#the dark wizard mentorship we were all secretly looking for

[twopenguinsinabox]

Plot Bunny: Dumbledore doubts his ability to keep Harry safe in Hogwarts after the events of the Triwizard Tournament and with Harry's burgeoning psychic connection to Voldemort, and thus sends him to Nurmengard to hide with Gellert Grindlewald.

I cannot possibly describe how much I want a grandfather/mentor relationship between Gellert and Harry. I want it so bad. For *reasons*.

Partially this is wish fulfillment -- it feeds the "mentorship role from older Dark Wizard" that Voldemort frequently takes up in a number of fics, but a but more realistically since Grindlewald has never killed anyone Harry loves, as well as giving some of that beloved Grindledore angst with a side order of repentance.

Grindlewald at the start of the story is powerless, infirm, and has largely been abandoned by even his guards as the years dragged on and most of those who lived through his reign of terror fade into memory. Only Nurmengard remains, the castle itself caring for him, but never allowing him to leave. This is an old man waiting to die.

Enter Harry, a walking, talking connection to the only person Grindlewald has ever loved, now facing a Dark Wizard of his own. It's enough to rouse something within him -- maybe not the will to live, persay, but for the first time in decades he finds himself interested in pushing death a little further away.

And this is where Harry -- hot-headed, lonely, and terribly charming even when he doesn't mean to be -- comes in, because Harry is fundamentally someone it's hard not to love. Harry is someone who finds strength through love, while Grindlewald was damned by it, and that contrast has a lot of potential there.

I think as a plot device it makes sense for Dumbledore to send Harry away if the expulsion at the beginning of his Fifth Year goes through. He's confident about being able to keep him safe at Hogwarts, but not anywhere else as much. I imagine Petunia and Vernon all but throwing the boy out of the house during the school year rules out the blood wards, and keeping him at Grimmauld full-time is a security breach waiting to happen.

Not sure what ships (if any) would appear aside from the canon Grindledore, but this is definitely one that's been bugging me for a while so I'll drop it here and maybe do something with it later.