Ok, chapter 17 is up. Thanks for all you reviews, I'm going to say that I
am writing, I'm just a bit stuck so if I don't update for a while, that's
the reason. : - ) Thanks to all of you who have reviewed, as I've said so
many times before, I really appreciate it. Please keep reviewing : - ) As
with every other chapter, I don't know about this one either. I will wait
and read your reactions, and if it sucks big time, I'll rewrite it : - )
that's my strategy.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and Co, JK Rowling does.
GOOD AND EVIL
Hermione arrived to the house that does not know time three days before they were to leave for Hogwarts again. She had joined Harry and Ron in their room where they were filling her in on what Melinda had told them so far, about professor Gallagher and about the book. As they finished, she had a frown on her forehead.
"Well, you've certainly been busy" she said.
"There hasn't been that much to do" Ron said. "We're still not allowed in on the meetings, still too young... I mean, we're almost adults now..."
"Ron, we're still underage wizards" Hermione said.
"Yeah, but still. I mean, we've contributed quite a lot. Just take last year, when we helped Harry stop Voldemort from reaching the prophecy, or in our first year when we helped stop Voldemort from getting the philosophers stone..."
"It's different now" Harry said. "We do get information about what's happening, a lot more than we did last year..."
"My mom doesn't like that Melinda tells us everything though" Ron said bitterly. "She still thinks we're kids, doesn't want us to know anything about what's going on..."
"She's trying to protect us, that's all" Hermione said and started to look at the books surrounding them. "You know, Melinda's got quite the selection of interesting literature here..."
"Yes, we know, you said that the last time we were here, remember?" Ron said.
He was awarded with a glare from Hermione and Harry knew that a quarrel was close at hand. But Hermione got up and started to look at the books more closely. Harry and Ron were bored, they'd played wizard's chess plenty of times and had even gotten some homework done. So now, there wasn't that much to do but lay back and stare at the ceiling. Harry thought about what Melinda had told them just a week ago, the day before Christmas. The ancient ones fascinated him. Just the idea of being immortal, Melinda must have seen so much, had so many adventured. But Harry also knew she'd lost a lot during the years. He wondered where she was, he hadn't seen much of her the last few days.
She'd sat down for dinner with them on Christmas Eve and was there in the morning. She'd given Harry a book about defence against the dark arts, written by professor Gallagher. From the look of it, it was really old and full of useful spells. Ron had gotten the latest book about quidditch and Hermione an old book that Melinda had seen her read over and over again. It was a history book, and there were only two copies of it in the world, Melinda had them both. Hermione had of course overjoyed when she'd opened her present and found that book under the Christmas wrapping paper. The odd thing was that there was no author name on that book. Hermione had been meaning to ask Melinda who'd written it, but had never gotten around to since she'd left before they had opened their Christmas gifts.
As Ron and Hermione got into another argument in Harry and Ron's room later about Ron's commentary earlier, Harry decided to sneak out and see if Melinda had gotten back yet. He felt a bit restless; there wasn't exactly much to do in the house. And he'd almost wished he was back to Hogwarts, at least there he could go out and get some air.
He and Ron had been exploring the house, but there wasn't much to see. They'd found a door that looked very peculiar, but since it was locked they hadn't seen that room. They'd been in every other room in the house. It was quite large, and had many rooms. But there wasn't much to do, unless you liked to read a lot. Harry and Ron had tried to read some of the books in the shelves, but often they'd found the books being written in other languages. And the ones in English were written in old English, and they didn't understand much of that either.
Harry found himself standing in front of the door moments later; he hadn't even intended to go there. He and Ron had been fascinated by the door, because it had been embellished with what seemed to be jewels and gold. Red and green gems surrounded the door that seemed to have been made out of solid gold. Harry slowly lay his hand on the doorknob and found that the door was unlocked. As it opened, he stared into the room. It was a dark room, lit up by a faint blue light coming from the seven mirrors in the room. The mirrors all had different frames in different materials. Two of the mirrors seemed to be just that, mirrors. But the others were moving, there were small swirls in the other five mirrors. Harry looked at them, fascinated. Then suddenly he jumped back as something seemed to be moving towards him. At first it seemed to be just a shadow, but as it moved closer Harry saw that it was a man. An elderly man it seemed with kind and wise grey eyes.
"I never thought I would meet you, mr Potter" he said as he looked at Harry curiously. "Branwen has told me about you. I thought she was you..."
Harry backed away and looked at the other mirrors. In one of the other mirrors, a woman with dark hair and black eyes looked at him indifferently. In one of the others a woman was smiling at him, she had a kind green eyes. In the other two mirrors there were two men, one had red hair and green eyes and could very well have been related to the Weasley's Harry thought. In the other mirror stood a man with a serious expression on his face, and the bluest eyes Harry'd ever seen. They all looked very different from one another.
"So this is him" the man with the blue eyes said.
"Yes, Gawain, I believe it is" the elderly man said.
"He seems frightened" the woman with the black eyes said, still studying him closely.
"Well, perhaps we should tell him who we are. I'm sure that this is not something you see every day. Branwen has obviously not told him..." said the kind looking woman and smiled at Harry. "Though, I must say, he seems terribly young..."
"Who's Branwen?" Harry said suddenly. He was really confused and curious about who all these people were. Though he had his suspicions.
"She goes by another name now, I believe you know her as Melinda" the elderly man said. "My name is Proteus, and we here are what the wizards call the ancient ones."
Harry stared at them all.
"You're... The ancient ones?"
"Yes" the woman with the kind eyes said. "We are here to try and help our sister. And, of course, the wizards that are fighting this... Voldemort."
"But I thought..."
"That we were dead?" Proteus said and smiled.
"Well, that's what Melinda said..."
"Well... We are, in a way I guess..." The man with the red hair said.
"That depends" The darkhaired woman said still looking at Harry.
"Morana, I don't think this is the right time for a philosophical discussion" Gawain said and looked at Harry. "I sense that mr Potter here has many questions that Branwen has not had the time to answer."
"Melinda... Er, Branwen said that you had told her the book had been destroyed..." Harry said and looked at the elderly man named Proteus.
"Yes... I did tell her that... It was a mistake, but it is done and nothing I can do can change that now... You see, I travelled around the world, trying to find a way to destroy the book. Only learn that the book could not by any means be destroyed. Not by fire or any power we here possess...And I had a feeling that the book would be needed later on, there must be a reason why such a powerful artefact could not be destroyed ... I therefore trusted it to a wizard that I trusted more than anyone..."
"Even more than you trusted Branwen?" Morana said sternly.
"She would have been my first choice... But I felt she had gone through enough as it was, she'd suffered more than any of us here. And to tie her to the book upon all that was something I was not willing to do..."
"She would have taken the book, and she would have protected it from this new evil" the red haired man said.
"Yes, she would have, Deoradhán. I have no doubts about that. But she would have been unhappy, for decades to come. And considering everything that happened back then... With Lycurgis... Branwen never was the same... She carried a lot of guilt for a long time, she still does... You all saw it, you all knew it... Branwen was after all the one who killed Lycurgis..."
"But, I thought you all killed him, together" Harry said, fascinated by the conversation.
"Yes... We did, in a way..." Gawain said. "You see, even for being an ancient one, Branwen always was special. As was Lycurgis."
Harry looked at them all, he didn't understand.
"You see, to keep the balance between good and evil, there always has to be someone who... Well is as good as another is evil. Branwen, or Melinda, was that person. She was the good that sooner or later would face that evil very evil, our brother Lycurgis... And sure, we helped her... We made our forces into one as she surely has told you. But it was her power that killed him... In the end..." It was the woman with the kind face that had spoken.
"You're explaining it a lot better than I would, Amarante" Proteus said.
"You could say, Branwen was what you are now... She was chosen, born with certain powers so that she could face Lycurgis. Branwen told us of your early meeting with the wizard Voldemort, how you weakened him into a state where he only lingered in this world because of his hate and anger... That was when we understood... You will face this new evil, this Voldemort. And from what I see in your eyes... You already know, that you're the only one who can stop him, the only one who stands a chance against him." Morana said and looked at him with her black eyes.
Harry looked at them. They were all looking back at him, studying him.
"So... This, it has happened before?" Harry said, really confused now and looked at Proteus.
"Yes... But this is very different. This war will probably be larger than any of the wars we saw and fought during our years. There are powers at work now that none of us understand, greater than anything we've ever encountered... At least that is what I can tell from what Branwen has told us."
"But... How long has she been in contact with you?" Harry asked.
"She has been summoning us every now and then." Proteus said. "We can not do much more than give her advice... Since we're not there with her."
"These mirrors enable us to talk to each other. We came up with the idea a long time ago, before Lycurgis turned. Because we all knew we would leave this world, perhaps not at the same time... So in order to be able to communicate, all of us, we created these mirrors. One for each one of us. The other two you see there are Branwen's and Lycurgis. But Lycurgis can not be summoned, he is forever lost... We are now but shadows of our former selves." Deoradhán said
"We chose this path, chose to leave the world. Branwen did not. Probably because she knew that her journey was not over yet" Gawain said.
"From what we can understand, she was meant to stay behind. To aid you and the wizard world in these dark times..." Amarante said calmly.
Then suddenly, Harry heard footsteps behind him. He turned around and saw Melinda. She looked at him with her tired violet eyes.
"I should have known you would find this room sooner or later... I'm guessing you've met everyone?"
End of chapter 17
I like to get a bit philosophical, about good and evil and stuff like that. Thought it would be interesting to present the ancient ones... Since there were a few who wanted to know more about them, and I wanted to write some more about them : - )... Please tell me what you think... I'm working on chapter eighteen right now...
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and Co, JK Rowling does.
GOOD AND EVIL
Hermione arrived to the house that does not know time three days before they were to leave for Hogwarts again. She had joined Harry and Ron in their room where they were filling her in on what Melinda had told them so far, about professor Gallagher and about the book. As they finished, she had a frown on her forehead.
"Well, you've certainly been busy" she said.
"There hasn't been that much to do" Ron said. "We're still not allowed in on the meetings, still too young... I mean, we're almost adults now..."
"Ron, we're still underage wizards" Hermione said.
"Yeah, but still. I mean, we've contributed quite a lot. Just take last year, when we helped Harry stop Voldemort from reaching the prophecy, or in our first year when we helped stop Voldemort from getting the philosophers stone..."
"It's different now" Harry said. "We do get information about what's happening, a lot more than we did last year..."
"My mom doesn't like that Melinda tells us everything though" Ron said bitterly. "She still thinks we're kids, doesn't want us to know anything about what's going on..."
"She's trying to protect us, that's all" Hermione said and started to look at the books surrounding them. "You know, Melinda's got quite the selection of interesting literature here..."
"Yes, we know, you said that the last time we were here, remember?" Ron said.
He was awarded with a glare from Hermione and Harry knew that a quarrel was close at hand. But Hermione got up and started to look at the books more closely. Harry and Ron were bored, they'd played wizard's chess plenty of times and had even gotten some homework done. So now, there wasn't that much to do but lay back and stare at the ceiling. Harry thought about what Melinda had told them just a week ago, the day before Christmas. The ancient ones fascinated him. Just the idea of being immortal, Melinda must have seen so much, had so many adventured. But Harry also knew she'd lost a lot during the years. He wondered where she was, he hadn't seen much of her the last few days.
She'd sat down for dinner with them on Christmas Eve and was there in the morning. She'd given Harry a book about defence against the dark arts, written by professor Gallagher. From the look of it, it was really old and full of useful spells. Ron had gotten the latest book about quidditch and Hermione an old book that Melinda had seen her read over and over again. It was a history book, and there were only two copies of it in the world, Melinda had them both. Hermione had of course overjoyed when she'd opened her present and found that book under the Christmas wrapping paper. The odd thing was that there was no author name on that book. Hermione had been meaning to ask Melinda who'd written it, but had never gotten around to since she'd left before they had opened their Christmas gifts.
As Ron and Hermione got into another argument in Harry and Ron's room later about Ron's commentary earlier, Harry decided to sneak out and see if Melinda had gotten back yet. He felt a bit restless; there wasn't exactly much to do in the house. And he'd almost wished he was back to Hogwarts, at least there he could go out and get some air.
He and Ron had been exploring the house, but there wasn't much to see. They'd found a door that looked very peculiar, but since it was locked they hadn't seen that room. They'd been in every other room in the house. It was quite large, and had many rooms. But there wasn't much to do, unless you liked to read a lot. Harry and Ron had tried to read some of the books in the shelves, but often they'd found the books being written in other languages. And the ones in English were written in old English, and they didn't understand much of that either.
Harry found himself standing in front of the door moments later; he hadn't even intended to go there. He and Ron had been fascinated by the door, because it had been embellished with what seemed to be jewels and gold. Red and green gems surrounded the door that seemed to have been made out of solid gold. Harry slowly lay his hand on the doorknob and found that the door was unlocked. As it opened, he stared into the room. It was a dark room, lit up by a faint blue light coming from the seven mirrors in the room. The mirrors all had different frames in different materials. Two of the mirrors seemed to be just that, mirrors. But the others were moving, there were small swirls in the other five mirrors. Harry looked at them, fascinated. Then suddenly he jumped back as something seemed to be moving towards him. At first it seemed to be just a shadow, but as it moved closer Harry saw that it was a man. An elderly man it seemed with kind and wise grey eyes.
"I never thought I would meet you, mr Potter" he said as he looked at Harry curiously. "Branwen has told me about you. I thought she was you..."
Harry backed away and looked at the other mirrors. In one of the other mirrors, a woman with dark hair and black eyes looked at him indifferently. In one of the others a woman was smiling at him, she had a kind green eyes. In the other two mirrors there were two men, one had red hair and green eyes and could very well have been related to the Weasley's Harry thought. In the other mirror stood a man with a serious expression on his face, and the bluest eyes Harry'd ever seen. They all looked very different from one another.
"So this is him" the man with the blue eyes said.
"Yes, Gawain, I believe it is" the elderly man said.
"He seems frightened" the woman with the black eyes said, still studying him closely.
"Well, perhaps we should tell him who we are. I'm sure that this is not something you see every day. Branwen has obviously not told him..." said the kind looking woman and smiled at Harry. "Though, I must say, he seems terribly young..."
"Who's Branwen?" Harry said suddenly. He was really confused and curious about who all these people were. Though he had his suspicions.
"She goes by another name now, I believe you know her as Melinda" the elderly man said. "My name is Proteus, and we here are what the wizards call the ancient ones."
Harry stared at them all.
"You're... The ancient ones?"
"Yes" the woman with the kind eyes said. "We are here to try and help our sister. And, of course, the wizards that are fighting this... Voldemort."
"But I thought..."
"That we were dead?" Proteus said and smiled.
"Well, that's what Melinda said..."
"Well... We are, in a way I guess..." The man with the red hair said.
"That depends" The darkhaired woman said still looking at Harry.
"Morana, I don't think this is the right time for a philosophical discussion" Gawain said and looked at Harry. "I sense that mr Potter here has many questions that Branwen has not had the time to answer."
"Melinda... Er, Branwen said that you had told her the book had been destroyed..." Harry said and looked at the elderly man named Proteus.
"Yes... I did tell her that... It was a mistake, but it is done and nothing I can do can change that now... You see, I travelled around the world, trying to find a way to destroy the book. Only learn that the book could not by any means be destroyed. Not by fire or any power we here possess...And I had a feeling that the book would be needed later on, there must be a reason why such a powerful artefact could not be destroyed ... I therefore trusted it to a wizard that I trusted more than anyone..."
"Even more than you trusted Branwen?" Morana said sternly.
"She would have been my first choice... But I felt she had gone through enough as it was, she'd suffered more than any of us here. And to tie her to the book upon all that was something I was not willing to do..."
"She would have taken the book, and she would have protected it from this new evil" the red haired man said.
"Yes, she would have, Deoradhán. I have no doubts about that. But she would have been unhappy, for decades to come. And considering everything that happened back then... With Lycurgis... Branwen never was the same... She carried a lot of guilt for a long time, she still does... You all saw it, you all knew it... Branwen was after all the one who killed Lycurgis..."
"But, I thought you all killed him, together" Harry said, fascinated by the conversation.
"Yes... We did, in a way..." Gawain said. "You see, even for being an ancient one, Branwen always was special. As was Lycurgis."
Harry looked at them all, he didn't understand.
"You see, to keep the balance between good and evil, there always has to be someone who... Well is as good as another is evil. Branwen, or Melinda, was that person. She was the good that sooner or later would face that evil very evil, our brother Lycurgis... And sure, we helped her... We made our forces into one as she surely has told you. But it was her power that killed him... In the end..." It was the woman with the kind face that had spoken.
"You're explaining it a lot better than I would, Amarante" Proteus said.
"You could say, Branwen was what you are now... She was chosen, born with certain powers so that she could face Lycurgis. Branwen told us of your early meeting with the wizard Voldemort, how you weakened him into a state where he only lingered in this world because of his hate and anger... That was when we understood... You will face this new evil, this Voldemort. And from what I see in your eyes... You already know, that you're the only one who can stop him, the only one who stands a chance against him." Morana said and looked at him with her black eyes.
Harry looked at them. They were all looking back at him, studying him.
"So... This, it has happened before?" Harry said, really confused now and looked at Proteus.
"Yes... But this is very different. This war will probably be larger than any of the wars we saw and fought during our years. There are powers at work now that none of us understand, greater than anything we've ever encountered... At least that is what I can tell from what Branwen has told us."
"But... How long has she been in contact with you?" Harry asked.
"She has been summoning us every now and then." Proteus said. "We can not do much more than give her advice... Since we're not there with her."
"These mirrors enable us to talk to each other. We came up with the idea a long time ago, before Lycurgis turned. Because we all knew we would leave this world, perhaps not at the same time... So in order to be able to communicate, all of us, we created these mirrors. One for each one of us. The other two you see there are Branwen's and Lycurgis. But Lycurgis can not be summoned, he is forever lost... We are now but shadows of our former selves." Deoradhán said
"We chose this path, chose to leave the world. Branwen did not. Probably because she knew that her journey was not over yet" Gawain said.
"From what we can understand, she was meant to stay behind. To aid you and the wizard world in these dark times..." Amarante said calmly.
Then suddenly, Harry heard footsteps behind him. He turned around and saw Melinda. She looked at him with her tired violet eyes.
"I should have known you would find this room sooner or later... I'm guessing you've met everyone?"
End of chapter 17
I like to get a bit philosophical, about good and evil and stuff like that. Thought it would be interesting to present the ancient ones... Since there were a few who wanted to know more about them, and I wanted to write some more about them : - )... Please tell me what you think... I'm working on chapter eighteen right now...