Author's note: This is written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition Season 4 (Round 10). I hated this prompt, so I apologise because this is not my best :3
Task: Write about Ariana Dumbledore in portrait form.
Disclaimer: I, unfortunately, do not own Harry Potter.
They were all so brave. I couldn't deny that.
I knew that, at first when the passage to the school was revealed and the remarkably resilient students started to use it, my brother did not want to be a part of it.
He didn't want any trouble, even if we all knew that trouble was all around us, in this mess that we now called the world.
I had been able to convince him, though, without having to say a word. I knew that he wanted this darkness to end, as everyone did, but he just had a little difficulty in taking up his role in the secret uprising that went on in Hogwarts, behind the backs of the people who ran it. But then again, Aberforth had always listened to me… or so he'd told me.
Hanging on the wall, I had very little memory of before. I called myself 'Ariana Dumbledore', but I knew that I wasn't her. Not really. I, myself, was a memory, stored in canvas and paint.
Still, it seemed to keep my brother happy, having me there, even if I could not respond in words. He would tell me, though, of times when we'd all been together, as a family, before everything had gone horribly wrong.
I suppose that I had never known any different. I had only ever seen the four same stone walls of that room in Aberforth's little pub, where my frame had hung since the last stroke of the brush touched the canvas on which I was to stay forever. Every day, I'd watch the same two or three people wander in and out of the small pub, stay a while to drink and chat, before making their way home.
I'd always felt a little melancholy, trapped in the same frame with only my brother for company. It wasn't a bad existence, but it wasn't what I'd hoped for in the beginning.
Of course, everything changed when the passageway was created and my brother and I were pulled into the revolution taking place within the school. Then I was able to see life from a completely different angle.
It had been a day like every other one I could remember. Aberforth came down from the dimly lit staircase to open the curtains, revealing a soft hazy light that shone onto the stone wall beside me.
I had smiled at him, as I always did, but I faltered slightly, having felt a sharp tug from behind me.
It was as though someone was pulling my hair from behind, but when I turned there was no one there. However, as the day wore on, I decided it was more than that. It felt as though they were very far away, but the connection with me was still as strong as if whatever was emitting it was standing right next to me.
My curiosity got the better of me in the end. I turned in my frame, away from the familiar space of my little room and instead faced the winding path that stretched far over the grass-covered hills.
I took a step and then another, placing one foot in front of the other, making crunching noises in the gravel.
It was not as though I had never walked down this path before because I had. I used to run to the end and back as quick as I could and my brother would laugh, the expression temporarily removing all traces of hurt from his face. I hate seeing him upset, which happens all too often.
I could feel my sense of apprehension growing as I neared the crest of the hill. What would I possibly find over the other side? There had been nothing there when I'd come up here before, so why did I suddenly believe that there would be something now?
I stepped onto the hilltop, expecting to see nothing more than I usually would. So you can imagine my surprise when I could suddenly see a whole new place altogether.
Bunched up together in a darkened, yet cosy room were over a dozen children, all dressed in black robes, each with a crest of either blue, red or yellow.
Some were battered and bruised. Some looked as though they hadn't slept in days. However, as I looked on from my second frame, surveying the faces of each and every one of them, I could find only one thing: determination.
I stayed for a while, not quite at the front of the frame, but far enough back that I wasn't obviously in the painting. I sat and I listened to them talk, of how they planned to take back the school.
Even though they were frightened and mistreated in the place where they'd once been safest, it was easy to see that they believed in what they were doing.
They all believed that they could make their plan work. That staying strong together would help pull them out of the darkness that shrouded our world. It made me wonder about my family. If only we had had more determination in bringing us together, rather than trying to achieve our own ambitions, then maybe we'd still be together.
Maybe there wouldn't be any need for my portrait to hang in that little room. Because Ariana Dumbledore could stand on the wooden floors and touch the cold stone walls and wander beyond them, as I never could.
I shook my head. There was no time for that now. I began to run back over the hill, completely unaware that I had been spotted and that the students behind me had found a passageway behind my frame.
That had been months ago now. My brother and I still helped them where we could, but it was hard. What could we do to actually help? I was beginning to feel as though the fight was futile now, that there was nothing more we could do.
But when the boy with messy black hair and round glasses entered my brother's pub with his two friends, I knew that delivering Harry Potter to the brave children over the hill would certainly make a difference.