Emerald Eyes - HP one-shots

Ariana Dumbledore

This story takes place in 1891.

It was a warm and sunny day, and Ariana Dumbledore was playing in the back garden. She'd found a long twig in the grass under one of the trees in the large garden, and was waving it around like a wand.

She couldn't wait to turn eleven, when she would get her Hogwarts letter. She knew her big brother Albus was due to go to Hogwarts next year. She was excited to go to Diagon Alley with him to see which wand he would get—well, that is, if her Mum would let her go with them. For now, Ariana was content to play in the garden.

Later in the afternoon, she was sitting on the lawn with a small pile of leaves by her feet. Everything was beautiful: the sunlight, the flowers of the garden, life itself. She was filled with joy, seemingly bursting with it. Without warning, the leaves started to gently float up into the air. Ariana stared in wonder as they slowly circled around her head. What she didn't know was that there were three Muggle boys on the other side of the hedge, watching her.

"How is she doing that?" asked one of the boys.

"I don't know. She's got to be some sort of freak, though," replied one of the others, his face scrunching together, the corners of his mouth pointing down while his upper lip curled.

"Let's go play with the freak!" said the third boy with a grin that did not reach his eyes.

"Yeah, let's make her show us!" said the first boy with a matching smile.

The three boys pushed their way through the hedge into the Dumbledore family's back garden, breaking branches and trampling flowers.

"Hey, freak, what're you doing?" said one of the boys.

"W-what?" asked Ariana. She crawled backwards, trying to get away from them. They towered over her, dark against the sky.

"We saw you make those leaves float around your head. You're a freak!" spat the tallest of the three boys.

"Freak!", "Freak!" Chanted the boys together, circling her.

Ariana looked up at the three boys with tears in her eyes, fear making her heart beat a tattoo in her chest, and shivers run down her spine. "Please, I'm not a freak," said Ariana, her voice muffled with tears.

"Show us how you did it, and we'll leave you alone," said the apparent leader of the boys.

"But I don't know how I did it! It just... happened," whispered Ariana.

"Liar!" the boys shouted.

With that, the three boys launched into a vicious attack on the scared little girl.

Ariana's father, Percival, who'd been in the front room, hadn't heard the boys breaking their way into the garden. On his way to the kitchen, he'd passed by the back door, and that's when he saw it. His baby girl was curled in a ball on the lawn with three boys kicking and stomping her. A red mist descended, clouding Percival's sense of reason, and he went running out of the back door, yelling for his wife as he went. The three boys ran for their lives at the sight of bared teeth set in a face with bulging veins, but Percival did not stop at their high-pitched screams. He attacked the boys with every horrible spell he could imagine, cursing them in plain sight of the other villagers.

It wasn't long before representatives of the Magical Law Enforcement and a team of Obliviators swarmed the village to arrest Percival and modify the memories of all the Muggle witnesses. Percival, of course, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban, leaving Kendra Dumbledore to raise their two sons and daughter alone.

The attack on Ariana had done significant damage to the little girl. The once bright, sweet, happy, chatty little girl was now a shadow of her former self. Initially, when she came around from the attack, she was scared and extremely nervous of everyone and everything. It only went downhill from there. She tried to get rid of her magic—it was to blame for everything—but she just couldn't, no matter how hard she tried. Eventually, the magic inside of her consumed her and sent her spiraling down into madness.

Weeks passed, marked only by the increasingly frequent sounds of sobbing coming from Kendra Dumbledore's room. Visions of great castles and bustling alleyways ran through Ariana's head too quickly to catch, sending her spiralling into fits of rage.

"Freak!" Ariana screamed, the word losing all meaning as she howled it over and over again. The furniture of the front room swirled around her head and tore itself to pieces as it dashed repeatedly against the brick walls.

Albus gritted his teeth and left the room, sending his Hogwarts trunk—newly packed—floating up the stairs in front of him. Aberforth stared at her for a moment longer, his eyes shining and his fists clenched by his sides. A torn cushion smashed into the architrave above the doorway where he stood, but he remained still and silent. When a wooden chair changed course, heading towards the girl in the centre, he grabbed it and flung it aside. A small sound escaped him, and he turned to leave the room.

"Take me with you!" Ariana howled, falling to the floor and holding her head in her hands. "Take me with you!"

Aberforth closed his eyes, leaving the room and his little sister behind.

In the years that followed, the anger that plagued Ariana showed itself less and less. It was quite the opposite—frequently, it was hard to tell if she was even alive.

Until one day, in a flurry of colour and anger and fear, she wasn't.

Ariana opened her eyes. A gentle summer breeze wafted over her face, carrying the scent of honeysuckle with it. In the distance, veiled by a thin sheen of fog, was what looked like the inside of a small, dimly lit tavern. A man stepped back from the entryway, dropping his arms from where they had been stretched upwards, like he was adjusting a painting. His eyes met hers—devastatingly familiar—and he smiled.

For the first time in years, the darkness fell from her mind, leaving only light and summer days behind. She thought of the great castle that had beckoned her with its splendour and magic. Before all thought of magic turned to abhorrence, she had wished with all her heart to live there. Thinking of it now filled her with a sense of serenity and rightness that she had never known before.

A breeze stirred at her back, and she turned to see the bright field dissolving into a long tunnel. Her brother's voice reached her, as if from a great distance.

"It will take you to Hogwarts, Ariana."

She smiled and took a step toward the tunnel; at last, Hogwarts was here to welcome her home.