Be warned this is angst heavy. If it fails to make you cry, this piece is a dud.

No Dram of Mercy

Second Salem Church building, 1906

Mother was always strict about the chores being done. Credence thought it odd when Red did not awake to light the stove like he was tasked with. Redemption Barebone was still in his bed. The younger boy slipped out of his own bed and shook his brother. He felt warm to the touch but did not wake. Credence crept downstairs. Mother will be angry if the fire was not lit and the kitchen cold. He placed the coals in the potbelly stove and lit them, like his brother had showed him how, He then ran back upstairs.

"Red?" There were spots all over Red. Fever. His brother was sick…

"Redemption Barebone! How dare you leave the stove untended!"

Mother's footsteps. The ominous smack of the switch. Credence cowered. Mother's temper was terrible to behold. Laziness, impetuousness, and any childish infractions were punished with meals withheld, whippings with whatever was at hand…

The sick boy did not stir. Credence scrambled to the furthest corner of the room before he thought the better of it. He threw himself across his brother's bed just as the door swung open. Mary Lou regarded the sight before her with detachment. The older child sick, likely with measles, and the smaller boy…

"Well, you probably have it too. Stay here." The door slammed shut and there was the ominous click of the key. Esther, the servant girl who came in to do the cooking and cleaning, would bring their porridge later that morning.

The doctor came and prescribed some medicines for Red.

"It's a miracle the other boy has not caught it from him. Has he had measles before?"

"Not that I am aware of. Took them in from the orphanage."

"Ah, you are a good Christian woman, Mistress Barebone… taking in these poor boys. Mind, the fever will need break before this chap is out of the woods."

Red was still tossing and turning in his cot feverishly. Credence wrung out the cloths for hours, trying to cool that burning brow. Mother was always busy and Esther needed to do the cleaning and cooking… If only there were something other than the doctor's medicine that could make his brother better…

The water was already lukewarm in that battered basin.

Cold, like winter in the orphanage, where the children would cling together for warmth. Credence looked back at the basin his hands were immersed in. The water was so much cooler now. No, too cold. A layer of ice had formed near the edges and rapidly froze up once he had wrung out the cloth. Now he could not get at the water.

Under the bed was a stick Red picked up from the street when Mother sent them out with the papers. Mother taught them magic was evil, but Red had been playing at being a conjuror. The orphanage had one visit the Christmas before they became Barebones. Red hid the makeshift wand, knowing Mother's wrath.

Credence took the stick and started chipping at the ice with it.

"Credence, how dare you!" Mother was standing in the doorway with the tray. She was livid.

Before he could react, she was on him, beating him with the tray. The medicines and porridge long spilled onto the floor.

"You wicked child! How dare you bring a wand into my house?" She was using the stick to beat him now. He was caught between the bed and the dresser. There was nowhere to go.

"I'm sorry, please stop!" he could taste blood on his lips. He tried to shield himself with his arms. The stick snapped. Mother seized a belt from the dresser and started whipping him with it. Until he blacked out from the pain. When he came to, he was in the dark. He guessed rightly he was in the coal cellar. Cold, hungry, and bloodied.

It seemed like forever before Esther came with a bowl of thin gruel. She tended his hurts the best she could with her hanky. Mother was still angry. He would remain in the coal cellar until her temper cooled.

Red died.

He recalled being roughly scrubbed and forced into uncomfortably itchy clothes. The walk to the cemetery was so long. En route, Mother kept up a rant on the evils of magic and how he was a wicked boy for bringing a wand into their house. Was it his magic that killed Red? He only tried to help Red and killed him instead.

Mother would bring in other children from the orphanages or families that could not feed them. The city was unhealthy. Many died too young. Mother denounced it as witches' curses that killed the children. Maybe his siblings will have lived if he did not do any magic… but Patience, Hope, and Temperance still died. As did Isaac and Tobias. A litany of names that passed through the cold upstairs rooms and were lost into the night. Each time, he was reminded of that basin of ice and the wrongness of magic. Had there been ice in the basin at all? Perhaps the night had been cold.

Mother was always free with her hands and the belt. It was because she wants to warn them to keep away from magic and witches. Credence had never seen a witch before, at least nothing like they have on the pamphlets and the fairy tales. There were maidservants who swept the porches with their brooms. Esther reassured the children they were not witches but just regular people working. Young Credence had yet to see any maid take to the air on their broom.

Esther got sent away. He recalled watching Mother shout at Esther, calling her rude names that would have earned the children a beating if they dared utter them. Mother did not need Esther to come work for them now that he had two sisters from the Old Salem orphanage – Patience and Temperance – to do Esther's work. The ill-fated pair would die of cholera the next summer.

Ten-year-old Patience innocently remarked Esther was having a baby and they do not know who the father was. Credence's heart caught as Esther was all but shoved out the door. That was the last time they saw Esther alive.

The next time Credence saw Esther was when Mother sent him to the docks with the pamphlets. They had just taken her from the river. Her eyes were gone, eaten by the fish. Her wet dress clung to her swollen belly. She had drowned. Perhaps she fell into the river, or thrown herself in. It was his fault. If he had not run that night… If…

Five months ago, he had been out distributing the pamphlets, far too late. Esther had gone with him, unwilling to let a twelve-year-old who was way too small for his age venture into so rough neighbourhood. They had finished giving out the fliers when the rough men came, reeking of cheap gin and stale tobacco. He did not understand why they decided to pick on them, a young woman with a boy. He tried to put himself between the men and Esther, but they knocked him to the ground. They then dragged Esther into the shadows.

He heard her shouting at him to run and so he did. He ran without stopping to the church, where Mother added her share of and welts to him and locked him in the coal cellar for being late for dinner. Esther turned up for work at the same time the next morning, wearing a bruise on her cheek. She did not say a word about the night before, so Credence supposed she must have gotten away from the rough men too.

He was older than his siblings. He can better withstand the beatings dealt out by Mother. He deserved it, after all. He was a wicked, ungrateful boy like Mother said. He must be there to protect them… even if it hurts so bad…

Fall 1926

"My momma, your momma, gonna catch a witch,

My momma, your momma, flying on a switch,

My momma, your momma, witches never cry…"

A child's voice drifted up from below as someone entered the church. Modesty. A murmured exchange of words drifted up from downstairs. Chastity was tidying up in the kitchen.

Credence dragged himself up as Mother stalked off, her spleen spent. He was bleeding. His collar needed to be changed. He bit back his tears with a hiss of pain. With luck, Mother would not notice Modesty was fifteen minutes late for tea.

Author's Notes:

One fascinating character to me in the Fantastic Beasts series is Credence/ Aurelius, probably because he shows the most character development over the course of the films. At the start of the series (based on the canon timeline), he should be an adult. He has been so downtrodden, he dared not go against his abusive foster mother, until he literally snaps. His growth is stunted in a sense. The overall feel we get is a vulnerable boy. Tina feels compelled to protect him, seeing him as a helpless boy who needed protection and comforting.

In the sequel, he is on a quest to find the family who gave him up for adoption. He also shows a protectiveness towards Nagini and the chick he found. He has in a way grown up. At the same time, he is willing to give her up for Grindelwald's promises.

In the last film as Grindelwald's acolyte, a more confident Credence still craves the approval of his mentor, Grindelwald, whose feelings towards his protégé are ambiguous at best. His exchanges with Aberforth in the mirror are just heart-breaking. On some level, he is still a lost little boy seeking to go home.