We meet resistance, we must use only the force that is necessary and no

more. (This was your mistake at Durmstrang! But I do not complain,

Because if you had not been expelled, we would never have met.)

Albus

Astonished and appalled though his many admirers will be, this letter

Constitutes the Statute of Secrecy and establishing Wizard rule over Muggles.

What a blow for those who have always portrayed Dumbledore as the Muggleborns’

greatest champion! How hollow those speeches promoting Muggle rights

seem in the light of this damning new evidence! How despicable does Albus

Dumbledore appear, busy plotting his rise to power when he should have been

mourning his mother and caring for his sister!

No doubt those determined to keep Dumbledore on his crumbling pedestal

Will bleat that he did not, after all, put his plans into action, that he must have

Suffered a change of heart, that he came to his senses. However, the truth seems

Altogether more shocking.

Barely two months into their great new friendship, Dumbledore and

Grindelwald parted, never to see each other again until they met for their

legendary duel (for more, see chapter 22). What caused this abrupt rupture? Had

Dumbledore come to his senses? Had he told Grindelwald he wanted no more

part in his plans? Alas, no.

“It was poor little Ariana dying, I think, that did it,” says Bathilda. “It came

As an awful shock. Gellert was there in the house when it happened, and he

Came back to my house all of a dither, told me he wanted to go home the next

Day. Terribly distressed, you know. So I arranged a Portkey and that was the last

I saw of him.

“Albus was beside himself at Ariana’s death. It was so dreadful for those two

Brothers. They had lost everybody except for each other. No wonder tempers

Ran a little high. Aberforth blamed Albus, you know, as people will under these

Dreadful circumstances. But Aberforth always talked a little madly, poor boy.

All the same, breaking Albus’s nose at the funeral was not decent. It would have

destroyed Kendra to see her sons fighting like that, across her daughter’s body.

A shame Gellert could not have stayed for the funeral. . . . He would have been

A comfort to Albus, at least. . . .

This dreadful coffin-side brawl, known only to those few who attended

Ariana Dumbledore’s funeral, raises several questions. Why exactly did

Aberforth Dumbledore blame Albus for his sister’s death? Was it, as “Batty”

pretends, a mere effusion of grief? Or could there have been some more

concrete reason for his fury? Grindelwald, expelled from Durmstrang for the

near-fatal attacks upon fellow students, fled the country hours after the girl’s

death, and Albus (out of shame or fear?) never saw him again, not until forced

To do so by the pleas of the Wizarding world.

Neither Dumbledore nor Grindelwald ever seems to have referred to this

Brief boyhood friendship in later life. However, there can be no doubt that

Dumbledore delayed, for some five years of turmoil, fatalities, and

Disappearances, his attack upon Gellert Grindelwald. Was it lingering affection

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1045