Choices Without Regrets

Chapter IV: Fragile Alliances

Abraxas eyed him warily, "Depends on what you heard, son. It could merely be rumors that are baseless. I may also know of what you want, but do not wish to answer."

Lucius nodded as he swished his brandy, "You and my lord went to Hogwarts together during the Grindelwald war, correct? A time of unrest that showed Albus fighting and a different man than the one I know now?"

Abraxas hummed in agreement to this.

Lucius eyed him, "I overheard that Albus's hatred of dark magic was somehow related to the war with Grindelwald? Is that true?"

Abraxas then considered how to answer this one; he knew the answers that his son was obviously seeking to find, but he wasn't sure this was something his son should learn from him. He sighed, however, and gestured for Lucius to get comfortable. His son summoned a chair and sat down.

"It both is and it also isn't; it's more complicated than simply the war." He agreed slowly, "How much of the Dumbledore family do you know about?"

Lucius raised a brow, "Not a whole lot, to be fair. Albus obscured lots of his family history after the war."

Abraxas nodded, "Not surprising, to be honest. Keep in mind that I learned this while in school and cannot exactly vouch for its complete accuracy; though I would still trust it more than rumors. Lucius, you know why I agreed to serve Tom. You understand what I came to believe from him in his vision of the world for us.

Back then, I was very much against all muggles like a great number of my own house. I didn't want them to ever know of us, and I had hoped to help Tom find a solution to hiding us if it proved necessary to remove our people completely from them."

Abraxas's eyes showed his haunted look, "I saw what the muggle war was doing to the world; it created more distrust for us magical folk against them. Not that Gellert Grindelwald and his fanatics were better. To understand this story, you need to understand how terrified all people were; it didn't matter of what part of the world you belonged to. Witches, wizards, muggles alike; we were all scared and terrified for our lives.

Blood status was of no import to how scared and afraid we all were then."

Lucius inclined to this; he could only imagine the horrors his father had seen back then.

"Before Gellert Grindelwald became a Dark Lord; he was a German-born student at Durmstrang Institute. He was powerful and gifted just like Tom was when he came to Hogwarts; yet Gellert had already shown signs of being unhinged.

Eventually this state of questionable sanity and his cruel experiments; it caused an uproar, and he was expelled from Durmstrang. He left as he was told to, and he never looked back."

Abraxas saw the look on his son's visage, "You know all of this. This is where the story becomes interesting. Gellert left the country after his expulsion and he came here to England; where he stayed with his Great-Aunt. A witch of great renown as a historian, and who lived in...Godric's Hollow."

Lucius's gaze snapped up to this, "Bathilda Bagshot is his relative?"

Abraxas nodded firmly, "Now, back then...It was not simply the Potter family that lived there in that tiny village. The Dumbledore family and several others did. Gellert was mostly a loner; he kept to himself, at first."

Abraxas paused, "Albus Dumbledore; he was about twenty-four or so when Gellert arrived there. He had already been named as the head of his family, and he had proven resourceful and powerful. But that power had come at a price."

Lucius's brow rose and Abraxas waited a moment, "Albus's mother; Kendra Dumbledore, she had died years ago. But few people outside of the family realized that Albus and Aberforth also had a younger sister, Arianna Dumbledore."