1892
My memory of that spring is blurred, as it stained every moment that came after it. It was a Sunday. Most of the muggles were in church. I was eleven, and was admiring my new school collection I had bought at Diagon Ally – back in those prosperous years when my mother could spend money on her children with little concern. My wand I loved most of all. I loved how it’s dark sheen captivated my eye, and the light danced off its smooth surface. I loved my books also, even more so because they were a prelude to what would come when I arrived at Hogwarts.
Ariana wandered into my room while I was reading. I was to absorbed to notice her shuffle through my things with as much wonder as I had upon receiving them. I might have admonished her to not to touch my things if I had noticed. However, I didn’t see her take my wand from my room, and run outside into the garden with it.
I was scanning a passage on the ancient witch hunts of Great Britain, when I heard her scream.
I heard other voices from the garden too, and they distinctly sounded unlike those of my father or brother.
By the time I reached the garden, my mother was already there, and the boys had fled. Not before I got a good look at them however. Three of them, I saw, older than Ariana. They were local scoundrels, who had probably skipped church and decided to play in the street outside. One of them was short and stout for a child of his age, with short blond hair, the second was tall, taller even than me, and perpetually covered in dirt, and the third I recognized as a boy from across the street, who I’d caught staring over the hedge at us several times in the past year.
I didn’t follow them, because my sister was curled on the ground, her arms over her head, and crying. There was dirt on her face and hair, and her arms were covered in bruises which sickened me to look at. I stood further away while my mother examined her. Ariana was confused, and tried to push her away, but my mother grabbed her arms, and pulled them away from her head to reveal where blood trickled down from her forehead. A rock lay on the ground beside her, dropped by one of the boys, and stained with blood. Nearby, lay my wand.
The wait for my father to come home was endless. Due to my mother’s skill, her injuries healed quickly, but more concerning was how she wouldn’t let anyone touch her. We kept her in her room for the rest of the day, where she sat on the floor, staring at the wall.
I can downstairs later than evening to find my mother sitting in the drawing room with my father. He looked…broken.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked me as soon as I entered the room.
“He’s in his room,” I answered, wondering why he asked the question so urgently.
“You should be in bed too, young man,” he said to me, and though I said it was only nine o’clock, he led me into my room, and hovered about me as I prepared for bed.
“She’s not speaking,” I said as I sat down beside my bed, “Should we take her to St. Mungo’s? Perhaps she’s more hurt than Mum realized?”
“No,” he snapped, “No, she’s not going there. I checked her over myself. She just needs some time.”
He didn’t look like he believed it. He looked like he too, might never speak again if he said the wrong thing to me. As if he’d already come to an important decision, he was surveying me with those bright blue eyes, that could see into my thoughts.
“Albus, I need you to tell me who they were.”
I said nothing. I may have been only a child, but I knew exactly what he was asking of me. I wanted to get up, and run away, and refuse him. I wanted to tell him that revenge was wrong, and that they were only kids after all. I wanted to tell him that it was my fault for letting her take the wand. She must have played with it, and the boys must have seen her, and been afraid.
Ariana was just shaken up, that was all. She would be fine in the morning. We could tell the children’s parents and have it all sorted out. But then he leaned forward, and looked at me with those half-moon spectacles, saying, “It’s alright Albus. I’ll make it alright.”
And so, I told him. I told him everything I knew. From what they looked like, to where they lived, and what I’d thought they’d done to my sister. And when I was done, I was shaking and he was still. A cold fury was in his eyes like I had never seen before. My father was the kindest man I knew. He never raised his voice at us, he never spared us a smile. Half of me didn’t believe what I thought he was going to do. He couldn’t. He wasn’t capable.
“Goodnight, Albus. Stay with them in the morning. They’ll need you.”
I nodded.
He left.
In the morning, he sat in the drawing room, reading the Daily Prophet, while my mother drank her tea. Aberforth didn’t come down for breakfast, he was with Ariana.
“Is she feeling better?” my father asked him when he came down. My brother was a quiet child most of the time, and now he was even quieter and looked shaken.
“She screamed and threw a fit when I came near,” he said. “Dad? Why did they do it?”
I put down my tea. It tasted like motor oil the muggles used in their horseless carriages.
When he didn’t respond immediately, Aberforth asked again, “Why did those kids do it? Why did they hurt her? She did nothing to them!”
Kendra put her tea down too. She had mastered the ability to hide her emotions. Whatever she was feeling, I never knew.
“Do you know why the muggles must never know about us?” he asked Aberforth.
“Some stupid Statute… what’s it to do with us?”
“The Statute of Secrecy was put in place to protect us. Muggles fear what they don’t understand, if they knew there were people with powers they didn’t have, they would hunt us down. People like you and Ariana would never be able to live –”
A knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” Kendra said, but my father paled.
“No, you stay here. I’ll go.”
I watched his tall frame move out and down the hall. I heard him open the door. I heard gruff male voices talking to him, and one of them said, “—placing you under arrest—Killing curse,” and my brother stood, jostling me on his way to the hall.
I ran after him, fear stifling my words and chocking me.
“Dad?” he called “What’s going on?”
I grabbed his hand, but we both stopped when we saw the Aurors on the doorstep. My father turned to us. He looked as calm as ever, and said gently, “Abe, go fetch your mother, and then see to it that Ariana gets her breakfast.”
“What are they doing here?” Aberforth asked stubbornly, and I closed my eyes, gripping his hand even tighter.
“Mr. Dumbledore,” said one of the Aurors, “You need to come with us.”
“Go where?” Aberforth asked, his voice was getting higher in pitch, “Dad?” he asked, and when he didn’t respond he broke free of my grip and ran towards him. “Dad? Don’t just stand there! What’s happening? Why are they taking you?”
My mother was in the room, for the first time since all of this occurred, she looked afraid.
“Percival?”
“Please hand over your wand.”
“Dad? Where are they taking you?”
“I’m sorry Kendra, I did what I had too.”
I don’t remember who exactly said this. I only remember Aberforth raising a small fist at the Auror and the Auror and a second after, I was there, pulling him away from my father, and subduing his struggles.
“Stand back!” shouted one of the Aurors, who had his wand raised threateningly, not at my father, but at my brother and me.
“Mr. Dumbledore,” the Auror repeated, “You’re under arrest for the murder of three muggle children, and must therefore be taken into custody awaiting trial.”
“There’s been some mistake,” said Kendra, stepping forward imperiously, “Three muggle boys attacked out daughter yesterday afternoon –”
“So there’s a motive?” asked one of the Aurors, who was standing behind the others.
“No—” My mother tried to intervene, but my father interrupted.
“Yes. I killed them.”
A pause, in which everyone forgot to breathe. My brother had forgotten to struggle, my mother’s protests silenced.
After that, everyone happened quickly. My mother stepped back from the door; all her fight gone. My brother burst into tears. My father slowly removed his wand, and handed it over.
“May I have a word with my son?” he asked, and the first Auror nodded. He beckoned me forward. I walked past my brother who was watching me in teary confusion, my mother, who’s mask had slammed back in place at watched me go by as if I were a stranger, until I came to my father.
He looked down at me from behind those glasses of his, and said, “You remember what I asked you last night?”
I nodded.
“Will you promise me?”
Another nod.
The summer before I left for Hogwarts was consumed with the murder trial of Percival. Aberforth stayed home with Ariana while my mother and I attended. Neither one of us reacted when he was pronounced guilty. We both knew he was. I don’t know if my mother forgave him, or if she even spoke to him after that. I followed her lead. He had chosen this, I thought. He had murdered those muggles, and now he would face the consequences. And yet…if I had not told him who they were, would our family still be together?
Ariana was hurt. That I had already caused with my carelessness. But she perhaps she would have recovered if her father were with her, but instead he had chosen to avenge her. I saw his picture on the cover of the Daily Prophet later that week, saying he’d been sentenced to Azkaban. They compared him to the muggle hating, pureblood fanatics I’d heard about, and painted a picture so ugly, I couldn’t see through it to the other side.
Ariana had her first episode that night. I was trying to talk to her, telling her in the gentlest way I could what had happened, when she erupted. I woke up in my bed later, having been unconscious for hours. Ariana was just as sweet and harmless as she had been before, but I always saw the obscurial underneath every time she looked at me.
When I stepped on board the Hogwarts Express for the first time, I would be lying if I claimed not to feel the slightest bit liberated.