hollow // credence barebone

17. escape

———

credence had found it both admirable and morbid by how easy elise made it to break into highly protected governmental buildings at 3 in the bloody morning.

ever since he joined circus arcanus, he began learning the basics of magic. at first, he hardly understrood the conversations he overheard. they might as well speak a foreign language with the amount of unknown words that fell from their lips. slowly and after much confusion, he comprehended enough to semi-function in the magical world. then, he began experimenting.

first, he watched the passing wizards as they called for things to come flying to them, or for the lights to come aglow. he knew he could do those things, but not exactly how to that on purpose. his first attempt at putting theory into practice ended up with shattering every single lightbulb in one kilometre ratio, instead of making the lamp magically turn on. it resembled the way he functioned in an obscurial state, with only half of his actions driven by him while the rest came with some animalistic flow he had no control over.

since then, he opted to be more careful. and it wasn't only about the spells he practiced, but also about the way he looked. realising that his face was likely to become a bounty, he found nagini's friendship to be very helpful. other than changing into a beast at night, she was very skilled at human transfiguration. she could completely shift his features until he didn't resemble himself any more. the only issue was that the charm would stop working at night, so they had to repeat the unpleasant procedure every morning before circus arcanus woke up.

gradually, credence could find enough balance in his fingers to keep the candle's flame slowly levitate over his opened palm. the magic inside him was bubbling and taking sharp turns, making it incred difficult to stop the flame from spreading. only if he concentrated hard enough would he be able to deliver magic without explosions. and each time, he'd be shivering in sweat and running out of breath.

but elise's magic was not as untamed as his. hers was precise and silent, as without making a single sound she unlocked the door to the hidden gabinet in the government's office and gestured for him to follow. the grace in which she stuffed the wand back into her pocket had something strangely ethereal about it.

all around them, on tall wooden bookcases, hundreds of thousands of papers piled up in a formidable mess. elise assessed the room before announcing, "well, that's about every single birth certificate of every single person alive or dead in france in the recent twenty years."

credence gazed up to the very top of the high ceiling where the bookcases finally ended, "this is madness. elise, you're actually crazy."

"this is by far not the craziest thing i've done in my life. and i can't believe you didn't think about breaking in here earlier."

"i don't know how to do that sort of thing without destroying a building or two and causing the local police to chase me."

"lucky for you that i do." she spared him the stories of her hogwarts days and the countless cases of breaking into spaces she was not supposed to be. she particularly enjoyed professor slughorn's potion stack, for it was a free practice land that had only once ended in detention. she still remembered polishing all the trophies in the trophy room, cringing at the memory.

"alright," credence sighed. "and how are we going to find that one document in this entire p-"

elise waved her wand, "accio!" and a single sheet of paper came soaring straight onto her opened hand.

"-lace," he finished, his eyes big enough to cover his entire face. he looked at her as if she just grew a couple new limbs. "are you serious?"

she looked at him with a smug smile, "you're most welcome."