{Thirty-Five Owls}

I

September 10th, 1951

Dumbledore--

Lo, it is I. Your old friend, Gellert Grindelwald. Your surprise at receiving this, believe me, is somewhat less than my surprise at writing it. Still, I go where I will, do what I will, as you well know.

I hope this finds you in good time, especially after all that bragging I've heard about England's owls. The birds do not fly easy around Nurmengard's tower. The storms pour down off the mountains like floods. I'm twenty feet under the lightning rod, and, oh, the crackles it makes when the cloud fronts break, like the whole castle's under Cruciatus. Huge anvils in the sky with the thunder hammering down from them through the night of boiling pitch, and when the clouds part it's the werewolf moons of the North coming in through the bars. It's beautiful. Though not to your taste, I assume; too uncivilized.

You're no doubt staring down your nose at this, letter and bedraggled owl both. (She likes white mice.) Are you really surprised, old friend, that I'd have the stomach to write to you, even after everything that happened? You shouldn't be. This is dear old Gellert, you should say. Bagshot's German pest. Never leaves me alone, even now that he's sitting in prison all day with nothing better to do. My much-lauded gold is going grey, Albus, imagine that! Still, I must say, as prisons go, the stonework is exquisite. Good of me to encourage the masons so, if curses could be considered encouragement, and they left the magic scars like jagged ivy in the granite, very pretty. Enjoy the irony. Old. Friend. Locked in my own prison.

You still at that school of yours? Enjoying teaching, I hope? Reading plenty? Eating well? Taking good care of It? You'd better be.

Give my regards to that mad bird of yours. Hope I didn't kill him too much.

Listen to me. Hope. Hope. With the mold gathering on the walls of my cell. Laugh at me, Albus. Go on hating me like you always have. Enjoy yourself.

Gellert