A/N: Ummmm, hi guys? You probably weren't expecting me to update this as I finished this story well over a year ago. As it said in the description, I am writing about Albus Dumbledore again due to recent developments in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. If you haven't seen the movie yet, stop reading here, because everything written below this line is spoilerific.

Okay. As you know, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is quickly turning into a story about Gellert Grindelwald's reign. And it's going to feature Albus Dumbledore in it too, starting with the second movie. Which is like… what? Never did I ever, ever, ever, ever, ever think I would be finding myself watching a movie in which both a younger Albus and a younger Gellert are running around in their mid-forties.

Then I'm reading through stuff, and I find this interview. Me and my JK Rowling interviews. They served as so useful 10+ years ago, and still, they are SO EXCITING and AMAZING, because she knows how to tease us:

Erin Whitney: Will the movie present the future Albus Dumbledore as openly gay?

JK Rowling: *Smiling knowingly at the question.* Well, I can't tell you everything I would like to say because this is obviously a five-part story, so there's lots to unpack in [Albus/Gellert's] relationship. I will say that you will see Dumbledore as a younger man, and quite a troubled man, because he wasn't always the sage. He was always very clever, but we'll see what I think was the formative period of his life. As far as his sexuality is concerned… watch this space."

K… we're watching…

In the meantime, let me try my best to write Dumbledore as a "quite a troubled younger man."

Note: I would also like to thank everyone for the reviews I received after the last chapter over a year ago. It meant a lot to me! Thank you all!

1926

By daytime, Albus was a model teacher. He was still young, at least as far as Hogwarts teachers go. He was still the youngest professor at the school even, though he knew it was only a matter of time until he would no longer have that title. Yet he had proven himself early on as a gifted teacher. He was brilliant and dedicated. At first, the headmaster was worried about bringing on the twenty-one year old Albus as a teacher because he was so close to the seventh years in age, but his magical knowledge was enough to separate Albus from the students. He connected well with the students. He thoroughly understood his subject matter. He knew how to motivate his students, and he loved seeing his students' eyes light up with comprehension and joy when they were finally able to cast the spell correctly, even if it was just his first years turning a match into a needle for the first time. The headmaster couldn't ask for a better Transfiguration teacher.

But then by nighttime, he was a total mess. He was unrecognizable.

When the sun went down, Albus transformed into something his students never saw him as.

He put up such a great front by day. Nobody would ever know that on the inside, he was screaming in pain every night, nursing festering wounds within himself that he could not heal… would never heal. He spent each night trying to drown the voices out so he could sleep for once. Kill the voices that reminded himself of what he was… and what he had done.

Depending on how persistent the voices were, and on the day of the week, Albus had a few different things he used to drown them out.

Sometimes he could drown the voices out easily by listening to music playing very loudly or maybe taking a walk around the school at night. If the voices were at a mediocre volume, then he might be able to drown them out by writing or reading something. Sometimes he was wary of writing though, because on more than one occasion, Albus had sat down and written for an hour or so only to be horrified by what he had written. It always made him uncomfortable to black out when writing, to not think at all about what he was writing, and then read its contents. He was often… ashamed… of what he wrote. However, once he ripped the pages into microscopic pieces, he usually felt better.

And then, if the voices were extremely loud and persistent, he often had to stop himself from hurting himself. He hated to admit this to himself, but it was true. Albus had not deliberately hurt himself since that one time he had tried to kill himself with a knife twenty-seven years ago, but sometimes he couldn't help but linger his eyes on something sharp and play a 'what if?' scenario. For some reason, when he was bleeding to death on his kitchen floor, he had felt like the blood that was oozing out of him was dirty, and he was bleeding out all the bad parts so he could feel good again. Sometimes he still wanted to feel that sensation again. Sometimes he found himself thinking, But maybe if it's just a little at a time… He was extremely ashamed that it even still crossed his mind. He never wanted to let his mind go there. So, his remedy usually was, if it was a Friday or a Saturday… get drunk.

Not at Hogsmeade, of course. That would be ridiculous. At Hogsmeade, people knew who he was. People sat in a bar talking about Gellert Grindelwald's reign of terror. And Aberforth was at Hogsmeade. If Albus went sauntering into Aberforth's bar to get drunk out of his mind, Aberforth would probably punch him in the face, break his nose again, inform everyone in the bar of the fact that the famous Gellert Grindelwald was, in fact, an ex-lover of Albus Dumbledore's. Then Albus would find, in the Daily Prophet and in different newspapers from all over the world the headline: Dumbledore and Grindelwald: Ex-Lovers Near the Turn of the Century. That title would be printed in English and in seven or eight other languages for the whole world to see. It might even make the front cover page. It would be in bolded in all capitalizations, he was certain of it.

It was almost impossible for Albus to look anyone in the eye, and nobody even knew. He already couldn't sit in a room where Grindelwald was being discussed. What would he do if the world did find out? Die of shame after refusing to eat for months, probably.

It was better he didn't go around Aberforth. It was better his brother forgot about Albus' very existence, because if Aberforth ever did tell the world the truth…. Albus hadn't talked to his brother in twenty-seven years. Not since…

Scowling, Albus finished the last of his drink. No, instead of staying with wizards, he Apparated from Hogsmeade to London. London was full of all kinds of bars and people who had hit rock bottom in life. Better to play it safe and get drunk where no one knew his name.

His brain was fuzzy, but he still ordered another drink. He began listing off all of his academic recognitions. All of his awards. All of his groundbreaking work and research. It was kind of like whipping himself.

A brunette man and a blonde woman sat down at the bar table beside Albus. They weren't as drunk as Albus.

Albus' eyes shifted to the bar's perpendicular table. An attractive youngish-looking man with light blond hair was just sitting down, maybe twelve feet from Albus. Albus looked at him with lust in secret, hating himself.

Then he felt someone bump his elbow.

"Oh!" said the blonde woman. "I'm sorry," she apologized. Her voice was still pretty put together, but it was beginning to slur slightly.

"S'fine," Albus mumbled.

"Hey, sir," said the woman's date, "do you live around London? I wanna take this lady out to see something spectacular, but I don't know the area."

"Me'n neither," Albus said, his speech slurring badly.

"Oh," said the man. "That's okay."

"What's your name, dear?" the woman asked.

Albus was still glancing over at the blond man's general direction. "Albus."

"What d'you do for a living, Albus?" the woman's brunette date said.

"Teacher."

Both the woman and man laughed loudly. It drew the attention of the blond man. His eyes met Albus' eyes. He had blue eyes. Albus' heart began thumping harder. He loved it when they had blue eyes….

"You're a teacher?" the brunette man exclaimed. "You sure don't look like a teacher!"

"Am," insisted Albus indignantly.

"What do you teach?" persisted the blonde woman.

Albus' attention still was not on the woman and her brunette man, but he still began to answer her with, "Transfig…" then his brain stuttered to a halt. Transfiguration wasn't a Muggle subject. He was normally so brilliant, but he was in such a foggy state, so he had to think long and hard about translating Transfiguration into an equivalent Muggle study, only to find there really wasn't any kind of translation.

"You teach 'Transfig'?" echoed the woman.

"History," finished Albus pathetically.

"Transfig History?" repeated the woman incredulously.

"Yep," said drunk Albus defiantly, as if that was a real subject they should be familiar with. The blond man had looked away again.

"Wait," said the brunette man, apparently thinking carefully. "What's… what's transfig history?"

But Albus didn't even hear him. He was too busy looking at the blond man, tracking where his eyes went around the bar and, more importantly, where they didn't go. They weren't resting on a woman, at least not for long, anyway. This man was looking at the other men. Then the blond man looked at Albus again. Albus could see he looked like he was around Albus' own age – maybe his mid-thirties to his mid-forties. He had fair skin, a bit of stubble on his face, thin… a lot like Gellert would look today, he reckoned. Albus hated the feelings that were overcoming him. He remembered how Gellert had always drawn himself close to him, how he had always known how to nonverbally communicate affection for Albus even when barely moving. A touch of the shoulder… touching his neck, drawing him in close. Caressing.

You imbecile, he mentally cursed himself. Gellert hadn't touched him in twenty-seven years.

The blond man's eyes moved toward the door. He stood up and meandered around a bit, trying to appear indifferent. Then he wandered back over to Albus. He sat down beside Albus and ordered another drink. Albus' heart was positively hammering by now.

"What are you doing here alone?" said the blond man softly without looking at Albus.

There was a moment's pause before Albus answered truthfully, "Trying to drown out the voices."

The blond man paused.

"Not like," Albus slurred to clarify, "not like… real voices. I don't… I'm not crazy. Just…"

"Me too," whispered the blond man.

The two sat in silence for a while as Albus tried to screw up his courage. He didn't really want to control his emotions anymore. He didn't want to deny his feelings. He just wanted to have the courage to let himself have what he wanted… what he needed…. Push the shame down. The shame would be the end of him. Don't feel ashamed, don't feel ashamed…. He was certain Gellert wouldn't have a problem with wanting this. Sex was something as normal and mundane as eating or sleeping to him. Gellert would have already disappeared into the night with someone, male or female. Gellert was always completely comfortable with this. Albus never had been. He was forty-five years old, and he still had trouble admitting to himself what he was.

"You want to go outside?" said the blond man softly after the lengthy silence.

Two different emotions were swirling within Albus. One was self-disgust. The other was desire.

Desire won that night.

He felt ten times dirtier and even more ashamed than he had the night before. Albus thought he had hit rock-bottom last night, but he awoke to find himself even farther down than he was the night before. That's how it always seemed to go. He thought he had fallen all the way to the bottom, but then… he kept falling.

He returned to Hogwarts without running into anyone, mostly because he could easily make himself invisible. He couldn't look anyone in the eye. He didn't know if he ever would be able to again. So instead, he retreated to his quarters, settled down on the sofa, and tried to forget.

Then he heard a knock on the door. Albus ignored it.

Another knock. Then another. Albus knew who it was. He didn't know how she knew – how she always knew. There was no one else that would be this persistent with him. He had not seen her in nearly four years. But here she was, ready to break down his door after he had done something so shameful last night he thought he would die of embarrassment before Monday's staff meeting.

Then she started using spells. Alohomora was first, and then the spells progressed to be more forceful. Albus still remained on his back on the sofa, staring blankly at the ceiling. Her spells got more and more aggressive until she finally destroyed his door. It exploded, blasting pieces of wood everywhere. One piece even hit the wall across the room.

Fallon emerged from the doorway, brushing off pieces of wood dust nonchalantly. She was wearing an ordinary dark blue traveling cloak and had her hair pulled up. She looked like she meant business.

"Albus," she said mildly. "Good morning. How are you?"

"I'm all right," Albus said dully without getting up. "How are you?"

"Fine," she answered.

Neither of them commented on the fact she just blasted his door to fine pieces.

"Why don't you sit up?" she suggested after a beat.

Obedient, Albus slowly sat up on the sofa to face his second best friend he used to have as a Hogwarts student. Nowadays, Albus felt like she was his closest friend rather than Elphias. This was because Elphias didn't know Albus' secret. Elphias didn't know that Albus Dumbledore had spent his summer after graduation sleeping with another man, a man who was now killing innocent Muggles all across the world in the name of the greater good.

Fallon knew. She knew all about him and Grindelwald.

Calmly, Fallon waved her wand. Hot tea began to ready itself in Albus' small kitchen across from his tiny living quarters. Albus listened to the clinking of silverware and the boiling of water until two mugs of tea floated over to them. Albus' cup sat itself down on the coffee table right in front of him.

Fallon took a sip from her own mug before speaking again.

"Go ahead and tell me everything," she said calmly.

Albus put his face in his hands. He ran his left hand through his tangled hair. It was getting too long. "Everything?" he exclaimed. He then gave a mirthless chuckle.

Her brown eyes surveyed him closely. "Well, maybe not everything," she said gently. "Let's start with who the man was that you slept with last night. What was his name?"

Albus' face was already burning. "What? How do you –?"

"You might want to use a spell to get rid of those red marks on your neck. What is that – fingernails or…?"

"You ask way too many questions," he muttered. At first he wondered how he didn't catch that when he looked in the mirror first thing that morning. Then he knew why: because he hadn't looked in a mirror yet this morning. He tended to avoid doing that, even when he was in the bathroom.

"You asked me," she reminded him. "I'm just telling. I answer your questions, so now you answer mine, please. What was his name?"

Albus didn't answer. He hoped that she would misinterpret his silence as defiance.

"Oh Albus," she sighed. "You didn't even know his name?"

He could already see tears welling up in his eyes, blurring his vision. He couldn't speak. No, he hadn't known his name. His name was irrelevant. All he knew was that the man looked like Gellert. That was all that had mattered. A sob escaped from deep within his chest involuntarily.

Fallon put down her tea and joined Albus on the couch he had just been asleep on. She sat crisscrossed facing him. Then she pulled him into an awkward embrace where he wasn't really being hugged, but his head and neck were just kind of nestled on her shoulder, her two arms resting on his shaking back. He began to cry. He tried to keep quiet, but the sobs seemed to be coming from deep within his chest, and every breath was a painful gasp. Fallon sighed deeply again and tightened her hold on her childhood best friend.

She waited for his sobs to stop before softly saying, "I'm sorry, Albus. I love you."

For any outsider, it would look like this scene was sign of some kind of romantic feeling between them, but both Albus and Fallon knew they felt nothing of the sort for each other. Albus wiped the tears from his face, trying to gain some last shred of dignity within himself.

He had none.

"He looked like Gellert," mumbled Albus pathetically, wanting to be understood.

"I quite understand."

Albus shook his head. "Stupid… really…"

"No, it isn't," she said defending Albus from himself. "It makes a lot of sense. You've not been in any kind of relationship with anyone since Gellert, have you?"

Albus shook his head. No. He hadn't. And that was the truth.

"So it makes sense," she told him. "You miss him. You feel alone because you have been alone for a long time."

"But how can I? He killed about thirty Muggles last week in Spain. Blew up a bridge. I mean, do you read what the newspapers –"

"Yes, Albus, I read what the newspapers say," she said, sounding a bit impatient for the first time. "I see the name 'Grindelwald' almost every day."

There was an awkward pause.

Albus shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. "I simply don't know what to do."

Fallon made a small noise of dissent. "Yes, you do," she said. "You have to stop blaming yourself. Stop torturing yourself. You have to move on with your life and finally put the past behind you. You're forty-five years old, Albus, and you've been carrying this since you were eighteen." Fallon paused. "No, even that's wrong," she corrected herself. "You've been carrying along this self-hatred since you were ten. Because when you were ten –"

"Ariana," he whispered.

"Right," Fallon said calmly. "You blame yourself for that. And you lost your father to Azkaban, where he then died. You've been carrying this burden since you were ten. And you haven't let go, have you? You just keep adding more to it. First, your sister was attacked, and you blame yourself. Then your father was taken away – you blame yourself. Then your mother was killed by Ariana – you blame yourself. Then Ariana was killed by –"

"Gellert," he said quietly.

"And then –"

"He went on to become what he is today, and I helped him get there."

Fallon breathed deeply. "Right. How much longer can you keep doing this to yourself?"

"I'm fine," he mumbled.

"Fine?" she exclaimed. "Fine? This is fine to you? Look at yourself, Albus! You're killing yourself. You're torturing yourself. You have to let go."

"I did! That's what I was trying to do last night!"

Fallon opened her mouth to angrily retort, but then she closed it again. He watched her as she tried to gain a better sense of control. Her Gryffindor temper was getting to her.

"I see," she said quietly. "Now I get it. It's not a matter of knowing you should let go; it's a matter of knowing how to let go. You think that you did yourself a favor last night? Huh?"

Albus only gave her a confused expression. He really didn't know what she was talking about. Yes, he had done himself a favor last night. He had gone out into the world. He had told himself to let go of his shame, let go of his denial, and let himself have what he wanted. He spent all his spare time trying to deny his feelings, and he never expressed them, but then he had stopped fighting last night, he let go of the tight control he kept himself under, so why was she insinuating he was doing the opposite? She wasn't making sense. She wasn't there last night. She didn't know that the last thing he thought was, Let go of your shame…

Fallon sat quietly for a moment as if she was trying to gather her thoughts. So was he.

Finally, she took a deep breath and said, "Albus, you didn't 'let go' last night. You did the complete opposite."

"No, I didn't," he snapped. "You weren't there; you don't know."

"No, Albus, I wasn't there, but I still know what you did because I know you. Let me give a narrative of what you did last night, and then you can tell me if what I'm saying is accurate, just so you don't think I don't know what I'm talking about. All right?"

Albus didn't nod, but he didn't shake his head either. He just maintained eye contact. That was permission enough.

"You went out and got drunk in a bar in the city. Probably London," she said.

He didn't deny it.

She continued. "You kept to yourself in a bar where no one knew who you were."

He didn't deny it.

"Then you saw a man that looked similar to Grindelwald. Handsome, blond hair, blue eyes, right? Tall?"

He didn't deny it.

"Then you started wanting him. You eventually made your way over to him –"

"You're wrong," said Albus baldly, loving the way those words felt in his mouth when they were directed at Fallon.

"All right," she said after a beat with only a hint of irritation. "He went up to you and sat down beside you."

Silence. She was right.

"And then you two went off into the night to have some kind of drunken sexual encounter with an absolute stranger. You didn't ask for his name, and he didn't ask for yours. You just had sex without a word passing between you."

He didn't deny it.

"Did you even think, for the faintest of moments, that that wasn't a good idea?" she pressed. "Do you realize you just used him and he you? Two complete strangers? Did you even find a building to do this in, or did you just drop your clothes in an abandoned alleyway?"

"Don't be ridiculous," said Albus, trying to sound indignant. "Of course it didn't happen in an alleyway."

She waited, one eyebrow slightly raised.

"It happened in an abandoned shed behind a restaurant next door."

"That's great, Albus," Fallon said with venom. "That's just really great. That makes it so much better."

"So what do you want me to do?" he retorted. "You want me to never ever touch another human being again, or –?"

"You don't understand," she said, sounding exasperated. "You really don't get it."

"Well then, you're the genius here, not me! You tell me what I'm supposed to do!" he snapped.

"You need to stop running away," she said forcefully. "You need to accept yourself for who you are and what you are, and then you need to let other people in. Going off and having sex with the first drunk man you meet in a bar is not letting other people in! It's superficial and weak. It's just another form of running. You run from all meaningful relationships, Albus, and it's not just the romantic kind. You run away from friendship, from family; you run away from everyone. And you hurt yourself in the process. Why did you have to choose a man that reminded you of Gellert Grindelwald? Why didn't you go for a man with brown hair, or red, or black? Brown eyes?"

Albus' head was spinning. "Because –!" he began to explain. But then he felt silent. He didn't know why 'because' anymore. He didn't know how to finish that sentence he had just began so forcefully.

"Because you are hurting yourself," she finished for him. "You like to hurt yourself. You're focusing on the past, and your past hurts you. You know what you need to do? You need to keep in contact with your old friends. You need to write back to me when I write to you instead of ignoring me like you've done for the past four years. You need to answer Elphias' letters too. You need to let me in when I knock on your door. You need to build new friendships with your colleagues here at Hogwarts. You need to focus on making things better for your students, the ones who pass into your classroom every day, who look up to you. And if you're going to have a relationship with someone again, it can't be some random drunk man who reminds you of Gellert that you meet in a bar and have sex with inside a shack behind a restaurant at one o'clock in the morning! That is not letting go! That is holding on! That is you hurting yourself!"

A stunned silence met Fallon's words. Albus hated them, despised them, because he knew everything she had just said was true. An overwhelming sensation of sadness hit him like a wall of bricks.

"Fallon," he said softly after a lengthy silence.

"Yes, Albus?"

"When am I going to hit rock bottom?"

Her eyes scanned his face.

"Albus," she said finally, "you're already there. You've been there for a long time now."

He closed his eyes.

They sat in silence for a long time. Albus kept his eyes closed. They sat like that for so long, he began to wonder if she had gotten up and left. Then he felt Fallon's hands take his hands.

"Fallon?" he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

She didn't speak. She just kept holding his hands.

"That summer, after… after he left…. I hurt myself. Right after her funeral. I… I tried to kill myself." He felt her squeeze his hands harder, and even though Fallon didn't know about this part until now, she refrained from interrupting him. It made it easier for him to keep going. "I'm not proud of it. But I almost bled to death on my kitchen floor. I would have had Mrs. Bagshot not come snooping around to check up on me. I almost didn't make it. I had lost so much blood…. Nobody… nobody knows about this. Aberforth had already fled. Gellert had fled. Elphias never found out. I just… I've never told anybody."

She inhaled sharply before repeating, "You've been at rock bottom for a long time, Albus."

"So…" he said, reopening his eyes, "how do I get out?"

Fallon traced her right thumb across his right hand before answering. "You have to figure out what you stand for. And then you have to stand for it."

But what do I stand for?