Part 1.3
"Do you hate me?" Ariana asks softly.
It is dusk in their home, silent but for his sister as she takes her seat on the windowsill and cries bitter tears. Somewhere upstairs is Aberforth, and Merlin knows where Albus' heart has gone.
"No," he tells her. "No, I don't hate you."
"I hate myself," she whispers. Her eyes are the red of blood, her cheeks hollow like a skull. "When I was younger I used to dream of a silver blade and the rush of death. But what I feel now - it's not hate. I've never, never known a person to be so despicable ."
Her whimpers are too much to bear. Albus looks away. "It wasn't your fault."
"She told me that too, you know. Bathilda Bagshot. Patted me on the back and said that I was innocent because I didn't want to kill her. Of course I didn't want to kill my mother. " Ariana pinches her wrist. "I must be some foul, foul creature to have produced something like this."
Albus doesn't know what to say.
"I'm sorry," Ariana mumbles. Her lips are swollen, her nose flushed pink in the darkness of late evening.
Albus wraps an arm around her shoulders. They sit together, silent.
"Can you brew me a potion?" she asks. She tilts her head, until Albus is forced to meet her eyes, blue like shattered ice. "I - I don't know the name, but you must. It would, it would be -"
"A sedative," he hears himself say.
"Yes," she whispers. "Please, Albus, when I close my eyes I see her - I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't, I can't breathe ." Tears spill from her eyes. "I want peace. Quiet. The monster has been good, I swear it has been. We were doing so well. Now it won't leave me alone. It wants to ruin me, Albus, just as it ruined Mother. I want it to, I want it to stop." She looks out the window. "I want it to all go away." Ariana sets a hand on his arm. "Can you be a stranger?" she asks. "Just for tonight? Tomorrow you can be my brother again. But tonight -"
Slowly, Albus disentangles himself from her, sits on the couch with a foot of space between them, as a stranger would. "Tell me," he says quietly.
"I wish I were never born. I wish I had died an infant in the cradle. I wish, I wish those three boys killed me." Her gaze does not leave his face. "I want to kill myself. An eye for an eye. Blood for blood. Is that not how balance must be restored?"
"Blood is the truest ink of men," Albus says.
Ariana considers him with rheumy eyes. "If I asked you to kill me, could you do it?"
"No more than you could kill me."
"I could kill you." She bites her lip as her eyes fill with tears. "Not on purpose, but -"
"Anyone can kill me," Albus tells her. "Even a muggle. Human lives are so easily snuffed. Perhaps that is what makes them so precious."
Ariana closes her eyes and tips back her head. Tears slip down her cheeks, swift as summer rain.
Bathilda Bagshot comes on the morrow with a basketful of muffins and busies about their kitchen, brewing tea and setting the table, bringing out a jar of blueberry jam and whipped butter. They sit at the table.
"The muffins are lovely," Albus tells her. The voice is not his, nor is the smile that creeps along his lips.
Bathilda Bagshot stays a little longer, but her good heart can only keep a conversation afloat for so long. Fifteen minutes later she is gone, and Ariana stands from the table and climbs the stairs back to her room.
"I'll quit Hogwarts," Aberforth says at once. "Never liked that damn school anyway."
Albus' wand is in his hand, a silent muffling spell in the air before his brother can say more. "Your education -"
" My education. We have no money, we have no one to take care of our own sister . Just yesterday you were suppose to leave on some grand tour of Greece, and Ariana can hardly tag along, can she?"
"Aberforth -"
"One of us will always have to watch after her, you know," he says, suddenly sober. "No one needs a Hogwarts education to take care of their sister."
"Your future -"
"My future is with my family," he says quietly. "What's left of it, anyway."
If Albus spends hours in Ariana's company, both are careful to never mention it. There is an unspoken agreement between him and Aberforth; neither are gone from her side for long, taking shifts in her room that rotate like hands on a clock. They sleep in her bed, with auburn locks pillowed over the covers. Read her stories, even if she is far too old to be coddled like a mewling kitten.
Sometimes it is nothing at all, sitting one against the other, staring out the window to the bright green leaves of the cedar by the front door.
Once, when Albus sees Ariana reach for a knife, his heart leaps so high and beats so loud that his vision turns to dust and the ground starts to wobble.
"Albus?" she says, and furrows her brow. "Have you caught a chill?"
"No, nothing of that sort…"
In her other hand is an apple.
If Albus could, he would have cried.
Albus sees to it, with the same meticulous efficiency as he goes about his studies. Her body is cremated, roasted in a fire, picked apart by flame until only bones remain. They are ground until it is fine powder
Kendra Dumbledore comes back to them in a golden urn, graven with vines and flowers, a handle of ivory. Ariana takes one look at its yellow sheen and runs to the bathroom. Albus hears the sounds of gagging, muted cries, and then - retching.
Aberforth hurries up the stairs to comfort her; Albus has never been as good with Ariana as his brother. Instead, he sets the golden urn somewhere where it will not be easily seen, waiting until the day when he will make the solitary trek to the graveyard.
If ever they considered a public funeral, that thought is now long-quashed.
Albus wakes in the night to screaming from the living room.
" PLEASE STOP IT," she begs. Her voice is desperate and raw, breaking at the seams. Something crashes and shatters. A whimper of pain.
Albus runs down the stairs and finds Aberforth already there, cradling her head, stroking her auburn hair.
"'M sorry," Ariana sniffles. She hugs her chest, lying in a ruin of ceramic and wood, her hands bloody from clawing at glass. "I - I -"
Albus had been laying with her; he could have sworn he'd gone to sleep with her head on his arm.
Aberforth meets his eyes above Ariana's trembling shoulder. They are dark and empty, but it is not there that Albus looks. His sister's lips are dark and dripping, covered in a fine spray of dust. Her eyes are pleading.
They help Ariana back to bed; Albus cleans her wounds with muggle antiseptic and a damp cloth, Aberforth fetching a new sleeping robe from her room. When it is done, Aberforth sets a soft hand on Ariana's back and guides her upstairs.
Leaving Albus alone.
With Ariana no longer there, he takes out his wand and mumbles the incantation. At any other time he might have been able to do it without words, but his thoughts are wayward and jumbled. The sofa stitches itself together, the shards of glass stacking into one, the rustled drapes straightening. It is poorly done against his usual thoroughness, but it will have to do for tonight.
Albus stares at the tiled floor, where Ariana had lain.
He goes to Mother's study.
It has reaminer touched since her death, dust not yet settling upon the shelf that lines the wall. There is a photo on her desk, un-moving and faded from sunlight, a black-and-white rendition of her three children running through a field. Albus takes it in his fingers, the cold wooden frame, the ripple of Ariana's dress.
He sets it down, quietly, and turns to look at the rows of her cabinet.
It has been six years, but there they are. A collection of herbs and potions ingredients, dried and pressed. Albus looks at them, the arrangement, the selection. He recognises the brew; Mellara's interest in healing has exposed him to potions and poultices only available from a licensed Healer.
He will need to order some fresh ingredients, but he has enough to start tonight. His head aches and his eyes are dry.
Albus begins brewing a sedative.
The letters of condolences come, from his peers at Hogwarts and all around Europe. Albus watches the pile grow. He reads through each and every one of them, and replies only to Mellara's and Elphias'. They have met Mother only a handful of times, Albus realizes, quill poised to write, ink dripping from the nib. To them, she was no one. A word, an idea, a wisp of abstraction that has no meaning outside of the impersonal. He thinks about it for a little longer, and asks for privacy in the coming weeks to mourn. He reflects, as he screws the lid of the inkpot shut, that his mourning is rather non-existent for the son of a dead woman.
He seals the vial with a cork and a drop of clear wax. The liquid is dark and runs sluggishly, a faint smell of cinnamon and star anise that lingers in the air. Albus sets it aside to cool for half an hour.
When it is ready, he pours a small teaspoon and mixes in a cup of warmed milk. Ariana watches as he enters the room. Perhaps it is his stance, or the hesitant way in which he approaches, but she understands at once what he holds.
"Thank you," she whispers. Her hands are cold when she takes the glass from him.
Albus nods. He looks anywhere but her eyes. "A spoonful," he says. "No more. Or the toxic accumulation will kill you."
"I understand."
Ariana drinks, and within moments the cup is drained. She sighs, soft and content. Albus watches her carefully. "Sixty years ago," he says, "there was a war fought between the United Kingdom and Imperial China. The First Opium War. There would be a second, ten years later."
Ariana frowns. "Opium," she repeats.
Albus comes to sit by her. "The sap of a poppy flower. Known for its gift of release. First used for medicine, and then as a crutch. It always starts small."
Ariana stares at the empty cup. "I won't -"
"You won't." His voice comes out harsher than he intended. "But I need to know if it becomes too much. This sedative will give you back your sanity, but I don't want it to take your life."
Ariana fingers the handle of the mug. "Is that what happened me all those years ago?"
Albus tries and thinks. His memory is impeccable, as sharp and clear as it had been seven years past. And yet for all of that - he cannot say. There is a mist that clouds the tenth year of his life, unperturbable as fog.
"What were they like?" Ariana asks. "The men who had the poppy sap."
"They were broken," he says. "Destroyed. Everything they ever knew and everything they ever loved became obsolete in the pursuit of opium. They were husks. The remenant of a man after he has been kissed by a Dementor."
Ariana nods and tucks her knees under her chin. She is so small in that moment, fragile. "Will I be like that one day?"
"Not if we're careful." Albus takes the cup. "This is a - temporary solution. A remedy to treat the symptom, not the root. It will need to end one day. It will feel too good, just as the opium did. Your bursts of magic will be dulled by nature of the potion. Your mind will be at peace. But it must end eventually. And the withdrawal will be ruinous."
"It would be easier," she says, perhaps to herself, "to live off of the potion. To do nothing but drift."
"The higher you climb, the worse the fall. There may come a time when I'll have to increase the dosage, because of bodily resistance. When that time comes, it will end. Or it will already be too late."
"It will end," she promises. Her eyes are already brighter, her lips full. Ariana looks up. "Aberforth doesn't know."
"No," he agrees.
She nods and sits up just a little straighter. Her hand is cool on his wrist. "Thank you, Albus."
She wraps her arms tight around his neck.
When Ariana has been put to bed, when the sky is black like soot and dark as a starless sea, Albus opens the cupboard and reaches to the very back. He brushes his hand against the golden urn, cold and hard and reproaching.
Aberforth watches him from the doorway. His brother has gone quiet, has spoken only ten words in the five days he has been back.
"We should go. It will rain soon," Aberforth says. His voice is harsh like waves against rock, rough from disuse.
Albus holds the urn. The metal edges dig into his palm. He nods.
They do not speak; it is a quiet walk in a quiet village, and the graveyard is still. The stone is already there. Albus thinks he weeps; when he comes back, his cheeks are wet and his throat is raw. Or perhaps Aberforth had said it true: the rain has come to say its farewell.
"I have a grand-son," Bathilda Bagshot says. She sets a slice of sticky toffee cake before Ariana, patting her auburn curls. "He'll be staying with me for a week. Seventeen, like you, Albus."
"You've spoken of him before," he says politely. The name comes to him: Gellert Grindelwald, a student at Durmstrang. He is a dark smudge in a haze of grief, no more remarkable than a pebble that lies below the waves.
"Gellert will be coming tomorrow." Bathilda Bagshot smiles. "Perhaps you would like to meet him?"
Albus shrugs. Then remembers his manners. "It is kind of you to offer."
He is dressed in dark purple and soft gray, gold at his throat and a chain of silver links around his neck. Albus meets him for the first time, a reluctant host.
"Gellert Grindelwald," the boy says, a faint accent from lands faraway. He extends a hand, back pointed to the heavens as an arrow strung by the hands of God.
"Albus Dumbledore," he returns. Slowly, he meets Gellert Grindelwald's palm, their fingers clasping. Albus watches as his eyes flutter shut for a moment, the glint of sunlight off golden hair. Ariana and Aberforth linger behind him, neither truly wishing to be here. "These are my siblings," Albus hears himself say. "Ariana, Aberforth."
"An honor," Gellert Grindelwald says, courtesies so carefully veiled Albus can't tell if he means them.
"My home holds little interest," Albus says, when the silence stretches on. "But there is a forest not far from here, and the trees are at their most beautiful bloom during the summer."
What tree blooms? His words have gone thick in his mouth, but Gellert Grindelwald, coldly beautiful, unflinchingly chivalrous, doesn't even blink. A smile breaks across his face, and he bows his head. "Please."
"I am sorry for your loss," Gellert Grindelwald says, as they walk through a field of grass. The sky smiles for them, and with the wind comes the scent of mulch and mud, lavender that flowers under the grace of sunlight.
Albus is silent. He thinks on what he should say. He has written - dozens, if not hundreds of letters, thanking men and women for their thoughts and prayers, dodging their questions woven into careful courtesies. What is a man like you doing still at home?
His answer to Gellert Grindelwald should be no less standard.
But for all of that -
"This is the upteenth time someone has said as much, I know," he continues. "And I am sorry for adding to the burden. No words will ever express the pain of losing someone so dear."
"And yet," Albus says slowly, "perhaps silence can."
Gellert Grindelwald raises his face to the sun and closes his eyes. "Perhaps it can."
They walk for a while longer after that, silent. There is a river by the edge of Godric's Hollow; a thin stream canopied by the shade of tall cedars, the burble of water that whispers forgotten secrets. Gellert Grindelwald clasps his hands behind his back. Looks to Albus.
"I've read your articles in Transfiguration Weekly. All thirty-four of them."
Albus stays silent. He does not know what to say.
"You have a way with words, one we find so lacking in academia. I was not sure it was you until I heard you speak. Your words are... poetry. Fuelled by a quest for higher knowledge. It is as much a pleasure to learn from your thoughts, as it is to dwell in its lyrical aesthetic." Gellert Grindelwald is full of humility as he says, "I wrote my final paper as a direct deconstruction of your primary thesis."
Albus jerks back, appalled. In his mind muddled by sorrow, it is the only thing that breaks through. "That was the culmination of twenty-three of those papers."
"I know," Gellert Grindelwald says. His smile is mischievous. "And they were excellently written."
Albus is lost. "To have amassed the requisite research in mere weeks -" He frowns. "You do not jest?"
Gellert Grindelwald flickers his fingers in a fluid display of wandless magic, and there it is, crisp parchment bound tight into scrolls. "You could read it, if you have the heart to pour through my atrocious handwriting. And the German."
Albus takes the offering. "Surely," he says slowly, bewildered, "there were other, simpler topics to do for a final paper. And surely you would have been expected to commence the planning as early as November."
"There were easier projects." Grindelwald shrugs. "I'd intended to do an analysis of spell-casting language in relation to regional accents, but the topic was beginning to bore me. Thick books written by some old man five hundred years' past do little to hold my attention." But my papers did. "It was madness, restarting as late as seven weeks before the paper was due, and my professors protested vehemently. They relented when they saw the quality of your work." Grindelwald smiles when he sees Albus flush. He changes topics abruptly. "Where do you see yourself in ten years?"
"I -" Albus thinks. "I do not know. With my, with my family."
"Ever-dutiful." Grindelwald grins. "I was expelled from Durmstrang, you know."
He turns. "Expelled?"
"A surprise, isn't it? A good school boy like me ought never have such a word strung after him, but here I am."
"Expelled," Albus repeats, and cannot help the smile that curls along his lips. "Do I dare ask what for?"
"You wouldn't like the answer."
"Surprise me."
Gellert Grindelwald shrugs. "I dabbled in blood magic and the headmaster found by audacity displeasing."
"Displeasing -?"
"There is an expression in your English," he says suavely, unabashedly. " The world is your oyster. It is waiting for me, Albus Dumbledore, rich as ivory, dark like the dawn. Who am I, knowing such treasures lie in the unknown, to turn from its call and live a life of ignorance?"
Gellert Grindelwald looks at him, his eyes full of the freedom Albus has been denied. In that moment, he thinks he hates him, if only a little. The man beside him in dark velvet and pale chasings has a spoon of silver waiting at home. On his finger is an opal as large as an eye; around his neck Albus has seen whispers of golden links, flashing against the sun. His morals are as loose as flakes in winter, his smiles ripe with secrets unsaid.
Gellert Grindelwald is filled to the brim with joie de vie , but more than that, he can drink from the cup of life and afford to ask for seconds.
"Do not despise me for this," he says, as if he can hear Albus' thoughts. "We do not choose who we are born, only what we may be."
"What will I be?" he asks, and scares himself with his flayed honesty.
"Greater than what you are now. Or smaller." They make their way along the stream, sunlight dappled upon the earth. "But for men like you and me, the only place where we may rest is beyond, with the glory of success shining as polished laurels in our hair. If it is the stars that are truly our limits, then the heavens must be our palace."
And with words like that, so plain in their frankness, so simple in their obvious truth, so poisoned in their fantasies, Albus cannot help but think: if I live by his words, it will be the end of me.
Even still, he does not walk away.
An owl waits at his window that evening, a mottle of black-and-white feathers, perched with a quiet grace that leaves little room as to whom the sender is. On its talon is a scroll of parchment written in a frenzied hand. The words are cursive, crooked, flush-dark against bone-white paper. Albus feels a smile on his lips. He knows, even without reading, that it is a translation of Gellert's paper into English.
He fumbles for his quill and ink and writes until his fingers cramp.
On the morrow, Albus finds himself knocking on Bathilda Bagshot's door, asking after Gellert Grindelwald. With a sky still purple from the early dawn, they walk through a field of pansies. His eyes are heavy from a night spent reading, and his back is stiff from hours of bad posture; with the first golden rays peaking through a thicket of clouds, he has the sudden feeling of being neither asleep nor awake, but strung in a queer microcosm of both.
"May I ask a query?" Gellert Grindelwald says.
"Of course."
Gellert Grindelwald wears shades of brown like the rich earth of the Forbidden Forest, his collar embroidered with gold thread. "Do you have dreams?"
"We all have dreams," Albus tells him quietly. Gellert's paper has been forgotten in the stillness of morning. "We live for dreams."
"My aunt tells me you've written to her on Transfiguration above all," Gellert Grindelwald says. "She tells me that one day you'll be a public intellectual such as she was in her youth, a curator of knowledge instead of a historian as she is. Having read your works, I know you'll far surpass her. A member of the Wizengamot at sixteen, lauded by international politicians at seventeen. With all this exposure, surely you must have an opinion in contemporary politics."
The praise makes him flush.
Gellert Grindelwald looks at him, amused. "Mister Dumbledore. Are you always so easily flustered?" When he doesn't respond, Grindelwald smiles. "Surely, you were not so abashed in the face of the full Wizengamot?"
"No," he manages.
"The proceedings are too much of a bore to field much emotion as it is." Grindelwald inclines his head. "That was not a dismissal of your achievements. Merely a criticism of modern democracy. In Britain, your muggle monarchy has been reduced to a constitutional monarchy. Terribly inefficient. In Austria-Hungary, we are burdened with the same foolishness. Do you ever wonder what might be done if it were not for this? For these little shows of democracy, of allowing every man to take a slice of a pie too great for the hands of filthy, common men?"
Albus has never heard someone speak so charismatically with such open disgust. "Better a democracy than a tyrannical ruler," he says carefully.
"Absolute monarchies do not need to be ruled by monsters." Gellert Grindelwald watches his reaction. "History must be written to flatter the victor or its people would live in perpetual doubt. Do you want to know my dream Albus Dumbledore? I would tear down this system of tedious bureaucrats and lousy politicians, and in the dust of this conquest, raise from its ashes a new system of raw efficiency born from a monolithic power."
"You."
"Me." Gellert Grindelwald tilts his head, faces him. "A return to the old ways. To the age of empires and kingdoms, before they were weathered away by corruption. Alexander the Great. Genghis Khan. Napoleon. A thousand years separate one from another, yet their legacies dominate till this day. Imperialism is a celebrated virtue no matter what age." He holds himself tall, but shrugs in an act of benign humility. "A dream no more. Some children wish to be Aurors and fight crimes; others have their eyes set on arbitrary greatness: wealth in gold or prestige in titles. Mine is no different. We are all built from dreams, as you've said. What are yours, Mister Dumbledore?" His eyes are blue like frost in winter, like the sea in autumn. "I would not judge you for it."
Dreams are bitter sawdust on his tongue. Albus had them once; many, a thousand like the stars in the sky.
"If you had all the wealth in the world," Gellert Grindelwald says. "No worries and no trouble and no problems. What would you make of your time?"
"Research."
Gellert Grindelwald mulls on his word. A moth comes and settles on the wild daisies, wings thin like silk. "You would be wasted on research." It is, like everything he has ever said, spoken with certitude, as if he has known the dawn of the universe and the death of the last galaxy. "You would be wasted in academia, pouring over dilapidated old texts, scouring for fame in a circle of aging wizards with beards that tickle their toes."
"An amusing image."
Gellert Grindelwald looks at him sharply. "And entirely unworthy of you. You would be excellent at it, as you are with everything, to have your name writ across a new potion, a new spell, a new cure. But it would not be your truest destiny. Something tells me you know it as well."
Albus bows his head, smiling despite himself. "Politics, then."
"Politicians are pushers of parchment. You would wither and die there, where you may have thrived in the company of intellectuals. A fate worse than death, you do not think?"
"You would be a politician."
"A revolutionary . There is a difference. I would bring change and advancement and novelty."
"Revolutions are bloody business."
"In a world as stagnant as ours, change must be wrought with heavy price. There is a cost to what we do. Always."
Speaking to Gellert Grindelwald is frightfully easy. His thoughts, which he is so used to keeping tight to his chest, slip free as if oiled loose. There has never been anyone like him: open to such controversial discussion, weighing all of Albus' words as if they were raw gold and bright silver, holding them in such reverent light it threatens to make his heart grow wide and heavy.
The questions start from magical research and slowly wind their way to philosophy.
"I would not rid the world of them," Gellert Grindelwald says one day, as they pass a muggle boy and girl, laughing at some obscene jest.
"No?"
"No. But they are rather simple, you do not think?"
"You despise them."
"I pity them. They live their simple lives without knowing of the greatness that hangs over their heads." Gellert Grindelwald flexes his fingers. "Did your parents consign you to lessons as a child? Musical lessons."
"No."
"Mine did. They were high Austrian nobility, and accomplished musicianship is seen as the highest honor. Violin when I was three; piano two years later. Wands are pure polished wood, but I dare you to hold a Stradivarius, four hundred years old and carved from supple wood. I held one, for a moment. When I was fifteen. I bewitched a few muggles and had a short hour to play. I broke, oh, I don't know. At least fourteen laws that day."
"For a chance to play a violin?"
"The greatest kind of violin. I would have sold my soul to play it anew. But even still. I would cut off my left hand and never touch music again if it meant I would still be a wizard. I say this from pride, but it is more than that. It is in the grace of a spell and the beauty of an incantation. Forget about sound and music. Magic is the highest aesthetic, the greatest peak of sophistication. I pity the muggles who will never know the glory of magic. And I pity squibs above all, who know just enough of the highest art to understand that greatness exists in the edges of their horizon, but who will forever be incapable of knowing its sweetest fruits."
Albus thinks. "What would you do if you were a squib?"
"I admire them. It takes great strength of character to live a cursed life. I live for magic, for art. For musicianship, for the beauty of life marked singularly by the miracles of virtuous passion. Life is only worth living because of its joys. Without art, who would I be?"
They watch the two muggles for a little longer, as they round the corner and disappear down the street.
"I would kill myself if I were a squib," Gellert Grindelwald says. They do not talk for the rest of the afternoon.
Albus shops at the local market once every week, bringing back sacks of potatoes and bags of apples; carrots grown from nearby fields, blueberry jam ground from a farm in the next town over. His salary as a writer, and what he has saved from his time as junior representative in the Wizengamot, is by no means an extravagance, but it is enough. For now.
He pushes open the door with effort, not daring to use magic, and finds giggles coming from the living room.
Gellert Grindelwald sits on the couch, draped like a king, hands spread in the midst of a tale. By his side is Ariana, drinking his every word like they are ambrosia. She is smiling.
Albus cannot remember the last time she smiled; he is too shocked to speak.
He watches them for a bit, and then clears his throat, announcing his entrance. Later, he will ask Gellert Grindelwald what they spoke about.
"Have you ever seen your sister's sketches?" he says.
"Sketches?"
"Sketches," Grindelwald agrees. He leaves it at that, but the next time he comes over, he brings a bag with pads of thick paper the color of cream; charcoal pencils engraven with gold foil; a set of acrylic paints with shades as rich as the crimson of dawn and the blue of a summer sky.
Ariana smiles more often now.
A/N:
This is *technically* Part 1.31. I've decided to split Part 1.3 into three parts, just to make editing easier for myself. The next two sections will be posted... as soon as possible, lol. I hope you enjoyed reading!