Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 51: The Missing Book
"So, how are you feeling?" Harry asked while looking at Morgan.
The woman raised an eyebrow with suspicion. "Why are you asking that now? Are you suddenly concerned for my well-being?"
"I'm always concerned for your well-being." Harry brushed off her snarky remark. "It's been over a month since I checked its progression. Let me take a look."
"There is no need for that. I'm doing fine." Morgan crossed her arms and looked away from him.
"Morgan… this is not a joking matter. I need to make sure that it remains stable. Why do we need to have this conversation every time? You know where it ends." Harry spoke in a gentle tone.
She frowned. "Fine! Look all you want."
Morgan stood up from her seat and opened her robes. Underneath, she was wearing a thin black blouse and some purple panties.
Harry knew that she was not upset about having to expose herself to him. After all, he had seen her much more naked than that.
What Morgan disliked was the idea of looking weak in front of him. Of course, Harry would never say this to her face.
He moved his hand across her chest and towards her neck, where a thin and barely visible white chain was wrapped around.
This was the unfortunate result of his failure to remove the chains from Morgan.
The sealing spell he had used came from a very mysterious source, that black book that Merlin found during one of his trips outside Camelot.
Despite spending decades studying it, there was still so much he didn't completely grasp, and it was something that had always fascinated him.
The sealing spell was a piece of magic that Merlin thought he had fully understood, but when it came time to undo his magic, it became obvious that this wasn't the case.
He was able to greatly weaken the seal, but not completely remove it.
Something that he had been unaware of during his study was that the seal would gain strength as time passed.
When Morgan was initially bound, she was still able to move around the entire city of London and its surrounding land, just as Merlin had intended.
However, over the long period of 1500 years, Morgan had become more restricted in her movements until eventually, she could no longer leave the alley, and if that continued, she would have been eventually restricted to her own home.
Now that the binds had lost a great deal of strength, she had regained her autonomy to freely roam the city of London.
But Harry was hardly satisfied with just this. He wanted her to be completely freed from the bounds he had placed on her so long ago. And for that, he was going to need that old black tome.
"Any pain?" Harry asked as he examined the chains.
"Not at all. Most of the time, I even forget they are there. Something I couldn't say before," Morgan commented.
"I have promised you to remove them and intend to keep my promise, no matter how long it takes," Harry said.
"Well, you don't have all that long. Unless you are willing to make some changes," Morgan reminded him that Harry was a simple mortal at the moment and would have one more century of time at best.
"I won't need that long." Harry took a step back. "You can cover yourself now. There are no visible changes in the spell, which is good news, I suppose."
"Oh?" Morgan had a playful smile as she closed her robes. "Did you not enjoy the view?"
"I just wish you took these things more seriously. It is your freedom we are talking about here."
Morgan frowned. "I know that. Don't treat me like a child. I am now much older than you, remember?"
"Then you better start showing it," said Harry. "Did the source that you mentioned yesterday get back to you? It sounded promising."
For the past four years, Morgan had been putting a great deal of her resources into finding clues about the location of the black tome.
Merlin had been eager to find it, and not just because it could contain the key to finally getting rid of her chains, but it could also have the solution for their troubles against the Argent Flame organization that the former King Arthur created shortly after the collapse of Camelot.
Morgan crossed her arms and looked away. "I'm not sure if I can consider that as a proper piece of information. I can't believe I paid a hundred galleons for that… It's nothing more than an old story."
"May I hear it anyway?" Harry asked.
Morgan glanced at him. "You don't care about me going bankrupt?"
"I just think there are more important matters to worry about. Now stop complaining about a few gold coins and tell me this story."
"Tsk… It's about a haunted house in a small village. No one lives in it now, and everyone who did in the past ended up dying in strange circumstances."
"Mmmm." Harry listened attentively. He was wondering what the black tome would have to do with a haunted house, but chose not to interrupt Morgan.
"The current keeper of the property claimed to have found an old diary that belonged to the first occupant of that house, some four hundred years ago or something. Apparently, he had originally come from Britain, but escaped after getting into some trouble with a local noble. He had stolen a book from this noble, a peculiar black tome… and brought it with him during his escape. Soon after that, he built a house in some remote area of France, met a girl, got married, and a few years after… strange things began to happen."
"It is an interesting tale, but it is not a lot. I'm sure there are hundreds or even thousands of black books out there," Harry said.
"There is one more thing. The current keeper of the house claims to have seen this book on one occasion. He said that when he approached, a human face appeared on the cover of the book, and the poor man ran away in terror. No one believed him, but he has not set foot in the house since then."
"A human face." Harry's expression grew serious. "Tell me… where exactly can I find this house?"
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