Graves has seen many things in his line of work -- in the number of years he'd been immersed in it. Terrible, wonderful, bittersweet, the awful to the mundane, and Credence is right in the middle of all of it. He can see the way the truth sinks in, an undeniable presence that wedges its way into his mind and makes its home, forcing all others to accommodate the sheer presence of it, the fact that Credence Barebone is something else entirely, something unknown and a near perfect mortality rate.

Then again, everyone dies -- all in all it's just a matter of how, and when. He studies the play of emotion on the young man's face, the set of his strong jaw, the glitter of determination in those dark eyes, the set of his generous mouth. But then something else creeps in like a shadow, an uncertainty that corrodes, and Graves can almost see the turn of his thoughts, the inevitable decline towards the familiar.

"Yes." He says finally, his words even. He could be talking about the weather, for all the inflection his voice holds. "I assume you have been isolated. No friends, even though you're legally an adult. Your adopted mother has kept you under her thumb for years." A beat. "And there it is, something shaped like your salvation. Your shield when for so many years you've had none."

It's not difficult to divine the seductive nature of power, especially for someone this isolated, this lonely. Graves can see it in his eyes -- and even if he had not been there; he's more than half sure that this is precisely how Grindelwald seduced him.

Are they talking about the Obscurus now, or Grindelwald? Nobody knows.