Chapter 1. There is a glass in which we all slowly drown.

7 March 2003

The forest was a mass of leaves, bizarre, green and brown rushing against the corners of her eyes as Juliette took every ounce of courage she had left to run as her parents had instructed her months before. Her feet ached and the young witch felt the metallic taste of blood in her dry mouth.

"If by any instance they are near, run, Jules."

Run.

Run. Run.

Jules kept repeating it over and over again like a mantra, as she scanned her surroundings, trying to pick up the telltale sign of the end of the forest. She needed to get to the point of apparition, to where there were no guards, and simply escape as far as she could.

Juliette had understood too late that this really was a war. Not like the ones the no-maj portrayed in their movies, there were no bombs or guns, and right there in the woods were no haunting noise or background song to warn of the presence of the worst of the enemies. It was tactical, it was strategic, but all that failed to take away the violence and dread, the uncertainty creeping through her bones like a question and leaving her body in sheer despair.

The silence was maddening, especially when what Jules could hear most was her own ragged breathing, the blood pounding against her ears in an erratic melody. The wind, the birds, nature was mute, sometimes it was night, sometimes it was day.

In the dream, usually, she cast the same deadly spells as the snatchers chasing her. She shouted the words as if she knew them by heart and as if she had been using them all her life. Sometimes Jules heard them, sometimes she saw faces melted as if they were made of wax uttering them, as if she had been chased by living statues instead of flesh and blood people.

That was the war, the memory of the rising laughter, the arrival at the only point of emergence she knew, the drinking of the vial when she was a second away from believing she was caught.

And disappearing.

Then she used to wake up, like at that very moment. Of course, her seatmate didn't seem too touched by the clear nightmares she'd just had as soon as she opened her eyes with a start. It was a non-maj woman, who looked like she had sucked on a lemon while Jules was sleeping, and who gave her a very clear look of disgust when Juliette's nails dug into the arm of the seat.

Jules, however, was more preoccupied regaining the breath she wasn't short of, her eyes roaming the plane as the desperate desire to return home to the middle of nowhere assailed her.

She had no logical reason to have taken the job. Her older brother had seemed disgruntled when she had told him about the proposal and that she was thinking of taking it just so she could travel and get information for her work on the Augureys.

Nor had Jules been given much time to consider the options, or whether it was a job she could decline at all. She knew more than the rest, while her brother enjoyed the theory and paperwork at the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Juliette had always been one step ahead, hands on directly in the deed.

"I'm sorry," she muttered in the woman's direction. "Do you know how long it will be before we get there?"

"Twenty minutes."

"Thank you."

She felt Bowie shift uncomfortably in her pocket, after the episode in the airport lounge where a child had thought he was a doll and had practically begged Juliette to let him play with it, the poor bowtruckle was traumatised.

Suddenly she was grateful she had brought everyone else in the case. Thorfin would be going crazy if he were outside, viewing all the possibilities of what could go wrong in the flying no-maj machine.

Jules had to distract herself with a magazine, since twenty minutes seemed to stretch on forever and she needed to try to clear her mind from the dream. Feeling the weight of the vial she had brought with her, disguised to non-magical eyes as an ordinary pen, eased the anxiety in her chest a little bit.

What she was looking forward to most was getting off the plane, getting to the ministry just to drink her dose of calming draught and calm down a bit. Juliette mentally reviewed, while watching the latest news about the British non-maj royals, what she was supposed to do upon arrival. The last time she went to the headquarters of the British wizarding government was a little over seven years ago, with her grandfather, and it had barely lasted a moment while the man had delivered one of his latest reports on the basilisk that, he had told her, had attacked Hogwarts.

Juliette insisted that he at least share pictures with her, however there was no possible ruse that would make her grandfather break Albus Dumbledore's trust. Hopefully he'd allowed her to check out the poison for her admissions essay for Castelobruxo, and that had definitely been one of the investigations Juliette was most proud of.

The work pulled her out of obscurity, it always had.

Perhaps that was why she accepted the position she was offered without further thinking, as an obligation and as an excuse not to be alone at home reeling in the memories. They wouldn't even let her look after Christine, for Merlin's sake, it proved the point that she had touched in a way that nothing else did.

Juliette went into autopilot mode, getting off the plane, getting into the taxi and heading to where she needed to go. It still happened to her sometimes, her mind going blank and her body just having free reign. But it also helped her because she stopped feeling like a blurry stranger in her own life, living just half the time, present and dissociated but being there physically.

Jules was sure Rolf would be waiting there, or perhaps he would have asked Luna to show her the way to the office.

"Keep the change," she told the taxi driver.

She'd never been much of a fan of British weather, so she adjusted the scarf around her neck, swinging the suitcase she was carrying to try not to knock it over. The little street seemed mostly unused, which was actually a good thing since she could walk in without any non-maj being able to see what was going on. In the pocket of her trench coat Bowie shuffled, presumably wanting to get her attention.

She stepped into the red phone box, noting that no one was watching before dialling 62442.

"Juliette Scamander," she said before the voice even asked. "Business meeting with the Minister of Magic."

It was barely two seconds before the ID card appeared and the booth began to sink as it gave her clear instructions to go to the security desk and give her wand for inspection when she arrived.

Jules walked out the cabin to find herself in the entrance hallway of the Ministry, the chimneys on either side of the huge place roaring as Ministry workers emerged at short intervals. It wasn't even ten o'clock in the morning yet but everyone already seemed in a hurry, pacing back and forth, the lifts filling with ease. Reminiscing how many levels there were, the witch remembered to herself that she was supposed to go to the first level.

She pulled Bowie out of her pocket.

"Don't split up or you're going with the rest inside," she warned carefully. Opening the case just enough to call her wand with an accio, she closed the case immediately and made her way to the main desk.

The Ministry was quite stunning, peacock colored skies and polished light yellowish floors. Some flying purple memos were crossing above the people's heads, some of them almost hitting the absent-minded employees that were talking with their co-workers or company.

There was no sign of Rolf or Luna, or any other familiar faces, so Jules would simply go to the Minister's office to hear about the job and sign whatever it was before going to the flat to get her belongings settled.

Bowie perched on her shoulder, watching the tide of wizards and witches with interest.

The witch behind the counter seemed more concerned with changing her nail polish with her wand than paying attention to the moment Jules arrived there.

"Good morning. Juliette Scamander, I'm here to meet with the Minister."

The girl raised her eyes, analysing the newcomer woman for a moment and looking at the identification that Juliette pinned on her brown coat. Without being asked Jules held out her wand so that the girl could check it and speed up the process a little. The secretary girl was a brunette witch, with sophisticated features and teal eyes, her hair piled on top of her head in a complicated hairstyle, and Jules found herself wondering how long it would take to do such a thing.

Scamander could see that the girl's name tag read "Astoria".

"All right, Miss Scamander, let me just let them know you've arrived so that someone can come and pick you up."

Pick her up? Was she a child?

She knew the Minister's office was on the first floor, so there was no way she would get lost. But the witch knew all too well about the Ministry' beloved bureaucracy.

Nevertheless, Jules bit her tongue and swayed from one foot to the other with what little grace she had left. She needed a tea, drink her potion and feed the occamies before they lost their heads, her and them, in that order.

"Miss Scamander?"

Kingsley Shacklebolt and her had met before, so Juliette wasn't surprised to be recognised. Even if the first and last time that Jules saw the man had been at the hospital after the end of the war, because he wanted to pay his condolences after picking up her mother's memories at the MACUSA and taking the opportunity to check on her to report back to her older brother.

Rolf Scamander and Shacklebolt were active members of the Order of the Phoenix, an organisation that from Juliette's point of view had been the ruination of her family. And yet it was impossible for her to blame them for anything, even if she wanted to hate Dumbledore, Harry Potter or even Voldemort himself.

"Good morning, sir."

He was a tall man -at least a foot taller than she was- and he still wore the gold hoop she remembered in his right ear. The years had added just a line or two to his expression.

"Come on, we've been waiting for you. How did you find England? Did you have a good trip?"

Yes, I can see that, she thought.

Juliette wasn't going to confess that she had skipped her place on the international portkey and taken a non-maj plane earlier to get there in time, as she didn't want to delve into the subject of her own health and all the things she had stopped doing as a coping mechanism.

It wasn't as if Shacklebolt was going to laugh at her, but it was unnecessary information to share.

"I think I'm going to have to get used to the weather, but nothing impossible to do."

She saw him glance at the suitcase only once, but surely imagining what would be inside, the man didn't say a word. After all, they were there because she was the best one in her field of study.

Only rivalled by her own grandfather Jules Scamander had built up an incredible reputation in the area of magical creatures. Spending a semester as an exchange student in Brazil and its school of magic specialising in magical fantasy animals, she eventually settled in the United States and became active in the MACUSA.

The newspapers called her the Scamander heiress, with the ability to tame the most complicated creatures.

Juliette had never explained that it was practice rather than skill, having grown up surrounded by all sorts of creatures and only being able to collect more, it had always been clear that she was going to become an excellent magizoologist.

And she was slightly glad that even though the war had taken so much from her, it did not take away that small part of herself that remained intact, that had kept her afloat.

It took them almost five minutes to finally reach the Ministers' office, which Juliette was extremely relieved about. She had noticed the number of stares in her direction, probably because of the man accompanying her and not because of her person per se. It wasn't as if she was so ugly that people didn't take an interest in her either, but she wanted to believe that no employee was bold enough to make eyes at her while she was working.

Shacklebolt let her in first, opening the office door for her. Inside Jules met some faces she didn't know and at the same time did.

"Tea? Water?"

"Tea's fine, two spoons of sugar" she said carefully, sitting down in the only available seat besides the obvious minister's chair. Juliette let Bowie tuck himself into the scarf, just poking his head out and looking at the other three people there.

"Miss Scamander, these are Harry Potter, Graysen Dudhald and Hermione Granger."

Juliette, whose place was between Dudhald and Granger, didn't quite know how to act.

"It's a pleasure." Jules' voice was quite low, barely higher than a whisper.

Dudhald leaned close to her, clearly excited.

"It's going to be a pleasure working with you, Miss Scamander. I was a great fan of your father."

She nodded, a strand of her honey hair pulling forward at the sudden movement.

"So, what do you need from me?" She asked generally, thanking Shacklebolt briefly as the cup landed in front of her. "Do you suspect the murders may have been committed by a magical creature?"

At least that's what she understood from the letter that they had sent her some days ago.

Jules untwisted her scarf, leaving it on top of her suitcase, then took off her trench coat. Everyone else seemed to watch her movements carefully.

Hermione Granger was quick to take the word at a nod from the Minister. She was identical to the picture in the papers, with dark caramel skin that looked as if she had just taken a sunbath, her curly brown hair neatly arranged in a ponytail with just a few small curls across her forehead. Beautiful of course, with a smart tone that made Juliette feel a little annoyed for some reason.

"It seems the most logical option but we don't think it prudent to rule out any other possibilities for the time being. We currently have two victims," Jules saw how Hermione opened a folder to pull out many photographs from it, "both with incisions in their stomachs, the first with an arm missing and the second with chunks torn off, however it wasn't possible for us to identify which creature could have done such a thing."

Jules was not very good at looking at corpses, so she took the photographs with some hesitation. Even before she gave a quick look at them she could feel her stomach turning as if she was appearing, but Jules summoned up the courage she knew would be needed and simply kept in mind that that was her job.

The first two pictures were directly the jagged edges of the rest of the arm, leading Juliette to have to blink a little before she could think clearly what could have caused it; the amount of rusty red colour on something as simple as a photograph was impressive. She wasn't sure if that was a bite or tear from a creature, which she couldn't really analyse as there was more blood than edges to be seen clearly.

The other photographs were a grim collection of flesh and blood, two different faces that were ashen and looked terribly terrified of whatever had attacked them. Juliette did not recognise either of them.

The first was a man who must have been a few years older than her, with black hair that looked brown from the blood in it, and dark green eyes that were probably going to haunt her all that night from the expression of anguish and fear in them. He was dressed in what she could see was a robe.

The other was an older man, with greying brown hair, his face was grimacing but his eyes were closed, though judging by all the lines of expression he knew he was under attack.

"We don't think they died instantly," said Harry Potter. Jules felt her hair stand on end in shock, because it was a bit like talking to a character in a fairy tale rather than a normal person.

The man was kind of just a name for her. All the feats he had done were to her like a chapter in a book, she knew they were real but all of it seemed somehow fantastic or inhuman.

"I can't give a conclusion based on these photographs," she said calmly. "If you look at yourselves, the edges of the tear in the arm and the places where the skin is missing, which could presumably be due to an attack, are not clearly visible. This could be the work of a psychotic non-maj with a knife for example. It could be the product of snitching as well...

Dudhald looked at her as if she had said something foolish."

"What I mean is that I can't be quite sure it is the fault of a magical creature. The bites are very specific to the way the beasts tend to attack, and if it was the doing of a creature of xxxx classification the bodies probably wouldn't have been found in the first place, not as complete at least," she made a fist and placed her claw-like nails over her knuckles to demonstrate. "The mode of feeding or even attack is usually locking the mandible and rip out, depending on the type of teeth there's going to be a certain pattern left on the victim."

Hermione nodded.

"Would it help if you could see the washed bodies, if you could examine them?"

"I suppose so, though I'd like to look at the whole case first."

Oh, Jules was definitely going to need a large dose of calming draught if she was going to have to deal with the corpses first hand.

"Very well. Each office is going to share with you the previous investigation reports, and we'll schedule a meeting with the Department of Mysteries so you can see the bodies," Kingsley rolled up his sleeves. He stopped looking at her and turned his attention to the rest of the people in the room. Shacklebolt looked stressed, and Jules wondered who the dead people were, to put such a strain of resolution on the shoulders of the man in front of her.

"Potter, Granger, Dudhald, thank you for your participation, you may leave the reports with Scamander and return to your places of work. Dudhald please contact the Department of Mysteries for the meeting. Scamander, stay for a moment."

The other three nodded, left the reports with Jules and said a short goodbye to her and the Minister before leaving.

"We need to sign this before you leave," she nodded.

[ / ]

Jules opened the door to the flat Rolf got for her. Well, she had actually found the place in the magical classifieds and had asked her brother to view and safeguard it after collecting the key.

Luna Lovegood, Rolf's girlfriend, turned up at the Ministry to give her the key. The girl was a cutie and Jules had known it from the first moment she had seen her, when Rolf, Christine and Luna had gone to visit her at her home in Colorado.

The flat was one of the best that Jules had found, with enough space for most of the animals that enjoyed being around her to do so without any problem. It was the main thing she discussed with her landlord, but given her job, and a generous sum of money taken directly from her portion of the inheritance, the witch had managed to get it without too much trouble.

"Here we are, Bowie."

The bowtruckle seemed pleased with the information, jumping out of his usual spot in her pocket and climbing straight onto Jules' shoulder.

The place was spacious, and had most of the furniture, looking exactly as Jules had seen it in the ad. The building itself was new, only a few feet away from the Leaky Cauldron, and was hidden from the non-majs between a coffee shop and a convenience shop.

Moving from a whole house to a flat with two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen seemed like a decent idea. A change of scenery and an attempt to stop drowning in whatever it was that had been holding her back in Colorado was something she needed if she wanted to chase away the bad thoughts.

Maybe they'd even let her see Christine more often, or let the kid come live with her as she should have since their parents passed away.

Juliette raised her wand, quickly casting the anti-apparition charm and the anti-intruder jinx. She did not doubt that her brother had done a good job, but she would rather be safe than sorry.

Taking off the trench coat, she left it on the two-piece sofa, an imitation chesterfield in dark blue. Bowie slipped off with the coat, settling himself until he was sitting on the back of the sofa.

The suitcase was left in the centre of the room as next, waving her wand open after she had taken a few steps away. Jules was sure the bulgae wouldn't be too happy about all the time spent apart, so it was best to let him out and wander around the flat.

"Aodh."

There was no need for her to go in after the creature, who did not enjoy being cooped up at all. Before anything else could come out, however, Juliette hastily flicked her wand to close the suitcase.

She watched the bulgae stretch out on its legs, stretching as if he had just woken up from a nap, looking like nothing more than a huge dog with wiggly ears. Since the day she had rescued him in Korea the beast had stayed with her, resulting in a more docile creature than his species usually was, and several of her mother's rugs set ablaze.

"We're home" she murmured, bending down a little to give him a caress on the head. The creature smelled faintly of burning, and she reminded herself that she had to buy some essence of dithane when she went to an apothecary.

She had to feed the animals, and then perhaps she could write to Christine so that she could come and visit her big sister.