5 February, 2014-Durmstrang Castle, Unknown Location
In the far north of Europe, inside the wizarding school of the Durmstrang Institute of Magical Learning, two 15-year-old students stayed up late to study alone in one of the castle's classrooms that was situated underground.
One of the boys was a short Swedish wizard with red hair and freckles. Since it was out of class no one was required to wear school uniform, so the Swede, whose name was Ernst, took the liberty of wearing a red and white striped sweater and blue jeans. His friend Elias; a tall, orange-haired wizard from Finland, was dressed in camouflage military pants and a neat- looking blue turtleneck.
They were both feeling warm and bright inside while studying wizarding history together in what was otherwise an empty room. Candles were lit and levitated several feet above the floor. The classroom had a medieval feeling about it, with stone brick and a golden brown floor.
The two young Nordic wizards were reading about a subject familiar to all the sons and daughters of Durmstrang: Gellert Grindelwald.
Gellert Grindelwald was a wizard from Switzerland who attended the Durmstrang Institute in the late 19th century, where he proved to be a student like no other because of his exceptional skills and ambitions. Eventually, he flew too close to the sun and during one of his many dark experiments, things went haywire and one student lost his life as a result. Grindelwald was forced to flee the school and came to be the most dangerous and infamous dark wizard in history. He managed to start what would come to be called for the "Global Wizarding War" in his quest for ending the Statute of Secrecy and forcing muggles into submission. He and his fanatics spent decades savaging Europe, destabilizing and conquering the Ministries of Magic and forcing thousands of wizards and witches into joining his cause. He was a tyrant like no other and he made Lord Voldemort of Britain look like a schoolyard bully in comparison.
It was for the reasons above that all students were taught about the war Gellert Grindelwald lead, as early as the first year and would continue to study the legacy he left, in explicit detail during the following years. It was a bit of a sensitive subject at the school because of that many students and staff members had lost family members at his hand or even had distanced friends and relatives who'd been forced or tricked into serving him and regretted it later.
The Swedish boy paged through his copy of "Das höhere Wohl," "The Greater Good," that contained detailed writings about Grindelwald's ideology of wizard supremacy and many enchanted pictures of the dark wizard himself. Ernst looked at a moving picture of a middle-aged Grindelwald with his weird eyes and ugly hair-cut while dressed in a trench coat and holding a skull hookah in his hand.
"Do you manage to get anything done?" Elias asked in his friend's native language. The Finn had taken the effort of learning how to speak Swedish for the sake of his comrade and even though he only began learning it two years ago, he could already speak the language fluently, albeit with a clear Finnish accent, of course. Ernst felt a bit guilty that he had not done the same for his friend as he could barely speak a word in Finnish himself.
"Well, most of this is quite common knowledge for all of us by this point. Although there's one thing that just bugs me. Gellert succeeded in swaying all the French pure-blood families over to his side during his rally in Paris, 1927, by claiming that they fought for stopping World War ll. But then, he not only let the war happen, but he also took advantage of it to destroy the muggle population. Why on earth would anyone in their right mind follow such an obvious hypocrite?" Ernst wondered openly.
"Well, society is run by hypocrisy, simple as that. We validate certain people's words over others, no matter how nonsensical and potentially dangerous they might be. Still, if I had lived in the 20s, I might have joined Grindy myself, hadn't he been so damn ugly," Elias answered with a twinkle in his eye.
Ernst couldn't stop laughing at his friend's relentlessly dark sense of humour, which mirrored his own.
"Judging by how good old Gellert looked as an adult can make one wonder why Albus Dumbledore ever would've fallen in love with him. But if you look at him in his teenage years, you can totally see why he was such a mankiller " the Swede, joked.
"You'd really hit the nail on the head there. That chap certainly did not age like wine, to say the least," Elias filled in.
"Well, what do you say should we pack and leave? It is late and we're probably not going to learn anything new until the test tomorrow, " Ernst said.
"Yeah, you're probably right. I have to finish my assignment in Wizarding Politics, but I can do that in the dormitory," The tall Finn agreed.
"'Wizarding Politics', I cannot for Merlin's sake imagine why you or anyone else would choose that course freely. There's just nothing magical about politics, " The Swede stated.
"Well the way I see it; if you want to bring a change to the world you live in, you'd better learn how it works in beforehand."
"Whatever you say, fruitcake."
With a silent wave of their wands, they summoned their books and papers into their respective backpacks and went out off the room to the magically lit corridor.
"HELP! SAVE ME!"
"Seems like someone is in trouble," Elias suspected. "Let's check it out!"
"I think the scream came from the Dark Arts classroom," Ernst said.
The door to the classroom was locked, so Ernst had to look through the keyhole. What he saw horrified him.
His classmate Ulf Gustafsson, a werewolf, had his arms locked by a long red-haired guy in a black leather jacket, whom Ernst identified as Francis Avery.
A slim, black-haired witch in a black dress and fishnets moved towards their hostage.
"There's no point screaming Fido," she hissed in Welsh-accented English. "Our silencing charms prevent anyone from knowing that you're even here, and when we have obliviated you, you won't remember a thing from our encounter."
Well, she should've known better since her silence charm was failing, Ernst thought for himself.
The girl, Samantha Carrow, pointed her wand at the Ulf's throat and uttered a dark curse that caused his mouth to fill with blood that streamed down through his blue shirt.
"Easy there! Are we really going to become as cruel as our parents?" asked a muscular, blond boy with a Scottish accent. Ernst recognized him as Carlyle Yaxley, who was a year younger than himself and always neatly dressed in a white shirt and black sweater.
Out of Durmstrang's enormous and diverse multi-European student body, those three bastards were the only ones from the Brittish Isles. They were transfer students from Hogwarts, sent to Durmstrang by their families because they didn't fit in there. They were too intense for the British school to handle, to put it lightly.
Elias whispered, "What is going on Ernst? Is someone about to get murdered?"
"Almost. It's the Death Eater kids. They're holding Ulf the werewolf hostage to torture him," Ernst explained.
"Well, we're not going to let them get away that easily, won't we?"
Before Ernst even got to respond, Elias made the lock on the door melt with a flick of his wand, and the two friends stormed into the room.
"LEAVE THE WEREWOLF ALONE!" Elias screamed in English, his Finnish accent thick.
Carrow turned her head towards them and said with a sadistic smile; "Eriksson and Jaakkonen! What is this? Is it a burst of courage I get to witness?"
"Go back to Hogwarts, you slithering Slytherins," Ernst yelled sounding unintentionally silly due to his clunky accent.
"I used to be in Ravenclaw, actually," Avery corrected them as he pulled Ulf behind his back. He spoke in an Irish accent that Ernst had not been able to identify before.
"W-well, then you should be smart enough to back off when the storm is coming," Ernst shuttered. The Swede always used to joke in tense situations like this because it made him feel cool, despite the nervous breakdown he was having on the inside.
"What storm?" Yaxley asked, utterly confused.
"We are the storm!" Elias answered furiously.
Carrow made a quick swoop with her wand and screamed "ELECTRA," and before Elias could react, he was hit a thunderbolt in the chest, flinging him backward on the floor, trashing his turtleneck.
"STORM THAT! YOU SON OF A MUDBLOOD!" The ex-Slytherin laughed hard and violently.
The classroom quickly had turned into a battlefield.
Ernst panicked and ran around the classroom as if he was a lost chicken with his wand in his hand while the witch fired curses in his direction.
He tripped on his shoelaces and fell to the floor, and Carlyle Yaxley, lacking any superior magical skills ran recklessly towards him. Ernst quickly pointed his wand at the Scottish wizard and shouted out a spell that made Yaxley's head turn into that of a moose. As always happens when a non-animagus wizard turns into an animal, he lost his human conscience and began to run on all four until he lost his balance and laid crawling on the floor, unable to get up.
With an "Expelliarmus!" Carrow disarmed. "I've had enough of you bastards!" She moved towards the Swede and began to kick him in the stomach with her pointy high heel boots. Ernst tried to get up but she kept kicking, making it impossible for him to do anything else but to cringe in pain.
Suddenly, Elias shot to his feet, never angrier than he was now. He pointed his wand towards Carrow and uttered "Serpentsortia," and conjured a long black mamba. Before the witch could do anything, the snake had bitten her in the right leg causing her to fall down on the floor barely able to breathe from the poison.
Francis Avery began to lose his grip on Ulf to try to get himself involved in the fight, and Ulf took his chance to wrestle him down on the floor, beating him unconscious with some well placed left jabs, leaving the Irishman with grotesque black eyes.
"Vipera Evanesca" The Finnish wizard uttered and the snake vanished in ash. He placed the tip of his wand at the nearly unconscious Samantha's snake bite and said: "Vulnera Saneteur," healing the damage.
Ernst, nearly speechless at all the havoc they had caused, opened his mouth and stuttered "E-elias, I-I don't mean this in a bad way but had you attended Hogwarts, you would've definitely been sorted into Slytherin!"
"I can see the reasons behind your argument, but I like to think myself more of as a Gryffindor actually," his friend answered, shocked that Ernst was still able to crack a joke given the circumstances.
"On a more serious note, make sure to repair all the damage. We must leave no trace what has happened," Ernst said. "Also make sure to revert moose guy over there back to normal," he pointed at Yaxley who was still unable to get up on his feet.
"Yes, absolutely!" His friend answered and began to magically repair all the damage caused.
Ernst went over to his scruffy, black-haired and neatly dressed werewolf classmate, who was still dripping blood from his mouth. "Hey let me fix that," Ernst said as calmly as he could. He pointed his wand at Ulf and uttered, "Vulnera Saneteur," just as Elias did with Carrow's snake-bite before, and the mouth healed and his classmate was able to speak clearly again.
"Thanks, Ernst! I don't know how to repay you, " he thanked him in Swedish.
"You don't need to, and don't worry, we will take care of all the damage," Ernst assured him. He went down on his knees and tipped his wand at the unconscious Irishman and uttered "Obliviate".
"What are you doing! Do you know how many school rules they've broken? We could get them expelled instead! Wouldn't that be better?," Ulf demanded, confused.
"No, we could not. Their aristocratic families have most definitely bribed our maggot to headmaster so much that they can't get expelled from Durmstrang no matter what. Besides, even if we did succeed in charging them for their crimes, they probably have access to the most cunning and corrupted criminal lawyers in the Wizarding World, and we'll look guilty in court instead. The best we can do is to obliviate them and not leave any traces."
Ulf, not liking the idea of his captors getting away this easily, assumed his saviors were experienced in such situations more than he was, so he agreed to let them do what they thought was necessary.
"Hey, Uffe! Elias and I are going to practice transfiguration with some other friends tomorrow after class. We would love to have you come with us. So what do say?" Ernst said.
"I would like that very much!" The werewolf replied gratefully.
"That's great! We'll see you tomorrow then, and remember don't tell anyone what has happened this evening," the Swedish wizard said with a smile and laid his hand on his classmate's shoulder.
AN: Finally it feels like I got a good way to kick off the story. Please don't hesitate to review and give some response. I would love to know what you think of the story and how I can improve it. Lastly, I want to thank my beta thunderstorm-skald for helping me with the grammatic errors and spelling mistakes.