i am lord voldemort • Tom Riddle

Alternative Timeline XXXIX

"You'd do terrible things, huh?" Lae teased lightly. "You? Of all people? I would have never thought. I'd be more surprised if you said you'd start donating to charity."

In grand tradition, it was Julius who interrupted them, sounding both disgruntled and affronted at his return. "Again with this? I thought I was through with this particular brand of deathly torture. Oh! Oh my..." His interest audibly piqued. "Is that Gellert? My goodness does he look murderous."

Already Lae reflected fondly on the brief moments where she forgot Julius existed beyond death.

"I nearly forgot you were package deal," Lae sighed, glancing down at the Resurrection Stone and back up to her very old, very dead, companion.

Was it possible for him to already be on her last nerve even though he only just reappeared?

As for her uncle, she wouldn't describe his expression as murderous, per se, but it did inspire her to hastily leap to her feet. It was the look of an overprotective parent who'd just caught his charge doing things he'd rather not be witness to. Just as fast, Grindelwald moved on, sweeping his gaze over the the surrounding muggles, whose lives all had come to an abrupt standstill. The crowd continued to swell as more ventured close to deduce the cause of all the commotion. Dithering vehicles had been swatted off the road like flies to make way for their ascent from the earth, like a geyser, because even after sprouting from the stretching fissure they kept rising higher, higher, higher...

They stagnated just above the tallest surrounding buildings, the two platforms more or less parallel. With all the Ministry still trapped deep in the earth below, they were temporarily safe, leaving Lae with no second thoughts about leaping the distance to her uncle's stage — and that's what it truly was: a stage for his most ambitious bit of theatre yet. His hand stretched out to pull her in as soon as she went airborne, indicating his attention hadn't moved on quite as much as he would have liked her to believe.

"You can always push him off," Julius suggested as Grindelwald tucked her in close by his side. "If I'm lucky, it might even kill him."

What a piece of work. She wanted to tell Julius to abandon his desire for their failure — they already were on the precipice of victory in every way that counted – but she couldn't risk being overheard. Even for witches, hearing voices wasn't generally considered a good sign.

Instead, she reverted her focus back to the living. Besides her and Grindelwald, there were seven on the platform with them, all intimately familiar to Lae as some of her uncle's most loyal subordinates. They stood prominently in many of her favourite childhood memories alongside her uncle, taking on near guardian level roles at times when Grindelwald couldn't. She hadn't realised how much she missed them until that moment when it was suddenly oh-so-clear how she might have irreparably damaged their relationship.

Later. She took a deep breath and grinned up at her uncle. She could apologise to them later.

"Uncle, don't you think this is kind of flashy?" Then, remembering who she was speaking too, she amended, "Even for you."

"Let this be another lesson for you, since that school obviously neglected an important part of your education: there's no point to living if one can't be extravagant."

"Don't be tellin' the girl such confusin' things," a gruff, yet deceptively kind wizard named Diazien admonished. Age was catching up with him fast, drawing thin lines across his forehead that weren't there five years ago.

"He really is an awful role model," Julius agreed.

"Now," Grindelwald's voice boomed to an unnatural volume, "I dare say it's time we introduce ourselves to our new subjects."