Archive of Our Own

THE NEW YORK GHOST -- ISSUED ON THURSDAY, MARCH 3RD, 1927

------------------------

DIRECTOR OF MAGICAL SECURITY ON TRIAL! GRAVES FACING DEATH PENALTY!

------------------------

Tensions rise today at the Woolworth Courts, following Director Percival Graves’ discovery and rescue last month. While Gellert Grindelwald awaits a transfer to Azkaban, Graves himself is set to be tried for treasonous acts against his Government and Country, despite withstanding months of torture at the dark wizard’s hands.

Madam President Picquery has expressed her belief that the trial is necessary to put to rest any possible loose ends or suspicions of other acting parties. It is unclear whether Graves willingly passed along classified information to Grindelwald, or if he, at some point, did intend to assist Grindelwald in his breach of the Statute of Secrecy. The Statute has been proclaimed by countless Congress officials to be wizard-kind’s most sacred law; if found to be a complacent contributor to Grindelwald’s conspiracy, the death penalty will stand.

He will be questioned by eight jurors selected by the President. Picquery herself will have final say.

Her ruling will be confirmed tonight, and released publicly tomorrow morning at 8 A.M.

...

“Please state your name for the record,” says Seraphina.

It’s foreign territory, this side of the table. Cursed ground, no-man’s land. The glare of artificial light, and heavy steel paneling. Less than a year ago he had sat amongst the high court benches, and looked down his nose at victims and witnesses alike. Power had never held the same sort of weight, when he was the one holding it.

Chains wind tight around his ankles and wrists; his wand is who-knows-where, in the custody of some timid Ministry researcher, no doubt. Hidden away in the Department of Artifacts. They’ll be reverse-checking every spell, matching truth to his word. He knows what they’re looking for, and what obligation they’ll have if they cannot find it. Without immovable evidence of an inflicted Unforgivable, he’ll have voluntarily traded government secrets. There’s no reason why treason won’t bear the same sentence for him as it does for anyone else.

At least they don’t use dementors, thank God; they’re not as brutal as their British counterparts, in that regard. A trial is a fair chance, Seraphina has always said as much, and this will be his first.

Possibly his last.

From behind the podium the president arches a brow. “Please,” she repeats, “state your name for the record.”

He knows a few of the faces scattered throughout the crowd, circling like vultures and swarming the ring. It’s a semi-public event: a chosen handful of press, the new department heads and old secretaries. Proudfoot is squeezing past a pinched-face reporter at the end of the seventh row. Abernathy is settled near the middle left, mopping at his already-damp brow with a kerchief.

The Goldstein sisters are both peering down from the balcony seats; Tina manages a wan sort of smile when their eyes meet. She had been the first visitor he’d gotten and it had meant a great deal, despite the way she had struggled through small talk, fussing constantly at the sleeve-cuffs of her jacket. Hovering at the edge of the hospital curtain, stammering over him before it had broken through at last: I’m sorry, sir. Staring at her shoes, there’ll be a trial, sir.

Fair enough, he’d said.

It seems right, somehow, that she had been the one to tell him. Or perhaps just incredibly ironic— the other Graves, after all, had reportedly been the one to hand Tina a death sentence of her very own. And she hadn’t been allowed a real trial at all.

The room is stirring anxiously. People shifting in their seats, whispering. Seraphina raises her voice, fingers curling around the gavel. “Will the defendant please—” 

“Percival Graves,” he says.

His voice echoes its disuse in the chamber hollow; for a moment, he wonders if he’s answered wrong.

For a moment, nothing about the name sounds right in his mouth.

...

The streets are dark, and quiet. Heavy with the promise of rain, clouds cast thick across the sky. Graves is camped out on the corner across from the church, shadowed into the back-brick of the building behind him. He checks his watch once, twice, waiting. He has to be at the office early tomorrow morning and it’s not his area of expertise, babysitting, he’s only doing it for Tina’s sake. Confirmation that he’s breathing, still on two legs. 

One good glimpse of the boy, he thinks, and he’ll be free to go.

But then, of course, he gets that glimpse.

He has never believed in love at first sight. And this is not love, but something much worse. Something Graves has seen ruin good men and undo the most guarded secrets; this is curiosity, burning hot under his skin. Because the boy is an open wound

bleeding

and beautiful. Cradling his hands to his chest and shivering in violent bursts,

slipping out from the dusk of the church doors to slink along the shadows, shoulders hunched to his ears, shoes shredded at the heels, suffering in silence that screams for relief, for salvation, and Graves—

Has always prided himself a savior.

So like hound to blood, he follows.

Like moth to flame.

...

Seraphina calls him to her during the first break. It is not to offer him sympathies or luck.

He still walks with a limp, and a cane. The Skele-Grow had healed what fractures he’d had, but the pain has stayed anyway; a silly, annoying sort of phantom, stabbing at his shins when he least expects it. Shuffling down to the president’s office takes twice as long as it should, and the humiliating addition of the two guard Aurors that hawk close behind him the whole way doesn’t help. When at last he hobbles through the door, leaving his stony-eyed guards flanked outside, Seraphina is on her feet, pacing with an open file in her hands.

“Percival,” she says, without looking up. “You took your time getting here.”

“Madam President,” he replies, scathingly. “It might’ve been easier to meet in the damn courtroom.”

“I didn’t want this to be easy, I wanted it to be private.” She drops the file on her desk and pushes it toward him, flipping back to the first page. “Read, please. Then sign.”

Using veritaserum in a public hearing borders on unconstitutional. It’s an exceptional court order only the president has permission to request, reserved for criminals of the highest order, never for normal cases; but this, Graves realizes, glancing up to gauge her expression, is not a normal case.

“You could hardly give me your name,” Seraphina says, crossing her arms over her chest as he rifles through the agreement. “We both want this over with. Perhaps it’ll be easier to—”

“To what? Force the answers out of me?”

“I won’t use it unless it becomes necessary.”

“That was Grindelwald’s stance on the Imperius curse, you know.”

“His alleged," she says, "Imperius.”

Graves looks up again, close to snarling.

And then he really looks at her.

The bags under her eyes are creased deep, and ugly. She looks as tired as he feels. He wonders what it had been like, to watch the man she had thought had been him start toward her with death gleaming between bared teeth. He wonders if she had ever suspected at all.

“I don’t need your permission,” she says, and because he knows her, he knows that the tremor in her voice is not one born of anger. “But I would prefer to have it, do you understand?”

“Trust goes both ways,” he answers. To stoke the fire higher in her, to burn away the flickering, sorry guilt behind her eyes, and replace it with something stronger.

She flares to the bait. Remembering herself, shedding skin for armor, “I’m not taking any more chances,” she says. “Sign the damn form, Graves.”

He signs the damn form.

...

There’s a boy in an alley, and his name is Credence. There’s a boy in an alley and Graves can’t stay away. It isn’t killing him, yet, but it will; he isn’t counting kisses he can’t keep, yet, but he will, he will.

He isn’t holding him but there’s a pull in his chest. He isn’t touching him. He’s trying not to. The first time he heals him it feels like realigning the whole world, like centering something that’s spun off-axis, and he spends the rest of the day with his heart slamming against his ribs. Wondering where he’d gone wrong. Wondering whether it will ruin him.

It will.

He takes him home, twice. The first is to escape a downpour, to dry his sopping clothes.

The second:

“This is wrong,” he murmurs, rubbing dittany into the angry red welts stripped across his back. “You can’t let her do this to you, Credence.”

“She has to,” says Credence, so quietly. “I’m— there’s something wicked. In me.”

“Wicked?”

Credence draws his knees up to his chest.

“Did she tell you that?”

There’s a creep of red at the tips of his ears, a flush spreading down the back of his neck. “She’s right.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Credence,” says Graves, softly, one hand spread warm and open over the curve of his spine, and when Credence shivers, he feels it, under the heel of his palm.

“Never mind,” Credence whispers, and flinches away. “It doesn’t mean anything, please, please forget it.”

...

He recounts the story over and over, until his throat is sore with it, until his head aches.

Yes, he remembers being the last man standing; yes, he remembers the duel. No, he doesn’t remember boarding the ship, his first memory of his return to America is opening his eyes and finding woozy blackness pressing in on him from every side. Feeling the sides of his suitcase, devoid of light. Claustrophobia and dread, and swallowing down the taste of acid in the back of his mouth, recounting everything he’d ever learned in the field to keep from screaming.

That had only been the beginning.

Yes, he admits, he’d been tortured before.

But no. Never to that extent.

They ask him what the Imperious curse had felt like.

“Sleepwalking,” he says.

“It was like—”

...

“—losing time.”

Graves puts his hands on his shoulders, steadies him. Pretends not to notice how Credence’s eyes flutter closed at the touch, how he leans into him, imperceptibly. He looks dead on his feet. Wax-pale skin, shadow tinged, Graves feels the bruises twist inside of him like they’re his own.

It’s getting out of hand, he thinks; he can’t keep doing this, he thinks.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he says.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I can’t remember.”

He traces the gash at Credence’s collar with a careful finger. “How did you get this?”

“I don’t know, I can’t remember.”

There’s a boy in an alley and Graves is there with him. There’s a boy and he’s close-to-broken and he’s afraid, he’s saying, “Mister Graves, I’m afraid.”

But Graves can’t bear to stay any longer.

So Graves is saying, “I need to go, Credence. I have to go.”

Credence nods, fast, his breath coming shaky, keeping his desperation clamped between his fists, keeping his fists trembling at his sides. “You’ll come back, right?”

Statute Infraction: Grade One: Breach Four. It’ll ruin him and he knows it. But there’s a hungry ache in him that wants Credence more than it’s ever wanted anything, anyone, and the want swallows fear, swallows doubt, says him,

him,

it’s him.

Take him.

Let him have you.

He takes Credence’s hand and

uncurls

the tight fix of his fingers. Brings his knuckles to his lips, brings his thumb to the flat of his pulse.

Him, him, and he should have listened.

He would have heard, if only he’d listened:

The animal beat in Credence’s blood, the beast with only bone and sinew between them.

...

“How long were you in Germany?”

“Three months.”

“And how many encounters were there between you and Gellert Grindelwald within that timeframe?”

“Four.”

“All violent?”

“Well, I wasn’t about to take him to fucking dinner—”

“Graves,” says Seraphina, wearily.

“Yes, they were all violent, of course they were violent!”

They ask him to list the names of his companions, the witches and wizards he’d watched fight and fall, and he does. They ask him to recall their last confrontation in as much detail as he possibly can, and he tries. He’s straining with it, dead names and regret heavy on his tongue; time stretches and slows when he speaks, throat going rough with confession.

The questions fizzle out at long last and Seraphina comes down to the jury box. There are thick-sheafed papers passed between the huddle of their gathered heads, marks of ink and mild conversations that he can’t make out. Murmured agreements, dissents, and Graves waits, chains clinking between his knees.

“All right,” the president calls out, apparently satisfied with whatever they’ve discussed. Her voice rings bell-clear over the audience’s low chorus, seating herself behind the podium once more; Graves’ fingers tighten into fists, breath coming quick, braced to hear her ruling:

“Let’s go over it again,” she says. “How long were you in Germany?”

...

“Three months?” repeats Credence, faintly. “Three—”

He breaks off, sagging back against the alley wall. The look in his eyes is dull and far away. Graves thinks of reaching for him. He stays where he is, hands in his pockets, heart crawling toward his sleeve.

“What are you doing there?” Credence asks, finally, and the question struggles on the way out. He’s trying so desperately to be good. Trying to be selfless, sacrificial, to say yes, sir, and no, sir. To say anything but please, don’t.

Or please, stay.

“I’m going after someone,” Graves says. “A criminal, in my world. There’s a summit in Germany, we’re going to track him down, try to bring him in.”

“He’s dangerous?”

“He’s the evil witch your mother warned you about.”

Credence doesn’t smile.

Graves sighs, pulling his hands through his hair. He hadn’t meant to upset him. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come. He had only wanted—

For heaven’s sake, what had he wanted?

“I’ll go,” he says, resigned.

Credence’s hand tightens around his wrist before he can take two steps.

Graves looks back at him, surprised; he colors at once, letting go of him like it burns. “Sorry,” he whispers, “I’m sorry,” and he sounds ashamed— as though he isn’t turning Graves’ world upside-down. Everything he’s believed to be true, dropped at Credence’s feet. “I’m sorry, I just, I wish you didn’t have to, I wish you could take me with you, I wish—”

There’s fear in his eyes again. But there’s something else there, too, something decisive and beautifully brave, and Graves goes deathly still. Afraid to blink and miss it. Afraid to scare him off.

He knows better. He knows he shouldn’t—

They can’t—

There isn’t an outcome in this world where either of them can get what they want, and yet:

Yes, he thinks, watching the uncertain flicker behind Credence’s eyes, go on and do it, it’s all right. You’re all right.

Credence’s hands are shaking. He lifts them, clutches at Graves’ coat, yes, thinks Graves, breath catching, go on, I won’t run. There’s a boy in an alley, and he’s got his fingers hovering around Graves’ neck. There’s a boy in an alley and he’s kissing him, softly, and close-mouthed, in little uncertain beats.

And Graves is kissing him back.

Tilting his head to better the angle, coaxing him deeper, slower. Credence’s palms slide flat against his chest, letting go of a relieved, wrecked sound, pushing up against him eager and panting, like he’s wanted it forever,

kissing him saying I’ve wanted this

forever

and please

you’ll come back you’re

coming back right you’ll come back

won’t you?

“I shouldn’t—” starts Graves, more certain than ever that this will be the end of him, “we can’t—”

But neither of them pull away.

“Three months,” says Graves.

“I can wait,” says Credence. “I’ll wait, I will, I’ll wait for you.”

...

Inevitably:

“What about the boy?” says one of the jurors.

“What boy?” says Graves.

...

His boat leaves at sunrise the next morning.

Credence turns up outside his flat that night.

And when Graves opens the door he looks at him like it hurts to, like his words are caught and wound up in the sharp-angled lines of his throat. He doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t need to.

Graves lets him inside.

And then lets him

inside of him.

And holds him

while he presses silent shadows

into his neck with his legs

open around his waist

he wonders

if this is how Atlas felt

holding the world.

I needed you, whispers Credence, when they’ve spilled and shuddered against each other, the sweat cooling between them. His voice is small, raw, hidden in the disheveled mess of Graves’ hair, I need you, he says. As though Graves is already somewhere far beyond his reach. As though he isn’t still twined around him, their bodies gone soft and spent and shy again.

I’m here, says Graves, feeling him slip away. I’m right here.

...

The jury are exchanging uncomfortable looks.

“Credence Barebone,” somebody says.

“From the Second Salemers?”

“What,” says Graves, stammering. “What do you mean, what about him?”

“You’d made contact with him, had you not, prior to your tour in Germany?”

“Auror Goldstein implied that you were closely acquainted—”

The restraints tighten, as his voice rises. “What the hell does this have to do with my case?”

“Surely you’ve been made aware—”

“Of what?”

“That the obscurus was his?”

He hears it faintly. As if from miles away: a high, wounded sound from the balcony, half-muffled, echoing through the silent chamber like the crack of spell-fire. Dazed, dream-like, Graves watches Queenie Goldstein rise from her seat with her fingers pressed against her mouth, the look in her eyes mirroring the shattering behind his ribs.

From behind the podium Seraphina is on her feet, speaking noiselessly, her lips shaping his name. The jury is waiting for his answer, the rows of their faces blurring into nothing.

They think they know, he realizes, they don’t know. What it’s like to want to die, to really, honest-to-god, want it. They've never wanted it the way he had, has, does, made, unmade, he’s dying,

...

and waking up.

He dies

he wakes up he dies

again. He wakes and

remembers

Credence

is waiting for him in the shadows dragging his fraying heels through the dirt humming

some half-keyed tune Credence is saying wait I’ll wait

for you I’ll wait for

Credence’s fingers in his hair Credence

pressed against the dirty-bricked wall and

kissing him

cold mouth, warm breath

I’ll wait

for you

don’t wait

Graves pleads

alone in the prison dark

knowing he can’t hear

him begging

don’t wait Credence run

run it isn’t me he isn’t

me he isn’t

me

...

“All right,” the president says, quietly, watching him fight to breathe. “Dose him.”

...

He manages a near-escape only once and it’s unplanned, half an accident. Grindelwald is stooping down to slice off a fistful of hair and his wand slips from his pocket; like an animal off its chain Graves dives for it, comes up with it clutched in his fist. 

His victory is short-lived.

The duel is over as quickly as it’s begun. He fights wild-eyed and snarling, he fights hard. But for all his ferocity he’s half-starved, weak with fatigue. All he really manages to do is snap himself free from his binds, and land an almost-bruising blow to Grindelwald’s shoulder.

Grindelwald breaks both of his legs, to keep it from happening again.

He remembers the pain, white-hot, never-ending. He remembers the sound of snapping bone, screaming until he tastes blood. Spine arching away from the cold damp floor as it blinds him, now, now, he hears his captor croon, none of that: 

There simply can’t be two of us running around, can there.

Whatever would Credence think?

The Cruciatus curse flays him alive. The first time he blacks out from the pain he thinks he’s surely dying, it is what he’d imagined dying would feel like, anyway, shadows closing in over him, eyes rolling up into the back of his head, he dies, he wakes. He dies again. He wakes up.

And it starts all over again.

His mind has fractured almost completely by the time the rescue team finds him. He can’t stand, dragging himself toward them on all bloodied fours; they have to float him out like some kind of relic, pried out from old ruins. He made me do it, he babbles, half-starved, his hair matted and shorn in places. He unmade me, he made me.

He grasps at the cuff of Seraphina’s sleeve, as they pass her by.

She pries his fingers loose, one-by-one.

And later:

It was a persuasive imitation, she’ll say.

I don’t know what to believe anymore, she’ll say.

State your name for the record, she’ll say, and he’ll pause.

There’ll be a trial, Tina will tell him; fair enough, he’ll answer. Fair enough.

...

Once you’ve swallowed— or been forced to swallow— the standard measured ounce of veritaserum, you have five minutes before it takes full effect. And following that, you have an hour before its influence wears off, and you need to be dosed again. But of course, he’d learned all of this in theory. And it had all seemed very well and good before he had been the one counting down the minutes.

Under the control of the Imperius he had felt foggy, painless; he had answered questions dreamily, willingly, the regret had come later. The veritaserum leaves him crystal-clear, and straining. Afraid of what they will ask. Hating that he’ll have no choice but to give his answer.

“How did you become acquainted with Credence Barebone?” asks a wizard in the front row of the jury, studying the contents of a thick folder with a critical eye.

“It was a personal favor,” he says, the answer caught, hollow, hooked, reeled out of him. “Tina— Porpentina Goldstein, she asked me to.”

“Under what pretense?”

“His mother beat him. Goldstein worried she’d made things worse, she’d been demoted for—”

“Violent interference and exposure, yes, we’re aware.”

Another juror leans across the bench. “She introduced the two of you, then?”

“No,” says Graves, relieved that this is, indeed, the truth. “I chose to go looking for him myself.”

“Did she ask after him often?”

“No, not often—”

“Was she aware you continued to see him?”

“I don’t know,” he says. He grits his teeth; the potion surges in his blood. “I stopped giving her updates—”

“Why?”

“Madam President!” A witch towards the back speaks up, perplexed. “This line of questioning is absurd. We’ve called him here about Grindelwald, not about the boy.”

Seraphina doesn’t take her eyes off of him. “Your concern is noted,” she replies. “Your answer, now, Graves, please.”

He holds it off for as long as he can. His fingers dig into his palms, hysteria swallowing him whole. He’s cornered. There’s nothing left to fight with.

The words crawl out of him.

“My interest in him was no longer professional,” he hears himself say. “I thought— our relationship was criminal.”

“You assumed he was incapable of magic?”

“Yes.”

“You never suspected he descended from a wizarding line?”

“No,” he shudders, against the serum. “No—”

“You are insinuating something incredibly serious,” says the first juror, folding his hands together, “so let us be very clear: you are telling us, Director Graves, that you made yourself intimately familiar with the young man, even believing that you were breaking the Statute?”

His throat works frantically around the answer. His eyes squeeze shut.

“Yes,” he whispers, helplessly, and feels the entirety of his career slip from his fingers.

...

Hospital fever-dreams brim with what-ifs and could-haves, and for love’s sake—

These dreams always begin with love.

Credence swoons toward his neck. Kisses with teeth, leaves the outline of his lips stained sweet and berry-black. Graves tells him all the ways he doesn’t mind. Pressing fingers where he’s bitten down. Tracing the lines his hunger makes.

Credence finds him in a dim prison room. Behind a secret panel in his office.

Credence finds him in the bottom of a trunk, locked away

with the rest of Grindelwald’s plots and playthings

fixed between a rock and a hard place

the styx and the underworld

Credence delivers him

into the light

the living

he wakes.

Credence never finds him at all.

Credence sits small and unnoticed

at the back of a crowded courtroom.

Credence vanishes when Graves says,

boy?

What boy?

And Graves knows it couldn’t really have ever been him to begin with.

...

The results of the spell-trace are handed to Seraphina at the end of the day. The Imperius curse is first on the list; crucio is second.

Grindelwald’s ship pulls away from the New York harbor an hour later, bound for Azkaban. In the morning, Graves is handed back his wand, and released from custody. He walks a free man.

Subsequently—

He also walks a disgraced one.

The papers fly hot off the press. And while there’s nothing they can do to him legally— Credence was of magical blood— the kind of admission Graves had made in court isn’t something Seraphina can forget. Not from her Director of Security, putting heart over head.

“I’m so sorry!” Tina wails tearfully as he cleans out his office, tossing out-of-date wand permits and broken quills. “I should have told you, I wanted to— this is all my fault! I had no idea the court had decided to use veritaserum, if I’d known—”

“I agreed to the veritaserum, Tina.”

“But— what? Why?”

Graves puts down the disabled sneakoscope he’s been fiddling with, and rubs a hand over his brow. All that time— meeting him after hours, in-between lunch breaks— Credence had been fighting an invisible war. Choking down a leviathan of his own making, an unimaginable ocean of hurt and pain and I’m losing time—

And Graves had done nothing.

He hadn’t even noticed.

His legs are aching again, phantom-pains. He reaches for his cane. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, his voice rough. “It’s over, none of it is on you.”

Tina wipes at her eyes, looking miserable. “I knew you were seeing him,” she admits weakly. “Even if you’d stopped saying anything. The whole office— well, they might’ve not known the details. But everyone could see you were— happier, for a little while. That someone was making you happy.”

Graves feels his face go hot. “The whole office?”

“You weren’t exactly discreet, sir.” She laughs, sniffles. “Calling meetings early. Coming in late with this silly look on your face—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“You started saying hello to Abernathy every morning, that was the worst of it.”

He chuckles. And it feels good to smile, even if it’s long-rusted— but halfway through he feels something tremble, and start to give. Something long-cracked, and crumbling, and before he can haste to fix it, it breaks for good.

And his laughter becomes another thing entirely.

“Sir,” says Tina, a note of horror in her voice as he slumps over his desk, and weeps into his hands. “Please, um— please don’t, I didn’t mean to—”

“Sorry,” he gasps, his tears hot between his fingers, running in ugly rivers to his chin. “I’m— so sorry, Tina—”

She had asked Graves to help him. And in return he had led him to the slaughter, he had tried to save him and had sealed his fate, instead; Credence had fled to that subway believing he’d been abandoned, betrayed. Killed-on-sight, and if only Graves had been there, if only he had never left. Credence had been afraid and if only he had listened, or understood. Or held him closer. Given him more.

“This is ridiculous,” says Tina, almost angrily. “You aren’t allowed to stay miserable over— I’m not supposed to, we’d decided— but— oh, never mind it! Come on, we’re going.”

She has hold of his arm, one minute.

She’s shoving him into the fireplace the next.

He’s still blinking out tears, stumbling, astonished, “Goldstein! What in the seven hells are you—”

His office disappears in a flame-burst of green.

The floo network has always been one of his least favorite methods of travel— drawing out what apparation would do in half the time, with twice the mess. He grips his cane as tightly as he can and closes his eyes, blocking out the shutter-flash of brick and grate blurring past him.

The world stops spinning.

He lets his breath loose.

“Oh!” says a high voice, sounding surprised but delighted. “Hello, honey, I wasn’t expecting you.”

The first thing he sees when he blinks the ash from his eyes is Queenie Goldstein. Then the scatter of lacy slips drying over the hearth he’s standing in, pinks and yellows floating mid-air, and an odd-assorted heaps of sketches and plants sprawling at every corner. “I’m— sorry?” he says, disoriented, cheeks sticking gray with salt and cinder. “Your sister—”

There’s a whoompf of breath as Tina floos into the hearth behind him, stumbling into his back. “Out of the way, now,” Queenie is saying, tugging at his sleeve, “he’s sleeping late, poor thing, he’s always so tired—”

“I— who?”

“Oh, really, Teeny! You have to start telling him things, he can’t read your mind! But don’t worry, honey, I ain’t like the rest of your government people— and neither is Tina, but oh, you know that already, don’t you?”

“He goes in and out of his physical form,” comes another voice, a man with a reddish-brown mop of hair, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, forearms busied with something in the sink across the room. “Admittedly much better than when we first found him, of course, your Aurors did quite a number on him—”

“Newt!” Tina hisses, un-caking dead embers from her shoes. “Not so loud!” 

“I thought we’d decided to keep him out of this? That is him, yes?”

“Of course it is!” Queenie has hold of Graves again, steering him around to help brush off his shoulders. “She couldn’t stand it, could you, Teeny, keeping him in the dark? And now he’s all mixed up, aren’t you?”

“What,” says Graves, dazed, “who—?”

“Newt Scamander,” Queenie says, pointing at the man; “Legilimens,” explains Newt Scamander, pointing back at Queenie.

“Welcome to the zoo, Mister Graves,” Tina says, exasperated, and crosses over to the sink to wash the ashy smudges from her cheeks. “And as for you two— he deserves to know, it’s unfair to the both of them if we— Merlin’s pants!”

“There’s no need to shout,” says Scamander, adopting a placating sort of tone.

“What is that?!”

“She’s shedding, Tina, it’s perfectly natural—”

“Why on earth have you put her in the sink?”

“Where else would I put her?”

“In your suitcase, Newt! In your suitcase—”

Something has slowly stirred awake inside of Graves’ chest, hesitant but wild; faint, but rapidly blooming. Feeble and dizzy with relief, with hope. Queenie takes hold of his elbow, half a second before his legs start to give out. “It’s all right, honey," she says, "he’s all right.”

“He’s here,” says Graves weakly, reeling, clutching white-knuckled at his cane. He isn’t sure if it’s a question or not. He’s afraid to hear the answer, if it is— my God, he thinks, light-headed, no, I can’t, can’t face him, unless— and he must know, he’s got to know, doesn’t he? How just the syllables of his name, spoken aloud in the trial chamber, had gripped bloodied fingers around his heart. How Graves had never meant for any of this, how it had ripped through him, the naked truth, and does he know—

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Queenie says gently, and the double doors at the far end of the room slide open.

Three months in Germany. Two months held captive and two more bound to a hospital bed, over half a year since they’d— and he’s not so thin, anymore. That ridiculous haircut has grown out, tousled, sticking up in the back, eyes still so dark, coffee-black, wide. He’s wearing soft-looking gray-and-yellow pajamas, with a Hogwart’s crest on the sleeve. And an old pair of Thunderbird socks, tugged up to his shins.

Graves’ heart twists wretchedly in his chest. “Credence,” he says—

It comes out begging, lost, a plea for something he can’t name, mercy. Forgiveness?

The rest of his words are lost.

Credence says nothing. Starting toward him slow, unsure, staring. “Credence,” says Graves again, paralyzed, frozen with half-thrilled terror as the space between them shrinks, “please, Credence, I—”

There’s a sound, half-choked. Wordless, and Credence is lunging the last few feet. The breath is knocked from his lungs; he staggers back. His cane clatters to the floor, Credence’s arms go tight around him, burying his face in the crook of his shoulder, and on instinct—

...

—Graves holds him.

One hand cradling the back of his head, the other splayed between the dip of his shoulder-blades. Credence’s heart is pounding. He can feel it against him, the rhythm is echoed there, in his own chest.

He’s warm. He’s breathing, in little hitches, fingers fixing and unfixing in the folds of his shirt.

The world shrinks.

Silence and breath and touch, his cheek hot and damp against Graves’ neck. The always-cold tip of his nose, nudging up along Graves’ jaw. The way he smells. New, clean. Like chocolate, faintly, and of soap, and hay. Graves doesn’t notice when Newt gathers up his creature in his arms and disappears into the next room with Tina close behind; he doesn’t notice when Queenie draws her wand and casts a muffliato charm around them, either. Credence is trembling in his arms and he thinks, this is not mercy, or forgiveness, this is

rebirth.

And waking up.

“They said— a thousand pieces,” he whispers. “They said— there was nothing left of you.”

“There wasn’t,” says Credence, mouth moving against Graves’ skin in an almost, a not-quite kiss. “Not for a long time.”

...

“Will you be all right apparating on your own?” asks Tina, after an early-afternoon lunch in which Scamander had given a long-winded and frankly unnecessary explanation of the magizoologist field, and Queenie had suffered two half-stifled giggling fits over someone’s thoughts— he supposes they’ll never really know who’s. “I know it’s been a while since you’ve had to. You’re welcome to use our fireplace, there’s a floo jar on the mantel—” 

Graves shakes his head, searching the room for his cane. He’d rather not spend the rest of the day scrubbing ash from his hair, and he isn’t sure his hearth would still be connected to the grid, anyhow. “I’ll be fine, Tina,” he says, when she doesn’t seem convinced. “I was actually the Director of Magical Security once, if you can believe it.”

She snorts indelicately, then looks scandalized. It’s going to take her a while to get used to seeing him as anything but her superior; he wonders how long it’ll be before she stops calling him sir. “Well. I suppose—”

“You could side-along with me,” says Credence breathlessly, materializing next to him with the cane in one hand, and an unfamiliar wand in his other. “I can do it, Tina.”

He’d changed out of his assorted sleepwear before lunch, reappearing in a thin, soft collared shirt, and one of what must be Newt’s sweaters: open at his pale throat, softening the sharp jut of his shoulders. It’s nothing like the pinched black coat his mother had always forced him into, two sizes too small. “There’s no need for that,” says Graves, finding just a bit of trouble in tearing his eyes away. “I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“I don’t mind. Please, I— I’d like to.”

Graves glances at Tina, who quirks an eyebrow. “Don’t look at me,” she says. “Newt’s the one who’s been teaching him.”

“I can do it,” says Credence, so fervently that Graves goes warm at the ears. There’s a quiet shyness to him still, something wistful in the way he lingers so close to him, fingers curling carefully at his elbow. But he isn’t the skittish, shivering thing he’d met in the dark, not anymore. And who is Graves to deny him this? To deny him anything at all?

“Go on, then,” he says, taking Credence’s arm.

Gravity presses down with twice the effort, sucking them into the familiar swoop of apparation: like missing a step and then a whole flight, lungs straining, the world sliding out from under their feet. They reappear— perfectly whole— in the hallway outside of his door, and Graves’ ears pop once, twice, with the shift.

He takes a moment to steady himself. There had been a time where he had thought death more inevitable than a homecoming. He had certainly never imagined it this way, with Credence nestled close at his side, unruly-haired, grinning— and it takes another moment to remember how to breathe, in the light of his smile.

“Well done,” says Graves, stupidly, unable to think of anything else to say. “You must be a quick learner.”

“Mister Scamander’s a good teacher,” says Credence. But he flushes with the praise, all the same.

Graves unlocks the door with a strained alohomora. He puts his hand on the knob. Swallows— sighs. Braces himself and pushes it open.

Seraphina had mentioned the search warrant.

They’ve done a more thorough job than he’d expected.

Grindelwald had made himself quite at home here, in the months he had stolen, or so Graves has heard. After his arrest the place had been corded off, a crime scene, and now it is the home of no one. Almost empty, scrubbed clean by the investigators, stripped bones of an old life. The bigger pieces have been left alone: dining table, davenport. Gas stove, chiffonier. But there are none of the Ghost editorials he’d liked to clip and save, no briefings or case-files spread out over the counters. His American National quidditch calendar is gone. So is his owl. His books, photographs, mementos and memorabilia, all filed away as evidence. 

“They took everything,” says Credence, hushed.

He’s followed him in, hovering close enough that their hands brush. Graves looks at him, flesh-and-blood. Beautifully solid and here with him, somehow, still.

“Not everything,” he says.

Before Grindelwald, he would have steamed from the ears at the idea of his things being seized and requisitioned. Now they’re just things. And he’s just— so tired, with an exhaustion that has crept into his bones and settled.

His four-poster is a refuge of an island in the middle of an otherwise barren bedroom, stripped to the mattress. He pulls back the curtains at the end of the room and opens the french double-doors, letting the cold spring breeze stir at the stale, unused air. There’s a crack in the flagstone that he remembers, jagged, spider-silk thin. He scuffs at it with the toe of his shoe, and it feels good, just to see it, proof that there was a life before the nightmare. Remembering what was real, what did and didn't matter, cracks in the flagstone and Credence in the doorway: 

Hovering, uncertain, red-cheeked.

Remembering, no doubt, what they had done the last time they were here together. The way Graves had taken him in hand and guided him, showed him how to spread him open, how to make it good. The look on his face when Graves had held him flush, coaxed him deeper: stunned. Shocked, even, like he wasn’t sure if it was really meant for him. Half-expected to be torn away, even buried inside of him.

“Come here,” Graves says, hoarse with slow-fading memories and the ceaseless need to have him closer.

Credence goes to him at once. Shoulder to Graves’ shoulder, shoring up against him. Yellow taxis and brick-brown train cars echo white noise, drifting up from the street, and Credence reaches out and touches the back of Graves’ wrist, where the skin is scarred and still rubbed red, manacle imprints ringed and raw.

“I went to your trial,” he says.

Graves blinks at him, startled; Credence blinks back, soft-eyed.

“I had to know,” he adds, softly. “Whether you— were with him. Nobody wanted me to. Queenie and Tina were worried I’d get hurt, Mister Scamander said it wasn’t a good idea—”

“Maybe it wasn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Credence,” he says, tired, so tired. “I nearly ruined you, Credence.”

“But now I’ve ruined you, haven’t I?”

“That’s— of course not, the trial wasn’t your fault—”

“Grindelwald wasn’t yours.”

“Nothing about me is a good idea,” says Graves, unraveling the confession from where it’s been tangled and aching in his lungs, ever since Credence had slipped back between his arms. “Not anymore. Maybe not ever.”

“You’re afraid,” says Credence. “What are you afraid of?”

Everything— and he has to bite his tongue, to keep from admitting it. He’s afraid of waking up again and finding that this, too, has been nothing but a pipe dream. He’s afraid of losing himself to this, to uncertainty, pauses between names and healed wounds that have gone on hurting. 

At least he doesn’t have to fear losing himself to Credence. That’s happened already, long before the rest of him ever began to fall apart.

“Do you know what Grindelwald’s last words were?” he says, to stave off the truth, too-sharp. “Before they took him into custody— he said he couldn’t be contained.”

“You think he’ll escape?”

It’s low on the list of his worries, all things considered, but it’s there, yes. He wonders if Grindelwald would hunt him down, finish the job. There wouldn’t be much to finish. It’s more likely he would hunt for Credence, instead.

He feels sick to his stomach at the thought.

Another breeze drifts up from the whirl of the metropolis below; the curtains stir and sway behind them. “He told me I could be with him,” says Credence. “With you, in your world, he said he saw us together.”

“You believed him.”

“I wanted to— it was all I ever wanted. He knew that. He knew— you never promised me anything like that.”

More than anything else, the truth of it stings. Slipping beneath his skin and cutting where it hurts most, worsening when he tries to throw up a defense: “I couldn’t,” he protests, “you can’t just learn magic, Credence, it’s in your blood! And how was I to know— if you’d only told me that you even suspected—”

The touch of Credence’s fingers on his wrist is gone; he’s quiet again, and distant. Graves wants to touch him so badly it burns, wants to put his hands in his hair, on his waist. To kiss him until he’s made up of nothing but a wild heartbeat, and sweet breath. Brave and rosy-mouthed, the way he’d been in New York’s alley shadows, between Graves’ sheets.

“What was I supposed to think?” Credence asks, his voice very small. “You came back and you were so set on work, but you’d always been like that. And you didn’t say anything about— about what we’d done, about— what you let me do to you, before you left, and I just, I thought, maybe you wanted to forget it—” 

He breaks off. Staring out at the city, at the smoke and sky-scrapers.

“I pretended it never happened. And then I thought, maybe it didn’t. Maybe I’d imagined it, or dreamed it, or—”

“It wasn’t a dream,” Graves says, sharper than he means to.

“I know. I know that, now.”

His chest is iron-tight again. Everything he’d hidden and held close, balled up at the hollow of his throat. He’s sick of feeling this way, stretched and caught on the verge of collapse, waiting for someone to kick his feet out from under him, to send him into free-fall. 

Better to take the leap himself.

“I was so— horribly in love with you.”

Credence looks over at him. Graves can't bear to meet his eyes.

“In Germany,” he soldiers on instead, the wounds scraping raw around his words, “I almost wrote to you. More than once. I was never any good at...pursuing. And I know it’s ruined, now, you can’t, we— shouldn’t, but you deserve to know. In case— if you weren’t sure whether or not I— whether I did—”

“Why would it be ruined,” says Credence, softly. 

“What he did to you—”

“It isn’t your fault.”

“I wanted to save you,” says Graves, pleading; his voice breaks in the middle, “I was only trying to save you, Credence—”

“You never hurt me, Percival.”

He lets the name loose, low and quiet. But the syllables are smooth and steady in his mouth, certain, beyond question, that it’s his. There’s a boy on his balcony and he’s not afraid, anymore; there’s a hungry ache in Graves and it wants him more than it’s ever wanted anything, anyone. 

And it swallows fear.

His hands tremble around the railings. He lifts one, fingers shaking as he traces along Credence's chin, cupping his jaw, “Please,” Credence breathes, “go on, it’s all right—” 

Graves pulls him in.

Cradling his face between his palms, kissing him graceless and messy, helplessly frantic. Needing him close, closer, needing him and the animal inside of him; cold mouth, warm breath. Sharp angles, and shadows, and he thinks, take me, take me; let me have you, he thinks—

I’ve wanted this forever.

“Forgive me,” he says, eyes wet, free-falling.

“For what,” Credence whispers, and reaches out and catches hold, slim fingers against coarse palm, against red-raw knuckles.

...

THE NEW YORK GHOST -- ISSUED ON MONDAY, APRIL 11TH, 1927

------------------------

MINISTER FOR MAGIC SCANDALIZED! DARK WIZARD ESCAPES EN ROUTE TO AZKABAN!

------------------------

Minister Hector Fawley faces record-low popularity ratings amongst British wizards after admitting that Gellert Grindelwald has, once again, escaped custody. Grindelwald, most recently accused of murder, treasonous intent, and impersonation of a government official, broke free of his guard late last night only a few miles away from the infamous Azkaban prison. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Anyone with information is urged to disclose it to the British Embassy; a reward of Two Thousand Galleons has been personally issued by the Minister—

Graves puts the paper down, frowning. The kitchen has gone quite dark, despite the morning sun; across the table Credence’s thundercloud has risen up at his back, spelling out darkness, wrath, blocking out the light. 

“Read the rest,” says Credence. His voice is a near-hiss. His eyes are milky-white.

“I won’t,” says Graves, patiently. “Not until you stop threatening to bend that fork in half, at least.” 

He blinks, then, brown-irised, and flushes. He lets his silverware clatter to his plate amongst half-eaten eggs, munched slivers of bacon, and he looks up at Graves, the sweetness back in his eyes, the curls of his beast shrinking into his skin.

“Do you really want to hear it, Credence?”

“No,” Credence says, shoulders slumping.

“Should we forget it?”

“No,” Credence says again, more intently, and his slender hands make fists.

Graves curls the corner of the front page between his thumb and forefinger, turning it over in his mind. “They won’t find him— you know that. Even if they did, they wouldn’t learn. They’d just try to stick him somewhere else, they wouldn’t have the heart to finish him off.”

“So what do we do?”

“It depends.”

“On?”

Graves tosses the paper down. Pushes his chair back and stands, searching Credence’s face.

“On how you feel about crossing the Atlantic,” he says, “and causing a little trouble.”

And Credence smiles, slow.

All teeth, and love, and shadow.