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Tina could not remember when the pain stopped.
At some point, that solitary drop of water had made its way from the windowsill to the floor.
The pain stopped after that.
But before the bright lights and the warmth came and replaced the cold damp of the room.
Go through it, she commanded her clumsy, addled brain. Go through it.
Go through all of it.
[---]
I suppose any good book starts at the beginning, doesn’t it?
[---]
She wasn’t even supposed to be there.
Not like with the Second Salemers, that is; rather, it was Graves who was supposed to be handling the case, not her.
But Tina volunteered.
She volunteered because Graves’s eyes still looked a little too sunken, his skin was still too pale, and because he still moved like a man twice his age, always a slight tremor shaking his hands. He was still reeling from captivity, from Grindelwald.
He was also still reeling from what Grindelwald did whilst wearing his skin, which was evident from how he seemed to have trouble looking Tina in the eye.
“I can do it, sir,” she said.
Graves looked so tired when he finally met her eyes. Before, he’d have snorted and waved her off, maybe made some dry remark about how his hair wasn’t completely gray yet. Now, now he didn’t even have it in him to joke.
“Are you sure?”
Tina nodded eagerly, trying not to bounce in place with her eagerness to prove that she was up to this rather advanced task.
She’d never been in charge of a raid before.
“Alright,” Graves said, and though she was happy with the answer, there was the underlying sting of how easy it had been to get. It should have been harder to get a yes, and that made her worry about Graves more. “Alright. It’s yours.”
“Thank you, sir.”
She looked back on those last words now and wanted to cry.
“Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. I’ll be back in the morning to debrief you.”
[---]
Now, this one you might have heard of, as it ties into your country’s history: The Clabbert. Cheeky little fellows, all of them, though not nearly as bad as the Nifflers. Or at least, not as bad as my Niffler.
I am, of course, rather unclear as to how useful Clabberts were to detecting Muggles. After all, not all Muggles are dangerous or bear ill will and I fail to see how the Clabbert would have been able to distinguish what was dangerous to a wizard and what was dangerous to the Clabbert itself…
[---]
Balls-up.
Down the tubes.
A clusterfuck.
So many turns of phrases to describe a situation that had gone wrong in just about every way possible.
It was indisputably not her fault. Their informant had been feeding them bad information: She’d said there were four wizards hiding out in the forest.
Not twenty-four, which was the actual number that jumped out and attacked when Tina led her tragically measly group of five (including herself) into their camp.
The informant in question was grinning down at her now, a woman not much older than herself with blonde hair and green eyes.
“Head Honcho, huh?” She remarked. “We were hoping for Graves.”
Of course they were.
Even though her heart was pounding in her chest and the other Aurors were lying stone-cold dead around her, Tina was grimly, bitter-sweetly thankful that Graves was not in her place. He’d been through enough, he didn’t need any more hell.
But sweet Deliverance Dane, the informant’s smile was chilling.
“Oh well. You’ll do, in the meantime.”
From there, everything got kind of… Fuzzy.
[---]
Teenie?
Teenie?
You in there?
[---]
The pain was awful.
Tina had to give them credit, though: They were smart enough to make sure they didn’t go overboard with the Cruciatus curse. Too much pain might drive her mad, make her useless to them.
She tried not to wonder how many people they had to torture before her to figure out how much was too much.
Naturally, they wanted information.
“What are the passwords to the restricted areas in MACUSA headquarters?”
“What members of MACUSA are closest in proximity to the President on a regular basis?”
“Where do they live?”
“What sort of charms protect their homes?”
“Do they have children?”
They tried shoving Veritaserum down her throat, but Tina has been trained to resist truth potions as part of the process she’d undertaken to become an Auror. When they asked her questions, she blocked them out as much she could and posed questions in her own head that she could answer safely.
My mother’s name was-
“Eliana!”
I got a pastry at Jacob’s it looked like a-
“Niffler!”
Queenie’s middle name is-
“Hortensia!”
Graves’s wand is made of-
“Ebony wood!”
I met Credence Barebone on-
“September 25th!”
Newt’s Demiguise’s name is-
“Dougal!”
Some of the answers she spat out were obvious falsehoods. ‘September 25th’ was not the name of the Goblin that had been informing on her captors to MACUSA and ‘Ebony wood’ was not the number of the room that the files on Grindelwald’s followers were being kept in.
Eventually, they stopped force-feeding her Veritaserum. The informant-traitor knelt down and pushed the tip of her wand up and under Tina’s chin, forcing her to look up and meet her eyes.
“Just tell us,” The woman urged. “The sooner you do, the sooner you can go.”
A beat.
Then, to the woman’s obvious shock, Tina burst out laughing. When they started using the Cruciatus curse on her again, the giggling was mixed in with the screaming in a truly strange and abominable way.
That was rule number one of being a captive Auror:
If they promise to let you go, you’re already dead.
[---]
Ah, the Fire Crab.
Beautiful creatures. Don’t know if you saw the one in my case- I keep them contained in their habitat, or the whole place would go up in flames. They shoot fire out of their… Uh. Well, I think you might guess.
Their numbers are terribly low, and as well as the book’s done, I’ve been thinking about making a proposal to the Minister of Magic to create a reservation for them somewhere before they die out.
Actually… I have a sketch here of them.
[…]
You know what, I’ll just take you to the habitat when you’re feeling better. The sketch doesn’t do them justice.
[---]
“Get up.”
It took a moment for Tina’s brain to reattach itself to the rest of her body and process the instruction.
By then, she’d been kicked in the ribs twice.
It was apparent that the extended bouts with the Cruciatus curse were starting to wreak havoc on her body: Her muscles were like jelly, every movement made her shake dangerously, and the nerves in any given area screamed when the slightest bit of pressure was applied to them.
“What now?” She asked, voice slurred slightly from exhaustion and pain.
“We’re going to the cage.”
Cage? Tina thought, a lump forming in her throat. What cage?
But she didn’t bother asking out loud.
Because she had a feeling that whatever this ‘cage’ was, she wasn’t going to be alone in it for very long.
[---]
Tina
You’re scarin’ me.
I can’t hear you, Tina.
I’m really, really listening and I can’t hear you.
Please. Please.
Hear me.
Talk back.
Wake up.
Please.
[---]
When Tina was certain they weren’t watching her, she broke down and cried.
Not loudly- she kept the noise in, the only indicator that she was crying at all was her slightly stuttered breathing. Her chest heaved the way it had when she was little and her father had finally died, a week after her mother, confirming her and Queenie’s status as orphans.
Queenie. Oh God, she must be a wreck. They’ve never been apart for too very long since their parents died; when Tina had graduated from Ilvermorny she’d made regular commutes back to Massachusetts to visit her sister until her own graduation. Coming home after work to find Queenie working on some dress or reading a magazine or baking was as natural as breathing and the realization that they’d been apart for probably more than a week made her feel sick.
Hopefully Jacob was looking after her, comforting her with hugs and pastries as best he could. He was a good man. Tina had gotten to know him better over the last few months, and No-Maj or not, he was a good match for Queenie. They had a similar spirit. Any girl would be lucky to have a man that looked at her the way Jacob looked at Queenie. Tina hoped that if the worst happened, if she did not come home, that he would be able to hold Queenie together.
And Newt; Newt had been due back in New York a week from the day Tina had been captured. Surely that time had passed by now. What had Queenie told him? What had he felt when he’d heard? Did he think she was dead? Was he mourning for her? Or was he pestering the Aurors, as Queenie surely was, to find her? Tina remembered the look on his face when he’d begged them not to hurt his creatures, and when the Aurors had killed Credence. She thought about that look on his face upon learning of her disappearance and maybe even her death. It made her cry harder.
Aurors- Graves. What about Graves? Was he looking for her? Had he given up on the possibility of finding her alive? Did he feel guilty about allowing her to take the lead when it should have been him? That, unfortunately, was more likely than not a very solid ‘yes’- Tina could see him perfectly in her mind’s eye, the heaviness in his shoulders all too clear. He would convince himself that this was his fault.
And Tina was starting to suspect that she would not have the chance to convince him otherwise.
[---]
…okay, now don’t be angry, but I may have recently acquired this next creature on the black market right before I came back to New York.
I think they were on the market for Parseltongues. I suppose that makes sense, since Runespoors are snakes and can provide excellent conversation if appropriately addressed; or at least, that’s what I’m told. When I was researching them in the field I had a Parseltongue named Abram who translated everything the wild Runespoors were saying to each other.
Really, you’d be surprised how much of it was constant disagreement over basic decisions like ‘which direction do we go’ and ‘does that spot look good for a nap’ and ‘should we rip this fellow’s throat out or leave him be’- er, yes, I was the fellow in question. In fairness, they were so preoccupied with their decision-making I had more than enough time to put a safe distance between us.
[---]
Time was so fluid that it had ceased to have meaning.
There were beatings.
There were curses.
There were-
There were sessions in the cage.
Tina existed in a twilight world where she was neither awake nor asleep. Sometimes, she would dream so vividly that she would forget that she was in the cell. Sometimes the dreams would contain memories. Other times, the things she saw were obviously built on imagination.
She had definitely been yelled at by Picquery the day she’d attacked Mary Lou Barebone in front of her Second Salemers. Picquery had given her the chewing-out of the century, the words “embarrassment to the department” and “catastrophe on levels unheard of since Rappaport” had been thrown around. That was real.
But she’d never sat in the Mooncalf enclosure with Newt and watched the strange little creatures do their odd, ritualistic dancing.
And she had never held a job at Jacob’s bakery.
She did get absolutely wasted on Firewhiskey at the office Christmas party two years back with Graves; she was a greenhorn to the Aurors and was out of her comfort-zone interacting with so many of them on a personal level, and Graves could only resist the urge to bust them for various (and there were many) infractions if he was rip-roaringly drunk.
At one point, after a beating Tina was barely able to pay attention to because of how scattered her brains were, she began to think that if she were to die, this wouldn’t be the worst way to go out; better to have a head full of dreams and memories rather than a reality of pain and terror.
[---]
Hey Teenie, guess what?
Jacob proposed to me last night.
Gave me a ring and everything.
I was…
I was going on about how you’re the only family I got. And how I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.
And he- he said I didn’t need to worry about not having any family. That he’d been my family. Isn’t that just the… The sweetest thing anyone’s ever said?
[…]
But he said he wants to wait till you’re better, Teenie. Says it wouldn’t be right to get married ‘till you’re healthy enough to come.
So you gotta get better, okay?
You gotta be my maid of honor.
Can’t have a wedding without a maid of honor, right?
[…]
Please, Teenie.
I need you.
Please come back.
[---]
There was a moment of clarity. Or semi-clarity, as it were; Tina’s head was full of fog, but it was a fog she could see and hear through.
“Is she dead?”
A pause.
Then the toe of a boot collided painfully with Tina’s ribs, and she coughed.
“Apparently not.”
Another pause.
She thought about opening her eyes, but really, why waste the effort? They would ask questions, she wouldn’t give them answers, there would be kicks and curses and pain, and really, did her eyes need to be open for that? There wouldn’t be anything new to it. She recognized the voices. It was always the same.
Really, now it was just a matter of how much longer they planned on keeping her alive. Soon they would realize that she was useless for information, that their time and efforts had been wasted for nothing.
And then there would be a bright, all-consuming green light, and then nothing.
If Tina could not go home, then nothing was the next best thing.
[---]
Oh, I’d nearly forgotten this one. Must have skipped a couple of pages.
Now, the Quintaped was absolutely terrifying. I didn’t think I could actually learn to dislike a creature, but the Quintapeds- I am not fond of them at all. See this?
[…]
This is what I got from failing to appropriately conceal myself from them. Personally, I’m inclined to believe the lore that suggests they used to be human, because I’ve never met such a malicious creature outside of the Dementors or Lethifolds in my entire life
no no no no no no no no no no
no no no no no no no no no no
no no no no no no no no no no
no no no no no no no no no no
no no no no no no no no no no
no no no no no no no no no no
no no no no no no no no no no
NO NO NO-
Tina?
Tina!
[---]
Tina was in the cage.
She started screaming preemptively, because she always knew what was coming when she woke up in the cage.
The interior covered two-hundred square feet of the floor, with the chair directly in the middle. The first time in the chair she had panicked because it reminded her of the chair she’d nearly been executed in at MACUSA.
[---]
Teenie, Teenie, it’s okay!
It’s okay, Teenie, you’re okay!
[---]
The hatch in the ceiling opened.
And the Dementors descended.
Dozens of them.
They slid into the space between the cage and the walls of the room, too far away to Kiss her, but close enough to drain her happiness away and bring her to a state of complete and utter misery.
The things she remembered were terrible:
Her parents’ deaths, holding Queenie as she wailed and wondering, amidst her own grief, what their future would hold.
Honoria and Paulette pouring ink on her head in front of the entire classroom and calling her a whore in her sixth year because Tina had, unknowingly, flirted with a boy who she didn’t realize was Honoria’s boyfriend.
The time she watched a sobbing woman be torn away from her husband in the MACUSA lobby, and Graves explaining that he was a wizard and she was a No-Maj and that Rappaport’s Law meant that she would have to be Obliviated and he would be going to jail.
And the execution chamber.
That was a popular one.
When Tina had woken up in the nights after that particular incident, shaking and whimpering as she so vividly recalled her very near brush with death, she’d folded her knees to her chest and tried to recall with equal clarity what had happened after that.
“Tina, listen to me. I’ll catch you. Tina!”
The death-potion swirling around her, her growing terror that she would be consumed-
“I’ll catch you.”
Newt was disappearing.
“I’ve got you, Tina.”
And she’d jumped, and ever since, in retrospect, Newt had not needed to hold her as long as he had, but he did, and it felt so good after that moment of heart-stopping terror to be held by someone.
But every time she was brought to the cage, her ability to recall that moment with the same comforting clarity slipped further and further away.
And all that was left was the fear.
[---]
Tina?
[…]
I am so, so sorry.
I shouldn’t have mentioned those dreadful creatures last time.
I didn’t mean to upset you, Tina.
Seeing you like that, it makes me…
[…]
Oh, Tina.
[---]
At some point, the pain stopped.
There was no accounting for what was in her head and what was reality anymore.
It don’t hurt I’ll catch you Tina Tina can you hear me a hot dog for lunch again disgracing the department Tina come on look at me how would you feel if I gave you your copy in person Goldstein Goldstein where is she Tina did they hurt you did they use the Cruciatus curse on you I am not flirting everyone knows Newt only kept me around because witch you will burn in hell get her up quick before they regroup
Tina stayed in that gray place where the dreams and memories came and went.
Until one day, she didn’t.
[---]
Teenie.
I miss you.
I miss you so much.
[---]
In this time, in that hazy gray world where reality was fluid, Tina was still quite able to tell the difference between the dreams and the memories.
And one day, for the first time, she became confused.
Queenie was showing her a wedding ring. Her wedding ring, because she and Jacob were getting married.
This is a memory.
No. No, this was a dream. Jacob and Queenie weren’t getting married.
But she told you they were.
When? Tina distinctly remembered, on the day she left, that Queenie had been bare-handed when she’d made breakfast. She was not wearing an engagement ring.
No. But she is now.
That was ridiculous.
Tina was in her cell. She hadn’t seen Queenie in at least two weeks.
It’s a memory.
Her head was starting to hurt.
You saw it on her hand.
It was a green stone with a silver band. It reminded her of the colors Newt had described to her as being part of the Slytherin house at Hogwarts.
She was sitting right in front of you.
Tina could picture that too: Queenie sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes wet, voice cracking as she talked about what Jacob had said to her.
But there was no bed in her cell.
And then, after a long pause, in which her damaged brain attempted so hard to reconnect itself, Tina wondered:
Am I still in the cell?
[---]
Sea Serpents.
[…]
Well… I suppose to start, that one everyone seems to think lives in Scotland, that’s not a Sea Serpent- that’s a Kelpie. Met him myself, actually; I call him Ebenezer.
Ebenezer aside, I did meet an actual Sea Serpent. She was quite the friendly lady- most of them are, it’s actually rather rare for them to attack people, I’ve yet to find any recollections of people who have been attacked by actual Sea Serpents.
This one I named Calliope. With the proper bait she came right up to the side of the boat, and let me tell you, the boat was a rather small one, I was a bit concerned she might topple us quite unintentionally-”
(Oh. This was real.)
[---]
“Newt?”
His name came out clumsily, somewhat slurred. Tina had no idea how long it had been since she’d used her mouth for speech that was not agonized screaming.
The room they were in had been there for a while. But it felt as though Tina was seeing it for the first time.
She was in a bed. In a hospital.
Not in the cell.
Evidently Tina’s mind was not capable of great displays of emotion just yet, because her only thought upon realizing that she was safe, that a cold, lonely death was no longer in her future, was:
Oh. That’s nice.
Abruptly, Newt was on the edge of her bed. It took a full ten seconds for her body to jerk in surprise; her reaction-time was severely dulled.
“Tina?” Newt’s voice came out hushed, hopeful, worried.
It took effort. Her brain was still clearly trying to remember that there were arms and legs attached to her body. But slowly, with no small amount of wobbling, Tina managed to lift her hand so that it touched Newt’s shoulder.
“…Newt,” She managed.
Newt’s face crumpled, and he made a sound like a sob.
“Tina,” He croaked, and then gently pulled her into a hug. “Oh, Tina. Oh God. We thought you might not come back.”
And Tina set her head on Newt’s shoulder, unsteady fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt as tightly as she could.
The pain was gone.
She wasn’t in the cell.
She was in the city.
In a hospital.
Her sister was getting married.
And she was with Newt.
I’m here, Tina thought.
“I’m back,” She said to Newt. “I’m back.”
-End