Advice gratefully accepted
({.})
He finds himself returning the following day, and for several days after that. Each time she forgoes the traditional greeting for an observation on some tactical error he made during his campaigns. She talks as if she read about the battles in a book, but he knows that she observed and fought in many of them.
({.})
He had his men searching for clues on who this little mouse is. After he forcibly relocated the former head of the French resistance he expected a few months reprieve from fighting them. Within two weeks the resistance had bombed one of his barracks and staged a break out of a concentration camp.
The new leader, for all intents and purposes, seemed to appear from nowhere. His code name is Thor, young and handsome according to reports. He is too perfect, and Grindelwald knows that there must be someone else pulling the strings behind the resistance. Someone who was there all along, someone who also worked with the Goat. The patterns they are following are too similar to what they were before he clipped the Goat with a spell that would leave him weak and unconscious for months.
His spies bring back reports of a mouse. Small and quiet, but when this mouse speaks the generals of the magical resistance go quiet. Everyone used to assume that she was the Goat's child, an orphan that he took a liking to. Now his informants among the resistance's court talk of quiet comments to Thor that give him a more pensive look.
({.})
"Cutting off the house elves from the markets was a remarkably intelligent strategy."
This is the first time she acknowledges his success, and he almost misses it because she says it in the same dry tone she uses for everything. Refusing to start the conversation does not mean that she decides in which direction their talk will go, but occasionally he does respond to her criticism. Usually he ignores what she says.
({.})
There is no organized German resistance. In the muggle world Germany is still a young country, but in the magical world there is no unified Germany at all. Germany is still, to an unexposed magical's mind, a land of fiefdom's and serfs.
Magical France had always been more connected to their muggle counterpart than Germany. When the muggles had their revolution in 1789 the magical king had tried to close the borders. He only succeed marginally, and he was forced to forgo all of the rights to laws that he had previous held. This power was shared with a council of aristocrats, turning wizarding France into a bastardized oligarchy.
({.})
"You should have focused on capturing Beauxbaton before taking Paris. Once you had the elite's children you would have cut out half of the defense's members."
Compliments are uncommon, cherished, and completely deserved. The mouse compliments him in the same way he once complemented his mother's cooking. With surprise and no expectation that she will ever again cook anything good enough to deserve a compliment.
"Yes, and then I would have had the pleasure of your company a bit earlier."
"Would you have taken the muggleborn students into your prison?"
"Of course not my darling, I should have trained you for the battle field, a duty you would have surely refused." Beaming like a child given a treat on Yule he bounces on the balls of his feet, once again behaves with a gaiety unbefitting of his age and rank.
Mouse, on the other hand, never acts her age. Her words, measured and thoughtful, give one the impression of a professor trying to explain a complicated principle to a particularly slow child.
"What of the children whose parents ruled France, what should you have done with them?"
"Cherished them of course, not that their parents would believe that." His smile is huge across his face.
She believes him, he does seem to try and eliminate as many child causalities as he can. The punishment for a soldier injuring a child is fierce, akin to a soldier turning traitor.
({.})
Eventually he must review the Western front. While in 1943 the muggle Eastern front is dangerous and active, wizarding Russians find no conflict with Grindelwald. Their Tsar is a cousin of his actually.
The term Western front is really a misnomer though. The fight for pureblood rights is against Scandinavia and south Europe. Within each country there are local fighters supporting his cause, and within the countries already under his control there are fighters who do not wish for an earth cleansed. Therefore Grindelwald must control a war on multiple fronts, and hence why he must spend so much time at his centralized base camp.
While he enjoys decimating the allies' soldiers, Mouse finds her living situation deteriorating. Her guards had noticed the special attention their commander paid her. Some resent her, some wish to know why she is special, others wish to impress their leader.