Basilisk Eyes

Chapter 140: A pile of scrolls

"Nicolas, Harry!" Madam Flamel's walking stick sounded in the hallway outside the laboratory. "It's getting late, I need to return Harry to his dormitory. Why do you have Morgana's scrying bowl out?"

"We were just looking at Harry's tears. He has managed to absorb the Phoenix and the Basilisk as well as Voldemort and then there is his mother's protection. He is a swirling vessel of light and dark, he is! So much power in such a fragile container."

"Hey!" Harry protested, crossing his arms over his chest and jutting his chin up in the air. "I'm not fragile!"

"Of course you're not!"

"Nicolas!" Madam Flamel exclaimed and then started shouting at him in a blur of French. Harry could feel the air moving as she came close to them, gesticulating. He couldn't understand her words, but he understood how angry she was and he curled down into a ball over his knees on the unsteady stool trying to make himself as small as possible.

He flinched when she put her hand on his shoulder.

"Oh, Harry. I'm so sorry. This is too much for you. It seems we are just blundering about like manticores in a potions lab around you!

Harry started to uncurl himself from the stool and turned his face toward Madam Flamel. "But what does it mean that I have all these things in my tears... basilisk, phoenix, Voldemort, my mother... what does it mean about me? How? I don't understand. It's not how things work. It just doesn't make any sense."

"What? You expect the world to make sense? I stopped believing in sense centuries ago!" Nicolas fumed from across the room where he was moving small glass containers on a wood surface.

Harry turned his ear toward the sound, surprised that Sir Nicolas was so far across the room. He hadn't heard him retreat over Madam Flamel's indignant shouts.

"Oh, Nicolas. Don't take your anger with me out on the boy. He didn't ask for any of this and he's so young."

Harry started to protest, "I'm almost 13..." but the words faded as they passed through his lips... compared to them he was very, very, very young.

"I'm ready to go home... er... back to the Center," Harry said feeling the day's revelations settle on his shoulders and he was certain that if he learned anything else he might spontaneously combust.

Like a phoenix. How fitting.

What he really wanted to do was hop on a broom and fly away from all of this... from the article in the Daily Prophet, the death-eater-dog pursuing him, the darkness lurking within him...

"Oh! But you can't go home yet! We've got more experiments to do! I was hoping for a bit of your blood!" Sir Nicolas came hurrying over to where Harry was shaking out his staff and preparing to leave with Madam Flamel.

"Nicolas, don't be ridiculous! He's not giving you a drop of blood. Get a hold of yourself. You've already done too much. Voldemort! In his tears!"

"But we need to know what it means! It could be the clue we need to understand how to defeat this menace. It could save thousands of lives."

"Voldemort is gone."

"You know as well as I that he is simply biding his time. Off in the Albanian forest according to Dumbledore."

"Let Harry have some peace. This is too much for this child. We'll discuss it later. Give him some time to process what you've told him."

"Time is the one thing we don't have!"

"Nicolas... we have had all the time in the world. More time than anyone else..."

"But now is when we need it. I think this is why we have lived so long. So that we could help Harry defeat Voldemort. Look at it, Nell! Your work with Louis Braille has led us here... to this very moment. And the one Riddle marked..." Harry jumped when Nicolas's clammy hand was pressed against his forehead, pushing his fringe up to expose his scar. "This is the reason why... fate meant our paths to cross. Harry needs our culminated knowledge so that he can survive... so that Voldemort is defeated! For good."