August 21st, 1972
David watched as Lily disappeared through her front door, her mother's voice calling a cheerful greeting from inside. Mrs. Evans had been surprised but pleased to see the Headmaster of Hogwarts personally escorting her daughter home. Dumbledore had charmed her completely within thirty seconds, complimenting her garden and asking after her health with such genuine warmth that she'd practically glowed.
The door closed. Lily's face appeared briefly in an upstairs window before the curtain fell back into place.
David turned away, Dumbledore still at his side.
She'd been the last to be taken home. Severus first, to the grim little house on Spinner's End where his mother had answered the door with hollow eyes and a grateful nod. Then Mary, to her neat terraced house in London where her parents had fussed and thanked Dumbledore profusely for the "extra care."
All three of his protégés had been confused. He'd seen it in their faces, in the glances they'd exchanged when they thought he wasn't looking. Why was he still with Dumbledore? Why were they both personally delivering each student home when a simple Floo call would have sufficed?
David hadn't answered their unspoken questions. He couldn't. Not now. Not when he had so many questions of his own churning through his mind.
The manifesto sat like a weight in his memory. Every word of it burned into his consciousness with perfect clarity. He'd only needed to read it once—his memory was excellent, honed through years of deliberate practice—and now he couldn't forget it even if he wanted to.
Culling of Squibs.
Magical thieves.
Legal hierarchy of blood status.
His anger simmered beneath the surface like magma beneath a thin crust of earth. Hot. Dangerous. Barely contained. How dare this Lord Voldemort—this Tom Riddle—go this far? How dare he put into writing, into formal manifesto form, the kind of systematic oppression and genocide that David had only theorized about in his darkest moments?
He'd known they were capable of it. Intellectually, he'd known. He'd read the histories, studied the records of what pure-blood families had done in the past when their power went unchecked. The hunting of Muggleborns for sport. The treatment of half-bloods as shameful secrets. The casual cruelty dressed up as tradition.
But seeing it spelled out—reading the words written from the mouth of a pure-blood supremacist with the confidence of someone who believed utterly in their right to reshape society according to their twisted vision—that was different.
That made it real in a way historical records never could.
And beneath the anger, underneath the cold fury that made him want to find this Tom Riddle and show him exactly what a Muggleborn wizard was capable of, there was something else.
Vindication.
David recognized it for what it was, acknowledged it even as part of him recoiled from the feeling. He'd known this would happen. Had predicted it, warned about it, built the Circle specifically to prepare for this exact scenario. And now here it was, exactly as he'd foreseen.
Being proven right sent a spark down his spine. Filled his chest with a satisfaction that felt almost shameful given the horror of what that proof represented. People would die because of this manifesto. Were perhaps already dying, if that village attack was any indication. And yet some part of him—the part that had argued and debated and been dismissed as paranoid or extreme—felt that terrible, electric thrill of vindication.
I was right. I was right all along.
It was because of this—this combination of fury and vindication, of rage at what was coming and grim satisfaction that he'd prepared for it—that David had decided to see if Dumbledore was willing to pick a side. Now that the sides had shown themselves clearly, now that the threat wasn't theoretical but documented in twenty pages of precise, educated evil.
Dumbledore had chosen. David was certain of it, even though the Headmaster had said he hadn't, that his choice would be determined by how this mysterious meeting went. But David knew better.
He knew Dumbledore. Three years of chess matches, of careful conversations where every word was weighed and measured. Three years of watching how the Headmaster's face shifted when certain topics arose—the slight tightening around his eyes when David spoke of necessary action, the way his fingers would still on his teacup when the conversation turned to the limits of peace. He'd learned to read the man the same way he'd learned to read all those he spent enough time with. Not through what they said, but through what they didn't say. The pauses. The tells. The micro-expressions that revealed truth beneath diplomacy.
Dumbledore had already decided to help him. This meeting—whoever this mysterious person was—it was about something else. A test, perhaps. Or a warning. Maybe both.
"Shall we?" Dumbledore's voice broke through his thoughts. Gentle but carrying that undercurrent of urgency that had been present since the ice cream parlor.
David nodded. "Where are we going, sir?"
"We will be leaving Britain." Dumbledore's tone remained light, conversational, but David felt the weight behind the words. "Ordinarily, we would use the International Floo network, but I would rather our coming and going be undocumented. We will instead procure the services of my good friend. But first, let us move to a less open location."
They moved away from the residential street of Cokeworth, walking in silence past identical brick houses until they reached an abandoned building on the edge of the neighborhood. Boarded windows, cracked foundation, the kind of place teenagers probably used for illicit gatherings. The walls would muffle sound. The location would discourage curious eyes.
Dumbledore gave a single nod.
A flash of flame—brilliant gold and crimson that seemed to fill the narrow alley with warmth and light—and then Fawkes appeared. The phoenix materialized on Dumbledore's outstretched arm, trilling softly. His feathers shimmered in the fading afternoon sun, each one looking like it had been dipped in fire and somehow frozen mid-burn.
David had seen Fawkes before, of course. The phoenix often dozed on his perch in Dumbledore's office during their chess matches. But seeing him appear like this, summoned with such casual ease, reminded David that Dumbledore wasn't just the Headmaster. He was one of the most powerful wizards alive.
"We will be fire-traveling then, sir?" David kept his voice steady despite the flutter of nerves in his stomach. He'd never traveled by phoenix before.
Dumbledore nodded. "Yes. I find it is the most secure way of travel across international borders. No records, no trails, no possibility of interception." He paused, his expression shifting to something more serious. "Ah, before I forget—please, read this."
He handed David a slip of paper.
The handwriting was Dumbledore's distinctive script—elegant, precise:
Nurmengard Castle is located five kilometers from Große Klammspitze.
Nurmengard.
David's eyes shot to Dumbledore. His heart hammered once, hard, against his ribs.
Nurmengard. The prison fortress. The place where—
The Headmaster was looking at him with an expression of gentle severity. The twinkle had faded completely from his eyes, replaced by something older. Sadder. A look that carried decades of weight.
"Yes, David," Dumbledore said quietly.
The paper trembled slightly in David's fingers. He read the words again, as if they might change. As if the name might transform into something less impossible.
But it didn't.
Nurmengard. The fortress prison built by Gellert Grindelwald himself to house his enemies. The place where the man who had nearly conquered magical Europe now spent his days locked away from the world.
The mysterious meeting. The person Dumbledore wanted him to meet before deciding whether to help him prepare for war.
It had never been mysterious at all.
David looked up, meeting Dumbledore's steady gaze. "You're taking me to see Grindelwald."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes." Dumbledore's voice was quiet, measured. Heavy with the weight of what he was offering. "You are about to embark on a path that will be fraught with danger. I want you to see where that path could bring you."
David's mind raced. Grindelwald. The dark wizard who had torn Europe apart. Who had built an empire on the promise of wizard supremacy and magical dominion over Muggles. Who had been defeated by the very man standing before him.
The parallels Dumbledore was drawing were painfully, deliberately clear.
"You still think I'm going to become like him." David kept his voice level despite the tightness in his chest. "You think fighting this Lord Voldemort will pervert me into something else."
"I think," Dumbledore said carefully, "that good intentions are a treacherous foundation when combined with absolute certainty and the willingness to use force." His blue eyes held David's grey ones. "I think you are brilliant, passionate, and genuinely committed to justice. I also think you are fourteen years old and convinced that you alone see the truth clearly enough to reshape the world."
He paused, letting that sink in.
"Gellert believed the same thing at your age. In his late thirties, he had built Nurmengard to imprison anyone who disagreed with his vision of the greater good." Dumbledore's expression softened slightly. "I do not believe you are him, David. But I believe you should meet him. You should speak to him. To see what certainty can wrought."
David looked down at the paper in his hands. The Fidelius Charm, obviously—the only way to find a location hidden by such powerful magic was to be told by the Secret Keeper. And Dumbledore, having defeated Grindelwald and claimed his fortress prison, would naturally be the Keeper of its location.
Wait.
That didn't make sense.
He knew Nurmengard was in the Austrian Alps. It was common knowledge—well, as common as knowledge about a secret prison fortress could be. Historical records mentioned it. Books about the war referenced its general location. Sure, he didn't know the precise coordinates, but he still knew where it was.
And the Fidelius Charm was supposed to hide knowledge completely. You either knew the secret or you didn't—there was no middle ground.
"Sir, I already knew the castle was in the Austrian Alps."
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled with mirth, the heaviness of the moment before lightening slightly. "Ah, but Große Klammspitze is not in the Austrian Alps. It is in the Bavarian Alps."
David blinked. Processed that.
Oh.
"You misdirected where it was," he said slowly, understanding clicking into place. "In case someone went looking for it. Let them search Austria while the prison sits safely across the border in Bavaria."
A small smile touched Dumbledore's lips. "Precisely. The general location of Nurmengard is public knowledge—I could hardly hide the existence of a fortress prison that once held hundreds of prisoners, many of whom were eventually released. But the specific location?" He gestured to the paper. "That remains hidden. Protected. Even those who served time there and were freed cannot reveal where they were held. The Fidelius ensures it."
Clever. Brutally clever, actually. Hide the truth in plain sight by giving people just enough information to think they know the answer. Let them believe Nurmengard sits somewhere in the Austrian Alps, and they'll never think to look a few kilometers across the German border.
"How many people know?" David asked.
"The true location? Myself and an elf to ensure he is fed and watered." Dumbledore's blue eyes peered deeply at him, conveying the weight of trust he was placing in a fourteen-year-old student. "And now you."
David held the Headmaster's gaze. The significance of that settled somewhere in his chest—solid, weighty. Dumbledore was entrusting him with one of the most closely guarded secrets in the magical world.
He gave a small nod of acknowledgment.
Dumbledore held out his arm for David to take as Fawkes perched on his other shoulder. "Come. Oh, and prepare a warming charm. I have found that our destination's weather can vary quite significantly. Best to be on the side of caution."
David pulled his wand from his sleeve—that blackthorn length with its unyielding core—and cast the warming charm on himself. The magic settled over his skin like an invisible blanket. August in England was warm enough, but the Bavarian Alps would be another matter entirely.
He stepped forward and grasped Dumbledore's arm. The star-spangled fabric was softer than expected under his fingers.
Fawkes trilled once—a sound like bells mixed with flame—and then everything dissolved into fire.
The warmth was immediate and all-encompassing. Not burning, just present—gold and crimson filling his vision as they moved through space in a way that felt nothing like Apparition's sharp crack and squeeze. The phoenix's song surrounded him, wordless but somehow speaking of loyalty and cycles and rebirth.
And then, between one heartbeat and the next, they were somewhere else.
The cold hit despite the warming charm. Sharp mountain air that smelled of snow and ancient stone and something older—something that carried decades of weight. David opened his eyes.
They stood on a narrow path carved from dark stone. Sheer drops fell away on one side, a towering cliff face rose on the other. Snow dusted the rocks despite it being late August. In the distance, other peaks stretched out—the Bavarian Alps in jagged silhouettes against a grey sky.
And before them, perhaps a hundred meters up the path, loomed Nurmengard.
The fortress was massive. Built from the same dark stone as the mountain itself, as if carved directly from the peak rather than constructed upon it. Towers jutted upward at severe angles. The architecture was brutal, unforgiving—designed to intimidate and contain rather than welcome.
Above the main gate, carved in letters that must have been three meters tall, were words in German:
FÜR DAS GRÖSSERE WOHL
David's German was functional—he'd studied it alongside French during his years of private reading, teaching himself from library books. He translated slowly in his head.
For the Greater Good.
Grindelwald's motto. His justification. The phrase that had convinced thousands to follow him, to fight for him, to die for his vision.
And now it hung above the prison that held him.
"He carved those himself," Dumbledore said quietly beside him. His voice carried oddly in the thin mountain air. "When he built this place to hold his enemies, he put his philosophy above the gate. So that everyone who entered would understand why they were here. Why their suffering served a greater purpose."
David stared up at those massive letters. Something cold settled in his stomach that had nothing to do with the alpine chill.
For the Greater Good.
How many had walked through those gates believing they were doing the right thing?
"Come," Dumbledore said, and started walking up the path toward the fortress. His star-spangled robes looked almost absurd against the grey stone and white snow—a splash of whimsy and color against calculated bleakness. "He knows we're here."
"Knows we're here? How?"
Dumbledore hesitated before replying. His boots crunched against the snow-dusted stone as they walked. "Did you not find it strange that the greatest dark wizard of recent memory—if not ever—was placed in a prison, a well-made prison to be sure, and never escaped with all his power?" He glanced at David. "He built this prison. He ensured it was nigh unescapable. But he made the wards. The traps. Why could he not escape despite it all?"
David considered that. He hadn't really thought about it before—why hadn't Grindelwald escaped? This was a wizard who had been Dumbledore's equal, who had conquered most of Europe, who had built this fortress specifically to hold his enemies. The wards and protections would have been designed to his specifications. He would know every weakness, every backdoor, every possible escape route.
And yet he'd remained here for over twenty-five years.
"I suppose I assumed you added your own protections," David said slowly. "After you defeated him. Reinforced the wards, closed whatever loopholes he'd built in."
Dumbledore nodded. "Indeed, I did." He paused, his expression growing heavier. More somber. "Not to the prison, but to Gellert himself."
The words hung in the cold air between them.
"I bound his magic."
David stopped walking. Stared at the Headmaster. "You... what?"
"I stripped him of his ability to access his magical core," Dumbledore said quietly, not looking at David now. His eyes were fixed on the fortress ahead. "Locked it away where he cannot reach it. Gellert Grindelwald is completely powerless. He cannot cast even the simplest spell, cannot access the vast reservoir of magic that once made him the most feared wizard in Europe."
To bind a wizard's magic—it was considered worse than death by most of the magical world. A fate reserved only for the most heinous criminals, and even then, rarely enacted because of how deeply it violated the fundamental nature of what they were.
David felt something twist in his chest. "That's... cruel."
"Yes," Dumbledore agreed simply. There was no defensiveness in his tone, no justification. Just acknowledgment. "It is."
They walked in silence for a few more steps. The wind picked up, whistling through the peaks with a sound like distant screaming.
"But you left him something," David said, remembering what Dumbledore had said earlier. About Grindelwald knowing they were here. "You said he knows we're here. How, if he has no magic?"
Dumbledore's expression shifted to something complicated—regret and resolve mixed together in equal measure.
"The ritual I used to bind him would not allow an all-encompassing effect. No ritual ever does—there must always be something left unbound, some aspect of magic that remains accessible or the binding collapses entirely." His voice was quiet, measured. "So I left him his most prized ability. His Sight."
David was confused. "Sight?"
Dumbledore exhaled slowly, the breath misting in the cold mountain air. "Gellert is a True Seer. A wizard who can see the future and remember what he saw—not vague prophecies or clouded visions, but clear sight into past, present, and future alike." He paused, his blue eyes distant. "I suppose it was my punishment to him. He can watch the world from his cell, see how it moves and changes, witness history unfold without him."
His voice dropped lower, heavier.
"Powerless to effect any change. Powerless to act on anything he sees. Powerless as the world passes him by."
David felt a chill that had nothing to do with the alpine cold. To see the future—to watch events unfold, to know what was coming, to witness opportunities and disasters and turning points—and be completely unable to do anything about it?
That was torture. Calculated, deliberate torture.
"So he's seen us coming," David said quietly. "Seen this conversation before it happens."
"Almost certainly," Dumbledore confirmed. "Gellert has watched the world for twenty-six years through visions he cannot act upon. He has seen wars and peace, births and deaths, the rise and fall of governments." His gaze finally shifted to David. "And he has undoubtedly seen you, David Price. Seen what you might become. What paths stretch out before you."
The weight of that settled over David like a physical thing.
Grindelwald had been watching. Had seen him at Hogwarts, seen the Circle forming, seen the choices David had made and would make. Had seen the manifesto, seen Voldemort rising, seen whatever future waited at the end of all this.
David felt something twist in his gut. This was going to be every bit the test that Dumbledore hoped it would be. Someone who could look at past, present, and future was going to be... trying.
But there had to be limits.
"It can't be infallible," David said, his voice firm. "He's in here. He lost."
Dumbledore nodded, a small smile touching his lips—approval, perhaps, that David had reached that conclusion so quickly. "You would be correct. He is by no means omniscient. I confess divination is not a subject I have much skill in, but I know more about Gellert's Sight than anyone save himself."
He paused, choosing his words carefully.
"When we were at war with each other, I became a master of what I called countersight. The art of obscuring the visual, of taking away the sense in events, of introducing enough variables and uncertainties that even True Sight becomes unreliable." His expression grew distant, remembering. "I learned to make choices at the last possible moment. To keep multiple plans in motion simultaneously. To create situations where the future branched in so many directions that even Gellert couldn't see which path I would take."
The wind whistled around them. Snow began to fall—small, sparse flakes that caught in Dumbledore's beard.
"It made his Sight less reliable," Dumbledore continued. "He still saw much, but it would be through a lens of uncertainty. Probabilities rather than certainties. Possible futures rather than the definite path." His blue eyes met David's. "It was this uncertainty—this inability to see clearly which choice I would make in our final confrontation—that eventually allowed me to defeat him."
David absorbed that. Even the most powerful divination had weaknesses. Could be countered, obscured, made unreliable through deliberate chaos and last-second decisions.
"So he might have seen me coming," David said slowly. "But he doesn't know what I'll do. What I'll say. How this conversation will end."
"Precisely." Dumbledore's voice carried a note of satisfaction. "He knows we're here. He may have seen this meeting dozens, hundreds of times in various futures. But which version is this? Which path have we chosen? That, even he cannot know with certainty."
They had reached the gates now. Massive things, iron reinforced with what David suspected were dozens of enchantments. The carved words loomed above them.
FÜR DAS GRÖSSERE WOHL
"Are you ready?" Dumbledore asked quietly.
David looked up at those words. Thought about what waited inside. A man who had tried to reshape the world through force. Who had believed so completely in his vision that he'd built a prison for anyone who disagreed.
A man who might see, in David's future, the same trajectory.
"Yes," David said. "I'm ready."
Dumbledore nodded. The gates swung open silently at his approach—no visible spell, no spoken command. They simply recognized their master and obeyed.
They moved through the castle. It was every bit as forbidding as David had imagined. Perhaps it had once looked regal or stalwart, but now, after so many years of disuse and neglect, it looked as if it was haunted. The stones were dark with age and moisture. Frost crept along the walls in crystalline patterns. Their footsteps echoed in ways that suggested vast, empty spaces all around them.
And David supposed it was haunted, in its way. By the ghosts of everyone who had been imprisoned here. By the ideology that had built it. By the man who still lived at its heart.
The interior was cavernous. High vaulted ceilings disappeared into shadow above them. What little light existed came from narrow windows cut into stone so thick that the openings looked more like arrow slits than proper fenestration. The air smelled of cold stone and old magic—not the warm, living magic of Hogwarts, but something harder. More unforgiving.
They passed empty cells with iron bars rusted from decades of mountain weather. Passed corridors that branched off into darkness. Passed what might have once been guard stations or administrative offices, now stripped bare and abandoned.
Their footsteps were the only sound. Even the wind seemed muted here, as if the fortress itself absorbed all noise and gave nothing back.
They wove through the corridors—Dumbledore leading with the confidence of someone who knew this place intimately—until they came across a great winding stone staircase. It spiraled upward into the central tower, each step worn smooth in the center from countless feet over the years.
David looked up. The staircase seemed to climb forever, disappearing into darkness far above. When he craned his neck to see the top from the middle section of the spiral, it looked as if they would be walking for weeks.
"How far up?" David asked, his voice echoing strangely in the enclosed space.
"The highest tower," Dumbledore said simply. "Where else would you keep a man who once commanded armies? Where else but as far from the earth as possible, as close to the sky he can no longer fly through?"
He began to climb. David followed, one hand trailing along the cold stone wall for balance as they ascended into the dark.
The stairs seemed endless. Round and round, the spiral tightening as they climbed higher into the tower. David's breath came harder in the thin mountain air. His calves began to burn. The warming charm kept the worst of the cold at bay, but couldn't do anything about the exertion of climbing what felt like hundreds of steps carved from unforgiving stone.
By the time they reached the top, his calves ached. His breathing was heavier than he'd like.
Dumbledore, despite being ninety years old, looked no worse for wear. He wasn't even breathing hard.
The Headmaster stopped at a single wooden door. Heavy oak, reinforced with iron bands that had gone black with age. He turned to look at David—a last silent question: Are you certain?
David nodded.
Dumbledore pushed the door open.
The hinges didn't creak. The door swung inward smoothly, silently, as if it had been opened just yesterday rather than sitting untouched for who knew how long.
The room beyond was large—perhaps twenty meters across, circular to match the tower. On one side sat wooden furniture that had long since rotted: a table collapsed in on itself, chairs reduced to skeletal frames, their joints having given way to time and damp. Bookcases lined part of the wall, but the books they'd once held had turned to dust and mold, leaving only dark stains on warped shelves.
On the other side of the room stood a cell.
Iron bars, thick as David's wrist, formed a cage perhaps five meters square. Inside, sparse and spartan: a cot with a thin mattress, a small table, a single chair.
And sitting on a stool in the center of the cell, his back to them, staring up at a narrow window cut high in the stone wall—
Gellert Grindelwald.
He didn't turn at the sound of the door opening. Didn't move at all. Just sat there, perfectly still, gazing up at the small rectangle of grey sky visible through the window.
David's breath caught.
Even from behind, even sitting motionless on a stool in a prison cell, there was something about him. Something that made the air feel heavier. More charged.
This was the man who had nearly conquered Europe. Who had commanded armies. Who had been Dumbledore's equal.
And now he sat alone in a tower, powerless, watching the world through visions he could never touch.
"So it is now that you come." The voice was rich but harsh—as if his voice had gone unused for years. "You have decided to trust him then, Albus? Ahh, a great many threads unravel because of that trust. But I suppose you accepted that you cannot prepare David for this anymore than you could prepare him for the pull of gravity or the rush of the tide."
He stood and turned to face them.
David's breath caught.
Gellert Grindelwald was beautiful in the way ruins are beautiful. Platinum blonde hair, now streaked through with white, fell past his shoulders—unkempt, but somehow still elegant. His face was gaunt, sharp cheekbones cutting shadows across hollow cheeks, but the bone structure beneath spoke of aristocratic breeding. Prison-simple grey robes hung on a frame that had been whittled down by decades of confinement, yet he wore them like ceremonial vestments.
But it was the eyes that stopped David cold.
One was blue—pale, piercing, the color of winter sky. The other was milky white, clouded like milk poured into water, but somehow aware. As if it saw beyond the present. It didn't track movement the way a normal eye should. It looked through things. Through time itself.
And despite everything—despite the prison, despite being stripped of his magic, despite twenty-six years of isolation—there was something undeniable about him. A presence. A charisma that hadn't dimmed even a fraction. When he smiled, David felt it like a physical pull.
This was the man who had convinced thousands upon thousands to follow him. Who had nearly reshaped Europe in his image.
And he was smiling at David like he'd been waiting for this moment all his life.
He stepped forward to the bars of his cell, fingers wrapping around the iron with casual familiarity. "What a pleasure to finally see you in the flesh, David Price." His smile widened, showing teeth. "Founder of the Circle. Teacher of the blood-drenched mist. Lord Ananke. Glorious Leader of the Muggleborn Movement!"
The titles rolled off his tongue like prophecy. Like fact.
"More names than you would know what to do with, and yet. Oh—" His mismatched eyes gleamed. "It's like looking in a mirror."
David swallowed. His Occlumency shields blazed as strong as he could make them, organizing his thoughts, controlling his reaction. "We are not the same."
Grindelwald's smile didn't fade. If anything, it grew warmer. More knowing.
"No?"
He tilted his head, and that white eye seemed to glow faintly in the dim light.
"I have walked by your side at every moment, David. Every choice. Every turning point." His voice took on a prophetic quality, speaking of things already seen. "I was at your side as you screamed yourself raw in a lonely graveyard, when you decided: Whatever it takes. I'll do it. I was at your side when that Slytherin seventh-year decided that Muggleborn girl would make good target practice, when you thought: This is wrong. Why has no stopped this before."
He leaned closer to the bars, his voice dropping to something almost intimate.
"I was there every step of the way. Watching from my tower as you became exactly what you needed to become."
David swallowed hard. Those were memories he had told no one about. No one. Those were his personal reminders of what the world had forged him into—the graveyard, the moment with Avery and the Muggleborn girl. They had shaped him into who he was today, crystallized his purpose into something sharp and unbreakable.
But he couldn't give Grindelwald the momentum in this conversation. He knew—from experience, from instinct, from his own developing skill with words—that momentum changed everything in conflict. Both physical and verbal. This was like his chess matches with the Headmaster, just faster. More dangerous.
He needed the initiative.
"You will need to try a different avenue of attack," David said, keeping his voice level. Analytical. "Unbalance me, unnerve me, make me doubt enough to allow a chink in my armor, then push the attack. Turn the crack into a fissure." He met Grindelwald's mismatched gaze directly. "A good attempt."
Grindelwald's smile didn't falter. If anything, it deepened—delighted, as if David had just proven exactly what he'd hoped to prove.
"Oh, but the crack is already there, David." He spoke with the certainty of someone who had Seen it, lived it, watched it unfold across a hundred possible futures. "Not of doubt—your certainty has long since burnt that from your being. Unnerve you? Ha!" The laugh was genuine, warm. "You have more nerve than any but a few I have ever met."
He leaned against the bars, utterly relaxed. Free.
"But balance?" His white eye seemed to glow brighter. "Oh, you have never found it. You who walk between the worlds as if you are of both. But you are like me, like Albus—you are of neither."
The words landed with the weight of certainty.
"You may wear the clothes, speak the words, but they are not yours. You look at both worlds and find them wanting. Shadows of their potential." Grindelwald's voice took on that layered quality, prophecy and raw charisma blending seamlessly. "You have read the words of the great men of both. That they speak but do not think. That they see but do not act. That they hear but do not care."
He stepped even closer to the bars, his face mere inches from the iron.
"But you do. As I did. We care so much it burns us from the inside out. We see what could be and cannot—will not—accept what is." His smile was almost tender now. "We are alike, you and I, in a way only the few can comprehend. The weight of seeing. The burden of necessity."
The last word hit David like a physical blow.
Necessity.
It was the word he had built everything around. His life. His magic. His home. His friends. His organization. His future. His past. Everything was colored by necessity—the word that justified every choice, every sacrifice, every line he'd crossed or would cross.
He felt his heart lurch into his stomach. When he laid it out like that…David struggled to deny the similarities. No, no! His Occlumency shields wavered for just a fraction of a second before he slammed them back into place, reinforced them, made them iron.
No! They were not the same. Grindelwald said the right words, poked and prodded at the right wounds, but that didn't change the facts. They were fundamentally different.
David didn't want this. Not in the sense a person wanted a new robe or a different color on the wallpaper. He didn't crave power the way Grindelwald had. King of Earth? That didn't interest him at all. What good was a golden throne if it sat surrounded by suffering? What value was there in standing above others just to prove you could?
No. He didn't want this.
His push, his fire—it wasn't desire. It was like the need to eat and drink. It was not a choice. It simply was. Without it, he would be as unmoving as a corpse. As dead as Ruth in her grave.
Grindelwald had wanted power. Had wanted to be King, to stand at the top of the pyramid and declare everyone beneath him. That he was the greater. They were the lesser. Oh, David was sure he hadn't used those exact words—Grindelwald knew the power of the right words just as David did. He would dress the pig up with makeup and give it a ballroom gown, but it was still a pig underneath.
The difference was conviction. True conviction. Not ambition dressed up as ideology.
David stood taller. Straightened his spine. Met those mismatched eyes with his own grey ones and glared at the man across from him.
This was not his mirror. This was a man who didn't believe. Not truly. Who had burned with ambition but not conviction. Who had wanted to rule rather than needed to save.
"We are not the same," David said, and his voice was steel.
Gellert looked at him. His smile dropped. His face went still as a statue, expression completely unreadable.
For a long moment, there was only silence in the tower room. The sound of wind against stone. David's own heartbeat loud in his ears.
And then Grindelwald laughed.
Loud and deep and utterly genuine. The sound filled the circular chamber, bounced off stone walls, echoed in the empty spaces. It was the laugh of someone who had just heard the greatest joke ever told. Who had seen something so perfectly, exquisitely ironic that he couldn't contain his delight.
When he finally caught his breath, wiping at his eyes with one hand while the other still gripped the bars, Grindelwald looked at David with something that might have been affection. Might have been pride.
"Truly, David," he said, his voice warm with genuine amusement and something deeper—respect, perhaps. Recognition. "You are one of a kind!"
He turned his head to look at Dumbledore. "Oh, Albus. You needn't worry about him walking in my footsteps."
Dumbledore stood stiffly near the door. David only just noticed that the Headmaster had yet to say anything since they'd entered the room—had been watching, listening, letting this play out between them.
"So he will not fall from his path?" Dumbledore's voice was quiet but sharp. "He will not become a shadow of himself?"
Grindelwald gave him a look that said a thousand words David couldn't translate. Something old passed between them—decades of history, of shared past, of wounds that had never quite healed.
"No one is immune to power and its lures," Grindelwald said finally. "But if David is to fall, it will not be easy."
"But possible?" Dumbledore fired back.
Grindelwald rolled his eyes—an expression so casual, so mundane, that it was jarring coming from the most feared dark wizard of the previous generation. "Do not be a buffoon, Albus. Our young Lord Ananke here has just as many shades of me as he does of you." His mismatched eyes glinted with amusement. "Your hat looks ridiculous, but you are not a fool. You have seen who David is, what makes him different, from the moment you decided to play that Muggle chess game against a small boy."
David could tell Dumbledore was offended by the hat comment. He'd commented on the Headmaster's fashion sense in the past during their matches, always gently deflected. It seemed like fashion was the one thing that could genuinely hurt Dumbledore's feelings.
Grindelwald turned away from the bars. He picked up the simple wooden stool, carried it to the front of his cell, and sat down facing them. He gestured to David with one elegant hand.
"Come. Conjure yourself a seat." His smile returned—playful now, inviting. "Now that we have established you are not like me, let us converse as equals. As one future conqueror to a past one."
The words hung in the air like prophecy.
Future conqueror.
Not a question. A statement of fact. Of what Grindelwald had Seen in the timelines stretching out before them.
David glanced at Dumbledore. The Headmaster's expression was unreadable, but he gave a small nod. Permission. Or perhaps acknowledgment that this was always where this meeting would lead.
David pulled his wand from his sleeve. The blackthorn felt solid in his hand, grounding. He focused, channeled his magic, and conjured a simple chair—wood, sturdy, nothing fancy. It appeared with a soft pop of displaced air.
He sat down across from Grindelwald, separated only by iron bars and decades of history that wasn't his own.
"Alright," David said, meeting those mismatched eyes directly. "Let's talk."
Gellert stared at him for a long moment, his white eye seeming to glow faintly in the dim tower light. When he spoke, his voice carried that prophetic weight again—speaking of things Seen across countless timelines.
"Would it surprise you to know that David Price rarely makes it to Hogwarts?"
David felt confusion ripple through him. "What do you mean?"
The blonde Seer smiled—not mockingly, but with something that looked almost like wonder. "The deck was stacked against you from birth. Born into poverty. An alcoholic father and a religious mother." He leaned forward slightly. "There are countless futures where you die before even realizing you had magic. If your father hadn't died when he did, you would have starved. You and Ruth both. Long before the leukemia could take hold."
David's breath caught. His hand tightened on his wand.
"Other times," Grindelwald continued, his voice soft but relentless, "you come afoul of someone—a gang, a driver, simple bad luck—and die in the street before your eleventh birthday. In the few futures where you make it to Hogwarts, Ruth dies after you are already there. You are not with her when she passes. You blame yourself—you are magical now, and yet you didn't save her. Couldn't save her."
He paused, letting that terrible alternative sink in.
"You become just another student who graduates and eventually dies to Voldemort and his Death Eaters. A nameless statistic. A footnote in a war you barely understood."
The words hung in the cold air of the tower.
Grindelwald's mismatched eyes held David's grey ones with an intensity that felt like being pinned in place.
"The David Price that sits here today—the one who held his sister's hand as she died, who received his Hogwarts letter three months later, who built the Circle, who sits before me now—is one in so very few to get to this point. To speak to me."
His smile widened, genuine and almost tender.
"You are a statistical anomaly, David. A confluence of circumstances so precise, so unlikely, that in most timelines you simply... don't exist. Not as you are now." He tilted his head. "Does that frighten you? Or empower you?"
It took a moment for David to think on it, but it didn't take long to find his answer. "I don't feel anything about it." He kept his voice steady, matter-of-fact. "What does it matter? If I spent time thinking on the countless ways things could be different, I would waste my life instead of living it."
Grindelwald nodded, and something that looked like approval flickered across his gaunt features. "A good mentality to have regarding the twists and turns of fate. The Sight can be a curse in that way—knowing all the paths not taken, all the versions of yourself that never were." His white eye seemed to glow brighter for a moment. "I have spent twenty-six years watching timelines branch and collapse, watching futures that will never be. It is... maddening, if you let it be."
He leaned back slightly on his stool, still graceful despite the simple prison garb and decades of confinement.
"Your turn," he said, gesturing to David with one elegant hand. An invitation. A challenge. "Ask me what you came here to ask. Or what you didn't know you came here to ask. I promise honesty—I have nothing left to lose by lying, and everything to gain by truth."
David thought about what he wanted to ask. There were so many questions swirling through his mind. About the future Grindelwald had Seen. About what paths lay ahead. About Voldemort, about Dumbledore, about the Circle.
But those felt like the wrong questions. Too obvious. Too much like asking for answers he should find himself.
He needed to understand something more fundamental.
What did he actually need to know from the man who had walked this path before him?
"Was it worth it?" David asked simply.
Grindelwald leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His white eye seemed to glow brighter, while the blue one focused with laser intensity on David's face.
"Starting there? Interesting. I was sure you would finish with that one." A small smile played at his lips. "Was it all worth it? Despite my sitting in a cell in a tower of a fortress I designed to be inescapable? All the sacrifices, all the deaths, all the choices that led to where I am now?"
David nodded.
Grindelwald was quiet for a long moment. His gaze went distant—not looking at David anymore, but through him. At timelines past and future, at paths taken and not taken.
"Once," he said finally, his voice soft but carrying that prophetic weight, "I would have said no. When I looked to the future and all I saw was a madman butchering his way through Muggles and magicals alike, what was the point of it all? It would all lead to a boy-who-might-not-be-born dying for nothing. For the Muggles to discover the magical world and hunt it like deer, cannibalize its parts for their own purposes. To die in this tower with the only thing I could find pride in being a lie to a monster that's darkness eclipsed anything I ever harboured."
His mismatched eyes refocused on David with sudden, fierce intensity.
"Now?" The smile that crossed his face was terrible and beautiful at once. "I regret nothing. My vision will come to fruition. Not by my hand, not in the way I envisioned it, but it will happen regardless."
He leaned even closer to the bars, his voice dropping to something almost intimate.
"All because a small Muggle girl died of a Muggle disease."
The words hit David like a physical blow.
Ruth.
Grindelwald was saying that Ruth's death—that Ruth—was the catalyst for everything. That his entire vision, his philosophy, his war that had failed decades ago would somehow succeed through David. Through the Circle. Through whatever path stretched out ahead.
David's hands clenched on his wand. His heart hammered against his ribs.
"You're saying I'll succeed where you failed," he said, keeping his voice level despite the turmoil beneath. "That I'll accomplish what you couldn't."
"No." Grindelwald's voice was sharp, cutting through David's assumption like a knife. "I am saying that regardless of whether you succeed or fail, I will have won."
He stood from his stool, began pacing the small confines of his cell with restless energy—a caged predator who had accepted his cage but not forgotten what it meant to hunt.
"Because if you fail, you will inspire another, just as I have inspired you. And as much as you wish to deny it—" He turned back to face David, his mismatched eyes blazing with certainty. "There is no Circle without the Alliance. No Ex Necessitate without the Greater Good. No David Price without Gellert Grindelwald."
The words landed like hammer blows.
David felt something cold settle in his stomach. His Occlumency shields held, but only just. The implications were staggering, terrible.
Grindelwald was claiming lineage. Claiming that every step David had taken, every choice he'd made, every principle he'd built the Circle upon—it was all downstream from Grindelwald's war. That David wasn't rejecting Grindelwald's path, he was continuing it.
"That's not true," David said, and his voice came out harder than he'd intended. "We're fighting for different things. You wanted wizard supremacy. I want—"
"Integration," Grindelwald finished, waving his hand dismissively. "Yes, yes. Wizard and Muggle working together, the Statute shattered, magical healing for all, technology and magic combined." He smiled. "A prettier package than my vision, I'll grant you. More palatable to modern sensibilities."
He stepped back to the bars, gripped them with both hands.
"But the core?" His white eye seemed to glow. "The fundamental truth beneath all the rhetoric? We are the same. Those with power have a responsibility to use it. Those who hide that power while others suffer are complicit in that suffering. The world is broken, and we—we few who see clearly—must fix it, whether the world wants fixing or not."
He tilted his head, and his smile took on a knowing quality.
"What was it you said to your young charge? 'Like someone who can see guiding someone who's blind. Not because the blind person is lesser, but because they literally cannot perceive what the sighted person can. The responsibility falls to those with the greater capability.'"
David swallowed hard. His throat felt tight.
Because he couldn't argue that point. He did believe that. Had said exactly those words to Lily when explaining why wizards had a moral obligation to help Muggles. The logic was sound. The reasoning was solid.
But hearing it come from Grindelwald's mouth, framed as proof they were the same...
"Ah, don't look so glum." Grindelwald released the bars, waved one hand in a gesture that was almost playful. "Albus still believes as you do, despite what he would have you believe. He may not have the fire that he did decades ago, but in his heart, his belief is unchanged."
His mismatched eyes glinted with something that might have been old pain. Old memory.
"That Muggles are not lesser, but other. Different. In need of guidance from those who can see what they cannot." He glanced past David toward where Dumbledore stood silent by the door. "The only difference between Albus of the past and Albus of the present is that he learned to be afraid of his own convictions. Learned that acting on them had consequences he couldn't bear."
Grindelwald's voice softened, took on an almost gentle quality.
"You haven't learned that yet, David. And I wonder—when you do, will you stop? Or will you decide the cost is worth paying anyway?" He paused, and his smile returned. "I think you will do as you have always done. Endure."
The word hit David like an echo. Endure. The same word he'd used with Dumbledore in the Headmaster's office, when they'd discussed what it meant to carry this burden. When he'd promised he would endure whatever came, because stopping wasn't an option.
Grindelwald had Seen that conversation. Had watched it unfold through his visions.
"I will." David found himself saying it with the same certainty that beat in his chest like a second heartbeat. He would not turn away from this path. This was his path. His life. He would walk it to its conclusion. No matter the cost.
"I know." Grindelwald waved at him dismissively, almost fondly. "Your turn."
Was it? David wasn't sure how this conversation had become a structured exchange, but he'd accepted the framework. He thought for a moment about what he needed to know.
"Voldemort. Will I beat him? How much difficulty will I face?"
Grindelwald's expression shifted—became more focused, more present. His white eye seemed to glow brighter as he looked through timelines, through possibilities.
"It will be both easier and harder than you imagine. It can fork into many different threads. It all depends upon what you try to learn. What weapons you decide are yours." He leaned against the bars casually. "If you build off what you have already begun, then you will have the tools to defeat any who oppose you. I will give you some small aid— tell Albus about your dome. It is not as insignificant as you think."
My dome?
David blinked, confusion rippling through him. His learning tool? The small illusion he'd created to teach the Circle—the projection magic he used to show them historical events, to visualize concepts, to make abstract ideas concrete?
The dome he'd first made in an attempt to recreate Ruth's fairy tales from her book. To fill that loss in his heart by bringing those stories to life the way he'd once read them to her in their shared bedroom."My dome?" he said aloud, unable to keep the skepticism from his voice. "That's... it's just a teaching aid. A visualization technique."
Grindelwald's smile widened. "Is it?" His tone suggested David was missing something fundamental. "You created the technique—as it is not a spell, not truly—from nothing. No understanding of spell creation. No knowledge of wand movements. You merely willed it. Easy as breathing."
Dumbledore cut in from where he stood near the door. "What is this dome, David? Perhaps a demonstration is in order?"
David gave an absent nod. He withdrew his wand once again and gave it a wave, channeling the familiar magic that had become second nature. Next to him, the dome formed—much larger than usual since he'd wanted it bigger for the space. Normally he used it on a table, not manifesting it directly on the ground like this.
Inside the hemisphere of shimmering air, smoke swirled. Nothing concrete yet. Just potential.
Dumbledore stepped toward it, his expression shifting to one of analytical curiosity. Confusion, even. His blue eyes tracked the dome's edges, studying the way the magic held its form.
David supposed he should make it do something. Show them what it was for.
He pictured that day at the park with Ruth all those years ago. Before the diagnosis. Before the pain. That day of laughter and joy—the day he last remembered truly being just happy. Not burdened by responsibility or loss or the weight of what needed to be done. Just a boy playing with his little sister.
The smoke inside the dome began to shift, coalesce, take shape.
A park appeared. Swings and a slide rendered in perfect detail. The grass was green—greener than Sheffield ever really was, but that's how he remembered it. That's how it had felt that day.
Two children materialized. A boy of perhaps eight or nine, dark-haired and thin. A little girl, maybe five, laughing as she ran toward the swings. Ruth's yellow dress—the one with the flowers that she'd loved so much—bright against the grey city backdrop.
The scene played out inside the dome like a memory made real. The boy—David as he'd been—pushed his sister on the swing. Her laughter rang out, tinny and distant but unmistakably hers.
David's throat tightened. He'd recreated this memory dozens of times when practicing the technique. It never got easier to watch.
"Extraordinary," Dumbledore breathed. He'd moved closer, was examining the dome from multiple angles. "This is... David, this is a remarkably advanced illusion. The level of detail, the movement, the sound—it achieves the same effect of the hundreds of runes carved into the stone of a Pensieve." His voice held genuine wonder. "How long have you been able to do this?"
David wasn't sure, to be honest. "I... I don't know? I first cast it in my first year. I would use it to watch memories of Ruth. It helped me keep going."
"You are a natural at it, David." Grindelwald cut in from his cell, his voice carrying that strange prophetic weight again. "Your natural ability is something to be cultivated."
There was a peculiar emphasis on the word natural that David couldn't quite place. But by the way Dumbledore straightened, his expression shifting to one of realisation, David had the feeling the Headmaster understood exactly what Grindelwald meant.
"Sir?" David asked, looking between them.
Dumbledore waved one hand dismissively. "Another time, David."
The brush-off annoyed him but he let it go. Now wasn't the time to press. He could ask Dumbledore later, once they'd left this tower and its prophetic prisoner.
He turned back to Grindelwald, letting the dome dissipate. The smoke collapsed in on itself, and Ruth's laughter faded into nothing. The empty tower room felt colder in its absence.
"Anything else about him? Voldemort?"
Grindelwald's expression shifted—became more contemptuous. His lip curled slightly, and for the first time since they'd arrived, David saw something like genuine disgust cross his features.
"Only that he is nothing like us." The words came out sharp, dismissive. "He does not do what he does out of conviction or the belief in carving out something better. He does this solely for his own lust for power. He wishes to be a God—undying and all-knowing."
His white eye seemed to glow brighter, looking through futures where Tom Riddle walked.
"He is not, nor will he ever be. He is just a little boy with an inferiority complex bigger than Hogwarts itself." Grindelwald's voice dripped with disdain. "The manifesto is what his followers want, not him. He would use any tool, espouse any ideology, as long as it allows him to be the one at the top. Pure-blood supremacy, Muggle extermination—these mean nothing to him except as means to gather power."
He leaned closer to the bars.
"That is the difference between you and him, David. You believe. Truly, deeply, dangerously believe. Tom Riddle believes in nothing except himself." Grindelwald's expression hardened, became more serious. "However, don't mistake his lack of conviction as magical weakness. He is powerful, and he has had decades more than yourself to learn. If you are to defeat him, you must use your time wisely. Not to learn all of magic's secrets, but to learn only what is necessary for you to be triumphant."
David absorbed that. The warning was clear—Voldemort had a massive head start. More experience, more knowledge, more raw magical power built up over years of study and practice. David was fourteen. Voldemort was in his forties.
"Focus," David said, understanding clicking into place. "Specialize rather than generalize."
"Precisely." Grindelwald smiled, pleased. "Tom will have studied everything—every branch of magic, every dark curse, every ancient ritual. He collects power like a dragon collects gold, hoarding knowledge for its own sake." His white eye glowed. "But breadth is not the same as depth. And a specialist who has mastered their chosen weapons will defeat a generalist who has merely dabbled in everything."
He gestured at the dome's fading remnants.
"Your illusions. Your mind—I can see it in you, the way you watch, the way you read people. These are your weapons. Build on them. Master them. Make yourself unbeatable in your chosen domain, and Tom's vast knowledge will mean nothing when he cannot distinguish reality from illusion."
David felt something settle in his chest. A sense of direction. Of path.
But something nagged at him.
"Would you telling me this not set me down a path of your choosing?" David found himself asking.
Grindelwald smiled—not mockingly, but with something that looked almost like approval. "Perhaps. But it is where you would have arrived at regardless of my intervention. It would simply take much more time. Several losses, some minor, some major, all painful, before you realized that you are not like Albus and Tom. You are not a natural genius of magic. You are like me. You have to work for everything you get. What comes as easy as breathing for them is different for us."
David gave him a look of incredulousness. "Really? I have doubts that you struggled with magic."
Grindelwald laughed—genuine and warm. "Ah, but you are seeing through the lens of my legend. My mythos." He spread his hands. "The truth is I was not as naturally inclined to magic as Albus. Instead, I clawed and scraped for everything. The only thing that came natural to me was Divination. So I learned different ways to use that talent."
His white eye glowed brighter.
"Other than Albus, no one defeated me wand to wand. When your opponent can see what you will do before you do it, what can you do but pray?" He tilted his head. "I turned a single natural gift into an insurmountable advantage. That is what you must do. Your illusions, your ability to read people, to speak words and watch them worm their way in—these are not just useful skills. They are the foundation of something that can make you untouchable."
He leaned back slightly."Tom will be stronger. Faster. More knowledgeable. But if he cannot trust what he sees, if he cannot be certain of his own thoughts?" Grindelwald's smile widened. "Then all his power means nothing."
David nodded. "Your turn?"
Grindelwald peered at him deeply, his mismatched eyes seeming to look through David's flesh and bone to something beneath. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but carried the weight of a nation.
"Would you give it all up? All your knowledge, all your conviction, everything you have built—for Ruth to have been saved?"
It felt like a knife was jammed into his ribs and dragged toward his heart.
Would he?
David looked down at his hands. They were steady despite the tremor in his chest. He thought of Ruthie, of her smile, of her laugh. He thought of that day in the park, her yellow dress bright against the grey Sheffield sky. He thought of the love that had filled him when she was still here. The simple, uncomplicated joy of being her big brother.
Could he give it all up? Unmake everything he'd become, everything he'd built, if it meant she lived?
"No." The word came out as a whisper, as if speaking it too loud was something forbidden. Something shameful. "No, I wouldn't."
His throat tightened. A tear tracked down his cheek, hot against cold skin.
"I miss her every day. Little Ruthie."
He looked up, met Grindelwald's eyes—one blue, one white, both understanding.
"But the world is bigger than me. Bigger than my ache." The tear was followed by another, but his voice grew steadier. Steel seeped back into it, conviction replacing grief. "There are a million other Ruths out there who deserve better. A future of carefree smiles and joy-filled laughter."
He wiped at his face with one sleeve, not caring that Grindelwald could see him cry.
"I won't allow myself to be selfish. They deserve better."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the wind outside seemed to have stilled.
Grindelwald stared at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, something shifted in his expression. The playfulness faded. The prophetic distance receded. What remained was something raw. Honest."That," Grindelwald said quietly, "is the answer of someone who will change the world. Whether for better or worse—" His smile returned, but it was different now. Sadder. More human. "—that remains to be seen."
Dumbledore had moved behind him and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. David looked up at him and saw understanding in those blue eyes. Mutual pain. The recognition of someone else who had lost, who had chosen the world over their own heart.
"I think it is time for us to be on our way," Dumbledore said gently. "I have my answer, and you have found answers to questions you didn't know you needed. You know the location now. Gellert is not going anywhere. Return at your leisure, if you wish."
David nodded and wiped the tears from his face with his sleeve. He stood, banishing the conjured chair with a flick of his wand.
"I am curious to see if you will return," Grindelwald said.
David looked back at him. "Will I?"
"It varies. Sometimes you do, other times you don't." Grindelwald shrugged, the gesture elegant despite the prison clothes. "I will be here either way. Watching. Seeing how it all unfolds."
David stood fully, feeling the weight settle on his shoulders. It was one thing to theorize about your future, to plan and prepare and build. It was another thing entirely to have it presented to you as prophecy. As paths already Seen, already walked in timelines that might become real.
He gave a nod to Grindelwald. "Thank you for your time."
The Seer waved it away with one hand. "Time is all I have left to give."
He stood, picked up the stool, and carried it back to its original spot by the window. He sat down, turning his back to them once more, resuming his vigil. Watching the world through visions. Powerless to touch anything he saw.
David moved side by side with Dumbledore toward the door. Their footsteps echoed in the circular chamber.
"Oh, and one last thing."
Grindelwald's voice rang out, clear and carrying. David stopped but didn't turn.
"If you ever find yourself bereft an eye—" There was dark humor in his tone, prophecy mixed with terrible amusement. "Please visit again. I would hate to waste a perfectly good eye when I die."
David felt ice run down his spine. The white eye. The Seer's eye.
He didn't respond. Couldn't respond. Just kept walking, following Dumbledore out of the cell, out of the tower, down the endless spiral stairs.
Behind them, Gellert Grindelwald sat alone in his prison, watching futures unfold.
And in one of those futures—perhaps many of them—David Price returned to claim what had been offered.
o—o—o—o