Chapter 456: Dreams and Principles
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21 June 1995, Nurmengard
It wasn't hard. With their common enemy dead, Grindelwald and Dumbledore, as expected, turned towards one another, each one ready to attack, and that suited Harry just fine. After all, if his enemies were ready to do his job, then why would he stop them?
Albus Dumbledore felt the world clear up slightly as he finally realised what had happened. It had been like a fog had just been lifted from his mind, giving him a small sense of clarity. The Light's imposing thoughts, which he hadn't even noticed were almost piloting his body so far, just slipped away slightly, likely feeling relief as Harry Potter was dead.
The former headmaster could barely believe it. Harry Potter was dead. He had dreamt of this moment for years now, that the troublesome boy who had cost him so much with his interference was finally gone. He had put up a good fight, an impressive display even. It had taken both him and Grindelwald essentially imposing their wills on the material realm, fully manifesting the Light and Dark, together to finally finish him off. They couldn't have even done it without Dumbledore's spear acting as a channel, as a fragment of the Light, to enhance his will, and Grindelwald's body was essentially made of the Dark's energy, allowing him to channel even more power through it.
For the first time in centuries, the Champions of Light and Dark worked together, and they did so out of desperation to kill a boy who hadn't even gotten to his OWL year and wasn't that bit pathetic. Sure, the boy had obviously been Fate's chosen champion for the greatest prophecy ever made since the dawn of time. It was the only reason why his schemes, his far-reaching plans, somehow worked. It had taken their full power, enhanced to their peaks, to do the deed. And even then, it had to be coupled with the fact that Fate's grasp on reality was temporarily halted due to Excalibur's destruction and the frankly insane amount of magic that their ritual was utilising, which stopped the entity from protecting each champion.
And to make things worse, the boy had somehow held his own. Albus looked at what remained of Nurmengard, what had been Grindelwald's masterpiece once, his pride and joy, and all that remained was ash and destruction. Yes, Harry Potter definitely did not go down quietly. In the privacy of his mind, Albus would always fear what would have happened if they had waited for him to grow older and more experienced.
The former headmaster remembered seeing the boy arriving for his first day at Hogwarts. He had honestly forgotten about him, besides being Lily Evans' son, and a potential way to manipulate Voldemort's prophecy. Sure, his sorting into Slytherin had been something of a surprise, but it wasn't that big of a deal. After all, it was just a schoolhouse, and the boy wasn't a priority. To be honest, from his teacher's report, the boy was obviously a scholar at heart, and Albus thought that he should have gone to Ravenclaw, that he should have just capitulated.
Dumbledore realised how wrong he was when he crossed wands with the boy. His entire method of fighting was based on traps and illusions. Each attack was always a part of a stronger sequence, like a string in a tapestry, woven as a strategy. He was brilliant, there was no doubt about it, and the way he fought reflected that. Fate or not, prophecy or not, the boy had given them a fight to remember, and the mere thought of a stronger or craftier Harry Potter just made him shiver.
As if it were agreeing to his argument, the Light's relenting a bit of its influence showed just how much it had wanted the boy dead. It made sense, the boy was the first person who actually almost killed the Light, and that sort of mind and talent was terrifying. After all, if he came this close on his first try, leaving him alive came with the risk of his succeeding the next time.
Still, despite having channelled the Light many times over his life, he had never felt so completely out of control, and it was terrifying. He could feel himself being slowly overwhelmed by the spear, as the Light seeped into his soul, making it more rigid, more orderly.
It was overwhelming, and just to take a breather, he impaled it to the ground, and stared at his oldest friend, "Gellert."
The Champion of the Dark slowly morphed its form, turning slightly into a mimicry of flesh and blood, "Hello, Albus. That's a nice weapon you got here. I have to admit that I didn't see it coming."
"Given the state of Nurmengard and what you turned yourself into, there are many things that you didn't see coming," the former headmaster retorted.
"I suppose you're right. That boy really was more of a handful than I expected. I haven't been this outplayed in a very long time, maybe ever. I expected that without Fate's protection, getting rid of him would have been easy. He was more prepared than I expected."
Albus gave him a deadpan look. Gellert had just lost an army of vampires, warriors who had been alive for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Elder Vampires were known to be army killers, with countless massacres to each of their names, well-recorded in history, essentially unkillable, unharmable. Sure, the boy's use of soul magic had helped a lot, and his weeping angels were uniquely made to fight them in the darkness, slaughtering them like cattle. In the end, Dumbledore's and Grindelwald's great army was made up of just the two of them. Oh, sure, they could wipe out cities easily and overpower entire armies, but that wasn't the point.
Still, Gellert was obviously trying to buy some time to activate the ritual, and so Albus brought up the issue, "You betrayed me, Gellert."
"Have I, now?"
"The ritual was never meant to save humanity, just a fraction of it. You lied to me. You wished to ascend as a god, leaving me with the muggles to deal with Ragnarök, while you rule over a small realm like a petty god."
Gellert sneered in response, "I have never said that we'd save humanity, Albus. I always said that we'd save our world, our people, our culture, not theirs."
Looking back at their conversations, Albus had to admit that Gellert had never directly confirmed this, but had changed the subject, or made a vague enough statement that Albus made his own logical assumptions.
"This isn't a court of law, Gellert. Even if you hadn't said it directly, you knew exactly what you alluded to. You broke my trust, and you know it," Albus growled, "You would doom billions of people, and for what? So that you'd have a little realm to rule over. Don't you have enough power? Aren't you already a god in everything but name?"
"This has nothing to do with power, Albus. This is about protecting our people. The muggles are a true threat to magic, and I saw a way to separate us from them, nothing more."
"We've had this argument before, Gellert," the former headmaster answered back, "You cannot punish an entire people and commit genocide, for actions that they haven't taken yet. Your visions are not absolute. Your failure here is proof of that."
"It's funny how you judge me while you haven't seen what I've seen. I haven't seen our people wiped out, Albus. I didn't see a war. That would have been merciful, at least. It would have been an honourable end. No, our people were not killed; they were enslaved and turned into nothing more than tools and weapons. Children were born and indoctrinated, with the sole purpose of serving a role for the muggles, and they would know nothing more than that. They wouldn't be part of society, just one more asset for the muggles to use against one another. Is this what you saw as our people's fate? Is this what you think magic's legacy should be like? For thousands of years, we have fought and bled for humanity, and we ended up being hunted for it. We hid, but it was a temporary measure, and now we cannot hide. Is it truly that abhorrent that I do not wish to save the people who wish to wipe out mine?"
Albus had to admit that Gellert had a point there. In his older years, he had kept a bit of an eye on their progress and his old friend's rants, which had seemed nonsensical decades prior, started to make more sense. He had a few plans in place to deal with it, but most of them required a united magical world. If his plans for Britain had worked, and so did the expansion in Europe, he could have managed something.
He would have likely brought them to an empty place, hidden under thousands of enchantments and away from any Muggle devices. He'd have assured its privacy and that of isolated magical locations, with a network of Fidelius Charms, and the rest of the world would have followed him. He could have even used the muggles as a way to get the rest of the world to join him, to make himself a paragon of protection against them.
It would have been his final masterpiece, his greatest achievement, his final goal, and it would have been far more merciful than full extermination, but he had to abandon it when his plans for Britain fell through, and him being busy with Ragnarök, which changed everything. And so, Albus argued back, "Muggles need infrastructure to grow. The result of Ragnarök would have crippled their progress and gave mage-kind more than enough time to assert their dominance. Refusing to save them from an apocalypse that we arranged is the same as killing them. Do not pretend that you have no hands in this."
"This is why I didn't tell you. You've always lacked vision, always clung to your precious Light like some lost duckling. What do you think would have happened after Ragnarök ended? Did you think that the Light or the Dark would have left humanity alone? No, they would be enslaved by the winner if they ever returned to Midgard. This was always going to happen, and all we did was make sure that it happened on our terms. I gave our people a way out, in another realm, a chance at safety and freedom."
"There was enough energy for the rest of humanity," the former headmaster retorted heatedly, "energy that you're planning on using to ascend."
"Say that we save the muggles, say that I bring them to my realm, free of the Light or the Dark, what makes you think that the muggles wouldn't rise again the same way? They have before. Eventually, there won't be a champion of Light or Dark to protect them, and they'll fall. They need protection. They need guidance. They need me."
Silence reigned at Grindelwald's proclamation, and if he was honest with himself, Albus had to admit that he didn't know what to say about that. His old friend always had a silver tongue of some sort. It was how he swayed nations into following him in his foolish war all those decades ago. It was hard to argue with him when he obviously wished for the best for mage-kind. But the cruelty of this path stopped Albus from entertaining his words any further. It was close, the absolute decimation of billions of lives, just minutes away at the most, and no matter how much Gellert tried to argue it, no matter how much Albus had fallen, he had to admit that this was just wrong.
Gellert must have seen the advantage and continued, "It's a beautiful weapon, what you have, and a terrifying one at that. The Light did a very good job crafting it, especially the soul magic. Absolute stillness, the ultimate order of the Light, given to a spear, capable of usurping anything connected to a sword, like, for example, a ritual channelled through one. It's crafted exactly for this moment, for me, but I can see what it's doing to your soul, infecting it slowly, unmaking it. You are dying. You have been dying since you grasped that cursed weapon. No, it's worse than that. You're being erased, mind, body, and soul."
Albus nodded, "I have. I can feel the Light overwhelming me, slowly morphing my soul into a rigid thing, taking out what it thinks are my imperfections. I look at the world and see nothing but imperfections that need to be purified, and I resist the urge to do so. This was the price for my failure, one that I gladly paid. You're dying too. You barely have a body now, if you can call it that. Your soul will change irrevocably if you activate that ritual."
"You're right. I can feel the Dark pushing against me, getting louder with every moment, urging me to destroy everything. It's funny, isn't it? The end of the world hasn't begun, and yet we're both dying. No matter the victor, it all ends the same. If I win and activate the ritual, you'll die. If you win and usurp my ritual, we'll both die. So why fight? Why bother?"
"I bother because of my dreams, because of my principles. You believe that muggles would inevitably turn against mages. I believe that we cannot judge a new world before it even exists. I believe that humanity, mages and muggles alike, will learn to coexist, especially given the hardship that they'll all face, in a completely new environment."
"Ever the optimist, Albus," Grindelwald retorted with a sneer on his face.
"And you are a pessimist, Gellert."
Grindelwald chuckled, but there was no joy in the sound—only weariness wrapped in mockery. "Perhaps. But pessimism keeps people alive. Optimism makes them martyrs. Tell me, Albus, how many died for your hope? How many children, how many innocents, followed your bright ideals of a magical utopia only to find nothing but death and darkness?"
Albus didn't flinch, but it was a close thing. "And how many were butchered for your fears? How many futures did you see? How many times have you manipulated the strands of time and fate to get things to happen exactly like you want? These people that you say you want to protect, you decide for them. You reshape the world for them as if their choices were irrelevant."
"Because they are," Grindelwald snapped. "You think they'll choose rightly when the time comes? They never do. Give them the option between hard truth and easy delusion, and they will choose the lie every time. I've seen it. So, I make the choice for them. I save them without their consent, and I will keep guiding them until the end of time. That is mercy."
"Is that what you say to yourself? Is that how you justify yourself, how you manipulate everything around you like strings? Do you even see us as people anymore? You manipulated me, I see that now. You played me like a fiddle, building on my fears, on my past, putting me into a position that would push me more and more to your corner, forcing me to commit one atrocity after another, losing my own autonomy, and using your divination to say the perfect words, to take the perfect actions, just to make me join you. By the Light, maybe I would have joined you properly, with my own decisions, and I would have been happy to walk with you to the end. But you took away my autonomy, you took away my choice, just like you're planning on doing for mage-kind. So, no, Gellert, that's not mercy. This is fear. Yours. And you've been driven by it for so long that you can't even see the world without it anymore. It's why you used your divination to convince me, in fear that I'd refuse. It's why you hid your true purpose, because you feared this argument. It's why we need to fight. Because, alive or not, right or wrong, I cannot leave the fate of the wizarding world in your hands."
Albus was yelling by the end, and Gellert's new crimson eyes slowly looked solemn, "So, battle it is. I have killed thousands of people in my life. I have never regretted a single one of them, because every death had a purpose, had a goal, for the greater good of the magical world. I think yours will be the most painful. I wonder if I'll regret it."
"You've taken your last life," the former headmaster stated, taking back his impaled spear and wielding it, ready to attack his opponent.
Shadows started to grow around Grindelwald, and he answered clearly, "No, you've lived your last day."
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AN: I thought about jumping into a fight immediately, but I decided against it. It seemed more appropriate not to leave things unsaid, and it felt better to have a slower chapter after how eventful the arc has been so far. The idea was to have Grindelwald try to talk his way out of fighting, but that it's inevitable. I'm not sure I pulled it off, so, 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.