A few hours before Harry's talk with Narcissa, Albus Dumbledore sat across from Gellert Grindelwald in a shadowed chamber deep within his old rival's hidden base.
The air was heavy with the dust of ages and the scent of damp stone, and the walls seemed to absorb all sound, leaving only a suffocating, unnatural quiet. The table between them was bare, save for a single, low-burning candles that cast a flickering, dancing light across Gellert's sharp features, carving his face into a mask of cruel light.
The flames were a tiny, fragile thing, much like the life force that Dumbledore felt was slowly guttering within him.
Dumbledore's eyes roamed the room cautiously, his fingers brushing the edge of his cursed hand, which throbbed with a dull, constant ache that no potion or charm could quell.
The pain was an unyielding reminder of his mortality, a gnawing in his flesh that spread an icy, creeping numbness up his arm and into his chest. It was like he could feel his very essence was being slowly consumed.
When Grindelwald had sent him the portkey, he had half-believed it was a trap from the man. Every fiber of his being screamed to refuse, to stay far away from the man who had been his greatest love and his greatest regret.
But desperation was a cruel master, and the numbness gnawing through his arm had left him little choice. He had tried everything else. There was nothing left to lose. He had scoured his libraries of his home, from the restricted sections of Hogwarts to the private vaults of families that he had access to.
He had followed every whisper, chased every rumor, but the secret of the Hallows remained elusive from back in the past and now.
Now, here he was, at the end of his rope, seeking aid from the very man who embodied his greatest failure.
"Albus, it is good of you to come…" Gellert began, his voice a smooth, low murmur that seemed to hum in the silent room.
"You know why I'm here, Gellert," Dumbledore cut him off, his voice clipped and strained. "Do not waste my time with pleasantries."
Grindelwald raised an eyebrow, a flicker of amusement in his pale eyes, then chuckled. He leaned forward just slightly, his form shifting in the candlelight. "You are no fun when you are like this, old friend. Very well. Straight to business, then. The Hallows."
Dumbledore stiffened, his blue eyes narrowing.
His body instinctively tensed, a physical response to the mention of the very thing that both held the key to his salvation and had brought him to this humiliating position. He had spent years in their younger days, buried in forgotten lore, trying to find them, and now he found them only to be cursed and dying because of one, when he had given up on them. Fate really was a cruel mistress.
"Yes," Gellert continued with smug satisfaction, reading the tension in Dumbledore's face like an open book. "I know you possess all three. I know you are not well. I imagine it is far worse than you allow anyone to see. You hoped the Hallows would help you, but you've not discovered how to use them, have you?"
Dumbledore said nothing, but the tell-tale flicker of pain that crossed his features was enough. He looked away, unwilling to meet his old friend's gaze. He could admit defeat to himself, but not to Gellert.
Gellert leaned back in his chair, a cruel smirk on his face. "You see, simply having the Hallows does not make one the Master of Death. That is a child's myth, a fairy tale for those who do not understand true power. And while the tales hold true in some ways, they don't tell all. There is a ritual, Albus. A ritual that binds their power into flesh and blood. Allowing one to take the power they possess and become more, taking the very essence of death and surpassing what they could do alone to conquer death and become its master, it was hard finding the truth and real way to use the hallows, but after years, I did find out."
Dumbledore frowned, silent, weighing the words. He did not trust them. Every instinct he possessed screamed that this was a deception, a carefully woven lie.
He knew Gellert was a master of half-truths, of wrapping a deadly promise in the guise of a gift. Spitting sweet words that one wants to hear. Yet the growing numbness in his cursed arm reminded him that his time was slipping away like sand through glass. He had tried everything. There was nothing left to lose.
"And how would this ritual be performed?" he asked finally, the words a low rumble in his throat.
'Jackpot'. Gellert's eyes gleamed with an almost predatory delight. This was it. The moment he had been waiting for. Dumbledore, in his prime, would never have considered such a desperate alliance.
But a dying Dumbledore? A Dumbledore running out of time? That man could be reasoned with, or rather tricked. That man could be used. Gellert had learned the ritual a lifetime ago, in hushed corners of the world, but he had never possessed the means to perform it.
The Hallows were the key, a relic of the god that needed to be summoned, and he had lacked them. Now, Dumbledore had brought them to him, along with a powerful, if temporary, ally.
"Ah, ah, ah. I am not so generous as to give you the answer for free," he said, wagging a finger mockingly. "I want something in return. The Hallows, of course. Not to take from you, oh no, if I wished that, I could simply wait for you to die."
Dumbledore scowled at the barb. "Then what do you want, Gellert? Why ask me here?"
"Isn't it obvious? The ritual is not easy for me to perform alone," Gellert lied smoothly, his voice taking on a tone of sincere earnestness. "It requires immense power and a balance of wills. And I thought it would not be bad to have an old friend help me. I want us to work together, Albus. Old friends, sharing in power. You perform the ritual with me. You gain your salvation. And perhaps I take… a little for myself. I am sure you won't mind sharing a little of the power."
The lie was so perfectly crafted, so laced with a kernel of truth, Grindelwald's endless thirst for power, that Dumbledore almost believed it. Almost.
He stared at him long and hard. He could hear the lie humming beneath every word, the promise of a shared power that would surely become a trap.
But his failing body screamed for a solution. He told himself that he could control this. That if it came to it, he would end Gellert before he gained true power. 'For the greater good. '
It was the convenient phrase he had used his entire life, a powerful justification that allowed him to make the most terrible decisions with a clear conscience.
"…Fine," he said at last, the word a bitter taste on his tongue.
Grindelwald clapped his hands, a flash of delight crossing his face. "Excellent. Then let us begin. We haven't much time, your condition tells me that clearly enough."
They traveled by portkey to a desolate stretch of the Scottish coast, where storm winds lashed the sea and the air was thick with the scent of salt and raw magic. This place was a convergence of powerful ley lines that ran all the way to Hogwarts, a perfect natural stage.
"The Hallows," Gellert demanded, his voice now a taut whisper of anticipation.
Dumbledore hesitated before withdrawing them from the folds of his robes: the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Invisibility Cloak.
Grindelwald's eyes shone with a greedy, feverish hunger as he reached for the wand, but Dumbledore pulled it back sharply, glaring. Gellert snorted and snatched the Stone instead, his fingers closing around the smooth obsidian.
The ritual circle was already drawn into the earth, runes glowing faintly as the cloak was laid at its center. Gellert held the Stone, pouring his magic into it until it shimmered with a sickly green light. Dumbledore stood opposite, the Elder Wand clutched so tight his knuckles were white. Grindelwald's men surrounded them both, their faces a mixture of fear and devotion.
They began to chant. The incantations were of ancient magic, of a language that he doubted belonged to men. The sounds were guttural and sharp, a series of syllables that seemed to grate on Dumbledore's soul.
The sea roared, the sound building to a crescendo. Clouds rolled black over the sky, forming a spiraling, bruise-colored vortex directly above them. The very air began to burn away, growing thin and unbreathable, and the ground beneath their feet groaned in protest.
The grass withered and died, the earth itself collapsing into dust. The Cloak at the center of the circle glowed first, then the Stone, then the Wand—each pulsing with a raw, unnatural power that made Dumbledore's teeth ache.
Then the world stilled. The chanting stopped. The wind died. The sea fell silent. The silence was so complete it was as if time itself had been a tangible object and had shattered into a million pieces.
And then, like shattering glass, the sky cracked.
Black mist spilled downward from the fracture, a crawling darkness that devoured all light, withering all it touched. Instinct screamed. Every man present felt it, a primal urge to run, to flee from this unnatural horror.
Death had come.
Grindelwald's laughter rang out, wild and ecstatic. "It worked! It truly worked!"
Dumbledore's blood ran cold. Too late, he realized the truth. Gellert had lied about the ritual, this was not about taking the power of the Hallows. He had used them as a key to call forth a heretic god. The ritual had never been for him, it had been for Gellert's selfish goals, and now the man had doomed them all.
The mist swirled, condensing into a colossal humanoid shape. Hollow eyes of abyssal black turned downward, watching them like insects. Gellert's men, terrified beyond reason, some fell to their knees. Grindelwald charged forward with his remaining followers, the Stone blazing green in his palm.
Spells and curses erupted around him, crashing against the god's misty form, only to dissolve like water splashing against rock. One man, a desperate, sobbing mess, screamed the incantation for a powerful Bombarda Maxima. The resulting explosion was a shockwave of pure force, but the mist simply absorbed the blast, rippling for a moment before reforming.
Another man, his face a mask of terror, launched a Sectus, the dark curse of a thousand cuts, but the black tendrils of the heretic god's form simply parted and then rejoined, completely unharmed.
The air around the mist thrummed with a dissonant frequency, a sound like a thousand whispers screaming in an unknown tongue, and the men's faces twisted in an expression of pure, unadulterated horror as their magic faltered and then died.
The magic from their wands simply dissolved into nothingness, not even the simple light charm Lumos was working. The world was now plunged into a surreal, half-darkness as if all the color and magic had been leeched from the world.
"Now!" Grindelwald shouted, unleashing a beam of emerald energy. The explosion tore through the mist, scattering it. For a moment, silence. Relief flickered through the surviving men.
Men started cheering, they had done it. Gerllet couldn't help but think to himself, he had killed a god, and now he would become a campione, he would be unstoppable.
Then the mist surged back with a scream like a thousand voices. It swept through Grindelwald and his followers, their cries cut short as their bodies withered, their magic folded, their very souls erased.
Their screams did not last long, they simply turned to gurgles as their bodies were crushed from the inside out and their magical aura was violently ripped from their souls. Their forms melted like ice, and their bones cracked into dust.
Grindelwald was gone, just like that.
The heretic god turned its gaze upon Albus Dumbledore.
And in that instant, Dumbledore knew true fear. The cold that had been slowly consuming him from his cursed hand suddenly felt insignificant compared to the absolute, soul-freezing cold radiating from the being before him.
————————————————————
If you want to read ahead and access 20 advanced chapters, check the patreon. $4 Dollars
Link:patreon/Phantomking785