This was a club—its unofficial nature meant that membership required a sponsor.
When Lys produced her token, the bartender suddenly burst into laughter. "Ha! That old bastard got beaten up pretty badly recently. I'm guessing that was your handiwork?"
He reached behind to the liquor rack and placed a bottle of black beer in front of Lys. "Since that old git has to nurse his wounds, he hasn't been round to cause trouble in my bar for ages. This one's on the house!"
Lys merely smiled without touching the bottle. Her hoarse voice, carrying a slight British accent from behind the mask, spoke: "Romanian dragon sanctuary, return trip." She held up two gloved fingers. "Will this cover it?"
The bartender's enthusiasm instantly cooled, his mercenary expression appearing quite naturally.
"Well..." He held up three fingers. "Don't say I'm having you on, but your sponsor's level is a bit..." He gave her a knowing look.
Lys scoffed but didn't mind pushing away Glenn's curious head as he leaned over. She held up four fingers. "Keep the change. Next time, don't use that excuse to fob me off."
The bartender's expression immediately warmed again at Lys's generosity. "Of course, of course! I may love money, but I know which side my bread's buttered on!"
Behind her mask, Lys pursed her lips. She knew that during Grindelwald's era, it wasn't just wizards who'd waged war—the Muggles had fought so savagely that some peoples nearly faced extinction. The man before her belonged to one of those nations.
Since Grindelwald had once meddled in Muggle battlefields, Lys had briefly studied reports of several infamous Muggle campaigns.
Horrific. Absolutely horrific...
Learning they could depart this afternoon, Lys wasn't in any rush. She simply settled down and pulled a book from her case.
The bartender tried fishing for information about Lys's identity, but she ignored him, absorbed in her reading.
When a thoroughly sloshed patron checked his pocket watch and lurched to his feet, he bellowed, "Dragon sanctuary! Look sharp! This is a timed Portkey—miss it and there's no refund!"
As the Portkey activated, Lys's journey officially began.
She encountered criminal gangs poaching dragons. During the skirmish, Lys accidentally released most of the sanctuary's dragons...
Private treasure hunters excavating ruins, work teams breaking into Egyptian pharaohs' tombs—after the job ended, Lys walked away with a goblin-forged two-handed sword...
Treasure seekers venturing into magical forests for rare materials—Lys handed everything they found to Lucy for her business ventures...
Hunting bounty wizards to sharpen her combat skills... though later Lys's assumed identity also earned a price on its head... forcing her to adopt yet another persona.
From her constantly changing companions, Lys glimpsed a more captivating world, then witnessed it firsthand through her ever-shifting journeys.
Unlike the sanitized reports in official papers, unlike the skewed gossip of shadowy pubs, the occasional profound observations from these worldly souls would leave Lys brooding for hours.
Those theories from dusty tomes, those hearts described in literature...
Those flesh-and-blood realities, those genuine human souls...
This odyssey gave Lys—raised between Hogwarts and Knockturn Alley—entirely new perspectives. She found herself wrestling with concepts that had once seemed clear-cut: naive vulnerability versus harsh pragmatism.
She began discovering rational explanations for behaviors she'd once found terrifying. Through endless travel, she uncovered secrets everyone desperately concealed...
She realized that human obsession was never dictated by the nature of one's power.
What people flaunted most ostentatiously might be precisely what they lacked most desperately.
Good people weren't necessarily virtuous, villains weren't always recognized as such—yet good people could commit evil acts, and villains occasionally showed mercy...
On a snow-swept night in a Muggle village, she even encountered her former Divination professor.
The woman was euphoric over a successful crystal ball prophecy, and over shared drinks, she revealed many secrets about divination to Lys.
"...So once a complete prophecy begins, it never terminates halfway through."
"Countless prophecies lie discarded and forgotten. Are the futures we glimpse truly futures that exist within this world?"
"I'm the sole survivor of an ancient divination bloodline. This prophecy's birth marks both beginning and end."
Though the intoxicated professor spoke of endings, she still produced her most treasured Tarot deck and had Lys draw several cards.
She cackled at the cards in her palm and released an alcohol-tinged hiccup. "I've been meaning to tell you this for ages, but hold on a tick."
The professor extracted the dormouse nestled in her hair and clutched it protectively against her chest, then leaned conspiratorially close to Lys's face:
"I wanted to tell you when you were small—you should find more joy. Don't always look so bloody tense and suspicious... because everything comes to an end eventually."
"When, you ask? Haven't the foggiest. Don't even know what 'it' is! So I certainly don't know how it'll turn out..."
"But I've observed your lifeline—it's remarkably long, longer even than Albus's, though it breaks once in the middle. Can't make heads or tails of that bit."
"Remember this, child: as long as someone draws breath, every beginning finds its ending. Now then—cheers!"
Afterward, the professor began rambling about opening a divination shop in some Muggle town, selling the most scrumptious bread and knitted socks for cats, and how she was absolutely going to give up the bottle.
Lys said nothing as she watched the woman continue gulping sherry.
She simply used an opal ring to settle the tab with the bewildered barkeep, bundled the sodden Gypsy witch back into her Thestral-drawn carriage, and vanished once more into the swirling snow—her dragonhide coat now hanging loose on her transformed frame.
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