Dumbledore versus Grindelwald
Warning: Spoilers for all Harry Potter stories, including Fantastic Beasts…

I've had the idea for this fanfic for years, but now it seems like the right time to finally do this, after Fantastic Beasts has just been released. I will say up front the ending will be… different than what will likely happen in the new Wizarding World of J.K. Rowling series of films, but I hope it will tide you over till then.

Note: Harry Potter is the sole intellectual property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros, and all use of their characters and concepts herein is intended to be in compliance with fair use.

Round 1
December 1943
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

Shivering in the biting night cold and blowing snow, Private Köhler could barely see the twin lights of a vehicle make its way towards the gate. Unslinging his rifle, he rubbed his hands together to bring feeling to them. The lights made themselves out into a well-worn Kübelwagen. There were two people inside: a driver and a full Oberst. Despite the wintery lethargy, his arm shot out in a brisk salute.

"Good evening, Private," the colonel said, a short but intense looking man with silver-white hair. "I am Colonel Aldrich, here with my assistant, Herr Schaatz, on an unscheduled inspection of the special factories on behalf of the Interior Ministry."

"May I see your authorization order from the Minister?"

"Certainly, here it is. Signed by Frick himself."

Köhler examined the papers. Nodding, he signaled to the gate operator to open the doors. Waving them in, he said: "Very well, Colonel Aldrich. I hope you find everything in order."

"Indeed."

"If you just sign the visitation log, we can proceed to the tour." Director Johannes proffered the clipboard with the yellowed-paper and a large fountain pen to Aldrich, who quickly signed his name. Johannes looked at the signature: there were quite a few splotches where ink had leaked excessively.

Nodding, he gave it to his secretary and said: "Thank you, Colonel. Please file it in the Blue room." She took the papers and exited the office. "Shall we?"

The three of them made their way across the grounds heading to the main building shed. Despite the late hour all the adjacent complexes were at full activity, smoke belching from their stacks, the flicker of burning coal visible from the few windows in the thick masonry walls. The entrance was a thick steel door; it took both guards some time to unlock and slowly open it. They went inside.

"In case you're curious, we're here to inquire about the status of T-555," said Colonel Aldrich as they began descending a stairwell.

Despite the cold, Johannes began to sweat. "I assure you, we're doing our best to figure out how to manufacture it, but it's a very unusual compound."

"How so?"

"Well, it's quite deadly – the accidents, and the tests, have revealed that. But its effects are unusually random. Sometimes it doesn't seem to work at all." He laughed nervously. "Almost as if it has a mind of its own."

Aldrich merely made a nonverbal sound in his throat. They had reached the basement level; the corridors branched off in three directions. Aldrich and Schaatz continued to walk forward, but Johannes stopped them. "Sorry, Herr Aldrich, the main labs are this way."

Aldrich and Schaatz shared a look. Nodding, they began following Johannes down the left corridor. They walked about ten meters until they met another set of doors. Opening it, Johannes gestured for them to go inside. "This way gentlemen. You'll find everything you're looking for in here."

"After you, Herr Johannes," Schaatz said softly.

Sweating even more, Johannes said: "Of course." He entered; Aldrich and Schaatz followed.

They entered a large foundry room, brightly lit, with large steel vats lining both sides of the path. Aldrich said: "Very interesting, but this isn't quite—"

—Johannes sprinted towards a pole with a telephone midway towards the room. Lifting up the phone, he abruptly vanished. At the same moment, a half-dozen guards burst into the room from doors along the sides. One of them yelled: "Fire!"

Submachine gun fire raked Aldrich and Schaatz—and hundreds of bullets abruptly bounced off a shimmering blue orb that had appeared around both of them. The guards had looks of shock on their faces; before they could react all of them fell to the ground unconscious as red flashes of light hit them.

Before Aldrich and Schaatz could escape, more guards began pouring into the room, opening fire with assault rifles. Bullets stitched across Schaatz's chest; gasping he fell to the ground, slumping against Aldrich. Shouting in dismay, Aldrich dragged Schaatz behind a vat.

"Take the other alive!" one of the guards shouted to the others. "Surrender! There is no escape."

That will be the day. Aldrich got up and held out his arms: all around him electric cabling from the walls ripped apart and hurtled towards the guards, wrapping themselves around them like animated snakes. With another wave of his arms, the vats ripped from their foundations and wedged against the doors, sealing them shut.

In seconds, it was all over.

Aldrich looked down at Schaatz, who was deathly pale. "MacAlister? Are you okay?" he asked softly.

"I…" With a final gurgle Sedwick MacAlister slumped over in death. Aldrich stopped waving his wand over the smoking holes in MacAlister's chest. Sighing, he pocketed MacAlister's wand and magically closed his eyes. Getting up, Albus Dumbledore twirled his wand over his head to relieve himself of his Colonel Aldrich disguise.

Your sacrifice will not be forgotten MacAlister, Dumbledore said to himself as he looked down on his long-time Auror associate's still form. As he did so, an unnatural bitterness seized him. How many times have I had to say that over the past fifteen years? The list was already far too long.

Dumbledore crouched down and examined MacAlister again. No question: the bullets had somehow penetrated their Protego. It could just as well have been me. Extracting the bullet, he touched his wand to it, but nothing—not a hint of magical properties to it. That was incredible…but not surprising.

The Muggles are killing us! Grindelwald was right! With another massive war among the Muggles having broken out again just a quarter-century after the last time, most witches and wizards had merely taken the same precautions they had back then. Normally the standard protective charms and spells should have completely protected wizards and their families from any direct or indirect effects of Muggle activity, even war.

But in the past few years that had changed. Even the Ministry could no longer deny it; it was incontrovertible that witches and wizards had been injured or even killed by Muggle weaponry, despite the fact that magic should have made them immune. 'Death to Muggles! Repel the Nomaj! Kill the Magicless!' All across the world, in many tongues, witches and wizards were saying similar things, joining with Grindelwald's movement. We may be too late already.

The Muggle government in Britain had denied any knowledge or responsibility for making the bombs and shells that had caused wizard casualties. The Ministry of Magic's Aurors had investigated munitions factories across Britain and found nothing. Across the Atlantic, their counterparts in MACUSA had found a bomb that could penetrate magical defenses, but only after it exploded; no one knew where it had come from, only that it had been loaded on a ship bound for Europe. Despite the efforts of Investigators on three continents, no one had been able to find a way to identify the enchanted Muggle weapons, nor find where they were being made.

Dumbledore was one of the increasingly dwindling few who insisted that wizards were behind this. This was the first time enchanted Muggle weapons had been found—the answers had to be here! Dumbledore waved his wand; MacAlister's body Transfigured into a set of dog tags, which he pocketed. Now he picked up one of the guard's rifles. The rifle itself was completely ordinary. Firing it, it appeared to be just an ordinary rifle. He removed the bullets, and touched his wand to them—still nothing. Finally, he took a bullet and carefully pulled it apart. Then he gingerly tasted it with his tongue. Just like normal gunpowder—ack! Staggering, he stumbled and fell. Dazed, Dumbledore slowly got to his feet. He needed to cast a Rejuvenating Charm on himself; he felt as if he had just boxed with a giant and lost. That was definitely Magic, but what kind? Could it be—no!

With a jolt, Dumbledore realized he had felt this kind of magical attack before. It had been decades ago, but the similarity was unmistakable. A theory rapidly began to form in his mind, becoming more concrete and horrible as the hypothesis fit the facts. But I must find proof.

Now a foot taller, Dumbledore grimly went up to one of the guards. Towering over him, he growled: "Where did you get those rifles? Who made them" he asked tightly, pointing his wand right between the guard's eyes.

"Not… here… not… here…" the man babbled.

He doesn't know. There was no point interrogating the others, the answer would be the same. With a flourish he rendered them all unconscious; they hung limply in their wire cocoons. Dumbledore returned to the door; it was sealed. Alohomora didn't open it, but a Shrinking Transfiguration spell was able to shrink it by a smidge, enough for him to Apparate to the other side. Walking down the corridor, Dumbledore held his wand to his ear. He could hear nothing; no sudden alarms anywhere above. Completely separate. Was he working with the Muggles here? He and MacAlister had come to this camp after painstaking research into the Nationalsozialismus secret weapons projects; the existence of this factory had been hinted at, but there were discrepancies in the reports from what outside surveillance revealed. I think we're very close.

Dumbledore returned to the main corridor and proceeded the way he and MacAlister had planned, before Johannes had lured them into the trap room. That log must have been Charmed to detect magic; that's how they knew we were wizards. Holding out his wand, he Unsealed the door at the end of the corridor and entered.

"Stop!" Immediately Stunning spells whizzed by him. Shielding himself, Dumbledore cast a Blast Wave Hex; his assailants were picked up and hurtled against the wall, knocked unconscious. Dumbledore bound them; they were Goblins, and they were carrying wands. He was equal parts shocked and curious. Unprecedented. A gross violation of wizarding law—not that that mattered much to Grindelwald.

Looking around, it was a room similar to the one where he had been ambushed, but with a horrible difference: dozens of people were hanging from enchanted floating crucifixes, moaning softly. Deathly thin and in tattered rags, all of them had a cursed cut in their ankles. Their blood dripped down into a large obsidian cauldron, big enough for a man to step into. The cauldrons were all filled to varying degrees with blood, simmering due to magical heating. Grimly Dumbledore went up to one and, holding back the desire to vomit, he stirred the blood potion with his wand. Slowly, small ingets of gold floated to the top.

Intellectually—but not emotionally—Dumbledore was possessed with the desire to wreak vengeance for the atrocities taking place in here. Blood to gold—an ancient Dark Alchemy, lost to wizardkind… but not to goblins. The fact that goblins—with wands!—were here explained much. That's how Grindelwald is getting support from the Nazis—turning their victims' blood to gold—and getting support from goblins, by giving them wands in violation of wizard law.

He was running out of time, but Dumbledore could not ignore what was going on here. He unbound the Muggles, did his best to heal their wounds, then Apparated them to the surface. For the goblins, he gathered their wands and destroyed them; then he began interrogating them by Legilimens. Like the guards, they knew nothing about the enchanted Muggle weapons. But it's pretty clear where to search next.

Exiting, he went down the third corridor, dreading what was to come. By Merlin's grace, may I not see what I think I will see. To his surprise, the door was not locked.

As bad as the sight of Muggles being leeched of blood to turn into gold was, that was nothing compared to what he now saw: all around him, floating in magical cocoons, were dark twisting clouds of black-red torment—the remnants of Obscurials.

Dumbledore could hold his outrage no longer. In a loud, controlled voice he exclaimed: "Grindelwald! Show yourself!"

A fireplace magically erupted. From the flames, Gellert Grindelwald's head appeared. "Albus Dumbledore. What an unpleasant surprise."

Gesturing around, Dumbledore said in the coldest voice possible: "Is there no depths to which you won't sink to advance your twisted goals?"

Grindelwald smiled. "None. For the greater good, nothing is out of bounds. Nothing is beyond the pale."

"Torturing Muggles—"

"—Please, the No-Maj are nothing. Let them kill each other, the more the better." Before Dumbledore could reply, Grindelwald continued: "Certainly I hope you don't try to convince me that your Magicless are better than mine!"

"They are not my Muggles or your Muggles. What they do to each other has nothing to do with your culpability in aiding and abetting their crimes."

Grindelwald chuckled. "Perhaps. Anyway, enough about Muggles. That's not why you really came here, is it Albus?"

Mirthlessly Dumbledore replied: "No. It's over Grindelwald. You are exposed. The whole wizarding world will know it was you who enchanted those Muggle weapons… lacing them with fragments of Obscurials."

Grindelwald stopped smiling. Dumbledore shook his head. "Why I could I not see it before? Magic that can hide from Magic—you learned that from what you did to Credence, somehow. There is such concentrated magical power in an Obscurial; once released, it explodes with incredible force, then vanishes completely." He paused to collect himself. "Placing a fragment of an Obscurius inside a Muggle bomb is the perfect way to make it seem as if Muggles are able to harm wizards."

Scowling, Grindelwald said: "They are a threat, Albus. You have no idea what the Muggles are capable of."

Dumbledore shook his head sadly. "No, I had no idea what you are capable of." He turned his head to look at the Obscurials. Again holding back the desire to wretch, Dumbledore asked harshly: "Did you cut up Credence's essence into these pieces? Or did you find another Obscurial? Or…?" Dumbledore's mouth fell open at the final, horrible possibility.

Before he could say the final accusation, Grindelwald taunted: "Why don't you ask them? I'm sure they'll love to respond!" Grindelwald's head then vanished. All around Dumbledore, the magical containers holding the Obscurials disappeared; out of control, the Obscurials whirled and bounced off the walls, crackling with immense, uncontrollable power.

"Oh dear." He tried to Disapparate out, and was unable to do so. As fast as he could, Dumbledore raced for the door. Waving his wand, he activated all the alarms in the complex, and Disapparated all the guards, goblins and other Muggles he could sense in the basement. I hope they can all escape in time. Behind him the room rumbled; he dared not look back, but he could tell it was being literally torn apart.

Reaching the base of the stairs, he was finally clear of the anti-Apparating charm. As far as he could, Dumbledore transported himself out. He found himself precariously balanced in the limbs of a pine tree, almost a kilometer away. The factory complex was a blaze of lights, klaxons blaring unceasingly. Streams of people were running into the surrounding forest; many hundreds of them, highlighted by the lights against the snowy ground. The central building from where he escaped shuddered; then there was a blinding light and a deafening explosion, which made Dumbledore turn away instinctively. Moments later he looked back; the entire complex was a pile of rubble. Scores of Muggles were pulling themselves out of the wreckage, but it was clear many did not escape.

I will stop you, Grindelwald. You shall answer for everyone who died here today; for Credence and all the others you killed, no matter what it takes. Rarely had Dumbledore not been able to do what he intended; he only hoped this would not be the exception.

Dumbledore Apparated away.