At the close of the nineteenth century, our focus brought us to a family from the wizarding village of Mould-on-the-Wold. In particular, a ten-year-old boy who became very important to me. He was troubled, and powerful beyond anything I had ever witnessed. My actions, and the unfortunate actions of his father, set him on a path that would lead to darkness and desolation. For him, and for many. It was never his fault, and I have never blamed him for the anger he had against me, for his entire world broke apart on a single day. His sister was attacked by three Muggle boys, in their effort to understand how she could perform such miracles, and his father chose to repay evil for evil. I saw from a distance what had happened, and arrived in time to save the boys from his wand, but the father, Percival, would not be deterred from his vengeance. He struck me with the killing curse and strangled the Muggle boys to death. Had he known who I was, and that death could not take me, he may not have acted. Percival Dumbledore may have been persuaded to spare their lives and allow them to be brought to justice. But he did not, and I was forced to bring him to justice instead.

The eldest son, Albus, having witnessed the awful treatment of his sister, Ariana, and the delivery of his father to Azkaban prison, was unhinged, invoking powers he could not fathom and without faith in the goodness of man. Perenelle and I brought it upon ourselves to watch over the boy and his family. Not many years had passed before Percival Dumbledore died in Azkaban Prison. I understood the momentary rage he had shown, and I knew Ariana had broken the Statute of Secrecy. I understood that we should have brought her to St. Mungo's Hospital once the injuries proved her magical faculties unstable. In many ways, we failed that family.

I visited Albus regularly during his first year at Hogwarts. I encouraged his schooling and begged him to trust in the goodness of wizards and men. He fought me, with both words and spells, and my inability to be harmed only infuriated him. I never gave up hope that Albus Dumbledore could be saved from the darkness he felt within, but when his mother, Kendra, moved them to Godric's Hollow to keep Ariana's wild abilities hidden from view, the task was nearly impossible. For it was there that he met Gellert Grindelwald.

Recently expelled from Durmstrang and wielding a runic symbol of a triangular eye that seemed to contain a power of its own, Gellert Grindelwald swayed Albus against the Muggles and toward a fascination with the Deathly Hallows. To them, the rune of a vertical line slicing through a circle, encased in a triangle, represented each of the three mythical artifacts. They became obsessed with finding them.

I was no stranger to obsession, but theirs was uniquely determined, especially when they discovered that Godric's Hollow was the final resting place of a Peverell son. Like me, Gellert noticed the sheer power Albus could wield, and so they bonded over experimenting with the Light Arts and the Dark. Before long, their obsession with the Deathly Hallows grew into a desire to create a new wizarding order under the banner of this runic symbol, with the charge of enslaving the Muggle people for the greater good.