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(Enchanting Melodies) Chapter 420: Great Heights
🕑 Added 2025-02-02 14:00:19 +0000 UTCChapter 420: Great Heights
23 May 1995, Nurmengard
Gellert Grindelwald emerged from the shadows to his office, feeling victorious after his plan worked without any issues, yet whatever smile on his face disappeared as he stared at what was left of his hand. It wasn’t flesh and blood anymore, just an expression of his skill in materializing the energies of the Dark. Most of his body was, really.
As much as he didn’t want to worry Albus, the Red Witch’s last attack should have killed him. If it had been in his youth, it would have, without a doubt. It was only his connection to the Dark that stopped him from being erased from existence, and he only managed to do that by his skill in channelling the Dark without needing a physical body.
He had turned most of his body into an elaborate energy construct that mimicked his flesh. It severely limited his power due to how much concentration he needed to keep his body functioning, but that wouldn’t be for long. He’d been preparing for weeks for this moment. His life’s work was on the brink of being completed and he wouldn’t miss it, not for anything.
There was also something else, something that niggled in his mind, another reason to be at his best, and that reason was Harry Potter.
When he spared his life a year back, he never expected the boy to become such a threat.
It was simple. The boy was a Peverell, and was likely to be the hero of Ragnarök, and as impressive as he was, he was still a teenager with barely four years of magical education. Manipulating him should have been an easy a way to ensure that Ragnarök would occur exactly like he envisioned.
It had worked well enough until Olympus. Wasn’t that a massive failure? His injuries aside, Gellert didn’t like how closely they were to lose everything. It was only Albus ingenuity that saved their plan from being completely scrapped, allowing Ragnarök to occur unimpeded, uncontrolled, and with nothing more than ashes remaining from the aftermath.
Trying to control a prophecy was a very delicate endeavour, to say the least, and it was only Gellert’s skill in divination that allowed him to make plans that made it feasible, a skill that the boy counteracted during their duel.
He had relied too much on his connection to his multiversal counterparts, a connection that had been severed in Lily Evans’ last attack, leaving him having to face the cloudy uncertainty that was normal divination. Sure, Gellert was a seer of immense power, but he was fighting destiny itself, and Fate definitely didn’t approve of his plans. It was something he discovered when it hid his loss to Dumbledore half a century prior, destroying his younger self’s life’s ambition of saving the magical world from the muggles.
It had taken him a while to move on from that fact, to accept that even as a seer, Fate was not on his side. Thanks to the Dark, he had been able to craft a replacement of his divination, something that had taken him years of effort and energy to pull off, time that he certainly didn’t have anymore.
When Lily Evans attacked his connection to the Dark, she also ruptured his own connection to his alternates, and now his greatest injury was how blind he felt. Sure, she had killed herself in the process, but she had hurt him far more than any other person in his life.
He hadn’t told Albus of his disability. His old friend still trusted his orders. He should have been able to handle the Potter boy, to finally wipe him off the board. He wasn’t a reliable pawn, not anymore. Gellert would have to manage without him. The prophecy would choose someone else to act as its hero, and the plan would still work.
Albus should have been able to handle him easily, and yet, he had lost a duel. He had lost the Elder Wand to a child. The sheer madness. Gellert knew that fate was favouring the boy. It had to be Ragnarök’s prophecy making sure that he would survive until its completion. That was the only explanation.
He couldn’t know, not without his full sight, and so, he had found a way to get it back. He would push his Seer abilities into heights that no one had ever experienced before him. He would defeat Destiny at its own game, ensuring that his final plan would be completed.
Gellert opened a drawer and took out a small ritual dagger. It was an ugly thing, looked like it was made of stone more than anything, but the energy that it released was so similar of his own, of another Champion of the Dark. The dagger of Namtar, one of the oldest Champions of the Dark, was worshipped as a god in ancient Mesopotamia. It was one of the oldest magical artefacts ever discovered and there was no denying how powerful it was.
With that done, the Champion of the Dark moved through the shadows to a temple on the other side of the continent, where thirteen Vampire Elders stood there, ready for what awaited them. There were very few Elders remaining after they were hunted down in the previous tasks. The Potter boy had gotten very good at killing them over time, probably using his soul magic. That was a very nasty piece of magic that hurt even him.
There hadn’t been many, to begin with, but a vast majority of them died in the last few years alone. It was a shame, for some of his strongest servants to perish like that, but if everything went according to plan, he would have no need for them anyway. They were suitable like this, as a sacrifice to his own ends.
As he entered the ritual circle, it lit up in blue light. To say that it was a masterpiece would be an understatement, and he wasn’t even exaggerating. He had worked hand-in-hand with the Dark to make it happen. His patron was surprisingly agreeable, probably looking forward to Ragnarök, to the final battle with the Light, despite the fact that Gellert had done his best to block out his influence over the years.
It was something that he managed far better than Albus, who still relied on the Light’s advice, despite the fact that they both knew that the power’s ambitions could contradict their own. It was why he didn’t tell Dumbledore the true extent of his plans after all.
Still, a ritual of this magnitude wouldn’t have been something that he would have ever managed on his own. It was probably one of the greatest acts of magic in the history of mankind, and yet very few people would realize what it was.
Gellert raised his hand up, and the Vampire Elders all froze, before slowly being hollowed out, their very essence sucked into the ritual circle whose light darkened in reaction to it, moving towards the middle, where a familiar bound creature kept thrashing in panic.
It looked like a mix of a sloth and an ape, with silky white hair and large eyes that were glowing blue. It was a Demiguise, one of the few magical creatures which can boast having a connection to the tapestry of destiny itself. It could turn invisible, of course, but the Champion of the Dark knew for a fact that divination was a form of magic that was far more powerful than most people thought it was.
To be perfectly honest, Gellert had no idea how such a creature came to exist. It was probably some magical anomaly that affected a bunch of apes, creating them.
Still, looking at the creature, he could see the fear in its eyes, as it saw the fate that awaited it. Gellert didn’t relish in it, didn’t wish for a creature as unique as this to suffer. Instead, he gave it a sad look, “I’m sorry. I truly am, but I have no other choice. If it’s any consolation, your death will save more people than you could possibly comprehend.”
The Demiguise stopped thrashing, gave him a hateful look, and closed his eyes. It had accepted its fate, of course. Gellert grabbed his dagger and stabbed the Demiguise in the heart.
The ritual circle enlarged itself, releasing an enormous pulse of magic that spread around him, with a very simple command, to kill every Demiguise around him and absorb their essence. Normally, it wouldn’t have done much, but Gellert’s forces had spent weeks capturing every Demiguise they could access in the Far East. He had thousands of them just bound outside the circle, ready for his ritual.
Slowly but surely, their essence started to be contained in the circle, and he stood there for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably around a couple of minutes, until the curse ran its course, killing every single Demiguise he had captured. Thousands of life forces coursed through his body, the energy slowly rebuilding his flesh and blood, while he felt his magic shift slightly to accommodate its new property.
Oh, he could see it now, the difference between his previous bastardization of divination and what a Demiguise could do. They didn’t make simulations of the future as he had before. They didn’t brute force their way in. It was far more elegant than that. They saw the tapestry of Fate as exactly that, a series of choices and consequences. He could see as much as his mind could handle, which was sadly not as much as he liked. The level of detail, the number of choices, that was too much. He could also see the knots, symbolizing prophecies that led up to similar responses. He was still limited by the amount of energy he could handle. Sure, he was far more powerful, able to stretch his visions for far longer than the creatures ever could, but outside of using the Dark to filter out the possibilities, he couldn’t really see everything.
However, using the Dark wasn’t something he wanted to do. He didn’t trust the entity, especially considering what he had planned. It wasn’t that much of a limitation. He didn’t have to see everything – he couldn’t before anyway – but he could still see a few decisions.
He tried it out for a bit, trying to see the outcome of his plan, only to freeze. A lot of his lines just disappeared right before one of the greatest knots he had ever seen, a knot that collected every other string.
It must be Ragnarök, and his lines’ disappearance meant one thing. He had died in them.
Gellert looked at how it happened and froze completely. The last magical release failed, even when they killed the Longbottom boy, and the backlash from all of the other magical releases they had stored destabilized, killing both Gellert and Albus.
That meant one thing, his prophecy was either fulfilled or broken. He was leaning towards the latter, and that meant that Tom Riddle was dead. Who was responsible was a very easy thing to realize.
Harry Potter.
If Gellert hadn’t been successful with his endeavour, the boy would have succeeded in killing them and probably wiping out half of Britain with the magical release. Why couldn’t that boy just stop meddling and die already?
Gellert realizing that Tom Riddle was dead created a few lines, one where they used a different prophecy for the final task. Funnily enough, Albus had another one practically ready, which he didn’t want to use. Oh, it seemed that Gellert wasn’t the only one with secrets. It was funny. They were both playing with one another. At least Albus hadn’t gotten rusty in his old age.
And yet, his string still disappeared. How was that possible?
By the powers, it was Harry Potter once more.
How did that happen?
Gellert looked at it slightly deeper and literally froze as he realized what he had just witnessed. The mad brilliant boy had managed to destroy the Light and the Dark. He created a form of disease, using the Philosopher’s Stone and Jörmungandr’s fang, that infected both powers, making them kill themselves.
Gellert couldn’t help but watch, spellbound, as he realized what was happening. He expected the boy to be a nuisance, with Fate helping him at every measure, but this was beyond an act of destiny, this was sheer brilliance.
Even now, a part of Gellert had underestimated the boy’s capabilities. Sure, he was extremely dangerous, but without the strongest prophecy in existence protecting him, he shouldn’t have been that much of a threat. But this was beyond anything he could have dreamt of, an actual end of the Light and Dark because of a boy who hadn’t even reached his majority. For thousands of years, people have tried to stop them with Solomon being the closest, and he was one of the strongest mages in history, an unparalleled genius who also had gotten lucky.
But this…
This was different.
Without even thinking, he sent the vision to the Dark and watched as it had gotten as well. Fate had also hidden this from the entity, which definitely didn’t like the idea of actually dying. It was probably planning on resisting this assault somehow and Gellert had ideas of his own that he wanted to implement.
He didn’t trust the Light or the Dark, but he needed them; they were the key to his greatest ambition, to finally free the magical world from its shackles.
Finally, with that out of the way, the path forward was far clearer, almost everything ended with his plan working and Ragnarök occurring. There was nothing after that, the event probably being something that Fate itself couldn’t perceive, but in all of them, Harry Potter lost, watching in despair as his ritual was completed. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see what was coming after, the ritual working was more than enough for Gellert to make very accurate predictions of what would happen.
Still, it was surprising just how much effort it took him to win because of the intervention of a single child.
With barely a thought, Gellert conjured a Patronus in the shape of a Dragon and sent it towards Dumbledore, “Albus, we have a problem. Tom Riddle is dead, and there’s something we need to talk about. We need to make a few changes in our plan.”
No, he wouldn’t let some boy destroy his life’s work, not after what he sacrificed. He would succeed; he would forge a world from the ashes where his people would be free.
It was his destiny after all.
AN: This chapter was a lot harder to write than I expected. It was supposed to be relatively straightforward, but I kept revising it since I wanted to maintain the balance of not revealing too much and spoiling the ending, while also having enough information to tease what could happen. Anyway, there are a few hints about Grindelwald’s true plan (not everything, of course), but the gist is that while he doesn’t just want to make sure that Ragnarök won’t destroy the world, he wants to use it for something else (Sorry, no more spoilers). I’m not sure this chapter came out like I wanted it to, and I don’t mind rewriting it depending on your feedback. So, as usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
Comments
Garri Sarkisov
Well. I am glad Harry made aware that his original plan wouldn’t work which is what Gellert just saw. Great job Penerelle
Callum Runchman
Well at least we know now that nimue wasn't misleading harry and harry was right to be paranoid about grindelwald's seer abilities. Now just have to wait and discover how harry shall manoeuvre around this new danger that threatens his every move against the light and dark
DoodleBopCheese
Nice 👍🏻
Afterdark230
Fate has a nasty way of sneaking up on you! Will be interesting to see how they try to escape it.
Monzter E
Too bad grindie boy thats not enough... Good chapter! And am still hyped!!!!
