Dear Albus - An Epistolary Novel

Snape reached for the bundle marked 1947 and carefully untied the black cord. He studied the topmost envelope to check the date and paused. At the bottom left corner of the envelope was a note written in Dumbledore's familiar handwriting:  

'1947/JAN/01/NUR/I'

Snape looked up and was not surprised to find Dumbledore’s portrait studying him. He held up the envelope.

“What is this?”

“A note to myself that this letter is preceded by a memory. A memory that I am not particularly proud of.”

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“You went to Nurmengard?”

Dumbledore gave the tiniest nod.

“Why?”

Dumbledore’s lips twitched under the silver moustache, and Snape waited for almost a minute before accepting that he would get no answer.

“You may see it if you wish,” the portrait said instead.

His eyes never leaving the portrait, Snape rose from the chair and crossed the room to the intricately carved mahogany cabinet. He reached into the pocket of his black dressing gown and produced the headmaster’s keys. 

“Are you sure?” he asked the portrait.

Dumbledore smiled. “He gave me his express permission before he died.”  

Snape felt a chill creep up his spine all the way to the base of his neck. The extent to which this man had prepared for his own death was eerie.

Before he could think any further, Snape inserted the magical key into the cabinet’s lock, where it expanded to the correct size and turned itself around with a low click. The double doors swung open silently. The rune-covered stone pensive stood on its shelf, just about chest high so that it could be extracted comfortably. Snape caressed the cold stone with sinewy, acid-stained hands. His. It was his. Snape carried it over to the desk.

He returned to the cabinet and eagerly studied its contents. Above and below the shelf he had just emptied were walnut panels that looked like the doors of filing cabinets, but they had no handles or keyholes.

“You will need the seal, Severus,” Dumbledore’s portrait said helpfully.

Snape looked at it for a moment, then he fumbled for the fine silver chain around his neck and tugged the ring with the Hogwarts crest out of his collar. Feeling slightly foolish, he pressed the ring to the wooden panel. Instantly, the wood melted away to reveal rows and rows with hundreds of tiny, identical phials. They were arranged in pull-out wooden racks, each carefully labelled with a year. Each vial contained a swirling, silver memory. Their combined glow cast a ghostly light on Snape’s hungry face. He had seen the contents of this cabinet once before and yet he marvelled again at its sheer volume.

The collected memories of Albus Dumbledore, more than a century of memories, itineraries, a century of dirty secrets of many a member of the Wizengamot and Merlin knew what else — all at his fingertips.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” the portrait said cheerfully.

Snape called his mind to order, orientated himself for a moment and pulled out the rack labelled 1947. He extracted the first vial in the row.

It read: '1947/JAN/01/NUR/I'.

He carried it to the pensive, poured it out and hesitated. He was surprised to find that his hands were shaking as he laid the empty vial on the desk next to the pensive. He could not quite make out what he was feeling and why it was affecting him so much, but he was eager, almost giddy, to immerse himself in the memory.

He looked up at the portrait again. “I appreciate your confidence in me.”

The portrait chuckled. “I cannot pass it on to him, sadly, but be comforted, Severus. He knew. And he cared about you, Severus, even if he did not always show it.”

Snape nodded at the portrait, took a deep breath and plunged himself into the silver swirl.

A bleak room: white walls, grey floor, two grilled windows.

In the middle of the room two metal chairs. Between them, a battered wooden table.

Albus Dumbledore had his back to the door, facing the window. His hair and beard fell just beyond his shoulders, their chestnut colour harmonising with his midnight blue robes. His crooked nose was not yet as prominent as it had been in his old age. He wore no glasses, but his eyes were the same as Snape had always known them — brilliantly blue and unusually sharp.

Right now they were focused on the view outside. From the window of the visitor’s room, Snape could see the frozen lake below Nurmengard castle, the densely wooded, snow-capped slopes beyond and, farther away, slate-grey mountains tinged with white.

The door opened with an earsplitting shriek. Dumbledore did not turn or even flinch at the noise.

Two men could be seen through the open door. A guard with a heavy black moustache and an even heavier scowl, and his charge, a lean, tall man in baggy, washed-out clothes and a voluptuous mane of blond curls.

“Dreißig Minuten,” the guard barked, but Grindelwald did not move. His face was slack with obvious disbelief as he studied Dumbledore’s back.

“Beweg dich!” The guard shoved Grindelwald over the threshold. “Und vergiss nicht: ich beobachte dich genau.”

The door banged shut. It took Grindelwald a moment to regain his balance, and his cane made a sharp tap on the floor. Still, Dumbledore did not turn or acknowledge him in any way.

 It took Grindelwald mere seconds to school his features into a mask of imperturbable courtesy. With measured steps, he limped through the room and stood in front of the second window, both hands resting on his cane.

For a minute or two, the two men stood side by side, their eyes fixed on the wintry scene outside.

“What a welcome change to see these mountains again,” Grindelwald said finally. “The tiny window of my cell faces west, you know. All I can see from it is a sea of conifers.”

Dumbledore did not answer.

Grindelwald threw him a sideways glance. “How did you manage to arrange this?”

Dumbledore smiled without taking his eyes off the sky. “It comes with certain privileges to be me, Gellert.”

Grindelwald barked out a laugh. Then he strolled towards one of the chairs and sat down, propping his cane against the desk with a thud. Instantly, the heavy metal chain on the armrest sprang to life and cuffed his left wrist. Grindelwald flinched, suppressing the movement instantly. Dumbledore had seen it, though, and Grindelwald smiled wryly.

“Please.” He gestured widely, words punctuated by a clink of metal.

“It pains me to be unable to be a proper host. I cannot even offer you a cup of tea.”

Dumbledore took his time to walk over and sat down in the other chair. He looked at him steadily.

“I am not here for tea.”

“And yet.”

They passed a few moments in silence.

“I had expected you to have aged at least a decade within these two years,” Dumbledore said, “but you look completely unchanged.”

Grindelwald smiled. “Why are you here, Albus?”

Dumbledore did not speak immediately. Finally, instead of a reply, he asked, “Don’t you regret anything?”

A long period of silence.

“Look, Albus, are you sure you want to have this conversation?”

Dumbledore’s face gave nothing away.

Frowning, Grindelwald studied his old friend — rival, lover, enemy or whatever else he was or had been or might be. “You have not thought this through at all, have you? You came here on a mere whim.”

Again no answer.

Grindelwald linked his hands behind his head, metal cuff chinking, leaned back and stretched out his bad leg.

“So, you came all the way from Scotland, bribing — or was it blackmailing? — at least a handful of important people, just to ask me how I sleep at night?”

Dumbledore leaned forward, his long fingers resting lightly on the scratched wooden table.  

“Yes.”

Grindelwald nodded. “Very well.”

He ruffled his golden hair before he began. “Regret, Albus? It is out of the question that I failed in my attempts. The statute of secrecy got reestablished, the Muggle war I set out to prevent did happen and millions of people died and are dying still. Worse: through my interference, wizards have died, too. Thousands of wizards. Do I regret the outcomes of this failure? Yes. But do I regret the attempt?”

“So you would do it again?”

“I would.”

“You would do it all again?”

Grindelwald sighed. “Would it comfort you, Albus, if I pointed out a detail or two that I would prefer to undo? I am no fool. With the benefit of hindsight and with the knowledge I now have, I would do a million things differently. But that is a superfluous exercise, is it not? It is easy to debate means from the comfortable distance of the future, or from within the walls of a cloister — pardon me, a school, in your case. But we both know that reality is different. What is appropriate, what is right, is not set in stone. It evolves as history evolves.”

Dumbledore turned down the corner of his mouth in a bitter smile. “What you’re saying is that I am a coward and have no right to judge you? That once you start manipulating and intimidating people, it is easy to blackmail them as well, and once you have done that, you can as well torture or, why not, murder to achieve your ends? That the path to ever more violence is a gently sloping road that you follow almost inevitably as soon as you set out into the world?”

“What I am saying, Albus, is that you have chosen the easy way out. You chose not to act. I cannot argue with you about morality because you can always claim the moral high ground, while you are just as guilty in my eyes.”

“I see.”

“What do you see?”

“That my words do not resonate with you. That you do not regret what you have become.”

Grindelwald remained silent, but the gleam in his pale grey eyes was answer enough.

“I do,” Dumbledore said almost inaudibly. “I regret it daily. You could have been one of the great figures in wizarding history, but you chose to be remembered as its greatest villain. You could have been my friend, my… my companion, but my affection never meant enough for you to … I regret losing you to your own ruthlessness and your lust for power, Gellert. I regret it daily. And I pity you.”

A wry smile. “So you do pity me. You wrote to me once that even in your noble spirit you could not find pity for a wretch like me.”

Dumbledore folded his hands carefully and sighed. “Yes, I was quite upset then. But I am calmer now.”

“Are you?”

Grindelwald leaned forward to mimic Dumbledore’s posture, the metal chain clanking as he put his hands on the table.

“Why are you here?”

“To ask you to stop writing to me.”

Grindelwald shook his head a fraction. “No. You know I won’t.”

He leaned further in, eyes blazing. “You have planted it in your head to change me. To discipulise me. Take care, Albus, that you are not going to be the one changing.”

Grindelwald stretched out his unshackled right hand and let it hover a few inches over the other wizard’s hands, still resting lightly clasped on the table. Dumbledore’s gaze flew up to meet Grindelwald's. Uncertainty, even fear, flickered in his blue eyes.

Grindelwald’s smile was a curious blend of gratification, malice and tenderness. Slowly, he lowered his arm.

Dumbledore jerked his hands away before he could touch him as if expecting to be burned. Metal screeched over stone as Dumbledore pushed back his chair and hastened to his feet.

He stood, his mouth opening and closing once. Then, “I should go.”

He turned around and walked briskly to the heavy metal door. He raised his hand to knock, but it was already screeching to life.

“Take care,” Grindelwald called after him.

Snape stumbled a step backwards before he regained his balance.

He stood, bowed, one hand resting on the surface of the desk, for a long moment, before he said, "I think I have seen enough for today, Dumbledore."

"Yes," Dumbledore said calmly. "I daresay you could use a few hours of sleep before the students arrive tomorrow."

Snape looked up and opened his mouth, a vicious retort already on the tip of his tongue. He thought better of it, swallowed it down and, with a tired shake of his head, he began tidying up the study, hiding away the compromising letters and vials. Then, without another word, he made his way to bed.