Abigail shook her head and said stubbornly, "You said you would respect my choices. So…"
She straightened up, her gaze blazing as she looked at him, and said with absolute resolve, "Don't get in my way, Braun."
Braun fell silent for a moment, then gave a helpless little laugh. "All right then, I'll help you keep looking."
Next came the third one, and once again it was Abigail herself who dug it out from a remote corner.
...
The skin-and-bones man knelt on the ground, sobbing and sniveling. "I'm begging you, for the sake of the fact I'm about to die, tell me—Carrel… my child… is he still alive?"
"Carrel? Who's that? I've never heard of him."
Abigail said it without a ripple of emotion, even with a faint trace of impatience.
No pity, no guilt, not even the slightest warmth that a human being ought to have.
She had just gone through a memory alteration; it felt as if her entire self had been shattered and reassembled. Her genuine emotions were so blunted they were almost nonexistent; most people and things in the world meant nothing to her.
Her world was flat, iron-grey; other people's suffering was like something seen through bulletproof glass—visible, but stirring hardly a single ripple in her heart.
All she had in her mind was obedience to orders, and the thought that she could do anything for the Scourers.
In her consciousness, in order to completely eliminate Wizards, necessary sacrifices were both permissible and perfectly normal.
Just like Abigail herself—for the cause of Scouring she had sacrificed nearly all her personal hobbies, honed every skill to the extreme, and done more killings and silencing for the organization than she could count.
Or take Bloren: his family died for it, his lover likewise left him because of it, yet that man's will had never wavered in the slightest.
Abigail deeply admired him for that.
By the same logic, other people sacrificing themselves for it was only natural.
Especially those children who carried Magic Power in their bodies—if they didn't join the Scourers, sooner or later they would become the enemy, locked in a fight to the death.
The organization hadn't chosen to wipe out the hidden danger completely, but instead brought them back and carefully trained them; that approach was already merciful enough.
As for using the Forgetfulness Spell to make them forget their parents, that was entirely for their own good. Otherwise, having a child with Magic Power was not a blessing for ordinary people, but a disaster.
Take Landon Johnson, Carrel's father.
He was a case of someone who hadn't forgotten what needed to be forgotten, and as a result—despite being just an ordinary man—he managed to stir up such a commotion he nearly turned Wizards from all over the world into natural enemies of the Scourers.
To protect the organization, Abigail had been forced to act decisively and kill him.
—All of this was entirely correct, and righteous.
Yet when she saw Carrel at Hogwarts, saw those children raised in their parents' love flashing vivid smiles, why had she suddenly felt confused and stabbed with pain? Why had she started doubting the "Scourers"?
...
"Thud!"
Abigail's body lurched violently, almost shattered by those fragmented pieces of memory from Hogwarts.
She staggered backward and grabbed hold of the shelf to keep from falling; several Crystal Bottles clinked against each other with a crisp sound.
Fortunately the Protective Magic on them was very solid; on closer inspection, the wooden shelves even had tiny grooves carved into them for stability, so not a single bottle fell.
But Abigail's face was already deathly pale. She was gulping air, her face and back slick with cold sweat, her hands and feet trembling faintly with a cramp-like twitch.
The Cloak drifted down, sizing up the changes in her aura, and asked in puzzlement, "What did you remember? You look awful… like you've seen a Ghost. Oh, and Ghosts aren't all that scary—what's much worse is that old Goblin from before! To be able to pinch and mould other people's memories like plasticine."
Abigail squeezed her eyes shut, her teeth clamped so hard on her lower lip she could actually taste rust.
She didn't want to answer, and couldn't answer; her throat felt as if something were strangling it tight, even breathing was painful.
After a moment she forced herself to open her eyes. Her gaze wandered out of focus for a few seconds before pulling itself together.
Out of the corner of her vision, she saw something glinting.
"What… are you holding?"
Abigail asked hoarsely.
"Oh, you mean this?" The Cloak awkwardly produced a Crystal Bottle and said, "I found this on one of the upper levels. The label has your name on it… but looking at the state you're in now, I'd suggest you take a breather first, drink some water. You can look at the memory tomorrow, or just not look at it at all…"
Abigail slowly shook her head.
"No."
She breathed out that single word in exhaustion, as if unwilling to let herself off the hook, and snatched the Crystal Bottle, her fingers clamping down mechanically.
"Pop."
A soft sound.
The silver memory inside was like a bird released from its cage, instantly flowing out, drifting like a wisp of smoke, surging toward her brow…
...
"We can't afford to keep her. You can take her away."
From behind the kitchen door, a young Abigail hugged her only playmate—a hideous rag doll—and heard a man speaking in a lifeless voice.
Though she had no proof, a word suddenly surfaced in her mind—"Dad."
Her father's back was hunched, a pipe clamped in his mouth, and he kept tugging and haggling with the other man:
"She can work!"
"She barely eats!"
"Just treat it like buying livestock—she's much cheaper than livestock… Give her two more years and she'll be grown!"
In the end, a wad of worn banknotes was slapped down on the peeling tabletop, and a stranger grabbed Abigail and tossed her into the back of a truck.
There were a few other children in there, their eyes empty, faces wooden, as if each of them were a grey-toned puppet.
As they were leaving, her mother ran out, shoving a shriveled apple into Abigail's pocket.
The girl clutched her mother's hand in terror and begged through sobs, "Don't sell me, Mum! Don't sell me… Dad, Mum…"
She cried as if her heart were being torn apart; the woman wept as well, but still pried her fingers off with grim resolve.
The familiar home shrank rapidly in her field of vision, and Abigail crouched in the corner of the truck bed, whimpering through her tears.
A boy came over and shoved her down, then dug the apple out of her pocket and bit into it without waiting.
"Crunch!"
As the crisp, sweet scent spread, he said thickly and coldly, "Quit crying! All of us got sold off by our own parents… People who sold you don't really count as parents."
...
They sat in the truck for what felt like a very, very long time. Another ten-odd children were loaded on before they finally reached a farm.
The farm was so big you couldn't see the end of it; all at once, her world contained nothing but endless rows of fields.
Every day they were blown awake by the whistle before dawn, picking cotton bolls, digging beets, spraying pesticides, collecting potatoes… and only when it got dark could they return to the dormitory, more crowded than a pigsty, to rest.
The food was so coarse it was hard to swallow; the place they slept was damp and gloomy. When she was exhausted to the limit, she didn't even have the strength left to cry.
The turning point came one evening.
That day she was so worn out she was on the verge of collapse; as she left the fields carrying a bundle of straw, her legs suddenly gave out and she fell.
The child operating the mower was still inexperienced; that colossal steel beast roared toward her, the spinning blades flinging up grass like a spray of blood mist.
"Run!!!"
Someone screamed themselves hoarse.
In that instant, her mind went completely blank; it was as if every sound had been sucked away by an invisible vortex. The only thing left in her suddenly contracted pupils was the blade drawing ever nearer.
"Bang!"
The mower charged like a bull on the rampage, mowing straight across the spot where the girl had been, leaving behind a strip of green carpet reeking of sap. It finally rumbled to a halt at the edge of the lawn, chugging deeply.
The terrified screaming children and the overseer running over from the farm took several seconds to realize that the ground held none of the carnage they had imagined—no scraps of clothing, no mangled limbs, not even a single drop of blood.
Not until someone yelled, "Over there!"
Under a crooked tree a dozen meters away, the girl was standing there, staring at the grass in a dazed, terrified stupor, with no idea what had just happened.