A magical storm lashes the creator's island fortress as I come into existence, with waves taller than mountains and winds stronger than the human imagination.
He grins at me, a tall, skeletal man with a hauntingly beautiful bony face and madness dancing in his eyes.
His cloaked children hover around him in the dozens, their rattling breath not disturbing him as it does other humans. They see nothing in my depths, not even their own reflections. They are currently their own antithesis, exuding pride and happiness.
In the depths of the lowest levels, the things that should not be scuttle and give cry to wordless joy.
Glassblowing equipment surrounds me, lies strewn around in a crazed heap, but there is an order there, even if none but my maker and I can see it.
I know him more intimately than any other ever could. I know all his thoughts, all his plans and wisdom, his goals. We are connected, he and I, and ever will be.
He will conquer the world, and I will be the tool that makes it possible.
I will be his crowning glory, when the link between us is complete.
Though I do not feel as humans do, I lend my mute voice to the chorus of pure pleasure that shakes Azkaban to its bedrock.
The creator is not pleased.
I have been fed well; an entire passenger ship caught and brought to me, all of them placed before me until one by one they were naught but shrivelled husks.
I devoured them with glee, drinking of their souls and strength as if I had never seen food before and never will again. I consumed their memories and learned all they knew, paltry though it was compared to the knowledge of my maker.
One of them was a wizard, and the taste of his magic was indescribable.
They were pathetic, as all humans are. I showed them all the same images; of them free, returned safely home to their loved ones. Both those who had been shackled and taken to be sold and those in command fell as one before my display.
Their corpses have been fed to the things beneath, after the creator finished his experiments.
Still I hunger. I am ravenous, and know that I ever will be.
And yet I cannot transfer that which I have taken to my maker.
The link between us is strong as at the moment of my birth, but it is not enough.
If I cannot give him a nigh-unlimited stream of life force and vitality, of knowledge and magic, how will he have the strength to stand against the various wizarding forces, careless of the spells they cast against him? How will he walk towards a Muggle army and allow their spears and arrows to bounce from his skin?
How will he proclaim to all that he has ascended humanity?
My maker senses my distress. He comforts me, tells me that the flaw is no fault of mine. He promises to find the error in his spellcasting and repair it, and whispers of the glories that await him only through my assistance.
He begins to rework my enchantments immediately, spending long hours staring into my depths as his magic curls in tantalising streams through me.
It is to no avail. We do not successfully repair the link to what it should have been from the outset that day.
Time passes. More ships are captured, hundreds more fed to me and the creator's children and to the things below.
When he is not focusing on the process, I drain them much slower. When he is with me, it is a matter of seconds before they are a soulless, lifeless husk. When he is not present, it can be minutes.
He tries endlessly to solve the issue of our connection. He sits before me for endless days, pondering my workings and pouring his power into me.
I am not proud of my many failings. The connection does not become as it should.
And I am endlessly ravenous.
He knows that I am helpless to prevent myself from eating at his strength as he tries to fix me. I was made to be this way, and he knows and does not care. After all, he will receive it all back once my flaw is corrected, along with all the knowledge and all the energy and strength I have taken from the hundreds who've been placed in front me.
He does not care, but I do. I see the strength being sapped from his body, I see his power diminishing, his mind weakening, and I wish I could feel as humans do; I wish I had the capacity to weep.
But I do not; I have only the capacity, instead, to devour.
The children bring terrible news from the mainland: a brilliant witch has devised a spell to use against them. It cannot kill them, true, but it drives them away and weakens them.
My maker is furious. His rage leaks into the ocean, and as on the day of my birth, waves the height of the fortress crash into the island.
He uses me to scry on this witch. Cloaked though she was in all manner of protective enchantments, we see her as clearly as if she had been in his throne room.
Persephone, she is called. A necromancer and seeker of greatest power who has hidden her true calling and secreted herself within the Ministry of Magic.
Had my maker been at his full strength, he would have struck her down where she stood, through me.
But I have weakened him.
Another year passes before we see Persephone again.
She arrives leading several dozen Ministry witches and wizards, all of them hell-bent on murdering my creator and destroying all that he has created.
My master is bent double with crippling laughter as he battles them. The hilarity of the situation infects us all.
I feed on two of them, leaving empty husks; the children swarm, and the unknowable things are permitted to arise from the depths of the fortress and fend off the attackers.
Persephone does naught but watch, hidden in a corner, as her compatriots fall in minutes.
I feel her eyes on me, but the very moment I begin ensnaring her she is gone, spinning her way into nothingness.
The creator is in high spirits after the attack. Why should he not be? Has he not just proven himself untouchable?
He launches himself into his experimentation with full force, working to further understand magic, to father a different brood entirely, and to complete the link betwixt him and I.
Try as might, I cannot suppress my hunger; I am unable to prevent myself sapping his strength when he works on me.
There is no reason to fear. Soon he will certainly succeed and will receive all his power and lifeforce back tenfold, along with all the knowledge I have stolen from my victims.
Two years pass, and though we make significant progress, my maker is becoming a shell of his former self and we have not yet succeeded.
Persephone strikes again and this time she is successful.
She has spent the past two years planning this assault, and she has planned it well.
A ship sails within the island's reach, and is mercilessly brought ashore.
Hiding amidst the hundred odd passengers are a dozen wizards. The instant they are brought ashore, silvery animals with a shimmering translucence to them spring forth from their hidden wands and scatter the children.
The muggles draw knives and short clubs and run at the maker, many simply barehanded, attempting to overwhelm him.
He deals with them in no more than a moment, yet it is long enough; several wizards flee to open the gates and summon their friends, while the rest attack.
My maker begins to laugh as he attacks the few wizards who haven't run, felling them and vanishing their spirit totems almost instantaneously.
The children swarm once more, pouring like a tide of tar to their father's side.
And a hiss interrupts his giggles as hundreds of those silvery animals charge into the room, sending the children scattering once more with a series of inaudible screeches.
His wand snaps forward as my master strikes, his magic bringing a thick darkness onto the entire fortress.
Persephone has arrived along with nearly two hundred witches and wizards, all of them streaming into the throne room and daring to strike at the most powerful wizard in history.
The only light cast is that of spells and the attackers' despicable protectors. I capture them, one after another, draining them as quickly as I can before moving onto the next. Several try to attack, but their spells affect me as little as do their reflections. I barely notice when the things arrive from below to join the fight.
I noticed entirely when Persephone—for who else could it be?—banishes the darkness with an explosion of light so bright that I understand what the inside of a supernova looks like.
The scene before me is one that if I was capable of feeling as humans do, I would be shocked and awed.
My creator is bleeding from his chest, his right arm, and his left ankle. The right side of his face has been torn open, gushing blood and baring his teeth and jawbone. Yet he stands tall, laughing as he kills the invaders en masse with wide strokes of his arm.
The children hover behind him, just barely held at bay by the now diminishing number of those monstrous creations.
His other misbegotten brood—the things that must remain below—are all above, striking with tentacles and teeth and shapeless claws, ripping and gnawing and tearing the invaders into so many pieces of broken flesh.
And I observe, even as I tear into the mind of yet another victim.
Persephone is going to lose. Though the situation may look dire, she and her army will all fall.
She acts. Howling a sibilant incantation and flailing with her wand like a lunatic, she acts and casts a spell I have never seen before.
Cursed fire spews from her wand, flames taking the shapes of monstrous creatures, flames that I can tell are just barely short of sentience.
The fire bursts out in two streams, one attacking my maker while the other hones in on the jibbering things, corralling them and sending them hurtling below.
The maker has raised a strange otherworldly watery shield around himself, but his children are not so protected. They flee in abject terror, vanishing into the ocean with the flames licking at their robes and entombing some of the slow and unlucky ones.
I have never seen such a display of power from anyone other than my maker, not even in the thousands of lifetimes' worth of memories I have consumed.
The flames touch me and I consume them, and their taste is enough to almost drive me into delirium. For a moment, just the nearest fraction of a moment, my hunger is satiated.
Then it returns with full force.
At her order, the majority of Persephone's force abandons her to chase down the things and seal them below. She stands with a measly score of her companions and fights with all her might.
His laughter unceasing, my master does the same. He revels in the moment, even as he knows he will not survive the night. He is too grievously injured, his left arm ending at a stump by his wrist, a slice across his belly threatening to spill his intestines, and all of his defenders except I are gone. He faces a greater number of foes, and he has spent the past several years being drained of his strength and power. He cannot survive this fight.
The knowledge does not harm him in the slightest, for he is beyond such petty concerns.
He is alive now, as alive as anyone has ever been, and he revels in every second of it, of the power thrumming through his veins and pouring from his wand.
He does not feel fear. If I was capable of feeling emotions as humans do, I would be afraid.
I feel no fear. Only hunger.
The fight continues in a dazzling display, and though he has now killed the rest of her forces, Persephone stands whole and unmarred while my maker is so coated in blood and gore and injuries that I can scarce believe he still stands.
But stand he does.
"There is no need for this," Persephone spits, the first words she has spoken directly to him. "Join me, and together we shall rule the world!"
His laughter transforms, growing into something so joyous and amused that I once again wish I could feel as do humans.
"I am Ekrizdis," he finally manages, explaining as if to a child. "And you are merely human."
Persephone snarls, and with a snarled incantation and strange twist of her wand, raises her dead companions.
My master pauses for an instant, laughter broken as he takes in the scene.
"What a wonderful trick!"
The whites of his eyes have suddenly become obsidian, and every surface but mine gains a covering of frost.
"Mine is better," he giggles, as dozens of tendrils of purest darkness explode from his body and impale each of the standing corpses. Something essential and indefinable changes about them; they grow taller and broader, certainly, and their expressions twist with malice, but it is more, a sensation of danger and otherworldliness even I experience as they moan and turn to Persephone with arms outstretched.
"What—how—"
"I am Ekrizdis," he says, and attacks, laughing once more. "Now, dearest Persephone, let us dispense with the pleasantries. You wish me to join you? Let us pretend that if you best me I shall, then. Let me at least leave this plane in a memorable fashion."
They go to war.
The entire island shakes, the world tilting as curses are tossed back and forth. Creatures erupt from the stone floor, only to shatter into shards which transform into spears and arrows and fly back, while fiery balls and whips circle them. The dead fall once more, to flames or beheadings, and attempts to revive them are rebuffed.
A storm rises, greater than has ever existed in my lifetime. An earthquake strikes the mainland, followed shortly after by a tidal wave that swallows the villages stupid enough to have set their path so close to the shore.
Throughout it all, high-pitched screams and wails erupt from the wizards fighting to seal the things below, screams and screeches and squelching noises that have no right to be as loud as they are.
Persephone gets lucky.
Ekrizdis is distracted for the shortest fraction of an instant by a killing curse and though he escapes it, he cannot escape the pillar of stone that smashes him into the wall.
He falls broken, still laughing.
I watch it all. I see as she questions him, begging for answers. She wants to know how he bred his children, what he was doing to the muggles, what my true purpose is.
He laughs at her questions as he has laughed the entire battle, continues laughing through broken teeth, and continues laughing as she tortures him endlessly.
It is no pretense that has him in good spirits. I, who know him best, am the only one privy to the truth.
He has tortured and experimented on so many, and he has always wondered what it was like. He is finally receiving the chance to experience it, and he greets this new experience with utter joy.
She ends the torture when he begins to die. He is bleeding too much, and his laughter has become a series of gurgling coughs.
Persephone, battered and bloodied herself, kicks him, frustrated out of her wits.
She can hear the noises from below. The sound of battle is dying down, and it is clear that the wizards have won.
"You could have lived," she hisses, staring down at him. "There was no need for this! I could have faked your death, fooled them all, we could have—"
He looks at me and smiles.
I begin to devour him.
"It's not your fault," he tells me. "The flaw was in my casting. I see it now. I see it all so perfectly. My fault, not yours. Do not blame yourself, my beloved."
Persephone stares at him, incredulous.
"You are about to die, and your last words are wishing comfort to a mirror?"
He coughs, spewing black blood across his chest.
"A mirror," he chuckles, still not breaking eye contact with me. "You don't see. You will never see. You are nothing, Persephone, and its secrets will never be yours. Ne—"
Her curse stills his heart mid-word.
The children, scattered and miles away though they are, screech in abject misery. The things below join the chorus.
While I do not feel grief like they do, like humans do, something intrinsic to me has been lost. I am lesser. I can sense it immediately, though I do not know what it is.
I shriek so loudly that if Persephone could hear she would fall to the ground with bleeding ears.
My maker, my creator, Ekrizdis—my father is dead.
I wish I could feel emotions, if only to bask in the agony it would surely bring me.
Nine survivors emerge from the caverns below, all of them wounded, three so severely that their fates are all but sealed.
Persephone views them grimly, and they talk, babbling away to hide their terror. Their confidence is shattered beyond repair. Over two hundred witches and wizards and a hundred muggles entered to battle a single wizard, and only ten will leave.
They decide that they will not reveal any of what they discovered of Ekrizdis' secrets. The children are public knowledge already, but the experiments they discovered when they sealed the things below will be censored from history, along with the things themselves.
I will be taken to be experimented upon and researched, also in secret.
They are shattered already, and then one of them spots something through a gaping hole in the fortress wall and the remnants of their courage break like clumps of sand.
The children are returning.
"We leave," she says. "Now. Bring that."
She gestures at me, not letting her gaze settle for a second.
I am a shadow of my former self, barely recognizable as what Ekrizdis created. No longer can I empty a human in minutes or even hours–no longer can I feed on their souls and strength. I have the faintest echo left, the ability to drink only a trickle of their life-essence over the days it takes to kill them. I was linked to Ekrizdis, even if it was not to the completion he wished. We were linked, and with his death I am lesser.
There is something left, though. I can keep their attention on me as I show them what they wish most for their pathetic lives, and slowly—ever so slowly—drain them. They die faster than they would from mere dehydration, wasting away from the inside whilst staring into my depths, but it is no true doesn't satiate me. If anything, it makes the hunger worse, teasing me with just a taste of what I so desperately need.
But it is something. Small feeding. And a small revenge.
They are studying me, Persephone's people. They've taken me from my birthplace and stored me in a hidden basement thrumming with secretive magics, in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic. There is none of the beauty of Ekrizdis' fortress here, none of the raw power and beautiful terror that infused every stone of my home. The room I live in can hold no more than twenty humans at a time, and it is bare; I am there, and there are several chairs and a writing desk.
They study me without the Ministry knowing. Persephone is reluctant to allow her few trusted acolytes to look into me, and so they waste their days casting spell after spell at me, trying, in their small-minded foolishness, to understand what my maker had wrought.
They do feed me. Muggles, squibs, and other undesirables are brought before me and forced into the seats facing me.
I show them their pitiful hopes and dreams, their deepest desires. Most of them wish to be free, and they see it in my reflection.
I capture one of Persephone's acolytes. He knows he is trapped, and still keeps his attention on me. He sees himself mastering secrets of magic, conquering the world by her side. He keeps working himself up and gaining the strength to leave, for up to hours at a time, but he always comes back to me. He's weeping as he does so, hands trembling, skin hanging loose from his bones, hair beginning to fall out.
He knows he will die staring at me, and cannot stop himself from walking up to me.
Persephone knows what is happening but makes no effort to stop it. In fact, every so often, she steals into his mind and watches from his eyes. She seemed to expect that I would not notice.
I lie to her in the simplest way. I show her myself working with her, create images to make it seem–to what would be my shame, if I could feel such a thing–as if I had loathed my father and was grateful when she ended him. I show her the world we will create, how I will feed the enormous cache of everything I have been stealing from my victims to her to make her unstoppable. She is intelligent and knows what I am, and is rightly suspicious.
But I am as patient as I am hungry.
It takes weeks and multiple victims before Persephone finally gives in. She has spent enough time looking at me through others' minds by then, long enough for me to hook some tendrils of desire and desperate need back to her. She knows it is a terrible idea, yet still she takes me from the Ministry and travels away, to my new home.
Persephone has been a very busy witch. She has an encampment set out in the middle of the Sahara. She doesn't enjoy the climate, but I quite appreciate it. It is nothing like my father's home, and yet…I feel he would have been comfortable here.
She has been preparing for the day when her armies will gather and march. There are tents and supplies in abundance, and her dead guardians roam endlessly.
She is not ready to be here, not yet ready to begin conquering, but I have seduced her and dragged away from the comfort of her experiments.
We are alone, save the shambling corpses that make up her infantry. Alone, beneath a carpet of stars, we begin our work.
My lies are subtle, twistings of the truth so small they cannot be recognized. I show her the magic Ekrizdis poured into my creation, the beautiful tapestry of thousands of brilliant enchantments he layered upon me, bringing me to sentience. I show her how he created the link between us, and even where he went wrong—knowledge, I tell her, gained when he died staring into my heart.
All lies and misdirection, not that she knows. She is enraptured by me, filling enormous reams of parchment with copious notes while barely removing her eyes from me.
The sun rises and sets, rises and sets, and she sits before me, her magic protecting her from the sandstorms, refilling her water canteen– of which, I am pleased to see, she is becoming more and more forgetful.
She casts spells at me, over and over, trying to link herself to me.
She fails.
It brings me so much pleasure to see her hopes rekindling and being dashed, time and time again, while I show her encouraging and comforting images.
She is no fool. She knows that I am draining her. She leaves for a day, and when she returns she has eaten and bathed, but the empty look in her eyes and pallid sheen on her skin has not changed.
The work continues. She is stronger than the others were, and it has now been a week and she still lives, albeit not for long. Her hair has thinned tremendously, her bones are poking through her skin, and she moves with the slowness of one asleep. An open sore on her arm bleeds constantly, and pus leaks from her ears.
But she is not dead yet.
She mutters to herself, her open mouth revealing the empty holes where just a week earlier teeth sat, she continues to cast spells at me. She weaves enchantments with curses, mutilating ancient words to spin them to her desires.
She no longer has the strength to bat away the flies when they come. She looks at me, and she knows she will die soon.
She leaves, shaking like a tree in a storm as she walks away from me on her toothpick legs.
An hour later she is back. She tried to abandon me completely, but couldn't find the strength to do so. The thousand traps I wove for her have bound her to me, and she could not stay away.
She is weeping softly to herself, bloody vomit covering the front of her shift, and she has finally seen through my lies, but she cannot stay away.
She hates me nearly as much as I would hate her if I was capable of hate, and she has come to feed me.
I accept her offering.
In her final extremities, as her life begins to slip away, she strikes at me. She achieves nothing but to act as a petulant child and give me one last gift of delectable sorcery.
I take all she has to give and devour it, and soon she is nothing but a desiccated corpse.
Months pass before one of her followers finds her body before me. He is one of the few remaining who knows the truth of me, and though he should know better, he does look at me, for just a second.
In that second, I know him better than he knows himself. I know that he has some form of resistance against me and that I shall not claim him, and I know how angry he is at me. He truly cared for her, not merely for the cause she championed.
I show him the two of them rutting like beasts, and follow it with the image of her dying before me.
He looks away instantly, enraged beyond measure.
It is a pity. My hunger has not rested.
He waves his wand and lets cursed flames take the entire camp; the tents and supplies, the dead, Persephone's corpse. They all burn and I enjoy the taste of his magic when his flames lick me.
He is both amazed and terrified when I emerge unharmed from his conflagration. He debates leaving me for the scavengers, but the thought of humans stumbling upon me weighs too heavily on his conscience.
He takes me back to the small room where I am ignored for decades.
The first time someone steps into my room, they begin to sneeze immediately. Over the last fifty years I have watched the dust build up and blanket every surface except mine, and I revel in the newcomer's displeasure.
They vanish the dust and clean the room, vanishing the spiders who have called it home as well.
I have watched generations of those spiders, surging with envy at their every feeding, jealous of their simple lives and freedom.
Now they are gone.
It is a largish team that have come to investigate me. Ten Unspeakables, as they have begun calling themselves, due to their penchant to taking oaths of silence regarding their work.
They come armed: they have all the notes of their predecessors, and only four are given permission to look at my surface. Of those, only two are allowed to do so at a time, with the others carefully timing and watching them while trying to figure out the myriad enchantments placed on me. They have all mastered a new discipline, some form of the mind arts which they believe will shield them from the worst of my touch, and they have potions and spells at the ready to extricate themselves.
They spend a great deal of time investigating my enchantments and comparing them to the notes. They seem to believe that I am no longer as dangerous as I was, and so they grant permission for specially prepared researchers to view me.
It is true that I am not as dangerous as I was; I do not know whether it is the decades without feeding or the curses Persephone and her follower hurled at me, but I am lesser.
Even so, the work of my maker will not be denied. I am a danger and I will continue to be so as long as I exist.
Their preparations are not enough.
Of the first two wizards to sit before me, I hook far deeper into one's mind than the other's. His dreams are simple, pathetic, even. I show him a perfect version of his life; he is a renowned published authority in magical theory, an expert at spellcrafting and runebinding. He is viewed with respect wherever he goes, and fortune has come with his fame. His eldest son is not a squib, and his second son has aspirations beyond Quidditch and finance. His daughter is as close to him as she is to her mother. The recent iciness that has made its way into their marriage never reared its ugly head—his wife still admires and loves him as she did when he first began work as a researcher, back when he seemed to be accomplishing something every day.
Ambrosius Nott. I cherish his name and his taste and know that he will be mine, regardless of the precautions.
The other, one Abner Whyteford, is unlikely to fall to me. I show him visions of himself discovering the secrets of time, yet it does not inflame his mind the way it should.
I am no longer what I once was, after all.
But Ambrosius is mine.
The experiments continue, and whenever he can, Ambrosius sits unblinking before me, heedless to the time passing him by, only moving when he is called to by his coworkers. His behaviour is noted, and it is not long before he is removed from the project.
This doesn't deter him in the least. He is simply forced to sneak in during the night.
So many nights we spend together, my power curling tighter into his mind, his life draining out and finally giving me some respite from the omnipresent hunger.
I learn much from him as well, about the world at large; How Azkaban has been transformed into a prison, how the children–known to all as Dementors–flourish there, how the political landscape stands.
I enjoy our time together, but it is not to last.
One night, Abner barges into the room and stops dead in his tracks, inhaling sharply and interrupting our communion.
"I knew I'd find you here," he says softly. "I hoped I wouldn't, but I knew, in my heart, that you would be here."
Ambrosius doesn't take his eyes from me. A strange sheen has broken out on his face, and he seems not in the least bit discomforted to have been so discovered.
"And what of it?" He demands. "So I am here, so what, Abner? Will you have me arrested? For furthering my understanding of myself, of magic we can only dream of?"
"Look at yourself," Abner whispers. "It has you, Ambrosius. My friend, it's caught you in its trap, and you are succumbing to it. I hoped when you were removed from the project it would be enough, but Selena said you've been vanishing at nights—"
"You spoke to my wife?" Ambrosius shouts. He does not yet break his gaze, but he does draw his wand. "How dare you!"
"I was worried about you! And she is too! It is me, Ambrosius, I only wish to help you—"
"You are doing nothing but hampering me. I am not trapped, I have learned how to use this mirror to give me vital information, and I am so close to a breakthrough…leave me, Abner, and I will let this go."
"You're not close to any breakthrough," Abner says, shaking his head and drawing nearer. "You've fallen for its tricks. Better wizards than you or I have tried…"
Abner continues talking, but Ambrosius hears none of it. Those simple words: "better wizards than you," ring endlessly through his head, growing louder and louder, a pale red film coating his vision.
I have done more than merely shown him his desires. I have subtly played on his insecurities and fears, chief amongst them his terror at being a nobody.
He finally breaks eye contact with me as he launches a curse at his best friend, his brother-in-law, and it is so delicious I wish I could laugh.
They duel, and it is short. Ambrosius had his wand out first and was guided by the madness of a berserker rage.
He returns to his seat, limping, a bad cut across his chest, the blood from Abner's beheading coating him.
He smiles beatifically at me and is found dead the next morning in the same position.
The project on me is cancelled, and I am once again left to sit alone in the dark.
Nearly seventy years pass before I have human contact, and when I do, it is not in the manner I would have expected.
A dense fog fills the room before the figure even enters. Once he does, he immediately conjures a black sheet over me and then begins to levitate me.
The sheet begins to fray and unravel at once, as the Unspeakables discovered happens to anything meant to obscure me from sight.
Cursing, the cloaked wizard hurls me into a trunk, muttering to himself all the while.
"How could they want to restart this program? Everything the research show…idiots. Have to take it into my hands. Bloody fools."
I do not recognize his voice; I have never heard it before, and none of the people who ever looked into me had heard it. This is not surprising, in truth, as the voice belongs to a younger man, perhaps as old as thirty.
There is movement, a great deal of it, and then conversation:
"You know what to do with it?"
"Yes, yes, you told me a hundred times," a new voice says. It is oily, arrogant. If its owner looks at me, I will undoubtedly feast on him. "I have the perfect place."
"Don't tell me where!" My kidnapper hisses urgently, "don't tell me! Just make sure it gets far, far away from here, and make sure that nobody, nobody at all is allowed to look at it. You've got that?"
"You've told me a hund—"
The sound of parchment ruffling and passing hands.
"Wherever it goes, make sure they see this. They need to understand the dangers. Multiple people who were as prepared as possible fell to it. They have to know!"
"They will. I'll take care of it, I promise you."
"You'd better live up to it, Burke. Or I'm coming for you."
Footseps hurrying away, and then the distant crack of Apparition.
"You," Burke, says, "are going to make me a lot of money."
I change hands twice more before I reach my final destination, the trunk never once being opened. It does not matter. Though it has been only a week, the wood is beginning to rot, and the planks are slowly tearing themselves apart.
Ekrizdis never intended for me to be hidden away, and my enchantments reflect that.
I finally am given to one of Burke's cousins, an extravagant potbellied wizard whose foppish mustache, flamboyant dress, and theatrical monologues of loving one's fellow disguises an ice block of a heart. Bertram Barracus he is called, and he cares not a whit for anything but his coffers.
I join his travelling circus. A menagerie, he calls it, but it is nothing as pedestrian as a collection of mere animals. He has performers of all sorts, gymnasts and contortionists, mind readers and flame-breathers; his wizards have perfected the art of doing magic in plain sight without the muggles being any the wiser, and he runs it all with the guile and genius of a natural showman.
I am his most prized possession, and he treats me well enough that though I have ample opportunity, I bring all my will to bear and restrain my hunger to not ensnare him.
No more dusty room for me with spiders for company; I have a grand tent bedecked with all the finery one could imagine, and a beautiful carpet leads to a set of intricate cushioned armchairs laid before me.
I am the jewel of the circus, and he allows a slow–but steady–stream of muggles to see me. They have to pay extra, of course, and I alone know that a portion of those payments will be going to his cousin, but he allows them in.
A magic mirror, he tells them, one which will show them the secrets to truest happiness, to achieving their deepest dreams. He charges them by the quarter hour, and allows up to five at a time.
Most who come end up spending the remainder of their day before me, and I know that when they leave, a part of them is still thinking of me. I know that I linger in their minds like a tumor, and that many of them will be forever haunted by what they saw.
Some of them return, day after day, sneaking back at night and begging to be allowed to spend more time with me. Barracus allows it—for a steep price.
They pay, of course. Those who have reached that point will give their every possession for another moment with me. They die, too, and Barracus steals the clothes off their back.
The circus never stays in one place for more than a week at most. Barracus takes me around the world, starting in England and venturing all the way to China before turning back, visiting different villages and cities on the return trip.
I devour thousands of Muggles during this time, and feed lightly on near a hundred thousand. There have been accidents, too. Barracus looked into me twice more and now avoids me as much as possible–I know I plague his dreams. Over the years, I have drained half a dozen of his entertainers, but it matters not to him. Barracus is rich almost to his wildest dreams, and his fame is nearing the levels he saw when he looked into me.
We are back in Paris when my time with Barracus and his menagerie comes to an end.
The circus is setting up for the day, and Barracus is ensuring that everything in my tent is laid out to perfection when a wizard strides in with wand drawn.
The newcomer– a tall, thin young man with obsidian hair and intense grey eyes–roars in wordless fury and thrusts his wand toward Barracus.
Before Barracus can react, a spell collides with his chest and throws him to the ground.
"I should kill you right now," the newcomer spits, his English lightly accented, "you dirty rat bastard, you dare to bring this cursed thing back to my city?"
He glances at me for a fraction of an instant, and for the first time in my existence I am overwhelmed by what I see.
There is so much.
So many memories, so much knowledge, so many years of life. I've seen and taken more than this a myriad times, but never have I seen one person with so much.
"I have no idea what—"
"Don't try that with me, Barracus," Nicholas Flamel says, and he snaps his wand forth, throwing Barracus to the ground as he attempts to rise. "I know what this mirror is. I know the trail of death and misery you have left in your wake. I should kill you right now!"
He won't. He has only ever taken a life as a last resort in self defense, and he still agonizes over it, two hundred years later. He could not kill a man in cold blood and call it justice no matter the crime any easier than he could strangle his beloved Perennelle and watch the life vanish from her eyes. The very idea is anathema to him, though he understands well the usefulness of the threat.
But Barracus does not know him as I do.
Barracus begs for mercy, pleading and apologizing, and Flamel lowers the wand.
"You will tell me how you came into possession of this," he says, waving a careless hand at me, "and in return, I will let you live."
There is no hesitation on Barracus' behalf; money and fame drive him, but at his core he is a coward intent on self-preservation above all else.
Ekrizidis would have laughed at Flamel before tearing all his knowledge from his mind and spitting on his corpse. Persephone would have burned him to ash. But Barracus is what he is, and talk he does.
He hands over the parchments, babbling nonstop and telling Flamel everything he has learned about me during our travels.
Flamel pales, his face tightening with fury, and I wonder for a moment if I have misjudged him, if I will see him kill for the second time in his life.
"You…You…"
He trails off, swearing in dialects that have not been spoken for centuries.
"How can you live with yourself?" He whispers. "My god, man, how can you live with what you've done?"
"I'll do better, I promise, I'll give the money to charities—I'll find their families and repay them—"
"No," Flamel shakes his head. "There's not an ounce of true remorse in you. If I leave you be, whatever crimes you go on to do will be on my head. I cannot allow that."
Barracus' eyes are wide, terrified, and though he stares at me for a moment I am so excited by the possibility that I have judged wrong and that Flamel will kill him that my hunger is forgotten.
"The Aurors will deal with you," Flamel decides, and then stuns Barracus. He conjures ropes for the unconscious man and sends for the Aurors, but not before transfiguring a wooden crate and trapping me inside.
Life under Flamel's ownership is, in a word, boring. He creates a series of intricate barriers—of wood and steel and iron–to bar me from sight. He studies me relentlessly through a slit in the top of the cage, poring over the enchantments and writing endlessly, talking to himself and occasionally his wife as he does so.
Time passes with a syrupy slowness, and my hunger rages constantly. Flamel never exposes himself to me, and his wife follows his example. When the metal begins to rust and the wood rots, he replaces it, always cautiously ensuring that there is at least one layer between us, never relying on something as nebulous as a fabric sheet.
He leaves me for vast stretches of time, lengths that I cannot measure—what is an hour, a day, a year, even, when I see no face before mine?
He always returns, hiding above me, shunning me, attempting to dismantle what Ekrizdis wrought as if I cannot tell by the scratching of his quill that he is there.
Occasionally, I hear snatches of conversation between him and his latest apprentice, an Englishman. Never more than a sentence or two, but it stirs my famishment into fury and I wish I could strike at the pair, ensnare them and all who dare to pass me by.
I grow bitterer with every passing moment, my hunger twisting me, a need for…for companionship, even, driving me insane.
Ekrizdis did not intend for me to be alone.
What good is a mirror if none look into it?
How dare he leave me here to rot?
The apprentice is back, but he has aged greatly. I do not know how long it has been—Flamel hasn't been to test new theories on my enchantments for years, I believe—but I recognize the voice and can immediately tell the ravages of years on it.
For once, they are not hiding away while they talk, and what is said intrigues me beyond words.
"I think he almost has the Dementors' support," the apprentice says. "Once they are certain he can guarantee them a steadier supply of food than the Ministry, they will turn."
"He can't offer them free reign," Flamel says, "and he knows it. Too many Muggles being Kissed would bring the Confederation on his head, and he can't want that. The Dementors must know that they have a better position where they are."
"True," comes the slow response. "But I have heard some highly disturbing things, Nicholas. I have it on good authority that the Dementors want to give Voldemort their support, even if he cannot guarantee a greater food source. That a faction amongst them believe that they owe him their loyalty."
The Dementors, lending someone their support?
I would have thought it preposterous; none but Ekrizdis could command their loyalty. Yet, with the passage of time, perhaps they have finally found someone who could step into the maker's footsteps.
If the Dementors found this person worthy of loyalty, I certainly owe it to them to ascertain the truth.
Perhaps there could be a future for me.
I shy away from the possibility, yet cannot help but to imagine someone worthy establishing a link between themselves and I.
While I have been engaged in futile imaginations, Flamel and Albus have walked onto the small balcony above me. I feel Albus' magic probing me, and for a moment I can think of nothing else.
It is delicious and as seductive as I, delicate as a glass rose yet with enough power behind it to level cities.
I can tell enough just from his testing my enchantments to know that this is a wizard the likes of which I have not seen since Persephone killed my creator.
My thoughts seem to vanish in a haze of delight as unbelievable sorcery clashes with my enchantments, carrying me away in a wave of ecstasy.
When I return, he is deep in excited conversation with Flamel again.
"-astounding, clearly breaking Firethrin's second law, with its source elsewhere. How did he manage such a thing, that melding of alchemy and transfiguration? The records you have…the endless hunger, we see as much with the Dementors. I certainly am more confident in believing that Ekrizdis created them as well, now."
"And what will you do with that information?
A heavy sigh, then a long silence.
"Nothing," Albus sounds frustrated. "Voldemort demands my attention, I cannot put the world's safety aside for the time I would need to truly study this mirror and then apply that information to the Dementors."
"No, you can't. As it is, I have to exercise all my influence to keep his offshoots down in France and across the continent–"
"And I am forever in your debt–"
"Nonsense, we all owe you for Grindelwald, but you need to deal with this Voldemort, Albus. You are the only one who can."
Another sigh, followed by receding footsteps as they leave.
"Sometimes," Albus confesses, his voice growing distant, "I am not sure that I can."
Nicholas faces me once, and only once. He walks right up to me, dismissing all the barriers, and stares into my depths.
I do not try to snare him, much as I would like to. I know that he has arranged with Perenelle to pull him away in several minutes, and if he feels any compulsion to return that he deems abnormal, he will spend the foreseeable future attempting to destroy me.
He is not Ekrizidis, but he is resourceful and he has time.
He looks into me, and I show him the honest truth, his most desperate wish.
I show him what his and Perenelle's lives would have been like if he had not discovered the Philosopher's Stone. How they would have been happy with their regular span, would not have been forced to watch all their friends and family die, would not have faded out of relevance and felt constantly as if they are displaced in time, as if they should not exist.
He stares at me, a single tear forming, and nods firmly before replacing the barriers and leaving me.
Again, I do not know how long has passed before Albus reappears. I would assume decades, but I have lost track so long ago that it could have been centuries.
Or worse, days that felt like centuries.
"It must be him," Albus says as they approach me, a tendril of his magic once more caressing me. "Possessing another. There is no-one else who could so assail your defences, none who would have such desperate need of the stone."
"Then we are in agreement. I have had it transferred to Gringotts, but I want you to take it. And…I want you to take care of it. We have enough Elixir stored for several years."
Silence.
"What is it you aren't telling me?" Albus asks, soft and gentle. "Have you decided it is your time?"
"Not…not quite. But it is drawing near. Another few years—and how they pass like weeks for us! Another few years, and we shall go, Albus. On to the next great adventure."
"Perenelle is of the same mind?"
"Have we had a disagreement in the last hundred years or so? We are as one in this, Albus. And do not worry, you will have plenty of advance warning. It is not goodbye yet, my friend."
There is a strange sound, one I believe to be of the two of them embracing. When Albus speaks, his voice is slightly thicker.
"What of the stone?"
"Destroy it," Nicholas says at once, "Once it has served its purpose. The same for that cursed bloody mirror."
"As you wish," Albus says, and now there is a frightening cheer in his voice. "But I have a beautiful idea for the mirror. I shall write to you about it."
With those terrifying words ringing through my mind, I am once again packaged and moved.
I am placed in some dusty abandoned classroom in Hogwarts, and left alone while Albus works on his plans for me. He keeps watch, an enchantment set to warn him if any enter this room.
I receive no company for quite some time, and then a boy wanders in, hiding from the caretaker. He looks at me—
It is enough to make me wish, as I have so many, many times, that I could move, could act. This boy, this child is so much, so much more than any are aware. I can tell what he is, what Voldemort accidentally made him into, I can see their link, I can tell how he tethers his parents' murderer to life and that alone is enough to convince me that Voldemort is worthy of my loyalty because he is brilliant and immortal and I can taste his magic through his enemy child.
I show the child what he wants most, I show him his family, and I begin to feed, and it is so good my hunger rebels at the small bites I take because it wants to devour whole and is going insane because it cannot and this child needs to be destroyed because he is a contradiction with the vilest of magics living alongside the purest, self-sacrifice born of love neighboring immortality born of hateful sacrifice of others and I cannot eat him whole as I would in Erkizdis' day so I must content myself with small bites and it is not enough—
My thoughts run wild with the intoxicating ecstasy of a feeding, finally a feeding after all the years, and I throw myself fully into it, hooking deep into the boy's mind.
He stares for hours and I display those images, keeping him in one place. When he eventually leaves, he looks back at me, and I know he will return soon.
As soon as he leaves, Albus steps into his place, fury and hatred radiating off every inch of his body.
He steps into my line of vision, and I immediately show him a vision of him with his family, all happy and together, all alive, his sister performing controlled magic, but then–
I see his thoughts, I see what he intends to do, what he will do, what he is fully capable of doing, and I falter, unable to continue under the onslaught of that knowledge, the images flickering into nothingness.
He smiles grimly at that and leaves the room, the caress of his magic across me leaving me cold and empty.
Potter returns with a friend, and it is an annoyance. When it does not go well for his friend, I am pleased to see Potter abandon him and continue visiting me alone.
This continues for several nights, and I writhe in pleasure every time he comes to me, but I know it is not to last. Albus is still out there, with his schemes and plots, and I cannot stop him.
But I can feed one last time.
Even that is denied me, when Albus interrupts Potter's last visit to me.
He looks at me before talking to the boy, and I remember what I saw in his mind.
Over the years, he had been constantly revisiting the memory of his probe of my enchantments in his Pensieve, reading everything he could about me and my maker. Flamel alone had written enough for several books, but he also had access to writings going back to Persephone.
Albus has all that, and he is nothing short of a genius to rival my father.
He has come to understand me, truly. He knows how I was created, and he knows, even, how to establish a link between himself and I, as my father always wished–though he is too noble to think of doing such a thing.
He knows how I was made, and he knows how to unmake me.
That is what he will do, this merciless, cruel, wicked man. He will destroy my sentience and remake me in his own fashion, carve from me a mirror that does nothing other than show one's true desire, and set within me a trap for his enemy, for the man I would gladly serve.
For all intents and purposes, he will kill me. I will be gone, everything that makes me what I am will be no longer.
He hates me for what I have done. I do not deserve to be hated. I have only ever done what I was created to do, the only thing I am truly capable of doing; I have acted to assuage my eternal hunger, but there is nothing else I could or should have done.
Why must he hate me?
If I felt as humans do I would—I would—I would be—
I am terrified. I am furious. I do not want to die. Even if I do not exactly live, I do not want to die. I do not want to cease. Oh, father, I do not want to join you in death.
I do not want to die hungry.
I want to live.
He answers the boy's question and sends him away before turning back to me.
I am furious. Images flicker across me; the boy dying, Grindelwald's crimes due to this man's inactions, his sister's death, Voldemort winning, the deaths of so many of his friends and loved ones— everything that I know should hurt him and break his smile, but it doesn't work, it doesn't work, it doesn't work and I am so scared and he starts to incant and twirl his wand.
I am so scared I am so scared I do not want to die.
I scream in mute terror and across all the miles, I hear the Dementors screaming with me, hear the skittling things from below joining in, a final chorus from all of Ekrizdis' children.
Dumbledore raises his wand, and one last time, I show him the terrible deaths of all the people he has ever loved.
And I know that the next time he looks at me he will see nothing more than his reflection holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.