Taking Everything Back

"You don't look so good, Mal," Fergus stared at Maligno with a small smile but there was no wramth in it.

Maligno blinked as if he was trying to clear his vision but when he finally realized he wasn't dreaming he started muttering,

"No . . . no . . . no . . . this can't be . . . you can't be . . . you cannot be alive."

"I am not," Fergus replied matter of factly. "At least not the way you are or everyone else is."

"You can't be here," Maligno spoke again as if he didn't hear Fergus's words.

"I am not really here either," Fergus confirmed again.

"How? How is it –?" Maligno stopped the first time noticing their surroundings had changed and there were no sounds from the battle going on in Hogwarts. "Where are we? What is . . .? If this is another one of your tricks, Christina Norton, you stupid bratty girl!"

"Why would she trick you, Mal? It was always your specialty, you know, tricking people and all that," Fergus started to walk around Maligno as he spoke. "Remember the time, you convinced Philip Galagar to have that staring duel with the Chimera, which resulted in him losing his vision . . . permanently? Or that time when you tricked Helena into stealing her mother's diadem? Or the time you convinced Emory to drink that poison. Remember that?"

Fergus stopped in front of Malgino and stared him down. There wasn't any anger in Fergus's eyes, just pity and regret.

"No . . . I made sure . . . you weren't alive . . . I checked," Maligno spoke with fear in his eyes.

"When? Almost four hundred years later?" Fergus looked amused. "When Ryan was on the verge of death because of the monarch's curse?"

Maligno looked at him surprised and Fergus gave a bitter smile before he continued talking. There were things he didn't tell Chris. Things that happened, things he did.

"What? You didn't think I knew? You thought I didn't know that the first thing you did after leaving Titian was send that modified dead Snallygaster to stop anyone from reaching me or entering the temple to help me? You knew despite what I did, my mother, my family would look for me. . . try to help me, so you took that away from me. But by doing so you made the Vampire family your enemies, thus after Madam Hufflepuff's curse took effect on you, you couldn't come back and ask me what to do. You spent almost one hundred and fifty years in a coma because of the curse, while the crystal's powers along with your will to live kept you alive. But even after you woke up, you realized you had become much much older and weak than you expected, and it took you more than two hundred years to understand and utilize the crystal's powers to keep yourself alive. Yet you were still weak and that's why you tried to visit the temple but even then you couldn't step into Titian, so you sent people to check for you, who got killed by vampires even before they could reach the temple. That's when you ordered the Snallygaster to bring me because you were sure I was still alive in that Temple."

"But I saw your corpse – you fought and died . . . even though I tried to stop the Snallygaster. You fought – I thought –" Maligno mumbled before realization dawned on his face as he started to catch up. "You staged it. Even though I sent a dead creature, you were able to tame it and show me that vision through its eyes."

"I couldn't do anything of that sort, I wasn't strong enough to compel your Snallygaster but when you ordered your Snallygaster to bring me, he stepped right into my illusion world, after that he saw whatever I created. I knew if I survived you would keep trying to get me out of the Temple. It was either I join you or die. The choice was rather easy. But you still had doubts that's why you sent him, right?" Fergus paused looking at Maligno with disgust. "Only one of your people made it up to the gates of Scarlett Temple – Ethan. The boy you planted in my family, but even then he couldn't enter the Temple, let alone go where you left me. You even had him marry into my family and have a child with the First Princess. What? You thought making another powerful Vampire Royal have a child with a wizard from a pureblood family would make another me? Because maybe that was all I was to you – an experiment. A powerful experiment."

"I treated you like a brother!" Maligno shouted finally getting over the shock of seeing Fergus. "You are the one who betrayed me. Not the other way. I asked you – I begged you to come with me . . . to join me. We could have ruled the world together, Gus. You were given the chance to be the King of Vampires and with my powers combined with the founders' powers, we could've ruled the magical, non-magical, and vampire world. There could have been no one daring to step in our path. There would have been no Grindelwald, no Voldemort. There would never have been so much destruction."

"So it would have been obey or die for everyone while you and I played God?" Fergus almost chuckled in disbelief. It was like the same conversation he had with Maligno after he was resurrected. "And you believe that would be less destructive? I really thought after all these years, you must have changed or learned something. But You were always like this, you always acted like you were the victim. It was your father's fault that he kept quiet while your brothers bullied you and made your life miserable, then it was the founders' fault for not choosing you as their successor, and at last, it was my fault for betraying you. Never mind the fact that you almost killed your sibling multiple times, that you constantly played mind games with the founders and their children, and the fact that you killed the woman I loved. You were always like this, weren't you, Mal? I was just so blinded by my faith and respect for you that I ignored everything else and believed you were a good guy, who just turned evil because of the Crystal's powers. But I realized how wrong I was because of Christina. She made me realize so many things that I was refusing to see because despite everything I still believed in you while you didn't even wonder how would I survive in that temple for years without any food or blood."

"Yes, you were wrong. You still are," Maligno spoke with venom in his voice. "And leave that high mighty moral argument, if you are such a pure magical being, how come you are still alive? You can't tell me you haven't used dark magic because otherwise, you couldn't had the ability to trap me here."

Maligno looked around the void they were standing in. There was nothing anywhere, just them and a long far far-stretched emptiness.

"You are right I used dark magic. In fact, I used the most twisted magic to split my soul along with my magic. I split my core But I am not doing any magic here, Mal. She is," Fergus said with a proud smile on his face and Maligno's eyes widened with complete shock at Fergus's confession.

Even before Fergus mentioned this 'She', Maligno already knew who Fergus was talking about but he didn't want to believe it.

"Impossible! If your magical core is divided then no other wizard or magic can bring one of your magical parts without the other parts, so you wouldn't be here if your core were divided. Because if she brought you here, it would mean –" Maligno abruptly stopped seeing the smile on Fergus's face which grew wider and wider with Maligno's every word. "NO! Her unnatural powers . . . Her keen instincts . . . her strong magical core despite having no magic from both of her parents . . . it was . . . you? Your magical core? A part of your magical core? Tell me you are lying. Tell me it's the founders' magic that I was fighting and not yours. TELL ME, GUS!"

"Congratulations. After so many years, you have finally solved the mystery," Fergus spoke very calmly compared to a distressed Maligno, who looked at Fergus with bloodshot eyes.

A thick silence pressed on them as Maligno just stared at Fergus. His expression slowly crumbling.

"I tried to kill you . . . I tried to kill your magical core . . . again and again. . . I thought you were killed by the Snallygaster because I was weak at that time and couldn't control my beast . . . but I didn't recognize you in that girl and kept trying to kill you . . . forgive me, Gus! Please forgive me! I made mistakes. But you are here now. I'm here now. Let's start over. Forgive me and we can go back to –" Maligno mumbled like a mad person. All of his sophistication, intelligence, and composure seemed to have abandoned him completely. He just looked like a desperate old man as he haphazardly stepped towards Fergus.

"Go back to what? Being friends?" Fergus stepped away from him. "You are a little late for apologies, Maligno. We can't go back in time and even if we could, I would have never been friends with someone like you."

"You don't . . . you don't mean that, Gus. Take that back!" Maligno spoke furious but there was nothing intimidating about his aura anymore.

"But I do mean it, Maligno," Fergus spoke loud and clear and Maligno flinched again at Fergus calling him Maligno. "However, there is only one thing I would take back . . . the thing that was never yours. Once I gave it to you and started this mess, so now I am here to take it back from you and end this once and for all."

Terror filled Maligno's yellow predatory eyes as he realized what Fergus wanted to take back.

"No! Gus, you can't –"

Fergus didn't wait for Maligno to finish talking before he plunged his hand inside Maligno's chest.

[To be continued]