For the Greater Good || Tom Riddle ||

Chapter Seventeen: Détente

The next day classes were resumed and the afternoon sun filtered through the large windows of the Alchemy classroom, making the room quite warm. Gwen sat in her normal seat, which was in front of where Simon and his friend Benedict Fawley sat.

She was the only student present inside of the classroom at the moment because she arrived several minutes early. However, Dumbledore was not absent and stood as still as a gargoyle as he stared out the large, lone bay window.

Gwen watched him, feeling anxiety grow underneath her skin. She watched as the sunlight caressed his whiskered and greying auburn face and enveloped his appearance in a heavenly yellow light. Thoughts of her task filled her head. If it truly came to it, would she ever be able to raise her wand against this man?

"Good morning, Miss Gawmdrey."

She was torn out of her inner soliloquy at his greeting. Slowly, she allowed herself to smile.

"Good morning, Professor."

Gwen noticed that Dumbledore's robes glistened a sparkly, deep scarlet as if tailored from rubies as he moved closer to her seat. It was apparent to her that the man had quite the affinity for flamboyant attire.

He smiled down at her from where he stood. Dumbledore spoke quietly, tentatively, as if testing the waters. "You're doing very well in Alchemy. Did Durmstrang offer a course similar to this?" he asked with curiosity, hands folded behind his back as he looked at her with an inquisitive gaze.

Gwen's small smile slipped off of her face for a second as her eyes became downcast toward the wood surface of her desk. She looked at the grain of the wood as she softly brushed her fingers over the waving lines. She shook her head.

"No, Durmstrang didn't offer any courses on Alchemy. I learnt most of the material from my family's library," Gwen explained quietly, eyes flitting upwards. "I suppose the best way to put it is that Durmstrang has a very structured and traditional curriculum."

She thought of the weathered note that she had tucked into her bookcase, the letter from Dumbledore to her grandfather.

We seize control FOR THE GREATER GOOD. And from this it follows that where 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.)

She couldn't help but wonder why Dumbledore had ever written such a peculiar thing to her grandfather, his words holding a strange meaning that her sharp mind just wasn't able to decode.

"Interesting," Dumbledore mused slowly in reply, his auburn brow furrowing in such a way that made Gwen feel slightly uneasy about what she just said. However, something within her curiously observed the ageing man's facial expression as he reacted to her mention of Durmstrang. Did the school perhaps bring up memories of her grandfather?

Gellert Grindelwald was currently sixty-one years old. Dumbledore couldn't be that much older. Surely, however, some memories might have faded from his mind—ones that he no longer found important to store. But could it be possible that Dumbledore reminisced of his adolescence, chasing after the desire to become the Master of Death? It was a title he had planned to share equally with her grandfather.

Gwen bit her cheek and blinked slowly as she shifted her gaze to the floor yet again. Guilt and panic rose inside of her, as metallic and bitter tasting as bile in her mouth. How would she ever be able to complete what her grandfather asked of her?

Instead of worrying about that question, she distracted herself from the very thought of it. The conversation with Dumbledore had died, and now Gwen lived within the thoughts inside of her own head.