Here's the next chapter. Enjoy~!

Pairings: Potential Hadria (FemHarry) x Tom Riddle, but more platonic than romantic, other pairings undecided.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter Two: Four Years of Freedom

"Malum consilium quod mutari non potest." It's a bad plan that can't be changed. — Latin Proverb

When Gellert Grindelwald was told he would be returned to the Living world, he wasn't sure what to expect. He definitely didn't think he'd find himself lying in the middle of a dark forest in some remote part of west England, with a herd of Thestrals surrounding him. The herd of Thestrals left when they saw that he had regained consciousness, though one large Thestral, a mare, remained.

When Grindelwald decided to take note of what he had with him, he found a piece of parchment folded into a crane-like shape, in one the pockets of the black trench coat he discovered he was wearing. Upon unfolding the parchment, he realised it was a list of the Dark (Forbidden) Magic he was not to perform, under which was a note that said that the Thestral before him was a gift from Change and Chaos.

So Grindelwald named the winged horse 'Nacht', which meant Night in German, the language of his half-blood mother, and rode the Thestral to Hungary, his pureblood father's country.

Grindelwald spent his first year back in the land of the Living sorting out his assets. The goblins were neutral to the affairs of wizards unless gold is involved, as always, and though they treaded carefully around him, they made no attempts to contact any wizards about the return of one Gellert Grindelwald who was supposed to be imprisoned in Nurmengard.

Grindelwald was a feared wizard after all, and though goblins didn't view wizards as superior to them, they were still wary of him. Not to mention the fact that he had a lot of gold, and was unerringly polite, having learnt that it was the best way to deal with goblins. So the Wizarding world was none the wiser, when Grindelwald's Hungarian and German Gringotts accounts were unfrozen, his manor's ownership returned to him and his Lordship in Germany reinstated. Grindelwald then created a false identity for himself with some help from old contacts who were sworn into secrecy, created new Gringotts accounts in both Britain and Germany in their respective bank offices, and made sure that anyone who met him or interacted with him would, in the worst case scenario, think that he was Grindelwald's heir instead of Grindelwald himself. It definitely helped that he was twenty-seven years old, and anyone who thought that this charming young man was a former Dark Lord had to be crazy. After all, Grindelwald was supposed to be a hundred years old and rotting in the very prison he made for his enemies.

In any case, Grindelwald wasn't too worried about his reappearance in the Wizarding world. He had no intention of joining politics or declaring war on Muggles or doing anything really Dark-Lord-ish. At least, not yet. He spent the next year in Norway and Ireland, before moving to France and Italy in the third year, before visiting the Middle East in his fourth, learning all he could about magic, both Light and Dark (though he was careful not to go near any sort of magic mentioned on Magic's Forbidden List, especially when he realised the Higher Entities had not mentioned the consequences of going against the conditions of his release).

The fifth year found Grindelwald in Russia, studying about the hags and fey-folk there, when the Gringott's London office Owled him about the meddling of one Albus Dumbledore. Two years ago, Grindelwald had paid the goblins with a large sum of gold to help him keep an eye on the activities of Dumbledore in Gringotts, and to send him a report if anything major happened. As it was, the goblins had informed him that the wizard had just recently arranged with another wizard to have a priceless object moved to a different vault, one of higher security.

Thus, Grindelwald flooed to England, deciding to take the opportunity to see how much has changed in Diagon Alley since the temporary fall of Lord Voldemort. After stopping by several shops, and a detour into Knockturn Alley, he made his way to the Gringotts bank. There, he was told that the item that had been moved was a secret, and they would not tell it was, except that it involved Dumbledore and the Flamels. When Grindelwald realised that they were probably talking about the Philosopher's Stone, he lost most of his interest and left. After all, his aim was to find the Resurrection Stone, a far better treasure than the Philosopher's Stone, in his opinion. Well, his aim was also to retrieve his Elder Wand from Dumbledore but that would have to wait. The second wand he procured from Ollivander (his original wand, the one he had before gaining the Elder Wand, had been lost—another word for forgetting where he had kept it) was serving him quite well for the moment.

Later that night, Grindelwald took a leisurely stroll in the Wyldewoods near Godric's Hollow, for it was Lughnasadh and he was idly hoping to catch a glimpse of any fey-folk celebrating the festival, for a hag had told him he might find some there. And while he did not encounter any fae, he did find himself staring blankly at a little girl who seemed to have lost herself in the magical forest sometime after midnight, and interrupted all his grand plans of travelling the rest of the world and study his beloved magic without a burden—the sort of burden that comes with wars, politics, reputations, responsibility, and past mistakes.

At first, the wizard thought she might be a fae. She certainly looked the part, with long raven black hair and unnaturally bright emerald green eyes that reminded him of the Killing Curse. She was a skinny waif, and wore a patchwork dress that looked like it might have been sewn by herself. But it was her face that was the strangest, for she was frowning at him and would have looked extremely cute if not for those green eyes of hers that if Grindelwald didn't know better, could have been Basilisk eyes staring him to death. But Basilisk eyes were yellow, had slitted pupils and belonged in the head of a giant snake, not a little girl who couldn't have been more than four years old.

"Hello Mister, are you, by any chance, my kidnapper?"

Grindelwald stared. He didn't think he was the kidnapping sort, not even when he was a Dark Lord. He certainly didn't kidnap children.

"No..." he said slowly. "Why?"

The girl relaxed, much to his bemusement. Surely she did not believe him just like that? Especially if she had just been kidnapped?

"Oh good," the girl said, looking around. "Y'see, today's my birthday. I was counting down to midnight as usual y'know, an' was wishing for someone to take me away, since it's my birthday, an' jus' 'cuz I don't have a cake or even a candle, doesn't mean I can't have one? Then there was a loud pop, or a crack, I dunno, but I felt like someone stuffed me into a small pipe? 'Bit like the time I jumped from the ground to the roof, y'know. An' then I'm here. But I dunno where here is an' how can I jump from my room to a place I dunno? So maybe someone, I dunno, summoned me, with some um, blood an' salt maybe? An' brimstone an' a chalk circle with the star thingie an'—Are you the one who summoned me?"

Grindelwald wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. The girl was becoming even stranger than he thought possible, and he wasn't even thinking about her speech and vocabulary.

"In order for anyone to summon you in a ritual like that, you'd have to be some sort of demon or spirit first," Grindelwald finally said, deciding not to add that even then, most demons or spirits could not be summoned like that, and those that one could summon… Well, Grindelwald still had nightmares from that one time he tried.

((One does not simply summon a Drude, Dark Lord or not.))

Meanwhile, the girl slowly blinked. "Well, Uncle Vernon says I'm the spawn of the Devil, so maybe I am?"

Grindelwald raised an eyebrow. "I somehow doubt it. Who is this Uncle Vernon?"

"Vernon Dursley. He works at a drill firm called Grunnings," the girl said, recalling how her Aunt sometimes introduced her husband.

A drill, Grindelwald understood, was a mainly Muggle contraption. And Dursley was almost certainly a Muggle surname.

"What sort of devilry have you done, then?" But Grindelwald had his suspicions. Though Apparition seemed rather advanced for accidental magic.

"Well, there's the time I jumped onto the roof. An' then the time that my hair grew back longer than before after Aunt Petunia cut 'em all off with a pair of shears. Then there was once I played with a black doggie an' Dudley said there was nothin' there."

Apparition. Accelerated hair growth. Imaginary black dog? That didn't seem quite right, Grindelwald thought. Perhaps it was just an imaginary black dog. Or even Shadow Magic, if the kid was already capable of accidental Apparition.

"Who's Dudley?"

"My cousin. But he seems to look more an' more like a baby whale as the days pass."

Grindelwald hoped she didn't actually accidentally transfigure her cousin into a whale. Then again, that would be rather hilarious. And the tone of voice she used to she talked about them, it sounded like her relatives were a few of the worst sort of Muggles one could meet if one were muggleborn Witch or Wizard. Which reminded Grindelwald that he ought to return to his original plan of world domination once he was satisfied with his knowledge of magic.

"What about your parents?" Grindelwald decided to ask. "Do they think you're the Devil's spawn?"

"Dunno. They died in a car crash when I was one," the girl said morosely, then swept aside the messy bangs that covered her forehead and brows. "See this scar? I got that from the car crash."

Grindelwald stared at the lightning-bolt mark, the shape reminiscent of the wand movements required for the Killing Curse. Then he looked at the girl, not quite believing his eyes. This was the Girl-Who-Lived? This was the future Master of Death? He hadn't really gotten the chance to see the famous Harriet Potter before, stuck in Nurmengard since his defeat to his death. He only heard of her briefly, from Voldemort and fellow inmates in Hell. He didn't know how she looked like, for the newspapers had nothing about her after her disappearance from the Wizarding world following Voldemort's first defeat. There were books of course, but he knew better than to trust any of their codswallop.

Now what to do? Here he was, in the middle of a Wyldewood, with a lost Girl-Who-Lived who has escaped from her Muggle relatives via accidental apparition.

He could leave her here, although she might follow him. Then he'd have to stun her or body-bind her. But then she would be stuck here, and help would be unlikely to come across her unless they came in the form of the Sidhe. Which wasn't a good thing either. It wasn't his conscience or morals speaking. He knew that if the fae got their hands on her, something Unpredictable, Unexpectable and Utterly Terrible might happen. It would be just like Chaos to take this opportunity to do something strange. And if this wasn't Death's Task shoved into his face by Fate, then he didn't know what was.

But. He was Gellert Grindelwald. And former Dark Lord or not, he wasn't a baby-sitter in any way. He was a sociopath, albeit not a psychopath—at least, he didn't think he was, not yet, and he should know the difference—but the point was: He couldn't deal with children. Fate must be laughing her ass off by now.

"I didn't summon you. And I'm not here to take you away from your relatives. You seem to have done a good job yourself. I plan to continue travelling the world, my next destination is Mongolia, then China, Japan, South-East Asia, you get the idea. I'm researching magic. I don't have time to look after a kid like you."

Harriet Potter tilted her head to one side, a bit like a bird, her watchful gaze on him. "Then can you bring me back? I'm lost an' I dunno how to get back. I live in Little Whinging, Surrey. Number Four Privet Drive."

Grindelwald did not fail to notice how ridiculous this whole thing was, and how this former Dark Lord now knew the address of the Girl-Who-Lived. He didn't fail to realise that the girl didn't seem very disappointed about having to return to her relatives either. He made a small movement with his wrist, and his wand appeared in his hand. A silent Tempus was cast.

"What time do you need to get back by?" In other words, how much time he had to find out more about this enigma of a girl.

The girl did not reply for a while, staring instead at his wand. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, like a goldfish, before she finally said, still staring at his wand with open curiosity and wonder, "Sunrise. Aunt Petunia will go spare if I'm not in my cupboard when she comes 'round to wake me up."

Grindelwald froze. "Cupboard?"

The girl blinked, her face carefully blank all of a sudden, her too-green eyes focused on him now. "Did I say that? I meant my room."

Grindelwald didn't need Legilimency to tell that she meant that the cupboard was her room, as absurd as it sounded. Though her eyes were focused on his, which would make it exceedingly easy to slip into her mind...

"Well then," Grindelwald said casually, to no one in particular, though he seemed to be addressing the girl. "It seems like I am going to be a kidnapper after all."

And in one swift motion, he scooped up the girl—who was too light, he noted—and apparated away.

That's all for now. Please let me know what you guys think of the story so far~! Constructive criticisms are welcome, so do review. Thanks XD

Next update will be up by next Wednesday.