Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related characters do not, in any way, shape, or form, belong to me.
A Prisoner's Remorse
There are times in his cell at the topmost tower of Nurmengard that Gellert Grindelwald allows himself to remember, and to feel regret for the past.
For the atrocities he had committed in the name of the greater good.
The Greater Good.
Ah, he'd had such dreams then.
Lying on his cot, staring at the sky out of the slit in the wall that passed as his window, Grindelwald frowned. Even now he wasn't so sure they had been bad dreams in and of themselves.
A peaceful world.
That was what he had wanted. A world where wizards wouldn't have to hide, where the magical community and the muggle one could live together in harmony.
That wasn't such a bad dream, was it?
He had carried them too far though, those dreams. He had been too brutal. He knew that now. Too ruthless in his ambitions and ultimately that was the opposite of what he had wanted and he did feel remorse for that now.
For all the lives taken and all the others shattered beyond repair. All the pain and suffering he had caused.
Including the suffering of the one person who had mattered the most. The one person who had ever matched him intellectually, who had understood him, who had loved him.
Who he had loved back.
Gellert Grindelwald closed his eyes, remembering a face from long ago. A long nose, soft auburn hair, and sparkling, brilliantly blue eyes.
Grindelwald smiled.
Albus.
He had made so many mistakes in his life but he still remembered the one that had marked the point of no return.
For a long time he had wanted to blame people other than himself. Albus's little brother for one. Better than blaming himself, surely.
In the end Grindelwald was too smart for that sort of thing though. Too smart to blame anyone other than himself, where he knew the blame really lay.
The goat-herder, as nice as it had been to blame him and as much as it pained him to admit, had been innocent.
The girl, too, was innocent. Never, for even an instant, had Grindelwald blamed the girl. Even he wasn't that low. She was too sweet, too damaged.
And Albus… well, he could never blame Albus. Not really. Albus was far too good. Always had been.
No, the blame was his, he knew that, knew it as surely as he knew his own name.
The goat boy, Aberforth, had tried to make them see sense and he, Grindelwald, had lost his temper.
All his fault.
"No, Gellert! No, don't hurt them!"
Albus had only tried to protect his siblings. The only family he'd had left. He really wasn't to be blamed.
"Gellert, stop! Hurt me, don't hurt them!"
So many mistakes, and Ariana, poor simple Ariana lay dead.
It didn't matter who had cast the curse; it was fault. His presence and his ideas that ruined everything, that caused it all to come tumbling down.
He had looked into Albus's eyes then and he'd known there was no going back, known there were some hurts that couldn't be healed. Wounds that went too deep.
And he had left. Left and never went back and from there he'd made mistake after mistake.
There had been no Albus to reign in his temper. No Albus to preach control.
And things had gotten so terribly out of hand.
Then had come the day when he had faced Albus once more. His old friend hadn't wanted to join him anymore, though. No, those days were long past and they had both known it.
And now he resided in the topmost cell of the prison he had built. Talk about irony.
And so the years had past and when he had heard of Albus's death, even after all these years, it had still hurt. Curious, that. The power of love.
The prison guards had seemed to think that the news would make him happy. Happy. They had glared at him, as though it were something he had wished for and by wishing had made it happen. There had been no one to share his grief with. No one who understood him anymore. And that had hurt too.
Grindelwald sighed. He supposed it didn't matter now. He wasn't long for this world, he knew. He would be dead soon too.
The new dark lord would come.
Of that he was certain.
The one they all said was even worse than him.
Voldemort.
And he, Gellert Grindelwald, would die. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would see Albus again.
That would be nice.
However, for right now there were other, more immediately pressing things to consider and in the gathering darkness of the room he had spent so much of his life in Grindelwald smiled grimly.
There weren't many ways left to him in which he could make a difference for the better. Weren't many ways in which he could atone… but maybe, if he refused to help an evil dark lord… tried to keep him from desecrating the tomb of a great man… from assuming a wand of devastating power… maybe that would be worth something…
And, yes, perhaps nothing he could do would stop Voldemort from doing all of those things, perhaps it would all be in vain, but he had to try.
It wouldn't cancel out all the bad he had done, that was true, but it would be worth it.
And Albus would have wanted it from him. Would have wanted him to do what was right.
It would be a good death.
The End.