Felix stood in the middle of the Potions classroom, it was midnight with a moonless night and only one torch burned near him, plunging the rest of the classroom in darkness.
Ethel had come with him from the Hufflepuff common room nearby in the dungeons. Uriel arrived first, as the Slytherin common room was also in the dungeons. Claudia arrived after with Emerick and Socrates.
After the handshakes they gathered around Felix in a semi-circle.
"Socrates and Emerick, you two need to catch up fast, because we have work to do", Felix started telling them in a hushed whisper. "We have to find what connects the Old Gods items. It'll be what Azrail has been after all along."
"Has he found the Shadeglass?" Socrates inquired, worried.
"I couldn't tell you before or in Atali, as none of you were bound by the unbreakable vow, but now you are. So, no and he won't as I have it, have had it ever since father had me drink a leaf of the Book of Leaves when I was seven to forfeit who I was and undo the insanity I had come to be after seven years of torment from Azrail. I've had it all along right under his nose!" Felix proceeded to tell Emerick and Socrates what they had learned at the end of the previous school year.
"Πέραν πάσης πραγματικότητας!» Unbelievable, my friend. Amazing, truly. May I…" Socrates exclaimed in an animated whisper.
"His brain's exploding, I'm sure of it", Felix teased him retrieving his wooden cup and offered it to him.
"Looks like a common cup made of wood?" Socrates said, taking it in his hands and examining it closely.
"Focus on how you believe the Shadeglass looks like", Uriel told him with a faint knowing smirk.
Socrates turned his gaze to the wooden goblet concentrating on it. A second later the goblet transmorphed to a tall glass made from iron scales of blue teal colour and a clear crystal receptacle inside them. "You can get the boy out Atali, but not Atali out of the boy Amazing, truly. Does it function the same as before?"
"That never gets old, my version is a lot glittier, but I'm fabulous like that!" Ethel laughed.
"Indeed, as it has for thousands of years and all past owners of it. Pour some water into it and drink it, you won't have tasted water like that before, ever. Or so Charles once said and we ignored it at the time", Felix nodded.
Socrates searched around until he found one of the faucets meant to clean tools and cauldrons and poured some water into the scaly goblet. Drinking it he moaned from a feeling of profound bliss. "I am lost for words. I need to read your notes on this, do you have any? What am I saying, it's you!" Socrates asked, in awe.
"All the notes your mind could possibly handle", Felix chuckled at his friend's pleased smile. "But we need to find a new room to gather for our research into it, last year's was…compromised."
"No empty classrooms?" Socrates voiced.
"There is one I can think of…I'll set it up and I'm sure the powers-that-be will prefer us not leaving Hogwarts even for Hogsmeade", Felix replied taking back the Shadeglass.
"What are we going to do about Professor Jordan? Azrail has had him for far too long…" Claudia interjected changing the subject.
"On that note…Professor?" Felix looked over to what seemed like an empty corner in the classroom, shrouded in darkness. A second later a toad croaked before jumping out of the shadows.
A blink and the toad transformed into Professor Horsewood startling Emerick and Ethel.
"What an uncomfortable animal…now, officially you lot cannot join us in Professor Jordan's rescue effort", Professor Horsewood paused for a second.
"And unofficially, ma'am?" Socrates wondered aloud incapable of not doing so.
"Unofficially, if we go about it with the Ministry's plan it is most certainly likely we will have a lot of casualties without much to show for it. So, I am going to burn one of my final…favours with the Minister and send them in a wild goose chase while you lot go and rescue our dear Professor."
"Do we even know where he is held at?" Claudia furrowed her eyebrows, stuffing her hands in her pockets.
"Not yet, Felix?" Professor Horsewood placed her hands in front of her lap turning her head at Felix.
"Well, they are in England….I've been having issues with my preferred method of information procurement of late", Felix replied taking a seat in one of the work benches nearest.
"You haven't looked good for a while now, paler than usual…" Claudia expressed looking worried.
"Is that so, Felix? There are other ways we can find out where your brother's hiding", Professor Horsewood asked, in doubt over what Felix had planned.
Felix brushed them off, retrieving a vial from his backpack, the dueling Xiphos gleaming momentarily in the torch light.
"Are you sure, Felix? I can find other ways to find where your brother's at, ways which will not endanger your health."
"Yeah, I'm sure. Bottoms up!" Felix popped open the vial cap and swallowed the seer potion in one gulp. In an instant the classroom blurred out faster than usual, the Headmistress and the others vanishing in columns of wisp dust, their voices lost in the void. A feeling of imminent dread overcame him, in greater intensity than his previous experiences, a feeling of being drowned in a waterless existence, unable to scream even if the effort was made as he plunged into the depths of a bottomless abyss. The despair overpowered his senses and sense of self.
When he woke up in his dorm he was alone and that sense of unspeakable despair was gone, his body and mind feeling exceptionally light.
"Where is everyone?" He wondered aloud descending the stairs to the Hufflepuff common room to find it empty of any students or pets, even the plants growing around the ceiling had a lethargic, slumbery look about them.
The more he walked the more everything in his body begun to hurt and ache, his vision blurry and his hearing impaired by a constant ringing.
He exited the common room to an equally empty corridor, it was a weekday, there were supposed to be students going to their classes.
He walked faster and faster to the Great Hall to find it as empty as the rest of the castle, void of any living being.
He searched in every classroom, every nook and cranny and he found not a single soul, yet the more he walked along with the aching body whispers arose, faint and non-coherent.
The Headmistress' office was as empty as the Professors' lounge and the Hospital Wing. "Why is it foggy in the castle? Where is everyone!" He run to the top of the Astronomy tower; Hogwarts' tallest of towers. Standing behind the parapets he saw the castle and grounds shrouded in mist, so restricted was his vision he could not see the black lake or even the forbidden forest's treetops.
"This is…eerily familiar…am I dead? Have I stuck in the crossroads unable to accept my own death, like Charles?" He mumbled to himself, that same existential sense of despair returning with a vengeance.
Out of the mist the whispers begun to take sound louder. "He knows of the Shadeglass, Master!" Bloodfang's voice filled the vacuum.
"Azy! No! STOP!" A boy's voice no older than five years' old vocalized next, filling his ear drums.
"Brother why!" "Why not?" "Whyyyy! Stop, please…four or three and one, one is irrelevant, and a human being s required! PLEASE STOP, AZRAIL! They were wrong the wizards of old, humanity is not separate from the whole!"
"Is this my voice? Five years' old, what am I saying? Wizards of old? How insane had he driven me I don't even make coherent sense?" Tears streaked down his cheeks and chin, his senses and emotions heightened in extremity.
"They know? Tell our esteemed Legilimency guest that if he does not find me the Shadeglass his continued existence or that of Lethargos' is not going to be extended for much longer…" Azrail's voice took shape arising from the misty grounds.
"Kill the spare!" An unknown yet hollow voice spoke from the past.
"Avada Kedavra!" "Expeliarmus!" A man and a boy he did not recognize yelled at the same time.
"What is going on? Where are the souls of the lost if I am in limbo? Or if I am one of them I can't see the others?" Felix thought, his hands quivering on the cold, granite slabs of the parapets.
A black orb appeared outside the school's main entrance, as the whispering voices subsided, and the mist cleared around it.
Felix lost no time running down the tower's winding stairs and the castle's many corridors, choosing instead to fly down.
He landed near the pulsating orb of black light and approached it with caution. "That's new…"he extended his arm towards it.
Before he could touch it the orb burst open to reveal a figure black as a moonless, starless night.
Felix stood there staring at it ambivalent if the black-light figure meant him ill or not.
"My first instinct is to fear you, but…you are me, aren't you? Or whoever I was before dad had me…us drink…I don't want to fear you or you me…" Felix told the young-looking figure.
The boy-figure raised his left hand casting a spell at him. An instant later Felix was convulsing uncontrollably. A thunder hit him, then a second one and a third one. He could feel his heart skip a beat. The black figure vanished in the mist.
"What the…that hurt", he staggered back clutching his chest.
A new orb appeared near the Whomping Willow, this one made of bright orange-red fire.
Reluctantly Felix walked over to it stretching his hand to touch it, yet the orb unfolded again on its own to form his seven-year old self engulfed in flames.
"I am scared of you, you are terrified of what happened to you and if I'm angry at Azrail and father about it, I can't imagine what you must be feeling like. I don't want to have to fight a part of me", he told his enflamed younger version, taking a step forward and extending his hand at it. "I want to embrace all of me, even the tormented, dark-arts-demented part of me."
The orb-child just stood there doing nothing, either to hurt or to embrace him. A moment later it gave him a wicked smile and re-took its orb shape as it dashed for the Forbidden Forest's edge.
Felix walked fast after it.
At the border created by the tree trunks the orb halted, changing from fire to a silvery liquid form. Then expanded to form three figures, the black and fire ones along with a new silver one.
"Manipulated, betrayed, taught and lost…she should have added tortured and tormented to the list", Felix muttered bitterly.
The black and fiery figures approached him glowing in the foggy darkness extending their right hands. Felix reciprocated hesitantly, yet what else was there to do? The more time passed the more he was convinced he was in what humanity called Limbo and what he had come to know as "The Crossroads". If he was indeed dead, which he didn't want to be, he was ready to embrace his past self and move on than to stay in Limbo forever or become a ghost, if this was what was keeping him behind.
He extended his hand, the fire child took hold of his wrist while he took hold of the black figure's wrist and it took hold of the fire child's one forming a trigon between them and the silver child stood behind gazing at them, hands by its side.
Fire and black merged eradiating a very bright black-red flame and with a gentle smile embraced him merging with him.
"I'll take this as a positive development", Felix told nobody in particular when the intense warmth subsided. "Who…or what might you be?" He told the silver child standing there in front of him. "You are no part of me, past present or future."
"I am part of everything, come", the silver child-entity raised its hand as if to handshake, in a voice that could not be characterized as boyish or even human.
Felix made to shake its hand, but instead he was transported to a lake shore, it reminded him of the black lake, yet it also did not. The river sand on it was a dark gray-silver colour and grittier and the tall, conical tree trunks had no brunches or leaves on them, they also appeared to fray around the edges.
How there could be light without the sun was something Felix failed to comprehend, and a queer light it was dim yet bright and not as white as he was used to in the living world.
The water looked just as black as could be imagined, as if light itself could not avoid it.
"What is this place?" Felix whispered as if afraid of what might jump out of the black water.
"The source, this is me in a way your mind can comprehend", the silver child replied in the same inhuman voice.
"And what are you?" Felix asked, turning his head and body to view the silver child.
"Everything", it replied, a simple answer yet so complicated.
"Everything? I don't understand."
"I am in everything around you, in every molecule, every being, every plant small or large, in the air you breathe and the water you drink and the food you consume. In the very thoughts that go through your minds and cells in your bodies, in the energy released by your evocations with your wands or hands", the silver entity tried to explain.
"A-are you god?" Felix asked, incredulously.
"That, I am afraid is a concept entirely made by your species. I am in everything, small or large, self-conscious or not."
"In everything? You are Magic? The Universe?" Felix asked, feeling increasingly lost and confused.
"Close enough"
"Where are we? This does not remind me of the Limbo I've experienced so far. Is…is it heaven? Hell? Am I dead? Is this beyond the Veil?" Felix asked, wanting and not wanting to know the answer.
"Neither. You are not in the crossroads anymore, those exist not, and you are quite alive."
"If I'm not dead, and I'm in neither Heaven, Hell nor Limbo…where or what is this place?"
"This is everywhere and nowhere", replied the silver child, making less and less sense. "We were in the crossroads, death and non-existence are only but two of the possible paths one can take. This is everywhen and nowhen. Everything that has ever been, is and will ever be, they are all simultaneously present."
"Lethargos and Achronia, even Algeine…they weren't interested in the dead or their soul orbs, were they? They were searching for this place, weren't they? And they created items to aid them in their search and interact with…whatever this is?" Felix asked, understanding dawning upon him.
"After they destroyed the Tree and the River's water run dry and stagnant, this is what they searched for. Only then they understood its value, ever since then they have used their inventions to try and communicate with me for their own selfish reasons. And only one of them understood enough to attempt and recreate what they had destroyed. But their inventions items they were not."
"You are the second or third person to tell me that…did they ever manage to drink from the water here?" Felix asked pointing at the lake.
"No, not directly, this is not for any one of you", the silver child shook its head gently.
"But if someone did manage to drink from here? With the Shadeglass?"
"In an instant one would know everything that has ever been, is and will be. Every atom, every molecule, every being alive or dead, every celestial body, everything of every second of everywhen that has ever existed or not as well as every thought ever made by any living being and every decision taken or avoided."
"That…would drive anyone insane. And what of the Book of Leaves?"
"Although man-made, and with a different purpose in mind, it too would cause the same effect on anyone who drink it whole."
"I have so many questions for you…" Felix sighed, thoughts racing in his mind faster than he could ever hope to form them into structured sentences.
"But not the time for them, not yet", the silver child gave him a pleasant smile and snapped its fingers.
Felix found himself back in Limbo, at the Forbidden Forest's edge. The merged black and fiery child was there looking at him, then the fire was gone leaving behind his seven-year-old self, smiling. "Two things before you return where you belong, you will drink it another time more and who you seek are at Little Hangleton, home of your Dark Past, and his", it said before vanishing as the environment around them begun to dissolve and blur.