Chapter 63.1- Doom Days

“So Perenelle will be the binder?” I asked, leaning forward now.

“You can’t bind your own unbreakable vows by yourself? I would have expected you to have reached that level by now” He said, something lurking behind his eyes.

“That’s impossible” I rested instantly. Because it was. Magic did not like being bound, and no one wanted to die. Your note intent to not die would prevent the vow from taking hold. It was like asking someone to cast the killing curse on themselves. The magic just could not work in that way. Nicholas tsked in a way that made it seem like I had said something exceptionally obtuse.

“If you ever want to reach the same level as Albus or even that upstart Dark Lord of yours then you must remove that word from your vocabulary. What you must learn Harry, is that wizards like us, we are gods. And for us, nothing is impossible.” He grabbed a hold of my hand from the table, and then his wand was in his grip again. Now that I wasn’t thinking about where he had drawn it from, I could look at the wand more closely. It was old, and gnarled. Not just because of how long he had lived, I suspected. Something told me this wand had looked old the day it had been made. The wood refused to run straight, bending this way and that. The tip was pointed a different direction from the handle such that pointing it straight ahead had the tip facing the left by a few degrees. That must have made aiming that thing a nightmare, I thought.

And then he was waving the wand around our joined hands.

“Do you, Harry James Potter, swear never to knowingly and willingly divulge the information regarding the Philosopher’s stone which I will give you tonight?”

“I will” I said, and a thin tongue of brilliant flame shot forth from his wand and wound its way around our hands like a red-hot wire. I gasped at the sensation. I could feel it, the weight on my magic. He nodded at me next.

“Do you, Nicholas Flamel, swear to give me full access to the whole body of written knowledge available to either you or your wife and give me the freedom to select three of my choosing, never acting to influence that choice by untoward means and taking no steps to deny me access to to the chosen works after having made the choice, and even defending my access to the chosen works if within your power to do so?”

He gave me a look, working over the words in his mind.

“I will” He said, and then another thin tongue of flame joined our wrists.

“So we have vowed, so we may be bound” We said in unison and then I gasped as the flames tightened before burying themselves in our skin. I looked at my wrist and could see a vague pattern that represented the vow.