A new set of footsteps approached the next time the door opened. Lae knew this, because Cedrella's light steps and cheery voice had been her only connection to the outside world for days. The new steps paused at the threshold, as though briefly unsure, before continuing all the way to finally halt at Lae's feet. Then, without warning, the blindfold came loose in his hands. She shielded her eyes from the sudden onslaught of light. Squinting, her eyes travelled up his travel-worn leather boots, past his dapper suit, to at last land on his face. Handsome, were he not several decades too old for her, and had she not met Tom. While Tom's features leaned towards elegant and refined, this man — the same man who'd yelled at his colleague a few days before for blasting her into the wall, she realised — exuded a far more approachable charm. These were, of course, private thoughts, hidden within a well shielded mind, since Merlin only knew what Tom would do and say if he knew.
If she ever got to see him again.
Lae buried the disheartening notion before it had the chance to take hold.
While she watched, the man waved his wand over the apparently repaired table in the middle of the room, vanishing one old platter of food and drink, replacing it with another. Giving her a pointed look, he took the new glass of water and visibly drained over a third of it into his mouth, then set it down, sliding it to the edge of the table closest to where she sat.
"You can call me Theseus. Ask me anything you like," he said. Lae caught on instantly.
"What is my..." her voice came out little more than a hoarse croak, but she pressed on, "my best way of breaking out of here?"
He smiled. "Well, I could tell you, but for the sake of proving to you this doesn't contain any Veritaserum, and keeping my job, I'll keep that information to myself. That is why you've been refusing water, correct?" Lae chose not to respond, guarded. He nodded, taking that as a confirmation. "Smart. They all were laced rather heavily. This glass isn't, as you plainly saw. We've decided information is not worth letting you die of dehydration, so go on. Drink."
With that comforting thought, she crawled to the edge of the table, and brought the trembling glass to her lips, spilling a good portion down her front. It did little to quench her thirst, seemingly absorbing into her dry tongue before even making it to her throat. Theseus dutifully refilled her glass, taking another conspicuous sip, and once again passing it on to her. She downed two more thusly filled glasses, before he declared that was enough, lest she upset her stomach.
He repeated the same scenario with a smooth custard, taking a bite, allowing her to ask a question that he could refuse to answer if it indeed contained no Veritaserum, then handing the small container off.
"So what's your angle?" she asked between spoonfuls, eyeing him wearily. "You took my blindfold so... are we back to Legilimency again? That certainly worked out for you last time."
"Oh no, I think not. Not that you have much reason to believe me, but I'm no Legilimens. I never could pick it up. I am, however, an expert Occlumens. You may even try looking into my head, if you like. I'd look forward to the attempt;" he shared a wink of overwhelming camaraderie, "no one's managed to get past me yet, and I'm actively looking to meet my match."
"Careful what you wish for," Lae warned, angling her spoon at him. It proved difficult to completely close herself off from his intense... friendliness. "My uncle could get into your head in thirty seconds flat — without a wand, and mid-duel with your best Aurors."
"High praise."
"Not praise. Fact."
"Care to give it a try for yourself, then?"
Lae frowned. What freak actively liked people doing their utmost to invade his privacy? "No, thank you. Even if I could get into your head, I doubt I could steal your wand the way I did with the other guy, now that I lack the element of surprise. It's not worth the effort."
Plus, days without sustenance left her mind scattered, her body unbearably weak. Even if she wanted to, and against a much more susceptible mind, she doubted she could manage.
"Oh, well. Perhaps I'll be lucky enough to encounter Grindelwald one day. That would certainly be interesting." The suicidal lunatic sounded almost wistful.
"Famous last words."
He snatched up one of the many snacks and began plopping the contents casually into his mouth, a glib show of his own lack of concern for his own mortality. "I earned my position in the Great War, you know. Grindelwald is only one man."
"It's not him you should be afraid of."
"Oh?" His hand, pinching a grape, paused on the way to his lips, raising his eyebrows in mild-mannered interest.
"I won't deny that he's just one man. No matter how powerful he gets, he can't quite overcome that, but he's rarely alone. There's hundreds, if not thousands, of people who would die for his cause — die for him. How many people do you know that would do the same for you?" Despite her best efforts, Lae caught her tone verging on waspish. Under different circumstances, she imagined she'd like Theseus, but his underestimation of her uncle stung at her own pride. "I doubt it's that many."
"Not quite a thousand, no," he admitted. "What about you? Would you die for his cause?"
She recited the usual mantra, tapping her pointer finger rhythmically atop the table. "For the Greater Good, a world where wizards have to hide from muggles no longer." Lae smiled grimly. "It's a nice idea... if it could actually work. They can't even fully decide whether what we want is equality or dominion, and both will began and end in bloodshed. To answer your question, unfortunately, my uncle is the dreamer in the family, not me. I'm not impassioned enough to die for any cause."
"You were certainly willing to starve to death over giving us information just a few minutes ago," he pointed out.
Lae's annoyance intensified. "Don't misunderstand. My moral backbone is nonexistent. I've given up on having noble hills to die on, no thanks to you people." He had enough shame to look abashed. "But I won't betray my uncle again. I can't." Why was she even talking to him? "You never did say what your ploy was."
"No ploy." At her obvious skepticism, he pushed away his food and raised his hands in surrender. Her eyes darted to the pocket of his robes, where she presumed he kept his wand. She wondered how quickly she could bridge the gap between them and nab it before his arms came back down. "Really. I'm just here to keep you alive. If you want to share any information, by all means, share, but my superiors have weighed our options, in light of your stubbornness, and decided no information we could gain by risking your life would be worth the risk. They tossed the idea of the Cruciatus Curse around, very briefly. Ultimately, it also wasn't worth the PR nightmare if the news that we'd used an Unforgivable Curse on a detainee got out. No one was particularly keen on trying, either. Besides, everyone knows information gained from torture is rarely accurate."
"That's... comforting," Lae managed, not sure she felt about the fact that the main thing stopping them from torturing her had little to do with morals or laws, but their fear of being caught. "I'm sure you know more about what my uncle is up to than I do at this point. I've been out of his sphere of influence for years now, so there isn't much for me to tell, even if I wanted to, which, obviously, I don't. What I don't understand is what you need from me that's caused you to hunt me so fiercely if you do quickly gave up on using me as a source of intel."
Although she didn't phrase it as a question, she watched Theseus carefully through her eyelashes, her head tilted down towards her lap, in hopes of an answer.
"Isn't it obvious?" he said.
"Would I be asking if it was?"
He considered that. "No, I suppose not. I'm just surprised, since your teachers at Hogwarts all claimed you were quite bright, when you put in the effort, which they also said verged on never."
Her jaw dropped. Was he calling her stupid? To her face?
He continued the thought, oblivious her indignation just a few feet away. "I don't suppose it will do all that much harm to tell you... and if my superiors take issue, what's the worst they could do? Fire me? I wish they would. I'd love the vacation." He glanced to the door, where Lae had no doubt others were listening in. "At the moment, you haven't actually done a whole lot worse than evade arrest for consorting with a known criminal — nothing we can prove, anyway — a charge made all the more tricky, given that you've yet to reach the age of majority. We can potentially detain you for withholding information, and a slew of other minor misdeeds, but for now, consider yourself in protective custody."
Was that so?
"In that case, consider me out of protective custody, because I very much don't want to be here."
Theseus laughed at the obviousness of the attempt. "Nice try. Minor's without established guardians are awarded to the Ministry to deal with. You'll find you don't have very many rights. All decisions pertaining to you will be made by an appointed guardian."
She only just started ruminating on how incredibly skeevy that sounded, when she remembered, "How do you know I'm not seventeen yet? I'm almost entirely through my sixth year. Plenty of us are legal adults now."
Tom was.
"You very well might be," he admitted easily with a shrug, "but you'll have to prove it."
Lae couldn't, and suddenly knew that was exactly what they were hedging all their bets on. Up to this point, proof of her identity had been more a liability than anything. When her mother abandoned her, she left nothing behind, and any records of her birth were probably long destroyed by the war, if there had even been one to begin with.
She grit her teeth, "This isn't fair."
"It isn't, isn't it?" He had the gall to appear sympathetic, and maybe he was, but not enough. "Do you know what else isn't fair? Having to tell the family's of Aurors who die in combat against your uncle that their loved one didn't make it home from that fight. It's not fair to those who find conflict on their doorstep. It's not fair to the muggles who find themselves amidst a wizarding war they have no chance of understanding."
"That's a good point." Lae glared him down. "It would almost be fairer if the whole world knew of our existence, rather than hiding about in the dark like mice, wouldn't it? For hundreds of years, we've treated them like children, not trusted enough with their own well-being to know the truth. We made that decision for them, yet we could help! How many of them die each year from disease our healers cure in seconds? How many of them unknowingly encounter magical problems, not knowing what it was, and pay the price? We could do so much, but we do nothing to preserve the statute of secrecy."
Her disgust was palpable.
"Do you see them?" he asked. "Do you see how they fight each other, murdering by the millions, for petty discrepancies in religion or race? How do you imagine they'll react when they know what real power is?" From inside his robes, not his pocket, as Lae initially presumed, Theseus drew his wand, holding it out to demonstrate what he took real power to be. "They'll turn their guns off each other and onto us in a heartbeat. Our children will be hunted before they ever get the chance to learn how to defend themselves."
Her blue and black eyes held unnerving depth when they fell upon Theseus. Paired with her hair, stripped of the enchantment hiding away the silver, she appeared the spitting image of her uncle.
With a lazy, confident smile, she drawled, "The muggles could never defeat us, despite their greater numbers. First, we announce ourselves to the world. Let them come, bearing scrap bits of metal we can transfigured into butterflies and snakes in their hands. We crush their resistance, until they can't even dream of fighting back. Then we rebuild a better world for both muggles and wizards alike. We need never hide again, and they reap the benefits of our magic."
At first, Theseus sat, startled into silence at her unexpected speech. "You take after Grindelwald far more than I expected," he murmured, examining her in an entirely new light. The crease in his brow bent at a troubled angle. "Your uncle breaks the Statute of Secrecy everyday, threatening out peace without a care for the consequences. That's why you are here, Lae, because you will be his consequence. He will fear what we may do, and he will come for you. When he does, our Auror's will be ready. We struggle, due to constantly encountering him on his terms. Here? We know what to expect. Here, we can trap him."
So that's what this was all about. She wished Theseus was right in his assumptions, not because she wanted her uncle to rescue her — the last thing she wanted was for him to fall into their traps, no matter how obvious. She just wanted their relationship to be how it used to, years ago. Unquestioned love and loyalty. Before she tossed it all out the window for a chance at freedom.
How pathetic, that all their scheming led to a dead end.
Not wanting to have to look him in the eye, Lae almost found herself missing the blindfold when she said, "You're overly optimistic, I'm afraid."
"Oh?" His chair creaked, indicating he leant forward. "I've been called a great many things over the years. 'Optimistic' very is rarely a personality trait attributed to me."
She swallowed hard. "My uncle won't come. That's where your plan is flawed."
"Our sources said the two of you were close. You really believe he'd abandon you here?"
The truth burned it's way up her throat, barely louder than a whisper. "I abandoned him first. I'm sure your sources told you that much."
Theseus didn't deny it. "They did. They also reported that he was desperate to find you again."
"Was that before or after last spring?" she asked dully. With his silence stretching to a telling extent, she managed a grim smile. "How comforting. Even the great many spies in the Ministry's employ somehow missed that my uncle found me almost a year ago. He tracked me down, imploring me to return to him, and I repaid his concern with betrayal. I stunned him and ran away."
What hurt the most? She could still see the disbelief on his face after she did it, the utter shock that his own blood would turn her wand against him, especially after killing Julius for his sake. Lae could hardly believe it, either. The mere memory filled her with a hollow ache for more than just the bridges burned. She never felt as alone as she did on that day. Grindelwald, although ruthless in his quest to bring wizard-kind out of the darkness of society, wasn't anything but a loving guardian, in his own way.
He deserved better.
And he wouldn't be coming to her rescue. The certainty engraved its way into her bones. Few people knew Grindelwald the way she did. She saw the way he disposed of traitors countless times. That's all she was. A traitor. Perhaps leaving him could be forgiven, but not attacking him.
I wish I'd just taken his hand that day, Lae thought, not for the first time. The chasm of helplessness in her chest only grew, and she wanted nothing more than to slump forward onto the table, her forehead against the cold, white marble, her arms cocooning her head.
Alas, she refused to do any of those things while in an interrogation room. She examined Theseus for a reaction. Assuming it was genuine, a dangerous thing to do with aurors of his caliber, he truly hadn't been informed. It made sense, in retrospect. Of course Grindelwald wouldn't have told others of that encounter, not when it exposed a weakness.
"It's really not funny," Lae laughed, not out of true amusement, rather a twisted mirth at their ruined plans. "I know this doesn't end well for me, either way. I've always known, whether it was going to be from my mother's neglect, or the nasty end of a wand while at my uncle's side," she wisely omitted the whole basilisk fiasco, "and now I will be locked away, since I'm worthless as a hostage if Grindelwald doesn't want me. I never held any real illusions about you all letting me go, but at least I get the satisfaction of knowing this plan didn't work out for you. There's some solace in that, I suppose."
"Hmm..." His eyes remained unconvinced. "We'll see about that." His chair lightly screeched against the ivory floors as he pushed to his feet. He turned back on his way to the exit, as though suddenly remembering something, but Lae could tell it had been on his mind the whole time he'd been there, waiting for the right moment. "Oh, and before I forget, your trial is set for three days from now."
She blinked. "My what now?"
"Your trial," he repeated. "That Dumbledore has been causing all sorts of problems, calling upon the whole Wizengmot for something so petty as this. It'll be impossible to keep this matter low-key the way he's handling it."
With one final shake of the head, the door clicked shut, leaving her alone to process all she'd learned in stunned silence.
A/N
With this chapter, I have decided Ophelia is slightly psycho. I didn't plan for this to happen, but evidently being raised with Grindelwald's ideology and spending too much time with Tom does things to a person.