Not one of the acolytes present raised a word of objection to anything Grindelwald ordered. They simply moved.
Two hours later, the German Ministry of Magic had been taken.
There had been no large-scale fighting, no dramatic standoff. The acolytes had been rooted in their old stronghold for years, and their influence had spread quietly into every level of the institution long before this night. The officials who were not on their side were subdued before they had any chance to mount a response, and those officials made up barely twenty percent of the total staff.
This did not mean the remaining eighty percent were all acolytes. Grindelwald's standards for recruitment had never been that loose.
The explanation was simpler, and in some ways more telling. Germany still ached for what it had lost. The current Ministry was vast in size and nearly powerless in standing, outranked on the international stage by countries a fraction of its size, and still paying off fines levied decades ago. Every year was another year of tightening belts and swallowing pride.
Many of the Aurors who had been sent to Gregorovitch's wand shop to arrest Grindelwald had not truly wanted to find him. What they had wanted, quietly, was to see him return, as powerful as he had once been, and give them something worth following again.
His duel with Dumbledore had answered that question for them. So when the night came, it moved like a drill exercise. The Ministry changed hands without a single drop of blood.
The first thing Grindelwald did once it was done was send someone to bring Gregorovitch in.
The men who came for him arrived wearing Ministry Auror robes, and Gregorovitch noticed nothing strange. He walked with them without hesitation. When he was shown into the Minister's office and found Grindelwald seated at the head of the room, the genuine Minister standing deferentially behind him like a secretary, the old wandmaker's legs nearly buckled beneath him.
"Gri...Grindelwald? What are you doing here?"
Grindelwald smiled with quiet amusement. "From this point forward, the Ministry, and the entirety of German wizarding society, belongs to..." He paused and waved the thought away. "Never mind, that's not what concerns you."
"Mr. Gregorovitch. The wand you made me was of substandard quality. It could not survive a single complete battle."
He gestured lazily. "You will take up residence here in the Ministry. When you have produced a wand that satisfies me, you will be free to go. Whatever materials you need, tell the guards and they will source them."
"Mr. Grindelwald, I have other clients to serve. You can't simply"
Grindelwald raised one hand. The Aurors guided the old man firmly out of the room.
"Reinhardt," Grindelwald said, turning to the Minister. "Mobilise your people. I will not be providing assistance in what comes next. If you wish to reclaim the glory this country once had, then demonstrate your worth. Prove your resolve."
German Minister for Magic Britz Reinhardt inclined his head in a modest bow. "You will be pleased with the outcome, Mr. Grindelwald. We have been shackled for fifty years. In those fifty years, we have been waiting for exactly this."
"Go."
Grindelwald closed his eyes. Reinhardt slipped out of the office without a sound.
Two and a half hours later, the Polish Ministry of Magic fell. The news sent a shockwave through the wizarding world.
Every Minister who received it had the same momentary failure of comprehension. How in the name of Merlin had Poland gone down faster than Germany?
By that evening, both Ministries had issued simultaneous declarations: they were withdrawing from the International Confederation of Wizards, and all foreign wizards were henceforth forbidden from entering. Any who attempted to do so would be detained, or worse, as invaders.
Unless, of course, they could prove themselves to be acolytes. In which case they were warmly welcome.
Grindelwald had spent considerable time examining the reasons for his first defeat. Losing to Dumbledore was the ending, not the cause. When he looked honestly at what had gone wrong, the answer was impatience. He had expanded too fast, spread himself across too much ground, and left his foundation unstable. A large following that included the disloyal and the uncommitted was not a following at all; it was a liability dressed up as strength.
Tom had done it the right way over these past two years, carefully selecting dependable people, layer by careful layer. That was the model. Advance steadily. Extend influence across the continent gradually. Build an elite core. Keep the foundation solid and never let it crack.
It was a busy night for everyone.
Once the news broke, neighbouring countries began sending people to see what was actually happening on the ground. Grindelwald received them with equal purpose: they were an opportunity to consolidate his new followers by demonstrating his power, and an opportunity to see whether Dumbledore would show up. If he did, there was so much to discuss.
Unfortunately, by the time they had caught several dozen foreign agents, Dumbledore had still not appeared.
...
The following days turned Hogwarts into something resembling an overflow venue for the International Confederation. Wizards from across the world arrived in a steady stream, and Dumbledore eventually had no choice but to go to the Ministry himself and redirect them away from the school before their presence disrupted the students further.
The students were already disrupted. The news was too enormous to ignore, and it was bleeding into every classroom, every meal, every corridor conversation. Would this escalate? Would there be a war? Would it reach them?
Professor McGonagall deployed the only weapon powerful enough to cut through mass anxiety.
Examinations.
You have exams coming. Worry about those.
It worked. The young witches and wizards snapped back into a state of frantic revision with remarkable speed, the existential concerns of international wizarding politics temporarily displaced by the more immediate terror of not knowing their Transfiguration theory.
Tom, meanwhile, was deep in a different kind of work. He was trying to develop an alchemical creature capable of taking over his production responsibilities, one that could manufacture the messaging platform and the bulk of his alchemical equipment without him.
The current situation had driven his orders far beyond anything he could fulfil alone. Working at full capacity between now and the end of the holiday would produce less than half of the backlog.
The process of extracting essence he had long since mastered. What he was missing now was memory: a complete, fully formed sequence of memory that contained his alchemical knowledge in a form the creature could absorb and internalise as genuinely its own, not information extracted from his mind and handed over, but memory the creature could experience as having actually lived.
He could pull information from himself. But information was not memory. He needed to construct something the alchemical creature would receive as real lived experience.
After turning the problem over from every angle he could think of, Tom finally arrived at an answer.
Dreams.