Translations for the foreign-language parts that have no explanation in the text are at the bottom; they're technically not necessary for you to understand what is happening, as it's all a mad jumble of words to Harry anyway.
The rest of the week blurred by, filled with sightseeing, more shopping, mountains of food, hikes in the hills around the city, and best of all, daily coffees with Oma, Sachertorte, and whipped cream. Luckily, Sirius and Remus had taken an immediate shine to her and she to them. She told them stories of the imperial court, Schönbrunn Palace, the huge hunts they went on in the woods, and funny anecdotes about Franz and Sissi Harry was quite sure nobody ought to have known. The afternoon previous, Oma Traudi told them of the end of the monarchy, of fights, struggles, and being shunned by the rest of the family after the Empire disintegrated. Stories of hiding and smuggling Jewish or "sexually deviant" friends, her own imprisonment, and Grindelwald's confident but clearly strategic attempts at seduction. He had made promises, showered her in gifts while she sat in a cell in Nurmengard, confessed his undying love for her, a witch over twice his age already, and she had laughed at his bold-faced lie. Then he had been gone, she had been free, and she had returned home. Harry had asked her which Hogwarts house she would have been sorted into, and been both surprised and a little disappointed when she admitted she knew without question that she would have been in Hufflepuff. Both Sirius and Remus had defended that assessment: she was brave, but what she valued above all was family and friends. Harry wondered whether a Gryffindor would have unofficially adopted someone the same day they met them, and decided probably not.
Today though, the three British wizards were sitting in a muggle train compartment going west towards the city of Linz, accompanied by Zauberbischoff Geistergruber, who had asked for Sirius' help in return for his own when he learned of Padfoot. He seemed to think Padfoot would be able to help with an old problem. The mission was not expected to be dangerous, strictly speaking, but it was a situation that had remained the same since the end of World War Two, as he explained.
"When many people die violently in one place or area, it leaves a mark on the land. Cruelty, true sadism, madness, and dark magic make it difficult, especially for magical beings not of the darkness, to linger and stay in these places. Let's just say there are no unicorns anywhere in Oberösterreich, what you would call Upper Austria. While you were busy learning the intricacies of Apfelstrudel with her Highness Frau Gertrude Habsburg yesterday," the old man smirked at Harry's embarrassed reaction, "we all agreed that it was time to go. We also felt it should be your decision, should you wish to join us. You will feel sadness and despair, but you will also learn things it is important for all young people to learn, I believe. I isolated the darkness in your scar sufficiently for it not to affect you during this trip or beyond, regardless."
Sirius, visibly annoyed at something that had obviously been hotly debated before, felt the need to say something. "Harry, I don't think it's a good idea for you to go. Firstly, we don't know for sure how well the ritual protected you from outside influences, but that isn't my main concern. You know what dementors are like, and this will be very similar. You have felt enough fear and pain."
Remus was quiet, too awkward to say anything, but Harry could tell his former teacher did not fully agree with his godfather. Intrigued, he said he would go, on the condition they would tell him more of what it was he was getting himself into. The bishop explained the problem: an entire region where anyone who had died cruelly in the last 55 years or so could not pass on, stuck as ghosts, souls unable to escape the world of the living, existing in a state of torture. Usually, places of great suffering were not so for very long but here, the suffering of the dead continued to taint that land even further. Muggles were frequently severely depressed or unhappy, crops were poorer than they should have been considering the quality of the soil, and magical beings of all sorts had mostly moved away, fearing this quasi-death and being stuck in limbo for eternity.
When they arrived at their destination after a short bus ride, he immediately began to regret his decision to come. The concentration camp at Mauthausen was a horrible place, radiating a sort of depressing sadness that Harry felt was actually rather different from dementors. Where dementors were pure malice, fed on all happy memories, and made it impossible to think straight, as they approached the gate to the concentration camp, they felt their ability to resist thinking of who they had lost being sapped away. Harry, not quite 14, had "only" lost his mother and his father, with few memories of them to boot. He was shedding silent tears, but Sirirus, Remus, and even the magical bishop, all clearly struggled to hold in devastated sobs, hands in front of their mouths, their eyes puffy and noses runny. So, it was up to the teenager to help them. Thinking of the moment he had gained an Oma the week before and the sheer joy he had felt, he waved his wand and whispered in order not to disturb the spirits of the dead. His Patronus appeared, shining as brightly as ever, and redirecting the attention of his companions away from inner turmoil. The Zauberbischoff laughed in delight at the sight of the tall stag bounding around them. "Gottes Gnade, mein Bursche. God granted you a wonderful gift."
The entrance consisted of two wide and stubby-looking square towers made of stone with dark wooden roofs, each leading to what looked like prison walls and barbed wire. These thick walls were covered in plaques and other memorials added over the last decades. Outside the camp, there was a large rock sculpture that reminded Harry of a modern Stonehenge, and statues of downtrodden people who looked far too thin, reminding him uncomfortably of Dobby. Thinner than Harry himself had ever been, certainly, and he had been tiny before going to Hogwarts. There was one massive wooden gate for vehicles to enter and leave the camp. The smaller doors for pedestrians, like themselves, were all closed. Except for a transparent man dressed in a military uniform waiting by one of these doors, the place was deserted, as had apparently been arranged. The ghost smiled when he saw the glowing stag and came to greet them with his heavily accented German and English.
"Willkommen zurück im KZ Mauthausen, Zauberbischoff Geistergruber! Welcome, Herr Black, Herr Lupin, and of course, you honour me with your patronus, Herr Potter. I am Zauber-SS Oberstabsführer Rabenschnabel, former Kommandant of the Schlachthexenmeister on the Eastern Front, and leader of the armed forces when they retreated from the Red Army. I serve my penance here."
Nobody was in the mood to exchange pleasantries with a magical SS Nazi officer, dead or alive, beyond what manners necessitated, and he soon led them into the compound by passing straight through a door, which the bishop helpfully opened as he spoke so that they may follow. "Meine Herren, a word of warning. The souls of well over 100,000 people are trapped here in this small space, unable to pass onto Paradise, even though they are willing. It is very noisy for anyone with magic, which is why only Muggels," Harry thought it sounded more like moogles, "really come to pay their respects inside. As you may know, the ghosts of Muggels are normally fleeting things, as they do not possess the magic required to do much more than appear for a few moments at most, reliving a memory, often of no real significance. The dense, stubbornly stained magic here however, forces them to remain at all times, reliving the last hours of their lives up to their deaths, which they experience anew. They will not react to your presence, and the cycle repeats as soon as they 'die' again. The Kommandant here will be our guide, do not be surprised if the ghosts of wizards and witches join us sometimes. They are curious of all magical guests, especially the children."
Sirius turned to his godson, a serious look on his face. "Harry, neither I nor anyone else would think less of you for leaving, at any time. Don't shake your head at me. If you need to leave, if it's too much, tell me or Remus and we'll take you somewhere else to wait for us. Promise?"
Harry answered by stepping into the compound, Prongs boldly following the boy. Immediately, it was chaos. Outside, strong magics had been used to contain the noise, but once they passed the threshold, the shrieking, crying, fear, anger, and sheer suffering of thousands of ghosts overwhelmed their senses. Harry closed his eyes and covered his ears, but there was no escaping it. Through the unintelligible, he began to notice words, whispers in German, French, and a multitude of languages he did not recognise. He thought some sounded vaguely Russian, some like a mix of English and German. After a moment, he opened his eyes and froze. There were thousands of ghosts in the square they had arrived in, milling about between two lines of barrack houses. Most seemed to be working or chatting, some to visible other ghosts, some to thin air. The first line was five houses long, and the next only three. However, where the two barracks were missing from the second line, ghosts hovered in the air on their backs, as if they were lying in invisible bunkbeds. It was hard to tell these spectres apart, as many people had used the same beds throughout the camp's time so occupied the same space. Then, he noticed more hovering ghosts further back, and deduced that some of the camp had been demolished.
Unlike the Hogwarts ghosts, the glow here was not bright and their shapes were ill-defined. Had he not known better, Harry would have said they appeared fuzzy, jagged edges fluttering with white noise like whenever Dudley had a tantrum about the bad TV signal (blaming it, of course, on Harry causing interference). Every ghost that Harry saw was unhealthily thin. He was afraid to look at their dirty, gaunt faces; their eyes displaying, to him, unimaginable pain and suffering.
He saw an exhausted little girl, carrying a large bundle of firewood on her back, fall face-first into the ghostly apparition of a splashing puddle and stop moving, before she disappeared without a struggle.
He saw a man, standing bound and blindfolded against a house wall, begging in a language he did not understand, fall to the ground as if the strings holding a puppet had been cut, dark bloodstains appearing on his chest before he vanished, too.
He saw two women struggling with an invisible guard, before two rifle-butts appeared and cracked them in the back of the neck and their lifeless bodies soon faded away to restart their day.
As the four living wizards followed the dead one's lead, he explained the various landmarks they were seeing. Housing for inmates, kitchens, the crematorium, a stable, some housing for guards, laundry building, isolation cells for those requiring extra punishment but not yet death, the clinic where horrifying medical experiments were conducted, the camp brothel which existed not only as a playground for guards but also as encouragement for some specific, privileged male inmates who collaborated called kapos; though it was thought their access was usually a part of some cruel trick by the SS. They avoided taking a detour to the official execution square for obvious reasons, their guide walking along a gravel path that took them out the other side of the camp's barbed wire fence to the edge of a forest. A muggle memorial to Bulgarian victims stood among the ghosts shuffling about, dutifully fulfilling their tasks such as moving goods, farming, or chopping wood. Most often, they seemed to simply keel over out of exhaustion. Sometimes, a ghost would fall because they had been tripped, or pushed by invisible hands, or bullets ending their lives. The worst ones to witness were the beatings, the ghosts pleading for mercy or just taking it silently from invisible assailants. It mattered not whether they were men, women, or children. Nobody but the Nazi ghost spoke until he halted their progress, turning to face the living. Harry hugged Sirius and then Remus, sharing in their profound sadness and shock at what they were seeing. The bishop's face betrayed no emotion as the Kommandant spoke again.
"You are about to follow me into the worst of it. I must warn you: on the 31st of March 1943, 1,000 Dutch inmates were pushed off the "stairs of death" in the quarry ahead from over 50 meters height. This was done for no other reason than the amusement of Heinrich Himmler, who was visiting the camp at the time. It was a common form of entertainment to force one prisoner to choose between death by bullet or pushing another prisoner off the edge. As a funny joke, they called those who fell Fallschirmspringer, parachutists. This senseless slaughter, combined with the thousands of others who died or were murdered here every day over a six-year period, makes this the most haunted, and therefore disturbing, place in Mauthausen with the possible exceptions of the clinic or execution square."
Everyone alive shivered, revulsed at the thought of what they were going to see. Sirius gave Harry a look, silently begging him to leave, but that only strengthened his resolve. "I have to see it, Sirius. We have to remember. We have to share this memory. Padfoot has to help them!"
His godfather nodded grimly, turning to take a breath, but failing as he saw what was behind them. "We're being followed," he said, worried. And indeed, a glowing mass was following them. Hundreds of ghosts stood, most of them older children and teenagers, with adults interspersed between them.
The Kommandant sighed. "Not only muggles died in Mauthausen, as you know. Magical ghosts know exactly where they are, and though they are spared the daily ritual of their own deaths, they instead suffer from being separated from Paradise, and being exposed to the horror here. I am not a popular figure among them, as you can imagine. Arme Schweine. We are different: I am here because I choose to be, I regret what I did or supported, and refuse to pass on until I have atoned for my crimes. They, like the others, are unable to leave, which is a suffering of its own kind. They do not belong here. They mostly arrived here as Grindelwald's rejects, or are Muggelgeborene who arrived with their families, having never realised they were magical or how to harness their power. The others were deemed deficient and 'unrecoverable': skvibs or near-skvibs, half-breeds, damaged magical cores, others simply guilty of the crime of being incapable of hurting another being. Of course, it is easier for adults to escape, so there are fewer of them. They are watching you, but it will take them time to decide what to do. Come, follow me, and be ready for what I can only hope is the worst thing you will ever see in your entire lives."
It did not take near long enough, in Sirius' opinion, for them to reach the stairs of death and the entrance to the quarry. Padfoot was straining to get out, eager to help shepherd these wayward souls like a dog might help lost sheep. They had to stick to the plan though, and that plan did not involve Padfoot losing sight of the most important goal: the source. The bishop had explained that his team had determined the source of the magical soul prison to be located in or around the quarry over 40 years ago, but they had failed repeatedly, as others had later, to find it or even figure out what it was. It was too raw, too primitive, woven into the very fabric of the air, rocks, and soil to such an extent that they could not even figure out where to go once they got too close. It did not respond to Geistgruber's most powerful purification rituals and had even resisted a would-be dark wizard's attempts at harnessing its power as well. It was a mystery.
The group stopped and stared, transfixed by over six years of daily murders condensed into one repeating day; horrified by the sheer volume of ghostly people screaming as they fell from the stairs of death, impacting silently on the rocks below, or causing soundless splashes in nearby pond that was long gone. They called for help as they drowned, there were cries of despair and pain as survivors of the fall were crushed by even more victims landing on top of them. It was a gruesome spectacle none could look away from for some time. The living cried together, the bishop saying his own prayers for the dead while the three others listened.
"Was hast du da?" asked a little girl, who had suddenly appeared, surely no older than eight years old. She was pointing at Harry's scar as she hovered over him upside down but face-to-face, startling him as he had not seen her approach. She was far too thin and wore the same striped tattered clothes nearly all the other ghosts did. Her short thin hair seemed to be affected by gravity, which looked a little bit funny, and he saw how different she was from the ghosts he knew. She seemed to flicker and tear, her eyes eerily transfixed by his scar. "Das schaut aber nicht gut aus."
The bishop translated for him. "She asks what it is you have on your forehead, because it doesn't look good."
Harry almost laughed at the rather spectacular understatement. "Please explain a bad wizard did some bad magic, but I am alive. Could you ask her name? Ich heiße Harry Potter."
This caused an explosion of whispering among the magical ghosts who had approached to watch, and Harry immediately regretted introducing himself. The bishop hurried to Sirius' side and urged him and Remus to continue and follow the Kommandant. He would have to stay here with Harry because even though they could not harm the boy, the agitated ghosts of children would prove an enormous distraction from their goal. Besides, he already knew many of them from his previous visits.
"Es ist ungerecht! Warum bist du nicht gestorben?" shouted the little girl at Harry, angrily, but ineffectually, jabbing her tiny index finger at his chest. It was unfair that he had not died when she had. The muttering around them grew in intensity, and Harry and the bishop soon realised the mass of overlapping ghosts had enveloped them, demanding answers to their questions from every angle – even above - in many languages.
"Wat is er zo speciaal aan je?" cried a little boy in Dutch, wanting to know what made Harry special.
"De unde știi că mama ta a fost cea care te-a salvat? De ce nu m-a salvat mama mea?" yelled another child. Harry looked to this Bishop who quickly explained that the child wanted to know why his mummy hadn't saved him, like Harry's had.
"To, że Voldemort jeszcze cię nie dopadł, nie znaczy, że tego nie zrobi !" warned an emaciated girl with sharp blue eyes desperately, no older than 10. Harry didn't need a translation to understand the fear in her eyes. She spat the name Voldemort at him and Harry knew that she was somewhere between threatening him that Voldemort could still kill him, and wanting to make sure he knew to be prepared.
"Vai jums ir draudzene?" said one young woman in a sultry voice, as she tried to drape her body against his - all that he felt was the cold of her going through him and the sorrow in his heart.
One man wanted to know if he was a Jew - "Bist a Jud?" - while another hoped to find information about when their family might visit again - "Kennst du die Famillie Goldstein? Mein großer Bruder hat es geschafft nach England zu entkommen, er kommt manchmal auf Besuch." But soon the words were coming at him so quickly that even the bishop's translation was not helping him. All Harry could hear was the overlapping of words and languages, angry, desperate, or simply curious syllables being thrown in his direction. and overlapped with one another .
"La idea de que un bebé humano podría haber derrotado a un mago oscuro es ridícula. ¿Qué eres, si no un humano?"
"Tu dois nous aider Harry Potter! On est tous coincés ici!"
"El kellene menned. Ez nem jó hely a gyerekeknek."
"Kletba zabíjí vždy, neexistují žádné výjimky ani ochrana."
"Želim si, da bi lahko hodil v šolo kot ti. Kako je učiti se magije?"
"Neturėtumėte klausytis nieko, ką sako vaiduoklis. Jis yra nacis, o jais pasitikėti negalima."
"Genug!" called the bishop, regaining his voice and startling the ghosts, who had descended into a childish cacophony, back several paces. "Harry, they have many questions for you. I had not realised they knew of your existence, perhaps another witch or wizard told them. If I can get them to speak one at a time, would you be willing to answer their questions? I believe if we offer them answers, they will be more willing to calm down, and it will distract the others less from doing their jobs." The Bishop whispered the last part quietly to Harry.
Harry sighed and agreed, which allowed the bishop to get all the magical ghosts to sit on the floor around them. Anyone could ask their questions or tell a story, but only if they lifted their hands and waited their turns, and allowed the bishop to interpret for them.
Meanwhile, Sirius, Remus, and the Kommandant had made it through the morbid throng of ghosts on the stairs of death, almost getting used to the feeling of the spirits constantly passing through them, and doing their best to ignore the noise. Muggle ghosts did not cause quite so much of a shiver as magical ones, which was a pleasant surprise for a terrible task. As they made their way through the quarry, they saw ghosts working on rock that was no longer there, standing and walking on invisible ladders and ground. The bishop had told them that this was as far as the best wizards could get, and that they would start to feel disoriented here.
The oppressive feeling of desperation and disorientation strengthened with each step at this point. Remus and Sirius, thanks to their exposure to dementors, cast their patronuses, but the results were not very helpful. Any happy memory they could find was tinged in tragedy somehow: Sirius had chosen the moment James and Lilly had asked him to be the godfather of their son (a rare happy memory the dementors had not stolen or rendered meaningless), Remus the time James had made Professor McGonagal laugh so hard she snorted, in class, and he had been incapable of reigning in his fits of breathless laughter whenever he thought of it for the rest of the day. The Kommandant stood silently as the two old friends sat down and cried, trying to move but unable to overcome guilt, grief, and sadness neither had been able to process in over a decade. James and Lily were dead. Remus' guilt for believing Sirius had been a Deatheater was crushing.
After some time, Rabenschnabel tried to coax them out of their hump. "Meine Herren, we have crossed the limits achieved by others previously. I am not unaffected by what you feel. Believe me when I say, I count you among the bravest wizards I have met since guarding this place."
To Sirius' surprise, it was Remus who snapped at the ghost first. "You may have turned your back on your past, but you contributed to this!" he accused, struggling to hold onto his anger as he spread his arms wide, drawing attention to their horrific surroundings. "It's people like you who make this world a dangerous and terrible place for everyone else. You have the blood of millions on your hands and no amount of regret will make that go away. You cannot possibly atone for this, and will remain a ghost for all eternity, too cowardly to face judgement in the afterlife. Shame on you for abandoning your fellow witches, wizards, and yes, half-breeds, muggles, elves, and all the rest. I see you and I feel nothing but contempt. I see a collaborator in the largest massacres this planet has ever seen, who at best simply stood by and did nothing, I see a soul that is underserving of even the most minor redemption or pause to their suffering. Fuck you Mister 'I'm-so-noble-because-I'm-a-sorry-Nazi', and kindly shove your empty praise up your ghostly arse and choke on it! None of this would have happened if it weren't for the likes of bastards like you."
For a while, the only sound was the working and suffering of muggle ghosts. Remus was breathing heavily after his outburst, trying to regain control of his temper and tears. Sirius came to hug him and he promptly burst into tears again on his shoulder. The werewolf stayed like this for a long time, Sirius holding him gently, trying to coax him back out of it, to direct his focus away from the ghost who appeared to have frozen at the harsh words. It was clear from the Kommandant's expression that he was devasted, however.
"Redemption is accessible to all, Remus," said Sirius. He eyed their guide. "Even Nazis if what they do is meaningful enough. This isn't about him though, is it? You think you're no better because you didn't save James, Lily, or me."
Remus nodded, and softly apologised to the ghost, who nodded but said nothing. They sat down again, drained by the difficult emotions they were facing, and silently worked through their feelings of betrayal and disloyalty, until the rustling of trees and a cold wind reminded them to progress with their mission. Rabenschnabel still did not speak, processing the accusations, the prospect of no redemption, and Sirius' rebuttal of that statement.
"Mooney, I'm going to transform now," Sirius announced. "You need to try to corral me back in the right direction if I go off looking somewhere else. Padfoot can tell something isn't right here. Keep an eye on me, if I transform back into a human, something might be seriously wrong."
"Let's hope that doesn't happen," answered his friend, with none of said hope in his voice.
The Kommandant still only stood silently, having nothing to contribute as he had not been involved in any of the planning. Despite being a ghost, and the verbal beatdown he had received from Remus, he audibly gasped when a grim stood before him. "Mein Gott. Brilliant! Bravo!"
Sirius was too busy to appreciate the praise, fighting a battle with Padfoot inside his own mind. Sirius wanted to go find the problem. Padfoot wanted to check on those ghosts that kept dying and reappearing without getting claimed by his master. That is what we're doing, you silly dog, he shouted inwardly. This seemed to calm Padfoot eventually, and he concentrated on the mission at hand, starting with a sniff of the air. It was completely overwhelming, the ability to smell decaying souls unique to the grim, the human mind unused to such. The air was thick with it and yet, there was also something else, something alive that should have been long dead. He barked, having caught the weird scent, wagging his tail as he walked and sniffed the ground towards the quarry's generator buildings. Remus and the Kommandant, who found it easier to overcome the compulsion to look anywhere else if they convinced themselves they were simply looking for a dog rather than the cause of this mess, followed over the rough terrain until they caught up, and Padfoot demanded Remus open the locked door by scratching. An Alohamora later, he continued his search inside, doing his best to ignore ghosts. Men were mainly technicians and women brought water or filled out paperwork. The magical ghosts, many of whom had been lost in dreams and nightmares undisturbed for decades, soon cottoned onto the fact that a grim was there and shrieked, fleeing the building in terror.
A normal dog or grim (in the sense that something like a normal grim existed) would not have understood the way the scent ended, simply disappearing underneath a metal table next to a disused generator, and there was initially a sense of confusion. A normal grim would have accepted that it had lost its target. Padfoot, shared its mind with Sirius Black; Padfoot, had access to hundreds of memories of Sirius Black and his friends under a certain cloak; Padfoot, who had even been under the cloak himself, knew better and barked for Remus. Remus seemed to be fighting a strong compulsion, looking anywhere but at the spot that Padfoot was pointing at.
"You found it? I don't see anything," he said, trying to turn his head and move his eyes to look at the spot under the table. It was almost impossible. He walked towards it backwards, and tried to sweep a foot through the indicated area. There was a muffled oomph and a tiny little boy with long, white wispy hair, no taller than a toddler, scrabbled away after appearing out of thin air, shrieking in panicked fear and holding a patchwork blanket tight to his chest, making himself as small as possible under the table. He was skin and bones, with unnatural wrinkles on his face and ancient blue eyes. He was no ghost. He babbled at them in German, which the Kommandant helpfully translated. "He's saying we can't have her, that he can't let her go, because the bad men already killed her, and she is not allowed to leave him all alone."
The magic that blocked the humans from looking at the boy dissipated when Padfoot lay on the floor and took a relaxed pose, lying down in front of him. Then, he activated what Lily had often called "puppy-mode" and cocked his head sideways at the strangely ancient lad, making his eyes seem bigger and begging for a scratch behind the ears.
"It appears accidental magic of unprecedented power has occurred here," continued the Kommandant as the boy talked softly for the first time in decades. "His mother, a muggle, died in this building so he is keeping everyone here as a ghost so that her soul," he moved around and pointed at a little ball of weak light hiding behind the boy, "does not disappear. His name is Levi."
Sirius took that moment to show his human face again. "Levi was wrapped in what appears to Padfoot to be Death's cloak, but it looks like an ordinary toddler's blanket. He hid himself and his mother from Death, but without food or interactions with any other humans, he did not grow, save for his hair and his wrinkled skin. What a brave little boy. Tell him he can leave here with his mother, and Padfoot will give him a ride to the entrance. There is an old friend waiting to greet them at the gates. Kommandant, Remus, please also try to find out how he got that blankie to become the world's second perfect invisibility cloak."
Sirius transformed back into padfoot and soon allowed himself to be mounted, much to Levi's delight, who let out whoops and giggles as his mother's soul whizzed around him in celebration, already shining far more brightly. When Padfoot and his rider took their first steps, all oppressive feeling vanished. The muggle ghosts closest to them faded away, replaced by other balls of light which quickly joined the mother into the dance around the little boy, who was awed by the light show. The speechless group exited the building, and yet more of the muggle ghosts, who until a moment ago had been in the middle of their mining activities, turned into shining balls of light. Where the first few had only glowed white, now they were joined by new colours: reds, blues, yellows, greens, pinks, Remus spotted a deep orange too. As they approached the bridge of death, the ghosts fearing for their lives turned into a multicoloured swarm and flew directly towards them like a rushing wind. At this point, the sun was disappearing under the horizon, but it might as well have been daytime, the entire area lit up by thousands of lights. The suffering and sadness of their surroundings turned into joy and celebration.
"I can feel the curse lifting," said Rabenschnabel, awed by the experience. "You will see, some souls are departing. They are not leaving us but bringing their loved ones to this procession. The news is already spreading, and I am sure the magical ghosts are coming."
True to his words, it took less than a minute for the first of them to arrive. They twirled, twisted, and pirouetted around the dancing souls of liberated muggles, laughing and singing in twenty languages, sometimes swooping down and staring at Padfoot and Levi. Sometimes, they realised the grim's connection to the dead, and laughed in delight as they actually stroked his fur or scratched him behind the ear, feeling the touch of another being for the first time since they had died. After the bridge of death, Levi cringed away when yet more trapped ghosts arrived. He did not fully comprehend what he had done, but he knew he had hurt them all and wanted to hide under his cloak again. The ghost of a tall, stern-looking witch stood before Padfoot and Levi, blocking their path from several feet away.
"She will not acknowledge me, but I will introduce you," said Rabenschnabel, moving forward and bowing to her. "This is Señora Rigora, a Spanish communist partisan witch who was caught in France after Franco's victory. She is what you might call a leader among the conscious ghosts, a mother to all."
The gaunt woman ignored everyone except Levi and strode toward him, an unreadable look on her face, before abruptly stopping to plant a kiss on his forehead and flying away with a peaceful smile. There was a great cheer among the ghosts and many, the youngest children especially, landed on the ground to dance and run and do cartwheels. Soon the throng reached Harry and the bishop, many of the ghosts having stayed with them, and what had started as a werewolf, a grim, an ancient baby with his mother's soul, and a Nazi ghost taking a walk became a veritable parade. They entered Mauthausen Concentration Camp with a happy cheer that had never been heard there before, all aware that they were on the cusp of victory over their decades-long imprisonment and torture. Thousands upon thousands of additional souls visible as multicoloured lights joined them every step they took, zippings in circles around Levi and Padfoot especially but also the others, zooming from one edge of the camp to the other, somehow having gained the power, or information, to release the ghosts they were related to or had known from their never-ending nightmare even further afield, the satellite camps of Mauthausen also having known much cruelty and death. A crowd formed along the side of the road to the camp's main entrance, laughing as Levi waved at them, pumping his arms in the air in excitement, sometimes becoming overwhelmed with the attention. Instead of the blankie, he used the grim's fur to hide his face in those moments, but only a few steps later a shining soul or a ghost would come to cheer him up.
Harry grinned happily as he "held" the hand of an especially chatty little Romanian girl from earlier as they walked among celebrating lights. Her name was Ana. All afternoon, he had spent hours answering questions and telling stories of his life and especially first three years at school and insisted on learning everyone's name. They had expressed their outrage at the Dursleys and Snape, their disgust and awe at Tom Riddle's diary or how he had received his scar, and their fascination at Sirius' escape from Azkaban, a prison not unlike their own in some ways. He promised himself never to forget them. A thin, pale man, somehow sporting an enormous moustache and carrying a violin, walked alongside the procession and played a famous Yiddish folk song of celebration and goodbyes, soon joined by others carrying flutes, drums, tambourines, guitars, and one girl was even lugging around a double bass. In magical harmony, it was impossible for anyone to resist the joy in that moment, even Remus getting press-ganged, if very gently, into a rapid dance with a teenage girl wearing a dress. In that moment, Harry realised something different was happening: the ghosts were turning into pictures of perfect health and happiness, as they should have been, before his very eyes. Faces filled out as malnutrition became reversed, jewellery appeared on ears, noses, wrists and fingers, horrible tattered rags-fo-uniforms were replaced by dresses, shirts, suits, feet were hidden by shoes or boots, and, most striking of all to him, children played with toys. Many he recognised: Rekha ran by, a stick with a horse's head between her legs; Bogdan, Slobodan, Marko, and Adrian kicked a rather heavy-looking football around; Benjamin, Teodora, Maria, Tudor, and Piotr challenged each other with a skipping rope; Veronica and Moishe sat opposite each other at a table and stared at a chess set, as if their existence had not been eternal suffering for over forty years; Sarah and Eden, twin girls who had proudly announced earlier that they were four years old, sat brushing the hair of some dolls; Abraham sprinted around chasing a wheel he kept hitting with a stick.
At long last, they reached the front gate and everyone stopped, staring at the closed doors. After a moment's hesitation, Harry strode forward and opened the one they had used to enter, and it felt as if opening a door during a storm. Over 100,000 brightly shining, multicoloured little balls of life all surged toward the comparatively narrow exit at great speed as if funnelled to the afterlife, and then launched themselves high into the sky. It soon became apparent that they were not disappearing, instead forming what at first was a vague blob but quickly became recognisable. Harry, Remus, Padfoot, Levi, the bishop, and the Kommandant stared in amazement as an enormous, very recognisable lightning bolt shone brightly in the sky. A minute passed as more souls rushed up to fill the outline, and only once the wind had stopped, the landscape was brightly lit, and every ball of light - but one hovering calmly near her son - had left camp and the surrounding area, did the lightning shape flash twice, even brighter than before, and explode with a deafening boom that echoed through the valley.
For a long moment, the wind-swept group stood silently in the dark, blinking away the spots in their eyes as they attempted to make sense of their experience. It was Rabenschnabel who spoke first. "You have succeeded. I have no idea how to explain it or how to thank you, but the magical ghosts have all passed on to Paradise, whole once more."
It was true. The only glow lighting up their surroundings came from one muggle mother's soul. Sirius felt Levi shift on his back and knew he was running out of time to fulfil his promise to the little boy, who had already fallen asleep playing with his fur. Without the protection the invisibility blankie had afforded him for 55 years since 1939, he was becoming weaker by the second. Carefully, so as not to cause his unconscious rider to fall, he strode through the exit. Levi's breaths became softer as Padfoot stood in the carpark. Though even he could not see his master, he could feel the entity's pride and satisfaction, all directed at him. He wagged his tail gently in acknowledgement. He knew Death was here and had come to collect the souls of the ancient little boy and his mother. Goodnight, Levi, he thought to himself. I hope to see you again when the time is right.
Finally at peace, Levi softly exhaled one last time and scattered into the wind with his mother, leaving naught but a tattered blanket and a trail of red and golden flower petals behind.
Translations
"Gottes Gnade, mein Bursche" (God's Mercy, my boy. Like "My goodness" but from a bishop. German)
"La idea de que un bebé humano podría haber derrotado a un mago oscuro es ridícula. ¿Qué eres, si no un humano?" (The idea that a baby human could have defeated a dark wizard is ridiculous. What are you, if not human? Spanish)
"Bist a Jud?" (Are you a Jew? Viennese Geman dialect)
"Tu dois nous aider! On est tous coincés ici!" (You have to help us, we're all stuck here! French)
"Kennst du die Famillie Goldstein? Mein großer Bruder hat es geschafft nach England zu entkommen, er kommt manchmal auf Besuch." (Do you know the Goldstein family? My big brother managed to escape to England, he visits sometimes. German)
"El kellene menned. Ez nem jó hely a gyerekeknek." (You should leave. This is not a good place for children. Hungarian)
"Kletba zabíjí vždy, neexistují žádné výjimky ani ochrana." (The killing curse always kills, there are no exceptions and no protections. Czech)
"Želim si, da bi lahko hodil v šolo kot ti. Kako je učiti se magije?" (I wish I had been allowed to go to school like you. What is it like to learn magic? Slovenian)
"Neturėtumėte klausytis nieko, ką sako vaiduoklis. Jis yra nacis, o jais pasitikėti negalima." (You should not listen to anything that ghost said. He is a Nazi, and they cannot be trusted. Lithuanian)
"To, że Voldemort jeszcze cię nie dopadł, nie znaczy, że tego nie zrobi ! (Just because Voldemort didn't get you yet, it doesn't mean he won't! Polish)
"Vai jums ir draudzene?" (do you have a girlfriend? Latvian)
So ends the second Grim Tale. I hope I was able to show the appropriate respect for the subject matter. I have been to Mauthausen and other concentration camps in Europe (still never Auschwitz), and there is just this oppressive thickness that pervades the air. They are awful places to be, and yet I would urge anyone and everyone to visit one of the major ones if they never have. Few things had quite such an impact on me, though I admit it was a more profound experience once I went as an adult. The stairs of death and the fun the guards had there are not invented, and I tried to use as many languages as possible (Bulgarian and Russian are written in Cyrillic so I did not use those, however they would have been present). Mauthausen was a particularly cruel place, its industrial output essentially irrelevant to the Nazis who just wanted people to be worked to death. Which makes it all the harder to believe, and somehow unsurprising as well, that Austrians kind of distanced themselves from the Nazis for a long time, only accepting their role as victims. One of my great-grandfathers was a card-carrying Nazi in Vienna and I am told he stayed that way until he died. His son, my grandfather, was in the Hitler Youth and would have died in Berlin had the war dragged on. For millennials like me, it is important to note that though it is not our fault it happened, nor even my Opa's (he was only 14), but as he did when he was still alive, I think it is important to be responsible with our history and acknowledge/confront it; those who feel nostalgic about those times are always there, spewing their filthy discourse over everyone else with glasses tinted so pink, it is hard to believe they can see anything at all when they look back at Austria's history. I too often hear the constant moaning about "how often do we have to say we're sorry for something we didn't do." If this is how you think, you are missing the point. As Remus mentioned above, it is impossible to atone for something as dramatic as the holocaust anyway, be it against Jews who bore the brunt of the death and persecution, or Spanish partisans, Roma, homosexuals, the disabled, or anyone considered unworthy of being alive. At least 100,000 people died in Mauthausen. So, if we cannot undo it, we must at least take some measure of responsibility for it, and recognise when those who would be willing to do this kind of thing, prepare to do it again. The only ways to stop a repeat of the holocaust involve robust democracy, respect for human rights and of minorities, and people with the courage to stand up to oppressors.
In my mind in the Harry Potterverse, Grindelwald used Hitler and the Nazis to try and gain evermore power, and to exterminate those who were in his way or just a waste of resources in his eyes. Though the magical side of the war was hidden from muggles, it was actually integrated within the context of World War Two. Levi, terrified of losing his mother and on the brink of death himself, produced the soul prison with accidental magic, and this magic (I see it like a kind of dome above Mauthausen and the surrounding area) was sustained by the darkness that was already there.