The Night Culmination

Gerard and his friends did not even have to exchange opinions – it was obvious what they had to do.

"Let's run after Anatole," Gerard said.

"Let's talk to the blond girl," Inès and Filibert said at the same time.

While Gerard's idea was kinder and probably more practical, they couldn't let their only prefect run out on them, could they? In the end, it was his friends' idea that was generally regarded as the best course to follow.

He sighed, and followed his friends.

The blond girl turned around to look at them, startled, as if the idea of three young Aurors in training making their way over to her scared her. The look in her eyes, however, had little to do with fear, and more with a kind of determination of not being found. She disapparated.

"What..." Inès' voice died in her throat.

"Come," Filibert told her, tugging on her sleeve. "Gerard was right. Let's look for Anatole. A person such as him will have gone back to the carriage. He'd never leave us lost."

Those were the kind of words Gerard would have loathed just twenty minutes before. But after his talk with the other guy, he realized something. Anatole's secrets were eating him from the inside out. The way he'd puked during class, the way he ran away that very day...

He was a person with a huge emotional baggage, that much was clear. And everyone expected him to be the perfect prefect all the time, even Inès and Filibert. It must have been a huge responsibility. Someone who looked the way Anatole looked when he was upset might have wanted to run for hours until he wasn't found. He might have wanted to fight the first person he saw on the street, crossing his path.

Gerard knew it. He'd been this upset before. But the others didn't know it, and they were under the impression that Anatole had to be there for them all the time, and act as leader. As if it was owed to them. Not that Gerard thought so lowly of his friends -- it was just the first time he recognized openly to himself that being like Anatole wasn't something to envy.

However, Gerard didn't have any other idea to offer, so he followed his friends to the carriage. Anatole wasn't there, they found out, but at least they were back to the start.

Except that Inès pointed out, "We're not leaving without Anatole."

Filibert nodded agreeably. "He's the prefect who was keeping an eye on us. You know, our alibi."

Gerard thought he could start to understand both of their reasons.

"If I was upset," Gerard said, knowing the moment he'd spoken the words that they wouldn't be of any help. "I'd run somewhere, anywhere. I wouldn't follow a route or go to any important place."

And, he thought, I wouldn't want to be found.

"Well," Filibert commented. "Maybe we do need a tracking spell after all."

Luckily, Anatole wasn't too far away from where they'd parked. Gerard thought it only luck -- his friend wasn't in any condition to have reasoned too much about where he was going. He was sobbing in the middle of the street, uncaring of who looked at him.

Gerard had never noticed that the prefect kept most of his emotions to himself. But it was the weirdest thing in the world, to see Anatole Morin sobbing.

You would have thought he didn't have it in him. And Gerard Touchard almost found himself thinking that it was the most heartbreaking thing in the world to be looking at.

Gerard thought that a situation just like this, sadly, couldn't be resolved with poise and grace. He was a soldier in training, after all, he knew nothing of the subtleties of the human heart.

But he was going to try, for Anatole. He coughed sheepishly, and put his hand on the other boy's shoulder.

Now, to be fair, Gerard had never thought about how touching Anatole Morin would be like. But just from squeezing his shoulder, he had the greatest feeling, as if Anatole's body was soft in all the right places and sharp in the others, and as if just being together with his friend gave him a lot of comfort.

Which was probably just a fleeting thought of the moment. Gerard had never liked physical contact of any kind, and, now that he'd thought about it, Anatole didn't either, never letting himself be too close to another person. However, at that moment, Anatole turned around and faced Gerard on his knees, almost hugging the younger boy's legs.

"Come, come, tell us what's wrong," Filibert said quite uneasily. "It was because of that girl, wasn't it?"

Girl wasn't the exact word. Woman would have been the best fit. When she'd turned around, Gerard took a look at her face long enough to be able to guess she was in her twenties.

Anatole suddenly went stiff, as if crying in front of his friends hadn't been an embarrassing thing, but admitting that woman shook him to the core was. He dried his eyes and got up on his feet so quickly, Gerard almost fooled himself he'd imagined everything.

"Which woman?" Anatole asked with what seemed like a great effort. This almost fooled Gerard as well. Maybe they'd been wrong. After all, it was only a guess. What if the reason Anatole had run away had had nothing to do with the woman after all?

But, in that moment, the woman apparated in front of them and said with a sick smile, "The reason little Anatole is crying is obviously me."

Anatole took a few steps back, as if he'd been hit. His reaction discouraged Gerard and his friends. If, before, they could have been under the impression that this woman wasn't some kind of twisted person, now they were disenchanted. It was obvious Anatole would have never tried to run away from someone who wasn't anybody important. Besides, she'd confirmed in a very nasty way that she'd been the reason Anatole was sobbing.

Gerard wanted so badly to make her pay.

"Adele," Anatole addressed the woman. "Please, go away. We didn't mean any harm..."

"Going into the city when my lady was spotted, wearing your uniform?" Adele replied. "Of course you did. Sorry if I'm not falling for it anymore, Anatole. Would you blame me?"

Adele was a beautiful woman, but cold looking and the look in her eyes as she spoke those words could be described as 'deranged'. Gerard couldn't pinpoint where his friend had met her before, but from her words he gathered that she was Madame Nuit's sidekick.

"How dare you admit that you work for one of the Wizarding World's worst assassins?" Inès cried out. "And act as if we are the ones who have no right to show our face here."

"I know which side I'm on," Adele replied. "I'm no fool. I know how it looks on the outside, but my lady has never done anything wrong..."

"She murdered my parents!" Gerard yelled. "Along with five other people."

Adele looked at the boy's hair. "Oh, you're Gerard Touchard? Interesting. My lady wanted to know how you escaped her spell."

Something broke in Gerard's heart. "You mean she doesn't know?"

"Even if she did, what would have you done? Asked her in a friendly way?" Adele shook her head. "What an odd bunch."

"Don't act like we've ambushed you all of a sudden," Filibert, who was very clever at coming up with hunches and guesses right on the spot, said. "You ambushed us. Otherwise why would you have apparated here? It was because you knew we were here."

"Fair," Adele admitted. "I was always into drama."

"Well, I was always into justice," Gerard replied.

"Boring."

"Maybe if we were talking fiction," Anatole huffed. "The real world doesn't have to be interesting, it has to be a decent place to live in."

"Spoken like someone who follows the Queen blindly," Adele said.

"This Queen is just, and has never given me any reason not to support her," Anatole replied. "But I've never believed in political systems, anarchy, monarchy, democracy, left, right... I've always believed in individuals. Every case is separate, for me. And I draw the line at murder."

"I thought you'd draw the line at much less..." Adele covered her mouth with her hand. "But I suppose you're not above torture."

From the way the two were speaking to each other, it was clear there was some kind of familiarity. Gerard suddenly felt very sick, and the feeling didn't subside when he saw the terrible look on Anatole's face.

At that moment, before Gerard could ask for any explanation, Adele took out her wand and pointed it at Filibert.

"Imperio," she said. Filibert moved mechanically towards Inès.

"I'm going to make him kill his friend," Adele said. Filibert was about to point his wand at Inès.

Gerard and Anatole were way too horrified to react. What was that? They weren't even attacking the young woman in the first place.

"Expelliarmus!" Inès shouted. Adele was disarmed of her wand.

"Oh," she chuckled. "Is that all they teach you at school? No, I suppose they tell all you little students not to use any Curse. Why don't you ask your prefects? Maybe the answer would be different."

The look on Anatole's face reminded Gerard of something else. How he had puked during the lesson where Professor Ardouin was teaching them the Unforgivable Curses.

Whatever had happened to his friend, it had something to do with that.

Adele hunched closer to Gerard. "I have a message for you, Touchard," she said. "Hence why I apparated here. My lady is not blood-thirsty. She got what she was looking for, all those years ago. But, she won't leave you alone. The same way, I suspect, you won't leave her."

"Go away," Anatole snarled. "You know nothing."

Everyone knew, however, Gerard would chase Madame Nuit to solve the mystery, and it seemed like Adele knew it too. Maybe she could read minds. At Auror training they taught you how to shield your thoughts from those attacks, but Gerard wasn't old enough to learn it.

"I will go away," Adele agreed. "I left a message, after all."

She disapparated.

"She's good at magic," Filibert commented. "But a really twisted person. I can't believe she almost..."

"That's fine, Filibert," Inès reassured him. "I know you would have never..."

"If, instead of not being able to complete your sentences, you decided to get your shit together," Gerard said, a bit rudely. "We should really get on the carriage and leave."

His temper was due to the fact that Anatole wasn't crying, but he was looking a little emotionless and pale.

They all sat on the carriage. 

"What are we going to tell the Professors?" Filibert put his head in hands. "This is crazy."

"It is the furthest thought from my mind, but I will come up with something," Anatole commented absent-mindedly. Gerard hoped they could trust him.

"Adele," Inès insisted. "You know her very well, don't you Anatole? I mean, it's fine if you don't want to talk about it."

"I don't," was the reply. Gerard wished Inès had tried to be a little more bossy. During the classes, she certainly knew how to. Perhaps she simply had one of those personality that are, in reality, too kind to get the job done.

Gerard didn't have one of those. He patted on Anatole's shoulder again, remembering how the other man had seemed to enjoy it. But then, he had to deliver the blow,

"Who is Adele, Anatole?" he asked. "I mean, who is she, really? I know there's something you're not telling us."

He quickly wondered whether it had also something to do with Anatole becoming prefect. In that case, he could wait to ask Jeanne and Charline.

But Anatole closed his eyes painfully, and enunciated slowly, "Of course I know Adele. She is my older sister."