AN: It's been brought to my attention that this Grindelwald interlude has some similarities to the Grindelwald interlude in "Harry Potter and the boy who lived," by the Santi. It's a really awesome story, unfortunately its been abandoned for eight years now. I'd definitely recommend a read though, despite that. It was probably at the back of my mind when I wrote this, even though the similarities are kinda only due to the interaction of newspaper + guard. There's only so many ways you can depict a man in prison, so I guess I just struck similarity on accident. Sorry about that? Idk, pretty random.
2nd of November, 1979
Gellert lay in his cot and analysed the ceiling of his cell for the thirty-ninth time that day and as sure as water was water, there was a new crack developing in brick A63. He stared at the furrow and tilted his head, noting that it looked like a lightning bolt and thus, the rune Sowilo. Sun, warmth, positive renewal. He looked outside through the iron bars to the outside. A world of perpetual darkness as the enchantments keeping the sky cloudy around Nurmengard did their work.
He hadn't wanted to give his prisoners the luxury of sunlight. Perhaps if he'd been a less cruel man his own imprisonment would be less dreary. How ironic, that all dark lords ended up being hoisted by their own petard. He sometimes thought that the universe itself might have a sense of irony.
If it did, he would have liked to use the opportunity to tell the universe that he didn't appreciate its sense of humour. He turned his gaze back to the crack, lying stiff and unmoving in the part of the cell that he slept in; he refused to call it a bed.
A rune. He methodically started analysing all the bricks making up his cell, trying to see if any other cracks had formed and if any of the old ones could have meanings attributed to them.
Nurmengard lay still as the dark lord swept his gaze slowly through his room. Hours passed. Guards patrolled past the cell. A piece of mouldy bread was thrown through the iron bars that constituted the entrance. No additional crack of any interest was found on the walls. He idly brought up a bony hand to scratch at the scab that he'd developed recently after cutting himself on one of his overly long fingernails, before deciding against it.
The fact that there were no other rune-like constructs on the wall, made the rune that had appeared, all the more significant in Gellert's mind. If it was not a natural formation, then it meant something. He wasn't the greatest believer in prophecies and divination. He rather thought of himself as a rationalist. But for some reason his mood lifted and he expected something to happen throughout the day, even if it was only a ray of sunshine peeking through the cloud cover.
Nothing of such a nature occurred and the rune was slowly forgotten, dismissed. Another disappointment in a long string of unfortunate and meaningless events. The dark lord returned to doing what he'd been doing since his imprisonment. Bitterly regretting, hopelessly planning and drawing in whatever minuscule amounts of magic he still had access to in his condition and folding it, not letting it dissipate in a pointless attempt at supplementing his health. He kept it all, every drop he had access to. The lake within him grew.
2nd November 1981
A harsh rattle woke Gellert from a dismal sleep and he immediately snapped to attention to stare at the young man making a ruckus by knocking on the iron bars of his cell. A guard, clutching a newspaper and wearing a hateful smile.
"Another one bites the dust," he said while fluffing the newspaper and beginning to read. "The dark lord that terrorised the British Isles for nearly a decade was recently vanquished in a raid gone wrong, by what the British claim was a baby..." he read. Gellert righted himself up slowly with aching bones, gripping the stones that his cot was made of for support.
He looked at the young man, who was looking at him expectantly and tilted his head curiously as if asking, 'What's it to me?' Dismissal was a weak man's greatest weapon. The guard blustered, apparently not expecting the reaction. He looked around, to the left, to the right. He wasn't supposed to be talking to the Prisoner, the only one still held in the square alpine tower of Nurmengard.
The guard looked back at the newspaper trying perhaps to ignore the dark lord's gaze, "Albus Dumbledore expressed his belief that-", he read aloud, before Gellert raised a hand at the boy, expanded a minuscule amount of his magic and ripped the newspaper out of his hands to hold it in his own. The guard's expression turned from blustering to terrified to angry. He pulled his wand and raised it at the prisoner and cast a spell, "accio!" he called, unnecessarily loudly. The newspaper didn't budge and Gellert couldn't withhold a smirk.
"How did you do that?" the guard demanded, "you're not supposed to be able to do magic, let alone summon away a man's possessions," he said, revealing that while he remembered something of his education, he was too dumb to connect the concepts.
"Ownership, magical presence, overlapping over the property. Lessened effects from bad actors on held items," Gellert rasped with an unused voice, causing the boy to freeze up. Perhaps he hadn't expected Grindelwald to rise up to his taunts? "While ownership is a powerful concept, nobody expects a toddler to wrestle an adult, no matter the leverage. In other words, you are obviously lacking in the department that represents mass, or rather, control, in the context of magic," he explained.
The guard banged aggressively on the bars but didn't reach inside. He wasn't that dumb. The cell was Grindelwald's territory and anybody that entered, he could do with what he pleased. Which is why no one did, no matter how stupid they were. "Give me the paper," he hissed.
"No."
"I can make your life unpleasant." Was the threat. An empty one, Gellert's life was already completely shit and beyond repair. The dark lord taunted by waving the newspaper.
"You can't, while I have this, still," he said. The only thing the other man could do was stomp petulantly on the ground, like a child. While Gellert held the newspaper that the idiot had so graciously delivered to him, he couldn't do anything in fear of it being revealed that he'd breached protocol. Assuming of course that the man was invested in keeping his job. The quality of the guards had quickly lessened over the years, as the veterans of the conflict that had been fought retired and the position became something for people too dumb to make anything else out of themselves. Perhaps auror trainees got assigned the task for a bit? He didn't know, he hadn't talked to another human in seven years, since the ICW had last come begging for him to reveal the location of his stashes. A request he'd refused, just like they refused his request for access to books.
Gellert looked up from his musings and saw that the guard was gone. He looked down at the newspaper in his hands and started reading about this so-called boy who lived and the idiot dark lord who'd died at a babe's hands.