The Third Harvest Moon Ⅹ

The twisting and winding darkness faded away as Rowan lands on her feet in the headmaster's office for the last time. A loud boom of thunder is heard while lightning flashes and brightens the dark office. Someone fiercely pounds at the door as Marcellus emerges from the Headmaster's private chambers in a long nightshirt. "Coming!" Marcellus shouted as he held his wand high, before muttering under his breath as the candles in his office burst into flame lighting the headmaster's office.

Long, pudgy toes peek out from underneath Marcellus's nightshirt as he walks barefoot over the cold, stone floor without slippers. Wrenching the door open, Marcellus peers into the darkness only to see the soaking wet figure of his soon to graduate student. "Dry yourself, boy!" Marcellus worriedly barked as the timber in the hearth burst into flames and began to warm the chambers.

"The demon-," Bertie's teeth chattered with the cold.

Mumbling a curse under his breath and casts a charm on the boy to dry him, before transfiguring a robe that hung on the headmaster's armchair into a blanket. Shoving the boy into the armchair, and covering him with the transfigured blanket, Marcellus rubs his forehead and says, "It is very late, Bertie. What spirits have possessed you?"

"I bound it," Bertie mumbled with huge, dilated pupil eyes. "But it won't last, it will escape soon from its binds."

"What did you bind, boy?" Marcellus much more gently asked.

"The demon inside of me," Bertie whispered. "Beedle, he helped me, sir."

"The half-blood Ravenclaw?" Marcellus mumbled as he recalled the Ravenclaw in question.

"Yes, sir," Bertie stammered as he wrapped the blanket that much more around him, but despite the warmth of the blanket and the fire. He only felt freezing and numb unable to feel much of anything anymore.

Taking a seat across from the boy, Marcellus stared at the young, pale face of Bertie, who stares straight into the flames of the hearth without flinching. After a lapse of silence, Marcellus finally says, "Is the Demon close, Bertie?"

"It's slipped into every crevice, Headmaster," Bertie whispered. "I can no longer tell, where I end, and where it begins. I am no longer me, but rather we."

"Then why have you come to me, Bertie?" Marcellus inquired as he clenched his wand in his fist. He did not wish to harm his student, but he would defend himself. And if it truly was that which he believed it was, then he would have no choice but to do so, and more.

Bertie tremblingly clenches his hands before him and says, "The demon was once a wizard, Headmaster. It perfected its master's craft and extends its life by possessing others and living through them. An eternal process of rebirth, never tasting death. However, I am a Hufflepuff, sir, and we are stubborn if anything else. I shan't allow it to so easily take me."

Marcellus closed his eyes briefly in pain and anger at one of his own students being forcibly taken by force by the abomination. Opening his eyes, he stares into the frightened, but stubborn eyes of the boy. "What will you have me do, Bertie?"

"This abomination must come to an end," Bertie hissed. "I cannot kill it, but I know how to slay it, Headmaster. The Demon's one and true heart must be pierced, and then the rest shall perish."

"I am already well aware, Bertie," Marcellus lamented knowing full well that Godric had once nearly succeeded in such an endeavor but missed as the boy from the clan's heart had been on the opposite side of his chest. And though his chest and been pierced, yes, his foul heart remained yet beating.

"Then Headmaster, I shall explain the criteria for electing other entities to possess such I," Bertie bitterly hissed. "Only those that possess magic can be possessed, a squib nor a muggle can be taken. Muggleborn's are the preferred choice of candidates as they are far easier to manipulate and possess as they lack formal magical training, but any wizard or witch can be possessed as long as they do not bear the trace of a magical creature bloodline. Those that do are still protected by the magic's of old, the blood lineage of the Spirits, and cannot by possessed merely manipulated by external means."

"It can only possess at most 127 entities at any single given time," Bertie explained causing Marcellus to blanch. "However, like all beings in existence, it too has its weaknesses. Most entities that it possesses count as only one, but those like me, who cannot be easily tamed cost more than a single entity fragment. Therefore, the number is less than said mentioned amount, but still a vast number."

"And lastly, the Demon can only possess a vessel, with who it has been in contact for a period of 11 months. It simply cannot possess any witch or wizard, but only one that which it has hunted for the period of eleven months. If the right conditions are not met, then the Demon cannot possess said entity," Bertie said triumphantly. "And if an entity is destroyed that fragment cannot be used until the fragment reforms again. Each destroyed fragment will only reform and be of use again after 13 months have passed."

Marcellus sighed with a mix of emotions at the desolate, but still hopeful news. The abomination had a weakness like any other being. The weakness was not large nor many, but neither was Achilles heel. And all it took was a single bow and arrow as Fate would have it.

"My time is up," Bertie whispered so softly only he could hear his own words.

Marcellus is temporarily lost in thought and does not notice as Bertie allows the blanket around him to fall to the ground and rise to his feet. With grim determination, Bertie walks to the Headmaster's window and slides it open. A burst of screaming wind rushes inside causing Marcellus to whip his head around and freeze at seeing the figure of his student standing before the open window.

Lightning flashes across the sky lighting the boy's pale but determined face. A burst of wind hurls fierce pelting rain at Bertie and through the open window sprinkling even the face of Marcellus. "Bertie, what are you doing?" Marcellus slowly said as he rose to his feet, while his nightshirt fluttered all about him in the storm breeze.

"This is how it must end, Headmaster," Bertie said with a grim smile. "I am sorry, sir," before leaping from the Headmaster's window and plunging down below.

Marcellus hurls a spell after Bertie's plummeting figure, but the boy dives down even faster. Rushing to the edge of his window with his nightshirt whipping around him and his face being pelted by icy, cold rain, Marcellus peers down below to see his spell harmlessly bounce against the body of his student, who lays with his eyes closed and his body cracked, and bleeding against the wet ground.

A cry of pain and anger escapes from Marcellus and just as quickly Rowan is violently torn away from the heartbreaking scene. Loudly gasping, she hurls herself back and out of the pensive, before falling onto the cold stone floor of her laboratory. Gasping loudly, she clutches her chest as her mind whirls around with the ramifications and implications that of which she had learned.

Crawling to her feet, Rowan tiredly slumps into a cozy reading chair and tries to formulate her thoughts, before her mind returns to one, S.R. Wilkes. A faint smile appears on her face at the memory, before vanishing just as quickly. S.R. Wilkes had once been her friend and enemy.

Rowan's mind returns to her first year and recalls the cheerful Slytherin. No, she did not believe that he was possessed at the start of the school year, but after winter break, strange ticks began to appear in his personality. Her lips faintly twitch as she recalled S.R. Wilkes, the cheerful Slytherin Prefect, who wanted to prove the world wrong. In the end, his dreams and his very existence had all been stolen away.

Anger briefly flashes through Rowan's eyes as she clenches her fist for a moment, before wearily relaxing them. S.R. Wilkes was gone, but she could only hope that he had given them a run for their money. And knowing him, he probably had.

Rubbing her woozy head with one hand, Rowan's sleep-deprived eyes flicker over to the pensive laying innocently on the laboratory table. Who would have thought that such a simple vial would contain so many forgotten truths? And as strange and insane as that might sound, she finally had hope. Hydra had a weakness, and just like Achilles heel that was all it took.

Drained after the many events of that night, and everything that she had learned, Rowan rises to her feet and carefully stows the pensive away in a locked drawer within her laboratory, before teleporting away. Mentally and emotionally exhausted, she somehow manages to change into her pajamas, before falling asleep. Though her night would be filled with countless dreams of the past, and whether, they were fiction or not even she did not know.