunk. "I'll git 'er." Ignoring the broken shards of glass on the floor, he took a few stumbling steps forward and hurled the bottle into Ariana's direction.

Inebriated as he was, his aim was still frightfully accurate.

Ariana turned just in time to have the broken bottle slash against her right leg. Spell broken, she plummeted downwards and hit the ground with a frightened yell and sickening crack.

She lay there motionless.

Her grasp slackened and the dragonfly found itself suddenly free. With blinking eyes, Ariana watched as it flew upwards, flying around her fretfully. Help me, she tried to say. When the words wouldn't come – the wind was knocked out of her stomach – she felt tears well in her eyes. Footsteps were nearing her now, and she could hear three distinct voices muttering to themselves. Were they here to help?

"What to do with her now, you think?"

"Git rid of her!"

"Drown the witch."

Through glazed eyes, she saw the boys approach her with long tree branches. They poked at her as they would a dead animal. Unable to move, all Ariana could do was hide in the safest recesses of her mind and hope for her mum to arrive. As she clenched her eyes shut, the dragonfly zoomed through the boys, buzzing angrily as they turned her over using their sticks, flipping over her skirt, nudging her towards the pond. Take me away from here, she thought, as the dragonfly landed on her hand.

Amidst the jeers and the taunts of the boys, she could vaguely hear a woman's voice coming from the path, calling "Ariana! Ariana, love!"

Still on her hand, the dragonfly buzzed.

Please,take me with you!

She was drowning now in the mud, half submerged in the water. In the back of her head, she could hear a hysterical voice shrieking, "What are you doing? Get away from her! GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!"

Please, take me away!

The dragonfly landed on her hair.

Someone was shaking her now, begging her to wake up. Please – "Ariana? ARIANA!"

It was too late.

In her mind, Ariana was already flying away with the dragonfly.