Chapter 191: Same Model as Dumbledore's. Like It?
Going to see Grindelwald. No matter how well-prepared he was, no matter how strong he'd become, facing a wizard of that caliber meant no guarantees. He might be suppressed or influenced. Might not realize something was off until after he'd already left.
Grindelwald was not Dumbledore.
With Dumbledore, Regulus had direct experience. He'd heard the man's guidance, felt his methods. Not deep familiarity, but enough that their interactions carried a baseline of trust.
Grindelwald was secondhand. Books, other people's accounts, old newspaper clippings. The image those fragments assembled was too blurred to be useful.
An impossibly powerful wizard? A defeated man? A prisoner locked away for decades? Someone who'd once set all of Europe on fire?
None of it was accurate. Not really.
Regulus wasn't about to decide Grindelwald was friendly just because this particular arrangement had benefited him. The opposite, if anything. At that level, people couldn't be sorted into simple categories of good and evil.
They sorted into two kinds: useful and not useful.
If you were useful, you got placed on the board, given resources, guided into position. If you weren't, you didn't even register.