CIII: Defeating Darkness

Note: Not DH-compliant! Forget anything you think you may know about Grindelwald.

CIII: Defeating Darkness

Albus took another sip of chamomile tea, then finished his cup and poured both of them another.

"I found myself heading south through Turkey then continuing to Persia and over to Egypt, then moving eastward again, stopping occasionally, meeting wizards, and humbly accepting whatever hospitality was offered me. I was feeling more like myself, my curiosity was returning, and I sought again to learn all I could from anyone who offered to teach me – even if it was something as simple and Muggle as how to smoke a hookah," Albus said with a slight smile. "Eventually, I found myself in India, where I heard of a wizarding Master of every Art who lived high in the Himalayas. I now travelled with a goal in mind, to find this master and beg him to teach me. I did find him, and daily, I presented myself, and daily, I found myself essentially ignored, though in the most friendly manner. I could never find myself resenting this cheerful and kind old wizard, his face like a wrinkled, brown apple. He gradually began offering me lessons, although I did not recognise them as that at first. A few words, a story, a question without an answer . . . then he invited me to join him for a meal, and for six months, I ate at his table and slept on his floor and cleaned his small, two-room house, sharing tasks with a few others who had also come to the master for what they could learn from him. Somehow, no matter how menial the task, I did not mind it, and I found peace in the most mundane work.

"Finally, one night I told Master Nyima all that had brought me to him, my mother's death, my flight from home, my escape from myself, every seedy and humiliating detail; I told him of my guilt and my despair and my arrogance and my sorrow and my yearning, and as I told him, it was as though it were he who was telling the story, and as though it was a story he had always known and had often told. I . . . I wept then, and I felt . . . it is hard to describe," Albus said, his voice hitching. "I felt liberated, in a way, something similar to the way I had felt when I awoke in the mud after having been discarded by Gelly. But this was better . . . I felt as though I had escaped not some constraining force outside of me, as I had then, but from something within me that had held me enslaved to it.

"A few days later, Master Nyima led me to a mountain, pointed to a cave, and told me to stay there and to practise. I asked him what I should practise, and he merely laughed. Before he left, he told me that he often took the wands of foreign wizards in order to assist them in their practice, but that he would leave me with mine because he believed I already knew it to be a mere tool and not the source of my magic."

"He left you alone in the mountains? At a cave?" Minerva asked, incredulous. "What were you supposed to do for food?"

Albus laughed. "Oh, I could scavenge, but I usually just came down to the village every several days and . . . um . . . well, I suppose one might call it begging, but it was something different there. I would show up, people knew that I needed food, and they would bring it to me, and I would leave again. It was somehow normal there. We are all dependent upon one another all of the time, anyway, it's just evident more at some times than at others. It was . . . it was like being reduced to infancy, again – not in a bad way, not at all – but I was beginning again, and like a baby seeking his mother's breast without thought of anything except the care and nourishment he receives, I accepted the care and nourishment provided by the village. It was, in a way, my mother. I was in its care, her care, and when I left her, I repaid her by passing that care on to others when I could.

"What Nyima did, in fact, was leave me a few hundred of yards from the cave. And I soon discovered why. There was an aged dragon living in the next cave adjoining it, an ancient mother of dragons. She did not take very kindly to having a human neighbour. It took me four days to actually move into the cave. In the meantime, I made do with a nightly fire and the occasional warming charm. I did not sleep well or easy, however. Finally, we reached a kind of . . . truce, I suppose you would call it. I even brewed her potions to clear her sinuses. A dragon with congested sinuses is a sad sight, Minerva, truly," he said, chuckling at Minerva's incredulous look. "And I scratched her back. Literally. With no mate around, and her children long gone to their own territories, she had no other dragon to scratch the itchy scales she was unable to reach. She could roll about in the dirt and loose stone, of course, and that helped, but she was genuinely ancient and appreciated a more passive way to relieve her itching. And she, in turn, would occasionally share a goat or other animal with me. It was quite a surprise when I first woke one morning to find the slightly charred haunch of some unidentifiable hoofed beast outside my cave. I learned a great deal about dragons during those months I lived beside Mother Dragon.

"I used little active magic, though I practised the exercises in mental magical control that Nyima had taught me and the Occlumency exercises that I had learned from Nicolas Flamel years before. It was a wonderful time for me, Minerva. I cannot express the peace I found there. I began to find ways to assist the villagers. I set up some wards for them – warding in that part of the world is quite different from what it is here – and did a few other magical tasks as I was able. Their love and compassion, though, was not dependent on what I did or didn't do for them. It was remarkable. And I began to remember all of the others in my life who had loved me, who had cared for me, and I began to understand the lesson that Flamel believed I hadn't learned. That my greatest asset, my greatest potential, lay not in my mind or in my magic, but in my heart. It always does, for anyone, no matter their talents or abilities, whether magic or Muggle. It was only love that mattered – true love, generous love, based on compassion, and not on mere desire for possession and control – and I felt that love there from them in the village, and even from Mother Dragon there on the mountain. It was not enough to gain knowledge and self-mastery, but one should use it in the service of others, even if only in a small way. Quite the opposite of the lessons I had rejected from Gelly those years before.

"Then one night I awoke to the roaring of my neighbour. I rushed from my cave and found that a band of wizarding thieves had come to rob my cave, believing the foreign wizard to be hiding riches and Charmed objects. I had no such things, of course, but I do not doubt that they would have killed me to search the cave or in an attempt to get me to reveal the location of these nonexistent riches. But my neighbour, Mother Dragon, came to my assistance. We were doing well together, and I believed we would drive them off and remain unscathed ourselves, but then one of their number raised a Muggle crossbow and loosed a bolt that found her eye and went deep into her brain. With an unearthly scream, Mother Dragon thrashed a moment in midair, then plummeted to the ground, landing on several men and killing them instantly. The others fled into the darkness. I raced to her side, but my ancient friend was dead." Albus paused, blinking back tears. "She gave all she had to protect me. I used my wand to dig a pit and I buried the thieves there, but she . . . her heart had been so great and so giving, even if in a dragonish way, so I took her heart and packed it into a charmed urn, then at dawn, I incinerated her after the manner of dragons.

"Incinerating an entire dragon was tiring work after a long night, but I left the mountain immediately. I went to Nyima and told him what had happened and what I had learned. He would have continued to teach me, and I knew I had more I could learn from him, but I felt it was time to return to my own people and to resume my life here.

"Still, I took my time and travelled back to Europe, stopping along the way and seeing everything with newborn eyes. In Egypt, I found a new friend. One morning, I awoke, and he was there beside me, beautiful in red and gold, and he allowed me to name him Fawkes. He has been my companion ever since.

"Eventually, I reached France and, with some trepidation, I sought out Nicolas and Perenelle again. I did not know if they knew about my mother, or, more embarrassingly, how I had passed through Europe on my way east, and how I allowed myself to go to seed. Now, though, dressed in the bright colours of the east and with Fawkes at my side, I overcame my embarrassment and returned to them. They embraced me . . ." Albus bent his head and Minerva could see tears shining on his cheeks. "They embraced me and Nicolas began to teach me again. I told him of a peculiar phenomenon that I had been experiencing. As you know, I had been an Animagus from the age of seventeen. I was self-taught, but I had never had any trouble with my transformation. I had been very careful always, although I suppose that it may have been somewhat reckless to have taken it on at all without a teacher, but there was no one available to me at the time. Still, I had never had any difficulties, none but the most minor sort, and those many years before. And yet now, my transformation was uncomfortable, and more uncomfortable each time I tried it. In addition, I found that my wand was not as responsive as I was used to. I put that down to my becoming accustomed to doing so much wandless magic for such a long time. But Nicolas was intrigued, and he did another divination, as he had before, with his coloured smoke and its dizzying effects on me.

"After this . . . divination, Nicolas instructed me not to transform into my Animagus form until he told me to, but to begin doing the novice mental exercises again, the internal ones only, as though I had never been an Animagus at all and was learning it for the first time. I did as he instructed without question. After approximately six months of this, during which time I lived and worked beside Nicolas and Perenelle and he treated me as an equal, although his knowledge and understanding far surpassed my own, the two brought me out to their garden one early morning and instructed me to transform into my Animagus form and to do it without any reflection.

"I did as they told me, and to my great surprise, my Animagus form was different. Not terribly different, but where I had been an Augurey before, I was now a phoenix. To say it was surprising would be an understatement. This phenomenon was almost unheard of. Even Nicolas, at his great age, only knew of three instances in history when a witch or wizard had their Animagus form change. And then to have changed into such a strongly magical form . . . it was almost unbelievable."

"How utterly extraordinary!" exclaimed Minerva, who had been listening quietly for some time, trying to absorb all that Albus was telling her and trying to understand that he was speaking of himself and of his own experiences many years before she was born. It seemed hard to comprehend that the kind, caring, vital, and courtly wizard whom she had known for so many years was the same man who had experienced such a youth. Her own life and her few trials seemed to pale in comparison. "Why did this happen? And how?"

"Nicolas said that I had undergone . . . a kind of purification and had become more myself and that the shift in my Animagus form was one sign of it. He compared it to an alchemical process, in fact," Albus answered. He turned his head, rolling his shoulders and stretching slightly. "It is late, but there is more, if you would hear it, my dear."

"Yes! Yes, of course. I do want to, very much," Minerva answered.

"I stayed with the Flamels for a while, and we developed a good working relationship, but my thoughts turned more and more frequently to my brother and to my uncle and his family. It had been years since I had been home or had word from them. My brother had written to me a few times those first months I had been gone, but when I never answered his owls, he ceased. I wrote Aberforth a letter then, telling him I was coming home. I did not know where to find him, however. One of the last letters he had sent told me that he had sold Mother's property and split the proceeds between us, depositing my share into my Gringotts account. But he did not tell me where he would be. So I waited, hoping that Aberforth would respond to my letter, despite not having heard a word from me for almost five years. Two days after I sent my owl off, I received a letter from him, remarkable only for its brevity. He was still in Godric's Hollow and worked at the Hag's Hump. He told me nothing else.

"I arrived at the Hag's Hump at two in the afternoon and found my brother, now a bearded young man, behind the bar. He greeted me curtly, asked me whether everything was in order with my accounts, and said that I was welcome to look at the papers from the sale of our mother's property if I wished. He had kept them for me. I told him I had not even given that a thought, but that I was home now and wanted to see him, learn how he was. That is when I learned that my Uncle Christopher had died the previous year and his daughter, Deborah, had married and moved to Canada with her new husband. Great-aunt Sarah, my father's aunt, had died a couple years before that. But Aunt Beatrice, Uncle Christopher's wife, still lived in the same house in Cornwall. Aberforth scarcely needed to say it, but I heard it in his voice, that Aunt Beatrice might be only marginally happier to see me than he himself was.

"I could not blame Aberforth for his attitude. He was five years behind me in school, and in his eyes, I had always had so much handed to me. I believe he even resented me my memories of our father, whom he barely remembered, except for the feel of his beard and the smell of his tobacco when he held him and told him his bedtime story. And after Dervilia died and I left my apprenticeship soon after, I was gone for four years, only to return and become my mother's little hero – that was what he called me at the time – and he resented my closeness to her when he had had her to himself and had done his best to help support her and be a good son during my years away. I do not blame him . . . and then, of course, he blamed me for her death. He knew my suspicions about the cause of her death, and he felt that whatever the cause, I was responsible for it. If it was, indeed, Gelly who had done it, I had brought the wizard into our lives and into our mother's home. If it was not Gelly, then it was still my fault, either something I had done, a bad potion I had given her, or something I had not done that would have saved her. And I did not hold those feelings against him, either, as I blamed myself, and for the same reasons he did. I think . . . I think that even after all these years, I still do, but he has moved on . . .

"I went to see my Aunt Beatrice, and to my surprise, I did receive a warm reception from her. Still, most of my ties had been cut, and somehow, some word of my earlier dissolute wanderings through Europe had reached the ears of my former friends and acquaintances. Some had even believed me dead, not having heard word of me in so many years. Seeing me again, quite whole and healthy, most did not credit the earlier rumours. But nonetheless, I could not simply pick up precisely where I had left off. There was no need to, of course, and I hadn't expected to do so. I was, after all, a master of two Arts, and had learned so much more in my travels and in my work with the Flamels. I had a new beginning. And for this fresh start, I took some of my small inheritance and bought a small cottage in the North of England. I began my own alchemical researches, corresponding on an almost daily basis with the Flamels and visiting them often. For income, I brewed potions, usually ones that were rare and difficult to brew, because they brought the most Galleons and I then had more time to devote to my own studies. I was by no means a hermit, however, and travelled about England, Scotland, and Wales, visiting friends and acquaintances, lending my assistance, magical or material, whenever I could, remembering the assistance that so many had given me so unselfishly during my journeys.

"I did visit your Grandmother Siofre shortly after your grandfather died. I had seen him only twice since my return from my travels, and yet I grieved his loss, for we had been great friends in school, but your grandmother," Albus said with a wry smile, "did not believe I would be a fit example for her young son, Merwyn. She told me I could come back when she was sure I had actually grown up and that this was not simply a temporary lapse into respectability. I could hardly fault her. I had been back for less than a year when Collum died, after all. In the ten years between Dervilia's untimely death and my most recent return to Britain, it seemed to her that I had done nothing but attend my mother's death and lead a wastrel life.

"In the meantime, my wand was becoming less and less responsive to me. Still perfectly useful, but . . . something was not right with it, or with me, and thinking of the internal transformation I had undergone that changed my Animagus form, I decided to visit Ollivander's for a new wand. I had recently bought my cottage, and my funds were somewhat depleted, as they say, so I decided to offer him a barter. I would give him the dragon heart that I had harvested from Mother Dragon, and, because my new form was a phoenix, I gave Mr Ollivander a tail feather from Fawkes, thinking he could make me a custom wand using a core from my companion. What would be more fitting than that, I thought. After taking some measurements from me, he asked me for two tail feathers, not one, because he wanted to try two different woods. My first wand had been holly with a unicorn tail hair, but he was unsure whether holly would be the appropriate wood for my new wand, given the measurements he had just taken. He accepted the dragon heart in payment.

"Several weeks later, I received an owl from Mr Ollivander telling me that my new wand was awaiting me, and I Apparated to London on that very day. He had made two wands with the tail feathers I had given him, one in holly and one in yew. I first tried the wand of holly and Fawkes's tail feather, since my previous wand had been of holly, but the results were hardly any better than my current wand, much to my disappointment. Ollivander didn't seem fussed, however, as though he had expected that result, and he handed me the one of yew and phoenix tail feather. That one was, unfortunately, no better than the first. I was very disappointed and resigned myself to taking a wand that Ollivander had made with no particular wizard in mind; I had truly hoped that I could carry and use a wand that was connected closely with my companion and with my own Animagus form. I could not understand why neither wand was suited to me.

"Ollivander drew out two other wands and handed me one. I tried it, and it was much more responsive, to the extent that I would have been satisfied with it, but he declared it lacklustre and unsuitable, and he took it and handed me the other. I knew as soon as it touched my skin that this was the one, and when I waved it, Ollivander declared that my wand had found me. The first wand was of Hedera pythonica, magical ivy, and dragon heartstring, and the wand that chose me was of yew and heartstring from the same dragon. Ollivander further explained that, just as the two with the phoenix tail feathers were brothers, the latter two wands were mates and had been made with cores of heartstring from the very dragon heart I had given him in trade. And although I felt some sense of . . . loss, perhaps, leaving behind the wands that had not chosen me, it was a fair trade and we had had an agreement. And that is how our wands came into being, my dear."

"So my wand . . . my wand contains the heartstring from Mother Dragon, the dragon who helped save you?" Minerva asked, pulling her wand from her pocket and looking at it as though she were seeing it for the first time.

Albus nodded. "The very same . . ."

"No wonder Ollivander told me that the dragon heartstring core was from an unusual source," Minerva said softly, brushing its polished length with a fingertip.

"A very unusual source . . . that heart beat within the breast of an ancient dragon who permitted me to share her living space and who even cared for me in a dragonish way, perhaps seeing me as a peculiar sort of naked, abandoned dragon pup, and who fought beside me and died doing so. And now . . . her heartstring continues to provide me with care and protection, and you as well, my dear.

"But the story I was telling you does not stop there, as you know. Sixty-six years after I received my new wand from Ollivander, I received word from him that its mate had chosen a witch, a young witch about to begin school at Hogwarts. I had never forgotten that my wand had a mate, but after the first few decades had passed, I thought that perhaps it would not find its witch or wizard during my lifetime, that it was waiting until my wand had been passed on to another, perhaps . . . I did not know, and I ceased even speculating about it. I simply got on with my life.

"I lived quietly, simply . . . as I say, I was not a hermit, but having had the experiences of my youth, I did . . . abjure certain aspects of wizarding social life. I felt . . . I felt that it was for the best for me, for my work, and," he said with a slight self-deprecating chuckle, "best for those around me, as well, particularly the witches. And, as most of my friends were married and well-settled in life, it was just as well. Indeed, it was during this peaceful period of quiet study and experimentation that I met Gertrude, a young witch, newly married, barely out of Hogwarts, and yet with a brilliance in Arithmancy that challenged and excited me. She had novel ways of approaching problems, and her imagination in those days . . . When we began corresponding, I actually believed that I was writing to a witch much older than she was, and even after learning that Gertrude was as young as she was, it was still a surprise when I first met her. She was nothing like I had imagined, you see. She was very quiet, soft-spoken, and pretty, with a gentle, feminine way about her – I had envisioned someone much more brash and out-going, given the nature of her letters to me and the vibrancy with which she discussed her discipline, yet she did have a certain . . . inner strength that reflected my expectations. We became close friends, and as she and Reginald lived in York, I often visited them. He worked for the Ministry in one of the local offices, though he spent much of his time in London. So Gertrude and I would work on our Arithmantic problems during the day – my problems, actually, as I was working on new uses for Arithmancy in Alchemy and she was assisting me – then in the evening, Reginald would come home and we would have dinner together and the three of us would talk late into the night. It was with some sadness that I saw them move to Berlin, where Reginald's work brought him, but we could still owl, of course, and I visited Berlin occasionally and stayed with them, coming to know young Robbie as he grew up, as well."

"When was this? I'm afraid it's all rather confusing to me," Minerva said.

"Hmm . . . Mother died in eighteen sixty-five, I returned to Britain in early seventy and received my new wand that year, then I first met Gertrude in nineteen-seventeen, the same year she married. Robbie was born in England in the summer of nineteen-nineteen, and then they moved to Berlin in . . . hmm, late nineteen-twenty-one or early twenty-two. It was twenty-two. I remember because we had Christmas and New Year's in York just a month or two before they left the country."

Minerva nodded. "All right, I see now, and it fits with what else I know."

"As I mentioned, I would visit them in Berlin from time to time. Seeing their happiness, my own thoughts began to turn toward a settled life with family, but with my situation as it was, and the events of the ensuing years . . . I was content enough, for one thing, and then later, the responsibilities I took on were naturally not conducive to such a thing for me.

"Gertrude and Reginald, of course, were not my only friends, and I also would visit the Flamels occasionally, but my visits to Berlin are notable because on one occasion, I ran into an old friend. 'Old' in the sense of 'former,' to be clear about it. Gelly . . . I had heard he had established his so-called academy. I was grateful I had never been a part of it. It sounded to me as though his academy was merely a way for him to get sycophantic followers who hung on to his every word. It also sounded to me as though it was somewhat . . . unsavoury. But as I, in the manner of so many others, did not particularly wish to recall the painful events surrounding our earlier relationship, so I also did not pay very much attention to the rumours about this academy of his and of his own forays into the German wizarding political arena. Regardless of how well I had come through the past and how much I had learned along the way, Gelly never would be someone whom I cared to remember. I had had many quiet, peaceful decades of study and experimentation, writing and publishing, and a little travel, a few good friends, a mended relationship with Aberforth, and I was content. I wanted nothing from my former life.

"So, as I say, I found myself one evening in Berlin, sitting in a café waiting for Gertrude to join me, and who should walk up to me but Gelly. Still as handsome as ever, and even more charming and charismatic, if that was possible. But now I could detect a coldness in his eyes that I had not seen before . . . I believe it had always been there, but I had not seen it, being blinded by his charms and his empty blandishments. This was a wizard, a man, with little to no ability to muster compassion for others, and certainly no desire to do so. To the extent he was able to discern what others were feeling, it was only in order to exploit those feelings for his own gain. It was, essentially, an unremarkable encounter and it proceeded as one might expect. He scoffed at me and at my choices in life, deriding my continued belief that he was responsible for my mother's death – saying, why would he, of all people, go to that dirty little village and waste his energy killing a pathetic, invalid witch – and then telling me what I could have had if I had chosen to join him in his academy, the power, the influence, the knowledge. And when Gertrude arrived, his derision grew, and he said he pitied me my choice of companions. At that point, the party he was meeting arrived, consisting of some very wealthy wizards and a few well-dressed, well-coiffed, and rather attractive witches who had apparently been trained to laugh and nod in all the right places in a conversation. I couldn't abide the sight of him. Gertrude and I left to find a more congenial atmosphere elsewhere.

"I barely spared him another thought, even when Reginald's letters, and Gertrude's, as well, never seemed to avoid mention of him. Reginald was becoming convinced that Gelly's talk, and his supposed academy, were actual threats to the wizarding world, and Gertrude was becoming worried that Reginald's talk of Gelly would lead to trouble for them. It was said that wizards who opposed him would simply disappear, or would turn up dead in some Muggle alley. Gertrude was worried about her husband, and I began to worry as well, despite my desire not to spend another second's thought on Gellert Grindelwald. And then that fateful day came in late July nineteen thirty-five, some seven years after Gertrude and I had seen Gelly in the café. I rushed to Berlin as quickly as I could upon receiving the news that Reginald had been attacked and deposited on the Crouch doorstep. It was one of the most dreadful things I have ever experienced, and not just seeing Reginald like that, but also seeing Gertrude and the effect it had on her. And Robbie – they, quite sensibly, would not allow the boy in to see his father, but he knew what had been done to him. I did what little I could do . . . there is a method of alleviating pain that I learned when I studied with Master Nyima. I cannot say that I ever was particularly adept at it, but I did what I could, and I believe he suffered less in the end."

"What is this method?" Minerva asked curiously, wondering if it was anything like the practices her mother used as a Healer-Midwife.

Albus hesitated perceptibly. "It is a magical mental discipline and it allows the practitioner to . . . let the patient bleed off some of the pain."

"I don't understand at all. Bleed off?"

"The pain becomes experienced less by the patient and more by the other person through something akin to Legilimency. It cannot cure . . . it is palliative only. And, sadly, it was all anyone could do, despite the presence of four of the best Healers in Berlin."

"You mean . . . you experienced the pain rather than Gertrude's husband?" Minerva asked, sure she had misunderstood.

"I am not very adept at it, as I say, and I have only done it a few times, and this was the only time I had attempted it since leaving Nyima sixty years before. But I did what I could for Reginald . . . and I believe he died in a bit more peace than he otherwise would have. It is a difficult practice, and I do not know if, after this many years, I could do it again. My life has, for better or worse, required me, or allowed me, to develop other skills, and I believe this one, never well-developed, is lost. It was hard enough then to even remember how to initiate it . . . I think it was more luck than anything else that I had any success with it at all. But I think it helped Gertrude even more than it did her husband, believing that his pain was being diminished. What Grindelwald did to him . . . he remained conscious, and there were spells . . . the Healers' magic simply caused him more pain when they tried to use them. It was diabolical, Minerva, what Grindelwald did to him, and I do not use that word lightly." Albus sighed and looked very old and very tired. "I don't think I ever regretted allowing Grindelwald to live after my mother's death as much as I did in the moment that I saw Gertrude's face on arriving at the house in Berlin, and then seeing Reginald, brave Gryffindor that he was . . . but I did not kill Grindelwald after my mother's death, and I did not even kill him later, although there was a part of me that wanted to do that. If not for my sake and my loss, then for Gertrude and her on-going suffering. Her hair had been a beautiful, deep chestnut brown, and within weeks, it seemed, it had gone completely grey, as had her spirit. Grindelwald had already caused so many so much suffering . . . and it would only worsen. And I had done nothing to stop him when I was young and so I felt . . . pain that I had not, and responsibility for the suffering he continued to cause.

"Ah, Minerva, it is late . . . I wish to tell you about Grindelwald, but only if you wish to stay and hear it," Albus said, looking at her with weary eyes.

"I do. I couldn't leave now unless you forced me to," Minerva answered. She thought she would perish from curiosity if she did not learn that night – or morning, as it now was – how he had defeated Grindelwald.

"Very well, then, but in respect for the late hour, I will give you an abbreviated version, complete, but not detailed. Many of the details are unpleasant ones, anyway. If at some later time, you wish to ask me questions about it," Albus said, nodding slightly, "I will do my best to answer them.

"Soon after Reginald's murder, Grindelwald declared his intent to bring 'rationality and unity' to wizarding Europe and to 'uplift the wizarding spirit,' and he moved to new headquarters, an old Grindelwald family castle, unplottable and heavily warded with ancient blood wards. Although there were attempts to locate this castle, they were unsuccessful for so long that, eventually, those who were trying began a different strategy. Although Grindelwald did stay within his fortified home most of the time, there were occasions when he travelled. The new strategy was to attack him while he was in another place. As you know, those attempts were never successful. You know, too, that the war, such as it was, was a long, protracted, and very nasty one, complicated by the Muggle war and Grindelwald's interference in it.

"I told you once that I believed it inevitable that Grindelwald would one day capture me. I had hoped, though, that it was not. But so firm was my belief that it may actually have helped bring it about, I do not know. That last mission, however, it was meant to be the last mission. We had finally located Grindelwald's hidden castle – your father's assistance was actually instrumental in that, Minerva, although he never knew it – and I set out with a small group of Aurors, four of whom were very accomplished Occlumens. To them, I entrusted my belief that we might not prevail in our attack, which was deliberately deceptively small and highly targeted. I also informed those four, and only those four, what my strategy would be if we were, in fact, captured. To entrust this knowledge to anyone else would completely doom our mission and seal our fates.

"Unfortunately, the mission went even worse than we had anticipated. We were detected as we were attempting to dismantle or fool one of the blood wards that shielded his stronghold. Of the twenty Aurors who had started out with us – yes, Minerva, twenty, not the small handful that the Ministry claims were lost – of those twenty, only six of us survived the attack, and only four of us were in any condition to be questioned. Grindelwald, on hearing that I was among the captives, had the four of us brought to him personally. Unfortunately for me, only one of the Aurors who knew of my fall-back plan had survived – Rufus Scrimgeour, whom I believe you know – the other two who were conscious and still with me, Alastor Moody and Katherine Fellows, knew nothing of it. And that was painful for me."

Albus sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I could go into detail of how I subtly convinced Grindelwald that I had deliberately triggered the wards so that our presence was detected, how I persuaded him that I had come to admire him all over again, and to become disgusted with the Ministry and with the general state of the weak wizarding world, and how I had come to regret my choices years earlier and longed to be accepted by him once more. He was sceptical, as should not surprise anyone, but he performed intensive Legilimency on me. I have never experienced such gruelling hours. It was like the worst interrogation possible, but he was not looking for information about Ministry strategies or resources, and I knew that would not be what he would seek. When I had known Grindelwald more than eighty years before, when we were both striplings, my skill at Legilimency and Occlumency was poor and undeveloped. Grindelwald greatly underestimated what skills I had attained in the intervening years. Oh, he believed I was skilled enough at brewing Potions and at performing Transfiguration, but he believed that even any achievements I had made in curse- and ward-breaking was all done on the backs of others, and that none of it was truly a product of my own skill and diligence. And I encouraged this belief. I presented him with memories and emotions skewed to show him precisely what he wanted to believe. I showed him myself using Gertrude Gamp shamelessly, stealing her ideas and her work in order to advance my own, exploiting her affection for me and toying with her, even taking advantage of her grief, and then I showed him others whose work in Runes, archaic spellwork, and defensive wards I took, used, and presented as my own. I presented him these memories with a veneer of disdain for the lesser witches and wizards whom I used and discarded. I made him believe that I had charmed these folk, lulling them so that they did not even realise what I was doing. Even you, my dear, I presented to him in a false light, and it was so difficult . . . he wanted to know how I had escaped him a few months before, that time in France, for he was certain I had been gravely injured and unable to escape on my own. And so I showed him you and your accomplishments and I conjured up a sense of pride in you distorted by a possessiveness and a sense of control over you that I have never had – I do hope you believe me, my dear. He believed I saw you as a mere product of my own doing and as my tool to use as I wished, and not as an independent person in your own right. And the Flamels . . . I convinced him that I still resented them both, that I chafed because they would not share with me all they knew, and that I had left them on poor terms. And I showed him my time of dissipation after my mother's death, and I convinced him that it had gone on for years, not mere months, that I had barely managed to pull myself out of the gutter, so to speak, and that I was desperate to join him and to regain my pride and to exercise power over those who had wronged me in my past.

"I cannot describe to you what it was like, distorting my feelings and my memories in such a way, hour after hour . . . and I had to behave as though I was resisting, as though I did not want him to see my weaknesses and to know of my debauchery, and to then give in with the appropriate mixture of pain and relief. But worst of all was the sense, deeply hidden from my interrogator, that I was betraying myself and all whom I loved. Yet I could not think about that, and I could not even think about those whom I loved, you, Gertrude, the Flamels, my mother . . . It was only later, after it was all over . . . I felt as though I had deliberately filled myself up with the most vile sewage imaginable. It was hard for me to feel clean again . . .

"But he believed me, and he returned my wand to me, and he had one last test for me. He wanted me to punish my compatriots. That was perhaps the worst moment of all . . . seeing Alastor, Katherine, and Rufus dragged out before me . . . wandless and weakened. I had not planned for this, although I should have, and I was not yet ready to duel Grindelwald. There were many people around him, and my friends had no wands. Desperately, I cast about the room, using Legilimency to try to find some weak mind that would allow me access whilst I talked with Grindelwald and scoffed at the Aurors. And then I found that weak mind and I knew where the Aurors' wands were being kept. They were close by. If they had not been . . . I would have had to provide them with wands from Grindelwald's guard and hope that they functioned moderately well for them.

"I could stall no longer, but I had been able to cast a wandless nonverbal Accio, and, knowing that the wands were sailing through the castle, I told Grindelwald – and I addressed him as Gelly, as I did in the old days – I told him that a witch was hardly worth the magic expended and that Alastor . . . that Moody was . . . that he was a . . . a pathetic cripple and also not worth my energy, and I . . . oh, Minerva . . ." Suddenly, Albus's cool narrative broke completely and his eyes filled with tears. He covered his face with his hands and took a few deep, shuddering breaths before lowering his hands, regaining his composure despite his tears, and continuing. "I turned my wand on Rufus . . . he, at least, knew and, I hoped, still believed, that this was a ruse. I cast curse upon curse . . . I did not put a great deal of force behind the spells, but they had to be real. It was . . . sickening. And yet I continued. I will never forget the expression of pain and dismay on young Alastor's face. It was as though his world had crumbled and disappeared before his eyes. But then there was a shout from Katherine. She caught her wand and the other two wands sailed to their respective owners. Without hesitation, I turned on Grindelwald and cast a strong Stupefy. Of course, he blocked it just as quickly as I cast it. Despite his weakened state, Rufus immediately attacked, disarmed, and Stunned a few of Grindelwald's guards, and Katherine did the same. It took a moment for Alastor to gather his wits, but soon, he, too, was keeping Grindelwald's guards at bay, allowing me to continue without interference from them. Fortunately for us, because we were in the centre of his castle and Grindelwald felt safe there, there were relatively few wizards actually in the room with us, and the Aurors took care of them quickly, leaving me to deal with Grindelwald. They sealed the doors and kept out any other of Grindelwald's men who attempted to enter. It was work for them to stay ahead of the guards' efforts, and if it hadn't been for the Aurors, I would not have had a chance at defeating Grindelwald.

"Grindelwald recognised that he had underestimated me before, but he did not realise the extent to which he had done so. I might have been weakened from the captivity and the Legilimency, but I had reserves of which he was entirely unaware, and I knew of magic that he could not harness. We duelled long, but in the end, I disarmed him and it was the very simple and standard spell, Petrificus Totalus, that ended the duel. And ended his reign of terror."

The two sat silently in the sitting room in the high Hogwarts tower, dawn seeping in through the windows. Minerva had begun to weep when Albus described his interrogation at the hands of Grindelwald, but had swallowed her tears and blinked them away; then when he described cursing Rufus Scrimgeour and young Alastor's reaction, her tears flowed and she could not blink them away. Now she pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her face.

"I am sorry . . . perhaps I should not have told you so much," Albus said softly, his own eyelashes still wet and pain written on his face. "It was selfish of me . . . wanting you to know, to understand . . ."

"No, no . . ." Minerva said softly, rising from her chair and joining Albus on the sofa. "I am glad you shared it with me. And if you ever want to talk about it, about how you feel . . ."

Albus shook his head. "No . . . I rarely think of it, any of it, really." He reached out tentative fingertips and grazed her damp cheek briefly, and said, his voice hoarse, "I just thought . . . you have wondered . . . and it is all of a piece, this story. And we are friends . . . I wanted you to know just what sort of friend you have, and that he is rather different from what you have likely believed him to be. He is not just the one for whom you feel affection and gratitude, but he is also this other wizard . . . you deserved to know."

Minerva surprised Albus by returning his gesture, touching his face, and then combing his hair back with her fingers and letting her hand come to rest on his shoulder.

"You are the wizard I have always believed you to be and more. You are . . . you are Gryffindor, and you did what was hard and painful for you . . . I can only admire you more than I did before." And she leaned forward and kissed his cheek, letting her lips rest a moment and her breath to pass warm across his skin before she sat back. "But now I see you are tired. And," she added with a bit of a smile, "you have not had your Vitamin Potion tonight. Might I recommend the vanilla one?"

Albus smiled himself at that. "Of course, Mother McGonagall. And I think we might both have time for a few hours sleep, at least, as the dawn still comes early. I do hope you will be able to sleep after all of this. It hasn't been the most pleasant of bedtime stories."

"Perhaps not, but I will rest easy knowing that I am at Hogwarts and Hogwarts is in your care," Minerva replied.

The two stood and Albus placed a hand on Minerva's arm. "Now that your rooms are on the seventh floor . . . the backstairs will bring you close to your quarters in Gryffindor Tower."

Minerva nodded and let Albus lead her from the sitting room, through his bedroom, then down the narrow dark stair, and in the darkness, she felt no fear, for Albus was there before her. She said good-night to him at the bottom of the stairway, insisting that he return to his suite and find his bed.

Albus nodded and cupped her face in his hand, leaning forward just slightly and placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. Then the scarred oak door closed between them and Minerva headed back to her rooms on the other side of the castle.

Note: NOT DH-compliant. The only thing I changed after DH came out was Grindelwald's first name, since I thought calling him "Gunny" and "Gunther" might be a bit unnecessarily confusing. ;)

As always, don't take my story for information about the way the world works, including anything veterinary, such as a dragon's congested sinuses or a horse's infected foot!