A/N: An Interlude.
There are men. Good, bad, neutral. There are great men even, both good and terrible.
And then there are gods.
Albus sighs as he gingerly picks his way across the ashy remains of an outpost, his robes barely whispering as they pass over the ruins of a watchtower. He was yet again far too late to save the soldiers garrisoned here from Gellert's wrath, and as he gazed about in sorrow, he could see nothing but dead children: boys just barely graduated from school, only to die facing a madman.
How had Gellert twisted his boyhood dream into this nightmare? How had he fallen, and how had he nearly dragged Albus with him? Albus plans to ask Gellert when the coward has the guts to face him, but Albus doubts if the pathetic remnants of his friend would answer. Secretly, Albus wonders if he can even bring himself to ask.
They meet on the field of battle. Their clash is legend. Two gods, not men. Two monsters, not wizards. Magic as or even more ancient than the Greeks, wielded for the first time in centuries. The ground riven in shards for miles in every direction. Where it's not broken, it's melted, stone glowing cherry red like it came straight from the mouth of a volcano. Trees cursed to nearly nonexistence, half faded out of this world. The corpses of scores of men, torched in the unholy fires of a dragon's furnace, the ashes of a legion more, incinerated by a phoenix's flames. Giant stone golems crushed under the weight of the magic they were sent against.
And still they were unbroken.
The Great War. A conflict that started when one boy objected to force over harmony. A conflicted kindled in the dry tinder of murder. A conflict waged across continental Europe on a scale dwarfed by only the Roman conquests of yore.
A conflicted ended by one man.
Oh he had his supporters and backup. A supply train leagues in length, propelling and fueling him from Britain to the mainland, funneling all of the fragments of the resistance into a coherent fighting force, led under the banner of a schoolteacher.
And I suppose you think the ancient Greek gods were simply overhyped wizards as well, do you?
Albus Dumbledore was no mere teacher, no mere man. No mere wizard. A living god who held heaven in his thoughts, who waged war against Gellert Grindelwald, a living demon who wreaked havoc on Europe and planned to reshape reality to his whim.
You had to pity Voldemort, really. After meeting Gellert not once on the field of battle, not twice, but thrice? And living to tell of it in good condition? Albus was unkillable.
Tom Riddle who?