Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Theseus looked back first.

With bowstring-tight posture, he slipped his hands into his pockets, the motion anything but easy, and tilted his attention to the exits.

“Newt,” said Theseus quietly, “any of those that look familiar to you?”

The humming crowd was battering Newt’s already strained senses, turning Vogel’s speech incomprehensible in the echoing hall. Jerkily glancing back, Newt saw the German Aurors in their black coats filtering towards the doors, slipping through the well-dressed people around him.

Familiar? How was he meant to remember? The faces from that night had all long grown blurred.

He bit down on the inside of his cheek, staring at the floor just ahead of Theseus’s feet. Keeping specific attention on the fraying laces of Theseus’s polished shoes helped soothe the icy chill.

“From Paris,” Newt mumbled. “The night Leta…”

The word stuck in his throat and crumbled there, a small bird suffocating before it could break free.

Died, he thought, feeling no shift in his body. Before I even took a step forwards. While I watched. While there was so much left unspoken between us.

Theseus, thank Merlin, stopped peering. The hawkish intensity had smoothed itself from his face; instead, he simply looked tired, maybe a little resentful, taking shallow breaths in through his mouth.

Whether it was from having to see Newt attempt diplomatic negotiation, regretting coming on this mission where he didn’t quite fit, or quiet fury at Vogel’s corruption, Newt didn’t know.

He didn’t ask. The shape of asking would have been as simple to find as constructing the shape of Leta’s body after she’d burned to ash. Something unreal, and, by gut instinct, wrong.

Newt wanted to be out of there. He wanted to tell Albus that, no, there was no one here willing to do what was right, and ask—not for the first time—why it had to be him. He didn’t mind failing. Sweat beaded at his collar, hot and trapped between the worn wool and his body. He didn’t.

Worrying at the buttons of his coat between thumb and finger, Newt came to a conclusion.

They had to leave.

Only, following Theseus’s word, with that strange instinct that still existed between them, even as they operated like awkward strangers in the team, Newt knew they were blocking the exits. It wouldn’t be a problem, he hoped. Newt knew how to slip out of every trap thrown on him, Lally had the Charms skills of a studied genius, Jacob somehow always handled himself, and Theseus—

Hope, like an axe breaking down a door, had severed a little of Newt’s uncertainty when Theseus had agreed to join the team with nothing more than the full facts from Albus and what seemed to be an unfamiliar, unconditional trust in Newt.

But sometime in the early twenties, every rigid line he used to categorise the particular creature known as brother had begun to blur like ink on a wet page. The bleed made everything impossible to understand, and Newt pretended not to notice, because acknowledging it would require words, and words between them had always been treacherous things.

When Newt looked up, Theseus was gone.

He froze. His hands curled into claws; it was too warm, too noisy, the wired reactions of an ecosystem when a scavenger was on the move. Swallowing hard, he spun in a slow, dizzy circle. Whatever Vogel was saying—meaningless noise—made the crowd tighten and bunch, opening up gaps he slid through by instinct.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he began to shoulder a new path, getting nowhere.

“Theseus?” Newt called, the name emerging too soft and uncertain to be heard. He tasted pennies. Panic. When they’d been younger, at the Ministry galas crammed full of people who hated their tainted family line, he’d run from Theseus too many times, balling himself up in the corner and shaking until he was found. Don’t abandon me, he thought, please don’t, and once more, remembered Leta.

A hollow feeling opened up beneath his ribs.

It took three steps to settle into the pace of the hunt.

At first, Theseus dragged, pulling away feeling like the reminder of a phantom limb. Paranoia, electric-tasting and old, dug its claws into the tension building between his shoulder blades; but he focused on taking silent steps, rolling heel to toe, as if sneaking down the stairs of their childhood home.

Scattered here and there were wixen who recognised him, nodded to him. He nodded back, social programming still running in the background. His posture loosened; he knew exactly what he had to do as observations passed like unspooling film across the back of his mind. Unimportant.

After all, the woman in the blue wasn’t just someone who’d been there when Leta had been murdered. Vinda Rosier, practically Grindelwald’s lieutenant, had been on his red-string board of connections for years, haunting case files with a subtlety Grindelwald had lacked in his earlier years. He’d only tried to make it easier for Newt to understand because he wasn’t certain exactly what Newt and Albus did in their evasive, quiet missions across continents, between strangers far from the Ministry.

Theseus knew better. He should know better than to separate from the team that had, however warily, accepted him. Chasing Vinda alone was exactly the recklessness he would have warned Newt against.

The rubbled subway; the telegram of Newt’s execution; the closed inquiry of Graves’s disappearances, the murders, the village-burnings; the near-misses of his own team; the strange encounters he’d had at both ends of his twenties; and Paris. It had been months before he’d been able to leave the house without being pushed to answer the question that mattered the most: How can you explain the Ministry’s failure in Paris, Head Auror Scamander?

The memories never failed, never changed, never demanded much of him beyond consistency. They fed the roaring in his ears. A purpose. He was not the man they were glancing at, too alert and too quiet. He was a walking machine programmed with both horror and amnesia. Theseus had evaporated; duty had evaporated; and, in the cold fire—

—what do I want from this?—

—when has it ever mattered what you’ve wanted?—

—dissolved, too.

By the time Theseus caught up to Vinda, he had the distinct sense of crossing a line—perhaps even cracking open a plan—with the fatalism of knowing that even reason couldn’t have held him back from trying to make an arrest in a room of enemies already barring the exit.

So, in the crowded room of the German Ministry, echoing with the rise of a new dictatorial order, Theseus made the decision to raise his wand. He locked eyes with Vinda Rosier. She gave him a small smile, green eyes focused distantly on his shoulder.

“You’re under arrest,” he said. His voice came out almost gentle; his heartbeat was so loud in his ears that it flattened all emotion. “All of you.”

No one moved, other than those to his back. Maybe they thought it was about justice, about the law. The Ministry might have given his life structured meaning, might have determined right and wrong, but that was once. That was for a Theseus Scamander who hadn’t seen it fail Newt, fail Leta.

For several seconds, a different timeline unfolded in front of him. In this one, Theseus had fought for just a heartbeat against fate’s threads. He’d proved that the guilt he’d carried about Leta’s murder had been worth the sleepless nights, the lost friends, the gentle erosion of everything he tried to carry in silence.

In this timeline, justice could be almost as good as being alive. In this timeline, Leta was no longer a casualty of the rally the Ministry refused to acknowledge, and his own two-step dance with death could turn simply into more knots lacing his spine. More mistakes to hold him upright.

Then, with a rush of air, the spell struck like a bottle to the back of the head in a cold bar.

Theseus’s veins froze over. First, the crook of his elbow; then down to his fingers and up to his neck, rigor mortis of the attempt at justice sitting in. For a bare second, he had enough time to register there were watchers—weren’t there always?—before the universe held him still.

He pitched down, soundless.

It moved quickly after that.

The German Aurors moved in efficiently, with the neatness of a planned arrest. They hooked their hands under his arms with no trace of emotion—and he was too paralysed to dig his heels into the floor and resist. As he was cataloguing defense spells, as the crowd parted, Theseus forgot all spells and any plans for escaping.

Because standing there was Newt.

Wide-eyed and staring in the new, severe grey coat, his mouth was held slightly open. His little brother’s hands, empty at his sides, were as frozen as they’d been when the graveyard had been sparking its dying light around them. That expression of mute shock, as lost as an eight year old, drove the lesson right under his ribs.

Reckless.

Selfish.

And, Theseus thought hazily, vision blurring as the curse spread, making even breathing begin to feel like inhaling through a wet, leaden blanket, he’s terrified.

After that, whether he was entirely unconscious or not didn’t matter. Instead, it was the vague sensation of being held down—somehow trapped—that screamed out above all others, louder even than the failure, which huddled in the shadowed corners of his artificial unconsciousness.

If it could be expressed, of course, it had to be voiceless. Rage and grief tangled together like wrapping veins and settled into the pale sense of something small and sobbing, heard through muffled walls, dragged across concrete.

Someone was propping him up onto his knees. His arms and legs were as stiff as doll joints as he let his chin fall forwards to his chest, noting with sharp interest the manufacturing floor and scattered, rusting bolts. When one of his captors bent his elbows behind his back, it forced his head up.

There were smattered star-shaped cuts in the ceiling; it was industrial and ancient, crumbling, letting starlight through.

The night, he supposed, proved he’d been successfully moved to a second location without undue interruption. In the days since he’d learned about the troth, he’d already felt himself somewhat set apart from the rest of the team, in the pathetic way of someone holding onto former glory: once-liked, once-golden, once a neat collection ascribed qualities that’d poisoned the well of his relationship with Newt.

Theseus thanked Merlin that Newt hadn’t chased after him. Ever since he’d been chosen to lead the search for Grindelwald, he’d known that the increasingly charismatic dark wix harboured allies who liked to kill—to burn—to hide. Their popularity, studiously played to every common discontent, was built on one simple principle.

Violence.

The anonymous letters had started coming after Paris. Newt and Albus couldn’t have known, thanks to the parallel lines of his little brother’s grief and his own, but they’d clearly been from Grindelwald. Theseus knew the man well, if not intimately. Hunter and hunted. On mission in Europe, Theseus had stepped into the field again, his team always at least ten minutes behind, the strategy dictated by Grindelwald’s terrifying capabilities. Now, given Vogel had chosen to be Grindelwald’s puppet rather than Albus’s, the potential headlines of how his capture would be framed should have flashed through his mind.

Instead, all he could think of was the grand memorial that had been erected in one of the side corridors close to the atrium.

It took six steps to reach the plaque once you turned into the third corridor from the fountain. It stretched taller than him: had to, to fit every name on, and still leave blank those two inches of space where Leta deserved her name. There, he’d started wondering exactly what he’d have to do alone to avenge her.

A jab into the base of his skull jolted him awake. Pins and needles crept into his wand arm as he immediately tested his fingers, flexing them bare millimeters. The air was heavy with a distinct smell of wet dirt and decaying plants; he swallowed, throat clicking, and tried not to remember any of his many previous captivities.

When he dared to tilt his head, hissing through his teeth with pain, Theseus managed to look around.

Vinda stepped around him and strode across the room, positioning herself by the far door. There were two people on either side of him. German Aurors.

The wards must have been engineered to let a select few people through, into this old, derelict factory. A rusted production belt sat on the far right of the room, with various other machines in states of collapse between him and the damp walls.

The silence stretched as his captors stared towards the far end of the assembly floor, without mention of either Helmut or purpose, until one withdrew a pocket watch.

“And…now,” said the man on the left. “Any moment. He’s coming.”

Theseus knew enough German to understand. He tried to wrench his hands forwards, scanning the floor for his wand in the rare chance it could have fallen from his unusable hand.

On both counts, he failed. The concrete floor only held rubble and dirt. And his hands weren’t just tied. They were laced firmly, intricately—behind his back, to his shoulders, to his legs. He bit back a frustrated noise as he rocked on his knees and let his face settle into an inexpressive mask. Years of practice helped his features remain level as a circle of white light opened up on the concrete floor.

It smelled like melting plastic; the wards were surgically excised with unique power. From that opening stepped through a familiar, elegant figure.

Grindelwald dusted off the lapels of his suit and looked straight into Theseus's eyes.

“Theseus Scamander,” he said, voice echoing off the metal fixtures. “How good of you to join us.”

They watched one another silently across the dismal factory room: two men who were on opposite sides of a war both of them knew was far from over.

Crushing, painful anger was building in his chest. It had been years since he’d seen Grindelwald in person. But how many nights had he spent thinking about the man? Wondering who he’d take next? Feeling himself slowly breaking under the stress of still being the leader of the task force, even with so many deaths behind him?

“Maybe it was about time,” Theseus said.

In the end, he could draw an invisible mental line from having proven himself worthy of winning the old case, through Newt and New York, to here, kneeling in a crumbling building and utterly at the other man’s mercy. He had always been a direct person—confrontational, even—in a way that’d made the quieter Newt despair. The adrenaline rush of the hunt had died the night Leta had.

What do I want from this?, had an answer it was better for him to leave acknowledged while there was still fight in him.

“The prodigal war hero,” murmured Grindelwald. His body language was unreadable; with his hands pressed together, he looked like a priest. “Looking for a fight, as always.”

“Your fight found the German Ministry first, me second.”

Grindelwald smiled, as if smelling the thoughts of Leta like a shark out for blood. “Forgive me if I believe it wasn’t as simple as you wanting to do the right thing. Because those whom you have lost, they cannot be replaced. They leave a mark, do they not?”

The knots were damn tight, and whoever had done it had taken care to make sure he'd have no quick escape. If someone kicked him, he was certain he'd topple. “If you're trying to empathise with me, you've got the wrong man.”

“The chase went so…beautifully only because I do believe we can understand one another. My visions tell me we both know what it is like to use power for evil—and to have that evil become so deeply rooted that it becomes part of who you are. And that you chose to be defiant against the Germans provides one further suggestion—your idea of evil stems more from within your own self than the strictures of our broken system. Is that correct? Maybe no one expects it, from you, but I do.”

“Mmh,” Theseus said, making a noise to fill the dangerous silence. He was momentarily losing the capacity to come up with any retort; only half listening, his mind was still racing through the possibilities of escape.

“I do know what it's like to lose someone you love,” Grindelwald said, and tilted his head. “It’s a coincidence we captured you. A lucky one. The Germans could have had you tucked away somewhere less pleasant…but, no, this coincidence could prove instructive. It’s interesting. Between two forces, here you are. Between Albus and his…little friend. And I don’t know anything about how useful you are. After all this time.”

Any further attempt to escape his bindings would look too obvious. For now, the ropes were painful, dangerous, but they weren't a death sentence. If Grindelwald's lackeys—Leta's killers—cast another curse like the first he'd been struck with, the rest of his inevitably shortened life would be spent staring at the crumbling corrugated ceiling of his factory as Grindelwald executed him.

So, he had to be cautious. He forced his hands to settle, digging his nails into his palms.

“Well, you have me now.”

“Not that it comes at my ease. Most likely, we’ll have to determine what a danger you posed to Chancellor Vogel. Highly illegal. But weren’t you already committing treason? With your seat at the Ministry, with your very identity as a supporter of the Muggles and only latent critic of the Statue, you suppress your fellow wixen just to hold your seat of power.”

Theseus could recognise the Ministry had some operational flaws, but the suggestion that the entire establishment was more destructive than Grindelwald's fascist vision galled him.

“I would disagree,” he muttered.

“And what would Newton say?” Grindelwald said.

Theseus's gaze snapped back up to meet Grindelwald's. Don't you dare bring my brother into this, he thought, but he bit down on his tongue hard enough that he tasted blood.

“He can say what he likes,” Theseus said.

“That would be fascinating indeed. But unfortunately, he is not here to speak his mind. Tell me—do you know what happened to the little brother you once knew?”

Theseus frowned. “What happened? He grew up, and became a better man than you'll ever be. And he can—he can think what he likes, too. About you, about me, about all of it. Doesn’t mean he has anything to do with whatever’s going on with you and Albus.”

Grindelwald raised an eyebrow. “Yes, he can think what he likes. Then, perhaps, you might come to see why no one chose to follow you in your suicide attempt against my loyal followers.”

Vinda turned from where she was standing idly by one of the machines and gave him a distinctly satisfied smile, eyes raking over him just as they'd done the moment he raised his wand.

With nearly eight years between the brothers, the closeness Grindelwald was trying to make him feel the absence of had always been impossible.

“What's your solution?” Theseus said. “Seeing as you know so much about my family.”

“I assume you want to survive. However broken and sad your bureaucratic life is. So, do as I say, and I will lift the noose you placed on your neck standing against the greater good of wixenkind.”

“You'll kill me if I don't do what you want?” Theseus questioned, and then let out a short, brittle laugh. “Very diplomatic. Do you have any subclauses for that offer?”

He would have held both his hands out, palms to the sky, if he could. It was hardly a convincing offer from Grindelwald; one of the first things you learnt as an Auror was that death, on each mission, stalking like a hunting dog, was a real possibility at the rise of every day and the dawn of every night.

“And as of yet, we don’t know.” His pale eyes glowed with a look Theseus had seen in the mirror. That look, like you had died, and someone else was wearing your body around to act out a charade; but he was certain Grindelwald's was not out of exhaustion, not the product of uncovering several corpses, but that manic fugue that had created them.

“No one who's gone missing at your hands has ever turned up alive again. Forgive me if I don’t feel trusting.” Theseus inhaled, thinking of how many investigations he’d headed. “Forgive me if I’m currently assuming you’re going to find out I know nothing about a plan we don’t have, and kill me. Make me disappear. As any legitimate politician, of course, would do.”

“Oh. So you miss him,” Grindelwald said.

A shiver ran down Theseus's spine as he had a sudden, uncanny flash of déjà vu. No—could he have been referring to—?

“Director Graves,” Grindelwald said. “Or, as you knew him, your dear friend Percy from the front, who disappeared…well, no one knows when.”

“He’s dead?” Theseus managed.

“Not yet,” Grindelwald taunted, and Theseus growled in the back of his throat, giving one more wrench at his ropes.

"He's alive?" he repeated. Stupid question, like he could force Grindelwald to give him a different answer. "Right now, he's—?"

"Unfortunately, Graves isn't part of the deal," Grindelwald said. "Your cooperation will have no effect on his survival. You see, I am already rather attached to the man."

"Then what do you want from me?"

"Albus." And that was all Grindelwald said, as though it were explanation enough.

Theseus let out a tight breath. "If you wanted leverage on Albus, you kidnapped the wrong bloody person."

"A ransom note will not work," Vinda said simply from her corner, and didn't elaborate.

Theseus was inclined to agree. Albus had been on edge since the Aurors had arrived in his classroom five years ago; understandable, really, given the meetings Theseus had sat in on and quietly evaluated, the Ministry taking the confident view that Albus and Grindelwald’s closeness was sure to at least pose a threat.

“No need to explain our plans,” said Grindelwald mildly. “They very much depend on what I might find.”

So he wouldn’t know what Grindelwald wanted to do with him. That was dangerous. If you didn’t know what you were resisting, how could you fight it?

Like a building headache, two vice-tight screws at his temples, Theseus felt the brush of Grindelwald’s Legilimency against his mind. Grindelwald frowned, turned to the side, not meeting Vinda’s questioning look, and pinched the bridge of his prowed nose between two fingers. The attempt had taken effort, and yet, Theseus’s thoughts were still his own.

It didn’t bode well, knowing he could shield the little he did know about his former teacher and younger brother.

“If you think I'm going to help you do anything, you're sorely mistaken. I'd rather be dead. I'd rather never see any of them again before I—“

“Oh, interesting,” Grindelwald said. “So you really are a creature driven by shame."

Theseus stared at Grindelwald.

“Creature?” he asked, trying to buy time, trying out various slicing and burning charms on the ropes and feeling their magical resistance to his weaker-than-usual wandless non-verbal commands.

“Your brother does collect them, does he not?”

Grindelwald bent down and leaned in close, pressing his face against Theseus's as if they were old friends sharing secrets.

“I can use that,” he said softly. “Your morals. Your beliefs and values; the things you hold dear. But are they really worth dying for? If that is what it takes to keep them intact? And do you, ever the stalwart Ministry man, ever consider that morals, double-edged, form out of repulsion alone?”

Theseus dug his fingers into his palms again.

No, he thought. It wasn’t repulsion. It was conviction.

Worse had happened to him before, and he had survived.

Grindelwald examined him with the expression of a Muggle surgeon looking at a traumatic war wound. The corner of the other wix’s mouth curled slowly downwards as he thumbed the lapel of Theseus's coat, running his hand along the seam to the shoulder and then drawing away, rubbing his fingers together, slowly and luxuriously.

The muscles of Theseus's stomach tightened, preparing for the Cruciatus Curse.

“Interesting,” Grindelwald said.

“It's wool,” Theseus said, blinking. “Savile Row.”

The murky expression in Grindelwald's eyes made him think that, somewhere, he'd missed a point.

“The tailoring is excellent, the fit perfect. Truly. It is impressive in its own way, that you feel the need. A sad, desperate attempt to fit in. A desire to be part of something you no longer trust. A man of the system, through and through.”

Theseus glowered at that. “Unlike you, I don't determine my identity solely on my inclusion or exclusion to society. Just because I'm not an extremist...I don't need to try to convince myself or anyone else of my worth.”

“Ah, but you see, my words are never without purpose,” Grindelwald said, then looked up at him. “The more layers we wear, the more complex the network of interactions becomes. What if you discovered what lies beneath? Could you survive it? Could you deal with it? Certainly, it is not as simple as removing this layer and to be free. The layers lie one over the other and each one must be removed with care, but someone like you will never become free—“

“What?”

“You have always lived your life on this layer,” Grindelwald said, indicating with his hand flat what Theseus assumed was the level of a Ministry official. “And you have always been content with it—the armour over your skin.”

Theseus gave the slightest shake of his head.

“I wouldn't be so sure,” he said.

From the expression on Grindelwald's face, the subtle shift, the hint of what could have been eagerness, he wondered not for the first time how the man's mind worked.

There was nothing interesting in Theseus’s own layers. Easy to believe that of himself. The first, just him, as he was; maybe a second, brother, would-have-been husband; and if there was a third, it was just echoes, the thunder of artillery and the spitting of bullet fire, remnants from the war. It was greatly possible Grindelwald thought him more fascinating than he really was. After all, he had met Newt, and his expectations were likely high.

The spectre of Grindelwald's rise was a shadow this version of himself had practically been raised and shattered under: Junior Auror, Senior Auror, Head Auror, widower.

But close to, Grindelwald didn't look as inhuman as he had silhouetted among those blazing blue flames. There were no shadows to add an uncanny affect to his eerily calculating face. His blond hair was streaked with grey; his cologne was musky and elegant.

Theseus hated him.

“You don't care to know why you've come second place? Why you’re not the prisoner I wanted?”

Theseus tried to shrug one shoulder, but the ropes were all infuriatingly connected, like a spider's web. “It's only a mad few that compete to get kidnapped and murdered by you and your cultists.”

“Ah-ah. Who's to say I've hurt him?” Grindelwald said, getting a withering glare in response. He clicked his tongue. “Nevertheless, I commend your modesty in understanding where bureaucracy fails.”

His hands reached out for Theseus's coat again, making the Auror stare at the floor, jaw clenching. He counted the tiny specks of pebbles amid the grey as Grindelwald's hand moved up from his jacket to his hair, a light touch that made him want to bite the man's long fingers off.

“I'm not afraid.”

Grindelwald gave him a long, thoughtful look, leaning in a little closer. Theseus swallowed.

Had this been what Percy's last moments had been like?

Or, maybe better, maybe worse, had a scenario just like this been his last few minutes of freedom?

“I hope you do not believe yourself above me,” Grindelwald said, and he reached out again, as if to fix Theseus’s collar, but stopped himself, taking his fingers away, as if he had remembered himself, and closed his eyes. “Unfortunately, you are very much beneath me.”

The incoming curse would burn like hell, like poison, but he could take it. But then, just in case this was it, just in case it was his execution, he ignored the warning of his drumming heartbeat echoing in his ears, for Leta and Percy.

“Funny you think that,” Theseus whispered, holding the eye contact, “because maybe you’re just a fucking nutter.”

Grindelwald reached out, nostrils flaring; his cold fingers hooked under Theseus's jawbone and pulled him forwards, crushing his lips into a brutal kiss.

The curse would have been a thousand times better.

He lurched backwards against his restraints, feeling the enchanted ropes tear at the exposed skin of his wrists, but Grindelwald's tongue forced its way past Theseus's lips, in his mouth, probing like a serpent tasting prey. At the back of his mind, he felt himself go blank, cold. Like falling into a lake. It only made the heat of Grindelwald's mouth feel worse in comparison, patchy and uncomfortable.

A second passed, then two; the third second spliced itself as Theseus made a weak noise. Eyes narrowing, Grindelwald pressed harder on his jaw. No, he thought, panicked, no more and tried to bite down. Carrying them both through the desperate lurch forwards, Grindelwald twisted to the side, folding them closer into the contact, the furrow between his brows intent and studiously distant. As though Theseus was contaminated.

The sensation brushed his temples again. Like a breath against a sheet of metal, he felt a gentle crunch, as if something had fallen back. Theseus gasped, checked the barriers; no, they were still there, had held firm, but—

If he hadn't always been, somehow, wrong inside before, he certainly was now. It was foreign, cold, bitter; his skin was crawling, tightening around his neck, until the collar of his shirt felt as if it was hanging him, even on his knees.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the dark wizard released his grasp on Theseus.

There was a moment's silence.

Theseus didn't know whether licking his lips would rid him of the aftertaste or only invite Grindelwald in, and that thought alone made his stomach twist all over again.

“As I suspected,” Grindelwald said.

In response, Theseus dry heaved onto the concrete floor, the bile bitter and acidic. He coughed, hacking this time, but nothing more came up.

“Suspect away.”

“Now, my dear, would be the perfect time for you to summon our friend, Albus,” Grindelwald said smoothly, standing with ease.

“I can't,” Theseus said. “Though maybe I could get a little closer to it if you gave my wand back.”

“I know how he makes plans; he takes care to ensnare each of his little pawns. So, unless you are entirely forsaken by him, I understand he's taught you a signal. A trick. Something to make him come running after you.”

Theseus wasn’t entirely blind; he’d known what Newt and Albus had been doing the last few years.

Theseus raised an eyebrow, feeling a hint of schoolboy rebellion rise within him. “I’ve got nothing. Maybe I'm just entirely forsaken.”

“Then, I wonder, shall I wait for him for a week, for a month?” Grindelwald said pleasantly, moving towards the door. “Or shall I rest on my laurels, confident today is the day?”

“You'll wait a lot longer than that.”

“Well, then.” Grindelwald said, tilting his head to indicate that his followers should accompany him. “Until tomorrow, Mr Scamander.”

With that, they were gone.

“Fuck,” he breathed out. “Fuck.”

His struggle had only tightened the chafing ropes around his wrists and ankles. Made it worse. A punishment for his foolishness in getting himself into this mess. He had gambled it all, his love and loyalty, for nothing. Every time he took a hesitant step beyond the rote duty drilled into him, beyond the quiet ignorance Albus preferred, he was punished—unhesitatingly.

Shouldn’t he have learned that, at least, over the years?

In their father’s study, among the heavy books and studies in practical normality, there’d been a cloth-bound copy of Greek myths. After reading it as a boy, he’d first been terrified, then resolute: woven promises as talismans against the myths of Theseus, his namesake, resolving never to either abandon the people who needed him or slay the wrong monsters.

But, here, there was no way he could avenge a woman he had loved and a man he had likely lost forever when at best, he'd fight his way free with his life, and at worst, endure until the end.

Theseus looked up at the leaking ceiling of the factory. It had started to rain.

Chapter Text

Flex, contract, extend. Theseus drummed his fingers against his palms, the joints aching like poorly oiled machinery, for a rhythm to pace his racing thoughts. The rain had been fresh and sharp—until the heavier rust and rot of the factory had crawled back in, conjuring the worst parts of the prisoner of war camp of 1917.

Now, his eyes were sandpaper-dry from the watching. Even if he got free from his bindings, there were wards cast around the building—and Grindelwald's own charms layered overtop, all humming nearly constantly on the edge of his consciousness. He'd picked the knots and tugged at the ropes until his fingers were sore. But given their indestructible enchantments, all that had accomplished was preventing the hand of his wand arm falling off.

There was room for fear, of course—bravery couldn’t operate without it. But there was no space for fracturing. Much of Theseus’s life spun in circles, the same mistakes being made over and over again, and after wearing the mask for the team of being fine, cracking now felt like opening a door and stepping out into an abyss.

So, he kept persisting: shallow, careful, controlled breaths.

Based on long-standing concerns about the allegiances of the German Ministry, I decided to perform a citizen’s arrest while off-duty out of concern that another mass killing event was being prepared in Grindelwald’s name, he thought, imagining it in neat type, the satisfying drumming of the typewriter keys. Summarily, I left alone, and separated from the team. While this provided the advantage of being more covert, i.e., separating from Newton Scamander, it also resulted in my capture. As far as I know, the rest of the team escaped without injury. I hope they did.

In a shriek of steel, the metal door flew open; a sharp bar of light shot across the factory's pitch floor, and Theseus blinked. Grindelwald emerged in a corona of white, his wand lit and held before him as if he were a child navigating the darkness, whiting out sections of the sharp angles on his face as if he were made of stone.

Grindelwald came to a stop in front of him. He clicked his fingers and the broken lights of the factory sparked into impossible life, casting everything in a yellow glow.

His expensive clothes and ruffled hair warred with the clear, cold fury on his face.

“I’m not,” said Theseus, “doing anything for you.”

Whatever you’re planning to do to me, went unspoken.

Trembling, Grindelwald flicked his head back, knuckles whitening. Of the last few months of paper appearances and interviews and last-ditch attempts at arrest, Theseus had never seen Grindelwald let down his guard enough to show anger.

Something in Theseus’s stomach twisted, but the fear registered as if through a screen. Detached, distant. Misty because the fog had become familiar. You’d be good under torture, Scamander, his instructor at the Academy had said, holstering his wand and letting Theseus exit with shaking legs from the semicircular stage of the training room. It’s the anticipation of pain that breaks people, but you seem to anticipate it—not feel it.

Closing his eyes, Theseus took a single, hitched breath. The last thing he saw was Grindelwald striding forwards, leather-soled shoes crunching on the floor.

Pop.

If there was information Grindelwald wanted, Theseus’s mental barriers were all still intact.

Then, the pain registered.

It needled at the space between his brows, insistent as a drill, and simply didn’t stop. Forwards, it went, boring through bone and tissue—there was no blood on his face, no catastrophic nerve collapse, this had to be crucio—accelerating in intensity until his head felt stuffed full of fragments, sharp as the rattle of a fast-approaching train.

One. Two. Three seconds after the casting, the sensation had blossomed into pure agony.

Breathe through it. Just breathe.

And yet not a question had been asked of him. His eyes snapped open, vision blurring at the edges; and Grindelwald was only standing there. Watching. No pretty words; no offered tricks.

Only this: he raised his wand for the second time, and cast the cruciatus curse again.

This time, he couldn’t help but gasp, jerking back in the ropes hard enough that his shoulders both screamed, unable to carry forwards the pace of his body. Snapping back forwards, he dropped his chin to his chest, hair slowly soaking in cold sweat.

Theseus wouldn't scream, wouldn’t crumble, couldn’t reveal anything to a man like Grindelwald.

It was oddly quiet, other than for the distant drip of the night’s rain breaking through the ceiling, and the gentle impact of the door on its rusted hinges—left ajar, but unreachable. He shifted on his knees, trying to fight the muscle spasms of the curse. Theseus’s heart rocked in his chest to the beat of a sprung clock, the nausea making his mouth flood with saliva.

Without breaking the silence, Grindelwald struck again with enough force it loosened his hair from its careful styling.

Fire seared through his veins. It was like being ripped apart, slowly skinned from the inside out; crashing like the tide, the curse rushed through every nerve and wouldn't stop, raging anew again and again.

As if from a distance, his breathing turned drenched: wet, rattling, limping. If there were words to say, they escaped Theseus entirely, strategy slipping through his fingers like water.

Time stopped moving.

“I’d have liked to kill you once you’d redeemed yourself,” snapped Grindelwald, the words registering hazy. Theseus tilted his head back, staring at Grindelwald down his nose.

The other man split and double, tripled, then shimmering back to one, splitting between his tenuous grip on this reality laid just over the ocean of agony below. “A position,” continued Grindelwald, “where martyrdom might be impressive and strike at the heart of the establishment so desperate to stand against me. It takes a more interesting man to prove himself worthy of being held here than I suspect you are, Head Auror Scamander.”

If he said anything, he risked incriminating the team.

“Fuck you,” he gasped.

Grindelwald kicked him, hard, loafer scuffing his jaw.

Bound as he was, Theseus collapsed on his side, noticing wide-eyed that the concrete under his cheek was splattering with fat circles of damp. He was crying. Silently. If time had stopped moving, it was breaking now. Each convulsion under the curse felt like muscle tearing, nerves pinching and imploding the longer Grindelwald held it on him. There were records set for this, measured in points towards and pitches into insanity.

But dying was a better option than giving in to Grindelwald. Scream, don’t repress the pain, was written in the Auror codex. The spell traces the magical circulation and begins to cling, causing phantom pains and allowing for technically infinite casting before—

He coughed and flecked the floor with blood.

He bit down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw the fresh taste of copper—and spat that out, too, aiming it in Grindelwald’s direction between his ragged, shallow breaths, grasping at the air as it came in to suffocate him.

Abruptly, Grindelwald crouched down, only to wrench his head up by the hair. With his limbs tied, Theseus’s scalp supported the full weight of his body as they locked eyes, the soundless tears running down his jaw. Finally, Theseus couldn’t help but think, someone’s going to explain themselves. Explain this.

“You’re so proud,” said Grindelwald.

If he were proud, as proud as Grindelwald assumed him to be, then he’d have already said everything trapped and webbed at the back of his throat. The accusations, the righteousness, the fury. He’d have said it all.

“It hardly bears explaining to you, of course, with where you stand. With your resistance. You’ll discover I can be very persuasive—but the question is—what do you know?”

“Nothing,” gritted out Theseus, and with a dissatisfied grunt, Grindelwald dropped him.

Theseus almost certainly knew nothing Grindelwald sought. If there was a secret he was to tell, he had no idea what it was. No one in the team had been told the full plan—in fact, they’d been playing catch-up with Grindelwald this entire time. Since the truth of Graves’s replacement, the new protocols Theseus had installed meant Ministerial information tortured out of him would only cause limited damage.

“They’re going to escape,” Grindelwald said to himself, dusting off the front of his pressed trousers and getting to his feet. “I can see it. The vision.”

For a moment, he stared off into the middle distance, his lighter eye flickering. Then, his face tightened, and he snapped his wand back down.

This time, he lost track of the curses, of how long they were cast.

Something like an hour. Easily, something more. Trying to hold onto the pain made his thoughts scatter like birds: leaving him without an anchor. Grindelwald simply watched as if uncovering an interesting dissection, a surgeon opening a war wound.

Fine tremors ran through his body as he managed to tilt himself back up to kneeling, digging his nails into his palms until they left indents deep enough they came away warm and wet. His own magic was beginning to stir like a wild beast, his thoughts fraying as incandescent pain exploded through him over and over. It was worse—the pain was worse—so much so that the world around him had tilted forwards, beginning to slowly spinning as he tried to recognise the distant, animal panting sounds as his own.

“Who?” he finally managed, more as a diversion than a confession. He knew who: had suspected, from the moment he’d seen the troth and the weariness in his former teacher’s eyes.

“Everyone breaks,” said Grindelwald, instead of answering. “In time, anyone can break. Theseus, you’re all alone here, aren’t you? All alone and keeping other people’s secrets. All I have to do is destroy you when you don’t give me everything—everything you know, at least. Would that be such a bad price to pay?”

Distantly, he wanted someone to touch him: something like a hand on the back. That this was meant to have been everything he wanted—revenge, alone with Grindelwald, revenge—

The word stretched and frayed, his mind pulling at the seams. This was dangerous.

“Stop,” Theseus managed to gasp out, barely hearing his own voice through the agony. Immediately, he wanted to take it back, hunching over.

Hunching over? He immediately fisted both hands, stretching his fingers back to scrabble at the ropes. A feeling like tasting dust in a hot room ran through him; the raw rings on his wrists tingled, and he felt the ropes loosen.

His magic had burned through the enchantment.

With that, Grindelwald lifted the curse, leaving him buckled in its wake. Theseus was left with a numbness that seemed to stretch on forever, as if his body was unable to register anything else outside of the pain that it had just endured.

“If the fear of death won’t make you talk, then should I propose the fear of insanity?”

Theseus, panting, shook his head, keeping his hands behind his back. “You haven’t even asked any questions.”

Grindelwald sniffed. The brush against his mental shields wasn’t gentle—but his mind held. Theseus could tell—Grindelwald was wearing this quiet fury like a hair shirt, hateful ferocity in every glance, redirected from a target far out of reach to one easily at hand.

Just as Theseus forced himself to standing, there was a sharp rush of air as Grindelwald apparated behind him—slipping through his own wards—and wrapped his cold fingers around Theseus’s wrists. Just like that, the ropes were tied.

He tried to reach for the memories of ricocheting into MACUSA’s marble halls, wand in hand, demanding to see the President. The memories of returning home to the empty flat after Newt had taken a dead-eyed Tina back to America—of walking numbly into the bathroom and turning on the tap and staring at it for hours and hours until he’d eventually shuffled into the hallway and laid down, thinking how he’d never before seen the cracks from this angle.

He tried to reach for the fury that’d helped him fight as a fourteen year old or the fear that had forced him to run rather than surrender after the first of the several platoons he’d joined in the war had been slaughtered.

“Do you know what MACUSA did to me, after I was captured by your brother? Did you know they cut out my tongue?” Grindelwald shook his head. “It’s this little network Albus has, you see. His little informants, all running like rats the moment I shine a light on them—never quite stepping forwards to face me until we find them. This? This is the nearest I can come.”

Instead, all he got was the tightness of grief. Compressed, unexplainable.

“And you’re resisting. Resisting, when I can be so persuasive…do you understand, Theseus?” said Grindelwald. “No, not yet. Since you are so fond of your Muggles, let me do this a Muggle way, and spare your mind from an early grave.”

Theseus tried to take a few steps, his feet rolling on the firm ground, but his numb legs buckled. Bile rose to the back of his throat—he tried again to haul himself up, and found his body simply refused. He might simply dissolve into the concrete, barely contained by skin. Every breath felt like inhaling broken glass. His magic, stirred into a frenzy by the repeated curses, roiled beneath the surface like a caged animal sensing weakness in its prison walls.

Grindelwald circled him.

Deliberate, unhurried.

“No answers?” Grindelwald's voice had gone soft again, the fury banked into something more controlled. More calculated. “By the end, MACUSA had me on so many sedatives, flies were trying to feed. Unless you fail to understand exactly—“

Theseus managed to lift his head. “Perhaps…” he whispered, “...they had better questions.”

The first blow came so quickly Theseus didn't register it until he was already sprawled on his side, ears ringing. Not magic—a physical strike, knuckles against cheekbone. So unexpectedly Muggle that he almost laughed, the sound emerging as a wet cough instead.

“Better questions,” Grindelwald repeated, as if tasting the words. He crouched down, too close, bringing the mixed scents of expensive cologne and sweat. “What an interesting theory.”

The hairs on Theseus’s arms rose.

“Perhaps you're right,” he continued, reaching out to brush a lock of hair from Theseus's forehead with incongruous gentleness. “Perhaps I've been approaching this all wrong. For a man so dedicated to justice, you've never managed to bring any to bear on me. Not in New York. Not in Paris. Not here.”

Grindelwald got up again.

“I've been wondering about that,” Grindelwald said. “All those resources at your command. All that righteous anger. Yet here you are, alone again. As if you're the only one who cares enough to try.”

The words found their mark with surgical precision. When Grindelwald stepped out of his field of view, Theseus tried to turn his head, and was immediately arrested by muscle spasms so devastating that he nearly passed out.

“Did Albus ever tell you what he said to me, the first time I suggested we might have to take action to achieve our goals?” Grindelwald's voice drifted from somewhere behind him. “He said, ‘There will always be those who stand against us.’ So young then. So certain that good people would naturally resist what the short-sighted call evil.”

There was a soft rustling sound, followed by the whisper of magic—different from the harsh crack of the Cruciatus. Something being conjured.

“But here's what I've learned since then,” Grindelwald continued, his voice closer now. “Most people don't stand at all. They wait for someone else to make the difficult choices. They wait for someone like you, to take the stand, to carry the weight of the noble choice for all else, and to either fail, or succeed comfortably enough that they can conclude they were safe all along.”

The words rang too true to the months after the war, where the Ministry had swung between a tribunal and accepting his Muggle war medals. Where even Newt had watched him like a murderer. He’d walked through the streets and had people praise him for inspiring them to help the Muggles near him, people blame him for practically sending their sons to die by example. The door of his tenement flat had been painted across. Murderer. He’d kept it there for far longer than necessary, as proof he should not make any further mistakes.

The ropes hissed and snaked, rearranging themselves, moving from forceful and excessive coils into careful knots that formed a web across his body, pushing into the fabric of his clothes so hard they felt like hands. He struggled, managing to clamber into a hunched standing position as the enchanted ropes bound his crossed arms to his chest. If he could straighten up, he'd be taller than the dark wizard, but the ropes on his legs flew up, tightening around his neck, jerking his head down.

And then, he crumpled on the floor—curled up on his side like a child, arms tied to his thighs.

Cold crept up his limbs. He had always been claustrophobic. While Newt had liked tucking himself away to hide, Theseus had always preferred to be out in the open, on the defensive.

“My little Auror,” Grindelwald said. “Given how easy you are to collect, you'd think they'd put a better watch on all of you. Before you go missing, that is.”

“They'll know if you impersonate me,” Theseus said. “We learnt from that; the same trick two times won't work.”

“I won't,” Grindelwald said coolly.

The dark wizard raised a hand in the air and gently moved his fingers, as if coaxing an animal out of the darkness. It was not an animal that answered his call, but a leather stick, splitting into black strands at its end.

“A cat o' nine tails, I believe you British call it,” Grindelwald said, taking one end and testing how it snapped. “They only stopped using this in the Muggle judicial system five decades ago. And yet you still fight to defend those animals.”

There was no retort to make when he knew he was about to be beaten like a dog. He pressed his forehead into his knees, entirely silent.

Gold light shot from the other man's wand and sank into his coat. The long dark garment that had been the topic of so much earlier debate was reduced to dust.

The chill of the factory air against his sweat-damp shirt sent a violent shiver through him.

“You're the golden boy of the Ministry. The hero. The one who follows orders and asks no questions.”

“That’s not true,” Theseus said—before he could stop himself, as though it were any other argument with Newt. But it was a mantle he hadn’t been able to bear since Paris. “You don’t know me at all.”

Grindelwald tested the weight of the whip in his hand, the leather creaking. “Do I need to? We’ve been chasing one another long enough, and now I finally have the chance to educate you.”

The first lash caught him across the shoulder blades, the shock of it momentarily eclipsing the lingering pain of the Cruciatus. His body jerked reflexively, a strangled sound escaping before he could trap it behind his teeth.

“Your brother,” Grindelwald said conversationally, as if they were discussing the weather, “has quite the talent for vanishing just when things get interesting. Paris. New York. Now here.” Another lash, this one curling around to bite into his ribs. “It's almost a pattern.”

Part of it rang true, in the fragment of Theseus that had grown bitter over the years, that’d been standing still at the centre of the world as his brother spun away, constantly holding just the one of them in time to allow their fractured brotherhood to survive.

The rest of him was just furious to hear his younger brother’s name in the bastard’s mouth. It all flickered to mind—the letters returned unread, the fights, the moments in-between that were as precious as glass beads.

“Leave—“ he gasped, “leave Newt out of this.”

“Why should I? Albus collects them,” Grindelwald said, circling back into Theseus's limited field of vision. “Bright, damaged people with something to prove. Except you can’t be very intelligent, can you? Because you’ve let them leave you here, all alone.”

Another lash. Then another, quicker now, less precise. If I died here, what would she think of that? Leta, who’d died so he could live—although it was nowhere near as simple as that. It couldn’t be. A whole soul, a whole life, gone. What kind of equivalent exchange was there for that?

“Do you know what it's like?” Grindelwald's voice rose. “To be so close—so close to everything you've worked for, only to know that the one person who truly understood your vision is now dedicated to destroying it?”

The whip missed, screeching against the floor and burning up Theseus’s shoulder. The next lash was weak, exposing his calves to the cold air. With a hum, Grindelwald cast a sharp severing charm. Cotton sliced with the sound of paper; Theseus twisted his head, heart pounding, and saw Grindelwald had split the back of Theseus’s shirt and waistcoat wide open. Not that they fell away. The blood welling from his lash wounds sucked the fibres in, matted them down.

All he needed was find the rhythm in it—to brace, to prepare. But it kept changing. No pattern. Or a pattern it would take time he didn’t have to depicher just to bear it. The timing, the intensity, the location.

Where next?

The fresh strike caught the tender flesh just above Theseus's hip, and he couldn't suppress the strangled sound that escaped him. Not quite a scream—he wouldn't give Grindelwald that satisfaction yet—but close.

Too close.

And too late. Grindelwald let out a grim, triumphant laugh, and snapped the whip down hard.

Theseus’s vision went grey.

He barely felt the wound, branching like lightning over his shoulder blades, up his spine.

Something was wrong—wrong, wrong—with his back. Grindelwald pursed his paling lips and severed the ropes into haphazard pieces, opening up a gash across Theseus’s cheek and thigh. With his hands hanging limply, he was able to just about touch the ragged edge of the wound—and knew immediately it was dangerously deep.

“You follow him blindly,” said Grindelwald. “Like a dog returning to a master who beats it.”

As if he was going to betray Albus. Like hell. Shaking, he tried to stretch forwards; the puddle of blood beneath him was glossy enough to catch his reflection. Those weren’t the eyes of the Head Auror. He felt as alone as he’d been when Newt had wrapped his arms around him in the graveyard.

“Not…” Theseus said, the honesty coming before he could metre it at the sudden well of furious, helpless emotion. “Not blindly. I don’t trust him. I don’t trust the Ministry. I don’t trust…anyone, anymore.”

Grindelwald paused, his chest heaving. In the sudden silence, Theseus could hear the soft patter of blood dripping onto concrete. His blood.

He tried to close his eyes.

“Stay with me, Head Auror Scamander,” said Grindelwald.

Shedding the ropes as if crawling from the decaying ribs of a dead animal, tingling with new cuts, Theseus rolled onto his back. The cool of the floor felt good against his back—only, the total loss of sensation should have warned him it was anything but.

“Tell me,” Grindelwald said, his voice soft. “Who do you blame for Leta Lestrange's death?”

The question caught Theseus off-guard. Leta's name in Grindelwald's mouth felt like a desecration, so he focused on his hands instead. The light from the reanimated factory fittings was warm, yellowish, and it painted Grindelwald’s fingers as if by the sun.

“You,” said Theseus. “It was all you.”

There it was again—the press against his mental defenses. Theseus was the reverse of a born Legilimens. Instead, he’d been born with a talent honed through obsessive discipline for protecting his mind. The barriers echoed: were tested. It was further than most got, and already too far.

Grindelwald’s small sound of acknowledgement as he stood there, staring down at Theseus and the growing halo of blood, said it all.

“Interesting,” Grindelwald said, raising his wand. “It seems as though we’ve got far enough for me to get inside.”

Chapter Text

Consciousness returned to him in a slow, sticky deluge, like filthy floodwater.

First, he registered the uncomfortable crick in his neck, the blurred cut of light visible several feet away from him. Theseus dragged his gritty eyelids open all the way. The light crept under a shut door. The bedroom he was in was unlit, the bulb of the heavy lamp on the bedside table nothing more than shattered glass.

The process of having been taken to a bedroom, was, of course, a concern. Further away from the German Ministry. Further out of sight of the British. Increasingly limited hopes of rescue, at a second location.

Theseus took stock of himself.

His hands had found the pillow, in his unconsciousness, curling knuckles-up as in sleep. With a hiss, Theseus forced his fingers to uncurl, one by one. He was still largely intact, then—though he’d pressed fresh half-moon dents carved into his palms with enough force to splatter the white linen.

Pain hit like a delayed curse. Fire lit his back, delayed, railroaded, sharp as a cigarette tip tracing the lashes. Theseus took three ragged breaths, holding the outpouring of each for six seconds at a time. The counting came automatically, and had done ever since the night terrors he’d had as a child, bolting upright mid-scream to the solitary darkness of his perfectly-kept bedroom.

Sound had brought no one running then—better not to acknowledge such damage—but it would here.

Six more seconds.

The walls were papered dark green, thin gold stripes; the bed had a crimson canopy fluttering in some distant draught from its four posts. Against his now-scuffed Oxfords, the floor was polished enough he could see his face in it. Wherever this was, it was neglected, dusty—and certainly some way from the factory he’d been held in.

Six more.

He didn’t know what Grindelwald wanted from him. Theseus had always handled uncertainty gracelessly.

Six more. Six more.

Slowly, he peeled himself up onto his elbows, and pressed his trembling, wandless right hand against his temple.

“Alright,” he meant to say, “it’s alright,” but while his mouth shaped the words, he only heard ringing silence.

Hastily, he kicked his legs over the edge of the bed, nearly blacking out.

The hearing loss came and went, a neuralsthenic symptom he couldn’t always control. His ears were fine, but they remembered that awful night he’d been separated from Percival: bleeding through the eardrums, sprinting across shell-torn earth. Occasionally, when he was stressed enough, his mind dragged him back there. Provided him with the same neat reminder that making the moral choice, hoping to save lives in the bloodshed, had cracked him inside almost two decades ago.

Theseus stared at the fraying ends of his laces, heart humming in his deaf ears. The Ministry had barely understood the tribunal that had come after the war, had barely accepted his Muggle war medals he’d have rather sunk in the Thames. But, as usual, he’d returned to play by their rules with ambitious vengeance, and been rewarded for it.

But Grindelwald had hinted the Germans had taken him away for treason. Not making the headache any better, he thought wryly.

The consequences of the wider public genuinely thinking he, the Head Auror of the British Ministry of Magic, had made an attempt on Chancellor Vogel’s life—when the same corrupt man was happy to condemn Muggles to death after seeing what Grindelwald’s protego diabola spell had nearly done to Paris—were unthinkable.

Here, in this lonely manor room, there was nothing at all he could do about it. No meetings, no emergency briefings, no intelligence analysis buried deep in case files and oversteeped tea. No trips to the field other Head Aurors would pass over, no chasing of that snippet of freedom, no self-justification of his place in the machine still being for the better.

For the entity of these last years, since he’d been twelve and considered the redemption of their tainted-blood family, Theseus had been watched. Now, he’d cut himself free in one reckless motion, and was alone.

Tears came with the next exhale. He made no move to wipe them away.

There were no windows in the bedroom. There’d be no escape that way, then.

Theseus knew enough about wards to know he wasn’t disapparating anytime soon. They were evident in the old ozone, draping heavy over the wrought-iron chandelier and the cracks around it, spilling from under the door.

He took a staggered step forwards, then another, until he reached the door. The wool of his trousers sat clammily against his skin as he tested the handle.

It was locked.

“Fuck.”

He pressed his hand to the weeping gash on his leg. There was little change in the coil of anxiety in his belly, upon feeling that tram-like groove dripping blood. What did it matter, if he were injured?

With a pained hiss, Theseus pressed his forehead against the wall. He needed to hear better, stop being broken. The machinic numbness of the Berlin Ministry wasn’t him—because he was usually much worse, wasn’t he? Really? His fingers slunk to pinch the marked skin on the inside of his wrist; the bright pain, under his control despite not being loud enough to drown out the rest, brought his hearing back to pinprick sharpness.

Out in the corridor were footsteps, slow and steady. Ringing out against the hardwood. Familiar.

It had to be Grindelwald. He’d memorised the way the other man walked. He’d followed him through Europe, that year before the New York incident, only ever arriving at the tail ends of his rallies and crimes. And, God, Albus’s words had lit a tinder that’d had been burning in him for years already, about responsibility and righteousness and the heavy hand of the Ministry.

There was going to be no grand revenge. But he’d always known that. He’d known that ever since he’d demanded Newt pick a side, and saw the flatness in his brother’s eyes, the same resignation he’d had even as a child. That, maybe, this wasn’t a war worth fighting. In the graveyard, with Newt rubbing circles between his shoulders the way their mother had, he’d only felt cold. Colder, and colder. There had been a chasm between them for years. Never had either known the other. Now, there was only the question of the grief, the blame, and where it would fall.

The door swung open. Theseus readied himself, settling into a hunter’s stance. Muscle memory—he reached for his wand. Still gone. Well, then, he’d hold out for as long as he could. Theseus could do that: could survive anything, knowing that it wasn’t his little brother in his shoes.

Grindelwald’s shadow stepped into the room before he did.

This time, Theseus didn't freeze. He threw his fist out, cracking the other man across the jaw. Bone against bone. Solid. Enough to snap Grindelwald’s head back.

Had Grindelwald been expecting it? It didn't matter; smoothly, Grindelwald caught his free wrist and held it, preventing the feint back he’d planned. In a moment of spiking adrenaline so intense it made his clenched teeth hurt, Theseus drew back his other hand, aiming to find just the right cluster of nerves. But the movement was shaky, too weak.

As if slammed into an invisible barrier, his hand was stopped inches from Grindelwald's neck, paralysed.

Letting go of Theseus’s wrist, running his finger over the old scars—Grindelwald tutted, the reddened skin from the hit rapidly healing. “You looked so refined from afar. My associates told me you were a restrained and fair man. Perhaps only when you’d rather pretend. I didn't expect you to behave like an animal so soon, but…persuasion changes people.”

Theseus flattened his fist, palm out, and pressed a surge of exhausted wandless magic into the shield. He’d been aiming for the spot just under the sternum.

“Truly.” Grindelwald closed the door behind him and locked it with a flare of bright white. He was wearing an elegant cloak lined with crimson red over a suit of grey-green weft. “It’s been two days since we moved you. And yet, your colleagues should have nothing to fear, not in Berlin. Let’s imagine you, of course, are housed safely in the Erkstag, where the newly-branded dissidents must end up. Let’s also imagine that, over this little distance, your loyalty may still mean something.”

“You’re going to extort me.”

“Well. Your record is clean enough that there’s little need to fabricate a scandal. Besides, how many of them once wanted to see you through the veil for aiding the Muggles in their senseless slaughter?”

“Speaking kindly,” said Theseus. He tried not to think about how tenuous his position at the Ministry already was, how many years of work were circling the drain thanks to the current climate. “I’d rather die than make an agreement with you.”

Grindelwald looked unimpressed. “This sentiment seems a common thread.”

“I’ve survived it so far.” He’d toed the edge of his pedestal enough times, and never quite managed to fall. Never, entirely, had he wanted to. There was too much he was responsible for to behave otherwise.

“And yet not kindly.” and Grindelwald rolled the letters in his mouth, throwing back the simple word with mirror-sharpness. “Not kindly enough for there to be any true haste in finding you; not kindly enough that they really care for you, or so I might suggest. But politics can be such a messy business. There are such wonderful grey areas for Albus and his protégè to skip through. I marvel they’re finally concerned about a lawful election at all.”

Thinking back to Berlin only made him uneasy. Everything had felt wrong at the time, he’d known that much. But it was like staring to the side of the white-bright sun on a clouded day. Not able to look at it, not directly. They’d been blocking the exits in case there was a protest; in his time as an Auror, he’d seen bodies stacked for less, Muggle and wixen alike. But the system should have held. Someone else in that room—anyone else in that room—should have noticed. Newt, certainly, had been on the cusp of it.

And even that hadn’t been enough. The little voice in his head was resentful. It followed its instinctive criticism with the same, squirming reminder: and he did say he wished you weren’t brothers, years ago, so don’t be so sure he can bring himself to care about someone like you. But there’d been no sense talking about it. They were always going to be estranged; Theseus would never succeed in his second chances.

Still, if Grindelwald wasn’t lying, outright, then Newt and the team hadn’t left Berlin.

“So what—?” Theseus began.

He was cut off when Grindelwald took a step towards him, reaching inside his cloak. Instinctively, Theseus stepped back. The other man only kept advancing, pushing and pushing until the back of Theseus’s calves hit the bed. Theseus threw himself forwards, hitched, twisted to the left. His heel kicked against the mahogany frame of the bed and he saw stars, barely able to restrain the gasp of agony.

“I do not want you to die, just yet,” said Grindelwald.

Theseus was weak. He was so weak. He’d not even eaten the day he’d been taken, for nerves. And now he and the team were going to pay for his mistakes.

“Sit.” Grindelwald smacked the heel of his hand against Theseus’s shoulder, as if disciplining a startled horse. Halfway back to upright, Theseus collapsed onto the bed, clawing his hands into the mattress to bring himself upright.

He stared down the length of his nose at Grindelwald, breath sawing. Control yourself. Too much of his life had been spent compartmentalising. Control it. There was a simmering pit within him—anxiety and sorrow all in one, the loss of Newt—permanent, constant, aching and real-time—the loss of Leta—

“I know what you did to him in New York. I won’t,” said Theseus, before he could think twice. He immediately wanted to slap himself. Too much information in two simple sentences.

“Would you get on the bed?”

Grindelwald reached into the lining of his coat and withdrew a thick glass bottle. He popped off the cork with his thumb and examined it as indulgently as a good bottle of whisky. A Muggle drug of some kind.

“You're a lunatic who thinks he's a god,” breathed Theseus. “I don’t take orders, not like that.”

"Oh, is that me?” Grindelwald laughed. “Then who are you?” He climbed onto the side of the bed, knees sinking the mattress, examining Theseus with blatant curiosity. “Come. Be reasonable. It's a simple sedative, not a poison.”

Theseus shoved himself up against the headboard. His stomach had turned liquid; he couldn’t stand to breathe the same air as the other man. Animal instinct. It was sheer, animal instinct. His body anticipated him putting it on the line—again—to do what needed to be done, and recoiled from it. “Fuck you. Let Vogel be your living puppet.”

“I’ve already told you.” Grindelwald’s voice was cold, sharp. “Newt is in Berlin. Berlin, I do not control. Yet the cause doesn’t demand control, it demands vision. So, believe me when I say they are all willing to listen to what I might suggest—and what I might suggest, is, finally, some consequences.”

This was exactly why he’d wanted Newt to make some effort at joining the bloody Ministry. It’d not worked—and perhaps a part of him had always known his attempts at protection were misguided. There would be no contacts Newt could draw on, no plausible awareness of the shadow war his brother could use to explain their quiet rebellion. All he had was his fame, his protection under Albus’s guarded thumb, his awkward and evasive nature.

“Consequences?”

“Easily. How many more can you truly afford to lose, Head Auror Scamander? Do you want dear Newt to find out exactly how Leta felt, in those final moments?”

It hit him like a hole punched straight through the scar tissue of his heart. With greying vision, Theseus crooked his elbows, and lay down on the bed.

He told himself he was only biding his time until he attacked Grindelwald again, not giving up. But when he opened his mouth, then closed it, again, no sound came out. Any words to describe the situation, the plea he couldn’t give, had been burned to ashes and scattered across Père Lachaise.

Grindelwald took both Theseus’s wrists in his hand. “You’re learning to understand my perspective on the greater good. After all, you're an Auror. Say my will is greater than your resistance. Why, you'll take it; because if Albus will not mourn you, not at all, we should not make him struggle so over mourning dear Newt.”

The fight was over in barely seconds. The blood loss made the room spin even as Theseus clawed at Grindelwald's cloak, his jacket; in response, Grindelwald straddled him and pressed his forearm down into his neck. There was no air. Grindelwald cocked one eyebrow, mouth twisting in utter revulsion. “You’re cold.”

That day, when Newt had wrapped his arms around Theseus for the first time he could remember since the war, he had indeed been cold. The gesture had felt futile, distant, despite the love behind it. Theseus had walked home alone. From the moment he stood in the hallway of their flat, too terrified to remove his shoes and make it real, he’d known there was no hope left for any of them.

Theseus bared his teeth, and Grindelwald lifted his arm. Beneath his back was gathering warmth. More blood, filling the abandoned room with the penny-metal smell.

“Do you think I can stand to touch you, either?” hissed Theseus. “And if you think you can catch Newt, good luck. Better men than you have tried. Failed. He’s under the protection of the British Ministry. Maybe even MACUSA. If either of those agencies wanted to take him in, if he didn’t want to be taken, it’d be the end of it. Since you—with everything you’ve done, the innocent people you’ve killed, you want to kill—since you, the Ministry is watching. Waiting. The first move you make that’s tested against a justice system you’ve not paid off, you’ll be in Azkaban.”

“Well. If the Ministry is watching, they’ll understand you ought to have sold me every secret you know about Albus from the moment you abandoned your brother,” said Grindelwald silkily.

Albus had never thought much of Theseus, Theseus had always privately assumed. He’d been a perfect student, a careful child. Once, he’d been grateful that Newt had at least one teacher looking out for him; now, Newt and Albus’s relationship only terrified him, making him wonder if all Newt’s difficult years had taught him he was only useful when being used, when being half-absent, an idle messenger.

“At least,” continued Grindelwald, “I assume they might have learned from their appalling incompetence. So heavy-handed towards innocents interested in the cause—maybe they could begin to accept you’re nowhere near the man they paint you as. What do my informants tell me? One of the handful that aligned with Henry Potter—a judicious advocate for a better system—and a moral compass, they say, when it comes to how people are treated.”

“Of course,” snapped Theseus.

His chest was tight. If anyone made him feel as though he’d failed in those three, it’d always been Newt—and he wanted his little brother’s name out of the dark wix’s mind, nowhere near Grindelwald’s prodigal Legilimency.

“I suppose you value that, about yourself? Is that it?” Grindelwald laughed. “Are you scared of the direction in which I’ll break you?”

Theseus tried to twist away. With a sound between a growl and a snarl, Grindelwald pressed him back down, fingers testing the fluttering pulse at his neck. It had, distinctly, jumped. What exactly did Grindelwald want to do to him? What did he want to make him do?

He wouldn’t budge a damn inch; he would not.

But if there were more wix on Grindelwald’s side throughout the German Ministry, if more Aurors than just Helmut had turned, Berlin could become a very tight net, very quickly. The Muggle economy was collapsing. Paramilitaries were running wild in the streets. It was ironic for Grindelwald’s cause, that he sought to position himself about Muggle society while assassinating opponents in their homes, but that wasn’t Theseus’s concern.

His fear was for the odds—how long it might take, for the team to get out. There were hidden passages all over the country for wix, a hangover from the Great War, but Jacob was the only veteran, and had been with the Polish Legions dangerously close to where the dragon project had been in the Caparthians. Helmut would know each of them—might even be delaying them, using Grindelwald’s lie that Theseus was in the Erkstag, testing how long they’d wait in the face of bureaucracy.

“Don’t try to manipulate me, Grindelwald. Just tell me what you want.”

“You are aware of the blood troths Albus and I each carry,” said Grindelwald. “I once possessed both. No longer, thanks to your brother, but it brings nothing to bear on the magical beyond the physicality of its effects.”

He’d seen Newt holding Albus’s troth in the graveyard, examining it with winsome curiosity. Only when Albus had decided to let it nearly kill him in front of two of his former students had Theseus been given the full picture.

“What will you do with them?” Theseus hesitated. “He might not be—“, and he found he couldn’t find the words to describe the former teacher he both respected and could not trust, “—I don’t know. But he deserves better than to be chained to you.”

“Chained?” scoffed Grindelwald.

Theseus held his careful silence, watching Grindelwald, shaking a little from exhaustion. But Grindelwald did not elaborate further, instead examining his hands, his nails, still not getting up, as if the torn white of Theseus’s shirt was nothing more than a canvas for his thoughts.

“That’s what I need to know. And yet you are skilled at Occlumency,” said Grindelwald, “and your mind doesn't quite let me in. Both born and made. I can taste the distinctions in the layers. You would have always been this way. But you’ve taken care to guard yourself, too.”

Theseus ran his tongue over his teeth.

“That's unfortunate,” he said.

“Very unfortunate,” Grindelwald agreed. He lowered his face, the scant light casting shadows across his features, and raised the bottle. “Unless you want us to repeat the unpleasantness yesterday—and unless you want me to twist those morals of yours inside out, knowing you could have stopped harm coming to your brother—“

The air in the room was impossibly thin. Taking advantage, Grindelwald flicked his free hand, and two silver cuffs burst into life on Theseus’s wrists.

He could have deflected that so easily if he only had his wand, or even some strength left. Magic binding charms worked best on those who weren't expecting them, and he'd been distracted. Again. And from here on, he wasn't going to get any stronger. Breathing alone was a struggle. Fighting was harder, more necessary, still an option.

“You bastard,” he said quietly. But even as the words left his mouth, he was shifting, drawing his legs up onto the bed properly. The movement sent fire across his back, but he kept his face blank.

Grindelwald's eyes glittered with something that might have been approval. “There's the man I've been watching all these years.”

“This doesn't make me your ally. Whatever you think you'll find in my head—“

“Oh, I'm not looking for an ally.”

His brother had always preferred to run from choices than suffer them, and perhaps that was why his evasiveness still struck Theseus as an innocence Newt had long since grown out.

But, God, even if it was smothering, even if the grip of his protection was choking, Theseus would make the same mistake a dozen times over, so as to not lose him. Enough years of their life had been spent estranged for him not to fear Newt’s dislike, his everpresent distance.

Theseus stared at the bottle. There would be no incentive for Grindelwald to keep this so-called promise should he not get what he wanted. But it would buy time—maybe even hours—based on past interrogations he’d endured.

How long would the sedative take to work? How much could he hide, even with his defenses compromised? A natural-born Occulmens was usually sent into spycraft or left entirely off the registries for powerful Legilimens. Theseus had chosen the path of the straight and narrow with some desperation, but he could bury any Ministerial knowledge that hadn’t already grown outdated. If he could just—

Shifting the hold he had on Theseus, Grindelwald pinched his nose shut.

A minute—a minute and a half. A clock with old hands beat out the time on the mantelpiece below the mirror, blessedly too tarnished to capture the bed. He followed the seconds in multiples of six, then seven, as if it would change the outcome.

His lungs were burning. Black spots glimmered across the patch of ceiling framed in the bed’s blood-red drapes, and he opened his mouth. Grindelwald shoved the bottle lip against his lips, knocking it painfully against his teeth. The sedative was cold, bitter, yellowish close to, as he watched the volume drop. Distantly, he registered the strange, inexplicable smell of garlic.

Sodium thiopental, most likely.

It pressed through his body as if he was turning to stone. His head was drifting, lifting him towards the ceiling as he sunk into the bare mattress. Like being drunk. Thoughts of being drunk paralysed him with horror. And it was not an unfamiliar feeling, that cold, statue-like sensation, the panicked snap of mental and physical immobilisation, but never had it been induced on him so directly since the last—day?

Two days? More?

Time was falling away. He was falling.

“I don't trust you at all,” Theseus said aloud, the words slipping free. His vision was going dark at the edges. “Hate you.”

“So you're prepared to remain unconscious and let me do—what? What am I doing, Theseus?”

Grindelwald gave him space for the answer he still refused to give—too dangerous, too dangerous by far—like a judge awaiting a guilty plea.

When Theseus woke, he was standing on the cliffs at Devon, the wind tugging at his loosened hair. He raked a hand through it, shifting his weight from one foot to another.

Beyond the gentle edge stretched out the churning sea, slate-grey as the sky. Wrapping his coat around himself, Theseus took a cautious step forwards.

He’d been here with Leta, the day after he’d introduced her to his mother.

They’d felt so lost, nobody’s children, laughing and running across the coastal path, so many metres above the ancient fossils he’d once collected. Artefacts of the past. Even on the cliffs then, he’d felt the weight of secrets pressing in, secrets he’d only find out more than a year later when Leta had finally explained she and Newt had once been friends.

Why, then, it was no wonder she sometimes turned cold.

It was too beautiful here to remember it here. He stretched out his arms, feeling the tug of the beyond. Then, carefully, he flicked his wrist, wand materialising from its holster. This was his mind—his rules. Theseus spun on his heel.

Grindelwald stood twenty yards down the slope, motionless as carved stone against the crumbling Devonian rock.

Their eyes met across the distance.

Move.

Theseus wheeled around and bolted. The coastal path blurred beneath his feet as he sprinted toward the memory that had always served him best—the one place Grindelwald would never want to follow. His lungs burned, his heart hammered, but he ran harder, chasing the distant sound of artillery fire.

Behind him, Grindelwald was getting closer.

The war. He had to reach the war.

On, they ran, past wildflowers and patches of brush, past slants of sunlight coming through the flat sky. Theseus’s strides settled into the loping rhythm of old, the pace that’d made him so good at the chase. It was building under his breastbone. Years of compartmentalisation begged to be looked at. They begged to be weaponised, for once, rather than glorified; ignored; spat at from the other side of the glass box that sometimes separated him and the rest of the world he’d thought he’d finally found his place in.

At once, Theseus skidded to a halt, finally singing with enough adrenaline. Grindelwald was terrified of the war, if his rhetoric held any truth. Theseus could still remember the look on the other man’s face as he’d summoned prophecies of war planes, of refugees, of impossible bombs Theseus believed humankind was bound to create eventually, if they gave them any power. This would be a trap, recklessly laid.

He dropped to one knee and pressed a palm against the earth.

Grindelwald stopped, brushing invisible dust from his suit lapels. “Tell me more about you and Albus.”

“There’s been nothing like that,” said Theseus, concentrating with razor-intensity. “My resistance made this necessary, you’ll tell me. Of course it did. But I’m not the pathetic one. I might be lying drugged up on a bed, but at least I’m not—“

“At least you’re not what?” Grindelwald said, voice like ice. “Ruined by love?”

“There are worse things to be,” Theseus said. “A fascist, a blood-discriminator, a murderer—“

There it was. The perfect word.

Theseus, there’s something you don’t know about me, Leta had said, that night in 1923. She’d already been shaking like a leaf, one hand wrapped around his wrist like a vice. At the same time, she’d refused to look at him, staring through the window they always kept open to the night sky. There’d been a bird at the window—a crow. My brother, my missing brother, the heir. I know where he is. I know he’s at the bottom of the ocean—that he’s dead.

Because it was me.

I did it.

I killed him.

Does Newt know? he’d asked, and she’d bit the inside of her cheek, luminously dark brown eyes brimming with tears. No, and he understood why she couldn’t tell him. There was something too good about Newt.

I’m a murderer. That’s all I am. All I ever will be.

He’d said more, then, about how she had just been a child. How she didn’t have to deny doing it, but it wasn’t her fault, because didn’t they both know what responsibility they shouldn’t have been given felt like, to carry? At last, he'd told her the truth he’d thought from the first instance of her confession: that he loved her, and nothing would ever change that.

“Murderer?” Grindelwald repeated delicately. “All that time taking orders from Muggles…you could obey like a dog, with the right push…”

Only the most skilled at mind-magic could conceptualise their present selves as a physical presence within the deep memoryscapes; it was only possible through active Occulemency in a live memory inhabitation, rarely in Pensieve review. Years of reviewing memory-evidence had taught him how traumatising it could be to witness them, second-hand.

They stretched. The time passed differently. Everyone’s memories were different: the perspective, the interiority, the ability of reliving it to rewrite the truth of the events. Investigating a catatonic victim’s memories could submerge a detective for, say, seven real hours—even if they’d only been gone for twenty minutes.

The death cry of artillery rattled in the distance, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. It was as familiar as hell.

No, it was hell itself, and getting louder and closer by the second. He remembered the collapsing trench walls, the bodies stacked to the height of a man, the bloated rats darting through the muck. The mud had been nearly black, in patches, swollen with rain and reeking of piss.

Theseus crooked his fingers, and when he lifted the impossible handful of earth, it was soaked with the same memories as the fields.

None of those waiting beyond was anything he wanted to share. He had been careful to keep the violence sewn up tight inside his head, between dreamless sleep potions and the occasional outburst of knuckles against the wall.

But he had made this bed for himself, and now, he was to lie in it.

It was deathly quiet on the front. Theseus’s memory-self watched the cigarette in his head unfurl, the ember burning to his fingers. The same stars that’d watched him try to smoke away the desperate need to prove himself on the Academy roof now stared dispassionately down.

To his left and right were men who’d since become faceless. With careful, almost fearful, respectability, he’d learned every one of their names. But time had wiped them clean. By the end, he’d been through too many units, been the sole survivor of too much in a war where he was the rare one of his kind in every massacre.

The present-Theseus and Grindelwald were crouched behind the trench on the parados. The fraying sandbags, the loose wire, took their weight—as the first artillery shots to the German position burst out like thunder. Grindelwald’s expression was cold and empty. His greying white-blond hair caught the light of the last cigarette.

They’d been told in the evening they’d attack in the morning. It’d been a night of waiting, of praying and crying and one of the privates banging his head against the dugout.

Oh, it’d made him think of his little brother again. Their argument after the expulsion. The culmination of those years Newt’d been half-miserable all the time, the nights he’d spent out in the woods as if testing the truth no one else would go looking for him. Once Newt had grown old enough to realise everyone would disappoint him, Theseus picked the fight and Newt obliterated it, cold as could be. It wouldn’t always be Theseus sitting alone in his room, cursing himself; sometimes, it would be Newt, exploding with that strange rage that’d have him diagnosed so-called schizophrenic, until someone was hurt.

Theseus had slid up to the left of the man—you’re safe, you’re safe—and pressed the roll of groundsheet between his head and the rotting planks.

Glowing ash caught on the breeze. The tip was a target for snipers. They could see past-Theseus outside himself. No doubling; that was when past and present-self memories merged entirely and it was all directly relived. But then, he’d still been sinking under buried regret for the argument after Newt’s expulsion.

Past-Theseus took a final drag of the cigarette and tipped his head back, waiting, imagining it. Then, like a good soldier, he crushed it under his heel. Touched the breast pocket of his uniform. He tried to summon the dusky smell of the Hippogriff barn in summer, the forest air from old days of Quidditch practice, the reassuring ink and polish-smells of active case files.

It had been a different life. One belonging to a person he’d hoped to kill. Because that had been before: before the warmth in his chest, his ambition and his drive, and the terrifying need to keep them safe.

He was going to be a hero. A martyr. Fix everything. For the first time in his life, not have to face it, not have to take responsibility. He was going to return. He was going to escape. Be free.

Present-Theseus took the sprouting memories and locked them deep, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek. Grindelwald had not moved a muscle, staring into the dark hollows of the trench. The cigarette embers had come back to life, impossibly sparking, weaving themselves into a thin rope of light that tangled over past-Theseus’s wrist. It crept up through where he knew the broken barbed wire and the storming stretch of empty land beyond waited.

“You’re not showing me what I need,” said Grindelwald. His voice was quiet, barely audible over the gunfire that had started up. The pops and clunks of Lee-Enfields. Distant whistles. The Germans were waiting for them.

“War was what you and Albus dreamed of, wasn’t it?” asked Theseus. He could taste blood, feel the wounds on his back in that abandoned bedroom still seeping.

“Oh, Albus thought it was too far.” Grindelwald turned to him, studied his face. The rain beat down harder, and didn’t touch them.

“That’s just the thing,” said Theseus. This was him, when he was not liked, with the sharp edge that had taken him through the ranks of the Ministry. “No one gets a choice on how far it goes other than the machines that drive it. Even in here— my mind—I don’t get a choice in how far the memories take me. You know what you sparked the tinderbox for. Slaughter.”

The officer blew his whistle. There was a screaming hum; a wet thunk, and he went still as a puppet, body jerked back into the far wall. An impossible bullet between his eyes.

For past-Theseus, everything fell away. In a single decisive movement, he threw himself over the edge of the trench: the first.

Grindelwald hissed and got to his feet, tugging here and there with his Legilimency. “Stop this.”

But the memory was too narrowed to escape, the glowing thread urging them on. Then they were running, too. Bullet pinged past. Men fell. Present-Theseus was not yet in his past body, not yet, the directionality of the memory still barely within his present reach. He fought the urge to cover his ears and drop to the ground like a child.

“I said stop.”

The next shell blew through them both, tossing the churned, wrecked earth up to the grey sky.

That hadn’t landed. That hadn’t hit. It didn’t even feel as though they’d moved, but the quality of the air had changed, touched with something wilder and just as drenched in cordite.

Grindelwald came to a halt, chest heaving, and examined their new surroundings. The forest was thick, and it was no longer daybreak, but deep night. The pull of doubling was nearly impossible to resist.

Percy. I was here with Percy. A pit opened in his stomach. How many days after he’d received the outdated telegram about Newt’s execution had he belatedly realised Percy was never coming back? Theseus walked over to the campfire burning through the gaps in the dense foliage, strides lengthening with each step, until he nearly stumbled into his past self.

He’d been keeping watch beyond the campfire, sitting on a fallen tree, unable to sleep. Being an insouciant American, Graves hadn’t struggled, not at all. There had been a thin cut on the back of his hand and he’d scraped at it with his nails. But any moment now—and Theseus could almost place his hand on the back of his past self, flickering into him—

—any moment, Graves would come up to him, place a hand between his shoulders. Theseus would flinch at first, the movement of Graves’s hand too close to his face.

“How do you know this?” Theseus asked, the dread building.

“I emptied his entire mind, and fed it back to him, piece by piece,” said Grindelwald. He looked down and kicked at the glowing thread, trailing over one of his impeccable loafers.

Theseus clenched his jaw tight enough his teeth hurt. He twitched on the mattress, in the forest. “You bastard.” And now Grindelwald had control of his memories, because he was feeling Grindelwald too, wrapped around him as surely as the press of his arms against his own—

The lump grew more immovable, wedged in the back of Theseus’s throat. He coughed in the airlessness, trying to separate from his past self— but he hadn’t turned until Graves had startled him.

Their surroundings hummed, shifted, changed.

For one heartbeat, Theseus was running down the stairs of his childhood home, taking the steps two at a time until he veered into the kitchen. The next heartbeat, he was in a grand building with a gold-and-blue ceiling, daubing blood on the walls; and then, he was stepping out of a white room, hair brushing his shoulders—

Those were Grindelwald’s memories.

In his peripheral vision, the campfire illuminated the planes of Graves’s face. It was all Theseus could see. His silhouette was smudged and indistinct. His glossy black hair fell over his brow, hiding his eyes. Six years since they’d truly seen one another and Theseus couldn’t even see him.

“If only we had a damn horse,” Graves said, dragging on his cigarette.

Past-Theseus turned his head. Thought of the horses, how they died.

As adults, some days, only the interdepartmental briefs told him how Newt was doing, his letters and visits expertly avoided. Their lives, Newt seemed determined to make sure, would be entirely separate, his own private and worryingly full of concerning, dangerous incidents. But it’d always been like that. Them not being able to tolerate being close.

“This isn’t a place for them,” Theseus said. He paused. “My brother would say they’re innocents…and…we can’t handle them without breaking them. The trainers, they love them. But they love them despite having to hurt them—to hurt them—and they send them to be cut up in the wire, to die pinned down there out in the gunfire.”

“Love can be a violent thing.”

“I know that,” past-Theseus snapped. He drew his knees up to his chest on the log. He didn’t know how to love without trying to tame the other person. The critical voice in his head never let him live. At twenty-seven, he’d tried to change a dozen times over, and never succeeded. So, certainly, there was no point in Theseus writing home from the front. Newt would despise what he’d done: while Theseus waited to be buried under some nameless epitaph, desperate not to be the perfect son he’d played to survive, but always staying a brother.

Percival got to his feet, and in the present, Theseus’s heart skipped a beat.

But Grindelwald’s power had more weight. The codex on memory retrieval ran through Theseus’s mind, an array of psychological dark curses next. But Grindelwald, in the mindscape, wrapped one hand under Theseus’s jaw. Turning his head away.

“No—let me see him—”

The quiet rushing of the leaves hung in the space between them; the tugging of their magic nearly made him surface there and then.

“This is mine,” said Grindelwald. “My memory. Yes, I took it from Percival’s mind once I had him, but there’s a tether here, through to before the summer.”

Before, he’d have killed for information from Grindelwald, any information. A single inch closer to being able to crawl inside his mind and take it apart. But the German Aurors had moved to bar the exits so quietly. Newt could more than handle himself against law enforcement, but he was still vulnerable.

Theseus imagined the small lake outside their childhood home. Something his instructor had suggested, years ago. It was clear in his head, with the hyper vigilance of the rest of his childhood. By the time he was ten, the pier rotted too far to trust—and, four days before he’d turned fourteen, he’d nearly drowned slipping off the side, anyway.

In this vision, he cut across the dry, patchy grass to the murky edge. The stones of the shore were slippery and painful under his bare feet. Summoning the image, the intention, Theseus saw himself dive under the surface—the cold shock—and, deliberately, inhale.

Slipping into true memory doubling felt like snapping together two pieces of broken glass.

There.

This one will hold us.

It was an impossibly warm day. The cobbled streets had burst, torn from explosives printing in the shape of stars. Theseus sat on the low stone wall at the perimeter of the village, turning over and over in his mind the blocked roads around the village. It could have been early enemy incursions. It could be magical interference. He was yet to meet a fellow wix. Crushing anger sat in his chest, like a bullet between the ribs. Breathing around it was impossible.

That didn’t come from the memory. It was the anger—the grief—that had kept him alive, cradled him, and beaten him into staying a good man.

But Theseus dipped his head and examined the rifle again. He drew a dirty cloth from his uniform pocket and twisted three fingers into it, clicking apart the Lee-Enfield with practised motions to scrub the barrel clean. Its stock sat heavy in his hands, the feel of the gunmetal almost a compulsive taste in itself.

“What is this?” muttered Grindelwald. “Fascinating, in its own way, rhetorically useful, yes, but not what you should have given me…” He took two steps forwards and stopped. Turned, examined their surroundings.

Then, slowly, Grindelwald settled backwards as though he’d hit an invisible barrier. “I see. All my attempts to drive your magic, and it had its own will for what it felt we should witness. Well. With the years I’ve spent—I can wait, if not patiently.”

Good. He’s still here, Theseus thought distantly. He could no longer pull out of this. Held in place by this memory, like I am.

Across the street, two children were playing, thin and splattered with dirt. The little girl jumped up onto the collapsed wall and began picking her way across the fallen chunks of masonry from the small grocer’s opposite, nearly twisting her ankle in the boy’s shoes she wore with each step. Her hands were crooked up by her ribs, like little claws. It reminded Theseus of Newt.

Since the artillery strikes yesterday on this little village nestled between fortifications, the air had been thick with acrid smoke. Civilians and the Allied soldiers alike had simply adapted to it. At least, he should have been used to it.

But his eyes were burning. Theseus took a shaky breath and pressed the edge of his sleeve against his eyes, gathering himself.

Grindelwald regarded them in silence.

When the little girl paused and looked up at him, Theseus tried to smile. Her eyes lingered on his armband with its single chevron, a familiar hollowness in them. Lance corporal. It meant little to his pride. He’d survived two massacres when the men around him had not; he was far from his original regiment, now, thanks to that first pinned assault. Then, the gas, then the suspicion, the punishment.

Clunk. Theseus snapped the rifle’s barrel back together, his useless wand burned the damaged skin of his inner arm at the holster. Villages changed hands like dice in a den. Morning, evening—nothing was guaranteed. Telegraphs were slow—although should Theseus die at the front, his family would never receive one—and runners were brave, but only human.

Where else was there to go, in rural parts of Belgium such as this?

“Excuse me,” he called out to the girl.

She stopped in her tracks and turned to check on the smaller boy with her. Theseus pointed up at the houses behind the children. One had a collapsed roof; the other had been entirely burned, leaving behind only its skeleton.

Theseus gestured up to the crumbling building, then down at the street scattered with the blown-out broken glass. He nodded to the little boy’s bare feet and then lifted one boot demonstratively. “Please. Be careful.”

They eyed him like wary cats.

“Va-t-on mourir quand les Boches arrivent?” called out the girl at last.

“They’ll slaughter all of you,” murmured Grindelwald. Ministry reports placed him as having been travelling through parts of Europe during the Great War. It didn’t explain how Newt had been the one to uncover him in New York—according to what Theseus had been able to wrangle of the withheld, redacted MACUSA files. “Mass slaughter for the greater good. These children, they’ll learn to hunt.”

The rusty French he’d picked up through his interest in Muggle politics didn’t cover the West Flemish dialectic.

Theseus instead shook his head and got to his feet. “It’ll be alright.” His tongue refused to shape any further promise, just in case. In case speaking a vow made the reverse coming true; in case he drew on that invisible balance of scales he’d been mindful of since he’d picked up the tapping as a child. If only he had some of the small food gifts they’d been handing out to give—but the supplies couldn’t get down the roads around here.

Worse, his magic was so far from him that it was practically out of reach. Caged inside him and restless, it simply refused.

The children sensed his stillness and ran. The patter of their feet faded out down the wrecked street.

Theseus kept his eyes on the thick woodland visible through the gaps between the rain-stained plaster of the standing house and the wreck next to it. Impossibly, he flinched before it landed, muscles locking with the familiar single heartbeat of stillness he allowed himself before he threw himself forwards into the fight.

The high-pitched whine built in the sky above. Starting as a distant whistle, it grew into a terrifying shriek, and then—

Crack. Like thunder. The skin on his cheeks tightened; his eyes pulsed, eardrums screaming in pain. Cursing under his breath, Theseus threw himself forwards and towards the perimeter, readying his rifle as the ground trembled under his feet.

Boom. The shockwave hit a moment later; his stomach, his kidneys, his lungs snapped back. Perhaps only being a wix had saved him—again.

He bit back the whimper of pain. Too long sleepless, hungry, marching. The forest was dark. They had to be here—the Germans had to be here. After the Schlieffen Plan, Theseus had seen so many dead civilians. Shot in collective punishment. “Who’s there?”

He raised the sight, locking in. “I said—who’s there? This is a civilian village. There’s none of your bloody guerilla warfare, no need for you to execute them, here, too.”

Come on, you bastards.

The stories of the British army had bled into his mind. Lies in every direction. Collective punishment, the brutality of the Huns. Massacres from Dinant to Leuven. The Ministry Decree had made no sense; the Muggle British government was the only institution cradling him now, and still distant, haggling the too-long war and deaths of thousands from Westminster.

Crack. Boom.

“Fuck!”

Theseus turned back just in time to see the leftmost building collapse, spilling powder into the street. A faint scream split the air. In the rubble, he could see the unmistakable colours of a woman’s dress.

Only Grindelwald stood in the memory. Pale-faced, he was only watching, quiet enough that Theseus almost couldn’t feel him there. The years of the chase had taken them here.

A mist-fine splatter of blood—dark red, it always darkened fast in civilian areas, because of the dust—covered Grindelwald’s suit. He’d removed his cloak.

“I could only get halfway down the street,” mused Grindelwald. He raised one hand and snapped his fingers, looking up. Roiling black clouds blanketed the sky—but the revelation he wanted didn’t come. “You’re trapping me. Only halfway.”

The dark wix looked down at his shoes, and lifted one, examining the sole. An ivory-white chip—too curved, too smooth to be masonry—had embedded itself in the welt of his shoe. A child’s milk-tooth.

A wave of dread hit Theseus, so deep that electricity shuddered through his shoulders, down his spine. Startled, he glanced at his hands. The slight weight of his wand was reassuring, but surely, still useless. Magic damaged like his own, only now repressed like his father’s, took years to recover.

For the first time, Grindelwald looked disconcerted. He touched the shoulders of the suit jacket, the blood, and when he looked back at Theseus, it was without the calculating suspicion of earlier. Whatever the new expression was, it was inscrutable, even to Theseus.

Footsteps burst from the wood behind him. Before Theseus could turn around, the soldier was on him. He shoved the rifle barrel and stock over his windpipe like a garrote. Bayonet, his mind warned him, bayonet. Jerking his head forwards to create breathing space, he kicked down, hard. Elbowed into the solar plexus. Twisted sideways. Off-balance, they nearly fell, Theseus clawing at the other man’s hands as his vision wavered; then, he was free.

“What are you?” Theseus shouted, kicking the other man’s rifle away, aiming his own at his chest. The knife was glinting in his enemy’s hand, but they were too far apart to use it.

“Aufklärer,” whispered the other man, nostrils flared. His eyes didn’t move from where Theseus had his finger on the trigger.

“So the rest of you aren’t far behind.”

He should have killed him, but they had to fall back, defend the village. With a sharp motion, he clunked the other man across the head with his rifle, knocking him down unconscious. “Bloody fuck.”

Throat raw, Theseus broke into a dead sprint, his jangling equipment beating against his back. A scout trying to kill a sentry meant the Germans were close enough to their own lines to risk the noise of combat. Even warning the others wouldn’t help, not with minutes to go. A great explosion sent flames guttering across the street. Theseus staggered sideways, sent with the gale-force of it into the wall. That impact might have killed a non-wix.

The half of the village onlooking no man’s land had been well-fortified in the time they’d had. Theseus stared out over those hundred metres. Overlapping shell-craters left it hard to clearly gauge distance. The fifteen soldiers remaining had to be already manning their stations. Time to go. He dipped past the fox holes, dodging when he could. A vicious spray of gunfire screamed past him. He lurched to the left, catching the leg of his trousers on a barbed-wire knife-rest, tearing free.

It was the church they’d told the civilians to use as shelter, because the roads behind the village were blocked. With masonry revetments and sandbags stacked waist-high around the perimeter, the church was the strongest structure in the building, with a large underground basement that echoed your footsteps back to you. The civilians would have gone to the church, but if the Germans got through—

—if they wanted another massacre—

He had the sudden, distant feeling he was going to die there.

“Your heart is slowing,” said Grindelwald. Theseus almost pulled out of the doubling—past-present selves wavering, almost seeing Grindelwald—but couldn’t. “You can’t see the fissures you’re showing me. Short-sighted as you are. The means, not the end; that’s what you said, in your speech.”

That girl—that tooth—

A strange warmth crept over his lower back. All this time, he’d been walking, the unevenness of the ground barely registering as shell craters.

Eyes wide, Theseus stopped dead on his feet, and turned to glance over his shoulder.

The distance looked about fifty metres from the British trenches. Easy to make a shot from either side. When he touched his waist, tracing the scar from glancing shrapnel he’d already taken the year before, his shaking fingertips came away red.

He’d been shot, too.

And then, impossibly, when he touched the ragged channel through wool and skin, the edges of his skin began to knit.

Magic.

His magic. Numbing him, healing him—what was it going to do to him?

This hadn’t been what he’d wanted. None of it had.

It was all coming back.

Time seemed to slow. The barbed wire, poking from the ground like yet more skeletal corpses. The shouts, the screams. The village behind him, burning. Two German soldiers sprinted past him at full tilt. One took a bullet to the gut and collapsed to the floor; the other didn’t register Theseus at all. Ahead, he could see maybe fifty. Whatever it was about this village, they’d had high command involved, knitting them all together into one mass.

But it was impossible to see them as anything other than yet more humans. Not Huns, not Jerrys, not even men.

He wanted to turn and run, cradle what was left of his humanity in the eyes of both worlds. Fighting made him a hero for the Muggles; a monster for the wix. Preserving the Statue would make him twice the monster he’d become. Not only would he face Azkaban for breaking the Decree, but the Minister had clearly indicated anything more than sympathies of going against the Decree in times like this could spell treason.

The rifle fell to the ground at his feet. The shaking racked him from head to toe. He drew his wand from its concealed holster. The tortoiseshell accused him, but his magic, Merlin. His magic reached him with horrifyingly electric warmth. Cruel in its beating intensity and demanding to be used.

The bullets trickled through his awareness like the rain hitting his upturned face, distant, persistent, inescapable.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

They’d shot enough to slaughter an equal fifty already.

His wand was warm in his hand as he aimed it.

Instinctively, he’d stepped in front of every plausible shield—giving him a clear sight line—and he drew not on the wilful motion of the soldiers but the dead stock in their hands. Their rifles. Their bullets. For a spell this large, he had to think of something. Surely. Surely, this all needed a deeper meaning, a guiding philosophy.

The spell surged through him, anyway.

“Arresto momentum,” he shouted, not caring what it revealed.

The sheer force of it shot him back almost three feet, boots churning straight furrows in the ground. Like that, he’d torn the Statue open worse than he’d ever done, deciding he cared not for it, if it was condemning people to die. All clicked and froze in unison, grinding to a halt.

Bolts, firing pins, triggers, bullets, going still in the air like glinting leaden hail.

Blood dripped from his nose. So much magic it was burning his core. Even the advancing German soldiers were held, trapped, in mid-motion. He could see the wide whites of the eyes of the men closest to him.

Theseus furrowed his brow and imagined rust, blossoming to life. A copper circle spread out from around his feet, briefly ferrous in its held metals torn from the earth, and then swept out. Too late, he realised he’d drawn on the curse for his own allies, too. He let them go. At least four ran back to the village—“strike, there could be another strike”—one ran to the back roads, and two went into the German line.

Leaving the Statue torn open behind him, the confused shouts and fatal relief, Theseus set his eyes to the church, and broke into a run.

Another strike.

Would the Germans fire artillery on their own men? Thinking of it—why had that first strike happened at all, if the scouts already knew the village was being defended by only a third of a regiment?

Or were they looking to wipe this place off the map entirely? The Auror in him couldn’t help but ask: if that was the case, then why?

Navigating the streets this time was easier, his focus utterly single-minded. Here and there were soldiers scuffling, civilians running, the cracks of gunshots and the odd scream.

Even Grindelwald, following behind him at an eerily calm pace, didn’t drag Theseus out of the memory.

Theseus’s future had fallen apart in front of him. But it already had, hadn’t it? He would go home a different man, if he went home at all; and in a dozen different ways, he’d paced the bounds of the Statue. Before he’d left, this would have been a security breach requiring a full Auror team. He’d have lectured Newt for an hour for less.

He darted through the fortifications around the church and inside. The splintered door had been left ajar. His boots echoed out across the stone floor as he stepped backwards, not taking his eyes off the door, panting in the damp air.

Theseus couldn’t actually turn to face the civilians he could hear behind him. Instead, he let the blood from his nose splatter fecklessly on the stone, watching the door, hoping against hope more people would get inside.

You can’t save us. You can’t protect us. Any of us.

This was life or death for nearly two hundred people. Some of his magic was still scattered out there in no man’s land, and he felt the earth begin to groan as if from a great distance, a weak cry like a child preparing for an awful punishment, close enough to silent to take it. His heart skipped a beat.

Theseus raised his wand for the second time. His magic was sparking off him in storm-grey flurries, charging the air with its distinctive smell. It almost felt like too much, as if it would consume him.

“Protego maxima!” Theseus roared, stretching up towards the heavens, and a huge white dome soared up from the tip of his wand. It was as heavy as iron, shuddering as it coalesced. Outside, the whistle grew louder—and louder—

He turned, feeling as though he owed that to them.

“You showed them magic,” said Grindelwald.

Two hundred, at least.

The explosion. hit. It hit like a train, crumpling him to his knees, but still he held the barrier. Magic against Muggle weapons; they were not evenly matched. Aching, he threw himself back to his feet and lifted his wand higher. Another. And another.

He was not good; he was not gentle; he was not even his own name.

A second explosion rocked the building, the sound catastrophic. Screams, behind him; shouting, outside. How far had his curse on the rifles spread? It was tugging at his feet as though he were partially rooted to the soil, and the lines of his influence felt disturbingly, monstrously, wrong. Gritting his teeth, Theseus tuned the spell as best as he could, thickening the shield without triggering physical suffocation, and threw out his left hand, too.

Smoke curled underneath the door. Something split in Theseus’s chest. There were nearly six hundred in the village according to first estimate; the men, conscripted, the rest unable to flee. High Command had warned of the following: when the Germans heard shots, even their own—when they fabricated shots, civilian resistance—the villages would burn.

To hide those they’d already killed. Two spells. Two spells at once. Theseus knew what he’d emerge to.

With a gasp of pain, Theseus walked to the door and stepped outside, searching for the officer who’d ordered this attack. The wind had picked up, whipping his hair into his eyes. He’d lost his helmet in the first struggle. And, around him, on both sides, the roofs of the rubbled houses were caving in with hungry flame. Violent red and orange roared from house to house. Glowing ashes dusted his hands, his arms; his vision was fading fast.

When Theseus stepped forwards, the air shimmered with a fine gauze, tasting like mist. His shield charm, impossibly holding.

Standing halfway down the street was a German officer. Tall enough to man the artillery, his high nose and sharp eyes tracked Theseus’s every step. He held a long, thin nozzle, strapped to the massive metal canister on his back. And, pinned to his chest with his free arm, was the little boy of earlier.

Oh, God. Theseus’s stomach heaved. This was the boy who’d lost a sister.

The silence stretched between them. The fire was crackling, the strange strangled noise of burning mixing with the low cries of the wounded he could hear even from a distance. Someone was wailing, the sound continuing on and on. His shield charm had blanketed nearly the entire village. Just stretching past the street corner, he could see a flung-out hand, a cane abandoned beside it—and his charm over the body.

“You stopped every bullet within kilometres,” called out the German in barely accented English. He aimed the flamethrower directly at Theseus’s chest. “What are you?”

Theseus looked at his wand, and the officer twisted the boy.

“No!” shrieked the child.

The officer gripped the boy’s black hair, and threw him to the side, sending him stumbling on his heels as if he were a wooden doll. The arm’s length was enough for the officer to aim the flamethrower at the boy, instead.

“We have prisoners in the fields. You must join them.”

Theseus’s blood ran cold. His fingers loosened his grip on his wand. Like a product of the accidental magic of a child, the shield didn’t waver.

The boy was sobbing silently, tears cutting through the grime on his face. His hands were loose at his sides, as though he were afraid even to touch the man.

Grindelwald’s voice close to his ear made him jump. “You should have killed them.”

But when Theseus tried to turn his head, his past and present selves refused to split. Like solving an impossible case, like breaking a bone, like—

“If you don’t order your men away from this village—if you don’t order them to take no other prisoners—then I can kill you where I stand,” said Theseus.

His voice held a wild edge he’d never heard before. No further Germans emerged, no sweep teams, no one in clean uniform. He tried to tell himself that they couldn’t have hunted him down, that his wand had recoiled hard enough to leave winged bruises across his chest when he’d last tried to save a life, his magic devastated and withered from the magic.

“How? You have no weapon.”

It horrified Theseus that he felt some measure of comfort, at that—that the Statue still held, for this man; that the British Ministry had been wrong enough to be comfortably and bureaucratically blind, but not enough to be utterly corrupt.

With a quick sleight of hand, he slid his wand back into his sleeve’s hidden holster, feeling the gentle shock of the charms conceal it from view. Theseus reached into his uniform pocket and drew his knife, instead.

The boy whimpered again, and the sound cut through Theseus's spiraling thoughts like a knife. Whatever moral ambiguities clouded this situation, there was a child about to die. Everything else was secondary.

“What do you want?”

“I told you. Come with us.” The officer's tone was matter-of-fact now, as if they were discussing the weather. “You will join the other prisoners. The war continues without anyone else dying here today.”

“And the boy?”

“The boy lives. The people in your church live. Your soldiers live.” The German shrugged. “We need to capture every British.”

God, he’d saved some lives, and damned the rest.

Theseus splayed his fingers. The knife clattered to the cobblestones.

The rapid patter of hobnailed boots built behind him. Two soldiers tugged his hands behind his back hard enough for his shoulders to scream.

Grindelwald flinched back at the sight. He didn’t hide it.

The shield above them flickered, but held, now barely visible in the smoke. His knees hit the ground, hard—and, like that, with a soft breath registering only how tired he was, the world suddenly grew very distant.

Grindelwald made a low noise. “What are you doing?”

Well, it did lead back to Albus, in an odd way. It was the one of the reasons Newt and Albus were so close. After he’d returned from the war, Newt had never seen him quite the same way. There’d always been fear between them—but it had been the dragons, winning the book contract from it, and every failure of the Ministry afterwards that’d made Theseus’s presence institutionally painful for Newt. And so Newt had drifted on, in obscurity, picking no sides even as his book sales rose and their teacher waited for the hand of fate.

“When?” asked Grindelwald, reading this. His eyes narrowed. “No—why can’t you speak?”

War neurosis. The kind to leave you empty and terrified and hopeless out of time and space.

Oh, it’d started coming on before that, but Theseus had always secretly believed himself stronger than others, better able to endure, to make it happen to him. This was the first time he’d learned losing his hearing was one of the symptoms—long before his eardrums blew out sprinting towards the Ukrainian border. This had been what he’d done to earn his Muggle medal.

Don't think about the way they looked at you when you came home, how he flinched when you came near for weeks.

Don't think about the letter you sent.

They remained there for hours, Theseus kneeling on the cobbles, Grindelwald standing statue-still beside him. The clinging damp of the trench had left its smell on him, thick with ammonia and cordite and decay. The memory shivered, here and there, in flashes of consciousness, but Grindelwald barely blinked. With a slow sigh, he sat on the wall guarding the church’s perimeter.

If anything, he looked thoughtful.

“You vaporised the shells with some force,” he commented, settling himself to sit with his palms facing towards the sky. “Much raw power. I’m curious what the backlash might have done, how it was balanced. A little time with them and you already fell to their level. Killing on command. Firing blindly. Letting fear consume you.”

Theseus had always believed in action and consequence as a pair of messy, necessary things. “We didn’t send ourselves out there to become mass-murderers. We were trying to save lives—on our side, but hell, even theirs.”

The other man held his gaze in a challenge. “Don’t justify what you’ve done. Recognise it.”

“I’ve recognised it for years.” Grindelwald and him had pursued one another for so long, they’d forgotten to remember it wasn’t them that was the pair: wasn’t them who understood one another. Not yet.

Grindelwald hummed. “Well. This little trick won’t hold me for long.”

It has already, Theseus thought. You’re too proud to admit it, you bastard—too proud to admit that I can fight you, now you’ve pulled yourself out from that veneer of respectability you use for your fucking blood purist rhetoric.

The clouds began to crackle with white lightning above them, a void the colour of blinding light beyond beginning to slice through.

“They may be humans,” Grindelwald said, “but they’re not wixenkind, not the same as you and I. But, you being short-sighted, you’re seeing every face. You’re choosing individuals over the greater good, the means over the end. No wonder you fail—no wonder, as he said, the war went on. You did it just to hold all the broken pieces of these worlds in place, because it suits you.” His eyes darted to Theseus’s khaki-clad shoulders, as if recalling the navy coat of earlier he’d already stripped. “The Ministry’s golden boy.”

The memory flickered again.

“The means are all there is,” gritted out Theseus.

The tinnitus was so bad that it made him dizzy, as if someone had kicked the back of his knees in with a steel-toe boot. It had come at a cost, staying in the war. One day, when the fear of the gas had reached a crawling frenzy—in his chest, couldn’t get out, the rest dying, dying, choking—he’d picked up a mortar and used magic for the shells. The smell of flesh, the chunks, the cries.

Theseus had been good at war. He’d spent his entire childhood being perfect. So, when the world blew itself into shrapnel around him, it’d skinned him into something wild and necessary.

“A focus on the means is necessary, but undesirable.” Grindelwald looked to the sky, eyes tipping further and further back until only the sclera showed. “But you wouldn’t understand what I suffer through every time I see what comes to bear in our future, over and over. There is nothing—nothing—but the greater good.”

Bang.

Their surroundings shook, dropped, as if they’d fallen trapped together in a faulty cut-cable lift. Sopping soil shifted into smooth stone under Theseus’s knees.

The archival vault of the mausoleum took form around him.

Tall stone bookcases filled with red-leather tomes. Carved statues of the Lestrange ancestors looking down on them both. Shadows of people, memories that hadn’t been filled in, scattered the cold floor. Theseus had the distinct sense he wasn’t meant to be there. That he was walking into something new, and unfamiliar, and didn’t that mean that he’d failed?

That twist in his stomach felt realer than anything had in months. Because he might have been good at the fight, but he was no good at grief.

Never had been. Never would be.

“Ah. Yes,” said Grindelwald. “1927. Paris does seem more suitable.”

“You weren’t here,” Theseus said. He fought to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Damn it, Grindelwald, then whose memory is this?”

Too much, too much—

“It’s not the memory at all, is it? It’s the connection. In fact, there’s not a dissimilarity to the situation between you and Graves, and what I recalled, both of the arrests and the men themselves. There’s much in a name. And as for the name Leta, you and I share connections there, too, like river forks.” Grindelwald-in-the-memory wrapped one hand over Theseus’s forehead, as if checking his temperature, palm cold and clammy.

Theseus only stood still, unable to look away from the shapes of the mausoleum room. The memory was starting to become solid now. The shadows filled into life from the outside in, revealing themselves as people he actually knew rather well.

To one side stood Tina Goldstein, the current Chief Auror of MACUSA, whom the newspapers gossiped Newt had been involved with on-and-off since the near-destruction of New York. Near her lingered his brother, five years younger but just as weather beaten, expression mulishly silent.

The Obscurial, known as Credence, stood at the centre.

And the man Theseus had only recently heard of as Yusuf Kama had a wand, pointed at the Obscurial’s chest.

Theseus sucked in a sharp breath. He looked down at his hands.

They weren’t his.

Theseus would recognise those hands anywhere, in any life, in any time. Elegant, delicate, the familiar nails, the silver-and-opal engagement ring, the warm brown skin. Stunned by the violence of how this last memory had been stolen from Leta, he raised his head to look Grindelwald in the eye.

“To think she came to the surface so unexpectedly. All thanks to you.” Grindelwald stroked a hand through the air, tasting something invisible. “Or rather, not entirely thanks to you. But thanks to Albus and the guidance he tries to give.”

Not every association could be trained, and not every repetition compulsion could be broken. It was an unorthodox practice, banned from the Auror Codex, still haunting the interrogation rooms. When a suspect had impossibly strong Occlumency, the brute force techniques rarely worked. Instead, you worked by association.

All paths led back to Leta. And all paths led to Albus, when it came to Paris; Albus’s advice, Albus’s hesitation, the words Theseus had carried under his collarbone ever since. Albus, Albus, Albus. All paths of Theseus’s own fear seemed to lead, these days, to either Albus or Grindelwald.

This is it, Theseus thought. Stupid. Selfish. This is how he gets in.

“This happened with Percival. With that memory.” They’d been half-between minds, and it had bled.

Grindelwald laughed, an oddly sad thing. “Oh, Percival. An apt name. Albus’s father, you see, was never a violent man—but oh, did he let it rule him. Maybe that’s part of why I wonder how Albus hadn’t learned yet. It blossoms around him like flowers, the blood. While he waits in Hogwarts, his pawns die. I remembered when he was a young man and still afraid of it. Not yet resigned to it.”

The words rang a faint bell in Theseus’s head—yes, he could understand that—but were quickly gnawed by the insatiable thoughts. Count to six. Should have died in her place. He couldn’t think that; he had to survive. Surviving might not save them. Your head’s cracked right open.

You made the wrong choice.

With two fingers, Grindelwald reached for his own temple. Already, there was a fine halo of memory shimmering free, white light circling his elegant forehead in a corona. He yanked free more thread. “Of course; it makes sense. Albus thought he was seeing the redemption he’d never had. To all intents and purposes, she did, too. But only some of us get the privilege of surviving.”

It’s too late, and this was Theseus’s last thought, because how could he deny himself being in her head one last time? She had asked him to teach her how to resist the Imperius Curse, after her mother. They had stepped inside one another’s minds before. Only this time, the need to understand her final moments drove out the bright light of resistance like an eclipse. From here, he can use my memories of her to go anywhere.

And then, he was her. Pulled entirely inside Leta’s memories.

Chapter Text

two days earlier

There was nowhere to run beyond the Ministry halls. When Lally dragged them to the back exit, they found it barred, magically locked.

Pressing his ear against it, Newt had heard that rumbling beyond. “What?” he whispered to Lally, who stared back at him, catching her lower lip between her teeth.

“The announcement was done with an instantaneous sonorous,” she whispered back. “They must have been waiting for this verdict on Santos’s vote to block Grindelwald’s application for the race. Wixen governments drew a tie, so it’s down to the current Supreme Mugwhump. Now that Vogel has made the final decision—they know there’s no punishment. No matter what Grindelwald’s done in the Muggle world, it doesn’t matter here.”

Lally gave the brief bark of laughter usually reserved for questionable displays of academia. “He’s a legitimate, vetted candidate. Gold-stamped. The approval of the current Mugwhump carries enough weight to keep him at the top of a ladder he’s already climbed. Mercy Lewis. This didn’t just get interesting—it also makes us royally done for.”

Beyond, the city streets were swelling with the footsteps of a marching crowd. Hundreds of people, by the sounds of it, chanting. “Grindelwald! Grindelwald!” Never had Newt heard the dark wix’s name said like that, a prayer rather than a curse. On his travels, maybe, hints here and there had bled through the worlds he straddled, but never like this. Never so many.

So the main doors were the only way out. A thin stream of people moved in and out, the tea service continuing as usual, ignoring the Aurors in their dark coats. Newt might have heard them whispering if his heart hadn’t been drumming in his ears loud enough to swallow the rest of the world. Instinct told him they were talking about Theseus, but low and hushed and altogether as apathetic as Newt had found most people to be.

And Theseus—Theseus was gone.

“We’ll have to do this through the usual channels,” muttered Lally. “Do you know where to go?”

“No,” Newt managed.

He couldn’t breathe through the feeling. It bubbled up in his chest, as fragile as a swelling gust of air. Then, the realisation. He was scared, yes, but there was a rage in the back of his head. It rattled to life, choked, then roared back with a blinding fury. As certain as the tide and as unfamiliar as standing here, accepting any of this, thronging in their uncomfortable masses without lifting a finger.

How could this have happened?

Newt’s vision sharpened into hunting fidelity.

“Someone, s—someone in here must know—they, um, they took him somewhere, people like Theseus don’t just disappear—“ and he sucked in a sharp breath before spitting out, “—without some procedure, surely.”

Theseus had been arrested by the German Aurors. Which meant he had to be somewhere, within the Ministry, being moved to a holding cell or starting up explanations in an office. After Newt’s arrest in New York, the process beyond the cell had been terrifyingly swift; the time in the cell had been barely hours, not enough to pull free of the awful memories of Sudan.

This was different. Theseus was an exception in most rooms he walked into. A war hero, not a barely-employed Magizoologist working on an obscure book. Well-liked and convenient and decisive, where Newt was considered prickly and irritating and strange. In Newt’s mind eye, he could see it: a discussion of some kind, Theseus arguing his way out of it with the usual moral rectitude, lacerating with his words and ideals.

“Let’s,” Newt said quietly. “Let’s—let’s go through the doors, and then we can find someone who’ll know where they took him.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense,” said Jacob, craning his neck. “I’m right behind you, pal.”

Unsure, now, Newt placed a shaking hand on Jacob’s sleeve, the sturdy warmth of his friend settling him. Other than Tina, Jacob was the only person he’d met with whom contact felt gentle, safe. “Please.”

“We’ll find him. Don’t you worry.”

Newt yanked away without apropos, not sure what else to say, and set off through the crowd. His shoulders up by his ears kept the sound of the people low. Too many people. The moment he burst back through into the marble-floor corridors, he was running, case bumping against his leg hard enough to bruise.

They found their way to a series of glass-lined corridors. The bullpens were empty, the files scattered and typewriters abandoned. Security wards glowed faintly on the ceiling.

“This has to be an Auror Office,” Newt said. “The boards, the wards—we have to find—“

They nearly collided with a bland-faced man walking down the corridor holding a clipboard. He straightened up, taking them in, and tilting his chin back to look down his nose just a little more. Newt had been underestimated all his life. He didn’t care.

“Where do you work?” Newt said.

“Wer bist du?” the man asked. The silver badge glinting on his suit jacket marked him as an assistant in the Auror Office.

Newt understood the sentence, barely. The Ministry had prepped the Corps based on the rumours German wixen were also serving in the war: more treason, more Statue breakers, more need for the death machines dragons could become in gentle and capable hands. “I don’t understand. But—but that doesn’t matter, um, because I have a question, please, and I’d appreciate it if you’d answer.”

“One question. Then you have to leave, understood? Lockdown’s been announced and anyone like you has to be out, or quiet, or facing the necessary measures. We can’t afford a situation where the rioters—or undesirable elements—attract the attention of the Muggles.” The man looked as though he wanted to be anywhere other than there. “Otherwise, we’ve been granted authority by Frau Fischer to make sure you see the inside of a holding cell. For the security of our people.”

The threat was clear; if they stepped out of line, they might be next on the list of arrest. Newt dared him to try. If anything, he was almost in the mood for a fight, small and defeated and buzzing with it until he felt as though he could rake his nails across the man’s face and draw blood.

“I’m looking for Theseus Scamander,” Newt said. “He’s—he’s been taken. You have him somewhere, he’s somewhere in here, and we need to find him.”

“Theseus Scamander? What was he—a dissident?” the man inquired.

Yes? No? It was true and not, at once. Newt had never been able to pin down whether Theseus was rebellious for the sake of it, or out of a sensible and simple compulsion that occasionally let him look beyond the strictures of the Ministry.

“That’s—I don’t know. His name is Theseus. You must know where he is.”

“We have not apprehended any such man. We have taken in, detailed, and released three rioters from the streets. That’s all. There have been no long-hold prisoners taken within the Ministry, certainly, because there has been no disruption. Martial law will hold for the next twelve hours until the commotion outside subsides. If your Theseus Scamander was one of the officials unhappy about that, I recommend he file a petitioned report with his respective Direktor.”

“The man that I’m inquiring about is the Head of the British Auror Office,” Newt began, but the man simply turned on his heel, dismissing the conversation, and began to walk away.

Newt broke into a jog, reaching out for the back of the bureaucrat’s coat.

The man whirled around. “You’re still here? If he’s an Auror, and underwent the requisite years of education on the sensibilities of Magical Law,” he said coldly, “am sure he would be informed enough not to interfere in the appropriate political proceedings. To deny Grindelwald his legitimate ability to stand for election would expose the wixen world to greater violence. To have the entire process questioned. The Mugwhump operates under the common law of the ICW during election decisions.”

The man must have not known they were brothers. It was an easy mistake to make, with the differences between the two of them, like night and day. Normally, Newt felt the soak of relief when people didn’t recognise Theseus, didn’t mention Theseus.

Newt curled one hand into a fist. “How,” he bit out, “can you have misplaced the Head of the British Auror Office?”

“It is our contention that since he was never in our custody, we never misplaced him.”

But he had been. He absolutely had been.

“Sir,” cut in Lally. “There were dozens of people there. Any of one them can corroborate—”

“And your name is?”

“Let’s get out of here. Wait.” Jacob froze, then pointed through the glass wall before them. “Wait, that’s him. That’s him; that’s the guy that took Theseus. He knows where Theseus is. Hey!”

Snap. The bureaucrat stepped backwards just as a guillotine-edge of glass slid from the ceiling and embedded itself cleanly in the wooden floorboards. Just like that, the bureaucrat vanished behind the changing, shifting corridors. The entire office was turning inside out, boxing them into pre-formulated shapes and paths.

“Where did that bastard go?” Lally siad.

Through the glass walls, where the frosted edges broke, Newt could see the silhouettes of two men. They were the only ones visible in the Auror Office. The shorter of the two had greased hair, slicked down through the middle, and while Newt had no idea what the man’s face looked like, he recognised him if only for he’d stalked towards Theseus.

“Hey!” repeated Jacob.

At pace, Newt wheeled down the left corridor, tracking through the maze towards the two Germans entering the lift in quiet conversation. His lungs were tight, burning. Even talking to Vogel, Theseus had been poised, ready to intervene—hovering at his shoulder with that expression he got sometimes, calculated and wary with eyes like flint. What Newt would do when he got to them, nowhere near a trained Auror, he did not know.

But he would find a way.

The next pane thunked down before them.

“Shit,” breathed Lally.

As Newt threw himself to the right, slamming hard against the glass as if the bone of his shoulder alone would shatter it, a new pane coated the existing barrier on the left. The protective spells were reinforcing themselves. The office itself didn’t want to let them through.

“No,” escaped Newt before he consciously shaped the word. “No.”

He stepped back from the right wall, boxed in on three sides, and pressed a desperate palm against the cold glass. The warmth from his hand left a halo against the glass; through blurred vision, he stared at his fingers, at the evidence he existed. He was reeling backwards before his unruly body caught up with his racing mind, twisting and turning as if in freefall. “No!”

It was Jacob’s hands on his elbows again that brought him back to reality. Jacob, who he’d barely seen since Paris, who had been the first person Newt had spent days with since the argument that’d blown him, Theseus, and Leta apart. “Newt, Newt, buddy, I don’t know what’s going on—but we’ve got to go, I know that much. When they ain’t want you in a place, you’ve got to go.”

Lally sucked her teeth. “He’s not wrong.”

The two men stepped into the lift. The door closed. The cogs whirred downwards, a low-pitched rumble shaking the glass, shaking the floor until Newt swore he could hear the roar of people outside. Dazed, he turned on his heel and began to walk. He walked and walked, until there were marble walls around him, faceless statues glittering with bronze plaques, great banners stretching from floor to ceiling with the insignia of the Berlin Ministry.

When he looked down, there were papers in his hand, and Lally was flipping through them with a pen between her teeth.

“Newt.” Someone had begun writing out the details in the topmost form. Theseus Scamander and the November alignment of planets he’d been born under eight years before Newt. Lally cleared her throat. “Newt. Can you hear me?”

There was nothing light in her voice; Lally rarely sounded this worried, this determined to try and hide. Lally and Theseus both, Newt thought. Lally took care to be easy-mannered, confident, but there were moments where her academic arrogance made others falter in their step for how completely it could swallow the truth of her emotions. Theseus, too, was a steel trap, disguised behind a charismatic face and handshakes that came firm enough to pass as a test for who might or might not hold on.

“Mmh?” Half-distracted. He was trying to apply a hash of the scientific method to the people around him.

Theseus had joined the team with barely ten minutes of stilted conversation in that lonely office; as easy as that, yes, he’d explained he trusted Albus, had even talked to him in a fashion before the events of Paris. He had stood even at the edge of the group in the train on the way, far back, maintaining the sure posture of the Head Auror to the last.

In fact, Theseus had gone so far as to relax into the side Newt had only seen of him when with Leta, even if it was for minutes. He'd sat thoughtfully across the chair and knotted the tie like a boy warming up for an essential Quidditch match. Limbs loose and expression almost open in its deep thought. The direct, critical, abrasive edges to his personality had been sanded down for the team, Newt suspected, Theseus never quite able to suffer feeling different, and perhaps he’d assumed it meant this was going to work.

Then again, there was a clarity, a relief, that came with facing irreversible danger head-on. Newt wasn’t a leader. He never had been. Maybe Theseus had been using that sense of rare freedom that’d carried Newt to Africa, to America, away from the expectations of his family, the Ministry, and pureblood society.

But Newt could only view Theseus through the lens of a stranger. Looking at any of it head-on—the expulsion, the war, the arguments, Leta, Paris, the grief, the estrangement—was like staring at the sun, vision whiting out in an animal discomfort. If Theseus had decided to break free out of whatever madness the last few years had thrown him into, because it was Theseus, Newt simply could not understand it. That economy between them had been exhausted by the time Newt had turned ten.

“What are Theseus’s middle names?” she asked.

Newt reached his hand into his coat pocket, seeking. His fingers touched a smooth stone, the brass communication amulet Albus had given him, a loose button from his coat. The stone was as cool as water under his callused fingertips.

“I—“

And he could not answer. He knew, but he could not.

Sit with it, Theseus had once said. Wake up and think about whatever you’re feeling before you get yourself in more trouble. Look at this—look at these documents. This isn’t just about caring for your creatures or trying your hardest to bugger off out of society. I think it’s proof. What’s going on? What’s wrong with you? Do you have a death wish?

It wasn’t just about being kind. It was about being angry, too. Angry for the forgotten creatures; angry for the broken weight of politics he didn’t care for; and angry at time.

And Theseus had been angry that day in his office, perhaps ten years ago now, until he’d breathed hard and made it his responsibility. He’d made Newt the usual burden, and turned that anger inwards. It was like a knife in Newt’s chest.

Yes. Maybe that was a rare, shared family trait that neither could wish away. They both knew, if unevenly, how anger could hurt, and shut it away, until it became another reminder, until it ended with them as separate as ever.

The next day, Newt returned to the Ministry as if it were somewhere that might cradle him. For the first time in his life, he sought out the receptionist, and asked for directions to the waiting room for the citizen’s advice chamber. He did this almost entirely without hope. He sat there for four hours, chewing on the sides of his fingers, until an assistant returned with a slip of yellow memo paper. They stood at an impasse, the woman holding out the paper with a plastic smile, Newt staring blankly at the side of her ear.

“Come back tomorrow at eight in the morning,” she said. “Vogel’s personal assistant, Frau Fischer, will receive you and personally notarise your concerns. Following that, you are welcome to continue visiting the Ministry building if you so wish, but should be aware that your request will have been officially recorded with no updates until completion, due to the current preparations for the election.”

“Why?” Newt got to his feet. “That doesn’t make very much sense. The thing—the thing that I’m looking for—tomorrow won’t change the fact that it’s gone. It’s someone in the Auror Office I have to see. You can’t just fob me off , because, um, you think that the longer I have to wait, the faster I’ll leave.”

“Yes, we’re aware,” the assistant said, pressing the paper into his fidgeting hands. “Herr Vogel has already been consulted on this matter. He is waiting to hear back from his sources; it seems there’s been some delay. But you must understand that his duties at the Supreme Mugwhump at this stage means everyone who has a comment on the election—”

“It’s not about the election,” Newt interrupted.

“I understand that, but regardless, if a comment is to be made, it must be taken through the appropriate channels,” she said, taking a step back. “Mr Scamander, we’re trying our best, but this isn’t as easy as you assume. We want to help you, but you have to understand that there’s at least three of my seniors and several of Herr Vogel’s advisors who need to be involved on any matter of security at this time.”

“If I—if you—” and Newt trailed off, lost.

“If you wish to inform your home Ministry about this endeavour, there are several steps we can assist you in taking. To ensure the reliability of reporting around the latest legal challenges from Frau Santos and the overall decision taken by Herr Vogel, both telegrams and owl post out of the city will be screened until ten days have passed, to avoid further suspected interference.”

“That’s fine. That’s—that’s fine, um, I’m not going to do that,” Newt said. They wouldn’t be any help. It would only bring down the mission, immediately, and have either Newt or Albus detained. “But why do I have to wait for tomorrow?”

“There’s been a significant delay. Given the delay is significant, kindly recognise there’s nothing I can do about it,” the assistant repeated, the frustration growing in her voice. “Have a good day.”

Newt had slept in far worse places for causes far less worthy.

He would have stayed in the foyer, curled in the corner around his case, his coat warming the floor. But Lally had stepped in. She’d warned the final bureaucrat they’d not suffer sleeping on the benches in the Ministry’s cold marble foyer for a third day, and so secured them government-issued temporary rooms three blocks away from the German Ministry. Reserved for diplomats, not intruders.

But for one of the few times in Newt’s life, his name had meant something good to these strangers. Knocked out of Theseus’s shadow, his forgettable fame shone. But it didn’t matter. Newt would have spent years on that cold, hard floor, if it would have brought one of those blank-faced wixen back with Theseus in tow.

By the third day, at gone six in the morning, he could no longer bear the quiet room with its dusty blinds.

Seeking air, he hurried down the stairs and came to an awkward halt in the quiet alleyway outside. Around him was the looming dark of Muggle Berlin, blocky terraced buildings with dozens of arched windows peering impassively down onto the streets and their glinting tram-tracks.

Newt swallowed hard and stepped towards the streetlamp out in the main road, glowing a dim orange as the sun refused to rise, and then caught himself.

No. They didn’t know if they were being watched, if the Aurors who’d taken Theseus were only delaying them until they, too, could be brought into custody.

For all the basic amenities in the room, he hadn’t been able to sleep a wink. The distant sounds of traffic and chatter had felt as forceful, as present, as passing trains on rumbling tracks. Everything about the four walls around him was as claustrophobic and distant as sleeping on the platform. The others—his friends, and he didn’t have many of those—had faded into something more like abstractions of people than allies he truly understood.

No matter how he'd been raised, in moments like this, he didn't feel part of the human world at all. His message to Vogel had failed; his first and second attempts to find where Theseus was being held had failed.

And he was at an age where he wasn’t scared of failure anymore. It was simply a matter of surviving it.

Newt hunted through his pockets. He pulled out the cartoon of cigarettes, crumpled but unopened, and toyed at the seal with his sharp thumbnail.

After the Dragon Corps, Newt had sworn he would not smoke again. It would be the first he’d smoked in months, perhaps, the intermittent weeks of travel for Albus having settled that restlessness in him.

He dragged his case back, unable to let it go for even a moment, and rested his head against the wall. The brick was cool and damp. The cigarettes went back into his coat pocket. What he withdrew instead was a turquoise-blue vial, the glass carefully blown and infused with shed Occamy scales to hide its contents.

The calming draught left a familiar, medicinal taste in his mouth, chased by apple, then nutmeg.

The artificial calm was better than the nicotine. Nicotine took him back to the rusty fans in the cluttered rooms of the DCRMC; the scornful glances for the disgraced boy who’d been expelled and had his brother pull strings; the smoke unfurling in plumes before the sunset over the Capathartian mountains. Through all that, Newt had been burned enough times to retreat far from the naïveity he often accused Theseus of. Do you think these systems are looking to make life better for anyone? he’d said in one particularly furious argument.

What did it matter? a quiet part of him thought. The days they’d been close were so long ago they escaped coherent memory entirely. Newt had been three, or maybe four. They hadn’t had long before the poison had set in.

So, the distance suited them both. Newt spent much of his time trying to find his place in the world without his brother’s suffocating control. Better to have just sprung up out of the earth. Better to be free until he ran into other people like him, other outcasts and dreamers—like Tina, it had been so long since he’d written to Tina—because families like Newt’s had never been destined to stay close. And the old hurt Theseus endlessly tried to brush over or apologise still ached.

The calming potion didn’t help the sense of distance from himself, as if he were eight again and hiding under Theseus’s bed. That Theseus had been taken didn’t immediately shape these feelings in any way Newt recognised. Cutting people off; losing them; losing himself; and then back, and then again, and then again. He often loved Theseus, far more often struggled to like him. The feeling was mutual. But there was a pin his brother had driven through the centre of Newt’s world with his constancy, at least.

He was pulled from his thoughts by Lally, clearing her throat behind him. She leaned against the doorway, an impossible travelling kettle radiating the bitter scent of coffee cocked in one hand.

“What are you thinking about there, Scamander?”

Newt paused. “Nothing much,” he eventually settled on.

They were academic colleagues, communicating primarily through enthusiasm across the ocean, and hadn’t trodden this particular dance before. Newt imagined it like a new creature encounter, each time—his friends slowly getting to know the shape of him.

A whistled hum of relief escaped him when she nodded and simply poured her coffee into the hairpin she’d turned into a mug.

“Nothing much,” Lally repeated. “I can’t deny it seems appropriate. Nothing much to think about, because there’s nothing much we can do. And unless Albus reaches out to us first—or unless we get out of Berlin, far enough to escape the area’s monitoring spells—we can’t contact him. The Germans will bring us in without a doubt.”

“I know.” Newt had always been stubborn. He’d carried home things that were a hair from death and let them die in his arms once it became clear living would be a cruel misery, part of the cycle of nature that he nevertheless felt in his heart like the loss of a loved one. “But it doesn’t make sense to leave.”

It did, but Lally didn’t say anything.

Lally reached behind her and produced Jacob through the collar of his jacket. He gave Newt a small wave. Lally swigged the rest of her coffee and then offered it to the baker, who, with his characteristic good nature, wiped off the edge of the mug and accepted the refill.

“You know where the rendezvous point is?” Lally asked. “Can’t have us looking like spies. No doubt they’re half-convinced Theseus was one. I still can’t decide whether that man would be an excellent spy or an absolutely terrible one.”

Newt shook his head. “We only need to get the train. Albus will try to meet us as soon as we’ve passed far beyond the city boundaries, should he be able to leave Hogwarts without, um, the Ministry possibly noticing.”

If Lally had any concerns about this plan, she did not let them show. “Well, it’s not precisely logical, but there’s an argument to be made for simplicity for simplicity’s sake. You know what? We should go in early, catch them off guard.”

In case this is a trap, Newt thought.

The words in themselves were concerning, but raised nothing but a flat, distant resignation in the back of his mind. Yes, that made sense. It also didn’t change the need for them to do this, to turn over these last few stones. Because every mention the Ministry workers made of the election, only reminded Newt that his duty was entirely elsewhere for the next two months.

For all he knew, this was a part of Albus’s plan they had not been told about. For all he knew, Theseus was safe in the holding cell he’d surely be released from soon. He might even be safer than the rest of them were: an American, a Muggle, and a semi-famous troublemaker, lingering in a corrupt Ministry where they clearly weren’t welcome.

They were taken through from the lobby by a petite woman dressed in dark green, a pillbox hat sitting neatly on her coiffed hair. Past the stairs, the marble floor was replaced by plush red carpet that sucked at Newt’s boots. The doors were set in heavy mahogany, bronze nameplates glinting by each one, the titles displayed getting longer and longer. At last, they came to a stop outside a double set of doors spanning the corner, and the woman turned around.

“My name is Frau Fischer,” she said with a tight smile.

Newt paused. “I thought we were being taken to see her.” Something about it felt off.

Her eyes went to Newt’s case and lingered there; protectively, he drew his arms behind him. “Attaché to Herr Vogel,” she concluded, not responding to his comment. “I was contacted regarding your report of a missing person…”

“Yes,” said Newt. “Yes.” He chewed on the next words—what would convince her?

Beside him, Lally had gone very still.

“And what were you told about this report?” Lally asked. She tilted her head back, waiting.

“Well, I had to clear two hours to discuss it,” Fischer said. Her lips pursed as she turned to the door, withdrawing a heavy silver key. Many of the Ministries had them to secure the offices in the event of an attack. “But Herr Vogel and I determined it had to be done. You must understand that our relationship with the British isn’t the most central fear wixen in this country are concerned with at the moment; and as the home of the current Supreme Mugwhump, we’re no sovereign territory either.”

“So the law…doesn’t apply?” Lally asked.

Newt glanced between the two of them, tracing the cuff of his coat.

“Certain laws change,” said Fischer. She swung open the door and gestured for them to step in.

Jacob took Newt’s case from his hands; Newt’s grip snagged enough to nearly knock the shorter, stockier man over, but both held firm. “Hey,” Jacob hissed. He raised his eyebrows at Newt and then gave Fischer an expression of open suspicion. “She was eyeing up all your creatures. Don’t think it’d hurt if I keep an eye on this thing out here while you all conduct your wizardry business.”

Newt’s attention slid back to Fischer—and Lally, who’d stepped towards the door, but not inside. When Newt made to squeeze past her, she grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back against the wall.

“One moment—and please, forgive us in advance for the imposition on your time—but there’s a form this man has buried in his coat I really should exhume,” Lally said brightly. “One of the many kindly provided for us earlier.”

“Yes,” Fischer said, and nothing else, still standing there doll-like.

“What?” Newt asked Lally, bewildered. It emerged oddly pitched, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Er—what?”

He took a few steps back down the corridor, Lally backing down with him. Fischer looked through Jacob as though he were part of the cream walls.

“This is wrong,” Lally whispered. “We know they took him. She knows they took him. Don’t you think the German Ministry is too busy right now for someone of her ranking to be fielding so-called missing paperwork? For her to walk us all the way to her office, personally, and be able to secure it with an emergency evacuation key? What’s to say we’re not locked in the moment we step inside?”

“Do you think it’s because—?“ began Newt.

Something about the dread in his face must have registered to her. “Maybe. What, that he’s a Scamander?”

Newt nodded, almost ashamed.

The Scamanders were not part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. They were nominally pureblood, known less affectionately as “mongrel purebloods”, a term reserved for those that likely had enough Muggles in the distant family tree while remaining of high magical ancestry in their immediate family. A generations-long curse had been placed on them with the Ministry’s system of magical classifications. Newt’s great-grandfather had been marked as ‘tainted blood’, as had his mother for her destroyed family records. The status had been conferred onto Theseus and Newt.

Despite this, they’d been in service to the Ministry for generations on both sides. Even his mother’s parents, one who’d travelled and one who’d been born in Cuba, had served. Transport, Magical Accidents, Internal Warding and Architecture. His great-grandfather had sat on the Wizengamot; his grandfather had earned a temporary seat; and even his father had been called in to weigh on certain matters.

Out of all of them, Newt thought Theseus the bravest.

“I suppose, yes, you would expect to mean something between the Ministries, with the cronyism, but my intuition is good.” She paused. “Has to be, to stop my work literally blowing up in my face. Newt—I know you don’t want to go, but trust me when I say they’re planning something. Everything about this screams that they’re playing a game.”

Newt closed his eyes, visualising the meeting point, Albus’s signal. He’d stayed neutral enough to be assumed a potential Grindelwald supporter, nevermind that encounter in the woods, nevermind the strange brushes he’d had with the man before he’d risen to utter prominence. Not only that, but after being suspected of directing Credence to cause the destruction in New York, he’d stuck at it. Only two years ago, he’d still been following Credence’s trail—until he’d lost it in Bulgaria. If the Ministry wanted Newt, they could bring him in on the spot.

For a moment, he felt that lurch in his stomach, those freefall memories of jumping off the hotel roof with one thought in his mind: saving Credence. “You might be right.”

He wasn’t brave, was he? Not consciously, not normally, not when there was nothing to save. His skin was crawling. Fischer had closed the door; there was a new hum of magic in the air, the frequency of a barely contained wasp’s nest.

“We, um, we might have to run,” Newt mumbled to Jacob. He glanced at the door and the patterns of light stretching through beneath it. “Now, really. Sorry.”

He went to the single-pane window of the dull corridor and bumped it open with his elbow, extending the latch enough he could lean his entire upper body out. Below, the streets were quiet, the watery sun catching the broken glass shattered from various windows.

What had he been doing? Patiently queuing in those cold corridors, expecting the right form to somehow make this right?

Lally peered over his shoulder. “By the way, that’s not a high enough drop to consistently calculate when you begin apparating. If you want to make certain you’re not going to lose an ankle—or two—in the process.”

“I’ll make it, probably,” Newt said, gesturing for Jacob and Lally to come closer. He paused. “Ah. Sorry, Jacob, what did you—what did you say?”

They all held their breath. Distantly, the thud of boots filtered up into the corridor. Something loosened in Newt’s chest in an inexplicable way; there was no need to calculate the distance nor the drop.

Jacob grimaced. “Maybe we ought to jump?” He already looked slightly green at the thought.

“Yeah,” said Newt breathlessly. “Come. Come, quickly. It’s the, ah, the train station would likely be watched, at this end, so we need to—well, Albus said that we would—reach it more directly.”

Newt wedged his wand between his teeth. He let them both take him by the wrist, wincing at the contact, and then drove the window wider with a bang of magic. It took some effort to wedge one of his legs over the windowsill, and then—

—Jacob yelped and they—

—they were falling, flying, snapping through time and space as a man shouted something furious in German behind them—

—and crack.

They smacked down to the floor of a dark concrete room. Around them were a warren of tiny shops and illegal menageries providing remedies for creatures that would be killed on sight, the moment their deadly nature was exposed. The heavy tang of droppings and shrieks of various animals ricocheted off the walls of the space. None of the market-goers looked twice at them as Newt let go of Jacob and Lally—they’d be able to follow him, they were sensible enough—and started tracking on.

“Where’s this?” Jacob dodged a man carrying a large crate, nearly knocking over one of the hurricane lamps throwing light in the cramped space.

“Nowhere, um, too significant. You see, it’s somewhere I’ve been before that I know can’t currently be traced by the German Ministry,” Newt said. “I’ve been, um, trying to get in and out and around Germany for a little while…I suppose, just delivering letters to some of Albus’s contacts, mostly. We’ve got to get at least a hundred kilometres out—away from the city—and a Portkey might have been confiscated from me. They always, um, they always search me—rather irritating, and disturbs the creatures dreadfully, especially when they take the liberty to put hands—so, um, anyway. So I kept it here.”

Belatedly, he realised that he’d perhaps half-deceived his friends through his scattered journey. That the journey had the potential to end with a Portkey at the end was its own secret. His mind was still everywhere from the search, the unfortunate difference of him that’d made him a target through his school years shining through like light piercing the cave gloom.

Blessedly, neither of them said anything.

Newt didn’t know why, but he began to run. Together, they slid through the market, around corners and edges and squawking baskets of peddled birds. Heading towards the back rooms. The ceilings got lower; Newt had to duck under every other of the rotting wooden rafters, eyes beginning to burn.

When they came to a stop before a series of boxes, Newt dropped to his haunches to pick the lock on the bottom right.

“Here,” he mumbled, revealing the rusted cog nestled inside. “This Portkey can take us out into the countryside. From there, um, I should be able to apparate us onto a train..”

Lally crammed in next to him, Jacob flanking his other side. “Hell,” was Lally’s only comment, before she reached out and grabbed it, dragging everyone’s fingers to the warm metal with her own in one swift move.

The lurch under his navel felt like a continuation of how Newt had felt for the last forty-eight hours.

When they staggered upright for the second time, the hillside they were on was mercifully quiet.

The landscape, scattered with trees and fields and distant factories coughing up thick smoke, felt as familiar as any other memory of the train journey.

Newt stood there, five steps separated from Jacob and Lally. He breathed. Breathed in the country air, the distant scent of hedgerows and steelwork pollution. His eyes were hot and heavy and impossible. The prickling sensation grew and grew, until he was aware his shoulders were shaking and he could not stop. On the horizon, the train tracks cut a deep path of iron through the landscape. The rumbling crept up gently, almost soft, and the great heavy black train churned into view. Dizzy with effort, Newt narrowed his eyes at it, and groped for Jacob’s wrist. One final time, he made the push to cross the distance, and—

—landed in the empty first-class carriage.

Crack. Lally shot in behind them, shaking out her coats. She immediately locked the doors on either side of the carriage. “This is a magical train, at least. I’m assuming your excellent tracking skills are taking us in the right direction.”

“Ah, Christ,” Jacob said, sitting heavily on the nearest seat. “Magical trains?”

Lally pointed her wand at the wooden bar and its lightly rattling bottles. “See? The drink selection? In fact, interestingly enough, someone’s been at the Gigglewater for a second time…”

Newt walked to the front of the carriage, all the way to the wall, and then turned his back against the paper to look at the first two seats on the left. His initial instincts had been correct: that undeniable sense of another human in the space.

“Albus,” Newt said, his tongue feeling thick and limp. He dashed his knuckles across his eyes, but didn’t make any effort to stop the encroaching tears, already exhausted enough. “How did you know?”

For several moments, Albus did not raise his head, did not reveal those familiar eyes under the drawn-low brim of his hat. Then, he said: “I didn’t.”

“You,” and Newt’s voice had come out very small, “you didn’t? Was this not part of the plan?”

Albus hesitated. “I told you before, Newt, and I’m so sorry for it. But the plan has to be incomplete. No one can know the full picture. No one can know what’s expected or what’s not, because every solid understanding, every decision, could be part of a vision Grindelwald uses against us.”

Newt sighed, looking at his boots. “Ah.” He tried to muster up something more charitable, like that’s perfectly understandable, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how few questions—for once—Theseus had asked on the way to the Hog’s Head. In a rare moment in their lives, Theseus had placed full trust in Newt, and it’d all fallen apart.

“You’re very fortunate you got out when you did,” said Albus.

Albus knew Newt never changed his course, once it was decided. If Newt had escaped by virtue of some mysterious delay, it did not trouble him. That was how life generally went. An unfortunate toss of the dice. Near-death encounters for worthwhile causes.

But he and Albus didn’t talk about emotions, not like that. As a child, Newt had never been forthcoming: wary and weary and simply not aware it was something to be done. As adults, they had discussions like colleagues, but the turbulence of Newt’s life, the quiet ache of Albus’s, never met in the careful gap between them. If there was anyone Newt would talk about Theseus with, it’d be Albus: perhaps the only person.

“You do know it’s Theseus,” Newt ventured.

“Yes.” Albus bowed his head. “It seems Vogel chose the easy path over the right one. Then again, many would argue it is democratic…that this is the truth of the people.”

“That can’t be right,” said Newt. “They detained an innocent man.”

The argument felt weary.

The situation had stretched, lost shape, like a wool cardigan hung out wrong to wash. Newt was too exhausted to be polite. Albus had endured him as a feckless boy, at any rate, rarely in the classroom or out of trouble.

“Innocent, yes. But good people who speak up are often the first to suffer the consequences of it,” said Albus. He flexed his fingers, looking down at his hand with a pinched brow. “Many of us spend years in silence, and are punished either way. Whatever your brother did, Newt, I know that it would have been what he believed was right. Whether it was misguided or not, it’s been made very, very quiet—which is good.”

“No, it’s not good,” said Newt. There was a whetted sharpness in his words that rarely came out, save for the most defensive, cut-open moments. “How is it meant to be good?”

“Newt,” said Albus. That voice had steadied Newt through so many sobbing fits at school, had told Newt about New York, and had understood Newt’s newfound history with Grindelwald in the years since. “I promise you I’ll talk to Vogel. I give you my word that you won’t be the messenger, not this time. I simply didn’t know if Grindelwald would be there, tracking the announcement, even coercing it from Vogel. With the effects of the troths, I can’t be near him, not physically; but if Vogel has either detained Theseus under German law, or decided to take him as a hostage to try and draw me out, I will have to deliver. That it’s quiet could mean they’re not using him as a threat.”

Newt set his jaw. “Then let me go back.”

He could almost hear Theseus’s voice in his head. What do you think is going to happen?

And that simple question, the constant implication of consequences Theseus had never shaken, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Because anything could happen, from here on out. The last time he’d been arrested, he’d nearly killed himself and the person he loved most in the world. Yet he hadn’t talked to Tina for weeks. Their connection had grown into a tenuous mental thread sewn through the newspaper picture on the inside of his suitcase.

Albus said nothing.

“You don’t trust them,” Newt said. “You don’t trust them at all. If you didn’t trust them so, um, so badly, then why would you rely on—on me giving a message to a man who doesn’t know me at all?”

Albus winced. “Because, like the fool I am, I believed that only being the messenger would keep you all safe.”

“Keep us safe?” Newt whispered. “Why are you protecting me?”

Leta, Tina, Theseus. Dead and distant and missing entirely. Newt didn’t stay on the move because he cared, particularly, for his own life, or saw his own safety as a prize to be kept well away from others. The instinct was more animal than that, comfortable, like growing into bad habits and his own freedom, done for the joy of it.

“You know what Grindelwald believes.”

“But I—I don’t care.” Newt almost laughed. “Albus, there’s nothing I can do about what he does or doesn’t believe. There’s nothing I can do about what he does or doesn’t do. That doesn’t matter.”

Now that it had been said aloud, it finally sank in.

The next breath Newt drew was wetter than before. He scraped at his eyes again. “Although I suppose, um, it’s rather obvious now,” and the way they’d stared at him, their indifference, their blank bureaucracy, “that what I do doesn’t matter, much, either.”

Albus’s hands had moved to the edge of the train seat, his knuckles whitening. One hand was gloved, the other not, as if he’d been considering sending another message before making the journey himself.

Newt used the back of the seat to steady himself. Then, he walked away.

Lally and Jacob were talking, their voices muddy to his suddenly-exhausted ears, so he made sure to sit enough seats ahead of them he couldn’t hear, and enough seats behind Albus to gather himself.

It all made an awful lot of sense. Albus was worried, but not terrified. Whatever Theseus was experiencing in the German detention system would likely not be pleasant, but the political situation was tenuous enough that the bureaucracy wouldn’t be able to hold him forever. If Vogel had refused to listen to Albus from a distance, then it was too late, and they had to adapt to the democratic, political reality. Whatever that was meant to look like, Newt thought, because right now, it made no sense.

Theseus would have lectured him on what it meant.

Theseus could survive a few nights in a holding cell.

Somewhere along the way, hope would pay off, and their rescue would come, even if the Ministry’s dues didn’t.

Newt leaned his forehead against the glass window of the train, the rumble of the wheels reverberating through his skull. Ahead of him, Albus did not move. The countryside beyond was fading into a deeper grey as they continued on and on, further from the city that was no longer safe. Part of him knew, as it had many a time with his suitcase in hand, that they wouldn’t be returning for some time. Being far from Theseus was familiar enough that it didn’t burn in his chest with new pain.

The first choked sniffle burst out of him. It almost sounded like a hiccup.

Newt yanked his boots up onto the seat, shoved himself into the corner, and flipped up the collar of his coat.

Breathing heavily through his nose, the nervous sweat of himself and the worn-soft wool, he allowed the sobs to come with a horrible caution. They needed coaxing, to slip free, like he would a terrified animal, because the taste of salt on his lips felt like drowning.

And the calming draught still ran its chemical course. A worry like this was everything and nothing, at once. The feelings were too great to understand or compress, the world turned upside down too quietly—and still, he felt as though he were drowning, because they had no choice but to carry on.

Chapter Text

The memory of her brother, fine as fingers, traipsed down from the back of her neck to claim her ankles. Leta stared at the light running through the windows of the classroom, how it burnished her hands gold, and marvelled how it did nothing to ease that cold. It reminded her, dimly, of the lessons she’d learned in those years before Hogwarts: when her age hadn’t been counted with any accuracy, her future summed in her mother’s fate. In the Bible, Jacob had been born clinging to the heel of his brother, Esau.

It was just the same. Nearly everyone still believed Corvus was missing. The prophecy had given birth to new hope, at least among the most traditional of purebloods, the worst, that the true Lestrange heir would return.

Congratulations, Leta. Your brother lives.

But Corvus’s hands had grown as she had. His ghost was a man’s, now, and despite the love she had for him folded in that drifting, spiralling sheet, his vengeance took her closer back to the ocean each day.

On her way to this empty classroom, two children in green-and-black robes had hurried past. Their heads had turned to stare, as if her very reputation were a fishhook. The brief stints of governessing had not prepared her for this—but then, nothing could prepare her for the rot within her meeting the reality of living, breathing things. She deliberately picked up her pace, reaching behind her to tug on Theseus’s arm as he lagged behind, half-distracted by the unwanted mission they’d been given by Travers.

The girl she'd been would have turned back and fought them, jinxed them, made them feel the weight of assuming her wrongness.

Now, in the classroom, Leta rested her fingers against the carved wood of the desk and traced the marks she had made. They’d used Newt’s little penknife he kept for cutting up herbs. The destruction layered on old graffiti had felt right. Back then, she’d thought herself too vile to leave a mark, too wrong to do anything but careen towards a destructive end. Next to her engraving was Newt’s chicken-scratch. Each had etched the other’s initial. Pieces of themselves, traded and swapped in the way only young people could.

Was love, in any of its breakable forms, enough?

Months before, Theseus had believed so.

It had been minutes past three in the morning when Theseus had woken to see Leta, lying prone in the bed, staring at the ceiling. Her white nightdress was soaked through to the skin with sweat, puddling and clinging to her stomach.

Only when he pushed himself up on one elbow and reached for her, inquisitively, did she shoot to life. With a great gasp, Leta sat up, hair clinging to her face in dark, sweat-soaked tendrils. The bedroom was dimly-lit by the stars shining in through the window, the gentle breeze making her shiver.

“Leta?”

She hadn’t slept since the ball. It wasn’t unusual. Neither of them often slept through the night; perhaps it was part of how they’d fallen so deeply into one another, all those twilight hours, when the boundaries between life and death and honesty and self-preservation began to blur. If it wasn’t Theseus jolting awake, it was Leta.

They’d gripe about it in the morning, half the way to work, but it wouldn’t change their dreams.

“Fuck,” she murmured, taking a sobbing breath. “He’s back. I dreamed that he was back, just like they said.”

She buried her head in her hands. When he moved his hand off her back, thinking to brush her hair back from her face, she grabbed his wrist. The sharp movement scratched angry lines across the old scars. After these nightmares, she saw herself as dangerous, all the slight limbs of her, deserving of being forgotten. If she could have willed him away, she would have.

Only Theseus never truly left, not when it was someone he loved.

“You should release the records,” Theseus said quietly.

“No!” She wrenched her head free from the press of her palms and looked up at him, eyes swimming. In the dark, they were luminous, all whites. “I can’t. Theseus, I can’t. They’re safe where they are now, I promise. But records or not, you can’t deny that they’d rather have him—that this prophecy is going to be his revenge. He’s going to crawl back from the deep and replace me. He’s going to change everything and it’s just what they want. No one really wants my brother back. They want me punished.”

Half-true, half-not. Theseus wasn’t unaware of what he represented, of the scrutiny already on his family. Their relationship had begun raising eyebrows even while they had been simply, dangerously, roommates.

“Oh, love.” He paused. “Hey. C’mere.”

She shifted towards him, rested her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes. By the time she opened them again, she had retreated to that quiet place into which he had long-since learned he could not follow.

Theseus recognised it from his brother. Once, Newt had been nine when it happened, standing mute in the living room ignoring the family’s Ministry colleagues. Theseus had grabbed him by the shoulder and steered him out of the room, determined to solve the problem.

Time had taught him there was no solution. Leta had gathered all of herself and taken it into the well inside her, searching for answers. Theseus felt that brief flare: of fear, frustration, needing to be useful here.

But it settled, with the warm weight of her against his collarbone, the frantic puffs of her breath shifting the air even against the backs of his hands.

You’re everything to me. And with Newt on his mind, still, and the lingering regret for who Theseus had been: Both of you; you’re everything to me.

After that day in Defence class, her pain flayed open to the class, Newt had found her out by the Bowtruckle tree. They hadn’t needed to say a word, between them. Leta had been confident; it didn’t look like anything other than a stupid sheet. Saying, get away from me, you won’t be able to help, had been her first instinct. Something impossibly mean, the second, although she’d grown to like Scamander enough that she’d have delivered a jinx or a kick first. Her ribcage had been simmering with bitter horror that this was still her, that he didn’t know better than to keep trusting her after their first accidental encounter in the alcove.

Minutes had passed like that, listening to the lapping of the waves against the shore.

Scamander was awkward, but everyone knew that. A defunct piece in the puzzle that’d never reshape to fit in with the rest of them. Some days, he didn’t say a word to anyone; other days, he extended his communication beyond skipped classes and kicked-over chairs and fretful avoidance to a hum, an explanation of his beloved creatures. They had been friends in the way a pair of chicks tossed from their family nests might have become allies, in the act of mere survival, content to not really know one another.

His hands had been so gentle.

She’d vowed to never tell him—

—but standing there in the family tomb, she realised she had been backed into a corner out of which there was no hope of escape.

“It’s never too late to free yourself. Confession is a relief, I’m told. A great weight lifted. Regret is my constant companion.” Albus’s voice had softened. “Do not let it become yours.” Albus might have thought her wicked, papering over his contempt with stupid hope tagged more to Newt than the truth of her. But she was not foolish.

Pain like that could be shared, and never understood; didn’t that make it all futile, anyway? Her guilt would remain, only more people would have to feel it—or, worse, more people would have to endure the truth of her and try to love her anyway, slicing themselves to pieces on the shards of her. Leta wondered if this was how the deer felt on those pureblood estates, when they had the wand or the barrel of the gun pointed between their eyes.

She was trembling. From her head to her toes, legs like liquid refusing to pour back into the damned container of her body. She couldn’t look away from the scene before her: her own half-brother and the black-haired man from New York.

Theseus might have said that, judging from their body language, neither was themselves—that both, according to his expert insight into the human condition under the weight of terror, were playing parts in a play much, much older than they were. His metaphors of machines and necessary evils and compromises and the grinding down of life were inadequate, here. Even so, she missed him: wished that she had a lover to stand at her shoulder like the woman with Newt.

Yusuf was going to kill Credence for the crime Leta had committed, if she didn’t speak up.

—and the first glimmer of absolution came only in the almost-relief that this really would make her a murderer—

—so what had she been before? Always fated to end up here, like this, putting an end to the cycle in her family tomb—

—because he never loved you. He, of course, was meant to be her father. But there was nothing gentle about tearing her heart from your chest in the middle of a room. She was an excellent judge, jury, executioner: had been all these things to herself since the boat trip taken as a girl nearly seven years old. That didn’t mean she wanted to play it. The wedding was soon, and she’d hoped to survive until then, and leave all the rest behind her.

“Corvus Lestrange is already dead,” said Leta, finally.

Barely able to keep the scream trapped behind her teeth. Barely able to keep the tears from swallowing every one of those cursed words.

“Corvus Lestrange is already dead, because I killed him.”

She raised her wand, realising she would need to show them. None of them could come close to understanding the person she was now. The person she had fought so hard to change into, the person who had been close to becoming good. The stability of her world had already crumbled beneath her.

By the time the white light lit the room, Newt had understood.

“You didn’t mean to do it, Leta,” he said softly. “So it wasn’t your fault.”

They held one another’s gaze. It was the first time he’d looked her in the eyes since stepping onto the London docks in 1926, and it cut her to the bone. Because it had been her fault, whether she had meant to do it or not.

But, oh, there was something of the Newt of old in the blitheness of that reply. The way he examined her, nothing shifting behind his eyes, no grand realisation running through his soft expression. The first time they’d tried to feed the Giant Squid, she’d pushed him in and he’d come up for air laughing. Like a wet dog, he’d shaken his mop of ginger hair, expression going wrapped-up and slack.

It was a contentment—or, no, he was never truly content, not around any people—so, perhaps it had been a certain peace that had come close.

Leta was still in freefall. Theseus had known. Albus might have guessed. But it had been Newt she’d never wanted to tell.

“Oh, Newt,” she said, weighed down by the resignation of it. “There never was a monster you couldn’t love.”

Newt’s mouth was slightly open, but he said nothing more.

Leta could taste the memories of sweets at Honeydukes, misbegotten potions, and the prickling fear with the way he’d looked at her that night on the Astronomy Tower. She could taste the wind and the rain and the potential she’d felt the first time he’d told her that he was going to run, far away from here. Far away from anywhere, to somewhere he could be free.

In her memory, Grindelwald found the link. Hogwarts, Albus. I said bad, not stupid. Don’t bother answering. I know you never liked me. And they were right. I was wicked—

—and she was standing before a mirrored cabinet, seeing her own eyes wide with the reflection unfurling like twin white orchids in the iron-dark pits of her irises. To Theseus, the surroundings weren’t familiar at first. The glory days of school felt so long ago.

Then, he recognised the old Defence classroom, and his old Defence teacher.

Albus’s auburn hair shone in the blue light cast by Leta’s Boggart. And it was him Grindelwald wanted, him Grindelwald stalked over to. Because Grindelwald, who’d ripped these memories from Leta’s head as she’d died, didn’t care to understand them. Memory synchronicity required empathy, care, if you truly wanted to step inside someone else’s head. Otherwise, you were doomed to become a simple witness.

The moment Grindelwald’s hand touched memory-Albus’s cheek, the memory lurched, reformed.

Because shared connections were doorways. Leta's memory of Albus became the key to unlock what Theseus had buried. Because the moment Grindelwald had touched memory-Albus's cheek, he’d followed the thread of connection back to its other end—to Theseus, who'd also sat in that office, who'd also carried feelings he'd never named.

No. No, not to this, Theseus realised.

Hurriedly, he strung his fingers through the shaken remnants of his mental shields and made an effort to tug, to gather in the loosening threads of his memories, but it was too late. That history between himself and Albus had never before seemed particularly important to Theseus’s ambitions—and he was paying for it, here, because care patched too much shielding around all the rest to defend this.

Too late.

Now, it was Theseus sitting opposite Albus in the familiar office. There were deeper shadows under his eyes; time and experience with his former teacher had allowed Theseus to see the calcified layers in him.

“Your Boggart,” said Albus, and nothing more. The corner of his eyes crinkled into a smile Theseus interpreted as a warning.

It was likely meant to be kind. Likely was kind.

Theseus looked down at his hands, thin and teenage, and quietly tore a hangnail until it bled. He jogged his leg, thinking, and then looked up. “It was a,” and he didn’t want to admit it, didn’t want to be anything but what he should have been, “mistake.”

He wanted Albus to tell him that it wasn’t a mistake, to let his fear bleed through.

He wanted Albus to tell him that Theseus was still a good person, even if the Boggart he’d faced three days ago had worn Theseus’s own face: older, colder, wrong.

The feeling of being dragged out of his memory-self was like being drunk; it made the room spin as he caught his breath.

With a smooth step forwards, Grindelwald pressed his arm against Theseus’s throat again, backing the taller but weaker man up against the stone wall with furious, possessive intent. The rumours were true, then, about the nature of the blood troth and the binding contract it represented. Grindelwald wanted to own Albus so completely even this childhood memory of Theseus’s compromised them all. Fighting for breath, Theseus tried to summon anger or even defiance.

The truth was that he only wanted to go back to her.

“Oh, I can suffer a little,” Grindelwald hissed. “We can go back to the war—and, this time, for as long as I want—“

“No,” Theseus said.

“No?” repeated the other man, exaggerating the nervous inflection. “No, war hero? Is the reality that you can’t save everyone—that you might even damn them with your presence—too much to face? And you accuse me of hiding?”

Theseus swallowed, tipping his head further back against the Hogwarts wall, wishing that he’d never trusted the German Ministry. He could have easily got himself and the others out the moment the mood shifted, the moment he saw them starting to guard the exits. “Damned either way, aren’t I?”

“And, as I suspected from you and Albus,” Grindelwald said. “Damned to hell in a third way, too. Isn’t that what Muggles believe?”

With the same effort as a man jumping before an incoming train, the weight of the past hurtling at him with determined velocity, Theseus attempted to stop the memory in its tracks. The motes of dust falling through the watery bands of sunlight froze. The clouds beyond the leaden panes slowed their crawling pace.

It didn’t stop.

“Not on the outside, I am sure. It would be difficult to accuse you of that.” A brief silence from Grindelwald, then: “I am saying that in the part of your mind that you do not control, where the animal persists, where your deepest instincts lie…you are unclaimed. Feral.”

Mouth dry, Theseus couldn't reply.

Leta had claimed him, completely, entirely. Coming home alone after Paris, a letter detailing the plans for the wedding flowers still on the kitchen island, had allowed him to take stock of those internal wounds. Grief never really left. It had become a deep hole inside him, that he could only attempt to wash the blood from by staying in motion. By seeking justice, all the while sluggishly bleeding from wounds both imagined and real.

“And what I mean by that is not that you have a beast within. It is not a powerful creature. The sacrificial deer, its insides; consider it closer to that than one of your brother's raging and dangerous monsters,” and Grindelwald hummed. “The curse of the eldest, the stoic, the ambitious. Albus, too, suffered from the same curse. And he, too, found this: what is unconscious will eventually be made conscious, whether by my will or the will of fate.”

Theseus opened his eyes, and saw no man's land. He closed them, and saw Leta becoming ashes. Why had Grindelwald been so concerned with his Occulumency abilities?

The threads of other people, woven through him, had torn them to shreds more effectively than the earlier torture had. His mind was being stirred through with uncaring fingers, manipulated and puppeted.

“I had a vision,” said Grindelwald, “while you were asleep, here. In the vision, I was standing on a wall at the end of the civilised world, weighing my decision, determining how far I would have to tread through the rivers of bloody change to save us. I turned, and saw that the wall was only one section of a bridge. There, your brother crossed over to Albus. Between the two of them, between everything I know of them, every encounter we’ve had, they built me that bridge of change the magical world needs to survive.”

There was only one bridge Theseus had seen Newt and Albus meet on, if Grindelwald’s prophecy really could hold a grain of truth. The bridge outside Hogwarts, the dust from Paris still cooling in his hair.

The last memory shattered around him.

He would remember that night as if it were branded on his bones: the quiet murmurs of the watchful crowd; the ringing of his feet against the stone steps as he led the circle around the rally; the bright flash of the first shot, the first spell thrown, the first death of that night. A roar built in his ears, either from the panic that he was going to be doomed to repeat the memory knowing how it ended, or from the presence of the fire itself. Its blue light seared, twisting around him with an inexorable pull, like an ocean tide, dragging him to a destination he didn't want to go.

He knew this.

His eyes snapped open as his fingers wrapped around his wand, destined to relive it as if he even had the power to wield his own weapon: as if he wasn't lying glassy-eyed on a bed, bleeding out.

“Let's take him,” he murmured, not for the first time, except now it was Grindelwald's laughter echoing in the ears of his memory-self rather than the drumming of his own pulse.

No sooner did the Aurors step forwards did Grindelwald raise his wand, bowing his head towards the ground as if listening to the calls of the underworld. He spun on his heel, drawing a neat ring of enchanted fire. Protego Diabolica. In the year spent trying to hunt him down since his appearance in New York, his team had learned there were several spells that only the dark wix could use. And when had Grindelwald ever wanted a fair fight?

The fire, it was rumoured, destroyed any who crossed it that were less than utterly devoted.

Vinda was the first to cross the flames. They licked and tugged at her coat, outlining her body in a violent corona, and she was suddenly through and free. Two others followed, less effortless, but they staggered through all the same, joining Grindelwald's inner circle for only a few moments before disapparating.

Vinda was a key associate. That skull clearly held some power of Grindelwald's, and she guarded it carefully, close to her body with each supercilious step. Leta would know exactly what it was. Leta would know whether it was worth destroying.

“Aurors,” said Grindelwald, smiling as if he was bathed in glory, not death. “Join me in this circle. Pledge to me...your eternal allegiance, or die. Only here shall you know freedom. Only here shall you know yourself.”

Yet—and again, he had to remind himself, this was a memory—knowing what he did now, the Theseus of the present day turned around.

This time, he saw Leta, as she emerged from behind the pillar. From behind the balcony, face drawn, Leta watched. The purple silk of her dress shimmered with the fire; her eyes were wide, but not fearful, not desperate.

“Is this what happened?” present-Theseus asked.

“Maybe,” Grindelwald said. “But just because it is in your past, in your head, doesn't mean it is faithful to what some call reality. Then again, it is only fools who believe there is a singular such thing.”

He tried to step up, towards her, but he was bound to his memory self, standing as still as he remembered, feet glued to the floor in a certain disbelief.

“No matter what I say, or will, or what you see in the memories of your past, you will never be able to step across the plane of the memory,” Grindelwald said. “Again and again, you fail, and will do every time I wish for you to repeat this little play.”

Theseus forgot this was torture, forgot this wasn’t real. “Why?”

What was he meant to do, then? How was he meant to stop this?

With each breath, the lines between his own immersion and introspection blurred; the stones beneath his feet, the outlines of the flames, the Grindelwald of the past's face, all materialised into intense focus and then faded out again, dancing between real and memory just as he felt his own mind start to get drawn in again. Tangled. Trapped. Drowning under the weight of his sins, either hundreds of kilometres away or under this domed ceiling.

“Play by the rules,” memory-Grindelwald said, turning more of the men and women Theseus had worked with for years to dust. “No cheating, children.”

“Credence!” Newt shouted. Memory-Theseus's eyes darted to the figure of the young man, in rapt conversation with his companion. His body was angled towards the circle. He was already lost.

Newt, though, still tried to reach him, heedless of anyone else present. The fire exploded up towards his brother, making Theseus's heart practically stop in his chest. But he beat it back in an explosion of orange sparks, making no progress; his frantic, furious efforts to save another one of his beasts collapsed as he fell to the floor. Practically heedless, Credence walked through the fires.

Theseus remembered, distinctly, thinking: fuck.

People were taking the offered olive branch. They were swayed, enough to pass the flames, by his illusion of a moral cause. Again, yet again, the propaganda, the lies, and the veiled fascism that led to millions of deaths on and off the battlefield had reached the wizarding world. And they hadn't seen how history repeated itself, from the Wizarding Wars to the Great War; they walked in blind.

What was he meant to do against that?

Another wave of attempted escapes and subsequent deaths. Newt had climbed to his feet, taking advantage of Grindelwald's quiet and furious conduction of the flames towards the remaining Aurors to rush along the dais, finally making it to Theseus. His younger brother didn't look behind him once, only stood, watching, breathless.

“Mr Scamander!” Grindelwald called, mismatched eyes fixed on Newt. “Do you think Dumbledore will mourn for you?”

Instinctively, Theseus stepped forwards. Grindelwald swung his arm, and the step they were standing on exploded into hot flame. Theseus threw his arm up just as Newt did his, warding off the flames in a burning splutter of golden sparks. If they hadn’t moved as one, they’d both have been ashes.

“I wanted to kill you both there,” the Grindelwald of the present noted.

But this was when he’d killed Leta.

Theseus took a sudden breath, coming up for air, pulling away from his memory. The adrenaline of that sudden fight for survival, magic against magic, cooled in his veins.

“Let me move,” Theseus said.

“I had you and your brother pinned like rats,” Grindelwald mused.

“Let me save her!”

“Calm, calm,” Grindelwald said. “Here she comes, like Orpheus descending the steps: unwilling to look back. She walks into the underworld not for love, but for loneliness.”

This time, he could turn, again separating from his memory self with a sickening lurch. What he hadn't seen before: the bruises under her eyes; the way she'd swallowed before taking the first step; how she carefully pulled at the sleeve of her dress to hide her wand, the fabric shimmering purple. Her favourite colour, deep purple-blue, contusion-coloured like the bouquet of irises he'd bought her to celebrate the first morning of their engagement. He hadn't seen her fear before. He hadn't seen that she'd steeled herself from the beginning.

“Grindelwald,” she called, drawing his attention immediately. “Stop.”

He forgot it was a memory; he was sucked into it like an actor on screen, playing it out breath by breath as if he were actually there again.

“Leta,” Theseus said immediately, voice ragged. He scrambled to his feet, slow at first, almost frozen with fear, and then broke into a half-run. Grindelwald didn't even look at him as the flames rose forwards like they had minds of their own, leaping to engulf him.

He fought the flames off, teeth gritted.

He could still see her outline through the wall of fire. He'd never fought so hard before; his breathing echoed in his ears, becoming tinny. Even the seconds he'd spent holding off the fire had depleted his physical and magical reserves almost to the bone, but he kept pushing through, beating against it with everything he had. The heat radiating from the raging fire was searing and relentless.

If he didn't reach her, Leta was going to die. Nothing survived the fire. But he had to be there.

Still, he fought on, desperate to save her.

Newt began to push forwards after him, running towards the flames, his coat billowing out behind him like the wings of a bird, but the fire rose quickly.

“I always give them a chance,” Grindelwald said, whispering into Theseus's ear as he tried again to fight the fire in the present, even knowing that the memory was doomed to end in the same way.

There had been no doubt in Theseus's mind that Leta was not joining Grindelwald. The dark wix stood for all that had made her suffer: from her twisted family, to the blood hierarchies, to her brother.

“Maybe she just wanted to die,” Grindelwald muttered.

“She didn't,” Theseus said in a strangled voice, gaining maybe a few inches, barely a step against the chasm between him and his fiancee. He reached out again with a blindly aggressive defensive charm and felt his abandoned physical body jolt.

With a hiss, Grindelwald stalked over, grabbing his arms and drawing him back a half-step, staying almost within the body of the past Theseus sacrificing life and soul in an attempt to make the impossible journey through the flames. He was now just far enough out of the memory to watch it all unfold, practically blinded by rage and regret.

How could he have been so useless, so weak? How could he have stopped the fire from touching him, then, but not her, after? It should have been him throwing himself in front of Grindelwald to save her.

The Grindelwald of the present seemed to have heard this thought.

“I would have destroyed you the moment you made a move,” he said. “Your inaction until then saved you. Theseus Scamander, joining my side? It would have been such a lie I would have barely dignified you. Yet Lestrange has—had—that beautiful darkness, did she not?”

She had light, Theseus thought. The world was falling out from under him again as Leta and Grindelwald stared at one another, silence on her face, calculation on his. The past Theseus cried out, straining and pulling, hurling his magic into the fire like a battering ram. He knew she'd already made her choice, but he still had to fight.

“This one, I believe I know,” the past Grindelwald said. “Leta Lestrange. Despised entirely amongst wizards; unloved, mistreated, yet brave. So very brave.”

There was no further he could go and nothing more he could do. He was petrified, as if every nerve in his body had been electrified and connected to a live wire, confronted by a force so powerful that all his energy could do nothing more than bear witness to the impending event.

“Don't do it,” present-Theseus pleaded. “Don't do it, please.”

“You fool,” Grindelwald hissed, tightening his grip on Theseus's upper arms as if that would stop him from almost fighting his way out of the sedation too. “I can no sooner undo this than you can bring her back.”

She touched, almost imperceptibly, her third finger to her fourth. Her warm skin gleamed with a faint sheen of sweat so close to the fire. Somehow, she kept her expression empty, haughty, almost dazed, as the flames raged around her. There were only inches between her and the Grindelwald of the memory, who sized her up, harsh lines of his face implacable, tapping the wand that had killed more than a dozen already against his palm as if weighing up his newest acolyte.

The Theseus of the memory swayed on his feet. Theseus of the present saw stars, some fixed in the room, the others rippling like a reflection in water beyond the room; the pain in his mind made it all empty, awash in a relentless deluge of rage and guilt that fell without cease, rendering him just as helpless the second time he was forced to bear witness.

“Time to come home,” Grindelwald said, offering his hand. There were so many buttons on his coat. Buttons and buttons. Leta's dress, like a shadow. Her face was as statue-still as the carved stone corpse behind them both.

She reached out her hand, brushing it against his cold skin. Grindelwald turned as if to pull her through the ring of fire, but let his hand...slip. Raised two fingers.

That was when her mask had broken. That was when she'd looked at him, immediately knowing that they were both doomed.

She searched his face as he searched hers, both wordless with the agony of knowing, and there was the faintest glimmer there of—what had it been? Hope? Regret? Acceptance? Her mouth and brows were drawn tight; her hand was still held in the air as she hunched forwards, jaw set, paralysed. Leta’s voice rang out clearly in the still air.

“I love you,” she said.

She struck, once. Grindelwald deflected. She struck out a second time, destroying the skull, and making his female follower flee.

“Go!” Leta cried out.

The fire exploded, drowning the room into a nebulous galaxy of electric blue, swirling outwards as if Grindelwald had become the new centre of gravity for the entire world.

He had been ready to die there to take on Grindelwald, even as the flames ripped across her, allowing them one last, mortal glance, before he'd seen her warm, living body somehow disintegrate piece by piece like an ancient painting crumbling into ruination.

One moment she was there; the next moment she wasn't.

How was he meant to have understood that? How was he ever meant to understand that? She'd been so alive; she'd tried so hard to live, and it had taken one strike to obliterate her essence from the earth. Even as he was throwing himself forwards, trying to get to Grindelwald—kill him—his eyes were still searching for her silhouette in the room, as if she might still be there, hidden somewhere.

It had been Newt who'd grabbed him, hard, and disapparated from the room.

The memory broke like a cold wave. Gasping, Theseus’s eyes snapped open. Grindelwald’s face was centimetres from his own, close enough that he could see every pore; when he raised his hand to push the other man away, his body only lazily responded, fingers twitching against the bloodsoaked bed.

“Jealousy is so fascinating,” said Grindelwald.

“All that mattered was I loved her,” said Theseus, dazed and unsure whether Grindelwald was referring to him or Newt or Leta or any of the mess tangled histories made of flawed people.

Out of the three of them, Theseus had been the best at hiding it, and the worst when he could not. So often he had watched the other two from the sidelines and realised that, while he trusted them both absolutely, there was something giving way in his chest. A hollowness.

He managed to clumsily stretch out one leaden hand, staring at the dirt and blood under his fingernails. I was there. God, he took me back. It was the same feeling after every fight, every blow from life. At the least, he should have been grateful for it.

“I was informed by Vinda that you ended up here out of an attempt to disrupt German democracy, but I think the intentions were far more obvious. Her view on love is quite transactional, you see, but I understand. Look—you’ve even kept the engagement ring.”

The gold band looked particularly lonely on his finger now, with his head strewn to the side and his fogged mind split open like they’d run him through another round of electroshock.

A tear ran down Theseus's cheek.

Grindelwald bent closer. “Your brother. Do you think he's doing all the same things? Looking for her, like some hopeless romantic? Does he still wonder why he wasn't the one she died for? What he could have done differently? Whether it's all his fault? She might have loved him instead.”

Newt and Leta had been inseparable, once. He'd ruined it, at first slowly and surely, by falling in love with her, and then in one fell swoop with the argument that had stopped Newt from talking to him for three years.

“Stay away from my brother,” Theseus said. His slurred voice was perhaps the only explanation for why he’d spoken the words at all.

How many years ago had it been, now, that he’d been standing there in the President’s Office burning up from the inside out with fury? Numbers swam hazily past him. His eyes refused to focus. There had been—there had been anomalies in the report. For one, Newt wasn’t trained in much magic at all, and certainly not to the level in which he’d be able to take on a wix as powerful as either Percival Graves or Grindelwald. For another, Newt and Percival had met for barely hours in the Corps camp in the Caparthians.

His first instinct, headstrong and brimming with rage, had been to dismiss it. Newt getting himself into trouble again. Proving a point after the argument of last year by almost dying; how very like his brother.

But the mutual recognition between Newt and Grindelwald, Theseus had to admit, had terrified him into sleeplessness. When he’d told Newt, for the first time in 1927, that the Ministry was watching him—what he hadn’t said was that he had been watching him, too, in the snatches that he could. It had all been kept off the record. Theseus never kept information off the record unless he deemed it were for a vital cause or, in the case of Newt, if the person would be in real and unjust danger should it come to the attention of the higher ups.

“Why didn't you tell her?” Grindelwald said, quietly.

“Tell her what?”

“That you loved her.”

“She knew,” Theseus said, some certainty entering his voice. He blinked hard and his vision cleared as he tried to force the ache back into his chest where it belonged, locked and buried under his ribs, not seeping into his heart and head.

For the first few weeks, he’d got through it by pretending she hadn’t died at all. Maybe she was working late at the office. Maybe she had taken a trip to the busy city park to look at the ducks. Maybe she was visiting an art museum, or buying groceries, not that she liked to cook, or doing almost anything that was a sign she still existed. But of course, she could not, because she did not.

When the fantasy failed, he drank himself numb—never letting himself get too far gone, always staying ready for the hunt. Depending on how much the self-loathing took him back to the days of their father, he took his grief out on the bottles, the glasses. The same bruise ached on his shoulder, slow-healing since he’d started to find eating hard, too, in the run up to this mission. He’d lurched to pick up the shards and slammed first into the wall, then knees first into the shattered fragments.

Grindelwald dug his fingers into it. “Most importantly. How did Albus come to know all that had happened?”

“All that had—?” Theseus choked as Grindelwald slipped his hand around, digging his fingernails not into the fragile armour of his work shirt, but the cut he’d made up the back to expose the whip wounds. Blinding pain stole his breath.

Before, even the vulnerability of taking a day off work would have required the careful negotiations of avoiding hospitals, of not letting the department down, of allowing himself a few hours slumped on the sofa fuzzy-edged as Leta practised her cursebreaking over the coffee table. This was some kind of revenge, from the world, for all those years dressed in careful armour. To become someone he wasn’t. To become someone he wasn’t meant to be, so weak and alone.

“Never mind the games he played to keep the Obscurial away from me. Never mind him and the Ministry. Irrelevant. His messenger, yes? Who brought him the news of the Lestrange girl’s last moments? Who brought him his blood troth, stolen from me?”

Newt was full of terrifying secrets, content to live his life in some parallel world without giving a moment of lip service to the real one. Maybe it had just betrayed him one too many times. Maybe that was why he’d tied himself to Albus despite the charges of potential Statue-breaking terrorism and intended collaboration with Grindelwald.

Selfish. Reckless. Theseus tried again to shield these thoughts. He was in Paris. Theseus, if Grindelwald calls a rally, don't try and break it up. Don't let Travers send you in there. If you ever trusted me. He was in the classroom. In the war, in his childhood home, in the Ministry corridor. Every moment where the world had snapped shut on his ability to escape like a steel trap. With every fibre of his being, he attempted to do the same with his mind.

The bridge was breaking through.

“Don’t lie, now,” said Grindelwald. “You’re attached to Albus, too, in your own way. Respect? Or—I know. I know of everyone who could want him. Of course I know. You’re one of them, aren’t you? An insatiable sexual invert. Like me, maybe, but so greedy, so indecisive.”

When Theseus didn’t reply, Grindelwald grabbed the waistband of his trousers and hooked his fingers in. The dark wix shook him hard. “Tell me.”

Theseus’s only clear thought was that he’d bite Grindelwald’s nose if he tried to kiss him again. Some people were like that. The only light in a dark room. You pinned your eyes to them in terror, the world around you vanished, and the feeling that remained could be made into anything noble if only you tried hard enough. Theseus had called it love, duty, necessary ambition before, with other people. With Grindelwald, he still called it vengeance.

“He was my teacher,” Theseus snapped. “Nothing more.”

It was partially true. Underneath it all, the dismissiveness he’d cultivated to keep him close to the track of the Ministry, he had an impossibly deep respect for Albus. The two of them had always shared more beliefs than Albus had realised or Theseus had shown.

“And so. Given that it is futile for you to lie to me. Given what you have already sacrificed to make sure I get a fragment of your truth, for the sake of your hapless friends who’ve left you behind. Who brought him his troth?”

Grindelwald lifted the tip of his wand and pressed it under the crook of Theseus’s jaw.

Under the collar of his shirt winked the silver of his own chain. Two blood troths, two pacts in unions to hold around the wearer’s necks.

“Merlin’s beard, it hardly matters,” Theseus said.

Grindelwald grabbed Theseus by the neck, choking him. The pads of his fingers were light on Theseus’s tendons, letting him feel every swallow, his reverberating pulse.

“We’re halfway between reality and memory. I would be foolish to tamper with that balance. But, as isolated as my informants tell me you are, you’re not untethered. You know, I won’t kill him. Albus and I are two sides of the same coin—two, like one. You and I, simply opposites. It was your brother, wasn’t it? He and I are not entirely different. Running our lives for Albus’s brilliance. Foils. I won’t kill him, Theseus. You only need to tell me the truth.”

As if it were all a matter of love. Why else would they have made the troth? Then again, could Theseus really judge anyone for the lingering effects of love, given where he was?

He coughed up saliva, the taste of coppery blood too strong in his mouth to spit at Grindelwald. “Go to hell. I’m not telling you anything.”

Grindelwald sighed, as if counselling a disappointing child, and shrugged off his suit jacket, his waistcoat. With a twitch of his eyelids, he pushed his sleeves up his forearms with a burst of wandless magic, easy and charismatic. The blood troth flared a brilliant red against the inside of his shirt.

“You misunderstand me,” Grindelwald said, voice dropping to something almost conversational. “I'm not asking anymore.”

Albus, whispered the air around them. A summons that reverberated in Theseus’s head like a scream in an infinite cavern. Dimly, he remembered the half-hearted words of the medic they’d had in the Caparthians, the first time he’d been able to vaguely articulate that the nightmares weren’t the just terrors that had haunted him as a teenager anymore. The memories, linked. A chain bomb.

Face it on your feet, open your eyes and face it, came the little voice in the back of his head, persistent and repetitive in the way it always was before it began to warn of consequences, the implosion of the world. Look at him. Look at him and show him that you're not afraid to fight him to the death to keep him away.

The bridge materialised with nauseating clarity. Grey stones, wind-whipped and ancient. Before: Newt's embrace in the graveyard, desperate and clinging. There was an emptiness inside him even that surprising warmth couldn’t touch. After: his little brother walking away alone, peacock-blue coat flapping in the wind like the wings of a broken bird.

No.

The refusal came from somewhere deeper than conscious thought: somewhere beyond words or strategy or the careful calculations that had kept him alive this long. It was the same instinct that had made him step between Newt and danger a hundred times before, the same protective fury that had driven him into this cursed mission in the first place. Not trying to hide or deflect anymore—just pushing, fighting, rejecting with every fibre of his being this violation of the people he loved.

Theseus drew on every barrier he had, every scrap of training and nurture granting him a mind like a trap, and pushed until the foundations began to groan.

Before it could take shape, the memory exploded.

For a moment that stretched like eternity, there was nothing but chaos. Images flashed and fractured: Leta's eyes in firelight, Newt's laughter from years ago, his father's funeral, war and death and a dozen different versions of loss. Each second was harder to hold back than the last, each more detailed, instincts growing into sensations, growing from snapshots into windows of the past. If he could have screamed forever, he would have. If he could have howled until his voice was hoarse and his throat was raw, he would have.

Hands intertwining in a dark room.

A slight girl, pale as the moon.

A man on his knees.

A vision, a bridge, an echo.

Impossible memories. Memories that weren’t his own.

Grindelwald's presence recoiled like a hand jerked back from flame.

When they came up for air, they surfaced together, drawing in twin gasps that came sharp and rattling in the otherwise silent room. Grindelwald smiled—confirming something to himself—and pulled himself off the bed.

Theseus lay very still, cataloguing his mistakes. He could taste blood where he'd bitten his tongue, could feel the ghost-ache of memories that had almost torn free in each shallow, careful breath—feeling as though any sudden movement might shatter something irreparable.

He'd won.

Grindelwald broke the quiet. “Newton and Albus,” he said, “still as close as ever. So you thought you would protect them from me.”

It was exactly as Theseus had suspected. The ferocity of his defense had been enough proof. In trying to save that memory from Grindelwald’s reach, its absence had become damning.

“Interesting,” said Grindelwald, tilting his head to one side, seeming entirely at home in this abandoned, ostentatious bedroom.“And I suspect you still will. For that, are you ready to sacrifice everything you have? Your body, your sanity, and your mind? You might, as you claimed earlier, have no interest in obeying me. But in light of what I have learned, I'm afraid we can progress far beyond the point of whether or not you want anything that comes.”

Whatever Grindelwald hadn’t seen in that bridge memory—Newt's trust, Albus's connection to them both, the fragile web of loyalty that held them together—had given him exactly what he needed.

“The Ministry will come for me,” Theseus said: not because he believed it, but because he wanted to will it into being true. Part of him wanted no one to come at all. How could he have been so stupid, so drunk on the tiny fragment of control he'd been able to claw back?

Grindelwald only sighed. When he reached the door, he paused, looking back over his shoulder. “Rest well. Tomorrow, we will discuss the terms of your cooperation.”

The lock shut with a soft click.

Screwing his eyes shut, Theseus let his hands rest against the mattress. Against his recalcitrant will to survive, freshly-woken thoughts warred deeper beneath the surface, opening up that waiting abyss. He was, still, so very alone.

Chapter Text

Vogel had extended no invitation, but Albus hardly cared. With the Germans taking Theseus, the permission was implicit. As was the rage he did not allow himself to feel.

The German Ministry’s country mansion was all red brick, with turreted wings and a porch blazing light into the night like fire. It sat on the outskirts of the city where suburbs meant countryside. Albus had walked from the city rather than apparate it in, turning over the situation half-predicted in his head like a stone.

Albus wasn’t blind to the possibilities of where Theseus Scamander had gone. Academically, the disappearance had been a less likely possibility, but not impossible.

And the blood troth’s chain refused to stay around his wrist where he kept it wrapped.

Albus came to a stop under a street lamp illuminating the flat, empty road. Fine as a snake, the silver links wound their way through Albus’s fingers with all the garroted strength of a lover.

The more he watched, the more it performed for him. Squeezed, tight, tighter, until both the veins in his wrist and his head were racing and sore. The tightness made the land around him only feel emptier on this stretch of field and home where the city began to bleed out.

Under the threat of it, intimate and inescapable, Albus only felt more alone.

Vogel had two properties, both inherited from his father, a proprietor of magical factories and a prominent diplomat; there was a gilded city house, narrow like property from money, and this. Once, Vogel had mentioned it at one of the academic conferences they’d both been invited to, under the label of being talented young wixen — out of flirtation, curiosity; did any of that matter now? Albus wasn’t the free boy he’d once been. Here felt so far from Albus’s own upbringing. Such was the state he’d been sleepwalking in since his and Gellert’s encounter in the café.

See: it was Newt that Albus had long worried about being taken somehow, if he could be caught, haunted by the queasy possibilities that his once-lover would turn on his former student. But Newt’s letters to the German Ministry had all been neatly compiled and sent on to Albus — by some secretary, the name given as Henrietta Fischer — along with an address.

With a sigh, Albus drew the Deluminator from his pocket. It was already an overcast evening. He clicked the silver device, and the light came to him, bathed him for one dazzling moment. The lights on the porch went out. The lights on the street went out.

Better not to think of Aberforth now, what with the similarities, with another set of siblings. But like a wound, his cankerous brother often drifted through his mind, always so close to the Hogwarts that served as his home, always so insistent Albus would never be a welcome guest.

Better still not to think of —

Of that moment she’d come down the stairs, silent as a ghost, pale as a ghost, hair shining in the bright flash of the spell —

If Vogel were there, peering from behind one of those gauzy curtains, he’d see the brief supernova of Albus’s silhouette. Albus was cowardly; he knew. Cowardly and — standing in the dark with all Vogel’s anglerfish reeling clutched in one fist — so very angry.

In a swift motion, Albus drew his hand out from behind his back. The light glowed at the end of the Deluminator, did not escape.

The door’s grand knocker was a carved eagle. Rather distasteful. Albus would prefer not to have to touch it, nor indulge the other man’s sartorial tastes. Vogel’s fear and desire looked so similar to Albus, were so parasitically intertwined, that he’d only rarely made the decision to decode them when it became a matter of survival. Albus cared not a whit what either of the Ministries would think, nor the concept of something happening to him. The actuality was different.

Delaying, he leant back, using the Deluminator as a clumsy torch.

To the right of the house, until now concealed by his manufactured darkness and the stretching tree, sat a car.

And then the door opened.

Albus turned back to the front door, peering up from under the crooked brim of his hat.

Vogel’s dark hair was slicked back, his hollow face studious. He was wrapped in a black, double-breasted evening jacket, the satin lapels looking slick in the light.

“That’s a fascinating car you have waiting for you, Anton,” Albus said, light and conversational. “Evidently Muggle, given the circumstances you find yourself in.”

He brushed past without waiting to be let in. But Vogel didn’t move from the centre of the door. That threw his step off by a beat, the hard bump of their shoulders in the dark.

Albus’s skin broke out in gooseflesh. There should have been some comfort in knowing it would never be more than that, not now Vogel had allied himself so publicly to Gellert. Yet the hairs on the back of his neck didn’t settle, even in the overwarm mansion. The white wallpaper with its fans of blossoming gold didn’t make it feel any less dirty, somehow.

“All these years, and I still wonder what exactly you think of their artefacts,” Vogel said. “For instance, just now; are you marvelling, or is the usual repulsion at anything they’ve created?”

The blood troth drew on him its warning heat. Albus had only openly cracked under the weight of the troth once, in front of the Scamander brothers.

Why them? he’d wondered at the time. Newt was different; patient and loyal and ever half-distracted. With Albus, he was attentive in ways the staid teaching of Hogwarts had never allowed him to be; lingering in the corners of rooms, curling himself into armchairs, making the bright jokes that sometimes broke through Albus’s fog and reminded him of the joy of brilliant company. Yet Albus had always kept his grief in a tight container around his — friend? Former student? Peer?

In the moment, it had been as natural as peeling back some heavy rug shrouding a secret, estranged from reality. His students could see him cry — what was there to stop him, to make him take shame in the emotion itself, as it began to split from the endless guilt? But the old guilt over that summer had lingered so long it had become background noise.

A facet of him, Albus was beginning to learn, that was dangerous in itself.

Albus exhaled once, twice. He clicked the Deluminator a second time and restored the light to Vogel’s house.

How much do I have to give? he couldn’t help thinking. Not protesting — never quite protesting, because Albus had never questioned that the monster he’d helped raise in that fevered summer in Godric’s Hollow was his duty — but tired.

Exhaustion bade him keep his distance. So keep his distance, he did. It was cold to think so, but there might be little he could change. It was why he’d given Theseus the Portkey: instinct, that even if he came out of hiding for this, even if he tried for the sacrifice to be his own, the threads of destiny would still ensure the strings pulled belonged to other people.

“Anything?” Albus said. “That’s a little presumptuous.”

“Hardly so when the man I once knew was plotting to bring them all under the yoke like cattle.”

With that oily veneer of politeness, Vogel retreated deeper into the hallway. Against Albus’s heels was the cold night air, a reminder of the open door behind him. In any other situation, a government official in a room with Albus might have locked it shut.

They both knew this was a situation of equivalent exchange.

Albus smiled without his eyes or teeth. “Then, your only challenge would be having to make a consideration of your own as to what I am.”

“I—“ began Vogel.

A decorative statuette adorned the otherwise empty side table. Albus lifted one of the headless men, weighing the gold in his hand. Vogel watched him as though he might steal it.

The house was modern on the inside and curiously empty. The rumours were Vogel lived his solitary lifestyle — no wife, no family, no photos — because of proclivities Berlin was beginning to cater for. Albus had always ignored the pejorative undertones to the scandal of it, the implications it was only for those who could buy others off that queerness started becoming a salacious fashion.

Vogel was empty.

That was why.

His life was empty; his beliefs were empty. He was an empty man.

“So what is it you deemed important enough to come and discuss, at this time of night?” Vogel muttered.

Vogel angled himself against the wall with the look of a child ready to pull the wings from a fly. A quiet sadism that would always baulk from real cruelty.

“I’ve heard Santos is already constructing a challenge against your supposed bias on putting Grindelwald in such a light,” said Albus. “It could be as simple as that.”

The effect of Vogel’s refusal to ban Grindelwald from campaigning, even with a criminal record, had already rippled outwards across the wixen world.

“Political matters,” repeated Vogel.

“Yes.”

Perhaps that had been why he’d asked Albus about his opinions on Muggles. Vogel was too afraid of the real evil living in Albus’s soul to get too close.

Ironic. Really. The invisible line drawn between them generated the truth of their divide. The Supreme Mugwhump, the elected head of the International Confederation of Wizards — and a schoolteacher. At the snap of his fingers, Vogel could call for deliberation that’d shift the bedrock of their world by increments. The ICW didn’t set policy, didn't mandate how countries and the self-determined collectives scattered through the Muggle Empires dealt with the Statue. But it had a less-then-delicate hand in leading all of it.

“And if it’s not,” and Albus laughed, rusty and quiet, “then I’m not sure, myself. I expected you to tell me.”

“Oh?” Vogel raised his eyebrows. “Forgive me if I don’t ask the staff to begin preparing the amenities.”

The chess game had been set in motion and the pieces were not moving as directed. Albus stared at the figure in his head, headless and armless and altogether disembodied. Put it down with a solid thunk.

“Then we’ll go somewhere it’s comfortable to discuss the matter of your Ministry disappearing a political prisoner.”

No need to mention his name.

“If this person is a prisoner,” Vogel said, “then, they have earned themselves the right to be disappeared. Isn’t that the nature of entrapment? It’s hardly a prison if you can just find the person you seek.”

Vogel sighed and then glanced up the stairs. The distant noise of footsteps, clatter — all the sounds of a household run by a small army of staff settling down at just past eight in the evening. “And — oh. Please,” said Vogel, beleaguered as if his patience was already being stretched. “Excuse me for a minute.”

You want privacy for this conversation, Anton, Albus thought with savage satisfaction. He could have stolen in through a window, an undignified leaf from Newt’s playbook. Even then, he wouldn’t have had the will to hurt Vogel into telling him where Theseus was.

The bureaucrat retreated down the hall through a grand set of doors. When Vogel returned, there was a port glass in his hand. He drained it without a second thought and vanished it rather than approach the side table Albus had been toying with.

As if Albus was contagious.

Given what had happened to his team within barely three weeks of trusting him, Albus couldn’t help but wonder if he was.

“I can't imagine you want to be seen with me,” Albus said. “What has the British Ministry been telling you?”

“Nothing I presume Theseus Scamander has not already,” said Vogel, taking down his hat from by the door.

Albus removed his own and placed it on the hook, feeling the other man’s eyes burning a hole in the side of his cheek. The mirroring would confuse him. Good.

“You remarked on my car.” Vogel shrugged one shoulder. “In that case, let me drive you. It’ll be late, but it’s a full moon tonight. I suspect you may not have been taught this, but the full moon — it will make for good hunting.”

Albus frowned as Vogel went to the wooden cupboard by the coatstand and drew open the doors, pulling out an elegant hunting rifle.

“Hunting,” he repeated.

“Not often.”

Vogel did not seem perturbed that he was wearing a dinner jacket outside at this time of night. The leather strap of the gun sat neatly across his broad chest. “But you should understand my position is rather precarious here, Albus, and I should not be seen with the wrong people. The wixen world has faith in me, to uphold the system, and ensure the old customs persist. I don’t squander that for half-hearted messages designed to be whispered in the ear — begged — rather than said through the change this world needs.”

Vogel had not served in the Great War. If Albus had been honest, he himself hadn’t even hidden from it — he simply had chosen to make sure he didn’t know it existed.

“A Muggle gun?” Albus asked.

Vogel gave him an awful, tight smile.

If Albus had evaluated the wixen who’d crossed over — about all of it as an academic exercise, just as the Muggle men in their high towers had done, simply without much understanding — then the past would have woken within him again.

“Maybe we shouldn’t throw stones,” said the German.

If Vogel ever made a statement on the Great War, there would be international outcry. The French Minister had a long-running feud with the Germans over the magical residue found in some of the blown villages.

Even his students were starting to share the sentiment. Before, a handful would raise questions: could Defense be used against Muggles? Perhaps they lived in a city, in a town, in a rural parish beholden by strict religious principles. Now, the question never arose. He’d taken aside one student: dark-haired, fanatical boy, somewhat callously hoping not just to convince him out of it but to barometer this rising prejudice.

I wouldn’t even let them touch me. I wouldn’t have to ask, the boy had said. Everyone knows what we’ll need to do to them, sir.

Albus followed Vogel back into the cold night air. Time had shrunk around them, pulling them firmly into twilight. The car’s wheels were heavy and rugged, the exterior exposed. It looked as though it should be crawling through coarse dirt, not sitting by the Reichstag.

Then again, the Muggle Germans had lost land with the treaty. The German Ministry seemed curiously invested in the matter, given the ICW currently ruled that wixen self-determination did not automatically give nations the privilege to follow conquest patterns of the Muggle world.

“Get in,” Vogel said.

Albus did.

With a rumble of tires, they were off, jolting down the country road until the groan of the engine smoothed out.

Albus wished he had a bag, something to do with his hands. His wand was hidden up his sleeve, but he doubted he would use it, should it come down to a physical fight.

Academic anger fought with weary acceptance, already — what was there for him to do? Either of the Ministries could shackle him. Wherever Theseus was, it would hurt Newt —

He cleared his throat, unable to bear the thought. His fingers settled under his sleeve, finding the cold metal of the blood pact’s chain. The pact itself was uncomfortably warm against the crook of his elbow. It was crawling its way up, slowly but surely, intent on reading his heart.

The truth was, he didn’t feel much like he was betraying Gellert. Because he wasn’t exactly rescuing Theseus, either. What betrayal did the troth have to read?

“It’s been some time,” observed Vogel, keeping his eyes on the road.

“Enough time for you to become familiar with blood and soil, it seems,” said Albus.

Vogel scoffed. “A fiction. The British Ministry only need someone to blame for the number of wixen that slipped over and engaged in the mess of the war. We cannot control our Muggles anymore than other wixen nations can without turning to the methods of the Europeans in Africa or the Americans in their fields and cities. The German Ministry is innocent.”

“The German Ministry has just,” Albus said, “pulled the trigger on a chain of events that could see the world as we know it collapse.”

The story had begun long before them, before the Predictions of Tychuous, before Credence and Corvus and Leta, before even Gellert had arrived that fateful summer. It was a cycle, history was. Yet the future was Gellert’s; only rumour had it there was a creature he needed to replace the skull — the cerebrum venedium — he’d shown Albus so gleefully in 1904.

Would all that be reason enough to take Theseus? If anyone had known anything about the cerebrum venedium, a crafted dark artefact for projecting visions of the future, it would have been Leta.

“You want to argue innocence is a tricky…concept, Albus? Or would you rather close your eyes to the fact the world has already been collapsing, and you have only chosen not to see it?”

As if Vogel had ever needed to grapple with moral rights and wrongs along his climb to the top, desperate and sweating and trampling on the backs of better men than him. Albus didn’t believe in innocence, only goodness. Goodness was — who?

This is going to hurt Newt. The thought had intruded the moment he’d received Newt’s desperately clipped, patchwork collection of ‘evidence’ from the Germans: the rejected paperwork and the captured Auror who’d never been. Albus had taught him, seen him through any number of near-detentions. And, Merlin, Newt was good.

“Anton. What do you want me to say?” Albus took a deep breath and swallowed a little more of his pride. So much gone already. He almost dared not to build it back up. “There is no conspiracy against you. That attempt at an arrest — it’s not part of a grand plan. Whatever disruption was caused, surely you see it was the act of one man.”

There, a gentle plea, to tempt Vogel’s baser senses.

His anger grew gently, like moss over the trunk of a tree.

Newt’s letter to him had been dotted with smeared circles of ink. The first three times Newt had cried in Albus’s office had been feral, almost animalistic in the raw pain. He’d bit his own arm and the mention of his older brother hadn’t calmed him; it had shattered something quiet in his face.

Albus’s own siblings had drowned him in his own guilt so long ago he hadn’t the words of comfort for the boy, then.

“You still love Grindelwald,” said Vogel. The car juddered to a stop, but they sat there in the dark with the engine running close to idle.

The fumes clotted in the air around them.

Albus turned his head a fraction. Vogel’s hands gripped the wheel, knuckles white.

“Is that relevant?” Albus asked.

“It's the only thing that's ever been relevant.” Vogel killed the engine. The silence rushed in, filled immediately by the rustle of wind through the forest pressing close on either side of the narrow road. “Do you believe I can’t see it? Think of me as so low? That this is you, easing your conscience, for the Greater Good?”

“The Greater Good,” Albus repeated.

“Don't mock it.” For the first time, there was real heat in Vogel's voice. “You helped create it. Those manifestos, those theories about magical supremacy and the natural order — you were there, Albus. In Godric's Hollow. Don't pretend you've forgotten.”

Yes, he and Gellert had planned out their necessary sacrifices and academic clauses for their new ruling era by candlelight. How Gellert would smear the ink of Albus’s feverish scribbling — how he would laugh, and put those stained fingers in Albus’s until they were both dripping with the alchemy of shared creation. There was nothing more physical than the empty inches between two unified in co-creation.

At the time, he had known it was extreme, radical. Even cruel. By those standards, that hadn’t mattered. They had been outcasts, future rulers, standing on the edge of a known and broken world, and that darkness had been oil ready to carry an incandescent torch. And even then — it had been restraint, restraint — and the old arrogance of knowing he was brilliant.

Vogel unlatched his door and swung himself out, readying the rifle.

“What are we hunting?” Albus asked.

“Does it matter?” Vogel didn't look back.

The blood troth grew hotter, hot enough that Albus knew he’d be peeling back his sleeve to reveal a brand-like burn later. Albus had grown up near a forest, but he had never stopped to consider what might have been in it. Newt would know what Vogel was hunting. He wouldn’t have let this happen. He would have come home hurt.

These were all his former students whose lives were in his hands; and Theseus and Newt had both witnessed the troth, both seen the effects on Albus. The trust should have run both ways.

Albus followed the other man, through the moonlight.

“My father,” added Vogel, “said you could tell everything about a man by whether he flinched when you pulled the trigger.”

A pause, broken only by the rhythm of their footsteps as Vogel led them off the narrow track and through the dark trees, the trunks spacious, cultivated, straight and narrow. This had to be some reserve.

Vogel raised the rifle onto his shoulder and cocked the trigger.

What creatures come out at this time of night? Albus mused. What are you trying to kill, Anton?

The first time they’d met had been at an award ceremony for one of the Ministry’s few scholarships given to young wixen. They’d been taken to France, if only for the romanticism of it, the moment to impart the significance of wixen heritage. Funny, when it was the same city Albus had spent trying to drown his sins against Muggles, determining whether it was the guilt he was running from or the truth of his crimes themselves, after Gellert had left.

Their meeting had been, Albus thought, utterly insignificant. Vogel and the silver spoon he’d been born with had seemed dull, but Albus in those days had been polite, friendly, to everyone he came across. Safer that way. Safer to begin to accumulate your knowledge of them, while they did not care to know you: a half-blood from the country, a brilliant student with a dangerous flair, with ribbon in his hair just past that edge of thoughtful, towards the breaking upon of Victorian sanctity.

Vogel would never be a killer.

The gunshot cracked out through the night.

If this was an execution, Albus hoped it would be fast. There was a faint rustle as Vogel drew his wand and lit it, bright as the lights of an interrogation room. Instead of aiming it towards whatever poor thing had fallen out there in the undergrowth, he turned.

Albus’s vision dazzled in the bright corona; through the radiant blue circle was Vogel’s face like a mask, tight and distant with an emotion Albus could not name.

“This isn’t his plan,” Albus realised aloud. “He wouldn’t have allowed you to contact me.”

“I heard it was you that sent the Magizoologist to Paris,” said Vogel.

“No,” said Albus. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think—“ and Vogel broke off. “Not so inconceivable should it be, Albus, that I too was sent.”

Oh, Vogel being a puppet on Grindelwald’s string. Surely there should have been an ounce of vindication to be drawn from that. The pride and the anger were too busy warring, demanding he respond, demanding something beyond being pinned like a deer in the headlights.

He didn’t deserve to feel either.

New York. What had happened to Newt. Paris. Another one of his students.

Now, Berlin, too.

“So tell me.”

Vogel lowered his wand. The world returned to blue-black shadow.

“Let's be honest with each other, Albus. Just this once. You came here knowing you wouldn't leave with Scamander's location. You came here to be told what you already understood: that interfering now would destroy whatever chance you have at stopping Gellert's election. That the risk is too great. That one man's life, even a good man's life, isn't worth the thousands who might die if Gellert wins.”

“It’s your election as much as it’s his.”

“No,” said Vogel simply. “It’s the democratic will of the people. Every wixen can cast a preliminary vote; every member of a wixen government can cast a deciding vote; every part of the process is—“

“Righteous.”

“Mine to spearhead,” said Vogel, a muscle feathering in his jaw, “and the cultural example of proper governance Germany has been built from since its founding, since the Ministry began, since I was elected in my turn.”

Albus took a step forwards, leaning in.

“So where is he?”

“I have many things.” Vogel's smile was thin in the darkness. “An understanding of how the world actually works, rather than how brilliant men wish it would.”

There it was — the bitterness that had always curdled at the edges of Vogel's admiration. Albus remembered it from their younger days, when Vogel had orbited the fringes of academic conferences, his father's money buying him access but not brilliance. Never quite brilliance.

Vogel lifted one hand, put it on Albus’s shoulder. For a moment, Albus’s stomach plummeted, without cause.

Then, Vogel gave a gentle, magnanimous sigh. “Should we go back? The fresh air has treated us — fairly, we could argue. You haven't changed.”

He watched Vogel track his way back through the reserve to where the gleaming black car crouched on the road, waiting to be brought back to life.

Albus could feel the threat.

Something hungry was watching him, memory or repetition. Did Vogel know what he and Gellert had done in woods like this? Was that why Vogel had chosen here?

Was that why he’d brought the gun?

Albus closed his eyes.

Let this be a test. He would go back to the car. If there was a demand Vogel had of him, if it would free Theseus, Albus would provide what he could.

Each step required a decision: to keep going, to not turn around, to not twist on his heel and leave Vogel standing there with his trophy of a car and his manufactured intimacy.

But these were the deals he’d bound himself to, a lifetime of them, the moment he’d slit a wound across his palm and joined blood with Gellert. By the time he reached the car, he was almost content in the fear of the decision he did not quite know how to feel, so momentous and different it was to his hiding.

He had to be, ruthlessly, pragmatic. It would not have been the first time, him drawing in these men like a moth to a flame; being a brilliant young man and woefully naïve, carefully studied, had brought him into their orbit, sure as any other talented wixen from a background below the echelons of purebred society.

Just as he reached the car, as Vogel turned to him with those awful eyes, the blood troth seared. It ran deep. Once, he’d touched the iron skillet of his mother, almost scientific for the reach to the flame, and been scalded almost down to the bone.

This was worse.

“Oh,” gasped out Albus.

No — the last someone had seen the effects of the blood pact on him had been the recruitment of Theseus. Then, it had been both the brothers standing there as witnesses in the Hog’s Head as Albus had let himself break under it. Newt’s worry had been evident, round-eyed; Theseus only going very still. They had been his students. It made them the closest to safe someone who’d made that pact could ever deserve.

Not Vogel and his greed, out of all of them —

Albus was the same fool.

He couldn’t.

Vogel had gone still: watching. Waiting.

I’ve betrayed him, he registered dimly. He knows. He knows. The words echoed over and over, over and over. The pain was too much to hide. He knows. A cry tore itself from him, emerging as a stifled gasp, and he dropped onto his elbow against the car’s unforgiving bonnet. All the while, Vogel was there — and please, let that stillness have a touch of horror, horror even Gellert had almost shown, not just awful fascination and disgust —

And Vogel covered his wanting by sleight of hand.

“You walked into my house with that deluminator trick, all theatrical fury, but you haven't once asked me to actually help you retrieve him. You haven't threatened me. You haven't even really tried to persuade me.”

Albus wished he could rip open his sleeve, if only to see the troth. His fingers went to the fabric, scrabbling, clutching, and then went limp. When he’d last fought it with an audience, it had nearly killed him. Vogel certainly wouldn’t make an effort to save him.

The clarity the familiar agony brought him was so vivid, like being pinned down, choked, having the air drawn from him by ounces until the boundary between life and death allowed him to see the world as it truly was. That survival instinct was always new. A bright spark that reminded him of Newt, somehow, even with the way his former student had allowed himself to be expelled with barely a mute protest and tears in his eyes over the fate of the injured Jarvey.

“You want permission,” Vogel said. “From someone. Anyone. To make the calculation you've already made. To prevent us having to be ever so regretful about the prisoner who tried to escape the Erkstag, where he has not been processed, but is safely held — depending on what you do next. Believe me when I tell you there are not many ways, these days, to guarantee a man’s life, no matter his position. But I can offer you one. Don’t involve yourself in this. He isn’t really one of yours. And if you’re lucky, if you stay away from him, then Gellert won’t begin to consider it necessary.”

So there was no bargain to be struck; Theseus’s capture might not have even been part of Gellert’s plan.

“What control do you have over the Erkstag?”

“Albus. I don’t pull the strings.”

It burned.

For a heartbeat, the troth dragged him fully under, and he felt Gellert. The bright quicksilver of his mind, the dimness of his rooms, the underwater atmosphere beyond Nurmengard’s leaden windows. The war table, the libraries, the grand shelves that would smell of the summer they’d met.

And there — scattered across the table like tarot cards — photographs. Not of Albus. Of creatures.

A mother Qilin, her scales catching light like oil on water. Her twin offspring, barely larger than fawns, their eyes ancient and knowing.

Then it released him. He could smell the damp leaves again.

Albus straightened slowly, one hand still braced against the car. His breath came shallow.

“The blood troth,” Vogel said softly, “has always been the most honest thing about you, Albus.”

“Honesty.” The word tasted like ash. “You wouldn't recognise it if—“

“If what? If it came wearing your face?” Vogel opened the car door. “Get in. I'll drive you back.”

“No, thank you.”

Vogel's voice was almost gentle. “My father's test, remember? And you passed, Albus. It was easy enough, since the day we met, to believe you might.”

In silence, Albus stepped back, and inclined his head. To stay the dizziness, he locked his knees in place, the world still spinning gently. The chains of the troth had woven their way upwards now, past his collarbone, the heat of the pact desperate to leech from the warmth of his chest, match his heart. If it chose his neck next — I cannot even think of betraying him — then he didn’t want Vogel to see how low it might bring him, as punishment.

“Then, good evening,” said the German, with that final smile that did not reach his eyes. The grand car’s engine growled to life, the wheels struggling against the path. Vogel rested both hands on the wheel and leisurely flicked on the headlights. “Any further enquiries into the Erkstag, so much as a visit to my Ministry, and the man dies in his prison cell. But I knew you would understand. The future of our world is, after all, at stake.”

Albus’s hands were shaking as he put them into his coat pockets. Angry red imprints lanced across his palm; they burned all the way to his collarbone, where the troth had tasted the crook of his neck. It would be faded by the next morning.

He had known this might happen: had planned for it. Each of the team's gifts had been the closest he could give to protection, and perhaps Newt had known that. Had known — when his brother had followed him forwards into this breach with the dogged principles Theseus Scamander was known for — that Albus had never protected anyone. Guided, yes. But who had he ever been able to protect?

If Theseus was in the Erkstag, he’d be kept alive. With a prisoner like that as leverage, Vogel and Gellert would keep Albus on their hooks.

The plan had to continue.

You can’t do this to Newt, Albus thought.

But he was. Standing by Ariana’s grave, he’d known he’d never be the same man again. Albus had taken that broken nose, every punch, every ounce of silence and regret, and buried it inside him so deep that it now only registered as a constant static. It never meant any less.

Grief never did.

No doubt that was why Theseus had done what he had — and now, for that bravery, was hidden within the Erkstag. The lie might have been the truth, might have been uncertain, but the team needed to function. To survive. Because, at any cost, they had to stop Gellert winning the election.

Those Qilins were part of his plan, that ancient political ritual designed for testing a leader’s inherent faith. Yusuf had already shared with him whispers of the acolytes moving through the wilds of China, tracking their way south-west, occasionally leaving incendiary reminders for Tao the likes of The Prophet would never share.

It made sense. The theatre of it.

Here was the quality of Albus’s own ritual: it never ended. It would always hurt. And, once again, his own choices would make him a liar, a coward, and unable to do anything but see the uncertainty through, as the truth blossomed into lies, and the plan twisted its way towards the edge of what constituted a necessary sacrifice.

Different brother, different war, same choice. The Greater Good required it. That's what he'd told himself then, too, when Gellert had first whispered those words into the summer dark.

Chapter Text

At the edge of Knightbridge, dreading arriving at Theseus's flat as he usually did, Newt found himself fighting Teddy for the spare key for the third time that cold evening.

The Niffler was well-trained at purloining it, a habit that Newt hadn't tried hard to stop in the past; after all, what would he do with a spare key? He was barely welcome, as much as they'd both tried to bring him over for dinner for several years. 

But the anxiety he'd used to feel stepping into something that was so clearly someone else's space was entirely meaningless given the place was empty. At the same time, he wondered if it might not be. The German Ministry was now firmly out of both answers and fabricated explanations. They'd responded to his accusations of losing the Head Auror of the British Ministry of Magic with shrugs and a few muttered words that Newt knew from gut instinct were derogatory at worst and dismissive at best.

It felt like an age since he'd been in London.

The ghostly yellow street lights illuminated the tall, stately buildings, turning each block into a beacon, while the distant horns of automobiles and commotion of hurried footsteps echoed off the wet pavement.

The air was frigid. Newt wrapped his coat tightly around him. Knightsbridge was busy, even at this time of night, and he ducked his head as he let his feet carry him all the way to the flats. Theseus and Leta had talked about moving into a house, at some point, but Newt knew that they'd been attached to the flat, despite its small size.

It was where they had made their first home together, after all.

Their home, Newt thought. Not mine. It's not a place I should be.

A car horn blared and he jumped clumsily out of the way as he crossed the street, passing in and out of the warm glow of its headlights. He approached the fancy-looking building, noting with vague appreciation the intricate stonework and imposing architecture of the structure.

He could either explain himself to the doorman, that he was Newt Scamander, brother of the resident Theseus Scamander, on a very regular and normal visit...or he could disguise himself.

Ducking under the overhang of the building, wincing as it started to drizzle a fine and foggy mist of rain, Newt wrapped his fingers around his wand in his pocket. His grey coat shrank into a navy boiler suit. His case shifted from leather to a toolbox, the handle now decorated with an oil-stained cloth.

As a final touch, he turned a handkerchief in his pocket into a flat cap, pulling it down over his unruly hair to hide his eyes from view. Biting down on the inside of his cheek, he shouldered his way through the door, heading straight for the lift.

There were several minutes in which he had to wait for the clunky thing while the doorman regarded him silently. At long last, the metal doors creaked open, and Newt stepped inside, the interior dimly lit by a small light fixture above his head. The elevator jerked and groaned as it ascended, and Newt gripped the handrail tightly, half expecting the thing to plummet to the ground at any moment.

As the lift doors opened with a stuttering lurch, Newt stepped out into the vestibule. Their apartment was the only one on this floor.

It was risky to be surrounded by so many Muggles, but both of them had decided to hide in plain sight; Newt heavily suspected that the normalcy made Leta feel far safer than a grand wizarding mansion could.

The only sound he could hear was his own breath, the rain outside, and what could have been a very, very faint radio from a few floors up.

He stopped outside the door, glancing at the empty vase sitting forlornly by the vestibule's burgundy wall. It was quiet. Too quiet.

He raised his hand and knocked on the door, the sound of his knuckles against the wood echoing. There was no answer.

"Idiot," Newt muttered to himself, feeling the hopeful, misguided anticipation of footsteps, a reply, even of the irritated kind, sink within his chest. If Theseus wasn't at the Ministry, if he wasn't with Dumbledore's team, it was highly unlikely he'd be at home.

He'd come all the way for nothing, just as he'd expected, and Theseus had still been dragged half-unconscious out of the German Ministry and disappeared without a trace.

His hand still rested on the door, and he leaned against it heavily, letting out a deep sigh. The weight of his own naivety forced his heavy head down until he was pressing his forehead against the wood, letting the flat cap sink to the floor. In the back of his mind, Newt had been hoping for a miracle, for some sign that Theseus was still alive and well somewhere out there in the world. Pickett crept down his arm, stepping over the spare key clenched in his grip with spindly legs, and set about opening the lock anyway.

"There's no point, Pick," Newt said quietly. "There's no one in there."

Pickett squeaked an affirmative response.

Newt gave his Bowtruckle a tired smile. "Then why are you opening the door? You know Theseus—well, actually, you don't—but he likes his privacy. It wouldn't be right to just walk in."

But Pickett didn't listen. With a determined click, the lock gave way, and the door swung open with a creak. Newt took a cautious step forward, peering into the darkened apartment.

"Hello?" he called softly, his voice echoing through the stillness, and then, despite everything: "Theseus?"

He turned the light on with one hand, feeling his heartbeat accelerate, and revealed the interior. The door swung shut behind him as he took in the familiar flat.

Teddy clambered out of his pocket, heavy feet tugging at the fabric of Newt's coat as his disguise began to fade away, and let out a happy snuffle.

There had always been lots to steal from Leta's dressing table. If his beasts were comfortable here, and the hairs on the back of Newt's neck weren't standing up, the Magizoologist could consider the apartment a safe enough place. It was weary, tired, but not dangerous.

"Don't you dare touch anything other than the cutlery," Newt told Teddy, who let out a sceptical snuffle, no doubt remembering the time that he'd stolen Leta's gold-backed earrings and she'd let the Niffler keep them, hence making it ever harder to teach him any semblance of obedience.

He walked down the entryway, running his hand over the lightly patterned floral wallpaper and looking at his dusty fingertips. Teddy jumped off Newt and started playing with the telephone, getting his paws up in the dial and spinning it around in a series of clicks.

Newt heaved a sigh and hoped Theseus didn't have Travers on speed dial.

He remembered waiting on the threshold of the apartment, lingering there, a ball of tension churning in his gut as his mind raced through all the possibilities. Theseus and Leta had invited him over for an announcement. He had suspected what the news would be already and felt practically allergic to the thought. It was as if he knew, deep down, that he would never be a part of this little family. He would always be the outsider, the one who didn't quite fit in.

That had been the engagement announcement, the official one in 1926, Theseus and Leta with their matching rings, a year after the intense fight between him and his brother that had driven them apart. Newt's heart had plummeted with the news.

He had always known, deep down, that this day was coming. Leta had more than hinted at it—as if trying to let him down slowly—citing the idea that they didn’t have forever, that they at least needed it for her safety should something happen to Theseus at work. But it still hurt like a blow to his chest.

"Congratulations," Newt had managed to say, the words feeling wooden and forced, but it seemed to convince Theseus, if not Leta.

Theseus had grown up with all of Newt—even this side to him, where it was hard to speak and harder to express anything with it. Leta, however, knew only the gentle, kind Newt.

Perhaps that had been why Theseus had let it slide: that flash of misery that Newt had felt and no doubt failed to hide. After all, hadn't they had it all out a year before? And yet everything had still lingered. As they'd chatted, it had seemed as if everything else was receding from view, like Newt was watching the scene from the outside, an observer rather than a participant.

After a while, he'd made his excuses and left. Not for the first time, when escaping others, he'd felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest. Before Leta had died, that had felt like a balm: proof that retreating as he'd done since finding out about their relationship was the right thing to do. The thing that could protect him.

The living room’s large, high windows let in the dim light of the London night. One gold lamp with a seashell-like shade tried its best to illuminate the room. There was no sign of a struggle. In fact, there was really nothing, other than a large oil painting of the sea hanging near the bedroom hallway that Newt distinctly remembered having been an engagement gift from their mother, and a crumpled blanket on the French-style couch, hanging forlornly off the wooden back.

Newt frowned at it. There was a distinctly human-shaped shape pressed into the fabric. The indent in the cushion was deep, and Newt's heart began to pound in his chest. He couldn't help but wonder if Theseus had been here recently. But maybe this was just where his older brother napped.

"What am I even looking for?" he muttered.

It couldn't have been comfort. The flat always made him uneasy and he'd never been able to pin down why. Maybe it was Theseus's home, but it wasn't Newt's. Perhaps it could have been a warmer place if they'd not grown distant.

Still, it was cold, and he absently picked up the blanket to wrap it around his shoulders, shrugging it on and feeling its soft fabric rub against his neck. It was a nice kind of fabric, not itchy or irritating, and made of out blue-and-grey striped cotton. There was the faint, lingering smell of cologne on it, mixed with a hint of something else that Newt couldn't quite place. It was comforting, in a strange way, and he found himself inhaling deeply, drawing the scent into his lungs.

He turned his attention to the small kitchen, searching through the cabinets and drawers for any clues. Part of him was glad but concerned that the fridge was empty. The last thing he wanted was to find a bottle of spoiled milk or mouldy leftovers. A few mugs sat on the side; Newt rinsed one and filled it from the tap, letting the water flush through for a few moments, pulling a face at the taste of the London water.

"Tastes like heavy metals," Newt muttered.

He surveyed the flat and realised with some anxiety that he was going to have to look in the bedrooms if he wanted to leave the place with any closure. The clock ticked softly on the wall. He wanted to reach out and turn it off.

Is anyone here? he thought, not for the first time, mentally crossing his fingers in the hopes that this wasn’t going to turn into a surprise encounter with the German Aurors or a rogue dark wizard.

Taking a deep breath, Newt headed down the hall towards the two bedrooms. Teddy followed, his little paws padding quietly on the carpeted floor. Newt tried to keep his footsteps light, not wanting to disturb the silence any more than necessary.

Drawing his wand, he crouched outside the guest bedroom, tentatively stretching his hand for the doorknob, and then wrenched it open with a bang.

For a moment, he thought he saw a shape moving in the darkness, crouching on the bed, but then he turned the light on and the room was empty. Newt let out a sigh of relief, his hand still clutched around his wand.

The room was tidy, the bed made up with crisp white sheets and a navy-blue duvet cover. There was a small desk in the corner, a few papers scattered across it, and a wardrobe against the wall. It was too perfect, too untouched. It felt like a prison cell, cold and sterile, with no signs of life or personality.

He'd stayed in this bedroom a few times. From his experience and the nights of poor sleep in the guest room, the wind rattled loudly over the window and dampness seeped in when it rained. Sure enough, when he ran his hand over the windowsill, his fingers came away glistening with rain. Between Theseus and Leta, he wasn't surprised they hadn't fixed it. Leta had never been house-proud and Theseus had probably been too busy with Ministry work to look at it twice.

Merlin, he was thinking about Leta again. Bitterness and nostalgia mixed in his throat as he looked at the closed door to the master bedroom. Until five years ago, this would have been where she came home to. She would have sat on those sofas, answered that telephone, and run her fingers over that bookshelf. Her hair might have been down. She would have been happy here, laughed here, and found that sense of security in this flat that Newt had never felt.

They'd both started as outcasts, but by their late twenties, it was Newt that felt like the piece of unwanted furniture in every domestic scene, while Leta had moved on to a new life without him, slipping into the role of a woman of society with ease, haunted by shadows she would no longer let him see. It was a wound that he'd thought had scabbed over, but the emptiness of this flat seemed to have reopened it.

Of course, she was dead. He'd spent several weeks grappling with that. But he'd seen loss and death, all across the world, being with beasts and magical creatures and even the young girl in Sudan as their eyes slowly glazed and their hearts slowed to a beat.

The first few hours were sometimes agony, and they sometimes weren't. He cried every time. And then, as if he was under the influence of the roll of a die, the emotions would calcify into unnameable shapes and settle into his brain like crystals, one after another until they formed a mountain of sadness and understanding that took up most of the space inside him. It tempered the sense of acceptance and understanding like those alchemical stills that discovered gold from lead.

Yes, I experienced that, I remember it well, and I remember that it was unhappy. Like beasts, people too, could be taken from the world in cruel and unnatural ways. It was a process that was both difficult and necessary, but he needed it to carry on with his work while still honouring the memory of those who had passed, the dozens of creatures that haunted him when he opened his old field journals. It was a cycle of life. He couldn't have done more. He couldn't have.

But, his brother? Theseus wasn't a creature he was ready to let go of.

He looked down at Teddy, who was gazing up at him with big, brown eyes. The little creature seemed to sense his distress, nuzzling against his leg in a silent show of support. Newt smiled weakly and reached down to pet him, his fingers tangling in his soft fur.

His palms were sweating; his heart racing even faster now. He had to do this; he had to face whatever was behind that door, even if it was memories he didn't want to face. Newt was used to dealing with locked doors, both opening and shutting them. When they were younger, Theseus had always been the protective older brother, looking out for him and shielding him from harm. He could still picture Theseus's face, the way his eyes would crinkle up when he laughed too hard, the way he would lean in and ruffle Newt's hair and tell him that everything was going to be okay.

There'd also, in later years, always been a door between them, and Newt wondered if this was how Theseus seemed to have made it through the last five years: acting as if Leta was simply in the other room rather than turned to ash. He could believe it, that kind of coping mechanism. Perhaps the ignoring had always been Newt’s speciality, but Theseus was like a steam train without brakes, unable to pause his relentless journey for anything, and Newt had glimpsed it for barely a second with their father.

With Leta, though, someone Theseus must have actually loved without reserve? Perhaps Newt was infectious. And, worse, thanks to the abundance of barriers they'd set between them, now, Newt could almost believe that he could put an ear to the door, like he was six again, and hear Theseus's quiet noises of existence.

The last time he'd sat by a door had been when he was twelve.

Theseus had come home from Auror training as much as he could. Their father had still been convinced the presence of his eldest son would make Newt somehow good at school. Yet Theseus had eaten dinner silently, made polite and weak conversation, and then walked heavily to his room, pulling the door closed even as Newt finally mustered the courage to approach him again. It was the start of many exchanges in hallways: always being halfway in and halfway out.

The door creaked open, and Theseus stepped out, looking haggard and worn down. "Sorry about that," he said, running a hand through his hair. "I didn't mean to keep you waiting. I nodded off...stupid alarm didn't work."

Newt nodded, trying to hide his disappointment. "How was training today?"

Theseus sighed. "Pretty rough. We had to go up against one another and I took a few hits. Well, more than a few. I just needed some time to rest. I know that cuts our time down to an hour before Mum sits with you for your homework. Hope that's ok."

He gave a rueful smile. Newt nodded again, not sure what to say. He looked up at Theseus, feeling a strange combination of admiration and wariness.

"Father wants to check my work tonight," Newt mumbled. "He says that I waste too much time looking at nothing. Even when I'm doing my work, with my creatures, he says that. They're not nothing. They're way more important than Charms homework. Or than him."

Newt scuffed his foot against the carpet and frowned. "Don't tell him I said that," he added. "He'll shout."

"He says a lot of things," Theseus reminded him. "And of course I won't."

"He said that you didn't fail any of your classes. Not a single one. Not for the whole time you were at Hogwarts," Newt said, tapping his fingers nervously against his trousers.

"...I suppose not," Theseus said slowly, almost reluctantly. He said it like it had been easy, and Newt wondered why he couldn't just be enough like his brother for his teachers to leave him alone: enough that attending lessons became more bearable than finding new and endless new nooks and rooms around Hogwarts to hide in and read and draw in peace.

They stood there in silence for a moment, awkwardness settling between them like a thick fog. Finally, Theseus spoke up again. "But, hey, I heard that you're doing really well in your Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures classes. And Transfiguration and Potions, too. That's great, Newt. Passing those—gives you plenty you can do. So, I'm proud of you."

"I've been studying really hard. Even though our teacher for Care of Magical Creatures just doesn't understand yet—that creatures aren't pests, or things that we only need to keep in cages, or—"

He lowered his voice and swallowed his words. Theseus was interested in his work, not in creatures. As much as his brother tried to pretend, and as little as Newt often understood the strange and wonderful ways in which people expressed their emotions without saying a thing, Newt felt like Theseus was always thinking about Ministry work, just like Newt was always thinking of the much more exciting topic of his creatures.

"That's good to hear. Then you'll be able to join the Ministry, if you have good grades."

Newt's heart sank. 

"I don't know," he said finally. "I'm not sure if I want to do the kind of work they do in the Beasts Division."

Theseus shrugged. "You know if you don't join the Ministry, they'll all see it as a failure, right?"

That had hurt. 

But even after they'd sat in the living room together, Theseus engrossed in a heavy book of magical law and Newt occasionally talking about the different kinds of tropical frogs used in various potions, Theseus had still stood up, rubbed his eyes, bid Newt goodnight with an affectionate ruffle of his hair, and returned to his room, closing the door firmly behind him. And he hadn't seen him again for another two weeks.

As he stood there in the guest room, staring at the closed door of Theseus's bedroom, Newt felt a pang of the old resentment. He had always been the odd one out, the one who didn't quite fit in with the rest of the family.

Theseus was the perfect child, the one who always did everything right, the one who made their parents proud. And that had all been fine.

No. No, it hadn't been fine; it had saturated Newt's childhood, every interaction with his father, his teachers, their wider family, and it had felt like the whole world hated him for it.

But it had been close to bearable until they'd stopped understanding how to talk to one another. Why had Theseus become so closed off, so distant? And when had Newt stopped trying to bridge the gap between them?

He couldn't even remember. After their argument and before Theseus had given up was the most likely possibility. 

It was all so complicated. He could have been happy never thinking about it again. But Theseus had gone and got himself disappeared, and now Newt felt like an Erumpent that had pulled its head out of the sand, following the maxim his brother liked to say, just to see more sand.

Finally, with the aim of getting it over and done with, Newt grabbed the ornate art deco handle and opened the door to the master bedroom.

Immediately, the heavy smell of dust assailed him, making him sneeze. He clicked on the light before he could imagine any more strange figures. The room was empty.

"Nothing here," Newt said, frustration evident in his voice. "Come on, Theseus."

It felt entirely wrong seeing inside; it made the soles of his feet itch with discomfort. This was meant to be the one door that stayed closed, forever, for everyone's sake.

He felt like a vampire crossing into forbidden territory as he stepped inside and surveyed the silent bedroom, noting the cream walls, the burgundy bed sheets—which maintained the appearance of having been folded one morning carelessly and left for several years—and the laden and elegant carved wooden vanity in the corner.

Slowly, he dropped the blanket he’d picked up from the couch onto the carpet, realising its gently musty odour was from prolonged use. There was a fine layer of dust coating everything, even the bed. That spot on the couch—that was clearly where Theseus slept.

That image did hurt: his brother walking to the door as hesitantly as Newt had done, staring into the room, and then retreating to the living room to curl up on a couch that couldn’t have been comfortable for someone of his height.

Newt pulled the thick patterned curtains shut and paced around the room, humming slightly to try and ease the tension building in his head. He put pressure on the balls of his feet as he tapped his fingers against the edge of his coat cuffs, thinking about why he was here—he didn’t know, he really didn’t know why—and what he could find—old memories and maybe Theseus’s will—

He paused in front of the vanity, fingers hovering over the various items, the small brassy bottles and brushes, but he pulled away, the faintest smell of oakmoss lingering in his nostrils. With a sigh, he pulled open the closet on the left, assuming it would be Theseus’s, and was met with Leta’s clothes, all arranged by colour and style, elegant and perfectly preserved.

It was just the way she would have kept them. She’d always talked about the clothes she’d buy when she escaped the family home, the shoes she’d get to match, how she’d have walls and walls of them that not even her hateful family could touch. The Scamanders weren’t as famed, as rich, as ostentatious; they were the wrong family to marry into for that kind of luxury Leta had imagined at the tender age of twelve, but looking at it now, Newt wondered vaguely if it was some kind of security she’d been looking for instead.

He closed the door hurriedly. It wasn’t proper for him to be looking inside—even he could recognise that.

Theseus’s closet was exactly as he’d expected. Shirts and trousers. Waistcoats and suit jackets. A drawer of socks. A drawer of ties. The three shelves at the top, high enough that Newt had to tiptoe to reach, were laden with what looked like old things.

A broomstick and a mangled-looking Quaffle. A few thick, beaten-up books. An impressive stack of files and papers. A wooden box. A photo album. A pair of old shoes where the soles gaped off the fine leather like open mouths. An array of magical devices, like armillary spheres and Sneakoscopes and strange compasses with coded dials; one let out a wheezy whistle as Newt inhaled deeply, as if sensing confused emotions and mixed intentions.

Unless Theseus was locked in his own bathroom, Newt had no business looking through the flat any further now that it was clear he hadn’t just been returned home from the German Ministry. Yet now that the thought of Theseus’s will had entered Newt’s mind, he couldn’t get it out.

“Not just a will,” he muttered. “Anything.”

A little remorselessly, he reached for the papers and the box, swearing as the photo album fell out as well—Theseus always liked to keep important things in boxes, packed away out of sight and tightly contained.

The hard leather spine of the photo album hit his knee with enough velocity to leave a bruise as he winced and scraped it off the floor, adding it recklessly to the pile even though he knew it would hold painful memories at best. Nothing had fallen out of it. Of course not. Theseus would have glued every single image down.

With his arms laden, Newt took one last look at the bedroom, thinking that Theseus's study would be where the answers lay, where he could prove both to himself and maybe even Dumbledore that this was a political imprisonment rather than a personal vendetta Grindelwald had against Theseus.

He clutched the papers and the box tightly to his chest, pressing them against his heart. The weight of the papers and box he held felt like a burden, a responsibility he wasn't sure he was ready for. What if he found something he didn't want to know? 

Newt hesitated before entering the study, considering the possibility that he was intruding on Theseus's privacy. But what he held in his hands urged him forward, and he pushed the door open wider. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, their spines cracked and worn from years of use. The desk in the centre of the room was cluttered with papers, quills, and ink pots, but neatly stacked, all arranged in a sort of geometric pattern that still made Newt consider it relatively tidy.

Theseus's chair was pushed back from the desk, as if he had just risen from it moments before.

He noticed a framed photograph on the desk, a picture of Theseus and Leta, smiling together. Theseus rarely looked truly happy in photos.

With a low sigh, Newt reached out and turned it to face the far wall, unable to bear the faded smiles of not one but two missing people beaming at him.

The papers he’d collected from Theseus’s closet—probably hidden there for a reason, either because they were out of sight and out of mind or because any intruder, visiting from the Ministry or otherwise, would go for the study first—were the safest option.

Already, the emotions were starting to buzz through his stomach like a low-current live wire, vaguely similar to the gnawing sense of loss but harder, more jaded; maybe because he couldn't believe that Theseus would go ahead and do something so stupid by himself and, in less than a minute, manage to disappear from their lives for more than two weeks.

Newt. Any of those that look familiar to you?

That hadn't been part of the plan. Newt couldn't believe it would be part of Dumbledore's plan. It was just like when Theseus had gone off to join the war. He always chose to do what he wanted, even if it meant going against the rules. Yet somehow, it always ended up being the right thing: because he had a knack for making socially acceptable decisions.

Well, Dumbledore had said that if Theseus was being held at the German Ministry, even if it was in the Erkstag, then their former teacher would do everything in his power to help the team break in and retrieve him.

So then why weren't they doing that already? Why was Newt looking through old Ministry documents? He scowled down at the emblazoned paper as he started to flip through the pile, case forms and incident reports and useless, useless things that he was too useless to understand, all with that same insignia printed in bold and broken black ink taunting him. Maybe they would have made sense to an Auror, but they meant nothing to him.

Newt's frustration grew with every page he turned, feeling as though he was no closer to finding Theseus than when he had first arrived in Germany. He slammed one of the papers down onto the desk, causing the ink pot to spill and stain the already cluttered surface. He cursed under his breath as he tried to clean up the mess, managing to dispel most of the ink before it dripped off the polished surface of the desk.

He'd never even been in here before; how was he meant to know that the ink would fall over so easily? It smelt faintly sweet, like vinegar or alcohol, as he went to dab it up with his sleeve and then decided to let the lingering puddles stay. Theseus's old ink-stained pine desk, the one he remembered from their childhood, hadn't been polished like this, hadn't been the solid mahogany desk of a man, and yet it still held a certain familiarity in the serious and meticulous way it was arranged, making him feel a little guilty for staining this surface on Theseus’s behalf.

As he grabbed one of the worn manilla folders, it shifted and grew heavy in his hands. He blinked at the large leather-bound notebook he was now holding.

“An interesting enchantment,” Newt noted.

His first thought was: Dear Merlin, please let this not be Theseus's journal; that's the last thing I want to be reading right now. A vague sense of relief rose in his chest as he cracked it open and was met with a sea of Theseus's precise, neat handwriting, stretching across the pages, but summarising Grindelwald's movements, his actions, his followers, drawing on strangely specific and detailed incidents Newt hadn't even heard of.

September 12th, 1929:

Grindelwald's attack on our team of Aurors was swift and brutal. As soon as he appeared on the scene, he unleashed a torrent of deadly spells that left us reeling. The "Avada Kedavra" curse was among the first spells he used, and it claimed the lives of several of our colleagues. He didn't need to think for more than maybe three seconds before summoning it, indicating an unmatched speed of strike.

From my vantage point, the only defence against it was to dodge it entirely, but this is easier said than done in the heat of battle. One misstep could mean certain death.

He is a man determined to enslave wizards and non-magical beings alike with his vision of a wizarding world that bows down before him. Even Albus Dumbledore may struggle to stand against him when the time comes—if the time comes. We must continue training diligently and remain alert.

Newt raised his eyebrows, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He didn't know that the Ministry had tangled with Grindelwald since Paris. In fact, that his brother was among them also took him by surprise.

January 23, 1931:

Today, I received reports of an attack on a wizarding community in Northern Europe. Eyewitnesses reported that the attacker was none other than Gellert Grindelwald himself. It appears that he was targeting specific individuals within the community, leaving others unharmed. This is a troubling development, as it suggests that Grindelwald is becoming more strategic in his attacks.

We cannot allow Grindelwald to continue unchecked.

Travers is still useless. Absolutely useless. The man is so blinded by his own ego that he can't see the danger that's right in front of him. He constantly undermines those who are trying to protect our community. There's a bigger picture here.

Newt skimmed forwards.

November 17, 1932:

Met Albus with Newt at the Hog's Head. The bigger picture is Albus. Of course it's Albus. He's been keeping secrets from us, from the Ministry, but not from my brother. He's going to get us all killed. And all this time I thought it was Grindelwald and I in the game of cat-and-mouse. No, it's just the old lovers. Trust him? Maybe he has a plan. Newt trusts him; and I think I trust Newt, or at least, I trust Newt to do what is right and moral.

I shouldn't be doing this as the Head Auror. I'm risking far more than my own life. Grindelwald has already proven more than once he knows exactly where to find me. Like it hasn't been enough, what he did; like he knows how much I hate him and is amused by it. It's going to be like that. He's a dark wizard, the worst they come. But if whatever it is isn't personal, it's still a liability to the security of the Ministry if I have to go into Albus's plan blind.

Or maybe the only thing at stake here is the time and effort of Travers. He can get another Head Auror in if something happens. There's no way Grindelwald wants to prevent another Great War. He wants to create it, and I can't let that happen again. So many could die. But I can't stop. I won't stop until he's caught.

Under this entry was a scrawled list of names, the handwriting uncharacteristically messy. Leta's wasn't there. Newt didn't think it needed to be. So, when Theseus had disappeared for a few hours after the Hog's Head to 'tie things up with the Ministry' and 'make his excuses for a solo investigation', he'd also written this. A strange emotion rose in Newt's chest; he was torn between feeling defensive of his brother and defensive of his mentor.

Thees, you always had such a hero complex, Newt thought. It was your recklessness, not Dumbledore's plan—surely—

No, he trusted Dumbledore too much to continue down that path.

Instead, he went to open the box, purely as a form of distraction. As he'd suspected, it contained a single piece of parchment.

Theseus's will, bland and impersonal, split his finances and property between Newt and Leta, with the process to be overseen by their mother. No special requests for the funeral were discussed, nor even any mention of how it should be carried out, and it stated the Ministry could default to the standard send-off they gave most Aurors.

Newt gaped at it for a few moments. Theseus could easily be accused of grandiosity, even arrogance, with his confident and sometimes charming demeanour.

This was not grand. This was pathetic, outdated—Leta was dead, what was he going to leave to her?—and surprisingly careless, like despite the obsessive concern crawling through all his notes on Grindelwald, he ultimately couldn't care less what happened after he died—

He couldn't bear the thought of Theseus being reduced to a mere memory, a name on a list. His brother deserved more than that, even if he had made mistakes.

Newt threw the unforgiving parchment back in the box, slamming the lid shut, and then snapped the leather notebook shut too for good measure, ignoring the thick and dogeared wad of papers at the back, dated the night of Leta's death: probably describing Ministry detail and bureaucracy in all its glory.

Newt took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes, staring out of the study's window at the London skyline. The stars were just beginning to twinkle into view, their light piercing through the encroaching darkness. He watched as the rain hit the glass, the sound soothing in a way. The brass fittings around the study glimmered in the low light, and it all still smelled like ink.

He already knew that he couldn't come back here.

As Newt turned to leave the room, he froze as he spotted the forgotten album, its black leather spine gleaming in the dim light.

With trembling fingers, he hovered over it. The logical side of him argued that some things were meant to remain buried, but his turbulent heart yearned for closure and begged for him to open the cover and take one last look.

He hated this—hated everything: that the apartment felt like a dream, a bad one, the kind where he'd turn the corner and find something dead; the way Theseus accused Albus of hiding secrets but had obviously hid some himself; the fact that this was exactly how he expected the private side of Theseus to be, but at the same time, not at all, struck once more by the years between them, because since when had his brother lived like this, wearing down a small hollow on the couch night by night?

He opened the album, vowing not to spend more than a few minutes mired in the past. The emotions were accumulating, threatening to crash down on him in a miserable wave. Gritting his teeth, Newt bit down on the cuff of his coat, tasting the fuzzy fabric, stomach lurching. Three photos, and then he'd go. He wasn't sentimental, didn't look at childhood artefacts: found them difficult to reckon with, because the past was the past, and felt too distant to reconnect with the person he saw in each image.

But if he wasn't going to come back to the flat, then this was the last time he could do so. Newt's few and treasured childhood photos had been slowly lost over the course of his nomadic existence, while their mother hoarded them like a dragon hoarded gold. Not many of them featured Newt, given the strange and often forgotten child he'd been. While Theseus had come back from war and shown Newt the pictures he'd taken, now bloodstained and folded, he hadn't expected this to be the one way in which Theseus took after her.

"It's going to be ok," Newt said aloud, repeating the mantra of earlier.

In the first photo, a teenage Theseus stood tall and proud, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked down at Newt with a smile.

He was wearing a simple shirt—Newt remembered it had been blue and according to their mother, brought out the colour of his eyes—and his hair was tousled by the sea breeze. Newt, maybe something like nine, was dressed in an oversized sweater that belonged to Theseus, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He had a determined look on his face as he tried to skip a stone across the water, his other small hand clenched into a concentrated fist.

The rough texture of the stone in his hand and the cool, salty spray of the sea on his face, his biggest worry in that second still whether he could skip a stone farther than Theseus or not. The image flickered and the stone skipped across the water, bouncing once, twice, and sank into the sea.

He couldn't help but smile at the second photo on the page.

Newt, Theseus, and their mother, Leonore, were standing in front of a pen filled with hippogriffs. Newt was standing next to his mother, wearing a wide grin as he leaned over to stroke one of the hippogriffs' feathers. Theseus, on the other hand, was standing awkwardly on the other side of the pen, his arms crossed over his chest, and a forced smile on his face, probably about eighteen and a little bored by the arduous process of taking care of the beasts.

Newt could still remember each of their names and their feeding habits. The one Newt was stroking had been called Persephone, purely because she’d been born in spring and seemed allergic to most meats they’d given her.

The last photo was a family portrait, all four of them, standing outside a wall of the house, dappled in its shadow on what must have been a grey day. Newt nearly slammed the book shut then. Why would Theseus have kept this photo? Why bother?

This photo made him feel queasy. It didn't look unhappy, not in itself. It was just the posture, the stiffness. He was barely up to his mother's knee, hardly able to stand without her hand on his shoulder, looking at the ground, playing with his fingers in the brief flash of motion the enchanted photo provided. Their mother grinned, her curly hair straggling around her face.

It felt odd seeing Theseus so young; it felt like Theseus had been a serious teenager all his childhood. But there he was: maybe eleven years old at most, dressed in a button-up shirt and a pair of slacks that were a little too long for him, staring seriously into the camera, glancing up at their father at the last second as his hand tightened on his shoulder. All of them were frozen in time in that two-second loop of movement.

Newt closed the album, feeling a lump in his throat.

He would find Theseus, he would bring him back, and they would figure things out. The meaningless of that pushed down on him as he walked slowly out through the living room, through the entryway, through the vestibule, back into the lift, letting Teddy jump back into his pocket.

The Niffler's stomach was fat with stolen fountain pens from the study, but Newt didn't have the heart to scold him, given he'd set him a bad example by rummaging through his missing older brother's things.

And even after all that futile investigation, even though it'd left him with the wreckage of a headache, there were only two facts he knew for certain.

The first: The German Ministry would have been the perfect opportunity for Grindelwald to finally catch Theseus. As his brother’s notes reflected, it would be an obvious, precise strategy to finally stalemate the cat-and-mouse game of their past, of Theseus's obsession with the dark wizard, and of the desire of both men to save history in very different ways.

The second: If Newt and Theseus hadn't had that argument, Newt wouldn't have been looking at the flat—the memorial to Leta—as if he were looking at a mausoleum for a near-stranger.

Chapter Text

It took Theseus a while before he could get up again. What disquieted him was the sense that Grindelwald was going by some methodological playbook he was wholly unaware of. In what part of the usual system of taking political prisoners were they left entirely unsupervised in a large and inescapable manor?

Still, he crawled up off the bed, wincing with each movement. Pins and needles flooded his arms as he tried to shake out the residual stiffness. There were scabbed half-moon cuts on his palms where he must have dug his nails in when dreaming. It was difficult to be grateful for his now jumbled thoughts. But the fury in Grindelwald’s eyes when he’d accidentally let that last memory of Albus slip—the clearest depiction yet of the fact that the two were plotting together against the dark wizard—made the invasive nature of his search almost preferable to a physical interrogation for one reason. In someone else’s head, it seemed, you couldn’t just use magic as you pleased. It was the most obvious explanation for why Grindelwald had lowered himself to physical touch to try and guide the search.

Unsurprisingly, he had a headache.

He got halfway through the mental motions of casting a wandless charm on the locked door when the cuffs tightened on his wrists. Theseus paused and raised a hand, blinking, remembering.

“Ah, fuck,” he muttered.

The last trick an Auror should have fallen to was the classic magic-restricting handcuffs. The damn spell had emerged out of America and quickly been shipped over the continent. It was usually used in a combination of bar fights and extortion cases; if you noticed in the first three seconds, you were almost guaranteed to escape, so the Ministry hadn’t yet managed to classify the severity of the charm.

Theseus, though, had managed to waste those three seconds. Probably doing something stupid like trying to get up.

Decision-making could be going better, he thought regretfully. He seemed plagued by a mixture of rationality and care—meaning that he was slow to act when it mattered—and an unforgivably emotional hot-headedness—with the exact consequences he would have expected.

Bending down, he squinted into the lock. It was old; he could slide the tip of his finger into the keyhole. Newt’s little stick creatures would have loved this. But without an array of fantastic creatures to help him out, a piece of metal would have to do. He ran his hands along his shirt, carefully lifting the collar, and slid out one of the thin metal collar stays. They were meant to keep his collar neat. The situation felt rather beyond any concerns of appearance. Following Grindelwald’s angry attempt to slice it off, his shirt was only held on his body by the stiff collar and dried blood on his back, with the worn cotton sucked into some of the angrier gashes.

Better than being half-naked, he reasoned.

It took some bending, grunting, and swearing as trying to press the metal into an adequate shape made the rope burn on his wrists flare again. But it wasn’t too long before he managed to slide it into the lock. A good fifteen minutes of conspicuous effort later—if Grindelwald returned, he was sure to be doomed to further paralysis—and the lock finally gave a wheezy clunk.

Heart in his throat, he stepped out into the corridor. Hugging the right wall, he hurried over to the next room. Theseus’s hand hovered over the doorknob before he shook his head to himself. It had to be further away—as far as possible. Even if the longer journey meant there was more time for Grindelwald or one of associates to find him out of the first room, which was where he was meant to be imprisoned.

Or maybe he’d been meant to get out. It wasn’t like Grindelwald, a known expert in complicated and infallible plans, had done much more to secure him than just leave.

Here he was, wasting time again, binding up what should have been a logical thought process in a thousand threads of worry and anger. If he survived this, and explained what had actually happened, he was going to be known as one of the most useless Head Aurors to ever be taken behind enemy lines. He yanked his hand decisively from the doorknob and decided to chance it.

At the end of the long, long corridor was a huge window. The tall octagonal shape provided an illusion of grandeur, but the harsh lead panes broke the otherwise clear image of the night sky beyond into fragmented pieces. He leaned up against the glass, catching his breath, transfixed by the clear light of the unshrouded moon. The ancient glass practically buzzed with wards.

It could have been the Black Forest. Thick pine trees stretched out towards the distant craggy mountain peaks. He looked down as far as he could. It was a two-storey drop: probably about five or six metres to the ground. He ran his fingers over the metal bands on his wrists and gritted his teeth. If he wanted to escape, he either had to find an unwarded ground floor exit (that would be a fucking miracle) or get the cuffs off.

Theseus had heard stories of people sawing them off. A powerful magic dampener, in essence, couldn’t have equally powerful magic protecting itself. If he couldn’t find a saw, he’d have to make do with anything else; certain charms would probably dispel them if he could somehow direct another spellcaster to them.

He touched the gash on his cheek left by Grindelwald’s slicing charm. This manor probably has some tools somewhere.

Feeling a little more purposeful, some of the fog clearing, he gave the outside world one last look before turning down a dingy stairwell. As he slipped down the spiral staircase, he reflexively tucked the two separating halves of his shirt into the back of his dress trousers. The moment his fingers touched his waistband, he froze. His next step was far from silent; he almost fell, grabbing onto the wooden bannister with sweating hands, sending a creaky thud through the still and dusty air.

Being able to trade information for his life had been the best case scenario. They had left the simplicity of that behind the moment Grindelwald had seen the truth: that Albus Dumbledore, the kind of man who would not mourn Newt, nor Leta, would also not mourn for Theseus either. Their connection was only significant because Grindelwald feared Theseus, with his capacity to love men, had Albus’s love. So—there were no more of Dumbledore’s secrets to give. There were no simple sentences he could hand over in exchange for his freedom, no secret methods of summons or communication or bond to call his former headmaster here.

They were approaching the next phase of a prisoner’s lifespan. Obedience and utility. Was the dark wizard going to take his face and identity, like he’d done to Percival? Grindelwald had not hesitated before pointing out that Leta was one of the few reasons he’d not done so; it would be harder to play the role with all the others.

Surely. Surely if Grindelwald tried that, after apparently being unveiled dramatically in New York before half their eyes, they would notice.

And he hadn’t entered Theseus’s mind with the intention of scraping every last detail from it. There were a thousand other mementoes more important than Leta’s death he’d need to successfully impersonate him. His relationships with his coworkers. His mannerisms. Small, innocuous details, like his Patronus, the way he arranged his desk, the way he walked.

It was Grindelwald’s overt thirst for him to obey that haunted him. The memories, all together, as the dark wizard had declared, painted a picture of a rise and fall. It was nothing he hadn't considered with his strict, almost debilitating moral compass. Perhaps he would be the last person expected to turn traitor, but only because he never spoke about the truth.

There were several more ways for him to summon Dumbledore. Now that the idea of their secret connection had been dispelled, Grindelwald must have been considering conventional options. Kidnapping. Blackmail. With Grindelwald—the kind of man to agree to something as archaic and dark as the blood troth—they were moving into the territory of unforgivable curses and unbreakable vows.

The staircase felt infinitely long. The moment his feet hit the thick green rug at the bottom, he went for the nearest door. It was small and wood-panelled. As he hurriedly closed it behind him, he realised there was a tiny circular window in it, barely illuminating the shelves of what looked like dusty and untouched Muggle cleaning equipment. The jar of floor polish nearest to him had expired two years ago. The tithes for this manor, it seemed, had been handed over in blood.

He leant over the small sink there, dry heaving from the burst of adrenaline. Only a little blood came up. The tap was rusted, but worked. The hiss of the water sounded loud, too loud, as if one of Grindelwald’s followers would instantly appear behind him at the noise, but he drank greedily and tried his hardest to clean himself.

To the right of the brass sink was a small mirror. The moonlight hit his face just enough to illuminate the outline of his features.

Theseus immediately closed his eyes, choosing to slump on the stool to the left of the sink instead. His chest was tight, heart fluttering within like a caged bird trying to beat its way free. He felt like a raw nerve. Thinking back to any of the memories was only inviting them all past the long-held barrier that had kept the worst of the past at bay. It was so unfair. It was so unfair that Grindelwald would just bring that down and leave him in this mess only to discover—what, exactly?

In a way, he hadn’t realised how many secrets he’d held until they were ripped violently to the fore. Theseus had to put them back, store them away. There was no room for weakness here, right at the heart of Grindelwald’s dark plan, as his next pawn-in-waiting if he didn’t get out soon.

He made the mistake of opening his eyes, exhausted by the flashes of the artillery and flares he saw in the patterns behind his eyelids. Even in the dark, he caught sight of his wet-eyed reflection staring accusingly back at him. There was a dark bruise under the side of his jaw. The first rule: never go unconscious before your greatest enemy. Here were the consequences: new marks and new wounds to deal with, mental and physical. He shifted, the tendons in his neck jumping, and touched it with shaking fingers. It almost looked like a bite.

Chapter Text

Vinda Rosier walked out of her seventh magical artefact shop of the way, a light scowl decorating her face. She pulled up the labels of her coat and lowered her elegant hat against the cold wind of Voronezh. The cerebrum vendium, known by some of the acolytes as Grindelwald’s skull hookah, seemed almost irreplaceable. Their last rally had been in Malta, with disappointingly limited success. Without the ability to produce such a clear reason for why it could be humane for wizardkind to take over the world of the non-magiques, they couldn’t capture that beautiful moderate section of unhappy society. Only the most devout and dedicated purebloods and those with personal grudges against the non-magiques were willing to take the risk of abetting their slaughter.

Of course, stopping the next Great War would be inevitable under their total command. Equally, not stopping it, perhaps even inflaming it, would serve just as well for her and Grindelwald’s goals. Yet for the mixed French and British audience at their most successful rally in Paris—the destruction of the historical cemetery and some of her home city aside—memories of the Great War had fully convinced them of the devastation the next would bring.

Her only recourse was to start paying more personal visits to the cloistered dark wizards of Europe. The idea was not unappealing, but a little exhausting. Someone, somewhere, would have a similar artefact. They were rare but not uncommon; Spanish invaders had stolen at least a dozen from the Peruvian mountain clan that had created them at first, with the spoils now fairly scattered across the world. As it should be. Power in the hands of the most powerful. And soon they would own the world.

She twisted on her heel and paid her first visit. After forty minutes, in which the man expressed his disdain for Grindelwald’s cause and revealed his disgraceful halfblood heritage, she walked out with a few of his more interesting books held delicately in one gloved hand. The body would be undiscovered for a while yet.

“Vera où?” she said aloud.

Perhaps it was time to make a return to her leader. After all, they had spent some time apart, and she had made notable progress she needed to update him on. Furthermore, she hated leaving projects unfinished. The takeover of the German Ministry and Vogel’s support had been guaranteed, but the cogs of the political machine would turn again soon, and she would like to position herself in a place of future authority rather than completing more menial work in Russia. Grindelwald needed her intelligence. If they no longer had the cerebrum vendium, they could simply consolidate the resources they did have. A student in these types of networks, these secret revolutions, she knew that while the goal was to spread, the true power was held in the concentrated enclave.

They did have a new prisoner. The British Auror. She wondered what Grindelwald’s plans for him were. It seemed logical to hope that they could begin to infiltrate the British Ministry as they had the German. But the Germans were swayed because of the blame they’d taken for the Great War. The entire wizarding world knew that their Ministry had some of the first intelligence of what their non-magique government was doing and yet had followed the Statue of Secrecy to the letter. Meanwhile, MACUSA and the British Ministry found it all too easy to condemn this. They were just as bad, just the same, yet another example of bureaucratic corruption. It seemed to Rosier that they could hardly count themselves as being on the right side of history when their greatest contribution had been a slow reluctance to get involved tempered only by a few public figures who had.

She would be interested in talking further to him, the prisoner. It wouldn’t be long before they could convince him, surely, with Grindelwald’s silver tongue. Her only concern was the association between the Scamanders and Albus Dumbledore. Her wise leader could get too wrapped up in the difficulties of the past when it came to that man.

Vinda couldn’t really understand. But she’d never been accused of loving before, either.

With that in mind, she headed to the nearest Floo network, preparing to make the jump back to the Black Forest. She pushed through the network and gave a sly twirl as she made it through undetected, feeling the soft earth of the forest give way under her heels. With a slight frown, she loosened the wards on the manor’s ground floor entrance, a small and inconspicuous door that might once have been a servant’s exit to the dilapidated smoking shed. The witch eyed it as she passed, deciding that if she had a productive conversation with the prisoner, she would allow herself one of her long, thin cigarettes.

So far, the manor seemed almost undisturbed. It was rather quiet. There were only two of her fellow acolytes in the strategy room—what was once the dining room—and it was exactly who she would have expected. Carrow and Abernathy. Doubtlessly, they were waiting on Grindelwald’s next order with an amusing lack of initiative. Well, Carrow being Carrow, she might have also been waiting for her next chance to kill. The other witch tugged at her straw-coloured hair and gave Vinda a blank stare before looking back down at the documents Abernathy had spread over the table, running the end of her wand over her lips.

Vinda felt her own mouth curl. In that case, she wouldn’t bother asking about the prisoner’s location. In fact, she could simply go and find him herself.

But when she climbed down through the trapdoor in the kitchen and entered the dark wine cellar below, she could see no new faces in the cells. It irked her more than she should, staring at the desolate few people they had in there. Their hopeless gazes and accusing states weren’t going to help them break free any faster. She meaningfully eyed the scorch marks on the walls from Carrow’s overly aggressive killing curses and departed in a swoop of her cape.

Grindelwald liked to pretend he was making his prisoners comfortable for the first few nights. She would check the bedrooms.

To her irritation, she only reached the approximate halfway point between both the cells and the first-floor bedrooms before she heard a noise.

A deathly expression on her face, she turned slowly on her heel to look at the nearest door frame.

There was a man pressed flat against it, as if standing very still would somehow hide the fact he was more than six feet tall and clearly not one of them. Dark-haired and still wearing the same clothes from the German Ministry, only dirtied and bloodstained.

The Head of the British Auror Office was not where he should have been.

Vinda instantly narrowed her eyes at him. Face paling, he took a little longer to turn his shock at being discovered into his usual restrained, simmering resentment—but sure enough, it wasn’t long before he was glaring back at her. It was just like the old times. The way he’d followed her through the crowd had been dogged, almost obsessive; the weight of those eyes had bored into the back of her neck.

How it had changed now that he no longer wanted to find her. Some people simply needed to be taught.

Vinda raised an eyebrow at him. “Aren’t you just a little too obvious? Or did you want me to catch you?”

“I haven’t got my wand,” he said darkly, as if that was enough of an explanation.

“What’s your name?” Vinda asked, aiming to disconcert; if Grindelwald hadn’t bothered to fully restrain him, he was likely trying to make the Auror feel unimportant and weak, wearing down the noble significance of his resistance. A contemptuous role, for the French witch, was barely acting.

“Rosier,” he muttered, evading the question as if they didn’t know one another from Paris. She’d been centre stage while he'd waited on the sidelines, but Vinda was certain it had been a memorable night. “We had your file, but only enough evidence to make the arrest after the rally…and by then—”

“That is my name," she said coolly. "But, how interesting it is then, Mr Thesesus Scamander, that you are now the one lawfully apprehended by our colleagues in the German Ministry."

The Auror’s features hardened in recognition. “Yet I’m not being held at the German Ministry.”

“No. So, you were trying to escape?” Vinda continued. “Or are you looking for company?”

Theseus remained silent, but his gaze was like a steel trap. She hadn't expected it; she was used to the usual suspects cowering in fear at the sight of her. He was less than happy to be cornered by her. One of his hands crept behind his back, resting silently on the doorknob. It must have been frustrating. If he had been moving faster, which it was clear he couldn’t, he might have been able to hide.

Small difference, she thought. Pas de problème.

Grindelwald’s charm was wrapped over both his wrists. Vinda would have been able to find him with a simple Revelio. The witch eyed him, hiding any trace of wariness, and stepped backwards out of lunging distance. Theseus made a small, tired noise, blue eyes watching her wand hand with almost burning intensity.

Although she might have lacked Grindelwald’s Legilimency, she made up for it in her ability to take decisive action. In an elegant sweep, she pointed her wand between his eyes.

Theseus tensed, jaw clenching. Vinda enjoyed the sudden fear that had taken hold of him as she stepped closer and took in the anger that seemed to have left his body. He was a tall man, and close to, more athletic than she previously assumed, with a hint of muscle pressing at the shoulders of his shirt, so she approached with wariness. In the missions she’d done for Grindelwald, she’d learnt that the physicality of some people—men and women alike, but far, far more often, men—made them dangerous. Vinda’s blood thrummed at the thought: the brief adrenaline of being smaller, weaker followed by her eventual triumph thanks to her superior wandwork and raw, dark power.

He did not strike her like an animal. How amusing. Perhaps he was already cowed by the work of her master.

A low laugh escaped her before impassivity crept over her again, planning taking priority over savouring the thrill of becoming someone worthy of respect, finally. So—Grindelwald hadn’t adequately dealt with him, beyond making it easy to command him by binding his magic. After all, the Auror was still poking around, looking for a way to escape: clearly unaware of his captive status. If she had to guess, given the link between the younger brother, Newt Scamander, and Albus Dumbledore…before her was a new addition to the intricate web of heartbreak still binding Gellert to the past.

“What are you going to do?” Theseus muttered.

His hand didn’t leave the doorknob. Her wand didn’t waver from the precise spot between his eyes where her Killing Curse could hit with deadly aim.

“First, ask a few questions.”

“Haven’t had many of those,” he said.

“Is that sarcastic?” Vinda asked.

“Mm. No. You want me to bring Albus Dumbledore here. I can’t, given the absence of the ability to do it in a normal way. So now what?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I believe I said I was asking the questions.”

“What are you going to do to me? What does Grindelwald want?”

“Mon dieu. Why so curious? It will hardly matter by the next week, or the next. If Gellert wants you to summon that man, he will make you, however the method. They cannot move against one another, but the desire to do so remains. It simply has to be expressed through certain pawns.”

He was choosing to stay silent now. Vinda did not fear talking; there was nothing to lose and everything to gain from convincing him of his own hopelessness, especially when it would be so easy to break down any sudden panicked resistance.

“What I will do—I am not yet sure. It is a matter of what will benefit my master. Fortunately, you are a most valuable asset. Gellert wants what we all want. A just world. A world where the order is right: where Muggles are put in their correct place, beneath us, like the animals they are. You are pure blood, no?"

"Mostly," he said, as if it wasn’t almost everything that would matter in their new world, as if a single Muggle in the family tree couldn’t seed bad, bad blood.

She sneered. "Grindelwald is a man who will take no risk with those who do not meet his exacting standards. I suppose that might be why he has let you roam free, as barely a threat. Yet I believe, in you, there is something worth salvaging. I can help you escape, maybe. Not from this manor, nor from your status as prisoner, but you can live, until Gellert is ready to return.”

Theseus's blue eyes were shadowed. "Salvageable," he said, voice low and sceptical. "But you know what the problem with living seems to be at the moment? No one will free me from Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald.”

“Dumbledore may abandon you if you turn to us,” Vinda said. "I can promise you will suffer no harm so long as Grindelwald is pleased with you. But it is not a long term promise."

"How long do you think he will stay pleased with you, Rosier?" Theseus asked, somewhat rhetorically.

"I don’t intend to fail," she said. "Nor do I."

Vinda's plan had been coming to life at the back of her mind through their conversation. Just as he was trying to buy time, so was she: not out of desperation or a need for it, but to add polish to the plans she was going to run like clockwork. She forced the corners of her lips to stay down. She did not need to be the one to tell him of her master's intentions for him. That was for Grindelwald to do—and Grindelwald, she was certain, was more than aware of it.

If Grindelwald found out she was acting outside of his orders, she could be punished harshly or even expelled from his inner circle. But perhaps she could get rid of this everlasting urge the man seemed to have to escape. For that, she was sure she would be greatly rewarded. One only had to consider how much careful effort Gellert had put into making the Director amenable to his imprisonment. If there was one thing he hated, it was desertion.

There was no harm in letting her own plans parallel Grindelwald's for now.

"Abernathy and Carrow are in the strategy room," Vinda said lightly. "Wouldn't you prefer to go somewhere more private?"

At the last word, his nostrils flared. Theseus yanked at the door behind him, the quickest way to put distance between himself and Vinda, and managed to get almost all the way through and close it before she jammed her heeled boot in the gap.

"Reckless," she whispered. "The last thing you should want to do right now is be impetuous."

Vinda pushed the door open with such force that the hinges groaned, sending a crackle of magical energy across the room. The wooden planks crumbled into themselves until they were nothing but splinters.

Theseus could not move for a moment. She looked him up and down in detail, studying his features as if to commit them to memory. Whatever face he put on, he was afraid beneath it. He was handsome, no doubt about that. Vinda would have thought Gellert found value there, if it wasn't as Theseus himself had already described; he was to be a mere medium to reach Albus instead. His gaze was troubled but unyielding—a trait she required when considered her master's new acolytes. She had no doubt he would be loyal to Gellert—if she could just manage to make him realise it himself.

Then he lifted his hands into the air, shrugging away from her in a clear gesture of surrender.

"Fine," Theseus said, staring at the back wall of the room. It would have been a dead end even if he'd managed to get further inside.

"Turn around and walk towards me," Vinda demanded.

Theseus did so, movements slow, as if he were dizzy. But he was clever. There was a spark in his eyes that said he could assert himself if he wanted, but he was letting her have this moment. She could see he had already compartmentalised his feelings into a thick wall of resistance. It was a tactic she was intimately familiar with. The shallowest of breaths. The cool emptiness of silence in a room.

Gellert had left his mark on the other man's back, but it hardly mattered. He was hers—for now. And so it would be Vinda to give Gellert the results he required: for she understood the importance of the cause, not the violence like Carrow or the political rewards like Abernathy, and the most important part of growing their inner circle was producing loyalty.

”The fact that I’m staying still is not because I want to join you," Theseus said quietly.

"Very well," Vinda said with a smile. "Then, how will we make our venture? You seem an astute study in escape. Better for you to be blind, or maybe unconscious."

Theseus tensed, his face paling. The witch tilted her head back, just a touch, to ensure their eyes met; she stared at him without blinking, without reproach.

"Neither," he said. "You don't need to do...either. I'll...come with you."

Vinda savoured the moment of her newfound power, tipping her chin in the air with the barest frown.

"Good," she said finally. "Say it again."

"I'm coming with you," he said, his voice a strained whisper.

"No. Say it like you mean it."

"...I want to go with you," he repeated. This time, his voice was more definite, the British accent he had been mumbling with earlier suddenly becoming clearer.

More, she thought. Ruthlessly, she lashed out at Theseus with a Cruciatus curse.

He grit his teeth in agony as his body seized under the immense pain and contorted, yet he held his tongue. That wouldn’t do. Vinda poured her magic out in a flurry of strikes; in her heart, she almost regretted that he was magically bound, because a duel would have been interesting, justice for the destruction of the artefact and her near-demotion after the encounter with Lestrange. With each successive spell, Theseus's resistance faltered—until he finally collapsed to the ground in defeat. Vinda's heart raced with adrenaline as she slowly lowered her wand and stepped closer towards her conquered victim.

"Blind," she said, answering her question from earlier. "Do you understand?"

Theseus nodded silently in agreement. He lay there on the cold stone floor—eyes wide open yet empty of emotion—as if all his life force had been drained from him.

Vinda raised her wand again.

"Could you do it?" Theseus asked. He rolled over onto his side, barely able to move his limbs. "Could you take my sight?"

"Let me demonstrate," Vinda said shortly, raising the wand high into the air and uttering the incantation.

An intense stream of light and heat shot out of the tip of her wand and landed directly in the centre of Theseus's face. He flinched as it hit him, but lay very still, body trembling a little, breath shallow and uneven.

Vinda stepped forward and placed a hand on his arm, noting the slight tilt of his head, the breadth of his shoulders, his almond-shaped eyes, dark lashes, the tight curve of his lips. The touch sent an electric charge through her body, one that was both inviting and intimidating. It was with a cruel twist of Theseus’s hair that she pulled him to his feet and led him back to her private quarters, practically dragging his injured body. Her task was not yet complete.

Vinda led Theseus into her private chamber, holding tightly onto his arm as he stumbled behind her. The room was dark, with only a small amount of moonlight streaming through the window. She lit a single candle and motioned for him to sit in the chair that was placed in the centre of the room. He did so, dragging his shoes across the floor, trying to get a sense of the space he couldn’t see.

"Theseus," she said out loud, testing the name on her tongue. "I'm not going to kill you."

Theseus shook his head. Another bout of silence. His face was glistening with perspiration; his hair stuck in wet curls to his forehead.

So nervous already? she thought.

"I'll tell Gellert that you are...receptive," she said.

"No–––no. Don't say that," he said. "I'm not."

It was with a deep and satiated smile that Vinda plucked a few hairs off Theseus’s head, smirking as he squirmed in a futile attempt to avoid her.

"Polyjuice?" he asked.

"No. Evidence, perhaps," Vinda said, placing them carefully in a velvet pouch. “If we have to demonstrate that you’ve turned to our side once you’ve done so.”

Heels clicking against the wooden floor, she went over to the room's grand wardrobe and opened it. Perhaps it had once held luxurious clothes and furs. Now, it was filled with an assortment of jars, the ingredients of each getting progressively rarer and hence more uncanny to look at as her gaze swept over the shelves. He must have heard the hinges squeal, because his head snapped to her approximate location, eyes staring sightlessly over her left shoulder.

Vinda sighed. “Ligare,” she muttered, tying his arms and legs to the chair.

It would have been common sense to just put this man under the Imperius Curse and send him on his way; Grindelwald knew the limits of his blood troth well and understood what counted as active and inactive resistance.

She had a nagging suspicion that Theseus’s relatively obedient behaviour would vanish the moment she tried. It was possible to shake off the curse, and it would hardly be useful if one of them had to follow him around reapplying it every few minutes. If Grindelwald wanted to send him back to the Ministry as a sleeper agent, Vinda would be extremely unhappy about wasting her potential hiding in his office and getting ready to hex the Auror back into a mindset where the curse would take every day. Merlin, even hourly. What a waste of both of their time and effort. And she was sure Grindelwald would not command someone like Abernathy to do it. Why make a man work on the gritty, dull, everyday work of political infiltration when he could make a woman do so?

It was exactly the kind of role she often suspected Grindelwald had planned for her. Carrow was bloodthirsty and expendable. Abernathy was weak-willed. If there was something difficult and dull to be done, it was always her that had to do it.

I already escaped a dull fate once before, she thought, reflecting on the pureblood arranged marriage her parents had planned for her. Now, she was not the delicate piece being auctioned off. Far from it.

There, on the bottom shelf of her supply cabinet, was an ornately inlaid silver box. Before realising the extent of his foresight, she’d purchased them as insurance against the exact scenario Theseus had outlined: Gellert growing apathetic to her ambitions.

Delicately, she withdrew one of the small vials, marvelling at its mother-of-pearl sheen. It was a powerful potion, but dangerous, not only for the receiver but also the giver. Obsession could be deadly, but she would stay on her guard. Gellert would praise her all the more for the potential sacrifice implicit in the decision. Not only that, but her plan would perfectly align with Gellert’s decision to leave Theseus at least somewhat free to roam. It seemed unbelievable that they were meant to let him keep testing the doors and windows and god knew how many other exits in the sprawling mansion.

“What are you making?” he asked.

“Nothing that should concern you,” Vinda replied.

“I doubt it,” he muttered. “What are the chances it’s illegal?”

She laughed. “Of course. You really are an Auror.”

Vinda walked up behind him and fixed the collar of his shirt with a light but firm touch. “It must be a difficult job. I believe the hours are rather long, from what our informants have told us. And that’s no wonder. So many spells and potions are illegal—and people keep creating more. Making laws doesn’t seem to stop the constant trade and flow in creations designed to harm others.”

He shook his head, hunching forwards. For a moment, Vinda was concerned he was going to be sick. Still, she continued, not particularly perturbed.

“Maybe you should stop policing and punishing what is inevitable—and save the Ministry’s effort for the victims. Why waste so much time on networks that will endure no matter what you do? Wasteful and foolish. Wizardkind only harms one another because we cannot fulfil our natural instinct to watch over the Muggles instead. Your Ministry allows weakness to be sown among the masses, punishes both the perpetrator and the victim…and yet still holds to the Statue of Secrecy.”

“I understand your point of view, but laws are there for a reason,” Theseus replied, his voice low and measured.

“Laws are there to control the masses,” she said, skimming her hand over her ingredients. “But we both know that laws don't always reflect what is right or wrong. Sometimes, the ends justify the means.”

Theseus glared at her, trying to follow the sound of her voice, his eyes narrowed. “That's a dangerous way of thinking,” he said. “You can't just justify any action by claiming it's for the greater good.”

Vinda shrugged, walking over to Theseus with the vial in hand. “It's not only about justifying our actions. It's about using all the tools available to us to achieve our goals. For example, potions. Sorely unappreciated by many, simply because the act of getting someone to consume them is rather complex—in the outside world.”

“Whatever world order you want to create, starting here in Europe, will be no better than the worst designs of the Muggles you all hate,” Theseus retorted, trying to turn and look at her but staring blindly at her writing desk instead.

“Ah, my apologies, Mr Mostly Pureblood Scamander. I was under the perception that our designs will always be better than those of the Muggles by virtue of blood,” she said.

He yanked at the ropes, but the chair was made of heavy wood, and barely rattled. Vinda quickly used a Sticking Charm on the legs. Spilling her precious potion would be less than ideal after taking care to allow it to mature to potency over nearly two years. It could be stronger, but it was certainly enough.

“We make laws to stop blood being shed. We do not make them on this biological determinism; history supports what the Ministry does,” Theseus said rigidly. “The evidence is in favour of our laws—the Muggles aren’t inherently bad, just like wizards aren’t inherently good—it’s why we have the Ministry. The laws are necessary to stop people like you: murderers.”

“All your laws?”

“Not all. But the ones that protect non wizards from wizards and vice versa—yes.”

“How interesting,” Vinda said. “What about the laws governing interwizard relationships? What rules are there protecting you from me, and me from you?”

“Here, clearly none,” Theseus said.

“And not so many outside this manor either. But you would enforce them if you could?”

He bit out a short, tense laugh. “Of course.”

“Mmmh. Since you’re here given your attempt at an unlawful arrest, subverting the course of justice, threatening me under false charges, I would expect so.”

“Because what you’re doing is illegal.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, let me plead for forgiveness after the crime is complete. The greater good awaits us. As it should. An eye for an eye—centuries of persecution and we will restore our rightful place in the world.”

Theseus shook his head. “You truly believe this,” he said, voice rough.

There was a brief silence before he inhaled. “I wish Leta had succeeded in killing you. Why be the acolyte of such a disgusting man? So that you can become more of a monster than him? So that you get a prime position presiding over the bloodbath that’ll come? You—“

He caught himself. Even blind, he must have felt her venomous stare.

“Well,” Vinda said. “In a private place like this, there are no jurors to determine which of us is right or wrong. Such a waste of your blood—you have allied yourself with the weak.”

There was a long silence, and Theseus finally said, “I don’t believe in your blood purity.”

She grabbed the back of his chair, her hands on wood, fingers twitching. She clenched them into fists, and then forced them to relax. “And I don’t believe that you can comprehend what it takes to rebuild wizarding Europe.”

“It won’t be enough.”

She laughed. “Oh. No, it won’t. I can be assured of that.”

The elixir swirled in her hand, magical energy pouring from its depths. The liquid inside shimmered from shades of deep burgundy to pale pink in the light that filtered through the windows. Vinda brought the vial close to his face, wafting it near his nose with precise movements of her slender fingers. He leaned back, frowning.

"What's that?" he asked. The two words sounded as if they were chewing one another up, disappearing into an uncertain concentric cycle of anger and fear chasing one another, head over heels.

"What does it smell like?" she murmured, a little intrigued.

Amortentia was incredibly rare. Perhaps one day his British Ministry would finally grow aware of the threat and consider its dangerous potential. No doubt, soon after that, they would be trying to brew it for themselves. Within the purest families, love potions were tokens of the trade. When so many marriages were politically motivated, it was no wonder that people like Vinda were born. Would she have had to feign some love, so that she would be seen as more desirable? Would she have had to find some poor fool who thought he loved her out of pity, or convenience, or loneliness, or some other such motive? No–––because in their new world, pureblood marriages wouldn't be cloistered and political, but the only kind allowed.

When he didn't reply, she tapped her wand against the exposed back of his neck.

"Tell me," she said.

"I don’t know. It smells like—something familiar."

"Is that all?"

"No."

"Then what?" Finesse was a tool of a true artist, and it was a pleasure to watch these final moments, where she could make him say things he didn't fully understand he knew. "Tell me."

"And that’s not—that’s not even right, it just smells like—" and Theseus's voice suddenly grew bitter as he narrowed his unseeing eyes, trying to pull away from the uncorked potion. "What is it?"

"Surely you know," Vinda murmured, pushing her wand harder between the vertebrae of his neck as a firm warning.

"Rain––" he started.

Theseus swallowed and began again; he grabbed the armrests of the heavy wooden chair, the tendons in his hands jumping out. "Rain, tea–––Merlin, why does it matter? And––––amber, jasmine, oakmoss."

Vinda hummed. "I would wager those are not the scents of your perfume," she said; he smelt like sweat and blood.

Leta had been dead however long, but it seemed she was here now. It was just unfortunate for her surviving fiancé that Vinda had survived that attempt on her life.

"It's Amortentia," she said, holding the vial close. The steam rising from it was almost visible in the dimly lit room. "The essence of love. Drink this and you will feel something for me you hadn't felt before, something that no man or woman could have ever given you."

Theseus didn't move; his breathing came fast and harsh, like a caged animal trying to break free. His eyes widened and he hesitated for just a moment, trying to push away what he knew was right because it clearly frightened him. She kept her wand drilled into the fine bones at the back of his neck, reasoning Grindelwald would be far more pleased if she didn't just make him drink it.

"If you don't drink it, I'm going to kill you," Vinda said, the words soft and shrewd.

That was close enough to a free choice.

"What will Grindelwald say about that?"

"I don't think he'll have anything in particular to share," Vinda said, and then remembered that this man couldn't read minds nor see the future: she had spent too long around Gellert. "He might have sent me here with permission to end your life. After all, if he didn't bother putting you in the cells or fully restraining you, our master might have simply been planning to let us take care of you."

He believed he was a dead man if he didn't drink this potion; and what reason did he have to not do it? If he had already been through so much, this at least would be easy–––if only he could bring himself to drink it. Vinda watched as Theseus's blind and tired blue eyes shifted to her.

He mumbled something under his breath, something along the lines of: "not again."

In the pale light, she could see the fine creases around them that had only become more pronounced with age, perhaps the only sign that he was several years older than her. Hopefully, they could force his early retirement, with all this effort, and finally end the persistent British-led manhunts chasing them across European borders. Vinda didn’t enjoy all the packing.

"Don't like it?" she said smoothly, twisting the vial in her fingers. She was enjoying making him speak the obvious. "Is it so terrible? Is it really worse than what else could be in store for you? All I wish to do is stop you from escaping, truly."

"You're as bad as he is," Theseus said, and Vinda took that as a sign of consent.

"My foresight is just as prescient," Vinda said.

She grabbed his jaw, her fingers pressing against his temples, and used her other hand to press the clear potion against his lips, wary of being bitten. Theseus tried to turn away, but then he was swallowing; once, twice, and Vinda felt something in her stomach tighten like a coiled snake when she realised she was winning. He choked, going pale, so she steadied him against the chair with a firm grip on his shoulders.

A sad, lovely love potion, Amortentia was.

It was always a long, dull process, waiting for the potion's effects to settle in; the victim might even feel an overwhelming sense of depression and pessimism before the actual feelings came.

After a few minutes had passed and the potion had settled in his blood, Theseus's breathing had grown laboured, his eyes still wide and staring, leaving him speechless. Vinda released her hold on his shoulders, somewhat bemused by his strange lack of reaction. Even this close, she wasn't getting any kind of subconscious signal that he was feeling love for her–––was he just going to stare at her all day?

Then again, Vinda didn't really know the man. They'd crossed paths from afar, but the only measure she had of the Auror was that he was damn persistent, enough that she could make a secondary assumption that he shouldered some additional resentment for the Lestrange woman's death. Vinda regretted it, too—more strategically than anything, but she was curious what true regret did feel like—Leta had been unusual. Potentially not the right kind of pureblood. She wrinkled her nose. He'd said he was mostly a pureblood. One or two Muggles in the long Scamander family tree, buried away, was just about passable given her ultimate goal was to engineer Gellert's success.

"So quiet, suddenly. Why?" she added, leaning close and watching him try to move away. It was pathetic, really, watching a grown man squirm away from her. "Surely you have considered a woman before?"

It didn't matter, really. Grindelwald wouldn't have cared if she had to magically compel someone who wasn't sexually attracted to her.

"You don't need to be so lonely," she added mockingly, leaning forward so their faces were barely an inch apart. "Love is something everyone needs."

She wasn't truly experienced–––but she was a fantastic liar.

"Water," he managed. "Please."

Vinda sighed and stoppered the vial. She clacked her way over to the dresser and poured a glass out of the carafe, ignoring the dust that had collected on its rim in her absence. He did that well-mannered thing of holding out his hand for the glass, so she held the glass to his lips instead, watching his throat bob when he took a drink.

He sat in silence as she pushed the cool edge of the glass against his cheek, digging the lip into a deep gash right on his cheekbone, then slid it down against his neck. Vinda would have to lift the charm on his sight eventually, or this encounter was going to go nowhere.

"The potion, if it feels anything like you say it does..." he spoke, then went entirely silent.

She'd broken another scab. Pressing the glass up against his skin, she watched the crimson blood bloom over its curved wet edge, as if she could capture it; then she floated it over to the dresser and frowned. How best could she manipulate this situation to work in her favour? Untying him might be one thing–––but there were effects at work on the mind and the heart, and she wasn't sure what those would look like on a man who was becoming more of an enigma than she'd expected from an Auror.

A new plan suddenly falling perfectly in place in her mind, Vinda grabbed his face and pulled his lips to hers. He emitted a weak sound, but it was enough to return her hunger. His confusion, anguish and neediness, like a banquet before her, opened in a way she relished. She wanted to devour him all, like one of those Veelas at school, blonde and beautiful in the way that she'd always been dark and wicked.

There.

Much better.

He was really quite a good kisser, despite the fact that he was trying to fight her off.

Theseus managed to finally get his voice back. "No," he said hoarsely, taking a breath and wetting his lips.

"No? No, you don't want me to kiss you?" she drawled, letting her nails scratch at the wound on his cheek, the darkened blood oozing into her mouth. He whimpered, and she revelled in it; his utter helplessness turning her on more than she would have believed. She leaned forwards and pressed their foreheads together.

He almost openly struggled in the ropes, which made her fingers play over their rough surface, wanting to undo them and hold him still, to make him realise that there was no other option.

"No, don't...please," he said, a little breathless now, albeit weak.

She was already untying him. "Oh, don't worry. Just...stop running away."

To her vague disbelief, Theseus made an attempt to do just that. With an irate hiss, Vinda knocked him over with a blunt spell. He tripped and fell to the floor, immediately wrapping himself in a ball, his arms loose around his knees, his head down, catching his breath, his hair a mess. It was the kind of behaviour she would have expected from his brother.

Vinda arched her head back, eyes closing, and crouched down beside him, grabbing a handful of his dark hair and pulling. She heard his shaky inhale. His mouth opened, but he fought his instincts, fighting her, fighting himself.

Whatever hardness that was previously in his eyes was dissolving. The charm had made them cloudy, but there was a new glassy vacancy creeping into his expression.

“You’re mine now,” she whispered in his ear before she kissed him.

A thin shudder racked his lean body as he leaned into her, resting one sharp cheekbone on the soft skin of her inner elbow. Perhaps it was a tremble of pleasure. She pulled harder, drawing his head back until his throat corded, examining the tendons with some interest. The blood was rushing in her ears as she twisted just a little, as if puppeting a marionette, watching his jerked, dazed acquiescence, still more frozen than inflamed by her hard kiss. If she just went again, and again, and again, soon he’d respond with a new, cultivated hunger. More potion, surely, and then it would be inevitable; he wouldn’t be able to resist her. Once she had finished with Theseus, she would return back to Grindelwald. She had something special planned for her dear old mentor, something that would truly please him.

Dragging them both upright, she stood and he followed, pulling himself out of her grip only to match every step of hers like a good dog. Grabbing his arm, Vinda collapsed into her bed, stomach churning with hot anticipation, good and bad. A spark of fear: tall, wiry, all that restrained anger. It must be so humiliating, she thought, smiling at the growing softness in his eyes, the way the taut corners were smoothing out, making him look younger.

Possessively, she pulled him down and pressed her lips to his, her fingers sliding through his hair and down over his shoulders, over his clavicles. Twisting them both meant he was beneath her: as he should be, pulse fluttering, and when her hands moved to his waist, his breath caught. Yet he was still tentative, hands barely grazing her body in return. Hardly a union. With another hungry cataloguing of the man beneath she caught his hands as they hovered by her elbows, ready to manipulate and push them to the places they should be instead, imprisoning those elegant fingers.

“Come on,” she purred, “you can’t tell me you don’t want to.”

Theseus’s eyes flickered. She watched him gather his wits, marshalling his strength and courage with a determined look on his face. He pulled his hands away from hers, but instead of fighting her, he finally embraced her, pulling her close to him. Lying on him, she breathed, feeling the give and take. Finally.

Still: “No,” he said.

“You’re not thinking of resisting me, are you, Theseus?” she asked, her lips close to his ear.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before pushing away from Vinda hard in another stupid lurching motion. She had never seen anyone fight back so hard against one of her potions before, especially not one utilised to invoke such a special blend of skin hunger and lost inhibition. As he stared at her, all icy eyes and flushed cheeks, she sighed.

“It is no use, Theseus,” she said. "I suggest you accept that quickly if you want to be able to maintain any semblance of control over yourself in the future.”

Hunched over, he retreated to the edge of the bed, gripping the corner of the mattress, looking as though he’d just seen a murder. Still, his lips were moving, voice hushed, almost silent. Theseus was chanting something to himself. It was almost certainly her name.

“Otherwise, I may just have to become more forceful,” she whispered.

A smile tugged at her lips as she watched him struggle and lose. Vinda felt her hardened heart soften just a little.

“It’ll be fine,” she said softly. “Come to me.”

Theseus shuddered in shame, but obediently crawled across the mattress, his hands and knees, towards her. As he reached her, Vinda unbuttoned the top of her robes slowly, a smirk spreading across her face. She pulled him close to her, brushing her fingers against his shirt, tugging the tie and deciding she rather liked it on him.

“Don’t worry. Soon, you’ll become so used to all this, it will become second nature to you.”

Theseus said nothing. And later, the potion took firm hold, Vinda realised his obsession was far more gentle than she’d expected.

Chapter Text

His world was a haze of days and nights blurring together, the sun and moon running one into the other. Every thought, every feeling, every sensation came back to her like an anchor dragging him down through each breath in his lungs.

Sometimes, he could see. For the first few days, his sight was given and taken away as freely as her touch. But then the fun, the threat, seemed to wane for Vinda; it might have been during the night when she first chose not to return his vision. When he couldn’t see, in long stretches of blindness, even though his mind was irrecoverably loyal, permanently and deliriously fixated with each new dose of the Amortentia, new shapes presented themselves in the darkness.

The magical energy surged through his veins, cleaning away the memories of sight until he was completely blind. His mind ran wild in spirals and geometric shapes, making sense of the sensations, trying to make them fit; faces of friends and enemies alike all ran together in a ferocious mix of terror and confusion. Leta's face stood out at first, but as time passed, other visages imposed themselves upon him: Albus. Grindelwald. Vinda. Percival. Lally. Jacob. Paralysed with fear, he felt their presence looming over him, reaching out to grab him from the fog.

It coursed through him and seemed to dull his senses. But in the depths of his mind, it only woke up something worse. As the fever raged on, he began to lose track of not only time, but place and happenings and reality itself. It was too strong; there was nothing he could separate into coherent threads and even less to remember.

The missing holes in his skull were filled to the brim with her, as if she was pouring herself into him. He longed to be able to see again, just for a moment, and take a breath of clear air before the insanity took over and consumed him once more. If he couldn't fight this–––then Grindelwald was right: his neurosis was simply the tension of an unravelling rope threatening to snap at any moment with the loss of the iron-clad grip he'd cultivated on his life.

Anyone with a distinct face, whose body might be a suitable puppet to explain the mismatch between the obsession and blind emptiness, he saw flickering in her place. How could he be feeling touch he couldn't see? Vinda, Vinda, Vinda. Men and women he hadn’t talked to in years treated him as the perfect conduit: Aurors and soldiers; his parents and Newt; Albus and Grindelwald in the haze. And the horror of that didn’t wake him up–––because he couldn’t wake up.

He did have moments of clarity. But each time the gnawing obsession started to ease, he would smell rain and tea and amber. The liquid was like an elixir to the spectres, filling them with vitality and purpose as they clung to his every thought. It was as if they were born anew, now able to take physical form and possess him with an all-consuming obsession. The pulse in his wrists was a hot bomb ready to explode. Her breath on his neck. Their skin together like wet oil.

Their hands on him. His hands on them. He was losing his mind.

Chapter Text

He could hear voices drifting down to him, as if he were lying at the bottom of the Great Lake.

"It will be wearing off now," she said.

"You arrogant girl," said a familiar voice.

"I did it because I had to. You left us no choice. He was trying to escape–––you understand my reasons, Gellert. I am ever rational. There was a purpose behind it."

"Do you know this man?" came the hissed reply. "I do not need your interference in my plan. Through my foresight, I sensed a disturbance, but little did I know it would be of this nature. You're lucky he did not harm you. And you are lucky I will choose not to, either–––if you value your memories, your position here, you will admit to your mistake."

She swallowed. "I was wrong. I realise that now."

"Do you?" he snapped. "Do you understand the danger of playing god, of playing with what you do not understand?"

"You think I do not understand love," Vinda said coolly. "Perhaps because you believe you are the only one that does."

Grindelwald sighed. "You are brave and I respect that. I will not punish you, but I cannot overlook this; you are too powerful to be so reckless."

"What will you do?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

There was no answer, only the hiss of a spell rattling through the air, hitting Theseus before he could react. It melted over his face as if ice had been tossed over him.

His eyes snapped open, jolted awake by an electrifying bolt of energy. The shockwave brought him back to reality, and as he felt the icy marble of the table press against his inner elbows, he could see the room around him, every corner illuminated in a blinding white light. Slowly, the light dimmed as he realised he could finally see. Grindelwald, with a frown, lowered his wand.

The large, grand room was illuminated with an imposing chandelier that cast a golden pall over the scene. Theseus, who had always been more detail-oriented, was more occupied by the fact that there were four people in the room, all staring at him as he immediately raised his wrists, checking whether the cuffs were still there. A frown crossed his brow–––still there–––as he saw the familiar silver glitter, and then he paused; across his right forearm was a deep cut, twisting along the line of his wrist, the skin ragged, the edges barely clotted.

Theseus turned his attention to Grindelwald, who was still holding his wand, his expression unreadable. The man was a master at masking his emotions, but Theseus could feel the tension radiating off him. Vinda was standing beside him, her arms folded across her chest, looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and concern.

He knew he'd done something wrong, either by their standards or his own. Here were the consequences. Blinking hard, Theseus groped around in his memory, but the details of it still eluded him. Even though his heart rate accelerated the longer the four all watched him, the Auror simply couldn’t get his body to move at any speed other than deathly slow. He ran his tongue over his teeth with a weary hiss, wincing at an ulcer on the side of his mouth, as if he’d bitten down on the inside of his cheek hard.

Was he meant to beg for forgiveness? Somehow, this didn’t feel like the aftermath of getting the upper hand. As he shifted his legs, surprised at the lack of ropes, the absence of his shoes suddenly struck him. Socks, but no shoes. They were damp. His breath caught in his throat as he covertly looked around the room, hoping to see a window. Perhaps he’d been outside; maybe there was a route he could retrace.

"What did you do to me?" Theseus croaked, his voice hoarse from disuse.

Something sour and frog-like was sitting in his throat.

"Vinda used Amortentia on you," Grindelwald said without preamble, the tendons in his neck jumping. "I won't have it."

He produced a small vial of milky liquid from the inner pocket of his suit.

"Drink this," he said. "It will counteract any lingering effects of Vinda's potion."

Shifting backwards in his chair out of instinct, reaching out for it, Theseus stared at his own hands for a long minute, looking at the long-faded bruises on his knuckles, noticing they were clean.

An antidote? he thought sluggishly. For what? A potion–––?

The realisation was slow to dawn, but once it did, it was like it had never left. The few memories he did have were fading fast: one of the most dangerous effects of the potion, because they were almost impossible to dredge up again in court. He'd know. He'd seen trials.

Theseus hesitated before taking it from him. He looked up at Grindelwald, studying the man's face as if searching for some sign that he was telling the truth. He could feel something inside him shift as he accepted the antidote. At some point, if he wanted to live—and he did want to live, with a fervour that surprised himself after all these years—he was going to have to stop resisting and start surviving. In the back of his head, he’d been playing mental chess with Grindelwald’s anger, his demands, and his patience.

Resisting was everything he’d been trained to do. It was the only right thing to do. Yet in a hostage situation, with himself as negotiator and victim, he would have to bow at some point, even a little, to scrape for a hint of favour in the eyes of the dark wizards that would make it worth keeping him functional.

After what Vinda had done, he was going to keep fighting with all he had. Hand tightening on the small vial, breath hitching with the realisation it could be taken away, he downed it in a single swallow. An eerie feeling seemed to linger in his veins long after he had finished drinking it.

“What more do you want?” Carrow said, unimpressed at his wary glance at her.

“Better legislation preventing the supply of illegal ingredients to brewers, more surveillance of international supply chains, the Department of Magical Accidents to take potions as seriously as charms,” Theseus muttered. “Take your pick. Seems like you all barely need wands. A few illegal ingredients and you’re all set.”

That was right. If he acted like it didn’t bother him—just pretended hard enough, but it wasn’t really pretence, more like a compartmentalisation efficient enough to impress any Auror—they wouldn’t try it again. The thought of losing more time to the influence of the dozens of other Potions out there wholeheartedly outlawed by the Ministry sent a shiver down his spine.

“Seemed like you enjoyed it well enough,” Carrow said, sounding stung by his attempt at nonchalance.

Grindelwald’s lip lifted, revealing a flash of white teeth, in almost a snarl. The mask of sudden rage dropped as quickly as it came; he looked impassively at a suddenly sweating Carrow, demanding her silence.

A cold rush of dread washed over Theseus; his skin tightened like a straitjacket and hung his head, suddenly unable to meet anyone's gaze. It was common knowledge, then. All his years of training, all the hours spent working towards the Head Auror role, and in the end, if this got out, he would be known as a traitor. If it were anyone else in the unfortunate situation of being dosed with Amortentia, he wouldn’t have felt this visceral hatred. But it was him, and he knew what the rules were; this kind of moral fall was inexcusable, on each and every count.

“Say that again,” Theseus said, the sentence crumbling on the last word, the again like a plea. “What happened? Tell me exactly what happened.”

Carrow wetted her lips. She and Vinda exchanged a glance as Grindelwald stood as still as a statue, listening in.

Shit, he thought. They’re too scared to admit to it. I’m never going to know.

Grindelwald stepped forward, and Theseus felt the man's presence like a weight upon his chest. Usually, receivers of a love potion only remembered its embarrassing effects. If the cobwebs of memory he did have were anything to go by, they had transcended embarrassment from the first moment. Either way, whatever folk knowledge said about the damn things, if the memories were still there in his head, they were practically on display for the dark wizard’s Legilimency.

"Look at me," Grindelwald said, his voice low and commanding.

Theseus raised his gaze to meet Grindelwald's. The man's intense stare seemed to bore into him, as if looking for something—an answer to some unasked question.

Finally, Grindelwald spoke again.

"You must understand that love is a powerful emotion and it can be used for both good and ill; we are all vulnerable when it comes to matters of the heart, and it is of course often necessary to exploit that vulnerability. I would rather have you for your strengths, Theseus, not your weaknesses," and he paused.

All the Auror wanted to do was escape; the walls of the room seemed to be closing in on him as if an invisible force held him down, making it impossible to move.

"How long did you let this happen?" Theseus demanded, breaking off the thought before it could hit him with the same velocity as the second of Grindelwald’s Cruciatus Curses, which he imagined was what taking a rifle bullet to the forehead felt like.

The abandoned factory felt like months ago. He could have almost prayed for it over this.

“No more than twelve days,” Vinda muttered.

"I don't believe you," he said.

Vinda had used him. Theseus almost felt the cold chill of Grindelwald’s long fingers brushing through his mind—the dark wizard locked his gaze with his own numb stare, as if trying to communicate something meaningful. But his body was aching where it shouldn’t have.

Grindelwald looked at Theseus with a level gaze. "I understand that you're angry," he repeated, as if he were on Theseus’s side. "But I assure you that I had no part in Vinda's actions. She acted of her own accord, and she will be dealt with accordingly."

He remembered the sensation of being pulled in a thousand different directions, of wanting something he could not have, and feeling an almost overwhelming sense of guilt for his thoughts—violated and disgusted with himself for even thinking such thoughts—himself—then her, then himself, then her—merging—the hallucinations, the flickering visages of people he knew in life beyond these walls—and the terror was razor sharp. It still sat in his gut. Theseus had the sense it would never leave, even though he didn't know how he'd got to this room, nor what had happened.

You fucking monster. His thought, forked like a snake’s tongue, sank its teeth into both intended targets. Theseus winced at the bite, hunching into himself at the table.

Grindelwald did not flinch. The intensity of his gaze burned through the air.

“Your mind is a little weak; I can see the memories that this potion has left behind, even if they are already growing buried too deep for you to fully comprehend," he said. "And…I am concerned by what Vinda has done to you."

“Done to me?” Theseus said, with a shaky exhale. "What did she do?"

“I don't know. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps it was harmless. But in any case, well, you did not do it to yourself,” Grindelwald said.

He wanted that to be true. Yet this man was not one to trust for his depiction of reality.

“It’s a terrible thing, is it not? To think you might hurt the ones that trust you?" Grindelwald continued. "And, I suppose, it might be hard to imagine that they could betray you in kind.”

“Amortentia shouldn’t do that,” Theseus said, ignoring the way something in him stretched out its fingers for that calm, gentle, reassuring voice, desperate to be coaxed away from the revolting implications of it all. “You did something.”

Grindelwald shook his head. “Not exactly, my dear Auror. If I wanted you to see such things, I would have done so already, although your Occlumency as usual makes it a challenge. Yet it rather offends my sensibilities. My theory, as of now, is that it was your blindness that interacted with the potion’s effects, creating…an unusual result.”

“What’s the usual result?” Theseus snapped.

With a short sigh, Grindelwald glanced at Vinda, who tightened her grip on her wand and lifted it to her heavy eyes, examining her nails wrapped around its carved base.

“Gellert, I took the risk for you,” she murmured.

“You could have been strangled—assaulted—killed,” Grindelwald said to her. “There is nowhere in our perfect world where such events should befall a loyal, pure-blooded witch, and certainly not you.”

The corner of her lipsticked mouth lifted.

The dark wizard turned back to Theseus. “I’m sure that you’ve cleaned up the aftermath of Amortentia in your time with your precious Ministry.”

Could have been, Grindelwald had said. So he hadn’t done any of those things to Vinda. When she looked at him, her eyes still simmered with victory. Fuck. Fuck. He deserved to be in Azkaban.

“Maybe,” Theseus said.

“It’s not always easy to face the darkness within ourselves.”

“None of that—none of it—was already inside me. You and your loyal follower put it there.”

“Mmh. I suppose if it got out to the public, it might not be seen the same way. After all, I know that you are—“

The chair legs squealed as Theseus stood up at the speed of light, heart hammering in his chest. “Don’t say it,” he warned.

Grindelwald cocked his head. “Why? Is it not a thought you’ve had before? Your little brother must have been to St Mungo's for his condition. If your parents had any sense, they would have taken you along, too. After all, when I saw that storm in your head—the memory collapse—well, it’s a sign. Either you've worn a mask for so long you’ve forgotten what’s behind it, or your sickness is finally catching up to you. Admittedly, we may not be helping.”

Theseus’s hands balled into fists. His own nails had become long—twelve days' worth of growth, plus the days before when he’d actually had control of himself—and he pressed hard enough that his palms stung with the opened half-moons.

“You don’t understand anything about me or my brother,” he breathed.

“Oh, I do,” Grindelwald said sympathetically, adjusting the collar of his own immaculate shirt. “I believe you when you say you’re a moral man. I really mean you can be excused from those repulsive images, if we consider that they infringe upon your mind rather than being welcomed in.”

Theseus’s shoulders dropped as he looked down at the polished table in front of him, feeling his fists loosen. He made a strangled noise and suddenly sat back down again, hard. This was a trick. Any moment now, Grindelwald was going to reach out again and rummage through his mind and tell him it was all true, really.

“But you could be safe, you know. Join us, Theseus. Leave behind Albus. He will only use you—and I think, despite your lack of foresight, you may already be starting to understand that.”

It must have all been a hallucination. Everything must have been a hallucination. When Leta had died, he'd spent months on end pretending she was only in the next room. In the same way, the echoes of the memories, the feelings alone, with no substantial evidence to back them up, couldn't have been real.

“I think it’s very clear how we feel about one another,” Theseus said through gritted teeth.

“Me?” Grindelwald said, almost sarcastically. "I have no designs on you. In fact, you rather irritate me, and my foresight unfortunately tells me that may continue to be the case. If only you did have some special connection with Albus—yet I remain the only one."

“I didn’t want this to happen,” Theseus said.

Grindelwald’s eyes narrowed as he stepped closer, leaning over the thin and long wooden table in between them. “Then stop resisting, Theseus. Start obeying. You don’t need to be reminded of your nature—this could be very easy."

“I won't obey you—“ he managed, wrenching his hands over his ears as the tinnitus returned with a vengeance.

The beast inside. Grindelwald had talked about the beast. The childhood ailment that had made him tap his fingers six times and check the locks twice and only get onto his broomstick from his left side was breaking free from its cage. Grindelwald was telling him lies.

Grindelwald looked suddenly bored. “Vinda, he’s not paying attention. Calm him, please.”

Theseus snorted, digging his fingers into his skull until he swore he could push through the bone, blocking out the other man’s voice. “I’m not going to pay attention to a blood purist bastard—“

Vinda elegantly stepped up onto the chair nearest her and walked over the top of the table, jumping down to the floor by his seat as if she were as light as a feather.

“You’d much rather see me, wouldn’t you?” she hummed. “All the others in the way…”

When her fingers took hold of his wrist, Theseus thought he would stop breathing right then and there. Vinda seemed to sense his discomfort, but her grip only tightened. The panic rose in Theseus's chest, his heartbeat quickening. The room spun faster and faster until all he could focus on was the intense agony radiating from her touch. Abernathy and Carrow watched with morbid fascination; Theseus silently wished he could be a spectator too, if only for a moment of relief.

“Please don’t resist,” Vinda added. “You’re much better off in one piece, sans aucun doute.”

She cleared her throat. “Gellert. I know you do not like it, and it will be difficult, but we should give it to him again. Perhaps he does not want to betray Dumbledore because he can still return to his side. If we made some kind of public announcement—a display, perhaps—“

This was it. They were thinking about putting him under again. In their training as Aurors, they’d been taught that in the first confrontation with a criminal, if the power balance was uneven—say, they had their wand and you didn’t, or they had some other artefact that could instantly cause grievous harm—the most important step was to surrender, even temporarily. Their life was not worth the job. Their life was not worth stolen cargo, or smuggled creatures (no matter what Newt might say—Newt, he thought, I’m so sorry), or even cracking a case.

The time to fight was at the second stage. The stage where the threat to life went from blackmail and intimidation to a plan. The key example their instructors had given was being taken to a second location. In the wizarding world, it shouldn’t have been a death sentence, but a leaf through a History of Magic textbook suggested otherwise.

If this was really it—if this was the moment where he was going to be made into a puppet like Vogel, like Helmut—then it was worth risking his life.

“I will never work for you,” Theseus said, covertly examining the room.

The table wasn’t laid. There was no cutlery to grab and make an improvised weapon out of. His magic-dampening cuffs were still on, and Vinda had pulled away from him, making her wand out of reach. Carrow shifted, brow furrowed, eyes bulging in her head.

He’d never found that damn saw to get the cuffs off, but a slicing charm might work. In fact, any curse strong enough, anything designed to cause obliterative harm and damage, might just get them off. After all—items designed to contain magic from the inside were vulnerable to magic from the outside. To ward off both at once was an inherent contradiction that would make the things collapse on themselves.

“I understand that, Theseus. But you have to understand there are those who would use your weaknesses against us. Your love for your brother, for example. Imagine what would happen if he were to be used as leverage against you. You would do anything to protect him, wouldn't you? Even if it meant betraying Dumbledore."

“You wouldn't dare. You wouldn't stoop that low,” Theseus said.

Each word Grindelwald said was deeply alarming, but his details-obsessed mind was clinging to the practicalities of escape, begging for hope, and he knew that while they would haunt him later, he couldn’t listen now.

“Wouldn't I? Think about what you're fighting for. Think about the sacrifices you're willing to make. You're a hero, Theseus. A hero who has the power to change the world. But you have to be willing to do what's necessary. You have to be willing to make sacrifices."

“Not for your side,” he said, quieter, looking between Carrow and Abernathy, attempting to put up some of the tattered shields of his mind to guard his next thoughts.

“That's what you say now, Theseus. But the future is uncertain. And I will not let you return to Albus just to keep him away from me. You see, I am the only one who can love him—and I am the only one he loves. You, like your brother, if you will not be part of the greater good, will be doomed to the fate of the others in our new world.”

Ears buzzing, Theseus vaulted the table. His body felt wrong, like someone had wired him back to front, but the momentum of his jump sent him flying into Carrow. They both thudded to the floor as the witch let out a blood-curdling scream: not of fear, but a war cry. He grabbed her throat—he had to provoke her, now, before Grindelwald stepped in. She might just fucking kill him in the process. But he couldn't let himself be taken to the so-called second location. If Theseus had known what would come out of that encounter with Vinda, he would have fought harder: yet at the time, he'd been drowning in memories, and barely able to walk after she was through with him.

"You're nothing more than Grindelwald's lapdog, Carrow," he said. "He uses you to do his dirty work because he knows you're too bloodthirsty to resist. On our file at the Ministry, we’ve got that written down. You think you’re better than a Muggle when, really, you’re stupider than—“

Carrow's face twisted, and she raised her wand, her eyes taking light. "You dare insult me, you pathetic fool?" she snarled. "I'll show you what a real witch can do!"

"Children," Grindelwald said. "Do not fight."

With a gritted-out charm, Carrow pushed him back, freezing his arms from the elbow down in blocks of magical ice. It was enough to set off the fight-or-flight instinct in Theseus, enough to make him twist to the side, rolling on top of her, pushing off her chest with his forearm. A spell shot out of Abernathy's wand, whizzing past Theseus' ear as he instinctively moved away from Grindelwald, but also away from the exit.

Carrow roared, getting to her feet, braided hair starting to come undone as she shot a fireball, but Theseus dived to the side, rolling behind a chair and narrowly avoiding the blast.

The Auror scrambled to his feet, his heart racing with adrenaline as he kicked Abernathy in the shins, causing him to stumble. Abernathy retaliated with a curse: shattering the ice encasing Theseus's arms and, by proxy, also shattering the magical cuffs that had kept Theseus bound for days. He shook off pieces of broken ice and metal, almost smiling with the thrill of the relief, and sprinted towards the door.

Carrow was still furiously casting spells, the air around her crackling with energy. A stray jinx came dangerously close to hitting Grindelwald, but he swiftly reflected it back towards her with a flick of his wand. Theseus expected her to be distracted, but she had a hell of a lot of practise in throwing out complex spells. Carrow's second jinx went flying into the wall across from the door, and a fireball burst out, scorching the plaster. Like hell these two were trying to catch Theseus with a hex like that; all they'd be catching were his charred remains at best.

Carrow launched herself at him, pushing him through the door and into the corridor. Theseus tried to fight back, but he couldn't grab her wand properly. His fingers were still numb. She was off-balance for a moment, turning to see Abernathy start to run after them, and inexplicably cursed and aimed a blasting spell at the floor beneath the other acolyte's feet, tripping him.

In that moment of distraction, Theseus made a break for it down the corridor. He could feel his magic returning to him; it was like he'd been starved of more than food or water. This must have been how explorers felt when they came across an oasis in rugged and desolate terrain, a cure for an undeniable thirst. Almost tentatively, he used his magic to grab a vase from one of the decorative dressers lining the long corridor, tossing it behind him. The sound of porcelain shards bouncing off the stone floor filled the corridor as he started to run in zig zags, praying he wouldn't get hit.

He heard Carrow scream, "Stupefy!" but she was clearly losing her temper, and it was only a half-arsed attempt.

In the fading light of day, he could see a set of tapestries had been hung on the corridor wall. Theseus dived behind a set of tapestries, conjuring a shield charm to block Carrow's spells. They smelt like old, worn wool; he gripped a handful of the coarse fabric and ripped it down rather than trying to fight his way free, igniting a fresh cry from Carrow.

He had never been the best at wandless spellcasting, but he mustered all his strength and shouted the confounding charm with all his might, pointing his finger at Carrow with a force he didn't know he had.

To his immense relief, Carrow stumbled and shook her head, her movements becoming slow and uncoordinated. Theseus took advantage of the momentary confusion and bolted down the corridor.

"Reducto!" Carrow cried out behind him, and he threw himself to the ground as the curse whistled through the air, burying itself in his lower leg. A searing pain surged through his leg; frantically, he counter-spelled, blocking it just as it started to erupt. Breathless, he rolled back to his feet, feeling his stomach protest with the movement.

"Fucking Reducto," he gritted out under his breath. Despite the adrenaline of the moment, he had a sudden, ridiculous flashback of using that same curse on any small, innocuous paperweight that arrived with paperwork—details about her death in black-and-white—about the Paris rally to his desk.

The watery twilight shone in through the windows on the right. Vinda had smelt like cigarette smoke. He smelt like cigarette smoke. His feet were wet, still. So if there was a ground floor exit, if Vinda had been caught by Grindelwald and maybe did not have time to put the wards back up, it would be beyond the right door at the end of the corridor.

His eyes flicked over the other three, one leading forwards and two leading left. But, placing all his faith in the right, Theseus grasped the door handle and yanked at the heavy wood. His wrist burned with pain; the door stayed shut. He forced the handle forwards, and with an almighty crack, the handle broke off, clattering to the ground. Theseus cursed and finally kicked the door like an idiot, and it finally gave way, flying open.

There wasn't much to choose from: a set of stairs led downwards, and two corridors extended at intervals, leading off in different directions. A promising scent of damp hung in the air.

He couldn't hear Carrow's footsteps anymore. It should have been reassuring, but somehow, he doubted he was about to make an easy exit.

Theseus limped down the servant's staircase, his hand running down the worn wooden bannister as he descended. The air was thick with the smell of decay and damp, with every step he took echoing through the grand German manor; whatever poor sod that had last walked down these stairs had been dead for years, likely at Grindelwald's hand. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he found himself standing in a vast foyer.

It was dimly lit, with only the faint light of the waning sun filtering in through the tall windows, casting eerie shadows across the room. The walls were adorned with ancient tapestries and portraits, and in the centre of the room, there was a massive stone fountain that had long since stopped running. The floor was made of worn marble, and every step Theseus took echoed through the halls.

Ahead of him, Theseus could see the conservatory, its once-grand panes telescopes now rusted and covered in cobwebs. To his left, he could make out the faint light coming from the kitchen, its door slightly ajar. And to his right was a long, dark corridor that led back to the stairs he thought he recognised as part of the first floor where he had been caught. His usually mediocre sense of direction was no better in the labyrinthine structure of this damn manor.

As he stood there, taking in his surroundings, Theseus couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding wash over him. The grandeur of the manor, combined with the eerie twilight that filled the halls, created a sense of unease that made him feel like he was walking through a nightmare.

Theseus stood by the conservatory doors, gazing out at the forest beyond. It beckoned to him, a tantalising promise of escape. One of the doors opening onto the outside world must have been ajar, because he could hear the wind, making the forest rustle as if it were taking soft breaths, and the faint call of birds. If the wards were weakened, with his cuffs, he was sure he could break through the wards and reach the relative safety of the forest.

But he hesitated. Grindelwald was a master of foresight. The most obvious escape route would be the first one that Grindelwald anticipated. He needed to be clever and think outside the box if he was going to outmanoeuvre the dark wizard. Just as Dumbledore had said.

With a heavy heart, Theseus tore his eyes away from the forest and turned back towards the depths of the manor.

A fragment of Vinda's words floated through his mind. When she had said them to him, he didn't know. He remembered her gesturing down the corridor when he'd been caught. Had they been on the first floor or the ground floor? He gritted his teeth. This was going to be just the beginning of another few months of not trusting his memories and thoughts, wasn't it? But she'd talked about the cells.

Maybe, if he was lucky, he could free some of Grindelwald's captives and create a diversion to escape unnoticed. The only thing further down the way she'd indicated was the kitchen, neatly and clearly labelled for the servants, probably, but he doubted the Muggles living here before would have predicted the Head of the British Auror Office would be using it to escape yet another set of fascists plaguing Europe even after the turn of the century.

Theseus moved towards the kitchen, taking care to keep his steps light. He paused in front of the doorframe and peered inside, quickly scanning the room for any signs of danger. Finding none, he pushed open the door and stepped into the kitchen.

The kitchen was grand and old, with a large brick fireplace dominating one wall. Pots and pans hung from hooks above it, glinting dully in the dim light. A long wooden table stood in the centre of the room, surrounded by chairs that looked like they had seen better days. Theseus could see the remnants of a meal left on the table, a few scraps of food and empty wine bottles. Shelves lined the walls, filled with jars and bottles of all sizes, containing herbs, spices, and various concoctions. Theseus recognised some of the ingredients from his time at Hogwarts, but there were others that he couldn't identify. The kitchen had a strange smell, a mix of burnt wood, mould, and something sweet and sickly that made him feel queasy. With dust and cobwebs coating many surfaces, there was an air of neglect and decay.

He noticed both the hidden doors at the same time. In the corner of the room, by a half-open cupboard, there was a trapdoor set in the floor. Directly ahead of him, the set of shelves holding—probably illegal items—were offset about an inch, revealing a patch of paler wall behind that had been scrubbed clean of dust by some movement.

With a grunt, he managed to force the shelves to the right, revealing a dark passageway.

"I'll be damned," he muttered. "Here goes nothing."

As Theseus descended the narrow staircase behind the hidden door, the scent of old wine filled his nostrils, mingled with the musty smell of damp stone. The stairwell led him down to a dimly lit, lofty room, with barrels of wine stacked high on either side, perhaps placed there in preparation for a celebration years ago that had yet to happen. The room was much larger than he had anticipated, with another staircase visible at the far end. Overall: incredibly not ideal.

But it was not the wine that caught his attention. The area was sectioned off into cells, each one seemingly created by powerful magic. Full cage-like structures lined the walls, barely big enough for a person to stand up in. The cells were empty, save for a few bits of straw and dirt scattered around. The stillness of the space was unsettling, but it was also very clearly a crime scene.

Many of the cages were empty and shattered, with metal bars twisted and broken. The stone walls of the cellar were stained with dark splatters and streaks, and the musty air carried a faint tinge of coppery blood. Years of chasing dark wizards kicked in as he took a few careful steps forwards, eyes narrowed in focus. The general disarray suggested that the prisoners had tried to fight back, but they had ultimately been overpowered. The marks on the walls indicated that there had been a lot of bloodshed. Additionally, the fact that the cages were empty suggested that the perpetrator had removed the bodies, possibly to hide the evidence.

It was recent. Theseus crouched down to take a closer look at the bloodstains on the walls. It was clear that they were not dried and appeared relatively fresh. As he touched a drying stain on the lower wall, he noticed the sudden tingle of faint magical residue in the air. Whatever this was had been recent.

"Bloody hell," Theseus said quietly, worried he was going to disturb ghosts by speaking.

Theseus's breath quickened as he made his way down the long, dimly lit walkway. The cages reminded him of a case several years ago, something that he should have considered yet another of a string of human trafficking incidents, but his department agreed there was no yet another about it. The Muggle children had been kept in similar cage-like cells. As they'd worked to free them—they would have to report this to MACUSA, the traffickers were springing up all over Europe, many with American roots—he'd looked into their eyes and remembered Newt when he was that age, cold with the knowledge that light was rarely coaxed back from a snuffed candle.

Grindelwald, too, liked to collect people. In fact, Theseus thought he was exactly the type of man to collect Muggle children; anything he thought beneath him was fair game for his hoard.

At the far end of the cellar was the only occupied cell. As he approached, steps quickening, he saw the shadowy figure of a man hunched in the corner. Blinking in the dark end of the wine cellar, where the flickering lamps must have been taken out by the slaughter, he cast a wavering Lumos, stretching out his glowing fingertips to grab onto the bar.

Theseus just needed a moment to steady himself. The prisoner couldn't be more dangerous than Grindelwald; and if they were, he could accept he was so fucking unlucky he probably wouldn't have been able to escape death anyway.

Slowly, as if an eternity passed by, the figure lifted itself and faced Theseus. The man's hair was tangled and matted, his face dirtier and gaunter than Theseus remembered. The sight of him rendered Theseus speechless for a moment.

Percival Graves stood before Theseus, his eyes dull and opaque.

"So, what is it?" Percival rasped.

Theseus blinked, unable to process this revelation. "You're alive."

Percival gave a faint nod of acknowledgement before he spoke again. "And you're here. So what is it? Are you a hostage? Are you on his side now? Or is this a rescue attempt?"

A palpable tension hung in the air, a strained silence. His old friend seemed to mirror his own emotions, the familiar expressions of their shared history now a distant memory. The last time Percival's hair had been this long was before the war. He was wearing grey slacks and a white shirt, not tucked in, which were dirty but not worn to rags. Neither of them had shoes. Theseus looked down at his own sock-clad feet.

The silence became so palpable that it was almost visible, like an invisible wall separating them and keeping out any chance at reconciliation.

"Erm...sort of," Theseus said finally.

Percival's eyes narrowed, his expression guarded. "Explain."

"Hostage is about right," Theseus said.

Percival blinked in surprise, his expression unreadable as he studied Theseus intently. After a few silent moments of consideration, he finally let out a sigh and leaned back against the cell wall, slumping wearily against it.

"That son of a bitch. So you're not here to rescue me?"

"Well, not exactly. I didn't even know you were alive. But now that I've found you, I'll get you out of here."

Percival chuckled weakly. "Don't bother. I'm not going anywhere."

There was a hint of bitterness in his tone that Theseus couldn't miss.

“Just like old times,” Graves added.

“Which ones?”

“Being a fucking prisoner of war.”

“We got out then,” Theseus said, battling with the cruel mixture of emotions inside him, both grief and sadistic hope. “Didn’t we? We can do it again. Now.”

“Have you seen the wards?” came the response.

"Yes. Yeah. But there’s a weak spot, I think, where—but anyway. How long have you been here?" Theseus asked.

"Here?" Percival muttered. "Several months, maybe. We move, you see. Safehouses everywhere. I don't know if they tried to find me, or if they're still bothering, but it would have made the search difficult. If they did try."

Theseus bit the inside of his cheek. "Picquery tried to–––but they had you down as dead. We both tried–––with what resources we had–––but eventually, the higher-ups cracked down on it. Forbade us from going any further."

"Wouldn't want you falling into the hands of Grindelwald on your reckless investigations, would they?" Percival said, tone laced with irony.

Theseus suddenly realised just how long it had been. He didn't know that Grindelwald had tried to execute Newt and Tina wearing his face, he didn't know about the election, and he didn't know about Leta's death. Or maybe he did. Maybe Grindelwald had told him, taunted him about it. He opened his mouth to speak but Percival immediately shook his head.

"No, I don't know," Percival added. "I know that face. You're about to ask me a question. Theseus, I don't remember much, and I know even less."

"We have to be quick," Theseus said.

"No. You have to be quick," said Percival. There were heavy bags under his dark eyes. He let out the barest of sighs, as if it were a luxury he was allowing himself, and slumped against the back wall, crossing his arms.

"A lot's happened. We could do with your help," Theseus said. Maybe if he made an appeal to Graves's sense of duty, he could break him out of this stupor.

"Grindelwald...he's powerful. And he's got a way of making you feel like you need him, like he's the only one who can protect you. It's...it's complicated." Percival closed his eyes and let out his breath. "Theseus, you know I'd hate to say it, but it's too late for me."

Theseus tried to break through the magical lock on his cell, pushing his arm in up to the shoulder to fiddle with the mechanism. "No," he muttered.

"It's a trick," Percival muttered, voice fading as he wrapped his arms around himself. "You're him, aren't you?"

"No!" Theseus said. "It's me. I promise. I...um...let me prove it to you, somehow."

Percival rubbed his eyes, clicking his tongue. "I don't know what's real and what's not anymore."

If only I could have done something, Theseus thought to himself. If he'd been fast enough, if he'd been able to help. But he hadn't.

"Graves," Theseus said. "If there's anything I can do, please, tell me. I'll do whatever I can."

"Tell me how you got those injuries," came the immediate reply. "Gellert, if it is you, I'd appreciate some honesty. Lift the illusion now if those wounds aren't real."

Theseus pulled his arm out of the cage-like cell and regarded the long cut on his forearm. Baring his teeth, he forced himself to bite down, reopening the deep gash with a low hiss of pain.

"Ah. Fuck. It wouldn't bleed if it were an illusion, I don't think."

"Give me your arm," Percival said.

He went pale as Theseus offered it to him and he wrapped his cold hands around it, retreating back the moment the blood touched his skin, realising that it was real.

"Merlin. It's really...you. Or at least, it could be..."

"There were other prisoners here," Theseus said. "Did they escape? How do you unlock the cage? How can we get out?"

"Gellert killed them all. About an hour ago. He's–––he's not going to be–––he's going to be angry–––he was already angry at something, but it wasn't me, but it could still be–––" and the other man slid down the wall, clutching his head in his hands.

Theseus couldn't quite place the feeling that had spread over him. To hear Graves, who'd been so insistent in his objections to Grindelwald, talk like that, like Grindelwald was some all-powerful being who could not be killed, made his own attempts at resistance feel like the futile beginning to a story he didn’t like the ending of.

"Graves?” Theseus said firmly, getting his attention. “We can't stay here."

"He's not coming back, not until...he's got to do something first. Leave me."

"I'm not leaving you here to suffer," Theseus said. "I can't."

"No. I'll slow you down. You don't look too good," Percival said.

Theseus laughed, low and mirthless. "No offence, Percy, but you'd know."

A wave of exhaustion hit Theseus. He'd used too much magic, and the last thing he wanted to do was spend hours arguing with Graves. But as he stepped back from the cell, Percival reached out, grabbing his hand and gripping it tightly.

"Listen to me, Theseus. I know you don't listen much, but you have to. You have to escape, now. And you cannot let him catch you."

Theseus wrenched himself free and stared at Percival's face, trying to see the connection between his own observation and this sudden desperation, wondering in his gut whether Percival had given Grindelwald some kind of tipoff.

"I'm trying to save you," he said.

Theseus knew that look; that haughty head tilt, the arrogant curve of Percy's shoulders. When they'd first met, he'd almost hated Percy: the way he acted so high and mighty, with the world owing him a debt of gratitude, proud and silent and more than a little arrogant. That had been a front, of course. But seeing the same attitude now, as Percival tried to act stoic, like Theseus's reappearance hadn't turned his world upside down again, only made Theseus painfully aware that it was a lie.

Percival didn't want Theseus to go; nor was he brave enough to go himself.

"If he catches us," Percival said. "He'll kill you. He won't kill me. He promised that he'd never kill me. And I wouldn't be able to live—he's told me what he's done with my face—knowing that I was the reason. You don't understand what he's capable of. You don't understand what he's planning."

"I know," Theseus said. "I get it, Percival. I really do. But...have some faith in me, please."

The man was crumbling again, and Theseus wanted to comfort him. But he didn't know how.

"No," Percival finally said, voice growing a little more assertive, a martyr-like change that made Theseus's stomach immediately sink. "You need to listen to me. It's been years, yet MACUSA's reputation will never recover. The Ministry is still intact. It won't be if you stay here. If he can't take on your face, he could—he could—Theseus, you just have to trust me. It's for the greater good. You have to go. And you have to get out."

"You remember what we said in the war. It's not about us. So, it's not. Not here,” Percival continued. “You're not my friend. You're the Head Auror of the British Ministry of Magic. And you could be dead in a minute, Theseus. That's not a risk I'm willing to take."

"Forget it," Theseus said, gripping the bars of the cell. "I'm not letting you rot with Grindelwald.”

Percival slowly unrolled the sleeve of his shirt, revealing a wicked tattoo that slithered up his arm. This symbol was two mirrored images of a familiar letter, an evil marker branded deep into his skin.

"Wherever I am. He'll find me."

Theseus stepped back. "It tracks you?"

"Yes; everything. I'm sorry." Percival said with a sad smile, dark eyes growing glassy. "You need to go now. If you leave me here, I won't care, so long as I can believe that one of us made it out alive. You always had the most courage."

Chapter Text

They both turned away from one another, then, but taking his gaze off his friend was agonising. He’d thought he’d never see him again. He’d accepted it, or at least repressed it, as he did so well. Now, Percival was standing in front of him, unkempt but alive, as well as he maybe could be, still sane and still a little proud—and he was meant to abandon him, because Grindelwald had ensured his presence would doom any rescuer.

Shaking his head, he backed away. The other man’s eyes were wide and pleading; the weight of the situation was written all over his face in his expressive black-brown eyes, always saying so much in his stony features.

Run, Theseus told himself, finally breaking eye contact and turning on his heel, feet slapping against the floor as he ran back through the blood strains and wrecked cages, past the aged wine barrels, and emerged back into the kitchen.

Fuck. Was he really leaving Graves? But they’d be coming now, especially if there was some link Grindelwald had with Percy through that mark. They were going to hunt him down again in the house where there was nowhere to hide. And Grindelwald had been angry, an hour ago, maybe a little longer—and yet Theseus had woken up sooner than that. Whatever the guillotine was, it was still waiting to drop.

The kitchen was a blur as he rushed through, barely registering the sights and smells. He stumbled over a stray utensil on the floor but kept going, his mind fixed on escaping this hellish place. There was a fire spreading through his chest as he pushed himself harder, ignoring the aching in his legs, his neck, even his hips.

In the iron and glass structure of the conservatory, it felt like the stars were watching him. A vague memory came to him of walking through here with Vinda; he pressed harder, the sound of his footsteps echoing in the spacious room, the rhythm frantic and haphazard. As he reached the entrance, Theseus could see the weakened wards shimmering, ready to give way. With a surge of magic, he broke through the weakened barrier, bursting out into the open air, panting and gasping for breath.

“Ah—Merlin’s beard, fuck—“

He turned back to look at the manor as he stumbled down the grassy slope towards the forest. There, silhouetted in the arched ground floor window three along from the conservatory, was a shadow.

A blind panic spiked in him again as he broke out into a limping run.

He had no plan. There was no plan for this situation, even without his mind being a jumbled mess of adrenaline-stricken thoughts and desperate attempts to ignore the incapability of his body to move as fast as he needed it to. The air still was too heavy here, a telltale sign that he couldn’t apparate yet. But surely it would be only a few kilometres at most before the protection charm ended. Surely.

He made it into the trees and made the fatal mistake of turning again. Walking so slowly, so calmly, from the conservatory door, Grindelwald followed him. His dark coat flapped in the faint twilight breeze; the faint blue glow from his wand illuminated the man’s corpse-like face, which showed neither fury nor fear.

All for nothing. Fighting against the dark wizard, when you weren’t Albus Dumbledore, was like being a foot soldier against an air strike. He crashed into the undergrowth, breaking twigs and throwing himself through tree branches, breathing so hard bile rose to the back of his throat.

If Grindelwald could see the future—if he knew he was going to escape, successfully—then he could have struck him by now. The patient pace of each step told Theseus all he needed to know. Staring ahead into the dense forest, outside for the first time in more than two weeks, freedom felt so close. With each breath, careening forwards through the trees, his heart kept jumping, as if he could just push through the next gap in the thick foliage and somehow see a way out.

But Grindelwald followed him into the forest.

The trees loomed over him like silent sentinels, casting long shadows across the uneven forest floor. The air was thick with the scent of pine and damp earth, and Theseus felt as though he were drowning in it. He kept tripping over tree roots. He should have been clear-headed, but seeing Percival had sent him into a tailspin—each misstep made his chest seize up, tightening his breaths like a thumbscrew just a little more each time.

Crashing through the undergrowth, Theseus almost missed the sound of Grindelwald’s footsteps finally catching up to him. In a last attempt to break free, he began to apparate, letting the weightless feeling buzz up his legs—but it immediately hurt. If he tried, he would split himself, and the phantom pain was bad enough that whatever parts of him emerged on the other side might not live.

“It’s a kilometre further, our boundary line,” Grindelwald explained, carefully aiming his wand at Theseus.

“Let me reach it,” Theseus challenged, finally hunching over, catching his breath and wincing. “If it’s only a kilometre, you might even catch me before I get there.”

“You’re a rather fast runner. Forgive me if I prefer not to let you chance it.”

He let out a low noise of despair. “I had to try.”

In the gathering twilight of the forest, the silhouetted trees suddenly came into focus: he could see their outlines, their branches and trunks, each individual leaf. The distant stars were shining through their silhouetted branches.

"I’ll make a deal with you," Theseus said, straightening up. As hard as it was to talk and breathe, he had to try. "If you let me reach the boundary line before you kill me, I will tell you the truth about Dumbledore. No tricks—no lies. I’ll tell you everything.”

Grindelwald let out a low hiss of breath, like a cat on the prowl. “Then you don’t think I know.”

"Know what?"

Grindelwald stepped closer to Theseus, his wand still pointed at him. "Everything I already need."

Theseus felt his heart sink. "What do you want?"

Never mind that he had never made a move, that time had laid his feelings to bed, that Albus's brief attempts at connecting with him had been stonewalled by the Auror himself, always too busy with work. Never mind that the potion had made him hallucinate indiscriminately, that Dumbledore had made no move to track him down, as far as he knew, that the man had given Newt bare commiserations and then never even mentioned Leta again to Theseus.

It seemed they were all paying for the summer of 1899. On the cusp of the century, love had doomed them all. In a way, he could hardly blame either for it. Love had doomed him to attempt the disastrous arrest that had landed him here and screwed both himself and Dumbledore's mission.

"Well, should we negotiate on how to continue?" Grindelwald said.

"Do tell," Theseus muttered. He should have kept his mouth shut, he knew that, but hardly anything irked him more than being misunderstood. But Grindelwald was fixated on his jealousy. It made sense–––how many years had the two men nursed the wound with the blood troth there to feed it?

"It is apparent you are soon to reach breaking point. I sense we now have the opportunity to strike a bargain."

"You won't get away with it," Theseus said, slumping against the nearest tree. He wouldn't have been surprised if he'd been tortured under the love potion. The bone-weary ache was, surely, not the kind that could be left by sex alone.

"I'll die first," he added.

Grindelwald smiled with an expression of supreme confidence.

"Will you?" Grindelwald taunted sweetly. "Will you, Theseus? In a moment, in a flash? Or will it take time? Months, years, decades?"

"Logically, decades," Theseus said, feeling little need to restrain his bluntness. "Two or three would be adequate. Reaching seventy, though, might be a pipe dream."

"You know what they say about shadows," Grindelwald continued, his tone almost pitying now. "The brighter the light, the darker the shadow."

Theseus felt a surge of anger at the condescension in Grindelwald's words. "Grindelwald, no matter what you say to me, I'm not going to join you. And it seems like you know everything about Albus, so why keep me here? Dumbledore may be many things, but he's out there, somewhere, and he's choosing not to come to you for a reason. There's nothing you–––or I–––can do about that."

There was silence as Grindelwald took in this new information.

"I was honestly expecting you to be more imaginative," Grindelwald said finally.

"Then you still don't know me very well," Theseus said.

"Odd that you are so keen to encourage me to explore you further," Grindelwald said, tilting his head to one side. "Such a private, guarded individual, no matter how you may come across. So keen to protect some of your memories that you collapsed them all."

"And your conclusion?" Theseus said, putting his hands behind his back and flexing his wrists.

"Oh, regarding the breaking point? Well, I would assume that, for a contained individual like you to make a series of some of the most impulsive and reckless choices I've seen, you are experiencing some...shift. And you keep doubling down. Worrying more. Resisting more. Getting more and more aggressive...less in control of yourself...I think, as an Auror, you can understand where that ends."

"Your follower," Theseus said. "made me lose control of myself."

"The love potion," Grindelwald noted. "Yes. Loyalty should not be bought or brewed in a bottle. Yet, seeing where we are now, which is also rather far from where you should be, I can understand why Vinda did it."

"It's against the law," Theseus said.

Grindelwald raised an eyebrow; it was an obvious statement, but he barely knew what to do, and reverting to the Ministry codes he did agree with seemed like the only way to navigate this minefield of a conversation.

"I can only assume you are really not having a good time here," Grindelwald said. "But I think you have been loyal to an old man for much too long. If that old man ever found out what you had done, what you have become, he will never forgive you. I doubt he even loves you anymore, Theseus."

"Oh," Theseus said, simply, "I doubt he ever did. It never became anything like love. It was passing, at best. But I don't think you can understand that, nor do you want to."

He bit down on the admission that Dumbledore had never loved him, never desired him. Grindelwald was not hurt by it, surely, in a way that made sense to Theseus. He did not even seem to care whether he was getting to Theseus or not. He was simply seeking to exacerbate his own self-pity in front of the ultimate witness.

"I suppose," Grindelwald muttered, "you are not much for idle chat, are you? Now, for what I have to say, you will have to be silent. Yes?"

There was a strange sort of pleading in Grindelwald's voice, and Theseus was too tired to see sense or question the sudden change in his captor's demeanor. Here was an opportunity for a plan, not a mad attempt at flight. Grindelwald could say whatever the hell he wanted while Theseus put together the wandless charms he wanted to use in his head behind the strongest shield he could muster.

"Here is your perception of me: I am insane, and a cruel monster. I do not enjoy killing so, so readily, but I have never been one to deny reality. You hate me, but you know that I will make use of you eventually. And then Albus thinks the same, does he not? But, for the greater good, I will endure. You understand, don't you? Or you will understand the greater good, even if you are to only be my tool for a short time, even if your obtuse perspective lingers."

The silence stretched on. Grindelwald lifted his chin and looked up at the stars, raising his hands a little from his sides, as if he were ready to take flight.

"Do not be frustrated that I cannot understand you enough to let you go free yet. Be grateful that I understand your weaknesses so perfectly. For at least you are not me: alone in the world, amassing followers, amassing power, and knowing that my perfect vision will forever remain incomplete while the blood troth exists."

"And then?" Theseus asked, fixated on how Grindelwald was changing his words, adding meaning to his previous rambling.

The other man's brows knitted together and his mouth turned down into a frown. He shook his head slowly and shifted his gaze away, the disappointment tangible in the air between them.

"It is time for us to return to the manor," Grindelwald finally said.

Theseus's heart sank. At once, he and Grindelwald locked eyes; Grindelwald raised his wand just as Theseus summoned a wandless defensive charm. There was a flash, the forest collapsing around them, and suddenly, the air was heavy not with wards but with the smell of blood and wine.

The wine cellar was dimly lit, the only sources of light being the flickering torches on the walls. Theseus and Grindelwald stood opposite each other, eyes locked in a fierce stare. Theseus had his hands raised in front of him, palms outstretched, ready to deflect any incoming spells. Grindelwald held his wand loosely in his hand, a smirk playing at the corner of his lips.

Grindelwald shot forward, his jet of purple light narrowly missing Theseus. In a swift response, Theseus called upon a wave of invisible force, and it struck Grindelwald's shield with a loud crack, flaring up but not shattering it. With a chilling nonchalance, Grindelwald cast the Cruciatus Curse, and Theseus convulsed in pain. The dark wizard watched coolly, tapping his wand against his leg as Theseus struggled to regain his composure.

"You can't stand against me for long," Grindelwald said.

The magic-binding charm snaked towards Theseus's wrists, but, with wide-open eyes, practically burning with the adrenaline of what felt like a last stand, he banished them without a second thought.

Grindelwald, a relentless storm of spells and jinxes, rained down on Theseus. He stumbled, barely able to dodge and block the wild onslaught. His strength was draining rapidly; he felt defenseless against the power of Grindelwald's wand. In a last ditch effort, he channeled all his remaining energy into one final electric bolt and flung it towards the weakening shield. The bolt collided with a deafening crash, shattering the shield in a dazzling explosion of sparks.

With a flick of his wrist, he sent Theseus flying across the room. Theseus crashed into a stack of barrels, the air knocked out of him. Grindelwald approached him slowly, a look of triumph on his face. Theseus struggled to his feet.

"Impedimenta," Theseus managed, saying the spell aloud like a schoolchild, scraping the last of his energy from inside him.

But the dark wizard evaded with ease and retaliated, magically binding Theseus with ropes. Memories of the factory returning to him in an unbridled stream of scattered flashes, a perfect motivation for pushing his magic beyond its limit. With a burst of energy, he released a surge of magic, destroying the ropes and freeing himself.

"How interesting that you chose that jinx for your last spell," Grindelwald said. “It’s as stubborn as you have been.”

Theseus's eyes drifted uneasily to the far end of the cellar. The place looked like a wasteland, but there was still one prisoner here who could be hurt if he tried to burn the whole damn mansion down.

The two wizards circled each other warily, neither wanting to make the first move.

He didn't know how much longer he could hold out. At some point, some point, he had to stop. The rational, logical person he'd been before he'd been taken practically screamed it; there was a purpose, too, in playing along, in surviving, in learning more about the situation and letting it unfold rather than fighting at every stage. But it all felt so wrong here–––this was no usual investigation. This was where Grindelwald was reshaping the clear-drawn line before good and evil, making it blurred and palatable to the public, ready to release it to his followers and wreck the world. Every choice he could make was the wrong one.

But then Grindelwald raised his wand and, with a strange calmness, murmured the words that would put an end to this battle. They were foreign to Theseus, some spell that the powerful wizard had created himself. All he knew was that the world suddenly lurched left as his head hit the bloodstained wall with a hard, ringing smack; and he felt himself fading away, losing consciousness as he slumped to the floor.

Chapter Text

1897 — June, several months after Newt is born

Dear Friends and Family,

We are overjoyed to share with you the wonderful news of the safe arrival of our second son, Newton Artemis Fido Scamander. Leonore and the baby are both in good health, and Theseus is excited to embrace his role as a big brother. The Scamander family is filled with gratitude for your well wishes and support during this joyous time.

With warm regards,

Alexander and Leonore Scamander

In the softly lit nursery, eight-year-old Theseus leaned over the crib where baby Newt lay, cocooned in blankets. He examined his face with interest. Mum had told him that apparently, by baby standards, Newt was rather cherubic, with wide green eyes and a calm, contemplative demeanour. He rarely cried and had skin so soft Theseus often had to resist the urge to poke one of his fat, custard-cream-colour cheeks, reasoning that it probably wasn’t a nice thing for an older brother to do. When his parents had sat him down and told him he’d be having a baby brother in just a few months, he’d been a little bit confused—obviously he’d noticed that Leonore was pregnant, so putting two and two together, he did think something was going to happen. The main concern he had was why they’d taken so long to tell him. What did his parents think he was going to do?

Their mum had said after a few minutes of contemplation, in which their father examined the arm of the sofa, that when her sister Agnes was born, Leonore had torn up all her dolls. It then fell to Theseus to explain that having a little brother sounded very acceptable, and he believed himself hardly prone to fits of jealousy, being good at sharing, well-mannered and careful. So, after Theseus had cleared up those misconceptions and considered those matters all sorted, two months later, Newt arrived with a little fanfare, soon to be given traditional Scamander middle names.

Newton Artemis Fido Scamander, shortened to Newt, not for any reason in particular, other then the baby had looked reptilian when born by several accounts.

One name for a Greek god, a tradition from Leonore’s side, where she was named after Hestia. Given the title of the goddess of home, she’d often complained, didn’t account for her exceptional skill at Hippogriff breeding. With half-compensation, she gave Newt the name of Artemis, to match in some way to her elder son. The Latin, of course, was from Alexander: his family sterner, more traditional, even if their father lacked middle names of his own.

Newt would be faithful, loyal. It was obvious Leonore had more influence on the naming, because given that Theseus was called Theseus Hyperion Felix Scamander, they were rather strange names for a family where the head of the household led the Department for International Magical Trade and Commerce at the esteemed Ministry. Leonore said she wasn’t that sure, that she’d picked them out of a book. Apparently, she’d wanted to call him Orion at first: had her heart set on it. Theseus had definitively been pleased to be free from the complicated legacy of the arrogant hunter, including more than a few embarrassing incidents in which Leonore had to promise him Artemis and Orion had been good friends, really. They’d been hunting partners all along, she reassured, and the important bit was how connected to nature they were.

But Hyperion it had been. They would make the names their own in time; for now they were mere decoration.

Even so, Theseus had thought, he’d still been given an equally stupid and esoteric first name that his friends in the village couldn’t pronounce without smirking. How fortunate.

Their lineage wasn’t as pure as it could be, and the social circles they ran in often proved they had a tenuous hold on their good position in society, so perhaps naming the children for the hunt made some sense in the tight and oftentimes repressive atmosphere of late nineteenth century Wizarding England.

The room was bathed in a warm, gentle glow as daylight filtered through the curtains, casting patterns of light and shadow on the walls. Theseus brushed some leaves off the windowsill from the heavy tree outside, sticking his head out to check the breeze, fresh to match the early evening outside. He assumed babies shouldn’t be too cold; he closed it, as the room was old and drafty anyway, part of their medium-sized family home set in the middle of the countryside.

With quiet steps, Theseus approached the crib and peered down at Newt, who was blinking up at him with wide, curious eyes. Newt was either staring at the ceiling or Theseus’s nose. He briefly wondered what Newt was thinking: whether he was assessing his face and questioning who exactly this big-eared stranger was. Did he even know they were brothers? Babies were so strange. It was almost like they weren’t really real, with such small hands and feet. Theseus's heart swelled with a mix of tenderness and pride as he crouched beside the crib.

Mum had let him take care of Newt as long as he was careful. Father worked too much to help with the baby, which Mum said was a very ‘bloody difficult’ task, but even though he was a boy, Theseus wanted to help with Newt as much as he wanted to play Quidditch. And one of those things was more helpful than the other.

"Hey there, Newt," Theseus whispered, attempting to make his voice carry a warm, reassuring tone. "It's just you and me right now. Mum's resting, so I'm on watch duty."

He was still getting used to calling him not by Newton or the baby, but Newt. Leonore’s little affectionate nickname somehow fit very well with his lizard-green eyes and slightly scaly head. Newt's response was, well, practically none, but he sort of smacked his lips in the way the older boy assumed a baby might. Theseus grinned, his face lighting up as he reached a hand down into the crib. He brushed against Newt's chubby little hand, and Newt's fingers wrapped around Theseus's with surprising strength. It was more a reflex than an act of recognition, but it did make him feel so very useful.

Theseus had watched his mother do this countless times, and he was determined to get it right. He was getting good at it. Besides, he was allowed to hold the baby whenever Mum had a headache.

With deliberate care, Theseus lifted Newt from the crib, cradling him against his chest. He supported Newt's wobbly head with one hand, looking at his tufty blonde-brown hair and wondering if the glimmer of ginger meant he’d look like Mum, reasoning he’d be lucky if he did, but he would also have to stay out of the sun lest he get as many freckles as she had on her arms.

As he rocked Newt gently, Theseus beamed down at the baby. "Look at you, Newt," he mumbled. "You're getting so big already. Just wait until you're old enough to play Quidditch with me."

He squinted at the baby. It was obviously too early for him to understand talking, so that made sense. Sometimes, though, Newt just ignored him. He was a small baby as well, although Theseus hadn’t seen many babies, and so he wondered whether Newt would really be good at Quidditch in the future. It would be a bit rubbish if Newt didn’t like the amazing sport, he reasoned, the significance of their age gap not quite yet apparent at eight years old, nor the understanding that he’d be well past school by the time Newt got to start.

“We might have to do lots of practice,” Theseus said, chewing his lip. “But it’ll be really fun, I promise.”

Newt wiggled a little and Theseus’s heart stopped; he reflexively drew him closer, making sure to keep the neck carefully cradled. Don’t fall, he prayed, as anxious as ever. After a few moments, though, his little brother’s round eyes drifted from Newt’s own hand to Theseus’s face; Newt reached out and slowly touched the cotton of Theseus’s shirt, making a faint cooing noise.

“That’s a happy noise, isn’t it?” Theseus asked. “Hmm? Newton—Newt? You know who I am, don’t you?”

Newt responded with a soft squirm in Theseus's arms. Finally! Theseus laughed softly, his heart swelling with affection for his baby brother. He gently pressed a kiss to Newt's forehead, feeling a surge of protectiveness that he hadn't quite experienced before. It was a new feeling, a new role to embrace, and he was determined to do it well. He jogged him on his hip, arms aching—he wished he was a bit stronger, because Newt was heavier than he looked.

It was nice, having someone who would listen without judgment, even if that someone was too young to understand a word he was saying. Newt was looking at him with intent focus in his little round eyes. The light threw twin sparkles against his baby brother’s green-hazel irises, like some grass. Theseus was sure there were better metaphors, but he’d stayed inside more the last few months to see the baby, and lacked the poetic inspiration he might have had otherwise.

”Anyway," Theseus continued, "I do have some really exciting news is about Quidditch, if you’d like to know. The Appleby Arrows absolutely trounced the Chudley Cannons last week. 270 to 40! Can you believe it? I've been keeping track of all the scores this season, you know. I've got a whole chart worked out.”

He paused to see if Newt had absorbed this. Newt opened and closed his toothless mouth with a quiet smacking noise.

“It's quite complex,” Theseus continued, “but I think if the Arrows win their next two matches by at least 100 points each, and if the Wimbourne Wasps lose to Puddlemere United, then the Arrows have a real shot at the league title. Their new Chaser, Josephine Hawksworth, has an impressive goals-per-game average of 8.3. That's a 12% increase from last season. I worked that out myself, you know, even though it can be ever so hard to read the numbers.”

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, pause. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, pause. At the moment, Theseus couldn’t exactly do his habitual rhythm-making with his hands, so he did it with his feet, making sure to support Newt’s neck the way Mum had shown. Mum had also told him it was okay to talk to the baby. Theseus had not entirely missed that the timing of this suggestion had come after he’d read to her during one of her headaches, and picked his neatly folded copy of The Times, a Muggle newspaper all about politics and London and everything.

”I tried to explain it all to Father. He listened, but between you and me, I think you’re a better listener. It's brilliant.”

He took a deep breath, realising he'd got a bit loud in his excitement. Theseus didn’t usually get loud unless he was passionate about something, and he was faintly embarrassed, because Newt’s ears were still so small and cauliflower-like. Newt squirmed slightly in his arms, and Theseus immediately lowered his voice. "Sorry, sorry. I'll try to be quieter. Don't want to upset you or wake Mum."

He glanced towards the door, his brow furrowing. "Mum's been sleeping an awful lot lately," he confided in Newt, his voice barely above a whisper now. "I think... I think having you made her quite tired. More than usual, I mean. She doesn't talk to me as much as she used to. But she’ll get better soon, and then she’ll be right as rain. I think. And I can be very useful and good in the meantime, so we’ll be okay.”

Newt's eyelids were slowly sliding shut, a dazed look entering his round green eyes, and Theseus’s arms were burning, so Theseus carefully lowered him back into the crib, making sure to lay him down gently and put all the sheets in the right way. Babies slept a lot, it seemed. Fiddling with the Hippogriff mobile hanging above his crib, he cleared his throat. They swung around and around as he tried to work a knot out of one of the hanging figure’s strings, the wooden animals clacking merrily together.

“Mum’s obsessed with these things,” he said with a slight smile. “You’ll get to meet them all soon, if you want to. Although you know, they do eat meat, so maybe not too soon, because you’re still kind of small... And I think they smell bad. Don’t tell Mum I said that. They have massive big beaks, as big as my head, and they sometimes nibble Mum, but they can also fly. That’s awesome, isn’t it? They're really cool creatures, kind of like huge birds mixed with horses. I've read about them in my books. Um, I read a lot, you know. One day, I’m going to read every book in the library.”

He waited for a response but didn’t get it.

Understandable. Babies didn’t talk for ages and ages.

Newt hadn’t even learned to eat actual food yet. Well, that was fine, because his baby brother already seemed like he would be a good listener. Very distractible and prone to, well, not listening at all, but it would be nice to be listened to. Theseus would have been happy to talk to a wall, because the last time he’d been to the Muggle village had been a while, and they’d only played football together for a few hours. They’d all liked him though, which was an optimistic portent for the future. He leaned over the crib's edge, his gaze lingering on his sleeping baby brother. Holding his breath, he lightly tapped at the polished cedar of the crib, drumming each finger once and the smallest finger twice, just to seal the good luck in.

The door creaked open and Theseus started. His shoulders slumped as Leonore stepped inside, her reddish-brown curls frizzing around her face. She wore a loose dress, walking slowly, clearly exhausted. He was pleased that now he was eight, he was far more aware of when she sometimes had her illness make her more sleepy, especially given Newt had only been born a little while ago. It made him a much better son, he thought. And so, nowadays, he rarely was accused of the old thoughtlessness from his father. That was good. It made him less worried; he just wanted everyone to be happy, but he made sure not to say it too much, because it didn’t seem like something to be really hammered across as a general point.

With a relaxed sigh, she wandered over, twisting one of the many stamped gold bracelets around her wrist, each studded with a tiny amethyst.

“Hi Mum!” he said with boyish enthusiasm.

“How’s my little worker?” she said, glancing into the crib and fixing the blankets.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, feeling a bit self-conscious. "I was just making sure he's comfortable."

“Oh, he’s asleep,” Leonore said. “He’ll be the talk of the maternity group soon if he keeps this up, all this sleeping. Anyhow, well done, sweetheart. You’ve been very helpful—talking to him and looking after him—we’re all pleased you’re being very responsible.”

She reached out and tenderly ruffled his hair, a gesture that made Theseus feel both cherished and slightly embarrassed, though he'd never admit it. "You've been quite busy taking care of your little brother, haven't you?” Leonore said conspiratorially. “Mums and Dads always worry about how the big one will handle a new arrival; but you’re putting our worries to rest.”

He chewed the inside of his cheek. “You’re still worried?” Theseus asked, even though they’d already suggested as much.

He and Mum had spent a lot of time together, and she’d done hours and hours of Numeracy and History and Painting with him, so he thought she might know that he wouldn’t be mean to Newt. The idea stung a bit, and he looked at the mobile dangling above Newt’s bed, the room draughty enough that the wind came through the large square panes of the closed window and made the little wooden Hippogriffs drift.

“Not anymore,” Leonore said. “I’m sure when you get older, the pair of you’ll fight like mad hens. Auntie Agnes and I certainly had her moments. Once, she climbed up the drainpipe to just put a Dungbomb in my room because I, well, I snipped her hair with scissors—but the most important thing, and remember this, all right, sweetheart—is that you’re there for one another when things get difficult, okay?”

Theseus nodded, scratching at his cheek. "I want to help. Newt seems to like it when I talk to him. But it’s a bit hard to tell.”

“They’re not the easiest creatures to read, babies,” Leonore said. “They cry, need the bathroom, and seem to always be hungry: those are the key things they do, really, which most of my friends have told me stays the case until they get old enough to let you sleep through the night and then you find yourself missing it.”

“Newt doesn’t always do all that,” Theseus pointed out, because Newt didn’t cry much, if at all.

“Well, maybe he’s just very well-behaved,” Leonore hummed. “Ooh. Is he going to be better behaved than you? Maybe your father and I can start a little competition.”

“I can win,” he blurted out instinctively, competitive instinct kicking in, then frowned. “Wait…if he’s my baby brother, does that mean I need to stop winning to be nice to him? Otherwise he might get sad if I’m better than him at everything because I’m big and he's not.”

“I think you’ll both be perfectly fine as you are. As long as you love him very much,” Leonore said.

Theseus considered his mother's words, his gaze shifting back to his sleeping brother. He found himself fascinated by the way Newt's chest rose and fell in a rhythmic pattern, as if he were in a world of his own. "And do you think he'll like Quidditch, Mum? When he's older?"

“Oh, it’s always Quidditch with you,” Leonore said. “You’re worse than Alexander with his newspapers and all that talk about the economy.”

He blinked, then remembered that was their father’s name, still getting used to remembering that his parents had lives outside the house that he didn’t see when helping with things and that his father had just been promoted and that people at work in the Ministry called him Alexander or even Mr Scamander.

“I don’t talk about the clocks,” Theseus said, referring to his father’s extensive antique clock collections scattered around the house, containing perhaps every kind he could ever imagine other than maybe a big booming grandfather clock.

Her eyes crinkled. “Ah, I love the clocks. They’re so romantic. Isn’t it lovely to think that they’re all carefully wound to tick in sync?”

“Hmm,” Theseus said.

He hid a look of mild disgust upon being made to consider that there were indeed feelings between their parents and they weren’t merely in some mutually beneficial partnership. To cover this indiscretion, he glanced out of the window.

The sky was darkening, shade by shade, the sun starting to sink over the distant horizon beyond the fields bit by bit. Maybe their father would Apparate home soon through the special route the Ministry had built to their house. It was quite a long journey and he always came back rumpled and grumpy, questioning why they didn’t live in London like his parents had.

The clock on the rule read eight thirty. At eight forty five, Theseus liked to be in his room, otherwise he felt sort of prickly.

“Good night, Mum,” Theseus said, abruptly ending the conversation. It was time to go. He bounced on the balls of his feet away from the crib, shoving his hands in his pockets. He paused by the doorframe. “Oops—and good night, Newt!”

“Good night,” Leonore called out, stretching out and settling onto the thin bed by the crib, ready to watch his little brother for the night. “When your father gets home, tell him that there’s dinner on the stove under the pan. I know the lid’s closed and he doesn’t see anything that’s not under his nose, so please point it out.”

“Okay,” he said, closing the door and running down to the kitchen, taking the stairs one two three four five, all the way to thirty three. He scribbled a note in the pot, debated signing it, and then sprinted to his room. With a frown, he bent down to check the clock by his bed, the rhythmic, echoey ticking telling him it was wound to time.

Eight forty four. He ran his hands through his hair and started running the water into his basin, humming the same tune Mum had been mumbling in wistful stops and starts by Newt’s little bed, the words something along the lines of falling down into a deep, dark well.

*

“Go show your work to your father,” Leonore said, handing Theseus the leather-bound elementary Transfiguration textbook from the table. “Take your Numeracy workings as well, so he can check them.”

“But he’s busy,” Theseus protested.

“Not too busy to make sure you’re studying properly,” Leonore said. “Besides, it’s been decades since I’ve practised Numeracy.”

“You’re really smart, all the same—you could have a look at it, maybe,” Theseus said, running his hands through his hair, fiddling with the curly strands.

He looked at his manuscript book, counting the number of scrawled sums, wondering if he’d done enough to satisfy their father. Alexander was strict and had an undeniable air of authority that Theseus was slightly in awe of, but he’d also read him several bedtime stories in his deep, monotone voice, and he’d brought Theseus his small-sized Cleansweep 400, so Theseus had resolved to be less fearful around him.

Everyone’s dad was a bit scary, anyway; he’d learnt that when visiting the village. In fact, he was sure that his father was nice, really. Mum had always said Alexander just tended not to show much of anything, that he’d always been reserved, she said, which made him perfect at his job.

Theseus thought he might be a bit reserved too. Sometimes, he was really good at being polite and friendly. And he had done lots of interacting with adults, where you had to give them quite a big smile and nod after every other thing they said. But when he met his father’s work friends, or talked to people in the Muggle village, he had to hold his breath for good luck.

“Go—no attitude, please, Theseus,” Leonore said, handing him the book.

“Yes, Mum,” he said dutifully, heading up to the study.

He paused outside of the double doors, heart pounding, shuffling his feet against the carpet. His shoes were starting to pinch his toes, but he hadn’t yet asked Mum if she could get him some new ones. Tentatively, he looked through the keyhole. Not being able to see anything, clutching his manuscript book in one hand, he rapped smartly on the door.

“Is that Theseus? Come in,” Alexander called.

He pushed open the door with some effort, sliding in through the gap before the heavy wood could squash him. Inside was dark, illuminated by a few candles, lending a warm glow to the panelled room. Alexander sat behind a desk large enough for Theseus to lie on, surrounded by heavy ledgers, parchment rolls, and a few golden magical instruments used for accountancy. He hesitated in the doorway before stepping further inside, watching his father working with a mixture of admiration and curiosity, eyeing his wire spectacles and furrowed brow.

"Father," he began tentatively. “I did some sums.”

“Very good, son,” Alexander said, looking up from the desk. “Let’s take a look.”

He handed over the book, waiting as his father pulled off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and reached over for a quill.

“Are you tired?” Theseus asked.

“Never too tired to look at some numbers, my boy,” he said. “These look mostly correct—you’ll need to tighten up your carrying over, though, as it seems like you’ve got mixed up line by line, and your handwriting needs a bit of work.”

“Sorry,” Theseus offered. “My hands are—I don’t know—I’m rather clumsy.”

“You’ll grow out of it soon enough,” Alexander said.

“Um,” Theseus started.

Alexander looked up from his work. "What is it?"

Theseus took a deep breath, his heart racing as he gathered his thoughts. He hadn’t meant to say it, but he blurted it out anyway, because it had been pressing down on him for a few days. It wasn’t something he was meant to talk about too much, because Mum said that worrying used up all his energy, that Theseus had a smart head on his shoulders for better things. The glinting enchanted abacus caught his attention, a difficult sum still operating on it, the brassy beads clicking themselves along the wires.

"I was thinking...you work really hard, and you know so much. But even so…are you ever afraid of making mistakes?"

“Mistakes?” his father asked, scratching through some of Theseus’s work. “Well, the first thing to do is not to make them. The real world isn’t forgiving.”

“The real world? What does it do? What happens if you make mistakes at work? Do you get in trouble?” Theseus ventured, accidentally producing a rapid-fire stream of questions again before he could stop himself.

A fleeting shadow passed over Alexander's features, and he leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled as he regarded his son. "Theseus," he began, "everyone makes mistakes. Even your old man. But not at work. If I did that, it’d be the end of it.”

Theseus's eyes widened in surprise. He had never heard his father speak so openly about his own fallibility. "The end?" he asked, his curiosity piqued. “Really?”

Alexander offered a small smile, a touch of sadness hidden behind his eyes. "Yes, really.”

“Hmm,” Theseus said. He put his fingers on his mouth and resisted the urge to nibble the sides of his fingers, craning his neck to look at the official papers with the elegant Ministry logo on his father’s desk.

What did mistakes at work even look like? If you were rude to someone, that was probably a mistake. Or if you messed up your sums. He wondered what else you could do as he tugged at his collar. A little awkward now, not sure yet to do now that his sums had been checked, Theseus looked around at the books on the shelves and the handful of photos. There weren’t any of him and Newt, but there was one of his parents on their wedding day, a grainy black and white where Leonore smiled and Alexander blinked.

“I didn’t get too much wrong, did I?” he asked.

“No,” Alexander said. “Not too much. Just enough to work on.”

“Yessir,” Theseus said.

Movement in the corner of the room caught his eye; he glanced to the worn leather armchair and saw his Quaffle rolling around on the seat, lightly dropping to the floor with a gentle thud. He frowned—he liked to keep it in his box, tidy, or he’d get scolded by Mum for leaving his things around.

“Sorry, I’ll put that away,” he started, heading over to it, hands outstretched.

Alexander followed his gaze. “You didn’t leave it here; I picked it up.”

“Oh,” he said.

His father tilted his head to one side, examining Theseus. “If I finish my work by four—this report will take another few hours—I thought we could toss it around in the garden, if you’re up for that.”

He crossed his fingers behind his back. “Yes, father,” he said, nodding. “I’ll check my mistakes.”

“Well done, son,” his father said, looking back down to his papers. “Good work. Do a little more and then help your mother, yes?”

*

Theseus traipsed into the library, remembering a little too late to take off his muddy shoes. He winced, crouching down and checking the red patterned carpet, shaking off his Quidditch shoes and carefully stacking them on the side. Carefully, he crouched down and stretched out his hands, concentrating—a faint glimmer of magic went through his hands—and the mud vanished.

A proud smile crossed his face; there was talk about the Ministry banning underage magic for good, according to his father, but the scale of the legislation apparently meant it would take years and years to come through. It was okay as long as he was at the registered residence, also known as their house. For now, his father had again said, the Ministry was just looking for naughty children or children who did things they shouldn’t in front of Muggles. Of course, he knew it was because of the Statue of Secrecy. Theseus had been taught what that was before he even found out his father’s middle names: which were none, since they didn’t exist.

He checked the door was closed behind him and hurried to the bookshelf, picking up a heavy leather-bound book and collapsing onto the armchair facing the window, his favourite. The room was a treasure trove of knowledge, with shelves crammed with tomes on various subjects, some well-worn from frequent consultation. The scent of aged parchment and the faint flicker of candlelight created an ambiance that reminded him of rainy days being taught history by Leonore.

Strangely, they’d gone through a lot of Greek myths, but never his. Like a careful surgeon pulling apart the woven webs of tales thread by thread, there were many she always avoided with great precision: Hades and Persephone; Medea and Jason; and Theseus and the Minotaur. That hadn’t stopped nor fazed him. He wasn’t scared. Besides, his namesake was in far more stories than he’d expected.

He propped the book open on his lap, fingers tracing the intricate patterns etched onto the cover. Myths of Ancient Greece: Tales of Heroes and Gods. As he flipped through the pages, his eyes widened at the colorful illustrations of powerful gods, brave heroes, and mythical creatures. The section about the Greek Theseus wasn’t well-thumbed like the others, but he’d been working through it by himself while Mum was looking after the baby. After Newt, rather. For some reason, even though it was quite intense and involved a lot of murdering of evil villains in brutal ways, he enjoyed it; it made his heart race. He wondered if they had any stories about scientists, too, so that Newt could learn all about the apple and the tree and gravity.

Theseus had already killed Sinis, the Cronnyonion sow, Sciron, Procrustes, and Cercyon. Not to mention, he’d also been nearly poisoned by Medea, who’d killed her children, too. With a slight frown, he looked at the familiar painting, the one he’d got stuck on last time, tracing Medea’s poisoned chalice and dark flowing hair with a sense of unease. It helped that he looked nothing like the Greek Theseus, although they both had no beard.

His mother had always told him that myths were like cautionary tales, meant to teach lessons. Shifting in his seat, swinging one leg up over the edge of the armchair to make it more comfortable, he looked down at his own hands and tried to imagine what it would feel like to be poisoned, and when it could happen, so he could adequately learn how to stop it. He had heard stories of dangerous creatures and brave battles, but that seemed like a silent and insidious threat—one that couldn't be fought with strength or skill. What would it feel like? Would it be painful? Would it be quick, or would it drag on, leaving him helpless and in agony?

He glanced out of the window, at the raindrops trickling down it and the mauve sky beyond, and turned to the next section. Here, Theseus was a heroic figure standing tall against a fearsome Minotaur, the walls of the labyrinth surrounding the warring pair.

"Amazing," he whispered. His fingertips brushed over the image, tracing the lines of the Minotaur's horns. The Greek Theseus was strong and fearless, facing danger without hesitation. Theseus Scamander was more cautious, preferring to think things through before jumping in. He chewed his lip, a habit he'd picked up when he was deep in thought.

"Maybe I'm not as brave as him," he muttered to himself.

Theseus's gaze shifted back to the window, the curtain swaying gently in the breeze. The wind outside rustled the leaves of the tree, casting dancing shadows on the walls. He pondered the tale for a moment, the complexity of it all both intriguing and slightly overwhelming, and then buried his head back in the book, turning page after page of dense text, flying through the rest of the legend, pausing only twice. Once when Theseus abandoned Ariadne, and once when Aegeus jumped off the cliffs into the sea out of mad grief.

After finishing that part, he slowly closed the book and put it back on the shelf, thinking carefully. As much as he tried, he couldn’t quite put himself in Ariadne’s shoes, marvelling at the scale of the Greek Theseus’s casual betrayal. How could she have helped him defeat the Minotaur and been rewarded like that—abandoned all alone?

Maybe he was in a hurry; maybe the gods told him to go, he wondered. But how could he leave Ariadne behind? That’s not fair.

It was with a sinking feeling, because he was prone to them, that he wondered whether Mum didn’t want to read the story to him because it wasn’t really all good. In fact, there were quite a lot of bad things. It was okay, though. He could be smart and strong and not do those things, couldn’t he?

The next day, he cycled into the village to go and say hello to his Muggle friends. He’d shoved a sandwich into his small leather bag, not made with great skill, because he planned to be out all day but also knew that he was often turned away by suspicious shopkeepers. Despite his relatively smart appearance—or at least he thought so—it was like the village grown-ups could smell he was a little different, and his hesitation around the complexity of the very limited Muggle money he did have made them shoo him out of most places before he could open his mouth. He liked the other children, though. The older boys had only beaten him up twice and one of the girls had a father working in the police, so he got to hear about everything that was going on: even things that would have made Mum tug his ear and call him a busybody.

As Theseus pedaled along, pushing himself to go as fast as possible, he watched the familiar country landscapes go by. The fields stretched out on either side of the road, bathed in the soft morning sunlight. Birds chirped in the trees, and a gentle breeze carried the scent of wildflowers.

Upon reaching the village, he parked his bicycle by the quaint little square. The village was alive with activity: shopkeepers setting up stalls, adults chatting around the fountain, and Muggle children engrossed in games. There was some bunting hanging from the roofs of the small houses. He leaned his bicycle against a tree, holding his breath as he dodged a dog that came up to bark at him, and went to join the lively group of other children, feeling a mix of anticipation and excitement bubbling within him. It was a welcomed distraction from the weight of the myth that had occupied his mind.

The group was gathered near the small playground, their laughter echoing in the crisp morning air. Theseus grinned as he approached, the worries of the previous day beginning to fade. The kids greeted him warmly, their faces lighting up with familiarity.

"Hey, Theseus! Come join us!" one of the Muggle boys called out, waving him over to a game of tag that was already in full swing.

“Coming!” he shouted back, breaking into a sprint.

*

Now, when the time of the third tribute came, and the fathers who had any young men for their sons were to proceed by lot to the choice of those that were to be sent, there arose fresh discontents and accusations against Aegeus among the people, who were full of grief and indignation that he who was the cause of all their miseries was the only person exempt from the punishment; adopting and settling his kingdom upon a bastard and foreign son, he took no thought, they said, of their destitution and loss, not of bastards, but lawful children. These things sensibly affected Theseus, who, thinking it but just not to disregard, but rather partake of, the sufferings of his fellow citizens, offered himself for one without any lot. All else were struck with admiration for the nobleness and with love for the goodness of the act; and Aegeus, after prayers and entreaties, finding him inflexible and not to be persuaded, proceeded to the choosing of the rest by lot.

Hellanicus, however, tells us that the Athenians did not send the young men and virgins by lot, but that Minos himself used to come and make his own choice, and pitched upon Theseus before all others; according to the conditions agreed upon between them, namely, that the Athenians should furnish them with a ship and that the young men that were to sail with him should carry no weapons of war; but that if the Minotaur was destroyed, the tribute should cease.

On the two former occasions of the payment of the tribute, entertaining no hopes of safety or return, they sent out the ship with a black sail, as to unavoidable destruction; but now, Theseus encouraging his father, and speaking greatly of himself, as confident that he should kill the Minotaur, he gave the pilot another sail, which was white, commanding him, as he returned, if Theseus were safe, to make use of that; but if not, to sail with the black one, and to hang out that sign of his misfortune. Simonides says that the sail which Aegeus delivered to the pilot was not white, but:

"Scarlet, in the juicy bloom /

Of the living oak-tree steeped,"

and that this was to be the sign of their escape.

When they came near the coast of Attica, so great was the joy for the happy success of their voyage, that neither Theseus himself nor the pilot remembered to hang out the sail which should have been the token of their safety to Aegeus, who, in despair at the sight, threw himself headlong from a rock, and perished in the sea.

— Plutarch, 75 A.C.E, translated by John Dryden

The cool weather of the spring was breaking into summer. The sun hung low on the horizon, stretching the shadows of the trees on the far side of the lake into long, spidery lattices across the eroded grass by the wooden jetty. Theseus stared out over the lake, looking at their house on the far side. He was simmering with anxiety, boiling over with an emotion not easily articulated nor named, watching the water with wary eyes.

His father tossed a cloth at him and he caught it with quick reflexes. “Come and help me polish the turnbuckles—get that vacant look off your face.”

He nodded, scuffing his feet along the rickety wooden pier and climbing up onto the boat with difficulty, stomach rolling as it lurched. The white sails shivered in the wind, canvas billowing as it caught the last of the spring breeze. He took a buckle between two fingers, short clipped nails tracing the rusted steel.

In front of Alexander, he wasn’t sure how to say he didn’t want to go. There was something about the sails—the sailboat—and he was thinking, irrationally, of the Aegean Sea, an entire body of water named after a corpse. This was their house, their lake. What if something happened? What if the water, what passed as their sea, grew a name, rooted in some other tragedy?

He dropped the cloth as the next vision hit him hard and fast. What if he killed his father? Theseus had killed Aegeus. What if he did the same? Shaking slightly, feeling the trembling in the back of his knees yet trying to hold his body still so he looked brave, he picked up the cloth, balled it in his fist. Never had he felt he could dent the world. But at times like this, it felt as though one wrong foot and he could punch through the fragile spiderweb woven under him.

Alexander's voice, a mixture of encouragement and impatience, carried across the beach. "Come now, Theseus. It's a beautiful day for sailing. Your mother and I used to love these trips. It'll be an adventure, just like the stories you love—especially if you learn now, because then you’ll be able to take a boat out anywhere."

His father walked across the lake edge, climbed up the ladder to the end of the pier, and looked at him. They shared the same dark brown hair, the same blue-grey eyes, and as Theseus got older, he was starting to grow into Alexander’s sharp features.

“We don’t—we don’t see, do we?” Theseus ventured.

This was met with a frown. “Are you asking if we have Seer blood in the family?”

“Yes,” he said, twisting his hands into his shirt.

The frown deepened. “No, none at all,” Alexander said. “Not for seven generations on either side, at the very least, and further back for my line—the records for your mother’s have been documented in a rather lackadaisical fashion, which is of course poor practise, but all tests and indications would suggest both you and your brother have no aptitude. It’s a rare gift, so I’ll expect you’ll develop your talents elsewhere, Merlin willing.”

“So,” he said. “If I see—if I see things, they’re not real? Dad—that’s right, isn’t it?”

His father climbed onto the sailing boat, checking the fastenings to the pier. It rocked to one side with the weight of his tall frame. “It’s called having an imagination, Theseus, and you’d do well to not have too much of one.”

“Okay,” he mumbled. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the images to go away. They wouldn’t. Saying anything now would make his father unhappy.

Alexander's face, a mixture of frustration and concern, was betraying more emotions than Theseus was used to seeing from his father, and he didn’t like it. He reached across the deck, his hand squeezing Theseus’s shoulder in a gesture that was meant to reassure but felt suffocating. "There’s nothing to be afraid of. You're safe with me."

He clenched his fists, knuckles turning as white as the sails in the wind, and thought of the white sails, the red ones, the black ones, the myth swirling around in his head and pressing on his shoulder with a force even heavier than his father’s guiding hand. His breath came in ragged gasps, the air thin and stifling as it entered his lungs. They were about to push off.

"Please, Father, I can't," Theseus managed to stammer.

Alexander patience was thinning like frayed rope. "Now you're being irrational. It's just a boat, just a few hours on the water."

The images of shipwrecks, labyrinthine walls, and ancient myths swirled in his mind, each thought feeding the wildfire of his panic. He wasn’t even sure what he was scared of or why. It was like there were so many possibilities that it was hard to choose. Why the myth had stuck, he didn’t know. Why it was a worry, he didn’t know, especially when it was only a load of words. Maybe it was something about it being his name, a name no one else he knew had, which made it feel like that stomach flip he got when he saw a single magpie and was dragged away too fast to salute.

His vision blurred as his gaze remained fixed on the planks of the boat’s floor. "I can't, Father, I can't. Please don't make me."

A heavy silence settled over them both, broken only by the sound of the gentle waves and the faint breeze. Alexander's shoulders sagged, exasperation etched across his face. Theseus tried not to look at him.

"Enough of this nonsense."

With swift determination, he gripped the tiller, setting up the ropes with a quick flick of his wand. They flicked through the air; Theseus ducked, watching as his father's expression hardened, a resolve etching lines across his features. The boat began to shift, the gentle movement of catching the wind sending a shiver down Theseus's spine. In a squeal of wood, they were suddenly adrift, the planks lolling beneath his feet; and with the hint of wind, those huge sails billowed and the boat picked up speed, its movement both exhilarating and terrifying.

The wind tugged at Theseus's hair, the strands dancing in wild abandon around his face. The ends jabbed in his eyes, but if he closed them, he was worried that something might happen that he could have, should have watched out for. Instead, the boy stole a glance at his father, observing the way his hands expertly guided the boat through the water. There was a fluidity to his movements, a grace born from years of experience on the water. A spark of admiration mingled with his unease.

“Give me a hand with the mainsail," Alexander called out, his voice carrying across the water.

Nervous energy surged through Theseus's veins like a quicksilver current as he closed the distance between himself and his father. His fingers, usually deft and nimble, suddenly turned clumsy as he grappled with the task at hand—the raising of the mainsail. He stole a sidelong glance at his father, unable to read his face, wondering if it was disapproval in his eyes, or understanding, or a similar sense of uncanny premonition. But finally, he managed to fix it in position.

"Good job," Alexander said with a nod, his voice carrying a hint of pride. "You're a natural."

Theseus managed a small smile, the praise flaring something hungry within him.

“Seasick?” Alexander asked. "Your mother used to get a bit seasick when we first started sailing together, too. I’m sure that’ll change. You’re like me, I’m sure of it.”

“Yes,” Theseus said, gripping onto the railing. He thought of Theseus and Aegeus, again, and couldn’t stop. “I finished the story today—the version of the story of the other Theseus, the Greek one, that we have in the library.”

“Is that what’s causing this incessant worrying?” Alexander's voice turned stern. "Son, those tales are meant to teach us lessons, not to be taken literally. The real world is different. You're not destined to follow a story written centuries ago.”

Chapter Text

He was shaken awake by a firm hand. Immediately, Theseus started, managing to jump awake in the wrong direction, hitting his forehead against the bars. He blinked, struggling to focus on their blurry outline, and then groaned, the low noise of frustration bubbling up through his chest with a forceful, humming intensity. Already too slow and disoriented, too vulnerable, he tried to get up and only managed to make the stained brown walls, papered with fading stripes, spin around him.

But it was Percival who had woken him and Percival who was looking at him through the bars of the cage: he would know those eyes anywhere. Regret and relief, like snarling dogs fighting over a bone, prepared their claws in his chest and fought one another with bared teeth, tearing at punctured old wounds.

The fog lifted slowly as he focused on Percival's face. The lines on his face were deeper, more pronounced than he remembered, and the shadows under his eyes spoke of long and sleepless nights. The flicker of the lanterns cast shadows on his face, emphasising the gauntness of his cheeks. Still: he was the same man he'd known for years, somehow in this nightmare with his—no, he'd already been in the nightmare, for years and years—watching at him from a wary distance through the bars, expression one of mingled relief and vague reproach. His dark brows were drawn, face pale.

"Ow," he managed to croak out, his throat dry and scratchy.

Percival seemed to sense his confusion. "You didn't escape." he said, his voice rough and strained.

Theseus coughed, clearing the stale air from his throat. He sat up and took stock, once again, of the situation. If he was concussed, it wasn't too bad. He'd taken worse tumbles off his broom back in the day.

After a long moment, Theseus sighed. “Things have taken a bit of a turn for the worse, then.”

“Theseus, you fucker, what part of getting out did you not understand?” came the rapid response.

“Your sympathy is appreciated,” Theseus said, then, immediately, shoulders tightening, added: “Where is he? And how much can he hear?”

“Anything that’s about him: only if it uses his name,” Percival said, wincing and resting his hand over his forearm, as if trying to push the tattoo back down into his skin.

The Auror groaned and pushed his head back against the wall. Seeing Percival again was like being taken back a decade in an instant. They’d been in some dire straits together and made it out the other side. But the brief relief was starting to fade in the wake of a horrific sense of guilt: because, really, maybe he had allowed the world to forget about his friend. Just as he’d distanced himself from Leta's death. Never seeing him again wouldn't have made it acceptable; it would have been a different kind of loss, but one that Theseus could have borne. Instead, now, he had to face the reality of what had happened to him. A reality that had been hidden from him for far too long.

"This wasn't the way I thought we'd end up back in one another's lives," Theseus said, culpability twisting in his gut like a knife.

If Percival had known about what had happened to Leta—that the three years Leta and Theseus had before the former Director's presumed death had ended at nine—then Theseus thought his friend would be well within his rights to loathe him.

"We're in the shit together now," Percival said. It almost sounded sarcastic.

Theseus managed a weak smile at that. "As always," he said, though he knew that this was far worse than anything they had ever faced before.

"This is your fault," Percival said abruptly, pulling away from the bars.

“I'd—love to think that I had enough control over this, over any part of this search, for it to be entirely on me,” Theseus said, then shook his head a little. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be funny about this.”

“Funny? I’ve spent the best part of half a decade being unamused,” Percival said, staring at the floor in front of him, knees tucked to his chest. He had always been one of the toughest men he'd ever met. But now, Theseus could see the cracks in his friend's armour.

Theseus turned his head a little to the side. “Does that mean you want me to try again, or give up?”

“At your attempt at a joke?”

“Mmh,” Theseus said, and smiled weakly at his friend.

“Go on,” Percival said, and then shook his head. “Actually, don’t. You’re never funny when you try to make a joke.”

“Thanks,” Theseus replied.

Percival frowned at him. “You know why you aren't funny when you try?”

“Why?”

“It's because when you try to make a joke, your face usually looks like someone just crapped in your herb garden. It takes all the joy out of it before anyone even gets the punch line."

Theseus sighed and dutifully stood up to test the lock of the cage. His palms tingled as he reached out; they warmed and buzzed as though he had accidentally grabbed onto a live wire. He hissed and stepped back. It enchanted, of course.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down, but it only made things worse. He was trapped, helpless, and he couldn't do anything about it. It was a feeling he had experienced before, but it never got any easier.

Percival watched him with a raised eyebrow. "You're not going to break that lock with your bare hands, Theseus. You're not that strong."

Theseus ignored him, focusing on the lock.

"What's the plan?" Theseus asked, turning back to face Percival.

Percival shook his head. "I don't have one. There isn't one. We can't fight him. We can't even escape him. He's everywhere and in everything."

"We can't just sit here and wait for him to come for us."

"We'll have to," Percival said, his voice resigned. "It's the only option we have now."

Theseus ran his hand over his face, feeling the stubble along his jawline. He was about to say something, probably something stupid, but Percival stirred a little, still hunching into himself, arranging his gaze so that he no longer had to look at Theseus.

“It all makes you think there’s not much point in being a wizard,” Percival said. He outstretched his own hands, examining them; the fourth finger on both was missing, removed neatly with surgical precision.

“Hammers home the importance of the Statute of Secrecy, though,” Theseus said.

His old friend looked at him, raising his eyebrows ever so slowly. “Really.”

Theseus looked back at him. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation—not about the Statue. Just…between the two of us. Perce, I thought you were dead. We all thought you were. I can’t believe—years—”

“Don’t tell me you don’t think I’m real,” Graves said. “Please don’t. I don’t think I can handle hearing that. It’s a concept that’s already haunted me for…a while. It would make so much damn sense; and it would be a hell of a lot better. It would have broken my heart to hear you say that, but it wouldn’t have been true. Couldn’t be. Everything has always hurt too much for me to question whether it matters: it being real or not."

Theseus frowned, pushing aside the lingering thoughts of the Statue of Secrecy and the war and the ticker tape of newspaper articles detailing Grindelwald's murders of Muggles. "You must be real," he said. "I know I'm not dreaming."

Percival looked up at Theseus, his eyes tired but piercing. "I suppose you're going to tell me that you would have never given up on finding me," he said, his tone laced with bitterness. "If it weren't for the system."

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Theseus said quietly. “I was going to say—I’m sorry. As you said, I’m the Head of the British Auror Office. With my influence, I could have pushed harder to keep up the search. It’s partly my fault we didn’t find you sooner.”

Percival hunched over further and wrapped his arms around his knees more tightly. He breathed in tiny gasps, like each breath hurt something inside him, and his dark eyes burned dangerously in his face. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he stared at the ground between them.

“Let’s not talk about it,” he said finally.

“Sorry,” Theseus repeated instinctively, then mentally kicked himself. He rarely apologised. Now he’d done to twice to Percy, who had never wanted to hear apologies, and almost certainly not now.

There was a short, tense silence. Theseus put his hands in his pockets and stared off into the distance of the wine cellar, watching the far end where the barrels were stacked, wondering if there was another exit. Of course it wasn’t the same as it had been; neither of them were the same people anymore. And if Percy held a grudge about it, Theseus would understand. He himself had harboured resentments for less.

“You came alone,” Percival said.

“Sort of,” Theseus said, immediately turning around, desperate for some kind of conversation to distract himself from the looping thoughts of regret and regret and regret haunting him the longer he stared at what could have been his escape route.

“You’ll have to explain it to me,” Percival said. “And—you don’t need to stare at me while you do.”

He winced and looked at the floor. That was fair enough.

“We went to the German Ministry of Magic because—“ he hesitated on Albus’s name, in case it somehow instantly summoned Grindelwald, and instead made a noncommittal noise. “—Newt had a message to give Vogel. Do you remember Vogel? He stepped up after the last one, Grunberg, the one who retired after the Supreme Mugwump accused him of not doing enough to stop the Great War. That mess of a tribunal when it was obvious attempting to do anything with the Treaty of Versailles would alert the Muggles to some kind of interference at any rate. Anyway. Clearly, the Germans still were sore enough from getting dragged through the mud with that disaster. Because Vogel was not amenable to our message.”

“Which was?” Percival asked.

“Do the right thing, not the easy thing.”

The other man snorted. “Simple enough to say in the moment,” he said hollowly.

Theseus swallowed. “It was for Vogel, Perce, not for you. I’ve seen what—“ and he caught himself before saying the dark wizard’s name aloud. “—look, I have a sense of what it’s like, and whatever you had to do to survive—“

“Is it that obvious?” Percival said. “That I’ve had to do things to survive?”

“No,” Theseus said hurriedly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

He gave a tired sigh, head drooping. “You probably didn’t. But I know what you’re like. You and those damn standards. Look—just be prepared. You might not like me anymore after this, after spending time with me here, when—he’s here as well. When he comes down here, I might not be the same person to you afterwards.”

There was another silence. Theseus pulled at his tie; for some ridiculous reason, he tightened it, as if it even mattered any more. He held the red fabric between his fingers for a few moments. If it had any magical properties that the cuffs had stopped him feeling, they’d gone now. The wards in this place were strong: no doubt they’d cancelled out any enchantment placed on it. Unless it was meant to be decorative from the start.

Thanks, Albus, he thought sarcastically. For everything.

"That's not true," Theseus said quietly.

Theseus could never hate someone who had heard the same gunfire as he had; who had saved his life; who had watched heads split open like roses from stray bullets; who had provided warmth during the cold nights spent in the trenches.

“We’ll see—" and then Percival scrubbed his hand over his face. “—go back to the German Ministry. Forget I said anything. My thoughts always go to the same place when I think about seeing anyone from the past. Let alone actually finding them.”

“Well. You know the witch—Vinda Rosier. I saw her—she was at the Paris rally––and then she was there, in Germany, too. Of course she was! She's one of his.”

“Rosier was unknown to me when I was still...active. But the rally? He talked about that,” Percival said, nodding a little.

“Yes. So I thought I could arrest her. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? It would be the right thing to do,” Theseus said. "I had to do it. I had to."

There was a small, regretful smile on Percival’s face. “It was a mistake, even if it was right.”

Theseus snorted. “Sure. I’d rather make the mistake.”

It had always been like this between them. It was part of the reason why Percival, technically, had the more impressive role; the Graves family saw life as a series of successes and subsequent achievements.

Theseus briefly thought that he’d been angry at Newt so, so many times in the past for faking warrants, crossing borders, and getting tangled up with illegal poachers, endangering himself and half the wizarding world for his creatures, for a crime that he’d instinctively committed himself in the German Ministry: following his heart or his instincts or whatever new excuse Newt liked to come up with in an addendum to the obvious call of saving every magical creature on the blighted earth. It was the Scamander curse of always wanting to do what was right, as described more favourably by their mother, and the reason he was tethering himself to a sinking ship, as described less so by his father.

Briefly distracted by the memories of better days—if trying to intercept the well-forged permits Newt kept sending off to the Ministry before they hit the desk of anyone important counted as better days—he started when Percival spoke again, voice low and familiar.

“So no one backed you up? They read the room better than you did?” Percival paused. “Either you’re working with a team of amazing Aurors with incredible instincts far better than yours—which would make little sense, since you’re the Head Auror—or everyone else knew it was a suicide attempt.”

Theseus hesitated. “You’re angry.”

“Of course I’m damned angry! Why do you have to be here? There’s no reason for you to be here, none at all.” Percival let out a broken laugh. “You know. Tried and tested the experience for a while. It doesn’t do you any good.”

“I think Newt wanted to follow me, but Lally stopped him.”

“Ah. Poor Newt,” his friend said, eyes softening. “And Eulalie Hicks? Interesting.”

“What do you mean?” Theseus asked, frowning a little, unexpectedly feeling rather defensive. “Newt says she’s one of the best Charms experts in America, if not the world.”

“I know. Talented woman. Didn’t mean anything bad by it; just curious what kind of team you’re part of.”

The Auror put both his hands in his pockets again. “When we get out, I’ll tell you about it.”

“Mmh,” Percival said, shifting in his balled-up position, glancing towards the far end of the room. “So the Germans arrested you, and shipped you right here.”

“We stopped off at some abandoned factory, but yes.”

“Merlin’s beard. Why make that arrest? Why even try? You damn fool.”

Theseus paused. He was frozen in place, feeling his face settle into the lines of shame. Everything felt heavy and still, as if the world had come to a standstill around him. For a moment, he couldn't even bring himself to look up.

"Well? Aren’t you going to answer my question?"

"I had to try, Percival," Theseus said. "I couldn't just sit back and watch them infiltrate the German Ministry––enter a criminal into the election––let him get away with his crimes. "

He surfaced from his ocean of denial and looked at what he'd done with eyes that were finally ready to see it for what it was. "It's not right," he concluded miserably.

Percival's eyes were––sad, really. "You should have known better. You should have known what they were capable of."

"I did know," Theseus replied, his voice barely above a whisper.

Percival nodded slowly, understanding etched into his features. "And yet you still went ahead with it. You still put yourself in harm's way. Again."

"He," Theseus said, the words spilling from his mouth in a rush, as if he feared they would be taken away at any moment. "He killed Leta. And Vinda watched it happen. That's why. Because I––I fucking watched her die in front of me––and I'm going to catch him––well, fuck, that's done for now––but I'm going to, one day, I'll do what I should have done the moment he pointed his wand at her. I'll make it right. I have to do this, Perce; if I don't do this, I might as well be dead already."

Percival's eyes widened in surprise, but he didn't say anything for a few moments. He simply looked at Theseus, letting the weight of the admission sink in.

Theseus narrowed his eyes, a little needled, heart pounding in his chest. “Sorry if the news didn't reach you in your cell," he added, because he saw the way he was being watched now, and wanted to make it stop as quickly as possible with a quick bite.

“Leta? Leta Lestrange?”

“That Leta, yes,” Theseus muttered. “We were engaged.”

“Oh,” Percival said. His eyebrows drew together, a telltale sign his friend was thinking, hard. “I’m…fuck, I’m really sorry. I know she meant a lot to you.”

“Still does,” Theseus said, not liking the look he got back. “Graves, don’t give me your pitying eyes. You don't need to say anything. Fuck, you of all people don't need to give me condolences now we're in a cell.”

“Fine," Percival said, in that business-like tone he always used for bad news. "I mean, moving to what’s happened since you’ve got here, from your fight with him—what happened there?”

They didn’t say anything more about Leta. Theseus wanted to: really wanted to. There were so many things he could have said to Percival, someone who he’d talked with when he’d had no one else to share his thoughts with. But it wasn’t fair to burden him with this, too. And the other man didn’t even know Leta that well. Not like he did—had, he corrected himself. It felt like he was dragging around lead weights with him, the grief draped over his shoulder with the same chill he imagined a Dementor’s touch would hold.

“Nothing much,” Theseus said instinctively. It was one of the answers he always gave. How are you? What are you up to? Busy, fine, nothing much, just work. He was surprised his colleagues weren’t bored to death by his trademark: fine. But fine was pushing it here.

Percival’s knitted eyebrows shot to the ceiling as the other man regarded his bloodied clothes and assortment of injuries. “Because every prisoner covered in blood and missing their shoes has been treated like a welcome guest.”

“Shoes?” Theseus said, glancing down. He pulled a face, ignoring the way his stomach dropped as he remembered what waking up at that table had felt like. “Maybe he didn’t want me to get the carpets dirty.”

“All these years, and you’re still an idiot,” Graves said; it was almost affectionate. Then his voice hardened. “He didn’t say you were here.”

By he, Theseus knew Percival meant Grindelwald.

“It wouldn’t make much sense to.”

“No—he always tells me when he has plans—plans that involve the people I know, anyway, the people I care for," Percival said. He got to his feet and walked in two tight and restless circles around his cell. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Look, it’s not been that long. Maybe—“

Percival gave him a disbelieving smile, a little sardonic. “Maybe he just forgot to tell me?”

“Mmh. I understand. It sounds stupid. But,” and Theseus swallowed, tongue thick in his mouth. “I—um—“

He leaned against the wall and ran his hands through his hair, finally falling silent. The words to explain any of the sequences of events failed him. Barely knowing what had happened himself didn’t help. Even though it was Percy, the other man’s new bitterness made him reluctant to admit anything about what had happened with Vinda—especially because, in his own eyes, it had been entirely his own fault. Surely he could have controlled himself, woken up somehow.

“Yeah. Strange,” he said, head suddenly spinning. “What, so he tells you everything? Everything? So, you must have known about Paris before we did.”

“Maybe,” the other man said quietly, tilting his head forwards so his shoulder-length black-and-grey hid his face. “Unless you knew even before then.”

“We had some inkling, of course; I mean, I had men and women on the ground, and there was quite a pattern of arrests for wizards happy to start spouting off his ideology or even start carving it into Muggles—even though he said it was going to be a peaceful rally—so, yeah, it was all going to shit. And then Travers, the arse, he didn't help, he threw fuel onto what was already going to be a fire, and he didn't listen. Albus was right, he always––”

“No,” Percival repeated, interrupting this train of thought with a sudden stiffening of his shoulders, like a puppet drawn up onto the brink of a great revelation. “I mean, if you are him, then you would have known.”

Theseus’s normally excellent poker face betrayed him at that moment, because as Graves turned his fearful eyes to his face, he could only stare blankly back. Whatever expression he was making, it wasn’t convincingly not Grindelwald enough. A few seconds passed. The floorboards above them breathed creaky whispers, too quiet to break the silence.

“You’re Grindelwald,” Percival concluded.

“I’m not!” Theseus said. He winced. That was the name, wasn’t it? Now what? Was the dark wizard just going to appear in front of the cells and crucio him into oblivion?

The fact that the prospect was one of the better options was mildly disheartening.

“Go on, then—put on my face,” Percival challenged, but despite the confidence in his words, he backed into the far corner of the cell, putting as much distance as he could between the two of them. “What did you do with the real Theseus?”

“Brought him with me,” Theseus tried. “As in—it is me, Perce. If I had a secret birthmark or something, I’d show you.”

“You don’t have any birthmarks. Just freckles,” Percival snapped.

They both paused. The dark-haired man seemed to collect himself, returning to the present. Theseus wiped his forehead with the back of his palm, feeling heat creep over his face.

“Never mind,” Percival said, turning away. “I fucked it anyway by saying his name. Merlin’s arsehole. Don’t say anything about anything you don’t want him to hear.”

“Does he…do that often? Use your…identity?” Theseus said.

A muscle in Percival’s jaw jumped. “Obviously. I suppose you weren’t in New York to see. I heard all about it, though.”

“Oh,” Theseus said. He had visited the New York office in a blaze of incandescent fury upon hearing what had happened to Newt under their shit supervision, but as for seeing the actual event, all he had were newspapers and heavily redacted briefs from MACUSA.

“Not since then,” his friend continued. “If that’s what you’re asking. He hasn't tried to use my face in the real world. No point being a dead man on the outside when you’ve got that much fame. Lots of utility in whatever cell I’m in, though.”

“We started checking people,” Theseus said, as if that fact helped Percival at all. “At the Ministry. Detection charms everywhere, at the doors.”

“And MACUSA?” Percival said.

“The same.”

“I think they deserve to fall for the same trick twice."

“Sera came to talk to me, you know.”

“Really?” Percival said with a tired laugh. “She couldn’t have cared that much. She let him get away with walking around as me for—well, I lost track of time—months?”

“She would be sorry, too, if she was here,”

“Oh,” Percival said. “Yes. I’m sure she would be. I’m rather sorry myself.”

He was at a loss for words. All he could think was that he’d come too late—but it was by such a colossal margin, years too late, that in the face of his usual determination, it felt like a crime being here.

It was difficult for him to kick the notion that if he had simply visited MACUSA in those precipitous few months, he would have noticed Graves wasn't Graves. Of course he knew what he was like; they'd had enough arguments over it in those early days. Ambitious, confident, proud. Competitive and self-assured with the humor of a dry bone that approached gallows on a good day. Impressively invulnerable. For someone generally more easy-natured like Theseus, it had been bemusing at first, but every time someone snapped out Percy’s surname he realised the weight of the Graves heritage meant every slip in his image was another disappointment to his illustrious family.

Theseus knuckled his eyes. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d escaped without you—you know that, Percy?”

The other man turned around again. He walked over to the bars, staring at Theseus through them.

“You said that when we almost got—executed by the Germans. And if I remember correctly, that was only because you that fucked up and set fire to the deputy marshall.”

“The one that was about to get us on a transport to the mountains?” Theseus said, crossing his arms and feeling a surge of self-righteousness, the kind he was often plagued by in situations where it was far from the diplomatic approach. “Right. And the special letter sent along with that would have taken us right to an intelligence camp, and that could have been it for the Statue of Secrecy.”

Theseus paused. “And he lived. Don’t forget that.”

Graves wasn’t in such a fragile state to be defeated by this argument. “Hard to forget the feeling of nearly getting taken out by a Muggle rifle either. You pushed it up to the wire, too.”

“You still think I was waiting until after I got shot in the head to apparate?”

“Seemed like the kind of thing you’d do.”

“What?”

“Die for it.”

“Hell, Perce, let’s lighten the mood. Everyone’s been telling me I’ve been acting suicidal recently. It doesn’t really help.”

“Everyone being him, I presume,” Percival said. “From that spell work I saw, I’m not convinced that you want to live as badly as you say you do. Impedementia? You might as well have tried a wandless disarming charm and started a fistfight. Not that he would have entertained that. He would think it beneath him.”

“I’m not a common bar brawler,” Theseus mumbled. “Maybe I think it’s beneath me, too.”

Percival raised an eyebrow. “I reckon they put you as Head Auror for your looks and charm, Theo. Well. Maybe that’s generous. Your leadership skills or something. Interpersonal skills.”

They were wavering back and forth between banter and sudden, wire-tight tension, acting both as if nothing had ever happened and if everything bad already had. Percival’s shoulders were still a little hunched, gaze too intense to be simply friendly conversation. Theseus wasn’t sure whether it was because his friend thought this was one of Grindelwald’s tricks or whether he hadn’t decided if he wanted to forgive Theseus yet. But the use of his casual nickname, Theo—Graves was the only one who called him that, because he was the kind of man who thought it was funny to call someone else by a completely different name—suggested the ice could be breaking.

Theseus mentally leapt forwards at that. He opened his mouth, but Percival held up his hand. Back in the day, that gesture would have silenced a room of Aurors. American ones, too, which made it particularly impressive. Theseus swallowed and examined the ground, accepting the silence, but Percival nervously tapped his thumb to his little finger and eventually looked up.

“Look. It is—good to see you again,” he said haltingly. “Can you—talk to me about something else? Anything I might remember—because I’m starting to forget a lot.”

Theseus nodded, sitting down on the floor, gesturing for Percival to do the same. “Only if we can trade information.”

“Depends on how much information,” Percival said.

“Basics—strategic—but of course, if you’re comfortable with anything else—“

Percival did not look comfortable with the idea of going into the anything else. It made the Auror worried, his gut twisting; he was already very talented at imagining the worst, and the small details, like the missing fingers, made him uneasy. And in the context of what Grindelwald had done to Theseus already—what would he have done given years?

“So,” Theseus said immediately, withdrawing from the thought as if touching a lump of hot coal. “Go on, throw me a bone.”

“You first,” Percival said, finally sitting down and immediately screwing his eyes shut, adding, as an explanation: “He never gets the voice quite right. But he only ever pretends to be me, so he might manage it with you—it’s just easier if I don’t look at you.”

“Hmm. Did you know that Newt has been working on a new breed of magical creature? We call them 'Niffler squirrels.' They're quite cute, really."

"Niffler squirrels?” came the incredulous reply. “What kind of creature is that?"

"Well, they have the body of a squirrel and the nose of a Niffler,” Theseus said, as if it were obvious. “They love shiny objects, of course, but they're also quite good at finding truffles."

Percival raised his hand again, but failed to silence him. “You’re lying.”

“Joking, actually,” Theseus said.

“Merlin spare me from your jokes,” he muttered, but his face twitched a little, coming close to a smile. “Niffler squirrels…does sounds like something your brother would come up with.”

"Maybe. But let's get back to the deal,” Theseus said, thinking that Niffler squirrels would probably feature in his worst nightmares. “What do you have for me?"

Percival scoffed. “Trying to think of a joke about him, give me a minute.”

Theseus waited a minute, then cleared his throat, making Percival’s lips twitch again.

“You actually waited for a minute.”

“Well, I wanted your joke.”

“The joke is that there’s absolutely nothing funny about the man.”

“Oh,” Theseus said.

“Reminds me of you,” added Percival, and then genuinely smiled, proud of the punchline.

“At least that implies we’re separate people,” Theseus said. “Fine. I suppose I need to come up with something better now.”

“Do you know how Estelle is?” Percival immediately asked, clenching his fists into the loose fabric of his too-big shirt, clearly nervous about the response.

“Fine,” Theseus reassured him; Estelle, Percival's older sister, genuinely was fine, a small mercy in a string of mercies so small he'd need one of Newt's microscopes to see them. “I haven’t visited her in a while, but my contacts at MACUSA tell me that she’s well. Apparently, she won a commendation for coming up with a new remedy for enteric fever which reduces the death rate by a good few percent.”

“I don’t know if I’m concerned or pleased that you stayed away,” he muttered, eyeing Theseus suspiciously.

“Look, I wouldn’t have flirted with her if I’d known she was your sister. She came up, she was friendly, it was a gala. She seemed very confident and I’d have felt just as awkward giving her the cold shoulder. And that was—what is it now?—more than two decades ago now.”

“So she’s still not married?” Percival asked.

“No,” Theseus said.

“Excellent,” came the reply. “She’s got enough friends to keep her happy. And who are these contacts at MACUSA? So I can judge the reliability of this conversation.”

“Sera. Tina,” and Theseus hummed. “Tolliver. Not sure if I want to include him as a contact, per se, as he doesn’t like me very much. Thinks I have a stick up my arse—or someone said as much.”

“Tina?” Graves asked. “Is she…alright?”

Theseus was about due his piece of information about Grindelwald, but these were all people Percival must have worried about for years, so he didn’t push it.

“She’s alright,” Theseus said. “Promoted, even.”

“I didn’t know that,” Percival said thoughtfully. “It makes sense. Formidably determined, though her execution sometimes leaves a little to be desired.”

He opened his eyes just enough to reveal a slit of black-brown iris, directing a glance at Theseus. The word choice there was uncomfortably close to the truth. The atmosphere wasn’t exactly relaxed, given their surroundings, but Theseus didn’t want to explain how Grindelwald had nearly successfully executed both Tina and his younger brother within the American judicial system. The death penalty alone was a depressing enough subject. In case the dark wizard was listening, it was better not to say anything about Newt and Tina anyway. Even though the two had barely got to the stage of making eyes at one another before she’d been buried by Auror work—he could relate, especially with the amount of pencil pushing that went on—the last thing he wanted to do was give Grindelwald that leverage.

“Our last safehouse was in Bulgaria,” Percival said, giving an uneasy glance around the wine cellar before closing his eyes again. “Tell me something else.”

“Umm…Newt wrote a book. On his magical creatures. Not including Niffler Squirrels.”

“Tell him congratulations,” Percival said. His mouth thinned and he shrugged one shoulder. “If you end up being able to.”

“I will.”

“He seems like the type to become a writer.”

“Loves it, apart from the book signing. You know, he ended up all over the Daily Prophet’s front page for it. They made some stupid typo, I think. Someone at work told me. Asked why my brother was suddenly engaged to my sweetheart. It seemed like a very good question at the time, until I saw the paper, and then remembered that journalists somehow think we’re interesting and have no respect for privacy.”

“Egad. That’s quite the mistake they made. That’s what the British rags are like,” Percival muttered. “How did you feel about that?”

“Irritated,” Theseus said. “They’d got it totally wrong. It was embarrassing on all fronts.”

“Only irritated,” Percival said, as if it were funny. “Very British of you, Theo.”

Theseus eyed him. He was not about to take this further to the rather precipitous slope of thinking about either Newt or Leta too much within the walls of this manor, which seemed to seep ghosts and resentments that only stirred up his newly disarrayed memories.

“No,” he corrected. “Just mature.”

He was exhausted, starting to nod off. Percival was staring at him again, expression a little bullish, reminding the British Auror of a guard dog.

Theseus shifted uncomfortably, feeling Percival's gaze boring into him. "What?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

"I'm sorry for getting so fucked off with you about ending up here," Percival admitted. "It comes from a place of concern. I don't want anything to happen to you, but it probably will, and I would kill to be able to do something about it."

Theseus gave a weak laugh. "I guess that makes two of us."

But for now, all he wanted was to close his eyes and rest to soothe the throbbing pain in the back of his skull.

The torches that had survived Grindelwald’s earlier fit of murderous rage flickered and waned. Percival remained motionless. Time seemed to stretch on and on, and the silence was only broken by the distant creaks of the old house and a faint dripping noise from what must have been a broken barrel of wine.

As Theseus drifted off to sleep, he couldn't help but reflect on how strange and unsettling it was to be back in a cell like this after so many years. And to be here with Percival, of all people. It felt like a lifetime ago that they were fighting together in the Great War, but now they were on opposite sides of a battle once again. Had it not been for his exhaustion, he would have tried to think of a plan to escape or at least stall. He couldn't help but feel uneasy. Grindelwald's plans for him were unknown, and the uncertainty left a knot in his stomach.

He hesitated, not wanting to give up control, but his body was winning the battle. The sound of his heartbeat seemed to thump through his ears; he could wake within seconds if he had to. Theseus felt the hard, cold stones against his back and winced, slowly adjusting his body to try and make the best of the situation. As he leaned into the unforgiving wall, he felt the chill emanating from its damp surface leaching into his shirt. It was a little too close a sensation to the nights spent in the trenches, trying to find a moment of reprieve from his worn and aching muscles.

Pick a memory, he thought, using an old tactic. Just a few seconds to quell the nerves that always plagued him when trying to fall asleep. His mind drifted to a childhood summer day with Newt, the meadow behind their house a blur as they ran around and laughed. The formerly verdant fields behind their home seemed to stretch on forever. He could practically feel the warmth of the sun on his skin and the ground beneath him softening from the days of summer rain. Theseus remembered feeling carefree in those moments as Newt encouraged him to explore, taunting him for being so serious, so slow. His breath caught in his ribs for a moment, struggling on its way out.

With a deep inhale, he tried to push his worries aside for just long enough to get these precious hours of sleep, dimly hoping it could put some distance between the haunting hallucinations and crawling dances of hands across his skin from the love potion: allowing himself to fully succumb to his exhaustion.

Chapter Text

The third trip of Eulalie Hicks to the German Ministry of Magic in nearly as many weeks had ended just as poorly as the first trip with practically the whole team and the second trip with just Newt. Perhaps she lacked the diplomatic finesse of Albus, but she certainly considered herself someone good at getting things done.

On a whim, she turned one of the bushes in front of the rundown lake house into a swarm of origami paper cranes. The charm was a little messy, given a certain unorthodox directionality thanks to her frustration, and they blew back over her as they broke free towards the grey sky, bedraggling her appearance further. Now, in polite society, that would never do. But, aside from the usual constraints and social conventions of the matrix of the wizarding and Muggle world, Lally was in the mood to take polite society towards a less-polite realm.

She liked to see the best in people. She was an excellent team worker. And so on, and so on. The kind of thing Illvermorny put on her reference when she got the opportunity to work on the odd MACUSA case. She understood the limitations of what they could do, the paradigm they were working with, and the time crunch of the upcoming election, complete with assassination plots and dark wizardry.

Never mind that they were a team member down. Which, in a team of six, was a pretty substantial margin to be down at just as whatever Grindelwald’s plan was had clearly just started unfolding. Their numbers at the end were going to be dismally low if they kept on at this rate.

She slipped in through the door. They were trying to strike a happy medium between being able to easily access the German Ministry while also not being so close as to fall under their surveillance. Hence, the incongruously whimsical lakeside house, somewhere up in the north of Germany, where damp and miserable fields stretched out for miles around. Somehow, Lally was sure they’d get more information in the city; the fact that she was, and always would be, a city girl at heart was practically irrelevant. Whoever owned the house was probably going to be back in a few months. She hoped they had insurance. Newt’s beasts had already done a number on the place.

With that in mind, she let the door bang behind her, chipping more red-brown paint off the doorframe.

Jacob stuck his head out of the kitchen. “Hey, Lal. Did you bring the flour?”

Lally grabbed it out of her bag and threw it over. Jacob just about caught it; the paper bag wheezed and exhaled a small fine cloud of the stuff over his waistcoat.

“No luck, then,” Jacob said.

“Oh, of course not,” she said. “Do you know what they said to me this time? They said that he might have been registered by temporary prison staff, meaning the paperwork wasn’t in order, so there could be a possibility he actually got transferred elsewhere.”

“Huh. Kinda seems likely, doesn’t it?” Jacob asked, glancing back into the kitchen, no doubt concerned about the faint waft of what smelt like rapidly caramelising frying onions. Lally could care less about onions. She was not in the mood for eating, however delicious Jacob's cooking always was. Yes, she'd only known the missing man in question for a few weeks, but that was now rapidly becoming half the time she'd heard of him, and it was a fact that disturbed her.

Lally rolled her eyes. “Well, the way they said it, it sounded like they didn’t think he’d been there at all. Patently untrue. I saw it with my own two eyeballs. These bureaucrats are evolving. Using a lack of their own paperwork as an absence of evidence is simply appalling.”

“When are we going to tell his guys?” Jacob ventured. “I’m starting to feel like it should be soon.”

The stairs creaked, one by one.

There he is.

Lally brushed her hair back from her face and crossed her arms.

“Yes, Albus,” she said. “When are we going to tell the British Ministry?”

“Theseus agreed to divide his responsibilities for the next three months, with the permission of Travers,” Albus said, standing on the bottom step of the stairs and moving no further.

“They’ll want updates. Meetings, even, I’m sure,” Lally pointed out. “It’s going to get to the point where we’ll have to forge his letters to stop them from changing their mind about allowing this and sending us all home.”

"We aren't allowed," Dumbledore said. "We are simply being overlooked, if that. Theseus told Travers that he was working with a range of close contacts in a private capacity. He did not say he was working with us, and for good reason, too."

"Then your Minister of Magic is certainly going to expect letters!" Lally pointed out, her transatlantic accent pitching violently.

Dumbledore sighed. “I understand your concerns, Lally. But we cannot let our impatience get the better of us. Theseus is doing what he can, and we must do the same. We cannot risk exposing ourselves or our mission.”

"Which we will, unless Theseus is currently in a location that makes it simple and convenient to keep up a correspondence," Lally said. "Seeing as he hasn't written to any of us, I doubt it, Albus."

The older man's expression was piercing. "That's interesting. Would you have expected him to write to you? "

She dug the back of one of her heels into the ground instead of taking a step backwards, not wanting to give up her ground, and ran her hands over the thick fabric of her skirts as she thought of how to deal with that tone. "No, of course not. I just meant that if he’s in a remote location, it’s going to be difficult for him to communicate with anyone, let alone us.”

Jacob eyed Dumbledore. "What're you saying?" he asked.

"I'm saying that we must be patient," Dumbledore replied.

Lally made a noise of frustration in the back of her throat. "We've been waiting for weeks, Albus. Every day that goes by without news is a day that we risk losing him for good."

"Every day that we wait is another day we buy in our mission against Grindelwald," Dumbledore said. "We are looking, are we not? We will do much better in our search without Ministry interference. You will do so much better in this mission with me still being free."

A shadow crossed his face, and he added, in a low tone: "I do not say that lightly. Like everything regarding my involvement, there is a price being paid."

And here's the kicker, she thought. He has to be right. We've been dealing with enough politics already, but at least we had Theseus on our side for the Brits. Without him, negotiating with them is going to be a nightmare.

“I’m pretty good at replicating handwriting,” Jacob offered, flexing one wrist. “All that practice icing and decorating wasn’t for nothing.”

“Newt could give us a sample of a letter,” Albus agreed, then paused. “Where is Newt?”

There was an answering crash from the kitchen and the other Scamander brother emerged through the door in a waft of onion, clutching a small orange bird in one hand. It tweeted innocently, darting its black eyes around the room, and spluttered out a finger-sized jet of flame.

“Sorry about that,” Newt said, extinguishing the flame with a quick wave of his wand.

“Is that bird messing with my onions?” Jacob asked.

Newt gingerly pulled the ring of onion off the bird’s neck and held it out to Jacob, as if returning it. After a moment’s pause, Jacob took it and ate it, having nowhere better to put it.

“It seems that Eulalie has had little success at the Ministry again,” Albus explained gently, now finally stepping off the lowest stair. He put both his hands in the pockets of his trousers.

“Oh,” Newt said. He glanced towards Lally, eyes skimming over her hands and bag as if there might be some alternative answer hidden there. She gave him an apologetic look.

“Letters—“ Newt started as Albus opened his mouth. “I have a few. What are you going to write?”

“What might Theseus say?” Albus asked.

Newt blinked. “Well, I’m sure that his letters to me will be different from the ones he sends to his work colleagues, if we want to be accurate. So I'm not sure. I'm just his brother.”

“Albus,” Lally said. “I think we need to talk about this.”

His shoulders stiffened and he shifted from one foot to another.

“Of course,” he said. “Where would you like to have the conversation, Eulalie?”

“Upstairs,” she said.

“And will this be something to have privately?”

She shrugged. “I have no preference either way.”

The smell of onions had distinctly shifted to that of something burning. Jacob winced and raised the bag of flour in silent thanks. “Tell me what you want me to do!” he called out, disappearing back into the kitchen.

He’s been cooking for England, Lally thought. I would, too, if I'd lost someone like he's lost Queenie.

Newt ran his hands over the cuff of his coat sleeve, thinking. “I—“ he said, and then nodded towards the kitchen, following Jacob in.

A little awkwardly, Lally followed Albus up the stairs, trying for once not to let the building silence intimidate her into talking. He politely opened the door for her and let her into the bedroom they’d turned into a makeshift strategy room. It had been a mess of parchment before, but it’d only got worse in her absence. Books and maps were scattered everywhere. Dozens of photos of Santos blinked, smiled, and waved at her from their scattered positions within the organised chaos.

She sighed at the reminder of the election.

“It will all be fine in the end,” Albus said. “Trust me.”

She crossed her arms once more. “With all due respect, Albus, I’m not one of your students. You can’t convince me just by reassuring me.”

He nodded and leaned against the edge of the table, looking deep in thought. The open countryside was visible through the window, and the late afternoon sun cast long shadows over the room. His hands were resting over several newspaper clippings, but he did not worry at them despite his furrowed brow; instead, his grip on the table was flat and gentle, seemingly free of sweat. Lally pulled a stray origami crane out of her hair and pushed it into the pocket of her maroon coat.

“Is this about Yusuf again?” he asked.

Lally whistled through her teeth. “Well, it might not have been to start with, but I think that’s actually a rather suitable point to begin our discussion.”

Albus raised his hand, offering her a flat palm as if to tell her to speak, freely. “Please begin.”

"We have to break Yusuf's cover and get the information we need,” she said immediately. It was an argument she’d been playing over and over in her head. The only reason she hadn’t already spoken it aloud was that, almost cruelly ironically, it was the kind of plan she would have liked to have run through someone like Theseus first before presenting it straight to the headmaster. She loved plans, especially risky and creative ones, but they had to be at least halfway good–––and it would take an exceptionally good creative plan to pass muster with someone who seemed as by the books as Theseus. Lally could call it quality control.

Albus frowned, running a hand along his beard. After a moment, he spoke.

“Let me play the devil’s advocate, Eulalie. He’s not been there long. He might not have access to the inner circle.”

“Say he does.”

Albus shook his head, his eyes fixed on Lally. "We can't risk Yusuf's cover," he said firmly. "If we reach out to him, it could put everything in danger. If Yusuf is discovered, he could be killed immediately, and then he can't help either us or Theseus. In good conscience, I couldn't put his life at risk with such uncertainty. We don't even know if Grindelwald is behind Theseus's kidnapping. All we know is that he was escorted out by the Germans, from the accounts of the team."

"But who else could it be?” Lally challenged. “It certainly doesn’t seem to be the German Ministry, from the story we’ve been getting, and if it is, maybe they're not to working alone. Yes, if it's Grindelwald, it might have made more sense for him to target Newt or Jacob, people he encountered on his last attempt to rise to power, previous enemies–––but we're all making enemies of ourselves now, aren't we?”

"I'd like to hope that our plan, Eulalie, actually protects you rather effectively," Albus said. "Out of everyone on the team, you have the least prior association with any of the others or with Grindelwald."

Lally rubbed her forehead, feeling the headache coming on. The sun was starting to set outside; the sky was a bruised purple, and the clouds were tinged with red. Santos kept smiling even as the light started to fade from the room, serene under her wide-brimmed hat from the dozens of black-and-white photos scattered across the wooden furniture.

"Then there must be something I can do," she said.

"Yes, and that is to follow the piece of the plan you do have," Albus said, and then winced, pulling at the chain around his neck, creating a precious fingernail-wide space between the harsh metal and his skin as it started to tighten. He said nothing about it. She said nothing about it.

"Fine. But if it really is–––" Lally began.

The crease in between Albus’s brows furrowed. “It would make some sense. It would make rather too much sense, if we believe the worst of Vogel, which is that he is colluding with Grindelwald rather than merely trying his hardest not to become a new target of the dark wizards. But it would be the worst-case scenario, and we should not distract ourselves with fear if the Germans are just being bureaucratic.”

“Perhaps there’s another contact we can reach out to who’s deeper in the inner circle,” Lally said.

“There’s Ms Goldstein,” Albus said. “And, now, Aurelius. But we cannot know how loyal they are to him until we try. And therein, you see, lies the issue. Ms Goldstein is a Legilimens—she could see the true intentions of either of the other two if Grindelwald is utilising her skills to the maximum.”

“Why put Yusuf in if you don’t want to pull him out?” Lally asked. “Then we rescue him and get the information at the same time, assuming Grindelwald has split his forces. And if he hasn’t, even better.”

“Many overlapping plans, Eulalie, and you can’t have the full picture.”

“When do you go back to Hogwarts?” she asked, meaning it to be the jab it was.

Of course he would go back—every time he stayed too long, he grew increasingly uncomfortable and distant. It had been Newt who’d explained the mechanics of the blood troth to her, and even as a Charms expert of her skill, she couldn’t think of a single way to break it. They’d only spent this amount of time together with Albus because Theseus’s disappearance had turned out to be a little more concerning than a blind-faith step in an unpredictable plan; in fact, it was a total disaster, not to mention the amount of stress it, not unsurprisingly, put on Newt.

She was an only child, but she could imagine that if anything happened to her own sibling, her flesh and blood, she’d be saying a very hasty farewell to a grander plot. It was admirable how calm Newt had stayed, how cooperative he was: almost as if he trusted Dumbledore. And Newt, although he trusted easily, was the backbone of the entire team, and having read his book, too, she trusted his judgment as a fellow academic.

“Tonight,” Dumbledore said, held still by what looked like the weight of his thoughts.

“And your vision for the plan—the plans—is still the same? Jacob and I with Santos? And what is Newt going to do?”

“I think Newt will need time to determine what it is he can do. For now, his knowledge of magical beasts is invaluable, and I’m sure he will continue to care for the Qilin.”

“What else can he do?” she asked, voice rising. “What options are there?”

She quickly tempered herself, tightening her lips and relaxing her shoulders, reminding herself again that even though she often didn’t want to think about it, there were certain standards expected of her. Her smile was a little forced as she took a deep breath. The room was oppressively quiet, broken only by the sound of her slow, measured exhales.

“As soon as we settle on something as concrete as options, as soon as we lay down the plan in stone, we take the very dangerous chance of him being able to see it with his skills of foresight,” Albus murmured.

Lally chewed her lip. “So for the same reason that none of us can know the full details of the larger plan, none of us can really make a plan to find him, because it’ll risk Grindelwald knowing—either of the rescue attempt or, through the convergence and solidification of your plan, of everything.”

“Exactly.”

“But doesn’t Theseus have a place in one of your plans? We can’t just carry on without him.”

Albus looked up. “We have to be unpredictable.”

“Which means?” Lally asked, then paused, reframing her question. She knew what being unpredictable meant, but not within Albus’s mysterious frames of secretive operation. “My apologies. Let me put it this way. If we consider these events: Anton Vogel’s decision to allow Grindelwald to run for the election and its political consequences; Theseus Scamander getting arrested at the German Ministry; and us trying to find said Mr Scamander—which is the most predictable for Grindelwald? What does he already understand and what can we conduct in a way he might not?”

“You must be an excellent teacher, Eulalie,” Albus said.

“And I would say the same for you, but although you seem to have the capacity to motivate a class and hold their interest, you would need to tighten up your explanations,” she replied.

The man nodded and picked up a nearby piece of parchment, folding it in his hands as he stared at the floor to her right. His jaw jumped. The wind rushed past the house outside, rattling the old windows; Lally wasn’t sure whether she preferred it here or in the Hogs Head, in terms of comparative cosiness.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Lally said. “And I can handle spontaneous plans, which was no doubt a reason why you chose to bring me in over some of my more traditional colleagues. But if Jacob and I already have all the information you can give us about the next stage—then we should be able to understand your reasoning behind the last one, in order not to make the same mistakes again.”

He could tell the game she was playing, but the expression in his blue eyes softened a little as he carefully kept dividing and dividing the parchment, turning it into a tight square.

“Vogel’s loyalty could have gone either way. Theseus getting arrested was predictable. Us trying to rescue him now, with a direct approach, using our contacts, will be predictable, too.”

Lally closed both her eyes and raised her eyebrows, wondering if she’d misheard. Quickly realising her mistake, she reverted back to a pleasant expression. “Theseus getting arrested was predictable?”

“Both fortunately and unfortunately, yes,” Albus said. “It was predictable, considering him as an individual, but as a team, it has made us unpredictable, giving you and Jacob the opportunity to have a real impact with your intervention at the dinner.”

“Considering him as an individual?”

The hint of a smile touched Albus’s lips. “There is nothing wrong with being predictable. And don’t get me wrong, Eulalie, the last thing I wanted was for him to get arrested. But Theseus, from what I know about him, will always act when he feels it is right.”

Lally didn’t say anything. She wasn’t so sure about that. The Auror didn’t seem particularly hotheaded whatsoever. In fact, it would be rather apt to have called him a stick in the mud.

Then again, she didn’t know him very well at all, despite all the time the team had spent together, simply because she could count on one hand the number of times Theseus had said something specifically about himself.

One was that he was Head Auror. The second was that he didn’t look after the wand permits—partly because, as he’d later explained, the British Ministry didn’t do them. She was being generous, counting those as facts. They were more of an introduction. The third was that he supported the Holyhead Harpies, and technically the Chudley Cannons, but the Harpies apparently had superior tactics, whatever those were. The fourth was that he liked the colour blue, revealed as justification for when Jacob had asked him about why all his ties looked similar, pointing out that they weren’t, that they were merely themed. Despite her excellent memory, Lally couldn’t think of a fifth.

Oh. She suddenly remembered it: his dead fiancée. Her heart sank.

“That doesn’t seem particularly fair,” Lally muttered.

“No,” Dumbledore said quietly. “I taught him, you know, when he was at Hogwarts. There is no situation in which I would want to put him in danger. Trust me when I say I am working on this—trying to come up with a solution. For now, it is fine to worry, but do not fear the worst.”

“Why?”

“I said that it’s possible Grindelwald is involved, but I don’t think it’s directly. My suspicions are still with the German Ministry, and I think the event with Santos will allow us to see more of Vogel’s true intentions. Moreover, we can’t forget that Theseus is a very capable wizard. I will sort this out. In no way am I abandoning or forgetting him—we must just act with caution, in case we sacrifice all we have done so far along with all we are yet to.”

Lally stared at him.

“And, yes, if we sacrifice the future of this plan—we sacrifice the world,” Albus said in a tone of finality, although his blue eyes held a surprisingly gentle, sympathetic gleam. He made no attempt to reach out and reassure Lally, likely seeing that her shoulders were pulled as tight as steel wire.

“Then, Albus, if I say I trust you, you have to prove it to me,” Lally said. “Or I’ll have to come up with some creative and unpredictable plot on my own.”

He gave a weary sigh, avoiding her gaze. His body sagged with an unspoken shame as she walked out of the room, her footsteps echoing against the hardwood floor, each step hitting like a hammer. With a small, taut noise escaping her lips, she closed the door behind her with rather more care than she felt like giving and immediately took a few bracing breaths.

Her thoughts were jumping all over the place without producing any productive results. The hope she’d felt sitting outside Jacob’s bakery, that this could be an exciting mission, a rare way to get involved in the world beyond academia and Illvermorny, was starting to fade—and it concerned her. Just a little stability was all she needed. Just one small piece of earth set firm against the shifting world for her to bury her feet in, and then she could let her mind run free—and come up with a plan or a charm for this very situation. But now she couldn’t shake the sense they might start to drop like flies. Fuck, it was part of the adventure, but only to an extent.

Newt was standing part of the way up the stairs. She wasn’t sure how much he’d heard. His hair was dishevelled, and his coat had a few wrinkles, like he had been in a hurry to leave wherever he had been. Nevertheless, there was something about him that was calming, as if he had a certain insight into the world that only a man who had spent most of his life amongst beasts could possess.

“Is everything alright?” Newt asked.

“We had our conversation. I tried,” she said, as casually and brightly as possible.

“Jacob says that he’s finished cooking,” Newt replied, and then paused. “Thank you…for trying.”

“You’re welcome, Newt,” Lally said.

He nodded and hurried down the stairs, case clutched tightly in one hand. She let him disappear into the living room, feeling both guilt and hunger grapple in her stomach as she headed into the kitchen. As she entered the kitchen, the tantalising aroma of Jacob’s cooking filled the air. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and savouring the scent for a moment before opening them again, the reality of the situation crashing down on her once more.

"What'd you cook, in the end?" she asked.

"Potato pie," Jacob said.

Lally sat at the kitchen table, watching Jacob as he served her a slice of potato pie. She could tell that he had put a lot of effort into making it. The golden crust glistened in the light, and the steam rising from the dish was a testament to its heat. She took a bite and was met with the soft and creamy texture of the potatoes, mixed with the taste of the spices.

"Don't wait for me, I've taste-tested enough," Jacob joked, but his eyes lingered on her for a moment too long, his expression somewhat knowing; it was obvious that their original plan, the unchangeable, mysterious, unpredictable plan, was still weighing heavily on her mind. The less she knew, the better it would be for everyone involved. If no one knew the wider picture, it was safer that way, wasn't it? It was basic common sense everyone had learned after the Great War, even if it made her feel like a fly in a web.

What's predictable for me? She couldn't help thinking. And how has Albus Dumbledore woven that into his tapestry of world-saving?

*

Letters, Newt thought. Feeling oddly morose, he set the case in the middle of the living room and unhooked the latches. The immediate feel of it instantly soothed his senses. Running his fingers up and down the worn leather edge of the briefcase, he decided that he could go and get the letters. It didn’t really feel right, though, even if it did help them get more time. He thought he’d kept the letters somewhere in the workshop in his case, but there had been that nasty incidence where the Demiguise spilt Dittany into several of his field journals from South America, and he had the vague recollection of using at least some of the letters telling him about the rather dull goings-on in the Magical Beasts department as bookmarks.

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the letters. It was just that Theseus always said an awful lot of things. Statements, mostly. So, he read them, but then what? There was sometimes a question or two scattered in there, but it was always something like: How are you? Or, even more frequently: Are you keeping yourself out of trouble? Replying back with ‘good’ and ‘it depends on what you believe trouble is defined as’ seemed as if it could come across as slightly rude, especially when he’d thought about it once, put the two pieces of parchment side by side, and realised he couldn’t think of anything else to add to the thirteen words.

And he’d also been all over the world, in various remote locations, so in several instances there were probably letters out there rotting in the post rooms of whatever inns he’d tried to stay in and then chosen the familiar sanctity of his case over.

Of course, they didn’t need all the letters. But Newt was relatively certain that the few surviving were not going to be adequate enough to convincingly seem to the Ministry as if they were from his brother. Half-truths were acceptable, when it came down to it—often there was no other choice, given the tunnel vision of the blinkered Ministry—but this was going to be a despicably necessary lie.

For starters, unless Newt had missed something, they didn’t actually have permission to be doing this in the first place. At least, as a collective team under Dumbledore. The Ministry didn’t mind it, Theseus had told him, when he explained he was hunting for Grindelwald, but mentioning Albus Dumbledore, in particular, was questionable. Then Newt had asked Dumbledore about it, who’d explained the Ministry thought he was colluding with Grindelwald.

So, Newt surmised, reporting Theseus as missing could actually lead to Dumbledore’s arrest.

He hadn’t said as much yet. It would probably be a good idea to say something soon. But Dumbledore was in and out and Lally seemed a little stressed and it seemed too troublesome for him to bother Jacob with it yet—the timing just seemed impossible, in between taking care of the Qilin and his other beasts and trying not to worry about it.

Hurriedly, he climbed into his case and then jogged to the workshop. The rhythmic motion helped, as did the quiet noises of the case, with the exception of the Erumpent, but at least it had a low roar. He finally peeled his fingers off the cuff of his coat sleeve and started rummaging through his notes instead.

The workshop was small and humble, made entirely out of wood. The tall eaves of the ceiling had started to become slowly but surely overtaken by the plants around it, and when it rained, the place smelt like damp earth and moss. But the floor always stayed perfectly dry, thanks to a clever series of charms, which meant he could sit on it when the stools started to hurt his back. Lanterns were scattered everywhere—it was getting close to dusk in the case’s world—to illuminate the organised chaos of books, journals, papers, jars, and the odd tool here and there that needed fixing up.

Newt hummed to himself aloud as he mentally located where he’d stashed all his mail over his extensive travels. There was a small locked box of letters that meant a lot to him on the third shelf from the left in the far corner.

The thing was that any of Theseus’s letters that had made it into that box were the ones where he’d been the least—well, the least Theseus. But if this was meant to go to the Ministry, he’d surely have to find the ones where his brother had acted much like his usual self, which, unfortunately, were the ones he hadn’t stored very systematically. There was only so much space in the box; he hadn’t wanted to add an enchantment just to fill it with scrolls of parchment talking about mundane Ministry work and all the things Newt was meant to be doing, or, the things he’d done that he shouldn’t have.

He was being unfair. Newt could recognise that. Theseus had been better in the last few years, and on top form, really, when it came to respecting Newt’s boundaries on this latest mission. But whose fault was it, really, that the sight of him just reminded Newt of nearly a decade spent being berated by their parents for being expelled, for failing in his job at the Ministry, for picking an esoteric career that brought little value to society and was just an excuse to keep running all across the world? And even before that, Theseus had been the perfect son, the one who had done everything right, while Newt had been the one who had done everything wrong.

It was something like that. But it wasn't like Theseus hadn't tried to help him: even if at times his help, his desk-hovering and task-setting, his attempts at meaningful social instruction, his insistence, had made Newt want to crawl into his shell and never come out. The approach had been better than their father's–––of course, it was, Newt thought with a pang, remembering that argument between them–––but it didn't make Newt feel any less like a stupid windup toy that needed fixing.

As he approached the box, he tried to shake the thoughts from his head, physically combing back his hair and sighing. Sitting in his gut was the deep, uneasy undercurrent of something else. It was almost impossible for him to piece it all together and determine in a few words what was wrong.

In that box of letters–––almost every one was from Leta.

"Newt," he mumbled to himself. "You're probably upset about them. Stop thinking about it. Please."

His mind attempted to oblige. Right. The boring letters. He'd have to find those. There was definitely one in the journal about Bowtruckles, so he picked that up off the left bench, slid it out of the large pile, and unfolded it carefully.

"Dear Newt, I trust this missive has found you in good health. I have been devoting my time to the current case regarding the disappearances in southern Devon on the moors and am starting to believe that it could be the work of a dark Expansion charm cast on a local region of woodland. A colleague told me that you were assigned the task of obtaining permits for encampment in the area? Yet I also filled them out today. Newt, you must take care to attend to your own duties and not be diverted by your creatures," he read aloud.

Newt interjected his own commentary. "Thank you for reminding me of my role. As if I would neglect those pressing matters of form-filling and the like."

Newt continued reading. "I presume that you will now choose to keep pace with the paperwork and the other responsibilities, seeing as you are capable. I am aware that it may be arduous for someone with your distinct approach to life."

He paused on that. He'd heard that one almost uncountable times, with each epithet and description waxing and waning in how charitable it was. Newt snorted, but held his finger under the sentence, repeating it under his breath. That sounded like something that could plausibly go into a letter to the Ministry: stilted and formal. Arduous for someone with your distinct approach to life.

A distinct approach to life. He both loved and hated how much it sounded like an issue of attitude.

With a sigh, Newt tucked the letter into the pocket of his coat and started looking through the other stacks of paper around him, quickly finding a few more. It surprised him that he still remembered the odd places he'd put them. But a familiar bookmark, no matter what the words on it said, was always nice to have with him, especially when his travels became dire and he was stranded in the middle of a savannah or somewhere where resources for further field notes on his specimens were exceedingly scarce.

May 16th, 1920

Dear Newt,

I hope this letter finds you well. The ministry has been keeping me busy, and I can only surmise that your creatures have been taxing upon your time as well.

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of something interesting that I recently heard. This information pertains to a creature that, as far as I'm aware, you haven't encountered yet. There could very well be space within the Beasts department for you to come on either as a consultant or as a temporary staff member to help us deal with tracking it down. We will not harm it. I wish I could say that with certainty, but I know if you were to get involved–––only within the Ministry apparatus you so detest!–––it will stay contained and as safe as a creature can be, I presume. I wish I could offer more details, but Ministry secrets must stay unrevealed in letters such as these, going through Merlin knows where. Nonetheless, I encourage you to diplomatically approach the department about this, so long as you do not mention the string of Muggle encounters with the illegal racing Hippogriffs in York that happened on the 14th, as it will irritate them. I heard they're nothing like the ones Mum liked–––mangier, apparently, but it's what you'd expect from criminals.

I trust you are taking good care of yourself and your creatures. I know you tend to get lost in your work, but remember to take breaks and give yourself some rest. Remember not to overwork yourself.

With warmest wishes,

Theseus

August 9th, 1922

Newt,

You reckless lunatic!

I really don't have time for this. It's a quarter past midnight and I've been pulling all-nighters trying to finish this presentation that's due in the morning. Travers is not only going to have my head, but he's going to crucify me for good measure (I say this metaphorically, Newt, but it still holds!) once he sees the mess I've made of it. And to top it off, I receive a bloody owl from the Ministry informing me of your latest escapades. It's been hard to get a moment to write but now it's my certain pleasure to go through all of this with you again, like we haven't contended about it for at least half your life. Sometimes I wonder if you even think about the consequences of your actions. Other people certainly do! They're not happy with us. Lots of talk about the Scamander name and it's not the kind that's winning us any favours.

Look, I've just heard about what happened in Hungary from your supervisor–––yes, an owl and a conversation, I gathered my data from all the sources I needed–––and as your elder brother, I feel like it's my duty to point out when you're being thoughtless or careless.

I know you're passionate about your magical creatures and your work as a magizoologist, but sometimes I feel like you prioritize them over everything else in your life, including your own safety. You're constantly getting into dangerous situations and risking your life for the sake of these creatures. What if something were to happen to you? I understand why you do it, and I'm not trying to stop you. But there must be better ways to look after those blasted creatures than nearly getting murdered by poachers, disobeying Ministry protocol, and then keeping the damn things when they're illegal in twenty countries? Surely you see that? And if you don't, then I'm afraid I'll have to spell it out for you.

Remember when we were kids and you would bring home those injured kneazles and bowtruckles, convinced that you could heal them? We were all worried sick that you would get hurt, but you kept at it anyway. You were so determined to help these creatures that you would sneak out of the house in the middle of the night, risking your own safety for theirs. And now, as an adult, you're still doing the same thing. Only now, your creatures are much larger and much more dangerous. And you're not just risking your own safety, Newt. You're risking your life, the lives of Muggles, the lives of your colleagues, when you bother to listen to them, and the whole of the wizarding world the moment one of your stupid creatures gets out and starts eating children or whatever had it banned in all those countries.

Be more responsible. I hope you'll take this letter to heart and start thinking about your actions more carefully.

Sincerely,

Theseus

August 11th, 1922

Dear Newt,

I appreciate your prompt response to my letter. However, I must question your statement "I look forward to collaborating with you to achieve our goals" as it implies that we share the same goals. It sounds to me as if you’ve pulled it from one of your colleague's letters and put it right into your message to me. I must say that I admire the creativity, but I’m still waiting for your collaboration.

I understand your passion for magical creatures and the importance of preserving them, but as an Auror, my goals lie in ensuring the safety and security of the wizarding community. I cannot risk my position and duty for the sake of creatures, no matter how important they may be to you.

I hope you understand where I am coming from.

Yours sincerely,

Theseus

"This is good," Newt said, speaking aloud for the first time in several minutes. "This one could be useful."

Newt put the letter down on the table in the expanding line and went to put the journal back into its stack. The string holding the worn book together shifted and he groaned as the back cover fell off onto the floor. His eyebrows furrowed as he went to pick it up, grabbing the stray piece of parchment that had fluttered down with it.

March 3rd, 1926

Dear Newt,

It has been too long since we last spoke, either by letter or in person. I am not sure which you would prefer. This should be the right address, but if it is not, I am sure the unwelcome reader of this missive will find nothing enthralling within. Simply, I hope this letter finds you well, and a late happy twenty-ninth birthday. How time passes.

I know you don’t like me talking about her, but Leta misses you too, Newt. If you consider the timing of this letter awkward, then I can admit that it partly is because it is indeed awkward. She noted today that it was the one-year anniversary of our argument. She doesn't know the full of it, but she remembered that, Newt. I’m sure we both have some regrets about how it went. With that–––while I won't apologise for the disagreement itself, I do regret any pain or distress it caused you. Most of all, I regret upsetting her by having to tell her anything about it at all. It's poor that she remembers the anniversary. We both failed there.

But you understand, we had to talk about it someday. I had to set down boundaries. I want to marry her, Newt. You know that I will always value our relationship, and I hope that we can continue to be close, even if we don't always see eye-to-eye.

I extend an invitation. Consider visiting soon, when your duties permit. It would be good to catch up and talk about everything that's been going on. I know that you've got your hands full with your magical creatures, but it's important to make time for family as well, even if we always play second fiddle.

Sincerely,

Theseus

Newt's heart sank as he read the letter. He had been trying to forget about Leta, but it seemed as though fate had other plans. He ran a hand through his hair and let out a deep breath.

He couldn't deny that he missed her, too. But the missing Leta feeling only seemed to confront him when he saw her things, read those letters, watched her pictures, and if he was away from any of those things, it just felt like a dull fact: she was dead.

From Theseus's apartment, it seemed that his brother, too, had played the game of they're just in the other room, except Theseus had only cried that once in the immediate shock of losing her and Newt had cried so much that her being gone meant he treasured rather than feared the memories of their time together at school.

When Theseus had got involved, too, though–––all that, Newt could recognise, was still a mess.

Neither Theseus nor Leta had ever explained the exact timing of their meeting to him. All Newt knew was that it was several years after Leta had joined the Ministry, and when he had turned twenty-four, Leta twenty-six, and Theseus thirty-two, he had been expected to accept this foundation-shaking new couple as it was. He eyed the letter like he might an uncomfortable and itchy jumper and put it back into the journal, empathically sliding it back into the tilting stack on the bench.

Perhaps it was time to try his hand at drafting the letter. Albus would appreciate it. He'd already made his rounds through all the creatures in his case, and the Mooncalves wouldn't need feeding until at least eleven at night.

He grabbed a quill and a piece of parchment, taking it over to a stool on the other side of his workshop. Chewing the feathered end, he dipped it in ink and started scrawling out a letter, trying to immerse himself in that direct and officious Auror mindset.

February 7th, 1932

Dear esteemed colleagues at the Ministry,

I trust this letter finds you well. I am writing to provide an update on our ongoing efforts to maintain law and order and ensure the safety of the wizarding world.

As Head Auror, it is my responsibility to oversee the investigation into recent activities of concern. I can assure you that we are making progress and taking all necessary steps to address the situation.

I understand the need for transparency and accountability, and I can assure you that my team and I are working tirelessly to uphold the values of the Ministry and the wizarding community at large.

I will continue to keep you updated as our investigation progresses, and I appreciate your ongoing support and trust.

Sincerely,

Theseus Scamander

He started off with that as a skeleton and kept adding to it, occasionally standing up and going back to the other letters to try and capture the patterns between them. It worked surprisingly efficiently; he produced a full length of parchment within about an hour. But Newt frowned as he read over the letter he had drafted, chewing on the end of his quill in thought. The words didn't sound right, didn't ring true to Theseus's usual way of speaking. He set the letter aside with a sigh, feeling frustrated at the task before him. It wasn't that he wanted to deceive the Ministry, but he knew they wouldn't allow him to continue his mission if they knew Theseus was missing.

He leaned back on his stool, staring up at the ceiling of his workshop. He wondered what Theseus would have done in this situation, how he would have worded the letter to make it sound official and convincing. But Theseus was a man of rules and regulations, and Newt could feel himself chafing at the thought of being tied down by bureaucracy; so, if the Ministry received the letter, they'd either think Theseus had a sudden personality transplant or see right through it as a forgery.

He started to scribble notes in the margins, crossed out entire sentences, and rewrote others. He whispered to himself as he worked, trying to channel Theseus's voice and mindset.

"This doesn't sound like him," he muttered to himself, scratching out a particularly stilted phrase. "Theseus would never have said something like that, I don't think."

He paused, staring at the letter, then shook his head and started writing again. He had tried to think of specific words and phrases that Theseus would've used, and how he would have structured his sentences. Slowly, the letter started to take shape. Newt's hand moved more confidently across the page as he got into the rhythm of Theseus's voice. He was still not sure it was quite right, but, with the help of all the letters spread out across his workbench, their cadence and patterns and occasional strange sentences, it was closer.

It just wasn't what he wanted to do. If there was one thing Newt wanted to do in this situation, one calm and reasonable step to take, it wasn’t this. Deep down, Newt was still sceptical of just trying to buy more time without taking action. After all, he didn't know anyone at the Ministry who would read such a letter and help. In fact, there were barely any of the other Aurors who Newt believed could...barely any he trusted...

Well, there was one Auror he knew. And that realisation marked the final passage of his thoughts wrapping neatly back around to the one thing he did want to do.

He swallowed a sudden, inexplicable lump in his throat and picked up a fresh piece of parchment, smoothing it against the bench and dabbing off any excess ink from the quill. Newt closed his eyes, thinking; the words swam through his head like a shoal of Murtlaps. As if he were possessed, he started to write, barely believing himself.

February 7th, 1932

Dear Tina,

I hope this letter finds you well. I realise that it's been quite a while since we've spoken, and I apologise for that. In fact, I'm very sorry, as we both know that letter-writing is usually one of my strong suits when I want to send letters. Of course, it's not because I haven't thought of you, because I have, often, and it's not because I had nothing to say, because there were also several happenings I would have liked to share with you. But I didn't want to be a burden or distract you from your important work. You can trust that the majority of things I would have said would have been regarding the usual, with beasts and enquiries and the like, so I hope you don't mind me suddenly writing to you about something else entirely (something that might come to you as bad news?).

My brother, Theseus, has gone missing. I don't know where he is. It's a difficult situation, and I'm not sure what to do next. It's never happened before. He's not vanished before. It's–––overwhelming–––and I don't know why he's gone, only that he seems to have vanished.

It's a lot to ask, I understand, but I trust you more than any Auror I've ever known. I know that you have connections at the American Auror office, and I was hoping that you might be able to see what you can do. It's been several weeks since something happened to him on one of our missions (I can explain, but we would have to be careful, and I'm sure that by this point in the letter you might understand why), and I'm starting to get worried. I've tried everything I can think of to find him, but that hasn't been much; there's a dead end at every turn. I think the person I'm working with is running out of options, due to various constraints, and so I was wondering whether you might have any leads, or any ideas?

I'm reaching out to you not just to ask for your help, but because I miss you. It's been too long since we've seen each other, and I regret not keeping in touch more regularly. I miss working together with you. I know I haven't actually said this to you, and it seems rather poor to be saying it now in a letter, but it's not because of you. Although your behaviour is sometimes reminiscent of a Hungari I've never really been good with people. That's why I'm always more comfortable around my creatures. But you're an incredible Auror and an even more incredible person, and I feel lucky to know you. I suppose I’m saying this because I don’t want you to think that I’m only asking you for help because I desperately need something from you and am taking the opportunity to do so like a greedy Niffler.

I know I should have sent a letter sooner, of some kind, and I’m sorry that it has to be now, in circumstances where I cannot write anything bringing better or more lighthearted news (I know your first and maybe only impression of Theseus was when he was chasing us through the French Ministry, and he tried to throw suitcases at us and you tied him to a chair and blasted him into the next room, and we talked about him killing me, and he really was quite angry, but he’s only like that sometimes, I promise you. It’s all happened so fast that I can barely work out what I should be doing, but I know that I need to find him, because I’m starting to get worried, and worse, I’m starting to get the feeling I’m right to be).

I understand that you're busy, and I don't want to impose on your time. But if there's anything you can do to help find Theseus or provide any assistance, I would be forever grateful. Maybe you could quickly come to Europe–––we are in Germany–––and I can explain, without the constraints that unfortunately come with putting this into ink. Either way–––I will always be grateful for your friendship.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, Tina. I hope to hear from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Newt Scamander

Chapter Text

He reached for the glass before him, lifting it slowly and swirling the red liquid inside around: one, two perfect rotations as the crimson lapped at the fine crystal, reminding him all too well of blood.

“It’s not poisoned, you know,” Grindelwald said politely.

“Knowing you, it most certainly is,” Theseus snapped back.

“Manners, my dear Mr Scamander,” the dark wizard muttered, taking a delicate sip from his own. He considered for a moment, eyes dark and inscrutable in the low light of the room, and propped both his elbows on the table, leaning all the way over. With long fingers, he plucked the fine stem of the glass from Theseus’s white knuckled grip and took a sip, placing it firmly back down by his plate.

Theseus took a deep breath through his nose and restrained himself from doing or saying anything risky. There was a faint half-moon smudge on the glass’s rim; he was struck by the odd realisation that Grindelwald, too, breathed like a human being might.

“You see? No poisons or potions. We would prefer you to be lucid at this stage of negotiations,” the same wizard said. “I—and several of the others—are quite eager to transfer to our headquarters, rather than this little hideout. For one, I’m sure you know the rules of the chase. The more frequently we change locations, the harder it is for your Aurors to catch up with us.”

Grindelwald cut into the meal on his own plate. Theseus wasn’t exactly sure what it was—it looked like it belonged in a far more luxurious restaurant or location than here. Where, how, and by who it had been cooked was another question. It was a little cold; maybe it had been summoned in. Normally, Theseus could and would eat almost anything, but although his stomach growled, it felt like a trap to give in to his hunger.

“Where are the headquarters?” Theseus asked.

Grindelwald raised an eyebrow. “I would like to think we are not foolish enough to share the address with a flight risk such as you, given my investment in making them a permanent location.”

“Why do you want to move me, then?” Theseus tried.

“Well, you’ve made your last escape attempt, haven’t you?” Grindelwald said. “You’re seeing things my way.”

It was an utterly bizarre atmosphere and situation. It had been two hours since Percival had woken him up to warn him that Grindelwald was coming. He’d had a minute to panic and then get himself under control before the dark wizard had appeared, springing open the lock to Percival’s cage with some kind of convoluted charm he’d clearly invented himself.

Theseus looked at Percival across the dining table. Percival looked down at his plate, avoiding his gaze. He held his fork performatively over the dish, tendons standing to attention, making no further move. Theseus couldn’t help but stare at his old friend. The Director of Magical Security, one of the most coveted and influential positions in MACUSA. Grindelwald’s prisoner. It struck him how someone could look the same, distinctly, recognisably; the same, and yet seem so different. When it had just been the two of them in the cells, Theseus wondered if his memories of the Percy of old had blinded him, hiding these small changes.

Grindelwald had taken care to make them both very aware of the relative roles there were to play. Percival was the loyal acolyte. Theseus was the troubled prisoner that needed to be brought to heel in accordance with the party line.

He looked at Percy’s black suit. The process of putting it on had become a strange and performative body-ballet taking place right outside Theseus’s own cell. Step by step, with a certain mixture of care in the precision of the dressing and callousness in the process of it, Grindelwald had produced an immaculate fabric bag, hung it up on the bars of Theseus’s cage, and withdrawn garment after garment. The loose and dirty grey shirt had become a fitted white one, the collar starched. The trousers had been replaced with formal dress slacks in a deep charcoal, close to black: almost funereal colours, although Percival had always gravitated to those. And; last of all, the shoes, the jacket, the tie.

With a few minutes of careful work and a few charms here and there, combing his fingers through Percival’s hair, Grindelwald had transformed him from a fellow prisoner to suddenly his superior. Whether that was really the case was something Theseus would only let Percival himself determine.

If as to make up for the minutes of uneasy eye contact they’d shared through that process, of Grindelwald unmaking and then remaking him in front of Theseus, Percival now did not look at him at all. Theseus uneasily picked up and put down his fork again, the fourth time in as many minutes that he’d done so, remembering what Grindelwald had said about his overcoat. The layers. The protection. It was meant to mean something, the chasm Grindelwald had opened up between the two of them. He could ignore that, easily. The real question was what would happen next.

Surely that was the next question.

He wasn’t there to question whose side Percival was on. It would still be the right one—it had to be—even if they were both playing Grindelwald’s games.

He also wasn’t there to question what side he was on. It was as obvious as seeing in colour.

“You’re staring, dear Theseus,” Grindelwald chided him, clicking his fingers. The abandoned knife next to the fork the Auror was restlessly toying with flew into the air and landed, quivering, inches deep into the wood between his second and third fingers.

Theseus pulled his hand away, very slowly, and slid it into his lap.

“Didn’t mean to,” he muttered.

Percival gave him a half-glance, bruised under eyes the only sign of his previous dishevelled self, and then stared into his glass of wine, taking a sip.

“There’s no shame in it. Don’t forget—I have been inside the Director’s head. And it was a foray far more complete than the brief excursion I made into yours. In light of your—wartime experiences—with one another, I think it would be a correct assumption for me to say that you care for one another? As friends, I noted, and—quite rapidly, really—nothing more.”

Theseus almost smiled at the thought.

“Certainly,” he said. “We were good friends. I heard that it was likely that you read our communication.”

The thick tension of the room, with opponents across the table and a little of his weariness eased by the potionless sleep, centred him. It seemed to lay out a clear pathway for which he could operate with at least some of the thought and reason he usually cherished.

“He did,” Percival said hoarsely, gaze immediately darting towards Grindelwald and then away again when the man didn’t react.

“They were rather delightful letters. So wonderfully British. And I must say, there’s something about receiving another person’s trust and confidence and slipping into their intimate world.”

“You mean—reading highly confidential Ministry communication,” Theseus said. “We weren’t writing love letters.”

“But don’t you think that a person who chooses to be reserved, to express themselves little, to lay themselves down into the mould their government provided, is also saying much about their soul in that decision? What we don’t say is as important as what we do say. That’s why I thought it would be an appropriate time to arrange a more formal conversation about our plans going forwards. It is time for me to make what I have restrained myself from saying into a promise for you.”

Theseus squinted at Grindelwald. “If this is the formal approach, then whoever you’ve been informal with must be six feet under.”

“No,” Grindelwald said with some emphasis. “The issue is that I have not been free to carry out my own plans. I have had interference. First, from you; then, from Vinda; and last of all, from Percival.”

He twisted in his seat to eye the other man and, with Grindelwald’s movement, without any magic, Percival jerked backwards as if he’d been slapped.

“Hush. It is not that bad. But you did tell him to leave, when all I need to do is convince him to stay for just long enough.”

He turned his mismatched eyes to Theseus. “I meant to treat you well. I, perhaps naively, assumed that you would be more amenable to our cause after understanding my strength and your weakness. Now, I find myself compensating for Vinda’s actions. We might have been able to convince you without force. But now I am certain we may have to work various curses on you thanks to that experience.”

Theseus shook his head. “In no world could you convince me. Your cause is the last that would interest me. I mean, I’ve spent nearly a decade fighting it.”

“Mmh. Percival did need a few years to change his mind. In light of that, I have decided that it is unlikely you will ever become a loyal follower. Perhaps you can do a few tasks for me here and there while I wait, but I do believe I would always have to watch you, guard you, guide you. It would require investing far more effort than I would like. After all, your role as Head Auror makes you a moderate prize, but beyond my personal intrigue in breaking you down, the final product does not interest me.”

Theseus bit down on the inside of his cheek.

“So why bother doing so in the first place?” he asked, trying to ignore the painfully immediate fear sparking in his belly.

Grindelwald laughed. “You act as if I am some villain leaping here and there to my various ideas. I am very invested in my cause, and for good reason; it is the only way to secure our future as a wizarding race. Of course I would bother. This is not so difficult for me.”

“What’s your plan?” Theseus gritted out.

“Generally?” Grindelwald asked.

The Auror narrowed his eyes carefully. “If possible.”

“Tsk. I suspect you already understand that I have some political desires. Putting two and two together, one might conclude I will make a stand at the election. You might be free in time to do something about it, so long as your reputation survives this.”

“Free?” Theseus asked, throat suddenly dry.

Grindelwald made a noise of assent. “Here is my suggestion, Theseus. We should not have to go back and forth with torture and escape attempts and torture and so on. I see myself as a man of principle. So we can make a deal. All you have to do is agree to an Unbreakable Vow—“

“No,” Theseus said bluntly, leaning back on the bench. “No chance.”

The other man extended a pale finger and continued: “—which will entail you agreeing to bring Albus Dumbledore to me, with some capacity or method which I will later determine…in exchange for me letting Percival go free.”

He could have heard a pin drop.

But Percival gave the tiniest shake of his head at Theseus, who felt as if he’d been dropped into ice water. The dark-haired man touched the collar of his shirt, subtly wrapping his fingers around his neck, stare loaded with warning. Just as quickly, though, he dropped the eye contact.

Theseus hesitated. “No,” he said, hating, hating himself for it. The only reason Grindelwald would bring them back together would be to use them against one another.

“I can hear you thinking, Director,” Grindelwald said, closing his eyes. “Do not shake your head again. Theseus doesn’t want you to be free.”

A small flash of regret on Percival’s face made Theseus look away. The dark wizard leaned over and massaged the back of Percival’s hand, still clutched unmovingly on the fork, making a soothing noise.

If Theseus said that wasn’t the case, he was playing straight into Grindelwald’s hands. If he said that was the case, he would be almost uncategorically lying. There were the slightest of reservations, unfurling and creeping across the back of his mind like dark vines, as to whether Percival was still the same person he’d once trusted with his life. But whether or not he could trust him now had little bearing on whether his friend deserved freedom.

But he also couldn’t betray Albus.

“Our dear director was hopeful for a moment,” Grindelwald noted. “Intriguing, that you both truly desire the outcome of the vow, yet will not act upon it.”

“Because we know it’s wrong,” Theseus said.

“What is it that runs in the Scamander blood? Your lineage produces such obstinate minds.” Grindelwald laughed. “Do you think Percival knows what is wrong and what is right? He knows only what I tell him to do.”

“You—“ Theseus started, not aggressively, but clearly ready to argue.

“Shhh,” Grindelwald said, tapping his fingers against his lips in a lightly rhythmic staccato, examining Theseus carefully. “Does it not affect you, then? Knowing that you are doing what you believe is right will keep him doing what—and I think, deep down, he still understands this—what he knows to be wrong?”

Theseus gritted his teeth and said nothing, looking at the table.

“Yes,” Grindelwald said, with some glee. “Yes, it does. And in turn, Percival is somehow on your side, but he still hopes that you might save him yet: because he thinks you are strong, stronger than he is now. I don’t think either of you understands the implications of your enmeshment. Theseus, I believe I already talked to you about the ties that bind. Your ties–––ah, Percival, you understand, don’t you? Surely you understand that this vow is the only way to protect the ties that serve you, and abandon the one that has not.”

“But you did all this,” Theseus said. “You impersonated Percy’s identity. You tortured my brother in that subway station. You rigged the election entries.”

“Of course,” Grindelwald said, and turned to Percival. “Sweetheart, I did it wearing your face. Unfortunately, Theseus’s brother and his friend interfered spectacularly. They stole my disguise. Stripped me bare, practically. I suppose that was when you died, in the eyes of the public.”

“Will we die, just a little?” Percival muttered under his breath. He exhaled. “You never told me that. About what you did to Newt.”

“It was not that important to me,” Grindelwald said simply. “I am only glad that I am free now from the prison in which your people tried to place me. But see, neither of you is free yet, but you could become so. Make the vow, Theseus.”

Percival shook his head, almost imperceptibly. He hesitated and then drank heavily from the wine glass, looking paler than before.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Grindelwald said coolly, even though the other man hadn’t said a word.

“Sorry,” Percival mumbled.

Thesesus’s eyes flickered back and forth between the two men, sensing the invisible back and forth of Grindelwald’s Legilimency. Like the touch of fingers against his mind, he felt Grindelwald reach for him, too, but then withdraw, the slightest frown wrinkling his forehead.

“It would be suicidal to make an Unbreakable Vow to try and fight Albus Dumbledore,” Theseus said.

“But you are not that important,” Grindelwald pointed out. “If you thought you were, you wouldn’t have tried to arrest Vinda in Germany. And I’m not suggesting you take him by force, of course. You have his trust, to an extent; you could certainly come up with something else.”

“I’m not doing it,” Theseus said, pushing his untouched plate away from him with some force. “A Vow requires willingness. I won’t sacrifice our cause for the dangers you present, that you have chosen to create and engineer, and the people you will choose to hurt. Because you’ll just do it all again. Won’t you? That's the whole point of your ideology.”

Grindelwald sighed, a sound that was almost sad. “You are correct, of course. I have made mistakes; I have hurt people. But I will continue to do so, as you well know, for the greater good. But I think you also know that I am not the only one competent enough to commit to such utilitarian acts. You are just as capable of them, and your choice to say you cannot do them out of an idealistic sense of honour speaks only to your stubbornness.”

“I’ve already done what I can. You’re the one who has to decide,” Grindelwald continued, looking at Percival, who was staring at the table, his hands trembling slightly. “It won’t be easy, but it has to be done. We’re both here because of it.”

Theseus pushed his chair back. The sound of the legs scraping across the marble floor echoed through the room. He stood, towering over the table and the two men seated at it.

“I won't do it," he repeated, his voice firm. "I won't make an Unbreakable Vow for your cause, Grindelwald. And I won't let you manipulate me into doing something I know is wrong."

Grindelwald's expression remained impassive, but something flickered in his eyes. "I see," he said slowly, as if weighing his next words carefully. "It's a shame, Theseus. You see, I have grown to like Percival, and I wouldn’t want to harm his delicate feelings. But I think I need to demonstrate to you exactly what is right and wrong here, in my world, not in the Ministry. It’s rather amusing that you think that Percival is entirely my responsibility…because it is you and your men and women who have left him here to rot. And now who does he follow? Me.”

Theseus felt a cold shiver run down his spine as Grindelwald spoke. He knew that Grindelwald was capable of anything, and he couldn't shake off the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. Percival's hands were shaking harder now, and Theseus could see the fear in his eyes.

"What are you going to do?" Theseus asked, his voice low and steady. He knew that he had to keep his composure, even in the face of danger.

Grindelwald's lips curved into a cruel smile. "I think it's time for a demonstration," he said. He stood up from the table and approached Percival, who flinched at the movement. Grindelwald placed a hand on his shoulder. The other man's face drained a shade paler; the quiet rasp of his breathing stopped entirely, fear flickering in his wide, searching eyes as Percival stared at Grindelwald like he was the only person in the world.

"You see, Theseus," Grindelwald said, turning to face him. "Percival is mine. He has been mine for years now. And do you know why? Because I gave him purpose, I gave him something to believe in. And he knows what he has to do."

"What do I have to do?" Percival breathed.

"Just tell Theseus what you've done. What we do. Let him do the moral calculus of your freedom," Grindelwald said gently.

Shaking a little, Percival looked up at Theseus from under his dark brows. "I don't want to," he said.

"Of course, we all have some shame," Grindelwald explained to Theseus. "But there is always the greater good."

He held his wand up to Percival's head. "Tell him, director, or I will do it for you. If it comes through your lips, you might be able to sanitise it, hmm? I think we can all see your dear friend is uncompromisingly moral. It would be rather awkward for your future imprisonment together if you grow to hate one another."

Percival wetted his lips with his tongue, hunching towards the table. Reaching out an easy hand, Grindelwald offered him the wine glass again; the man drained it. He took another quick breath.

"Gellert, I can't," he murmured. "I can't–––I'm sorry–––I can't do it."

Grindelwald sighed. "Ah, I'm sorry too, Percival."

Theseus felt his heart pounding in his chest as Grindelwald raised his wand towards Percival.

"Stop," Theseus said, his voice sharp and commanding. "You don't have to do this, Grindelwald."

Grindelwald turned to face Theseus, his wand still pointed at Percival. "And what choice do you offer me, Theseus? To let him go free? Oh, wait...that's not my choice. That's yours. Speak, director. Speak, now."

Percival clenched his eyes shut as if he could block out the terror of the moment. He took a deep breath, and then finally, he spoke. His voice was barely a whisper, but Theseus heard every leaden word.

"I've done some terrible things," Percival said. "To keep him in power. To help him in his cause. I'm sorry, Theseus, I'm so sorry. I never wanted to do it. Terrible things...I have done worse than hurt innocent people..."

He trailed off into silence, unable to force the words out. He finally forced himself to continue. "...I've killed...it was the only way...I had to do it."

As the words left his lips, the despair in his voice almost palpable, Theseus felt a sharp pain in his chest. There was a moment of profound clarity; in that second, Theseus understood how far Grindelwald had pushed Percival to go, and the depths of cruelty he had inflicted on an innocent man.

Grindelwald leaned in close to Percival, his voice low and menacing. "You see, Theseus? This is what happens when someone stands in my way. I will not allow disobedience. I will not allow disloyalty. I will not allow betrayal."

Theseus felt a sudden rage swell up inside him. He slammed his fist on the table, causing the plates to rattle. "You have no right to do this," he said, his voice a low growl. "You have no right to force someone to do something they don't want to."

"But he wanted to do it. He had to do it. Dear Percival, when was the last time I used the Imperius Curse on you?"

"Four years ago," said Percival softly. "I chose this path."

Grindelwald nodded. "Yes. Four years. You've been loyal and faithful. You've done what I've asked of you, and you've kept my secrets. You are my willing subject. And I'm sorry, Percival, that this was necessary. But Theseus needs to understand that his choice not to make the vow will just keep you exactly where you are: causing damage to the corrupt society he is so keen to protect."

Theseus didn't know what to say or do, and for a moment, he just stood there, staring at Percival.

"Disgusted?" Grindelwald asked. "Oh, you are."

Percival looked as though all his worst fears had been confirmed.

"...who?" Theseus asked quietly.

"Who?" Grindelwald asked. "Hmm. I think most of the high-profile murders crossing your desk won't have been Percival's precise doing. We usually ask him to help us prepare, you see, to facilitate the murder should it, unfortunately, be required. But I can certainly give some names where we worked together very successfully..."

He gave names. Each rang a bell. Theseus felt sick.

These were cases he had worked night and day on, poured over with his team, and walked the ground of the crime scenes. The names were long studied and familiar, instantly conjuring in his head the bodies whose tragedies he had laboured to solve and the smiling photos of innocence that his investigations had always sought to protect. They would have suffered. It was difficult to comprehend whether anything associated with Grindelwald could bring about any emotion other than agony. He had seen murders and disappearances and supposed suicides. Each was so different but so similar. Lifetimes, gone. Yet Percy had been a willing participant in these vile acts? This many of them? After seeing everything they had at the Front? His head was humming with rage, but under that rage was a deep, deep awareness that this was again his fault.

As Percival finished his confession, Grindelwald's expression softened a little. "Thank you, director," he murmured. He withdrew his wand and stepped back from the table.

"You're a monster," Theseus spat at Grindelwald.

He had always tried to do what was right, to protect the innocent and uphold justice. And yet here he was, sitting across from the man who had caused so much pain and suffering.

Grindelwald leaned back in his chair, a sly smile on his face. "Ah, Theseus. The weight of responsibility can be a heavy burden, can't it?"

"You've both done terrible things, and you need to be held accountable," Theseus said. "I won't let you get away with this."

Grindelwald's expression darkened. "You don't have a choice, Theseus. You either make the Unbreakable Vow or you watch as Percival continues to suffer."

Theseus could see the faces of the victims in his mind, flashing past as if he was sorting through a stack of old photos, old testimonies, old reports. He remembered breaking the news to families: their tears, their heartbreak, the wrenching mourning cries that sometimes tore free in front of him, and sometimes erupted like water from a dam the moment he closed the door behind him. Percival was as much a victim as anyone else–––but he was still alive.

I need time to think, was his only desperate thought, looping around and around in his head, drowning out all else. I need time to think.

Perhaps he could make the vow and hope Dumbledore would just kill him before he could even think about bringing him to Grindelwald. But it was the Vow, the unbreakable magical bond that would kill him on the instance of first disobedience, stone cold dead. But it would be better than the Imperius Curse—no, would it? One, he could fight. The other, he knew would end, one way or another.

He was panicking. Theseus gripped the table edge with both hands until the tendons in his wrists started to burn.

Percival shook his head. He shook his head, that very first time his own freedom was mentioned. If it were Theseus in his place, the Auror was sure he’d feel he didn’t deserve it. But this was Percival: the man who forgave himself for any failing that others didn’t see, who moved on like a breath of wind when he had to, who used to talk about the Graves family attitude of uplifted bootstraps with that same callousness of feeling, as if regret was a necessary burden that had to be put to one side in two to three working days. He’d picked cigarettes off dead bodies in the trenches and smoked the ghosts away.

For Percy, then, to shake his head—it meant something—that same suspicion Theseus had that there was new danger hidden behind that offer.

He could always just die. Make it, betray it, and die. But that wouldn’t come before selling his soul and integrity to the man who’d done nothing but harm people he cared about. And then there would still be the blood troth, the limits of which had not yet been tested purely due to the geographical separation of the two wizards. If he did bring Albus, would his former teacher trying to escape count as resistance against Grindelwald? Hurting him certainly would. Giving the bastard a punch in the face like Theseus himself had already done would probably tear him apart with that metal wire. Grindelwald wouldn’t be able to hurt him. But if neither could move against one another, the only answer would eventually be to move together.

And Albus had done it once before, in the summer of 1899. If he did it again, they were doomed, well and truly doomed, no matter how hard the Ministry fought for it.

Do what is right, not what is easy. Feeling sick with it, Theseus leaned into the part of himself in moral revolt and shook his head.

"No," he said. "I won't make the vow. You can't make me."

Grindelwald's expression hardened. "Very well. Then you will watch as Percival continues to suffer in my service."

Percival shivered. “I can make the vow,” he said, almost soundlessly.

The mechanical hands of a clock ticked away in the distance.

Grindelwald straightened up where he’d been hovering beside Percival’s seat, taking his hand off the table and running it over his waistcoat, straightening out the creases.

“Of course you can’t, pet,” Grindelwald said, each word a projectile of disgust, ice-cold. “I’m not willing to make it with you.”

“I’m sorry—“ Percival said immediately.

“I suppose I have to punish you,” Grindelwald mused.

The dark-haired man let out a choked cry, shaking his head. “No, I told you—I’m sorry—!”

“Stop it!” Theseus shouted, balling his hands into fists.

Grindelwald must have known he was about to try and vault the table again, because his wand was aimed right between Theseus’s eyes once more.

“You want to play the hero without freeing him,” came the cutting retort. “You want to be the sadist that watches him suffer. Maybe those visions of yours were pure love—perhaps I underestimated the evil lurking in the guts of the deer—“

“I don’t fucking want you to hurt him,” Theseus said.

“Take his place, then.”

He didn’t want to think about Vinda, or the damnation that awaited him at the end either of his acquiescence or his resistance. Please, Merlin, let that not be my punishment.

The Auror raised his chin. “I will.”

“Fine,” Grindelwald said, lowering his wand and reaching for his own goblet of wine, sniffing it and then taking a drag. “It will still be useful.”

There were memories slipping through his grasp, passing through his fingers like water, pouring onto the table, the floor. They had a fountain in their garden at home. When Newt was as tall as Theseus’s knees, his younger brother used to sit on the stone edge for hours, filling his palms with the mossy water, little imperfect containers. He thought it would make his hands something less human, more fish. Maybe it would make it easier to catch the creatures in the pond, just to look at them.

Theseus pulled his hands onto the table and looked at the blood encrusted under his fingernails.

“Why?” he asked.

Grindelwald shrugged. “Because I feel as though I have given you a poor taste of what I can do, and I also have my suspicions that you’re simply not sympathetic to what your poor friend has gone through.”

“That’s not it, and we both know it,” Theseus said in a low tone.

“No—you’re right,” Grindelwald acquiesced, as if it were part of the game. “My apologies, Mr Scamander. I do fear you have closed your mind off to me again; thus, I find you rather impenetrable.”

“I’ve said everything I had to say,” Theseus said. “I won’t betray Dumbledore and I hate what you’ve done to Percival. Both can be true at once.”

Grindelwald sighed and waited for a long minute.

“Everything you had to say?” the dark wizard confirmed.

Theseus stood, shaking out his arms, testing the swing. “That’s my stance on the vow.”

“You’re not leaving, are you?” Grindelwald said, turning his face to the side, angling his gaze like a watchful animal.

“Please don’t go,” Percival whispered.

Theseus opened his mouth, but Grindelwald got there first, running a hand through the other man’s dark hair and ruffling it, letting it hang in an oil-slick curtain around his face.

“I won’t be long, my dear,” he purred.

Despite the humming wards pressing heavy on the air, Grindelwald apparated across the table, easily surpassing the tableau of mock-civilisation that had kept them a blessed distance apart.

“Come—I am not allowing you free will to simply stand there sullenly and look at me,” he said, jerking his head towards the door. “Let us discuss.”

Theseus’s lips thinned into a tight line. “No—we can discuss here,” the Auror said, stepping backwards, watching Grindelwald with a tight gaze.

“You,” Grindelwald said, half-singsong, half-hiss, “said you’d said everything you needed to.”

Theseus bit down on the inside of his cheek, heart pounding. “I thought I had,” he said. “But then I realised something.”

The other man regarded him coolly. “Yes?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Percival, still sitting at the table, staring at them. Despite the trembling he could feel starting to echo through his hands, the slight warning hum of tinnitus in his ears, Theseus had to know something, and know it now. There was the light touch of Grindelwald against his mind again as he focused all his strength on drawing down, drawing in, tightening his thoughts into a steel core. With the beginnings of a headache, the pressure tightened, like a steel helmet being screwed to his head. It got worse—and worse—

He could feel each strand of hair touching the skin of his forehead in a flash of an ugly and irritating sensory overload. Then, although the tinnitus kept ringing in his ears, Grindelwald withdrew.

“Very funny,” Grindelwald said. “An impressive show of Occlumency, but you’re still equally as impressively simple. I won’t go into your head again—there. Do we have a deal between gentlemen, then? I can save my effort and you can be saved from the reminder that you seem to be a mere collection of your four personality traits with little inspired vision beyond.”

“Yeah,” Theseus said, thinking about Percival and Grindelwald’s strange and sinister enmeshment, webs of memories and actions over the years that he’d missed while hunting for the dark wizard himself. “Yes, fine.”

Four traits felt generous, even from the mouth of Grindelwald. He had spent a lot longer feeling composed of many fewer, flattened into a two-dimensional figure, strong and right, strong and right, and there was no room for grief in between those.

He could take a few more wounds to his back. It wasn’t a pretty sight and hadn’t been since the war.

“Come,” Grindelwald said.

Reluctantly, knowing that every glance was dangerous, he turned on his heel, looking back at the dining room behind them. Percival stared back at him, eyes reddened and exhausted, and reached out for the wine glass Theseus had abandoned on the table, seemingly uncaring that Grindelwald had drunk from it. His hand shook as he guided it to his lips, spilling several drops of crimson on the fresh collar of his shirt.

Theseus had a clear sense of the beginning of the end.

In the corridor, he grabbed Grindelwald by the shoulder, feeling the expensive fabric of his suit under his sweating palm. Grindelwald turned to look at him, eyebrows raised, with a faint professional smile playing on his lips, as though they were simply colleagues passing one another in the Ministry of Magic and Theseus needed a quick word.

“What is it?” Grindelwald asked.

“If neither of you can move against one another, then bringing Albus to you will do nothing.”

Grindelwald’s smile tightened: grew weary. “Not everything has to be a movement against. A lesson you would do well to learn.”

“The Ministry will be looking for me by now. You’ll be putting yourself and your followers in danger the longer you hold me here.”

The other man sighed. “Do they know you’re missing?”

“Yes,” Theseus said.

“Do they?”

“Yes,” Theseus said. “It’s been—more than two weeks. I’ve missed enough departmental meetings to raise questions.”

“Oh, so have you no replacement?” Grindelwald asked.

Theseus frowned. “My colleagues can run some, but I rather think—“

“Mmh, exactly,” Grindelwald said. “You will be replaced in enough time.”

Travers would, Theseus thought venomously. Fucking Torquil Travers: who tossed reports from missions where the Auror Office dared to fail; who’d always scheduled Leta in for overtime on the same rare nights Theseus was off early with such accuracy it was evident the man had access to both timetables; who’d told the Aurors to go in hard and fast at the Paris rally despite his entreaties to not be what Grindelwald said they were.

Still, the dark wizard was pretty damn accurate, wasn’t he? Percival had become exactly who Grindelwald said he was.

Yet he still had to protect him. He couldn’t free him, he couldn’t betray everything he believed in by making an Unforgivable Vow against Albus, and Grindelwald had made it very clear that any further escape attempts were going to have debilitating consequences.

Theseus rounded his shoulders and followed Grindelwald down the corridor.

Chapter Text

Percival looked down and saw the red on white. With a strangled gasp, he finished the last of the glass, forcing himself into the familiar fuzziness of drunkenness to escape the rising panic. With little food in his stomach, his hands were already reassuringly limp and weak as he examined the damage.

It was too late.

Of course it was too late.

It had been too late for years.

It wasn’t too late for Theseus, not yet, but he had the awful feeling that it might be soon.

His body felt like a projection, some kind of flickering image passing in feeble rays of light onto a large and dusty screen, wavering at each shadow of the audience that passed the sad story. He ate a little, giving in to hunger, watching the door with every bite.

Maybe the offer of the vow meant that Gellert was finally tired of playing with him. From the other man’s perspective—which Percival regularly attended to, praying, praying that for once he could get inside his head rather than the constant and careless skimming through his own thoughts—he was certain he ceased to be interesting to Gellert two years ago. The moment hadn’t occurred all at once, but it had crept in, slowly but surely. He wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t unhappy about it either. Like a thick and matted fur coat, his own uselessness clung to him with the stink of cigar smoke, a physical weight that meant when Grindelwald did indeed choose to take his face and have his fun, the man looking back at Percival was distinctly no longer him. In fact, it was almost impossible to imagine that he had once worked around as his own person: with his own light in his eyes, wearing his own clothes, sleeping in his own bed.

There was very little he knew anymore. There was something distinctly sad, Percival thought, even tragic, about it being Theseus to end up here with him. If there was ever a dragon to chase its tail, it would be Theseus, but how he had ended up here on that chase made the tragedy, because the last thing to be found in Grindelwald’s hands was any form of comfort.

He was the Head Auror of the British Office now. There was so much to lose. For both of them. For Britain, for America, for Europe—and then from Europe, the rest of the world.

If Percival was to be Gellert’s bargaining chip, a prize to be given away just as he had once been a prize to win, then he would be kept alive longer. But did that mean Theseus was equally guaranteed to live? Who else was on that team? Eulalie Hicks, who would not be close enough to Dumbledore for a convincing plot of betrayal. Other names he didn’t recognise: presumably inconsequential. Newt, possibly, potentially, the only person who could have convinced Theseus to go on such a stupid mission.

Dear Merlin, he thought. If it had been Newt, it would have all been over. Not because the man was weak, but because even Theseus, loyal to a fault and dangerously set in his ways, would be more likely to turn traitor than Newt. Dumbledore would never see it coming.

Why was he trying to rationalise Grindelwald’s plan?

And—fuck—because Grindelwald had a way of using people’s desires against them, opening it up and letting the victim propel themselves over their edge with their own calls to the void—he now wanted to be free.

Over the years, the urge had settled, gone dormant, bottled itself to allow him to entertain the thought of still living. In his dreams, he was always trapped; in every ideation of the future, he was still a prisoner.

The old tune rattled to life in his head like a rusted child’s jukebox. He was evil for feeling shame, not guilt. He was evil for what he’d done, for choosing life over defiance. And, worst of all, he was evil for feeling a stabbing fear at the idea that Grindelwald was ready to just let him go, just like that, after years under his thumb. What would he do if he was free? Was there even anything left for him out there, in the real world? For years, he’d been reminded of how little anyone cared, of how easy a target that had made him to impersonate for not just weeks but months; a man that no one truly knew nor cared to know was easily replaceable.

Feeling sick to his stomach, Percival turned and looked out of the large window to his right, knowing it was possibly the last view of the Black Forest he would see for some time. He didn’t want to go to Grindelwald’s true head of operations; he wanted to stay in this satellite mansion for as long as possible, locked away rather than set loose on the world, freed from the endless judgement of the man’s other followers. After those first few months of capture, where he’d been worked on almost incessantly, it felt strange to have Grindelwald’s attention off him, to have him looking and commanding others in the room, to let him stand quietly by himself in a corner and push it no further.

It started to rain outside. The water beat against the window as it came down in a deluge. Percival buried his head in his hands, heart pounding harder in his ears at the thought of going near the window, at the punishment he might receive as a result. Theseus had saved him, for now, even though they both knew he hadn’t deserved it. He tightened his grip on his hair, tugging hard, but the pain didn’t help him think. Neither did the wine, but it had helped make the heaviness in his body feel less like being dead and more like being in a really, really unfortunate dream.

He had been Grindelwald's prisoner for so long, forced to do dark magic and commit crimes to survive, and now he was resigned to his fate. He couldn't bear the thought of Theseus making the same sacrifices for him.

The sound of the rain tapping against the window intensified, echoing his inner turmoil. It was as if the heavens were mourning his predicament. He wondered if Theseus was feeling the same way, trapped in a room with Grindelwald, facing an impossible decision.

The only value in him being freed was, as Grindelwald had said, was as part of a desperate moral calculus. Maybe if he was free the world would be a better place. But he doubted it would change much if he remained a prisoner. The fact was the world kept turning, with or without the Director of Magical Security now several years out of post.

He was a damn fool, a damn good for nothing useless bastard, and a damn fucking traitor. Inexplicably, perhaps triggered by the harsh rhythm of the rain, he remembered one of the earlier days of the war, when they’d gone to accompany the attempt at the dragon offensive on the Ukrainian front. He and Theseus had always been very good at coming together, but equally skilful in separating in sharp and rapid snaps of tension and circumstance.

Still, he’d never been as cold as he’d been in Ukraine since. For the first time since he’d started serving, his and Theseus’s tours hadn’t synchronised. Theseus had gone home for a week to report officially back to the Ministry, while Percival had been put in Ukraine to coordinate evacuation efforts of the wizarding and Muggle communities living in the valley that housed the Ironbelly dragons. It suited his skills better than being meat in a trench, being able to lead people firmly and effectively, and he’d almost enjoyed it.

Theseus couldn’t stay away. Not from him, but from the war. When Percival heard the news of a certain Newt Scamander being appointed to lead the handling of the dragons, he was hardly surprised when Theseus arrived in determined tow, Newt in his civvies and Theseus back in familiar uniform. Percival remembered thinking at that moment that he’d not seen Theseus in normal clothes, curiosity a little piqued.

Either way, it had been a rough few days, but certainly not the worst they’d been through. The dragons hated everyone except Newt and a pair of Ukrainian witches who had attempted to create a dragon nursery for orphaned eggs a few years earlier, gaining some favour in the eyes of the intelligent female dragons. The number of burn injuries went through the roof. Theseus almost constantly smelt like scorched hair—constantly had scorched hair, even though he wasn’t meant to be anywhere near the dragons—and their small canvas tent’s rough enchantments couldn’t keep out the rain or the cold. The smoky aroma has only added to the damp.

Theseus had been the one to suggest huddling for warmth. It had started off as nothing personal, as most strangely intimate interactions set against the backdrop of war were: yet another collision of worlds where it was implicitly acknowledged there was no future for it. Never mind the kisses on the journey before even reaching Ukraine. They’d spent several nights shivering in concert, huddling together for warmth as the wind howled outside and the rain turned the earth to mud.

By the end of the fourth night, Percival’s filthy, impetuous soul had slyly already determined that he felt something more for the man, stupidly desperate. He could blame the Graves family-style upbringing and the tensions of the war for whatever came next, after they’d exhausted conversation about the dragons and Theseus’s passionate and clearly proud descriptions how Newt was almost handling them and they were almost there, and Percival’s own darkly comedic descriptions of his day. After all that, it was just them and the night.

If only you’d come in the first year, Percival thought. Or the second, or even the third. Then I might not have yet become someone you hated.

Merlin, they called themselves old friends, but when they’d fallen into and then eclipsed that brief flash of something more, Percival had known their lives would keep circling one another like buzzards, diving hungrily into the complicated carcass of platonic brotherhood.

Theseus didn’t want to free him. Of course not. It was all as Gellert had said. There was only one person left in the world who held any fondness for the man once known as Percival Graves, and he was one and the same as that man’s assassin.

He felt sick, wine-heavy. If that was the case, why had Theseus offered himself up in Percival’s place?

His breath was coming shallow and fast. Groaning, a frantic, injured noise, he rocked back and forth. If they came together, if Theseus somehow got over his disgust at Percival’s murders and made the vow, or worse, made the vow in hatred for him, for what he’d done, to put him in prison where he belonged, they were fucking doomed.

If Theseus kept running and resisting—Merlin, why would he even try, why didn’t he understand?—Gellert could do anything. He kept thinking of that damn tent and Theseus’s eyes, the same grey-blue as the mountain sky.

Escape?

If there was one thing Percival knew, one thing that was real, it was that he could never escape Grindelwald.

Chapter Text

Dumbledore strode briskly through the snowy streets of Berlin. Gellert was in the city to attend the most famous political dinner of the year, a convention of all the election candidates, and he had little doubt his followers would be close behind. All Dumbledore had to do was wander long enough until, like a fly to honey, one of them took the bait, adding another unexpected layer of diversion and unpredictability to their plans.

It was with a thin pang of guilt, then, that when he saw the long dark hair, the impenetrable eyes, the first thing he felt was a sense of pride in the security that this encounter would lend to their dangerously uncoordinated plots. After all, the Obscurial magic was unpredictable by nature.

As Dumbledore came to a stop in front of a shop, he saw Credence's reflection in the window, visible between the passing cars.

Credence was angry.

Dangerous, around Muggles.

As always, with every time Dumbledore thought about the Muggles, he felt the same revulsion—not towards them, but to himself, for those years allowing Grindelwald’s hate to blossom, and his penance now felt like a thin sheet hung over a palpable pyre of corpses. Not that sincere, really, and fraudulent enough that his mind could unpick it into a full case against him, something to one day come back to haunt him.

Dumbledore slowly blew on a snowflake, transforming it into a water droplet. The droplet flew like a translucent bullet over the reflected view of the trams and cars, breaking on Credence's forehead. As it burst, the sound of the street melted away, becoming distant.

"Hello, Credence," Dumbledore said, turning to face him.

Credence tensed, wand at the ready, as Dumbledore stepped out into the street.

The world around them seemed different, slower somehow.

They circled each other, the crowds around them oblivious.

Credence's wand was poised as he spoke. "Do you know what it's like to have no one? To always be alone?"

Of course. I have no one too. Dumbledore slowly realised the truth. "It's you. You're the one sending messages in the mirror."

"I'm a Dumbledore. You abandoned me. The same blood that runs in my veins runs in yours." Credence's dark energy rippled outward, cracking the pavement and lifting tram rails up around them.

Dumbledore glanced at the signs of the Obscurus beginning to break out from the fragile young man, stepping through pedestrians as he kept up the tight circle, prepared but not aggressive, never aggressive. The world around him continued as normal, and he could understand why.

For all Newt’s attempts to make Credence’s existence mean something, the only thing the young man had to him was the claim of his broken blood. Having the Dumbledore name was nothing but a curse that had begun with Ariana’s torture, and Credence was no less troubled than all the men before him, nor any more firmly aligned to the side of good.

"He's not here for you. He's here for me," Credence said as the ground began to splinter and break around him, tarry liquid seeping upwards through the cobbles, running counter to gravity.

Dumbledore didn’t ask who. If it was anyone, it was Grindelwald, and he was telling the boy lies. Of course the other man was looking for Dumbledore. On his spiral to the top, to realise his dark vision for the wizarding world, he was most likely as lonely as he’d ever been. Waiting for a warm body by his side. Desperately trying to create the summer of 1899. Chasing the heady intoxication of love by replacing it with the thrill of total and utter control, words and visions tightening his net of power into an inescapable trap.

A green bolt shot from Credence's wand, but Dumbledore parried it with smooth, fast movements. Credence advanced, firing another spell and lifting the ground to smash it around Dumbledore. But Dumbledore dissipated the explosive onslaught before Apparating out of the way.

Credence was running now, lifting cars, masonry, and glass from windows, sending a rippling, seismic earthquake ahead of him toward Dumbledore. The two locked arm in arm as they dueled, a tram approaching behind them. Dumbledore Apparated backward, Credence following, as they dueled relentlessly.

Credence split the tram in half with another powerful spell as they travelled at blinding speed from inside out and back into the street.

And then, they came to a stop: with Dumbledore’s wand at the back of Credence’s neck. 

"Things are not quite what they appear, Credence. No matter what you've been told." With a flick, the street around them was sucked into the Deluminator, melting like a painting, leaving a negative image of the real world as if it were a distant memory.

"My name is Aurelius," Credence said, frustrated and lashing out, lightning-fast. Dumbledore easily defended when

Credence fired a volley of explosive spells. He stretched out his hand and hit Credence with a spell that sent him reeling backward, causing a black, kinetic mass to erupt from his body.

Gently lowered by Dumbledore's hand, Credence fell slowly, his back on the snowy street, staring upward at the angry sky, at the circling Phoenix. Dumbledore's chest heaved as he lowered his wand and watched the Phoenix swoop down, hover briefly over Credence, then beat its wings and soar off.

"What he's told you isn't true,” Dumbledore said. “But we do share the same blood. You are a Dumbledore."

Credence's eyes met his and they remained like this for a moment, connected, before the flowing black mass rushed back into Credence. Dumbledore gently placed his hand on Credence’s chest.

"I’m sorry for your pain. We didn’t know, I promise."

Dumbledore lifted the Deluminator once more, and a spell rippled forth. When it cleared, the two were in the street, the world of their duel reflected beneath them in pools of water collected by the melted snow.

A single phoenix feather drifted through the air; Dumbledore reached out and took it, tucking it into his coat pocket. How it had appeared, neither knew, nor did either understand how the creature of rebirth and death had vanished just as quickly as it came. But, still, even through the mirror world, the worlds where reality was sucked in and out of existence through just a click, its presence was an undeniable omen.

Credence had one path. Like the branches of a withering tree, any alternate routes had been long closed off, rotting and falling away like the young man himself, abandoned in the dark with no love except Grindelwald's. And it was a toxic thing. Dumbledore knew that much. What else would explain Credence, Aurelius, as he was now, clinging onto life by a thread? What else would explain Dumbledore's own guilt and regret over the choices he made in the past?

Dumbledore stepped back from Credence, studying him carefully, and stretched out his hand. When Credence took it, Dumbledore reached down and lifted him up, before slipping away into the busy street.

Dumbledore turned just in time to see him stumble away, dissolving into black smoke as he did, no doubt to report to Grindelwald that this new intervention, this disgusting yet desperate attempt to use other people to bypass the sanctity of the blood troth, had failed.

The same blood that ran through his veins ran through Credence's, and yet he had abandoned him. He always had to abandon people. Again and again, and all because he was still tethered to Grindelwald.

There was a phoenix feather lying on the ground. He would give it to Newt: a reward for his faith; an apology for the inevitable consequences of his trust.

*

Lally gave Jacob’s dinner jacket a reassuring pat as they circled around the back of the German Ministry of Magic, having snuck in through the well-kept gardens under Lally’s expert disillusionment charm.

“I’ve got mud on me, haven’t I?” Jacob asked.

“No,” Lally said. “Just a little dust.”

He sighed. “Well, it’s not like we’re in an economic upswing. A man doesn’t have much reason to wear his fancy jacket anymore. But this is probably better than going in through the front door.”

“Goodness, yes,” Lally said. “We don’t want to encounter the German Aurors at all, if possible.”

Jacob gave her a wry, lopsided grin. “Don’t jinx it.”

“I am the witch, Mr Kowalski. You can leave the jinxes up to me.”

He snorted, fidgeting with his bow tie. She eyed him carefully, unashamedly trying to determine how he was feeling. They came to a halt in front of the back exit, the charm wearing off them and dripping to the floor like a sudden sheet of rainwater, evaporating into the cool evening air.

“Nervous?” Lally prompted.

“So, this Santos lady, she’s a proper good guy?” Jacob asked. “Because I know our politics are pretty screwed up, but whatever you wizards have going on seems pretty…non-transparent.”

“She’s not Grindelwald,” Lally said. “And I think she’d have the support of the majority if he hadn’t been allowed to run. Based on my own thoughts on her policies, I don’t think she’s a harmful option.”

“And better than Grindelwald,” Jacob summarised. “Well, that’s good, I guess. Wouldn’t want us to go to all the effort of preventing an assassination just for someone some mild flavour of better than.”

“Welcome to the political sphere,” Lally said cynically, checking that the sticking charms on the fine gold straps of her dress were still holding. They were, naturally; she’d been casting perfect sticking charms since the age of six, but she also preferred not to embarrass herself in polite or evil company. Tonight was a lovely mixture of both.

He sighed, puffing out his cheeks. “Can’t afford to fail,” he muttered, and then, a moment later, added: “Is it just Grindelwald coming, or will his…followers come too?”

Lally’s eyes softened. “It could be either, I’m afraid. As long as we stay aware of our surroundings, we can handle them. They wouldn’t make an overt move now that he has an image to maintain.”

“When Vogel, the German guy—when all that happened—he made some pretty overt moves,” Jacob pointed out.

Lally winced and clicked her fingers, producing a small flurry of sparks. “I’m ready to be on top form tonight, Jacob. We’ll manage. And you won’t mess up. We’re a good team, you’re charming, I’m also charming, and somehow with that combination, I’m contradictorily confident we’ll have the subtlety not to draw attention to ourselves.”

“As long as I smile and nod, and let you do the talking,” Jacob said.

She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say that exactly, but it wouldn’t hurt. Really, we can go with whatever makes us blend in—we need to be able to match the wallpaper, which is hard enough at the best of times,” she said, pointing self-effacingly at both of them.

Still, in her gold dress, she looked good and felt proud, with her natural hair cascading in a loose down her back, pinned in place with springs of brass wire. And Jacob looked very smart too.

“Not thinking about getting caught,” Jacob muttered to himself. “C’mon, Jacob. Not thinking about it…”

"Oh, come on, where's your sense of adventure? Think of this as a fun little challenge. We're like spies or something. And if we get caught, we’re spies making a daring escape.”

Jacob chuckled, "Spies? Oh, a spy’s probably one of the last things I’d want to be, poor bastards. No one likes them.”

Lally shrugged. "Hey, if you don’t make things sound more exciting than they really are, then you’ll live a long but joyless life, my dear Muggle friend.”

“Fancy food. At least there’ll be some fancy wizard food,” Jacob muttered, which sounded like his new affirmation.

Lally nodded and took the lead, appreciating his determination.

*

Grindelwald stood on the steps outside the imposing entrance of the German Ministry of Magic, his eyes gazing off into the distance. His mind was elsewhere, lost in the visions of the future that he was privy to. He saw flashes of a duel, a battle between two powerful wizards, one of them his own loyal follower, Credence.

He saw the swirling black mass that emanated from Credence's body, the same darkness that had consumed him in the guise of Percival Graves in the subway. The weight of his watching invoked the sharp, piercing pain of the blood troth that bound him to Dumbledore, a leash around his neck, a reminder of the beauty of restraint. He could suffer only observing a wizard as masterful as Albus had always been, even against the Obscurus, another dead thing in his collection.

At the same time, despite the uselessness of the boy, he could not help but imagine himself in Credence's place, feeling the pain of the troth, the grief, and the anger that came with it. The tremors from the past abuse. The meaningless of life in an orphanage. The abuse at the hands of wicked, wicked Muggles, who could not restrain from the corruption of their genetic code, the urge to destroy bred into their muddied bloodlines. A useless, dying thing, Credence was, but he was a tie, a mirror of a person who was both close to Dumbledore and alike to Grindelwald himself.

If only he could collect everyone Albus had ever cherished, used, every wicked being who’d stolen the only warmth he’d ever received, and create a beautiful ring of their bodies. Something sacrificial. For the greater good. And he would lie in the centre, and in the face of his own inherent reprehensible nature, he would open his mouth and drink down the draining blood touched by Albus’s love.

All for that man who had become his greatest adversary. He remembered the passion that had once burned between them, the dreams of a better world that they had shared, before everything had gone wrong.

He saw the disappointment and anger in Dumbledore's eyes as he fought against Credence, trying to protect him from the darkness that threatened to consume him. He saw the guilt and remorse that weighed heavily on Dumbledore's shoulders, the burden of past mistakes that he could never quite shake.

But you won’t do the same for me, will you, mein Schatz?

The blood troth had not bound their minds together, but it had woven a spell around their hearts, melding flesh and bone so tightly that they could never directly move against each other without risking their own lives.

With a heavy heart, Grindelwald tore his gaze away from the vision of the duel and turned towards the entrance of the German Ministry of Magic. He knew that he had a role to play, a destiny to fulfill, and that he could not let his personal feelings get in the way.

As he stepped inside the grand building, his mind was still haunted. Yet to the outsider, all they would see was his rakish and slightly rumpled appearance, the aftermath of all the hands on him, from his enthusiastic, growing crowd of followers, adding an attractive appeal to the fact that he had been so fondly touched. Why, the creases in his suit were only to prove that he was human, not that he was fallible. Each little sign of the reality of his own arrival only contributed further to his flesh and blood image.

He was a man of the people. He was not a man held in place by the past. And as much as he would like to convince himself, that was the case, he knew it wasn’t true. In the carriage of the black sleek car that had pulled him up to the front of the German Ministry of Magic, as he had heard the staccato banging of eager fists against the metal, he had only felt his heart pound in response.

This was what being loved felt like. This was what he desired. He wanted nothing more but to feel the hands of the crowd on him again, and again, and again, the warmth of their touch, reminding him of all that he had had, and didn’t need any longer, so long as he had his power. A small smile graced his face as he swept into the grand hall, eyes scanning the room, knowing that his followers were right behind him, the vial of deadly liquid ready for the assassination.

*

The room buzzed with conversation as plates of succulent lobster were whisked away to tables adorned with elegant silverware and crisp linen. Seated now, Lally's sharp gaze scanned the room, her mind focused on identifying any potential threats to their mission. Her eyes were fixated on the tables where Liu and Santos sat, mentally assessing the movements of the busboys and waiters orbiting them, always on high alert. She had been to plenty of fancy dinners and her time. Her parents have been well to do, and her career in academia furthered the need to be able to deal with all these niceties of high society. Lally rather enjoyed dinner parties. She knew she was a quick wit, and she also knew the kind of people she liked to talk with over a nice meal and a few drinks. A room full of politicians was not the said people.

As much as her parents probably would’ve wished her to, she also didn’t have very much practice at looking decorative. Her feet were practically itching for action.

She didn’t care if she looked on edge. In fact, she thought everyone deserved to know. They deserved to know that they were playing a part in the system that was falling apart before their very eyes. If they were still here, happily, drinking and eating, and taking part in the luxury food, after what happened with Vogel, then they deserved every bit of scrutiny she could give. Perhaps then she could call that a little justice for their friend and ally, who had been unceremoniously transported out of such an event just as he uncovered its corruption.

Jacob gave a hopeful glance into his fancy glass, giving a sideways glance at the full goblets of the other guests at their table. He tried lifting it up, then subtly tapping the rim, then giving it a shake. Finally, with a slight sigh, he picked it up, angling the base towards him as if there would be some secret button on it, triggering the filling charm. As Jacob's goblet magically filled with wine, he raised it in a toast to Edith, who was waving enthusiastically from across the room. Lally hid a small smirk. She hadn’t known Jacob for long, but he did have an incredible way of attracting people, both in the good and the bad sense, with the unfortunate talent of being so charming it was hard to fend them off.

Jacob suddenly put his glass down, jerking his head towards an elderly wizard with mad, conductor-style hair sitting to Edith's left.

"Lally," Jacob whispered urgently, "the guy with the hair, sitting next to Edith. He looks like he can kill somebody. He also looks like my uncle Dominic."

Lally turned her attention to the distinguished wizard with a nod of agreement. "Is your uncle Dominic the Norwegian Minister of Magic?" she asked.

Jacob shook his head, a wry smile creeping onto his face. "No," he admitted.

"Didn't think so," Lally said, staring at the bushy and unkempt eyebrows of the Norwegian minister with a renewed appreciation for Jacob's well trimmed facial hair.

But then the room that had been filled with chatter and laughter suddenly fell into a tense silence. All eyes turned to the entrance as Grindelwald and his followers made their way inside. His unruly hair and crumpled jacket gave him an air of careless charm, a stark contrast to the stiff and awkward demeanour of the other attendees. Lally watched Grindelwald intensely as he looked towards the house elf quartet. The leader of it seemed to shy away a little as Grindelwald leaned forward, extending a single finger in a gesture to keep playing. The wary quartet resumed playing, a tremble in the strings, and Grindelwald moved through the room with a magnetic confidence that drew people to him. It wasn’t just confidence. It was something else, simmering beneath the surface, with the same pull the open mouth of a deep cave might have.

And, like a creature spat out of a cave that bottomless, that dark, made pale and faded by the lack of sunlight, a beautiful blonde woman walked down the aisle, hands clawed at her sides.

Jacob rose to his feet. Lally let him. Grindelwald didn’t turn back. She didn’t turn back, eyes pinned ahead like a fearful taxidermy mouse.

Oh, Jacob, you unfortunate man, Lally thought.

Shoulders stiff, he caught Queenie's eye, a thousand hopes—no, Lally thought, one hope, see me, please see me—in that liquid look, like sight alone was a message all of its own between the former lovers. But to his shock and dismay, she completely ignored him, continuing to walk past as if he was nothing more than a piece of furniture. What colour there had been drained out of his face as he tentatively glanced at Lally, seemingly wondering whether their mission could spare him those few extra moments standing in the hopes that she might turn around. She tried to inject as much warmth into her look as possible, although she knew she was slightly emotionally unequipped to handle the intricacies of a situation revolving around lost love when Grindelwald was right there. Lally wasn’t panicking, far from it; she had plenty of ideas for what she could do.

Still, Lally instantly knew that Jacob was in love with the woman, even if she didn’t know the woman herself very well. Over the last few weeks of their rag tag team coming together, Jacob had been the easiest to get to know. On multiple occasions, he’d talked about a “Queenie”, offering up little anecdotes or funny memories, before apologising with his usual grin and lapsing into a dejected silence.

Jacob stood there, leaning slightly forwards as it weighed down by lead in his chest, as if his heart itself was heavy.

From what he described, the love between him and Queenie had all seemed so perfect. Or at least, it would’ve all been so perfect if the law hadn’t come in between them. And where the law had come in between them, Grindelwald had taken advantage of that want in the back of Queenie‘s mind, and persuaded her to either turn her back on their relationship, or be manipulated so fully by his charm that she was now fully embedded in their side. Lally, then, could understand why there was a shattered look in his wide brown eyes.

Lally's heart thumped in her chest as she watched the suspicious waiter approach Santos's table. She could feel the tension building in the air, a thick fog of danger and deceit. She gripped her own glass of ruby-red liquid tightly, tracking the waiter's journey across the room. Jacob sat beside her, downing another glass of wine, oblivious to the unfolding drama.

Suddenly, Lally tossed her napkin down and rose from her seat, turning to Jacob with a warning.

"Stay here," she said, low and urgent.

Lally pushed past the waiters. But as she approached Santos's table, two towering bodyguards stepped in front of her, blocking her path. She tried to slip past them, but they held their ground, their cold eyes fixed on her. She made a small, dissatisfied noise, hands curling into gentle fists at her side, as she stood on her tiptoes and peered past them.

Let me through, you idiots, before I turn your shoes into Firecrabs.

Meanwhile, Jacob stumbled towards Grindelwald's table, his movements unsteady. Grindelwald's gaze flicked over to him, his expression mild and detached.

As Santos lifted her glass, Lally discreetly cast a spell, directing the hovering liquid towards the high table. The ruby-red liquid zoomed towards a door, corroding the wood with a hiss and a fizz. That would’ve certainly felt unpleasant going down the throat. She was surprised they hadn’t been more imaginative. After all, it would’ve only taken a few simple charms to ease some of the clear visual warning signs of the poison. Then again, she wouldn’t expect much imagination from a group of wizards and witches who wanted to bring back the pure blood hierarchies of centuries ago.

She felt one eyebrow creep up her forehead as she turned slightly on her heel, watching Jacob out of the corner of her eyes. It was probably better if they didn’t appear to be openly together: because it looked like he was approaching Grindelwald.

Oh, shit, she thought, not sure whether she was meant to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation or weep for the man.

Now, they were about to see some action, whether they liked it or not. Grindelwald's eyes lingered on Jacob for a moment longer before he returned his attention to Santos.

Lally's eyes darted around the room, searching for any signs of danger. She knew that Grindelwald was a master of manipulation, and that he had the power of foresight and prediction. She couldn't shake the feeling that something was off, but Grindelwald’s expression remained calm and composed, almost as if he was amused by Jacob's presence.

Jacob wasted no time in getting straight to the point. A soft curse slipped past her lips as she realised the man had pulled out his wooden snakewood stick, and was aiming it at the dark wizard like it was a gun, a slight jaunty and challenging tilt to his chin that barely belied the fear she knew he must be feeling. Her heart rate seemed to slow down. Her fingers tightened on her wand.

"Let her go," Jacon said sternly.

Grindelwald's eyebrows raised slightly, and he tilted his head in confusion. "Excuse me?" he replied, feigning ignorance.

But before Jacob could respond, chaos erupted in the room as the rest of the dining witches and wizards noticed the usurper so casually challenging one of the election candidates.

“Assassin!”

Lally spun around in disbelief, watching as Jacob drew his wand.

Suddenly, Lally sprang into action. She flicked her wand, and Jacob's arm holding the wand was thrust into the air by an invisible force. The room shook with the force of a powerful vortex as she summoned a soft, grey flurry of thick storm clouds that crackled over Jacobs head, creating an ominous aura. The air suddenly felt damp and heavy as the soft sound of rain and the harsher intermittent cracks of lightning filtered through the previously shocked silence accompanying the sudden uproar the room was thrust into.

Grindelwald remained seated, his eyes fixed on Lally with a mix of fascination and amusement.

Lally's eyes darted around the room, taking in the chaos as she quickly sent another spell, tying the bodyguard's shoelaces together. Guests scrambled in all directions, knocking over chairs and tripping on tablecloths that pitched to and fro like boats caught in a storm. The room quaked with the trembling of each chandelier, and draperies billowed like sails along the walls. Napkins took flight like doves, flapping and soaring through the air.

Through the chaos, Jacob's eyes finally adjusted and he saw her. Queenie stood amidst the turmoil, staring at him with the same intensity. Their eyes locked, a silent conversation passing between them.

But just as quickly, Queenie began to slip from view, pulled away by Kama. Helmut and his Aurors entered the room, their wands at the ready.

Out of nowhere, almost as if one of Grindelwald’s departing entourage had sent it, a chair hurtled toward Helmut, temporarily obscuring his view of Jacob. Lally saw her opening and pulled out her book, flipping it into the air. With a flick of her wand, she dropped a chandelier on Helmut and his Aurors, sending pages cascading forth from the book.

As the pages landed, a series of steps appeared, beckoning Jacob forward. He turned and rushed toward Lally, his heart pounding in his chest. She fired spells at the Aurors, holding them at bay as Jacob took the steps at a sprint.

But Helmut was not deterred. He shot a fiery blast, setting the steps ablaze as Jacob raced toward Lally. Their fingers grazed each other as they reached out, straining to make contact. Lally managed to seize the front of Jacobs' dinner jacket, and a firm and slightly desperate grip as a man began to queue backwards, eyes fixated on the furious Helmut. And then, with a sudden rush of air, they were sucked into the book.

With a thump, Lally and Jacob finally emerged from the book, landing on solid ground. They were in a small alleyway, hidden away from the hustle and bustle of the street. Lally looked around to make sure they were alone before turning to Jacob.

"Well," she said, "that was quite the escape, wasn't it?"

Jacob was silent, lost in thought. Lally could feel the weight of his emotions and knew that it was not just about their narrow escape.

"I know it's hard," she said softly, "but we did what we had to do. Queenie made her choice, and it wasn't with us."

Jacob looked up at her, his eyes red-rimmed with tears. "I know, but it doesn't make it any easier. I loved her, Lally. I still do."

Lally squeezed his shoulder sympathetically. "I know. And it's okay to grieve, but we have to keep going. We have to fight for those who can't."

“But we can’t even fight him,” he said quietly. “It's very different. Like, when you came to visit me that day in my bakery, I thought I knew what I was signing up to. And I know I signed up for the right thing, because I know that I want to do whatever I can to stop this guy. But it’s always political stuff. And your political system: I don’t even know how it works, I don’t know what she’s going to do, or he’s going to do to her, or whether she’s the one who is going to be helping him with all this. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. I thought we had something. I thought we’d be able to do it together.”

Lally sighed, knowing that these were difficult questions with no easy answers. "We have to trust in ourselves and in Dumbledore. He may not have all the answers, but he is fighting for what's right. And we have to trust in our own instincts, even when it's hard."

"But what about the people we've lost along the way?" Jacob's voice broke, and Lally could see the tears welling up in his eyes. "What about Queenie? Theseus? What about the others who have been hurt or killed? Like all the Muggles Grindelwald’s…you know…all the people like me."

Lally wrapped her arms around Jacob, holding him tight. "There's nothing we can do about them right now. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do about them in the future. Trust me. When this is all over, we will make it right."

Jacob took a deep breath, trying to compose himself. “Got it. I’m sorry. I’m letting my emotions get the better of me. We can't give up.”

“It’s ok to feel, Jacob,” Lally said. “And, you know, if Queenie can read minds as well as we all think she can, she probably knows that you still love her. If that brings you any comfort—which I think it should—it means there’s still hope for you two yet. She hasn’t done anything irredeemable that we know of. We just need to stop Grindelwald from winning this election. And then maybe his followers will finally desert him.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to clear her mind of the odd image of the exterior of the German Ministry of Magic that kept sticking there. But the memories came flooding back: the chaos of the announcement, the fear of the situation turning on them, and the frustration she felt for not being able to have moved faster.

“Let’s get back home,” she said, almost automatically.

Jacob gave a tired laugh. “Where’s that this week?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I think it’s the same place as last week.”

They had to walk back. In fact, they even had to take the train. Her magic was a little bit depleted from trying to carry out about a hundred successive charms. The fact that her book had been burnt hasn’t helped either. Whatever stupid flame jinx had been sent over the paper had taken up far too much of her mental energy in trying to hold the fibres together as they started disintegrating.

At first, she and Jacob kept up quite a pleasant conversation.

He pointed out the various oddities of the streets around him, explaining a few of the muggle quirks in Germany that she’d missed, and in return, she gave him a few little tidbits of information about what those shops and practices were like in the wizarding world. Eventually, though, they lapsed into a companionable silence. Lally wasn’t used to being chased by thoughts in the quiet. But as the rhythm of their steps down the cobbled streets became meditative, and she found herself wanting to escape the occasional harsh stares of passersby, her thoughts drifted.

She hadn’t expected seeing Grindelwald to have any effect on her in the moment. And it hadn’t, particularly.

But now she was thinking about him. It was far more than the megalomaniac deserved. They waited on the platform for the next train. It blew past them as Jacob let out a sigh of relief.

“Public transport,” he muttered. “What a damn beautiful thing.”

Lally nodded, thoughtlessly. She charmed the thin, gold wire that served as decorative sleeves on her dress into a long yellow coat, wrapping it around herself with a slight shiver and glaring at the other passengers on the train who had been so keen to look before.

As soon as they got onto the carriage, Jacob fell asleep. She’d probably accidentally worn him out with all her magical manipulation of his body, and the sheer amount of charm energy she’d had to put in the air around him. Asleep, his eyebrows were raised, eyes tightly closed, lips slightly pursed. He looked at peace. Yet, she couldn’t help thinking about Queenie, that blonde woman. If she had really been his lover, what on earth had possessed her to join the very wizard that wanted to destroy all of his kind? Lally had never been easily charmed, so maybe it was just her suspicion getting in the way. But it was still sad. She didn’t claim to know how painful it was to watch someone she was close to make a choice that went against everything she believed in, but damn if it didn’t look like it hurt.

Lally gazed out of the window at the night sky. Perhaps she could start writing a letter to Dumbledore, but she saw no point in hurrying. Grindelwald, after all, had already got away, and Santos still lived. Surely that was all they could’ve done.

It was the first time she’d been on a Muggle train for a while. She didn’t miss the looks. And it wasn’t like she was getting any less determined now, but she did miss that degree of enthusiasm she’d felt when stepping aboard that train with Newt and the others for the first time. Of course, it helped that Newt had flattered her a little, but there had been some collective energy there, a sense of determination no matter how sceptical Theseus had sounded listing out their talents. Calling her a schoolteacher, too! She should have called him a glorified form filler, pencil pusher, stick-in-the-mud in response.

Lally gently huffed. Her fingers went to curl around the spine of her book, but there was nothing there any more.

What was the next stop? Give up? Wait? Enter some kind of complicated, strings-attached negotiations with Grindelwald? Try and hunt down the missing member of their team?

Because, after all, nothing made less sense than abandoning the most politically influential person in the group to the same wizard who could use it to bring down the entire British ministry. And then the question after that would be what to do if he did return. It would be one thing if he’d spent his time in captivity, being trapped, alone, and scared, but faithful. It would be another if he came back, having switched to Grindelwald's side, just like Queenie, and razed their already shaky plans to the ground.

Lally wasn’t sure if he had it in him: which then made it possible he was going to be coming back in a box.

She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Theseus, with his conventional success as an Auror and war hero, and Newt, the eccentric magizoologist, seemed like polar opposites, but Lally had observed the deep affection and respect they had for each other. And after all, she’d communicated with Newt by letter for long enough to consider him a good friend and trust his judgement. Surely someone related to Newt Scamander by blood couldn’t be so bad.

She’d hoped they would have been able to counter Grindelwald scoring control of practically the entire wixen world with their resistance. She remembered they'd debated about that on the train. It had left her distinctly un-surprised that Theseus argued for the importance of maintaining order and keeping peace in the unpredictable and chaotic wizarding world, while she tried to convince him that challenging the status quo could be a good thing. To that, he’d crossed his arms and leant back in his chair, raising both eyebrows and pointed out that he’d never said exactly the contrary.

Oddly enough, the longer he was missing, the more she actually remembered those few moments where they had interacted, wand permits aside. Not that it did much for either of them now.

Chapter Text

Tina stood in the park, the wind tugging gently at her hair and long dark coat. Her arms were preemptively crossed. Her stomach was churning worse than any of the cases of food poisoning she’d got from the seediest of New York’s street market hot dog stands, and she had no doubt it was at least ninety percent because of the younger Mr Scamander. The other remaining percentage could be allocated to the constant small memos that had managed to determinedly follow her all the way across the ocean on their magically-waterproofed origami paper wings. She slapped one out of the air and crumpled it into her pocket, although not before giving it a perfunctory check.

In fact, if Tina remembered correctly, Lally might have just been the person to patent the idea to MACUSA. She wouldn’t blame her good friend for being hounded by stupid reports about her stupider Aurors—the usual suspects, by all accounts, the kind of overly masculine hotheads who couldn’t keep their wands to themselves—to add work stress to her general stress.

She was MACUSA’s Chief Auror. Mercy Lewis. And yet, Newt Scamander might make her lose her job once again.

I can’t let that happen, she thought firmly.

On the other hand, if what was written in the letter was really true, then she was one of the first respondents to a coverup of the rightful missing persons process by none other than Albus Dumbledore, who she would have liked to trust. But something about him was as slippery as an eel, as Queenie might have said.

She swallowed hard and looked out across the landscape of the rolling hills of the park. Had they really both lost siblings to Grindelwald? Again, they had a strangely growing amount in common.

“Porpentina,” she warned herself aloud. This was not a little excursion to think about a relationship they’d both left several years in the past, nor was it some kind of mad dash across the pond to chase her heart. It was a matter of international security, the kind that took years of clawing up from the bottom to even hear of, yet alone resolve.

Tina took a step back as there was a sudden blur of motion near the tree on her left. Heart hammering, she folded her arms tighter.

“Mr Scamander,” she said coolly.

He pulled a leaf out of his hair, watching the tree behind her with immense care as he crossed the awkward distance between them. It took long enough that she really should have said something further, but what exactly she could say wasn’t springing to mind.

The obvious thing to do was question exactly what was going on. Sensibly, the letter hadn’t mentioned too many specifics, but—how on earth had this man managed to lose the Head Auror of his own Ministry?

“….Tina,” Newt said. “You don’t—erm—how was your journey?”

“I have seven days and then I have to go back,” she said. “I’ve taken all my leave from the last year and accumulated it for this. And I’m sorry, Newt, but once those seven days are up, the most I’ll be able to give you is a few hours of time here and there, and certainly not in the form of secret international trips. I can fight for those hours, but trust me, it’ll take some fighting.”

“Oh,” he said, rounding his shoulders so that he could trace his fingers over the edge of his cuff. “I understand. That makes sense.”

“Unless it becomes an international incident,” Tina said, which was a key detail of this new case she’d been thinking about for hours and still not managed to reach a conclusion on. “Which, in my opinion, it sounds like it should have been a few weeks ago, in Europe at least.”

“Ah,” Newt said. “Well, that’s partly the problem, you see. The German Ministry didn’t actually have any records—“

“Which means he should have been reported missing, unless you think he’s hiding from you,” Tina said levelly.

Newt glanced up at her through his fringe, eyes a little wide. “We can’t.”

She blinked. “Wait—not at all?”

“I don’t think so,” Newt said.

“Don’t think so?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he repeated, glancing uneasily around the park, keeping his distance as if sensing her frustration. She couldn’t blame him. It was something she’d noted herself since becoming Chief Auror; her irritation had gone from being generally laughed at to being taken at least a little seriously.

“Because Theseus is hiding from you?” Tina asked incredulously.

“It’s not quite that,” Newt said. “It’s more along the lines of—well—this plan we have, it’s not really been sanctioned by the Ministry, and they’d probably think it should have been. And, um, they think Dumbledore is working with Grindelwald. It’s stupid, really stupid. But that’s what they think. But because the German Ministry won’t admit to the fact that it was their Aurors who arrested him and took him somewhere than the Erkstag—“

“—which itself isn’t meant to be in operation at all,” Tina noted.

“—no, exactly, which isn’t meant to be in operation—and if he’s not there, then, then it looks bad for us,” and Newt inhaled, nostrils flaring. “It doesn’t matter whether we look good or not, but if the Ministry arrests Dumbledore or finds out what we’re doing, there’ll be no one to stop Grindelwald.”

Tina nodded, feeling a little faint. “Oh. That makes more sense. So what are you doing?”

Newt scuffed his feet. “The plan is that no one knows the full plan. We have to be unpredictable, you see; but I can tell you everything I know anyway. We might just have to ask Dumbledore first, to check.”

“We don’t need to do that,” Tina said. “Tell me.”

Newt’s throat bobbed. “Of course, I can. But you seem a bit unsure?”

“Not really,” Tina said. “I’m just confused, probably as confused as an outsider might be at this bizarre scheme. Especially one that neither the Ministry nor MACUSA was made fully aware of. That could be—bad.”

He smiled. “When isn’t it?”

Tina bit back a laugh. “Yes, when is you getting involved with our wizarding governments not a bad idea?” she said, thinking back to New York.

If this had the potential to go more wrong than getting sentenced to death by Grindelwald disguised as her former boss, then Tina would be a smart woman and a sensible Head Auror to walk away at this point before they left both Britain and North America stranded.

She frowned. “You look far too relieved considering I haven’t told you anything about what I’ve found. For all you know, it could be nothing useful.”

“I’m just glad you came,” he said softly, stepping closer. His coat was made of greyish wool; she wondered where the peacock blue had gone.

“Why did you think I wouldn’t?” Tina asked, her breath catching in her throat.

She’d spent hours thinking about that letter, far too many of them while being on the clock. She wanted to do the right thing, and could even recognise it might have counted as one of her duties at Head Auror to consult on the case if the Ministry had been made aware of it. But above all, what Tina had to consider the most was that this would be digging up the past all over again for a relationship that maybe could have been several years ago. Not any more. She’d started seeing Tolliver on and off; hadn’t she? She’d moved on with her life. It wasn’t like Newt had taken frantic steps to stop her doing so.

She unfolded her arms and shoved her hands into her pockets, looking out over the park. There was an old iron-wrought bench near the main path by the river, but for now, they both lurked among the trees like shadows.

“After the French Ministry, I mean, and I know you and Theseus didn’t have much of a conversation after we nearly burnt down Paris by proxy. So, I suppose, I can understand why you might be a little reluctant to…” Newt trailed off and gave a shrug, as if that explained everything.

Tima looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He watched her expectantly, lips parted, his windswept hair shadowing his gaze.

“Do you mean—“ Tina started. “—that you think I wouldn’t come and help you because I don’t like Theseus?”

“You’d be one of the first, I admit,” Newt said. “But he was quite angry on that day, and we both did probably want to kill one another, so I think he came across at his worst, if I’m honest.”

“I don’t dislike Theseus,” Tina said. “Certainly not enough to ignore that his vanishing is a significant issue on all counts.”

“Oh,” said Newt, shoulders slumping at her incredulous tone. “Oh, that’s good. I was worried. I don’t think it was the best first impression and everything moved too quickly to make much of a second. And of course, people rarely look beyond the first impression—although I’m not saying you’re like everyone. In fact, you’re entirely different.”

He gave her a small, tentative smile.

Tina took a deep breath. “Newt, it was more that I wasn’t sure about coming because I wasn’t sure about—what our relationship really is. Whether—well—I don’t even know where to begin—but it’s so complicated and I just don’t want to take the risk of everything falling apart. I’ve not got Queenie. All I have left is this job…I can’t do what we’ve already done again, only with a few years’ pause.”

Newt’s smile faded.

“I’m sorry,” she said instinctively.

“Don’t apologise,” he said. “That’s fine. I understand.”

Tina felt the need to bring the subject back around to the matter in hand, as much as she would have liked to pressed down on their old, shared wound, even if it was just to help her understand her own feelings.

“No, I mean, I don’t think there were any hard feelings about that incident. It’s not like I threw him down the stairs or anything worse than ego-bruising; and anyway, he sent me a note to congratulate me when I became Chief Auror.”

“That’s nice,” Newt mumbled. “He likes sending notes. Short and efficient ones, when he doesn’t have the material for a lengthy letter, but I’m afraid, with me, he usually does.”

“So how have you kept this from the Ministry? Surely they’ll be getting suspicious? And if something happens because we took too long—then, won’t they definitely—?”

“Letters,” Newt said.

“Not from you?”

“From Theseus,” Newt said, hissing the last few syllables through his teeth in some discomfort. “Forgeries. But they trust him enough to believe them, it seems.”

She rocked back and forth onto the balls of her feet, pondering this from the perspective of an insider. “Are you certain that they haven’t already realised and are keeping it quiet to see what you do next?”

Newt paled. “We haven’t thought about that. We’ve barely had time—I mean, you might have seen the news about Lally and Jacob.”

“Jacob tried to assassinate Grindelwald, yes,” Tina said. “So what has Dumbledore actually said to you about this? Because he’s your brother, Newt.”

“Dumbledore doesn’t say much when people go missing,” Newt said. “Or when they die. I think it’s too difficult for him.”

“Leta?” Tina asked, remembering with a pang the first time she’d seen the photograph in the case and then that magazine spread, which had been all too convincing with the way the beautiful woman’s eyes sparkled and smiled when she gently placed her hand on Newt’s back: at his book signing too, of all things, being the one person there for his dream. These brief memories were chased by an immense wave of guilt. If she was still jealous, she was competing with a dead woman, while at least Newt could make the claim that Tolliver was alive and kicking. Sometimes, she thought, unfortunately so.

Newt nodded and then gave a hapless shrug, pain flickering across his face. He nodded again and then fiddled with his case, as if for something to do.

Tina coughed. “So your team—you’ve got Lally and Jacob, Albus Dumbledore…?”

“Me,” Newt said. “Bunty, Yusuf Kama, and Theseus.”

“Do you have any leads? Any ideas?”

“Our progress has been dismal. We got too tied up with the German Ministry, I think, and the buggers have given themselves an excellent head start. So nothing solid yet—and it’s even harder that we’re trying to keep it all quiet.” Newt sighed. “Especially given my status at the Ministry—there’s no one there who’ll act as a covert contact for me.”

“That’s why you need me, I suppose,” Tina interjected, trying to sound hopeful. “Obviously we don’t operate primarily in Europe, so all we have are reports from the Ministries. And I was wondering why they were getting worse over the last few weeks.”

Newt gave a weak smile. “You could call it a downside of Theseus being a good Head Auror. Those seem to have accumulated for the both of us over the years.”

She chewed her lip. “Hmm. It’s worth looking at all the reports of wizard on Muggle crime in Germany and its bordering countries from the last—two, three months? Grindelwald has a track record of creating new safe places by simply removing the prior inhabitants.”

Newt pulled a dogeared journal out from his jacket pocket. “I’ve already taken a stab at it.”

“How’d you get access?” Tina asked.

He looked sheepish, running a hand through his messy fawn coloured hair. “Nonhuman contacts, if you catch my drift.”

“Please tell me you put the files back, Newt.”

“Of course I did. Theseus would have my head if I didn’t. It’d be a step beyond just embarrassing him if I started actively sabotaging his case files,” Newt replied in a rapid-fire stream, and then paused. It had started to rain.

Tina pointed her wand up to the sky, creating an invisible umbrella that kept the rain off her dark Auror jacket, and watched as Newt set down his case on the dampening ground, noticing the tan leather didn’t darken at all. He flipped the latches and brushed off his coat, glancing up at her.

“I thought we could discuss it in my case,” he said. “I have some notes. And I also have copies of the letters I sent, in case you want to see or any have crossed onto your desk.”

She eyed the open lid and gave a reluctant nod, glancing at the purple-grey sky. Fat drops of rain started to fall on the leaves, creating the beginning of what promised to be a percussive symphony.

“I promise all the inhabitants are fairly secure," he said, ducking his head into the case and giving it a quick check. "It’s a bit more sheltered."

Tina hesitated for a moment, not sure if it was wise to go into Newt's private space, but the rain quickly started to pick up, making it clear that they wouldn't be able to have their conversation in the park.

"All right," she said, hooking her hands over the sides of the soft leather and tentatively following him in.

His workshop was almost the same as she remembered. Wooden and rickety, but still innumerably charming. It was in a state of what looked like organised chaos. At the moment, it was dimly lit, with just a few flickering candles casting shadows across the walls.

Newt cleared off a small space on his desk, quickly gathering up his notes and parchments, arranging them in a neat pile. Tina watched him for a moment, noticing the way his hair had been soaked by the rain and the way he bit his lip as he concentrated.

"So. What have you found so far?" she asked, pulling her coat more tightly around herself.

“A pattern of behaviour,” Newt said.

Tina looked at the way his small pieces of parchments fit together into a rough and bedraggled map of Europe, marked here and there with crosses and what looked more like ink blots than anything intentional. Spatially, she couldn’t see anything of note.

“You’ll have to explain it to me,” Tina muttered after a few minutes, defeated.

Newt planted his hands palm down on the map and leaned over it, narrowing his eyes in concentration. of Grindelwald's attacks. He began tracing the dots with his finger; Tina made a quiet noise of protest and grabbed his hand as his rain-wet fingers smeared the ink.

"You see here," he said, pointing to a smattering of pins in remote areas, "these are the locations where Grindelwald has attacked with little to no magical or Muggle resistance. He's going after places where there are fewer magical folk to defend themselves or where Muggles are unlikely to come into contact with wizards."

“Any close to the German Ministry?” Tina asked.

Newt frowned. “One or two.”

“But if they’re remote, they’re less likely to have been noted,” Tina said. “It might be good for us to try and access some records of the general landscape of these Muggle residences. What kind of buildings does Grindelwald like?”

Newt made a noise that came close to a scoff. “Ones on the nicer end of the spectrum for an organisation of fanatics,” he said. “Although they also tend to wipe a lot of the furniture, essentially creating a clean slate, so unless he enjoys collecting interesting things just to strip them of personality, I don’t know if that’s his main motivation.”

“You wouldn’t have been too bad of an Auror,” Tina said.

“The desk work,” Newt replied simply.

Tina sighed. “Mercy Lewis, you can tell me about it.”

“That and the violence. But, yes, Grindelwald; it’s a tactical move," Newt replied, indeed deciding to tell her more about it—it being his theory—which she was curious about, given he had clearly put his mind to it. "By striking in remote areas, he can establish safe houses for his followers, away from prying eyes. And if he can clear out any existing residents, all the better for him."

Tina nodded slowly. "And what about these other pins? They're in busy urban areas. Places with a lot of tension between wizards and Muggles, from our experience."

"Exactly," Newt said, pointing to another cluster of pins. "These attacks are meant to stoke the flames of conflict between the two groups. Grindelwald wants to create chaos and instability, and what better way to do that than to go for the extremes?"

Tina frowned. "But it must make his day-to-day operations harder. Then again. I suppose we don’t know much about what they do on the daily. Maybe his followers take on a reactionary role. It was sort of demonstrated at the rally, right? He led.”

“Yes, I’d agree,” Newt said, brushing aside the mention of the Paris rally. “Ah, perhaps it's not just about the safe houses. Maybe it’s about the bigger picture. Grindelwald wants to bring about a new order, and he sees conflict between wizards and Muggles as a necessary step in achieving that. By creating tension and mistrust, he's sowing the seeds for his grand plan. So even for his safe houses, something practical and probably boring to him, he’s doing…the greater good.”

“Hm,” Tina remarked. “But bigger picture aside, then, although it makes sense, where are these safe houses still active?”

Newt shook his head. “It seems like the Ministry is only finding them once they get abandoned.”

“What, so you’ve got a steady stream of Aurors going missing when they find an active house, or Grindelwald’s magic is just too strong for the Ministry to find the places?”

Newt thought for a few moments. “It could be a mixture of both. I wouldn’t know what the Aurors are doing, really. Or what happens to them. Whatever desk position they were planning to force onto me at the Ministry has probably been filled by someone else by now.”

“So you needed that Ministry contact,” Tina said.

“Albus wanted me to bring Theseus to him so he could try and convince him to join the team. So I suppose so,” Newt said.

Tina could see a slight shift in his expression. Newt rubbed a hand across his face, pinching his nose as if trying to smudge the freckles away like he’d smudged the ink. She cleared her throat. “Newt—whatever Theseus did, he did it out of his own free will. Aurors are good at risk assessment. He probably had some idea of what he was signing up for.”

“Not really,” Newt said. “We don’t.”

Tina furrowed her eyebrows. “We’re coming dangerously close to war. If MACUSA recognises it, the British Ministry has already or will soon. It’s not like you tricked him. Got it?”

“Ok,” Newt mumbled. “But contrary to popular belief; I do trick people sometimes.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Tina said, the tone of which she suspected passed Newt by.

She frowned at herself, disappointed that she couldn’t seem to let it go, but then again, there was something faintly different about Newt too. It was hard to pin it down, especially given the difficult circumstances, but there was a hint of bitterness about him—just the faintest tinge, like the anise aftermath of a sweet cinnamon pastry. It was good they both felt the same way, she supposed. It was better if the feeling was mutual, because they didn’t have any time to waste.

That thought did make her miss their few whirlwind days in New York. They hadn’t had time then, either, but they’d both been happy to sacrifice it, called on by their morals and not their duties, standing on the precipice of a blossoming war with all that brave new hope.

Now, they were jaded, and she felt like a cockroach with a hard, glistening mahogany shell, polished and as tough as she could manage.

Tina cleared her throat. “Let’s go and meet Albus Dumbledore, then, and I can explain what I’ve found from my leads. We might be able to find clues in the safe houses, but they’ll be older. It would be better if we could catch Grindelwald in action, especially committing some new crime that makes him unfit to stand in the election again. Picquery is desperate for that, for a conviction.”

“It didn’t seem to work that well last time?” Newt said.

“Maybe they’ll learn from their past mistakes. Everyone’s capable of it,” Tina muttered. Before she grew winsome, she stood up, hearing the gentle birdsong from outside Newt’s workshop seep through the wooden walls, heading up to the ladder. “Take me to him.”

Newt blinked. “Okay, I can—but I’m not sure if he’ll want to tell you everything.”

Tina narrowed her eyes. “You’re a Head Auror down,” she said quietly. “And unlike the British, we’re not trying to put Albus Dumbledore behind bars, because we simply don’t believe he can be that important if he’s one man who’s chosen not to take any action against the most prolific dark wizard of this century.”

“Ah—“ Newt said. “I wish I could believe the same.”

She crossed her arms, shifting her weight onto one leg. “Are you concerned that I’ll say something?”

A small smile graced Newt’s face. “From the way that you’ve just suggested I should be, perhaps I am,” he said, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck.

“Well, I will,” Tina said. “Let’s go.”

Newt hurriedly folded up the maps and followed her out of the ladder into the twin. They walked close to one another underneath the magical umbrella; Newt was a little shorter than Tolliver and she appreciated that her arm didn’t ache from holding her wand high.

“Are you going to be able to just take me there, or do you need to blindfold me? Call Dumbledore with some secret code?” Tina asked.

Newt put his hand in his pocket and felt for the small device, a heavy brass oval with a mechanical switch. He glanced up at Tina through his fringe. “That’s—up to you, really,” he said, looking off over the small woodland to her right. “He might be teaching today.”

“Teaching?” Tina muttered.

“Yes, he’s a teacher,” Newt said.

“I was more surprised that he’s not with your team,” Tina said.

“Well, we’re trying to determine the next stage in our plan, and we don’t want to raise any more alarm bells than we have already. This man called Torquil Travers—he works at the Ministry—is keeping a close eye on Dumbledore. Dumbledore said that Travers put Admonitors on him for a while, actually, but someone removed them.”

“It must have been your brother,” said Tina. “The wandwork is very specific to the Ministries.”

“Right,” Newt said, letting out the barest of sighs. “We can stand here and wait for him.”

Tina looked at the park gates, beyond which was a small village with welcoming and gold-lit cafes and shopfronts. The smell of coffee wafted over to her, bitter and fragrant. She pointed up the damp path. “Let’s get a coffee, then.”

“Why?” Newt asked.

“We can sit inside.”

A gentle pink crept over his cheekbones as he looked at the ground. “I suppose we can try that.”

“Just to wait for Albus Dumbledore,” Tina said. “If he wishes to grace us.”

Newt nodded. “Yes.”

They both headed inside. Tina pushed open the door and Newt shouldered his way in behind her, carefully lifting his case to ensure that it didn’t hit the doorway, ducking his head instinctively. The inside was dark and quiet. The tables shone in the low light with either a polished sheen or a residual stickiness.

“Two black coffees, please,” Tina said, and then paused. “Actually, make that one black coffee and one tea.”

With Tina commandeering both the drinks, they crammed into the far corner, Newt taking the chair by the wall and squeezing himself into the hardwood frame. She immediately downed hers in three gulps. Newt stared into his tea, tapping out a syncopated rhythm with his feet against the iron base of the round table, the glow from the bare lightbulb above seeping through his irises each time he glanced up at Tina. She wrapped her hand more tightly around the mug.

“What did you call him with?” Tina asked.

“A device,” Newt said. “It’s not old magic. Maybe a few decades old.”

“Could anyone use it?” she asked, with some interest.

Newt winced. “I think so.”

“So it’s not that special,” she said, and then, a moment later: “I didn’t mean that to come across in a harsh way.”

“It happens,” Newt said, looking up and half-grimacing. “I can understand. It seems to be one of my specialties.”

She raised her eyebrows and he fiddled with the edge of his sleeve. “Being harsh?” Tina asked.

“No. Coming across—“ Newt trailed off as the bell hanging over the doorway like a wilting bluebell gave a faint plaintive ding. A hush fell over the coffee shop for barely seconds before a soft blanket of magic enveloped the inhabitants. With that, a familiar figure in a well-tailored suit, with enticing yet opaque blue eyes, strolled over to their table, shrugging his coat off his shoulders.

“Newt,” said Albus Dumbledore, softly, saying the name like a betrayal.

“Good afternoon,” Tina said, lifting her chin.

Dumbledore tipped his head to Tina as if reluctantly doffing his hat, but the smile he gave her didn’t reach his eyes. There was almost tension in his shoulders. Meeting Dumbledore in person always left Tina both struck by and jealous of his easy confidence. Maybe one day she’d learn to be the same, but she doubted it. Newt, as always, was unperturbed by the glimmer of frustration Tina could see in the teacher’s features.

“Albus,” Newt said, dipping his head. “Tina can help us. She said she—knows someone? Um, is that right? She—of course, we can trust her.”

“Congratulations on your promotion,” Dumbledore said. “Yet in light of it, you may understand why I’m hesitant to take the risk to your personal and national security of involving you in this.”

“She’s very—very capable,” Newt said, eyes fixed on the floor.

“I’m sure Miss Goldstein is,” Dumbledore said. He drew up a seat and sat down on the edge, lacing his fingers together.

“Don’t make me fight to take this case on,” Tina said. “Even if it doesn’t seem to be a case as such.”

Dumbledore looked at the table. He shifted, and the seams of his waistcoat gently creaked. “Newt, have you checked Ms Goldstein is who she says she is?”

Newt nodded, which surprised Tina, given that he’d done nothing more than approach her from his usual distance. “Yes.”

She wondered if she should say that he hadn’t done anything of the sort. But Newt would always lie if it meant protecting his beasts, no matter how little he enjoyed doing it. She wondered if the slight shadowing of his eyes was exactly that: whether she was one of his beasts, another in the collection, destined to come second to what seemed a much nobler cause than trying to build anything special with someone as uninteresting as her. After all, she could have been Grindelwald in disguise. Any number of dangerous dark enchantments could have been lingering over her like a swollen storm cloud, invisible to all but the most perceptive Revelio.

Then, like with any cautious animal, Newt was trying to show that he trusted her—whether it was reciprocated or not. Worse, Tina was greatly concerned that it was a condition he wouldn’t be easily cured of.

They almost made eye contact, but Dumbledore cleared his throat, cutting through the tension simmering over the small and greasy table.

“I don’t,” the older man said with a sigh, “think it’s a good idea.”

“Lally can vouch for me,” Tina said, a little miffed. “If you’ve got two Americans on your team already, I’m sure you can manage another.”

Newt made a small noise of agreement, clicking at the buckles of his case. Pickett crawled out of his coat pocket and surveyed the scene, the fragile green leaf on his head twitching with some interest. Tina and the Bowtruckle somehow looked at one another; she could have sworn that the creature gave an almost imperceptible chirp. She eyed Pickett.

Don’t go getting any ideas, she thought. This isn’t going to be like the old times.

With two parents dead to dragon pox, one of her life philosophies was that things that passed, passed. What had happened had already happened. She could worry about it until the crows came home, but she already knew it was a futile effort.

That might have been why the death serum had hooked her with eerie ease. The luxury of nostalgic recollection had hit her with a warmth and softness she’d never felt before in her life. It wasn’t like she was staring moony-eyed at Newt like she would the last memory of her mother. He was an incorrigible and disinterested Englishman—with a track history of trying to escape from her, whether consciously or subconsciously—and that was that.

Dumbledore cleared his throat.

“What do you want to do here? Miss Goldstein—Newt? What have you two been planning?”

“Nothing,” Tina said immediately. Those were two very different questions.

“Not quite nothing,” Newt added. “We think that looking for safe houses is going to be too outdated. We’ll be several days, even weeks too late. And the Ministry is already investigating the various acts of Grindelwald’s followers, whether they’re related to murders or property theft or—“

Tina looked at Dumbledore. “Why haven’t you reported him missing?”

“We cannot.”

“I know why you believe you can’t, but as the Chief Auror of MACUSA, I need to understand this fully—I need this to be justified to be so that I can assist this operation in good faith and know that I’m not aiding an obstruction of the law.”

Newt looked vaguely embarrassed on her behalf, likely having anticipated this typical Auror behaviour but not having expected it to remain so steadfast in the face of Dumbledore himself.

The older man nodded to himself and then leaned forwards a little, eyebrows lightly furrowed. “So,” he said. “Do you trust me?”

Tina leaned back in her chair. “No.”

“Do you trust anyone?”

Her gaze flitted to Newt and then rested back on Dumbledore’s piercing eyes.

“Not really,” she said firmly.

It had indeed been years since she had. She might have trusted her sister, once, but the betrayal felt so enormous that the hole it left felt infinitely long, as if the simple act of Queenie crossing over, like spilt ink, had steeped all her memories in hues of grey; at least Newt’s brother had most likely not gone willingly, or at least not subscribed to the dark wizard’s murderous philosophies on his way out.

“I understand your reluctance.”

“If you’re asking me whether I’m happy being the second Auror you lose on this secretive plot, then my answer is, firstly, no, and secondly, I will not become a casualty of this mad scheme when MACUSA has openly acknowledged that a global effort is required to counter Grindelwald.”

Dumbledore ran his tongue over his teeth and spread his hands in a gesture of acquittal. “From what I gather, the actual resources MACUSA has provided for this claim have been relatively limited.”

“We have domestic tensions to resolve,” Tina muttered. “Grindelwald was created in Europe, yet we got the first stages of the wider fallout. Riots, unrest. Muggle-wizard relations are probably at the worst they’ve been since the Salem witch trials.”

“I trust you, Miss Goldstein,” Dumbledore said. “We have a plan against Grindelwald, potentially the only viable one that’s currently being acted upon. With the election coming towards us at an alarming pace, we are also the only people taking action at the time when it really counts. The next few months will determine the future of the wizarding world. You can be part of saving it. You won’t be able to know the full plan, but you can rest assured that it is worthwhile. I know Grindelwald, intimately so; to the best of my knowledge, this is the only way to counter his foresight, an ability to predict the future to a concerning extent. But not perfectly.”

“Fine. Okay,” she said, lowering her voice. “How much do you communicate with the Ministry? Or are you just on their watchlist? I have a few contacts—we have some theories about what Grindelwald’s next target could be. Between what sounds like concerning behaviour at the German Ministry and the beginnings of disarray at the British Ministry—if you can’t find Theseus Scamander—Grindelwald is no doubt looking to strike in France, China, Brazil, or England. The opposition ministries—led by the Brazilian Ministry—are attempting to open up a court case against Anton Vogel that MACUSA is prepared to back.”

Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully. “Thank you for that insight. We were indeed present to witness the fall of the German Ministry. Vogel’s eating out of someone’s palm, that’s for certain, although we haven’t yet confirmed that Theseus being arrested by his Aurors is truly linked to Grindelwald. In that case, Newt—how is your task proceeding?”

Newt ran his fingers over the top of his leather case. “Good. She’s settling.”

“She?” Tina queried.

Newt grimaced. “Maybe,” he muttered. “Please ignore that. Pretend I said nothing.”

She smiled a little despite herself. Newt was like a book that was somehow open and closed at the same time, some kind of paradoxical and impossible thing with pages inside that she’d already read and was achingly familiar with and pages that she’d never see.

“Adding you into the plan at this stage is unpredictable,” Dumbledore said. “At least, from the perception of an outsider.”

She could tell what he was implying and was ready to let him down slowly, ignoring the lightness of his tone, an attempt to be encouraging in the face of her stony resistance.

“Newt and I don’t send many letters,” Tina said. “In fact, that this rare one was a plea for help didn’t make it easy. To be honest, I also thought about not coming as much as I did about making this visit to Europe. That would complicate the foresight, would it?”

“I think so,” Newt said. “Thank you, though…for being willing to help. I’m…truly grateful.”

She swallowed. “Deep down, I knew I would,” Tina added quietly. “If that will mean anything to Grindelwald.”

It was embarrassing to admit, but she felt as though she had to say it, lest the knowledge somehow bring the whole mission down like a pack of cards in the face of the dark wizard’s foresight.

“Grindelwald might have some inkling you were planning to join us, but if we keep our step fast then it should remain just that,” Dumbledore said. He held out his hand for Tina to shake. “In that case, Ms Goldstein, you can join us for as long as you see fit, and provide the aid you have the capacity to. It would be excellent to have the help of a skilled Auror like yourself. And I promise we will not let you get lost.”

She shook his hand.

“Then you’ll leave it up to Newt and I to chase this court case lead?” Tina asked.

“Of course,” Dumbledore said.

She took a deep breath. “Perfect.”

“So,” Dumbledore continued, voice a little weary, although Tina could neither place it nor know enough about the man to know why. “Interestingly, although I’ve heard a lot about you—and we’ve managed this entire conversation—I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced, and I think it would be only polite.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you from the other side of the pond,” she said. “But, sure. I’m Tina Goldstein. Head Auror at MACUSA. Nice to make your acquaintance in person.”

“I’m Albus Dumbledore,” he said, and they exchanged a firm handshake. “Professor of Defence against the Dark Arts of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, although many would say that’s not all I am, and have far more accursed titles in mind.”

“Excellent. I have a week at most,” Tina said. “How is your team organised? Will you let Newt out into the field?”

“Of course.”

“Hmm—so no structure? Who was backing up Lally and Jacob at the election dinner?”

“Structure creates predictability.”

“I assume that’s why you invited a No-Maj on your mission,” Tina said, a little ruefully, because he wasn’t just any No-Maj, but someone she considered a friend. “because I suppose that would be the last thing a powerful dark wizard would expect, being attacked by a non-wizard. I’m glad you at least had Lally look after him; I can’t think of a faster-thinking witch.”

“Do you and Lally know one another?” Dumbledore asked.

“We’re old school friends,” she said, and then stood up, ending the conversation. “Dumbledore, here’s my plan. Newt and I will find my contact and then follow the trail over the next two days. We won’t intercept Grindelwald directly or confront him. Ideally, he won’t even see us. We just need to be able to gather evidence that might suggest what safe house he is at, and where Theseus might be.”

“If Grindelwald has Theseus, yes,” Dumbledore said. “But certainly do not use force. Grindelwald has defeated more than ten Aurors at a time. Avoiding a face-to-face encounter could mean the difference between life and death, and that would be a wise idea, Ms Goldstein.”

“Who’s the contact?” Newt asked.

Tina took a light hold of his arm. “We can talk about it later.”

Newt winced and gently pulled his arm away. She felt her stomach drop a little, annoyance at herself rippling through her for having forgotten the most basic of things. How was she meant to remember? He’d never stayed pinned down long enough for her to truly learn all the little quirks she caught glimpses of—and wanted to know. She shook her head and combed her hair back from her ears.

Dumbledore seemed to sense the conversation had come to its slow and halting end as well. With a light sigh, as if getting up after a satisfying meal, he planted both palms on the table and pushed back his chair. None of the other customers turned their heads at the screech of its wooden legs, too fully immersed in the heavy Muffling charm blanketing the small cafe, blocking out even the steady drumming of rain hitting the pavement outside.

“Newt, I’ll be either at the safe house or at Hogwarts. Please keep me updated; and stay safe.” The older man winced, tracing an uneasy thumb around his neck. “I’m afraid I will not be able to answer any of your summons. The troth—I sense it—grows unhappy. At least it means you two may be close to something that approximates a more against him, but please, please don’t confront Grindelwald. Remember—force gets us nowhere.”

Newt hummed in agreement. “I suppose that includes a non-forceful confrontation.”

“I’m afraid Grindelwald may have become increasingly incapable of such,” Dumbledore said.

“He’s high off winning,” Tina said bitterly. “Anyone who reads the papers can see that. He’s got enough followers, almost enough to do whatever he wants.”

“Then, I have faith in you both that you’ll be able to take away one thing he does want,” Dumbledore said.

“I don’t think it’s Theseus,” Newt said under his breath, so quietly it was barely more than a breath.

Dumbledore either didn’t hear or pretended not to. “Best of luck. I will do what I can when I can.”

With that, he strode from the cafe, leaving more rapidly than when he’d arrived, as if whatever troth he was referring to—did he mean a blood troth? Tina wondered. Magic that ancient and dangerous?—was driving him away from the pair.

Tina cleared her throat. “What do you mean, you don’t think he wants Theseus?”

Newt gave a shrug, heavy and limp. His grey coat slid a few inches down his right shoulder. “Forget I said anything.”

“No, Newt, please tell me,” she said, leaning forwards.

He pressed his lips together and shook his head, clicking at the latches of his briefcase again. “Maybe later—maybe after this.”

There was a brief silence.

“So, I suppose I’m not allowed to meet the team yet,” Tina said.

Newt shook his head slowly. “I think…that we might be staying in my case. I promise it isn’t that bad. And the worst of the moon calves’ digestive issues seemed to have passed a few days ago.”

She gave him a wan smile. “So here we are again,” she said.

“Except this time you’re not trying to confiscate my case,” he pointed out.

“Knowing what I do now, I never would,” Tina promised.

He returned her smile, familiar dimples appearing, the light in his eyes low and faded as he flicked his gaze up to meet hers. She was struck by how tired he looked, something that she’d never really noticed before from his oddly timeless appearance.“There. Well, in that case, I suppose—that nothing being the same—that changing—maybe isn’t so bad.”

Chapter Text

When they’d entered, he’d seen her already looking for ways out. In a quiet corner, before entering the battlefield of charged social interactions about the Lestrange family’s history, interspersed with relatively friendly conversation with his colleagues and the occasional genuinely interesting person, Leta had told him in no uncertain terms that she was fully prepared to leave without him should the situation require it.

“Temporarily, I hope?” he joked. “Otherwise the Scamander might start going down in history as disappearers of elegant women dressed as ravens.”

She giggled, swatting lightly at his arm. “Yes, temporarily. If I’d planned to abandon you entirely this evening, then I wouldn’t have come.”

“There’s going to be no abandoning,” he said, clarifying the moment she raised her eyebrows at him: “In spirit.”

“Mmh, yes—well, in spirit, I’m sure that unless I manage more than three flutes of champagne, I would have much rather stayed at home.”

“It might be fun.”

“You know me,” Leta said wryly. “I’m the notorious murderer of fun.”

He leaned in. “I distinctly recall that being my role,” he noted, harking back to one of their old arguments. “What did you tell me again? It started with something like—“

“Don’t remind me of what I said here! Everyone’s going to know if you talk as loudly as that!” She tried to grab at his nose, but Theseus dodged, already grinning. “And it’s not like I’m wrong, you know. Don’t think I don’t see you in your study with your glasses, getting more frown lines.”

He ran his hands over the lapels of the white-tie suit. “I’m happy to play the charmer tonight.”

“Merlin, please do, but just for the first five minutes,” she said, turning to eye the room. “I don’t want to say a single word more than necessary. Unfortunately, the only way I’ll be able to achieve that is if we’re seen taking up all of one another’s attention.”

“People might want to hear what you have to say, you know,” Theseus said, leaning in as she looked up at him with a determinedly sceptical expression.

“I’m an assistant, Theseus, what could I have to say?”

“More than they could ever know.”

“That’s exactly why I’m not saying anything. My job is to drink enough champagne to get pleasantly tipsy; yours is to divert the mad purebloods and then spend the rest of the evening defending me from them. A most valuable way of using all that Auror training.”

Leta said the last words gently, almost teasingly, but she kept looking at the crowd. He shrugged his shoulders. “You know, given that’s an approach that’s worked surprisingly successfully for my brother in most social occasions, I’m inclined to believe it’s an efficient tactic.”

She clicked her tongue and looked at him with knowing eyes. “We both know that if I speak honestly to any of them, I’ll say something I’ll regret. Especially if they talk about…you know. The favoured Lestrange gossip of the month.”

“You might liven up the atmosphere,” he tried, but they both sensed the hint of anxiety in his tone, the tension that had started to stretch between them immediately loosening like worn elastic. “Fine, fine. In reality, it wouldn’t hurt to offend a few of the old brass, but yes, it would concern me as much as you’d expect.”

“Stop worrying about me,” Leta said with a sigh. “I was hexing people by third year, you know.”

The band was playing jazz across the grand hall. She shimmied her shoulders a little to the time of the jaunty beat, bouncing her foot against the floor in a gentle tap-tap of her heel.

“Leta—” he said. “—the evening only has to be for the two of us. I know it’s a Ministry event, and you don’t like them—“

“People are looking,” Leta replied, a hint of bitterness seeping into her dark gaze. She scrunched her nose and visibly forced it down.

“They’ll look all the more when we dance,” and he said it wryly.

“We are not dancing!” she protested, out of principle—he knew that she loved dancing.

“There’s a strong argument to be made for me not doing so in public, but you on the other hand—“

She blushed. “Oh, stop it, you flatterer. I'm sure I step on your feet more than I glide."

He took her hand and twirled her in a gentle circle. In their corner of the room, just about hidden by the marble pillars, the resistance in her arms loosened and she spun, the crown of feathers in her hair remaining perfectly fixed. “Maybe you bring out the best in me,” he suggested, thinking of dancing, of his clumsiness.

Leta took his other hand and stared at him. The slight smile on her face softened. "Sometimes, I worry that I'm holding you back. That my demons will weigh you down."

He collapsed his wrists and stepped closer, fingers curling around hers, feeling the delicate tendons. He brushed his lips against her forehead, heart clenching.

“Those demons are made to be fought, love,” he said, the depths of her eyes, as always, coaxing him into being a gentle hypocrite, to be the foundation she needed.“Don't doubt for a moment that you are anything less than my strength."

They both shared a glance, hearing the band move onto a third song, and headed through the ornate archway, Theseus with his hands in his pockets, Leta with her hands splayed by her sides, like a doll who’d just been placed in an alien environment and hadn’t yet been manipulated into moving. Ahead of them, the room practically glittered, sequins and hair gel and silk everywhere, chandeliers dripping from the ceiling, the smell of bubbly and exuberant alcohols sharp in the air, the murmured rise-and-falls of conversation beaten out by the beautiful music.

“Oh no,” she noted, barely hiding a wince as a familiar bearded man turned around almost instantly. “Yaxley. I hate the way he makes a beeline for me every time.”

“Well, if you insist on being the most beautiful woman in the room—“

“It’s not that and you know it,” she said with a nervous sip of her champagne; he could see her look up at him, searching his face through her kohl-lined eyes, as he gave Yaxley the necessary perfunctory acknowledgement, trying his best to keep the fact the man was staring at his significant other entirely out of his facial expression. “It’s all about blood with Yaxley.”

“Let me go and congratulate him—and we can dance—and I promise I won’t say another word to anyone for the rest of the night.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He walked through the crowd, shouldering through people. Every few steps, he spun back around, a new expression of weary acceptance on his face, finding it funnier the harder she started to laugh, collapsing delicately in on herself, hiding the smile on her face.

In the first few days in Nurmengard, as soon as he’d heard that Grindelwald was leaving, Theseus prepared himself for the worst. Against the dark wizard himself, he’d sworn to fight tooth and nail, even if it killed him. Against several followers, people like Vinda, like Carrow, he had to tame the instinct. He wouldn’t be taken out by a pathetic pure blood purist when all he really needed was revenge and freedom; whether they should have been in that order was something he’d already spent sleepless nights over, with the sinking feeling it was all hopeless anyway.

When they came in, Percival flinched. Theseus stood and crooked both hands above his head, surrendering, trying his hardest to restrain the trembling that started in the small of his back and wound its way through his body right to his fingertips.

“Director, mind if we borrow your Ministry friend here?” Carrow asked, eyes wide and flat, pinned against her head as if they were ready to explode with anticipation.

He wasn’t surprised when they escorted him out.

This was not the place to be an Auror.

Still, it was a good chance to get a better look at the inside of Grindelwald’s headquarters, outside of the wing they’d been stationed in, a myriad of grey-black stone and enchanted locked doors. The inside was freezing cold; visible patterns of ice laced the arched glass planes and dripped across the high ceilings. It reminded him of what Durmstrang might have looked like, according to the handful of former students he’d met in a friendly capacity at various seasons of the Quidditch World Cup through the years. Heavy, austere, and ominous. Uncomfortable in a penitent way, and as usual an odd contrast to the false claims of superiority running through all of Grindelwald’s ideals. Was this his own form of regret? Or was he trying to disguise his lust for unfettered admiration? Were the hard, chilled edges of this castle meant to create a sense of harsh pragmatism justifying the cleanse they all so wanted?

He scowled and almost opened his mouth, but settled for the coppery taste of blood as he split the inside of his cheek with his incisors instead.

Out of the seven, he recognised five, two Germans, two Brits, and someone who’d certainly not been flagged to the Ministry before, but had appeared on the front page of more than one Italian newspaper. The British pair—a man and a woman, Alaric Hawthorne and Phoebe something—concerned him the most, because they’d crossed paths before. Being the Head Auror wasn’t as controversial a position as the Ministry of Magic or the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, provided you managed the office well and kicked out the rotten apples before they could do any damage, but it certainly generated a whole host of very specific enemies: the people he’d had tailed, had investigated, kept dossiers on, and acted as any form of resistance to their doings were rarely pleased to see him on reunion. And that was inside the Ministry, usually, or out in the field, in the worst case.

Him being in their prison wouldn’t even the playing field.

But they weren’t Grindelwald. He could handle whatever they were going to do. It wasn’t like they could get in his head—and he’d kicked Grindelwald out of his head, too—and if they weren’t in his head, then they could do whatever they wanted to his body. The exception was obviously killing him, but it would have to happen someday. As a barrel he’d toyed with staring down for five years, the prospect of death didn’t frighten Theseus.

“Where are we going?” one of his followers muttered.

“Good question,” Theseus said.

This earned him a backhanded slap across the face. “I wasn’t asking you, Head Auror Scamander.”

“Basement,” Carrow said.

Alaric frowned. “Are we certain that our master has nothing…sensitive down there?”

Carrow snuffled a laugh. “Oh, oh, you mean bodies? Corpses? Gellert doesn’t keep dead people lying around—he’s not a monster!”

“The basement is perfectly suitable,” Phoebe agreed, in a velveteen accent. The two Brits took the lead as the Germans hung back a little, encircling Theseus from behind as they conducted a muffled conversation.

“Sie sagen, dass er ein fähiger Auror ist,” one of the men said.

“Ja, er hat sich einen Namen gemacht. Aber er ist nur ein Werkzeug des britischen Ministeriums,” came the reply.

“Eine Schachfigur in der Politik. Sie wollen verhindern, dass Grindelwald einen echten Wandel herbeiführt.”

The woman chimed in. “Aber sie werden ihre Arroganz bereuen.”

“Don’t go whispering without us,” Alaric said, and then in what Theseus recognised as functional German, added with far too much casualness: “Der Überlegenheit Grindelwalds nichts entgegensetzen.”

He recognised a few words: Auror, Grindelwald, British Ministry, name. The vocabulary he had was limited to the classics, the kinds of things that were screamed across a battlefield, all manners of warnings and threats and the occasional bloodthirsty threat against various men's mothers. Some begging. Thinking about it made something in his stomach twist. They were words he was far too proud to repeat now, but he understood why the men had said them, and every other person stepping into those dark trenches, those rain-blasted fields, those machine-gun-rattle nights, had believed themselves strong enough, or patriotic enough, or clever enough: with a different quality, something setting them apart from the rest.

Back in the day, he’d sworn to Percy that he’d get his medal, or whatever offering the Ministry had to give to cover their asses on the fact they were happy to let thousands die without intervention, and then shut up about the war. That intention hadn’t included Grindelwald, most notorious dark wizard of their time, almost accidentally dredging it up while scouring Theseus’s mind for memories of his former lover. It was blasted luck: seriously bad luck.

They descended into the basement. The air was musty and stale, with a hint of something else, something metallic. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw rows of shelves lining the walls, stacked with various dark objects. There were cursed objects, dark books, and even a few vials of what appeared to be blood. He recognised some of them, things he had seen in his years as an Auror, but others were completely unknown to him.

His captors pushed him forward, and he stumbled.

“Careful,” Phoebe said.

He was clumsy—he could admit that—not that being beaten to within an inch of his life by Grindelwald had helped.

Theseus sighed. "What are we doing down here?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, nothing too exciting," Alaric replied. "It's just that, well, it's not every day you get to have a conversation with the Head Auror himself. Why, it's almost half as exciting as getting to meet the Minister of Magic!"

He narrowed his eyes, shifting from one foot to another, and stayed silent. You fucking arseholes, and then, very traitorously, Travers ordered we attend the rally, yet he’s not the one now surrounded by some devoutly anti-Ministry wizards of high society.

Phoebe wandered over to the shelves, her fingers trailing over the spines of the dark books. She picked one up, flipping through the pages with a smirk on her lips.

"Those are forbidden objects," Theseus said, his voice laced with disgust. "You're all breaking the law."

Phoebe laughed, tossing the book back onto the shelf. "We're not breaking the law, Auror. We're simply bending it to suit our needs."

Normally, he quite liked arguing with people who were already too far gone, but this was not the time.

"I gathered as much," he muttered.

Alaric stepped forward, a glint in his eye. "We are here to make sure that you know what it feels like to be treated as we have been treated," he said. "To show you the same disrespect your kind has shown us."

Disrespect? he thought, with some disappointment. Is that what they're already calling justice?

"No idea what you're talking about," he said.

Some of the Ministry lot are probably already in bed with you, if that helps, he could have added, but it wasn’t exactly a diplomatic statement to accuse not one but two sides of treachery.

"You know exactly what we're talking about. You and your Ministry cronies have been treating us like dirt for years. But now, it's our turn to show you who's really in charge. You've been oppressing us, treating us like second-class citizens."

He had always tried to be fair, to do what was right. It was his duty to uphold the law, to protect the innocent. But these people, these radicals, saw him as the enemy. They saw him as the oppressor.

Sometimes, in the Ministry, hearing it all, he wondered if they were right.

But not with this lot. Not with these pureblood ideologists of high society.

Alaric and one of the Germans grabbed him again, hands inescapable. He tried to wriggle out of their grasp, heart starting to drum in his ears, but it was no use. His captors were too strong. Phoebe strode over to one of the shelves and retrieved a small, ornate box. It was made of dark wood and was adorned with symbols he didn't recognise. She brought the box over to him.

"Open it," she instructed, her voice low and menacing.

Theseus hesitated, fingers grazing the smooth lid. The basement smelled musty, earthy, like wet granite. Not like blood, not like that wine cellar in the last place. With a low, bitter sigh, he lifted the lid of the box.

Inside was a dagger.

It glinted in the dim light, its silver blade catching the little light produced by a handful of dulled storm lamps mounted the walls. It was a beautiful thing, with a handle that looked like it had been crafted from ice. It was also dangerous, he knew that much. Theseus had seen enough weapons in his time to know that a blade this fine was effective.

He looked at it for several long moments.

Phoebe smirked. "What do you think, Auror? We want you to use it."

"Use it?" he repeated.

"Use it to show us what kind of man you really are."

He raised his eyebrows, sensing this was veering into dangerous territory. "I'm not a man who usually handles ancient knives."

Phoebe laughed. "But you're a man who handles justice, aren't you? Well, let's see how far your justice goes when it's your own skin on the line."

"If you're going to stab me with this," Theseus said slowly, carefully. "Then you might as well do the job yourself."

"Oh, we don't want to kill you," she said sweetly. "We just want to teach you a lesson. To show you that you're not invincible, that you're not above the law."

He took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves. "What do you want me to do with it?" he repeated. He could try to fight his way out, but there were too many of them. Alternatively, he could try to reason with them, but they seemed determined to make their point.

Phoebe's eyes gleamed with malice. "We want you to use it on yourself."

Theseus felt his heart lurch. "What?"

"To prove your commitment to justice," she said, her voice dripping with venom. "To show us that you are willing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good. That you truly believe in the laws you enforce."

He looked down at his arm, at the scar already curving there, a reminder of what had happened with Vinda. A mark that traced the veins lacing their way up his arm: that he suspected was self-inflicted, despite his void of memories of those two weeks. Biting the inside of his cheek, he lifted the dagger high and dropped it on the floor, stepping away.

"No," he said.

Phoebe's face twisted into a snarl. "What do you mean, no?"

"I won't harm myself to prove a point."

She clicked her fingers and the dagger flew into her hand. His arms were held behind his back by one of the Germans as he was pushed face-first into the floor, barely managing to twist his head in time to save his nose from cracking on the stone. As Theseus struggled to get back to his feet, he felt a sharp pain in his back. He groaned, feeling the weight of one of the men on top of him.

The blade of the dagger traced a cold line down his spine. He could feel the tip of the blade hovering just above the base of his neck, poised to strike.

Phoebe's voice was low and menacing. "You'll do it, Head Auror Scamander. Or we'll do it for you."

His head spun—the adrenaline in his veins had nowhere to go—and the sudden flood of it sent him straight back to the past and its beckoning dissociative gaze.

What had previously been polite conservation had damped down into hushed silence. There was a familiar twist of concern in his stomach as he politely said his goodbyes to the Deputy Head of International Magical Cooperation and slowly spun on his heels, tracking his gaze across the crowd. There were no shouts; no sounds of rogue beasts on the loose. Despite what she’d said about her rebellious youth in Hogwarts, as an adult, Leta had become far better at disappearing than causing a scene.

He had to skirt the crowd in semi-circles, sliding through them with measured apologies like a late audience member might leaving a play at the theatre. The lights had dimmed. At long last, he got to the front row, facing out into the beechwood stage.

Oh, fuck, everyone’s watching her, was his first thought. Theseus had got too caught in the currents of the upper echelons of the Ministry, letting them direct him off to other people and standing in the long conversations that were only interesting to Ministry men. Craning his head forwards, he could hear a few snatches of conversation.

“Her brother will lead us all from the shadows,” a man whispered.

She cut a lonely figure, alone in front of the crowd, sharp face illuminated by the luminescent glow of the dancer’s water-like magic, spinning idly through the air like spirals of smoke.

Theseus held his position in the line, frozen to the spot just as Leta was. Maybe a strategic arm grab? But then they wouldn't be able to easily play it off as an innocuous act of interested spectatorship. Stepping out from the crowd and trying to catch her eye was more likely to stir up gossip. Leta was utterly engrossed by the ribbons of white. If he looked like he was trying to control her behaviour, the assumption made by most would be that her behaviour needed to be controlled: and then the information, gossip couched as fact, would go back to the Assistants’ Guild, and then maybe even up to Torquil Travers.

Fine, that wasn’t a course of action. But then again, maybe later she’d turn to him and tell him this was one of the times where he should have handled the situation for her, where he should have put his trait of wanting to take well-meaning control to good use for once.

He held his breath and waited.

A gossamer-fine ribbon of magic gathered up at the high ceiling and fell slowly, turning from what could have been a simple bundle of gauze, the kind used by Muggle medics, to a fluttering sheet, wide and dramatic, lit from within by the soft light of the chandelier above. Her jaw tensed. She turned back, barely an inch, and then faced the dancer again as if staring down a Boggart.

The dancer kept dancing.

Leta kept watching.

And then, after three long minutes, she took a slow, shaky sip of her champagne, touched the feathers in her hair, and cut across the front row of spectators with head high and shoulders tight.

With a muffled apology to the people hemming him in—stupid gawkers—he stepped out into the wider ballroom, the music still humming in the background, taking a mellow turn. His shoes squeaked against the polished floor as he walked towards the nearest stone arch. One of these would lead to a quieter space, maybe even a way out.

He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He was an Auror, damn it. With a sudden burst of energy, he kicked backwards, feeling his heel connect with something solid. There was a grunt of pain and the weight lifted off him for a moment.

He rolled onto his back, gasping for air. He saw that he had kicked one of the Germans in the face, and the man was now clutching his nose, blood streaming between his fingers. One of his own ribs might have been broken. A feeble wandless summoning charm wasn't enough to pull the dagger from Phoebe's grip, and he wasn't stupid enough to engage in an up-close knife fight, so he stepped towards the far wall, already cursing himself for not having just accepted his fate on the floor.

But then Alaric stepped forward and grabbed the dagger from Phoebe's hand. He looked Theseus in the eye. "Let me do this," he said, a cruel smirk already on his face.

The Germans grabbed him again, pushing Theseus onto his knees. There seemed little point in struggling; he would save his energy for trying to tackle Grindelwald on his return. Alaric took one of his arms, twisting it painfully behind his back, and gouged the knife straight into his skin. Pain burst through him, but Theseus hissed through his teeth, determined to stay silent.

Whatever varnish was on the floor smelled of pear; it reminded Theseus of the old garden in summer. He scanned the cream-coloured walls up ahead, looking for a door. The paintings hung up on the cornices shifted their oil-painted eyes and watched him with heavy suspicion.

“In a rush, young man?” the Minister of Magic from 1867 asked him.

“Not particularly,” he snapped back, instantly regretting it, hoping that the painting wouldn’t tell on him to the next person who wandered down here looking for the bathrooms.

“Looking for a girl?” the man added.

He exhaled and paused. “Yes,” he admitted.

“She might have gone to the bathroom,” said the Minister. “I hope you didn’t upset her. Crossing a Lestrange will get you in deep trouble. What are you, a secretary?”

Theseus huffed. “I’m an Auror, actually.”

“Oh, well, then you should be fine to pursue,” the painting said thoughtfully. “Pursue, as in, the way that Lestranges should be pursued by respectable Ministerial men.”

“Thanks,” he said, voice tight. “I’m actually a Scamander.” 

A gasp. “One of the tainted families?”

“By the way,” he couldn’t resist calling back. “I know you’re an old painting hanging in an irrelevant back corridor, but it doesn’t look good for a former Minister of Magic to be so narrow-minded towards his successor’s employees.”

“This is a function room, I see the best and worst of your lot and that’s it,” came the defensive reply, the brief pearl-clutching gone. “I learn from what you all say to keep my views modern, even if you think yourself so different, hopeful Mr Lestrange.”

“Bloody Ministers,” he muttered.

The Minister from 1874 cracked open an eye. “Harsh words from an imbecile clearly destined to stay in lowly office forever.”

“Look, you’re dead, so I’d appreciate not having to hear your opinion at all, thanks,” Theseus said.

He finally reached the end of the corridor, rounded the corner, and saw the door to a tucked-away bathroom. Swallowing, he went to the door and pressed his ear against the wood, instinctively reaching for the handle.

Someone was crying inside.

“Leta?” he called tentatively.

“Go away!”

“Are you sure?”

She made a half-hearted noise. “It’s a bathroom, darling, you can’t just hang around outside; people are going to think you’re peculiar.”

“Are you on the toilet?” he asked.

“No,” Leta protested.

“Is it a single bathroom or a set of stalls in there?”

“J—just the one,” she managed.

“Then, can I come in?”

She made a quiet, choked noise. “You’re so damned persistent.”

“Sorry, love.” He glanced uneasily down the corridor. “I don’t want to rush you; but maybe you’re right, maybe I should either stay or go. Never mind the paintings—but quite a lot of eyes were on you, and I don’t want to turn it into a scene by doing the wrong thing.”

He knew that she’d probably want him to stay: that for all her secrets and shadows, as much as she wanted to hide, Leta had always wanted to be seen after a life of being ignored.

“Come in, then,” came the surly, tear-stained voice through the door. He exhaled and put gentle pressure on the handle until he heard the lock click, then almost threw himself inside, closing the door hurriedly behind him without a noise.

“That was quick,” Leta muttered, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet with both knees tucked to her chest.

“Like you said—it wouldn’t do to be seen,” he reminded her.

“No,” she agreed, “no, this would be worse than the storage room.”

“Shouldn’t mix work and love, eh?” Theseus said, trying to lighten the mood and also figure out where to put his feet in the small, green-tiled bathroom.

Leta snorted, rubbing the back of her hand over her nose. “We’re in the same department, Theseus; don’t be ridiculous.”

Theseus could feel the tension in the air as he stood there, watching Leta wipe away her tears. He wanted to reach out and comfort her, but he knew that she needed space right now. So, he settled for leaning against the sink, his arms crossed over his chest.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "What happened, Leta?"

She shook her head, refusing to meet his gaze. "It's nothing."

"It doesn't look like nothing," he said gently.

Leta let out a bitter laugh. "It's always something with me, isn't it?"

Theseus didn't answer, but his eyes softened with understanding.

"I just can't do it," she said, her voice breaking. "I can't keep pretending that everything is fine when it's not. I can't keep living a lie."

"What lie?" Theseus asked, his heart pounding in his chest.

"You know," Leta said, finally looking up at him. "The lie that I'm okay. The lie that I'm happy. The lie that I can walk into an event like this and actually mingle with a society that hates me."

"Was it something with the dancer that reminded you?"

She stared at him. "What?"

"When you were looking at the dancer, you seemed like you were watching something other than her. Your eyes were faraway," Theseus said.

"You’re right. It’s not the dancer," she hissed, grinding the heels of her hands into her eyes. "It's that magic, the illusions. It got to me. Maybe I fucked with it by getting too close; it sensed my aura, I don't know, it just seemed to know what to show me."

He didn't want to tell her that she might have seen something that wasn't there, because he knew that in that light, with that type of magic, it could indeed look like falling fabric, white fabric spinning through water: and that was the nightmare she'd told him about. That night, when she was barely ten, when her family were travelling across the ocean and she'd made a mistake. And as a result, her brother had died, just a baby, sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Her shoulders shook with suppressed sobs.

It had haunted her life since.

"It's not your fault, Leta," he said softly, moving closer to her. "You were just a child."

"Children can be bad from the start," she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. "I suppose it’s been years: but I'm never going to get over it. And everyone knows. They talk about my brother being back—I don't know how they can't see that he's dead, that I murdered him. They congratulate me like I'm not a monster, like they care about anything other than my blood. All because my brother is rumoured to be alive among these people that know nothing when I know better than I know anything that I sank him to the bottom of the ocean."

Theseus reached out to her, placing his hand on her back. He could feel her shaking under his touch, but he didn't move away. “I know.”

"They're going to hear me," she managed, speaking the words into his arm. "They're all going to hear me and they're going to know; they're all right outside in that ballroom; oh, Merlin, they—"

"It's okay," he promised. "It's okay."

"What a lovely choice," one of the Germans noted.

Merlin, he was writing something?

"Justice is justice, no matter what the cost," Alaric said, his voice chillingly calm as he carved into Theseus' skin. Then, when the last letter was written, he stepped back, his expression one of satisfied pleasure. A wave of nausea crashed over him from the pain as blood trickled down his arm. The knife was changing hands now.

Don’t make a noise, he thought.

The Germans seemed to take turns, each one of them taking a slice of his skin, their smiles growing wider with each passing moment. He gritted his teeth and stared at the wall, feeling the pain from each cut as it seared through his body. The blood loss was starting to make him dizzy, and he felt like he was going to pass out. With every cut, Theseus felt a different kind of pain; an emotional agony that seemed to seep into his bones. He could feel himself drifting further away, as if his mind was trying to escape from what was happening.

"It's too cramped in here," Leta whispered. "I need air."

"Okay, we can do that," he said. "But just take a few moments first, to collect yourself."

"Oh, because I'm too much of a mess to be seen with you, is that right?" she snapped.

He shook his head. "No, Leta, not at all—it's just I don't want you to feel like they've seen you upset."

"And we're in this bathroom, together," she noted. "Unmarried. It's not proper for me. What does it take not to be called a scarlet woman in these circles?"

"If we stay quiet—this is near the back—and we're not doing anything wrong—" Theseus said quietly.

She looked up at him then, her eyes red-rimmed and vulnerable. "Sorry," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I just feel like being a—you know.”

"It's okay," he said, giving her a small smile. "We're both a bit on edge, aren't we?"

"Hold me," Leta pleaded.

A flush crept up the back of his neck. He glanced at her and was met with a pleading gaze that begged for intimacy.

The bathroom was so small that the only way they could do that was with Theseus sitting on the closed toilet and Leta sitting in his lap; he was quite tall, but she fit perfectly in his embrace. Her hair tickled the nape of his neck as she buried her face in his shirt; he kissed the crown of her head as her hot tears soaked through the cotton of his shirt. The scars of her past were too deep, too ingrained in her soul, to make this an easy situation to undergo so close to the scrutiny of the public eye.

"It'll be fine, Leta," he promised. "We only have to be quiet, so no one can hear us in here and think we’re up to something, okay?"

She nodded against his chest, her body still trembling. He held her close, rocking her gently back and forth until he felt her breathing become steadier.

"I thought I would be better at crying without making this much noise," she managed, the last word of the sentence rising in pitch, and then broke again. "My parents used to—hate it—I—used to be so good at crying in fucking silence!"

"When we get home, love," he whispered, "you can cry as much as you want, and make all the noise you want. But if anyone walks and hears us—"

"When we get h—home," she repeated.

"When we get home," he said.

She screwed her eyes shut, grip tightening. "I can never get it together," she squeaked. "I always do this; I can't escape it, can't escape him—oh, it's what I deserve. Merlin, why did I go here? Why didn't I go outside? I want to scream. I’m going to fucking scream."

"Leta," Theseus said. "Just stay quiet here with me for a little longer. Don't let them hear you; you deserve better than for them to talk about you the way they will if they hear, ok? You're strong, and brave, and kind. A little bit longer. Don't let them hear you cry. Don’t scream here—or do, if you really want, but—” “Don’t bloody tempt me,” she muttered into his neck. “Imagine. I’d be sacked within the hour.”

“Then, love, don't let them hear you scream either."

The sound of a door opening made them both freeze. They held their breath, listening. Footsteps echoed against the floor outside. Theseus's heart pounded in his chest, fear gripping him tight.

The footsteps stopped outside their door.

Theseus gripped Leta tighter, ready to defend her if he had to. But then the footsteps started again, fading away. They both let out the breath they had been holding, relief washing over them.

"Alright," she breathed. "Alright, I'll be quieter."

Theseus held Leta close, feeling her body tremble as she struggled to suppress the sobs threatening to escape. A deep ache settled within his chest, burdened by the weight of their circumstances. That they had to hide within this small bathroom, fearing the slightest sound that might betray their presence. That he had to instruct her to remain quiet, to protect their reputations in a society quick to judge. But he knew no other recourse. Not here, not now. Not with her reputation and his own hanging in the balance.

He stroked her hair, trying to soothe her, feeling the weight of his own guilt pressing in on him. “A little longer, and then we’ll go home, alright?”

What he had intended to say, had he found the words in that moment, was this: In a place where we can be safe, where we don't have to hide, where silence is not imposed, I will bear whatever sorrows you wish to share.

He hadn’t said that. Like an Auror, he’d said, thinking of noises and traces and evidence: Don’t let them hear you scream.

Phoebe's voice brought him back again. "Clean the wounds," she said coldly.

One of them grabbed a bottle of what must have been harsh disinfectant, pouring it over his shoulders as if it was acid. The pain was indescribable; it felt like his flesh was being burned away by the liquid. The fiery anguish of it was meaningless compared to the sharp cuts, but ten times worse; still half in his head, he suffered it, feeling reverential. They thought he’d deserved this. Theseus was inclined to agree. It was almost tempting to dare then to keep going, cut him again, write another word or words or even sentences.

The mantra kept playing in his head. Don’t scream. Don’t—scream.

The Germans stood back, allowing Theseus to slump to the floor, his arms and back stained with his own blood. He could feel himself fading in and out of consciousness, his head swimming with the pain. He knew he had to get out of there, but he was too weak to move.

"What did you write?" Theseus managed, looking at Alaric.

Alaric sneered. "Something to remind you of your place."

"And?" Theseus asked, wanting him to say it aloud.

Alaric's lip curled into a cruel smile. "Traitor," he spat, his voice dripping with venom.

A little longer, and then we’ll go home.

Chapter Text

Percival was shivering, even though the cold had long passed. They’d taken Theseus and then barely moments later summoned him for a mission, almost as if they knew how much it would fuck with him. With no wand, he’d not been able to cast the warming charms the others had.

While Vinda, Yusuf, Aurelius, and a few others had entered the house of a vocal pro-Muggle-marriage protestor in Finland, he’d been stationed outside as a guard. His hat was pulled low over his brows as he watched the quiet street. Snow fell heavy over the cobbles. When he’d still been Director at MACUSA, there’d been some talk about the civil war here and whether it required intervention, even in something as simple as diplomatic support. The conclusion had been a certain and definite denial. They’d wait until there was a building ready to house an American embassy and then settle for diplomacy.

He’d received letters about it even in the Ukrainian People’s Republic while stationed there. It had been dissolved back into the damn Soviet Union again: Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or some other moniker.

Percival wondered briefly whether they’d managed to get free in the six years that he’d been held hostage. It was like he was in a bubble from the outside world, from outside news, a far cry from the on-the-ball geopolitical hawk he’d been. No use knowing anything if it wasn’t in service to protect.

Here, it was almost better to stay stupid, stay useless. It had earned him being a sentry, pathetic, wandless, still guilty, but not one of those inside the house. Mercy Lewis knew what they were doing.

She sure as hell does know, he thought bitterly. I see why the No-Majs like their God. Gives you a sense of some kind of justice when they’ve got you pinned like a rat.

Looking at the darkened windows of the house, wondering if the target in question had even been home—or just died quietly—he raised one hand slightly, just about to elbow level. His breathing echoed in his ears. If they came out now, he could get in trouble.

What were the chances that they stepped out at this precise moment?

But they could.

Try and cast the charm, Graves, he thought, mouth tightening and nostrils flaring as he felt his fingertips tingle. The phantom pain of his missing finger burnt like a fucking flame, sending searing nerve pain up his wrist.

A small grunt escaped him as he took a half-step back, the snow and grit crunching against his heels. There was a soft pop, like putting a dislocated joint back in place, and he felt a faint hot seeping of his abused magic to his hand. He got slightly warmer, maybe by a half degree. The charm was weak. If he’d been worse at wandless magic before, he doubted he would have been able to cast it at all.

His magic sat inside Percival like a dark, roiling mess: a burned-up cloud of pressed toxic fumes, tarry and poisonous and utterly destroyed.

Whatever it was, however what Grindelwald had done to him over the six years could be described, it was probably infinitely better than what would have happened to the Finnish man if he was home.

The door creaked open. Percival shrank back into the wall, feeling the icy plaster drop cold water down the back of his neck, and waited.

“We’ll have to return another time,” Vinda said, stroking a hand over her hair and looking down the street with red, downturned lips.

“You,” she added, more than a hint of bitterness in her voice, “don’t look as though you care either way.”

Percival looked blankly back at her. “No one came up the street. No one looked our way.”

“And so you didn’t raise the alarm? Well, vraiment, that’s the idea. It’s…how do I say it? Simple enough that a dog could do it?”

He nodded, not having the words, missing the day when he had so many, could arrange them so artfully, that leadership was second nature, that speaking quietly like this wasn’t treated like a shameful eventuality of submission. Now, he could scream in the face of any of them and he doubted it would make a difference. Percival was like wallpaper to everyone except Grindelwald.

And now, Theseus.

So consumed by the demands of the present, of not keeping up appearances and not making a mistake, he’d almost forgotten that the other group had borrowed the man. As much as Theseus liked to pretend otherwise, shit was happening to him, and it was fucking obvious to everyone around them. Percival didn’t understand the insistence on lying, as if not talking about it would somehow undo the fact it happened.

Vinda raised an eyebrow. “Director, are you with us?”

He cleared his throat and dipped his head.

“Tell us, do you think Grindelwald has returned to Nurmengard? You, if I recall, are quite the favourite of his, unless his new pet is much preferable. But I think, between his tastes and my own experience, you remain the—“

“The what?” Percival asked.

“More intelligent, more agreeable, more visionary,” Vinda said. “You have been taught well, and you continue to follow your teachings well, oui? I won’t tell him, don’t you worry. It’s just how I see it. And I did source the cerebrum vendium—I won’t claim to have Grindelwald’s excellent foresight, but I do know some things.”

She gave him a look of dark complicity, the faint shadow over her eyes shimmering a little. The snow was so white that it reflected the limited light; he could see clearly, even though his mind was elsewhere.

“You’re a good listener,” Vinda said with a small smile, and handed him the Portkey, painted nails brushing up against his hand; his skin looked old and tired. His ability to Disapparate had been obliterated after a gruesome attempt to escape on the second month in—and the skill had never returned. It made sense. His body remembered the feeling of being torn and refused to force itself headlong towards it again. Since then, he’d reckoned with it so many times that it threw bile up into his throat if he so much as considered it.

She banished the accumulating snow from her dark hair and coat with a flick of her wand and twisted on her heel, disappearing into thin air. Yusuf gave him a deep, inscrutable look above the upturned collar of his brown coat and followed suit, with the others disappearing away one by one until it was just him and the Portkey.

Every time, it was a reminder of how screwed he was: because he looked down the street, not to think of a way out, but to check no one would stop him from returning. Tightening his grip, Percival let the Portkey drag him back to Nurmengard.

Back in Nurmengard, as soon as Percival was sure the others had returned to their dedicated quarters or even returned home—this was originally intended as a prison, after all—he went straight to the wing where he and Theseus had already spent more than a week since being transferred over from the Black Forest mansion.

It was a collection of rooms, and as he hurried through the corridors of stone, looking inside each dark and unfurnished one, he was struck by a growing fear that the other man was simply gone.

“Theo…?” Percival called out, voice cracking from disuse. His leg was starting to hurt. He grimaced and kept limping forwards, knee burning with pain. Every shadow looked like a person; every quiet groan of the wind outside the thinly paned windows sounded like an angry inhale, a precursor to a beating.

Like a madman, he was flinching at each noise, but his ears were so sensitive to sound that by the time he reached the largest room, what might have been a meeting room of sorts, with a few lonely heavy chairs scattered around, he swore he heard someone breathing.

“Hello?” he called.

In the corner of the room, by the large ornate arched windows that looked out onto the mountains, was a ladder of dark, crumbling wood. On their first night, Theseus had climbed it, investigating, breaking two rungs. It led to a small and empty crawl space, no doubt designed for some future servant to use to adjust the iron cast chandeliers from above.

He tried to shake out the cramps in his leg as best as possible and set both hands on the seventh rung. Thanks to the Finnish chill, the blood was still returning to his fingers; it took all his strength to haul himself up onto the stupid thing.

“Ah,” he breathed in sharp disgust; the wood was full of splinters and sticky. Trying to ignore the crimson flaking off onto his hands, Percival determinedly pulled himself up into the crawl space, huffing like an old man.

There, lying on his back in a pool of blood, tall enough that he had to stretch his legs out over a gap in the beams, was Theseus.

The breath was knocked from Percival’s lungs.

Theseus propped himself up on his elbows—the crawl space was high enough that Percival could probably stand hunched over—and gave him a weary look. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he muttered. “It’s all superficial. Just thought there’d be a chance in a million they couldn’t find me again if I put myself away somewhere small.”

Percival swore at least three times as he got his malfunctioning legs up into the space and finally managed to drag himself far enough that he could crouch next to his friend. “You took a beating.”

“Oh, yeah, just a little, Perce,” came the reply. Theseus lay back down and let out a gentle groan. “Fuck’s sake. Every time he’s not here, I end up worse off.”

Percival touched his forearm. “Don’t use the name,” he warned.

“I’ll be thoughtful about it when I do, don’t worry. I’ll make sure I follow it with is a wanker.”

The idea of laughing at the sentiment bubbled up in his chest but was met with a hard lump of fear. Grindelwald was practically omnipresent. It was too dangerous to laugh like that. Theseus fumbled with the buttons of his shirt and pulled out one arm, rolling over away from Percival to demonstrate the mess of gouges on the back of his arm and shoulder. They were deep, seeping congealed blood.

“I’m healing them, but it’s taking a damn long time,” Theseus explained, hastily getting his arm back into the shirt before relaxing back against the floor of the crawl space again. Percival snapped his fingers. At first it didn’t work. With a frown, he tried again, and finally conjured a small, feeble illuminating charm, which he pressed up against the exposed triangle of wall.

“Mercy Lewis.”

“It shouldn’t get infected. If I can seal the lot now, that is. Pretty sure they put some kind of antiseptic on me. Unless it was bleach, in which case I’ll just imminently hope I kick the bucket and save myself the trouble, because it does damn feel like it.”

“Who did this?”

“All the second-rate followers, I’m presuming: the ones busy scheming up plans to assassinate the Minister of Magic and keen to remove any other remotely moral official on their way to it.” He exhaled. “There’s definitely at least two who I'm heading up cases investigating, so I don’t suppose that helps the general sentiment.”

There was a brief pause.

“I was leading those cases, anyway,” Theseus said with some bitterness.

“Mmh,” Percival said, shifting on his haunches, trying to find a comfortable position.

“Don’t you miss your job?” Theseus added, turning his head to stare at the other man with piercing blue eyes.

There were too many layers involved in answering that question, regret and transformation and grief, and so he settled for a grunt and sigh.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t.” Theseus bent one knee, resting one foot on the metre squared of crawl space rather than the nearest beam. Percival leaned slightly over the side and looked down into their new prison below, relieved to find it was still empty.

“It won’t help things,” Percival finally managed. “It’s better to just focus on—surviving.”

“But not escaping, right? Isn’t that what you’ve been saying? That the time to escape’s gone now?”

“For me.”

“I’m in exactly the same position as you, Perce, except he seems to have grown attached to you and still fucking hates me because he’s convinced Albus and I had kind of wild fling.”

“You did?” Percival asked, frowning.

Theseus made a throaty noise, in between a laugh and a groan. “Merlin, no. That’s how you know he was born well before the turn of the century. Just because we have the same tendencies and know one another doesn’t mean we were with one another like that. But Perce, I think he’s fucking convinced.”

“He was your teacher.”

“Obviously. At Hogwarts? I was studying and going for the odd Quidditch player and dating a handful of girls for however long you manage to keep relationships alive at school. Not with my teachers. Okay, he was a young teacher. I was a teenager. But at that age, you’re just figuring it out, aren’t you? Given the opinions he has about in betweeners like me—it’s like he assumes I’m so promiscuous that I’d—want—anyone to—“

What had started off as a rant dissolved quietly into soundless words as Theseus turned away from Percival and brought his bloodied arm up to cover his face. He lay still for a few seconds, breathing heavily. They seemed on the brink of some kind of admission. But when he pulled his arm away, his eyes were distant, an expression Percival recognised as him being entirely elsewhere.

“About the job,” he said. “You might be right not to miss it. If I wasn’t an Auror, she wouldn’t have died.”

“She?”

“Leta,” he said, saying the name as if it was precious, as if it was inconceivable that after six years in a timeless hell of limbo Percival wouldn’t know her. “Who else? The things I hear about her. About what she did that night, about what I did. About what she shouldn’t have done. About what I should have done.”

Percival ran his tongue over his lower teeth. “You had no control over it.”

“Of course I did. There’s always a way to find control. In no situation are you totally powerless.”

He gave a mirthless chuckle. “Maybe.”

“I can’t stop thinking about her. After he showed me the memory of the night she—she died—it’s like it just happened all over again. I thought I was doing a good job of running from it. Not bloody likely. Obviously I failed at that as well.”

“You didn’t kill her,” Percival pointed out. “That’s what he does: commit the crime and convince you it was entirely your fault.”

That earned him another soul-searching gaze. “Mmmh,” came the non-committal response. He knew what Theseus was thinking, expected it of the fiercely moral man. “I’m not sure about that. You remember what it was like in the war: what all the men were always saying, about how they were fighting for their girls back home, how they’d die for them.”

“I wasn’t on the ground for as long as you were,” Percival said quietly, in reference to the shorter period that the Americans had been allowed to join as a weak concession to the failings of the Statue of Secrecy.

“We pretend that we’re years ahead of the Muggles, that we’re so much more advanced than them when it comes to how we see women and men. Even though I’m a—I won’t say the word, and no one else knows, anyway—but you know the way they usually think of it. I was her fiancé. I should have protected her, saved her, even stopped her from being in Paris in the first place, the fact she wanted to come aside.”

“Do they talk about it?”

A dry laugh. “Merlin, yes. What’s worse is that the common sentiment is not that I’m a failure of a man but that it was how she should have gone. They say bullshit like not even Grin—he—wanted Leta Lestrange.”

“If she had a good heart, he wouldn’t have wanted her,” Percival said, in an attempt at reassurance.

“That’s why I’m here, then,” Theseus said. “Good heart my arse. Hung up on revenge. Throwing her sacrifice away. Moaning about it all the fucking attic of the most powerful dark wizard of our time. I guess—being stabbed a few times—you’re trying to take your mind off it. Thinking of other things. But it’s not like the past is a nice place to escape to. It’s just a reminder, isn’t it?”

There was another pause.

“I know you’re not a feelings man,” Theseus said. “I'm just talking aloud; you can ignore me. Just trying to distract myself from the pain. Merlin knows you’ve got enough to worry about, enough problems: years of them, probably.”

“They’re not the kind that get any better on discussing,” he said grimly.

“When does anything?”

Percival leaned in, tracing the bloody lines across the white fabric of Theseus’s shirt over the marks. “You’ve got older injuries too.”

When did you get them?

“Maybe I’ll die of blood loss,” Theseus said, whistling through his teeth in a manner that almost sounded hopeful, hair stuck to his forehead in sweaty curls.

“You do look a bit pale.”

“Bloody perfect.”

“You must have other people to live for,” Percival said, a little brusquely, because his own lack of connections, his isolation, had been hammered home to him by Grindelwald over long years. “Heal harder and don’t bleed out over a woman.”

“And to think I almost opened up to you,” Theseus murmured.

“We both know that my only way of making sense of the situation is gallows humour at best,” Percival said with a sigh. “You’re meant to be the optimist.”

“Ha bloody ha. Die in France twice over and now I've been given the blessed opportunity to do the same in Austria—Germany—wherever this is. Lots to be optimistic about.”

Theseus rolled over, away from him, and staring at his bloodied shirt, Percival felt a sudden surge of panic. He was clearly in a mood, but given that he looked as though he'd been held down and sliced open, he could understand, not to mention the psychological aftermath of so much time alone with Grindelwald. Not to mention whatever had happened after the dinner that he still wasn't sharing. It had all built to show a gentle bending of Theseus's stoic demeanour. Or at least Percival thought that was the case. It felt like sinning that Percival no longer understood the limits of other people, other normal people, who hadn't spent six years as Grindelwald's prisoner. Maybe he was fine. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe this was as much as he could take. Maybe it was normal.

He and Theseus had done this before, exactly the same thing, where the Brit had tiptoed into a rare moment of emotional vulnerability—yes, he was open, wearing his heart on his damn sleeve, Percival would say, but not in a way where he could get hurt by it—and Percival had done the usual thing anyone growing up in the soulless Graves household would, which was turn to stone. No wonder they’d stuck to friendship.

“Wait,” he managed.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere quickly, am I?” Theseus said, voice muffled.

"What do you mean, he showed you the memory of the night she died?"

Percival watched as Theseus's back rose and fell with each shallow breath, wondering if the other man was thinking carefully, trying to determine how much he wanted to reveal when he'd been so persistent about not saying anything about what Grindelwald had done to him. Percival suspected it was so the offer of the Vow— the only chance in hell either of them had to get out—would be less appealing.

"Yes," Theseus finally said, his voice low and strained. "He wanted to make sure I knew it was my fault. That I could have saved her if I had just listened to her, if I had just been there for her. So he made me watch."

"I'm sorry," Percival said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Theseus. That’s not fair."

Theseus didn't say anything for a moment, and Percival wondered if he'd fallen asleep.

Finally, Theseus spoke, his voice barely audible. "I keep seeing her, over and over again. Not her death; all the time we had together. And even now, it doesn't feel like it was enough."

Percival reached out a tentative hand, hesitating before placing it on Theseus's shoulder. He could feel the tension in the other man's body, the way his muscles were taut and unyielding beneath his touch. "You can't carry the weight of her death on your own."

Theseus let out a bitter laugh, the sound harsh and grating in the quiet of the room. "Funny thing is, I don't even know if I want to share it. It's like this guilt has become a part of me, something I can't shake off no matter how hard I try. And I've tried, Percival. Merlin, have I tried."

He paused. "The only other person who ever cared about Leta is Newt. And it's an...impossible subject to bring up. He knows it too; I think he's too scared to try, and that's probably my fault. It was...complicated. Like most things in the family. Maybe we'll talk about it one day. But we were getting along well, before Helmut and his Aurors got me. I've done enough to him over the years, pushed him too much. He doesn't need me bringing it up. Doesn’t need the distraction; desperately wants to forget it all anyway. Besides, he’s got other things to worry about now than an old love triangle.”

Percival raised his eyebrows, sensing an unspoken statement.

Theseus gave him a half-hearted smile. "Yes, Newton Artemis Fido Scamander is sweet on someone."

"That's...Newt never seemed like the type to have eyes for anyone but his creatures."

Theseus chuckled, the sound soft and almost wistful. "Yeah, I thought the same. But I suppose we all have our secrets, our ways, don't we?"

Percival nodded, feeling a pang of jealousy. He had never been able to find that for himself, not with anyone. "What's she like?"

"You sound like a gossiping schoolboy, Perce."

Percival scowled. "Just curious."

"Um, so, to start. She's Chief Auror at MACUSA."

"Tina Goldstein?"

"What, do you bless the matrimony as her former boss?"

"Former boss," he repeated in a whisper. "Hell, I guess I do."

Theseus gave a soft sigh, his eyes slipping closed as if he was lost in thought. "She's brave. When I first met her, I thought she was a bit intense, but anyone can see how passionate she is about justice. Good in my book. To be honest, I think she's just who Newt needs to get him out of his shell. She did—erm—they did break into one of the Ministries together, and she did fully disable me.”

“What? When?”

“When I attempted to give chase and tried, to be honest, to apprehend them both: little brother and his girlfriend or not. Mum would say that's a good sign, probably."

"I knew that about Tina. Her heart’s always been in the right place, shit load of potential. Didn’t know you got it handed to you by her, but I’m sure it was a gratifying experience for all involved.” Percival paused. “But after everything, Newt went for an Auror?"

"What do you mean by everything?" Theseus asked suspiciously. He pressed his hand against his right shoulder with a wince, trying to heal the spiky mess of lines there, but to little avail. They’d stained the white shirt in a strange pattern of red lines; Percival could almost imagine they spelt out something.

Percival hesitated, wondering if his memory had started unravelling like the rest of him. Talking about things like this—siblings and colleagues and relationships, so normal—felt alien, as if he was trying to use a wand again with his missing fingers. "With all the trouble it caused between you and Newt, you being an Auror, and...other things besides."

"Yeah, well, love is a funny thing, isn't it?" Theseus said. "I think he's happy, and that's all that matters. She's still in America, still working, but I have faith in both of them, slow as they might be."

"Slow and steady wins the race," Percival murmured. Theseus clearly hadn't moved on from Leta, and he didn't want to take the man's mind back to somewhere that was clearly dark and guilt-ridden, so he cleared his throat.

"Clearly, or I wouldn't be here," Theseus noted. "Another stupid, impulsive decision."

"You said. Revenge?"

"Yeah, revenge," Theseus sighed. "I think that's about as likely here as Hector Fawley himself swooping in to assassinate him. Leta always told me that I worked too much, that I was too obsessed with tracking him down. We fought about it so often; we were taking it slow because she was never sure, always a little scared, but also because we didn't have much time to be a normal fucking couple, and I was wasting it. It's been, what? Nearly a decade since he first broke out in Europe."

Percival nodded. "We were...working on a few satellite investigations on his whereabouts even in 1921."

Theseus paused. "In Europe? You cheeky buggers. After all that talk about not wanting to get into any more European messes?"

"I wasn't the President," Percival pointed out, also thinking: and that's the kind of talk that would have instantly stopped me getting promoted. “Still, you’re right. At MACUSA, we were busy trying to forget the Great War happened.”

“Hmm,” Theseus said, possibly mollified, as always, by being told he was correct.

“Well, it always comes back to the war for you,” Percival said, almost fondly. “Unless anything has changed while I’ve been gone.”

"Only between us. Because you’re the only other person I know who understands," Theseus said.

The unspoken sentiment was clear. The only other person he knew well who’d served. It was lonely, in a way, to have your worldview so deconstructed, to have been so exposed to the No-Maj way: of life, way of thinking, way of dying in mud and blood and rain. And then return to a society that remained firm about maintaining the divide that should have forbidden them going in the first place. He wondered if Leta had known this about Theseus, too, or whether he was the only one, and would stay the only one forevermore.

The war had been a strange time, full of contradictions. The Ministry had banned wizards from participating in the war entirely; they were not to use their magic, no matter what. But it seemed like some still did – if only for the purpose of self-preservation. He remembered seeing flashes of magic here and there on the battlefields; a spell cast to save someone’s life, a charm to grant strength when all else was lost, a shield to stop two bullets.

He'd been able to cast illegal spells on the fucking battlefield and now could barely cast an illuminating charm to save his life, stripped of everything he once was: all his power, his status, his dignity.

Percival lay down beside Theseus, feeling the weight of the silence between them. He was acutely aware of the other man's presence, the warmth of his body radiating through the cotton of his shirt. For a moment, they simply lay there, side by side, listening to the sound of their breathing. Percival tried to focus on the rise and fall of his chest, tried to let the rhythm soothe him, but his mind kept wandering back to the memories he'd been trying to forget. It was the smell of blood. Mixed with the smell of Nurmengaard. Like a cocktail of the taste of fucking imprisonment.

He thought about the night he'd been kidnapped: a routine mission gone wrong.

"You're a smart one, aren't you?" Grindelwald had said, circling him like a predator. "But you're not quite smart enough. You thought you could catch us, but instead, we've caught you."

He had been tortured for days; the hours had blurred together in a haze of pain and desperation. He had lost track of time, of who he was, of why he was even fighting anymore.

The memory lingered.

It required fighting with the fog of his thoughts to try and remember Leta. Leta Lestrange. She and Theseus would have been lovers at some point when Percival was free, most probably, and the name had definitely been mentioned. As Theseus lay beside him, Percival couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy. Theseus had someone to grieve for, someone to remember. In contrast, Percival couldn't even remember the last time he'd felt anything other than fear and anger.

As Percival lay there, lost in his memories, he suddenly felt Theseus's hand on his cheek, warm and rough.

He turned to look at the other man, surprised by the sudden contact. The feelings they'd once shared, that heady magnetic attraction, were long gone; rather than any romantic feeling, it was the sensation of being touched that shook him to his core. Being touched without it being a punishment, a slap, a curse. How could the younger man bring himself to do it? How did he get past what must have been his hate for who Percival had become?

"I'm sorry," Theseus said softly, his thumb tracing circles on Percival's skin. It was as if Theseus was reminding himself that Percival was still here, still alive, still with him. "I didn't mean to go on and on. I know you must have gone through hell too."

Percival closed his eyes, letting the warmth of Theseus's touch seep into his skin. It was a small gesture, but it felt like a lifeline, an anchor to reality. "It's alright," he managed to say, his voice barely above a whisper. He almost wanted to say more, but couldn’t. It was practically comedic, the amount they couldn’t admit to one another, despite being in the same situation together, a fate Percival would call worse than death. And of course Theseus had managed to say something. Maybe Grindelwald had been lying, when he said no one cared—would ever care—not like he did—

There was an intensity in Theseus's eyes, the way they seemed to search his soul. "I don't want to forget her, you know?" Theseus said, his voice barely above a whisper, pulling away and returning to his lying down position, looking visibly paler. There was a dangerous amount of blood beneath him. Whatever attempt at healing he'd tried was starting to crumble.

"You just have to play along with what he wants," Percival ventured. "Just pretend. Buy yourself time."

"The only thing I'm good at pretending at is that everything's fine," Theseus muttered, staring at the ceiling through the thin slits in his closing eyes. "And everything's not fine. So like in fucking France, I'll keep fucking fighting, Perce."

Percival inhaled. After all this, this conversation with another person who treated him like a damn human, who'd been tortured, possibly even on his behalf, he was still too scared of Grindelwald to do the same. The dark wizard was the one in total control, always had been: a puppet master behind the scenes in Europe, pulling the strings.

But, like Theseus had said, Percival was still his favoured prisoner. For a moment, Percival allowed himself to think of what he would do with that power. He could send a message to Theseus's team, maybe. A warning, an update on Grindelwald's plans, something that might help them in their mission. Something that could at least get Theseus out of here. It would be risky. If caught, the consequences would be dire, Mercy Lewis, he would never see the light of day again, he'd be put under the Imperius curse and never freed. But it was, maybe, also an opportunity.

Percival's mind raced with the possibilities. He could be a hero: finally do something right for once in his life. But the fear still held him back, of Grindelwald's wrath, of the unknown consequences of his actions. He couldn't risk it, not yet.

Not yet.

Chapter Text

In the hours it had taken Albus to convince himself to return to Godric’s Hollow, he had half-convinced himself of the worst of the multiple futures opening up before him. Perhaps, he couldn’t help thinking, they would find a body tomorrow—and there’d be no need to make the journey home. Home was nothing more than scratched memory, abandoned to the elements, lost somewhere in the fields of Godric’s Hollow. Home had been a shooting star with its brightness long stripped away. That hallway had made his skin tighten over his bones for years, even before the night everything had changed.

But, having indulged his interests in magic of the esoteric and inaccessible for years, Albus had usually found ways to avoid the trip to his sister’s grave. 

Not tonight. Tonight, the leafrot speckled his loafers like paint; the earth smelled like rain and rot. The graveyard was so close to the old house that he couldn’t even remember the journey between home and the funeral. Whether he had walked, or apparated, or ran. Whether it had rained enough to fog his glasses on the way—he’d been reading Gellert’s letter, shame dripping from every pore—or whether the sky had been so clear the earth could weep for the loss of innocence, even with the circle around the coffin near empty of mourners. 

Taking a deep, shaky breath, Albus brushed his knuckle down the etched hollow under his eyelid. Bone touched bone; he swiped away the tear and turned up the collar of his coat, lowering the brim of his hat in the same fluid gesture.

Contracting inwards still didn’t change the shape of his once-broken nose. 

It didn’t change who he was. There were lilies in his pocket. Ariana, the version of her he’d only seen through fragmented anecdotes of Aberforth’s memory, dealt out like losing cards in a crooked pack, would have preferred wildflowers. He touched the troth at his neck. 

It has to be done before Gellert finds me, he thought, wondering and abstracted. Turning grief into guilt was the selfish thing to do; in that manner, Albus was perfectly suited to it. Ariana, it should have never been you. 

He remembered the dresses Kendra used to sew for her daughter: the thin, old fabric, their esteemed family’s finances draining into a slow bottomless well with every day Percival Dumbledore spent in Azkaban. Small, thin, white dresses, edged with blue ribbon trim, a desperate attempt to make human the ghost in their family. 

Albus knelt before the grave and placed the lilies against it. They glowed white in the moonlight, their petals perfectly preserved with a stasis charm, the smell damp and suffocating. Only Aberforth had held the body; only Aberforth had perhaps, ever, been this close, and so when Albus stretched his gloved hands out to smooth down the name on the headstone as one might adjust the folded edge of a childhood blanket, the troth yanked tight around his wrist. 

There was no one to watch—so he allowed himself the pain. Even after all this time, the memory of how much his own sister’s death had hurt was a betrayal of Gellert.

Screwing his eyes half-shut, not wanting to look, Albus twisted his palm up to the sky and rolled down his coat.

The winking vial of blood glowed a hot-coal red. For a moment, all he could hear was the gentle humming of the breeze through the trees around him. Then, a soft thump—a rock, tumbling from the crumbling walls onto the moss below—and he slowly got to his feet, burying his hands in his pockets. To his left, there was no church. Only his father’s grave. After all this time, when the troth recognised Gellert’s signature, Albus still had the instinct to run, to hide, to for once, not be understood by a boy who seemed both a devil and an angel in the same skin. 

Gellert’s cool breath ghosted across the back of his neck, sending a convulsive shiver up his spine. “Still thinking about those you’ve lost, mein Liebling?”

I feel like if I held my breath and counted to ten, you'd disappear, Gel.

Disappear? For you, I will always stay.

“As you said. You know all of my regular haunts.”

“The same place, at the same time,” mused Gellert. “Could you believe it’s fate? Why, we could mourn together, tonight, for your sister. Or is it that you understand?”

Albus couldn’t look at him. “My understanding has long since passed, Gellert. I cannot imagine a better way in which you might have taken it from me; I cannot imagine what might have happened had I not woken up. Our delusions were just that—delusions. Unchecked power? Unchecked? Think about what it’s doing to you, doing to you right now, and then you might understand what it did to us.”

Running his tongue over his lips, Gellert looked at the etched grave. For several moments, he was quiet. There was a soft brook rushing behind the graveyard of the small, sleepy town. “The true crime is that we hold our power, our potential, in restraint. Nobler wizards than us die to contain their true nature.”

“I won’t ever play that game again. Believe me, if you can.”

Gellert sighed. “But—the world will change. And you will be left with the burden of inaction. Shouldn’t I seek to spare you that?”

“Spare me nothing,” said Albus. “It was wrong from the beginning.”

Three weeks after Gellert had appeared in Godric’s Hollow with nothing but a packed bag and Bathilda’s approval, they’d tipped over the invisible, unspoken boundary. Albus’s room had become the centre of the world. History had been made in brushes with one another so intense they electrified; one lounging on the bed, one hunched over the desk, both crouched on the floor, always with the lace curtains drawn and the candles low.

Wealthier by Albus by far, and never explaining the heritage from which the money had come— middling aristocrats; bored, spineless people; perfunctory in their hopes of curing my madness, like how birds fly into glass and crack their necks —it had been Gellert who’d purchased the phonograph. Aberforth had nearly scratched Gellert’s eyes out, seeing that, and Gellert had knocked him half down the stairs as Albus stood on the landing, frozen.  

His parents had been so distant they may as well have not existed, so distant that in fact Gellert had spent periods of his childhood having been taken away from them by the Muggle authorities before Durmstrang. In itself, that was an early sign. With parents who cared so little about breaking the Statue that they’d let a child suffer—it was inevitable, tragically so, that the same child would turn back to the Statue and prepare to wield it as a puppet-master.

Prepare to burn it all down.

With a life populated by tremulous ghosts of people, hardly real, other than those who had hurt him, it became clear. Never had he any regard for consequences, nor had Albus ever had any skill for undoing them.

“Was it?” Gellert asked, the side of his mouth curling into a smile as light as smoke. 

The troth had choked neither of them. Not Gellert, who wore his around his neck; nor Albus, who kept his on the pulse of his wrist, a warning rather than a trophy. Albus knew it hadn’t been entirely wrong—Gellert knew it hadn’t been entirely right. That night, they’d danced, palm to palm. Their lips, when they’d met in a stolen breath, had tasted of ink; and they’d pulled away, breathless and sparkling with rebellion, bitten and sore but entirely untainted. The addictive nature of hope, like taking an axe to a door, had been a heavy burden to carry.

Changing the world was a heavy burden to carry. A forbidden one. 

But, side by side in it, as Gellert had laughed and spun Albus around again, the music unfamiliar and inelegant, Albus had thought himself ready to bear the weight of his choices for the rest of his life. 

“Do you remember,” Gellert continued. “That I promised you that your greatness would not elude you? That I would not let you rot here, in this empty husk of a village, when you could rule the world at your side? When I swore to you there would not be a single chain holding you back from a destiny only a wixen every thousand years can touch?”

“Don’t talk to me about chains,” he said, sudden and sharp. “Tell me what you’ve done with Theseus.”

“Who?”

“Theseus,” Albus said through gritted teeth. 

Another of my students whom I’ve failed. 

“What does he mean to you?” Gellert took a step closer.

“As much of any of my allies.”

“Maybe less,” Gellert said, filling in what Albus had not said. “Maybe less, but you can’t say it here, can’t admit it to yourself, else you might feel like a monster. Well. I can be your monster. The question is: do you promise?”

Albus swallowed. “I promise.”

This was met with a sigh. “Well, in that case, I can tell you the man is as much an enemy to me as he is to any of my followers. It is a trifling matter, constantly being hunted and hounded across Europe. Several of my own have faced threats of trial thanks to the work of the British Ministry, as unsuccessful as they have otherwise been at bringing me to so-called justice in the last five years. You might understand why I’d not want a relatively well-trained Auror who’s been following me for a decade and hell-bent on a personal, gory revenge for the last five years out on the loose.”

“That’s why the German Ministry seemed to have misplaced him.”

“I’ll say nothing about my allies,” Gellert hummed. “All I can say is that it was a natural opportunity to remove a rather irritating government official from my web of challengers, given your plan seems designed to be ineffectual, to put each individual at risk. We both know I have limited patience for the law, but I will take every opportunity to bend it and its agents to my purpose that I can, especially when they present themselves on such a pretty, determined plate.”

“You know nothing of my plans.”

“No,” Gellert admitted; he reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder, pulling Albus towards him so he could whisper in his ear. “But I do know that Theseus Scamander has wanted me dead for five years. You wouldn’t want that for me? Would you? He was a servant of the war. You know what that means—he has the capacity to kill without the neatness, the beauty, of the Killing Curse. You wouldn’t want him to kill me, would you, Albus?”

Albus tried his hardest to ignore the familiar heaviness of Gellert’s hand on his shoulder, the pounding of his own heart as he imagined it. “But he couldn’t— what you’re doing, if you have him, if any of this is more than one of your pretty lies, is — “

“Yes, yes.” A hint of brusque impatience in his voice. “No doubt I would defeat him. But it is about the greater principle.”

“If you’re looking to win back my favour,” Albus said. “Then you should release him.”

“No.”

“Why?” Dumbledore said.

Once they separated here, it would be nearly impossible to meet Gellert again without either returning to the graveyard or drawing the suspicious attention of the Ministry, particularly without Theseus there to divert Travers. Equally, although he occasionally tried, Gellert never asked twice. He would not beg. Not here, standing in front of the grave of his sister.

Years of bloody thoughts had coalesced into something smooth, certain, and almost academic. It was an awful thing to do. Worse, he knew Newt wouldn’t forgive him —and maybe for Newt, he would have begged, no, he couldn’t think that, couldn’t think of the games he played with lives—and yet here, with breath passing between them and the moon watching with its weighted judgement, Albus knew what his choices were. 

No matter what, he couldn’t let Gellert draw him in any closer. The troths operated not just across them but across one another, strengthening and warping their perimeters depending on what became betrayal in each moment. When he’d suggested making it, it had felt natural, romantic. He hadn’t accounted for the true evils of the human psyche—the way it ate at itself and memory, flattening out the worst and creating unconscionable longing for the best—until even in this moment, he wasn’t certain he’d survive proximity. 

The plan had always been for Theseus to cause a diversion. Albus suspected even Theseus had known he’d been recruited to the team for his status in the Ministry. While everyone else had some connection with Newt, had been offered and vetted, Newt had hesitated before suggesting his brother, and Albus suspected he knew why. Not the guarded, thin teenager Theseus had been, who offered perfect answers to every question and watched him with hollow eyes. Not the silent and shaking first-year, Newt, who’d eventually found a safe haven in his office, opening up about how he felt out of place, inhuman, wrong, sheltering in the long shadow of his brother and resentful for it. 

It was the same reason he was here, feet on a grave, feeling a chill walk over it, as if he were Ariana and Ariana were him. It was a single, fleeting connection he sometimes imagined he still had, like he could pay penance. 

Grief. 

“You and I both know he doesn’t matter that much,” hissed Gellert. “I am not winning you back through another man .”

Their eyes met. 

It was surreal being this close to him again, the way that he tried so hard to run even with the binding troth keeping him prisoner and yet their paths still kept crossing, not like pieces on the chessboard trapped on opposite sides but like two grandmaster players both beating at the same clock, locked in battle, waiting for stalemate.

“And, after all, why bother, my love?” Gellert added softly. “I foresee that the Muggles will move to tear one another apart again in the near future, perhaps even within the decade. Decorated war hero Mr Scamander may simply sacrifice his life for the filth, successfully this time. Don’t let what we have burn for his few remaining years to be spent lying with the weak.”

“He’s useful to me.”

“Oh, you make everyone so, Albus. You make them so, so useful to you.”

Once, Dumbledore had walked through Hogwarts’s stretching stone corridors into the empty Defence against the Dark Arts classroom to find Leta Lestrange sitting at an old desk, tracing her fingers over the initials engraved there, large brown eyes blank and lost, deer-like and prematurely empty. 

How earnestly he had told her that the burden of culpability was not hers to bear; how easily she’d challenged him, slight and beautiful, infused with a spirit rebellious and haunted in equal measure. He’d watched her make her escape down away from him in a flash of plum-stain silk, heavy boots drumming out an angry pace, right until she rounded the corner. 

Through the arches, in the negative spaces, he’d seen her reach Theseus. Stoic but affectionate Theseus— rotting wherever Grindelwald was holding him —who’d tilted his head in an easy manner, smiled, shrugged, and invited her to walk with him.

She had turned to him like a flower turned towards the sun. 

“Newt won’t be able to lose him,” said Albus at last. 

Gellert reached out and took his shoulder. “And the Magizoologist’s affections makes this Auror more important than me?”

Albus closed his eyes, struggling to keep his emotions under control. “No.” 

The safer answer. A lie. 

“Then prove it,” Gellert said, the hint of satisfaction darkening his pale eye suggesting he’d fallen on the hook: believed the untruth.

He pulled the troth out from his shirt, letting the time-dulled metal glint in the moonlight, their shared blood swirling in its centre, watching them both struggle with the messy entanglement like a wounded eye.

“You’re blinded by your own ambition. You cannot see the destruction that you are causing, the lives that you are ruining.” Albus hesitated, and then said: “You have become a monster.”

“Everything I've done?” Grindelwald repeated, his voice rising. “You know that everything I've done, I've done for the greater good.”

“Then release Theseus. Let him go.”

Gellert hesitated, the fingers of his free hand twitching as if he were considering it. Dumbledore held his breath, hoping against hope that his former lover would show some mercy. But then, with a scoff, Gellert shook his head.

“Even if I had him, I couldn’t do that, Albus,” he said, his voice now like ice. “I have given you too much power already. You control me; you control my heart. You still have one of the brothers, do you not? Surely just one is enough for you. You never cared enough for family, nor for love. You can decorate that worn grave of a little girl with as many lilies as you like, until this graveyard reeks of their rotting sweetness, but the truth is that we both killed her and you are just too blinded by your own guilt to see it.”

His eyes narrowed and before he could stop himself, he was moving deeper into the other man’s possessive embrace, not to return it but—

They gasped in unison as the troth threatened them both, sensing and forbidding the simmering discontent and unrestrained misery in the night air. The primal urge, with invisible force, halted their movements in their tracks.

The moonlight illuminated Gellert’s features: the sharpness of his jawline and the coldness in his eyes. Albus had once been captivated by those eyes. It was still the same face he saw in the Mirror of Erised.

Neither moved.

“And despite everything,” said Gellert, “Albus, you look as beautiful as ever in this light. Spending your entire life in mourning. Always regretting what happened that night.”

Albus tried to speak, but his throat was dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Despite everything, there was still a part of him that longed for reassurance from the man before him, and he loathed himself for it. 

“Don’t tell me,” Albus whispered. “Please.” 

Any attempt at negotiation, at games, had slowly suffocated under the weight of what he was doing: playing with more lives, getting more people killed, and he wanted nothing more than to be somewhere safe and warm and unaware of every secret on his hands, buried under his breastbone. There had to be another way. With all his intellect, he had to find another way to save Theseus, but Albus was spinning and spinning with no end in sight.

Gellert dug the toe of his expensive shoe into a softer patch of the churned earth on the grave, ruffled as if a small creature had perhaps searched for materials to build a nest or food for the cold months. His lips tightened. The merry, laughing, wicked boy had vanished behind this politician's facade; at last, taking two wordless breaths that emerged harried and frustrated, he turned on his heel and apparated on the spot, leaving nothing in his trace but the aftermath of his cologne, stinging Albus’s eyes. 

Once more, he was alone in the graveyard, moored in exactly the same place. 

We were destined for destruction—of our own doing, he thought, yet it stays slow.

His former lover’s touch? It lingered on his skin, same as the rest of the memories trapped in the Hollow, dictating the rest of his lonely path for him. 

Chapter Text

Theseus stared out of the time-speckled window, a grimy, murky portal to the hallowed outdoors set in heavy stone, and looked out towards the distant horizon. Grey clouds had rolled in, melding the sky into the same heavy and impenetrable mass as the mountains, like a vice tightening around the earth to squeeze life from the atmosphere. The silence in the room was deafening, broken only by the occasional drip of water from a leak somewhere in the rafters. Theseus felt a pang of hunger in his stomach, but he couldn't remember the last time he had eaten.

Percival had been curled up in the far corner for several hours now, either asleep or catatonic.

“Doesn’t that hurt your back?” Theseus asked, turning away from the window.

“Yes,” came the reply.

Theseus frowned and walked over, nudging Percival gently with his foot. Percival looked at it, hunching his shoulders to his ears, a spark of something unfamiliar lighting in his dark eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed himself more heavily against the wall, as if, with enough force, he could phase through and escape.

“They still haven’t given you your shoes back?” Percival asked, voice hoarse.

“Hardly matters,” Theseus said. He looked down at his bare feet, the skin rubbed raw and blistered from the hours of pacing up and down the tight confines of the quarters Grindelwald had locked them in.

“It might do in the future,” Percival said.

“Stop worrying about my shoes and start worrying about your back pain,” Theseus replied. “I’d start work on unfolding yourself now so you’ll be able to get your aged spine into action at some point in the next twelve hours.”

The age difference between them, which they’d never actually said aloud, Percival seemed ridiculously reticent about mentioning the fact he might have a birthday, was several years, maybe half a decade, maybe a little more. While Percival had found it hysterical that Theseus’s birthday fell the day after Valentine’s Day—not much of a gift, are you, Theo, twenty four hours late, even by military time?—all Theseus knew was that Percival was born in late October, in the very last days of it. Autumn. Of course. Around that time of year, the weather was only starting to turn. Not as bad as February, really. But still, some years: bitter, bitter months, the start of a season dark and depressing, the rolling autumn storms and encroaching darkness of its coming and the watery grey sliced with occasional beams of bright, icy sunlight marking its not-quite-end.

“It’s more than my back that hurts, Theo,” Percival said. “And—the door.”

“I can watch it,” Theseus pointed out, jerking his head towards the chair he’d already placed there and spent several hours on, alert and ready, planning out the most complicated and unpredictable combinations of wandless spells he could get away with in his head like attempting any wouldn’t get him cursed senseless. He was an Auror, for Merlin’s sake. Maybe the Ministry were trying to get him on the desk more, but he could sure as hell stand sentry for hours on end, just as he’d done staring over the damp landsliding edges of the trenches.

“I don’t trust you,” Percival said. “You won’t know how to watch the right way: what to look for.”

“Huh,” Theseus said. “You know I once stayed up forty eight hours on shift watching a door, and not a single person got past me. Okay, Perce? Forty eight hours with not a single handover.”

“Hardly professional. Where the fuck was that?” Percival asked in his familiar low voice, a hint of interest filtering through, like he’d been shaken out of his statue-like emptiness.

“Oh,” Theseus said, not having expected to be pressed for an answer. “A house.”

“And how old were you?” Percival enquired, just barely lifting his head, long dark strands cutting his pale forehead, split and twisted like the forked branches of a winter tree.

“You saying my senses have dulled over the years, old man?” Theseus said, feeling the barest hint of a smile.

There was a certain gravity in Percival’s words. “You were never one to disregard the rules of the handbook—“

“Yeah, of course,” Theseus muttered, running the nail of his little finger against his lips and sighing. “Of course.”

“So, what, you were younger?”

During the war, they hadn’t been together like that, both certain that a tent in Northern Europe might have been a place to share fear and daily reports and maybe even the touch of something hot and alive—but not that kind of self-reflection. One of the many epithets for Graves was Tomb, a reference to the fact that a man with beetle-dark eyes and raven-black hair, even if he indulged in expensive blue or grey scarves, was as ominous as his family name suggested. For the people and soldiers who’d got to know him a bit better, the whole mismatched team trying to get the dragon corps into Ukraine, it was a little more deferential. Graves, tombs, masoleums—all commanded respect in that heavy, gravitas-laden manner.

Theseus had learnt that, hadn’t he?

Graves, Tomb—also known as a man who never shared his secrets, who buried them beneath layers of stone.

Still, now that they were both prisoners and equally fucked, Theseus thought he might as well explain himself, despite his golden rule that information if shared should be done so with equal contributions from both party: a neat little rule that had served him well through his life.

“Okay. That’s correct, yeah,” Theseus said. “Yeah, I was about thirteen, I reckon.”

“So, it was your brother,” said Percival with a certain clarity.

“The usual, isn’t it?”

"And you didn’t fall asleep?”

Theseus shook his head, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “No, I didn’t. I was too scared that he’d get worse and I wouldn’t be there to help him.”

Percival's eyebrows raised, a glint of something unreadable in his eyes. Theseus couldn't quite tell if it was admiration or skepticism. Perhaps a little of both.

"But what about now?" Percival asked. "What's keeping you alert?"

Theseus shrugged, settling back against the cold stone of the wall. "Same thing as always. Fear, I suppose. Fear of what might happen if I let my guard down."

Percival's eyes glinted with something like recognition. "You're still a protector, then. Always have been."

"Not that it's something I'm proud of now," he said, letting out a single bitter chuckle before seeing the darkness settle in Percival's eyes again their imprisonment. "But I suppose it's what's kept me alive so far."

There was a moment of silence between them, both lost in their own thoughts. Theseus couldn't help but wonder how they had ended up in this situation. It seemed like a lifetime ago that they had been fighting on the same side, united against a common enemy.

Percival hacked out a cough. “If you want to see Newt again, Theo, we can take this two ways—“ and he paused, eyes losing focus for a few seconds, “—and I’ll tell you both.”

Theseus nodded.

“Either I say something along the lines of remembering the old days when we used to trust each other implicitly, or I say something about how trust is a luxury we can’t afford anymore.”

Theseus raised an eyebrow. “Which is it, then? You’ve got to pick one. Either it is or it isn’t. Either we do or we don’t.”

"I think we both know the answer to that," Percival said, his voice tinged with bitterness. "Trust in anyone but him was never really part of his plan."

Newt, with his extensive knowledge of magical creatures, would have been able to compare Percival's body language to that of a specific beast. But for Theseus, years of experience in the field had honed his ability to read people, even in the most dire of situations. His body was curled in on itself, arms wrapped tightly around his legs.

Taking a deep breath, Theseus approached Percival slowly, his movements deliberate and non-threatening. He sat down beside him, leaving a respectful distance between them.

“Look, if we’re going to plan, stop that. Your back will hurt,” Theseus repeated quietly. “We’re not young enough for that anymore. It’s ok—you can sit or lie down.”

Percival closed his eyes, but slowly untangled his limbs, sitting up against the wall. A slither of skin showed through the top button of his rumpled shirt, revealing a thick white line of scar tissue across his chest. “You’re not meant to be in this nightmare too.”

“What happens in the nightmare, Perce?” Theseus asked.

In the years Theseus had known Percival, he had always been struck by the other man's determination and single-minded focus on achieving his goals. Never, though, had Percival Graves been accused of demonstrating any particular weakness, or perhaps even having it at all.

“Same as always,” Percival recited. “He goes for my guts, or my legs, or my arms; anywhere, really. If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound? If you tear a man limb from limb and put him back together afterwards, even make him forget, was he ever broken in the first place? But the memory stuff—it fucks with you. You can’t just take away bad memories like that. Shit always stays. Like glass in the wound.”

“He…ripped you apart?” Theseus managed. He inhaled and touched his cheekbone, where the slicing charm had scoured an upwards line to the bone; he’d almost forgotten it was there. It had healed well.

Focus on Percy, he thought quickly, wincing at the memories, both of how he’d got it and how it might have healed.

Percival’s eyebrows furrowed. “You’re taking me too literally. He just liked wounds deep enough to stick his fingers in.”

This was more real than any case file or report Theseus had run through in his head as pure distraction; yet it felt less real than an accompanying crime scene despite his feet being firmly on the ground right by the victim. There was something in Percival’s gaze, a marked pleading intensity, that verged on unapologetic defiance: directed not at Grindelwald, but at Theseus. What was it? A plea for help? A silent resentment at the fact the Head Auror of the British Ministry had failed to find him? A last attempt at knitting together the scraps of strength he had in front of an old friend?

Was it a silent challenge—was he just waiting for Theseus to bring up those names of the people Grindelwald had said he’d killed?

Theseus leaned in despite himself, analytical instincts kicking in. “Is that—what his pattern of behaviour is like? How would you profile him?”

Percival rolled up his sleeves and hovered one hand over the marked tattoo on his forearm, as if checking it for warmth.

"He’s—he's very good at getting people to do what he wants. He knows how to find people's weaknesses, and he can be very convincing,” Percival said, and swallowed. “He's got this charm, but...it's hiding something darker. Despite it all, though, he can make you believe."

“And do you?” Theseus asked, personally thinking that he wasn’t sure the charm hid something darker as much as bloody exacerbated it.

“Believe? Do what he wants?” Percival muttered, being met with a silent nod.

He exhaled, and then, almost reverently, said: “Of course.”

There was silence. Theseus started to get up, already looking towards the window again. The castle was ominously silent. Theseus had heard it was called Nurmengard: Grindelwald’s private fortress. When he—when they—escaped, an eyewitness description would certainly be useful, even if the actual journey remained a mystery to both. He popped his knuckles a little nervously, worried that his memories were becoming too much of a mess to make this whole bloody experience at least legible in his head for a testimony to the Auror office.

“Don’t hit me,” Percival said.

“I wasn’t going to,” Theseus said, running his hands over his trousers, straightening out the creases, and going back towards the window, trying to calm his raging heartbeat.

He kept those implicitly accused hands busy and touched the back of his shirt. That had been changed while he was out. Unconscious. Whatever he wanted to call it. There was no use thinking about it now. Firstly, the shirt was covered in blood again. Not like it was fresh laundry, really, cross-crossed with burgundy-brown lines and splotches. Secondly, fhe memories of being out were fading fast, as love potion memories always did—they didn’t go, Auror work had taught him that, there was always extraction and pledging under duress and more and more and more—and the hallucinations had to be buried from the start. If he swung his arm too hard, he could feel the whip marks stretching, getting ready to split. He did it anyway, trying to coax the sense of betrayal from his body with movement.

Percival’s nostrils flared as he tracked this. “You might.”

“I wouldn’t hit you,” Theseus protested.

“You’ve done it before.”

“No, I haven’t! Getting in a scrap is different from beating up your friend when he’s doing nothing more than sit against a wall looking morose.”

“But I’m not me, am I?” Percival challenged. “We’re not friends anymore. Not after what I’ve done.”

Theseus sighed. “Do you want me to slap sense into you?” he said, not aggressively, but softly, as if trying to counsel Percival into understanding it was a non-option.

The other man shook his head slowly. “No…I don’t think that’ll help.”

Theseus ran his hands through hair and let out a quiet sigh. “We have to get out.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Percival said, letting his head drop onto his chest, catching it with both hands, knuckles whitening. “It’s impossible.”

“We can try,” Theseus said. “Is this in Germany, Austria, Europe, or not, do you think? When we came in, I remembered it felt like there was a road, or a path—although from here, you can only see the cliffs—“

“This is the damn second location, Theseus. For you. This is my headquarters. This is—this is the closest thing I have to a h—home. He doesn’t do well with people trying to leave him after they’ve been initiated into the inner circle.”

“I’ll find out soon, I assume,” Theseus said.

Percival nodded. Slightly unsteady on his feet from the hours spent in the corner, he stumbled over to the chair positioned before the door and took on the watch duty. The room was big and nondescript. There was an empty fireplace and several scattered chairs across the dusty stone floor. It had the distinct sense of being unused. Theseus supposed it would make sense to keep Grindelwald’s loyal followers separate from his prisoners, given how the last encounter had gone.

“There has to be a way out. You’re not telling me you’ve sold more than two decades of your life to the establishment just to give up here from a lack of damn Auror skills.” Theseus rubbed his hand over his face, thinking. “We could use his tactics against him, somehow. Maybe push the envelope on threats. See how far he’s willing to go. I mean, I’d take the risk of being escorted out of here again if it meant we could get some outside contacts, people we could talk into it, into doing the right thing.”

“How badly do you want to be fucked?” Percival shook his head again. "You're grasping at straws, Theseus. We're not the same people we were back then. I'm not the same person I was."

He had to swallow, attempting to dry the sudden sandpaper of his throat.

"You're right," Theseus said, his voice softening. "We're not the same people. We're stronger now. We've got more experience, more skills. We can get out of this, I know we can."

Percival didn't respond, but Theseus could see a hint of something in his eyes.

“And what if you get caught?” Percival muttered. “What if he gives up on converting you, on using the little power you still have, and instead…well, kills you?”

“Focus on what’s important. His deal. The vow. You don’t want me to make the vow, and I don’t want to make the vow either,” Theseus said bluntly. “We need to get out before he tries to convince me any further.”

The weight of Percival’s gaze on him made Theseus’s skin prickle with discomfort. It was an uncanny feeling, being both seen right through and being examined with forensic precision. Oddly, the closest feeling he could recall, the closest reference, was the day before he’d left home for the Ministry, staring out of his bedroom window into their wild and untamed garden. Within the collapsing wooden fences, he could imagine the ghosts of years dancing and chasing one another, footprints hidden in the thick dewy grass, spectres no one could see and would never see again.

Theseus wasn’t much of a poet—Newt had always been the artist. But it was the same feeling of ghosts and undeniable attachment and the futility of time that he felt looking at Percival, so similar yet so different to the Percival he remembered, and artfully so, as if the man himself was trying to craft the image.

“I don’t want to say it. Obviously I goddamn don’t—but if you don’t want to make the vow, and I don’t want you to make the vow, and you can’t escape, then I think you have to play along, do what he wants short of making a life or death pact.”

“Please don’t lie to me,” Theseus said firmly, still staying by the window, while Percival stayed in the chair, watching the door. Theseus wondered how much Percival thought about Grindelwald: if he ever could think about anyone else.

“I’m not lying to you,” Percival said. “I’m scared. If you make the vow, you’re—fucked.”

“I know,” Theseus said simply.

“You’re not thinking of it?” Percival asked, twisting around in the chair, wincing with the movement. “You’re not? Promise me you’re not.”

“I promise.”

“You promised me you’d escape the one time you might have had a chance,” Percival muttered.

“Well, of course I bloody tried,” Theseus protested, leaning the back of his head against the glass, wondering if he could have made it had he just run faster.

“That’s the problem. He’s the problem. The wards around Nurmengard are something else entirely. This place is his pride and joy. In the early years, in the first few safe houses, they weren’t so good at the wards. Now, though, here—this is the result of months of work, not days, like that Black Forest manor.”

Percival bit down on the inside of his cheek.

Theseus waved his hand in a gesture that meant elaborate.

“I’m worried you’re going to do it anyway. Despite our agreement,” Percival said. “Because that’s just who you are.”

“No. I’m loyal to Dumbledore,” Theseus said, crossing his arms. “I have to be. Or the world as we know it…ends. Again. Just like the Great War—but worse—because this will truly be something we could have stopped, something wizardkind alone created.”

“And I’m loyal to Grindelwald,” Percival said, “because in hell, there’s no other option. And—see—your eyes—you’re doing that thing.”

“What?”

“You feel guilty, or sad, or angry,” Percival muttered. “That’s why I’m worried. You shouldn’t care. You know what I’ve done. You’ve seen the papers and case files and, Merlin, maybe even the crime scenes.”

“Your loyalty is just from fear,” Theseus said, running his tongue over his teeth. He didn’t know whether it made it better or worse.

“And yours isn’t? What is Dumbledore going to do to you when you betray him?”

He’s already done enough, Theseus thought.

“Kill me, potentially,” Theseus said. “If we’re talking about what happens in the explicit moment of the betrayal, rather than afterwards.”

Percival narrowed his eyes.

“It’s not a joke,” Theseus added.

Percival nodded slowly. “I understand. Don’t let me be weak—don’t let me want it.”

“That’s not what I want either! I won’t let him just…keep…” Theseus lost his train of thought for a moment. “It’s not right that we have to give up on one another. It can’t be right. Look, every way I play it out in my head—“

“Every way it ends badly,” Percival finished for him, a look of defeat on his face. “I know. I’ve been here for too long, Theseus. I know him better than anyone, and he will never stop until he gets what he wants.”

“So then what? There must be something. There’s always something.”

“We wait. You play along with everything other than the vow, and I can try and do what I can to make an opening for you—and then, only when the time is right, not some pointless and constant resistance—maybe you can try and escape—“

“Now you have plans?” Theseus asked, raising his eyebrows. “That can’t be an option. I can’t leave here alone. I can’t play along.”

Percival made a hopeless noise. “I know what he’ll do if you don’t. And I can’t bear the thought of you becoming like me.”

“And I can’t bear the thought of losing you,” Theseus said, his voice barely above a whisper.

“You already did.”

“You’re sitting right in front of me. Do you know how often I thought about you? How responsible I felt for the searches stopping? And—I feel—“ Theseus grappled with his emotions; already unfamiliar enough, expressing them in this new prison was even harder. “Yes. Guilty.”

“Theo. If you can’t leave and you can’t play along, it’ll happen again.”

Theseus uncrossed and recrossed his arms, lifting his chin. “What will?”

“That,” Percival said, gesturing to Theseus’s body, lips tightening, eyes darker than ever.

“Well,” Theseus said, voice rising. “Maybe that’s nothing. Maybe that doesn’t matter to me.”

“The third option isn't continuing to offer yourself up as some sacrifice. That’s not it. That’s not how it works with him, Theo; he’ll destroy you and I mean it. You have to make a choice at some point, and I’m telling you what it is.”

“I’d still be betraying Dumbledore—he’d still be hurting you—“

There was tension drawn out between them, taut like scar tissue. They couldn’t go back, couldn’t undo what Grindelwald had done, couldn’t escape it.

“What happened after that dinner?” Percival said, cutting through.

My fault, my fault, my fault, he recalled. Your fault, your fault, your fault.

“What happened during it?” Theseus retorted.

“He set you up because he knew you’d step in. He wanted an excuse to do it to you.”

Theseus paled slightly, gripping the windowsill with both hands. "It doesn't matter,” he said.

"It does matter," Percival insisted. "It matters because he's testing you. He's trying to break you. And he won't stop until he does."

"I won't break," Theseus said firmly. "I won't let him win."

"But at what cost?" Percival asked. "You're sacrificing yourself for a man who doesn't even know you're doing it.”

“Percy…”

"We can wait," Percival repeated, his voice edged with desperation. "And when the time is right, we can make our move. But until then, you have to play along. You have to make him believe that you're on his side, even if you're not. That's the only way we'll survive."

Theseus shook his head. “But you understand just as well as I do that playing along isn’t just playing along. It’s killing people. It’s burning Muggle villages to the ground. It’s corrupting every institution we use to hold the world in order.”

“Theo, understand two things. The first is that it’s not what he truly believes, the killing. He thinks they’re below us, yes, but in the end, it’s for the greater good. That’s what he says, even if it’s not what his followers do, even though his hate often overtakes him. And the second thing is, here, you’ll do whatever it takes to survive,” Percival said quietly. “And sometimes that means morals be damned just to make it in their eyes.”

Someone knocked at the door and both men froze. Percival jumped to his feet.

The door creaked open and Grindelwald walked in, his piercing mismatched eyes sweeping over the two men. Percival tensed, his body instinctively bracing for impact.

“Gentlemen,” Grindelwald said smoothly, a small smile playing on his lips. “What a pleasant surprise to find you both here. I couldn't help but overhear your conversation.”

Theseus swallowed hard, his heart hammering in his chest. He forced himself to remain calm, meeting Grindelwald’s gaze evenly.

“I hope we didn't say anything too interesting,” Theseus said coolly.

Grindelwald chuckled. “On the contrary, Mr. Scamander. Your conversation was quite fascinating. You two seem to be at a bit of a crossroads, wouldn’t you say?”

Percival’s jaw clenched, but he said nothing.

Grindelwald walked over to the window, his hands clasped behind his back. He stared out at the grey sky, his expression thoughtful.

“I understand your predicament,” Grindelwald said at last. “Director, you are loyal to me because you have no other choice. Perhaps a little wisdom is involved in that choice, a little of your visionary spirit. You understand the mechanisms of being forced to protect something that cannot protect itself, no, considering our time together? And Theseus, you are loyal to Dumbledore because of your own convictions.”

“Convictions that I won't betray,” Theseus said firmly.

"We were having a private conversation,” Percival said through gritted teeth.

A brief expression flickered across Grindelwald’s face; it almost looked like shock. Theseus held his breath, resisting the urge to pull away from the window, where he was mere inches away from the dark wizard.

Grindelwald's smile faded, and his eyes narrowed. "You seem to be forgetting your place, Director," he said, his voice cold. "I suggest you watch your tone."

Theseus stepped forward, his voice low and dangerous. "You don't get to talk to him like that," he said, his fists shaking. "He's been through enough because of you."

Grindelwald's lips twitched in amusement. "And yet he still remains loyal," he said, his eyes flicking to Percival. "That's more than I can say for you, Theseus."

"Theseus is loyal to the right side of history," Percival said, no, stammered, the words tentative and shaky and terrified.

Grindelwald's expression turned dark, and he took a step forward. "Do you mean Theseus yearns for a second war? Would sacrifice lives, even magical ones, for his system, for the freedom of the Muggles? You know, I'm getting tired of this little game we're playing," he said. “Director. I didn’t think you had this defiance within you. And I hate this kind of…secretive collaboration.”

Percival flinched. “I’m sorry,” he said immediately, automatically.

“I’m not,” Theseus muttered.

“Mr Scamander,” Grindelwald said, laying a hand on Theseus’s shoulder, digging his nails into his clavicle. “I can’t have you deconditioning my pet, do you understand? Of course, he can be released when you make the Vow. But I will not have him misbehaving under my stewardship. You understand, don’t you? We must be careful, keep all our secrets, move with thought and precision. My unfaithful were all lost to the Protego Diabolia, and for the greater good.”

“We were just talking,” Theseus said.

“How charming. But I won’t have it.”

Grindelwald cleared his throat, stepping into the centre of the room. The chill down Theseus’s spine eased a little.

“Come. We’re going to the Brazilian Ministry.”

Percival blanched, looking at Theseus.

“There is no other option,” Grindelwald said. “Unless Theseus here wants to become a useless slave like you, which I doubt he does, on all accounts. I think I need to show you, Theseus. You’re getting weak and wavering. Do you want to see what playing along looks like?”

“The Brazilian Ministry will catch you,” Theseus said. “It’s…too risky.”

“Of course they won’t,” Grindelwald. “Director. Stop thinking so loudly. On your knees; quiet.”

Percival dropped to his knees. Theseus swallowed.

“Two options,” Grindelwald breathed. “You come under the Imperius Curse—a monumental waste of our time and energy, and, I’m sure, a rather repulsive idea to you—or you come willingly and I won’t make you do anything.”

“Willingly,” Theseus managed.

Grindelwald spread his hands, bowing slightly from the waist as if to a room of applause. “You see? I am in charge.”

Grindelwald's smile twisted into a sly smirk, and he turned to face Theseus with a glint in his eye. "My dear Theseus, I must commend you for your intelligence. But let me be perfectly clear: if you even so much as entertain the thought of intervening on this mission, I will not hesitate to crack your mind like a nut and send you right back to the British Ministry under the Imperius Curse. Losing the Director of Magical Security was a big blow to MACUSA; why, all that Muggle-wizard violence afterwards might have even been triggered by it. I hate to think what having an actively wicked Head Auror may do to the British.”

Grindelwald turned to Percival, placing a hand on his head. "And you, my dear Percival. I trust you remember what it feels like to be under my control."

Percival flinched at the touch. He swallowed hard, looking away from Grindelwald's piercing gaze.

"Ah, but don't worry," Grindelwald continued, removing his hand from Percival's head. "I have every confidence in you. I know you'll do what needs to be done to help me succeed."

Theseus felt a surge of anger at the way Grindelwald spoke about Percival, as if he were some mindless tool to be used at his will. He glanced at Percival, seeing the shame in his eyes, and felt a pang of sympathy.

"You'll see," Grindelwald said, a hint of amusement in his voice. "Watching Percival betray what you assume is the good side again may be the push you both need to make the vow. And then, finally, we'll be united in purpose. Come on, Director, let us gather in the courtyard.”

Percival got up first, lingering in the doorway. He clutched the frame, waiting, holding the door open for Grindelwald and then setting off down the corridor at a reluctant pace. Theseus ducked his head and followed both. The rest of the castle was much the same, all grey stone and damp walls and cobwebbed windows and mirrors.

They passed into the courtyard and Theseus nearly had a heart attack. By the grand arch shadowing the entrance to the grim castle stood two witches, one with neatly pulled back dark hair and one with a curled bob of bright platinum. He faltered, feet turning to lead, and tried to step backwards and forwards at the same time, ending up in exactly the same place. Staring. Standing still. Frozen.

Dark hair, Theseus thought. Vinda.

But then, he remembered the woman next to her from Paris. She’d gone through the flames—Jacob had talked about it, a few times, barely—and left him behind. She was the sister of Tina, a very capable now-Head Auror, who had tied Theseus to a chair and booted him into a storage room, and was almost certainly the receiver of Newt’s rare affection. Merlin, Queenie, that was the name. It had taken him far too long to remember such an important detail. Jacob had talked fondly of their bakery dreams, their time together, and even her Legilimency.

What a nightmare that would be. Theseus had always harboured the distinct sense that if anyone could truly see inside his head, they would find it impossible to love him. He was lucky Leta had never been able to, so lucky. They’d shared rare amounts with one another in a slow and hesitant trickle of admissions about childhood, nightmares, creeping anxiety, even though he’d felt like he was sometimes swinging a shitty feeble lantern up against the shadows that haunted her. And despite what she had known—she’d stayed.

It was a familiar feeling, the instant hammer blow of guilt, the heaviness of the knowledge she’d died to give him more years that he’d spent in a grey haze: sleeping on the couch, avoiding her photos, keeping all the doors closed, curtains drawn, windows shut, walls up.

There were eyes on him.

Vinda’s watching you, and he pushed the thought away hard, disconcerted by the way Queenie slowly swivelled her gaze from Percival to himself, crumpled eyebrows flattening into hard and expressionless lines. She pushed herself away from the arch, mouth twisting in what looked like uncertainty, and approached the stone circle outside the castle.

With wide, red-rimmed eyes and parted, downturned lips, Queenie walked towards him, wrapping her arms around herself as if to ward off the cold wind that had picked up on the plateau. She shot him a piercing look that made him feel uneasy. He couldn't quite place it, but there was something accusatory in her gaze.

Grindelwald looked directly at Theseus. Theseus personally was in extreme agreement that reading his mind was not worth it—nor, he could hasten to add to the dark wizard, had it ever been.

“Don’t try, Queenie,” Grindelwald called out. “It isn't worth the effort. I might need you later, but we will have to be dedicated with this man. Check Percival’s mind instead, if you will.”

A sudden biting wind picked up on the plateau, loud enough to hide their words from earshot. Percival seemed to notice this too; he reached out for Grindelwald’s shoulder, bowing his head and whispering something, drawing the dark wizard’s attention for a few seconds. Theseus took the chance.

“Jacob misses you,” Theseus called out.

Could you be an ally? he tried to project, as if shouting into a voice, but already he could feel the leaden shields of his own overactive Occlumency slipping back down against his efforts, as if he were a beaten Altas carelessly letting the sky press him back into the earth.

She'd been a victim of Grindelwald's manipulation and had been swayed to his side in Paris, but he couldn't help but feel responsible for not being able to prevent it. Was she as guilty as the rest of them? Was she another person he’d be hunting down upon freedom?

“Queenie," Theseus mumbled, catching her arm as she sought to move past him. "Is everything alright?"

She turned back to face him, her expression guarded. "You tell me," she said, her voice tight with emotion. "You're the one standing there with Grindelwald, aren't you?"

That was a question it was definitely not sensible to answer a few metres away from the dark wizard. Maybe it was a question of which of the two had the strongest ability to read minds. Maybe they could collide and cancel one another out. Maybe they could both tell exactly what he was thinking.

They locked eyes in the wind. Her hair was almost lifeless in colour, as if joining Grindelwald had started to bleach her dry too. She blinked, gaze flickering, and dug her fingers tighter into her elbows, gathering bunches of her dull peach coat in her tight grip. Seeing the determined look in her eyes, Theseus braced himself for the invasion of his mind. It felt—painful, like someone had taken the forked end of a hammer and was drilling it into the soft hollow above his ear.

But as she delved deeper, her expression changed. Her brows furrowed, and she leaned in closer, as if trying to find the entry point. Theseus felt a twinge of frustration as he realised that, once again, his Occlumency was working. He had always been proud of his abilities, but in this moment, it felt like a curse.

No one had ever suggested there was a way to turn it off. It was possible to naturally cultivate the skill, but rarely to this level, to the extent it might have been something special in the bloodline had the Scamander name carried elite weight. In fact, no one had really cared about it before Grindelwald.

The Ministry had politely implied that he should try to keep it as limited as possible—imagine, you’re on a mission with a partner, how well will that end for your partner?—but whatever the fuck was going on with it now was entirely out of control. Legilimens were considered valuable assets in interrogations and investigations. But without any particular natural knack for Legilimency, being a good Occulmens, one of those rare individuals with the ability to resist mind reading, was not a neat fit for the Ministry's categories, and had never been a particular problem or noted interest until now.

That explained the feeling of his mind closing in on itself. It was vaguely claustrophobic. But he’d noticed that, without a doubt, the more time he spent with Grindelwald, the more Grindelwald did to him, the shutters pulled down, the walls went up, the molten steel was poured into the gaps like welding a warship. And it was so tight and airless that even the unregistered Legilimens couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

It made him a little safe, he supposed.

Of course, Grindelwald could just cut off his arm, or torture him into insanity, or send his followers after the other two members of the Scamander family, and it wouldn’t matter one bit.

Still—it was something.

Yet the Goldstein sister, with her watery blue eyes and exhausted, beautiful face, was now wondering why he was roaming around without chains: why he’d spent so much time with Vinda.

Why they’d done what they had.

Another thing his Occlumency was preventing him from remembering in any more than vague bursts and snatches, but everything was definitely still there on the other side of that barricade, clawing at the sandbags of his skill. It was probably better Queenie didn’t have to see it, any of it.

They both stood there in silence for a few seconds. Theseus could feel the weight of her suspicions and accusations, and he wanted to defend himself, but he knew that he couldn't reveal everything without putting them both in danger.

“Last time we saw each other, you were on the other side. And now you’re using some trick. You’re hiding something from me. Don’t do it. Just tell him, or he’ll be making me find it.”

“What?” he managed, the words quiet now, having the distinct sense their time was running out.

Queenie's hands dropped to her sides, and she took a step back, a look of confusion on her face. Theseus felt a surge of relief and disappointment at the same time.

Finally, Queenie spoke up, her voice low and hesitant. "Oh…I can't read your mind. There's something different about you, something...weird. That’s not good for…for what he might do to make me…"

He looked towards the stone circle. There was some kind of enchantment around it. There was no other way to leave the castle other than through it, and presumably only by some spell only Grindelwald could do. No wonder she thought he was on his side. There was no way that, as his prisoner, he would be allowed to step into such a portal to escape.

“Are you really hiding your thoughts from me?” Queenie asked slowly, tilting her head a little, an expression of either relief or pain crossing her face.

The wind kept stealing their words away. The only consolation was that the dark wizard probably couldn’t hear them. It was freezing. He didn’t know how he hadn’t realised. It was no wonder she was cold. There was snow on the mountain caps around them, and he was only wearing a shirt and trousers. A shirt, trousers, and that stupid tie, and still no shoes.

“No,” he said.

Her throat bobbed and she took a half step back.

“That’s impossible. Impossible. Why does everyone lie here? Newt was such a sweetheart…and you…” she mumbled, constantly looking to the side, as if waiting for Grindelwald to break out of his conversation with Percival and punish them both. It was somewhat disconcerting to have her doll-like eyes flickering to the side, as if she was always looking through him. "And you're covered in blood...but Vinda told me about you...so..."

Theseus interrupted her with a sharp hiss of breath. He couldn't let her finish that sentence. He didn't want to think about what she might be implying. Not now. Not ever. Not if he wanted to keep his sanity intact.

Instead, he searched for the right words. For some mad reason, he felt there was some secret right thing he could say to get her to understand, and it was slipping through his fingers like sand through an hourglass. The shirt must have hidden the worst of his injuries from an outsider. It was almost laughable that he looked well enough to be a follower rather than a prisoner. He fought the urge to look back at the stone arch, from where tbe faint smell of familiar smoke drifted.

“Stop hiding from me,” she said. “Stop it.”

“I can’t stop it. It’s only getting worse. It’s like—well, I suppose it’s like your ability. It’s not something I can control.”

“He’ll want me to look into your mind sooner or later,” she said. “I won’t know if you won’t let me see—I won’t be able to tell if you’re…”

She made a small gesture, raising her wrists slightly. Theseus thought he knew what it meant.

“I know,” he said hopelessly. "If anything happens because of it, I'm sorry."

Queenie's eyes clouded over with a hint of sadness as she stared at Theseus. The wind howled around them, and she wrapped her arms around her chest, shivering. Theseus wished he could give her his jacket or something, but he had nothing to offer. He was a prisoner, after all.

“Fine,” she said suddenly, raising her chin, expression a little wobbly. She glanced covertly towards Grindelwald, who was still engaged in careful conversation with Percival, so close to him that their foreheads were almost brushing.

Theseus winced. Feeling like a puppet on a string, he nodded, his eyes locked with Queenie's. He hoped that she could see the truth in his gaze, even if she couldn't read his mind—and she shot him one last look, confused and searching, before tearing her eyes away and making her way across the snow-scattered path back to Vinda.

He stared at her retreating back. The coat looked thin and cheap. She was wearing low heels, but he didn’t think that was why her walk looked slow, injured, and unsteady.

“Theseus,” called Grindelwald. “Do come along now. Flirting with another woman? Rather unfaithful of you, if there still was a reason to keep whatever faith your kind paint a veneer of.”

Grindelwald had taken care to hammer the point home in their conversation after the macabre dinner.

He immediately spun around, instinctively touching his sleeve where he sometimes hid his wand in covert missions. No holster, no wand, no weapon.

With a deep breath, he walked towards the other two, leaving Queenie behind. So this was it. This was how it was going to be. This was how it was going to be if he returned to the others: no trust, no innocence, no way to know what the truth really was. His heart beat harder in his chest at the thought, a hollow sick feeling rising up his throat as he made eye contact with Percival again.

They weren’t so different.

Grindelwald turned to face him, a twisted smile on his lips. "I was starting to think you had abandoned us."

Theseus kept his expression neutral, his heart racing as he prepared himself for the mission he was about to undertake. He glanced over at Percival, who was already looking at him with a mix of fear and resignation.

“Not yet,” he said.

“Maybe when the village burning begins, you’ll want to. Yet the beauty of it is that you can’t. Not unless you make the vow.”

Theseus clenched his fists, trying to control the anger that simmered beneath the surface. He didn't want to be here, he didn't want to be a part of Grindelwald's plans, but he had no choice. And the look on Queenie's face—the accusation in her gaze.

He couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if he had been in Percival's position instead of being taken captive. Would he have been able to resist Grindelwald's promises of power and change? Would he have fallen for the same manipulations that Queenie had fallen for?

A few months ago, he wouldn’t have thought so. But it had all changed now that whatever relationship he and Percival had now was involved, whether he called it love or friendship or brotherhood. And he couldn’t abandon him for two reasons: one, Grindelwald wouldn’t let him leave, and two, what he’d become was not Percival’s fault.

“You said we were going to Brazil,” Theseus said, as levelly as he could, feeling the stone beneath his feet starting to heat as Grindelwald flicked his wand.

“Of course. Any killing now is bad for the optics. We can do just a little, should you stay unpersuaded, posthumously.”

“That breaches all the accords.”

Grindelwald raised his eyebrows at this rather obvious statement. “Yes. Why get elected if it’s not to change that?”

“What are you going to do in the Brazilian Ministry?” Theseus asked, narrowing his eyes. He had never been comfortable with deception, and the idea of infiltrating a foreign government's headquarters was daunting and so totally wrong he would feel sick at the thought if he wasn’t already in a state of half-shock.

Grindelwald continued, his voice low and intense. "Our goal is simple. We merely need to alter several case files and perhaps introduce information that better reflects our own opinions on the trials. There’s a few who wish to join us but would be overly occupied with foolish years-long court cases introduced by my opposition. Ms Santos has far too keen a sense of right and wrong and so wishes to open an investigation into the annulment of my crimes. I couldn’t put our dear friend Vogel in that position. The Brazilians, Chinese, even the French—they have all been thorns in our side for too long, and we need to take control before we start to lose it."

Theseus shifted uncomfortably, feeling a sense of unease settling in the pit of his stomach. He had a feeling he wasn't going to like where this was going.

"We're going to make sure that our cause is documented as the one true path. There is nothing illegitimate or illegal about it. It is only right. Vogel should not even face trial, and should he have to, it should finish within days, not the months usually attributed to such a thing. I will not have him busy at the time of the election,” Grindelwald continued, his eyes glinting with fanaticism. "The court must reflect the necessity of magical blood and penning in those who are not of wizarding descent under full control."

“Bloody hell,” Theseus murmured. He couldn't believe he was standing here, listening to Grindelwald spout the same dangerous rhetoric, just like in Paris but with less restrained, righteous anger, less playing to the crowd, and more fucking matter-of-fact. Like Grindelwald had any right to believe it. Like his followers weren’t falling down the slippery slope to ancient blood purity. Like it wasn’t rumoured that Grindelwald’s manifesto for the International Confederation of Wizards, should he win, included unspeakable changes to the accords. Grindelwald was righteous like Lucifer might have been, cast out of hell. And Theseus didn’t have a single drop of sympathy for the man.

If he could pinpoint someone who’d ruined his life, beautifully and perfectly, not in the messy way he’d done it himself, Theseus would have raised the finger of judgement directly to the grey-blonde man with mismatched eyes standing across from him.

"We will make it so that the magical world knows that we are the future," Grindelwald said, his voice rising with fervour. "We will be remembered as the ones who brought about a new era of magical dominance, and all those who oppose us will be erased from history."

“I can’t,” Theseus said, feeling as if there were iron bands circling his chest. “They’ll recognise my face.”

“Are you more afraid of witnessing the task, or having other people know you witnessed the task?”

“Go to hell,” Theseus snapped. “We can’t do this.”

“No—we are doing this. Answer the question and I’ll help make this easier for you. My transfiguration skills are unprecedented, and I’ve learnt from my mistakes of last time. I could give you a new face, although we’d have to use more force than if we utilised your credentials.”

There was a cold sweat on his forehead. He shivered. Which was he more afraid of? It was a minefield of thought, far too close to conceding. Either was terrible.

“I’m afraid of you altering damn Ministerial records to get innocent people convicted and guilty people freed, either now or under your new regime,” he shot back.

“Mmh,” Grindelwald remarked. “Rather distant fears when I can do so much more here.”

“That’s not a distant fear. That’s our whole society. These are not difficult choices. They’re evil.”

Grindelwald's smile disappeared, replaced by a look of cold fury. "You will be a part of it," he said slowly, his voice like ice. "You will do as I say, or there will be consequences. The greater good must be served, even if it requires difficult choices.”

For a moment, there was silence between them, broken only by the sound of the wind whipping around the castle walls. Grindelwald slowly lifted his wand to Percival’s head.

“Oh,” Percival managed faintly, and closed his eyes. The trembling began in his hands with the missing fingers and slowly worked his way up through his body. He shook his head—it was either a signal to Theseus or to Grindelwald.

Theseus held his breath. “Do it,” he bit out.

Grindelwald's gaze shifted to Theseus. He sneered, and a cruel smirk spread across his face. “Why, Theseus,” he said mockingly. “You really are a monster.”

He traced his wand down the side of Percival’s face, jabbing the point into the side of his hollow cheek. Grindelwald rolled his wand between two pale fingers and the top suddenly caught light, glowing bright white, radiating a red corona out across Percival’s skin as it started to burn him. Like his wand was entering hot wax, there was a sickening noise, and it was through.

“Don’t bite down, Director,” Grindelwald murmured. “What do you think, Theseus? Do you still love his face now?”

The hot, burning smell of a cauterised wound made the Auror feel sick. “You don’t need to do this.”

“Yes, but you only learn your lesson when I threaten other people. I suppose it’s good that you understand your limited worth, but it’s frustrating. I don’t like to have temper tantrums with my toys.”

Percival slowly sank to the floor, touching the peeling starburst in his cheek with wide eyes. He barely had time to process the pain. Glancing down, Grindelwald waved his wand at Percival and the man suddenly screamed out in pain as sparks of light shot from Grindelwald's wand and into Percival's body. Percival writhed on the ground in agony, while Grindelwald laughed. Despite the dark wizard’s facade of control, the laugh pitched, as if on the precipice of spiralling out of control.

Theseus could feel rage boiling within him, threatening to erupt like a volcano. He strained every muscle in his body not to move a single inch, not to let Grindelwald see that he was teeming with emotion. But it was hard to stand there and remain still as Percival endured intense pain, all because of something Theseus had said.

"Who would let his friend suffer like this, all for his pride? Do you need to be humbled again, hmm? What do you need? Because you, too, are indulging in the conceits of the greater good," Grindelwald said, whipping his wand back and striking Percival again.

Theseus watched as Percival's body convulsed with each strike of Grindelwald's wand. He felt sick to his stomach, his mind racing with thoughts of how he could stop this madness. But he knew that he was too outnumbered, too outmatched. Grindelwald was too powerful, and Theseus was just one man.

How could he stand by and do nothing? Percival cried out again, a raw and sobbing noise, and it was all too easy for Theseus to imagine that Grindelwald had made him cry like that so many times, for years and years, waiting for him to give in, twisting him into his fearful obedience. And this was Percy. This was a man who Theseus knew would have fought, even though he was alone, even though people had stopped looking for him, even though Theseus always knew Percival had the far better survival instincts out of the two of them. Yet against Grindelwald's ideology, he would have battled tooth and nail. And now he was broken, reduced to a quivering mess on the ground.

"Don't hurt him," he said weakly.

"What are your beliefs worth compared to someone's life? You are so blinded by your supposed morality that you fail to see the harm you are causing."

Easy for Grindelwald to say, given what he’d done, how he and Dumbledore had changed, how the German wizard saw it all as some sacrifice.

Theseus couldn't tear his eyes away. He saw it. He did see it. It was tearing him apart. But what could he do? He was trapped, caught between his loyalty to his friend and his fear of Grindelwald's power. He could feel the weight of the situation pressing down on him, suffocating him. For the greater good. One man against the world. In all those long nights at the Ministry staring at laden boards of evidence, trying to pin together Grindelwald’s crimes, trying to get justice, Theseus had never considered that they were two crusaders from mirror worlds, worlds that, perhaps, horrifyingly, would not have been in perfect dichotomy. He reminded himself of the killing, the man’s followers, the further corruption springing to life in the world Ministries.

"You will do as I say," Grindelwald said, his voice low and dangerous. "You will help us alter the case files."

He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. There had to be a way out of this. He couldn't let Percival die because of his own foolish mistakes.

“I’ll help,” he managed.

Grindelwald’s face was statue-like. He tilted his head a fraction. “What did you say?”

Theseus couldn't resist it any longer. With shaking hands, he cast a wandless spell to conjure a shield around Percival, to protect him from Grindelwald's torture. The shield held strong, and Grindelwald's spells bounced off it harmlessly. Grindelwald's grin widened as he released Percival from the spell. The man collapsed onto the ground, breathing heavily and shaking with pain.

“I said,” Theseus repeated, enunciating clearly with the certain knowledge that a mumble or misstep would only provide an impetus for Grindelwald to hurt Percival again. “I’ll help you get into the Brazilian Ministry.”

Grindelwald paused, his wand still pointed at Percival, and for a moment Theseus thought he was going to break the shaky shield. It was a shit shield, terrible, no better than a fifth-year student’s and cracking by the minute. There was sweat pooling in the hollow between Theseus’s palms as he clasped them together. All that to concede. He had let the dark wizard drill a hole into the face of a man with whom he’d exchanged letters for years and even now he was giving in with both palms raised, as if grateful, as if praying for this pathetic excuse to let him abandon his morality. A slow smile spread across Grindelwald’s face as he lowered his wand.

"Please," Theseus said, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Since you asked so nicely,” Grindelwald said magnanimously. “Why, then I will let you assist us.”

Theseus felt his fury gradually transform into a colder emotion, one more deliberate and restrained. The mountain air still sent a chill down his spine.

"No matter what you do, no matter how many people you kill or torture, you will not succeed," he said. "The world will rise against you, and you will fall."

Grindelwald laughed, a cold and cruel sound. "You think you know how the world works, Theseus? You think you have all the answers? You know nothing. You never did, and it was a lesson Leta Lestrange had to die for in order for you to understand."

"If you say her name once more time; if you dare—“ he breathed.

"I certainly would dare. But enough of your quest for answers; mine is far more consequential. All you need to do is get us in—and watch. In fact, if you do anything other than get us in, I'll make sure you regret it within an inch of your life. I need your title and then I only need your attention, enough so that you might understand the moral calculus of freeing Percival is far superior to letting him stay my loyal servant.”

Of course. A moral calculus. He didn’t believe in the greater good; but he’d always believed in sacrifices.

"I understand," Theseus said, his voice hollow. “There’s only one flaw in your plan. They might catch us all, and then your election run would be…over.”

Grindelwald released him, and Theseus stumbled backward, feeling as though he had been punched in the gut.

"Perhaps we do all deserve it. But you know what they say. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." Grindelwald's eyes gleamed with a dangerous light. "And I am the devil. You would be wise not to forget that."

How had he gotten himself into this mess? He had always believed in doing what was right, even if it meant going against authority. But now, he found himself bowing down to Grindelwald's command, and the guilt was eating away at him from the inside out.

He needed to stay calm and focused if he wanted to survive this. Worse, Grindelwald had the power of foresight. If he wasn't cursing Theseus now to ensure he did obey, he must have known, just as he did when he'd tried to escape, that he was going to do just what he said. Theseus didn't dare to look at Percival, who was still lying on the ground, gasping for air. He swallowed hard and pushed the thought of his friend's suffering to the back of his mind. He had to focus on the task at hand. He had to get Grindelwald into the Brazilian Ministry without getting caught.

"I won't fail him," Theseus said. "I'll do what you ask."

Grindelwald nodded slowly, his eyes still fixed on Theseus. "Good. Remember, any misstep and Percival will suffer. And it'll be on your hands. But, my dear Auror, may I tell you the truth? I always knew that you'd see reason."

Chapter Text

It was a hotter day than either Newt or Tina had ever experienced before. Tina held her leather Auror’s jacket over one arm as they walked down the bright street, scuffing up dust. Her fringe was sticking to her forehead with the perspiration and she was sure she looked as red faced as she felt. Newt, however, was in his element. With his shirtsleeves rolled up, and the barest glimmer of sweat on his forehead, he wandered down the street just slightly outpacing her with each step, considering each new house with interest. Telephone wires criss-crossed the sky above them, drawing harsh shadows across the greying but brightly painted facades of the small houses.

But their contact, a member of the British Ministry who owed Tina a favour for a tip that had led to a career-making discovery of a stash of mediaeval Sneakoscope prototypes, was a wizard. And their cousin, a journalist in Brazil, was a Squib, but with all the habits of wizardkind in the uneasy coexistence that seemed to be marking the decade of 1930. The brighter houses started to thin out as the track beneath them became coarser, replaced by teetering settlements stacked together, each clearly crafted with care and ingenuity, creating patchwork collages of wood and metal.

Newt’s eyes were drawn to the trees arching above the houses, ignoring the curious figures lingering in the doorways, watching the strange pair proceed down the street. It took Tina an uncomfortably long moment to remember that despite the prestigious standing of the Brazilian Ministry, their Muggle government was still in turmoil. With her American-style shirt and trousers, she looked like an oddity at best and a threat at worst to the people living on the edge of the city here. There was no one person, no Mary Lou, she could place the blame on to make full sense of the situation.

They finally reached the last house. This time, Newt hung back, giving Tina an expectant look.

“I suppose I’m knocking,” she said, and was met with a decisive nod.

She tapped her knuckles against the wooden door. Almost immediately, it swung open, revealing a fringe of amber-coloured beads that clattered as a woman emerged through them. She was tall with rich brown skin, wearing a white dress with neat ruffles around the collar; the dress was pinned in the centre with a silver brooch of a bird, and several strands of her braided hair were caught on its beak. Her eyes darted up and down the street.

“Come in,” she said, practically dragging Tina inside, giving Newt a sharp look that seemed to say follow, and quickly.

Tina blinked as her eyes adjusted to the comparatively low light. The room was simple but tidy. A desk held a typewriter by the square-cut window, and a bookshelf sagged under the weight of a mixture of tomes, some shimmering with illusion enchantments, no doubt to hide their wizarding titles from any No-Maj who might enter.

“One moment,” the woman said. She pulled the page out of the typewriter and shoved it into a wooden box under the desk, before folding the case back up around the typewriter and sealing it away into an innocuous box.

“Boa tarde, then,” the woman said. “My name is Flor. Yours?”

“Newt?” offered Newt.

“Tina,” Tina said. “Um—good afternoon to you as well.”

Newt walked over to the corner of the room and crouched on his haunches, examining the gap between the ground and the wall with some interest. “It looks as though you have—“

“A slight infestation, yes?” she shot back with a hint of impatience.

“Yes, of—“ and Newt frowned. “Faezinho, I think you call them. We call them Gritskittlers.”

“They can stay. There’s no harm in it, so long as they don’t start eating my documents. Then I’ll get what I deserve for not being able to afford a proper folio.”

Tina coughed. “I’m sorry to change the subject to a less pleasant topic—“

“Don’t worry, darling; it was already relatively unpleasant. Those papers are part and parcel of my career, even if most of the articles are still half-finished.”

“I see,” Tina said. “Well, in that case, I hope that your cohabitants remain…not hungry.”

“Take a seat,” Flor said, walking over to the small countertop in the far right corner and lighting the hob, carefully balancing a heavy iron kettle on it. Tina watched with some curiosity as she used a match to light the flames and then adjusted the heated appliance by hand, hissing and wincing as she flicked it around so the base lined up with the centre of the kettle. It was rare she saw the labour required for No Maj technology in action.

Flor caught her staring. “Yes, yes, life is harder here than in your America, especially when you don’t have magic,” she said sarcastically. “And I would say that at least we don’t have your fanatic problem, but it seems like the Europeans have beaten all of us to it. There are whispers now that Grindelwald’s sentiments are spreading to Brazil.”

“What do Santos’s polls look like?” Tina asked.

“Well, since that attempted assassination…whether it was targeting Santos or Grindelwald…they’ve been quite good,” Flor said.

Newt and Tina exchanged a glance.

“It could have been both, I suppose,” Newt ventured.

Flor looked thoughtful. She drummed her fingers against the countertop and looked carefully at Newt. “And why would you think that?” she asked.

“Oh, a range of reasons,” Newt said.

“Are you going to elaborate?”

Newt glanced at Tina. There was a brief pause in which she narrowed her eyes and prayed to Mercy Lewis that he wasn’t about to share all the details about Jacob being a No Maj to this journalist. As well-meaning as she was, the last thing they needed was for various followers of Grindelwald to try and take easy justice into their own hands.

“Umm…no,” he said. “But it would be a good story.”

She ushered them through to a back porch looking out onto a half-cleared section of forest, indicating for them to sit on the wooden chairs. A moment later, she returned with the fragrant and bitter-smelling tea, doused in milk and sugar. Tina took her cup, vaguely grateful, wondering whether it was something about joining a mission lead by a Brit that was causing so many of their strategies to be discussed over the beverage.

“Before we start,” Tina said. “I just want to let you know that if you feel as though sharing this information will put your life in danger, I am more than happy to offer you all the protection MACUSA can spare.”

Flor whistled. “I’ll consider it. I can always ask my cousin, too, providing my owl feels up to the journey. So—you two are interested in sponsoring my story?”

“Yes,” Newt said. “We definitely have a few contacts who are willing to fund this.”

“Perfect. I’ll take your word for it—something about you makes me trust you,” she said to Newt, then eyed the small gap between Newt and Tina’s chairs. “I’ll assume you trust one another, too. I’m not having all my work fall apart because you two begin your marital disagreements in the middle of it.”

Newt blinked. “We’re not married,” he said bluntly.

“No, I noticed,” Flor said, holding up a hand and wiggling her fingers.

“Oh,” Newt said, turning to Tina awkwardly.

“It isn’t that rare for a woman to travel unaccompanied by a husband in this day and age,” Tina said frostily.

“Ay! I didn’t mean it like that,” Flor replied. “I’m sure your colleague is being accompanied by you, by the looks of it.”

“Until we get to anything that requires magical beasts, then yes,” Tina said. To her surprise, this elicited a low laugh from Newt, and she felt something in her stomach bubble at the sound. She mentally kicked herself.

“It’s a fair assessment of my abilities,” Newt said in a good-natured way, peeking up at her through his fringe as if they were sharing an inside joke. She couldn’t resist smiling back, pleasantly surprised that, unlike Tolliver, this hadn’t sparked some tirade about all his many skills and years of training.

“So what’s the story?” Tina asked, cradling her cup in both hands and leaning forwards.

Flor crossed her legs at the ankles. “So, I think it’s running through the grapevine that there’s a high potential Anton Vogel might be tried for electoral interference based on utilising insufficient evidence to get Grindelwald into the running. It makes sense. Only a few people have seen the documents, and they’re the type of people who are happy to push it through, documents or not. It makes sense that the Chinese and Brazilian ministries will pursue this for the good of their candidates. I heard a rumour that the French wanted to join too.”

Tina nodded. “That’s what we’ve suspected too,” she said. “And, Mercy Lewis, I hope it goes through and he gets struck from the ballot.”

“But I’m sure you know almost as well as I do how these international trials tend to pan out,” said the woman, curling her lip.

“Years,” Tina admitted.

Newt winced, picking at a loose thread in his coat. “Is that the…best case scenario?”

The other two nodded at the same time.

“So, that makes the process significantly worse and lengthier than at the British Ministry. I suppose it’s always possible,” Newt muttered, running his fingers over the surface of his case and looking as though he wanted to do nothing more than jump inside and never have to hear about the bureaucracy of international politics again.

“It still needs to be done if it’s the closest to justice we can get,” Flor chided. “These things take time.”

Newt shifted on his seat. “Yes, of course—I’m with the, erm, with the British Ministry on this, and I’m sure they’re going to back the trial as well, they just might be taking their time about it, as they like to do—“

He suddenly frowned and stared off into the forest behind the cleared patch nearest the house, sitting up straight.

Tina ploughed on, aware that time was ticking. “I think your cousin mentioned that you have solid information on a potential place where Grindelwald might be heading to.”

Newt started to stand. Tina glanced sideways at him and decided that he wasn’t her responsibility, so long as he didn’t get himself killed. With that, she watched the long-limbed British man unfold himself from the small table and hurry over to the forest, already crouching, walking quicker and quieter, eyes wide and focused.

“Indeed. So, I had a friend.”

“Had?” Tina asked.

Flor sighed. “Yes. I’m not sure how much you know about it over in North America, but the 1920s have not been easy years for us. The ghosts of violence linger much longer than that. They linger in the hearts of those who survived, in the broken streets and shattered homes, in the whispered tales of those who were lost.”

There was a moment of silence, as the weight of her words settled over them like a thick fog. Tina felt a pang of empathy for this woman, who had lived through such tumultuous times and still carried the weight of it with her.

“Forgive me if I’m being too profound. I am a writer by trade. But we carry on," she said. "We carry on because that is what we must do. We pick up the pieces, we rebuild what was destroyed, and we hold tight to the hope that tomorrow will be better. So, that’s what my friend did. He carried on, he practiced his art, he grew famous, almost. He held to the idea that tomorrow would be better. And his tomorrow isn’t the same as mine; not in this country that’s still licking its wounds. Santos understands. Grindelwald could never.”

“Oh,” Tina said quietly.

Flor took a sip of her tea, the steam curling around her face. “But my friend,” she continued, “he got involved in things that were bigger than himself. He believed that he could make a difference, that he could use his art for good. And so, he agreed to design some election materials for Grindelwald’s campaign.”

Tina’s eyes widened. “Grindelwald’s campaign?”

“Yes,” Flor confirmed. “At the time, my friend thought that Grindelwald stood for something. Something different, something better than what was already there. But as time went on, and Grindelwald’s true motives became clear, my friend regretted his involvement. He withdrew from politics, from society. He became a recluse.”

“And where is he now?” Tina asked, curiosity piqued.

“He’s holding an art-charity ball,” Flor said. “It’s a place where artists can gather, share their work, and support each other. It’s one of the few bright spots in this city, and my friend is hoping to use it as a way to help those who were affected by the violence of the past few years.”

“And you think Grindelwald might show up there?” Tina asked, her mind already racing with possibilities.

“It’s possible,” Flor said. “My friend may have cut himself off from society, but he still hears things. Rumours, whispers. And one of the things he’s heard is that Grindelwald might be interested in attending the hall. After all, it’s for a good cause, and it would be a way for him to show that he’s not the monster people make him out to be.”

Tina nodded. “And if Grindelwald does show up, we can trail him. See where he’s headed.”

Flor winced. “Well, that’s not the story—I suppose it could be if you both turn up dead in a ditch, but I’d rather you didn’t. The story is about art, really. Art and loyalty. And maybe on a more personal level? I can’t help but wonder which side my friend’s really on.”

“I think…” Tina said. “…that’s exactly the story we’re looking for too.”

Flor nodded and raised her cup to Tina. “Then you should soon be off, before anyone comes to find you. I’m not saying they will, but there’s a reason that I live further on the edge of the neighbourhood than my non-magical non-writer peers.”

Tina shook her head. “Do you want to come with us? We can protect you.”

“Thank you, but I don’t really need anyone’s protection. Oh! And did I mention, I’m a Squib?” she added sarcastically. “I know there’s no such thing as a fair fight against Grindelwald, but there’s a fair fight and there’s taking the piss.”

Tina blinked, not having expected the elegant woman to say something like that.

“Tirando sarro,” she added. “Of course I’m not coming. There’s not just one way to fight a man, you know. Watch out for one of my papers, and then reach out to me again. It would be a shame not to see your pretty face again, mmh?”

“I’m an Auror, ma’am,” Tina replied. “Unfortunately, this is my job. This is all I can do.”

Flor raised her eyebrow. “An Auror?” she repeated, but not harshly. “Oh, you are keen to remind me. I’ve heard of your kind. You’re the enforcers of MACUSA. But tell me, Tina, do you really believe that they have your best interests at heart?”

Tina hesitated for a moment. “It’s been complicated,” she admitted, wondering all of a sudden how she could feel so lonely that the warmth of this woman had her speaking about something she’d never spoken about before. “My boss…almost executed me. But we all know that wasn’t actually him—it was Grindelwald. So as for MACUSA having my best interests at heart, I could go either way. I daresay my promotion might have been informed by the lack of compensation immediately after the incident.”

Flor leaned forward, her voice lowering. “Let me tell you a secret,” she said. “The Ministry doesn’t care about you. They don’t care about me. They only care about maintaining their power and control. And sometimes, that means turning a blind eye to the very things they’re supposed to protect us from.”

“Are you saying the Brazilian Ministry…?” Tina began.

Flor gave her a warning look. “I know you are only going to the art show, is that right? There would be no reason for you to end up at the Ministry.”

“No, of course not,” Tina replied in a hushed tone, feeling fire spark in her belly. “Of course not.”

There was a brief silence in which she could hear insects humming in the trees. Her shirt was clinging to her back. Flor took a slow sip of tea.

“Thank you, Flor,” Tina said, standing up from the table. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

Flor smiled. “Anytime, dear. Just remember, sometimes the greatest battles are fought in the shadows.”

She gave her a nod and realised that Newt was still somewhere in the forest. With an apologetic noise, she followed warily after him, pulling out her wand after quickly checking their surroundings. When she looked back at the wooden house’s small porch through the trees, Flor was gone.

“Newt?” she called out.

There was no reply.

“You goddamn idiot,” she muttered to herself. “We needed to stay together. That was important information. In fact, Newt, you needed to be there, otherwise what’s the point of you even coming?”

It wasn’t like Newt was trying to avoid Tina as much as she’d been trying to avoid him. Surely. Surely, she reasoned. If he really was avoidant as she was deep down, then they were already doomed.

Or, more likely, he’d chased some wild magical creature native to Brazil that had the capacity to do something strange and fabulous like eat young children with the full intention of loving it like one of those children. She scrubbed a hand across her cheekbones and wondered why it was suddenly even more warm and humid.

Tina cautiously made her way through the thick foliage, her wand at the ready. The jungle was alive with the sounds of creatures large and small, the rustling of leaves and the chirping of birds filling the air. She called out Newt's name again, hoping for a response, but the only answer was the echoing of her own voice.

“Newt!” she shouted, heart starting to beat harder. “Mercy Lewis! Newt!”

She was definitely going to call him Mr Scamander for this, refusal to re-engage with the past be damned. And what did she know? Their entanglement was already going wrong. For all she knew, he’d seen a follower of Grindelwald, not a beast, and was just as gone as his brother. Worryingly, her chest felt tighter than it had in years.

She barrelled her way through the next thicket of trees, ignoring the crunching of foliage under her feet, and only vaguely concerned about not being able to see Flor’s house anymore.

There.

She heard a faint cooing noise, soft and almost animalistic, but just a little too careful and too human to come from any creature other than Newt Scamander. With a gentle sigh, Tina dropped into a similar crouch to the one she’d seen him do, hoping not to scare the creature away, and slipped through the human-sized gap between the thick trees in front of her. Without Newt’s distinctive peacock coat, she almost didn’t see him among the shadowed patterns of the trees, but his shock of almost-ginger hair was difficult to miss.

He was crouched in front of a thick flowering bush, his eyes wide with excitement. She couldn’t help but feel a twinge of annoyance, mixed with a deep sense of concern for him. Newt was notorious for his love of magical creatures, but this was a dangerous time to be wandering off alone.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her tone firm.

“Shh,” Newt whispered, not even turning to face her. “I’ve found something incredible.”

Tina rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t deny the thrill of excitement that tingled through her body. There was something about the way Newt talked about magical creatures that was infectious, even when he was being reckless.

What is it?” she asked, taking a step closer to him.

Newt turned to face her, his eyes shining. “It’s a Sonímbula,” he said, his voice hushed with reverence. “They’re native to Brazil, and they have the ability to create a magical dust that can put people to sleep.”

Tina raised an eyebrow. “And why do we need something that puts people to sleep?”

“Trust me,” Newt said with a small smile. “We might need it.”

Tina sighed. “Fine. But be careful. We don’t know who might be watching.”

Newt nodded, and with a wave of his wand, he coaxed the sleepweaver out of the bush. It was a small creature, no larger than a mouse, with shimmering wings that sparkled in the sunlight. It chirped happily, as if it knew that it had caught the attention of two humans.

Newt approached it slowly, his hand outstretched. The sleepweaver chirped again, and suddenly, it released a cloud of glittering dust that enveloped Newt and Tina. They felt a wave of drowsiness wash over them, but then, just as quickly as it had come, the feeling passed.

“What was that?” Tina asked, feeling a little disoriented.

“That was the Sonímbula’s magic,” Newt said, a look of wonder on his face. “It can create dust that puts people to sleep, but usually only when they’re standing up, as it projects at around one and a half to two metres in order to tackle its larger prey. That’s why we weren’t affected too strongly, since we’re crouching here. But it only lasts for a few minutes, so we have to be careful when we use it.”

Tina nodded, feeling a sense of awe wash over her. Newt had a way of making even the most dangerous creatures seem beautiful and fascinating. She knew that she should be angry with him for wandering off, but she couldn’t deny the thrill of adventure that came with exploring this strange new land with him.

“Come on,” Newt said, opening his suitcase and gently helping the creature inside, and then tilting his head. “We have an art show to infiltrate.”

“Oh, you’re looking forward to it?” she asked.

“I love art,” Newt said simply. “I practised for years so I could draw accurate depictions of my beasts. How about you? What do you, um, think of it?”

“It’s okay, sometimes,” Tina said.

Newt scoffed. “You sound like my brother,” he added, and she wondered what he was really thinking.

She grimaced. “Sorry.”

He gave her a hapless shrug, pushing back his hair from his forehead for a half-second and then letting it fall back down. Newt's body language had suddenly shifted, and Tina couldn't quite decipher what it meant. She had learned to read some of his subtle cues over time, but this one seemed to elude her. There was a moment of awkward silence as they both seemed lost in their thoughts.

“Is everything okay, Newt?" she asked, studying the planes of his face.

“It’s fine. Maybe.” He looked at her, his expression unreadable. "Why do you ask?"

She swallowed, realising that she had less than a gift with words herself and no way to gently broach the topic. Now was not a good time to push him, although she’d only ever seen him upset once, when she’d brought in his damn case and nearly got it incinerated along with everything inside it. Newt gave her a sideways glance as if she was a little odd, and turned back to the bush where he’d found the little creature, running his hands over the leaves.

Tina's thoughts swirled with guilt as she stared at Newt's back, his shoulders slumped in a way that suggested he was wrestling with something within himself. It wasn't his fault, she knew, that the intricacies of human interaction often eluded him. Nor was it her fault that she was at a loss for how to approach the sensitive topic of Theseus. But the weight of the heavy silence between them pressed on her chest, a reminder of the words left unsaid. She wished she could find the right words to ease the tension, to offer comfort, but they eluded her like a flock of birds scattering in the wind.

Finally, Tina cleared her throat. "So, um, should we head to the art show now?"

Newt seemed to snap out of his reverie. "Yes, yes, of course," he said, straightening up. "We don't want to be late, I suppose."

*

With the location of the hall secured—in the centre of Rio and a thirty minute walk from the Ministry itself—Tina and Newt ducked into a shaded alleyway. It wasn’t long before they were struggling over how to disguise themselves in Newt’s case. The problem was, Tina thought, that Newt’s clothes were actually surprisingly nice and so he had no need to be as inventive as she did.He wore maybe four variations of a fairly typical outfit for a man, if slightly eccentric. He always had the bow tie perched at his neck, as if to demonstrate he was closer to a professor to any business-like tie-wearing plebeian. The thick khaki tweeds brought out the hazel in his eyes and his waistcoats all seemed to fit him perfectly. They were nothing out of the ordinary, but somehow spoke to his character, muted but dependable, suggesting just a hint of his adventurous personality.

Tina, meanwhile, had just started earning enough to have much of a wardrobe, and most of her salary dedicated to clothes went on the kind of thing that a serious Head Auror might wear, not girlish costumes for art balls. She kept summoning clothes over from her closet at home and instantly sighing. She had some clothes that were appropriate for formal events, but none of them stood out. They were all practical, plain and professional, like something a Head Auror would wear. She didn’t really have any accessories to speak of, save for a simple necklace—her silver locket, with photos of her parents and sister inside—and a pair of stud earrings.

Newt looked at himself in the slightly distorted mirror on the first floor of his workshop, frowning. "I suppose I could wear a different colour bow tie," he said thoughtfully, seemingly indifferent to the way the old mirror warped his face as he stared at himself. "Maybe a dark green?"

Tina shrugged. "It doesn't matter too much. We're supposed to be blending in, not standing out."

Newt nodded, looking resigned. "You're right, of course. I just don't want to stick out like a sore thumb."

Tina smiled sympathetically. "I don't think that's going to be a problem for either of us."

Newt cleared his throat, and Tina turned to face him. "I don't think I have anything suitable to wear," she said, feeling a sense of self-consciousness wash over her.

Newt looked up, a crease forming between his eyebrows. "I’m not even sure what counts as suitable," he said with a sigh.

Tina bit her lip, feeling a sense of disappointment. She had hoped that Newt would have some brilliant idea that would solve their clothing dilemma. He was the source of many brilliant ideas. Yet sadly not, it seemed, for her wardrobe.

They both lapsed into silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Tina couldn't help but feel a sense of unease between them. She knew that they needed to work together, but she was wary of the unresolved tension between them.

Newt nodded in agreement. "Right. Blending in. That's what's important." He rummaged through his suitcase, looking for something suitable. After a few moments, he pulled out a simple grey suit and held it up for Tina to see.

"What do you think?" he asked, a hint of uncertainty in his voice. “I haven’t seen this in a while. To be honest, I’d rather not wear it if I could, but the last thing I want is to be instantly recognisable.”

“Mmh,” Tina said. “The newspapers have picked up on you as a sort of…darling.”

There was an excruciating silence in which Tina rapidly determined that he either didn’t often read the papers or wholly disliked them. She somehow found herself stepping forwards, feet moving of their own accord, in an attempt to read his expression. He looked back with wide eyes and barely raised eyebrows, as if the words were already on his lips just as they had been in the moon-blue aisle of the records department of the French Ministry.

Newt fiddled with his wand and magically swapped the suit he was wearing with the suit held in one hand. The khaki melted into the blue-grey. It was formal, bordering on severe. She couldn’t say anything when she’d opted to hack off most of her hair the moment she got the promotion.

He didn’t want to respond to that comment about the papers, or his mind was on other things, so it was being categorically ignored instead. She could work with that. Trying to break the silence, Tina smiled. "It looks good, Newt. Classic and understated."

Newt's face relaxed into a smile. "Thank you," he said, relieved.

Tina searched through her own meagre wardrobe, trying to find something suitable. After a few minutes of digging, she pulled out a navy blue dress and held it up for Newt's approval.

"So, what do you think of this?" Tina asked, holding up a dress.

Newt examined it closely. "It's very...sleek," he said carefully. "It suits your style."

Tina raised an eyebrow. "My style?"

Newt stumbled, feeling embarrassed. "I mean, your style of dress. It's very...smart. Professional."

Tina nodded, not wanting to make things any more awkward than they already were. With a flick of her wand, she used the same transfiguration charm as Neet, easily switching her work clothes for the dress in an easy motion. Wherever they were in their professional relationship, it was certainly not at the stage where more skin than necessary needed to be shown. She felt a brief rush of pride at not blushing at that thought, as if it was proof she was growing immune to the butterflies that had plagued her since they’d made their goodbye on the New York docks.

Newt finally coughed and looked at the back of his hand, as if he’d find a suitable compliment there. After a few seconds of deep thought, his expression cleared. "You look beautiful, Tina," he said softly.

“Thanks,” she said, giving him a small smile in return.

Chapter Text

In the heat of the sun, the fabric of the dress clung to her. Flocks of people wearing brighter, luxurious clothes streamed towards the large stone hall. Newt shielded his eyes from the sun and examined the domed roof for a few moments with a low hum of interest.

“I thought it’d be a smaller event,” he commented.

“We can’t underestimate anything—or anyone.”

“Erm,” he said with a half-nod. “I was…partly thinking that, of course. But also…I’m not so good with crowds, at least if we’re just all meant to be in one place because we’re meant to be. It’s one thing if I have something else, some other task in mind where I might need to briefly push through; but this kind of thing can be…sweaty.”

Tina made a thoughtful noise. “Can I interpret that as meaning you don’t go to this kind of thing unless it's completely necessary? Or is it just sweaty?”

“Like being a Puffskein in a thimble.”

She blew air through her cheeks, trying to imagine why anyone would put such an expansive creature in such a small space to begin with. “I guess I kind of understand. I was a bit overweight as a teenager.”

They both shared a glance, practically feeling the crossed wires in the confused stare of the other. Newt picked up the pace again and slowly headed towards the entrance, scuffing his feet as they passed under large fluttering green banners adorning the outer facade. 

Her wand was hidden in a secret pocket at her hip; she resisted the urge to tap at it to check it was still there.

“No security,” Newt commented, tightening his grip on his case, which he’d disguised to look like another case—having to obey the laws of physics to some extent—but in a dark mahogany banded with gold, exactly the kind of case a prospective art collector might bring.

“Your Nifflers would have gotten us kicked out immediately,” she muttered.

“It’s always a possibility.”

“Well, now we just have to wait and see if he turns up,” she said, glancing around the room and feeling a stir of discomfort at the number of faces around them. With a twitch of her fingers, she cast an illusion over her hair, lengthening it past her shoulders and then down to her waist for good measure. She clicked her tongue at Newt, who pulled a pair of spectacles out of the suit jacket—“these aren’t mine, or I didn’t put them there, but they’re gold rimmed”—and cast a similar charm over his distinctive freckles. It was like he’d suddenly aged five years; she had to do a double take.

Most of the crowd were in the centre of the room, where a tall and intricate sculpture made entirely out of glasses of crimson wine stood like a blood fountain. 

Newt skirted the corner of the room, looking with fascination at his surroundings, and stopped by the first painting, adjusting the glasses that weren’t his with a squint.

She followed. The canvas was huge and covered in frothing textured oil paint. A single triangle of red was painted over the chaos, like an eye gazing into the void.

She made an uncomfortable noise. “What do you think?”

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, tapping his fingers against the side of his suit trousers. “I think it’s frustrated—wild.”

“I was thinking, um, the triangle—“ Tina began. “Flor said that she didn’t know for sure what side her friend was on, that they’d regretted helping with Grindelwald’s propaganda materials, but she didn’t say they’d stopped supporting him entirely.”

“Surely it’s one or the other with Grindelwald,” Newt murmured. He balled his hands into fists. “The—the fire—the Protego Diabola. There can’t be any way be lets people like that survive.”

“I think they’re more useful now that he knows who he can trust,” Tina said. “Once you reach a certain level of power, you can start working with less predictable people: because if they cause you any trouble, you can just…remove them.”

She stared at his profile silhouetted in the low and artistic light of the hall against the mess of the wild painting. It might have been the first time she’d seen him out of his element, having spent the most time with him in New York, trying to stop the beasts destroying the city.

It didn’t feel like seven years ago. It felt like yesterday. He swung the case around as he turned to face her again, rebalancing his weight with expert precision, and nodded.

“I see,” Newt said quietly.

Tina swallowed and stared hard into the centre of the painting. She moved along to the next one, seeing the bright colours of the last swirl behind her eyes as she pretended to examine the next one. 

Her and Newt's understated outfits were actually a blessing in disguise. They blended in perfectly with the crowd, and no one paid them a second glance as they took on the significance of the serving staff. 

The humid air smelt like sweet marzipan and frangipane, a clinging scent that seemed to drift out of the red velvet lining the walls. If they hadn’t stepped out of broad daylight, Tina would have forgiven herself for thinking this was a midnight masquerade ball in which everyone proudly wore their real faces.

Everyone apart from her, perhaps, because as she looked at the next painting through the shoulders of a tall, gossiping couple standing in front of her, she felt a swirl of emotions rise in her chest. The paint on this one hummed with the loamy warmth of enchantment.

As Tina approached the painting, she couldn't help but notice the sheer size of it. It was easily the biggest one in the room and dominated the wall it hung on. The brushstrokes were impressionistic, giving the scene a hazy, dreamlike quality, shades of deep greens and blues blending seamlessly into each other.

The painting depicted a group of people dancing in a dark forest. They moved and swayed to a rhythm she couldn't hear. The twisting vines and gnarled tree branches seemed to reach out and grab at the dancers. 

Her art education consisted solely of the long afternoons she and Queenie had spent haunting every free public attraction in New York right after they’d lost their parents. The galleries had been a place to rest her eyes, but she’d only been able to lose herself in the libraries.

“Huh,” she muttered. “Enchanted?”

She was vaguely aware of Newt approaching over her shoulder.

“Where do you think they’re dancing?” Tina asked, careful not to broach the previous topic of trust and betrayal on a mission where she’d sworn to do the former at the expense of doing the latter to her heart.

“Well, the forest in the painting appears to be predominantly deciduous, with a variety of broadleaf trees such as oak and beech. The understory is relatively sparse, indicating that the forest may be well-managed, which is a common practice in Western Europe,” Newt said, getting dangerously close to the barrier in front of the painting. 

He stepped back and continued in a hushed tone. “Additionally, the painting has a certain quality of light that is characteristic of the region, with a soft diffused light that suggests a temperate climate. And finally, there is the matter of the leaves themselves. The shape and arrangement of the leaves on the trees in the painting is consistent with the foliage found in certain parts of Germany, maybe. It reminds me of there, at any rate. In fact, and I know to most people all forests look the same, it reminds me of the Wolpertingers."

Tina blinked. It sounded like he’d restrained a sneeze, but it could have been the British accent. She looked at him with raised eyebrows, reigning in the blank stare.

“They’re a fascinating creature native to the forests of Germany,” Newt continued, picking up on the wordless question. “With the body of a rabbit, wings of a bird, and antlers of a deer, they’re quite unique. And the males have been known to perform an elaborate dance to attract a mate. It’s quite a sight to behold.”

“I once rescued a Wolpertinger from a group of smugglers who were trying to sell it on the black market. It had been injured in a trap and was in desperate need of medical attention. It was a difficult case, but Bunty and I managed to nurse it back to health.”

He paused, lost in thought for a moment before continuing.

“They’re very rare, you know. Only found in certain areas of Germany, and even then, they’re very good at hiding. It’s quite an honour to see them in the wild, let alone witness a mating dance.”

“But there aren’t any in the painting, right?” Tina asked. “Or are they very good at camouflaging themselves?”

Newt watched the painting. Several seconds ticked back—she wondered if it was her imagination or if, in the low light, his pupils had dilated. What did he see? What did he see that she didn’t? 

After nearly a minute of listening to the low hum of snippets of conversation in the room— “this painting is enchanted”, “of course it is”, “—é um lugar especial para Grindelwald?”, “Eles não fariam isso tão descaradamente, não pode ser.” —she pinched at the fabric of Newt’s suit sleeve, avoiding actually grabbing his arm, and removed the pair of them to a corner. She could still feel the brush of the enchantment on her skin and she wanted to put some distance between them and the painting.

“That was…unusual,” Newt said, his eyes still fixed on the painting even from several metres away. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Tina nodded, trying to shake off the strange feeling the painting left her with. “It was almost like the painting was alive,” she says. “The way the figures moved and danced was so real.”

Newt looked at her intently. “It was almost as if the painting knew us,” he said softly.

Tina raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“We’re teetering on the verge of that wildness; we’re all gathered; we’re all in places that feel dark and ominous, like here, for example, although I suppose I personally would prefer the forests of North Germany by the Rhine.”

This was not an ancient historical sketch of some wild animal, or a beautiful picture of a piece of nature, but rather something inhuman and frenetic, something that she would’ve thought Newt with his gentle soul, could’ve never truly seen himself in. 

What exactly was he identifying with? Was it the macabre nature of the painting in the world that seemed fundamentally different accompanying the rise of Grindelwald? Or is it the fact that it was uncomfortable, just as the entire hall made her feel uncomfortable and itchy, as if she wanted to peel off the skin?

There must’ve been thousands of reasons why he would find some meaning in it other than what are the artist had intended: the secret support of Grindelwald, the exhilaration of wizarding freedom, the ritualist ability to go back hundreds of years and once more wander freely in the woods, casting powerful and archaic.

In the end, feeling the dull weight of her Auror training, Tina tried to dismiss the idea. It hurt her that she could no longer believe the best of everyone. If Queenie could leave her, anyone could—it was just that Newt had already deliberately flung himself out of her life several years ago and hardened her heart enough that doing it again surely wouldn’t hurt her this time.

What the hell, Tina, she thought furiously. Abandonment issues aside, would Newt seriously join Grindelwald?

“We can’t let ourselves get distracted by paintings,” she said. 

“What’s the task?” Newt asked.

She looked back at the fountain of wine glasses in the centre of the room, watching the crimson liquid trickle its way down, filling each one.

“I think he’s going to come here,” Tina said. “This art—this exhibition—it’s a sure show of support.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. But trust me.”

He gave her a weary smile. “You know that I will,” and then, after a short pause, added: “can we find somewhere quieter, please?”

She glanced around the room, assessing the faces of each of those nearest to her, eyes sharp for a flash of that familiar silver-blonde hair, but she saw no sign of the dark wizard. Tapping her feet against the floor a few times, she nodded her reluctant assent and told him to lead the way.

The sound of their footsteps echoed off the marble floors as they moved further into the exhibit, away from the main crowd.

They found a small alcove, tucked away in the corner of the room, away from prying eyes and ears. The walls were lined with various paintings and sculptures, but none of them seemed to hold the same level of enchantment as the one they had just seen.

Newt sat down on a nearby bench, running his fingers through his unruly hair. Tina stood in front of him, her arms crossed over her chest. But as she opened her mouth to ask him whether the light sheen of sweat across his forehead was from the heat or some other emotion, he spoke up.

“Did you notice the leaves?”

She shook her head wordlessly.

“The painting itself—strange, yes, but the leaves kept moving into Grindelwald’s symbol around the edge of the painting, like a frame. Did you recognise it?”

She frowned. “Now that you say it…perhaps this is more than just admiration.”

“Is it a trap?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think it’s politics. It’s not just an exhibition. There’s something else going on here. Maybe the artist wants to show Grindelwald the paintings as a gesture of support. I don’t know.”

Newt’s eyes widened. “Do you think he’s already here? I do wonder whether Grindelwald is the kind of man who prefers more restrained, picturesque paintings, classical, not abstract and new-century. Dull landscapes, grey. There’s something sadder in him than I’d let myself believe after what he did to Leta in Paris.”

Tina shook her head. “No, I don’t think we’re going to see him here, not with all these people. But he could be interested somehow. This exhibit is catered just for him and his tastes, I think. We’ll be careful, we’ll be vigilant, and we’ll do what needs to be done.”

Newt sighed and touched the latches of his case. “If I ever face him, I want to have the case in a safer place. It’s too risky…it’s the one thing that he’ll know, that he’ll, um, definitely know, that’ll hurt me instantly.”

“Don’t worry,” she added. “There are so many people here that, if he does come, he won’t notice us as long as we keep our heads down.”

“I’m not worried,” he muttered, looking restlessly out over the crowd.

They sat in silence for a few moments, both lost in thought. Tina could feel the tension in the air, the weight of their mission pressing down on them. She knew they had to be careful, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.

Newt stood up, rubbing his forehead. “I need to think,” he said, his voice strained. “Again—we should go somewhere quieter.”

Tina nodded in agreement, scanning the room for a secluded corner. Her eyes landed on a small door tucked away in the corner of the room. “Over there,” she said, pointing towards it. “That looks like a storage room.”

She was a little unnerved by the way his rounded shoulders were practically by his ears as he walked, rocking forwards aggressively with each step as if the floor would burn the heels of his feet. 

This was a side to Newt she hadn’t seen before. Even in New York, when they’d both come so close to execution, he’d been nothing but calm even as the dark venom of the death chamber had come close to encircling her in its tarry arms. She remembered that in some dreams: the gentle, coaxing patience in his green irises, pupils surrounded by a few blotches of soft hazel, the way he raised his eyebrows, eyes wide, whispering trust me, trust me.

He hunched over, whispering something to the Bowtruckle in his pocket. Pickett let out a few enthusiastic chirps and directed a spindly finger to the right. Newt wordlessly pointed to the right, guiding Tina in that direction. She followed, twisting her head behind her with every other step, praying that Grindelwald wouldn’t waltz through the door in a dinner jacket while they were exploring the back rooms of the city hall.

Pickett clambered down Newt’s outstretched arm and clung onto the ornate door knob of the unassuming door. She looked at the plaque marking the room as for storage, as, after a few minutes of chirps and the faint rattling of wood against metal, the door swung open. 

Newt practically jogged inside; Tina followed through the thin gap before the door slammed shut.

“ Lumos ,” she mumbled, narrowing her eyes as the bright light illuminated wire shelves filled with wilting cardboard boxes and a few cabinets covered in white sheeting. “Can you think better here?”

The air smelt strongly of drying paint and dust, a heady enough concoction to make her head spin. Newt went down and sat on the floor in between one of the wire racks and a strangely shaped cabinet draped in a sheet.

He crossed his legs around his case and leaned forwards, cradling the thing, stretching forwards to hold onto his ankles. She watched him without judgement. It could have been considered strange, but only by the narrow minded.

That was half the damn problem. He wasn’t just someone she was in love with. He was also just someone who she liked, as a person, and there was no logical argument for trying to turn away from that.

“Mmh,” Newt said.

“He might not come,” Tina said. “But I think the artist’s intention was for him to do so.”

“Mmh,” Newt repeated, looking at the objects on either side of him, a small frown creasing his forehead. He hummed a few bars of a tune that Tina didn’t recognise, something jaunty and cheerful, frown deepening.

“Sorry,” she said. “Do you need a moment?”

Newt shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the objects around him. “No, no, it’s…fine, I suppose…” He trailed off, his hand reaching out to touch the corner of the sheet on the cabinet next to him. “I feel like I know this.”

Tina leaned in, peering at the object under the sheet on the cabinet. It was formed in a way she couldn’t quite discern, with curves and angles that seemed to contradict each other. “Know what?” she asked.

“This shape,” Newt said, his fingers tracing the edge of the sheet. “I feel like I’ve seen it before.”

She leaned back against one of the wire racks, feeling the cool metal press against her back. The air was musty and thick with the smell of old cardboard, but it was a welcome respite from the cacophony of noise and chaos outside.

"Was it too noisy outside?" she asked.

Newt looked away, his hand still resting on the cabinet. “Um, yes. Rather overwhelming.”

Abruptly, he pulled away, turning his head to look at the floor, as if terrified of the brief thrill of electricity she’d felt being pulled by him into the small, secretive room, a feeling that was incredibly foreign to her as someone who did not easily love. 

"I'm sorry if I'm acting in a way that you,” began Newt, “that you feel is odd—it's just that it's strange being around you again, Tina—and now , of all times, but I suppose in a way, it feels like it doesn't matter that we're here, that we're trying to—rescue—you know. Now that we’re really together again, and it all makes more sense—to me, because I’m…"

He was still grieving, still processing the loss of Leta and the trauma of New York. That fountain of wine was as red as the blood spilled in the Muggle-wizard clashes that had wracked America since he’d been exposed for impersonating Director Graves

She tried to keep her expression neutral. "What do you mean?"

He took a deep breath and launched into the sentence as he often did, the words coming out in a rapid-fire string. "I mean...ever since we parted in New York, I can't get you out of my head. And now that we're together again, I don't know how to handle it."

Tina felt her heart begin racing in her chest.

"I..." she started, but trailed off, unsure of what to say.

"I know, I know," Newt said, running a hand through his hair. "It's not the best timing, with everything that's going on. But I had to tell you. I couldn't keep it to myself any longer."

"I think I understand what you mean."

He looked up at her, his eyes wide and vulnerable. "You do?"

She nodded. "I've been thinking about you too, Newt. And I don't know how to handle it either."

"I thought I was going mad, feeling this way," he muttered.

"But—" she began, feeling her eyebrows curve upwards, her mouth tighten with a certain sadness.

He nodded. "It's okay. I don't think what I said makes any difference, but I still thought I should say it because it felt wrong, like a lie, not to. It doesn't matter too much, does it? We still have a job to do. We still need to focus on stopping Grindelwald. And you still need to go back home afterwards."

"I know," Tina said, her heart aching at the thought of leaving Newt behind again, because in her home there was nothing left.

No. That wasn't true. She had her job, her role as Chief Auror. The air, thick with unspoken words, seemed to thin as if she were rising to the heady heights of a mountain. She had a duty, a responsibility, to the safety of her heart and the safety of her people, to maintain international security and not let herself be tugged down that same path that had left her with a subtle, gnawing heartsickness for so many months. 

Newt had left her and not returned. Maybe he hadn't been the one marrying Leta, but there was undeniable history there. And even if that article hadn’t been true, it had hurt so much that she'd had to move on, and accept that feelings formed in a few days could be lost in a few seconds: the same amount of time it took to read a five word headline.

"I don't want to make things difficult," Newt said hesitantly. "I just had to tell you how I feel. It might be a mistake. Usually it is, and I don't mean that in a self-pitying way, but more in the factual sense, because they're often off the mark, my readings of it all."

Neither of them had actually clarified what the feelings were. Neither of them had called the other anything but a burden. And in their shared, searching gaze, neither corrected one another.

"I just don't know what to do about it right now," she said. 

We've both moved on with our lives, haven't we? she said, but silently, wordlessly.

They went quiet for a few moments, the only sound coming from the faint rustling of the sheet on the cabinet as Newt continued to touch it with gentle fingers.

"Let's see what's under the sheet," she said, swallowing the words that threatened to spill from her lips that were surprisingly angry, even frustrated.

Newt blinked a few times, the spell between them broken as Tina's words registered. He nodded, standing up from his spot on the floor and walking towards the cabinet. Then, he reached out and grasped the sheet, pulling it off the cabinet in one swift motion. 

Underneath was a sculpture.

"It's a phoenix," Newt said immediately. "The plumage is distinctly long behind the head, not over it, like most tropical birds; the claws; and it has that curvature of the beak, you see, it's all in the shape."

The sculpture was made of twisted metal, with jagged edges that seemed to be reaching out in every direction, in the shape of a phoenix. Its wings were held tightly against its body and its head was tilted slightly to the side, as if it were watching the world below with keen interest. On the base of the piece of art was a small plaque, placed right in between the phoenix’s grasping claws.

“May this bird of fire, with its talons firmly clasped, grant you access to new heights of power,” she read aloud.

Tina moved closer to the sculpture, running her fingers over the cool metal. On the slick surface, she could see her reflection. She breathed deeply, goosebumps prickling up her arms.

"Don't phoenixes represent rebirth?" she asked.

Newt stared at the piece of art. "Yes. Dumbledore has one. He says they're called to the family blood."

Tina turned to glance at Newt. "Why would an artist make a sculpture of the Dumbledore family animal for Grindelwald?"

"They were—that is to say—they were lovers, once," Newt said. "Not the artist. Or maybe the artist. But Dumbledore...and Grindelwald."

"Mercy Lewis, that's what the blood troth was from?" Tina asked.

"It's one of the reasons why Dumbledore is so invested in stopping Grindelwald. He knows what he's capable of, and what he's capable of doing with that kind of power."

Tina swallowed. "I didn't know it was because they loved one another. That’s…that’s really something else. Fuck. I wouldn’t have imagined it."

"It's complicated. They had a vision of a world where wizards and witches ruled over muggles, but Dumbledore realised the error of their ways and abandoned the cause. Grindelwald didn't, and he'll stop at nothing to achieve his goal."

Tina's eyes widened in disbelief. "It's unbelievable that someone could be so obsessed with having power over everyone else," she muttered. "But unfortunately, it's been done before."

Newt looked at Tina with sad eyes. "Love can make people do terrible things."

"Not even love," she said.

Newt raised an eyebrow, encouraging her to continue.

"Desire for power, for control, for revenge," Tina listed off, her voice growing stronger with each word. "It's not just love that can make people do terrible things. It's the human condition. We all have the capacity for darkness inside of us. But it's still up to us to take responsibility for our actions. Grindelwald has caused too much destruction. There's no justification for that."

Newt pressed his thumb to each fingertip, in deep thought. "So, then, what would you call how we feel?"

Tina sighed and looked carefully at the sculpture. "I hate to say it, Newt, but—something that's too late."

Newt spoke as if it was a genuine thought, not something he was saying out of anger. "No one ever said to me that emotions come with expiration dates," he mused.

Tina wondered how much of this was what she believed, and how much of it was what she had become used to: whether she was so used to being left behind that she instinctively feared the always-moving, always-distracted Englishman.

"But we let it go,” said Tina. “We're in different places; we have different lives to go back to."

"It's okay," Newt repeated.

"We'll stop Grindelwald. That's all that matters right now."

"Together."

She ran her fingers around its wings. And that was when she felt something hard tucked away in a crevice of the sculpture.

She carefully pulled out the object. A key. 

But not just any key—it was a ministerial key, a master key for the Brazilian ministry that was only meant to be used in cases of emergency. Tina knew immediately who had left this here. The artist must have meant to gift it to Grindelwald in the guise of the sculpture.

“That friend of Flor…isn’t a friend any more,” Tina said slowly. “This is them—or an associate of theirs—trying to give Grindelwald the Brazilian Ministry.”

“What?” Newt asked.

“It’s a key used in siege protocol,” she explained. “If the Ministry is under attack, or the wards are magically reverted and seal the building off, this key can open a number of secret exits that are usually impenetrable, but are also unwarded.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Newt said, leaning in.

She raised her eyebrows but didn’t step back. “No?”

“I wasn’t the best Ministry employee,” he admitted.

“You’re still better than whoever’s handed one of these over,” Tina said, pushing her fringe out of her eyes as she felt a sudden surge of anxiety. “Whoever it is, they’re high up. They have power. Oh, Mercy Lewis, I hope it’s not like Director Graves all over again…”

“He wouldn’t do the same thing twice,” Newt said.

“No, maybe this person is still alive and handed it over knowing it’d be put into a pretty sculpture as a show of support,” Tina said. “And then it’s here, and the artist is waiting to unveil it, hoping Grindelwald will come and get his prize: the Brazilian Ministry, just as he got the German one, to knock Santos right out of the race.”

“What does he want inside the Brazilian Ministry?”

Tina chewed her lip. “It could be anything.”

“…maybe we can return the key, then,” Newt said, and then ran his fingers through his wayward hair, combing it over his eyes. She watched his lips to try and read them as he mumbled out the next words. “I don’t know. We’re meant to pick a side , aren’t we? I don’t do—I don’t know about sides…just ours. What if we make it worse?”

“Worrying means you suffer twice,” Tina proposed.

Newt blinked and shook himself like a wet dog, as if her words had hit him like cold water. “I’m wondering if when my mother said that she was referring to breaking into a foreign Ministry just so that Grindelwald can’t use the same entrance route.”

A laugh escaped her despite herself. “Maybe that’s exactly what she meant.”

Newt made a noise. “I suppose she cared less for the rules, but I don’t know whether we’re—whether this is a good idea we’ve got here.”

“What do you mean? We only have good ideas.”

“That’s not what you said in New York.”

“That’s because those weren’t good ideas, they were just reactions to the situation at the time, and that situation was seventy-five percent your beasts trying to destroy my home city and twenty five percent trying to break out of MACUSA. And we did that in the French Ministry as well.”

“Chief Auror Goldstein,” Newt said. “Are you proposing we add a third to our list of governmental institutions we’ve caused chaos in?”

“Our chaos is better than Grindelwald’s chaos,” she defended.

“…I suppose we’re not… bad ,” Newt said, and then furrowed his brow, lost in deep thought for a few moments. “Or as bad…”

The key was crafted from a gleaming gold metal with intricate detailing etched into its surface. The head was in the shape of a stylized Brazilian flag, with a circular emblem in the centre surrounded by rays of light that radiated outwards, with the words "Ministério da Magia do Brasil" written in elegant script above it. A delicate pattern of leaves wound their way up the stem of the key. 

She traced her finger over the vines.

“We’re not going to be able to use any official Apparition points,” she noted.

“Right,” Newt began.

“And the Ministry is in Cascatinha,” Tina continued.

“Mmh,” Newt agreed.

She reached out and gently tapped his case. “So, got anything in there that’s good at making it through the jungle of a national park undetected?”

Chapter Text

"You have to change," Grindelwald said, eyes raking Theseus.

They were still waiting on the stone circle outside Nurmengard. Grindelwald had experienced some vision, some strange sweat-drenched fit, and neither Theseus nor Percival had spoken or moved until it passed, feeling the self-protective crackle of the man’s magic. It would have been the perfect time to kill him. Theseus knew that, knew he’d missed his chance to strike him down while he looked strangely vulnerable, sitting cross-legged, head jerking back with each new flood of the future as if he’d been slapped.

But then the dark wizard had uncrossed his legs, wiped the sweat from under his eyes, and smirked: like he’d seen in that very vision they’d both stand and await him. It was a rare feat for either of them. Percival was used to being the leader, to striding in with grand command. Theseus was used to following all the rules right until the point they became morally unacceptable. So by all accounts, neither should have been waiting, other for the fact that there was no way out.

Theseus snorted. "I'd rather stay like this, thanks."

"So everyone can see how weak you are?"

"What do you want me to change into?" he asked, knowing that Grindelwald enjoyed playing these mind games with him.

Grindelwald's lips twisted into a smirk. "Something more...fitting. Something that shows your allegiance to me."

Theseus scuffed his feet against the stone circle, a heavy frown creasing his brow. "And what does that look like?" he asked bitterly. "Could be anything. Your followers come of all sorts, don't they? The only clue we have is their oh-so-pure blood, and Merlin forbid that's ever touched when you have so much else to spill."

“Let me educate you on the finer points of my manifesto,” Grindelwald said, a light frown furrowing his brows. “I do not aim to purely shed blood. My goal is subjugation, not genocide. If you hark back to the ancient days of much of Europe, the days of the divine King and the lords and the serfs, that is my desire. A grand chain of being, lacking a god—because to their tiny minds, we are their gods. Consider the bloodshed so far a necessity of the terror and force required to acclimatise both their world and ours to my new regime.”

“Thanks, that’s very noble,” Theseus said. “I heard somehow, inconceivably, that you’d also painted a subtle picture of how you’d avert a second coming of the Great War.”

“They should be protected from themselves, no?”

“And what were you doing during the Great War itself?”

Percival’s glassy attention, previously fixed on the distant mountains outside Nurmengard, a brief flare of energy surpassed by the tortured logistics of Grindelwald’s plan, drifted over to Grindelwald. That made Theseus feel a little better, eased some of the gnawing in his gut. Percival was not just taking answers from his master; deep within him, there still existed the urge to ask questions, a hint of the relentless man Theseus remembered.

Grindelwald curled his lip. “Oh, I understand what your blunted military mind is trying to ask of me. You are saying that because I didn’t intervene to prevent the first, which I foresaw in equal clarity—you are suggesting—that hence, my concern regarding the second is purely an evocative accessory to my political quest rather than a true drive to prevent such madness.”

“It’s bloody self-evident, isn’t it?” Theseus muttered. “Like dressing up. Like you want to dress me up. You want to frame it all.”

"Ah, so cynical. You believe a line can be drawn between my performances and my true intentions, like they are not smoke in the air. Irrevocably mixed. But I suppose you have understood one thing: appearance can be everything, Theseus," he said, circling around the younger man.

Percival slowly combed his hair back, neatening it. They shared a quick and wary glance, just a hint of desperation in the dark-haired man's eyes, but Theseus realised with a queasy roll of his stomach that his old friend was not being dressed up. Grindelwald clicked his tongue and handed Percival his wand–––and it was his wand, which gave the Auror a certain relief that not everything he'd known of Percival had been entirely destroyed by Grindelwald–––and Percival removed the worst of the dust marks from his clothes before going no further. Instead, he turned a little, looking out over the mountains beyond Nurmengard, as if seeing those white peaks stretch on for kilometres was escape enough.

Theseus watched as Grindelwald walked over to Percival, his movements fluid and calculated. He magically produced and then handed him a black coat, which Percival promptly draped over his shoulders, hiding the hints of imprisonment in his clothing from the point of view of the casual observer. Theseus could see the despair in Percival's eyes as he submitted to Grindelwald's will, and it made his heart ache.

"See how easy it is, Theseus?" Grindelwald said, turning back to him. "Percival understands the importance of projecting loyalty to our cause. You should learn from him. And he's not going to be visible in this form the majority of the time, you see, so I will have to be especially certain that you look unbruised and fresh."

Theseus scoffed. "I'm not a piece of fruit."

Grindelwald raised his eyebrows–––Theseus, simmering with anxiety, watched carefully as Percival flinched at the glacial unwavering, heterochromatic stare. With no cloak of the Statute of Secrecy to shield them, their obligation for self-sacrifice was total in the face of this one man. There was no hiding behind it, no quick exits. There wasn't a single other person ready to take the same fall.

Percy, please understand, Theseus thought.

Grindelwald took a step closer to Theseus, his hand reaching out to cup his jaw. "No, you're not a piece of fruit," he murmured, his thumb rubbing over Theseus's bottom lip. "You're much more valuable than that, and much less sweet."

"And what do I have to do to look 'unbruised and fresh'?" Theseus asked, his voice cold, jerking away.

Grindelwald's lips curled into a cruel smile. "You already know the answer to that question."

He knew exactly what Grindelwald wanted him to do. The bruises on his forearms ached from where he'd been tossed to the floor. Shifting onto his back foot, as if he could run away, he licked his chapped lips, throat dry. Grindelwald's intention was for Theseus to appear wholly culpable. A willing and eager follower was protected, not damaged, by the loyalty. Even without a mirror, Theseus was relatively convinced he didn't look fine enough to waltz into the Brazilian Ministry without his identification card and charm the front desk into letting him in without them first checking for an array of curses and dark charms.

Like he wouldn't have already fixed his damn back if he had a chance.

"I can't heal myself enough," Theseus said. "Not unless you give me my wand: which you really should if you want us to pass successfully through any security checkpoint beyond the front desk."

"How do you know I haven't destroyed your wand already?" Grindelwald asked, tilting his head to one side.

Theseus gritted his teeth. "Then your plan is fucked, and you can leave me in the care of the Brazilian Ministry's very effective wards. They have these mechanical centipedes that use distilled venom to either put you to sleep or give you permanent nerve damage, depending on where they strike. I'll be no use to you then, will I? Hardly be fresh when you'll have to carry me all the way back to your little castle on a rock."

"Percival will protect you, even if you don't want to protect him," Grindelwald pointed out. "And, of course, I will take care of you, too."

"Take care of me," Theseus repeated under his breath.

"Why, is it such a foreign concept to you? To be cared for?" Grindelwald asked, his voice laced with amusement.

He swallowed hard and forced himself to meet Grindelwald's gaze. "It's not foreign to me," he lied. "But your idea of taking care of someone is vastly different from mine."

Percival touched the lapels of his coat and looked down at the ground, a rueful muscle in his jaw jumping. Theseus felt his heart beat faster as he wasn't sure whether that was weariness or resentment on his friend's haggard face. His exhaustion seemed to tighten the skin around his deep set eyes, but Percival wouldn't just meet his gaze, as if looking at one another for too long would alight Grindelwald's rage. Given what Grindelwald had thought about the relationship that had never been between Theseus and Albus––––Albus fucking Dumbledore, he thought resentfully–––Theseus wondered what exactly had been said to Percival regarding their on-and-off three years of wartime hedonism.

What a time. What a thing, to come out of so long in the trenches, mud and blood and bombs and guns and death, and find that.

Grindelwald chuckled, the sound grating on Theseus's nerves.

He bit down on his tongue, not liking the ominous sheen of the dark wizard's eyes, the slight smirk playing on his lips as if the other shoe was waiting to drop. Theseus scuffed his foot against the floor and noted that he, in fact, still needed both shoes: not metaphorically, but in real life. He was trying to distract himself now–––because Grindelwald was walking over, circling him like a predator stalking its prey. Theseus tried to keep his breathing steady, but the chill mountain air around Nurmengard still seemed intent on stealing his air away.

"Undress," Grindelwald commanded.

Theseus's heart raced as he looked up at Grindelwald, his mind flicking through the various scenarios of what could happen next.

Slowly, he began to unbutton his shirt in a series of soft popping noises, feeling the tinnitus of the first–––second–––third?–––night start to buzz through his ears again like haptic static from a broken radio. His fingers shook as he pulled the old shirt, stained with blood in those two weeks, off his shoulders and held it uselessly. The cold mountain air seemed to cling to his skin, causing goosebumps to rise on his arms and legs. The cuff of one sleeve was rimmed in red. He flexed his hand into a fist and watched the long winding cut jump. Carefully, he pulled off the red tie and balled it into one hand, concealing it within a fist.

"Don't look so embarrassed," Grindelwald said. "The English and their repressive attitudes. We are merely preparing for our mission."

"Preparing for our mission?" Theseus repeated, his voice laced with sarcasm. "Is that what you call it?"

"Come now," Grindelwald said, a hint of impatience creeping into his voice. "We don't have all day."

Getting it over and done with, he took off the shirt, the undershirt, and pulled off his stupid socks. They were short enough he should have been wearing suspenders with them, but they were absent. Finally, he peeled off his trousers, watching Grindelwald with flickering, wide-open vision that couldn't seem to decide whether it wanted to go in or out of focus. There was some kind of somatic shock rippling through his body; but he couldn't let him see that weakness.

The dark wizard, inexplicably, looked back towards the arches and sighed. "In my eyes, the greatest barrier to success in my plans is the agency of others."

Theseus shivered, feeling a cold sweat break out on his forehead.

"Vinda should not have done that," Grindelwald said, as if reading not his mind, but the expression on his face. "You have become too much of a difficulty because of it."

"I," Theseus said, indicating the old and worn clothes on the stone ground. "am going to put these back on unless you give me something new to wear."

Grindelwald furrowed his brow. "I'm as disinclined to witness this scene as you are to endure it. But the fact is that you will bleed onto a new shirt unless we heal it."

"So, give me my wand," Theseus said.

"No," Grindelwald repeated. "Turn around."

Theseus hesitated for a moment, his breath forming clouds in the frigid mountain air, and reluctantly turned his back to Grindelwald. The cobbles under his feet were icy and slightly uneven; the enchanted courtyard's apparition point was on a slight decline, sloping towards a shallow dip in the centre. It felt like he was getting ready to fall backwards into a bottomless pit.

He heard Grindelwald move closer. The stone peaks in the distance could have come out of a painting. They were surrounded by cliffs on all sides—the only way to freedom would be to jump.

This wasn’t bad enough to justify it. Soon, this would all be behind him. Soon, he would get himself and Percival out of this hellhole.

"Theseus, Theseus," Grindelwald murmured, his voice low and dangerous. "You really are a sight to behold. But we can't have any evidence of our little... activities, now can we?"

The spell hit him like a physical blow, and Theseus gritted his teeth against the pain. He felt his bruises fade away, the cuts on his back healing over. A warm sensation spread across his back. The deep cut on his arm closed up, and the pain he had been enduring since he was captured began to dissipate. Theseus let out a shaky breath, his eyes closing momentarily in relief.

"Better?" Grindelwald asked, and Theseus could hear the smirk in his voice.

Theseus slowly opened his eyes, feeling a strange sensation of both resignation and violation. He knew that this was how Grindelwald operated, but he still couldn't help but feel a bit uneasy about the whole exchange.

"There's something wrong with you," Theseus murmured.

Grindelwald simply smiled at him, looking amused. "And I could say just the same for you, considering the circumstances of your capture. Yet you're still here. Still alive–––and surprisingly well, at the moment, given that my followers have been out to play."

Theseus turned back around, keeping one hand hidden behind his body, still holding the tie, focusing on keeping his mental shields up: if that was even necessary anymore, judging from that brief interaction with Queenie. Dumbledore had given him the damn thing. It had to be useful, even if he could keenly sense that any magical energy it once had was long gone thanks to the humming wards around the castle. If there was a response to give to that statement, Grindelwald didn't care to hear it; he was already holding his wand up, the tip glowing with a soft orange light, a spell Theseus recognised.

"Let's make sure no one can see you," Grindelwald said.

When Theseus looked down, he was wearing a three-piece suit and coat and shoes again for the first time in what might have been around three weeks. The suit was navy. He would have preferred an adequately funereal black. It was as if Grindelwald was trying to erase the evidence of his wrongdoing with a flick of his wand.

He shoved the red tie into his pocket, pretending to fiddle with the sleeves, even though he wanted nothing to do with them. The movement wasn’t as smooth as he would have liked—his fingers had started trembling, for some reason, sparked by the chill racing down his spine, like electricity cradling itself around each single vertebrae. He almost saw her loom up towards him in his mind’s eye, lips painted red. The coat slipped off his shoulders as he raised both hands a fraction of an amount, wincing as he tried to block her—tried to block out the memory.

The coat. It almost fit, but not quite, which would have been a strange choice if Grindelwald had purely conjured it. With a frown, he realised there was a reason why it fit relatively well; it was one of his coats, probably stolen straight from his wardrobe. He had always prided himself on his appearance and his ability to maintain a certain level of professionalism, even in the most dire situations, but this was ridiculous.

I'd rather go to the Brazilian Ministry in rags than be dressed up like a doll, he thought. There has to be a way to get out.

There certainly were lots of ways for him to sabotage the plan, getting murdered by the mechanical centipede guards of the Brazilian Ministry aside.

"You look presentable enough," Grindelwald commented, "though perhaps a bit tired. But that can be easily explained away by a long night of work."

"A long night at work?" Theseus asked, raising both eyebrows.

Grindelwald tilted his head and gave him a once-over, his expression turning thoughtful. "Indeed. From the way you look, I'd say that excuse is far more believable than the truth." He smirked. "You simply look like a man who's been burning the candle at both ends for too long."

Percival frowned. Despite the years, the old familiarity between them was evident in the silent communication that passed between their eyes. One of Percival's heavy brows twitched. It was the same sentiment Theseus felt: You're telling me.

“I’m not making the vow,” Theseus said.

“Of course. I am sure you will keep saying that right until the moment that you do,” Grindelwald said, in a voice like satin. He smoothed down his hair from the gentle touch of the wind and lifted his wand aloft, the portal lighting up beneath their feet, the smell of the Brazilian jungle beginning to permeate the cool mountain air.

*

The last time Newt had seen the Brazilian Ministry hadn’t been on the most ideal terms. In fact, he’d been in trouble with their Department of International Law for alleged cross-border vegetation smuggling. Now it wasn't much different. He was still in trouble—or at least, about to get into it.

They’d had a slightly wobbly ride on the Erumpent, with the creature gleefully running through the forest, excited to be out of the case’s habitat and somewhere that felt new. The alluring humid air and heavy smell of thick vegetation also appealed to Newt, but the speed at which they’d raced through the National Park, just about covered by Tina’s Disillusionment Charm, had left both of the passengers looking significantly worse for wear. Tina dismounted first, almost slamming into the ground as her knees gave way. With a low groan, she covered her mouth with one hand, making a concerning noise. Quickly, Newt slid down the back of the beast to join her, giving it a reassuring pat on the hind legs.

“I’m not going to vomit,” Tina squeaked out. “Just get your Erumpent back into the case, please, before any of the patrols catch up to us and pin this on me.”

“Right,” Newt said, giving her an anxious sideways glance as she pulled at the collar of her shirt, still looking slightly green. He finally unclenched the right grip of his fist from around his case handle—the twigs and branches they’d rammed through had left them both with leaves in their hair and several wood-induced lacerations—and set it carefully down on the ground.

“C’mere,” he cooed to the Erumpent. It turned its head towards him, blinking balefully under the wobbling golden sac on its forehead, and let out a low grunt. It could have been worse; he could have had to pull out the pheromones again.

But luckily, when presented with the familiar open case, the Erumpent stepped one heavy foot inside. With a quick charm, Newt spelled it to the right enclosure, a small smile on his face as he did the latches up again.

“I think Rosy enjoyed that,” he said.

Tina picked a twig out of her hair. “Hmm,” she said diplomatically, which put her in a slightly more favourable position with Newt than Theseus, who always said something like hmm followed by I’m sure she did, but in a tone of voice Newt had come to recognise as sarcastic, meaning that he wasn’t actually glad that the Erumpent had free reign and was unhappy about the extraneous consequences of her freedom. When dealing with Rosy in the past, Jacob had screamed and shouted a lot, but Newt had determined he could have a free pass, given that he had been licked by the creature and her saliva was notoriously difficult to wash out of dark fabrics.

Tina put both her hands on her hips as she looked up at the Brazilian Ministry. Newt followed her gaze.

“Oh, they’ll never see us coming,” she said, looking at the window-lined walls of the grand building and the flat clearing ahead of them, beyond the treeline where they were currently standing.

Newt furrowed his brow. “I think there’s a small chance they might notice us if we’re not very, very careful from here onwards,” he said tactfully.

“Now that the Erumpent is safe and sound in her home, I think we’ll manage,” Tina said, giving Newt a quick smile and then lapsing into seriousness as she watched the Ministry. “We’ll need to find the emergency exit and—well—use the ministerial key to break in from there.”

The Brazilian Ministry was an organic building, simultaneously looming out of and blending in with the cleared patch of forest around it. In comparison to the grand exterior of MACUSA—which, disappointingly, hadn’t been the last Ministry that Newt had faced a near death experience at, if the archives of the French Ministry were anything to go by—it was less boxy and intimidating. Newt also considered it more visually appealing than the British Ministry, which had that grey and grainy appearance of much of the rest of London. None of its edges were harsh; they were all curved and soft, forming intricate arches and detailed cornices that furled out from the sides of the building like elegant leaves.

A wrought iron balcony separated the large arched windows of the ground floor from the second and the third, creating a shaded overhang in which Newt could mercifully not see any Ministry employees. There were several wooden accents on the building, some in the shape of various magical creatures, as if they were prowling across the walls like shadows, like spirits keeping the building safe from harm.

Hopefully, Newt and Tina breaking in using the attempt at a concealed boon for Grindelwald would help keep it that way. If they used the key, Grindelwald wouldn’t be able to—and the fact that the key was being offered at all was a clear sign that the Brazilian Ministry was high on the list of potential future destinations for the dark wizard. And it didn’t help that they couldn’t exactly just return it, as Tina had pointed out, without highlighting that they were on an international and technically unauthorised secret mission.

Newt hoped that they’d be following in Grindelwald’s footsteps, rather than preceding him; but only clues he could have got would have been valuable. More valuable than what Dumbledore seemed to want him to do, which was care for the Qilin and sit on his hands, Newt had trusted that, seeing the careful logic in it, even, until Tina had come along. And she was just as careful as Dumbledore, perhaps more so, and yet she was speaking up against it.

He trusted Tina just as much as he did Dumbledore, and he trusted both with his full heart and soul; and yet, given that Tina was ready to take action to find Theseus, he would follow her.

Now that everything was laid out neatly in his head, Newt started to walk behind Tina, wondering whether she was feeling warm in the elegant wool of her mid-thigh black dress.

“They usually have tunnels or passageways,” Tina explained. “A way to put some distance between employees and the Ministry building in case there’s a fire.”

“Surely a fire exit would be more useful,” Newt commented.

“Yes, well, we have those too, but I suspect these tunnels were originally built in the case the No Majs found us. It’s an old precaution that no one wants to let go of. But they don’t word it like that now, because if you mention anything of the sort, of uprisings, everyone at MACUSA will look at you like you’re the next Grindelwald in disguise.”

“I can imagine it would make people nervous,” Newt said.

“You wouldn’t believe the number of checks we have to do now,” Tina said. “There are detector gateways everywhere.”

“And in the Brazilian Ministry?” Newt asked.

“Not really. Not the last time I came here, anyway. They’ve got a much more active surveillance system, which means you’ll have a lot less fun trying to escape, but also, if you can break in well, you’d be able to evade it.”

Newt frowned. “Is this the kind of thing a Head Auror should know?”

“Chief Auror, we’re technically called in MACUSA,” she corrected. “It’s the same role, though. And of course it’s my business to know. Any holes in Ministry security are a concern for me. In a perfect world, I’d know about every single incident and failure of MACUSA, if people could be bothered to put their paperwork in order.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” Newt said diplomatically, thinking about his own history with paperwork, which consisted of and alternated between trying to fill it out, not bothering, and forging all necessary permits and licences when required.

“You’ll be right behind me.” Tina said.

“I will,” Newt said, dampening the questioning tone of the word down into an affirmative statement.

There was a moment’s silence as they both started picking their way across the long grass. Insects buzzed in a cacophony around them as the faint sound of birdsong filtered down from the dense forest around them. Tina walked on the leaves like a gazelle, Newt noticed, like a concentrating and beautiful gazelle with stiff hips.

“What’s the plan if we do actually encounter Grindelwald?” Newt asked. “I do think it would be a good idea to have quite a comprehensive plan. We’re replying on the fact that we’re either coming before him, if the key was his only way in, and looking for clues about who could have given him the key—or after him, and potentially having to reckon with whatever happened as a consequence of him going in there—or at the same time. Which would be really quite unfortunate, I think, and limit our ability to gather clues.”

“I don’t have a plan,” Tina admitted.

“I thought you Aurors always had plans,” he joked. “I mean, don’t you have lots of detailed plans in your heads for, you know, the various situations we might encounter, so that you can act on one at any given time?”

She hummed. “That sounds like it could be a good idea. But mostly I just react—you have to go with the situation to an extent, really.”

“Even with Grindelwald?”

“I mean, the goal is for there not to be a situation, so I suppose yes. You have to trust your instincts and deal with the aftermath in the hopes that you made the right decision.”

Newt chuckled. “In New York, you seemed rather faithful to the rules.”

She made a low, sceptical noise. “Oh, screw the rules. That was until I met that disgusting Mary Lou woman. And after we nearly got executed. Yeah. After that…”

“Right, right,” Newt said.

Tina stopped walking and looked up at the carved wooden statue before her, several heads high and carved out of Amazonian wood in a twisting pattern, like two hands extending from the earth with abstract, melting fingertips. She bent down and ran her finger over the base of the statue, pressing a hidden button and grinning as it slid forwards, revealing a neat trapdoor that rapidly sprung upright, unfolding magically into an ornate and vertical full-sized entrance, hanging innocuously in the air as if they were just walking into any old house.

“We’ll need the ministerial key at the other end,” Tina said. “It’s in their best interests to let intruders enter the underground passageway of their own accord, you see, especially when they can’t actually get out of either end.”

Newt swallowed. “I see.”

“That’s how I know you’re better suited to being a Magizoologist than an Auror,” Tina said gently. “You don’t think about death nearly as much as you should.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgement, having heard the accusation numerous times. “Maybe I don’t.”

Her expression turned serious. “We’ll handle this, Newt; don’t worry. It’ll stay under control. My womanly temper will—stay firmly under the handle today.”

“Unlike some people’s,” Newt muttered, thinking that if Theseus had just ignored his instincts, whatever Dumbledore’s plan was would be running much more smoothly. He ignored the stupid nagging voice at the back of his mind that suggested that the plan, with all its moving parts, was designed to churn as clumsily as possible, like a clunky machine, buying time for Dumbledore: even if it meant they got chewed up by the cogs in the process.

Clearly, Theseus and Lally’s combined cynicism had started to wear off on him, but while he could feel himself affecting it like an accent, he wasn’t entirely convinced they were right.

She gestured for him to follow her into the passage. “Come on. And—if you can keep Teddy well-behaved—because there’s a reasonable amount of gold leaf inside. Not an excessive amount, but—“

He gave a firm nod and hurried after her, case tightly clutched in one hand, ducking his head as he entered the cool air of the underground passageway.

*

The walk from the official Apparition point to the grand entrance of the Brazilian Ministry felt a dozen kilometres long. Sweat was beading on the back of his neck and seeping into his collar in clammy rivulets. And the worst part was that, given the overwhelming focus of most of the Ministries on the election, on keeping our unexpected invaders and saboteurs, it seemed terrifyingly possible that they were going to let him in.

Except they wouldn’t just be letting Theseus in.

He turned as much as he could with the insistent press of Grindelwald’s wand against the lower vertebrae of his spine, looking at Percival out of the corner of his eye. The other man’s face had entirely changed. No longer did he look like the missing Director of Magical Security, nor did he look like the weary and tamed prisoner Theseus had met in the cells. Instead, he wore another face entirely; it was the same unique magic Grindelwald had used to infiltrate MACUSA, and now it seemed, like the turning of the spokes of a wheel, Percival had been taught by his new master to keep the cycle spinning.

Grindelwald was invisible. The wandless charms Theseus attempted on him with every other step, variations of Revelio and Homenum Revelio and Finite Incantatem, all bounced off the powerful cloaking spell. He gritted his teeth as the low hum of pain built in his back again. Something about the healing charm Grindelwald had cast wasn’t working, as it was falling away from him every moment, a reminder of the ephemerality of the dark wizard. It felt as though the skin was sloughing from him, peeling away in layers. Despite constantly scanning the seemingly empty space behind him, around him, which dared to look as if nothing more than air was holding him hostage, he was always drawn back to the Ministry as they approached.

This was what the years had felt: like Grindelwald was always there, breathing the same air of whatever claustrophobic room he was trapped in, a ghost in the same way that his own guilt stayed a spectre. The security checkpoint would reveal any illusions, including Grindelwald's invisibility, but only if Theseus was going to be allowed to go through the usual routes. Once more, his status as Head Auror, which had made him such a desirable target to kidnap in the first place, was now a double-edged sword. If he tried to pull any tricks, it would be the end of not only himself but also of anyone who was unfortunate enough to be within their proximity at the Brazilian Ministry.

Grindelwald leaned in close, his breath hot on Theseus’s ear. “You know what you need to do, Theseus. Remember the plan; follow through.”

"I remember," he said, his eyes darting to Percival, who was still wearing that blank, vacant expression.

"And if you dare to cross me," Grindelwald hissed. "I will make sure that Percival suffers a fate worse than death. And then I'll take my time with the Brazilian officials you so foolishly think can protect you."

He closed his eyes for a second. "I won't," he said, his voice low and steady.

He had no intention of letting Grindelwald commit any more crimes. If he could just get through this entry point, then perhaps there would be a chance to turn the tables on Grindelwald and Percival, and make sure that justice was done. There were enough people for him to be able to tip someone off, but the quality of that tip might not be enough to spark action. Then what?

The hot Brazilian sun hung low in the sky overhead, but he suddenly felt the chill of Paris. He had no choice; he had to keep going. As they approached the Ministry, Theseus could feel his palms growing slick with sweat. He wished he could wipe them on his trousers, but he knew that would only draw attention to his nerves. He had to appear calm, collected, and in control.

He twisted behind him, trying to see even an outline of the dark wizard. Grindelwald's invisible hands grabbed his arm in an iron grip and pushed him forwards.

"Don't look," Grindelwald said. "There's nothing to see."

"Then don't fucking touch me," he mumbled.

Can you read my thoughts? he wondered. And with how much clarity?

For a moment, there was silence.

"I have no need to read your thoughts," Grindelwald finally spoke. "Your fear is written all over your face, Theseus. I can feel it emanating from your very being."

Theseus felt his eyebrows twitch. He ran his tongue over his teeth. That...almost sounds like an excuse, he thought, waiting for the retort he expected from a man who prided himself on his obsessive attempts at transparency.

There was no response: neither confirmation nor denial of his theory that his Occlumency was leading him to yet another destiny of brute force.

Still, it could be a good thing.

The rest of the walk passed in a blur. Grindelwald’s wand sat just at the right point on his spine, above the pelvis, that if he cast a spell with bone-blowing capacity, he would be paralysed for life. He counted the number of bars on the balcony–––fifty four–––the number of tiles lining the floor of the outdoor entrance–––eighteen, in orange and brown and white, like flowers–––the number of people in the foyer–––thirty one, at first glance, and second glance, and then that glance became a prolonged stare as his vision jumped into hyper focus and the noisy chatter was drowned out by the echo chamber of his own breathing.

Theseus could feel the eyes of the Brazilian officials on him, their scrutiny weighing heavily on his already burdened shoulders. He knew that any wrong move could be their last, and so he walked with a careful precision, every step calculated. Slipping into the role felt as simple as closing a door behind him and letting out a breath; there was a release of tension in his shoulders, not because he wasn’t miserable, not because he wasn’t terrified, but because despite the disease-like propensity he’d picked up of throwing himself into near-death situations, he was still an Auror, and Aurors protected people.

It was just that he himself didn’t fall into that bracket of people worthy of protection right now. He was the man with a wand to his back–––a wand owned by a wizard who could certainly melt him from the inside out with a simple charm. So there it was, the trifecta; the summation of potential harm caused now, in this foyer, had to be prioritised over whatever would happen in the quieter corridors later on where he prayed he would commit crimes he could fix. Any mass killing here, done without Grindelwald revealing himself, could easily be passed off as a rogue attack from one of Grindelwald’s followers: whoever’s face Percival was wearing, maybe.

Another thirty one people, gone.

So, get a grip, Theseus told himself. Pretend you’re fine, or they die.

The resolve came to him easily. Merlin, it doesn’t feel unfamiliar.

He cleared his throat lightly and straightened the lapels of his coat. When he went to slide his hands in his pockets, his fingertips touched the silky fabric of the tie. Still no wand. That was going to be a problem if they wanted more than his identification card, a copy of which had somehow entered Grindelwald’s possession and now sat in the coat’s pockets next to the useless artefact from Albus.

He made direct eye contact with the official at the desk and was ushered forwards. On the right of the wooden booths housing various supervisors and gate staff was a semi-circular arch, which he knew acted as the Brazilian Minstry’s detector, imbued partly with power by the ancient wood used carved with various etchings from some of the enigmatic tribes with wizarding abilities living deep in the forest. The wards were stunningly powerful and unfalteringly earthy, stripping every complex set of tricks down to an open guise. Being invisible, of course, was a simple play. It would flag up.

You’re not going through there, he reminded himself. If Percival goes through there, Grindelwald will cut his losses and bury the evidence and kill him. He promised. If it’s me, if we get revealed, I’m a traitor and Grindelwald takes people out with us—

The voice chased the thought and pounced. You’re letting him use you, you’re letting him—

You want this, you want this, you want this, and he shivered hard enough at the sound of the voice as it softened and rose in pitch, sweet and sultry, that he felt Grindelwald drag his wand up his spine and place it on the back of his neck, one invisible hand wrapping itself around his shoulder.

“Good afternoon,” Theseus said to the wizard at the nearest desk.

“Identification?”

He pulled out the card and handed it over. The wizard took it with dull eyes and glanced from the paper to Theseus before handing it back. Theseus held his breath, hoping he’d be asked for his wand for a full confirmation he was who he said he was, but the question didn’t come.

“You can go through the gate.”

There weren’t enough people for him to make this a matter of urgency. Or were there?

He cleared his throat, holding the identity card in two fingers, letting his eyes narrow. Tilting his chin upwards, Theseus affected a confidence he did not feel.

“I’m here on official business from the British Ministry of Magic,” Theseus said. “We would greatly appreciate your cooperation in acknowledging the degree of trust shared between the higher-level officials of our joint ministries.”

The man at the desk scratched his upper lip, running a thoughtful finger over his close-cut moustache. “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t let anyone in without proper clearance. Even if you are my superior, it could cost me my job. I hope you can understand that, Head Auror Scamander.”

Theseus nodded, leaning in closer to the wooden lattice of the booth, looking through it to see the person on the other side. “Of course. I would certainly not let this jeopardise your position whatsoever. It’s simply that the last time I paid a visit, the other members of the delegation and I were able to pass through the uncharmed gate.” He gave a rueful smile, gesturing to his jacket as if indicating a myriad of protective charms. “It hasn’t been an easy journey, and I’m afraid I may set off several of your detectors. You understand—in these times, preparation is quite extensive, and I wouldn’t want to hold up your line removing all my spells. Would it be quite alright if I—could forego the central gate?”

He was being watched with interest now. The man in the booth tapped his fingers against the wooden desk, picking up a stamp and twirling it in his fingers.

I suggest you try again," Grindelwald hissed in his ear, so quiet it was barely louder than the squeaking of footsteps against the tiled floor of the Ministry foyer. "Or things will get very unpleasant for you and your colleagues."

"I apologise for the inconvenience," Theseus said, his voice softening slightly. "But I have urgent business to attend to. Lives are at stake. Lead Auror Pereira de Almeida can attest to that, should you wish to call him.”

Theseus mentally burnt that bridge. It would be an unforgivable lie after all of this, especially because—he could feel the other man’s hesitance start to melt away.

The wizard in the booth’s eyes tightened in interest. “Another plot?” he asked.

Grindelwald was leaning into him. The buttons of the dark wizard’s jacket were pushing into the back seam of his coat.

“You understand,” Theseus said with a sigh. “The times we live in.”

“Ay, the times we live in, eh?” came the reply, punctured by the sticky sound of a rubber stamp being pressed into paper. “Very well.”

How’s Percy going to get in? Theseus wondered, stomach tightening. He walked past the booth and to the side gate, looking back just in time to see a barely perceptible flash of light illuminate the inside of that same wooden booth from the back, the reddish colour outlining the leaf-shaped slats for a few moments, before Percival in his new face stepped smartly into the queue for the detector-free entrance.

No one had died. Not yet.

But seeing as Percival was a better follower—because Grindelwald had made him do things like this before—he seemingly could be trusted to walk around without the threat of immediate and permanent paralysis.

Theseus inhaled, tasting the waft of someone’s tobacco pipe from the other gate and the tangible, caramel-like heat of the air, matching the ruddy organic grandeur of the foyer. It was half-real and half-not. While Theseus was taking steps to destroy his own life, Grindelwald was setting the stage for a play: telling the story of the vow, of Percival’s slow but inevitable fall into psychological indenture, of his own chance of release being held squarely in Theseus’s hands.

Theseus gave the second official a tight smile. Maybe he was staring, but this was also the point of no return. Whatever was in his eyes seemed incommunicable. The woman, a head shorter than him, was wearing an ankle length dress in blue polka dots. She looked him up and down and brushed her hands over the sheer silk vest she wore over the dress, but didn’t pull out her wand.

The vest was pinned with a golden brooch: some bird.

“It’s quite quiet today,” Theseus said politely, thinking that if he’d listened more carefully to Newt, he might know what specific beast it was.

“It’s a national holiday,” she said with a small laugh. “I’m surprised they made you come in at all.”

“Well, crime never sleeps–––I have some work to do here today regarding an issue of some importance, unfortunately,” he said, forcing some of the tension out of his shoulders. Still, he stared ahead at the white stucco corridor leading into the depths of the Ministry, eyes dry and sore, unblinking.

“Hm!” the official exclaimed. “In that case, you may go through.”

“Thank you very much. Have a good day.”

“You too, Head Auror Scamander.”

A good day? Yeah, this is the best day of my life, he thought sarcastically.

Chapter Text

Tina grunted as she managed to get the key into the lock of the oversized emergency door. The sound of metal against metal made Newt take a hasty step back, covering his ears.

“Mercy Lewis, the artist really wasn’t on our side,” she muttered. “The whole damn place must have heard us.”

“Oil?” Newt proposed, ducking his head and instantly reaching for the latches of his case. “I could get a bottle, if you wanted me to.”

She immediately paled and stretched out a hand to stop him, temporarily leaving the key jammed in the door. Their fingertips grazed for a moment. His hands had always looked so soft, so freckled, tan with the sun, but the gentle brush of the pads of his fingers revealed calluses and old scars. Newt blinked down at the latch.

“It’ll stay shut on its own,” he reassured her. “You don’t need to hold it down.”

She quickly pulled away, covering herself with a rueful click of her tongue. “Like it stayed shut with the Nifflers? And Dougall?”

Newt grinned, seemingly remorseless about the chaos he’d caused in the past, giving Tina a slight appreciation for Theseus’s sentiments as the fellow older sibling. Usually, the messes Queenie left in her wake were nothing more than awkward misunderstanding with besotted men. That had been, until Paris, where she’d made the largest mess of all: one she couldn’t come back from.

She’ll come back, Tina promised herself. She wasn’t herself when she made the choice—she’ll find her way free when Grindelwald stops holding onto her.

“You remembered the name of my Demiguise,” Newt observed, but his eyes, like green glass, lingered on her face a moment longer, glinting in thought. “You seem like you’re thinking about something.”

“I do think occasionally, yes,” Tina said.

“So do I,” Newt said.

She squinted at him. “Are you being mysterious with me?”

He tilted his head to one side. “No—I was just hoping that the door would open. But our timing might also be—well, I’d say it could either be opportune or less so, depending on whether Grindelwald wanted to use this key together, whether the key was the only way in, whether he’s found another way in—“

“Yeah, you’re right,” Tina admitted, scuffing her feet against the tunnel’s dusty floor and turning back to the carved wooden door, settling her hand against the key’s brassy stem again. “This was never going to only be about returning the key. If we get a chance to intervene without confronting him directly, I’m taking it.”

“You’re an Auror, Tina; I suspected as much,” Newt said, peering over her shoulder, so close that a few more millimetres and they’d have been touching. She didn’t mind it, though.

With another grunt, she finally managed to swing it open. The key thrummed in her hand, emitting a small shower of golden sparks, but the alarm she’d been anticipating remained mercifully silent. These back corridors of the Brazilian Ministry were surprisingly colourful, the walls painted in bold art deco fragments of blue and gold, but she stared ahead into the labyrinthine maze with a frown already marking her forehead.

“What the bloody hell are we going to do now?” Newt mumbled.

They both jumped as the door swung shut behind them and melted back into the wall, smoothing itself over with the bright paint in mere seconds. One of the round wall lights in the distance sparked and popped.

“Where do you think they keep the…centipedes?” Tina whispered back to Newt, not daring to turn her head, in case the light blowing out was a sign of the impending arrival.

Newt hummed. “Probably under the skirting boards, I would assume, as they’d lack the natural friction to effectively wall climb given their mechanical nature. Of course, that could be simply amended by replicating the minute hooks—called pretarsi, quite characteristic of the Chilopoda class—yet it would require some fine wand work.”

She felt the expression of concern on her face grow practically comedic as her eyes rounded. “Newt, I’ve never told you this, but I’m not the biggest fan of insects that have more than thirty legs.”

“There’s a lot we haven’t told one another,” Newt said, as if that would reassure her and not just remind her of how many years she’d spent blowing smoke into the wind. “Don’t worry. Many non-mechanical centipedes found naturally in the wild have less than thirty legs: just more than five, actually, to qualify as a member of the Chilopoda. I quite like them. If they come for us, I’ll find a way to handle it.”

She puffed up her cheeks and let out a stressed breath, tightening her grip on her wand. “Okay—“

“—we should probably be quiet?” Newt proposed.

Tina bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. She was the one giving directions here, as an adept Ministry employee who had a better understanding of how the Brazilian Ministry worked than the British magizoologist. She tightened her grip on her wand, at once grateful that her dress was plain and formal enough to pass as workwear and unhappy that the lack of long sleeves meant no convenient wand holster. Taking a deep breath, she shoved it in her pocket, feeling his eyes burning into the back of her neck. “Quiet, yes, but I might need to give you certain directions. Especially if we run into people. I’m the Chief Auror; I can’t just be wandering around another country’s Ministry with my wand out, looking as if I’m ready to hex the crap out of anyone who comes across me and the strange man with me who’s also entered through the emergency exit,” she muttered.

“And the centipedes?”

“Look, returning this key to the Ministry before Grindelwald realises it’s gone is more important,” Tina said, mentally crossing her fingers that the likelihood of them triggering the security system would be low.

“Understood,” Newt whispered back.

Tina and Newt moved forward, their footsteps soft and muted on the dusty floor.

*

As they reached the floor of the Department of Magical Law, approximately halfway up the Brazilian Ministry's concentric layers of balconies and leafy green plants, Theseus started to slow down. The officials at the reception had been right. It was quiet; there didn't seem to be a single person active on this floor. There was sweat beading on the back of his neck from the humidity, amplified by the wall of hot air rushing in from its hollow centre, which stretched all the way down to the ground floor, overlooked by an immense skylight.

Although Percival had his new face, he also seemed to be considering the implications of this. The other man was looking at the tiles, lips parted like they usually were when he was in deep thought. On this level, the floor was covered with a mosaic of stone tiles in muted earth tones and rimmed with dark marble banding: they depicted the four cardinal directions set around a gold-leafed inlay of scales, in the midst of weighing up the balance of justice. The overhang of the balcony from the floor above made it dim, creating shade despite the ambient warmth. The soft illumination emanating from ornate sconces mounted on the walls cast a gentle radiance over the intricate patterns.

Theseus sighed, glaring at each scale as he stepped over it.

"What are you going to do about the wards?" he said in a low tone.

"Suppress them, temporarily," the invisible Grindelwald replied, as if this was as simple as blowing his nose. "It's a simple mechanism. You see, the wards and charms are all interconnected, operating on a magical network. If I can tap into that network and disrupt the flow of magical energy, we can create a window of opportunity to bypass the security measures."

Theseus glanced at him skeptically. "And how do you plan on doing that?"

"Ah, my dear Theseus, you underestimate the power of knowledge. There are ancient spells and techniques that can be employed to manipulate magical energies. Just a little contact and I should be able to redirect their focus to something far less consequential than our activities. "

"Ancient spells...? Of course there bloody are," he said.

Grindelwald chuckled. "You sound like you don't believe me."

"I don't," Theseus replied, his tone sharp. "You're a criminal, not a wizarding scholar."

Theseus had worked with the Brazilian officials before, and he knew that their security measures were some of the most advanced in the world. But Grindelwald seemed confident, almost cocky.

"So," Grindelwald continued. "As soon as the wards and charms falter, we have a narrow window of opportunity. I'm sure you have an understanding of access seals on the various documents and how they might be undone. If I remember correctly, it's signature by the hand of one of a surprisingly long list of names...such trust in that."

"What about a front desk–––or guards?" Percival finally asked, voice dry.

"It's just for storage," Theseus said. "They don't have a reading room here; it's done in the offices."

"Theseus," Percival pressed, his tone insistent. "We can't afford to overlook any potential obstacles."

"...but there are usually a few clerks inside any record room," Theseus said.

"Then it is a good thing they are all on holiday," Grindelwald said. "And if they are not, then they will soon wish they were."

A few years ago, Theseus remembered Travers, ever a hardliner, pushing to scale up the usage of Admonitors. He'd suggested that the Ministry should dedicate considerable resources to scaling up the charm behind the cuffs so that it could be cast over several desks at once, whole rooms, even the entirety of the Ministry. Any spell cast within the building would be traceable back to the owner of the wand. The reception had been frosty at best and hostile at worst. It still seemed like an over-judicious tool that would certainly be used to silence any opposing voices, but Theseus couldn't help but think that it would have been useful in this situation. Surely the holiday would be damned if they got wind of Grindelwald knocking out clerks in a secure section of the Ministry.

Percival nodded, his eyes scanning the area. "W–––we don't want to be caught in the act."

Grindelwald sounded like he was grinning, his excitement palpable. "Oh, my dear Percival, you truly are a master of understatement."

The double doors to the record room loomed in front of them. There were two stools on either side of them, both empty. A thick iron chain had been woven into the already complex brassy collection of gears and dials worked over the carved wood; it was a standard but comprehensive security system designed for identity verification and protection of the valuable documents inside. Theseus came to a halt in front of it. Without a wand, he wasn't even able to start the first step, which required presenting an identifying card to the opal viewer with simultaneous production of a veritas charm of some sort.

Whatever wand Percival was holding had clearly been borrowed.

A bolt of red light appeared from where Grindelwald must have been standing and shot towards the chain, causing it to crumble into rust.

"The wards are still active," the dark wizard murmured. "But I can feel them weakening."

The air around them began to shimmer and warp, as if the very fabric of reality was being stretched and twisted. The gears and dials on the door began to turn and spin, the clinking and whirring sounds growing louder and more chaotic. Theseus watched in stunned silence as the door slowly swung open, revealing the darkened interior of the record room.

That's a better system than we have: and he undid it just like that? Theseus thought.

"Percival," Grindelwald hissed, and Theseus could see the finger-shaped indents appearing on the other man's coat as the invisible wizard grabbed his shoulder. "The alterations must be made by you. The changes may be traceable to the wand you're using. I will not risk my political attempt."

This was met by a nod.

"Theseus–––you do nothing."

He ran his tongue over his teeth, giving a reluctant half-nod, and followed Percival into the archive. The shelves reached towards the ceiling, each row crammed with bursting manilla files held behind iron grates. As they walked deeper inside, he noticed the sentient carvings on the wide sides of the shelves, figures that he certainly should have recognised if he had a better memory for names of beasts and other legends from the intersection of Muggle and wizarding folklore. One, a man with a demon-like face, hair like burning fire, leapt off an embossed tree and tracked them between shelves, leaf-point spear held high in warning. The air smelled of aged parchment and ink; it was all eerily still.

They finally reached the V section. Theseus's eyes fell upon a particular set of folders, carefully labelled with Vogel's name. He shifted from one foot to another, a bitter taste in his mouth as he remembered how easily the man had announced Grindelwald's candidacy for the election. There was no doubt that the Brazilian and Chinese Ministries were on the right track in their investigation, whether it was to boost their own candidates or not.

Sadly, the other two had eyes as well.

“Sign,” Grindelwald commanded.

Theseus placed a hand over the bars by Vogel’s files and waited until the access mechanism spat out a small piece of paper.

“I need a quill and ink,” he said reluctantly.

Percival gave him both. Theseus searched his eyes for any sign of life, but could see nothing other than fear. Gripping the shaft of it tightly, smearing the smooth line of the feathers into angry tufts, he scrawled his name on the paper and slid it back into the mechanism. There was a brief hum and then a gentle click.

Percival swung the bars upwards, freeing up access to the files, and scooped them off the shelf. He crouched down and spread them out over the floor with shaking hands. Grindelwald hummed, and seemed to walk somewhere else for a moment, gently stirring the sheaf of parchment on the ground as he did. But he was too quick, back too soon; with a brief, electric twist in the air around them, Grindelwald made himself visible, professing a fresh pot of ink and quill on one flat palm.

Percival took them without question, discarding the initial implements he’d given Theseus as if they were contaminated.

With painstaking precision, Percival began his work. His quill scratched a trail across the parchment as he worked to change various details, transforming the purpose of the pages, reframing the case. He twisted the truth with each stroke; the ink flowed, swirling out of control across the page. Every alteration was a careful dance of deceit. Theseus leaned over despite himself, seeing the removal of names, quotes, obscure case laws that acted as supporting arguments, replaced by brief and officious statements of neutrality in their place. Every few breaths, Percival tapped the stolen wand against the parchment, making the change neat and complete.

"All they need to do is read it to see that it's different," Theseus pointed out.

Grindelwald gave him a brief, patronising smile. "Yes, of course. But we have one more stop to make after this to ensure that will not be the case. Besides, the changes are small. You'll find that most government officials are happy to descend a gentle slippery slope so long as it leads them in the direction they desire. They won't question the details."

He bowed his head, grey-blond hair gleaming in the low light, and aimed his wand at Percival. "In any case, ensure that the changes are seamless, undetectable. The narrative must align with my design. Focus on the statements of accusation made by the foreign Ministries; attack their arguments at the base."

Theseus crossed his arms and leaned back against the shelf of files. His heart was pounding as he slowly brought one hand down to rest against the shelf, touching his fingers to what promised to be a random set of cases. Changes to Vogel's file alone might be innocuous, especially if Grindelwald had some secondary mechanism in place to hide the differences in the basic facts of the case being made before it even got to the discussion stages.

But he could reverse-engineer it. He could change all the other files on this row; then, surely, it would be noted that Vogel's file alone had been set up to be perfectly untampered with. The one, very obvious downside of this plan was that firstly, Grindelwald was so close to both of them that Theseus could smell his cologne, and secondly, he hadn't cast a complex charm since his attempt at escaping the Black Forest manor. Magic wasn't something you forgot. It wasn't meant to be, at least. But he was no Eulalie Hicks, who'd probably know exactly how to cast the charm here and do it with finesse. With increasingly trademark clumsiness, Theseus risked getting caught and then...well, all the consequences of getting caught, which he understood intimately at this stage of being Grindelwald’s prisoner.

As Theseus contemplated his plan, Grindelwald's voice sliced through the air like a razor. "What are you thinking, Mr Scamander?"

"I'm just reading the changes, same as you are," he said, catching sight of a few legal loopholes Percival was adding into the base charges of the Chinese Ministry's official statement, frowning as he tapped away at the original Mandarin to match his adjustments to the typewritten translation before. "Seems like you're trying to make it easier for the defence than get the case thrown out."

His fingers curled on top of one of the files.

The room seemed to shrink around them, the only sound the scratching of Percival's quill and the synchronised rhythm of their breathing.

Grindelwald's eyes flickered over to Theseus, and Theseus felt as though he was under a microscope. He tried to keep his expression as neutral as possible, tried not to let on that he was concocting a plan. Grindelwald's voice had an edge to it when he spoke again.

"You seem to have a lot of opinions for someone who claims to be merely observing," Grindelwald said. "Perhaps you would like to offer your own suggestions for how to proceed with this case?"

Theseus swallowed hard, feeling the weight of Grindelwald's stare on him. He knew he had to tread carefully. "If you want to slow it down...you could remove some of the signatures," he said. "There are about fifty, international. It'll take effort to gather them again if you take a handful out. Make it look like an administrative issue, like the paperwork’s not in total order yet.”

"Perhaps you should take over for Percival."

"It's okay."

He tapped his finger, once, twice, against the file, feeling the charm spread. It was a very weak riff on the Confundo charm and, he hoped, wouldn't do much more than leave signs of tampering, rearranging words, reversing pictures, and mismatching text. In this scenario, he wouldn't mind leaving a magical trace: anything to raise the alarm.

Percival set down the quill, a mixture of relief and apprehension etched across his face.

Shifting slightly as Grindelwald crouched over Vogel's documents, examining them carefully, Theseus put his other hand on some more files to his right and cast the charm again. Every time Grindelwald shifted, he stopped breathing, almost losing track of the intricate threads required of his fraught concentration to keep the spell going from file to file without Theseus doing something as bloody obvious as running his hands over every single one in the 'V' section.

Finally, Grindelwald stood up, tucking his wand back into his pocket. "Very well," he said, his voice cold as he turned to face Theseus once again. "I trust that you will have no further issues with following orders?"

Fuck, he knows. Theseus didn't trust himself to speak, nodding instead.

"You seem to have a way with words," Grindelwald said sarcastically.

He must know. He can see right through me. He probably smelled my stupid attempt at a multi-stage object transference charm and is going to curse me until I seize, or go insane, or die, or...

A moment passed. Percival returned Vogel's file to the shelf as Theseus stepped away, watching both the other men carefully for any reaction. Percival took his time adjusting the papers, shuffling the files, knuckles white with effort, hands stained with ink. His back was bowed as he silently drew the protective bars back over the shelf of files and stepped away.

Theseus had expected Grindelwald to check the documents for a second time, but when he dragged his eyes away from Vogel's folder, he found that the dark wizard's gaze was already on him. Grindelwald could see right through him. He kept his eyebrows light, resisting the strong urge to frown.

But to his surprise, Grindelwald simply nodded his head and turned away.

Maybe I got away with it, he thought with surprise, feeling some of the tightness pressing his ribs together start to unwind and lighten.

"Now, for that second stage you were so worried about," Grindelwald said. "Percival will patrol the corridors like the good guard he is, and Theseus, you can come with me and get your hands dirty, hmm? There's just one office we need to visit–––one little object we must place–––in order to ensure that this file is received with minimal scepticism, at least for a few weeks longer, so that they can make all the protests they want after my rightful election."

He inhaled. "You told me that I was only meant to watch."

"And you did–––you saw that Percival, in my service, is a great tool for our cause, and I would hope that leads to your understanding that he would not be such if you made the Unbreakable Vow and freed him. But, after all this demonstrated, so-called evil, you must not think yourself too special, Auror Scamander. I am not entering a foreign Ministry just to put on a persuasive play for you; I have something that needs doing, and I do not trust your willingness to play sentry enough to spare you from doing it."

"Which office?" Theseus asked.

"The Head of International Magical Law," Grindelwald said, disappearing again with a tilt of his head, becoming fully invisible once more. "Follow. Now."

*

The air in the back corridors was musty. As they passed the broken light, and then walked onwards along what seemed to be a circular route, the walls transitioned from the blue and gold of earlier to plain stucco white. They were getting close to the main body of the building.

Tina could hear faint whispers and murmurs coming from behind the ornate double doors they were headed toward. Her heart began to race, and she could feel the sweat starting to form on the palms of her hands. She turned to Newt, who was looking at her with a small smile of reassurance.

"We can do this," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the sound of their footsteps.

She let out a small, pained wheeze in response, running her fingers through her hair and straightening out her dress. "It's fine. We're here on important business. Just remember, Newt, once we get onto the first floor, they can technically see you from all the others. Including at the top. There are binocular sets up there."

Newt frowned. "Like they have at the seaside?"

"The seaside?" she repeated. "I've never been."

His eyes widened. "Never?"

"There's not much seaside in New York," she pointed out gently.

"That...makes sense," Newt said, eyeing the doors.

Taking a deep breath, she grasped the handle and pushed it open.

Tina had been to the Brazilian Ministry a few times and remembered the layout well. The central corridor was circular, labyrinthine, and the walls were plastered simply to accommodate both the rush of humidity that followed anyone who entered through open doors. On the first floor, where the famous iron balustrades were located, the Ministry opened up into a huge dome, stretching up towards the sky, with a hole cut through the other eight floors so that it was possible to hang off the railing lining the passageway outside the top offices and stare down to the pit of lush vegetation circling the rooms of the least important Brazilian officials. As always, the most important were the highest up, with the Prime Minister's office occupying the entire ninth floor of the Ministry.

The first thing Tina noticed as they stepped into the central dome was the heat - it was like stepping into a furnace. Sweat pricked her skin, and she had to resist the urge to fan herself. The second thing she noticed was just how few people there were. The silence was deafening, and the only sound was the soft rustle of their clothing and the occasional drip of water from an unseen leak. She had been to the Brazilian Ministry of Magic before, and it had never been like this. The corridors were always bustling with witches and wizards, and the air was filled with chatter and the occasional burst of laughter. But now, it was like the entire Ministry was holding its breath.

"We're returning the key, aren't we?" Newt muttered. "It's a national holiday today, apparently. Dia de Tiradentes. The Ministry here coheres with their Muggle world rather well; they share traditions and understandings better than I think happens in America."

"Yes. The key," Tina said. "It'll be fine to explain how we found it. It's a concerning development about Grindelwald that the Ministry should know."

"And if the official you want to contact–––"

"They'll be in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Aurors are responsible for emergency evacuations, so this key must have come from them. If not, then we should check in on the Department of International Magical Law, seeing as they’ll be the ones internally investigating the disappearance of this thing in the first place. Probably."

"What if they're not here? Will we leave it on the desk?"

Tina sighed. "I mean, I feel like we might have to keep it at that point and come back another time. By the time we reach the seventh floor–––or eighth floor, even, if we can’t find any Aurors–––we'll know if there's anyone milling around."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Newt said.

They continued to walk down the central corridor, passing a few workers from the Brazilian Ministry who gave them curious looks. Even though it was a holiday, some of the officials were still working. Tina noted that there was a lack of Aurors, who wore distinctive black cloaks with gold bands on the collars, and a quiet, relaxed atmosphere. She let her gaze flick up to the dome above them, looking at the blue sky visible through the lens-like enchanted glass. The ornamental plants centred in a matching circle down where they were, on the humble first floor, were fragrant and perfumed, enough that her nose itched.

Maybe they had indeed beaten Grindelwald to his conquest of the Ministry.

Then again, MACUSA intelligence claimed that he was one of the most powerful Seers of their generation.

Tina was good at staying wary.

*

Percival circled the floor of the Department for Magical Law, watching the lift. Only one of the offices was occupied. He couldn’t bear standing near enough to it that he could hear the artificial hum of the Muffling Charm: knowing that Theseus and Grindelwald were inside, up to something, something risky, dangerous.

He made another nervous loop, keeping his head down. The long-term life of the face he was wearing was nonexistent; behaviour that was odd but not urgently suspicious was fine. Percival reflected that the number of years he’d been under Grindelwald’s control were guaranteed to have made him odd. He certainly felt it. Odd. Strange.

Gritting his teeth against the incessant pain of this realisation, more painful than the nerve damage of the leg Grindelwald had obliterated in a fit of rage, he got into the lift and checked the floor below. Still no one. The floor one further down was empty, too. For good measure, he stood in the rattling lift and waited a while at floor seven, holding the occupancy so that someone else couldn’t call it, buying more time. He liked that the Brazilian Ministry didn’t have any elves looking after the lifts. They were efficient, useful creatures, but now, he found himself surprisingly sympathetic of them despite a childhood surrounded by a veritable force of indentured servants.

After a few minutes, he descended all the way to the bottom floor, forcing himself to keep his shoulders loose, fists unclenched, and head up, as if he were any other of the handful of Brazilian officials down here. Percival paused by the circle of vegetation in the centre, sitting heavily down on one of the benches around it to stretch out his leg. It had never been quite the same since Grindelwald had taken to his knee several years ago. Taking a risk, buoyed slightly by the knowledge Grindelwald was a few floors away, he stretched his leg, rubbed his knee, and sat back with a wince, reflexively scanning the crowd.

A woman with a bob and a neat black dress hurried past, kitten heels tapping against the tiles. A man followed her, shoulders hunched, holding a leather suitcase.

Percival blinked.

He knew both of them, even after years. The woman’s expression of concentration, her quick, arm-swinging walk, her now-short dark hair. The man’s freckles, his distant eyes, strangely familiar nose, strangely familiar almost everything—and his fucking case.

Tina Goldstein. Newt Scamander.

Fuck me in the ass, he thought, getting to his feet and heading to the only other available lift across the room from the one the pair were currently entering. Do I catch them? Will I be able to catch them? If he hesitated, either would be able to out-duel him, but Grindelwald had taught him a repertoire of dark spells that he knew would give him the upper hand. The real question was whether he wanted to catch them.

The lift rattled to life and Percival pressed his forehead against the button panel, instinctively hitting a few, buying himself time.

Buying them time.

But what if they crossed paths with Grindelwald?

His body went cold, palms suddenly clammy as he lurched backwards in the lift, feeling the metal hit his back as he tilted his gaze up to stare through the ceiling.

That’s why you’re letting them past you, isn’t it? a traitorous voice whispered.

Maybe they could stop Grindelwald. Whatever they did, he was going to pay the price for someone’s mistakes, he was sure of it. But Tina didn’t know that—Newt obviously didn’t bloody know that—and the only person he really blamed for spending weeks in pure agony when Grindelwald had taken the task of his disassembly most faithfully was Sera, because she should have known better, should have at least realised the person walking around with his skin and face wasn’t the man she’d worked with for almost a decade.

The lift juddered through the random assortment of floors he’d selected. When Percival could run from it no longer, he returned to floor eight, lingering on by the threshold of the lift. He glanced into one of the brass viewers, staring down at the ground floor. There was no sign of them there. They were on their way. What the hell was Newt Scamander doing in the Brazilian Ministry of Magic?

It took minutes to still his racing heart. Feeling some strange sense of resolution, he stared down the long green-tiled corridor, waiting for the distant shadowy mouth of the other lift to spring open. He tightened his grip on the stolen wand, licked his dry lips.

When they arrived, he’d turn the corner, retreat to one of the distant offices on the other side of the circular floor. A blind eye might be excused as a sign of his flatlining use as a follower and tool. It might spare him.

Seeing as he was already putting his neck on the line, while he was there, he’d try to find a packet of Floo powder for that note, even if it already felt too late for it.

Chapter Text

“We don’t have all day,” Grindelwald snapped.

Theseus walked around the office one more time, weaving in between the messy piles of files. He stopped and examined the bookshelf a second time, taking stock of each shelf. Pulling out a thick but worn compendium of magical law, he raised the temporary Pensieve device and almost put it in the gap where the book had been. 

The Auror glanced up at Grindelwald as he hesitated and then slowly slid the book back into place. “It needs to be in the right place,” he said quietly.

Grindelwald frowned. These were obvious delaying tactics. If he placed the device himself, there was a risk that the Head of Magical Law had put some clever wards down on his private space tracing movements, magical traces. It needed to be someone else’s fingerprints all over the device. The silver contraption, the size and length of his thumb, had taken months to fine-tune after he’d sourced it from a Tibetan enclave specialising in memory magic. Carefully attuned to a certain magical signature, it would tug at the target’s short-term memories, holding and releasing them in slow bursts. He wasn’t overly concerned about what would happen if it was broken. Perhaps near-total erasure, but seeing as it would be short-term and temporary, Grindelwald hardly planned to weep if some cleaning woman uncovered it a few weeks into its purpose and suffered the rightful consequences. 

When the temporary pensieve worked as intended, the effects were impressive. Disorientation, but mild enough that it was not suspicious. A near-complete, yet temporary erasure of short-term memory, enough to confuse a person entirely in the moment and yet leave no lasting effect. Whatever misgivings the Head of Law might have about Vogel’s files would be swiftly disrupted. And if they did manage to see the discrepancies, so long as the device stayed intact in the office, it would take weeks of fighting with it to get the case through to the debate stage.

By then, it would be too late.

He raised his wand and wandered over to Theseus, feeling cold disdain settled on his features, sparked by the irritation of this useless and obvious procrastination. 

“Percival would have placed the device by now,” he hissed.

Theseus lifted his head to look at the bookshelf again, glancing at Grindelwald out of the corner of his eye, jaw jumping.

“But you didn’t want him to do it, did you?” pointed out the other man.

“Because you would be a failure of a sentry,” Grindelwald said.

Theseus looked at the bookshelf again, weighing the device up between two fingers. His attention seemed to be drawn by a heavy armillary sphere, engraved heavily with strings of runes tracking its looping edges. Grindelwald felt a sudden burst of contempt. If he could, he’d put the man under the Imperius curse now and have gone with it, but casting Unforgiveables was likely to draw alarm. He was confident he could Disapparate, despite the heavy wards in this place. It was a game. He just had to slip through them. But now he was burdened with two others, one rebellious and the other so beaten down he wondered if he had a drop of initiative left in his body.

For a moment, Theseus looked as though he was going to try and toss the pensieve like a ball. But the man saw sense—walked back to the desk, opened a drawer.

“Place it inside that armillary sphere,” Grindelwald commanded. “The runes will hide the aura of the device.”

He’d seen Theseus looking too long at it; of course, that had been the best hiding place.

“No, the desk is better,” Theseus argued.

Grindelwald rolled his eyes. “Indisputably, it is the better place for the item’s discovery. Kindly place the item where I have requested. Or I will ensure that Percival feels the consequences on our return.”

“I don’t want to be a part of this.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“It’s—“ and Theseus tightened his grip on the device. “—I could break it, right here. Altering people’s minds, making them more sympathetic to your cause, consciously or unconsciously, through neglect or otherwise—“ 

“What? Is it wrong?” Grindelwald smirked. “Then, tell me—why have I had such success with it? After all, you’re here, without even having your memories touched beyond a brief investigation: and you’re helping me.”

That gave the Auror pause. Something flickered in his blue eyes as he held Grindelwald’s gaze.

“Do not waste this opportunity for me,” Grindelwald warned. 

He stood close enough to cast a shadow on Theseus as the other man, as if moving through molasses, wrapped one hand over the back of the heavy office chair and slowly dragged it towards the bookcase in a squeal of wood. The muffling charm Grindelwald had already taken the precaution of casting, anticipating some possible resistance, was strong enough that he could likely kill him in cold blood, without his wand, and have no one any the wiser. The thought eased some of the rage tugging at the corners of his vision. 

Theseus stared at the chair for several long moments, flexing one wrist, fingers shaking. At long last, he looked up and swallowed. “Alright,” he said in a low tone.

Grindelald pointed to the chair, indicating he should get on it so he could reach the sphere, narrowing his eyes into a loaded promise of violence. The office was quiet. There was a conspicuous lack of personal effects; he mentally profiled the official as someone old, traditional, guarded, stuck in their ways, a perfectly isolated and overbearing target. Theseus adjusted his thick coat, scuffing a shoe against the floor. As he braced the back of the chair against the bookcase, his nostrils flared, and he bit back what Grindelwald suspected was a noise of pain.

“Hurry up,” Grindelwald said, flexing his fingers around his wand. 

His patience for this performative slowness was rapidly fading. It was drawing some of the simple poetry from his plan. But it proved it, didn’t it? Those who did not believe, who were not ideologically enlightened, would simply be useless in the future. Grindelwald idly tilted his head from side to side, easing out some of the tightness in the tendons.

There was a soft clunk as the device fell to the floor. 

Theseus looked slowly up at Grindelwald, open palm trembling, and placed the heel of his shoe over the small cylinder.

Grindelwald tipped back his head and laughed. “Oh, you think that will help? Why don’t you try and see what it does to you?”

That caused the other man to hesitate. Grindelwald felt a grim flicker of satisfaction. Maybe there was a jot of intelligence there, something other than the blind need to lash out and protest. A survival instinct, even. Aurors worked with dark devices, did they not? The idea that Theseus was hoping the carefully-obtained temporary pensieve would do something as garish as explode made Grindelwald smile again. Obviously, he was just trying to delay. He wasn’t stupid enough to think of going that far and killing them both—and luckily for the two of them, this device did no such thing.

Cutting through the humid air of the locked office, the faint noise of footsteps against tile drifted under the door. 

Grindelwald sighed, but didn’t turn around. He’d made sure the lock system was fully activated when they’d entered. It would take several minutes for the most determined intruder to enter—and then they would be faced with him, so the concept did not phase Grindelwald.

The hushed voices drifted through Grindelwald’s muffling charm, so carefully engineered to allow sound in but not out. 

Like a hunter, Theseus was watching the door, poised for movement. He stiffened, eyes widening, as if catching sight of some terrible vision, one which he was not sure whether to embrace or retreat from. While Grindelwald knew the feeling well, cursed with foresight as he was, this situation had not graced him in his fevered premonitions, and so he battled with his disdain for long enough to pay attention. If Theseus was to be rabidly focused on these footsteps, these words, Grindelwald would do the same. 

Yet he didn’t recognise the voices as anyone of importance. He curled his lip and turned towards, trying to recall where they might have been familiar from, but prepared to remove said intruders from the picture as soon as possible. 

Theseus, however, made a noise like a dog who'd been kicked.

“Newt?" he managed, in a voice so quiet the dark wizard barely heard it.

Grindelwald had a sudden flash back to a grey, cubical room, its clinical white lighting, and the fidgeting, obstinate man across the interrogation table in possession of an Obscurial.

The younger brother. This is going to be a problem, Grindelwald thought with a frown.

"Make any move to alert them," he said, jerking his head towards the door, "and I'll kill whoever's on the other side of the door, whether they try to come in or not. Believe me, I have ways. I will not need to use an Unforgivable curse; the first person to know will be the one who walks over their cold bodies."

Theseus’s breathing became shallow.

Grindelwald continued. "I know you care for your brother, Theseus. You don't want him to come in here and find you with me, do you? So keep your mouth shut and stay still."

Theseus nodded slowly, quivering slightly with the effort of not speaking out. He managed to take small steps backwards, back towards the chair—but he didn't climb onto it to place the device. Instead, he stood next to it, silent and still as a statue, as if he was afraid that even the slightest movement would trigger something terrible from Grindelwald.

Grindelwald scooped up the temporary pensieve from the floor and went to the door, readying himself. The voices—a man and a woman—faded. It sounded as though they'd walked by. Naturally, his Muffling charm had been effective. Grindelwald was about to turn around and hand the device back to Theseus, feeling more and more dissatisfied by the complexity of the situation by the moment, when he heard the sound of feet against the floor.

This time, from inside the office. 

Gritting his teeth, Grindelwald undid the top button of his shirt, mentally readying himself for another humiliating scuffle, and turned around.

“When will you understand?” Grindelwald sighed, holstering his wand; despite his threats, he didn’t want to trigger any lingering wards while he was too distracted to weave his way through them. 

In a flurry of motion, Theseus shunted him with one shoulder, fingers scrabbling for the door handle. With a powerful jab of his elbow, Grindelwald pushed him back, hard, the muscle of his bicep jarred by the aggressive jolt. 

“You’ve lost the element of surprise, Mr Scamander,” he warned. “They’ll die.”

Sliding across the floor, Theseus caught his balance, rolling one shoulder back, and grimaced, shaking his head, his eyes blazing with a fierce determination. Dressed so cleanly, already complicit, close to greatness, and yet he retained such a fondness for resistance. His eyes swept up and down the Auror. His clothes were still pressed, fresh. This little scuffle wouldn’t have to make leaving difficult if he ended it quickly. 

In all the years Theseus had spent chasing him, the Auror had rarely lost his composure, according to the observations of his followers. Grindelwald took a few seconds to luxuriate in mourning the loss of that reserved and reasonable character who’d pursued him with such dedication. Because now, look where we are. 

“Well?” Grindelwald prompted. “Are you truly trying to leave? Do you not understand the consequences of our world and theirs colliding— especially with the abilities I have?”

"I won't let you hurt them," Theseus said, his voice steady. "I'll take you down myself if I have to. Like I always should have done.”

Grindelwald raised an eyebrow, almost impressed by the bravery, but primarily amused by his naïveté. "You think you're going to win this fight?"

They both knew he wasn't going to, but it was clear the Auror wanted to try. Theseus was too focused on the door—Grindelwald still was vaguely curious as to whether he wanted to join the others and escape, or block the door and stop him from reaching them—and so Grindelwald took the next step. He was done playing games with Theseus, with this entire situation, with the Ministry of Magic and their constant interference in his plans.

He swung a punch at Theseus, who managed to dodge it just in time. Grindelwald tried again, this time aiming for the stomach. Again, Theseus was able to move out of the way and counter-attack with a swift kick to Grindelwald's side, one that gently bounced off the harsh muscles of his obliques. Still, it scuffed his coat. 

Grindelwald snarled in frustration, reaching out for flesh, and grabbed Theseus by the neck, putting him into a headlock. He tightened his grip around his throat, feeling the delicate runnels of the thin man’s cartilage flex, and forced his fingers down until he felt the Auror's breath hitch in pain, prepared to squeeze until he passed out.

"You should have stayed where you were," Grindelwald said.

His opponent was struggling to breathe and his eyes were beginning to water, but he still tried a few weak punches and kicks. Each landed, but barely hurt. The harsh bones of his shoulder blades dug into Grindelwald's chest with each twitch, each attempted manoeuvre. It would be easy for him to throw Theseus around like a rag doll; he'd lost weight since his initial capture. Maybe if he kept feeding him only minimal rations—just enough to keep him alive—he’d be able to starve him into seeing the light. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling to Grindelwald, the way the brain slowed, the body weakened, and the spirit awakened with the bitter bite of hunger.

But if he kept him alive, let him sacrifice everything, there was a chance, slim as winning a game of blackjack, Albus Dumbledore would come back to him. 

He tilted his head to the side, studying the man in his arms. Theseus was sweating profusely, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. His skin was turning an unhealthy shade of purple under Grindelwald's grip. So he loosened his grip slightly, allowing Theseus to take a few shallow breaths. 

"Say it," Grindelwald whispered, his lips brushing against Theseus's ear. "Say that you give up."

He shook his head, a stubborn glint in his eye. "You're not killing anyone on my watch."

"Not even you?" Grindelwald found himself saying, even though he detested the lies, the sayings of things he would not follow through on, because they belied weakness.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash from outside the door. Grindelwald turned his head towards the sound, distracted for just a moment, and Theseus took advantage of the opportunity. He elbowed Grindelwald in the stomach, causing him to release his hold. Theseus stumbled backwards, gasping for air, and ran for the door again.

Grindelwald was close on his heels, and he lunged for Theseus, grabbing him by the back of his coat. He yanked him back— “agh,” Theseus grunted—and then pushed him forward with a powerful shove, enhanced with magic. Theseus stumbled and fell into the bookcase with an astounding bang, sending books flying in all directions. The force of the impact sent Theseus onto the desk, where he crashed into another stack of papers. There might have been a crack or a crunch. Grindelwald wasn’t certain. If he’d charged the blow with a hint more power, he could have had the useful effect of taking a hammer straight to bone, chipping, shattering, as he’d done to the Director’s knee several years ago. 

"Fuck," the Auror swore, grabbing at his left thigh and then his hip, eyes watering. Still, he was already getting unsteadily to his feet, swaying—and he tried to run again, this time towards the back wall, beating a hasty retreat.

It was a valuable opportunity to catch the dazed man. 

Grindelwald followed after him, trying to grab hold of him again. Theseus had already scrambled off the desk and was now standing at its corner, ready to defend himself if necessary. With a smirk, Grindelwald kicked the chair over, hemming him in one side, and then grabbed him by the arm. His other palm sat squarely in the now-messy tangle of the man's dark hair as he went to drive his head hard into the polished wood of the desk.

But as he started to push, Theseus bit down hard on the wrist of Grindelwald’s other arm—the one pressed against the desk to lever full force into the swing. Whether it was the gift of sharp canines or the foolish feral anger about Grindelwald’s murder of the woman, his teeth went deep enough to draw pricks of blood.  

Grindelwald hissed, feeling rage swell inside him with the strength of a thousand suns. How dare he? How dare he, this idiot, this—?

Theseus placed his hands on the desk, trying to push himself away from Grindelwald's grasp, slip back or worm his way free. Meaningless actions. The dark wizard was too fast for him. Inhaling, he slammed Theseus’s head against the table with a hollow thud, the sound so desirable that his lips twitched into a smile. 

"What was that?" came a female voice through the door, taut and suspicious.

Movements now slow, dizzy, Theseus stretched out an arm and tried to grope for a weapon on the desk, but Grindelwald had enough. Another bang with the same force risked incapacitating the other man a little too permanently. Refocusing past the pain in his wrist, he dulled the wards lingering over the desk that were meant to sense interference, and body-bound the Auror to it. Drawing the unseen cords was like painting, strings around his chest, a magnetic draw to the desk. 

As he’d expected, the curse was unappreciated. 

The Auror struggled against the invisible bonds that held him in place. His eyes were wild with fear and anger, but Grindelwald only smiled at him coldly, pleased with his work. He was ready to strike Theseus across the face, but then stopped himself. No, he wouldn't give in to his anger any more. He was not such an animal. And he would not be given away by the sting of a slap the magnitude he wished to mete out, a force that could break some of the bones in the other man’s face to help him understand that Grindelwald was untouchable. 

"You just need to be quiet," Grindelwald hissed. "if you wish to let them leave alive."

A small smirk of amusement grew across his lips as he watched him strain helplessly against the curse’s restraints, trying to kick his legs and finding they too were held in place, one stretched out straight, the other bowed at the knee, his hips and hands jammed against the wood.  

"You—!" Theseus started. “You absolute son of—!”

Doubtless he had crude words to follow. He was as bad as the Director had been at the beginning, back before the defiance had been extracted as if with rusty pliers in scrapes of bone and readings of nerves. Grindelwald pulled off his scarf and—with some reluctance, given it was a fine, expensive object—wrapped it around Theseus’s lower face, gagging his mouth, wary of putting his hands near the other man's teeth.

"Hush," Grindelwald said. "Is it that difficult? You never seemed like the noisy type."

Grindelwald turned away from Theseus, his attention now on the door. He could hear the muffled sounds of conversation outside. Then, a sharp rap of knuckles against wood. The minutes ticked by slowly; the only sound in the room was the ragged breathing of Theseus as he kept struggling. 

"Good," Grindelwald said, his voice low and dangerous. "Now we wait."

For the first time, he noticed how frightened the Auror looked. Calm him. Yes, he should calm him. Treat the creature like one. The man froze as he felt Grindelwald's fingers brush against his neck. He started stroking it in a gentle, soothing motion, reasoning that it could calm Theseus down—or provide a fast choke. He continued caressing Theseus's neck with one hand while his other arm snaked around the Auror's waist to keep him pinned, wishing that the desk was soft, so that he could just bury the other man’s face in it and make him pass out. 

It was a distasteful amount of contact. Still, there was something to it, a vague spark of the thrill of power. There was something. For some reason, he thought of Albus, of the café, of leaning in so close he could smell his former lover’s fresh laundry-scent, of the magic of the neck when kissed tenderly. If only any other could be a substitute. If only he had the power to take the picking without the familiar old guilt. No, he couldn’t be as bad as the Muggles. Still, this close to the other man’s magical signature, he could tell he’d badly injured him. It’d make it hard to run, perhaps. How lucky he was merciful.

Grindelwald eyed the narrow navy of the Auror’s back, ribs bellowing in and out like some half-mad animal, and tried to determine how likely it would be for Theseus to make a noise loud enough to break through the Muffling Charm and alert whoever was still listening on the other side of the door. He did seem the kind to potentially make a commotion if pushed hard enough. Not like the little brother, whom Grindelwald was sure would have been beautifully quiet and eventually pliable with enough tender care. This one needed more than tender care, that was for sure, and this was the one he’d been stuck with as his pawn.

That, and he’d seen it. The future could trick, it could lie. But Grindelwald’s foolish bleeding heart chose to beat in time to the desperate hope of that one vision: he and Albus, reunited.

"Shhh," Grindelwald said, remembering being ten and on the outskirts of the village by the rubble piles, seeing the mad, wild dogs there, slavering over yellow teeth. 

"Hello?" came the woman's voice again. "Is there someone in there?"

Grindelwald's grip on Theseus tightened, his fingers digging into the man's flesh. What? Why is he shaking so much? The back of his neck was covered in a sickly, chill sweat, soaking the dark collar of his coat. Grindelwald frowned, tracing the knobs of his neck, fingers heavy, questioning. It was not so hot.

Theseus's breathing grew more laboured. Still frowning, the dark wizard bent down to his level, pressing his cheek against the varnished wood of the desk so that he could actually see the other man's face rather than simply pressing him down. He was met with an empty grey-blue stare. His gaze had gone distant, his body taut and trembling as if reliving some horrendous memory.

This was not a reaction he had expected. 

Was it some sort of delayed realisation to something he had encountered earlier? Or was it something deeper, something buried in the man's psyche that had finally resurfaced? He shook Theseus roughly, but the man remained unresponsive. Unresponsive in the same way Albus used to get in their arguments. A ticking time bomb. Grindelwald cursed under his breath, his eyes darting to the door. He couldn't risk being discovered now, not when they were so close to achieving their goal: not with his beautifully amassed reputation. 

He leaned in closer to Theseus, his breath hot against the man's ear. "What's got you so frightened?" he muttered, voice edged with the need for a quick and efficient solution. Any spell would draw notice. No wonder the Muggles needed to be subservient; no wonder they needed to be penned in and controlled. Because if this was how they fought, how they fell to pieces even after machine guns and bloodshed, as displayed in a wizard disgustingly assimilated with their kind, they needed the hand of a master. 

"We're coming in," the woman said.

There was a brief pause. Grindelwald watched the door, the motes of dust. This woman—was she familiar? He suddenly remembered outside the subway, attempting to sweep in with the Obscurial, being chased by some girl with an attachment to his mask of the Director and so frantic with the urge to save the condemned boy that she’d wielded her wand with both hands, trying to contain the force shooting through the implement, so desperate to hold him off. 

Theseus suddenly twisted, trying to throw him off, and let out a low, pained moan. Feeling the erratic and unsteady pulse of the other man's artery, Grindelwald focused once more. He could place a stronger charm; but for once, his perfect concentration was starting to ruffle, and he suspected he would risk alerting the wards hanging over the desk.

Theseus was panting now, his body shaking. The tendons on the back of his hands jumped into angry ropes as he clawed at the polished wood of the desk. For a moment, he went still. The door handle seized, rattled. Grindelwald poured energy into the muffling charm, grip tightening. If he'd forced his opponent's head harder against the desk, this incident would not have occurred, brain damage be damned. 

But the stillness lasted only a heartbeat.

Grindelwald recoiled as Theseus let out a guttural scream. Screams. Choruses. They only sounded like music en masse. There was no greater good implicit in the melody of one, raw, rush of weakness. This was not part of the plan. He had not anticipated any deficiency this severe from the man.

"If you are discovered now, you will lose everything," Grindelwald warned. "I will make sure you lose everything.”

"I can't," he gasped, barely audible through Grindelwald's scarf. "I can't."

The door creaked, swollen wood scraping against the tile, rattling back and forth, resisting being opened. But slowly but surely, the intruders were making progress, scraping dust off the tiled floor in a neat half-circle, met with protests at every moment. 

They were going to be discovered, even with all Grindelwald’s careful charms cast for secrecy.

"Be silent!” Grindelwald whispered in an attempt to calm him down, but it was too late.

Theseus mumbled something back. The sound was muffled by the scarf, but it was loud enough to draw attention; Grindelwald cursed again as he felt the wards stirring, and started to pull away from Theseus, hating the furnace-heat of the other man’s body, realising the silent warming of his touch was no longer enough now that they’d pitched over some threshold of tolerance. When the vision for the Brazilian Ministry had struck him in Numengard, halfway through the preparation of a speech, leaving his fingers bloody from the cut of the quill’s sharp tip, he’d anticipated a faint block, but not this. 

"Get off me," Theseus managed through the fabric. 

"I'm not letting go.”

"Get off me!" The shout echoed, vowels damped by his spit-soaked scarf, but loud. 

He had to get Theseus to quiet down before it was too late. But all his efforts seemed only to agitate the younger man further.

The door clicked, improbably: was possibly on the verge of opening. Whoever was on the other side was determined. Grindelwald pulled the temporary Pensieve out of his top pocket and examined it for a few moments, holding it between both hands. He looked at the door. The Pensieve's survival would not be worth the risk of being seen by a high-level official of the Brazilian Ministry.

Gritting his teeth, Grindelwald smashed the Pensieve open over Theseus's head, the silvery liquid seeping out into his dark hair as he suddenly went still. He lifted the bindings, grabbed his scarf back, and swung his wand to rearrange the mess of books on the floor. Just as the door swung open, he turned invisible, retreating to a corner of the room with the broken halves of his precious device.

Grindelwald watched from the shadows as Theseus's breathing slowed. Theseus ran his hands over the desk as if trying to find a handhold, now quiet, his face less ashen. The temporary pensieve had done its work; it had obliterated with his short-term memory enough so that he was no longer having whatever hysterical episode that had been, and was now merely confused. 

Theseus pulled himself off the desk, wiped his face, and frowned.

"What just happened?" he muttered, looking around the room.

Grindelwald congratulated himself on making the decision when he did. The door flew open. Tina Goldstein and Newt Scamander—Grindelwald rolled his eyes, although Tina had been almost an opponent before in his quest for the Obscurial—stepped into the room, wands raised, their eyes scanning the area for any signs of danger. But with his invisibility, they couldn't see him lurking in the shadows.

"Theseus?" Newt asked, mouth falling open.

You annoying pair, Grindelwald thought sourly. You can have one another. 

However, the woman’s pale face remained puckered with concern, her dark, round eyes drinking in the room, scanning every corner. 

"Newt," Tina warned. "Get back."

Chapter Text

1900 — August, the summer before Theseus goes to Hogwarts

Theseus carefully closed his diary, setting it aside on his desk. He took a deep breath, letting the weight of his thoughts settle for a moment. Then, he pushed himself up from the chair and went to find his little brother. It wasn’t like he had much else to do anyway.

Leonore didn’t often let Newt out of her sight. That wasn’t too hard to do. Not yet, anyway. It wasn’t uncommon to find him in the same place she’d put him, just because he didn’t move very fast. Compared to some of the other parents in the village, who let their children play in the front gardens and on the porch the moment they could toddle, Newt seemed very calm. His little brother hadn’t quite started all that yet, all those things babies did.

Theseus assumed that he was only two, so maybe it was okay to let him sit on the mat in the living room and quietly clack his blocks together, his favourite picture book about talking Bowtruckles never far from reach. He wondered if the lines Newt made with the blocks were meant to be the stick creatures.

Fiddling with his shirt collar because of the heavy summer air, he creaked open the splintered door to the living room. Strange. Mum must have gone to lie down, again. He swallowed the thrum of worry and tiptoed over the edge of the rug to kneel down by Newt. As always, Newt was sitting on the floor, playing with his colourful set of wooden blocks. He was making Bowtruckles, again. Even if Theseus couldn’t care less about sentient sticks, he couldn’t resist ruffling Newt’s messy hair. Newt’s round green eyes swivelled to him.

"Morning, Newt," he said. "What are you up to?"

His little brother made a faint vocalisation in response, his tiny hands reaching out towards the blocks again, touching the edges of the nearest one. Theseus hummed; it was almost a dismissal, like Newt had better things to do, but he was going to start proper school soon and was determined to spend some time with his little brother no matter what. Young children liked to play, didn’t they? Theseus liked football and Quidditch. That wasn’t really going to work here.

“Are you building a Bowtruckle?” Theseus asked, running his fingers over the smooth line of blocks. Newt made another quiet noise and tugged at the picture book—Theseus was kneeling on it and hastily clambered off, apologising profusely to the calm boy—to show it to Theseus.

“Oh, or is it a train? Actually, have you ever seen a train…? No, is it a rainbow Bowtruckle? Wait. We can play Bowtruckles, definitely,” Theseus proposed, at first cool and calm, suggesting it with the same enthusiasm one of his parents might, heart not really in it. But just seeing Newt sort of look at him made the idea of playing a game—even imaginary and somewhat embarrassing—suddenly steamroll over any self-consciousness, thanks to the lingering loneliness and boredom of the summer spent in their slightly isolated home. “Yeah, let’s do that!”

On impulse, he pulled his wand out of his pocket, showing it off to Newt. It was a good one. Proper good. Ollivander had told him he was organised to get it three weeks before he went to school. Truth be told, he had obsessed over it the entire summer. There was only one issue. Technically, he wasn’t allowed to use it until he got to Hogwarts, but that wasn’t strictly enforced so long as he was in the house and didn’t have any so-called volatile deficiencies, not that his parents had let him look at the information pamphlets from the Ministry.

His specially-picked wand was rather sophisticated, too, with an expensive-looking gold band around the handle. The wand chose the wizard. Clearly, he was going to be an impressive wizard one day, or maybe a smart one, because the tortoiseshell was like glasses or his Mum’s hair clips, and the gold was all very official.

Sometimes, however, he felt a bit silly, especially because it was quite long. The wand maker had approved, said it was a perfect match, so maybe he was going to grow a bit taller still. It would be nice to be tall. Some days, he felt small; he wanted to be stronger.

Newt hummed and looked at it, chewing on his little fingers. He wanted to tell him how it was made out of cherry wood and dragon heartstring. He wanted to brag more about it, and share everything the old Mr Ollivander had said, and tell Newt that he’d never eaten a cherry before because they were very expensive with all the harvest problems, but now he definitely would. But he redirected himself.

“Alright, see, this is like a Bowtruckle,” Theseus said, cross-referencing the picture book laid out on the floor. “They’re both…magical sticks.”

Newt reached out for it with sticky fingers and briefly stared at it, as if to say, no, they’re not the same. Even though his little brother didn’t ever say anything and sometimes instead spent a lot of the day determinedly chewing on things, Theseus liked imagining what he was thinking. Most of the time, Newt looked rather bored, and Theseus imagined he was thinking about the Hippogriffs and Bowtruckles—probably other creatures as well, but he didn’t really know those, because as Mum said, they were usually considered pests, even if she didn’t agree—and on some occasions, maybe even listening to what Theseus was saying about Quidditch and the village.

“Pay attention, Newt. I’m not even going to be here in three weeks, and you’ll—erm—miss me, right?” But no one had said they were going to miss him yet, and Theseus didn’t want to come across as presumptuous. He lowered his voice to be more encouraging, tone soft. “Look here. You can be a brave little Bowtruckle with me, yeah? Aren’t you bored without Mum here? It could be a game.”

His little brother traced the blocks again, expression somewhere faraway. After a few minutes, when Theseus produced the book again, smoothing down the rumpled pages, Newt stretched his hand out and traced the outline of the Bowtruckles.

“Yes, that’s it!”

Newt made a sort of humming noise and Theseus couldn't help but chuckle at his brother's eagerness, or as close to eagerness as it ever appeared, feeling a rush of affection. He immediately started thinking, trying to figure out how he could spin an interesting story out of it. Despite what his father had said about Theseus’s imagination, it wasn’t actually that good for coming up with fun things. When he sat down and thought about it, he would consider himself as more straightforward, more practical, so a lot of his stories came back to the novels and history books he’d already read.

Theseus gently guided Newt’s hand, demonstrating how to hold the handle of his wand.

"Like this," he said. "See? You're a wizard too, just like me. But…erm, hang on, you’d probably rather be a Bowtruckle, wouldn’t you? You love those, don’t you? So, how about this? You can be a Bowtruckle in mortal danger, up a tree—living in a tree—and I can be a normal wizard. Not a Bowtruckle, I don’t think. I’d like to be a bit cooler, but even so—I’d be protecting you from all the dark wizards out there.”

There was a brief pause as his baby brother ran his fingers up and down the handle and then suddenly tried to chew on it. No one else wanted to hear him talk about his wand and being a proper wizard soon, but perhaps letting Newt eat it wasn’t an optimal solution.

"All right. All right, I should probably take my wand back, actually, before something goes wrong. Sorry.” He peeled it out of Newt’s lax grip and adopted a more serious tone. "So, Mr Bowtruckle, listen carefully. Dark wizards are coming, and they want to capture you. But don't worry, I'm here to protect you with my magic!"

Newt's round green eyes remained fixed on the book. He considered taking his brother’s hand to get his attention, but reasoned he might just be reading his book, although their parents hadn’t quite decided on whether Newt was on his way to all that or not. Two year old children couldn’t usually read, but Newt was quite unusual.

But his parents said that the hospital hadn’t given them any help in the matter—and then Alexander had affirmed, in a manner more vehement than Theseus would have expected, that they didn’t need any help anyway. Pulling his mind away from the depressing adult thoughts that seemed to plague him, Theseus raised his wand, his imaginary spells casting a protective aura around Newt.

"Expelliarmus!" Theseus shouted, waving his wand in the air, feeling a vague wash of relief that the spell didn’t actually work, only making his fingertips tingle. "I disarmed one of them! They won't be able to use their wands now."

At last, Newt traced the pages of his Bowtruckle book one more time and carefully moved it away from the wooden blocks, ignoring the lines of the toys he’d made. A sound like a giggle came from the little boy and he waved his tiny hands in delight, leaning towards the illustrations of the pictured pages. Half of him felt as though he was putting on a silly act just to impress his recalcitrant little brother, and the other half relished the rare joy of slipping into imaginative play rather than staring at books, as much as he enjoyed studying.

He squinted at the room around them. Maybe the table could be a big log in the forest. For all of maybe three minutes, he mentally set it up in his mind, translating the room into fenced-in obstacles rather than any storybook illustration. His imagination tended to work in one way. Bad things were coming, and he had to think of ways around them. Or bad things were already there, and he just had to pay a whole lot of attention, otherwise they’d sneak up on him. It was like a seven-way diagram, he figured. Kind of difficult to keep in his head.

But if you didn’t play with babies, they went all weird. That’s what the books said, although Theseus always got a bit bemused by the bits about breastfeeding. It was a fine game, seeing as it wasn’t like Newt would really know that dark wizards would probably kill him in one second—Bowtruckles present or absent—while Theseus as an eleven year old could definitely put up a decent fight.

"Stupefy!" Theseus exclaimed, aiming his wand at an imaginary enemy. It sounded like something splintered. He swallowed and glanced towards the door, but they seemed to have got away with it. "I stunned another one. They won't be able to move for a while. That’s what stunning spells do, Newt. Now, quick, use your Bowtruckle camouflage, or defence mechanism, or biting skills—go on, go for it—“

Newt's fingers curled into the shape of claws.

“Hmm,” Theseus evaluated.

One of his favourite daydreams when their father was making him do Numeracy sheets was being a detective like Sherlock Holmes, but tracking down dark wizards. Or maybe mysterious intellectual dark wizards. He wondered if Newt would become a Herbologist like their mother; they could be like Sherlock and Watson. It wasn’t quite how that worked, maybe, but their family didn’t usually work very well at any rate.

“Good Bowtruckle. Um—and now I’m doing a shield charm thing, because you were pretty slow,” Theseus said, mind blanking when he tried to remember the word. He crouched down in front of Newt and spread out his arms, feeling Newt grab at one of his suspenders with a soft coo. Carefully, he rocked forwards on his feet, not wanting to be clumsy and fall back on him. “So, Bowtruckle, what do you see? Any more dark wizards?”

Newt ignored him, watching Theseus’s shoes. Theseus imagined the ominous forest, the shadowy figures; it was harder to imagine Newt as anything other than a two year old: especially not as a living stick. So Theseus took advantage of his brother’s distraction, a rare moment of mischief coming to the forefront. He let out a dramatic gasp and stood, then staggered backward, clutching his chest with a theatrical expression of pain.

"Ugh, they got me!" Theseus exclaimed, his voice filled with mock despair. He stumbled and fell to the ground, pretending to be defeated by the dark wizards. His eyes were half-closed, his body sprawled out in a convincing display of defeat.

Newt turned his attention back to Theseus, his round green eyes widening with concern. He made a questioning sound, his tiny hands reaching out as if trying to figure out what had just happened.

Theseus remained sprawled on the ground, his expression one of exaggerated agony. He let out a weak sigh and managed to croak out a few more words. "Take care of the magical world, Newt... You're the only one who can now..."

Newt reached out to touch Theseus's cheek, his fingers brushing against his brother's skin as if trying to wake him from his imagined fate.

The landing had winded him more than he expected, but finally, he let out a chuckle and slowly opened his eyes, his grin returning as he looked up at his little brother. It wouldn’t do good to play dead for too long.

"I'm alive! You saved me!" Theseus exclaimed, sitting up with a theatrical flourish. "And, also, the dark wizards couldn't actually defeat me, because I was so good at magic. The dragonstring in the wand destroyed them all. Hey? All’s well that ends well.”

Newt’s expression didn’t change, but the roundness of his eyes relaxed a little. When Theseus pulled a silly face, at last Newt made a happier noise, maybe celebrating Theseus's resurrection.

"Looks like we've saved the day once again," Theseus declared, lifting Newt into his lap and hugging him gently. "You're a brave boy."

He’d considered calling him a brave Bowtruckle, but wasn’t sure how critically almost-babies like him could think and didn’t want to contribute to any confusion. Newt seemed smart enough not to truly believe he was a creature, but you never knew with children: as much as Alexander liked to remind Theseus his eldest had been a perfectly normal baby. So he used the epithet his mum had once said to him when he’d thrown up four times in a row. Brave. They’d all politely decided it was food poisoning but he’d been too anxious even to eat the day before the so-called incident; still, there was no need to announce it to everyone. He was far too old for such nonsense. At least, that's what it felt like most of the time. Just last week he had climbed his favourite oak tree in the backyard and pretended to be on lookout for dark wizards. But nobody needed to know about that anymore, either.

Newt responded with a tentative smile, attention waning again, his fingers gripping onto Theseus's shirt. Being looked through felt a little odd, especially when it was a baby. Then again, it was his baby brother, and short of Newt biting him with his little wonky teeth, Theseus could deal with it, probably.

The door creaked. He quickly put his wand away, heart pounding, and jumped up, carefully cradling Newt in his arms even as Newt tried to dramatically flop away as if allergic to being held.

But it was only Mum. He let out a breath. Their father didn't like catching him doing anything odd or childish. Not that Newt, he thought, was really old enough to get into trouble for those things, but there were lots of rules in the world.

“You two,” came their mum’s familiar voice. “Honestly, you’re rascals.”

Newt was starting to get heavy and Theseus had yet to fill out, but he already felt a rush of embarrassment knowing that he had been spectated doing such silly things, so he kept standing awkwardly, crooked to one side by Newt’s weight.

Leonore tugged at the brown ribbons by the neck of her dress, smiling. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, hair slightly windswept. It was obvious she’d been in the garden, and there was a gentle smile on her face as she looked at the pair of them.

Newt's attention immediately shifted to his mother's arrival. He made a happy mumbling noise, gaze drifting around the room, then reached out for her as if seeking her attention. With a huff—Newt rarely ate anything, how was he this heavy?—Theseus set Newt back down on the rug, allowing his little brother to immediately return to his dog-eared picture book. He scrunched up his nose. The dark wizards would have definitely got him with the amount of attention he was paying.

"Theseus, sweetheart, you're going to give your brother a complex if you keep dying in front of him," Leonore teased. She crouched down beside Newt as she exchanged a knowing glance with her older son, supporting Newt with one arm as he lolled backwards.

“Sorry, Mum," he said. "But you see, there were dark wizards, and they cast a powerful curse, and I had to show Newt how to defeat them—or how to get defeated by them, I suppose."

Leonore laughed softly, her fingers brushing through Theseus's hair. "Ah, I see. Well, I hope you've taught Newt all your heroic tricks then."

Theseus nodded. "Yeah, he was a great Bowtruckle.”

Leonore's gaze returned to Theseus, her expression softening with understanding. "It's not like you to be so openly playful."

He shrugged, a mixture of sheepishness and honesty in his voice. "I'm going away soon, aren’t I? And I’ll have to be cool at school. Else they’ll be like the farmer’s sons in the village, be all funny. But maybe less strong, in case they want to scrap me again for missing the goal. Or I hope so anyway.”

Leonore wrapped her arm around Theseus's shoulders, drawing him into a tight embrace. She glanced at Newt, who was now engrossed in turning the pages of his book, his fascination evident in his expression.

“Well," Leonore said. “It’s not every day that I see my serious and reserved Theseus engage in such imaginative play. It's a lovely change, I must say.”

He hugged her back without hesitation and then wormed out of her arms. “You know, in Hogwarts, they’ll probably laugh at me if I knew I do this,” he pointed out, already a bit worried about what it would be like to see so many other wizards his own age.

“I know,” she sighed. “You only get to be young for so long, don’t you? But I’ll have Newt to keep me company here, so don’t you worry about us. And you know, he’s such a gentle soul already; I don’t think he’d ever make fun of you like that.”

Theseus fixed the suspender that Newt had been playing with. “Well, once he starts talking, it might be a different story,” he said. “He’ll be able to say a lot about Bowtruckles, that’s for sure. I think you should get some other books. Otherwise he’ll only know about trees and sticky creatures, that general area of things.”

Leonore hesitated, then she slowly fixed the edge of the rug, fiddling with the tassel, and started stacking up Newt’s wooden blocks, ready to put them back into the case. “Yes, yes. A different story entirely, hmm? I suppose all you can do is keep looking out for each other, and remember that these moments are precious. And just so you know, it's a very sweet sentiment to want to protect your little brother.”

“It’s Newt’s milk time soon, by the way,” said Theseus. When he was a tiny baby, Newt had colic all day and all night, and still didn’t seem to like milk even now that he was a whole two years old and not interested in eating mashed up food. So, he felt bad for Mum, whose constitution was already a little on the weak side. Then, he darted past his mum and gave her a quick wave goodbye, before heading out and up to his room.

He kicked off his shoes, put them in their special wooden box, and then put the wooden box by the door, going to lie on the narrow bed, arching his neck back, taking in the Quidditch posters and league tables on the walls. His room was organised meticulously, each item in its designated place: the neatly arranged books on his shelves, the quill and inkwell placed precisely on his desk, and the pristine parchment stacked just so.

He would have loved to have been able to articulate the tangle of emotions within him. A big brother should be capable of recognising his own mind.

Was not being so serious meant to help him feel better? He’d enjoyed the game, he had, and it had all been pretend anyway—but why did it feel like he’d been pretending to play pretend? Had he outgrown any kind of fun game before Newt even got around to getting good at lifting his head off the blanket and crawling around? Maybe he was a big fraud because his inside and outside didn’t match. That was not a very principled thing to be.

No, it was fine. He’d had fun. And he was going to defeat dark wizards one day anyway. Newt could even turn into a Bowtruckle, and it’d be a bit sad, but he might be easier for Theseus to look after, his lack of gardening skills aside.

His thoughts meandered, touching upon his impending journey to Hogwarts. Learning magic and exploring the magical world and maybe studying for all his exams would be a good thing, but the idea of being surrounded by new people and experiences made his stomach flutter. Theseus had always found comfort in routines, in the predictability of his surroundings. Besides, he knew instinctively that there was a very particular manner to have.

With a sigh, he shuffled around on the bed, kicking his legs against the wall thoughtfully. The simmering restlessness got too much and he gave in, getting to his feet and tracing the worn circuit of wood rubbed to the point of shine. Pacing in several neat circles until his thoughts about school started to untangle, he wondered whether he was going to miss home, knowing that he was going to miss Newt. He’d looped in so many more circles since the start of the summer, more than last year or the year before that—and while the rhythm helped quieten his thoughts, it didn’t get rid of the growing hold the strange feelings had on him.

*

And that summer, the feelings grew worse the more he thought about leaving, about everything changing. It wasn’t that he loved it at home, but there were certain ways he had of doing things, and he wasn’t allowed to take his Cleansweep to school, and there were certain things he had to pay attention to, and he was meant to have Newt and Mum to look after, which obviously wasn’t going to be possible if he was all the way up in Scotland instead of Devon.

Theseus slowly blinked awake, pale sunlight filtering through the curtains to wash his bedroom in a gentle glow. He lay still for several heartbeats, gaze tracing the familiar cracks in the plaster ceiling. Then, taking a breath, he pushed aside his quilt and rose to begin his morning routine.

Selecting his clothes took longer than normal. Theseus studied two nearly identical white shirts with furrowed brows before finally reaching for the one on the left with slightly straighter seams. He dressed in silence punctuated only by the faint squeak of floorboards underfoot and the rustle of cotton as he yanked it over his wiry frame. Fully buttoned moments later, he appraised his reflection critically in the standing mirror, smoothing a hand over his curly hair. Content at last, he tucked his shirt once more into belted trousers. His hands were shaky, but he pressed on, determined to get through the morning routine. Routines were important to him and enjoyable, too—so long as he was the one who dictated them.

Everything was still there in his bag, including the parcel he needed to take to the post office, just as he'd left it in triple-checked careful preparation last night, but the unease remained.

Downstairs, the smell of breakfast greeted him. Leonore was at the stove, her enchanted pan flipping pancakes of its own volition as she attacked the cast-iron porridge pot left from Alexander’s favourite simple breakfast. In some kind of sturdy canvas contraption that looked as though it had been dragged straight out of the dusty Hippogriff stables, Newt was strapped to her back, small arms and legs swinging gently. Theseus and his little brother exchanged a sort of look, but Newt was busy chewing on the padded wire framing of the carrier, still speckled with porridge.

With a sigh, Theseus tried to focus on the comforting aroma and took a seat at the table, tapping a rhythm against its wooden underhang. He glanced at the clock again.

"Good morning," Leonore said, her voice cheerful as she placed a plate of pancakes in front of him. “Sorry, we all started without you, but you can have the last few. Better than putting the batter in the cool box, anyway, we don’t want to attract the mice back too soon after the last incident.”

"Morning," he mumbled, his gaze fixed on his plate. The pancakes looked perfect, just the way he liked them. He picked up his fork, his fingers trembling ever so slightly as he cut into the pancake, examining it closely, smelling the fresh butter. Between mouthfuls, he neatly lined up the silverware parallel to the table's edge when not in use. Cut, chew five times, set the fork down. Cut, chew five times, set the fork down.

"Dear, are you alright?" Leonore's voice brought him back to the present, and he looked up to see her concerned expression.

"I'm fine," he replied, a bit too quickly.

Leonore's brow furrowed, but she didn't press the matter. He considered saying something, but the words caught in his throat, and he pushed the thoughts away along with his breakfast, tracing his finger over the patterned rim of the china as he put precious inches between himself and the plate.

As always, he had chores, enough to take up most of the day. Today, he was going to begin with posting a box. It was a donation Leonore was making to a Muggle orphanage: some baby clothes, as wizards didn’t have orphanages at all. A few months ago, he’d learnt that. Not from his mother or father, weirdly, but from Auntie Agnes, because there’d been some kind of very noisy argument downstairs that meant he didn’t even need to use the glass-against-the-floor trick. Auntie Agnes was pretty nice. She was like a more exuberant version of Mum, with twice the energy, uncalloused hands, and her auburn hair in finger waves. Apparently, their father had four siblings, but they never came around like Agnes did.

Orphanages aside, it was an important job.

But he had to go all the way to the Muggle town, not even the Muggle village, almost up to where the railway bridge was. As he washed up his plate and hurried out of the door, he couldn't shake the feeling that something would go wrong. After all, having woken up wrong, surely the day would sense his unease and recourse appropriately. His grip on the handlebars tightened, his knuckles turning white.

It was a sunny day. The shops were busy and Muggle grownups wearing their stiff clothes and smart hats were already out and about. A few horses dragged carriages and carts down the road as street sellers flogged oranges and single flowers. Not a fan of the big, snorting, huge-toothed beasts, he kept to the pavement. Smog from the train still lingered in the air, even though the sky looked clean and blue. He skirted the fancy edifice of the station with a sigh of relief, his heart pounding in his chest. Glancing through the windows, he could see the platform was bustling, the noise and commotion making him sweat as he clutched the small parcel in his hand, wheeling his bike in precarious lines with the other. The task seemed straightforward: deliver the parcel to the post office and return home.

Summoning every ounce of courage, he held his breath to navigate through the crowds and found his way to the post office further up on the street. The line was long, and his heart raced with impatience as he waited his turn, fingers digging into the parcel enough to force the brown paper to let out a tortured groan, flexing to the point of near-tearing. He kept his eyes downcast, folding his hands behind his back with the clothes package to keep them still.

After fifteen nail-biting minutes, the line spat him out at the front counter. Wiping sweaty palms on his trousers, Theseus managed a wobbly "Good morning" and slid the parcel forward with a handful of Muggle coins.

The clerk affixed a stamp and sorted it into an outbound crate, brushing a speck of dust from his lapel as he finished the transaction. Theseus offered curt thanks, then exited into the sunshine feeling the knot in his chest loosen. Errand complete, parcel sent. Simple as that.

But as he mounted his bike and began the journey back home, a new wave of worries crashed over him.

You took too long. They’ll be angry now. His breath came faster, legs pumping as he pedalled harder. What if you get lost and can’t find your way home?

The sun was already low in the sky by the time Theseus finally arrived home. He glanced at the clock and felt a knot of dread tighten in his stomach.

The front door squealed, the wood warped, as he stuffed his key in the lock and fiddled several times, swinging it this way and that. The stained glass set in the russet-coloured wood rattled as he opened the door and peeked through. They were both waiting in the hallway, Newt presumably having been tucked in for an early night. Alexander was still wearing his Ministry suit. As Theseus stepped inside into the dim warm light of their familiar hallway, he noted the concerned faces of his parents. His father's stern expression made him flinch, and he lowered his gaze to avoid meeting his eyes. Leonore, on the other hand, stepped forward and enveloped Theseus in a hug.

"Where have you been, Theseus?" said Alexander, shaking his head.

"I—I'm sorry," Theseus mumbled.

"We were worried about you," Leonore's voice was gentle, her fingers brushing through his hair. “You were meant to be back by the mid afternoon at the latest, not just before dinner.”

If she hadn’t been hugging him, he didn’t think he’d have been able to sort it out in his head. Feeling the warm heaviness of her arms resting on his shoulders made him try and search his stomach to try and decide what he felt. Theseus's throat tightened. He didn't want to burden them with the chaotic thoughts that had plagued him throughout the day. They didn’t make much sense, and he liked to make sense. Leonore exhaled and pulled away. He took a tentative step back, fixing his hair and wishing he could just go to bed.

"It's just...things didn't go as planned," he finally managed to say, staring at his hands, folding them together. “I really, really wasn’t being late on purpose.”

Leonore exchanged a knowing look with his father before guiding Theseus to the living room. She sat him down on the sofa and took a seat beside him. He kicked his heels against the tapestry fabric, glancing around the room, examining the dusty ceiling’s plaster edges and the red fabric lampshade stretched over the flickering candle charmed not to burn or run low.

"Tell us what happened," she said softly.

Theseus hesitated, his fingers fidgeting in his lap, and swallowed hard, his throat working. How could he explain this sudden malaise? It was like a fear that had been following him for a while but only now demanded attention and satiation, like something that needed feeding. But the explanation felt like it was caught in his chest, and he forced his uneasy fingers into tight fists, frustration and shame mingling within him. Not one bit of relief struck him from the idea of saying all this. It was totally unlike the books. In the books, little boys told their mums to make it all better, not big ones. Or if—older, practically grown up—ones did, they were able to speak, actually. Which was making him feel useless on multiple fronts. Excellent.

He didn’t know quite how to put it. Maybe he’d had it a bit when he was five—and maybe he hopefully wouldn’t have it when he was twelve or even older. At the same time, it hadn’t been like this, so perhaps it was nothing at all. Somehow, he felt that putting a timeline on it wasn’t what they wanted to hear. Mum often said Newt was a dreamy baby, but Theseus was like the exact opposite of that, which strangely seemed to annoy his father just as much, even if his stony features never gave anything away.

Theseus harboured the niggling notion that his father viewed him as constitutionally weak of spirit, lacking in the natural authority that proper pureblood sons ought to possess and which would allow them to navigate the challenges of life comfortably. If only he could reach inside himself and extract that timid organ beating a frantic tempo in his chest, replacing it with stout English oak, aloof and impervious to outside judgement.

"Blood is blood and will out," his father always said, a crease marring the space between his eyebrows, which had made Theseus actually a bit annoyed. People should just really say what they meant. In his job with all his sums, Alexander didn’t exactly have to act like a sphinx, so it wasn’t fair for him to pull that on Theseus too. After all, both of them wanted what was best for everyone. Might as well say it in a straightforward way. He would do whatever was needed to stay in his good books, because his father knew what was right and what was wrong, spending all day tallying heavy ledgers and making sure economic policy was correct…

Leonore reached out, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You can tell us, Theseus. We're here to listen and help."

His defences were crumbling under his mother's warm touch and understanding words, and he felt a dull heat creep up the back of his neck, knowing that he wasn’t yet old enough to truly hide it from her. What if he didn’t tell her and something bad happened? Then again, what if he did tell and something worse happened? He borrowed a familiar swear from the bobby’s daughter in the village. Bloody hell.

Be brave, he reminded himself, thinking of all the monsters the old Greek Theseus had slain.

“Recently, um, some of my thoughts...carry on for quite a while,” he finally admitted, feeling as though he was speaking through sandpaper.

Leonore reached out to rest her hand on Theseus’s thigh and then seemed to think better of it, drawing back to press it down into the gap between the square sofa cushions, as if trying to cage it. He looked at his mum, trying to gauge her reaction; even though he’d not met that many people in his life, not yet, he was developing an increasingly firm conception of what was normal and what was not following the turn of the century.

The silence swelled uncomfortably until she managed an unsteady smile. "Well, these worries have quite a hold on you lately...I'm sure it's just the changes ahead stirring old anxieties..."

Theseus's tapping fingers when he was nervous—normal. His need to retrace his steps when walking through a doorway—borderline. The nagging urge to double-check whether he'd locked the front door—probably not normal when it happened more than six times in each incidence.

Fiddling with his hair between his fingers when lost in thought—normal, but apparently a bit girly. The circles in his room—not normal, described in some books as the pastime of lunatics and mad people locked in attics. Apparently, one of his parents’ grandfather had been like that, although he was yet to figure out which side it was on. Maybe it was both. Theseus bit the inside of his lip as he seriously considered this. No, he decided, that’d be too much of a coincidence, and having shared heritage of crazy grandfathers didn’t seem like one of the things grown ups looked for in a happy marriage. Surely not. Not that he was super sure. Adults were pretty odd. His parents in particular.

But, honestly, he was eleven and pretty grown up. All that mattered was what he did, surely? And all those good intentions meant he could add up to normal, didn’t they? He was good at Quidditch and school and reading. Really good at Quidditch, actually, even if he’d only been able to play against other wizarding children at Alexander’s Ministry summer gatherings. And he’d trounced them because he was so fast and good with the Quaffle. And the Muggles liked him when he wasn’t getting cuffed around the ear. Finally, the village bobby’s daughter thought he was actually smart. But despite all this—pretty impressive evidence—parents really were the final authorities on these things, and he didn’t want to be as disappointing as the mantle clock their father had bought from Paris which had arrived slightly cracked.

He was determined to make it add up.

One of his greatest regrets in the next decade would be continuing to speak despite clearly understanding the importance of this wish.

"I see," Alexander finally said, steepling his fingers together. "And how often do these...episodes occur exactly?"

“They carry on. Like—it’s little things and big things. Not just stuff like having to feed the Hippogriffs. And sometimes, it's like...my brain is speaking them rather than thinking them, and I feel a bit dizzy-headed, and I suppose. Um. Today, I was so focused on sending the parcel that everything else kind of faded away. So that’s why I was late.” Theseus paused. “Sorry. I won’t be next time.”

Leonore leaned toward Alexander, lowering her voice. "It sounds somewhat similar to your cousin’s condition, does it not?"

Alexander's jaw tightened, a shadow crossing his face. "Perhaps. But let us not jump to conclusions."

His heart sank further when Leonore looked not at him first, but at Alexander, who seemed as though he was made of stone. His father gestured with the flat of his palm to his mother and they both stood, leaving Theseus feeling somewhat bereft on the sofa. Never had he admitted anything of this kind before; the reaction playing out before him was entirely novel.

Theseus's stomach plummeted. Were they removing themselves to discuss his issues more frankly without sparing his feelings?

They were on the other side of the room before his father started to speak, and very quietly, too. Their bowed heads left him with no illusions that this was a secret conversation. Still, Theseus had an excellent sense of hearing which only sharpened over the years.

“—it’s not,” he caught his father saying.

His mother replied something equally incomprehensible, her voice dry, like the rustle of leaves. His father mumbled something back, face twitching unhappily. She’d pointed slightly at him and he didn’t seem to have liked it.

“—not even—“ another faint snatch of conversation but Leonore twisted to look at Theseus and Alexander caught it. “—they’re—“

"...not like the other," his father muttered. "It's just...opposite extremes..."

Leonore's reply was lost, smothered by the sleeve of her dress as she ran a hand over her mouth. But the tail-end drifted out—

"...your side of things..."

Alexander flinched almost imperceptibly. Brief shock flashed across his face before he schooled it blank. Theseus's eyes narrowed, thoughts churning. Your side?

His father whispered something terse, palms raised placatingly. Leonore's responding sigh sounded terribly sad. They stared at one another for a long minute, silent communication passing between them. His father made some gesture, watching his wife’s hands. And then Alexander said something that could have been one or the other again, or any other word in between in its vague phonetics. The terse two words—bad blood—jumped out, rising above their furtive undertones. It was his mum’s turn to shake her head. At last, Alexander raked both hands through his hair and turned away. Leonore watched him, green eyes conflicted. And then, the matter seemingly resolved, both sat back down with some new tension. Artfully masked, Theseus noted, probably too good at telling for his own sake.

“We'll figure out how to help you, okay?” she said cautiously.

Alexander's scepticism remained. "But bear in mind that if we indulge these behaviours, they'll become even worse. We need to teach you to be strong to overcome this."

She reached out to place a comforting hand on Alexander's arm. "I know it's hard, my love, but I don’t think it’s just about being strong.”

“I understand that, but what if his behaviour becomes disruptive? What if it draws attention to him at school? And, of course, it might compound—well, the last thing we need—“

Leonore jumped in, brushing her flyaway hair back from her face once, twice.

“We can worry about that when he’s actually at school, can’t we? We’ve got some weeks left to sort it out,” Leonore said, smiling slightly at Theseus, who sat uselessly on the couch with a strange and sinking feeling dragging his stomach slowly down to his toes.

Alexander nodded slowly, his gaze distant. "Yes, formal schooling will help. And I suppose you're right. We can't just sweep this under the rug. Theseus, you’re an intelligent young wizard, yes? It’s just because we’ve made you spend too much time on your own, mostly likely. You’ll make some decent friends, and get on well with them. Just bear in mind that Ministry children will report back to their Ministry parents.”

He wished he could take back his words, retreat back into the safety of silence where he wouldn't have to confront the uncertainty of his parents' reactions.

With a resolute expression, Theseus made a silent vow to himself. All of it reinforced a decision that had been forming for some time.

Next time, he wouldn’t say anything—and so, next time, he wouldn’t have to face the gooseflesh feeling of inadequacy, or something that almost felt like an unjust dismissal. Even though he had no idea what he would have wanted to hear instead. In which case, perhaps he was being the unfair one.

His mother's voice broke through the fog. "Hey, sweetheart? Are you still paying attention?"

He blinked, focus returning to the present. His parents were both looking at him, so he tried to muster a small smile. If he proved just disciplined enough, proper enough, perfect enough...then perhaps fate's judgement would pass him by without terrible incident.

"I'm fine," he mumbled. “It’s not that big of a deal. It was probably because it was warmer than I expected and I forgot lunch. And it was, erm, muddy, so I had to walk the bike, and the town was busy, and…”

"I just don't understand why you couldn't tough it out," Alexander said. “You're a strong young man, Theseus, and getting caught up in these worries...again…”

The disappointment in Alexander's tone cut deep, and he struggled to find the right response. Eventually, after some deliberation, he settled for a contrite nod. “It was nothing, really. Just a passing bother, not as bad as it might have sounded…and I’ll try and fix it.”

Behind him, Leonore nibbled her lip, clearly weighing more to say. But after a taut moment, she simply smiled at Theseus.

“Maybe the post office is just a task you’ll have to take on next year, when you’re older, then,” Alexander said, voice neutral and calm, as if trying to reconcile. But Theseus couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted in his father’s expression: a subtle revulsion, as if he had stared into a mirror and found something very unpleasant looking back.

*

As he helped his mother set the table for breakfast, his hands moved with a precision that had become second nature to him, arranging the cutlery with a focused intensity.

"Eggs again?" his father remarked.

"Yes," Theseus replied evenly. "Eggs are a good source of protein and nutrients."

His father accepted that. “Good reasoning.”

Leonore reached and ran her fingers through his already tousled hair. “Perhaps when we buy your robes, we can look for something else to neaten this up.”

“But it’ll just get messy again,” Theseus complained, eyeing Leonore, who had been the one to pass down the curly hair, even if he lacked her brilliant auburn.

“Then you make it tidy again,” Alexander said, stirring his tea counter-clockwise, turning over the newspaper. “Takes some effort, good presentation.”

“Yessir,” Theseus said.

“It’s only school, though, so I expect standards will be lower,” Alexander said. “Still, they’ll exist.”

At the table, Theseus carefully cut his food into neat, bite-sized pieces, arranging them on his plate in a pattern that felt just right. He maintained a rigid posture, aware of his father's watchful eye. His mother exchanged a knowing glance with him, handing Theseus the pepper.

As the family ate, Theseus observed Newt, who was seemingly in a world of his own, his eyes fixed on the patterns of the wallpaper as if deciphering a hidden code.

"Why can't he just eat like a normal child?" his father muttered under his breath, his patience waning.

"He's fine, dear," his mother said soothingly, her gaze shifting between Theseus and Newt. "He's just exploring in his own way."

After breakfast, Newt wandered into the back garden, Theseus trailing protectively. Crouching by a rosebush, Newt gently poked a fat bumblebee resting between the blossoms. He flapped his hands—a happy sign—and leaned closer as if greeting a friend. Then Newt lay on his stomach, nose nearly touching the grass. Theseus puzzled over this until noticing a line of ants by his brother’s elbow. Instantly Newt went still, enraptured by the insects’ orderly march. They swarmed over a grasshopper carcass, dismembering it efficiently. Theseus grimaced. But Newt watched, spellbound, for a small eternity

"You're like a little bug professor, Newt," Theseus commented.

Newt glanced up.

“If you want to be a professor, you have to work hard. You’ll have plenty of time to study and all that in a few years time,” Theseus said, his knees hurting a little bit from crouching down. “You know? You’ll go to school and meet lots of people, make friends, and show them that you’re very smart.”

Newt scrunched up his face, pointing now to a black beetle—oh, shit, Theseus thought, skin crawling slightly, there’s loads of them—on one of the logs bordering a slightly shrivelled wildflower bed, nodding his head not at Theseus’s words but if giving the myriad creatures around them a silent salutation.

Theseus eyed his little brother with a touch of worry. “Father said that he wants you to be a bit different before you go to school, I think. Mum and Dad were talking about it on the swing in the garden near her roses. It’s okay, though—he said the same to me—the same lines and everything, so you’re not alone. Otherwise we might have to go to the doctor or something. So, we can study together, yeah? Alright?”

“Seus,” Newt said, squeezing his hands in and out of fists as he watched the beetles, then walked away a metre, stumbling over his own feet to go and see them.

Theseus chewed his lip. There were cooler things out there: like all the Quidditch tricks used in the world championships and the home games; or the section of Alexander’s newspapers where they reported on the local crimes and he could memorise every name that appeared for future reference, just in case he ran into the offender in question. But two year olds weren’t very good listeners.

“Mmh. Beetles. They’re quite interesting?” he ventured. And then it hit him. “Wait, Newt—that’s your first word!”

He got hurriedly to his feet, wondering if he should give Newt time to say goodbye to the insects so that his baby brother didn’t start crying. There was a warm feeling in his stomach as, after a minute, in which Newt predictably gave a floppy wave to the swarm of beetles making their way over the collapsed log, he reached out for Newt’s small hand, letting him climb to his booted feet and follow him back inside. He would have carried him, but Newt always turned into a plank when he got carried, and Theseus was still struggling a little with getting big and strong.. At the kitchen table, his father was now working on a typewriter, examining sheets of figures. His mum was cooking some Hippogriff feed with mulched lentils, wiping her hands on the apron as she went.

“Everyone,” Theseus said proudly. “Newt’s said his first word.”

“Oh? What was it?” Leonore asked, eyes brightening. She hurried over, dropping to her haunches, and lifted Newt’s chubby chin with a finger. “What did you say, darling?”

Newt wobbled a little on his feet as their mum adjusted his shirt, fixing the fraying edges of his striped canvas belt. He opened his mouth and no sound came out—he gave their mum a look that was undeniably worried, his near-invisible gingery eyebrows crumpling. Leonore rubbed her thumb over his freckled cheek, waiting.

Newt twisted his head to the left, looking up at his older brother. “Seus,” he proclaimed again, clenching his fist into his shorts.

Alexander sniffed. “Good,” he said, adjusting his steel glasses and dabbing at his brow with his sleeve. “That’s good.”

“Of course it is,” Leonore exclaimed, giving Newt a quick hug and bouncing to her feet. “I knew the nurse was being too pessimistic.”

Theseus tilted his head slightly, his eyes flitting between his parents as Alexander gestured for Leonore to come to the heavy oak table and they exchanged a series of hushed words. Again? he wondered, a little miffed that he couldn’t be part of these discussions given he considered himself old and mature enough. There was an underlying pattern of these quiet talks that he couldn't quite comprehend, but he knew they had something to do with Newt.

Sensing the atmosphere, Theseus decided to voice his thoughts. "Maybe...maybe Newt's finding it hard to say his first word because my name is difficult," he mused aloud, hoping to offer a possible explanation that might put his parents at ease.

For a moment, the weight of their concerns seemed to be held in abeyance. The pan on the stove bubbled gently, the lamb shank and pulses for the Hippogriffs suspended in a thick broth. So that he didn’t do any unseemly fidgeting with his hands, Theseus shoved his fingers deep into the pockets of his trousers, pressing his palms against the woollen lining.

However, Alexander's response was swift and sharp. "No. It's not because of your name. Your name is perfectly fine.”

His words were abrupt, leaving Theseus momentarily taken aback. With a determined resolve, Alexander turned to Leonore.

"Let’s not go back and forth on this any longer. We should take the child to the doctors," he stated, his tone firm, as if he had reached a decision that he considered irrefutable. “Confirm that everything’s as fine as it can be in their eyes.”

He glanced at Leonore, who bit her lower lip, the freckles splattered liberally across her cheeks unusually visible. Mum had gone a bit pale—that wasn’t a good sign. It was clear that Alexander's suggestion was not one that had been taken lightly.

*

Later that afternoon, as the leaves started to fall outside his bedroom window, Theseus sat at his desk, his attention focused on a textbook. He had been trying to lose himself in the pages, looking at potion recipes and then charms, his wand in his hand.

But he couldn’t look at it now. He tried to control his gasping inhales, but it was no use. Heart pounding, he put his head between his knees, feeling faint. What was happening? He couldn't get enough air as images spun through his mind on an endless loop—worthless details battering him from all sides until he thought he might scream.

Footsteps sounded outside Theseus's door. He tried to sit up normally, school his expression neutral, but a fresh wave of dizziness nearly toppled him from the chair.

Father's going to be furious I can't control this. The thought battered inside his skull, revving his heart impossibly faster. His heart hammered inside his ribs, panic rising as his thoughts spun out of control. What if he failed his first year exams and embarrassed the family? What if the other boys never accepted his manners and ostracised him? What if—

It was happening again, the vise-like panic wrapping around his ribs till he thought they might snap from the pressure. He had to make it stop somehow, before—

"What in Merlin's name are you doing?"

He flinched violently at his father's sharp voice. Alexander stood in the doorway, taking in the scene with narrowed eyes. Mortified, he shrank back, willing his hammering heart to still through sheer force of will.

"I—I'm sorry, I don't—it just comes over me sometimes—“

"Well, can you stop it now?" Alexander cut in as he entered the room. "Better, can you explain succumbing to childish hysterics over nothing of consequence?"

"I wasn't—it wasn't hysterics," Theseus whispered, shame burning his cheeks at being discovered mid-panic. "My thoughts just...I struggled quieting my mind.."

"Theseus. I thought we agreed you’d master this, before you bring scrutiny upon this family." Alexander raked a hand through his hair. "Merlin knows your behaviour already affects your brother..."

Theseus's head snapped up. "What do you mean?"

Alexander exhaled through his nose. "Why else would Newt display such abnormal traits if not influenced by your anxious disposition early on?"

Theseus stared, dumbstruck by this pronouncement. "I've done nothing to—to sway Newt's nature," he finally managed. "We're simply different by temperament."

"Preposterous." Alexander crossed his arms.

He felt exposed and vulnerable, like a creature caught in a hunter's trap. Biting the inside of his cheek, he rearranged his fingers, made sure not to tap the table, and then lifted and set his wand down on his desk with a faint clunk before looking at his father and giving him as earnest a nod as he could.

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

His father stepped closer, seeing that his son had been studying, some of the hardness in his eyes dissipating.

“The crucial thing you’ll learn is that some of these worries you have, the things that you do—you’ll have to say nothing about them when you’re around people outside of this family, do you understand? It’s rather important. And look, son, I’ll tell you something myself: the truth is that I don’t want it to have to be this way, but we need to show different people different faces.”

He wanted to please his father, to meet his expectations, but it felt like an impossible task.

“You see, there's a certain way one must compose oneself in society. It's essential to adhere to the norms and standards, even if they might seem unnecessary or stifling. People will judge you based on appearances, and our actions often speak louder than words. We’re no sacred family—status is held purely on our present, not the legacy of generations before us, do you understand?”

“I don’t know what’s necessary and what’s not,” Theseus admitted.

Alexander paused, his gaze distant for a moment as if lost in his own thoughts. Then, he continued with a sigh. "When I was your age, I too struggled with certain tendencies, but I learned that it is possible to control these urges, to rise above them, to excise them. It takes discipline, determination, and an unwavering commitment. That’s why I’m successful, and not some gibbering fool in a special home. Do you understand? It’s a necessary skill, and everyone has to do it, particularly when, like you, they could have an excellent future ahead of them. I have a successful career, a family, and I did so by presenting a controlled, composed exterior."

Theseus absorbed this, not understanding the message of it, considering the simultaneous rationality and irrationality of it. His fingers twitched. Instead, he watched his father’s face, wondering why now he wouldn’t look at him, praying inside that it wasn’t because he was ashamed.

Alexander placed a hand on Theseus's shoulder, his grip firm yet reassuring, staring out the window with indecipherable grey eyes. "I know it's not easy, Theseus. But trust me when I say that this path will lead you to better things. You have potential, and I want to see you succeed. Just remember—sometimes the sacrifices we make for the sake of fitting in are the ones that shape us into who we're meant to be."

The question bubbled inside him. Somehow, he couldn’t help but see a link, a chain of reasoning like the ones in his detective stories. Newt, his father had mentioned—Newt being unwell.

“Why does Newt have to go to the doctors?” Theseus finally asked, the words sticky. “Father—please—I need to know, so that I know he’ll be okay—“

Oh, Merlin, he was starting to feel strange again—but Alexander's hand came down heavily on the desk, rattling the chipped replica Quidditch hoops, making Theseus jump. "You will stop this nonsense immediately. Do you understand?"

Theseus nodded, his voice barely a whisper. "Yes. Alright."

"Then come downstairs.” His father's tone brooked no argument. “Idle minds breed dangerous thoughts.”

With a heavy sigh, Theseus pushed himself up from his seat and made his way downstairs. Leonore looked up from her embroidery, where she was changing the colour of the thread with her wand and stitching with her free hand, the wooden hoop magically suspended in front of her. As she took in Alexander and the uncharacteristically rumpled Theseus, an increasingly bemused expression spread across her face.

"Your mother and I have decided that it's time for you to contribute more to the household," Alexander announced. “He’s going to do some cleaning, to shape him up.”

Leonore glanced between her husband and her son, sensing the tension in the room. "Cleaning, dear?" she asked, her voice tinged with curiosity.

Alexander nodded. "Yes. To learn responsibility and discipline."

Leonore’s expression softened as she looked at Theseus, who was standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, not sure whether he should step all the way into the room or try to quietly retreat. "Well, I suppose it's good for him to learn some practical skills."

Her support offered a glimmer of comfort in the midst of his father's stern judgement. Reluctantly, he nodded in agreement.

"Yeah," Theseus said quietly.

Alexander seemed to consider the matter settled. "Good. Start with the hallway. And make sure everything is spotless."

He made his way to the hallway, the polished wooden floor stretching ahead of him. The late afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows. No wonder his father wanted him to clean, out of all things, as a quasi-punishment; the house was dusty and there was grainy soil crunching under his feet as he approached the grimy stained glass window set in the door, presumably tracked in by mum after visiting the Hippogriffs.

Taking a deep breath, he retrieved a cloth and began to carefully wipe down the surfaces, his movements deliberate and cautious. Mentally running through some of the cooler Quidditch games he’d read about, checking the numbers and points of the leagues against the rosters in his head, he fetched a feather duster from the cupboard and started dusting the furniture and frames that lined the hallway. His movements were methodical, the repetitive action allowing his mind to wander as he lost himself in the rhythmic motion.

As he worked, he couldn't shake the feeling that his every action was being scrutinised, evaluated, even though none of the others had left the kitchen. Hours seemed to stretch on—and at least two certainly did—as Theseus meticulously cleaned every nook and cranny. Perhaps he was going to be good at cleaning because he had to check, make it all uniform. So he started to polish the wooden bannister until it gleamed, gripping the cloth tightly as he scrubbed away any imperfections.

He started when something pulled at his trouser leg. A soft breath escaped him when he looked down and saw—out of all people—Newt, who’d climbed over the extended bottom step, one hand planted on the green carpet and the other tugging at the hem of his trousers. While Theseus knew how to do most types of non-magical cleaning needed in the Scamander household, it was rare he did it entirely alone, and Newt had clearly picked up on this too.

"Hey there, little brother," Theseus greeted softly, not wanting to disturb the tenuous calm of the house. He bent down. "What are you up to? Sick of the Bowtruckles? I’m impressed you got up the step—well, almost. You must be getting stronger, right?”

Newt's response was an odd sound, accompanied by a sort-of giggle. It was clear that Newt didn't quite have the words to express his sentiment, but his intent was clear as he continued to grip Theseus's trouser leg and bounce on the balls of his feet.

Newt's gaze followed Theseus's gesture, and he seemed intrigued by the bannister. His little fingers released their grip on Theseus's trousers and instead reached out to touch the polished wood, his eyes widening with wonder. Theseus blinked in surprise, breaking away from his thoughts to look down at the wide-eyed child.

“Hm,” Newt hummed, turning back to Theseus and reaching into his older brother’s pocket, tugging out the dangling clean spare cloth that wasn’t yet smeared with varnish with interest. Theseus lifted the one he was currently holding.

“Cleaning,” he explained, performatively folding the cloth over the bannister and a spindle below, the harsh bite of varnish drifting up to his nostrils. “This is my job, Newt—if you want, you can go back to whatever you were doing before, ‘cuz I’m sure it’ll be much more fun.”

Newt waved the cloth, rubbing it over his face. Theseus held his breath and thanked Merlin he’d not put varnish on the second one as Newt seemed to explore the soft cotton texture.

“But if you’re really that keen on joining me in the one, I'm just cleaning the bannister. See, it's a bit dusty, and I want it to look nice."

Newt's green eyes remained fixed on Theseus, his tiny brow furrowing as he tried to process the explanation. With a small smile, Theseus took the cloth from Newt's hand and demonstrated how to use it to wipe the bannister.

"Like this," he said, his fingers guiding Newt's hand in a gentle sweeping motion. "See how it shines now? We're making it clean and pretty."

Newt's curiosity seemed to be piqued, and he attempted to mimic Theseus's actions, his tongue poking out slightly in a manner that reminded him of their mother. Earnestly, he pressed the cloth against the bannister flat on, laying it against the spindles until it peeked through on the other side, shrouding his small hand.

“Mmh?” the younger boy murmured, glancing up at Theseus. He seemed to favour grunts most of the time, which was fine, seeing as the standards for communication with babies were probably quite low anyway.

Lightly, Theseus wrapped his hand around Newt’s upper arm, guiding him back down the steps to the hallway floor, and pointed him to the main and lowermost bannister, carved with simple geometric floral medallions set in squares. “Why don’t you work on this one?” he suggested, worried about him falling, and demonstratively bent down, cleaning off a cranny until it shone.

“Hm,” Newt hummed tunelessly, as if it were a little melody. His chubby fingers clutched the fabric as he attempted to imitate his older brother's actions, his efforts resulting in a mixture of enthusiastic swipes and wiggles. Theseus watched with a mixture of amusement and affection, trying not to laugh, because Newt approached the task with laser-focus, as if it was his god-given duty. Every so often, he would pause to examine his work, considering the small streaks of dust he had managed to dislodge.

For a peaceful half an hour, they worked in concert. It was sweet that Newt had come, Theseus thought, even if he didn’t quite understand everything that was going on. He seemed so determined to help, in his own way, and that thought made Theseus pause in his polishing, a strange feeling in his chest, a mixture of gratitude and sudden, deep affection. The muscles of his arms and back were starting to ache as he neared the top steps, polishing in intense circles as if he were being paid not to miss a spot, and he stretched, groaning, before heading right back down to his little brother.

Newt beamed up at Theseus, his eyes crinkling at the corners as his smile grew wider. He held out the cloth for Theseus to take again, as if offering it as a token of their shared endeavour.

“Ah, you’re not too bad at this,” Theseus said diplomatically, glancing at the wood Newt had been working on, which looked mostly unchanged. “Where are you off to now, then?”

Newt pointed vaguely in the other directions available to them, suggesting some location other than where Theseus was heading.

“Good idea, Newt,” Theseus said. “Don’t tire yourself out, hm?”

With a nod, Newt deposited the cloth in Theseus’s hand and headed out of the hallway towards the library, no doubt eager to find his Bowtruckle book again. Their mum had started amassing quite the collection of quaint creature-themed books, picking them up from various wizarding flea markets across the country. She often remarked on how she’d like to try her hand at illustrating one. Theseus waved goodbye to Newt’s departing figure, watching Newt’s familiar little walk, with rolling, slightly shuffling steps, eyes always fixed either on the ground or the ceiling.

Theseus took the cloth Newt had been using and headed into the downstairs bathroom, pulling out equipment from the cupboard under the sink there in a noisy clatter. If this was Mum, she would have already had it all out, floating, getting to work on its own. A few times, she’d suggested that they ask in the village if there was a Muggle cleaning lady happy to help, but Alexander had said firmly that he wouldn’t have a maid putting his house in disarray, messing up the order of things. This, then, seemed Theseus’s new duty, and he didn’t mind. Cleaning was useful, same as getting the stain of the thoughts away.

*

They were in the hallway again. He’d dutifully cleaned it for the last time two days before, sick to his stomach with nerves, so unsure of what he was actually worried about. It was like a sixth sense or a premonition, like a whispering in his ears. No Seer blood, he reminded himself regularly, making it biologically impossible for anything he saw or heard to be in any way accurate. To try and chase the worries out of his system, he’d studied like mad, blazing through almost the entire first year curriculum. After packing and repacking his trunk more than a dozen times, he’d finally thrown half his worldly possessions at the wall in frustration and resolved to go with as little as possible, earthly comforts be damned.

His robes, freshly ironed but still a bit too short at the sleeves, felt slightly uncomfortable against his skin. He adjusted the collar and fidgeted with the hem, his nerves causing his movements to be more jittery than usual. There was a strange atmosphere as he looked around the familiar hallway, taking in the photos and paintings on the walls that had been there for as long as he could remember. So he stood by his trunk, resisting the urge to idly kick it, not sure what to do with either his hands or his feet.

The clock on the hallway table next to a vase of Leonore’s wildflowers ticked in perfect time. Alexander was very fussy about the clocks matching, keeping the same clock-hand beat. The consequences of so many barely discordant patterns in so many rooms could drive a person, he claimed, to insanity.

His mum checked the time on that very clock, humming, and wandered over. Inexplicably, Newt was standing by the coat rack, under the coats, small enough that the hanging garments just about brushed the top of his head; Alexander was sitting on the lower stairs, clasping his hands together. Leonore reached out and gently straightened the collar of his robe, her touch soothing in its familiarity; he could smell the faint vanilla of her perfume mixed with a little of the fresh earthiness of the countryside around their house, and fought the urge to hug her tightly, wanting to stay composed.

"You're growing up so fast," she murmured, her voice tinged with a mixture of pride and wistfulness.

“I can't believe it's finally happening," he said.

“You’ve got everything, haven’t you?” she asked, stifling a yawn. She gave him a smile. “You know, I think your packing abilities are much better than mine. But, sweetheart, it’s good to be relaxed about it as well.”

“Of course,” Alexander commented, shifting in his temporary perch. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Good job, Theseus. It’s all put together, despite your mother’s best efforts to make it chaotic.”

“I finished the ironing this morning,” Leonore protested.

“Yes, an hour ago,” Alexander noted with a fond smile. “I think the only occasion you’ve definitely been on time to, outside tending to the poor sods at St Mungo’s, was our wedding.”

“Exactly! And now I’ve got my two sweet boys,” she said, turning to Newt with a wink and a click of her tongue, making the little boy look up.

Alexander crossed his arms, surveying the scene. The morning light was beginning to filter through the stained glass window set in the house’s old door. Newt fidgeted with the edges of a small piece of paper in his hands, face tight—with either confusion or overwhelm, Theseus thought. Leonore approached Newt with a soft smile, crouching down beside him thoughtfully.

"It's a big day for your brother, isn't it, darling?" she whispered. “What have you got there?”

Newt glanced at his mother, his fingers clutching the note a little tighter. Gently, she reached out and brushed her fingers over the paper, tilting her head back towards the centre of the room, inviting his little brother to come out of the periphery. Newt’s fingers twitched, and he looked at the ground for a long moment before extending his hand towards her. In his palm lay the crumpled paper; Theseus eyed him curiously, wondering what it could be, as Newt was barely old enough to hold a pencil.

“Go on, Newt, give it to Theseus,” Leonore coaxed. “Come out from under the coats. They’re all going to get stuck on your head otherwise.”

Newt hesitated for a moment. His lower lip trembled slightly.

Leonore kept her eyes at the same level as her youngest son's. "It's okay, my love," she said. "You can give it to Theseus. He'll really appreciate it."

It sort of seemed to work—a soft sigh escaped Newt’s lips, and he shuffled his feet.

“I'm right here,” Theseus said.

At last, Newt took a small step forward, his fingers slowly uncurling from the paper. Clutching the note tightly in his fingers, he approached Theseus with his head down, steps a little shaky, eyes averted at the floor, his round cheeks gently flushed. Theseus recognised exactly what it was. Poor Newt was feeling shy. One day maybe he wouldn’t be so shy around Theseus. That would be nice, maybe, but it was fine this way too because Newt liked him, at least.

Written in Leonore’s flowing script, the note read: Goodbye Theseus! Good luck!

He read it carefully and then read it again. Newt hadn’t added a single new word to his limited repertoire, and almost never spoke, but he certainly understood far more words than most people thought he did—and their mum had probably sat down with him to write it, like a translation from Newt for everything he either wasn’t so keen—or big enough yet—to actually vocalise.

The whole idea once again threatened to make Theseus’s attempt at a stoic eleven year old demeanour start to crumble. Newt's lower lip trembled even more, and a tear finally rolled down his cheek. He sniffled softly, staring at the floor, tugging at his own fingers. Of course, Theseus had to give him a hug. His poor little brother. But also, his lucky little brother, he supposed, who didn’t have to go to school. Hogwarts did cane children, but the wizarding world looked down on physical punishment, Theseus had surmised, in comparison to the Muggles. At least, he assumed so from having been disciplined a few times in the village by other people’s parents—but they’d have to do a pile of lessons. That would be a pain for Newt, who would probably just want to know where the Bowtruckles were, if his track record of interest was any indication.

“You look after Mum and Dad, alright?" Feeling Newt immediately try to pull away, he straightened up, folding the note and stowing it in the inner pocket of his robes. “I’ll keep this very safe.”

Newt wiped his nose on his hand, and went back to their mum, grabbing a fistful of her long skirts as if he could hide in them, averting his eyes and turning as still as a statue.

As the moment hung in the air, Alexander's stern voice cut through. "Come along, Theseus," he commanded, his tone firm.

Theseus's smile faltered slightly as he looked back at his father. He glanced at Newt once more. "I'll write to you," he promised Newt. “Mum can read it out. Like a bedtime story, but probably not as good.”

His father raised his wand, floating his luggage into a neat stack, and pointed to the door. Theseus straightened up and followed, stepping over the threshold into the outdoors, looking back one last time to see Newt finally untangled from his mother’s skirts. As Leonore supported his shoulder with one hand, his little brother’s shoulders shook, but his tear-stained face seemed, in a way, calm.

Chapter Text

Newt half-lowered his wand, positioning himself so his body was in front of his case, protecting it. Uneasily, he looked between Tina and his brother.

“What are you doing here?” Newt finally managed.

Theseus stared at him, patting the pockets of his coat and pulling out his identification card with a frown. He looked at it for a second and then shoved it back inside; it didn’t seem to be what he had wanted to find. There were bruises around his neck, and he seemed to be favouring one side of his body. Yet at the same time, he had exactly the same easy posture Newt knew, long-limbed and controlled, a combination of quirks from being both a Quidditch player and a former soldier. Newt could read that well enough; Theseus postured like any of his creatures, and said posturing suggested injured, exhausted, low concern to threat, conducting a familiar interaction.

But his expression of polite bemusement was poorly represented in the animal world—and certainly not one Theseus generally wore.

“What am I doing here?” he repeated. "I must have gotten turned around. Presumably, I’m on Ministry business.”

“What?” Newt spluttered. “Ministry business?”

Theseus chewed his bottom lip as it seemed to dawn on him that the other two were pointing their wands at him. “Well, why else would I be in the…” he paused and looked around. “…in the Brazilian Ministry?”

“We heard noise from outside,” Tina said. "It sounded like something fell."

He rubbed a hand across his eyes. There were heavy shadows under them, cradling the thin web of broken blood vessels across his left sclera. With a sigh, Theseus looked around the room. “Everything's in order here, or so it seems.”

“Something’s not right,” Tina said in a low voice.

“My head hurts,” Theseus admitted, threading his fingers through his dishevelled hair and frowning. He checked his pockets again, eyeing Newt and Tina’s wands. “There's a more important question that begs to be asked here. What are you two doing inside another Ministry?”

“You’ve been missing for more than a month,” Tina said.

Theseus blinked. Newt stepped forward cautiously, his wand still raised, but he didn't sense any immediate danger. Theseus looked up at him, his expression blank, as if he didn't recognise his own brother. Equally, seeing him like this, for Newt, was like looking at a stranger.

“I said,” Tina repeated. “You’ve been missing for more than a month.”

Theseus furrowed his brow, his hand still rubbing his temples. "Missing? What do you mean?"

"We've been trying to find you,” Newt said gently. “We’ve been worried sick.”

Theseus laughed, eyes flicking from Newt to Tina as if he was the subject of some practical joke. "Really?" he asked. "Well, I suppose I've been found, although I do think missing is a strong word. A lot of...work, maybe. Maybe I...lost a few days to it. But, see…how could I be missing if I'm here?"

"Are you okay?" Newt asked, lowering his wand as he approached Theseus. He looked over at Tina, who was still on high alert, ready to defend them if necessary. The thing was that it wasn’t the right question to ask Theseus. In fact, it was almost a guarantee he’d get the same, dismissive answer as usual, but Newt was a Magizoologist, not an investigator, and none of the sharp and focused questions designed to stir Theseus out of this slight haze came to mind.

Theseus shrugged, as if the suggestion was of little importance. "I'm fine, really. Just a bit disorientated." He rubbed his temples again and sighed. "Maybe I need some fresh air. Also, a legitimate reason for you being here with Tina, little brother, would be good, seeing as she's a Chief Auror and you were banned from the Brazilian Ministry in 1923."

Of course Theseus remembers that, out of everything, Newt thought.

"You can't be fine," Newt said. "You can't be."

His eyes settled back on Newt, and he smiled, though it was a strange, distant smile.

"I am fine," Theseus replied automatically, but his voice lacked conviction. He was still patting his pockets, searching for something that wasn't there. "Where the hell is my wand?"

Newt exchanged a worried glance with Tina.

"Your wand?" Newt repeated, furrowing his brow. “Theseus, how did you get here?"

"Why are you in the office of the Head of International Magical Law while they're not in?" Tina pointed out.

Theseus's eyes flickered over to Tina, as if he had only just noticed her presence. He looked her up and down, his gaze lingering on her wand. With a thoughtful noise, he shrugged, still looking disoriented. "I don't know. Maybe I was called in for a meeting."

Newt stepped closer to his brother, searching his face for any signs of distress or injury. "We thought Grindelwald had you."

Theseus looked at him blankly. "Well, that'd be damned bad luck, but...I'd know if something like that had happened."

There was a brief silence, in which he seemed to evaluate the body language of the two intruders, and started coming to some kind of slow realisation, frown deepening. His hair was a mess; that was very unlike Theseus, to not have fixed it with an easy wandless charm.

"Do you remember...anything?" Tina asked. "Any kind of curse, memory charm, obliviation? Temporary or permanent?"

Theseus shook his head. "No, nothing. I just...lost time. Like I said, maybe I’m here for a meeting, a case, sharing some evidence; it could be anything." He paused, as if struggling to piece together the events that led to his current situation. "Wait, can we return to the subject of Grindelwald? Why would you think he had me?"

"You chased one of his followers," Newt said. "At the German Ministry. A woman. And they overpowered you, and that was...the last time I saw you, for weeks."

A hint of worry touched his gaze. "German Ministry? I did what? Which woman?"

Newt tugged at his hair in frustration, trying to recall the name, but the surreal nature of the situation was turning his thoughts foggy, making the lights in the room feel too bright, the air too hot. He looked at Tina, but she grimaced at him, shaking her head to indicate she didn't know, because of course, she hadn't actually been there. And Newt hadn't explained it to her well enough. It was like there was a glass wall between all three of them, an enclosure more limiting than Newt would allow for any beast, and even though his brother was alive and breathing only a metre away, he felt completely out of reach.

“Thanks for the information, Newt,” Theseus said in a certain tone that could have been genuine and could have been the tone reserved for uncovering Newt’s falsified permits: one the magizoologist classed as exasperation with a secret layer of you’re lying on top.

He’d accepted the possibility it had happened. Newt’s heart beat faster at the thought. “You left me, and chased her through the crowd, and then you were gone, stunned or something, some special curse, and we couldn’t follow you because there were too many people. But you did ask me if I recognised her, the woman, and I did. They were there—there in Paris.”

“Oh,” Theseus said. “Paris.”

He didn’t say anything about being sorry for it. After a moment, he rubbed his temples again, and Newt noticed the sweat beading on his forehead. "I don't understand. Why would Grindelwald keep me alive? Why wouldn't he just kill me?”

"Maybe he wants something from you," Tina suggested.

Theseus snorted. "I don't have anything he wants."

"Maybe there's something you know, or something you have, that he thinks is valuable," Tina said, twisting her wand in her fingers, the handle starting to grow slippery with sweat.

"Alright. All I know is that I'm here now, and I need to figure out what's going on." Theseus looked at them both, his gaze now steady and focused. "I need to find my wand. And then I need to speak to the Ministry—the British Ministry. This is a serious breach of security. If Grindelwald really does have something planned..."

Newt and Tina exchanged a look, both unsure of what to say next. Theseus seemed to have regained his composure, but Newt couldn't shake the feeling that either his older brother was wearing a mask or something had genuinely gone really wrong. Since when did Theseus accept things he didn’t know? Since when did he not follow up the absence of said things with a barrage of intense, nosy, obsessively detailed enquiries? It was Tina’s hesitance holding Newt back. Perhaps there was dark magic at play here. Perhaps Theseus was nothing more than a puppet. After all, Newt had been ten when he’d wondered that same thing, looking at Theseus standing by their father as if mirrored—and standing as he was now, too. It all suddenly felt too real—the world swam for a moment—and Newt swallowed, throat dry, blinking hard.

Theseus’s eyes flicked to him. As if reading his mind, Theseus let out a sigh. "Look, I know I seem a bit out of it, but I'm fine. I just need to piece together what happened."

"You don't seem like yourself," Newt said.

"Well, it's all a bit hazy."

"We'll take you to St. Mungo's. Make sure everything's alright," Tina said, her wand still at the ready. "Check for dark enchantments. Maybe the Imperius curse."

Newt stepped forward to take his brother's arm, but, reacting trigger-quick, Theseus pulled away from him, his expression wary. He held his arm in front of his face, raising his forearm like a cross warding off a vampire, fingers clawed.

"I don't need to be handled like a child," Theseus said, ice seeping into his voice syllable by syllable in the sentence until the last word was almost a hiss.

Newt hesitated.

"Maybe he was hiding from us," Tina remarked in a whisper.

"But that doesn’t make sense, not now," Newt whispered back. “There’s something wrong with him.”

Seemingly recovering, Theseus pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing as he did so, a little blood pooling under one nostril as he pulled his hand away and searched his pockets again. "I can hear you both, you know."

Tina's face tightened and she raised her wand. "Be careful," she warned. "This could be a trap. I don't trust him yet. It's just—a gut instinct. He's too slow, delaying us too long. Watch the door, Newt."

Newt glanced at her. "Okay," he said, the word barely audible as he stepped back towards the door, his eyes darting between it and his brother. There was something off about Theseus, something that made him hesitate, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He just knew he needed to be on guard.

Meanwhile, Theseus continued to search through his pockets, his movements becoming more frantic. "I don't understand," he muttered, his voice low and shaky. "It was here a moment ago, I swear."

"What are you looking for?" Tina demanded, her wand still trained on him.

"My wand," Theseus replied, his tone growing more agitated. "I need it."

"For what?" Tina asked.

He chewed his lip, confusion giving way to frustration in a way that Newt recognised well. "Well, to not have a wand is highly irregular, given the current climate. And I need to defend myself if necessary."

Tina's eyes narrowed. "Defend yourself from what?"

He scoffed. "People pointing their wands at me, maybe," he said, eyeing the other two and their raised hands.

"Where's Grindelwald?" Tina asked.

Theseus shivered a little at the name, looking around the room. "I'm not sure."

“None of this makes sense,” Tina said. “He must be lying."

Theseus peered at her, looking thoughtful. “I’m not lying, but I’m curious to hear the reasoning behind this statement.”

"Tina, please," Newt said. “He’s been made to forget. It must be something like what Dumbledore said. He said we can’t see the full picture—that none of us can. Maybe it doesn’t matter if—if he doesn’t—”

Tina hesitated, her wand still at the ready. "I don't know," she said. "This all seems too convenient. Newt said that you went missing at the German Ministry. Do you really expect us to believe that you don't know that? Where have you been for the last six weeks?"

Theseus shook his head, running his hands through his hair. He turned towards the window on his side of the room, glancing through it to the bright daylight outside, and then paced a quick, anxious circle around the square of tile he’d commandeered, moving as if caged. "I don't know," he said through gritted teeth. "I don't remember much. It's all a blur. But I know—I think I know—maybe this is part of his plan somehow, because, because maybe I didn’t want—either of you two, to come in, because—"

Tina's wand arm wavered, but she didn't lower it. "Why not?" she asked.

Theseus hesitated, his lips parting but no words escaping immediately. It was as if he was struggling to find the right way to explain his actions.

At last, Theseus lifted his chin a fraction, eyes still lowered, always lowered, and set his expression. At last, though, instead of speaking as Newt had hoped, he began to turn away, shoulders hunched, looking back at the bookcase with a faint breath of recognition. His face had paled.

Newt’s stomach suddenly dropped through the floor as he realised they were on the cusp of a revelation.

“Newt—“ Theseus began, inhaled, shakily. “Newt, there might have been things—“

The air in the room suddenly stilled, an eerie prelude to a powerful gust of wind that seemed to come from nowhere. Papers that were stacked perfectly on the desk took flight like startled birds. Sunlight still streamed in from outside. The tiles were still orange and coated in a fine layer of dust. The office was still unnervingly clean, orderly.

And now, there was a familiar figure pulling himself out of the corner by the desk, brushing down his fine suit.

"Crap," Tina hissed. “Crap. I knew it.”

Newt raised his wand, but Grindelwald held up a hand, his eyes glittering with an otherworldly power.

"Put down your wand, Newt," he said, his voice low and commanding. "There's no need for violence."

Newt hesitated, his wand still raised.

Tina, however, was quick to react. "You're not welcome here," she spat, her wand pointed directly at Grindelwald's chest.

Grindelwald merely smiled, seemingly unfazed by Tina's hostility. "I understand your concern," he said, his gaze shifting to Theseus. "But your brother is not here against his will. In fact, he seems content to wallow in his own deceit."

Theseus took a step back, reaching for his missing wand. "How did you get here?"

"I’ve been here all along—but, ultimately, you let me in, didn't you, Theseus?" Grindelwald said.

A vague hint of recognition settled over Theseus's sharp features. He jerked his head to the side to shake it off.

"Why would I help you break in?" Theseus said, his voice gruff with underlying hostility.

"I know that you're not so blinded by your loyalty to the Ministry that you can't see that." Grindelwald said. "With your tentative allegiance, because you still had doubts, we made an arrangement, here in this very room. In return for my promise not to hurt any of your allies, you joined my side. To stop me from taking a wand to either your brother or your fellow Auror, you promised to leave with me, and lay yourself down in service to my vision."

Theseus's mouth fell open slightly and he took a step back from everyone in the room. There was a hard line of a bruise forming around his brow bone on the left. "Someone's done something to me," he said. "I don't remember. None of that. I wouldn't."

Newt and Tina exchanged a worried glance.

Grindelwald's eyes narrowed. "Someone's done something to you?" he repeated, his voice dripping with disdain. "Is that the story you're going to stick with, Theseus? Are you going to truly pretend that you wouldn’t sell your soul to protect him if you could?”

Tina didn't lower her wand. "What have you done?" she demanded.

"Nothing that he didn't willingly allow," he said smoothly. "In fact, Theseus has been a valuable asset to our cause."

"Asset—no, I don’t think so," Newt said. He’d seen the inside of Theseus’s flat.

There was no way a man with a journal like that—painstaking notes on every appearance of Grindelwald’s, a scrawled list of lost names, a congealed sense of stoic loss emanating from each page—would turn. But then again, it had been six weeks. Six weeks with no trace. By virtue of being alive alone, Theseus could have—

Grindelwald's smile widened as he stepped forward, his voice hypnotic. "Must I repeat myself? Theseus understands the importance of protecting those he loves. He knows that the only way to ensure their safety is to join us. And he did so willingly. Freedom requires slavery, a lesson I have learnt myself. And yet that slavery can be beautifully democratic when you let the people speak, and still free them from the shackles of democracy's auspices."

“Sick logic,” Theseus muttered. “Sick, sick logic when you apply it to citizens.”

“But for just one man?” Grindelwald said.

"What are you saying?" Tina snapped.

"Only my own views, but, much like Theseus, I suppose, I plan to locate my success safely within the political system before I dismantle it from within. Of course, the paradigms are now different—your system has become so small, hasn’t it, my Auror? The only meaningful blood relative in the democracy of your destiny is here. It’s a little, little system, a family system you’ve become the caretaker of—far more important than the greater one you protect.”

Theseus shook his head, but Grindelwald's words seemed to have a strange pull on him.

“And you’ve played this game before,” Grindelwald said. “The system against the system, freedom against slavery, life against death, the small, the vulnerable, the sacrifice, against power and vision. The unloved—against the destiny of the unloved, woven by the system and the secondary system and finally by me.”

That final word seemed to strike Theseus. Taking a step back, hunching slightly as if he’d been hit, he looked up and bit at his lip.

"Maybe I did what I had to do," he said, his voice distant. "So he didn't kill you like he killed Leta."

Newt looked at Theseus in horror. "No, Theseus, don't listen to him," he said. But his words fell on deaf ears as Theseus continued to stare off into space, lost in his own thoughts.

Grindelwald chuckled darkly. "You see, your brother understands the necessity of sacrifice. Something you have yet to learn," he said, his eyes flickering with a dangerous gleam. “Without sacrifice—well, you’ve carried the guilt of betraying Leta Lestrange for far too long, haven't you?"

Theseus tensed, his jaw clenching. Newt made a noise that was meant to be a response. But standing in the room was starting to make his head spin. How had Theseus betrayed Leta? Maybe because he’d let her die. They’d not been able to save her—and Merlin, Newt suddenly felt sick at the memory of Paris, of the way she’d screamed. Never before had Theseus truly cried in front of him; that had made it all the more horrific, the knowledge that she’d directed her last words at both of them but perhaps only for one. In his heart, Newt had always wondered if it had been him: the stolen glances they’d shared, the bitter nostalgia of it all, his old belief that he’d been the bearer of a weightier magnitude of their confused feelings, safer that way. But a statement like that to Theseus? Something unresolved? Of course, Theseus would gnaw at it like a bone for the rest of his days, never let it go, have it as a chip on his shoulder. And perhaps over the years that had built up a spite great enough that Newt wouldn’t be surprised if he’d do anything to lift its immense weight off.

"You see, my dear Theseus, you might not have immediate memories, but I’ve been watching you for almost as long as you’ve been chasing me, so be assured I recognise your struggles well. Your loyalty to your family and your sense of duty have always been your driving forces. But tell me, how heavy is the burden of your guilt? How deep is the shame that you've tried to bury? Your choices always hurt those you care about; but that doesn’t make them wrong.”

Theseus shifted uncomfortably, his gaze flickering away for a moment before returning to meet Grindelwald's unwavering stare. "Perhaps,” Theseus admitted, his voice edged with self-reproach.

Grindelwald's lips curved into a sympathetic smile. "And that is precisely why you and I are not so different, Theseus. We both understand that sometimes, sacrifices must be made for the greater good. Choices that others might not comprehend. Choices that keep our loved ones safe, even if they tarnish our own souls."

"You know that you would never willingly betray our cause," Newt said quietly. “Even if you betrayed us, you’d never believe in what Grindelwald wants.”

Theseus Scamander, war hero. Theseus Scamander, looking to Grindelwald for answers, one eye bloodied in a room he wasn’t meant to be in.

"He's not under the Imperius curse, is he? No need for such crude methods." Grindelwald said. "He's here because he chose to be."

Newt's mind raced as he tried to come up with a plan. He couldn't let Grindelwald take Theseus, but he also couldn't risk putting Tina in danger. If either of them fired off a spell here, and Grindelwald could simply evade the wards, Newt suspected there was a real chance of them repeating what had last happened at MACUSA. The prison, that grey room, the tarry liquid that had clawed at Tina’s feet—and he’d been as calm as he could have been, even with all his creatures lost, with Tina’s precious life in his hands—all of it could happen again with a simple sleight of hand from Grindelwald. He could almost taste the powdery dust of that underground cell again, the despair, so bitter, that had flooded every inch of his being in a wave of emotion so unfamiliar and yet familiar at once it felt like it could kill him on the spot.

"L—Let him go. You don't need him," Newt said, trying to reason with him, the clunkiness of his words as he stumbled over them igniting a sensation not dissimilar to Occamies writhing in the pit of his belly.

"No, I don’t," Grindelwald corrected. "But you need him to be with me. And, dear Magizoologist, we've had this conversation, Theseus and I, and it follows the same rhythms rather beautifully."

Tina's eyes flicked between Theseus and Grindelwald, her wand still pointed at the dark wizard.

Newt's heart pounded in his chest as he watched Theseus standing there, looking so lost and confused. A part of him wanted to believe that Grindelwald was lying, that Theseus would never betray them. But another part of him couldn't help but question everything he thought he knew, unsure of how he could begin to comprehend what had happened in just two months. He’d been gone for nearly four years before they’d been reunited in Ukraine for those few months, and the feeling was still like a hole, as if this time, it had been years again.

Theseus slowly lowered his hands, his eyes still unfocused. "The truth…" he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “But who…?”

Grindelwald smiled. "Everyone makes mistakes, but not everyone acknowledges them. It’s a feeling that never truly leaves—a scar on your conscience. So, yes, that's right. There's more darkness within you, secrets you dare not utter. I can see it in your eyes—the conflict, the struggle to maintain the facade of the noble hero. And in the end, as I believe you will always do, you chose to protect those you love from the breaking of that front.”

That seemed to strike some emotion in Theseus, who scoffed, a weak, disparaging noise, putting his hands on his hips. He took a step backwards, looking towards the bookshelf, and rubbed a hand through his hair. "What the fuck?" he muttered. "What the fuck did I do and why can't I remember?"

Grindelwald opened his palm and the two halves of some device glittered there. Newt looked at it. "What is that?" he whispered.

"A temporary pensieve," Grindelwald said. "It distorts short-term memories. Theseus was placing it as a trap here, for me, but I presume that when he heard you two approaching he used it on himself to avoid having to face the truth: so that he could convince you both that he's still innocent when really, he's anything but."

Theseus looked at the device in Grindelwald's hand. "But why would I do that?" he asked, his voice barely audible. “I’m not a bloody idiot—I can’t explain myself any fucking better now that I can’t remember—“

Grindelwald stepped closer to Theseus, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Because you were too ashamed to admit directly the depths you were willing to go to," he said, his voice low and persuasive. "After all, a betrayal like this is a hateful thing to witness. You were desperate to euthanise your own sense of self-contempt by forgetting just long enough to pretend you were as innocent as the day you were born. This—your shame—I think you’ll know, have reckoned with it for years already, after we consider your own, real memories.”

Theseus grabbed the device out of Grindelwald's palm, looking thunderous. "No way in hell," he started, and then gripped it tightly, face draining of colour. He looked at the desk, eyes widening, and then at Grindelwald.

"You remember it, do you?" Grindelwald asked. “Who do you remember? Me? Her? Or perhaps, even further back…?”

The words seemed to fall on deaf ears. Theseus was watching the large polished desk with the same expression he’d had the first time he’d seen Newt with the dragons up on the Ukraine front, like he was looking at a vision from a nightmare premonition. Newt's heart sank as he watched Theseus, knowing that whatever memory had resurfaced was not a good one. He stepped forward, but Tina caught his arm, shaking her head.

"What did you do?" Tina asked, her wand still raised.

Theseus stared at her, his face pale. "I betrayed…everyone…no, I betrayed Leta."

Grindelwald nodded. “Even without your memories, of that you are absolutely certain. And I do believe that we can call certainty of that magnitude—the truth. Isn’t that right, Theseus? Aren’t you that kind of man? What you believe must be right.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Theseus muttered, burying his face in his hands, digging his fingers into his temples until his knuckles turned white, like he could reach into his head and rip out the memories Grindelwald was bringing up. “Fucking Christ, no.”

Newt's heart sank. Betrayed. It was a word that cut deep, despite the years of irritable scuffles and secrets and explosive arguments, because it still came from someone he trusted with his life. How many times had he felt betrayed by Theseus, by his silences at the dinner table, his slow bowing to their father, his machine-like perfection? And yet it was like Theseus finally understood what he’d done through Newt’s entire childhood—only now it was all different—and the word rang with conviction.

Grindelwald stepped forward, his eyes fixed on Theseus. "You see now, my friend, that you cannot go back to them. You have compromised their mission, their safety. You cannot be trusted, and they will not learn to trust you, not now and not ever."

Theseus looked at Grindelwald, then at Newt and Tina. "I know you’re doing something," he said, his voice cracking. “Ever since you killed her, you’d never let me rest.”

Grindelwald sighed. "I understand your reluctance, Theseus. But you must see that this is bigger than any one person. This is your chance not to repeat the mistakes of your past, as I promise you, I will not harm Newt or Tina. They will be safe."

Newt watched as Theseus's grip on the broken device tightened, his knuckles turning white. More than anything, he wanted Theseus to say something, to explain himself, but whatever conversation he was having was firmly locked within his own head, translated only through a tiny series of gestures, a flicker of his eyes, a twitch of his fingers, that eluded Newt.

"No," Theseus finally whispered. "I can't stay with you and I can't go back to them. Not after—what I—"

But Grindelwald was not one for sentimentality. He stepped forward, his eyes hard and cold. "It could have been anything; I’ll tell you that now. And yet I’m the only one who knows right now, and possibly permanently, depending on whether the device is reversible. It’s your secret that rests with me, and believe me, it carries more of a weight than the others you conceal in your head," he said, his voice low and menacing. "Stay with me, or you leave and risk everything you hold dear, endanger it, become the threat. The choice is yours—but know the chasm that separates you from them is too deep, too stained. And if you cross it, not only will you lose yourself, but I will with certainty—“

The room was still for a moment. Newt could see Theseus’s pulse hammering in his neck.

With a sigh, Grindelwald raised his wand, holding it limply and delicately, and aimed it in Tina’s general direction, looking back at Theseus, lips curled in patronising exasperation.

Her eyes bore into Grindelwald, unwavering even as his wand pointed in her direction. Newt could see the tension in her body, how tight and drawn her shoulders were. “We’ll alert the Brazilian Ministry,” she warned. “You won’t get away with hurting me.”

Grindelwald's lips curled in a cold smile, his gaze fixed on Theseus. The room seemed to shrink; Newt’s gaze flicked desperately up to the crumbling plaster ceiling, behind him to the door that was slammed and locked shut, but there were no answers other than cold dread in his stomach for Tina.

His older brother opened his mouth to speak, but Grindelwald raised his hand, silencing any protest. Instead, with low murmured vowels of some kind of honey seduction, too indistinct for either Newt or Tina to make out, the dark wizard leaned in, lips brushing Theseus’s ear. With an expression of vague horror, as if there was some trust there, Theseus turned to face him, almost bumping noses with the dark wizard, sharing in the secret.

"Theseus!" Newt began, groping around in his head for some kind of language, the right kind of language, a string of words his brother would have confidently told him was persuasive when they were younger. "We can…fix this."

With a tense exhale, Theseus's fingers relaxed slightly on the broken device he held. It was a clear acquisition, a kind of break in the dance of interaction that Newt dimly recognised, was poor at seeing at the best of times—a silent invitation to end the stand-off, maybe.

Grindelwald straightened up. Theseus shook his head.

"Why would I do that?" he muttered, an expression of revulsion crossing his face. "Why would I try and hide what happened from myself?"

"See, you can't remember the full truth, but you can join the dots well enough, can't you?" Grindelwald said.

Newt felt a chill run down his spine at Grindelwald's words. Whatever Theseus had supposedly done, it was clearly something unforgivable. But Newt couldn't believe that his brother could do something so terrible. Surely not. He’d been so good in the last few years, by Theseus standards, evidentially trying hard to be softer, make less of the harsh sacrifices he was so keen on drumming up for the sake of nothing.

"Please," Newt said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Please. You don't have to stay with him. I trust you now; you know I do.”

He was entirely blanked. Theseus’s flat gaze slid over his features and snapped right back to Grindelwald.

"I can't risk their safety," Theseus said. "I'll stay with you."

Grindelwald's lips twisted into a cruel smile. "Good choice," he said. "You won't regret it."

"No," Newt breathed.

Tina gave him a wide-eyed look. "We can't fight Grindelwald," she finally said. "We can't do it."

Theseus shook his head, the weight of his decision heavy on his shoulders. "She’s right. I don't have any other option," he said, his voice hollow.

Newt opened his mouth to protest, but Theseus cut him off. "You don't understand, Newt. I can't remember what I did, but Grindelwald does. I can't risk your safety. Something did happen. I know I've done something wrong. But I can't remember what it is. And I can't hurt you again by being—“

"You're not the kind of person who would willingly hurt others," Newt interrupted, heart hammering in his chest.

Theseus looked at Newt then, his eyes hollow and tired. Those weren’t words Newt had used before. Even if Theseus couldn’t remember it, maybe he sensed it, the old accusations.

Grindelwald smiled, his eyes glinting with a sinister light. "But whether you are or are not, it's all right," he said. "You can make sure that none of them ever find out what kind of monster you really are."

He couldn't let his brother go like this.

"Wait," Newt said, his voice trembling. "Please, just wait.”

Grindelwald's smile widened. "Yes, Newt? What do you have to say?"

“Whatever it is, it’s just a secret—“ Newt started, but even as he said it, he couldn’t deceive himself; Theseus could have been under Grindelwald’s thumb for the entire time he’d been missing. Anything could have happened. Theseus could have done anything.

And no one, at least in their family, had really expected Theseus to join the war, either, to put himself and others at risk like that when his Ministry career was just taking off. To sign up to kill, to fight for a country that had tossed their kind into rivers and burned them at stakes. Eager to get his hands dirty. What of Theseus did he know? Perhaps only the glimmer of someone who was also a child so many decades ago. Could Newt really say the secret wouldn’t endanger the team? Could he make an assessment that would defeat the logic, the skill, the self-knowledge of Theseus himself, proclaimed bloody Head Auror of the British Ministry of Magic?

"It doesn't matter. Don't look at him—don’t you dare talk to him," Theseus cut in, the words directed at Grindelwald alone, ignoring Newt's sharp breath in, blocking out his younger brother's plea, like he was shutting him out. Of course. Of course, Newt had always been small, stupid, and meaningless. Different and to be ignored. His head was humming with the familiarity and unfamiliarity of it—never before had he been dismissed and then abandoned by Theseus. Before, they’d stuck like rats in a glue trap. Instead of making the vague eye contact Newt for once desperately sought, if only for the utility of it, Theseus looked at Grindelwald.

"I'll leave with you. Let’s go—you don’t need to talk to them. You don’t need to hurt them, okay? I’ll fucking go with you, if that’s what I have to do."

Newt didn't want to be spared. Tina stepped towards him, bridging the distance between them, her wand still held high; it was a small gesture of comfort that did nothing to ease the tightness in his chest. He wanted to scream, to lash out at Grindelwald and Theseus for putting them all in this position. But he knew that would only make things worse.

Tina inhaled. "You’re going to be back in the cell we put you in,” she whispered. “Grindelwald—the British Ministry, MACUSA they’ll have your head.”

“Not if the most formerly determined investigator of the British is with me,” Grindelwald said, tilting his chin up. “The illusion of slaughtering my freedom seems to burn like a candle in many people’s nights; if it warms you, let it warm you.”

Grindelwald stepped forward, grabbing Theseus's wrist tightly. Theseus flinched but didn't resist. Newt watched, his heart heavy with defeat. The sound of his own pulse had never been so loud.

Theseus and Newt shared a last look, a silent conversation passing between them that no words could convey. Newt knew he’d never know, never be able to pin it down: how could you put us all in this position—you’re meant to be the responsible one—I just found you—

"Do not follow," Grindelwald commanded. "I have several other followers in this building at this very moment, and they have nothing to lose. They will think little of incurring the wrath of the Brazilian Ministry to kill either of you. In fact, you can be grateful for your traitorous brother for being enough of a distraction to stay me from taking both your lives before you even opened that door."

Stunned into silence, Newt and Tina parted, allowing the other pair through. Eyebrows suddenly furrowing, Tina tried to lash out in a quick jinx, aiming for the small of Grindelwald’s back, but it dissipated into smoke. The moment she readied herself for another, he let out a low laugh.

“I have your sister too, Miss Goldstein,” Grindelwald murmured. “You’d be wise to be a touch more diplomatic.”

Tina gave Newt a tortured look, like her dark eyes had become the mouths of caves, and lowered her wand. Her hand was trembling as she flicked her hair back from her face, head lowered. “Sorry,” she breathed. “Newt—we have to let him go, and then we have to run.”

As soon Grindelwald was over the threshold of the doorway, he aimed his wand over the balcony, turning back with glinting eyes to Newt and Tina. "And, if I'm correct, you're both as much intruders as we are. It would be a shame if someone raised the alarm, hmm?"

An ozone smell—and there was no one standing there anymore.

A few seconds delayed, an almost imperceptible flash of light shot through the darkened balcony corridor, illuminating it like a jolt of lightning in stark contrast to the sunny office. A low, whining klaxon began to build, heavy and apocalyptic in tone, making the ceiling judder and shed flakes of plaster.

The klaxon was growing louder and Newt knew they had to leave, and fast. Grindelwald and Theseus were long gone. Newt and Tina exchanged a panicked glance.

“We have to go,” Tina said. “We have to go, now, or they’ll think we were the ones who did it.”

The sound of Grindelwald's laughter rang in Newt’s ears as Tina wrenched the door open, holding it for him, drying her clammy palms on her short black wool dress. They matched one another’s pace, her steps a little shorter, a little more frantic, beating an uneven rhythm.

Newt and Tina hurried to the ground floor, their footsteps echoing in the empty hallways. Finally, they reached the emergency exit they had entered through with the ministerial key. Newt fumbled in his pocket for a moment before producing it. He inserted it into the lock and twisted hard, feeling a satisfying click as it opened. Through the tunnel. Footsteps loud, the circular walls closing in. To the statue marking it. Then, case in hand, out out out, running as fast as they could to the tree line, where he pulled the latches open as fast as he could so they could get out and away, to somewhere his brother was not.

*

They’d simply walked out of the gate, the same way they’d entered, and no one had been any the wiser: not with the alarm going off. Theseus stumbled as he materialised in the alleyway, disoriented and queasy for the first time in his life from an official Ministry apparition point, his head spinning. Grindelwald steadied him with a tight grip on his arm, a twisted smile on his lips.

"Welcome back, Theseus," he said, his voice dripping with malicious glee. "How was your little trip down memory lane?"

Theseus shook his head, trying to clear the fog that still clouded his thoughts. Seeing his brother after being a prisoner for so long had thrown him off balance, like a flash from another life, and the effects of the temporary pensieve were still active, making him question what he truly knew. He could feel the absence of the memories, the missing pieces holding his secrets and thoughts captive. The world felt both too real and too surreal all at once.

With a sigh, Grindelwald jabbed his wand into the base of Theseus’s skull, pulling away a spiralling helix of silver liquid from his hair with a sweeping movement. The first surge of memories hit him like a tidal wave, fragments of his past flashing before his eyes. Faces he had forgotten, emotions he had suppressed, moments he had locked away—all rushed back with overwhelming intensity. It was as if a dam had broken, and he was flooded with the raw emotions and experiences that he had kept hidden. Slowly, with a dull throbbing in his temples, the shifting, elusive memories returned. Before he’d been found, they’d been fighting.

Fighting.

He’d not joined Grindelwald.

Theseus's eyes widened as the realisation hit him, and he wrenched his arm free from Grindelwald's grasp. “No.”

“The memories were always yours. I merely gave them back to you."

“These memories were taken from me for a reason!" Theseus said, his chest tight, finding it hard to breathe. "You killed Leta, you took everything from me, and now you use my own past against me?"

“You used your past against yourself.”

“No. No, that’s not how it works. You used that damn pensieve on me," he growled, his anger simmering just below the surface. "You took my memories and convinced me that—that everything that happened—because I’d know it was bad, I know I did the worst thing, the worst fucking thing, but I wasn’t so far gone they couldn’t have—that all that was left for me was to join you.“

All the talk was only making him remember more of Vinda, more of it all. He clenched his jaw. “How did I believe you?"

Pure frustration bubbled up inside him. He could have hit Grindelwald, but he’d been punished so badly before; instead, he turned to the wall of the alley and buried the skin of his knuckles into the brick, four, five times, feeling his hand explode with the pain. Shaking, he took a step back, cradling his smarting hand, and whirled back around to face Grindelwald.

"You were going to betray us," Grindelwald said, a hint of accusation in his voice. "I had to make sure you didn't. Weeks I've spent trying to break your will, and yet here we are."

"Now they think I'm a traitor," Theseus said.

His head really fucking hurt. He had to blink shadowy stars out of his vision despite the daylight. So, Grindelwald had played on the suspicion Theseus had, and would always have, that he’d done something unforgivable for getting captured, for allowing what Vinda had done to happen. Even in the office, without his memories, he’d felt it like a spectre trailing fingers down his back, and assumed the worst. The dark wizard’s silver tongue had painted such a picture. A rise and fall, as he’d described the story he wanted to tell all the way back in the factory. A man who’d reluctantly turned his back to alleviate his own guilt for sins committed under the false relief that people wouldn’t get killed for it: that it would be saving them. And he’d fallen for it.

He could have walked out. He could have let Tina take him to the hospital.

If he believed Grindelwald would just let him go—Grindelwald, who’d held on to Percival for six years—he was sorely mistaken. Someone would have died, the survivor whoever Grindelwald judged was best placed to make the vow out of the three of them. Theseus had only been the most convenient pick. He was certain that in Grindelwald’s dreams, it would have been Newt.

"You can't blame them, can you? And for the record, Theseus, I also consider you a traitor. That device was not made for you. It was carefully crafted for my target, and I wasted it on you just to shut you up. Do you have any idea how difficult you have made what was a very simple plan?"

"I don't give a fuck about your plan," Theseus shot back. "I never agreed to betray Dumbledore's team. We'd have both had a bloody easier few weeks if I had. Why didn't you—why did you have to do that?"

Grindelwald laughed, a harsh sound that echoed in the alleyway. "Because what I needed most was for you to keep your silence,” he said. "Of course, now, you can shout your innocence from the rooftops all you want, but it won't change anything. You are a traitor in their eyes, whether you like it or not, not that it is a huge concern of mine or an obstacle to my plans."

"I don't care what they think," Theseus said, his voice low and dangerous, wondering if it was a lie. "I know the truth."

No—he knew it was a lie. He cared, so, so much, about whether he did the right thing, and while what people thought about him didn’t mean much, this would be too far. The thought that people he cared about, including his family and colleagues, would now see him as a traitor, a blood ideologist gnawed at him like a relentless beast. He had always prided himself on his integrity and loyalty, and the idea that his reputation had been tarnished in such a way left him with a sinking feeling of helplessness. It was a feeling that hadn’t waned in a while. No wand, no leverage, no secret connection to Albus to draw on to get him pulled out of the nightmare. From the moment he’d seen Vinda in the German Ministry, he’d sent himself down on a death spiral. Instinctively, gut honed by years of chasing dark wizards, of life and death situations, he sensed he was getting close to the deep pit at its end.

But painting him as a traitor in front of Newt and Tina—was like Grindelwald had already kicked him off the edge, and down.

Grindelwald leaned in. “If I may be honest with you, my dear Auror, I believe you said something about the Lestrange woman. Perhaps you were thinking of your dalliance with Vinda; and that’s hardly truth or faith, is it? In the end, it is indeed a betrayal to memory. Even if they leave us, we should stay bound to them, should we not? Tell me; if you wish to elevate yourself from your increasingly subhuman status, at least indicate to me that you understand the sacrosanct nature of that true, passionate, romantic love.”

Theseus retreated up against the wall of the alleyway, sensing a surprisingly petulant rage from Grindelwald, something he'd been too disoriented by the temporary pensieve to notice before. “Fuck you, you insane bastard—go and—“

Grindelwald cleared his throat.

"I've had enough of you. Forget the vow. I'm not allowing an animal like you anywhere near Albus. You changed the documents, didn't you? You sabotaged the files. You're ruining Percival. You distracted Vinda. In all cases, your existence is making it even harder for me to reconcile with Albus. And if you can't even follow simple orders, if you can't even place an item on command for me, then I know you're not going to make the vow. Too much energy of mine has been wasted in this endeavour. Truthfully, I regret the lost time. I should have executed you in that factory, because this experiment in persuasion has now brought me more pain than pleasure.”

"Because I never willingly joined you,” Theseus said. “Why would I want to help you?"

"You've been sabotaging my plans from the inside. And for what? To protect your precious Dumbledore and his little band of misfits? To keep your filthy Muggles safe? So that you can let them blow one another to pieces?"

Theseus was taken aback by the fury in his voice. "You're the one who's been torturing me for weeks. The Great War aside, you’ve the one who's causing destruction—burning villages, killing children, clearing out homes for your own use—not them.”

"You're nothing but pathetic," Grindelwald hissed in his face. "All those little dalliances, I can imagine, and probably with Muggles and wizards alike. Disgusting. For all those graces, many of which have already abandoned you, clearly, you’re just a weak, spineless little whore. That's how you got Leta Lestrange, isn't it? And your weakness is how you lost her."

There was pin drop silence for several heartbeats.

Theseus stared at Grindelwald, eyes darting between the sweat beading on the man’s upper lip and their surroundings, brick walls pushing in on each side and the faintest murmurs of life in the distance. If he hadn’t been able to hear the harsh rasp of Grindelwald’s breathing, a constant reminder not to let his guard down—anger, it was anger burning through him, rage, pure and simple, and it was dangerous—he would have tipped his head back to see the Brazilian sky just one more time before Grindelwald ended him.

"Did you just call me a whore?" Theseus asked, giving in and retreating a half-step backwards, the gritty alley floor crunching under the sole of his shoes.

"Yes," Grindelwald spat. "You are a whore for your ideals, Auror. You're so desperate to cling to your damned moral high ground that you'll do anything to maintain it. And what are you going to do about it? Cry to your precious Dumbledore? He won't save you now. You're practically a gutter rat; the Scamander name is beyond besmirched, and rightfully so, seeing the defects of your bloodline."

Theseus recoiled from Grindelwald's words, his blood boiling. "You're sick, you know that? You think you're some sort of martyr, but you're a deluded fascist."

But despite it all, the memory of Newt and Tina flashed through Theseus's mind, and he couldn't help but feel a sense of relief wash over him. He had saved their lives, and that was something. Grindelwald would have made good on his threats, he was sure of it, or worse, had Percy do it for him. Their lives were all subordinate to the man’s vision. He couldn’t have lost Newt—and, perhaps a subordinate concern to that age-old, primordial fear, he couldn’t have made Newt feel as he himself did with Leta if he’d caused something to happen to Tina—

Who’s saying Newt doesn’t already feel that way? He lost Leta too, a little voice in his head argued, and then, in a haunting echo: I love you, and her eyes, resting in between the two brothers, burdened with meaning, glistening with finality. He thought about 1925, about Newt calling him a monster: so out of character.

Grindelwald was unhinged, more than he had ever seen him before.

"Oh," he said, shaking his head. "You really don't understand, do you? It's not about fighting me. It's about accepting the inevitable. You're going to lose, Theseus. And when you do, you'll wish you had made that vow. Because you're not useful to me any more. And people who aren't useful to me tend to disappear."

"Disappear me, then," Theseus said.

Go on, he thought, even though he wasn’t sure whether Grindelwald could read the thoughts trapped in the spring trap of his mind any more. End it. End it.

"Oh, I will," Grindelwald said, his voice dripping with venom. "I make people disappear very slowly. You'll beg for mercy, Theseus Scamander. You'll beg for death."

Well, this is it, he thought, the tension in his inner voice easing. A cart rattled down the street beyond the alleyway. It was hot. He could feel the wall against his palms, rough and dry, and wondered whether it was a house or a shop he was leaning against, whether there was someone inside, and what they were doing. They couldn’t help him—so they weren’t of much use.

It had always been Theseus’s vague intention to go out with pride, and although latter years had made him less concerned about the manner of dying, he suspected Grindelwald would not let him have that choice.

“Alright,” he said, keeping his emotions in check—the pain in his hand from punching the wall helped with that, with bringing him back to his old, normal self, with ignoring the humming memories of Leta’s death and years of nights staring at the ceiling and planning revenge. “Fine. Do what you want.”

“Soon, I will,” Grindelwald promised, jabbing his wand into his ribs and casting a painful stunning spell, turning everything black.

Chapter Text

Lally hurried to open the door of the safe house—this was a terraced townhouse in a heavy, industrial part of the city, and everything constantly stank of smoke—and was greeted by the sight of Newt and Tina.

“Tina!” she exclaimed, hurrying forwards and throwing her arms around the other woman’s neck. She hugged her tightly before pulling away, smile fading. “Oh, Mercy Lewis, what did you two do?”

“Got ourselves into a mess,” Tina said.

Her dark eyes seemed to swallow up the rest of her face as she stared past Lally into the depths of the safe house. Stomach dropping, Lally gestured them both inside, sensing there was bad news to come.

“I suppose I won’t waste time asking why you’re here with us,” Lally said. “And instead will ask what happened?”

“First, we need to sit,” Tina said, glancing at Newt, who was staring blankly at the rickety staircase ahead of them. “And maybe get a hot drink. We’ve just got back from Brazil and it wasn’t the easiest of journeys. It involved a very dodgy passageway that went through Libya, and to get from there to here, we had to give the man some gold, pure gold, because he wouldn’t take any currencies.”

“Libya? Brazil?” Lally asked. “Total opposite directions. What?”

“We were following Grindelwald,” Tina explained, brow wrinkling. “I can say that, can’t I? If it’s already happened, then surely he can’t see it with his foresight.”

“I damn hope we can talk about the past in peace,” Lally said, grimacing, and opened the door to the living room. Jacob jumped up from the sofa where he’d been doing crosswords and, with one look at the newcomers, headed straight to the kitchen.

“Except we followed Grindelwald a little too well,” Newt said quietly. “And we found him.”

“Shit!” Lally said. “Are you two alright?”

“We didn’t fight,” Tina said.

Lally arched her eyebrow. “Teen, you absolutely could not have fought—and Dumbledore has already put all the evidence in front of us that he’s the only one who can fight Grindelwald in any measure, so however many promotions you’ve got and however high your grades were in duelling, you cannot beat yourself up for crossing paths with the man and nothing more.”

“We saw Theseus,” Newt blurted out. He slumped onto the sofa.

Her stomach, which had started to recover slightly upon seeing no evident wounds on either of her friends, did a new, interesting thing, somewhere between a flip and a twist. She sucked her teeth. “That’s not good?”

“He was with Grindelwald,” Newt said.

“With—in what way?” Lally asked, thinking back to her earlier mental debate over this exact issue, cursing the man for being such a closed book.

“I don’t know.”

Tina leapt in. “We heard noise in one of the offices—when we went in Theseus was there, seemed to be confused—and then somehow Grindelwald appeared—“

“He must have been there all along,” Lally said, butting in. “To be honest, someone as powerful as him could probably get through the anti-apparition wards around a Ministry, as I’m sure the Brazilian Ministry probably also has. But it would take a vast amount of effort. Like cracking a puzzle. I’ve managed it a few times—helping MACUSA check their security— and almost always been fully incapacitated afterwards. Without adequate compensation, I dare say. Besides, we know Grindelwald is quite the master when it comes to wards and long-standing magics.”

She tucked her hands into her lap and realised she’d been talking too much.

Tina gave her a quick, sharp nod. “Yeah. It’s likely. So he appeared, and said all this stuff about how Theseus had already joined him. We didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him but Grindelwald put his confusion down to this metal thing he called a temporary pensieve. Lally?”

She shook her head. “That’s not charms magic. I’ve got nothing on memory magic.”

Newt winced but didn’t say anything.

Tina leaned forwards on the sofa, gripping both her knees tightly, straightening out the hem of her dress. “So then,” she said, voice tinged with a certain grit. “Then, Theseus seemed to think that all sounded right, and left with Grindelwald, who triggered the emergency alarm on his way out, just to top it off. Newt and I barely got back. We weren’t the ones breaking in and, I suspect, trying to fix Vogel’s court case, but still Grindelwald managed to walk out without us touching a hair on his head.”

“We wouldn’t have been able to fight him,” Newt mumbled.

Tina looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “But we could have tried.”

Newt turned to face her, eyes raking her face, a silent plea in them. “No, Tina, we wouldn’t have been able to. I don’t know about you, but I barely escaped with my life the last time Grindelwald paid any special attention to me. If he’d wanted to, he could have killed us there. Why not? He’s wanted to test whether Dumbledore would mourn for me—for several years now.”

Jacob looked a bit green. “Wouldn’t he have got—I dunno—arrested? If it was right in the Brazilian place?”

“You’d hope,” Lally said. “But the unfortunate reality is that there are sympathisers everywhere ready to turn a blind eye, as we’ve already learnt.”

“In this case,” Newt pointed out, “it was a national holiday, so there also weren’t that many people around. For instance, there was no one on the same floor who we could have, erm, heard us, which is rather unfortunate, considering my usual experience of the Ministries is that they’re filled with busybodies.”

There was a brief pause. Newt swallowed. “But Theseus did let Grindelwald inside. Um, so, holiday or not…I suppose it just means they weren’t caught.”

Tina’s steely demeanour collapsed instantly as she sat back on the sofa and drew both her knees up to her chest, kicking off her boots and sighing. She stretched her arms out to grab her ankle, gently hitting her forehead against her knees with a soft groan, and then unfolded once more, hair rumpled. “I know,” she said. “I know, I know—I’m so sorry.”

The magizoologist blinked, curling a strand of tawny hair between his fingers. “Why are you sorry?” he asked quietly.

“That wasn’t the right way to handle the situation, the way we did,” she admitted. “MACUSA’s training doesn’t focus much on negotiation and information extraction, but I’m still normally better at it than most. I wasn’t this time…”

Newt sighed. “But has anyone ever successfully negotiated with Grindelwald? It’s i—impossible. He wouldn’t listen to us—I’m sure he thinks we’re beneath him. And trust me, I have a gut instinct—for when people see me like that.”

“I feel you, pal,” Jacob said. “He wants to enslave us. Me and my No Maj buddies. Like, poof! Bottom of the food chain.”

“No, I know, but I should have managed it,” Tina said, sighing. “Mercy Lewis, you’re too forgiving. I wasted too much time trying to interrogate him—it looked so suspicious—when I could have been checking the room, figuring out a way out we could all take. Or just knocking him out—he didn’t have a wand, as long as we didn’t trigger the wards—he might have put up a fight, but given the alarm got triggered in the end anyway—“

“I think you were doing the right thing,” Newt mumbled. “We were right to be suspicious. Device or not, Theseus is the last person to fall for a total lie, not when we were also there—he wasn’t alone, nor did he seem excessively vulnerable—so I can’t help but wonder, even though perhaps it’s a possibility we shouldn’t be touching on, whether there’s a grain of truth to what Grindelwald said that convinced him to do it again at the end.”

“Do what again?” Lally asked, fiddling with the edges of the fraying cushion near her.

“Grindelwald said Theseus joined him to protect his allies,” Newt explained.

Tina sighed. “Newt, did you not see the way he was looking at you? He was testing the both of you, trying to see whether you’d respond. He said allies, but he really meant us. This team; not the Ministry.”

“Oh,” Jacob said. “Oh, no. That’s how he got Queenie, the silver tongued son of a bitch.”

“You said he left with him?” Lally asked. “To be honest, you two—you both almost picked a fight with Grindelwald. Someone had to give up something there for all three of you to walk out alive. Teen, the whole plan has been misdirection, distraction, to avoid being face-to-face with him. I’m guessing Newt’s asked you to get involved, but Newt also understands how Dumbledore’s asked us to operate, so there’s been some…choices made here. ”

“Eulalie Hicks, are you telling me off for bending the rules?” Tina asked, raising her eyebrows.

“I’m just saying that all the reasonable people on our team are starting to go batty.”

“But it’s—that’s a crazy situation,” Jacob interjected, adding in some of the sympathy Lally had accidentally eschewed.

“No, let’s go through it again,” Lally said. “We need to look at it from more angles. There’s got to be more there than meets the eyes. Some missing details.”

She smiled at Tina. “And, for the record, I’m glad you’re on the team. I was desperately missing the presence of another woman,” she paused. “No offence to Bunty, of course, but she’s here about as often as Albus is, and spends so much time in the case that I’m not sure whether she’s hugely interested in talking to me.”

“Bunty is quite…shy,” Newt explained.

“Tina can be, too,” Lally couldn’t resist saying, but then placed her palms together as if praying and placed both her fingers under her chin, propping it up and letting the press of her fingers guide her thinking. “So Grindelwald one hundred percent is involved in this whole Theseus mystery. I’ll have to tell Dumbledore that; he was so against the concept.”

Newt copied Tina’s pose, balling himself up on the sofa. “Go on,” he said, rocking a little. “What do you want to know?”

Tina gave Lally a warning glance, shaking her head slightly. Lally sighed. Of course Tina didn’t want the man who looked suspiciously like her crush to get upset, but someone had to ask questions and get answers. Scrunching up her face, indicating that she was sorry but she had to go ahead, Lally inhaled. Before she could speak, Tina gently placed her hand on Newt’s back; he tensed up but did not shake it off.

“Just tell me whatever else you remember,” Lally said.

“I remember everything, but I don’t know if I can say it,” Newt admitted.

“That’s fine,” Tina said.

“It’s not, really, but I appreciate the sentiment,” Newt mumbled.

“What’s the important question?” Jacob asked. “Let’s just try and figure out the one thing, huh? And then I’ll cook something nice for everyone and we can take a break, rest our eyes, and get back to the problem all fresh.”

“What should we do next?” Lally suggested.

“How do we get him back?” Tina offered.

Newt sighed. “I was thinking more along the lines of why, but he’s my brother, so I understand that it’s not a productive question, seeing as it doesn’t change anything,” and he paused. “But, it’s just—it makes sense but it doesn’t make sense, it seems—well, the worst of it is that I can believe that it has happened. But at the same time, you see, he’s made a choice, and understanding it might not change anything.”

“Hey, man, don’t talk yourself out of your question before you start,” Jacob said.

His shoulders sagged. “Mmmh,” Newt replied noncommittally.

Lally wanted to press on the actual situation, which still remained painfully murky from the brief summary Tina had given, but out of their three questions in an impossible situation, she could at least recognise that only one of them could be answered in a way that seemed reassuring.

“You know, Jacob’s right,” she said. “I suppose the most important question to resolve right now is the why just so that we can determine whether we want to tell Dumbledore this now or sit on it for a bit longer.”

“Lal, are you sure sitting on it is a good idea? I mean, your Dumbledore guy generally seems to have a pretty smart idea of what’s going on,” Jacob said.

“It’s just a thought,” she said defensively.

Newt heaved another deep sigh. “We can’t tell the Ministry of Magic. They’ve been taking my excuses surprisingly well. I don’t think it would do any good to disrupt that now.”

“What excuses?” Tina asked.

“Erm, I said that our mother was in a hospice, and Theseus was taking time off to care for her as in line with his responsibilities as the oldest son,” Newt recited mechanically, as if directly recalling what he’d written on the forged letter.

Jacob blinked. “You told them that your mum is dying?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Newt said.

“Is she?” Jacob asked, sympathy beginning to filter into his tone.

“No,” Newt said.

“Oh,” Jacob said. “…have you told her that she’s meant to be dying right now?”

“No,” Newt repeated.

“I mean, what do you want her to do with that information?” Lally pointed out. “She’s probably not going to want to actually commit herself to the hospice.”

The corners of Newt’s eyes creased. “I doubt that too.”

Tina frowned. “She’s safe from Grindelwald, isn’t she? What about your father? Are they living somewhere protected? Because from what Grindelwald said—he sounded as though he was ready to turn his sights outwards—“

“Dad died in 1913,” Newt said. “1912? No, 1913. Mum will be fine. We lived in the countryside; the house has ancient family enchantments on it to protect it, even though it’s in the middle of nowhere. And I’m fairly sure Theseus didn’t give the Ministry her address, for this exact reason. I mean, they didn’t want to take mine, apparently—weren’t sure that they could reach me if it was an emergency because of my travelling. He wrote down some place in France for mum, I think.”

Tina, despite herself, laughed. “I didn’t know that was an option. I should have done that to stop all my letters coming to the apartment. Queenie just wouldn’t stop reading them. Always thought it was funny when I got a complaint filed about me. But she always cooked strudel those evenings.”

“I’ll cook you strudel sometime,” Jacob offered. “Can’t do the fancy wand stuff, but I can add the secret Polish touch, and trust me when I say it’s like a whole new world of taste.”

Newt was on a different plane of conversation altogether. He let out an uneasy hum. “I don’t know if Theseus will like me talking about him,” he said, redirecting the conversation back to the original topic.

“He’s not here, is he?” Lally said.

“But when he comes back…” Newt started, and then trailed off. “…if he comes back…”

“What, he’ll be mad? I’m sure you’ll both have bigger problems,” Lally pointed out.

“Lally,” Tina hissed.

“She’s probably right,” Newt said, but Lally couldn’t help but notice the hint of the smile that touched his face, making the freckles scattered across his nose jump, as he looked in the general direction of her friend, seemingly grateful for the defence.

Oh Merlin, we’ve got a couple on our hands, she thought.

Jacob leaned forward. "So, you don't think he'd just turn on you like that, right?"

Newt hesitated before answering, his gaze dropping to his hands clasped tightly around his knees. "I don't think so," he admitted softly.

"There ya have it," Jacob suggested. "The guy was just under a lot of pressure and had to make a hard decision. We can tell Dumbledore that and, um, probably keep it a secret from his Ministry people, because they don't seem like such a nice lot."

"We're going to tell Dumbledore, what, exactly?" Lally asked. "Newt's brother made a difficult decision: which, from what you two have told us, was being caught in a foreign Ministry with Grindelwald, Grindelwald appearing, and then leaving with Grindelwald. Where in that was the difficult decision and not just someone getting caught in the act?"

"Now is not the time for a debate," Tina said, shooting daggers at Lally.

Lally softened her tone. "I just want to get a better idea of what we're up against after being kept in the dark so long by Dumbledore, Newt, I don't mean anything bad by it."

He looked up at her through his fringe, gaze resting somewhere between her left eyebrow and ear. "As a fellow academic, Lally, I understand your curiosity and desire to investigate," he said in a quiet, wry tone.

"We need to make sure we're not walking into a trap. Grindelwald is dangerous, and if Theseus is really with him, we need to consider the potential consequences for all of us. Theseus knows our plan," Lally said. "Obviously not the specifics, but the general gist of it."

Tina and Newt shared a searching glance. "Grindelwald didn't actually say anything about our plan," Newt said.

Tina nodded in agreement. "He didn't seem that interested in any of us, to be honest."

Lally raised an eyebrow. "And you believe him? Grindelwald is a master manipulator. He could have been playing you, making you think he didn't care about your plan when in reality, he's already one step ahead of us."

Newt's brow furrowed in concern. "I didn't think of that."

"Which is why we need to be careful," Lally said firmly. "We can't afford to be reckless. We need to know where his loyalties lie."

There was a brief pause. Newt sniffed and aggressively wiped the back of his hand over his nose. "Theseus hates Grindelwald. Why would he join him? He killed Leta. If I hate Grindelwald for that, surely Theseus does."

Lally winced. It was a good point, and one that made her feel bad for pushing the perspective of the devil's advocate. “What about his ideology? Might he have been swayed by that rather than the man himself?”

Newt made a derisive noise. “I thought we were a team. Have any of you actually talked to Theseus?”

“He’s not said much,” Lally pointed out.

Jacob sighed. “Maybe he just doesn’t say much, Lal; we can’t all be as whip-smart as you. Could just be a quiet guy.”

“Compared to me, not really,” Newt said, glancing around the room. “Being quiet has nothing to do with it. What, do you think—do you seriously think—that’s a sign he was going to turn traitor to Grindelwald?”

“Mercy Lewis,” Lally said. “No. No. I went too far. I suppose it just…is hard to make sense of without knowing that much.”

Newt looked as though he’d come to a decision, like her pushing the argument far past where it was fair had finally caused his thoughts to solidify. She watched tentatively.

“Theseus doesn’t change his mind,” Newt said finally, punctuating every third word with a furling and unfurling of his hands. “And our senses of right and wrong—aren’t the same, but I thought he was the least likely to make a decision like this. It seems wrong. And—he’s my brother. Merlin’s beard. Does no one else see that? I’ve known him my entire life. We don’t understand one another very often, and we both gave up on one another about a decade ago, but—“

“It’s different,” Tina supplied.

He turned to look at her. “Like you and Queenie,” he said. “He could be a traitor and I’d still hope he wasn’t.”

There was a brief, contemplative silence. Lally fiddled with the waistband of her tweed skirt, tucking in her blouse again.

Tina gave him a small smile, a deep sadness in her eyes. “Just like Queenie and I.”

Newt crumpled a little at that. “Tina,” he said, searching her face. “Could we talk about this—just us?”

“Let’s…um…get some food rustled up,” suggested Jacob as Lally opened her mouth.

Lally let out a gentle sigh, recognising that this was a conversation that, if it happened at all, she wouldn’t be a party to. “Come, Jacob, I’ll help you do the washing up.”

*

As soon as the other two left the room, Newt shuffled back on the sofa, giving himself space to put his suitcase down for the first time since they’d entered, squarely between him and Tina.

“Do you want to go inside?” he asked quietly.

Tina nodded.

Incongruously to the grey and smoggy streets they’d walked through to get to the safe house, the sun was just setting in the world of the case, lighting up the landscape beyond the wooden workshop in a warm glow. Tina walked over to a window and just stood there for a few moments, feeling her heavy breath collecting in her lungs. When she turned back, Newt was gnawing his lip, twisting his fingers together. She was so used to seeing him careless, a free spirit—even in that death chamber he’d been calm—that his anxiety unnerved her. Instantly, and she didn’t know why, she wanted to somehow soothe it. But she’d always been a damn caretaker under her tough exterior, whether dragon pox had taken her parents from her or not.

Newt cleared his throat and shifted on his feet. "I wanted to talk to you about what happened with Theseus," he said, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere behind her.

Tina nodded, taking a deep breath. "It’s a good idea to go through it again, while the memories are still fresh.”

"I just don't understand how he could have fallen for Grindelwald's lies," Newt said, his voice tight with emotion. "We were raised to stand up for what's right, to fight against tyranny of that level. Theseus knows that."

"Remember," she said carefully, not sure whether it was going to be the right thing to say. "Remember that Grindelwald told both us and Theseus that he turned to protect us."

"It doesn't make sense. We're protected by Dumbledore, essentially, and I'm sure Grindelwald knows it. We're untouchable, at least at this point in the plan. Theseus must have understood that too. It's too much, even for him, to go that far."

"What do you mean, it's too much?" Tina asked. "We had a close call. I'm still not sure about what exactly happened, but I think that—"

"No, it's too much for him to betray everything he believes in just to protect us. If you knew him—it’s morals over people, from what I’ve seen. Perfect for the Ministry when the two align, from my, um, my experience, until they get ready to throw you aside like a used tissue. No. There has to be something else going on, something, um, that we don't know about. Theseus has always been the one to make the tough calls," and he chuckled mirthlessly. "Oh, he's always been a fan of the truth and facing reality and making the decisions that need to be made, but this? This is beyond that. This is betrayal."

Tina watched as Newt's hands clenched into fists at his sides, his eyes shining with an intensity that she had never seen before.

"How can he have spent years telling me to pick a side, and then, when we were right in front of him, when we could have done something, go with Grindelwald?" Newt said.

"We don't know what Theseus is going through right now. Maybe he's conflicted, maybe he's in over his head, maybe––"

"Maybe he's just betrayed us, and betrayed Dumbledore, too," Newt interrupted, his voice low and bitter.

Tina recoiled slightly. "Newt, please don't say that. Theseus is your brother, he loves you."

"He'd never let me make one decision," Newt mumbled. "No, he just decided that he had to leave me behind.”

There was a certain resignation in the anger of his tone, as if this wasn’t a new occurrence.

Tina sighed, understanding the pain and anger that Newt must be feeling. "I know it's hard, Newt. But we have to remember that Theseus is not the enemy. Grindelwald is. And we have to focus on stopping him."

Newt nodded, sighing, fingers still twisting around and around one another. "You're right," he said. "But—but I’ve spent weeks now feeling as if something is wrong, finding it hard to concentrate—I just want to be with my creatures: nothing else eases the feeling. We’ve spent far longer than this apart before. It’s strange. It’s not that I’m missing him, I don’t think. It’s something else; more like when you touch a Thestral, and your hand goes all cold. Like there’s something about the world that’s fundamentally off, but all I can do is let it chew at me.”

“You’ve touched a Thestral?”

He shrugged a shoulder, as if it was commonplace. “Yes.”

She supposed he’d travelled so far and so wide it was bound to happen.

“It’s good if it helps to look after your creatures, as long as you’re also looking after yourself. People only care so long,” Tina said sympathetically, thinking about the utter silence she’d had at work, at how no one had so much as enquired about Queenie Goldstein, the tea girl, and why she no longer made her rounds. “With my sister, even the purebloods haven’t said anything, and you’d think—they’d congratulate her, or something equally as bizarre—but she’s still not the right kind for them.”

Newt seemed as though he was both listening and not, existing in a kind of anxious parallel, head bowed and shoulders tight, hands still weaving as if working an invisible loom. It was a movement so familiar to her, and yet subtle and quiet, unobtrusive.

“It doesn’t help that we’ve lied about where he’s gone. But, even so,” Newt began. “It’s like everyone has just accepted that Theseus is missing from our team, including me. That’s not right, is it? It’s normal—to miss people. Humans are meant to be social animals. This is meant to feel uncomfortable, and it does, but maybe not as much as it should do, because Dumbledore will help us eventually. I suppose when the election is over—when the political consequences, whatever those bloody are or mean, of telling the Ministry isn’t so bad, and when we’ve perhaps defeated Grindelwald, so Dumbledore can afford to suffer whatever stupid things the Ministry will want him to do—consequences and the like—“

His hands stilled and suddenly, he clasped them together. Newt cleared his throat quietly, continuing with a little wariness around his eyes. “It’s been a while since I felt so wrong. But it’s doubly painful when, for the first time in years, I can’t just let my feelings be without calling them normal or not—when the whole situation is so far from anything I know that I can’t even use my intuition anymore.”

She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but he seemed sincere. It was like disorientation, being out of sync. There was no need for him to punish himself for it, but saying as much felt as though it would be patronising.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong, or right, or normal, or not,” Tina began. “About any of this. And I know that we were meant to wait until the election to find Grindelwald. No, I know. We went from investigating his movements to accidentally running parallel on his plan. Probably not what Dumbledore wanted you to do.”

“It doesn’t matter what he expects us to do; we’ll never understand that. We’re just doing what he tells us to do. But I don’t understand what we’re meant to say in the meantime. No one seems to care that he's been captured by Grindelwald. They're all so focused on the next move, the next plan, that they've forgotten about him. And he went with Grindelwald, he switched sides, but he didn't look—he didn't look well."

Tina winced. "I understand, Newt. I know what it's like to lose someone you love to this war," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"But it's hard to keep fighting when your own family—“ Newt said, and then made a mirthless noise. "And, see, we were barely family for a long time, all because of Leta. Well, not Leta at all. Because of us."

"What happened?"

"Theseus happened," Newt said. "Theseus always happened. From being Dad's favourite, to becoming an Auror, joining the Ministry, trying to trap me there too, to joining the bloody Great War—all the violence, all the killings!—to having his fianceé be my only childhood friend, and making that all difficult too. You see, I know I'm different, but I don't make things hard. I just keep my distance and don't get involved. That's what you're meant to do. It's worked too, I think, because look—we’ve been apart for weeks—and there, in that office, did he really say anything meaningful? It could have been the last time we saw one another. And he said nothing. In a way, then, you could argue, um, you could argue that saying nothing actually means everything.”

Tina could see the pain etched onto Newt's face as he spoke about his brother. She knew that the bond between siblings was a complicated one, but she had never seen it quite like this. The relationship between her and Queenie had been simple. Easy as breathing. Until it hadn’t been.

"I'm sorry, Newt," she said softly. "I had no idea that things were that difficult between you and Theseus."

"He never understood me, Tina. So I decided that I didn't need to understand him. And look where we are! And look where he is! He went to try and arrest that woman in the German Ministry and then next thing we see of him, he's standing with Grindelwald and taking his hand and—sacrificing himself for us—joining Grindelwald—and it's like I don't even know him any more. Like the last time I thought I knew him was—a long time ago."

Through this long string of words, Newt’s voice was never loud, never went above what Tina would consider the lower limit for the volume of a polite conversation. There was a brief pause.

“There you have it,” Tina said, a little wryly. “Times like this, you just have to hate everyone, hate them all, like you said. Queenie was never a fan of that approach, called me an old meanie, but hey. It happens.”

Newt sighed. “I didn’t mean it when I said that, if I’m honest.”

She looked around the workshop, at its cluttered surfaces and the small marks of care everywhere, fine instruments and complicated potions, all to ensure the wellbeing of his beloved creatures. “I know you didn’t.”

“Just don’t see what Grindelwald sees in Theseus,” Newt mumbled. He paused, seeming to consider it, and then added in a lighthearted joke that didn’t match his slumped shoulders. “It’d be bloody exhausting. He's a headache even for me, and I'm his brother. Unless Grindelwald constantly wants to be told what to do and how to do it, or he enjoys the constant bickering and arguing...”

Tina looked out of the wooden window again, at the way that the smear marks of a dirty cloth on the pane caught the low light. "I think Grindelwald enjoys having people like Theseus around him. It makes him feel powerful, to have convinced someone with such authority to switch sides," she said, trying to offer some perspective.

"Power," Newt repeated, his voice heavy with disgust. "It's always about power, isn't it? It's what drove Theseus to become an Auror. It's what drives Grindelwald to do what he does."

"I don't think it's just about power," Tina said, her tone thoughtful. "It's about fear too. People join Grindelwald because they're scared of what he might do if they don't."

Newt sighed, his gaze dropping to the ground. "That’s the problem. Theseus has always been against that kind of thing, even when we were kids. He used to stand up for me. Maybe he had to, I suppose, with the way people were, still are. Even so, I do wonder whether he really believed it, whether it was, um, all true. I think he was still scared of what my behaviour did to our family’s reputation."

“Sticking up for you?” Tina smiled softly. "He sounds like a good brother."

"He is, about forty percent of the time."

"You don't have to know everything about someone," Tina said. "Sometimes, it's enough to just appreciate the parts of them that you do know."

"But if I don't know everything, they don't make sense," he said, tugging at his hair. "He'd always say how concerned he was. All the time, when I was simply doing my work, what I was meant to be doing. It's like he doesn't grasp that it goes both ways, that his pulling something like this might make me worry too."

"Does he believe in the greater good?" Tina asked.

Newt shrugged. "I have no idea. The greater good isn't Ministry work, is it? Not officially. So, in that regard, seeing as that's what he likes to talk about, I—I'm clueless. Apparently, we're heading towards another war, he’s mentioned that on and off, not the Great War, a different war, but Merlin if he tells me what's going on in his head."

Tina squeezed his arm. "I'm sorry."

"He's my brother," Newt whispered, his voice breaking. "I don't want to hate him, but I don't know how to forgive him either."

"Newt," she said gently, "we will find Theseus. We will bring him back. And we will help him."

The workshop was, when she really thought about it, really looked at it, a place of beauty, with its wooden walls and fine instruments spinning everywhere, somehow muffled, lacking the usual humming and buzzing so that the rush of the wind outside was the loudest sound.

The wind, and Newt—Newt making a quiet, sad noise, almost silent.

He stared at her elbow, somewhere around there, and nodded, the tears finally spilling over and running down his cheeks. "I just don't know how to do that," he said, his voice breaking.

Tina took a step closer to Newt, placing her hand on his cheek and wiping away his tears with her thumb. She looked into his eyes, seeing the pain and vulnerability there. "We'll figure it out. We'll find a way."

Newt sniffled, wiping away his tears with the back of his hand. "Thank you, Tina," he said, his voice shaky but filled with gratitude. "And maybe Queenie will come back too.”

"I hope so," Tina said softly. "And if she does, we'll be there for her too. I’ll be there for her. More than ever before."

The silence stretched in between them again, and despite what she’d sworn in the back rooms of the art exhibition about not letting this mission get more complicated with the addition of her fondness for him, even after all this time, she felt a confession bubble up in her chest. The softness of the light through the workshop windows and the post-fight adrenaline were softening her, perhaps unforgivably.

"I'm glad I answered your letter," Tina managed. "Because, you know, I hoped, maybe a little, that I could find her again in Europe—"

"It's okay, Tina," he murmured. "It's okay to be sad."

It was, perhaps, the first time in her adult life that someone had said that to her face, and it all hit her again, the magnitude of their circumstances crashing down on her like a breaking wave.

She bit her lip.

Queenie would never hurt a fly. She’d just wanted to get married. Saying as much aloud felt painfully redundant when it was so true.

Newt slowly took her hand in his. "Come on," he said gently, leading her outside into the fading sunlight. "Let's sit outside for a while. It's a beautiful evening."

They stepped out into the warm evening air, the sun casting a glow over everything it touched. Newt led Tina over to a bench underneath a sprawling oak tree, and they sat down side by side. The leaves rustled softly in the breeze, and birds chirped in the distance. She watched Newt from the side, examining the prow of his nose, his gentle lips, his freckles. It was so hard to tell what he was thinking—and of course, she no longer had Queenie to tell her. Back when they’d first all met in her New York apartment, Queenie, Jacob, her, Newt, she hadn’t known just how special a thing it was. Why would she? She was Tina Goldstein, notorious non-receiver of special things, always passed over, never looking out for them, focused the vast majority of the time on mere mortal tasks like not fucking up rather than fate’s blessings.

She wondered whether Newt had dreams about Theseus standing, eyes dark, by Grindelwald as the world as they knew it collapsed around them. Whether he had dreams he came home, sat down at the kitchen table, turned to one side, and sweetly—no, Theseus didn’t speak sweetly, maybe firmly—reveal that his homecoming was a mere recruitment drive for another pure agent of the cause. It had been five years. Of course she had dreams about Queenie killing her, of having been twisted so far past her natural nature that she’d just broken.

Did Newt have dreams of him being dead?

Did Newt have dreams of it all being his fault?

She didn’t think so: either not yet, or not at all, from their conversation. Well, she didn’t want to sound like a madwoman, as little as the Englishman would judge. She imagined, instead, with the help of the case, its grass, trees, sky, all so beautiful—instead, she imagined being back in Central Park, feeding the ducks with Queenie.

Tina stretched her aching legs out before her and sat in silence, the pair of them both lost in memories, happy for the lack of need to share them, grateful for the silence.

Chapter Text

1901 — August, the doctor’s appointment

St Mungo’s Hospital of Magical Maladies and Injuries

Report on Child Patient

Patient Information:

Name: Newton Artemis Fido Scamander

DOB: 24th February, 1897

Age: 4

Date of examination: 2nd August, 1901

Observations

During the examination, the patient, Newton Artemis Fido Scamander displayed signs of delayed development and heightened sensory sensitivity. Newton was visibly distressed when approached by medical personnel, leading to an increased heart rate and physical resistance. It should be noted that the patient's reactions were not typical for a child of his age and demonstrated an unusual level of aversion.

Furthermore, Newton Scamander appears stunted in both speech and social capacities compared to typical children of comparable ages. Social inhibition appears almost complete compared to typical children at parallel ages who display aptitude for communication, interaction, and imaginative activities. The parents reiterate that the child having spoken, with proof of verbal and cognitive functions, is an indicator of standard development. Assessment in an objective clinical setting proves this not the case.

Determining Newton’s cognitive faculties proved challenging, given the difficulties interacting directly. Newton showed limited ability to follow simple commands or complete basic puzzles. However, no conclusive diagnosis of feeblemindedness can be made at this preliminary stage, due to the youthful age of the patient.

As part of the standard neurological examination, reflex responses were tested using both locomotor and psychosomatic stimuli. Tactile stimulation provoked similar excessive reactions. Light pressure applied to the limbs led to forceful withdrawal marked by fearful vocalisations. The child's non-compliant physicality required restraining charms to complete a full survey for deformities or deficiencies, as per regulations. No physiological anomalies were noted.

Nerve testing spells revealed delayed pupillary responses and lack of tracking to a moving wand, indicating sensory integration abnormalities. When walked across the room, Newton moved in a clumsy, uncoordinated manner with a wide-based gait. He required his brother's hand on his shoulder for stability and direction.

Inquiry into his medical history via the mother, Mrs. Leonore Scamander, revealed substantially delayed speech development. At nearly three years of age, Newton vocalises only simple one-syllable utterances, with no capacity for phrase-building. He fails to respond when addressed by name, suggesting impairment in receptive language as well. No attempts at verbalisation were observed throughout the entirety of the examination.

Note:

The patient's elder sibling (age 12), upon witnessing medical personnel attempting to approach Newton, physically intervened and attempted to decline standard procedures on Newton’s behalf, despite lack of guardianship rights.

As pubescence approaches, susceptible individuals may develop various nervous afflictions or unnatural preoccupations that strain rational self-governance. Ultimately, the sibling (12) was taken for separate evaluation by a colleague as a precaution under the remit of requirement of St Mungo’s medical care policies, where a non-patient exhibiting distress should consequently be considered appropriately.

Demonstration of age-appropriate vocabulary, logical reasoning ability, and appropriate self-care habits preclude diagnoses of mania, melancholia, or feeblemindedness at this juncture. Marked excitabilities notwithstanding, Theseus Scamander appears capable of adequate functionality without immediate therapeutic interventions.

Close parental monitoring is recommended during adolescent development to guard against the intensification of hysterical outbursts or the emergence of other nervous afflictions. Reexamination may become necessary if additional signs of psychological disorder or unnatural passions manifest. Facility staff shall reassess as needed if the Scamander family desires further consultation. A conclusion can be drawn that development has and will likely proceed as expected, with no visible social or mental difficulties.

Parental Perspective and Blood History

The parents, Mr Alexander and Mrs Leonore Scamander, expressed resistance to the notion that their child may exhibit abnormal traits. Despite medical suggestions for treating the clear emergence of mental malady, the parents maintained that no intervention was required. Given the elder’s successful first year in education and a strong Ministerial family history, hopes for Newton gaining coherence are high. Family records are notably nonfunctional for the two parents. The Scamander history presented shows mismatch with Ministry records, and the Highfair lineage is poorly documented, with only sporadic core lines dating back four generations at most and suspected mingling with non-magical blood.

Ultimately, the purpose of the examination was to determine whether Newton (3) displays difficulties consistent with potential mental absence; mutism; and dementia praecox (Kraepelin) or psychoneurosis (Clouston). Birth was reported as normal, with no prolonged oxygen deprivation or further maternal condition. Yet abnormalities persist. A conclusion can therefore be drawn that Newton indeed exhibits deficits consistent with reasons for examination. Further action is to be taken accordingly, as outlined below.

Further actions necessary

Newton Scamander may demonstrate arrested development and extreme sensitivities problematic for social integration. Possibility of congenital feeblemindedness cannot be excluded. Idiocy must be ruled out pending further cognitive evaluation. Prognosis guarded at this juncture.

Close supervision at home advised given neurological deficits. Continued treatment and observation every 4 months recommended to track development. Parents instructed to document behaviours of concern indicating need for escalation of care.

Close surveillance remains imperative both for monitoring Newton's progression and ensuring he presents no danger of exposing the wizarding world. We concur with Senior Healer Sinclair's cautions against underestimating the potential threat posed by these deficits in cognitive restraint and regulation.

Signed off by: Healer Arthur Bennett, MBW (Member of the British Wizarding Medical Council)

Reviewed by: Senior Healer Edward Sinclair, MBW, FRCMMP (Fellow of the Royal College of Magical Medical Practitioners)

Permission granted by: [UNSIGNED]

A copy of the record will be delivered by owl to the registered address for the patient. The original record will be filed in the system with a promise of reasonable confidentiality and warding against accidental destruction. Upon receipt of this record copy, the named party or guardian thereof is required to sign in confirmation, by decree of the British Ministry of Magic, to agree to this storage, else medical care and the patient profile may be permanently removed from the system of St Mungo’s Hospital of Magical Maladies and Injuries, in line with Section 1.9 of the 1892 Act for the Provision of Magical Medical Care.

*

Dear Mr and Mrs Scamander,

I hope this letter finds you well. I would like to extend my appreciation for entrusting me with the evaluation of your sons, Newt and Theseus. After careful consideration and discussions with you both, I am writing to share my insights regarding their development.

Regarding Newt, I wish to assure you that he is displaying some signs of progress for a child of his age. After noticing symptoms that might have raised concern, I must say that after further discussion with you, his parents, I am reassured that Newt's quiet and introspective demeanour is simply an indication of his unique personality. While his speech development may be lagging slightly, I believe that with the supportive environment you provide, Newt will surely find his voice in due time.

I understand your concerns about Newt's interactions with his peers. However, after taking into account your explanations of his fascination with creatures and the natural world, I can appreciate that his interests might set him apart for the time being. It is encouraging to witness his deep curiosity, and I am certain that with gentle encouragement, he will eventually become more comfortable in social situations.

Turning our attention to Theseus, it is clear that he is a responsible and thoughtful young man. His commitment to his studies and his dedication to routines stand as strong indications of his discipline and character. After noticing some traits that could have been indicative of certain inclinations, but upon further discussion with you, his parents, I am convinced that Theseus's meticulous nature is not cause for concern. Instead, it highlights his potential for academic excellence and orderly behaviour.

In closing, I want to emphasise that my intention is not to discourage you, but rather to prepare you for potential challenges that Newt's development may present. It is crucial to be ready for the reality that he may never fully assimilate into societal norms or attain the levels of achievement that are generally expected of boys of his age and background. As he matures, it would be judicious to discern whether he indeed harbours a deeply ingrained condition or whether his pace of development merely differs. Both patience and discipline are recommended, and your steadfastness as displayed in the consultation and eagerness to engage in clarifying discussions is to be much commended. It is clear you have certain goals as outcomes from this consultation and I have every faith they will be achieved. Naturally, the health of your family and the importance of the Statue of Secrecy must come first.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the well-being of your family.

With warm regards,

Healer Arthur Bennett, MBW (Member of the British Wizarding Medical Council)

*

Dear Arthur,

I’m sure you’ve seen Alexander’s letter—and refusal to sign the record, hence eradicating Newton from the state’s potential care. Ridiculous from any rational man. Should the child break a bone, what will they do? And the madhouses have little restriction on whether they take registered waifs or not. It’s clearly an acknowledgement accompanied with a touch of denial that there’s something profoundly wrong or at least defunct in his family line. At the same time, likely owing to his position at the Ministry, he wishes to ensure this obvious and objective concern is not memorialised. It’s too poor we’ll probably have the whole lot in due course! At the same time, of course, I don’t wish the good work the department does into new and innovative therapies to be slashed in the next budget quarter, so I reluctantly concede the Scamander patriarch will get his way. Were this a Sacred family, I’m certain the situation would be much more amenable. But you saw—the eldest has holes in his shoes, the woman is sick—so rather than gain his favour, we will simply have to follow the obfuscation while monitoring the situation. We will be threatened until kingdom come for pointing out that the natural strength a youth should have is simply lacking here.

It is clear that Newton, the assessed, lives in a world of his own making. To think that the parents thought he had proven himself normal through a single word of speech only shows their delusions. Feeble-mindedness is closest to my assumption providing he shows no moral deficiencies that would require action sooner. Bear in mind that while the family has an admittedly obscured history of some oddness, the parents are by all accounts still on the edge of good society. With this qualification, I admit it may be easier to accept Alexander Scamander’s insistence that the child will be well-managed. Unpleasant histories at least abide by the Statue’s directives, which is of course the main concern. The proximity of the home to Muggles was also noted in my discussions with the Underage Magic department. The distance seems sufficient as a protective barrier should Newton pose only a minor threat to the Statue. The child is unlikely to roam far without supervision.

Merely a minor threat is what we must hope for. The child has his own sweetness and the elder shows decent temperament and understanding of authority. Reviewing the notes, I can only concede your conclusion is correct, with these bizarre behaviours. Like any classic schizophrenic, the barriers between reality and his internal world are porous, if not non-existent. He will not respond to his own name nor the nickname his family uses on most occasions. Neither was he able to string even a few words together other than the occasional repetition of sounds so admittedly mangled I could not discern their meaning. Hence, I stand by my initial assessment that Newton’s chances of integration and success in our society are, at best, limited, but perhaps the threat he poses is mild enough that our decision on the situation can stand in good conscience. Time will tell whether he shows signs of imbecility but I think professional judgement is enough at this stage.

Frankly, however, I'm unsure if there's a place for him in the world as it currently stands.

And this, Arthur, is why wizards have never got far with our treatments of the deficient. Evidently, the mother is rather attached and will not permit removal, and so we must wait until some tragedy strikes or his deficiency is fully apparent to take further action beyond what will likely be costly monitoring from the Underage Magic division. I do believe the Ministry is uniquely corrupt in how greatly unqualified, paranoid officials like Mr Scamander can interfere with the objective workings of our psychological science.

Following your assessment, I requested to meet once more with the parents alone. It is a good sign they attended, understanding the significance of a senior healer’s authority in this area. In my discussions with the Scamander parents—naturally, either the child was targeted by some unusual curse or creature at birth, or the blood is simply poor—I found them to be a curious pair. Mr. Scamander, Alexander, is intense, to say the least, with manners both polished and rather rude. His unwavering demand for secrecy and discretion is noteworthy, reflecting an underlying concern for appearances and reputation. It is as though he believes that sweeping matters under the rug will negate their existence.

Leonore, on the other hand, is the most unassuming of the lot. I certainly would have preferred to take the follow-up appointment without her husband and his scrutiny! She seems to be the calm amidst the storm, the one who bridges the gap between the fervour of her husband and the idiosyncrasies of her sons. Furthermore, it is also a good sign that unlike her husband, she seemed emotionally affected by our conclusions, and hence may have some actual concern for the good order of society. Unfortunately, it seems doubtful she will ease into the discipline to shape the boy while still developing—some womanly temperaments do arise, after all, qualms about striking small boys, ridiculous—but perhaps we must pray that a woman’s touch eases the potential security threat we have brewing here. But I digress from what I can prescribe. Yet I will take no pains to conceal the family as a whole has irritated and challenged me immensely.

With signage of the initial record being rejected, and it being evident we cannot erase the profiles of a family exhibiting potentially problematic future behaviour (not to mention with notable ties to the Ministry), the record is to be amended. They are willing to accept a vague mention of "delayed development" for Newton alone in the records, effectively obliterating the truth of the matter. I urge you to approach this matter with caution and maintain a discerning eye as we navigate the delicate line of professional responsibility in this situation.

Yours sincerely,

E. Sinclair

*

It was the middle of the night. He’d not been able to sleep through bedtime to waking up since they’d come back from St Mungo’s. It had only been a week and a half, but already, he was trying to adjust his life at home to fit this new failing of his, wondering how it would have been if he’d been at school in the Hufflepuff dormitory, surrounded by other lightly snoring boys, making mental coin tosses on whether he fit in or not. The rain outside was heavy. It was still the start of summer and it seemed torn between a deluge and a horrible, humid heat that made him feel like a frog in a boiling pan.

Part of Theseus’s problem was wounded pride, he was sure of it. Between being talked down to, dragged into a small and separate white room, and returning to what he was sure was the aftermath of bad news, all he could think about was how worried he was for Newt—and how angry he felt. How dare they poke him like that? How dare they treat his mum like she knew nothing? Or even treat him like some silly baby who needed both a stern talking-to and a horribly invasive examination while they did who-knew-what to crying Newt? He used to think healers were all okay, because his mum had been so good at it she’d saved multiple of her Hippogriffs from being put down. Now, he wasn’t so sure at all.

He got up to use the bathroom. No sooner did he step inside was there a sharp crack splitting the draughty air. He gasped, taking a step back on the tiles, and realised he’d forgotten his wand by his bed: not that first years were really meant to do magic outside Hogwarts. Before him, the grimy window, in the day looking out onto the garden and in the night a splintered-wood portal to pure darkness, dripped with condensation. The flaking windowsill shook again, losing paint, and something cracked against the glass once more.

Oh; it’s an owl.

With a sigh, he opened the window, letting the bedraggled creature in. It collapsed into the sink in a pile of shivering wet feathers. Their father had never warded all of the windows in the house, claiming they were too isolated, out in the middle of nowhere, for it to matter. He hoped it wasn’t Auntie Agnes asking after mum’s health, because when she asked in the middle of the night, it often meant it was bad, that it was a response to a desperate missive from Leonore when she needed more of the medicine. The illness had a slight inherited component. Infusing the vials with a drop or two of Agnes’s blood—she was the healthier sister by some margin—added potency, but of course, Theseus thought, there were only so many times you could politely ask your sibling to bleed for you.

“C’mere,” he tried to encourage the bird, but the thing was so wet it looked more like a dishrag than an eagle owl.

With a sigh, he summoned a towel from the drawer and tried to dab down the owl; it immediately tried to bite him and then clasped his fingers between its talons, either trying to paralyse him or clamber onto his pyjama-clad arm to deliver the soggy parchment.

“Hey, hey,” Theseus said. “Ow—bloody hell, that’s my finger! Stupid owl. Bet Newt would have given you a hug and a kiss by now.”

It was addressed to his father, and he still implicitly trusted him, even if he’d been the one to take Newt to the doctors: where they’d looked at him and decided he was sick somehow, even though he was sure Newt was well. And Theseus had been unwell before with more than a handful of diseases, magical and non-magical, and none had elicited the reaction he’d been unceremoniously returned to the main room in time to see. Clearly there was some problem. Alexander Scamander was very intelligent; in his Department, Theseus had heard he was incredibly good at double-checking things. This was an important letter. It probably needed double-checking too. So he clutched the dripping paper in his fingers and went to knock on the door of his parents room.

He knocked once and then pressed his palm against the door, waiting.

It wasn’t long before the door flew open. Alexander towered over him, eyes wide; he grabbed onto the doorframe, clearly dizzy from getting out of bed so fast.

“What? What is it?” he said, voice raspy.

Theseus looked guiltily at his father’s pyjamas, which were a dark grey and piped in black. “It’s an urgent owl.”

“Oh, Merlin’s beard, is it from St Mungo’s, again?” Alexander hissed. He scrubbed a hand over his face, glanced back into the room, then summoned his glasses and slammed the door shut behind him. “Trying to get me to confirm. Just itching for it. Boy, to my study, now.”

The walk down to the study suddenly felt a million kilometres long. What had he done? Had he already done something? Somehow, he had the sinking feeling that one day he was going to walk into something he shouldn’t, unsure whether he trusted too much or not enough, and equally unsure what to do about it.

His father’s back was rigid and his shoulders squared. "Close the door.”

Theseus complied, shutting the door behind him with a soft click. He took a deep breath. “What’s in the letter?” Theseus asked.

“You’re so—curious,” Alexander snapped, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why does it concern you? Why do you think you have to know?”

“Father, they took me to that other room,” he began hesitantly.

“Well, they often do that to whatever children take their fancy. It’s nothing personal.” Alexander's gaze bore into Theseus. "The problem isn’t you. It’s that you spend far too much time with that younger brother of yours: the wrong kind of time for his type.”

Theseus shifted uncomfortably, his fingers twisting into the fabric of his trousers. "I like spending time with Newt.”

"Your brother is...peculiar," Alexander remarked, his lips forming a thin line. "His behaviour, his way of thinking—it's not like other children his age."

Theseus's heart sank at his father's words. He knew that Newt was different, that he saw the world in a way that was unique and sometimes perplexing. But Theseus found solace in his brother's presence, in their shared quiet—because to be honest, they were pretty quiet—moments of understanding.

"I don't mind," Theseus said softly.

Alexander's eyes narrowed, his voice growing sharper. "You don't mind? Theseus, you are the eldest son. You have responsibilities, expectations. Your future matters."

“I know. But Newt—I want to be there for—“

"No. You have a duty to this family: you will make sure to turn out right, won't you?"

His father's words were almost like a threat, a demand for conformity that left him feeling trapped, tight-chested. But at the same time, he couldn’t deny the power it held, that ability for others to easily like him, to be praised by his teachers, to subsume that side of him that seemed to leap out at home to be a good student. He did want to start making his father happier with him again, like before he started getting all hysterical about things. Those were nicer days. That was when Alexander had given him his prized possession: his Cleansweep.

"I will," Theseus replied, his voice barely audible. The weight of his father's expectations were pressing down on him like a suffocating cloak. “I’m trying—and Newt’s trying as well, you can see—Dad, the doctors are all wrong. You saw—“

“Yes. I saw, and I see.” Alexander shook his head. “You don’t understand what they’ll do with this. I’m fighting tooth and nail to keep the records off the system, but it could mean, if Newt ever did something, if he grows up to be as useless as we fear and that mark’s on his record, at the first crime… Well, powerful wizards without their sanity, they can’t stay out in society, and they definitely can’t have guardians in positions of rank at the Ministry…”

“Newt won’t commit crimes!” Theseus said, horrified. “He can’t even kill spiders or even put a glass over them to take them out in case he catches their legs. I’ll make sure that he doesn’t do anything wrong. The doctors don’t know us.”

“No, of course they don’t,” Alexander said, swinging open his desk drawer, pulling out a long, heavy, sharp-edged metal ruler, the one he used to finalise his balance books. “In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have gone, but the Ministry heard the rumours. And then the doctors tell your mother and I. Then they tell us so-called everything. They didn’t know me then—they don’t know me now—and they don’t know you—and they might not even know Newt, although I dare say his issues are rather evident.”

Theseus stood still, his gaze fixed on his father. There was something in Alexander's expression that made his stomach churn with unease, a mixture of anger and frustration that Theseus had become all too familiar with. And something else, like disgust or despair, and his posture was all strange.

“But that envelope was not yours to take, nor consider opening. Come here.”

He was almost uncomprehending of it, what he was being asked to do. He tapped his fingers, one to five, the smallest twice against his thigh, and upon seeing that nervous tic, Alexander’s expression cracked, cold anger seeping from the remains of his usual stony facade.

So Theseus went to the desk, bare feet shuffling against the floor, shivering a little. The surface of the desk seemed to stretch out in front of him, its worn wood marred by the countless hours of paperwork his father had diligently worked on over the years. He couldn't help but notice the scattered papers, the quill resting haphazardly in an inkwell, the faint scent of parchment and wood polish that filled the air. He was keenly aware of his father holding the ruler.

Many of the boys he knew endured regular thrashings once big enough to take it. Boys needed to be broken in a bit when they got rowdy, some of the women at the village said. Even gentle Alfie Jenkins who helped his dad at the bakery arrived some days gingerly favoured a wrist or winced as he played. "Just a little reminder to work harder and not let the bread get scorched," he always explained with an awkward shrug. So it wasn't as though Theseus was being singled out unfairly at home. On the contrary, Alexander had shown great restraint compared to most families.

Yet he’d only been smacked on the knuckles before with this ruler—that it was now being drawn so far up wasn’t a good sign. His shoulders tensed as his father paced behind him, and he dared another furtive glance at his father's face, bracing himself. Perhaps three stripes of the ruler would settle it, six at the very worst. Barely worth shedding tears over, when his meaner, bolder sort-of-friends like Orville Hodgekins had endured twice that and more for far lighter offences.

Other fathers used belts, switches, or their hands. Somehow, this felt more perfunctory. As if he were a ledger column that simply needed balancing. Theseus felt his breath grow short, lungs tightening. He focused on keeping his arms loose rather than wrapped around himself. Don't tremble, he commanded internally. Don't shame Father further when he's only doing his duty to correct your behaviour.

And truly, Theseus reasoned, he couldn't blame Father for finally reaching the end of his patience. These small episodes of private discipline likely embarrassed him more than anything.

The desk. Yes, he was meant to go to the desk, with all its ink-stains and scratches, where his father made big decisions about the world and their family at all hours, his spectacles on and the candles low to stop him getting a headache. he slowly moved to position himself against the large oak desk. Hands fumbling blindly, scraping his inner wrists against the polished wood. He shuffled his feet, planting them more securely to brace himself, the irony that this stance made him feel less instead of more secure not lost on him.

Jaw tight with apprehension, he scanned the familiar contours of the study—the towering shelves packed with leather bound tomes, the glass-fronted cabinet filled with clocks and measurement apparatuses, the fronds of some exotic magical plant trailing down from where it was dying on the windowsill. Looking anywhere else, burning with humiliation.

His father’s footsteps stopped directly behind Theseus. It seemed strange they were both in their pyjamas. He could practically feel his angry eyes boring into the space between his shoulder blades; the hair on his neck stood up despite the stuffy warmth of the room. Fearing further displeasure if he hesitated, he gripped the wooden edge of the desk more tightly and bent forward, trying not to disturb any papers, feeling his back cramp.

"What do you think you're doing?" Alexander demanded. He grabbed the collar of Theseus’s pyjama shirt and yanked him up, giving him a hard shake, making his teeth clack together painfully at the jolt.

But Alexander seemed incensed further by his nonplussed stare. Theseus found himself slammed back against the desk edge even as his father bore down on him. Had he misjudged the procedure somehow?

Theseus flinched away from the upswung palm, but it seemed to serve only as a punctuating gesture as his father only stabbed an accusatory finger at his chest instead, flushed spots of colour rising on his suddenly pale sharp cheekbones. "I told you to take this, not...present yourself like some performing monkey!"

"I...I thought you wanted...for the ruler?"

"Absolutely not. The method’s thirty years out of date. I won’t have it in my household—children have some damn dignity these days." Alexander's voice shook with poorly concealed emotion. He turned away, beginning to pace behind the relative safety of his wingback chair. "Stand up and go hold onto the edge of the mantle, if you truly need to grip something.”

Confused but knowing better than to argue, Theseus straightened slowly. His hands felt oddly numb where his white knuckles had gripped the desktop just moments before. Anxiously, he flexed his tingling fingers, tracking his father's erratic movements across the Turkish rug, running his free hand up and down the ruler, now looking very cross, discomposure evident in the tight lines bracketing his downturned mouth.

“Just...just stand there,” Alexander snapped. “And do not slouch."

Theseus clenched his hands behind his back, nails biting into each palm, and moved to the carved fireplace as he’d been ordered. A prolonged, heavy silence blanketed the study, broken only by the steady tick of the antique clock. The quiet stretched tauter than braided Acromantula silk.

He hoped it wouldn’t land on his shoulder and break something; he wouldn’t want to have to stop playing Quidditch.

Alexander’s hand was white, bleeding pink. Holding the ruler tight. The muscles of his shoulders hunched and went taut—but as his father's hand began to rise, went to strike him—Theseus's instincts kicked in, and he involuntarily flinched, shutting his eyes tight in anticipation of the blow that seemed poised to land the metal flat right down on his back.

To his surprise, the impact he had expected didn't come. Instead, he felt a forceful shove of magic against his chest, causing him to stumble to the side, just about catching himself. It felt like someone had ground the heel of their palm into his chest, but it was nowhere near as painful as he’d expected—and now, he was beyond arm’s reach.

Alexander's face was still contorted with anger, but there was a flicker of something else in his eyes.

Theseus's heart raced as he struggled to process the sudden change in direction. What had just happened? Why had his father stopped? Was it because he had flinched, because he had reacted to the threat of punishment? He’d always thought—hoped—that his father liked him, with the weighty currency of his approval being immensely valuable in the house. A sad, guilty feeling tightened his stomach as he thought of Newt, what was already being said about him, and what might be said in the future. All of a sudden, the threat of the heavy ruler, as wide as his wrist, felt meaningless.

He should apologise for provoking his father's temper. Promise to obey better next time. But uncertainty glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

And Alexander was still talking.

"Listen to me," Alexander's voice was tense, his words clipped. "There are times when we men have to be firm. Wouldn't want your mother or brother thinking either of us weak now, would we?"

The way Alexander framed it made an uncomfortable sort of sense. Mum wasn’t very well, after all, and didn’t need to worry about his deficiencies…perhaps his father was right that she should be protected from life's rougher edges. He supposed some people needed to be corrected in different ways, maybe. That was another thing the bobby’s daughter from the village had said. Truly, that’d made him like her quite a lot less.

Theseus peeked up at him with some uncertainty. "No..."

"Exactly. No need to trouble anyone else with this business. I'm sure you understand. Sometimes, I have to make difficult choices. Decisions your mother needn't worry herself over."

Theseus bit his lip. His father's words painted secrecy as a noble thing—a respectable choice, an act of masculine strength. Things clicked into place as he applied simple logic to this statement. If hiding these things was brave, then telling about them must be cowardly.

"I understand," he said finally.

So, this was the way—they had to do things that went against the doctors, the Ministry, their social circles, themselves. In an instant, he understood, like the painful flash of lightning imprinted on the back of his eyelids. This was his father, though, and he had to trust what he said, believe to at least an extent in his opinion, no matter what. The longer it sank in, the more sense it made. Any promises felt far less bitter now. After all, real wizards kept a stiff upper lip just like Father. No whinging or tattling. He would prove he could handle things like a man.

Following this train of thought to its logical conclusion, Theseus nodded slowly, trying to speak in a diplomatic tone given the glint of the ruler in the room’s magically ignited candlelight. "But why?"

Alexander's jaw clenched. "Because, sometimes we have to be strong for the ones we love. We have to protect them from the harsh realities of the world."

Theseus bit his lip again.

"Promise me," Alexander's voice was softer now, almost pleading. “Tell me that you won't say anything. It's for the best, Theseus."

Theseus looked up at his father again, meeting his gaze with a mixture of trepidation and a child's inherent desire to please his parent. He nodded slowly, his voice small. "I…promise, I suppose."

"Of course," Alexander replied, attempting to smile. "We're a respected family, and we don't air our dirty laundry."

There was another silence. The house was creaking around them. His father looked at the bookshelf, angular face half in shadow.

“Father..." Theseus began hesitantly, hardly daring to breathe. Alexander visibly started at the sound of his son's voice, his throat constricting as he swallowed hard. With a convulsive jerk, he released the ruler, the metal clattering across the desk, upending an ink pot.

"Best put it out of your mind now. It’s not your concern, and you won’t question my corrections, nor my leniency.”

Theseus stared at the floor, at his bare feet.

"Go to your room," Alexander said after a long moment, his voice hollow. "Just...go."

“I’ll be strong. I really will be,” Theseus ventured, hoping to get his father back to a more recognisable state.

"Good boy," Alexander said. He gave Theseus's shoulder a gentle squeeze before stepping away. It was a rare moment of physical contact between them, and he wasn’t sure whether to lean in or hold himself stiff, feeling the weight of it. "Now, go back to bed. I don't want to see you again until tomorrow or when you've composed yourself, whichever comes first."

Chapter Text

1901 — the winter holiday straddling 1901 and 1902

Theseus crept down the creaky staircase, wincing as a loose step groaned under his weight. Early morning light filtered through the landing windows, illuminating drifting motes of dust. It was freezing. He paused outside his parents’ bedroom door, holding his breath, but couldn’t make out any sounds within. Father must have already risen for the day. That wasn’t a good thing or a bad thing, he decided. He would simply go downstairs, one hand trailing along the faded yellow wallpaper, skirting right to the edges with the aid of the bannister as always on the third-to-last step, avoiding the telltale creak, before hopping down into the entry hall.

While he’d been away, the house had got all dusty again. But he was fixing it, as he should.

His first term at Hogwarts had been just as difficult as anticipated. Which wasn’t really a positive sign, when he considered it. It rather telegraphed that he worried an accurate amount, realistically. But while there was lots he didn’t like—strange school meals and too-short lessons and getting shaken down in the corridors—he walked differently there. He wondered what he was treading on—what he was afraid to tread on. Calmness was coming to him in tentative waves. Real calmness was when you could roll your shoulders and not feel the joints and muscles scream. The other version of calmness, which was accepted just as well, was when you just didn’t tap your fingers and quirked the corners of your mouth a little and made your voice deep, lollopy, and pleasant. All that—shit, he thought vicariously—was practically figured out.

Right. Time to find Mum.

Her skin had been particularly bad this week, as if stamped with a hot poker, a sure sign the condition the doctors called lupus was flaring. It had been diagnosed during his first term. Apparently, everyone wanted to do hospital appointments without him. Idiots. He knew better than anyone except his father that you had the disease inside before you had it outside, with an equally limited capacity to be surprised as the Scamander patriarch. He could handle it.

Heading into the kitchen, Theseus extinguished the stuttering radio mid-broadcast with a concentrated flick of his wand and glanced around.

"Morning, Mum," he began, then faltered. It was empty. "Mum?"

Without much searching, Theseus found his mother seated in the living room, embroidery hoop in hand. They exchanged a glance, both knowing Leonore dreaded needlework unless she was stabbing a thick needle into leather Hippogriff harnesses. His father was there too, the wan winter light filtering over Alexander’s intense features as he finished rebraiding her thick hair over her shoulder, his suit knees picking up grey lint. With a sigh, his father leaned forwards over Leonore, obscuring her except for the edge of her faded purple dressing gown. He laid the back of his hand against her forehead.

Theseus must have rustled too loudly. His father looked up with reflexes too fast for either a Ministry bureaucrat or a star Quidditch player—in Theseus’s opinion—with flinty eyes behind the rectangular wire spectacles, shoulders hunching slightly.

One perk of the first term was that Theseus had finally figured out how people looked at you when they hated you. In the village, fists were usually exchanged first of all, but with Hogwarts came a disorienting introduction to the pureblood club he was definitely not included in, not properly. The thing was, then, that when Alexander looked like that, he was only thinking, not hating. He mentally clapped himself on the back for finding proof of being loved.

"Theseus. I thought I made myself clear—if the door is closed, we shouldn’t disturb her. The headaches worsen with stimulation.”

"Forgive me, sir,” Theseus rushed out. “Only—I thought I could do some extra chores or—how is Mum feeling?”

Alexander exhaled, glancing back at Leonore. She offered a wan smile. "Not to worry,” he said. “It’s likely just a spot of light-headedness today."

But Leonore had gone still, her gaze distant as she worried her lower lip between her teeth. Theseus felt his stomach tighten. His mother only wore that vacant expression during the beginnings of one of her episodes.

Alexander looked at them both and sighed. “I won’t tax you further, Leonore,” he said quietly, “I’ll let you talk to the boys and return with some pain medication. The amendments and reviews due by owl this midnight aside, I should…”

“No, don’t go all the way to that dratted hospital, not today,” Leonore said, eyebrows crumpling. While Theseus had been at Hogwarts, Newt had somehow developed eyebrows, like Leonore, in spite of their shared gingery nature. Theseus considered this a fortunate thing. “It’ll be stuffed to the gills with the poor ex-revellers from last night. You know how it gets near Christmas.”

His father cleaned his spectacles, jaw twitching at the mention of the drunks of the holiday season. “Let me go. It’ll only be a few hours, and I’ll be back by the afternoon.”

“We can’t miss the fair,” his mum said. “But only if you’re sure, love, you’ll probably not find it comfortable…”

They were only allowed so much medicine in the house at a time. It was a constant pain, the fact it wasn’t even adequate nor affordable aside.

“I’ll cope, so long as we make it to this fair. No Hippogriffs to sell there this year though, which takes the pressure off,” Alexander noted, and then gave a hint of a smile. “Thank Merlin. See you both. Shouldn’t be long. Make sure you behave.”

With that, he swept out of the room. Theseus nervously tracked his exit, relieved that someone was going to try and help sort Mum out.

"Good morning, Mum," he ventured. "Can I fetch you anything?"

Leonore started, blinking over at Theseus as though just noticing him for the second time. "Oh! No, thank you, sweetheart. Did you and Newt eat already?"

"Yes," said Theseus, lying instinctively and not really knowing why. He cursed his lack of foresight—he’d make some porridge soon. Perhaps he’d put some of the spiced apple mash in it. Newt liked that. He hesitated before asking, "Are you...not well today? I know it’ll be a busy day, but we’re not cooking too much, right?”

His mother sighed. "It's nothing to fuss over, just a bit worn is all. Likely stayed up too late reading. About fossils, would you believe? Crinoids and the like. I’ll be fine by the evening. And I know what I often muck up; I’ve got a plethora of charms ready for the potatoes. And your father is going to do all the other bits for me.”

She gestured for him to sit beside her, so Theseus perched on the sofa's worn cushions, folding his hands tightly in his lap to keep from fidgeting. "Is there anything I can help with? I don't mind."

Leonore cupped his cheek fondly, a telltale pallor tinging her freckled skin, at odds with the bright red rash spreading across her cheeks, peeling a little at the corners. Theseus knew it wasn’t sunburn, not like this. The lupus sometimes made her face and arms look as though they’d been bitten by a wolf. Hence the name. But she was still their mum, no matter how scary it sometimes looked, as if she was truly falling to pieces.

“You're such a dear. Well, perhaps you could give Newt his bath? I'm feeling rather faint today, but it’d be good for him to be less grubby when we venture out. The posher Muggles might have a fit otherwise.”

"Of course." Theseus straightened his shoulders. Caring for his baby brother was a duty he readily accepted, especially on days when their mother lacked her usual vibrancy and verve. “Lemme go get Newt.”

Nor knocking, he swung open the door papered with crooked stencils from Leonore’s plethora of creature care manuals—each one incongruously named in wobbly letters—-and burst into his little brother’s room. The culprit was still buried beneath the patchwork quilt, his dirt-encrusted sandy mop all that showed above the covers. He did indeed need a hair wash. Perhaps Theseus could even convince Newt to sponge, although that was usually a struggle. Theseus smiled fondly before crossing over to gently jostle the small lump.

"Rise and shine, sleepy bug.”

With a grumble, Newt emerged reluctantly, blinking owlishly up at Theseus. His mussed hair stuck out every which way and he clutched his beloved Bowtruckle picture book. The balding stuffed Niffler fell out of the bed as a kind of mild tidal wave went through Newt’s considerable selection of toys. Theseus picked it up between two pincered fingers—it did smell faintly of drool—and dropped it back onto the messy sheets.

"Bad case of bedhead you got there," he said, ruffling the tousled mess. "Let's get you squared away. Mum's resting at the moment, so I'll oversee your washing up today. Yeah? But we have to say hello to Mum first. I know you don’t like talking in the mornings, but you're the cute one; you’ll be better at cheering her up.”

Newt’s shoulders hunched slightly closer toward his ears. But he gave a tiny nod without pulling away. Theseus counted it a win. Progress.

“I’ll wash too so we match,” said Theseus, hoping to frame the grooming as a shared experience rather than a chore required of Newt alone. “Come on, up we get.”

They made their way downstairs. Leonore glanced toward the doorway. "Speak of the devil. Good morning, poppet!"

Newt hovered tentatively in the hall, small fist rubbing at one eye. Mother had likely promised him a new book if he stayed in bed at the allocated hour rather than getting up at all kinds of odd times, daylight or not. And Newt never forgot a promise involving books or creatures.

At her cheerful greeting, Newt blinked fully awake and shuffled over for their customary post-nap snuggle. His little brother nestled against Leonore's side, breathing in the faint lavender scent of her dressing gown. Their mother hummed a few wandering notes under her breath as she combed her fingers through his rumpled mop of curls. Despite his worry, Theseus felt himself relax at the comforting scene.

"M’ning, Seus," Newt finally mumbled, eyes already drooping once more. Theseus suppressed a smile. His little brother forever vacillated between drowsy and alert without much middle ground.

"That's right, your good big brother's here," said Leonore, dropping a kiss atop Newt's head, meeting Theseus's eyes.

*

Their shared bathroom was absolutely freezing. Small icicles hung off the chipped windowsill. The ever-present leak that Newt so enjoyed watching drip seemed to be unavailable entertainment today. Humming tunelessly to himself, Theseus thoroughly scrubbed his face and arms using the simple tallow soap. He splashed his cheeks liberally afterwards, welcoming the cold shock. There was nothing like crisp water to chase off morning grogginess. He brushed his teeth, twice over, combed his hair, keeping an eye on Newt in the mirror.

After towelling off in a series of firm swipes, Theseus rinsed out the flannel, cast a slightly botched drying charm on it, and approached Newt, who was lingering warily in the doorway. “All fresh and ready to start the day now. Your turn! Here. C’mon. Let’s use the toilet, yeah?”

Newt still wet the bed occasionally, which was only a problem if Theseus went to ask Leonore for help and she was too entangled with his father for him to reliably wake her up without rousing them both. They were figuring it out. Newt was good at hiding the sheets, for a clumsy toddler, but Leonore assured him it was better than the potting process they’d put Theseus on as first time parents: which had apparently induced tears on all sides and rigorous potion use. Really not what Theseus wanted to hear about at any given time. Once Newt had shuffled his way through the necessary components, Theseus got him to stand on the stool by the sink and brush his teeth.

“Okay, bath time.”

Newt squawked in process. Theseus sighed.

“No, I know it’s the morning, but you went to bed grubby last night because the pipes froze over…no running away now, little monster.”

He took out the small tin bathtub and set it within the larger, rusting one. It was too cold in December to really sit in the tub, so he’d have to sponge Newt down quickly. The hair washing was going to be a problem. But there was actual mud in his brother’s hair, probably from rolling around in the Hippogriff stables—which actually, made this an urgent matter, because who was to say that was mud at all? Efficiently, Theseus divesting Newt of his pyjamas, hooked his hands under his armpits, and deposited him in the dry tub next to the waiting bucket. Newt tried to climb out, rather ineffectually. He was short for his age.

“Just a quick wash. And a quick sponge. Tip back now..."

Seeing that Newt had given in, sort of—there might be some thrashing involved—and supporting Newt's neck with one steadying hand, Theseus carefully leaned him forward over the smaller basin's edge. The overhead pipes rattled as he twisted the taps on full blast. Icy water sluiced out in a violent torrent.

Too late, Theseus remembered their plumbing's rather overzealous pressure first thing in the morning. Newt jerked upright with a startled yelp just as the first frigid deluge hit his face. Soapy water sloshed everywhere.

"Merlin's pants! Sorry, sorry..." Theseus hastily turned off the gushing faucet away while awkwardly propping up Newt, who spat out the excess water indignantly, scrubbing his eyes. Bloody brilliant start he'd made of things. At this rate they'd both catch their deaths well before reaching the fair. That they were both starting to shiver only made Theseus feel as though he was making more of a disaster of the simple chore.

Grabbing a towel off the nearby hook, Theseus mopped at his dripping brother. "Circe, look at the mess," he muttered, turning his attention to swipe half-heartedly at the puddles coating the nearby floorboards. He'd forgotten to bring the mop. Bother it. A few quick Scourgifies later then.

Tossing the sodden towel over the rust-stained tub's edge, Theseus took a deep breath. "Right. Let's try this properly now, shall we?" Keeping one supporting hand spread wide across Newt's back, he cautiously turned the tap just so. A tepid trickle emerged.

Much better. Carefully, Theseus leaned a placid Newt backward once more and gently wet his hair. He maintained light pressure on Newt's nape, silently willing his small body to remain still and not jerk about wildly again. Theseus found himself holding his breath. But apart from jogging one knee, Newt stayed calm.

“Seus,” came the grumble, as expected with every bath time. “Don’t like.”

"Well, even so, you're being so patient..." Theseus lied.

Keeping up a steady stream of low chatter he worked the soap through Newt's fine strands, working hands methodically over his little brother's crown in soothing circles. Newt let out a faint sigh. Theseus allowed himself an easing exhale in turn at the sound. So far, so good, it seemed, despite his earlier clumsiness.

Humming softly, Theseus massaged Newt's scalp between his soapy fingers. Odd that a young boy's hair could seem so unusually coarse, yet the texture felt pleasant under his ministrations. His little brother quieted; Theseus smiled fondly.

"Feels nice, doesn't it? Getting your hair played with."

Newt only offered a drowsy sigh in response. Theseus liked it when people played with his hair, but he was pretty sure that was an inside thought, because he was really too old for it and would have to wait until he got a girlfriend to figure all that out.

Sponge and redress. Newt was making a noise like a furnace starting to warm over, so he tried to be quick. At last, Theseus gave Newt an appraising look-over. His damp hair was already springing into loose coppery curls, with his round cheeks flushed from the exertion of his contortions over the small bucket. In his olive linen shirt and brown tweed trousers, Newt resembled a perfectly ordinary young boy headed to the fair. Theseus grinned, giving his shoulder an approving squeeze before leading Newt downstairs by the hand.

*

The hospital trip had been a success. With the medicine obtained, Leonore was in better spirits than ever as they all crowded out of the door and side-along apparated to the fields in which the fair was always held. It impressed Theseus that Alexander had the willpower and focus to take three other hangers-on.

Despite a lingering sense of unease that always flared when in public company, he allowed himself to scan the area, taking in the winters countryside of Devon. It was a nice night. Busy, but fresh. And all the food smelled good: really good.

Theseus shoved his hands in his pockets, pulling his scarf up over his lower face, and glanced down at Newt. Newt’s hand was wrapped over the pocket flap of Theseus’s wool coat, but as much as he wanted to directly hold his little brother’s hand to keep him safe among the busy crowds, he knew that Newt didn’t like that either. He shot Leonore a hapless glance, but she was looking with interest at the distant trees hung with enchanted glass ornaments, each lending a golden glow to the stripped branches.

“They’re like little stars!” Leonore exclaimed.

Theseus looked sideways at her and wondered how she could be so happy, so carefree, in the way she stared off at the trees. It was difficult to read the mood so precisely when there were so many people around them, buffeting them this way and that, filling the air with laughter and shouting. But, then again, when she was cheerful, it did feel easier, like they were together as a family for once.

“There you go, Newt,” Theseus said, gently snapping his fingers in front of his brother’s face to draw his attention and then pointing at the lights. “Those lights over there, you see them? Don’t they look like stars?”

“Stars,” Newt agreed.

Don’t let him get lost don’t let him get lost don’t let him get lost, he thought. The air smelt of roasted chestnuts. His breath crystallised before him like the handprints of a ghost.

“Merlin, it’s busy this year,” Alexander said, stepping in front to try and part the crowd, elbows slightly extended. “You wonder what all these people are doing here. It’s not even Christmas Day and yet everyone and their uncle is out and about.”

“That’s the Christmas spirit I like to hear,” Leonore teased, blinking hard against a burst of cold wind.

Alexander turned back, shrugging his shoulders, almost smiling back, and then carried on through the frost-covered grass, shoes adding to the relentless movement of people over the field, slowly turning it all to mud. Theseus looked at the large, elegant imprints of his father’s loafers and tried to place his feet in the same dents, where the soil was compact and he was less likely to slip.

It was a small, unspoken attempt to be in sync with the man he wasn't sure whether he admired or feared, even if that connection remained elusive. He noticed the confident stride of Alexander as he led the way, the casual authority with which he navigated the holiday crowd. Theseus knew that in the midst of the holiday festivities, the chance for a genuine connection with his father remained elusive; Alexander didn’t like holidays, not when they were celebrated like this, in a riot of colour and smells. Yet, he continued to mimic his father's steps, hoping that somehow, he could bridge the emotional gap that seemed to separate them ever since the letters.

An immensely annoying chittering noise cut through the air, and Theseus followed it with a frown, eyes eventually landing on a roughshod stall with a cardboard sign announcing Tamed British Beasts, Exhibit. The store owner, a weathered man sporting a deerstalker hat and an incongruous grin, looked at least seventy and seemed just as much a curiosity as the creatures he was selling. Newt made almost direct eye contact with the man and, without hesitation, darted toward the stall. His little feet slipped in the mud, but his determination was unwavering as he dragged Theseus right along with him.

“Um, hello,” Theseus said, trying not to wince as the man flashed him a smile that revealed several missing teeth.

“Rare, these are,” the man said. “Bred to be the perfect curiosities for display, whether that’s your living room or conservatory.”

Theseus looked at a creature that seemed like a fluffy ball, with a face and legs that seemed as though they were hewn from wood. The iron cage had incredibly thin, densely-packed bars, as if deliberately created to hold small things and never let them out.

“It certainly seems a…curiosity,” Theseus offered. “But I wonder if living creatures deserve to be treated as more than mere curios.”

“Well, aren’t you a well-spoken young man?” the stall owner said with a wheezy laugh. He leaned in, placing a leather-patched sleeve on his table strewn with pieces of animal bedding and hay. “Aren’t we all just curios in the end?”

Theseus could feel his hackles going up, the back of his neck prickling. He eyed his younger brother, trying to convey without saying outright in front of the man that he suspected they were being judged. “Come on, let’s go.”

As usual, anything unspoken and pleading fell totally flat with his little brother.

“Wow,” Newt breathed, staring straight at a cage of what Theseus recognised as Cornish Pixies. His voice filled with awe as he finally made contact with the cage's bars, his fingers gently tapping them, watching the blue things inside start to hiss and bare their teeth. “Amazing."

“No,” Theseus groaned, all too familiar with Newt’s obsession with magical creatures, which was undeniably pronounced even at the age of four. “Please, Newt, not the manic ones. They’re dangerous. Remember what we talked about?”

Theseus knew that Newt was drawn to magical creatures like a moth to a flame, but he also understood the potential dangers. One look at the teeth of the pixies told him that. And if anything happened to Newt, if Newt made any impulsive decisions—the kind that four year olds tended to make—it would be Theseus’s fault.

But his little brother's caring nature shone through as he spoke to the creatures in hushed, soothing tones. The pixies seemed to respond, their antics becoming less chaotic in Newt's presence; a few, at least, broke off from the swarm hurtling around the cage like a tornado. Don’t bite, he thought, narrowing his eyes at them.

Quickly, Theseus glanced back at his parents, staying watchful. Pixies or parents. Same things, really. Alexander and Leonore were immersed in conversation, their voices muffled by the surrounding noise. Alexander had paused, turning back to survey the scene with a critical eye. Theseus detected a subtle shift in his father's demeanour—a tightening of the lips, a slight furrow of the brow. In an instant, his stomach started to sink.

No, it’ll be okay, he told himself. I just need to convince Newt to behave and then we’ll both be just fine.

"How about one of the fluffy ones, Newt? Mmh? Something you can actually hold?” he suggested. “Something that’s not going to tear your finger off and try to kidnap you?”

“Yes!” Newt said, stepping back and bouncing on his feet, squeezing his hands into claws, fingers gripping the cuffs of his coat. “Yes, yes, please.”

He leaned in closer, studying the cage holding the first creature he’d seen. “What kind of…specimen is this?” Theseus asked, voice low and cautious.

“It’s called a Whistwig,” the stall owner explained.

“Why?” Newt asked, still twitching with pure excitement.

“Well, young ones, the name 'Whistwig' comes from the peculiar sound it makes when it's content and happy," he began, a raspy chuckle escaping his toothless grin. "You see, these little creatures have a unique way of communicating with each other. They produce a soft, melodic whistle when they're feeling safe and at ease."

Newt's eyes widened, and his bouncing slowed to a mesmerised sway as he listened intently.

“These little fellows are masters of camouflage," he added with a sly grin. "They blend seamlessly with the trees and retract their fur when in the forests where they’re native, making them tricky to spot in their natural habitat. That's why they're so prized as curiosities for your homes, you see. It's like having a piece of the enchanted forest right in your living room."

Newt’s imploring gaze turned to Theseus. He held his right hand out, palm up, and then delicately raised it higher, fingers forming a pattern like a bird taking flight. Ask. Please.

Theseus extended his right hand, fingers relaxed. He bent his index finger and middle finger, forming a slight curve resembling a question mark. Are you sure?

Newt nodded, twice, almost bursting with excitement, which was unusual for the younger brother Theseus knew, who tended towards placid and quiet behaviour, often shrinking into himself so much that his parents joked whether anyone was home. Well. Given that disastrous doctor’s appointment, maybe it wasn’t a joke. He didn’t want to think about it. Already, he’d lost hours of sleep, at Hogwarts and at home.

“Please could he hold one, if that’s not too much trouble?” Theseus asked.

“Certainly, certainly,” the old man said, leaning down with a grunt and flicking open the brassy cage latch, retrieving one of the creatures with surprisingly gentle hands. Theseus eyed him. Perhaps he treated his curios with some care, but it still didn’t change things. “These are also excellent pets, you know.”

“Ah,” Theseus said. “I don’t know whether that will go down well with our parents. Mum already breeds fancy Hippogriffs...”

“How old are the two of you? No reason you can’t strike out on your own and collect some of these marvellous specimens.”

“I’m twelve,” Theseus said, a hint of pride creeping into his voice. “And Newt is four.”

“Huh,” the man said, handing Newt the Whistwig. “I thought you were older and he was younger.”

“We get that a lot,” Theseus mumbled, not wanting to talk about it.

“Sure you can’t convince your Mum and Dad over there to buy just one for the pair of yous?” the man asked.

“No,” Theseus said quickly. “No, our father doesn’t want to encourage Newt’s…his interest in creatures.”

Alexander had said much worse, but with the way Newt was tenderly stroking the Whistwig, any further explanation died in Theseus’s throat. Theseus looked down guiltily, but Newt was fully absorbed with the fluffy creature, carefully tufting its fur and combing out any tangles, whispering to it as it let out a quiet, squeaky whistle.