HP: Fantastic Beasts And The Right Way To Use Them - 308

Chapter 308: Melvin

Beneath the tower, Nicolas Flamel faced a woman in a pure white gown. Both of them looked drained, as if they had just come through a fierce confrontation.

The churned‑up ground around them, and the mass of grey‑black mist tightly wrapped in countless runes, were proof enough of that.

Yet from the calm, almost orderly way they were speaking now, it was clear the standoff had been over for quite some time.

“Melvin…”

Hearing the woman speak that name, a complicated look flashed through Flamel’s eyes. There was anger there, and grief so heavy it nearly drowned everything else.

His fists tightened slightly, then loosened again. The movement was small, but it still caught the woman’s attention mid‑sentence.

She stopped and looked at him steadily. Ravenclaw’s voice was calm as she asked softly, “You seem to care a great deal about that name?”

Flamel did not answer at once. After a long silence, he spoke in a low voice.

“It’s nothing. It’s all in the past.”

Then he lifted his head and asked, “You mean Melvin was Herpo’s vessel?”

“Not exactly a vessel,” Ravenclaw explained. “He was a real person. It’s just that he found Herpo’s Horcrux and ended up sharing a body with him.”

“Sharing a body…” Flamel murmured.

He remembered Albus telling him that the Dark Lord had once possessed a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. It seemed liches all had that trick.

“He was an ordinary‑looking boy, nothing special,” Ravenclaw continued. “Salazar only took him as a student because Merlin’s disappearance made him want a new apprentice, someone to help with errands and to be taught certain knowledge he did not wish to leave behind at Hogwarts.”

“At first, Godric did sense something off about the boy. His instincts were always sharp. When we travelled the world together, that intuition saved us from danger more times than I can count.”

“But at the time, he was quarrelling with Salazar, and we thought his emotions were making him oversensitive. We did not interfere much. We only checked the student’s background, placed him inside a seal woven from detection magic, and after he passed every test flawlessly, we all went back to our own work.”

“Looking back now… if we had truly kept him under full watch, noticed the odd way he sometimes muttered to himself, perhaps we could have pulled that child out of Herpo’s grasp. Perhaps none of what came later would have happened.”

Ravenclaw’s voice dipped for a moment. She paused, then went on.

“You may not know this, but a Horcrux maker’s possession causes immense damage to the host’s body and soul. Melvin’s body was well suited to Herpo, but even so, he could not remain inside him for long.”

“It is the same dilemma that troubles many liches. They may live forever, but each body has a limited lifespan. No flesh can sustain them in this world indefinitely.”

“So he wanted to extend his life by other means?” Flamel guessed. “The Philosopher’s Stone?”

“No. The Philosopher’s Stone can prolong life, but it cannot resist the ageing of the body. That is not the immortality he wanted,” Ravenclaw said quietly. “What he wanted was true agelessness.”

“He really was greedy,” Flamel said, and there was bitter weariness in the word. “He failed, I assume?”

After all, Flamel himself had lived for centuries. If a truly ageless Dark wizard had emerged in the Dark Age and survived to the present, Flamel would not have remained unaware.

“Yes. For now, he has not succeeded,” Ravenclaw said, nodding.

“For now?” Flamel repeated, puzzled.

Ravenclaw did not answer immediately. She hesitated, glanced back at the tower behind her, then at the mass of imprisoned grey‑black mist not far away, and let out a soft sigh.

“I told you before that we created this place to preserve vital intelligence about the Dark Age. To preserve information that has been completely sealed away, we needed to build a space entirely cut off from the Hall of Lost Dreams, for example, this place.”

“It is not affected by the Hall of Lost Dreams, so it cannot form a link to that sealed era. It was meant to be nothing more than a barrier for isolating information.”

“But I do not know whether Salazar let something slip. Somehow, his good student learned about this place.”

“A few years after we created it, he crept here in secret and sealed himself inside as well. He meant to taint us, seize our control of this space. If he succeeded, he could use the space’s separation from the Hall of Lost Dreams to complete his plan.”

“A plan to transform himself into a wraith, without being constrained by a wraith’s body.”

“That should be the most perfect path to immortality he ever devised.”

“Fortunately, he still has not succeeded. But this fragile balance may not hold much longer. Once you leave, you should…”

Ravenclaw had not finished when Flamel’s eyes suddenly widened, as if he had just heard something unbelievable.

“Wait,” he said sharply. “You’re saying Melvin left himself here, on purpose, to taint you?”

He looked so shocked that the wrinkles on his face seemed to deepen.

“Are you certain?”

Ravenclaw frowned. “We watched him seal himself into that separate space and release the mist. Unfortunately, by then our bodies were already dead, and our souls had entered the sealed Hall of Lost Dreams. I believe that was the opportunity he had been waiting for.”

“His body was close to its limit at the time. Trying to use the space we left behind to complete the final step of his immortality makes sense.”

“But he likely did not expect our echoes to possess consciousness of their own. Over these many years, we have never relaxed for even a moment, and we have never given him a chance to fully occupy us.”

“Without gaining all of us, he cannot control this space. That is why, I suspect, he created so many abnormalities here. He was trying to lure other wizards in.”

“Once we complete our mission, we will no longer be able to maintain our own existence. That is when he can take advantage of the gap and seize this space completely.”

“Actually, once I finished telling you everything, I planned to ask you to find that place, find his body, and destroy his Horcrux and soul entirely…”

Ravenclaw stopped. Flamel’s face was turning worse by the second, and her own expression grew grave.

A bad feeling curled tighter and tighter in her chest, growing sharper with every breath.

Then Flamel swallowed, and in a slightly trembling voice, he spoke.

“I told you before. My companions and I created the Philosopher’s Stone to stop a plague that was spreading across the whole continent.”

“The one who created that plague was also called Melvin.”