As foretold by Claudia Felix aced their NEWTs tests, being the first one to finish each one and knowing, just knowing he had done well even before the Ministry-appointed examiner would announce them.
On the day of their final departure from Hogwarts as students, two hours before the end-of-the-year feast the Seventh years gathered in the Great Hall for the Graduation ceremony, along with their parents, friends, and family. The ceiling glowed with the sun's rays, enchanted as it was to display the sky outside.
Professor Horsewood stood in front of the owl lectern with the Professors standing behind her in a row.
Professor Hudson gave her a scroll with the names of those Seventh years graduating and their NEWTs overall scores.
One by one she called out those names, eliciting cheers and clasps from students, Professors, and audience alike, but none was cheered as loud and as intensely as when Felix's name was pronounced.
When the cheering quieted down and Professor Horsewood finished the rest of the names she looked at all of them one last time in a moment of silence, the last time she'd see them as students of her school.
"What can one say when so many young, bright minds Graduate from one's school of Witchcraft and Wizardry? I find myself lost for words so I will only take this moment to thank each and every one of you for having learned, having excelled, and having made this school proud, having made me proud. You all deserve this moment, this celebration of the conclusion of these seven years.
"It is a custom in this ceremony that I ask the brightest student of each year to give a small talk but alas I am afraid this custom will have to be broken this year as he wants no attention or limelight on him. Instead I will say a word or two about him, as I came to perceive him.
"I am ashamed to say that at first I was as narrow-minded as most, blaming him for his family's actions, but through his kindness, selflessness and care for others, in all his endeavors to be the exact opposite of his family, to help people even when he was doubted and smeared, even when he was, wrongly, accused. Even when he had lost almost everyone he cared about he would never stop trying to help, trying to stop his own brother from hurting more people, Muggles and Wizarding folk alike. I have come to not only be proud of him, but to respect him deeply, to admire his tenacity, courage, and honourable existence. Felix Burton, you embody and practice not just the best House Hufflepuff stands for, but what we should all aspire to stand for, to be. Thank you for being a student at this school", Professor Horsewood said impassionately before standing down from the owl lectern amidst a chorus of cheers.
Felix hugged his mother, uncle, and aunt before shaking hands with the others graduating and hugging his friends, and Claudia.
They mingled, talked, and drunk their first sip of adulthood in the form of champaign.
"Do you still think being a Head Boy was a leash?" Claudia asked him at some point later on. Felix had told her a few months back how he thought Professor Horsewood had made him a Head Boy to make sure he'd be too busy proving her choice right to go looking for the Spring of Eternity.
"More or less", Felix said giving her a nod.
"Then maybe it's for the best, now you can't complete your Prophesy, without knowing where the Spring is", she told him, relieved.
"The Spring? Oh, I've known where that is located for a while now, I figured it out", Felix replied demolishing her good mood. "Come", he took her by the hand taking them in front of the large fireplace in the Great Hall where he cast Revelio and then two more advanced charms, revealing the Old Gods' items hovering there inside the fireplace.
"In here! They've been here all year!" Claudia gasped.
"Hidden in plain sight, who would have thought to look inside a fireplace in the Great Hall for four spells?" Felix said smiling very smugly.
Felix placed the four 'items' inside his backpack and sneaked them out of the Great Hall, walking them to the Forbidden Forest in silence.
"The spring is in here?"
'Yes, Azrail figured out the riddle of the scroll he had found in the Americas and had his goons attack Hogwarts while he went searching for it", Felix nodded pausing just outside the forest's rim. Claudia was trying to pull him away from it.
"It's not fair! Why must you do this now? You are too young…to…to…" Her voice broke down trailing.
"Die?" It was not until then that he noticed Professor Ixion standing there, under the trees' shade looking at them, hands crossed in front of her torso, bow behind her back, blocking their way.
"Ma'am", Felix tried to bypass her, but she'd not let him.
"You are not welcome yet, nor are you ready", she said in a stern voice.
"You know of my task", Felix said as if that were evidence enough of why he should be allowed entrance into the forest.
"For one as intelligent as clairvoyant as you, you are being very…obtuse, Mr. Burton. Your Prophesy gives you a task, yes. And it also gives you 'when'. "When you are ready to lay your burden down…" why would you want to restrict 'when' into 'now? Silly Human Child", she told him as a mother would tell a child in a tantrum.
Felix stood there lost for words and stunned out of his wits. After a moment he retrieved the Old Gods' items from his backpack giving them to her. "I won't be needing these anymore, not for a good long while, I think", she nodded taking them before disappearing into the forest's depths.
"In all their history, you are the first one to give them up willingly, Wonderer. You will know when it is time."
Felix and Claudia walked slowly back towards the castle.
"So…what now? Have you decided what you are going to do after school?" She asked him afraid of the answer, but for different reasons than before, it was a glorious sunny, summer day and yet she felt this nagging feeling of being cold.
"I have…I wish to travel the world for a while, see what there is to see, explore new avenues of magic, invent technomagy and experience life before returning home to my family and friends. Can I ask you a question in return?" He said looking ahead. He had not felt these butterflies in the base of his stomach for such a long time he had almost forgotten the sensation.
"Y-yes…sure", she said, crestfallen.
"You would have died for me, as would I for you…but can you…could you live without me?" He asked, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
Claudia did not reply, she knew not what to reply, wanting to reply both yes and no at the same time, wanting to take both paths the question opened before her and being unable to muster the courage required to answer what her heart was commanding her to answer.
"Yes…I hope…I…I love you, I always will", Felix said leaving, his voice cracking as he began to cry silent tears.
He was already a few paces away when she extended a hand, wanting to stop him, being unable to, her mouth opening and closing a few times before, in tears, she let the hand drop down and took the road back to the castle, the end-of-the-year-feast, and their departure after.
Headmaster Burton sat in his chair behind his desk, silver spectacles in front of his eyes covering silver-haired brows, his hair having turned a fine gray-white decades ago were trimmed meticulously in contrast to his moustache and beard which hang low, circled on top of his lap as he wrote in a piece of parchment in full concentration with thin, slithery wrinkled hands.
A knock on the door broke his reverie. He finished writing before setting the quill down. "Yes, enter", he said in a low yet resolute voice.
A woman in her fifties peaked her black-haired head through the door. "Headmaster, you called for me?" She asked before entering the Headmaster's office.
Felix placed the letter and his wedding ring made of wood in an envelope and sealed it with a wax seal before writing "To my family" on the back of the envelope. He set the envelope on the desk and looked up at the woman.
"Ah yes, do come in Professor Jaybird", Felix told her standing up from his armchair. He pointed his wand at the floor and a second later it transformed into a walking staff of black, well-polished wood and a large silver stone at the top.
Felix walked to the other side of his desk where the Professor took a seat in one of the leather armchairs.
"I suppose you'll be wondering why I've called you here, at the end of the school term, I suspect you fear ill news about your continued presence in the school's faculty", Felix said without waiting for a reply, his maroon and silver robes touching the floor. "Fear not, you're not getting a stick but a carrot. It is not yet public knowledge, or announced to anyone but the Governors but I will be stepping down from Headmaster and with Professor Harrison becoming Headmaster from Deputy Headmaster we are in need of a new Deputy, hmmm?" Felix made a purposeful pause for a second leaning against his desk with both hands on the staff.
"H-headmaster…I don't know what to say…", Professor Jaybird stuttered.
"You were my first choice, the logical choice. Professor of Defense against the Dark Arts, previously Professor of Transfiguration, straight Os in OWLs and NEWTs, great work with the department of magical enforcement yet not as…authoritarian as they can be, hmmm? Yes, the logical choice. You do accept the promotion, I wager?"
"Y-yes of course, sir!" She shot up straight offering to shake his hand, which he did not yet reciprocate.
"Of course. It is…refreshing to see timidness from a Slytherin. With the end-of-the-year feast tomorrow you need to start preparing yourself for your increased duties come next year, Deputy Headmistress", Felix told the overwhelmed woman and supporting his frail weight in one hand on the staff he shook her outstretched hand before walking to the window next to the great telescope behind his desk.
"Thank you, sir. I won't disappoint you", Professor Jaybird left the office.
Felix stood there, leaning on his staff looking outside the window for some time lost in his thoughts as the few sparse clouds moved fast carried by the late spring breeze.
"You like it here, yes hmmm?" He told his portrait self to his right. "We always did like gazing afar…but now I have a prior engagement that can be postponed no longer, twenty-four decades is long enough", he said under his breath before stepping over to his office and setting his spectacles on it.
He stood on the office's door looking back for a moment. Taking a breath, he turned and exited the winding steps and out the gargoyle entrance.
The steady sound of tap, tap, tap followed him down the corridor and the animated stairs of the Grand Staircase as he descended them slowly, his old muscles no longer supported fast movements.
"What have we said about running in the corridors, Mr. Aubrey?" A second year Gryffindor boy froze in his tracks. "Sorry sir. May I ask you a question, sir?"
"You may ask another", Felix hid his smile at the boy's hesitation under his moustached lips.
"I have seen you do chores you could easily finish fast with a spell, manually, why is that sir?" The boy asked blushing.
A deep smile appeared in Felix's face, warm and gentle, remembering himself asking this of a man before his first year and the answer he had received. "In a world of magic, manual labour can be relaxing. Now, do you have some place you must be at, John?" The boy smiled and left with a nod of his freckled, brown-haired head. Felix continued his descent to the castle's entrance.
"Headmaster, is your speech ready for tomorrow's feast?" A male voice asked him, originating from the Great Hall's entrance.
"Professor Harrison…I fear that speech is not mine to give but yours. I have a pressing concern I must attend to that can wait no more. I have left an envelope on my…your desk for your eyes, the password to what is now your office is "where shadows do not lie". Thank you for your years of service as my Deputy and as a Professor of this school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I would like to ask you to make sure another envelope on my desk addressed to my family, makes it to my grandchildren", Felix stood just inside the Great Hall looking it over, trying to memorize it in his failing memory.
"Yes, of course, sir. But so soon? I thought from next year…" the average height, thin man looked lost for words, caught off guard.
"It is time when it is time. My affairs are in order, I am not one for big farewells, and I am up for a final adventure", Felix gave the man a nod and a smile before walking off towards the drawbridge where he stood for a moment more taking in the school grounds, lake and school, "my favourite spot in the school…" before setting off for the Forbidden forest.
Reaching the first of the large grey-green tree trunks he changed the staff back to his wand before aiming it at himself. "I suppose when in a forest…" he changed to his leopard, stretching the six-meter wings, and folding them back.
As fast as his aged four legs would allow him he made his way through the thick dark forest, the late of the day and the setting sun casting otherworldly shadows through the tree canopy.
Like a ghost he moved through the tall trees and small shrubs avoiding other beasts and creatures large and small until he saw the centaur camp's entrance breaking through the low-lying mist covering the tree trunks.
Changing back to human he declared himself to the camp's denizens.
"Professor Ixion, or shall I say Algeine? Here to welcome me or stop me? Hmmm?" He asked the old Centauress appearing on his right from the shadows cast by the ageless, tall trees and the camp's tents.
"Child that was never meant to be, Azrail Whiteraven's half-brother, order of Merlin First Class, traveler, inventor and assistant wand maker and lore keeper, technomage, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Envoy of Britain and Ireland, Professor, husband and father, Headmaster, you certainly changed what the fates had in store for you, your perspective changed. Stop you? We have a conversation to conduct you and I", the Centauress walked to the center of the camp, sitting on her hind legs by a fire burning bright, animal carcasses lying on wooden steaks drying up all around it, future food and pelts for the centaur herd.
"Will you sit with me for a time, wonderer?" She asked in a tired voice pointing at a place opposite her. With some difficulty Felix sat on a wooden log, placing his hands on his beard on his lap.
"Betrayer, or betrayed?" Felix asked looking at the fire tendrils playing about consuming the wood below.
"Betrayer, I betrayed my sister and brother. A lot can be said about us three, more than twenty thousand years of history is difficult to surmise in a few spoken words but the gist of it is this, plain and simple. We set out to understand nature, to free ourselves from her bonds, and in the process we gained understanding, created the vestiges of civilization, culture and mythology around the globe, created, destroyed, vied for power, knowledge, and the abilities to become…gods or godlike. The more knowledge we gained the more our arrogance and pride grew and the more we believed our own lies. I created the Protection when I knew I would betray them, a means of protecting against Lethargos' Shadeglass and killing curse, which I reinvented, yet what I sought was an understanding of pain, life, death and…immortality. Lethargos invented the Shadeglass to foretell the future from the cumulation of knowledge of the dead, from what lay beyond the Veil in the Crossroads, he created the Shadeglass to distill each thing's, alive or not, essence into knowledge and Nóese created the Book of Leaves to attain a "godly" level of understanding, reading from that book increased not your knowledge but your ability to understand and comprehend.
"Neither of us created our spells to work with the other two, or in a combined effort, nor could we have predicted how the spells would work with each other. I betrayed them first and I betrayed them last. We had sworn not to use each other's spells, but I broke that when I tried to distill a page from the Book of Leaves using the Shadeglass, to increase my ability to understand the things I was interested in. My trespass gave the others just cause to begin our first of many…many wars. In our forays we dried up the vast fertile plains to the south, dried up the River and destroyed the Tree of Life and Knowledge. Only its leaves remain now bound together in the Book of Leaves."
"I know already most of what you speak, Algeine", Felix told her, his eyes still gazing the fire.
"I was the first to awaken from our collective arrogant hubris, I placed the wards in the Book of Leaves, the images one sees when trying to read from it, the selflessness required to read from it, I made it so that whoever drinks or reads from it forfeits his or herself and I placed the fault in the Protection, I made the Shadeglass change to the perspective of each new user, I thought that it would make it pass into obscurity and lethe, lost and forgotten…" Algeine sighed her discontent at her failure.
"Lost but not forgotten...avada me féin…you did not do a good enough job of it", Felix said sad yet not irritably.
"After many a millennia I thought to use the three items to recreate what we had destroyed, made the spring out of the River's last few precious droplets, one final spell…but I failed to set that plan into action and my intentions soon became myth and myth passed on to legend as the other two understood what I was trying to accomplish and used the Mundanes to their will thus propagating the legend, weaving mythology, religion and culture into the very fabric of Mundane and Wizarding civilizations…many times we made truce, we tried to cooperate, created Elysion, destroyed civilizations whole in our gluttonous, insatiable, unrelenting thirst for power and knowledge and created new ones… so, now there remains one question and one question alone."
"Am I here to combine your creations and become a "New God", or to finish what you started", Felix stated the question, looking up to her with tired, blurry eyes. "I will admit the possibility of possessing such power as to gain the ability to bring back the dead, reverse events, toy with time and space, gain a measure of omniscience and omnipotence is compelling. But I have given a lifetime or more into denying my evil battle and I will not do so now. Charles is dead and my mother is dead, my wife is dead, though their deaths were natural and peaceful in contrast to my cousin's. I have lived my life as best I could, and I am now ready to lay down my burdens. I have one question of mine for you, if you would answer it, one final unanswered detail."
Algeine nodded.
"Who was it that turned the Book of Leaves into a vessel of unlife for you three? It is a horcrux is it not?" Felix flexed his hands around his knees, the fire shooting tendrils about in a mesmerizing dance.
"Nothing so crude…although it does offer similar yet far more powerful abilities. It was Lethargos and Nóese who betrayed me and created that from my spell, thinking that if they bound all three of us into that one object, none of us could really kill the other two without killing ourselves as well in the process. I betrayed them last, corrupting Nóese's timelessness spell so that she could never bring herself in-time again and Lethargos so that he'd always be one step behind his precious Shadeglass, his tracking spell always off by one or more steps, then I whispered into the hungry ears of Persian Kings of its existence, power and abilities…the rest is History."
"Yet I killed Achronia…Nóese in my fourth year of school, pulling her back in time, I saw her die as her many years caught up to her. And Professor Jordan killed Lethargos in my Sixth year?"
"Indeed, they are dead, but they are also very much alive inside the Book of Leaves, or at least the portion of their consciousness they added to it is. If they were to somehow be given a new corporeal body they would be alive again, but without the skills, knowledge, abilities, and memories they gained after committing this. They would for example know not who you are, or anything that happened the last…five thousand years", Algeine answered.
"I see. You know of what I must do, do you not mind? You die when it happens."
"Mind? No, I have lived for nigh thirty thousand years, first of the three. Mundanes are trying to conquer the secrets of life everlasting, immortality, eternality, they do not understand that life has meaning because it ends, love is sweet because it has an expiration date. Otherwise it is a curse, and it soon becomes ash in one's mouth, a poisoned chalice it is, not a Holy Grail", she replied bitterly in a low voice.
"And Professor Ixion? Her body will be allowed to die when you do?" Felix flexed his hands on his lap, feeling the fire's warmth.
"Indeed, she passed away many decades ago, so I took over, I had to converse with you when you would come to fulfill prophesy and destiny alike. When you commit to it, I'll die in an instant, and this body will be allowed to rest and rejoin the whole."
"And if I had chosen a normal death in a bed somewhere?"
"Someone else would have eventually come to do so. Maybe another Azrail, maybe another Felix and I would have waited longer."
"It is time, I can feel it", Felix stood up with some laboured effort.
"Indeed, farewell, Wonderer. I do envy what you are about to experience, way more than we ever did", The centauress lay down on the muddy floor assuming a fetal position, closing her eyes as Felix stood up.
The air picked up pace, blowing leaves from the overhead trees on top of her, Felix saw centaur eyes looking at them from inside their huts, daring not disturb the event.
He walked out the back of the centaur camp, to the clearing with the forest lake and the Tree seedling, the Shadeglass, the Book of Leaves and the spring.
"You have come", Felix told a she-wolf sitting under a tree's shade at the clearing's edge. Above them the sun was setting in a clear, cloudless sky bathing them in red and orange hues.
"I have come here every day for twenty four decades, I never knew when you'd decide to commit to this, and I was too proud to ask you, what it'd mean…" Claudia replied, changing to her human form, stepping closer to him, in a black dress and robes, and white hair hanging behind her head, free in the light breeze.
"It'd mean we were both wrong that day in our seventh year's end", he declared in a quivering voice.
"You asked me a question I did not have the courage to answer back then, and we both took the lack of answer as an answer in itself and while I searched far and wide, married, had kids, grandkids, I never found anyone to whom I could tell that answer and mean it. I could not, cannot live a life without you in it. I am unafraid anymore, be it courage or old age, I fear not ", she took his hands in hers.
"I also married and had a son, I did love my wife in my fashion and my son was the pride of my life, air in my lungs. I gave him all the love I never received from my father and then some. Seeing him grow up, enter Hogwarts, graduate it, find love, have a family of his own gave me more contentment than I can ever put into words and yet…I have not felt complete since that year in Hogwarts I could hold you in my arms, and I have tried to, believe me. I asked you the question and you did not answer and at that time I was at the same time extremely crestfallen and relieved…afraid of what it would mean for how I defined myself if you had asked me not to leave, to take you with me, to share my life with you, my soul. Because had you I would have done so without a second thought, doubt, or hesitation", Felix rose their hands to his mouth kissing hers.
"We can correct this error now, yes? In our final moments in life we can, please tell me we can", she hugged him, shivering in the coming night.
"For all eternity, come walk with me", hand in hand they walked up to the seedling inside the lake. Felix took out his wand.
"What will happen?" She asked seeing the seedling, the Book, Shadeglass and the spring of eternity in the lake's shallows.
"We will become something different, the understanding and knowledge of the Shadeglass and the Book of leaves, the properties of the spring were never meant for any one single human being. We will become the medium which will spread it all equally to all living beings, from this spring the River will flow, join other rivers, lakes and seas and all creatures will benefit. Ready? Once this starts, it cannot be stopped", Felix made eye contact with a warm, gentle smile on his aged, wrinkled face.
A rustling of leaves behind them, made them look as to the source of the noise. There, all in deep old age, stood their friends, holding each other or canes to steady their frail old bodies. Socrates, Bellerophon, Ethel, Emerick, Lydia, Uriel and William for Alfred had passed the year before. They stood at the forest's edge with caring faces.
"Ah, a happy surprise…considering I thought many of you dead and buried already", Felix commented, amused and emotional.
"A required tactic on our part to avoid any…grief from younger family members who think we frail old farts should be lying in beds when we desire adventure, but none of us would miss this moment, we started this journey together, and we would be here for its next step, its conclusion", Socrates voiced, and the others nodded. A band of white-haired wizards and witches paying their farewell to their friends, unaware of what they would witness at their life's twilight.
"Very well, goodbye my friends, it was an honour to have spent my life with you all, to have shared it as we did together. Claudia love, are you ready?"
She nodded and hugging him close she planted her lips on his, interlocking her hands with his own free hand around their necks.
Felix pointed his wand down at the seedling and cast the longest, most complicated multithreaded spell of his life. His wand glowing gold, it released a jet of blinding white light fusing into his hand and in an instant the prophesy in his wrists glowed gold, having been fulfilled. The Book of Leaves, Shadeglass, Protection and the spring vanished in silver light, melting, and fusing with the seedling, and slowly their feet begun to transform into roots digging deep into the muddy soil, thirstily, hungrily drinking up the lake's water. The seedling wrapping around them, fusing, becoming one, their bodies transfiguring into trunk and bark, their hands and fingers interlocked transmuting into branches with thick, umbrella-broad, circular green leaves and trumpet-shaped, silver coloured flowers with a golden-teal under-glow. Their lips locked in eternal embrace as the new Tree of Life and Knowledge continued to grow skywards reaching fifty meters high under the starry sky, its low-lying branches touching its roots breaching above the dark brown soil.
And from its roots the River of Knowledge Eternal flowed again, starting its journey anew.
The sun set below the horizon and on its new rise the world would never be the same again.
The End