Pick Your Poison | Tom Riddle |

Chapter Thirty Two: Attack on the Ministry

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"Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily."
--Napoleon Bonaparte

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Tom, being the darkness oriented man he was, conjured a Concealing Charm strong enough to get them back through the doors of the Auror office unnoticed. Well, a few people turned their heads when the door gently open and shut the quietest they could make it.

On the top of their toes they snuck over to an archway under the spiral staircase that hung a sign that had "Archives" written across it in silver paint.

She could have sworn someone noticed but Tom held her arm tightly enough to keep both of them concealed.

Once through another set of doors that no one noticed open (she hoped), she was met with a room only about two stories high and filled to the brim with old filing cabinets and cases. It looked like an old office of sorts actually, merely being taken over by clutter and dust. It was close to the offices they were just in and she wondered if this used to be apart of it.

A large enough chandelier hung in the middle to lighten the areas they began to observe. A spiral staircase, black with no railing and only one loop, led up to the second level.

"I feel like my mother deserved more than a filing cabinet." Eleanor frowned, feeling dissatisfied. She didn't expect a shrine for her mother. But she expected something obvious enough.

"Well it seems that half of this is labeled alphabetically." Tom said, rolling up his sleeves to his elbow as he began walking up the steps.

Eleanor quickly followed.

"Why are you helping me snoop around one of the most secured buildings in the city?" she asked.

"Learning dark magic is easy when you have a list of criminals at your demand." he shrugged, sounding as if it were completely normal to be doing this kind of thing in the Ministry. "I'm only joking." he added, frowning at her look of concern.

As she searched for the letter "P" on a cabinet, she glanced over at Tom who intently stared down at one of the files and looked so drawn in by it.

"How did you know Grindelwald killed the Minister and said he was coming for me?" she asked curiously, thinking of his nasty wound.

Tom looked up from the file like he were being rudely interrupted but shut it anyway and allowed it to float back into its place. He walked towards her, his fingers skimming over the cabinets and just a few feet away from her he opened another drawer that was the one she was looking for. She noticed the dust that collected on his fingers and sighed.

"I had just found the Diadem and needed to fend off two peasants I found on a trail in the forest I was in." Tom said, leaning on the other cabinets beside the open drawer. "They were in the way and didn't intend on leaving me be, so I had to do what was necessary."

Tom cast her a wary look, but Eleanor didn't bother, already knowing what he did to them.

"I continued walking because I was going to come for you but then I heard something off a small trail where this great big home was."

Eleanor swallowed past a lump in her throat. She pictured the mansion on the hill, just outside the capital city and tensed slightly.

It was a vacation home the Minister and his family had been inviting them to for years.

"It was completely burned down and the Minister was at the very front of it all with Grindelwald standing above him. He was killed. I couldn't hear what they said to each other. But then he rallied up the dozen men he had with him and nearly chanted your name and how they were going to come for you." he explained in strict detail, staring down at her like she were the file he just had in his hand.