Red, White and Blonde

A/N: 'Sup cats and kittens. Had a worryingly overwhelming urge to write some Grindledore yesterday, and after running it through my head a bit, this is what I came up with.

It's a modern day AU of my take on what happened when Dumbledore and Grindelwald were all friendly-like in their youth. Modern day because making everything all Ye Olde-like is such a friggin' hassle and it means I get to play around with dynamics, and AU 'cause somewhere along the lines of my half-assed planning I decided against this being a magical universe. Once again, for the fiddling of dynamics. Also, Aus are fun. So you've been warned.

By the way, I own nothing; Lord JKR does. And this level of ownership will not change over the course of this fic, so I ain't gonna bother putting disclaimers in every single chapter. Just sayin'. Laziness ftw.

Chapter One

Albus Dumbledore was sitting on one of the chairs outside the headmistress' office waiting to be called in. He absent-mindedly prodded the foam protruding from the worn squishy chair on which he was seated, wondering whether the school purchased that type of chair pre-ripped, for every single one he had ever seen was ripped in at least one place. Sure, the more logical explanation was that the chairs were old as hell and the school's budget didn't extend to replacing them, but it amused Albus ever so much more to imagine a used-chair factory. Just think, with a specially-designed robot claw whose sole purpose was to rip fabric in such a way to perfectly mimic the actions of a delinquent teenager. Charming.

"Albus Dumbledore?" a voice called from within. Albus picked up his school bag and headed into the headmistress' office.

"Good afternoon, Ms Buxton," Albus said, smiling politely. While it had not been explained why the headmistress wanted to see him, he had guessed. And his guesses tended to be rather accurate.

"Good afternoon. You're not in trouble Albus, don't worry." She held up a sheet of paper. "I need to discuss with you your subject selections for this year.

Ah, so Albus had been right. This meeting was almost inevitable, but that didn't stop his wishful thinking. "I hope it was all in order. I would dread the thought that I would not be allowed to do one of my subjects."

Ms Buxton sighed. "I'm afraid that's exactly it. More than one of your choices has not reached the minimum number of students for a class. Physics, geography and Latin, to be precise."

"Surely you can make some special arrangements," Dumbledore replied, still smiling good-naturedly. He knew full well that she knew full well that he was easily the brightest student in his year, and presumably the school. And to stifle a gifted child was tantamount to murder… or so a speaker had said to the school at assembly just a week beforehand. Surely she would remember this. It was a given.

"Albus, even if we could, there's still the matter of the number of subjects you selected. Maths, English, chemistry, physics, biology, history, geography, economics, German, Latin… even if I could make a class for all these subjects, they could not all be timetabled to fit in a single week. You'd have to be in three places at once! So if you were to do all the available subjects except one or two, everything can be worked out smoothly."

Albus was silent for a moment. He had anticipated all of this. And he had also thought of a perfectly viable solution. "You have textbooks, yes?"

"Excuse me?"

"For the subjects that I will apparently not be able to do. You do have appropriate materials if, I don't know, I taught myself."

"Albus, what you are proposing is ridiculous."

"Maybe not so ridiculous. I would have adequate resources. If I have any questions, I can ask the perfectly qualified staff."

"You cannot possibly teach yourself four or five subjects. It would be far too difficult, and your marks would most probably flail in all your other subjects."

As much as she wanted to spout all she had learn from teachers' conferences, Ms Buxton knew that Albus would be more than capable of teaching himself, and handling the workload. Hell, he could probably teach the students better than some of the teachers. Most of the teachers. He was just too friggin' good. And Albus knew it, too. No matter how calm and polite he seemed, there was no way he wasn't aware of his outstanding academic prowess. It would be a crime not to let him learn. That speaker she had hired for assembly for last week had said so. And even if she forbade him to learn in his own time, there was no doubt that he would do it anyway.

"Oh, very well, I will look into making some arrangements. Will you be planning on sitting assessments for these subjects?"

"Of course."

Albus thanked his headmistress and left her office. Excellent.

Albus pushed open the front gate. The hedge needed pruning again. The hedge always needed pruning. Nobody had the time or could be bothered neatening it up, but with enough persuasion Aberforth could usually be coerced into doing a half-assed job every now and again.

"Good afternoon!" Albus called as he opened the front door. He picked up the mail. Bill. Bill. Advertisement. Letter from his pen-friend in Germany. Bill. Advertisement. Nothing out of the ordinary. He pocketed the letter from his pen-friend and headed into the kitchen for a snack.

Whilst tucking into a cheese and avocado sandwich, it finally hit Albus why the house was so quiet. Where was his brother Aberforth? Usually he was making all sorts of racket at this time of day, but today there was no sign of him.

Albus got up and headed upstairs to Aberforth's bedroom. This didn't bode well.

He knocked on the door. "Aberforth? Are you in there?"

No reply. Albus pushed open the door, and was met with the sight of his younger brother sitting on the end of his bed and looking like he was about to cry.

"Aberforth? Are you alright?"

"Ariana's been taken back to the hospital."

"Ah." Albus sat down next to his brother and put an arm around his shoulder. Their younger sister had a very rare and severe bone disease and was constantly in and out of hospitals for examination and trial treatments. No matter how frequent these hospital visits became, it still affected the whole family, especially Aberforth.

"I mean, I know it's all routine, but what if something goes wrong? What if they find out it's worse than they thought? What will we do?"

"It will all be fine," Albus reassured him. "They are working on finding more treatments. Apparently there is this new treatment extracted from shark livers…"

But Aberforth wasn't listening. He didn't want to hear about shark livers. Most people don't.

Okay, so short chapter and I haven't really gotten into anything. This was more of an intro than anything. Okay, more like half an intro. I'll post more tomorrow or the day after, promise!

Liking it so far, though? The entire tone of this could very well change over the coming chapters. Hur.