Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling [57]
“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!”
Doge looked to be on the verge of tears. Auntie Muriel, who seemed to be enjoying herself hugely, snapped her fingers for more champagne. Numbly Harry thought of how the Dursleys had once shut him up, locked him away, kept him out of sight, all for the crime of being a wizard. Had Dumbledore’s sister suffered the same fate in reverse: imprisoned for her lack of magic? And had Dumbledore truly left her to her fate while he went off to Hogwarts, to prove himself brilliant and talented?
“Now, if Kendra hadn’t died first,” Muriel resumed, “I’d have said that it was she who finished off Ariana —”
“How can you, Muriel?” groaned Doge. “A mother kill her own daughter? Think what you are saying!”
“If the mother in question was capable of imprisoning her daughter for years on end, why not?” shrugged Auntie Muriel. “But as I say, it doesn’t fit, because Kendra died before Ariana — of what, nobody ever seemed sure —”
“Oh, no doubt Ariana murdered her,” said Doge with a brave attempt at scorn. “Why not?”
“Yes, Ariana might have made a desperate bid for freedom and killed Kendra in the struggle,” said Auntie Muriel thoughtfully. “Shake your head all you like, Elphias! You were at Ariana’s funeral, were you not?”
“Yes I was,” said Doge, through trembling lips. “And a more desperately sad occasion I cannot remember. Albus was heartbroken —”
“His heart wasn’t the only thing. Didn’t Aberforth break Albus’s nose halfway through the service?”
If Doge had looked horrified before this, it was nothing to how he looked now. Muriel might have stabbed him. She cackled loudly and took another swig of champagne, which dribbled down her chin.
“How do you — ?” croaked Doge.
“My mother was friendly with old Bathilda Bagshot,” said Auntie Muriel happily. “Bathilda described the whole thing to Mother while I was listening at the door. A coffin-side brawl! The way Bathilda told it, Aberforth shouted that it was all Albus’s fault that Ariana was dead and then punched him in the face. According to Bathilda, Albus did not even defend himself, and that’s odd enough in itself, Albus could have destroyed Aberforth in a duel with both hands tied behind his back.”
Muriel swigged yet more champagne. The recitation of these old scandals seemed to elate her as much as they horrified Doge. Harry did not know what to think, what to believe: He wanted the truth, and yet all Doge did was sit there and bleat feebly that Ariana had been ill. Harry could hardly believe that Dumbledore would not have intervened if such cruelty was happening inside his own house, and yet there was undoubtedly something odd about the story.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” Muriel said, hiccuping slightly as she lowered her goblet. “I think Bathilda has spilled the beans to Rita Skeeter. All those hints in Skeeter’s interview about an important source close to the Dumbledores — goodness knows she was there all through the Ariana business, and it would fit!”
“Bathilda would never talk to Rita Skeeter!” whispered Doge.
“Bathilda Bagshot?” Harry said. “The author of A History of Magic?”
The name was printed on the front of one of Harry’s textbooks, though admittedly not one of the ones he had read most attentively.
“Yes,” said Doge, clutching at Harry’s question like a drowning man at a life belt. “A most gifted