Age was an inconvenient truth I learned to ignore. In the bones of a child I kept the patience of a general and the curiosity of a scientist. By eleven, my days were split between arithmetic and anatomy, between nursery games and laboratories where impossible things were made real.
Nurmengard's annexes had become my sanctuaries — stone rooms warmed by leylines, wards written into the walls, and laboratories whose instruments had seen more than a century of deliberate cruelty. Grindelwald's name still hung in the air like a charm that taught men to obey; his absence from the world was a political necessity, but it had never been a scientific one. The Alliance had built me a base of research that would have made any Ministry department blush.
I spent my points like an artist buys pigments. The Elder Wand sang in my hand as I worked, an instrument that let my will translate into effect with ridiculous fidelity. The Palantír watched over one table while a phoenix nested in another. My notes were not messy; they were blueprints for inevitability.
Inferno was the first true proof of concept.
A Hungarian Horntail egg, drenched in blackened ritual and threaded with necromancy, birthed not a monster but a weapon: a dragon whose scales drank light and whose breath did not die until it had consumed its target. Its flame, which I named Dragonsbane, burned with a darkness that felt viscous — a fire that digested wards and bone with the same hungry patience. It could exhale a poison-mist laced with a soul-scent that made the living still for an instant, and it grew larger and smarter than its kind should have.
I tethered Inferno to me through a blood-bound contract. He was not merely a beast but a component — a battery for war and a testbed for every elemental theory I had bought and learned. I staged fights in the ash-yard and measured how flame interacted with wards and with the regenerated flesh of my undead test subjects. Each iteration produced data that became more dangerous.
Then came Sol.
A phoenix resisted and resisted until my wards and gentle coercions found a rhythm that tired it into cooperation. I did not destroy what made a phoenix holy; I corrupted and repurposed it. The drink I forced it to take — a distillation of the dragon's poison-mist tempered with enchantment — altered its flame. Feathers turned from gold to coal-black. Its fire became Purgatory Flame: regenerative and corrosive, able to heal what I wanted yet burn what I commanded. Sol retained teleportation and rebirth, but her song now amplified dark sigils instead of easing them. Through illusion and transfiguration I taught the world to see her as ordinary — a luminous bird that reminded people of hope — while in truth she hummed with the power to drown hope in ash.
Other experiments followed in patterns that made my notebooks proud and the Alliance quietly nervous.
• Trolls were bred for patience. I raised their intellect to the level of a toddler — enough to follow complex instructions, not enough to plot rebellion — and reinforced their skin with charmwork so they became unsurprised by most wards.• Werewolves were improved rather than cured; the curse held, but I increased the potency of their wolf-forms and strengthened their bodies in human shape so they were useful at any hour. I did not bother to remove the curse; a chain is better when born into purpose.• Chimaera were built in factories of flesh: mixings of lion, goat, and serpent with enchantments that corrected instinctual chaos. Some were failures; some were brilliant. The successful ones guarded corridors and ate men who learned not to come back.• Vampires were turned into political bargaining chips. A potion that allowed them to walk in sunlight and sleep without feeding bought me loyalty and coin from a lord whose coffers once worried about nothing. He pledged troops in exchange for a cure that cost him his pride. Pride is currency easy to spend when you know how to mint it.• Dementors were listened to like languages. Through soul-magic I learned the cadence of their hunger and the patterns of their thinking; I dominated a handful with knots and sigils that bound their attention to my commands while preserving a shard of their original utility. I did not remove their weakness to Patronus charms — that would have been a madness — but I learned how to make their fear-scent a weapon and how to graft it into other creatures.
Few of these experiments were purely cruelty. Even cruelty was efficient; each success was a solved equation that produced leverage. My labs smelled of iron and ozone and distilled intent. The Palantír sometimes showed me the ministry men who would be startled when something moved across their safety lines.
There were limits I respected — for now.
I did not make Inferno immune to Patronuses. I cloaked Sol in illusion so she looked like a normal phoenix to prying eyes, and I kept the Dementor-Boggart hybrids to a tiny number with a secret fail‑switch only I could trigger. Power without control is a circus. I preferred a quiet, inevitable victory.
I also did not begin war.
Even with armies of undead, an iron-bound dragon, and a small fleet of engineered beasts, there were counters: Dumbledore, the Order, the Ministry, and international forces if things escalated. The International Confederation of Wizards could mobilise relief. The Order could place legends in their pockets and bring men who could ruin slow plans. I had to be better than a spectacle; I had to be a storm.
So I prepared.
Horcruxes were my private obsession again. I needed them returned and consolidated before I risked a frontal move. I needed Grindelwald freed and placed at my right hand. I needed allies in Hogwarts — students who would grow into positions of power and loyalty. I needed the Black fortune and Gringotts' subtle accounting to mask the money flows.
My notes filled two volumes with contingencies: how to shepherd Muggle technology into distractions, how to seed propaganda across stationery and portraits, how to build a legal front for Alliance holdings. I wrote lists of pureblood families to court, professors to charm, and wards to reinforce. I practiced speech; I practised what a charismatic child would say in the presence of a nervous Ministry official. Every detail mattered.
And yet sometimes I allowed myself the private pleasure of testing one thing at a time: watching Inferno breathe a black arc of fire over a ruined ward and seeing the runes dissolve like sugar; hearing Sol's song cause a ward to tremble and knowing that the song's resonance carried a secret signature audible only to my necromantic eyes. These small triumphs were rehearsals for the violence I planned as architecture rather than chaos.
By eleven, the ledger read well.
Points accumulated. Creatures bred. Allies silently bought. Tools crafted. I could start a war tomorrow and walk out believing I would win. But playing the long game is an art. So I did not begin yet.
Instead, I catalogued what remained:
Recover and re‑secure all Horcruxes.
Return the Elder Wand's mastery to being absolute (rituals remain).
Use Regulus and other resurrected assets to secure Grimmauld Place and the Black fortune.
Plant loyalists and student-recruits at Hogwarts.
Free Grindelwald and make him my War‑Architect at the hour of igniting.
Dumbledore remained the linchpin. He was the smartest living adversary in practical terms; the Order of the Phoenix was a collection of variables I preferred neutralised. If I could remove Dumbledore without breaking Grindelwald's trust, the timing would be perfect. Otherwise, I would wait and undermine.
I closed the lab books and fed Sol by hand that evening, watching black feathers glint like spilled night. She ruffled and peered at me with a phoenix's half-imperious curiosity. I patted the small hollow at her throat and thought of resurrection.
Immortality was a debt I was still calculating the price of.
Outside, Nurmengard held its cold vigil. Inside, a child who had two lifetimes of calculation in his head slept for a few stolen hours and dreamt not of toys but of maps.