The untold Story of Grindelwald and Dumbledore

Chapter 4 - the other boy

The following days passed by in a blurr. I was mostly busy with organising my day. I had to look after Ariana and make sure that she was outside enough meanwhile I cursed the damn little village and tryed to stay in touch with the wold outside. I was glad Bathilda looked after the cooking but I tryed to help her as often as possible to make sure to be able to cook perfectly myself one day. Ariana seemed to be interested in some of my books so I read them to her or we read it together and that way I got a chance to read them myself. Whenever we smiled about the same phrase or whenever she said something about the book and then looked at me I felt as if maybe one day we could really be together here and read books and tell each other stories but these were only short moments of peace. It was like beeing around a ticking bomb but sometimes the time would stop just to show when it would start running again that in the end all of it seemed rather useless. Beside all this I got up ever night to practise spells or perform some magic just for fun and away from the eyes of my harmed sister.

The doorbell rang. I closed the book I had just been reading and opened the old and heavy wooden door to Bathilda. "Hello Miss Bagshoot. I did not expect you here tonight but don't you want to come in?", I asked surprised because since I started getting along better Bathilda preferred to stay at home as far as I knew she was writing a history book. Maybe I could manage to find out a bit more this evening. "Oh dear boy I am sorry for just showing up but I had to invite someone to you. He is right in your age but you were so busy and I was so sorry for you that I did not want to bother you with it.", she blurted out. "Right Miss Bagshoot.", I said a little confused because she was standing alone. "Whom did you want me to know?"

"That must be me then." A tall, young man appeared behind the trunk of the old oaktree in our front garden. When he came over and extended my hand he had the unmistakably elegant movements of a wild cat. His hair was pearly white and as he came closer I recognised the different shade of his eyes: chestnut brown and steel blue. His grip was firm and dry. "My name is Gellert Grindelwald. And you must be Albus Dumbledore. Bathilds speaks most highly of you." The tone made it absolutely clear that he would form his own opinion about that. "I am.", I answered. "It is a pleasure to meet you though highly unexpected. What makes you visit Miss Bagshoot?", I asked politely. "She is my aunt I am spending my summer here after school." "To which school did you go?", I questioned as it could not have been Hogwarts because I was in no way familar with his face. "Durmstrang.", was the dry answer and I began to wonder why he was already spending his summer holidays. If Durmstrang had some similarities with the Hogwarts terms, the schoolyear would last at least a few more weeks. Still I nodded without mentioning it. "I am sorry I cannot let you in right now. My sister is ill and I would like to check on her. I would not be a good host." I hoped that Bathilda got the wink that Grindelwald should not come in touch with Ariana until I possibly knew him a bit better and how trustworthy he might been. Luckily Grindelwald himself picked up. "We do not want to bother you any longer. I am short with time anyways. I am currently working on a magical analysis which takes a lot of time and rune translation." He smiled vaguely and turned on his heels walking away as swiftly as he had appeared. "What is he working on?", I asked Miss Bagshood and tried to hide the curiosity in my voice. "It must be something with old fairytales as he is studying about ten of these at the same time. Maybe he tries to find the true core within them. It is a bit odd but Gellert is one of the brightest minds I've ever met so I let him do his work." She smiled and I smiled back being even more curious now. A white haired boy who left school studied fairytales. I could not deny but be wonderous about this strange appearance.

I was woken by a sudden flash of light shining through my dark windows. For a second I stared blinking into the velvety blackness, surrounding me when it happened again. For the inch of a second the whole room was covered in a silver shine until it retreated again and the darkness that remained seemed in an even deeper shade of black then before but I had seen enough. I left my bed as quietly as possible, hurrying over to Arianas room to make sure that the flashes would not wake her up. She was sleeping though restless, throwing herself around ant muttering. I drew my wand and closed the shutters which we normally left open to allow the mild night air to fill the room without an audible spell. But back in my room which now seemed a lot brighter after having left the blackness in Arianas room it was still alit by various flashes. Aberforths room was to the other side of the house so he would not see any of this but my curiosity was awaken and there was no point in sleeping anymore anyways. I dressed quickly and left the house on silent feet with my wand enclosed in my fist. Carefully I surrounded the house made of rough stone bricks and was once more glad tat it was at a fair distance to the village of "Godricks-Hollow". This light would have awoken at least half of the muggles. When I surrounded the last corner there was another silver light and I saw a tall man standing a few feet away from our backyard, close to Bathilds Bagshots house. Only the shadow of his figure was visible because the light was consumed by a huge silver bird in front of him. I recognised the shape of a beautiful phoenix clearly as patronus. I stepped up to the young man, the wand still in my hand when the bird suddenly vanished into nothing. He cursed. "It never works you know." Impulsively I looked around but there was no one whom the words could have been addressed to unless he was speaking to himself. "How did you know it was me?", I asked. Grindelwald turned around with a smirk. "I suspected it though you were very silent and it took you some time to get out." "What are you practising and why are you doing it outside? Someone could have seen it.", I asked irritably, thinking of Ariana, hoping that she was still asleep. "Who would see me here except you Dumbledore?", he gave back still not with the slightest tone of an apology. "I have siblings you know. They could have woken up." "And they are not familiar with magic? It is refreshing how you do not blame me for having woken up you but for obviously not having woken up your siblings. Was it your sisters window you closed?" I could mot help but be a little fascinated against my will that he recognised this also. "That's not the matter but yes you have also woken me up and why did you not just go to the forest where you would not have bothered anyone?", I asked irritably. "Because I wanted you to wake up and see." His voice was completely neutral so I had no chance of guessing if he spoke ironically or not. "What are you doing? Why?", I asked, referring to the patronus and to his confusing answer alike. "Because I thought you might be interested because you came out immediately and were not particulary furious." He was right but I did not want to give that satisfaction to him even though I was driven by curiosity. He had casted a plastic patronus which I was not bad at myself. My patronus usually took the shape of  a dragon known as the most unusual shapes of patroni because they were large and detailed animals very had to be casted properly. His patronus has been very plastic but vanished rather quickly. I tried to answer diplomatically to conceal my interest: "It is your magic and none of my business but tell me if you like." He gave another smirk and I could see his white teeth gleaming in the darkness. "Well patroni are known to be casted by a very positive memory or so I have been teached." I nodded because that was the same I had learned too. "I have been asking myself if that makes it easier for people to cause a patronus who are generally happy or if one happy memory is a lot stronger if it stands along with only terrible memories because its gets to be outstanding." "I think it depends only on the wizard and how strong he can make his memory. Every memory used is different. Sometimes it is just a glimpse and if well trained it is just a general feeling I think that the wizards abilities to catch hold of that is the point.", I said because I had asked myself the same question when I had casted my first plastic patronus. "Yes.", Grindelwald agreed now sounding like we were discussing an interesting magical phaenomen. "That was my conclusion as well. So it is rather the power of the memory, isn't it? Would this also work with bad memories if they just feel powerful?" I shook my head. "The dementor is a creature of evil which can not be fought with an evil memory." "That is interesting.", he said. "As the kiss of a dementor makes the person an emotionless cover the dementor himself must be a creature of evil and lack of emotions. So isn't it the humans ability to feel emotions themself which make it just possible to love?" I ran the thought through in my head which was a highly interesting one but he already continued. "To give you an example: If someone who you dearly love dies this is pain and sadness but still the expression of one of the most powerful feelings which is love." "So...", I continued, thinking fast. "So you mean in the end it is not the dark feelings against the bright feelings but rather the emotionless and evil dementor against the human being able to feel and therefore be good?" "Yes that is it. Maybe it's a fools thought because humans are not generally good or something but it was in the middle of the night and I could think of nothing else but trying it." He smiled widely. "It did not work.", I said, suddenly taken aback by this realisation stopping our mind experiment. "The patronus did vanish." "It did.", Grindelwald answered. "But did you stop after trying only a few times? I cannot do this." I thought of all the spells I had practised in the middle of various nights until I could do them properly and assumed that I was not the type for this either. I drew out my wand The whole time while we had been talking a memory had been swirling inside my head. The memory of my mother and if this memory would be strong enough to cast a patronus. Maybe even a stronger one than usually. If it depended on the strenght of the memories, what powerful patroni could one make if having access to all of ones memories. "You did cast a patronus with a normal happy memory and then tried to keep it alive with the other memories?", I guessed. "Exactly.", Grindelwald answered. I rose my wand. "Expecto Patronum"