"Gini, Vivian! It's been far too long!"
That woman could sing a song or two with her pleasant voice, she sounds euphoric and yet so gentle and soothing. A circumstance I'm actually grateful for, since after another sleepless night engrossed in theories, my migraine is back at its all-time zenith.
"Queenie," Vivian mumbles as she hugs the woman tight to her chest, "my dear Queenie! You haven't aged a day!"
"Oh, don't you say that," she protests, waving it off. Her accent is unmistakably from the States. "Just did what I could."
Whatever she could, she could do it well. Queenie seems picture-perfect, the fine lines around her eyes couldn't be more eggy.
"Let me look at you," she now turns to Nagini, a warm smile on her lips. "How are you, my dear?"
Nagini just hugs her. There isn't much to say about her cursed circumstances, and all those present know it.
Right of Diagon Alley lies Horizont Alley, which led us straight to Carkitt Market. Nagini guessed we would find Queenie here, as well as good coffee, and she was right.
"How's your dear Jacob?" Vivian proceeds to catch up. "Are you still cooking all these nice dishes for him?"
"Sometimes I think food is his only reason to stay with me," Queenie quips, and given the pleasant aura that surrounds her, it's almost impertinent to be so humble.
"But tell me …" She pauses and looks past the two of them, directly at me. "Who do we have here?"
Her facial expressions show keen interest and if I wasn't dead inside, her euphoria would probably be contagious.
"Queenie, this is Tom," Nagini introduces us. "Tom – Queenie."
"Good to meet you," I all but say, but she insists on a handshake – and all of a sudden, she stares at me in dark surprise.
As do I.
According to the textbooks, when two people capable of legilimency touch each other without any premonition, the comprehensive synchronisation of consciousness, of the circumstances of both lives, occurs for a moment – supposedly ever so brief.
And it's true. I see what she did to Jacob – in her desperation, with warmth. Clearly better than what Merope did, because Jacob was in love. Yet she wanted to cast a spell on him so as not to lose him. And yet, in a sense, she lost her sister Porpentina in the process – the only family in her equally orphaned life before she fell in love and left the States behind with Grindelwald. She's a good person, in the classical sense, and yet she's capable of hating Grindelwald for his broken promises. He had lured a dreamy lover into his ranks, holding out the prospect that with him in power she'd soon be allowed to join Jacob in America, but instead her life's only been overshadowed by unimagined darkness.
And she, in turn, is shaken to the core by reading me. That I'm an orphaned child from a forced union, without love involved, but a lot of black magic. She sees who I am. It's happening too fast and she's too good – I can't banish her from my mind. As I have seen everything about her, so she sees it all about me. In one split second about she knows about Slytherin's heritage, that I am my uncle's murderer, how attached I'm to Harper even though I left her behind all alone, that I'm Hogwarts most talented student – and she sees my abyss. She stares into my darkness, I into hers.
She guessed that joining Grindelwald's acolytes was not a good decision. In tears, she was to manipulate Credence to become a weapon for him, in Nurmengard, in the middle of the Austrian Alps. She complied, with charm and every ounce of subtlety, until she had won his trust and earned her life back. A life here, in England, where marriage to her No-Maj raised no questions. But her guilty conscience, which haunted her all the way here because she had once chosen the wrong side for her terms, has plagued her ever since. Also that her sister, an Auror, no longer has a place in her life.
She sees that I could possibly be the key to the end of all this, so she finally nods, and it's meaningful.
As we loosen our handshake again, we're both anxious not to let any of it on – and we both don't, well-practised in hiding our true intentions from the world.
"Hello, Tom," she says, giving me an affected smile.
The others hardly see it, but I know what it means.
It's not pity.
It's compassion. In a couple of ways, we share our fate …
"Hello, Queenie."
From now on, we also share secrets – and each of us in turn realises that we have an obligation to each other.
"You look like you could do with a coffee," Queenie suggests. "Or even two. Long time no sleep?"
"Insomnia," I reply.
She nods and looks around the market. "I have a feeling we'd better talk undisturbed, my dears – will you accompany me? There's cake ready at home anyway …"
"That sounds fantastic," Vivian agrees.
I nod, gesturing for her to follow Queenie. "After you."
"So you folks really want to do this?"
Queenie glances back and forth from me to Vivian and Nagini. The latter nods, while Vivian starts shaking her head.
"Wanting is a far stretch," she immediately explains, "I believe it to be a huge mistake, but Tom –"
"Wants to create a Horcrux and infiltrate the revolution of the most dangerous black magician of our time," Queenie adds with a sigh, touching my arm as if to throw a life ring out to me, almost lost at sea. "Are you sure about that, though?"
She can see it.
Through her touch, she sees the crucial side effect I hope to access with a Horcrux. Not only do I want to rip my soul to shreds, I also want to never feel anything again either …
And the look on her face speaks volumes.
She would love to advise that when you have a broken heart, the best thing to do is to get a bit drunk or eat all those feelings without understanding any of it for a few days. But she completely misinterprets the situation.
I don't have a broken heart.
I don't have one at all.
"You know why we're here," I finally tell her. "Nagini is convinced he trusts you the most."
"He does," Queenie admits. "But you want to sneak in with some Polyjuice Potion and pin all our hopes on his memory optimism regarding young Albus Dumbledore? Did I understand that correctly?"
"I have nothing left to lose," I acknowledge the rather tenuous plan with a nod.
"Sounds bad …" She shrugs. "And you're intending to venture all of this with nothing more than a few disgruntled witches? And a Maledictus, excuse me, Gini … Don't you think you could use a few more men?"
"Queenie, cunning and talent. That's what I wish to use, completely regardless of who brings it in. So where do we find him?"
"Probably in Nurmengard?" Vivian thinks out loud, right before trying her cake. Nagini and her have been placed on Queenie's Victorian sofas with huge full plates as well as lots of cream next to me. I, on the other hand, am not hungry. "Oh, it's so good," Vivian sighs and immediately takes another bite. She mumbles, "Tom, you ought to try it!"
"No, thank you, I –"
Like I'm a toddler, she's already holding a heaped fork right into my face, and – it smells fantastic, I might just as well taste and –
Heavens.
Queenie knows how to bake …
"Do you finally want a piece of your own?" she cheerfully asks, handing me a plate faster than I can even nod.
"So off to Austria?" Vivian proceeds with our planning, yet this remark only makes Queenie laugh nervously.
"Hate to remind you, but my last name is Goldstein and you know it – wild horses couldn't get me anywhere near the Germans!"
"Queenie, please." Vivian puts her plate of cake down as though we were now getting specific. "It won't work without you vouching for a young man who reminds him of Albus. If any other person in this world introduces them, he'll smell conspiracy, but just maybe not with you."
"You overestimate my influence –"
"Hardly," Nagini claims. "We need you. And I even think he might be in Albania right now. In the woods."
"But even there it's teeming with the Wehrmacht," Queenie says, "in the middle of Tirana …"
"Wait a minute," Vivian sighs, a little perplexed, "what would he want in Albania?"
"He must be looking for them," Nagini thinks aloud. "The Hallows."
"Pretty stubborn," I say, smiling caught when everyone looks me up and down as though that also applied to me.
"He'd probably go to the ends of this earth for the Hallows," Queenie agrees. "And yet … we're all dead if this goes wrong –"
"We have our dues to pay," Vivian retorts. "We all do, don't you think? Blood is on our hands, we allowed ourselves to be carried away by him for the Greater Good, and without us he wouldn't be where he is today."
"Have you forgotten, Queenie?" Nagini looks at her for a long moment. "The gathering, Père Lachaise? I saw you walk through the fire, just like Credence –"
"You joined him later, too –"
"Only to deceive, and only for Credence," she says, "as you did for Jacob. We had noble goals, we all had our reasons."
Vivian nods. "And we all have to make right. We swore it to each other – if we get an opportunity, we'll take it."
Queenie swallows hard. "But what do you hope to achieve, Viv? Tom has his own interests, he's not that keen on putting an end to tyranny –"
"Not exactly, no, but I had given up long ago, Queenie," Vivian interrupts her. "I thought I would never be able to make amends for the support I gave back then. But yesterday Tom stood in front of me just after sunrise and for the first time in many years I felt like we had the slightest chance. Can't you sense it? Tiny as it may be, there is a spark of hope. He must be stopped, and Dumbledore might –"
Queenie shakes her head. "Dumbledore made a blood pact!"
Nagini throws in, "You do know that Newt gave him the vial back then –"
"But so far, only the Niffler that stole it has really done its bit for a revolution, hasn't it?" Queenie sighs, resigned to fate. "If Albus Dumbledore has had the vial for 17 years and hasn't found a way to destroy it to get around the pact, then there almost certainly isn't one!"
"That's what Nagini and I were talking about yesterday, and I've been reading Vivian's books all night," I hook in, glancing at the ladies with consequently bloodshot, tired eyes, "and we've come to the conclusion that Dumbledore just had fundamentally wrong tools so far."
Nagini nods at these words.
"What are you getting at?" Queenie doesn't even wait for the answer, she reaches straight out to me. "Show me, because if we don't stand a chance, then – sorry to say it – I won't even try."
I take her hand – however, she immediately pulls hers back in shock.
She struggles for breath. She saw it. Before taking my hand again and squeezing it tightly she whispers, "Poison. Fresh basilisk poison. All of this – it's so insane it might even work …"
"I thought so, too," Nagini confirms. "And I'd rather die trying to finally get revenge than wait forever."
"What are you even talking about?" Vivian asks in confusion. "How the hell are we going to get your hands on fresh basilisk venom? Breeding them is strictly forbidden, you can't possibly consider –"
"Tom is the last living descendant of Salazar Slytherin," Nagini tells her, both looking at each other as though they had always expected something along those lines. "He has access to basilisk poison …"
"Madness," Vivian groans nevertheless. "This is madness."
"The end justifies the means," I find.
Queenie all but shrugs. "Brilliance and madness remarkably often coincide. Shall we work on tracking spells?"