School:Beauxbatons
Year:5
Prompts:(main)[dialogue]"I'm not crazy, my reality is just different from yours,", [action]star gazing,[race/group] Muggle
W/C: 2000
Written for Rose (year 6), who requested a fic about Ariana Dumbledore.
Ariana Dumbledore knocked on her brother's door at eight one morning. From inside came a plaintive wail: "Go away!"
She tried to turn the knob, but she couldn't reach it yet.
"Albus!" she yelled.
"I'm busy," he said. "I can't play with you now. I'm working."
He's always working. He never has time for me. Never mind, Aberforth will play with me. Delighted by the thought, she ran to his room as fast as her six-year-old legs could carry her. However, her mother was standing outside her brother's room with a stern expression on her face.
"What do you want, Ariana?" she asked, catching sight of her daughter.
"Can I play with Aberforth, Mama?" she asked.
"I'm sorry, Ariana, but Aberforth has a bit of a cold today," she said. "Why don't you go into the garden and find something to do?"
Sadly, the little girl made her way out of the open front door. She sat down on her favourite stone bench, gazing at the wall. At least she could still amuse herself with the sparks. She opened her fist, letting red sparks fly out. They were so pretty, like those glowing insects that hovered around the garden at night. She then made the flowers growing on the wall open and close.
She felt someone watching her. She looked at the hedge on the left side of the garden.
There were Muggles peering through it!
One of the boys stepped through a hole in the fence. "What on earth are you doing?"
She looked at the door of her house. No, her parents would not be coming through it just yet. She would have to deal with it herself. "Nothing," she tried saying. Hopefully, he'll believe me and go back to where he came from! But the stubborn Muggle did not budge.
"I don't believe you," he said.
She started to panic. Go away, go away, GO BACK!
Her sudden outburst unleashed a force of magic that pushed the boy against the back wall.
The other Muggles came through the gap in the hedge to help their friend. How did a hole get there? she wondered.
The Muggle boy was now standing up, helped by his friends. "Get her, lads!" he yelled. Before she could remember what that meant, they were on her, punching and kicking, hurting her, oh, she wanted to make it stop, but she couldn't, she didn't know how to….she screamed, and saw her father running out, but it was too late…everything went fuzzy…then there was darkness.
~ooOOOoo~
Kendra, alerted by her daughter's screams, came running downstairs. As she did, she witnessed her husband relentlessly firing spells at three Muggle boys, all of them trying to cower behind a bush, but to no effect.
"Percival, stop!" she yelled. "What are you doing? You could get yourself arrested for that!"
"Look," her husband snarled. "Look what they did to our Ariana."
She had not expected, and did not want to expect that, but she looked.
Her daughter, her one and only, tiny, beautiful daughter was lying on the sofa inside, bloodied and bruised. Most of those could be healed, but the biggest problem was that she didn't sense the usual feeling of magic in the area around her. No, it can't be that, it's almost impossible to do; did they even have the strength to do anything like that?
Ariana stirred and opened her eyes, looking at her mother's worried face.
"Ariana, darling, I know you don't feel good right now, but can you make those sparks appear again, just for a second?"
She tried, but nothing came out. Crushed, she fell back into sleep.
Kendra ran back out into the garden, wanting to break the news to her husband, but when she got outside, the sight that greeted her was a team of Aurors. She was about to ask why they had come when one of them announced, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but we are taking your husband into custody."
"Why?"
"From what we can see and what he told us, he appears to have seriously injured three Muggles. Did you, ma'am, have any idea that he was going to do this?"
Numbly, she shook her head.
"His trial will be held next Friday; we will send you the official letter. You are welcome to bring your own witnesses. What is it?" The last sentence was irritably directed to Percival, who tapped the policeman roughly on the shoulder.
"May I speak to my wife in private?" he asked. "I give you my word I will not try to escape." The Auror nodded.
"What are you doing?" she whispered.
"We can't tell them about Ariana," he said. "If the Ministry gets to know, they'll take her away from us, isolate her, Obliviate her and send her to a Muggle orphanage. I'd rather be in Azkaban for the rest of my life than let that happen."
"So it's true," she said, willing herself not to cry. "Her magic's gone."
"It might not be; keep an eye on her," he said. "I 'confessed' to attacking the Muggles. They'll write it off as prejudice. Don't try to get me out of it. I won't have my little girl exposed for anything."
She understood, but she could not stop the tears now rolling along her cheeks.
"One last thing, Kendra," Percival said, his eyes filled with despair. "Don't take her to St Mungo's."
~ooOOOoo~
"Percival Dumbledore, by unanimous vote of the Wizengamot, you have been sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban."
He was crying now, truly crying, but there was nothing he could do about it. They were powerless.
~ooOOOoo~
In the weeks following her husband's arrest, Kendra tried to hold it together, for the entire household was distraught. Upon hearing the news, Albus had locked himself in his room, then numbed his pain with his first adults' edition of Transfiguration Today. Aberforth had been stunned; he did not respond to anybody's call for a week, did not eat for a day and was unable to sleep well. Ariana simply threw a gigantic, week-long tantrum.
It was then that the family learnt the truth of what had happened to Ariana. They never fully knew, because they had never tried professional healing, but her magic was not nonexistent-simply trapped. She had lost all control of it, and it burst out of her in moments where she couldn't control her emotions: a wild, unique, dangerous explosion of magic.
The Dumbledores moved to stay safe, but the past did not leave them.
~ooOOOoo~
After moving, Kendra issued a rule that Ariana was to stay indoors during the day because of her sudden outbursts. Other than this, things went as back to normal as it was possible to go. Her two sons began Hogwarts; an intense source of pride for her, soured by the fact that Ariana would never be able to do the same.
Albus rose higher and higher, escaping the family's taint earned from newspapers and word-of mouth rumours. Aberforth, meanwhile, found other ways to move on: not entirely respectable, but they worked.
Ariana's outbursts deterred Albus from getting near her: disgustingly, she was, in his opinion, worth little more than a house-elf. However, far from repulsing Aberforth, they only brought the brother and sister closer. Aberforth calmed her, she loved him, and she had more control when he was around. Slowly, he became almost a father to her; he was so much more than a sibling.
~ooOOOoo~
"Aberforth," said Ariana, jumping on his bed after a lengthy discussion with her mother about why she couldn't go to Hogwarts, "is there something wrong with me?"
Her brother sighed. He had been expecting this someday, but eleven years was still too young.
"Well, there's nothing wrong with you, exactly," he said carefully. "It's just that you can't do some things other people can't." That's true, at least. The only thing wrong is that she can't control her magic.
"Isn't that bad, then?" she asked. "Am I crazy?"
"No, you're not," he assured her. "Your reality's just different from mine."
~ooOOOoo~
The day Ariana turned fourteen, it happened.
It had been the last day of Hogwarts for her brothers. Her mother was going to collect them from the station, but she refused to take her daughter. Ariana was furious- after eight years of hiding, she wanted to get out at least once, she was older, she probably had more control, she wanted to see the place that held an opportunity she would never have, and it was her birthday, for goodness' sake!
That was the biggest explosion of her life, as well as the one she most regretted.
~ooOOOoo~
The weeks after her mother's death were a complete blur. The last thing she remembered was her mother collapsing lifelessly on the front lawn. However, the knowledge that she had killed her mother didn't leave her. She couldn't fall asleep at night, because wasn't it murder, what she had done? She lost her appetite, because what did it matter? She deserved it. She was a murderess, and she deserved to be punished.
One night, she was sitting on the bench where it all started, staring up at the sky. The stars were her friends, and only by immersing herself in them could she partly forget her grief, even if it was only temporary.
She was just picking out the stars along the top of a constellation whose name she couldn't quite remember when she heard the door opening. Her concentration broken, her grief came rushing back.
She felt a familiar arm around her shoulders, and heard a familiar voice say, "What's the matter?"
"Mum," she breathed. "I killed her." She trusted this person, and now he was all she had left.
The arm tightened, and another arm enclosed her from the other side. "It wasn't your fault," her brother said. "It's in the past now, and we've got to move on. Mum," his voice shook slightly "would have wanted that."
"Aberforth."
"Yes?"
"Who was the lady with blonde hair and blue eyes?"
"Mum's sister, I think. She couldn't communicate with Mum after we moved. Why?"
"Well, she was speaking to Albus while you were opening the gate. I was nearby, and I heard what she said."
Her brother's expression, ever protective, urged her to go on.
"She said, 'It's all your fault. You and you crazy sister killed my sister, and a better person you never shall find. Don't expect me to adopt you after what you've done. Even if you didn't, I'm not having a lunatic in my house.' Albus said we didn't need to be adopted, that he'd take care of the family, and then she said, 'If I were you, I'd put your sister in a Muggle orphanage. She's as good as a Muggle.'"
She paused for a second. "I know it was rude, Aberforth, but I had to reply."
"What did you say?"
She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. "I said,' I'm not crazy, my reality is just different from yours.' But now, I'm not sure….was that the right thing to say?"
"Of course it was," her brother reassured her. "That's the truth, after all. You aren't crazy; just different." He hugged her. "Don't worry about it. It's over, and we can't change it. Now, which constellation were you looking at?"
The brother and sister sat together, looking at the star-strewn sky.
"What's that constellation called?" Ariana asked, pointing at the one she had been looking at earlier.
"Oh, that?" her brother said. "It was one of the few constellations that were discovered by Muggles. See how it looks like a compass? It was used by travellers to find their way."
Ariana looked up in wonder. It did look like a compass, and it had always been so to her. Whenever she couldn't sleep, whenever she felt lost in doubt about her life, she came here to look at it. Maybe Muggles weren't as foolish as wizards thought.
"It's called Circinus."