Chapter 20
The Power of Love
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Where Grindelwald's will is read
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A single candle burned on a spindle-legged candle holder in the Headmaster's office. Ariana continued to drink her tea, gaining strength for a necessary conversation with her brother.
It's not going to be easy, she thought, but she felt the overwhelming need to put old grudges to rest and to learn the whole truth of what happened in the past and why Albus acted like he did, allowing Gellert to take custody of her. She didn't buy for a moment his pathetic excuse to Aberforth that he did not know. Albus was far too intelligent for that.
And then there was the will.
It arrived to Grimmauld Place 12 shortly after Alphard was born but Kreacher and Winky kept it from her, considering the "Young Mistress" too delicate for such reading. The scroll had been dropped by a strange looking owl, foreign and big-eyed, her feathers ruffled after a long distance flight. The parchment was black, the letters big and bright red. It was addressed to Ariana Dumbledore (-Black? 1900-1927? 1998?), Grimmauld Place 12, London. When Kreacher finally decided to stop punishing himself for keeping the letter a secret and gave it to Ariana, it was beyond her understanding how anybody knew how to find her there.
She didn't know how she felt when she read the contents of the will, and the fact that she didn't faint or puke gave great credit to her recently improved magical and personal integrity. To leave Alphard with Kreacher was the hardest decision she had ever made. Dressing him up way too warm and threatening Kreacher with socks if anything happened to her son, Ariana rushed to Hogwarts. When she arrived to the Headmaster's office, she was glad to see Severus after weeks of seclusion with her baby, but Val's intrusion was perfectly timed, and she was even gladder to get rid of him without hurting his feelings. Yes, he would deny he had feelings, but Ariana knew better and she had come to consider Severus to be her best friend. That was perhaps the only thing Albus and Ariana ever agreed about without discussion.
Yet what she needed to discuss with Albus could only be done in private. Very much so. Staring at Albus's frame still covered with a cloth, she wondered what her brother's reaction was going to be and decided it was time to find out.
"Albus," she said unravelling the cloth and letting it slide to the floor, "there is something you've got to see. And I warn you that it's not nice at all."
"Ariana," Albus acnowledged her, "where have you been?"
"One moment, brother," she said, "first things first."
Ariana carefully smeared a Portrait Snoozing Gel invented by Severus over the frames of all the former Headmasters to be certain that no one was going to listen in on their exchange. Phineas Nigellus was not there and he was almost family, in a way, despite that he didn't know it, so she skipped his frame for sentimental reasons.
With rhythmical movement she unrolled the will and remembered the exact echo of Gellert's cold-hearted voice in the small house above the sea. It was appropriate for what she was about to do. "Here, Albus. I cannot bring myself to read it, so a little trick will do."
"Loquitur," she spoke to the ragged parchment, making it read itself out loud in Gellert's voice.
"Nurmengard, beginning of March 1998
The Last Will of Gellert Hieronymus Albert Grindelwald
To be delivered to Miss Ariana Kendra Hecate Dumbledore in person by the authorities of the prison after my death.
Failure to comply with this request will result in a certain and immediate destruction of the prison and all its facilities as prior to my passing I will activate the old curse I personally placed in its foundations when I still ran the Institute.
As a hint to the authorities I believe that she now resides in Britain but her exact whereabouts are a secret even to me. Had I known them, no walls would stop me to deliver her these words in person before my timely end.
I fully trust the thoroughness of the prison administration, that I have frequently felt on my own skin in the long years of my stay, to be more efficient then I am in finding where she is.
Should anyone try to open the second part, addressed to Ms Dumbledore, the consequences will not be nice: you will not succeed in reading it so don't bother to try.
(the sign of the Deathly Hallows)
Beware and be prepared for the death is one day coming for us all,
Gellert Grindelwald"
"How?" asked Albus, sounding terribly uncertain.
"Let him explain," Ariana replied, tired of everything, "then we talk."
The voice of a dead Dark Lord continued echoing in the office of the Headmaster of Hogwarts, implacable and surviving the demise of the wizard.
"Dear Ariana,
I will not ask for your forgiveness for I deserve none. I didn't ask for your love nor offered my own.
I made you believe lies about yourself, or rather I perpetrated and augmented the lies told to you by others and I am not sorry for that either. I simply believe it is time for you to learn the truth. Your magic is whole: get yourself a wand and start practising. Or do without, even better, Merlin knows you can.
It shames me greatly but I have to confess it all now for I have no more time.
Ariana, I wanted you badly. I wanted you like I have never wanted anyone before. You were so young when I met you. I was aware that my intimate tastes were not for everyone's liking and I erroneously believed that if you didn't know any better in life you could grow to accept me. It never occurred to me that you could have loved me just as well if I had only helped you and courted you the usual way.
I was a killer at 10. For me killing came as natural as having a cup of tea. I did it when I was bored or simply because I could. I never questioned my methods. I never bothered to consider if magic was dark if it served my ends of expanding my power.
When Albus defeated me in 1945, he spared my life. It was the worst punishment I could have received. He also paid me in kind by breaking my magic, which has become like yours, uncontrollable and unpredictable, essentially unusable.
A fit punishment for my worst crime: you.
Trust Albus to know about righteousness.
That is how I lived for more than 50 years. And unlike you silly Dumbledores, I have always been a hopeless case for wandless magic so I had no way to recover properly.
Albus let me live to pay for my crimes. But above all I believe he sought justice for you. For Albus is, was and always has been in favour of justice above all things. Even above love.
My end is drawing near. I will soon die at the hands of Tom Riddle. Please let Albus know this – I will play my part in his charade, for the greater good. It's the least I can do. He will be pleased to hear a confirmation about what kind of fool Tom Riddle is and he will know what I mean.
Ariana, I missed you for 70 years. That had been my true punishment for everything. And I couldn't believe my luck when I felt your existence again and I knew that you were alive so I could say my confession before leaving this world. That is a rare magical gift we share, you and I, we could both sense the beings we were connected to, even from a great distance, as I am sensing your presence now across the entire continent after so many wasted years. And I envy the wizard who did better by you so very much. You were right in hiding him for me for I would have killed him for sure if I only could. I was never really good in sharing things.
I wish to give you a parting gift, a few lines I dreamt about repeatedly in the short time when I had in my possession the painting of Nativity that took you away from me for real. The lie that Albus and I told Aberforth ironically turned out to be the truth.
'They say that one day the Veil has to return to the place where it was taken from. Then all the good deeds wrought by the angels will come true. But no one knows where that place is.'
This I bequeath you, this is the inheritance you shall have from me. This is the single most important content of my Last Will and Testament to you.
This is my single legacy to the world if there is any I deserve to have.
Heed to these words. They remained engraved in my memory and I feel it is almost my duty to pass them on to you and that for you, they could be important.
Goodbye, Ariana.
I am going.
I hope to shed a burden of my sins and see Albus on the other side, and him, him I will have to beg for his forgiveness. For I ruined all he held dear and I could have never given him anything in return. And it took me 70 years of questioning everything I have ever done to finally understand what I did.
Farewell!
Gellert Grindelwald"
The silence in the Headmaster's office was chilly, inhuman in its simplicity. Ariana folded her hands demurely in her lap to hide her uneasiness better. Slightly moved by hearing Gellert's confession in his living voice, against her own wishes, she asked: "Albus, could you please explain to me what he's talking about. What did he exactly do to you that could possibly be worse than what he did to me?"
"It's a long story, Ariana," said her brother's crumpled voice. "And I will try to explain it to you if you promise that you won't interrupt me. It is past time that I do it, and I owe it to you as surely as he owed to ask you for forgiveness, and did not, the fool."
"You lost the right to make any demands on me," said Ariana bitterly, "but I still want to hear what you have to say. I agree that it is past time that we have this conversation long overdue, you and I."
Albus sighed and began his tale. "First of all, I'm sure that you are familiar with the work of Miss Skeeter about my life, as most wizards are these days. Also, as anyone can guess Miss Skeeter got plenty of things wrong from the old Bathilda Bagshot when she wrote her version of events. She presented my friendship with Gellert as a one summer get-together of two teenagers, if I recall correctly. I am too old to remember things these days... Severus was kind enough to borrow me the book. "
"Yes, and?" Ariana interrupted, impatient for Albus to get to the point.
However, the truth is quite a bit different, as you can guess better than anyone. Gellert was almost 8 years older than me. We met when I was 8 and Gellert almost 16 years old. He came to England from the continent as a strange pilgrim, chasing the wizarding legend of the Deathly Hallows. At first he couldn't find any hallows, deathly or otherwise, so he bought a house to live in, which belonged to a witch deceased years ago. Her family wanted to get rid of it because it was haunted by a very peculiar curse. It was said that wizards who ventured into the house disappeared without trace and disturbing noises could be heard from it at night. The neighbours called them whispers from the world of the dead...
The witch was called Vanna Prince-McMillan. She was one of the kindest persons ever to exist in wizarding history, a widow, living alone with her son, who left home when he was of age to work in curse-breaking somewhere in Siberia.
Gellert bought the house, expecting to find a buried treasure, or fight a great danger threatening to consume him. But the house did nothing at all and all his dreams of greatness remained unfulfilled. So he decided to get rid of the obsolete magical objects there and that is how he met my father. Father was thrilled with artifacts he received and he had been known for helping people out for no reason at all, so he arranged Gellert an internship in St Mungos to have an occupation during his search for hallows. They kept in touch. I would occasionally see him when he visited my father.
When I grew older, and my studies in Hogwarts progressed, Gellert and I became best friends. He invited me to join him in his search. I have never met another wizard whose intelligence and intellectual curiosity matched mine. My first mistake was getting estranged from our brother Aberforth whom I considered too limited to share my interests. I believed that Gellert and I were meant to find the hallows and jointly become masters of death. The hallows, you surely read about what they are; the invincible wand, the resurrection stone and the invisibility cloak. And I can ensure you that they are very real and not only stories for little children. But I have my doubts now that they make you a master of anything whatsoever."
Ariana's face was inscrutable. The portrait of Albus Dumbledore sighed and went on.
"In any case, Gellert agreed with me that with the help of the hallows, we would become the masters of death, together, and it would all be for the greater good. It was always about the two of us, you have to understand that, Ariana."
"And where was I in your dreams of grandeur dear brother?" Ariana inquired, distractedly looking towards the door, wishing she left with Severus to do something useful and skip the painful discussion altogether. She tried to suppress her disappointment that Albus was after all a heartless monster she always suspected him to be. She should never have come to talk to him. There was no possible explanation, even less justification for what he had done.
"When I graduated from Hogwarts, the death had already taken our father and I couldn't do anything about it. As I couldn't do anything to help you or our mother, the death's next victim. I was heart-broken and Gellert went for a tour of Europe in search for hallows, concluding they abandoned England."
"Somewhere in Spain he defeated a dark creature, with no human form, but with something akin to human understanding. It lived there in tree-holes and terrorized local population drinking their blood. Before Grindelwald disarmed it, the creature boasted to be Antioch Peverell the 12th, owner of the unbeatable wand. Local people claimed the creature was immortal. Gellert told me he accidentally destroyed him by drowning him in water, which the creature apparently could not stand. I was so happy to see him when he returned to England that I didn't understand how he destroyed his opponent by using very dark and very violent magic. Thus he became the master of the invincible wand."
"It was the first time he lied to me, Ariana."
"He had stolen the Elder Wand earlier from the wand maker, Gregorovitch, and I know not how Gregorovitch came to possess it, but that was the truth. Then he haunted the miserable half alive creature of its first and possibly last true owner and killed it like an animal, inventing stories of what this creature did."
"And I couldn't have followed him on his journey because I became your guardian and I couldn't leave you..."
"I'm sure your sacrifice had been tremendous," Ariana said with hatred.
"Please, don't interrupt me. I will be finished soon and then you can continue despising me all you want," Albus said in a deep voice. "It is good that you received this letter so that I can also finish this confession of my own. Long overdue as you said yourself."
Ariana stood up and paced in the circular office, her mind a jumble of thoughts, her heart telling her to gather her robes and leave Albus forever. But if I leave, I will never know the whole truth, she said to herself. What's the point in knowing it, whispered the inner voices, you know enough to condemn him. Still, I want to know, she thought. This certainty silenced the voices of her fear, and she willed herself to sit down again, hands once again folded in front, blue eyes twinkling with mild curiosity.
"Please, Albus, go on," she said, "whatever you may still confess, cannot make your betrayal any worse to me than it is now. You were supposed to guard me after our parents died. And what have you done?"
"Gellert told me he could help you. He took me to St Mungos and demonstrated his new prowess with his new wand, treating several patients deemed incurable before. He still owned Vanna Prince McMillan's house and I agreed that he could take you there. We made the place unplottable so that no one could find it. We told everybody you died. Aberforth wouldn't believe us so we told him that the Nativity painting our father left to you was cursed with evil and that it took you with it in the unknown direction. We blamed father for your accident, we even called him a dark wizard as everyone else already did. If I had only known that the painting was a Veil of Death!"
"I've heard enough," said Ariana, green and broken-hearted. "Albus, you are a monster-"
"Yes! But here is the final part of my confession, something I've never told anyone. And that is how I turned into a monster that I am. You have to understand that Gellert treated me very differently than what he treated you. Ever since he met you after our mother died, he started telling me that I was his brother and more. He wouldn't specify what he meant by more but he praised my knowledge on every occasion and matched every magical exploit of mine with a passion of his own. He went everywhere with me and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what he wanted, or what I wanted. I have always been different from the boys in school, Ariana," Albus slowed down his monologue, as if every word he was saying was almost impossible to pronounce from shame.
"What do you mean?" asked Ariana, recognising for the first time in her brother the signs of emotional roller coaster Gellert could cause in a sane person.
"Well, I never paid any attention to girls, if you know what I mean. I didn't notice their existence as girls, they were keen spirits and I treated them as equal in magic, but I never noticed or commented on their hair, their eyes, other parts of their body that boys talked about, nothing of the sort. And then when Gellert wanted to take you away, he took me on an outing to the Great Lake of Hogwarts and declared in absolute serenity that I was his soul-mate. He said he couldn't live without me. And that is why he was willing to help me and assume upon himself the great burden of helping my hurt sister come back to her magical integrity."
Albus's eyes were twinkling with unshed tears, his voice so deep and so broken that it was barely audible, generating a rumbling echo from the stone walls and gargoyles of Hogwarts.
"I was a fool. I was a stupid idiot, Ariana, and I said yes. I don't blame you for hating me for it."
"Albus, did he, I mean did the two of you, I mean-" Ariana could not formulate her question as her eyes suddenly filled with disgust.
"No, Ariana, we've never been together, if that's what you are asking. And not for my lack of interest. Gellert flirted with me at every moment for 12 long years, and shamelessly since he met you, and my best guess is that he laughed behind my back whenever I was gone. You see, Gellert, he was entirely into girls. And he used me, a boy who was different, a wizard who was different, a man who was unaware of what was an essential part of his identity. Gellert used me to get what he wanted from the very beginning. You." Tears big as diamonds crawled from Albus's eyes at that point, and Ariana considered briefly how portraits should not have been able to cry.
"If you must hate me, Ariana, go on, do it. You are in your right. But please, please don't hate me for being a monster, hate me for being a fool!" said Albus in a voice of one waiting for the henchman's axe to fall upon his throat.
Ariana sipped the last bit of her tea, cold as steel. With iron grip on her emotions, she sought to understand, as if understanding was the only way out of the trap of hatred. And than she saw it, bright as a new day, the truth that her brother learned from his mistakes.
"That's why you believe so firmly that Harry Potter will vanquish the Dark Lord for having a power the Dark Lord does not possess, the power of love..." Ariana retorted unexpectedly and Albus's eyes widened.
"No one has ever understood that before..." he whispered through his tears.
"You didn't vanquish the most powerful Dark Lord of our times because you learned how evil he was, or because you hated what he did to me, or out of the duty to help the wizarding world, which was all on your mind, I have no doubt about that. You won only because you loved him so deeply, no matter what he did, that your love for him could move the mountains. And so could your magic, if you allowed yourself to call upon the sheer brute force and power of your love."
Albus was speechless, probably for the first time in his life, or death.
And Ariana simply concluded, "And Harry's capacity to love others, his friends, everyone, is perhaps even stronger than yours, Albus. If only half of the stories I heard about that boy are true, Merlin help Tom Riddle when the force of love that strong is released upon him!"
"I apologise for interrupting," whispered the portrait of Phineas Nigellus discreetly, the painted Ariana bent behind him in the frame, "but I've come back. Harry Potter and his friends just entered the castle, with my other portrait frame firmly in the Mudbl... I mean Muggle-born girl bag. It will start soon."
"What did you hear, Phineas?" asked Ariana.
"A little bit of what happened to Albus," the portrait replied wistfully with a playful wink. "But it's nothing I care to repeat to anyone, honestly, you have no idea how many such secrets we have in our family. Old uncle Sirius had this life-long friend, Aurelius, they were a legend together."
Ariana fought the simultaneous desire to weep and to laugh, trying to regain her own composure, lost irreparably somewhere in the middle of her conversation with her brother.
"I missed you, Phineas," she said, finally. "It's good to have you back."
"Can I see the letter?" asked the painted Ariana.
Real Ariana gave a questioning look to Albus, who just nodded his approval still unable to speak. The painted Ariana's face turned grim as the letter read itself again in Gellert's voice as if it announced the arrival of doom.
"I have to correct myself," said Phineas, with an expression full of complicity and knowledge "we can officially adopt both of you to the Black family upon re-examining your case in its entirety. I'm sure we can find you a suitable place on the family tree."
Painted Ariana hit Phineas over his head with the empty bowl of fruit depicted on the table in their shared portrait, urging him to stop the nonsense. Their bickering started waking up the other Headmasters, meaning that the effect of the miraculous Portrait Snoozing Gel wore off. Ariana smiled when she remembered how Severus developed it for similar occasions, joking he had to make his rather complicated life of a Death Eater at least a little bit easier.
"How did you know, Ariana?" Albus managed to ask in the middle of commotion.
Ariana remembered how she defeated Grindelwald's mush spell before falling into the Veil, when, for the first time in her life, her soul was going to burst from love.
"Because you're my brother," she replied without thinking.
Having spontaneously said that, Ariana decided it was time to check what was going on outside and let the crazy portraits deal with themselves. Eager to keep her best kept family secret a bit of a secret, she carefully scooped Grindelwald's last letter and stored it into the abysmally deep inner pockets of her robes where she used to hide Sirius's wand, wordlessly casting an Obliviate in the direction of Phineas and painted Ariana.
When she was folding the parchment, she finally realized where the red colour of the letters came from. Gellert Grindelwald had written his Last Will and Testament in his own blood.
It was still not nearly enough to forget what Albus and Gellert did. Ariana caught herself hoping that one day she would be able to forgive them. The last thing Alphard needed was a mother with a soul poisoned by hatred in a world where his father was irreparably lost.
She made a few tentative steps down the spiral stairway of the Headmaster's office and stopped to give a look at the gargoyle at the entrance.
The castle brimmed with sound and a red jet of light came as far as the beginning of the stairs.
Ariana recalled all the bravery she didn't have, and hoped Val's spell would work lest Alphard become an orphan before he had any chance to meet his mother.