do you have any child!graves headcanons?? you write him so well and i need to know your ideas... for science :) <3
Oh man! Child!Graves, as in from When You Were Young? I do have head canons for that! The way I picture him (and the way little Graves was gonna develop), he didn’t have much of a childhood. His family put tremendous pressure on him to be great. He was a ‘Graves’, after all. A child of a crazy powerful and influential bloodline, filled with various Graves men and women who have all dedicated their lives and their magic to the servitude of the magical community in some way or another, most recently being his father as one of the founding 12.
And then the added bonus of Graves having a well of rich, magical energy even at a very, very young age – so much so, his small body almost can’t contain it all. His father stresses the importance of containing himself and the safety of secrecy. He’s never allowed out of the grand estate, because his family fears he wouldn’t be able to harness himself in public. So they bring in tutors to help him reign himself in.
Cue school, where suddenly he has peers his own age, but has been tutored since he was 3 or 4 by the best of the best. Cue a small boy who knows he has to be the best. Who is already trained to be the best. Who is the best at everything but making friends, because outside of his tutors and the servants (human and creature alike) at the Graves Estate, he has never had one – let alone his own age. He’s a small, serious boy. With powers unlike any child his age. He’s more a machine than a boy, and school is his first glimpse at how different his childhood was.
But he was raised with the idea that the Graves live to serve, so he lives to serve. His magic is not a gift, but something that makes him a weapon. Something he must be conscious of at all times. He holds himself like a loaded gun everywhere he goes.
So when Grindelwald turns adult Graves (a man who is powerful and good and respected, but distant and not very well understood) into a child – cue a small boy finally being told that he is not a weapon, but a gift. That his magic is something to be celebrated. That his life is his to tailor as he wishes. This may be my first fic where, in some way, Grindelwald is in fact liberating in a positive way for Graves (even if unintentional). Grindelwald sees him as the very reason why he must do what he does. And if anything, the more he learns about baby Graves, the more protective and attached he becomes.
I just see him as a very small, very quiet, very anxious boy. A boy who was never allowed to be a boy.