Chapter Text
Leon Adler was a very normal wizarding boy. He was doing well at school but wasn’t too smart, he was good-looking but wouldn’t be considered attractive, he was the average height and weight of other boys his age, and he was starting his first summer job.
The only bizarre thing about Leon was his job. Plenty children his age were already starting to earn money, but most worked in small corner shops, or helped out at a local theatre, or something normal, something no one would be too surprised to hear.
Leon left the dinner table in the evening on October 31st, and made his trek up the mountain. He was to take the graveyard shift at the Austrian wizarding prison of Nurmengard. He snatched a browning banana from the fruit bowl in the staff room, weaving through his new colleagues. He made his way up to his post, and nervously greeted the prisoner. The prisoner stared back at him, past the cool metal prison bars.
In the early morning of November 1st, Leon Adler was announced missing, presumably dead, and the alarm bells of Nurmengard rang. Gellert Grindelwald had made his escape, and a sixteen-year-old boy was to blame.
News of the escape was kept secret by the Austrian Ministry, and while the Ministry fell into havoc, Gellert Grindelwald buried the body of young Leon Adler.
All he had were the clothes he’d stolen from the young guard, the boy's sketching book, and his rather blunt pencil. Grindelwald found a cold stone bench, sitting down and opening the sketch book. It was unfortunate, of course, for the boy to have died, but it was necessary. Besides, such a young boy never should have been put to guard a high-profile prisoner. But alas, the mistakes of the prison’s security allowed Grindelwald’s escape.
He flipped past drawings of animals, occasionally pausing to admire a particularly good sketch. Gellert found an empty page and took out the pencil. He wrote his list in neat cursive, dotting every addition to the list meticulously. He had a plan, and his plan would not fail like his others had before.
Gellert liked to consider himself a reformed man, though many others may disagree. Spending so much time in a cell of the highest tower of the prison he’d built – it had altered his thinking, somewhat. He was to put aside his past, and start anew.
By the morning of November 1st, Gellert had reached Liechtenstein. He found a small town buried amongst the mountains, discovering a rickety charity shop sitting on the corner of the road.
A young man behind the counter gave him a quick glance, but otherwise remained uninterested. Gellert wrapped the dead boy’s guard robes tighter, hiding his prison attire from view. He browsed the men’s section mindlessly, picking out the dullest clothes he could find, clothes that would make him appear as unassuming as possible. He paid for the clothes with stolen money, and left for Switzerland.
The journey through the mountains was difficult and exhausting, and with his magic having been repressed for so many years, Gellert was just the same as an unfortunate muggle hiker finding themselves stranded in the wild. He walked down barren roads, hunting deer for food and filtering water through his old prison clothes to drink. He was a fool in that respect – having been so paranoid not to be noticed that he sought out clothing before food and drink. On cold nights he stayed awake, close to the warmth of the fire, desperate not to fall asleep.
It took a month to reach Zürich, the calm capital city of Switzerland. Gellert spent his nights at an inn, and his days wandering the streets looking for work. Being unqualified for muggle work, Gellert had very few opportunities. Eventually, he found an opening at the nearby opera house, and became the caretaker of the opera house.
All he needed to do now was find a wizarding newspaper. The newspapers were mostly focused on the scandal of Gellert’s escape, having finally been revealed to the public. It took him a while to find anything on the wizarding war raging on in Britain. Of course, Gellert had heard of the war while he was still locked up. He’d heard of a man named ‘Lord Voldemort’, and his quest to eradicate muggle-borns.
That night, Gellert decided his next stop would be Britain. After all, they seemed completely unaware of his escape, and would be so wrapped up in internal affairs they wouldn’t notice him at all.