In the year 1997, Albus Dumbledore died. Everyone knows this.
What they do not know is that less than a year later in 1998, Gellert Grindelwald died. No one knows this. Gellert Grindelwald is but a shadow, a half-paragraph in history books, pale in comparison to the one known as Voldemort.
He was never a shadow to Dumbledore.
Sometimes, on sunny days or cold nights, two ghosts appear in the halls of Hogwarts. They're both young, blond men dressed in old-style clothing. They're laughing and joking, although to us it's like a silent muggle film - their lips move to jokes we can't hear, and their eyes cry with laughter we can't see.
Someone starts a rumour that one of them is Albus Dumbledore. The older students, the ones that were eleven or twelve when he die have nothing to say. After all, in the war he was so different. How could you say one of these laughing young men was or wasn't the tired one they knew?
"Then who is the other one?" they ask. No one has an answer for that. Well - almost no one. The teachers don't dare talk about it. Minerva McGonagall will stand tall and stone-faced in front of anyone who dares question it, glaring silence into the disturbance. Trying to talk to the two is out of the question - they're lost in each other. Many a first year has been dared to get their attention, only to be hooked out of the way by headmistress McGonnagall. Or, in the event where she hasn't noticed, the ghosts will pause. They will turn around and look at you, with distance and disdain in their eyes. And then, they'll disappear. For some reason unknown to the onlookers, the first years are always shaken, but they'll never say why.
You may scour the library and the history books - notes on Albus' pre-hogwarts life, read giant tomes of information, maybe even read a 'sensationalised biography' or two written by Rita Skeeter. None of them will tell you the truth. Really, no one knows the truth.
The truth is as such:
On a cool summer day in 1899, two men were introduced. One was instantly besotted. The other was not.
However, they soon grew to be friends. Both were idealistic, and together they made idealistic plans. These plans soon turned to dust with death and disappointment. One man (the man who killed) continued on with his plans. No, not their plans. His plans. The other man (the one who didn't) withered and faded. But at least this man survives. This man is free.
Which one is Dumbledore? Which man is not? Because the thing is.
They're both Dumbledore. They're both Grindlewald.
And that is the truth.
