The amber light from the tank washed over the stone laboratory, casting the three figures in a hue that was neither golden nor bloody, but something ancient and suspended in between. The only sound in the deep, subterranean chamber was the rhythmic, fluid thump-thump of the heart that should not exist.
Gellert Grindelwald had not moved his hand from the glass. He could feel the vibration of the life within, a tiny tremor that traveled up his arm and settled in his own chest, syncing his pulse to hers. It was a sensation more intoxicating than any spell he had ever cast.
"She is anathema," Dracula said. The Vampire Lord stood a few paces back, his arms crossed over his chest. His expression was unreadable, a mask of marble indifference, but his red eyes tracked the floating embryo with a predator's sharp calculation. "You understand this, Gellert? We have not merely stirred the cauldron; we have cracked the vessel."
"Evolution is always anathema to the stagnant," Grindelwald replied, his voice low, distracted. He watched the tiny, translucent fingers of the embryo twitch in the suspension. "The first fish to crawl onto land was a monster to its brethren in the sea. Until it learned to walk."
"The sea does not hunt the walker," Dracula countered, his tone cooling the air. "But my kind... we are jealous of our immortality. We guard the bloodline with a fanaticism you wizards reserve for your blood purity. If the Covens of the East learn of this—a hybrid who possesses the magic of a wizard and the regeneration of a Nosferatu, fueled by an Obscurus..." He let the sentence hang, heavy with implied violence. "They will not see a miracle. They will see a usurper. They will burn the world to turn her to ash before she takes her first breath of air."
Vinda Rosier stood in the shadows near the heavy iron door, a silent sentinel. She watched the two titans converse, her hand resting lightly on her wand. She saw the way Gellert looked at the tank—not with the manic glint of 1945, but with a terrifying, quiet devotion. It frightened her more than his rage ever had. Rage could be outmaneuvered; love was absolute.
Grindelwald finally turned from the glass. The amber light reflected in his mismatched eyes, giving him a spectral appearance.
"Let them come," he said softly. "But they will not know. Not yet."
He walked over to a workbench, picking up a piece of dark cloth, wiping the condensation from his hands. "The Ministries believe I am rotting in a cell, mourning my lost war. They believe you are a myth in a mountain. We have the greatest weapon in warfare, Vlad: anonymity."
"She will need time," Dracula observed. "Decades, perhaps. The Obscurus must be tamed by the blood. Her body must knit itself together slowly to withstand the pressure of her own soul."
"She shall have it," Grindelwald vowed. He looked back at the tank, where the embryo floated in its eternal twilight. "She stays here, in the heart of Nurmengard. Vinda will oversee the protocols. You will provide the blood to keep the solution viable. And I..."
He paused, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips.
"I will teach her. Even while she sleeps, I will whisper the secrets of the old world into the glass. When she wakes, she will not be a child stumbling in the dark. She will be a queen waiting for her crown."
Dracula nodded slowly. It was a sound pact. "A shadow grown in the dark," the vampire mused. "Very well. My lips are sealed, Alchemist. Let the world sleep while we sharpen the knife."
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Headmaster's Office, 2:00 AM
Hundreds of miles away, the wind over the Scottish Highlands was not a mourning cry, but a biting, freezing gale that rattled the turrets of the ancient castle.
Albus Dumbledore sat behind the large, claw-footed desk of the Headmaster's office. The room was a sanctuary of ticking clocks, whirring silver instruments, and the gentle, comforting scent of sherbet lemons and old parchment. Yet, the atmosphere tonight was brittle.
The silence of the office was shattered not by the chiming of a clock, but by a frantic, rhythmic clacking against the high tower glass. Dumbledore looked up from his work, his eyes narrowing.
Against the pane, a nondescript brown owl was battering its wings, fighting the gale to stay aloft. It pecked at the glass with desperate urgency.
With a flick of Dumbledore's wand, the latch clicked. The heavy window swung inward, admitting a blast of freezing Scottish wind that scattered the parchments on the desk. The owl swooped in, wet and shivering, but it did not seek a perch or a treat. It dropped a heavy, unassuming envelope onto the mahogany desk and immediately banked around, diving back into the storm as if the message it carried was radioactive.
Albus rose and shut the window against the howl of the night. He looked down at the envelope. It was plain parchment, sealed with a nondescript gray wax lacking any crest. To the untrained eye, it was junk mail or a dull administrative update.
Albus tapped the seal with the tip of his wand. " Revelio Veritas. "
The gray wax hissed and turned a translucent blue—the color of the Austrian ICW Intelligence Division.
He slit the envelope open. Inside was not a letter, but a punch card, the kind used in the new Muggle computing machines that the Ministry was nervously experimenting with to encrypt data. It was a method of communication born of the Cold War—cold, impersonal, and designed to bypass magical interception.
Albus placed the card on the desk and passed his wand over the holes. The dots rearranged themselves, ink bleeding from the void to form succinct, typewriter-style text.
REPORT: 74-ALPHA LOCATION: Nurmengard Fortress. SUBJECT: The Prisoner. INCIDENT: Unscheduled Visitation. VISITOR ID: Vlad Tepes (Class 5 Non-Wizard Entity / Vampire High Lord). TIMELINE: Entry 02:00. Exit 08:00. Duration: 6 Hours. OBSERVATION: Visitor entered via shadow-transport. Visitor departed via shadow-transport. No alarms triggered. No guards alerted. Visitor departed alone. STATUS: Prisoner remains in custody. No breach detected.
Albus read the lines three times. The paper felt heavy in his hand, heavier than lead.
"Six hours," he whispered.
Dumbledore stood up, the purple velvet of his robes rustling in the quiet room. He walked to the window, staring out at the Forbidden Forest. The trees were a wall of black spikes against the indigo sky.
"Six hours," he repeated, his voice harder now. "Dracula does not make social calls, Fawkes. He does not visit ruins to admire the architecture."
On his perch, the phoenix ruffled his crimson feathers and let out a low, crooning note of unease.
Albus began to pace. It was a slow, measured rhythm that he had worn into the floorboards over the last decade. The report was factual, dry, and terrifying.
Gellert Grindelwald was supposed to be a broken man. He was locked in the highest tower of his own fortress, stripped of his wand, stripped of his army. The world believed the threat was neutralized. But Albus knew better. He knew that you could take the wand from the wizard, but you could not cut the tongue from the deceiver.
"Why?" Albus asked the empty air. "What do you have left to trade, Gellert?"
He stopped before a cabinet of curiosities, his reflection caught in the glass. He didn't see the aging Headmaster. For a fleeting, painful second, he saw the summer of 1899. He saw Gellert's smile—that charismatic, dangerous tilt of the lips that could make a man believe that burning down the world was an act of mercy.
He could charm the birds from the trees, Albus thought, a bitter taste rising in his throat. And now, it seems, he can charm the monsters from their caves.
Dumbledore's mind, sharpened by years of strategy and loss, immediately began to construct the worst-case scenario. He did not think of heirs. He did not think of redemption. He thought of war.
"The vampires remained neutral in '45," he murmured, his eyes narrowing. "They stayed in the shadows while we bled. But if Gellert has found a way to promise them something... a territory? A permanent night?"
He turned back to Fawkes, his face pale in the firelight.
"He is forging an alliance, Fawkes. He is not sitting in that cell mourning his defeat. He is negotiating."
The fear that gripped him was cold and familiar. It was the fear of the General who realizes the enemy has not surrendered, but merely retreated to reload.
"Dracula commands the East," Dumbledore reasoned, his voice tightening. "If the vampires join the remnants of the Acolytes... if they break him out..."
He looked at the punch card again. Visitor departed alone.
"For now," Albus corrected grimly. "He departed alone for now."
He banished the note with a flick of his wand, turning it into ash. He sat back down at his desk, pulling a fresh roll of parchment toward him. He dipped his quill in ink, but he did not write. He sat there, the nib hovering over the paper, paralyzed by the shadow that had just stretched across Europe.
He had no proof. He had no heartbeat to guide him, no mystical sense of a child's birth. He had only the cold, hard logic of warfare.
"You are plotting, Gellert," Dumbledore whispered into the silence of the castle. "You are building a new weapon. And I will not let you catch the world sleeping a second time."
He extinguished the lamps. In the darkness, Albus Dumbledore's eyes remained open, watching the door, waiting for a war that wasn't coming, completely blind to the tragedy that was.