Two.
Professor Dumbledore, like every other Hogwarts teacher, reads the newspapers every morning with a growing sense of unease. There are reports of muggles being slaughtered across the Continent, wizards being imprisoned in a fortress greater than Azkaban, and governments magical and non-magical falling to one leader whom he knows far too well.It is only a matter of time before Britain is threatened too.
In the privacy of his office, he unrolls a fresh sheet of parchment. He scrawls phrases like "stop now and turn over a new leaf", and "trust me, you will only destroy yourself", and "don't you care", and at the end, the thought strikes him and he writes "I do still love you".
He looks at those loopy letters in disgust, scrunches the parchment into a ball and tosses it away. How could he sink this low?
He thinks not only of genocide in Germany, but of a family being torn apart. He thinks of the sister lying six feet under Godric's Hollow, and he thinks of the brother in the pub in Hogsmeade who still refuses to speak to him.
No one must ever find this letter.
He picks it out of the bin, and methodically rips it into shreds. He walks to the fireplace, and drops the pieces into the dancing blue and green flames. His own eyes are quite dry.
A/N: Creepy, hey? Sorry I put this up later than on my LJ - I'm a little superstitious about numbers - and I was waiting for one of my favourites to roll around, since I have yet to figure how to warp the FFNet clock.