Resolving a Misunderstanding

Note: Not DH-compliant!

Albus called for peppermint tea, and when it had come and they were both sitting comfortably with their teacups, he picked up his story again.

“I left Britain and began my travels in France. I had a mind to find another master eventually and begin my apprenticeship again. My Potions master had been good enough to let me go, despite my not having completed my obligation to him, but to any other master, it would not matter that I had completed a year and a half of an apprenticeship. I would have had to begin all over again, and as the international regulations governing the training of apprentices were not yet as advanced as they are today – and left far more to the individual countries to regulate – there was no requirement, as there is today, that a master offer an apprentice for Mastership after a year if they had clearly attained the qualifications. So I would have had to begin an apprenticeship in Potions as a rank beginner. Transfiguration had always been a particularly fascinating Art for me, and I decided that if I found a master, I would begin an apprenticeship in that, instead. But in the meantime, I travelled and learned all I could, particularly focussing on controlling and developing my magic as completely as possible.

“I found that I had even greater magical reserves than I had known, and I learned to tap into them and harness them. Eventually, I found myself in Prussia, one of the centres of the wizarding world at the time, and met a small group of wizards who, it seemed to me at the time, were dedicated to the same quest that I was, the quest for knowledge and control and development of their magical power. Their central leader was a fine figure of a wizard, only a few years older than I, handsome, well-spoken in several languages, from an old pureblood family. He had grown up with every privilege his parents could give him, and they were many. He began his studies at Durmstrang far advanced relative to the other students, and he excelled. The Headmaster was taken with him and impressed by his achievements, and allowed him to begin the advanced courses a year early. He completed the Durmstrang equivalent of OWLs at fourteen and the school leaving exams at sixteen. Apparition was not well-regulated anywhere then, and was least regulated in the German wizarding states, and he was Apparating at fifteen. His magic matured early, and his intellect, too.

“By the time I met him, he had begun and been dismissed from three different apprenticeships. He claimed the jealousy of the masters had led to his dismissal, and it was a credible claim. Certainly his knowledge and skill in Potions, Transfiguration, Charms, and the Defensive Arts were impressive, and I could easily believe that he had surpassed his masters. Later . . . later my thoughts on that changed.

“I became great friends with Gelly, or I believed we were great friends. I admired him and felt grateful that he not only included me in his group of friends, all of whom seemed to come from far more impressive backgrounds than I, but that he counted me among his closest friends. I believed I was learning much from him . . . we would sit and talk late into the night and sometimes into the next day, and he would demonstrate spells and ask me to demonstrate what I knew, as well. I believed I had finally found someone who was brilliant and who recognised my worth. I also believed that our goals were the same: the pursuit of knowledge and control over ourselves and our magical powers.

“However, it was when we began to discuss those goals that I began to sense differences between us. At first, I dismissed the differences as inconsequential, I was so grateful to be included in this exclusive group, but then . . . we began to argue, and I worried that I was falling out of favour. I was always grateful when he would forgive me for contradicting him or challenging him when we were in the company of others, but until he forgave me, I would worry and . . . mourn the loss of his favour. And then his forgiveness would come, and his sun would shine upon me again, and I would again feel as though I was in the company of brilliance and that my own brilliance was greater as a consequence. In my youthful enthusiasm, I thought that this was the pinnacle of wizarding life – a life of intellect and magical exercise. My uncle had been sending me money, irregularly, but enough to permit me to live as I did . . . and Gelly had invited me to live with him in his house, and it spared me the embarrassment, as I saw it, of staying in the small, dingy room above the Muntere Kobold. After a time, though, the allowance from home became smaller and my uncle wrote me and said that if I was going to stay in one place for a while, I should find a job.

“I had resigned myself to working to earn my keep and began to look for a job, but even those jobs that had seemed promising . . . the offer would be withdrawn, or after a day, my employer would discover that he did not need me and I would lose the job. After this happened a few times, I learned that Gelly had been obstructing my ability to get and retain work. He explained that it was for my own good, that I didn’t need a job when I was his friend and that working only distracted me. We argued again, and I gave in for a time . . . but it was the beginning for me to begin seeing Gelly in a new light. I listened more closely to what he was saying and to his political and social views, and with shock and even sorrow, I realised that this wizard whom I had idolised so thoroughly, his goals were not the same as mine. I wished to increase my knowledge, my power, and my self-control for myself, and he . . . his ends went beyond that. He had often said it, but I had never really heard him, even when I argued with him about it. He believed that the reason to learn to control magic and to control oneself was so that one could more effectively control others. I had mistaken his tolerance for Muggle-borns for a generally enlightened attitude, but now I recognised that it was simply because he valued power above all else, and he wanted to control wizards with power. His attitude toward witches had always puzzled me . . . he seemed to believe that their power could never match the innate power of wizards and that witches were not to be trusted. I have always liked and respected witches. In addition to my mother, there had been many witches who had nurtured my development, my Great-aunt Sarah, Aunt Beatrice, Professor Terwilliger, who had been my Transfiguration teacher, and, of course, Dervilia . . . she had been a talented and brilliant witch.” Albus sighed. “I should have encouraged her to do an apprenticeship, but if it was difficult for a married wizard to find a master who would take him on, it was even more difficult for a married witch, and I did not think it worth her trouble and the inevitable rejections she would suffer until she found someone who would take her.”

Albus poured himself more tea and reflected a moment.

“Finally, one day, we had an argument, and Gelly . . . he scoffed at me. He said that knowledge and power were wasted on me if I did not see how they could be used. And he demonstrated quite thoroughly how well he had learned to use his magic. We duelled, and when I woke up, hours later, I was lying in the mud, my bag beside me, far from his house and nowhere near any wizarding folk. I was injured and humiliated, but I still felt an immense sense of relief and freedom. I hadn’t realised how he had taken over and dominated my life until I was free of him. It had only been a matter of months that I had been in Gelly’s company, but I felt as though my life had been taken and now had been returned to me.

“I travelled west again, leaving the German-speaking wizarding world behind and entering France. When I had passed through France before, I had heard rumours of a powerful but humble wizard and his equally impressive wife. I decided to seek them out.” He quirked a grin. “At that moment, ‘humble’ sounded wonderful to me. It took some time, but I found Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel living quiet lives in a small village outside of Paris. Truly wonderful people, Minerva. And despite my lingering arrogance, they were good to me, eventually even taking me into their home, and Nicolas began to teach me something of Alchemy, an Art that had always fascinated me, and one that was obscure and esoteric and that seemed to promise great power. Merely the thought of learning something unknown to most wizards and witches . . . it was thrilling to me. At the time that I met the Flamels, I had been gone from home for two years, six months of which had been spent – or wasted – in the company of Gelly. I learned a great deal from Nicolas, and from Perenelle, as well, but I was impatient. I wanted to learn more and learn it faster. I chafed at the pace and at the menial tasks which Nicolas would set for me each day before he would teach me . . . or watch me as he allowed me to experiment. I came to feel he was holding me back, and there was such a promise of greater knowledge just out of reach. I wanted that knowledge and power. I had forgotten the fear I had for the power I had exercised when I destroyed the wizard’s mind, and forgot that I had left home in search of self-mastery.

“I tried to argue with Nicolas, but, maddeningly, he would listen to me calmly, whether I tried cool logic or I shouted and ranted at him, yet without responding to my complaints. One evening, though, after I had angrily and unjustly accused him of deliberately keeping me from certain knowledge because he was afraid that I would surpass him, he lifted one finger, and I was Silenced. He told me that yes, he was afraid, he was afraid for me. He said that I had great potential, and it wasn’t just magical or intellectual potential, but that I persistently turned away from the one area in which my greatest potential lay, and that he could not help me with that, that only I could.

“As soon as I left his presence, I regained my voice. I went to Perenelle, to whom I had often complained. I believed I had an ally, or, at least, a sympathetic ear, in her. And she listened to me, and she was sympathetic, but she said that Nicolas was right and that I needed to develop myself more before I could advance in Alchemy, that my very impatience was a sign that I was not prepared for further study.

“I became very discouraged, but through Nicolas, I found a Potions master who would allow me to begin an apprenticeship and who promised me that he would offer me for Mastership as soon as he believed I was ready without even requiring a full year’s service. Eight months later, I was a Potions master. Nicolas himself offered me for a Transfiguration Mastery, and I was accepted without ever having to serve a traditional apprenticeship, my time with Nicolas being substituted. So despite not being willing to allow me access to the most esoteric areas of Alchemy, Nicolas did help me, and I was grateful. However, my gratitude was tinged with resentment for what he would not give me. One last time, I begged him to teach me more . . . he lit a small blue fire, tossed some peculiar mixture of powders into it, and multicoloured smoke rose in the room. My mind grew lax and all I could see was the smoke and Nicolas’s deep brown eyes. I scarcely remember what he did then, but it was a manner of Legilimency or divination that I had never experienced or heard of before. When it was over, Nicolas told me that I was unready, and I would remain unready until I recognised that. He said that I had great potential, potential to be many things, but that I had to choose a path, that I had to find my path or set my foot upon one that found me. I felt he spoke in riddles and that I had already chosen a path, a path of learning and the life of the mind and magic. And my resentment was not diminished, but neither was my love for him and his wife.

“I decided to leave the Flamels. I was a master in two disciplines, and Nicolas still declined to teach me more or to supervise my own experimentation. I loved them both, but I believed they were holding me back, Nicolas in particular. My last evening in their home, Nicolas presented me with a book, a copy of Goethe’s Faust. He recommended it to me. Of course, I was familiar with the legend of Faust – who in the wizarding or Muggle worlds had not heard of the wizard who made a pact with the devil, after all? I knew why he had given it to me, but I pretended, even to myself, that I did not. I was not making a pact with the devil, after all, and there were things that I would not do in order to obtain greater knowledge. I found the gift insulting, but still I kept it and carried it with me.

“Not long after I left the Flamels, I received an owl from my brother. There was an outbreak of paralytic magical morbilliac fever, an epidemic, in fact, throughout Wales, Cornwall, and the west of England, and my mother had contracted it. This is a disease that was, and remains, fatal more often than not. I made my way home as quickly as possible, arriving the day after I received my brother’s letter. My mother was terribly ill and we had to take precautions to ensure that we would not contract it. We had to care for her using no magic, since casting spells in the presence of someone suffering from morbilliac fever opens one to infection, oneself. There was still no guarantee that one would not contract it, anyway, but my magical control at the time was sufficient that I believed it safe for me to assist in her care. One reason that morbilliac fever is so frequently fatal is that one can use no magic to care for the patient and the patient suffers as a result. Fortunately, potions could be freely used, as long as their brewing occurred elsewhere. I used all that I had taught myself, and all that I had learned from Nicolas and from my Potions master, to brew the potions my mother required and to alter them to increase their efficacy. Slowly, she began to recover, and I adapted my potions to encourage the recovery of her magic, as well. So many who survive paralytic morbilliac fever are left with such poor control over their magic that they are magical invalids for the remainder of their lives. I was pleased with my mother’s progress, however, and hopeful for her recovery.

“Imagine my surprise when Gelly appeared on our doorstep one day, saying he had been visiting England and thought he would see if I had returned to Wales. He behaved as though nothing had occurred between us that last time we had seen each other. He was still the brilliant, powerful, and charismatic wizard he had always been, and I felt flattered that he had sought me out. He told me he had heard that I had attained two Masteries, and that I had studied with the mysterious Flamels.”

Albus sighed. There was still so much to tell Minerva, and he still felt he had scarcely begun his story.

“I am sorry to say that I invited him into our house. He stayed in the local inn, but he was a regular visitor to our home. He avoided any mention of our previous disputes or even of the topics that had always given rise to our earlier arguments. I was tired from caring for my mother, my brother seemed taciturn company, at best, and spent his days . . . well, he was not of an intellectual bent, shall we say. Having Gelly visit daily was a respite for me. And my mother seemed to like him and he always treated her in a courtly manner.

“Then I learned his true purpose in visiting me. He told me he was beginning an elite academy in Berlin that would take only the most talented young wizards and teach them all Arts without dividing them into separate disciplines. He would accept any adept wizard over the age of fifteen, he said, and he wanted me to join him, to, as he put it, become his wand-hand at the academy, where he would train wizards and contribute to the ‘uplifting of wizarding society,’ as he put it.”

Minerva’s eyes widened as Albus began to speak of an “elite academy,” and Albus believed that she now knew who his friend Gelly became – who he had always been, in fact – but he continued his story without pause.

“I told him that I was flattered, as indeed I was, but that I could not possibly leave my mother, particularly at such a crucial point in her recovery. I also did not think that I wanted to fall within his orbit again, but I did not tell him that. We had had a congenial visit, and I did not want to alienate him by reminding him of our previous parting. Gelly continued to try to cajole me into leaving with him. He said that he was returning to Germany in a few days and he wanted me to join him when he did. Once more, I declined, citing my mother and her recovery. He told me that if I were ever to amount to anything, I would have to cut my ties to my family, particularly to my mother. I told him that would never happen. The next day, I returned from procuring potions ingredients to find a note on our kitchen table. It was from Gelly. He said that now that I was free, I could join him. He would be waiting for me in the bar of the Hag’s Hump. Note in hand, I raced upstairs to my mother’s bedroom. She lay peacefully in bed . . . dead.

“Certain that Gelly was responsible, I Apparated directly into the bar of the Hag’s Hump, creating quite a disturbance with my arrival. I confronted him, publicly accusing him of killing my mother and saying that I would see him answer for it. He laughed at me . . . he said that he knew he would be able to tell my true colours by my reaction to her death, that he had hoped I would join him and leave that miserable place behind. He never admitted killing her, nor did he deny it. He left before the Aurors came. When they investigated my mother’s death, they could find no cause for it, and told me that she had likely simply expired from her disease. They would not listen to me when I said that she had been recovering. They even said it may have been one of my potions that had hastened her demise, that I had wanted to be rid of her,” Albus said softly, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. “There was nothing I could do, and I found myself wishing I had killed Gelly for what I believed he had done, and then glad I hadn’t, glad I had exercised the control that I had been unable to years before, but then I would excoriate myself for that very control and ask myself what kind of son I had been, inviting a viper into my mother’s home like that and then not being wizard enough to take care of him . . .”

Albus paused, not looking at Minerva, avoiding her gaze.

“Did . . . did you ever find out what really happened? How she died?” Minerva asked softly.

Albus shook his head. “No. And I have no certain evidence, no facts . . . but I feel it, I believe he was responsible for it. He denied it at the time, and he denied it again when I saw him again many years later, but then, years after that, he simply refused to speak of it, or of anything at all from our past. I did question our house-elf, Kangtin – Wilspy had returned to my Uncle Christopher’s house after Aberforth started school and Ferchil had died whilst I was away – but he knew nothing but that the wizard had Apparated to the front of the cottage, let himself in somehow, gone upstairs to see my mother, they talked for a while, then the wizard came down to the kitchen, left me the note, and departed, Disapparating.”

“I am so sorry, Albus . . . that must have been just awful for you,” Minerva said quietly, tears in her own eyes.

Albus did not respond directly to Minerva’s statement, instead, picking up his story again. “I moved through the next days, mechanically doing what needed to be done. Finally, I told my brother to finish it – sell the cottage or keep it himself. I did not care. I went to my uncle, half-expecting, even at that age, that he would have some words that would fix everything for me. But he did not; there were no such words. My soul was disturbed and my mind found no rest. Nothing had meaning any more. I left home again, this time wandering through Europe with no goal in mind, no care for anything at all. My path had been reduced to a mere track, a meandering and narrow way. I was in a wilderness and darkness and I did not care whether I ever found my way out of it.

“I avoided people and places I had come to know in my previous travels. I did not work, I barely even thought. If there was a pub in a wizarding village or neighbourhood, I would stop there a while, drinking, watching others’ lives . . . seeing respectable folk come in for their pint or their glass then going home to their families, seeing less respectable folk drinking more and taking what they could with as little effort as possible, and seeing still others who cleverly exploited both classes of people. I listened to their stories . . . their happy tales I greeted with cynicism, and I scoffed at their tales of loss. Nothing had meaning . . . my material means were meagre, and though I could now write wizarding cheques and draw on the family Gringotts account, I rarely did so. Instead, I would find others desperate for company and entertainment, and I would provide that in exchange for a meal and a bed . . . not that I put it that plainly to myself at the time. I did not reflect at all on what I was doing or on the manner in which I was living. And if I forgot where I was at times . . . I did not care. And oft, I would offer more company and more . . . entertainment . . . to a pretty witch for a particularly warm bed, and believed I was giving and taking comfort, when in actuality, I was only losing myself in a different way than through alcohol or potions.”

Albus avoided Minerva’s gaze as he thought of those long-gone days. “I became . . . dissolute and even somewhat profligate, and I thought it only right. I was unworthy of anything better, I believed, and I forgot even why I felt that way, but it seemed to be the only truth in my life. I became less and less charming company, and fewer and fewer wished to seek me for entertaining conversation or for more . . . I moved on, moving constantly, it seemed, still avoiding anyplace where I might see someone who knew me, although I doubt that most of my former acquaintances would have recognised me at that point. Even in school, I had been well-groomed and tried to dress in accordance with current fashion as far as possible on my limited budget. Now . . . my beard was unkempt, I barely concerned myself with personal hygiene, my clothes . . . I had somehow managed to lose most of my belongings one night, stolen by someone who took advantage of my state.” Albus shrugged. “I wandered like this for months . . . I am convinced that if it had continued much longer, I would have been dead within the year. However . . . one morning, I woke up in a mental fog, once more unsure of where I was, but now not even able to remember how I got there. I didn’t remember the previous night at all, and my memory of the day before was almost as hazy. I looked around me and was . . . shocked, or as shocked as I could be at that point in my life. I was certainly sickened, though that might as easily be accounted for by what I had ingested the day before as by the sight that met my eyes. I gathered my few things together, barely taking time to dress, and Apparated to the first nearby location that I could clearly call to mind, a spot by the side of the road just outside of town.”

Albus paused to rewarm his tea, seeming to do so without thought. His eyes were vacant and tired, reflecting the desperation of the events he was recounting.

Minerva rose and stopped his hand with a gentle touch from her own. “I think fresh tea would be better right now,” she said gently, and called Wilspy, asking for a fresh pot of chamomile tea, thinking its soothing properties would be welcome at that moment.

Albus sat back and smiled wanly at Minerva. “Thank you, my dear. Very thoughtful of you.”

“I find you can only rewarm tea so many times before it loses its flavour,” Minerva said matter-of-factly.

After their tea had arrived and Minerva had served them, her curiosity finally won out, and she asked, “What did you wake up to that shocked you so much, especially after all you had already gone through?”

Albus took a deep breath and let it out, and answered, though he was unable to look at her as he did so. “Well, lest you believe that I woke surrounded by dead bodies or some such thing . . . there was a tangle of naked limbs in the bed beside me. Several. And I didn’t recognise the faces of their owners. All I could think was, how had I ended up there? I, who had been the most promising student Hogwarts had seen in hundreds of years, who had thought himself so much better than his peers?

“I sat there by the side of that cold, hard road, quite sick, emotionally numb, with almost no money, hundreds of miles from home – feeling, actually, as though I had no home and nowhere to go – I sat there for a long time in the chilly early morning, with no energy to move and not enough to do myself in, either, though I thought at that moment that death would be preferable to continued existence. How had I gone from being the best and the brightest to being this debauched wreck of a wizard? As I sat there beneath a tree, in complete and utter despair, I heard people approaching. I cared not whether I was seen or not seen, and remained where I was. It was a caravan – three wagons, in fact, a few people on ponies, some on foot. They stopped there. As uninterested as I was in anything in the world but my own empty misery, I still could see that they had stopped to look at a pony, which was riderless and limping, clearly unwell. To say that I scarcely cared would be an overstatement of my concern for them and their animal. Life was misery, after all. Unrelenting misery. The men were shaking their heads, and I believed that they were going to kill the animal, put it out of its misery. Then I saw a little girl, perhaps seven or eight, her black hair in a long, thick braid down her back, her dark brown eyes large and round and filled with tears as she watched the men discussing the fate of the pony. She ran up to the poor creature and held on to it, weeping with every bit of sorrow her shuddering little body held.

“For the first time in months, I felt something other than bleak emptiness. I wanted to weep with the little girl, and I wanted to spare her the pain of losing the pony. So I rose from where I sat, knowing that I looked terrible and smelled worse, and approached the men. Using a combination of French, Italian, and German, I managed to convince them to let me prepare a potion to try to help the poor beast. They moved off the road and sat and watched me brew the potion. I used ingredients they had at hand and those that I could scavenge myself nearby, and within a few hours, I had a thick potion. Now this particular pony was unshod; it had suffered an injury to its hoof, something having been driven deep into the softer area in the centre of the foot. Now, I knew little of horses or ponies, or any Muggle animals, for that matter, but I knew a great deal about potions and a little something about Healing in general. Using only the magic that flowed through my hand as I held the beast’s leg between my own, I calmed the animal’s pain and began to clean out the infected flesh using a long, thin blade one of the men handed me. I finally found the source of the infection – a sharp metal shard – and removed it and the noxious tissue, as well. When the pus was well-drained, I packed the hoof with the potion. Normally, I would have simply sealed it off using magic, but with these Muggle Gypsies, I clearly could not do that. There was a blacksmith among them, and under my instruction, he fixed a solid plate to the hoof, holding the potion in place.

“I knew my potion would be effective, and likely within a matter of hours at the most, but lest they wonder at the speed of the pony’s recovery, I instructed them not to allow the pony to move about for at least another day, at which time they could remove the plate, clean out the potion, and allow the pony light exercise.”

Albus sighed. “To make a long story short, I stayed with these people. They invited me to share their meal, the pony recovered, the little girl held my hand and fell asleep, and for the first time in a long time, I felt some purpose and some genuine human warmth sparking in my soul. I travelled with them, and learned their ways and their language. I started to feel again. I paid my way by brewing potions and telling stories. I began to find healing by . . . helping them, by offering what small measure of healing I could give them. One night, Maria, the oldest sister of Elinor, the little girl whose tears had so moved me, came to visit me. And she stayed till morning. She often came after that, and I grew . . . quite comfortable for a while, living with the Roma, sharing their lot. But then, Maria’s brothers paid me a call one night and said that her visits would cease until I agreed to marry her. They were not angry at all, merely matter-of-fact. These people had become like a family to me, and I had begun to recover myself in their company. But two days later, I left them. I did not really belong with the Roma, and I knew it, and they knew it as well.”

Next: “Defeating Darkness” 3 August 1957; 1866 - 1945. Darkness may seem formless, but it can take many guises.