Albus didn't want to be doing this. He didn't want to be in charge of everything, making decisions that he knew would deeply affect other people's lives. Perhaps it might be nice to have someone he could rely on or to help solve his problems for a change?
But he had no one like that anymore. He took advice of course, listening to the opinions of previous headmasters and headmistresses (apart from Phineas Nigellus Black, who he'd never agreed with), but if he was honest with himself, he didn't feel anyone could quite understand him as well as he understood others.
Albus had known from a very young age that he needed to operate alone.
His family life had been happy enough, with his younger brother and sister taking up most of his parents' attention. He'd been left to get on with things really, putting his intelligence and curiosity towards anything and everything he could get his hands on.
He observed life keenly, and he noticed with sadness how easy it seemed to be for people to fall into the poisonous soup of being told what to think and feel. Being told what was true.
It was even worse when he went to Hogwarts. He couldn't understand why his best friend Elphias Doge was so quick to follow rules and keep his head down. That was until, after asking one too many challenging questions, he was sent to see headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black, who showed Albus exactly why the other students did what they were told so obediently.
Unfortunately for Professor Black, this only confirmed Albus' belief in the need to follow his own path in life. If someone's opinions had to be enforced by physical violence, how much weight could they hold really? Albus knew it was fear that led others to act defensively, and fear often led to cruelty.
Albus wasn't fearful, but he wasn't stupid either. He learned to play the game, appearing to follow the rules of the castle while dashing off essays on the uses of dragons blood and researching alchemy in the library.
Alchemy certainly wasn't on the school syllabus, but Albus fell on it with a passion he never had for sketching bowtruckles or pruning flutterby bushes. At its essence it was the process of transforming base metal into gold, but it could be applied to almost everything and anything in life. Nothing had ever made more sense to him than this. Why wasn't this the first thing they learned at Hogwarts?!
"I quite agree." His friend Nicolas Flamel had said as the pair met for drinks in Paris one night during his late teens.
It was a beautiful summer's evening, overlooking the river Seine with the Eiffel Tower silhouetted against the twilight sky behind them.
"Perenelle and I helped the muggles to build it." Flamel said, smiling at the relatively new construction. "La Tour Eiffel, I mean. We could see they were struggling and we thought it was such a good idea… just a small tweak here and there. It was built in record-breaking time." He winked at Albus. "But don't go telling your ministry or they'll be doing the same in London and the muggles will start getting complacent!"
That was another thing Albus liked about Flamel. He was fond of muggles and appreciated their talents. He didn't treat them as the inferior beings he'd been told they were by Professor Black during his Hogwarts years. That man certainly had been wrong about quite a few things…
Albus had always known there was more to life than what meets the eye, but his friend Nicolas Flamel quite literally confirmed that by confessing to the teenaged Albus that he had in fact died in 1992.
Though most wizards might have at least spat out their drink at this news, Albus had taken it in his stride. "You found a way." He breathed, his eyes alight with wonder as all he'd believed and known to be true was confirmed. "You found a way to live beyond death."
"My dear Albus." Flamel had smiled, patting the young man's hand with his frail old one. "All of us have a life beyond death. I am simply embodied proof."
But Flamel had not invented the Philosopher's Stone or taken the elixir of life to cling to a world he ought to have left behind. He has not done it out of a need for power or glory, as Voldemort had so many years later. He has done it for the betterment of wizardkind. To share the wisdom of alchemy, and help show the world another way.
And it was this that he so eagerly shared with Gellert Grindelwald when the boy had come to stay in Godric's Hollow that summer so many years ago.
He felt the old pang in his chest as his old friend came to mind once more. Gellert had been the only wizard he had felt truly understood by. Gellert had seemed to see the world the way Albus had. He'd been quick, lively, fiercely intelligent and full of bright, exciting ideas. He was handsome too, and carried himself with an intoxicating confidence that Albus had never seen in anyone else before.
He was a bright sun, a breath of fresh air. And Dumbledore had trusted him with the ideas he had kept a hidden secret for so long. Ideas he hadn't even shared with Flamel. It was as though there was a deep truth inside Albus and he'd been saving it for Gellert without ever knowing it.
He remembered the time he and Gellert had spent together as though it were yesterday. They would lie on their backs under the stars, pondering the world and their role within it.
"What do you think we are here for?" Gellert had said in his familiar German accent, soft blond hair falling off his face as he gazed up at the sky.
It was truly a magnificent night. Clear and inky black with stars twinkling like gemstones in a lake. He turned to look at Gellert, his pale face illuminated by the light of the moon, blue eyes distant and thoughtful and Albus wasn't sure what in this moment was more beautiful.
"To love." He said without thinking.
Gellert turned to him, and there was a strange smile on his handsome face. Albus felt himself blush, and was suddenly grateful for the night's cover.
"Do you want to know what I think?" Gellert said.
More than anything else in the world…
"I think we are here to teach. We are here to pave a new way. And we must do it, Albus, you and I. We have the knowledge. We have the resource. We have been chosen for this."
Gellert was sitting up now. He was looking at Albus with a passion that was almost startling.
He was so confident. He was so sure. Convinced and convincing. For the first time in his life, Albus trusted blindly. He didn't question Gellert. He didn't decide for himself if what the boy was saying was right before believing him. He drunk in his words like a man dying of thirst.
"You say the purpose of life is to love, Albus?" Gellert said, smiling at him again. "Well…" and he was edging nearer now. His blue eyes alight with passion. "How's this for living?" And he kissed him.
Albus would never forget that love affair with Grindelwald for as long as he lived. It had been magical, magnificent, the most beautiful and pure thing he had ever experienced. This was true alchemy. This was the gold that lay beneath life's mundanity. He'd never wanted to let it go.
Was it any wonder it had taken him so long to see who Grindelwald truly was? Could anyone blame him for wanting to hold onto a wisp of that… perfection… he had experienced in Godric's Hollow all those years ago?
The love Albus had felt for Gellert could move mountains. And, in the years that followed the man's departure, he used it as inspiration for his work. He cared deeply for the world he lived in and, with his knowledge of alchemy and love for Gellert, he set about putting into practice their ideas for the greater good of everyone.
But he'd been a fool. As Gellert moved away and began taking action in his own country, Albus came to realise he hadn't felt the same love Albus had felt towards him. Gellert's interpretation of the vision Albus believed the two had shared was warped and twisted.
He watched in dismay as his old lover began to use horrific means to bring the pure, beautiful worldview he had believed they'd shared into life. The actions were monstrous, inhuman. And Albus was forced to believe he had never really known Gellert at all. And, perhaps even more painfully, that Gellert had never truly known him.
He grieved deeply for the loss of the love that had never been. It has been so wonderful, feeling understood. But, as he came to realise, that's all it had ever been. Nothing more than a feeling.
And though he saw now who Gellert truly was, he still couldn't bring himself to hate him. The love he felt for the other man never truly died. And, if he was honest with himself, he still held out some hope that the Gellert he thought he'd known might still come back to him.
The wizarding world had been calling out for him to act against Grindelwald for many years before he did. People were dying and Albus was the only one who they believed could stop it.
Dumbledore felt conflicted. The world couldn't see what Albus had seen. They didn't see the beautiful boy Gellert had been. The pure soul, the limitless potential. The mesmerising wonder of him…
Unlike Gellert's, however, Dumbledore's love was not limited. He loved the world he lived in, and he knew he needed to act. He needed to act 'for the greater good'. He met with Grindelwald for their legendary duel in 1945 and, to the world's gratitude and joy, defeated him once and for all.
"What is this Albus?" Grindelwald had said, eyeing Dumbledore coolly as the other man pointed his wand at him. "You gone off me or something?"
"No, Gellert." Albus said sadly. "You've done this all by yourself." And he cast the final spell.
Grindelwald was safely in Nurmengard now. A wizarding prison in Austria. Dumbledore wasn't sure if the conditions were quite as bad as Azkaban but he suspected they probably were.
He tried not to think of his old lover and later adversary if he could help it, but Sirius Black's escape from Azkaban and re-appearance in his life triggered a lot of old feelings for him.
Sirius Black was someone Dumbledore had felt able to trust at one point. He'd watched the boy's journey through Hogwarts with interest, wondering if perhaps he might do what Albus himself had done as a child, and turn against the oppressive Black family.
It certainly seemed that way, as Phineas' portrait, with its portal into number twelve, Grimmauld Place, continued to report.
"He's like you were, Albus." Phineas told him unpleasantly. "Consistently refusing to do as he's told. But if I know Orion and Walburga they'll get through to him one way or another…" Dumbledore didn't like hearing about the lengths Sirius' parents went to in order to achieve this, but he had faith in young Sirius. And, when the boy was sixteen, he did what Dumbledore had hoped would happen and left them all for good.
"Well done." He'd told him on hearing the news. "You can truly be your own person now."
And he had been. Like Dumbledore, Sirius thought for himself. He had never accepted being told what to do either, and it was this, more than anything else, that made Albus trust him.
But then, like Gellert, Sirius had disappointed him. He'd betrayed the Potters, or so Albus had thought.
It was cruel, the way others changed around him, or at least appeared to change. Who could he trust really in this life? He'd felt he could trust Gellert, but he's been wrong about him. He'd felt the same about young Sirius Black, and look what had happened there?
Perhaps this was why he had chosen to operate alone. Even the most intelligent, brave and loyal wizards never turned out to be quite what they seemed.
Albus had suffered the same fate all fools who love experience, and the pain of it had very nearly destroyed him.
But not quite. He wasn't willing to let go yet. He would keep fighting. He would persevere. There would be something that came of this old magic. The magic that Voldemort knew nothing of. He would channel it out. He would offer it freely.
For the greater good.