What infuriated Voldemort most was that he could not identify what he had done to provoke this.
"Grindelwald. We have never met. We share the same enemies. What possible reason do you have for coming after me? Go and bother Dumbledore."
The words came out of the vapour at something near a shout.
"Dumbledore, yes, I'll get to him." Grindelwald's tone was pleasant. "But you and I have our own matter to settle first." He glanced down at Nagini where she lay unconscious in the vines, and gathered her up with the unhurried ease of someone reclaiming their property. If Voldemort had possessed a body, the expression on it would have been murderous.
He had never been the one things were taken from.
"What matter?" Voldemort pressed, the rage held down to something cold and controlled. "We have never crossed paths. Not once."
"It's simple enough." Grindelwald examined his fingernails. "I dislike the title. Dark Lord. One Dark wizard who never managed to operate outside Britain decided to give himself that name, and somehow the world went along with it." He paused. "I won't argue with what's already established. Public opinion has its own momentum."
He looked up.
"But from this point forward, I am the first Dark Lord. You are the second. And given that the first is still alive, I find myself questioning your right to the succession. So I've come to resolve the question."
"You have gone too far." The vapour detonated outward, splitting into a dozen streams that scattered in different directions simultaneously, each one moving fast. "Grindelwald! I will return! And when I do, I will show you exactly what a real Dark Lord looks like!"
The voice faded slower than the mist did. Grindelwald watched the last trace of it disappear into the trees, then stood in the quiet of the forest for a moment, thinking.
Something was wrong with what he had seen.
Voldemort existed in a state between life and death, stranger even than a ghost. Everything Grindelwald had cast had passed through him without effect, as though the target was not truly present in this physical space. The soul was here only as an impression, a shadow cast by something that resided elsewhere.
To kill Voldemort permanently would require finding whatever was anchoring him and destroying it first, then forcing him back into a physical form, and only then finishing it.
The Horcrux. Herpo's creation. Grindelwald turned it over with genuine admiration. As a mechanism for immortality, it was nearly flawless, the only cost being the soul itself. And yet in all of recorded history, no one had actually achieved permanent immortality through one.
"The curse of it," he murmured.
He lifted into the air and, through the connection in the learning space, reached out to Tom.
In Britain, the funeral for Regulus was winding down. It had been brief and unhurried in the way good funerals tend to be. Sirius had written the eulogy himself, and read it in a voice that did not quite stay steady throughout, carrying within it every complicated thing he felt about his brother without trying to resolve any of it.
There was no mention of Horcruxes. The eulogy said only that Regulus had died taking something from Voldemort, something that would cost him significantly when the time came for a real reckoning. It emphasised, clearly and deliberately, that Regulus had acted alone. No Order of the Phoenix. No Ministry handler. No organisation behind him. One person who had looked at what Voldemort was and made a decision entirely on his own.
The gathered mourners understood what that meant. Everyone there had some experience of what opposing Voldemort had cost people. Knowing that Regulus had done it without backup and without certainty of anything beyond his own death made the silence at the end of the eulogy feel different from ordinary silence.
He had earned his family's motto entirely. Toujours Pur. Always pure. Always noble.
It was as the gathering dispersed that Tom received Grindelwald's message.
"You found Nagini?"
"I did. I tried to detain Voldemort as well. Nothing worked. Every spell passed straight through him."
"Did you try True Name magic? Binding curses through the name itself."
Grindelwald paused. He had not. True Name curses required preparation, ritual, the full architecture of the working laid out in advance. There had been no time for any of that.
"There's a collection in the library," Tom said. "From the Black family. It should give you what you need."
"Noted." Grindelwald filed it away. "What do you want to do with Nagini? She's lost her mind entirely."
Tom thought about it for a moment. "I'll come find you in the morning. Just hold onto her until then."
He had some confidence that he could help Nagini recover. Not certainty. He would need to see the actual state of things before he could say more.
"Understood. I'll be waiting." Grindelwald turned and headed for the library.
Tom's awareness withdrew from the learning space.
And then he noticed something small and out of place.
He moved to the edge of the flower arrangement surrounding Regulus's grave, waited for a moment when no one was looking his way, and then his hand moved. Fast, precise. His fingers closed around a beetle.
He lifted it up and looked at it for two seconds.
"It's been a while," he said quietly. "Miss Skeeter."
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