Nurmengard had never been quiet.
Not really.
Even in its ruin, even with its cells empty and its guards long gone, the fortress breathed with the weight of history — cold, jagged breaths that scraped against the stone like old bone.
But tonight, it was still.
Not peaceful.Not calm.
Still — like the world was holding itself taut.Listening.
Waiting.
In the highest cell — the one he had carved for himself — Gellert Grindelwald sat on a narrow bed, back straight, eyes closed. His white hair fell loose around his shoulders, unbound, catching the weak winter light that crept through the barred window.
A teacup sat beside him, untouched.
His wand — long surrendered — rested on the table, gathering dust it would never feel again.
Yet the air still bent around him.
Magic remembered him even if he could no longer command it.
He opened his eyes when the first shift hit the mountain.
A tremor — small, almost imperceptible — rippled through the stone beneath his feet.
His breath caught, chest lifting.
"…ah."
The sound slipped out unbidden, soft and knowing.
Something had changed.
Something old.Something vast.Something he had once chased across continents.
Grindelwald stood slowly, leaning lightly on the carved wall as though reacquainting himself with gravity.
His eyes narrowed.
The world pulled in two directions.
A bright flare — the kind of light even phoenixes would bow to. A dark pulse — the sort of shadow that was not void, but origin.
Life. Death.
Balance.
His lips curved — not in cruelty, nor triumph, but in recognition.
He crossed to the window, hands clasped loosely behind his back. Snow howled across the mountains, but the storm parted for an instant — sunlight cutting through thick cloud, a clean golden blade.
Then the light flickered.
Died.
The valley plunged into sudden cold, frost racing over the stone ledge like it had a mind.
Grindelwald's breath fogged the air.
He tilted his head slightly, listening to the hum of the world beneath the storm.
"And you feel it too, don't you, Albus?"
For a heartbeat, the old loneliness twisted through his ribs.
He crushed it.
He was not that man anymore — neither conqueror nor lover.Just a memory the world no longer had a use for.
Or so he thought.
A door slammed somewhere below — too loud, too sharp for this abandoned place.
Footsteps.
Measured. Weighted. Known.
Grindelwald exhaled, eyes drifting shut.
He didn't turn when the heavy iron door to his cell creaked open.
Snow blew in first — then a silhouette.
Tall. Old. Cloaked in dark blue. Light clinging to him like an old habit.
Albus Dumbledore stepped inside.
Grindelwald did not speak.
Neither did Dumbledore.
For a long moment, the only sound was the wind screaming against the fortress walls.
The two men — once the greatest threat the world had ever seen together, once the greatest tragedy — simply looked at one another.
Grindelwald broke the silence first.
"I wondered," he said softly, "how long it would take you."
Dumbledore's face was carved with exhaustion, the kind no magic disguised. His eyes — once bright, once full of unbearable hope — were dim and frantic beneath the surface.
"I did not come here lightly," he said.
Grindelwald smiled faintly. "You never do."
Wind whistled through the tallest tower of Nurmengard, slipping under the heavy door as Dumbledore stepped inside. The cold followed him like a ghost.
The outer hall was ruin — frost-bit stone, snow drifting through cracked archways — but the cell at the heart of it was untouched. Ordered. Sharp. A room that looked less lived-in than held in place by a mind too disciplined to allow decay.
Grindelwald stood facing the window, the pale winter light tracing every line of age that had not softened him.
"You felt that," Dumbledore said quietly.
Grindelwald's posture didn't shift. "You assume much."
Dumbledore said. "Three days ago. The night it happened."
Grindelwald glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowing with mild interest. "Did I?"
A beat.
"Then something must have stirred."
He turned fully then, gaze resting on Dumbledore's face. His expression was neither hostile nor warm — only alert.
"You're troubled," Grindelwald observed. "That alone is enough to concern me."
Dumbledore's mouth tightened. "Two students at Hogwarts are… unwell."
"Unwell," Grindelwald repeated, as though tasting the word. "You crossed an ocean of politics and pride to tell me two children caught the flu?"
Dumbledore exhaled, shoulders dipping. "They're not waking."
Now Grindelwald stilled.
Dumbledore continued, voice low. "Talora Livanthos and Shya Gill. They have been unconscious for days. No curse signature. No illness. No poison. No magical strain."
Grindelwald nodded once, slowly, the way a mathematician acknowledges a difficult equation.
"And why," he asked softly, "do you come to me?"
"Because nothing modern explains it," Dumbledore said. "Not St. Mungo's. Not the Unspeakables. Not even Fawkes will go near them."
Grindelwald's eyes sharpened.
"And what exactly happened before they fell unconscious?"
Dumbledore hesitated — just long enough for Grindelwald to notice.
"They… performed a blood vow," Dumbledore admitted. "Accidentally."
Grindelwald's eyebrows rose. "Accidentally?"
"They are children, Gellert. They were frightened. Heartbroken. They sought comfort in each other."
Grindelwald crossed the room, hands clasped behind his back, movements deliberate.
"Children don't accidentally forge vows strong enough to disrupt ley currents."
Dumbledore shut his eyes briefly. "They made the vow above a basilisk corpse."
Grindelwald stopped walking.
Very slowly, he turned.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Slytherins creature, last year," Dumbledore said. "A thousand years old, sustained and enhanced by devouring a thousand years of the death leyline. Frozen between life and death by phoenix magic and the life leyline. They found it… and something reacted. When they touched it, the frozen suspension collapsed."
Grindelwald took this in with a long, thoughtful silence.
"Phoenix magic," he murmured. "Basilisk corpse. Two leylines."
He glanced toward the window, thinking.
"Two children. Blood binding."
He paced again.
"But you don't know what it triggered?" he clarified.
"No," Dumbledore said tiredly. "No, I do not."
Grindelwald's gaze flicked over him — not cruel, but sharp.
Almost pitying.
"Then you suspect this is older than Hogwarts magic."
"I do."
"Older than wandwork."
"Yes."
"Older than language."
"Yes."
A beat of silence.
"And you want me," Grindelwald said quietly, "to see for myself."
Dumbledore met his eyes. "I want you to tell me if there is any chance they can be saved."
Grindelwald's expression didn't change. But something in him tightened — the faintest flicker of curiosity, the first spark in decades.
He reached for his coat.
"You understand," he said, slipping his arms through the sleeves with practiced calm, "that I make no promises."
"I understand."
"You understand that if this is what I think it might be, neither of us should be near it."
"I understand."
"You understand," Grindelwald concluded, stepping close enough that the air between them warmed, "that if I walk into your castle again, the world will not like it."
Dumbledore's voice cracked with sincerity he rarely allowed.
"Gellert… the world is the least of my concerns."
Grindelwald studied him for one long moment — something unreadable flickering through his eyes.
Then he nodded once.
"Very well, Albus. Take me to your girls."
He walked past Dumbledore, cloak brushing the stone.
Not triumphant.
Not sentimental.
But alert — like a man walking toward a mystery too old to refuse.
Snow swirled violently outside, the wind howling as if the mountain itself knew what was being set in motion.
Dumbledore followed him out.
He did not look relieved.
Only afraid — and determined.
The snow fell harder by the time Gellert Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore reached Hogwarts.
The wind knifed sideways, sharp with January's temper, but the sun still glowed faintly through the storm — a quiet, wrong contradiction that both men noticed but neither commented on.
They stepped through the castle gates without fanfare.
Grindelwald paused.
The moment his shoe touched Hogwarts grounds, every torch along the entrance corridor flickered at once — half dimming into icy blue, half flaring gold.
He stilled.
Dumbledore watched him carefully. "You feel it?"
Grindelwald's expression didn't change, but his voice did.
Quiet.
Controlled.
Almost reverent.
"Something is pulling the castle's spine in two directions."
Dumbledore nodded once. "Then it began already."
They walked through corridors emptied for winter break, footsteps echoing off old stone. The air itself felt strained — too warm on one side of the hallway, then chilling cold on the next, funnels of opposing magic twisting invisibly through the walls.
Grindelwald's mouth tilted, half-amused.
"It really is them."
"You haven't seen them yet," Dumbledore murmured.
"I don't need to. Children don't do this."
A pause. "Nature does."
Snape was already waiting outside the sealed private chamber.
He stood stiff-backed, wand in hand, eyes colder than the stone floor. He bowed only his head when Dumbledore arrived.
His gaze flicked to Grindelwald.
"Headmaster," Snape said tightly. "I was not informed we were… summoning war criminals."
Grindelwald smiled like a knife being drawn.
Snape's jaw clenched, but he said nothing.
Dumbledore intervened.
"Gellert is here as an expert in ancient magical anomalies. Nothing more."
Snape didn't look convinced. But he stepped aside.
Inside the ward, Cassian and Roman were seated on opposite sides of the girls' beds.
They both shot to their feet the instant Grindelwald walked in.
Dumbledore raised a hand. "Boys. This is Professor Grindelwald. He is here to assist."
Cassian stared, unimpressed and unblinking.
"That's Grindelwald? The Grindelwald."
Roman glanced at Dumbledore sharply.
"You brought him here? To them?"
Grindelwald met their suspicion with a calm, faintly amused look.
"If I wanted harm," he said dryly, "your castle's wards would not have stopped me for eighty years."
Roman stiffened.
Cassian didn't relax.
But neither protested further.
Not when Shya and Talora lay between them — pale, split light and shadow glowing faintly across the bedding.
Grindelwald approached without ceremony.
The private chamber was dim, curtains drawn so the flicker of gold from Talora and silver-black from Shya painted the room in a strange twilight.
Two beds.
Two girls.
Hands touching between the railings.
Talora's side:
plants placed by Pomfrey were blooming out of season
the air was warm, fragrant
tiny motes of golden dust pulsed from her skin like breath
Shya's side:
frost curled at the bedposts
the lantern nearest her sputtered when she exhaled
the shadows beneath her bed rippled like water
Grindelwald's breath left him in a single, controlled exhale.
"Oh my," he murmured.
It wasn't awe.
It was recognition.
He reached their joined hands.
The sigils — moon-silver on Shya, sun-gold on Talora — pulsed once.
His fingers hovered just above the marks.
Not touching.
Not yet.
His eyes widened the slightest fraction.
Dumbledore saw it. "You recognize it."
"Not fully," Grindelwald said quietly. "But enough."
Cassian stepped forward, voice tight.
"What does that mean?"
Grindelwald didn't answer him.
Not yet.
Instead he walked around the beds, observing the subtle distortions of temperature, the faint warping of the air above them, the way every magical instrument hummed slightly too fast or too slow depending on which girl they were closest to.
Then he spoke — low, more to himself than the room.
"I expected disturbance. Not… harmony."
He turned to Dumbledore.
"We must speak privately."
Roman bristled. "Not without us."
Grindelwald regarded him.
"You are brave. Loyal. Useless in this context."
Roman took a step forward, but Cassian grabbed his arm.
"It's fine," Cassian muttered. "He's right. For now."
Dumbledore laid a gentle hand on Cassian's shoulder.
"We will explain what we can, when we can."
Grindelwald looked back to the girls — and this time, he touched nothing, but he bowed his head.
Almost respectfully.
almost reverently.
As if acknowledging the presence of something sleeping.
"Albus," he said softly.
"They are not what you think."
Dumbledore's voice was barely a whisper.
"I feared that."
Grindelwald's eyes burned bright.
"No. It is far, far worse."
He straightened.
"Take me to your office."
And that was the moment Cassian's stomach dropped.
Because he realized — without needing any ancient magic or cosmic theory —
Whatever this was…
it was only just beginning.
The storm battered Hogwarts as if trying to get in.
Snow hurled itself against the tower windows in frantic sheets, but the sun never dimmed behind it — a thin, stubborn glow, clinging to the horizon despite the hour. The contradiction made Dumbledore's office feel wrong, its shadows twitching oddly every time the lightning flashed.
Fawkes paced on his perch, feathers puffed, eyes bright with a worry Dumbledore had never seen in him. His wings twitched like something was calling him — or warning him.
Grindelwald stood in the center of the room, dripping snow and quiet menace.
He didn't bother removing his cloak.
He didn't bother warming his fingers.
He stared at the floor, brows drawn in a frown so deep it made him look decades younger.
"Do you know what it felt like," he said softly, "walking onto these grounds?"
Dumbledore's heart clenched. "I felt the temperature shift, yes."
"No," Grindelwald whispered. "Not temperature. Field displacement. Reality… leaning."
He lifted his hand, and the candle flames bowed sideways instead of up — as if gravity had been persuaded to listen to someone else.
Fawkes gave a distressed trill.
Dumbledore lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. "You said you recognized something when you saw the girls."
"Recognized?" Grindelwald let out a humorless sound. "Albus… I feared it."
He turned sharply.
"Tell me everything again. From the beginning."
Dumbledore exhaled and began.
He told him about the basilisk — a creature so old its skin was fossilizing.
He told him about the Death leyline that coiled under the school like a sleeping serpent.
He told him of Fawkes — how he had not killed the basilisk, but suspended it using the opposing Life current.
Everything a paradox.
Everything impossible.
Grindelwald listened without moving, without blinking, like a statue trying to remember how breath worked.
When Dumbledore described the girls going down, the blood vow, their hands intertwined—
Grindelwald whispered, "A stillpoint. They collapsed a stillpoint."
"A what?" Dumbledore breathed.
"The single most dangerous condition in magical theory. A paradox of opposite currents forced into immobility. Life and Death staring at each other across a fault line. And two children stepped into the middle."
He ran both hands through his hair — a gesture Dumbledore hadn't seen since they were young.
"How did it react?" Grindelwald asked.
"The basilisk dissolved," Dumbledore said. "Into light. Into nothing. Into them."
Grindelwald froze.
"Of course it did," he whispered, voice trembling with awe and dread. "It had nowhere else to go."
Dumbledore conjured two thin folders from a shelf; they landed on the desk with soft thuds.
"Everything I've ever recorded about them is here."
"Not enough," Grindelwald murmured, but he opened the first.
TALORA LIVANTHOS
Polished handwriting. Neat columns. A childhood far too calm for what she was becoming.
He read:
"Accidental healing at age seven… deep tissue mending…"
"Out-of-season growth around her bedroom…"
"Nightmares : 'the world cracking open to let something bright out.'"
"Wand chose her Cherry. Phoenix feather. Swishy."
Grindelwald paused.
"That wand combination ," he said slowly, "has not chosen anyone in six generations."
Dumbledore nodded. "Ollivander wept. He said the combination chooses only those destined to reshape or rewrite magic."
Grindelwald's breath left him in a thin line.
"Creation," he whispered. "The breath before the world forms. Yes… she was always meant for this."
He opened the second folder.
SHYA GILL
The parchment smelled faintly of ink — as if Shya's magic had seeped into the page itself.
He read:
"Miraculous survival at age six — no broken bones despite height of fall."
"Glass jar decayed into ash at touch (age eight)."
"Child saw Thestrals without witnessing death."
"Thestral-drawn carts reacted to her arrival at eleven."
Grindelwald closed his eyes.
"And her wand?"
"Ash. Thestral tail hair. Unyielding," Dumbledore said softly. "Ollivander said such wands only serve those who walk with death."
"Not walk," Grindelwald corrected. "Belong."
He leaned back, hands flat on the desk.
"They were not shaped by trauma. They were born marked."
Grindelwald began pacing in a tight circle, boots whispering over ancient rugs.
"This is not two accidents," he said. "This is symmetry. Look at them."
He raised both hands, conjuring two silhouettes of shimmering light and ink.
"Life. Death."
"Light. Darkness."
"Creation. Destruction."
He pointed at the hovering figures.
"They do not clash. They orbit. Look."
The two silhouettes drifted toward each other, merging into one perfect shape before splitting again.
"They are each other's gravity," he murmured.
"Two halves of the sixfold ley. Two ends of the cosmic spectrum."
Dumbledore's voice was small. "Why them?"
"Why twin flames? Why binary stars? Why hearts that ever seek their mirror?" Grindelwald's eyes gleamed. "Because some things are meant to be born together."
Dumbledore rolled the small amulet across the desk — the one Selene Varna had given Talora.
Runes shivered across its surface like something alive.
Grindelwald's expression hardened.
"This is not a charm. This is a limiter. A womb charm. A binding to keep her power asleep."
"Selene said—"
"I don't care what she said," Grindelwald snapped. "This was holding Creation back."
He lifted a vial — Talora's nightmare memory — and poured it into the Pensieve.
Light erupted upward:
forests bursting with flowers in seconds
stars blooming in Talora's hands
whole valleys flooding with warmth
the world tearing to make room for her
Grindelwald swallowed.
"This isn't dreaming. This is prophecy."
Next, Dumbledore uncorked Shya's memory vial.
Darkness poured upward:
shadows peeling off the walls in sheets
oceans turning to black glass
the sky cracking open
the universe folding in on itself like paper
Grindelwald stepped back.
"And she saw this at age twelve?" he whispered. "Before the basilisk?"
"Yes."
He turned slowly to Dumbledore.
"They were already waking up."
Grindelwald formed the two sigils in the air again.
Talora's blazing sun.
Shya's crescent void-moon.
They locked together with a metallic click — soft, inevitable.
Not clashing.
Not fighting.
But completing a mechanism that had been incomplete for thousands of years.
It lit the room in gold and silver shadow.
"Albus…" Grindelwald whispered.
"They are not conduits channeling the leylines."
The sigils rotated, perfectly balanced around each other.
"They have absorbed them."
Dumbledore's breath hitched.
"That cannot be."
"It can," Grindelwald said softly. "Because the universe chose them as vessels. They are not wielding Death or Life. They are becoming Death and Life. They are not channeling Darkness and Light. They are becoming Darkness and Light."
The sigils pulsed.
Fawkes bowed his head in reverence.
Grindelwald met Dumbledore's eyes with something like fear.
"This was not caused by the ritual. Nor the basilisk. Nor phoenix magic."
He stepped closer to the desk.
"This was destiny. A convergence. A story written long before magic chose language."
And then:
"They were always meant to become this."
The storm outside went silent.
The sun flared brighter.
The castle's magic hummed through the stones.
Dumbledore whispered the only words he could manage.
"What… do we do now?"
Grindelwald smiled faintly.
"We teach them to survive what they're becoming."
And then, more quietly — for Dumbledore alone:
"And we pray the world survives them."
Snow hissed against the windows again, though the sun was stubbornly bright above it — an impossible daylight bleeding through a winter storm. The light filled Dumbledore's office, illuminating floating sigils of light and darkness that Grindelwald still hadn't dispelled.
For a long time, neither man spoke.
The castle hummed beneath them — soft, steady, almost like breathing.
Or waiting.
Grindelwald finally broke the silence.
"They are accelerating," he murmured, watching the faint tremor of gold and shadow dance along the walls. "Their cores are already reshaping the field. Within a month, they will not be able to sleep in the same building as other humans without… effects."
Dumbledore closed his eyes. "We must find a way to teach them before their powers begin rewriting the world around them."
"'Begin'?" Grindelwald's smile was thin. "My dear Albus, it has already begun."
They moved quietly into the private infirmary suite — the place that once held only two beds but now felt like a sanctum.
The air inside vibrated faintly.
Haneera lay curled at the foot of Shya's bed, massive already, her fur blacker than void, shadows clinging to each strand like reluctant children.
Her breath came out cold.
Frost rimmed the blankets.
Pandora, beside Talora, glowed faintly with a soft golden-white aura. The air around her shimmered with heat, flowers blooming out of the stone floor before withering from the winter air.
Both creatures were unconscious. Both were changing.
Grindelwald knelt beside Haneera.
"A true Gwyllgi," he breathed, almost reverently. "A harbinger of endings. She should not exist. Not in this plane."
Dumbledore watched Talora's familiar with equal wonder. "And Pandora… a White Cadejo, symbol of protection, rebirth, and guardianship. A creature used in pre-dawn rituals on the oldest ley crossings."
"Fitting," Grindelwald murmured. "One for the end. One for the beginning."
He rose slowly.
"The familiars are becoming extensions of their magic. Once they wake… the girls will not be alone in their power. The dogs will instinctively amplify what already seeks to break free."
Dumbledore folded his hands behind his back.
"We have… weeks."
Grindelwald moved to the window.
"The longer they sleep, the more they absorb. The basilisk's essence. The leyline resonance. The curse-break of the stillpoint."
Dumbledore's voice cracked. "Could they… lose themselves?"
"Not to madness," Grindelwald said softly. "To scale."
He met Dumbledore's gaze.
"When they wake, they will think they are the same girls. They will speak the same. Laugh the same. But when emotion spikes — joy, grief, rage — their powers will answer before they do."
He swept his hand, and shadows curled along the ceiling.
"Talora may bloom a meadow in the middle of a desert without intending to."
Light flickered bright enough to hurt.
"Shya may collapse a building into dust simply by feeling cornered."
"And the world?" Dumbledore whispered.
"Will bend," Grindelwald said. "Or break."
Grindelwald inhaled sharply.
"There is only one answer. We teach them. Before the shift completes."
"How?" Dumbledore asked. "In Hogwarts? Around other children?"
"No."
Grindelwald turned fully toward him.
"We take them away."
Dumbledore stiffened. "You know that will cause uproar."
"We shield the truth."
"And if they are hunted? Feared?"
Grindelwald smiled with quiet certainty.
"They will not be hunted once they can flatten mountains with tears."
Dumbledore sighed. "Not helping."
Grindelwald walked in a slow circle, energy crackling beneath his footsteps.
"Talora must be taught first in landscapes that can feed her — places aligned with Life, Light, Creation. She must learn in environments that respond to her presence naturally: green valleys, ancient forests, warm canyons, seas that pulse with primordial growth."
He nodded to himself.
"Crete. Bhutan. The Ashen Gardens in Ilvermorny's hidden wing. The Verdant Steppe in Kyushu. Places where creation thrives and the earth knows how to rise."
Dumbledore murmured, "And then?"
Grindelwald looked out the window.
"And then she must be taken to places that reject her nature — dead zones, shadowlands, ruins where creation is impossible. She must learn restraint… or she will smother the world in her warmth."
Dumbledore exhaled shakily.
"And Shya?"
The temperature dropped five degrees.
Grindelwald spoke her name as though it were dangerous.
"Shya must be trained where shadows live easily. Ancient caves. Ruins older than settlement. Deserts where nothing survives. Glacial caverns beneath the Alps. Old magical battlefields."
He closed his eyes.
"And then, when she has control… we take her to places that recoil from her. Places of light and life. Sacred groves. Phoenix nests. Desert oases. She must learn gentleness."
Dumbledore rubbed his eyes.
"So we split their training."
"No," Grindelwald said sharply. "Never split them."
Dumbledore blinked. "Why not? That seems…"
He gestured vaguely at the unconscious girls.
"…safer."
Grindelwald leaned close, voice low.
"If you separate them while they are still awakening — the universe will react. Catastrophically. They stabilize each other. They complete the sixfold field. They are the stillpoint. Pull them apart…"
He snapped his fingers.
"…and you tear magic itself."
Dumbledore paled.
"Always together," Grindelwald said. "And always accompanied by those the field chose for them."
"You mean the boys."
"Yes. Cassian and Roman. Their anchors. Their humanity."
Dumbledore lifted his wand.
A Patronus swirled forth — a phoenix of pale blue light.
"Minerva. Filius. Pomona. And Severus. Please come to my office at once."
The light streamed out of the room.
Within minutes, the Heads of House arrived — tense, worried, cold from the walk through unnaturally bright winter corridors.
"What is happening?" McGonagall demanded. "Why are our students still unconscious?"
Dumbledore glanced at Grindelwald.
Grindelwald stepped forward, polite but unbothered, like an emperor entering a debate.
"Your students," he said mildly, "have begun the transformation into primordial embodiments of the universe's fundamental forces."
Pomona dropped the teacup she'd been holding.
Flitwick squeaked so loudly the floor vibrated.
Snape froze.
McGonagall sat down without permission.
Silence stretched until Snape rasped, "Excuse me?"
Grindelwald clasped his hands behind his back.
"I assure you, I am not exaggerating. Livanthos and Gill are not conduits. They are not cursed. They are not possessed. They are becoming."
McGonagall whispered, "Becoming what?"
Dumbledore spoke gently.
"The Heartkindler and the Voidweaver."
Snape's jaw flexed.
"What… does that mean for the school?"
Grindelwald answered.
"It means that when they awaken, they may accidentally unmake the castle by sneezing."
Flitwick squeaked again.
Pomona burst into tears.
McGonagall whispered, "What do you need from us?"
Dumbledore bowed his head.
"Secrecy. Absolute. You will tell no student. No parent. No Ministry official. No one."
Snape narrowed his eyes. "And when they wake?"
Grindelwald smiled faintly.
"Then the world becomes very interesting. Or very doomed. Depending on how well we teach them."
He pointed at the girls' beds, glowing faintly with gold and black.
"We will begin their training the moment they open their eyes."
McGonagall whispered, "And until then?"
Grindelwald's expression softened — uncharacteristically.
"We wait."
Dumbledore added, almost broken:
"And we pray."