Disclaimer: Will Vaver belongs to me. All things Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code belong to their respective authors.

Thank you to my reviewers!

Author's Note: Now, when I originally wrote this I used all sorts of fancy fonts for Da Vinci's mirror writing and various other things, but doesn't allow that, so it's now just plain font.

The next afternoon found Will sitting in a small conference room in the Ministry of Magic with Sirius and James, plus the rest of their team, made up of school friends all of whom were exceptionally bright and talented; Remus Lupin, Hermione Granger and Lily Evans. It would be a lie to think he wasn’t intimidated by them all. They had all filled him in on their thoughts and how Grindelwald was after what they suspected to be the Holy Grail.

Lily huffed at James’s newest suggestion, “No, James… We can’t do anything until we’ve figured this bloody cryptex thing out, even if it was a good suggestion.”

Will kept going over and over the words in his head, the secret hides beneath the rose; what the hell did that mean? What rose? How were they supposed to find this secret holding rose? Perhaps the words didn’t make as much sense as he originally thought…

But suddenly, almost as though a light bulb had pinged on above his head, Will had an idea.

“What’s that box made of?”

Hermione glanced up at the young Auror, “Eh, rosewood, I think we decided. Why?”

Will got to his feet and went back over to the table and sat down; he pulled the box to him and saw the continuation of his idea. Without bothering to say anything to the others, he reached for the nearest pointy object – a quill – and opened the box; he found a small hole on the inside of the lid and pressed the tip of the quill into it.

“What are you doing? Don’t destroy it!”

“Ye have little faith,” replied Will as a thin piece of wood dislodged on the outer shell of the box; he picked it up and held it up. “A rose.”

Sirius grinned, “I told you he was good.”

Will smiled in reply to the compliment, “He’s after the Grail, yes?” he got a few nods in reply. “The Rose, according to my grandfather, is synonymous with the Grail in the Priory of Sion. It also symbolises secrecy. ‘Sub rosa’ or ‘under the rose’; it was a Roman tradition to hang a rose over a meeting room to indicate that the meeting was confidential,” he turned over the rose and saw four lines of engravings on the backside of the wooden rose; it wasn’t readable, but he was sure it was text.

llorcs siht seerf modsiw fo drow tneicna nA

elohw ylimaf d’rettacs reh peek su spleh dnA

yek eht si sralpmet yb desiarp enotsdaeh A

eeht ot hturt eht laever lliw hsabta dnA

“I can’t make it out…” it did look familiar though. “I wonder…” Will looked up. “Does anyone have a mirror?”

Both Lily and Hermione had a quick look through their bags.

Lily pulled a mirror out of her handbag, “Here.”

Will smiled as he took it and held it up to the top edge of the wooden rose, “I thought so.”

An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll…

And helps us keep her scatter’d family whole…

A headstone praised by templars is the key…

And atbash will reveal the truth to thee

“What? What is it?”

Will read aloud what he saw, “An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll, and helps us keep her scatter’d family whole… A headstone praised by templars is the key, and atbash will reveal the truth to thee…” he looked up at the five puzzled faces. “Da Vinci wrote his journals in a backwards script, it was his way of passing unreadable secret messages.”

“An ancient word of wisdom?”

“Atbash?”

Hermione frowned, “Something to do with the Knights Templar, it seems…”

Remus raised his eyebrows a little, “Your grandfather taught you all this?”

Will nodded, “Pretty much… He had loads of books about the Holy Grail and he used to tell me all about it and about his theories.”

“What kind of theories?”

“That the Grail isn’t really a cup, but a woman,” replied Will; he really did love the feeling of knowing more than these people. It was giving him a great deal of confidence. “Mary Magdalene, to be precise. The chalice or ‘grail’ that carried the sacred, royal bloodline of Jesus Christ – a girl called Sarah, who was born shortly after Mary arrived in France after Jesus’s crucifixion. It’s also said there were a great deal of documents laid to rest with Mary upon her death. From that day forth, her final resting place was supposed to be a guarded secret, kept by the Priory of Sion. Their symbol was the fleur de lis with a ‘PS’ in the middle…”

“Ah, I’ve read about the Priory of Sion,” said Hermione after Will’s voice had drifted off; she had thought James and Sirius’s decision to hire this kid was a bit silly to begin with and she had thought Sirius was just thinking with his dick, but Will had more than proven himself to be a mine of knowledge. “There are supposed to be three Senechaux and one Grand Master, the keeper of the location of the ‘keystone’. Leonardo Da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton were supposedly Grand Masters at one time or another.”

Will found himself being fixed with five curiously serious gazes, “What?”

“It begs the question as to why your grandfather had the key to this cryptex… The keystone…” Remus spoke slowly as everything fell into place in his head.

Will blinked, “What…you think my grandfather was the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion?” he couldn’t keep the slightly hysterical tone out of his voice. “You can’t be serious…”

Hermione narrowed her eyes slightly in thought, “It all falls into place, though, Will,” there was a definite look of alarm on the kid’s face now. “Why else would he have the key? What other reason would he have had to leave those clues before he died? He didn’t want the secret to die with him, so he left the clues for someone to find. Someone who can decipher all his messages.”

Sirius nodded in agreement with her, “There was another line of text by his body. I didn’t show you, because none of us could figure out who it meant,” as he spoke, James shuffled through the photos and handed one over to Will.

Will gazed at the photo in front of him; scrawled beneath the anagram were just two underlined words:

Find William

“Now we know.”

“He must have known that the magical community would get involved; he must have known that this would somehow get to you.”

Sirius continued on from Hermione’s words, “Knowing what we know now, we have reason to believe he was coaching you to be a Senechaux.”

“Me?”

“You.”

Will was confused, “But…I don’t know where it is… Wouldn’t he have told me if he was coaching me?”

“As I said before,” said Hermione. “Why else would he leave the clues? He wants you to find it. He knew you would be able to figure it out.”

“’The secret lies beneath the rose’. The rest of us couldn’t figure that out, but you could. What’s to say you won’t figure the rest of his clues out?”

Next Chapter: A continuation of the brain storm. Will figures it out.