CHAPDISC: PS/SS 1, The Boy Who Lived and Avatar SPOILERS LONG

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 187783

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "catlady_de_los_angeles" <catlady at ...> wrote:
his Grander Tour because he 'had to' stay home to care for Ariana because his mother had died suddenly. I believe it is only an implication that Kendra was killed by an effect of one of Ariana's magical tantrums, or is there a more psychiatric word for a rage?

Pippin:
It's a bit more than an implication. 
Aberforth says, "If I'd been there, I could have calmed her down. She had one of her rages, and my mother wasn't as young as she was, and...it was an accident. Ariana couldn't control it. But my mother was dead."

Aberforth wasn't there, so it's not clear how he knows what happened, or who arranged things so that Ariana was not discovered, much less suspected by anyone else. But the brothers  believed that Kendra's determination to care for her daughter alone had cost her her life. 


Up till then, Albus had been sheltered from the unrewarding (to him) drudgery of looking after Ariana, or, indeed, drudgery of any kind.  I don't think he had the Draco-ish thought that this sort of thing was for servants -- IMO, he hadn't even known it existed. Not that he never had routine stuff to do, I suppose, but nothing that wasn't so easy he  couldn't think about more interesting things while he did it. Unfortunately, you can't daydream while you're looking after a person with a history of unpredictable violence.

As you say, Albus was a good boy. A less conscientious person would have seized his freedom, left Aberforth to care for Ariana, and happily gone on with his life. 

But Albus's parents had made their terrible sacrifices so that his brother could go to school and Ariana could remain at home. He felt he owed it to them to sacrifice his own ambitions. And that's what Albus tried to do. He didn't enjoy it, but Aberforth says he did alright for a few weeks, until Grindelwald showed up.

 Aberforth found himself taking care of Ariana again, and that was okay with him. But then it was time for Aberforth to go back to school. Albus couldn't think of abandoning his sister to St Mungo's or let his brother abandon his schooling when that's what his parents had died to prevent.

So he and Grindelwald decided they'd just bring Ariana along.  That's what started the fight with Aberforth, who could see that Ariana was in no fit state to be moved, much less hauled along on whatever adventures Albus and Grindelwald were planning. 

Pippin