The Road Not Taken

1925

1 Sometimes, during idle moments, Celestia wondered what exactly had been the metaphorical dislodged pebble that had launched the catastrophic avalanche her life had got caught up in – the first in a series of unfortunate events. It was probably a silly and overly simplistic way of thinking, not to mention a moot exercise, but she couldn't help herself. Her thoughts would start to wander, and she'd always end up thinking back on a single horrid incident: the episode that had led to Newt Scamander's expulsion from Hogwarts. In the interim, she got to know him better than she had back then, which made the nagging and ugly sting that was guilt worse over time. Still, even during those days, she'd felt like the scum of the Earth for being complicit in a scheme that had resulted in the punishment of someone innocent.

It's not a big deal, Alastair had told her over and over again, once events had irreversibly unfolded. He'll be fine. He's got his work cut out for him with the Hippogriffs at home, anyway, and his weird research. He's got Dumbledore on his side, too. But if Leta had been found out, her life would've been over. You don't want that, do you?

That was something he excelled at – always had: avalanching Celestia with arguments until she wasn't sure what was right and what was wrong anymore. Were these rationalisations of someone with a heavy conscience, or did he really believe that after everything had been said and done, this was the best solution for everyone?

Not that it mattered. Again, he was close to dying, closer with every passing second.

Back then, she hadn't believed that she'd ever be able to bear being in such a situation again. It was nothing short of amazing how much a person could handle – even a person no-one, including herself, had ever thought of as strong. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe this was just the one thing she couldn't ever give up on if she wanted to stay able to look in a mirror.

Inside the decaying barn in the middle of nowhere, she found the next clue left by the elusive contact: two enchanted galleons that, like the ones they'd found in the forest, showed the way to their next destination.

They were all standing together in the dilapidated, mouldy, damp, decaying, draughty barn: Celestia, Nocturna, the Malfoy brothers, Leta, and Ethel.

"Are you sure that you want to go by yourselves?" Apollo said, sounding genuinely concerned. His white-blond hair was dishevelled, and his usually pallid face was flushed slightly pink. "You don't know for certain who this contact is, or that this isn't a trap."

"It's not a trap," Nocturna said, smiling a little. "At least not involving any Aurors. Anything else, we can handle."

"And we need to stick to the plan in order to get Goldstein," Ethel said, a distinct note of disgust tainting her voice.

"Don't forget that so far, Tia handled it all on her own," Nocturna said.

"Not entirely, no." Celestia looked down at her muddy boots. "For a while, Newt Scamander helped me."

"He probably thought you wanted to save the creature," Leta said quietly.

Celestia shook her head at her. "No. He knew I wanted to save Alastair. What he didn't know, for a long time, was that doing so will presumably kill the monster, and that if the monster dies and the heart is preserved, it can be used as a weapon. If the heart is just reunited with the animal, then the animal gets to live, but the effect on Alastair and his family might not be reversed that way."

"Might." Ares arched his thin eyebrows. "He abandoned you to your own fate on a might? Charming fellow."

"He wouldn't do that," Leta snapped. "He's the most decent chap you'll ever meet."

"A matter up for debate, and a virtue one could argue really is none," Ares said, earning himself a glare from everyone but Ethel, who just snickered.

"We should be on our way," Nocturna hurried to say, before this case of mild bickering could devolve into a full-blown argument. "Tia?"

"Agreed." She looked at each of the others in turn. "Good luck. We'll see each other soon."

She and Nocturna Apparated away.

2 Priding herself on not being a clueless idiot, Tina Apparated herself and her sister just outside the place where the locating spell had situated Celestia Prewett's wand. It was a small forest at the edge of a huge, forlorn-looking field that had once been used for growing crops. The weather wasn't all too inviting: strong winds made the nearly bare boughs above sway and creak. Dark, heavy clouds rolled across the sky at an incredible pace. The air smelled like rain. It was icy cold, too: despite her rather heavy coat, Tina was shivering.

Poor Queenie looked as if she might freeze to the spot. She had an eye for fashion and always looked effortlessly beautiful, but she had never been the most practical dresser. There were pros and cons to everything.

Her brow creased, Tina reached out and touched her sister's elbow. "You should head back."

"No." Queenie's pleasant voice sounded firm and determined. "I ain't going nowhere. We're doing this together." Her expression turned reproachful. "You promised."

Suppressing an irritated sigh, Tina said, "Yeah, I promised." She raised her wand and spoke the locating spell again. Immediately, the picture of the old barn appeared. Her eyes darted from the projected picture to the real thing. The latter was standing at the far end of the field, slowly but inexorably falling apart. It looked deceivingly peaceful and quiet. "She's in there." Saying this out loud was a redundancy, but it was Tina's personal philosophy that it was better to say things twice than leave something important unspoken.

"Is she alone?"

"Not likely. Now, they don't know we're coming, but Apparating right over would be stupid. There's a zero percent chance they haven't warded the place against that kind of tactic. We need to approach cautiously and catch them by surprise."

"Won't they just Apparate away again? Or are you any good at casting an Anti-Disapparation jinx?"

"I can do it, but not blindly. I need to get closer to the target. They probably warded against that, anyway."

Queenie gave her a doubtful look. "You still sure this is such a grand idea? I mean, it's only the two of us against who knows how many of them, and you're the only Auror. Maybe we should go back and get some backup?"

"That's never gonna happen. Graves made that quite clear." Squinting against the chilly wind that made her eyes water, Tina looked at the innocent-looking, decaying barn where the Grindelwald fanatics were hiding. Finding Prewett's wand had been the easiest part, true. Truth be told, Tina hadn't planned much beyond this stage. She was usually good at coming up with practical solutions to dire predicamentson the fly. But the enemy was shrewd. The only thing she and Queenie had working to their advantage was the element of surprise.

Queenie was right: once that was gone, they had nothing. There was nothing stopping Prewett, her sister, and whoever else was in there from just leaving. A bunch of Aurors could; a single one could not.

What to do, then? She couldn't exactly leave them alone. Especially now that she'd gone behind Graves's back to get permission to find Prewett, she needed results. There was no going back empty-handed. Otherwise, she might as well kiss her career goodbye. The thought alone made her throat constrict and her pulse pick up the pace. She tasted something sour in her mouth.

No. No panicking now. She was here to do a job, and that was precisely what would happen. She would not crawl back to New York in shame; she couldn't. It was more than that, though, of course: these Grindelwald supporters were working toward bringing down everything that was good and just in the wizarding world. They could not be allowed to follow through on whatever scheme they had in mind.

Graves would have to understand, to see that he was in the wrong, that Celestia Prewett could not be trusted.

Tina would make sure that he did. She leaned toward her sister. "I've got an idea."

3 After shaking off the brief disorientation always brought upon by Apparition, Celestia and Nocturna found themselves in a dark, stuffy room somewhere. The air was heavy, way too warm, and smelled like the inside of a shoe during summer. It was hard to see anything in there.

"Where the hell are we?" Nocturna said. The room almost swallowed up her voice, muting it somewhat – most peculiar.

"I have no idea." Celestia blinked, waited until her pupils adapted to the semi-darkness. Some light was coming in through a partially boarded window, but it wasn't enough. She raised her – or rather, Apollo's – wand. "Lumos." How odd, how off it felt to cast a spell with a wand that had a different master – a wand that had not chosen her.

The small sphere of white light cast a bright radius around the two witches.

They were in…a living room? It was cramped with old-fashioned, ratty, dusty furniture. Along all walls were huge stacks of books accumulating a thick coat of dust. No-one had cleaned up in here for a very, very long time. The place could do with a breath of fresh air, too, to put it euphemistically.

"Why is it so warm?"

"I don't know," Celestia said, and raised her free hand to her mouth to cover up a yawn. The sudden change in temperature was making her drowsy – if that was all this was. Once could never know.

Maybe Apollo had been right to object. Maybe this really was a trap. It didn't feel like one, but that didn't mean anything at all in the grand scheme of things.

Nocturna lit up her own wand and started to warily explore the room. "Can you see a door? Anywhere?"

"No, I can't. It must be behind one of the book stacks. There's an entire library in here." She rubbed at her eyes. "Why are we here? As far as I know, our contact was supposed to be waiting for us wherever the second enchanted galleons sent us."

"He or she will be here. Let's wait a while. If nothing happens, we'll leave."

Celestia cast her an irritated look. "I can't just leave. My time's running out. I have to find that ghastly thing and get back to England!"

"All right. Let's have a look around, then, and see what this place has to offer." Nocturna raised her wand. "Lumos maxima." A brighter sphere of light shot from her wand, rose to the ceiling, and hovered there, providing more than enough illumination.

"I'm sorry I snapped at you," Celestia made herself say, even though it took some effort. It wasn't as if she didn't feel the need to apologise to her ever-helpful, ever-cheery sister. She was just tired of herself at this point and wished she weren't so on edge and insufferable all the time.

Nocturna could, if push came to shove, just leave.

Celestia was stuck with herself.

Standing by a pile of dusty, moth-eaten books, Nocturna waved off. "Oh, it's quite all right. Once this is all over, you'll be able to rest easy again. No-one's blaming you for being a tad on edge until that day comes."

"No-one but our parents, all the Blacks, and all the Malfoys."

"Nonsense."

"It's not, sadly. I wish it were nonsense, but it really isn't." Her legs felt heavy as lead, but the sofas and armchairs were in such a deplorable condition, she decided against dropping herself on one of them. She had to be much wearier in order to stop caring about ticks and mildew and who knew what else. This was something she could claim with some authority, having been in such a situation a number of times before.

Inevitably, the random thought brought Newt to mind, and the guilt at leaving him behind. She dearly hoped that he was all right. What she didn't expect was for him to forgive the betrayal. But then again, they'd probably never see each other again.

He'd never been particularly fond of the likes of her, and for good reason. Having to admit this wasn't pleasant, no – far from it. It had become a necessity, though. One could only pretend to believe a lie of one's own spinning for a limited amount of time.

She lowered her wand-carrying hand and pressed her left against the aching small of her back. Her toes and fingers were all pins and needles from circulation returning to them. "I know that this is nothing more than me feeling sorry for myself, but sometimes, I can't help but wonder."

Nocturna didn't look up. She was squinting down at a particularly thick greenish tome with what might once have been golden lettering embossed on its cover. "Wonder what, love?"

"Whether our parents were right all along. Whether it might not have been better for everyone if I had stayed with Apollo."

Slowly, Nocturna straightened up and turned to face her. "You're the one who told me that you couldn't live like that anymore. Knowing you the way I do, that was no exaggeration. So what if you upset the applecart and wrecked a political marriage? The consequences are a million times preferable to you being dead."

"But would this, all this…would it still have happened? I'm the one who's responsible, Nana. This is my doing. If I hadn't been there, Alastair would still be fine."

"No, he wouldn't. He'd be miserable. Besides, disasters have a way of happening even when you remove one person from the equation. I suppose you didn't go traipsing into that stupid monster's lair by yourself, looking for trouble."

Celestia shook her head. She wasn't going to point any fingers. This was her mistake to fix and nobody else's. "It doesn't matter. Like I said, I know that I'm just looking for an excuse to give into self-pity."

"Happens to everyone."

"That doesn't make it any less annoying." She almost sat down, now; her body felt so, so heavy. Her head had started to ache. There was a knot in her throat. Her eyes were sore. In a quieter tone, she added, "I miss my daughter."

Nocturna gave her a look that was so sympathetic, it was almost enough to break the latter's flimsy control over her emotions. "I'm so sorry."

"So am I." She closed her eyes for her moment. "I can't help but think that if I hadn't done what I did, I'd still be with her."

"You've made a choice: the best choice for you. It's the only way you can be happy. You can't always live according to everyone else's needs."

"It was still a selfish thing to do."

"Maybe. Doesn't make it any less right, even if it was also wrong in a way. Life is so much more complicated than we'd like. People get hurt. It happens. You would've done her no favours if you'd stayed, ultimately."

"I just couldn't imagine how hard to bear the consequences would be. And now, I only have little over a fortnight to save Alastair and his family from certain death. I might lose it all." Celestia drew a sharp, shaky breath and clasped her free hand over her mouth.

Mustn't lose control. Mustn't be weak.

That was when she felt Nocturnas skinny, yet strong arms envelop her, and she couldn't fight it anymore. She burst into tears and all but collapsed against her sister.

For half an eternity, they just stood there holding onto each other, not saying a word. It wasn't necessary.

Finally, though, Celestia calmed down again. She peeled herself out of the embrace, mopping at her eyes and sniffling. Crying was always so horribly undignified and messy.

"Hang on." Nocturna fumbled in her coat pockets and pulled out a clean handkerchief. "Here you go."

"Thank you." Loudly and heartily, Celestia blew her nose and wiped the tears from her face. "I'm mortified to point out that I might've got some snot on you."

Nocturna blinked at her, then laughed. "I'll live – barely, but I will. I'm tough that way. You'd be surprised."

Before Celestia could make any kind of reply, the air at one of the corners of the room distorted; someone was Apparating inside.

Immediately, both women pointed their wands at the intruder. When they saw who it was, they lowered them again simultaneously. It probably looked more than a little bit silly, as if they'd synchronised their moves beforehand.

Celestia stared at the man, who was smiling expectantly at the sisters, wide-eyed. "Ronny Flint." It wasn't even a question.

He raised a hand to awkwardly wave at them. "Hello. Please don't kill me. I'm only here to help."

"You're the contact?" Nocturna said.

"I'm the contact." He shrugged – a jovial, unmistakeable what-can-you-do gesture. It was typical him, in any case. "So, you mind getting out of here so we can fetch the damn thing? Time's short 'n all that."

Again, Celestia and Nocturna shared an incredulous look.

"No, we don't mind," Celestia said. "By all means, lead the way."

"But we do have questions," Nocturna added. "You understand."

"Later." He beamed at them. "Right now, I just want to help save good old Alastair."

On that, they could all agree.

4 Apollo and the others had debated splitting up and setting a perimeter around the field, so as to encircle the Auror once she inevitably showed up. They ended up deciding against that; splitting up might seem like a splendid idea in theory, but it would make them vulnerable in practice. No, it was better to stay put and just prep the place a little. The element of surprise was, in the end, on their side; after all, Goldstein didn't know that she was traipsing right into a trap. She'd be coming alone, too, most likely. Her boss certainly wouldn't allow anyone to go with her. The only person likely to be joining her was her sister, who none of them considered to be much of a threat.

They didn't even have to wait long. Only a few minutes after the Prewett sisters left, the low-volume Intruder Charm sounded off.

"There she is – predictable as always," Ethel said, wearing an expression on her face that was probably supposed to be a smile, but came across like a snarl instead.

"You don't think she'll be stupid enough to attack us head-on, do you?" Leta said, brushing a wayward lock of her hair behind her ear, just so she'd had something to fidget with. She wasn't exactly battle-hardened like the others – especially Ethel.

That woman was tough as nails.

Ethel shook her head. "The way I know her, she'll try to trick us into showing our hand. She may be a pest, but she ain't a moron."

It was a bit of a marvel how inventive humans were when it came to coming up with new insults. Up until recently, 'moron' had still been a medical term – one Leta didn't feel all that comfortable with, if she were to be honest with herself. But why protest? No-one would agree with her, and she didn't want to make herself unpopular with the others. That never ended well. "So, what now?"

"We keep calm and stick to the plan. She'll try to lure us out, but if we manage not to get side-tracked, then we got her."

Ares opened his mouth to say something, because God forbid he let any exchange pass without commenting on it, but didn't actually get to say anything.

All around them, a sonorous, feminine voice boomed: "Attention, Grindelwald supporters! You are surrounded on all sides! The site has been subjected to an Anti-Disapparation jinx! If you give yourselves up now, you can expect leniency! Otherwise, we won't hesitate to use force in order to stop you! You only get one warning!"

Everyone stared at each other.

"That's not her," Apollo said. "That's the president."

"No, that's Goldstein pretending to be the president," Ethel retorted, sneering, and waved off. "Oldest trick in the book, buddy. You got to polish up on your rules of engagement."

"You don't know that," Leta said. Her stomach was cramping a little. She wasn't sure she was cut out for this kind of work. Was there a way out of this? The important thing was to stay calm and focus.

"It's the likeliest conclusion," Ares said. He was always on that woman's side. What were they to each other, anyway? It wasn't as if his family would ever permit him to leave his Pureblood, English wife and elope with an American nobody.

"Stay calm, everybody," Ethel said, after giving Ares an approving nod. "We-"

A loud crash rocked the thin walls of the dilapidated barn. Everyone winced, cowered down. Splinters and age-old hay rained down on them.

"This was a warning shot! Come out now and face justice!"

Ares sneered. "A tad melodramatic, aren't we? Can't she tell the place is warded?"

His brother frowned. There were beads of sweat on his nose and forehead, despite the cold. "Are you sure this is just a bluff?"

"Whatever it is, we need to put a stop to it, and soon, before the MACUSA has no choice but to rain hell down on us," Ethel said, visibly annoyed. "And I'm not leaving this place until Goldstein's bit the goddamn dust!"

Leta pressed her lips together and balled her free hand into a fist. Whatever happened, she wouldn't betray her friends, but she wasn't going to stick around only because some random madwoman held a personal vendetta against an American Auror. No, Leta was going to look out for herself. During her Hogwarts career, she'd learned that that was what she was really good at – better than anyone else, perhaps.

Thoughts of Newt were crushed in their inception. There was no time to feel bad about him right now, about what her actions had done to him. There was no time to miss what they'd once had, either. There was no time to miss him.

But sometimes, she did it anyway, and wondered what might have happened if she hadn't done what she'd done.