"It's really none of your damn business, Harris," Ian hissed, his voice dropping into a low, jagged whisper that felt like a serrated blade.
He didn't pull back. Instead, he leaned in closer across the table, his eyes narrowing until they were nothing but chips of cold blue flint. The arrogance radiating off him was stifling. Every syllable was spat out from behind clenched teeth, a warning for Allen to back off before things turned ugly.
"I saw it, Ian. The glow. That little glass vial wasn't filled with sugar," Allen replied, his own voice steady, though his heart was hammering against his ribs. He locked eyes with the American wizard, refusing to blink. There was a detective's instinct screaming in the back of his mind, a desperate need to understand the 'why' behind such a blatant betrayal. "What are you doing to her?"
"I said, stay out of it," Ian growled, his hand twitching toward the pocket where he kept his wand.
Allen didn't wait for the draw. In one fluid motion, he lunged from his chair, his hand blurring across the table toward Jessica's discarded coffee cup.
Snap.
Ian was fast—scary fast. His wand was out and leveled at Allen's forehead before Allen's fingers even closed around the ceramic rim. The air in the room crackled with the static of an impending curse.
But Allen didn't flinch. He gripped the spiked cup firmly, holding it aloft like a trophy or a grenade. He stared down the length of Ian's wand, his expression devoid of fear. He was gambling on the fact that Ian wouldn't dare fire a loud curse while his sister was just a floor above them.
"Tell me what this is," Allen demanded, his voice a low vibration. "Or I drop it, and we can explain the mess to Jessica together."
Ian's face contorted, a mix of fury and genuine desperation flickering across his features. He looked at the cup, then at the stairs, then back at Allen. Finally, he let out a sharp, ragged breath.
"It's Swooping Evil venom," he confessed, the words sounding muffled, as if they were being dragged out of him against his will.
Allen's eyebrows shot up. He hadn't expected the truth so easily. "Venom? You're drugging your sister with a brain-scrambler because of a Muggle priest?"
"I can't beat her in a duel, okay?" Ian's voice cracked slightly, his bravado slipping. "She's faster than me. Always has been. And I can't... I can't bring myself to point a wand at her face and cast a Memory Charm. It feels too much like an assault. But this? This is subtle. This is supposed to help."
"Help?" Allen scoffed, looking at the dark liquid in the cup with newfound disgust. "Ian, Swooping Evil venom is used to erase bad memories. It's selective. It's not a blank slate. How can you be so sure that Simon is a 'bad' memory for her? What if she enjoyed the conversation? What if it's a neutral memory? You'll just end up making her dizzy or erasing something else entirely."
Ian froze. The confusion on his face was genuine. "What? No, Leonard said... he said it wipes the slate clean. He said it was the most effective way to deal with exposure."
"Then Leonard gave you a half-baked lesson," Allen retorted. "It's a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. It targets trauma. If Jessica doesn't view her pity for that priest as a traumatic event, the venom won't touch it. You're being reckless, Ian. You're so obsessed with 'protecting' her from the law that you're willing to experiment on her brain."
"Is it really that selective?" Ian whispered, his wand lowering an inch.
"In my opinion, you're completely overthinking this," Allen said, trying to lower the temperature in the room. "To Jessica, that priest is a passing shadow. A curious footnote in a long winter. She'll have forgotten his name by next Tuesday. You're treating a papercut like a terminal illness."
As Allen spoke, a dark thought crossed his mind. This family is a bit too 'Lannister' for my liking, he mused. He made a mental note to stay far away from any high windows or balconies while staying at the house. He didn't fancy ending up like Bran Stark just because he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to.
At their age, emotions felt like mountains. A moment of guilt felt like an eternal burden, and Ian was clearly projecting his own fears onto his sister. He wanted to solve a problem that hadn't even finished manifesting yet.
The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of heels sounded on the wooden stairs.
"She's coming back," Allen warned.
Jessica appeared at the landing, looking absolutely radiant. She had traded her stained sweater for a chic, Chanel-style knit dress that hugged her frame perfectly. She'd even taken the time to redo her hair, pinning it up into a sophisticated bun held together by tiny, shimmering pearls. It was the classic "I'm fine" look—an armor of beauty to hide the morning's lingering gloom.
Under Ian's panicked gaze, Allen calmly set the coffee cup back in its original saucer. He leaned back in his chair, watching Ian.
"Well?" Allen murmured, the question hanging in the air. "Is she drinking it or not?"
Jessica slid back into her seat, her eyes bright and her mood seemingly transformed. "Right! Let's finish our caffeine and get back to the hunt. We've wasted enough of the day on melodrama."
She reached for the cup. Her fingers brushed the handle.
CRAAASH!
The sound of shattering porcelain exploded in the quiet room. Ian had lunged forward, his hand swinging out with enough force to send the cup flying against the far wall. Dark coffee and venom splashed across the floorboards in a jagged Rorschach test of failure.
Jessica froze, her hand still hovering in mid-air, her mouth slightly agape. "Ian? What in the name of Merlin is wrong with you?"
"There was... a spider," Ian stammered, his face turning a brilliant shade of crimson. He looked incredibly guilty, but his improvisational skills were working overtime. "A massive, hairy thing. It dropped right from the ceiling into your cup. I didn't have time to warn you, I just... I had to stop you from drinking it."
He looked so earnest and horrified that Jessica actually blinked, her anger turning into a mild, sisterly annoyance. "A spider? You almost gave me a heart attack over a bug! And now look—the floor is a mess."
"Better the floor than your stomach," Ian said, regaining his composure and offering her a shaky grin.
Allen didn't say a word. He just flicked his wand, and the shattered pieces of the cup flew back together, sealing seamlessly. Another wave of the wand, and the stains vanished from the wood as if they had never existed.
"So reckless," Jessica muttered, though she didn't seem truly mad.
Ian eagerly grabbed a clean cup from the kitchen, refilled it with fresh, untainted coffee, and presented it to her with the flourish of a courtier. The crisis had passed, neutralized by a "spider" and a broken cup.
"So," Jessica said, taking a sip of the new coffee. "Where to next, Oh Great Hunter?"
She looked at Allen, and Ian followed suit, his expression now uncharacteristically humble.
"We need somewhere quiet but expansive," Allen mused, tapping his chin. "Somewhere with trees, water, and enough space for a large creature to hide without being stepped on by a thousand Muggles. Does New York have anything like that?"
"Central Park," the siblings said in perfect unison.
"I think I saw a sign for it when we landed yesterday," Allen recalled. "It's a massive green lung right in the middle of the concrete. If I were a magical beast, that's exactly where I'd go to feel less claustrophobic."
They threw on their heavy coats, the leather creaking in the cold air. Allen offered his arms, and with a familiar, stomach-churning twist, they vanished from the house.
They reappeared at the edge of Central Park. It was a weekday, and the biting winter wind had chased away all but the most dedicated joggers. The park was a sprawling landscape of frost-covered grass and skeletal trees. They walked quickly, their boots crunching on the frozen earth.
As they neared the small zoo area, Allen suddenly pulled up short. He held up a hand, his eyes scanning the horizon.
"We're too late," he said, his voice heavy with disappointment.
"What do you mean?" Jessica asked, looking around the empty path. "I don't see anything."
"The MACUSA Aurors," Allen explained, pointing toward a patch of trampled snow near the lion enclosure. "They've already swept this area. Probably within the last hour."
"How could you possibly know that?" Ian asked, his old skepticism returning. "I don't see any footprints that don't look like Muggle sneakers."
Allen smiled mysteriously. "I happen to be quite good at listening. And the locals here... well, they're very talkative if you know the right frequency."
He turned toward the lion enclosure. A massive male lion was pacing back and forth, let out a low, rumbling roar that sounded like a rusty engine. He was looking at his mate and letting out a series of huffs and growls.
To Jessica and Ian, it was just zoo noises. To Allen, it was a play-by-play commentary.
"And then the two-legged ones with the sticks pointed them at the Big Gray Horn-Nose," the lion was 'saying' to the lioness. "It vanished into thin air! Poof! I told you, woman, the world is ending."
"You're an idiot, Leo," the lioness replied, yawning. "I saw it too. They didn't eat it. They just moved it. Now shut up so I can sleep."
Allen relayed the gist of the conversation to the stunned siblings. "It was an Erumpent. Gray, rhinoceros-shaped, big glowing horn. Very valuable, very dangerous. The Congress agents bagged it and moved on."
"An Erumpent in the middle of Manhattan?" Ian whistled. "That's a disaster waiting to happen. If that horn had touched a taxi, the whole block would be a crater."
But Allen wasn't done. He walked further down, toward the ostrich pens. The large birds were clustered together, their long necks swaying like cobras as they hissed and chirped at each other.
"Did you see the men in the long robes?" one female ostrich cooed. "So many sticks! But they weren't all together. The angry ones went toward the stone gardens."
"The ones who live in the cemetery?" another replied, fluttering its wings. "The ones looking for the ghost man? Henry Jones? I heard them say his name."
Allen froze. Henry Jones. That wasn't a name related to magical beasts. That was a name he'd seen in the briefing about the prison break—a high-value person of interest.
"What is it?" Jessica asked, seeing the change in his expression.
"The animals saw more than just the Aurors," Allen said, his voice dropping an octave. "There was another group here. Not looking for beasts. They were looking for a man named Henry Jones. And they mentioned a cemetery."
"A cemetery?" Ian frowned. "There are dozens of those in New York."
"We need to get this information back to Leonard and Flitwick," Allen said, his mind already spinning with the implications. "The beast hunt just got a lot more complicated. It's not just about runaway pets anymore—we're standing in the middle of a manhunt."
With one last look at the squabbling ostriches, Allen grabbed their arms.
"Hold on."
Crack.
The park was empty once more. The male ostrich looked at the spot where they had been and buried his head in a pile of sand.
"Definitely ghosts," he muffled into the dirt.