The head nearest him reared back between its furled wings. The beak split open, revealing rows of tiny pointed teeth, and the creature hissed, exhaling a foul-smelling mist.
"Holy--!!" Albus spat, leaping back and waving his hands to disperse the Jiskra's wet, acrid breath. "What the bloody hell was that!?"
"Defence mechanism," Nastasia giggled. "Another name they go by is 'Deathbreath'. It's a good thing the other head's asleep."
James kept a safe distance from the monstrous bird-thing. "Dumbledore had his Phoenix," he mused darkly. "Avior has… this thing."
Near the enormous cage on its stand, a large wooden desk was covered to overflowing with parchments, inks, books, instruments, and, strangely, an oversized wizard chess set. James approached this, examining the pieces where they stood in mid-play on the board. The black figures seemed to be made of ebony, while the white figures sparkled in the firelight like diamond.
"Someone really likes their board games," Albus said as he joined James near the desk. "Who's winning, do you think?"
James shook his head. "Ralph would know. He's the chess player, not me."
"Too bad Ralph wasn't invited to this little party," Albus shrugged, turning away.
"Neither were you," James mumbled grumpily. In truth, he would have preferred Ralph under the Cloak than Albus. He leaned closer to the chess set, intrigued. The figures seemed strangely familiar. He studied the ebony king where it stood on its square. It was tall, robed, with a hood covering most of its face and thin, knuckly hands protruding from its sleeves. He gasped with recognition.
"What?" Rose whispered immediately. "What did you find?"
"Come here!" James gestured, not tearing his eyes from the board. "Look!"
Rose joined him, huddling shoulder to shoulder. She leaned over the board with a puzzled expression. James glanced at her. "Do you see it? The ebony king?"
Rose studied the figure for a moment, and then clapped her hands over her mouth. "It's that horrible wizard we ran into in New Amsterdam!" she said through her fingers. "The Collector!"
"The new American vice president," James nodded. "But look next to him. Look at the Queen."
Rose leaned closer, her eyes bright, worried. "Is that…" She frowned, confused. "Who is it?"
James looked down at the tall feminine figurine, resplendent in long robes, her carved hair falling down her back in waves and her proud chin raised. The eyes were tiny green emeralds. "It's the Lady of the Lake," he said firmly. "I'd recognize her anywhere."
Rose's frown deepened as she studied the figure. "Are you… are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure," James answered. He glanced aside at his cousin. "Why?"
Rose seemed reluctant to answer. "Because… well, to me… she sort of seems like..." she looked aside at him, her eyes bright in the darkness. "Like Petra."
James opened his mouth to protest, but as he did so he dropped his eyes to the chess board again. Carved in black ebony, the figure's cascading hair did suddenly look like Petra's dark locks. The raised chin could be seen as determined rather than proud. The eyes now seemed to be pale blue amethysts.
"Who are the figures on the other side?" Rose asked, changing the subject. "It's hard to tell. What are they made of? Crystal? Diamond?"
James leaned closer. Firelight played on the facets of the opposing figures, obscuring their details. The king was tall, with unruly hair and a pair of tiny, unmistakable spectacles. As if there was any doubt about the identity of this figure, a tiny lightning bolt glowed faintly, etched onto its forehead. Rose saw this at the same time as he. She grabbed his elbow.
"It's your dad!" she whispered. "And the queen! It's… is that… my mum?"
But James shook his head slowly, tensely. "No, Rose… That's not your mum. That's--"
"Jackpot!" Nastasia's voice suddenly sang out. "I think you're all going to want to see this!"
James looked up, following the sound of Nastasia's voice. He was about to tell her that what she'd found certainly couldn't compare to the eerily familiar chess pieces, but closed his mouth as the pink-haired girl parted a heavy, intricately embroidered curtain. Beyond it, a blue torch flickered to life, illuminating a tiny, circular alcove. The space was entirely empty but for a high wooden table and, upon it, a small book. Nastasia glanced back at them with a crooked smile. "I may be mistaken," she said, "But I think that… is a diary."
James glanced at Rose, whose face was still unusually pale. Together, they rounded the desk and approached the curtained alcove. Albus joined them there. As one, the four students crept inside, surrounding the tiny table.
The book was surprisingly small, its page edges rough and thick, its cover made of deeply tanned leather. To James' eye, it did indeed look like a sort of personal journal or notebook.
"You found it, Nasty," Albus said, nudging Nastasia. "You do the honours and open it up."
"Not me," she replied, taking a step backward. "I'm all for snooping around and all, but I smell curse on that thing." She glanced at James, and for the first time there was something like fear in her expression.
He shuddered and turned back to the book. "Well," he gulped. "What else did we come here for?"
Quickly, before he could reconsider, he reached forward and touched the leather cover, bracing himself. Nothing happened. He glanced back at the others.
"Make with the reading, already!" Albus declared. "What, are you hoping it'll suck you into its pages or something?"
The moment broke. James rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the book. He flipped back the cover carefully, revealing a creamy blank page. Was the writing invisible, perhaps? He stared at it, waiting for something to happen. When it didn't, he turned the first page, then the next. There, on the third page, was a neat column of handwriting. He leaned over it. In a low, tense voice, he began to read.
"This is an account of the unspoken and hidden life and times of…" he paused as a wave of coldness fell over him, chilling him to his heels. "Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore!"
Behind him, Rose gasped.
"Holy hinkypunks," Albus said in an awestruck voice. "My namesake! The Big Al himself!"
"Hush," Nastasia said quietly. "Go on, James."
James nodded. Taking a deep breath, he continued. "I fear that this shall not be a happy account, and it is quite possibly as private a record as has ever existed, chronicled by my own hand for whatever peace of mind it may offer. The memories caged in these written words would much more cheerfully be relegated to the comfort of the pensieve, hidden away and forgotten. But alas, as will soon be revealed, that is an impossible luxury forbidden to this woeful tale.
"But first, a forewarning for anyone who, either by mistake or subterfuge, finds themselves viewing these words: as you peer into the void, be assured that the void peers into you. Let it be known that by reading this account, I shall be reading your thoughts, and marking you. The curse that will result shall not be on my head-- indeed, I may not even wish you harm-- but it will befall you nonetheless. Some costs cannot be paid with other than blood. For your sake, and my peace of mind, turn back now."
James took an involuntary step back from the table and the leather diary.
"Called it," Nastasia said faintly.
"Should we go on?" Rose asked, her voice nearly a whisper.
"Oh good grief," Albus rolled his eyes. "It's just a standard warning curse. We Slytherins put them on everything, up to and including our to-do lists. Only first years are afraid of them."
"But this is the diary of Albus Dumbledore!" Rose countered. "He wasn't just some Slytherin with a power complex. He was one of the most powerful wizards ever!"
"Fine, whatever," Albus shrugged tersely. "Back out now. Let's head back home and do our Arithmancy homework, what do you say?"
Nastasia giggled again, and then nudged James gently forward. "Dumbledore's dead and buried," she said. "He can't curse anyone anymore. Go on, James. Keep reading."
"Easy for you to
say," he mumbled. And yet, he knew that Nastasia and Albus were right. This is what they had come for, after all. He used his finger to find his place on the page again and resumed reading.
"I suppose one could say that I grew up in a happy home, in that there were times of simple, uncomplicated joy. I abided with my mother, Kendra, after the imprisonment of my father, Percival, a man I only dimly remember but have always known by the rather confused legacy he left behind. He was sentenced to Azkaban after attacking a cabal of Muggle boys-- an act of fatherly vengeance. The boys had traumatized my young sister, Ariana, over a display of simple, childlike magic. This is what is known.
"What is not known is that I blamed my father for his absence in the years to follow. His act of revenge on those who had devastated his only daughter was understandable, but thoughtless. It took him from us. And I cannot but think that, if he had remained, if his blind rage had not overwhelmed his prudence and sent him to prison, this unfortunate tale would have ended much differently.
"For instance, my father would not have liked Gellert Grindelwald. Had he been there, he'd have said Gellert was a boy 'with airs', a pompous, talented, young aristocrat who enjoyed, more than anything, hearing himself speak. I know this because my mother told me so on many occasions, and I remembered my father well enough to know that she was quite correct. It was this very thing, most likely, that drove me to befriend young Gellert Grindelwald, despite his careless arrogance and heady delusions of grandeur. He was living with his aunt for the summer, having been expelled from Durmstrang Academy for recklessness and rabble rousing. That fact alone would have prompted my father to forbid any fraternization with Gellert, but my father, quite simply, was not there. He had betrayed all of us by being sent to Azkaban. Indeed, mine was a small boy's hurt buried under a young man's rebellion, and this had but one inevitable result: since my father would not have approved of Gellert Grindelwald, I intended to wholeheartedly embrace him.
"And it was not difficult. Gellert and I were very much of one mind: idealistic, ambitious, ready to change the world, and damn the age-old institutions that held us back. Of course, many of our ideas were foolhardy. Some of them were, in point of fact, dangerously naive, even fascistic. But we were young and essentially powerless. Rhetoric was free, without consequence, and we revelled in it.
"I spent more and more of my time with Gellert as I finished my own schooling and embarked on careless adventures. We pursued the vaunted Deathly Hallows. We campaigned for change in the laws of Secrecy, extolling the mutual benefits of full disclosure to the Muggle world. Besides being a formidable wizard, Gellert was a gifted speaker, using his natural charm and magnetism to gather a following everywhere we went. Within two years, we had earned enough of an audience to no longer be merely young men toying with revolution. When I looked around us, I saw that the revolution was no longer hypothetical. It was swiftly becoming a reality.
"And I began to doubt.
"It was an exquisitely uncomfortable time for me. Gellert did not understand my reservations, of course. I tried to persuade him, discovering perhaps a step too late that I was, despite my best efforts, my father's son after all. On the most instinctive level, I sensed the flaws and dangers in our plan. I realized Gellert's idealism was driven less by altruism and more by ego. He did not merely wish to benefit the Muggle world, but to oversee them. To him, they were rather like a race of talking pets-- friendly animals for which one feels some affection and concern, but which one must eventually rule for the greater good of all.
"I could not debate Gellert in public, for I had no wish to undermine him. I hoped to persuade him in private, to subtly alter the direction of the revolution that was bubbling around us. But he was immune to doubt. His unshakable conviction, bolstered by both his natural confidence and his singular magical prowess, was beyond the reach of my persuasion. Eventually, regrettably, we parted ways.
"Disillusioned and defeated, I returned to Godric's Hollow only to find that my absence, like that of my father, had taken a marked toll on my family. My mother appeared to have aged a decade. Aberforth had become sullen and angry. Ariana was, if anything, even more withdrawn, buried so deep in the web of her own haunted memories that even I could not always coax her to speak. In the years after being attacked by the boys in our old neighbourhood, Ariana continued to stifle her magic, to compress it deep inside her so that it occasionally burst forth involuntarily. This was sometimes harmless-- mere flashes of light or freakish rains of frogs outside the cottage windows-- and sometimes dangerous, with crockery hurtling suddenly against walls, fire erupting from the hearth, or the entire cottage shaking on its foundation as if in the teeth of an earthquake. It had always been bad, but it was getting far worse. I understood this more than anyone in my family. Magical power is like any other energy: essentially indestructible. If it is not spent, it does not go away, but builds, creating pressures that, in even the most benign cases, inevitably burst forth.
"The most disturbing detail of my return home, however, was in learning that my father had died in Azkaban. This simultaneously seemed the least obvious but most pervasive influence over our household.
"Aberforth stubbornly refused my help in caring for the cottage and our meager land. In my heart, I did not blame him, although my youth would not allow me to admit it. I had been gone for nearly three years, after all, leaving my brother to manage everything on his own. Nonetheless, I did what I could, attempting to relegate myself to a life of simple hard work, at least for a time.
"And yet, as the days passed, I sensed an abiding secret in our home. My return to Godric's Hollow had complicated the lives of my family in some deep, unspoken way. It needled at me with a sense of something under the surface, driving Aberforth's rage, deepening the lines on my mother's face, pushing Ariana further into the fugue of her thoughts and the increasing pressure of her stifled powers.
"Three weeks after my return, as night settled beyond the windows of the cottage and the fire crackled in the hearth, I confronted them all, asking to know what they were keeping from me.
"Even now, quite honestly and sincerely, I wish I had not. I have devoted my life to the accumulation of knowledge, and yet if there is one thing I have learned that I wish I had known on that night, it is this: some things are best left unknown. Sometimes curiosity is a poison, not only for he who drinks it, but for everyone around him.
"I had not yet learned this. Thus, I demanded that my family tell me their poison truth. They did not wish to. They resisted me passionately, but I would not be denied. My frustration at not being able to change Gellert Grindelwald's mind made me stubbornly insistent to have my way with my much more pliable family.
"And in the end, after much shouting, after Aberforth had stormed out into the night, not even closing the door behind him, with my mother sobbing by the fire and Ariana kneeling before her, silhouetted so that I could not even see her face as she spoke, it was she herself that told the tale.
"Ariana, my young sister, was with child.
"With that knowledge, I understood everything: Aberforth's worried rage, my mother's mounting fear, and Ariana's increasing instability. After all, what could cause more raw havoc in a woman's mind and body than the fundamentally visceral process of pregnancy?
"The father was a Muggle, a young man in the village. Ariana insisted that she loved him, that he understood her, and that she ardently desired to marry him. Aberforth patently refused this, of course, going so far as to threaten the young man if he so much as showed his face at the cottage door. My mother, for her part, was torn between desiring her daughter's happiness and the abject terror that, without the constant supervision of her family, Ariana would lose control of her stifled powers, with catastrophic results.
"In this, of course, she was quite unfortunately prophetic.
"On that night, the powder keg that was my family became fully known to me. Ariana was entering her third month with child, only just beginning to show the bulge of her belly. And as
the baby grew, so did the tension in the cottage.
"Ariana's uncontrollable fits became more pronounced. One morning, as the common sickness of pregnancy took her, she split the kitchen butcher block with a mere look. A week later, as she took to the weeds behind the cottage to wretch, a quantity of black ooze vomited from the chimney like a volcano of tar. It became more and more difficult to predict what might spawn one of Ariana's events, which subsequently made them much more difficult to manage.
"Aberforth spent his time out of the house, working the land, which left me and my mother to tend to Ariana. These were some of the most interminable and difficult months of my life. My only distraction, unpleasant as it was, was the news of my old friend Grindelwald. On his own, he had become a political power so pervasive that he threatened the Ministry of Magic itself. Those who followed him did so with a nearly fanatical devotion. Those who opposed him portrayed him as a totalitarian power-monger threatening not only the stability of society, but the very foundation of Muggle and magical coexistence.
"And in my heart, I knew that those fears were not unreasonable. Grindelwald would not deviate from his plan to eventually subjugate the Muggle world beneath his purportedly benevolent boot heel. He would not doubt himself, because he was utterly convinced that his goals were right and good. His mantra-- our mantra, if I am to be completely honest-- was the prevailing doctrine that anything was acceptable for the greater good. Of course, I now knew that the vilest evils in the world could be justified by that cause.
"I gradually came to accept the fact that, somehow, some way, my long-time friend and compatriot had to be stopped. And yet, this problem would have to wait. I had learned my lesson. The duty to my family was my first priority.
"And amazingly, in the midst of it all, there were still moments of beauty. The time I spent with my sister necessarily drew me closer to her than I had ever been. I began to understand her unconscious impetus to deny her powers. What had begun as a defence mechanism had become a habit so ingrained that it was insurmountable. She had erected a barricade in herself so strong that she herself could no longer breach it. But the young witch inside that barricade was still there, beautiful and charming and eerily intelligent, whenever I could coax her to show herself. We talked for hours at a stretch, and I began to realize something amazing: she truly did love the father of her child. She had met him on one of the frequent trips into the village, accompanied, as always, by the watchful eye of our mother.
James Potter and the Morrigan Web Page 53
