Work Text:
Sometimes, Ariana pretends she has a brother her own age.
In her daydreams, he’s a little younger than her. He’s different than them all as well - but then, she thinks, they are all different from each other. Aberforth’s hair gleams like dull dark wood in the sun, Albus’ gleams like copper. Her own gleams like the faint gilded edges of Mother’s favourite crockery, a little too silver to be fully gold.
In her daydreams, her brother’s hair gleams like tar or black oil, or the shimmer-sheen of hard-mined coal.
She names him Aurelius, in her daydreams, because everyone must have a name.
Aberforth grows curter as they get older. She knows he doesn’t mean it. She knows it’s because he wishes he could be at home more, help Mother more, especially now that Albus is swanning off to Europe as though they don’t matter at all.
She knows, also, that some of it is because of her magic.
Unstable, they say. Unbalanced. Ariana wonders if she should tell them that her magic’s always been a little wonky. Not out of her control, not like it is now, but it had always… she would call her magic and make a flower dance in her palm, and then another magic would rise out of her palm, and tear it to pieces.
Or the time the teacups danced - she had only meant to call one to her, but the other magic had risen up out of her skin and called the rest and left them dancing around the kitchen until Mother had come in to settle them all down.
She hadn’t known, then, how to say that it hadn’t been only her. That there was another magic in the house, in her , and that she hadn’t known what to do with it.
Then, when Albus had been away and Aberforth and Mother had been at market, Ariana decided to name it.
Names, after all, if Albus was to be believed, held power.
The power of names has long been held, from the European concept of the Fae, entities bound by their names, to the Japanese concept of Kotodama, whereby the naming of things can reveal other facets of their existence. Even the Ancient Egyptians, creators of some of the greatest curses known to wizardkind, acknowledged the power of the name. In Kemetic cosmology the Name was the Ren , a part of one’s very soul. To name something was to create something, and to destroy a name was to destroy the thing itself.
After all, no thing can continue without a soul.
-- Excerpt from Meditations on Magic and Meaning: Magical Theory at its Finest by N. Omen.
Aurelius sits with her in shadow. No one ever knows he’s there but her. He has cheekbones like she does, like mother does - hard and sharp and high. In her face they’re softened by childish baby-fat, so she imagines Aurelius’ to be sharper. His eyes are the same shape as hers, but hers are the same clear blue as father’s, so she imagines him to have mother’s eyes, dark and definite, and piercing in the same way as Albus and Aberforth’s. Her eyes aren’t so piercing though - she’s more like Father was, a watcher who only engages when she must.
Sometimes she wishes that Father hadn’t had to intervene after-
The floating magic of Aurelius’s presence rests a hand on her shoulder.
Sometimes she thinks that Aurelius has always been there. Certainly, the wonky magic she’s had all her life is a part of him. But after- After. He’s something else. Something more. When she panics he wraps himself around her, warm as a second skin, forcing everything else away unless its’ Aberforth singing or Mother’s worn hands or the goats, snuffling and strangely curious.
He doesn’t speak. She’s wondered about that but when she thinks more than a moment she knows why all too well.
She’s spoken to so few people, after all. How could she possibly give him a voice when she’ll know exactly who he sounds like?
“You did this,” she says to Aurelius as Aberforth and Albus busy themselves around Mother’s body. Her real brothers don’t see her in the corner and she’s speaking so quietly to the thing in the shadows. “You. I told you. I told you not to.”
Aurelius’ head tilts. His lips purse. He frowns, just a little.
Ariana knows the words he’d say, if she let him have them. I’m just a part of you. I can’t do anything that you don’t let me.
But she won’t let him have them. If she lets him have them, if she lets him say them, she’ll have to wonder if she wanted Mother dead after all.
“Don’t come near me,” she whispers to the shadow. “Don’t you dare.”
“We have to,” Aberforth’s voice says. “Let’s get you cleaned up, all right, ‘ana?”
When Ariana looks back to the shadow, she sees the face of Aurelius fading away.
She doesn’t see her imagined brother for days after that. For weeks. For months.
She regrets it, almost, sending him away. He was the one piece of magic she’d always been able to work, even after- after everything broke. She’s never had a trouble pulling him out of nothing and spinning his presence into place beside her. She can’t let herself now. But it’s strange. As long as she’s had him he’s been a separate thing, even if he was always beside her.
Now he’s no longer beside her, but his thoughts and face are always in her mind.
How can I be away from you, he asks her, over and over, How can I be away from you if I am you?
Ariana doesn’t know. But she’s fourteen years old, now. She’s too old for imaginary friends.
Go away, she thinks instead, and goes to feed the goats with Aberforth.
Something about Albus’ new friend sends prickles of worry over her shoulders. It’s almost like when the Other magic would rise out of her skin, like when Aurelius would wrap himself around her when the panic took her.
No, she tells the fragments of him she keeps pushing to the edge of his mind. I don’t need your protection. I need protection from you.
It doesn’t stop the prickles of worry, though. It doesn’t stop the magic.
The day of the duel Ariana is sat upstairs. Her magic has been quiet. The Other magic has been quiet. She thinks, that maybe, finally, sending the Other away has helped. Maybe, if she manages this, one day she’ll be healed. One day she’ll be able to go to Hogwarts. Be a normal witch.
Maybe. Maybe maybe maybe. Does she dare to dream? After she cut out her daydream to make him control the Other and when neither of them could control the Other at all and she’d cast him away entirely?
She sits at the window, and wonders if she has any dreams left.
“Depulso!” comes Aberforth’s voice, loud and clear. She hears a crash.
“Protego!” Albus. Unmistakable.
“You idiot boy!” Grindelwald. “How dare you! Decor-”
“Silencio!”
Out of the window, Ariana’s brothers duel Albus’ dear friend.
The magic prickles around Ariana’s shoulders.
Spells flash across the garden. They’re bright and unmistakable. Ariana knows what only a handful of them will do, ones Albus had once shown off, or that Aberforth had explained. She doesn’t know what any of the ones that Gellert is casting do, just that they’re bright and terrible, and make the magic pinch at her shoulders in warning as her brother’s shield and dive in desperation.
“Stop!” she cries.
They don’t hear her. They never hear her.
“Stop!” she cries again, and throws the force of her magic behind it. The shout rocks through the garden, but none of them respond. She pulls her magic, pulls it out in a way she hasn’t since before- since before. She pulls it though, pulls it hard and it flares out of her shoulders in a familiar shape.
“Aurelius,” she whispers, and steps forward towards the spellfire.
When they hit, the light that illuminates everything is gold.
Two years after Ariana dies, something manifests in the Dumbledore house.
After a little while, it screams.