Spoilers found below:
“Visitor.”
The guard’s grunt was followed by the crunching sound of the gate being forced against the wall, then the turn of the key. The prisoner made no move throughout the process, huddled on the floor because the cot was full of fleas. He heard no footsteps, although the gate swung open and closed again with a pathetic whine. No one had opened it in more years than he cared to consider.
Once the sound of the key turning was heard again, and the echo of metal grating on metal had died away, he heard a most unexpected thing, and couldn’t help but raise his head.
“Thank you,” Albus Dumbledore said kindly to the guard, who nodded before striding away down the hall, his footsteps muffled by the magic of the place. In this building, only the footsteps of the condemned made any sound at all. And the prisoner should know. He had, after all, designed the whole facility, a fact in which he no longer took any pride.
His eyes met the blue eyes of his visitor. He didn’t bother trying to shield his mind. He was a broken man, but the man before him, for all that he had lost, was whole in a way the prisoner knew he had never been. He had nothing left with which to resist.
To his surprise, however, Albus didn’t bother to look into his thoughts. “Hello Gellert,” he said instead, and Gellert Grindelwald could hear the sound of his missing years in the man’s voice. He sounded weary. He sounded more broken than Gellert would have thought possible. It was only then that he noticed the blackened, withered hand protruding from his visitor’s sleeve.
“ ‘Lo,” he responded. He ventured no further comment, but he wondered what had brought this man, who had humbled him so profoundly over fifty years ago, to finally visit him. He studied Albus in silence, but could not perceive the answer.
Many moments passed before Albus Dumbledore gathered his robes about him, and seated himself on the floor facing Gellert Grindelwald, crossing his legs and staring intently into the other man’s eyes. When he chose to speak, the topic was nothing Gellert could have predicted.
“I have seen all three, Gellert. All three of the Hallows have passed through my fingers.” The excitement in his voice would, years before, have infected Gellert like a virus. It would have spread through his whole being and spurred any number of grandiose ideas, each more radical - more dangerous - than the last.
He remembered those times well. He remembered the twinkling blue eyes that were peering at him with such innocent joy. But he had neither the will, nor the energy to share in Albus’ excitement. He shook his head, and rasped out, “And do you find yourself the Master of Death?”
The twinkle left the blue eyes before him at once, followed by a brief look of regret. “No.” Albus held up his decimated limb, and pulled back his sleeve, showing just how far up his arm the blackness had crept. “No, I find myself a slave to death, still. It is enough that I have met the Master of Death, and can count him a friend.”
There was a hardness in his voice at the word friend, and Gellert heard it and understood it. “As you once did me?” he inquired, attempting to wound the man seated before him.
“No. As you did me, I rather think.”
Gellert hung his head. He had used Albus’ brilliance, personality, and creativity to further his own causes - causes he knew the man would never have supported to their logical conclusion, for all that the ideas were thrilling. He comprehended Albus’ guilt over using the Master of Death in a similar way. He spent a moment staring at his skeletal hands, wishing he had learned guilt sooner. It had been decades before he’d understood, and by then, he had been well entrenched inside a persona of evil that could not be unmade.
Albus broke the silence, and disappointment seemed to tinge his words, as though he’d been expecting an apology in place of Gellert’s reticence. “You are aware, I am sure, that Lord Voldemort has returned.” The prisoner nodded. “He will come. You must realize it.”
“Is that why you have come, Albus? To ensure that I will not betray the location of the Elder Wand to this upstart Dark Lord?”
Silence stretched the air between them again before Albus replied. “That is why I have come.”
Gellert heard finality in the tone, and thought back to the day he had killed Ariana Dumbledore. There had been finality in Albus’ tone that day as well, when he’d told Gellert to flee for his life. And flee he had. Though he had never intended for the girl to die, he understood all too well the enmity he had created that day.
Albus was peering at him again with a question in his eyes. Reminiscing finished, Gellert decided to reassure him. “I will tell him nothing.” Then, realizing what that would mean, “I am prepared to die.”
Both men swallowed hard at that pronouncement, though it was rather more painful for Gellert who’d had no water since the day before. Albus Dumbledore stood abruptly, and rattled the gate, which bound the men together in the cell.
He turned back to Gellert, who had remained on the floor. “As am I, my friend,” he whispered. “After all, to the well ordered mind -“
“Death is but the next great adventure,” Gellert finished, recalling a phrase they had read together in their youth, in that first letter from Nicholas Flamel. And for the first time since he had been brought to this cell in the highest tower of his own prison, Gellert Grindelwald smiled. “I’ll be waiting for you, then,” he said.
Albus returned his smile sadly, and shook his head. “I think not, my old friend. It is I who shall be awaiting you.”
The sound of the guard unlocking the door startled them both. Moments later the only company Gellert had in his cell was the dying echo of metal grating on metal, and the memory of a smile. It was enough.
Also, there is a friending frenzy going on at julibeth's journal today.