"You – Maxim – come!"
An invitation out of the blue, but Queenie just nods at me from the open kitchen tent, as if to make me realise that this is the moment she's been waiting for.
We've all been waiting for it, even if my impatience in the high spring of the forest has almost eaten away at me.
I guess Edwin made it happen in the end.
This is the one chance …
"Now?" I call after Grindelwald.
He doesn't even look back. "Are you busy otherwise?"
"No! Where are we going, sir?"
I struggle to catch up with him and the dogs after I grab my coat. Grindelwald himself looks like a mixture of a relentless general and some over-ambitious hiker – that could be relevant to his plan …
"You'll see – where are you?" he grumbles without turning around, and I can't help but be annoyed to realise that this must be a trip to Godric's Hollow.
Edwin's words, my words – they must have really worked, but if they finally lead us on the desired excursion, anything is fine with me.
"Why me, sir?"
He still doesn't even look at me as I finally catch up with him and the dogs. Maybe it wasn't that much of a brilliant idea to look like his lost love after all …
"I'm sick of muddy water," he growls. He's ever pretending to be an insightful man of reason, when the madness is written all over his face …
We are silent companions for a while, at least until we put enough distance between us and the tent city. And then, in the middle of a clearing, he abruptly stops to offers me his arm.
I look up at him.
"Do you wish to walk to Great Britain?"
"Sir," I hesitate, "apparate across countries?"
"I do it across continents if I please," he hisses.
Touché.
Not me, it would tear me apart. Even though I reached the entrance to the cave by the sea as a child with Amy and Dennis without any problems and without a clue, the distance was much shorter than from Albania to England …
I finally take his arm – my now blue eyes locked directly in his, before we are pressed through space and time and land unpleasantly quickly in Godric's Hollow.
I can barely breathe on the other side as I count my limbs, it feels like someone punched me.
"The greater the distance travelled, the worse the nausea," Grindelwald informs me, already looking around almost furtively. As if in passing, he adds, "You get used to it, just take a deep breath …"
Wonderful advice! Breathe …
Nevertheless, I simply nod until I, too, take a look around the place.
It's ridiculously idyllic, but in a completely eerie way. The pretty little houses, the narrow paths leading out of small alleyways, all the supposed tranquillity – there is magic in the air.
But what kind of magic …
"To the church," he murmurs. "Move."
"To the church?"
I've had enough of churches ever since Little Hangleton …
"Can't you hear the organ?" he asks, slightly annoyed still. "We can criticise the No-Majs all you like, but at least that's impressive."
Gellert Grindelwald – a friend of music.
I concentrate on the church and the sounds that reach us from its direction, then I recognize the piece.
"Toccata and Fugue in D minor," I say. "Bach."
"Probably the most famous organ work in Europe," he adds, then he walks ahead with the dogs again, probably expecting me to run after him like one as well.
I loathe it, but I have no choice. And so I swallow my pride and follow him to the doorstep – but like the devil shuns holy water, I have my doubts as to whether I want to enter. Can. May …
"What are you waiting for?" he asks me and gestures for me to come inside the church. "I want to listen to this."
"I already hear it perfectly here – I'll keep an eye on your dogs while you're inside," I suggest, but he sternly shakes his head.
"The acoustics are best in the centre aisle. And the dogs will wait for us here without you – until the next ice age, if they have to."
I inwardly groan and hope that I don't crumble to dust right over the doorstep because of all my true intentions …
That must be what Harper meant when she jokingly surmised that there was a curse in the dungeons that would prevent her, as a muggle-born witch, from stepping into the Slytherin common room.
I feel similar now – after all, what's a lost soul doing in a church?
But I have no choice. I force myself to give in and start moving. Without burning, without fading to dust, I follow directly behind the Dark Lord, right into the high, echoing hall of the church, until he finally chooses a row of seats to sit down and stare at the plain altar.
He hasn't even turned around to face the organ player above us. Behind us, only accessible via a staircase, the most powerful instrument on earth, meant to praise the heavens, is proving its magnificence. The man, completely absorbed in his playing, with hands on the keys and feet on the pedals, is facing the organ and has thus turned his back on us, involuntarily – but Grindelwald isn't interested in him by choice.
What is this talented organist to him? A cockroach who happens to master such an imposing instrument as this, as well as a monumental piece like Bach's Toccata, but otherwise worthless due to a lack of inherent magic?
"Sit down already."
His orders are so self-righteous I could puke. I feel the urge to tell Grindelwald that his lack of success in finding the Hallows is not exactly surprising – constant distractions and waste of time in chapels are just one nuance – but biting my tongue, I do as I'm told and join him in staring at the altar.
We sit there for a while, silently and suffering, because the seats in churches like this are not made for listening to the word of God, but rather for forcing people to repent.
"It wasn't too long ago," Grindelwald quietly says, out of nowhere, "that they used this masterpiece for the beginning of one of their insignificant movies." Disgust in his voice. He seems almost angry as he stares so intently into space. "As if it were cheap horror and these sounds were meant for the trivialities of their world."
He seems to take Hollywood, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, quite personally.
"I didn't find the movie that insignificant," I say before I bloody think. In view of his irritated glance, I'm forced to add, "Well, it's basically the film adaptation of a book … a very psychological one. As an Austrian by choice, you should be familiar with Sigmund Freud's work?" He's still eyeing me so darkly that I have nothing left to lose if I just keep talking. "Have you seen the movie?"
"Have I seen the movie? Boy! Are you kidding me?"
I shake my head. "No, but –"
"I'd never watch, let alone read, such profane nonsense from the world of those who were unworthy of magic."
Unworthy, in his opinion, are Harper's parents, who are the only parents in the world who have ever welcomed me, as if I were already part of their family…
Unworthy are all the poets and thinkers, philosophers and researchers and scientists, even Bach himself?
Even without any empathy, I understand that one world always needs the other …
"Stevenson's character Dr Jekyll lives in Cavendish Square, a wealthy part of London," I begin to tell him, despite his bad mood. "Do you know the neighbourhood?"
Of course he does …
"Sir – Dr Jekyll believes that each of us has two faces, a good side and a bad. And he thinks he can control the latter by forcing a separation of the two."
The principle of the idea seems ancient – and hardly only existent in the magical world in the form of a Horcrux …
"So he experiments," I continue.
Just as Gellert Grindelwald and I have always done with magic.
"Successfully, in fact, and through the use of certain substances, or … perhaps even a potion? It almost seems like a witch's kitchen in the book … The basically respectable doctor from the wealthy part of London turns into Mr Hyde, who wreaks havoc in Soho undisturbed. Perhaps you know Old Compton Street, too?"
He glares at me at these words, and perhaps it was foolish of me to mention the very street where we first met. Even if I'm wearing a different face right now …
"Hyde," I continue, "is committing heinous crimes there, while the doctor seems to be doing fine – but here's the crux. Has he really managed to split his soul?"
I'm watching him closely as he listens to these words, but he doesn't even flinch, keeping his cards close to his chest. But maybe his different eye colours are an indication of splitting the soul?
"Or," I continue, "is it all just symbolic of how a good person can be changed by substance abuse – or even magic from a witch's kitchen? Is it possible to separate good from evil or are we basically always all in one? An interesting case of schizophrenia or just the fateful destiny of a lost man? You know, sir, that's why I think Bach's work is appropriate. Toccata and fugue – an interplay of low and high notes, light and bright and dark and heavy. The narrative of the story and the way it is told are too realistic for cheap horror. And possibly also relevant in our world, despite the supposed insignificance of the No-Majs."
"Who are you?" he asks me with strange, calm urgency, his look bearing witness to my worst fears as well as Edwin's proclamations.
He's too intelligent to buy this charade.
"Sir?" I cautiously stall, silently hoping that I'm simply mistaking.
"You're no more a Maxim trained at the Koldovstoretz than I was a Percival Graves and Director of Magical Security. But at least people believed me to be just that …"
"And you don't believe me?" I ask – closer to death than I've been in a long time.
It's so bizarre that he laughs in utter disbelief. "Do you use Polyjuice Potion? Horrible taste …" I keep quiet, but he continues unperturbed. "I figured out pretty quickly how to change my shape with a spell, I would have expected something similar from you, if you're who I think you are."
"It would've gone to waste," I impassively retort.
And to be honest, I have no idea how I would do it without the potion. I'll save the research for a distant day in the future, should I survive.
"Take this," he orders, handing me a small glass potion he pulls out of his coat.
In the meantime, the organist has switched to Händel's lively Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, while I take the phial and turn it in my hand.
"You force me to end my life in a church?"
"I want to see your face," he corrects. "I want to see how much you've changed. How old were you then? Eleven? Just before Hogwarts."
I smile wanly, but not surprised, and I nod.
I wouldn't have thought my acting was quite that bad, but perhaps the mention of Old Compton Street was a bit too much.
"What was it?" I simply ask.
"What gave you away?" He snorts contemptuously. "You could have easily disarmed Vinda, it was as obvious as sunlight in the daytime."
"I should've pretended it was an exhausting duel?"
"Indeed," he replies, almost smirking as he looks down the aisle. "It reminded me of a boy who boldly shook his head when I asked him if he could manage more than flickering brothel lights. It was easy to guess that it was a lie. And to be so determined to lie at that age, about powers you weren't even supposed to have discovered yet – that was extraordinary. And it reminded me of myself."
I take a deep breath and nod.
Maybe I'm about to die, or maybe we'll just ponder over this strange situation a little longer. Either way, it's probably cathartic.
"Drink up."
I realise I have to, so I let it wash over me as my face, my whole body, swells due to the bitter sip, only to finally return to its original form after days and weeks, almost within a minute of the strangest tingling on my skin.
"Look at me," he demands, examining my features as I do. "A shame, hiding a face like that. You're Hogwarts' model student, aren't you?"
"You're quite informed …"
"I am. You, on the other hand, are foolish for insulting my intelligence so bluntly, forcing this face on me."
"The plan was quite a spontaneous one," I admit, gravely adding, "presumably everyone involved with me is already dead –"
"I don't spill magical blood unless it's absolutely necessary and serves a purpose."
"That's good," I hear myself say, "because we didn't come to you to betray you."
"Why then?"
"The Hallows." I hold his gaze. "I can indeed help you. Not entirely altruistically, though."
"What the hell were you hoping for?" he asks, his gaze literally piercing through my soul.
Everything or nothing.
"You wish to get closer to immortality with the Hallows – I want a Horcrux. But would you have helped the lying child from Old Compton Street? Hardly."
He raises his brows and leans back a little to repeat, "A Horcrux?"
I slowly nod, not taking my eyes off him until he adjusts his beard thoughtfully.
"Why have you come to me for this?"
"Sir, you are without a doubt the most accomplished magician of our time when it comes to the Dark Arts –"
"You can't find anything about the ritual and the spell," he says, as if he knew exactly how that feels. "Do you get on well with Dumbledore?"
I sigh at this change of subject. "Do you think I do?" I ask the counter question.
"You're the darkness that Albus fears," he says with conviction. "Because you're like me. He's been hiding away for years, he thinks he can run away from the past and, conveniently, he's got our blood pact in his hands – and with that the absolute excuse for his reluctance to act."
"You regret that?"
He looks at me in surprise. "Of course I do! We haven't moved forwards or backwards for 17 years now. Together we were unstoppable, downright brilliant, but against each other …" He shakes his head and exhales bitterly. "This pausing of events is worse than a clear front."
"If we're a bit alike," I say, "you can help me. And I can help you."
"I might," he replies, "but why would I want to, Tom Riddle?"