Chapter Summaries

Gioconda recovered while living with Nelson, grew attached to him, and struggled with whether to reveal the secret magic her father had left her. She finally showed Nelson that she was a witch, comparing herself to his missing daughter.

• Gioconda woke beside Nelson, made a fire under his guidance, and wondered whether he was a good person and whether she should use her father's secret spells.
• Nelson brought Gioconda milk and tea saved for his missing daughter, and she grew more moved by his kindness.
• Over the following days, Gioconda regained her health and joined Nelson and Gangbeng on his hunting trips, while their bond came to resemble that of father and daughter.
• When Gioconda proudly brought Nelson a frozen rabbit, he pitied her and realized his revenge against her had little meaning.
• Gioconda asked Nelson whether he believed in magic, summoned the rabbit to her with her Wand, and told him she was a witch like his daughter.

Credence trained Adele in the forest while Tom explained Nelson’s theory for treating the dormant Obscurus inside her and sent them to begin the treatment. After noticing Adele wore an Acorn that suppressed Obscurial magic, Tom sought answers from Ravenclaw’s embodied knowledge.

• Credence pushed Adele through a morning run while Tom prepared her protective cloak and teased Credence about his fitness.
• Tom told Credence that Nelson believed the Obscurus inside Adele had been altered by the purification of the Second Salemers’ darkness and gave him a treatment plan.
• Adele set off with Credence for the prepared practice site after promising to cherish her.
• Tom recognized the Acorn Professor McGonagall had given Adele and secretly altered it with his Wand.
• Tom put on Ravenclaw’s Diadem, suppressed Rowena’s memory, and began questioning Ravenclaw’s embodied knowledge.

As Bella prepared to leave the house, she told Nelson the story of how she met and married Jonas Nicklaus, a German reporter driven into exile by his writing. After revealing that Jonas died at the Somme River in 1916, Bella urged Nelson to pursue his own path and never be left behind.

• Nelson helped Bella pack and asked whether she had replied to Jonas’s first letter; Bella recalled that she had answered, “Notre-Dame Cathedral doesn’t have a girls’ school.”
• Bella remembered how she first met Jonas in Paris, where he spilled beer on her, and how her father docked her wages for spending time with him.
• Bella described Jonas returning to Paris as a penniless exile after German authorities targeted his reporting, and recalled comforting him as he grieved for his homeland.
• Bella recounted how Mr. Williams summoned Jonas in 1916, tested his resolve with a question about retaliation for a civilian’s death, and entrusted Bella to him before leaving to fight.
• Bella told Nelson that Mr. Williams died at the Somme River that year and that Jonas later built a successful career, then urged Nelson not to become someone left behind.

Tom learned how to use the lost Ravenclaw door knocker to access Rowena Ravenclaw’s stored knowledge, then questioned her memory about Horcruxes, time travel, and magic that could create coincidences. After meeting the transformed tree-root Rowena, he and she faced a stone mountain split by a black beam of light.

• Slytherin explained that Ravenclaw’s Diadem stored knowledge and that he had helped create the knocker as a tool for accessing it.
• Tom used the knocker with the Diadem and learned that destroying a Horcrux owner’s main body would leave the remaining fragments silent but preserve their memories.
• Ravenclaw’s stored knowledge said time travel was impossible and offered no specific magic for creating coincidences.
• Tom removed the Diadem and returned it to the hollow stump, then confronted the woman in green, who revealed she was the tree root transformed after following Nelson’s advice.
• A black beam cut through the stone mountain behind Tom and Rowena, sending its upper half sliding toward them.

Adele unleashed her Obscurial power and destroyed the falling mountain, then struggled to regain control while Tom and Credence waited for her to awaken. Credence warned Tom about two dangerous figures connected to the Second Salemers, Daguerre and Armando Dippet, as Adele began recovering.

• Credence urged Adele to face the voice within her without accepting it, and Adele’s black magic formed a giant likeness of her before she vanished.
• As the mountain collapsed, Tom and Rowena rushed to help, but black lines from Adele halted and pulverized the falling stones.
• Credence and Tom stopped Tom from approaching Adele, and Nelson’s alchemical Thunderbird briefly appeared before returning to Tom’s pocket.
• Adele sat up and examined herself as Credence explained the danger of Obscurial power and described the torture she had suffered at the hands of the Second Salemers.
• Credence warned Tom to watch out for Daguerre, an early patron of the Second Salemers, and Armando Dippet, who sought a way to treat his Obscurial grandson, Barry.
• Credence left to find water while Tom and Rowena watched Adele begin to recover.

Tom and Rowena treated Adele after her Obscurial magic erupted, and Rowena recognized the Acorn that had been in Adele’s hair as an old Hogwarts safeguard. Meanwhile, Nelson learned Adele was safe and discovered that Gioconda could escape her pursuers using an armadillo-scale amulet.

• Rowena examined Adele, concluded she was exhausted, and used magical flowers and resin to soothe and protect her.
• Rowena explained that Adele’s Obscurus had assimilated into her and identified the shattered Acorn as a prototype of Hogwarts magic designed to curb young wizards’ outbursts.
• Tom connected the Acorn to Dumbledore and speculated that it had been meant for his sister Ariana before it reached Adele.
• Nelson received word that Adele was safe and had mastered her Obscurial power, then reflected on Gioconda’s grief and his own search for the people manipulating events.
• Gioconda remembered that her bundle contained an armadillo whose scales could hide her from pursuing wizards, and Nelson told her she could leave the frozen hideout.

Nelson confronted Dr. Sakes’s memory-based attempt to resurrect himself through Gioconda and freed her from his influence. When American Wizards arrived to take Nelson to Laurel, Gioconda vanished after asking him to find her if he became a Wizard and remembered her.

• Gioconda urged Nelson to seek a way to remain part of Laurel’s life, but he refused to abandon his life by Lake Ontario.
• A witch in the woods detected a third magical reaction as Nelson confronted Dr. Sakes’s memory inside Gioconda’s soul.
• Nelson exposed how Dr. Sakes had used Gioconda’s memories and soul as a vessel for his resurrection, then destroyed the memory that was tormenting her.
• Gioconda’s mind cleared, and she jokingly claimed Nelson was her father before American Wizards arrived asking to take Laurel’s father to see her.
• Nelson told Gioconda to run, and she embraced him, asked him to find her if he became a Wizard and remembered her, then vanished with the Niffler.

Nelson let the wizards take him away from Gioconda after urging them to remove their surveillance and hoping she could learn to become a good person. As Johnny and Joseph questioned Penguin about his purpose, the group’s uneasy alliance remained unresolved.

• Gioconda watched Nelson being taken away and grieved over her helplessness, while Nelson said the lake would be empty next year if the fish could not return upstream.
• Nelson told the witch to remove the surveillance measures and let Gioconda use him as an example, then allowed her Impediment Jinx to knock him into the snow.
• The witch and two wizards carried the sleeping Nelson toward the Great Lakes region, and one wizard recounted Nelson’s past before Penguin sent him to work near the Tigris River.
• Scarlett told Penguin that her children were still Squibs, and Penguin reassured her that their group sought a better future than either Grindelwald’s rule or traditional wizarding society.
• Johnny and Joseph challenged Penguin about his motives and accused him of gathering people who had no place between wizards and Muggles, war and peace; Penguin rejected Johnny’s suspicion.

Gioconda reached the Second Salemers’ memorial and offered to help protect it after learning how its Muggle caretakers faced hostility. At Hogwarts, Adele practiced controlling her Obscurus while Tom questioned Credence about how he knew Nelson needed the Invisibility Cloak to save Nagini.

• Penguin revealed that Nelson had already disappeared, leaving only a puddle of water that vanished into the snow.
• Gioconda reached the Second Salemers’ memorial, learned that Nelson and Riddle had rescued its victims, and saw the defenses protecting the site.
• John showed Gioconda the memorial and described the hardships its Muggle caretakers faced; Gioconda revealed that she was a Wizard and offered to help.
• Adele practiced using magic with Credence’s guidance while Tom watched and thanked Credence for helping her control her Obscurus.
• Tom asked Credence how he had known Nelson needed the Invisibility Cloak to deceive the Blood Malediction while transforming Nagini’s soul, and Credence denied knowing.

Tom and Credence argued over who had given Nagini the Invisibility Cloak, and Credence recalled that an unseen Obscurial had delivered it to him. Tom then experienced a vision of his past bargain with Credence, but the moment passed and left him with a brief sense of double vision.

• Tom insisted that the unique Invisibility Cloak had been in Nelson's hands and that Credence must have used the same cloak.
• Credence explained that Nagini had returned to him after years apart, and that an unknown Obscurial had left the Invisibility Cloak at their home.
• As Credence described the stranger's message, Tom felt a burning pain and seemed to be pulled into another time.
• In a vision, Tom agreed to remove Nagini's Blood Malediction in exchange for Credence's life and Obscurus power, sealing the bargain with an Unbreakable Vow.
• Tom killed the wizard who witnessed the vow and welcomed the power as a feast for the newborn Nagini.
• Tom came back to the present, and Credence asked whether an attack had occurred; Tom murmured that he had double vision.

Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and Nelson each encountered a disruption involving time, as Grindelwald failed to restore a component from Nelson’s magical automata. Nelson destroyed a dangerous experiment in Ilvermorny’s Greenhouse, where the witch asked him for ideas on its unstable restoration process.

• Dumbledore watched Fawkes’s rebirth flames scorch his desk, then had the armor check whether Nelson was at Hogwarts; the armor reported that Nelson was at the Quidditch pitch.
• Grindelwald instructed an Acolyte to recruit the wealthy families of imprisoned American figures, then dismissed him.
• Grindelwald failed to restore a Small Silver Ball component from Nelson’s Magic Factory and noticed that an Acolyte had repeated a sentence as time seemed to falter.
• Grindelwald left Nurmengard in blue-black Fiendfyre tinged with pale purple.
• At Ilvermorny, Nelson watched a flower and seed move through a House Point Hourglass-like vessel until the seed swelled dangerously at the bottleneck.
• Nelson vaporized the vessel with his Second Hand Sword, and the exhausted witch asked whether he had any ideas about its unstable restoration process.

Nelson broke Lorian’s experimental Time Sand and discovered that it had shifted the world back by one second, prompting Lorian to study ways of sending information into the past. As Nelson began investigating time magic, he encountered Grindelwald and Dumbledore at the foot of Mount Greylock.

• Nelson broke Lorian’s sealed time experiment, and its Time Sand vanished after apparently rewinding the surrounding world by one second.
• Nelson checked Alexander’s timekeeping core against his pocket watch and confirmed that the clock was exactly one second slow.
• Lorian analyzed the fragments and proposed using Divination-like magic to create an anchor for sending information into the past, then gave Nelson her notes and returned to her research.
• Nelson visited Professor Twelve Trees, searched the Horned Serpent and Wampus House libraries, and pondered how to understand the essence of time at Mount Greylock.
• Grindelwald greeted Nelson, and Dumbledore joined them as the two men traded remarks about Grindelwald’s visit to Norton II’s office.

Dumbledore and Grindelwald met Nelson in the United States, where Nelson concealed his role in the time disturbance by claiming he had been interrupted while seeking Herpo the Foul’s last Horcrux. Dumbledore and Grindelwald began a practical duel for Nelson to observe, leaving the two former rivals battling amid the forest.

• Grindelwald argued that the children of condemned wizards deserved equal treatment, but Dumbledore dismissed the political dispute and asked Nelson what had happened.
• Nelson pretended not to understand the time disturbance, blamed Professor Twelve Trees as a guess, and claimed he had been interrupted while trying to locate Herpo the Foul’s final Horcrux.
• Dumbledore discussed Nelson’s studies and offered him a practical combat lesson, but Nelson lowered his Wand when he realized Dumbledore meant to duel Grindelwald instead.
• Grindelwald launched a surprise spell at Dumbledore and told Nelson to watch, but Dumbledore deflected it and sent a storm of leaves after him.
• Grindelwald and Dumbledore traded spells and Apparition attacks as they explained their tactics to Nelson and the duel intensified through the forest.

Nelson used prophetic magic and Alexander’s power to follow Grindelwald’s movements as Grindelwald and Dumbledore fought with water, spells, and Fiendfyre. Dumbledore contained Grindelwald and then ended the duel before Ilvermorny’s teachers arrived; Grindelwald told Nelson he would wait for him in Boston, where a Sun-Patterned Robes group was performing a ritual.

• Nelson connected his glasses to Alexander through the House of Gaunt ring and used prophetic magic to predict Grindelwald’s Apparition points.
• Nelson used oak-leaf remnants to activate Gioconda’s magic, improving his predictions and identifying Grindelwald’s likely attack on Dumbledore.
• Grindelwald blinded Dumbledore with a powerful Lighting Charm and ignited the water prison with purple Fiendfyre.
• Dumbledore used the remaining water to trap Grindelwald, then began transforming the Fiendfyre into a Phoenix while continuing to teach Nelson.
• Dumbledore released Grindelwald as Ilvermorny’s teachers approached, and Grindelwald told Nelson to meet him in Boston before the three disappeared.
• A group wearing Sun-Patterned Robes performed a dance at a camp outside Boston for a god who had answered their summons.

A concentrated Fiendfyre explosion struck the Ilvermorny professors investigating the forest, but Nelson secretly shielded the stragglers and helped them survive. Dumbledore confronted Grindelwald about the danger, and Professor Twelve Trees later spotted a fleeing intruder and led the professors in pursuit.

• Professor Twelve Trees cast Ultimate Protection as the Fiendfyre condensed and exploded, but several professors were caught outside the barrier and hurled away.
• Dumbledore confronted Grindelwald at Troka's Bar over the Fiendfyre and its potential harm to Ilvermorny's teachers.
• Nelson arrived at the bar and explained that he had helped shield professors, including Professor Randall, from the blast.
• Professor Randall woke with a charred bald spot and recalled a giant figure protecting him, while Professor Twelve Trees examined the blast site and found fresh growth among the ashes.
• Professor Twelve Trees spotted a glint from a fleeing intruder and pursued it, with the other professors following on their brooms.

Melissa Sakes and Armando Dippet were caught by Ilvermorny professors after a magical explosion, and Armando’s attack turned their attempted escape into a fight. Melissa stayed behind to protect her sister Gioconda’s chance of reaching her, then revealed her identity and named Dippet as the dark wizard who fled.

• Professor Twelve Trees and the Ilvermorny professors surrounded Armando and Melissa after their spells exposed them in the woods.
• Melissa freed Armando from enchanted vines and reflected on how his failing health and obsession with finding a cure for Barry had made him a dangerous burden.
• When Melissa explained that Apparition was sealed, Armando cast the Killing Curse at Professor Twelve Trees, prompting the professors to close in.
• Melissa stayed behind because she feared Gioconda would walk into danger if they both fled, while Armando broke through the encirclement and escaped.
• Melissa dropped her wand, revealed her face to Professor Twelve Trees, and identified the fleeing dark wizard as former Hogwarts headmaster Armando Dippet.

Melissa used a false identity and the professors’ sympathy to avoid arrest at Ilvermorny, while Professor Twelve Trees chose not to expose her. Armando escaped but collapsed in the wilderness, where Daguerre found him and offered Isobel’s medicine and an address he needed.

• Professor Twelve Trees weighed the political consequences of arresting Melissa and told the returning professors that she was one of theirs.
• Melissa transformed herself into Martha and claimed she was a British immigrant seeking a teaching job at Ilvermorny.
• Ilvermorny professors sympathized with Melissa and urged Professor Twelve Trees to accept her, so he reluctantly compromised.
• Armando Apparated into the wilderness, exhausted himself, and lost consciousness while worrying about finding a cure for Barry.
• Daguerre found Armando and gave him Isobel’s medicine and the address of what he sought, urging him to go before the weekend ended.

Tom and Credence discovered Daguerre was watching Adele and split up to deal with the threat, but Armando ambushed Credence and paralyzed him. Armando carried Credence toward Adele, unaware that a strange light was gathering above him.

• Tom and Credence abandoned their planned duel after spotting something move in the sea, then Tom attacked and exposed Daguerre, who died as his disguised body fell apart.
• Tom used a blood-tracking spell to follow Daguerre’s trail west and sent Credence back to protect Adele.
• Armando ambushed Credence with a paralysis spell, explaining that he had learned how to control an Obscurus while seeking a cure for Barry.
• Credence saw Rowena’s giant tree rise near the cabin, but Armando knocked away his Small Silver Ball and carried him toward Adele.
• A bright spot of light settled above Armando and began to solidify as he moved through the forest.

Armando tortured Credence and revealed that he planned to trade him to Daguerre for a chance to capture Adele, while Credence provoked him to stall his advance. A giant Castle-shaped Armor arrived to stop Armando, whose identity as the former Professor Dippet was challenged by its unseen pilot.

• Armando used the Cruciatus Curse on Credence and explained that Daguerre wanted Credence while he wanted Adele.
• Credence taunted Armando about his grandson Barry and accused him of causing Barry’s suffering.
• Rowena distracted Adele with a lesson while hiding her worry about the fighting.
• Armando attacked Credence with a powerful bolt of green magic, but a golden light appeared and shielded him.
• A giant Castle-shaped Armor confronted Armando and an unseen voice declared Professor Dippet dead, demanding to know what kind of ghoul he was.

Nelson rescued Credence and confronted Armando, who had used a potion to burn through his life and empower his magic. Tom defeated Daguerre and demanded a price for sparing him, while Nelson overwhelmed Armando until he collapsed unconscious.

• Nelson arrived and pulled Credence out of danger, leaving Armando trapped in the forest.
• Nelson faced Armando and refused to forgive the harm he had done to Credence or let him go, despite Armando mentioning Barry.
• Tom defeated Daguerre, pinned him to the ground, and demanded to know what he would pay to keep his life.
• Armando repeatedly cast Killing Curses at Nelson, but Alexander’s lightning and Nelson’s defenses diverted or neutralized them.
• Armando exhausted himself trying to overcome Nelson and lost consciousness before he could finish saying that Barry still needed him.