A friend and I were once discussing how much we enjoyed alternate character interpretations, and the idea that you could add a completely different dimension to a character while still retaining the actual canon personality. This was the result.
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The problem with power, you see, is that its appeal is not visible to only those whose actions result in bad press.
Dumbledore rested his fingertips against one another, felt the dry skin folded into leathery ridges by age, and tilted his head. He couldn't imagine that others had no comprehension; it was so much easier for Muggles, in that sense. The sensation of magic filled his body, rushed through his limbs, constantly, giving them the strength that old age stole away. It was no wonder young Tom had sought power so. When the feeling of magic became commonplace, where else could the euphoria of power be found but domination?
But that was young Tom's mistake, and Grindelwald's too, because they had lacked discipline. Their attempts were so rushed, so hasty, like a firework, beautiful and bright and then they had nothing.
That was his success; because while young Tom had wasted away so long, and Grindelwald watched the walls of his prison with dull eyes, he saw the sun and held more dominion in his old hands than either had ever stroked in long, cold fingers.
He would admit, willingly, that Grindelwald had fascinated him, attracted him like a moth to a flame. He was so distracted by the man himself that he had not understood. Grindelwald was so full, in himself, took up all the air around him, that it seemed impossible to defeat him.
Torn away, he saw.
The trick, he learned, to being what most would call evil, is always perception. Dumbledore had killed. Dumbledore had manipulated, twisted, and warped, and took everything. Young Tom had feared him for that; because he saw some shadowy reflection of himself in Dumbledore, but could not understand how others did not see it, how they shrunk away from Tom but not Dumbledore.
He watched young Harry fight, unknowing, because it entertained him. He let young Draco approach the breaking part with reckless abandon for the hell of it. And he sat in his office and watched Fawkes fly.
Young Tom had thought true power was to escape death forever. Dumbledore knew that true power was to own death. To flee from death, to fight it, was to lose. There was only one way to ever gain true dominion over life and death.
Dumbledore sat in his office, with Fawkes' cunningly stupid eyes on him. He heard the shouts beginning, the explosion of his guardian statue, and pounding footsteps on the floor, and nodded at Fawkes' impassively blank face.
He stood up and turned towards the door as it burst open.
"Ah, Mister Malfoy," he said, pleasantly.
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