What Happened To Dumbledore's Sister In The Harry Potter Universe

Throughout the "Harry Potter" books and films, it's safe to say that Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (played in the first two films by Richard Harris and Michael Gambon after Harris' passing in 2002), is somewhat of a man of mystery. Dumbledore, a mentor and parental figure to Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), doesn't share a lot of information with Harry in general — a move that, to be honest, puts Harry in peril quite often — and he definitely doesn't share a lot of personal information. When Dumbledore dies in the sixth book and film, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (very old spoiler alert?), Harry is left with far more questions than answers, to say the least ... and after Dumbledore's funeral, he unexpectedly learns some dark facts about the legendary wizard.

In the book version of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," disgraced reporter Rita Skeeter releases several extraordinarily nasty excerpts from her book "The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore," a tome that accuses the wizard of "dabbling in the Dark Arts," and Harry first hears about it at a wedding held at the Burrow (the Weasley family's humble abode). Throughout the final book in the series, which was split into two films, Harry learns more and more about Dumbledore's childhood, teenage years, and past — and specifically, he learns more about Dumbledore's beloved younger sister Ariana Dumbledore.

An important note here: the "reveal" in the "Fantastic Beasts" films that there's another Dumbledore sibling, Aurelius Dumbledore (Ezra Miller), won't be addressed here. Not only does that turn out to be false (Aurelius is later explained to be the son of Aberforth Dumbledore, played in that franchise by Richard Coyle), but the "Fantastic Beasts" franchise will likely go unfinished, so it's (mostly) not going to come into play here. With that out of the way, here's everything you need to know about Ariana Dumbledore ... and her tragic fate. 

The youngest child of Percival and Kendra Dumbledore, Ariana Dumbledore, was born with magical powers just like her older brothers Albus and Aberforth ... but unfortunately, the fact that she couldn't control her magic at a young age cost her her future. (Kendra was a Muggle-born witch, making all of the Dumbledore children technically "half-blooded.") When Ariana was just six years old, she was happily performing childlike magic outside of the Dumbledore family home in Mould-on-the-Wold, an English village home to many magical families, which was a relatively common thing for young magical children to do. Sadly, a few Muggle boys who were spying on her saw her cast rudimentary spells without a wand attacked Ariana, and the incident traumatized her so deeply that she seemed unable to perform any sort of magic anymore. As Aberforth, played in the "Harry Potter" movies by Ciarán Hinds, tells Harry in the book. "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."

When Percival learned of his daughter's attack, he searched for and attacked the three Muggle boys and was sent to Azkaban for his crimes, largely because he was unwilling to say why he attacked them. (The fact that he never disclosed this also means that Ariana never received necessary magical medical attention at St. Mungo's.) It gets worse from there. After Albus left home to travel after graduating from school, Aberforth was left to help his mother Kendra care for Ariana; tragedy struck a second time, and Kendra died.

"Then, when she was fourteen ... see, I wasn't there," Aberforth tells Harry in '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 killed."

After Kendra's death, Albus and Aberforth ostensibly team up in Godric's Hollow — a town populated only by wizards where the family moved after the incident in Mould-on-the-Wold — to take care of Ariana, but as the sort-of ghost of Dumbledore tells Harry at the end of the narrative of "Deathly Hallows" while they're both in a sort of limbo after Harry sacrifices himself to Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), a young Albus resented this. As Dumbledore says in the book, "I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted glory," explaining that he was selfish in regards to his goals and felt angry that he was trapped in a small town taking care of his sister. Unfortunately for everybody, that's where his best buddy Gellert Grindelwald — Jamie Campbell Bower in "Harry Potter" and both Mads Mikkelsen and Johnny Depp in "Fantastic Beasts" — shows up in Godric's Hollow, creating an immediate divide between Albus and Aberforth.

'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," Aberforth mournfully tells Harry and his two best friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) in "Deathly Hallows." "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." Yes, Ariana Dumbledore is killed by a stray spell during a duel between three fully-grown wizards; as Albus later tells Harry, he believes it was Grindelwald: "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."

Even though the general public doesn't know the terrible secret of Ariana's death, it is a well-known fact that, at Ariana's funeral, Aberforth broke Albus' nose in a duel — and the relationship between the brothers never fully recovered. When Harry, Ron, and Hermione meet Aberforth in "Deathly Hallows," he's a bitter and closed-off man who tells Harry to give up the fight against Voldemort because they can't win, and any faith in his brother was misplaced. Speaking with Harry, Aberforth grouses that Albus was "free" after Ariana's death, but Harry does correct him and says his brother was "never free," referencing their hunt for a particular Horcrux in which Dumbledore was tortured with a potion and began screaming for an unseen person to hurt him instead of "them," presumably referring to the fight with Grindelwald that endangered Aberforth and killed Ariana. 

As the book reads, "'He thought he was back there with you and Grindelwald, I know he did,' said Harry, remembering Dumbledore whimpering, pleading. 'He thought he was watching Grindelwald hurting you and Ariana ... it was torture to him, if you'd seen him then, you wouldn't say he was free.'" Though Aberforth asks if Harry is sure he isn't "dispensable" like Ariana, Harry fights back, and ultimately, Aberforth fights for his brother and sister's memory alongside the students of Hogwarts against Voldemort, bringing the Dark Lord down forever. Tragically, while they're in limbo, Dumbledore tells Harry something particularly heartbreaking, which is that he cursed his own hand — and signed his own death warrant — by putting on the cursed ring containing the Resurrection Stone hoping to apologize to his mother, father, and brother. 

The terms "Obscurus" and "Obscurial" aren't really mentioned in the original "Harry Potter" franchise, so here's where we must return to things we learn in the "Fantastic Beasts" franchise about wizards who suffer from this affliction. Basically, when a young witch or wizard has to suppress their magical abilities, they can cause a sort of magical internal blockage or injury called an "Obscurus." When an Obscurial faces extreme stress, their Obscurus can send them into a state that's best described as a possession; in the "Fantastic Beasts" films, anyone suffering from an Obscurus attack resembles cinematic portrayals of people who require exorcisms, showing the white of their eyes and causing their bodies to contort. Children with an Obscurus typically died young as a result of the stress on their bodies.

Other Obscurials seen in the "Fantastic Beasts" franchise include Credence Barebone, the wizard who turns out to be Aberforth's son — and not Albus' brother — Aurelius, who survives much longer than a typical Obscurial. Based on the definition, we can safely conclude that Ariana was, in fact, an Obscurial, which means that if she hadn't been killed in the duel between Grindelwald, Aberforth, and Albus, she likely wouldn't have lived long anyway. 

If you want to check out Ariana's brief appearance (in portrait form) in the "Harry Potter" films, they're all streaming on Peacock now.