This is the beginning of a story I started writing a while ago. I haven't added to it in a while, but if you all like it, then I'll try to add more. Please comment, I want to know your thoughts...
ENJOY!
1
His black eyes had a manic glint that always meant danger as he stared out the window. Normally, his eyes were so lifeless and dark that they seemed to repel sunlight, for they never seemed to reflect it. But now they were different. A certain light seemed to have entered them, and was dancing like fire within them.
The object of Gellert Grindlewald's scrutinizing was a tall, gaunt man. His figure was silhouetted against the low sun.
"Crackpot." He thought to himself. He kept on watching as the man stopped, turned, and vanished instantly. The sun was setting, and the brilliant pink clouds were stretched across the sky contrasting nicely with the green, tree-speckled horizon. Gellert turned away from the window and stared without seeing at the large and extremely dusty padlock on the outside of his cell. He hated everything about that man. Everything from his stupid grey beard to his stupid boots made him, Grindlewald, angry beyond even his own belief.
What is the point of locking me in prison anyways? He thought to himself. He reveled in the thought that it was out of fear, although another possibility, and also the most likely one, was that Albus Dumbledore was angry. What did Dumbledore care if Gellert was causing a bit of trouble? He had to admit that he hadn't expected Albus to fight him, given their past friendship.
He pressed his thumb to his tongue, and in turn pressed it to the end of his left robe sleeve, which was smoking slightly from the duel he had just lost. It stopped smoking. How had Dumbledore managed to defeat him, the master of the deathstick?
At this thought, he started a little and put a dirty hand into his pocket. He was devastated, but not at all surprised to find it devoid of a wand.
Suddenly, the lock he was looking at came into focus and he really saw it for the first time. That lock was the least of his problems. After all, he himself had made it, and knew perfectly well how to escape. The real problem was not calling attention to himself when he did.
He got up and began to pace around the room, occasionally pulling apart a cobweb with his fingers. The answer seemed close. Just beyond his reach, under his hammock, or concealed behind the dust on the walls. And to find the answer was as simple as to brush the dust away.
Even though he could easily escape the confines of his cell at any time, there was still the problem of inconspicuously leaving Nurmenguard itself, and that, unfortunately, required a wand.
He stopped pacing abruptly and stared dumbstruck at the wall opposite him. He was stupid not to think of it immediately. He had created himself a secret way to escape that only he knew how to work. And once he had gotten out, he would go to the small room of wands confiscated from prisoners, and take one, just like that.
Of course there was still the gaping hole in his plan of what he would do once he had a wand, but that was to contemplate tomorrow.
He crossed the room and hoisted himself into a large hammock woven roughly from thick itchy ropes. He lay down and twiddled his thumbs. He thought that maybe if he pretended not to care about his situation, he really would not.
For what seemed like hours (although it may have only been minutes), he lay staring at the ceiling, until he turned over to avoid swallowing a large spider dangling over his mouth.
He was nine years old, sitting on a flowery blue sofa and staring avidly at a brick fireplace across from him. As he watched, the fire suddenly leapt high into the air, and went out. Only a few seconds later however, there was again a large fire in the grate, belching sparks over the carpet.
He showed no interest at all in the bizarre behavior of the fire, but merely stared at it. He was used to strange things happening where he was. He had been told long ago that this was bound to happen, that in two years he would be on his way to Durmstrang, a mysterious wizarding school. A gust of wind blew in through an open window. Then, as though it was blowing through time itself, everything sped up. His surroundings were a blur of color and light, and he seemed to be growing larger and older! Then, it stopped.
He was two feet taller than he had been, crouching on a window sill, twiddling a wand between long fingers. A man walked into the room and saw him. However, the man only had time to stare, horror struck at him before Gellert jumped off the window sill.
He was younger, but not by much. He was laughing at a joke, arm in arm with Albus Dumbledore, while a man snapped a picture.
He was reading a letter by wandlight in the dead of night, smiling at what it said.
He was outside, seething with anger, whipping his wand around while multicolored lights streamed from its tip. Two other boys his age were doing the same. Deadly green beams of light were missing him by inches, and Sparks were flying like fireworks where spells clashed. A young girl stood cowering in the middle, crying and screaming for them to stop, but they did not. Lights were flying more furiously than ever, then, it all stopped. He looked down to see the girl sprawled motionless on the ground. Then without thinking twice, he ran.
Hands gripping the hammock as if to save his life, he woke up. He was momentarily surprised that he could not see anything, until he realized that his face was pressed against the pillow, which was wet with drool in places. He shifted into the closest thing he could manage to a sitting position in the hammock. His hair was stuck to his forehead with cold sweat.
It was still dark outside and could not be much later than dawn. His hand, which was just as wet as his head, was trembling as it reached into the inner pocket of his robes. It withdrew a small leather package, kept closed with a small brass button. He opened it slowly. It was filled with no less than ten papers, all folded, and with the appearance of having been unfolded, read, and re- folded many times.
He ran through the old letters with his fingers, pulled out a relatively old one, and read it.
Gellert-
Your point about wizard dominance being FOR THE MUGGLES' OWN GOOD—this, I think, is the crucial point. Yes, we have been given power and yes, that power gives us the right to rule, but it also gives us responsibilities over the ruled. We must stress this point; it will be the foundation upon which we built. Where we are opposed, as we will surely be, this must be the basis of all our counterarguments. We seize control FOR THE GREATER GOOD.
He stopped reading and simply stared at the last four words. They had become the pedestal on which his plans stood, the cornerstone of his life.
And yet there they were, on an old letter signed- Albus.
He had left a copy of this letter back in Godric's hallow, and kept the real one. He had hoped that, If Dumbledore found the copy, those words might move Dumbledore farther along the path to wizard domination.
Somehow he had been stupid enough to take the stack of useless letters now stored in a leather package with him ever since. Why he had not left without them, he did not know, and why he still kept them confused him even more.
He folded the letter with unnecessary care and replaced it in the leather pouch. Replacing the package in his robes, he got up and looked blearily at his watch. It was five thirty. He did not want to sleep anymore. He walked to the steel bars that closed him into the cell and pressed his thumb to the rusty padlock outside of the bars.
Immediately, it glowed electric blue and grew warm. He leaned close to it and muttered "Hallows."
The word did the trick. The padlock disappeared with a pop and the bars melted away. He walked through the jail, passing cell after cell of his own creation. He laughed at the prisoners who were close to death, and ignored their pleas for freedom. After a minute, he came to a small window. There was no lock on this one, and he easily climbed through it and jumped out. Once he had fallen about ten feet, he twisted in the air.
The air around him closed in like a solid thing, and he was squeezing through a rubber chute with no air to be inhaled.
Then, he was again on solid ground. He opened his eyes immediately. The grass under his shoes was wet with morning dew, and the trees were rustling slightly in a warm breeze.
Without hesitation, he began to stride across his property, still filling his lungs with morning air and the scent of grass. He had disapparated to just outside the gates of Nurmenguard. He walked for another short space of time, and turned right. There were the walls of Nurmenguard, made of crumbling cement, wrapping around the building fifty feet away in every direction enclosing the tall structure in the middle. The iron gates arched a little way above the rest of the wall so that the cement had to curve up and over it to enclose the iron on the top. On the cement arch was written:
For the greater good
He stared up, half disgusted, half awed at the words etched in the wall.
He was brought to earth by a gust of wind in his face, and stepped forward to be close enough to touch the gates.
He wrapped three times on the old rusty bars, and immediately they caught fire. Only it was not normal fire. It was constantly changing color, from green, to red, to blue, to black, to white. The clean morning air was filled with smoke. He again muttered, "Hallows." The flames subsided.
A golden ball of light appeared above the gate, casting its light around the surrounding area. This was used to detect magical concealment. As there was none, it disappeared and the gates creaked open.
He was particularly proud of his detecting light, because he knew that no other prisons had it- it was his own creation.
He kept walking, strutting shamelessly across the damp grass. It was lighter out now, and the cement building was thrown into greater detail.
There was no door, and he simply walked through the wall, into a dimly lit room. There were chains hanging on every foot of the wall. On his right, there were rusty handcuffs, chains on them leading to ankle shackles. Here were torture helmets on his left, glowing red hot, to be placed on the heads of those who were… naughty.
He crossed the room, feeling immensely superior to the prisoners because he had to wear none of those things. On the right, where the large chains were hanging, he pulled aside the chains like a curtain, where there was an archway leading to a small room with stone walls lined with wooden cubbyholes.
As he stepped in, the chains he had pulled aside fell back in front of the arch with loud clinks and rattles. On one side, the cubbyholes were all labeled: "elder." On the other, they were labeled: "Other."
He trotted to the side were the elder wands were, and peered into the cubbyholes. They were empty. The other side, he found were nearly so, except for four or five wands of different colors and lengths.
He tested them all, producing flowers, then shooting flames from the tip of the wand and watching them curl and turn black, crumbling to the ground. They all worked the same, so the choice was down to how comfortable they felt in his hand. He ended up with a short wand made of cherry, with a crab apple carved at the end of the handle as some sort of pommel.
He did not particularly like having fruit at the end of his wand, but the others felt odd in his hand, and he only liked this one. He tucked it away inside his robes, and stepped through the chains, for some reason forgetting to push them out of his way, and receiving sharp pains in his forehead where they hit.
After he had stood blinking in confusion at his stupidity for a few seconds, he walked across the room and to the stairs leading to the cramped solitude of his cell.
In a few minutes, he was slumped in the left corner of a large overstuffed armchair he had conjured, his right leg hanging luxuriously over the other arm. From the silk bathrobe he was now wearing, he drew a cigar, which he lit with his wand and put in his mouth.
Now he needed to think. He knew that if he simply left, just like that, someone in the prison would notice he was gone. Therefore he could not leave an empty cell behind. Something, or someone would have to take his place.
The cigar fell out of his mouth as his jaw dropped. That was it! Someone would take his place!
He waved his wand and the bars on the windows melted away. Running to the window, he yelled, "Acio broom!"
In a moment, a confiscated broom from the first floor of Nurmenguard came flying up to him. He jumped on it and flew on it, high above the prison to get a better look at it. He hoped against hope that this look was one of his last.
7