Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter universe or any of the recognizable
characters living there. I am just borrowing them to tell this story.

Summary: Bryan tells Dumbledore about his past.

A/N: I hope that this chapter clears up as much confusion about Bryan as possible. My original
plan was to reveal small parts throughout the story, but maybe its better this way. Too late to go 
back now. But hey, I can still talk about other things from Bryan's past. It wasn't all bad, all the
time. We'll just have to see what the future holds for us, right? 


Bryan had so many questions he wanted to ask but felt that Dumbledore should start, given that they were sitting in his office. He also wasn't sure how exactly he should word them. It seems obvious that Dumbledore thinks that I can help him in some way. Would he change his mind if I don't know something that he feels that I should? After a few more moments of silence, Dumbledore seemed to sense that Bryan was waiting for him to speak first. "Based on my observations and our earlier conversation, it would seem that you are unfamiliar with the wizarding world. In fact, you seem to have been completely oblivious to its existence. Is this a fair assessment, Bryan?" "Yes, it is. I wish I had known. If I had, perhaps things would've turned out better." Bryan took a moment to collect himself as some disturbing memories threatened to surface. "Unfortunately, my inherited memories didn't include that bit of info." "Inherited memories?" Bryan took several deep breaths. God, I don't want to talk about this. I'd hoped to never have to relive it. "Albus, I can sense that you're solidly on the side of Good. Because of that I'll tell you everything I can. But you'll have to forgive me if I have problems with some parts. What I'm about to tell you is something that I had hoped to forget. In fact, I have spent the last four years trying to do just that. I lost many friends and family in a fight that I never asked for. "Let me start at the beginning. I was born normal, or muggle if you wish. My life was about as average as could be expected. There was my mom, a brother, a sister, and myself. I never knew my father. The only thing I knew about him was that he was also my sister's father. Rich's father had died when he was just a year old. Mom never changed her last name afterward so we all ended up with the same last name. We didn't care. To us, we were complete brothers and sister. Most of the time my siblings and I got along quite well. Occasionally we'd fight, like any other family. Mom always seemed to know exactly what to say to settle things quickly. Of course, she couldn't be there all the time. You see, she was a single mother with three kids. She had to work two jobs to make ends meet. We weren't rich, but we weren't poor either. We had to share a lot of things but I usually didn't mind. However, I vividly remember one time that I did mind." Bryan smiled as he remembered his sister. "My sister, Samantha, or Sam as she liked to be called, was a year older than me. I was eight, I think, and Sam and I had to share a bicycle. Rich had his own bike, since he was five years older. Anyway, one day I had decided that I wasn't going to let Sam have a turn riding the bike. I wanted to go riding with my friends. She was standing in front of the bike with one leg on either side of the tire, and she was holding the handlebars tightly so I couldn't get away. She had been asking me very nicely to let her ride it for a while. Naturally, I kept telling her no. big grin After five minutes of being nice about it, Sam had enough. Without warning she hauled off and decked me right in the face, breaking my nose. She didn't know it at the time. As soon as I fell off the bike, Sam grabbed it and rode off to meet the same friends I was going to go ride with. Sam had always been a tomboy. Having two brothers and living in a trailer park full of mostly male children, she never really felt comfortable with female friends. But I digress. As soon as the babysitter found out what happened she had called our mom and told her that she needed to come home quickly. Missing work always put Mom in a bad mood. Combine that with what happened and she was extremely angry with the two of us. After we had returned from the hospital having my nose set, she tracked Sam down and gave both of us the worst scolding I can remember her ever giving. When it was all said and done, we had been grounded for two weeks and had lost the use of the bike for a month. For about a week, Sam and I didn't speak more that a few words to each other. By that time Mom had decided we'd been grounded long enough. We rushed outside and it was like nothing happened. We were joking and playing with all our friends; the only reminder of what had transpired the week before was the bandage on my nose and the dark rings under both my eyes. We seemed to come to a silent agreement to never mention it again. And we never did." Bryan had to take another calming few breaths as he remembered why they'd never get the chance to mention it again. Although Dumbledore didn't know what some words meant, he knew enough about muggles that he understood enough to guess their meaning. He took this brief pause to conjure up a pitcher of ice water and two glasses. He filled both glasses and handed one to Bryan. Bryan took a long drink before continuing. "Thank you, Albus." Dumbledore nodded. "Where was I? Oh yeah. I had several friends, but only a few that I'd call close friends. There was Matt, Joe, and Tom. Matt, Tom, and I were all in the same grade while Joe was a year behind us. I had known Matt for as long as I could remember and I often thought of him as another brother who just happened to live in another house. Joe moved into the trailer park when I was seven. Tom lived about half a mile down the road and was an only child. We met Tom when the three of us had been riding bikes the week before school started. The four of us spent every day that week at Tom's house. He had all sorts of games and we probably played every single one. Once school started we were inseparable. When we weren't in school we were exploring the mountains that were next to the trailer park. Sometimes we'd get together with our other friends and play war games. By that I mean that we'd grab anything that looked remotely like a weapon and we'd divide into different teams, each would go to a different area of the woods and set up a 'camp'. After our camp was up, we'd try to find the other team's camp and 'kill' any enemy that we came across. Oftentimes this would take up an entire day until we had to head home for dinner. It was during one of these games that Joe's and my lives changed forever. We had teamed up and were trying to circle around behind Matt's and Tom's team while the rest of our team came at them from the front. We had almost made it when something caught our attention. I was almost thirteen and Joe had just turned twelve so being cautious hadn't entered our minds as we went to investigate. We'd both explored these woods so often that we thought we knew every inch. We were wrong. We followed a faint blue light until we entered a clearing that we hadn't been in before. It was then that we thought about going and getting the others. We didn't though. We followed the light to the center of the clearing where we could see that the light was coming from the ground. More precisely, it was coming from a crack in the ground. We had no sooner seen the source of the light when the ground broke open and we fell into a small cavern. We lost consciousness immediately. When we woke up almost four hours later, we received the shock of our short lives. We had been changed. Each of us now possessed powers that even our active imaginations couldn't entirely comprehend. If that wasn't enough, we also possessed memories that weren't our own. I'm surprised that we didn't go insane from information overload. As we tried to climb out of the cavern the memories started to coalesce into some sensible information. It seems that we had inherited, as it were, the powers of two Mages by the names of Sarralon and Reyvan, who had been mortally wounded in a battle with a Dark Mage by the name of ..." Dumbledore was startled when the first two names had been mentioned. When Bryan had mentioned the Dark Mage, he knew what Bryan was going to say. "Malchien." Now it was Bryan's turn to be startled. "You know of him?" Albus stood and walked over to one of the bookshelves and grabbed a really old looking book. He leafed through it for a few moments until he found what he was looking for. He brought it back and handed it to Bryan as he sat back down. It was a history book, ancient history to be more precise. The section that he had opened to talked of a Mage war, The Mage War. "Almost two thousand years ago there was a war between the forces of the Light and Dark Mages. It lasted for almost a century, during which time the wizarding world was almost completely obliterated. One by one, Mages from both sides were killed. At the end of the war, only three Mages remained: Sefat Sarralon, Tyr Reyvan, and Nikolai Malchien. In what is commonly referred to as the last battles of the Mage War, Sarralon and Reyvan chased Malchien all over the world. Each time they caught up with him, they would fight. Although he was outnumbered, Malchien kept escaping. The final battle had taken place somewhere in what is now the northeastern part of the United States. It was believed that none of them survived because none was seen ever again. There hasn't been another documented Mage since." Bryan closed the book and handed it to Dumbledore. "I wish that were true. Unfortunately, it's never that easy, is it. During that final battle, Sarralon and Reyvan had the upper hand and thought that they had Malchien beat. Both were throwing everything they had at him and Malchien was losing ground slowly, but steadily. They knew that he wouldn't last much longer. Then, without notice, Malchien did something totally unexpected; he vanished. Whether it was intended or not, the spell he had used to vanish also caused Sarralon's and Reyvan's spells to ricochet back at them. Although they weren't killed instantly, they knew they weren't going to live for much longer. They spent their remaining time figuring out what had happened. They determined that Malchien had attempted to jump forward in time. They had no way of calculating how far because they didn't know if he had time to complete the spell. Then there's the fact that he was under attack at the time. Not knowing how that would affect it, they couldn't even make educated guesses. They knew they couldn't wait around for him to return so they hatched up a new plan. They decided to embed their power into the walls of the small crevasse that they were currently in. They included as much of their knowledge as they could as well. Before they were completely powerless each had placed a final spell that would transfer their power and knowledge to the next person that comes along that is deemed Good. I am guessing about that last part. I know they were planning on doing it, and I later learned that we just missed the return of Malchien by hours. Since their powers didn't transfer to him, it would seem to be the logical conclusion. "At first we didn't know that Nikolai Malchien was now somewhere in our time. He spent almost an entire months learning about the new time he was in and also learning about us. Meanwhile, Joe and I spent that same year impressing our growing number of friends. Not the most sensible thing to do, I know, but we were just kids. What did we know? I'm just glad that we had enough sense to at least keep it out of the public eye. As we learned more about our Mage powers from the memories, we started doing more and more stuff. Stuff like creating bicycles for all our friends, making a secret place that only we could get to. We hid it inside the mountains right behind the trailer park. We began spending more and more time there until we were spending a week at a time there. We'd simply tell our parents that we were staying at one of our friends' houses. We wanted for nothing. If there was some item that we didn't have, we conjured it. If there was someplace we wanted to go, we made our private version right there inside our 'hidden palace' as we started calling it. We continued going to school but we no longer had to study. When test time came we enchanted our pencils to know the answers and we passed every time. It was almost paradise. We should've known that it couldn't last forever. "Almost a year to the day later, Malchien made his first move. I don't know what possessed us, but we just knew where we needed to be. Since we were curious to know what was there, we went. We were in Idaho. At first everything looked to be fine. Then we heard the train whistle. When we looked in its direction, we could see a passenger train heading for a canyon. The problem was that there wasn't a rail bridge to see the train safely across. Since we weren't sure we could stop the train in time we created a temporary rail bridge that lasted just long enough for the last car to make it safely across. Once that was done. We alerted the railroad company, anonymously of course, of the situation. "Over the next year and a half we were subjected to ever-increasing tests. Each time we'd sense where and we'd go. Each time it was bigger than the last, testing a different aspect of our new abilities. Each time we'd have to expend more and more energy. And the tests were occurring more frequently. I'd lost count we had to alter people's memories so they wouldn't remember what happened. "Probably the only good thing that came out of those tests of Malchien's was that we were forced to learn everything we could about our abilities. We had started to recognize the pattern to the attacks. We noticed the fact that each attack seemed to require a different approach. It was then that we had determined that we were being tested. We just didn't know by who. The memories of Sarralon and Reyvan suggested that it was Malchien, but we couldn't be certain. That is until the final test. Malchien made his presence known to us in quite a dramatic fashion. He'd set up his final scenario. This time he wanted to test our hearts instead of our power. He forced us to choose between helping our friends and helping a town full of strangers. I remember that first introduction with perfect clarity. "'Ah, the midget Mages have arrived. Good, time for some more fun.' He'd laughed. 'Oh, how remiss of me, let me introduce myself. My name is Nikolai Malchien. I've been dying to meet both of you for so long, now. You've proven to be a most enjoyable diversion up to now.' Another laugh. 'You both should be honored, you know. You are the first two people to meet a Dark Mage in millennia. I am very honored to be meeting two Light Mages, even if they are just shadows of my former enemies.' An exaggerated bow this time. 'You seem to have all their power. What I want to know is, do you have their heart? After today, we'll know, won't we!' Again, he laughed. He'd laughed so hard, we had thought that he was going to pass out from lack of oxygen. No such luck. He righted himself and continued. 'I have tested each of your Mage abilities. Now I'm going to test YOU. I've taken the liberty of securing several of your friends somewhere out of the way. I'm not going to tell you where, but I will tell you this. They're in a hole that is gradually filling with water. And they can't get out on their own. I've taken the liberty of securing them to the bottom with a constricting band. The further from the bottom they get, the tighter it gets. The more water that fills in around them, the higher they'll float. The higher they float, the more they get crushed.' He put up a hand to stop us just as we were about to go looking for them. 'Wait. You might want to hear what else I've set up for you.' When we made no other move to leave, he told us the rest. 'You see that town over there? It's about to be visited by the biggest storm in the history of storms. If you do nothing, everyone in that town will die most horrifically. Now you must choose between saving your friends and saving a town full of people that you hardly know.' With an almost dismissive wave of his hand, he vanished. "Immediately, the town started to get pummeled by a mage-induced storm that put a hurricane to shame. Winds were blowing so hard that small cars were being pushed around. Rain and hail had also started pelting everything in sight. Then the thunderclaps started. They were so loud and forceful that windows shattered, raining glass everywhere. Several forks of lightning pierced the darkening sky. Each time we could see the townspeople running around aimlessly. No place seemed to be safe. Joe and I looked at each other and just knew that we had to help them. We knew where the townspeople were. We knew how to help them. If we took time to look for our friends there was no telling how many people would die. We went into town and started to battle the storm. It was slow going at first. We would counter one part of the storm and another would pop up across town. We fought for hours. Each volley the storm threw our way we drove right back onto itself. Finally, we beat it. After taking a few moments to ascertain the extent of damage the storm had done, we found out that twenty townspeople had died. We felt like we'd been rammed in the stomach by a dump truck. We set that feeling aside, however, because we still had to find our friends. We searched for what felt like hours. In reality, though, it was only minutes. Ironically enough, we found our friends in the very same cavern we had fallen into two and a half years earlier. It was almost completely full of water. We could see our friends hovering about halfway down. They were holding their breath for who knew how long. Joe quickly broke the constricting spell. Our friends burst to the surface, gasping for air. I was the first to notice that not everyone was so fortunate. Instead of floating to the surface with the others, our friend Matt had sunk to the bottom. Without thinking, I dove into the water and brought him to the rim of the cavern where Joe had helped to pull him out. Matt was dead. As it turned out, he had had one of his panic attacks and couldn't hold his breath. He drowned instantly. When we found out that all those people had died, we felt really bad. But that couldn't compare to how we felt seeing Matt lying there as if asleep. We tried to revive him but it was beyond our abilities. We were devastated. Numbly, we carried him back to his house where his parents started bombarding us with a million questions. We didn't know what to tell them so we lied. We told them that we were playing in the stream and that Matt had dove into the swimming hole and never came back up. There was an investigation into his death. It was determined that he had probably dove into the water and got trapped on one of the tree roots and couldn't escape. We all agreed that it was best if we let people believe it. The deaths in town were attributed to a burst water main since Joe and I had erased the storm and all its damage from the townspeople's memories. "After that day we went on the offensive. We swore on Matt's memory that Malchien would rue the day he ever crossed our path. We took the battle to him every time we found out where he was hiding. He, of course, didn't stop attacking us, either. For two years we fought many battles. Each one had dire consequences. We lost more friends and strangers. Each loss only served to spur us on more fervently. Several times we thought we'd beaten him just to have him spring back up months later as strong as ever. The last time we thought we had beaten him was during our senior year in high school. We couldn't feel him anymore. We were relieved that it was finally over. We started to put our lives back together and move on. Everything went smoothly the rest of the year, right up until graduation day. "It was a perfect day. The sun was shining and everyone was smiling and having a great time preparing for the ceremony. The school principal had just finished introducing the class valedictorian to present her speech when I felt it. I looked towards the stands and I could tell that Joe felt it as well. With no more warning all hell broke loose. The ground opened up beneath the stadium we were in and many people fell to their deaths. My mom and sister were among them. Rich had been killed the year before or he would have been there as well. I didn't have time to grieve because Malchien appeared at the podium and started throwing Mage energy in every direction. Joe and I began transporting as many people as we could out of harms way. When we had finished we both turned our full attention on Malchien. That final battle was almost a reenactment of the final battle between Malchien and our predecessors, Sarralon and Reyvan. We poured almost everything we had at him. He fought back, but again, he was losing ground. Knowing how he had escaped before, we blocked him from using the time jump spell. Malchien was about to lose and he knew it. Moments before we destroyed his body, Malchien transferred his life-force into the nearest person, Joe. Sensing this transfer I immediately turned my attention to Joe. He seemed to be fighting an internal battle, which I guess he was. I was at a loss to what I should do. Joe was the first to figure it out. It was barely a whisper, but I had no problem understanding him. "'You're going to have to kill me. I can't fight him off for much longer.' The look in his eyes spoke volumes. He didn't want to die, but there was no other alternative. He could keep him from escaping into another body at the critical moment. He was also sorry. Sorry that it was I that had to do it. After everything that had happened in the past five years, we were the only ones left standing. We had no one else to turn to. We were it and Joe knew how difficult it would be for me to do what had to be done. I was about to kill my last friend, my last family member, the last person that I cared about. All of this I saw in his eyes in that one moment. 'Do it, Bryan. it has to be done.' "I could barely speak in whispers, but Joe just nodded when i said, 'I'm sorry.' A moment's pause, and then I did what I knew I had to. I drew upon my Mage powers once more and killed him. There was no grand explosion, no fireworks, nothing. A brief flash of light and he was dead. After each loss I had suffered I felt a little piece of me die too. This final blow almost killed me inside. I just slumped to the ground and started to cry. I didn't move, nor stop crying, for the rest of the day. It was late in the evening when I was finally all cried out. I became aware of my surrounding once again. I was in the middle of what looked like a field of cloth. Everywhere I looked there were bodies covered in whatever was available. Some were covered by suitcoats, others by capes from the band members' uniforms, still others by the pennant flags that once hung around the stadium. There were a great many people moving around whom I'd correctly guessed were rescue workers. One of them noticed that I was starting to move and immediately came up to me. "I don't know exactly what he asked or what my replies were. I do know that it wasn't the truth. When I had collected my wits enough I did what came naturally by this point. I erased it all from people's memory. For the next two weeks the local newspapers were reporting that the high school stadium was destroyed by an undocumented seismic event. Each new day brought a new theory as to the cause, but none were anywhere close." Bryan took a moment to empty his glass, refill it from the pitcher, then empty it again. "After that day I just packed up and left. I had no interaction with anyone that I once knew. Never spending enough time in any one place to form any new friendships. I did the odd job here and there to make a few bucks. Enough to get by for a while. I stopped using my Mage abilities altogether. I guess you could say that I was hiding from myself. For the last four years I've been wandering throughout the United States, trying desperately to forget about it all. "That is, until I saw that news segment about the grave desecrations. Once again I felt the pull to be somewhere. I wasn't afraid that Malchien had risen again; I knew that he was gone for good. I was wary about going at first. I didn't know who, or more likely what, I'd find when I got there. It was that uncertainty that finally convinced me to go. If something happened and more people died because I was afraid to act, I knew I couldn't live with that. So I followed that feeling, and here I am." Albus Dumbledore remained quiet for several minutes as he digested all this information. He compared Bryan's story to what he knew of the strange energy that the American Ministry had been trying to track down for five years. It seemed a coincidence at first glance. But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. The strange energy just appeared one day. It would then start bouncing around so much that it became impossible to pinpoint. It would then vanish for long periods of time, only to flare up again, then vanish once more. They had thought they'd found the source when they'd traced a really big energy spike to a muggle game field. The only apparent survivor was a seventeen year old muggle who told them that the ground had just started shaking and that he had seen his family fall to their deaths. The American Aurors could feel the aftereffects of a great battle but couldn't find any survivors. They did find two bodies that they had assumed to be the combatants. Since they were already dead they decided to let the muggle authorities deal with them. They had made a final note about the surviving muggle going to the body of the younger combatant. He was probably a friend. The American Ministry had kept watch on the teen for about a year before determining that he possessed no knowledge of the wizarding world. I guess they were wrong. "Well, that explains a great deal about some things. When I had read the reports from the American Ministry that concluded that there had been another Mage battle and that there were no survivors, I just couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss. I didn't know exactly what, mind you, but it had been bothering me ever since. Now I guess some part of me knew that there had been a third participant. Like I said before, when I sent the summoning spell I wasn't entirely sure it would be successful. I just had to give it a try. There's one thing that still bothers me. With all the knowledge that was passed on to you, didn't any of it include the existence of the wizarding world?" "I guess they didn't think that it was important enough to include. Believe me, I wish that I HAD known. Maybe, with some help, we could have defeated him so much quicker, and without such a high price having been paid. Maybe my friends or family ..." Bryan couldn't bring himself to finish the rest of the thought. Even now it was very painful to think about. Thinking about the possibility that they might've survived if he had just sought out some help was impossible. It didn't matter that he didn't know at the time that such help might have existed. Neither one spoke for several, long minutes.