Dumbledore picked up the steaming milk tea and took a sip, savoring the rich caramel flavor. "Didn't you say before that Tom is a coward? He can't beat me in a direct fight, so it's natural for him to constantly be thinking about how to run away. That's why he and his Death Eaters are all masters of escape. Plus, he has so many people under him, and I'm just one person, so I'm spread a little thin."
"Dreyar, I don't want this sickly sweet drink. Get me a beer!" Grindelwald took a sip of the milk tea and immediately looked disgusted. He then asked Victor for a bottle of beer, chugged it down, and took a big bite of the pork knuckle, looking completely content.
"Oh, right, Mr. Grindelwald, there's something I wanted to ask you," Victor said, taking a sip of his milk tea. "Do you remember Xenophilius Lovegood?"
"Xenophilius? I remember him. He was the son of one of my Acolytes," Grindelwald replied. "You know him? Why do you ask?"
"No reason, just curious," Victor said. "Mr. Lovegood is the father of a friend of mine. When I met him, he said that some of your former Acolytes were secretly planning something. Do you know anything about that?"
Grindelwald put down his beer bottle. "They are not my Acolytes. Perhaps some of them followed me at one point, but the name 'Acolyte' is not something you get so easily. Those people used my name to do some shady things. I personally cleaned out a few of them back then, but it's inevitable that some of them slipped through the cracks."
"Shady things?" Victor asked, his face full of curiosity. "What kind of things?"
"They're cut from the same cloth as the Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries, except that the Unspeakables in the Department of Mysteries at least have some self-restraint and a bit of humanity left. But those people who use my name have no humanity at all."
"Can you be more specific?"
"Alright, I have nothing better to do. Consider it a long-overdue chat with the second person I've had a decent conversation with in all these years…" So, Grindelwald began to tell some of his stories from back then.
In the early 20th century, Grindelwald and Dumbledore hit it off. They planned to find the legendary Deathly Hallows and use them to lead a revolution in the wizarding world, overthrowing the International Statute of Secrecy and establishing a new world order where wizards would rule Muggles.
However, Dumbledore and Grindelwald's relationship suddenly soured, and they had a big fight on a rainy night. From then on, the two began a half-century-long struggle.
Around 1926, Grindelwald, who had been lying low for years, began to use his Alliance Acolytes to launch terrorist attacks in various parts of Europe. His goal was to expose the power of the magical world to the world, thereby causing Muggles to fear them.
"I am a natural Seer. I once foresaw how Muggles, with no magic and weak flesh, would destroy life with their arrogance, cruelty, and selfishness. The thing was called a 'nuclear bomb,' wasn't it? Just one could easily destroy a city and slaughter hundreds of thousands of people in an instant."
"A few hundred years ago, Muggles, with only cold weapons, were able to almost wipe out all wizards. We were forced to hide in the shadows and live cautiously, afraid to expose ourselves. But in reality, wizards are like the shadows of humans. Can we truly remain undetected in the shadows forever?"
"So, I didn't want to just sit there and wait for death. Muggle technology has developed to a level that can destroy the world, and wizards, as a different kind of human, will inevitably face unimaginable retribution once we are exposed. I want to build a world ruled by wizards while our power still has an advantage, to protect our own kind, and to make sure we don't have to live in the shadows anymore."
Grindelwald's tone was completely flat as he said this, as if it were all perfectly normal.
In fact, from another perspective, what Grindelwald did back then was extremely righteous for the entire wizarding community. That's why so many people followed him back then. His slogan was never about high-and-mighty rule, but about protection!
In this regard, Voldemort couldn't even compare.
However, as someone from the modern culture, Victor could clearly see the flaws in Grindelwald's revolution.
That is, his revolution was achieved through terror.
In the history of Earth, any revolution achieved through extreme terror and violence would inevitably be met with an even greater backlash. This follows the same principle seen in Japan's Sengoku era: Oda Nobunaga crushed his rivals with fire and steel, yet after his death, Japan still descended into further bloodshed.
So, Victor said bluntly, "Your intentions were good, but your revolution would have failed in the end, unless you killed all the Muggles. Otherwise, in the near future, Muggles, under pressure, would surely find a way to counter magic. At that point, 'the purge' would happen again. In other words, your so-called protection was actually pushing all wizards into the fire."
"Yes, you're right. But back then, I had a dream. I dreamed that I became the master of the wizarding world. I also dreamed that the three legendary Hallows, the Elder Wand, the Invisibility Cloak, and the Resurrection Stone, if combined, their owner would become the master of Death! I thought… it was a prophecy."
"You wanted to use the power of the Deathly Hallows to achieve your goal?"
"Yes, but in reality, I misunderstood. The Hallows were given to the Peverell brothers by Death himself. In my dream, the person holding the Hallows looked down upon Death from a high place, but that didn't mean he was the master of Death. The Invisibility Cloak on him allowed him to avoid Death's gaze. His arrogance made him complacent, but he forgot that immortality is a kind of trap."
"Actually, I only realized these things later. So, even without this annoying man, I would have failed. It's just a matter of time," Grindelwald said, pointing at the sugar-stained Dumbledore with a disgusted look.
"But how does this relate to the people you said were doing shady things?" Victor asked, confused.
"In the cracks between wizards and Muggles, there's a kind of person who lives there, a person who clearly understands the power of magic but can't use it," Grindelwald said ambiguously.
"Squibs?" Victor immediately knew what he was talking about.
Squibs.
In the Harry Potter world, they are people born to wizarding families (at least one parent is a wizard) but who cannot use magic.
Squibs can never attend a wizarding school. They have knowledge of magic but have almost no opportunity to participate in it. As a result, Squibs usually have a bad and hateful attitude towards wizards who can use magic. Most of their lives are poor and uneventful.
And back then, Grindelwald had, for various reasons, taken in a group of Squibs to bolster his forces.
"The Squibs I took in back then were almost all from ancient pure-blood families. They were looked down upon, but they had incredible wealth and unexpected influence," Grindelwald said slowly. "But their madness was far beyond my imagination."
In fact, Squibs were not 100% unable to use magic. Some of them, after some training, could use some magic, like making a leaf float or moving a sugar cube.
This led to the emergence of a "Rapid-Chanting Crash Course Correspondence" specifically for Squibs, which was the same one that Hogwarts caretaker Argus Filch attended. So, Squibs held on to a tiny bit of hope that they could use magic.
Back then, the symbol of the Acolytes was a rune made of the three Deathly Hallows. Grindelwald's pursuit of the Hallows' power to rule the world naturally made these pure-blood Squibs' hope of using magic infinitely magnified.
In 1938, Grindelwald led the Acolytes in an all-out public war against the wizarding world. The global wizarding war broke out, causing a large number of casualties and disappearances. By 1945, Grindelwald's power was almost "unstoppable."
"At that time, my power had reached its peak. The continuous victories led to an extreme expansion of everyone's desires. Arrogance and madness were spreading. And those Squibs became bloodthirsty monsters with no humanity." Grindelwald's eyes grew cold as some memories surfaced in his mind.
"Monsters?" Victor's eyes lowered, and he fell into deep thought. From what he had heard, he had a good guess about what those Squibs had done.
Back in Earth Land, there was a group of people who had also lost their humanity. He was so angry about it that he carried out a six-month massacre, and tens of thousands of people died by his hand.
"There are thousands of skeletons buried under the cliff of this prison. Among them are captured wizards and a lot of Squibs who were secretly brought back. The victory in the war made them think they could do whatever they wanted. They couldn't wait to gain the power of magic."
"So, the Squibs you took in were doing some extremely cruel experiments…" Victor murmured.
"Those people used my name outside to lure many ordinary Squibs and wizards to Nurmengard. Then, they would secretly imprison them under various pretexts to conduct magical experiments. They thought that their bloodline was noble and that these ordinary Squibs and wizards were not human."
"The dungeon under the tower only had three floors, but they secretly created a fourth one without my knowledge. Can you imagine what that dungeon looked like when I found it? The entire dungeon was black and red. The blood had completely soaked into the stone bricks. The rotting human flesh was stuck in the cracks, being gnawed on by some unknown bugs."
"To be honest, although I am a ruthless and unscrupulous person, I at least have a bottom line. But those people, they are the embodiment of humanity's purest evil!"
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