A thin layer of gloomy cloud still hung over the sky, casting the whole earth beneath it into a gloom that seemed unwilling to lift.
The heavy snow had finally stopped falling, but as the bone chilling wind continued sweeping through the landscape, it lifted the loose top layer of snow from the heavy drifts covering the ground, sending pale white waves swelling and rolling continuously across the silver-covered land.
Jasnah stood in the cabin doorway, leaning her weight onto her cane, staring out at this entire ice-layered world with a blank expression.
Though the blizzard had stopped, the snow piled several feet deep on the ground remained an obstacle she couldn't overcome on her own—one that stood, immovable, between her and any hope of leaving this village, cut off as it was from the rest of the world.
The Anti-Disapparition Jinx was still in effect, but no Auror from the German Ministry of Magic had ever shown up in the following days.
Jasnah genuinely didn't know whether she should feel grateful for that, or simply unlucky in some other way.
Something moved behind her frozen-looking eyes, and she turned her gaze toward another stretch of bleak scenery.
Across the river, a few dark shapes stirred against the stark white backdrop.
The heavy snow had cut off the villagers' own road, and those dark figures visible in the distance were evidently clearing a path toward the frozen river's edge.
That particular work, the old Muggle had already finished on his own side days before. He'd ploughed resolutely through the snow all around the cabin, cut a path through it, and then hauled his hand-drawn sledge across the frozen river surface and headed further upstream. He'd been gone, this time, for half a full day already, longer than any previous absence.
Thinking of that continuously silent, gaunt Muggle, a flicker of helplessness appeared across Jasnah's own face.
Forgive her—in her mind, she could still only call him "the old Muggle," lacking anything better.
She'd been trapped here for several days now, and she still hadn't managed to get his name out of him. Without her wand, she found, her powers of persuasion simply weren't what they used to be.
'Wizard.'
The thought made something stir faintly again in Jasnah's chest, recalling the moment.
That night, four days ago now, the old Muggle really had genuinely startled her.
An old man who'd lived deep in these mountains his entire life, who by all outward appearances had barely ever left the area and yet he knew this world had wizards in it.
Instantly on guard at the revelation, Jasnah had pressed him instantly for more.
"Wands—"
Sitting by the fireplace that night, his face lit ruddy by the flames, the old Muggle had said calmly.
"You know about wands?"
Jasnah's own cold lips tightened sharply at that.
"You've seen one before, or—"
Her voice had risen sharply, and she glared directly at him.
"You're a wizard too?"
And that, notably, had been the entire end of that exchange.
In the days since that first revelation, she'd tried more than once to pry out of him exactly why he knew this secret about wizards, and—needless to say, given his character—the results had spoken thoroughly for themselves.
Bit by careful bit, though, over the accumulated days, she'd started to get a proper feel for the old Muggle's particular temperament.
He wasn't exactly silent all the time, she'd learned. When she happened to bring up certain topics that "interested" him specifically, he'd give some kind of actual response, however brief.
So, in a place where crying out to demons or gods got her nowhere useful, coaxing the old Muggle carefully into talking had gradually become her primary way of passing the time.
"How long have you lived here—"
Jasnah lowered her eyes to the charred appetite-killing strip of dried fish held in her hand, thinking privately that the delicious bowl of potato-and-fresh-fish stew she remembered so vividly must have been, some kind of exhausted, feverish illusion.
Still—staying alive mattered more than any complaint about the quality of her meals.
She frowned hard, bit determinedly into the salty, fishy dried fish, and asked, almost offhand, testing the waters.
"Fifty years—"
Jasnah's head snapped up in genuine shock at the answer, and she stared directly at the old Muggle gnawing on a potato by the hearth.
Her shock had two causes: first, she genuinely hadn't expected her casual question to actually receive a proper answer at all; second, she was genuinely stunned that the old Muggle had lived here, in this same isolated cabin, for a full half-century.
"Did you—did you ever have a family of your own?"
The question slipped out before she'd genuinely meant to ask it.
The old Muggle fell completely silent at that.
Jasnah let out a small, regretful sigh at the renewed quiet, and just when she'd given up on receiving any answer at all, he turned his face toward her.
"I did. And you?"
It was, she realised with a small jolt, the very first question he had ever actually asked her in return, across the entire four days. For that alone, she was willing to say a little more than she otherwise might have.
"I have a father and a grandfather too, though I haven't seen him in many years now. I've always stayed with my father instead. Before I fell into the river, he and I were together. Did you really never see him anywhere nearby?"
After that particular exchange, the two of them didn't speak again for the remainder of that night.
A long, drawn-out sigh echoed through the little wooden cabin as Jasnah's memory of that night faded, bringing her back to the present.
Turning around from the doorway, Jasnah's eyes caught on the newly sewn mattress sitting atop the pile of odds and ends in the corner, and her gaze fixed there with fresh curiosity.
The Muggle had used up nearly all of his own accumulated stores of fur to sew that particular mattress, and every hour he had free that wasn't spent chopping wood, eating, or sleeping—she genuinely had no idea what the finished piece was actually for.
'Speaking of which—'
Turning her head back toward the white world stretching outside, worry surfaced in Jasnah's eyes.
The old Muggle had, by now, been gone far too long on this particular trip.
In the days before this one, he had also stepped out for a while each day, following his established routine, but never more than an hour or two before he'd drag half a dead tree trunk back out of the surrounding woods and return to his workshed to split it into usable pieces.
He'd never once, in all the days she'd been here, been gone half a full day without coming back.
'Could something have happened to him—had he fallen into the river, perhaps, breaking through weakened ice?'
The moment that particular thought surfaced, the colour drained from Jasnah's own face.
"Ridiculous!"
Inside the empty pine cabin, Jasnah scolded herself aloud.
In this ice-covered world stretching before her, all that stirred within sight was the drifting snow that gave the wind its shape, and, far across the way, the villagers struggling steadily to clear their own road but the gaunt, silent old Muggle never once appeared among their distant, working figures.
Then, all simultaneously, the tight knot sitting in Jasnah's brow loosened considerably, and a bright light she hadn't seen in days flickered suddenly through her dull, tired eyes.
She limped her own way carefully back over to the bed, pulled the musk-deer hide coat she'd been using as a blanket up over her own shoulders, and then, leaning heavily on the cane the old Muggle had made for her with his hands, went determinedly out through the door.
The hundred-odd feet stretching to the river proved to be the hardest road she had ever walked in her entire life.
Every single step had to be taken with the utmost precision in the minus-ten-odd-degree cold, the surface snow had frozen hard into hazardous ice, and one careless move would send her sliding badly, potentially reopening her healing wound.
It took her over ten full minutes to properly cover that murderous stretch of ground.
'Feeble Muggles,' Jasnah thought privately, standing finally at the edge of the frozen river, gasping hard for breath from the effort.
If her wand still worked, there was so much useful magic that could have helped her broken leg heal properly and quickly.
If Apparition were an option for her, she could have crossed to the other side in a single instant, instead of dragging herself painfully across step by exhausting step like this.
"Hey, over here!"
Balanced unsteadily on her single good leg, Jasnah waved her cane urgently at the few distant Muggles working on the far bank.
The distance—no more than three or four hundred feet in total wasn't really so great but the whistling wind swallowed her voice before it could properly carry, and no matter how loudly she shouted, none of the working villagers could hear her over the wind.
Crossing the river itself would require even more caution than the walk here had.
The ice was solid enough, on testing, that she didn't need to worry about falling straight through into the water beneath but the loose snow dusting its surface made the whole crossing considerably more slippery and far too risky an undertaking for someone who could only currently walk with the assistance of a cane.
To properly avoid the danger, she had no choice left but to—crawl across on hands and knees.
She glanced around carefully first to make certain the old Muggle wasn't anywhere nearby to witness this, then clenched her own jaw hard and, slowly lowered herself down to the ice.
The stinging pain in her bare palms couldn't touch her in that moment, but thinking of the full situation she now found herself reduced to, Jasnah suddenly felt an urge to cry.
Like a stray dog with nowhere left to go.
By the time Jasnah finally reached the small group of Muggles working on the far bank, she was utterly spent from the crossing, and her right leg had inevitably brushed hard against the ice more than once along the way—now her previously broken leg had begun throbbing again with fresh pain.
"Whew—sorry about that, everyone."
No one wanted to linger out in the snow and ice any longer than absolutely necessary, and the Muggles clearing snow outside had all been working with their heads bent down, entirely focused on the task—until Jasnah's voice broke suddenly through the wind, and one by one they stopped their work to look up.
"Whoa, who are you? Where'd you come from?"
A few tired faces exchanged glances between themselves for a moment. One of them, a man perhaps in his forties with a ridiculous little moustache, stared directly at her and asked, startled by her sudden appearance.
"Um—"
Jasnah was still carefully arranging her own words in her head, just about to speak.
"She's wearing Enno's cloak—"
Another young man present, pale-skinned and freckled across his nose, narrowed his own eyes as he looked her carefully over, and suddenly pointed at the cloak she had wrapped around herself.
'Enno—was that, then, the old Muggle's actual name?'
Somehow, Jasnah felt herself relax slightly.
"That's right, I came from across the river—"
Jasnah nodded in confirmation.
"But—"
The initial surprise faded from the brown-moustached man's face, replaced by rising suspicion as he continued studying her more carefully.
"That old man Enno's always lived alone up there, hasn't he, far as any of us ever knew? Never once heard he had any relatives to speak of. You're—"
"I'm only staying with him for now."
Facing several pairs of questioning eyes on her, a fresh thought suddenly surfaced in Jasnah's mind, and it changed, on the spot, what she'd originally intended to say next.
"I'm from Berlin, originally. Because of this snowstorm, I got stranded out here. The reason I came to this village in the first place is—"
Jasnah's own gaze grew steady as she looked carefully across each of their faces.
"I heard there were wizards here."
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