It’s so odd to spend eternity in a vast, ancient castle, a school inhabited by children who are genuine witches and wizards, taught by adults who are genuine witches and wizards, because I never was a witch myself, not really, nor was anyone in my family or even my village a witch or a wizard. Nevertheless, I was accused of witchcraft in 1585 in my Scottish village, Darloch, put on trial, and hanged from a tree. My accusers were certain that I would burn forever in hell at the side of my supposed lover Satan himself, but that’s not at all how things turned out. When I was first thrown in prison, fearing that my life might not be spared, I was simply thankful that, if the worst happened, and I died, I would have a relatively quick death by hanging rather than the agony of being burned at the stake, and that I would ascend to heaven, a pure and innocent soul, guilty of no more than the usual petty sins that we all commit, and would spend eternity in the company of my savior and my loved ones. That’s not how it turned out either.

There are many dangers in life—famine, disease, death by warfare or in childbirth—the list is very long. I even knew of a man who was struck by lightning, and occasionally someone freezes to death. But I never gave a thought to death by execution for criminal deeds.

Criminal deeds were never a part of my life. My name in life was Mairi Alpin, and I was a docile and hard-working girl in a family of six children. We all attended the holy services every week at the church in Winton, in Aberdeenshire, and obeyed the laws, and I learned to read and write. So far as was possible, we were on friendly terms with all people, but underneath their smiles, greetings, and gossip there ran an undercurrent that, to my peril, I failed to recognize.

In my youth I married a lad, Conall, from another village, which was Darloch, and made my home with him there, not realizing that I would always be viewed as an ‘outsider’. Our home was built of the native gray stone, as were all buildings, with a thick thatched roof and a chimney at each end. In the flat, green countryside there were few trees but rocky outcrops everywhere, so our barns and even the fences which bordered our fields were all made of stone. We had shaggy-haired black and white cattle, short-legged brown horses, and the usual sheep and chickens. My young husband proved to be an excellent farmer, and our farm and animals thrived, for which I was happy, never suspecting that less successful neighbors would, in their envy, ascribe our good fortune, not to hard work and wise decisions, but to witchcraft, and their own sickly animals and stunted crops to evil spells.

Three children were born to my husband and me, two sons and a daughter, but tragically, none of them survived to adulthood. Disease carried them off, we laid them in the churchyard one by one, and it was my failure to save them that finally impelled me, grief-stricken, into what was to become my life’s work—learning to use the herbs, shrubs and trees that grew in my native land to create curative draughts for ailments and diseases. Here in this castle where I now abide, I hear people refer to these creations as ‘potions’, but in my time we called them ‘simples’, and simple they were, often having only one ingredient, or at the most two or three. A few plant-based remedies were already widely known and used, but I was certain that others must exist also, undiscovered, and I was determined to increase our knowledge by gathering these plants and boiling them into teas to drink, or grinding them into pastes to be applied to the skin, trying them at first on myself in tiny quantities to check for adverse effects.

I roamed the countryside for miles around our village, seeking native plants, learning their names and where they grew, and bringing them home to try to learn their secrets. A few, like aconite, also called wolfsbane, and deadly nightshade, which was also known as belladonna or even witch’s berry, were too deadly to be safely used. Beautiful though they were, with violet-blue flowers and purple berries, the margin between an effective dose and a toxic dose was so narrow that I feared to touch them. But some others, like the aptly-named speed-well, a modest little plant with tiny blue flowers that I found in ditches, and heal-all, also modest, with tiny pink flowers, helped a wide variety of ailments, and if the young ones resisted their bitter taste, I would add some angelica to sweeten the brew.

In time I became adept at the use of medicinal herbs, both the old remedies and also some new ones, and people began to seek my advice or trust my judgment. I was gratified that I could help them as I had been unable to help my poor children, and I never suspected that my good deeds would carry the seeds of my own destruction.

When I was fifty-eight years old, after forty years of a happy marriage, my dear husband, Conall, also died. I know now what I should have done then—I should have sold our farm immediately and moved back to Winton where my three brothers, Brodie, Dougal, and Alistair, still lived. They would have taken me in because they were family, and they would have kept me safe. But I suspected nothing. For an intelligent woman of fifty-eight years, I was inexcusably naive.

A few of my neighbors, people whom I had assumed to be my friends, accused me before the village council of being a witch. I know now why they did it—jealousy and spite, along with a desire to get their hands on part of my farm. I was a woman alone, with no husband or children to defend me, and my bottles of simples and bundles of dried plants, along with my written recipes and records of my observations and methods, were to these mostly uneducated people positive proof of my dabbling in dark arts and consorting with Satan.

One day, to my astonishment, two representatives of the town magistrate appeared at my house and ordered me to accompany them to the magistrate, Eachann of Harris. At the town hall I was told that my neighbors had accused me of witchcraft, and I was immediately imprisoned in a small, windowless room in the back part of the council building while people ransacked my home searching for evidence of my crimes. By the end of the day the searchers returned with a rag doll, one of my chickens, and my notebooks and bottles. They claimed that the doll was used in rituals to put curses on my neighbors, that the chicken was my ‘familiar spirit’, and that the writings must be demonic spells. I was angry about these ridiculous assertions but also frightened because I knew how serious the matter was&mdash:I could be facing a prison term, or worse, if people believed the charges.

During the night two women entered my cell, wearing scarves around their faces to conceal all but their eyes and carrying candles for light. I did not recognize who they were. They ordered me to undress completely so that they could examine my body for ‘the witch’s mark’, which I understood to be anything like a mole, a scar, or a blemish. Shivering in my dim cell, naked, my arms raised over my head, I prayed that I was correct in believing that there were no blemishes. The thought leaped into my mind that there existed women (or so I had heard) who possessed extra nipples, not just the two nipples on their two breasts, but also smaller, more rudimentary nipples in their armpits or along the sides of their ribcages. With a feeling of horror, I realized that such a woman, if ever examined for ‘the witch’s mark’, would be doomed. In equal measures I was thankful that I had no such extra nipples and anguished for the women who did, who would have to live their lives in acute sensibility to avoid inciting their neighbors’ animosity as I had apparently done. When the women were finally finished with their examination, they ordered me to dress myself again and then called for the jailer to let them out of the cell. I watched their retreating backs as they went out the door but dared not ask if they had found anything.

My preliminary hearing was the next day in a chamber of the town council, with my accusers and the investigators present, along with curious citizens of the town. If anyone might have been inclined to testify on my behalf, perhaps the villagers whom I had helped over the years with my simple remedies or with whom I had merely been friendly, they dared not say anything for fear of being accused, in their turn, of being in league with a witch. I was all alone, with my chicken, my doll, and my notebooks.

The investigators described how they had searched my house and had found my notebooks, bottles, and dried plant materials, as my accusers had informed them were in the house. Then, they recounted, they had searched for objects that could have been used in ungodly rituals and had found a little human figure made of cloth. Knowing that a witch usually had a ‘familiar spirit’ which took the form of a common animal but was really a demon, they had searched for a toad or a black cat, but, finding neither, had settled on one of my chickens which happened to have a black-and-white color pattern in its feathers.

They triumphantly presented the cloth human figure and the chicken in a wicker cage to the court, declaring them to be proof of my witchcraft. During their testimony the chicken suddenly cackled briefly, and the investigator who was speaking interrupted his testimony to say, “You see, My Lord? Even now the fiendish bird attempts to communicate with the witch.�

But their most critical piece of evidence, over which they gleefully gloated, was my two notebooks, faithfully compiled in my own handwriting over many years. These books, they declared, contained magic spells obtained from Satan, with which I could control the weather, cause or avert disasters, cause crops to grow or fail, effect or terminate pregnancies, save lives or bring about death, and turn base metals into gold.

My mouth dropped open in astonishment. Aside from the part about saving lives, which in my modesty I could scarcely claim, though I had sometimes relieved suffering, there was not a single written word in either of those notebooks about any of the other magical abilities. It was inconceivable that those men had made the effort to actually sit down and read the contents of the notebooks; their assertions were entirely imaginary. And if by some miracle they had read the notebooks and knew what they really contained, then their accusations were absolute lies, even though they had both placed their hands on the holy book and had sworn, so help them God, to tell the truth.

I started up from my seat and began to blurt out a contradiction to their characterization of my notebooks, but strong hands immediately forced me down onto my chair again, and the magistrate sternly ordered me to hold my tongue.

I sat on the hard wooden chair, trembling, as the magistrate ordered the investigators to place the items of evidence on his table before him. He turned the cloth doll over in his hands for a few seconds, completely ignored the black-and-white chicken in its cage, and then picked up one of the notebooks and began to leaf through it, turning the pages very slowly, while I leaned forward and stared fixedly, trying to discern his thoughts. My very life depended on the fairness of this man.

Finally he lifted his eyes to mine and said mildly, “What do you have to say for yourself?�

I hastily stood up and began, “My Lord…� but he stopped me by holding up a hand and saying, “You must be sworn before you can testify.�

The village clerk stepped up to me with the holy book, and I placed my hand on it and swore that what I was going to say would be the truth.

“Go on,� the magistrate then said. The council room was quiet.

Trying hard to keep the tremor out of my voice, and desperately weighing each word before I spoke it, I declared, as God was my witness, that I was not and never had been a witch, that I knew nothing of witchcraft, that I had never seen or communicated with Satan and that if I ever did see him in the future I would instantly flee from the spot.

“The cloth doll is only an old plaything of my beloved little daughter, nothing more,� I declared. “She died almost thirty years ago, and although I rejoice that she has entered into joy with our Savior,� (I said this to avoid their thinking that I believed I could communicate with the spirits of the dead), “I kept it as a remembrance of her because I loved her very much. I swear that it has never been used for any black rituals, and the very idea is abhorrent to me.

“The chicken which has been called my familiar spirit is no such thing. It is just one of many chickens that I keep for meat and eggs.� I was about to add that many villagers had black-and-white chickens like my hen, but luckily, at the last moment, I censored that idea because I did not wish to suggest that I thought that the color had any significance at all. It occurred to me to say that I would not mind if they chopped the chicken’s head off, decapitation being her probable ultimate fate someday anyway, but I instantly abandoned that thought also, for fear that my accusers would say I was heartlessly offering to sacrifice my familiar spirit in order to prevent the chicken’s revealing any of my dark secrets.

It would be better not to dwell on the chicken, I decided, for fear of digging myself into a deeper hole, so I turned to the notebooks. I explained that I had been gathering plants for simple remedies for many years, and I showed the magistrate how the entries included the dates, the places where I had looked, the plants I had found, and what I had gathered. Other entries described what I had done with plants generally considered non-medicinal, how I had brewed them in teas or ground them to pastes and had tried tiny doses on myself to check for taste, skin irritation, nausea, and so on. I emphasized that most of these experiments had ended in nothing, but the Lord had granted to me to make a few useful discoveries.

One of the investigators declared that that could not be true because all men knew that the Lord granted wisdom to men only, not to women, so that if I had any new knowledge it must have come from the devil. The magistrate looked at him pointedly, and he quieted down.

The magistrate then called the minister to testify as to whether I had attended holy services regularly, had partaken of the Lord’s Supper, and had had my children baptized. The minister, Mr. Purlie, affirmed that I had done all these things and that I had not dropped the blessed sacrament or spilled the blessed wine. Then the women who had examined my body in my jail cell were called, and reluctantly they admitted that they had not seen anything beyond ordinary freckles.

I sat on my hard wooden chair, scarcely daring to move or breathe, knowing that while none of this testimony explicitly damned me, none of it unequivocally exonerated me either. How does one prove beyond a doubt that one is not a witch? I stole a glance at the magistrate’s face, but it was impassive. I could not read his thoughts.

Then he gave the investigators an inquiring glance. “Have you presented all your evidence?� he said.

“My lord, we have presented our evidence, which we are assured will be sufficient for you to arrive at a fair and just judgment for the well-being of the community,� said the chief investigator, rising to his feet and making a little bow. He turned his face toward his fellow investigator and gave a little smile.

I thought to myself, If that’s all they’ve got, maybe I have a chance. It all depends on the fairness of the magistrate. He seemed to be a sensible, skeptical man; I relied on his disbelief in witches.

He sat quietly for a moment, his hands folded on the table in front of him, and then spoke. “I find the evidence presented insufficient to establish a verdict of Guilty. The charges have not been proven. I order that the prisoner be released.� His voice was firm, the words definite. Relief flooded through my body, but only for an instant.

A woman seated on the benches leaped to her feet.

“Wait, My Lord,� she cried out. “That’s not all! I saw her flying through the air on a night, like to a big bird. Isn’t that right, Maisie?� she added, addressing the woman seated next to her. “We saw her, My Lord. We did!� Maisie, huddled in her brown cloak, stared at her own feet and said nothing.

The magistrate frowned, demanded of the woman her name, and asked if she would be willing to repeat those charges under oath. The woman identified herself as Jenet Hepburn and eagerly placed her hand on the holy book while vowing in God’s name to tell the truth. I was shocked beyond measure. She was lying under a solemn oath—her soul would go to hell for that. Didn’t she care?

Apparently not. Mrs. Hepburn, a woman with whom I had been slightly acquainted, wife of a farmer with small holdings some distance from the village itself, recounted a tale of being outdoors after dark one night within the previous month and of seeing a human figure fly by in the air. With prodding by the investigators, who asked many leading questions such as “Was the defendant wearing any unusual garments, did she fly low enough for you to get a good look at her face, did she make any vocal utterance such as a fiendish laugh?�, Mrs. Hepburn embellished her plain accusation with more and more details until it rivaled a mystical saga of ancient berserkers as sung by the bards of old. The eyes of everyone in the chamber hung on her; all mouths were agape. I could scarcely draw breath, and my heart pounded so hard I feared it would break my chest open.

When Mrs. Hepburn had run out of details to add, when she could think of no more lies, the magistrate ordered her companion Maisie to stand and face him. “Do you have testimony of your own to present?� he demanded, but Maisie seemed to shrink into her cloak as she dropped her gaze and said, so softly that she could scarcely be heard, that she did not wish to testify and remembered nothing of the night in question.

The magistrate then addressed me sternly, saying, “These are serious charges against you. You cannot be released until they have been investigated.�

“My Lord,� I cried out frantically, “the woman is lying. I have never flown through the air. I cannot fly. I cannot do such a thing.�

“But she has sworn by all things holy to tell the truth,� the magistrate said.

“I too have sworn on the Bible to tell the truth,� I pleaded.

“But what does she have to gain by lying?� he asked me. “You, on the other hand, have much to gain by lying, if you are indeed a witch.�

“But you yourself, My Lord, you believed I was not guilty.�

“There is a difference, madam, between ‘not guilty’ and ‘not proven’ �.

He stood up, declared the hearing closed, and ordered me to be taken back to prison. I was escorted to the little windowless room again and given a bowl of a mutton and barley stew with onions before the door was closed behind me and locked. I sat on the three-legged stool and stared at the bowl in my lap with repugnance. Its warm aroma held not the least attraction for me; my stomach was tied up in knots, and I wondered if I had any friends at all.

Mr. Purlie, the minister, visited me that evening in my cell for the purpose of hearing my confession. “Witchcraft is a terrible sin, my child,� he told me, “but nothing is unforgivable by God. Throw open your heart to him and confess every failing, beg for his unending mercy, and he will wash away every sin and make you fit to enter into his kingdom.�

I began to tremble. “Are you saying that I am going to die? What is happening to me?� Fear washed over me, and the footsteps of my doom seemed ever closer.

Mr. Purlie leaned closer and took my hands in his. “Your case will be transferred to a higher court in Stanhope. Three judges will listen to the evidence.�

“And if they believe that lying cow, what happens to me?�

“I won’t deceive you, my child. It could mean a long prison sentence.�

I sat up straighter and snatched my hands back. “And if they don’t believe her, does that mean she gets to make up some more foul lies and go on testifying? And who will speak for me? I want my brothers! I want someone to go to Winton tonight and tell them what has happened. They’ll defend me. They’ll talk to the judges.�

“Compose yourself, my child. It’s too late to send someone tonight, but I will make inquiries and find someone who can leave early in the morning. Your brothers will be informed.�

I tried to relax myself and focus on my brothers. I took some deep breaths and asked, “If…if I have to go to prison, what will happen to my farm? Will my brothers get it?�

Mr. Purlie shook his head. “They cannot have it. It is not permitted for the family of a witch to profit from her witchcraft.�

“What then?�

“The witch’s property is forfeit to the crown, but those who benefited the community by bringing about her exposure and apprehension can claim a one-quarter share of it.�

“You mean…�

“The people who accused you will be able to file a claim to your property.�

I screamed aloud, again and again, and beat my fists on my thighs as I sat on the edge of my cot. It was so biased, so unfair! Anyone who was willing to perjure his soul could falsely accuse someone else and legally steal their property.

“Those Hepburns,� I sobbed, “those damned liars. Thieves, murderers!� I carried on until exhaustion overtook me, while Mr. Purlie waited patiently. When I was finally quiet again, he tried to console me by reminding me that the judges in Stanhope might see through the Hepburns’ schemes and release me, and that my brothers would surely defend me staunchly, as soon as they learned, on the coming day, what was happening.

He gently suggested that I should make my confession, and I nodded, wiping my eyes, but, I said, I would not confess to being a witch because I was not one.

“Then do not do it, if it is not true,� the minister said. “We must not lie, not even in a confession.�

I slipped to my knees on the rough stone floor and considered my sins. Pride, yes, I was proud of the things I had accomplished and the new remedies I had discovered. Sloth, yes, there were many times when I could have been working but wasn’t, times when I wandered in the fields and woods as much for ease as for seeking medicinal plants. Envy? At that moment I envied everyone who wasn’t falsely accused, who wasn’t in prison. Lust? No. Gluttony? No. Greed? No, not like those greedy Hepburns who would steal my land.

That left Anger. I was too angry to repent of my anger. I could not imagine ever letting go of such anger. I could not tell my god that I was sorry for my anger. I hugged it to me. I could confess everything else, and I did, but I did not confess the anger.

Mr. Purlie pronounced God’s forgiveness for the sins I had confessed, and then he urged me to try to sleep and not to worry about things which, at that moment, I could not control. After he left my cell I lay down on my cot and tried to do as he said, but for a long time sleep would not come. I huddled under the rough woolen blanket, my knees drawn up to my chest, dreading what might happen. Mr. Purlie had spoken of a long prison sentence (and I tried to imagine staying in a little cell like this one for many long years), but in my lifetime I had heard of witches and sorcerors being hung, or even burned at the stake, and in my childhood we bairns had told one another stories in hushed voices, so that the adults wouldn’t hear, about a mythical witch named Wendelin, who had been burned.

Much later that night I awoke to the sound of a hubbub outside my cell. Arising from my straw-filled mattress and looking through the little window in my cell door, I saw a mob of people, shouting and wielding wooden clubs and iron bars. They began battering on my cell door, and I shrank back against the back wall of the cell. The mob broke the door open, seized me by the arms, and dragged me outside. Where the jailers were, or what had happened to them, I did not know.

Once outside, in the black night illuminated only by torches held by some members of the mob whose faces were covered by scarves, rough male voices declared that I was to be hanged for witchcraft. Terrified, I cried out that I was no witch, that they were making a mistake. I begged them to let the judges in Stanhope decide, but their shouts drowned out my words, and their strong arms subdued my struggles. I was dragged to a tree where I saw, to my horror, a rope dangling from a high branch.

“Nooo…� I screamed as a noose was jammed around my neck, and I felt myself hoisted into the air. The rope was so tight I couldn’t breathe; it felt like a ring of fire around my neck. I scrabbled at it with my hands and kicked frantically in the air with my legs. My head felt as if it would burst. The sounds of the shouting mob became faint and faded away entirely, and everything went black.

---

Slowly I began to regain consciousness, but everything still seemed very dark. I’m outdoors somewhere, I thought. It’s night.

But no one else was there, and I wasn’t sure if I was lying down, sitting, or standing, as I couldn’t seem to feel anything.

“Where is this place?â€Â� I said aloud, but my voice felt thin, as if it would not penetrate very far. I doubted that anyone would hear me. Am I in a forest, I wondered, or near a dwelling? However, I wasn’t feeling cold, so I decided to wait where I was until morning—maybe my head would clear. I felt so woozy. I tried to remember where I had been before waking up here, and I seemed to recall many people and much noise, but what had it all been about? And why were they all gone while I remained here?

There was nothing to do but wait until the sun rose. Maybe I would feel better by then. Although this place was strange, it did not feel unsafe and I was not afraid. Perhaps I can sleep, I thought, but my mind seemed to be in some intermediate state between sleeping and waking.

Eventually the sky began to get light in the east, though everything looked gray—the trees, the bushes, the ground. I realized that I was sitting on the ground, dressed in my everyday dress, but even I looked gray, and when I tried to stand, I could not push against the ground with my hands or knees—I could not even feel the ground—but nevertheless I glided to an upright position, simply because I willed it to be so. And when I tried to walk, I did not feel my legs moving, but I seemed to be gliding in the direction I wanted to go. Something was very abnormal.

I came to a lane in the early morning grayness. The sun was not yet risen, but the sky was becoming yellow in the east. I was not sure where I was, but the lane would lead somewhere, perhaps to the village. I glided along the lane, and presently I saw a figure approaching from the opposite direction, a man carrying a large, bulky bag over one shoulder. I wanted to ask him where I was, but as we neared each other he stopped suddenly, gaped, and, dropping his sack, turned and ran at top speed away from me, back in the direction from which he had come.

I was taken aback by his reaction. I glided up to the abandoned sack lying in the lane, leaned over, and tried to pick it up.

My hand went right through it.

I moved my hand back and forth through the bag. There was no doubt.

“I am a ghost,� I whispered. “I must be dead. I died last night.�

Memories came flooding back&mdash:the prison cell, the hearing, the minister, the mob with torches. I had lost everything.

In the days that followed, my execution at the hands of the mob was the main topic of news in the village. By the end of the first day my brothers were there, and they dealt with their shock and grief by fighting vigorously to have my body buried in the churchyard because I had never been convicted of witchcraft. They insisted on taking possession of my farm and my house, over the violent protestations of the Hepburns, and the legal conflict continued in the courts for two years, displaying for all to see what the Hepburns’ real motivation had been.

I kept myself in the shadows as I slowly saw how thing worked themselves out, trying not to let anyone see me, especially my dear brothers, because I did not want to upset them. I had realized that this place was not heaven, and I was grief-stricken not to be reunited with my husband and children, who had died during my lifetime but whose spirits did not seem to be ghosts in the village as I was. They had gone on and I had not. I didn’t know why.

It occurred to me that I could haunt the wretched Hepburns, who certainly deserved it, and I did try it a few times, appearing in their bedchamber at night and frightening them out of their wits, so that they shrieked and pulled the bedclothes over their heads, although I did nothing more than stand there; their guilty consciences did the rest. But the fun of that soon waned; there was no satisfaction to be gained from it.

My brothers pressed the court strongly to bring someone to justice for my murder, but there was no hard evidence about who had been in that mob. I never doubted that many people in the village knew who they were, and knew whether they had been spontaneously motivated by fear of witchcraft or had been egged on by the Hepburns, who had feared I might be acquitted by the courts. But the villagers all closed ranks; they told the officers of the court that they knew nothing, had heard nothing, had seen nothing. In the end my brothers had to be satisfied with the twin victories of gaining a consecrated grave for me and my property for themselves. No one was ever punished for the witch hunt that led to my death.

I took to wandering around the woods and meadows where I had roamed so often during my lifetime when I used to seek and collect plants. Those had been happy times, I recalled, opportunities to be cheerful and content even when alone. I needed places like that now, when I was always alone.

One day I roamed farther from the village than was my custom, though not farther than I had been before, and had a great surprise. On a distant cliff over a lake, where I knew, from previous wanderings, that the ruined walls of an old castle could be spied, I saw instead a tall massive castle in perfect repair, with towers, turrets, and a great bridge. Was it in the same location as the old ruin had been, or was I hopelessly confused?

I ventured to approach the castle because in my ghostly state distances did not matter to me; I could glide as far as I wanted without ever tiring or stumbling, and my curiosity about the castle was greatly aroused. Upon finally arriving in front of the massive wooden doors in the late afternoon, and marveling at the absence of a moat or high stone encircling walls around the castle to provide protection from hostile assaults, I glided straight through the doors into an enormous hall. I had never been inside a castle before, for only very grand people lived in them, dressed in rich fabrics, fine furs, and jewels, as everyone knew, but to my surprise I saw scores of children dressed all in black with not a lordly crown to be seen anywhere. And thus I became acquainted with Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Ghosts lived there, almost all of them friendly, but some of great antiquity, hundreds of years old, and it saddened me to learn that, because it implied that there would be no way for me to enter the blessed realm and rejoin my husband and children. I felt doomed to remain on this earth forever.

But I could make a ghostly home here, as I could no longer do in the village that had been my home in life. The resident ghosts welcomed me to stay as long as I liked, and I learned that while the residency of living persons in the castle was restricted to wizards and witches, there was more leniency among the ghosts. Apparently my death at the hands of a witch-hating mob qualified me as a purported witch; it afforded me sufficient cachet to allow me a place here.

Because of my earthly interest in simple remedies, I gravitated to the hospital wing and became friends with the matron, Madam Bornaby. Of course her potions and magical techniques were far beyond any healing assistance I could offer. The remedies I had used in life had been derived solely from a few plants, mild in their effects, chiefly augmenting the body’s own natural healing powers, never capable of healing ailments and injuries instantly. But in quiet moments Madam Bornaby and I would sit together and talk, reminiscing about former patients and discussing current ones, and gradually I confided in her about my life, my tragic death, and my confinement in the shadowy world of ghosthood.

“The ghosts of Hogwarts are kind and welcoming,� I told her, “but I long to leave the ghostly existence and rejoin my family, wherever they are. Do you suppose my husband and my children wonder where I am?�

“Perhaps time does not work the same in the blessed realm as it does here,� Madam Bornaby suggested kindly. “Perhaps they are not counting the years the way you are.� If I had not been a ghost, I think she would have reached over and patted my hand.

“But if they do,� I continued, “they will notice when my hundredth birthday arrives and will surely be looking for my arrival. And when I fail to appear, they will fear that something has gone terribly wrong and that I have been sent to the infernal region.� The gulf between me and my family seemed so wide, so unbridgeable, that I sank my face into my hands and would have cried, if ghosts could cry. Poor Madam Bornaby, she could not offer me so much as a cup of tea.

It occurred to me that if anyone knew how to break free of this ghostly existence, it would be the other ghosts, who, if they had not done it themselves, must have seen others do it. But they could not give me instructions.

“What keeps you here?� I asked, “What prevents you from moving on?�

Some said that they were afraid to leave because they did not know what lay ahead, whereas they had created a tolerable existence at the castle. I secretly wondered if they had led such evil lives on earth that they feared damnation, but of course I didn’t say so, and at any rate that reason did not seem to apply to my case.

Others said they felt compelled to cling to a certain place on earth where significant events had happened in their lives, and that made sense to me, for in my life I had heard of ghosts who haunted their former homes, though I had never seen one and so had never believed it. Some said they were clinging to unfinished tasks or unsettled quarrels.

I began to suspect that I too was clinging to something that kept me tied here—not to the locale of my death, for I had left my village willingly, but to my unrepentant anger at the Hepburns. It even occurred to me that perhaps they had repented of their wicked deed (and my appearing to them in ghostly form may have hastened that repentance), so that they confessed their sin, were shriven of it, and died absolved and went straight to heaven ahead of me. Let me tell you, that thought stoked my anger for a few days!

Finally I realized that by clinging to my anger, I was carrying myself down the wrong path, a path that would never lead me where I really wished to go. For my own soul’s health, and for the ultimate happiness of my family, I had to let the anger go. I imagined drawing my anger out of my breast with my two ghostly hands, and holding it in front of me like a cloud of fuzzy purple light, and then balling it up between my hands to make a compact, dense little purple sphere, and then carrying it down to a stream, placing it on a broad dried leaf, setting it on the surface of the water like a little boat, and allowing it to just drift away, downstream, out of sight.

Two other things have helped me. First, by living in this castle for several decades, I have come to realize that what the Hepburns did to me was really not so unusual in the course of men’s affairs. I have seen a lot of history go by, more than the average person would see in his earthly lifetime—wars, disasters, treachery, base dealings, cruelty, self-service, but also great love, courage, selflessness, good fortune, happiness, even miracles. It is plain that one must take the bad with the good, and the very bad with the very good. It is just the way of the world and not a personal affront. Perhaps the Hepburns were like a bee that might sting me or a wolf that might bite me or a heavy tree branch that might suddenly fall on my head. Just an instrument of fate.

The second thing that helps me is a little room that I have found near the base of the Astronomy Tower. It is totally unused; in fact, the door to it was bricked up long ago, though the stone arch of the doorway is still visible as a sign. No one can enter now except a ghost, but the room has one unglazed slit window, perhaps used for defensive purposes long ago. This room has become my little chapel, since there is no other chapel in this building, and I go there often, gliding through the bricked-up doorway, to be alone, to meditate, to kneel on the little stone floor, now padded with the mold of dead leaves that have drifted in through the slit window over the years, and to pray.

In my lifetime I was charitable to all people, and in my death I was not. But I can feel the peace flowing back into my heart, and now there is empathy for those poor people who were, for some reason, driven to do those terrible things. They too deserve pity. I have wept for myself, and someday I shall weep for them also. Then perhaps the day will come when I fall on my knees in my tiny barren chapel, and the world sees me no more.