Our Blood Pact Bound Us Together, But His Dark Ambition Cost Me My Sister

The stifling quiet of his great-aunt Bathilda’s parlor was just another cage. Albus sat, hands steepled under his chin, feigning a polite interest in the chintz and doilies that seemed to absorb all sound, all life. Godric’s Hollow was supposed to be a temporary prison, a summer of duty after his mother’s death, but it felt like a sentence without end. He was responsible for Aberforth’s simmering rage and Ariana’s fragile silence. The weight of it was a physical thing, pressing down on his chest until his own brilliance felt like a useless, forgotten trinket.

Then the parlor door opened, and the air shifted.

He was not what Albus had expected of Bathilda’s German great-nephew. He was golden and sharp, a raptor in a well-tailored suit. His hair was the color of spun sunlight, his face a collection of beautiful, dangerous angles. But it was his eyes that held Albus captive. One was a piercing, intelligent blue; the other was darker, almost black, and it fixed on Albus with an unnerving, immediate intensity.

“Albus Dumbledore,” Bathilda said, beaming. “This is my great-nephew, Gellert Grindelwald.”

Gellert gave a curt, dismissive nod to his great-aunt, his gaze never leaving Albus. He crossed the room in a few fluid strides, ignoring the offered chair and instead leaning against the mantelpiece, a proprietary air already settling over him.

“Bagshot tells me you achieved a N.E.W.T. in Transfiguration with a notation for original contribution,” Gellert began, his voice a low, melodic baritone with only a hint of an accent. There were no pleasantries, no inane questions about his journey. “Your paper on cross-species switching. I found it… timid.”

A spark of indignation flared in Albus’s chest, the first real emotion besides grief he’d felt in weeks. “Timid?”

“You stopped short,” Gellert said, a faint, challenging smile playing on his lips. “You outlined the theoretical framework for switching the innate magical properties between a beast and a being, but you shied away from the obvious conclusion: the complete and permanent transference of consciousness. Why?”

The world narrowed to the space between them. Bathilda, the tea service, the suffocating parlor—it all faded into a dull background hum. This was not a conversation; it was a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down on the worn Aubusson rug.

“Because it is dark, dangerous, and fundamentally theoretical,” Albus countered, his own voice sharper now, alive. “The magical schism created would be catastrophic. The soul cannot be decanted like a potion.”

“Cannot? Or should not?” Gellert pushed off the mantelpiece, taking a step closer. The intensity in his mismatched eyes was hypnotic. “You speak of limitations. I speak of potential. Imagine the applications, Dumbledore. The power. To shed a failing human body, to acquire the strengths of a dragon, the immortality of a phoenix. You see a boundary; I see a doorway you were too afraid to open.”

He was brilliant. Arrogant, dangerous, and utterly, incandescently brilliant. And in the searing light of his intellect, Albus felt an exhilarating, terrifying recognition. It was the lonely ache of his own mind, mirrored in another. For the first time, he was not the smartest person in the room. He was merely one half of a whole.

The debate had not ended in Bathilda’s parlor. It had merely paused, spilling out of the stuffy house and into the humid, buzzing air of the summer night. They had been walking for nearly an hour, their footsteps the only sound breaking the stillness of the Godric’s Hollow graveyard. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and honeysuckle, a cloying sweetness that clung to Albus’s skin.

They moved between the crooked, shadowed headstones, their shoulders occasionally brushing in the narrow spaces. Each point of contact was a small shock, a jolt of warmth that had nothing to do with the summer heat. Albus was acutely aware of Gellert’s presence beside him—the fluid grace of his movement, the intent focus of his gaze as he surveyed the sleeping village below them.

“They sleep, and they dream their small dreams,” Gellert said, his voice a low murmur that seemed to vibrate in the air between them. He gestured with a sweep of his hand toward the distant, flickering lights of the Muggle cottages. “They live their short, brutish lives, entirely unaware of the power that walks among them. The power that hides itself for their comfort.”

His passion was a tangible thing, a force that pulled Albus closer. “The Statute of Secrecy protects us as much as it protects them, Gellert. History has proven that.”

“History has proven that we are afraid,” Gellert countered, stopping by a tall, granite angel, its face worn smooth by a century of rain. He turned to face Albus, his mismatched eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “It is not protection, it is a cage. We have been blessed with abilities they cannot comprehend, with the power to shape the world, to cure their diseases, to end their wars, to guide them. And what do we do with this gift? We hide. We cower in the shadows, terrified that our inferiors might grow frightened of us.”

He took a step closer, and Albus’s breath caught in his throat. The space between them felt charged, electric. “Don’t you feel it, Albus? The sheer waste of it all. The potential we suffocate every day, just to maintain this… this peace. It is not peace. It is stagnation. We are lions, living as lambs.”

Albus felt a dizzying tremor run through him. Gellert’s words were a torch, burning away the grey fog of grief and duty that had shrouded his mind for months. The endless, dreary weight of caring for Ariana, of managing Aberforth, of being the man of the house—it all felt small and insignificant compared to the vision Gellert was painting. It was a world of purpose, of greatness. A world where his own brilliance wouldn't be a burden, but a tool for reshaping destiny. For the first time since his mother’s funeral, a feeling other than sorrow surged through him. It was hope, sharp and intoxicating, inextricably mingled with a dangerous, soaring ambition. He saw the path Gellert was laying before him, and he wanted, desperately, to walk it.

He led them on, deeper into the oldest part of the graveyard, his steps sure and purposeful as if following an invisible map. Albus followed, caught in the wake of Gellert’s conviction. The ambition Gellert had ignited in him was a fever in his blood, a warmth that pushed back the chill of the tombs surrounding them.

Gellert stopped abruptly before a weathered, tilting headstone, nearly swallowed by ivy and moss. It was far older than the others, the name almost completely eroded by time. But a symbol carved beneath it was still clear in the moonlight: a triangle, bisected by a vertical line, with a circle enclosed within it.

“You know this mark,” Gellert stated, not a question but a soft command. He traced the carving with a long, elegant finger, his touch lingering on the stone as if drawing power from it.

Albus’s heart gave a strange, hard beat against his ribs. “It’s from a children’s story. The Tale of the Three Brothers.”

“It is no story,” Gellert said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that made the fine hairs on Albus’s arms stand on end. He turned, his body blocking the moonlight, casting Albus in his shadow. He was so close Albus could feel the heat radiating from him. “It is a map. A promise. The Elder Wand. The Resurrection Stone. The Cloak of Invisibility. Together, they make one master of Death.”

The words hung in the air, ludicrous and yet, spoken in Gellert’s fervent tone, they felt like the most profound truth Albus had ever heard. This was the core of Gellert’s ambition, the engine driving his vision for a new world. It was not just about power, but about conquering the ultimate limitation.

“The Deathly Hallows,” Albus breathed, the name feeling foreign and powerful on his tongue.

“You see?” Gellert’s mismatched eyes burned with a triumphant fire. “You understand. Most wizards dismiss it as a fable. They lack the vision, the courage to believe. But you… I knew you would be different.” He reached out, his hand closing around Albus’s upper arm. His grip was firm, possessive, sending a shock of heat straight through the fabric of Albus’s shirt and into his skin. “To possess them is to be invincible. Unbeatable. To be the rightful leaders of the world we will build.”

A dizzying confluence of fate and chance washed over Albus. The story Bathilda read to him as a child, the strange symbol he’d doodled in the margins of his textbooks, his own family’s whispered history—it was all culminating here, in this dark graveyard, with this beautiful, dangerous boy.

“Ignotus Peverell,” Albus said, his voice barely audible. He looked from Gellert’s intense face to the name on the grave, now decipherable under Gellert’s focused gaze. “He is buried here. He was the third brother. The one who was given the Cloak.”

Gellert’s fingers tightened on his arm, his expression sharpening with rapacious curiosity. “How do you know this?”

The secret was a heavy stone in his throat, one he had carried alone. But looking at Gellert, he felt not a burden, but a key. A key to unlocking this incredible connection between them. “The Peverells,” Albus confessed, his gaze locked with Gellert’s. “They were my ancestors. The story has been passed down in my family for generations.”

The last sliver of distance between them dissolved. Gellert’s face was inches from his, his breath a warm puff against Albus’s lips. The world had shrunk to this single point in time: the grave of his ancestor, the heat of Gellert’s hand on his arm, the wild, possessive light in Gellert’s eyes. It was a look of discovery, of hunger, of finding the final, missing piece of a puzzle he had spent his life trying to solve. Their intellectual duel had ended. A shared, sacred quest had just begun.