Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He was silent when they found him. 

Of course he was. Delgato had been half-sure he was dead, the broken little pile of their poor Director, left collapsed in the farthest corner of the dank stinking little cell they’d found following the barest thread of magic, Grindlewald’s filth folded through the bright glimmer of Graves’ signature Shield-- Grindy had been siphoning magic for weeks, muddling up the magic enough that the poor bastard was the battery for the wards on his own fucking cell.

He’d been completely unmoving after they’d burst through the door--of course he was. A week, since they’d captured Grindelwald with the help of the blue-coated Brit and little Tina Goldstein. A fucking week, with not even what little food and water Gellert-fucking-Grindelwald must have offered his prisoner before they'd captured him, to leave him skin-and-bones the way he had been that day.

“We’re too late,” Weiss had hissed, barely a step in, falling back and turning away from the agonizing failure of the notion.

Delgato had almost agreed, had gritted teeth against the cruel swoop of a stomach dropping in painful, helpless regret. But it was only proper to put that tiny endless glimmer of hope out of its misery, and well. He had rank, it was his duty.

So he forced himself forward.

“We’re not,” Delgato had said, on his knees, two fingers pressed to the thready pulse in Percival Graves’ throat. “Oh, Mercy Lewis, he’s alive. Mercy--Fuck, get some light over here. Someone go for a Healer, fuck, sir, just--”

Chapter Text

He was silent, in the hospital.

He was still silent, after the first desperate week of potions and spells gave him a reason to wake. 

He was...unnerving, silent and still. Awake, for sure— he tracked sound uncannily, watched anyone in the room with him with such a laser focus and such wary stillness that the healers didn’t realize he was blinded for days, a blindfold curse left to linger. It took days longer for them to sort it so that he finally blinked to find light and Healer Donovan's familiar face. 

He didn't say a word, then, or as a policy, really, and that stillness didn’t truly uncoil until he heaved himself out of the bed and stalked back to his own office nearly two months after he'd been carried in, but he'd finally nod or shake his head in answer to questions. Two days previous, the only indication that he might have heard them was a piercing stare and the tense breathing of a trapped wildcat.

“Sir, d’you need anything?” 

A nod and the briefest of pantomime, brought pen and paper.

With sight returned, he jumped to using his recovering magic so quickly half the staff was sure he’d shred whatever remained of his magical core. He had quite thoroughly earned a scolding for doing even the meager magic that made memo creatures move, wandless and wordless, and smiled thinly at the healer doing the scolding before doing it thrice more. The healers were getting better at asking before he got it into his head to do something medically, magically foolish.

He was silent, when his summons were answered, when Picquery arrived as a jangle of business-clad hard-edges and apology. Silent in a narrow hospital bed, shoulders broad but thin under a hospital-issue nightshirt, clean-shaven but shaggy-headed, dark eyes bright and sharp as steel above cheeks gone hollow—  

"It's. Percival, you must know the job's yours, if you want it," Picquery said.

He was silent when he accepted.

Chapter Text

He'd never been a loud man, is the thing. Some men shout at their employees to promote discipline, or raise their voices in frustration, and that was not behavior that Mr. Graves had ever indulged. Praise or punishment, Mr. Graves had never been one for shouting — even during drills, he raised his voice only enough to be heard, and everyone hushed to hear better.

It was joked: the loudest thing about the Director is his wardrobe.

Well. Had been joked. No one was in much of a joking mood about the Director these days.

The change…it ought not have felt so profound. Or perhaps, it was more accurate to say that it didn't...quite feel profound enough, in some ways.

It went without saying that the Director's fieldwork days were on hold indefinitely — the Healers had done their best by the knee, and perhaps time would ease what they couldn’t. But for now, and for a long time coming, the limp was only eased by the cane and frequent rest, and it grew visibly worse over the course of the morning's tasks, his face pale from lack of sunlight and grey with pain. 

That was a blow. Percival Graves was a familiar face in the field, and ops that had the Director on them rarely dared to go wrong.

But that wasn't entirely unexpected. He'd been benched before to sit out injuries. And it was a departure from the norm in any case, for the Head of the DMLE to be risking himself in the field. It was, for all intents and purposes, a desk job. Percival Graves had simply never allowed that to stop him before.

The real blow, though, was subtler. Not something anyone might have guessed they'd miss. Not something anyone might have expected they wouldn’t have, as long as Percival Graves headed the DMLE.

The Director’s afternoons had always centered around the mountains of desk-work the department’s running demanded. Meetings, paperwork, negotiations, all of the bureaucracy that made the business of auroring tick, not just in New York but across the country. It was a rare day, when his office wasn't layered full with more paper than all the trees in Central Park might have given, but a rarer day still, that any of them might have to venture down to it with a question or a casual complaint, or really, anything but a problem that required the privacy of a closed door. 

His office was an awkward thing, well down the hall from the bullpen, to take the coveted corner of the building, and it sat at such a distinct remove from the bustle of the rest of the department that a shout in the bullpen could barely be heard from the threshold.

Previous heads of the DMLE had appreciated the quiet and the prestige that such a remove provided. The imposter had surely appreciated it, a cushy lair to plot and scheme from.

Percival Graves had never stopped grimacing over the distance, and he took frequent walks to ease the divide--fetched his coffee from the same carafe they used, perused the big case board on the regular, tweaking threads straight, lingered on his return from meetings outside the department, to say hello and offer comment or praise, or snipe rejoinders with the jokers of the force.

Or he had.

Grindelwald had hid the faux pas of going straight back behind the excuse of his own chaos, the hubub and panic drifting over from Europe behind him. He'd picked up the habit to some extent, though thorough reflection and exchange of notes throughout the department would term his rendition closer to skulking than anything else, and the amount of time at the President's heels suspicious only in retrospect.

Still. A blow, to realize now that something they'd had was lost to damages they hadn't been able to prevent. Being benched for injuries had never prevented the Director's efforts before, but he'd never been permitted out of the hospital while still being quite so lamed before. Now, once the morning drills and sparring rounds were finished and he’d shaken hands and heard the day’s reports, no one could blame the Director for retreating to his desk and staying there. Not when the stoicism didn't hide the cost from where it carved fresh lines into his face, or the shake in his hands.

But…

The drills were as crisp and demanding as ever, the very few matches the Director had ever been inclined to participate in, he still deigned to, putting aside the cane, stepping into the ring with a half-smile and a bow. Those matches still ended as quickly now that all of the spells were silent rather than just most. The only thing obviously lacking was the footwork, and the jocular roughhousing at the end of a match had been replaced with someone getting the cane back under his hand as quickly as possible.

Incorrect reports, if they had got as far as his desk, still flew out to smack themselves down into the to-do box of whatever poor bastard had neglected their cross-references or their spelling lessons, marked up in red. If sometimes his spiky Palmer-script shook, no one ever said anything.

He still watched interrogations and court-days, made time for it he surely didn’t have to give, still nodded approval and devised exercises and experiences to press them closer to excellence. 

Their caseboards were treated to the same exacting eye they’d always fallen under--though it came as a thoughtful pause now in the morning, and again in the evening, instead of several times a day--and if it was now the pointed tap of a fingertip to a scrap of evidence that pushed a case forward, rather than a musing sentence, well, his facial expressions certainly hadn’t changed. They learned quickly to be on hand if there was a case of theirs on the board.

The silence was…

Now, Mr. Graves could speak. All in earshot had jumped the first time he did it, after his return. That was a small group, and there had been little talk of anything else that week. And the next. And when it happened again, it was just as notable.

It wasn't that he whispered, exactly. But he spoke briefly, and murmured at a volume perhaps better suited to the bedroom than the bullpen.

They had always hushed, when the Director spoke, because he'd never been a loud man. Now--they hushed faster, and harder, when Director Graves was speaking. 

He didn’t do it often. As weeks tugged toward months, such incidents could be counted with the fingers of one hand.

And it was never much. Never fragments, never anything uncareful or unfairly clipped. But he weighed the very few words he’d offer like a poor man with the last of his coinage, and once they were gone, there wouldn’t be any more until some metaphorical payday.

The junior aurors, the trainees, heard him most often--too many things they didn’t know, that couldn’t be efficiently conveyed with the tilt of his chin or a sketch of colored light that hung quietly in the air until he waved it away. But more often, a quick-scribbled note was offered, to direct them to a mentor, a case study, a lead overlooked. And likelier still, it was followed by a memo creature that presented itself with a flourish, to explain further.

The senior aurors got the fewest of his words, needed the fewest of his notes, and oscillated wildly between the warmth of that regard, and the sinking weight of failure.

It. It ought to have been....

More disruptive, a Director who wouldn't, couldn't, didn't, speak.

But the department stumbled, and then they recovered their footing. And that was a proud thing, really, a credit to him. 

And. Having the pieces of him that he could give was better than being left with nothing. And they so easily could have been left with nothing. Hours more, Healer Donovan had admitted, before she chased Delgato and Weiss out of her hospital ward, and there would have been nothing to be done but don their dress blacks and grieve. 

But. There was something terrible in how they all smoothed into a new reality, something that worked so easily yet tasted of heartbreak and salt-iron on the tongue, something that felt like stone walls constructed in a hurry and disappointment bitten-back.

Perhaps, Delgato mused, morose, to Weiss over cigarettes taken out on a chill-air walk, it was because it was so easy. It so easy, and it was only so fucking easy, after all, because the Director made it so, and they let him. 

Perhaps, Weiss mused back, and stole the tobacco pouch with nimble fingers, to roll another. Would you want it harder? For us, for him? Already a lot of work.

Lotta work for him, sure. No, wouldn't want it harder, not for him. Us? We could stand to work harder, the lot of us.