Grindelwald sat by the window as usual, letting the cold winter wind blow into the room, blowing his own bones and flesh until it was cold.
In fact, it can't be called a window - it's just a gap or gap left between the stone bricks. It may not be called a window, but if you get close to it, you can smell some fresh air and see some dim light. Beyond that, darkness filled the room. There is no light, of course there is no light, there are no candles and there are no light bulbs, and the only occupant here does not need light, so there is no light.
There was the sound of some clothing rubbing together in the corner of the room, and then the sound of light footsteps gradually approached. A thin blanket was covered in front of him, so that the cold wind could not easily penetrate into the bones of this desolate old man, and barely protected this shaky old man. shelf.
"I told you yesterday, the day before yesterday, and every day before that," grindelwald's voice was cold, with almost no emotion or humanity, "I don't need your care. Take it away."
This order, which did not have an imperative tone, was not carried out. The footsteps retreated to the corner as lightly as they came, and there was another sound of clothing being rubbed, and then the room returned to deathly silence.
Stubborn, very stubborn.
Grindelwald came to a conclusion several times.
Not long after, the sound of turning books came from the corner again - the sound of turning books at a normal speed. You can almost imagine how the reader's fingers caressed and lightly turned the pages.
Be patient, extremely patient.
Today, grindelwald has to add another conclusion.
This is a stubborn and patient boy. There was no other reason. The boy had been here for six days. This kind of silence had happened every time since Grindelwald rejected the boy for the third time. Grindelwald had used the most rejecting attitude towards him, and had also rejected him in the most elder-like tone, but whether he wanted the boy to go away or respected his own opinions, the boy seemed not to hear him. .
"You sometimes make me think that you are the most obedient servant," he said coldly, "but you are also the most arrogant and authoritarian old noble."
But this is not a servant, nor a noble, just a boy. grindelwald confirmed this when the boy fell here six days ago.
This place is imprisoned in magic, but apart from magic, there are many glowing things on the boy's body. Grindelwald watched him take out a small mirror-like thing, which lit up and illuminated the boy. Black hair, green eyes, wearing summer Muggle clothes. At that time, the boy's face was full of panic. Grindelwald did not want to understand him, but he could understand the panic - the boy was like a ghost who suddenly walked through the wall. Appearing here, there is almost no warning.
Perhaps due to his strict upbringing and habits, the boy still said hello to him after he stood firm, even though the expression on his face could no longer be described by such a small word as 'panicked'.
"Good evening, sir... um... you... look a little... younger than last time?"
This was the first thing the boy said to him, and the German he spoke was broken due to shock.
For grindelwald, this sentence made no sense, because he had never seen the boy and had no desire to talk to anyone. So all he sent back to the boy was silence.
The first day, complete silence.
The next day, the boy began to take care of his life tenaciously: watching him eat, covering him with clothes and blankets that were better than nothing, and occasionally cleaning the empty room. But the only older prisoner in the prison still gave him silence.
On the third day, unable to bear the sound of the boy nibbling away the snacks he took out from his pocket, grindelwald made a request to the guard for the first time. During the whole process, the mediocre wizard guards were frightened, trembling, and confused. Grindelwald was impatient, irritable, and decisive. The boy was quiet, quiet, extremely quiet, sitting in the corner as if there was no one there. From beginning to end, the guards noticed this. There is a second person in the cell.
On the fourth day, the boy finally understood that he was a stranger to grindelwald and asked the old man for the date.
"...Almost eighteen years!" The boy was so shocked that he blurted out.
Then he seemed to be hit hard - the silence in the room spread from that day, and until the sixth day, the boy didn't say another word.
Grindelwald was finally a little satisfied.
And now six days later...
After hearing grindelwald's words, the other person in the room paused for a moment and sighed. Then, a calm reply that Grindelwald had not expected rang out in the room, as if there had been no silence in the intervening days.
Grindelwald was not very satisfied with this calmness - a dissatisfaction that could not be explained - or in other words, he hated this calmness from the bottom of his heart, preferring the panic when the boy came out, which was more like a child, a young man, a Unexperienced daredevil, not a sage... whatever, maybe cub is a good word.
But grindelwald hated cubs - he had a hunch that years of living alone had made him unable to stand the boy for many days. What he needs is an absolutely private enclosed space, a cell that belongs to him alone, not a ridiculously shabby room like a bald old man raising a child.
Grindelwald once wanted the guard to take the child away, but he was not the type to yell whenever something happened. Even so, he was used to observing coldly in secret. Since the guard ignored the boy nibbling snacks in the corner as if he was blind, he no longer Thinking about this solution - it's not that he doesn't have a solution, but it's too troublesome. People don't want to bother when they get older. I don't know if this is a common trait of all humans, whether wizards or Muggles.
"You have your persistence," the boy's German was not very fluent, and he spoke neither hurriedly nor slowly, and his voice was neither too loud nor too soft, "but I can't just sit back and watch. I have my persistence. For example, someone will bring food in a while. I definitely want to watch you eat it."
"I don't see the point of you staring at a dying man here." Grindelwald looked at him in the dark for a long time. His face, which was almost too old to show any expression, was like a solid stone slab. You could put your hand on it. You can touch the human temperature, but you can't feel that it has a human soul. And he finally asked a question that had nothing to do with rejection, "...What magic objects do you have on you?"
"There are too many," the boy replied calmly, "Which one are you asking about?" After a pause, he said directly, "If you are asking how I can read... I have a magic item called the 'Hand of Glory'. It can light up a small area for me alone, and the scope of effect is only the owner.”
The reaction is neither fast nor slow, but it is above the level of ordinary people. Grindelwald thought.
"You are a pureblood." Grindelwald said with a sure tone, but there was also doubt in his heart, because the boy's clothes were completely different. He made a muddy sound from the depths of his throat, which was probably a mockery or something, "Magic items always It’s a rare occasion.”
"No," sure enough, the boy said, "This is a... birthday gift. I'm not a pure-blood, and I have pure-blood friends and classmates."
If this is true, then he can answer every question grindelwald has. This is another mystery that grindelwald cannot solve - the boy's answer is casual and inappropriately detailed, as if grindelwald is not a high-level prisoner. The prisoner in the tower was really the neighbor boy who lived next door to him.
Ah, the neighbor boy. ha.
He felt deeply sarcastic at the idea—even if it was an emotion he had struggled to possess over the years. He didn't know how long ago, he thought he had stayed here alone long enough to bury all these immature emotions, but now it seems that time is not long enough.
——Then again, the boy really doesn’t look like a pureblood. Wizards from pure-blood families receive education from an early age, and no pure-blood is as stubborn and ignorant as a boy. Unless too many years have passed outside, a young wizard like this has forgotten how much danger the name grindelwald once brought to the wizarding world, even though this man is now just a prisoner in Nurmengard.
"You look worse than I knew." The boy continued without fear, "There are no books, curtains and tables - do you have any spiritual needs? Do you usually ask the guards for newspapers?"
"You may not know enough about the meaning of a prisoner." Grindelwald said lightly, "No prisoner needs those things."
The boy was silent for a moment without any meaning. Grindelwald wished he could remain silent, but he sighed anyway, sounding tiredly like a grown-up child of thirteen or fourteen.
"I still hope you have something here to pass the time," the boy said. "In addition to the spare magic items in my pocket, there are just a bunch of snacks, a mobile phone... Oh, you may not know what a mobile phone is, it is similar to communication parchment. I have this copy in my pocket because my advisor asked me to write my thesis while on vacation.”
Space expansion spell. tutor. Vacation. Grindelwald calmly found out a few pieces of information.
"Then you should go out." The old man continued to look at the boy from the window without turning back. "You won't even be provided with food here."
"I know."
"I'm not going to chat with you,"
"I know."
"Whatever your purpose, you'll achieve nothing here."
"Maybe," the boy said.
Grindelwald heard the sound of his book closing, and another swipe of fabric. The boy seemed to have buried his head in his knees, because his next voice sounded strange, as if his mouth was covered and his neck was strangled.
"But I don't know what I can do." The boy said softly, "I don't even know where to go back, where to go... I beg you, let me stay here for a few more days."
"Because I can't think of an answer yet," he said at last.
This time he spoke like a child.
…………
On the ninth day, the food delivered to grindelwald's tower became double.
This change couldn't have come at a better time.
The clicking sounds of the boy chewing snacks have become less frequent, and the fruits he occasionally takes out are less than snacks. The sound of his footsteps these days has also begun to become hollow. Grindelwald could tell with his toes that his snack reserves were probably gone - this was bound to happen sooner or later. No child in Nurmengard who suddenly entered winter from somewhere in the summer would have enough food with him. Water reserve, to be honest, even grindelwald himself thought it was abnormal for the boy to carry these snacks and fruits. However, he knew clearly that the boy had been controlling his food intake, because it was impossible for the prison to starve to death the only prisoner, but it was very likely to starve to death the only superfluous person. If all the reserves were eaten at the beginning, only He will die earlier without even being able to wait for a chance.
But even grindelwald couldn't guess what opportunity the boy wanted - the boy's reserves were gradually dwindling, but he still rarely spoke. He only read books and disturbed grindelwald's purity in the name of taking care of him. He didn't even ask grindelwald. Give him a sip of water.
"Thank you." The boy said sincerely.
"Others have made their own decisions." Grindelwald said coldly, not knowing why he would let things turn out like this. But he still only touched his own portion, and the other portion was eaten by the boy without any hesitation soon after.
Too vigilant. Grindelwald thought as he heard some soft sounds behind him. If he was still a villain, or there were villains outside, the boy could be killed here with just a sip of water, without even needing an Avatar Kedavra.
But he said nothing and let the boy eat quietly behind him.
Although he stated that he was not a pureblood, the boy obviously had a certain upbringing. His fork and plate never made a sharp sound, nor did he chew loudly or drink water. Everything was done quietly and in an orderly manner until the end. If you ask someone to do a hygiene inspection afterwards, you will find that not even a crumb has been left here, and the crude tableware is placed neatly.
On the tenth day, grindelwald glanced at him occasionally in the early morning and saw a drop of water floating in the boy's palm.
Grindelwald was almost immediately shocked, followed by a panic that he couldn't quite explain.
This almost instantly shook the old man's mind, and he immediately used himself to sense the confinement of the tower... When he found that it was still solid, he breathed a sigh of relief, and then an impulse that he had not felt for a long time surged in his heart, such as Slap a kid on the back of the head.
"What are you doing?" said grindelwald. "No magic can be used here."
"We all know that," the boy replied meekly, "so it's not magic, sir."
He closed his palms a little, and the water droplets trembled weakly. Although Grindelwald is old, his magic power still supports his organs to stay above the level of ordinary people. He can see that the water droplet seems to condense and change into something else for a moment, but in less than a second, it Dispersed.
The boy obviously saw this result and sighed silently. The early morning light allowed Grindelwald to see his expression clearly. His green eyes were not as bright as when he first arrived, and were almost completely dimmed.
Grindelwald clearly knows what most people in the world do when they fail - get frustrated, curse, get angry, shift negative emotions and responsibilities to others, or fear the consequences, panic, scream, and are unwilling to face reality. …
But there are indeed some boys who are like this - not frustrated, not angry, not afraid, just sighing. Like numbness, like indifference, but also like reason. Because reality is like this and cannot be changed, so they just did it like this and got this reaction.
"You must be young and promising." Grindelwald suddenly spoke at this moment, like ripples on the surface of a lake.
The boy was rarely startled, as if a fish suddenly jumped up from the ripples of the lake and photographed it in front of him. This made his expression lively for a moment.
"What? Oh, uh..." The boy thought for a moment, as if he was weighing this statement, "If you are a student, forget it." Grindelwald could tell that he didn't care very much and said, "I was the first in the school year last year. If That’s what you asked.”
"It's not about exams, it's about quality. Quality determines your test scores and whether you are capable. Only fools use grades to simply judge whether a person is capable." Grindelwald said almost contemptuously, "If an ordinary Hogwarts student came here, , he will never be like you."
There was an extra person in this cell a few days ago, but strangely, he didn't make any waves.
Because this person is very different from ordinary people, even ordinary children.
"What am I 'like'?" The boy curled up. He has been sleeping on the ground and leaning against the wall for the past few days. Although he does not look particularly cold, this is Nurmengard, which is always dark, or Nurmengard in winter, and he cannot be very warm. Grindelwald saw him tucking his fingertips into his sleeves to keep warm.
"Independence. You never seemed to think of asking for my help," grindelwald pointed out.
When a person falls into a closed space, a closed space that is not his own private space, he will inevitably have some panic. Some people show it obviously, and some people don't show it obviously, but this kind of insecurity will not completely disappear. And when this person discovers that there is another person in this space who is not a friend, most people will usually make two choices, threaten or ask for help, because he will want to get out.
But grindelwald knows that whether it is a threat or asking for help, it is a sign of dependence - it proves that this person wants to rely on another person to get out, no matter what means he uses to get out. If this happened to young grindelwald, he would be the third type - he firmly believed that there was no problem that he could not solve, and he would eventually get out on his own.
The boy belongs to a rare category - he may not be able to get out, and then when he fully realizes this, he becomes completely quiet. He is the kind of person who, even if he is really a prisoner, will walk to the last moment as if he is walking to class. type.
Of course, this type also has its contradictions with boys: he is said to be quiet, but he likes to be nosy, insisting on watching whether grindelwald eats and whether he needs to put a blanket on his body.
But he did separate himself from the other person in the room somewhere else - and he never asked grindelwald for help, whether that would be useful or not.
"…………"
Facing grindelwald's words, the boy lowered his eyes and blinked a few times. He was silent for about ten seconds before answering an unexpected answer.
"Actually, I don't call this independence." The boy said, "It's just that you don't know what it is like to me outside... In comparison, no matter how you change here, it seems to be no different. To me, this is me. Deceive yourself into a…small room.”
He doesn't call this a cell, he calls it a room.
"Can you get out?" Grindelwald asked. He asked this question with a bit of hoarseness and a different ferocity, "Then how long are you going to stay here?"
"Maybe we can leave in a few days, maybe tomorrow." The boy said and stood up, took out a Muggle lighter, lit the fire, and danced around the flame with his fingertips, as if he was chanting some fire magic, but It dissipated after three seconds, which made the boy sigh again, "It's not up to me to decide."
So what's the decision?
This question popped up in Grindelwald's mind, but he thought it was quite boring to ask it - it would be the same wherever the boy went, it had nothing to do with him.
His pair of heterochromatic eyes turned and he changed to an irrelevant question.
"What book are you reading?" he asked, "What book have you been reading for several days and haven't finished yet?"
"Actually, after I finished reading, I still want to write a paper to clarify my views." When he said this, the boy was like a child again, his tone was quite helpless, "But I don't even have a pen and paper, and I don't even have a pen or paper." I didn’t know where to hand in my homework, so I could only read it over and over again and make drafts in my mind. Speaking of which, how did you know that I was a student at Hogwarts?”
"Because you are very nosy!" Grindelwald said coldly, "The nosy young people I have seen are all little bastards taught by Hogwarts."
The boy was stunned and blinked, as if he didn't expect to receive this explanation. Then he actually laughed.
"Okay, I know what you actually want to say," this was the first time Grindelwald saw a boy smile, a very light smile, but it was indeed a smile, "those people are, without exception, little bastards trained by Dumbledore. .”
"Do you think you were the accident again?" Grindelwald said angrily, "You all like to waste time on things you shouldn't do."
The boy smiled and sat a little further away, his shoulders shaking a few times. He took out the small Muggle box (mobile phone) he had held in his hand at first, and looked at it like a mirror.
Grindelwald didn't stop looking at him. The boy looked like the best disguise magus. His hair changed from black to brown, his eyes changed from green to blue, and his chin became round and pointed... This was even better than the water drops and sparks just now. It went much smoother, and the boy finally breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thirteen, no, fifteen? No, John's age is wrong..." He murmured in a thin voice, looking up at the ceiling, counting the bricks and calculating something, "Then it's because It’s too early for this era.”
Grindelwald watched him look at the sky for a long time, then sighed and picked up the book again.
"You're right, I really feel like I'm wasting time now - can I study?" The boy asked for the first time, "Just read it out in the corner and recite the spell, okay? I want to practice my pronunciation. "
Of course not, grindelwald needs to be quiet. It allows him to fall into the silence of his own consciousness, instead of filling the room with the sound of incantations from diligent students.
The boy may have discovered that Grindelwald was not that hard to talk to, and after being rejected, he began to pester him - fully fulfilling Grindelwald's comments about him, being stubborn and patient.
On the twelfth day, someone wearing a silver-rimmed cloak sneaked in inconspicuously into the tallest tower in Nurmengard, and came out inconspicuously. He cast a spell and brought a table, paper and pen, and a few books and books into the top room of the place. A book as thick as a human head... Then the problem is solved.
The boy finally got the paper, pen and extra homework to write the paper. Grindelwald finally regained peace for about three days after completing the homework. 166 reading network
