New Fears [Tamatha]

[finn kylie nottingham]

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Her lungs felt seared and her eyes were still burning from the smoke inhalation inside the castle. Everything was so much worse than what she had anticipated upon her arrival at Hogwarts. Calling the interior of the castle chaos didn’t describe the scene nearly well enough by the time the Ministry moved in to start handling things. Collapsed walls and flames, fiendfyre and otherwise, crawling up the shells of empty portraits and licking at the cavernous ceilings of what she was told was once the Great Hall. Conducting search and rescue amidst a potentially collapsing building was not how she had viewed her first visit to Hogwarts would go; no, that was supposed to be her sister’s graduation in a month. Her parents had just purchased the plane tickets a few months earlier and Ellie had been overjoyed about it. Now Finn didn’t even know where her sister was. Inside? Outside? Hogsmeade or Hogwarts? Alive or dead?

There had been bodies strewn across the floor in the Great Hall, though according to one of the professors still in there trying to evacuate when her team arrived, they were merely paralyzed by some sort of potion that seemed to have been in that night’s dinner. She was no good at dealing with fiendfyre, but apparently her history with leveling buildings was well thought of when it came to clearing rubble and large groups of bodies out of the castle. Every small, still body was levitated with the utmost care and brought to a newly formed staging area that the first healers on the scene had created. There wasn’t enough time for her to check pulses to see if they were alive or not, though it was always a relief when she made eye contact and saw the terrified, frozen faces blink back at her. Keeping herself composed every time this happened was so painful because she knew they were aware of everything going on around them and were unable to do anything about it. At least with the ones she was unsure of, she could mentally trick herself that they weren’t conscious. Briefly dehumanizing the paralyzed students while she ran back and forth through the entrance was the only way she could keep herself moving throughout the whole ordeal.

As more Ministry members and first-responders arrived to help, she was finally given a break. Whispers of the fiendfyre being quelled were spreading, but that didn’t remove the immediacy of getting students to safety. Eventually she was told to head back towards a staging area in Hogsmeade and help control the incoming crowd of parents and onlookers, who were rightfully trying to find their children safe. Exhausted and skin black with ash and debris, Finn hobbled along the path that led back towards the wizarding town. A barrier had been erected near the gates that led off of the Hogwarts grounds and students that had been safely cleared or needed minor treatment were being lined up and led through one at a time. She still hadn’t found her sister or seen anyone that would know her. Ellie was smart though, and if she had gotten out, she would have made sure to get as far away as possible.

Finn was ordered by whomever seemed to be leading the gate security towards the medic tents near the edge of town, saying that they needed a few more bodies there to keep the parents from busting in and disrupting the healers. She nodded that she understood and headed off in the direction that she was pointed to. A few parents tried to ask her questions but immediately turned away when they saw the glazed over look in her eyes when she failed to respond. This was all too much and pretty soon she was going to have to put her work face back on. The healers needed the time and patience to do their jobs uninterrupted.

The amount of students that flooded the streets of Hogsmeade was alarming to her as she walked, and the realization hit that aside from those injured or still being evacuated, most of the student body seemed to be here. While she still had her job to do, she started to look around at the faces of those she passed by, hoping she’d catch a silver tie of Ravenclaw or a familiar Ilvermorny face. Ellie’s friends weren’t totally unknown to her, but she was sure she could pick one or two of them out if need be.

A particularly larger group of girls huddled near one of the buildings caught Finn’s eye, one of them talking to a woman. Whatever was said between the two of them, the woman started to wobble immediately and tried to keep herself standing with the support of the building’s wall. Finn pushed herself over to them and put her arms underneath the woman to try and cushion what looked to be a fall. One of the girl’s said quietly that they had just told her that her sister had died, a Cameron Berg, and Finn realized that meant this was Tamatha Berg she was helping. While a few years apart, they had both been in Wampus together. Finn remembered her name, at least. “Easy…easy. I’m going to help you sit down, okay?” She didn’t dare ask the girls standing there if they had seen Ellie. That wouldn’t be fair at all.

tamatha josée berg ● 898 ● Follow You Down by Lights

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[tamatha josée berg]

TW/CW: Death, mention of vomit

May 15, 2026

"Easy… easy," said a voice that Tamatha thought for a moment belonged to one of the Ilvermorny girls with whom she'd been conversing before she had been relayed the news about Cameron. "I'm going to help you sit down, okay?" At that point, she didn't care very much whose voice it was, but there was a certain comfort in hearing that it was almost certainly an American. Tamatha realized that it was another grown woman—relative to the teenagers, anyway—who had spoken to her, and she vaguely recognized her features. She was probably about the age that they would have been in school together, not that Tamatha's mind was terribly focused on placing her. All that she knew was that she was familiar enough that she felt somehow safer that way.

Tamatha's tacit acceptance of the assistance of the other woman came as she found herself sinking into what had to have been her arms. She didn't know from where she had come, but Tamatha turned her head slightly when she realized that she hadn't simply fallen against stone. It looked as though the woman must have been in the castle itself. Was she a teacher? A first responder? It didn't matter. Tamatha wasn't even sure that she was still breathing. She was going to hit the ground and be jolted awake.

Instead, she continued to feel the same arms beneath her, though any hope of sitting upright seemed futile as—no longer having to hold herself up—she leaned against the woman's grasp. Tamatha still felt as though everything were spinning, and she tried to inhale. The only noise that came out was a scream muted by the gasp of air that returned as a sob. There was still conversation happening around her, though the noises of panic became drowned out as the Ilvermorny girls who had helped her took the blanket from around the shoulders of the one and held it up to provide what little privacy they could when they began to realize that she was attracting stares.

She was dizzy and wanted to vomit, but she kept choking and coughing and sputtering on her own tears until her head throbbed, pausing every so often only to hyperventilate.

finn kylie nottingham

[finn kylie nottingham]

▲

The reaction Tamatha was having right in front of her was the first true realization that everything that had happened over the past hour or so was real. Going from over one-hundred percent energy and adrenaline pumping battle-mode to this was horrid, and Finn could feel her own knees start to weaken underneath her as she carefully lowered the other woman down to the ground. She hadn’t been trained in disaster relief. She was the one that went in and beat up the ‘bad guys’, as she had been told years earlier during her training. This sort of situation…she was completely useless. But she’d grabbed ahold of Tamatha and helped anyways, as if that was going to absolve her of whatever position Ellie was currently in. Fate didn’t work like that. This wasn’t some equal exchange and the poor woman had just learned about her sister’s death. Finn knew she had to keep it together for both of their sake, only because she still had work to do, as horrible as that was.

The group of girls that had been standing there had seemingly understood what to do without Finn asking them, holding up a blanket to block off the little alley they were now crouched in. The horrified sobbing screams that came out of Tamatha as Finn lowered her into a sitting position and held onto her were the same kinds of ones that she’d tuned out back at the castle. But she didn’t have the help from a burning, crumbling castle to mute this out. Everything went right into her. Turning to the girls that were still there, Finn asked one to run to the mediwizard tent and try to get assistance. “Tell them an Auror sent you,” she added as one ran off. Finn had no way of knowing if she’d heard the last part. Whether that was a stretcher or an actual healer, she didn’t really care. Tamatha needed to be watched over by someone that could actually help her in this situation. A calming draught, for one, would at least bring down the breathing, or else Finn feared that she might pass out from hyperventilating.

But what did she do now? Finn couldn’t lie to her and say that the girls had no way of knowing. Especially if they had witnessed it themselves. The students were in an equally terrible position here and she wasn’t going to throw them under the bus just to save Tamatha a few hours of grief. There was no winning solution here. “I just sent one of the girls to get a healer,” Finn explained, wanting her thought process to be known. “Once we get you over there, I’ll follow up with the mediwizards about your sister. They were still evacuating students when I left, I’m sure she’s just being treated at the tent.” Finn had a feeling that everything that had just came out of her mouth was a lie, but what else could she do? The most obvious answer to her death would be if this group had seen the fiendfyre take her, but the reports on where that had been located would mean the girl would have been wildly out of place in the castle. She hoped Ellie hadn’t been in the same situation, merely eating dinner and becoming paralyzed instead of the alternative. Either way, where was that damn healer?

tamatha josée berg ● 546 ● Ragnarok by Worm Shepherd

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[tamatha josée berg]

TW/CW: Death

May 15, 2026

As much as she wanted to be able to clear her head and think through the news that she had been given, Tamatha felt completely drained. She was Cameron's guardian. If she wasn't supposed to be able to save her little sister, she didn't know who was. The other woman who was assisting her began to delegate tasks to the teenagers, and Tamatha could hear her say to one of the girls to mention that an Auror had sent her.

Whether the woman really was an Auror or whether she was just saying that to expedite their getting additional assistance, Tamatha didn't know, nor was she capable of thinking through any of that. It was only once the woman spoke to her that Tamatha was able to focus at all. The woman explained that she had sent the girl to get a Healer. Once they got her over there, she continued, she said that she would follow up with the Mediwizards about her sister. "They were still evacuating students when I left," she stated. "I'm sure she’s just being treated at the tent."

Tamatha couldn't think about anything but the seed of hope that had been planted by the stranger who had been kind enough to help her. It had to have been a mistake; that was all. She had only spoken to one group of students. They might not have had confirmation that Cameron was out of the castle safely, but that didn't mean that she wasn't. Tamatha whimpered at the thought that Cameron was somewhere that would have been within walking distance otherwise and trying to reach her somehow.

She wanted to stop crying, and she tried to focus on the woman assisting her. Despite how badly her head and throat ached from crying, she nodded her head to indicate that she understood what had been said to her. "O-Okay," she forced out, still tearful. Now, Tamatha didn't really feel that she needed the aid of a Healer; she wasn't injured, but she didn't think that she would be capable of getting to her feet. Running straight towards the castle was out of the question.

finn kylie nottingham

[finn kylie nottingham]

▲

The girl that Finn had sent out to retrieve a healer hadn’t been gone for more than a few minutes. She knew that the likelihood of having someone come back to them was fairly high, especially if the student really sold the ‘injury’ to the healers. There was no guarantee of that though, and she couldn’t just let Tamatha sit in the alleyway, hyperventilating and thinking her sister was dead. Peeking out into the street didn’t help her at all either, and there was no way to tell if the girl or a healer was headed their direction. The healers would take her seriously if she took Tamatha there herself though…

“Hey…Tamatha?” Finn asked, kneeling down next to the woman and placing a hand on her back to try and comfort her a bit. This was the first that Finn had used her name at all throughout the encounter, but there wasn’t any time to go over how she knew who Tamatha was. “Do you think you can walk? I really want a healer to check you out,” she repeated. She didn’t want to think of it as offloading Tamatha onto someone else so that she could get back to work, but how else could she look at it? Comforting others wasn’t exactly her specialty. Blowing up walls and chasing down bad guys was. Or had been. Conducting search and rescue was something that had been done during initial training and re-upped every so often just to keep it at the forefront in case a situation like this did occur. But it had been years since she’d been required to do that training, as MACUSA hadn’t asked her to do it again when they’d brought her back into the fray after Azkaban. The least she could do was assist an old classmate and get her to where she could receive actual help. “If you can, I’ll bring you over there.”

tamatha josée berg ● 320 ● Song by Artist

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[tamatha josée berg]

TW/CW: Death

May 15, 2026

"Hey… Tamatha?"

The Auror who was helping her knelt down beside her, sounding more like a kindergarten teacher than an Auror. She had no recollection of having given the Auror her name, nor did she know hers in return. It didn't occur to her that the Auror must have known who she was from Ilvermorny. It was hard to think about much with the crushing fear that she was about to receive confirmation that her younger sister was dead. The Auror asked her if she could walk because she wanted a Healer to check her out, and that seemed like an odd question. Of course she could walk, Tamatha felt! She wasn't the one who had been trapped inside the castle. She wasn't injured.

"I can walk," Tamatha protested stubbornly, though her voice still shook as she spoke. She could get up, in theory. All she had to do was get to her feet from the cobblestones and then… walk.

It sounded easy enough when she said it aloud, though Tamatha quickly found that getting back onto her feet wasn't going to be as easy as she had assumed that it would be. Her legs shook, and she couldn't get them underneath herself fully to stand up before sitting back down again in defeat. She felt her pocket for her wand and her mobile phone—still there—and took in another unsteady breath. "Can you… help me?" She hated that she had to ask an Auror just to assist her in walking over to a Healer, but she didn't have much choice. She needed to hear if her sister was really gone.

finn kylie nottingham

[finn kylie nottingham]

▲

Finn thought her gentle voice only came out around children or her dog. She certainly wasn’t trying to infantilize Tamatha when she was in such a vulnerable state, but what else could she do? Keeping calm and even toned cut through a lot, even if she wasn’t either of those right now. Her threshold for panic and fear was unfortunately at a level far, far above the average person at this point, no thanks to work. Had she been in Tamatha’s position though, with the possibility of her own sister’s death, she didn’t know if she would be able to pull herself together either. Those were untested waters that Finn never wanted to tread if she could avoid it. As she currently didn’t know Ellie’s whereabouts, the thought was lingering on the forefront of her mind while she tried to get Tamatha’s attention in order to get her moving.

The other woman stated that she could walk, and Finn thought for a moment that there was maybe a bit of steeliness remaining in her despite everything else so far. The wavering of Tamatha’s body as she attempted to stand had Finn holding her hands out underneath arms, the Auror hoping that this wasn’t going to turn into a situation where she passed out completely from mental exhaustion. If anything, that would be a better outcome. Levitating someone that was out cold was something she’d been doing all night and would get healers on the case ASAP. Watching Tamatha carefully as she slid back onto the ground and felt around her pockets, Finn listened to her carefully as she asked for help in getting up.

Quickly nodding her head, Finn got into a position that was easy to help lift someone, unfortunately another thing she’d done a lot of tonight, and prepared to hold the virtually deadweight that was going to be coming from Tamatha. Lifting up someone that was paralyzed or knocked out was easier for her because she didn’t have to account for specific kinds of resistance. A conscious person would follow the gravitational pull if they weren’t strong enough to get up on their own. “Whenever you’re ready to stand. And then put all your weight onto me, okay?” It would hopefully be easier once she was up. A slow, careful walk was ahead of them.

tamatha josée berg ● 388 ● Cigarette by Old Sea Brigade

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[tamatha josée berg]

May 15, 2026

The Auror confirmed that she could help her, but that didn't keep Tamatha from feeling stupid for needing to ask for that help in the first place. She didn't fully understand how it was possible for her to feel so capable and incapable at once. She was someone who could—and had—done just about everything in stilettos, yet she couldn't get up from the ground now without having someone else to assist her.

"Whenever you're ready to stand," the Auror guided her. "And then put all your weight onto me, okay?"

The thought of having to lean her weight against the young Auror to balance sounded ridiculous, but Tamatha knew that she needed to do it. She was dealing with someone who was probably trained in that sort of thing, wasn't she? She said nothing in reply but nodded her head to show her that she understood what she had been instructed to do. Then, with the aid of the Auror, she got to her feet… and somehow remained standing. Though she might not have wanted to lean her weight against the Auror, she did as she had been told. In her vanity, she considered that she wasn't a very large person, at least, so that wouldn't be a concern.

finn kylie nottingham