The Manor's night patrols were thorough. Trained wizards, alert, rotating shifts — Lucius had invested seriously after what had happened to the east wing.
None of them noticed the figure walking through the garden.
Grindelwald was already there when the footsteps came, seated in the open air with the moonlight falling across his shoulders, watching the sky with the patient attention of someone who had spent a great deal of time in a prison cell and had not yet tired of open spaces.
The footsteps stopped behind him.
He let the silence sit for a while.
"You're welcome to stand there until sunrise, Albus," he said at last, "but I suspect we both have better things to do."
Dumbledore stepped out of the shadows. His face, when the moonlight caught it, was complicated in the way that only a very long history makes a face complicated.
"Whose body was it?" he asked. "The one in Nurmengard. The one they buried."
Grindelwald sighed — the soft, tired sigh of a man who had expected a different opening line.
"It's been fifty years," he said. "And the first thing out of your mouth is an interrogation."
He turned, finally. Looked at the man he hadn't seen in half a century with the calm, unhurried attention of someone reading a very familiar text.
"That beard has gotten entirely out of hand. I've been telling you for decades."
Dumbledore's expression didn't shift.
"Fine." Grindelwald turned his gaze back to the moon. "A prisoner. He died of natural causes several years ago, which was more than he'd earned, honestly. I made some adjustments to the body. That's all."
The silence that followed was different — some of the tension going out of it.
Dumbledore settled into the chair that had, apparently, been set out for him. Grindelwald sat beside him. Two old men in a moonlit garden, and fifty years of unsaid things between them.
"Why now?" Dumbledore asked. "With everything happening."
"I got bored." The answer was entirely genuine. "I've always done what I felt was right, Albus. You know that. Some of it was very wrong. But the impulse was always the same."
"That impulse has given me chronic headaches for sixty years."
"Yes, I imagine it has."
Dumbledore's gaze dropped to Grindelwald's right hand. The scar there was old but clear — burned deep in a pattern that had no natural cause.
"What did Tom want from you?"
Grindelwald cocked his head at the name.
"Voldemort," Dumbledore corrected, patient.
"Oh. That." Grindelwald turned the scar upward slightly, as though examining it from a new angle. "He wanted me to kill either you or the boy. Kevin. One or the other — my choice, my method, my timing. That was the deal."
A beat.
"And he genuinely believed you would honour it?"
"He had leverage, or thought he did." Grindelwald's voice was almost fond — the tone of someone describing a chess player who'd spotted a clever trap and walked into a cruder one. "Tom Riddle has always mistaken fear for loyalty and ambition for reliability. It's his most consistent flaw."
"He'll kill you when he finds out," Dumbledore said. Not a warning. Just arithmetic.
"He's welcome to try." Grindelwald said it lightly. "I've been preparing for a great many things, Albus. Being double-crossed by a man who trusted me is not my most pressing concern."
A pause. Then, quieter: "Next time I see the boy, I won't be pulling my punches."
"Neither will I, Gellert," Dumbledore said. "If it comes to that."
"..."
"That," Grindelwald said, after a moment, "is precisely what I hate about you."
The garden was quiet. Somewhere above them, a cloud drifted across the moon, and the light softened. Neither of them moved.
When Dumbledore eventually left, the garden had no witness to mark it. Grindelwald stayed where he was, watching the sky alone.
Chapter 163: Continued (Hogwarts, same evening)
The O.W.L.s dissolved into the past like smoke.
Everyone had, to varying degrees, done better than expected. The relief was visible for about forty-eight hours, then replaced with the particular giddy energy of students who had survived exams and were now faced with a surplus of unscheduled time.
Harry's summary of events: "We're basically done."
Kevin's summary: "We have maybe six months before everything gets significantly worse. Let's barbecue."
The System, which had been dormant for months with the indifference of a sleeping cat, chose this exact moment to wake up.
[Ding! Detected that the host has altered the Order of the Phoenix plot arc. Reward: Free Attribute Points +10. Additional Reward: Free Talent Points +5.]
Kevin stared at the floating text.
[The host has altered the fates of Sirius Black and Albus Dumbledore. The host is now the subject of Death's interest.]
[Death's Scheme: ???]
He kept staring.
Question marks. Actual question marks. The System — which had, in the past, shown him neat categories and numerical values and clearly labelled escalation stages — had apparently looked at whatever Death had planned and responded with the magical equivalent of a shrug.
Come at me straight if you've got the stones, Kevin thought.
He pulled up his stat panel.
Name: Kevin Croft Attributes: Constitution 40, Magic 45, Intelligence 30 Talents: Spellcasting 38, Potions 17, Alchemy 12, Flight 3 Available Attribute Points: 10 Available Talent Points: 5
The Magic bump was age-related. Automatic. Annoying, in the sense that it felt unearned.
He allocated without hesitation: all ten Attribute Points into Intelligence. Five Talent Points split between Spellcasting (up to 40) and Alchemy (up to 15). He'd long since passed the point where raw stat increases were going to make the decisive difference in a fight — that scrap at Malfoy Manor had made it painfully clear. An opponent like the old man had decades of experience over Kevin's combined lifetimes. Talent points couldn't buy fifty years of hard practice.
What they bought was time. Reach. The ability to still be standing long enough for something to change.
He filed the question marks away. Death could queue up like everyone else.
On the train south, he and Hermione had a compartment to themselves. Through the window, the countryside scrolled past in the long golden light of early summer. Across the aisle, Harry and the others had commandeered the next compartment and were audible in the way that groups of teenagers always are when they believe they're being subtle.
Hermione had her book open but wasn't reading. She was watching Kevin instead, which she would have denied if asked.
"You've been thinking too hard again," she said.
"Do I look like I'm thinking?"
"You look like you're trying very hard to look like you're not thinking."
He considered this. "Hermione. Does my forehead look dark to you?"
She blinked. "What?"
"Between my brows. Dark. Like something's hovering there."
She tilted her head, studying him. "...No? Should it be?"
"Just feels like something's aiming at me from a direction I can't see yet."
She set her book down, crossed over, sat beside him, and gently pushed his head down into her lap. Her hand rested against his hair.
"You're exhausted," she said. "Sleep."
He didn't argue. The ceiling of the compartment was a very neutral colour to stare at. Outside, the light was warm. Hermione's hand was steady.
He closed his eyes.
Death can wait.