Over a century ago in the outlying provinces of Prussia, poverty and ignorance ran rampant. As did superstition, though perhaps a more optimistic word for it would be 'faith'. When one's only education is at the altar, every noise in the night is a demon, every storm God's vengeful rage.

What would become, then, of a child with magic in their blood? A full-grown witch or wizard would know to keep their secrets, and even facing accusations could defend themselves if need be. An untrained youth, however, would be defenseless. They don't know what they are, how would they know to hide?

People never tire of seeing demons and malevolent spirits in their children - call it changelings, the evil eye, or even the devil himself. More often than not, any 'evil' in a child might be nothing more than a troubled phase, a naughty habit or even an undiagnosed illness.

Every once in a while, it is something more.

.

"What've we got, Weiss?" Asked Pavel Sorokin, as he and his partner set out for a field assignment.

"Demonic possession, they say." Replied Albrecht Weiss. "The stories are impressive: levitation, illumination, combustion, even minor transfiguration."

"Stories are always very much exaggerated. Like as not you've got a bunch of spooked muggles with a kid going through a naughty phase, and they've chalked it up to the influence of Satan or whatever they call it. Seen it a hundred times."

"If the child in question was going through a naughty phase, as you call it, I doubt they will be anymore." Weiss said, giving his head a mournful shake. "They're scared shitless at the thought of those evil gods they dream up. I hate to think of what they've done to the poor child."

"It's not our job to provide child care for muggles. Just get in, see for ourselves what's going on, and report back to our superiors that I've been right all along: it's not magic, and not any of our business."

"Alright, alright. Whatever you say, Sorokin. I assume you at least have the portkey?"

"Got it right here I do. Now let's get this over with. My wife's cooking goulash tonight and I want to be home while it's still warm."

Their destination was an old church miles from the nearest village, which was hardly more than a wide spot in the road in and of itself. The exterior was picturesque; a white plaster building with a shingled roof. In the back there was an orchard, and a few yards away there was a squat, mossy well.

The only thing that was amiss about the place was the heavy silence, not broken by a single bird. Perhaps it was for that reason that both of them felt a suddenly ill at ease.

Neither of them drew their wands, not liking to show they were spooked by such a little thing.

Once they pushed back the heavy doors, however, the wands came out immediately.

Sunlight slanted down from high windows, casting the scene in a soft, terrible radiance. Blood had been splattered and sprayed over the once-white walls and ceiling. The bodies of what looked like five to seven people (the carnage was such that it was impossible to say exactly how many) lay ravaged on the floor. A few of their hands still clutched rosaries or Bibles.

The air itself in the room was frigid, causing their breath to rise in pale clouds before their faces. It was in this way only that they discovered another living creature in the midst of the mutilation.

At the far end of the chamber was a slightly raised dais. Upon it was an altar, and upon the altar there was a child, bound at his wrists and ankles. His hair gleamed gold in the midday sunlight, his skin strikingly pale against the blood. They both knew without saying that they had found the child who was at the center of the stories. Stories which, they realized with dread, had not been exaggerated in the slightest.

"Do you think he's alive?" Weiss asked, after a moment of long, heavy silence punctuated only by their breath and racing hearts.

"Look's like he's breathing…" Answered Sorokin. In his unspoken opinion, the child looked at though he didn't have long even if he was breathing. As they approached, taking pains not to slip on blood on tread on bodies, bloody lacerations were visible on the boy's back. Whip marks.

When Weiss saw this, he made a small, anguished noise of distress and rushed to the child's side. Sorokin opened his mouth to caution his partner, but it was too late. As soon as Weiss's hands touched the bindings, the boy's eyes shot open. What color they were could not be told, for the pupils were dilated so far as to make his eyes appear black. They told Weiss that he was going to die, even before the pain began.

Sorokin only saw the child's eyes snap back to life, and then Weiss was doubling over, screaming. Blood was running from his mouth, his eyes and nose and ears. Lacerations blossomed on his flesh like stigmata. He was being torn apart, inside and out. Sorokin knew that his partner was going the same way as the dead muggles in the church, and he wasn't thinking about his wife's goulash any longer.

He raised his wand and took aim at the child.

.

.

.

Approximately ten years later:

A bad Monday morning was made worse for Sorokin when an aid approached him as he made his way to his office.

"Excuse me, sir? Ah, Gellert Grindelwald is waiting in your office."

"What? He should be in school."

"That's, well…" the aide fidgeted nervously. " It seemed he's been expelled from Durmstrang."

"Expelled? Why?"

"Attacks on other students, the report said."

Sorokin stopped dead in his tracks. "Any dead?"

"No sir, though they were in severe states of injury."

Sorokin swore under his breath and redoubled his pace, all but running to his office. When he got there, the scene he met did nothing to improve his mood. His classified and supposedly secure documents had been strewn around haphazardly, turning his hitherto neat office into a cluttered mess.

In the center of the mess, perched casually on his desk like a large golden bird was Grindelwald, legs crossed and face obscured by one of Sorokin's 'classified' case reports.

"You're filing system is terrible." He said, without looking up when Sorokin walked in. "I don't know how you manage to find anything at all."

"Put those things back this instant!"

"No, I don't think I will, thanks." He lowered the paper, meeting Sorokin's eyes. "It's only my own file. I think I've a right to know where I came from."

"That's not for you to decide!"

"Yet I still have the folder, don't I?" He said, brandishing it slightly as though teasing a dog.

Sorokin swallowed an enraged rant. This was not what he came here for, he reminded himself.

"They say you've been expelled." He tried, changing tactics. Try and get the little menace on the defensive.

"They say rightly then." He cocked his blonde head. "What's your point?"

"I – you – how can you take it so lightly?"

"Because I don't care. School was boring anyway."

"Maybe if you paid attention and kept your marks up, you would find something to interest you." Sorokin said through clenched teeth. They had had this conversation before.

"I don't pay attention because there's nothing to interest me." He raised the case report again. "I don't feel like this discussing this with you. I was tired of school, I got out, and that's less money on your wizard government's part and more freedom on mine. Case closed."

"How dare you disrespect me this way? After everything I've done for you, looking after you all these years, seeing that you were fed, cared for, educated, and to have you throw it all away because you were tired of it?"

"Spare me the long-suffering rant. You don't give a damn about me." Gellert's tone was still calm, though his eyes were cold. "You're only trying to assuage your own guilt. If not for your callous indifference, I might've been discovered before the priests decided I was evil incarnate, and then your friend Weiss would not have died. Looking after me is no more than a ploy to appease your own conscience."

Sorokin sputtered in inexpressible rage. "I've told you to stay out of my head!"

"You make it so easy, though. You really ought to take lessons; your mind is like an open book. In any case, I've decide to stay with my great aunt in England. We've corresponded for several years now, and she's expressed that she is willing to take me."

"You will not go to England or anywhere else!"

"Try and stop me, why don't you?"

Sorokin did nothing.

Gellert smiled, and it was cruel. "Ah, but you're not foolish enough for that. You saw what I could do to an adult wizard when I was six years old, and you're not in a hurry to piss me off."

"How can you speak of it so lightly? You took lives –"

"Lives of backwards creations with no moral objections to killing children for the sake of their faith!" He was as angry as he had been detached a moment ago, and the change was disturbing. The temperature in the room plummeted, and a sparking sheen of frost appeared on the windows.

"Do you think I was the first, Sorokin?" He continued. "The first child that they took to beat and starve and leave in the dark to repent, to drive the Devil out of them? If there is one thing in my life that I am proud of, it is what I did to them, and the world is a better place for it!"

"And what of Albrecht Weiss? Is his death another badge of honor in your collection?"

"If you two would've pulled your heads out of your asses long enough to see the fucking sunlight, it might never have gone that far! You might have helped me! You might've saved many before me, but no! Why should such fine, upstanding wizards such as yourselves be troubled with the fate of simple muggle children? Not when you have your own world to hide in, your own kind to protect!"

A shadow seemed to come across the sun, and their breath was coming in frosty clouds. Sorokin retreated until he was backed against the wall. He was reliving his nightmare of nine years ago, but he knew this time his wand, a quick stunning spell, would not help him. Grindelwald was no child anymore.

"Still." He said, calming a bit, though the darkness did not disperse, nor the cold dissipate. "For myself I hold no grudge. Really I ought to thank the both of you for being such incompetent idiots on the job. If I'd never been broken, I never would have learned just what I was capable of." His smile was as icy as the air.

"You've become a monster, Gellert." Sorokin said, eyes closed and face pale.

"If I am, it's the monster you let me become. You and your perfect wizard society." His voice was quiet and calm once again. He slid from the desk and stood, case file still secure in his hand. "Do you still intend to keep me from traveling where I will?"

"The farther you go, the better." Sorokin said in a slightly chocked voice. "And good riddance."

"Aw, I'll miss you too, Sorokin. But don't believe you've heard the last of me."

He let the door slam behind him.