The silence after Alden's defiance hung like smoke. No one moved. Even the mist seemed to wait.
Voldemort was the first to stir. His laughter began as a low murmur, an intimate, private thing, before it swelled and spilled into the open air. It wasn't joy—it was revelation, the terrible delight of a predator recognizing a worthy prey.
"How extraordinary," he said at last, eyes glinting red in the dim light. "I thought I had summoned worms and ghosts to my court, but instead—" He gestured lazily toward Alden. "—a relic walks in their place."
The Death Eaters remained deathly still, too afraid to breathe. Only Wormtail whimpered quietly, clutching his silver hand.
Voldemort took one unhurried step forward, then another. Each movement seemed to bend the light around him. "You wear the Dreyse name, boy, but you speak like Grindelwald. Tell me—does his ghost whisper in your sleep? Does he tell you how to challenge gods?"
Alden's eyes, still bright with frostlight, didn't waver. "You've never been a god," he said quietly. "Just a man who couldn't stand being ordinary."
Voldemort's smile widened. "And you think yourself different?"
"I think," Alden said, "I know what you're afraid of."
That earned a pause. The red eyes narrowed to slits. "And what is that, little scholar?"
"Not death," Alden answered. "Obscurity."
A murmur rippled through the circle of Death Eaters. Theo's father stiffened; Lucius inhaled sharply behind his mask. No one had ever spoken to their master like that and lived.
Voldemort's head tilted, the serpentine grace of a cobra about to strike. But instead of fury, amusement flickered across his face. "Such eloquence," he said softly. "The lineage shows."
He turned, spreading his arms slightly, addressing the circle like a maestro before an orchestra. "Old blood should know its manners. I think we might indulge in civility before correction. Don't you agree?"
No one answered.
Voldemort's gaze returned to Alden. "We'll duel," he said, almost gently. "Not to kill—not yet. But to see what your ancestry truly amounts to. Let us see if the last of the Dreyse line remembers how to dance."
He gestured with his wand. The bindings that chained Alden to the air fell away like ribbons cut by unseen scissors. The frost beneath him shattered, releasing a hiss of steam.
Alden stumbled once, catching his breath, then straightened, spine drawn taut as wire. His right hand, bruised and blood-streaked, rose to grip his wand. The polished ebony gleamed like midnight metal under the half-light.
Behind Voldemort, the Death Eaters retreated instinctively, widening the circle. Harry, still bound to the Riddle statue, could feel the pressure between them—the magic, the hunger. The world itself seemed to lean closer.
"Consider this your lesson," Voldemort said. "On history, on power, on lineage."
Alden wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand. "Then consider this mine—on consequence."
Voldemort's expression shifted. "How very Dumbledore of you," he mused. "So eager to moralize before the first curse is cast."
"I'm not Dumbledore," Alden said. "I learn from everyone."
The faintest twitch of irritation crossed Voldemort's face. "Then you'll learn what it means to stand before me." He raised his wand. "Bow."
The word was not a request—it was an edict. The air itself bent slightly, the weight of compulsion pressing down like invisible fingers. Alden's knees almost buckled under it. His wand trembled in his hand.
But he didn't bow.
He forced himself upright, chest heaving. His eyes met Voldemort's—cold, alive, refusing. The frost from his earlier magic still traced the graves, and where it reached his boots, it flared brighter, feeding on his defiance.
"I don't kneel for anyone," he said.
For the first time, something unreadable flickered behind Voldemort's gaze—something like recognition. Then he smiled, thin and bright. "So be it."
The world seemed to draw breath.
"Fulmen Cadens!" Voldemort's voice struck like a whip. The night convulsed—violet lightning erupted from the sky in spiraling lances. The ground trembled.
Alden's wand was already rising. "Umbra Velo!"
The air in front of him shimmered, folding light into a translucent dome. The lightning struck—and froze. It suspended midair, each bolt crystallizing into a web of glassy filaments that refracted ghostly light across the tombs. For a moment, the graveyard became a cathedral of frozen thunder.
Voldemort's expression didn't change, but his eyes narrowed. He flicked his wand sharply, shattering the suspended bolts. Shards of violet light rained down like embers.
"Impressive," he said softly. "Tell me, does your frost always feed on heaven's wrath?"
Alden lowered his wand slightly, his breath steady but shallow. "Only when it falls too low."
Voldemort's laugh was brief and cutting. "Then rise, little heir. Show me your inheritance."
He moved first again—"Confringo!"—and the earth erupted between them.
Alden stepped through the smoke, wand carving an elegant counter-arc. "Gelum Filum." A thread of ice split the explosion cleanly in half; flame and smoke sheared away as though sliced by a scalpel.
The Death Eaters murmured—uneasy admiration under their fear. Theo's father whispered something to Lucius, his voice trembling. Lucius didn't answer; his eyes were locked on Alden, the faintest note of disbelief breaking through his composure.
Harry could hardly breathe. Every movement was too fast, too deliberate. Alden wasn't surviving—he was dueling, every counterspell a sentence, every flick of the wand a declaration. He thought of what Moody had said during lessons—Dreyse doesn't fight to live. He fights to understand.
Now he understood, too.
Lightning froze midair. Fire split along seams of ice. And in that impossible, terrible stillness, Voldemort smiled wider, eyes gleaming like blood.
"Yes," he said softly. "Now we begin."
And the graveyard answered him—with thunder.
Voldemort's wand rose, a single, graceful motion that parted the mist like a curtain. The graveyard trembled.
"Fulmen Cadens!"
The words cracked the air. Lightning spiraled down in a perfect geometry—five converging lances of violet fire screaming toward Alden. The world seemed to breathe in with them. Every tombstone threw a long, trembling shadow; every Death Eater flinched instinctively away from their master's power.
Alden didn't move at first. His expression was too calm, his eyes unreadable. Then—just as the bolts were about to strike—his wrist twitched, barely perceptible.
"Gelum Filum."
The lightning stopped.
No—froze.
It hung midair, shards of electric energy turned to glittering icicles. The whole graveyard was caught in their light. Frost rippled outward from Alden's feet, threading across the grass and stone, reaching the hems of the Death Eaters' robes. For one breath, even the thunder hesitated—suspended in that impossible stillness.
Then Alden exhaled, and the bolts shattered. Glass-like shards of light scattered through the air, tinkling faintly as they fell. The violet reflections danced across his face, caught in the green-grey of his eyes. He lowered his wand slightly, chest rising and falling once. His voice, when it came, was quiet and sharp."Raw power breaks itself."
Voldemort's answering smile was thin. "And restraint wastes it."
He flicked his wrist, faster than sight. "Crucio!"
The curse struck like a whip of molten light. Alden didn't dodge—he couldn't. The air screamed. The spell hit him square in the chest, and for a moment, his back arched, his teeth clenched, his veins glowed red with pain—
—but then something shifted. The red glow dimmed. Turned blue.
"Frigus Corpus Secunda!"
The scream that should've come out turned to vapor. Steam poured from his sleeves, rising like smoke from a forge. The agony folded inward and calcified, turning pain into frost. Veins of ice webbed across his throat and hands, glowing faintly beneath his skin.
Voldemort's smile faltered. The Death Eaters stirred, whispering in disbelief.
The frost spread further, crawling across the ground toward their boots. One of them stepped back, muttering a half-prayer before catching himself. Even Wormtail fell silent, clutching his new silver hand to his chest.
Harry could only stare.
He'd seen Alden duel before, in practice—clean, clinical, unflinching. But this was different. Every motion was slower than Voldemort's, yet sharper, deliberate, precise. There was no fear in him, only concentration, as though he'd been waiting for this moment his entire life.
The lightning, the frost, the silence—it wasn't a fight. It was an argument written in light.
Harry remembered the whispers in the Slytherin corridors."He's the next Dark Lord.""He studies things that shouldn't be studied.""He doesn't flinch when curses hit him.""They say Snape's grooming him for something."
He'd believed them, once. He'd seen Alden's eyes—cold, detached—and thought the rumors must be true.
But now, as the frost crept through the grass and the air turned silver, Harry remembered something else. The voice from hours ago, low and measured beside the Cup:
"I hate the myth they made of me. Fear wastes time, Potter. There's no light or dark—just intent."
And suddenly, Harry understood. Alden wasn't fighting to win. He was proving something.
A new sound broke through the quiet—soft, deliberate footsteps. Voldemort walked through the shards of frozen lightning as though they were petals, wand tracing lazy arcs in the air. His red eyes gleamed with delight.
"Beautiful," he said softly. "So elegant. So… fragile."
A flick. A whisper. "Confringo."
The world exploded. Fire ripped through the ground in concentric rings, throwing shards of gravestone into the sky. Alden vanished behind a curtain of dust and flame.
"Show me your heritage, boy!" Voldemort's voice cut through the smoke. "Show me why they feared you!"
The dust shifted. A thin, pure sound—like the ringing of glass. Alden stepped forward.
Frost followed him like a cloak. The flames nearest him bent inward, their heat devoured by the cold radiating off his skin. His hair was slick with sweat and ash, his eyes pale as moonlight.
"You want to see fear?" he said. His voice didn't shake. "Look behind you."
Voldemort turned. Half his followers had retreated two paces from the duel—their courage wilting under the unnatural frost creeping toward them. Lucius's mask hid his expression, but his hands trembled. Nott Sr. stared straight ahead, rigid, unwilling to meet Alden's eyes.
Voldemort's laugh broke the tension. "You think their fear strengthens you? No, boy—it isolates you. Just like him."
"Grindelwald?" Alden said.
"Dumbledore." Voldemort's smile was razor-thin. "You'll learn the same lesson he did: that love and intellect die screaming before will."
He raised his wand again, crimson energy gathering at its tip. Alden mirrored him, frost flickering along his arm like veins of light.
"Then let's see whose will breaks first," Alden said.
The air between them shimmered—two worlds colliding.
And with that, thunder returned.
The world was breaking open.
Gravestones split like bone. Lightning etched black scars across the fog, and through it all Alden moved — darting behind a cracked angel statue just as another blast from Voldemort's wand detonated the ground where he'd been standing. The explosion tore through the air, a deep, concussive boom that turned soil into shrapnel.
Frost and fire collided in bursts that painted the night white.
"Protego Maxima!" Alden hissed, his wand cutting an arc through the smoke. A translucent dome rippled outward, shielding him from the next curse — a chain of red bolts that struck the shield and ricocheted into the graves behind him, sending splinters of marble flying.
He moved quickly — too quickly for a fifteen-year-old boy, but not fast enough for the thing hunting him.
Voldemort's voice carried over the chaos, sharp as glass."Running already, little heir? Grindelwald must be spinning in his tomb!"
Alden ducked behind another monument, chest heaving, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and blood. His lungs burned with the cold magic he'd been channeling. His frost wards pulsed faintly through the air, cracking and fading as Voldemort's power pressed down like a weight on the atmosphere itself.
He'd never felt magic like this — vast, ancient, cruelly deliberate. Voldemort wasn't fighting him. He was studying him.
Another curse shrieked through the dark — "Diffindo Maxima!" — slicing through the gravestone beside Alden like paper. Stone dust rained over him as he rolled clear, wand snapping up.
"Gelum Impetus!"A surge of frost shot forward, freezing the air into a jagged wall of ice between them. It lasted two heartbeats before a hiss of green fire shattered it.
Alden hit the dirt, covering his head as shards of enchanted ice rained down. When he looked up, Voldemort was walking toward him through the smoke, utterly calm, his wand tracing lazy sigils in the air.
"You're clever," he said. "Cleverness always was the Dreyse flaw. You think understanding replaces strength."
He raised his wand again, voice low and intimate: "Mortis Umbrae."
The ground answered him.
Shadows spilled outward from his feet, rippling across the frost, swallowing moonlight as they spread. They reached Alden and crawled up his legs like living smoke. The temperature dropped so fast his breath crystallized in the air.
Then he saw it.
His own shadow — no, shadows — peeling away from the ground, rising upright, solid, moving with him but not quite. Every motion, every flick of his wrist, they mirrored half a second too late. It was like being surrounded by his own reflection, all carrying his stance, his poise — and his wand.
One of them smiled, an echo that wasn't his.
"What is this?" he hissed, circling, wand raised.
"Yourself," Voldemort replied, voice almost fond. "There is no greater opponent."
The nearest shadow lunged. Alden reacted instinctively, parrying a blast of violet light that ricocheted into the air — and was mirrored by two more shadows casting the same spell back at him from opposite sides. He dove aside, the curses colliding behind him in a burst of raw energy.
The Death Eaters watched in awed silence as the boy vanished and reappeared among the graves, dueling against himself in a ballet of frost and flame.
From the statue, Harry's breath came in quick bursts. He could barely follow the fight — flickers of silver and green, lightning bending around pillars of ice. Alden's movements were desperate now, sharper, almost feral. This wasn't the composed strategist he'd seen in the maze. It was survival.
He wanted to call out, to shout something, anything, but his throat felt like it was full of ice.
Alden pivoted, sending a blast of cold through one of the shadows — it shattered into mist, but another formed instantly behind him. Every spell he cast echoed, replicated. His mind raced. He couldn't outduel himself. He had to unmake the reflection.
His wand dipped low, pressing into the soil."Gravemora."
The air thrummed. The ground convulsed.
The tombs around him shuddered, lifted several inches, then slammed back down with a thunderous impact that cracked the shadows' footing. For a heartbeat, they wavered. That was enough.
"Sectis Nox Magna!"
The curse tore through the air like a blade of night. It sliced cleanly across the field — through three of the shadows at once. They screamed, a sound like ice breaking underwater, and then dissolved into ash. The remaining ones staggered, distorted, flickering like dying candlelight.
Alden stood amid the wreckage, shoulders heaving, frost trailing from his sleeves like smoke. His eyes locked on Voldemort's, and for the first time, he saw something flicker there — not fear, not even anger. Interest.
Voldemort tilted his head. "You fight to survive. Admirable. But survival is not mastery."
He gestured lazily, and the remaining shadows dissolved back into mist.
"I wonder," he said, almost conversationally, "do you think your friends would still stand beside you if they saw this? The boy they call noble, fighting with the magic of monsters?"
Alden's voice was hoarse, but steady. "They already know who I am. That's why they're still here."
"Here?" Voldemort's smile deepened. "No one here but the dead."
The words carried across the graveyard like a curse. Harry flinched; Lucius closed his eyes for a moment behind the mask.
And in that silence, the man remembered the letters.
Draco's handwriting, scrawled across thick parchment — enthusiastic, reckless, full of color."Alden says Moody's paranoid.""Alden stood up to him in class, you should've seen it—he actually blocked a spell Moody fired!""He says it's not about dark or light, it's about intention. He makes sense, Father.""He's different. He listens."
Lucius could hear his son's laughter in the words, could see the boy sitting by the fire with friends he actually trusted — friends who saw him, not the family name, not the politics.
And now, that same boy — that same friend — was fighting death itself, bleeding into the frost. And Lucius did nothing. Could do nothing.
His wand hand trembled. He gripped it tighter, forcing stillness, the way he'd learned to do all his life. What would I tell Draco?That his best friend died in silence while I stood and watched?
Voldemort's laughter cut through his thoughts — sharp, cold, absolute."Let's end the illusions, shall we?"
The ground darkened once more, and every trace of frost began to melt. Alden raised his wand, but Voldemort was already moving, his magic unfolding like a serpent.
Harry could see it now: Alden wasn't a soldier. He was a philosopher with a sword in his hand — trying to reason with a storm.
And the storm was starting to win.
The sky had turned the color of ash and bruises. Every breath Alden took came out white, mist curling from his lips as he stumbled between the graves. His robes were torn, his wand arm streaked with blood, the frost along his skin cracked and blackening from the heat of near-misses.
He dove behind a fallen obelisk just as another curse struck — Fulmen Cadens again, this time thicker, heavier, a spear of violet fire that splintered the marble to dust. The shockwave hurled him sideways; he hit the ground hard, dirt caking his palms.
"Protego!" The shield flickered, weak and fractured. He coughed, spitting blood. Every nerve in his arm screamed. He could barely feel his fingers.
Voldemort advanced through the haze like something born of it — robes trailing, wand raised, unhurried. There was no need to rush. This was play.
"You disappoint me," he said softly. "I expected more than parlor tricks and parried thunder. Is this the legacy of Grindelwald's bloodline? Frost and fear?"
Alden forced himself upright, chest heaving, every breath burning cold. "You call it fear because you've forgotten what control looks like."
"Control?" Voldemort's voice darkened, curling around the word like smoke. "No, boy. Control is an illusion the weak cling to when they lack the courage to be ruthless."
He swept his wand in a graceful arc. "Venenum Flammae."
The earth screamed.
Flames hissed from the soil — not orange, but white-blue, serpentine and alive. They slithered over the graves, tongues of liquid fire weaving through the cracks in the stone, devouring the frost as they came. Alden threw up his wand, muttering Aqua Obducta, but the conjured mist vaporized instantly. The heat was blinding.
The fire wasn't ordinary; it fed on magic. His own defenses made it stronger.
He stumbled backward, mind racing. Each step he took, the fire followed, curling in hunger. It was beautiful — and merciless.
Voldemort's laughter echoed through the smoke. "Grindelwald played with symmetry, with philosophy. But I understand the only law that matters. Entropy. Everything burns, boy."
Alden clenched his jaw. "Not everything."
He dragged the edge of his wand across his palm. The blade of raw magic sliced deep — crimson blooming against the pale of his skin. Blood pattered onto the blackened soil.
He raised his wand, his voice a whisper that carried through the entire graveyard."Sanguinis Vincta."
The ground convulsed. The blood sank into the dirt, spreading like veins through the earth. Every drop glowed red as it traveled, webbing out between the graves until the whole ground pulsed like a beating heart. The flames recoiled briefly, hissing as if alive.
From the soil, frost erupted anew — not the clean white frost from before, but crimson-edged, streaked with veins of light. Bone-like sigils rose from the earth, curved spines of ice and mineral forming a lattice around him. They hummed faintly, alive with ancestral power.
The Death Eaters recoiled. The air itself tasted like iron and snow. Lucius's mask tilted toward the spectacle, voice breaking through a whisper: "Merlin save us…"
Even Voldemort hesitated, eyes flaring wider in something that almost looked like wonder.
"So the blood remembers after all," he murmured, then smiled. "Then bleed for me."
He flicked his wand. The serpentine flames surged again, hissing, tearing through the frost-wards. They collided midair — red-blue and white-gold, flame and ice. The impact turned the world into a storm of steam and light. Alden staggered backward, his vision bleaching out.
He held his ground, pushing against the inferno. His wand trembled, blood dripping from his palm onto the sigils that pulsed brighter with each drop.
"Come on," he muttered through gritted teeth. "Hold—"
The wards groaned, fractures spiderwebbing through them. The next explosion shattered the nearest monument, a shower of marble shards and bone dust pelting his side. One piece sliced his cheek open; another tore his sleeve, exposing his arm already slick with blood.
He hit the ground again, rolling through debris, ears ringing. When he looked up, Voldemort was a silhouette of fire and shadow, striding through the ruin as though it were his throne room.
"Still on your feet," Voldemort said. "Good. A corpse that bows would be dull."
Alden braced his arm against a headstone, dragging himself upright. He barely registered the pain anymore — it was distant, abstract. He looked around, eyes darting for any advantage, any escape.
And then he saw it. The Cup.
It lay half-buried near the far edge of the clearing, still faintly glowing through the soot and frost. His heart lurched. A Portkey. Still active.
If he could reach it—
He started forward, staggering through the haze. But then, through the blur of smoke and ruin, he saw the Riddle statue.
And Harry.
The boy was still bound there, chest rising and falling in shallow, terrified gasps. Watching. Still trapped. Still helpless.
Alden stopped.
For a moment, everything fell away — the pain, the noise, the fire. Only that image remained.
I forgot him, he realized, a sick weight pressing down. He'd been so focused on surviving that he'd nearly left Harry to die in this hell.
He turned his head, just in time to see the next curse forming.
"Bombarda!"
Voldemort's voice cracked through the air. The spell wasn't one of elegance — it was pure, unrestrained violence.
Alden threw his wand up, but his shield came too slow, too weak. The curse hit dead-on.
There was a flash of light — not from his wand, but from the silver ring on his hand. Daphne's ring.
The air shimmered, a faint translucent barrier forming just as the explosion struck. It held — barely — the light cracking through it like glass under strain. The shield absorbed most of the blast, but then splintered into a thousand pieces, the ring on his hand bursting apart with a sound like a breaking bell.
Alden was thrown backward into a tomb, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs. He slid down the stone, coughing, the pieces of the shattered ring glinting faintly in the dirt beside him.
His vision swam. He pressed a trembling hand against the ground, trying to push himself up. The world tilted.
Somewhere above him, Voldemort's laughter rolled through the smoke — low, cruel, infinite.
"Even love," he said softly, "shatters when it touches me."
Harry screamed his name, but Alden barely heard it. He was staring at the ruined ring in the dust — and through the haze of pain, he whispered a promise no one could hear.
"I'll come back, Daphne."
Then he lifted his wand again. Shaking, bleeding, burned — but still standing.