They had a train to catch first thing the next morning.
When they got up, Hermione and Cho Chang — who had sat up the whole night with her — were so drowsy they could barely pry their eyelids apart.
Even Katherine's face was thunderous when she appeared in the dining room, and the sight sent Kate hurrying to take a few extra sips of water.
"They're going back to school this morning. Grandpa Rand, could you see them to the station?"
She had spoken up first, and then she turned to Katherine, who was studying her through narrowed eyes. "Auntie, is there something on my face?"
"No," Katherine said, raising an eyebrow a fraction as she cut a slice of bread and spread jam across it. "Though you look to be in fairly good shape."
Kate's eyes curved. "I wasn't sleeping well at first. Then I worked a few things out, that's all."
Katherine gave her a thoughtful look.
Instinct told her that the little niece in front of her felt like an altogether different girl from the one of yesterday.
People really did have to live through something before they grew up. Still, a change like this in the space of one night was genuinely surprising.
Her sister's daughter, no question about it.
"Don't concern yourself with those two. Stay behind. Once I've finished explaining what I didn't get through yesterday, you can decide whether you're going back to Hogwarts."
Kate nodded calmly. "All right."
After breakfast the old butler took the two guests and left the manor, while Kate followed Katherine to the study.
They had barely sat down before Katherine asked, blunt as ever, "You say you worked a lot of things out. Care to tell me what?"
Kate straightened without thinking. "The man Grandfather swore himself to, all those years ago — it was the Dark Lord Grindelwald, wasn't it?"
"Oh?" Katherine's eyes narrowed, her face full of open scrutiny. "In a single night you've truly accepted that there's a Curse inside your body — and thought it over carefully as well?"
In truth, at the mere mention of the Curse, Kate's composed frame still gave a small tremor. As long as she didn't know what conditions would set it off, the unease refused to leave her entirely.
But she had a reason now that left her no room to retreat.
"Because there are people I want to protect. And you're one of them."
She met Katherine's gaze without a flicker of fear. "For their sake, I have to face it. I'd imagine you came to that same resolve long before I did."
Katherine held her eyes for a while before a smile bloomed across her soft, lovely face. "Not bad. There's a bit of your mother's bearing in you now."
She drew out a roll of parchment and tossed it onto the desk. "My sister found this while she was still alive. Everything she learned about the Curse you're carrying."
Kate's lashes trembled. She unrolled it at once and read fast, her eyes racing down the lines.
After a long moment, her knitted brows loosened.
"You see it, don't you? To set the Curse off, you have to be killed — and then, within forty-eight hours, a special alchemical item has to be used to strip out the lifespan the Curse has forcibly hoarded in you and hand it over to someone else."
Katherine leaned back in her chair, at ease. "Little Kate, in the world as it stands today, how many people are there who could actually kill you?"
Kate set the parchment down without a word, raised an eyebrow, and looked at her for a while.
Bluntly put, among all the Wizards alive in the world today, no more than ten could surpass her on raw attributes alone.
Even allowing for combat experience and every other sort of advantage, the number stretched to twenty at most.
Whether Corbin — who by this point was so old he could scarcely walk — could kill her at all was a fair question.
But he could do exactly what he had done last time: use voodoo dolls, take an entire village hostage, and force her to keep away from Hogsmeade.
In a straight fight she almost certainly wouldn't lose. But when it came to how low a person was willing to stoop, Kate couldn't come anywhere near her dear grandfather.
"Strength isn't the only thing worth counting," she said, pushing the parchment scroll away. "Last year, when you and Grandpa Rand went to mainland Europe — you went to find him, didn't you?"
Katherine leaned forward, propping her head on one hand. "Yes. That was when Mr. Rand first told me that he had come looking for you years ago.
"So Mr. Rand and I set out to trace him backwards. We found he'd been to a great many places over the years, never staying long in any of them, as though he were searching for someone.
"Until a few years ago, when he settled in Austria."
Kate's breath stalled. She knew perfectly well what lay in Austria — Grindelwald, imprisoned in Nurmengard.
Had that old wretch actually managed to find where Grindelwald was being held?
No. If he truly knew, he would have had to break into Nurmengard, and then Dumbledore would certainly have learned that someone had gone off to pay a private call on his old flame.
Which left two possibilities: either he had only dimly guessed that Grindelwald was imprisoned somewhere in that country without knowing the precise spot, or he knew exactly where Grindelwald was kept and simply couldn't force his way in.
She leaned towards the former.
Old as the wretch was, he could still turn out perfectly decent voodoo dolls. Even if he couldn't get inside, he would never have been able to resist trying.
Her lip curled in scorn. "Such devotion. Willing to stake everything on one little phrase — for the greater good."
"Perhaps madness simply runs in the blood the Winyard family passes down," Katherine said with a faint smile, taking a small wooden box out of a drawer.
"You may not know this. Two years before you were born, your mother tried to assassinate him."
Inside the little box lay a map, half a wand, and a bloodstained silk handkerchief.
Kate forced her surprise down and opened the map. Its surface was covered from edge to edge with densely marked lines and symbols, all of them moving.
"That year, he came very close to dying." Katherine spread her hands with unfeigned regret. "Such a pity."
Kate's brow gave a hard twitch.
A father who murdered his wife and laid a Curse on his daughters, and a daughter who tried to kill him back.
This family of theirs really was a picture of tender fathers and dutiful children.
In which case, her own modest wish — simply to kill her grandfather — suited the household's tone rather well, didn't it?
"Back in the seventies, long before you were born, my sister had already worked out the pattern of his movements. She lay in wait on a road he had to take."
Katherine spread her hands. "What actually happened in that fight, nobody can say now. But by her own account afterwards, she crippled one of his legs and destroyed his wand.
"That was why the man dropped out of sight for a time and left no trace at all. He knew he was old and failing, and no match for her."
So he hadn't triggered the Curse not because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't win?
Kate's small face darkened.
Decades ago, that old wretch had already been unable to beat her mother, and afterwards he'd lost the use of a leg. The most he could manage after that was bullying a small child ten years ago — herself.
By now he might well be too decrepit to walk at all, forced to act through voodoo dolls.
She lowered her eyes, and a cold light flashed through them. "Where is he now?"
"You want to find him?" Katherine blinked, the gesture weighted with meaning. "The man's movements are slippery as smoke. He isn't so easy to track down."
Hard to track or not, hadn't her mother mapped his movements all the same?
She rolled the map up, inch by inch. "Let me borrow this and study it."
Katherine pushed the whole box across to her without a second thought. "Ready to go back to school already?"
"Mm. There are things there I haven't finished."
No need to rush. These things had to be done one at a time.
Watching the girl stride out, Katherine's mouth curved in quiet satisfaction, and she called towards the empty part of the room, "Satisfied with how she handled herself?"
Rand's figure took shape slowly in the corner. He watched the retreating back with worried eyes. "The Miss really has grown up. She's the very image of her mother."
"Is she?" Katherine's smile turned musing. "She's a great deal like my sister, yes. But I believe that this time she won't repeat the mistake that was made back then."
The old butler's face went sober. "You mean…"
"The little one has already made up her mind to finish that old wretch off. The two of us can't be the ones dragging her down."
Katherine tilted her head and brought out a fresh map. "Let her go to school. I'll run the calculations again — the places that man is most likely to have surfaced these past six months."
"I'll have the people tracking him on the European mainland tighten their watch," the old butler said with a nod, and vanished from the room.
…
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