Please let me know if you spot any mistakes, I'm just getting this off my computer as I write it.
Grindelwald looked like a different wizard by dinner. Once cleaned, his hair was an arctic white which, combined with such pale skin give him a rather bleached appearance. That made his strange blue-black eyes stand out and gave him an almost haunted appearance. She'd managed to find some clothes in one of the wardrobes that were a close enough fit for him and he'd borrowed her wand to trim his hair and beard.
It was strange to observe the effect he had on the other occupants of the room. The oldest among them avoided him like the plague but those of Hermione's generation who had only heard of him in history books seemed to be almost in awe. To his credit, he didn't seem to even notice the looks and seemed more interested in third helpings of chicken than the whispers.
After dinner though, the three of them retreated to the library again. It was one of the few rooms in the house that hadn't yet been cleared of dark artefacts, which almost guaranteed that nobody else would venture in to spend the night.
Grindelwald sat on the seat next to the fire whilst Hermione cast spongify charms on the carpet. Harry meanwhile went off to transfigure the safest books he could find into pillows and blankets. Once he had returned and they had cast the necessary silencing charms, they were free to plan for tomorrow.
It was quickly established they could do little until Grindelwald, or Gellert as he told them to call him, had a wand. With Ollivanders closed, the only choice seemed to be to go abroad. Gregorovich was the only foreign wandmaker they knew of, although Grindelwald quickly informed him that he was almost certainly a persona-non-grata in that specific store. The only remaining option was to hope that the death eaters hadn't plundered Ollivander's store and that there was a suitable wand in stock.
They went to bed early, leaving the fire burning for warmth.
Grindelwald was up before dawn and woke them up. Hermione grabbed her wand and her beaded bag and the three of them snuck down to the kitchen. Luckily, it was only the Hogwarts elves awake at this hour and they were only too happy to give them all of last night's leftovers under a stasis charm with minimal fuss or questions.
They had left before the sun was even up.
They apparated to Richmond to wait until after Voldemort's curfew, a supremely uncomfortable experience as Hermione couldn't remember exactly what Grindelwald's views on muggles were. He certainly managed an impressive sneer towards a passing policeman. Strangely, it seemed almost impertinent to ask him now.
They found a bench in Richmond Park with a spectacular view of the city, and settled down to watch the sun rise.
'The world hasn't changed.' Gellert remarked as Hermione renewed the warming charm for the second time. 'Ours I mean.' He clarified, gesturing to the three of them. Hermione understood what he meant. The wizarding world seemed to have gotten stuck in the 1940's.
'Was it more similar to the muggle world?' She asked curiously.
'The muggle world was very different to now. They had been at war for half a decade, decimated half of Europe. The wealthy and the poor were divided to the extremes, they seemed to almost enslave one another.' Frequent use had softened the croak of his voice, and Hermione found herself understanding why so many had blindly followed him.
'Wizards lived similarly to the wealthy muggles – the technology in our homes, transport, clothing. The way we live has changed very little, but muggles seem almost different animals.'
'I'm muggleborn.' Hermione suddenly blurted out, resenting him calling her parents animals. Grindelwald looked over her searchingly.
'I had assumed, either that or your wizarding parent died and you were raised by muggles.'
'Muggles are not animals!' She hissed, jumping up from the bench so that she could unleash the full fury of her indignant gaze on him. He lounged back on the bench and looked straight at her, completely unfazed. It was disconcerting, looking into such drastically different eyes, an effect she suspected he was fully aware of. She looked away first and huffed stubbornly.
'Sit, you're causing a scene.' He purred. Hermione looked around, noticing a pair of joggers watching them. 'I assumed you were raised by muggles because nobody else would be brave enough to approach me. Did you know I hadn't had a single human visitor until your Dark Lord?' Hermione huffed, stubbornly waiting until he apologised for calling muggles animals. Grindelwald just flicked his hand in a downward motion and wandlessly forced Hermione to return to her seat. She was so in awe of his ability that she couldn't decide whether to be impressed of angry.
'Muggles are animals, we are all animals. We all have our place in the world, just like a worm, a sparrow and a hawk. Letting muggles get so far ahead, it is dangerous and humiliating. We have allowed ourselves to become so separated for fear of revealing ourselves, we have stagnated under the statute of secrecy...' He trailed off, seeming to remember that he wasn't speaking to his old followers for the first time. 'Forgive me, I forget that my views are not appreciated.' He finally said.
'We should leave.' Harry said after a pregnant pause. It had been light for a while and businessmen on bicycles were starting to join the flow of joggers.
He stood and Hermione realised that the spell holding her down had been released. Harry stood as well from where he had been listening to their conversation. The Boy-Who-Lived held out a hand to Hermione, who linked hers with Grindelwald.
They disapperated with a crack and reappeared in Ollivander's dusty shop; it was full. Thousands upon thousands of boxes lined the shelves as if nobody had been inside since the wandmaker had gone missing. The three of them stood in the middle of the store, observing the countless options in front of them.
'How do we find the right one?' Harry whispered into the silence. Ollivander had shared none of the details of how a wand was selected with them. From Gellert's expression she doubted anyone had shared the information with him either.
'Maybe you can feel it?' Hermione whispered, running her fingers over the desk and pulling out one of the draws. A silver tape measure whipped out like a snake and started taking random measurements- the distance between two legs on a chair, the breadth of the bell above the door, the length of Harry's tongue.
Harry snatched the silver tape as it started measuring the size of his teeth and told it firmly that it was Grindelwald who needed to find a wand before tossing it aside. So they were all surprised when the tape started measuring Grindelwald. After a couple of measurements, boxes started to fly off the walls, stacking themselves on the counter. With no better ideas, Hermione took the top box and handed it to Gellert. He took one look and sneered.
'No.' Hermione tried the next and the next, quickly building a pile of potential candidates and sending those he turned away back to their homes on the shelves. By the time the tape finally fell into a neat coil on the floor, less than ten wands remained. The Dark Wizard ran his fingers across the different boxes, seemingly pleased with the results.
He picked a box at random, pulling out a pale wand. He flicked it once, snorted and tossed it aside.
'This Ollivander uses unicorn hair. Pathetic.' Two more wands joined the discarded ones, it became clear that unicorn hair simply refused to work for him. The fourth wand was the first to show results, sending several boxes clattering from their shelves.
'Strange, my first wand was hornbeam and dragon heartstring.' He commented, putting aside that wand almost reluctantly. Elder and phoenix feather was the next to provide a result, something he claimed would have suited the young Dumbledore perfectly.
Hermione knew the moment he picked up the right wand, his magic surged through their vow, dark and completely unrepentant as it seared through the room in a malevolent wave of blue fire. If the feel of his magic through their vow wasn't enough, the manic grin on his face was a sure signature.
'Yew and dragon heartstring, eleven and three quarter inches, unyielding.' Hermione read from the small note in the box. Grindelwald didn't seem to notice as he was too busy blowing apart and repairing shelving. Harry drew the line when he began reanimating the corpses of spiders that had fallen victim to one of the blasts, claiming that an army of undead spiders would be more likely to traumatise Ron than rescue him. The Dark Wizard insisted on keeping them, summoning a jar from Hermione's bag and directing the bugs inside it.