a/n: so, i spent the better part of a year and a half obsessively stanning and writing about ariana dumbledore. then a year's break, and now this- which is also the sanest i've ever written her. thank ava, ya'll.
I don't much like the rain.
It's not even that I mind the dark it brings— I like the dark, actually, it never hurts my eyes the way bright lights do, even though Albus insists on waking me up every morning by screeching Lumos! and letting his lit wand prod at me until I get out of bed. No, the dark is nice, it's quiet. Maybe bad things might happen in the dark, but it wouldn't hurt so much then, at least. Black is a cushion on your eyes, it makes things soft.
Rain, though, rain pounds. It hits the roof of the house and clangs through every corner until I can't hear things normal, until I have to press my face into my pillow and cover up with my blanket. But it still gets through, thudthudthud, all over, vibrating inside of me, and even though I know it's going to end (no rainbows without rain, that's what Aberforth taught me, and there's always rainbows no matter what), sometimes it feels like rain is bringing the end of the world. As though if I look out the window there's going to be a great fire roaring closer and closer, eating me alive, charring me into dust, like the man with Mama— with Mama, when she went in the ground with the dirt— ashes to ashes, dust to dust—
I never actually realize I'm screaming until Albus or Aberforth rips my blanket away from me. But by then it's too late, I can't stop, couldn't if I wanted to, if I had the will to. It's like a tornado, a whirlpool, a riptide, those unstoppable forces that wind their way through Albus's books, except they're all inside of me, clawing at me, shredding the seams of my throat until I choke and fall into the fire. It depends on who gets there first what happens next— if it's Abe he covers my ears right there and rocks me and sings songs at the top of his lungs until his face goes red, so that my howls and his words drown out the sounds outside until the rain turns into a drizzle and I can finally breathe again without inhaling dirt and fear.
If it's Al, though, he takes me to his bedroom, carries me there because wands frighten me then, I'm not sure why, it's like getting electrocuted when I see one, like my heart is going to beat so fast it bursts. He carries me to his bedroom and lays me on his bed, with the blanket that Mama made him before he went off to Hogwarts, because I think Albus knows what it's like to have a hole inside you from wanting someone so bad. Then he takes one of his books down from his endless shelves and, like Abe, at the very top of his lungs, he reads to me, screaming the words until his voice goes hoarse. It feels like it takes longer but eventually the rain ends anyway, it always does— always a rainbow, remember, or else why even bother —and then I can stop seeing flames in front of my face, burning up my legs and licking at the insides of me, and I can only hear Al, wheezing and coughing, choking out the end to Advanced Transfigurations.
Sometimes I wish I could be like Albus, always calm, never afraid, but the rain— it sickens me. Aberforth tells me it's okay, that it's fine to be scared, and if I make myself strain I can even remember Al crying once before— at that place with the angels— ashes to ashes, dust to dust…
Still, I can't shake the feeling.
Bad things happen in the rain.