An Anthology of Fate

After the death of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, history often treats his sister as a tragic footnote in an otherwise magnificent life. An insignificant stain upon the great man’s spotless existence. But, as should be clear by now, the word insignificant is wholly redundant. How can anything be insignificant when the slightest degree of difference starts a chain reaction which alters the fate of humanity? The absence of Arianna Dumbledore doesn’t so much as initiate a reaction, as an earthquake which breaks the Richter scale.

In this world, Albus Dumbledore is an only child. He lacks the parable of Arianna to teach him the importance of supposedly lesser people. He lacks the responsibility that might one day soften his edges and teach him the importance of kindness. Through Aberforth’s absence, he lacks the brutal stern presence which reminds him of his flaws, that growls at him when he considers repeating his mistakes. Above all, without his siblings, he lacks for far too long the knowledge of what it is to be loved.

Albus’ parents are not cruel, nor abusive. They are simply apathetic. They care little for their son, beyond ensuring he is fed, clothed and adequately housed. Albus’ childhood is a lonely one, books his only friends, the characters in fairy tales his only companions. When at a shockingly young age, magic hums out of him, he thinks his parents might be impressed. They aren’t. Albus has magic, they already knew that.

When Percival Dumbledore dies, shockingly young from dragon pox, Albus doesn’t cry or scream, or feel anything at all really. He’s as apathetic as his father was. Kendra relocates them to Godric’s Hollow. Little changes. Albus is still lonely and alone. The encouraging smiles, occasional biscuit and lent storybooks Bathilda Bagshot plies Albus with, cannot make up for the continued emotional neglect of his mother. It’s a sad boy that arrives at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Still, one destined for greatness and possessing enough courage to be placed in Gryffindor. Albus doesn’t bother befriending a green and pox marked Elphias Doge. He simply doesn’t see the point. He keeps his head down, finds his feet and excels. He’s just too powerful not to.

So, after he graduates Hogwarts, there is no grand tour planned. He slinks off back to Godric’s Hollow – intending to stay for a month or so, then rush off into some position or other in the ministry. It is that summer, where he meets Gellert Grindelwald for the first time. Gellert was always the more forward of the two, the one that ensnared the other. In this world, the effect is magnified. This Dumbledore has never known what it’s like to be loved with such ease and openness. The bond may have started over talks of hallows, but Gellert deepens it, preys upon Albus’ fierce desire for companionship. He loves Albus, there can be no doubt. But, the balance of power favours Gellert. Albus, though completely infatuated, is still no fool. He knows all this, knows the hold Gellert has on him, knows the darkness etched within Gellert’s soul. He doesn’t care. Not when, for the first time in his life, he’s no longer lonely. Gellert never had to drag Albus into the darkness, he just danced him in – with whispered promises and tangled webs of grand plans.

Plans which the pair now act upon.

Tracking Ignotus’ line is easy enough. Wizards are proud creatures, even the best of them. The Potter family is no different, maintaining great volumes of their ancestry publicly available for all to see. It proves their undoing. Mr. and Mrs. Potter return home one night to find Albus and Gellert casually sitting in their living room, house torn apart in search of a very particular magical cloak. There’s no sign of their six-year-old son – Henry. A blessing as it turns out. The interrogation begins. At first, it’s a quiet persistent questioning from Albus, assurances that no one would come to any harm, a gentle pitch at the good the cloak could do in better hands. It leads nowhere. Mr. Potter knows full well where the cloak is. It’s hiding his son, no doubt, who would have fled to his maternal aunt’s house at the first sign of trouble. Neither father, nor mother, would ever give up their son.

Then came Gellert’s turn. Albus had be assured it would be veriterserum – a foolish thing to believe. As if a man like Gellert would bother with such subtilty. Gellert produces from his robes not a vial, but a wand.

“Crucio!”

Mrs. Potters screams rent the air, Albus slams Gellert’s hand away, shocked. There’s an argument, but one too meekly fought and too easily won. Albus slips through the Potter’s door and sits heavily upon their porch, while Grindelwald plies his trade.

The greater good.

He repeats that mantra over and over, while Gellert tortures the Potters into insanity. There are certain things you cannot come back from. Perhaps Albus did not cast the spell, but here, silence is complicity. Albus is party to Gellert’s abhorrence, it galvanises him to the cause, entrenches him within a singular belief – the greater good.

Still, the cloak is not theirs. The hallows are a peculiar sort of magic – the cloak’s true power is not invisibility, but protection. Mr. Potter was wrong, young Henry didn’t flee to his aunts. Instead he squirrelled himself away in the attic of the house, invisible to sight, spells and even death. He heard his parents being tortured, heard every scream and every word from their attackers. He tried desperately to pull the cloak off, to give it up willingly to save his family. He could not. He was not the cloaks master, his father was. His father wanted him safe and the cloak made sure of it. Only when Gellert casts a casual killing curse towards the now mindless Potter parents, does the cloak pass on to Henry. By then, he knows it’s too late.

Thwarted, Gellert and Albus turn their attention to the second hallow – the stone – while keeping one eye out for news of Henry Potter all the while. Again, it’s not difficult. The Gaunts are a pure blood family on the wane, they boast loudly and often of their storied ancestry. They don’t need to torture the Gaunts, they simply pluck the ring from a young Marvolo’s stumpy finger before obliviating the whole family. Albus has no need of the ring in this world – he never liked his father, his mother still lives. Gellert takes the first of the hallows. Albus worries for weeks, armies of inferi haunt his nightmares. But, an odd thing happens. Gellert’s experiments with the stone conclude sharply and abruptly. He hands it back to Albus.

“Useless, my love, only good for completing the three. You keep it.”

The hunt for the third hallow begins. Now, the lovers are searching not for a particular family, but a lineage of wand owners. From Antioch, to Emeric, to Egbert, all the way to Livius and Arcus. Two potential owners and a mystery of ownership thereafter. After much toil and deliberation, Albus and Gellert part ways, each pursuing one of their leads.

Albus takes Livius, journeys to the ruins of Rome, to Pompei and Mount Etna. It’s a curious path which leads him squarely to the door of one Aegeus Scamander. But, Scamander’s wand is Hawthorne, twelve inches, with a fairy wing core. Albus apologises for his intrusion, smiles at a young Newt Scamander and heads off to join Grindelwald.

He finds Gellert at Nurmengard, Elder Wand in hand. He’s had it for several months now, cut a swathe of destruction across Austria. There is love in the first look they exchange after months apart, but there’s also something else, something darker. There can only be one master of the Elder Wand. The relationship between Albus and Gellert has always been one sided. Albus doesn’t draw his wand, he can’t bring himself to do so. He just smiles.

“Fate chose you to wield the wand, I will not contest that.”

Gellert smiles.

“Join me, my love.”

Now Albus frowns. The difference is there, starker than ever before. The dreams they spun were latticed together on equal footing – synchrony, not subservience. But now, Gellert expects Albus to bow before him – to kiss the ring. In some worlds, Albus might have resigned himself to be the lesser partner. Not this one, not this Albus who has never had to share, never had to self-impose limits to his own powers.

“I think not Gellert, your path is no longer one I can share. But, that does not necessitate enmity.”

Spheres of influence are carved – Europe for the master of the Elder Wand, England for the man who danced with darkness. Sealed, as ever, by a blood pact. The pair depart, lovers no more. Albus considers his next move – politics, law enforcement, revolutionary – all ring hollow. Albus Dumbledore is meant for only one post. Phineas Nigellus Black, Headmaster of Hogwarts, is more than happy to employ a Dumbledore. In this world, Albus does not seek the Transfiguration post, but the DA one. The ability to shape young minds, the ability to recruit. Albus Dumbledore sees the opportunity to bend the next generation of wizards to his will and he seizes it with both hands.

Four years yield him as much success as he could ask for. Students flock for his attention, enamoured by his raw power and appealing talks of muggle-wizard integration, led by wizard-kind of course. Evening classes for his best students, Christmas parties for his favourites. Inter-house rivalry is a trivial thing to Dumbledore, students identify not as Gryffindor or Slytherin, but whether they have been inducted into the Order of the Phoenix. Once, the order might’ve served good in its purist form, now it serves the ambition of one man.

But not all are so enamoured by the mighty visage of Albus Dumbledore. You can’t languish in appeasement and collaboration of evil in the way Albus has done and not expect to pick up a few enemies on the way. Henry Potter lived. He fled to his maternal aunt’s house, who understanding the danger he was in, hauled him off to France for safe keeping. Henry Potter became Harry Fleamont, the invisibility cloak was locked away.

Until that is, Harry returns to England to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His aunt begs him to choose Beuxbatons. No chance. Henry Potter wants to look Albus Dumbledore in the eye, wants to know the monster that allowed his parents to be tortured to insanity.

The Potters and Fleamonts are Gryffindors, every single one. But, Harry Fleamont is not about to join a house headed by Albus Dumbledore. Hufflepuff beckons. It is amidst a sea of yellow that Harry Fleamont meets Newt Scamander for the first time. Newt knows animals – magical or muggle. So, when at the age of eight, he locked eyes with Albus Dumbledore, he saw the man for what he was. He saw an apex predator, with vile hunger on his mind. Newt’s not so easily swayed by Albus’ velvet words. Harry gains an ally and a friend.

When Albus first catches sight of Harry, he knows exactly who he is. Albus has not yet given himself to the darkness completely, the weight of his guilt means that he knows the Potters faces even after four long years. He sees their visage in young Harry, in the Hufflepuff’s accusatory gaze above all. Albus simply sighs to himself, does nothing. The Potters, he feels, have suffered enough. Besides, he has no use for hallows.

However, Harry is not content to be idle. He sees the steady stream of Dumbledore’s favourites being fast-tracked into high-level ministry positions. It makes him deeply uneasy. A quiet rebellion stirs within the bowls of Hogwarts, among those deemed unworthy to be part of Dumbledore’s order. Oh, on the surface it’s simply be remedial lessons and study sessions – but beneath the veneer bonds of brotherhood are being formed. Newt is Harry’s right hand, Leta Lestrange joins them, as does Theseus Scamander eventually. From the ranks of the underappreciated and underestimated, Harry Fleamont creates the Order of Albion.

Now, it’s Dumbledore’s turn to be uneasy. Here is a boy who knows his true nature, marshalling a resistance against him. He acts. In this world it’s not Leta’s jarvey that causes a major safety scandal. But a baby wampus cat planted into Newt Scamander’s trunk. Harry steps up and looks Albus dead in the eyes.

“It doesn’t belong to any of us, but if you’re looking for the cause of all this… well then I suppose that’d be me.”

Harry Fleamont is expelled, but when the ministry arrives to snap his wand, they find neither hide nor hair of him. Once again, he flees to France under the cover of his family’s invisibility cloak. Newt keeps the Order chugging along in Harry’s absence, but lacking his friend’s magnetism, struggles to recruit new members.

The Order fractures. Most join the ministry, create a bulwark against Dumbledore’s subsuming influence and his new protegee – Torquil Travers. Harry Fleamont lives on in exile, now with his wife Amelie Delacour and his son Charles. To his shame, he pushes Albus Dumbledore to the back of his mind. Thoughts of vengeance and justice are difficult to reconcile with his newfound desire to keep his young family safe.

Then things change again. Torquil Travers becomes Minister for Magic, Albus Dumbledore is elected head of the Wizengamot. Laws are passed, chief among them policies designed to ensure magical-children are removed from non-magical families and entrusted to the care of the ministry. No more muggleborns. It’s an unprecedented level of intrusion into muggle affairs and to Harry’s mind, sets a solid foundation for full wizarding domination. Harry can’t ignore the threat any longer, he goes in search of someone who could defeat Albus Dumbeldore.

His search leads him to New York and a happy reunion with Newt Scamander. Grindelwald’s there, in search of a champion himself. In this world, so is Albus Dumbledore, entrusting no one but himself with such a mission. The three parties converge upon Credence Barebones. In this world, there was no Aurelius for Leta to swap – the last Lestrange son lived. This time, the sight of Dumbledore’s fury dove-tails beautifully with Grindelwald’s honeyed assurances. Corvus Lestrange chooses his side.

Twelve more years pass. Europe falls quickly. Gellert and Corvus carve the continent apart, attracting the worst of society. The muggles are consigned to hard labour, every part of their lives minutely controlled beneath the weight of wizarding oppression. The situation is similar in England, thought the darkness hides behind Dumbledore’s usual facade of benevolence. There is no forced labour, the muggles are free to go about their day – so long as their day does not include resistance or advancement. Wizards instruct muggle law – inter-marriage is banned. The muggle world, though now horribly aware of their wizarding counterpart, remains segregated and unequal.

The Fleamont’s flee to Ireland, the liminal space between the domains of Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald. The Order of Albion reconvenes with little hope in the face of such overwhelming darkness. Harry Fleamont knows that none of them can hope to oppose the two titans of Europe, not even together and with double there number besides. There only equal is one another. Albus and Gellert have spent decades studiously avoiding one another, whether due to pangs of lost love or certainty of the carnage that may be wrought, not even they know. But, Harry Fleamont has something they both want.

The Order of Albion pleads with him, so does his wife and a newly-graduated Charlus. It’s futile. Harry Fleamont is forty years old to the day and he has never forgot the sound of his parents being tortured, followed by Grindelwald’s careless avada kadavras. Nor has he forgotten Albus’ meek disagreement at Gellert’s actions, not the horrific feeling of looking Dumbeldore in the eye during every lesson and meal. Above all, he remembers how the world used to feel, when he was six, safe and happy. So full of light, so full of promise. He sends two owls, one to Dumbledore, one to Grindelwald.

You know me as Harry Fleamont. My true name is Henry Potter. Come take what you have searched for all these years.

Gellert moves at one, not caring if it is a trap. Henry Potter and his order do not scare him, not with the power he possesses and Corvus at his side. He had given up on the hallows, he needed none but the elder wand to realise his dreams. But now, with the location of all three known to him, the old childhood fancy re-ignites. Dumbledore is an altogether more curious case. Harry expected him to act for the same reasons as Gellert, to united the hallows. He is wrong. Dumbledore accepts Harry’s invitation out of a desire to protect, not to attain power. That last miniscule shred of good still exists within him, haunting the knot of his ambition. He still remembers the Potter’s defiance, their screams, their faces. Their love which protected young Henry. So, he moves against a man he once loved. This is not redemption. Albus’ is too far gone for that, too enslaved to the notion of the greater good.

It’s nothing more than an echo of the man he could’ve been.

Albus, Gellert and Corvus arrive at the Giant’s Causeway to find a grim-faced Harry, the Order of Albion at his back. Albus goes to stand beside them. He sighs.

“You have already achieved everything you sort, Gellert. The hallows are nothing more than an indulgence now. Let the Potters’ memory rest.”

Harry bristles at the mention of his parents.

“He didn’t seek it alone, Dumbledore. Do not insult my parents with your piety. The world you’ve created is as bleak as his. At least he has the decency to admit his crimes.”

Dumbledore tries to reason with Harry, tells him to don the cloak and run. But, Harry doesn’t have the cloak. Instead, Charlus does. He’s beneath it now, watching the scene unfold, watching his father stand against Gridlewald and Dumbledore. A perfect bit of symmetry.

Grindlewald grows impatient.

“Avada Kedavra.”

The curse never hits Harry. Dumbledore’s wand slashes upwards. His and Gellert’s spells meet. The blood pact breaks. The two wizards begin a duel for the ages. Harry, Newt and Kama duel Corvus. They finish it rather quickly, which is good, since the duel between the two former lovers threatens to engulf them. Kama gets the final blow, fulfilling his vow. Harry and his friends stumble over towards where Charlus is waiting. Harry’s son grips his hand, relieved. The battle between Grindelwald and Dumbeldore rages on. Harry hoped that the two wizards would be evenly matched, that both might kill the other, or that one might emerge victorious but weak enough to be vanquished in turn. He is sorely mistaken. In most worlds, Albus Dumbledore is more skilled than Grindlewald, even when the latter wields the Elder Wand. In this world, having no self-imposed magical boundaries, Dumbledore dwarfs him.

As Gellert lies broken before him, Albus pauses. Once, old love might’ve stopped him from doing the unthinkable. In this world, nothing is unthinkable for Albus. A casual wave of his Rowan wand, a flash of green, Gellert is no more. As if in a trance, Albus walks over to the Elder Wand and scoops it up. Beside his son, Harry groans. One titan down, but with no hope of killing the other. Part of him wants to return to France, to go into exile for a third time. That part of him wants to see Amelie again, see Charlus married and bounce grandchildren on his knobbly knees. That part of him wants to give in to his son, who is even now frantically trying pulling him away from Albus Dumbledore.

But the rest of him… well, the rest of him is so very tired of running.

Henry Potter, Harry Fleamont – both men in equal measure – walks squarely towards Albus Dumbledore, standing before him, defiant till the end.

“Ah Harry… Harry… would it not have been easier to run? What good does it do you to oppose me?”

“All the good, Dumbledore, what’s left of it in this world.”

Dumbledore sighs, considers simply leaving, gifting Harry back the life he is trying so resolutely to throw away. But, he knows he cannot – not if he wishes to see his ambition fulfilled. Not if the greater good is to be served.

“Very well then… if you insist. Avada Kedavra.”

Months later, Albus Dumbledore makes a great show of caving into public demand and accepts the position of Minister for Magic. His first and foremost order of business is to commission a statue for the ministry’s foyer. Preserved in bronze is the image of Albus Dumbledore defeating Gellert Grindlewald, at his right-hand side Harry Fleamont strikes down Corvus Lestrange. Dumbledore and Fleamont allied in battle. History is written by the victors, after all.

It may be tempting to suggest that at a time such as this, with his every ambition fulfilled, Albus might feel a twinge of remorse. He doesn’t. Albus Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard alive. England is his, forged into a vision of wizarding superiority and muggle subservience. No one can stop him. The world is lost to darkness.

For a time, anyway.

[---]

A/N:

Bit of a shorter one this, I’ve treated it more as a prologue to set the scene for the next three parts. I honestly struggled to plot my way through the mess that are the Fantastic Beasts sequels. I could've tried to integrate 2 and 3 but I felt it would have pointlessly elongated the chapter and probably been a bit boring. I chopped and changed a few character’s ages btw, specifically so I could get Newt and Henry in the same year. Part 2 will be around chapter 8 if you’re looking out for it.

Next chapter will be centre on a werewolf Harry Potter who never went to Hogwarts.

Big thanks to everyone who’s liked, commented and followed so far.

As always, lmk your thoughts on the chapter.