In Slavic folktales, the goddess who presided over death and winter was called Morana. She was the tenth child of Perun, the thunder god, and was usually depicted as a maiden holding a sickle.
During the long, bitterly cold winter, hunger and cold brought death. Even Morana herself died at winter's end. But that did not mean everything was over. She would be reborn as Vesna, goddess of spring and life, year after year, unchanged.
She had a twin brother named Yarilo. On the last night of February, when they were born, Yarilo was stolen away by Veles, god of the northern underworld. The underworld lay across the sea, where there was eternal spring and damp grasslands. Yarilo grew up there, guarding his foster father's cattle.
But every year at the summer solstice, he met his twin sister Morana. Unknowingly, they fell in love and married. Yet after the harvest season, Yarilo was killed by Morana for being unfaithful to his wife, and cold winter arrived. At winter's end, Morana also died. The following year, both she and Yarilo were reborn, repeating what had happened the year before.
Pomona went to the fourth-floor corridor on the day of the summer solstice. The mirror there had not changed as it had during previous solstices; it seemed to be nothing more than an ordinary mirror. Then she looked through the calendar from 1752 and found that the summer solstice that year had not fallen on a full moon. Every sign suggested that she had been overthinking things.
Of the three people standing outside the door that day, Barnaby had a natural talent for immunity to Dark magic, Severus had brought an Invigoration Potion, and Pomona had brought nothing. Coupled with her own sensitivity-based talent, her reaction had been far stronger than either