Dumbledore? I can’t wait to read it. I must remember to place an order at Flourish and
Blotts!”
Doge looked stiff and solemn at this but Auntie Muriel drained her goblet and
clicked her bony fingers at a passing waiter for a replacement. She took another large
gulp of champagne, belched and then said, “There’s no need to look like a pair of stuffed
frogs! Before he became so respected and respectable and all that tosh, there were some
mighty funny rumors about Albus!”
“Ill-informed sniping,” said Doge, turning radish-colored again.
“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.
A chill that had nothing to do with the iced champagne was stealing through
Harry’s chest.
“What do you mean?” he 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!”
“He never told me his sister as a Squib,” said Harry, without thinking, still cold
inside.
“And why on earth would he tell you?” screeched Muriel, swaying a little in her
seat as she attempted to focus upon Harry.
“The reason Albus never spoke about Ariana,” began Elphias in a voice stiff with
emotion, “is, I should have thought, quite clear. He was so devastated by her death –“
“Why did nobody ever see her, Elphias?” squawked Muriel, “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. “What is this?”
Doge looked wretched. Auntie Muriel cackled again and answered Harry.
“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 you say, Elphias, but explain, then, why she never attended Hogwarts!” said