Chapter 5

If I had thought that Albus Dumbledore looked grave when he had been speaking about my dead father, that was nothing compared to the expression on his face now.

"Miss Flamel," he began, hands folded and behind his desk. His blue eyes nearly looked pained as he frowned at me. I couldn't imagine what Snape must have written in that letter to make him react in such a way—the old man held the look of a father walking in on their daughter in the middle of la petite mort.

"Sir, I didn't—"

He held a hand up. "Please. The last thing I want to do is interfere in matters such as these, but this is serious indeed."

"But sir, that's what I'm telling you, nothing happened."

He stared at me doubtfully, and what happened next would leave me shocked for weeks to come. His blue eyes seemed to suck me in until they were the only thing I could see—then I felt a pressure in my mind that I hadn't felt in ages.

Panic rose to the surface as I realized that Dumbledore was trying to perform Legilemency.

My mind fell into the old patterns of muscle memory and immediately began to push him out. When it did work immediately—Dumbledore was a strong wizard after all—I conjured up all my strength in occlumency and directed it into one aggressive shove against the old man's mind.

I knew the moment he felt it, because he retreated just as quickly as he had entered.

"What was that?" I demanded, though we both knew. My ears rang, and my eyes teared from the strain of his sudden mental attack.

Dumbledore's surveyed me in surprise. "My dear, where did you learn such strong Occlumency?"

"My father," I snapped, annoyed that he was trying to divert me.

"Ah," he said dispassionately. "Of course."

"Does a tryst in an abandoned classroom really mean that much to you?" I urged, returning to the subject at hand. "Was that not illegal?"

"No, not in Britain."

"Well it should be!" I yelled. I could have sworn the headmaster flinched, but I was too angry to care. "Do you do this to all your students?"

"Only when the situation is dire," Dumbledore replied quietly. Was it my imagination or did he almost sound ashamed?

"Whether or not I'm shagging Harry Potter is dire?" I asked incredulously.

I had half a mind to fly out of his office right then and tell Madame everything. This was absurd, and it was more than a little alarming that the headmaster so freely used legilemecny on his students—and me? He didn't even know me like that. The only authority this man had over me was what Madame gave him. He was so out of bounds on so many levels. In France, this would be considered a human rights violation.

But just as I began to get up, the headmaster seemed to collect himself and looked me dead in the eye, confident and void of remorse.

"Yes, the situation between you and Mr. Potter is dire. If you don't promise me right now under veritaserum there is nothing romantic occurring between the two of you, then I will be forced to reenter your mind and take drastic measures if I find what Professor Snape suspects."

I gaped at the headmaster, but his blue eyes held not a trace of jest or guile.

"First you invade my mind, now you ask to drug me?"

"It will just be a drop," Dumbledore said, undeterred. "Its effects will last only for a minute."

I was about to tell him what he could do with his drop, when he spoke again firmly: "It is either the veritaserum or I will enter your mind again. Trust me, Madame and any court of law will take my side if they ever found out the reason behind my concern."

I narrowed my eyes at the stubborn headmaster but saw no sign of bluff as he offered the vial of veritaserum to me. He would make an excellent chess player, I thought bitterly, remembering the metaphor I said to Harry just an hour before. Considering my options, I quickly decided the best way to take the advice I had just given to Harry to be active instead of reactive in this situation—with an aggressive swipe, I took the vial out of the headmaster's hand and downed it.

"Fine. I promise I am not seeing Harry Potter romantically." Dumbledore's eyes softened a bit as he sat back in his chair. "But—"

He raised a brow and leaned forward, much to my satisfaction.

"I also promise that I will start seeing him if you don't immediately tell me why this situation is so…dire," I finished sardonically.

The headmaster considered me for a moment then smiled pleasantly. "You could have just asked, my dear. I was going to tell you anyway."

I doubted that.

"Harry Potter is related to you."

I started at Dumbledore blankly. Of all the things I had expected him to say that wasn't one.

"Excuse me?"

"He's a cousin of yours," the headmaster replied calmly. "On your mother's side."

I wracked my brain for the names of my mother's siblings, but I was less familiar with her lineage than my father's unfortunately.

"Okay…" This wasn't adding up. "Even if he was somehow related to one of my mother's siblings, that would be generations back. The blood link would hardly matter by now since it would have had centuries to dilute."

His face froze and when I looked into his blue eyes I could practically see the calculations behind them. Finally, a light dawned, like he solved the equation but from the twist of his lips I could tell he didn't particularly like the answer.

This should be good, I thought, nearly rolling my eyes. I wondered what lie he would tell next to justify his rash behavior.

"That would be true…" the headmaster began gently, as if he didn't want to say what came next. But he did. And we would never be able to take it back: neither his lips nor my ears.

"If Perenelle Flamel was your biological mother and Nicholas, your biological father."

My heart literally stopped for a moment, and my breath hitched in my lungs. I literally choked on air. My gasping coughs finally turned into a shaky, panicked laugh. "What game are you playing at here, Dumbledore?"

When I looked up at him, his blue eyes met mine sadly.

Something in me shifted.

"Qui diable pensez-vous que vous êtes? How dare you!" I snapped, standing up to my feet and looking down at the old man. "Va te faire foutre, Dumbledore. You may have been my father's friend but you're a manipulative, old geezer, and I can guarantee if he was alive today he would hate you for the disgusting lies you're telling me."

When the old man continued to just look at me sadly, completely unresponsive, something snapped.

I lost it.

"How dare you? How dare you!" With a burst of angry magic, I exploded his papers on the other side of the room then stormed out, racing through the grounds until I was far enough out of view from people then turning into a butterfly and furiously fluttering as far away from the headmaster and his stupid office and his stupid school with its stupid secrets as possible—as far as I could get.

It wasn't until the dead of the forest when I stumbled across a massive fallen tree trunk, thick as a basilisk and as green as one too from all the mold, that I allowed myself to transform back into human form. Curled up beside the dead, decaying tree, I struggled to regain my breath, fighting the furious, panicked ringing in my ears—a symptom of my childhood illness that I relapsed into only when I lost control of my magic and emotions. The last time had been their deaths, which was fitting because it felt as if they had just died all over again. Except this time not even the ring could bring back what I had just lost.

I felt as though I couldn't get enough air.

Fingers shaking, I pulled the ring off my finger and turned the stone three times. I closed my eyes, focusing on my breathing when I heard his voice.

"My little Marguerite."

That nearly broke me right there.

Dragging myself up from the ground, I leaned on the thick, moldy bark of the fallen tree trunk in order to face him—the voice I had longed to hear for so long.

Only when I was fully standing did I open my eyes to see the pale ghost of my papa. My mother stood beside him. They stood on the other side of the fallen tree, looking down at me in all their moonlight glory, dimly lighting the trees and forest leaves around us.

"Tell me it isn't true," I begged, voice bleak and hoarse.

My mother's eyes grew even more misty, if that was possible for a shade. As for my father—he viewed me with a look of such sadness, so similar Dumbledore's, that it sent me over the edge.

"I said, tell me it isn't true!"

"Marguerite…" my mother started to say. Yet my father looked at her, and she could not finish. No, as I looked back and forth desperately between the two of them, it became clear that neither could tell me what I wanted to hear—that Dumbledore was full of nothing but merde, that I was truly their daughter in every way.

Because it would be a lie.

Everything, all this time, had been a lie.

In a roar of fury, I whipped out my wand and turned it on them. A jet of purple more hideous than I had ever seen slashed out like a knife of lightning through the air.

The mighty tree trunk cracked in half, sparking and curling in purple flames where it had been skewered.

I looked at the fire licking the bark of the tree then lifted my eyes to them. Though ghosts could not be harmed by spells, for all the pain on my parents' faces, they might as well have been the tree.

My rage died down with the remaining flames on the tree. By the time all the purple extinguished and only the dim white light of their ghostly forms remained, an aching emptiness had filled that hole in my chest, the place my fury had just been.

As I stared at them across the chars of bark and smoke, that only emptiness grew. Especially as they just stared at me, horrified, in complete silence.

Finally, in a quiet, cracked voice, I asked, "How could you?"

My mother stepped forward, drawing my watering eyes to her as she passed my father who still looked frozen in horror.

"When you were still in your mother's womb, she was attacked by a very powerful dark wizard. Your birth mother died under the stress of it, with you still inside her." My eyes widened. How could that be possible? "It sounds unbelievable, but it's true, darling. You were rescued by a man on the scene, a powerful wizard in his own right, who was able to deliver you and sustain you with potions long enough to get further medical intervention. However, your situation was unprecedented—no medicine or potion had yet been created for a case like yours. In order for you to live, you needed an alchemist."

My brain whirred as I looked toward my father. He seemed to finally awaken at that, walking to stand beside my mother and placing a supportive hand on her back as she continued with what, from the looks of it, must have been the most difficult story she'd ever had to tell.

"Dumbledore asked us to take you in, but we had said no." My blood ran cold. Dumbledore? He knew my birth parents? "That is, until the man who saved your life brought you in." My mother's eyes held a far away look, and when her features softened, I knew that her mind had transported her back into that very moment. My heart twinged. "I took one look into your eyes, such a distinct bright green, nearly glowing, even as an infant—and I knew." She looked to my father, grabbing his hand. "We both knew."

"Knew what?" I rasped, voice thick from the shouting and emotion.

"You were ours."

"No," I said, fighting back tears as I shook my head. "You couldn't have possibly known that just because you liked my eyes."

"It was not a question of liking your eyes," my father finally spoke up gently. I stared at him, drinking in his approaching form. Even in death, he was so lifelike with all his quirks—the slight limp in his left leg, the crooked smile, the intelligent glow in his eyes. He was an immortal soul indeed.

"Then what?" I asked, feeling hopelessly like a child once more under the gaze of those eyes and the ghostly hand he put on my shoulder.

"Of fate, mon âme."

My soul.

"Remember all the things we've spoken about," he urged with a meaningful look. For some reason, as my mind skimmed through all the lessons we had about potions, alchemy, the sciences, health, self-discipline, and a vast array of other magical disciplines, it ultimately landed on the story of Pysche and Cupid he used to tell me as we wound down from lessons, his eyes always glowing with hope and sentiment at the thought of death. Perhaps it was because papa's eyes held a similar look just at that moment.

But that was absurd. What reason did he have to look that way? He was already dead, and he could not die again.

"I don't understand you, papa."

"The time is coming when you will," he said gently, such sureness in his voice that I knew he was speaking in more than just abstracts. Far from the first time since I had arrived at this school, I felt as though there was something huge sitting right in front of me that still remained unseen.

"There is more," my father confirmed, seeming to read my thoughts in that skillful way of his. Unlike Dumbledore, he did not need legilimency. "There is so much more truth you have yet to uncover. I daresay this realization won't even be the most painful."

I flinched underneath his hand. "I doubt that."

His ghostly hands fell on my cheeks, bringing a cool draft with them. "My little Marguerite. You are ours and we are yours. Forever and always, our only daughter and the joy of our lives. About that, we never lied."

At that, a rare tear finally dropped from my eye.

"Why… why does this feel like goodbye?" When he didn't answer, I reached out to hold his hand, like I used to do as a child. "Papa?"

He moved to wipe my tear, but of course he couldn't. Instead, his finger merely cooled my face, matching the ice that now ran in my veins.

"A soul never truly dies, mon âme." He smiled sadly. "Or did you forget already?"

"I don't…"

"Marguerite," my mother said softly, as though she was savoring the sound. Her ghostly hand soothed my hair, expelling a pleasant gust of cool wind. "We named you for the daisies that spring in the soil of death, you know." She laughed lightly but sadly, like wind chimes on a rainy day.

"Who would have thought the name would be fitting in more ways than one."

"Maman, I don't… s'il vous plaît, expliquez—"

In the distance, I heard a pair of voices—one male, one female.

"Alas, little one. Our time is already up."

"No," I insisted, clutching tighter to the stone even as the voices came closer. "What do you mean? We can finish this when they go away. I can call you back."

"Listen, Marguerite," my father's voice cut through. "Albus Dumbledore. Trust him."

I scoffed. "Father, that man is manipulative, and he's—"

"The reason you're alive. He will keep you alive in the years to come. Ask him about my will."

The voices were near enough to probably see the specters of my parents if they came any closer.

"And Marguerite," my father said urgently. He looked as if there was so much more he wanted to say, but my hand was already on the stone. I would have to act soon or the stone's power would be exposed.

He looked desperate enough that I let him say one last thing.

"Remember that Pysche's box only causes a long sleep, not death."

I could now hear the voices well enough to recognize one of them as Fleur's. I was so nervous, I didn't even process how odd his last statement was.

"I love you, Papa. I love you, Maman."

"We love you."

They disappeared just moments before a laughing Fleur dragged a tall, handsome redhaired man into the clearing. They both froze when they saw me.

"Marguerite?" Fleur approached me in shock. "Que diable? Why are you 'ere?" She examined me closer. "What iz zat?"

"Just my ring," I said casually, but my voice cracked, still thick with all the emotion of the night.

"Lumos!" She moved closer to me with the glowing tip of her wand, inspecting me like a doctor. From her narrowed eyes, it was clear she did not like what she saw.

"Were you crying?"

The redhaired man behind her shifted awkwardly behind her.

"Of course not," I replied gruffly. Redhaired stranger be damned—Fleur was the last person I wanted to appear weak in front of.

She did not buy my act.

"Who did zis to you?" the blonde demanded with an anger that took me aback. I was well aware of her veela temper, responsible for instigating it on many occasions, but never would I have guessed that it would be wielded for me and not against me.

Yet in that moment, her silvery eyes glittered in a righteous rage that sliced through the dark as her delicate nostrils flared. Hers was the face of a woman ready to take on a dragon.

"Fleur—"

"No," she cut me off, moving closer. "Who did zis? Waz it one of zose stupid 'Ogwarts boys?"

"Hey," the redhaired man protested, stepping out of the shadows. I turned to him, examining him properly. He had long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Knowing Fleur's past flings, I doubt she would have been interested in him if it weren't for the fact that he was so tall, nearly a head taller than Fleur who was pretty tall herself, and had a chiseled, handsome face. He struck me as the edgy, well-traveled, cultured type—of course the fang earring tipped me off.

"You are from Hogwarts?" I asked.

"Yes."

I rose a brow at Fleur. Madame would not approve.

"Occupe toi de tes affaires."

I frowned and longed to reply in French so that her Hogwarts beau couldn't eavesdrop, but by the way the redhaired man's eyes followed us with complete understanding, I had a feeling he spoke the language.

Besides, I needed to get away as soon as possible so I could continue my conversation with my parents.

"Ne sois pas stupide," I whispered to Fleur, leaning in to give her a withering look. She opened her mouth to reply in doubtless indignation, but I walked behind the covering of a tree and transformed before she could.

"Fille arrogante! Fille têtue!" Fleur shouted into the night sky, knowing exactly what I had done. Mildly amused, I fluttered in place for just a moment longer to see the alarmed look her boyfriend gave her, doubtlessly questioning her sanity as she screamed out at me as if I was up above—I was, of course. But he didn't know that.

Heart a bit lighter knowing that I would soon speak to my parents again, I flew back to the castle, thinking all the while about why they acted as if that conversation would be our last. My parents were no fools—they must have had a reason for their fear. Perhaps Dumbledore had gotten to them somehow or they suspected I would forget about them once I heard about my 'real' parents. Whatever the reason, they were crazy to think I would ever willingly leave them.

Also, what did my father mean when he warned about the secrets I would soon discover? What could possibly be more painful than your lineage being a lie? More importantly, who would be keeping such a secret in my life? All of my bets were placed on the man who started all this intrigue and scandal in the first place: Albus Dumbledore.

I liked the man less and less each time I heard his name. Why would my father tell me to trust him, the person I trusted least right now?

According to my father, the headmaster once saved my life… but why? What was in it for him? Who was the other man who saved me?

Most importantly, who were my real birth parents?

These were all questions I needed to ask my parents when we spoke again.

However, by the time I flew through a window into the Durmstrang carriages and transformed back into my human self, the weight of the day began to crash down on me. My heart raced and my hands tremored; the pangs of my old illness returned to me as they so often did when my emotions spun out of control.

By the time I sat on my bed and reached for the stone, my hands shook so badly that I couldn't even hold it.

In a fit of frustration, I dropped the stone onto my nightstand and curled up into a ball under my covers, realizing that I had lost control: first of my emotions, now of my body, and if I wasn't careful, I'd lose control of my actions next. I thought back to what I had advised Harry just the other day; be active, not reactive.

As I lied there trembling, I decided that the only way to take back control would be to discover all these supposed secrets that my father referred to before they were dumped on me, much like my adoptive status was tonight. Not that I wanted to discover dark secrets about myself, but I knew I never wanted to feel this way again.

So, a new question arose: how to pry secrets out of the most intelligent minds of our age?

Before summoning my parents or confronting Dumbledore again, I would need to regroup, reassess, and think of a plan. I would need to think of the best approach that would convince them to tell me every last secret they've been keeping from me.

A violent jolt wracked my body at the thought of what those secrets could be, and I forced myself to quit thinking on it. Another day, I promised myself. I would plot and plan and act another day, but for now…

Just lightening my tremors enough to fall asleep would be victory enough.