3
It’s almost dark out when Percival arrives outside the Woolworth building, the last tendrils of the sun burning orange between the shining skyscrapers. He managed to leave the guards behind at his townhouse, telling them he was going to his office to pick up some paperwork, but he’s too smart to think that they don’t have orders to spy on him covertly. It’s almost impossible to completely shake them off.
Graves lights a cigarette with a snap of his fingers and inhales deeply. A nervous habit from the war that he’s picked back up again, along with the drink, to calm his frazzled nerves, if only just a bit.
In the lobby, he runs into Queenie, just as planned.
“Ms. Goldstein.” He nods.
“Director Graves. Are you working late, sir? Can I get you some coffee or anything?”
Graves smiles tightly, glancing around as he exhales smoke. A few low-level bureaucrats wander the lobby, carrying briefcases and piles of paperwork. Guards are everywhere, quietly surveilling the large marble hall.
“That would excellent. I’ll take a black coffee up in my office.”
“Yes, sir.”
They hurry off in different directions, Queenie stopping to chat with two guards and offer them a hot drink. As his footsteps echo across the marble, Graves can hear her lilting voice fade.
Several floors up, he collapses into his office chair, runs his hand through his slicked-back hair, and waits, mindlessly sorting paperwork to keep up appearances for any passerby. He keeps his door open to avoid suspicion, although there’s only a few people still working on the floor so late. He could almost pretend it was normal, just another late day at the office for him (Merlin knows he had worked until late into the night at many points in his career) but for his heart hammering away as a constant reminder of the circumstances.
In a few minutes, Queenie knocked lightly on the open door, balancing a coffee tray on one hand and a hip.
“Come in.” Percival waved her in, a sprinkle of ashes falling from his cigarette in his hand.
“Here you are, Director,” Queenie chirped, setting the tray down on his desk.
He thanked her and took a sip.
“Oh, and sir?”
“Yes, Ms. Goldstein?”
“Mr. Abernathy wishes to speak with you down in his office. He asked me to escort you.”
“Really? Well, alright.”
Graves crushed his cigarette into the ashtray and stood up, smoothing his dress shirt.
The two walked down the hall in silence, leather brogues and pink suede heels echoing in tandem. At the end of the hall, glancing around, Graves cast a silencing charm, and they turned left.
The left wing of the former Department of Magical Security was in fact, the opposite direction as the office Abernathy, a traitor from the beginning and one of Grindelwald’s administrative deputies, now occupied.
It was dimly lit and sparsely occupied even back in the old days, home to just a few small conference rooms and supply closets. Now, it was near abandoned. Graves took out his wand to illuminate a door to the utility room at the end of the hall. In the semi-darkness, Queenie murmured to him,
“You see that room? There’s a service elevator in there that goes all the way down to the basement to carry food and supplies to the dungeons, and I got the code from a janitor who was thinking real loud. This way no one will see us going down there.”
With that, she unlocked the door by drawing a complicated shape in the air with her wand until it glowed. They tiptoed through buckets, mops, and packages of dried soup into the elevator.
Inside, Graves let out a long breath. “Thank you, Queenie. This is very well thought out.” He smiled.
“You know, you wouldn’t make a bad auror.”
Queenie let out a matching smile. “Oh, Mr. Graves. You know my sister is the career girl. I can’t stomach all that stuff.”
But the mention of Tina sobered the mood as the stuffy dark elevator dropped another couple floors.
Percival and Queenie had never spoken more than a few polite words before Grindelwald happened. Theirs was a delicate alliance, one built on their shared concern over MACUSA and over Tina Goldstein. Tina was one of Graves’s best and most promising aurors, and truth be told, he considered himself a bit of a mentor to her. At least he liked to think so. And so, when Queenie first read his mind when he was on his knees in front of Grindelwald in the ballroom, his thoughts going a mile a minute, she decided then and there to stick to Percival Graves. He was strong, and he was the only one in MACUSA who could pull off something like this. Along with her help, of course, though she didn’t like to think herself all high and mighty.
The elevator clanged to the bottom, and the two headed down the hall until they reached the dungeon checkpoint, with several guards standing, sitting, leaning, smoking, and chatting to one another, wands out.
When they saw Graves, they stood and saluted uneasily.
“Gentlemen. Lord Grindelwald has requested I obtain private access to the dungeons in order to prepare for the execution ceremony. Queenie here is to escort me.”
At this, Queenie smiled and waved, causing not a few guards to stare and blush.
The head guard, a gruff looking man with one hand shoved into his jacket pocket and the other in his wand holster, looked them over.
“I’m going to have to see some proof of this assignment. Sir.” he added, looking Graves straight in the eye. This man and his lackeys were the scum of Grindelwald’s movement, Graves knew it. They were the kind of stormy, restless men who the dark wizard had recruited off the street, promising power and wealth.The thought of his aurors, his Seraphina, being under their care made him almost vomit right there.
Under their shallow “sirs” and salutes, these men distrusted Percival Graves, the former right hand man of MACUSA.
Graves frowned. “Of course.”
He pulled a pensieve from his coat pocket, earning him questioning looks.
“Memories? Usually we’re looking for a signed permit.”
“Well, this was a recent development and Lord Grindelwald has been busy. But as you will see here, he has asked me to oversee the execution of several of the prisoners housed here.”
Graves closed his eyes, imagining their meeting of hours earlier. It wasn’t hard. Grindelwald’s sparkling eyes as he asked him to do the unthinkable would probably never leave his mind.
Queenie raised her wand to Graves’s temple and drew a wisp of translucent white into the pensieve, handing it over to the guards.
The leader took it, feeling it over, and projected the scene for all to see.
Sure enough, as Grindelwald appeared telling Graves to handle the executions, the guards relaxed their shoulders and softened their suspicious glares. Graves held his breath. He knew that this might not be enough. After all, there was nothing in their conversation that explicitly granted him permission to go down the the dungeon. Stomach churning, he prayed that their fear of disobeying Grindelwald would prevail over their distrust of Graves’s intentions in the dungeon.
“Well,” the leader said, shuffling back towards his seat and his cup of coffee. “If Lord Grindelwald commands it, it’s my pleasure to obey. You have ten minutes.”
Graves nodded in thanks and proceeded with Queenie to the steel doors.
“Wait!” the guard shouted. Graves felt his heart stop.
“Wands, please. Visitors may not have wands or any other magical devices in the cells.”
Graves slid his glossy black wand out of his holster and placed it firmly in the awaiting hand of the guard. He stared straight ahead as he was magically scanned. Behind him, another young guard blocked Queenie with his arm, wand raised.
“Ms. Goldstein?”
“Sir,” the young man turned to him, “she can’t go into the cells with you. She don’t have any proof of assignment and even if she did, she don’t have the rank to even be here.”
“Alright, alright.” Graves raised his hands and glanced meaningfully at Queenie. “Ms. Goldstein, you will stay here. When I come back you will take notes for me and prepare the execution orders to sign as planned.”
Queenie sighed and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
With one more glance back at her reassuring expression, Graves breathed deep and faced the tangle of steel doors separating him from his imprisoned aurors.
The head guard spoke into his wand, ordering the guards inside the checkpoint to give Graves his privacy in the cells.
After a series of complicated wand movements involving three guards at a time, the steel doors slowly unlocked, magically enforced steel screeching as it maneuvered itself open. He stepped forward, hearing the definitive clang of a closing door behind him.
He was alone. Truly, for the first time. Somehow, he had managed to beat the odds. Somehow, he had managed to get out from under the constant supervision of Grindelwald and his lackeys, even if only for ten minutes.
When he walked further into the dankness of the basement prison, he came face to face with Tina Goldstein.
“Goldstein.” He murmured over the lump in his throat.
Behind the magically-reinforced glass, bruised and disheveled, Tina lifted her head and gasped in shock, her eyes searching and brows furrowing.
“Mr. Graves? Is that you, sir? What...why are you here? Are you alright? How...”
Graves let out something between a laugh and a sob. He was not alright, not even close. But he was better than Goldstein, with her sunken eyes and tattered clothes, languishing below ground under Grindelwald’s henchmen.
“Tina, listen to me.” He found it hard to keep the shaking out of his voice. “Are you injured or sick?” He squatted down to the ground where she sat and scanned her over, looking for any glaring injuries.
“No, no,” Tina mumbled, “I’m fine, but-“
“Listen, I don’t have much time, the guards are right outside. But Queenie got me in here. Your sister, she’s okay.”
Tina let out a heartbreaking sob. She always had been easy to read, and now she was an open book, eyes flooding as she looked at her boss with a poignant mix of respect and desperation.
“I’m sure you’ve heard, I’m working with Grindelwald. I’m trying to help, to gain his trust. But you need to listen. Grindelwald, he,” Graves felt his hands begin to shake, “He is planning an execution. In two weeks. The President and...and others. We need to get everyone out of here, soon. Your sister and I will work on a plan, okay? But you need to stay alive, stay vigilant. Use all of your instincts, use your auror training and pay attention to how the guards enter, what they talk about, how they leave.”
Tina calmed, nodding, entering the state of mind of an auror in the field.
“Mr. Graves?”
“Yes?”
“Please be safe.”
“I’ll try my best. But I need to get you all out of here. It’s my job.”
Tina nodded uncertainly.
“Alright, Goldstein, do you know where the President is in here?” He glanced down at his watch. Four minutes.
“She’s in the cell all the way down the hall, I haven’t seen her but the guards have talked.”
Graves heard her voice crack and his heart broke with it.
“Okay,” he rubbed his hands over his forehead, “okay. Tina, listen to me. I’ll come back here, I promise. We can fix this whole thing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright.”
“Alright.”
With three minutes before the guards come to call him back, Graves speeds down the hall to the cell at the end of the line. It’s dark there and he can barely see until he waves his hand and creates a bright wandless torch. Being divorced from his wand has never been an issue for Graves.
“Sera? Sera?” He sees her in the corner, wrapped in a blanket and slumped to the ground, and his stomach drops. “Sera, please.” He knocks on the glass. “Wake up! It’s me.” The figure moves a little and he can hear chains clinking.
That’s his childhood best friend in there, he thinks. With the skill of an advanced auror, he pushes down the panic rising in his throat and blurring his vision.
He kneels in front of her, trying to get an angle where he can see her face, she the rise and fall of her breath. He needs to know she’s okay.
“Sera, can you hear me?”
The figure shifts again, and he can see a glimpse of her golden hair, a shard of her regal nose. It’s not enough.
“Please, Seraphina. I’m going to help you. We’re going to fix it. Please. Together.”
She doesn’t show any sign of response, and his stomach twists with an assumption of the worst. He breathes once, twice, to try to calm down, to focus.
Then he hears footsteps echo down the hall and come to a halt behind him. Turned away from the guard, he manages to steel himself into the picture of indifferent calmness. Graves checks his watch casually.
“I still have two minutes.”
“Alright. But Director, I heard you wanted to speak with me?”
“Hm?” Graves turns around, ready to question the raggedy guard.
Instead, he finds himself looking straight at Abernathy.
The weaselly little man scrunches his forehead and stares right back.
“Let’s go up to my office. We certainly have some matters to discuss.”
“Yes, alright.” He keeps his expression proud and relaxed.
For the first time since his surrender, Percival doubts whether he will make it out of this charade alive.