The Greater Good [GrindelwaldxDumbledore]

~Chapter Two ~ Testing times

He was busy extracting the juice from the lavender buds when he started to feel his body grow uncomfortably warm. It rose up in waves, making him feel sick and shaky as his sweat-slick hands struggled to keep a grip on his silver knife. The pounding in his head and the swimming of his vision forced him to close his eyes.

Surrounded by darkness he could hear voices, their screams ringing in his ears as they whailed for help. The black became brown, stained with red, so thick it rooted his feet to the ground. Hands, ghostly white reached up out of the quagmire, gripping at his clothes, trying to pull themselves out of the muck that had once been farmer's fields. Heavy artillery fire shook is bones as he was forced to look on, helpless to do anything more than to bear witness to the horrors of yet another muggle war. His heart ached. He longed for it to stop, he screamed until his throat was raw.

A piercing whinny made him jump, silencing his protests. The poor animal waded through the unsteady ground, slipping and tripping over the bodies of the fallen. It passed right through Gellert, allowing him to feel its immense strength and fear. He turned to witness it fall, the mud sucking its limbs into unmeasured depths, the noise it made indescribable as it fought against the rising tide.

Tears cascaded down his cheeks as his knees buckled, the earth claiming even more of his flesh. His thoughts caught on his own steed, Cara, the thestral he had trained when his father had grown impatient and his Grandfather was too sick. How she had saved him from the darkness of neglect and given him something to live for when all seemed to be lost.

It was enough to break the vision, drag him back to reality, to the small room hidden in Durmstrang castle. Still feeling sick, he grabbed blindly for one of the vials, unsure how much 'real-time' had passed. His hands shook terribly, half the contents missing the cauldron and falling into the low flames where the liquid sizzled and popped.

By the time his vision cleared he could see that he had made a mistake. Instead of a nice clear liquid, the potion had turned milky white and thickened up to the consistency of single cream. He swore loudly. There wasn't enough time to brew another batch, the full-moon had passed and he had no lunar toadstools left in his stocks, picking them this late would almost certainly kill anyone he tested the potion on later.

He sighed, snuffed out the flames and turned to see his mistake. The vial of fresh lavender oil lay untouched, the peppermint oil on its side, but the gabriella sap had been uncorked and was now dripping all over his scruffy looking instructions. It had been left over from his last dreamless sleep draught and he hadn't wanted to waste it, he now wanted to throw it at the wall.

Looking down at the disappointing potion he had no idea what to do with such a large volume of potentially dangerous material. The plumbing in the castle was rudimentary at best, ill-equipped to handle anything as viscous as this, and pollution of the surrounding lakes or ocean would be noticed. He sniffed it, nothing untoward about its aroma, it didn't smell like anything. He needed a test subject.

Having worked in the room for months at a time for the best part of two years he knew about the regular, non-human, visitors. Pointing his wand at a small hole in the wall he cast a summoning charm. The mouse wasn't keen on human contact, it squirmed and tried to bite his fingers, forcing him to change tack and create a magical container.

The mouse raced around the small cage, gnawing on the golden bars in a bid for freedom. He was reluctant to take anything the man offered him, suspicious of the strange liquid.

"Add the peppermint," Gellert uncorked the bottle and added a few drops to a goblet-full of the potion. He used the handle of the spoon to offer some to the mouse, holding his breath as the rodent came in for a curious sniff.