Gellert Grindelwald had had a lot of time to consider his actions over the past few decades and had not been terribly impressed with the conclusions that he came to. In his zeal to see wizards and witches rise to what he saw as their rightful place in the world, he had sown untold chaos and, in the end, had weakened the very people he sought to elevate. The decades he had spent in isolation had given him plenty of time to assess his folly and, as he watched the battle outside his cell, the first bit of excitement he'd had since the war, all he could see was the same mistakes made again.
"You got old, Albus," he thought to himself as he watched his one-time friend and lover battle what could only be Lord Voldemort.
The snake-like man was powerful, there was no doubt there, but as he watched the duel, he couldn't help but think that he wasn't actually equal to what he had been in his prime, and as that went on, he wondered why Albus hadn't simply put him down yet. He was dangerous, that was certain, and very skilled, but he was no better than the aged wizard he fought with, who almost certainly had declined some in the days since his own initial reign of terror. Something was wrong here, he couldn't help but think, and he doubted that his old friend hadn't come to the same conclusion.
Just as he thought that, he received a visitor at the window of his cell that he hadn't thought about in years, and it took him a moment to even recognize her.
"Vinda?" he asked, his eyes widening as he realized that she must have flown up to him on her broom, despite how clearly wounded she was.
She was bleeding profusely, something that even her black robes couldn't completely conceal, and he sighed as he saw her grasp the bars of his cell with shaky hands.
"My...lord," she whimpered. "I'm sorry."
"Nein, Vinda," Grindelwald sighed, "it is I who am sorry, for so very much."
"My lor…" Vinda went to ask, only to be knocked out cold as she was hit with a stunner, and levitated away by a nearby auror.
Shaking his head, Grindelwald peered out towards Albus and Voldemort, who were moving closer to him as they continued their duel.
"I expected Tom's followers to be a little rusty after all these years, but not him," Dumbledore thought to himself as he conjured a marble shield to catch his foe's latest killing curse.
Transfiguring the shattered pieces into glass hummingbirds, he directed them towards his foe, their razor-sharp beaks more than up to the task of doing him great harm, provided any of them made contact. Voldemort snarled and flew back, destroying the flock as he went, and Dumbledore pursued him. He might not have been able to fly under his own power as his former pupil could, but that didn't mean that he couldn't still fight him.
"This is remarkably sloppy of you, Tom," Dumbledore called out, his wand a blur as he sent a flurry of spells at his foe, who evaded them all.
"I've already won, Dumbledore," Tom chuckled. "Soon you will be dead, and I will reign supreme. Crucio!"
Dumbledore leapt out of the way of the torture curse and sent a pair of bludgeoning hexes back in return. Voldemort swatted them aside with ease but didn't notice the vines that sprung from the earth, catching his ankles. Growling in frustration, he burned them and sent plumes of flames Dumbledore's way, something that he froze with ease.
"He's plainly distracted," the headmaster thought to himself as he shielded against an organ-melting curse. "His spellwork and even his retorts are oddly inept. He's still a cut above most wizards and witches, but this isn't the man I fought against during the war. Did his resurrection go wrong in some way that I hadn't heard about?"
He had yet to plant Severus in Voldemort's inner circle, so his intel on his foe was very limited, and it was possible that he had come back significantly weakened for some reason, something that he could only hope was true for what it mean for the prophecy. As Voldemort flew off towards Gellert's cell at the top of his tower, Dumbledore summoned his broom from his mokeskin pouch and flew after him.
The wards of this place were tied directly to the Elder Wand, which had been under Dumbledore's complete control since the forties, so the chance of Tom freeing his old friend was slim, but he'd learned long ago not to underestimate Tom Riddle. As he pursued the self-styled dark lord, he realized just how poorly this fight had gone for his followers, many of whom had already fallen and been captured by the German aurors. Vinda Rosier and Angus Macduff were the only ones other than Voldemort who had proven themselves truly capable combatants, and the former had already been defeated while the latter was currently fighting Alastor.
"I swear I had nothing to do vith zis, Albus," Gellert called out as he drew near. "I zink something's wrong, zough."
"Ossus fragmen," Voldemort hissed, sending the bone-break right at his chest and forcing him to shield against it. "Avada Kedavra!"
Dumbledore flew out of the way of the killing curse with ease and was about to respond when he felt a sudden shift in his foe's mood. The rage and hatred gave way to confusion and finally fear as he saw a look on the man's serpentine visage that he didn't think he'd seen on his face since he'd first demonstrated magic to him all those years ago.
"What's going o...AHHHH!" Voldemort screamed as he plummeted and Dumbledore didn't even hesitate to save him.
"Arresto momentum," he cast, summoning his wand from his hand a moment later as he pulled him in close. "Incarcerous."
"What's going on? Where am I? Headmaster?" Voldemort asked in confusion, and Dumbledore felt a terrible chill go down his spine as he finally realized just what he was dealing with.
"I'm afraid you've been had, old friend," Gellert muttered. "You'll probably smell ze polyjuice on his breath, I suspect."
"Merlin, no," Dumbledore breathed he finally saw the battlefield around him for what it was.
This wasn't an attempt to free Gellert Grindelwald and use him as a weapon against him, it was a ploy to lure him away from Hogwarts. It explained why the Death Eaters all seemed so sluggish and sloppy, why even Voldemort didn't seem to be the threat that he generally was. Not a single one was actually there in person, and each of the men and women they faced, save for Gellert's old followers, presumably, was a polyjuiced, imperiused puppet.
"He dangled ze one bit of bait zat he knew you could not resist," Gellert sighed. "I'd be impressed if zis vasn't so dire."
"You truly had no idea this was coming?" Dumbledore asked as he carefully lowered the innocent man Tom had been puppeting down to the ground safely, and sent a patronus around the battlefield to warn the the others what they were actually facing.
"Nein," Gellert replied simply. "Zere is von bit of tentatively good news here, zough. Voldemort lost control of his puppet, vhich means zat something very dire has happened to him."
"We can only hope," Dumbledore replied as he reached for his emergency portkey.
"Ze aurors have zis vell in hand, Albus," Gellert nodded. "Good luck."
Dumbledore smiled grimly and nodded as he left, hoping that he wasn't going to be too late to save Harry, who he knew had to be Tom's target.
*****
"Dad?" Harry asked, staring in shock at his father. "Oh my God!"
It wasn't something that he said often anymore, but nothing else came to mind as he saw the man he'd wanted to meet his entire life. He had a single memory of his mother, the memory of her murder, but none of his father. There was no question about who he was, though, and before Harry even realized what he was doing, he was rushing over to him. James hugged him fiercely, tears welling in his eyes as they streamed from his son's.
"How is...oh, shit" Harry muttered as it finally dawned on him just how he was seeing a dead man in the flesh.
"You're not actually dead," James explained. "As far as I can tell, you're just kind of in between, and besides, that girl of yours would bring you back anyway. Speaking of, there is one very important bit of business we need to get to."
"Huh?" Harry asked as his father stepped back.
"Up top," James replied with undo seriousness as he held his hand up and Harry just laughed. "Oh, come on, you can't bag multiple birds of that caliber and not expect me to be impressed as hell. High five your old man, Harry."
Harry did so, remembering that his father had been just twenty-one when he died and probably hadn't matured any since, though neither had Sirius who had reacted much the same way to learning about him and Rias.
"I somehow doubt that we'd be doing this if Mum were here," Harry chuckled. "Where is she, anyway? Could only one of you come meet me here at a ti…"
He trailed off as he watched his father's face fall and felt a pit form in his stomach as he realized that he was about to receive some bad news.
"Harry, that's actually part of why I came here," James replied, his cheerful demeanor disappearing in an instant. "I need your help, son."
*****
Rias watched Harry fall dead in muted shock, too horrified by the sight to even process it for a solid moment. So distracted was she that she didn't notice Voldemort fall at the same time until the Death Eaters reacted in alarm.
"KILL THEM ALL!" she roared, black fury the likes of which she'd never known consuming her.
Holding her hands out in front of her, her tiredness was forgotten for a moment in her anger, and she unleashed the Power of Destruction on her masked foes in a wave of power the likes of which she'd never managed before. A half a dozen of them were atomized before they even realized they were in danger, and horrified screams rang out across the room at the sight of the enraged devils.
"Devils!" Rodulphus Lestrange cried out, raising his wand to them. "Avada KedavAHHH"
He screamed in pain as Kiba, faster than any of them could track, sliced his wand arm right off. His screams didn't last long, though, as his head swiftly followed. His master had ordered him to kill these men, and so he would. He could practically feel the evil rolling off of them in waves, and it reminded him of the men who had so gleefully helped Galilee murder him and his friends. That comparison would do them no favors.
"How the hell did Potter manage to summon devils?" Thaddeus Nott growled as he unleashed a flurry of the darkest curses he knew at the admittedly beautiful dark-haired devil.
"Not really something worth discussing just yet," Antonin Dolohov muttered as he lobbed his favorite organ-melting curse at the crimson-haired one, only to growl in rage as she dispelled it with a wave of her hand. "Dispel this, bitch. Avada Kedavra."
He watched the green curse fly towards her only for it to be engulfed in a wave of crimson that stopped it in its tracks. The killing curse was a perfect manifestation of murderous intent, a spell so pure and powerful that no other spell could block it. That apparently wasn't true of whatever that horrifying crimson energy was, as it didn't just block the curse but destroyed it completely. Normally, he'd have asked Rookwood how that was possible, but he couldn't exactly do that in the middle of a battle, and as he heard the men scream in agony a moment later, his body burned to an unrecognizable crisp by lightning, he knew that he'd never get that answer.
The Death Eaters fought as best they could, trying to score a hit of any kind on the devils, but between the crimson-haired one's ability to destroy their spells, the dark-haired one's ability to block nearly anything that got past her while frying them to a crisp at will the frightfully quick, sword-wielding boy's ability to pick them off one by one, they all quickly realized that they were completely outmatched. Dolohov looked to their fallen master, hoping more than anything that he would wake up and help them, since he, at least, could match the power on display here, but when he saw his lord's arms and legs disappear, consumed by crimson destruction, he despaired. His lord had done as he set out to do: he had killed Harry Potter, and it appeared that they were all going to pay for that with their lives.
Rias watched with grim satisfaction as her foes fell one by one, continuing to defend against their magic so Akeno and Kiba could kill them without risk. When their ranks had been thinned enough that she figured her queen and knight could handle the rest on her own, she flew towards Harry, intending to push a pawn into his chest while she still had time, only to freeze when she felt something from him that she hadn't expected.
"He's alive," she thought to herself, smiling widely down at him.
*****
"What do you need my help with?" Harry asked and James sighed.
"To answer that, I need to tell you about the last months of your mother's and my lives," he replied. "We were overjoyed when we learned that we were having you. The timing wasn't exactly ideal, and I worried about having a child in the middle of a war, but the simple fact was that either one of us could have died every time we left the house even before he-who-must-not…"
"Just call him Tom," Harry cut him off.
"Even before Tom started targeting us directly," James continued. "Bringing you into the world, even if it was still a pile of flaming shit at that point, was the happiest moment of our lives, and we both hoped with all that we had that that dreadful time would end soon so that you could grow up in peace. That wasn't meant to be, though."
"Because of the prophecy," Harry scowled.
"We were horrified when Albus told us," James sighed, "especially once we learned that h...Tom had learned part of it. We knew at once that we had to go into hiding, as did the Longbottoms, as their son was also a potential candidate."
"Right," Harry nodded.
"Your mother...you have to understand that I grew up in the Wizarding World in the sixties, born to parents who lived through the great war," James said. "To me, and to so many of us, Albus Dumbledore was almost a messiah figure, the one who had ended the threat of Grindelwald and restored peace to the world. Your mother, though, grew up in a different world, and though she came to respect our headmaster a great deal, she didn't have the same degree of reverence that I did. She agreed with the plan to hide away under the Fidelius charm because she couldn't think of anything better, but in the weeks leading up to our going into hiding, she looked for any solution she could find."
"Like what?" Harry asked.
"That was my question," James muttered. "Dumbledore himself couldn't put the dark prick down, so what could we do? She didn't give me an answer because she didn't have one, but she kept looking and looking, and eventually she ended up borrowing a very particular book from Pandora Lovegood."
"Oh no," Harry thought to himself as he realized where this was going.
*****
"AHHH!" Neville screamed as every nerve in his body was set on fire by Bellatrix's curse.
"You scream as beautifully as your parents did," Bellatrix giggled. "Such lovely music."
"Stop it, you crazy bitch!" Seamus screamed from where he was bound to the wall between Dean and Ron.
"You can make me stop anytime by telling me where Harry Potter is," Bellatrix lied.
"We already told you!" Ron exclaimed, tears streaming down his face as the guilt of having dragged his friends into this set in. "He's in the Great Hall!"
"Stop lying!" Bellatrix hissed, ending her curse for a moment and raising her wand to Ron. "My lord would have summoned me back if Potter had shown up!"
"Maybe he just isn't that into you," a flat female voice said, and Bellatrix whipped around to face the newcomer.
"What the fuck?" Dean asked, furrowing his brow in confusion as he wondered if he'd begun going mad.
Standing a few feet away from them was a short, thin, white-haired girl with cat's ears and a tail. Her eyes were golden and looked bored more than anything, which was frankly even stranger than the cat features, given who she was standing near.
"Run!" Ron shouted, wondering if this girl had suffered a Polyjuice accident like Hermione had back in their second year.
"Who are you?" Bellatrix asked as Neville opened his eyes and tried to force his twitching form to roll onto his front so he could push himself up. He looked at the catgirl and would have begged her to leave if he could speak.
"That doesn't matter," the cat girl replied in her monotone voice as she walked closer. "My master has tasked me with saving these fools from you. Put down your wand or be disarmed."
"I'd like to see you try, little girl," Bellatrix giggled. "CruciAHHH!"
Bellatrix shrieked in pain as, faster than any of them could blink, the girl grabbed her wand arm and ripped it clean out of the socket. The three boys hanging on the wall were sprayed with blood as she jerked around, seemingly as shocked as they were by what had happened. The cat girl hit her upside the head with her severed arm so hard that it knocked out some of her teeth, and she fell to the ground in a heap.
Neville struggled to push himself up and ended up settling for curling up and watching the violent display in muted shock. As he took in the sight of the small cat girl beating Bellatrix Lestrange, the woman who tortured his parents into insanity, to death with her own arm, he felt a sense of vengeful satisfaction that he hoped wouldn't have any lasting effects on his psyche. Years from then, when he'd ask his wife, Hannah Abbott, to let him transfigure cat ears and a tail on her in bed, she'd wonder why but agree without complaint.
*****
"It was the devil book, wasn't it?" Harry asked.
"It was," James nodded grimly. "She didn't have it for long, as we had to go into hiding not long after she spoke to Pandora about it, but she copied out a couple pages of it and took them with her. I don't know who she summoned, and I didn't even know what she was doing because she didn't tell me, but I know that she summoned a devil."
"The devil energy signature that Ajuka noticed!" Harry exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "That had to be from whoever she summoned."
"Quite likely, because whatever that devil did, I think that's what saved you back then," James replied, "but it wasn't without cost."
"What did she offer?" Harry asked, bracing himself for what couldn't be a good answer.
"I don't know, but…" James trailed off, looking stricken. "She's not here."
"No," Harry breathed. "Oh, Merlin, I…"
"It's not your fault!" James exclaimed. "That madman came after us, and there's nothing that the two of us wouldn't have done to protect you. You'll understand when you have your own kids someday, but...with the contacts you have, you'll be able to find out what's happened to her. You're dating the devil king's little sister, right? Surely he could order whoever took her soul to let her go!"
Harry reeled, stepping backward, and sat down on the nearest bench he could find, burying his face in his hands.
"I'll do it," Harry vowed, running his hands through his hair as he wondered if he'd ever stop finding him drifting from nightmare to nightmare. "Whatever it takes, whoever I have to fight, I'll save her soul."
"Thank you, Harry," James sighed, sounding relieved, "but hopefully it won't come to that. This Sirzechs…"
"Theoretically, he should be able to work out a deal with whoever has her, but since when have things in my life gone smoothly?" Harry asked. "Fuck, I still have a horcrux to track down and destroy before I'll be rid of Voldemort for good."
"The one in your scar is likely gone," James mused. When Harry looked up at him curiously, he explained, "The devil's protection saved you from the first killing curse, but I doubt it did this one."
"The soul shard took it instead," Harry nodded. "That makes sense. Good bloody riddance."
"I'm sorry to burden you with this, son," James sighed, "bu