Jasnah narrowed her eyes carefully, studying the Muggles' expressions with close attention.
"Wizards?"
The freckle-faced young man blinked in confusion at the word, his lips were moving as he mumbled something entirely incoherent under his breath, while the rest of the gathered Muggles wore similarly dazed, blank expressions across their faces.
"That's right—"
Jasnah showed no trace of disappointment at their reaction. Her hand emerged slowly from beneath her fur cloak, gripping her broken wand carefully.
"I'm a professor, as it happens. I teach at a university in Berlin, and I also belong to a small society there—one dedicated to studying supernatural forces, folklore, and the like."
Jasnah extended her wand a little further into view, so the gathered villagers could get a proper, closer look at it.
"A student in our society found this particular object while hiking near here, some weeks back. After some careful research on our part, we've concluded it might genuinely be a wand—the specific kind of implement wizards are said, in old folklore, to use for casting their magic."
"But—"
Freckle-face's mouth twitched at that explanation. He examined Jasnah's broken wand carefully for a considering moment, leaning in.
"This just genuinely looks like a piece of craftwork to me. Nicely carved, sure, but just wood."
"There are no wizards in this world, Professor—"
The brown-bearded man finally burst out laughing at the whole premise.
"You've probably been played for a fool by your student, if you ask me."
A round of cheerful laughter moved through the group standing in the snow. The villagers were all, evidently, rather amused by the whole reason behind Jasnah's unexpected appearance among them.
"Oh, is that so?"
Visible disappointment appeared on Jasnah's face at the reaction, though privately, beneath that performance, she quietly breathed a genuine sigh of relief.
"I thought I might actually be close to catching myself some real wizards, silly as that sounds now. None of you have genuinely ever seen a little stick quite like this one? Of course, it might be crafted from some other particular kind of wood—perhaps somewhere in the home of some villager who behaves a bit oddly, if you think of anyone like that?"
"Everyone here is perfectly normal, Professor. And I'm quite certain I've genuinely never seen a little stick like that sitting in anyone's home—"
The brown-bearded man said with continued good humour, "Unless someone's been hiding it from the rest of us on purpose, which seems unlikely round here. Or maybe this little stick just floated down the river to reach you."
"That's possible, I suppose."
Jasnah said, letting the thread go.
It seemed, on this evidence, unlikely that any wizards actually lived hidden within this village. The Anti-Disapparition Jinx must, then, indeed have been cast by German Ministry of Magic Aurors, sealing off the entire surrounding mountain region as part of their search.
"Oh, is that how you hurt your leg, dear?"
A stout middle-aged woman with braided hair looked at Jasnah with sympathy.
"Oh, yes. I know—I was clearly a bit reckless, exploring somewhere I shouldn't have been."
Jasnah smiled faintly at the woman, matching the tone.
"That looks like a serious injury. You must have fallen from somewhere up on the mountain, didn't you—"
The brown-bearded man studied the evident wound on her right leg for a considering moment, then shrugged easily.
"You should count yourself proper lucky it was old man Enno who found and saved you, out here. He's very good at handling this kind of injury. Whenever any villager breaks a bone round these parts, they go straight to him for help rather than waiting for a doctor from town—"
"Enno didn't mention to me that he was any kind of doctor?"
Jasnah asked, genuinely a bit surprised by the detail.
"He doesn't talk much at all, does he?"
The stout woman said with a knowing smile. "My father, before he passed on, told me Enno wasn't like this at all when he was a younger man. But after he came back from the battlefield, he became quiet and withdrawn from everyone."
"The battlefield?"
Jasnah blinked at that particular detail, her interest was sharpening considerably.
"The Second World War, half a century ago now—"
The freckled young man jumped in eagerly to answer first, his tone was tinged with inherited regret for a war he'd never personally witnessed.
"The Battle of Berlin. He must have watched his fellow soldiers die under enemy gunfire!"
"When Enno was a soldier, he served as a medic."
"There's a rumour he once received an award from that man!"
The Muggle villagers gathered before her grew increasingly more animated as they spoke, all chiming in eagerly with their own scattered, half-remembered accounts of old man Enno's distant past.
'He fought in that war, then.'
Jasnah's own gaze drifted for a moment. The question that had puzzled her for days now had the beginnings of a clear answer.
That great war half a century ago hadn't only ever been fought by ordinary Muggles alone—the entire European wizarding world had been embroiled in it just as fiercely, working alongside and against them.
In fact, the reason the Muggle world had been reduced to such a terrible condition during that period was, behind the surface of it all, wizards themselves stirring the flames of that conflict—some had even joined the Muggles' battlefields directly, fighting side by side with them.
So—as a veteran of the Second World War, Enno had likely witnessed wizards slaughtering Muggles on that same battlefield, or perhaps wizards duelling openly against one another in the chaos.
Inexplicably, a small flicker of goodwill toward the old Muggle rose, in Jasnah's heart at the realisation.
The chief instigator of that war had been the great Dark Wizard her father worshipped without any reservation—Gellert Grindelwald and the tyrant so thoroughly reviled by Muggles across the world had been none other than Grindelwald's own Muggle ally in that conflict.
Enno had fought for him, then which meant that, on the Muggle world's battlefield, he had fought for the great Gellert Grindelwald himself!
'What a pity!'
Jasnah couldn't help but feel a private pang of regret at the thought.
On the European front, the Muggles' eventual collapse had, to a great extent, come from losing Grindelwald's support at a crucial moment and how Grindelwald himself had ultimately fallen was, of course, known to everyone in her world.
Thinking of this whole chain of history, a fresh indignation stirred steadily in Jasnah's heart.
If the great Gellert Grindelwald had won that particular battle instead, then she wouldn't now have to resort to some laughable pretext just to ask this ordinary Muggle whether wizards existed anywhere in this village.
"You came all the way across the river just to ask about that?"
A goodlooking face is useful anywhere, in any circumstance.
The freckle-faced young man noticed Jasnah's regret and disappointment across her expression, and mistook the whole reaction for disappointment at not finding an actual wizard among them.
He looked at her with earnest concern.
"Is there anything else at all I could help you with, perhaps?"
"Oh—"
Jasnah came back to herself with a small twitch of recognition.
She'd noticed what the flicker in the young man's eyes actually meant as he'd looked her over throughout this exchange—while disguised as a professor teaching at the Muggle university, she'd seen plenty of male students, over the years, look at her with that exact same expression.
"I was thinking—"
Feigning warmth to make herself seem considerably friendlier was, for her, was no genuinely difficult task to manage. With a slight adjustment to her expression, she made herself appear far gentler in the freckled young man's observing eyes.
"I can't stay out here forever, unfortunately. In fact, I only took a single week's leave from the university before travelling here—I need to hurry back to Berlin soon for my work there."
Jasnah looked directly at the young man, her own gaze was tinged carefully with visible eagerness.
"If someone here could perhaps take me to the proper town—oh, I did ask Enno about this too, but as you've all mentioned, he isn't the easiest man in the world to talk to about anything."
"To the town?"
The eagerness sitting in the young man's eyes, who'd been quietly longing all this while to show off somehow in front of Jasnah, dimmed considerably at the request. His whole expression turned troubled.
Jasnah's heart sank at that reaction. She turned her gaze instead toward the other villagers, and every single one of them, without exception, stayed completely silent in response.
"I really do genuinely need to get back to Berlin as soon as possible—"
Jasnah said with real urgency in her voice now.
"If anyone here could help me manage that, I'll pay a generous reward for the trouble, whatever it costs!"
"It's frankly not about the money, Professor—"
The brown-bearded man said, his expression was turning grave, and he turned to point in a specific direction for her benefit.
Jasnah looked carefully where he pointed and saw a dense stretch of coniferous forest stretching away, and beyond that forest, a mountain range rising faintly, half-obscured through the continuing, blowing snow.
"I imagine that's roughly the direction you originally came from, isn't it—"
The brown-bearded man's tone remained solemn throughout.
"To reach the nearest town from here, you'd have to cross that entire forest and the mountain beyond it, and there's a frozen lake sitting in between the two as well—dozens upon dozens of miles of difficult road, all told.
You could run into an avalanche at literally any moment along that route, and in the depths of winter, the wild beasts that come out foraging for food are at their absolute fiercest and most desperate. It's genuinely, seriously far too dangerous a journey to attempt right now."
Several of the other villagers nodded along firmly in agreement with this assessment.
The stout woman pointed up at the shifting, heavy dark clouds gathered in the sky above them.
"There's a good chance of another heavy snowfall coming too. Going out into that now, in your condition especially, simply wouldn't be wise at all."
Under the villagers' scattered, well-meaning attempts at consolation, Jasnah's expression gradually darkened.
Without her magic to rely on, in these remote mountain woods cut off from the wider world, her ability to survive independently was, no match for these hardened, experienced villagers who'd lived their whole lives adapting to these conditions.
By the villagers' honest account, her leg wound might take a full month or two to heal properly and by that point, the harshest, most punishing depths of winter would have arrived across this region.
'Could it be that I'd have to stay here until next spring?!'
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