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

That evening, they were right back where they started, in the Great Hall of the German Ministry of Magic.

Donning semi-fancy clothes, Tara followed Lally and Jacob into the building, immediately searching for and finding seats amongst the multitude of tables that were now jammed into the center of the grandiose room. Plates piled high with lobster were floating about, landing in front of those already sitting in their chairs. Busboys and waitresses flitted up and down the long tables, occasionally having to duck their heads under the flying dinnerware. 

Once Tara found a seat, Lally and Jacob quickly fell into the ones on either side of her. The former of which was repeatedly mapping the room with well-trained eyes.

On the table in front of them, their goblets had filled themselves magically with wine. And whilst Jacob had been almost supernaturally quick to down his first glass, Tara hadn’t even made a move towards her own.

She never did like wine after all.

“Lally-” Jacob had spoken up after a while, swallowing down another gulp of his never-ending beverage. “The guy with the hair, sitting next to Edith. He looks like he can kill somebody.”

Tara blinked in surprise as both witches turned their heads towards the Muggle.

“Edith?” 

Lally in turn looked to where Jacob had been pointing.

“He also looks like my uncle Dominic.” the man added.

“Is your Uncle Dominic the Norwegian Minister of Magic?” Lally asked.

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

As she spoke, the far doors of the hall all but burst inwards. And the air of the room seemed to drop an immediate twenty degrees in temperature.

Whipping her head to the right, Tara’s eyes widened as she watched Grindelwald and his medium-sized entourage waltz into the Great Hall. The music that had been being played by a band of musicians in a far-off corner, faltered ever-so-slightly upon their arrival.

In her chair, Tara went rigid, her eyes tracking the man across the room. She felt supernaturally possessed by both her anger and her fear. 

A hand quickly landed on her upper arm, as Lally instinctively reached out in what she could only assume was a fear that Tara was going to leap up from her seat.

But she didn’t.

She couldn’t, in fact.

As the group of dark wizards passed their position, it was actually Jacob who rose to his feet.

“Queenie…” he called out softly. “Queenie.”

Tara, finally managing to rip her eyes away from Grindelwald, tracked Jacob’s eyeline into the group of lackeys. Bypassing a squadron of Acolytes and other followers she passively remembered seeing that fateful day in Paris, momentarily lingering on Kama who was pointedly not looking in their direction, her attention finally found purchase on the woman that Jacob was calling out to.

She had short, cropped, blonde hair and wore a beautiful dark dress. But more importantly, she was doing a much, much worse job in trying to pretend that she had not heard nor seen the Muggle standing there.

Back at the head of the group, Grindelwald had stridden over to where Santos was standing with her own squadron.

“Madam Santos. A pleasure. Your supporters are in fine voice.” he said, his words carrying out across the room more than Tara would’ve liked.

The female delegate fixed her smile as pleasantly as possible.

“As are yours, Mr. Grindelwald.”

Now sitting down at a table of their own, Tara watched on with wary eyes as Grindelwald leaned down towards the blond-haired witch from before. She had jumped in surprise, seemingly lost in thought prior to his words, but quickly tuned in to what he was saying. The dark wizard had gestured over his shoulder with his head, and the woman was quick to direct her attention towards a back corner of the Great Hall.

Instantly following suit, Tara’s mouth fell open in surprise as she found herself suddenly staring at the half-hidden figure of Credence. He was lingering in the shadows of the entranceway that the group had sauntered through only minutes prior.

The blond witch nodded her head, quickly rising from her chair and beginning to head in the boy's direction. When she inevitably passed by their table again, Jacob had once more risen to his feet. And as the woman turned her head away from them this time, Tara could clearly see the way that her shoulders were shaking with the effort it evidently took her to do so.

Suddenly, Lally pushed her chair back, placing a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. Her eyes were trained on something at the complete opposite end of the room.

“Stay here.” the witch instructed before slipping into the crowd, beginning to snake around the edges of the tables.

Tara took a moment to watch her, quickly catching onto the way that she was seemingly following one waiter in particular. Both of them now approaching Santos’ end of the table.

Back at her side, still standing, Jacob let out a long sigh. The Muggle then took a pointed chug of the remainder of what she believed to be his third glass of wine before pushing his chair back and beginning to walk across the room.

The witch was on her feet in an instant.

“Jacob, no-!” she tried to whisper, but the Muggle was already long gone.

And he was making a b-line straight for Grindelwald.

Without hesitating, Tara tore off after him.

Shouldering past thick clusters of other wizards, she did her best to catch up with the semi-swaying man before he sauntered up to the dark wizard, but she was a fraction of a second too late.

The silver-haired man glanced up to regard the Muggle’s arrival with a mostly impassive expression.

“Let her go.” Jacob blurted out as Tara shoved yet another waiter out of her way.

“Excuse me?”

Finally, Tara arrived at Jacob’s side, immediately grabbing a hold of his arm in order to pull him away. But in the process of her doing so, her eyes had landed on the dark wizard sitting in front of them. The one who had murdered her parents. The one who had murdered her best friend. The one that had tried, on multiple occasions, to murder her. And she simply could not fight against the way that her feet frozen to the marble floor.

Grindelwald’s eyes were slow to slide over to the newcomer. But once they had, a sickening smile immediately appeared on his face.

“Tara Kelly…as I live and breathe. How lovely it is to see you again.” he spoke, his voice coated with a dark, velvety smoothness. Grindelwald then picked his head up, making a show of glancing about the room behind them. “But- where, oh where is your Head of the British Auror Office?” he asked mockingly.

Tara did not answer him. Mostly because she physically could not bring herself to do so. Her blood had quickly reached a boiling point beneath her skin, and all she could do in response was glare back at his smiling face.

At her side, Jacob had reached into his back pocket. In a flash, he had his fake wand pointed forward, directly at Grindelwald, whose attention turned towards it in what appeared to be genuine surprise.

“Assassin!” someone cried out from behind them.

In a millisecond, all attention in the room was on Tara and Jacob.

Cursing under her breath, Tara tried to calculate a frantic escape plan. But before she could do so, a huge, violent tornado exploded forward, seemingly from the tip of Jacob’s wand. It sent every object in the immediate vicinity careening in a thousand different directions.

As Tara instinctively held a hand up to shield her eyes and head from the flying furniture, she somehow managed to catch a glimpse of Lally across the room. She had been firing spell after spell at the wizard she was currently engaged in battle with, before reaching out into the air, and producing her trusty textbook in a flash of bright light.

The main doors of the Great Hall burst open again, depositing a group of German Auror’s into the now immensely chaotic room. And the man leading the charge was the now infuriatingly recognizable Helmut.

Furniture was still flying everywhere, and Tara quickly tried again to tug at Jacob’s arm, which was now even more difficult to do since he was seemingly having trouble controlling the tornado pouring out from his wand.

At their backs, the giant, shining chandelier that had been hanging above the banquet, swiftly crashed down onto the marble floor. Shattering into a million, glorious pieces.

Both Tara and Jacob turned their heads towards the sight, only to be immediately met with a sea of parchment pages shooting towards them with a purpose. Lally, while deflecting the onslaught of spells from the Aurors, was simultaneously using the floating pages as steppingstones, hastily thundering towards their location. 

Tara’s eyes widened, immediately tugging harshly at Jacob’s arm, once more urging him forward. And finally, she succeeded in her efforts. 

They leapt up onto the tables at their backs, using them as a launching platform for them to then throw their bodies up to the floating pieces of paper, quickly beginning to stumble towards the professor.

A large blast of magic hit the wave of papers at Lally’s heels, instantly setting them ablaze. The fire was hot on their face, and fastly approaching their position in the air. But by then, the group of three had already reached each other. And when they all grabbed a simultaneous hold of Lally’s book, they were sucked into the portkey in a sharp snap of wind.

Tara, Jacob, and Lally rolled out and onto a cold, expansive lawn. As their momentum slowly came to a halt, the three found themselves sprawled out amongst the otherwise peaceful soil and wet blades of grass.

Groaning, Tara used her fists to slowly push herself up off of the ground before shakingly climbing back to her feet. Swiping her hair out of her face, she quickly took in their immediate surroundings, her eyes landing on the large castle that loomed several hundred meters up the hillside from where they had appeared.

An indignant scoff escaped her throat as she stared up at the walls of her former school before swiftly turning back to her companions, watching as Lally hauled Jacob onto his feet.

“I have to go back.” Tara said breathlessly, moving over to grab a hold of Jacob’s other arm. He still appeared to be a bit dazed and confused by all that had transpired over the past hour. “Newt and Theseus are still at the Erkstag, we don’t know what-”

“Tara…” Lally said sternly, having draped Jacob’s arms over her shoulder.

When Tara looked over at the young professor, she found an understanding, but severe expression painting her features as she slowly shook her head from side to side.

“There’s nothing you can do for them. We have to put our trust in Newt.”

Everything in Tara wanted to argue with her. But the more sensible part of her brain, however slim it was those days, somehow managed to take over. Maybe it was the way that Lally, while out of breath, appeared to be so damned calm about the entire scenario. It contrasted so starkly with the buzzing of her own anxieties, that she had no choice but to believe wholeheartedly in her words.

Without another word, Tara secured Jacob’s other arm in place over her shoulders, and soon thereafter the group of three began to hobble their way up the hillside.

Once arriving at the castle’s front gate, they were greeted by several members of the Hogwarts staff, and Jacob was swiftly whisked off to the infirmary.

Tara had loitered just outside the doors for a moment after they disappeared, just…staring blankly up at the stonemasonry surrounding her. Once more, deep into adulthood, she found herself retreating into the hallways that she had used to run down as a child. How was it that she always ended up back here? What sort of message was the universe trying to tell her by repeatedly forcing her back into the embrace of this castle?

After about fifteen minutes, Lally reemerged from inside the infirmary, quietly joining the witches' side in the middle of the dimly lit corridor.

“They’re going to keep him overnight as a precaution.” she informed her. “They’ll send him to breakfast with us in the morning.”

Tara had absentmindedly nodded in response to her words, but wasn’t really paying full attention to what she was saying. Instead, one of her nails was caught in between her teeth as she tried her hardest not to let her thoughts linger for too long on the wizards they had left behind in Germany.

Lally pursed her lips, standing silent for another moment before placing a hand on the side of the witch's arm.

“Come on, let’s get some sleep, yeah?”

Tara couldn’t bring herself to respond in the affirmative, but allowed Lally to more or less drag her to where the professors were allowing them to stay the night on some spare cots in the faculty wing of the castle.

In the end, she had gotten maybe an hour of sleep in total, finding it particularly hard to close her eyes. For every time she did, one of two images flashed to the front of her mind; Theseus bound and beaten in a dark corner of a torturous wizard prison, or Grindelwald’s smiling face.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* : ｡☆ﾟ.･ ───