The carriage stopped at the edge of the Moonlight Field.
The carriage door opened silently.
Two staff members in silver-gray work clothes stepped forward and lifted a coffin out of the carriage.
A crystal coffin.
Completely transparent, all six sides were magically reinforced crystal panels, the seams soldered shut with silver wire, with preservation runes carved into the lid.
A person lay inside.
Fenrir Greyback.
Preservation magic had frozen his features at the moment of death.
Just as he had looked last year at the Griffin's Nest in Diagon Alley.
Unkempt hair, a twisted face, and those tattered clothes.
His eyes were tightly shut, his face frozen in an expression that mingled shock and pain in the moments before death.
And his chest.
A huge, hideous wound that pierced straight through him was clearly visible.
The flesh around the wound bore traces of scorching from some powerful magic.
That face had once made parents throughout the United Kingdom's wizarding world afraid to let their children near windows on nights with a full moon.
Now he was locked in crystal, reduced to an exhibit.
The staff set the crystal coffin in the northeastern corner of the Moonlight Field.
Not in the center, not somewhere conspicuous.
In a corner.
A corner no one would notice unless they deliberately looked for it.
A footnote to history.
An old story no one mentioned anymore.
Marco came over.
The leader of the Ashen Claw wore that rugged, dark brown leather armor, the silver wolf-claw emblem on his chest glinting in the starlight.
His steps were heavy, each one making the gravel crunch.
He walked up to the crystal coffin.
He stopped.
He looked down at the face inside.
The face that had once made some of his people scream in the night.
The face that