{Thirty-Five Owls}

VIII

November 19th, 1952

Albus--

You would truly do that? Break Its power?

I suppose I shouldn't even bother to ask.

It is peculiar, though, how much the idea distresses me. Breaking and violating Its entire history...you've held It, Albus. You've felt It tugging at your heart and soul, power as tremendous and inviolate as Death itself. To imagine that power--phenomenal, unique, ancient--destroyed forever...

I do not even know my own reaction. But, Albus, I thought you did not kill.

As for your little moment of combustion--there are no dementors in Nurmengard, Albus. The guards are only human--and, no, you shouldn't begrudge them a little sport with me. I have gone too far down the path of the Dark for pain to be anything but an inconvenience. Didn't you, too, rant endlessly about my sins when you finally came to vanquish me? Wouldn't you have me tossed in prison for taking the life of a single Muggle, after your saintly change of heart, no matter what it means for our Greater Good? Who are you to dictate my Hell?

There are no dementors, yet still, every night as I sleep, there are screams. And do you really think I'd prefer to hear the screams of wizards falling in battle, or of Muggles at labor or under torture, or even my own when I heard of your betrayal to our cause, when instead I might hear your screams of pleasure at my hands all those years ago? Of course I have been thinking of that. Of course I have been writing on it. You were beautiful once, you miserable dingbat.

And if you are ashamed, humiliated, that you were once the confidant and lover of the Dark terror of the century--well, I must get my revenge somehow. Go teach your children, eat your candy, preen your bird and bury me. But we were brilliant together, Albus, and not even you can change history.

Gellert