Gellert Grindelwald

## Gellert Grindalwald

Grindelwald (c.1935)

**Gellert Grindelwald** (b. 1882) was a Norwegian wizard who was considered to be amongst one of the most powerful and notorious wizards of all time, his only superiors being Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort. A student at Durmstrang Institute, Grindelwald was expelled for twisted, dark experiments and near-fatal attacks on students.

After leaving Durmstrang, he fostered a romantic relationship with a young Albus Dumbledore, making plans to find the Deathly Hallows and lead a Wizarding revolution to end the International Statute of Secrecy, and create a new wizard-led order that would dominate the world. At seventeen, their partnership fell apart after the two were involved in a three-way duel with Dumbledore's brother Aberforth that resulted in the death of Dumbledore's sister Ariana. Grindelwald left Britain and later stole the Elder Wand from Mykew Gregorovitch, proceeding alone with the revolution he and Dumbledore had planned.

Grindelwald was a complex figure, highly idealistic and talented, dedicated to achieve his ends at any cost. A revolutionary operating outside the law, he and his followers committed numerous crimes, including several murders. With violent acts in both the United States and Europe, Grindelwald ultimately established a power base at Nurmengard Castle in Austria. In 1945, at the height of Grindelwald's power, Dumbledore confronted and defeated him in a legendary duel. He was subsequently imprisoned in his own fortress for decades.

## Biography

### Early Life (1882-1899)

Gellert Grindelwald was born in 1882, and was educated at Durmstrang Institute during his formative years, where he excelled in various fields of magic and absorbed much of the school's strength-obsessed, Dark Magic-oriented culture. He was an extremely talented wizard who possessed an attractive and winsome personality, which was coupled with a "merry, wild" disposition.

At some point in his youth, Grindelwald, who was a natural born Seer, had a vision where he saw himself rise to dominance over the wizarding world, and when he learned of the fabled Deathly Hallows; three fabled objects which, if united, would make the possessor the Master of Death, he quickly came to see the Quest as instrumental to fulfil the aforementioned prediction.

Over the course of his school career, Grindelwald grew increasingly obsessed with learning whatever he could about the three items in question, to the point of appropriating the runic symbol that represented them as his own personal emblem; and even engraved it on the walls of Durmstrang prior to his departure. These engravings persisted for many generations, and Rita Skeeter's book *The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore* explains that Grindelwald's 'twisted experiments' had been the reason for his expulsion at 16 years old from Durmstrang before he could graduate. This was an ominous and troubling sign, as it meant that Grindelwald performed experiments that were too disturbing even for a school with a notably high tolerance of the Dark Arts.

#### Relationship with Albus Dumbledore

After his expulsion from Durmstrang, Grindelwald's quest for information about the Hallows led him to Godric's Hollow, England, where Ignotus Peverell, said to have been the first owner of Death's Cloak of Invisibility, had been laid to rest. Conveniently, his great-aunt, acclaimed wizarding historian Bathilda Bagshot, lived there and provided a place for him to stay, complete with a treasure trove of books and documents and a minimum of supervision. It was in Godric's Hollow in the summer of 1899 that Grindelwald met and befriended Albus Dumbledore. The two teenagers had a lot in common: they were intellectuals and talented young wizards, who were also idealistic and ambitious. The pair even became lovers during the two months that they knew one another. Following these “two months of insanity,” as Dumbledore would later recall them to be, the two teens shaped one another's ideas, powers, as well as destinies from that day forth and became intertwined with each other. Whilst they were staying at Bathilda Bagshot's house, they also made a blood pact, swearing never to fight each other.

The pair shared two preoccupations: The first was their search for the Deathly Hallows toward the goal of acquiring all three and wielding their power to become a Master of Death, which they believed to mean immortality and invincibility. They also dreamed of overturning the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy and creating a new order in which wise and powerful wizards and witches were the benevolent overlords of their world, including Muggles. Dumbledore coined the phrase "For the Greater Good" that would be used to justify the necessary use of force required to achieve their goals, and Grindelwald would later adopt as his motto.

However, Dumbledore's motivations and intentions were different from Grindelwald's: as a young man, he had been powerless to stop a group of Muggle boys tormenting his younger sister, Ariana, to the point that the sweet-natured girl suffered an emotional breakdown and her repressed magic became dangerously unstable. Dumbledore's father was sent to Azkaban for taking revenge on the boys and his mother was killed in one of Ariana's accidents. Dumbledore wanted the power to protect his loved ones (and by extension the whole world) against cruelty and xenophobia like that shown by the Muggles. He viewed the Resurrection Stone as a way of returning his parents to life and relieving him of his new familial obligations, while Grindelwald mistakenly viewed it as a tool to amass an army of Inferi.

Their plans to leave Godric's Hollow, acquire power, and begin their revolution turned serious. When Dumbledore's brother Aberforth became aware of this, he was both concerned about and disgusted with Albus's ambition, knowing that he and Ariana would need to be brought along as she would not receive the care and attention she needed to keep her stable. The tense situation boiled over into a confrontation and Grindelwald, enraged, inflicted the Cruciatus Curse on Aberforth. Albus moved to defend his brother, igniting a vicious three-way duel in which Ariana was killed. Grindelwald fled the country and received putative blame for Ariana's death, thus confirming his place on the wrong side of the law and touching off his career as a Dark revolutionary, which would last until 1945.

### Rise to Power (1900-1926)

#### Theft of the Elder Wand (1903)

Grindelwald delved into his research on the Deathly Hallows and uncovered the location of the Elder Wand. Rumours had been circulating that the renowned Wandmaker Mykew Gregorovitch was in possession of the wand and was trying to duplicate its properties. Grindelwald broke into Gregorovitch's workshop, lay in wait for the Wandmaker, stunned him, and stole the wand, thereby becoming its new master. Grindelwald's research may have uncovered this unconventional path to ownership of the wand as the common interpretation was that ownership passed only by murder.

## Physical Appearance

Grindelwald had an aptitude for human Transfiguration allowing him to change his body type and shape to suit he need. Most well seen when he impersonated Percival Graves.

However, he

As a young man, Grindelwald had golden-blond hair and a "merry, wild" and "handsome" face. Harry Potter thought he had "a Fred and George-ish air of triumphant trickery about him".

By the time he was middle aged, Grindelwald's hair was light blond, and he one blue eye and one silver. He also had a thin white moustache.