Chapter Three

Waking Death

The only sound, apart from the faint rumble of thunder and torrential rain, was the scratching of his quill, echoing off the stone walls. He spared no attention to his stark surroundings, his familiar stone cell. The only decoration, apart from his cot and his writing desk, were his leather-bound journals, stacked neatly next to the desk. The oldest and newest lay side-by-side upon the desktop, as he took careful notes on his previous entries. These entries, his very oldest, were dated with dates he now knew were meaningless. All his previous journals were missing, Vanished. He had once suspected they had been taken by the guards in the night. Now, he suspected — No, he knew — that they had never been here at all. Once again, he poured over his "first" journal.

March 17, 1998, morning?

A storm rages outside. It must be morning, but such is the storm that the sun is hidden. The lands outside are lit as if by twilight despite the storm, so it must be midmorning at least, possibly even noon. Jakob did not wake me, nor has he delivered my first meal.

Last night I dreamed. I usually relive the moments of my worst mistakes. I see them again, and again, and each time I am reminded again of the magnitude of my folly. My arrogance. My lack of compassion. But this dream. For the first time, I dreamed something new. It was vivid and real. Could it have been a premonition? It has been many years since I looked to the future. Have I ignored my gift for so long that it is now intruding on my dreams, demanding to be heard? Is it a warning that my time is soon?

In this dream, Voldemort came to me at last.

He sought it. It surprises me that he found it necessary to question me. Did he not know history? He had learned that it was I that stole it, that I had possessed it during my campaign to liberate wizardkind from hiding. Is he so foolish that he did not realize who would have taken it from me?

No. It could not have been a premonition. A wizard of his caliber could not have been so foolish. It was a dream. A foolish, silly dream of a man that longs for death. Yes. That is it. Even my dreaming mind wants to die.

Why will death not take me?

Let it be real. Let him come and kill me at last. I have done my penance.

Give me freedom.

His gaze swept over the gap of empty page down to the bottom where he had appended a second entry.

March 17, 1998, evening?

Jakob did not bring my meals today. Do I deserve to starve? Perhaps. But Jakob's punctuality is something I've come to count on. That he forgot me is concerning. Has something happened?

I shall ask tomorrow, assuming someone comes.

He now knew, of course, that Jakob, his guard for eleven years, had never been here. He turned the page.

March 18, 1998

Were it not for yesterday's entry, I would not even know that a day has passed. The dream, which I described there, happened again. Vivid and real. He came, he demanded it, we argued and then he killed me.

Jakob, again, has left me to starve. And yet my hunger pangs are no worse. I feel as though I ate just yesterday. My thirst is no worse, as if I just drank yesterday. I would believe I had ate and drank yesterday as normal, that today were again March 17, were it not for yesterday's entry.

Am I going mad? Is dementia setting in at last? I am old. I am not immune from the ravages of aging on the mind. I have not been visited by the prison healer in weeks. Perhaps, at last, senility has come to take me. But is it not said that insanity robs one of self-reflection? Can I, in insanity, question my sanity? That axiom suggests that I remain sane.

And yet my circumstance is anything but sane.

I can recall no second night. No second sleep. No second waking. It is as if I am simply waking continuously as the storm roils outside my window, waking for uncounted hours until so much time has passed that I forget time has passed at all. Until I read my entry. It must be tomorrow. It must be March 18.

What is happening?

Insane, and yet sane, he mused to himself. Insane enough to be trapped, sane enough to eventually break free. He turned the page again.

March 19, 1998

It is tomorrow and also today and yesterday, yet again.

I have no explanation.

No food or drink for a third day, and yet no real hunger or thirst. No sign of the guards, no visit from the healer, though his check-in was due. Today, I banged on the door. I screamed for help. For a response. From anyone. No answer. I realized that I cannot even hear the voices and noises of the prisoners below, drifting in through my narrow window. Even over the rumble of the storm, I should hear something. Someone. Has the prison been abandoned?

That seems the easiest explanation, but it cannot account for this perplexing sense that time has stopped and that I am reliving the same day again and again.

Perhaps if I slept. Have I slept? I cannot recall.

Once again, I question my sanity. I shall try to sleep.

Even now, he was unsure if he ever actually slept during that time. He likely wandered about his cell in confused delirium before stumbling accidentally upon his journal and, after reading again the previous entries, supposing he had just awoken. He turned the page.

March 20, 1998, morning?

I awake again from the dream. As vivid and real as the first time I described in my March 17 entry. No hunger. No thirst. The prison empty and abandoned. No memory of the intervening time.

What is happening?

The entry continued after a meager gap of an inch.

March 20, 1998, afternoon?

Something has happened. My hypothesis that I have lost my sanity is becoming more and more irrefutable. Moments ago, I noticed that I am covered by scars. Every inch of my body. How long have I been like this? How could I not have noticed?

My hands, arms, chest, legs and, if my sense of touch is to be trusted, my face are scarred by uncountable, healed lacerations. I have no explanation.

He now suspected that the scars were remnants of his cruelty. Though he'd never made a Horcrux, he had murdered. He had tortured. He had terrorized. All these actions must injure the soul. A wizard that created a Horcrux could restore the torn fragment to his soul if he felt remorse for his actions. Perhaps the same held true for injuries. He was sure — reasonably sure, anyway — that his scars were healed because of the remorse he experienced as he aged in the confines of his cell.

The next page. The "date" had been later struck through by a single line, with the title "Entry 1" added next to it.

March 21, 1998? Entry 1

It cannot be March 21. But what else can I call it? How much time has passed?

I have just reread this journal as though for the first time. I can barely remember writing the words that came before, as though weeks and months have passed. And yet the dream feels fresh and new.

But it cannot be March 21, because I opened my cell door today.

The easiest explanation would be it has been weeks or months since the Sealing Charm was last recast. My magic, without a wand, should not be able to overcome a fresh Sealing Charm. Albus himself conceived it. And yet I willed the door to unlock and open, and it did. I explored the prison and found it empty.

But that suggests months must have passed since the evacuation. And yet I do not hunger. I do not thirst. As I write, I can conceive of only one plausible explanation. It terrifies me. I not want to commit it to parchment, and yet I must, lest I forget.

I am dead.

As I wrote the words just now, a shudder passed through my body. I think I've realized it before, but I never committed it to parchment. I must write it again:

I am dead.

Suddenly, I feel more awake than I believe I have been since I arrived in this place that is and is not Nurmengard. I feel as if my mind has been freed from some invisible bondage. Once more:

I am dead.

My dream was no dream. Voldemort came to me. He sought the Elder Wand. I lied, and claimed never to have it. He killed me.

And now I am here, in a waking death without end.

What now?

He closed the journal. He knew so much more now, and yet still knew so little. He learned that he could, with effort, conjure anything with a thought. Below this room, he had meticulously and slowly restored the remainder of Nurmengard to its former glory. . . . and yet he chose to spend most of his time here in the tallest tower. The rest of the castle felt wrong to inhabit. It was a reminder of his past cruelty. His vain ambitions. No. This barren cell was where he belonged, as he puzzled out the nature of his existence after death.

More than anything, he wanted to know how long he'd been dead. He wanted to know how many days, weeks, months or even years had passed between each of those entries as he had existed in a waking fever dream. . . . a stupor that broke the moment he wrote "I am dead." He wasn't even sure that this journal was truly the first. How many times had he written a handful of these entries only for his delirious thoughts to banish them from existence and force him to start anew? How could he now keep track of time when his fragile perceptions constantly altered the speed with which a clock turned?

He had spent the uncountable time since then experimenting with this bizarre afterlife, taking detailed notes on his experiences from Entry 1, his first lucid experience, to today's Entry 873. But now, something was different. He glanced again at the reflection in the mirror before him, the newest addition to his spartan cell, then he resumed writing.

Entry 873

Something is different.

Since my awakening, I have written the previous entries in a listless pall of melancholy. I have felt empty and without purpose, much as I did in life as I languished in prison for my crimes.

But in the past hour, a peculiar sense of hope and optimism has crept into my mind. I suddenly feel as though I am waiting for something, or someone.

My appearance has changed. My scars remain, but my face now looks as it did when I was at the height of my power, just before my defeat. It is for that reason that I have been rereading my journals, seeking some clue —

"Gellert."

More shocking than hearing a human voice for the first time since death was Gellert Grindlewald's lack of shock. Particularly given the familiarity of that voice. He lay down his quill, stood and turned, eerily calm, and there in the doorway of his cell was Albus Dumbledore, looking exactly as he had on the day that they had fought and he had lost.

"Albus?"

Albus nodded, smiling cautiously but kindly.

"I am sorry," he began, "that I did not come sooner."

Gellert racked his mind for words to say, but he was speechless. What do you say when visited at last, in death, by your oldest lover and greatest enemy? Particularly when he is the first to do so. Particularly when his first words are an. . . . apology?

"I have been here for an hour at least, trying to find you," Albus said cautiously. "I confess I did not expect to find you up here."

"The castle below is a reminder of what I was," Gellert said at last. "I spent most of my life here. This feels like home."

"You spend all your time here?"

"Yes. I only pass through the rest of the castle when I decide to go outside. And, given the storm, you can imagine how rarely I do that."

Albus stepped out of the doorway and crossed to the window, looking out across the beautiful peaks of the Austrian Alps. Suddenly, the thunder quieted. The clouds lightened and the torrential rain slowed to a light drizzle.

"Even in death, I have proved myself a foolish, selfish old man," Albus began. "During the height of your power, I selfishly avoided facing you. Now, in death, I selfishly avoided you for fear of confronting your worst self yet again. I am relieved that it is not so. I am relieved that your scars are healed and that you are aware of your situation. Many who bathed themselves in cruelty are trapped in a hell of their own making, unable to escape the cycle of self-defeat."

He paused then, still gazing out the window as the clouds turned white and parted to reveal the sun. Was it really Albus, or some simulacrum his lonely mind had conjured? After a few moments, Gellert decided to speak.

"I began there. I do not know how long I was trapped in that fever dream. Eventually, I began to keep a journal, and through it gradually realized what had happened. Voldemort killed me when I refused to tell him you had the wand."

Albus nodded. "Yes, I know."

"How can you know?"

"There are techniques for observing the physical universe we left behind. I will try and teach them to you. The Scarred, such as yourself, are handicapped here, but your healing is extensive. Much also depends on how strongly you are remembered there, and the nature of the remembrance."

Gellert considered that carefully. He doubted he was well-remembered, or that many of the living would appreciate his spying on their lives.

"So I am to expect regular visits?"

"That, and more. This is your Space. For those who are strong enough, our personal relationships forge paths we can traverse by thought to the Spaces of others. I am reasonably confident that as we restore our friendship, that connection will become strong enough for you visit my Space."

Gellert nodded, but before Albus could continue he asked the burning question to which he needed an answer.

"Does time matter, here?"

Albus smiled. "Yes, and no. Our perception can make it run faster or slower, but time itself does seem to flow forward. Those who still live in the physical universe are not yet here. And those that have been here longest often disappear and move on to something. . . . else. In that way, time matters here."

"Then please tell me —" He could not keep his desperation out of his voice. "— how long have I been dead?"

Albus' expression became grim. "I do not know how quickly your mind has caused time to flow in your Space, but it is presently somewhere around mid-May in the year 2019 on Earth."

His mind reeled. He grasped for his desk chair and dropped into it hard. Placing his hands on his head, he pressed his temples tightly.

"Twenty-two years."

"Perhaps now, you understand my haste to apologize," Albus said, caution and a tinge of fear etched into his tone. "I have no excuse for waiting this long. I died many months before you did."

Gellert looked up from his hands, his emotions seething beneath what he hoped was a calm exterior. "What changed?"

"Voldemort."

Gellert smirked. "Has someone finally killed him?"

Albus shook his head. "No. He died just three months after you. He foolishly took the Elder Wand from my tomb, believing that would make him its master. Call it providence if you wish, but circumstances arranged for Harry Potter to become its true master. When Voldemort attempted to kill him with it, it turned the Killing Curse back on him."

"If he's been dead for twenty-two years, why does he bring you to me now?"

Albus moved closer and sat in a chair, much like the plain wooden thing Gellert sat on, that appeared even as he lowered himself into it.

"Do you know what a Horcrux is?"

Gellert nodded. "Yes. I assumed he made one. It was the only explanation for his return from 'death.'"

Gellert listened intently, with no small degree of surprise, as Albus explained Voldemort's intentional creation of no less than six Horcruxes and the accidental creation of a seventh in Harry Potter. Of course, with a soul mutilated by the creation of half a dozen Horcruxes, it was no surprise that a rebounding Killing Curse would fragment it further.

"He was a fool," Gellert said bluntly. "He came to me seeking the Elder Wand. A foolish waste of time. At the moment he learned I took it from Gregorovitch, he should have realized you took it from me and gone straight to your tomb. At the beginning, I could not believe his visit had really happened because it represented such folly on his part."

Albus sighed, his disappointment in his old pupil obvious. "There is a reason why your campaign was more successful, overall, than his. He was blinded by arrogance to a degree that you never were."

"So how does all this bring you to me?"

"Please know that I had, truly, planned to visit you eventu—"

"Enough apologizing, Albus. Out with it."

After a final hesitation, Albus explained that Voldemort had been unable to transition into the Afterverse — "An amusing, but accurate name," he interjected — due to the extensive damage to his soul. He had been stuck between the two states of existence. His victims, seeking vengeance, had some time ago pulled him the rest of the way across. And now. . . ."

"You want to restore him?"

"I do," Albus said. "My conscience cannot bear to leave him wallowing in that state, without even attempting to save him. The circumstances of his birth and early life were far from ideal, and his loss of the ability to love not entirely surprising."

"He would have to feel genuine, true remorse. Do you think that will happen?"

"No, I don't. But I will try nonetheless."

"And that brought you to me, because you seek insight. How do you introduce empathy into the mind of a genocidal madman?"

The bitterness of his tone was slight, but not missed by his former lover and enemy.

"You were neither genocidal nor mad, Gellert, but yes, I hope that you will be able to help me convince him of the wrongness of what he has done."

"It took me decades to accept that and begin to feel remorse, but then. . . . I suppose we have centuries or even millenia, now." He smiled. "It's as good a pass-time as any."

Albus' expression made clear that he had not expected such a warm response to his plan. He stood up.

"If you are to help me, you will need to learn more about the Afterverse," he said.

Gellert rose as well, and extended his hand.

"I can check my calendar to be sure, but I am confident that I have no conflicting engagements."

A twinkle of amusement glittered in Albus eyes as they shook hands, and with a surprised yell he felt Albus pull him into a tight hug.

"I am truly sorry, Gellert."

As they pulled apart, he looked carefully into Albus' eyes. That indefinable something that set living eyes apart from dead ones was there. Could a simulacrum be so convincing, even here? At last, he dared to believe.

"It really is you, isn't it?"

Albus nodded gentle, a hopeful smile appearing on his face.

"I am sorry, too, Albus. We shall be friends, I hope."

For the first time in nearly a century, Gellert Grindelwald felt a measure of happiness.