Burned Into Glory

Visions of Horrors

"Enter." Grindelwald looked up from the Austrian wizarding newspaper on his desk as the door to his office opened. Queenie and Vinda came walking in together, which surprised him until Queenie said quite happily,

"We... have been party planning!"

"Oh, you have, have you?" Grindelwald smirked a little, glad to see Vinda in something of a cheerful mood after Larsen's recent execution in London and the breakup of her engagement before that. Vinda bounced on the balls of her feet just a little and pronounced,

"Queenie found ze perfect spot for ze party, Monsieur. A non-Magique mansion - Tullnhaus - outside the city, in a town called Klosterneuburg."

"I know the place well," Grindelwald nodded, and Queenie continued,

"We went to visit the No-Majs and Confounded them, pretending we were seamstresses for the wife," Queenie shrugged. "It's how we examined the place. When we decided the place was perfect for hosting the party, we Confounded them into going to their other home in Salzburg that weekend."

"Perfect," purred Grindelwald. He drummed his fingers on his desk and pulled out a scrap of parchment and a quill. He began to write neatly.

My brother and sister wizards,

Kindly join me for a party to discuss a great vision of our future which I have foreseen and wish to share with you all. We will celebrate our fellowship with drinks and dancing at the conclusion of our discussion. Tullnhaus, Klosterneuberg, eight in the evening this Friday next."

He handed the note to Vinda and said tightly, "I'd like this multiplied and distributed among those most likely to donate. This vision is particularly shocking and will likely elicit large amounts of funding from donors who have the means to give."

Queenie and Vinda looked at one another, and Queenie asked carefully,

"Can you show us the vision?"

He rose from his chair and went to the shelf along the wall where he kept his Seeing Skull. He cleared his throat and pulled it off the shelf, and then he came back to his desk, sat again, and put the hookah mouthpiece between his lips. He took a long drag on the mouthpiece, inhaling deeply and letting his eyes roll back, letting the vision wash over him. He puffed out the smoke in a great breath that blew inky black throughout the office.

Suddenly a horrifying image filled the space above the three of them. There were men in uniforms on white horses, slowly walking along rows of emaciated, ill-looking prisoners beside a barbed wire fence. Queenie gasped. The image transformed until there were naked women, their hair having been shorn short, standing inside a shower room, and suddenly they were all shivering and screaming, clutching at each other and the walls as they appeared to suffocate. The image changed again, until a uniformed man was shown aiming a firearm - one of the non-Magical weapons that had proven so deadly in previous wars - at a quivering elderly man in stripes. He fired the weapon, and the elderly man collapsed, bloodied and dead, lying in snow. The entire vision gave way then, and as Grindelwald set his skull down, Vinda's eyes went wide, and Queenie demanded,

"What was happening there?"

"It was a tangent of the war I showed in Paris," Grindelwald explained calmly. "A genocide they will perpetrate on the basis of religion, creed, belief. They will seek to exterminate some of their own kind through the most egregious acts of violence, and it is only by taking a few lives to save a great many that we can - and must - stop them."

Vinda shrugged a little and demanded, "Why not let them kill themselves off, if they are so hopelessly violent and destructive?"

"Vinda!" Queenie gasped. "We can't let that happen! Those poor women. It looked like what Jacob told me about the trenches, about the gas they used against the soldiers. They were suffocating them! We can't let them do that to themselves!"