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The room felt familiar yet being in it again after so many months accentuated the details of its interior which they hadn’t noticed before. It was a critical time back then when they needed to go to Hogwarts and then the battle had ensued. The bar man had helped them reach the school without getting caught by the death eaters and it somehow felt like it was just yesterday.
Now stepping over the threshold of the room, Harry and Hermione looked around the place- the same dimly lit sitting on the first floor above the bar in Hog’s Head, letting in light only through the lone dusty window on the left. The rough bricked walls rose to the low ceiling, having the paint and plaster weathering off which narrated on its own the antiquity of the aged room. The grey tiled floor did little to add any beauty, though it's worn colours complimented the overall dark and recessed features. An old table and a couple of chairs were the only furniture present in the room along with an almost broken cupboard that stood in one corner. On the opposite, right side, the fireplace had leftover ashes and unburnt wood. Over the mantle rested the big oil portrait of a girl around fourteen with long blonde hair and a calm vacant expression on her young face. She was dressed in subtle but well-tailored clothes.
Ron had been late and his patronus announced earlier that he’d be there in or around thirty minutes. Got work at home, Mom never gives a free weekend you know , he had said. So, Harry and Hermione had arrived without him at Hog’s Head where Aberforth welcomed them in with a gruff but polite invite. He didn’t talk or express much when Hermione told him that the three of them thought it would be nice to visit him, the only Dumbledore left, and pay their respects as today marked exactly two years since the day Professor Albus Dumbledore died.
Aberforth had told both of them to wait in the room above by excusing himself that he was busy attending the bar (although there were only two customers present who had already been served and they were savouring their drinks). They didn’t give much thought to it and had simply climbed the stairs to the room above.
They were sitting at the table, opposite to each other, talking casually about things at Hogwarts as Hermione had recently finished her schooling. They had no idea what they were supposed to talk with someone who had lost his very old brother years back except for the fact that they considered it was important to visit the lonely man whose brother had been the best man they had known. Besides, Aberforth had also helped and fought in Battle of Hogwarts, so it was only better of a reason to visit him.
“Good to see you two again.” A pleasant, calm voice sounded lightly just to their right. They both looked in that direction to see who has spoken because nobody had entered the room and obviously Aberforth couldn’t have such a sweet voice. There was only Ariana’s portrait smiling down at them.
Hermione leaned closer to Harry and whispered, “Harry, do you think she spoke?”
Harry shrugged, not knowing for certain if what they heard came from the painting. They had been here before and at the time of their long conversation with Aberforth, Ariana’s painting had not uttered a single word. Then how come it be possible that today she greeted them?
They both looked at Ariana expectantly in hope that she would speak again and they could be sure it was her voice. Their doubts were answered the next instant as the portrait spoke again, “By judging your startled looks, you seem surprised to hear me. My apologies for being so unannounced.”
Harry relaxed at the revelation and tried to make up for their behaviour which would have appeared as quite weird to someone who had just greeted them so sweetly. “We are pleased to see you too, Ariana. It's just that we weren’t aware that your painting spoke, we haven’t heard...”
“It’s okay.” She said simply.
And then a long moment of silence stretched between them, neither of them knowing what to speak. Harry and Hermione felt awkward to sit like that, they glanced at each other and then fixed their eyes anywhere in the room but the painting.
Hermione hesitated but then managed to break the silence, “We are sorry Ariana, for what you have endured. Mr. Dumbledore told us about you and the miseries of your family. We are here as it been two years since-” she trailed off with the weight of the saddened words she was about to say.
“I know.” Ariana said empathetically, looking at Hermione with shared pain and a rueful smile. “Albus was a great man. He would be immensely proud to see his students becoming heroes- you two and Ronald Weasley.”
They both warmly acknowledged their praise with a ‘thank you’.
Hermione added, “Actually, it's been our pleasure to have Professor Dumbledore as a constant guidance. Though it’s disheartening to know that his life was imbued with tragedy. We can only regret that he, and also you, never had a joyful time you deserved.”
Ariana’s blue eyes shined as if they were holding back tears, “Who says we never had a joyful time? Ah I wish Aberforth had given you the complete backstory, but he’s not to blame. Both my brothers never had courage to acknowledge to themselves the truth about the end of that summer.”
Hermione and Harry gave puzzled looks, turning uneasy about what was left to know about the troubled past of their professor. They were already carrying heavy hearts from the grief of gone Dumbledore, and it was not going to be easy to confront yet another unknown fact about his past. If it was positive then Harry imagined that it might be bearable but if it was account of some another tragedy, then all that would overwhelm him.
Ariana had spoken to them today, so Harry thought it would be unkind to just deny listening to whatever she’ll tell, and he decided to hear it, however hard the truth might be to accept.
But it was Hermione who asked first before Harry could frame his words, “Is that something you’d like to tell us?”
Ariana nodded. “I don’t see any reason to bury the story about that summer. Afterall, I believe that at least people whom Albus loved the most deserve to know it.”
Then Ariana narrated to them the brief account of events from summer of 1899, including a direct mention of how much Albus and Gellert loved each other. To this Hermione’s jaw literally dropped with surprise, eventually followed by a wash of extreme sorrow and Harry was startled a bit, very soon realising that Dumbledore at the King’s Cross was telling him about his lover, not just a mere friend. Now Dumbledore’s emotions from his memory of that train station fitted to the fact that he was in love with the infamous Gellert Grindelwald and how he cried when Harry had mentioned about Grindelwald dying to protect Dumbledore’s grave- very much of a proof, Harry mused, that it was a mutual love.
“Oh Harry” Hermione exclaimed; her face tearful and pale. “He was forced to fight him, every chocolate frog card of him reminds this. I- I can’t... I can’t imagine what it must have been like to encounter your love which can easily result in death of other. It’s awful!”
Harry opened his mouth to reply but was distracted by Ron who just entered the room and said playfully, “Hey Hermione, whose love encounter led to death? Is that even possible?”
As Ron noticed the tears streaming from Hermione’s eyes, he knew he had pulled a joke at the wrong time. Certainly, they were talking of something serious, and he made a mistake of not observing it. “I am so sorry” he said truthfully, his expression grave and grim “I didn’t know...”
“It's alright. Please have a seat Mr. Weasley.” Ariana offered.
Harry motioned to the seat beside him and as Ron settled down Harry quickly gave him a short overview of what they have heard. Ron was not expecting that a thing related to their late professor could affect him after that long time, but it did make him turn more pale and sad than other two and he felt miserable for the Dumbledore family.
“Ariana,” Ron spoke softly, “Sorry I was late and interrupted your conversation. Uh, you can continue now?”
“No problem.” Ariana paused for a long while, gazing absently at the far end of wall as if reminiscing an old moment.
“Then came that day declaring my freedom,” she continued after a mournful sigh, pulling out Harry, Ron and Hermione out from their trance state as they got lost in their own thoughts. They quickly adjusted their attention to listen.
“Albus came to me in my room, it was a day before that three-way duel, and I saw a radiant glory behind his calm grin as he entered. You see, he didn’t come to me often and on rare chances when he did, I was filled with anticipation, if not enraged by the obscurial within. I expected that he would read me a story or perhaps play with me or maybe announcing his marriage at extreme. But it was a totally different thing. He told me about his plan to leave Godric’s Hollow and that I could accompany them.”
Ariana described to them of how Albus proposed that he would take her to Garden of Eden and everything will be okay. She was more mesmerised by the idea of visiting Garden of Eden than her freedom that was promised along with it. She had asked Albus in disbelief if that garden truly existed because she had only heard of it in fairytales and biblical records that their mother used to narrate to them. Albus was so confident about it all and had convincingly explained to her that Garden of Eden was indeed a real place in the magical world and that him and Gellert would find it. He assured Ariana that the same Garden from which Adam and Eve took the fruit of knowledge, the same paradise had unfathomable magical powers that can cure any disease and hence will free Ariana from her obscurial.
Ariana was filled with joy that day. After so many years, she would go out and be free. She did fear magic, but she had faith that the paradisical place had only good magic. She felt like it would be a dream come true where she could actually experience a fairytale. She agreed she would accompany Albus there if it meant her freedom from the perpetual prison of obscurial and pain. Finally, she could escape the calamities. Maybe if she wished for her mother and father to be back, then the Garden of Eden could grant that too.
“I was just a child. I believed all that,” Ariana said after another long pause. “Though I am still sure that Albus was not lying about the garden, but I now know that no power can bring back the dead. But somehow, I feel that could also have been come true since Albus and Gellert were going to find all the Hollows as well. They could not entirely resurrect our parents, but I hope maybe something close to it that I could talk to them at last.”
“Professor Dumbledore had similar wishes.” Harry said, his voice laced with sorrow. “He wanted to use the stone of resurrection to talk to them. To apologise...”
Hermione wiped her face as Ron placed a comforting hand on hers, massaging it a little till she calmed down. He found the knowledge about Dumbledore’s past disturbing and watching Hermione being sad was no pleasant of a sight. However, he also felt a bit nice that Ariana was once promised freedom and if things would have been different, then she might have been healed.
“Gellert wasn’t that bad,” Ariana started speaking and explained to the trio that even if she hadn’t seen him often that summer, she still knew enough to gather what kind of person he was. He might have been rascal and tough, but he really did love her brother and cared for her too. She learned that it has been his idea for taking Ariana along and find solutions to her condition.
She further emphasised that Gellert surely had a dark shadow lurking inside him, and he arrived at Godric’s with way darker plans than he admitted to Albus. But the innocent, sweet and pure love of Albus had started to change him for good. His fights with Aberforth had significantly reduced over the course of a few weeks and she noticed him getting more considerate and kinder in nature. The same day she was asked for visiting the Garden of Eden, a fond memory was created which assured her that her brother Albus was with the right partner.
Ariana neared the end of the story by telling Harry, Ron and Hermione that her death wasn’t exactly a fault of Albus, Gellert or Aberforth. That day when the duel broke out between the three others, she had been upstairs, sleeping with all her things packed for they would be leaving. The sounds of argument and shouting had awoken her, and a devastating fear crawled up inside her. The obscurial’s dark force gripped her heart with threatening force. The loud voices of spells being cast and her brothers fighting intensified the turbulence inside her caused by the obscurial.
She revealed that she did catch a few words of the argument downstairs that clarified what was causing the fight. Aberforth didn’t want Albus and Gellert to take Ariana along. He kept accusing them that they must have manipulated her to make her agree to come with them. At that point she knew that she must go down at once and stop all this.
Harry realised that his heartbeat was raising as Ariana was reaching that point of her story when it was her ultimate fate and end of Albus Dumbledore’s good days way before they ever started. Hermione felt depressed to the point that she wanted to leave but she also wanted to know who brought about Ariana’s end. Ron was feeling bad for all the Dumbledore’s siblings and wondered if Gellert died in any false guilt.
“They were fighting, they didn’t see me coming,” Ariana continued, “all those lights were driving me out of my mind. In between all the chaos flaming inside and outside me, I just knew I had to stop it. I direly wished that Aberforth would believe me, that I had agreed to go with my own wish. I hurried down the last step of stairs and knowing nothing better to do, I jumped in the center of the colliding spells coming from three different wands in order to stop them.”
Her face was ashen and devastated as she spoke the next words, “My obscurial couldn’t bear that much magic around me. Fear of magic was the only reason it had built inside me and magic was going to be the reason to eliminate it. I don’t know if it imploded or exploded, but it brought an end of life. I heard Gellert ran away thinking it was his fault and Albus would be mad at him. Albus and Aberforth spent their whole lives living in the guilt that it was them. When reality is, it was none’s fault.”
Hermione was distraught (as were Harry and Ron). Stammering, she said, “Oh... but... why didn’t you tell your brothers that it wasn’t their fault?”
“Yeah,” Ron added, “for old man’s sake.”
Harry simply stared, expecting an answer.
Ariana clarified, her tone very smooth and patient, as if repeating a well-established idea, “I did. To both of them. But they waved off my explanation. They told me, in their different versions of reasoning, that I was only saying that because I didn’t want them to take the blame. And that I was just a painting and can’t possibly be their true sister. I suppose they liked being in their own world of guilt. Nothing I could say would comfort them. We eventually ceased talking at all. I had nothing to say, and they had nothing to ask, too ashamed for any conversation.”
“But they should have!” Ron remarked.
“I am just a painting after all. Can’t say more than the memories in me know. Real Ariana in afterlife hopefully have settled it with Albus.”
“I’d like to consider that you’ve settled with me too.” A heavy voice spoke near the door. Everyone turned to see and found Aberforth Dumbledore standing at the door, holding a tray with four teacups. “Been here and listened to your little tale, Ari.”
Ariana’s face glowed as Aberforth approached her and gave her an assuring gaze. She smiled understandingly. “Standing for how long?”
“A couple of minutes.” He turned to the threesome sitting and placed the tray on the table. “Have some tea.”
As Hermione, Ron and Harry sipped their tea with Aberforth, Ariana looked over her brother with fondness. Then she remembered something was still left to be revealed.
Nervously she asked Aberforth, “You should tell them about Aurelius.”
Aberforth was taken aback by the sudden mention of his son. Memories came flooding back to him and he tried to subside them. He didn’t even want to think about it, least talk about it. (Though he did think about it every day.)
“Who’s Aurelius, Mr. Dumbledore?” Harry asked, curious about the inclusion of a new person’s name.
Aberforth shrugged, praying that he wasn’t there in the room at all. He tried to ignore it, keeping silent but the pleading look on Ariana’s face made him feel obliged to speak. He acknowledged that his son wasn’t born in this world to live and die without anyone ever knowing if he existed or not. Soon, he would himself die and then no living soul would know of the tragic little boy Aurelius.
“My son, Aurelius.” Aberforth managed to say, measuring each word that came out of his mouth. He summarized life of his son to the trio, skipping the details and talking broadly about how he lived an orphan almost all his life as an obscurial, only having a few months knowing he had a family (sadly only his father and uncle), and that he was loved. As he told them that his son died soon after that, a tear trickled down his face. He resented of how he failed to give his son his desired life.
“He really suffered a lot. Poor Aurelius. I-” Hermione said, wiping her face yet again.
Harry felt his own eyes brimmed and he looked over at Ron whose face was describing clearly that he wished he never heard any of it. Harry looked out of the window and noticed to his startlement that it was getting dark outside, and the sun was almost dipped behind the building opposite to them.
“It's getting late.” He informed Ron and Hermione. “We should really be leaving for home.”
The other two glanced at the window and reciprocated Harry’s expression. Ron hastily finished drinking the last sip of tea and kept the cup back in tray. The three of them stood up to leave.
Aberforth said, still looking gloomy, “Oh well. time flies quickly. It was good that you came today.”
“We considered that was essential.” Hermione replied, looking apologetic that they have to go suddenly.
“It was nice to meet you.” Ron told Ariana and Aberforth. “But frankly, your past will haunt me I guess.”
Harry realised how much true those words were. It will haunt him as well. Though Hermione glared at Ron with wide eyes as if silently forbidding him from being that straightforward.
Bidding farewell to Ariana, the three of them were dropped to the main door of Hog’s Head by Aberforth.
“A lot to take in,” Ron said as they apparated back to the Burrow. Hermione and Harry were there for sleep over tonight.
“Never knew about the Dumbledores son.” Harry relayed. “Such a complicated life of our professor. Almost make me feel like mine is far better.”
“Yeah,” Hermione said, “I feel sick. Dumbledore and Grindelwald, I really wish they ended up together minus all that havoc Grindelwald caused. At least there would be some family. All those years Professor Dumbledore was alone, so alone...”
“Right, and....”
“...”
...
Now as for the memory Ariana was talking about “The same day she was asked for visiting the Garden of Eden, a fond memory was created which assured her that her brother Albus was with the right partner.” Here’s the memory she recalls when she was sitting idle at her bedroom window and saw Albus and Gellert in the backyard:
It was a bright sunny day. The boys were relaxing in the shade of the huge tree in the backyard. Light wind was blowing which felt cool in the tree’s shade. The rustling of leaves and swaying of grass made a pleasant summer afternoon.
Gellert was a little ill that day. They had not done any research on deathly hollows, and he had arrived at Albus’s home after waking up late in the morning. They were going to leave for their mission tomorrow and Albus had suggested him not to work today and rest so that he can be fit to leave the next day.
They were both lying on the grass, Albus resting his head on Gellert’s shoulder. It was all delightful and they felt contented on how far they have come together.
“I’d be leaving tomorrow with you.” Albus whispered into Gellert’s ear as if saying a sacred secret.
“Yes.” Gellert mumbled, letting his hands play with the soft tassels of Albus’ hair.
“And I am very excited.” Albus brushed his lips on Gellert’s cheek.
Gellert blushed. “Me too, Albus.” He turned and held Albus’ face in his hands, kissing his forehead softly. The rosy tint on Albus’ face deepened.
Then they again laid side by side in comfortable silence, enjoying the company of one other. Time passed like a smooth slow flowing river, bathing them both in tranquility. A bumblebee hummed close by, and the breeze carried a subtle scent of lavender flowers. And above all, the air smelled of promise for forever commitment.
Gellert wrapped his arm around Albus’ shoulder, holding him close. Moments wisped away like vapours, and feeling Albus rested in his embrace, Gellert felt like he was holding his whole world in his arms. At that point he realised that achieving the greater good was a distant future. Albus was his present, his everything. Even if he didn’t achieve the highest power, it won’t be that bad, he would still be happy with his love. His precious love. His delicate love. A love that he would cherish and protect at any cost.
[‘he ran away with his plans to seize power’ because he thought Albus abandoned him, and that the only way to show Albus his loyalty towards them was by fulfilling their dream. Then maybe, maybe, Albus would come back. But yeah, he had been delusional.
It was Gellert which Albus wanted, not the muggle domination... ]
Years later, Aberforth rests in his bed, taking his last breaths at their old home in Godric’s Hollow. He holds two sheets in his hands, looking at them both to his fill as if drinking them all in. As he feels his end is near, he lays the sheets facing down on his chest and embrace them dearly. Then his body slowly loses its life, finally departing from the miseries of the world. What remains are the sheets which are indeed inanimate paintings- of their family portrait when they were young and together and the other of him and his brother, both middle aged, with his son. All looking happy.
A few houses away, another still painting is resting in Bathilda’s cupboard, accumulating dust of ages. It is of her standing with her beloved nephew and the auburn-haired boy, all looking happy. No one knows it even exists. Just the memory remains caged in the painting with no one present to see it anyways.
There are things that death cannot touch- paint and memory and love.