A/N: This was a bolt of inspiration that hit me on the bus to work while reading Silently Watches' 'Black Princess Ascending' story (second in the series). Oddly, it wasn't at all inspired by the recent Fantastic Beasts film like you might assume, but was instead based around Dumbles' questionable decisions as 'Leader of the Light' and just what his justifications were.
Of course, said justifications and problems have been rehashed hundreds upon thousands of times on this site, and by far better writers than I; however, I believe I'm the first to have this little plot twist. So, please enjoy, and let me know what you think. I know it's a bit dry to begin with, and clichéd, but hold on.
DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING, ALL PROPERTIES BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS.
For the Greater Good
Percy Weasley was a dedicated fellow, who threw himself into life with everything he had. Some would say this led to him being overbearing, or perhaps stuffy (or other less polite words if he'd managed to piss someone off, which was sadly common.) Of course, this dedication meant he took his various roles throughout his young life very seriously; from his current position as a junior undersecretary to Minister Fudge, his postings at Hogwarts as prefect and later head boy, or earlier still when his mother would ask him to babysit his younger siblings.
Needless to say, when Madame Umbridge had tasked him with creating a dossier on Albus Dumbledore, and any questionable decisions he had made in his age (the man was born in the 19th century for Merlin's sake! Of course he made mistakes, despite his parents' insistence otherwise) Percy had approached the task from the senior woman with his normal gusto and thoroughness, intent on delivering a report detailed enough to impress the meticulous witch.
The findings of his search were a bit of a shock.
As he shuffled sheafs of parchments atop his desk, the ginger man was reminded of his words to a certain raven-haired boy at his first welcoming feast when the child queried the Headmaster's odd speech: "Mad? He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry?" Back then he had instantly brushed it off - he was Albus Dumbledore! His definition of 'mad' at the time was just a bit eccentric, and someone who enjoyed throwing out odd things to offset people and keep them guessing. And then of course was his declaration - 'Best wizard in the world!' - it was what he had been brought up on; great man, this, genius, that, the only man You-Know-Who ever feared, and the great Defeater of Grindelwald of course. The seeds of doubt were firmly planted however, now that he had time and incentive to consolidate feelings, and were only ratified by what evidence he was drawing.
And that was only on what he had witnessed in his time at Hogwarts! The old man's decisions beyond those seven years he witnessed, and even actions during then outside of the school, were suspect when looked upon thusly. The incident in '87 when a cursed portrait several students to magical exhaustion, and even managed to reduce one unfortunate muggleborn to a squib!
The DMLE had no record of this, or indeed the entire Ministry. The girl, too, had seemingly disappeared of the face of the Earth.
He could hardly forget near the end of the 1988 summer term when the then defence professor - Siran McCain - had barricaded himself in his classroom with a whole class of first years for some unexplained reason that led to him dying.
Not a mention of the dangerous hostage situation that Dumbledore himself had to resolve.
Then in the Spring term of '90 when his foolish brothers had all but started a war with Slytherin house that lasted months, and ended in what was close to a pitched battle in the Great Hall, resulting in numerous people being remanded to the Hospital Wing for weeks on end - Burke had never quite lost that limp, and Macklemore still had twitching problems.
Again, no official record.
Then in '91 when the troll got in - not even mentioning the live cerberus found by numerous 'adventurous' Gryffindors on the third floor - the next year, petrifications and his own sister being kidnapped and possessed, '92 many times when on patrol as Head Boy he had to prevent Dementors from coming too close to the school buildings at night, had found collapsed or shivering students suffering from exposure, or the damn creatures storming the bloody quidditch pitch in the middle of a game!
Nothing, it was barely mentioned in a simple memo in the Control of Magical Creatures department and a meeting record in the DMLE that some Dementors had been stationed at Hogwarts, there was no call to the DMLE that someone was claiming to have opened the Chamber of Secrets and was petrifying people - even a ghost! - for months on end, and the fact that a class 3X creature broke into what was supposedly the safest place in Britain wasn't mentioned either.
And that wasn't even starting on what he did find evidence for.
The school of Hogwarts had been massively downsized under his ascension, and numerous classes removed - from Wizarding Culture (a recommended class for muggleborns) to sporting events like Duelling competitions - not to mention that there used to be common rooms for each year group in the castle, and that there were at least two teachers for each of the core subjects, allowing the senior professor to focus on the upper years while training their junior to replace them one day, and of course the increase in tuition fees that had kept his own family so destitute despite his father's position as a department head in the Ministry, did not consider the exchange rate when offered to muggleborn in pounds and pence, and stayed the same - meaning those who paid in Galleons were paying far more to accommodate for Muggleborns, a fact which had forced many to attend other, less exclusive schools in Britain and drastically decreased the number of those attending Hogwarts to around sixty per year, or even less following the War.
And that was another subject! The Blood War as it was known had not at all been wrapped up properly.
Dumbledore held a position as Chief Warlock then - as he had since just after Grindelwald's war - and it was the duty of him, then-Minister Millicent Bagnold and Bartemius Crouch, the head of the DMLE at the time, to sort out the country after the war was finished, and move back into normal operation. As part of this, emergency powers and various wartime policies were supposed to be revoked and normal laws retroactively applied.
This had not happened.
This meant the emergency powers granted to these three roles during wartime were still in effect, allowing Dumbledore - and now, Cornelius Fudge and Amelia Bones - power beyond what their positions should allow. And, various examples of breaking the law had occurred as well; most importantly that very few captured enemy combatants had received a trial! Igor Karkaroff, the Lestranges, and Augustus Rookwood were the only Death Eaters to receive trials; the rest had been thrown in Azkaban - originally a precautionary measure while the war was ongoing - and forgotten about! There were dozens of people on record, from the renowned Sirius Black, to the lowly enforcers and undesirables who made up the bulk of You-Know-Who's forces, who had never received due process.
How could the Professor have let that happen?
As Chief Warlock, the law was his responsibility to uphold, impartially and blindly to all. The simple fact was he had not. And that was without even going into the approach of after the war and his dealings with Harry Potter.
The elder Potter's wills had been sealed following a closed session with Dumbledore and Bagnold, and the child had been 'put in the care of his appropriate guardians.' Whenever the subject had been approached, whether in the Wizengamot or by a newspaper, that had always been Dumbledore's response, and he refused to say anything else.
Of course, that was before Percy learned of the truth after his brothers had to rescue the poor boy from a room with iron bars on the windows! Not to mention he had always been far too skinny and small for his age, making certain assumptions point to malnutrition and mistreatment.
Taking a sip of coffee, the young man choked and spat the cold and unappetising mouthful back into its mug, and glanced at the clock by the door of his small office with a sigh. Bloody hell it was late, he had just gotten so caught up with all this... he didn't even know what to call it anymore. It was still difficult to believe any of this possible, that the Great Albus Dumbledore could do any of these things - his very mind rebelled against the idea.
As he began to gather together the parchment and make preparations to head home for the day - or perhaps night was more appropriate - he was startled by his door swinging open.
To his surprise, the figure beyond was very recognisable, and the last person he wanted to see right now.
"Professor, what a surprise," he stated, trying very hard not to look down at his own neat handwriting beneath his palms that detailed this very man's crimes.
"Good evening, Percy, shouldn't you be home at this hour?" the old man's eyes twinkled as he smiled genially, in that old-grandfatherly way that had so relaxed the ex-Gryffindor whenever it had been laid upon him at school. Shame it failed to do so now.
"Yes it is, I was just heading home actually," he made a grab for the overcoat he wore outside over his formal work-robe.
"Finished investigating me, then?" he replied casually in that same light tone.
"W-what?" Percy spluttered as the words sank in.
"Oh, come now my dear boy, do you think I do not have certain files tagged so that I am aware if someone tries to access them?" Dumbledore dropped his head to look at the papers flooding his desk, flicking a hand through a few with interest. "I find the best recourse when this happens is to see where the investigator goes, and what paper-trail they follow before approaching them - it makes it so much easier to cover my tracks, as it were, and prevent it happening again in future. You're actually the first person in a number of years to go looking this successfully; I suppose I had thought to have destroyed any relevant evidence."
"You're talking about tampering with evidence and..." Percy trailed off as he looked back into those once-more harmlessly twinkling eyes.
"Oh yes; I can hardly risk someone managing to slip through my fingers and leak it to the papers, now can I?"
"You're a criminal," he breathed.
"I suppose you could see it that way; however it is all for the Greater Good."
"You've thrown away the law books and acted illegally and negligently and now you're just going to cover it up!" anger grew in him as his face started to turn 'Weasley red,' "I won't let you!"
"Now why did you think I would give you that opportunity?"
HIs eyes only had a chance to widen, before a jet of red light struck him, and Arthur Weasley's third child slumped to the floor.
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The first thing Percy was aware of upon waking was a pounding headache, and a sick feeling to his stomach. With a groan, he sat up, blinking bleary eyes and automatically moving to rub his head.
"There you go, up you come," said a comforting, familiar voice, "have some tea, if you would like."
"What?" the ginger man replied nonsensically as his mind began to clear.
"Oh good, you're British. Tell me, how is my dear homeland?" The words fell upon deaf ears as Percy became aware of the face before him, offering a porcelain cup of steaming brown liquid.
"No!" he exclaimed as memory flooded back, backpedalling away from the man and swatting the cup out of his hands, leading to a smash and spillage of the hot drink.
"Oh dear, I was rather fond of that cup," Albus Dumbledore replied as he looked forlornly to the mess.
"Get away from me," Percy demanded, fumbling at his right pocket for his wand, only to find it missing. "You attacked me!"
"No, I offered you a cup of tea; generally speaking, it is polite to either refuse humbly, or accept it gratefully. Do they no longer teach young people manners?" the old man replied, turning to sit down in a simple rocking chair, grabbing his own cup from a tray on a nearby table. In confusion, Percy glanced about at his surroundings; they were odd to say the least. The whole room was constructed of smooth, elegant swirls of metal forming a dome overhead, within which was contained the table and two chairs at which Dumbledore now sat, a bed in one corner, what looked like a toilet and bathtub and a tall bookshelf filled with worn volumes. In short, it looked like a comfortable prison cell, not helped by the lack of a visible door.
"You stunned me, back in my office," Percy retorted, snapping his gaze back to the old man who was calmly rocking and now sipping on his own drink - why didn't he fix the cup with his wand if he was fond of it? And where exactly were they?
"Ah, yes, I shouldn't have assumed you'd already be aware, he does like to taunt me so. Forgive me, I fear in my aged state I am becoming senile, as the muggles would say," he shook his head slowly, "no, I'm afraid I have never visited your office, young man, and I did not stun you. That would be..." he paused as a grinding sound pervaded the air, and the dome began to move, swirling and rotating as it collapsed into the floor, revealing a further room beyond. It appeared this was, in fact, a sphere suspended in the middle of a large, cubic room visibly lined in metal plates covered in huge glowing runes. However, Percy's attention was quickly drawn to the man approaching along a thin walkway towards them, wearing a familiar face.
"What?" Percy spluttered as another Albus Dumbledore walked up to them, smiling all the way - and no longer his kind smile, this was a harder, more vicious thing. He glanced between the two, realisation beginning to dawn; while the approaching man was as the headmaster had always been, the one in the chair was different. Where the latter wore half-moon spectacles, and an eye-watering robe of purple with moving stars, the former had a pair of round glasses and a garb like pyjamas of pale blue and white stripes, and was significantly more wrinkled, and nearly going bald. "Who? How?"
"Where is your normal verbose nature, Master Weasley?" the approaching Dumbledore inquired in dark amusement, "a little bit confused, perhaps?"
"Who are you? Where are we? How long have you been...?" Percy gestured wildly with his arms as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing with his own two eyes.
"There's the ever inquisitive swot we all know," the man replied in an infuriatingly calm manner, "and such simple questions, even if they do have wonderfully interesting answers."
"Oh, stop showboating; don't you never tire of doing this?" the older man said from his chair disdainfully.
"Never, Albus, you know me."
"If he's Dumbledore," the red-headed teen looked at the old man briefly - and wasn't the idea Dumbledore could be captured so strange - "then who are you?"
"Interesting place, this, do you like it? It took me years to get it just right," the man replied nonchalantly, instead.
"You are quite obsessed with drama. He's-," the elder was stopped in his explanation as his mouth suddenly stopped making any noise. He glared at the newer Dumbledore, who flicked his suddenly appeared wand meaningfully.
"Now, now Albus, don't spoil my fun. You know I prefer that moment of realisation when they work it out for themselves," he said mockingly, "now, as I was saying. This place is likely the finest prison ever built; much better than that pigsty Britain chucks its criminals into. Relying on a notoriously fickle, demonic subspecies to guard your prisoners? Idiocy in its highest form. No, this was a true piece of art." He spun on the spot, arms held out to gesture around. "While any can enter, only my blood can leave."
"Who. Are. You?" Percy all but growled, clenching his hand and desperately missing the comfort of his twelve inch wand of hawthorn.
"I always loved," the man continued, unabated, "how people found it so very ironic that I was supposedly contained within the prison I built to hold my arch-enemy; as if I would have been that stupid." It took a moment, but the young Weasley's eyes widened comically as the words sunk in and he paled, fear shivering up his spine. "And there's that little moment I do so savour."
"You can't be," he muttered in denial, his mind whirling through old history books in his head - he knew them well, there was a reason he got so many 'O's' at Hogwarts, after all.
"Oh, but I am," the grin that split his face was openly taunting as he clapped the heels of his shoes together with a resounding 'clack' and bowed slightly, wand held out to the side, "Gellert Grindelwald, at your service."
"But how? For how long...?"
"For fifty years, my little friend," the man now identified as Gellert, replied. "As if anyone could defeat me whilst I wielded the Deathstick, hah! I am unbeatable! Ah, but fooling the world was oh, so easy. They all wanted to believe I was gone and forgotten."
"Why?" Percy was aghast, staring down who he now knew to be the greatest Dark Lord of the last few centuries - a man who far surpassed You-Know-Who in body count, took over multiple countries and assisted in the extermination of millions of muggles.
"Oh, it's quite simple actually. I realised in the 40's that conquest and being a tyrant wouldn't work out eventually, and so I decided to change my tack. Far better to be respected and loved, than feared and hated. All it took was faking Albus' win over me on a battlefield, and replacing him. All of a sudden, Albus Dumbledore is the darling of Europe, ender of the Great War, Greatest Man Alive, immediately given positions of authority in Britain and abroad." The man was clearly in his element, monologuing to the nth degree. "And so I bided my time, and set up the chessboard perfectly. Increase the discontent between pureblood and muggleborn, harbour hatred and allow it to fester, by the seventies the whole country was gagging for a scrap, and it just needed a spark to set the bonfire alight. Along comes my little candidate; Tom Riddle, though I imagine you'll know him better as Voldemort."
"What?"
"You can't get past one word sentences can you? Be quiet and listen, this is the greatest masterpiece of a victory the world has ever seen!" The twinkling in his eyes had changed, and a glint of madness was now visible within the icy, sky blue. "I had plenty of candidates, possibilities to push in the right direction, but Riddle, oh he was perfect. All through school, getting ridiculed in Slytherin for his blood status, pushed into the Dark Arts, sent back every summer to an abusive orphanage; by the time he left school he was a fine weapon."
"You made Voldemort... he killed hundreds."
"No, boy, he killed thousands. All to serve the Greater Good, not that he knew that, self-absorbed as he is," the maniac gestured animatedly with his hands through his diatribe, his wand even shooting enthusiastic red sparks as he flicked it. "It was all so perfect, until that prophecy and the Potter boy killing off Tom before he could do his job." A brief sign of irritation shoed on the man's face, before quickly being consumed in triumph once again. "But now he has returned, and I have had years to set the stage perfectly once more."
"For what?" Percy found himself asking in dread. What could all of this have been in aid of?
"Our reveal to the muggles of course, my dear boy," the statement was followed by the ginger's blank stare of horror.
"You can't! If we're exposed..."
"Oh but I can," the mad smile seemed ready to split off Grindelwald's face like the Cheshire Cat, "all it takes is Tom finally hitting a muggle target, and his existence – and thereby ours – becoming known worldwide. And then as he terrorises the helpless population, in swoops Albus Dumbledore to defeat him, and take the adoration of all.
"It's already happening, little by little. I've already controlled various members of authority in the muggle world; as soon as the fight happens, I shall be named Lord Protector of the land. And then comes the great magical cures of disease and hunger, helping worldwide until every face looks to Albus Dumbledore and none shall protest as I take my place as eternal guardian of the world!" Here Grindelwald paused, and a bit of laughter escaped his visage. "Oh, I nearly forgot. That's why I chose to bring you here after all. I found the last one, Albus. That fool, Riddle, turned it into a Horcrux. The Wand, the Cloak stolen from the boy, and now the Stone. I am truly the Master of Death." The old man in the chair went from sadly resigned to looking stricken at that, seemingly understanding what Percy did not. "So, boy, what do you think? Marvellous is it not? In a few short years, all the world shall be mine, and I am a very patient man. After all, it is for the Greater Good."
"You're mad."
"Mmm, yes I suppose I am. But then, you already knew that many years ago, and passed it off as 'Albus Dumbledore's Greatness.' I have long since won; this is merely the march towards the victory parade." The man seemed to physically compose himself then, reforming his persona as Dumbledore. "It's been too long since I've been able to share my genius with someone new; you have no idea how frustrating it is having your brilliance underappreciated my dear boy. Still, I've had my indulgence," the wand with its strange nubs was brought fore to train on Percy, "and unlike Albus, I have no desire to force you to watch my victory, and I can hardly let you go with all the knowledge you now have, and even obviations can be undone by the Unspeakables these days."
"Goodbye, Percival Weasley."
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Daily Prophet, 25th July, 1995
Page 18
Section 8, Obituaries
"This week, the Ministry of Magic are sad to announce that Junior Undersecretary Percival Weasley died on Tuesday as he left work, unfortunately getting hit by an Muggle ambylunce on the streets of London. He is survived by his six brothers and sisters, as well as his parents. The Ministry added this should remain as a cautionary statement to Witches and Wizards looking to travel in the Muggle world that danger is present at all times. Percy was…"
A/N: And there we go, surprisingly very quick to punch out and reached nearly 4k very quickly. Maybe I'm getting back in the hang of things? One can't but hope. On a related note, the next CMM chapter is in production – and hugely, massively delayed, yes I know – and might see the light of day before Christmas? I don't know, you'll have to wait and see.
Cheery-bye!