A month past and spring's warm breeze was removing the last of winter's vestiges from the landscape around Hogwarts, long gone was the snow and bone-chilling cold.
It had been a month of routine for Felix and his friends and he was most grateful for it, between classes, Students of Hogwarts and Quidditch training sessions and his private tutoring with Professor Jordan and studying in the library he had no time to think on the ensuing attacks outside Hogwarts' walls.
Emerick's parents had been attacked, thankfully without serious injuries, Claudia's parents had left the country and were hiding somewhere in Italy until the summer when they'd have to go and pick her up from King's cross station and there was an attack almost every day.
It was almost nine in the evening and Felix and Professor Jordan had been dueling relentlessly for more than two hours straight without a break, panting and sweating. Groups of students watched them from a safe distance.
Professor Jordan threw a fireball at him. Felix made a trigonal shape with his wand before touching the incoming fireball with his wand's tip. "Lumos illumiia!" The fireball exploded in a plentiful of ultra-bright flashes temporarily blinding his adversary and Professor.
Professor Jordan cast Nox Ultima to see the snow leopard charging at him, fangs and claws bared. "DEPULSO!" He threw it back before casting Diffindo at its forelegs only to see it vanish in ash and smoke.
He felt the touch of a wand behind him on the nape of his neck. "Incarserus maxima! Expulso!" Professor Jordan found himself bound to the ground and as he tried to escape he felt his will to fight draining rapidly. He wanted to sleep, feeling as tired as he never had before.
"Legilimensed without even understanding I've been invaded? My defenses broken without my knowledge?" He dropped his wand kneeling before Felix hair sticking to his sweaty forehead.
"You could have defeated me weeks ago, you let me believe otherwise, drew me in, in a self-assumed feeling of superiority….I stand defeated", Professor Jordan bowed his head, emotionally charged.
"I feared if I did defeat you you'd stop tutoring me, sir…" Felix replied panting and sweating.
"I am rendered undone and void of knowledge to give. You are ready if you but believe it. Our tutoring has come to its inevitable end. You have surpassed me", Professor said in a bittersweet tone standing up.
"How can I be ready, feel ready, know I am ready and yet have this internal voice at the back of my mind yelling at me not to take that step? To want this time of my life of being in Hogwarts having friends and despite Anneke, the Governors and Azrail feeling and being safe in here. I don't want this to end, am I a bad person for not wanting it to? Not wanting to die?"
"No, only another teenager at the cusp of adulthood. But there comes a time where move on you must. As sweet as childhood is, its end is inevitable. Where one thing ends another begins."
"Cute pep talk, but you know of what I speak of. What awaits after if I do kill Azrail."
"Cryptic-find-the-solution-on-your-own seems to not be working. So, what was it Achronia told you? "Prophesies are a prism of Perception." All Human perception is flawed", how can you with all your enhanced understanding and amazing brilliance not realise how her Prophesy is a two in one?" Professor Jordan started limping away.
"Two in one? Useful as always…not", Felix mumbled under his breath walking slowly back to the castle. "Perhaps giving battle to -my- evil is not a bad idea if I am to die afterwards. I don't want to use Avada, the cost is too high…but what choice is there? Azrail in prison will keep coming for us, there is no prison that can hold him for long. I just don't know what to do…"
He found Claudia walking with Socrates and Ethel near the drawbridge.
"…they still don't know what caused that massive explosion in the south of Switzerland", Claudia was saying.
"Yeah, but we do, that Orb in the Vault", Ethel said in a low voice.
"Fires that burned hot enough they melted metal and marble alike", Socrates replied in awe.
"Hey guys, Whatcha doing?" Felix asked them coming up to Claudia's left between her and Socrates.
"OH, h-hey, going to eat, wanna go down with us?" Claudia replied and ignored Ethel chocking on her own saliva.
"Yeah, sure. Dueling Professor Jordan for two hours has me ravished."
"Still losing on purpose?" Socrates asked him.
"I defeated him, our private tutoring is at an end and he thinks I'm ready", Felix replied hunching his shoulders.
"He does? You did? Now, what?" Ethel barraged him with questions but all three of them looked astounded.
"Now we enjoy the rest of the year in Hogwarts and some point after I graduate next year I'll have to fight and kill Azrail, simple", Felix sighed.
"I wonder…."
"Just once, please, let it be. Let me have this one year. I will face Azrail, but I need a year, just one."
"One? Why not many?" Socrates insisted.
"I must be off, Quidditch practice", Felix said but headed away towards the Grand Staircase instead of back outside to the Quidditch Pitch.
"He's…more cryptic than usual", Ethel noted.
"He suffers under the burden of self-appointed duty so much he fails to see the truth staring him in the face", Socrates stuffed his hands in his pockets looking at his departing friend's figure.
"Why not tell him, then?"
"Some truths must be discovered, not shared."
"And you find this vagueness appealing?" Ethel teased Claudia.
"I…I find his mind enthralling, his…gifts enticing, enraging, fun and sexy…" Claudia shrugged lacking passion in her voice.
"Oh, you fa…" Socrates did not allow Ethel to finish her sentence.
"To be talked to in the third person's always fun, a ghost in my own dialogue", Socrates seemed sad if not annoyed.
"Oh, shush. You love the attention", Claudia tried to sound teasing, yet she too was irked.
Socrates leaned in. "I love you, your attention, not "the" attention. But reciprocated it is not entirely, is it?" he whispered in her ear catching her off guard.
"I…what? Yes, no…I.." Socrates was already walking away, hands in his pockets. "Yeah, I thought so. It's okay."
"What just happened?" Ethel was snapping her head back and forth between them.
"What was inevitable", Claudia sighed leaving as well at the opposite direction with teary eyes.
"Oh grand, just grand. Now Claudia's as cryptic as Socrates and Felix!" Ethel went into the Great Hall for lunch.
The morning after Felix entered the Divination and Astronomy classroom early. Outside the spring sun was still having a bout with winter's clouds.
He found Professor Ixion gazing intensely at the half moon high atop the morning sky. Her tail flicking nonchalantly.
"Years of nothingness, unnatural for the bodies celestial to remain quiet for so long. She is correct, salvation or doom", she gazed into his eyes. "Yes, Mr. Burton?"
"She?"
"Not the question you had in mind. Ask that one, time's not your ally."
"Time's not been my life-long ally."
She turned to face him. "Be thankful she's not your enemy. Your question?"
"Do centaurs gleam the everywhen through the celestial bodies?"
"That isn't your question, ask it. Lesson is about to start."
"When you are ready to meet as equals and lay down your burden will the seed find soil and water and take root", he paused for a moment concentrating his thoughts. "To the Old Gods eternity meant not everlasting life, did it? The only thing eternal is Death. I have known for a while now, what my brother's deepest desire is, why he can't seem to find it in himself to kill me and keeps taunting me, going after my family and friends…what I don't understand is how this changes anything, what choice is there from him when I possess both the knowledge and the power to kill him? And yet the Prophesy of mine doesn't end there, does it? Lay down my burden…I must die for this Prophesy to be fulfilled, mustn't I?"
"Yes, but you fail one word in your Prophesy. When."
"What choice is there?"
"As much as you allow for", Professor Ixion turned again her eyes and attention to the morning sky and half-moon at the top next to the sun.
Felix took his seat and waited silently until class started. And he remained largely silent during that day's classes.
When the classes for the day had finished the school proceeded to the Quidditch Pitch and the game between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.
Felix looked at his teammates' eyes, just before they lift-off in the pitch's center. "Boys and girls. Ladies and Gentlemen", he started his pre-game speech explaining the team the strategy they'd follow. If the team had been loyal and cohesive before Azrail had begun his attacks in earnest, now they had come together in one fist, one thought and as determined as no team had ever been before to win the Quidditch Cup. They'd prove to the world and to Azrail that no matter the attacks, the threats, pain and death, they would stand with their Captain, they would play for him and win for him.
The game started and Ravenclaw were caught off guard at just how brutally efficient the Hufflepuff chasers had become at passing and reclaiming the ball and scoring. How ruthlessly efficient the Beaters removed any bludger threats to their team while creating problems for the Ravenclaw team.
For every goal the Ravenclaw team managed to score, the Hufflepuff team would score three and for every inch of pitch they'd claim they'd lose ten. The Hufflepuff students in the stands created a feverish atmosphere letting nothing drop, they'd boo the Ravenclaws every time they'd come in possession of the Quaffle and cheer their team for reclaiming it or score in such intensity Claudia had to place a silencing charm around her ears, as did others including some Professors.
Just when the Ravenclaw captain thought he had decrypted Felix's strategy, Felix would turn everything on their head and leave him guessing as to what would come next and how he should react.
Two hours later Katya put the Ravenclaws out of their misery catching the Gold Snitch and the stands erupted in cheers of such fierceness that Uriel could feel the bass against his chest.
Every game the team won was celebrated vividly after during dinner and in the Hufflepuff common room.
The Hufflepuff table was therefore in full celebratory raucous during dinner but the festive mood was extinguished when two Black Ravens brought two students each a Howler, a Ravenclaw fifth year girl and a Slytherin sixth year boy.
With a booming sound the howlers tore themselves open,
A parent a day until Felix is surrendered unto me. A parent a day until either every child in Hogwarts is an orphan or I have Felix.
Everyone in the Great Hall heard Azrail's voice making Felix's heart sink and all thoughts of the victory against Ravenclaw vanish as if the game had never happened as the two howlers delivered their message in stereo and then shredded into tiny pieces.
Timidly some few students from the other three tables made to stand but were faced by everyone in the Hufflepuff table not only standing as one but placing themselves around Felix with their wands drawn at the ready.
Felix was standing up to tell his fellow Hufflepuffs to stand down, that he preferred to surrender himself to Azrail rather than see students exchange blows for him when they heard the Headmistress' voice magically enhanced a hundred times louder than the howlers' echo across the Great Hall and much of the corridor outside.
"ORDER! Anyone who takes it upon themselves to carry out Azrail's wish will find themselves expelled so fast their great grandkids will be born with whiplash and I don't begin to care who your parents are or if I will be fired thereafter. Return to your dinner and then return to your common rooms as befitting students of this school of witchcraft and wizardry. Or face my swift wrath."
"Grand….just fucking grand…" Felix sat back down with no appetite for food anymore.
"Things are about to become even more interesting for you if that owl is from the witch I think it is", Ethel told him sitting next to him as Irina's owl landed on the table in front of him.
Felix retrieved the folded parchment from the owl's talon and opened it reading it silently. "No, not interesting. I'm in deep, deep trouble…" He said aloud and standing up he rushed to the Professors' table. Ethel who had read the letter over his shoulder run after him, while trying to grab the others' attention with her hands.
Professor Horsewood saw him and standing up she came to the front of the Professors' table along with Professor Jordan and his friends.
Felix showed them Irina's letter. He had this feeling of increasing intensity that a heavy boulder was dragging him to the bottom of a bottomless abyss, and he could not escape no matter how much he tried.
Professor Horsewood read the letter giving it to Professor Jordan and leaving instantly for her office.
"What's it say?" Claudia asked worried.
"That I am f…udged beyond all measure…" Felix whispered.
Mr. Burton,
The article is coming out tomorrow morning, and the Ministry will start their investigation and arrests by noon the day after. Despite all of my refusal, wishes and threats and for reasons I cannot understand and am guessing have to do with who is owning and pulling the strings of the Daily Prophet, my editor is going to publish your name as my source and not keep it a secret and safe. As I consider it a gross breach of journalistic ethos I have resigned my post in the newspaper. You may want to avail yourself of some protection and tell your Headmistress.
I am truly sorry.
Irina