For the Greater Good || Tom Riddle ||

Chapter Twenty-Six: A Dinner Party

She went ambiguous, lonely, disguised in the basic math.

Gwen had left the sweeping streets of London like a ghost and reappeared atop the rugged mountain where Grindelwald had made his castle. The air was thin and sharp, and Gwen wished she had put on one of her heavier coats before departing England as the sheer altitude of the German mountains and forbidding fortress shot them closer to space.

Nurmenguard was a skyscraping, majestic fortress with looming towers, deep blue turrets, and ornately-carved frescoes of gleaming-white limestone in the spring sun. It was located in the Austrian Alps and enveloped in a near panoramic view of craggy cliff faces, snow-topped peaks, and lush green backdrop. It looked more like a fairy tale castle out of a storybook than the originally intended prison built by Grindelwald to hold his opponents—and because of its beauty, her grandfather couldn't part from it. Hence, Nurmenguard also served as the base of operations for Grindelwald and his followers.

Gwen had not been inside Nurmenguard since immediately after her grandmother died—the time when Grindelwald gave her the Cloak of Invisibility in a flowery midnight-colored hatbox. It felt like ages ago now, a long-forgotten memory of flickering candles, tears, and longing.

Her nerves were shot and her heart was racing, but her face remained impassive as Gwen journeyed across the large wooden bridge that went over the moat that protected and separated the castle from the rest of the mountain. Down below, one would find a lurking Kelpie waiting in the depths of the water. After luring unwary travelers onto their backs (or sacrificed intruders), Kelpies liked to drag their prey underwater and eat them, allowing the entrails to float to the surface of the water. Gwen swore she had seen a floating kidney once, but had been too terrified to ask.

She was off put when she noticed that other people were walking toward the castle too. Others began arriving at Nurmenguard left and right, and Gwen quickly distilled that Grindelwald must be hosting some kind of event. Carriages pulled by gigantic and extremely powerful Abraxan winged horses, their creamy manes sparkling in the sunlight, landed on the granite driveway. A man and woman got out, wearing their best attire and speaking French; the man pulled out a bottle of whiskey and gave to the carriage driver to give to the horses. A smaller carriage pulled up powered by Thestrals, and Gwen began to notice that brooms of all kinds were also being parked by a valet service of Goblins.

As she neared the ginormous oak door, Gwen's breath caught in her throat as her eyes landed on the carved key stone above its frame. "For the Greater Good" had been etched into the rock, and it reminded Gwen of the Deathly Hallows carvings that could be found at Durmstrang if one looked hard enough—all the wand-work of her grandfather. In her mind's eye, she could see the white burning light of the Elder Wand cracking the ancient brick and making it a canvas.

Gwen didn't even need to knock on the door before an unfamiliar house-elf opened it with a flourish. There stood a crowd of people, some faces familiar and others foreign, but all acolytes, all followers of her family's regime. They're smiling faces made her sick to her stomach.

The followers had always been kept in the dark about her heritage to Grindelwald, he had insisted it like so for her and Eilowyn's safety. Grindelwald made it so that Gwen's presence was always brief in front of his Court and most importantly, forgettable. He didn't want her to be a target for Aurors.

As Gwen inched her way up the granite steps, squeezing by witches in gaudy dresses and men in suits who gathered by the front door, she started to wonder.

Did they even know about Grindelwald's desire for the Hallows? Or were they merely tricked into believing the false hope that her grandfather could bring peace and unity to the world?