"What did Azrail ask you, sir?"
"He wanted to know if I knew where they are, who has them and if they could be used to kill everyone regardless of their protection. But while his questions were disturbing, he did not ask me that question, and I did not like his motives or his eyes. A ghost can tell a lot about someone from their eyes, I am the dead one and his eyes were the vacant ones. He was in his first year and yet I warned the Headmistress about it."
"You warned Headmistress Adams about what?" Felix asked, feeling stunned. They sat opposite his desk.
"His eyes, it was the second time I have seen such vacant eyes, both times I was ignored and both times we had death and destruction."
"Who was the first time, sir?" Asked Socrates.
"His and Azrail's ancestor, Tom Marvolo Riddle, or…"
"Lord Voldemort", Felix completed grimly.
"Indeed, your line certainly has a knack for producing Dark Wizards, Mr. Burton."
"Tell me about it…"
Professor Binns chuckled making both boys' jaws to hang low in disbelief. Professor Binns did not laugh or smile or do anything other than talk in the same level droning voice, everyone knew that and here he was Professor Binns laughing.
"Sir…it's personal, I know. But, why did you stop your research into the Old Gods?" Felix asked with a honey-and-empathy voice.
"Two hundred and thirty-five years…I never thought…I kept giving hints and going against my nature of facts and coaxing people down the path that would lead at least one student to understand, to ask me that question….two hundred and thirty-five years…"
"Well you certainly intrigued Azrail's young mind…and in the end here I am asking you, your efforts have finally paid off, but that doesn't answer the question, sir."
"I was fourteen when I started researching some obscure, moldy old scroll from Alfred's court, written by one of his Wizard scribes, I had found in a Wizarding monastery. The manuscript described Merlin as "a man who loved to travel from body to body across the eons" to maintain his youth until Morgana tracked him down and killed him, it certainly wasn't part of the Arthurian legend we were taught in History of Magic, so it got my attention. I was almost fifteen when I found out about the Shadeglass and managed to convince the Headmaster to let me travel to Elysion and Acherontion as part of my research. The glee I felt when I held it, when I drunk from the Styx and Achronia gave me her warning…I was seventeen when ignoring Achronia's warning I decided to tell my father, show him my research. Why I stopped, Mr. Burton? Because I told my father despite celestial warning given and he took my research and threw it in the fire, right before giving me a scathing lecture on following non-factual, non-historically accurate legends instead of pursuing actual historical facts and how I was disgracing the family name. Why did I stop? I think I don't have to tell you what it means for a seventeen-year-old boy to have his father's approval with his endeavours and just how soul-crushing it is when those hopes are spat back at his face and he is told he is a disgrace."
"Yeah…at any age, sir. I'm sorry", student and Professor sighed in unison.
"Sir, would you like an opportunity to right the wrong two and a half centuries later? Help us, please?" Socrates pleaded looking straight into Professor Binns' sad, ghostly eyes.
"Anything I can do to aid two students' pursuit of knowledge."
"Do you know how they connect, sir?"
"My research did not reach that far, but I had found it had something to do with a long lost "garden", a river and how a war waged aeons ago before recorded history ever begun destroyed that river. And at that point my father…"Do not seek your father's recognition for deeds long since forgotten, grief awaits you if you do. Grief and pain", should have listened to her."
Socrates turned his head to Felix. "River? Garden? The Hesperides? Can it be?"
"I honestly do not know but…at this point we have reached…is it even impossible?" Socrates and Professor Binns shook their heads.
"Hesperides, Eden, Shangri-La, Avalon, we know names change with each culture. War? Achronia mentioned that the three of them warred with each other and that "the fertile lands to the south dried up as a result of our first war""
"The Sahara? I've read non-wizarding reasons for why and when it dried up", Even Socrates was reaching his point-of-disbelief.
"Yeah I know, but it was…around that time. And maybe one thing precipitated or aided the other. The wizarding wars between the three "Old Gods" and the non-wizarding environmental reasons. I don't know, who does after so many millennia?" Felix shrugged.
"I feel lost which is weird, since I have done quite a bit of research in this", Professor Binns cut in.
"Socrates, Professor, do you have a few hours empty, at least for today? To sit down and compare what we have so far found out, and what you did in your youth."
"I have no time constraints, Mr. Burton", It was weird for Professor Binns to not have the boring voice they were used to, but he seemed to have lost it temporarily, replaced by as much a happy tone as he could muster.
For the next five hours they compared notes, Socrates and Felix writing down what they didn't know already, what questions and answers Professor Binns had for them, and what few parts they had wrong so far. Whereas they had focused on the spells left behind by Lethargos, Achronia and Algeine, their uses and their chronological and cultural history, Professor Binns had focused more on the three individuals and what he had found out about their history, personalities and deeds.
Felix stretched, five and a half hours later, looking at his watch. "I have to go, Professor Jordan awaits, but I have an idea. Socrates can you finish taking notes with Professor Binns?"
"Sure, I am not to meet Claudia for a couple of hours more, if Professor Binns agrees?"
"I am a ghost, other than teaching History of Magic I've not much else to do."
"Just one more question sir, before I leave. Why have ghosts disappeared? Why do the other ghosts in the castle seem terrified of anyone living accessing the Crossroads? Uh…I mean Limbo."
"That is a very complicated question, Mr. Burton, with an even more complicated answer. But let me ask you this; what do you think is that which ghosts fear the most?"
"Easy answer, sir. Death, passing beyond the veil", Socrates jumped in happy to answer an easy intellectual question.
"Indeed, so my simplified answer to your complicated question is this. If Azrail succeeds with his plan he will not only end all life, but all death as well and without life and death all paths that lie in the twilight in between, like non-existence, will simply cease to exist as well. The ghosts may have vanished from the realm of the living, but hiding they are not. They are trying with everything they have to find alternative paths to maintain their current…existential status…to no avail. If the cycle of life and death stops, everything stops."
"They are not hiding, they are running scared, they think they are about to die, and they are as afraid of it as when they were still alive…Peeves?"
"Peeves?" Professor Binns laughed a loud cackle that made their spines shiver. "He's leading the charge, but he also can't pass up the occasional opportunity for a good prank here…incorrigible he is of pranks and chaos."
"Thank you, sir", Felix left for the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and his tutoring lesson with Professor Jordan.
Entering the classroom Felix knew something was different, as Professor Jordan had stacked the desks and chairs in columns behind the stairs leading to his office, behind his desk at the far end of the classroom leaving thus a large portion of the classroom empty at the center, away from the sarcophagus, and other stationary lesson aids and decorations. Professor Jordan stood at the center of the room with his wand in hand and his strength back.
Felix said nothing. "Sir."
"Felix, good you have come."
"Uhm, sir? What are we…"
"I am getting you off your training wheels. I'm training you to be a damn good dueler, and I can teach you all the spells I know, and I will, but it'll all be for naught if I don't teach you the brutal art of dueling. So, get your wand out so I can wipe the floor with your face", Professor Jordan had a very wicked, very unsettling grin about him.
"And if I win instead?"
"You will, every teacher's dream is for their pupil to surpass them, you will but not today. Today I'll wipe the floor with your prideful self-esteem, because I am Curseweaver and it's time for you to understand why I was who I was and for me to break you in. Training wheels are off."
"Are you going to bore me to death, sir? Or are we going to fight?" Felix taunted his Professor, wand in hand.
"Fight? Oh, no you wouldn't survive it", Professor Jordan faced Felix and bowed with his wand in pressed against his chest, and a solemn, emotionless face.
Felix faced him and bowed, wand by his side.
They straightened up with Felix trying to pull off a spell but in an instant he was savagely pushed back against the floor with a steady pressure. He tried to cast a curse at Professor Jordan who deflected it with ease then flipped Felix on his stomach dragging him up against the floor before throwing him up against the far wall.
"Again", Professor Jordan demanded, pressing his wand against his chest.
Felix stood up and attacked. Two spells down the road he was facing the floor again and three times later he groaned with increasing frustration as it begun to dawn to him, he was no match for Professor Jordan.
"You defeated Azrail in year four because you had passion, rage, mourning, because he wasn't expecting you to be able to animagus to not one but two different animals and because you had lots of help, and because at the end of the day Azrail and his lieutenants are predictable at their favourite choice of curse-usage. So far you have come out of it victorious because of one or more of those factors. Azrail defeated me solely because twice I underestimated him and he had the element of surprise on his side, and so did Marigold last year. Not a mistake I intent to commit a fourth time. But at some point your luck is going to run out, your passion is not going to be enough and you may stand alone against Azrail or any other foe and on that moment you will forfeit your life. Without strategy in your dueling, if you don't think of it as a chess game where you enter a fight with a twenty or more moves aggregate and another twenty for every possibility of everything your opponent may or may not do, if you don't do that you will sooner or later die. Now, do you know why I've been so easily wiping your face all over my classroom's floor, even though your raw talent far exceeds what I've ever had even in my prime years?"
"Because I keep trying to brute force you without having a strategy?" Felix replied, trying to calm down the anger bubbling within at his own failure to defeat his Professor and tutor, his heart pacing fast and his chest heaving for oxygen.
"That as well, but mostly you keep trying to impress me, which you have already accomplished on your first, second, third, fourth and fifth years. You are trying to prove to yourself and I that you are better than me by brute forcing your way into defeating me and you're not, not yet. And you're doing all of it without a strategy in mind. Want to get serious already? Because I hate wasting my time and yours with beating the crap out of a child", Professor Jordan told him with a serious, almost angry face.
Felix nodded. "I know Quidditch strategy I've read up on it. I know chess strategy I've read up on it…" Professor Jordan interrupted him.
"You also go and watch the other teams play be it in Quidditch or Hogwarts' dueling tournaments from year one, I've seen you watch dueling games during Hogwarts' tournaments, the others may not notice you, but I see past your disguises, deny it not I wasn't born yesterday, and I can tell a felifors cat from a real one with my eyes shut. Reading is important, but it's not everything. Dueling's a lot like chess, know your opponent, if they are likely to offence, defend, which protective and offensive spells they may know, how to breach them while protecting yourself from them, your move, their move, your reaction to their move, their move to yours and how many moves you think the match is likely to go on for versus how many moves you would like the match to go on for and so on until either you or your opponent lose consciousness or is pushed out of the dueling ring…or both. It's chess, and your mind should have no problem formulating strategies for it."
"Yes, sir", Felix pressed his wand up against his chest and bowed.
For four hours they dueled until neither one of them could see clearly from the tiredness, and while Felix did not defeat his tutor once, he did provide more of a resistance.
"Yes, I will render you unto this generation's greatest dueler yet. Goodnight, Felix and sleep well you will need it", Professor Jordan told him leaving the classroom for the staff bedrooms in the north of the castle.
Felix thanked the universe he was a prefect and was able and allowed to move out of bed and common room after curfew as he made his way to Professor Binns' office.
Once there he entered without knocking thinking he'd find Professor Binns alone, Socrates having left for his date with Claudia, but instead under four different torches he found Socrates and everyone else, Claudia, Ethel, Uriel and Emerick taking down notes and participating in an avid discussion with questions and answers with Professor Binns in a way that had not happened in Binns' professional career. Ever.
"Hey, what time is it?" Uriel asked him, raising his head from his notes.
"Way past midnight. Mr. Binns, would you mind us we continue this the day after tomorrow?" Felix replied rubbing his eyes.
"Of course, Mr. Burton. What was your idea earlier?" Even Professor Binns appeared to be tired.
"That we combine yours and our research and when we discover what links everything together I write an essay and submit it to the Wizarding History Review with all of our names and yours, so that finally this bit of Wizarding History can come out of obscurity and legend and you can gain the recognition you deserve from this that your father denied you. What do you think, sir?"
"Yes", Professor Binns replied instantly and with no need for thought.
Felix nodded, addressing his friends. "Any of you eaten for dinner? I am famished…"
"Food! Oh my god how can we have forgotten to eat!" Emerick exclaimed slapping his forehead.
"Because we have been enthralled by what we're doing and keeping so many notes I can barely feel my fingers?" Uriel replied stuffing his quill, ink and notes back in his backpack.
"So, I take it we're all famished?" Felix chuckled.
"I'm not, ghosts do not need to eat", Professor Binns announced shocking everyone at his ability for dry humour.
"Everyone alive then, yes please let us eat", Socrates made quick work of stuffing his stationary objects in his backpack as did the others, stomachs growling for food.
They left in a hungry hurry and lost no time finding their way to the kitchens in the dungeons.
"I don't think I've ever been in the kitchens", Emerick stated scratching his stomach. "How can we even access it without being in detention?"
"Angel left me his kitchen contact you know the one that helped us feed our Auror guests in our third year. Mort!" Felix yelled banging on the kitchen's door.
"Wait, that was actually real? You had Aurors in the castle?" Uriel exclaimed.
"Oh, yeah, in the Room of requirement", Claudia beamed.
"Wicked, and how on Earth did you even prevent Joymother from finding them out?"
"Oh, simple. We used a ton of Polyjuice potion to masquerade them as Hogwarts students, they passed right in front of Joymother and he didn't even realise, then Professor Horsewood used the fireplace in the Headmistress office to floo-network them out and into my Manor where they could use apparition to go to new safehouses", Felix was grinning wide.
"Wicked!" Uriel laughed picturing Joymother's face of disappointment.
A hunchbacked House-Elf with a scar across his face and looking very sour opened the door. "I have food for you…all…" he said dryly.
"Thank you, Mort", Felix threw him a few gold galleons who let them in pointing them at one of the four tables with plates on them. The rest of the kitchen was dark with House-Elves sleeping on mats on the floor. "I put sleeping drought on their food, not to worry" he told them when they looked at him scared of being caught. "eat and leave."
"Ray of sunshine", Uriel whispered as he dug in and started wolfing down food.