Grindeldore recs
Posted on reddit hpslash first. Cleaned up!
I selected mostly intro recs so if you already read a lot of fics about this pairing these won’t be new to you. No Fantastic Beasts recs from me :( This is just the seven HP books/movies.
A lot of the fics are M-rated. Contains some smut. Most of them are canon compliant. They contain some angst because Grindeldore canon is angsty.
Short fics. Less than 5K words
Fortress, An Anatomy
by tehtarik (2014)
Summary: There is a fortress in the mountains and it watches the world. It watches its beloved Master and it watches itself. Nurmengard is the name of that place.
Sentient Nurmengard! I love sentient buildings so much and this one is great! I really like reading about how authors think about sentient Hogwarts, Grimmauld Place, Nurmengard and other places.
Clear as a windowpane Nurmengard remembers the first sight of its master all those years ago when it was rising out of dirt, feet and foundations and torso and ribs and shoulders of granite. And the Master, Gellert Grindelwald they called him, glowing gold in the dirt-coloured skies of winter, untroubled by wind and rock, wand held above his head in glee.
Himnusz
by eldritcher (2011)
Summary: Before there were wars and wands, before Ariana and Nurmengard, there were two boys who loved lemon-drops.
Gellert is deeply patriotic in this fic. The Hungarian national anthem is used beautifully to show the two great loves of Gellert’s life: Albus and his motherland. This fic tells a lot of story without actually telling a lot of story.
“I was born by the riverside, you know,” I told him softly. “My father often told me the tale of Moses, of a babe found by the river who grew up to be a leader. My mother named me after her Magyar grandfather who was slain in a skirmish with the Habsburgs.”
“Gellert - the spear, the weapon of your people,” Albus murmured. “She named you aptly. You will be powerful.”
Hair of the Dog That Bit You
by occamybites (2017)
Summary: “Gellert should have turned and walked away. It had been ten years. Gellert was the fifth most wanted man in Europe and rising, and Albus was a schoolteacher. All promises were already broken. There was no going back.”
Gellert runs into Albus in Vienna. Albus wants to have sex one last time to get Gellert out of his mind. Tragic. I keep saying that a lot in this post but that’s because this pairing is tragic.
He and Albus had discussed Sacrifice. They had always known there would be sacrifices. They had mostly imagined that they would be other people’s sacrifices.
Medium length fics. 5K to 20K words
Thirty-five Owls
by letterblade (2008)
Summary: Being a correspondence between Albus P.W.B. Dumbledore, Grand Sorcerer, Supreme Mugwump, etc., and the prisoner Gellert Grindelwald, of some decades in length.
This is the very first Grindeldore fic I read! It is funny, romantic and tragic. This is a great intro to Grindeldore fic if you are new to the pairing! The Grindeldore fic for a lot of folks, rightfully so!
But I am nothing to you anymore but an ear. Writing ancient lovers tearful letters in your Christmas sherry again, Albus? Back & forth we go, back & forth.
The Prisoner’s Remorse
by Miss M (2011)
Summary: After Sirius Black’s betrayal, Professor Dumbledore finds work for Remus Lupin as a prison guard in Nurmengard, where there are quite a few things to be learned.
I love Remus in this fic! He’s younger than we usually see in fics. More innocent and less jaded. Gellert and Albus are very much obsessed with each other. Neither of them are easy characters here to sympathize with but they are very much human in their relationship. Remus is caught in the middle. It’s also got a Wolfstar theme. The reason why Albus sends Remus to Nurmengard is because he thinks Remus understands what it is like to obsess over somebody like Gellert.
Tragic…but Wolfstar is always tragic. Grindeldore is usually tragic. So the combination is double the feels and double the angst.
“How is that old vanquisher of mine, Albus Dumbledore? I expect he played quite a part in this struggle?”
“Quite.” Remus felt strangely self-conscious, as if there were something almost inappropriate in discussing Dumbledore with this man. “He’s very much admired.”
“Of course,” Grindelwald said. “Of course. But then again, he’s always been most admirable.”
The Sultan and Scheherazade are one
by eldritcher (2021)
Summary: Albus Dumbledore is irresistible. This is merely the first of Gellert Grindelwald’s problems.
This is probably my favorite Albus. He’s a contradiction of being shy and bold. Gellert is head over heels for him. Lots of discussions about anarchy and socialism. Reading poetry to each other. Lots of world events seen through Gellert’s eyes - World wars, Spanish Flu. The second part of the fic is set in Nurmengard. Gellert gets only one visitor. It’s not Albus. There’s tragedy of course, because this is Grindeldore after all! A sweeping and brilliant story told without a lot of words. This one is brand new and got me on a binge read through my Grindeldore favorites.
“Trothed under a yew,” he said solemnly.
“Romantic,” I tried to say in dismissal, but my insouciance fell flat before his earnestness.
We crowned each other, under his whore mother’s roof, with berries from his sister’s favorite yew.
Long fics. 50K+ words
Let Perpetual Light
by tehtarik (2016)
Summary: In the village of Godric’s Hollow, the Dumbledore family is falling apart. Kendra Dumbledore is dead under mysterious circumstances, and Albus is the unwilling guardian to his wayward brother Aberforth, and Ariana, their mad sister in the attic. But everything changes with the arrival of Gellert Grindelwald, violently charming juvenile delinquent with an obsession for the fabled Deathly Hallows.
This is a longfic. Since completed longfics for this pairing are pretty hard to come by, it’s a treat whenever we get one. It’s set around Ariana Dumbledore’s life being the driving force in Albus’s and Gellert’s lives. The characterizations here aren’t the ones I am used to seeing for Albus and Gellert but the author makes it work great. It’s well written and definitely recommended!
Albus remains in the churchyard, beside Ariana’s grave, long after the last guest (Bathilda) leaves. A number of the other attendees had milled around in a rather infuriating fashion, pretending to examine the names and inscriptions on the ranks of headstones. He rather suspected that Aberforth’s public outburst had stirred up some excitement among them, and they lingered, scavenging for gossip. Ariana is in the earth now, still unacknowledged by life.
random thoughts
When I did this post, I realized how the fandom characterizations of Albus and Gellert changed between Thirty-five Owls back in 2008 to later characterizations like Let Perpetual Light in 2016. It’s so amazing to see the pairing evolve and get reinvented by talented authors over the years!
I also noticed how fics by the same authors evolve over time. Let Perpetual Light is more ambitious and darker than Fortress, An Anatomy by tehtarik even if they are both equally great reads and actually part of a series!
Equally interesting is how some authors keep the same headcanons over time. Himnusz and The Sultan and Scheherazade are one by eldritcher are both very similar in characterizations even if they are written in 2011 and 2021 respectively.
Finally I also noticed how much creativity the authors use in filling the years between 1899 and the big showdown. After Gellert’s imprisonment, epistolary fics are so creative when they fill in the gaps!
Another thing I noticed is that unlike Snarry this fandom doesn’t have a lot of portrait fics or Patronus fics.
Literature! Literary references are everywhere in Grindeldore fics compared to other ships! Whether it is Thirty-five Owls and its literary references to Everybody’s Autobiography and Gertrude Stein or The Sultan and Scheherazade’s and its reference to a ton of books about solitary confinement from Napoleon and Marquis de Sade to Princip who assasinated the Archduke which began World War I, literary references are everywhere in these fics!
I also made this Rec List picking 21 slash fics from 21 years (2001 to 2021)!