The Greater Good: Dumbledore and Grindelwald

Peverell the Second

A very long time ago...

Cadmus did not know how long he had been walking. A few moments? An hour? A day? That morning, he'd stopped at an inn and checked the date. February 22nd. That meant he'd been walking for a week. The knowledge didn't shock Cadmus. Maybe it would have a month ago, but not today. His sanity was a thing of the past. Bit by bit, and very gradually, Cadmus had been losing his grip on reality. 

It had started in small ways. Forgetting small things. Then Cadmus realised he'd been retreating into himself, more and more. Getting lost inside his own mind. One night he'd relaxed into his armchair by the fire, and by the time he'd realised what he was doing, he'd knelt by the fireplace and thrust his hands into the burning furnace. He didn't even remember doing it!

But even as Cadmus pulled his hands from the flames, horrified, he'd felt no pain. His flesh was blackened and blistered, but he'd felt nothing. 

Cadmus knew the cause of it. Especially on today of all days. As he strode through the countryside, the rising sun peeking over the horizon, Cadmus glanced down beneath his cloak. His left hand swung free, but his right hand was clenched as tightly as he was able. His hand had been locked shut like that for weeks, apparently, and his flesh was angry and red from the pressure. 

Cadmus dared not open his hand. He cursed himself for what he'd created. He cursed himself for playing with forces far, far beyond his understanding. Death was the world's greatest mystery, even for a wizard. Everyone born into the world lived their lives knowing that one day, it would be their  turn to face the unknown. Everyone had different ideas on what waited for them, but nobody could agree. 

Cadmus Peverell came from a long line of scientists and seekers of knowledge. He remembered, as a boy, his father had sit him and his brothers down. He'd showed them his wand, and all the magic he could do with it. He levitated a bookcase, a bird into a goblet, a whistle into a watch and had it sing the time. And then he tossed his wand aside and explained that nothing, not even magic, could surpass the power of knowledge. 

Magic was a tool, but knowledge was the endgame. As they grew into young adulthood, Cadmus' brothers had delved into researching their respective areas of study, their goal to enhance their own powers. But Cadmus wanted to go further. He wanted to take away the mystery of death itself. Recall people lost to the grave and expand the knowledge of humanity to a place it had never been. 

At least that's what he told people. Cadmus knew well that his reasons for fighting to overcome death were much, much more personal. 

For years, he researched and experimented and toiled away over books and research papers. He studied cadavers, he studied the brain activity moments before death, and he'd done things his father would not have been proud of in his pursuit to attain mastery over life and death. But Cadmus could not control...whatever he had created. 

And it was the moment that he realised he'd lost control that he also realised he had succeeded. If you could call it success. Cadmus hadn't just created something that could bring lost souls back from death (if it could indeed do that), he'd created what he believed to be a soul in and of itself. Just being in its proximity could evoke emotions and feelings unlike anything Cadmus had ever felt. 

It could awaken memories and instincts from so dark a place in his mind that he'd forgotten they existed. The symptoms were not unlike those created by a Horcrux, the darkest of all magical arts. Or so he'd thought. The Stone seemed to be darker. Cadmus had first called it a rock, but then decided it was too perfectly formed to be so. It was smoky grey in colour, barely larger than a pea, and shaped like a diamond, or double-sided pyramid. The edges were perfectly smooth and the tips pointed.