The Greater Good: Dumbledore and Grindelwald

Peverell the First

Hundreds of years earlier...

It was pissing down. 

The street was narrow, the bricked walls on either side reaching high into the black night sky, but they only served as a funnel to concentrate the rainfall. Antioch turned up his collar against the harsh wind and quickly stuck his hands back into his pockets before the cold claimed them.

 Fortunately, he'd used a charm to repel water, but that didn't make it any warmer. 

People turned in disgust as Antioch pushed past them rudely in the street, turning to use his shoulders as impromptu battering rams. Antioch paid them no mind. In his pocket, he tightened his hand around the wand. Antioch still considered it 'the wand' not his wand. Because it was the wand. It had always been the wand. Every blueprint or schematic he'd drawn up, every note he'd ever jotted down. 

The entire project had been referred to as 'the' wand and now the association was forged in his brain for good. 

Through the rainwater, Antioch could spy the pub. The Red Salamander. Soft candlelight flickered through the open windows and Antioch could hear the pleasant sounds of laughter and idle chit-chat wafting out onto the evening air. Pleasant to some, that was. Antioch hated rowdiness. He was much more comfortable in the silent solitude of a laboratory. 

Still he did up his trench coat's third button, readjusted the thick scarf around his face and made a beeline for the pub door. He didn't bother to knock cheerfully, as men often did before opening the doors, by way of greeting, but merely shoved the door open and stepped inside. 

Everyone turned to look. Antioch paid them no mind. He stood stock-still, allowing the warmth from the pub to soak into him, filling him up before he unwound his scarf and dropped his hood. The Red Salamander's light threw Antioch's features into sharp relief. He was a well groomed man, elderly, but with a sprightly look about him. He had a long, pointed face framed by black hair. Balding, but what remained of the hair on his crown was still lush and jet-black. 

His long, thick sideburns were joined halfway down his face by a neatly trimmed moustache and goatee. Overall, he looked far younger than 80, so he was doing fairly well. 

Everyone had gone back to their drinks. Except one. A familiar face. 

Antioch allowed the corners of his mouth to curl into a malevolent smile. "Gryffindor!" he boomed. 

The man at the bar turned slowly, carefully. He was almost as old as Antioch, by the telling, but with brown muttonchops and an old man's cap on his bald head. A half-drained tumbler of firewhiskey was cradled in his right hand, and as Antioch called, he saw the man's left hand sneakily slip into the left pocket of his dungarees. 

Antioch readjusted his grip on the wand, still in his pocket. 

He began to move purposefully through the tables, and the chit-chat had begun to die down as people felt the tension in the room. 

"Peverell," Hector Gryffindor intoned. "I thought I told you not to show your face in these parts again?"

"Watch your tongue, Gryffindor," Antioch said smugly. "Or I'll have it out."

"In your dreams," Hector snarled. 

"Gents," the bartender, Victor Medina, said gravely. "I don't know what this is, but I'll tell you something, it's not happening in my pub! So you two can both get out and get your minds right or don't come back at-"