A/N: Written for Round 9 of the Houses Competition for Slytherin House as a short story.

Prompt: 7. [Irish Toast] May you live one hundred years, with one extra to repent.

Words in bold taken directly from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The sentence belongs to J. K. Rowling.

Word count: 729

May you live one hundred years, with one extra to repent.

He'd received the message with a newspaper clipping back in his office a few days ago. The headline on it read: Gellert Grindelwald Escaped From Nurmengard; Presumed Dead.

Albus Dumbledore sighed to himself as he walked with Harry, explaining to him the anomaly that was Horace Slughorn. It took you long enough to break out, Gellert, he thought, his mind far away from the conversation he was having with Harry. You only built Nurmengard, after all. He'd heard about it in the Daily Prophet, of course; the Ministry would want to prove that they were at least a reliable source of information and encourage the public with news of the death of the second darkest wizard in history. But it was nice to receive the message from Gellert all the same as a last farewell before he died.

While Albus wasn't fooled into thinking his former lover was actually dead, he was not worried either. With the rumors of the Elder Wand still circling around Grindelwald's head, it was only a matter of time until the Dark Lord caught up to Grindelwald. Quite ironic that he now held the item he and Gellert had so coveted in his hands at this very moment.

May you live one hundred years, with one extra to repent.

Albus remembered the first time he'd heard the toast: at a pub in Ireland he and Gellert had snuck off to when they were bored. They'd each taught themselves to Apparate, so it was no trouble at all, and the night had been filled with much dancing, drinks, and laughter. At the end of the night, when the pub had finally been closing up, the barkeep had raised his own tankard and said the toast, and the patrons had repeated it, oddly solemnly for an end-of-the-night farewell. Albus remembered that Gellert had looked him straight in the eyes, as if he truly wished for the two of them to spend a century together, ruling the world.

Then again, that was all he was ever interested in, Albus reminded himself. Ruling the world. He's gone dark now, and he'll be dead soon. As will I.

He squeezed his withered, blackened hand under his cloak for the tenth time that day, as if thinking that now it would be back to normal again. He'd been extremely stupid to make such a mistake. The old pull of a Hallow shouldn't have affected him so. His goal in the remainder of his life was to find and kill Voldemort; his goal was to repent.

Perhaps his death was long overdue as well as poetic. Albus had lived sixteen years and a century, and in that time had truly damaged the wizarding world. He'd helped bring Grindelwald into power, fueling the man's desires in his blind, youthful infatuation. And he'd taught Tom Riddle at Hogwarts for seven years; all the time his suspicions had heightened as the boy's genocidal ideas developed, and yet he'd watched passively. Thousands of opportunities wasted…

And Harry. Tom Riddle, his own student that had grown to be the darkest wizard of all time, had also grown to decimate the lives of his current students. Riddle murdered the boy's parents, and then Albus threw him into an abusive home for ten years, believing in his own motives, believing it would be better for Harry in the long run, believing it would better for the bleeding greater good just as nearsightedly as he had believed in Gellert.

May you live one hundred years, with one extra to repent.

Well, Albus told himself, grabbing Harry's arm and preparing to Disapparate to the Burrow, you've lived well over one hundred years; now it's time for you to repent.

Albus had sheltered the boy, selfishly, fearfully, detrimentally; he knew that now. Keeping Harry in the dark had only given him less time to prepare for the inevitable. Now it was time to repent by giving Harry the only weapon Albus could pass on: information. His pensieve would come in handy…

He spun on his heel and was plunged into suffocating darkness before he and Harry appeared outside the crooked tower of rooms that was the Burrow.

"If you don't mind, Harry," said Albus as they passed through the gate, "I'd like a few words with you before we part."