A/N: Originally posted on ao3 under the pen name youngjusticewriter. Part four of the "The advantages of foreknowledge and the disadvantages." series.
Ariana is quiet. She doesn't talk much. She's learnt that if you're silent you can listen and observe better than you ever could if you were talking.
She's also knows if you're silent then those monsters who wore boyish faces would not get anymore perverse satisfaction but she tends to try think about that day and the days that followed afterward. It makes her upset - like something was inside of her stomach is clawing she doesn't if it clawing out in pain and fear like a corned animal does or if it's clawing to get out - and then she loses control. She sinks into the pain in her stomach.
The clawing.
And then she hurts people. Why is that Ariana always hurts people or is the one that's hurt? Ariana has always been a good girl or so she's been told. So why was she's always hurting or getting hurt? Why did those boys hurt her?
She use to ask this question to herself on and on. Time and time again. Then Harry came into her life and now she wonders why do bad things happen to good people?
Ariana knows she sees the world around her differently then others. She sees people differently than anyone else does. She's a freak like that.
(Harry had once told her that was nothing wrong with being a freak as he combed out the tangles of her hair one night. He was as much as a freak as she was, he told her in an even softer voice than he normally used around her; like he was telling her secret and maybe he was. After that Ariana had decided that was was absolutely nothing wrong with being a freak despite what those boys had thought and told her. Ariana didn't mind being a freak if Harry was one too.)
Maybe that's why she knew Harry didn't belong here (but that didn't mean Ariana wanted him to leave). It takes one to know one. That was the saying that explained this (whatever this was).
...Wasn't it?
Ariana isn't sure. She's not sure of a lot of things and hasn't been for a long time. But that's okay. She has her brothers when they're not gone from the house, the goats, and Harry.
(She use to have a mom and dad but they're gone away now. Least that's what Aberforth tells, repeats to her with sad eyes over the years. She hates it when he's sad. It makes her sad too. But whenever they get sad about their parents Ariana gets this twisted, aching feeling in her stomach.
It's called guilt.
She doesn't know why she feels guilty. But like she stated earlier Ariana isn't sure of many things.)
Except shes knows this. When Harry walks in the house with a little brunette boy with patchy clothes and a guarded face she doesn't focus on those things. She notes the color around Tom. She bites her lip in fright and she tastes the familiar taste of copper. Her heart feeling like a heart of a scared rabbit. Beating so fast it might come out of her chest.
Why?
Cause that little boy (If it's a little boy. Monsters that have hurt Ariana, and by extent her family, have before worn the faces of pretty boys.) has the color that it scarily familiar to that which once lingered on the scar on Harry's head that's the same color as Harry's eyes.