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(Enchanting Melodies) Chapter 457: Ragnarök
🕑 Added 2025-04-15 14:00:12 +0000 UTCChapter 457: Ragnarök
21 June 1995, Nurmengard
“You’ve taken your last life,” the former headmaster stated, taking back his impaled spear, and wielding it, ready to attack his opponent. Shadows started to grow around Grindelwald, and he answered clearly, “No, you’ve lived your last day.”
The world stood still as both combatants stared at one another, each one waiting for the other to make a move. Albus knew, deep down, that it was always going to come to this, a fight to the death between him and Gellert. Ever since his victory decades prior, he knew deep down that his fight with his old friend would not end. The Dark Lord was not one to go gently into that goodnight. He would prefer to die kicking and screaming, with his head held high, on the battlefield than in a cell alone and forgotten.
Even if he had always hoped that their rematch wouldn’t happen, that Gellert would see his way one day or at least remain imprisoned until Albus’ plans came to fruition. And yet, the moment he decided to spare his former friend, the moment he thought that by containing him, he would have prevented another Champion of the Dark from rising, he had made this inevitable. He could see that now, even if he had denied it before.
And now, it was time to fix this error in judgement.
With a yell, Albus thrust the spear forward, asking the Light to condense into a spiral of absolute stilling, a way to destroy anything through purification and order. A gigantic beam of Light appeared and raced towards Grindelwald, who decided to actually meet the attack first-hand, summoning the Darkness into a beam.
Darkness met Light in a gigantic pulse of energy, vaporising almost everything in sight, and carving a gigantic crater into the ground. Both seemed equally powerful until Albus summoned a pulse of Light with his sword, enhancing his attack, slowly making it inch towards his enemy. Albus had the advantage in terms of raw power; the Light’s spear allowed him to channel more potent energy than Gellert’s corrupted body ever could. Unfortunately for Albus, raw power very rarely came into effect in duels.
Grindelwald’s beam of darkness morphed into a gigantic, clawed hand, which grabbed Albus’ attack and redirected it towards the ground, creating another crater in the ground due to the explosion. When the dust settled, Albus barely had time to use his spear to parry the clawed black hand that appeared from his own shadow, trying to kill him.
He retaliated with a burst of Light energy, which vaporized any entity of the Dark near him. He heard some hissing and saw Gellert’s body rebuilding itself, likely due to the attack. Albus took advantage of this by conjuring a gigantic mist, that started to cover the entire battlefield.
The mist wasn't just for cover; it was a reflection field. Light bounced unnaturally through it, bent not by mirrors, but by sheer will, forming fractured angles and disjointed images that looped upon themselves. Grindelwald's eyes narrowed, recognizing the tactic too late. Albus raised his spear, and a pulse of order cascaded outward, refracting endlessly within the mist. Hundreds, no, Thousands, of hard light constructs burst forth from the reflections, raining down like spears forged from judgment itself. The Dark Lord weaved between them, his form unravelling into shadows, but the light followed.
Until, he obviously had enough, and black clouds started to gather in the sky, destabilizing the origin of the attack. Nevertheless, just as Albus prepared to deal with another attack, he felt something gather in the clouds before a gigantic attack seemed to come from the sky and smite him with Darkness. The former headmaster barely conjured a Light shield to protect him, and the shockwave seemed to travel back and cut a nearby mountain in half.
Albus then moved with a surprising nimbleness for a man his age and rolled away, dodging the extended spear of Darkness that almost impaled him. He parried it with his spear and countered by conjuring a wave of Light towards its source, however, he didn’t see Gellert’s attack, which appeared from the shadow, trying to impale him. He barely shielded against it, out of instinct more than anything else, but the impact of the shield shattering, sent him flying back.
Thankfully, Albus used the spear to stabilize himself in mid-air and created an impromptu alchemical circle, that channelled the Light into the ground and then used it to conjure a white fire, that spread all around him. Gellert’s incoming form was almost swallowed by it, only for the dark lord to have conjured a shield of darkness, stopping it, and then releasing his own darkness, negating Albus’ alchemically modified territory, and sending a sneak attack from a shadow. And yet, Dumbledore didn’t dodge it. As the attack flew at him, he simply channelled a lot of magic suddenly into the spear, making it extend at blinding speed, impaling Grindelwald in the gut, while taking a hit that would have atomized anything with a pulse.
He suppressed the urge to yell in pain, as he felt the shadow spear impale him in the gut, trying to spread its destructive influence, only for the Light to banish it away with barely any thoughts.
Gellert winced and growled, his inhuman voice returning, and he turned into a shadow and sent a small wave of darkness at him that Albus split apart easily. When the battlefield stilled, Gellert had reformed his body, looking healed, and yet he was not. He was lesser. This was a direct hit by Albus’ spear, which absorbed a fragment of the energy in his soul, and a fragment of the ritual.
However, Albus’ own injury healed in seconds as well, channelled through the spear, and yet he still felt affected, his soul specifically. It felt more rigid, more subsumed with the Light. While he had hurt Grindelwald, relying on the spear to heal him just to land a hit wasn’t something he could keep doing, not without accelerating his own soul’s destruction. He needed to secure humanity’s future before he could afford to do that.
Still, the former headmaster looked at his former friend, who was glaring at him, “We both know that my victory is inevitable here, Gellert. I can heal from your attacks, while you still suffer from mine. Eventually, I will absorb the ritual’s energy and your soul with it. I can heal from your attacks.”
Gellert was a logical man. He had to be to survive being such a powerful seer. He should have realized that at the moment, he was at a disadvantage. His greatest strength was always his ability to wield divination in battle, countering spells that hadn’t even been cast yet, and slowly manoeuvring his enemies into a corner, before defeating them. Now, even as their power was far higher than they ever were before, his greatest strength was gone. It had to be for their plan to work in the first place. And that made Albus’ weapon the only viable trump card in the fight, the only way that guaranteed that their fight didn’t end in a stalemate with each side endlessly regenerating.
And yet, despite the logic of being outmatched, Gellert didn’t relent. Instead, he growled, “Oh, Albus. You can’t lock up the darkness.”
Just like that, his crimson eyes glowed and the world erupted into a burst of Darkness, with Grindelwald manifesting his will into reality, warping it into a mockery of the Dark. Dumbledore did the same, manifesting the Light, and cancelling out the attack, only to be met with a wave of purple fire.
Thankfully, Dumbledore was able to redirect the blast by creating a shield of Light, and yet the hasty shield broke from the pressure of the attack, sending him flying back. While in mid-air, Albus released wild arcs of stillness, golden energies that literally unmade the darkness around them, before using his spear to right himself in the air and standing with a stance ready to be attacked once more.
As the darkness faded, Albus noticed that a gigantic dragon stood where Gellert’s form used to be, its crimson eyes glowing with the same intensity, the same rage, that had always been hidden in his old friend’s heart, even before they grew apart.
The dragon flew in the air and dived towards him, and Albus conjured hundreds of light spikes at him, only for him to shrug it completely. Right as he was about to be hit, Albus turned himself into Light, and appeared up in the sky, waving his spear in complicated patterns, with traces of Light remaining with every swing. The Light solidified into the shape of a gigantic eagle, with Dumbledore in its heart, which flew at blinding speeds towards the dragon, who roared in acceptance.
Albus accelerated himself suddenly into a parody of Light, his construct catching Grindelwald’s dragon form in a surprise, sending them all flying away through a mountain miles away, while extending his spear to impale Grindelwald while in mid-air.
However, while in the middle of the attack, Gellert bent his serpentine neck at just the right angle to breathe a beam of concentrated plasma that was enhanced with the destructive energies of the Dark. It took Albus completely by surprise, and he barely managed to tilt away from the attack. It wasn’t enough to be completely unharmed since he was still hit by the attack, but enough for it to be manageable. Still, the eagle construct was destabilized, and Albus was sent flying back while Grindelwald crashed into a mountain.
The former headmaster slowly raised his spear into the air. Light started to gather into the cloud as if a new sun had been born into the sky. It channelled itself into a single point—blinding, radiant, absolute.
Then, Albus’ hand tightened on his spear and the Light answered. The gathered energy lanced down from the heavens, a colossal pillar of stillness that shattered sound, time, and thought. It wasn’t just magic; it was the concept of judgment made manifest, a decree of unmaking from the Light itself. The beam struck the mountain where Grindelwald had fallen, and everything, stone, shadow, memory, was erased.
Not destroyed. Erased.
The mountain didn’t crumble. It vanished. The ground didn’t shake; it ceased. For a moment, it was as if that part of the world had never existed. No ash, no ruin, only absence.
But Grindelwald was not so easily undone.
He appeared from one of the shadows, looking more like a beast than a man. At least twenty feet tall, his body radiated waves of suffocating pressure, his form forged of twisting smoke and shadow, barely holding together, a thing of pure malice and intent. His limbs burned with black flames, eyes glowing crimson. Wings stretched wide behind him, made of layered darkness that bled tendrils with every movement. And in his hand, he held a blade, long, jagged, pulsating with destruction, like a wound carved into the world and kept open.
Albus took a breath. His ribs creaked from the last exchange, but the Light moved through him still. His bleeding body began to stitch itself back together and his skin reformed through his patron’s grace. Yet, as his wounds closed, something within him frayed. His thoughts felt slower, cleaner. Not by clarity, but by removal. He could feel the Light chipping away at what made him human, smoothing out the imperfections until there was nothing left but an instrument, followed by nothingness.
Still, he stood.
And when Grindelwald surged forward all wings and fury and weight, Albus met him without hesitation.
The Dark blade swung, wide and brutal, tearing the air apart with its sheer presence. Albus parried with his spear, their weapons crashing with no sound, just a flare of force that rippled across the battlefield and forced the air to split.
The impact sent cracks spidering beneath their feet, which spread further than Albus could tell. The Champion of the Light used some of the debris to transfigure into chains that would inconvenience Grindelwald, and yet the Champion of the Dark moved through them as if they didn’t exist, and followed through with another attack, and this time, Dumbledore spun to meet him, spear clashing in blinding arcs that turned the world to blurs of gold and black. And then, without warning, Albus reversed his grip, slammed the spear into the ground, and activated the magic stored within.
The weapon extended.
It launched him upward like a beam of light, his body arcing into the sky. And mid-flight, the Light answered again. Wings unfolded from his back, vast, angular, impossibly sharp, glowing with an intensity that made the storm clouds part around him.
Then he dove.
Faster than thought, than sound, than sense. The sky itself bent around him as he descended, spear angled forward, golden threads spiralling behind him like a comet.
And Grindelwald rose to meet him.
They collided in mid-air, not like men, but like storms, chaos and judgment meeting at blinding speeds.
Light howled as it carved the sky apart, raw beams of judgment flashing like divine lightning. Darkness shook, collapsing and reforming around Grindelwald’s monstrous frame. They struck again and again, each blow sending tremors through the clouds, each parry shattering the air, ripping through the atmosphere with the weight of opposing truths.
Dumbledore didn’t hesitate. He spun mid-air, his wings beating once with enough force to clear the ash and cloud, and brought down his spear like a falling star. Grindelwald countered with his jagged blade of corrupted shadow, and the two magics met in a collision that didn’t just shake the earth; it changed it.
The battlefield broke.
Valleys cracked open. Ridges buckled. The crater beneath them deepened, no longer carved by stone but by will. The trees at the edge of the horizon caught fire from the shockwave alone. The world tilted under the weight of their clash, trying and failing to hold their power.
And then, Dumbledore struck.
He turned himself into pure Light, into pure energy, and broke his enemy’s blade suddenly, the impact was bright enough to blind the very sky. Albus used this opportunity the push himself further, and with a final thrust of his spear, its glowing having intensified even further, he pierced through and pierced through Grindelwald’s chest. There was no scream. Just silence.
Stillness spread.
It wasn’t death. It was erasure. Darkness unravelled from the point of contact outward, breaking down Grindelwald’s monstrous body like paper dissolving in flame. Wings, claws, fangs, all of it turned to ash and dust, before vanishing entirely.
But he didn’t die.
The darkness gathered again, slowly pulling together, reforming with effort, with pain, with defiance. Grindelwald’s shape took form once more, smaller, more human, his body looking like a mimicry of flesh.
Dumbledore stood before him, hovering slightly, his wings of Light tattered and flickering, his robes drenched in blood, his breathing shallow. The spear remained in his hand, steady, unwavering, and it was pointed at Grindelwald’s heart. He spoke up with finality in his tone, “Surrender now. We both know how this ends.”
“You still don’t have the guts to kill me, do you?” Grindelwald answered while chuckling bitterly.
“This isn’t about killing you, Gellert. This is about undoing you. The spear will literally wipe out your soul as it takes the ritual. Don’t you understand, Gellert? I wish I could kill you, I really could, because the alternative is so much worse.”
“And you want me to just give you my life’s ambition, the key to saving my people?”
Albus nodded solemnly, “Are you so bitter that you would make me give you a fate worse than Death? The outcome is the same. It’s whether or not you have a soul that would change things.”
The former headmaster expected the Dark Lord to be bitter, to yell and rage, before seeing the logic, the mercy that Albus was offering, especially given his betrayal. Instead, Gellert started to laugh. There wasn’t any bitterness in it, just pure hysterical laughter, and he knelt up, smiling at him, “Do you not think I have planned for this? Do you think that I haven’t learned from our duel all those years ago? No, I learned from my mistakes, and one of them was not planning for defeat. I knew perfectly well that there was a chance that I’d lose, that something would happen, that Fate would help you, as it did in our previous fight. This time it was this spear, practically the only weapon capable of stopping me. But no, not this time. Not like this. If I must lose, then I will make it far more costly for you than it is for me.”
Panicking, Albus prepared to thrust the spear once more, only for Grindelwald not to move and instead took out a very familiar artefact, Gjallarhorn. The horn had been essentially dormant when they acquired it during the school task in Nebelheim, and yet now, it was different.
It shimmered in Gellert’s grasp. No, it pulsed, as if each flicker was the breath of a dying star. Its shape was a contradiction, something that looked like a horn yet refused to exist entirely in one space, one moment. Different parts of it flickered in and out of view, each facet layered over another, colours trailing behind like afterimages, vibrant, shifting hues, too perfect to belong to this world. The whole thing seemed to phase in and out of reality, as though it were caught between timelines, between realms. It was a horn forged from prophecy, from inevitability, and its surface gleamed like a rainbow bleeding into nothingness.
Albus froze. His eyes widened, as he slowly realized Grindelwald’s last play. He yelled out, “No!”
But it was too late. Before the former headmaster could stop him, before his soul could scream its warning loud enough to reach his limbs, Gellert brought the horn to his lips.
And blew.
The sound wasn’t a sound. It was pressure. It was prophecy. It was the weight of every choice made and unmade since the dawn of time collapsing into a single note.
The call echoed not through air but through magic itself—through soul, through thought, through fate. Albus felt his very soul vibrating with it as if the world itself was taking a breath of silence.
Finally, the horn crumbled in Gellert’s hands, not like metal, but like light breaking apart into rain, fading as if it had never been. And the silence that followed was deeper than before. Heavier.
Grindelwald stood tall now, steady and he smiled victoriously, “Now, we’ll see what matters more to you, Albus. The call has been made, the End of Days will start now, and you’ll have to decide whether to hold it back and let me save the magical world on my own terms, or if you’d rather kill me, unmake my soul, and doom the entirety of humanity. You know that you can’t do both. So, which is it, Albus? Would you rather have a humanity under my rule or no humanity at all?”
Albus stood there, silent, almost not believing the fact that Gellert was using Ragnarök, the End of Days, the Apocalypse itself, as a way to force Albus’ hand. And yet, he was right. Albus would rather have a fraction of humanity surviving than complete extinction.
He prepared himself to stop a breach from opening, to deal with the screams and deaths that would inevitably follow the Horn of the Apocalypse being blown, and yet, there was nothing.
Gellert looked just as perplexed at him. Obviously, he wasn’t expecting that either. Each of them stood there for a few seconds which felt like an eternity, waiting for a massive disaster to occur, only for the world to stay silent.
A squelch broke this silence.
Dumbledore blinked—once, twice—as if his mind couldn’t quite register what had just happened. One moment, Grindelwald stood before him, victorious, triumphant, the echo of Gjallarhorn still lingering in the cracks of the world. The next, he was still—but not in victory.
He was still because he had stopped moving.
The Dark Lord’s breath hitched sharply, and his body stiffened. Albus followed his gaze down.
A scythe had burst through his chest, its blade looking like a familiar shimmering fractal, a fragment of the chaotic void between worlds.
Behind Grindelwald, the air fractured like old glass and out stepped a figure clad in shadows and starlight, cloak billowing, eyes dark with purpose.
Harry Potter.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t taunt or explain. He simply stood there, one hand gripping the haft of the scythe as if he had always been meant to arrive in this moment, at this exact place in time, blade already buried in the heart of prophecy.
Grindelwald fell to his knees, his hands trembling as he touched the weapon.
It was only then that Dumbledore realized that the Dark Lord’s injuries weren’t healing.
AN: That chapter took a lot out of me. I think it’s one of the longest ones yet, and definitely one that I’d been planning in my head for a while. It was honestly weird writing it. I kept feeling that I was forgetting to put stuff in or make the fight more epic or longer. I’m not sure, to be honest. I hope it came out like I wanted it to, and if it didn’t, I don’t mind rewriting it depending on your feedback. As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
Comments
Anthony
Thank you ❤
Garri Sarkisov
Excellent timing
