𝐚 𝐧𝐚𝐨𝐢 𝐝é𝐚𝐠 // 𝟏𝟗
Tara quickly shuffled down the hallways, feverishly wiping her face clear with the back of her hands. And as she emerged back out into the main atrium of the French Ministry, she found the building in total chaos. People were running around, talking and even shouting frantically with each other in a flurry of different languages.
Up ahead, she spotted Travers speaking to a group of Aurors, so she made her way over to them first.
“What’s happening?” she demanded immediately upon her arrival.
Travers was the one to answer her.
“Grindelwald is calling a rally. Tonight. His summons just went up around the city.”
“Do we know where?” she asked.
The man shook his head, appearing to be a bit frazzled.
“No. But we’ll find out. And when we do, I want every single person in attendance arrested.” he shouted, not only at her, but at the rest of the crowd of Aurors.
A scowl quickly overtook Tara’s expression.
“If you go in too hot, you run the risk of casualties. You know that.”
The Director glared back at her.
“Risk of casualties rises every second we let Grindelwald's actions go unanswered.
“You’re playing directly into his hands!”
Travers took a single step forward.
“We are not letting him get away this time. If you disapprove of our methods, then perhaps your skills are of better use elsewhere.”
Tara ground her teeth together, stepping up to him as well.
“If you send those Auror’s in there tonight…their blood will be on your hands.” she spat.
Travers didn’t entertain her with another response. Instead, he simply shot her one last pointed glare, before turning and waving a hand at the surrounding Auror’s.
“Let’s move!” he barked, pushing past Tara. “Find Theseus! We need to figure out where this rally is taking place, now!”
Tara watched them walk away from her, clenching her fists tightly at her side. She had seen a few of the Aurors steal worried glances back at her as they followed their Director, but ultimately none of them had left his side.
Out of a distant corridor, Theseus finally emerged back out onto the main floor, suit jacket now back over his shoulders.
His eyes had quickly honed in on where Tara was standing in the center of the atrium, but neither of them moved.
Travers then quickly shouted Theseus’ name, and the Head Auror severed eye-contact in order to jog over to the rest of his team.
Tara let out a frustrated, albeit muted, scream.
Even as alarm bells began to echo out overhead, Tara paid them absolutely no attention. For someone else suddenly crossed her view, moving swiftly in the complete opposite direction of every other body in the Ministry.
It was Leta.
Tara broke out into an immediate sprint in order to catch up with her.
“What are you doing?” she called out the moment she reached the witches’ side.
Leta simply looked back at her with a pained, desperate expression.
“The Records.” she answered plainly, her voice cracking. “I just…I need to see it. They’re making me feel crazy.”
Tara pressed her lips together, but nodded all the same.
“Alright. Let’s go.”
The two of them took off for the Records room, which was on the floor just above the Ministry’s main chamber. Peering over the railing into the cavernous room below, they found themselves staring at rows and rows of records stacks. They each had intricate carvings of tree limbs etched into the sides of them, and held at least a hundred shelves of files a piece.
Tara glanced sideways at Leta, watching as she took a long, deep breath before raising up her wand.
“Lestrange.” she beckoned.
Instantly the stacks began to move, shuffling around amongst each other like a cup game, before making way for one in particular as it rose up and off of the floor, swiftly levitating towards where the two were standing at the railing. When it came to an eventual stop, it hovered perfectly at eye level with them.
The shelf facing them had the Lestrange family name printed above it. But the cubby itself was mostly empty. There was a rectangular mark left behind in a thin layer of dust, a sign that something had in fact laid there in the past. Now in its place, was a single, folded piece of parchment.
With shaking hands, Leta reached out to collect it. And Tara peered over her shoulder as she read the printed script out loud.
“Records moved to the Lestrange family tomb at Père Lachaise.”
The two witches share a worried glance, but before either of them could venture so much as a word, a sharp, high-pitched squeal suddenly caught their attention.
Whipping their heads back to the record stack, Tara quickly took notice of a small, green creature poking its head out from in between one of the small crevices in the shelves.
Her eyes widened in recognition and Leta once more raised her wand.
“Circumrota.” she whispered softly.
Slowly, the record stack began to turn, eventually revealing to them the opposite side.
And the two people who were clinging onto it for dear life.
The first wizard was wearing the undeniably recognizable blue, wool trench coat of their childhood friend. And the other, was a woman with short, cropped, brown hair who looked vaguely familiar to Tara. But it wasn’t until she bashfully tilted her head over her shoulder, that she remembered how that was so; she had been one of the MACUSA Auror’s present at the events that had transpired back in New York.
“Hello, Newt.” Leta greeted kindly.
“Hello.” the Magizoologst replied, glancing back and forth between his two friends for a moment.
“Hi.” the American Auror squeaked out as well.
Tara had opened her mouth to ask the obvious question about how they had come to cling onto the side of the record stack, when suddenly a combination of footsteps, and low growls sounded from behind them.
“Oh no.” Newt exclaimed, causing the two witches on the platform to spin on the balls of her feet. There, they found the old secretary who was in charge of guarding the doors of the archives, slowly walking sauntering towards them. At her sides, she was flanked by two, large feline-esque beasts with glowing blue eyes.
“What kind of cats are those?” Leta asked nervously.
“Those aren’t cats, they’re Matagots.” Newt quickly explained. “They’re spirit familiars. They guard the Ministry. But they won’t hurt you unless you-”
“Stupefy!” Leta had cried out, clearly growing uncomfortable by how close the woman and creatures were getting to their position.
Her spell hit one of the animals, but instead of sending it flying backwards, it simply hissed angrily before splitting in two, multiplying right before their eyes.
“-unless you attack them!” Newt finished off as her curse continued to ricochet off of the hides of the ever-growing population of creatures, thus creating more and more aggressive duplications.
“Oops.” Leta whimpered.
“Go, go!” Tara shouted, pushing Leta back towards the railing.
The two of them then jumped forward without a second thought, both Newt and the American Auror reaching out their hands to help pull them onto the record stack.
“Reverte!”
The stack flew backwards into the lower level of the archives, the Matagots lunging after them with vicious snarls.
Newt cast a silent spell of his own, which resulted in the other shelves in the room to begin spinning and twirling around their location, in an effort to obstruct them from the view of their pursuers.
Once their stack hit the ground, the group of four immediately leapt off. Newt threw his case down onto the ground, flicking it open and ordering the witches to jump inside.
They all obeyed him without question, scrambling down the rickety wooden ladder into the small shack that was waiting for them below. They had no time to look around, as Newt followed close behind, sprinting out the front door and into the infinite, magical scope of the rest of his case. Mere seconds later, a loud, excited roar echoed from somewhere far beyond their position, practically shaking the ground beneath their feet.
“Get under the counter please!” they heard Newt call out to them. “She’s going to make quite a mess coming through there!”
Leta, Tara, and the American Auror dove under the wooden counter that extended out of the farthest wall of the room. Just in time too, as an enormous creature suddenly came bursting into the workshop. The room magically grew to meet the animal’s size, but its massive tail did manage to swipe some things off of the surrounding shelves, sending them clattering to the ground. Leta let out a surprised scream, reaching up to cover her ears with her hands.
Tara peered out from the safety of their hiding spot, taking a fraction of a second to marvel at the large creature as it tramped around in a brief circle. This one also seemed to resemble a cat, but not in the same way the Matagots did. Despite its size, this one had several of the hallmarks of a mountain lion of sorts, except with a tail that looked like it should belong to a paper-mâché dragon.
“Stay here!” Newt ordered the group again.
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Tara replied, pushing herself further under the cover of the counter, dragging Leta with her as the big cat finally shot up the ladder, exploding out of the top of the case. The lid slammed shut behind them, but they still managed to hear the muffled roars of Newt’s creature, as well as the shrieks of the Matagots somewhere far above their heads. The case shook slightly, which was then followed by the loud sound of shattering glass.
Then…total silence.
The group of witches shared worried eye contact before eventually coming to a silent agreement to crawl out from under the cover of the counter. And as they dared to peer up the long ladder of Newt’s workshop, the lid of the case suddenly flicked open, revealing the starry night sky that twinkled high above their position.
The American Auror had snatched something up off of the ground before following Leta and Tara up the ladder and back onto solid ground.
When Tara emerged from the case, the first thing she saw was the lettering of the tall, metal entrance gate that they were suddenly standing beneath; Père Lachaise.
“Shit.”
Newt and the creature were a few meters across the way from them, the latter appearing overjoyed by the situation, bouncing around and letting out excited mewls here and there. It then turned back towards Newt, nuzzling his chest affectionately with its giant head, nearly knocking the wizard over in the process.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, wait-” Newt laughed. “Hold it there, please. Come on- Alright, okay-”
The American Auror shuffled forward, holding up what she had gathered back inside the case. The soft jingle of a small cluster of bells echoed rather pleasantly out into the nighttime air.
The large creature immediately turned towards her and the toy, its eyes wide with excitement.
That’s when Tara saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Paranoidly turning her head to the left, she managed to catch sight of Leta sprinting down the dark path of the graveyard.
Briefly glancing back over her shoulder, Tara watched Newt finish ushering the creature back into his case. When he picked up his head, the two of them made brief eye contact before Tara quickly spun on her heels and took off after her friend.
“Leta!” she called out into the darkness, the bottoms of her shoes making light imprints in the soil as she went. “Leta wait-!”
She managed to catch up with the smaller witch just before she walked through the entrance way of a particularly large mausoleum. As she grabbed Leta’s arm to stop her from moving any further, her eyes glanced upwards, dancing across the name etched into the ancient stone above their heads; Lestrange.
Quickly, she looked back down at Leta.
“Are you sure?”
Leta nodded tearfully, seemingly unable to speak.
Tara took a breath, dropping the hold she had on Leta’s arm. Only to then swiftly slip her hand into hers, tightly interlacing their fingers together before the two of them moved to descend down the long staircase.
The walls of the all-too-creepy tomb were lined with statues of older, dead members of the Lestrange family. All men of course. But if that wasn’t bad enough, the moment that the two of them emerged into the main chamber of the mausoleum, they found themselves stumbling upon a gaggle of people who were already gathered inside.
Three of them were standing at the center of the room, a fourth pressed up against a far wall, seeming absolutely terrified at what he was watching go down.
One of the men at the center of the room had his wand brandished. His skin was dark, and he was wearing a long, navy-blue coat. Across from him, stood a beautiful woman, done up in a blue, scaly dress. Her hair was tied up in a disheveled bun at the top of her head, and she had her arms out to either side, shielding another person with her entire body.
The man cowering behind her had short, black, choppy hair, and was wearing a red and black vest that rested overtop a black button up. Neither of which looked like they fit him right.
Tara had to stifle a gasp when her eyes found the young man's face, immediately recognizing him as Credence, the Obscurial.
The fourth person in the room was the man cowering against the back wall. Notably as far away from the wizards as possible. He was a shorter, stout man with a small moustache across its upper lip.
“Move back!” the man with the wand demanded loudly. “Move out of the way! If I must kill you as well as Corvus, I shall!”
In less than a heartbeat, Leta had also pulled out her wand.
“Stop!” she shouted, causing all heads in the room to turn towards their position at the bottom of the staircase.
The entire tomb fell silent as the man in front of them stared back at Leta with an expression of grief-stricken astonishment. When Leta had made a move to step forward, Tara intercepted her actions, eclipsing half of her body with her own, not exactly appreciating the way that the man had shuffled forward as well.
“Yusuf?” Leta suddenly whispered, her voice shaking.
The man’s wand arm finally dropped down to his side.
“Is that really you?” he said in return. “My little sister?”
Tara blinked in surprise.
From behind them, two more pairs of footsteps began to echo down the stairs in a hurry. And soon enough, Newt and the American Auror had stumbled into the room as well, bringing the final count of those crammed into the underground resting place to eight.
In the beat of silence that followed their arrival, Credence carefully walked out from behind the woman in the blue dress.
“So he’s your brother?” he asked timidly. “Who am I?”
Leta swallowed heavily.
“I don’t know.”
The young man’s expression contorted into something that resembled pain. For it looked as if it was hard for him to do so much as breathe.
“Just tell me my story…then you can end it.”
Yusuf slowly turned back to him, his own shoulders beginning to shake.
“Your story, is our story,” he said, briefly glancing back at Leta. “Our story.”
“No Yusuf-” Leta begged, but the man did not listen.
“My father was Mustafa Kama, a pureblood of Sénégalese descent and most accomplished. My mother, Laurena, was equally as high-bred, a noted beauty. They were deeply in love. They knew a man of great influence, from a famous French pureblood family. He desired her. Lestrange used the Imperius Curse to seduce and abduct her…that was the last time I ever saw her. She died giving birth to a little girl.” he continued, again glancing over his shoulder back at Leta. “You.”
Tears quickly began to well up in the shorter witches’ eyes.
“Stop this.” Tara hissed, but the man ignored her as well.
“The news of her death drove my father insane. With his dying breath, my father charged me to seek revenge; kill the person Lestrange loves best in the world.” Yusuf continued darkly, still looking at Leta. “I thought at first it would be easy, he had only one close relative- you. But…” he then paused.
“Say it.” Leta hissed from behind gritted teeth.
Yusuf almost looked apologetic for a moment.
“He never loved you.”
Leta released a shaky breath.
“He remarried not three months after her death. He loved her no more than he had loved you. But then, his son Corvus was born at last. And that man who had never known love, was filled with it…” the man said bitterly. “All he cared about was little Corvus.”
A tense silence blanketed the tomb as his words fell on all of their shoulders.
“So…this is the truth?” Credence dared to ask. “I am Corvus Lestrange?”
“Yes.” Yusuf answered.
“No!” Leta had shouted at the exact same time.
Credence looked back and forth between the two half-siblings, and regrettably, so did Tara.
“Realizing that Mustafa Kama’s son had sworn revenge, your father sought to hide you where I couldn’t find you.” Yusuf continued. “So he confided you to his servant, who boarded a ship for America-”
“He did send Corvus to America, but-” Leta had attempted to interject.
“His servant, Irma Dugard, was a half-elf. Her magic was weak and therefore left no trace I could follow. I had only just discovered how you had escaped when I received news I never expected…the ship had gone down at sea. But you survived, didn’t you?” he said, whirling on Credence accusingly now. “Somehow, someone had pulled you from the water! ‘A son cruelly banished. Despair of the daughter. Return, great avenger, with wings from the water.’ There-” he said, pointing back at Leta. “-stands the despairing daughter. You are the winged raven returned from the sea, but I…I am the avenger of my family’s ruin.” he said, once more raising his wand. “I pity you, Corvus. But you must die.”
Leta suddenly surged forward, ripping her hand out of Tara’s and pushing past her so roughly that the Irish wish stumbled slightly over her own feet.
“Corvus Lestrange is already dead, I killed him!” she screamed.
No one moved. No one breathed as her words settled across the now silent tomb.
With tears continuously streaming down her face, Leta raised her wand with a shaking arm.
“Accio!”
A heavy box, which had been haphazardly hidden in a far corner of the room, was summoned forward by her magic. It slammed down at Leta’s feet, a plume of dust rising in its wake. The witch then slowly knelt down to its level. Now in the presence of a Lestrange, a series of gears and locks began to whir to life, as the box itself started to unfold like some sort of metal puzzle.
Despite her own shaking, Tara subtly raised her wand as she stood behind Leta, making sure everyone else in the room stayed back.
“My father owned a very strange family tree.” Leta began to explain as the records began to uncoil out of the box, stretching upwards in an uncanny resemblance of that very thing. “It was only recorded the men. The women in my family were recorded as flowers. Beautiful. Separate.” she said before taking in another shaky breath. “My father sent me to America along with Corvus. Irma was to pose as a grandmother with two grandchildren…Corvus never stopped crying…I only wanted to be free of him. Just for a moment…just…a single…moment. So I swapped him with a sleeping baby in the cabin across the hall. But soon after that, the ship began to sink. I didn’t have time to take it back so…I said nothing.” She then swiftly casted a spell up above their heads, conjuring the haunting sea-green image of a drowning baby swaddle.
Back on the tree in front of her, an unlabeled orchid twisted around the branch with Corvus’ name on it, constricting it until the green leaves slowly began to wither and die right before their very eyes.
Another suffocating silence fell over those gathered.
“You didn’t mean to do it, Leta.” Newt finally whispered from behind them. “So it wasn’t your fault.”
Leta looked over her shoulder tearfully.
“Oh, Newt.” she whispered. “You never met a monster you couldn’t love.”
“Leta…” the female Auror at Newt’s side ventured as gently as she could. “Do you know who Credence really is? Did you know? When you swapped them?”
Leta just shook her head.
“No.” she whispered.
Across the room, Credence’s expression shattered.
However, any further conversation surrounding the topic was violently cut short. The loud sound of falling stones echoed up into the air, as directly across the room from where Tara and Leta stood, a small entrance way opened up out of the tomb wall itself. It revealed a steep staircase, leading even further underground, and disembodied voices could be heard floating up from below. Like some sort of horrible portal to hell.
The man who had been pressed up against the wall during the entire ordeal, never even saying so much as a word, had surprisingly been the first to explore it.
“Queenie?” he called down into the corridor, before hurrying down the stairs.
Newt and the American Auror had immediately sprinted off after him. And Yusuf shot one last pointed look at Leta before following.
Tara bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, quickly crouching down to her friend's side.
“Lee-” she whispered. “Stay here. Please.”
The witch gave her no verbal promise but nodded her head. Her attention was still trained harshly on the family tree in front of her.
Tara stared back at her friend for one last moment before rising to her feet, heading for the foreboding entranceway herself.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* : ｡☆ﾟ.･ ───