The wind howled against the black slate of Nurmengard like a rejected lover, a shrill, weeping sound that sought entry through every mortar joint and arrow slit. But the fortress had been built to withstand the wrath of armies and the fury of elements alike; inside, the air was still, heavy with a silence that pressed against the eardrums. It was the winter of 1956, and the world outside was moving on, forgetting the fires that had nearly consumed it a decade prior.
Gellert Grindelwald stood before the floor-to-ceiling window of his private sanctum, his reflection a ghost against the swirling white abyss of the blizzard beyond. He wore no armor, no high-collared coat of the revolutionary general. He was dressed in a simple, heavy robe of charcoal wool, and his posture, usually as rigid as a drawn wand, was slumped.
He did not turn when the heavy oak door creaked open. He knew the footfalls.
"The fire has burned down, Gellert," Vinda Rosier said softly. "Shall I call the house-elves?"
"Leave it," Grindelwald replied, his voice raspy, as if unused for days. "The cold keeps the mind sharp. Comfort is a sedative, Vinda."
Vinda ignored him. It was a privilege she alone possessed. She moved to the hearth, flicking her wand to reignite the dying logs into a roaring blaze that cast long, dancing shadows against the tapestries. She poured a cup of dark, spiced tea and walked to him, placing it on the small table by the window. She did not bow. She stood beside him, looking out at the storm.
"You have been in this room for three days," she observed, her tone devoid of judgment but rich with concern. "The acolytes are restless. They await orders for the Eastern expansion. They need their visionary."
"They need a figurehead," Gellert corrected, finally turning his gaze from the snow to her face. His mismatching eyes—one dark, one silver—lacked their usual mesmerizing mania. They looked only tired. "They need a statue to salute. I am weary of being a statue, Vinda."
He walked slowly to his armchair, sinking into it with a groan that spoke of spiritual exhaustion rather than physical age. "Do you know what I was thinking of, standing there? Not the Muggles. Not the Ministries." He gestured vaguely toward a chessboard that sat on a side table, untouched, gathering dust. "I was thinking of a bakery in Godric's Hollow. The smell of stale bread and summer heat."
Vinda sat opposite him, her hands folded in her lap. "You are thinking of him."
"I am thinking of connection," Gellert murmured, picking up a silver teaspoon and turning it over in his fingers. "I built this fortress to be the capital of a new world. But look at it. It is a mausoleum. I have followers, yes. Soldiers who fear me, sycophants who want power, enemies who want my head. But who... who actually knows me?"
"I know you," Vinda said fiercely.
"You serve me, my dear Vinda. You are loyal to the cause, and perhaps to the man, but you look at me and you see the Commander." He leaned forward, the firelight catching the sharp angles of his face. "I am fifty-six years old. My bloodline ends with me. When I die, whether by a curse or by time, what remains? A few lines in a history book? A name used to frighten children?"
He dropped the spoon. It clattered loudly in the quiet room.
"I do not want a successor to my ideology," he whispered. "I want a family. I want to look into eyes that are mine and see recognition, not reverence. I want to build something that breathes."
Vinda studied him for a long moment, seeing the crack in the armor that no enemy spell had ever achieved. The absolute, crushing loneliness of a man who had climbed to the peak of the mountain only to realize the air was too thin to breathe.
"Then we must prepare," she said, standing up and smoothing her skirts. "Because your guest has arrived. And if you intend to ask a monster for a miracle, you should not look like a man mourning a ghost."
The library of Nurmengard was a cathedral of knowledge, housing tomes that had been banned by every Ministry in Europe. Yet, for all its dark majesty, the figure waiting by the fireplace made the room feel small.
Vlad Dracula did not look like the rotting corpses of folklore. He was devastatingly elegant, a creature of timeless aristocracy. He stood examining a first edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard with a look of mild amusement, his long, pale fingers caressing the spine. When Gellert entered, the vampire turned. His movement was fluid, like oil sliding across water.
"Gellert," Dracula said. His voice was a deep baritone that seemed to vibrate in the floorboards. "You have aged."
"And you remain an insult to the natural order, Vlad," Gellert replied, a genuine, crooked smile breaking through his melancholy. He walked forward, extending a hand.
Dracula took it. His skin was cold as marble, his grip iron-hard. "It has been... what? Forty years? Vienna, 1916. The Opera House."
"You drained the soprano in the third act," Gellert recalled, moving to a crystal decanter on the desk. "Caused quite the scandal."
"She was off-key. I did the audience a favor." Dracula laughed, a sound like dry leaves rustling. He accepted the glass Gellert offered. The liquid inside was not wine, but a thick, crimson vintage harvested from magical veins. "To the old world."
"To the old world," Gellert echoed. They drank, the silence between them comfortable, born of centuries of combined existence. They were two apex predators sharing a quiet watering hole, their claws sheathed.
They sat by the fire, legs crossed, discussing the changing tides of Europe, the rise of Muggles, and the clumsy politics of the magical congresses. It was the conversation of peers. Dracula was perhaps the only being on earth, other than Dumbledore, whom Gellert considered an equal.
"You did not summon me to discuss the opera, or the war," Dracula said eventually, swirling the crimson liquid in his glass. "Your message spoke of a personal matter. A biological matter."
Gellert set his glass down. The mask of the casual friend slipped away, replaced by the intensity of the Alchemist. "I am going to conduct an experiment, Vlad. The Great Work. I intend to create life."
Dracula raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "A homunculus? Clay and spellwork? That is beneath you. It is a parlor trick."
"Not a construct," Gellert said, leaning in. "A child. A biological heir. But not one born of frailty. I possess an Obscurus, Vlad. A parasitic force of pure magical entropy that I have managed to keep in stasis."
The Vampire Lord went very still. "You play with fire that burns the soul, Gellert. An Obscurus consumes the host."
"Because the host is mortal," Gellert countered, his eyes gleaming. "The host breaks because the magic destroys the body faster than the body can repair itself. But what if the body did not break? What if the body was... static? Eternal?"
Dracula's red eyes narrowed, glowing faintly in the dim light. He understood. "You need the regeneration of the Nosferatu. You want to bind the infinite destruction of the Obscurus to the infinite resilience of my blood."
"I want a daughter who cannot die," Gellert said, his voice dropping to a plea. "I offer you a stake in this, old friend. Not a soldier for my army, but a legacy for us both. We are the last of our kind, in spirit if not in fact. Let us leave something behind that the world cannot erase."
Dracula looked into the fire, the centuries of solitude weighing on him just as they weighed on the wizard. "A child of shadow and blood," he mused. "To walk the day and the night." He looked back at Grindelwald. "Very well. Let us see if we can trick God."
The laboratory, deep within the mountain's roots, hummed with a low, vibrating power. The air smelled of ozone, copper, and something sweeter—like ancient incense.
In the center of the room stood a tall, cylindrical tank of reinforced alchemical glass, filled with a nutrient-rich, amber suspension fluid. It was surrounded by a complex array of silver pipes and runic circles etched into the stone floor, pulsing with a faint blue light.
Vinda stood by the door, watching, her hands clenched white. She knew the risks. If this failed, the explosion would level the mountain.
Gellert moved with the precision of a surgeon and the reverence of a priest. He stood before the open intake of the tank. In his left hand, a vial of his own blood, bright and charged with his magical signature. In his right, the dark, viscous essence Dracula had provided—heavy, dead, yet paradoxically alive.
"The Catalyst," Gellert whispered. He poured his blood. It hit the amber fluid and bloomed like a red orchid.
"The Anchor," he intoned, adding the vampire blood. It sank like black oil, intertwining with the red, fighting it, then merging.
Then, the danger. The Containment Sphere floated nearby, holding the Obscurus—a writhing ball of black smoke and screaming silence. Gellert raised his Wand. He did not command the entity with force; he guided it with a lullaby of magic, weaving a spell of binding so complex it made sweat bead on his forehead.
" Synthesi Sanguinis... Vitae Aeternum..."
He drove the Obscurus into the tank.
The reaction was instantaneous. The fluid boiled. The glass groaned, spiderweb cracks appearing at the base before sealing themselves shut as the magic took hold. The room shook. Shadows peeled themselves off the walls and orbited the tank. Vinda gasped, stepping back. Dracula, standing in the shadows, watched with unblinking fascination.
Inside the tank, the chaos began to order itself. The black smoke of the Obscurus was trapped by the net of vampire blood, forced to condense, to solidify. The wizard's DNA provided the blueprint, the map of humanity.
For a long, agonizing minute, it seemed it would fail. The fluid churned violently.
Then, stillness.
The amber liquid cleared, settling into a heavy, glowing silence.
Dracula was the first to move. He did not step forward; he merely tilted his head, his nostrils flaring slightly, his red eyes locking onto the center of the vessel. A low sound vibrated in his chest—not a growl, but a hum of recognition.
"Listen," the Vampire Lord commanded softly. "The cadence of eternity."
Gellert stood frozen, his wand hand lowering slowly to his side. He focused, straining against the silence of the room.
At first, there was nothing. Then, amplified by the liquid, a rhythm emerged. Faint, wet, and tenacious.
Thump-thump.
Gellert exhaled, a sharp release of breath that fogged the air. He did not fall; he straightened. The exhaustion of the ritual seemed to evaporate, replaced by a surge of electric vitality. He stepped toward the glass, his movement deliberate, the stride of a king approaching his throne.
Suspended in the nutrient suspension was a tiny, pale form. An embryo, curled into itself, fragile and translucent. But in the center of its chest, where a human heart would be, a core of volatile, crimson energy pulsed. It was the Obscurus, leashed and bound to the regenerative rhythm of the vampire blood.
Thump-thump.
It was the strongest sound in the world.
Gellert raised his hand and pressed it flat against the cold, thick glass. His palm eclipsed the tiny form floating within. He stared at it with an intensity that would have terrified a lesser being. There was a shimmer of moisture in his mismatched eyes—not of weakness, but of overwhelming, arrogant triumph. He had not just created life; he had curated a masterpiece.
He leaned in, his breath hitching slightly, his face illuminated by the amber glow of the tank. He looked at the floating child not with the detached curiosity of a scientist, but with the fierce, terrifying possession of a father who had finally secured his legacy.
"You will defy them all," he murmured, his voice low and steady, vibrating through the glass. "Time, death, destiny... they hold no dominion over you."
A small smile touched his lips—proud, regal, and absolute.
"Welcome... Aurelia Grindelwald Dracula."