CHAPTER TEN
Anguish of the Damned
Harry and Flamel set out that very same day to Louisiana. They took the train because, according to Flamel, his old apprentice would be informed if they attempted to arrive via Portkey or Apparition, and he didn't want her to know that they were coming.
This didn't quite reassure Harry.
"Why don't you just write Lady Wen a letter?" Harry asked as they approached the train station. "I'm sure Eos wouldn't mind delivering it."
"First, Eos is my Phoenix not yours. You can't offer her services to me." Flamel scolded. "Second, she doesn't deliver letters when I ask her to. I think she finds it demeaning." He ignored Harry's exasperated expression. "Third, what makes you think that we are on our way to see Mei Wen?"
Harry frowned. "Aside from Dumbledore, she's the only one of your apprentices that is still alive."
"I knew my exclusivity would one day work against me." Flamel sighed. He had joined the queue to purchase their tickets, ignoring Harry's earlier suggestion of just walking aboard with their Ouroboros' on because he wanted a private compartment. "Lady Mei Wen and I did not part on the best of terms." Any other day, he would have asked probing questions, if only to satisfy his curiosity, but after last night's events, coupled with his fear of sleep, he was too tired to get into it.
"Why don't we just take a plane then?" Harry asked ten minutes later, as they were still in the queue. "It has to be faster than this queue anyway."
"It's the same problem as any other mode of transport. Mei would have the airports watched for my private jet." Harry stared at him, as a private jet had been the furthest thing from what he had been imaging, but as they had reached the front of the queue, he decided against correcting him.
Harry spent the next two days watching the American landscape go by on the window, too tired to explore the train and too stubborn to go to sleep. The few periods of rest that his body had forced him to take were short and filled with images of the man he had almost allowed to die on the side of the road for nothing more than his own peace of mind.
And that worked out so well didn't it, Harry thought.
Eos did her best to help, but the roots of his nightmares had wrapped themselves so tightly around his consciousness that not even her beautiful song could give him amity from his warring mind. It got so bad that even Flamel was beginning to look concerned. Considering the fact that the only time that Harry had ever seen him worried was when he had almost had the life choked out of him by a Lethifold, this was probably a bad sign.
Hoping to distract Flamel as well as himself, Harry tried to make conversation. "So, why is Lady Wen living out in New Orleans anyway?" Flamel raised his eyebrows, so Harry clarified. "I mean, she's from China, right? Shanghai? I would have thought after the Fourth Great Wizarding War she would have stayed there and worked her way up from that Citadel to the Magister's position."
"You and everyone else." Flamel smiled sadly. "War affects people in different ways. Mei has lived many different lives, and she has proven formidable in all of them. I don't know why she had settled in Louisiana, but I am certain it is not without reason."
When their stop finally arrived, Harry and Flamel disembarked the train only to immediately find themselves in the muggy heat of New Orleans. After five minutes of waiting for a taxi, Harry made a noise of disgust. "Don't pretend like you've never been here before." He accused. "You're a million years old, you've been everywhere. Stop acting like a Muggle and Apparate us to somewhere I won't sweat myself to death." He was more irritable than he had been since he had been suspended from Hogwarts, as in his New York winter clothes, he felt like he was slowly being cooked.
The city wasn't even all that hot, even by British standards, but the comparison from the New York winter to New Orleans humid air was a startling one.
Flamel sighed and clasped Harry's arm as soon as they were invisible to Muggle eyes once more. "You really need to learn to enjoy the simpler things in life, little Henry."
Despite his initial reaction the local climate, Harry quickly grew to enjoy it, as it both cool and windy. He had only thought it was so hot was because he had still been bundled up for a New York winter and Flamel had been keeping the temperature of their private compartment deliberately low, probably in order to get a reaction out of him as he had been in a dark mood for days. Harry was forced to admit that it worked. Few things irritated him more than an uncomfortable personal environment.
"The last correspondence she deigned to reply to let me know that she was living here." Flamel told him as they settled into their suite in a massive, white-bricked hotel.
Flamel hadn't managed to acquire the penthouse as he did not know anybody who worked here. The idea that his master had regular friends and contacts in New York, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, but not New Orleans because he was so afraid of his old student was funny enough to make him smile even in the state that he was in.
"How long ago was that?" Harry asked, turning away to store his belongings in his room. Despite Flamel's complaints, the suite was very nice.
"Hmm…about twenty years ago." Harry turned in order to stare at him, and Flamel sighed. "I know, but it's the last lead that I have." Considering that they were only here to help him, Harry knew that he didn't have any right to complain, so he kept his mouth shut.
They began their search in the New Orleans Citadel, hidden away in City Park. Unlike the Brooklyn Citadel, the local Captain didn't seem to be busy at all as he had come to speak with them in the meeting room the next day.
"Oh, Lady Wen shows up every once in a while, but only on her own schedule." The Captain told them far too happily. "I can send a letter to her if it helps? Let her know that you're looking for her?"
"That would be lovely, thank you." Flamel smiled, but the Captain paused.
"Would it be too much to ask, and feel free to say no, but can I get a picture with the two of you?" Harry blinked, having never been asked that before, but Flamel took it all in stride.
"No trouble at all." Flamel spoke for the pair of them, and once they had left the Citadel behind them Harry asked him about it.
"I sometimes forget that your famous." Harry admitted. "Do you get asked for pictures a lot?"
Flamel shrugged. "When I come across people who know their history, I do." He was such a silly man that Harry sometimes forgot that he was living with a legend who had once been the apprentice to the First Magister and had helped build the Confederacy to what it was now.
As the search was going to take a while, Flamel let Harry know that it was safe to explore the city on his own. "What about the witch who keeps trying to kill me?"
"I didn't just take the train to avoid Mei." Flamel informed him. "Someone at the British Department of Magical Transportation must have informed her of our Portkey's destination."
"Or they had it forcibly removed from them." Harry suggested, not wanting to believe that Stephen Boot couldn't keep his people in line, or was responsible for this himself, even though he had only met him a handful of times. "Is it alright if I just stick with you?"
Flamel looked surprised, but he agreed immediately. It wasn't that Harry was scared to go off on his own, but he had explored both London and New York, and the latter had been infinitely more fun because he hadn't done it alone. He looked forward to exploring another city now, even if they were doing it in search of someone else.
He wasn't quite sure what to make of New Orleans, as it was unlike any city he had ever been to before.
Harry had grown up in English suburbia, he had spent time in London, visited New York, and currently called a house that was divided by a brook in an enchanted forest his home. He even went to school in a magical Scottish castle, but New Orleans was something different all together.
The area in which they spent the next few days residing and searching was next to the wide and swiftly moving Mississippi River. Hugging its bank, and standing barely above the level of the waters, was the French Quarter, and it was captivating.
Both the buildings and the people held a bohemian quality that he had not seen anywhere else, the style of the construction left the streets narrow with structures crowding each other. Cast-iron balconies were hanging over the pavement, built as though to protect pedestrians from the city's climate, and the scent of strange but appetising foods wafted through the air.
What caught his attention most of all was just how busy the streets were, and not in the way they were in other cities, where people were moving quickly to their destinations, but in a more relaxed sort of state, as though they were already exactly where they were supposed to be.
However, one thing New Orleans had in common with London and New York before it, was how close it melded with the Wizarding World, but even that turned out to be a little different.
"There isn't really a school that serves this part of the United States." Flamel informed him as they made their way towards a bakery. "There hasn't been a need for one. They rely instead on family covens who pass down specific branches of magic from generation to generation."
Harry was confused. "Why are you telling me this now?" He had thought that they were simply heading to pick up a snack.
"Because Aurors need to possess at least five Outstanding N.E. when they enlist. This means that in this city, and in many other cities like this one around the world, the Aurors who police it are either outsiders or Muggle-borns who were taken in and trained since the age of thirteen. This has led to centuries long resentment between them and the locals." Flamel looked at him seriously now. "Despite this, Mei has earned the respect and cooperation of both factions. We may not be looked kindly upon for searching for her."
That was an understatement. While the baker did not shout at them, his answers were so clipped and his voice so cold, that they had to leave after five minutes when it became clear that they weren't getting anywhere. As they departed, Flamel snatched the bag of Beignets that Harry had purchased and vanished them.
"He coated the sugar in a potion that would have had you in the lavatory for days." Flamel informed him.
Harry gave a forlorn look to his now pastry-free hands. "He must really want us to stay away from her."
"Did you see his daughter? Playing behind the counter?" Harry nodded but didn't know what he was getting at. "She had faded pockmarks, the kind you only get from late-stage Dragon Pox when chances of survival drop to twenty percent. I'm willing to bet that it was Mei that saved her life."
That pattern proved to be true over the next three days, as no matter where they went within the city, restaurants, galleries, museums, and even a riverboat, no witch or wizard that they sought out was willing to speak to them. Due to health or legal troubles, they all at least knew someone who had been helped by Lady Mei Wen.
Flamel looked morose as they sat down to eat, this time in a Muggle restaurant in order to avoid the dirty looks their own people were sending them. "I knew that tensions between New Orleans locals and Aurors had dropped over the last two decades, but I wasn't aware that it was solely because of her."
In contrast, Harry was feeling a little better. Not only because he was now hopeful that Lady Wen could help him after all the stories that he had heard about her from the locals, but because he saw and appreciated the effort Flamel was putting into helping him.
"You know, I think I want to travel when I grow up." This was not a revelation to him, but it was something that he now wanted to share with Flamel. "Is there anywhere you'd recommend?"
It was obvious what he was trying to do, but Flamel allowed himself to be distracted anyway as he began to tell Harry of all the places he had been to, and why he loved them all in different ways. However, before they could even scratch the surface of all of his travelling adventures, there was a burst of flames over the table, scorching Harry's gumbo.
"Eos! What on earth-?!" Flamel stopped his scolding midway, but Harry was too distracted by his ruined meal to notice why.
"It's like you two just don't want me to eat the local cuisine, or something-"
"Harry." Flamel said in such a strange tone that he immediately stopped complaining and looked up. Clenched in his fist was a letter, and he was smiling triumphantly at Harry. "I know where she is."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
"So, she sends you a letter, with your own Phoenix, and you don't think it's a trap?" Harry asked.
The two had Apparated to the location the letter had given them, which turned out to be a lonely dock somewhere out in the bayou, probably a hundred miles away from where they had just been eating lunch. There, just as the letter had told them, was a tiny rowboat that had been enchanted to lead them right to Lady Wen.
"Eos would never lead me into a trap." Flamel assured him as they climbed aboard the boat. The second that they were both seated, the boat took off, rowing itself forward at a sedentary pace.
"I wouldn't be so sure." Harry said, doubtfully. "I mean, she spends more time with me and Argos than she does with you, and she just delivered a letter for a witch you haven't even heard from in over twenty years."
"If you're so sure that this is a trap, then why get on the boat at all?"
"Because I don't think Eos would lead me into a trap." Harry smiled cheekily. "She actually likes me." Flamel grumbled something unintelligible underneath his breath.
The bayou was exactly as Harry had envisioned it; the water was nearly still, its depths murky and the trees on the shore were long thin and overhanging the river, blocking the late afternoon sun's rays from reaching their little rowboat and casting them in a green shade.
Perhaps it was merely his overactive imagination, but Harry could have sworn that there was a flicker of movement in the water. "Do crocodiles attack rowboats?"
"Alligators." Flamel corrected.
Harry rolled his eyes. "Whichever. Are we safe from deadly amphibians?"
"Reptiles."
"Flamel!"
"Yes, we're safe." Flamel chuckled. "But I would be more worried about Hinkypunks and Kappas if I were you."
Harry began to scan the area around him as though said creatures would pop into existence now that their names had been said out loud. "We haven't gotten to that in class yet."
Flamel seemed to hear the nerves in his voice and sobered up. "Don't worry. If we come across such creatures, I will teach you exactly what you need to know." Harry nodded, gratefully, so gratefully that he didn't point out the many hints that seemed to indicate that this entire endeavour was one big trap.
They were rowed by their boat for so long that the sun almost finished its descent before any change occurred in their scenery. Unfortunately, this change occurred after such a long period of inactivity, that Harry had stopped paying close attention to his surroundings, so it took him a while to realise anything was wrong.
When Flamel had sat up, Harry knew something was finally happening. A slow fog had begun to float in over the water, at first it was so thin that they hardly noted any kind of change, but now it had begun to obscure the shore from their sight.
"What should we do?" Harry asked, itching to draw his wand, but not wanting to seem aggressive if this was Lady Wen.
For the first time since Harry had met him, Flamel looked utterly baffled. "I can't sense any kind of Mana from this fog, so it may be natural."
Harry stared at him. "May be?"
"Well, it came in so slowly that it's hard for me to separate from the ambient Mana that lingers over all of nature." Flamel explained. "Honestly, I don't think that we're in any kind of danger. Mei and I didn't part on terms quite so bad as to warrant an attack."
Harry scanned the now dense fog around the boat. "I wouldn't be so sure." He was thinking of his friends back in Hogwarts, the Dursleys, even Sara. "You can't really know what another person feels about a situation you may have both experienced unless you speak to them." With a sigh, Harry let the melancholy thoughts go for now, turning back to Flamel. "What exactly did she say to you the last time-" Harry stopped speaking suddenly, unnerved.
Flamel was gone.
"Flamel?" Harry whispered, in case he was invisible, and they were under observation. When the seconds ticked past and it became obvious that he was on his own, Harry felt true fear for the first time since he had faced the Boggart in October.
Over the last six months, he had slowly come to put his trust in Flamel, both in his abilities and in his intentions to Harry, especially over the last few days when he had gone to such efforts to save him from his own guilt. He didn't underestimate how much it would have cost him to seek out an old student that he had parted on bad terms with, especially given how prideful his master was. The fact that he was no longer in the boat told Harry one thing:
Whatever they were dealing with was more powerful than Nicolas Flamel.
Harry's fear must have been obvious, as a sudden peal of laughter emerged from the dense fog. "Now that you can't hide behind another protector, your true self emerges: The coward." The voice was both strange and familiar to him, as though it were something he had heard in the distant past. "It doesn't matter if you chose to shield yourself behind the Alchemist, or Dumbledore, or even beg sanctuary from Lady Wen, Harry. I will tear through all who attempt to shield you from me."
The speaker's silhouette slowly came into view, and he was standing on the still water's surface as though it were glass, waiting with arms extended, ready to embrace Harry as his own. He was tall, thin and long-limbed, and his bald head was so large on his skinny neck it was a wonder it was being held up. His skin so pale it was almost translucent, and his eyes were a pale blue with slits for pupils. Like a Dementor, the black robe that he wore was smoke made solid, constantly moving and shifting, as though it were being held back from attacking Harry by their master's will.
"I'm not afraid of you." The words fell out from Harry's lips without his consent, and they sounded weak even to his own ears. "I hate you."
"Oh?" Voldemort sounded amused, as though he agreed. "Hatred is born from fear, Harry, because we despise our own weakness. Hate me all you like, but it only lets me know that you share the same fear all prey possess: That you can run and escape death a thousand times, but one day it will come for you, and in your case, it will be wearing my face.
"Nowhere is safe."
"Locomotor!" Harry's boat lifted a foot out of the water and began to fly backward, as he directed it towards the nearest shore. Did running away make him a coward? Perhaps. But he would rather live until he was a hundred than jump into a fight he could never win.
As though reading his thoughts, Voldemort let out another peal of laughter.
Harry jumped off the boat as soon as it reached land, but he allowed it to keep flying forwards as a decoy. Running in another direction, Harry tried to summon his Invisibility Cloak, but nothing came. While he had left it behind in the hotel, he had summoned it from further distances than that before. It shamed him to admit it, but without it he felt as vulnerable as a child without their night light.
Distracted by his missing Cloak, Harry ran at full speed into something solid, landing on his backside rather painfully. Looking up, he was met with a sight that was beyond any nightmare he had ever experienced before.
"Mum?"
Lily Potter hadn't moved an inch when her son had run into her, but her expression did when she looked at him, souring as though he were the enemy.
"Now I'm your mother?" She scoffed. "You only had one job, but you ignored it favour of licking your wounds like a child."
Harry stood up shakily. "What the hell is this?"
"I watched my own parents take their last breaths in front of me, cursing me for bringing a war into their lives, but I didn't wallow over it as you've done." Lily looked at him in disgust. "Voldemort returned to full strength, Death Eaters loose in the world, everything we gave our lives for undone, and you still haven't acted."
Harry shook his head, backing away, but he bumped into someone else. "There's no running from this, son." James placed his hands on Harry's shoulders and forced him to turn and look him in the eye. "Your mother and I are gone, not dead perhaps, but still beyond your reach. There is something you can do, something that will make our sacrifice worth it."
Harry pushed his hands off. "Worth it? You left me. Nothing was worth it!"
Lily opened her mouth to speak again, but Harry didn't want to hear it. For his entire life, he had yearned to speak with them, but now that he had the chance, all he wanted was for them to go away. Ignoring their calls, Harry ran for the trees, with Voldemort's laughter ringing in his ears.
They made the choice to fight. Harry told himself repeatedly as he ran. Not me. I didn't have a choice. I was born into a war that I want no part of. Despite how many times he told himself that, it didn't make it any easier to hear his parents fight Voldemort while he left them behind.
The thoughts only stopped flying in his head when he tripped over something and landed roughly on the spongy marshland. Scrambling up and looking down at what he had tripped over, Harry was aghast to see the pizza delivery man from New York, Ralph, lying on the ground with his neck bent at the same unnatural angle.
Turning to run away, he stopped as he spotted Jean waiting for him in between two trees. "My master will see you now." She had the same expression fixed on her face, the one that had told him that all she wanted to do was walk into the fireplace if it would let her escape an undead life of exploitation and servitude, and just like last time, Harry turned his back on her and ran away.
He knew what would be coming next, the sin he had already attempted to rectify, but had only made infinitely worse. Harry didn't want to face it, face him, but as the fog grew denser around him, and the ground beneath his feet became soggier, as though it were trying to slow him down, he knew that he had little choice in the matter.
"Running away? I don't know why I would expect anything else from you." Quirrell's voice emerged from the fog, and even though Harry wanted to close his eyes in order to escape seeing him again, he could not. He did not possess any kind of control here, not even over himself. "Look at me, boy."
Against his will, Harry did so.
There, stepping out of the fog, was Quirrell, exactly as Harry had last seen him. He was wearing his usual teaching clothes, the ones that he had died in, and as he lifted his chin ever so slightly, Harry could see the full extent of the damage that he had done to him in June. Half of his throat had been ripped out, but he still spoke to Harry as though he was completely uninjured.
This did not stop the spite that was clear to hear in his voice.
"You knew that I was innocent, a victim of You-Know-Who, and yet you still killed me." Quirrell began to circle around him, while Harry was struggling to move against the ground that he was slowly sinking in. "You did it to save your own skin, like a little cockroach that just keeps surviving."
The five other figures of the people he had fled from were visible in the mist now, walking towards them at a leisurely pace.
"How many people will suffer for knowing you?" Harry pointed his wand at his feet, but neither the Gouging nor Severing Charm worked to free him. Quirrell continued speaking. "Your parents, myself, that poor Werewolf boy. Even the Immortal Flamel is probably dead by now."
As Quirrell continued to berate him, Harry, desperate to escape, removed his kindjal from his Mokeskin pouch in order to try and cut himself free. "How many more people will die just so you can live?"
"Just one."
The words fell out of Harry's mouth as though they had been spoken by another person. Instead of cutting himself free, Harry moved the kindjal upwards, driving it into Quirrell's throat once more.
At the exact same moment, Quirrell fell to the ground dead, and Harry fell forwards, free from the sinking earth. With his hands stained with blood, he crawled over to where Quirrell lay dying, drowning in his own blood. As Harry watched, the light slowly died in his eyes.
The others were clearly visible now as they were standing over him, surrounding him on all sides, and his mother, father, Jean, and Ralph were watching him in silence, as Voldemort laughed at the pain and misery his student had caused.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Harry awoke, crying silently.
He vaguely wondered if he were dead, as he was surrounded by white and did not recognise a single thing in his surroundings. He was lying in a massive canopy bed, twice the size of his own at Hogwarts, and the thin, white curtains were almost see-through, as though they were intended to keep out insects rather than ensure privacy.
Checking the bedside table, Harry was relieved to see that his wand and Mokeskin pouch had been left for him. A Muggle would not have been able to even see those, so that meant his rescuer was a sorcerer as well.
Nicolas or Lady Wen, Harry reasoned, as anyone else would have killed him for his role in Voldemort's downfall or handed him over to the Aurors. Climbing out of bed on unsteady feet, Harry hoped it was Flamel. Someone had changed him into grey, drawstring trousers and a white t-shirt, and while he wasn't at all comfortable with Flamel seeing him naked, it was marginally better than a complete stranger doing so.
Walking over to the balcony, Harry stepped outside to see that they were still in the bayou, as the river was clearly visible over a quarter of a mile away from this height.
"I did not expect you to awake so soon."
Harry quickly turned at the sound of the unfamiliar voice, drawing his wand as he did so. The woman that had spoken did not even flinch to find a wand being pointed between her eyes and, judging by the golden Ouroboros glimmering on her wrist, she had good reason not to.
"Many travellers will find themselves comatose for days, even weeks after journeying through the Anguish of the Damned, but you have risen in under a day." The woman regarded him curiously. "Do you not possess any demons at all, boy?"
"I've just been living with them for a long time now." Harry replied, before asking, "Lady Wen?"
"The one and only." She said, confidently.
She wasn't exactly what Harry had expected. When he had read about the young woman who had risen to prominence during the Fourth Great Wizarding War, who had singlehandedly defeated the enemy leader and led the Auror Corps reforms that had been instrumental in slowing down Grindelwald's rise to power in the run up to the Fifth War, Harry had imagined someone a little more…impressive.
Instead, Lady Wen looked like somebody's coddling grandmother.
Harry really should have known better. The Fourth War had ended of a century ago, and Lady Wen must have been at least a hundred and thirty years old by now, but he was still surprised, and Lady Wen seemed to sense this.
"Not what you expected?" She asked, humorously. That was an understatement. Lady Wen was a small woman, half a head shorter than he was, with a slightly hunched back and white hair that was done up in a neat knot at the top of her head. Her face had more wrinkles than he could count, and her limbs looked so frail that he could not imagine her fighting anyone, much less saving the world.
Still, he knew better than to say any of that out loud.
"After meeting the seven-hundred-year-old man who doesn't look old enough to drink in some countries, I've learned to stop having expectations when meeting Sages." Harry said casually, and thankfully, Wen chuckled. "Speaking of, do you know where I can find him?"
Wen's face suddenly turned impassive. "He's outside." Harry followed her as she led him out of the room, and through the large house. As they descended downstairs, Harry took note of the lack of personal touch in the building, as though Lady Wen had hidden away any knickknacks and precious belongings that might give any indication of what kind of person she was.
Harry wondered if this were done deliberately, so that she could hide a part of herself away from her guests. Things between her and Flamel must have ended even more poorly than he had expected.
Opening the front door, Wen lead Harry out onto a wide porch that wrapped around the large colonial house and nodded at the swing near the corner. There sat Flamel, swinging gently back and forth on the porch swing as he stared blankly out over the bayou while he turned the Philosopher's Stone over in his hands. "He awoke before you, but he's had a more difficult time bouncing back." Wen said with little sympathy in her voice. "He should not have come here."
"How did we even get here?" Harry asked her. "Did you rescue us from that…whatever you called it?"
"The Anguish of the Damned." Wen said again. "A naturally occurring phenomenon that affects areas that have experienced much death and suffering. It was Lord Hoca's inspiration for the Veil, and it is used to protect Memphis from Muggle eyes." She waved her hand at Flamel. "I use it as a defence from unwanted guests."
Harry thought about all the deepest darkest fears that he had, that he had let his parents down, that he's a coward, and all that he was good for was surviving at the expense of others. That was the culmination of twelve years of living, so he couldn't begin to imagine how many fears and regrets Flamel must possess after almost seven centuries.
Pushing aside the thoughts that told him that Flamel would be more than capable of taking care of himself, Harry approached him without another word to Wen. He was angry that she was the cause of the nightmare vision that he had experienced, but he could see that Flamel needed him more right now, and after he had gone to such lengths to help him with his demons, Harry wanted to return the favour.
Warily, afraid that he will be told to go away, Harry sat down beside him and turned to face the river that he was so focused on, only to see nothing there. "Am I missing something?" He asked, lightly. "I'm not seeing anything that's interesting enough to hold your attention."
Something in his words made Flamel deflate, as though Harry had just insulted him in the worst possible way. "Is that what you think of me?" His words sounded angry, but they lacked any heat. "That all I care for is stimulation? Oddities and discoveries to hold my attention?"
Harry looked at him quizzically. "Well, yeah. You say it often enough." As well as your everyday actions.
There was a snort from behind him, and Harry turned to see that Wen had silently followed him to the porch swing. "Not even an eternity is enough time to make you change, Nicolas." Flamel glared at her for a moment, before turning back to face the water.
Harry tried to be respectful. "Lady Wen, could you please give us a minute alone?" Wen seemed a little insulted that a guest was telling her to scram on her own property, but she walked back into the house without another word anyway.
Harry turned back to Flamel. "You're going to have to explain things to me, Flamel, because I'm not following." When the Alchemist continued to hold his silence, Harry added anxiously, "Nicolas, please. You're starting to scare me."
Perhaps it was the use of his given name, or perhaps it was his admission of fear, but Nicolas turned to him abruptly and simply stared at him for a long moment before speaking. "I had a family once, a wife and a son, did you know that?" Harry nodded slowly, not wanting to say what he had read out loud in case his master was still grieving after half a millennium, but Nicolas said it anyway. "They died because of my failures and greed."
"My wife, Perenelle, was the first to realise what kind of a man I was. She was quite older than I was, and widow to boot, but I had married her for her former husband's wealth you see, felt that I was entitled to it, as in my mind the research it funded would change the world for the better." He was speaking in a rush, as though trying to get all the words out before he lost his nerve. "When she realised that I had hoodwinked her, took advantage of her while she was lonely and at her most vulnerable, she grew to resent me. But, like it or not, she was stuck with me, as witches had few rights in those days, and divorce was unthinkable. Her hatred of me was only tempered by the son that I had given her; our Gerard."
Harry felt his stomach churn. While the texts he had read hadn't gone into details on what had happened to the Flamels, he did know that the boy had died when he was still young, and Nicolas only confirmed that. "Gerard was only a few years older than you when he died. I think his resentment of me would be even more justified than Perenelle's, but I'm not sure how he felt towards me. I was a distant father, and for all his talents, none of it interested me enough to pay much attention to him. For one reason or another, be it my research, my apprenticeship, or even the First War, I was away from home and he was in Beauxbatons whenever I wasn't."
Nicolas fell silent once more, and after a minute, Harry prompted him. "Research? For the Philosopher's Stone?"
"What else?" Nicolas sighed. "When the war was done, and Master Hoca began his reign, I was hailed as a liberator by many due to my apprenticeship to him and as a radical oppressor to many more. I found out later that made things difficult for my son in school, but at the time the possibility did not even cross my mind." His hands clenched reflexively around the red stone. "Gerard was a brilliant boy, and maybe he sought to gain my attention or perhaps he simply wanted to spite me, but either way, he set out to complete my life's work before me."
"He had stolen discarded notes from my laboratory and set about making his own Philosopher's Stone. I didn't realise how fractured my documents were until the results came to be." Nicolas was slowly shaking his head. "Somethings were so obvious that I didn't even deign to write them down, as the only reader of these notes would be myself. I only found out that they were even missing when I heard Perenelle's screams."
Harry voice sounded hoarse, as he asked, "What happened? What did he miss?"
"The Law of Equal Exchange. The entire point of the Philosopher's Stone was to create gold and eternal life from nothing. However, with my notes, Gerard created a stone, this stone," he shook the Philosopher's Stone in his grip, "the possibility of which I had tossed aside as the cost was too high."
"What was the cost?" Harry asked the question, even though he already suspected.
"A soul." Nicolas stared down at the pulsating red stone in his hand. "There was no sacrifice made when Gerard created this stone, and by the time Perenelle discovered him, screamed for him, his body was already half consumed. I apparated there and saw what was happening, but I-," his voice broke, "I hesitated. My son's body and essence were being destroyed, but I hesitated. But Perenelle did not."
"She was a remarkable witch in her own right and seemed to understand what was happening even without taking part in my research. She exchanged her own soul for Gerard's, allowing herself to be destroyed for the stone's creation, but it was too late. What was left of Gerard's body was beyond saving, even by today's healing practices, so I trapped his soul in the only thing present that was strong enough to contain it; the Philosopher's Stone itself."
Harry felt sick to his stomach. "There isn't a way to free him?"
"I have searched for centuries, there is no way to return things as they were!" Nicolas snapped defensively.
"But you're still using the Stone for its elixir! Why don't you just destroy and let him move on?!" Harry knew why he was getting so worked up over the fate of a boy he had never met before, because if Nicolas could do that to his own son, then what could he do to him?
"The Elixir of Life?" Nicolas laughed, humourlessly. "There is no such thing." He explained before Harry could even ask. "It wasn't long before I realised that by putting Gerard's soul in the stone, that I had enacted the final step in a ritual never even thought of before. With both my wife and child sacrificed in its creation, it gave me eternal life. No weapon or spell can kill me. I used to believe that it was Perenelle's will that was punishing me, refusing to let me succumb until I can release our son."
Harry had an inkling in which method Nicolas had utilised in order to discover that no weapons or spells could kill him, but he didn't want to ask just in case he was right.
"I eventually realised that I couldn't discover the answer on my own, so I turned to the best and brightest that our world had to offer. I used my own fame as a lure in order to appeal to these ambitious young witches and wizards, teaching them what I knew in the hopes that they would be able to discover a way to free my son, but not a single one of them could." Nicolas let out a slow breath, as though he were marvelling at his own past ignorance. "Some of them were not even trustworthy enough to tell my secret of immortality to, and the ones that were grew to distrust me when they learned of my family's demise."
"You want to know what I saw in the Anguish? I saw myself more clearly than I ever had before. Mortality is the only universal human experience. The longer I am separated from it, the less empathy I feel for my fellow man. I have lived centuries where I have lied and used the apprentices who trusted me in order to further my own goals, and I have done so with less and less regret each time."
Harry pushed the swing back with his legs, setting the rocking in motion, if only for something to do while he gathered his thoughts. "New York. We went there for an old project of yours. Was it a…," he paused for a second, trying to come up with the right word, before settling with, "remedy?"
Nicolas hummed. "More like a myth."
When he said nothing else, Harry continued. "Look, if there's one thing I've learned over the last year, it's that nothing is impossible." Nicolas stared at him, so he elaborated. "I mean, not so long ago I was living in the Muggle world not even knowing magic existed, and now I'm fighting monsters every other week and apprenticing with an undying Alchemist. Life can really surprise you."
Nicolas grunted. "It cannot surprise me. I've seen everything."
"Oh, please." Harry scoffed. "I've only known you since July and I've seen you look as open mouthed as a fish at least a hundred times." Nicolas stared at him, and he corrected, "All right, a few times, but still! You can't tell me that there aren't things that can't catch you off guard. You don't know everything, Nicolas, and besides, the Law of Equal Exchange means that there has to be something to free your son, otherwise the Philosopher's Stone wouldn't even exist."
Nicolas well-worn mask finally fell, and underneath Harry saw the face of man wallowing in his own sadness. "I'm tired of looking for something that I will never find."
Harry narrowed his eyes. "And your son?" He knew that it was below the belt, but it needed to be said. "You're just going to abandon him? I know you said that your empathy has faded, but I don't think that's true." He waved a hand at Nicolas' juvenile apparel. "Just look at the way you dress. You look like you belong in some garage band."
Nicolas touched his raggedy flannel shirt, self-consciously. "So?"
"So," Harry stressed the word, "you trying so hard to fit in with the times doesn't make me think that you want to be separate from everybody else. You like feeling connected to the rest of the world, even if it's just through your clothes." He pointed at the stone. "You're not giving up on Gerard. We all need something to work towards, something to look forward to in life, and this is yours. You just have to think about reuniting with your son."
Nicolas swallowed. "He wouldn't want to reunite with me."
Harry shrugged, thinking of his own vision. "I think my parents would feel the same, but I'm still going to try to find a way to bring them back whether they like it or not."
"Because we all need something to work towards?" Nicolas asked, and Harry nodded. Slowly, he smiled, more genuinely than Harry had ever seen from him, before nodding over his head. Harry turned to see Lady Wen had returned and she was staring impatiently at them. "Go to Mei. She'll have a soft spot for you."
Recognising the dismissal for what it was, Harry slowly stood and made his way over to Lady Wen, where she was waiting for him by the front door. "I have the strangest feeling that you have not convinced him to leave."
Harry withheld a grimace at that. Formally, he said, "Lady Wen, Master Flamel and I have come here to ask for your help." He barrelled on before she could refuse. "It's for my own sake. I'm haunted by the memory of a man that I killed in self-defence, and I was told that you could heal me." Something in his words seemed to set her off, as waves of burnt orange Mana began to emanate from her in pulsating waves, as she glared over Harry's shoulder at Flamel. "Please." Harry pleaded, not wanting to have come so far only to be refused at the last hurdle. "I can't sleep."
That made her calm down almost immediately, as she looked him over before finally acquiescing. "So be it. I will guide you, Harry Potter, but it is you who must heal yourself."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Harry opened his eyes, only to be met with a familiar sight. The bottom of the Dursley's staircase. Blinking tiredly, he turned his head and his cheek brushed against the moisture on his pillow. Tears. He had been crying.
He remembered now. Christmas. Eight or nine years ago. Dudley had been presented with a small mountain of gifts, and Harry, with none, had kicked up a fuss about it. Petunia had picked him up and locked him in the cupboard without a word, and no matter how much Harry cried and screamed for attention, no one came to let him out for the rest of the day. They simply spoke louder, increased the volume of the television, and urged Dudley to play as rowdily with his toys as he wished.
He had eventually given up screaming when his voice started to hurt, but it hadn't stopped the tears. His pillow had been soaked with them.
He hadn't thought of this day in years, even though it was always in the back of his mind, and he wondered why he was remembering it now. Wasn't he in the middle of something important? What was it Wen had said?
Wen. Harry slowly began to remember.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
The two Sages had found common ground in their warnings.
Wen had told Harry to wait for another day or two, in order to give his mind time to rest after his ordeal in the Anguish, and Nicolas was quick to agree, but Harry was insistent. He feared that even one more night of haunted sleep would drive him mad.
"Here." As Wen led them towards her ritual room at the bottom of the house, she handed him a Mermish crystal flask that had been sealed shut with a dropper. "It's a potent potion, so you'll only need two drops. Anything more than that and your heart will be too damaged to restart."
"Restart?" Harry only just managed to stop himself from yelping the word. "What are you talking about?"
"I thought you knew." She opened the door at the bottom of the long staircase, and the three of the stepped into a barren stone room, reminiscent of Malcolm Blake's in New York, right down to the number of lit torches on the walls. "Your old Professor is in a plane of existence somewhere between the realm of the living and the dead. In order to see him again, in order to earn his forgiveness, you need to meet him there."
"Which means I need to be undead while I do it." Harry finished for her, and when she nodded, he felt a wave of apprehension about to crest over him, but he quickly crushed it. Ignoring the voice that was telling him that he was about to die in a glorified basement halfway around the world from home, he drew the dropper from the flask.
Lying down in the centre of the room at Wen's direction, Harry glanced at Nicolas. "You'll be fine." He assured Harry. "I'll be watching over you the entire time."
"The entire time?" Wen snorted. "He will only be under for a single supressed heartbeat. If he doesn't wake up, he'll be beyond our reach." Nicolas glared at her, but she looked back, unrepentant, before turning to Harry. "The Hollow is a realm beyond time and space, so your perception will be changed by your mind into a form that you can comprehend. It may seem like hours or even days to you, but you will be under for only the space of a heartbeat. Do you understand?"
Harry nodded, warily. "I was actually hoping for some last-minute advice, but whatever." Without hesitation, Harry carefully placed the two drops on his tongue, partly to escape the barely concealed tension between the two, but mostly because he was eager to wash away the stain of murder on his soul.
Feeling his heart beginning to slow, Harry lay back until he was flat on the cold stone, and Lady Wen knelt behind him, putting two fingers of each hand on both of his temples. "You will now cross into the Hollow, where there is only a bleak nothingness. Your mind will not be able to comprehend it so, in a futile survival reflex, it will try to make you understand the danger by creating images and sensations that already bring you agony." Despite the stark warning, Harry was wondering how she could possibly know that. "You must find Quirrell in the place where the Necromancer trapped him before your body fails. Remember that, whatever you-"
That was all Harry heard before his vision went black.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Of all the places he could have ended up, of all the memories he could have been tortured with, this mundane form of neglectful cruelty was what his mind had conjured up in the face of oblivion. Harry wished he could say that it had no effect on him, but that would be a lie. This moment here, one of his earliest memories, was the first time he could ever recall feeling the bitter sensation of loneliness.
However, something was different here. Normally, when this memory came to mind, it hardly affected him at all, as he had built up so many defences around his grimmer memories, that he only felt hollow whenever he thought of them. But now the Hollow had stripped those defences away, leaving him as exposed to his own emotions like a fresh wound to an infection.
Harry drew his legs closer to himself, wrapping his arms around his knees and burying his face in them, trying to hide from the outside world, if only for a minute. It took far longer than he was proud of for him to get a grip on himself, and he only did so by repeating a mantra in his mind.
This isn't real. Harry told himself. None of this is real.
Slowly, Harry rose from his bed and opened the cupboard door. Ignoring the images of Vernon and Petunia, who were both screaming at him to return to his room with increasing volume, Harry repeated the mantra over and over in his mind as he reached the front door and opened it. Stepping through, he came upon a different memory.
Sitting at a table on the very edges of St. Gregory's cafeteria, Harry was a little older now than he was in the last memory, around six years old. Aaron from Class 2B was trying to get under his skin again, but Harry was living in the same house as Dudley, so he knew how to let mean comments roll off his back.
That was until Aaron brought up his mother.
Harry had stopped eating, and Aaron, sensing a weakness, continued his insults. The kids surrounding them were laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world, and Harry could feel the last of the harboured dreams of friendship he held go up in flames as he stood and proceeded to beat Aaron into the ground with his hard plastic lunch tray.
Unlike the last, Harry had always looked back on this memory proudly, as it was the day that he had begun to stand up for himself properly, not waiting for others to strike at him first. After all, no one else was going to look out for him, so he had to do it for himself, as effectively and brutally as necessary.
However, now that years of fond recollection had been stripped away, the Hollow had left him with the truth of what he had been feeling that day. This was when Harry had retreated so deeply into himself that even he hardly acknowledged the truth of his own emotions. It was some kind of self-defence mechanism he supposed, to hide his true self and to put on an aloof mask, because if someone had a problem with the façade that he presented the world with, then it was okay, as it wasn't who he really was.
Even now, years later, he was still hiding.
With Aaron crying on the ground, and the other students looking at him warily, Harry made his way to the backdoor, while ignoring Roemmele's calls to come back to her office. Opening the door, Harry stepped into another, far more surprising memory.
The day he met Hagrid. The day he discovered who and what he really was.
It was a much longer memory than the last, and as he sat through Hagrid's entire explanation of his heritage and the secret world he had been born into; Harry was wracking his brain trying to understand why the Hollow would try to torture him with this memory. This had been one of the happiest moments of his life.
If its so happy, then why couldn't you make a Patronus out of it? A familiar voice whispered in his ear. Harry quickly turned, but no one was there.
Confused, he followed Hagrid to the train station on the way to Diagon Alley, the gentle giant keeping up his side of the conversation exactly as Harry remembered. It was only when they entered his family vault at Gringotts, did he finally recall the emotion he had felt when he stared up at his family tapestry.
Domus Potter
Quod in te est, prome
Bring forth what is within you, the same voice scoffed disdainfully, but there is nothing within you. You are hollow.
Harry turned and caught sight of a shadow ducking out of the vault door, and he gave chase. Ignoring Hagrid's calls, Harry sprinted down the dark tunnels after the shadow, and into the next series of memories. One by one, memories of the last year flashed by, Voldemort's manipulations, his own failure to recognise Slughorn's worsening condition for what it really was, and all the pain he had experienced due to his own recklessness and stupidity.
The worst part was, now that he was forced to confront these experiences, he couldn't see a way for him to have done any better with how little he knew at the time. Regardless of the choices he had made, he was always going to experience these awful events, or even worse ones, just by existing. Voldemort wouldn't have allowed anything else.
Despite this realisation, Harry kept running after the shadow, memory after memory, not allowing the emotions he was forced to experience as though they were happening for the first time to affect his chase. Finally, when they were in the Wampus room, and there was only one traumatising memory left, the memory he most wished to avoid, Harry caught finally tackled his shadow to the ground.
Or rather, through the ground.
Tangled in a heap of thrashing limbs, Harry and the shadow fell through the stone floor, punching and kicking at each other in free fall, before landing roughly on a bed of grass. Rolling away from each other upon impact, Harry scrambled to his feet, ready to pursue his quarry once more, but this time he wasn't running away, allowing Harry to get a good look at him for the first time.
His brain refused to believe what his eyes were seeing. His quarry's silhouette had been familiar, but under the light of the fire, Harry was able to see him for what he was.
He was looking at himself. A brutalised and mutilated version of himself.
His jaw was hanging loose from his face, and both eye sockets were hollow and without lids. In contrast to how quickly it had run from him earlier, his left leg was clearly broken at the knee, and he dragged it behind as it approached him. Worst of all were the burns and scars that seemed to cover every bit of visible skin.
"Terrible, isn't it?" His shadow as mockingly. "The marks of all that has been done to us. You would look the same if you didn't have magic to heal and blind you to the truth."
Harry took a step back, shaking his head. "I've never been that injured." He was certain that no damage had ever been done to his eyes, and those burns were something else entirely.
"Not physically, no." The shadow agreed. "But if you think you could just walk away from everything that's ever happened to you without a mark to show for it, you're out of your mind." He smiled. "You should look at yourself more clearly. What they've done to you…it's a tragedy."
"What even is this? How can you speak to me? How are you separate from me?" Harry didn't understand what was going on. In every memory so far, even the ones in the distant past, he had experienced the memories as though he was living through it again, not as an outside observer.
"I'm not a memory, I'm a possibility." The shadow said proudly. "I'm you as you should be, without guilt or regrets to drag you down."
"What do you-?"
"Look around!" He expanded his arms to gesture in the area they had landed in. "Even now you're wallowing in memories you don't even have!"
Warily, as he didn't want to take his eyes off the shadow, Harry turned to observe their surroundings. They had landed on a well-maintained lawn in a magnificent garden, and there in the distance, was a massive house that had been wrapped in the tendrils of a giant serpent made of red flames, and the black night sky was tinged with the colour of blood. Even from this distance, the screams of the people trapped inside was audible over the sounds of the building's destruction.
The Hallow, July 31st 1980.
Even before setting foot in Hogwarts, Harry had read so much about the demise of his family's ancestral home that he could almost picture it clearly in his mind, but never more clearly than this.
"Months you've wasted wallowing over this, over our parents, over Quirrell, when you should have been training to become even greater than the one who committed all those crimes against us!" The shadow had stepped into Harry's view of the Hallow, as though resenting his attention being placed anywhere else.
"Why waste time feeling guilty over things you had little control over? Things you can't change?"
"Because…" Harry trailed off, not sure if he could provide a reasonable explanation.
That was all right though, as the shadow seemed to have all the answers. "It's because it makes you feel better, right? You think it's what a good person is supposed to do, what our parents would have wanted us to do, but we both know you don't have any kind of connection to them. Whether they were the nameless, faceless strangers we knew them as children, or the fairy-tale heroes that we were told they were, they're still nothing to us. They're not people! They're concepts!
"Focus on the here and now. You have Flamel under your thumb, whining about his family. He as good as exposed his weakness to us. Utilise that weakness, manipulate him and become so powerful that nothing and no one will be able to make you feel weak ever again." He stepped forward and pointed a finger at Harry chest. "Bring forth what is within you."
Harry shook his head. "That's not what that means."
The shadow raised its eyebrows, amusedly. "Oh? You're thinking its more equivocal than that? Something more spiritual?" Admittedly, Harry had. He had believed that it was something that he would come to understand in time, but his shadow had turned into something crude and base.
The shadow stepped back and shrugged. "There's only so much you'll be able to take before you drop the façade of caring about anyone but yourself. You'll see things my way eventually." He gestured away from the house, towards the wooded area. "Maybe even sooner, considering what's left." With that, he shimmered and vanished into the black smoke that was drifting from the still burning house.
Harry swallowed, knowing which memory was left, and he couldn't help but fear his shadow had been right. Not wanting to stay here and hear the imagined dying screams of his family any longer, Harry walked into the dark forest.
But he lost his nerve at the last second.
Please no, Harry thought with his eyes clenched shut, not again, please don't make me feel this again.
"It's okay." A familiar voice said, calmly. "You have nothing to fear here."
Cautiously, Harry opened his eyes, and he saw the man he thought he would see, but not in the context that he so feared. He was standing in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, which was lit by the bright afternoon sun streaming from the windows, and Quirrell was sat behind his desk as though he had called Harry in for a meeting.
Fearing he had simply dropped into a memory he had forgotten instead of the one that he dreaded, Harry asked carefully, "Are you the real Quirrell? Or just a memory?"
Quirrell smiled. "I'm very much real, but considering how desperately afraid you just were, I decided to meet you halfway." He gestured at the room around them. "This is entirely of your own design."
Harry stared at him, and despite everything he had experienced today, despite everything he had experiences over the last year and a half, he couldn't believe what was happening. Right now, for the first time, he was meeting the real Quirrell in the empty space between worlds. "Hello. My name is Harry Potter." He introduced himself, because he had never gotten the chance to before.
Quirrell's lips twitched. "Yes, I am aware. I was conscious, you know." Harry swallowed. He hadn't known that. "I saw all that he did while he was wearing my face, all the horrors and pain he inflicted on everyone he met. Do you have any idea what it's like to finally be free of that?"
Harry inhaled sharply. "Y-you're alright with what I did then?" He stuttered. "What I did to you?"
Quirrell regarded him coldly. "Do you mean killing me? You committed the act boy, you should at least be able to say it." He stood from his chair and made his way to the window, basking in the sun's rays, completely ignoring Harry's flinch at his reprimand. "You need to get over yourself. You've somehow made another person's death, my death, all about you. It's not about you."
Harry couldn't meet his eyes. "I-I know that, but-"
"You're not hearing me." Quirrell interrupted. "My death is not about you. Do you understand?" For the first time, Harry found the nerve to look directly at him, and Quirrell nodded satisfactorily. "You will receive neither forgiveness nor condemnation from me. Only you can know if you did the only thing in your ability that was capable of freeing us both from His grasp."
"But I don't know." Harry whispered. "I did the only thing that came to mind. The only thing that I thought would save me and stop him."
Quirrell hummed. "Well, my death was likely to occur the moment he took possession of me, either by the hand of another," he gestured to Harry, "or by his when he found a more suitable host. The question is, can you live with the fact that my pre-determined end came at your hand?"
Harry shook his head, slowly. "I don't know."
Quirrell looked away from the window and met his eyes. "Remember boy, neither forgiveness nor condemnation."
Harry had done this expecting a definitive resolution, hoping that he would be forgiven by Quirrell, but fearing that that he would be excoriated instead. What he had instead received was control over his own guilt.
Neither forgiveness nor condemnation. Harry could feel the weight of that settle over him, as he was dragged back to the land of the living.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Apparently, there was a cost in stopping your heart and transporting your soul through the barrier between worlds.
For the first time in his life, Harry had fallen ill. He spent the next two days bedridden with a fever, as his body tried to fight the lingering effects of the potion Lady Wen had given him, but despite this he was in a better mood than he had been since the Quidditch Final last May.
"How do you feel?" Nicolas asked, when Harry left his room for the first time since the ritual and stepped into the kitchen.
"Lighter." Harry sat down and accepted the plate the Automaton offered him, gratefully. "But heavier at the same time."
Nicolas snorted. "Thank you for clearing that up." Harry shrugged, as that was the closest that he could get to explaining his new state. It wasn't that his recollection or feelings of Quirrell's death had changed, on the contrary, it was clearer to him now than ever before. No, what had changed was his perspective on the matter.
It's not about you.
Harry had taken a man's life, but he had only cared about how it had affected him. This realisation now left a heavier weight on his soul, but it had also healed it in a way, as he knew for sure that he had done as much as he had been able to. He could not forgive himself for taking an innocent life, but he refused to continue condemning himself for it either.
Despite what his shadow had said, Harry now knew that he didn't have to resort to a lack of empathy in order to continue living.
Lady Wen spoke then. "Well then, now that they boy is healed you can take your leave." She stared hard at Nicolas, who was about to take another spoonful of porridge into his mouth. Now, he froze with the spoon in mid-air before putting it back in the bowl and standing from his seat.
"You are right. We have accomplished what we have come for." He looked at Harry. "Finish your breakfast and pack your things. I will have a Portkey ready for us by then."
"Err…sure." Harry said, taken aback. As Nicolas left the room, he turned to Wen. "Lady Wen, may I ask you a question?" She gave him a non-committal gesture that he took for a yes. "Why do you hate Master Flamel so much?"
Wen looked at him so intensely over that table, that he quickly focused his attention on his stack of silver dollar pancakes, but eventually, she answered him. "In a historical context, does the name Wen sound at all familiar to you? Aside from myself of course."
Harry thought she was pulling his leg. "Well, there was the Dark Sage Wen during the Fourth Great Wizarding War." He didn't want to say the obvious in case she was sensitive about it. He knew he would be.
"My older brother." Mei Wen said. "He was the first Dark Sage the world had seen after nearly three centuries of peace. Nicolas trained me to fight him, as he believed that my brother would not harm me." Harry grimaced, as he knew how that ended, and Mei smiled grimly. "Yes. It sounds foolish in retrospect, but at the time I still remembered him for the boy he once was and believed the bond we shared would stop him from harming me." She worked her jaw in a nervous tic. "It didn't stop him from killing my daughter."
Harry said nothing, not knowing of any words that could soothe the pain of a grieving parent, but Mei Wen was not done. "You ask me why I hate Nicolas? He put me on the front line of the war. He made my daughter a target." She looked him directly in the eyes now, as though willing him to understand the severity of her next words.
"Believe me when I say that he will do the same to you."