What Grindelwald said was not easy to process.
"So you're saying my new friend… is Death, from the fairy tales?" Under the moonlight spilling through the window, Ariana's skin had that true cool ivory pallor.
She looked at Grindelwald with confusion in her eyes, along with the clear hesitation of you have to be joking.
"Yes. Exactly that." Grindelwald nodded. The back of his head was still throbbing. He touched it, felt the swollen lump there, then pulled his hand back and wiped the blood on his robe.
"You and I both saw legend made real. There is no second explanation."
"From everything I know, the Elder Wand among the three Hallows should have been in your mother's possession. But clearly, she lost the treasure that symbolized your family's honor."
"The Dumbledore family, as descendants of the eldest Peverell brother, having their ancestral home built above the underground chamber imprisoning Death—it actually makes perfect sense."
"And that only reinforces my theory. Back then, the Peverell family took Death's cloak, Death's weapon, and the Resurrection Stone that represented his authority."
"They were not taken from the world by Death in the end. They deceived him and sealed him away. The fairy tale everyone knows softened the truth, as fairy tales always do."
His voice was steady—steady in a way that seemed impossible for a man who had just been dragged out of a tunnel, had two broken ribs, and several swollen knots on the back of his head.
The future legendary wizard believed his own conclusion absolutely, because he had studied the murals in the underground chamber and found more than enough to support it.
"Mr. Grindelwald, what you're saying is a bit too fantastical." Ariana shook her head and chose not to trust the friend of her brother standing in front of her.
She had never liked him much.
"To Muggles, wizards are fantastical too." Grindelwald answered without hesitation. "And from the conversation I overheard, with a personality like his, I could think of a hundred ways to trick him into handing over his power."
"Heap praise on him. Put him on a pedestal. Then tell him, with all the awe in the world, that I want to see his treasure. He'd show off and hand me the Hallow himself so I could admire it."
Grindelwald seemed to think rather little of the boy's intelligence. Even after getting beaten senseless by him, he still sounded utterly certain the child would be easy to manipulate.
Ariana shook her head again.
"Mr. Corpse told me he was Lord Iain of All Arts."
"He lied to you," Grindelwald said immediately.
"Mr. Grindelwald, maybe you need to rest." Ariana sighed, her voice heavy with the tiredness of I really don't want to argue with you anymore.
"You must have gotten your brain scrambled when Mr. Corpse hit you."
That one sentence made the corner of Grindelwald's eye twitch. He looked, very briefly, like a man on the edge of losing his composure.
"And that kind of devoted trust is exactly why he chose you as his herald." To his credit, now that he had other designs in mind, Grindelwald did not let his temper show.
He merely stared at the girl in front of him, his gaze a little complicated.
"His herald?"
Ariana blinked in confusion.
"You exchanged tokens with him, didn't you? Some kind of magical contract has already formed between the two of you. If you don't believe me, return my wand and I'll reveal it for you."
Grindelwald took his hand off his ribs and straightened away from the wall.
"But your wand is with Lord Iain of All Arts." Ariana froze for a second, then once again emphasized Iain's identity with complete sincerity.
This time Grindelwald did not even bother correcting her.
Instead, his expression changed dramatically, as though the world had just kicked the floor out from under him.
"How could he have taken it!"
Clearly, Grindelwald had regained consciousness too late and had not witnessed Iain's habit of looting anything interesting off the unconscious. He had only just realized a truly horrifying possibility.
He might have lost, forever, one of the defining symbols of his life as a wizard.
…
His instincts were correct.
That was exactly what had happened.
No matter how formidable Grindelwald was, he had no way to pursue a thief across nearly a century of time.
Inside the lit little cottage in Hogsmeade, in 1991, Iain was already holding the new wand and pointing it at a spider crouched in the corner.
"Lumos."
At once, a ridiculous, utterly excessive burst of fire roared forth. He cast a fire spell under the disguise of a lighting charm, and the poor spider—who had done absolutely nothing to anyone—was instantly burned to ash.
"Decent power."
Iain found the new wand comfortable in hand. The wand he had manifested through his own imagination showed no resistance whatsoever toward him, though the effects of its magic were clearly not as strong as those of his first wand.
"That's what you get from a wand without a spirit. Only a bound spirit can truly amplify a wand's power. Honestly, I suspect Dumbledore figured that out while studying the Elder Wand."
With an imagination as rich as his, Iain had long since started guessing why the Elder Wand was so powerful. As one of his occasional skeptical moments, he had never really believed it came from Death himself.
Marketing, that was all.
If he had been some great wandmaker in the ancient world and forged a wand strong enough to dominate the age, he would have made up a legendary story for it too, just to raise its value and mystique.
That was how rarity worked.
"If I can figure out how to raise wand spirits in batches, maybe one day everyone can have an Elder Wand." Iain remained the same pure-hearted soul, forever concerned with the well-being of all.
To achieve that dream, he knew he would need to capture a lot more spirits. So, true to form, the moment the idea occurred to him, he acted on it, never mind that the moon was already high overhead.
"Sure, the forest's more dangerous at night, but if it helps my new wand get a spirit sooner, then suffering a little is no big deal."
He was saying that mostly to manipulate the new wand a little. After making some preparations, he slipped out of the cottage and into the forest. If he had known the way to the Forbidden Forest, he might even have tried his luck there.
As for safety—
Honestly, the boy was not especially worried.
"No magical creature can beat me when I'm fully armed. Not even a dragon."
In his left hand, Iain held his wand. In his right, the Sword of the King. Around him hovered the rest of his eighteen wizard-hands, invisible but very real, with one currently gripping the new wand aloft and the rest carrying a thoroughly alarming collection of equipment.
Oversized grenades. Packs of C4. A homemade pistol. Two Molotov cocktails. Four or five bottles of suspicious chemical compounds. If he had finished building a Gatling gun, he would have brought that too.
Still—
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Whenever the pistol fired, the bullets flared with the red glow of a fire charm. They were enough, more or less. Once they struck a target, they would ignite the victim's organs from the inside out.
"Give me time and I'll enchant the bullets with green light too!" Iain's genius idea of enchanting ammunition went a long way toward soothing his chronic fear of insufficient firepower.
That night, the animals of the forest met the harshest hunter they had ever known.
"Stupefy!"
Whenever the boy's aim failed him, or some nimble little creature dodged too well to be chased down even with a sword, Iain rewarded it with a spell instead. In the right hands, even the most basic spell ceased to be basic.
"No need to learn some evil Killing Curse. I'm going to reinvent the Stunning Spell."
In truth, Iain was not aiming that spell at the creature itself.
He was aiming at the heart.
Three minutes of cardiac slumber was enough to grant permanent sleep.
What could you say?
Maybe Hogwarts really did have a terrorist problem.