A burning summer

27th July 1899

A week had passed in the blink of an eye. It was as if the world had suddenly started spinning faster and the days that the two young wizards had spent packing their bags and studying their speeches for the last time had flown weightlessly into the warm summer air. They would leave in two days at 09:21 from King's Cross to Dover, they would leave in search of their destiny.

Those who were not yet fully aware of their destiny were the younger Dumbledore siblings. Albus had managed, much to his embarrassment, to postpone giving them the news of their imminent departure until that moment. On the one hand, he kept repeating to himself that he had nothing to fear, after all it was his brother who had proposed leaving Hogwarts to take care of Ariana at the beginning of the summer. And then there were Bathilda and, who knows, maybe Clarice Malling too, if that girl and his brother would solve things, to give him a hand. Somewhere in his brilliant mind, however, a wise voice, which he tried to ignore at all costs, was mercilessly reminding him that as a major sibling it was wrong to abandon his brother and sister like this. Yet, it was easy to forget those guilt feelings by watching Gellert Grindelwald's brilliant smile, listening to him explaining the magnificent processes of his mind. With one of his kisses he could have justified the end of the world.

The young English wizard lay on his bed while he thought of these things. His lover was there with him. Sitting cross-legged by his side, he too was immersed in his thoughts.

"Soon everything will change," Gellert said at one point, breaking the peaceful silence that had filled the room until then. Albus nodded, a slight smile pursing his lips.

"Yes, soon a new era will begin in the history of the Wizarding world. And we'll be together and free,"he whispered and decided the moment had come. He sat up and took a deep breath.

"I'm going to tell my siblings," he declared. The blond looked at him intently in silence, then smiled and leaned towards him to give him a kiss.

"It's time," he breathed on his lips.

They went down the stairs in silence. Historic days often seem ordinary as any other, yet at that moment both of history's greatest wizards clearly perceived that the world was about to change. Great minds sometimes have a certain unconscious intuition of what will happen, but neither of them had imagined that the impending change would have hurled them in a direction so different from what they had dreamed of.

They would soon painfully learn, first Dumbledore, and then eventually Grindelwald as well, that there is no great written destiny, but that we instead are the authors of our own story and therefore responsible for it. No dream comes true if one expects an imaginary destiny to make it so.

Those thoughts, however, were far from the minds of the two young wizards. Gellert was too sure of himself, convinced that he had been marked by Odin with that clear eye that allowed him glimpses of the future, convinced that he knew everything there was to know about the world, and forgot that knowing was not synonymous with understanding.

Albus would have liked to be like him: able to close his eyes to everything and concentrate only on his incredible gifts. He had spent his entire childhood being told he was exceptional, and he intended to prove it to himself as well. He had lost his balance and had fallen miserably from that mysterious thread that connects our mind to the heart. And he had definitely fallen on the side of the heart: powerful, hot, pulsing... but blind.

Albus knocked on the door of Ariana's room. His brother was also there and was intent on reading Little Women to her, one of the books that her maternal grandparents had given her when they were still alive.

Neither seemed to notice their older brother, and so the auburn haired cleared his throat.

"I'd like to talk to you for a moment," he said, and then all his eyes were on him.