Chapter Text
───── SATORU ─────
If there was a drug on this planet, Satoru was sure it wouldn’t quite compare to Malfoy Manor. The Manor was amazing, alluring even, unmatched in its ability to convince Satoru to forget anything else existed except the comfort she felt within its walls.
It had, for one brief evening, almost convinced her that the world beyond its gates had stopped turning. There had been warm food waiting on the table before she'd even realized she was hungry, clean sheets that still smelled faintly of lavender, and people who asked nothing of her except that she rest. It had been dangerously easy to pretend that Grindelwald was someone else's problem. That if she stayed tucked away behind ancient wards and ivy-covered walls for just another day, the war would politely wait for her to return.
It hadn't.
Though she supposed she shouldn't have been surprised. For when had war ever waited for Gojo Satoru to be ready?
The newspapers piled across the library table made certain of that.
Every edition seemed worse than the last. Villages burned overnight. Ministry officials assassinated in broad daylight. Entire families vanished without explanation, leaving behind little more than abandoned homes and neighbors who spoke only in frightened whispers. No, Grindelwald was moving more openly now, and with every passing day the casualty reports grew longer, the attacks bolder, until even the papers seemed to be running out of ways to describe the destruction.
Satoru stood over the enormous map spread across the center of the library, one hand braced against its edge as dozens of tiny silver pins glittered beneath the morning light filtering through the tall windows.
Each pin marked another attack.
Far too many attacks.
Tom sat opposite her, his sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms as he sorted through Ministry reports with the meticulous precision that seemed woven into his very existence. Beside him, Lord Malfoy compared newspaper clippings against casualty lists while Aurelia transfigured colored thread into delicate ribbons, stretching them from one silver pin to another whenever a possible connection emerged. Abraxas, meanwhile, leaned quietly against one of the towering bookcases with his arms folded, watching them all with an unusual stillness that Satoru couldn't quite place.
For what felt like nearly an hour, nobody spoke. Or maybe that was just the noise in Satoru's head.
Finally, Satoru frowned.
She reached across the map, lifted one of the silver pins from southern Germany, and shifted it several inches farther west.
"They keep saying he's attacking at random."
"He is," Tom replied without looking up. "There's no obvious military objective."
"No." Satoru shook her head slowly as she continued rearranging the pins, tracing invisible lines through Britain and continental Europe until the scattered attacks no longer looked quite so scattered. "That's exactly why it isn't random."
That finally caught Tom's attention.
He rose from his chair and crossed to her side, studying the map with narrowed eyes as she adjusted another marker, then another. For several long moments he said nothing, his gaze moving methodically from city to city before dropping to the dates and casualty reports scattered across the table.
"The distances are inconsistent," he murmured.
"They are."
"The targets have no political affiliation."
"They don't."
"No strategic importance either."
"No."
His brow furrowed as he followed the line of attacks farther across the map, his eyes flicking between the reports and the silver pins until, almost imperceptibly, his expression shifted.
"They're getting bigger."
Silence settled across the library.
Tom reached for the nearest newspaper, then another, comparing casualty reports against the map with increasing speed.
"Thirty-one," he read quietly.
Another paper.
"Forty-eight."
Another.
"Seventy-two."
His fingers stilled against the parchment.
"It isn't conquest," he said at last, lifting his head. "He's escalating. Every attack is larger than the last. He isn't trying to hold territory. He isn't even choosing strategically valuable locations. He wants people talking."
Aurelia's ribbon drifted to a stop midway between two silver pins. "Fear spreads faster than armies," she said softly.
Satoru nodded, though something still didn't sit right with her.
Her gaze drifted back across the newspapers, lingering this time not on the casualty figures but on the photographs printed beneath the headlines. And then, finally, the last piece clicked into place. Fuck.
"Wait."
She unfolded another newspaper across the table.
A crowded marketplace.
Another.
A railway station overflowing with families trying to flee.
Then another, the front page dominated by the smoking remains of a schoolyard where children had been playing only hours before.
Her stomach tightened.
"He's choosing crowded places."
Tom glanced at the photographs before looking back at her.
"So?"
"So..." Satoru's voice came out quieter than she'd intended as she looked between the photographs and the map one final time. "He knows I'll come."
Nobody spoke.
She didn't have to explain the rest. Every person in the room understood exactly what she meant.
Grindelwald had figured her out.
He knew she would always choose civilians over victory. That if forced to decide between pursuing him and pulling innocent people from the rubble, she would never hesitate. Every battlefield had been chosen with that certainty in mind, every attack carefully arranged so that by the time she reached him, there would already be too many lives hanging in the balance.
And she could scream and curse him all she wanted, because he was certainly intent on messing up her plans.
But maybe this was a good thing.
Because if Grindelwald was doing this, going this far just to keep her away?
He was scared of her.
Good.
She'd prefer it that way.
───── TOM RIDDLE ─────
To Tom’s surprise, the first one to speak up after Satoru’s realization was Aurelia. Though he supposed that she always was the voice of reason.
"Then we need to stop looking at where he's been," Aurelia said, reaching across the table and pulling the map closer. "If these attacks are becoming increasingly deliberate, perhaps the more useful question is where he would want to strike next."
Satoru nodded slowly, her gaze still fixed on the scattered silver pins. "Somewhere crowded."
"Somewhere that matters," Tom added.
"Somewhere where I can't ignore him," Satoru finished.
Tom looked at her.
There it was again, that infuriating certainty with which she seemed to accept the worst possible conclusion and then immediately begin figuring out how to survive it. There was no panic in her expression, no hesitation, only that familiar determination. He cursed that small part of him that wondered if her bravery was more of a stubborn refusal to acknowledge her mortality.
Because why should he care about her mortality when his was decidedly more fragile? He turned back toward the map, blocking out his emotions. They would do him no good here.
"Then we need to identify what all of his previous targets have in common."
"We already know that," Satoru said. "They're crowded."
"No." Tom shook his head. "That's only the obvious part."
He reached for one of the reports Abraxas had brought and spread it beside the map, then another, arranging them according to date rather than location. Satoru watched him in silence as he moved from one attack to the next, his eyes scanning the figures with increasing concentration.
"The first attacks were relatively isolated," he said eventually. "Small villages, government offices, places where the casualties were manageable. Then he moved toward larger gatherings."
"The market in Munich," Aurelia murmured.
"The railway station in Salzburg," Lord Malfoy added.
"And the school," Satoru said quietly.
Tom nodded. "Each attack attracted more attention than the last."
"And more people," Satoru added.
"Exactly."
She leaned over the map, studying the pins again. "So he's not just increasing the number of casualties."
"No. He's increasing the audience."
He had spent weeks thinking the attacks were meant to terrify people into submission, but perhaps that had only ever been part of it. Grindelwald wanted to be seen. He wanted every witch and wizard in Europe to wake up knowing his name, to look over their shoulders and wonder whether their village would be next.
He wasn't simply waging a war, no he was creating a spectacle.
"And if he wants an audience," Satoru murmured, "he'll need somewhere people are already gathering."
Tom's eyes flicked toward her. "Which leaves us with two possibilities."
Satoru looked at him.
"Two?"
"Two obvious ones." He tapped the map. "The International Wizarding Exhibition is being held in Paris next week. Hundreds of delegates are expected, along with thousands of civilians."
Satoru's expression tightened.
"And the second?"
Tom moved his finger farther north.
"The reopening of the King's Cross international terminal. It's supposed to be a symbolic event for Britain, especially with the Ministry trying to convince people that the country remains secure."
"That's a lot of people," Satoru said.
"Yes."
"Which means he'd probably choose one of the two."
"Probably."
She frowned.
"Can we get there in time?"
Tom almost laughed. "That depends on which one you intend to go to. But it’ll certainly be faster than whatever we were doing before."
Satoru stared at the map. For the first time since they'd entered the library, she looked uncertain.
Not frightened. Tom had rarely seen her frightened. But uncertain, yes, because there was no way to be in two places at once, and for perhaps the first time, Satoru was being forced to confront the possibility that she could not save everyone.
Tom shook his head again. What was up with him? Why was he constantly trying to decipher Satoru?
Abraxas had been quiet throughout their discussion, but now he pushed himself away from the bookcase. "I'll go to Paris."
Tom looked at him. "You?"
Abraxas rolled his eyes. "Come on, Tom, you know as well as I do how well connected I am. Besides, I’m the only one amongst us three that can actually speak french. I can take Dad with me.”
Satoru's eyes moved between them. "Then I'll go to King's Cross."
Tom immediately looked at her. "No."
She blinked. "No?"
"You'll go to Paris."
"And you'll go to King's Cross?"
"Obviously."
"Tom."
"The station is in Britain. I can handle it."
She stared at him for a moment before narrowing her eyes. "You think I'm going to let you walk into a Grindelwald attack alone?"
"I was about to ask you the same question."
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because I'm me." Because Satoru, perhaps for good measure, thought that she was safe by herself. And so why did his heart still pang?
Tom stared at her. "That is perhaps the least convincing argument you've ever made."
She opened her mouth, clearly preparing some sort of retort, but Tom spoke before she could. "You're the one he wants."
The words came out sharper than he'd intended.
Satoru went quiet.
Tom glanced toward the map again, suddenly finding it much easier to study the ink than her face. "If he has been deliberately choosing places where he knows you'll intervene, then sending you to the most obvious target is precisely what he expects us to do."
"So you want to use me as bait?"
"No." Tom's jaw tightened. "I want to stop him from deciding where you go."
Satoru studied him for a long moment, and something in her expression softened.
Tom hated that. He hated the way she looked at him as though she could see through every carefully constructed layer he had spent years building, as though she could find the thought beneath the thought and the feeling beneath the feeling.
"So," she said quietly, "you want me to stay away from the obvious target."
"I want you to think."
"I am thinking."
"Then think about what happens if you're wrong."
Satoru's gaze dropped back toward the map.
Neither of them spoke for several seconds.
Finally, she sighed.
"Fine. We split up."
Tom nodded.
Abraxas reached for one of the reports, but Satoru caught his wrist.
"Be careful."
He smiled faintly. "You sound like Aurelia."
"That's because Aurelia is usually right."
"Don't let her hear you say that."
Satoru laughed softly, and for just a moment the tension in the room eased.
Then Tom looked toward the window.
The sunlight had shifted while they'd been talking, spilling gold across the library floor. Somewhere beyond the manor's wards, the war continued moving without them, indifferent to their plans and predictions.
He should have felt confident.
They had a direction now. A strategy. For the first time in weeks, they weren't simply chasing Grindelwald's shadow and hoping it led somewhere useful.
But Tom couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Perhaps it was because Grindelwald had always seemed several steps ahead of them.
Or perhaps it was because, for the first time, Tom understood exactly what his opponent was trying to accomplish.
Grindelwald wasn't merely hunting Satoru, no he was learning her.
And Tom wasn't entirely sure which frightened him more, the possibility that Grindelwald understood her better than they did, or the fact that Tom himself had begun to understand her at all.