The King's Players

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The King's Players

Scene Two

Cider

Thursday, 16 December, 1937

The Sawyer Residence, Hogsmeade

Claire Sawyer was beside herself. Her neighbour, Jackie, had come over to find her sitting on Greta's bed sobbing into the girl's favourite doll, inconsolable.

"What happened, dear? Tell me what happened."

As her friend looked up from the doll, Jackie could see that Claire's face was bright red and there were distinctive patches of salt where layers of tears had already dried. Her voice cracked when she tried to speak, and when she did get words out, they were bitter and flat. "Him. He took them from me. I'll kill the bastard. I'll kill him with my own two hands if I have to."

"Grindelwald." Jackie sat down on the bed, feeling helpless. Claire took hold of her hand, and gripped it as if for dear life, but continued to stare at the doll as if the porcelain and paint held all the answers.

"He came out of nowhere. In Muggle London. Earl... he's dead. Bastard took Greta." Her voice took on a distinctively hysterical edge. "Oh, Jack. What will I do?"

Jackie had nothing to say. She stroked Claire's hair gently. Claire flared up, nearly hyperventilating as she ranted:

"I'll curse him to death! I'll flay him! I'll strangle him! I'll... I'll..."

"You'll what, exactly, Claire? And please, go into detail. I like your imagination." Both women shrieked at the sound of Grindelwald's voice in the bedroom doorway.

Grindelwald stood up from the doorjamb where he'd been leaning and sauntered into the room. Jackie clung to Claire with her free hand, frozen. Claire shook her off and stood up.

"Where's Greta?" Her voice wavered, but she managed to get the words out.

"Where's Earl?" Grindelwald countered. "Having trouble extricating the body from Muggle legalities, are we?"

"You knew I would," Claire snapped. "Where's Greta? 'She won't leave my side,' you said. And here you are without her." Her eyes held a mixture of fury and terror. Grindelwald's eyes, however, were unreadable. They held only a glint of something he knew.

"Am I? Am I really? Are you accusing me of breaking my word, dear lady? Because if you are, I might decide that I don't like you so much after all. And imagine how badly things would go for your friend here if I decided that. I've never been a fan of the Killing Curse, you know. Flashes of green lack creativity."

Claire fell silent. Jackie just shrank back onto the bed, her features made sharp by abject terror.

"As it so happens, I came regarding Greta." He gestured to an old and worn (but well cared for) leather pouch hanging off his right hip. Though it looked like it had originally been for coins, no coin jingled as Grindelwald fished inside the pouch with two fingers. When he pulled out a red pawn, Claire promptly fainted.

"You see what I have to deal with, Jackie?" Grindelwald sighed in irritation as Jackie let off a squeak and scrambled to Claire's side.

"What did you do to her? Help her!" she cried out without thinking--but Jackie clamped her mouth shut as soon as she remembered exactly to whom she was speaking.

"I? I did nothing. She fainted on her own. I simply brought her information. She knows what it means. Someday, I'll pry from her the reason why she knows so much about my pieces, but for now, it will suffice that she does." He dropped the chess piece back in its pouch.

"That's Greta, isn't it? You turned her into..." Jackie trailed off, and her hand found its way to her open mouth to cover it. She could hardly believe what she was saying.

"You're a quick one, Jack."

"My God." Jackie was white as a sheet.

"Oh, one last thing. Never let it be said that I never give back anything that I take." He twirled his fingers and a wand appeared in his hand. Dropping nine and a half inches of oak in Claire's unmoving hand, he turned his back and walked out.

--==[[<>]]==--

Tuesday, 21 December, 1937

St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, London

Donald MacVicar was, by nature, a very neat and well-ordered man. His desk, on the other hand, hadn't seen the light of day from under the mess of papers spread over the desktop in some months, leaving it in desperate need of polishing. A cluttered desk is a sign of genius. He only wished he knew who had said that so he could properly thank the fellow for thinking up such a sanity-saving gem.

Today, however, his desk was clear. He had a tendency to clear it for important visitors.

"Dietfried, how have you been? It's been too long." MacVicar finished stacking the last of his piles of records on a shelf.

Grindelwald pulled up a chair and gave an amused appraisal of the desk (which was still slightly dusty). "You cleared your desk for me. I'm touched. How's the wife?"

"Mary? Oh, she's doing well. We're expecting, don't you know it. Boy. I didn't want to know, wanted it to be a surprise, but Mary just couldn't contain her curiosity. You should have seen her face when the diagnostic spells came up male. She wants a son so badly. We're due in May." Donald could feel his whole face glow with pride.

"You devil. Fatherhood, eh? It suits you. How many people do you take care of already?"

"Ach. You haven't any idea. And it's not even as if I take care of them personally. I just keep 'em organised." Donald shrugged dismissively, but the growing files lining the office walls certainly attested to the amount of work involved.

"Full time job, that. Care to get one of your files early and done with and out of the way? It'll make your life much easier come May."

Donald eyed Grindelwald suspiciously. "What are you... no, wait. Let me guess. You moved my piece, didn't you?"

"Who, me?" Grindelwald grinned innocently.

"Dietfried... don't play games with me. Own up. You did, didn't you?"

"The minor red queenside bishop may have been moved last night."

"I knew it. What am I doing? This had better not disrupt Mary." He stared Grindelwald down, trying to keep a stern look.

"Would I dream of disturbing Mary? Of course not," the other answered seriously. "Just get the Hogwarts list early. I want it. Is that so hard?" Turning him down was impossible when there was so much practicality in his voice.

"Suppose not. Also suppose it's pointless asking why?"

"You're spot on as usual, Don. Staying home for Christmas Eve?" The sudden change of subject slightly worried MacVicar, especially a subject involving that day, but he went with it.

"I promised Mary a home cooked meal. Got the night off. It's our last Christmas alone, you know? I promised her that nothing in the whole of the world could make me come in that night." He began to fidget in his chair. For all the banter, for all the friendship, even he could not forget that Dietfried Grindelwald was the greatest terror England had seen in centuries.

"Good. It's good for you to get out, see the woman you love from time to time." Grindelwald nodded approvingly.

"When are you going to get married, D? You're not getting any younger." He fell silent as one of the darkest stares of which he'd ever been on the receiving end pierced through him. "Not that you have to, of course," he amended quickly.

Grindelwald's hand strayed to his pocket, where he seemed to unconsciously trace the outline of an object there.

"So. D. Are you taking Christmas off this year?" MacVicar desperately tried to change the conversation back to the original topic, not liking the darkness in his friend's eyes. Grindelwald seemed to snap out of a slight reverie.

"Of course not. Do I ever?" Grindelwald smiled none too innocently. MacVicar shuddered and quickly changed the subject once again.

"I'll get you that list within the week. Dumbledore'll want to know why I want it early. What should I tell him? If it were Dippet I was dealing with, I'd worry less, but it's Dumbledore's book, Dumbledore's quill, Dumbledore that I have to go to."

"Tell him all about Mary and your little boy that's coming and how you just have to get a head start on your upcoming work. It'll get past him. It's true, isn't it?" Grindelwald pointed out, pushing his chair back and standing up. "Don. I've got to get going. Do send my warmest love to Mary, and my congratulations. I'll be seeing you. Oh, and Happy Christmas."

Grindelwald let the door swing shut behind him, leaving a composed but visibly pale Donald MacVicar sitting at his empty desk.

--==[[<>]]==--

Friday, 24 December, 1937

St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, London

There was a false air of cheer at St. Mungo's. But then, the holidays were always like that. The Healers tried their best to make things bright and happy, but the patients remembered where they were. Forgetting was difficult at best if you were in hospital for a manticore bite or a transfiguration class spell gone astray.

But a sense of cheer there was, nonetheless. There were more visitors than usual, and the food was certainly better. Gifts were piled around the long-term patients' beds, and cards lined nearly every bedside table.

Laughter could be heard from many rooms all throughout the building, which, for Robert, made the sense of cheer real enough. Robert didn't usually look forward to holiday shifts, but the Christmas one he always enjoyed.

"Not like I got a wife or nothing," he'd always say. "Might as well let someone else go home to theirs." Especially with Christmas on a Saturday this year.

He went from room to room, bringing hot cider personally to each patient.

"Emily, I see you're feeling better, Happy Christmas."

Emily grunted but smiled a bit. "I'll get out in a few days, they say. And what's the point of cider if it ain't got no alcohol?"

"Because administration won't let us get our patients drunk again this year. 'Sides. Imagine what alcohol would do to the people in here with potion problems. And this same stuff is going to the kid's ward, too. But you're getting out in a few days; that's good holiday news, innit. Paul, how's that leg?"

"I swear. I'll never walk again. Stupid cauldron." Paul grimaced.

"I hear talk they've been putting together legislation in the Ministry for thicker cauldron bottoms, then this sort of thing won't happen so much." Robert tried to sound hopeful as he set the mug of cider on Paul's bedside table.

Emily piped up. "I'll believe that when I see it. Ministry, get something done." Paul snickered.

From down the row of beds, a voice called over. "Oi! My brother works for the Ministry! If they say there's going to be regulations for thicker cauldron bottoms, then I say you'll see the damned regulations by this time next year! Who wants a wager? Christmas 1938. I'd put a galleon on it."

"William!" Robert admonished. "Stop that! A galleon this time? You think we're made of gold? Stop trying to gamble while you're in hospital! This is a house of healing, not a casino!"

"Yes, Robert," William muttered. There were snickers all around.

"Hey, Will! I might take you up on that wager of yours! I could use a galleon, I could! You should just give it to me now, though, since we all know about the efficiency of the Ministry."

"Ingrid, don't you even encourage him. You just like making trouble, don't you?" Robert was sorely tempted to throw something at the woman before better judgment silenced the devil on his shoulder.

"You know I do, Robbie, love. You know I do." She winked at him and threw him a kiss. Robert gave into his little devil and threw a pillow at her.

Snickers turned into full, honest laughter from every bed in the room. Ingrid, on the other hand, pouted.

"You don't love me."

"That must be it. Dreadful sorry. 'Sides, I got lots of cider to get to lots of other people; I'll see you all in a while."

Robert didn't see it until he turned to leave. A mist, ankle deep, had already filled the corridor, but only just begun to flow into the room. He froze where he stood.

"Robbie, love, what's the matter? You look like you've seen a demon." Ingrid struggled to sit up in her bed, arms shaking slightly as she hauled her body up.

The mist was green, but not any of the greens Robert would have expected. Neither a sickly green nor an acid green, the seeping fog reminded him more of moss and trees than of anything else. It was the living vibrant green of forests and clover-covered hillocks. And what was perhaps the strangest part of all was that the haze seemed to be alive. Eddies whirled purposefully as they spread, dancing across the room.

By now, the swirling mist covered half the room, rapidly approaching Robert's feet. He started to back up, but there wasn't enough room to back up very far. He bumped into the cart, still full of cider, and watched half in horror, half in sheer curiosity, as the mist wrapped tendrils around his feet.

The tendrils tingled slightly as they tightened. Robert tried to pull his foot out of their hold, to no avail.

"Robert... what is that?" Emily drew her knees up and tried to make herself as small as possible. She sounded frightened.

"I have no idea, Emily. But all of you stay on your beds. Don't touch the floor until I figure out what's going on." As he tried to walk forward, two more tendrils reached up and wrapped around his wrists, pulling him down as he cried out in surprise. The cart of cider toppled over, spilling its hot contents all over the floor, but no one noticed; they were too busy watching. Robert let out a strangled shriek as yet another tendril wrapped around his throat.

Fighting as hard as he could didn't seem to help. The mist felt like a thousand small pins prickling all over his skin, digging for something that lived very deep inside, draining every last bit of something he couldn't identify but couldn't live without.

Tendrils started to climb the bedposts. Emily was the first to shriek. Ingrid followed suit.

Soon, every person in the ward was screaming.

Soon, every person in the hospital was screaming.

Soon, every person in the hospital was silent.

--==[[<>]]==--

Saturday, 25 December, 1937

St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, London

"Mummy, erm... Mum..." Eliza Michaels was huddled in a corner hiding with her mother and father. She was sixteen years old and usually thought herself entirely too old to call her mother Mummy, but this situation was enough to send anyone running to their mother. "Is it over?"

"I don't know, honey. We'll just... wait here until someone comes. Someone's bound to come. Even wizards must have emergency people, right?" Rena held her daughter close as her husband whispered over.

"It's Christmas. They had a skeleton crew on last night. Who's going to come? No one came in the war; we had to fight for ourselves. And that's the last time I saw something like this, I swear." There was a cold, hard look in David Michaels' eye. He'd fought in the Great War, been in the hastily-dug trenches; he'd seen the atrocities, the poison gas, the death. But even he had never seen anything like this. The screams had lasted for hours. And yet, the three of them had come out untouched. But not Andrew.

"David, don't think like that. Someone's got to come. They've got to. This isn't a war. Just because you can feel war brewing in our world doesn't mean that war is brewing in their world. There's no bad guy." Besides. You're scaring Eliza. She tried to convey that last message with her eyes.

"What happened to them all, Dad? What happened to Drew? What was that stuff?" Eliza looked up from where she was huddled. "I mean... he was in for, what did he say it was? Dragon pox? Is that like chicken pox? I've had chicken pox; can I get dragon pox? But they had a cure and everything and he was going to be fine! He does not look fine! He looks dead! Just like everyone else in this blooming hospital!" She was nearing hysterics. Rena pulled Eliza up onto her lap and started to rock her back and forth, deciding that perhaps now was not the time to chastise Eliza for her language.

"Hush, honey. Someone will come, and they'll work their magic, and he'll be all right." Please let it be true.

"Why can't I have magic? Why couldn't I get a letter like he got? Why couldn't I go to that school and learn to do all those things? I want to live in their world. You said it yourself! There's no war coming here!" Tears started to flow down Eliza's face.

"How do you know that their world is better than ours? Our world is a good place, and we have a good life. Your brother... we always knew he was special, but you're special in your own way. You'll do great things, Eliza. Never forget that." David reached out and put a comforting hand on his daughter's shoulder.

A man's voice echoed from down the hallway. "I'd listen to such wise words if I were you, dear."

Rena called out, "Hello? We're over here!"

The voiced called back to them. "You can come out. You're quite safe. Relatively speaking."

"I told you someone would come. Come on." Rena helped Eliza up, and they followed the voice. They tried not to look at the bodies of patients they passed in the ward, or at the Healers that had gone down in the hallways. A wizard of medium build with darkish sandy hair was picking his way through the hallway toward him.

"Ah, there you are." The man looked them up and down. "Yes, I suspected you'd be Muggles. That would explain it. Follow me." He started to walk briskly down the corridor.

David asked, "Are there any other survivors?"

"No. Just the three of you. Wouldn't be much of a Christmas celebration if I leave too many unscathed, now would it?" The man's words stopped David dead in his tracks.

"If you leave too many unscathed?" he echoed, pulling Rena and Eliza behind him. "Sir. I don't know who you are, and I thank you for your help, but I think that my wife and daughter and I will find our own way out."

"Out? Who ever said I was taking you out? I thought I just told you. It wouldn't be much of a Christmas celebration if you walked out unharmed. People would say I'm slipping, and I can't have that, can I? Of course I can't."

Eyes glittering, he continued, "I think I might let them find you hovering with just enough life to tell them what horrors you saw this night. But don't be hopeful. They won't be able to save you. There are things I can do to you that God Himself couldn't save you from." He cocked his head as inspiration seemed to strike.

"Or, I might rub honey in your hair and call it a day. Not sure yet." The amusement fell from the sandy-haired man's face once more as the sparkle in his eyes turned to a dangerous flash once more.

The man approached slowly as he continued. "You said you don't know who I am. Didn't that son of yours ever tell you about Dietfried Grindelwald? No? He should have. You would have known to get far, far away long before I got here if he had. But now you're stuck with me, aren't you?"

David stood his ground. Rena and Eliza started to back up.

"Oh. Wrong choice." In a flash, his wand was out. All three froze in their tracks. They knew what those polished sticks of wood were, and were afraid of what one might do in the hands of this madman. "Bet you wish you'd gotten one of those letters now, eh, Eliza?"

"How'd you kno..."

"How'd I know your name? Just call it magic. Everything else is magic, isn't it? Either that, or you just look like an Eliza. Or maybe your darling father called you that earlier. 'Ohhh, yeaaahhhh. That. I forgot.' Right, Eliza?"

Ropes shot out from his wand, encircling Eliza's knees. She fell hard to the floor as he dragged her to him. The girl screamed as she was pulled along, desperate to stop herself trying to dig her fingers into a crack, any crack, in the floor. Finally, she tried to push her palms into the floor, anything to push against the movement. Nothing worked.

"No!" David rushed toward his daughter.

"You want her? Come get her." Grindelwald started walking once again, dragging Eliza behind him. David stared in half horror and half amazement that this man could drag his daughter, who easily weighed ten stone, without any apparent effort. She grabbed at her knees, trying fruitlessly to free herself.

"Sir. I beg you. Spare her. Take me instead." David tried to put himself in Grindelwald's way.

"Instead? Did I indicate that this was an either or deal?" Grindelwald walked on. Eliza clawed at the ropes in terror, begging incoherently, tears streaming down her cheeks. Rena ran after them.

"Please. I'll do anything. Spare my daughter. Let her go. Anything. There must be something," He pleaded desperately. Finally, Grindelwald stopped walking.

"Anything? What about," he swung around and pointed at Rena, "her?"

Rena let out a terrified gasp as Grindelwald continued. "Yes, what about it? You and the girl can walk out of here, free as anything for the small price of your wife. You said anything. Did you mean it?"

"I... I..." David started to stammer. He could hardly get a sound out, could hardly even think.

"Why, what's the matter? She was dead anyway. You're saving yourself and your daughter this way. But oh, how much longer she's going to suffer if you take this bargain. Think on it, but think quickly. The three of you or the one of you? Are you really willing to give anything? I'm curious."

Rena and Eliza started talking at once.

"Daddy, don't do it."

"David, take your life and go."

"Daddy, no!"

"David... I'll be all right... take Eliza and go!"

David stood frozen in horror.

"What will it be, David? Will it be three relatively quick deaths that only take a day or so, or one excruciatingly slow one that takes significantly longer? Make up your mind. I'm running out of patience. I might start to get bored."

Rena finally looked David in the eye and broke through the madness. "David. You trained for this in the war. The needs of the many, David. The needs of the many."

Her words finally broke through the haze in his mind, and David answered clearly:

"Outweigh the needs of the few. Grindelwald, you said your name was, sir? Give me my daughter. We're leaving." He tried to stop the tears that were welling up, but they flowed freely. Pulling Rena close, David held his wife tightly. "Honey, I'm sorry..."

"I know."

Grindelwald put a hand on Rena's shoulder. "Time to go, dear. We have a date, you and I."

--==[[<>]]==--

MacVicar Residence, Chelmsford

"Donny, love, do you have to go in? It's Christmas. You promised." Mary MacVicar stretched in bed as Donald washed and pulled on clean robes.

"I promised Christmas Eve, Mary. I have to go in. You know that Christmas Day is the day that the emergencies from Dietfried pour in, if he let anyone survive this year from whatever it is he's done this time," he added with a shudder. "Besides. I have something that he's looking for." Bending over to kiss his wife, he said, "I'll see you tonight. I have a special present for you."

"Ooh. What is it?" Mary sat up, pulling the warm covers with her, fluffing a pillow behind her back.

"It's a penguin," Donald called over his shoulder as he headed out the bedroom door.

"Donny!" Mary shouted after him.

"Whaaat? It's a surprise! I love you dear, but I'm going to be late if I don't get going in the next five minutes."

Mary pouted. "At least come kiss me goodbye. And make it worth it. It's Christmas. I want it to make up for that penguin you didn't get me."

Sweeping his wife up into his arms, Donald whispered, "I love you," in her ear as he kissed her. "Happy Christmas, Mary. I will see you tonight. And I promise it's better than a penguin. Penguins are such high maintenance pets anyway." I should get her a stuffed penguin. Where am I going to find a stuffed penguin on Christmas Day?

Even as he Disapparated, he felt like he really should just call in. When he walked out of the Apparition Point at St. Mungo's and to the front reception area where the Welcome Witch should have nodded absent-mindedly at him, he knew where the odd feeling of dread had come from.

The whole hospital was turned upside-down. Bodies were scattered on the floor, left wherever they had fallen. Several other people were there already, in varying stages of shock.

"What happened here?" He pointed to a Healer at random. "Bianca. Tell me what happened."

She raised a shaky hand and pointed to a glass table that, even to a casual eye, clearly did not belong there. The table stood before the front desk, where Joanna the Welcome Witch still lay on the floor--dead.

"I was the first to get here, Mr MacVicar... everything was just like this."

Donald walked up to the glass table. It was an elegant piece, to be sure. The top was circular and crystal clear, almost as if there were no glass there at all. The three legs were made of a smokier glass, and curved gracefully and delicately. Sitting in the centre of the tabletop was a red pawn with a note. "Transfigure Me," it read in a neat handwriting that Donald instantly recognised.

"Did anyone even think to transfigure it?" he asked calmly.

Bianca stared at him as though he'd grown an extra head. "Are you mad? We'd probably end up with a hungry gryphon or something equally horrid that wants to eat our innards. It's a chess piece, Mr MacVicar... it's one of Grindelwald's games."

"Hungry gryphons aren't his style, Bianca. He's done his damage. May I safely assume that someone checked the building already and this is a widespread... phenomenon?"

Another Healer spoke up. "Not a soul survived whatever happened last night."

"Thank you..."

"Frederick, Mr MacVicar. Frederick Bode. I checked all the wards. All dead." His voice faltered.

"Thank you, Frederick, for keeping your head enough to do something useful. I'd say we have ourselves a situation here. Does anyone have any ideas?" Several blank stares and a few shaken heads told him that no one did.

"Right. Well, since you have no ideas, and I have one, I'd say that it's time you stopped thinking me quite so mad." Drawing his wand and praying that gryphons really weren't Dietfried's style, Donald transfigured the piece freeform.

Every single person in the room jumped back as the glass table shattered. The woman that sat dazed in the pile of broken glass was significantly heavier than the chess piece had been, and the table was too fragile to support her weight. She had dozens from cuts from the glass and was starting to bleed freely.

The woman had a blank stare. She didn't seem to realise that she was there. Donald took a tentative step toward her. "Erm... ma'am?"

She blinked. And screamed. Bringing her hands up to shield her face, she looked as if she were absolutely terrified that Donald would do something Unforgivable to her. She tried to back up, her feet sliding on broken glass as she back-pedalled.

"Somebody calm her down!" someone called out from behind him. Donald thought it might have been Bianca. His wand was already in his hand. "Sedoverenus. All right there, ma'am?" Immediately, the woman calmed down.

"What... what did you do to me?' She still sounded terrified, but the hysteria had passed. Sedoverenus wasn't that uncommon of a spell, was it? Donald wondered why she didn't recognise it, or at the very least recognise the effects. Then again, surviving an experience with Dietfried was enough to send anyone off the edge.

Donald walked over slowly and held his hands out. "Calming spell. For the hysteria. That's all. I swear. Now why don't we start again? My name is Donald MacVicar. I'm an administrator here. What's your name?" As he reached the woman, she again tried to back up, finally managing to find a foothold under the fragments of glass.

"R-Rena. M-my n-name is R-Rena."

"All right, Rena. That's a good start. Now. What do you say we get you out of that glass and stop that bleeding before we do anything else?" Donald reached Rena and held out his hand.

"D-don't want any more m-magic..." It dawned on Donald what the missing factor was.

"You're not a witch, are you?" He looked at her in fascination.

"No. M-muggle. That's th-the word... r-right? A-andrew Michaels." She hesitated at his outstretched hand, drawing back from it as if it were poisonous.

"Oh, sweet Lord. You're his mother, aren't you? He was in hospital for... oh, what was it; I had his file... dragon pox or some such. Got it because he was Muggleborn, so he didn't have the immunities. It all makes perfect sense. What happened to you, Rena? No. Don't tell me now. We'll get you cleaned up, and then you'll tell me," he said soothingly. Several of the staff started to stare at him as though he really were mad, but Rena finally looked up and took his hand.

"Frederick! Richard! Get her cleaned up and healed!" MacVicar started shouting out orders, and Healers started to fly to Rena's side.

"The man who did this. Grindelwald. What did he say to you?"

"How did you know? Oh, it was horrible. He... he said... he said I was a witness. He said..." Tears started to flow down her face as she spoke.

"He said I should ask if you thought you'd be safe forever patching others up and not burying your own." Every face in the room tightened. Donald's hand gripped Rena's until he realised he was crushing it and loosened his hold.

Slowly, over the next few hours, in fragments, Rena recounted the memories her mind was already beginning to repress. It took half the psychiatric ward to get the information from her; no one knew how to deal with a Muggle victim to whom varying types of magic were indistinguishable from each other. Though Muggle victims were hardly a rarity, they didn't tend to end up in the hands of Wizarding Healers. Rather, they much more often tended to add to the (so the Muggle doctors thought) inexplicable increase in the occupancy of asylums, much to the delight of the bookkeepers working for the manufacturers of straitjackets.

--==[[<>]]==--

72 High Street, Oxford

Grindelwald did not sit at the chess table. There was no need; he'd not move any pieces today. Christmas was a day of old moves coming to fruition. Christmas was a day to curl up on the couch with a good book. He'd recently found a fascinating alchemy book that raised some interesting theories about the uses of dragon's blood.

"I'll have to try that..." Grindelwald said to himself, flipping the page.

"Try what?" Donald MacVicar was standing in the doorway.

"Don't you knock? You could get yourself killed one of these days."

Donald shrugged. "I'm too angry to knock. Try what?"

"According to this, if I drink dragon blood on a certain day of the year, I can be gifted with the language of the birds. Alas, no one's figured out which day it is. I suspect if someone just had it with breakfast every day, they'd be set." Grindelwald turned the page again and kept reading.

"Aren't you going to ask why I'm angry?" Donald asked as he walked in and sank into a comfortable easy chair, making himself at home.

"I already know why you're angry. I'm the one that set up the whole thing, you know. I'm not stupid. Do you have the Hogwarts list, by the by, or did you not get it yet?" He did not look up.

"Yes, I got your bloody list. To hell with the list. Do you have any idea how many of my people are dead? I was supposed to be spending this afternoon searching for a stuffed penguin to give my wife for Christmas, but no! I was picking up the bodies of my staff!" Donald's voice rose in pitch as it rose in volume. His face grew redder as he spoke.

"Oh, how is Mary? Did you have a nice Christmas Eve together?" Grindelwald still had a friendly voice despite the waves of anger coming off Donald.

"She's fine, she's lovely, she didn't spend all day knee-deep in the corpses of her friends!" Donald stood up in order to fish something out of his robes. Producing a piece of paper, "Here's your sodding list. Next time you come to me... don't." Dropping the paper to the floor, he turned on his heel and headed for the door.

Grindelwald finally looked up from his book.

"You think you have that choice?"

"You come asking me to do something for you and then you do this to me?" Donald's retort had venom in it.

"I specifically made sure you were out of the way." A shrug.

"And what if I'd gone in that night? What if there was something I'd forgotten? What if... what if I'd left Mary's gift in my desk?" Donald took a small but elegantly wrapped box from his pocket and brandished it angrily to make his point.

"Then it would have gone very badly for you, wouldn't it?" Grindelwald stood and started to advance.

"Do you even have a concept of friendship, Dietfried? Do you know what a friend is? Friends aren't just people who sit and banter, friends don't nonchalantly let each other die!" He was shouting by now.

"And here you are. Alive and well and kicking. Actually, I don't recommend the kicking part. I've been kicked before. I don't like it." Grindelwald was deadly quiet, but Donald was too angry. Reason was silenced in his head. He shot out with his foot and kicked Grindelwald in the shins as hard as he could.

"Right, then. That does it." With the flash of a wand, there was only one man left standing. Grindelwald stooped over, and picked up the remains of Donald MacVicar.

"You're right. Stuffed penguins are absolutely adorable. You make an especially cute one, Don."

Putting the plush toy on a shelf along with the elegantly wrapped box that had fallen by its side, he curled back up on the couch and turned the page.

--==[[<>]]==--

Night, Saturday, 25 December, 1937

MacVicar Residence, Chelmsford

Soup simmered on the stove, sending the scent of onion throughout the house. Mary took a whiff, thought for a minute, and then dropped some black pepper into the pot. Donald was due home any minute.

Almost as if that thought were the cue, Mary heard the front door open.

"Took you long enough, Donny! Soup's just about on!" she called out without turning around.

"Soup, eh? If I'd known you were making dinner, I'd have brought cookies or something. Maybe a few pears to go around."

Mary dropped the ladle and spun when she heard Dietfried's voice. Breathing heavily, she laughed.

"D, you scared me! I was expecting Donny. What are you doing here? Are you staying for dinner?"

"Only if you'll have me, Mary. I really just dropped by to bring something over that Don left at my apartment." Dietfried produced a stuffed penguin with a ruby and gold bracelet around its neck.

"Oh!" was all Mary could think to say.

"I take it this means something to you?" Grindelwald's eyes twinkled.

Mary stared at the bracelet, and let out another, "Oh!" before getting a more intelligible, "He said it was better than a penguin! Oh! The two of you are incorrigible! All right, you can come out now, Donny! Where are you?" Mary started to look around.

"We're not in on anything this time. I couldn't tell you where he is, really."

Mary paled. "What? That's not like him."

A shrug. "What can I say? I last saw him this afternoon."

"Dietfried, would you at least stay for dinner? It would give me peace of mind if I weren't waiting for him alone."

"Of course. What are friends for?"