Jasnah used Bryan's wand to conjure the stove and the pots and pans, every tool they properly needed for the small, improvised meal, and then handed the wand back to him.
A strange sight unfolded there on the ice.
Amid the vast, frozen lake wrapped in bitter, howling wind, a small patch of stillness had appeared—a pocket where no wind stirred at all, held unnaturally calm.
An old man, one foot already in the grave, wore an expression touched throughout with sorrow as he worked a wooden spatula, turning over the fish that had gone soft and slightly overcooked in the pan, his attention was only half on the task.
Beside the stove, Jasnah crouched on the ground, watching with keen interest, seeming not to notice Enno's clumsy, distracted hand at the cooking.
The smell of faint scorching drifted steadily into the air, but Bryan did not so much as smirk at the amateur effort.
He sat with his weight settled against the collapsed, ruined frame of the sled, keeping quiet throughout, keeping his own presence small and unobtrusive within the small circle of warmth.
Under the fierce, concentrated heat of the stove, the ice-melt water poured into the iron pot soon came to a boil, and then Enno cut the cooked, frost-hardened potatoes carefully into rough chunks and dropped them into the pale, milky-white fish broth already simmering.
The broth churned and rolled once more at the addition.
"There we go, then—"
Enno lifted his head and said, his voice hoarse from disuse and the cold both.
As a last meal before an execution, it was pitifully plain fare.
But Jasnah paid that no mind at all. She ladled out a full bowl of the fish broth, entirely unseasoned, straight from the pot, and after a moment's thought, made her way with difficulty over toward Bryan.
"Oh, I get a share too, do I?"
Bryan smiled, entirely relaxed.
"Of course you do. You spared both Enno and me from ending up as wolf feed out here, Mr. Watson—the least I can offer in return is a bowl of soup."
Bryan said nothing further in response to that, only smiled and took the offered wooden bowl from her hands. He sipped the broth carefully, then nodded once in approval.
"Not bad at all."
"You truly are a wizard worthy of respect, Mr. Watson—"
Jasnah gave a small, proper bow of her head in a gesture of real respect.
Then she walked back to the stove and ladled the remainder of the broth carefully into two large wooden bowls for herself and Enno.
The old man and the young woman sat together on the body of a fallen ice wolf, leaning against each other for warmth, savouring the bitter, simple broth without further conversation for a time.
"What will you do afterward, Enno?"
Jasnah's tone was idle and conversational but it dropped Enno instantly into a long, considering silence.
Bryan, watching from a small distance, could sense clearly the pain buried somewhere deep in that silence.
The old man clearly had no wish to deceive Jasnah with false comfort, and yet he could not bring himself to speak whatever full truth actually sat behind his hesitation either.
"Back to the village—"
He said at last, his voice thick and low.
"Mm—"
Jasnah let out a soft, considering hum. She reached up and smoothed down the strands of grey hair that the wind had tangled badly during Enno's earlier desperate chase with the ice wolf.
"When you get back there, move across the river and live with the others, Enno—"
Her voice had gone gentle.
"However many Muggles you killed on that battlefield all those years ago, a fifty years have passed since. You've paid for your sins already. There's no need to keep punishing yourself further."
'Paid them off. Have I, truly?'
A flicker of bewilderment passed through Enno's clouded eyes at the well-meaning suggestion.
'No. I haven't.'
Those particular shameful sins were bound up with his very life now as long as he drew breath at all, there would be no day when they were washed clean of him.
But there was no need to speak of any of that truth aloud to her.
"Mm—"
Enno nodded instead, letting the comforting fiction stand.
Seeing him agree, Jasnah's face brightened into a smile. She took a few more sips of the thin broth with an expression of pleasure.
"Oh, right, Mr. Watson—"
Something seemed to occur to her, and Jasnah turned to look at Bryan, who had been sitting lost in his own thoughts.
"Mr. Watson, I have one further favour to ask of you—"
"Speak freely, Miss Rosier—"
Bryan came back to himself and spoke gently, giving her his attention.
"I hold vaults at Gringotts in France, Germany, and Italy. That particular sum of money means nothing to me anymore. I'm willing to give you the vault keys—all of that accumulated wealth can be donated to the British Ministry of Magic, to help rebuild Diagon Alley after all the destruction there. But in exchange—"
Jasnah glanced sideways at Enno.
"I'd like to ask you a favour. Help Enno build a new house. He's very old now—the work of building a house alone would be far too much for him to manage."
"Build a new house."
Bryan looked over at the silent old man, something shifting subtly behind his eyes.
"That's no great difficulty to arrange, Miss Rosier, but—"
Bryan gave a small, considering shrug.
"Are you certain you want to give away everything you currently have, Miss Rosier?"
"Haven't I already been sentenced to life in prison, in any case?"
There was genuinely little sorrow in Jasnah's own smile as she said it.
"That's true enough, as things currently stand—"
Bryan inclined his head at the fair point.
"But under the Avalon Prison Administration Act recently issued by the British Ministry of Magic, any prisoner serving their sentence—if their conduct is good, if they engage sincerely with the rehabilitation offered, if they come to a genuine recognition of the shamefulness of their crimes, and if they show remorse—may, after serving a certain minimum term, be granted either parole or a reduced sentence, even if they were originally sentenced to life imprisonment. So—"
Looking at the somewhat dazed Jasnah, and at Enno, whose own attention had likewise sharpened with interest at this news, Bryan smiled easily.
"You may yet have a day of freedom waiting somewhere ahead of you. And out there in the wider world, whenever that day comes, you'll need Galleons to live on—"
"You mean—"
Joy slowly bloomed in Jasnah's eyes at that.
However willing she was to atone for her crimes, if there was a chance to walk free again someday, who would honestly refuse it?
"We'll get to see each other again!"
Jasnah turned to Enno at once, her eyes turned bright with genuine surprise and delight at the prospect.
Enno nodded firmly in return.
"Thank you, Mr. Watson!"
Jasnah thanked Bryan with genuine sincerity.
"But I still want to donate all the Galleons regardless. I have no right left to make use of it."
"As you wish, Miss Rosier—"
Bryan rose slowly to his feet, brushing snow from his robes.
"Well then, it's about time, I think. I believe we should be on our way now."
Bryan set down his empty soup bowl, his own expression remaining entirely composed throughout.
Jasnah and Enno rose as well, the two of them facing each other now across the dim, frozen stretch of the plain.
"Thank you, Enno. I'll come back to see you, whatever it takes."
Jasnah stepped forward and embraced the old man's thin, wobbly body carefully, her voice had gone soft with emotions.
"Take care of yourself while I'm gone. I don't want to come back one day and find your gravestone waiting for me instead of you."
"Mm—"
This particular tenderness, something he had never before tasted in his entire life, left the old man's frail body stiff with the unfamiliarity of it. Across a face wrinkled by decades of wind and hardship, there flickered, for a moment, something like helplessness. It was a long moment before he came back to himself enough to answer.
Jasnah let go of Enno gently, gave him one final, warm smile, and limped her own way over toward Bryan.
She circled around him briefly, and, her fingers lifting with precision, cut free the fur blanket still hanging from the wreck of the sled frame.
Enno had spent many nights and days stitching it together, to send her off. She wanted to take it with her.
At last, she looked deeply, one final time, toward the old man standing by the stove—a figure that seemed, in that moment, lost entirely in silent grief and Jasnah pressed her lips together hard, holding back the sorrow of this parting.
"After you take me to prison, Mr. Watson, don't forget to see Enno safely home. He can't make it back there on his own."
Bryan gave a soft murmur of assent to that request, and then—
BOOM!
It was as though the sky itself had come crashing violently down all at once. Lightning flickered suddenly in Bryan's own eyes, and a crushing oppressive force descended without any warning at all.
Under the sheer, naked pressure radiating from Bryan in that instant, Jasnah, standing close by, had no strength left in her to resist it. Her eyes rolled back sharply, her whole body went limp all at once, and she collapsed instantly into total unconsciousness, folding to the ice.
"The purpose of my visit here tonight was simply to offer what small help I could to an old man who had spent half a lifetime and who might not be used to life out on the wider outside. I hadn't expected to find this instead—"
Bryan's tone remained calm throughout, entirely unshaken, as he looked steadily at the thin, wrinkled old man standing before him.
The eyes that had, only a moment before, reflected the crumpled, unconscious form of Jasnah lying on the ice slowly lifted to meet Bryan's gaze directly and the dullness that had always sat in them dissolved away without a single sound, replaced instantly by a sharp, unmistakable silver light.
RUMBLE!
The earth itself suddenly shook beneath them both.
Beneath the dim, oppressive sky, above the pale grey ice of the frozen lake, two distinct orbs of light abruptly appeared, blazing and radiant as twin suns rising together in open defiance of the winter dark.
The instant the two solid orbs of light made contact with one another, a wild, sudden wind rose from nowhere, and blinding bolts of lightning tore violently down out of the roiling dark clouds, as though the God of Thunder himself had taken up his whip and was lashing the earth below without any mercy.
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