Chapter Text
1930
Albus POV
I sat alone in a muggle cafe in London waiting, waiting for him. He – Gellert Grindelwald. Meeting him for the first time in, what, 30 years? It makes me nervous. Seeing my ex-best friend, my ex-lover, is something I'd rather not do, especially after he became a convicted criminal by all the European ministries for mass murder.
But my god, I can't help it. I want to get over him, but my heart is still pulling me back. I know in my mind that this is wrong, very wrong. Who would expect THE famous Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of all time, to fall in love with an evil manipulator?
My questioning was interrupted by a waitress. She put tea on the table: "Would you like something else?"
"No, ehm... not just yet, I'm waiting,"
Leaning forward as if sharing a secret, I said, "I'm expecting someone."
She smiled and bowed her head in understanding. I wanted to continue my nostalgic thinking, but I realised my tea was getting cold. I put a sugar cube on my teaspoon and dripped it in the tea. I waited and suddenly I remembered my first meeting with Gellert. When his aunt, Bathilda, invited me for a cup of tea with her and her grandnephew.
At that time, I didn't know how this "relationship" would turn out. I dropped the sugar and stirred it. While slowly closing my eyes, I dived back to the day we met...
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"Good morning, Aberforth!" I greeted my younger brother.
"Good morning, Al."
I sat next to my sister Ariana: "Hello, what are you reading?"
"Nothing special, just some fairytales," she answered with a sigh.
Slowly, she's getting more and more depressed. If only there was a way to make her happy again. After three Muggle boys assaulted her, when she was 6, she was never the same. She was just doing some magic. She couldn't control it. No wizard or witch can control their magic at such a young age.
Later, when Father found out about the accident, he killed them. The three muggle boys were dead. Our father was on his way to Azkaban just for protecting his 6-year-old daughter. But he didn't say anything about her being obscurial. If he did, they'd take her away.
Years after the incident, her obscurus killed our mother. From that moment, it was my responsibility as the oldest to protect and take care of my siblings. Which I'm not good at. Just looking at Ariana makes me feel guilty like I should have been there to help her and to protect my mother.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Ari asked.
"Sorry, I'm a little bit distracted by my thoughts," I answered with a reassuring smile.
Just as I was about to start eating breakfast, someone knocked on the door. Aberforth looked really annoyed. He was always so grumpy, especially in the morning.
"I'll get it," I said as I stood up from the table and opened the door.
I saw a woman from next door; Bathilda Bagshot. She's an older woman, but she's very kind. She's probably the only one outside of the family who knows about Ariana.
"Good morning, Mrs.," I said politely.
"Good morning Albus, would you like to come for a cup of tea?"
Why would she come here so early in the morning just to ask if I'd come over? There's definitely something going on. Before I could ask, she started speaking again:
"You see, my grandnephew is staying with me for some time, and I would like you to meet him. He has an extraordinary mind, like yours."
"It would be my pleasure," I smiled at the old lady. I want to go just out of curiosity about this boy with an "extraordinary mind."
"Thank you, Albus, thank you. You can come in the afternoon, you know where my house is, see you later Albus," she said to me. I closed the door.
"What was that about?" asked Aberforth.
"Just Mrs. Bathilda asked me to come over this afternoon," I enlightened him. He nodded. He always tends to judge everyone. Usually, he judges me the most.
● ● ●
It was already afternoon. I said goodbyes to my brother and I went to Bathilda's house. I kind of have big expectations. I knocked on the door, thinking if he's not smart, I hope he's at least good-looking.
Suddenly, the door opened, revealing a very tall and good-looking boy, interrupting my train of thought. His long light blond hair hovered over his shoulders. And those charming mismatched eyes, one eye as blue as a pool of sapphires, the other as dark brown as swirling chocolate.
"Good afternoon, you must be Bathilda's nephew," I said politely to the mysterious, good-looking man.
"Yes, I am. Gellert Grindelwald," he introduced himself. I stared at him. Maybe for too long because the boy that I now know the name of asked me what my name was.
"Sorry, Albus, Albus Dumbledore." We went inside Bathilda Bagshot's house. I'm so stupid. How can I get so mesmerised by someone who I know nothing of?
But there is something – it's just pulling, no, pushing me toward him. I feel that I can be safe with him, that I can trust him, that I should trust him. I think he can feel it, too. The whole time I'm talking with Mrs. Bagshot, he's just watching me with this smug look on his face. Well, this will be interesting.
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I get so sucked into the memory that I haven't even realised that Gellert had already arrived. I still have my eyes closed. I get so happy, I'm going to finally see him, see how he looks now, after all those years. I slowly opened my eyes. I saw Gellert looking at me with the annoyingly deep eyes, which seemed to lose their familiar spark as he got older. His beautiful long blonde hair turned gray.
He's got the same smile on his face as me. Everybody can see the excitement on our faces. He started walking towards me. When I saw his face, all of the days we spent together flashed before my eyes. I was so absorbed in the happy moments I didn't even hear him speak:
"Would this be one of your regular haunts?"
What? I'm pretty sure he just wants to tease me. He makes me angry. I instantly felt the blood pact tightening around my wrist.
"I don't have any regular haunts," I said just to make him satisfied, for now. He huffed and sat down.
"Let me see it," he looked down on the chain around my hand.
My smile quickly faded. He no longer trusts me. Not like I trusted him. Not like I still do. I slowly opened my hand, showing a beautiful jewel with a drop of our blood mixed in the middle. Its chain slithered around my palm at a slow pace, as if alive.
"Sometimes I imagine I still feel it around my neck, I carried it for so many years. How does it feel around yours?"
I didn't know what to say. It feels bad to be unable to help the world in defeating him, but on the other hand, it feels nice to know there's some connection with him. In times like this, I have to make a very difficult choice between love and morality. I chose love in 1899. It surely wasn't the best option. After Ariana's death, I found out love can be blinding.
"We can free each other of it," I said, looking at Gellert's slightly dejected face.
The truth is, I'm not happy about it either. I don't want to fight him. In fact, I wouldn't have thought about destroying the blood troth if the ministry had not ordered me to do so. Gellert does not look like he's willing to fight me, but I think it's not because of love.
Gellert ignores my answer: "Love to chatter, don't they? Our Muggle friends. Though one must admit: They make a good cup of tea."
Oh, what an imbecile! I can see that his "humorous" personality has not changed over the years.
Unimpressed with him, I started: "What you're doing is madness -"
"It's what we said we'd do!" he interrupted.
Yes, I said that, but only because of Ariana's incident with those Muggles. I was young. I hadn't realised that the revolution would take the lives of many people, both muggles and wizards.
"I was young, I was -"
"Committed. To me. To us," he continued my thoughts.
"No, I went along because -"
"Because?" he asked.
It was difficult for me to say.
"Because I was in love with you!" I choked out.
I still am, although I kept that information to myself. He wouldn't understand. We stared into each other's eyes. Just for a split second, I hoped he'd say it back, and we would embrace each other and forget all of this. But of course, I will never be happy.
"Yes. But that's not why you went along. It was you who said we could reshape the world, that it was our birthright."
I wanted to scream at him, but again, it was true, I said it. But I really did it for love, maybe not his, but Ariana's. Maybe I'm still feeling guilty for spending whole days with Gellert and not with my family.
"Can you smell it?" Gellert looked around and deeply inhaled.
"Can you smell it? The stench? Do you really intend to turn your back on your own kind for these animals?" I just stayed quiet.
I gazed at him, meeting his deep eyes. I wanted to tell him about all the things that went wrong. However, I'm not able to do it.
Leaning forward, he continued his hypnotic speech: "With or without you, I will burn down their world, Albus. There's nothing you can do to stop me."
Oh, but there is, I just have to destroy the blood pact. After drinking my tea, I noticed an oddly-looking book floating in the middle of the cafe. Before I could think about it more, Gellert stood up. Walking behind me.
He bent forward to whisper in my ear: "I was never your enemy, Liebling."
I turned around to catch a glance at him for the last time when, without warning, the book flew at us. It started to flip its pages. On each of the pages, there were written names of many witches and wizards. I recognised some of them. The book stopped on a page with Potters, and we were instantly sucked in. The last thing I remembered was a white flash that turned instantly black.
● ● ●
After some time, I woke up lying on the hard cold floor. I must have passed out. We appeared to be in some old house. I went to look out the window. It appeared to be some village. "Is this Godric's Hollow?"