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21 June 1995, Nurmengard
Gellert Grindelwald knew that his victory was all but certain. After all, he had spent decades planning it, fine-tuning every small detail to ensure his inevitable victory. He had started so long ago, from the moment he built his treasured fortress, he had been sure. Every single stone was reinforced so much so that they were almost indestructible. Every single one was filled with small runes, a part of a whole, the instructions of a ritual so magnificent that Merlin and Morgana themselves would watch entranced as it took place.
He had an army at his beck and call, of creatures that served him with a conviction that bordered on worship. He had everything he could have ever wanted; his dream of a free magical world was so close he could taste it. He had manipulated Dumbledore into even betraying his Light, using humanity as a hostage. He had countered the Potter boy's plan of tricking the Light and Dark into destroying themselves, not that he needed to anymore.
The moment the ritual was done powering on, he would blow on Gjallarhorn, summon the Light and Dark to the material realm, and activate his ritual, freeing him completely from their grasp. Whether they died or not did not matter much to him. He would be free either way, and the magical world would be safe, tucked away in his dimension, with him guiding them into prosperity.
Sure, it would have been nice to have the entities destroy Midgard and wipe out the muggles with them, but Gellert would settle with just saving his people.
There was nothing that could stop him, not really. The ritual was being powered, and interrupting it would cause a strong enough magical release that it would wipe out most of Europe. Albus wouldn't risk it, not for anything, and the Potter boy definitely wouldn't want the blood of billions on his hands. This should have been his final victory.
Alas, Gellert knew that Fate wouldn't be so kind. The prophecy of Ragnarök was unpredictable, to say the least. Dozens of wars ended with no victors because of it, Camlann being the most well-known. Destiny always found a way to make people who messed with it pay, and now, he sat across Fate's agent, the champion of Ragnarök, Harry Potter, who sat across from him, giving him hostile looks.
Gellert had the boy in the palm of his hands by taking the Greengrass girl, and had countered the boy's trump card. He had felt the small intrusion into the Dark's domain a few minutes prior and saw the entity immediately attack it like a wild animal, tearing it to shreds.
His victory should be assured, but Gellert didn't trust Fate, especially now that his divination couldn't work. The ritual, Ragnarök's approach, Excalibur's prophecy's destruction, it was like someone had made thousands of ripples in the previously calm sea of Fate, and he couldn't see through it, not anymore.
But he didn't need to, not if the boy was convinced not to fight. It was why he had even invited the boy to speak, binding him to their chess game. Gellert's ritual would work without him, his Fortress all but guaranteed it, but as an agent of Fate, Potter needed to be active. He was bound by both the Greengrass girl being hostage and their game.
As for chess, well, Gellert was always a fan of the game. He'd been
With the boy being essentially bound to their game, it should have guaranteed that his strategy would fail, and yet, Nurmengard's wards, one of the greatest pieces of magic he, himself, had made, had fallen. The smug look on the boy's face showed that he had planned for it, that he knew about it. After the shock, the small bit of anger and panic was replaced by his assuredness in his defensive measures. He gave the boy a smirk, "It seems that we've got ourselves a game."
The boy nodded, "We always did have a game, Grindelwald. You just didn't accept it till now."
Gellert grinned and made a move of his own, "Perhaps I should have. It's a strong opening move, that I'll admit, but you're severely underestimating my defences."
As if they were hearing him, a pulse of Darkness suddenly created small shadows that floated up into the air and blocked down the very sun. In mere moments, the sun had faded away completely, and the battlefield was pitch black.
Then the dead rose from the ground.
There was a reason why Gellert liked to bring his greatest enemies into Nurmengard during his first war. One of the foundations of his very protection detail was one of his greatest masterpieces. He had dabbled a lot in necromancy during his youth, where he had integrated it into the very fortress. Should the wards break, the corpses of his enemies would rise and fight for him, not as inferi, but as mages capable of even casting magic, which actually included family crests.
The boy before him thought that he was bringing an army of mages and Lycans against werewolves, not the remnants of the greatest warriors of the Great War. Thousands of corpses of mages from all over the world gathered and started to meet the attackers firsthand.
Then the Vampire Thralls came. They were animalistic savages at best, fallen into madness. Like a tide of bodies, they appeared from the shadows and started to charge at the incoming army.
Gellert saw the shock in the boy's eyes, probably at his display of necromancy than anything else. He had to admit that getting the dead to still absorb ambient magic into their preserved circuits had been extremely hard, to say the least, but it was a worthwhile investment. After all, he had an army under his command, which was why he didn't bother recruiting any mages to his ranks for Ragnarök. They wouldn't be as effective or as loyal, and he knew that he would end up killing half of them out of annoyance in the first few months. It just wasn't worth the hassle.
Still, the Dark Lord enjoyed the stupefied look on his opponent's face, and spoke up, "You really shouldn't have broken the wards. It would have been a far kinder fate for your forces if you had."
That seemed to let the boy regain his bearing as he nodded, "Perhaps, but sometimes you need to lose a few pieces to get a better position on the board."
He moved his queen into an attacking position, pressuring his king and as if it had been waiting for a signal, the sky started to rumble, and hundreds of bolts of lightning fell from the sky, illuminating it briefly, with every sound of thunder. Each bolt seemed to strike his forces almost exclusively, witling them down one by one.
Until he came. A titan of lightning emerged from the ground, as tall as a mountain. In his hand seemed to be a gigantic trident that commanded the storm itself. With just a few slashes of his weapon, thousands of his undead army and thralls were cut away like a farmer does to wheat. It almost seemed like a judgment from the heavens.
It was strangely familiar. A part of Gellert felt like it was screaming at him that he had seen it somewhere before. Sure, he'd known about Marinakis' power, but it wasn't anywhere near what he was witnessing. It didn't matter, he needed to act relatively quickly. In mere seconds, half of his forces were annihilated, and of course, he needed to respond similarly.
He moved his knight to attack the queen and spoke up, "A very nice move, if a little premature. After all, you just revealed your most powerful piece so early in the game."
A screech seemed to echo across the battlefield, followed by another one, and then another. Tons of water appeared out of thin air, like a gigantic tidal wave, and raced towards the boy's forces, only to be redirected away somehow, likely the Marinakis boy, Perseus.
However, this was a smokescreen, a way to hide the true nature of the attack, where half a dozen gigantic reptiles appeared from the redirected water and attacked the Elder Marinakis' gigantic avatar of lightning. Against one, it would have been fine, but against six of them would be troublesome, especially given the fact that they were quite fast.
Without even looking at the boy, he continued, "Leviathans. I assume you're familiar with them. You killed one of them very publicly during the first task of the tournament. You made quite a stir when you did so. The program almost lost funding due to a lack of faith. After all, why spend millions of Galleons on a weapon that a child could defeat? It was almost easy to take over the project."
"Marinakis could deal with a few water elementals," the boy replied, retreating his queen, while still not committing to an attack.
"Who said I only have water elementals?" Gellert answered while using his bishop to put even more pressure on the boy's queen.
As if it had been waiting for his instruction, dozens of other leviathans appeared from the fog, and like dragons, released a torrent of dry wind and flames against the boy's army, which conjured a gigantic shield protecting them. It stopped the fire, of course, but the physical might of the fire Leviathans was too strong and broke through the protection, and cut through the army of Lycans and mercenaries. It was obvious that the boy was losing, even if he had put up a valiant fight.
And so, Gellert spoke up, his voice soft, trying to put as much compassion in it as possible, "We don't need to be enemies, Harry. You do realise that if by some miracle, you defeat me, all you'll cause is death in a previously unseen way. The magical release alone would wipe out most of Europe and a good chunk of Asia and Northern Africa. Every single man, woman, and beast alike are following you to your death, either through my force's hand or through their own victory."
The boy shrugged, looking oddly unconcerned, "The hardest choices require the strongest wills. If I had to sacrifice millions to save billions, then so be it. Perhaps that makes me a monster, but I learned a very long time ago that the world isn't kind. And you haven't won yet. I still have a few things up my sleeve as well."
The boy ignored his queen completely, despite it being under attack, and used the bishop to attack Gellert's own queen. It was then that the battlefield turned silent. There were pulses of darkness. No, it was something that absorbed Light somehow, for just a fraction of a second, and every single time, as if invisible, one of his Leviathans perished. Then it was his forces, slowly dying, like an invisible ghost attacking them. It was only then that Gellert saw them, statues of angels, with their claws glowing black, and he turned towards the boy, stupefied, "What are they?"
"Just statues charmed to be animated and attack your forces with their nails enhanced with soul magic, but I added a small trick with them as well. I locked them in time whenever they were observed. They're the perfect assassins because they become invincible when they are seen. But the moment you blink, the moment the light goes out, then they strike."
This was a very impressive piece of magic, Gellert had to admit. He could see it now, how it was made and conceived, and the danger they posed if his forces couldn't counter them. Thankfully, the Vampire Elders in his ranks finally proved their worth as they entered the battlefield and created a fog of darkness that turned the world grey. It wasn't exactly light, just a form of darkness that one could see through, and it was enough to stop the spells that absorbed light to support the stone angels. They even started to contain the angels by trapping them in spheres of darkness, and killing them, while they were out of anyone else's sight, and thus, not protected by the time-freezing enchantments.
And just like that, the battle turned into what it was always going to be, the Lycans and mercenaries against the Vampire Lords and Elders, and it seemed like they were almost equally matched. No, that wasn't exactly right. The boy's army seemed to be progressing slowly towards the fortress. Damn it, this wasn't going as he expected.
To be perfectly honest, it was strange to see himself countered on a tactical level. He knew that he tended to rely on his divination a lot, but the boy hadn't had those aces up his sleeve when he attacked them in his visions. Had he been keeping them hidden, knowing that he would see it coming? It made sense as a way of countering a known seer, but for the boy to be so dedicated to not using a plan until the proper moment wasn't something the Dark Lord ever expected.
And it had worked. It was obvious that Fate was playing a game. The boy's move was too precise and his counters too effective for it to be just a genius's work. Gellert was one as well; he would know, and he could also feel Fate's hand guiding the boy's forces to an undeserved victory. He couldn't risk it, not with the ritual so close to being completed. He needed to press the boy now to stand down. It was the safest way out for all of us.
He turned towards the boy and gave him an impassive look, "An impressive showing, but it doesn't mean anything, not anymore. Our forces seemed to be matched, and yet this is all meaningless in the grand scheme of things. My vampires will hold the line here until the ritual is ready."
He stared at the illusion. His jaw clenched, nails digging into the side of the chessboard. Then he spoke—cold and clear, "It's your move."
"If you think that your scheme to kill the Light and Dark will work, then think again. I personally made sure that your little trick wouldn't infect the Light or the Dark. Your plan will not work. You literally gain nothing by fighting me, only death and destruction."
The last Potter's eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he steeled himself and replied, "It's your move."
"You'll kill her," Gellert replied, showing the illusion of Daphne Greengrass being chained to a chair, with small tears streaming down her face, "She'll die if you stop my ritual, and you know it."
The young wizard froze and stared at the illusion for what seemed to be an entire minute before turning towards Gellert, "You said that you wouldn't hurt her."
"I wouldn't. You would be the one holding the gun. You would be the one responsible, not me."
Instead of accepting, the boy gave him a steely look and spoke clearly, "It's. Your. Move."
"If you don't value her life, then why don't I make it easier on all of you and order your death? After all, I said that I wouldn't hurt her, but that doesn't mean that someone else can't do it for me. You should really focus on the wording whenever you do a binding deal."
A vampire showed itself towards the illusion and took a dagger to the girl's throat, and Gellert continued, "This game has gone on for long enough. You will forfeit and order your army to retreat, else the girl dies."
For the first time, the boy glared at him, "That was the wrong move to make. You're right that I should have paid attention to the wording of our deal. You're right. You have the advantage here. This is your fortress, and I'm the one on a clock. You have me dead to rights, but you haven't killed me yet, have you? You haven't even tried because you think that Fate favours me. You think that I have something up my sleeve, something that you didn't account for that would mess with your plans. So, you took Daphne, and that's where I drew the line. You really shouldn't have done that."
"Why? Do you think that I'd regret the death of a girl?"
"No, I think you should be very careful what you bring into your fortress."
Grindelwald's eyes widened as the knife sank into the girl's chest as if it had been summoned out of the vampire's hand, killing the girl. Only, instead of a girl, the dead body slowly morphed into that of Peter Pettigrew, one of Albus' pawns during his war against Voldemort.
Slowly but surely, the corpse died and started to release a golden glow. He barely had time to conjure a shield before the fortress started to shake, and everything turned white.
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AN: That chapter took a lot out of me. I wanted it to essentially be like a chess game between Harry and Grindelwald, with each move being a layer in their plans. I don't know if I pulled it off quite right, so, as usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.