A/N: This chapter has not been checked for any spelling/grammatical errors. I apologize if you find them.
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"Did something happen between those two?" Susan asked as Harry and Neville walked into the great hall for breakfast. Hermione looked up from her book and was surprised to see them both together.
"I wonder," she said as Harry and Neville came and sat beside the girls, filling their plates. The girls kept looking at them when Harry noticed that he was being stared at. "
"Is something wrong?" he asked.
"No," both, Hermione and Susan said it together before quickly getting back to whatever they were doing. Harry eyed them weirdly for a moment before digging in his breakfast while Neville remained uninterested all this time, focusing on his breakfast as they were already running late for their classes.
"Where's Daphne?" Susan asked.
"She left for home," Harry said. "Said she had a family matter to attend to."
"Makes sense why we didn't see Astoria all morning as well," Susan said.
They finished their breakfast before heading for their classes. The entire day Harry kept thinking about where Draco and Selandra were when finally the classes for the day came to an end. The group decided to take a stroll down the Black Lake with Daphne and Luna joining them this time.
"Did something happen between the two of you?" Susan who was walking beside Neville, asked him.
"Between who?" he asked.
"You and Harry, of course," she said. "We saw you two a little friendlier today. It was weird yet nice."
"Let's just say that we both understand each other's situation," Neville replied simply before walking ahead as Susan stood there, watching him go.
"Are you alright?" Luna asked coming beside her.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Susan said.
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"We are one less this time, even if we manage to get the remaining all on our side," Selandra said.
"How did your talk with the others go?" Kingsley asked.
"To be honest, we haven't told any of them about the Yayu," Draco said. "IF we had none of them would've agreed to help."
"It's understandable considering it was the Yayu that took them all at once the last time," Remus said.
"Fearing thee Yayu is reasonable," Selandra said. "You all don't know the horrors we saw through the hands of that monster. If the others realize that the Yayu still pose a threat they will all step back."
"Don't they realize that if Merlin wins this time it will be a complete end of this world?" asked Remus.
Draco looked away from him. "Is there something you are not telling us?" Kingsley asked. Being a good judge of character he knew from Draco's looking away that they had something to say.
Selandra looked at Draco, knowing full well why he had such an expression on his face. "We may have found out a way to return back to the Spirit Realm," she said after a small pause. Everyone but the hooded guy and Draco looked at her.
"How can you think of something like that and not tell us before?" Remus said looking at Draco.
"You all don't understand," the person wearing the grassy cloak said. "Listen to the complete truth before judging anyone."
"Well?" Kingsley said looking at Selandra.
"It comes at a cost," she said, "but at least it will open a pathway for us to go back to our own world."
"What cost?" Remus asked.
"At least half of our lives, if not more," Selandra said.
Everyone looked at her with shocked expressions. "I…I thought you all were immortal as long as you weren't killed by someone or died from a wound or something," Kingsley said.
"Opening the pathway to the Spirit Realm requires too much power," Selandra said. "Doing so will take too much of our life force and render us very weak. This…change…the weakness and loss of power will be permanent and there's no way to recover back from it and with so much strain being put upon our life force it will start to feed from within itself to sustain our very lives until it can't no more."
"You mean to say that if you do this…your own life force will become a parasite within you all?" Remus asked. Selandra nodded. "Why would you go to such lengths?"
"It is better than dying by the hands of someone like Merlin," she said. "While I don't agree with it that much…the others do especially Fawks, Griffin, Scylla and…" she turned towards Sven, the guy with the grassy cloak "…and Faygon."
"I didn't know having the word 'divine' in your common names would actually refer to being creatures filled with cowardice pride," Kingsley said in disgust as he turned around and left.
"King…"
"Let him go," Selandra said, stopping Remus. "He's right, you know. We are creatures with cowardice pride. To not be able to stand against someone who was indirectly a result of our own creation is just as embarrassing as it is dangerous. It is this embarrassment that is causing some of us to not take a stand against Merlin to begin with. Facing him again would mean facing with a failed creation we never meant to make in the first place."
No one said anything to that. "Wait a minute," Remus said remembering something. "You said Scylla was also not in favor of facing Merlin but isn't she in stasis? How did you contact her?"
"Her host is in stasis," Selandra said. "That doesn't mean that we can't communicate through our powers. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that we can rescue her."
"Dumbledore took Ariana someplace secret?" Remus asked.
Draco nodded. "He's an accomplished wizard on his own," he said. "Being able to kept Fawks in binds for all those years and now masking Scylla's presence from the other divine beasts…it takes skills one can't just come across simply."
"So you can't find her?" Remus asked.
"If we could then she would already be here," Selandra said.
"Then why not ask her where she is being held when you guys can talk to each other through your powers?" asked Remus.
"She can't see anything that her host can't," Selandra said. "Having been kept in stasis for so long Scylla and Ariana's bond has weakened meaning if Ariana can't sense, see or hear anything so is Scylla."
"So unless Ariana wakes up from the stasis Dumbledore has put her in it cannot be helped," Remus said. Selandra nodded. "Well, where do you think he's hiding then?"
"The ministry is searching for him everywhere," Draco said. "But everyone knows that's not gonna be easy."
"I wouldn't be too surprised if they aren't able to find him," Remus said. "That man is clever. I still wonder how he was able to get sorted into Gryffindor."
"The sorting hat takes your choice of house into account," Selandra said.
"Of course you know about the sorting hat," Remus said rolling his eyes. He paused, looked at Draco and Selandra before looking at others standing around him. "It's funny, you know," he said. "We are planning to fight against someone so powerful with just a bunch of prehistoric beasts, half of whom are not even in the actual mood to face him while the other half has been somewhat rendered weak or has been captured and stolen off of their powers. On the other hand we have a ticking time bomb that can very well explode at the appropriate time taking us all out for Merlin. How the hell are we going to win this?"
"In all honesty, we don't know," said the hooded man.
"You said your plan is going to work but I don't see it even getting started while Merlin gets powerful with each passing moment," Remus said.
"I told you it comes with some conditions," said the hooded man. "You know the rules. I cannot interfere directly. If I do then I cease to exist."
Remus didn't reply to that as he looked away in frustration. "I'll go see where King went," he said before going towards the direction Kingsley had gone to a few minutes ago.
"He's right, you know," Sven said. "What about the prophecy?" he asked Draco.
"It was different than what you said it would be," Draco said looking towards the hooded man. "This have already changed too much from your perspective. Remus is right to worry about things getting too late. Things have already changed too much for our comfort. We are not prepared for a sudden attack from Merlin's side if he decides to do so. It might as well be tomorrow, a week, month or a year from now. We will never truly be ready. We need to think of a backup plan…"
"There's no backup plan for this one," said the hooded guy. "We either defeat him or we get defeated. That is it. There's never a third scenario to this situation and trust me…it would be better that we all end up dead than try and survive under his tyranny."
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When Harry entered his room he saw the locker was glowing. Hurrying over to it he quickly opened it and took out the locked box and then the book from inside of it. he flipped the pages, confused as he saw nothing written in it. The book had stopped glowing the moment Harry had touched it. This was different. He flipped through the pages again and again, trying to see it from different angles but nothing worked. There was nothing written in the book.
"Lascaux!"
Harry dropped the book in surprise as he looked at it when he realized what had happened as his eyes widened with shock. He quickly picked it up and flipped through the pages again. "Can you hear me? Hello?" he said but nothing happened. The pages remained blank. "Can you talk again?" he asked once more. Just like for the first few days when he had got the book Harry could hear it talk to him. The same thing had happened again but this time the book only said one word – Lascaux.
Harry didn't know what it meant so he placed the book back in his locker before sprinting towards the school's library. He headed for Madam Pince's table where the organizer's access book was where a student could simply write the name or description of a book or what he/she was looking or and it would tell where that book was in the library, just like the one Harry had back at his manor.
"Mr Potter what a pleasant surprise," Pince said seeing the third year boy in the library after such a long time. Harry somewhat ignored her as he simply nodded at her before writing the name he'd heard the book say. Unfortunately, nothing came up. He rubbed the word and wrote it again but the organizer said that the library had no such book which had the name or description with the word 'Lascox' in them.
Pince leaned over wondering why Harry looked so desperate and in such a hurry when she saw what he'd written in the organizer. "I think you mean 'Lascaux'," she said. Harry's head snapped up, looking at her.
"You know what that is?" he asked. She nodded her head.
"Your spelling of the word is wrong," Pince said. "The book you are looking for is on the fourth shelf in the second aisle. It's by a muggle author with the last name Hawthorne. The binding is the color of Cornish pixies."
"Thanks," Harry said as he closed the organizer and headed for the second isle. He immediately found the book which was about some prehistoric places on earth. Looking at the index he found he word Lascaux and opened that page. It wasn't a big piece of writing but Harry got to know what the word meant. I was a natural cave system in the south-western part of France, near a village called Montignac. The caves had prehistoric wall paintings.
Harry wondered why the book will tell him about a cave system…unless it meant something else. But seeing that he had no other lead to go for he decided to heck he place out. If this place was what the book wanted him to check then it would surely mean something. He just wondered why the book had given him something to look for after so long. Whenever the book gave him instructions it only meant that something was going to happen so Harry wondered what it was tat was going to happen and whether or not it was related to Merlin or the Yayu.
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Thanks for reading…
