This chapter is dedicated to:
1. Nian Ning Lee (1987-2008).
One of my best and dearest friends from university. Thank you for everything; I'm going to miss you so much. May you rest in peace.
2. koorimechick & lindy hopper who have favourite-ed this!
3. The 4 FFNet-ers who have alert-ed this!
4. My 8 reviewers. You keep me going in times of need.
5. You guys, my readers. Without you, I would not have hit over 250 hits.
Four.
Dumbledore will not touch him. Instead, he lets two Aurors, perhaps twenty years his junior, do his dirty work. Alastor and Amelia, he calls them.
Grindelwald has no more energy left to resist; he allows himself to be carried to Nurmengard, so much more than just a prison. It is where he resides most of the time, as he did in Bathilda's house before he met Albus, falling asleep over great tomes in the library. He was waiting in Bathilda's library, and he was waiting in Nurmengard's library.
But this time he is thrown into the tower opposite, a bare cell which provides its inmate with the barest of linen and the scantiest of food. There is one long, lone window, a slit in the black bricks, too narrow for anyone to slip through without magic. Grindelwald rushes to it, looks down, and sees his vanquisher speaking with the Aurors in the moonlight, before turning his back on Nurmengard.
Grindelwald flings his arm out the window, twisting his body into a grotesque and painful stance.
"GOD DAMN IT, I LOVE YOU!"
He screams out to the night and clenches his teeth and fingers, to no avail. Not one head turns in his direction.
But from the way Dumbledore plods along, he suspects that Dumbledore cannot live with himself any more than he can live with the man called Grindelwald.