The Beautiful and Terrible thing called Truth

'Forgiving someone is easy, but being able to trust them again is a totally different story.'

Unknown

"Commander," One of the soldiers gasped. Rhaegar frowned, looking up from his activities.

He was this time, in the nursery, with his wife, delightedly looking at the plans.

The next few days after Christmas, Rhaegar had been overjoyed beyond imagining. Truly, happiness shone from within him, and he was not happy to be interrupted.

"Yes?" He asked.

The soldier bowed and handed him a scroll of parchment. Rhaegar frowned and took it, untying the string and breaking the wax seal to unfurl it.

The soldier bowed his head and left. They couldn't risk sending owls, in case they were intercepted.

But in times of peace- well, not open war, anyway- they could afford more relaxed measures of communication than what they usually had.

There was a silence while Rhaegar read, then:

"WHAT?!"

"Love?" Alarissa frowned looking at him in concern.

He looked at her, his face was utterly white.

"We've been attacked." He whispered.


"Are you certain?" He demanded harshly. Next to him, Harald winced.

"Who are they?" Someone else demanded. "That they dare attack one of our cities? En masse as they were? As in ARMIES? ARE THEY REMNANTS OF GRINDELWALD'S FORCES?"

Rhaegar snarled. "We should go to him. Wring the truth from his neck!" Not something he usually did, but when someone, or some people, were under his protection…. The consequences of breaking that protection were….

"I've already spoken to Grindelwald," a witch named Marie said. "I went to Nurmengard as soon as the attack was heard of."

Rhaegar shook his head harshly. "Whoever they are they have great power and forces at their disposal. We cannot ignore this threat any longer!" he glared at each and every single one of them as if saying this was their fault. "But, my friends, pray it is Grindelwald. If we have to defeat another Dark Lord of Lady…."

He left that chilling fear hanging in the air.

He turned and once he had left boundaries, he disapparated with a crack.


Nurmengard Central Europe….

Rhaegar apparated with a crack. He stood in front if the chilling, foreboding gates of Nurmengard.

The clan's forces had imprisoned Grindelwald here, despite calls from the international Wizarding Community to have Grindelwald executed- or better yet, Kissed by a Dementor.

But the clan loathed Dementors even more than Dark Witches or Wizards. So Grindelwald was thrown here to rot, in this unplottable fortress in Europe. No one dared go against the clan, and Dumbledore, the victor of the final great battle, had supported them publicly and strongly.

Rhaegar intoned the enchantments in his mind that were necessary to pass through this place. Not even a master sorcerer would be able to penetrate the fortress' defences. Not only Atlantean magic, but it was exclusive only to a select few- members of the military elite. Not even new members of the elite received that privilege.

The place would have turned anyone's blood to ice and froze their bones as well. Just knowing countless innocents were worked to death, tortured, killed sadistically in the most agonizing of ways for fun….

Rhaegar passed through the slogan, 'For the Greater Good' in iron. For the 'Greater Good' indeed. How many people have to die, for a war to stop? Rhaegar might have been a warrior, but if it would be forever for another war to turn up, it would have been too short a time.

Rhaegar passed through icy cold walls of stone, former places of torture, for prisoners. Always their screams could almost be heard in the haunting eerie silence of the stone corridors. The cells. He didn't stop, though. Didn't let it affect him. Didn't even bother to peek into any of the cells until he reached what he went for.

He arrived there.

It was the topmost tower. A place so high and isolated, Rhaegar just knew that if anyone died here, save for those that brought the prisoner food, no one would know anything.

A man, thin and drained as could be, huddled on the iron bed. His robes were tattered. He'd grown a dirty beard, so stained, like his hair, it was hard to tell the colour it was now. He looked nothing like the mischievous carefree blond boy he had been in the pictures, nor the tyrant yelling orders to his troops.

Gellert Grindelwald.

Rhaegar made his presence known. He tapped on the door.

The former Dark Lord's shoulders tensed, then relaxed somewhat.

Rhaegar used his magic to allow him entry.

"Grindelwald," he said after a moment of silence. Grindelwald's back was turned to him.

Rhaegar wondered if he had fallen asleep upright.

"What does the clan want of me now?" The former Dark Lord spoke. So he was awake.

After his imprisonment, the clan visited him a few times to interrogate about his forces, the remnants, the individuals loyal to him, his spies, and so forth. Grindelwald had nothing to lose. He had already lost his magic. As for his wand… Rhaegar could never be too sure what Dumbledore did with the damned thing.

Probably snapped it in half, he thought. And burnt the pieces.

"The clan wants nothing. I want something." He answered. That made Grindelwald pause. He slowly turned towards him.

Grindelwald stood in shock at the sight of the unbelievably handsome young man in front of him. His poise and composedness suggested that he was military and of aristocratic background. He wore the Volsung Clan's military uniform, and judging from it, was a member of the elite forces. But that was not what shocked Grindelwald to the core, more than anything.

His eyes.

They were the deepest, yet icy blue. Eyes that he knew. Eyes that he never really forgot or hated, no matter how much he pretended. Eyes that secretly haunted him to the depths of his soul.

Rhaegar stepped forwards. The shock paralysed Grindelwald seemingly. Rhaegar himself was in shock. No, Grindelwald would not be expecting visitors- unless he remembered he just had one that morning, but...

The man's pale blue eyes were staring at his ones.

And with a shock, himself, Rhaegar remembered his mother.

He remembered the pictures. He remembered her eyes. He had her eyes.

"Did you know her?" He wondered somewhere, in the back of his mind, how he had found his voice and managed to keep it emotionless.

Grindelwald stared at him. "Knew who exactly?"

"You knew her, didn't you? My mother?" Rhaegar asked ignoring his question.

Grindelwald narrowed his eyes, trying to cover up how much this young man unnerved him. "Do I know you?"

"I was young but in the forces when you were defeated," Rhaegar said icily. "But I am not asking about me. I am asking about my mother. Katerina Alexios." He remembered her maiden name.

If Grindelwaldwas shocked into a sudden icy stillness. "Your mother? Katerina is your mother?"

"Yes." Rhaegar looked steadily at him in the eyes.

Grindelwald stared blankly at the stone wall.

How things would have gone, he mused. How different things would have been. The dying flames reflected in his eyes but he saw nothing. Just her.

He remembered her. That beautiful, gentle yet proud young girl. Fantastically arrogant, reined by her emotions as much as her spectacular brains. He remembered the days they spent, laughing at their innovative new charms and causing piles of paper and parchment to explode when they didn't like their work, or their rivals taunted them. He remembered the tricks he got up to, how she smacked him afterwards, threatened to jinx him if he got into any more trouble…

And their promises. The little of their hopes and dreams they shared- how he had been blind- they had been so little. That look… The last look they shared with each other. Never again would he set his eyes on her. Never again. And he had left, arrogantly proclaiming that he didn't need her, but admitting silently to himself that he not only did, but he depended on her the way he did on no one else. Time and time again had taught him to rely only on himself, especially after numerous betrayals, but despite his intentions, he had found himself leaning on her more than anything.

He had fought. All this time thinking of her. Convincing himself that she would see reason and they would be reunited together, her and him championing and guiding the new world order. And he had seen her face just before the last duel, just before he collapsed and allowed blackness to overcome him.

And all the time in Nurmengard… He had mourned only one thing.

Now he looked up at the boy with her blue eyes. Those blue eyes, seemingly staring and piercing straight through his soul and seeing right through him.

"So is that why you have come? Katerina's son, to ask me what she knows? Perhaps you should have asked your mother in the first place."

Rhaegar narrowed his eyes. "I'm asking you." He said in a deadly-quiet voice.

Grindelwald stared for a moment then began to laugh hysterically. Rhaegar showed no emotion whatsoever apart from his lips twitching somewhat and a strange glint in his eyes.

"Your mother proves to be as deceitful to you as she did to me, then." The former Dark Lord stated. Rhaegar showed no emotion whatsoever. The former Dark Lord was trying to goad him.

"Perhaps. It's in her nature to conceal many things, especially that which brings her great pain," Rhaegar said quietly.

"Great pain." Grindelwald snorted. "Did my leaving bring her great pain? All those years she claimed to love me, to stay by my side for eternity, and at the slightest mention of seriousness, she fled."

Rhaegar took a few steps forward. "So you did know each other." Inside he was feeling icy-cold shock drench him to the bone. They loved each other.

Now he knew why his mother reacted so badly with Philomena's fiancé without even knowing him. Now he knew why his mother loathed Tom Riddle with a passion (though not without reason).

It was all because of what she had done.

Rhaegar forced an icy smile on his lips. He couldn't afford to act weak in front of this man, no matter what he had been reduced to. Now that the world was at stake, especially now that he had so much to lose. He not only had a wife, he was about to be a father, now.

"When did you last see her?" He asked, as if from a distance.

Grindelwald smiled a blade-like smile. "November 1925. Why?"

Rhaegar was silent. Outwardly he looked as if he felt nothing. As if the information was nothing. But inside….

Rhaegar had no trouble with the math. A bucket of the iciest freezing water seemed to drench him head-to-toe, straight to the bone. As if someone had cast a permanent Freezing Charm in his insides.

Rhaegar had been born on August 1926. Exactly nine months after the date Grindelwald gave him- or roughly, anyway. He didn't give the exact date.

But Grindelwald claimed not to have known who he was- and he did act shocked. And yet….

Rhaegar, if possible, felt even icier inside. Now it all made perfect sense.

His mother. The most deceitful, manipulative, secretive, dishonest, selfish hypocrite of all.

Rhaegar wanted to run from the room. He wanted to scream. He wanted to whip out his wand and blast Grindelwald to shreds- except that no one could cast magic in this place. He wanted to dive into flames and kill himself. He wanted to howl at the skies. To blot out his existence to the world.

He lies! A voice screamed in his mind.

And yet… What if he wasn't lying?

He had smiled, as if he knew what this was doing to Rhaegar inside. Did Grindelwald know that Katerina had married? That would have been no surprise. But then again…. How much news would he have had in this fortress?

How would he know when Rhaegar was born? And counted backwards to the time when he would have been conceived?

Rhaegar however said nothing. Whoever this man thought he was, he was a monster, and a deranged one at that.

"Tell me, Grindelwald," he said quietly. "Did you make any plans, before your ultimate downfall? Apart from conquering the entire world and setting up a new world order with wizards on top and Muggles enslaved at the very bottom?"

Grindelwald laughed. "If I did, do you think I would be imprisoned in this very place, which I had built to house those that did not believe?"

"They built this place. Not you." Rhaegar said quietly. "They laboured, blood and sweat, hour after hour, week after week, month after month, year after year, to build this place, so they would be thrown into these very walls, dark and cold as could be, without seeing the light of day ever again. Without ever seeing their loved ones- their husbands and wives, their sons and daughters, their grandchildren and siblings, all because you could not bear it so. Just because you lost what you guarded close to you, does that mean that everyone should lose it as well?"

For the first time, Grindelwald's face showed an ugly flush.

"Watch what you say, boy." He sneered. Rhaegar grinned. "No one's called me that for a long time. Not even when I was a youth training to be a soldier." He laughed harshly. "Please." He looked the older man straight in the eye. "You did nothing. You deserve nothing. You thought to set up a new world order against all odds- you thought you would be the one leading it. You thought that simply because you were simply lucky enough to be born Pure-blood, meant that you could trample on everyone who were simply unlucky enough to not be born one."

Grindelwald's face flushed even further. "How dare you!" He growled. "It was they who trampled us in the first place. Those damned Muggles and their witch-burnings-"

Rhaegar scoffed, still looking at Grindelwald in the eye. "No country has had a witch-burning since the eighteenth century! And even then they started to decline! And although you say they treat us as freaks if they knew, and that Muggle-borns are a threat to our race, ask yourself this, did you choose which family you would be born into?" His icy eyes bored into Grindelwald's pale ones.

It was as if a canon-ball had dropped into the room.

They stood there for a long time.

"Are you going to answer my question?" Rhaegar asked icily. His icy eyes- which seemed to have an effect on Grindelwald- never once moved from his and seemed to see right through his soul.

Grindelwald froze. Apparently he could think of nothing to say, when confronted directly with this question.

Then he sneered. "I don't have to answer to you, boy. You or anyone."

Rhaegar looked icily at him. "Then you have to answer to yourself. Ask yourself why you're in here, and why my mother married another man. Ask yourself whether it was clever of you to think of everything up, and why you are here. If it was clever of you, why are you in here?"

There was a pause.

"People dead before their time." Rhaegar spat. "Mother and Fathers lost their children, sons and daughters, their parents. Siblings torn apart- by war. All because some were merely lucky enough to be born Pure-blood wizards. But ask yourself this- was it anything more than luck?" His eyes blazed. "Was it anything more than luck we were born Pure-bloods?"

Not even the former Dark Lord could say something against that.


When Rhaegar left Nurmengard he was steaming. Rage simmered in him. Bitterness, hatred and resentment. And more.

He had looked evil in the eye before, and yet…

And there was the information he gained.

Now he wondered what Sigurd would feel someday when he grew up and learned the truth. Heck, he wondered what his own child would feel if she ever knew.

But was it the truth?

He lies… Rhaegar's mind told him. He is filled with lies….

And yet… he had looked shocked that his visitor bore Katerina's eyes. And he did know his mother. Not even she could dispute that.

Either way…. He would no longer trust her. Not as long as he lived.

Rhaegar disapparated.

Alarissa was waiting for him when he got home.

She smiled and ran to him.

"Careful!" He said in a warning tone as he caught her, his hand automatically going to her belly. It was still flat.

She rolled her eyes. "I'm more coordinated than humans. Even when pregnant. Besides what could happen?"

He scoffed and gave her a kiss, wrapping his arms, a little too tightly around her.

"Rhaegar," she complained. "Sorry," he muttered. He drew back, as if his very touch would contaminate her. She looked at him, alarmed. "Rhaegar what's wrong?"

He took a deep breath. She noticed he was shaking slightly. That frightened her. He would never react like this, unless something major had happened. Apocalyptic even.

"Rhaegar," she touched his arm. Her gentle touch seemed to have restored something within him, and when he looked down, she noticed that his colour had gone back to normal. "Please," she led him to the kitchen.

Minutes later, after fixing them both cups of tea, she sat across him, while their drinks cooled.

There was silence. In a way, they were both glad the atmosphere was warm and cosy.

It was a while before either of them spoke.

"Was that all he said?" Alarissa said.

Rhaegar nodded. His eyes fixed on a spot in the table in front of them. "Yes."

Alarissa looked at the teapot. "Rhaegar."

He looked up and their eyes met. "Gellert Grindelwald has been known to manipulate others by playing on their emotions- their desires and fears, their loves and hates. He is a master of this. Do not take this to heart. He could be lying."

"Could be," Rhaegar said. "Except he didn't know my mother had a son, much less four children, who and how old I was. How could he possibly know, being trapped in there?"

"He could have received news about the outside world along with food," Alarissa reasoned. "Yes," Rhaegar said. "But not about my birth. Or my mother's marriage."

Alarissa sighed. "Grindelwald had spies, Rhaegar. And he was captured after you finished Hogwarts."

Rhaegar sighed. "Oh." He snorted. "Right."

"If he was in love with your mother and he was resentful that she left him, it could only mean that he was keeping tabs on her- at least before the war broke out." Alarissa stated. Her fingers twirled the spoon in her teacup. "He might have even been suspicious that she was… you know… giving out information about him."

Rhaegar snorted. "But she could hardly have been the only one, could she?" He demanded. "There were many others…."

"Yes." Alarissa said. "There would have been. But your mother would have known him best of all."

Rhaegar stared at the swirling tea in his cup, bitterly. Of course she knew.

"She lied." Rhaegar said. "If this is the truth- and it might not be- then Grindelwald is my father and she lied all this time."

Alarissa looked doubtful. "You look like your father, her husband." She said. That was true. But what if she had married someone that looked like that?

Rhaegar took a picture out of his pocket. Something he had obtained in secret.

A Durmstrang school photograph. A boy in Durmstrang robes posed. A boy with a mischievous smile. Hs studied the boy's features. Very handsome. His eyes were sky-blue and his hair was a fine golden-blond colour but his face…

It was chiselled, lean and sculptured, and he had angular, high cheekbones, a high, but not prominent, forehead and a fine, narrow mouth. Like Rhaegar's father.

Like Rhaegar.

The thought made him sick. Did his mother…. But his father had black hair too, like Rhaegar. And yet Rhaegar knew it was possible for Atlantean witches, especially ones as powerful as his mother, to know what their child would look like.

And what better way to cover this up than to marry someone who looked similar to him?

Rhaegar breathed deeply, but shakily. "I have to report to the council. I don't believe that Grindelwald has been in contact with anyone since his incarceration. I checked. This has to be something else."

He had to put it aside. The future was more important. But he could not just ignore the past, especially if it concerned his family- the ones he loved.

Never.


"You are certain?" The leading commanders boomed.

An older man- by the standards of the Atlanteans- and ancient, according to normal wizards- he was nonetheless stronger, harder, leaner and more muscular than most people much, much younger than him. He also exuded an aura of power, authority, respect and fear.

Rhaegar nodded his head, his face expressionless. "Yes, sir. I am certain."

The leading commander grunted. "Very well, then. We shall have to conclude with undercover investigations in secret."

Rhaegar frowned. "Maybe we shall have to negotiate with others to go on our behalf- the most discreet ones, that is- goblins, and other magical folk-" he did not call them beasts or creatures- his wife was one of them- "and they can investigate with us, where only they would go."

"Of course!" The leading commander said. "Problem is, how many are on our side?"

"Well in that case," Rhaegar said dryly. "Perhaps we should start making friends?"


Andreas frowned. His wife was staring blankly at the fireplace.

"Have you heard the news?" He asked. "One of our cities has been attacked. Other people think that a Dark Lord or Lady is on the rise." His tone grew worried. "I hope they can settle this soon."

Katerina said nothing. Her vision was haunted by the image of a laughing, golden-haired boy, merrily making eyes at her across the room.

And then of her son. What would become of him?

And of her daughter, Philomena? She feared for them more than anything.

And of her other son and daughter. What of her grandson?

And what of the family secret she would do anything to keep- the secret that could endanger their very lives?


Yes, yes, I know I'm so sorry I left this really late. I'm not saying the secret Katerina is desperate to keep involves Grindelwald, however.

Now that there's a new baby on the way, everything is at stake.