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ad astra per aspera ( to the stars through adversity)
.✧･ﾟ: ༉‧₊˚✧
𝕿ragedy — that's the word.
Tragedy is the tuneless chords tapped underneath the old classroom tables, and the coarse grit in the taste of twilight colours on her tongue. Tragedy is the twinkle carved into each of the constellations glossing past her lonely brown eyes, and the weight between her collarbones that felt sometimes like a person of its own.
It holds her. Close to its chest, like a careful mother, combing frail fingers through her copper-red hair. I am here, it seemed to be promising. I am here.
It watches. Shifts and shimmers over her shoulder as she leans over her daughter's cot, singing lullabies to fill the silence — stories from the shores of Cornwall, salt-slick tunes stolen right off her mother's tongue —
It watches, for it knows.
Tragedy is the Patronuses, the prophecies, and the palpitation of her heart as the truth tore into it : Voldemort has fallen. Lily and James are dead. Harry Potter is the Boy Who Lived. It follows her to the front door like a worried lover, waiting patiently while she fumbles with her cloak.
Do not be afraid, I will always be here.
She knows, too. It lingers in her sun-soaked shadow as she strides through the restless ribs of the Ministry of Magic. Within, where some semblance of a heart heaves with activity, she knows Bartemius Crouch will greet her a grim frown, and a folder to the face.
"Good news, Black," he'll tell her, "you've been promoted. I want a full report of the Potters' case on my desk by tomorrow night, which includes any conversations you might choose to have with the convicted."
"What?" she'll reply, startled. "How — I don't — who's the convicted?"
And there will be tragedy in the steely eyes, the scalding edge of her superintendent's eyes as he stares at her, suspicion giving way to sympathy as he spoke :
"Your husband."
It rests a firm hand on her shoulder, like a heartbroken father, and she feels a little less like a solivagant even with sorrow's cold lips on her skin. Why are you weeping? it asks softly. I have always been here.
Yes. Ariana Yseult Dumbledore was named for two women that had been wronged by those they held most dear — her father's sister Ariana, murdered for no fault of her own — and Yseult of the White Hands¹, forever shadowed by her husband's first love. Tragedy, for her, is both the soft rush of saltwater that sang her to sleep every night, and the slant in Sirius Black's smile when his eyes found hers.
"Twelve Muggles," she said, when she was finally standing across him in the solitary confines of Azkaban — disbelieving, because she didn't want to believe it. "Peter Pettigrew. Lily Potter. James Potter."
He wore the weight of his empty gaze like a weapon, and she felt her words shake. Oh, how like a flower he was : so beautiful, even in something so near epilogue!
"I don't know what to do," she went on, fear giving way to fury at the lack of response. "Merlin, I should just kill you. I should kill you right here and now for what you did to them."
When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, heavy. "I won't stop you."
Oh, but for death, desire, and the deliquescence of it all! Distantly, she wondered if this was the great trial of God. This cold jail cell, and all she could take from within it, was this her chariot to the so-called celestial paradise?
"Tell me you didn't do it," she begged, still searching for hope in the slippery hands of betrayal. "Tell me, and I'll believe you. Just tell me you didn't do it, Sirius, please."
He could — he knew that. Sirius could take her heart between his teeth and tell her that it had not been his fault, that he did not tip the scales that led to his best friend's death — but he didn't want to, he didn't want to lielike that, not to her.
"I owe you the truth," he whispered.
I owe you — the words lodged into her heart, a wound that would never heal enough to turn scar. I owe you — what, as though they were not equals, united by love and law?
Sirius Black did not owe Ariana Dumbledore anything, neither in this life nor the next.
"How could you?" she cried, rattling the rusted metal bars separating them. "How could you do this? I know the man I married — this isn't him, Sirius! Where have you gone? What have you become?"
Perhaps he doesn't speak, or perhaps his words are simply lost in translation. Ariana knows what it is to scream into the silence of space, and hope not ever to be heard : she is made of supernova residue, after all.
"When you find him," she finished, trembling, "when you find the Sirius I fell in love with, let me know."
( Yes, Ariana Yseult Dumbledore was named for two women that had been wronged by those they held most dear — and the world would never let her forget it. )
Her father was waiting outside to catch her when her heart finally gave way, and it was perhaps fitting. For Albus Dumbledore, too, had knelt at the feet of a killer and wished it were his grave — Albus Dumbledore, too, had mourned the mercy-killing of a love.
And there is tragedy in her grieved gasps, her wordless wails. Was holiness supposed to be such a heavy thing? I am here for you, it reminds. I have always been here, and I will always be here.
She stared out across the nightscape — a sky that would always be missing one star — and felt the first tears begin to fall.
.✧･ﾟ: ༉‧₊˚✧
1. From the famous Arthurian legend Tristan and Yseult.
