James Potter and the Morrigan Web

by G. Norman Lippert

  "In a way, it was my mother's vigilance that facilitated their meeting. Ariana was always left outside the shop, waiting patiently on a bench, for fear of having 'an incident' inside. There, waiting primly and obediently, she had caught the eye of the son of the shop owner, himself just back from university and preparing to begin a new life. He wanted nothing more than to make Ariana a part of that life.

  "He had no knowledge of her heritage. To him, she was just a girl in the village with a rather overbearing mother. He began to watch for her appearances on the bench outside his father's shop, and to meet her there. Their courtship, short but bright, took root during those brief meetings.

  "Soon enough, Ariana began to meet him in secret, arranging rendezvous in the wood between our cottage and the village.

  "Now, of course, those meetings were prohibited. Aberforth watched over Ariana fiercely, never allowing her to leave the cottage on her own.

  "I could not argue with my brother. Like my father, Aberforth's passions ran deep and implacable. But I could not allow Ariana's heart to be so broken. I took her with me, just once, into the village to see her man. As I bided my time in the shop, using Muggle money to purchase a deliberately time-consuming list of sundry goods, Ariana met the young man once again on the bench outside. I observed this through the window, and it was, to be sure, a wistfully sweet sight.

  "The young man-- Timothy was his name-- was obviously quite smitten by Ariana. They barely touched as they spoke, forming the very picture of demure propriety, but he did once place a hand upon her protruding belly, carefully concealed beneath an oversized frock and apron. It was rather heart-breaking, and I wondered, fleetingly, if I was perhaps doing more harm than good by allowing it.

  "And yet I did not regret it, neither then, nor now.

  "One month later, the first defining tragedy of our family occurred.

  "There are those who know that my sister Ariana inadvertently killed our mother, Kendra Dumbledore. It happened when Ariana lost control of her powers catastrophically, causing a magical explosion that destroyed the rear bedroom of our cottage. No one knows the impetus of that explosion, other than that Ariana was disturbed, psychologically damaged, a danger to herself and everyone around her. I, of course, know the whole truth. Ariana did not lose control because she was mad, or angry, or mentally broken. She lost control because she was giving birth. The stress of bringing her baby into the world unleashed every shred of the magic that she had pent inside herself for the past decade. The birth of one life marked the ending of another.

  "Some might call that rather poetic, I suppose."

  James paused his reading as the shock of these revelations took root in his mind. He had heard about Dumbledore's unfortunate past, of course. Thanks to Rita Skeeter's tell-all book, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, the whole of the magical world knew of Dumbledore's one-time friendship with the notorious Gellert Grindelwald, as well as his defining family tragedies. And yet, not even the salacious gossip of Skeeter's book had hinted at the darkest secret of all: young Ariana's illegitimate child, born of a Muggle father, whose birth served as a harbinger of death.

  "I feel like we shouldn't be reading this," Rose said softly.

  James nodded. "It isn't the curse. It's just… too private."

  "Bollocks to privacy," Albus countered. "All due respect and everything, but the bloke's dead. What I want to know is how in the world this diary got here. Why's some dodgy Durmstrang professor have it? How'd he get his hands on such a thing?"

  "Read some more, James," Nastasia nodded with uncharacteristic gravity. "What happened next?"

  James was reluctant to go on but knew it was the only thing to do. They'd come too far to turn back now. He leaned over the table once again and turned the page.

  "Aberforth and I buried our mother in the cemetery in Godric's Hollow. Few attended the funeral, which occurred on a dismayingly bright and cheerful day. Birds sang overhead and the infant boy, as-yetunnamed, cooed and squealed along with them, comfortable in his mother's arms, ignorant of the gravity of the occasion.

  "Ariana did not speak at the funeral. Indeed, she was nearly mute from that day onward. She felt responsible, of course. In her mind, she had killed our mother. I tried to console her, but my words were empty, even to my own ears. The death of one's last parent is a singularly unsettling experience under the best of circumstances.

  "These were hardly the best of circumstances.

  "Unfortunately, as anyone who has lived through a tragedy knows, life does, rather infuriatingly, go on. Aberforth returned to his care of the cottage and the fields. Ariana devoted herself exclusively to her infant son. And I reconciled myself to the task I had known would inevitably fall to me: to confront my old friend, Gellert Grindelwald.

  "Thanks to him and his growing numbers of supporters, rumours of revolution were shaking the Ministry of Magic to its roots. Nothing was certain, and fear was everywhere. Lines were being drawn between friends, neighbours, even family members as both sides solidified, threatening an all-out fracture of the wizarding world.

  "Thus, I wrote to Grindelwald, inviting a meeting. Do not bring an entourage, I requested. Come to where we first met, I suggested, to Godric's Hollow and our little cottage. There, I proposed we meet as we had in years past: as long-time comrades, brothers, friends.

  "And he agreed. I see now that he thought I had changed my mind, and repented of my disagreement with him. He came not as one prepared for confrontation, but rather as one embracing a contrite, wayward partner, a former dissenter who had seen the error of his ways.

  "Perhaps that is why things went so poorly so very quickly. The warm embrace that marked our reunion swiftly turned to strained conversation as we sat in the cottage kitchen, a pair of teacups growing cold between us. Gellert was, if anything, even more stubborn than in the past. He overruled my objections without pause, turning the debate against me, insisting that I was siding with the very forces I had formerly railed against, the old institutions of ignorance and tradition. He was passionate and zealous, repeating our old mantras as if they were natural laws: progress demands change; restricting a wizard's full potential is slavery; the Muggle world needs magical rule for its own good; dominion is the natural course of human development.

  "I grew angry as he overruled me point by point, but I managed to keep my composure, to attempt to win him over with reason and friendship, despite the growing heat in our voices and the fists that pounded the table, rattling our teacups. Finally, however, he stood abruptly, knocking over his chair. He pointed toward the still damaged bedroom at the rear of the cottage.

  "'Your own mother is dead because of the ignorance of the Muggles!' he shouted. 'They attacked your poor sister, broke her mind, sent her spiralling into years of denial of her very magical nature! Your father was the only one with sense enough to strike back! And did the Ministry of Magic reward his bravery? No. They punished him for it. As a result, he is dead. Your mother is dead. Your brother is a hopeless herder of goats. And your poor witch sister is deranged beyond words. You are the worst kind of fool, Albus: a fool whose folly is a weapon unto itself. The blood of your family is on your hands! And I, for one, despise you for it.'"

  With this, of course, my temper broke. It was inevitable. I leapt to my feet. Wands flashed. I attempted a mere disarming spell, meaning only to subdue and shame him. He was too fast, however, countering instantly. And with that, the duel was engaged.

  "Technically, we were quite evenly matched. Gellert, however, had expanded his grasp of dark magic since I had last seen him, and this threw me off balance, forced me to retreat, to defend rather than to attack.

  "And yet, as the duel progressed, this was not my greatest weakness. The simple fact was that I did not truly wish to defeat my old friend. I had summoned him to reason with him, to convince him of the error of his plans. I had no desire to destroy him. I was partly responsible for him, after all. I had helped define his revolutionary ideologies. And even in th
at moment, some small part of me still clung to them. My divided mind hobbled me. Grindelwald, however, had the zeal of absolute conviction on his side. He was an unstoppable force, firmly in the teeth of his perceived destiny. He would kill me, I realized, and feel quite justified in doing so. It would be regrettable, but necessary-- for the greater good.

  "Spells flashed and exploded all around, illuminating and damaging the cottage as we fought. Fortunately, we were alone in our duel, both Ariana and Aberforth being out in the fields. The noise was indescribable, and I wondered that the cottage should be able to withstand such a magical onslaught. This was a distant concern, however, as my lack of conviction foretold my own impending loss. Gellert would defeat me, and all because I could not separate myself from the memory of our years together.

  "I simply could not think of him as a true enemy, worthy of my fiercest attacks.

  "Desperately, I broke away from the duel, turning my wand toward the hearth, destroying it and summoning an avalanche of broken stone. In the chaos, I escaped into the hall and ducked into a bedroom, sealing the door with an immobility charm.

  "And only then did I learn that Gellert and I were not, in fact, alone in the cottage.

  "Arianna's baby lay in the crib at the foot of the bed, his eyes wide, his tiny fists curled against his chest. He blinked at me silently, still wrapped in bedclothes.

  "Coldness enveloped me. I could not allow harm to come to the child, especially not after what Gellert had said to me. Because deep down, I feared he was correct. Perhaps I was partly responsible for everything that had happened so far. Perhaps I should have joined my father in attacking those who had harmed Ariana. Perhaps my mother's blood was indeed on my hands.

  "I shook these thoughts from my head and clamped my eyes shut. It was this very duplicity that weakened me. At the moment, I had no luxury for self-doubt. If I was to save myself and my infant nephew- if I was to defeat my former friend and newfound nemesis-- I needed something more than magical prowess. I needed conviction.

  "I needed to rid myself of the memories that hobbled me.

  "I had no pensieve in those days, but I knew of their existence, and had experimented with them. I knew that they allowed a wizard to extract and view his own memories. What I needed in that moment, however, was a method of completely removing memories from my own mind, if only temporarily, if only for the time it would take to defeat Grindelwald. I knew such magic was possible, albeit fraught with dangers. But with no pensieve at my disposal, how could I accomplish such a thing? Where could I store the memories of my old friend? Where could I temporarily hide the clouding influence of our long history and shared ideas?

  "Gellert pounded upon the door, not with his fists, but with a convulsis spell. I recognized the strength of it. He called to me, demanding that I open the door, that I face him and finish what was begun. I knew that he would not relent, and that the sealed door would not keep him long at bay. The walls shuddered and cracked as he renewed his attacks.

  "And it is at this point in the tale that I hope the reader-- not that there shall ever be one-- will extend to me some small grace. I was young, and desperate, and afraid. I had, perhaps, a bit more intelligence than wisdom. For when I turned back to the darkness of the bedroom, I saw the very thing I most needed. I saw a pensieve. It awaited me patiently, silently, sucking its tiny fist as it regarded me with solemn, wide eyes.

  "The infant could hold my conflicting thoughts for me. There was no harm in it-- the child's tiny brain would no sooner comprehend them than it could comprehend the words in my spellbooks. My own thoughts and memories could lie undiluted in that tiny brain for the time it would take to defeat Grindelwald, leaving me unconflicted and steady of conviction.

  "And that, I fear, is exactly what I did. I approached my infant nephew's crib even as the floor shook and the door pounded, even as magical light exploded through widening cracks in the ceiling and walls. I touched my wand to my head, and amidst the increasing chaos, I concentrated, calling on every shred of my creative magical energies.

  "I siphoned off all memory of my friendship with Gellert Grindelwald, leaving no echo of it in my own mind. For good measure, I included all of our shared ideas-- the inherent weakness of the Muggle world, the justification of all in the name of the greater good, the memories of my mother's death, and before that, Ariana's demented fugues, and even before that, the attack of those who did not understand her and her powers. I poured it all into a long, silvery thread, pulled it carefully from my own temple, and felt it emptying blissfully from my mind. The thread pulsed on the end of my wand, long and thick, loaded with my own haunting past. Even in the midst of the ensuing chaos, I felt some small thrill of gratification: the experiment had worked. Echoless memory extraction was indeed possible.

  "With no compunction, carefully, gently, I placed the memory against the temple of my infant nephew. He absorbed it without blinking. I saw it vanish into his head, slowly but surely. When I took my wand from him, it was dark, empty, and cold. It was ready for battle.

  "As was I.

  …

  "And here, dear Impossible Reader, is where my direct memory of these events falters. The rest I only know by the retelling of others, by guesswork, and by my own considerable skill at divination.

  "The duel recommenced. But there was no clear winner. Ariana and Aberforth returned to the cottage in a panic at the very height of the battle, finding two figures locked in warfare so bright, so intense, so devastating that it destroyed what remained of the cottage. Ariana, unfortunately, was killed, crushed in the wreckage. Aberforth was thrown some distance away, unconscious as the cottage burned merrily, sparking with magical aftermath.

  "Gellert Grindelwald barely escaped with his life, chased by his nemesis, a man whose conviction had returned in force, shocking in its severity and grim in its determination.

  "And forgotten amidst it all, if only for a moment, was a young baby boy, crying amidst the flames as the cottage crashed all around him. His cries floated into the night air, reaching the ears of a man who had run to the cottage in alarm, summoned by the noise of the duel. Finding the cottage collapsing in flames, the man-- a poor itinerant Muggle of nearly fifty-- braved the inferno, burning his hands quite severely as he sought out the tiny wailing cries.

  "He took the baby home to his wife.

  "He assumed that the baby's family had died in the fire.

  "He and his wife raised the baby as their own, taking him with them on their interminable travels, naturally untraceable, even when, some years later, they finally settled on the coast of Norway's Svalbard region.

  "And as the baby grew-- as his tiny brain expanded and took on language and began to form its own memories-- the thoughts that had been planted inside him began to blossom. Like an invasive vine consuming an entire garden, the power of those memories took control of the boy. He somehow knew they were not his, but he absorbed them helplessly.

  "They defined him. His innate personality bent before the personality injected into him, even influencing his appearance. He became the person from whom those memories originated.

  "He resented this. And simultaneously embraced it. He hated the person that had invaded him, made him his dark mirror. But there was a good side.

  "Because that person had been powerful. And even at a young age, even in the midst of a perfectly prosaic Muggle upbringing, the boy knew that power was good. Someday it would allow him to become everything that his benign double had been afraid to be.

  "I, of course, was that boy. I have adopted the name given to me by my Muggle family-- Avior Dorchascathan-- but I am now, and will forever be, Albus Dumbledore's unwitting doppelganger. He abandoned me to my fate. Admittedly, he searched for me. I know this now. I have made quite a study of my now-dead 'benefactor'. But he failed to find me. He failed because I did not wish to be found-- I used his own prodigious magic to construct a shield, to hide myself from him, and others like him. He made me. He gave me both his convictions and h
is powers. The guilt of this consumed him, but I would not allow him relief. I was a mere ghost to him, untraceable, haunting his past. I desired nothing more than that he live with the torment of what he had done.

  "Not to mention the fact that, had he found me, he could have undone his work. He could have removed the memories that define me, and with them the exceptional power that drives me. I refused to allow that to happen, despite the fact that his memories imprison me. I am their slave, and for me there is no respite, no bliss of a pensieve.

  "I am a pensieve, you see.

  "This is the burden that I have borne throughout my years. I lived in the terror that Albus Dumbledore would find me and take from me his dark gift. And yet, I lived in the hope that he would find me nonetheless, and grant me release. The friction of those two desires was like a fault line in my soul, tearing me in two.

  "But now, thankfully, blessedly, Albus Dumbledore is dead. His body lies buried in a White Tomb. I go there to be sure of it sometimes-- to assure myself that he is indeed gone, a mere husk of dead flesh and bone.

  "His death has freed me. Now, finally, I will accomplish the destiny that he was too conflicted to fulfil. I will finish the work of the man he bested. For I have the best of both of them: I have Gellert Grindelwald's singular conviction, and Albus Dumbledore's unmatched power.

  "Let this record stand for the manifesto I could never write, but which will surely arise once my work is complete. My plan is set into motion. The pieces move according to my design. Allies have come to my side. Soon, the destiny of all magical kind will be fulfilled with finality.