Chapter Text
The afternoon sun beat down upon the Sicilian countryside with the same indifference it always had.
Hay fields stretched all the way to the horizon, golden and still. Beyond them, centuries-old olive trees, bent by time, marked the boundary between cultivated land and a sky of almost cruel blue. The air was thick with the scent of dry earth, wild grass, and scorching dust. A fragrance that, in kinder seasons, had carried the promise of life now felt like nothing more than a weight pressing against the lungs.
There was no breeze. Only the metallic drone of cicadas, singing stubbornly as though the world were still the same as yesterday.
It wasn't.
At the heart of that sea of gold, a solitary olive tree cast its shadow over a rough wooden cross freshly driven into the ground. The earth beneath it had been recently turned, uneven and scarred by the shovel.
A little boy with strikingly blond hair and pale eyes, almost transparent beneath the blinding sunlight, stood with his head bowed before the mound of fresh soil. He clutched a worn Sicilian flat cap in fingers gone white with strain, gripping it with the desperation of someone who no longer knew what else to do with his hands. His tears had run dry hours ago. What remained was something far heavier-and far quieter-than grief itself.
A few steps away, two figures watched in silence. An elderly man, his face carved by years of hardship, and a young woman whose bruised features and bowed shoulders spoke of violence and a guilt too heavy to bear. They stood apart, unable to share even this sorrow.
The old man slowly approached. He bent down and rested a weathered hand on the boy's narrow shoulder with the utmost care, as though experience had taught him that bones burdened by grief could break just as easily as glass.
"There are no words, my son," he murmured in Sicilian dialect, his voice rough from a lifetime of hardship. "I'm so sorry. I'll stay with you tonight, and tomorrow we'll figure out what to do."
"No."
The boy lifted his face. His swollen eyes met the old man's. When he answered in the same harsh dialect his grandmother had taught him, his voice did not tremble.
"I've got enough to get by for a few days, Salvatò."
The old man lowered his gaze, struck by the sound of that voice. It was the voice of a child forced to speak like a grown man before he was old enough to understand the price those words carried.
"Alè... I can't leave you here alone. Your grandmother wouldn't have wanted that."
The wind stirred the wheat around the cross for only a moment.
A dry breath.
"I'll bring you some bread and cheese tomorrow morning. All right? But for now... let me stay here with you."
Alessio gave the faintest nod.
Salvatore withdrew his hand, but he did not step away. He remained behind the boy like a silent shield.
That was when Alessio noticed the woman.
She had remained on the edge of the field all morning. Her lips parted, trembling, but no words came. Her eyes drifted toward the freshly turned earth, then back to Alessio, silently begging forgiveness for something she could not bring herself to confess.
Then she simply turned away.
The heavy rustle of her footsteps through the dry wheat scraped against the scorching air, a raw earthly sound that marked her retreat until her figure dissolved into the merciless afternoon light, leaving nothing behind but silence.
The boy followed her with his pale eyes until she disappeared before turning back to the cross.
There was nowhere to go.
No one left to wait for.
Then the memory struck him.
It was not a wave.
It was a collision.
The man shoving his grandmother to the ground as though she were nothing but garbage.
Her body lying motionless in the dust.
And him...
Too far away.
Too small.
His legs frozen.
His voice trapped inside his throat.
Unable to do anything.
His breath caught painfully in his chest. Something dark and dense swelled inside him, pressing against his ribs, searching for a way out.
It wasn't pain.
It was something ancient.
A beast without a name, clawing to be unleashed.
The wind stopped.
Instantly.
Even the cicadas fell silent.
The countryside sank into a deathly stillness.
The silence that comes before disaster.
Salvatore stiffened.
His old instincts recognized the taste of a storm long before the clouds could appear.
"Alè?"
A single drop of sweat slid from the boy's temple and struck the freshly turned earth above the grave.
The air exploded.
The wind became a furious scream.
Hay rose into blinding whirlwinds of dust and light.
The branches of the olive tree cracked apart with sharp snaps like breaking bones.
The boy convulsed violently.
His flat cap slipped from his hand.
The irises vanished from his pale eyes, replaced by two pools of cold, ancient white light.
Thin tendrils of pitch-black mist began leaking from his pupils.
"Alessio!"
Salvatore rushed forward, driven by nothing but instinct.
A mass of dark, oily vapor erupted from the boy's body.
It expanded in violent pulses, breathing in time with his convulsions.
The earth groaned beneath them.
Deep cracks tore through the ground around the cross.
Salvatore was only a meter away when the shockwave struck him.
A merciless force lifted him off his feet and hurled him backward into the dust.
An instant later, as though recoiling from the blast of a shotgun, Alessio himself was thrown through the air before crashing violently back to the ground.
Liquid agony burned through every vein in his body.
"SALVATORE! HELP ME! IT HURTS!"
There was no answer.
Salvatore's body lay motionless in the distance.
Through tears and swirling dust, Alessio saw a tall, lanky figure racing toward him, impossibly fast.
A house-elf dropped to his knees beside the boy.
His long fingers stretched out in a reassuring gesture.
"Easy... easy..."
The boy struggled to focus on the impossible face before him, standing in the middle of the Sicilian countryside.
"Aldred..." he whispered.
A blinding flash of pure white light swallowed everything.
And for the briefest of moments...
the cicadas began singing once again.
MONTAGE SEQUENCE - WIZARDING NEWSPAPERS, 1928-1929
Animated headlines race across the screen. Letters crash into one another. Black-and-white photographs tremble with life. The ink itself seems to burn through the paper.
"GRINDELWALD ADVANCES: THIRD STRONGHOLD OF THE EUROPEAN WIZARDING CONGRESS FALLS."
"A NEW ORDER: GRINDELWALD'S VISION DIVIDES THE BRITISH MINISTRY OF MAGIC."
"DOES A BOUNDARY BETWEEN WIZARDS AND MUGGLES STILL EXIST?"
News photographs spring violently to life.
Riots erupt in squares invisible to Muggles.
Silent explosions consume the rooftops of Paris.
Injured magical creatures are dragged from burning forests.
Aurors fight battles whose faces will never appear in Muggle history books.
The chaos freezes on one final photograph.
It is 1929.
GELLERT GRINDELWALD sits before a chessboard in the shadows.
He does not look at the pieces.
Slowly, he raises his mismatched eyes toward the viewer.
And smiles.
The real game has only just begun.