Magic of the Divine

“Lily,” Nicholas Flamel said. “Did Harry give you that bracelet?”

“It,” she said, her voice weak. “It’s tied to a reverse-portkey. Harry said it will change colors if the reverse-portkey is used.”

“A reverse-portkey?” Apolline Delacour repeated. “There is no such thing.”

“You would be correct five minutes ago,” Sir Gawain said. He had leaned forwards, staring at the bracelet in question. “I assume that our missing dinner guest enchanted it?”

Lily nodded. “He told me to give it to Sam, our son, and to tell him to only use it if his life was in danger.”

“Why would he give that to your son?” Fleur said. Harry Flamel was not known to be particularly friendly with the younger students when he attended Beuxbatons.

“Sam has a penchant for getting himself in sticky situations,” James said. “In his first year him and his friends tried to duel a troll, believe it or not. And it was not an isolated incident – Sam took up a little too much after his old man.”

“The Potters are very close friends of ours,” Penerelle added. “Practically family. Harry grew up—”

Penerelle paused as the house shook. The whole table stood up and moved to the foyer of the house.

When they got there, the group observed a dark staircase had emerged from where there once laid a marble floor. Fleur glanced around the room. The Flamel’s seemed shocked and worried as did the Potter and her parents. Sir Gawain, however, had mischievous smiled.

“Nicholas, I don’t suppose that is your doing?”

“No,” Flamel said.

“Penerelle?”

“No.”

“Then this must be the young Mr. Flamel’s handiwork. How exciting!” the Knight said as a moved to enter.

“What are you doing?” Fleur’s mother spoke.

“Investigating,” Sir Gawain answered. “To think a girl of your young age has lost all sense of adventure. I can only imagine what the young wizard has hidden below.”

“It’s trespassing,” her mother said.

The knight raised an eyebrow and looked towards the Flamels. Neither said anything nor moved to stop him, and he entered the staircase.

“I need to see,” Lily Potter said, entering the staircase and her husband and the Alchemist and Draughtess followed.

Fleur waited a second. She glanced at her father whose eyes had not left the staircase.

“Well, I’m going too,” she announced and took a step to follow. Nails dug into her arms, as her moth pulled her back towards her and Gabby. “I’m not a child anymore," Fleur said immediately.

“You don’t know what’s down there.”

“It’s probably just a hideout for him to hide things from his parents. Like lewd magazines or something,” Fleur said. She hoped it was anything but that, not that her mother needed to know. “Nothing will happen with a Lord and a Lady and a Knight of Camelot near.”

“Perhaps, I shall accompany our daughter,” her father said. “You can stay up here with Gabby.”

Fleur’s mother nodded, but the glare she gave her father promised that this was not the end of this. Fleur didn’t care; her father couldn’t deny her anything.

Together, they entered the dim staircase, and she heard her father sigh. “There’s no need to antagonize your mother like that Fleur.”

Fleur was glad that there was no light in the hallway, so her father could not see her rolling her eyes.

“The first time in my life something out of the ordinary happens, and she wants me to stay away like a useless princess.”

“She is right, Fleur. You are a brilliant young witch, the light of my life, but you are young and too eager.”

Fleur felt her fist clench in her hand. Too young! Yet Harry Flamel was old enough to whisk himself away with a Philosopher’s Stone and an enchanted blade.

It took nearly five minutes before they arrived at an opening. The room was dim, with a few sconces dotting the walls. She turned to her left and noticed a fence and handrail. The only reason to have a fence was because,

Fleur walked over and stared down into a hole as wide a quidditch pitch. “How deep does it go?” she said to herself.

"Miles, I suspect," Sir Gawain said. "Why not find out?" In an instant, the man was vaulting over the rail laughing as he plummeted into the depths of the grand cave.

Fleur watched in shock and turned back to where her father, the Flamels, and the Potters had congregated around a wall .

“Whats on the wall?” Lily Potter said.

“Magical artifacts,” the Alchemist answered. “Invaluable ones. That is the Tablet of Ruination and that is the a Fae runic dictionary.”

“Those should be on display at the Louvre,” her father said. “They must be fakes.”

“Harry’s a snob. He’d have no interest in fakes,” Penerelle said from where she stood further along the wall. “Everything here is the genuine article.”

“He’s a klepto,” Fleur said. Who new perfect Harry Flamel had a dark side?

“Not just that,” Minister Delacour said. “A criminal of the highest order.”

Harry’s parents said nothing.

“Flamel! Get down here," Sir Gawain's voice boomed from below.

“Group up,” the Alchemist.

Fleur and the others followed, linking hands. A second later, they were at the bottom of the chamber and face-to-face with Harry Flamel. His eyes were closed, and he was standing as straight as a soldier, unmoving, unbreathing.

Fleur blinked and looked left at… Harry Flamel. Her eyes trailed down the rest of the wall. She was wrong. Harry was not standing like a soldier at all. There were hundreds of Harry Flamel’s lined along the walls, stacked ten, fifteen, twenty deep like inventory at a shop.

“Bloody hell," James Potter said. “Since when was Harry into dolls?”

“Not dolls,” the Alchemist said. “Homunculi.”

“Also illegal,” her father muttered.

“That’s impossible though,” Fleur said. To create a Homunculus was a crowning achievement of any wizard – the type of magic won you awards. “Even if he could make one, it takes years. There's too many.”

“Not if you have a Philosopher’s Stone,” Sir Gawain said. “Yet, I do agree with the young Ms. Delacour here, the quantity is remarkable.”

“How many?” the Alchemist asked.

“I counted four-hundred stories all arranged like this one. As far as bodies, at least a hundred rows twenty deep.”

“Eighty million!” her father shouted. “That’s a country! An army! He could conquer France!”

“Don’t be hysterical,” Nicholas Flamel said. He had a hand touching one of the homunculi and was prodding at it with his wand. “They have no soul.”

“Then they are not homunculi,” Sir Gawain said.

“I would not go that far. They have something there – I don’t know what it is fully, the homunculus was never an interest of mine.”

“Make it one then,” Penerelle’s sharp tone spoke. “I don’t want to hear any of your riddles now.”

“Where there soul should be, they have directions.”

“Like a potion recipe?” James Potter asked.

“More like a map,” the Alchemist answered.

“So, what does that mean?” her father asked.

“I believe the first thing we can conclude is that they were not made to be an army to overthrow France,” Flamel said, looking directly at her father. “Not that he could, mind you. I doubt these homunculi would be even able to move on their own. They are puppets, replicas.”

“Why would he need that?” her father asked.

“They’re not replica’s,” Fleur interrupted. She was staring directly at one. “The eyepatch is on the wrong eye.”

She watched as the adults all turned again to the homunculi to verify her words. She was right, of course. She remembered a few years ago when Harry Potter had came back one day to their dining hall sporting the eye patch. He had said that he’d been injured in a potions accident, and indeed, there was a large scar that extended form the top of his brow to just beyond the eyepatch. But on the homunculus, there was nothing.

“He’s missing his scar, too,” she said. “Can you tell how old these are?”

“No more than three months."

Fleur felt her hand and she moved to touch the replica. She moved the eyepatch, expecting...

There was nothing. Just a normal closed eye.

“It’s completely—” she begun. All of a sudden she felt a splash of milky liquid, and where once stood an almost exact replica of Harry Flamel, there was now nothing but a pile of guts.

“Fleur!” her father screamed, as he rushed towards her. He waved his wand and the blood and guts whisked away.

“What did you do?” her father said.

“She didn’t do anything,” Sir Gawain said, staring at the mush. “That magic...”

“Oh my god,” Penerelle said. Fleur turned to Harry’s mother to see her stepping back. The homunculi that she was standing before had been sliced diagonally from left shoulder to right hip, and the top half of the homunculi was slowly sliding down, the top half and bottom half spilling over reds guts along the cut. After a second, the top fell to the side and the bottom's knees buckled.

As if a floodgate had broken, all the homunculi around them started to explode, slice, and burst into more and more disgusting deaths. In the span of a few seconds, the once full floor that they had entered had become a mausoleum to horror and disfigurement.

Fleur looked to the Alchemist. The man had fallen to the ground. In his hand, he held the hand from one of his sons’ homunculi.

“Nicholas, Nicholas,” his wife said. “Nicholas!”

“I understand,” he said. “Oh, Harry, where are you?”

The Alchemist never finished his thoughts, as the sound of her mother's voice reached the bottom of the pit.

“Nicholas, Penerelle. There’s some people at the door, they look like kids.”

Penerelle put a hand on the Alchemist’s shoulder. “Let’s go see.”

The Potters and her father grouped up to follow.

"Let's go, Fleur."

She looked at her father and hesitated.

“Why don't you go up without her,” Sir Gawain said. “I’ll bring her up in a few.”

Her father nodded, but she could tell he was not happy about it.

When they were gone, she watched as Sir Gawain approached a pile of blood and guts.

"Remarkable, isn't it?" he said.

"What?"

"The scale of a true Lord of Magic," he said. "Not just a Lord, but a Champion too."

"Harry's a Lord of Magic?"

Sir Gawain nodded. "And he will be one of the best, if her survives today."

Sir Gawain knelt down before the pile of guts and summoned a beaker, with a wave of his wand, the blood gathered into the glass. He then topped it off with a cork and stood.

“I think I’ll be needing this,” he said. He held out his arm to her. “Let’s return to the surface. I am curious about our most timely visitors.

Amazingly, they arrived just as the door had opened.

“Samuel Igneous Potter!” Lily Potter exclaimed. She closed the distance in an instant and had her son wrapped around in a hug. “I was so worried.”

“I’ll never do it again,” Sam said, tears streaming down his face. “I’ll follow the rules for the rest of my life. No sneaking out during curfew, no pranks, just boring school.”

Lily was nodding and hugging her son, but the other adults were not as excited and relieved.

“What did you three do?” James Potter said.

Sam Potter looked back at this father, fear in his eyes.

“Sam and Ron wanted to sneak into the Undercroft, Mr. Potter,” the girl said. “I was against it, of course, but I couldn’t convince them. So, I went with them in case they ran into trouble.”

“The Undercroft on Samhain?” Fleur wanted to shout at them for the absurdity.

First, there was this British girl who fashioned herself some sort of mastermind. She was a kid. Not even a teenager, if Fleur was correct. And then to go into the Undercroft, one of the most dangerous realms of the magical world, on Samhain of all nights.

“You’re all getting distracted,” Sir Gawain announced, stepping past Fleur and the Potters. “The important question is where Harry Flamel is.”

“The French kid?” the ginger asked. “Why would we know where he is?”

“Sam,” Lily spoke. “The bracelet I gave you was enchanted by Harry ‘

“Why would he do that?” Sam asked.

“So that wizard was Flamel?” the girl said.

“Bloody hell,” the ginger said.

“Answer the question,” James Potter said with a firm voice. “I’m already throwing the whole book at you, Sam. I’m sure the Grangers and the Weasleys will too."

“It wasn’t our fault,” Sam said. “We just thought they were dressing up.”

“Who?”

“Let me, Sam,” the girl said, she straightened her posture. “A few of the Upper Years had organized a trip to the Undercroft to go drinking, and using Sam’s cloak we followed them in. Originally, the plan was to follow the older kids, but then Ron and Sam saw this group of cloaked people scurrying about, so they decided to follow them.”

“Yes, follow the obvious criminals,” Sir Gawain said with a sigh.

“Sam and Ron followed them,” Hermione said with a sniff. “I merely went along to ensure they stayed out of trouble.”

“Great job,” Fleur said. “Whatever you three did went swimmingly.”

“We followed them until Ron tripped and the cloak fell off,” Sam said. “There I said it. Okay?”

“So, it’s my fault?”

“Yeah it is!”

“And then?” Nicholas Flamel prodded.

“I don’t know! All of a sudden, we were at the center of this arena of some sort and there were thousands of those cloaked wizards chanting. Someone threw a bunch of bones or something into a cauldron. Then suddenly, this guy was rising from the soup."

“Describe him,” Sir Gawain said, voice firm.

“I don’t know. It was dark. His skin was reddish," Sam said. "But I think it was because the cauldron he rose from was steaming.”

“This is not good,” Sir Gawain said.

“You’re thinking?” Flamel said.

Sir Gawain nodded.

“What did Harry do when he got there?” Sir Gawain said.

“So there was this wall of fire that the soup-wizard had conjured at us,” Ron said. “And he stopped it and sent it back at the wizard.”

“What do you think?” Nicholas asked.

Sir Gawain shook his head. “There are maybe a hundred or so wizards in the world who could incarnate themselves — there is little to say for this.”

“Is there anything else you remember?” Lily asked.

“Yeah,” the redhead said. “The frenchie knew the guy.”

“Knew him how?” Flamel said.

“The first thing he did was say his name when he landed.”

“And what was that?”

“I can’t remember,” Ron said. “But the wizard didn’t know who Harry was. Then he started monologuing about his life, accomplishments, and being some important lord or whatever.”

“He said he was a Lord?” Nicholas Flamel asked.

“Yes,” Hermione butted in. “He called himself the Lord of Curses, but I think he was making that up.”

The effect was immediate. Lily Potter burst into tears and wrapped her husband into a deep hug. The Flamels squeezed their hands together. Her mother and father looked as if someone had murdered their child. And Sir Gawain… for the first time in the night, Fleur saw the Knight finally present and serious. Gone was the mischievous grin and knowing smiles.

“By Merlin,” the knight said.

Fleur did not know the identity of the Lord of Curses. In fact, she had not known a Lord of Curses had existed. She knew of most of the major Lords and Ladies: Merlin, the Lord of Magic; Morgana, the Lady of Enchanting; Albus Dumbledore, the Lord of Transfiguration; Nicholas Flamel, the Lord of Alchemist; Gellert Grindelwald, the Lord of Necromancy; Eleanor of Arborea, the Lady of Truth; Genghis Khan, the Lord of War; and all the other Lords and Ladies they had memorized in school."

While she couldn’t remember all their names or all their titles, there was one things she was certain: a Lord of Curses did not exist.

“Father,” she whispered. “Who is the Lord of Curses?”

“The Herald of the Red Night and the Still,” he said. “Apprentice of Morgan Le Fay, Voldemort, Lord of Curses.”

Voldemort. A name that she had only seen on paper and tested with her tongue in solitude. The darkest wizard in the world, and the only wizard to have killed a Lord of Magic in the last twenty years – he killed five.

“We must find him Nicholas,” Penerelle said. “Get Albus and we will storm the Undercroft together.”

“You will die,” Sir Gawain said, his eyes staring at the children who had escaped the terror of the world. “Neither you nor your husband have skill for such a fight.”

“You dare,” Penerelle said, her wand out. “I may not have fought in centuries, but I am the same as Riddle, just as Nicholas is.”

“That’s it!” Ron said. “He called him Tom Riddle.”

Did the boy have any sense of tact?

“No, we are not,” Nicholas said with a sigh. “Riddle has felled greater duelists than you or I.”

“So, you'll just let him kill, Harry,” Lily said.

Fleur raised an eyebrow. While she agreed, she wouldn’t voice her opinion about someone else's child like that.

“We cannot do anything as we are.”

“That’s not what Dumbledore said.”

“Lily,” James Potter warned.

“Dumbledore promised. He swore to me.”

“Lily,” James Potter yelled. “Not now.”

“He said you cared and would risk your lives.”

“Lily!”

“Shut the fuck up, James!” she yelled. “I don’t care. I did not follow Dumbledore’s stupid plan and give my baby – our child – to the Flamel’s to raise just for them to give up. He promised me that they could keep him safe from Voldemort. Now at the first sighting of Voldemort, we find out that we gave up 20 years with our son for nothing.”

There was a moment of silence before hell broke loose.

“Harry’s my brother?” “Harry’s adopted?” “That’s fraud.” “Lily!” “Dude, you have a brother!”

“Silence,” Sir Gawain said, as he slammed his foot into the ground, shaking the land. “This hysteria has gone on far too long.”

“And what is it that you know?” Penerelle said, with a sneer.

“Harry Potter-Flamel, Flamel-Potter, or whatever you decide on calling him, is in grave danger. There is a chance he’s still alive due to the ingenious alchemy at work in the caverns below, but it is clear what flavor of magic is afoot. Harry will not live long.”

“All this talking is helpful though?” Fleur said.

“We will be unable to find him in the Undercroft. Not in time. And if we did, I do not know if we could win. It is simple, then, what we must do: bring Harry here.”

“But how?” Lily said.

Sir Gawain looked at them an expression of shock.

“You jest,” he said. He looked around to the same faces of confusion. “Even the Alchemist missed it. How low the standards are for modern wizards, indeed. Harry has already given us the methodology of his escape, resting in the young Mr. Potter’s hands.”

Fleur looked into the bracelet that Sam Potter clutched. “The reverse-portkey!”

“A single brain between the lot of you.” Sir Gawain walked up and took the band from Sam Potter.

““Harry said it only had one charge.”

“One use,” Sir Gawain said. “And it is all the difference. The magic and enchantments of this cube are whole. The answer to its single-use nature is more relevant as to how this cube knows who to transport. A portkey works by transporting those who are touching it. When taking into account Gramm’s Law of Intention, how does this Reverse-Portkey know who to transport?”

Fleur leaned in as she watched the Knight fiddle with the bracelet, magic flowing from his hand as the colors changed and shifted.

“Without the hints that Mr. Flamel provided, it would have taken me weeks to devise the source of this magical identification. To understand an enchantment devised by Albus Dumbledore is no easy feat, even for someone like Merlin. But then again, it must have also been something finite and not so elegant, else Harry would not have shared to Mrs. Potter that it had a single use.”

“Then, of course, my thoughts drifted back to that great cavern of his. Why did the doors open so? My first thought was perhaps he needed the staircase open and revealed for his magic to be able to be activated. But I dismissed that rather quickly. He was able to use those bodies to absorb and transfer the magical wounds his true body was receiving. And from the attestations of our foolish youth, it appears that it is crossing realms. No mere floor could stop such magic. And the way that the house shook so violently when they opened, he wanted us to find it.”

“Then, at the dining table, before Mr. Flamel was whisked off to the Undercroft, he did a particular piece of magic that was not the norm. The way he summoned his sword, it was at that moment that I knew he had dived deeply into the arcane.”

“He was so very careful, too,” Sir Gawain said. “Before we left the table, I checked the tablecloth and the knife, and he had used all of the blood in the summoning – clearly the work of a master.”

“And then, of course, it clicked. A practitioner of the arcane art of blood magic would know the value of his blood. So, out of protection, he provided the portkey with the minimum amount of blood it needed to function – thus, a single use. The reason why the cavern announced itself so proudly was because in it resided something that we needed to fuel his contraption: his blood.”

The knight was still fiddling with the magic.

“But of course, the timing does not line up,” Sir Gawain said. “Mr. Flamel revealed his laboratory minutes before the children arrived with his portkey. If he had a way to escape, why not take it with them?”

Fleur nodded.

“The answer to that was found by Ms. Delacour.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you had mentioned that the patch on the homunculi was on the wrong side; and while you had removed it and inspected his lack of scars, I investigated with more earnestness.”

“What did you find?”

“That Mr. Flamel has removed his left eye and replaced it with one from his homunculus.”

“But that is his working eyes?”

“That is what he wants you to think. Has anyone here ever seen his damaged eye?”

“Yes,” Penerelle said. “I examined it myself.”

“And how confident would you be in your ability to distinguish it from one of the thousands of fakes hidden beneath us? The truth is that Mr. Flamel has two working eyes, and that his real eye is the one hidden beneath his eyepatch, and his fake is the one he uses each day.”

“Then where is his other real eye?”

“Likely in a homunculus buried and hidden so far and deep we will never find. Alas, I am allowing myself to be distracted. The oddity of Mr. Flamel’s eyes are inconsequential to my theory, and I believe the truth of them will be revealed to us shortly.”

“As I was saying, Ms. Delacour was the cause of my epiphany, not intentionally, it just happened to splatter itself all over you. It was at that moment, when I observed all the homunculi exploding and dying in all those sorts of ways, when I truly understood the depths of our problem. There is only one magic of the sort that can render someone so many deaths so quickly: the most powerful of sorcery, a divine feat of magical prowess, magic’s souls, a d—”

“Domain,” Lily Potter said, speaking at the same time as Sir Gawain.

Sir Gawain raised an eyebrow. “It appears you know more than you let on, Mrs. Potter.”

“That explanation is barely an explanation,” Hermione said.

“Indeed, as for each of us it is different,” Sir Gawain agreed. “To even formulate a domain is a divine feat. It is supplanting your reality, your magic, onto the world; and inside that world you are a god. It is believed that all wizards, if dedicated enough, can craft their own domains, but the only ones in recorded history have been the Lords of Magic and the Knights of the Round Table. It is for this reason that I warned the Flamels that they would die.”

“It was then, as I realized that Mr. Flamel was now dueling inside a Lord of Magic’s domain, that he too would utilize a domain if he could. It was during this time that the doorbell rang. As I began to listen to these children’s story that I recalled a long-forgotten memory of a masked boy who had the most peculiar of domain in the realm of the Fae, no more than ten years ago.”

“It was incomplete and far from battle-ready, but in a second, I had watched a child weild magicks long since lost to time and memory.”

“Was it Harry?”

“I suspect so now,” Sir Gawain said. Sir Gawain stopped moving his hands. He pulled out his beaker and put a drop of blood onto the bracelet.

"Children and parents, take a step back," Sir Gawain said. Slowly he reached to his side and pulled out a sword from his hilt.

Magic overwhelmed Fleur sense. So much magic that it hurt to breathe. More magic than the Philosopher's stone.

"Whatever happens, do not enter this battle," Sir Gawain said. "Galahad," he said, tossing the bracelet away from the house and the others.

A second later, the devil founds it ways to France.