Tina crept with Newt along green-carpeted corridors, past green doors and windows with green curtains. "There's a divide between the House of Commons and the House of Lords," said Newt. "On the Lords side, everything is red."
They had memorised Newt's map, and found their way to the famous parliamentary chamber, rows of benches either side of a high wood-panelled room. The benches were upholstered in green leather, and tiny brass portcullises punctuated the end of each row, but still Tina's first thought was, bleachers - opposing teams facing each other, ready to roar their support or disapproval.
At the end sat a chair it was impossible to label anything but throne. Or referee's chair.
Around the top of the room ran a gallery where the public might sit to view government in action. In the centre of the main floor was a smaller bench. "For independents," said Newt. "Members of neither main party. Magic sits there."
"So every nomaj politician knows about magic?" said Tina.
"Yes. Unless they're really determined not to notice." His voice trailed off. "I feel clear headed. How about you?"
"Fine."
"It could be anywhere."
"We better start looking." But how do you look for a one-inch-tall dark blue creature which has been hidden by people who don't want it found? Tina lifted her wand and murmured words of revelation.
Newt crept around the chamber, calling softly to the dubbalum. After several minutes and no such access, he straightened up and pushed his hair back off his forehead. "I'm not sure why I'm bothering, the dubbalum never came to me anyway -"
He stopped, his hand still in his hair. "I wonder," he said.
"What?" Tina left the back benches, where she had been searching among the seats, and joined Newt in the centre of the chamber.
Ha eyes were bright. "I was watching you dancing," he said.
"Ugh."
"Those men. They, ah, were not at all respectful."
"Say that again." Those men had been grotesque.
"And this morning. In Liverpool. All the workers. Men, again."
"Yeah, pretty unpleasant to claw our way through the crowd. I felt like meat on a slab the way some of them looked at me." It was not unusual, but it had been, somehow, disappointing.
"That's my point," said Newt. "I didn't notice, I mean, I didn't specifically notice that it was hostile. Towards you." He tilted his head back to look up around the chamber. "This is a male world. Every Member of Parliament is a man. Every drinker in a pub is a man. Every train driver and taxi cabbie, a man."
"Some women work," Tina said.
"Plenty do," said Newt. "But the single women are away in their mills and factories, and the married women are at home raising children. They're not in the streets, trying to make their way." He gestured with his wand, and gazed up into the rafters. "What if the dubbalum is a female?"
He ducked his head and met Tina's gaze.
"Alone in a male world," she said.
"Perhaps I could never have won her trust," said Newt. "-It gives us something to try, anyway. I'll go and tuck myself away in a corner, and you..."
"Stay and be a female friend," she said.
Newt pointed. "If I wanted a confusion signal to spread across as much of the room as possible, I'd hide a dubbalum there."
Tina's gaze follows the line of his arm to the speaker's chair. "Right in the middle. But, Newt-"
He stopped in the midst of turning away.
"These people," she said. "They've found a way to silence it. Even if it, she, wants to be my friend - she might not trust any human. She might be... hurt." She could not bear to say the idea she'd had about how the dubbalum might be silenced.
"Then let's find her as quickly as possible," said Newt.
Tina climbed the dais to the speaker's chair. Cooing softly, as she had heard Newt do, she hunted all around the platform, under the chair, behind it. Her mind ached with the idea that at any moment an onslaught of confusion might be unleashed.
The dubbalum was not there.
"Well, that explains why we've not felt any ill effects," Newt said. He and Tina stood, dispirited, in the middle of the chamber. "They may not bring it in until it's actually needed. Right before the votes."
"Or our whole theory is totally wrong," she said. "Look, let's retreat, I'll wire Queenie to do some digging at MACUSA, we'll work on it some more. At least nobody's seen us sneaking around in here."
"That may be about to change," said Newt. He clutched Tina's arm. "Someone's coming."
"I don't hear anything."
"Chaplin just stirred." Newt touched his collar "A finickactus has very acute hearing. It must be time for the emergency vote. Hide!"
They scuttled to the top row of benches on the government side, and crouched down. Tina prepared to see six hundred self-important men troop in, ready for their role in democracy.
But only one man appeared. Tina knew him at once from newspaper photographs. It was the Minister for Magic, Sir James Fox.
He was tall, portly, and silver haired, with a small moustache. He carried something in his closed fist.
Newt drew breath in sharply. Tina elbowed him to be quiet.
Sir James strode, not to the speaker's chair, but to the opposition benches. Reaching up to the wooden balustrade which edged the public gallery, he opened his fist and placed what he held between two newel posts.
This done, he swiftly backed away, and hurried from the chamber.
Newt sprang up. "Tina-"
"I know. It must be about to wake up-"
There was no way Sir James could have completed his plan under the influence of a dubbalum. But his hasty exit suggested that that influence was about to burst to life.
Tina drew her wand, and ran down the steps, across the chamber and up the opposite steps.
"The MPs are coming!" called Newt.
"I can't reach her-"
Tina could see the dubbalum, a tiny ball if midnight blue fluff, settled between two newel posts. It was above her head height. The fluff was stretching, wriggling like an animal roused from a long sleep-
The main chamber doors flung open and men began to pour into he room.
The dubbalum froze. Then she scrunched into an even smaller ball, like a hedgehog curling up, like a cat about to spring.
There was no time for Tina to coax her, no time to build rapport. At any moment the dubbalum would begin her defence against this roomful of huge, heavy-footed, rumbling men. The confusion would spread, and nobody, not Tina or Newt, would be able to think clearly enough to escape.
The dubbalum began to hum. Tina felt it between her ears, like a half-remembered song, or a dream drifting away on waking. The hum grew louder, making Tina wonder what the tune was, and where she might go and look it up, not now, but perhaps some day -
She shook herself, and screwed up her face against the sound. The dubbalum! The dubbalum was awake and defending itself.
Tina had to act, had to do the thing she hoped to avoid. "Newt," she said, "stay back!" as he began to climb the stairs towards her. He halted on the second step. Tina turned quickly to meet his upturned gaze. "Trust me," she said, and spun round to raise her wand at the dubbalum.
The tiny dubbalum reared up as the politicians crowded into the chamber. And Tina pointed her wand, silently asked forgiveness from MACUSA, the Ministry and Newt, and said words she had been told never to say, ending with a whispered, "Tardetimpane."
The dubbalum gave one squeak, toppled, and fell from the gallery.
Newt, horrified, sprang forward, hands outstretched. His shoulder slammed into the top bench and he slid along it. The dubbalum fell into his cupped hands and Newt lay, gasping in pain and shock.
"What have you done?" The dubbalum lay utterly still in his palm, a bobble of midnight coloured fluff. Tears ran down Newt's face and he did not wipe them away.
Tina, eyeing the startled politicians, said, "We gotta go -"
"This was not the answer," Newt said. His voice cracked. "This is never the answer."
"I can explain. But -"
"No, you can't. You cannot explain this to me."
He tried to dodge Tina's hand, but she gripped his wand arm, muttered three words and apparated them out of there.
