Young Albus Dumbledore lay in his bed on a white, snowy morning in Godric's Hollow. It had been years since his best friend, and for all intents and purposes his lover, had lay there with him, but it was as though Albus could still smell the soft, summery scent of Gellert Grindelwald on his pillow and sheets. If Albus closed his eyes and thought hard enough, he could almost feel the warmth coming off of Gellert's body, making Albus feel the one thing which meant more to him than anything else: safe.
So many times Albus had tried, in vain, to get over Gellert. He was, after all, a menace to the wizarding world and needed to be stopped. Albus wanted to deny it, but he knew that in the end it would come down to the two of them, and that Albus would no longer be able to hide behind his illusion of love to escape his duty towards the community. More than anything else, Ariana's death had been responsible for convincing him that there was no redemption for Grindelwald, that he had strayed further onto the dark path than wise, and that no one, not even Albus, could bring him back.
Albus got up off his bed, having barely slept at all in the first place, and checked his nose in the mirror which was still crooked from where Aberforth had punched him at Ariana's funeral. Fixing the nose didn't seem right; Albus deserved the pain, and he would wear the scar on his face forever as a mark of his weakness and his foolishness.
Never again, Albus decided, would he ever let anyone get that close to him. Gellert had taken a place in Albus' heart which had made Albus oblivious to his faults. Albus had gotten so caught up with the beauty and brilliance and perfection and charm of Gellert that he had failed to notice, or maybe refused to acknowledge, that Gellert's ambitious aims steadily became more sinister and more obsessive in nature. How could he have been so foolish?
Albus walked out into the graveyard of the church around the corner from Batty's house and sat at the foot of Ariana's grave. Before he knew it, Albus was sobbing heavily into the snow, his tears melting the icy coat over her grave to reveal the dark stone beneath. All Albus wanted to do was to die and be with his beloved, sweet, innocent sister. No matter what the others said, Albus was responsible for her death, and he would forever pay the price of his foolishness in the form of the pain which consumed him so completely.
Albus would go on to study comprehensively and become, for all intents and purposes, the greatest wizard of all time. He would be acknowledged by witched and wizards across the wizarding world, and he would eventually face Grindelwald off in the legendary duel which finally put an end to the tyrannous wizard. What no one would ever know, what he would never let people know, would be how every night he would cry himself to sleep; how every second of every waking moment that he had, he would spend thinking about how easily he would give up all his achievements for having Ariana back for even a moment; how he would lose control of himself whenever he was alone; how he would never, ever let anyone come as close to him as Ariana, so he would never have to deal with the pain of loss or the burden of guilt.
Albus would forever fight for the right cause and do everything in his power to redeem himself of the crime of which he knew he was guilty, but seeing Aberforth's eyes, so similar to his own, he would once again be reminded of the fact that there was no redemption for his sins, that once you lose family, you lose everything. Albus would search obsessively for the Hallows, the only method he knew of conquering death, and demand that Ariana be returned to him, claiming that he had suffered enough and didn't deserve to suffer anymore.
Only years and years later, in his wise, old age, would Albus come across little Harry looking at the Mirror of Erised and realise, while describing how it drives people mad, that he had been driven mad before it too. He would look at it one last time, seeing as ever him dying at the hands of Grindelwald instead of Ariana, before vowing to never think of Him again.
Six years later, Albus would once again be thrown into the middle of that duel, where he had stood powerless, unable to believe what he was seeing Gellert do, unable to bring himself to raise his wand against the man whom Albus loved more than anything else in the world, except of course his sister. Albus would succumb to the power of Voldemort's potion and would relive the worst horror of his life, of being rendered incapacitated by the very same love which he championed as the basis of greatness. He would drown for the last time in the pain of losing the two most valuable people in his life at once, one to the inevitable claws of death and the other to distrust.
Hours later, Albus would plead to his one ally, to Severus, for relief. Relief from the pain in his arm which threatened to envelop his body; relief from his sister's agonised screaming, which he in his old age could bear no more; relief from the guilt which he had cowardly carried all his life. He would beg Severus for relief, and would see the flicker of pain in his eyes before seeing the blinding flash of green last, which would be the last thing he'd ever see.
