Dumbledore listened to the fading footsteps of the first year student as he sat upon the desk. He rose slowly, though he would never admit it, he was old. He could not escape the creak that had slowly set into his joints as deeply and permanently as his very own magic. Not even wizards could escape the hands of time. He moved to the mirror, not with his usual air, but that of a dog that loyally held off death because he felt his master needed him. Turning towards the mirror, with no expectance on his face, he simply looked.

The cave was built for exploring. Seeped with ancient magic it lured the boys who were slightly to old for such folly. They scrambled for footholds in the dark, the thin layer of precipitation on the walls soaking their hands. the natural formations wound them forward slowly steering them so that the light was lost slowly like a horizontal sunset until the last glimpse of light had been lost.

"Grindelwald!" The more reluctant of the duo had not been worried until he realized that he could no longer see. "Grindelwald, we should go back!"

The steady gentle pull on his arm loosened, the fingers relaxing slightly but remaining in the speakers own. He could hear Grindelwald turn towards him.

"Come on, Albus! We'll be fine." The voice was low and smooth. Confident, and strong enough that it could over come the unsure nagging voice inside a person's head.

But something felt wrong this time. The voice in him was more assertive that proceeding would end badly. Albus pulled back slightly, "No."

Albus could feel Grindelwald move closer. "Why not?"

It was a quiet inquiry. Something about the moist cave demanded silence. Like a library, one could not help but feel that to raise one's voice would shatter some sort of spell made of a lattice of glass.

"My feet are cold." The lie floated through the cave's warm stagnant air and became the humidity that wetted the walls.

"Your feet are cold." Albus could hear the amused smile on the other's face. "You know what helps cold feet. Warm wool Socks."

Albus blushed and smiled slightly in the dark. "Perhaps then you will have to get me a pair then, for our adventures."

"Yes, I guess I will." The grin was so thickly layered in his voice that Albus actually imagined that he could see it for a moment.

Suddenly Grindelwald twisted to face into the proceeding darkness of the cave. "We'll be right back, we just need to get some socks!"

The loud declaration echoed in the cave as the boys left, followed slowly by the reverberations of their own laughter.

Dumbledore had never gotten the socks. The event was lost in the ideas and schemes of the two teenage boys. It laid riddled among the notes and the late night talks and the plans for the future until it was buried in the events of that summer. It had seemed so insignificant at the time, just a moment of curiosity, but it had come to represent that summer, those memories.

Dumbledore stood for a long time gazing into the mirror in the quiet moonlit classroom, the same spell on it as the one in the cave. And just a suddenly as he had made his presence known to Harry, he turned and left.