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Bathilda
By Gaerdir
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"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." - Helen Keller
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Bathilda Bagshot was a quiet child.
She preferred to observe the world around her, rather than take part in the social motions that everyone else went through. She wasn't really that important or famous to demand attention from people that her parents were loosely acquainted with. She had no cousins and no grandparents to speak of; her parents were single children, and their parents had passed away a couple of years before her birth.
Bathilda's parents were lenient with her, taking her behavior as a sign of her own unique personality developing, which, in a way, was true.
Bathilda didn't like talking to humans; she enjoyed watching them, and recording their actions.
She made it her life goal to know all there was to know about humans. Maybe her hard-working actions would please the ones that brought her into this world, and they would stop pestering her.
Bathilda couldn't feel. She thought of herself as a biological creature that went about its tasks mechanically. There was no emotion behind any of her actions. She was blessed with a highly developed eidetic memory, but she lost the ability to be truly human. She instead chose to admire what emotions had cost humans throughout history, and also what it had given them.
By the time she was eleven, she was able to remember 300 years of history of the top of her head, and another 200 if she dug in a bit deeper.
And then the letter and the witch arrived.
Bathilda finally felt a stirring of emotion in her chest when the witch arrived and said warmly, "I can explain what's 'wrong' with your daughter."
When the witch finally explained about magic, and turned the table into a pig, in front of her disbelieving parents, Bathilda felt a twinge of disappointment, and just like that, her first ever emotion was… gone.
Had she just hoped? Perhaps. It didn't amount to anything anyhow.
Her parents finally accepted the truth of the weird occurrences of when she was just a baby, and realized how she had reached the books they kept on the higher shelves when the witch explained about how magic was about intent. What they also understood was why the incidents hadn't happened again. Bathilda never really displayed any emotion anymore, so why would her magic react when she didn't?
The witch looked curiously at the girl sitting calmly between her parents. Bathilda noticed and lifted her chin up to look at the woman in the eye.
"I already guessed that magic might exist, ma'am. You're just confirming my hypothesis."
And that was that.
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Bathilda felt a bit of a spike of excitement in her emotions as she looked at the books in Flourish and Blotts. There was so much more history hidden away in this new world she was now part of. A whole other aspect to human nature that she hadn't yet chronicled in her crystal clear memory.
Maybe this magic wasn't half bad. It was definitely doing what she had thought to be impossible. Making her feel emotions. It made her feel human for a while.
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School wasn't too difficult for the budding historian. Her memory allowed her to answer any question asked from the text, and the concept-based questions and practical applications she could handle with a bit of effort. She breezed through the courses, but on the whole, was unremarkable compared to the popular upperclassmen who formed the majority of her peers.
But she was the first to consistently score in extra credit in all her History tests.
She also shattered the record of highest History marks on the OWLs and NEWTs by almost 50%.
But no one really cared, because who really pays attention to History?
Bathilda was approached by a division of the Ministry, and she quietly joined.
The Unspeakables needed someone of her caliber to help out in their historical research teams.
XXX
Magic hadn't really helped Bathilda much in the emotional department. A twinge of sadness, a pang of guilt, a spark of happiness were all she really felt now. It was an improvement over the dull days of her childhood, but not a drastic overhaul. The only people she stayed in regular contact with were her parents. She didn't even have what someone would call a friend in Hogwarts. She stayed to herself, and her favorite seat in the library.
So when her parents died in a freak accident while riding in a horse-drawn carriage, Bathilda was shocked when her body was wracked with sobs, before her mind, too, quickly succumbed to the onslaught of emotion.
She displayed emotion for the first time, and all it took was her parents' death
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Bathilda slowly withdrew from all public view. She stayed cooped up in her parents' home, her home now, and worked on her new project. She had decided it was time to put pen to paper and record the troves of information sitting in her head for future generations to make use of.
And so, the A History of Magic series was born.
Bathilda was the best person to write the books, seeing that she remembered everything the Unspeakables had discovered and identified with her help, and knew that having a comprehensive record would help people understand just how rich in history their society was.
She hoped to make history interesting for Hogwarts students.
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Bathilda had heard about the Percival Dumbledore incident. She had also heard that the Dumbledore family was moving to Godric's Hollow from Mould-on-the-Wold. Today.
She took a deep breath.
She, Bathilda Bagshot, took a deep breath.
She, a grown woman, was going to try and make her first friend today.
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A couple of years later, Bathilda was still smarting from the rebuff Kendra Dumbledore had so smoothly delivered.
She decided she would try the oldest son this time. She had read his paper on trans-species Transfiguration in Transfiguration Today, and thought it was pure genius.
She made sure to tell him so in her letter.
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Finally, she was on talking terms with the Dumbledore family. Kendra was like her, a social outcast, and having no one to cling to. Bathilda played the role of a rock, ready to support the beleaguered wife and children. The damage done to Ariana, the poor girl, was already driving Kendra nuts, and to compound to that, the mother could also sense the growing tension between Albus and her younger son, Aberforth.
And then, out of the blue, in another freak accident, Kendra died when her daughter lost control. Albus felt as if his wings had been clipped and he stood forever on the precipice of freedom, shackled to the earth below him.
Then, out of the blue, she got a letter from a dying twice-removed niece, who asked her to take care of her teenage son, Gellert Grindelwald. Bathilda was their only living relative.
She sent back an acquiescing letter and then hunkered down, and got ready to have a guest for the first time in 50 years.
XXX
Gellert Grindelwald was nothing like she expected.
He was charming and attentive. He listened to what she had to say, and what she advised him to do. He begged her for stories and clapped appreciatively at the end. She gathered from her slow talks with him that he and his mother hadn't actually been very close.
"You've actually done more for me, than that woman ever did, Aunt Bathilda!" He exclaimed one day.
She found herself, after a couple of months with him as a guest, thinking of him as her son. Both of them had been adrift at sea for many years, with no one to cling on to. And they had found each other.
He had even called her "Mother!" one day. She didn't bring it up, and he didn't stop.
He also grew closer to Albus, something she wholeheartedly approved of. They both often came to her with questions about the Deathly Hallows and the items' powers.
She was reluctant to answer at first, but Gellert slowly coaxed it out of her.
But one day, as she waved her wand and dusted the house, she heard sounds of a fight and spellwork coming from the direction of the Dumbledore house, where she knew Gellert was. She rushed there, and paled at what she saw.
Ariana lay on the ground, dead, and Gellert was nowhere to be seen.
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The departure of her grand-nephew hit her hard.
The news of him turning Dark, and using the legends she had so joyfully recounted for him, as a symbol of hate and destruction hit her even worse.
His final death in a blaze of glory hit her worst of all.
She tried to move on from her loss, years later, talking to a young couple that had recently moved in to the area, the Potters. She played with their son, an adorable little boy named Harry. She told the woman stories about Albus and Gellert, but didn't think Lily believed her. She tried and tried and tried.
But, she never really recovered from the rapid emotional blows she had taken from the first time she had really come out of her shell. Her friend had died suddenly, and then that friend's family had fallen apart. Bathilda's honorary son had left, and the two remaining brothers were at blows over their sister's death whenever they saw each other. She used to sit dazed by the fireplace, every night, clutching a picture of a grinning blonde man as she lost herself in the past.
Maybe that's why she never sensed that snake coming.
Or perhaps she did, but didn't really care anymore.
Bathilda Bagshot died with a slight smile on her face.
I'm coming, Mum, Dad, Kendra, Ariana. And Gellert, my son, will be here soon as well.
I can't wait.
FIN