Chapter Text
Newt Scamander. British born wizard. Hufflepuff, expelled before he graduated. One older brother, a decorated war hero. No surviving parents, but a large extended family - the Scamanders were old blood. Not pure, not necessarily, but the roots of it were old.
Floppy, lopsided hair. Oversized blue coat. Long fingers, fidgeting with the edges of his pockets. Nervous.
Newt Scamander looks like nothing so much as nothing much. In any other situation on any other day, Gellert would dismiss the man and think no further of him.
It irks him that he, in this fictional other situation, may have made a mistake.
"I wonder," he says, keeping his voice calm and light to belay the interest in his words. "What makes Albus Dumbledore so fond of you?"
Scamander demures. He acts like he doesn't know the weight of the question Gellert is asking, doesn't know what it means to be someone that has caught Albus' interest -
Well, maybe he doesn't. Albus has such a lovely habit of using the people around him without ever saying a word of his schemes to them, it's entirely possible that Scamander is a hapless bystander in their torrid game. Still, though, it doesn't change the fact that Albus saw something in the socially inept wizard that he thought could be used. Hapless or not, Scamander is involved.
He gets a hint of what his one-time lover must have seen when he brings out the obscurus. He leans forwards, because this, this is what he needs to know. The dark power of the obscurus has been extracted from its host, but how? The strength required to do this, the skill - this is soul magic at its purest, this is what he needs to be able to use once he tracks down the elusive child from his vision.
He expects Scamander to say he found it, like he 'finds' so many of his creatures. Or, failing that, for Scamander to speak of some great dark wizard on one of the many backwards continents he's visited that he wrested the thing from in some misguided attempt to save it.
"I separated it, took it, I took it from a girl in Sudan," Scamander haltingly explains. "I tried to save her." He babbles on, something about harmlessness and something that Gellert vaguely registers as the obscurus being useless without a body to inhabit.
Gellert isn't listening. He's still stuck on the fact that bony waif in front of him, the awkward Hufflepuff dropout, could split the dark magic out of an obscurus.
"So it's useless without a host," he manages to say, staring at Scamander as though he could see the strength of the wizard hiding in that deceptive frame. Scamander, curse him, falters, picking up on Gellert's phrasing and intensity with dawning suspicion.
"Useless?" he repeats.
Gellert makes and discards a dozen plans in the time it takes him to turn to the two witches acting as their security. The one he settles for is simple, elegant; he sentences Scamander and the girl (Goldberg? Goldstein?) to death, lacing a subtle command beneath his words for the girl to die first. He's already constructing in his mind the glamour he'll wear when he sweeps in at the last minute to save Scamander from an untimely demise. A fellow zoological enthusiast? No, too shallow, and too hard to maintain. An auror, junior, working the obscurus case and trying to save the child - yes, Scamander would fall for that. A girl, perhaps, as he seems to trust Goldstein well enough, but Gellert will have to match her features fairly closely to his own. Without time to use a potion to anchor the transformation as he'd done with Graves, he can't afford any major deviations in appearance.
The tracker he places on Scamander is basic and rough, but will be enough for his purposes. As soon as the wizard falls under the trance-like state required by law for magical executions, Gellert will be there to sweep him away. He's already pulling on the disguise as he strides around to a back entrance to the chamber, Grave's dark features falling away to his own sharp edges and high cheekbones. A twist of his wand and his hair falls into a messy blonde bob; a flick, and freckles chase across his cheeks and soften the harshness of his face. His pressed suit melts into a soft fawn dress and his shined oxford shoes flow midstep into elegant heels. The glamour settles against his skin and he pulls the new personality over his mind.
Charlotte, as she decides she will be called, is mere steps away from the hidden entrance to the execution chamber when she feels everything go wrong. She holds her new form for a moment's hesitation (because Charlotte is young, seconds old at best, but nothing born of Gellert Grindelwald would ever give up their existence just like that) then banishes the glamour with an angry sweep of her wand. It takes longer for Charlotte herself to fade, but it's Gellert again that strides through the corridors, Grave's face dragging his image down and Grave's clipped footsteps echoing off the walls.
He doesn't know how Scamander did it. Wandless, bound, guarded - the cuffs were magic resistant, strong enough that even Gellert would struggle with them. It's the second time in less than an hour that he's underestimated the man, and it pushes his interest that tiny bit closer to hunger. When he catches up with the pair of them (and damn, the girl as well? Was it too much to ask for people to just quietly die and get out of his way?) he hangs back, curious.
When he sees the creature he doesn't understand.
Vibrant blue-green plumage aside, it's deadly, vicious and elegant in the merciless way it takes down the aurors. A dark creature, it has to be, and a powerful one at that. Scamander commands and it listens, but the man doesn't have a wand and isn't firing off spells, not that Gellert can see. Is it imperius? Is Scamander so skilled with the unforgivable that he can fire it wandlessly and wordlessly? Does he have the control constantly running in the background, the creature always ready and waiting to obey?
The mind boggles. The skill, the strength of mind - the strength of magic required, it's unfeasible. Perhaps, he thinks desperately, perhaps there's no magic to it at all? Gellert is no stranger to manipulation, feeding people the lies they want to see. It's one of his greatest talents. Perhaps Scamander is like him, and that guileless face hides a scheming brain that cajoles and breaks his creatures until they serve him willingly.
He can see something, now, of what Albus saw. Newt Scamander would be a dangerous foe and an endlessly useful ally, if only he could be brought to heel. The ability to control, whether through a network of imperius curses or something infinitely more insidious, would be an ability that Gellert could use well.
Just. Really.
A Hufflepuff?