Professor Baier read the list twice.
He did it the first time out of habit, the second time because his eyes refused to accept the numbers.
Six Rosiers, four Carrows, four Selwyns, six Blacks, then Volkov, then Voss, and lastly Krafft.
He held the parchment a touch closer to the floating light orb, as if the names might shift into something sensible if he stared hard enough. The corridor outside the classroom stayed loud with the sounds of boots. The impatient scrape of chairs. A cough that belonged to a child who had learned to copy adult impatience.
Baier shut the parchment against his palm and listened. These were the first years. But not the wide eyed children who still believed the castle was a story. These were students who had applied to advance. The students who were better than their peers were able to challenge the exams. They can select up to eight subjects to pass and go through the exams. This can be repeated every three months if they have the nerve and the discipline to sit for it. Hogwarts had borrowed the structure from Durmstrang and then made it worse.
He approved of the 'worse' part and was still confused about why half of Europe's ministers were having new blood and, more importantly, why they were in his class.
The students called him Rival, his moniker from his mercenary days. Not to his face, usually. It started as a joke, then it became a habit, and now it was a title that came with a certain kind of grin. The sort that appeared when a student survived his lesson and decided that survival counted as friendship.
He was not a gentle man. He had never pretended to be.
He walked to the door, stopped with his hand on the latch, and let his eyes run over the ward lines he had carved into the frame the night before. Old habit. A mercenary never trusted someone else's locks, and whatever post he occupied, he was a mercenary at his heart.
Behind him, on the wall, Hogwarts portraits watched with the offended patience of people who had been dead long enough to believe their opinions mattered more than the living.
Baier's mouth twisted.
"Why in Morgana's name," he muttered, "are we examining children from ministerial houses in my class?"
A portrait of a witch with too much powder on her face sniffed.
Baier gave her the same respect he gave any critic. None.
He opened the door. He was teaching Dark Arts to first to third years. The classroom, naturally, was arranged based on this. There were safe zones to let the students cast some of the dark spells. The batch in front of him stood away from those arrays in a loose line, wands tucked away, palms empty. They looked disciplined and calm. One boy, Castor Black, tried to look like he had already passed and was waiting for Baier to notice.
That look earned him Baier's attention. Not anger, interest.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The sound cut through the room. A dozen breaths adjusted. A few shoulders pulled back.
"Well," Baier greeted them, voice level and dry. He let his gaze move across the faces in a slow, deliberate sweep. "Witches and wizards of influential houses. If you are here to waste my time, I suggest you leave now. I will still fail you. It will just save us the parchment."
A few mouths tightened. One girl, Selwyn, actually smiled.
"Rules," Baier continued, hands clasped behind his back. "For the Practical part, you will demonstrate spells cast with teachings and mentality of Dark Arts and without. For the theoretical part, you will explain the differences.
One of the girls from Blacks, her curly hair and dark eyes following his every movement, grinned. Baier felt the need to add one more line before starting the practicals.
If you think Dark Arts means cruelty, you can go write poetry about it and leave the rest of us alone."
The girl blinked, then looked away too quickly.
"You will show me intent, precision and more importantly, discipline. You will show me that you understand that the feeling to feed a curse is a tool and not a tantrum. If you do not understand that," he added, letting the silence stretch, "I will teach you by failing you."
Baier cast a silent Tempus and counted the last ten seconds aloud. With a flick, the parchments flew to his desk.
"You will receive your marks tomorrow. Dismissed."
They left with a rush of robes and careful manners. Some bowed. Some nodded. None spoke.
The door shut behind the last one.
Baier stood still for a breath and listened to the silence settle.
Then sent a Patronus to Headmistress Rosier. He was pretty sure who might know what was going on with incresing number of kids and who might know where he was.
He did not need to say the name.
The smug bastard had a way of being absent and still being responsible.
Baier grabbed his cloak, rolled his shoulders and stepped into the corridor.
As he walked, his grin appeared again, sharp and pleased.
He has not forgotten the promised duel between him and Corvus, and he was itching to put him in his place.
He reached the staircase that led toward the Headmistress's tower and slowed, letting his thoughts arrange themselves into questions that would not be brushed aside.
Where did these children come from?
Why did they move like trained soldiers?
Why had Narcissa left her post?
--
Gellert Grindelwald held his daughter against his chest and watched her eyelids flutter.
The child was small enough that she did not yet understand the world's weight. She did not understand politics. She did not understand the old blood debts. She did not understand that her father had once been locked behind stone for half a century and had counted the days by hatred.
She understood warmth.
She understood the steady rhythm of a heartbeat.
She made a pleased sound that was halfway between a coo and a sigh, then curled her fingers into the fabric of his sleeve with the possessive certainty of a creature that had never been denied.
Gellert's mismatched eyes softened.
It still surprised him, sometimes, that he could look at anything without calculating how it might become a weapon.
He looked down and brushed a knuckle along her cheek. The skin yielded to the touch. A living thing, unquestioning.
Vinda had actually laughed when he stared too long at their firstborn
A laugh that carried joy, love and relief.
"You look confused," she had told him.
He had been confused.
He had spent decades with nothing but his own mind, the slow rot of regret, and the occasional glimpse of possible futures that mocked him with probability. He had thought he had learned every shape his heart could take.
He had been wrong.
The nursery in the Nest did not resemble a nursery in any sane home. The walls were warded, layered with runes that hummed like a living net. The windows showed sky and hills that did not match any map of Britain. Not because they were false. Because the land was folded, enlarged, and protected until it might as well have been its own country.
Outside, through the glass, new buildings rose in a rough grid. Workshops. Laboratories. A line of cottages for wet nurses, healers and scientists, built with the blunt practicality of people who can mould and shape reality.
Gellert shifted the child higher on his arm and walked to the window.
His movements were quiet. Even in slippers, even in a room full of sleeping infants, he walked like a man who had once learned to make every step mean something. He carried danger the way some men carried daggers. Invisible until it was too late.
In the courtyard below, a group of Muggle doctors in white coats walked with quick, purposeful strides. They were escorted by witches. A pair of house elves hurried behind them with bundles of linen.
The Nest had become a machine.
It started as a hidden manor with an underground laboratory.
Now it was a compound.
Some months ago, he would have found it disturbing to see Muggles working with Magicals, not for them, with them.
Now he found it efficient.
His mind went to the meeting where Corvus had spoken without flourish about the biology and the work they were doing here. The female body carries thousands of possibilities for something like the miracle in his hands and uses almost none of them.
Vinda had listened with her chin lifted, eyes sharp.
Gellert had watched her, not the explanation.
When Corvus finished, Vinda had turned to him.
Not with hesitation or coyness.
With the blunt courage she had always had, even when she was younger and reckless.
She took what she wanted, and she was brave enough to make him face what no one would have spoken about.
"Stop speaking as if you do not deserve them."
He remembered the way her hand had found his.
The way she had held his fingers like she was anchoring him to the world.
Time arrays did the rest.
Two weeks outside meant months inside. A natural pregnancy, supervised by Muggle doctors who understood the body, and magical healers who understood the core. The children arrived with the careful violence of life and the calm competence of a facility built for it.
Gellert looked down at the infant in his arms.
His youngest.
One of six.
Six rays of light that made his old sins feel both heavier and less relevant.
He kissed the tip of her nose.
A soft gesture.
A dangerous vow.
He heard the door open behind him.
Vinda entered. She wore simple robes today, not the Headmistress's formal black. Her hair was pulled back. She looked tired in a way that did not weaken her. It only made her more real.
Her gaze went to the baby.
A faint smile touched her mouth.
"You have been standing there for ten minutes," she noted, voice low.
Gellert's smirk returned, restrained.
"I was thinking," his tone answered.
Vinda moved closer, careful not to wake the child, and rested her hand on his forearm.
"What about," her eyes asked.
Gellert looked through the window again.
"About the fact that I spent fifty years believing I understood loss," he replied. His voice stayed gentle. He made it worse by keeping it gentle. "And now I understand fear."
Vinda's fingers tightened once.
Gellert continued, letting the truth sit between them.
"Not fear of dying," he clarified. "Not fear of imprisonment. Not fear of the Confederation or the Muggle pets. Fear of someone taking this."
He did not need to gesture. The child was enough.
Vinda's gaze sharpened.
"Then we do not let them," she replied.
A simple yet absolute solution.
Gellert's mismatched eyes held hers. In them, there was warmth. There was also the old fire that had burned cities and men.
He had not changed into something soft.
He had changed into something that could love.
That made him worse.
In the corridor outside, footsteps passed. Voices. The steady hum of staff moving through schedules that had been carved into place. The Nest did not pause for sentiment.
Gellert shifted the child again; he had practised enough.
"Corvus," he said, speaking the name like an acknowledgement rather than praise.
Vinda's mouth tilted.
"He built this," she replied. "He feeds it. He trains it. He keeps it from collapsing under its own weight. Even when he pretends he is tired of all of us."
Gellert gave a quiet sound of agreement.
He remembered the earlier days. The first time he had looked at Corvus and seen a younger version of himself with fewer mistakes. The first time, he had tried to push and tease, to test the his spine.
Corvus had snapped back and Gellert had enjoyed it.
Now, watching the compound below, he understood that Corvus was not playing at leadership.
He was building permanence.
And because of that, Gellert's pride had found a new shape.
Not the pride of a man worshipped.
The pride of a man who had backed the right ruler.
He looked down at his daughter again.
Her eyes stayed closed. She moved her mouth in sleep, searching for milk that was not there.
Gellert's fingers curled protectively.
He could burn the world.
He could burn the world and not lose sleep.
And now he had a reason that did not come from ideology.
It came from a small hand gripping his sleeve.
His gaze hardened as he looked back out toward the outer wards.
New miracles arrived every day.
And anyone who reached for them would learn what it meant to threaten a Dark Lord who had finally found something worth keeping.