Pottermore Discusses the Life of Ariana Dumbledore

Dec 02, 2016

Posted by: Emma Pocock

Fantastic Beasts Movie, News, Pottermore

WARNING: Fantastic Beasts Spoilers below!

As we know from the Harry Potter series, Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore’s younger sister, Ariana, was killed tragically at aged 14. Pottermore has discussed the circumstances leading to her death.

The first incident occurred when Ariana was six, involving a group of Muggle boys (which left her traumatised and too afraid to perform magic):

‘When my sister was six years old, she was attacked, set upon, by three Muggle boys. They’d seen her doing magic, spying through the back garden hedge: she was a kid, she couldn’t control it, no witch or wizard can at that age. What they saw scared them, I expect. They forced their way through the hedge, and when she couldn’t show them the trick, they got a bit carried away trying to stop the little freak doing it.’

Hold up a second, ‘too afraid to perform magic’? Pottermore reminds us that her powers ‘turned inwards’, and comments that this is ‘extremely dangerous’:

“Aberforth describes her as mostly ‘sweet, and scared, and harmless’, but when she was upset or angry, magic would explode out of her and she would become ‘strange and dangerous’”

It’s not just us that thinks this sounds eerily like an obscurus – comments have been flooding in in Twitter, most of them commenting on the comparison an the suspicious timing of the release of this article.

Kendra – Albus and Aberforth’s mother – died as a result of one of Ariana’s ‘rages’, that she ‘couldn’t control’. Later, Grindelwald created friction between Aberforth and Albus Dumbledore, with Aberforth challenging Grindelwald, and Ariana losing control and being tragically killed:

‘…I pulled out my wand, and he pulled out his, and I had the Cruciatus Curse used on me by my brother’s best friend – and Albus was trying to stop him, and then all three of us were duelling, and the flashing lights and the bangs set her off, she couldn’t stand it –’
The colour was draining from Aberforth’s face as though he had suffered a mortal wound.
‘– and I think she wanted to help, but she didn’t really know what she was doing, and I don’t know which of us did it, it could have been any of us – and she was dead.’

However, Ariana’s death does not appear to be the same as Credence’s explosion into tiny fragments:

‘Grindelwald lost control. That which I had always sensed in him, though I pretended not to, now sprang into terrible being. And Ariana … after all my mother’s care and caution … lay dead upon the floor.’

Read the full story at Pottermore here and let us know if you think Ariana was an obscurial – what are your theories? Was Grindelwald potentially interested in obscurials as a result of his knowledge of Ariana Dumbledore’s circumstances?





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