The blinding light slowly faded.
Malfoy and the others opened their eyes—then froze, utterly stunned.
"Where are we?" Tiffany Selwyn cried out in alarm.
Indeed, they no longer seemed to be in the basement of the Three Broomsticks. Instead, they stood in a city sealed in ice.
The ground beneath their feet, the trees, even every building around them—all were frozen solid like intricate ice sculptures. Everything was motionless, lifeless.
Draco Malfoy was the first to react. He looked down at his thin robes and frowned.
Clearly, dressed so lightly, he should have been shivering in such a cold place.
"Don't worry," Jon said gently. "These are only illusions."
"This is... the future?" Malfoy's voice trembled slightly.
"Yes, the future," Jon replied, his expression turning mysterious. "Though not exactly. Take a few steps back—you'll see it clearly."
Malfoy nodded and backed away a few steps—then suddenly realized what was happening.
"It's like we're inside a painting!" he exclaimed.
He was right. It was the small silver octahedral box that had created this scene. They were still in the basement of the Three Broomsticks, merely immersed in the vision so deeply that it had felt real.
...
The members of the Knights of Walpurgis stepped back as well, continuing to observe the "future" projected before them.
The frozen city stretched endlessly, empty of wizards, muggles, or any sign of life.
"Ah!" Pansy Parkinson shrieked, trembling as she pressed herself against Malfoy.
Through the window, she had seen several muggle corpses lying inside a nearby building.
Their bodies were sheathed in frost, perfectly preserved—as though time itself had stopped, though it was impossible to tell how long they had been dead.
Their expressions were peaceful, free of pain, and their bodies were still positioned around a dining table—as if frozen solid in the middle of a meal, in a single instant.
"This is London!" Sean Avery shouted, pointing toward the distance.
Following the direction of his finger, they saw Big Ben, the Palace of Westminster, and Tower Bridge—London's iconic landmarks—all turned to ice and buried beneath colossal glaciers.
"Charing Cross..." Tiffany Selwyn whispered, her eyes darting frantically as she searched.
Then suddenly, she found what she was looking for.
Selwyn rushed forward, grabbing Jon's arm, her voice trembling. "Chris... please... can we see what's happened to Charing Cross?"
Her tone carried a desperate, tearful plea.
"What do you think this is, Miss Selwyn?" Jon said coldly. "Do you think this is a book you can flip through at will? This is a vision of the future—not something I can control."
"Selwyn's family lives on Charing Cross Road," Malfoy said quietly, stepping forward to comfort her.
He gave Selwyn a sympathetic glance.
If all of London had been frozen over in an instant, then Charing Cross Road would not have been spared. Her family had likely perished in their home, frozen like the muggles trapped in the surrounding buildings.
...
"What kind of magic is this..." Malfoy murmured.
What sort of wizard could freeze an entire city in an instant—turning London into a silent wasteland?
"Was it the Dark Lord?" he asked softly.
"I doubt it," Jon said with a shrug. "I don't believe the Dark Lord has power of this magnitude."
"Then... who?" Malfoy stammered.
Jon spoke quietly, "I don't think any wizard could do something like this. Which means it must be..."
"Muggles?" Malfoy shouted in disbelief. "Why would they freeze their own city? How could they even do that?"
"I don't know," Jon said with another shrug. "But I can make a guess. If the Dark Lord really took over the wizarding world and declared full-scale war on the muggles... this would be the result of that war. The muggles must have done this to wipe out every wizard in London."
"Impossible..." Malfoy stepped back, shaking his head in denial.
...
Jon watched the shaken young Slytherins—their worldview crumbling before his eyes—with a faint, unreadable smile.
The truth was, the Misericore that once belonged to Grindelwald had a simple function.
It could make memories tangible.
Its key was memory itself—feed it a fragment, and it would absorb, amplify, and project it for everyone around to see.
In a way, it served the same purpose as a Pensieve. But where the Pensieve allowed wizards to revisit their memories, this small silver octahedron allowed them to display them.
The previous year, in Dumbledore's office, Jon had seen Grindelwald's speeches in Paris and at Durmstrang. The way he revealed "visions of the future" was through the Misericore—projecting his own memories before his followers.
Jon, of course, couldn't truly foresee the future. But he still retained memories from his previous life.
The scene they had just witnessed came from a disaster film of that world. Jon had selected a short segment from it—then presented it here as a prophecy.
For a magical artifact created by someone of Gellert Grindelwald's caliber, even Voldemort himself might not have noticed the deception—let alone these naïve Slytherin students.
...
Suddenly, the surroundings shifted again.
A blinding white light burst forth once more, and this time, the more experienced would-be Death Eaters quickly covered their eyes.
When the light faded, they slowly lowered their hands.
"I remember now!" Avery shouted. "Patrick—this light... it's the same as that night in the dormitory, isn't it?"
"Yes," Jon admitted with a nod. He had no reason to hide it.
Avery opened his mouth to continue, but his words were drowned out by the screams that erupted around him.
Before their eyes, in the projection—
A blinding mushroom cloud bloomed into the sky.
The sun seemed to waver, and a searing heat devoured everything around it. The earth trembled violently; mountains cracked and crumbled. Everywhere the light touched, the world turned to ash—nothing left but scorched ruin.