Perenelle and Adele waited upstairs for a long time, talking about their own things, but upon realizing that Nicolas and Victor weren't planning on returning, they decided to go down to the workshop themselves.
Downstairs, they were greeted by a truly bizarre scene: Nicolas Flamel was dashing through the workshop like a madman, skimming through ancient books and scrolls on the fly. He was constantly muttering under his breath, and after slamming one volume onto the floor, he would instantly hurl himself toward the next. In his frantic haste, he was knocking over everything in his path. Victor, meanwhile, sat absolutely calm on a bench right in the center of the chaos Flamel was causing, lazily watching his frantic movements.
— Nick, what's going on? Is Victor having problems? — a worried Perenelle called out to him, but her husband didn't even turn his head. Frowning, she stepped closer and firmly tugged at his shoulder. Though Nicolas turned toward her, his gaze remained buried in the text:
— In a second, in a second... I'm sure it's somewhere here... — He dropped the tome and, slipping out of his wife's grasp, bolted toward the next bookshelf.
Perenelle froze in place, utterly stunned. Did she just... get ignored?! Her husband had been known to throw himself headfirst into research before, but he had never allowed himself to brush her off like that. This was a first in hundreds of years.
Victor let out a tired sigh:
— He just can't bring himself to come to terms with the reality that unfolded right before his eyes.
— What reality?
Victor nodded and attempted to stand up to walk over to her, but Nicolas instantly barked from behind a cabinet:
— Don't move!
Victor ignored his grandfather, however, and walked over to Perenelle with a calm stride. Nicolas, realizing Victor wasn't going anywhere, simply resumed his search.
— I don't know how, but my eyes... how should I put this... — Victor tried to find the right term. — They came to life.
Looking at the still-puzzled faces of Adele and Perenelle, he sighed and set about explaining:
— My eyes became real, living ones. I mean, everything looks as if they were never transplanted at all, like I was born with them.
— Is that even possible? — Adele asked.
She had previously tried to copy her brother and had taken up alchemy, but after realizing it wasn't for her, she had devoted herself entirely to potion-making. Still, she understood a thing or two. From the literature she had studied, she recalled a fundamental law: magic is never capable of breathing true life into the inanimate. Magic can copy a form or grant a temporary impulse, but creating fully functional biological matter out of a dead object is impossible—the moment the charm fades, the object will inevitably revert to its original state.
— It IS impossible! — Nick cut in ahead of Victor, popping out from behind a bookshelf. — There MUST be some reasonable, logical explanation! Are you absolutely sure you didn't Transfigure them yourself?
Victor rolled his eyes dramatically:
— For the tenth time: no, I didn't do that.
Perenelle clapped her hands together, breaking up the brewing argument:
— Enough! Right now, we are all going upstairs together, calming down, and you are going to tell us everything that happened to you in detail—from the very beginning to the very end.
Nick's eyes sparked:
— Exactly! We need to break down step by step when and why it happened, and then we'll understand everything!
Victor suddenly froze and shifted his gaze to Adele. Telling everything "from the very beginning to the very end" meant admitting that this entire chain of events had been set off the moment he nearly killed her.
Perenelle immediately noticed the strange, fleeting glance Victor gave Adele, and instantly understood: he had a secret he didn't want to disclose in her presence.
— Though... you know what, you two are probably exhausted after a long flight, so this conversation can easily wait, — Perenelle said calmly, offering him an escape route.
— What?! No, let's do it right now!.. — Nicolas immediately protested, but upon meeting his wife's icy, strict gaze, he instantly fell silent.
— No, it's fine. Let's go up, I'm ready, — Victor offered a soft smile and patted Adele on the head.
Had this been just a week ago, when the former Victor—the pacifist—lived within him, he would have panicked and clung to any opportunity to run away, hide, and wait for everything to resolve itself. But now, everything had changed. He was the former Victor Moss who ran from nothing. He was ready to face Adele's reaction head-on, even if, upon learning the truth, she grew to genuinely hate him.
— I want my little sister to hear everything too, — he repeated softly, yet with a resolute smile, gently ruffling the girl's hair.
For comfort, they went up to the living room and sat down around a large circular table. Everyone stared at Victor in tense anticipation, but Adele watched him most intently of all. The girl felt that she was somehow directly connected to the changes that had taken place with her brother.
Nicolas tapped his foot incessantly against the parquet floor out of impatience:
— Well, start already!
— Nick... — Perenelle gently placed a hand on his knee to soothe him. — Don't rush him. Though you, Victor, stop teasing us!
She was right: Victor wasn't delaying out of nervousness at all. He was simply thoroughly enjoying their anticipation and, in particular, Nicolas's growing annoyance.
Victor looked at Perenelle's strict face and let out a rueful click of his tongue:
— Alright, then. So that you can fully grasp what exactly happened to me, I suppose it's worth starting from the very beginning. And this is especially important for you, Adele, — he shifted his gaze to his sister and smiled warmly. — Adele, you know that your brother is... let's say, not entirely right in the head and has a weakness for killing. Though no, that's not quite right, — this time his eyes swept over everyone present. — It's not like I'm some mundane serial killer. My passion doesn't lie in the killings themselves, but in the process! I would never take the life of an innocent person... probably. Well, most likely. Though if someone annoyed me to absolute distraction, I'd probably maim them, but certainly not kill them! Anyway, that's beside the point. What I'm getting at... Because of what happened in my childhood, I hate rotten people like my dear foster parents with all my heart.
Victor's voice instantly lost its previous lightness and turned deadly cold, his pupils flaring into the crimson Sharingan on their own:
— No... "hate" isn't the right word at all. They make me physically sick. Every cell in my body literally craves their death. Craves watching them writhe and scream in their death throes! They all imagine themselves to be predators... Oh-h-h, you have no idea how much I love their faces the exact moment realization hits them: to me, they are nothing more than prey. Weak, pathetic, helpless prey...
The smile on his face grew wider and more terrifying, the tomoe of the Sharingan spinning smoothly within the crimson pool of his eyes, an unhealthy flush flooding his cheeks as his breathing turned heavy and ragged.
— Victor, calm down! — Perenelle interrupted him firmly.
Victor blinked instantly and snapped back to his senses, surfacing from his insane trance.
— Ahem, sorry... — Victor took a deep breath, gradually regaining his composure. — So anyway. Last summer, whenever I encountered someone like that, I took their lives without a second thought. Most were Muggles, some were wizards. Basically, I entertained myself however I wanted. But at some point, I realized my body count had already crossed into the dozens. I knew it couldn't go on like this. And don't fool yourselves—this wasn't happening because of some awakened sense of morality or pangs of conscience. I simply recognized that if I kept going like that, I would inevitably be caught. I didn't have the power to stop on my own. So, after slaughtering another group of Death Eaters, I deliberately left a clue meant to lead Dumbledore to me. That's how I ended up here. The old man lied about the Flamels being able to cure me, when in reality, by leaving me with Nick, he was just hoping I'd throw myself headlong into alchemy and forget about killing. I'm not so stupid as to not realize that.
Victor paused for a second and turned a warm gaze onto his sister:
— And everything was actually going smoothly. Nick and I spent days buried in the workshop inventing things, until one day... I found out about you. Because your situation seemed somewhat similar to my own, I rushed to your house without a second thought. I expected to see a beaten-down, tormented girl being brutally abused by her own parents. I didn't even have a proper plan—I just intended to slaughter your parents and free you.
Adele shrank back slightly and shivered visibly. The thought of Victor potentially killing her mother and father struck her with a sharp pang of pain. Even if her parents had locked her in her room, they still loved her dearly, and she loved them back.
— But when your mother was ready to sacrifice herself just to keep me from harming you... it finally hit me. There were no monsters there abusing their child. There was only a terrified pair of parents who were scared to death for their daughter and had no idea what to do. In short... in that situation, the only true monster turned out to be me. I came hairbreadth-close to stepping over that very line that would have permanently turned me into the exact scum I so thoroughly despise. And that was when I began to seriously think about changing.
Victor offered a sad yet genuine smile, looking first at Perenelle and then at his sister:
— In the beginning, it was excruciatingly hard. But thanks to having you two by my side, thanks to that sense of family and affection you gave me... over time, I pulled it off. I became the person you saw up until now. Essentially, I remained the same person, but with an entirely different mindset. It's like an actor who gets so deeply into character that he comes to genuinely believe the role is his true self.
— I don't understand what any of this has to do with anything?! We came to find out what happened to your eyes, not to listen to your biography! — Nicolas cut in discontentedly.
— Ha-a-ah... — Perenelle let out a heavy sigh and looked at her husband with an impossibly sweet, loving smile, smoothly placing her palm against his chest.
— Sw... eetheart?.. — Nicolas stammered, staring at his wife. For reasons unknown, a slight tremor ran through his body, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. And his instincts didn't betray him: in the very next instant, Perenelle's palm flashed with a brilliant light, and Nicolas flew backward like a bird. Shattering his own chair to splinters with the impact and hurtling across the entire living room, he slammed into the far wall with a loud thud, after which he slid limply down onto the floor and remained lying there.
— Continue, Victor, — Perenelle nodded to him calmly.
Adele stared at the spot where Nicolas had landed in absolute shock, nervously wondering if he was even alive. In truth, Nick was not only alive, but fully conscious—one ought not to underestimate an ancient monster of alchemy. Even if he wasn't a combat mage, his body was immensely strong and covered in defensive charms. He had decided to stay lying on the floor purely because it was nice, cool... and certainly not out of fear of angering his wife again.
Victor ignored Nicolas entirely and carried on.
— But no matter how deeply an actor gets into character, he will still instinctively react if someone calls him by his real name. That is what happened on the train. When I felt that Auror's hatred and explicit desire to kill me, I felt his inner darkness... and without even realizing it, I passed a death sentence on him. And from there, like a recovering addict falling off the wagon for a fix, I simply couldn't stop myself. And in the moment I was slaughtering Greyback's pack... I wanted to kill you too, Adele.