Some important and relevant context to the chapter and personal thoughts

'Behind each one of the dead stand many, who remember them. Each fallen regiment leaves behind an army of mourners and tears.' – Clalüna, Schilliger, Schneider, published in Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 26 July 2022; translation from the German by author

Each of the dead had a story. One may have been an engineer, another a poet. Perhaps another was a student, or maybe a teacher; yet another a cook, an actor, or a gardener. They had hoped to keep telling that story, but because of the malice of others, the story has ended.

Each of the dead had a family. A father or a spouse, waiting and waiting for a message that did not come, is not coming, and will not come. A daughter or a son, waiting still for a parent who did not return, is not returning, and will not return, to come home.

Each of the dead had others who knew them. Friends, who had promised to gather for a drink after it was over, whom now the forever empty places will become scars that will never heal. Teammates, who will now train alone in silence. Colleagues, whose lunch breaks will now be spent alone at their desk.

Each of the dead had a name – Viktor, Semyon, Irina, Olha, Yuri…

Each of the dead.

Two hundred soldiers on the Ukrainian side alone are dying per day. What is the meaning of this number?

In the one and a half hours it took me to write this piece, twelve soldiers will have been killed – twelve extinguished stories, at least twelve mourning families. Countless friends, teammates, colleagues.

It may take you one hour to get from home to work or studies every morning, and another hour to get home every evening. In that time, sixteen will have been killed.

Perhaps you work or study eight hours in the day. In those eight hours sat in front of a workstation or in lectures, sixty-six will have been killed. Another sixty-six will die in your eight hours of sleep.

Maybe you will take thirty minutes to read this chapter, sitting comfortably in your kitchen or bedroom, perhaps with a hot drink and some snacks. In that time, four will have been killed.

Today, 24 August, 2022, marks exactly six months since the invasion of Ukraine heralded the beginning of this grim new world, and it is not by coincidence that I am putting this chapter out on this gruesome anniversary. The events of this chapter and the next, though they may remind us painfully and uncannily of current events, were in fact conceived long before 24 February, 2022 – before the world awoke to the idea that wars of aggression intended explicitly to subjugate – perhaps even eradicate or enslave – another people were still conceivable in the twenty-first century. We asked ourselves in the before-times whether we as a global society have finally moved on from conquest and aggression of the sort that has been seen since time immemorial up to the Second World War. Many of us had been tempted to say 'yes'. Our optimism has been proved false.

Many of us had hoped that the war, death, and brutality would end just as quickly as it began. We had hoped that the international response, Ukrainian resilience, and an overly optimistic reading of the strength of – without doubt brave – resistance to the invasion within the Russian Federation, will bring hostilities to a quick close. These hopes were, as we now know, in vain. Not only that, the aggressive Russian Armed Forces continue to defy all perceivable boundaries to barbarism. Even in the first days of the invasion, we heard reports of civilian residential buildings. Any doubt we may have had that such events had been simply the result of the incompetence of a deeply corrupt military was erased on 16 March, when the Russian Air Force dropped bombs on a theatre in the city of Mariupol, killing perhaps up to hundreds of civilians. What makes this attack even more despicable and disgusting is that the occupants of the theatre had clearly written, in large letters which must have been visible from any modern military aircraft targeting system, the word 'дети' – Russian for 'children'. In an age of precision strike capabilities, the targeting of this building could point at nothing less than intentional malice – imagine the sadism it takes to drop explosives upon a building in which you know children are hiding.

Hundreds of children, who had only had their first tastes of the world and who had only just begun to dream of their futures within it, will now remain forever young.

This feeling of disgust is only amplified when one hears the official statement from the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, which claimed not only that the Russian military had not perpetrated the attack, but instead that 'Ukrainian nationalists' had taken their own civilians as hostage, then proceeded to murder them. Consider the insanity and depravity of this statement.

Then came the discovery in late March of the massacre in Bucha, near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where the world witnessed clear evidence of the premeditated executions of civilians, many of whom had their hands tied to their backs and killed by shooting from close range. We also saw evidence that the Russian Armed Forces then attempted to cover up their crimes by cremating the remains of their victims in a manner that reminded myself, among many others, of the crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germany. On 8 April, 2022, the railway station of the Donbass city of Kramatorsk, where hundreds of civilians trying to flee the war waited for trains they hoped would take them to safety, was hit by not one, but two Russian missiles. More than fifty lost their lives – it may even be fair given previous behaviour to say that they were in fact murdered in cold blood. At the end of June, the Russian Air Force then bombed a busy shopping centre in the city of Kremenchuk, killing twenty people.

This is only a very partial list, and yet how many – innocent civilian – lives have already been ended by these acts of savagery alone? Two thousand?

That is two thousand prematurely ended stories.

That is more than two thousand grieving families.

That is tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of mourning friends, colleagues, and others.

As previously stated, the contents of the following chapter had been conceived long before the invasion began, at a time when I could not have imagined that fiction and imagination could turn into reality. I contemplated much about this sequence after 24 February, including whether I even wanted at all to keep and publish it as is given the horrors that were playing out in real life and a desire to respect the very real and very human victims. In the end, I decided to go ahead, modifying it significantly to focus more on the brutality of occupation and its toll on the people, in the hope that perhaps it would help to draw greater attention to the genuine suffering of people living through a terrible invasion of their homeland and try to show readers the trauma, horror, and hard choices that terrible times and circumstances bring. I do not claim any of the following to be the accurate feelings of those who have truly lived through these events – it would be grossly and arrogantly disrespectful for me to do so – but I put forth my best attempt to understand what I do not truly understand. I wished only to humanise the headlines you may read in the breaking news, to impart something, even if only a blurry reflection of reality, possibly valuable on readers who may not have any other way of hearing of these accounts and experiences. Take what you read with a grain of salt, but I hope that I can give you something to think about.

Returning to the greater world, as I had said in March, just after the beginning of this brutal, continuing war, any victory for Russia, even if purely farcical and propagandistic, is a victory everywhere around the world for tyranny, authoritarianism, and a barbarism stemming from a lack of respect for human life. It is undeniable that democracies – Ukraine and the West included – are far from perfect, either, but if one uses what-about-ism as a means to defend, relativise, or minimise Russia's abuses, then that shows nothing except the fact that one does not in fact believe in democracy and human rights at all and seek only to exploit the banner as a stick with which to beat others. Even for this reason alone, we who believe in democracy should support Ukraine in its resolve to fight to the end, until Russia's marauders are chased out of their unjustly gained lands.

Yet, I believe that even more important than the struggle between the hope of democracy and the ever-present spectre of revanchist and regressive authoritarianism are the individual human experiences of innocent people, innocent lives, caught – or sickeningly often in this war, held – in front of guns. The true cost of war can never be measured in the number of destroyed tanks, downed aircraft, or square kilometres of lost territory. It is not adequately reflected in the amount of destroyed buildings, cities captured, or billions of US dollars in estimated damages. It is in its most horrific and unforgiving form experienced not even in the number of dead, but the individual lives cut short themselves.

It is told by the shattered stories of dreamers and achievers.

It is heard in the weeping of the grieving loved ones.

It is shown by the new empty spaces around the once-full table.

One, perhaps two, or maybe three Ukrainian soldiers have now fallen since you began to read this piece. They sacrificed themselves in defence of not only their motherland, but also my right to write this opinion – and indeed, this entire story – without fear of government persecution, and your right to freely read it on an open and uncensored internet. Ask yourself now this: what is your responsibility to help the people defending against an invasion of their home, but also your own freedoms and rights?

Слава Україні.


Other than fear, the greatest effect of the twin petrifications on Halloween night was that everyone had, all of a sudden, become interested in self-defence to a degree which not even Lockhart could provoke. The school's energy, however, seemed to be spent in the wrong direction – though there was not much direction for anyone to follow in any case. A new Duelling Club sprang up within the walls of Hogwarts, led by a few seventh-year students. Harry, motivated both by curiosity and a belief that it may prove useful, attended the first meeting, organised in just about a week and a half after that fateful Halloween, and the club managed to defy all expectations with just how useless it was.

The club proved to be a simple rehashing of Lockhart's most basic of lessons – and in fact, many of the spells the seventh-years taught had already been taught to them by Quirrell. Without any guidance from someone actually informed in self-defence nor any equipment of the sort that Lockhart had, the seventh-years had their 'pupils' cast the elementary spells at one another while both caster and defender stood as still as a tree and without trying to block or dodge the spell in any way. Harry was by no means an expert in combat or self-defence, but Lockhart had at least taught him that such unrealistic 'training' had absolutely no value. Indeed, many of the other students thought the same way, and the corridors were filled with mutterings of disappointment and ridicule after the end of the meeting – though much of that, Harry thought, was quite misguided, as it seemed that a good number of students had come to the meeting with wholly ridiculous expectations of learning spectacular spells, the legality of which seemed to Harry highly doubtful.

Things would have likely gone far better if, instead of the hapless and rather incompetent seventh years, Lockhart had been in charge of this 'Duelling Club', though Harry knew from experience that there was next to no chance of Lockhart agreeing to put in time doing anything extra for the students. In any case, shortly after that first meeting of the club, Lockhart disappeared from the castle, no doubt running some kind of errand related to the petrifications. Unlike the other teachers, however, his absence did not last just a few days – even after a full week had passed, there was no sign of him.

Even though there was no denying that Lockhart was an extraordinarily harsh teacher – and like all children, most Hogwarts students, save for a few notable exceptions, did not like to be worked too hard – by the end of the first week, many were longing for his return. The primary reason, Harry believed, was Lockhart's substitute. Unlike previous cases of teachers going absent, it was not Anna who picked up the classes, for she, like Lockhart, had gone, too. Instead, it was Snape who had taken over as the temporary Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.

True, Lockhart worked them hard, but he at least had an aim, a goal, and quite good justifications for doing so. As strenuous and difficult as his practical lessons were, they were at least engaging, and even fun in a way. Plus, to add to that, he never gave any written or reading homework – though without independent practice, both in terms of physically casting spells and mentally going through the motions, one was as good as dead for the next practical. Snape's lessons, however, took everything of Lockhart that was pedagogically good and threw them out. The end result, as expected, was something even worse than his potions class. The lessons devolved from useful practise of magic of combat skills to nothing more than dry lectures of new spells, which, as Lockhart's lessons had shown, could have been learned with less than half an hour of lecture followed by some practice in class and later in the dormitories. Snape also assigned homework, which, though not necessarily an issue in and of itself, consisted of rote essays of the Potions kind which did little to complement what little they had managed to learn in class.

'I can't stand another day with Snape!' Hermione complained angrily after the final Defence lesson that week, taking Harry – and everyone else – by surprise with such open criticism.

'What?' she demanded after enduring an awkward moment, during which half of the second-year Gryffindors had stared at her in disbelief.

Seamus opened his mouth. 'I…well, I'm just surprised that you of all people…'

'What, would talk bad about Professor Snape?' Hermione questioned, looking and sounding indignant.

'Something like that,' Lavender murmured.

'What do you want me to say?' Hermione asked. 'You can't tell me that his lessons aren't stupid, especially next to Lockhart's. I mean, I don't think he's so terrible at Potions, but he's even worse of a teacher in Defence than Quirrell was. At least…'

At least he wasn't hosting Voldemort inside him? Harry thought darkly.

'Is he really "not so terrible" in Potions?' Dean commented with a snort.

'At least we get to do stuff there,' Hermione replied. 'And his lectures aren't so dry and redundant.'

'Sure, they're just non-existent,' Neville quipped. 'To be honest, I'd rather he just had us read out of a textbook for Defence, too. It'd save us a lot of time and effort trying to stay awake for two-hundred forty minutes a week.'

As with the year before, despite the weighty and frightening recent events, mundane things like Quidditch matches seem to somehow go on – possibly it was to provide students with some kind of distraction. That weekend, Gryffindor trampled Hufflepuff in a landslide victory of nearly two hundred points – a landslide victory which was expected as it was unexciting. Even though they had been the previous year's champions and maintained their strong side into the autumn, they had, in a stroke of utter misfortune, lost two Chasers, one of whom was their Seeker, Cedric Diggory – who was commonly considered the best in the school – to training injuries the previous week, and had to play with replacements. Gryffindor, at peak form, easily bested their defence and blunted all their attempts at offence. Neither side managed to catch the Snitch, but it was inconsequential, for not even the Snitch would have done anything except slightly ease the destruction of Hufflepuff's pride.

Despite the uselessness of the first Duelling Club meeting, Harry, Hermione, and Neville decided to continue to attend for as long as Lockhart was out. 'It's practice,' Hermione had pointed out. 'Really bad practice, but it's something nonetheless…considering we're not getting any from Snape.'

He could see her point, Harry thought, but believed the primary benefit of attending the meetings was going to be one of morale and comfort rather than anything tangible. Nonetheless, some moral support was still to their benefit, and as such, Harry did not object.

The second meeting of the Duelling Club took place that Sunday. It was immediately apparent to Harry upon arriving that attendance had significantly shrunk. Close to a half of Hogwarts had turned out to the first meeting, but this time, there were less than thirty – nearly all of whom were students from the lower years, for whom learning and practising the spells taught there had at least a small benefit.

The seventh-years in charge of the club seemed to have gathered from the cool reception to the previous meeting that they needed to change things up – at least a little. There was no change in the levels of spells which were taught: the 'curriculum' consisted still of basics like Disarming Charms and Jelly-Legs Jinxes, but instead of putting students into pairs and having them blandly throw spells at each other, they now organised a sort of duelling 'tournament', where the students were to 'duel' one another, using only the handful of spells that they had been 'taught', for the grand prize of a Honeydukes chocolate bar.

'We'll split you into groups based on your year…' one of the seventh-years started, but upon another one of the seventh-years pointing out that with just three or four exceptions, only first- and second-years had shown up, she decided not to bother, simply instructing each student to find themselves a partner for the first round.

Harry, Hermione, and Neville decided not to pair with one another – they knew that they were stronger at duelling than the rest, and it would not be very fun if they eliminated one another right at the start, then in later rounds face only weaker opponents. Harry ended up against Dean; Hermione against Terry; and Neville with Ernie. Though Dean was quite decent, it still did not take a great deal of difficulty for Harry to triumph. Hermione and Neville, too, won against their first-round opponents, advancing to the next stage.

By the luck of the draw, Harry faced Hermione in the second round, which proved to be a noticeably more difficult duel than against Dean, not least because they, by silent and implied agreement, did not restrict themselves to the spells that they had been 'taught'. Nonetheless, after several minutes, Harry managed to catch her with a Full-Body Bind Curse before disarming her.

The third round saw Harry face Pansy Parkinson, the strength of whose bark, as ever, far outstripped that of her bite. Her duelling skills were quite poor, her dodges were clumsy at best, and she seemed to rely on spewing taunts and aimlessly flinging spell after spell, hoping to hit something. It was a surprise that she had even made it this far – Harry held her wand in his hand after barely a minute.

The fourth round paired Harry with a first-year who seemed to have made it all the way here by sheer luck alone, for Harry managed to disarm him with a single spell just seconds after the duel began, putting him in the final. For the 'crown' and the bar of chocolate, he was to face…Ginny.

He was to face Ginny, who had somehow managed to wipe the floor with Draco Malfoy the round prior, catching him with two Jelly-Legs Jinxes which rendered him unable to even sit up straight, and then disarmed him with a perfect Disarming Charm. Harry, of course, was happy to see Malfoy's pride destroyed by a first-year in front of his entire House – or more accurately, his entire year – but Ginny's unusually powerful display puzzled him. Had she been practising duelling? Even he, though, was not this good last spring – and that was after months of intensive, even if rather pointless in hindsight, practice. Ginny must have had a really good teacher – perhaps an older Slytherin was showing her tricks?

Ginny stepped onto the improvised piste, whose borders had been marked with chalk, as the other students in attendance closed in around the sides to watch. Neville, who had been eliminated in the third round by a third-year, gave him a thumbs-up, while Malfoy, standing roughly opposite him, was red in the face as he glared at Ginny, then at Harry, clearly unsure which of them he would rather have lose. Ginny, for her part, wore a blank and emotionless expression on her face, gripping her wand firmly yet comfortably in her hand.

A seventh-year clapped once to get everyone's attention. 'The final of the duelling tournament will be fought between Harry Potter of Gryffindor and Ginny Weasley of Slytherin!' he announced. 'Duellers, are you ready?'

'Ready,' Harry answered. Ginny gave a small nod.

'Trjes, dwjes, ojwis,' the seventh-year shouted. 'Enkenak!'

The duel began. Harry had watched Ginny duel, and anticipated her to wait for Harry to begin to cast his first spell before casting her own to try to catch him off guard. Unexpectedly, however, no sooner had the last syllable left the seventh-year's mouth did Ginny pounce, sending an accurate Knockback Jinx, followed quickly by a Jelly-Legs Jinx Charm, directly at Harry. Harry, not expecting the move, barely managed to jump aside. Just as he dodged, another spell, this time a Disarming Charm, came flying at him, forcing him to duck to avoid it.

Harry attacked back, sending a Disarming Charm, then another slightly to the right, where he anticipated Ginny to dodge. Ginny, however, did not fall for the trap, instead rolling to the left, and Harry's spells sailed past her harmlessly, sparking off the back wall of the classroom. Whoever was teaching her how to duel really knew what he or she was doing. That much was plain to see.

Another volley of spells from Ginny, and Harry dodged again before launching his own attack, which Ginny once again avoided. This exchange went on for several more minutes, and Harry was quickly becoming exhausted. Ginny, it seemed, was also becoming fatigued, though to a much lesser extent than Harry was. Her movements and casting were still sharp and fluid as ever, and Harry could not even get a glancing hit on her, while each of her spells was so accurate that he barely had any time to dodge them.

Finally, Harry's luck ran out. A Tripping Jinx caught him right in the legs, and he fell forward. A split-second later, his wand was torn from his hand. When he finally regained his composure a few seconds later, Ginny was holding his wand high in her hand. The Slytherins – especially the first-years – were cheering and showing rude gestures to the Gryffindors. Even Draco Malfoy had to be reluctantly and grudgingly impressed, and shook her hand, though the expression on his face told Harry plainly that he did not like it. Ginny, meanwhile, looked extremely proud of herself, a smile as wide and radiant as it was eerie and unfeeling plastered on her face.


Events in the world may change quickly, but it was more difficult to change the ways of the people. The Protectors were no different, having carried on without fail the tsar's tradition of ubiquitous corruption of a frightening magnitude – alongside, of course, brutality. Anna was, in this case, thankful for the former, though certainly not for the latter. The two guards watching over the portal in the small western Ukrainian town, through which they had entered the magical world, had been more than happy to let her and Lockhart – under false identities, of course – through after being offered a bribe of a single Galleon each. The Denga, the Russian Empire's currency, has long been nearly worthless to foreign exchange, so the single Galleon could probably have fed them for a good two or three weeks, if not more.

It felt like an eternity for how much had happened since, but it had only been a little more than three years since she had fled Russia for good. People were often dramatic when returning to a home with which they had long ago parted ways, but it would not be too dramatic to say that it felt to her that she had returned to a different reality than what she had remembered. Perhaps it was simply how used she was to the peace of Britain, but she had been totally unprepared to witness the gloom, hopelessness, and moral and physical devastation of the inhabitants of the Empire. As bad as things had been when she had fled, she could not – or would not – seem to remember the sheer magnitude of bleakness that she now saw.

Incredible change had happened, too, outside of the magical world. As much as it was unnecessary to their mission, she had insisted on paying a half day's visit to Kiev, the city in which she had been born and grown up, by herself. The last time she had been here must have been close to a decade ago. After everything that had happened, her memories of the place were vague, restricted to a small selection of particularly memorable moments, but it was enough to know that the city of today did not resemble that of the 1980s. Even skin deep, while the same dreary residential blocks were the same as what she remembered, the old communist banners were now no more, replaced by the blue and yellow banner of independent Ukraine.

There was only so much time for reminiscence about a lost childhood, however, for their mission had to take paramount importance. After a short train trip back west to re-join Lockhart, who was still waiting for her at their starting point near the edges of the magical Russian and Austro-Hungarian realms, they entered the magical world and began their journey.

They journeyed across steppes and hills, occasionally passing the odd village from a distance, never daring to pass too close to populated areas out of an abundance of caution against being detected. The magical world made things easy, for towns – or indeed, any pockets of population – were far more isolated from one another than their equivalents in the non-magical one. The destruction caused by the war, rendering many settlements little more than burned carcasses, no doubt helped them in this endeavour as well, as grim as it was to say so. Nonetheless, they still exercised an abundance of caution not to be found. They camped in the wild, often in forests or in valleys and ravines. They never lit fires, using spells to keep warm in the biting late-autumn wind. They kept watch in turns, Anna taking the first, shorter one, and Lockhart, on his own insistence, taking the second, longer one. He came off as – perhaps purposefully – rather patronising in that insistence, but Anna did not have any desire to fight him, for that would have required unnecessary interaction. Plus, it would be a lie if she were to say that she was not going to say no to extra sleep.

Anna did not speak to him, except when she had to, and even then, their conversations were curt, to-the-point, and prickly – from her side especially. She mostly observed Lockhart without comment, and the more she did, the more she disliked him. His behaviour came across as that of one who possessed severe delusions of grandeur. Lockhart carried at his hip his sword at all times. That was not something strange in and of itself – many wizards, especially martial ones like officers in the tsar's army, had a sword as a secondary weapon in case they were disarmed, or for close-quarters situations when they might deem it risky to spend critical moments casting a spell. Some swords forged from certain materials using special techniques, Anna knew, were even able to deflect spells – including many of those that could not be protected against with a Shield Charm – with a perfect parry. What was strange – and perhaps even slightly disturbing – however, was Lockhart's attitude, his relationship, towards it.

He treated his sword like a baby, and it seemed to Anna that the sword was the only thing in the world that Lockhart loved with any sincerity. For one, during his nightly watch, he would take to caring for his sword for hours on end – even if he had already done the exact same thing just the previous night. He would not stop prattling on about it either, no matter how much Anna made it clear that she simply did not care. Arondight its name – apparently called that after a sword carried by some legendary warrior – it was, as he had repeatedly stated, forty standard inches long and made of the 'finest goblin silver'. As they hiked during the day, Lockhart would go on about all the fights that he had won with that sword, all the foes he had slain, oblivious that such stories were the last things that Anna cared or wanted to hear. After several failed early attempts to get him to stop talking, Anna chose the path of simply ignoring him, conceding to let him entertain himself while trying her best to tune it out.

It took nearly seven full days of travel, carefully avoiding using too much magic or straying too close to large settlements, for them to even reach the general area in which they would be searching, but if any of them had thought that this would mean the end of their 'adventure' and their return to Britain, they would have been wrong. Perhaps it had always been so in these farther-flung parts of the Empire, but the amount of suspicion locals held against those who came from outside their towns was shocking. In one of the first towns they visited, Anna had been thrown out by the keeper of a local shop simply because he did not recognise her. In another, she had been immediately accused of being a Hwjerikwunist spy by a shopkeeper, who claimed that she had an 'unmistakeable accent' and then threatened to report her to the Protector authorities for a reward. Seeing the shopkeeper's dilapidated state, Anna offered her a bribe to keep her mouth shut, which she thankfully took – but she was still forced to flee from the town in fear of her cover being blown.

Anna never allowed Lockhart to go with her when dealing with locals. 'You're a hinderance,' she told him bluntly when he asked to go with her to 'offer backup'. 'You and that fucking sword of yours. Sit here and don't do anything stupid, hard as that may be for you.'

Correspondingly, when Anna's first attempts at courting the locals ended in failure, Lockhart was quick to criticise. 'There's a war going on here. It's not a Sunday afternoon stroll we're taking,' he scolded bitingly after she had returned from being accused of being a Hwjerikwunist spy.

'You think I don't know there's a war going on? Me, of all people, don't know that there's a fucking war going on?'

'Well, you're not acting like it!' Lockhart snapped. 'You expect these people to do business with you as if everything's normal. Well, everything's not normal. Are you surprised they think you're a spy? Do you believe for a second that they will trust some random girl they've never seen before, who acts and speaks differently than they do, and who's asking for a rare herb that they're probably being forced to supply to the Protectors for their soldiers? You don't know how this works.'

'Yes, because I'm sure you know very well how this works,' Anna growled back. 'What's your solution? Run in, swing your sword around and kill everyone, then grab what we need? Is this what your brilliant plan is, to be lower than a common bandit?'

'I am not a terrorist,' Lockhart shot back, 'but I'm not an idiot, either! What I can see is that you'll need better means of convincing than the charm that you completely lack! If you want to get something, you need a carrot, and you need a stick – you give them an incentive to cooperate together with a threat! – but right now, you have neither!'

'Whatever I need to do to get them to help is something for me to figure out!' Anna shouted. 'Since you obviously don't remember, Albus tasked me with dealing with the locals, not you!'

'You can do whatever you want, but when we inevitably scour this entire region and you fail to get any results for your troubles, I won't be going back to England empty-handed.'

'Ah, your precious reputation at stake? What's your next book going to be about, huh? How you single-handedly "saved" Hogwarts by undertaking a heroic quest of fetching a bloody herb from some backwater town?'

Lockhart was fuming, his eyes alight in anger, but that did nothing except satisfy Anna more. 'Can't handle the truth, Lockhart?' she taunted. 'Why, I knew your sense of self-worth to be massively inflated, but I was not prepared for how fragile it was. Now that I think about it, it's not very surprising, is it?'

His eyes flashed, and for a moment, Anna was concerned that he might do something rash, stupid, or dangerous. Lockhart, for his part, seemed to recognise that, too, and he sat silently for a long minute, apparently trying to gather himself and hide his thoughts and emotions from his face. 'What's not very surprising is that you're still here fighting with me,' he said finally, keeping his voice as level as possible. 'If you had been any bit wise at all, you would have already been learning from your mistakes, planning what to do next. But you're not doing that, are you?'


After that row, Anna and Lockhart refused to speak altogether, communicating instead by gestures, grunts, nods, and the like. They had set out to find a village that had been marked on their maps as 'Glukhova', but when they arrived, they found that the village had long since been abandoned. Its buildings had been burned to the ground, its surrounding fields razed, and the corpses of some of its inhabitants picked apart by scavengers so that there was little left except slivers of decayed flesh and bones.

Unable to dwell on the scene for long, they departed to their next waypoint, a settlement named 'Klyonovo'. The map, made before the war, marked this as a larger settlement – nowhere near a city, of course, but certainly somewhat larger than the ones they had visited up to that point. There was, however, no telling what the war had changed. For all they knew, the town could have, too, been razed to the ground like Glukhova was.

Once they arrived, Lockhart pitched camp past the outskirts of town and got to work concealing it with magic – the man had his uses, regardless of what Anna might think of him. Anna, not bothering to waste time and effort helping him, made her way into town, dressed in peasant robes she had found laid across the remains of a bench in Glukhova. Lockhart had packed for their journey long, dark robes with large hoods, intending to use it to conceal their features. Anna had known at once that it would only serve to make them stand out among the destitution and deprivation of this area of the Empire, but Lockhart would not listen – though he found that out for himself in short time. Even with the peasant robes, she still looked far too well-fed and well-kempt, and therefore out of place among the peasantry, but nonetheless, it was a much better disguise than Lockhart's idiotic idea.

The town was, to Anna's relief, intact, though all its life had obviously long since died. Curtains were drawn in nearly every window of every house, and no signs of any sort marked any shops. The few people walking on the streets looked like living ghosts, backs hunched and staring at their feet as they shuffled down the street. Occasionally, when they looked up, Anna would see how hollow and empty their faces were, their eyes dull and dark as if their souls had been sucked out.

In the absence of any signs, Anna was completely lost as to where to go, where she might be able to find someone who could provide for her what she was looking for. Trying to ask directions, she stopped a passer-by. The man, staring at his feet like all the others, did not notice her until it was too late, nearly crashing into her.

'What the fuck are you doing?' the man snarled. 'Do you not have fucking – '

As the man got a better look at Anna, however, he suddenly froze, his eyes widening and a look of horror coming across his face. 'I'm…I apologise,' he breathed, suddenly switching his speech to Russian. 'I did not mean any disrespect… I'm sure you're here on important business.'

Momentarily perplexed, Anna quickly grasped the reason for the man's fright. 'I have nothing to do with the Protectors,' she answered, purposefully using Ukrainian in an attempt to ease the man's rational fear of outsiders and spies.

'What are you doing in this town, then?' the man asked, sounding a little calmer but still fearfully sceptical despite Anna's assurance.

'I'm looking for something,' Anna replied. 'I'm looking for Breaking Grass. I know it's found in this region. Is there someone in this town who sells it? Or perhaps knows where to find it?'

The man looked at Anna for a long moment. 'If I tell you, you won't hurt me?'

Anna shook her head, trying to appear as calming and non-threatening as possible. 'I have no intention of hurting anybody.'

The man hesitated, looking doubtful. He opened his mouth, closed it again, before once more opening it. 'Andriy,' he answered quietly. 'He runs an apothecary. North side of town.'

'Thank you,' Anna said. 'What does his apothecary look like?'

'You cannot miss it,' the man replied. 'He does business with the tsar's men. He's wealthy – compared to everyone else, at least. You'll know the place when you see it.'

Anna nodded. 'Thanks again.'

'Don't tell anyone you met me,' the man said before hastily scurrying away.

Quickly, Anna cast a spell to orient herself before hurriedly heading towards the north of the town. Compared to their muggle counterparts, magical towns were quite small, and as such it only took about ten minutes to traverse along its main thoroughfare. Once there, she walked about the quarter of the town, looking for any house or building which stood out to her. Despite nursing some frustration at the vague instructions that the man gave as she began her search, it soon became obvious that Andriy's establishment was, indeed, impossible to miss. In comparison to the other dilapidated, nearly collapsing huts in the town, the herbalist's house was well-maintained, with the boards of its outer walls in quite good shape. Unlike most other houses, this one had all of its windows still intact, its roofing tiles remained firmly attached, and not only was the paint not completely faded, but it was also not even peeling off.

Anna stepped up to the front door of the house and knocked. She waited for a few moments, but there was no response. After waiting another several seconds, she knocked again.

This time, the door eased open, and a man peeked out. 'Who are you?' he asked in a harsh whisper. 'What do you want?'

'I'm not with the Protectors, Hwjerikwunists, or anyone else, for that matter,' Anna replied, again using Ukrainian. 'All I'm looking for is to buy an herb. I've been told that you might be able to help me.'

There was a pause, but Anna thought that she could see the man's expression relax somewhat. 'Fine, come in,' he said after another stretch of hesitation.

The man opened the door just enough to allow Anna to squeeze through. Barely had she fully entered the house did the man rapidly and rather aggressively shut the door behind him, nearly catching Anna's hair between the door and the frame.

'My…my apologies,' the man – Andriy – said. 'You're not from this town, and you're not with any of…them. It's best that nobody sees you here.'

'As I have been told,' Anna replied. 'I understand.'

The interior of the house was far less glamorous than the outside. Antique shelves and tables, not in the best condition, lined the walls and floor space, decked with plants of various sorts. The floor was rather dusty, and the whole space was dimly lit by a single, old lamp hanging from the ceiling. A dust-covered painting on the wall hung crooked, but a portrait of the tsar – required by the Protectors – hanging on another wall was perfectly fixed and in mint condition, no doubt being carefully maintained out of fear of painful repercussions.

Other than the portrait, the only other item in the house that looked like it was being cared for was an intricately decorated sword and scabbard hanging behind a small counter at the back of the room. Though Anna was no fan of weapons in any capacity, she could not help but take some interest in the craftsmanship. It was not gaudy like Lockhart's bloody Arondight, but even tastefully elegant. The blade was long and tapered, but where it joined the hilt, the blade expanded slightly to create a diamond shape. The cross guard curved forward in an arc, and the grip was covered in what looked to be white leather, accented with inset diamond-shaped black stones, terminating in a pommel in the shape of an ornate flower – a rose by the look of it. The design of the scabbard, too, complemented the blade, with black accents crisscrossing a white base in diamond patterns.

'Well, what do you want?' Andriy asked, interrupting Anna. 'You said you were looking for an herb.'

Anna nodded. 'I'm looking for Breaking Grass.'

There was a pause. 'Breaking Grass…well…'

'Do you have it?'

Suddenly, Andriy turned around and retreated behind his counter. 'No, I don't.'

His reply was quite harsh, something which surprised Anna and took her slightly aback. 'Okay…do you happen to know where I can find this herb, then?' she asked.

Another pause. 'No.'

'But it's native to this area, no? You obviously know about the herb. You have to have some idea of where I could find it.'

'You can try looking in the fields,' Andriy told her with a shrug, in an almost sarcastic way.

With his back to Anna, he reached up to one of the shelves behind his counter and removed a jar from it, which he then quickly stuffed under the counter. As he did so, Anna caught sight for a split second of the contents of the jar. It appeared to contain a green herb of some sort, with small leaves, loosely stuffed. True, there were many herbs that could have looked like that, but Anna sensed immediately that Andriy was not being truthful with her about his possession of Breaking Grass.

'What was that?' Anna demanded.

'It's not your concern.'

'Was that Breaking Grass?' she pushed, refusing to let him off.

'It's none of your concern,' Andriy repeated. 'In any case…it's not something I can sell you, anyway.'

'Answer the damn question,' Anna snapped. 'Was that a jar of Breaking Grass or not.'

Andriy hesitated for several seconds. 'Fine, yes, it is,' he admitted finally. 'But it doesn't matter. I can't give it to you.'

'And why can't you do that?'

'The Protectors,' Andriy answered. 'They demanded that I reserve all my supplies for them… They want it for medical uses – for their troops. This jar…it's the only one I have…and I'm already short on my deliveries this month…'

'All right…' Anna said. While she felt quite disappointed that they had found what they were looking for, only for Andriy to refuse to sell the plant, she also understood his predicament. The Protectors were, as she knew herself, demanding and cruelly ruthless when their demands were not met. 'Do you know where else I could find this plant, then? Anyone else who might be able to sell it to me?'

'Look for it yourself,' Andriy told her. 'The Protectors are demanding supplies from all the other merchants around here, too. They need the herb – a lot of it. You know why.'

Anna nodded. Breaking Grass was, after all, an important component of several medicinal potions for a variety of maladies native to the region. 'Fine. If I can't buy it, then where can I find this herb in the wild?'

'It won't be easy,' Andriy said with a sigh. 'Breaking Grass is rare in the winter. It took me more than two weeks of scouring in total to come up with just the amount I have, and all the other herbalists are probably doing the same.'

'I know it's rare, but that doesn't tell me how to find it.'

'Look on the banks of creeks,' Andriy answered. 'Ideally under large trees. They like to grow in the shade. Since it's winter…look under the north-facing side of the trees. If you're lucky, you might find one or two growing there.'

'Only one or two?'

'I told you they were rare. It takes a lot of searching, especially in winter.'

Anna sighed, her heart falling. This was going to be far harder than they had ever thought it would be. From a glance, if it took two weeks for Andriy to find his jarful, it was going to take them at least a week to gather enough to make the potion. To boot, neither she nor Lockhart were practised herbalists, something that was no doubt to impede their search…

'Wait,' Andriy said suddenly, pulling Anna out of her dejected thoughts. 'Where are you from?'

'I…uh…from the south,' she lied. 'Odessa.'

Andriy shook his head. 'I doubt it. You look too…good…to be from anywhere near here. Anywhere in the empire…unless you really were sent by the tsar…'

'I was not,' Anna insisted, an anger washing over her at the – however misplaced – insinuation that she would serve the emperor. 'I would never work for the tsar. I despise him for…'

The look on Andriy's face morphed suddenly into one of shock at Anna's denunciation, but then, it suddenly changed into a satisfied look. Immediately, Anna knew that she had made a grave mistake. She had, in her emotional outburst, revealed too much. Her hand jerked towards the wand in her pocket, and she began slowly backing towards the door, ready to make a run for it if Andriy suddenly turned on her.

'Not something a servant of the tsar would say…' Andriy mumbled. 'I guessed right, then. You're not from the country, are you? Actually, you probably were, given how you can speak our language.'

'What makes you say that?' Anna demanded, trying to sound defiant to rescue her quickly crumbling cover.

'Your mannerisms,' Andriy answered simply. 'They're too different. Well, where are you from, then? Prussia? Austria? Ottoman Empire?'

'I…Prussia, yes,' Anna lied. 'I'm from Prussia.'

Andriy nodded slowly and began to pace behind the counter. Frightened that he was about to do something to her, Anna's hand sunk into her pocket and grasped her wand, and she had to fight to keep herself from pulling it out in her anxiety. 'Well…if you're really from Prussia…' he looked up. 'What are you doing here, then, in this wasteland? Why are you looking for Breaking Grass?'

'I…I'm a herbologist,' she replied, scrambling to make up an answer. 'I need…I need Breaking Grass for…for some research I'm doing, but I couldn't find it on the market, so…'

'So you decided to risk your life to come here,' Andriy finished with audible disbelief in his voice. 'You're very devoted to your work.'

Anna saw no option other than to play along. 'Yes…of course. I…I love doing this research.'

Andriy nodded slowly. 'Somehow, I doubt you're a suicidal scientist,' he noted. 'You had to have known very well that someone could have thought you a spy and turned you in. Do you know what the punishment for a suspected spy is?'

Anna gulped. All kinds of horrors, terrible curses and tortures she had seen over her years, flashed through her mind, each worse than the last. Was Andriy about to turn her in, and one of those misfortunes about to befall her? She opened her mouth, but could form no words, could let out no sound in her terror.

'They'll gouge your eyes out,' Andriy said ominously. 'So that you can never spy again, see? After that, they'll burn you alive in a magical fire, before they obliterate whatever's left and mix it with the dirt. That's if you're lucky, and they don't torture you first with all the worst curses they know.'

Even hearing the brutality that she could be subjected to made Anna's blood run cold. Yet despite her fear of Andriy's betrayal, a force was keeping her from drawing her wand, attacking him, and making a run for it. For some reason, a part of her, one which seemed to believe that Andriy did not in fact mean to do her harm, was keeping at bay her instinct to fight and flee and telling her to hear first what he had to say.

'And don't think it'll just be you,' Andriy continued. 'Whomever they suspect to have helped a spy, they'll subject to the same fate.'

'I'm not a spy,' Anna said. 'I assure you, I'm not working for anyone.'

Andriy shook his head. 'That's not the point. The Protectors don't care for what you have to say. There's no trial for any suspect – just torture and then execution. If you were really a herbologist…I doubt you would be risking your life like this. You're here for something else.'

'For that matter, I don't care who you are. I'm prepared to give you the Breaking Grass.'

The turn was so taken so quickly that it took several moments for Anna to process it. One second earlier, Andriy seemed to be threatening to turn her in, yet now, he was offering to help her, to give her exactly what she was looking for. A second of disbelief and excitement later, however, Anna's mood fell again at the realisation that there had to be a catch to this. There was even the distinct possibility that Andriy was luring her into a trap. Yet, at the same time, she could not simply reject the offer out of hand. The Breaking Grass was, after all, far too important, far too rare, for her to turn down a chance to acquire it.

'What do you want in return?' she probed.

'I want you to take me out of the country.'

Anna blinked. 'You want me to…'

'Take me out of the country,' Andriy repeated. 'If you had been able to cross the border from Prussia and then make it so far into the Empire…you have more than a good chance of making it out alive. I want you to help me escape. In exchange, I will give you the Breaking Grass and anything else of mine you want, free of charge.'


'No. No way.'

'He offered to – '

'I don't care what he offers,' Lockhart interjected. 'He'll be a liability. It'll put my life at risk. And yours, for that matter.'

'So, what I'm hearing is that you're going to finally get off your high horse and crawl through the field looking for a few blades of grass yourself, then?'

'I have no intention of doing that, I assure you,' Lockhart said. 'That's a stupid waste of time and effort that's even more foolish than your insane plan.'

Anna snorted. 'Well, if you've got a good idea for once, then spit it out.'

'Simple,' Lockhart replied. 'You go in, pretend – '

'I'm not pretending – '

'Shut up for once and let me talk,' Lockhart snapped. 'You wanted me to spit it out, so now you'll listen to me. You will go to him, pretend that you've agreed to take him out, and I'll sneak in under a Disillusionment Charm. We wait for him to offer up the Breaking Grass, at which point I'll stun him. You take the Breaking Grass, I modify his memory so that he doesn't remember that he had ever met us. Then we get the hell out of here.'

Anna laughed caustically. 'Ah, just like I thought! Gilderoy Lockhart, supposed great defender against the dark arts, nothing more than a common thief and bandit! Actually, more! Not only are you going to be attacking and stealing from an innocent man, you're also as good as murdering him! Ever thought what would happen when the Protectors came knocking?'

Lockhart leaned back in his chair. 'Frankly, I don't give a flying fuck,' he said coldly. 'Our task is to get the herb we need, not to keep random villagers alive for a few months longer. Stop being naïve. This country's been at war for almost a decade now. Guess what? Innocents die in a war, especially when the armies show as little regard for life as they do here. If you think you can fight every battle under the guidance of some innocent perception of morality, the only thing you will accomplish is putting yourself in the grave. Think on it for a second. What does it matter if you save the life of this Andriy or let him die? He's but one compared to the scores that will still die just today alone, deaths that you can do nothing at all to stop!'

'I'm not a child, Lockhart. I know this,' Anna shot back. 'You're the one who doesn't seem to understand there's a difference between being unable to do anything and being able to do something, but choosing not to do so! Do you do the same thing to people you know? Your friends? Your loved ones? Or do you have none of those because they are equally worthless to you as "some stranger"?'

Unexpectedly, Anna's statement seemed to trip up Lockhart, and for a few moments, he seemed to be at a loss for words. Quickly, however, he recovered. 'I can sit here and debate ethics with you for a year,' he responded, choosing not to acknowledge Anna's attack. 'Or, we can get done what we're here to do. My concern right now is getting this herb and getting out of here. You can choose to help me, or you can stay here. I don't care either way. You've had enough chances to do it "your way". Now it's time to get results.'

'I refuse – '

'I never asked for your permission,' Lockhart interrupted. 'I don't care if you like it or not. I'm going to do what I'm going to do. You can help me, or you can sit here. I don't give a fucking shit. What you won't do is hinder me.'