Gabriel woke to the faint hum of the machinery around him, the soft blue glow of the liquid tinting everything in his vision. He floated weightlessly inside his Sleeping Pod - a glass chamber shaped like an upright capsule, filled with cool, viscous fluid that wrapped him in silence. By the intensity of the sunlight filtering through the tinted glass, Gabriel guessed it was already midday.
'So much for breakfast.', he thought.
He blinked a few times and noticed the faint tug of the thin tubes connecting him to the Pod's walls - one glowing amber, another deep blue, and the last a pulsing crimson. He didn't know what any of them did, and frankly, he wasn't sure he wanted to.
With a lazy stretch, he pressed the button near the glass.
The Pod's "wake-up" protocol began immediately. The blue liquid started to drain away with a low hiss, swirling down the bottom vents until he was left standing inside the empty glass chamber. The tubes detached from his body one by one, their ends retracting like the mouths of tiny leeches before sealing shut.
A moment later, a soft spray of warm water descended from the ceiling, washing off any residue from the fluid. Then came a second mist, faintly sweet - blueberries, he realized with a half-asleep smile. Finally, another rinse of clean water and a powerful current of air dried him off.
When the glass door finally slid open with a soft 'shhhk', Gabriel stepped out, cracking his neck and sighing in contentment.
His room was dimly lit by shafts of sunlight cutting through the circular window. Judging by the angle, yeah - noon, give or take.
He looked around the space: the potted Puffapods on his desk - one the original Neville had gifted him, the other grown from a sapling he'd coaxed from the first. His broom rested on its wall mount above a small cabinet crammed with cleaning kits and spare twigs. The desk itself was cluttered in a charming sort of chaos - Dumbledore's Grimoire of Pyromantic Principles, his own dog-eared notebooks, and scraps of parchment filled with runes and spell diagrams.
His wand sat on its stand, humming faintly. Gabriel picked it up, feeling the familiar static warmth course through his hand. Almost automatically, before even thinking about it, he muttered:
"Blauflammer."
A circle of sky blue flames flared around him - wrapping his wrists and ankles in cool fire, and hovering like a halo above his head. He blinked, realizing what he'd done.
It wasn't even cold.
The magic wasn't warming him - it was, if anything, cooling him, softly, pleasantly.
Gabriel let out a quiet laugh. "Guess that works too."
He moved to his wardrobe, pulling on a pair of dark jeans and a black shirt printed with the Aborto Elétrico logo. Slipping into his slippers, he made his way down the narrow stairs to the kitchen nook.
There, waiting for him on the table, was a deep bowl covered by a gentle warming charm. Inside was a mountain of food - white rice; feijoada rich with sausage, every kind of mystery meat and beans; farofa golden with butter; and four thick cuts of pork steak sizzling beneath a drizzle of rosemary-infused fat. Beside it, a small bowl of vinaigrette gleamed under a faint cooling charm.
He smiled, rubbing his hands.
Opening the fridge, he grabbed the chilled pitcher of watermelon juice and a glass cup, bringing both back to the table. He dug in without hesitation, devouring a few mouthfuls before pausing mid-pour, a grin forming on his face.
He swallowed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and lifted his wand again.
"Flamma Borealis."
A crystalline blue flame burst from the tip, swirling toward the cup and licking its surface in a soft shimmer. When it faded, the glass was rimed with frost, tendrils of mist curling upward.
Gabriel poured the watermelon juice into it and took a sip - the sweetness perfectly chilled, almost glowing on his tongue.
"Perfect," he muttered happily, taking another bite of steak, utterly content.
-~=~-
As soon as Gabriel finished eating, a folded note materialized above his plate, floating for a second before settling softly onto the table.
He frowned, chewing the last bit of pork while wiping his mouth, then picked the note up. It contained only a single line:
Meet me in the third underground laboratory.
Gabriel's eyes widened. He blinked once, then twice, then read it again.
"The third...?" he muttered, looking down to make sure he wasn't misreading. But no - there it was, in her unmistakable handwriting.
He swallowed dryly and glanced toward the pile of dirty dishes on the table. For a moment, he looked like he might clean them out of habit - but quickly decided they could wait. Whatever this was, it sounded important.
He grabbed his wand and walked toward the stairs at the back of the room, descending into the lower levels of the house.
The first underground floor was familiar territory: rows of cauldrons, potion shelves, copper tubing that glimmered faintly with enchantments. The air smelled faintly of valerian and peppermint. He passed through the second one - the biology lab, as his mother called it - where glass vats held preserved magical tissues and half-dissected flora pulsed faintly with residual mana.
Then, finally, he reached the third door.
It was different from the rest - round, metallic, with a large wheel in the center instead of a knob. It looked like it belonged in a submarine, not in a wizard's home. The steel glowed with faint blue runes, and the hum of machinery resonated from beyond it.
As he stepped closer, the runes brightened and the wheel began to turn on its own, clicking into motion. With a heavy hiss of steam, the door unsealed and opened inward.
Gabriel took a hesitant step inside - and immediately froze.
The third laboratory looked like the impossible child of a steampunk inventor's workshop and a wizard's study. Clockwork contraptions lined the walls - some half-built, others actively ticking and whirring on their own. Pipes snaked through the ceiling, carrying faintly glowing liquids in every color imaginable. There were disassembled humanoid mannequins made of brass and silver, mechanical arms holding quills or screwdrivers, and magnifying glasses suspended by enchanted metal stems.
On one table rested a collection of random Muggle objects: a small TV, a disassembled air conditioner, an old computer tower cracked open like a metallic egg. And beside them, a small box that, judging from its melodic hum, could only be a music box.
In the middle of it all sat Eloá.
She was perched elegantly on a high stool, still wearing the black and blue robes from their duel, golden accents glinting faintly in the amber light of the room. Her witch hat was gone, replaced by a pair of brass goggles with multiple rotating lenses etched with runes. She was hunched over something silver in her hands, gently poking it with a thin wand tipped with a runic stylus.
Gabriel blinked. "Is that... the Diadem of Ravenclaw?"
Eloá smiled faintly but didn't look up. "That it is. Quite the piece of work, really." Her tone was casual, almost conversational. "It's impressive what that brat managed to do with such a trinket - it's a pity it was sullied by a disgusting little vermin's broken soul. But I'll get some use out of it."
Gabriel stepped closer, his awe growing with every word. The Diadem was beautiful even in its corrupted state - its silver polished to a mirror shine, the blue gem at its center pulsing faintly like a trapped heart.
"So this was another Horcrux?" he asked, pulling up a stool beside her. "The one that was in the Room of Requirement? The one with the curse?"
"Mhm." She didn't look up, adjusting her goggles as one of the lenses retracted and another slid into place with a small click.
The silence stretched. Gabriel fidgeted, tapping his fingers on the table.
Finally, he ventured, "Are you... going to explain things now?"
Eloá didn't answer immediately. Her voice, when it came, was soft - barely audible over the hum of the machines. "Your birthday's tomorrow."
"Mum," he pressed, uncertain if she had heard him.
"My son will be thirteen years old tomorrow," she whispered, almost to herself. The faint wonder in her tone slowly turned into something heavier - sadder. "I didn't want to tell you until you were at least thirty."
Gabriel's throat tightened.
And then, for the first time in his life, he heard her voice break.
"I thought I would have more time," Eloá said, her hands trembling as she set the Diadem aside. She pulled the goggles off her face and placed them gently on the table.
Tears streaked down her cheeks, glistening in the soft light of the lab.
Gabriel just stared at her - silent, confused, frightened in a way he couldn't yet name.
For a moment, Gabriel didn't know what to do. His mother's tears - real, human tears - froze him completely. He had never seen her anything less than unshakable. She wasn't supposed to cry.
So, without thinking, he simply moved forward and wrapped his arms around her.
He hugged her tightly, careful not to use too much strength. His heart was hammering, his mind spinning with the weight of what she had just implied.
Eloá exhaled shakily, then returned the embrace, pulling him close. One hand patted his back while the other gently threaded through his dark hair, fingers brushing against the soft halo of blue fire still hovering above his head. The flame rippled faintly under her touch.
When she spoke again, her voice had that strange cadence she sometimes used when reciting old things - half a memory, and half a ritual.
"I was born a long, long, long time ago," she began, "in the city of Khemenu, which the Greeks came to eventually call Hermoupolis Megale."
Gabriel blinked, half unsure if he'd heard that right.
"My parents," she continued, "were the equivalent of minor nobility at the time. They gave me the name Seshat - 'She Who Scribens.'" A faint, wistful smile touched her lips. "In my childhood, a man from the priesthood of Thoth discovered my magical nature and took me in as his apprentice. He was... great. So great that two of the most powerful civilizations of antiquity likened him to a god. Today, the world remembers him as Hermes Trismegistus."
Gabriel's breath caught.
Eloá's eyes grew distant, her tone filled with something like reverence. "He taught me to read the stars, to perform rituals in grace of the gods - and of myself. To brew concoctions of power, to turn imagination into reality. To understand my own soul... and to perceive the true nature of the world around me. He was my greatest teacher, my dearest friend, and..."
She hesitated, smiling faintly through the tears. "My first husband."
Gabriel looked at her, eyes wide. "You - married him?"
"I was barely an adult then, by today's standards," she murmured. "That's around the time when he discovered the secret to immortality... and refused to use it."
Gabriel frowned. "Why?"
Eloá let out a soft, bitter laugh. "Because this world is cruel. There are rules that cannot be broken - not even by those who can shape reality. One of them is that immortality, true immortality, must remain precious. Unique. A singular accomplishment of greatness." She sighed, rubbing her thumb over his shoulder absently. "There are many paths that lead to it, but once one is taken - once an individual achieves it - that path closes to all others. And the immortal themselves can never use another."
Her eyes gleamed faintly with something between sorrow and pride. "My master knew those rules. He had met an Immortal once, in his youth. And so, when he perfected his method... he chose not to use it. He gave it to me instead - so that I might take the place that should have been his."
Gabriel swallowed, his voice small. "He must have loved you a lot."
"He did," she said simply, tightening her arms around him.
For a long moment, there was only silence - the hum of the machines, the faint ticking of enchanted gears.
Then Gabriel murmured against her shoulder, "The method... was it the stone in your chest?"
Eloá chuckled softly, the sound rough but warm. "So you do remember that?"
"I couldn't," he admitted. "But after I saw what you looked like, I remembered... well, I think it was my first day of life?"
"Yes," she said, a trace of surprise in her tone. Then she laughs. "The 'stone in my chest', as you call it... I suppose you could call it the prototype of the Philosopher's Stone, though they are very different things."
She pulled back slightly, placing a hand over the center of her sternum. "It is called the Nephren. It's created through a ritual in which the magician - after undergoing a process of living mummification - turns their body into crystal. A perfect, undying form. Their soul is transmuted alongside it, reshaped to mirror that state, allowing for eternal life."
Gabriel's eyes darted instinctively to her chest, imagining the crystal heart glowing faintly beneath her skin.
"The Nephren," she continued, her tone almost tender now, "can then be housed within another vessel - an automaton, a homunculus... or something in between. It allows the magician to live on, body and soul united in an immortal reflection of themselves."
She takes a deep breath and starts to speak, then stops halfway, draws another breath, and continues.
"After that first period of my life," she says, avoiding any mention of what happened immediately after she became immortal, "I travelled the world, assuming new identities either to mingle with the local population or simply because my current body had grown too old and needed to be changed. I experimented with all the vices the world had to offer, achieved all kinds of victories, and suffered the bitterest miseries as well. During my first millennia I tried to… do something with all the power, all the knowledge I had."
Her fingers absently traced a seam in the workbench.
"I founded cities, made them into kingdoms, turned them into empires - and watched them crumble from a mistake of mine. I tried again, and failed before even reaching the same point as before. I tried again, and watched it collapse because of others. So I gave up on leading, and tried to guide instead - I became a prophet, a wise man or woman depending on the mood. A sage, a religious figure - and then I cried as I saw my followers being massacred, or disappearing into the sands of time, or distorting my teachings into disgusting things."
Her tone shifted, a softer, colder note entering.
"So I gave up on guiding too, and became a teacher instead. I had hundreds of students, taking care to always take only one at a time. I taught them combat, magic, alchemy - and watched as they inevitably began to hate me because I would not share my immortality with them. Or observed as they died in the name of some cause they believed greater than themselves, or for love, or for vengeance. The worst times were definitely when I got to observe as they wilted into a bed in old age, thanking me for staying by their side until the end while I had to see their bodies go still and their souls be taken by the world."
Her voice grew brittle, then detached.
"Eventually the grief became too strong and I decided to become a hedonist - I learned the arts of the bed with a thousand thousand different courtesans and street whores and priestesses of goddesses of love. I experimented with every kind of drug under the sun and more besides. I taught illusions and poisons to the Hashashins in exchange for a single smoke of their magical plants. I turned my alchemy toward creating new forms of ecstasy, or even making bodies that could give and take more pleasure than a normal human could - but eventually I grew numb from that, too."
She takes a deep breath and lets it out, body relaxing.
"In the end I decided to just… live. Live like a normal human, with no grand expectations or plans or desires - just like every other immortal who did not go crazy or eventually kill themselves. I would choose some profession, learn it, work at it while waking up every day in a good home, eating good food, falling in love at some point, and eventually faking my death. If something caught my interest I would study it; if someone caught my eyes I would seduce them; if something bothered me too much I would kill or destroy it. And so I did for a thousand years," she says, smiling.
"Did you like it?"
"Like it? Gabriel, I loved it!" she answered with a laugh. "The moment I stopped worrying about life was the moment I truly started enjoying it. But after entire lifetimes, after thousands of different experiences, there was still a single joy I never had, and would never have - a single thing that could have completed me. Do you know what that was?"
Gabriel shook his head.
She let go of him, cupped his face in both hands, and gave him a radiant smile - eyes still wet, but this time with happy tears.
"It's you! You! Even before I became what I am, I never had the chance to have a child. I always believed I could do it later, even when my Master tried to persuade me otherwise. But after the ritual was completed, I learned the truth." Her smile softened, turning wistful. "An immortal lifeform has no need to procreate. There is no need for offspring to assure the continuity of the species, because it perpetuates itself simply by existing. And so, both magic and the world forbid us from having children."
Then the melancholy left her face, replaced once again by brilliance. "That's why you are my miracle, Gabriel. You, alone, broke two of the fundamental laws of magic simply by being born."
"But something happened, right?" he asked, frowning despite the warmth spreading across his face, his cheeks still smushed between her palms.
She glared to the side. "Yes. Because this world is cruel, it could not allow something that goes against its rules to exist. It tried to correct you as soon as you were born."
"By killing me."
"By destroying your soul," she corrected gravely. "You weren't alive for even a minute before the world tried to tear your soul apart and return it to Aether. I had never seen anything like it before - not even the imbeciles who create horcruxes suffer such a fate, though some would argue that what happens to them is even worse."
"And then you did something with the crystal, right? The Nephren. You took the red away from it, made it blue - and gave it to me."
"I took my soul away from my body, turning it into a hollow receptacle that I then used to house your soul, protecting it from the world," she said softly. "Unfortunately, the law that forbids someone from using another's method of immortality also means you can't use it as I did to change bodies. For you, it's not much different from… an extra organ." She sighed, regret flickering across her features.
"But… what about your soul?" Gabriel asked hesitantly.
She winced.
"That's the problem," she admitted quietly. "Without the Nephren sustaining it, my soul began to… age. That's not quite the right word, but it's the closest one. In simple terms, I'm 'growing old' - even if I change into a younger body. The discrepancy between my physical and metaphysical age is causing a gradual degradation of my body, mind, and soul. If things continue as they are, one of the three will eventually fail, triggering a cascade that will end with my death."
"Then take it back!" he pleaded desperately.
"NO!" she screamed. Her magic exploded outward, shattering furniture, cracking the walls, and sending a shockwave through the room. "NEVER! I waited fo you for four thousand years, Gabriel! I am not the kind of vermin who would kill their own children to maintain their grasp over a miserable, wretched life!"
"BUT I DON'T WANT YOU TO DIE EITHER!" he cried back, voice breaking as tears streamed down his face. The flames that had gently surrounded his body and haloed his head surged outward, filling the room in a blinding pulse. His sclera turned black, and his white irises flared with an eerie, burning blue.
"And I won't," Eloá said firmly, grabbing his face and looking deep into his eyes. "I won't. Because I love life, and I love you, and I've waited far too long to finally hold you, to finally see you grow. I will not lose it now that I have it."
"But you said-!" he tried to protest, but she cut him off.
"I said this world is cruel, and that it doesn't allow an immortal to find another path to immortality. I also said immortals can't have children - and yet here you are, Gabriel." Her expression softened into something radiant. "You showed me the way. A path beyond this world's rules and limits. You completed my life, meu Anjo, and gave me the key to keep it."
She pulled him into a hug, and he clung to her, crying in relief.
"How?" he asked hoarsely.
"That's a surprise," she said, chuckling.
He started to speak again, but she pressed a finger against his lips. "No complaints. I'll tell you when your Occlumency is strong enough - when you can keep control of yourself, and not even Dumbledore could peer into your mind to find the secret. Not a moment before."
He let out a small huff against her shoulder, making her laugh.
They stayed there, holding each other, the silence of the workshop warm and comfortable around them. The scent of oil and metal filled the air, the faint hum of clockwork devices a gentle background to their breathing.
"…Should I call you Seshat now?" he asked after a while, a teasing lilt in his voice.
She giggled. "If you wish to. There's no one left who would recognize it - and it would be funny to see the confused faces."
Gabriel snorted. "What would you have called me?"
"What do you mean?"
"When you were still Seshat. If you had had a son with Hermes… what would you have named me?"
She hummed in thought, tapping her chin. "Hmm… either Ankhhaf or Sahure, I believe."
Gabriel went quiet, shoulders shaking.
"What's wrong?" she asked, suddenly concerned.
"Those names are weird as hell," he said, barely holding back a laugh.
He was still laughing three seconds later - when he found himself flying backward through the workshop door after his mother flicked her wand and blasted him out with a spell.