This was inspired by part one of the 'Deathly Hallows' film.
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Historians were only supposed to record events, not change them. And it was possible – to warp a reality with a few decisive strokes of a quill. If there was one thing that Bathilda Bagshot had learned in her years as a curator of history it was that the majority people were, to phrase it simply, lazy. More specifically, they were too lazy to think; they wouldn't even try to conduct research if they thought another had done it for them. It was why the histories of wizards and muggles alike were filled with bloodshed and conflict. It was, rather more fortunately for Bathilda, why her books had sold so well.
Only, as old age had approached, the threads of fact had become tangled and her arthritic fingers were too swollen to untie the knots. It became too difficult to pull away from the welcoming arms of the past and into lucidity, to succumb to the temptation of dwelling on better times.
The secrets that she was meant to safeguard had spilled from Bathilda's mouth before she had understood what it was that she was doing. They had been pulled apart and reconstructed by those large hands and their blood red fingernails, twisting the past until it was unrecognisable. And people would believe it.
Not only had she forgotten her responsibility to the truth – for those dizzying few hours, it was as though the green quill that had flown across the parchment, replacing fact with fiction, had hypnotised her – Bathilda had also forgotten her loyalty to a family that had once been great and proud. She had entrusted their past to another, unable to act on the nagging belief that she was doing the wrong thing.
In the increasingly brief snatches of reality that were gifted to her, Bathilda had been conscious of a guilt that had gnawed at her every thought. And so when he had appeared in her home, unnaturally pale in the darkness, she hadn't even reached for her wand or tried to remember what offensive spells she could use.
Bathilda knew, deep down, that she had disgraced the memories of the members of the Dumbledore family, and she didn't resist as the green light sped towards her – it was her payment, dying weak and without a friend, without a thought of the histories that she had recorded, only a memory of her mistake.
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