Chapter Text
Queenie wakes her up early at dawn, far too early, if the still dark sky is anything to go by. Tina opens her eyes only to glare at her sister, but Queenie’s whole face seems to shine with unspoken words. She sighs, moves around the bed to sit up and properly look at Queenie.
“There’s a forest outside,” Queenie says, eyes serious despite the smile on her lips. Tina frowns. For a moment she thinks maybe she’s still dreaming. Queenie laughs at that. “You’re awake, silly, I would know.”
“We’re in the middle of the city,” she says once she manages to find her words. “There are barely any trees around, let alone a forest.”
“I know. That’s what makes it exciting.”
***
There is, Tina finds out once she leaves the house ten minutes later, a forest outside. Or what seems like the entrance to one. It stands just a few feet away from their house’s entrance, thick and menacing and tall, and Tina has to pinch her arm to check, again, if she’s asleep. With the slight pain, Queenie’s words come back as well. She was also correct about the being awake part, it seems.
Queenie is right behind her, the smile still wide and bright on her face. “See? I told you so.”
“Sorry I didn’t believe you,” Tina replies and turns back to stare at the forest with wide eyes. It seems to swallow the street and the houses, making a clear division between the parts that are forest and the parts that aren’t.
“It’s fine,” Queenie says with a shrug. She takes one last look at the forest, intertwines her arm with Tina’s and begins walking towards Woolworth Building. “This is gonna be a fun one to figure out.”
***
Tina gets swiped away to a meeting the moment they set foot inside the MACUSA. Queenie waves her goodbye before walking to her desk.
“This is a serious matter,” Director Graves is saying when Tina enters the room. The Madam President stands next to him by the table, looking at what seem to be photographs of the forest, taken from different parts of the city.
“Good morning,” Tina says and walks towards the table to join the others. They both spare her a look and nod in greeting, but soon go back to staring at the photographs. Tina can’t blame them, not when she’s seen the situation with her own two eyes. “Do we know how far it reaches?”
“We can’t know for sure,” the Madam President replies. “We have no communication with the quarters on the other side of the forest. We won’t know if we don’t go into it.”
“Are we?” Tina asks. When both of them look at her with equal frowns in their faces, she adds, “going in, I mean.”
Director Grave’s face is somber as he replies.
“None of the spells we’ve tried on it have helped understand it or get rid of it,” he says. “We have no other way of knowing what we are up against.”
***
The first party they send into the forest doesn’t make it back. They stop hearing from them an hour after they set foot past the barrier of trees, and finally decide to consider them lost a week later.
There’s no better luck with the second party, or the third. The moment they lose communication with the fourth, the Madam President calls an emergency meeting with all Aurors left in the building. They’re barely more than thirty.
“We need a new course of action,” she says, voice as strong as ever, even though there’s a frantic edge that coats it. Mumbles travel through the room increasingly concerned with every passing second. Finally, a man stands up, clears his throat. The Aurors on the chairs next to his look at him intently, nod and mutter, as if to give him strength.
“What if,” he finally says. His voice has a certain shake to it, like that of a man who doesn’t believe in what he’s about to say. Tina closes her eyes, braces herself for literally anything. He clears his throat again before continuing, “what if a creature is causing the disappearances?”
Tina opens her eyes, slightly shocked. At the front of the room, she can see the Madam President and Director Graves exchange a look. He stands from his seat and looks around the room with uneasy eyes.
“That’s a plausible theory,” he says. He pauses then, looking at the ground with a thoughtful frown before continuing. “There’s no one in our ranks with the experience and knowledge needed to tell for sure. If there really is a creature, sending more people will only make us lose more Aurors.”
The mood in the room seems to fall even more, if that were possible. The mumbling in the room starts up again, louder, more agitated. Tina knows, without having to think too much on it, that they are running out of ideas. If no one else can come up with something soon, people are going to start panicking. And they all know very well what the effects of panic can be.
Tina closes her eyes again. Around her, the mumbling grows louder, fills the room, wraps around everything and everyone. There’s a certain kind of panic about the noise, an obvious attempt to come up with something, anything , that might help, that might point them in the right direction. And Tina is trying to focus, trying to make her thoughts swim against the noise, trying, like everyone else, to find a way to help. But she can’t . She can’t think and the noise keeps getting louder and she can almost taste the fear around her and—
“I know someone,” Tina shouts above the noise. And, like coming up for air after being too long underwater, the noise stops. The Madam President is looking at her with expectant eyes, and Tina can almost see the relief clear in her face. She takes a breath and repeats, “I know someone.”
***
Technically speaking, Tina doesn’t know Newt Scamander, not personally; she knows of them, has read some of their papers and essays about fantastic creatures—not that she’s ever been overly invested on the field of magizoology, but Queenie kind of is, so there’s always at least one book on the topic lying around the house. She also knows their brother, Theseus Scamander—also thanks to Queenie, though Tina has promised never to tell that story, so she refuses to even think about it.
She doesn’t tell this to Director Graves or the Madam President. She just tells them that she knows someone in Great Britain who could perhaps help them. The statement is met with uncertain looks, and whispered words, but finally, the Madam President looks at her in the eye and nods.
“Do what you must.”
Tina has no illusions. She knows her words sound shady at best and outright illegal at worst. She knows there would be questions and reprimands if they weren’t all so desperate. As it is, she gets two equal nods and free rein to do whatever she deems necessary.
Tina nods as well and leaves the office, already drafting in her head the letter she’ll send Theseus Scamander.