Lydia loved Paris in the spring. She remembered spending time there on holidays and even after she had left Hogwarts visiting with her parents on their business trips like they had when she was much younger. She loved the weather which agreed with her and her skin glowed but she was there on business of her own this time.

Her plan was to spend no more than two weeks in France and then go back home unless Kobina called about the baby. In preparation for her research trip, she'd sent multiple owls and her contacts would make time to meet with her when she was available. While she was still at work, Lydia had spent the better part of the first several days before her trip carrying keys to gain access to the Ministry's rotating library: reading and rereading texts dating from the late 18th century forcing herself to understand as much as she could before her trip. For someone who read as much as she did, the thought of taking notes on old texts in a language that she had never read as quickly as English did not excite her. For her study, there was the issue of standardization and nomenclature in spellwork and then, most was handwritten in flowery cursive. Lydia bit her tongue. She couldn't reasonably curse the French in their own country. She half believed that she might turn into a literal frog if she did. This was coupled with her getting distracted by anything that sounded even remotely like a sound a baby might make which was just about everything. After her own reading and holing herself up in her family's cottage in the countryside she made her way to their apartment and from their she would head to the ministry where she would return the keys by hand and embark on the difficult task of trying to understand what she had heard during the trials.

Le Ministère was enormous. There was a longstanding serious but still civil argument over which building was older, which was an argument on which institution was older. It was a more stylish building for certain either way. The cold glowing light grey stone, the high, stately ceilings and the plushness of the soft furnishings. It had been designed with a convivance of thoughtful architecture and having been built under the Seine so that there would be an errant but clean breeze that could be felt in the upper stories and in the lower stories, would trap the renewing fragrance of petrichor or sweet, clean, blueberry smelling dirt and sun warmed hay. Celine was waiting for her in the front hall. They exchanged pleasantries and kissed each other on the cheeks. As they walked, they passed a group of students in light blue silk chattering oblivious to everyone and everything around them. The stone sparkled around them lit by the daylight magnified by the sunroofs and the river above them. Lydia felt very much at home surrounded by cold stone under water.

Lydia, Celine, Reine and her sister Leontine, who was Keeper of the Keys at Beaux Batons, had known each other for years when Lydia's family would visit France. Now they were all grown up and administrative employees. No one thought this was funnier than Celine who swore that Lydia would have played Quidditch professionally but instead decided to marry one of the biggest stars in the West African division. She might have been talking about this very thing but instead she was largely silent as she made her way across the hall and down the flights of stairs. She absentmindedly asked about England, her husband and son. She replied with small vocalizations of affirmation sometimes interrupting Lydia, obviously distracted.

«And then I ate a dragon's egg, grew wings and flew away.» Lydia replied mid sentence in French.

«That must have been very difficult. Also, the word we use for a dragon's egg is not the same word as a chicken's egg. You're out of practice.» Celine said offhand. They got to a door which she opened and Lydia stepped inside expecting a long hallway but instead it was a room with a chair, a projector and a screen and stacks of small film reels. Reine stood in the room and smiled. Celine nodded Lydia inside.

-

Lydia had been obsessed with the trials then. Everyone was. It was through sheer luck and coincidence that she took the internship with the Wizengamot all those years ago and she had been called for by name and she had hated it then as she did now but now she was also obsessed. She had not missed a day of the trials for months until Kobina pulled her aside before she was due. She would give herself a stress headache. She went flying for hours after over the city and would come home cold and shaking. She sniffled through the flu for several days listening to testimony. She read everything that every newspaper published. She read the English papers, the French papers. She had the German papers translated. The Scottish papers came a day or two later and with reason, they were the most comprehensive. She preferred their balanced take, their thoroughness. It wasn't until years later when a young reporter by the name of Rita Skeeter broke the news of the werewolf attacks and the subsequent reporting on the trials that the Daily Prophet would usurp the Scottish papers. It was through this reading especially that Lydia had been able to keep up with her French in the first place, she knew that the French paper had not covered the part of the trials that she was here to discuss.

The first time Lydia saw Rodolphus Lestrange she had to do a double take. He looked like Edgar. On closer inspection, they looked nothing alike at all. Where Edgar was tan, Rodolphus was pale. Where Edgar was prone to smiling and his face open and even mischievous, Rodolphus was haughty, cold and closed off. They were both very tall and broad but the what struck her was how they both had a swaggering arrogance. Rodolphus, before he spoke had sucked the air out of the room, he was that attractive and he knew it. Bellatrix would do something in court a little later and any shade of jealousy that anyone felt for her beauty evaporated in a way that Rodolphus' hadn't.

Celine closed the door behind them. Reine's arms were crossed and one hand clutched a rolled up newspaper.

«They're calling it a cult.» She snorted. Celine shook her head.

«Rodolphus Lestrange? I read it in the papers. It's getting bad over here.» Replied Lydia

«It's getting embarrassing over here. It's made worse because he's going to prison "out west". I could spit on England, it's that close and these girls are insisting that he's been done some great injustice because he committed these crimes and he's being punished for them in the country he committed them in.» Reine shrugged. «How's your reading?"

«I'm out of practice.» Lydia tossed at Celine who smiled wanly for the first time all day.

«Well, you won't need to know any French for this.» Reine said. Celine's smile had melted away and she breathed heavily.

«You should sit.» Said Celine curtly.

Lydia turned just in time to see them exchange a quick glance.

«What do the English say? 'There's nothing for it.'». Reine went to the projector, fiddled with a few things and then spun her wand in the air and the room was plunged into an inky darkness. The screen lit up shortly after and the whirring click of the projector came to life.

When Rodolphus refused to speak in English, Dylan volunteered to translate. The Wizengamot would ask a question and Lestrange would answer back in French. He was asked if he spoke English.

«Oui.»

He was asked if he may please speak in English to which he replied, «Non.»

The Wizengamot could not bungle this. They had, on great authority, that Rodolphus Lestrange was not only high ranking in Voldemort's group but that he had committed a great many violent crimes. This would shape up to be the Spaniard's or the Carrows' trial all over again. They were this close to calling a recess when someone had the awful idea to ask if someone from the audience could translate. Before Lydia could raise her hand, Dylan was half way down the steps.

There was no time to vet this. Amelia Bones wanted to scream but breathed a sigh of relief seeing Dylan approach the Wizengamot to offer to translate. It was any wonder that Hogwarts also didn't teach any language. Lydia shook her head at the thought. She didn't have time to reflect on what it meant that none of the Wizengamot stopped this from happening. There was no way for Lydia to know that they were working on spells so that this could never happen again. The magic for simultaneous translation still wasn't where it is now and much of it required both parties to write so for the time, they would have to rely on someone who spoke both languages. Just like muggles, Lydia thought.

The acoustics made it so that everyone, even those sitting at the very back, could hear but Lydia found herself alternaely leaning in or away confused at what she was learning. Someone on the Wizengamot would ask a question, Dylan would translate, Rodolphus would answer and Dylan would translate his answer for the Wizengamot. It would have all been very boring if it weren't for what they were learning about the Death Eaters. For Lydia, it was further compounded by having to hear everything doubled or almost. She couldn't remember but it made the translation even starker. He used so many false cognates. He misinterpreted several things said by Lestrange and clipped information out. His translations were so odd as if he barely understood the language at all. Maybe he didn't after all. She had half a mind to inquire about it after the fact, if he was in fact speaking in dialect. Then part of the inquiry wiped the thought from her mind.

Les Sangfroids. The direct translation being the Cold Bloods that Dylan translated to a snake. He called this group that Rodolphus mentioned, The Snakes. The Carrows trial, one of them had something said something about a mark and one had started to say something about snakes but was shushed by the other. Lydia had never heard of the word before used in this context. The Wizengamot inquired further about this also. They had wanted to know what did that mean and that's when she noticed Dylan gesture to his ribs almost involuntarily. It was a casual, harmless gesture but it was then that Lydia realized not only did he know precisely what Rodolphus was talking about that not only was Dylan mistranslating on purpose. Everything the Wizengamot said was translated pretty accurately but not in the opposite direction. Lydia would not be able to clarify anything later. It was best that the Wizengamot and Dylan and everyone else not know that she spoke any other language beside English and that if she wanted to know what Les Sangfroids was or who they were she would need to go to Paris and ask her contacts there as discreetly as she could manage. She had tried to speak with Prisha after and she had become strange and run off. She couldn't risk the same thing happening again.

-
The whirr of the projector opened on a cut of a group of women in a room somewhere. They are all wearing white except for a woman who is seated and wearing a black dress and veil. The other women in white, all older, fuss over her. A little girl crosses the field of the camera and the older women pretend to busy themselves with something else. When some of them turned back to the woman in black, they are smiling. Another little girl crossed the field of the camera and then there is a cut.

In the next scene, the women are dancing in the sand and walking down something like an aisle. Some of them are carrying small hand brooms and appear to be singing. All of their heads are covered in fabric wraps or scarves. They are dancing towards the camera and past it and behind the first women are several who are also in white sweeping the dirt. The woman in black is walking slowly behind them and the reel ends.

Reine changed the film and the whirring started up again.

In this one there is a young man maybe in his early thirties wearing a white robe and clutching a book. He is smiling warmly and kissing people on the forehead but randomly it seems. A young man stands sentinel a little to his side and the camera catches his cold, steely faced expression for a second.

«Is that-?» Lydia exclaimed and turned.

«Yes,» Said Celine.

Lydia leaned in closer. Another scene. The man is dipping people in water. A river? He brings them up to his face and he kisses their wet foreheads as they shake and hold in their sputtering. The man in the white robe gestures to what must be a group of people and another person walks up and at the end of the river the reel ends again.

The room is filled with light and Lydia winces against it. Celine rests against the table with the projector staring at the floor at a point where the wall turns into the floor so intently that Lydia follows her gaze, finds nothing there and stares at Celine not wanting to distract her but confused. Reine clears her throat.

«You don't have to continue this,» Celine to the point on the floor. She raised her head to look at Lydia. «Do you understand what you're looking at?,»

«The keys Leontine sent… the women are Algerian?

Celine nodded.

«The man, he's the leader of the cult. The Sons of the Five Temples?

«Bien. You recognized Rodolfus?

Lydia had almost forgotten. «Yes, I don't understand what they have to do with each other.» Celine looked up and to Reine.

«What else do you know about Five Temples?»

«They were a small cult. That's about it. It was long time ago. It was in the muggle papers.»

«You understand how it ended?»

«They were disbanded, something about money, I think. Lots of people were arrested. That's all I remember.»

Reine laughed, «The English and your money.» Lydia laughed.

Lydia looked back at Reine who was looking at Celine who was looking at the floor again.

«Lydia, the next reels, you cannot unsee what you are about to see, you understand?»

Lydia looked between the two of them, nervous now.

«What will I see?»

Celine pushed herself up from the table tired and heavy. She gave Lydia a look and Lydia nodded a little looking between her and Reine. Reine was looking at Celine now. Her arms still crossed.

She heard Reine ask Celine a small, ca va and, as an answer the room was again plunged into darkness.

The next reel the man who was in the robe was now surrounded by men and women. He looked older and he was touching people on the head and smiling. He was surrounded by a crush of people all clamoring to be touched on the head and they gave a small curtsy and then incorporated back into the fold so they wouldn't be crushed and this is the only thing that kept the man in the center safe.

«The blessing.» Celine said monotonously and to no one in particular.

Lydia turned to find Celine staring at the screen.

Lydia turned and watched the remainder of the reel. She wasn't sure if this is what she couldn't unsee. It hadn't been so bad.

The next reel was a group of men fighting pushing and jostling each other. Lydia shrank a little expecting something terrible to happen but the men were pulled apart by others and the man who was now much older pushed them apart at the center. He still had the same boyishness about his face but there was impatience and anger there. The man gestured at the camera and it cut to another scene of people in throngs gathered for what Celine had called the blessing.

The last film on the table was loaded onto the projector. Celine placed her wand on the table and rubbed her palms on her thighs. She looked up at the blank of the projector as if it had said something personally offensive to her and then the projector clicked on. First a group of men were standing shoulder to shoulder and there were crowds behind them. The robed man was waving above their heads and people were forcing their hands past the lined up men's shoulders to reach and touch him. He was no longer carrying a book. The scene was similar to the first reel except they were all men. The robed man walked barefoot in white and the men were in various colors.

The reel cut and the man was talking addressing the crowd. A woman in front of him grabbed the front of his robes and started crying and a man standing beside pulled her off. Lydia could tell she was pleading and she felt something in her stomach lurch. Something glinted at the man's side. They were going to sacrifice her. Lydia's breath quickened but the tape cut again and the man was looking around and he had the blade in his hand but it was clean. Lydia waited for the appearance of the woman but instead the man knelt, the hand with the blade in it was shaking. Lydia jumped up when the blade fell. Her hands had flew to cover her mouth, she felt like she was sweating and her eyes were welling with tears but she couldn't look away. She had brought a knee up to her chest involuntarily. The camera remained steady on the man who had dropped the blade and was slumped over. Lydia didn't understand why the scene hadn't changed. Then the man pushed himself up very slowly, very carefully. He stumbled slowly picked up his own head, brushing off some of the dirt and blood but smearing it across his own forehead. His white robe was now soaked with a darkening streak of red down the front. Whoever held the camera ran to capture the front view and in doing so captured some of the expressions of the people in the crowd. The woman who appeared earlier was crying hysterically was looking on in horror, mouth agape and eyes wide with terror. The man's eyes were open and blinking dazed. Lydia slowly dropped her hands from her mouth and her eyes darted across the screen trying to understand what she was seeing. She leaned in despite herself.

The man walked forward a little his eyes blinking slowly as if awoken from sleep. He took several steps forward and the crowd surged backwards jostling the camera person but it stayed trained on the man whose body turned a little this way and that way, the eyes looking at nothing in particular. His head was cradled under with one arm and steadied with the other. Lydia didn't understand what happened next but the body seemed to buckle under its own weight and collapse the camera was jostled more and then the screen went dark.

Lydia sat in silence still until the projector ran out of film and the screen went white.

Lydia turned to find both Reine and Celine, arms crossed against the screen.

«What does this have to do with the Sangfroids?»

Celine looked at Lydia, «What did you say?»

«Everything» said Reine with exhaustion. She dropped her arms to her side, one hand clutching her wand the other the newspaper which was now crumpled and damp from her sweating palms.