Gathering

"Prophecy?"

Zweig raised his head, his eyes lighting up. "Did he predict the course of this war?"

"No, he wouldn't." Grindelwald shook his head and waved lightly at the air, as though he could touch the lingering warmth of the Phoenix flames that had carried Dumbledore away. His fingers curled in the icy air as he murmured, "Someone like Nelson wouldn't want to see the outcome of this war that belongs to him. He would rather die in the fog than savor a victory whose ending was already set."

"Is it related to this war?"

"I can't really say whether it is or not. This prophecy is too ancient, and it also seems to belong to a future even I cannot see. Perhaps he heard it somewhere." Grindelwald stroked the Cocoon wrapped around Barry with one hand, withdrew the hand that had reached for the flames, and his Wand left leaping green runes one after another on the Cocoon. "There are too many things in this world that appear completely unrelated, even separated by so vast a span that they cannot be connected at all. But when we try to straighten out the logic within them through the thread of time, we instead discover that behind matters that originally had nothing to do with one another, there is a hidden line linking them together. We live on the surface of the world, but perhaps its underside is just such a tangled mess, a maze of interwoven lines."

He seemed to have said everything, and yet also seemed to have said nothing. Zweig lowered his head and pondered for a long time. The wrist he had cut was dripping blood onto the black Cocoon. The hot blood had begun to clot a little in the night, as though even time had