The manor was quieter than usual that morning. Not the peaceful kind of quiet, but the kind that waited.
Rain whispered against the glass panes, threading silver lines down the tall windows. The scent of storm and polish lingered in the air, mingling with the faint, familiar traces of old parchment and floor wax. Alden stood before his open trunk, sleeves rolled up, methodically folding a set of dark robes. His wand rested on the desk beside him, still faintly humming from use the night before.
Crix hovered nearby, arms crossed, a pair of neatly pressed socks floating in the air beside him as if waiting for permission to join the pile. His ears twitched once—an old habit of restraint. The elf had lived through too many Dreyse departures not to know when words were coming, and when they were being avoided.
"You don't have to go back, you know," he said finally, his voice gravelled by age and too much loyalty. "The train will leave without you just fine."
Alden smirked faintly. "It's rather famous for doing that."
"I'm being serious, young Master."
"I know," Alden said, glancing at him. "That's what makes it so irritating."
He turned back to the trunk, lining his books with surgical precision. Intermediate Transfiguration. Magical Drafts and Potions. Ancient Runes Made Easy. Each cover clicked against the next like the closing of a lock. He hesitated before adding Dark Arts Defence: Basics for Beginners and gave a small, amused shake of his head.
Crix tutted softly. "You mock, but that book's the best protection most will ever read."
"And that's the problem," Alden replied, sliding the volume neatly into place. "They're taught to fear the dark, not understand it."
"Understanding it didn't save your family," the elf muttered.
Alden paused, just briefly, before closing the trunk lid halfway. "No," he said. "But neither did fear."
Thunder rumbled somewhere above the moors. The air shivered through the glass, faint and hollow.
Crix sighed, tugging at the edge of Alden's cloak before folding it with unnecessary fuss. "If young Master insists on returning to that castle, he should at least explain why. The school's full of whispering mouths—and the Ministry's spies wear student robes now."
Alden leaned against the trunk, gaze distant. "Because Hogwarts is the one place the Ministry doesn't own. Not yet. As long as Dumbledore's there, they can't touch me."
"Dumbledore is a man," Crix said flatly. "Men grow old. Men make mistakes."
Alden smiled without humour. "Yes. But his mistakes are still safer than Fudge's truths."
Crix muttered something under his breath about old fools and their phoenixes. He adjusted the clasp on Alden's trunk, testing its weight. "You've grown again," he said absently. "Five foot eleven now, I think."
Alden glanced down at him. "You measured?"
Crix sniffed. "I've been measuring Dreyses since before your great-grandfather learned to tie a cravat. You're all the same—tall, thin, and too clever for your own good."
"Occupational hazard."
The elf's hands slowed. "Hogwarts sent no letters this summer," he said after a moment, too casually. "No prefect's badge either."
Alden chuckled, soft and low. "Did you expect one?"
"You deserve one."
"Perhaps," he said, closing the trunk fully now. "But prefects are symbols. Dumbledore has enough fires to put out without adding my name to one."
"You think the Headmaster would refuse you?"
"I think he'd protect me," Alden said quietly. "And sometimes that means keeping me invisible."
Crix gave a derisive snort. "Invisible, he says, while half the Prophet's staff writes his obituary."
Alden didn't rise to it. He sat down on the edge of the bed, fingers brushing over the grain of his wand. "It's safer there," he said again, softer this time. "You know it is."
The elf's shoulders sagged. "Crix knows," he admitted. "He also knows what the Lineage Commission does to names it dislikes."
Alden looked at him, steady and calm. "Then you know why I have to go. If they want to make me their villain, they'll have to do it where Dumbledore can see."
The room filled with the faint, rhythmic tapping of rain on glass.
Crix exhaled, then picked up the last book from the nightstand—Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The spine was scuffed, the corners dog-eared. He brushed a hand over the cover before placing it on top of the others. "You've read this one too often."
"Habit," Alden said. "It reminds me there are creatures worse than wizards."
That earned him a faint grunt of approval.
The elf looked around the room—the neatly folded clothes, the books, the wand holster beside the window—and then at the boy who was somehow both fifteen and far older than any fifteen-year-old had a right to be.
Crix spoke again, more quietly now. "You'll be careful?"
"As careful as I can afford to be."
The elf didn't look satisfied, but he nodded. "Crix will see the manor moved east," he said. "Beyond the Fens. Hidden deep."
"Good," Alden murmured. "Let the Ministry look west."
Crix hesitated at the door. "And what will young Master do when they start asking about his blood?"
Alden's gaze drifted toward the rain-streaked window, the moors dissolving into grey. "Nothing," he said. "There's nothing to do. Gellert left a hole in this world, and everyone's still falling through it. They'll always fear the name Grindelwald. I just happen to share the blood that made them tremble."
The elf's throat bobbed once, old anger flashing behind his eyes. "It isn't fair."
Alden gave a thin smile. "Neither was the world he tried to build."
He rose, closing the trunk with a firm click, then rested one hand on the lid. The manor creaked faintly, as though listening.
"I'll be fine, Crix," he said, turning toward him. "And if I'm not, you'll hear about it long before I do."
For the first time, Crix allowed himself a short, grudging laugh. "You sound like him."
Alden looked up, puzzled. "Who?"
"Your father. The same arrogance when he left for his fifth year."The elf's expression softened. "But you've his mother's eyes when you lie about being fine."
Alden didn't answer. He simply knelt, clasped the latch on his trunk, and whispered a sealing charm. The gold runes pulsed once, faint and greenish, before sinking into the wood.
Crix sighed, the sound low and heavy with memory. "Then it's settled."
"It was settled long before we spoke," Alden said, standing. "Now it's just packed neatly away."
He reached for his cloak. The rain outside had eased to a mist. Somewhere deep within the manor's bones, the old wards stirred, sensing departure.
"Come, Crix," he said gently. "Let's not make the house lonelier than it already is."
The elf followed him to the door, eyes glimmering in the dim light, and for a moment the two stood side by side — the last Dreyse and the last witness of their name.
Neither said goodbye.
They simply stepped into the hall, leaving the packed trunk waiting in silence behind them.
The air outside the manor carried the smell of rain and old stone — that clean, hollow scent that came only when the clouds had spent themselves and the moors breathed again. Mist clung low to the ground, coiling through the hedgerows and wrapping itself around the cobbled courtyard like a shawl.
Alden stood at the edge of it all, trunk at his side, wand tucked into his sleeve. Behind him, the manor loomed in patient silence — its tall spires blurred by fog, its windows dim as if the house itself knew what was about to happen.
Crix stood a few paces away, his thin fingers resting against one of the stone columns that framed the great doorway. He had changed into a rough travelling cloak that looked far too large for him, the hood pushed back so his long ears drooped into the drizzle. For once, he wasn't muttering or fussing. He just watched Alden with an expression that didn't quite fit his face — something like sorrow softened by pride.
"The wards are ready," Crix said at last. His voice came out low and deliberate, as though each word weighed more than it should. "Once you're gone, I'll move the manor west, near the marshlands. Deep enough that no owl will find it. No wizard either."
Alden nodded, eyes tracing the manor's fading edges. "Good. Keep it breathing."
Crix's gaze flicked to him. "And you, young Master? Who will keep you breathing?"
Alden gave a small, crooked smile. "Dumbledore's still good at that. And Hogwarts hasn't killed me yet."
"That's not funny."
"I wasn't trying to be."
The elf's mouth twitched, ears drooping further. For a long moment, neither spoke. The rain ticked softly against the paving stones, and a lone crow called from somewhere beyond the mist.
Then Alden turned, stepping closer until the two were eye to eye — or near enough. He knelt without ceremony, bringing himself level with the old elf. His robe hem darkened against the damp stones.
"Hey," Alden said quietly, almost a whisper, like he was speaking to the air itself. "I'll be fine, Crix. It's nothing but words. Rumours and titles for people too afraid to see the difference. They can call me whatever they like — it doesn't make it true."
Crix's jaw worked, but no sound came. His eyes glimmered faintly, the way old glass caught the light. "They'll twist those words until even you start to believe them," he muttered. "The world has a cruel memory, Master Alden. It forgets kindness, but it never forgets fear."
Alden smiled then — small, genuine, and painfully familiar. The kind of smile Crix hadn't seen in years, not since the boy had been ten, barefoot in the library halls, trying to balance books taller than himself and insisting that Mathius Grindelwald wasn't evil, just misunderstood.
For a fleeting moment, Crix saw that same child — all silver hair and soft defiance — hiding behind the young man who now carried too many shadows in his eyes.
"I remember," Crix said softly. "When you first read those journals, sitting by the fire with crumbs in your hair and ink on your fingers. You told me one day you'd show them all — that not everything was black or white, that there was grey, somewhere in between."
Alden looked down at his hands. "I meant it then."
"And now?"
He hesitated. His voice, when it came, was quieter, steadier. "Now I think I'm finding out that grey only exists when people are willing to see it. The rest… they'd rather burn what they don't understand."
Crix studied him, his old eyes narrowing, the lines of his face deepening with grief he'd never been allowed to show. "You've grown too fast," he said. "The world forces you to play at being older, and you do it too well."
Alden reached out, resting a hand gently on the elf's shoulder — a rare gesture, one that made Crix stiffen before he allowed it. "You raised me," Alden said simply. "That's how I know what I need to be."
For a heartbeat, the old elf looked away, blinking too quickly. Then, in a voice that trembled but did not break, he said, "It isn't fair. You've always been a kind boy, Master Alden. The world should've given you time to stay that way."
Alden's smile lingered — faint and far away. "Maybe kindness isn't what it needs right now."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Crix whispered.
They stood there in the mist, a boy and the last servant of a vanished house, and for that small moment, there was no Commission, no headlines, no weight of names — only the quiet rhythm of rain and memory.
At length, Alden straightened, brushing the damp from his knees. "Will you take me to the platform?"
Crix blinked up at him. "You want me to Apparate you?"
"Who else?" Alden asked, the faintest glimmer of humour flickering in his eyes. "You've never splinched anyone. Not recently, anyway."
The elf gave a wet, huffing sound that might have been a laugh. "One time," he muttered. "One. And it was your father's hat, not his arm."
"See?" Alden said lightly. "I trust you."
Crix looked up at him then — properly looked — and something inside him seemed to settle. He nodded once, firm and deliberate.
But before he lifted his hand, before the air could crackle with that sharp rush of magic, he stepped forward and did something he hadn't done since Alden was a child: he wrapped his arms around him.
The old elf's grip was surprisingly strong, bony fingers clutching at the back of Alden's cloak. "Be safe, young Master," he murmured. "Don't let them take what's yours. Not your name, not your truth."
Alden froze, then slowly returned the embrace, one arm around the small, stooped figure. "I'll come back," he said. "I always do."
Crix pulled back, sniffed, and nodded briskly, pretending his eyes weren't shining. "Good. Then hold on tight."
Alden took one last glance at the manor — its silhouette already beginning to fade, the wards shimmering faintly like a mirage — and then looked back down at his oldest friend.
"Ready when you are," he said.
Crix reached out, grasped his hand, and the world folded inward — mist and rain collapsing into a streak of motion and sound, until there was nothing left of Dreyse Manor but the echo of a promise and the faintest scent of rain on stone.