For the Greater Good

Gellert looked around his prison, mind wandering. That's what he did these days. Sit and think. Breaking out was useless, he had learned that years ago. Screaming and rattling the bars of his cage did nothing, and his wand had been won many years ago. No one wanted him to be free. He had no family left. Since then he'd given up on being free, the only contact from the outside world he had was from the house elf that brought him his meals. The only words that ever went past its lips were the month, day, and year, all delivered in a high, squeaky voice. No matter how many times Gellert asked, it would tell him nothing of the outside world. Most likely on order from Albus.

Albus.

The name resonated in Gellert's mind, bouncing off every other thought.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.

The one man who had calculated him, analyzed his thoughts, taught him things he could've never learned at Durmstrang.

The one man who actually loved him.

Gellert liked to remember Albus as the way he was during the summer they spent together, tall and handsome with auburn hair, rather than the last time Albus had been when Gellert saw him. Aged and faded, hard faced, only his eyes giving away how he was dieing inside as he locked Gellert into Nurmengard.

The day that he and Albus met seemed so long ago. That warm summer day when he met his great-aunt Bathilda on a hill close to her house.

Just like Albus, Gellert had been young then. Lean, pale, and blond, he fit the standards of beautiful anywhere he went. Terrifying in many ways, but beautiful all the same. One wouldn't have been able to tell that Bathilda Bagshot was related to Gellert in any way if they just looked at the two. Bathilda was short and plump, dark haired with dark eyes. But their mannerisms were the same.

Both were scheming, interested in everything around them, curious about the world and the magic both of them possessed. Cold and yet welcoming in their own ways. Hungry for knowledge, ready to learn what they could about anything and everything. The mischievous twinkle in their eyes.

Aunt Bathilda was everything Gellert wished his mother and father were and more. She was kind and handed him the books that he wanted to read no matter what their content was. And that was what Gellert did through those first few days. He poured over books with a deep hunger. A craving for more, to expand his mind. To find them.

The Deathly Hallows.

That was why he had come to Godric's Hollow in the first place. To see the place where Ignotus Peverell lay at rest, to see if he could find clues to where the Hallows might be.

Well, that and the fact that he had been kicked out of Durmstrang, gaining him full abandonment by his mother and father.

Aunt Bathilda was the only one who would take him in after that. And she did gladly, Gellert having always been her favorite nephew.

And so Gellert stayed with his Aunt Bathilda, holed up in his room, pouring over books, hoping –praying even– for a clue towards the Hallows. He stayed there for days, only leaving for meals and baths.

“Gellert, darling, you need to get out of the house,” Aunt Bathilda would say, “Make some friends.”

Gellert would always nod, tell her tomorrow he would go out, but instead he would sit in his room and continue to pour over the books, growing increasingly frustrated when he came up with nothing time and time again.

A week or so after Gellert originally arrived, Aunt Bathilda surprised him with a visitor.

“Gellert, come downstairs. There's someone I'd like you to meet.”

Frustrated with yet another dead end, Gellert slammed the book he had been analyzing shut. He paced for a moment or two in his room, pulling at his hair, trying to figure out where he was going wrong. He was mere yards away from where Ignotus was buried. He had read practically every book in Aunt Bathilda's library, pouring over histories, straining to find even a breath of a clue. Everywhere he looked he couldn't find a path that would lead him down a dead end.

“Gellert! Come downstairs at once!”

Gellert winced at Aunt Bathilda's tone. It was the one tone he knew he couldn't push, couldn't prod until it stretched out for him. He took a moment to right his hair, then stormed downstairs, mind still whirling, trying to find something he had missed, something he had overlooked.

When he reached the parlor, Gellert looked up, then froze. Sitting next to his Aunt Bathilda was a young man Gellert had only seen out of his window. His auburn hair spilled over his shoulders, blue eyes sparkling past his half-moon spectacles as they looked Gellert over from the rim of his tea cup.

“Gellert, this is Albus Dumbledore. Albus, this is my nephew, Gellert Grindelwald.”

“Hello,” Albus said simply, smiling softly as if he knew something about Gellert that he didn't know himself.

“Hello.”

“Well, don't just stand there like a sleeping hippogriff, sit down. Have a cup.”

Gellert obeyed his aunt, slowly sitting down next to her, eyes still locked onto Albus. She passed him a cup of tea, and he gratefully took it, needing a reason to break their gaze.

“So, Albus,” Aunt Bathilda began, breaking the brief silence, “What have you been up to, now that you've graduated from Hogwarts?”

Gellert glanced up to analyze Albus' face, realizing that if he had graduated from Hogwarts, he couldn't have been more than seventeen. Albus seemed much older to Gellert. He gave off an aura of being twenty years of age or older, already starting to grow a goatee. Gellert, at sixteen himself, couldn't grow a beard if he tried.

“Well, Elphias Dodge and I had planed on traveling the globe, but as you know that plan fell through.”

Gellert may have been mistaken, but he could swear that he heard a slight tone of resentment on the words “fell through.”

“Oh, yes. Poor Kendra. How are Aberforth and Ariana taking the loss?”

“They both take it in their own ways, and they spend most of their time together.”

Aunt Bathilda nodded, and the rest of the tea was spent in silence, Albus occasionally glancing at Gellert before taking a sip of his tea. Gellert could tell that Albus and his aunt knew each other well, and didn't feel like they needed to talk. Gellert liked this just fine, he went back to the turmoil in his mind, trying to figure out where the Hallows could be, where he could find them, how he would use them.

After their third cup of tea, Albus glanced out the window, nodded to himself, and stood up.

“Well, Bathilda, I do believe it's time for me to be going.”

Aunt Bathilda and Gellert stood up at the same time and walked Albus to the door, listening to him comment on what a wonderful tea it was and how glad he was to have been able to spend some time with them that day and how they should do it more often. He pulled on his traveling cloak, and that's when Gellert saw it.

The mark of the Hallows, stitched onto the cloak's pocket in fine, gold thread. His mouth dropped open, face registering the immense shock.

“You're searching for the Hallows?”

Albus looked at Gellert, eyes still sparkling, lips pulling into a slight grin.

“Yes. Isn't everyone?”

And with that, he was gone.