The morning sun had not yet burned the mist from the moors when the crack of apparition split the air. Crix appeared in the threshold of the breakfast room, his long ears quivering, clutching a rolled copy of the Daily Prophet in both hands as though it might bite him. The silver tray he'd been carrying clattered onto the sideboard—tea splashed, toast tumbled—and he didn't so much as glance at it.
"Young Master," he croaked, breathless. "You'll want to see this—though I wish you wouldn't."
Alden glanced up from the table where he'd been absently turning the pages of The Practical Theory of Resonant Wards. The light filtering through the tall windows was soft and green-tinged, bending through the ivy outside. The room smelled faintly of smoke and mint. He closed the book with a quiet snap.
"What catastrophe has the world invented today?"
Crix's eyes darted to the paper as though afraid to speak its title aloud. "A printed one. The worst kind."
He unrolled it, and the headline gleamed black and wet across the top page:
THE GRINDELWALD HEIR? Ministry Confirms Investigation Into Dumbledore's Student of Unclear Lineage.
Below it sprawled an artist's rendering of Alden himself—caught mid-duel from the Third Task, wand raised high, green light searing across his face. They had shadowed his eyes until they looked hollow, dangerous. To anyone who hadn't known him, it might have looked like a portrait of a young Dark Lord being born.
Crix's voice shook as he read. Anonymous Ministry sources confirm that young Alden Dreyse's spellwork bears resemblance to that of the infamous Gellert Grindelwald, whose theories he is rumored to study.' Lies! Wicked, festering lies!"He slammed the paper down so hard that a bit of butter knife jumped.
Alden reached for it, calm and deliberate. His expression didn't change as his eyes traced the lines. They'd quoted "witnesses"—half the school, probably. A few embellished sentences: how he'd destroyed Dumbledore's age line to enter the Tournament. How he'd called himself "above common wizards" during a duel (he hadn't). How he'd bribed Potter after attacking him in the maze. Every accusation looped neatly into the next, tying him to power, arrogance, and danger. The sort of story that lets cowards feel brave for hating you.
A small chuckle escaped him, low and humorless. "They're more creative than I expected."
Crix's ears twitched back in disbelief. "Creative? They call you a monster! They speak your family name like a curse again. Mathius would tear their tongues out if he still breathed."
"Mathius also believed hysteria was proof of progress," Alden said, folding the paper with precise movements. "Seems the theory holds."
The elf's old eyes glistened. "You don't even deny it? You'd let them drag your name through every gutter in Britain?"
"I've been called worse," Alden murmured. "Usually by people with sharper tongues."
Crix's nostrils flared. "Your father would never have stood for this. He would have marched to the Ministry himself—"
"My father is dead," Alden said quietly. "And the Ministry doesn't listen to ghosts."
The words hung there, heavy and final. Outside, a crow called once, the sound distant and hoarse. Crix went still, staring at him as though seeing something older behind his young master's eyes.
"You're too calm," the elf muttered finally. "You should be furious."
"I was," Alden said. "A year ago. It accomplishes very little."
Crix gave a sharp sniff, the kind he reserved for Dreyse's ancestors who had disappointed him in portraits. "You've your mother's temper and your father's pride. A dangerous mix when bottled too long."
"Then it's a good thing I prefer glass to breaking," Alden replied lightly.
For a long moment, neither spoke. The clock ticked once. The mist beyond the window began to thin, revealing the wild hills beyond the wards. Finally, Crix bowed his head and gathered the scattered dishes with a tremor of old magic.
"They call you Grindelwald's heir," he muttered bitterly as he stacked the cups. "But if they'd ever met him, they'd know you're nothing like him."
Alden's gaze flicked toward the folded newspaper. The black ink still glistened faintly in the light.
"Perhaps that's what frightens them," he said.
Crix looked up, startled. "Sir?"
He met the elf's eyes, and for a heartbeat, there was something sharp, cold, and older than fifteen in his expression.
"Because if they were right," Alden said softly, "they'd know what I could do to them—and that I haven't."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Then, with a faint flick of his wand, Alden summoned the paper from the table. It drifted into his hand. The next moment, the parchment burst into silent emerald flame, curling inward upon itself until nothing remained but ash that shimmered faintly before falling into the hearth.
"They always attack what they don't understand," he murmured.
Crix stared at the fading glow, chest swelling with a mix of fury and something that might have been pride. The elf bowed his head, voice rough.
"Then let them choke on their ignorance, young Master. We'll keep our truth to ourselves."
Alden turned toward the window. Beyond the wards, the fog burned away, leaving the hills sharp and silver under the sun.
"Truth," he said quietly, "is a patient thing."
And as the last ember winked out, he felt it—the familiar hum in his wand, dark resonance thrumming faintly like a heartbeat beneath the calm. Not rage. Not fear.
Just stillness. The kind before the world remembers how to listen.
The week rolled by beneath a pale sun and the constant shuffle of owl wings. Each morning, the Daily Prophet arrived like a curse that refused to lift, and each morning the headlines grew bolder—hungrier.
By the seventh of August, Alden's study had become a graveyard of newspapers. Stacks of them towered against the walls; others lay splayed open across the desk, half-burned or wrinkled, their ink bleeding through the pages. The air smelled faintly of parchment, ash, and the sharp tang of disappointment.
Crix stood amid the chaos, his small hands trembling as he clutched yet another copy, fresh from the owl's talons. His long nose quivered as he read aloud, voice tight with outrage.
"Attack on Potter — Student Rivalry or Rehearsal?" Exclusive insight into the Hogwarts dueling prodigy whose arrogance may hide darker ambitions.
He flipped to the next one without pausing for breath.
"New Dark Lord Rising?" Alden Dreyse's silence leaves questions — and fear — unanswered.
And then, the latest dagger:
"Dumbledore Grooming Successor?" The Headmaster's secret apprentice or something far worse?
Crix slammed the newspaper down, his old voice cracking with fury."They call you proud now! They say you bribed Potter to keep quiet—some nonsense about gold and guilt! That Dumbledore hides you away like a weapon waiting to be unsheathed!"
He began pacing, his ancient robes fluttering around his ankles. "The Ministry feeds them every lie they can print! That your burns were from Potter defending himself—defending himself!—as if he were the one who dragged you half-dead from that graveyard! And not a word—not one word!—about that Skeeter woman vanishing, no, they'd rather pretend you silenced her!"
Alden sat in the high-backed chair near the fire, elbows resting lightly on the armrests, watching the candle beside him tremble in the heat. The flame bowed and straightened, again and again, like it couldn't decide which way the wind was blowing.
"Rita Skeeter hasn't been seen since the first task," he said quietly. "And everyone loves a mystery."
Crix froze mid-step. "They suspect you," he said softly, as though testing the sound. "They think you—"
"Erased her?" Alden's mouth curved faintly. "If I had, the Prophet wouldn't have anyone left to write about me."
The elf drew himself upright, expression a mix of horror and reluctant admiration. "You sound like Mathius when the Ministry outlawed his work on inversion theory. He said the same thing—that ignorance must have its historians."
"Then perhaps it's hereditary," Alden murmured, eyes flicking toward the heap of papers.
The Prophet had printed everything now — students' "eyewitness" accounts, teachers' supposed "concerns," anonymous Ministry sources. One piece even quoted a "Hogwarts insider" describing how Alden had "openly declared no wizard alive could rival him."He remembered the night that lie had been born — the Great Hall, the broken stitches, the cheers. He hadn't boasted. He'd simply refused to kneel. But the world had never learned the difference between defiance and arrogance.
Crix's pacing grew more agitated. "If your parents were alive, they'd storm the Ministry themselves! They'd—"
"Be called traitors," Alden interrupted, voice even. "Just like me."
The elf stopped again, his lined face softening. "You don't even flinch when they spit on your name."
"I've learned there's no dignity in defending yourself to people who've already decided what you are."
Crix's ears drooped. "So you'll just let them call you a monster?"
"If fear keeps them awake," Alden said simply, "then I've done them a kindness."
He reached for one of the newspapers, turning it over in his hands. The illustration on the front showed him mid-duel—face half-lit, wand raised, the light warped into an emerald flare that wasn't his spell at all. The artist had exaggerated everything: the darkness in his eyes, the curve of his mouth, the tilt of his head like a king about to condemn.
"Good likeness," he said after a moment. "Though the eyes are too kind."
Crix made a wounded sound, somewhere between a growl and a sigh. "You talk like him again," he muttered, meaning Grindelwald this time. "Quiet and clever and dangerous. It's how the world loses good men."
"The world never deserved good men," Alden said, not unkindly. "It only remembers them once they're gone."
The elf turned toward him sharply, but Alden didn't look up. His fingers brushed the edge of the newspaper, feeling the grain of the parchment beneath his thumb. It trembled faintly from the heat of the fire.
He flicked his wand once.
The candlelight shivered—and the stack of newspapers ignited. Green fire rushed across the ink, devouring every word. The room filled with a faint hiss and the sweet, metallic scent of burning lies. Ash drifted upward, spiraling, scattering into the shadows above the mantel.
Crix stepped back, face half-lit by the flames, equal parts outraged and proud."You burn them like your great-grandfather burned his summons from the Ministry," he said quietly. "Refined, stubborn… and reckless."
Alden watched the last headline crumble into ash."Perhaps I just have his sense of theatre."
The firelight caught in his eyes, turning them pale and bright. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, measured — but something colder had crept beneath it.
"Fear makes good ink, Crix. Let them print their nightmares."He leaned back in the chair, eyes on the dying flames."It saves me the trouble of explaining the truth."
The elf stared at him for a long time — an old servant seeing, for the first time, not a boy he'd raised, but a reflection of every Dreyse who'd carried too much silence and too many secrets.
Finally, Crix bowed low. "Then may their ink run dry before their courage returns."
Alden didn't answer. The flames guttered and fell to ember, and for a moment, the only sound in the room was the faint crackle of burning paper and the whisper of ash falling like snow.
The Daily Prophet arrived before dawn that day, the owl's wings ghosting through the mist that hung over the moors. Crix retrieved it as he always did, muttering under his breath about "ink-drunk bureaucrats" and "human folly," but he didn't deliver it immediately. He read it first, his old eyes scanning the front page once, twice—his hands beginning to shake before he reached the end of the first column.
By the time Alden entered the breakfast room, drawn by the faint scent of smoke and tea, the elf was standing by the fire with the newspaper crushed in his hands.
"Another masterpiece from the Ministry's imagination?" Alden asked mildly, pouring himself a cup. "Or have they finally run out of synonyms for 'dark'?"
Crix turned, his expression neither angry nor frightened—just old. The kind of tired that reached the bone, "They've done it, young Master," he said softly. "They've written your future."
Alden raised a brow. "That's generous of them. How does it end?"
The elf handed him the paper in silence. The headline stretched across the top, neat and respectable, as though the words themselves hadn't been sharpened into blades:
MINISTRY ANNOUNCES LINEAGE INTEGRITY COMMISSION. Ensuring Safety Through Magical Oversight.
Beneath it, Cornelius Fudge's smiling face beamed up from the moving photograph—rosy-cheeked, self-satisfied, utterly sure of himself. Alden's stomach tightened.
He read aloud, voice steady:
"In light of recent disturbances within the magical community, Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge has announced the formation of the Lineage Integrity Commission—an independent body devoted to monitoring magical families exhibiting unusual resonances or unstable histories. This proactive measure seeks to ensure no lineage, no matter how ancient, endangers the safety of our society."
He stopped there, the faintest flicker of disbelief in his eyes. "'Unstable histories.' They make it sound hereditary."
"Because that's precisely what they mean," Crix said grimly. "They're not hunting dark wizards anymore. They're hunting bloodlines."
Alden scanned lower. Names began to appear—pure-blood families, half-bloods with records of forbidden research, old houses long faded from the Ministry's favor. The Dreyse name gleamed in the first column, right below Gaunt (defunct) and Rosier (under review).
The ink seemed to darken as he stared at it.
"They've made me precedent," he said quietly.
"They've made you an example," Crix corrected, voice low. "The first stone in a wall they'll build until it crushes someone else."
Alden set the paper down. His teacup steamed gently beside it, untouched. "So they'll monitor my 'lineage.' I suppose that means interviews, audits, perhaps a few polite interrogations about my grandfather's hobbies."
Crix's mouth twisted into something between a grimace and a smile. "You joke too easily, my boy."
"It's either that or panic," Alden replied, eyes on the window. "And I've never found panic particularly useful."
The elf studied him, his lined face unreadable. "You sound more like your great-uncle every day. Mathius said much the same when the Ministry tried to confiscate his journals. He called it the bureaucratic instinct—'If you cannot understand what you fear, regulate it.'"
"Wise man," Alden murmured.
"Mad, some said."
"They usually overlap."
Crix sighed, his shoulders sagging. "It won't stop here. You understand that, don't you? Once they find nothing in your blood, they'll invent something in your shadow."
Alden turned then, eyes catching the light. "Then let them look," he said softly. "There's less there than they hope, and more than they deserve to see."
The elf's lips pressed into a thin line. "And Dumbledore? What will he do about it?"
Alden's smile was faint and humorless. "He'll stay silent. He's good at that."
"Snape, then?"
"Worse. He'll obey orders, which is the same as silence dressed in black robes."
For a long moment, the only sound was the faint rustle of parchment as the fire drew it toward ash. The photograph of Fudge melted last—his smiling face dripping into nothing.
Crix spoke again, very quietly. "They mean to make you a villain, Alden. You can see it, can't you?"
Alden's gaze drifted back to the window. The morning fog had lifted, revealing the moors stretching pale and endless beneath the sky. The air was clean there—unregulated, unmeasured.
"They're not making me anything," he said. "They're just trying to name what they don't understand. If it comforts them to write 'villain,' let them. It's a smaller word than truth."
Crix bowed his head slightly, an old gesture of respect born from centuries of service. When he spoke, his voice carried both pride and sorrow.
"You sound less like a boy every day."
Alden's reflection in the glass looked back at him—taller, sharper, a shadow framed in morning light." Good," he said softly. "Boys are easy to blame."
He turned away from the window and the burning paper alike. The air behind him shimmered faintly, the last of the smoke curling upward into the carved rafters of the manor.
Outside, the crows were beginning to gather again—black specks against the grey-blue sky. Watching. Waiting. Always ready to feed.
Night had descended soft and silver over the Dreyse estate, the kind of stillness that made even the air seem hesitant to breathe. The wards shimmered faintly above the grounds, a pale, translucent dome that caught the moonlight and bent it into threads of white across the grass. Somewhere far below, the sea murmured against the cliffs, low and rhythmic — an old heartbeat.
Alden sat on the balcony railing, his legs dangling freely over the drop, the wind brushing through his silver-white hair. The manor behind him was silent, the lamps dimmed; even Crix had long since retreated to the kitchens, muttering about "mad boys and colder nights."
The sky stretched endlessly overhead — moon full, stars sharp and distant — and for the first time in weeks, there were no voices but his own.
He spoke softly, as if the night itself were listening.
"It went wrong so quickly."
His breath clouded faintly in the cool air. He turned his wand over between his fingers, the ebony wood catching the light like wet ink. "One year ago, I thought if I proved magic had no sides — if I showed them control was strength enough — they'd understand."A bitter laugh escaped him. "I entered their tournament to prove it. Spent a year walking their lines, fighting their beasts, bleeding for their spectacle… and for what?"
The wind tugged gently at his sleeves, whispering through the ivy.
"Now I'm a headline."
He looked out toward the horizon, where the moorland met the sea, where everything blurred into one endless sweep of grey. "I said there's no difference in magic, light or dark — only intent. I still believe that. But maybe…"He hesitated, his voice dropping lower.
"Maybe intent doesn't matter to people who've never had power in their hands. Maybe they need sides. Saints and monsters. It gives them something to kneel to."
For a while, he said nothing. Only the sea spoke, and even it sounded tired.
"I thought if I kept control, if I stayed calm, they'd see reason." He tilted his head, eyes following a star sliding between clouds. "But they don't want reason. They want someone to blame. Someone to burn for their safety."
A faint sound came from the doorway — the quiet scrape of a door pushed open, the soft pad of bare feet on stone. Crix stepped into the moonlight, his posture stiff, a small wool blanket draped over one arm. "You'll catch a cold out here," he said, voice low and disapproving.
"I won't," Alden murmured without turning. "The night's honest. That's more than I can say for most things."
Crix sighed, the weight of centuries in that single breath. "You've been talking to yourself again."
"Someone has to answer the questions the Prophet won't," Alden said. He gave the elf a sidelong glance, a ghost of humor passing his expression. "They've called me everything but quiet."
The elf moved closer, placing the blanket on the railing beside him. His wrinkled face was silvered by the moonlight, every line carved with loyalty and grief."You're not dark," he said firmly, as though the words themselves might anchor truth. "I've served this family for two hundred years, and I've seen dark. You're not it."
Alden smiled faintly, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Then maybe the world's forgotten what dark really is."
Crix looked at him long, studying the boy who'd become a shadow of every Dreyse he'd raised before. "Don't let them change what you are, Alden. The world's frightened of mirrors that show its cowardice."
He paused, then added softly, "Your father once told me, 'Fear makes fools of us all.' Don't let it make you one too."
Alden's gaze dropped to his wand again. The moonlight traced the carved runes along its handle — thestral hair and basilisk scale bound together in impossible balance. Duality made manifest.
"Fear doesn't make me foolish," he said. "It makes me aware."
He leaned back slightly, the rail creaking under his weight, and let the silence stretch. "When I fought him… Voldemort… I realized something. He wasn't powerful because of the spells he used. It was his certainty. His intent."His voice grew quieter, steadier. "The magic listened because he meant it. Every curse, every word, every breath. He never doubted what he was doing."
Crix stiffened. "You're not comparing yourself to him—"
"I'm comparing his conviction to the world's cowardice." Alden's eyes glinted in the dark. "They'll call me dark because they can't imagine strength without cruelty. Because they fear what they can't label or own. That's what disgusts me — not weakness, but the need to turn it into virtue."
The elf's voice trembled slightly. "You sound like Mathius again."
Alden looked out toward the horizon, where the ocean shimmered like mercury under the moon. "Maybe I finally understand him."
Crix moved closer, resting a small, bony hand on the railing near his knee. "You're still a boy, Alden."
He smiled faintly. "Not for much longer."
They stayed like that for a time — one old, one young, both staring into the same unending dark. Somewhere in the distance, an owl cried, its wings cutting clean through the night.
Alden spoke once more, almost to himself.
"Intent shapes power. But maybe restraint only matters in a world that deserves it."
The words hung there — not a declaration, not yet a belief. Just the first fracture of something once whole.
And as the moonlight washed over him, Alden Dreyse, the boy they called heir, sat silent on the edge of his world — watching it begin to turn away from him, and realizing for the first time that he might let it.