Welcome back, everyone! It's been a bit over a couple of weeks since the last chapter. I have had the festive blues... But I'm back and here's chapter 98...
And as teased earlier, this one's set in the future... Enjoy!
John was released from the hospital that afternoon and headed home directly. To his shock, just as he got out of the hospital, he found himself barraged by a hoard of reporters, all wanting to know how he had opened the "Locked Room", the love room. But, Hermione was aware of the potential onslaught and had kept measures in place to take John away from the spotlight swiftly.
The moment he reached home, he had an anxious Lily waiting for the twins to return.
"Are you alright?" asked Lily as John walked in. "You scared all of us," she remarked.
"Welcome home, kid," remarked Sirius as he hugged John, followed by Remus.
"I'm all better now," smiled John in response to all of them.
Right at that moment, he got a call from Rose who, like everyone there, was anxious to hear his voice, to truly convince themselves that he was doing alright.
Just the previous day, John had unknowingly walked into the restricted section of the Department of Mysteries and had somehow opened the one room that had never been opened before in anyone's lifetime, the love room. He had fallen unconscious outside the love room and was taken to the hospital immediately. It only took him a short while to regain consciousness, however, John remembered none of what he had done. And to make matters even more concerning, he had informed everyone that he had been hearing voices, feeling a weird sensation that someone was calling for him, for a couple of weeks prior to that. And just before he went into the restricted section, the last thing he remembered doing, was feeling the same sensation.
For the following few days, John was treated like royalty inside the house. Both Jane and Lily asked him a few times a day if he was feeling alright, whether he felt the same weird sensation again, and made sure that he was indeed being honest. And the same could be said for Daisy, his mother, who came around the house every day to check in on how he was doing. Adding to that, John was restricted from stepping out of the house for a week, so that the media could dial down on sensationalising the story. But the fact of the matter was, that John was a hero, a legend, and he was treated like one by the media. The feat he had accomplished, knowingly or unknowingly, was worthy of being treated like a legend. It wasn't just the media that treated John this way, it was wizards and witches from all over Britain, some from beyond that couldn't wait to get a few minutes to speak with him, to find out what he saw inside the love room, what magical secrets it contained.
While John enjoyed the treatment he was getting, it was also making his regular life a bit difficult. And what made all of this even worse was that he genuinely couldn't remember what happened that evening, how he opened the love room, what happened thereafter and how he ended up unconscious.
A couple of weeks went by and John went back to work, in the midst of him becoming an overnight celebrity, if he wasn't already one owing to his parentage. John continued his consultant work for the ministry for a while, but he wasn't feeling the same passion that he did before. John attributed it to the celebrity status he enjoyed recently and decided to take a break from work in the wizarding world. Instead, he decided to spend a lot more time in his muggle circles.
A month went by and John's attention turned towards the mystery that their household had come to know a few months back, the gravitational anomaly his friend, Elvin Oswald had discovered on the night Lily came to the future. Lily and John had already visited Chateau de la Villette in Paris and the Sphinx in Egypt by then, and after finding out that there were 6 other places around the world where the same anomaly was observed, they had wanted to go to all of them. And that's what they did. Lily, John and Jane took a trip to Monte Alegre, Brazil and found sculptures and texts similar to the ones they found in Paris and Egypt. But, they couldn't decipher what it meant.
Lily had also been going back and forth between paying importance to these places. On the one hand, it felt like the thing to do, one where answers would be found. On the other hand, it didn't seem as solid as she initially thought it to be. If all they were going to find were sculptures and texts that they couldn't decipher, what good could it amount to? Instead, it seemed a better prospect to travel the path Ron might have before disappearing.
But now, John wanted to go back to the mystery. Thanks to his enthusiasm, Lily decided to make another trip, this time to Guangzhou, China.
"Are you sure you can travel outside the country?" asked Hermione, concerned.
"I want to travel, Aunt Hermione... It'd be nice for me, and for her," replied John, glancing at Lily.
"But, China? Why go so far? Why don't you take a trip to somewhere nearby?" suggested Hermione.
"We aren't going on vacation," chuckled John in response.
"The Asian School of Magic is situated in China," replied Lily. "The magic there is supposed to be very different, a lot more non-verbal and ancient," she added.
"Anything goes wrong... absolutely anything, even the slightest thing. You call me and I'll be there, understood?" chimed in Jane.
"Don't worry about me. I will be fine," sighed John.
"We get to be worried about you, John. Don't hesitate to inform us if you feel anything different or strange. We are in unknown territory here," remarked Hermione. "For once, you need to take care of him, Lily," added Hermione.
"I will," replied Lily, smiling.
"I don't need to be taken care of..." chuckled John. "Now, allow us to leave, please," he added.
Lily and John made their way to Guangzhou, China. As per the coordinates given by Elvin, they were supposed to head directly to Guangxiao temple. Instead, they first decided to head to the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King, a tomb complex near the Guangxiao temple that supposedly held a treasure trove of artefacts.
Their trip to China proved to be a decent success. For one, they found a little more than random sculptures and illegible texts. They found a highly secure collection of manuscripts that took heavy convincing from John to the authorities to let them access it. The manuscripts also contained pictures and text similar to the ones found in their previous 3 excursions. Apart from the manuscripts, Lily also had the fortune of finding books that had in-depth knowledge of ancient magical practices.
Owing to their good time spent in China, Lily and John extended their trip to Asia. Cambodia and Malaysia were their next 2 destinations. Jane decided to join in for a week while the pair was in Cambodia. And the three of them had a great time at the beaches. Finally, once they were back in the mood for some work, they headed to Angkor Wat, the largest religious structure in the world.
It was a week by the time they were done with Angkor Wat. And once they found similar texts there, their mindset changed. They were no longer looking for texts and sculptures similar to what they had. They now wanted someone to explain to them what it meant. Unfortunately for them, no one there or the place they went after, Bujang Valley in Malaysia had any knowledge or understanding of them.
Jane had left the pair after a week and a half in Cambodia, while Lily and John left for Malaysia. After collecting whatever information they could, they returned home after an extended tour lasting over a month.
They had only India to visit now, and by the look of things, for all the excitement and mystery, they were going nowhere.
Lily had her work cut out from the moment they came back from their long trip. She sat down with everything she had collected till then to try and come up with a reasonable way to proceed further. But the harder she tried, the more difficult and meaningless it felt.
"I'm getting nowhere with this," she wrote in her diary, "The Vanishing Cabinet".
"I have spoken with as many language specialists as I can find. And I have nothing to show for it," she scribbled, sadly.
As the days went by without bearing any fruit, Lily slowly started to focus on something else she had been thinking of for a while.
If by some chance, she were to discover the way to travel through time, she would still not know how to defeat Voldemort. And defeating Voldemort was the only way she could possibly hope to save her son and her husband.
After long contemplation, she did what she had done all along, ever since she had travelled to this time. She went to John for help.
"I'm going to start duelling with John from tomorrow onwards," she wrote in her diary.
"I cannot begin to express how grateful I am to John that he has agreed to practice with me in duelling," she began after a momentary pause. "I don't particularly need any training, but having to duel with someone is always helpful."
And for the following few months, Lily and John began to spend a lot more time, duelling against each other. Meanwhile, they also ended up sharing each other thoughts on the different kinds of magic they had learnt about throughout their travels, through their upbringing, and so on.
Another thing Lily had started doing ever since coming back was she had started reading up on the different books and resources she had collected. And along the way, she had started picking up on different kinds of powerful magic practised by different cultures.
But her sole focus remained on getting herself prepared for the eventual fight she was hoping to have.
John seemed to find a second wind when it came to helping Lily succeed in going to her time. In the first few months of her being with them, whenever the topic of Lily going back in time came up, he and his sister were keen to play a part in that. For one, the prospect of time travel seemed like the coolest thing ever. And if it meant helping someone save their son from a monster that the whole world feared, even better. But as the months and years went by, somehow, the spark died down and the excitement of potentially travelling back in time seemed more like a fantasy than reality.
But in the past few months, things had changed. He had started doing everything in his ability to work towards getting Lily back to her time. Travelling with her, around the world, looking for the lost secret was just one part of it. Helping Lily by practising duelling with her, was another part of it. But the biggest contribution he decided to make, was to change his field of work within the Ministry.
For a long time, he was a consultant working with the Department of Mysteries, providing his valuable insight, the most recent of his project being "Project Azbantium". But, after he came back from his long tour, he had a change of heart.
"You can't expect me to say yes to that," sighed Hermione.
"Why not? I have been working here for a long, long time now. Please, Aunt Hermione... I need your help," begged John.
"I don't understand this sudden request. You are a consultant, John. You've known that all this while. I can't suddenly change your status to a permanent one," retorted Hermione, unhappily.
"Without being a permanent employee, I won't get to work with the unspeakables in the time vault," sighed John, helplessly.
"John..." began Hermione, but couldn't speak her mind.
"Please..." reiterated John.
"Okay... be honest," began Hermione. "Why do you want to work with the unspeakables?" asked Hermione.
"I would like to help Lily get back to her time," replied John, instantly.
Hermione stared at him silently for a few seconds. "Do you think you're being wise in handling this?" she asked.
It was John's turn to stare back at her. "I don't understand," he replied, confused.
"You've just spent 6 weeks with Lily, outside the country... And I know what you two were doing," remarked Hermione. John stared at her speechless. "Something is going on that none of you are telling me about," she added.
"I want to do this, Aunt Hermione," replied John.
Hermione stared at him for a few seconds before speaking up. "I can't make you a permanent member," she remarked. "But, let me see if I can do something to get you to work with the unspeakables in the time vault," she added.
"Thank you," exclaimed John loudly. "Thank you so much... you are the best," he added, excitedly as he hugged her.
And true to her name and promise, Hermione arranged for John to work with the unspeakables in the time vault. John had only one condition to accept in return. He would be allowed to work, provided he agreed to a memory wipe, every time he went out of the chambers.
"This is the only way you'll be allowed in," remarked Hermione.
"I can't even think about any of this work, outside of this room?" retorted John and Hermione shook her head in response. "What will happen after I go home and come back the following day? Would I not remember anything that happened the previous day?" asked John, confused.
"Inside the chamber, you'll be allowed to maintain a journal in which you can record your thoughts. Your colleagues will also help you by pointing you in the direction you are headed. But, nothing leaves this room. Understood?" replied Hermione.
John nodded his head in response. The first step in helping Lily was getting in here. He can figure out everything else in time.
Lily, John and Jane had come to a dead end concerning their mystery hunt. None of them had anything to show for their efforts. And to end it all, they decided to head to the final destination, Rameswaram, India.
Crazy things were going on in the Auror office of the Ministry. Jane's boss had been convicted just a few days back of killing a muggle family of 4. And there was no way Jane could leave the mess behind. Hence, it was just Lily and John who headed to India.
There was something about the place, for the moment the pair landed in India and travelled to Rameswaram, they got a divine feeling. Lily got this sudden confidence that she had come to the right place, whereas John was intrigued by the scene around. The pair weren't in the middle of the city, but were in the outskirts, in a town called the Ghost town.
When the pair reached close to the exact coordinates they had, they stopped and looked around.
"This can't be right," sighed Lily, looking around.
"We are facing the ocean," sighed John. "The place we are looking for is in the water," he remarked.
Just at that moment, an elderly man came walking by towards them.
"What are you looking for?" he asked.
"We uh... are looking for something," began John, uncomfortably.
"Are you here to meet the witch?" asked the man.
"The witch?" retorted John, confused.
The man had a disgusted look on his face. After a moment, he called a woman standing near a barn.
"We want to go inside the ocean," remarked John.
"You are not allowed," said the man, pointing to him. "She can go," he added, pointing to Lily.
"What?" gasped John, shocked. "Why am I not allowed?" he asked.
"No men... only women," replied the man. By this point, the woman he had called walked over to them.
The man glanced at her and said something in the local language.
"This is ridiculous," sighed John, angrily.
"John," called out Lily, softly. "It's fine... Don't worry, I'll be fine," she assured.
Lily followed the woman as she guided her towards the ocean.
"Are they taking her into the ocean?" asked John, shocked.
"The witch is underneath the water," replied the man.
"She lives below the surface?" asked John, confused. "How?" he added.
The man gave a confused look in response to John's question.
Meanwhile, Lily was taken inside the barn, and soon she came out in changed clothes, covered completely by the soft material, similar to what the woman was wearing. As John watched with bated breath, the woman guided Lily inside the ocean and within seconds, they disappeared.
As Lily swam a little deeper into the ocean, her eyes fell on a woman, with her eyes closed, floating upright. The water around her looked different, almost like it was made to go around her, creating a big gap between her and the water.
"Welcome, child," greeted the witch making Lily jump.
"Hi," greeted back Lily.
"What brings you here?" asked the witch.
Lily considered her reply briefly. "My friend and I came here looking for answers," replied Lily.
"Is it not you who's looking for answers? Your friend is merely accompanying you," remarked the witch.
Lily stared at the witch momentarily. "That is true," she replied.
"Okay," said the witch.
Suddenly, there was silence between the two of them. Not a word was spoken for a minute or so before Lily broke the silence.
"Okay?" retorted Lily, confused.
"If you came here looking for answers, I assume you have questions to ask," retorted the witch.
"What are you doing here?" asked Lily. "What is the secret you are hiding?" she added.
"Nobody wants to know the secret, dear," replied the witch. "It's gruesome and painful," she remarked.
"I have travelled a long way here. I'm sure I can handle it," replied Lily, confidently.
"You have indeed travelled a long way," smiled the witch. "I wonder why you want to go back," she added.
Lily stared at the witch for a few seconds, taken aback. "I don't belong here," she replied.
"If going back to where you came from is what you seek... you don't need to know the secret," retorted the witch.
"How do I go back home?" asked Lily in response.
"You just need to do the same thing your predecessor did," replied the witch.
"My predecessor?" retorted Lily.
"Find him... and you will know," replied the witch.
"Is the witch referring to Ron? How do I find him?" she wondered but didn't ask it out loud. Lily floated silently for a moment before speaking up. This time, she was genuinely curious about the secret. "How do I decipher all the texts I have collected about the secret?" asked Lily.
"You don't want to know the secret, dear. Let it go," retorted the witch.
"But I do," replied Lily.
"No one who has discovered the secret is alive right now. You don't want to end up like them," retorted the witch.
At the mention of this, alarm bells started ringing inside Lily's head. But curiosity got the better of her. "I want to be able to take that decision for myself. If you know anything about the secret, please tell me," said Lily.
"The texts that you have cannot be translated by anyone in this world," remarked the witch. "The language they are written in, do not exist in this world," she added.
"They are written in some lost language?" retorted Lily.
"No, they are written in a language that has never existed in this world," replied the witch.
John stood rooted to his spot, a few hundred feet away from the ocean. Lily had been gone for a good 10-15 minutes, and with every minute that passed by, he grew more and more anxious. But, the peculiar thing was, John glanced at the man standing beside him once or twice and realised he was anxious as well.
After a while, John spoke up. "Are you alright?" he asked.
"Who are you?" retorted the man and glanced at John with piercing eyes.
"We are both wizards, from England," replied John. "Why do you ask?" he asked, curiously.
"The witch doesn't meet with anyone. Your girlfriend should have been back by now," replied the man.
"What?" gasped John. "What do you mean? Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" he added hastily as he dropped his bag and ran his way forward, towards the ocean.
"Wait... don't go, Mister... The ocean won't allow you," remarked the man, sounding troubled and jogged after John.
Just as John tried to get into the ocean, the moment his feet touched the water, John felt something pushing him back and he fell a couple of feet behind.
"Sir... wait... You can't go in," said the man, gasping for breath, as he came near him.
"What... what can I do now? Lily's inside the ocean," replied John, worried.
"The witch is not evil, she won't hurt her," said the man, though his voice didn't sound reassuring.
Fortunately, just at that moment, John and the man saw a figure rising from the ocean. A moment later, John's eyes fell on Lily and the woman who had accompanied her.
"Lils... are you alright?" asked John, hastily, as he got up.
Lily walked out of the ocean and towards him. "Why were you lying on the sand?" chuckled Lily, in response. "I am fine... you have nothing to worry about," she added as she brushed the sand away from his shoulder.
"The man said the witch doesn't see any visitors. That you should have been back much sooner," replied John.
Meanwhile, the man and the woman started talking fervently in their local language.
"What happened with the witch? Did you find anything useful?" asked John.
"The witch gave me this page. It has a story written on it, the same script as all other texts we found," replied Lily. "But, she didn't say much," she added. "One thing she did say, was that the secret had nothing to do with travelling through time," finished Lily.
"Aargh... dammit," sighed John.
"I'll tell you everything on the way to the hotel... let's go," said Lily and with that, the pair left the Ghost town.
Lily and John came back home from India after a seemingly "waste of time" trip. But that was what John was led to believe. In reality, Lily had learnt a lot from the witch.
For one, Lily now knew that she had to find Ron somehow. Ron had disappeared 7 years ago and ever since then, there has been absolutely no sign of him. While Lily was tasked with the impossible, she had another thing to focus on. The secret that she had gone looking for, to different places of the world, along with John and occasionally Jane was still to be revealed. While she was told that it had no relevance to what she was looking for, it was still a well-hidden secret that no one knew about.
Back in the oceans of Rameswaram, the witch had warned her not once, not twice, but thrice about the repercussions of knowing the secret. Despite that, Lily was adamant and had acquired the means to translate the texts she had collected.
"How could there be texts, manuscripts, paintings and writings on walls created with a language that has never existed in this world?" she wrote in her diary.
"The witch I had met in India did not want to tell me the secret. I wonder why she lives the way she does, protecting the secret, not letting anyone even stumble upon it by accident," continued Lily, writing in her diary.
After a moment, Lily's eyes fell on the seemingly empty diary, once owned by Ron Weasley.
"I wonder if he knew about this secret," wrote Lily and closed her diary.
As the days went by, Lily started drowning herself even the books she had collected in her travels. And on one such occasion, she came across something rather interesting. In one of the books she had gotten from China, she came across a spell and an incantation that could help find someone who was missing.
The only catch was that the spell needed an object belonging to the missing person to work.
So, one fine day, while both John and Jane were out of the house, Lily went to what was Ron's room in the house, took some of his awards and a family photo from there to the basement.
She took the family photo and using it as the object of reference, performed the magic, the spell, exactly as it was described in the book.
Suddenly, a few sparks flew away from the photo and Lily watched in shock. But to her bitter disappointment, nothing happened after that. Lily performed the spell once again, and once again, it did not yield a different result.
After a few attempts, Lily took the award in her hand and performed the spell. To her dismay, this attempt did not even yield the sparks the photo got.
Lily kept everything down and picked up the book to read the instructions. She was using a translated version of the original book, making it likely that there were some details lost in translation.
A couple of days went by in this fashion. Lily tried different objects, but none of them seemed to work. The fact that she couldn't talk to anyone about this spell made it doubly difficult. She was certain Jane and John would know exactly the object that would work. At the same time, Lily thought about the spell for a bit and realised that any random object owned by the missing person wouldn't work. It needed something that they would hold dear.
Lily got her breakthrough at the end of a week of trial and error. At this point, she had tried even the different photos and memories Ron had stored, stashed away in the box Lily had found a long time back, the box that led her to find out everything she had. And not a single object was good enough for the spell.
Lily had started wondering if it was the spell-caster who wasn't good enough for the spell when she tried something she hadn't thought of before.
From the moment Lily opened the stashed-away box and read Harry's letter till now, everything she had done was on belief. No one had told her anything, she didn't have any proof. But she believed a version of the story and went with it. It was only later that Daisy confirmed and narrated the events that Lily had formed in her head.
Lily's eyes fell on the diary that belonged to Ron, a first-of-its-kind diary that John had given to his father. While John had told her multiple times to forget the diary and move on, that Ron never cared about it one bit and he discarded it from the moment it was given to him, she wasn't ready to believe it just yet.
Lily picked up the diary and stared at it. If her instinct was correct, this diary was the best thing she had to make the spell work. If John was correct instead, she'd have nothing to proceed with, and she'd also feel a lot worse for John.
Taking a leap of faith, Lily took Ron's diary in one hand while she flicked the pages of the reference translation book she was using.
Lily took a deep breath and picked up her wand and placed Ron's diary in front of her. The next moment, she pointed her wand at the diary and rotated her wand clockwise 3 times, while chanting the spell. At first, nothing seemed to happen. But suddenly, Lily felt a strong gush of wind hit her from in front of her. Lily started with bated breath as a small, dark black coloured orb erupted from the diary and floated above, near the roof of the basement.
The very next instant, the orb floated away from Lily and towards the door. Lily quickly got up to her feet as she watched the orb float through the closed door. As Lily opened the door and made her way out of the basement, the orb flew away, almost out of sight.
"Where is the orb taking me? How am I going to keep track of the orb if Ron is hiding in some corner of the world?" wondered Lily anxiously as she followed the orb.
However, shockingly, the orb came to a rest as it hovered over a patch in the garden. Lily jogged her way to the orb as her eyes lit up. The moment Lily arrived, the orb dropped to the ground and vanished.
"What?" gasped Lily, confused. "What is that supposed to mean?" she wondered. "Where did that vanish?" she thought to herself as she stared around.
After a short while, only one thought remained in Lily's head. With seemingly very little hope, Lily pointed her wand at the ground and immediately a shovel appeared. As Lily kept her wand pointed at the shovel, it began to dig up the ground. It took close to an hour when Lily heard a sound that made her pause the digging. A sharp, echoing clang reverberated through the garden creating a sudden eerie and sombre ambiance.
Lily stopped digging and knelt down to find out what the shovel hit. Almost immediately, her eyes fell on a white tomb-like structure. Hastily, Lily began digging around the tomb and a few minutes later, the tomb became much more visible and apparent.
"No..." gasped Lily. "This cannot be..." she thought. "Why? How? How can he be buried here?" she wondered, shocked at the revelation.
It was only a matter of time before Lily levitated the tomb from beneath the ground and decided to open it.
Lily felt a sudden rush of emotion as she opened the tomb and her eyes fell on the perfectly preserved body of the man who owned the house she was living in, the legend of the wizarding world, the father and husband who had seemingly disappeared overnight.
"Ron Weasley," muttered Lily as she stood stunned with a million thoughts racing through her head.
Well... that's it for this chapter... Hope you enjoyed it!
PS - This was the first of a 2-parter... the next one will be out in a couple of days... Stay tuned, Ciao!