"Incendio." Albus felt his chest tighten as he entered Hedda's memory through the Pensieve, watching her ghostly face brighten in a multitude of colours as she stepped away from the flames she had just created. She stood there for a few seconds, veins visibly pulsing against her temple and neck as she tightened her hand over her wand, her jaw tightening as yowls of agony emerged from the flames. The hallway they were in was wooden and damp, yet the flames engulfed only the room she lit, licking at the door yet not extending beyond it.

Was that Durmstrang? He remembered Gellert telling him it was a cold and unwelcome place, that in winter time, the wood would expand from all the moisture, and all the doors had to be closed and opened magically, as they would simply get stuck, and the Institute never had enough money or willingness to repair the building.

"Where are you going, Gellert?" Hedda asked in German, her tone low and vitriolic, and Albus turned around, only to see a blonde-haired young Gellert taking a step away from her. Her voice was more reminiscent of

"How long have you been doing this, Gellert?"

"You wouldn't have done anything!"

Albus watched Gellert raise his wand, and assume a duelling position. "You didn't even know, all this time! Their own parents didn't know! You just sat there, when people like us- wizards! Children! Killed, and-and when…" For the first time, Albus saw Gellert at a loss for words, his charismatic persona not yet formed. The young Gellert stuttered, an incomprehensible chain of sounds coming out of his mouth as he tried to regain his composure.

Without warning, he flicked his wand, and a red jet came out of it, which Hedda parried with her own wand, her eyes ablaze not from the flames crackling nearby, but from pure and red-hot anger.

"Want me to do something now, Gellert?"

Albus followed them as they duelled, watching Gellert as the spells and curses sputtered from his mouth as he cast them, exploding, alighting, transfigurating trees into golems, lifting the earth itself as he both attacked and ran from his own Headmaster. Albus watched the madness in his eyes intently, almost forgetting at times he was inside a memory. He compared Gellert duelling Hedda with his own duels with him, and was shocked at how much he evolved in a matter of a few months.

Much like he remembered his duelling technique, Gellert was fully on the offensive, whereas Hedda was undoing his curses and transfigurations, parrying and playing on the defensive - if anything, her goal seemed to take him as far away from the school as possible, until-

Albus covered his eyes for a moment, as even through a memory a century old, the bright light from Gellert's wand burned him momentarily. Lost in his memories of his own duels, he was unsure what spell Gellert must have cast, as he had never seen such a spell or its effect before. Hedda's own memories seemed to have blurred as a result of it, and he could see nothing but white snow and the castle's outline for a few good seconds.

When Albus could finally see again, he wondered if Gellert had Disapparated at first. All he could see was Hedda, laid down in the snow. He approached her, and watched her groan as she unsteadily raised herself on her feet, blood bubbling at the corners of her lips through the sheer effort. Her robe was in threads on her right side.

She took her wand, only realising as her arm was in front of her face that she was covered in blood. Not only was the sleeve of her robe ripped to shreds, but her skin was ripped with it. As Hedda looked at the damage done to her right arm, seemingly shocked that she could even move her hand, Albus noticed that on the maroon snow underneath her, there was not only Hedda's blood and flesh, but also Gellert, unconscious from the impact of the spell, however, appearing completely unharmed, without a single scratch on his face, apart from being half-covered in blood that was not his.

With laborious breaths and blood seeping through to the bottom half of her robe, Hedda stuck her wand into the belt of her robe, and proceeded to wipe Gellert's face off her own blood.

Albus watched him open his eyes, and saw a look of terror dawn on the face of Gellert Grindelwald.

Only two times had he seen that look before - when they realised Ariana died, and when Gellert had first been escorted to his cell at Nurmengard, when the realisation hit him that that would be his prison forever, and that he had finally, unequivocally lost. This time, it was the realisation his murder attempt had gone awry, for whatever reason - and perhaps that was why he had never attempted to use this spell again.

Gellert tried to scramble for his wand in the bloodied snow, before being pulled up by his collar by Hedda. From the side he was on, Albus could see the muscles in her ripped right arm contract under the shreds of skin, and wondered if the white he saw was from bone or cartilage as she pulled him up to his tip-toes, locking eyes with him. When she spoke, her voice was disquietingly calm and collected, not bearing a single tremor in her voice.

"If I lay my eyes on you again, I will not do you the honour to kill you like a wizard. Gellert, with my own two hands, I promise to kill you like a Muggle. Do you understand?" she asked, her tone calm as she waited for Gellert to nod, and moved her head together with him.

The look in Gellert's eyes as he nodded matched the pure look of rage in her eyes. If he were to see her again, he would kill her before she would have the chance to. But right now, with her bony fingers digging against his throat, with a spell that was supposed to kill her that failed, covered in her blood from head to toe and without his wand handy, Gellert begrudgingly agreed to the terms, and stepped away from her the moment she let go of his neck.

Albus watched together with Hedda as the young Gellert picked up his wand slowly and begrudgingly, maintaining eye contact with her as he wiped it off his robe, opened his mouth, before deciding against it and using his wand to summon his broom. He gave her a final look before flying away, and Albus turned to Hedda, only now noticing a tremor in her right arm.

He followed her through the memory to what looked like the Institute's infirmary, one of the only places that was not covered in wood. With a move of her wand, she lit the candles inside it and shut the door, before opening the lid of a cauldron. Albus watched her concoct a quick form of a restorative potion, thick and milky-white, before taking out a ladle and pouring it on top of her right arm.

The potion, boiled down and now thickened to a viscous consistency, quickly covered her entire arm, turning shades of pink by the time it reached her fingers. She repeated it one time, two, three, before sighing in exasperation and shoving her arm up to her shoulder inside the cauldron. She used her other hand to cover other injuries on her head and body, and soon enough, a good third of her was either covered or stained by the potion, giving her the appearance of someone who had poured gallons of white paint over themselves..

Albus watched her take a seat on the floor, and use her good hand to cover her forehead, her mouth curling and contorting into a soundless scream as the memory abruptly ended, and he found himself back at Hogwarts, back in the present.

"So?"

He turned to face Phineas's portrait, unsure as to where to start. However, right as he began explaining what he had seen, Phineas stopped him, telling him he had no interest in such things.

"She stored it there as the name Gellert Grindelwald started to become more known in Britain. Said that if something were to happen, someone should see it. Never did say what that something was, so I left it there…" Phineas shrugged, before adding "and then I forgot." with an ironic chuckle. Something in Albus's face brought his good, short-lived, cruel humour back.

"I am surprised that you were never curious to see this memory."

"I am a man of my promise, Dumbledore, I thought you knew me as much. Hedda may have had no convictions, but I still had and have mine, as you very well know."

"Were you never curious to know more about her?"

Phineas moved his eyes from Albus to the Pensieve, lost in thought. He remembered her shaky hands as she handed him the vial, and watched him place it in the drawer. It was one of the only times he had seen her fingers tremble. That night, on her bed, she kept relentlessly asking him about his life, grasping at his collar, at his hair, as if she wanted, more than anything, not to be with him, but to merge together with him.

"Tell me about Ursula."

He told her about their wedding, the first time they met. The birth of his eldest son. The death of his older brother when he was only a child. She asked about his mother, and his father, and his first year as Headmaster, and he answered it all in great detail, gazing into her piercing black eyes, not daring to look away as she looked at him from above, as if absorbing each of his words and memories to replace her own. Her eyes were reddened and moist as they finished, and she still held tight onto him, for the first time since he had known and visited that small bedroom. She held onto him tightly for the entire night, and for some reason that he could not untangle even a hundred years later, he felt mesmerised, and held onto her just as tight.

There was one time, after she had left, long after, that he looked back at that one memory. He was revolted when he could finally see, as an outsider, just how enraptured he had been by her, with how much reverence he had been looking at her with. Each and every movement she made captivated the Phineas within the memory, however, what terrified the Phineas looking back onto his own memory was that, when he turned his eyes from himself to her, he was slowly feeling captivated yet again.

It was the one time he questioned his beliefs - he had not felt a single lick of doubt when he burnt off the name and face of his son off the tapestry, or when he had cut off his sister, both blood traitors. He refused to think about them, to talk about them, but he still looked at this woman, who had married a Muggle, and felt that, if she were to appear on his doorstep, he would forget that she was a blood traitor, ignore her beliefs and her convictions, or lack of. He would forget, just to be able to feel her gaze pierce and burn within his soul once more, feel her throaty laugh through her chest just once more.

As far as anyone was concerned, including himself, if he ever were to see her again, he would very gladly let her know exactly what he thought of blood traitors like herself, yet if he would have been able to see her again, he feared to know what he would have actually done.

"If anything, I wish I could have known even less." he finally answered.

If Phineas had never asked to visit her, to know more about her, and her past, and her family, if he never would have broached the subject of Muggles… he had never wanted to know.

He pretended she was like him, all that time, until that moment when it became impossible to still pretend. And when he was with her, he could pretend he was like her - free of everything. In that room, he could lighten up like he never could with anyone else. With his staff, family, with his siblings, even in his most intimate moments with Ursula, he had to keep a formality expected of a member of the Black family. He would not have exchanged who he was, the position he was in for anything in the world, but he revelled in the moments when he was with Hedda, when he could rid himself of all shreds of formality.

"Did her memory serve you well, then?" Phineas asked, and Albus seemed unsure, closing his eyes for a moment. "Would you have wanted to kill our hypothetical student as well, then?"

"No. While it served me well, I still would not have killed, or threatened to kill."

No matter what that burnt room hid, and Albus started to get an inkling of what it might have contained, considering Gellert's alchemical studies and knowledge of ritualistic magic. He spoke a lot on its theories, always complaining that his notebooks were still at Durmstrang before he managed to get a good grasp of them. However, even thinking about young Riddle, he couldn't imagine himself threatening, much less wanting to kill him, not while he had been a student at Hogwarts. In the war, as an adult, yes, but he believed, even if foolishly so, that with time and care, he could have changed his ways.

"Then you are a more foolish Headmaster than Hedda was."

"Is it foolish not to kill, Phineas?"

"You even start to talk like her." he commented, amused at how even the tone matched how she asked it. "If you'd like to know, I told her it is, back then."

"And now?"

"Does it matter, when you are dead? These questions are for the living, for you, not for me to mull over - both of you… Even when Hedda asked, and she agreed with me back then, you know, you didn't see her move and go on to kill Grindelwald the next day, no matter how much she mulled over it."

Albus chuckled, having noticed a flicker in his eye each time he brought up her name and her memory. He spoke of her with disdain and contempt, but Albus felt that in the portrait of the long-gone bigoted ex-Headmaster in front of him, a flicker of her memory was still kept alive in some form, and as eager as he was to cut ties, he did not want to extinguish that flicker. And perhaps if she had been given more time at Hogwarts…

"Did she die content, then?" Phineas suddenly asked, and Albus looked up, meeting his eyes. For the first time since they started talking about her, he felt a genuine concern in his voice when talking of the Hedda beyond his own memories.

"She did."