Chapter 437: Crack in the Foundation

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7 June 1995, Land of Shadows

The vampire spoke up, "I also have a few ideas on how to increase your odds during the fight against Dumbledore and Grindelwald." Harry turned towards the vampire with a gleam in his eyes, "I'm interested."

The meeting ended up taking up hours of his time. It was time to literally plan for everything, including how to separate their army into small teams, which speciality would go there. Arcturus and Delacour were obviously not going to participate in the fighting. They were just too old to be able to do this, despite their protests. To be fair, Delacour didn't protest as much as Arcturus who still grumbled at Harry, glaring whenever their eyes met. Alright, it might have been because of the fact that Harry didn't want his guardian fighting in a war, but the logic was still sound.

In terms of true heavy hitters, they were Harry, Drakul, and Marinakis, and after each of them finished their roles, they were supposed to meet up to fight Grindelwald and Dumbledore together. Of course, Drakul had to break the wards first, Harry had to try to fight against Dumbledore and set up his plan, which should start in Britain, as well as making the connection with the World Tree seed, and Marinakis should help lead the fight against the vampires, carving his way in publicly.

Remus Lupin and Severus Snape technically counted as 'faction leaders', but if Harry was honest to himself, they could barely fight a Vampire Elder each, which was frankly very disappointing. Well, Lupin probably could take on two at best, but in this war, that didn't make him all that remarkable in a war of this magnitude. Snape, while a fountain of resources barely even counted in a real fight. Both of them also treated him pretty weirdly, obviously still seeing him as his mother's son. Thankfully, he didn't have to deal with them, and the others were still in the room. Lupin was still stabilizing his group. Lily's death still caused a few tensions to rise, not much but enough that he had to be involved. As for Snape, he was still looking for a suitable prophecy that Dumbledore could break and didn't have the time to come.

Anyway, the Unspeakables and the Lycans would participate in the attack on Nurmengard, with the Unspeakables focusing on breaking the wards or any enchantments they face there, but not in the fighting itself, while the Lycans would be on the frontlines fighting off the vampires in close combat, with support from the mercenaries from long range.

Thankfully the meeting was over, and Harry watched as Daphne decided to talk to Arcturus and Marinakis about something. The blonde had remained quiet for the entire meeting, not really chiming in any way, despite having asked to be part of it. If he had to guess, Daphne had wanted to make sure that they had an actual plan more than anything. Harry still had some reservations about her being part of the fighting, words from the future or not. She was certainly capable, but he didn't like the idea of her being hurt, then again, it was probably the same for her.

His train of thought was interrupted by Vlad making his way towards him, "Ah, young love. It's always so refreshing to see."

Harry snorted, "If only we didn't have the Apocalypse holding us back. I can't help but be worried about her."

"And she can't help but worry about you."

He hummed but didn't answer and the vampire continued, "You shouldn't underestimate her. Perhaps you don't even think that you do, perhaps it's a subconscious thing, but she will surprise you. Do you want to know what she's talking with them about?" he motioned towards them.

Harry nodded and the vampire answered, "She's currently negotiating with Marinakis to house her family under his wards. I have to admit that they will be quite safe there. Delacour is probably going to follow her lead too. She's even arguing for the Lycan children to also get a place there."

The last Potter an amused smile, "She's always been a bit of a spitfire despite her trying to be cold and collected. And it's not that I underestimate her, it's just that I don't want her fighting on the frontlines."

"Then give her a bigger role elsewhere. We have enough warriors and fighters. One girl will not make a difference, not really. She could be a lot more valuable away from the carnage. Trust me, forbidding her from fighting will only make her want to do it more."

Harry thought about it and had to admit that the vampire had a point. He'd just been blinded by the prospect of Daphne getting hurt or dying had rattled him a lot, and made him very hesitant to make her part of the fighting and she obviously knew that. However, like it or not, Daphne's new combination of blood magic and her crest's druidic magic had made her very formidable.

He didn't delude himself and think that he could stop Daphne from fighting, but what if he could make it so that she had a critical role in the coming fight without being on the frontlines? He knew that she would be involved anyway, so why not use it to his advantage?

He stifled a grin as an idea formed in his mind. It could work, and it fits perfectly with his plan. He turned towards the vampire and said, "I'll take that into consideration."

The vampire chuckled and changed the subject, "You were quite good. If it wasn't for your age, I would have thought you were a veteran commander leading his battalion in a war."

"I was pretty nervous, to be honest," Harry answered back, "I'm glad it didn't show."

The vampire shook his head, "You don't get it, do you? I wasn't giving you a compliment."

Harry tilted his head, "I'm not sure what you mean."

"You did a good job acting like a war general, but that's not who you are. You're leading an army, ready to charge at a magical fortress probably with more wards than most ministries combined, ready to fight the Champions of Light and Dark by yourself. It's not a bad plan, but it's obviously not yours."

Harry stayed silent at that, and the first vampire continued, "You are not a general, Harry Potter. You are not a soldier, nor a warrior. You are a scholar and a trickster. That's how you survived against Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and that's how you need to be to defeat them. You're fighting them as they would fight you. You know fully well that in a contest of might, they would win. You are clever, but you do not have something like the Light or the Dark empowering you. Perhaps had things been different, were they normal if extremely powerful mages, you'd have a chance, but we're not so lucky. The others are warriors and fighters, this is what they're used to. You're not and you need to use that to your advantage."

Harry nodded, looking pensive. Of course, his plan was pretty layered. He'd only given the others a surface taste of what he'd been planning but Vlad still had a point. Most of them didn't understand why Harry wanted to be at Hogwarts at the start. Sure, he would love nothing more than to stop Dumbledore from destroying the final prophecy, but he wasn't exactly extremely hopeful about it. There were too many variables, but there was a lot to gain from being there, a small edge in his favour, despite the inevitable fight with Dumbledore.

They didn't know about Harry's plan for the inevitable fight, his ace in the hole, seeing it as a battle just to get Harry there to fight against impossible opponents, and he wasn't planning on telling them otherwise. They didn't know the extent of how much Harry prepared everything, but now that he thought about it, he could do better, for the surface fights as well. Daphne could play a part in it as well. It would satisfy her, given the size of the role.

Ideas started to swim in his head, layers and layers of plans that he could implement, and it would save him a lot of time and money. Nevertheless, he didn't say anything to Vlad and just asked, "You said something about helping me against the Light and Dark?"

The vampire let out a sigh, "You're planning to fight the Light and Dark together, but you don't have to. I have reason to believe that Gellert will not tell Dumbledore everything about his plans."

"Why is that?"

"That ritual, the one that he's been designing, he's been doing it for decades, refining it. Of course, I thought that it was nothing more than a scholarly pursuit, but it was more than that. Albus Dumbledore, for all his faults, deludes himself into thinking that he has noble intentions. He would not have joined Gellert, essentially bringing forth Ragnarök, if he didn't have a noble reason to do that."

"What do you think the true purpose of the ritual is?" Harry asked.

"I said it before, I don't know it for sure. Many things have changed since Gellert was my student."

"But you have a guess," the young wizard insisted.

The vampire sighed regretfully, "You know, you remind me of him. Gellert was a brilliant young man, but he never valued power, not the way that you think. He is a powerful seer, probably one of the strongest I've ever met, and since his childhood, he'd been haunted by nightmares, possibilities and death. It changed him the only way it could change any child. Gellert saw the muggles wiping out or enslaving the mages and wanted to save them, wanted to save us, but he found no other path to salvation without power. Mages listened to the most powerful and he decided to do that. All that conquest, all these deaths, they were sacrifices for his fateful victory. Believe it or not, he thought of his connection to the Dark as a shackle, as an unwelcome voice in his head. It was one of his main contentions with Dumbledore, who thought of the Light as some form of divine guidance."

"Seriously?" Harry asked, stupefied. It was odd to think of Grindelwald as anything more than a Champion of the Dark.

"Yes. He spent decades stifling the Dark, hoping not to use it, only to fail, for his life's work to be undone by his former friend who had given in to the Light. I think something broke in him that day, which was probably the Dark's plan in the first place now that I think about it."

"But what does that have to do with his ritual?"

The vampire hummed, "Gellert spoke of a ritual before he started the war. It was his last resort when all else failed. Even he thought it was too drastic to be used casually. When the magical world is threatened, when it would face extinction, at the hands of the muggles, he would have enacted this ritual, to essentially transport the entire magical work into a realm. Anything with a drop of magic, be it plant, creature, or mage, would be removed from the material realm and into one he had specifically chosen. He would ascend, shedding his connection to the Dark, and become a god, unageing, unending, ruling of the magical world however he deemed fit."

Harry didn't respond to that. He didn't exactly know how to. This was beyond mad. He could see why power requirements were so immense, but the sheer principle of it was just wrong. He couldn't seriously do that without any repercussions. For one, Harry had seen Grindelwald's very essence during the fight against Olympus and it was so intertwined with the Dark that it would be impossible for him to rip his connection with the entity. Maybe he was hoping that it would be too distracted with Ragnarök to care?

"That's insane," was all he managed to get out.

"I said the exact same thing to him when he told it to me. I thought it was a theory, a thought exercise at best. I should have seen that my answer obviously upset him. He would have confided in me if I thought otherwise, but I was too foolish to think further of it."

Harry shook his head, "It wasn't your fault and blaming yourself will not help anyone. At least we know this much. But I see your point when you said that Grindelwald didn't tell Dumbledore everything, I don't see him agreeing with something like this, to leave the entirely of the magical world under his enemy's control."

The first vampire snorted, "Agreeing? Of course, he wouldn't agree. But Albus Dumbledore is someone that Gellert figured out a long time ago. He likes to think that suffering is a cost of a greater plan, a greater good. It wouldn't be hard for Gellert to modify the details enough to frame this as a way to save the magical world from annihilation. It's a very foolish attitude to have, especially for someone with so much power, but it likely stems from when his sister died, a young man desperately trying to find a reason for the cruelty she experienced, to justify his possible role in killing her. Nevertheless, this provides us with an opportunity."

"To turn them against one another," Harry hummed. It was a good idea, even if it was very risky. There was a high chance that Dumbledore wouldn't believe him. Maybe he could trick Grindelwald into revealing it somehow. Again, there were too many variables and too many ways for things to go wrong. Still, this gave him more context about Grindelwald's ritual and how he could potentially mess with it. His mind was swimming with plans, a few viable, others not so much.

Harry took a deep, calming his thoughts and asked something that had been on his mind ever since Vlad told him of his suspicions about Grindelwald's ritual, "Is Grindelwald really prepared to destroy the material realm, causing another Great Cataclysm, wiping out billions of innocent people, non-magical creatures but innocent nonetheless, for his plan?"

Because that's what it would do. Grindelwald was obviously planning this for a while from the shadows but accelerated things when the prophecy of Ragnarök started to appear. He obviously wanted to use it as a smokescreen, but to do that, to blow on Gjallarhorn just for his plans was beyond drastic. It was simply monstrous and mad.

The first vampire nodded, "I'm afraid so. It's the only reason I could see him having stolen Gjallarhorn. Your main priority should be the horn. Without it, Grindelwald would not activate his ritual. He will not risk the Dark's ire when trying to escape its grasp, and he definitely will not allow the magical world to be under its control. Turn the Champions of Light and Dark on one another, then steal the horn. That is the only way."

It wasn't. For all his knowledge and age, Vlad didn't know all the variables and didn't even know what Harry's plan was. It was funny how his plan seemed perfect for exactly this scenario, but Vlad's knowledge gave Harry room to improve it. A big limitation was the lack of information on his enemies' plans, and now he had more than enough to start planning.

A mischievous and blood-thirsty grin appeared on Harry's face, "You know what, Vlad, you were right about me sticking to my roots."

"Think nothing of it. It was just some advice," the vampire retorted.

"Well, let's just say I had a very clever idea, and I'll need your help to pull it off."

By the time Harry explained his plan, Vlad Drakul had a grin that matched his own.

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AN: I'm not really sure about that one. I wanted it to address a bit Harry's 'simple' plan from the previous chapter and add a bit more substance to Vlad's character in the story. I finally decided to address Grindelwald's plan a bit. Given that Ragnarök is very near, I felt that it was time. I was pretty hesitant to put it here and not leave it for later, but I decided to use it to make Vlad a bit more useful in the story (other than the final battle). You guys are right that I didn't really write an elaborate plan, but that was mostly because this is the surface-level plan, essentially the smokescreen, and I don't want to spoil the actual thing. Let's just say it's a very 'Harry' plan. As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.

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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.