“I got it. Haha, I managed to get more than enough. At least there is some use to having a seat in that dratted Wizengamot.” Sirius burst into the room where everyone was sitting.

We were already well into the summer break and a lot had happened. Mione’s parents had come to terms with their daughter being in a relationship but still wanted to meet Darius at least once. Mione took the chance to show them a proper magical home and asked Darius if they could come over to their home. With his mother’s permission, all three were called over on the second week after the start of the break.

Mr. and Mrs. Granger, or as they preferred to be called, Richard and Emma were a pleasant couple to be around and enjoyed the tour of the magical house. They didn’t even give Darius a hard time about dating their daughter, at least not too hard.

Darius showed them the magical tools around the house, the expansion charms that made everything inside much bigger than the outside, some of the magical portraits which moved around and talked and even some actual, real magic. Muggle parents had a hard time of it when it came to magic. They had to send of their children for the greater part of the year for learning magic in some far away, inaccessible school and the students couldn’t even show them what they had learned due to the Decree for Underage magic restriction. So, when she found out that the wards around Darius’ house were strong enough to stop the ministry from detecting her using magic, well, she insisted that she show her parents every single spell she had learnt. And they were only too happy to see them. There was something very gratifying about actually seeing the magic. Darius promised himself about looking up into how the trace could be removed from wands. Surely, the RoR would have something to say about that.

Both sets of parents got along swimmingly, and Harry also came to know about it through letters. Sirius just had to join in the fun and he invited them over to Grimmauld. Now that all the dreary decorations had been removed and the house cleaned up thoroughly, it was an altogether different place. The elves had outdone themselves and the house looked fantastic.

Due to the size of the house and the multiple rooms, it soon became the gathering spot for the circle of friends. Darius, Mione and Harry at first but after Sirius spoke to Castor Greengrass, Daphne also joined in the fun. Neville came to know soon after and came along with both Hannah Abbot and Susan Bones in tow. Amelia Bones was often present, ostensibly as a chaperone for Susan but everyone knew there was something brewing between her and Sirius. The Weasley twins also dropped by occasionally to talk shop with Darius.

They had been sitting together, discussing the merits of Transfiguration, when Sirius had barged into the room. He did it often enough, sometimes Darius thought it was just because he wanted to catch them off guard in a compromising situation.

“I got the tickets to the World cup final between Ireland and Bulgaria. I had to pull a few strings but all of them are Top Box tickets. Anyways, its not like I don’t have the gold for it.”

“What?”

“Nice job!”

“For all of us?”

“Yeah, I got them for all of you.” Sirius said with a grin. “You guys have been hanging out together since the start of the summer. Why would I want to split you guys apart on the most exciting day of the vacation?”

Darius couldn’t help thinking that it would truly be the most exciting day of the vacation, just not in the way they expected. He had hoped that since they were not all that close with the Weasleys, the quidditch cup incident doesn’t come up. It was through sheer luck that Harry and the Weasleys got off without any damage in canon and Darius was not looking forward to testing their luck. And unfortunately, he would not be able to stop them from going to it either. After all, it was the biggest sporting even of the wizarding world and he didn’t even have a reason to stop them from going, not one which he could tell them in any case.

The only thing he could do was to be prepared to take on whatever comes their way. Thankfully, with the wards on the Black house, everyone was able to practice their spell casting daily, preventing their skills from getting rusty. Sirius even managed to help them out with some of the little tricks of the trade that he knew, he was on the Auror task force in his youth after all. Darius sorely wanted to have a look in the Black library, he was sure it would contain the most priceless of books. But his training with his mother held him in good stead, according to old family laws, the Black family would be perfectly justified in taking his head off his shoulders if he was caught with Black family secrets. He might have been able to convince Sirius about it, but he decided to wait till he was sure about it.

But all this was washed clean out of Darius’ mind by next morning’s post. It was the official OWLs result. Finally, after more than two weeks of waiting, it was here. The quidditch cup was some time away and he could ponder on that later, but this took precedence. He was in his own apartment with his mother that day when the handsome tawny flew in with the envelope. Even though he was absolutely confident about his results his hands still shook a little as he detached the letter from the owl.

He looked at the departing owl for a while till it became a mere speck in the sky before steeling himself and turning around. He called out, “Mom!”

“Yeah, baby, what happened?” She said as she entered the room.

In response, Darius merely help up the envelope, with the official W.E.A crest on it.

“Ooh, your results are here, I’ve been waiting for them so eagerly. C’mon, hurry up, open it already.”

Darius’ mum was so eager to see the results. She knew her son’s talents and was very eager to see how well he did in the exams. Just as Darius was about the tear the square envelope though-

“Wait, wait! Why don’t we go next door and have the Flamels watch too? I am sure they want to know how you did as well. Though it’s not like any of us have any doubts about your talent all, its fun to see what you’ll get.”

Darius had started learning under the Flamels again. He had not been able to do so last year, and he was eager to make up for last year. The amount of knowledge they had was mind-boggling. It ranged across a multitude of topics and was just amazing.

He had asked Perenelle about it, “I understand that you gained a lot of knowledge over the centuries but how do you manage to keep track of it all. I mean, its just amazing how you have facts and figures of something that happened at the time of the Hogwarts founders at the tip of your fingers.” He suspected that they had a memory reinforcement spell like his as well, it would make perfect sense.

Perenelle had replied, “We were quite normal during our first century. In fact, most witches and wizards can easily live for a century, maybe even two. But it was in our second century that Nicolas realized the need for preserving our memories. The Pensieve had been created just a while before that, so we used it for a while. But it quickly became apparent that it would not be sufficient neither was it easily accessible.”

“Then, what did you do?”

“We delved into our own minds, of course. Muggles are only now realizing the true scope of potential that our minds have. Wizards realized it a long time ago, but even they could not fathom the true depths of it. We just worked together on a way to bind our memories to our blood powers and mind. You already know some of the arcane powers embedded in our blood. It had also seeped into our brains through the normal process of circulation. All we did was to link our memories to it. That way, the memories would remain eternal, just like ourselves. There would be no detoriation or anything of the sort. It would stay perfectly preserved form the day it was created to the day we finally breathe our last.”

“God damn, that’s impressive!”

“It is, isn’t it?” She chuckled.

We had many more enlightening conversations of the sort. It was always a new topic every time and it always opened up a fresh avenue of thought.

Darius and his mother hurried to the Flamels and were let in after a knock.

His mum couldn’t hold it in any more. “Darius got his results!”

“That’s great! I’m sure he must have done well.” This came from Nicolas, who was sitting at the table.

“Of course, he did, whose student do you think he is?” Perenelle puffed up at the other end of the room. They bot had come to treat Darius as their own grandson and were quite proud of him. Darius had never met his grandparents in this life either and enjoyed their doting.

Darius opened the letter and placed it on the table for everybody to see. Everybody craned over his back to see the results and wide grins broke out on their faces.

ORDINARY WIZARDING LEVEL RESULTS

Pass grades: Outstanding (O) Fail Grades: Poor (P)

Exceeds Expectations (E) Dreadful (D)

Acceptable (A) Troll (T)

DARIUS ICARUS HAS ACHIEVED:

Astronomy: O

Care of Magical Creatures: O

Charms: O+

Defense against the Dark Arts: O+

Herbology: O

History of Magic: O+

Potions: O

Transfiguration: O+

Ancient Runes: O+

Arithmancy: O

The results were beyond incredible. He had gotten 10 OWLs with straight O. He had even gotten 5 O+. Getting even one of them was incredible, getting five of them was no doubt a historical record. An O+ signified that it was the best result in over a decade. In fact, some people even considered it as an additional OWL, so according to that strain of though he had acquired fifteen OWLs. Of course, this was only an unofficial view and the Ministry still considered his performance to have garnered ten OWLs. Darius had obviously gotten it in HoM and Runes, where it was only a written paper due to the Fortis Memoriae. DADA, transfiguration and Charms were his strongest subjects and he went above and beyond in his practical exam. The rest of them were not as exaggerated in their results, but they were still commendable for being all ‘O’.

Darius’ mother and the Flamels, all gave whoops of excitement and congratulated him on his excellent showing. Darius himself was quite proud. He didn’t quite know how the likes of Dumbledore and Voldemort had done on their exams, but he was quite sure he was up there somewhere on the same level. This was a solid affirmation for all the efforts he had put in since his childhood and he couldn’t be happier about it.

The Flamels were pleased, very pleased about Darius’ results. He had potential unlike no other mage they had ever taught. And that is why they decided to come clean about something a little earlier than they were planning to.

“Darius, there is something we feel that you should know. While we did give you the philosopher’s stone, and there are currently no problems with it, there are some things you ought to know as its holder”, Nicolas said.

Perenelle continued, “The stone may give you eternal life and endless wealth, you may have also discovered that it can slowly expand your magic power, but it does have its drawbacks.

If it is taken at a young age, like yours, the user comes away with no harm to themselves. But after about two score years, when a magician is in the prime of their life, the side effects come creeping in. For starters, the body becomes dependent on the elixir to maintain itself at its optimal condition and the lack of elixir would cause the body to go into a sudden shock, rapidly ageing itself to the appropriate age and likely causing the user’s death. Thus, you become completely dependent on it. Second, and even worse, you lose the ability to have children if the elixir is taken past that age. The life you live is unwittingly powered by your future bloodline, i.e., your children and you will never be able to have descendants of your own. It took me a long time to come to terms with that, a very long time and I seriously suggest you desist from using thee stone after you reach your thirties unless you want to suffer as well.”

Perenelle spoke to Kaela as well. “I am certain Darius must have been giving you the elixir as well, he loves you too much not to. But I suggest you stop using it soon. You are still in your mid-thirties and it will not have any impact on you. On the contrary, the residual effects will let you maintain your youth for a long time but using it any more would have grave consequences.”

Darius listened to all this with a gaping mouth. This was all so sudden. He felt some cold sweat slide down his back. Just imagining the result if he had taken the stone and the Flamels had not visited gave him shivers. He had really dodged a bullet there.

Nicolas explained a bit more about the stone itself. “Our blood, however it may have mutated, still falls under the laws of nature. The stone however, does not. It acts against the laws of nature, distorting them and that is why it can be considered a cursed item. Each stone requires exponentially more power to create than the previous. By our calculations, the theoretical limit would be about three of them. Any further, and they would not just be against the laws of nature but be rejected by them altogether.”

“Rejected by the laws of nature? What do you mean?”

“I mean, that their creation process will be unsuccessful and all the energy in the incomplete stone will be released instantaneously. I.e., all the energy in the stone, which is a nearly unfathomable amount, will be release in an instant. The fallout should be enough to take out a continent, or at least most of it.”

Darius could not stomach what he was hearing. This was horrendous, and he felt that the world was very lucky that the stone was in the hands of the Flamels till now. Lesser people could have wrought untold damage with power like that. In fact, he was not worthy as well.

“Master Nicolas, with all due respect, I’d like to return the stone to you and your wife. I realize it is not a bomb that could instantly blow up a country at my command, but the risk of having it with me is far too great. I have enough elixir to last me till my thirties at least and that will be enough.”

“Well done, my child. I’m proud of you. I didn’t interject when the Flamels spoke, to let you make you own decision and you have done me proud. It takes a great deal of courage to let that much power out one’s hands.”

“And we fully agree with your mother. We both are proud to have you as our student, Darius.” Perenelle said.

Darius grinned bashfully at the praise. He didn’t feel he had done something all that great, it was just plain commonsense. Keep the continent destroyer in the hands of those who had protected it for several centuries already.

“No, let’s say we move on from these boring topics and learn something more interesting. How about some medical spells?” Perenelle laughed.