The man stepped into the room, and I saw that in his hand he was clutching some kind of curved stick, more like a root. But he swung it as if it were a weapon.

  I opened my mouth and almost immediately closed it again.

  My whole body was trembling.

  What the hell… what the hell is even happening?

  What is this place? Who is this man? What is happening to me?

  "I…" my voice broke into a rasp. "I don't understand… Where am I? Who are you?"

  The man froze for a moment. And that was even more frightening than his shouting. He narrowed his eyes, staring at me with some kind of disgusted contempt. His head jerked—it looked like a nervous tic.

  "So you've decided to pretend you're completely stupid?" his voice dropped into a coaxing, hissing growl. "Or did your brain stop working after the beatings?"

  He spat onto the earthen floor. The lump of saliva landed in the dust near my bare feet. I didn't even immediately notice that I was barefoot.

  "Get up, you filth. Start making breakfast before I raise you with the stick!"

  He lifted that gnarled club again.

  The horrifying meaning of his words began to sink in. It seemed that this man was actually about to raise his hand against me.

  But for what? Why was this person so aggressive toward me? I didn't even know him!

  In any case, with every passing moment I believed less and less that what was happening to me was really a hallucination.

  No, the animal terror I was feeling right now was more than real.

  Even though I still didn't understand what was going on, I was definitely afraid of this man.

  I tried to get up, leaning on the straw. My legs buckled from weakness and fear. My knees trembled. The man stepped toward me, raising the stick.

  "I said—get up, useless squib!"

  I squeezed my eyes shut, drawing my head into my shoulders and waiting for the blow. My heart was pounding somewhere in my throat, making it hard to breathe.

  "Father."

  Another voice—hissing, angry, but younger—stopped him.

  From behind the man, another boy suddenly emerged.

  Just as bulky, with the same dark, crazed eyes and the same strange, seizure-like expression on his face. He looked at me with disgusted contempt, the way one looks at an insect crushed on the road. Black hair fell over his face in greasy strands.

  "Leave her," he said. "She's useless anyway. Just takes up space."

  He stepped closer, and I saw a snake in his hand. A real, living snake that was coiled around his wrist.

  God.

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  That moment was enough to understand that what was happening around me was truly complete madness.

  "Morphin," the older one barked without turning around, "be quiet. I'll decide myself when to leave this squib trash alone!"

  'Squib'? What kind of nonsense was that…?

  What squibs?

  For some reason, the word seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't even understand why.

  I pressed myself into the straw, as if trying to become as small as possible or disappear into it entirely. I was shaking. Cold sweat broke out on my forehead.

  I looked at them—at this wild old man and, apparently, his no less wild son—and only one thought pounded in my head.

  It seemed that after death I had somehow ended up not in heaven at all. This was a real hell.

  "I… I don't understand…" I rasped again, and the thin voice that escaped my lips, to my even greater horror, sounded completely foreign to me.

  "She doesn't understand!" the old man roared and shoved me away. I hit my back against the edge of some table and gasped from pain. "Do you understand anything at all, Merope? Or are you completely stupid, like the last Muggle pig?"

  Merope? He called me Merope?

  I tried to stand up, but my hands were trembling so badly that I fell again. The older man had already lost interest in me and walked over to the table where a bottle and dirty mugs stood. The younger man, who seemed to be called Morphin, remained standing next to me, playing with his snake.

  "Father, you should have killed her," he said to the man. "She's completely useless. Only brings shame to our name."

  "She might still be useful," the old man muttered, pouring himself into a mug. "Our line must continue. Even if she's useless in magic, at least she'll give birth to someone."

  "Who would want her like that?" Morphin snorted and spat on the floor. "Even Muggles wouldn't touch her."

  The old man turned toward me again. The stick in his hand swayed.

  "I said—make food. Now, before I really get angry!"

  I got up. My legs barely held me, but I forced myself to stand. Because if I didn't—he would hit me.

  "Yes," I forced out in a hoarse, thin voice. "Right now. I… I'm going."

  And I took a step toward the hearth, feeling two heavy, hostile gazes on my back.

  Those two frightening types stayed in the room for a while longer, after which they left. But did I feel any relief because of that? Not at all.

  I froze in place and simply tried to process everything I had just heard.

  Magic. Squibs. Muggles.

  These words surfaced from the depths of my memory, clinging to one another and forming recognizable images.

  It didn't take me long to remember that these words were well-known terms from Harry Potter.

  Harry Potter—the world-famous book series that I myself had once read in middle school.

  I remembered the story well about the chosen boy who studied at a magical school and fought the Dark Lord.

  So could it be… could this really have happened to me?

  After death, I was reborn? And not just anywhere, but in another world?

  I swallowed.

  It seemed that after death I had somehow been reborn in the world of Harry Potter.

  That fact alone was more than shocking.

  But apparently, even that was not the worst part.

  Because I still didn't know the most important thing.

  Whose body did this belong to…?

  I lowered my gaze to my thin, trembling hands.

  At that moment, more than anything in the world, I wanted to see my reflection.

  Fortunately, I noticed a small cracked mirror on the wall.

  Staggering and holding onto the wall, I immediately headed there.

  And of course, it was not me at all who looked back from the cloudy mirror.

  A completely unfamiliar girl stared at me from there. About seventeen or eighteen years old. Dirty, long-unwashed blonde hair had tangled into mats. Her face was thin, drawn, with an unhealthy pallor. Dark circles under her eyes. Her lips were cracked. But the most frightening thing was her eyes. In them was frozen that all-too-familiar expression of a cornered animal, and something inside me broke.

  I raised my hand to my face. The girl in the mirror repeated the movement. The hand was thin, with broken nails and dirt beneath them. But it was not my hand.

  Panic swept over me suddenly, like a surge of cold water.

  Until the very end I wanted to believe this was just a dream. A nightmare. That I had not ended up in the world of the Harry Potter universe, and certainly had not fallen into such a terrible situation.

  But the cruel reality turned out to be completely merciless.

  At that moment my head spun involuntarily, and it wasn't because of weakness. It was because the memories of this foreign body were rapidly flooding into my brain.

  It was as if a film reel flashed before my eyes, but instead of movie frames—these were someone else's memories.

  Every one of those memories was simply horrible, filled with pain and fear.

  I grabbed the wall so I wouldn't fall. I was shaking all over.

  At that moment I understood with absolute clarity who I was.

  Merope Gaunt.

  The future mother of the Dark Lord.