Grindelwald's answer left Leonard a little speechless. His relationship with the Ravens was nowhere near close enough for him to ask that level of secret.
"All right, I've answered your questions. Now it's your turn to answer mine." Grindelwald sounded a little urgent. "You said Dumbledore would die. Tell me the details of the prophecy."
"I don't mind telling you, but since you have no intention of leaving this place, why ask something that will only trouble you?" Leonard said with a smile.
"Hmph." Grindelwald gave a cold snort. "If you hadn't told me this, I wouldn't have been troubled in the first place. But since the trouble is already inevitable, I'd rather know the truth and be troubled for a reason."
"Nicely said." Leonard gave him a thumbs-up. "In that case, I'll tell you. Dumbledore will die because of the Resurrection Stone."
"Resurrection..." Grindelwald was dazed for a moment, and a trace of sorrow appeared in his eyes.
"Did he die fighting over the Resurrection Stone?" Grindelwald asked softly.
"Not exactly. He died because of the curse on the Resurrection Stone... though that was only the trigger. In the end, Dumbledore was killed by someone else. You could say he willingly died by another person's hand." Leonard summed up Dumbledore's death in a few understated sentences.
Grindelwald's grip tightened around the carving knife.
"All right, I've now answered the question I promised you. I'm very glad we had this conversation. I've benefited greatly from it." Leonard gave a slight bow and turned to leave.
"Wait..."
Grindelwald instinctively tried to stop him, but all he saw was Leonard's distorted figure disappearing through Apparition.
A breeze passed through the tower. Grindelwald stood in the opening, letting the warm sunlight fall across his body, yet it could not warm the chill in his heart.
He hesitated for a moment, then turned back to the half-finished mural and instinctively raised his hand, trying to fill in the blank space on it.
Tap... tap... tap...
The knocking resumed, and Grindelwald bent over the wall like an ordinary old man.
At the blank space on the wall, two vertical lines slowly emerged beneath the tapping, and at a glance they looked like two figures walking side by side.
Looking at those two marks, so simple they could not possibly be simpler, Grindelwald suddenly dropped the carving knife in his hand, his gaze turning dark and unreadable.
"I will never allow it..." he said softly. "For you to die in such a ridiculous way."
"Rumble..."
The sky, clear just a moment ago, was suddenly covered with dark clouds. Blinding lightning flashed across the air, and heavy rain began to gather.
By the time the downpour fell, the old man who had been standing in the tower's opening was already gone.
...
Crack.
A bolt of lightning tore through the pitch-black sky, heavy with storm clouds, briefly illuminating a lonely island below.
It was an exceptionally sinister-looking island. On it stood a dilapidated building that, beneath the shroud of dark clouds, looked like a haunted house that devoured life itself.
Shadowy figures like ghosts moved through the building, like vengeful spirits claiming lives.
This was a place that struck fear into the hearts of many dark wizards, and made wizarding criminals blanch at the very mention of it.
Because this was the nightmare of prisoners, the most terrifying prison of legend, Azkaban.
Compared with other prisons, Azkaban's most distinctive and most notorious feature was its unique jailers.
Those eerie beings known as Dementors. No one knew exactly what they were.
Ghosts? Monsters? Magical creatures?
No one could define their species, but everyone knew they were among the vilest beings in existence. Their mere presence was enough to worsen the weather in the surrounding area.
"Ugh... aaah..."
A scream came from inside one of the cells.
It sounded like the cry of someone dying, full of fear and unwillingness.
A raven landed by the window, irritably preening its rain-soaked feathers from time to time while peeking through the bars to watch what was happening inside the cell.
Inside, a shriveled shadow, draped in a tattered cloak like Death itself, was hunched over a prisoner. Its mouth was open as it sucked some smoke-like substance from the prisoner's body.
The prisoner being drained trembled all over. His abdomen jerked upward like a spring, his eyes rolled white, and tears slid from the corners of his eyes.
That was a Dementor. It fed on happiness, bringing despair and pain. Once a person's suffering became unbearable, it would deliver the Dementor's Kiss and take the victim's soul.
Creatures like these should never have been tolerated in the world. Yet to this day, no wizard had developed a spell capable of killing a Dementor. Only the Patronus Charm, which could restrain most dark magical creatures, was able to limit them.
But only limit them. The Patronus Charm could not actually harm them. If not for the fact that these creatures could not reproduce, the whole world might well have been overrun by them by now.
To keep them from leaving and bringing disaster to the world, the British Ministry of Magic had established Azkaban on the island where Dementors were born, sending prisoners there to be guarded by them.
And as jailers, Dementors were naturally free to feast on the prisoners' happiness.
You could not really call the method cruel. After all, many of the prisoners truly deserved it. Even those who were not the worst sort of criminals would understand the cost of crime after a short stay in Azkaban, and after that they either rarely reoffended, or became much more careful when they did.
Harris Raymons watched the Dementor sucking joy from a prisoner through the eyes of the raven, Sta, and his expression became extremely strange.
Because he remembered something very interesting.
The Raven Organization had once studied Dementors, and one senior member with an eccentric way of thinking, and very unusual masochistic tastes, had once proposed a self-proclaimed genius theory.
Since Dementors brought pain, then if someone enjoyed pain, when a Dementor sucked away that person's happiness, would that person be feeling pain or pleasure?
The moment that question was raised, it shocked the entire Raven Organization, from the Senate President down to clueless newcomers, hundreds of people in all.
After fierce debate, the Senate Presidents temporarily suppressed the cries of "This guy clearly doesn't belong with us, we refuse to associate with him, vote him out," and reluctantly approved the genius experiment.
Then, at that senior's solemn and impatient insistence, they locked him in a secret room together with a Dementor they had gone to great trouble to capture.
Everyone else stood outside and listened to the senior scream for half an hour. And when he finally crawled out of the room, they at last understood.
Masochism did not counter Dementors, because the Dementor would also take away the pleasure that came from pain along with everything else.
However, that kind of pleasure seemed to give Dementors indigestion. Many agreed it was more like nausea. The Dementor that had absorbed that senior's happiness had ended up emotionally broken.