The weary-looking woman began to float slowly around the three of them. Seeing her movement, dozens of the other spectres filling the cemetery emerged from their hiding places among the trees and gravestones, imitating her. They began to circle around Aurelian, Hestia, and Flora.
"We want you to see…" the woman spoke, her voice reaching them from all directions at once. "We want you to see the atrocities those filthy, magicless ones did to us."
Aurelian immediately noticed how her manner of speaking changed drastically. Every time the spirit uttered the words "magicless," a thick, visceral hatred saturated every syllable.
The ghosts picked up speed. The circle quickly transformed into a vortex of fog and tormented faces that swirled furiously around them, churning up the earth and dust of the cemetery. Feeling the immense residual pain of the souls, Aurelian wrapped both arms around Hestia and Flora, pulling them tightly against his chest to protect them.
Suddenly, a white light burst from the center of the vortex, blinding them for a few seconds.
When the three of them opened their eyes again, the gloomy, cursed cemetery had completely vanished. Their surroundings had transformed. They were now standing in the middle of an open field, just on the outskirts of what was clearly an ancient settlement.
It was a 17th-century pilgrim village. There were modest wooden houses with sloping roofs, dirt paths, and wooden carts. Several villagers, dressed in the austere clothing of the era—black hats, white collars, and long, dark skirts—were hurrying about.
Aurelian frowned slightly when a man with an axe slung over his shoulder walked straight toward them… and simply passed right through them as if they were made of air.
Hestia and Flora clung to their husband's arms. They didn't need anyone to explain it to them; all three immediately understood that they had been swept into a memory—a memory anchored to those souls. As if they were using a Pensieve.
Guided by a force they didn't understand, they began walking through the village until they reached a cabin. As they stepped through the door, they found a woman who looked exactly like the ghost who had spoken to them.
Here, however, she was alive. Her face showed no pain, only immense warmth. The woman was inside her home, standing in front of the fireplace, cooking a stew in a heavy cast-iron pot over a wood fire. She seemed genuinely happy, humming a gentle tune as she sliced a fresh carrot with a knife and dropped the pieces into the boiling water.
Suddenly, the door behind the trio burst open.
Two small children—a boy and a girl no older than seven or eight—dashed past Aurelian, Hestia, and Flora at full speed.
"Grandma, we're back!" the children shouted in unison, filling the cabin with their laughter.
The old woman turned around, her face lighting up with a smile. She set the knife aside, knelt on the floor, and opened her arms to welcome them. She hugged them lovingly, kissing their cheeks again and again.
"My beautiful treasures… how I love you," Grandma told them, stroking their hair affectionately.
"We love you too, Grandma," the children replied, smiling happily in her arms.
It was a scene of pure innocence.
But then, the warmth of home vanished. A thick gray fog flooded the interior of the cabin, and the scene changed abruptly.
The fog cleared to reveal the center of the village. The atmosphere was no longer warm, but terrifying. All the villagers were gathered in the main square. Their faces were contorted with fear and rage, shouting curses and demanding blood.
"Death! Death to the devil's children!" roared the frenzied crowd.
Grandmother, her dress stained with mud and her eyes bulging with panic, pushed her way through the violent crowd, desperately struggling to reach the front.
Aurelian, Hestia, and Flora watched her go. When she reached the center of the square, the blood ran cold in all three of them.
Standing on a makeshift wooden platform, a man dressed in black with bloodshot eyes was shouting at the top of his lungs, holding a Bible aloft. He preached furiously that God hated magic, that it was the poison of the devil, and that it must be purged from the earth at any cost.
And right below him, in the mud of the square… were the two children.
The villagers had surrounded them. Men and women of all ages were hurling heavy stones at them with all their might.
The woman let out a heart-wrenching scream. She ran toward the center of the circle, throwing herself into the mud to shield her grandchildren and protect them with her own body.
But the crowd didn't stop. Seeing her only fueled the Muggles' hysteria.
"It's the witch! Death to the witch and her bastards!" they shouted, hurling stone after stone.
The rocks struck the woman's back, shoulders, and head with dull thuds. She made no attempt to defend herself or use magic to attack; she simply wept inconsolably as she clutched her grandchildren's tiny bodies, taking blow after blow in a futile attempt to shield them from human barbarity.
But it was already too late. In her arms, the two children were already lifeless, their faces covered in blood and their eyes wide open, their expressions vacant.
Even amid the hail of stones, the woman looked up, her face streaked with blood and tears, at the man with the Bible. The preacher and three other town magistrates stared at her with disgust and contempt.
"They will burn in hell," the man with the Bible declared in a thunderous voice. "That is where abominations, demons, and beings like you belong."
Hestia and Flora watched the entire scene with their fists clenched until their knuckles turned white. Their faces were pale, their expressions grave with horror. They didn't know what to say. They had grown up believing that Muggles were wild animals, but witnessing such brutality committed against innocent children surpassed any story they had ever been told.
Aurelian maintained a stoic expression, but the darkness in his eyes was profound. He didn't say a single word. He simply drew his wives toward him, hugging them tightly, and began to stroke their heads in an attempt to offer them some comfort in the face of the barbarity they were witnessing.
Suddenly, the chaos, the crowd's screams, and the blows fell silent all at once, as if someone had paused reality.
The woman's specter appeared, floating right beside Aurelian. She was watching her own memory—the image of her broken body embracing her dead grandchildren in the mud.
"They were just learning about magic," the ghost whispered in a broken voice, giving voice to a pain that not even three hundred years had managed to erase. "It was my fault… I was teaching them. They wanted to make the flowers grow… because that would make their grandmother happy."
Aurelian turned his face to look her in the eyes. He remained silent, listening to her agony, without passing any judgment.
There was nothing he could say. No promise, no comfort, and no word of encouragement that could soothe the heart of a grandmother from whom her treasures had been snatched away in such a cruel manner.
Aurelian simply watched her with respect, finally understanding why those souls preferred eternal torture to letting the world that had murdered them so cruelly go unpunished.
The memory of the grandmother wasn't the only one. As if a dam had burst, the gray mist swept them through a vortex of memories, each more horrifying than the last.
They witnessed the Salem massacre. They saw men and women being dragged to the gallows, hanged from trees while the crowd cheered. They saw bonfires burning in the night, consuming the bodies of witches and wizards who screamed in pain as the flames devoured them—this being the most common method of execution among Muggles.
But the cruelest memory—the one that made Aurelian clench his jaw—was different.
They were inside a modest house. A family—the father, the mother, and three small children—were sitting at the table, quietly eating dinner. Suddenly, the wooden walls began to burn from the outside, blocking the doors and windows. Through the smoke and the crackling of the fire, one could hear the euphoric shouts of the crowd outside, who had blocked the exits.
"Damn you! Die, demons of hell! Die!" roared the Muggles, while the magical family clung to one another in the center of the dining room, crying and slowly suffocating beneath the flames.
Before the roof of the house collapsed on top of them, the thick fog enveloped them completely once more, shielding them from the terror.
When the light returned, the horror had vanished. They found themselves back in the cold, silent Salem cemetery, bathed in the faint moonlight. Before them, hundreds of spectres watched them intently.
Aurelian took a deep breath and looked out at the crowd of souls.
"I cannot promise you revenge," Aurelian said frankly amid the silence. "It is too late for that. Your executioners—those who inflicted this harm upon you—have been rotting in the earth and dust for centuries."
The spectres seemed to stir, but Aurelian raised a hand, stopping them.
"But I can give you my word and my oath that this will never happen to anyone with magic again," Aurelian promised them. "I will do my utmost to save the majority of our people. I will take them out of this broken world and create a new place. A place where everyone—from the oldest wizard to the youngest child—can display their magic without fear and truly be who they are, far from this cruelty and ignorance."
Silence settled once more over the cemetery.
Until the two young grandchildren of the grandmother's ghost stepped forward. They floated slowly until they were close to them. Despite all the pain they had suffered, the children smiled at them.
"That's good, sir," said the boy in a soft voice. "As long as everyone is happy, and no one else has to cry, that's enough for us."
Hearing the little ones, Hestia and Flora were moved. Both witches knelt down to be at eye level with the ghostly children.
The twins smiled back at them.
"We swear it, little ones," Flora whispered to them.
"Just like our husband, we'll do our best to make it happen. No one will ever hurt you again," Hestia promised.
The children nodded happily at the promise, held hands, and floated backward until they were back by their grandmother's side.
The old woman wrapped her arms around her grandchildren's shoulders. She looked up at Aurelian. All the resentment, hatred, and agony that had anchored her to this world for three hundred years had faded slightly from her face, replaced by a sense of peace.
She gave him a weary smile.
"Then I wish you good luck on your journey, young wizard. May magic bless you and your family."
As she spoke those words, the miracle occurred.
The woman's ghostly body began to glow with a warm light. Behind her, the hundreds of men, women, and children did the same. The oppressive heaviness that had cursed the cemetery shattered like glass.
In an indescribable spectacle, the spirits vanished, transforming into thousands of fireflies. The tiny sparks rose toward the night sky, swirling in the air and flying toward the stars, illuminating the gloomy cemetery in an incredibly beautiful way.
Aurelian, Hestia, and Flora remained there, gazing at the sky until the last light vanished into the vastness of the night.
Several meters away, hidden in the shadow of a distant tree bordering the cemetery's edge, Margaret Sayre watched the scene in complete silence.
The old headmistress leaned on her cane, watching the sky light up and feeling the curse of Salem vanish from the earth forever. A tear rolled down her wrinkled face as she smiled in awe.
"Solomon was right about him," Margaret whispered in the solitude of the night. "That boy really is something special… I look forward to seeing what you accomplish in the future, Lord Gaunt."
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