"Yes," Vogel admitted with shame, nodding as a flicker of red light passed through his eyes while he looked at the unconscious, battered Etienne.
"If you need to contact me, send your letter to the Greengrass family in Britain. I'll be off now—no, wait."
Tom stopped mid-step and turned to MacDuff.
"In the future, don't go looking for trouble with Newt Scamander. All it'll do is make people think the Saints can't take a loss—too afraid to challenge Dumbledore, so you bully Newt instead. Is that what Grindelwald's been teaching you? To pick on the weak and fear the strong?"
MacDuff's face flushed crimson under the rebuke, but he couldn't muster a single word in response.
Tom gave him one last, disdainful glance before Apparating away.
Vogel and the others didn't linger either. The commotion earlier had been anything but subtle, and it wouldn't be long before Ministry wizards arrived. Best to leave this place before trouble caught up.
Besides, they had to deal with Etienne's family—and certain preparations needed to be made quickly.
He'd given Tom his word that everything would be resolved before morning. There was no room for sloppiness.
As for meeting Rosier? Neither side brought it up—it was too trivial to mention. If these Saints couldn't even handle something that simple, they weren't worth keeping around.
Sure enough, less than an hour after Tom and the Saints departed, a team of Aurors tracked the magical disturbances to the quarry. They pulled out a few detection instruments, and when the readings came back, their expressions changed drastically.
"Someone used Fiendfyre here!"
Fiendfyre—the eternal nightmare of Paris's wizarding community. They had nearly lost their entire city to it once, and the trauma still lingered.
The Aurors wasted no time. They raced back to the Ministry to report.
The Ministry reacted at once, deploying large numbers of wizards to track down any suspicious individuals.
And then, that very same night, the Etienne family was annihilated.
Every single one of their more than ten members dead without exception—poisoned. The investigation concluded it happened when a potion was being brewed incorrectly, producing lethal fumes.
But given the timing—and the family's known connections—several high-ranking Ministry officials could not help but feel suspicious.
The entire French wizarding world became tense.
In moments like these, the French Minister for Magic proved himself far more capable than Britain's Cornelius Fudge. If Fudge had been in charge, his first instinct would have been to sweep it under the rug.
After all, if nothing had officially happened, it was all just speculation—and without visible consequences, they could just "play the music and keep dancing."
But all of this had nothing to do with Tom. For the time being, he had no reason to contact the Saints again. Once he returned to Britain, it would be easier—no need for the level of caution he'd shown today. Under Dumbledore's protection, most Britons had no real grasp of how dangerous the Saints truly were.
…
Back at Nicolas Flamel's manor, Tom finally received the magical notebook he'd been eyeing for a long time and began studying it.
In the original events, Nicolas had used this very notebook to communicate with Eulalie Hicks across the ocean—one of the few real-time long-distance communication methods in the wizarding world.
But it wasn't without flaws. Nicolas had first intended to contact Dumbledore, but when he couldn't find him, he'd reluctantly turned to Hicks.
After two days of research, Tom finally understood how it worked.
Each page was essentially a magical frame. When a contact stepped into the designated spot, they would appear in the frame like a "living portrait." If Nicolas opened his notebook, he too would appear in the other person's frame, allowing them to converse as though standing face-to-face in a painting.
But if the person wasn't standing in their frame, there was no way to reach them.
When Tom asked Nicolas for the details of its creation, he realized the flaws were significant.
The materials alone were extravagant—Nicolas was wealthy beyond measure and had never once considered cost.
More importantly, the system was limited: Nicolas's notebook was the "main unit," and the other frames were "secondary units." The main unit could contact any secondary unit and vice versa, but secondary units could not contact each other.
Still, the magical signal-conversion process inspired Tom greatly.
Nicolas, upon hearing Tom's ideas, even offered suggestions—giving Tom several valuable insights.
…
As August drew to a close, Tom settled into a steady routine: two and a half days of study, and the remaining half-day spent taking Fleur out to relax.
They couldn't travel far, but together they explored nearly every corner of Paris's magical district.
Tom even visited France's equivalent of Diagon Alley—Montmartre Hidden Square—a bustling, expansive marketplace nearly twice the size of Diagon Alley, with dazzling shops and magical goods of every kind.
It was then Tom truly realized—Merlin's beard, Britain really was a backwater. Without Dumbledore holding up the country's reputation, it would have long since slipped into being a second-rate magical nation.
…
Time flew. Before Tom knew it, August was ending and the Hogwarts term was just days away.
On his last day in France, Tom arrived at the Delacour home, gifts in hand.
Fleur's mood was subdued, and Gabrielle's was no better. Both knew Tom would be leaving soon, and neither was happy about it.
"It's not like we can't stay in touch after I'm gone," Tom said. "No need to be so gloomy."
Fleur countered, "Writing letters is a hassle. It takes two or three days to get a reply—it's far too slow."
Gabrielle bobbed her head vigorously. "Exactly! And I still don't know how to write a lot of words. I always have to ask big sister for help."
"Then you'd better start learning," Tom said, tapping the little girl's forehead.
"When I was your age, I already knew English, French, and German."
"It's all big sister's fault!" Gabrielle declared, entirely serious. "She stole all my cleverness. That's why I'm this slow."
Both Tom and Fleur couldn't help but laugh. So, according to Gabrielle, the sisters' combined intelligence was fixed—if their mother had another child, would that one be doomed to drooling and babbling?
The little one's innocent words scattered the heavy mood of parting. Tom then placed his gifts before Fleur and Gabrielle.
"What's this?" Fleur asked curiously.
A green-covered notebook lay before her, its cover marked with a chat bubble emblem containing a tiny phone.
"This," Tom said with a mysterious smile, "is something you can call… WhatsApp."