1977 : How can I trust you ? (Harry Potter)

1 : London, here I am

A wall of mist fell over the city of London, veiling the streets and enveloping the tall buildings. The Palace of Westminster, too, was obscured, with only its gigantic clock rising between two clouds to cut through the fog.

Londoners were hurrying home after a hard day's work. Their faces closed, their eyes veiled, they seemed like automatons programmed for this gray life, returning home to work again and again.

In their midst, a young woman stood out. Smiling, standing still, staring up at the palace, she admired the symbol of the capital, the luminous Big Ben, which tried in vain to brighten the misty evening.

It seemed to her to symbolize mankind's struggle for freedom, the desire, nay, the obligation to fight against darkness in order to offer a better world to its children. Like the mist, the darkness would return again and again. Sometimes it disappeared, leaving the sun to shine on the hearts of men and offer them moments of happiness. But it always came back. So when the darkness tried to stifle the cries of freedom, it had to be chased away, as the sun alone could not cut through this suffocating mist.

This darkness was none other than the cruel madness of mankind. No other species in the animal kingdom has experienced all the crimes perpetuated in the name of ephemeral ideals. Yet no man, whatever his nationality, had escaped this darkness: it was to be found in mistrust leading to injustice, in hatred leading to violence, but also in society, religion and politics. Thirty-five years earlier, the Nazi regime was strangling Europe, committing crime after crime, genocide after genocide.

The young Frenchwoman shuddered to think of it. Her family hadn't been affected by the Second World War, but her country had. What would have become of it if it hadn't been the Resistance, both internal and external, and its allies?

We'd be speaking German... Or Russian.

She didn't know which one was worse. Of course, the USSR hadn't set up those concentration camps, hadn't murdered children in the name of religion. However, their gulags and totalitarian regime, their mysteriously disappeared opponents... No, it was unthinkable to imagine France in the hands of either of these regimes.

-Thank you, she whispered to the clock.

Her words of thanks faded into the night and were never heard. But it expressed all the gratitude of this child of France, who had grown up in a country in peace, and who felt the deep debt she owed to the Allies.

-And now, London, here I am, she whispered with a serious look on her face.

It had been seven years since those same Allies had been threatened. All too often, British people disappeared, found dead without the slightest scientific explanation after autopsy, when they didn't magically evaporate.

And for good reason : there was magic in those dark days.

Edith d'Aveyron gritted her teeth.

That such power, able to subdue the strongest mind or reduce another to nothing, lay in the hands of ordinary men... That they had a pretentious inclination to believe themselves superior, here was magic confirming them in their idea and proving to them that they had every right over non-wizarding, Muggles. But what could those do when a wizard used magic to steal their memories, make them levitate, turn their car into a tricycle or turn them fat? Yes, with a simple Stupefy, a wizard would freeze anyone in their acts, unable to be released until the spell was lifted. But they were just another human being with a certain ability: magic.

They got their power purely by luck, as no one was able to explain how magic was expressed. It wasn't a question of genetics: although there were wizarding families and non-wizarding -Muggle- families, the latter sometimes had a child able to master magic. In wizarding families, on the other hand, there was sometimes a child with no magical powers: he or she was known as Squib.