Golden light erupted, and everywhere it touched, the serpents crumbled to ash.
Both men's speed, in attack and in response, had climbed to its absolute limit. The air itself thickened with the magic bleeding off them, and Apparition grew harder by the second. Dumbledore would ordinarily have had Fawkes at his side to help, but after the hard journey here, the phoenix was still recovering.
A deep confusion gnawed at him.
Grindelwald had just finished breaking the assault of three hundred Aurors. Three hundred Aurors, not novices sent out to be slaughtered.
So why did he show no trace of exhaustion at all? If anything he looked more alive than ever, spirit high, battle-hungry, standing at the very peak of his power.
Dumbledore, meanwhile, felt the opposite. Even carried by Fawkes, crossing that much distance in an instant always left some mark on the mind, and his thoughts ran just slightly slower than usual.
In the end, the fight settled nothing. Grindelwald had no intention of fighting to the death, and Dumbledore alone had no way to hold him there. The two of them leveled the surrounding landscape, turning a barren mountain peak into a sea of violet and gold blossoms, before calling a silent truce.
"Hand over the Aurors, Grindelwald."
Grindelwald let out a short laugh. "I'd suggest you get your head examined, Albus. I went to all that trouble to take those hostages, and you think one sentence is enough to walk off with them?"
"You're making blood enemies of every Ministry out there."
"We were already blood enemies, long before today." Grindelwald rose slowly into the air, looking down at Dumbledore from above. "Tell Babajide this: if you so much as touch one of the Bulgarians, I'll kill ten Aurors. Kill them all, and I'll go catch more."
"Albus, so long as you let yourself be chained by that laughable morality of yours and by your own reckless goodwill, you'll never be my match. You'll always be the one taking the hits, never the one landing them. Think it over. Next weekend, bring your student Tom Riddle, and come see me in Berlin."
With that, Grindelwald dissolved into a streak of light and shot off toward Berlin. Dumbledore stood watching until the light vanished completely, then let out a quiet sigh and pulled out his communication mirror to reach Babajide, only to find the news already waiting: Durmstrang had fallen.
This wasn't exhaustion anymore. This was closer to wanting to die.
He genuinely wanted to wipe out every last useless one of them and then go join them in the ground.
His old teammates, the ones who'd once been on his level, had all retired. How was he supposed to win anything with a pack of fools like this backing him up?
If you don't have the strength for it, don't go picking fights with Grindelwald. Why not just hold a standoff and wait for an opening instead of throwing yourselves at him headfirst? Now they'd lost hundreds of Aurors and an entire school along with them.
Babajide's haggard face appeared on the notebook screen, worn thin but still clinging to some thread of hope. He'd clearly already heard the shape of the battle from the Aurors who'd fled, and Dumbledore was the last hope he had left.
But the moment he saw the fury banked beneath Dumbledore's cold expression, his stomach dropped. His voice came out hoarse. "We... we failed?"
"I've told you this more times than I can count." Dumbledore had no patience left for pretense. "Once Grindelwald decides to leave, there's nothing I can do to stop him. Your three hundred Aurors were broken in half an hour, and he did it at the very peak of his power, magic and all."
"How could he possibly be that strong?" Babajide's voice cracked.
"Because he's Grindelwald."
Dumbledore offered an answer that sounded almost like nothing at all, and yet was true. "He wants me in Berlin next week to negotiate. Babajide, do try to handle the last of this properly."
With that, he cut the connection.
In North America, inside the headquarters of the International Confederation of Wizards, Babajide slumped bonelessly into his chair.
"The last of this..."
He knew he was finished. This operation had been his plan, his and the other Ministers' together, and whatever storm of public outrage was coming, whatever fury the various nations were about to unleash, all of it needed somewhere to land.
And if not him, then who?
Babajide searched desperately and found no way out of the corner he'd backed himself into. No, there was one path left: capture Grindelwald before the news broke wide. But was that even possible?
...
Meanwhile.
A streak of light cut through the sky as Grindelwald flew on toward Berlin, then abruptly stopped. Tom stepped out from the pocket world within.
"Sure you don't want more time to rest?"
Tom looked to be in decent shape, but Grindelwald still couldn't help asking, just to be sure.
Holding off a dozen, sometimes dozens, of curses at once while weaving through more than a hundred opponents. Honestly, only Tom and Andros could have pulled that off. If it had been Grindelwald himself in that position, he'd have needed a far more roundabout approach just to survive it.
"I'm fine." Tom shook his head. "I was fully recovered by the time you and Dumbledore started trading insults. Not a scratch on me."
"If we head back to school now, we might even make it in time for Hermione and Ginny's match."
Grindelwald had nothing to say to that.
Kid, you just about turned the entire wizarding world upside down, and here you are, still worrying about some schoolyard game between little witches?
"Then go on back. I'll swing by Durmstrang, see how much the place has changed after all these years."
Grindelwald changed his mind just as suddenly.
The two parted ways there. Tom turned south, back toward the Scottish Highlands, while Grindelwald changed course and continued north.