The news reaches Britain three days before the Second Task. Harry is sitting with Hermione and Ron in the Great Hall, still blinking off the last remnants of sleep. It's a normal day, punctuated only by Dumbledore's absence at the Head Table…but that's a common enough occurrence that no one pays it any mind. The owls swoop in as they always do, dropping mail and copies of the Prophet off to various students. Hermione had canceled her subscription in solidarity with Harry due to the slander they'd been publishing…but the other students around them go on about their normal business.
And then someone screams.
Harry immediately whirls around, instinctively looking for an intruder or some other danger, but there is none. Yet, other people have started screaming as well, everyone looking completely hysterical.
"What's wrong?" Harry asks aloud. He turns back to his table, looking at the other students. Most of them are peering down into a copy of the Prophet, faces pale.
Parvati Patil, sitting close against Lavender Brown, is crying, silent sobs wracking her frame, her hand pressed to her mouth in horror. Lavender's lips are pressed tight, trembling. She glances at Harry, Hermione, and Ron, all of whom are looking on in increasing concern. Taking pity on them, she silently passes them her copy of the Prophet. Harry stares at the headline.
DARK LORD GRINDELWALD ESCAPES NURMENGARD PRISON; LOCATION UNKNOWN
"Who's Grindelwald?" Harry asks, though he suspects he's no one good, considering the "Dark Lord" moniker. He'd thought that Voldemort was the only Dark Lord…
Ron laughs, almost hysterical. "Mate," says Ron, "Grindelwald was the Dark Lord before You-Know-Who. He…he was awful. You-Know-Who stuck to Britain but Grindelwald carved a path of destruction all across the Continent. He's a monster."
"Dumbledore finally defeated him in 1945," Hermione whispers. "They say the duel lasted five days without pause."
"I heard it was seven," says Seamus.
Harry's gaze snaps to the Head Table, where Dumbledore's absence now seems much more sinister. He then looks to the other teachers, who are also reading their own copies of the Prophet. McGonagall looks absolutely devastated and Sprout looks close to tears herself. Flitwick and Hagrid are murmuring to each other, as are Burbage, Vector, and Sinistra. Some of them, like Professors Trelawney, Moody, and Babbling, are nowhere to be seen. Snape hasn't even looked at the Prophet yet, observing everything with furrowed brows until Professor Sinistra leans over and shows him the paper, at which point the goblet in his hand slips from his grip, crashing to the floor. The clang of the metal against stone is what finally silences the Great Hall.
And then Snape whispers, "Oh God."
Harry concurs.
McGonagall takes the opportunity to stand, declaring, "Your attention, please!" And so all the eyes in the room turn from Snape to her. She takes a deep breath and then commences to do her best to comfort a Hall full of frightened children.
She has limited success.
She does end up canceling classes for the day so that students can take the day to send and receive messages from their families. Ron, who would normally be over the moon at not having classes, remains silent, solemn. As for Harry himself…well. He's certainly frightened, but not as much as the other students, which he attributes to one of two reasons: either he's desensitized to dealing with the terror of Dark Lords, what with Voldemort and all…or he simply doesn't appreciate the true impact of Grindelwald.
To assess which of those options are true, he does something unprecedented: he heads to the library to research.
Apparently, several other students, mostly muggleborns, had a similar idea. The section where his biographies are housed is crowded, the shelves nearly empty, and Harry snags the first one he sees so that he has something to read. He nearly regrets it when he sees what he's got.
It's…well, it's a tome. Well over a thousand pages, falling apart from age but gathering enough dust to imply just how little it has been read. He gazes at the cover, taking in the words: The Rise and Fall of Gellert Grindelwald. He barely glances at the author's name, though he notes that it sounds vaguely familiar, before opening the book, skimming the table of contents. He skips the Preface—Hermione had tried to drill the importance of reading them into his head but they're always drier than the reading material, and that's saying something—and the section dedicated to his early years, eventually flipping to a section regarding his crimes.
And then Harry reads.
He walks out of the library three hours later, having barely put a dent in the book but still feeling deeply disturbed by its contents.
He really hopes that Grindelwald steers clear of Britain.
Though the Hogwarts students are suitably terrified of the news, as are the Beauxbatons students, it's the Durmstrang students who are truly affected by it. Harry hadn't been looking at Krum when the news had finally reached them but the rumors run around the school and he eventually hears about the way he'd gone deathly pale, the way he'd all but run out of the room, just as several others had.
That makes sense—after all, Grindelwald had been a Durmstrang student before getting expelled for doing magic so dark that even the school's looser restrictions couldn't overlook it. Harry wonders if the Durmstrang students still whisper stories about Grindelwald, or if Grindelwald had left behind stains of decay in the school the way Voldemort had left Myrtle in the girl's bathroom. Either way, all that's for certain is that the Durmstrang students wither before the eyes of the rest of Hogwarts, whispering amongst themselves. Harry thinks it's all fear, the instinctual terror of making too much noise when you know you're in danger.
And then—and then Draco Malfoy opens his mouth. He says, "I say good riddance. He would have done great things if Dumbledore hadn't gotten rid of him."
Malfoy promptly finds himself on the wrong end of Viktor Krum's wand. Krum looks furious, just about ready to tear Malfoy into pieces, and he says as much. Malfoy pales steadily the longer he stares into Krum's eyes, probably realizing how deep of a hole he's dug himself into—after all, Krum is much larger than Malfoy, and though they're both Quidditch players, Krum is obviously better trained.
Honestly, Harry hates Malfoy, but he wonders if he'll have to step in and defend him just so that Bulgaria's foremost Quidditch player doesn't murder another student. Luckily, he doesn't have to humiliate himself like that because another Durmstrang student steps up. Harry doesn't recognize him.
The student says, "Krum, let the boy go."
Krum spits, "This is none of your business, Mikhailov!"
The student, Mikhailov, says, "Don't threaten the boy for speaking his mind."
Krum's eyes narrow and, suddenly, the wand is off of Malfoy and trained on Mikhailov, instead. "Why should I let him speak his mind when his mouth is spewing nothing but shit?" he asks. "Grindelwald was a scourge on this earth. He's a blight that Headmaster Dumbledore should have snuffed out when he had the chance."
Mikhailov says, "And now you've spoken your mind. You don't see me threatening you just because I disagree."
Oh. For some reason, it hadn't clicked in Harry's head that some of the Durmstrang students might support Grindelwald but, now that he thinks about it, it makes sense. It still fills his stomach with tar, though. He scoots closer to Neville, who's been watching the entire exchange in silence, though his eyes are wide and frightened.
Krum says, "He slaughtered my great aunt and her family when they were simply providing aid to a war zone."
Mikhailov says, "He granted my grandfather asylum when my family fled from Russia, when no one else would help us."
It devolves from there, and though Krum keeps his wand drawn, he does lower it. No spells fly. Instead, the two boys switch to German and begin to yell and snarl at each other. Krum is an open fuse, constantly ready to blow, but Mikhailov remains cold as ice. Other Durmstrang students join in, too, also in German. A girl joins in, followed by another, and then a boy, and suddenly the corridor is full of the sounds of angry German.
Snape ends up breaking the fight up, yelling in German himself—though his British accent is pronounced—and sends them all scattering.
Harry, who doesn't like Snape but has noticed that the man has been oddly subdued these last few days, approaches him. He suspects he's going to regret what he's about to do but he still asks, "What now, Professor?"
Snape's glare is acidic. "What?"
"I mean—what is Headmaster Dumbledore going to do?"
At that, Snape's gaze goes distant for a moment, losing its ire. When he looks back to Harry, he's studying him. He says, "I don't know." Then, "Five points from Gryffindor for not following instructions. Get to class, Potter."
And then they both flee in the opposite direction from each other, too scared to remain together and be forced to reckon with more concerning realizations.
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