October 13th, 1952
Dear Gellert,
Again the thirteenth is peaceful, however much the superstitious fear it. These have been good years for England. Very quiet. Thank you for your letter, however sulky. You retain, I see, that talent for poetry that so sparkled your conversation in your youth.
Yes, I know full well what I have done to you. I will not apologize for what was necessary. You had to be removed from power, kept from harming the world, because—well, for the greater good. And seeing as I am a self-righteous old dingbat, as a student most memorably dubbed me a few weeks ago, I would not have murdered you. (I'm even getting some gray hair myself, to properly look the part.) And yet it saddens me, to think of a mind and talent as brilliant as yours wasting away in taffy days; and it saddens me to hear of your suffering. I hope I can provide at least some small joys.
I think you deserve to know, Gellert, in confidence, of my intentions for what I won from you in that duel. (I admit that I agree with your habit of circumspect wording, given the nature of it.) I intend to take it with me to my grave. If I can succeed in breaking its bloody history...well, as it's been said, I'm a dingbat. But I believe, with all that I've now seen, that the world is better off without it.
This is one of those peculiar cases in which I'm unable to anticipate your reaction, I must admit.
I must make one more apology, though—if your intent, that time with the ice, was indeed to teach me Russian geography, I'm afraid you quite failed, as I was far too distracted at the time to pay proper attention. I find it odd, though—we knew each other for perhaps two months, and I admit the passion was intriguing, yet you write on it so often. Was that brief time, which you threw away when you left, really so important to you?
I wish you had told me earlier, what those guards were doing to you. I would have had them removed at once, if only through chains of favors. Believe me when I say I had no wish for such degradations to be a part of your sentence; your words left me burning hot with outrage.
I must to work.
With thanks,

November 19th, 1952
Albus—
You would truly do that? Break Its power?
I suppose I shouldn't even bother to ask.
It is peculiar, though, how much the idea distresses me. Breaking and violating Its entire history...you've held It, Albus. You've felt It tugging at your heart and soul, power as tremendous and inviolate as Death itself. To imagine that power—phenomenal, unique, ancient—destroyed forever...
I do not even know my own reaction. But, Albus, I thought you did not kill.
As for your little moment of combustion—there are no dementors in Nurmengard, Albus. The guards are only human—and, no, you shouldn't begrudge them a little sport with me. I have gone too far down the path of the Dark for pain to be anything but an inconvenience. Didn't you, too, rant endlessly about my sins when you finally came to vanquish me? Wouldn't you have me tossed in prison for taking the life of a single Muggle, after your saintly change of heart, no matter what it means for our Greater Good? Who are you to dictate my Hell?
There are no dementors, yet still, every night as I sleep, there are screams. And do you really think I'd prefer to hear the screams of wizards falling in battle, or of Muggles at labor or under torture, or even my own when I heard of your betrayal to our cause, when instead I might hear your screams of pleasure at my hands all those years ago? Of course I have been thinking of that. Of course I have been writing on it. You were beautiful once, you miserable dingbat.
And if you are ashamed, humiliated, that you were once the confidant and lover of the Dark terror of the century—well, I must get my revenge somehow. Go teach your children, eat your candy, preen your bird and bury me. But we were brilliant together, Albus, and not even you can change history.

January 1st, 1953
Dear Gellert,
You do seem to realize that you will not talk me out of my plans for the object in question, for which I am glad. It would be a shame to wear the wings off owls arguing over this for the rest of our lives.
Of course I have felt it, the temptation of it, as you have. But do you realize the danger of it, old friend? Surely the old history of Ilmarinen has spread to your corners of the North. There are some things that must be destroyed. And it is not, Gellert, alive. This is crucial. It has no memory, no soul, no life within it. It is not murder to end it, to prevent it from drowning future generations in blood as it has ours.
One of its powers, I fear, is that the wizards that bond to it do so with an obsessive passion that borders on twisted love. I am saddened to see you affected by this. But I will not apologize for what must be done for—yes—the greater good. The future will be better off without the temptations this thing offers. Breaking its blood inheritance will turn over a new leaf in the relations between the powerful wizards who are steeped in the mysteries...oh, dear. New leaves. I'm afraid that writing on New Year's Day makes me maudlin.
But, yet, again, I am sorry for the condition I must leave you in.
Yet you are correct. Cruel as it is to say, it is the truth—I am ashamed, to have been your lover, if 'lover' is even the word for such as us. Yet it is a small pleasure that I am able to provide you with some comfort through those memories. I thought, though, that you liked hearing the screams of Muggles?
It is a bad habit of mine to distract people with sweets. In lieu of that, perhaps, more books? I think Gertrude's grammatical eccentricities might provide you with some entertainment.
I admit, Gellert, that I've been thinking overlong myself on our boyhood time together. It has been so long since I was so intimate with another, without fear, without withholding. You are correct again: I cannot change history. And it is difficult to deny the joy of those months spent in abandoned pleasure and ambition, when I thought that you and your brilliance would save me. But the cost, Gellert. The cost! You left me burying my sister and forever uncertain of my own decency. You left me with parts of myself I must ever hide.
Ah, here is the dawn, coming up cold and misty over the Scottish hills. No potted fields here around Hogwarts—wild enough for you, I dare say. The clouds are thick round the dark forest near the grounds, and I have not slept tonight, and I...
Enjoy your books, Gellert.
[enclosure: Everybody's Autobiography, Gertrude Stein]

April 18th, 1956
Dear Gellert,
It would seem I have upset you again. I can only ask your forgiveness. It was truly not my intent to do so.
England remains at peace and well-potted. Old Headmaster Dippett has announced his retirement, and I'll be filling his position—immensely preferable employment to everything our Ministry keeps badgering me into. We'll have to start the search for a new Transfiguration teacher soon, I suppose. I've seen a few excellent Quidditch games these past few years, including one which ended in a proposal of marriage, and even the Muggles are doing well.
I suppose you would only laugh at me if I asked for your news.
Shall we go in circles like this forever? I mis-step, apologize, resume contact...
I hope you at least enjoyed Gertrude.
Regards,

July 11th, 1956
Mister Supreme Mugwump Sir, and of course I heard about that particular commendation—
The rest of our lives, you say? Forever, you say? Are we wedded by owl, then? Am I bound to your sanctimonious pronouncements as permanently as the lichen on my walls? The orange spot is becoming particularly magnificent. There is green like scales, green like little leaves. They grow unimaginably slowly. My whole life has become glacial. It's been more than ten years, hasn't it? More than ten years in one single little room. I thought I'd go mad. Maybe I have.
Headmaster. Bollocks. Schweinhund. Look at you. Look at you, the great Albus Dumbledore, International Mugwump of the Grand Posh Scheisse-Swarm, hunching over your New Year's ale because you ****ed a German boy decades ago and can never love again or some nonsense—and you still blame me for her death, don't you, Albus? It was an accident, you drunken idiot, an accident, it wasn't me, I swear, I only fled in fear—
And look at me. Gellert Grindelwald. There was a time when every child in Wizarding Europe cheered for my name or shrunk from it. There was a time when I cast curses that stripped the leaves from every tree for thirty feet with the mere wind of their passing—there was a time when I was on the verge of establishing, truly establishing, a new world order, a bright new future, and I would have done it for you and me—and here I am, rotting, lonely enough to care what some poncy old British git thinks of me. You must have enjoyed the thought, yes, that I might be haunted by the screams of my victims? Does that fit your idea of how things work, that I lie awake at night tossing and turning from the ghosts of my past? And do you, Albus? Little Ariana held you back from hunting me down for years, didn't she?
News. NEWS, Dumbledore? News from this oubliette you left me in? Four years without a letter—the charms on my watch are holding perfectly well, thank you, I know how long it's been—and then only to brag that you're Headmaster? [a dark, indecipherable blotch of ink]
It's sweet, really, your bewilderment. You can't understand how I could possibly be angry at you, can you? Because you mean well, because you approach me in friendship, I couldn't really be upset, now could I? Just sulking again, right?
Gertrude is a crazy bitch. What lesson are you trying to teach me? What game of yours am I playing in now? We already finished one, the one where you spend every day with me, give me your body and your mind, and then blame me for an accident and betray me and leave me to do our work alone? And then the next, where you set me upon my path, share my plans, hunt the Hallows with me, give me the very words by which I forged my philosophy, and then, at your leisure, when you've watched enough, wander over from England in the name of truth and justice and bat me out of the sky?
You forged me, Dumbledore. You forged me and formed me and let me loose in the world. And I think your little brother would agree that you have a habit of ignoring uncomfortable truths.
But enough about you. Let's talk about me, your haunted and broken pet Dark Lord, your misbegotten experiment, who used to spin sweet spells round your body and smile as you begged him to bugger you? And who, I wonder, knows that? Is that one of those things you must ever hide? Poor Albus.
Yes, we go around in circles. Here I am back to mocking you until I can barely breathe for anger.
I have a new pen pal, Professor Dumbledore, aren't you proud? Never think that you're the only one I write to—god knows if you were, I would've bashed my head out on the wall years ago. And it's lovely, sometimes, to talk to somebody who doesn't disapprove of everything one is, a fellow Dark wizard, ambitious with abandon. British boy, very clever, a little stiff, silly made-up name—owled me out of the blue a few years ago looking to talk shop, as you'd say. Great mind, but no sense of humor. He seemed rather startled when I mentioned that I knew you.
I told him that you were a user and a hypocrite, and to stay well away from you. Of course, he was already frightened of you. You might want to keep an eye out for him though. He could be a dangerous lad. And how could you possibly handle a Dark Lord who isn't your lapdog?
Be well uncertain of your decency, Albus Dumbledore. And Gertrude is a crazy bitch.

September 27th, 1956
Dumbledore,
The peculiar thing is that you've given me no particular reason to want to help you with this Voldemort bloke. (That would be the correct British term, yes? Bloke?) It was mostly technical. Obsessed with death, that one, even for a Dark wizard. Terrified of it, even as he nursed delusions of grandeur. Unhealthy attitude. But you probably knew that already. He was not on the path of the Hallows. Probably just as well. The fewer upstarts after that sort of thing, the better.
He was mostly on about his crackpot theory to improve the Killing Curse—won't work out, I think. That and Horcruxes. Woolly business. I like all my bits in one place where they belong, and if somebody's good enough to take me out I'd rather die properly, none of this floating about half-alive nonsense.
I don't hate you, Albus. I never have, and at this point there's nothing worse you can do to me, so I never will. That's the problem.
P.S. Getrude says, "And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself."

February 28th, 1957
Gellert,
I suppose it might give you great pleasure to know that you can still make me burst out laughing. A woolly business they are indeed, and I think (for everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something) that Gertrude would agree. Unlike her, however revel in my commas.
Voldemort visited me a few days ago, here at Hogwarts. I had been prepared to write off the dark rumors I'd been hearing as just that, but his entire demeanor and every word he spoke confirmed my fears. England may indeed have a genuine Dark Lord on its hands.
I realize you have no particular reason to listen to me, but I would suggest breaking off contact. Voldemort may be a whippersnapper compared to you, but he is impetuous, ambitious, and, as you deduced, obsessed with death. Then again, he might be just your sort of bloke.
As for the rest—I cannot untangle your heart, Gellert. I can barely keep measure of my own.
With thanks for your help,

March 15th, 1957
Albus—
So you've got yourself a baby Dark Lord on the fair Isles of Alba? Then it would seem you should beware the Ides of March.
I wonder—will you go after Voldemort now, as a vigilante, in the good ten years or so before the officials will have any idea what's going on, or will you play it safe, bide your time, and watch the first deaths? Either way I'm sure that inflamed conscience of yours will suffer. Give it a sherbet lemon and spare us.
The boy has a lot of power and little imagination. You and I, at least, never lacked in the latter department. Part of why we were magnificent.
The more I read these Muggle books of yours, the more I am bewildered. All this time they spend on their cultural conceits, their literature and arts, their social niceties, their limited, supposedly scientific ways of understanding the world without magic. I suppose it is what people do when they do not have magic? Yet without magic, what is the point of it? A wizard with a violin can alter reality itself, but a Muggle with the same is limited to simply affecting the emotions of his fellow-kind. And two Muggles arguing over commas change nothing, but two wizards revising a spell structure can change the world.
Is this your lesson, Albus, when you sent me these books? To teach me to pity them in their small worlds? How ineffective they are?
My heart was untangled with—It—in my hand. Without It now, without the surety of magic—
How?
How does one live?
The landscape out my window has changed in twelve years, though how much I cannot say. My thoughts slip and slide away from me. One would think they would have nowhere to go, with shield charms thick as goblin steel through my walls. You always used to say you'd get a Pensieve one day—
My Nurmengard will not break me, Albus, and neither shall you. Go, deal with your whippersnapper of a Dark Lord. I'm just a rotting—am I really an old man now? I suppose I am. Well, in my day we had to go up hill both ways in the snow to conquer countries.
Crochetily yours,

December 5th, 1957
Gellert,
You've hit more than one nail on the head, I'm afraid. Hammered them in, even. There is so much that I fear, in the end. And--and I do not know what. The more I think on it all, on our history—decades of it by now, startlingly enough—the more I cannot untangle myself.
I first made my Pensieve, you realize, to sort through every memory I had of our time together. To look, with an objective eye, as best as I could, at who you were, what you were doing, how you were acting. To see if I should have been able to predict your actions, if I was as short-sighted and blinded to your darkness as everybody around me thought I was. So, yes, what you seek is there, well-preserved. "Yes," I said, "she might drop dead at the sight. Though of us or the blood magic, I'm not sure." I then went on with that ultimately doomed theory of mine about Transfiguration-based amplification of the latter.
I am sorry for the delay. It was a little thing, and fair to ask. But—no, I am still inexcusably tangled.
I must go, I am afraid.

December 25th, 1957
Albus—
That's odd. Fallibility of memory, I suppose? I assumed that you made it to find out who killed Ariana. And I keep thinking that you might have said that you loved me.
July 12th, 1965
Dumbledore—
—well. Here we are again. Eight years now?
The Voldemort brat wrote me declaring his oncoming glorious rule, soon to be Lord of All, Supreme Deathwump, etcetera, ad nauseum. I told him that casting too many Unforgivables at once shrinks one's wand. He'll go in circles for a while trying to figure that one out. Entertaining, I'm sure.
I'm still not sure whether I remember, to be fair. What you said that day. Whether you said that, exactly. Though I am sure that you lied, when you answered, one way or another.
Continuing to explore Muggle literature. Romantic poets dull. Tolkien entertaining. Lichen flourishing. Now know what you were getting at, comparing It to that Sampo-One-Ring idiotic myth complex. You are a right bastard, but I'd rather go back to marriage by owl than never hear from you again.

September 5th, 1965
Gellert,
Voldemort—that proved both alarming and most useful. I am not precisely sure how to thank you. We hadn't seen a peep of him for years—he's been operating so far underground—but I started watching the signs again—
But did you ever forget at all, I wonder? Or were you setting me up to lie to you, as you guessed so well I might?
I was young, and foolish, and affectionate, caught up in your brilliance, and very much in lust. I cannot say whether I spoke the truth then either.
I cannot think what else to say to you. The Voldemort situation may become crucial—fatal—soon, and I do not know how much time I might have. But, Gellert, please believe you are free to owl me at any time.
December 25th, 1968

December 25th, 1968
Albus—
Happy Christmas, again. Busy with Voldemort, I would imagine?
I admit that it doesn't much appeal to me to write and never receive a response. Or to never know what's true and what isn't. But old Natalia Fedotyeva just fell afoul of a rogue giant, and I had an owl a day from her until then...
I'm getting old, Albus, and tired of mocking you. I suppose you are too. Still lonely? Still hiding?
Don't die over there. You're too clever to be killed by somebody with no sense of humor.

December 25th, 1970
Albus—
Even here in the wastes it's reached me. News of the disappearances. Voldemort's making his move, isn't he? I know the pattern. I used such a one myself. Wizarding Britain will be at open war in, what, six months?
Owl me when you're through with him. I can't imagine he'll give you any more trouble than I did.

November 13th, 1981
Dear Gellert,
You did, I recall, some time ago, ask me to owl you when I was through with Voldemort. This owl is perhaps a decade later than you expected, old friend? And I am not yet sure that I am through with him, per se. But I did appreciate your optimism many times during the war, even though he actually gave me a good deal more trouble than you did. Not to insult your Dark Lordliness, but he had a few specific advantages, particularly a natural talent for Legilimency which rivaled my own, and which I was unable to predict until far too late in the game...
But I digress. Through a very interesting turn of events, Voldemort is—not defeated for good, certainly, though most would like to think so. I believe, though, that he is staved off, set back, for years, most likely, and when he returns, he shall be very weak.
I agree as to the disappointment involved in owling an unresponsive correspondent. But, Gellert, the battle against Voldemort was tooth and nail, and I organized the front force while maintaining Hogwarts. I have grown unfamiliar as of late with my bed-curtains, and particularly in the past year, I feel as if I have seen new-carved headstones more often. There has been so little time...
Even now, more than a month after his defeat, I battle exhaustion. But I do not wish to abandon you, old friend, even though I have done so for years. Sherbet lemons for my conscience, you said once, but they never seem to do any good.
I am sorry to hear of your friend's death. I am sorry for so much.
There have been some peculiar rumors spreading about you, amongst the Dark wizards and the underground of Europe—as I'd been working about that area quite a bit, trying to stem Voldemort's control of the werewolves and giants. They say old Grindelwald has shown remorse in his moldering cell. They say he cries in grief for his victims. A decade ago I would have thought this nonsense, but it has been a very, very long ten years, battering and changing the whole face of Britain. I have seen men and women whose hearts and souls I thought I knew altered, scarred, changed forever. So it is too easy for me to imagine that all this terrible change could have spread across the channel, over the continent, up the mountains to Nurmengard.
And it has been so long since we truly corresponded. So long since I knew your heart. So let me ask you, just this once, in all sincerity, no mockery—how are you, old friend?

December 25th, 1981
Dumbledore—
I seem to be acquiring a habit of writing at Christmas. Very well, merrymaking and festivities for all, twine the holly and the ivy, etcetera, etcetera. Are people making that oh-so-common mistake of confusing good cheer with goodness?
I've heard wild stories. Apparently your Dark Lord was defeated by a one-year-old baby? I think you dragged your feet on this one, Albus, and you didn't even have a dead sister for an excuse.
But there I go again. After all these years, I thought I'd grown tired of mocking you. But you invite it so obligingly! And I will never quite cease to be angry at you. You seem to have confused that with hatred more than once.
The Voldemort boy—no, but I suppose he isn't a boy anymore, is he? He must be, what, at least forty by now? Not dead yet? Go off & finish the job, Dumbledore. Isn't that what you do?
As to remorse? That is between myself and myself. Or what's left of myself. Wavy shadow of Gellert in the grimy narrow window, faded eyes, faded face, faded will—that's his concern. Just as your own burden of guilt is your business.
How on earth did your fair island spawn its own Dark Lord anyway? We come from the wilds of the North, as a general rule.
Don't waste your sincerity, seeing as it's so rare. I'm the same as always. How could I be anything else?