Well, this wasn't up nearly as soon as I expected, but here it is! Part two of my three-part oneshot series surrounding the Peverell brothers. This one is about Cadmus' last bit of time on the earth after Death got to him.

I still haven't written Ignotus', but I still plan to. This one's been finished for quite a long time, I just never got around to posting it up until now. Heh, whoops?

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The journey had been long and tiresome, but after splitting away from his brothers, Cadmus Peverell had arrived home at long last with that odd stone still in hand, the one with a strange runic symbol carved onto its front. He chose to pay it little worry – the man obviously hadn't been in his right mind. He had refused to pull his hood down from his face when Antioch had demanded him to at wandpoint, and had attempted to pass off a mere stone and a stick as "gifts" for erecting a bridge to cross a fearsome river. He had claimed to be Death.

True it was, Ignotus' gift for success had been far more of a promising one, but how foolish could he have been for asking for something as simple as an invisibility cloak? He had not asked for one in those exact words, but the meaning of his request had been, all the same, the perfect description of a cloak of invisibility. Cadmus and Antioch had teased their brother for his selection; had he really believed the traveler to have been Death himself? Ignotus had, however, laughed at Cadmus and Antioch, who were indeed given nothing but a poorly carved stick from an elder tree and a stone from the riverbed for their troubles, while Ignotus had been awarded a fine cloak that he could use for years to come.

Cadmus did admit that his brother was right in that sense, but Cadmus himself had simply asked for a way to raise others from the dead, not for a useless rock. It had been Ignotus to foolishly ask the frail old man to produce the strongest wand ever made out of thin air! Foolish indeed.

But then, Ignotus had received a working gift from "Death," so was it possible Camdus's own gift, as well as Antioch's, had some hidden power that neither of them knew? Perhaps that poorly carved stick had indeed been a wand with power of proportions matched by no other. Maybe turning that silly stone around in his hand three times would allow Cadmus to bring back – no, he was letting his imagination run as wildly as that of a child! It was ridiculous to think that a mere stone could perform necromancy when no sorcerer on Earth had ever managed it before, not true necromancy. If that stone did work for what the old man in the black traveling cloak had said it was for, then Cadmus would have absolutely no doubts that the man had been who he said he was. As there was no way that he could have indeed been the embodiment of Death, then that stone was as useless a piece of garbage as any other common rock.

Nevertheless, as Cadmus sat on an old, lumpy couch to look down at the stone, still clutched firmly in his hand, he found it impossible not to let his mind wander.

"He only wants to make a fool of me, of all three of us," he mumbled to himself, holding it between two fingers to stare at it. "I never did see him carve that symbol into the stone…. How is it there if he just picked it up from the river and handed it to me? He had no wand to his name, so it couldn't have been by magic. Hah," scoffed Cadmus spitefully, and he flipped the stone onto the wooden table in front of his couch to sit back. "Rancid old man. No wizard with an ounce of sense would believe the garbage he was spouting…"

Within a few minutes, Cadmus had managed to find a decent book on his small shelf and a less lumpy, more comfortable patch of couch to sit upon and read until night fell. His small cabin was a few miles away from the nearest village of Ottery St. Catchpole, and he wasn't up for the journey after the much longer one he had been on and back from recently. Tonight, it would be better to just relax.

However, even as he read, his eyes were continuously darting back to that stone that lay face down upon his coffee table, tormenting him, invading his mind with quiet whispers of 'Pick me up. What harm could it do? Just flip this stone around a few times, I'll either work or I won't. You said it yourself, that old man had no wand, so it's doubtful I'll work anyway. Would it not be best to put your curiosity to rest so you could get a decent night of restfulness after such a long trek?'

Cadmus shook himself mentally and went back to the book. Stones couldn't talk, nor could they invade minds. He was just worrying too much, his subconscious imagination getting away from him and making him believe that the stone might have actually had some sort of power to it. Then again, it would put his mind at rest if he at least tried to flip it over a few times in his hand, would it not? Just testing what that old man had told him to do would ease his mind if it didn't work. Begrudgingly, Cadmus closed his book and picked up the stone once again to give it another examination. It was black as the night sky, beaten smooth by the roaring river he had crossed after getting it, and so plain that it was almost maddening. And that symbol, a triangle surrounding a circle and a line – or rather, a stick? Perhaps it was some sort of strange representation: the line was a wand, the circle was a stone, and then the triangle would be a cloak. It looked rather like a rune… just none that he had ever seen before.

He could have found out if his older brother's wand and his younger brother's cloak had the same symbol by sending them a letter by owl, but there was no doubt he would receive replies either laughing at his irrationality or questioning his sanity. It was best to keep this secret if neither of them had noticed – let them contact him first. Cadmus wouldn't let them think he had gone loony from pondering over a rock, as he most certainly had not and never would allow something so simple to addle his brain.

It was best to get it over with. Cadmus flipped the stone over in his hand once, twice, then a third time, thinking of a single name, the name of the very person that had truly inclined him to ask for such an artifact that would allow him to call up the dead. Carmella Shaw, she was the only reason he had asked for something so inane, contrary to the belief of his brothers that it was just to make a fool out of the old man at the river. He looked up from the stone in his hand and saw –

"Nothing," scoffed Cadmus. "Big surprise."

He reopened his book and continued reading, until a few minutes and quite a few pages later, when he heard a faint, familiar sound:

"You brought me back."

And in his surprise, he promptly dropped his book and fell off of the couch, though he clutched the stone as though it was keeping him from dying. He scrambled back onto the couch and sat on his knees, facing the back of the couch to gape at the strange, glowing form standing in the middle of his den, looking around in something between confusion and morose.

"C – Carmella?" he said quietly, in wonder.

The young woman, with her long blonde hair, wore a white gown and a look of deep distress upon her face as she looked upon the small house. She directed her gaze over to Cadmus, though her expression of such great distance made it seem almost as though she were staring straight through him, even straight through the wall behind him… straight through to somewhere else entirely, somewhere that he was incapable of seeing.

"Why did you bring me back?"

"You – you can't be there," he said, looking from the stone in his hand to Carmella Shaw, the girl he had hoped to marry years ago, when he was only seventeen. She had died at eighteen, only weeks after their engagement, of a terrible sickness that no Healer could identify. "That old man… he wasn't lying… he couldn't have…"

"But why?" she asked, her voice echoing as though from some distant space, as though from years ago.

"C – Carm – this stone," he said brokenly, managing to come to his feet and hurry over to her as she floated a few inches off of the ground. "This stone here, an old man at a river told me it could bring back the dead. I didn't believe him and I tested it, and it worked. Don't you see what this means?" He took her hands in both of his. "Now we can be together again."

"I can't," she said, looking at the stone herself. "I can't stay here, I have to go."

"But Carmella, I've suffered like this for twenty years now!" he said desperately, looking at her pleadingly.

Carmella blinked a few times at this, looking down at Cadmus curiously. "You've suffered?"

"Yes."

"And now you're happy for me to be here, while I must suffer by being here when I shouldn't. I can't be here, Cadmus. You understand death better than any of your brothers with as much as you've studied to reverse it since I died. You know that it can't be done, not by anyone or anything, not entirely. That stone," she said, prying her hands away from his, only to open them and examine that very stone, "is a lie."

"If it's such a lie, then how are you here?" Cadmus demanded. "That old man who gave it to me called himself Death. If he wasn't, then this stone would have done nothing at all. He had no wand, no weapon, just an old cane. He picked up this rock from the river and handed it to me and told me how to use it. I thought it was a lie then, but it obviously isn't!"

"You don't understand. There's only one way for us to be together."

"What is it? Tell me!"

"You know it as well as I do," said Carmella, looking at him in that strange way that made it seem she was staring off into another dimension. "You're the one who so insisted on studying it and came to the same conclusion yourself hundreds of times, but you're too stubborn to resort to something so weak. The only way is for you to die."

Cadmus had feared her saying such a thing. He looked at her for a moment longer before slowly wandering back to that old, lumpy couch. Years of studying and exploring and all he had to his name was a minuscule house with a lumpy couch in it. Ignotus was eight years younger than himself, and he had a beautiful wife and wonderful children already, as well as a well-paying job and a much nicer house. Antioch was a rambler – he was the one who had talked Cadmus and Ignotus into coming on that last trip with him, to head off and look for legends.

This most recent time, his quest had been for "The Fountain of Fair Fortune," which Antioch claimed would give them all great fortune for the rest of their lives if they could find it… which, no surprise, they hadn't. They had come across a large wall, which Antioch claimed it was behind, and that the wall only opened on "the longest day of the year." Cadmus had been utterly annoyed with his brother (who had been claiming the whole way that "this one is real!"), but Ignotus had thought it was absolutely hysterical that they had traveled for a fountain surrounded by beautiful gardens that could heal the worst of woes, only to find a wall taller than the tallest of giants that seemed to be impenetrable. Antioch was apologetic and vowed that they all would come back for it on the longest day of the year.

In Antioch's case, age came with something much different than wisdom: sheer madness.

But who was mad, really? Here sat Cadmus Peverell upon his lumpy old couch, a man who was much more reasonable than his elder brother (though maybe not so much as his younger), clutching a stone with a funny symbol on it and talking to his long lost and dead lover. How could that even be possible? It was most definitely true that most of the books on his shelf were full of legends of necromancy and spells that might allow it to be performed, but nothing had ever come of it for him. It had turned from a serious quest in his early twenties to more of a hobby by his twenty-sixth year of life to discover some way to bring anyone back to life. He had truly given up on accomplishing anything serious by that point.

Now, though, he finally had, and it wasn't even of his own doing. He'd have been furious with that old man if he weren't so grateful to have his love back, even if it could only mean the worst for him…. But what was death?

"Is it painful?"

"Is what painful?" asked Carmella gently. Cadmus turned around on the sofa again.

"Dying. Is it that bad?"

"It's a lot like falling asleep, but it's… quicker. You can lie awake in bed for hours trying to find sleep and never manage to catch it. When it's your time to pass on, Death finds you and never fails to catch you."

So this was Death's plan…. That old man, Death, he had called himself, had given him that stone as a reward for conquering Death, but it had been a mere trick to lead Cadmus right back into his grasp. Carmella was here for that reason alone, to make him believe that death would be fine, that it wouldn't hurt in the least bit, only so that Death could have him in his grasp again without Cadmus being able to avoid it.

What angered Cadmus the most was that Death's plan was working. He wouldn't do it yet, but he felt that same power of persuasion his older brother often used on him to get him to come on his childish journeys for the unknown being employed by Carmella, by Death's spokesperson. That was all she truly was… but she was still herself. It was still Carmella he was talking to, but she had been sent to him by Death to convince him.

Cadmus spent as many days awake as he could on that couch with Carmella floating about in his den. A few times within those days, an owl he recognized as Ignotus's would fly in and out of the window and drop a letter for him, peck his hand half to death in an attempt get him to open the letters she brought, and give up after a few hours to return to her master. He didn't care how badly his hand was bleeding after that owl's persistent pecking and scratching; all he needed to do was speak to Carmella, attempt to reason with himself about this. He had her with him again, and letting go of the stone would mean letting her go for a second time. That would surely kill him, and he would die distraught and alone. If he died holding the stone, she would still be there for him to join and to head to the next life in.

Her strange distance made it seem almost like she was cloaked in a veil that he couldn't see, only sense. It made his view of her alone seem cloudy while everything surrounding her was clear, like his eyes were simply unable to focus on her just as it seemed hers were unable to on him. They were truly from different worlds now, and she was right in saying that the only way for them to truly be together would be for him to die.

Finally, after four long days without movement, Cadmus stood from his seat upon the couch. Carmella looked at him questioningly.

"What are you doing?" she asked him.

"You said yourself," he said, withdrawing his wand from his cloak's pocket, "that the only way for us to truly be together is for me to die."

"Yes…"

"If I let you leave me again by letting go of this stone, there is no doubt that I won't be able to survive," he said. "If I die holding it, we can leave here together."

"But do you truly want to die?"

"It doesn't matter whether I do or not," he said. "You'll suffer here if I refuse to let go of this stone. I'll die suffering if I let you leave. It's better this way."

As he pointed his own wand between his eyes, the only emotion throughout him was fear. Carmella told him dying wouldn't hurt, but if she was speaking for Death, then what truth could there be in her words? Nevertheless, Cadmus held in her words the same trust he always had. Regardless of who she was speaking for, he didn't believe she would lie to him. Even as he spoke the incantation and he saw the blinding green light through his closed eyelids, that was the thought he held onto. His body fell to the ground, the stone still clutched in its hand, but he still felt as though he was standing. He looked down at his own dead body – a strange sight indeed – and then at his own hands, much more youthful-looking than his more solid counterpart's that lay upon the ground. He looked back up to take her hand, and Cadmus Peverell allowed himself to step through, away from the suffering that had plagued him for years and into eternal happiness.

And so Death took the second brother for his own.