In the night, the mountains of Austria looked like a row of giant black teeth trying to chew up the sky.
The Citroën’s gas tank was nearly empty, just like Harry and Fleur’s stomachs.
The Temperature-Charms inside the car were beginning to fail due to a lack of magical power, and the biting cold seeped through the cracks of the car windows, making their teeth chatter.
“There’s a tower up ahead.” Harry squinted, pointing to a black fortress standing on a sheer cliff.
It pierced the night sky in isolation, devoid of any lights, enveloped only in a suffocating, dead silence.
“Looks like a…
prison?
Or a monastery?
Wonder if we can beg for some food.” Fleur looked up at the tower, her face turning pale instantly, looking even worse than when she had faced the Frost Wyvern.
“Don’t stop, Harry!” Her voice turned sharp as she slammed on the gas.
“Go fast!
That’s Nurmengard!
That’s—” But it was too late.
The moment the Citroën passed into the shadow of the black tower, an irresistible, massive suction force erupted from the highest window at the top.
It wasn’t gravity; it was pure magic.
“Waaaaah—!” The dark blue Citroën, like a tin toy caught by a magnet, instantly lost control.
Instead of falling, it defied the laws of physics and was pulled directly into the high sky, flying toward the single window at the top of the tower.
“Lumos!” Harry tried to pull out his wand, but this magic was absurdly powerful, directly suppressing their movements.
The car hovered outside the narrow window.
The stone wall parted like melting wax, “swallowing” the entire car into the dark, damp cell at the top of the tower.
Clang.
The Citroën slammed heavily onto the stone floor, its engine letting out a puff of black smoke before dying completely.
Harry scrambled out of the car door, stumbling as he crawled out.
He gripped his vine wood wand tightly, looking around warily.
This was a cell with only a hard wooden bed and a ragged blanket.
And in the shadow by the window sat a skeletal old man.
He looked as if he had been sitting there for a hundred years.
His skin was shriveled over his bones like parchment, his eye sockets deeply sunken.
But when he raised his head, Harry saw his eyes.
They were heterochromatic eyes.
One was as cloudy as stagnant water, while the other burned with a pale, trembling flame.
Even dressed in rags and reduced to skin and bones, this old man still exuded the residual majesty of someone who had once ruled the world.
That pressure was not Voldemort’s frantic bloodlust, but a deeper, more profound arrogance that seemed to see through time itself.
Fleur shrunk against the car door, her entire body trembling.
She recognized this sign.
She knew who this was.
“Interesting…” The old man spoke.
His voice was raspy and dry, like two gravestones rubbing together.
He didn’t look at Fleur; his heterochromatic eyes stared unblinkingly at Harry, as if looking at something that didn’t exist in this dimension.
“The tapestry of fate…
is broken.” The old man slowly stood up.
He wasn’t actually tall, but his shadow stretched extremely long on the wall.
He walked over to Harry, his withered fingers grasping at the empty air, seeming to touch some invisible thread.
“According to the original score, you should be on that island, acting as a sacrifice, or a chess piece, stepping toward death one pace at a time.” The old man murmured in a low voice, his lips curling into a strange smile.
“But now you are here…
in a shabby iron box, with a Veela, standing in my cell.” “This was not in his plan.” The old man’s eyes flashed with a fanatical light.
“Nor was it in my foresight.
A variable.
A massive, ridiculous variable.” Harry frowned as he looked at this crazy old man.
He didn’t recognize this face.
In Harry’s eyes, this was just a dark wizard locked up in the deep mountains of Austria, who was probably a bit touched in the head.
“Uh, listen, sir,” Harry interrupted the old man’s musing.
He didn’t put down his wand, but his tone held more exhaustion than fear.
“I don’t know what chess pieces or musical scores you’re talking about.
Our car just broke down, and we were…
sucked in by you, or this tower.” Gellert Grindelwald froze, those terrifying eyes narrowing as he scrutinized the boy who had interrupted him.
“You don’t know me?” “Should I?” Harry asked in return, his stomach letting out a loud, highly untimely grumble.
The sound echoed in the dead silent cell, proving extremely awkward.
Harry blushed slightly, but since it had already come to this, he decided to just let it all hang out.
“Since you brought us in…” Harry rubbed his stomach, looking at the former Dark Lord with great hope.
“Do you have anything to eat?
Bread?
Potatoes?
Even crackers as hard as rocks would do.
We’re starving.” The cell fell into a dead silence.
Shrinking in the back, Fleur nearly fainted.
She looked at Harry Potter as if he were a madman asking Death for candy.
That was Gellert Grindelwald!
The first Dark Lord!
The man who had set all of Europe ablaze for half a century!
And you’re asking him if he has biscuits?!
Gellert Grindelwald was also stunned.
Those eyes of his, which had seen through countless futures, planned world-level wars, and fought a duel of the century with Albus Dumbledore, were now filled with an absurd blankness.
He looked at Harry’s earnest face, which practically screamed “I’m hungry.” No fear.
No worship.
No hatred.
Not even a shred of awe for the name “Grindelwald.” In this boy’s eyes, he wasn’t some grand revolutionary or a terrifying Dark Lord.
He was just a fellow inmate who might have half a loaf of bread hidden away.
“Ha…” A dry laugh squeezed out of Gellert Grindelwald’s throat.
Then the laugh grew louder, turning into a fit of violent coughing—a laugh filled with mockery, helplessness, and a sort of relief.
“Albus, oh Albus…” Gellert Grindelwald shook his head as he laughed, sitting back down on his hard wooden bed.
“The Savior you spent so much effort raising turned out to be a glutton who only knows how to look for food.” The fanatical light in his eyes died out, and he turned back into a dying old man.
He waved his hand at Harry, like shooing away an annoying fly.
“Get out.” “Ah?” Harry blinked.
“Really nothing to eat?” “Begone!” Gellert Grindelwald swept his sleeve violently.
Boom—!
The massive magic erupted once more, but this time it was an outward repelling force.
The Citroën, along with Harry and Fleur, was blown straight out the window like dust swept away by a broom.
The car flipped several times in the air, and gravity took over once more.
“Start it!
Harry!
Use your wand to start it!” Fleur screamed.
Harry hurriedly cast Incendio on the hood.
The old engine coughed, spat a shower of sparks, and finally roared back to life twenty meters above the ground.
The Citroën glided just above the treetops, stabilizing itself in a hair-raising maneuver, and then accelerated madly like a startled rabbit, fleeing the shadow of the black tower.
In the cabin, Fleur panted heavily, drenched in cold sweat.
“Are you out of your mind?!” she roared at Harry, turning her head.
“Do you know who that was?
That was Gellert Grindelwald!
If he wanted to, he could have crushed us into dust with a single finger just now!” “Grindelwald?” Harry ruffled his messy hair, a bit surprised.
“The dark wizard written on the Chocolate Frog cards, the one defeated by Dumbledore?” He looked back at the high tower receding into the darkness, curling his lips in disappointment.
“He’s famous enough…
too bad he didn’t even have a sandwich.” “Hogwarts is still better.
At least Filch won’t throw you out of a window, and there’s always food in the kitchen.” Harry sighed, his stomach rumbling again.
“Let’s go, sister.
Looks like we’ll have to go rummage through some Muggle trash cans.” High up in the tower.
Gellert Grindelwald sat in the darkness, listening to the sound of the car fading away.
“No past, and no reverence for the future…” The old man closed his eyes, though that strange smile still lingered on his lips.