Chapter 3: The Difference Between Good and Evil
Quiet chirrups of birds announced the new morn as soft rays of dawn filtered through the high arched windows into a room handsomely furnished with burgundy-toned couches and a plethora of vintage bookshelves, each of which were filled to the brim with priceless tomes. Wax candles of different heights along with stacks of parchment and ink were strewn all over the surface of intricately carved mahogany tables located in the darkened corners of the room as they accumulated dust from years of neglect.
Soft crackling sounds of burning logs were heard and the occasional sparks and flares danced across the shadows of two conversing figures who sat by the fireplace of their living room.
A sudden flame blazed and lit up its immediate surroundings, revealing the figures to be none other than Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel. Hushed murmurings could be heard at this ungodly hour of the morning.
"You should apologize" said a quiet, stern tone.
"…"
A sigh followed, then—
"You can choose to either get along or tolerate her presence but know that I will allow her to stay for as long as she wants my help."
"… "
"You're too proud to admit that you've judged her wrongly."
An intake of breath heard from the silent figure marked the intention of voicing a statement.
"—Don't deny it. I'm not scolding you for being suspicious, Merlin knows how many times that's helped to keep the Stone safe, but even you must know that your attitude towards her was far past what could be excused as suspicion."
There was a moment of silence as Nicolas contemplated his response.
"There is just something off about her." He sighed. "You said it yourself—that you didn't feel any grief in her magic from her outburst. There are only two wizards I know that would react the same way as she did to her situation: Grindelwald and Voldemort."
"She's not evil," said Perenelle with certainty.
"Not yet." Nicolas stressed. "Children think that good and evil, light and dark are separated by a distinct line, and as adults, you begin to understand that there are grey—neutral areas—but what many wizards fail to recognize is that while those boundaries are blurred, there is one distinct characteristic that separates and marks the fall from good to evil."
"Love?"
"Yes," he confirmed, "but more specifically, I believe that it is the connection that humans form with other humans. Sympathy."
Nicholas continued on grimly, "You don't know Albus as well as I do Perenelle; I was there when he met and became enraptured with Grindelwald and his ideals. There is a reason why Grindelwald viewed only Albus as his equal—it was because they were similar. They were similar in their intellect and power, and at the peak of Albus' enthrallment, similar also in their ambition and in their belief that muggles were inferior. You have absolutely no idea of how close Albus was to falling dark…the only thing that prevented his fall was his ability to sympathize."
"And believe me when I say that it wasn't his morals that stopped him," he scoffed "—by then, they were far too twisted to do any good. No, it was Ariana's death that woke him. His care for her allowed him to feel grief, and with grief came guilt." Nicholas finished, "His guilt was what gave him the needed push to return to the light."
There was a moment of silence as Perenelle digested the information.
"Are you saying that Cyrna's lack of sympathy will make her evil?" she asked.
"No," he sighed, "I'm saying that if Cyrna falls from the light, then there will be nothing holding her back from becoming the next Dark Lord. You know how powerful she already is, and this is before her magical maturity."
Perenelle knew that this was not an exaggeration of Cyrna's magical potential. There was accidental magic, like levitating objects or making them disappear, and then there was accidental magic—the sort that Dumbledore, Riddle, and Grindelwald had displayed in their childhood. That type of accidental magic was much more powerful and advanced, not to mention dangerous.
She shivered as she recalled Dumbledore's recounting of his meeting with the young Tom Riddle.
"I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to…"
She had been skeptical at first when she had heard this tale. While it was common for a young child to display uncontrolled wandless magic, also called accidental magic, it was rare for a child to have the advanced ability to perform intentional wandless magic, much less wandless magic that was comparable to imperio.
But really, the only difference between Cyrna's show of magic and Riddle's was control. If Cyrna learnt how to control her magic and used it for evil…
She didn't want to entertain that idea.
But would Cyrna act on the temptation to use her powers for evil?
She had just lectured her husband about judging too quickly. Nicolas did make a valid point, there were chilling similarities between her and Riddle.
But similarities in the end, were just similarities. Actions were what characterized a person.
She thought back to her interactions with Cyrna, and immediately, she knew that her primary instinct on Cyrna's character was not wrong.
"Nicolas. Do you think that Cyrna's story was a lie?" asked Perenelle suddenly.
"No." Nicolas replied confusedly, "but what does this have to do with her going dark?"
"Here's another question," Perenelle continued, seemingly ignoring his response.
"If Riddle had been in that child's body, do you think he would have spun a story so far-fetched that a normal wizard, after listening, would be more inclined to feel suspicion rather than sympathy?"
Nicolas thought for a while. "He wouldn't," he reluctantly conceded. "He would have woven a story of abuse, attempting to play with our compassion so that we would be manipulated into providing hospitality for him. Cyrna did—"
"—the exact opposite." Perenelle finished softly. "Besides the fact that you were the one who chose to apparate her here, and I was the one who invited her into our estate, she has shown morals or at least a sense of justice. Remember yesterday by the seashore when she ignored my hand? I remember you complaining to me about how arrogant it had all seemed. I myself had seen it as shyness or caution, but I think we were both wrong."
Understanding dawned in the alchemist's eyes as he, for the first time, viewed Cyrna's actions without bias.
"Her rejection of your hand was in some twisted way her sense of honesty," he muttered thoroughly astounded. "She did feel bad about destroying our house as a repayment for our care," he snorted amusedly, "In fact, I'm actually quite sure that she has somehow talked herself into the idea of 'owing' us her honesty."
Then he sobered, the fleeting moment of merriment lost as his thoughts turned serious.
"I knew I was different. I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something." was what Riddle had said to Albus. What a far cry that was compared to Cyrna's view of herself: "There is nothing I can do that someone else could not do better. I have nothing unique to offer."
Oh, he knew that she was smart—he could tell by the way understanding and recognition dawned on her eyes when she had pieced together her observations of Perenelle, himself, and their potions room to, almost instantaneously, form the conclusion that she had been reincarnated into an alternate universe.
He was also fairly certain that she knew that she was smart. In fact, the way she carried herself around screamed 'confidence.' He had first mistaken this as arrogance, but now he knew better.
His erroneous belief of her arrogance combined with his awareness that she was highly intelligent had lead him to be extremely wary around her. And if Cyrna had been truthful in her description of herself, then she was either very humble or a realist who believed that she was remarkable in her abilities but not the best.
His instinct was telling him that the latter was the more likely explanation.
All these ponderings soon culminated to Nicolas' current dilemma: Had he really misjudged her that severely? Could he trust her?
Perenelle sat quietly on her worn-down cushioned armchair as she watched her husband contemplate his past actions towards Cyrna. The Philosopher's Stone, she mused, had marked the peak of Nicolas' genius as well as the start of his pessimism. In the early years when he had just invented the Stone, they had been hounded and chased by people who wanted it, and as danger grew, Nicolas' paranoia did as well; still he had never doubted the inherent goodness of mankind.
That had all changed when their child had died.
Her chest tightened painfully as she remembered that moment. One day they had returned home only to find their wards destroyed and their home upturned.
A crazed man had held their child at wand point while thirty other men had stood by.
They demanded the Stone in return for their child.
She remembered her child's frantic cries of "Mamma! Papa!" and she also remembered the hardening of Nicolas' eyes as he made his decision. In the next moment, he had gripped her arm and had apparated them out of the house. In the midst of apparating, she knew that neither she nor her husband would forget the enraged cry of "Avada Kedavra" as the consequence of their choice was made known.
She knew that he had chosen correctly—the Philosopher's Stone was far too dangerous in the hands of evil.
But even with that knowledge, she had still been bitter towards her husband for the longest time, after all, what mother would sacrifice her son, even if it was to save the world?
However, as she had lived on, time softened the edges of her pain and she made up with Nicolas a decade later. She learned to love and care for other people again, but the same could not be said for her husband.
Nicolas had never been quite the same after the incidence.
First, he had lost the ability to see good in people, then he lost the ability to trust. Paranoia, which had been festering within him for years, soon made itself known in Nicolas' decision to separate from the rest of society.
Unwilling to let Nicolas face eternity on his own, she had followed him to his self-imposed exile.
They had been living in solitude for around 400 years when one day, Nicolas had brought back a young Albus Dumbledore. He had muttered something about teaching alchemy to the young man as a favour for Albus' third great-grandfather before herding the boy downstairs into the potions room.
She remembered Nicolas' disappointment when he discovered Albus' involvement with Grindelwald, and she remembered how much Albus' return to the Light had meant for him—to Nicolas, the return had been the needed proof that not all men would fall when tempted by evil.
In the next eighty or so years after that revelation, Nicolas had mellowed out, and his paranoia was reduced to subdued suspicion.
Despite having told Cyrna that Magic had placed her here because there was a place for her in this world, Perenelle wasn't so blind as to believe that Magic would do such a thing without a price.
Magic's intervention always came with a price.
In return for a second chance, Magic had probably trapped Cyrna into a path that she would not be able to stray from. Where the path of fate would lead her, she did not know. But she did know that it was more than a simple stroke of luck that had led them to the girl in the Elven Forest.
She glanced once again at her husband who by now had been sitting in silence for quite a while.
"Nicolas, don't fear her for something that she may never become."
"Going with your logic," he muttered miserably,"'we should fear her for something she may become' would also be a perfectly valid conclusion."
"You know that she has morals and that she has tried to learn how to heal and care for people," interjected Perenelle.
"So?" queried Nicolas, not understanding her point.
"So unlike Riddle, she hasn't given up on sympathy—she still has a desire to learn to care for others. And that, if nothing else, sets her worlds apart from any other Dark Lords."
She does have a sense of integrity… but…
Nicolas spoke with a weariness that seemed to come deep within his soul:
"Would you run a race that seems to stretch on forever with neither the directions for how to get to the goal nor the knowledge on when the race will end? There's only so much one can endure before they tire of what they will perceive as running in vain. Even the most stubborn of humans would be worn down if their attempts were met with nothing but failure. One day, she will decide that she is tired of trying to care."
"She could change for the worse," finished Nicolas.
"But she might also change for the better," countered Perenelle. "Nicolas, have I ever been wrong about the matters of the heart? If you can't trust her yet, then trust me when I tell you that she will not fall to darkness."
Nicolas' eyes softened as he gazed upon his wife. His thoughts traveled back to their days at Beauxbatons, then to the time when he had successfully created the pinnacle of alchemy, then finally to that day when he had chosen to save the world instead of his son. The hundreds of years that passed by after the incidence had been blurred with despair, self-loathing, and irrational anger. But through it all, Perenelle had stayed by his side; she had always comforted him in his bouts of grief and had offered him wisdom in his bursts of anger.
When he had brought back a 19-year old Albus to teach, Perenelle had been wary of his student. 'There is something wrong about his magic' she had stated. Neither had really known why until he had found out of his protégé's involvement with Grindelwald.
No, she had never been wrong when it came to judging a person's character.
He observed the lines that time had marked on Perenelle's face, and he thought of how different she looked now than when they had first met as children. And in this moment under the light of the dawn, to him, she had never looked more beautiful.
He gazed into the eyes of the one who had comforted him and had anchored his sanity during his time of despair. They now shone with wisdom and affection as its owner waited patiently for his response.
"No, you have never erred," Nicolas answered as he smiled tenderly at her, "and if you are willing to go to such lengths to defend her, then—just once more—I'll place my trust in the potential of humanity to do good in the face of evil."
Perenelle's eyes brightened as she heard the answer. Perhaps one day, Nicolas would be able to completely overcome the trauma that lingered in his soul since his son's death and that he would be able to trust in the good of mankind once again.
A yelp followed by the distinct sound of shattering dishes jolted both the Flamels from their conversation. Standing at alert, they exchanged a glance before Nicolas' lips quirked into a smile.
"I think our little guest has arrived."
"Oh dear," Perenelle muttered fretfully, "I forgot to warn Cyrna of the rather unfriendly stray that visits the kitchen every so often during the early mornings for food. I best go and find them before either gets hurt," said Perenelle as she hurried to the kitchen.
Nicolas watched with more than just mild amusement as his wife rushed off like a frantic mother hen.
Perenelle had always had a habit of picking up strays, perhaps it was her way to fill the void that their son's death had left in them. Nevertheless, he sincerely hoped that he was not making the wrong decision in trusting the newest addition to their family—there was no way his wife would let the child go, not after her impassioned plea to him for her to remain.
With a sigh, he followed Perenelle to the kitchen at a much calmer pace, all the while thinking about how he should go about introducing Cyrna to her new world and what he should teach to someone from an alternate universe.
The child seemed intelligent—maybe even brilliant enough to learn alchemy.
"Perhaps I can teach her my trade," he muttered to himself as he headed out of the living room.
After all, it had been quite a while since he had taken on an apprentice.
