Phineas Nigellus Black wouldn't have called his relationship with Ursula the most passionate or romantic, but he did love her greatly, both in life and death. As his marriage was arranged, to ensure that his wife would come from a well-off pureblood family, his choices were somewhat limited, but he did find her lovely, full of a learned grace, normal for a young girl of her stature. Their marriage was a happy one, without many arguments - she agreed with his decisions without much complaint, wrote to him letters about his children while he was stuck with leading hundreds of teenagers at Hogwarts, long before his own children would join the ranks of over-emotional wizards and witches at the school.

There had been nothing to reproach in his wife's conduct. Even more so as he knew his wife must have been aware of his affairs. It was just how it was - how it was for his father, how it was for himself, how he was sure it must have been for his sons. Hedda was not even the first, nor the last witch that he had ever held an affair with, far from, however she was the longest affair he had had - when he thought about the word passion, it wasn't his wife that his mind would conjure, it was Hedda.

She was overwhelmingly passionate in short bursts. Her skin would glisten with sweat, hot to touch, the curls in her hair would become frizzy and stick to both her face and his. But the moment everything was over, she would pull herself away to a corner of the bed, legs lazily stretching against the wall, looking at him from afar, and take refuge back into her solitude. She would engage in conversation, she would talk, and lounge, and joke, and sip on drinks, and discuss plans for winter, or summer holidays, but Phineas knew all too well that the warmth she had exuded mere moments ago was slowly dissipating from the air, and like a turtle she would retreat into her own heart.

With all of this, he couldn't help but laugh when Dumbledore asked him if he ever loved her. No. He loved his wife, he felt something akin to love towards his children and grandchildren - well, apart from those that brought him shame, he loved parts of the life he lived, loved the power and status he had, but as for how he felt towards Hedda…

"Don't be ridiculous, what kind of question is that!" An indignant answer came from his portrait as Phineas crossed his arms across his chest.

However, while he wouldn't tell Dumbledore this, he had in fact asked himself this after she left Hogwarts and Britain. He dug deep within his own heart and being, trying to find something, but he could not find the name of the enigma, and he had no one to share his consternation with.

"Ridiculous to insinuate a wizard could have loved her, when she herself wouldn't accept anything but the love of a Muggle. Her wizard father taught her that, did you know?" Phineas watched Albus shake his head, and scoffed.

It wasn't because he was a married man, or because she was a half-blood, no, that wasn't even in his head. He remembered the fall-out all too well. When over the dinner table, his own son, blood of his blood, the son sharing his own name nonetheless, told the entire family that he supported Muggle rights, as a retort for… well, Phineas couldn't even remember over what. But he remembered how he kicked him out, dragged him out of his heart and his family forever, let out a flurry of choice words as he did so, and with his wand, pressed it and burnt his name from the tapestry, his anger immeasurable as he did so. He had to go the next day to Ollivander's, as his wand had slightly bent from the immense force he had applied.

And when he had told Hedda, when she had asked why his son would write to her, why his son asked her for money, for shelter, and when he explained… She had said she wanted to show him something. And took him to her birth place.

"Of course you didn't. He himself told me that - in the summer she left Hogwarts, before she self-exiled again. Lived in a small village, on the side of the Black Forest. You know what he did, the old mad man? Married a Muggle woman, and when she died, he willed himself blind. He simply decided, that without the Muggle, that there was nothing worth seeing in life anymore. Nothing. Not even the face of his daughter, nothing. That much of a Muggle-lover and blood-traitor he was, and he made sure he passed those traits." He hissed as he spoke about the wizard, tall and lanky and with sunken cheeks, just like Hedda, but with a darker complexion, riddled by wrinkles of time and with milky-white eyes through which light did not pass.

How easy it was for the old man, in his thick German accent, to explain all of this to him… As if it was the most normal thing in the world. Out of his own will and sheer stupidity, all because a Muggle died before him. It sickened Phineas to even think about the senile old man, how he would fumble in his self-inflicted darkness for his cane, for his food, for his daughter's hand. And she looked up to him, she looked up at the fool of her father, with such endearment, oh, how she would absorb every single word he said!

"Every time they made him see again, and that's what Hedda said, Dumbledore, not me - potions and whatnot, drops in his eyes, he would simply will himself blind again the next day.

It was him who taught her from a young age that no wizard could love someone like a Muggle could. That their love was unconditional, and that they loved someone purely, for who they were. So do dogs, they love unconditionally, because they are stupid thoughtless animals, but we don't teach our children to refuse others' love for the love of a dog, do we? And she believed that. She believed all of that, even though she was watching the old man stumble all day long. How could any self-respecting wizard love someone like that, then, Dumbledore, explain this to me."

Albus did not dare contradict the old Headmaster in the portrait, not when his words were dripping with a contained rage he had not seen him display before. With each word, each sentence, the conflict within Phineas was emerging to surface, and he could sense it.

"Why do you think she stayed so close to you then, if she knew? If she knew your views towards Muggles…"

Phineas raised his shoulders. He had asked her this question himself, asked her how she could bear then to look him in the eye then, to be next to him, to lay herself bare, when he tried to pass legislation to remove Muggleborns from Hogwarts, when his views clashed so much against hers, when she had known this all along.

"Life is meant to be lived, Phineas!" she retorted, offended, throwing her hands in the air, as if her response was the most normal in the world. Her arms slowly fell down, and there was a sound of resignation in her voice. "If I were to regret, if I were to truly care about all the depraved things Muggles and wizards did to one another, and to each other, if I were to examine-... if I were to dig, and examine, and be obliged to pick up convictions and sides, I would rather take my wand, and simply kill myself, Phineas, I would, if I were to escape it."

"Do you have no convictions, then?"

The sound of her stifling a maniacal laughter, whispering that she simply does not care for such convictions resonated in his head even after these many years. It floored him back then

"I think, in spite of your differences and views, that she did love you, in her own way. I think love is funny that way, in how it sparks even between the most unlikely of pairs."

Both of them were prideful, too prideful for their own good - and Albus knew it would have taken Phineas more than one single person to budge him when it came to his views. And now, almost a century later, he could finally understand what the fallout was, why one early September, instead of finding her once again as a colleague, him teaching Transfiguration, her Alchemy, he instead found an empty seat, and an empty classroom, and an empty office, and the position for an Alchemy professor vacant ever since.

"And I think that you should have known by now that I don't care much for it, Dumbledore, and I don't care much for all of that."

Albus nodded, and looked at the picture of the aged Hedda. Her eyes, as she stared straight at him, were impenetrable, and he felt like even through the grainy photograph in the Daily Prophet, even though she was long dead and buried, that she could read right through him. Since he was a student, he felt as if he could hold no thought or secret from her, and her piercing gaze was one of the first reasons he had to become a skilled Occlumens.

He understood very late why she had asked him to accompany him to Nurmengrad - because all those years ago, all that time ago, all those many, many summers ago, she had read his relationship with Gellert in his eyes, and on his face. She had known, all along, far before anyone else knew, and kept it within her own eyes, until she could no longer bear it.

"I did not know you were ever close, until very, very late, close to her deathbed, when she asked about you."

"I was long dead by then."

"I told her about your portrait in the office here. I told her I could bring her, if she wanted to."

"Let me guess, she did not want to."

"She said she could not bear to see the bitterness in your eyes again. She said she could still feel the ash from how they burnt her all those years ago."

"So she did tell you."

"She would not tell me a single word more about what happened." Albus finally said, shaking his head gently. He took a seat at the desk, before sighing, as he remembered how heavily the words came out from her throat, how she copper her hand at her chest, frail and small and brittle, a shadow of the proud statuesque woman "I don't think she even wanted me to tell you this - it just… came out, in a moment of weakness."

Even in his old age, hailed as one of the greatest wizards alive, he felt afraid to have his mind and thoughts interpreted by the old, aged well beyond her years, witch. Still, as skilled as he was at Legilimency, he could not get anything more than what she had said, her eyes red and puffy and welled with tears - however, whether it was due to her knowledge that she would die soon, or from the impact of her memories, he still did not know.

"Well, go on then, Dumbledore. You cannot possibly just say that. What moment of weakness?" Phineas moved his hand, expecting more, surprisingly impatient for how much he had stated he did not care.

Albus took his time as he thought about it, as the memories played in his head for the first time since he experienced them all those weeks ago. He dissected his memories many a time, either in his head or in the Pensieve, but this time, he wanted to let that one memory stew, let it reach a point where he could distance himself emotionally. Yet, he felt that perhaps it would do Phineas good to know.

"Days before her death, she asked me to accompany her in one final visit. She knew she would die soon, you see, and she wanted to... well, I think she wanted to clear her conscience. She was too old to make the visit alone, and I think she brought me on as she did not know anyone else that could accompany her without asking too many questions."

And she would have been correct, as he had not asked a single question, apart from asking her why she thought he was the best person to bring along. He tried to refuse, tried to get out of it, tried to tell her about his own promise not to visit that place and that man, however she would not take no for an answer, and laughed heartily, reminding him of when she was a young witch and he was nothing but an overzealous teenager, at a conference in Cairo.

"This is something we have to do together, my dear. Like all those years back - no one else can come."

She grabbed him tightly as they Apparated to a place he had vouched to himself never to visit. But he knew, he knew by then that she was just as responsible as he was for the man that was imprisoned there, and he could not refuse allowing someone to atone for their own sins.

They never talked about Grindelwald to one another, apart from that fateful visit. Never before, never after.

"'That Muggle-loving bitch' is what he called her, before I even knew it was referring to Hedda." Albus explained, however he did not speak of how heartily he laughed at Gellert's impression, how Gellert would wrap himself in a blanket and imitate her walk along Durmstrang's corridors with exaggerated movements, stomping his shoes against the floor with each step. He would clap and laugh with him, and many years later, when he found out the imitation was of no one else but Hedda, he would curse at himself for not realising it sooner, for not sending her an owl to ask for her take on his expulsion. Not that he had ever found out details.

"Appropriate, go on." Phineas nodded with a chuckle.

"She felt responsible for expelling him, for setting in motion what became his rise to power, and wanted to make amends. I think she must have thought that she was too harsh on him, and that perhaps, had she taken a different approach… things could have turned out differently."

"Did you see him, then?"

Albus shook his head. He could not bear to see Gellert, even after all those years. He was afraid, and did not know how he would react, or if he would be able to retain his composure, however he knew that being the only prisoner in the tower, Gellert could feel his presence there.

"It wasn't about me, and I stayed at a distance, behind a wall, just making sure to see her. She was shaking from the moment we arrived at Nurmengard, I was afraid she would just collapse on the spot, and would die right there."

He was thankful that Gellert could not see him, as he had to retain his composure as he heard her apologise to him, and heard Gellert's croaked voice, for the first time in more than half a century, talking in German with his former Headmistress.

"You stupid child, you knew nothing then! You were there to learn, and I removed you, and threw you into the unknown, and left you to your own devices… I should have kept you close, and I threw you-"

"I threw myself! I did-" From his corner, Albus watched Hedda take Gellert's hands into hers. So emaciated was he, that despite her small hands, Albus could see her fingers could go all around his wrists. It took him a minute or so to realise that he had not been paying attention to what he was saying. "They would kill the magical children they birthed, out of their own ignorance and…"

"I know what you thought, my darling, I know. But those were the days back then… we were ignorant as well, you know very well. We killed our own that were bit by werewolves back then, instead of finding a cure, did we not? And we still fight one another, and will always find ways to fight against one another, purebloods, half-bloods, Muggleborns, and those from long-lasting families against those who have not a high-name… you know all of this, and knew all of this, we taught you all of this-"

"Would you have really killed me, if I would have come back? Like you said back then…"

"I think I would have tried, my darling. I think I would have. But you would have done the same to me."

"I think I would have."

"And would that have changed anything?" Albus had to lean in, as their voices turned to whispers, and for a moment, he wondered if they were still speaking, as he could not hear anything apart from Hedda brushing her hands against Gellert's cracked palm.

"I don't know. I was scared then - when I thought… You were so angry, so angry. I thought, the next wizard I would duel, I have to kill them. I have to kill them, otherwise they will kill me. And it was releasing, each time I did it - all I kept thinking was… they won't kill me. And more and more wizards started to respect me, and what I wanted to achieve, and it made me feel... It was easy to get drunk on that feeling."

"I think my only regret was that I never asked her what happened back then." Dumbledore interrupted his own recollection to raise his head towards Phineas, and for the first time, left a sigh escape him. "What could cause a Headmaster, someone in my position, to want to kill a student, and to really tell them that at such a young age..."

"It doesn't take a Durmstrang Headmaster much to tell a student that, first of all. And not wanting to kill a student perhaps says more about you then any other Headmaster, Dumbledore." Phineas chuckled amused. "But if you are curious… That specific memory is stored right here. Well, in this office."