Fantastic Beasts 3

She's Gone

NEAR THE GREAT HALL

Dumbledore made his way to the aurors to tell them of his discovery, biting back tears. He saw Torquil Travers was still standing where he was before, watching Grindelwald's acolytes get forced out of the school.

"Travers, there's something I need to show–"

"Dumbledore!"

Dumbledore spun on his heel to see Newt running after him. 

"Yes?"

"It's not... him," Newt said carefully as he realised that Travers was listening.

"What do you mean?"

"He's not dead, it's someone else. Must have been disguised as him."

"Who on earth are you talking about?" Travers asked.

"Oh, nothing important," Newt replied.

Just as he was about to interrogate further, Theseus stepped forward and said, "I'll go with them and see what the problem is." Travers nodded curtly and let the three go.

"So what happened?" Theseus asked Newt as they hurried up the switching stairs.

"Well, Dumbledore found Grindelwald's dead body in a corridor, but then after he left to go let the Ministry know, the body changed into Queenie's."

Dumbledore and Theseus looked at him, shocked.

"Must have been polyjuice or something," He mumbled, hiding from their eyes as a tear rolled down his cheek.

As they reached the highest floor, Newt led them to Queenie's corpse. Tina sat beside her sister. She had stopped crying, even though the skin around her eyes was swollen and her eyes were red. She seemed as if she had become emotionally numb.

"I know what happened to her," She muttered to Newt as he sat down beside her, leaning against the wall.

"What?"

"You know how I said Grindelwald's eyes looked cloudy?" She said, turning to look at him, "It was because that was actually Queenie. He didn't kill her when they found her, they used her as a distraction."

Newt nodded, about to cry himself at the sight of her. The fire in her eyes had gone out. She could not have looked more emotionally exhausted at that moment and his heart ached for her to be ok.

"So when he told me she was still alive, he was probably telling the truth at the time. He probably just assumed she was still alive because he kept her alive..."

As she continued to talk to him, Dumbledore examined her body.

"...I'm just so sick of losing her over and over again. First to Grindelwald, then I had her back for... two weeks? Maybe less?"

Tears began to trail down her face again. Newt pulled her close to him and let her cry into his shirt.

"She's alive," Dumbledore said abruptly after a while of silence.

"What?" Newt asked, looking up. Theseus gave him a questioning look, too.

"She's alive, just petrified."

"How can you tell?" Theseus asked.

"Well, if what Miss Goldstein says about Queenie being imperiused, then she can't be dead. The basilisk kills when someone looks directly into its eyes, correct? Well if Queenie was imperiused and whoever imperiused her was looking through her eyes to control her, then, in theory, they would be dead, not her."

"That's a bit far-fetched," Theseus countered, "What if whoever imperiused her was following her? They wouldn't need to see what she's seeing."

"No, but I can also tell by the way her limbs have stiffened. A regular corpse's limbs will stiffen over time in a process known as rigor mortis, but when someone is petrified their muscles will harden instantly and remain that way."