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Chocolate Frog Cards Challenge: Gellert Grindelwald - Write about Gellert Grindelwald
200 Characters in 200 Days: Gellert Grindelwald
405 words
The News
He didn't get much news through. He didn't get much of anything through, really, except for the cold and bitter wind, and an hour or so of sunlight in the late morning. They occasionally brought him food, but it was never three meals a day, not anymore. They'd fed him enough when they'd first imprisoned him, but over time, it began to wear off. Gellert wondered if they'd begun to forget about him.
He wouldn't blame them, if they had. He often wished he could forget about himself, shed his old skin like it was a curse and be born anew, with a bright future still laid out ahead of him.
They brought him news today. They didn't give him any details, and they'd seemed uncertain in the telling, like they weren't sure why they were giving him the news, or what his reaction would be, only that it was important he knew. Gellert's history, he knew, had long been reduced to folklore and myth in the eyes of these young men.
But he was grateful they'd told him, all the same.
Albus was dead.
Albus, the only man believed able to match Gellert; who he'd fought with on a cold moor in the most infamous duel of the 20th Century to date; who'd won. Albus, the school teacher; the mentor; the man desperate to make amends for his own lack of sight as a young man, ready to instil a sense of direction into the hearts of those that were like he himself had been. Albus, the bright-eyed youth with a brilliant mind and big ideas; the boy with the responses to Gellert's unanswered questions; the boy with questions only Gellert had ever been able to answer. Albus, the friend.
The men who gave him the news only really knew of the duel.
Gellert remembered the look of anguish on Albus' face as he fell to his knees by the body of his sister, Ariana. Gellert knew what Albus didn't want to know, and chose never to tell. In that moment, he saw the human cost of conflict, and felt remorse. It was a feeling he'd been trying to let go of ever since.
It was the reason he spared Gregorovitch.
But he knew that Albus, too, had always harboured remorse.
He looked out through the bars of his cell into the darkness of the northern evening.
"Did you ever forgive yourself, old friend?"