Harry Potter: I am the Legend

"Grindelwald."

"Grindelwald."

"Grindelwald."

The murmurs grew clearer, approaching from the distance.

It sounded like a sigh from someone far away, yet also like a haunting melody.

On a deserted street, a white-haired man came to a slow stop.

Before him stood rows of towering buildings, their dark, colorless facades stretching high into the sky. The street was void of people, devoid of sound—save for the eerie, song-like voice drifting on the wind.

"Grindelwald, silent as stone. Grindelwald, speaks but acts not. Grindelwald, achieves nothing at all."

As the peculiar song echoed, a line of little girls dressed in bright red dresses appeared, hand in hand, running across the empty street. They sang as they passed, turning their heads to look at Grindelwald. Although their bodies were childlike and delicate, their faces were those of grown men—pale, empty, and unsettling.

Grindelwald's face remained emotionless as he closed his eyes. Gripping his wand, he waved it in a swift arc.

Zzzzrrrk.

A crack of light flashed, like fabric being violently torn apart.

The chain of little girls was split in two, their forms shredded down the middle. The razor-sharp spell cleaved through the street, the buildings, the air itself—tearing the world apart like a canvas ripped into pieces.

Then, silence.

Yet beyond the rift he had created, he found himself in another place entirely.

A cliff.

Below the cliff lay an endless abyss. At its edge, a man clung desperately to two people on the brink of falling. The man was none other than Fatil Drasses.

The two dangling over the precipice were a younger Grindelwald and someone he recognized well: Jakob Bohan, the reckless, gambling scion of a wealthy family—a man infamous for his vices.

He was back in the summer of 1913, at the pivotal moment that altered his life forever.

Beside him, Jakob was still trembling and stammering, just as Grindelwald remembered:

"F-F-Fatil, no, this isn't right, it won't work!"

"Fatil, what are you thinking?! Pull me up!"

"Don't let go of this hand—let go of the other one!"

Grindelwald watched, an odd detachment in his gaze as he observed the scene unfold. Gradually, he understood where he was. Yet, he could not recall when or how he had slipped into this dream, as though memories outside it had been erased—just like how a dreamer forgets the waking world.

Thud.

After a moment of hesitation, it wasn't Grindelwald who fell into the abyss, but Jakob.

When Fatil pulled the younger Grindelwald to safety, his usually impassive face flickered with an uncharacteristic trace of emotion.

"So this is what you've been yearning for all along?"

A voice chuckled from behind him.

"No wonder no one can understand you.

If someone lived for more than sixty years and still longed for love, they'd either be a woman—or a lunatic."

Grindelwald turned around. Behind him, looming over the horizon, was Mount Kilimanjaro. And above it floated a monstrous entity of unimaginable size—larger than the mountain itself, blotting out the sun like a leviathan swimming through the sky.

The creature had countless arms and jellyfish-like tendrils trailing below its body. Its head was shrouded in swirling black mist, lacking a nose or mouth. Instead, its every strand of hair stretched hundreds of meters long, resembling writhing tentacles. Only its massive eyes—like vast lakes—pierced through the darkness, reflecting an endless cycle of void and eternity.

Standing as an ant beneath this colossal being, Grindelwald remained silent. The Elder Wand in his hand transformed into a sharp black blade. After a moment's contemplation, he stabbed the blade into the ground beside him.

At the Klausnick base in Germany, dark clouds loomed overhead. Occasionally, sharp beams of light swept across the landscape.

At a lookout post three hundred meters away, an officer holding binoculars frowned deeply.

"What are they doing, Major?"

Beside him, a curious soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder asked, "It looks like... they're doing nothing."

The man holding the binoculars looked utterly puzzled as he handed them to the soldier beside him. "Take a look yourself. Does that look like a negotiation to you?"

The soldier took the binoculars and focused on the scene.

Through the round lenses, the distant scene atop the meditation tower of the esteemed wizard came into clear view.

Two individuals sat facing each other.

One was a woman draped in a gray blanket, slumped in a wheelchair. She was entirely bald, her head tilted to one side. A wand lay across her knees as her frail body trembled slightly.

About ten meters in front of her sat a man. His posture was perfectly straight, his hands resting firmly on his knees. Yet his head drooped onto his shoulder, his eyes shut tight, as if he were asleep.

"Is Lord Grindelwald... asleep?"

The soldier lowered the binoculars and asked, baffled.

No one answered.

When he put the binoculars down, he suddenly realized that the officer beside him had inexplicably collapsed to the ground, eyes closed, softly snoring.

The soldier's eyes widened in shock. Before he could voice his confusion, a wave of dizziness washed over him. Sleepiness consumed him in an instant. Unable to resist, he fell to the ground, landing on top of the officer.

The sharp black blade hung in the air like a needle pricking an overinflated balloon. With a soft pop akin to bubbles bursting from a fish's mouth, the monster, Kilimanjaro's snowy peaks, Fatil, and even Grindelwald himself vanished entirely.

He awoke from his cross-legged meditative state, finding himself seated in a sandy arena resembling an ancient Roman coliseum.

All around him, countless shadowy figures writhed and danced in a frenzy. Their faces were obscured, hidden in darkness, but their glowing, blood-red eyes burned like embers. They waved their arms and convulsed as if they were the most rabid, bloodthirsty spectators, their numbers stretching into the tens of thousands. Yet, for all their wild movements, not a single sound emerged.

Shh-shh-shhh.The faint rustle of sand being disturbed.

A gray-haired young man, barefoot, walked step by step across the sandy ground of the arena. His body was tightly bound in dense black chains, which dug so deeply into his flesh that they seemed to merge with his skin.

It was hard to fathom how anyone, bound so brutally, could still move.

As the figure drew closer, Grindelwald could see that the chains trailed behind the young man. Tangled in the links were several grotesque, rotting human heads. Dragged along the sand, the heads had become a mess of blood and mangled flesh.

The gray-haired youth stopped before Grindelwald. Lifting the chain, he raised the string of heads for display. One of them slowly rolled to the ground, landing on the sand.

At the bottom of the pile was a head with silvery hair and wide, unseeing blue eyes.

"I killed your teacher," the gray-haired man said mockingly. "Even in death, he never understood your pain."

"I don't understand what you're talking about," Grindelwald replied evenly, averting his gaze from the heads.

"There's no need to play coy with me," the youth sneered.

"Your beloved teacher is dead. The seeds of hope you planted—withered. Even the student you held in highest regard, I've cast away. Tell me, is there anyone left in this world who could ever become like you?"

Grindelwald slowly lifted his gaze from the bloodied heads. "You."

"Ha! Hahahahahaha!"

The gray-haired youth threw his head back, laughing wildly. His laughter echoed far and wide, reckless and unrestrained.

When his laughter subsided, he shook his head with disdain and arrogance. Planting his feet firmly into the sand, he shifted his stance, his chain-bound body bracing itself for combat.

At that moment, the entire coliseum erupted. The shadowy figures boiled over with frenzied, silent cries, their movements like a storm unleashed.

(End of Chapter)

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