Blitzkrieg

As war wages on the continent, rumors Albus reads about in the papers make him wonder and long to forget.

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Assassinations. Alliances.

Entente. Central.

It’s in the Muggle papers he reads each morning along with the Prophet: people dying in a war they all thought would have been over what seems like eons ago. The world is watching them struggle. Even theirs. Muggle and Wizard - in times like this, there is no difference. Only desperate hope remains.

Trenches. No man’s land.

The Muggles’ ingenuity never ceases to amaze Albus.

But he knows something else is brewing on across the Channel. There are whispers about the greater good and a boy he once knew - a man he still loves.

He’s afraid to sleep at night now. Afraid laughing green eyes and hair like spun gold will be there when he closes his eyes, haunting his dreams. He doesn’t want to remember anymore. But with the morning’s headlines come the memories. Both report death and destruction. Only the Prophet mentions him. The Muggles are too preoccupied to notice what is happening on their home front.

England. Germany.

He wonders when it will become Albus versus Gellert instead and dreads it. One war is raging; another is brewing in the underground. How it will end, Albus doesn’t know, but learns to despise war and the allure of the Hallows.