Someone is bound to attempt headhunting Albus away from Hogwarts… Or Dumbledore goes on that world tour without Grindelwald.
1962
19th June 1962
Dear Gellert
In the interests of furthering inter-institute collaborations and exchanges, I have been asked by my friend Headmaster Dippet to take a sabbatical year, which will entail me visiting our fellow wizarding schools across the globe. Beauxbatons is likely my first stop, followed by Durmstrang, if they do reply. Ilvermorny has offered me a place on their faculty for a semester if I so choose. The headmistress of Uagadou popped up in my dream last night to enquire if I would be interested in a post in her School, no background in staff-work required. We had a nice time hanging out under the baobabs, watching the savannah grass grow.
Dippet has also written to Castelobruxo, Mahoutokoro and Koldovstoretz through the International Wizard Education Committee for possible visits to their schools by Hogwarts faculty – namely me. We decided to pass on the remaining three. The mobile Walkabout Wizarding School has no fixed address. It is somewhere in the Outback but that is all we have. The Ocean Wizarding Academy's sailing schedule puts it awkwardly about the Southern Ocean for much of the coming year. Oh, and the Bhutanese Council of Magic denied my request to visit their School of Astral Magic due to something you did there back in 1932.
Somehow, I am barred from Bhutan for the next hundred years due to guilt by association as your 'blood' brother. You had to use their premises to keep your necromantic Qilin and they are still purifying the place as of now before they can reopen for their aura projection studies. If they knew about (ahem) the truth about us and that blood pact, I think it would be a ban for life.
Yours sincerely
Albus Dumbledore
Summer 1962
Dear Albus
Once upon a time, two little boys made plans to travel the world together. Good to see at least one boy is making the journey while the other rots in a cell. I hate you! We planned to travel the world together! What is this I hear about you hobnobbing with other wizards in your dreams? Argh! Just get these shackles off me and I will show you what a proper dreamwalking looks like. Watching grass grow indeed. Pah! How about the two of us hanging out in Monte Carlo, sipping champagne and having a flutter at the roulette and blackjack tables? Or enjoying the Caribbean sun?
If Durmstrang ever replies, do drop over to check if anyone has managed to remove the Deathly Hallows symbol I carved into their wall yet. If anyone asks about what happened to Potions Master Herr Goofus Muller, he is petrified in the northern wall of the second cell in the castle's lower dungeon, where I left him back in 1898 (if they have not filled in the place for a winter swimming pool yet).
Are these schools – Ocean and Walkabout - new? I have never heard of them before. About the others… Well, I did have a handful of acolytes from Mahoutokoro. Fond of the colour white. Pure hell for hiding bloodstains – must be a cultural thing. They did not actually graduate but were more expelled. They have a stylish way of doing it too – getting tossed or jumping off the top of the island into the middle of a typhoon. Ritual suicide over bringing dishonour to your family any day. Only the hardiest wizards make it back to the mainland alive. Survival of the fittest at its best.
Aside from Castelobruxo's Amazonian campus, they have a neat branch campus in Machu Picchu. I will recommend visiting that one over the main campus – less annoying jungle sprites. All you have to deal with are the ghosts of slain Incas and conquistadors. The weather is less steamy too. Well, I am sorry about Bhutan, but I needed a warm and magically powerful place to keep my pet Qilin before the main event. Their Astral Atrium fitted the bill.
May I ask that you send me postcards? And maybe a world map so I may track your voyage?
Gellert Grindelwald
P.S. Psst, aside from the one in Bhutan, I am sure there are at least five other Magical schools in continental Asia. Has the Supreme Mugwump not heard of them yet?
9th September 1962, Beauxbatons
Dear Gellert
I am pleasantly surprised how encouraging you are of my world tour. I am currently writing from the guesthouse of Beauxbatons, the first stop in my journey. You can mark that with a pin on the map I sent you. About those other Asian schools you mentioned, we seem to have problems certifying them for a variety of reasons, ranging from secretive curriculum to no fixed location for the accreditors to report to for accreditation. The Walkabout School got accredited only because they remained in Darwin long enough during the Muggle's Second World War to be certified.
The Ocean Academy straight up kidnapped the accreditors from Bristol and took them on a sea voyage halfway around the world before dropping them off in Shanghai upon accreditation in the 1920s. It was recognized as official recently given the way they went about the business of getting certified. The one in Delhi looks promising, if they could be more discerning about their students. Currently they accept everyone, including Muggles, for their Astronomy and Divination classes. The one in the Tianshan mountains refused to allow ICW accreditors into their premises.
Castelobruxo's Machu Picchu campus was closed permanently due to tourism that came in after they exorcized the many local ghosts and persuaded them to move on. Too many Muggles taking photos and annoying vendors selling souvenirs. About Mahoutokoro, I am horrified at their archaic disciplinary processes and if possible, will like to recommend that a more humane expulsion process, if they would care to listen.
Mama Lucinda, Uagadou's headmistress, dropped by last night in my dreams again, to discuss the possibility of an exchange programme between Hogwarts and her institute. I am amused to hear that they have a correspondence course for students as far afield as the Caribbean and the Southern States of America. Hogwarts' might want to consider this as an alternative for students who are unable to board.
I expect to spend a fortnight or so here as guest lecturer before moving on to your alum mater.
Yours sincerely
Albus Dumbledore
P.S. By the way, what happened to those Japanese acolytes of yours? There are no official records of any Japanese citizens working for your Alliance.
Autumn 1962
Dear Albus
I thank you for sparing me the gruesome details of how your academic visit went or how the students adored you as the old fart who took out the Dark Wizard Grindelwald. I do not suppose you can spare the time to get me a few souvenirs. The academy produced some stellar wizards towards my cause. Sadly, most of them have either been captured or repented of their ways and gone good so to speak. My lieutenant sends me a sweet bread for Christmas ever since she got hitched to some Italian squib. However, I believe this little tradition might not be followed by her bambinos as all of them turned out squibs like their Papa. Then she finds out she inherited a blood maledictus curse from somewhere up the family tree that will turn her into a tree in a few years. Pureblood enough for a blood curse to kick in but not enough to overcome those pesky squib genes. I will miss her panettones. Why can't you give those healers a push towards finding a cure for these blood curses?
About those Japanese wizards – survivors, every last one of them. If they were ever on the official payroll, they probably used some dorky Anglicized pseudonym like Cherry Wood or Sunny West. I last heard of them being in Hiroshima in July 1945. Not sure if they hightailed it out of the city before that bomb fell. A clannish lot. No, they have not contacted me since my defeat. They all made it very clear they are in it for business only and I was the strongest wizard hiring. They do not buy that quaint ideal of undying loyalty. I suppose they might have put their wands in another master's employ, but I like to imagine them setting up shop in the mountains selling hexes and potions.
Yours sincerely
Gellert Grindelwald
14th October 1962, Durmstrang
Dear Gellert
Apologies for the tardiness in replying – it appears that one must fill in multiple request forms to get an owl to send a letter out or to receive one. How do you lot cope with not being able to communicate with anyone outside as children? This is rather worrisome to a child's development.
And the cold! I have three pairs of woollen socks on and a warming spell, yet I am still freezing. The only fires allowed are spell-fires for potions and magic works. The headmaster kindly allowed me to have a small fire, but he did warn that non-magic fires in his institute tend to draw in the ghosts of past students. Naturally, I had to light the fire and promptly had to hold a lecture for a dozen ghost students on souls and the Afterlife. I do hope I managed to coax some of them to move on.
They seem to be quite a decent bunch, a bit lost perhaps. I am sure being so isolated has some bearing on the high number of suicides and murders among the student body and faculty. Are you acquainted with one Head Prefect Wilhelm Koenig? He claims you straight-up murdered him as a final year student in 1898 and his ghost is still flitting about the guest suite. Well, pieces of him are. They never got round to putting in the swimming pool and the headmaster had a Curse-breaker called in to retrieve Durmstrang's long-missing potions master from the dungeon wall. The rats got to him, so there was not much left.
Once more I question my sanity in falling for a psychopath like you. My next stop will be Koldovstoretz, where I expect to spend the Yule season.
Albus Dumbledore
Autumn 1962
Dear Albus
It takes a psychopath to know one. I do hope this owl catches you before you depart for Russia. For obvious reasons, I will not be able to write to you when you are in Koldie.
I never had much of a relationship with my family to start with so no loss there. Wilhelm is a liar, period. His death had nothing to do with me. It was his fault sticking his nose where it is not wanted, like into the middle of our experimental warding portal. If you see Alexei, Hans, and Jansen floating about, they will attest to that. I only survived intact because I was fast enough with my protego.
Once more, survival of the fittest apply in Durmstrang's frozen halls back in my day. Pureblood families rarely play nice, and the entire education was designed to ensure only the fittest graduate or are expelled. Those who fail to make the cut generally depart from this world without a crack at reproducing – a way to make sure only the strongest traits get passed down.
If you think Durmstrang is cold in fall, you clearly have not been to our more egalitarian counterpart Koldovstoretz in winter. Were you thinking St Petersburg or Moscow? Sorry to disappoint - it is in Siberia, just a few degrees into the Artic Circle. Better stock up on those woollen undies, old chap.
Good to hear you are surviving my alum mater's dubious hospitality
Gellert Grindelwald
P.S. I will not expect any owls from you as the birds just freeze up over Siberia during winter. Save the birds and owl me once you reach warmer climes.
Author's Notes:
Time for Dumbledore to travel the world. These are the eight acknowledged and certified Wizarding Schools of the eleven mentioned by Rowling. So I get to have fun imagining what the remaining ones are like.
When students of Mahoutokoro do Dark Magic, their school-issue robes turn white. A dead giveaway who needs to be expelled.