It was a Saturday afternoon.
The wind was blowing something fierce, but the sun was shining brightly despite the hurricane like conditions. Three Muggle boys were braced against the wind as they walked down the street, on their way home.
One of the Muggle boys spotted something out of the ordinary, and alerted the other two, pointing towards the Dumbledore's home in Godric's Hollow, where Ariana stood in the backyard in the garden.
She was tall for her age, just a child. She wore a white cotton dress that fell to her knees. Half of her white blonde hair was pulled back in a clip and hung down to her waist. She had her eyes closed and her hands clasped at her waist.
"What is it that you're pointing at?" one of them asked and stretched, looking around.
"Just there. Do you see her?"
The Muggle boy, who went by the name of Ethan, pointed to little Ariana, who, despite the hurricane like conditions, was standing in what appeared to be an invisible bubble where no wind or debris penetrated; her hair was not whipping about her shoulders, nor her dress about her knees. She was perfectly still as the chaos of the climate happened around her.
The boys watched her, for a moment, waiting. This wasn't the first time they had seen Ariana do something of the sort. The Dumbledores were strange people; very strange. The boys with their long hair, the girl who didn't speak and did hokus pokus things in her yard. Like at this very moment.
"What's she doing?" another Muggle boy, Derrick, whispered.
They watched as she unclasped her hands and raised her arms, high into the air. And just like that, all the wind stopped. The boys' jaws dropped and they stood straighter, glancing around the street.
Ariana lowered her arms, opened her eyes and glanced around. She took carefully measured steps, barefooted, until she reached the edge of the garden where there was a flower bed full of not-quite bloomed daffodils. Her head tilted to the side and she concentrated very hard; one by one, the daffodils bloomed, and then changed colors, slowly at first, then rapidly.
"That girl's a witch, she is," the third and last Muggle boy, Henry, whispered. "Where's her magic wand and her witch's broom?"
The boys snickered but continued to watch in amazement as Ariana slowly wandered around her garden and did various types of magic. It was her domain, her little sanctuary.
"Why don't we go give her a spook, eh?" Derrick smirked and rubbed his hands together. Ethan and Henry nodded in agreement, then stepped out from behind the hedges.
Immediately, Ariana's head snapped to attention, and all the magic stopped. It had gone deathly quiet aside from the boys' footsteps.
"We've caught you, we have," Derrick said to her with an evil smile. "You're a little witch, with your magic tricks, eh?"
Ariana didn't speak but continued to stare at them with wide eyes. They were much older than her, twice her age, at the very least, perhaps and more likely a couple years older. They were tall, though not quite as tall as both her brothers and mother, but close enough. Ariana could feel her heart pounding through her chest and she swallowed heavily.
"Well, don't you speak?" Ethan barked at her. "We can't hear you, speak up!"
"Little witch can't talk, hm? Why don't you do another magic trick, little witch?"
She shivered convulsively and took a step back; her foot landed on a twig, and like it was some sort of signal, the three boys pounced.
She was pinned to the ground, her arms and legs feeling as if they were no longer attached to her body. She opened her mouth wide, but nothing, nothing, nothing escaped, no voice, no scream, nothing-
Their hands, oh their hands- they were everywhere and she closed her eyes tight because she didn't want to see what they were doing, where they were looking. But that didn't matter, no it did not because she could feel it, and it was so uncomfortable, so violating and wrong. She struggled against their hands and they were so rough, so rough, why- why were they hurting her like this?
And then the pain that erupted in a place where she didn't know there could be pain, something was inside of her, something that didn't belong there and oh, the pain was so unbearable and there weren't words to describe what was happening.
Ariana's eyes didn't open once in the countless times she'd been raped in the hour the boys violated her. She could not scream. She could not cry. She did not make a sound. She struggled- Merlin and Morgana above, did she struggle, but the boys weren't really even boys, no- they were men, big strong men and they overpowered her greatly.
A door slammed and everything stopped in that moment. Ariana's stomach felt like it was being ripped in two, and suddenly the boys were thrown back, as if they were punched in the gut, and they landed hard on the concrete pavement.
There was a roar of anger; bellowing anger, that sounded like someone dying. Ariana didn't move. But she knew.
Ariana left the world, her world and retreated; to a small corner of her mind, her own personal corner of the universe, where she hid for good. From her corner, she watched Ministry officials arrest her father. She watched as they wiped memories, so many memories, of so many Muggles. She watched them carry the three dead Muggle boys away. She saw her mother crying, she saw Aberforth and Albus rush to her and comfort her. They didn't know; they couldn't possibly know. Nobody knew.
But they did. Ariana wanted to reach out for them, but she was scared. Oh, she was so frightened, and no matter what Albus or Aberforth said, or did, she wasn't coming back.
And she never did.