Not sure how this will play out given there have been on-off rumours on whether there will be a FB4 or 5. Maybe WB have decided to cut their losses and end on a trilogy – the Magic is dead.

A Regiment of Witches

He had managed to stabilize Galahad and negotiated warmer quarters for his patient. Bedivere checked Gal's pulse and breathing. They were both stable for now. The senior healer in him had just kicked in. He had demanded a series of healing potions to deal with Galahad's fit, then he had laid siege to the castle's scant potion ingredients cupboard. Some luckless lackey had been dispatched to the nearest magical apothecary for items low in stock.

"Might sir want some victuals?" a timid house-elf popped into the room.

"Oui, merci beaucoup," Bedivere beamed. It has been hours since he had been summoned from his cell and more since his last meal. Lucia had gone into semi-hibernation in his vest pocket. His adrenaline spent, he all but collapsed in the armchair. Had he really snarled orders at the Dark Wizard Grindelwald? The Graves clan were legendary for placing themselves in the line of fire, both those adopted down South and those related by blood to the Twelve up north. He was a healer, not a warrior, even if some distant forebear might have been a Cherokee war chieftain.

Bedivere had been the sole healer present at the aftermath of the magical explosion in 1915 with many critically wounded. Then there were the magical epidemics in the mid-1900 and late 1910s. Healers had run themselves close to collapse with patients flooding the hallways and dying as they waited to be treated. Old, young, wizards and witches alike.

He scarfed down the stew he was brought, barely tasting it. He wondered how their family was coping. Bedivere was a loner, though he considered Galahad and Percival both his intellectual equals. He might have kept up correspondence with Percy if the fool had bothered to reply. Perhaps Percy felt embarrassed about his humble origins and his family's illegal dealings. It had smarted. However, Bedivere had often requested that Gal or whoever needed his medical services visit him via the back alley instead of at the main door of his townhouse in New Orleans. He had treated more than his share of tricky hexes and injuries inflicted on his siblings that might cause some awkward questions in the hospital.

"Galahad and Bedivere Graves kidnapped by Grindelwald?" Tina could not believe what she was hearing. Had it been Kay or Hector making the call, she would have brushed it off as a poor joke. Both wizards had seen fit to ask her out through the Floo despite her being in a relationship with Newt. Both also had a list of minor offences to their names long as their arms, including the occasional jail stint.

Guinevere Graves was a no-nonsense witch with little time to waste on fools. Tina recalled she had been one of the few Black Creek Graves at the Director's memorial who had remained sober enough to rein in the excesses of the others. She nodded grimly.

"Professors Silverfoot and Delance can vouch for that. Bloody greycloaks both. We have two others injured."

Tina frowned at the mention of her old professors. It always bothered her how closely tied academia and politics were in the wizarding sphere. It made sense that the most powerful wizards gravitated towards either field. Power drew power, even in the Old World where blood and family loyalties often came into play.

Should she inform her supervisors at MACUSA, or Picquery even?

"Goldstein, I trust you not to involve MACUSA on this. Picquery's been defanged after developments this summer." A veiled warning from the current headmistress of Ilvermorny.

"What would you have me do then?" Tina asked in exasperation. She felt like a pawn in a giant chess game, being moved by unseen hands. Helpless. Her sister probably an entire ocean away in Grindelwald's stronghold.

"Pelly will meet you in the park if you have any news… Just send word to him at the Black Creek General Store." Jenny Graves added.

"Keep your eyes and ears open, and watch your tongue," Silverfoot this time. "How many in MACUSA have been turned? A few or many?"

"Can we trust you?" Tina asked quietly, giving voice to the question that had plagued her after all the double-dealings she encountered in the recent months.

"Trust? Never trust a greycloak further than your heart will allow," Silverfoot replied enigmatically before ending the call.

"So I live." Galahad stirred. "Pity."

Bedivere hastened over with the necessary potions and coaxed the blond into swallowing them. After confirming his patient was stable, the healer called the elf to bring him some light broth.

"Gal, you are an idiot of the highest order."

"I concur," Galahad replied with a wan smile. The smile died when he saw the shine of tears in Bedivere's eyes.

"Gal, don't put me through that again…"

"What?"

"I watched the light go out of his eyes. Caradoc - I watched him die, elbow-deep in his blood, trying to fix his heart and lungs after his chest was ripped apart by shrapnel." A comforting hand on his shoulder.

"Oh, Bee… I'm dying anyway. Regret not leaving me in Marie di Lourdes?" Galahad managed a chuckle.

"You're incorrigible."

"There is a young man in the castle who interests me…" Galahad limped over to the window and peered out. A dark-haired wizard was practising his hexes against a dummy under Miss Goldstein's watchful eye. The witch was giving him instruction on how to hold his wand.

"Sure you are not trying to get into the lovely Miss Goldstein's knickers?" Bedivere asked nonchalantly. "The boy feels wrong…"

"Morituri te salutamus," Galahad laughed dryly. The boy was doomed to die soon. An Obscurus. It was a miracle he lived as long as he did.

Paris

Perenelle Flamel busied herself sweeping her doorstep. She did not quite have the heart to offer her rooms for rent again after the events of the summer. Losing Irma had hurt. She had been young for a part-elf. Alas, that was the price of their immortality. To watch friends and family slip past the Veil.

"Greetings, Grandmere…" Perenelle looked up to find a well-dressed witch with an olive complexion and raven-black hair. The younger witch bussed her cheek with a kiss.

"Severine, dear child, it has been a while… I last heard you were at Ilvermorny teaching…" Severine had spent several quiet years, single and teaching at the school before stumbling into another marriage.

"I am to wed, again..." the witch rolled her eyes. "When he leaves me, I'll be back to Ilvermorny…"

"Child, you have been doing this for far too long…" Perenelle never really understood the mestizo witch. Severine seemed to be trapped in an endless cycle of marriage, childbirth, followed by widowhood. Oh, she wed well, joining herself to powerful wizards and pureblood clans. Her husband rarely outlived their child's second birthday. Yet there were many who would risk their sons for the sake of securing the family bloodline through a powerful witch like Severine.

Glamour could be applied to hide the ravages of the years, but it did little to hide that the witch was quite exhausted by life. Severine never kept any of her children for long. Pureblood marriage contracts always favoured the father or his estate while ensuring the mother received some form of material compensation. If Severine felt anything about giving up her offspring, she hid it well. Severine's parentage did little to weigh in her favour. Perenelle had first known her as an urchin, running wild like an Apache about the streets while her demimonde mother entertained guests at home. Her father was a Latin American wizard who had washed up in Paris after a series of misadventures. He made the fatal mistake of defying the Monseigneurs when his daughter was seven.

The Flamels tried to help where they could when they recognized the little girl's potential. They sponsored her to Beauxbatons but it was not to be. Severine was expelled for conducting a blood-ward ritual – the only magics her late father taught her. Her Non-Magique mother took over from there, training her daughter to be a courtesan. Severine took to hiding in Perenelle's house as she grew into womanhood and helped her with her potion-brewing. It was almost a relief when her grandmother finally descended on them like a Fury and packed the young witch off to South America.

"Who's the groom this time?" Perenelle welcomed her guest into her sitting room. Severine was still wearing mourning for her last husband.

"Louis Prince."

"Surely he is too old, even for you…"

"The Younger. They say I am too old for a boy barely out of Beauxbatons."

"Young Prince is of frail health. Is your grandmother well?" Perenelle recalled the elderly witch of Mayan descent – insufferably haughty and steeped in her family's blood magic. Such magics were recently declared illegal by the ICW.

"The Queen of Jaguars is very much alive and as bitter as the gall. Her sons are failures, her daughters all traitors. She curses them with every breath," Severine laughed musically. The relationship between grandmother and grandchild was fraught at best. Many claimed Severine's propensity for marrying into powerful wizarding clans was to escape her grandmother's control, and that her husbands' deaths were a curse courtesy of her grandmother.

"I bring news of Alex Rosier…"

"How is she?" The Flamels have heard little of the last of the Rosier sisters after she fled across the ocean.

"Bound to Ilvermorny surer than with iron chains, but she fares well enough as a tool of the Council. They say she has a nephew turned Obscurus. And that this nephew is Aberforth's get. Does that gascon know he is a father?"

"Non," Perenelle shook her head. "Missy said Alex wanted him kept from his father's family."

"Blood calls to blood. The gascon will know. If not, his brother…" Severine had been in Perenelle's house helping to nurse the injured youth after the duel. Alex was a master duellist, capable of inflicting a wound that appeared mortal but was not. The ducking in the filthy Seine did more harm than her blade, but the stubborn young man survived.

"Do your children ever call to you as a mother?" Perenelle asked. The Flamels had no children of their own. The alchemist's curse. Few practising alchemists in the Middle Ages fathered children. After Nico created their Philosopher's Stone, it was impossible for them to have any under its magic.

"Never." Severine lied. She had too many unshed tears in her heart. Blood-mage mothers were bad news for their own children as their magical rites often demanded the sacrifice of their blood. She could only watch from afar, just as she had when she placed herself at Ilvermorny as Dona Severina to be close to her beloved daughter Leonora.

Silent Thunder had taken a chance on her knowing she was an unregistered blood mage, and she failed his grandson. Swift Runner was no warrior despite being in Wampus House. She had allowed those in her House to volunteer for the No-Maj war in Europe, even easing their way into the No-Maj world with false papers and permits. Some lessons needed to be bought with blood. Alex had literally duelled the boy bloody, but the lesson did not take… Afterwards, Dona Severina had left.

"What of the Jaguar Queen's granddaughter, your cousin who is soaring towards the ICW?"

"Vicencia Santos? We're never close, but she will go far," Severine shrugged prettily. "She is as the condor soaring above the Andes, wingtips touching the sun."

Author's Notes:

Morituri te salutamus - We who are about to die salute you.

I am tying this back to the first part of this series with the letters written by Credence's maternal aunts.