The flames burned low in the chimney. It was late, and light danced on Albus Dumbledore’s face. His study was crowded with colorful and bizarre magical artifacts from all over the world, but he had eyes only for the pendant dangling from his fingers. The silence was filled with his loud thoughts.
A knock. Albus looked up from his desk to the door. “Come in”.
A tall, severe witch promptly entered the room without hesitation. It was not her way to talk around the point. “You are thinking about him”.
Albus put the blood-red pendant back into the pocket of his jacket. “We all are. The Ministry has put their best Aurors on the Grindelwald case”.
Disappointment flashed on Minerva McGonagall’s face. She walked over to Albus, took a chair and sat right across him. Albus gave her his polite, tired smile.
“How can I help you, Minerva?”
The witch seemed not to hear him, or chose not to. “You know I am your friend, Albus”.
“I do, Minerva. As I am yours”.
Something in the wizard’s response seemed to anger her. “In this case, is truth too much to ask? Why are you hiding, Albus?” Her feline eyes sent incandescent bolts towards the man, but he seemed unaffected.
“You are asking me why I am not fighting Grindelwald?” He patiently folded his hands on the desk between them, as if he had variations of this conversation every hour of the day. “I am afraid I don’t have anything more to tell you than what I said to the minister when you were present. The blood-pact prevents me from doing so. As you know, such incantations are almost impossible to dissolve, and both Grindelwald and I were already very powerful in our youth. I am working on finding ways to dissolve it. Is this why you are here? Do you have any information that might help me?”
Minerva didn’t fall for the false curiosity in the man’s eyes. She had known Albus Dumbledore for way too long to fall for his tricks. “And that’s the only reason you are not fighting him”.
“You are correct”. In a different circumstance, Minerva might have even admired Albus’ cleverness for choosing to read her sarcasm as a question.
For a moment, it seemed like her disappointment might turn to anger again, but then something in her features softened. When she spoke, her tone was almost motherly. “I know you like men, Albus”.
Albus Dumbledore looked up to her face. Minerva felt the warmth of triumph fill her chest as she observed a flash of surprise pass through her friend’s eyes. But it was only for an instant, and then Albus had his features again under control.
“I suppose I should congratulate you on your deductive abilities, then”. His tone was playful, but his eyes didn’t leave hers for a second.
“And I also know you’re in love with him”. That was a lie, but she also knew how to play Albus’ game.
The man regarded her for a moment longer, then stood. He walked to the window and stayed there, hands clasped behind his back, face hidden from her.
“Why are you here, Minerva?”
“I am your friend”, she repeated, but somehow it had sounded better in her head. Out loud, those words were suddenly hollow.
“That doesn’t answer my question”. The witch almost flinched at the harshness in Albus’ voice. But she hadn’t brought the conversation this far to give up now.
“Because you choose not to let it. It is true, then? Those rumors. You and him, barely adults, in a small village, all those years ago…”
Albus let out a dry chuckle. “If the Ministry put at least half of the effort to spy on me into actually capturing Grindelwald, maybe this war would have already ended”.
Another trick Minerva didn’t fall for. She drew a long breath. “It is true, then”, she said, more to herself.
Albus turned to look at her, his expression unreadable. “I don’t know what truth you are referring to. What we call ‘truth’ often says more about our agendas than about the facts of the world”.
Minerva leaned back into her chair, and suddenly it was as if all her strength had been sucked from her. For long seconds, she listened to the silence of the room, the lazy waterdrops gently hitting the window. She took in the nervous light of the flames, and the golden reflections of the uncountable magical objects around them.
“I am your friend”, she repeated once again, uselessly.
At first, Albus didn’t reply, then: “Please forgive me”.
Minerva McGonagall jerked awake, all tiredness gone at once. As the man sat back at his desk, her eyes didn’t leave him for a second.
“We were in love”, Albus said, simply, and those words set the air on fire. Albus Dumbledore didn't look like a man who had just been honest for the first time in decades. “That summer was the first time I truly lived - and the last”. His whisper dissolved into the room’s dark corners, as if it had never existed.
Minerva felt crushed under the weight of those words. She had gotten what she had come for, hadn’t she? But somehow, this was nothing like she had pictured it. Her fingers started playing with the seam of her dress - something to hold onto.
“You still love him” she managed to press out. It sounded less disgusted than it should have.
But Albus Dumbledore’s eyes were lost in the past.
“Gellert was my teacher to everything that had been forbidden to me. I followed him, and found myself”. Then his eyes shifted and focused on her. “Have you ever tried to stop loving someone, Minerva?”
The witch stiffened. “I have”.
“And did you succeed?”
Albus’ eyes glimmered knowingly at her silence. He put on an enigmatic smile and leaned back in his chair, as if there were nothing more to say.
The witch knew it was childish, but she still had to know. Her fingers let go of the seam of her dress and closed around the chair’s arms. “Why?”
To her surprise, Albus laughed, long and sinister in the dark study. Minerva suddenly felt very small, and didn’t like it. “Mind letting me in on the joke?”
“Minerva, my dear. Do you really want to know the answer?”
It was in moments like this that the witch asked herself whether Albus Dumbledore was a man she should be afraid of.
“I did just ask, didn’t I?” Few people would dare speak to Albus Dumbledore like that. I am his friend, the witch reminded herself. He is my friend. Although, when she looked at the man’s expression, a terrible doubt closed her throat - that maybe she was just his pet.
“Do you ever feel like you’re about to disappear?”
Minerva didn’t answer. Was he still making fun of her? Was this one of his tricks?
“You are Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of our times. Everyone knows you. Right now, you are the least likely to suddenly… disappear”.
The man took out the pendant from his pocket and let it gently dangle from his fingers.
“In a way, I have already disappeared, Minerva”, he said, his voice thick with something that the witch couldn’t identify.
“What do you mean?”
“Who people call on isn’t me. Never has been. ‘Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of our time’... That is just a symbol, not a person. People choose to see who they need me to be for their personal gain”.
The sorrow in his voice seemed honest. This still wasn’t enough to make her let her guard down.
“People see what they are able to see. You should trust in their good faith”, she said, cautious.
“No”, the man said, cold. “They choose to see their version of me because the truth - the real truth - is too ugly for them. What use do they have for Albus Dumbledore, the sodomite? The gifted child, who, in a slightly different world, now would be trying to subject them under his rule? The lover of the public enemy number one?”
Behind the articulate rhetoric, the witch had to admit that there was truth to what the man was saying.
“What does this have to do with Grindelwald, Albus?” she asked, but she was beginning to understand.
It was barely more than a whisper. “Gellert sees me”.
Silence stretched out between the two of them. The fire was almost out, but neither reached for their wand. A sick feeling had started to collect in Minerva’s throat.
“Call it what you want: hate, love, eros… whatever it is, between me and him - we are tangled. He’s my only real anchor to this world. The only thing that gives me hope that I won’t disappear every second now”.
When the witch didn’t answer, Albus added: “Only through him I feel like I exist. And if this isn’t love, then I don’t know what is”.
Minerva tried to picture her friend before that conversation - tried to conjure any image she had of him - but that new Albus seemed to have overwritten everything about the old one in her memory.
“Is this what you truly want, Albus? To be seen by someone as the monster you think you are?” She didn’t know what she was about to say until she opened her mouth. She realized the weight of her words only after.
The wizard’s eyes found hers, and didn’t let go. The witch felt a cold shiver run down her spine.
“Yes”.
Minerva opened her mouth to reply, but maybe there was nothing more to say. With frozen cold movements, she stood up and walked slow steps towards the door. She put her hand on the handle. Then she hesitated. And then her rage flowed.
“I don’t know what you are punishing yourself for. But whatever it is, it can’t be worth the thousands of lives that are about to be lost!”
The wizard gently clasped his hands on the desk in front of him, as if this was the discussion between a teacher and a student and nothing more. He smiled sadly. “I am no hero, Minerva”.
Something in her was boiling. “It’s your choice. You are choosing to see yourself through his eyes. But…”, and despite herself, now her tone took an almost pleading turn. “You are not a monster, Albus. You are no monster to me, or to Newt, or to Theseus. No monster to the other teachers and especially not to the students”. And there was one last thing she wished to say, but she didn’t know how. So how can you trust that madman more than all of us?
“Minerva”, he called, and she listened. “Even if he was younger, he was my teacher. By his love, I found myself. The day he left Godric’s Hollow… I have never been able to find myself like that again, after that day”.
A part of Minerva wanted to throw up. She regretted coming to his study, that evening. There was so much she wanted to say… What are you punishing yourself for? But she didn’t ask it, because after what she had heard, maybe she didn’t want to know the answer.
She found that her hand was still gripping the door’s handle. She pushed it down, and the corridor’s cool air came as a relief.
She didn’t turn back. “You truly must hate yourself with your whole heart”, she spat out. “Goodnight, Albus”.
Albus Dumbledore’s voice was calm and collected. His usual, as if that conversation hadn’t just changed everything. “Goodnight, Minerva”.
The door closed behind her, and she left a lonely many even more alone.