Chapter Three

The Interrogation of Adam Pierce

The motel was in on a stretch of road several kilometers from my hometown. Adam left the car for Amanda to take in the morning, explaining that it was against muggle law to drink and drive. Fortunately the nearest pub was within walking distance, and it gave him plenty of time to answer some of my big questions.

"Only a few people know my real name," he explained. "A name has a lot of value in our world, just as it does yours. It's always been a habit of mine to change it every ten to twenty years."

"To keep people from finding you."

"Among other reasons, yes."

"Okay. What about the swords. If you live forever and can't die then what's the point?"

"Well I said you can't die. But you can be killed when someone takes your head." Adam paused, letting it sink in. "And people will come to take your head. You will meet other immortals who seek your knowledge and power, mortals who know about you and just don't like you, and now."

"But what knowledge do I have that-" I stopped as realization dawned on me. I knew about Hogwarts, about Diagon Alley and the Ministry of Magic. "Someone might discover the Wizarding world?"

"Exactly," Adam said. "There are plenty of people, mortal and muggle alike who would use that knowledge to declare war on your kind. Then it's only a matter of time before both of our races are wiped from the Earth."

I suddenly felt nauseous. Last week I was the Hogwarts Champion, just an ordinary wizard from Hufflepuff house. Now the fate of wizards and witches everywhere suddenly rested on my ability to keep my head.

"Do you really think it will come to that?"

"I've seen a lot of things in a long time," Adam said. "And in that time I learned that people are capable of just about anything."

I took a few deep breaths and ran my hands through my hair. It was a warm evening but it felt cold suddenly and I thrust my hands into my pockets.

"So I need to learn to use a sword," I summarized.

"Yes. Unless you'd rather become a monk. On Holy Ground you could be safe for all eternity."

I shuttered at the thought.

"I didn't think so."

The pub was open for another couple hours. A flickering Guinness light sputtered in the window. It was mostly empty by now accept for a few muggles. Adam led me to a secluded table farthest from the distractions.

The bartender placed coasters on our table and gave me a sour look.

"I'm gonna need to see some ID," he said. "We had a sting here 'bout a year ago and I don't want to pay another 500 pound fine."

"He's just gonna have a coke," Adam said, taking his jacket off. "I'll have a beer."

The bartender looked like he was about to argue. Then he shrugged it off and left us alone after he brought us our drinks.

"So, how old are you?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

"Old enough," Adam answered. "It's never smart to give away too much info about yourself. This isn't an international dating service. The less they know about you the better."

"So you're not even going to tell me?"

Adam drained half his glass before speaking again.

"I'm not going to tell you how old I am. But I will tell you that as far as I know, I'm the oldest living Immortal. Meet me at this pub, at this table, in twenty years and I'll tell you my age."

I slumped, disappointed. I drank my soda and tried to think of a question he wouldn't try to dodge. The only thing I could think of was to ask him about Hogwarts.

"In all your time have you ever met another wizard or witch like me?"

"You mean, immortal? Not personally. When I stopped teaching there I promised never to come back, lest I lead the Watchers straight to it. Of course if there were immortals, I imagine the Ministry of Magic has kept them pretty quiet."

"But I thought only the school's founders knew about you?"

"Well, only Godric knew I was Immortal. The others were curious about how I never aged, but they assumed it was some kind of age defiance potion. When Godric first met with the earlier incarnation of the Ministry, he delivered his report that immortal creatures such as myself existed. He left my name out of it, but he brought up his concern about Immortals being unaffected by magic, they took it about as well as you might think.

"Over the centuries, just to make sure things were all right, I'd maintain contact with the school. It was under a different name each time, but I think someone might have caught on once or twice.

"The Ministry of Magic admonished the headmasters and headmistresses to check the background of each newly sorted student. Specifically they were required to look out for children who had been adopted."

I raised an eyebrow, questioningly.

"It's hard to explain, but as far as I know, all Immortals are adopted by their parents. In all of my existence I've never heard of a person being born with the inclination to immortality."

"So you're saying I was…"

Adam nodded. "Your parents adopted you. But I don't think the Ministry has been worried about that for some time now. Times change and so do minor cautions."

"But what happened to the students back then?" I asked.

Adam drained his beer.

"No one is certain. Some said the adopted students were taken to the Ministry and hit with various spells and curses to see if they would have any effect on them. Others said the children were killed off to activate their immortality. If they turned out to be immortal they were beheaded immediately, their quickenings lost."

Now I thought I might truly be ill.

"None of this was confirmed though," Adam said quickly, trying to reassure me. "Mostly they were just guesses by whomever I was in contact with."

"How did you feel about that?" I wondered. "Just the idea that they were killing innocent kids?"

"I thought it was sickening," Adam said, honestly. "But not unexpected. This was a time when red heads were popular as sacrificial offerings. When you've smelled burning flesh as often as I have, you get a little desensitized."

I sipped my soda slowly, trying to ease my stomach. I knew there was a lot to take in but I never expected it to get this deep.

"You have to understand something," he went on. "The Ministry had a perfectly legitimate reason for their concern. They work around the clock to make it increasingly difficult for muggles to discover them. We aren't so different, wizard, witch and Immortal. We know how well they-" Adam gestured to the other customers, "-deal with competition."

It was the truth. Deep down I realized it was the harsh, bloody truth, and Adam was simply giving it to me straight. As a Wizard this was the life I lead. Now as an Immortal, it simply meant more of the same.

"We do the same thing too, don't we? Keep it from them."

"Not all of them," Adam answered. He raised his hand to signal for another beer. "Just like you guys have muggle parents who know of you, there are mortals who know of us. The Watchers are the biggest example of them."

"These Watchers…you've only mentioned them a couple times but I guess they watch us?"

Adam grinned.

"Very deductive. They observe and record our kind, but never interfere." Adam made quote signs with his fingers at the last part. "I was one of them for a while. It gave me a chance to steer them in the wrong direction a few times."

"When will I get mine?"

"You won't know for certain. Usually they won't even notice you until another of our kind makes you his student."

"That's what you and Amanda want to do with me?"

"Yes."

"That brings me to my next question," I said. I waited until the bartender brought our refills. "How did you two come across me? Ottery St. Catchpole is a mostly wizarding town. It's not even on any of the Muggle maps."

"Well, you remember how I said magic doesn't affect us? When we passed through town it never occurred to me that it was a place where magical people lived. With the houses and playgrounds I just figured it was a relatively small town and shrugged it off. Do you recall a strange feeling before we dug you out?"

I nodded.

"Well, we felt it too, though it was faint at first. I know something about what it's like to be entombed and Amanda was insistent that we investigate. The rest is history."

"So we can feel each other?"

"Most of the time," Adam said with a shrug. "It depends on how close you are to one another. It's like an alarm that warns you ahead of time so that you're prepared."

"Okay. Next question."

"Bring it on."

"What were you two doing in England in the first place?"

"Well, I'm playing the part of a graduate student currently," Adam said. "And my 'grandfather' died recently, leaving me an enormous fortune to pay my way through school and settle down. I came out here to claim it and spend a little time in the country. Amanda and I go back a few centuries and she happened to be in the neighborhood."

I grinned. "Is she your girlfriend?"

"More like a friend with benefits. That's all Amanda is to anyone these days, although she's usually the one getting all of the benefit."

I was still unfamiliar with most muggle euphemisms, but I had an idea what he meant.

We spent a few moments in silence. I drank my soda and Adam drank his beer. We snacked on crisps and corn nuts. A clock above the bar said three o'clock. I had less eight hours to make a difficult decision.

I looked at Adam. Was it right to think of him as Methos, I wondered? He didn't seem to mind Amanda calling him that, but then he had indicated only a few people knew his name. Amanda was obviously someone he trusted enough. What had I done so far to earn his trust?

If he didn't trust me with as much as his own age, how much could he really teach me?

It was a small comfort to know that he knew of my kind. Amanda seemed to think he was mental, and would likely treat him that way until she either saw proof or got bored.

"She'll be rather hurt if I don't choose her," I thought out loud.

Adam nodded. "Most likely."

"Why is that do you think?"

Adam shrugged.

"Psychology was never my strong suit. But the short of it is Amanda's the type who's used to getting her way. When she found you, terrified the way you were when we pulled you from the grave, her heart was set on taking you under her wing." He paused to drink more. "Maybe it's a part of some buried mothering instinct. But I think the large of it is that most of her students are dead. The one who isn't dead is a little bastard who kills his opponents in his sleep. Maybe she's trying to balance the ledger."

"But then why are you so interested in teaching me? Is it just because of what I am?"

"A large part of it yes," Adam admitted. "When I discovered what you were I realized it was imperative that I teach you. I spent one thousand years keeping the pact with Godric. If I leave you to get killed, allowing your secrets to fall into a potential enemy's hands, that pact is broke."

"So it's mostly guilt. You're conscience is telling you to keep the pact."

"I never feel guilt," he corrected me. "I decided long ago that guilt kills our kind quicker than any sword. So I simply stopped feeling it.

"I made the pact with Godric to protect myself as well. I didn't want to die back then and I don't want to die now. If a war breaks out between Muggles and Wizards, our kind will take the crossfire."

I snorted. Suddenly it was so much easier to see Adam Pierce, Methos, as the head of Slytherin house. He was a survivor all right. His pact with Gryffindor had nothing to do with friendship, honesty, or loyalty. It served him well so he agreed to it.

"Just like a Slytherin," I muttered. "Thanks for the soda. I need to use the toilet."

Adam simply watched me as I walked away.

I really did have to use the toilet. It smelled awful and the sink was filthy, with over a month's worth of rust around the faucet. I would have just held it in and taken a long walk instead, but I didn't think Adam would let me go alone. So I used the call of nature to get the only time to myself I had since the grave.

My life was so different in so short a time. I could never go back to my family the way I was. They weren't even my family for that matter. And what if the Ministry still kept an eye out for Immortals? Would they take my head like they supposedly took the heads of students before me? Would they keep it hidden from my parents, or would they be even more devastated when they found their only son had come back from the grave, only to die again in a far more gruesome manner? Did it even matter that they weren't my real parents?

I remember how much hell Harry Potter had to go through, just being the Boy Who Lived. Briefly I recalled seeing him again, along with a man and woman I assumed was his parents. There was another man there, facing him down with his wand. I asked him to return my body to my family. It might have been a delusion, something I imagined when I was in the grave.

How had things gone for him? I wondered. Was he safe with his muggle family this summer? There was so little I knew about the guy, accept for what I'd heard from others. Once or twice, when we were figuring out the challenges to the Tri-Wizard tournament we exchanged information. Then there was the maze.

Harry saved me once when Viktor Krum had me under the Cruciatus Curse. When we solved the maze, we agreed to share the victory and split the prize. He was a noble person, someone I wish I could have gotten to know better. But now that ship had sailed.

My life as a wizard was over the day I died. Now I was an Immortal. And like Adam said at least once tonight, I was in a position to be a great danger to the Wizarding World. I was faced with an obligation to embrace this new life. And like Adam, I didn't to die again anytime soon.

I finished up and we started back for the motel.

"I appreciate what you're trying to do." I said. "You've told me so much about my own world that I didn't know and I'm grateful for that. It sounds appealing, going with you, learning all you have to teach me. But all you can really teach me is how to use a sword."

"That's not-"

"Please, let me finish. I can't go back to the world I came from. Not the way things are. I'd only be a danger to them and eventually to us as well. The only way for me to survive is to learn from someone who doesn't know about my world. Someone who isn't prejudiced towards the threat I represent. Only then can I truly survive."

Adam didn't respond. In the dark it was hard to read his expressions so I couldn't guess what he was thinking.

"Amanda can help me more than you can," I continued. "She doesn't know about wizards and magic, she doesn't even believe me. She's not distracted by the idea that I could be dangerous to her. To her I'm just another student and she wants to do right by me."

We returned to find that Amanda had left with the car. She took my clothes with her and left the sword Adam had left on the chair. A note was on the table, written in Gaelic.

Probably to throw off the housekeeper, I thought.

"She's at the airport." Adam said, reading it. "She took the car and will return it to the rental place. She'll be waiting for you at the McDonalds until noon."

I nodded.

"So I guess I'm on my own now." I said.

"Nah," Adam shook his head. "We've got a few more hours to catch up to her. Lets get some breakfast and I'll bring you there."

Adam ordered a cab and went to Birmingham where Amanda was catching her flight. He gave me a crash course in the subtle differences of the muggle world, like currency and technology. He explained how devices like a television and a computer worked, knowing I would have no knowledge of such things.

The idea that currency changed from nation to nation was a bit odd to me. American wizards used the same currency that Europeans did as far as I knew. Some of the muggle recreational activities like seeing movies and playing videogames kept me interested, and they made me forget about the fast changes.

Adam made one stop in a sporting goods store and bought a duffle bag to put the sword in. Then he dropped me off in front of the airport.

"This is yours," he said, handing me the bag.

I was surprised.

"I couldn't take this from you."

"You'll need it. Amanda will probably give you one as well, but you never know when you'll need a spare."

I stood there, feeling the weight of the bag adding to the burden I all ready shouldered. Somehow, I knew it wouldn't be the last.

"You're gonna miss your flight," he said, clapping me on the shoulder.

I held out my hand. I don't think I completely trusted Adam just then. But it didn't seem right to leave on bad terms with a guy who helped save your life.

"Thank you," I said.

He shook it firmly.

"If you want to thank me, buy me dinner next time we meet." He said, jokingly. "So long Hogwarts Champion."

"See you in twenty years." I said. Then as an afterthought, I added. "Methos."

Then he got into a cab and left. I turned around and went into the airport terminal, wondering if I'd ever see the old guy again.