Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

Doge, who had been calm because of Evan’s explanation, became flustered again. His face was now turning radish-colored.

“Ill-informed sniping,” he said loudly.

“You would say that, Elphias,” cackled Auntie Muriel. “I noticed how you skated over the sticky patches in that obituary of yours!”

“I’m sorry you think so,” said Doge, more coldly still. “I assure you I was writing from the heart.”

“Oh, we all know you worshipped Dumbledore; I daresay you’ll still think he was a saint even if it does turn out that he did away with his Squib sister!”

“Muriel!” exclaimed Doge.

“What do you mean?” Harry asked Muriel. “Who said his sister was a Squib? I thought she was ill?”

“Thought wrong, then, didn’t you, Barry!” said Auntie Muriel, looking delighted at the effect she had produced. “Anyway, how could you expect to know anything about it? It all happened years and years before you were even thought of, my dear, and the truth is that those of us who were alive then never knew what really happened. That’s why I can’t wait to find out what Skeeter’s unearthed! Dumbledore kept that sister of his quiet for a long time!”

“Untrue!” wheezed Doge. “Absolutely untrue!”

“Wait, you’re saying Dumbledore killed his sister?” said Harry suddenly, a chill in his heart.

“Who knows? Like I said, no one alive knows exactly what happened. But we can infer from the many subsequent clues that Dumbledore killed his sister. This is very likely. Perhaps he thought she was too great a burden. If you look at Dumbledore’s past behavior —”

“It wasn’t Dumbledore who killed her, but he bore responsibility — he didn’t take proper care of her,” Evan interrupted Muriel. “That was a failing he could never shirk. But everyone makes mistakes, and over his sister’s death, Dumbledore always carried deep remorse. The key lies in the repentance and choices he made afterward.”

“Oh, Barty, you seem so understanding and noble, but how much do you know about Dumbledore?!” Muriel sneered at Evan, swirling the wine in her glass, even getting his assumed name wrong. “You defend him, but I’m sure you have no idea how cruelly he treated his sister, a Squib. You probably don’t even know she was a Squib, do you? Poor child, how could you know about these past events that even Dumbledore’s closest friends don’t know? Like those others, you’ve been deceived by Dumbledore’s long-standing facade. You don’t know his true self, nor do you know what happened back then.”

Evan knew full well. That night at Gaunt’s Cottage, and during his visit to Grindelwald, Dumbledore had told him much about his hidden past.

Things were nothing like Muriel’s malicious speculation, but Evan couldn’t explain it clearly. Right now, he wasn’t Evan — he was supposed to be a distant relative of the Weasleys. How could he possibly know about such matters?! And besides, why should he even bother arguing with Auntie Muriel over this?!

There was no point in talking to someone like her about this. He could just explain it to Harry and Hermione alone later.

On this matter, Dumbledore had indeed made mistakes, but he had atoned for them all his life.

That was enough, at least Evan believed it was enough!

“Perhaps. But I think you can’t judge a person’s entire life by their past mistakes. And many things aren’t the way we imagine them — what we see with our own eyes isn’t necessarily the truth, let alone what’s guessed at,” said Evan. “Anyway, I’m a little hungry. I think we ought to find something to eat.”

But Harry didn’t move. He seemed to care a great deal about Muriel’s words, and muttered in disappointment, “He never told me his sister was a Squib.”

“And why on earth would he tell you?” screeched Muriel, swaying a little in her seat as she attempted to focus upon Harry.

She was no longer looking at Evan; Harry’s question brought the subject back to the point she was trying to make.

“Albus never mentioned Ariana, not to anyone, and it’s not that he deliberately didn’t tell you, my boy,” said Elphias in a voice stiff with emotion. “The reason is, I should have thought, quite clear. He was so devastated by her death. … Now, you should be enjoying the party, not —”

“Why did nobody ever see her, Elphias?” squawked Muriel, interrupting Doge. “Don’t dodge the question. Why did half of us never even know she existed, until they carried the coffin out of the house and held a funeral for her? Where was saintly Albus while Ariana was locked in the cellar? Off being brilliant at Hogwarts, and never mind what was going on in his own house!”

“What d’you mean, locked in the cellar?” asked Harry at once. “What is this?”

Doge looked wretched and Auntie Muriel cackled again.

“Dumbledore’s mother was a terrifying woman, simply terrifying. Muggle-born, though I heard she pretended otherwise —”

“She never pretended anything of the sort! Kendra was a fine woman,” whispered Doge miserably, but Auntie Muriel ignored him.

“— proud and very domineering, the sort of witch who would have been mortified to produce a Squib —”

“Ariana was not a Squib!” wheezed Doge, so caught up in his argument that he had forgotten to chase Evan and the others away.

“So you say, Elphias, but explain, then, why she never attended Hogwarts!” said Auntie Muriel. She turned back to Evan, Harry, Hermione, and Elaine. “You may not know, but in our day, Squibs were often hushed up, though to take it to the extreme of actually imprisoning a little girl in the house and pretending she didn’t exist —”

“I tell you, that’s not what happened!” said Doge, but Auntie Muriel steamrollered on, unstoppable.

“Squibs were usually shipped off to Muggle schools and encouraged to integrate into the Muggle community … much kinder than trying to find them a place in the Wizarding world, where they must always be second class; but naturally Kendra Dumbledore wouldn’t have dreamed of letting her daughter go to a Muggle school —”

“Ariana was delicate!” said Doge desperately. “Her health was always too poor to permit her —”

“— to permit her to leave the house?” cackled Muriel. “And yet she was never taken to St. Mungo’s and no Healer was ever summoned to see her!”

“Really, Muriel, how you can possibly know whether —”

“For your information, Elphias, my cousin Lancelot was a Healer at St. Mungo’s at the time, and he told my family in strictest confidence that Ariana had never been seen there. All most suspicious, Lancelot thought!”

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