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Chapter Text

The Obscurial was a problem.

He'd joined Grindelwald, yes, but not because he believed that wizards should rule over the world. Not because he believed that those of nonmagical blood were lesser. Not because he wanted to fight for a better world, a world where wizards ruled. Not for any of the reasons that his acolytes followed him. No, he'd only wanted to find out who he was.

Now that he did know who he was - or his real name, at least - his loyalty was wavering. His Legilimens had told him so; he regularly asked her to check up on his followers, but especially him. Her own loyalty was always suspect, of course, but all he had to do was drop a few remarks about how wizards and Muggles could live together in peace once he'd succeeded and about how no man, not even a Muggle, under his protection would come to any harm, and she was his again. But for the Obscurial, it wasn't that simple. Especially as he realized the consequences of his decision, as he saw what he was being asked - ordered - to do, what they were all training for. Foolish boy, war is war. Anything is necessary for the greater good.

Grindelwald wasn't about to just let him leave. He had put in immense time and effort to find the Obscurial, and it had been nearly as hard to get him to join his side. 

He couldn't force him to stay. He was incredibly skilled, but the boy was an Obscurial - if he so chose, he could bring Nurmengard Castle tumbling down. He couldn't imprison him - his magic was the most powerful, destructive thing on earth. Above all, he could not risk the Obscurial turning against him. 

The Obscurial was, however, emotionally vulnerable, and so far Grindelwald had used that in his favor. Deep inside, the boy wanted an authority figure to care about him, whom he could take orders from and trust unconditionally.

But if that stopped working? There was another way to get him to obey, a way that would ensure his loyalty without resorting to magical force. All because of the boy's foolish emotional sentimentality. But then, that was why he'd joined in the first place, so Grindelwald was grateful that the powerful Obscurial was so emotionally weak.

There was one person that Grindelwald knew that the Obscurial cared for. He'd even faced his worst fear, the thing he most dreaded, for her. The evidence from New York was more than enough, and his Legilimens had mentioned that he still thought of her.

If the Muggle girl Modesty Barebone was in danger, the Obscurial would do anything.

Chapter Text

It had been relatively simple, finding the Muggle girl. He'd sent two of his acolytes to New York, with instructions to track her down and bring her to Nurmengard, relatively unharmed. A witch and a wizard finding an unprotected, unaware Muggle, a child no less. It had been, well, child's play.

The girl was not quite unaware, though - thanks to the woman her adopted brother owed his existence as an Obscurial to, she knew that magic and witchcraft existed, and she feared it more than anything. And here she was, in a room, in a castle, filled with magic-users.

She looked terrified - young, eight or nine years old. She was as pale as the Obscurial, her breathing uneven, her eyes wide and darting around the room, searching for some avenue of escape. 

She had been brought quite easily into the heart of Nurmengard. There would be no escape.

"Fetch Aurelius," the blond man told the man who had brought her here, who nodded and left. Modesty didn't know who Aurelius was. She didn't know why these people wanted her. She wanted to go home.

The man smiled at her, and she stumbled backward, shuddering. She pressed herself against the wall, and the woman who had brought her here laughed.

Modesty had lived by herself for a while, after Credence had - after. She'd met enough of the street children Ma had fed to know how to go about being one herself. Then the police had brought her to an orphanage, where she'd been for a while longer, because they said she was too young to be on her own. But there hadn't been enough food there, and the people in charge hadn't been nice. They'd yelled and hit, although not as hard as Ma had, and she hadn't been able to run away from Ma, but she could run away from the orphanage.

So she had, and she very clearly remembered running into the woman and man who had brought her here only moments after sneaking out - how long ago had that been? But she couldn't quite remember what had happened next. She remembered the woman tightly grasping her arm, and a stick - no, not a stick, a wand, like the one she'd been playing with that had started all the trouble in the first place, only it was a real wand, and then she hadn't been able to move, hadn't been able to scream, no matter how much she'd wanted to. She'd screamed in her head, certain that she was going to die, that the witches had found her and would kill her, a panic equal only to what she'd felt the night Credence had killed Ma and Chastity overtaking her, only she hadn't been able to move. She didn't remember anything at all after that, until she'd found herself being carried into this room.

It was a small stone room, and it was cold and looked old. There was nothing in it, no furniture or anything, a spare room that wasn't being used for anything. Ma would have said this was a waste of good space. The orphanage would have put half a dozen beds in here.

The blond man inclined his head slightly and said quietly, "Modesty Barebone. It seems we meet at last."

Her skin crawled.

He knew her name. How did he know her name?

"My name is Gellert Grindelwald," he told her. His voice sounded familiar, somehow, even though Modesty had never seen him before, so he couldn't have seen her before either, but then how did he know her name?

She was going to die. They were witches and they'd brought her here to kill her and she was going to die just like Ma and Chastity-

"Oh, don't worry," he told her. "We're not going to hurt you."

Her breath froze; she drew in a hitched gasp that caught in her throat. She felt sick.

"At least," he added, "as long as your brother behaves himself. If he does, you have nothing to worry about." His eyes gleamed.

Her brother?

The door opened.

Chapter Text

Modesty didn't recognize Credence at first.

His hair was much longer, spilling down around his face in a messy dark tangle. Ma would never have condoned his hair looking like that, or even hers; nor would have the adults in the orphanage.

He was wearing a long black coat and a matching vest. They made his hair and eyes look even darker.

Yet compared to his clothes, his skin was starkly pale, a sickly white pallor that made him look ill enough for even Ma to acknowledge, like he hadn't been outside in all the time since she'd seen him last.

Then he spoke, and she recognized his voice with a start. It seemed to be the only thing about him that hadn't changed.

He stared at her, his eyes widening, seeming to suck all the light out of the room into their dark depths.

"God," was the word he whispered, even though that utterance was reserved only for the most serious of circumstances in the Barebone household, and never by the children. "Oh, God."

The last time Modesty had seen him, he had been searching for her as she hid in the abandoned, ghostly building where her old family had used to live. He'd been with another man, and gotten angry at him, and the walls had collapsed.

The time before that, he'd killed Ma and Chastity. Modesty remembered the sound Ma's body had made hitting the floor, and how the roof had collapsed, leaving a clear circle around her but burying Chastity under wood and tiles.

She was terrified of him. Once he had been her sole friend and protector. Now she'd had many nightmares of that night, and some in which Credence came to kill her too. She instinctively lurched backwards, inching away from him.

But she was terrified even more of the pale blond man, who seemed to radiate menace and harm, who somehow knew her name, and she didn't want to be anywhere near him; it made her skin crawl. So she stumbled and ran forward to Credence, seizing his coat before freezing.

He gripped her arm very tightly, and she would have pulled away if not for the bigger terror behind her. "Modesty," he whispered.

"Aurelius," said the blond man - Gellert Grindelwald - pleasantly. "Aren't you happy to see your sister after so long?"

Modesty didn't know who Aurelius was, but it was Credence who answered. "You brought her here?" His voice was shaking. "Why?"

"Well, I would have thought such a smart young man like you would be able to figure it out." She heard footsteps, and buried her face in Credence's coat, heedless of what her brother would do, but they did not come any closer; they merely repeated over and over, like Gellert Grindelwald was pacing back and forth like Ma had used to do when she was berating one of them for something.

"You see, Aurelius, I must be sure of the absolute loyalty of all those who are here in Nurmengard. It is a privilege, you know. Only the few who I trust absolutely are permitted to reside here, to be trained personally by me. And I'm afraid I find myself not quite certain where your loyalty lies."

"To you!" Credence snapped, in a tone she'd never heard him use before. "You know this!"

"What I know," he emphasized, "is that you joined me because I had not lied to you. I knew your true name, and gave you a wand. You were loyal to me then. But now? Now that you have what you want?"

Modesty could feel Credence trembling.

"Now you are reluctant to carry out the simplest of tasks, and do your best to delay. You balk at battle training, show reluctance to learn half of my most useful spells, wonder at our very purpose here, and seem to like the idea of living among our cowardly brethren. And yet you will be quite a valuable resource in serving the greater good, Aurelius. And so I thought of a brilliant idea."

There was the sound of breath drawn in through gritted teeth.

"If your very name and wand were not enough to make you happy, why, perhaps you simply needed a bigger incentive." The rustle of a sleeve. "And so I had your dear adopted Muggle sister brought here all the way from New York."

"You won't hurt her." Modesty risked a peek at Credence's face, and it was so frightening she buried her face in the fabric of his coat again. He'd never looked like that before, not even on that last night.

"I won't," Grindelwald agreed. "Not as long as you show the utmost enthusiasm for doing what needs to be done, for learning and planning and joining my cause with as much vigor as all of the others. You know where you are lacking, Aurelius. Fix it."

There was a long, terrible pause before Credence spoke again. "And if I don't?" His voice was barely more than a whisper.

Grindelwald lowered his voice to be as quiet as Credence's. "You don't really want to find out, do you, Aurelius?"

"No," Credence whispered. He was trembling even harder now.

"Then there is no disagreement between us."

"No," Credence repeated in agreement.

"Excellent."

This seemed to be a dismissal, because Credence, still grasping her arm, nearly dragged her out of the room and down a hallway as fast as her legs could carry her.