The Greater Good: Dumbledore and Grindelwald

A History in Blood

It was early morning, five am, when the Sun began to rise.

Albus was up, fully dressed and across the street from his house. In the graveyard of Godric's Hollow, a blanket of early morning mist hung over the graveyard.

Albus stood rigidly, eyes flickering around and taking in his surroundings, with his wand in his hand.

At these early times, it was unlikely that anybody would be in the graveyard.

Well...Albus definitely hoped that one other person would be. Gellert had agreed to 'play Dumbledore's game' when he'd seen him last, but perhaps he'd changed his mind? Gellert came across as quite a temperamental man, an ever-shifting mind subject to change at the last moment.

All Albus could do was-

"Dumbledore," a soft voice intoned.

Albus started. He wheeled around, wand raised for action, but his eyes fell on a figure dressed in black and draped in the fog of the cemetery. "Grindelwald," he said slowly.

Gellert advanced out of the fog towards Albus. "You'd better have had a good reason for calling me out here so early, Dumbledore."

Albus smiled and stowed his wand away. "You'd better believe it, Gellert."

Grindelwald narrowed his eyes skeptically. "Oh?"

"But first," Albus said. "How much do you know about the tale?"

"Of the Three Brothers?" Gellert asked.

Albus nodded. "It says that there were once three brothers traveling a lonely, winding road-"

"Yes, I know the story," Gellert said testily. "I don't need the likes of you telling me."

Albus nodded again. "But you don't know where to start?"

Grindelwald shrugged. "If I did, I wouldn't need you."

Albus let the insult run off him like water. "Well fortunately for you, Gellert Grindelwald, I do know where to start."

"You do, do you?"

"Yes," Albus nodded. "If we want to know what became of those...incredible artifacts. The Elder Wand. The Resurrection Stone and the Cloak of Invisibility, then we need to trace them back through history. The Elder Wand, in particular, has left it's mark on the world, moving from owner to owner."

"And always trailed in blood," Gellert nodded. "The First Brother had his own throat slit over it. So the tale goes."

Albus agreed. "Well remembered. But there's more."

"More?" Gellert asked.

Albus drew his wand and raised it. "Lumos," he intoned, and a narrow beam of light issued from his wand tip.
Albus aimed the beam to his left and it picked out a tombstone in the middle of the cemetery, basked in ethereal fog. "Read, Gellert. Read and understand."

Gellert squinted at the tombstone, intrigued. The words had been etched there for centuries. It was possibly the oldest tombstone in the graveyard. Gellert must've seen it a hundred times. 

"Ignotus Peverell," he read. "So what? What's the significance of this?"

"Look at the symbol below his name," Albus urged him.

Gellert did. It was a triangle, a vertical line through the centre and a small circle squeezed into the bottom. "Right. I'm looking. What am I..." Gellert trailed off. "Hang on...I've seen that Symbol before!"

Albus smiled. "Exactly."

"Etched into your copy of the Tales of Beedle the Bard!" Gellert exclaimed. "Inked into the page! What is it?"

"I have reason to believe," Albus said. "That this Symbol is the mark of what many are calling The Deathly Hallows."

"The what?" Grindelwald asked.

"The Three artifacts, owned by the three brothers?" Albus asked. "The world is now calling them the Hallows."

"But what makes you think that this symbol," Grindelwald said, gesturing to the tomb stone. "Symbolizes these...Hallows?"

Albus smirked and levelled his wand at chest height. "Flagrate," he murmured. When Albus began to move his wand, it left a blazing trail of fiery orange sketched upon the air.

Albus etched a vertical line, straight down. "The Elder Wand," he said.

He then added a circle to the base of the line. "This is the Resurrection Stone."

Albus sketched a final, searing triangle. "And this is-"

"The Cloak of Invisibility," Grindelwald finished.

"Precisely."

Gellert was amazed. "What would this Symbol, if it truly does signify the Hallows, be doing on this tombstone? Unless-"

"Of course," Albus finished. "Mr Ignotus Peverell was one of them. The original owners of the Hallows. Maybe even the man who created him. Our investigation, Grindelwald, starts with him."

Albus raised his hand in offer of a handshake. "Partners?"

Grindelwald surveyed him uncertainly, and Albus could see the doubt in his eye. Moments later, it was washed away by a fiery hunger for higher power, and he took Albus' hand firmly in his own. "Partners."