Author's Note: I don't want a huge author's note clogging up the page, so I'll try to make this short. This is the first part of what will eventually be a trilogy surrounding the life of Albus Dumbledore and his family. This first part will centre mostly on his parents and the events leading up to his birth.
What to expect: a multitude of original characters, but some canon characters will be appearing, of course, and most of the original characters are ancestors of the canon characters we are familiar with.
I have researched and tried to stay as close to canon as possible, but I know I'm bound to slip up, so if I do, please feel free to point out my mistakes! If you have any comments or questions about the story at all, please drop me a review, or come say hello on my livejournal, the link to which can be found in my profile.
Dumbledore (Part I – The Phoenix)
Prologue
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The family of Dumbledore was very well respected. They were not nobility, but were certainly acquainted with Lords and Ladies aplenty, and so thought that they might as well have been. Mr Thomas Dumbledore could trace his ancestry back to the Normans, and Mrs Isabel Dumbledore (nee Clarkend) traced hers back to the Saxons if she tried hard enough.
The Dumbledores had two houses: one on the coast of Cornwall, where they went often for the summer months, and one in Bath, where they spent the chief of their time. They had no house in London; Mrs Dumbledore told all of her friends that this was because she detested London, but it was really because they could not afford it.
Aside from their two houses, the Dumbledores also had four children, the eldest of whom was a very pretty, but very stiff girl called Rosamund. Rosamund was twenty two years old, and dwelled in a state of perpetual disappointment, for despite her pretty looks, and pretty name, and many pretty accomplishments, and the five hundred a year promised to her, all of which she had been assured would secure her a good husband, nothing of the sort had yet materialised.
The second child was a son called Terrence, who was very fond of women, cards, and drink. His parents still held out hope that he would become responsible on his twenty first birthday.
The third child, and the person on whom our story chiefly centres, was a boy called Percival, who was sixteen and very unremarkable. He had been to school, but he had left, and had also been instructed by a tutor, whom he had hated. He was now instructed by himself.
The last child was a girl called Maria, who was very handsome, very amiable, and very stupid. She had absolutely nothing to recommend her aside from her looks, temperament, and the fact that she could sing charmingly.
But let us first venture five years into the past, and for the moment return to Mrs Dumbledore. A very fine day in the summer of 1820 saw the post arrive, and as Mr Dumbledore, having over-exerted himself at the ball the night before was not yet up, Mrs Dumbledore was the first to get it. Upon sifting through the letters, she found one addressed to her second son and opened it – for whom, she reasoned, could have business addressing an eleven-year-old boy, and in emerald green ink, no less?
On reading the opening of the letter, she was struck silent for a good minute. On reading the rest of it, she was struck with such an agitation of nerves that she jumped up from her chair, paced around the room, and sat back down again five times in a row. The reason for Mrs Dumbledore's distress was that the opening line of the letter addressed her son as follows: "Dear Mr Dumbledore, we are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." The rest of the letter went on to tell about this supposed school of magic, and included a list of items that her son would be required to purchase; things such as cauldrons, and toads.
Mrs Dumbledore was sure that this was somebody's idea of a joke. Yes, it had to be. She became quite indignant, wondering who would be foolish enough to think that she and her husband would be taken in by such a scheme. And why on earth involve their young son in it?
Well, thought Mrs Dumbledore fretfully, Percival was a bit odd. But she did not think that any stranger would have noticed the child's slight eccentricity. The letter writer must have been someone intimately acquainted with the family, then. But who? One of the servants? For a moment she entertained the notion that it was Percival himself, playing a trick, but she quickly put that thought aside, given that the letter was not in a child's handwriting, and she did not think that Percival had access to green ink anyhow.
Mrs Dumbledore went through the whole of the morning in a state of noticeable vexation. Her husband, the children, and the servants all remarked upon it; but everyone who spoke to her seemed completely ignorant as to the cause of her distress, leading her to believe that the letter had indeed originated from outside the house.
She read it over twice more that day. She had to admit that whoever had written it had done a very convincing job of it. She even found herself wondering if it might all be real. Even so, should she send her son away to this so called 'Hogwarts' to learn magic? Mrs Dumbledore did not think it wise to send her son off to magic school when he could just as well attend Eton or Harrow. And certainly there would be questions regarding where the boy had gone. She could not very well say that he had gone to any sort of respectable institution at all, because someone would be sure to have a son or a nephew there, and would point out that there was no one called Percival Dumbledore at such-and-such a place. Telling all of her acquaintance that she had sent her son off to school to learn to become a wizard was out of the question, and so she resolved to think of the letter as she had first done – as a joke – and told herself that she would never look at it again.
Mrs Dumbledore waited anxiously all summer, but no other letters came. On the first of September, she breathed a sigh of relief, and, being a very sensible sort of woman, laughed at herself for ever having taken such a thing seriously.
Meanwhile, she had not had much time to think about Percival that year. Mrs Dumbledore was quite disheartened that, though seventeen and very agreeable, not one gentleman had yet showed any inclination to marry her eldest daughter Rosamund. Apart from that, she was trying to persuade Terrence against joining the military (he had heard that ladies greatly admired men in the regiment), and Maria was going through a very trying stage, and demanding her full attention. Percival seemed content to stay in his room and read, and Mrs Dumbledore was content to let him do so, despite her husband's concerns that the boy was becoming too idle.
It was partly these concerns, and partly an event which occurred close to Percival's twelfth birthday that prompted Mr and Mrs Dumbledore to finally take a course of action concerning the boy.
It was a clear, warm day near the end of April, and the whole family was sitting together outside. Mr and Mrs Dumbledore were arguing about something in the newspaper, Rosamund was at her needlework, Terrence was examining his reflection in a puddle, and Percival was reading. Maria was sitting in the shelter of the pavilion with her elder sister. Growing bored of this, she ventured over to Percival, and snatched the book he was reading out of his hands.
"Give it back," Percival demanded in an irritated manner. The girl simply laughed and skipped further away. "Give it back!" He exclaimed loudly.
"Percival, really!" His mother scolded. "Let your little sister have the book."
"It won't do her any good anyway," Percival protested, standing. "It's written in Latin."
His mother regarded him with a shocked expression for a moment and then said, "Wherever did you learn to read Latin?"
"I taught it to myself," Percival replied. "Maria, give it back!"
The little girl stuck out her tongue and threw the book into a nearby puddle. It happened to be the one that Terrence had been admiring himself in, and he swore loudly, but nobody noticed, because Maria was dangling upside-down in the air.
Mrs Dumbledore screamed. Her husband shouted. Rosamund jabbed herself in the thumb with her needle out of surprise. Terrence was lamenting the mud which had splashed up onto his clothing, and Maria was sobbing to be let down. Percival had gone very red, more out of frustration than anything else, and a good many of the servants came running to see what the commotion was.
By the time they had all managed to put Maria right-side-up, Percival had locked himself in his bedroom, and subsequently refused to emerge for two days straight, during which time he suffered no one to see him.
In these two days, Mr and Mrs Dumbledore deliberated, and the conclusion was drawn that Percival ought to be sent away to school – a completely respectable, completely non-magical place called Eton. Mr Dumbledore was not sure exactly how his youngest daughter had ended up upside-down (Mrs Dumbledore had never showed him or anyone else the letter), but felt that it must have had something to do with Percival. This, coupled with his long-held belief that the boy was becoming increasingly idle, prompted him to send him off to school immediately.
"Do not worry," he told his wife, when she expressed some concern about the scheme, "he will do very well at school, I am sure. He taught himself Latin, after all. He's made out to be a scholar."
Percival was wary of going away to school at first, but it took only his parents' assurances that he would be learning a great deal to convince him. Percival was very fond of learning things, and it seemed to him a very good thing that there should be an entire institution dedicated to teaching him.
Eton was not at all what he had expected, though, and he found himself sorely disappointed. The lessons were tedious, and his work suffered. He hated the teachers because they were strict, and in turn they did not like him because he was such a poor pupil. All of the other boys disliked him very much – there was something simply wrong about him, they thought – and children are always happy to join together in the act of derision.
There was also the troubling fact that strange things seemed to happen when Percival was upset. Another boy had thrown a chunk of ice at him once in the winter, but the ice had burst into flame and melted away before it had even come close to his face. Another time, a group of boys who had been teasing him particularly cruelly found that all of their teeth had vanished the next morning. They grew back by dinner time, but it was still the cause of much disconcertion, and a popular rumour that Percival was the Devil began to circulate.
Percival found himself so miserable at Eton that he wrote to his parents, begging them to let him come home. His parents, tempered by the months since the upside-down incident, and genuinely missing their son, agreed. So it was that Percival returned home after spending less than a year at school, and being no better for it than knowing a few words in Greek, which he promptly forgot. He was of the opinion for the rest of his life that he would have learnt a great deal more by staying at home.
To make up for his not being in school, Percival's parents employed the services of a highly recommended tutor by the name of Mr Harley. Mr Harley was very severe, and Percival hated him. Percival wondered if he might learn Italian – Mr Harley said that only girls learnt Italian. Percival wondered if he might practice writing instead of arithmetic – Mr Harley said that writing stories was a waste of time, especially for young men. Percival said that if that was the case, he did not want to be a young man, and remarked that if he could borrow some of his sister's clothing, he might pass as a young lady instead. Mr Harley was so shocked by this comment that he assigned him extra grammar.
Percival endured Mr Harley till he was fifteen. One day in June, he was coming up the stairs, and met Mr Harley, who instantly began berating him for neglecting his studies. "Where have you been?" He asked sharply. "Where are you going now? What do you think is more important than the advancement of your learning?" Percival was not at all in the mood to hear any of this. His family was to leave for Cornwall soon, where he was looking forward to an entire summer without Mr Harley breathing down his collar. To be stopped now upon the stairs and lectured by him was not at all to his liking. Then, quite suddenly, Mr Harley fell silent; this was because his mouth had disappeared.
Percival felt both surprised and elated. He was quite sure that it would grow back, if the events back at Eton were any example to go by, and so he allowed himself to be amused. Mr Harley seemed utterly bewildered. This odd scene was broken by Mrs Dumbledore coming in the door and inquiring as to what was going on.
This startled Percival and, although he had not been completely positive that he had been the cause of his tutor's vanishing mouth, when his concentration was compromised, it was immediately back in place.
Mr Harley wasted no time using it again. "You devil!" He shouted at Percival, and made the sign of the cross. He had gone very pale.
This angered Mrs Dumbledore a great deal. "What on earth is the meaning of this?" She demanded. But Mr Harley would not answer her. He went upstairs, and gathered his belongings and then walked out the front door, and never came back to the house again.
Mrs Dumbledore was so disturbed by these events (she still vividly recalled the letter from years ago) that she did not lament Mr Harley's going, and she made no steps to hire another tutor for her son.
Percival was very well pleased by this. He could now devote the better part of his time to studying what he liked, and so he did. The result was that by the time he was sixteen years old, his knowledge was extensive, but not at all well rounded, and he had no idea what-so-ever as to which profession he wished to pursue.