Maria Binoville stepped onto Platform 4 and 3/4 with a huge sigh of relief.
Thinking back on the previous day, she quickly pulled out a mirror and examined herself.
She wasn’t thrilled with what she saw, but the train’s whistle prevented her from properly applying cosmetic charms.
“Damn it.”
Biting her lip in frustration, she quickly made her way to the train entrance.
Perhaps celebrating her first successful Curse-Breaker assignment in Egypt with the others had been a bit excessive.
Not that she regretted it.
She was glad to celebrate her first successful job after three years of grueling training for this unpopular but well-paid profession.
After all, no one would call removing curses and enchantments from burial grounds, crypts, ancient artifacts, and mass graves a safe job.
So when, after finishing her seven years at Durmstrang, she had chosen that profession, her parents had been, to put it mildly, opposed.
But if there was one thing the daughter of the Binoville family didn’t lack, it was stubbornness and a taste for adventure.
With the help of friends she’d studied with, the young witch quickly moved from Czechoslovakia to Germany, where she enrolled in training courses.
Fortunately, her excellent NEWT scores in all subjects allowed her to enter without problems, and a small part-time job at a café paid for her studies.
And now, after her first successful assignment, when the relieved Curse-Breaker team was heading back to their home countries, she joined those going to Prague.
To return home for the first time in three years.
Touching her ear, which her mother had grabbed, the girl shuddered at the memory of the ensuing scandal.
Still, her parents had quickly calmed down and accepted her career choice.
But just as she was feeling relieved, they hit her with a question.
Did she have a boyfriend?
At that moment, she started to suspect something.
The next month was filled with introductions, meetings, and visits to families with “good sons of mother’s friends” or “promising young men.” So when a letter from the German branch of the Curse-Breakers’ Guild, where she was registered, arrived with news of a new job, she was as happy as if a thousand Galleons had fallen from the sky.
Overjoyed at her imminent departure from her too-“clingy” parents, she even agreed to have a drink with her colleagues the night before her trip.
If you didn’t count the fact that she’d had to use a couple of curses to fend off a couple of overly persistent guys, the terrible headache the next morning, and nearly missing the train, everything had gone perfectly.
“Watch out.”
The daydreaming girl flinched at the cold voice.
A man in a grey robe stood near the train entrance.
Under his piercing blue eyes, she felt like she was on a coroner’s examination table.
A few seconds of silence were broken by a surprised and happy voice.
“Mary!”
Tearing her gaze away from the man, the witch noticed a white-haired girl who had just boarded the train.
“Maria!
My name is Maria, how many times do I have to tell you, Professor Airi?”
The former Arithmancy professor at Durmstrang laughed.
“You haven’t changed a bit, Mary.
Walthard, you can let my friend and former student through.”
The wizard in the grey robe silently stepped aside.
Casting a wary glance at him, the girl handed her ticket to the impassive conductor and boarded the train.
“Come on, come on.
I haven’t seen you in ages, and Illya would love to hear some stories from a young Curse-Breaker.”
“Illya?”
The girl threw a questioning look at the little girl with white hair and ruby eyes peeking out from behind Ayrissphil’s back.
“Oh, I forgot you haven’t met yet.
Let me introduce my daughter and heiress, Illyasphil von Winter.
Illya, meet the young Curse-Breaker, Maria Binoville.”
The little girl, slightly embarrassed, curtsied.
“Pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
Maria smiled, charmed by the almost doll-like beauty of her former mentor’s daughter.
“Alright, let’s go.
We’re blocking the corridor.”
For the next few hours, the heiress of the von Winter family listened with delight to stories about the peculiarities of Curse-Breaking, while Ayrissphil, glancing at the delighted Maria, smiled as she drank her tea.
The compartment held only the von Winter and Binoville ladies, while one bodyguard stood guard outside the door, and the other, along with the butler, waited in the adjacent compartment, ready to respond at a moment’s notice.
After a while, the clearly tired little girl fell asleep on her mother’s lap.
“Sorry, Mary, she must have tired you out.”
“My name is Maria.
And how could this little cutie tire me out?”
The white-haired girl just laughed softly.
The brown-haired witch smiled lazily, blinking sleepily.
“I’ll step out for a moment, so don’t be bored without me.”
Ayrissphil just nodded.
Leaving the compartment, where the wizard in the grey robe was yawning, Maria headed toward the back of the train, where the restroom should be.
Passing through the vestibule and wrinkling her nose at the smell of tobacco from two men who had decided to smoke there despite the rules, she clicked her tongue disapprovingly.
“And where’s the conductor?”
The floor under her feet vibrated steadily, while forests, lakes, and small Muggle settlements, whose inhabitants had no idea of the passing steam engine, flew by outside the windows.
Countless charms layered on space, mentalism, and concealment prevented Muggles from seeing this fusion of science and magic.
Quickly finishing her business and nearly falling asleep while washing her face at the sink, the girl headed back.
The corridors were still empty, but something made the Curse-Breaker wary.
There wasn’t a single sound of people.
Approaching the nearest compartment, she knocked and carefully opened it.
A peaceful picture of a family, father, mother, and ten-year-old son, asleep, greeted her.
Maria quietly closed the door and walked on.
A minute later, she opened another compartment.
Now the witch saw four men, sprawled haphazardly, sleeping wherever they’d fallen.
“Excuse me…”
Getting no reaction, she grabbed the nearest man by the collar and shook him.
Zero reaction.
“Enervate.”
The man only briefly opened his sleepy eyes and continued sleeping.
A chill went down the Curse-Breaker’s spine.
She finally noticed her own strange drowsiness, which she’d been blaming on the party.
Memories of certain tombs surfaced.
Their builders had used a rather tricky curse, the “Sleeping Pool,” to protect their contents.
It couldn’t be detected by ordinary spells because it constantly affected the entire area non-selectively, often being mistaken for a harmless feature of the magical background.
“Airi…”
She spun around and ran toward the front cars.
The empty corridors and silence fueled her growing anxiety.
Finally seeing the door to the right car, Maria opened it with a bang.
The guard who had been talking to an unknown man spun his head toward her, wand already in hand.
The witch, as if in slow motion, watched the blade slide out from the sleeve of the man in work clothes, who with inhuman speed drove it into the distracted wizard’s throat.
“No!
Stupefy!”
With animalistic agility, the man dodged the red curse beam.
At the noise, Walthard and Tian quickly rushed out of the adjacent compartment.
Quickly assessing the situation, the second bodyguard unleashed a cascade of spells at the assassin, destroying the magical protection that had sprung up around him in seconds.
But three more attackers, emerging from the locomotive’s direction, prevented him from completely suppressing him.
Two men the witch had seen smoking and a woman aimed their magical foci at them.
In the next moment, Maria realized Walthard earned every Galleon.
Like an unstoppable force of nature, he deflected all the spells with economical movements, along with the knives thrown by the man in work clothes.
The attackers began to slowly retreat.
Soon, the sound of an opening door came from behind.
Spinning around, the witch saw the conductor with relief and shouted at him.
“Quickly, alert the Aurors about the attack!”
“O-okay.
Stupefy.
Bone-breaker.”
On pure reflex, Maria deflected the red beam.
She watched in disbelief as a transparent shimmering streak of air struck the unsuspecting Walthard in the back.
With a distinct wet crunch, his chest caved in, and his body hit the floor.
“You shouldn’t have interfered, madam.”
The conductor said quietly, aiming his wand at her.
“Protego.”
Four spells immediately crashed into the translucent dome that had sprung up around the Curse-Breaker, shattering it instantly.
“Well, this is it.”
With a mix of resignation and anger, Binoville stared at the people about to kill her.
The next moment, she watched the grey-haired butler, who had burst from the compartment, smoothly and fluidly cut the conductor’s throat before he could even turn his head.
“What?”
One of the four attackers exclaimed loudly, sending spells at the butler instead of her.
But the butler, with a strange pendulum-like motion, dodged them all and lunged forward.
The man in work clothes rushed to meet him, his yellow eyes flashing, swinging the blade protruding from his sleeve.
A moment later, his yellow eyes widened as a battering-ram fist slammed into his gut.
Without pausing, Tian threw the limp body into the nearest enemy wizard, while Maria distracted the other two.
Only the appearance of the red-haired wizard in the white coat and bowler hat made the girl realize their troubles were far from over.
A burst of gunfire ripped through the air, nearly taking the butler’s head off if a delayed magical shield hadn’t appeared.
Recognizing the Muggle firearm in the wizard’s hand, the Curse-Breaker quickly cast a spell against it, preventing it from working for the next few minutes.
She could barely remember the mechanics of the spell; it was supposed to prevent gunpowder from igniting or something.
The important thing was that it worked.
“You people are stubborn.”
The red-haired man said with disappointment, clicking the now-jammed pistol a couple of times.
He tossed it aside and turned to them.
“How about you just sit this one out while we take Lord Winter’s wife and daughter?”
“Go to hell!”
“Pity.
I hate killing beautiful women.”
His cane was raised parallel to the floor, sending a barrage of wind blades her way.
Taking most of them on her shield, Maria glanced at the butler, who had been hit by one.
A gunshot blended with a flash of pain for the girl as she hit the floor.
The burning pain in her shoulder washed away all thoughts and useful spells.
A ringing filled her ears.
“Damn it.”
She reached for her fallen wand.
She wasn’t going to die unarmed, whimpering in pain on the floor.
Finally grabbing it, she looked up with clearer vision and noticed a handsome young wizard with golden hair in the doorway, staring at her in a stupor.
The girl smiled self-deprecatingly.
“Great, I look awful.
Damn it.
He’s about to die.”
“What are you waiting for, idiot?
Run!”
Maria didn’t want another innocent person to die today.
She’d already seen enough deaths she couldn’t prevent.
But what happened next made the girl forget her pain entirely.
Instead of freezing or running to the back of the train in terror, the wizard looked at her with unreadable blue eyes.
A wide line of flame, shifting from gold to red, streaked over her body.
The witch watched, mesmerized, as the cut and burned parts of the attackers’ bodies began falling to the floor, eternal incomprehension frozen in their eyes.
The deadly arc of flame slid across the corridor’s windows, stopping at the flashing blue magical shield at the compartment entrance.
With veins bulging across his body, the golden-haired wizard raised his wand, from which a stream of golden-crimson flame flowed.
The heat intensified, and the arc of flame coiled into an expanding sphere of fire.
With the distinct screech of breaking metal and the hiss of melting steel, the sphere took the shape of a lion’s head, its jaws opening wide toward the cracking magical shield at the compartment door.
“STOP!
The lady and her daughter are in there!”
The grey-haired butler threw himself at the frozen figure of the golden-haired wizard.
But as soon as he got close, a white wave nearly threw him through the broken window of the moving train.
He only managed to grab the edge in the last moment.
With the sound of the shattered magical shield at the compartment entrance, the girl finally unfroze.
“STOP!”
The lion’s head of fire froze.
The golden-haired wizard turned his gaze to her, something dark lurking in the depths of his blue eyes.
The sheer force of the magic surrounding him took her breath away.
She’d only felt something similar from a few veterans of the Grindelwald War, but compared to them, the man before her seemed more…
oppressive.
A crack came from the side where the attackers and the mother and daughter should have been.
In that moment, the wizard before her transformed.
His dark blue eyes brightened, gaining a lively gleam.
With a few waves of his wand, the fire spell, comparable in power to Fiendfyre, was dispelled along with the remaining flames.
The strong wind from the broken windows and collapsed roof died down.
“Oops, they got away.
Let me help you with that wound.”
The blue-eyed blond smiled warmly at her, his veins no longer bulging.
His figure seemed to radiate benevolence and charm into the air around him.
The girl nodded slowly and warily, stunned by the sudden change.
“He’s not crazy, is he?”
Then the meaning of the wizard’s earlier words finally hit her.
“Oh no.
Airi and Illya…”