Chapter 9: Taken

"He's gone?" a high, feminine voice inquired thoughtfully.

Reclining on a modern sofa that was worth more than some houses, Madison Ruthway nodded. Her body still hummed with the knowledge of the pain it had been subjected to just a day previously. She hadn't thought that Tod would have had it in him, being the bookish, skinny boy she remembered from school. He had never joined the dueling club, but she remembered that he had been just as skilled as she in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and if she was being totally honest with herself, probably the most talented in their year at Charms. Despite his talents, he had always been quiet and moody, never a great attractor for friends or attention. At least now he was out of the picture. "MACUSA replaced him with Aurors."

"Will this make things easier for you?" Victoria asked. Today she wore another slinky black and white dress, and she sitting like an aloof cat upon a small posh stool while her son played with matchbox cars around her on the immaculate white rug.

"Yes, and no." Gertrude answered from her perch on the window sill. "They will be harder to outright kill with so many pairs of eyes on them. On the other hand, they'll be easier to get past their hiding charms and such. With so many people involved in the operation, it will be easier to find someone that slips up. They would almost be easier to steal…"

"Then let's do that. Bring them to the little island prison in the bay, and I will take care of them there myself."

"Then can I stop holding it in, Mommy?" a voice asked from Victoria's feet.

"Of course baby. Then you'll be free, and we won't have to ever worry about that curse on you, and you can be normal. Just like Mommy and Daddy."

The child went back to playing, and once again Madison felt an eerie chill descend on her that had nothing to do with the dementors she had persuaded to help her in this task. Whatever curse she was talking about, it even made Madison uneasy. After exchanging a knowing look with Gertrude, she turned back to Victoria. "How would you like us to contact you once we succeed?"

Wyatt did not know how his brother had done it. How could three little girls have made such a mess in such a short amount of time? He looked around at the scattered hell of barbies, clothes, dolls, legos, coloring books and stuffed animals, picking them up one by one while the children washed for bed. David had just returned home and was eating dessert and cleaning up from dinner while Wyatt tried to restore some modem of order to the house. Sitting at the table, still in his suit and tie, David watched him as he rinsed off several legos that had become sticky with juice. He didn't even remember giving them juice this afternoon.

"You're Tod's- I mean Tarian's brother, aren't you?"

Wyatt eyed him, surprised. "Yes. How did you know?"

"I saw you in his memories." Hardening his glare in askance for clarification, David sputtered, "I accidentally stuck my head in his bowl that he kept on the dresser."

"He had a pensieve?" This was news to him.

David shrugged, bringing a spoonful of pudding to his mouth. "That's what his friend called it. He told me I was rude for looking without permission."

Wyatt said nothing and set the legos on the side of the sink to dry. His curiosity piqued he leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. "And what memories did you see?"

"I saw him at the school, and the snake with the jewel on its head flashed."

"Ah yes. That was him getting sorted into Horned Serpent. It certainly shocked my family," Wyatt scoffed, a certain fondness in his voice.

"Why? Is that house bad? I know Hyacinth said something about wanting to be in Wampus house…"

"There are four houses at Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Wyatt said slowly, trying to use the most elementary words possible. "The statues in the sorting room are imbued with magic to discern the strengths and personality of a child and decide in which house that child will learn best and go furthest. Puckwudgie looks for healers and those of great heart. Thunderbird looks for the adventurers and senses the strong soul of an individual. Wampus is for warriors, and those strong in body. Horned serpent favors scholars and those with a strong mind. Once in a very great while, more than one statue reacts, and that child can then choose for themselves which house they may be happiest in."

"He was looking at the big cat one, and seemed surprised that the Horned Serpent I guess lit up," David said.

"Our entire family has always been chosen by Wampus. All the Fischers have since the school was founded. It's a source of pride, as most of us go on to be great Aurors."

"Not your brother?"

"No, he was always too sensitive and smart. He relied much more in his quick wit than developing a strong body. Retrospectively, he was a perfect fit for Horned Serpent."

David nodded, "Yeah I saw it was a source of contention between you both. Do other families fight like that when it comes to houses? My girls won't fight more than they already do, will they?"

"There is some inter-house rivalry, but for my parents, it was hard having a son like Tarian, who wanted to hide in a tree and read rather than go down to the pond with the boys and fish or play games. He used to sit in our library for hours and hide from them. Why? Did you see us fighting too?"

"Yeah I saw you hurt him in the orchard place."

Wyatt felt his face flush with shame at the memory. "That was not my finest moment. He had just fought with my parents about the job they had gotten him as a clerk in the Auror department for when he graduated. I thought he was being rather ungrateful. I went to try and go smooth things over and failed miserably. That was our first real fight. I mean we fought a lot as kids, but that was…that was bad. I had always stuck up for him with our parents; always thought he just needed some help and acceptance to be like the rest of the family. I tried to make him more like us. He went along with it, for me, but I think deep down he secretly hated it."

David poked at the last of his pudding. "That stuff about your family disowning him. Is that true?"

Wyatt sighed heavily. "Yes. What I didn't realize until yesterday was that when Tarian originally testified after the dragon incident, he was telling the truth. My parents thought he was lying. It was an accident. Every death we pinned on him was an accident." Wyatt could still clearly picture a younger Tarian in his minds eye, begging Wyatt to listen to him, to convince his parents it wasn't because he was ungrateful for the job. He was just bad at it. Tarian was very perceptive, but he was unfamiliar with Auror systems and how wand registering worked, so that when he had finally given into his suspicions, he had nearly been too late.

"Why didn't you just use some of that drink to make sure he was telling the truth?"

"Vertiserum? We have a very limited supply of it. We only give it to our worst criminals. At the time, Tarian had no record, so we never even bothered. I was too ashamed of him to suggest it."

"So, then he figured that he had nothing to lose and turned to a life of crime?" David prompted.

"Yeah. Without my parents he was penniless, and he had just lost a job at MACUSA in a record fowl-up. No one was going to hire him," Wyatt admitted. "So, he joined a crime guild and dropped his given name to go by Tod. His specialty was extracting valuable items without being detected and then hiding very well afterward. Your wife hunted him for several years until she finally got him last September."

"You knew her?" the widower asked softly, a pang going through Wyatt's heart as he thought of the man's loneliness.

"Yes. I was her senior agent. We worked very closely together. She was a magnificent woman. You are very lucky," Wyatt said, but his words sounded hollow in his head. If David were truly lucky, his wife would still be here.

"Yeah, she never really told me about…all…this," he said with a sort of bitterness in his voice as he gestured to all of Wyatt.

"It was a smart play on her part," Wyatt soothed. "It protected you and your children and allowed her to advance in the Auror department."

"Yeah, Tarian told us about Rappaport's law, and how the stigma is still there. What sort of stigma is it?"

Wyatt pulled a chair from the kitchen table and took a seat, "Back in the early days of America, there weren't Aurors to catch criminals and enforce law. There were a lot of wizard outlaws, doing it for the money. They were known as Scourers, and they were terrible and corrupt. They would sometimes pass no-maj's off for witches and wizards just to get some gold, and don't get me started on the Salem witch trials. At any rate, once we formed our own government in MACUSA, we brought them to justice. Wilhelm Fischer, my relative, was one of the first Aurors in fact. Some of the Scourers escaped justice though, and with such big bounties on their head, disappeared into the vast no-maj communities. They married, had children, but stamped out most traces of magic from their lines, and instead cultivated a hatred for it, just like they hated the community they had once belonged to and now hunted them. The absolute conviction that magic is real, and that anyone who possesses it must be exterminated is what drives us to maintain our secrecy like we do. After one incident in which a well-known witch fell to the charms of a Scourer boy, nearly revealing all of the American magical community, Rappaport's Law was enacted, which required all wands to be registered, kept at school until a child graduated, and finally forbid the marrying of non-magic folk and starting families with them. Even friendship was forbidden. It was for our own safety."

After pausing for a moment to let David digest the information, he said "Mallory must have loved you very much to buck the old traditions. She was from one of the most prominent wizarding families in America. Like mine, her family have been traditionally made up of Aurors."

"Thanks," David murmured, standing and taking his dish to the sink. After taking a deep breath and straightening, he asked, "Why do you think she employed Tarian to look after our children, and not any of you?"

Wyatt frowned. The question had bothered him as well. "I don't know. Mallory was a brilliant witch, but sometimes her logic was beyond me. Usually it worked out for the best, so I never really questioned it. This one has even me baffled though. My brother has no experience with children, and while he is rather gifted with charms and defense spells, I cannot imagine choosing him among the many good agents she had at her disposal."

David nodded, but in the dim light of the kitchen, Wyatt could see the regret on his face. "You feel as though you betrayed him, huh?"

David nodded with a sigh. "I feel like I've betrayed both of them. It sounded so much better to have a trained task force look after us, but now that he's not here, the house is so much different. Not anything against you guys; he just had a way with each of the girls. They adored him for some reason or another. Now we're back to square one."

Wyatt nodded, feeling some of the guilt as well. "Yes it was an awful position to put you in, and I'm sorry we did it. And the choice relieved our guilt and transferred it to you."

David looked perplexed. "Why would you feel any guilt?"

"Because my brother made the unbreakable vow with your wife. By getting you to choose us, we may have condemned him."

Brown eyes searched familiar blue for a moment, before David asked cautiously, "What happens when you break an unbreakable vow?"

"You die."

Looking stricken, David blurted, "You mean I-"

"No! No, since the children are safe, my brother is still alive. But if something were to happen to them, he would die for breaking the vow. That's why I didn't stop you from choosing to use us instead of him to protect your children. The senior undersecretary, the woman who asked you to choose, her end game was to get rid of Tarian since she didn't have the legal means of executing him any more since your wife cleared him of all charges. I only agreed to it because despite everything, being disowned, our fights, everything-all of it, he's my brother. And if I can keep your girls safe, I know my brother is as well."

David nodded, still looking torn, quiet descending into the kitchen. After a few moments, Wyatt noticed and asked, "Don't your girls normally come back down after they've cleaned up?"

"Yes, they pack their bags for tomorrow morning and get their lunch pails out for me to fill," David murmured.

Deserting the kitchen, Wyatt took the stairs two at a time calling out, "Girls?"

"Fern? Hyacinth?" David called after him, close on his heels.

Reaching the landing at the top of the stairs, Wyatt noted the buzzing silence, looking in each of the rooms with foreboding, finally reaching Tarian's old room, now simply used for storage. The window was wide open, allowing breaths of cool evening air in. Sticking his head out, Wyatt could see the crumpled form of another Auror below and felt his heart sink. Turning back to David, he could see the other's face crumble as he stated, "The girls have been taken."

Tarian stared up at the ceiling. The fan that hung swirled lazily around, Tarian's eyes tracking the movement sometimes, other times staring at nothing. The lumpy mattress beneath him was digging into his right shoulder, but he could not find it in himself to care. He was sure his discomfort would soon be gone, as well as every single one of his failures. In his mind's eye he could see them, but none hurt as much as leaving those little girls after having betrayed their trust with lies and deceit. Would he have told them the whole truth eventually? He liked to think so.

In all his life he had always found himself in the wrong, not by choosing, but by happenstance. It was not his fault his parents had wanted him to be something that he was not. He liked books and learning, not fighting. He hadn't meant for the Horned Serpent to choose him. It was not his fault that he had let his brother down. He had not meant to smuggle those dragon eggs. It was not his fault those people had died. He had simply been so hungry, that not stealing those things meant a gruesome death of starvation. He had preferred the swift purpose of execution to that. But he had willingly entered into this vow, and willingly kept a dead woman's secrets. He had many regrets in his life, but letting down those little girls, letting them slip into someone else's hands without a fight, would always be his greatest regret he decided.

With the rain pouring outside, he almost missed the sound of steps on the old wooden stairs that led to the tiny attic he occupied. There was a knock and someone entered, but even the effort of turning to look seemed like too much effort.

"I brought you some onigiri," a voice said. Takeo? No, more likely Daisuke. A stool scraped across the wooden slats. "You know you can't sit up here and mope forever. C'mon you haven't eaten since you got here."

Tarian took a deep breath, and his eyes flicked to Daisuke's. He didn't see any malice where he should have. "How are your parents taking it?"

Daisuke scoffed and set the plate down on the wooden crate Tarian had been using as a night stand. "Better than yours. They understand, and are mad we made them look bad. They said our careers weren't honorable to our family, but they are unsure how to help us otherwise. Just because they're Liasons, doesn't mean they make a lot of money."

"I'm sorry," Tarian whispered, eyes flicking to the rain. He had apologized as soon as he'd contacted them, and continued to do so at moments. He felt terrible for blowing their cover under the veritaserum.

"Don't be. They would have figured it out sooner or later. We couldn't hide what we did forever," Daisuke shrugged. "The real question is what are you going to do about those girls?"

His gaze turned back to the fan and he sighed. "Nothing."

"Tarian Fischer, I did not get confounded and my cover blown for you to do nothing," Daisuke remanded. Softening he added, "Tarian, Takeo and I know you care about them. I saw the way you were with them, and the way they were with you. You're the big brother they need, just as much as they're the family you need right now. We've worked enough missions together to know that you're not like that with anyone else, even us. Now what are you going to do about them?"

Tarian let his words sink in and frowned. "I don't know. I don't know if I can even do anything. How am I supposed to protect them? Sit out in the rain in front of the house? I still don't get why Mallory would want me to do that."

Daisuke frowned and tilted his head, his black locks falling to the side. "Maybe she didn't want you to sit there and protect them. That's what Aurors are doing. Maybe she meant for you to do something else?"

Tarian finally sat up, his head swimming for a second from having not eaten anything. He grabbed for an onigiri and found it stuffed with fish. His favorite. "Like what?"

"I don't know, you're the criminal mastermind," Daisuke smirked and shrugged.

But he was right. Tarian had been the most wanted man in America, and there was a reason: he was good at what he did. When it came to stealing things though, the best thing in one's arsenal was patience and observance. You had to pick up the little details and learn everything about the person you were going to steal from. And if things went awry, you improvised. You thought outside the box. Relied on your intellect. But what did that have to do with…realization poured over him like the cleansing downpour occurring outside.

"She never meant for me to baby sit them like that. She expected me to go after whoever was trying to hurt them once I had hid them all effectively."

"Well we know Victoria Shaw is behind it, and she's a no-maj. But it's really Gertrude and Madison that-"

"No. They're fine. I mean, we know them and we know their end game. Madison wants to be the best duelist on the planet, and Gertrude is looking to hurt Aurors after her unfair trial. But what do we know about Victoria Shaw? Why would she want the Graves? How does she even know about magic? It's stealing 101- why does the client want what they want?"

Daisuke sat back, looking at Tarian, trying to keep up with his logic. "Maybe she's a Squib and she feels jilted about not being magic?"

Tarian swung his legs over the edge of the bed and leapt to his feet, "Ok but why does she want the Graves' dead?"

"They were the most prominent wizarding family in America."

"And the Shaws are the most prominent no-maj family. What if they've crossed paths?" Tarian queried, his voice beginning to rush. Popping open the lid of his battered trunk he dug about until he produced a beaten up textbook with a gold embossed title of America: A Wizarding History.

Daisuke gave him a confused look, while Tarian flipped through until he came to what he was looking for. "Aha! I knew it! Look here!" He turned the book for Daisuke to read.

"…and it wasn't until the obscurus killed a no-maj known as Henry Shaw Jr, a man who had been running for the no-maj congress in Washington, that the threat was fully taken seriously…" he mumbled for a moment before continuing as if he had struck gold, "Percival Graves, once released from Grindelwald's capture helped his department re-organize and clean up the city. Many people were obliviated successfully with the help of Newt Scamander's beast. Those having difficulty were visited personally by Percival, who felt guilty for being captured by Grindelwald. Among the difficult no-maj's was Henry Shaw Jr's younger brother, Langdon. Percival is said to have never been sure that he had been successfully obliviated, and he later married Chastity Barebone. She was of the same Barebone family that were at the heart of Rappaport's Law."

"Of course she believes in magic. They know it, and they hate it. They're Scourers," Tarian said eagerly. "What if Langdon was never fully obliviated? What if he believed Percival and the Graves' were behind his brother's death, especially since Percival visited him in person. It would be the one wizarding family he knew."

"Ok, but that happened in the 1920's. Why attack them now?"

It must be something that had been happening recently, thought Tarian. What else would drive her to go after the magical community? Had someone else died from magic? Or where they about to? Once again it dawned on him. "When I was fighting Madison, she said that if Victoria didn't get me, a 'HE' would."

"'HE' who? I thought old man Shaw was dead?"

"What if it's not someone older, but younger. Here, read this paragraph here," he pointed just below the picture of a woman and her three children, one boy and two girls. They were standing and scowling out from the page, looking about in a generally unhappy fashion.

"Above is a picture of the Barebone family, circa 1922. The boy, named Credence, would become the obscurus that nearly destroyed the International Statute of Secrecy, after being beaten by his mother and egged on by Grindelwald that fateful day in New York City." Daisuke looked up expectantly, not quite connecting the dots.

"You told me Victoria had a son right? A sickly son who couldn't come out much?"

"And you think he's an obscurus?"

"Yes! It makes sense! That's her motivation! The Barebone family was once magical. They're bound to produce magical offspring once in awhile. But they also hate magic, and when you make a child bottle it up inside, make them fear their own selves…"

"…you get an obscurus," finished Daisuke.

"She's a no-maj and a Barebone, and a Scourer. She was brought up with stories of the Graves' magic, and how it destroyed her uncle. Now her son is beginning to show signs of magic and she's scared, as a mother, so while smothering her child in her attempt to protect him, she's lashing out at the only name she knows in the magical world! She probably thinks that they're behind it, and that's why she's trying to wipe them all out!"

Daisuke stared, open mouth at him for a moment, Tarian taking deep breaths in his excitement of reaching that conclusion. "Dude, you're crazy. Crazy smart that is!" Daisuke paused and looked around the room. "Ok, but how are we going to find her?"

Tarian frowned and looked out the window, it had finally stopped raining out, but a thick fog was building in the area, depressing the atmosphere. "That one I'm going to have to think about."

Another pair of footsteps on the stairs soon revealed a somber looking Takeo. "What's all the yelling about?"

"Tod's a genius and figured out why Victoria Shaw wants to kill the Graves'. Now we just need to find her."

"Well I suggest you do it quick. There are Aurors all over that house you were at," he explained, nodding at Tarian. "I couldn't get too close, but from what I heard, I think the girls have been taken by Madison and Gertrude."

The atmosphere deflated, as if popped by a bubble. "Well they're not dead," encouraged Daisuke, "Otherwise you'd be dead from the unbreakable vow."

"That's true," Takeo agreed, "but how are we supposed to find them before Tod drops dead?"

Tarian looked about the room. Surely there must be something. He had finally figured out what he thought Mallory had wanted him to figure out. Now he just needed to know how to use it. His eyes raked over his trunk. Nothing in there would help them find the location. Over across the unmade bed, across the night stand and out into the fog…the fog…what a thick, depressing fog…

"I know how we're going to find them. They're closer than we think," he stated, not moving from the window.

"How do you know?" Takeo asked impatiently.

Tarian pointed outside to the dark shapes moving distantly through the thick mist. "We're going to follow the dementors."