Hello all!
Special thanks to all of my reviewers!: bookcrzygirl, Cows are my friends (DD never actually confronted Harry about being Grindlewald, so Harry was still blissfully in the dark), Nosi (yes, DD isn't going to confront Harry about it anytime soon), VeshtaNarada, Mystical Magician (poor Harry is right--DD has no idea how wrong he is...), hypercell, lilyre, E. (however evil you looked thinking about the Harry/ Gellert comparison is nothing compared to how I looked when I thought of it in the first place), Immortal Sailor Cosmos, crystal, Ellesra (thank you thank you thank you!), Element's Sole Protector (your review made me giggle--thanks for brightening my day!), Aimael (hey look--I updated! Yay!), cyiusblack, Dumbledore's Emerald Pheonix, Ellyanah (-blush-) You guys ROCK!!!
I hope you guys all like this chapter... XD
About three things Albus Dumbledore was absolutely certain.
One: Gellert Grindlewald—former friend, former foe, ruthless dark lord, brilliant man—was at Hogwarts, and was indubitably manipulating and persuading the students to his ends.
Two: Albus was utterly and completely powerless to stop him.
And Three: Albus really, really needed a lemon drop.
But back to the Grindlewald thing.
It was a distasteful, terrifying thought—the sort of thing nightmares are made of—to be unable to intervene as Gellert brought to life his dark schemes, and it had taken Dumbledore what felt like an eternity to finally wrestle himself into accepting, however grudgingly, that conclusion.
But the evidence was overwhelming.
If there was one thing that Grindlewald had refused to do, it was to underestimate anyone—he considered it no greater insult than for his enemies to come even marginally close to winning. As such, servants, prisoners, and followers alike were vigorously interrogated at random, to weed out any spies. Similar to the well-known Azkaban, Nurmenguard had never (at least, never during Gellert's reign) been host to a break out; it was too well protected. Any foe or battle was anticipated and thoroughly judged before Grindlewald named the troops he would send to meet them—and then he always multiply his troops' numbers. The only fight that Gellert had ever, since his teen years, entered without double his opponents' power had been when Albus himself had faced him, and even then Grindlewald had more than a few aces up his sleeve—the Elder Wand, his entire army ranged around him, and mind games to play about dear Ariana's death.
No, Gellert Grindlewald never took chances—and he certainly wasn't now.
Albus had no idea of the numbers backing Gellert—just how many followers had he gathered by now? Grindlewald may have been prideful, but he certainly would not have ventured into Albus's "territory," as it were, without being certain that his back was covered.
Moreover, even when weak, wand-less, follower-less, isolated from the world, kept under complex locking charms, watched day and night by guards, and mentally unbalanced by his tortuous memories of that blood-stained room, Gellert Grindlewald had masterminded his escape—possibly more than once—from what was supposedly one of the safest prisons on earth.
Gellert's prowess at magic, which had already rivaled Albus's own, had undoubtedly grown immeasurably.
...Which left him with the distasteful option of waiting for the opportune moment to strike and take down Gellert Grindlewald.
AaAaAaAaAaAa
Albus took the long way back to the castle, muddling through his thoughts as he mechanically apparated into Hogsmeade and slowly ambled his way through the various shops, not even noticing the sights and sounds and smells that jumbled together all around him.
He stopped and chatted politely with all who called his name—though there were few among their numbers, as most people were holed up safe and sound in their homes and offices, venturing out into the dangerous outside world only when it was absolutely necessary.
His spirits, already so heavy, sank at the sentiment.
This war had torn apart far too many lives, robbed far too many children of their precious childhood and innocence, stolen far too many souls long before their time....
How much worse would it become now that there was another dark lord on the loose, and he was gaining support and followers?
How many more lives? How many more deaths? How many more betrayers?
There was, however, one small ray of hope, dark as the prospects surrounding it might be. If Gellert Grindlewald was indeed planning on resuming his earlier plans, then perhaps the deaths and bloodshed and betrayers would likely handicap the the enemies' forces rather than the Light's own, for they would be split down the middle between both Tom's and Gellert's campaigns, and Albus could not fathom either dark lord willing to share—Tom because he was too selfish, Gellert because he already had, and it had been Albus, his partner, who had used his weaknesses to bring about his defeat.
But although Albus would cross his fingers and hope for the best, he wouldn't hold his breath for a quick and easy end to the war.
He had reached by now the entrance to Hogwarts's grounds, but he passed them by with hardly a second thought. The castle's magic had, of course, recognized his signature and put up very little fuss as he crossed through them.
Albus was nearing his office now, and considered, with a great sense of relief, that a steaming mug of hot cocoa would soothe him considerably, but it was not to be.
He wearily murmured the password and ascended the elegant golden spiral staircase, and upon opening the door to his office, he saw a crowd of professors sitting impatiently, and was suddenly reminded of a duty he hand forgotten.
"Oh, dear me," he lamented, by way of making his presence known to the room, "Was the staff meeting today?"
Faces whirled around, some surprised, many relieved, others accusing, and Minerva McGonogall rose primly to her feet and nodded, lips tight.
"Indeed, Albus. Might I inquire into your absence?"
Dumbledore, not at all put off by her stern appearance, nodded sagely. "Certainly, you might, though to spare you the trouble I shall volunteer the information. I confess I was merely wrapped up so completely in my thoughts that I quite forgot the date and time. Has it been long since we were proposed to start?"
"Two hours," was the sharp reply, and Dumbledore worked to keep an embarrassed flush off his cheeks.
"My sincerest apologies, to all of you. What say you we keep this short today, hmm? Is that agreeable?"
A few relieved sighs around the room was enough answer to his question—though he had never truly expected any opposition—and they began.
There were no complaints to speak of, classes were running smoothly, and when Albus asked how the four transfers were adjusting to the schoolwork, their teachers assured him that they were not significantly, if at all, behind the other students, and were even ahead in some specified areas of study.
Professor Jenn Mandlebrook commented blithely that she was looking forward to making the four transfers feel at home and to imparting her knowledge with them, and they adjourned.
And then Dumbledore got his cup of hot cocoa, but it wasn't nearly as sweet and rich and soothing as it normally was. He could have sworn it was lukewarm, too, but when he checked his timepiece he realized that he had been staring, unseeing, at his full, untouched mug for over an hour.
Sighing, he vanished it with a wave of his wand and summoned a novel to read at random, pulling up the old novel Jinx by Twilight, it's pages yellowed with age and crinkled many a time from frequent reading. Tiredly, he reclined comfortably in a plush armchair with the book, but even as the clock struck two in the morning and his eyes reached the bottom of the final page, he had yet to absorb a single word.
He banished it to a shelf and resigned himself to a sleepless night.
AaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAa
The word was all over the school before dinner commenced, which was when Professor Jenn Mandlebrook approached Albus and informed him of her woes.
"I was teaching them about dueling," she exclaimed, her voice taut with the effort of holding back tears, but she brushed off Albus's efforts to soothe her. "Immeasurably dangerous, of course, but utterly fascinating, too. But you know how students are, always getting distracted even with the most interesting lessons, so I thought I'd liven it up some, tell some funny stories about dueling to keep them entertained. The only other option was letting them duel each other, and I certainly couldn't do that!"
She laughed scornfully, humorlessly, looking so downtrodden that Albus couldn't bring himself to ask her why the students dueling would be such a bad thing... And in any case, he already knew her well enough to guess the answer.
As Jenn Mandlebrook took a dainty sip of her pumpkin juice, Dumbledore mused over the beginning of her tale. The gossip around the students was that the lesson had been worthless, they hadn't learned anything at all, and that all of her classes were equally pointless—but then, while the word of a single teenager is largely legitimate, the word of a mass of any people, particularly about something even mildly unpleasant, is typically extravagantly exaggerated.
"So then," Jenn Mandlebrook continued, having sipped her fill of the magnificently tasty juice, "In the middle of my lecture, one of the new students, Hermione Granger, stood up and challenged me outright—said would I please get to the point, because so far the class was an insult to their intelligence and certainly wouldn't help them survive the war!"
Naturally, after such a comment, Albus's sensory receptors largely shut off—his delightful kidney and steak pie wasn't nearly as mouth-watering, the room around him blurred into non-existence, and his hearing distorted strangely in his ears.
He heard, as if from far away, disconnected phrases from Jenn Mandlebrook ("mocked me to my face", "horridly vivid and exaggerated lies" and "terrified the other students"), but his mind could not possibly spare the excess thought to fathom their meaning.
Instead he pondered these newest developments, and the possibilities they entailed—the key factor seemed to be whether or not Grindlewald was directly or indirectly behind the event.
Scenario Z: Gellert Grindlewald's planning was complete, and his plots were being set in motion—the first step of which appeared to be along the lines of mass hysteria among students....
Maybe he wished to make the war seem more real and dangerous, and then would introduce the concept of betrayal, by having one of his friends pretend to betray him. It would lead to doubt and suspicion, and loyalty ties between students would in turn decay to next to nonexistent: ideal for recruiting grounds.
Scenario Y: Miss Granger, as Gellert's perhaps unwilling follower, was sending out a subtle plea for help—hoping that someone would catch on to the fact that they were in far over their heads in a war they didn't understand and weren't ready for.
Or possibly Scenario X: Miss Granger passionately believed in whatever lies Grindlewald was feeding them—perchance even the same tall tales of glory and honor that Dumbledore himself had absorbed so eagerly in his teenage years—and thought that by making the war more realistic and imminent to her fellow classmates, she could coerce them into choosing a side, preferably her own.
Albus blinked twice, rapidly, and the room swam into focus, Jenn Mandlebrook looking to him expectantly.
"Very well," he said pensively, in answer to what he assumed she wanted, "I shall speak to our guests and deal with them accordingly. Will that be satisfactory?"
Jenn Mandlebrook's mouth dropped to form a small 'o'. "Oh, no, headmaster," she said, breathlessly, "That won't be necessary. I've already asked Minerva to address the issue, as she is their head of house, and she seemed happy enough to oblige. I just thought you might want to know—and, if nothing else, it is an entertaining tale to tell over dinner, isn't it?"
So she only wanted an attentive audience...
Somehow, Albus Dumbledore was not the least bit surprised, he mused to himself as he nodded politely and returned to his kidney and steak pie.
AaAaAaAaAaAaAa
Yet another room had spread like wildfire by the next morning, and though Albus was not sure how much to believe of the tales of bloodcurdling screams and faces so pale it was assumed they were corpses or ghosts, he wasn't much concerned either way.
Oh, it was horrible to hear, certainly, that Gellert and his followers were haunted by dreadful pasts... But Dumbledore wasn't surprised.
He was, after all, pondering the state of mind of a ruthless dark lord....
Once again, thanks a million to all of my reviewers! Next chapter: THE prank! (And yes, I am more excited to write that than you could possibly know)
Until next time,
I love you all