Hogwarts Legacy: The Price of Power

Father Dearest

Despair crashed over Dracaena in a great wave, leaving her sapped and sagging.

"It's... gone?" she managed.

"Gone," Sebastian clarified. "We're too fucking late!" he spun and cracked his bloodied fist against the empty pedestal, and he swore.

"It can't be," Ominis managed, swaying as he clung to Dracaena. "We can't have gone through all that for nothing!"

"Well, we did!" Sebastian barked, striding up and down, clutching his hand, his eyes streaming in pain and fury. "All of that, all of what we went through for NOTHING!" he roared a wordless shout and began to kick and punch at the pedestal, drawing his wand and casting vicious jets of light at it, before he sank to his knees, defeated and weeping.

Dracaena staggered to him, Ominis by her side, and they knelt beside him as he cried, drawing him to them, pulling him away from the pedestal and into their arms.

It seemed impossible to her, but it was true. The Source was not here. All they had been through had been for nothing. All their pain, their fear, the terror and the almost-loss, the times they could have died, all for nothing, when they could have been at Hogwarts, safe and sound in the Room of Requirement, fed tea and sweet cakes by Deek, listening to soft chamber music and struggling with nothing more taxing than a complicated essay. Such an easy life it seemed, now. Something they had taken for granted. Something they could have had in spades, had they not stumbled upon this cursed knowledge, ensnared by her insatiable curiosity and need to make things right.

How they had changed in so few short days. How everything seemed so different now, in the light of all they had lost.

Who had taken it? Was it the Gaunts? Had they made their way here ahead of them, and were now poised to take over the world as they knew it? Or was it some other intrepid young explorer that had stumbled upon this place, ignorant of all they lay ahead, passing the trials and laying their hands on the greatest power ever known?

Whoever it was, Dracaena could not find it in herself to keep searching. It was gone. The Source was not here. All her hopes, all her dreams of making her life that much better by revising her own history were dashed, and she could only begin to imagine the misery that enveloped Sebastian as he finally curled into her, sobbing helplessly. He'd needed it to bring back the part of him that had been stolen all too soon. His other half. His twin. Anne.

Gone.

Gone too soon, with no hope of returning. She pulled him closer, and by the tightness with which Ominis held them both, she knew his mind was one with hers. They couldn't leave Sebastian alone now, not for a moment, perhaps not ever again.

Dracaena wasn't quite sure when or where she found the strength to get to her feet, but find it she did, after an unknown time of lying curled against her partners, each of them mourning in their own way at the loss of something spectacular, a new, creeping fear winding its way under their skin, not yet to be registered or realised, but there nonetheless.

They rose, scanning the small room, and Dracaena spied a tiny catch hidden in the wall of the alcove. She pulled it, and sunlight flooded into the chamber, so bright and accompanied by air so fresh it seemed almost a dream that they had survived, and they were out. They stepped through, finding themselves in a small, unfamiliar clearing, surrounded by mountains and trees, a soft stream hushing by. They made their weary way forward, Dracaena fumbling in her bag for her broom, or perhaps the tent, maybe the last of their rations, so that they might rest and recuperate before they had to embark on the journey back to Hogwarts, wherever the castle lay. Hopefully, they hadn't gone too far.