Anchor Of Life

3. The Secret Package

Then he heard another pair of footsteps join his son's, which was coming towards his study. 

Et Tu, Barty?

Now Marvolo wanted to bang his head on the desk. Instead, he could only sigh and check on the wards and the protection and tracking spells, there was no alert or danger. What had these two riled up that they both were coming running?

He needs to understand who is the real culprit here. Barty, or Hadrianus? It feels like both Barty and Hadrianus enable each other's madness in such a chaotic way that leaves him with nothing but headaches. He regrets introducing them to each other now.

He opened the door as soon as they both reached his study, narrowing his eyes as he stared at them expectedly and with exasperation, reprimand already forming in his mouth. 

But then he smelled it. Smell of blood. More particularly, his son's blood.

"What the..." Alarmed, Marvolo sat up straight, "Where are you hurt?"

Whatever Hadrianus was about to say got lost, "What?" He frowned at him, "I am not hurt!"

"Don't lie to me! I can smell your blood from here!"

"It's true." Barty agreed, sniffing the air. "That's why I came to check on him."

"I'm not hurt!"

"Get in and strip your outfit, right now." Marvolo was not in the mood. Hadrianus is bleeding and he didn't even notice? What kind of child was he fathering?!

Despite his protest, Marvolo had his son strip down to his underwear, searching for the wound, but to his surprise, there was none, true to Hadrianus' word.

But then why do his clothes smell so strongly of his blood?

Perplexed, he now followed his own nose, searching his clothes, when his hand touched a stone.

A red stone.

Marvolo stared at the stone, perplexed. Why does this stone reek of Hadrianus' healing magic and blood?

"I came here to show you that." Hadrianus' nervous voice came. "It's the Philosopher's Stone, isn't it?"

Marvolo frowned. It does look like so, but what made him curious is why it reeks of his son's blood. It was the first time he had seen the stone, and he had no previous collection of whether it truly smelt like that since day one.

"Did you cut yourself with the stone?"

"Of course not! I am not that fragile, father!" Hadrianus was offended and Marvolo had to agree that he did make a good point.

Marvolo stared at his hand, on his palm lies the ruby red multifaceted alchemical stone. A gem born of fire, glittering and swirling with power.

"I'd like an explanation now, Hadrianus."

"Er, sure. Uh, father?" Hadrianus gulped, eyes darting around the room guiltily which immediately had Marvolo suspicious. "If I.. hypothetically tell you that I.. kinda urm, accidentally stole it from someone, are you going to punish me? Hypothetically speaking, obviously."

Marvolo stared at his son speechless. Did he actually hear what Hadrianus was saying? Hadrianus, his son, his little mamba, his precious innocent child, accidentally stole Philosopher's Stone? The very artefact that even The Dark Lord failed to steal?

"You accidentally stole Philosopher's Stone ?" How do people accidentally steal priceless artefacts?

"Er, yeah. I, er, I really didn't mean to. Steal it, I mean. I kind of thought it would cause a lot of chaos if I stole the top priority secret package that the gamekeeper half-giant Hagrid was not-so-subtly trying to hide, but I didn't know it was such a priceless artefact like Philosopher's Stone, I swear."