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Fire raged through the streets of Muggle London. At its center, the wizard feared above all others. Aurors desperately battled the many headed hydra of his fiendfyre. He watched as two were devoured. The power he felt right now. No one could touch him. This would be his crowning achievement. The goal to which he had bent his entire life. The dominati– just then, his fiendfyre evaporated leaving a smell of ash and – and cherry blossoms? That was – not possible. He looked around wildly.
A figure emerged from the slowly falling petals.
“Albus?” Something flickered across Grindelwald’s features. Fear. It was replaced with a sneer. “So after all this time, you’ve finally decided to show.”
“Gellert.” Albus Dumbledore nodded.
It had been years since Grindelwald had felt anything close to fear. But he felt it now. The only wizard even remotely close to his level of skill. He thought the fear of knowing who had killed his sister would keep him away. He thought he understood the nature of the man before him.
As if sensing that this was a duel they could not possibly hope to influence the Aurors backed off.
Dumbledore raised his wand and the earth moved. The pavement surrounding them ripped free and they ascended upwards.
“You waste your energy on saving Muggles?” Grindelwald sneered again. “How soft have you become? You could’ve been the greatest wizard in history.”
“I have energy to spare, Gellert,” and then he vanished.
Grindelwald prepared himself, waiting for Albus to appear. He felt the pavement below him tremble and he realized just in time what was happening. He apparated towards the ground and saw massive spikes of earth shoot through the floating chunk of pavement from the ground. He looked up and saw Dumbledore’s outline on top of a building that must have been twenty stories high.
Grindelwald raised his wand. The Thames exploded behind him. A four hundred foot wall of water arced toward Dumbledore. He knew Dumbledore would not let him destroy the building he stood on, he would not just apparate away. Grindelwald flicked his wand and the water turned to enchanted molten glass. Dumbledore made a motion in the distance and the glass hardened, then shattered. But before the pieces could even fall they transformed into lilies that drifted down onto the city. Suddenly Dumbledore was in front of him and they were dueling. Dumbledore moved faster than he had any possible right to. Grindelwald kept pace, he had never been pushed to this extreme. He felt Dumbledore’s mind boring into his and he returned the favor meeting the smooth glassy wall of occlumency that had once been so familiar when they practiced in the backyard on those hot summer days. He knew Dumbledore was not reading his thoughts, but it felt like he was. Every movement of his wand, every curse he threw was deflected expertly. He blocked hexes and curses, he stopped his wand movement with a shield if he were about to send out a killing curse or otherwise conjured random items to block the jets of green light he did manage to shoot at him. Dumbledore maintained a calm impassivity as he dueled at a speed Grindelwald thought belonged only to himself. He looked frantically for weak spots in Dumbledore’s movements. He saw an Auror standing nearby, watching. He fired a jet of green light at him, but impossibly, without even looking, Dumbledore summoned a slab of wood that took the curse before it had made it halfway to its target.
Grindelwald disapparated four hundred feet away into a muggle park. He knew the Ministry had a trace on him and so was ready when again Dumbledore appeared twenty feet in front of him and the Aurors followed soon after, standing sentinel, almost as if they were here just to witness this duel.
Grindelwald knew he would not win on dueling skill alone. Dumbledore had shown him that much. He would have to win on sheer magical power. He held the elder wand, his one advantage against this anomaly of a wizard who had no right to exist.
He bitterly thought that in any other age he would have ruled as a near god, uncontested. But because of this man he had had to prepare in the shadows for over twenty years. Finding the elder wand, pushing his magical acumen to the absolute limit, all in preparation for this day.
Grindelwald waved his wand and black flames erupted in every direction completely consuming the park. Dumbledore flicked his wand in response and silvery shields appeared around each Auror. Dumbledore himself did not have a shield. He merely walked through the flames. As they touched him they turned red and shot out like ropes toward Grindelwald.
“This was my favorite park, Gellert,” Dumbledore said calmly.
Grindelwald was forced to create a silver shield of his own and the fiery ropes wrapped around it. A gong like note echoed across the now flat expanse. Grindelwald again apparated away. He had barely appeared on a skyscraper when Dumbledore appeared in front of him again. Closely followed by the Aurors.
Grindelwald conjured muggle vehicles, signposts, and sculptures from the city below in the air above them. He made slashing motions over and over with his wand, sending massive object after massive object at Dumbledore. Dumbledore pointed his wand at the ground and a tree sprouted from it. Branches shot in every direction until Grindelwald was out of conjured items. They were each impaled or deflected by the tree branches which then began to reach out and attack him. Dumbledore wasted no time. He launched a massive concussive blast. Grindelwald raised a shield in front of him only to see that Dumbledore had vanished again. Where? He turned. Dumbledore had apparated just off the edge of the building. A wave of force blew him off of the roof. He hurtled through the air toward another building. Amazingly, Dumbledore had apparated into the path of his trajectory, preparing to cast a spell. Grindelwald apparated quickly to another park. He shot a jet of green light as soon as he appeared, expecting Dumbledore to show.
Dumbledore, however, appeared behind him. Grindelwald, launched a jet of green light as soon as Dumbledore appeared. Dumbledore apparated again an instant before it touched him. He reappeared in exactly the same place and again they dueled in a flurry of close range spells and Dumbledore was smiling.
“Why are you smiling, Albus?” he snarled as their flurry of spells and counterspells reached a crescendo.
“As much as what you have become, maybe what you always were, disgusts me, I haven’t had this much fun in years, Gellert. I have to say it is rather boring holding back all of the time,” and with that he flicked his wand and an unknown spell threw him backwards.
Grindelwald apparated on the spot. He appeared above Dumbledore and sent fiendfyre hurtling downwards. About ten feet from Dumbledore the fiendfyre continually turned into water that redirected in streams toward Grindelwald. Grindelwald apparated to the ground, then flicked his wand upwards and the earth erupted before him, forty feet high. There was a brief moment of quiet before the water rushed around the earth and shot toward him. Grindelwald turned the tendrils of water to glass and barely had time to react as dumbledore apparated in front of him and sent a stunner at his chest. The glass caught fire and shot forward. Dumbledore waved an anti-apparition ward into existence. He took a step back, or tried. Enchanted ivy snaked up from the ground around his legs. He transfigured the approaching fire into solid wood and just as he was slicing apart the ivy wrapped around his feet, the wood exploded into thousands of tiny needles that rocketed toward him. He shot fiendfyre at them, but then felt his body go rigid. He’d lost track of Dumbledore and been hit from behind. He fell to the dank earth.
Dumbledore stood over him. He paused for a moment. “It was never your destiny to rule Gellert. Not while I lived. I regret only that I did not stop you before it had gone this far. I was a coward.”
“Legilimens,” Dumbledore said, pointing his wand at Gellert. After a moment. “You never knew either – this whole time.” His shoulders dipped slightly, and he sighed.
Then Dumbledore sat on the grass next to him and patted his shoulder, almost affectionately. “Do you remember when we were boys and we would practice in the yard at Bathilda’s? It was so exciting, the endless possibilities of the future – we were such fools then. I wish I could go back to being the fool sometimes, shake off the weight of all that has happened, all that we’ve done.”
Dumbledore sat there quietly with him for a moment. Almost as an afterthought, he took the elder wand gently from his hands. And then he apparated away. Seconds later Aurors rushed into his field of vision and began to cast spells of binding.