Stacks of books and dusty old tomes began dumping themselves on a large oval desk after Hermione had summoned them with her wand. Albus, Scorpius, every available member of the auror department and the minister's main group of helpers had assembled in her office. Naturally Hermione's first order once the new information had come to light was 'research'.
Now that they knew the Nemesis was in fact Morgan Le Fey, it was time to find out as much as they could about her.
The books were from all corners of the archives. Some on Merlin, others on ancient wizarding history, a few research journals written by unspeakables that had studied the veil and lots on the Arthurian legend. Ron made his own contribution by tossing his Morgan Le Fey chocolate frog card next to the pile of books. Everybody grabbed a book at random and started scanning the indexes for anything relating to Morgan.
It only took a few seconds of looking for Albus to realize that they weren't going to be of any help at all.
As Morgana had already told him, everything the wizarding world believed about her was a load of crap and all the book seemed to just be regurgitations of that same crap. The only thing they had gotten right and all seemed to agree upon was that Morgana was an indescribably beautiful red-head that could turn into a raven.
"This is the useless pile," Albus said throwing the book to one side of the table before picking up another one.
"Well you don't know that," Hermione objected. "You didn't even read the first chapter!"
"Didn't have to. The first page states that Morgana lived in the eleventh century so its margin for error was only four hundred years. Merlin, Arthur and Morgana existed while England was still a heptarchy," he said.
"A what?" Ron asked looking confused. He wasn't the only one.
"It was divided into seven different kingdoms," his wife said quickly before turning to Albus. "But the earliest stories of Camelot originate in the twelfth century."
"That's because Merlin erased all the earlier ones from existence. He didn't want anyone knowing the truth about Morgana, namely that she had found the source of magic," he sighed and tossed the second book away. "You're more likely to find proof that kitsunes exist than accurate book about the Arthurian legend in the wizarding world. We should be looking at muggle books, they place Arthur's reign in the seventh century."
"What's a kitsune?" Scorpius asked.
"A nine-tailed fox spirit from Chinese folklore. Or a sexy animated K-pop singer depending on the medium," Albus said conversely.
"Are we sure that she's not lying about being Morgana?" Harry asked causing everyone in the room to stop and await an answer.
"I'm sure," Albus said grimly.
"How do you know?" Teddy asked.
"Because she doesn't lie to me."
That answer didn't seem to bring them any comfort whatsoever. In fact, it was quite the opposite. A few of them, including his parents, looked at him with even more concern than before. It was bad enough when Albus had been sitting down for fireside chats with an unknown entity that had taken a bunch of students prisoner in Hogwarts. Now they knew that particular entity was none other than one of the most powerful and feared witches of all time and whom was resolutely considered an enemy by any one on the side of 'light'.
And the fact that he seemed to know her so well. That he could understand how she thought, how much time he'd spent with her and that he'd even defended her on occasion was clearly rattling them. For the last few months, most of his family and most of the ministry as well, had made it clear that they'd all feel a lot better if Albus turned himself over to the psychiatric ward at St. Mungo's but now they seemed to be getting ready to forcibly drag him there.
Unfortunately, it was yet another example that Morgana was right about many of the things she said about the wizarding world.
He made them uneasy because he was different.
It was like they were just waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Albus to snap and join forces with Morgana instead of trying to stop her. His parents were trying to desperately hard to act as if that thought had never crossed their minds, but he knew that it had.
Hell, it had probably crossed the minds of just about everyone in the ministry at some point. The only person that hadn't was Scorpius who had managed to put up with Albus' oscillating level of madness for years.
"But, now that we all know who she is, does that mean her challenges will stop?" Ginny asked. She couldn't keep the hopefulness out of the voice.
"Nope," Albus said simply.
"Why not?"
"Because she's having too much fun," he stated. And because she was planning to steal something from the Natural history museum and needed a way to distract me while she does it. He decided not to tell them that part. He couldn't be sure of who was under her control and who wasn't.
Everyone's attention was suddenly drawn to the office door. A woman was raising her voice just behind it.
"I don't care! Get out of my way!"
The door burst open to reveal a flustered looking auror that was attempting to restrain Anya Zabini who looked downright frightening at that moment.
"I'm sorry, Minister," the auror sighed.
"That's quite already. What can we do for you Anya?" Hermione asked, looking a little confused.
"Sorry for the interruption Minister, I just need a quick word with my boyfriend!" she growled.
Albus was secretly thankful that Rose wasn't there to hear Anya say the word 'boyfriend' while looking at Scorpius.
"Anya," Scorp tried but didn't get very far.
"What the hell is this?!" she demanded will holding up a small piece of parchment.
"It's for your safety and Hope's."
"'Go stay with my cousin'?! My cousin lives in Luxembourg!" she yelled.
"He's right, Anya," Harry weighed in. "You've got a new-born and –"
"Excuse me auror Potter but I don't remember asking for your opinion!" Anya snarled which actually caused Harry to look a bit sheepish before she rounded back on Scorpius. "I'm not just going to abandon –"
"Morgana Le Fey," Albus said loudly causing her to pause.
"What about her?" she asked looking confused.
"Nemesis is Morgana Le Fey," Scorpius finished.
Anya was silent for a moment. She almost seemed to be waiting for one of them to start laughing and admit that it was a joke but when nobody did, her face began to pale.
"Shit," she muttered.
"Yes. All kinds of shit is about to hit the fan so maybe a trip to Luxembourg isn't such a bad idea," Albus nodded.
"But…Albus, if she really is…you don't stand a chance," she whispered in horror.
"Yeah, I wouldn't bet on me either," Albus sighed.
"That's not true," Scorpius said forcefully. "There is one person that thinks you've got a chance against her and that's her. That's why she's trying to keep you occupied all the time."
Albus shrugged. "Well, I suppose if celestial bodies can do it, maybe I've got a shot."
"Huh?" Ron couldn't help grunting.
"Binary stars can often play out a sort of David and Goliath situation. If the smaller one is a neutron star it will pull energy away from the larger star until it eventually kills it," Albus said.
"Why do I get the feeling that your 'Acceptable' OWL in Astromancy was deliberate?" Hermione asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Because it was," Albus admitted. "So was Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Herbology, Potions and Divination. I'm surprised you never noticed."
"Adapted," Scorpius snorted while rolling his eyes.
"What?"
"His OWL results spell out the word 'Adapted'," Scorpius explained. "That wasn't an accident."
"What…no…you…" Hermione spluttered while she remembered Albus's OWL results. Then it dawned on her. The shock on her face was mingled with anger. He had made a mockery of the school's exams! He had done just enough to make sure he got the appropriate grade in order to spell out a word! "The Ordinary wizarding Level exams are one of the most important parts of a young wizard's education and you decided to use them to play SCRABBLE?!"
Albus shrugged again. "Well it's not like I could play solitaire."
If Hermione were a water pipe then the pressure gauge attached to her head would have just broken and an evacuation of the immediate area would be advised.
"I can't imagine why she likes you so much," Anya said dryly.
"I'm sure she just wants him for his money," Scorpius remarked. "But, since she is going that route, I've got the full-time job of trying to make sure he doesn't do anything completely suicidal and If I'm terrified for you and Hope at the same time, I think I might actually explode. So please, I'm begging you, just take Hope and leave the country," he said taking hold of her hands and squeezing them hard.
There was a pleading in his eyes that she couldn't ignore.
"I hate this," she breathed.
"So do I," he said and pulled her into a hug. The two of them seemed to have forgotten that there were several others in the room.
"You need to distance yourself from the wizarding world. We both know what she wants," he said hoarsely.
"You two look after each other," she leaned in close enough to whisper in his ear. "Don't let her change him. She never wanted to kill him. She wants him on her side. She wants him to be like her."
"I know. But, have you met Albus?" he smiled. "If anyone could annoy an immortal to death, it's him."
"Is that a compliment? I don't think that's a compliment," Albus said looking around the room for some kind of confirmation. It didn't come.
Most of them were still to stunned by his manipulation of his own OWL grades to give a response.
"Believe me, if I could convince Rose, Dom and Melissa to leave as well, I would," Scorpius said.
"So that you two can shoulder this all by yourselves?"
"She doesn't want anyone else shouldering it. These tests are designed for Albus," he said.
"And she will become aggressive if others try to butt in," Albus confirmed while shooting a warning look at his father.
"Truth be told, I don't think any place is really safe from her at the moment but her main focus seems to be the UK so getting you out of it is a good start," Scorpius said.
"Fine, I'm going!" Anya groaned. "But I'm doing this under protest!"
"Yes, I think we all got that," Albus smirked.
"Albus…what ever she offers, what ever she promises you…you can't give in," Anya warned. "Even Merlin was afraid of her."
"Fear makes people do awful things," Albus nodded in a hollow voice.
"I'll owl you once I arrive," Anya said before giving Scorpius a quick kiss. She gave another audible sigh before heading towards the door. "Look after him. He needs looking after, you know."
"I always do," Albus smiled.
"I wasn't talking to you," she remarked before leaving the office.
"He's not my babysitter!" Albus yelled as the door closed.
"No, he's your doctor Watson," she called back.
It was actually a bit worrying that her analogy was so accurate. Albus was Sherlock, Scorpius was Watson which meant Morgana was Moriarty.
Sherlock had to die to stop Moriarty.
It rattled him. But it also made him think up a new consideration.
"She saved me…" he whispered.
"When the room of requirement was about to go up?"
"She doesn't want me dead…I wonder how far she'll go to make sure I don't die?"
"That's a dangerous line of thought," Scorpius warned.
"Maybe I should put it to the test," Albus wondered, apparently not hearing Scorpius.
"Albus, no!"
"Call it a fall-back plan."
"What?! You're threaten her with suicide?!" Scorpius yelled in outrage. This was exactly what Anya had been talking about. What he had been talking about. Albus really did need someone to steer him away from driving the car off the cliff.
He had never been shy about being reckless with his own life. It was Scorps and few others that he worried about. One life sacrificed for a multitude of others was just good math. Of course, Morgana saw things differently. She believed that a mass cleansing was needed. Like Stalin had once said: 'Death is the solution to all problems.'
But Morgana was far from a communist. She was an anarchist. She believed in prosperity through destruction. Like a phoenix that has to self-immolate in order to be reborn.
And like any true anarchist, she didn't need followers. She operated alone. She was taking control of others just because they were a means to an end. Unlike Voldemort, she didn't want groupies. She just needed puppets. Drones to help her accomplish her goals.
Was he a puppet? Was he playing straight into her hands?
It was so damn difficult to know whether or not he was a step ahead of her or a step behind. He had to trust his gut.
But his gut was also telling him that he was a pawn, but maybe not for Morgana.
"I need to…"
"Go somewhere and talk to yourself, yeah I know," Scorpius shook his head. "Do even think about putting suicide on the table!"
"No, its not that, something else just occurred to me."
Nobody argued with his departure. The last time he'd disappeared for a while he'd come back with the information of who they were truly up against. He hadn't told anyone what he and Morgana had talked about in the woods. He knew that information would truly frighten them.
This time he really did retreat to one of the ministry bathrooms and made sure to lock the door and hand the 'cleaning in progress' sign on the front of it as well so he wouldn't be disturbed.
He pulled out the phone and called the laundromat, once again asking for Mr. Swan whom they had no knowledge of. After a few seconds phone rang with an unknown number.
"Albus," Bloggs voice said.
"You knew, didn't you."
"Could you be more specific?"
"You knew Nemesis was Morgana," he stated.
"If I had simply given you that information, she would have realized that you were getting help," Joe said without guilt.
"And then she would have gone looking for where that help was coming from. I get it," Albus admitted.
"We're not much good to anyone as a smouldering crater in the ground, which is undoubtably what she'd do if she found out about us," Bloggs said.
"How did you find out?"
"I killed a lot of Death Eaters in the second war, Albus. While your dad was off hunting Horcruxes, I managed to liberate some of Tom Riddles other prized possessions. Including a journal that belonged to one Merlanus Ambrosius. Voldemort never managed to decode it but we did and let's just say she's mentioned more than a few times," Bloggs explained.
"Anything useful in there?"
"Not much. It gave us an idea of when she'd bust out but other than that…he never referred to it as the veil. He always just called it 'the prison' but I suppose we should have made the connection. He talked about moving something to an underground chamber in Londinium."
"And I'm standing two hundred feet above it."
"Does it really whisper?" Bloggs asked.
"Yes."
The disembodied voices of the people on the other side were audible only to people that had been close to death. Just like Thestrals, you could only hear them if you'd witness someone die or been close to death yourself.
According to muggle lore, purgatory was a place of waiting. It's where souls went to wait until they could be judged and sent to either heaven or hell. But apparently some just stayed there. People that just couldn't realizes or refused to accepted that they were dead. In the wizarding world it wasn't spoken about much. They put no credence into religion but the place itself was theorized a being real. It's one of the reasons that the department of mysteries researched death so extensively and it was also believed that ghosts were echoes of the souls still trapped in that place.
"As were on the subject of who people really are –"
"Albus, my former identity has zero baring on anything that's happening. I didn't change my name because I wanted a dictator's title like Tom Riddle and I don't hide it because I like to tease people like Morgana. It's standard practice for someone like me to completely shed their old life," Bloggs said sounding a little exasperated.
"Well, you can't blame me for being curious."
"You have bigger things to worry about."
"Speaking of…I need you to do something for me," Albus said rubbing his face. "If I do manage to disrupt her plans, there will be…retaliation. She will not be happy and she will want to…hurt me, in response. I need you to protect the people I care about."
There was a silence on the line before he spoke again.
"I'm not sure I can do that, Albus," he reluctantly admitted. "I have to protect my own…but, I'll do what I can."
"I don't know what her response will be but when she realizes that I'm on to her but, she'll adjust her plans and abruptly end our little game."
"I thought she liked you?"
"She won't kill me. But I've seen her lose her temper before. She gets jealous easily and she gets very vindictive when things don't go her way."
"So, even if you manage to stop her from stealing whatever she's after from the natural history museum, you're basically expecting to get your ass kicked shortly after?" Bloggs asked.
"Pretty much, yeah," he said as dread started to build inside him. "But, if I can limit the collateral damage, I'll take it as a win."
"Well, I see what I can do to help but I can't guarantee anything."
"Thanks."
"One more thing…my intel says you disappeared for four hours. I'm guessing that you came back with more than just her name. What else did you talk about?" Bloggs asked seriously.
Albus couldn't stop himself from jumping into the vault and accessing the memories. The things they had talked about in the woods had altered his whole perspective. Maybe that's what she wanted or maybe it was just the ugly truth she'd revealed that had done it.
Suddenly he was back there.
The setting sun, the chill in the air, the crater that she'd made. It was as real as life.
Morgana clicked her fingers and a few logs piled themselves together then burst into flames. She could tell he was cold and with the smallest of movements, she made a pair of fallen trees shoot over and slump down in front of the fire. Seats.
"There's got to be another way," Albus said, practically begging.
"If there was, don't you think I would have found it?" Morgana stated. "Yes, I'm angry! Yes, I want revenge for what the wizarding world did to me! But do you honestly think genocide was my first pick?"
Albus' brows furled in confusion.
"I've played out a lot of scenarios, Albus. A clean slate is the only one I can see that will actually solve the problem."
"Muggle integration isn't a lost cause! It can still be done!" Albus pleaded.
"I'm not talking about that…the wizarding world has a sickness…and that sickness takes the form of a cycle of violence and chaos that never ends," she said. There was a slight desperation in her voice.
"What are you talking about?"
"Oh, come on, Albus! You've seen it, even if you don't want to believe it, as none of them do!"
She walked over to one of the logs and sat down, gesturing for him to do the same. He obliged.
"In the muggle world, evil is the symptom, not the cause. The cause is hate, prejudice, greed, ignorance and so many other things that spurs people to do evil things. Tyrants and monsters rise and more often than not, they are then defeated, not by good but by other tyrants that want to take their place. The evil of the muggle world goes up and down and it's scatters all over, like a rash. But…in the wizarding world, it's different. In the wizarding world, evil culminates. It takes a single form that becomes the defining figure of its era."
Albus couldn't help but be vividly locked to her every word.
"Before Voldemort there was Grindelwald, before Grindelwald there was Corvinus Gaunt, before Corvinus there was Ekrizdis! Herpo the fowl, Emeric the Evil, Salazar Slytherin, Loxias, sooner or later a dark figure appears that spearheads the drive of evil. And they are always defined by the same thing. The horrible things they did…and the hero that defeated them. One villain after another."
"And you're the next in line?"
"No. I intend to be the last villain. I will end the cycle of infinite chaos!"
"So…you're saying that if I were to somehow defeat you…"
"There would be another villain that steps up to take my place," she nodded. "Maybe you'll see it coming, maybe you won't but make no mistake, they will come."
"It's interesting that you're now referring to yourself as the villain," he remarked.
"I'll be whatever I need to be to get this done!"
"And you thin wiping out the wizarding world will stop the cycle?"
"It's never been tried before," she shrugged. "Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Do you honestly thing your father was the first 'chosen one'? Arthur was the chosen one! For every great villain there is a chosen one! Why do you think prophecies exist in the first place?! They don't predict the future, they just spell out the evitable!"
Albus's body went cold and it had nothing to do with the temperature.
"How could your father not fight Riddle?! How could Dumbledore not fight Grindelwald?! That's not destiny! It's gravity! It's the pull of two objects towards one another! Just like you and me."
Albus couldn't stop himself for looking her in the eye. He was drawn to her and she to him.
"I'm the unstoppable force and you're the immovable object and we just have to smash into each other. And…I want to…I want to collide with you. I can't think of anything purer than that."
And that was the truth. The ugly truth.
He wanted it too.
A/N - Hi all
This is sort of a all around message to anyone that's reading. I'm neck-deep in prep for my exams atm but those exams will finish in mid June so when they are done I'll finally be free to write again. Please know that I'm not abandoning this story, I've just got other stuff going on right now. The next chapter is on its way. Thank you all for your patience. I'm hoping it will be rewarded.