Author's Note: Written for…
Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. Team/Position: Montrose Magpies, Chaser 1. Task: Write about a magpie in 2,551-2,750 words. (2,562, without A/N and breaks) Prompts: (emotion) surprise, "There's no such thing as magic!", faithful
Hers
1888
Ariana was a magpie.
Aberforth had known since they were small children. By four years old he had spent quite a lot of time watching the magpies that nested outside their house, and his little sister was just like them. As a toddler she was constantly cold and would steal the blankets off her brothers' beds to create a little nest for herself.
"She's more like a red kite than a magpie," Albus had said. "She doesn't have black hair."
But Aberforth knew more about the creatures he could find in his own backyard than he did about some bird his brother had read about in a book. And the way Ariana would sit in her pile of blankets for hours and ask Aberforth to bring her water or toys reminded him heavily of the hatchlings waiting for their mommas to feed them.
He started referring to her as his baby bird, and Ariana loved the name. She would come running as fast as she could on little legs, chirping excitedly with arms stretched out to her sides whenever Aberforth mentioned the nickname.
Ariana insisted everyone else have an animal too.
Momma already called Albus her little lion. Aberforth thought that suited his brother. From what Daddy had said, lions were very lazy creatures, and Albus didn't do anything but sit in his room and read all day.
Daddy was a rabbit, always on the move. Momma said Daddy couldn't relax even if he wanted to, and Aberforth never saw a rabbit sit still for more than a few seconds.
Momma's animal was hard to nail down. She was smart and funny and caring and sometimes, when she caught Abe tracking mud into the house, she could be scary. After careful consideration – and stealing Albus' book on creatures of the world – they decided a dragon suited her perfectly.
"What animal am I, Ari?" Aberforth asked as he flipped through the pages of Albus' book. Abe liked every animal he'd ever come across. How could he narrow it down to just one?
The little girl rolled over in her nest to scrutinize her brother. Aberforth watched with unease as the sparkling blue eyes rolled over him slowly.
"Puppy," she finally determined, and flopped back onto the pillows.
"A puppy?" he asked uncertainly. He liked dogs alright, but he could imagine how he was like one.
"My puppy," she clarified.
Aberforth heard his brother's loud laughter and scowled at the closed door.
"It's not nice to eavesdrop, Al!" Abe huffed as he opened the door. Albus was in the hallway, doubled over in laughter.
"No wonder Mum won't get you a pet – you are the pet!"
When Albus' laughing fit had ceased, he marched into the room and snatched his book off of the floor.
"I told you not to take my things without permission."
Aberforth didn't bother to apologize. He sat on his bed and swung his legs as he watched Ariana. She stared sleepily back at him, content to stay in her little nest for the rest of the evening.
"It suits you," Albus suddenly said. He sat down at the foot of the bed.
Aberforth had to crane his neck to look at his brother's face. Albus was three years older and quite a lot taller.
"What does?"
"The dog."
"Go away, Al."
"I'm not being cruel. Ariana is right. You're her dog. You always have been."
"I am not."
Albus smiled. "Look at you, sitting on a bare bed while she snuggles with your blanket. You'd let her sleep with it while you shiver in the night, wouldn't you?"
Aberforth shrugged. They all knew he would.
"You've always been enamored for her, ever since she was born. You'd be by her side the moment she started crying, trying to help Mum look after her. You're her faithful dog."
Aberforth was surprised. He hadn't realized how devoted he was to his sister. But as he watched the baby bird doze off in her nest, he found he was okay with being hers.
:-:
1891
"Magpie? Where are you?" Aberforth called as he searched through Ariana's room. He'd been looking for the girl for at least a half an hour to no avail. Ariana was undoubtedly the best hider of the Dumbledore children, but only because she cheated and moved positions when her brothers' backs were turned.
He glanced at the clock on his way out of the room and paused. It was almost dinnertime and Albus and their dad would be home from the store any minute. If Ariana was hiding in Al's room, she would have to get out fast before their brother found out.
Giving up on the unwinnable game, the seven-year-old found his mother knitting in the den with classical music wafting through the downstairs.
"Momma, do you know where Ariana is?"
"I think she went in the garden, dear."
The music was so loud that he didn't hear the screaming until he reached the back door.
"There's no such thing as magic!"
He didn't recognize the voices shouting, all male, but he knew the one screaming for help. He burst out the back door to find his sister laying face-first on the ground, arms over her head to shield her from the five boys encircling her, yelling at her.
In a blur, Aberforth raced forward to protect her. The boys were all older and bigger than him, but he managed to knock two of them to the ground before reaching Ariana.
"Get away from her," he growled dangerously. Another one of the boys took a step back.
Ariana was still screaming, and she whimpered when Aberforth laid a gentle hand on her arm.
"She's a freak," said a blond boy. "We saw her. She … she was making the rocks fly."
"Go away!" Aberforth shouted in the boy's face. He wished he was old enough to have a wand. He would have turned the whole group into fire logs if he could. But then, they didn't know what he was capable of. He raised his hand, pointing behind the boys toward the parting in the hedge they'd climbed through. "Stay away from my sister or I'll curse you all!"
He may not have looked or felt very threatening, but it was enough to scare a bunch of muggles who had just witnessed magic for the first time.
Again, Aberforth knelt by Ariana and tried to coax her up from the ground.
"Come on, Ari," he said softly. "You're safe now, they're gone. It's all right, magpie."
Albus and their father were just arriving home when Aberforth finally ran inside to get help.
"Ariana's hurt!" he told them urgently. "She won't come inside."
Momma was the only one Ariana would allow to help her. Aberforth felt helpless as he watched his baby bird sob uncontrollably as she was pulled onto their momma's lap. He didn't see any cuts or bruises on her, but she must have been hurt for all the crying. Ariana hardly ever cried.
Albus and their father were uncharacteristically quiet as they watched the scene.
"I think she's in shock," Momma said, holding on to the girl tightly. Aberforth had never seen her look so scared.
"Isn't there anything we can do?" Albus asked. No one answered.
Aberforth grew angry with himself. If only he'd given up the game sooner and come looking for her. He could have found her before the stupid boys hurt her.
His father startled him, grabbing his arm without warning.
"Who did this, Abe?" he asked. "Who hurt your sister?"
He felt all eyes watching him expectantly and squirmed under the gaze, as if they all knew it was his fault.
"The Bowen brothers," he said quietly. Albus used to play with them when they were younger. "Henry Pond. There were two others, I don't know them."
"Percival, you can't harm them. They're just children. Muggles," Momma had said.
Aberforth watched his father head, wand outstretched, for the space the boys had made in the hedge.
"I'm not going to let them get away with hurting our little girl."
:-:
Aberforth couldn't bring himself to leave Ariana's side that night. He pulled the blankets from his bed to recreate the nest that his magpie so rarely made these days.
She didn't respond to the added warmth, nor showed any sign that she knew he was even in the room. Undeterred, Aberforth slept on the floor by her bed that night, watching over her and making silent promises to never let her get hurt again.
:-:
1895
School turned out to be more frustrating and boring than Aberforth had expected. He couldn't imagine what Albus thought was so great about it.
Mum assured him it would get better with time and that he just needed to adjust, but he was pretty sure he'd seen all he needed to after a week of academic life.
The dorms and common room were crowded. The Great Hall was too loud. The classrooms smelled. The ghosts were annoying. The teachers were boring.
He missed her.
He could probably handle everything else if he could only see her and make sure she was okay. Mum promised she would be fine to handle the ten-year-old on her own and she would write with updates every week, but it wasn't enough.
How was he supposed to sleep without the little girl climbing into bed and curling into his side? What would he do with his free time if he didn't have to make sure she was eating? Feeding his and Al's owls just wasn't as fun as the goats without his little helper.
What if she forgot about him?
His only solace came two weeks into term, when his Mum's letter came with an attached drawing: a magpie soaring above a small dog.
:-:
1899
He couldn't remember how he'd come about calling her a magpie. That memory, like so many others of little, healthy Ariana, were forever gone from Aberforth's mind.
He didn't realize how apt the nickname had been until she was dead.
Albus insisted they clean her room out. He wanted to sell the house and move on. He always wanted to leave.
He never loved her. He never cared.
Aberforth couldn't bring himself to do it in the week between her funeral and his return to Hogwarts. He didn't even want to go back to the stupid school. It was his young age and need for an education that had prevented Albus from signing over custody with their mum died.
It could have prevented everything. They never would have met that murderer.
He couldn't bear to open the door until Christmas. It was the first he would spend alone. Albus offered to stay, but they both knew it was best if he were elsewhere. There was still too much anger and guilt between them to spend very long together, and the new slant of Albus' nose was proof of that.
It took all the strength he had not to cry upon opening Ariana's door. The room had been closed off since her funeral, and it still smelled strongly of the lavender fragrance she was so fond of.
It felt wrong to use magic in the room of someone who couldn't, but Aberforth was beyond caring about that sort of thing. He had already killed his sister. What would she care if he sped up clearing out her room?
Almost everything was packed up to be given away. Clothes, books, old toys she had refused to let go of. Aberforth went through it all in hurried silence, not spending more than a few seconds on any particular item. Any more than that and he would start remembering his sister wearing or using the object, and then there would be no getting rid of it.
Aberforth thought he was finally through when the wardrobe and shelves were empty, but it was only the beginning. He wasn't sure what made him think of looking under the bed, but he did.
The wooden box wasn't any larger than his heaviest textbook and looked awfully familiar. He thought it might have belonged to his Mum a long time ago but he hadn't seen it in years. Probably not since they'd moved to Godric's Hollow.
He wasn't expecting to find anything inside. Ariana often put things back where they didn't belong, or where she thought they ought to be. He could never have anticipated finding a plethora of pebbles and leaves stuffed inside. There were feathers of all shapes and colors, small twigs, acorns, pinecones. Buttons, beads, marbles, puzzle pieces. It was all rubbish, but not to Ariana.
"Magpie," Aberforth muttered, recalling how the birds were often collectors and thieves. Ariana had lived up to her name.
:-:
1998
It never got easier.
People liked to lie a lot. Aberforth had learned that a long time ago, but it still amazed him sometimes. He'd attended a few funerals in his time, a lot quite recently, and each time he heard the same myth passed around.
'It'll get easier,' the people say. 'The pain will go away.'
"No, it bloody well doesn't," he'd huff under his breath. And he ought to know better than all the young know-it-alls. He had over one hundred years of grief and it hadn't diminished any.
But maybe he was just crazy. Everyone else seemed to think he was. Albus certainly had.
He supposed he should have felt more when he learned of his brother's death. Albus was all he had left of their small family, but Aberforth had been alone for ninety-nine years. There was a delayed reaction. It was almost a year before it hit him fully. He was actually alone. And maybe he regretted not settling things with Albus sooner. Maybe.
Things were always much worse on Ariana's birthday. It would have been – should have been her hundred and thirteenth that year.
Ninety-nine years and he still hadn't settled on whose fault the incident was. It changed from day to day, and there wasn't one day that had gone by in all that time in which he didn't think about his dear, sweet Ariana. Photographs of her hung all over his rooms, from before and after her attack.
It was unlike him to write a letter. He didn't have friends. He didn't like to write. But for some strange reason he felt like he needed to that night. It was probably the bottle of firewhiskey he'd downed in honour of the day.
He couldn't say it made him feel better, writing to her. He usually liked to talk to her portrait or photos and pretend that somewhere, wherever she was, Ariana could hear him and know how sorry he was. But all the same, writing it out was a different experience, and it helped to pass the time.
When he finished it, he folded it neatly and staggered to his lit fireplace, smiling up at the subdued image of an eternal fourteen-year-old girl.
"For you, my magpie," he said softly, in that voice he reserved for her. The portrait smiled at him and Aberforth threw the letter into the flames. He watched it turn to ash as his eyes burned.
He would eventually return to his day-to-day life, casually conversing with the portrait every evening. Because even all those years later, he still belonged to her.