James Potter And The Morrigan Web (75 page)

“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.

“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 heartbreaking, 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-yet-unnamed, 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 that 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?