The silence was thick enough to choke.
Two men faced one another across the stone chamber, its air heavy with age and spells woven deep into the rock. Albus Dumbledore stood rigid, his hand at his side clenched tight around his wand, though he made no move to raise it. Opposite him, chained to the heavy chair bolted into the floor, sat Gellert Grindelwald, older now, his once-glorious features thinned by years of confinement, but his presence still unmistakable.
For a long while, neither spoke.
Dumbledore's breath misted faintly in the cold air. His chest tightened as he looked at the man he had once loved, the man he had once fought, the man who had shaped so much of his life. The weight of the sealed parchment hidden in his robes pressed against him like a curse, urging him forward.
At last, he broke the silence.
"I went to Gringotts."
Grindelwald tilted his head, as though he had not expected words at all. His pale eyes narrowed. "You seldom travel for banking matters yourself. What did you lose, Albus? Gold? Time?" His voice was hoarse with age, but the mocking lilt remained, sharpened like a knife dulled by years but still capable of cutting.
Dumbledore's lips pressed into a line. "Not time. Not gold. A truth I did not seek—but one I could not ignore."
Something in his tone made Grindelwald's faint smile falter. He leaned forward slightly, the chains clinking. "And what truth was so terrible that you came here to me?"
Dumbledore drew a slow breath, forcing his voice to remain steady. "A child lives. A boy. He is of my blood—and of yours."
The words struck like a blow. For the first time since Dumbledore had entered, genuine confusion flickered across Grindelwald's features. He blinked, his brows knitting. Then, incredulity broke into a laugh.
"Impossible," Grindelwald said flatly. His smile was sharp, almost desperate. "A cheap trick, Albus. Perhaps you have grown crueler with age, to come here and bait me with nonsense."
Dumbledore's hand twitched near his robes. He drew the sealed parchment out, though he did not unbind it. "This is no trick. The goblins' rites are older than Hogwarts itself. They do not lie. The inheritance parchment burned true. His name is Oliver D. Night. His bloodline—Ariana. And you."
The laughter faltered. Grindelwald's eyes locked on the parchment, narrowing, searching for weakness in Dumbledore's face. He saw none.
His hands curled against the chair's arms. "No. Ariana is long dead. You know this better than anyone. And I…" he gave a bitter sweep of his arm, the chains rattling, "have been here, caged like an animal, long before any child of mine could walk the earth."
Dumbledore's voice rose, anger edging past grief. "Then explain it, Gellert! Explain how the parchment shows what it does. Explain how a boy now carries both her blood and yours."
Grindelwald stared at him, bafflement shading into unease. His lips pressed into a thin line. He muttered, almost to himself: "A boy… at Hogwarts?"
"Yes," Dumbledore said, each word sharp. "And his presence shakes the castle already. He is no ordinary child."
For a long moment, Grindelwald said nothing. He leaned back slowly, eyes darting from the parchment to the floor, then back to Dumbledore. The chains creaked as he shifted, restless for the first time in decades.
When he finally spoke, it was quieter. "There was… an attempt."
Dumbledore froze.
Grindelwald's gaze seemed to drift inward, his eyes unfocused, as though dragged back through time against his will. "After Ariana's death, you were… shattered. Consumed. I thought—" He broke off, his lips curling in something that was not quite a smile. "No, not thought. I decided. That if I could not give you her life back, I would give you some remnant. A fragment of her continued. A memory made flesh."
Dumbledore's stomach turned, nausea clawing at him. He already felt the edges of what was coming. "What did you do?" His voice was low, dangerous.
Grindelwald's fingers twitched in his lap. His gaze grew distant, his voice matter-of-fact, as though reciting a long-forgotten experiment. "I harvested one of her eggs—preserved, fragile, touched with rites that even the Unspeakables would not dare to perform. I treated it with alchemy, nourished it with essence, and sought to… seed it with my own contribution. I thought—" His shoulders rose and fell. "I thought to create a legacy. For you. For me."
Dumbledore's breath caught. His nails dug into his palms until they hurt. "You desecrated her. Even in death, you used her."
The older wizard's voice did not rise, but steel threaded through it now. "I failed. Again and again. No life stirred. Nothing quickened. It was folly, yes. I knew it even then. So I abandoned it. Cast aside the vessels. Left the ashes where they fell."
He looked up sharply, confusion flickering into something else—something darker. "But if a boy walks the halls of Hogwarts now with her blood and mine… then perhaps…"
His words trailed off, his lips parting slightly in stunned realization.
Dumbledore's voice trembled, heavy with fury and grief. "You played god with my sister's memory. You twisted her into your obsession. And now, years later, your folly bears fruit."
Grindelwald looked at him then—not with mockery, not with pride, but with something that had not touched his face in decades: fear.
"I abandoned it," he whispered, as if to himself. "I did not watch. I could not imagine it might… succeed." His hand clenched tightly against the wood. "Ripened in silence. Ripened in time."
Dumbledore's face hardened, but a shiver ran through him. His mind spun—through Nyx, through Oliver's strange gifts, through the way fate seemed to bend around the boy.
Part of him whispered: perhaps it was Ariana's blood that drew the phoenix. Perhaps that bond had always been waiting.
The thought chilled him more than the cold walls of Nurmengard ever could.
Grindelwald's fingers twitched against the wooden arms of his chair, the chains rattling softly in the silence. His pale eyes stared at nothing, fixed far away, fixed on some summer of decades past when arrogance had guided his hands and grief had made him reckless.
"I abandoned it," he said again, voice thinner now. "I turned my back on the work. Left the ashes to scatter. And yet… and yet…" His gaze finally lifted, locking onto Dumbledore. The confusion, the denial, the disbelief—all of it drained away, leaving only something stark.
"If the parchment is true—then the spell did not die. It lived on. Ripened unseen. Ripened until now."
Dumbledore's jaw was tight, his face pale. He looked every bit the elder wizard cloaked in dignity, but his hands trembled where they gripped his robes.
"Yes," Albus said quietly. "It lived. And the boy lives. Ariana's son. Your son."
The words hung heavy between them.
For the first time in all their long, tangled history, Gellert Grindelwald seemed unsteady. His chest rose and fell with breaths that were not smooth but ragged, like a man struck in the gut. Slowly, his lips parted, and he let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh, except there was no mirth in it.
"I am… a father." The words seemed foreign to him, as though his mouth had never known their shape. He said them again, more firmly, as though daring them to make sense. "I am a father."
Silence pressed harder against the walls.
Dumbledore's fury, contained until now, broke loose. "You dare claim that? You dare take pride in it?" His voice echoed, harsher than it had been in decades. "You desecrated Ariana's memory. You used her as an experiment, a tool for your obsessions, and now you would—what? Claim innocence? Claim kinship?"
Grindelwald did not recoil. He watched Albus, eyes sharp despite the lines carved into his face by time. "I never expected this," he said hoarsely. "I did not scheme for it, not truly. And yet fate has seen fit to bind me. A child… mine. Ours. Do you not see, Albus? The world bends, even now. It bends around him."
Dumbledore's wand hand twitched, though he did not raise it. "Do not speak of him as though he is yours to claim. Whatever blood may run in his veins, he is innocent. He owes you nothing. You will not touch him. You will not see him."
Grindelwald's brows furrowed, and for the first time his voice cracked with something rawer than arrogance. "I do not wish to corrupt him. Do not mistake me. But if he carries Ariana in his veins—if he carries me—then I would see him once. Just once. Before this prison swallows me whole."
"No."
The word was final. Dumbledore's eyes blazed behind his spectacles, his grief transmuted into iron. "You will not. I will not expose him to the shadow of your ambition, your legacy. You tampered with life itself, and now the boy bears the cost. I will protect him, even from you."
Grindelwald's lips thinned. He leaned forward, chains rattling, his gaze burning. "Protect him? Or hide him? What is it you fear, Albus? That he will follow me? That he will follow you? Or that he will surpass us both?"
Dumbledore flinched, almost imperceptibly.
Grindelwald's tone softened unexpectedly. "He is proof, Albus. Proof that neither of us could escape fate. You cannot deny it. A boy born of grief, born of fire—and bonded to a phoenix no book has ever recorded. Tell me you do not see the pattern."
Dumbledore swallowed, his voice quieter but no less fierce. "Perhaps it was Ariana's blood. Perhaps it was mine. Perhaps it was both. But you will not shape him, Gellert. Not with your words. Not with your presence. The boy's path is his own."
For a long time, Grindelwald said nothing. His eyes searched Dumbledore's face, as though trying to pierce through to the man he had once known beneath all the years and guilt. Then, slowly, he leaned back, his shoulders sagging into the chair.
A strange, faint smile touched his lips, though it was brittle as glass. "Blood calls to blood, Albus. You may deny me, you may deny him—but not forever. He will come. Sooner or later, he will come."
Dumbledore's eyes hardened. He turned toward the door, his robes whispering against the cold stone floor. The sealed parchment pressed against his chest like a brand, heavy with secrets he could not yet bear to share.
As the door opened and torchlight spilled in, Grindelwald's voice followed him, softer now, almost intimate:
"He is ours, Albus. Whether you like it or not."
The door slammed shut behind him, cutting the words short.
And in the silence that followed, Dumbledore felt the echo of them ringing louder than any chain.