He Seduced Me With Power and Destroyed My Family

The summer air in Godric’s Hollow was thick and suffocating, clinging to the skin like a damp shroud. For Albus Dumbledore, it was the perfect metaphor for his life. At eighteen, he should have been celebrating the end of a brilliant career at Hogwarts, preparing for the grand tour with Elphias Doge, a world of intellectual discovery waiting for him. Instead, he was trapped. Trapped by the sudden, violent death of his mother, and trapped by the crushing responsibility of his sister, Ariana.

His mind, a place that once teemed with complex theories and dazzling new spells, felt barren. The days bled into one another, a monotonous cycle of managing Ariana’s terrifying outbursts of uncontrolled magic, cleaning up the wreckage, and trying to hold the fractured remnants of his family together. His own potential was rotting inside him, a brilliant light smothered under the weight of duty and grief. He would pace the small rooms of their house, the floorboards groaning under his feet, feeling the walls close in.

A note from his great-aunt, Bathilda Bagshot, was a welcome interruption. A request for tea was hardly an adventure, but it was an escape, however brief. He ensured Ariana was calm, settled with a picture book in the parlor, before walking the short distance to Bathilda’s cottage, the familiar scent of her overgrown garden a small comfort.

He found her in the study, a room so crammed with books that the walls themselves seemed to be made of paper and ink. But she was not alone. Standing by the mantelpiece, bathed in the dusty afternoon light slanting through the window, was a young man.

Albus stopped in the doorway. He had never seen anyone quite like him. He was beautiful, but it was a severe, arresting kind of beauty. His hair was a shock of gold, his face a study in sharp, aristocratic angles. He held himself with an air of absolute self-assurance that bordered on arrogance. But it was his eyes that held Albus captive. They were mismatched—one a piercing blue, the other dark—and they fixed on Albus with a startling intensity. It was not a friendly gaze; it was probing, analytical, as if he were taking in every detail of Albus’s mind and soul in a single, sweeping glance.

“Albus, my dear boy,” Bathilda said, her voice pulling him from his stupor. “Come in. I want you to meet my great-nephew, Gellert Grindelwald. He’s come to stay for the summer.”

Gellert did not smile. He simply inclined his head, a minute, regal gesture. “Dumbledore,” he said, his voice a low, cultured murmur with a faint, unplaceable accent.

Albus felt a jolt, a current of energy that was entirely foreign to the sleepy quiet of the Hollow. It was the startling, terrifying, and utterly exhilarating feeling of being seen. This boy, this stranger, did not look at him and see a grieving son or a burdened caretaker. His sharp, intelligent eyes saw an equal.

Bathilda bustled forward, seemingly oblivious to the charged silence. “Well, don’t just stand there, Albus. Gellert has been telling me the most fascinating things about his time at Durmstrang. I’ll just put the kettle on.”

But Gellert’s gaze hadn’t left Albus’s face. He ignored his great-aunt entirely. “Durmstrang has its merits,” he said, his voice low and dismissive, as if it were a triviality. “But its vision is limited. As is all of ours, is it not? Cowering behind this ridiculous Statute of Secrecy.”

The statement was so abrupt, so baldly contemptuous of one of the fundamental laws of their world, that Albus could only stare. No one spoke like that. Not out loud.

“It protects us,” Albus said, the response automatic, the textbook answer he’d given a hundred times in school debates. “It protects Muggles from us, and us from their persecution.”

A flicker of amusement crossed Gellert’s face. It was not a kind expression. “It forces us to live in the shadows. To what end? So they can live their short, brutish lives in blissful ignorance of their betters? We are the ones with the power, Dumbledore. We are the ones who can shape the world, heal it, command it. And yet we hide. We perform our magic in secret, like it’s something shameful. It is a doctrine of cowardice, not protection.”

He pushed off from the mantelpiece and took a step closer. The space between them seemed to shrink, charged with a sudden, palpable energy. Albus could feel the heat of him, smell the faint, clean scent of soap and something else, something sharp and ozonic, like the air after a lightning strike.

“Think of the potential we waste,” Gellert continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur, yet ringing with passion. “The good we could do. Not just for ourselves, but for them. We could guide them, lead them. End their wars, cure their diseases. We would be their shepherds. Benevolent, yes, but firm. It would be for their own good. For the Greater Good.”

The words struck Albus with the force of a physical blow. For the Greater Good. It was a phrase that resonated with a deep, secret part of him—the part that chafed against the mediocrity of his confinement, the part that knew he was destined for more than changing Ariana’s bedsheets and mourning his mother. He had entertained similar thoughts, late at night, in the privacy of his own mind, but he had always dismissed them as arrogant, dangerous fantasies.

Here was someone who not only shared those fantasies but spoke them aloud as undeniable truth. He saw the world not as a set of rules to be obeyed, but as a thing to be remade. Albus felt a dizzying sense of recognition, a dangerous, thrilling alignment with this boy’s fierce, unapologetic ambition. The stale, suffocating air of Godric’s Hollow was suddenly gone, replaced by the exhilarating promise of revolution. The stagnation he had felt for weeks was being swept away by the sheer force of Gellert’s will. He was looking at his own secret heart, given a voice and a beautiful, terrible form.

The sound of the kettle whistling from the kitchen was a shrill, mundane intrusion. Gellert didn’t even glance toward the sound. His eyes, one blue, one dark, were fixed on Albus, holding him in place.

“Let us walk,” Gellert said. It was not a suggestion. He moved toward the door, his long coat swirling around his ankles, expecting Albus to follow. And Albus did, leaving Bathilda to her tea without a word of explanation. He was being pulled by a gravity he had no desire to resist.

Outside, the oppressive heat of the day had broken, leaving behind a cool, star-dusted night. The air was silent, save for the crunch of their shoes on the gravel path. Gellert walked with a long, confident stride, and Albus matched his pace, the space between them humming with everything that had been said and everything that was still to come. They passed darkened houses, the sleeping village entirely unaware of the revolution being plotted in its quiet lanes.

Gellert led them not toward Albus’s home, but in the opposite direction, toward the old church and the cemetery that sprawled behind it. The wrought-iron gates groaned as Gellert pushed them open. Inside, ancient headstones leaned like crooked teeth under the pale light of the moon. A place of death and history. Albus felt a familiar pang of sorrow, his mother’s new grave not far from here.

But Gellert strode past the newer plots with purpose, navigating the overgrown paths as if he’d walked them a hundred times. He stopped before a weathered, lichen-spotted stone, so old the name was nearly eroded away. He traced a finger over the inscription. “Ignotus Peverell.”

Albus stared at the name, the gears of his mind turning. A name from a children’s story. The Tale of the Three Brothers.

Gellert turned to him, his face illuminated by the moonlight, looking like a statue carved from marble and shadow. “It is no tale, Albus.” His voice was low, intense, a mesmerizing hum. “The gifts Death gave the brothers were real. The Deathly Hallows. And they are the key.”

He raised his hand and drew a shape in the air with his finger. A vertical line for the Elder Wand. A circle around it for the Resurrection Stone. Enclosed by a triangle for the Cloak of Invisibility. The sign burned in the air between them, an image of impossible power.

“Think of it,” Gellert whispered, his eyes blazing. “The Elder Wand, an unbeatable weapon to enforce our will for the good of all. The Resurrection Stone, to conquer the ultimate enemy, death itself. To see those we have lost…” He paused, his gaze sharp, knowingly touching the raw edge of Albus’s grief. “And the Cloak of Invisibility, to move unseen, to be untouchable. To be master of all three is to be the master of Death.”

He took a step closer, his ambition a palpable force, a heat that warmed the cold cemetery air. “This is not a quest for trinkets, Albus. It is our crusade. With the Hallows, we would be unstoppable. We could reshape the world in our image. We could build an order where wizards are no longer forced to hide, where our power is celebrated, not feared. For the Greater Good.”

The words were a spell, wrapping around Albus’s heart, squeezing the breath from his lungs. The guilt, the grief, the suffocating sense of powerlessness that had defined his life for months—Gellert was offering him an antidote. Not comfort, but power. Not solace, but a purpose so grand it eclipsed all personal tragedy. The invitation was there, unspoken but absolute, hanging in the space between their bodies. Join me. Be my equal. Be my partner in this. And in the silence of the graveyard, surrounded by the dead, Albus felt more alive than he ever had before.