"Ní mhaireann solas na maidine don lá." // "No morning sun lasts all day."

Tara was running late to the Ministry that morning, but she wasn’t all the way worried. There had been countless times before where she strolled in an hour past the traditional start of her shift, and nothing had come of it. She wasn’t exactly needed until the afternoon hours anyway, and the less time she spent sitting behind her desk, the better her day was all around.

But that morning, once she had stepped foot into the main corridor, she was met with what could only be described as chaos.

Wizards from all different departments were scrambling about, whispering frantically amongst themselves and wearing matching expressions of both grief and concern.

Tara reached out and stopped a random witch who was just about to pass her by.

“What’s going on?” 

“Grindelwald’s done it again.” the woman replied. “They say he attacked a neighborhood in the heart of Dublin. Both Wizards and Muggles were killed in an explosion.”

Immediately, Tara’s blood ran cold.

She thanked the wizard and continued on, breaking out into a brisk jog. She made it to the office level in a matter of seconds, sprinting down the carpeted hallway and not looking where she was going in the slightest. Not until someone had already crashed directly into her shoulder.

Tara’s eyes widened as she suddenly found her best friend staring back at her, eyes wide with terror. Tara couldn’t formulate the question that she was already far too terrified to ask.

But Leta answered anyway, easily reading it in her eyes.

“They…they said it was a gym.” she said in a trembling voice.

Tara was sprinting down the hallway again before Leta could even manage to call out after her. 

She practically broke down the door of the Head Auror’s office, finding Theseus standing in front of his desk, quickly flipping through a report, his eyebrows wrought with intense concentration.

When their eyes met, a heavy silence fell over the room. One that quickly suffocated them both.

“Tell me it wasn’t them.” she demanded.

Silence.

“Theseus…tell me it wasn’t!”

The Auror opened and closed his mouth once before managing to cough out a response.

“I’m so sorry Tara.”

The witch was gone.

“Tara, wait!” Theseus called out, things falling off of his desk and crashing onto the floor as he tore out of his office after her.

Pushing past people in the crowds, Tara nearly knocked over multiple wizards as she aimed for the Floo Network. Once she stumbled into one of the fireplaces, she threw the powder down, all but screaming out her home address.

Tara re-appeared in the dead center of a large pile of rubble. Sirens were blaring all around her, and people out on the surrounding streets were screaming, shouting or crying. 

She didn’t even recognize the land around her at first. Stone and bricks were strewn everywhere, and there was no longer any semblance of shape or form. But when she took her first hesitant step forward, there came a sickening crunch from underneath her boot. 

Looking down, she pulled her foot back to find that she had stepped on what looked to be a picture frame. And with shaking hands, she bent down to pick it up.

Theseus had appeared on the street only a minute after her, his head on a frantic swivel. 

Tara shoved the soot and grime off of the broken sheet of glass in her hands, finally able to stare down at the cracked and crooked smiles of her and her family on the day that they had first opened the gym.

The gym that she was now standing in the rubble and ashes of.

“Hey! You!” a policeman shouted. “Get out of there! This is a crime scene!”

But Tara clearly hadn’t heard him. And just as the cop had started towards her, Theseus had appeared in his path. 

“Stop, stop!” he said loudly, holding his hands up. “That was her house. Her family.”

The policeman blinked in surprise.

Tara gripped the sides of the picture frame so hard that her knuckles turned a stark, white color. In a flash, she had thrown it back down to the bricks and stones at her feet. Her hands instead reaching up to her hair, fingers winding tightly into the strands as she glanced around at the rest of the wreckage.

Theseus glanced over his shoulder at the sound, immediately breaking out into a jog and nearly tripping over the rubble as he made his way over to her. 

Tara had paced a few feet to the right, crouching down in order to pick through the mess again, haphazardly throwing pieces of debris every which way.

Theseus pulled himself to a stop a meter or so behind her, watching on as she wandered through the destruction, his chest burning with guilt and worry. He had gone to step forward again, when he accidentally kicked something with the tip of his shoe.

Glancing down at his feet, he found the picture frame that she had discarded a few moments prior. Picking it up himself, he found the glass cover completely shattered, but the photograph that lay behind it seemingly untouched. Before he even realized what he was doing, he had pried the frame away completely, staring down at it for a long moment before glancing back over his shoulder. The policeman he had talked to had by then been joined by three of his colleagues, and they were all now watching the two wizards intently. 

Quickly, Theseus shoved the photo into his back pocket, walking the rest of the way over to Tara and crouching down at her side.

She didn’t move.

“Tara, I’m sorry but we can’t stay here.” he whispered. “The Muggle police will do their investigation, then we’ll come in and do ours.”

The witch took in a long breath, and Theseus watched her shoulders shake as she did so. But she still hadn’t been able to respond.

“Tara-”

Loud footsteps suddenly approached them from behind. And at that, the two wizards were quick to climb to their feet, whirling around to face the three Muggle police officers who were coming upon their position in the rubble.

“I understand you’re a part of the family?” one of them eventually ventured. 

Tara slowly nodded her head in silent confirmation. 

The Irishman gulped.

“We are still in the preliminary stages of our investigation-” he said, gesturing over his shoulder back at the main street, causing both wizards to turn their attention there as well. “We do need someone to identify the bodies.”

Tara’s eyes widened as they fell across a line of what seemed to be dark brown blankets, laid in a neat row down the center of the street, an ambulance and police car flanking them on either side.

She whirled back to the policemen.

“No.” she barked, taking a step backwards. “You can’t make me do that.”

“Ma’am, I understand this is a traumatic moment for you, but no one else has come forward yet-”

“Half of the people in this city knew them!” she began to argue. “Ask them! Ask literally anyone else! But don’t ask me- don’t ask me to look at my- don’t ask me to do that!” she shouted, turning on her heels and immediately sprinting off the scene, no particular destination in mind.

“Ma’am please-” one of the other men had called out, stepping forward as if in an effort to pursue her. But just as quickly, Theseus appeared in front of him, holding a hand up in front of the man’s chest. 

“Just leave her be.” he said lowly.

And the man listened.

That night, Leta held her best friend tightly as they sat together on their couch.

She didn’t cry. 

Not once. 

She just shook like a wounded animal.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* : ｡☆ﾟ.･ ───

Tara didn’t return to the Ministry for almost a week after the attack.

And when she did, she could feel every single pair of eyes that so much as passively glanced at her figure. 

The incident had made damn near every paper in both the wizarding and Muggle worlds. The Irish police had come to the conclusion that it was a freak accident with the gas mains below the gym itself. But the British Ministry of Magic had just as quickly found evidence to link it to Grindelwald and his followers.

Each respective paper had also included the names of the victims, leading to an easily made connection to the Director of Lawmen training that had joined the ranks of the Ministry almost a year ago. 

Eyes followed her out of elevators, down hallways, and all the way up until the point where she was finally able to close the doors of her office behind her. 

Whatever paperwork that had been left on her desk was shoved to the ground, and instead replaced with pounds and pounds of research on Grindelwald that she had stolen from the archives. She would lock herself in her office all day, not even coming out for meals. Those piles of parchment quickly became her entire world.

Late into the evening on her fourth day back, there had been a careful knock on her office door.

She didn’t answer it, rather she was too busy pacing back and forth behind her desk, thumbing through her thirteenth mission report of the day.

Theseus gingerly pushed the door open, poking his head inside. When his eyes fell upon her repetitive strides and frozen expression, a heavy sigh escaped his lips as he fully let himself in the office.

It wasn’t until the door had already closed behind him that she managed to pick her head up. And it was then that he got the first glance of the witch’s face since the day of the attack.

She looked terrible. 

Her cheeks were sunken in slightly, the bags under her eyes practically purple. Her hair was haphazardly collected into a bun at the back of her head, held together seemingly by her wand alone.

Theseus stopped just shy of her desk, and Tara made a point of looking back down at the report in her hands. 

“What do you want, Theseus?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“I just wanted to check in.” he answered honestly. “See how you were doing…” His voice trailed off as the large stack of files on top of her desk slowly caught his attention.

“I’m fine.” she responded. “Just busy.”

Theseus plucked a file off the top of the tower of parchment, one with a moving photo of Grindelwald tacked onto the front. He immediately held it up towards her.

“Busy with…what, exactly?”

Tara’s eyes whipped towards him, her face burning with anger as she snatched the file out of his hands, slamming it back onto the top of the pile. Theseus immediately mimicked her actions, placing his entire palm down flat on the file, causing the two of them to engage in a brief stare down.

“Don’t do this to yourself.” Theseus finally whispered.

Tara’s nostrils flared, pointedly dragging her hand off of the stack.

“I don’t need a lecture from you, Theseus.” she growled. “I am quite capable of handling mys-”

“-handling yourself. Yes I know.” he interjected boldly. “But you don’t have to. And you shouldn’t. Especially not now.”

Tara immediately shook her head, all but throwing the file she had been reading down onto her desk. She grabbed her jacket off of the back of her chair, moving to leave the room altogether. But just as quickly, the Head Auror had grabbed a hold of her arm, forcing her to stop in front of him.

“This is exactly what he wants.” he said through gritted teeth. “If he can isolate you, break you down, you’re easier to control.”

Tara wanted to argue that she wasn’t that gullible, but something in her chest told her that he was right, even if she would never dare to admit such a thing out loud. Instead, she simply clenched her jaw tight, refusing to speak altogether.

In the silence that followed, Theseus sighed. With his free hand, he reached into his front suit pocket, producing a carefully folded piece of cellulose. He then handed it to her without a word.

Tara eyed it, and him, for a moment before slipping her arm out of his grasp and taking it. When she unfolded it, she swallowed down a gasp as she stared at the photo that she thought she had left behind, discarded amongst the rubble of her childhood home. 

“I know you don’t trust Auror’s-” Theseus started as Tara quickly looked up at him with wide eyes. “But could you please trust me, at least? I swear I will help you get to the bottom of this in any way that I can, but just don’t…don’t throw your life away for the sake of revenge.”

Tara continued to stare up at him, dumbfounded, as his words settled over the room. The man offered her half a smile before moving to walk out of the office himself and leave her be. 

“Theseus-” her voice called out to him just as he reached for the door handle. 

He turned back towards her, perhaps a bit too quickly.

Tara pressed her lips into a tight line.

“Thank you.” she said, her whisper somehow managing to travel the length of the room.

Theseus blinked in surprise, but his serious expression did not waver.

“Always.”

And with that, he disappeared out the door.

When he was gone, Tara glanced back down at the photo she was holding in her hands. Her thumb traced across the smiling faces of her family as she slowly lowered her body down to the floor, pressing the cellulose to her chest tightly.

And she finally let herself sob.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* : ｡☆ﾟ.･ ───