Rivals | D.M

45. The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Asters POV

My mother was out like a light, sleeping deeply in her bed upstairs. I listened as my fathers heavy footsteps echoed up the stairway and down the corridor. Waiting for the heavy shut of his bedroom door, I finally slipped out of my room and tip toed downstairs.

Standing outside my fathers study I concentrated on my wand balancing in my hand and muttered the shield penetration spell. I could see the protection wards waver and after a few tense seconds the air rippled. It worked.

I gingerly placed my hand on the door knob and twisted. The door opened easily and I couldn't help but smile to myself.

Muttering "Lumos" the downlights and a desk lamp flickered on instantly. The large room was a mess. So unlike my father.

I frowned as I stared at the numerous books stacked untidily on his large chestnut desk, his bookshelf completely disorganised. Ink splattered odd pieces of parchment, and I leaned down to read the odd smudges and slanted writing.

Magical Permanency: Characteristics

Irreversibility

Consequences? the between-space

inhumane?

Balance of nature - what must we sacrifice?

It wasn't a list per say but seemed like my fathers rambled thoughts. It wasn't odd to see this sort of brainstorming from my father, I know he had been toying with the theory of permanent magic, specifically to do with wards and protection spells. What really caught my eye was the words 'the between-space'.

I shuffled though the papers but came across nothing of importance, more protection spells, the textbook 'Magical Theory' by Adalbert Waffling - a required first year text at Hogwarts, something my father referred to quite often. I would have thought he would have had it memorised by now.

Blank pieces of parchment also littered his desk. I picked up a nearby pile of books and found another text, this time referencing the so-called 'between-space' or 'limbo' as it also mentioned. It mentioned the first law of fundamental magic, commenting on the different consequences for different violations but it was nothing I didn't already know.

And then, I saw the book 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard' casually sitting on an armchair nestled in one corner of the room. He must have retrieved it from my room. On the inside of the book, my name was written messily, courtesy of 7-year old Aster.

Curiosity brought me towards it. Why would he be reading this? Knowing my father wasn't one for fictional worlds, I picked up the small book and wasn't at all surprised when I found my beloved copy riddled with annotations.

The story with the most annotations seemed to be 'The Warlock's Hairy Heart', a quite gothic fairy tale. The tale talks about a young warlock removing his heart from his body using dark magic to prevent himself from falling in love. The heart decays after being away from his body for so long that by the time a young maiden asks him to put his heart back inside his chest, the heart is consumed by dark magic. This ultimately drives the Warlock to take by force a human heart. He attempts to take the maidens heart for his own, only for the heart to stop him from using magic. Before he can replace his own heart with the maidens, he dies across the maidens dead body with one heart in each hand.

The story was always skipped when my mother read out loud to me, only for me to read it to myself just before I attended Hogwarts. It was horrific and quite terrifying. Not much of fairy tale if you asked me.

My father's writing messily covered the last paragraph, his words reading 'in seeking to become super-human, this man renders himself inhumane'.

Was this about the Death Eaters? Is this what the Dark Lord wants to know more about? Being super-human?