They'd unanimously agreed that Ian had the blood of the Dumbledore family.
Of course, Ian himself had no idea about this; his gaze was fixed on the real Grindelwald at the staff table—the extraordinary Prophet disguised as a hack writer looked like he'd nearly choked on his milk.
"Hiss~ Who'd have thought someone other than Headmaster Dumbledore could actually get Grindelwald this riled up!"
Back in the day.
When Ian first learned that Grindelwald had replaced Lockhart and become the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts, he had wondered if Nimongard was already an empty shell.
He figured the most flawless plan would be to have a Saint impersonate Grindelwald at Nimongard to throw everyone off. That way, not only would it avoid causing an uproar, it'd also muddle the waters for all the nosy followers watching closely.
Now the facts were proving Ian's guess to be right, only he hadn't expected the Grindelwald imposter wasn't a Saint at all—he strongly suspected Grindelwald had swapped in the real Lockhart over there instead.
"Old G, how did you even dare? All that for your reputation, you'd knife your own Lockhart!" Ian was pretty sure his deduction was spot on.
If not, there's no way that article would've ended up in the United Kingdom's newspapers. And why would the Saints dare smear a leader they'd followed for years like this? They even cooked up bizarre stuff about 'love and succubus'! Probably only a highly imaginative writer like Gilderoy Lockhart could ramble on about such things.
Between the lines of the interview—
—was Lockhart's classic style of stirring up trouble and grabbing headlines by any means necessary.
"What are all these absurd reports! Don't these newspapers have literally any other news to push out?" The Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts finally caught his breath after all that choking.
He started wiping his desk with a handkerchief as he launched into a rant, exasperated and speechless, "Whoever writes this sort of stuff ought to be sent to the stake. He's outright slandering our Headmaster… and that poor parent locked up in Austria."
This might genuinely be a morning Grindelwald never saw coming.
"Grindelwald's not some innocent, Professor Lockhart. That time was a long way from ours, and you've lived in the United Kingdom all your life—you probably don't know what sort of Dark Wizard he really was." Quirrell was also shocked by what was in the news, but he still quietly countered the Defense professor's complaint.
"..."
Grindelwald shot the traitor a long, deep look.
"I'll bet you anything—nothing in this article was actually said by Grindelwald himself." The Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts held his ground, defending himself with the rest of the staff.
"I know Dumbledore. Prophet Daily is just fishing for clicks." Professor McGonagall wasn't convinced by the article either, sitting next to the muttering Head of Ravenclaw House and the Head of Hufflepuff House. The two of them avoided discussing the news, busy debating why Grindelwald would suddenly show up in public like this.
Nobody knew if the news was real or not.
But that photo of Grindelwald smiling on the front page definitely wasn't a fake.
"Excuse me, I'm suddenly not feeling well—I need to step out for a bit." Gilderoy Grindelwald sprang up, clutching a newspaper twisted into a wrung-out braid.
He hurried briskly toward the Great Hall's doors, maybe racing back to Austria in a panic… Grindelwald really hadn't counted on Lockhart improvising to this extent.
"That bloody hack! Is he brain-damaged or what!" As the Defense professor stormed past Ian, Ian could clearly hear the furious grumbling under his breath.
"Sorry, I know nothing." Aurora, seeing her grandfather in such a flustered state for the first time, hesitated before putting down her food and following after him.
The German girl's face sported a hint of excitement—she wasn't sure if she actually wanted to interrogate Dumbledore and Grindelwald about those untold stories.
Or maybe she just felt she'd finally found some dirt on Grandpa?
Ian still couldn't quite wrap his head around these hilarious, dysfunctional families.
"Everyone, quiet down!"
This time, Professor McGonagall used a little magic, her voice carrying loudly over the noisy little wizards. With a flick of her wand, she confiscated every newspaper in the Hall.
Not just the Prophet Daily.
Ian's own copy of the Wizard and Muggle Express also didn't survive the purge. After both Grindelwalds departed, he'd been reading a story about a wildfire in Little Hengerton.
Everyone else had been scrambling for the Prophet Daily, so the other newspapers were left behind, discarded on the tables—and what grabbed Ian's attention was the photo on the page.
The wildfire had burned almost everything away, but Ian still recognized the place in the photo—it was Little Hengerton, where Grindelwald had once brought him to retrieve the Resurrection Stone Ring.
Voldemort's childhood home.
The news report never mentioned that, focusing instead on how the Muggle World couldn't even handle a wildfire. The paper's editor picked apart the United Kingdom's defense, military, technology, bureaucracy, and way of life, finally concluding this country was a breath away from total collapse.
"Some people in the wizarding world are really something."
Even after his newspaper was confiscated, Ian couldn't help admiring the tabloid editor's far-sightedness. Around him, the little wizards kept up their whispered chatter about Dumbledore and Grindelwald, even after Professor McGonagall's stern warning.