Grindelwald had arrived with all the swagger in the world, and he left the same way.
Dumbledore had no intention of giving chase. He stepped forward and bent down, reaching for the fragments of the broken wand, but the moment his fingers made contact, the pieces dissolved into fine dust. The furious blaze behind his blue eyes dimmed, replaced by something heavier.
For a long time, he had never been entirely sure of Grindelwald's true strength. Now he knew. Grindelwald had not weakened. He had grown stronger, surpassing even the man he had been on the night of their last duel, and he had done it without the Elder Wand to lean on. His magical reserves, his mental fortitude, the sheer physical condition of him, all of it had pressed down on Dumbledore like a weight he could not shake. It was as though time had simply declined to touch Grindelwald at all.
And himself...
Dumbledore's hand trembled, barely perceptibly. He had held the upper hand. If the fight had continued, he would have won. But only on one condition: that his body lasted long enough to outlast Grindelwald's stamina.
He was old. His magic and his craft had never stopped growing, but the flesh carrying them was in steady retreat, and it had begun to lose the race.
A Horcrux?
The thought surfaced quietly. Given everything he knew from Voldemort's case, it was the first thing his mind reached for. There were other Dark Arts that could achieve a similar effect, but their toll on the body was far more visible, far more dissonant. He had watched Grindelwald throughout their entire exchange and detected nothing discordant, nothing that suggested the price of a darker bargain. Whatever the answer was, it was not obvious.
"Troubled times," he murmured to no one in particular.
It was now beyond all doubt. Dealing with Grindelwald in any short window of time was simply not going to happen. The wizarding world was going to have to brace itself for a long, unstable stretch ahead.
He turned. A wide sweep of his wand drew the suspended Fiendfyre from the sky, and he folded it into a vast sphere of conjured water that smothered the flames entirely. When it was done, he walked toward the bridge, where Tom was tending to Aberforth.
"So," Tom was saying, his tone caught somewhere between dry and amused, "you came charging in here like the world was ending, took a Cruciatus from Grindelwald personally, and that's all you have to show for it. How was that? Hurt much?"
Aberforth shot him a withering look. "You want to know how much it hurt? Go find out for yourself."
"I don't have a talent for self-punishment." Tom smiled.
Not that anyone needed to be told. Grindelwald had been vicious about it, deliberately so. Of the three Dumbledores, Aberforth was the one he had always held in the lowest regard, and he had been getting in the way of Grindelwald's plans since Godric's Hollow.
Aberforth looked up at his approaching brother, and the wounded anger in his face curdled into something sharper. "Why didn't you finish it? He was yours to take."
"Because I couldn't hold him." Dumbledore was honest about it. "This wasn't like last time. Grindelwald came today without any intention of fighting to the death. The moment he decided to leave, there was nothing I could have done to stop him."
"That's because you didn't kill him when you had the chance!" Aberforth's voice cracked with fury, long-held and raw. "Did you see how he talked about Ariana?! Did you see his face?! He felt nothing! Not a single thing! And he doesn't care how you feel either!"
Dumbledore had no answer for that. He stared at a scattering of sunflower seed shells on the ground near his feet, eyes distant and still.
The professors nearby had the collective wisdom not to insert themselves into a Dumbledore family argument. An awkward silence settled over the group, thick and uncomfortable, until the sharp sound of displaced air broke it from somewhere in the distance. Dozens of figures on broomsticks were sweeping in toward Hogwarts from across the valley.
"Aurors," Professor McGonagall said. "I contacted both Fudge and Scrimgeour before I came. Their response time isn't bad, considering."
There was a general unspoken observation that it did rather look as though the cavalry had waited for the battle to finish before showing up, but in fairness, from the moment McGonagall had made the call to now had been barely half an hour. It was not slow.
The broomsticks touched down in short order, and it was Scrimgeour himself leading the unit, his sharp predator's eyes sweeping across the entire scene. They snagged briefly on Tom, a student standing plainly in the middle of everything, and then moved on, dismissing him entirely.
"Dumbledore. Where is Grindelwald?"
"Gone."
"Why didn't you detain him?" Scrimgeour said, not bothering to conceal his displeasure.
Dumbledore said nothing. He regarded Scrimgeour with the mild, patient expression of a man who had long since made his peace with certain kinds of foolishness, and thought, not for the first time, that Tom's assessment of the man had been entirely accurate. Even Fudge had more sense than this, and Fudge's greatest gift had always been keeping his stupidity at least partially out of sight.
Scrimgeour wore his publicly and seemed to consider it a virtue.
"Rufus," Dumbledore said pleasantly, "I am an old man with old bones. I barely managed to drive him off, and I very nearly came apart in the process. His condition after all of that is presumably not ideal either. Are you thinking of pursuit?"
The ambition behind Scrimgeour's eyes stirred. Fortunately there were clearer heads present. Kingsley Shacklebolt caught his superior by the sleeve and said quietly, "Sir. Look over there."
Kingsley cast a Lumos toward the battlefield. The sharp intake of breath that followed passed through the assembled Aurors like a wave, and the temperature of the group dropped several degrees.
Where a flat open stretch of earth had stood that morning, the ground had collapsed entirely into a jagged basin. At its deepest point, the terrain sat nearly ten metres below the surrounding level. Wisps of black smoke still curled up from the scarred earth, reeking of concentrated Dark Magic.
"We're going after Grindelwald?" Shacklebolt asked.
Scrimgeour went quiet. He dearly wanted to say yes, go ahead, I'll return to the Ministry and coordinate support, but even he understood that saying that out loud would leave him standing alone.
"Dumbledore," he said, pivoting cleanly. "I need a full account of what happened."
Dumbledore inclined his head. "You will have it. I will come to the Ministry myself first thing tomorrow morning. For now, I have students and staff to settle, and several other matters that require my attention. Thank you for coming, Rufus. It was appreciated."