In an extravagantly furnished restaurant on a London street, Grindelwald sat with a copy of A History of Magic in his hands, sipping his tea with only half his attention on it.
The story of this world was considerably more interesting than the one he came from.
Here, his younger self had parted ways with Dumbledore, only to be defeated by him in 1945 and imprisoned in Nurmengard.
After that, history had taken a radically different course.
Wizards still lived in hiding, while Muggles flourished more than ever.
And then there was that Voldemort fellow who had emerged in Britain.
Grindelwald remembered that, in his own world, Voldemort hadn’t been called Voldemort at all.
His name was Tom Riddle.
Dumbledore’s proudest student.
Proudest student.
(╬◣д◢) Grindelwald’s eyes practically began spitting fire.
Of course.
The reason Grindelwald paid so much attention to this particular student had absolutely nothing to do with jealousy.
He was merely keeping an eye on exceptional talent in the wizarding world.
Yes.
That was all.
Exceptional talent.
At that point in history, Grindelwald had only just achieved victory and had not yet begun his purge of the Muggles.
Dumbledore had always opposed Grindelwald’s plans to wipe them out.
In his view, the wizards had already won, and Grindelwald should put an end to the pointless slaughter.
Grindelwald disagreed.
There were simply too many Muggles.
Their sheer numbers meant they still posed a significant threat.
Grindelwald had no intention of leaving such an enormous danger unresolved.
Still, he had to take Dumbledore’s feelings into consideration.
For that reason, Britain had been the last region on Grindelwald’s list.
And it was around that time that Merope Gaunt fell in love with a Muggle.
The Gaunts had very nearly slaughtered the entire Riddle family over it.
To oppose Grindelwald’s purge of the Muggles, Dumbledore personally intervened, suppressed the conflict, and even presided over Merope’s wedding to the Muggle she loved.
It was his way of making his position perfectly clear to Grindelwald.
Grindelwald hadn’t stopped in the end.
Dumbledore, however, had gained something else from it.
The child born of Merope and Riddle’s love— Tom Riddle.
Unlike this world, where witches and wizards still hid among Muggles and Muggles feared magic, Grindelwald’s world was very different.
For a Muggle man to marry a witch was considered an extraordinary honour.
And in Merope’s case, Dumbledore himself had officiated the wedding.
The couple lived very happily together.
From an early age, young Tom displayed extraordinary intelligence.
He was also kind and courageous.
When he entered Hogwarts, he was Sorted into Gryffindor and quickly became one of Dumbledore’s favourites.
After graduating, he went on to become Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts.
Before Grindelwald had arrived in this world, he had once heard Dumbledore say that Tom’s magical ability had already surpassed his own by a considerable margin.
Dumbledore even intended for Tom to succeed him as Headmaster of Hogwarts after his death.
Every time Grindelwald thought about Tom, irritation flared inside him.
Dumbledore wrote back to him twice a year at most.
And yet in those letters, less than a thousand words in total, hardly a sentence went by without Tom’s name appearing somewhere.
Worse still, every mention was praise.
It was enough to make Grindelwald’s eyes turn green.
He had been nursing that particular vat of jealousy for several decades, simply waiting for the day it finally became too much and exploded.
But in this world…
Dumbledore’s proudest student had somehow become his enemy instead.
And Dumbledore had apparently never shown him the slightest favour.
He had even rejected Tom’s application to become Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts.
What wonderful news.
Grindelwald happily lifted his cup and took another sip.
The tea contained no sugar whatsoever.
Yet somehow, it tasted sweet.
“Hm?” As he raised his cup, Grindelwald happened to catch sight of a familiar figure outside.
At that very moment, Witt was out shopping with Lily.
“Lily, look at this one.
Isn’t it cute?
Want me to buy it for you?” Witt waved a stuffed toy in front of Lily, trying everything he could think of to cheer her up.
Two days earlier, they had visited Lily’s old home.
Her parents were already dead.
When Lily returned to Witt’s house afterward, she had burst into tears.
Ever since then, the smile had disappeared from her face.
She didn’t even seem interested in shopping anymore, despite it usually being one of her favourite things to do.
So Witt had been doing his best to cheer her up.
He was still desperately trying to coax a smile out of Lily when a hand suddenly settled on his shoulder.
“Long time no see, Mr Cress.” Grindelwald greeted him with a warm smile.
Witt turned his head.
The instant he saw that familiar face, adrenaline flooded his entire body.
“Lily, run!” Witt grabbed Lily and bolted.
“Petrificus Totalus.” “…” ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Back at Witt’s house “Mr Grindelwald, please, have some tea.” Witt wore the most ingratiating smile he could manage.
This wasn’t the dungeon.
He only had one life here.
If he died, he stayed dead.
Faced with a boss like Grindelwald, Witt had exactly two choices.
Submit.
Or submit even harder.
There was no third option.
Grindelwald took a sip of tea and nodded appreciatively.
“Not bad.
It seems you weren’t boasting after all.” After saying that, he studied Witt more carefully.
Back in the palace, simply looking at Witt had filled Grindelwald with an inexplicable sense of disgust.
The feeling had been roughly equivalent to watching Dumbledore at Tom’s graduation with an arm around the young man’s shoulders, laughing and joking happily with him— before asking Grindelwald to take their graduation photograph.
In short, it had been utterly infuriating.
Worse, the sensation never faded with time.
Every time he saw Witt, he found him just as irritating as before.
It had made Grindelwald wish he’d simply killed the boy properly the first time.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Author’s Notes] Depending on the Quest, the System may apply either a Hostility Aura or a Friendliness Aura.
The higher the Quest tier, the stronger the effect That was why, the very first time Witt had entered the palace, Grindelwald had fired a Cruciatus Curse at him without a second thought.
Grindelwald had assumed the unpleasant sensation was somehow inherent to Witt.
Yet now that they had met again, that strange feeling had completely disappeared.
Without the inexplicable hostility clouding his judgement, Grindelwald was naturally willing to talk with Witt for a little longer.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ “Little fellow, don’t you have anything you’d like to tell me?” Grindelwald was immensely curious.
Every time Witt died, his body vanished instantly.
And despite dying hundreds of times, he always came back to life and reappeared inside Grindelwald’s palace.
The ability to return from death was something Grindelwald found extremely interesting.
“Ask whatever you like.
I’ll tell you everything I know,” Witt said eagerly.
“How did you enter my palace?” As an emperor of the wizarding world, Grindelwald’s palace was quite possibly the most heavily defended place on the planet.
Yet Witt had appeared inside his private chambers again and again, bypassing every defence and evading every attempt to trace him.
It was almost unbelievable.
“Er…
every day I just sort of go whoosh, and then I’m there.
I genuinely don’t know how it works.” Witt answered with perfect honesty.
Grindelwald stared into his eyes.
When Witt didn’t flinch or avoid his gaze, Grindelwald reluctantly decided he was probably telling the truth.
He had already tried other methods before.
Legilimency didn’t work.
Neither did the Imperius Curse.
All he could do was judge whether Witt was lying from his expressions and body language.
“Next question.
Why did I come here?” “I don’t know.” Witt shook his head honestly.
Grindelwald had probably appeared here because of the penalty for abandoning the Quest.
But how could Witt possibly tell him that?
Would Grindelwald even believe him?
You’re just a fictional character who got dragged out of a dungeon because I abandoned a System Quest.
Who in their right mind would believe something like that?
And if Witt said it aloud and Grindelwald became offended enough to attack him, what then?
Witt wasn’t stupid.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Grindelwald asked several more questions, but Witt’s answers remained watertight.
Eventually, he gave up on trying to extract any useful explanation from him.
“Would you mind if I stayed here for a while?” Grindelwald phrased it as a question.
In reality, Witt was quite certain he wasn’t being given the option to refuse.
“If you don’t mind sleeping on the sofa in the sitting room, I’ve got no objections.” “Hmm.” Grindelwald gave a low hum.
No one had ever dared tell him to sleep on a sofa before.
Noticing the distinctly unfriendly look in his eyes, Witt quickly lowered his voice and explained, “This house only has one bedroom, and Lily’s using it.
You wouldn’t seriously take a little girl’s room away from her, would you?” As he spoke, Witt sneaked a sidelong glance at Grindelwald.
The meaning was obvious.
If you’ve got even the slightest bit of shame, you won’t say yes.
Grindelwald’s mouth twitched.
“No.
I’ll make other arrangements.” He drew his wand and gave it a casual flick.
A doorway appeared in the wall.
When Grindelwald opened it, several scraps of material lying nearby immediately transformed into a bed, wardrobe, mirror, and bedside lamp.
Within moments, an elegant bedroom had appeared from nothing before Witt’s astonished eyes.
“Whoa.” Witt’s jaw nearly hit the floor.
Magic can do that?
He’d always assumed magic was mostly useful for fighting.
“Make me one too!” Witt grabbed Grindelwald’s sleeve and looked up at him with enormous, sparkling eyes, putting on the most pitiful expression he could manage.
Sleeping on the sofa really wasn’t comfortable.
Grindelwald turned back and lowered his voice enticingly.
“Oh?
You want one?” “Mhm!
Mhm!” Witt nodded furiously.
“Not a chance.” Grindelwald rejected him without mercy.
He stepped into his new room and slammed the door behind him.
A second later, the doorway slowly vanished from the wall.
Not a chance.
Magical edition.
“Childish git.” Witt muttered under his breath.
He finally understood now.
This so-called emperor of the wizarding world had the personality of a child.
He was even more childish than Witt himself.