antebellum [t. riddle]

bonus ii: all the presidents men

march 1945

FROM THE DESK OF SERAPHINA PICQUERY

do you take pride in the destruction that you have caused to our world? i wonder at times— i give you far more credit than you deserve, i believe. when i think of you, i think of a tyrant and a warlord, but not a madman. but when you facilitate actions like this that cause such unnecessary chaos in the cruelest of ways, it makes me think otherwise. you act in the most gruesome, disgusting ways i could ever imagine and every time i wonder why the universe would grant magic to someone who could behave this way. 

many muggles hold a belief that there will come a day of reckoning where every man will be judged for his sins and punished based on the severity of them. sometimes, i think that your existence in this world is a punishment for all of wizardkind— for some great sin we have collectively committed, yet none of us are privy to.

this was rash, irrational, and horrific, grindelwald. you truly make me sick.

do you even know who you killed? desecrating a funeral, of all places, to kill those who have never so much as raised a wand to fight you. secretaries, office aides, and the like. they died at the hands of your army, many of them terrified and bleeding out and being trampled all at once. you killed them, or allow them to be killed, in horrible ways, and yet you remain so indifferent that it makes me wonder if you've forgotten that these are human beings and magicalkind.

tiberius blackwood was a neuro-healer who trained for years with the sole purpose of aiming to heal. his heart was pulled from his body and placed in his hands. carlisle craft was director allen's nephew and was writing a biography of his uncle's professional career. he was found with his entire body drained of blood. isobela griffith was just a year out of school, only a child still, and worked her first job as a clerical aide in the department of games and sports. one of your followers blew her face off with a miscast bombarda and half of her skull has still yet to be found. 

she was 18 years old. a child. how do you sleep at night knowing you sentenced an 18-year-old to death?

and all this destruction you've caused— all for what? 

was it just a show of strength, to prove how many murders you could complete on a group of unsuspecting people only trying to mourn? was it just opportunity— a public event at a public place because we all know how much you love the spotlight?

no— i think it was because despite all of your claims and protestations of macusa's incompetence, you are still not able to locate the agent you so desperately search for. 

your attempts are incredibly useless and feeble. the spies you have within our walls— the ones you think we are not aware of— even they come up empty handed when grasping at straws for information on her. 

so, instead, you hoped to draw her out to you. but again, you were proven wrong. 

you assume that every individual who fights against you is of a bleeding-heart and is willing to do anything to defeat the evil that you embody, but you are wrong. many of us are tactical, and calculated, and are willing to take the hard losses that some do not have the heart for. 

she is one of them. 

she is never going to step up to fight you, grindelwald. she is never going to jump in front of a moving train and hope to change its direction. she is never going to put herself in the front of the crowd and beg you to spare the rest because she is smart enough to know that she is a piece in a much larger game. she is no coward, and she understands the meaning of 'the greater good' far more thoroughly than you will ever be able to.