《Empathic capacity of a teaspoon》 Chapter 1 (Ergarth)
I also write original fiction Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Chapter 1 This is something I wrote when I was 16, better release it than have it gathering dust in my files.
I sat in my laboratory looking at the machine that could grant me immortality. It was an ugly thing, cobbled together from many different coloured parts and glowing slightly from its uranium power source. I couldn''t really bring myself to feel anything, as this was the goal for which I had abandoned my family, my friends, my normal life... Always knowing that to achieve something great would mean sacrifice, I wasn''t quite sure if it had been worth it. Even if the procedure worked, I felt empty inside. The actual personality, habits and everything that makes a person human are imprinted on the brain through things they regularly do, but for the last few decades I''d had almost no contact with other people. Except for the internet of course. I had to have some free time or I would go insane, but I wasn''t really sure if the internet counted as human contact... It would be an incredible irony if this worked and I couldn''t enjoy my immortality simply because I lost the capacity for human interaction. Theoretically, once a man was reborn in a new body, he could start acting in a way that made a positive imprint on his brain, but I had discovered that every time a person was reincarnated a small part of their personality branded themselves upon their very soul. This would make them more likely to do the same things, prone to making the same mistakes they had in their previous life. If this worked my brain would change into a metaphysical entity, latching onto my soul and staying there. My memories, tics, and personality would be in the 7th dimension, making me effectively brain dead since the brain I would be reborn with would never be used. In a way, this would meld my consciousness, my mind and my soul - which was simply a concept of his existence and the impact he had on the world. Probably. To be honest, I wasn''t quite sure what would happen.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. The soul was what this entire experiment depended on, if it succeeded the filter between mind and soul would be erased, or maybe they would fuse together into one entity, "When, not if," I thought to myself, "I can''t afford to harbour doubt." I sat up from my burgundy coloured armchair and walked over to the machine. It was... unstable to say the least. I should know - I had made it that way intentionally. The decision I had made all those years ago haunted my mind, made me doubt. "Only one chance, if it fails I won''t have enough time to start again anyway, it''s better like this so if I fail I won''t have to live with the failure". Damn, my voice sounded weird, like the voice of a coma patient who hadn''t used his vocal chords for 20 years. Scratchy and generally unpleasant. The moment I stepped into the pod, I felt all of my 67 years. My conscience would hurt at what I was about to do if I had one. I chuckled at my joke. But indeed there were not many people who were willing to kill billions like me. Simply for the small possibility of someone finding my research and using it to reverse my immortality. "Truly, Paranoia, thy name is Ergarth." I was justified in my fear, of course in my mind I was always justified - the perks of someone who embodies selfishness. I hadn''t been that careful in my youth seeking easy ways to eternity. I had gathered a lot of enemies who only stopped chasing me after I faked my death. Never mind, none of this would matter soon. "Either dead or ascended, truly a win/win situation." Had I mentioned that I had become slightly depressed in the last few years? After the pod had concluded its function, it would explode in a spectacular example of why atoms should never have been researched as deeply as they had been. Ergarth imagined at the end of this day there would be no earth left. Maybe while all the others died, he would wake up in a new body having cheated death at last. ''NO'' never maybe, he repeated his creed, the words he lived by once more before his ascension to eventual godhood. After all, if one had all the time in the world what could one not accomplish! My words unsure I hadn''t had much reason to speak with anyone in. "It''s been 12 years now", "Forward lies eternal glory". I opened and the door and stepped in, no buttons to press simply closing the door activated it. Ergarth''s lifeless body fell to the ground, and Australia was no more.
I know, starting of with something like this, not that great, but I''m not going to rewrite this. 53 more chapters that I have stored up from 16-year old me. All of them are this short sadly. Comment the mistakes you spot please. Chapter 2 Chapter 2
I opened my eyes, no, I didn''t have eyes anymore, I don''t even know what I am at the moment, but I definitely don''t have eyes, Ergarth the eyeless wonder. Nerds with glasses were referred to as 4-eyes I wonder if I would be called no-eyes. I digress. I didn''t open my eyes as much I simply decided to start acknowledging, no not deciding, that would imply a previous state of metaphorically closed eyes which I didn''t have. Since I just arrived here, wherever here was. Thoughts are restless I couldn''t focus I wonder where I am. What was that flying object? The world I see is filled with colours, white, grey and some splashes of green changing shades. A vast expanse of nothingness wherever the ''eye'' could see with 3 predominant colours, but something is flying towards me, or is it falling, there appears to be no gravity. I tried testing that by spitting, of course, that didn''t work, since I had no lips or mouth. For that matter, I didn''t even have a body. I wonder what I looked like, My vision or my feeling, my awareness? Well, whatever it was it suddenly shifted and I saw myself, I didn''t know how I knew that it was me. I could have just been moved by an invisible force. Wait invisible meant not being able to see something with your sight, I didn''t have sight, I had awareness. Whatever it doesn''t matter. I won''t bother creating a new dictionary right now, I would rather look at myself. I was a flame, a candlelight sized flame, it was green at the base but the higher it went the darker the flame became until just at the tip of it turned into an almost black purple. It reminded me of ice cream. Hmm Ice cream, I wish I had some ice cream right now. Focus. Was that my soul? It was pathetically tiny and now that I looked closer inside of it I saw a black marble with shadows flowing upwards from it, that was probably the thing that made my soul? Flame? Being? Turn into a darker colour. Something told me those were my memories that a few hours? Days? Years? ago. Had still been contained in my medial temporal lobe -insert time here- before. Fascinating Do my metaphysical eyes lie to me or is that really something flying towards me. It ''looks'' like a concept of evolution, hmm if it was a concept then the more fitting verb would be feel.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I really hope I won''t be stuck here forever, oh sure it would still be better than being in my old body and eventually dying, but wait I don''t even know anything factual about souls maybe they die as well? Now that is something I probably do not want to think about. Wouldn''t want to give myself suicidal thoughts! Screw you, it was funny. Something was flying towards me, damn I''d gotten distracted, It slowed down when it got nearer, It didn''t have a shape, or maybe it had one and I couldn''t grasp it? I looked at my soul, I wonder if I could go back into my soul and see the thing, concept of evolution whatever it was from a closer perspective. Suddenly I was inside my soul again. For some reason I focused inwards instead of looking at the concept,the black marble with the smoke/shadow wafting out of it was fascinating, wait, when I looked closer I realised those were memories! I saw them leaving and I immediately knew that I was losing my memories in a reverse chronological order, I couldn''t remember where the base I had been in my last 5 years was located, I just knew it was somewhere in Australia. FUCK! I tried stopping the memory loss and it worked, it used up my whole concentration but it worked thank god. I was suddenly distracted by a tendril worming its way into my soul, I didn''t become aware of it as much as I suddenly felt it. NO! I tried willing the thing away, it stopped advancing, but I COULDN''T FORCE IT OUT. I suddenly noticed my memories slipping upwards again. Nonononononononononono, I tried concentrating on both things at once but I could only halve the speed of both of them. I had to decide let myself be invaded by this thing ''concept of evolution'' or lose my memories. The decision was simple to make if I lost my memories all of this would be for nothing. I would lose myself, having to grow up again, maybe into a subpar human. But the most important thing about that to me was that I without my memories would cease to exist being only a soul controlled by my instincts. I let the tentacle wrap itself around the black marble that represented my memories it wasn''t smoking upwards anymore which I took as a sign that before that I had already been losing my memories. Now it was simply a black ball being wrapped around by a tendril of ''concept of evolution''. The tendril was small maybe a hundredth of its entire mass, as I was angrily observing it, I suddenly felt a yanking sensation I felt like I was being compressed into a tiny speck and strapped onto the most powerful rollercoaster in existence. If I had a body I would have vomited my organs straight out. It hurt, a lot. I DIDN''T want to feel this torture! I had had needles jabbed into my fingernails, my limbs ripped off and I''ve been waterboarded. That was nothing compared to this. Suddenly I was torn into the third perspective like before and the pain was blessedly gone, but the second this happened I noticed that my soul which didn''t seem to be moving at all was leaking memories again. I froze my thought process turned as glacial as the ice age. I would have to go in there again or risk losing my personal existence. If I had eyes right now I would have been crying tears of blood, but I didn''t so I forced myself to go inside of my soul again- nonononono IT HURTS! I tried to ignore the pain and concentrate on stopping the memory leakage but I was to distracted! I could only slow it fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. It suddenly stopped. I wasn''t a soul anymore The roller coaster from hell was over I felt like I had a body I was surrounded by warmth I couldn''t see anything I was in a womb And I only had memories up to the 32nd year of my life Chapter 3 (Embryo gang) Having only 32 years of memories was very very bad, I had started searching for immortality at the age of 21. I only started working with souls, brains and the metaphysical when I was 29, suffice to say I hadn''t really come far in 3 years, this meant I now had no idea how I actually managed to do what I did. And therefore couldn''t replicate it. Oh, I was fairly certain of what I did I just wasn''t certain about the how. I knew from my experience in the soul realm that I managed to create something in my soul that would store memories independent of my bodies brain. At least I think I did... There was nothing I could actually do while inside a womb, as galling as it was I just couldn''t do any research at the moment. So I would simply have to do other stuff... For fuck''s sake what was there actually to do here. It''s a womb. I guess I could check on my bodies status an-! NAME: UNKNOWN BEING: HUMAN (FETUS) STATUS EFFECTS: NONE I stared at the thing absolutely stupefied, the fluid surrounding me pulsing. What, am I a video game character? I thought about the apparent situation for a few moments. Oh my dear self. I was a genius. Yes. The scenario started playing itself out in my head. Head, me the bored genius having found a way to immortality after 20 years. But that wasn''t enough was it, being older than everyone in your generation was a pretty huge one I would be satisfied with if I could get more. So I broke reality itself to give myself more. Damn I was good. Too bad I have no idea how I accomplished this... But this was huge. Simply having a status window was an enormous advantage over everyone else. Being able to put numbers to your progress... People often started training for completely asinine reasons, being fit, healthy etc. useless stuff honestly it felt good being in good shape but otherwise it was simply a creature comfort. One that I would try my hardest to gain of course. Does that make me a hypocrite? Yes it does. But the point was they started and then they stopped mostly because they simply didn''t feel like they were improving. It did take a lot of time for hard work to pay off when one worked on a human body after all.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. But if I saw, for example, a stat gain in vitality after a month of training I would know it had been worth it. But enough about that I really wanted to check out my options. Wait how do I summon the menu window? Well, when I figure it out the first thing I''m changing is the colour. Who thought garish pink was a good idea? I summoned my status by thinking about it but when I thought of it again, it didn''t appear. Well, the first time it could have been the game Trying to gain my attention? I probably have to mean it. ''Menu!'' STATUS WINDOW SKILLS OPTIONS Wait what? Why do I only have three things here, and no inventory. That is kind off a bummer, but honestly, even having this much is a blessing.''Options''. Awareness of gamer interface ''think to change'' Only one option then why the hell is it called options, that''s plural...Whatever ''change colour to something not so eye cancer inducing and make it easier to read not this middle shit''. The options blinked out as it probably recalibrated. I immediately summoned it again. Status Window Skills Option It changed to option, good that means it''s adaptable. ''skills'' Player has just gained ?the game" therefore there are no skills yet, gain skills by dedicating yourself to something and working hard on it. Well, that is interesting it''s not like I can remember having particularly many abilities in my last life. I was pretty good at cooking and lying that''s about I guess I must have been pretty good at something to accomplish all of this but I don''t remember what. I checked skills again. No skills Well that was interesting I wondered what those things meant though. Wait. How can I even see this, a fetus shouldn''t be able to open it''s eyes. Whatever not important. ''status screen''. ? human (fetus) Str: G- ( you''re a fetus) Agi:G- (you''re a fetus) Vit: G ( you''re a magical fetus) Wait what, does this mean I''ve been reborn in a world with magic. No, not a 100%, of course for all I knew this thing was bugged. This... changed things before the magic thing I had wanted to simply become rich early somehow live a happy life, mansion full of expensive stuff, good food and shiny computers. Everything that a man needed basically. But if I really had magic now, this changed everything. I would have to reevaluate my life goals later. No, screw that, my life goal was to have fun no reason to change that. Back to stats, I was suddenly very anxious about what I would find. Reg: G (you''re a magical fetus) Magic: 0 ( unable to utilize due to fetus status) Magic reg: 0 ( no magic to regenerate for the time being) This confirmed I was magical at least, even if I couldn''t do anything with it yet. To be honest with myself, I foresaw a lot of boredom in my future months. -/- Ok, it''s official, for the last months or was it weeks? I had combed through the game and found absolutely nothing new, I guess those were all the features. I''d tried controlling my body, it didn''t work. I''d tried to do something against my boredom, you have three guesses at what happened, two don''t count. Nothing worked. -/- I don''t know the time but it was getting kind of cramped in here I''m pretty sure I''ll be out soon. Chapter 4
A few days after my birth. Well I thought it was a few days at least, something strange happened. I had noticed that someone unusual was holding me. My whole family was red-haired, something even my infant eyes could discern. These eyes I just mentioned ripped open immediately once this person picked me up. They opened so fast I probably scared them since they startled and I was jostled a bit. The person, no I was fairly certain it was a woman, holding me was monochrome and radiated the most intense feeling of unconditional love I have ever witnessed. No, I don''t know how someone could radiate unconditional love and I didn''t really care. I just basked in it. I couldn''t make out her face. Almost white skin and black hair, I pouted angry for not being able to see more clearly, hearing giggling I concentrated my eyes on her again, I strained my body and reached out a hand. She changed the way she held me, it was one armed now. She let my small fist curl around her thumb, when we touched I felt the connection to my magic shiver and I just couldn''t find a way to describe her touch, it was weird, but a good weird. Then she laid me down in my crib and left. -/- Being free once more was like a dream come true, sure I didn''t really have much control of my body, I had to be breastfed, I couldn''t communicate and I was certain my parents were red haired which meant I would be as well. BUT I breathed fresh air, I had a comfortable crib, a lot of siblings who hugged me. Basically, I simply revelled in my immortality I imagined it was like being a dreamer. You grow up, making something your passion. You work hard on a masterpiece. Failure upon failure heaped upon you. Then you succeeded I was that masterpiece, and at the same time, I was the creator. Never in the habit of boasting, I still couldn''t help but describing with the word glorious. If only others could pay witness to my greatness, take note of my brilliance! If only. I couldn''t help but laugh, I imagined it as a loud and booming sound, but it was probably an adorable giggle. My mother came to change my diapers. ''Note to self, don''t laugh so hard, accidents may happen''. I only saw my mother as a brown blob with practically neon red hair, my eyes were to underdeveloped to truly see. She said something, my ears were too underdeveloped to truly hear but I knew one of the words she said was my name it was the thing most often said in my presence. ''Ronald'' my new name it could have been worse, but in my personal opinion names didn''t really matter. If you were a respected and powerful person the people saying it would use a different tone then if you were a bumbling fool. The tone that was the important thing. -/-Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. I had heard that babies were good at feeling moods, I couldn''t attest to that since I had had that particular talent in my last life as well. Sometimes the atmosphere was really gloomy and I heard mother crying. My childhood, babyhood? wasn''t filled only with happiness and hugs. Sometimes I would hear devastatingly loud booms when was taken outside on the occasional outing. A moment later after being squeezed through a tube I would be home again and my mother would be gripping me tighter than ever. Yes my parents could do magic. Then my parents would converse in hushed whispers, some of my older siblings sometimes butting in with their adorable voices. From these conversations, I found out that my father was named Arthur, we were at war and I was Ron Weasley. I cared little, living my life to the fullest had always been my goal, being in a fictional book (apparently) changed nothing. Sure I''d check if I could apply my knowledge of the harry potter series. But honestly, who cared. The most important thing to happen though was Magic, yes it deserved to be capitalised. Trying to draw on it was futile it was like catching water with a sieve but, every time I tried, no, every other week I would be able to close one more hole in my metaphorical sieve. But no, I didn''t actually have magic what I had was a tendril connecting my body to something from which I could theoretically draw it. It was passively used to bolster my body, it was the reason for my higher vitality. This I knew because I had gained traits. My status had also been updated. Status Skills Traits Option Trait: Magical Increases your vitality and regeneration by one increment (for example G becomes G+) Gives you a connection to magic and allows you to use it Ron Weasley Since I identified myself as Ron and not Ronald it looked like that. Str: G Agi:G Vit: G+ Reg: F- Magic: G Magic reg:G- Another thing I had gained was a title. I only had one, but I was still pretty proud of myself, the stats had increased after my birth I would have to check if they increased by training as well. Ron Weasley The Immortal Title grants one increment towards reg I was tempted to make my first words be avada kedavra or Slytherin but that would have shown people immediately that something was wrong, so on the day I reached 8 months I shouted "FOOD", I had of course done so when at the breakfast table, when the entire family was there. Mum started freaking out about me saying my first word and how happy she was. My dad looked like he was trying not to laugh. Bill and Charlie were both laughing, Percy had a weird expression on his face and the twins were giggling. After that, we had held a small party that was later interrupted by the news of my Uncles death. Awkward. -/- Mum was pregnant again, I wondered if it would be Ginny. Recently having started to walk, I was still confined to the second floor. There were wards in front of the stairs. I liked them, they glowed blue when you touched them. I played with them often and my parents would always freak out when they found me doing that. What they didn''t know was that I was trying to learn to sense magic, trying being the keyword. I also gradually started to improve my vocabulary I was almost one year old, I imagined I wouldn''t allow myself to speak in full sentences until I was at least three. It was kind of frustrating having to restrict myself, but I knew it was necessary. I saw the looks dad and Bill were giving me, they probably thought I was a genius already, no need to make it worse. I would later find out that they were considering the possibility of me being sightly, slow in the head due to the fact I had underestimated how quickly children developed. It was almost expected that I would finally manage to draw in my magic on the morning of my first birthday I felt it coursing through my body a tiny amount flickering almost disappearing at some points but it was there. I tried guiding it to my fingertips and making a small flame, I failed, of course, I couldn''t even manage to move it to the finger, it slowly went that way, erratically at that and then it dissipated I didn''t care, it was progress. Chapter 5 (You gotta use your sixth sense) Everyone in my family was smiling as wide as they possibly could, expect from mum she was crying tears of joy. In a way, she had been the one most affected by this war. The stress of having children in this time must have been enormous and she had lost almost all of her family. Dad hadn''t really had much in the first place. I saw many fireworks on the day after the defeat of you-know-who, poor Harry though, he lost his parents and was probably being carried towards abusive relatives this very moment. I laughed not really knowing why this was funny, it just was in a way. An ironic way, the one who brought forth such joy in a nation is now sent to suffer and eventually become an irrevocably broken child because of that. Now moving on to more important things like the ward stopping me from leaving the first floor. Staring at the ward touching it at random times, I didn''t notice my favourite Bill sneaking up on me until he lifted me up and started tickling me. My body betrayed me and I started giggling like a madman. "Stop stop". My voice sounded like a banshee, damn. "What are you doing Won Won, trying to fall down the stairs again?"I turned to look at him since he finally stopped his tickling attack and answered in the most serious voice I could muster. "Pretty blue lights", like that would explain everything. It did in a way, the barrier shone with a pale blue light every time you touched it, the more force you applied, the brighter it got. My oldest brother looked at me weirdly, damn he didn''t believe me. Bill was pretty smart for an 11-year-old. He puffed up his chest and took on a sophisticated mien, which to be quite honest made him look more constipated than anything. "You don''t have to lie to me you wanted to see the rest of the house didn''t you?", he said in a conspiratorial tone. I sat there stunned looking at him like he was a genius for figuring out my nefarious plot. I nodded 4 times in succession. He immediately hoisted me up and carried me over the ward. SENSE MAGIC SKILL HAS BEEN CREATED Magical sense (passive) lv. 1 Exp:26% Sense the magic around you -range 2 inches I grinned, was about time I''d been trying to gain that skill for the last 8 months. I wondered how I gained EXP. Though I hadn''t heard anything about quests yet. ''Experience system description!'' Gain experience by learning/experiencing new thingsThis narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. "Ron are you okay, you''ve been spacing out?", should have waited to go back to the crib I was slowly getting too big for, to check the game. I could notice he was actually concerned by his use of my real name. I shouted "Freedom!" jumped out of his arms and ran screaming into the kitchen, this would distract him from my blanking out. "cheeky bugger", he muttered and started play-chasing me, at the end of it I ended up lying on the floor out of exhaustion and he scolded by mum until his ears were red. "You are leaving for Hogwarts soon Bill, I hope I won''t be getting any letters from school about you. Now take your brother to bed, you''re grounded for the rest of the day!" I let myself be carried, and said to Bill "Worth?", he grinned "Worth". Bill snuck into my room later that night holding the tales of Beedle the bard. "Do you want to hold the book while I read it." I nodded and stretched out my hands for the book, receiving it. "Just say the title of the story you want to hear the book will open itself on the corresponding page." This was totally a test, he wouldn''t be using that vocabulary unless he wanted to test my intelligence, I guess they suspected I was smarter than the average kid. I puffed out my chest mentally. Whatever. "three brothers." I felt the magic travel along my tendril, form in my hands and get absorbed in the book. I sat there blankly staring at the words. If it wouldn''t have made Bill worried or suspicious I would have facepalmed so hard people in china would have heard it. I''d been doing the magic thing wrong, materialising the magic in the middle of my body was fucking stupid why hadn''t I seen that. The only place wizards ever used their magic out of were their damn hands. I sighed, having to wait to research this sucked but I was pretty hyped for this famous story. "There were once three brothers who cheated death..." Heh cheated Death. I fell asleep immediately, I was only a year and some months old after all. -/- The second I woke up the next day I tried to summon magic in my hands, it worked, but it was dissipating incredibly fast, what did I even want to do with my magic now that I had it? Fire. It didn''t work, the surface above my hand became warmer but otherwise, nothing happened and when I tried to draw on more magic I got the distinct feeling the tendril connecting me to the source was too tired to manage. I decided to leave my room and grind my magic sense on the ward, but found it to not be there anymore. My parents must have taken it down, the one leading upstairs was still up. "Explore downstairs or learn more about magic?" The answer was obvious. Three hours later I was staring at the ward like it had personally offended me with it''s very existence. Three hours of grinding and I''d gotten 3% EXP in the skill, 1% coming from me touching the tales of Beedle the bard. This time I did facepalm, nobody was around me at the moment. Of course I wouldn''t get much experience from touching this thing. I''d been doing it for the last 8 months. It was in the name for heaven''s sake. Experience, I needed to experience new things not just repeat the old ones. I stood up by pushing myself up with my hands. "Ouch, shouldn''t have facepalmed that hard." I muttered to myself as I went to my room and picked up the tales of Beedle the bard that Bill had left there earlier. Sensing magic was... weird, I suddenly had a 6th sense that could comprehend magic around me in all directions for 3 cm. The strength of the feeling wasn''t all too strong if you compared it to touch it would be like wind brushing over your skin ever so lightly. I wondered if others felt magic differently, maybe by taste? The book felt different than the ward but in a not discernable way, maybe one day I''d be able to identify what kind of magic I was feeling but that day was far off. I had been right of course, 15 minutes after me starting to examine the book with my skill I got a 1% increase, 24 minutes after that once more a 1% increase. Only after 1 hour did I get another one. The time it took to level the skill, a level 1 skill at that meant I would need to invest a lot of time into working, which honestly wasn''t as bad as it sounded since. Could one ever get bored of magic? I think not. -/- When dad found me sitting on the floor staring blankly at a book he assumed I wanted to learn how to read. Thus started my second schooling, I was done in a week. But it had been nice bonding time Chapter 6 (You have to feel it in the air) I had been forced to share the baby room with the little Ginny for two years before I was able to convince my parents of my ability to not fall out of my bed and break my neck. Due to this I was able to get my own room and unlimited access to blissful sleep, uninterrupted by my often screaming sister. It was the room right under the attic and had a window looking out to the forest near the Weasley home. I enjoyed sitting on the circular window still and trying to continuously emit magic from my hands. Even if I wasn''t having much success, it was still a fun activity. When Bill got his Hogwarts books I often went to his room and read them with him. Bill and I got along very well. I enjoyed his maturity (for an 11-year-old), and he liked how I stayed quiet when I had nothing to say. Me saying something was a rare occasion by the way. It wasn''t that I didn''t talk with my other brothers, they just didn''t really care about me, the twins had each other, charlie thought he was too awesome for me and Percy was occupied with his new pet Scabbers. I didn''t really care much honestly, they were children, Bill was the most mature one and the one I liked most, so I hung out with him mostly. After a while, of course, Bill was gone, Hogwarts had started. Without the one person who I regularly spent my time with, I could finally start sensing magic in earnest. I had said to myself that I would grind the skill on everything magical I could find in the house first before exploring the outside world. I had decided to start with my own room, sure there wasn''t much there, a bed that was way too big for me with dark brown covers, a beanbag chair, a half filled closet and a table with a chair. But almost all these things were magical, some of my clothes were enchanted, the chair was only being held together by magic and the bed covers could change their colour by command. Apparently one of my ancestors had been a very good enchanter. Which spoke well for my ancestry since being an enchanter was difficult, being a good one even more so. The house itself was magical as well, if it wasn''t, the crooked and impossibly expanded thing wouldn''t be standing. I started by running my hands along the walls as I slowly traversed the room. It was enlightening feeling the surface of the enormous amount of magic being used to hold this house together.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Whoever had done this must have been a very powerful wizard. After few weeks of sensing every nook and cranny in my room, I went over to the chair. Any Exp I could have gotten of the bed covers was already gone since I slept with them, same with the clothes I had. "What?" muttering to myself I ran over to the nearest wall and touched my hand to it, then I went back to the chair and did the same. "YES!" I had known I would be able to discern types of magic, but I hadn''t even dreamed of it being this soon. I could seemingly only discern the specific type of magic that lingered in magically repaired things of course but this was a huge step. Magical sense (passive) lv. 3 Exp: 68% Sense the magic around you -range 3 inches I was a bit miffed that it took almost 3 months to level up the skill twice and that the fact I could now detect different types of magic wasn''t noted in the skill description. But otherwise I was just genuinely happy "One small step for wizardkind, one giant step for Ron Weasley." I couldn''t help but laugh at that, the happy hormones still dancing in my head. All in all, I had just finished with my room by the time Bill came back from Hogwarts for Christmas. Once we sat in his room he in his chair me lying on his bed listening to some weird jingle about dragons and rainbows on the wizarding radio. We finally starting talking. "So what''s been happening while I was away getting detentions?" he asked with an interested expression. He knew how much I wanted to go to Hogwarts and was trying to make it not seem as fun as we both knew it was. My big brother couldn''t possibly be this cute. "Oh nothing much, dad got promoted, the twins have started speaking at the same time and charlie decided he wants to be a dragon tamer." Watching Bill spew water out of his mouth after hearing that was pretty funny. "What? a dragon tamer really?" he leaned in suddenly interested. "Apparently he got a book about dragons for his birthday, finally read it, he''s been completely taken with the idea ever since." Bill was looking at me funny, damn, right vocabulary. "Err, book dragons, dragons cool." I watched as his funny look quickly turned into a deadpan. "You know you don''t have to play stupid around me. Why the act anyway?" I noticed by the gleam in his eye that he really wanted to hear the answer to that one, he was just trying to look casual. I scrunched up my face as if in deep thought, opened my mouth, closed it again and finally said. "what does act mean?" Bill glared. I started laughed, he joined me soon after. The attack of the giggles completed, he gave me a look that said he would stop prying. Or at least that''s what I interpreted his look as, he could have been trying to say that the pancakes he''d eaten today had given him indigestion. "So how was Hogwarts, I know you''re a Gryffindork, but other than that your letters have left us woefully in the dark, you really must start working on your eloquence brother mine." Bill groaned at my way of speaking. "You sound like some of the pureblood Slytherins I''ve met. I guess Hogwarts is fun, I don''t like some teachers, my favourite subject is charms and I get along with my housemates, it''s only been 3 months not really much to say." he grinned. "And honestly, Gryffindork where did you hear that one." I just absentmindedly nodded, suddenly asking myself which house I wanted to go to. Chapter 7 (Attic) We were sitting in the living room when it happened. I was just lounging on the couch reading a book about herbology when I suddenly felt the book in my hands being affected by magic. The twins had entered their pranking stage, so I was reasonably wary. I did the only thing that came to mind. I turned to the twins, who had been hyper all day for some reason and threw the book in Fred''s face. Well, I thought it was Fred, could have been George for all I knew. It was quite funny watching the book turn into a giant hairy spider after it landed on him. The spider then proceeded to crawl on Fred who was at the moment shrieking like a little girl. Which of course made George shriek as well (I''m almost 100% sure they have some kind of link), this, in turn, made Charlie laugh and after that Ginny started crying as well. I did not want to be here when Mount Molly exploded so I skedaddled up to my room. On my way up I heard Percy talking to Scabbers. The illegal rat animagus, I''d completely forgotten the little turd. He was just so damn forgettable. My mood suddenly turning somber I threw myself on my beanbag and thought of what to do to the rat. Expose him? No, too many questions asked. I''d have to deal with him myself, but I wasn''t nearly strong enough, I couldn''t even use magic yet for Christ''s sake. I had decided I''d wait to try making actual magic happen until I was able to create a constant stream of it at the minimum. Did I actually have to ever interact with Scabbers? Probably not it''s not like he''d ever done anything to the Weasleys in the book. But I wasn''t quite sure if I was even in a book, at this point, it''s just as likely I''m in a fanfiction... If I see Harry acting weirdly at Hogwarts I''d definitely flee the country, fanfic authors liked to bash Ron way too much for my liking. And they were quite a few fics where Harry was some eldritch abomination. All I had to say to that was, no thank you. Wormtail had something I wanted though. You-Know-Who''s wand. I was a collector at heart, a collector of interesting things. The wand that was used to bring magical Britain to its knees definitely fit that criterion. But collecting it would be useless if I couldn''t take it with me when I died, hmmm. I''m a wizard, if there is no way, I shall make a way. -/-Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. My birthday passed without much fanfare, my parents were much to enamoured with their only daughter and with their eldest starting his education. The cake was good, Charlie gave me all of the books he didn''t want anymore, fourteen all in all. I asked dad for a bookshelf, he took one out of the attic, a few reparoes and it was as good as new. My room was slowly being filled and was getting a personality. I enjoyed that fact. I had explored everything in it though, it was time to start on the rest of the house. I left my room and looked at the corridor, it was small, I slowly caressed the walls the door. Nope. Nothing. The door didn''t have any magic and the walls were the same as the ones in my room. I had decided to go from top to bottom with my exploration. I looked at the ceiling, I knew the hatch was simply hiding because of its shy personality, you had to be assertive with it. "Hatch open!" The ladder crashed onto the floor and I warily looked at the rickety and old thing, it honestly seemed as if it would crash if a dust mote landed on it. It would have to do. I started climbing, reaching the top and pulling myself into the attic. The first thing that hit me was how small it was, I was a child and even I felt cramped here. I looked around, quite a lot of things here, a bed frame, closet, chest, some boxes with indistinguishable writing on them, the family ghoul. Nothing that jumped in the eye in any way. Wait. The family ghoul was staring at me with its beady eyes, mouth slobbering. Ignoring the sinfully ugly but harmless thing I turned to the closet, I would leave the boxes and chest for last. "Creepy fucking thing," I muttered to myself while running my hands all over the closet. Nope not magical at all. The Bedframe wasn''t magical either. I went over to the chest. Magically locked, I''d have to wait for Bill to come back and ask him if he knew the unlocking spell yet. I didn''t really want to nick one of my parent''s wands and try it myself. My magic had the ranking G, pretty sure there was nothing to be done with that. I walked over to the boxes, I could feel the thing''s eyes boring into my back, this ghoul was creeping me out, thank god it was chained to the wall. Maybe I''d use it to test some malicious magic in the future. I paused. That was actually a fairly good idea I would need a partner to learn legilimency after all. Who didn''t want to be a mind reader. It was easier to ignore the ghoul now that I knew he would eventually be useful to me. I opened the first box. Clothing, pieces of wood and a few blank journals with writing supplies. I took the journals and the writing stuff and threw them down the hatch after checking nobody was there. They would be useful and if I couldn''t think of anything to write, well I had always wanted to learn how to draw now was as good a time as any. The second box contained more trash and a single photo album, I only needed one photo, magic-wise they were all the same. As I looked through the photo album I noticed how painfully young my parents looked like, in some of the photos. Well, whatever as sad as it was I didn''t really care much about my parents in this life. I didn''t think any would compare to my original parents. A photo of my grandparents on my father''s side they looked to be 17 and madly in love, they kept sneaking glances at each other. I looked at the back. SEPTIMUS WEASLEY & CEDRELLA BLACK I blinked in surprise, I hadn''t known my grandmother had been a Black, maybe I could use this fact to gain access to the Black properties. Food for thought. The only other photo of interest I found was the one of the original order of the phoenix. Yes, I would take these two, they were interesting... The third box simply contained even more useless stuff expect for a pocket watch and an old wizarding chess set. On the wizarding chess set, the name SEPTIMUS WEASLEY was engraved. The pocket watch was an old bronze piece, in itself not really something valuable, but I felt some quite potent magic on it. Back in my room, I looked at my haul. A few blank journals with a few pencils quills and ink pots, an old and tattered photo of my grandparents, a reminder that I was a Black, in a way. An old pocket watch with powerful magic in it and a wizarding chess set. A photo of the order. I don''t know why but something about that thing made me look at it. I couldn''t discern anything special no matter how hard I did. I yawned. Chapter 8 (burning clock) I was three and a half years old when I finally managed to raise a stat. Magical regeneration has increased I was of course ecstatic and threw a party with Tibbers, the toy bear I had gotten for my birthday. Spurned on by one of my first major successes in this world I diligently continued to train in everything that I could. It was very boring being an adult in a kid''s body, little to no interesting literature in our house, inability to play with other children without dying of boredom and some things simply out of my reach. Therefore I was already spending all the time I could on productive uses of my time. If past me could see me now. I wondered if the magical world had a library, it would most likely be heavily censored in terms of magic but I was more interested in magical forms of entertaining literature. I had been an avid reader in the past, I stopped that train of thought and got back to work. A month after that I was rewarded by my Magic stat increasing as well and I was finally able to effectively emit magic from my hands. Ron Weasley The Immortal Str: G+ Agi:G+ Vit: F- Reg: F Magic: G+ Magic reg:G The day after finally managing the hand emission I sat down on the floor with a glass of water nearby and tried to create fire with just my will. I had always seen thermodynamics as one of the simple sciences and every wizard ever seemed to start with either a light or a fireball. Sadly it didn''t work. I tried again this time I imagined the atoms above my palm vibrating and I noticed the air grow warm. My magic reserve empty, I stopped. This would take a while, that I was at this point, a 100% sure of, but at least now I knew that conceptualization helped. Later that day I assigned the creation of a fireball a gesture, snapping my fingers and an incantation, Fuego.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. "Fuego" a small flame the size of my thumbnail flickered to life in the air. I decided that I would learn this with the incantation and the gesture. I simply couldn''t bring myself to delay learning magic any longer. Doing magic was orgasmic in a way. Addicting. Changing reality itself, manipulating forces that others couldn''t touch with anything else but their imagination. I wondered how wizards hadn''t gone mad with the power. After a few moments spent pondering their society, clothing and general mentality, I deduced. They probably had. From that day on I almost religiously practised my flame making spell as many times as I could, which wasn''t much honestly, maybe three to four times a day. I tried creating some other spells, but nothing really worked out as well as fire did. Humans had an innate understanding of hot and cold, fire was the one of the first and most important tools we had learned to wield. It had allowed us to cook food so it was more digestible, which freed up energy from the digestion process, the free energy then moved on to develop our brains. It wasn''t too far fetched that without fire humans wouldn''t exist. It made sense that we had an affinity with the element. -/- It was at night that I slipped out of my room and stealthily moved to the ground floor of our house. Breathing shallowly, my palms sweaty I tried to not step on any of the squeaky stairs. The punishment for sneaking downstairs after bedtime would be simple but I didn''t want to let anyone know what I could do. I calmed down considerably when I arrived onto the ground floor. Walking over to the family clock I marvelled at its complexity, truly it was maybe the greatest masterpiece I had ever seen. It was also the only magical thing left unexplored in my quest to level my magical sense, except for my parent''s bedroom. If my family saw me almost sensually caressing the thing they would probably be freaked out. Rightly so, there would be no discernable reason for the action in their minds, which might suggest me having mental issues in the extreme case. The magic in the thing was so unbelievably complicated and powerful I was sure it would take me two months to fully grasp it. It didn''t. Take me two months that is. It took me two and a half years. -/- I was six years old and lounging in my room thinking about what to do next, all the magical things had been thoroughly sensed. The only thing missing was the master bedroom and the garage. I had initially forgotten about that place since it wasn''t directly part of the house, I had tried to remedy that, but it was warded, probably by dad. I opened my skills window. Magical sense (passive) lv. 20 Exp: 38% Sense the magic around you -range 1 meter Stealth (active) lv. 8 Exp:12% the man lurking in the shadows 2% noise suppression 2% less visibility What I had noticed about my sensing skill was that the higher level it became the better I could differentiate between types of magic and that it''s range did not grow linearly unlike my stealth skill. At lv. 1 of stealth I had 0.25% noise and visibility suppression and at lv.4 I had had 1%. I hadn''t the faintest clue what that meant but I would find out. "Fuego" A tennis ball sized fireball appeared in the air I grinned. Then I frowned, sure the fire looked quite menacing with its green flame but I couldn''t move the damn thing. That would be the next step. I looked out of my circular window beyond our garden, the plains behind it and into the forest beyond. "It''s time to start exploring the outside world." Chapter 9 After breakfast I walked to the door and opened it, everything suddenly became so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I left. I heard dad say ¡°Isn''t this the first time he actually left the house?" ¡°He''s the only one in this house who is actually mature, I trust him to be responsible." ¡°Mother why must you hurt us this way." Three guesses on who that was. Now that I was outside, I actually couldn''t think of anything to do. It''s not like there were monsters lurking behind every corner and a labyrinth of doom in every forest. This was rural England for Christ''s sake. The only thing exciting about this place was the fact that it wasn''t exciting. Suddenly hearing a noise I turned towards our garden I followed the sound, my feet stealthily eating up ground and what I saw would forever be branded into my mind. Two garden gnomes copulating. Two disgusting potato-like beings with giant heads humping at each other without abandon, it was one of the most horrifying things I¡¯d ever witnessed. I pulled a knife out of my pocket, a knife I had liberated from the kitchen just for the occasion of going outside, a knife I always carried with me, expect when bathing of course. ¡°It''s time to shank some bitches." I walked over to the gnomes and was about to stab the things to death when I thought about the windows facing the garden, I could only imagine how my family would react if they saw me go knifey knifey on these creatures. I picked the two up, they had been so consumed by their... work they hadn''t noticed me sneaking up on them. I spun them around and threw them as far as I could. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I looked at the window seeing mum looking at me approvingly. I started my first genocide. After I had thrown the gnomes in one direction, I went inside and told mum I would go and throw the gnomes even further away so they wouldn''t just stumble back. I hadn''t thrown the things particularly far and they were still stumbling around like a bunch of drunk tourists at an Oktoberfest. The two love birds were at it again..... I went over to them and hacked off their heads, I watched detached as their green blood spilled onto the ground. The others finally noticing what I was doing tried to stumble away to safety, I chased them all down. After killing the last one I noticed that I had moved quite a way from the house, I was almost standing in the forest now. I was bored and lunch wouldn''t be for a few hours so I went into the forest to explore a bit. I had a fairly good sense of direction so I wasn''t scared of getting lost. -/- I was picking up a particularly interesting stone when I felt something magical sneaking up one me. Throwing myself forward I made it just in time to avoid getting bludgeoned, if the sound of something hitting the ground behind me was indeed a club as I thought it was. I turned around swiftly just to see something I immediately identified as a red cap running towards me, stone club raised and face drawn in a hateful grimace ¡°Fuego" I held the ball of fire before the red cap, effectively stopping its charge, I couldn''t throw the damn thing or in any way manipulate it but the red cap didn''t know that. I drew the knife just in time before the fire flickered away, I wouldn''t be able to use any more magic for the time being. It roared, Red caps were 3-foot tall dwarves but I was intimidated anyway, looking into its eyes I saw that it knew it had been tricked. With a rage filled shriek it ran towards me and tried to club me to death, I dodged, the thing may have been strong but it was slow as well. As it was raising its club I suddenly took a quick step forward and stuck my knife in its chest. The things skin was leathery, so I only managed to force it in half-way. The red cap dropped it''s weapon and reared back making me lose my grip on the knife. I saw that the knife was sticking out of its stomach, not it''s chest as I¡¯d thought. From its hateful scream it was well and truly enraged now. ¡°Fuck." I cursed as I stumbled away from its charge, it was much faster now that it dropped the heavy looking club. I was able to dodge a few more strikes from its clawed hands, the monster was getting noticeably slower but I stumbled on something and fell on my back arms flailing. Me flailing my arms was a terrible mistake on my part, I should have just fallen down and used them to defend myself. This I realised just as the thing arms wrapped themselves around my throat and started squeezing, the sickening sound of my right arm snapping precluding this did not help my hopes of actually surviving. I tried defending myself but my dominant right arm was broken, so I only managed to slap it''s face weakly with my left arm. It then proceeded to fucking bite me. It hurt like hell but I grabbed it''s tongue and created a flame desperately willing it bigger and stronger. The flame felt four times smaller than normal because I couldn''t use my gesture or incantation. But I felt it grow, fueled by my desperation. The red cap let go of my neck and stumbled back shrieking fire gushing out of its mouth. The voice of a wounded animal made the birds in the tree above, which in my imagination had been gleefully watching the fight before, fly off squawking loudly. I forced myself to my feet and ran like a madman towards the things club, it was the only weapon in my sight at the moment. The club weighed heavily in my one hand as I ran towards the still shrieking red cap clutching its tongue rolling on the floor. I raised the club and smashed it into the things face. I didn''t stop until it wasn''t moving anymore. Chapter 10 (Burning gain)
Skill created Fire sorcery (active) lv. 1 EXP: 17% Create and manipulate Fire -1% heat resistance -1% additional heat Your vitality has increased Your magic has increased I wasn''t really in a mood to celebrate. I had to leave the forest fast, lest another red cap jump me. I hobbled towards the forest edge glancing at the ground as I did. Not finding my knife I dismissed it from my thoughts, not wanting to spend another second here. My body felt well and truly beat up. A dislocated right arm, a left hand that had an ugly bite wound and I was fairly certain I had sprained my ankle. I was just grateful my arm wasn''t broken like I''d suspected. If that had happened I would have had no way out of telling my parents and if Molly found out what happened to me I would never be able to leave the house again. Walking over to the stream intent on washing away the blood I wondered what a red cap had been doing in that forest. My head pounded so I stopped that train of thought. I washed in the stream and lay in the grass to dry myself a bit, letting the sun wash over me I almost fell asleep, but I managed to force myself up and walk home. When I entered the house I didn''t see anyone so I simply hollered "I''m back." Went up to my room, threw myself on my bed and promptly fell asleep.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. When I woke up my left hand was throbbing. It looked slightly green around the edges and was throbbing with my heartbeat. Infection. I checked my other injuries. The sprained ankle was smarting a bit, the arm that had been dislocated still hurt and felt like it would pop out again through any provocation. At least I felt several times better than yesterday, so that was something. I almost went back to sleep, but managed to prevail. Sitting in the bathroom before a metal pot I had boiled until my magic had ran out I wondered how much this would hurt. I plunged my diseased hand inside. "Mgghhgmmm." Good, the gag had been a smart idea. I had felt slightly foolish because in my last life this would be a walk in the park, but my new body had no pain tolerance yet. Once I could almost ignore the pain- I took out another knife I had liberated from the kitchen and plunged it in a wound left by the tooth of the red cap, making sure to twist it a bit once it was inside my flesh. ?Fucmgghhh." One done 23 more to go. I had blacked out, thank god I was smart enough to tie a shirt around my arm to close off blood circulation or I would have bled out. "Ron come on you''ve been in there for the last 20 years, come out some of us want to use the bathroom as well." Yes, the thing that had awoken my from my blackout induced sleep. Percy''s shrill voice, and the indicator of his need to use the facilities if my guess was right. "Minute!" After screaming to be heard through the fairly thick door I checked my hand, I had ''treated'' all wounds and my ankle felt fine. It was fascinating watching the red water slowly flow down the drain, I removed any evidence of what had transpired here. Drank what felt like one litre of water to replenish some blood. Hobbled out of the door past a fidgeting Percy. I heard the bathroom slam shut behind as I fell into my bed my body too exhausted to support me. It was time to think about a training plan, I had thought that because the Harry Potter books started in first year nothing exciting would happen to me as well until that time. Obviously I''d been wrong. What I had noticed in the fight with the red cap was, that the only thing I wasn''t missing in terms of combat potential was the willingness to kill. Everything else might as well be a big fat 0. I took out the blank book I had found in the attic and wrote Ron Weasley''s journal on the first page. The cover was too black to write one. On the first page, I wrote. -Start physical training -grind fire sorcery -grind stealth by always using it -try to find more magical objects for magic sense training It wasn''t much of a plan. But I had never really been the type, a vague idea about what to do was absolutely enough. The rest one could improvise. Chapter 11 (The dark lords wand) The throbbing of my hand woke me the next morning. Moving my body I deduced that my ankle was doing ok and my shoulder wasn''t in danger of being dislocated by a sneeze anymore. The wounds on my hand clearly showed someone or something had tried to bite it off, sighing I took out some bandages and wrapped both my arms to the shoulders. "This actually looks cool," I remarked to myself after looking in the mirror I had protruding from my closet door. Satisfied that no one would get a heart attack by bursting into my room I sat on the circular window still and started practising fire. After I was done I didn''t really know what to do. Before this, there had always been just one more magical item to grind my skill on and I didn''t feel comfortable going out to run for physical training yet. My ankle still wailed in quiet agony whenever I walked on it. I took out my journal and a pencil set the tip on the paper and. Couldn''t decide what to draw. I closed my eyes and got a sudden flashback of the redcap lying dead on the floor unrecognisable face staring into the forest canopy. A fleeting smile flickered on my face, that would do. -/- Moving everywhere using stealth was annoying, but worth it. In just three weeks the level of the skill had risen by two. The experience gain of my other skills, fire mastery was glacial at best though. I grinned at my pun and started running. Percy was gone visiting a friend or something, he had left Scabbers in his room with the window open. It had been fairly easy to get my grubby little hands on a certain potion, my twin brothers had been secretly brewing it in their room after all, I had simply walked in and taken it. In the future, doing so would be much harder since they would receive wands, ward and trap their room, especially after this theft. But I had needed the confusion potion for my plan. A plan that was about to be put into action. Percy really should be more careful about where he left his rat''s water bottle, some insidious individual could lace it with something uncomfortable. I entered Percy''s room imposingly and spoke in my best imitation of the dark lord. "Wormtail, come out!" The rat froze in its tracks and looked at me, looking ready to bolt. "I have marked you as my servant even if you run, you cannot hide." I put on my most impressive sneer. Suffice to say it wasn''t very impressive, having a boys face didn''t help in that regard.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Seemingly willing to go along with my acting Wormtail went through his transformation and tried to kiss my feet, good survival instincts. I was impressed that he was able to make such a clear decision even through his confusion addled mind. I kicked him away harshly, I may not be strong in this body but Peter had lived his last years as a rat he hardly had the strength to contest me. He glanced at me confusedly, not only from the potion, but from my actions as well. Voldemort probably enjoyed having his feet kissed, it might explain why he had no heirs. Ignoring the apparent oddity Peter started to babble. "My lord you survived, I am ashamed of not recognising you. I always believed you were alive please let me serve you once more!" he said while not looking into my eyes, trying to stop his nose from dripping blood on the floor. "Serve me by giving me my wand fool." His eyes widened and he started shaking in fear, probably thinking he had committed some sacrilege by daring to take my wand from the Potter home. Ahem. Voldemort''s wand. "Do not worry, I am grateful that you kept it safe, you shan''t be punished, you will be rewarded even." My consoling voice didn''t really sound good, but I was fairly sure the man was scared shitless and wouldn''t notice. His trembling hands reached into his frayed muggle clothes and almost reverently took out a bone white wand. For a second I was afraid he was going to point it at me and kill my ass, but he simply held it aloft and handed it over it. I only felt a minor feeling of warmth from the wand as I clasped it in my palm, I imagined this meant we weren''t really suited to each other. "Turn back into your rat form and do what you have done for the last years, you will receive further orders tomorrow," I grinned down at the wand in my hand, evilly! "There are some things that need to be done now that I have access to my full power again." I didn''t wait for him to acknowledge my orders, I simply left the room and shut the door behind me. I was fairly sure I didn''t imagine the sounds of crying. Later at night, I used my eleven levels in stealth to sneak into Percy''s room. I halted momentarily before Wormtail''s sleeping form, asking myself if I really wanted to do this, then I plunged the knife down. The elaborate plan to get the wand had been necessary because when an animagus died while in their animal form, they stayed that way and the items they had with them were lost to the void. I opened the window and leaving the room took the rat corpse with me, I checked for blood stains, none whatsoever, good. Percy would think Scabbers had escaped through the window that he had forgotten to close. It wasn''t really an impressive murder, but I was fairly proud of myself for planning it out so well. I had been fairly uncertain but then I realised something. I wanted the wand, no, I needed the wand, once I had unlocked the fire sorcery skill I had tried to wandlessly summon something. It didn''t work, I tried lifting something with magic. It didn''t work. I don''t know if I had an affinity with fire or a negative one with telekinesis but I had a theory. Wizards could learn wandless magic, after a bit of research I found out that most wandless magic was obtained through mastering a spell to a degree that one could use it without a wand. What I had been doing with my fire was sorcery, manipulation of magical energy without the help of a medium. What a wand did in response to an incantation and wand gesture was interesting and debatable, the strongest theory available was that it produced a weave. Once you become practised at a spell you could cast silently, the step after that was casting without a wand gesture, the step after that was to forsake the wand in the entire process. I didn''t know if a spell could be done without an incantation at all. What I wanted to learn was a wandless accio so that if I ever lost my wand in a fight or something it wouldn''t be an automatic death sentence. And for that I needed a want to learn the spell with in the first place. "accio" The pebble I had wanted to summon wobbled a bit and I felt my magic deplete to a low never felt before. Chapter 12 After three weeks of training my vitality and agility finally increased. Along with my strength, which was odd since the only training I did was running, but in the end, I simply concluded it was a natural increase because of my body growing. Or maybe it didn''t matter how I trained and it always added to all physical stats A few days after that I was playing with my fire, trying to make it into certain shapes as an exercise for my control over it. I was fairly certain I had been trying to make a triangle, but when I managed a circle and got a level up I was fairly happy. I was even happier when all of my magic stats increased. I had managed to make the pebble I practised my summoning charm on to slowly hobbled towards me. Sure it only moved 1 inch, but it was progress as I liked to say. Bill had moved out immediately after leaving Hogwarts, as expected starting an apprenticeship with Gringotts to become a curse breaker. For his 17th birthday I had given him some of my better drawings, I visited his apartment once and saw them hung out in his living room. I wasn''t sure if he had simply hung them there that one time to make me happy, but even if that was the case, it had worked. Bill and I kept in contact through the owl he had gotten from our parents for making perfect. I often asked him questions about magic and he asked me about home. -/- I was nine years old when I finally got to see Diagon alley, heh, diagonally. Mum had taken me, Percy and the twins for Hogwarts shopping, Charlie was also gone at this point. Taming dragons in Romania. If I had to use one word to describe Diagon alley it would be mesmerising. "Can we go to the wand shop first, I want to ask some questions." Molly looked at me and nodded, me and my mother didn''t have a bad relationship, strictly speaking, we simply didn''t really have a relationship. A mother developed a bond with her child in the stage of toddlerhood. I simply hadn''t initiated the bond and so it hadn''t formed, once Ginny came she was distracted by her and then it was too late. "Sure thing sweetie but don''t annoy Mr Ollivander too much ok." And so to Ollivander''s we went. I was trying not to concentrate on my magic sense, which was hard since I was constantly being bombarded by things and magic I''ve never sensed before.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. But when we entered Ollivander''s my mind almost exploded. I just stood there rooted to the spot with my hands closed so violently I was almost drawing blood, even with the bandages I always wore. The old bespectacled man looked at me oddly, but then he started measuring Gred and Forge. It took me 15 minutes to get myself under control again. Incidentally exactly the time it took for the twins to get wands. Mum looked at me questioningly, oh she wanted to know if they should wait for me. "Go on, I have a lot questions, you''ll only get bored if you wait for me, I''ll be going to Hogwarts soon, I think it''s about time I learn some responsibility. I will find you later." I saw mum nodding, with a sad look in her eyes for some reason, the twins rolling their eyes and Percy was, well Percy had snuck away to eat some ice cream with a pretty looking girl. I watched them leave and turned to face Ollivander, who finally decided to address me. "seems like you have some questions for me young man, ask away." I saw in his eyes that he expected me to ask if I could pick my own wand or something equally as stupid. "What do you believe is the function of the wand and how exactly is it necessary to use spells?" By the widening of his eyes, I assumed that had been an unexpected question. His demeanour turned a tad calculating. "Believe, I would like to think I know." He was baiting me trying to make me reveal more of my personality before he committed to a certain approach in this conversation. "In the world of magic, Belief often trumps knowledge." There, cryptic enough to be interpreted in different ways. "Well if you must know, a Wand is there because with something more magical than themselves witches and wizards find it easier to channel from their magical core." A magical core? No, I couldn''t be unique in my ability to sense magic, he was lying. For some reason. "It also provides a magical with a further way to strengthen their belief in their ability to wield magic with wand gestures." He was looking directly into my eyes now as if expecting something. I started an answer but then decided to say something else. "I don''t really think we have a magical core." I sat with the earnestness of a child. His eyes twinkled. "And why do you think that? It is the most commonly believed theory of where magic comes from." He was looking for something. He had been trying to steer the conversation to this point since the beginning. Time to be a bit blunter. "How did you realise I can sense magic?" He blinked at my abruptness. "By the way you reacted when you came into the shop, you looked like you were getting a fainting spell, I was quite concerned." Damn the guy was sending out grandfatherly vibes like the sun did radiation. Weirdo. "Is being able to sense magic rare?" He grinned like a fox at my question. "Yes, which you would know if you had told your family." I looked at him with the bored eyes of a man who knew what was going on and had the perfect counter. "Don''t imply that''s blackmail material, it really isn''t." Ollivander smiled at me. "You''re smarter than you look." I almost got irritated, but that would simply be giving him a reaction. "And you''re not as socially incompetent as the most old pieces of horse droppings I''ve had to converse with over the years." He was stunned by my crassnes so I went for the kill basically taking any advantage he had in this conversation for myself. "So I assume being a wandmaker requires this special sense." The old man pouted, he pouted for god''s sake old men weren''t supposed to pout. "Well I have to admit I underestimated you because of your age, but truly a Weasley in Slytherin, my what an outrage this will cause." He looked quite delighted by the outrage that would cause. "Pff, Slytherin everyone knows the real Slytherins are in Hufflepuff." We both chuckled at that one. "So I think we established that you''re Slytherin material at least, and those people never do something without an intention. What can this humble wandmaker do for you?" Now that was just over the top. "My family is too poor to buy me a new wand for Hogwarts in two years I want to be taught how to make one myself." Ollivander blinked, he blinked again and then he simply said. "Ok." "Thank you, Mr Ollivander." "You can call me Garrick." chapter 13 (Excuse me what the fuck) I was lying on Bills couch, it was a nice green shade, my favourite colour actually. Fiddling with the fluffy pillows I completely ignored my brother¡¯s baffled face. ¡°What.¡° he repeated himself again. ¡°I want you to teach me how to apparate.¡° I said with the blandest voice possible. ¡°Why ask me, I know how to do it but I¡¯m not really an expert.¡° I gave him the best deadpan I could manage. ¡°Because I trust you unlike, I don''t know, basically everyone else.¡° My eldest brother had a sad look on his face. ¡°I know you never really had a great relationship with mum and dad sorry for asking.¡° That was a dumb thing to assume. No matter the relationship, no parent would ever consider teaching their pre-17-year-old child apparation. I waited until Bill sipped his tea, the one I had made. Bill was terrible at making teas. ¡°I''m pretty sure they think i''m squib.¡° His reaction to that was to spew tea all over the floor and start coughing uncontrollably. After he was done he took out his wand muttered a cleaning spell and put on his thinking face. You knew it was his thinking face because his brows creased themselves together. ¡°You know I''ve never actually seen you do accidental magic, I just always assumed you were way to calm for that to be necessary.¡° He looked at me and asked. ¡°Can you do magic?¡° I threw a weak fireball at his face, I was pretty sure that was answer enough. You could see his brain grind to a stop. ¡°Take care your ears might start smoking.¡° I grinned as I teased him.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. He started massaging his temples. ¡°Any other bombshell you want to bombard me with or is that all?¡° Well, he was asking for it. ¡°I''m also a reincarnation.¡° At this point Bill just slammed his head on the table and started groaning. Later when he was feeling well enough again, I had gone over and patted his back I was sure that had helped a lot, he asked. ¡°Why never tell anyone?¡° Shrugging I answered. ¡°I never really trusted them and I know curse breakers have to learn occlumency.¡° He actually looked kind of ashamed at that. ¡°My occlumency isn''t really that good.¡° I almost couldn''t hear his mumbling. ¡°Well preventing your youngest brother from being kidnapped by a crazy dark wizard should give you incentive to learn harder.¡° He looked like he agreed. ¡°Wait how old are you if you''re a reincarnation.¡° I was simply amazed that he simply accepted it. I shrugged. He sighed. ¡°When you gonna tell me how to apparate.¡° He groaned and seemed to consider it for a bit. ¡°Accio Book¡° ¡°This is my apparition textbook, but you need a wand to use it at first.¡° ¡°I work for Ollivander now I have access to more wands than you''ve ever seen.¡° He stared blankly, that was something he was doing a lot today. ¡°Of course you do, why wouldn''t Ollivander hire a nine year old, makes sense to me.¡° The last part trailed of into incredulousness. ¡°You want to move in with me?¡° Now it was my turn to look at him like he''d just proclaimed his favourite colour of the alphabet was 7. ¡°I guess you didn''t ask before because you weren''t sure if you could leave a kid alone for long?¡° Bill had just finished his apprenticeship and was working full-time now. He would be flying to egypt in a week. Lucky bastard. ¡°Yeah and now we have an actual excuse, no matter how hard our parents deny it they don''t have the money to let you floo to Ollivanders everyday. My apartment is only a 15 min walk away from Diagon.¡° Mom could apparate me, but they were wizards, they probably wouldn¡¯t consider that solution, ¡°Yeah sure i''ll move in, but please soundproof your room before that I don''t want to hear you doing it.¡° That made him blush. ¡°I guess we can go explain to mum why her youngest son is moving out.¡° He stood up dusted himself of and held out his hand to me. ¡°Please be gentle it''s my first time.¡° He started sputtering and then I felt like I was being squeezed through a tube. We were suddenly standing before the burrow and Bill was looking at me expectantly. ¡°Please, this is nothing compared to the feeling of having your soul forced into a new body, or being born.¡° ¡°That''s disgusting.¡° He didn''t stop grimacing until we entered the burrow. -/- 3 hours later my stuff was shrunk down to a moveable size and I suddenly remembered something. ¡°Hey Bill a few years ago I found a closed chest in the attic, you wanna go see what''s in it?¡° Bill''s face suddenly matched his hair and he looked like he wanted to be talking about anything else. He coughed in his hand. ¡°I was curious as well, so when I learned basic ward breaking I opened it, it was dad''s porn.¡° Of course it was. chapter 14 "The first thing we will be doing is setting down some ground rules." Said Ollivander, which didn''t really surprise me, it was the same at every workplace. "First rule: have fun, the positive emotions will mix themselves with the magic in the air and we will get better results." Interesting, I had already known emotions had a great influence on magic but I hadn''t thought it would be relevant enough to be mentioned. Garrick rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "That''s actually it, you seem smart and I''ll be there to warn you if you''re doing anything wrong." "Follow me." We went into a workshop, I noted from the other doors in the corridors it was in, that it wasn''t the only one. The first thing that caught my attention was the gigantic array of different woods leaning on the walls. The second was the smell, it smelled like a forest, fresh and tantalizing. "This is where you start, the shape of a wand isn''t just important for aesthetic purposes, it is also a factor in the compatibility between wizard and wand." I looked at him seeking further instruction. He handed me a knife and told me to get to work, "and no using magic that could mess with the results." So I did. After four hours I had produced one serviceable stick of wood that looked like it could become a wand, Garrick had more than a thousand of the completed product in his shop. I wondered how long that had taken him? He had probably inherited it. In the four hours I had been working the old man had produced five wands. His were all of greater quality, and the man had also occasionally sold wands to customers at the shop front. I only wanted to produce one wand in the grand scheme of things, so I could take my time and try to do the work well. Ollivander was also simply more practised so there was no reason to be jealous. When he came back he took the wooden stick into his hand and hummed for a bit gliding his spindly fingers all over it. "It''s average, but still very impressive work for someone your age, once you can make a wand of greater quality, I will teach you how to match a wood, length and shape for yourself." He looked at me as if expecting some childish outburst. "May I have something to drink, I''m kind of thirsty." He chuckled and went to get something. I started on another wand. When Ollivander came back he simply took a look at me, floated a glass of cold lemonade next to me and went back to work.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. After a while I was told I had worked enough for the day and was given a sandwich to eat while I went home. I smiled at the praise to my work ethic. "With the pace you''re going at you''ll probably be able to make your wand in a year, astounding!" -/- I heard the door of the leaky cauldron shut behind me as I walked to my apartment, when I reached it, it was to the sight of Bill laying on the floor in a drunken stupor. Cute. I leaned in as close to his ear as I could without waking him and opened my mouth. "HEY BILL ARE YOU FEELING OKAY!" The poor sod sprang up, stumbled over his own legs fell on the floor and starting barfing. I took out You-Know-Who''s wand and started practicing my summoning charm. I heard the sound of washing in the bathroom and Bill came into the living room looking like death warmed over. I looked him up and down and shook my head. "Bill, Bill, Bill, aren''t you supposed to be an example to the next generation, what would dear mother say to your behaviour." "Go eat a gnome, you''re older than me and I certainly don''t see you being anything more than an obnoxious brat." He managed to spew out, in a astounding effort of sentence building for someone with a hangover. Or did he have a potion against that in the bathroom? I clutched at my heart theatrically. "Your words are as toxic as the other substance you just expelled from your mouth. Why must you hurt me this way." "Do you want me too help with your occlumency a bit before you leave for Egypt?" I asked more seriously. He adopted a consternated expression I had seen all to often on him in the past days. "You know what I''m not even surprised you know legilimency okay hit me, read my mind." He said and locked eyes with me deliberately. I gave him my best sneer. "The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by any invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing, William." He was simply staring at me with a horrified expression. "By Merlin, you sound like professor Snape." As he was distracted by the thought of why I sounded like his former potions professor I whipped out my wand faster than he obviously thought I could and pointed it at him. "Legilimens" The only thing I got were vague expressions and some disjointed words before I felt him pushing me out slowly but surely. I started using more of my magic and smashing against his will like hell''s own battering ram. With one grunt of effort he forced me out just as my magic was completely depleted. I had used legilimency on the ghoul in my old home, but he was primitive and not a great test subject. After that I had tried it on some garden gnomes and animals I found around the house. I found it much easier to cast this spell than the summoning charm, maybe because voldemort''s wand affinity for it, or I was simply talented at it. I didn''t know. Bill was laying on all fours clutching his head in his hands and barfing again. Great. After he got himself under control he stared at me, finally realizing I was dangerous, but happy that I could actually defend myself. "That was brutal, but you know that I think. I might just get better at defending my mind if I practice attacking, what do you think?" He raised his wand in what for him was probably a threatening gesture, to me it just looked like he was going to poke his eye out. "Whenever you''re ready." I looked him in the eyes and he cast the spell. Bill was on the floor puking his guts out, between heaves he managed to formulate one word. "Cheater." Well you couldn''t read my mind through my eyes since my mind was fused with my soul, you would simply find an incomprehensible emptiness that was not at all pleasant. Tough. Better luck next time. chapter 15
Chapter 15
After five months, I had managed to create a wand that was, ''decent enough'' if you believed Garrick. It still didn''t look as good as the old man''s creations though, which as mentioned previously did not evoke any feelings of jealousy within me, at all. "I must have a great variety of wands so that I can match them to my customers, making custom wands would be impossible since it would take a few weeks to get to know the magic of the buyer." I looked at him urging him to go on. He smiled and said exactly what I had hoped he would say. "Naturally, because you yourself are the most familiar with your own connection to magic, the wand created by you, for you, will trump mostly anything made by others." Grinning, I patted myself on the back, learning wandmaking had been a great idea, not that I had learned it in its entirety yet. "Now find a wood that you feel would be most conductive to channeling magic." I sat up from the stool I usually used for carving, and went around brushing my hand against different woods, letting of a small stream of magic from my fingertips. Ash, maple, redwood, cherry, PINE. The wood from the pine tree sucked in my magic slowly, my magic sense skill of level 28 was quite helpful. I left some of my magic in it, too much to devour in less than a minute while I checked the other woods, receiving no reaction from any of them. I walked to the other side of the room and stretched out my right hand towards the pine branch. "accio" It was more of a thought buried deep in my mind than an actual incantation. The light brown branch slowly rose up and started floating towards me. When I grasped it in my hand I felt my soul quiver with excitement. "Well you seem to have found your preferred wood, quite an amazing reaction if I do say so myself." Garrick''s voice shocked me out of my trance.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. "Pinewood, interesting you don''t see that very often." He commented, looking rather deep in thought. "How do I determine the best shape and length?" My question broke him out of his stupor, he blinked a few times and answered. "Well this is quite a long process when you are doing custom wands, you will have to slowly chip away at the wood feeling with your magic for what is right. But before that, let''s go look for the wand core." He led me to another workshop one I hadn''t been allowed to enter before. The first thing I noticed was that the walls were filled with shelves, upon them were jars filled with a variety of cores. I only recognized dragon heartstring and phoenix feather, though they were the most numerically represented. The walls shimmered with unicorn hair. My eyes widened, that stuff was literally worth a fortune. I glanced at the Garrick in my peripheral vision. This might just be the richest man in England. Originally I had thought that I would simply be picked by a phoenix feather, they represented immortality and rebirth, quite fitting. But it was not to be. Maybe Pine already fulfilled that role. As I stretched out my magical sense and walked around the room (the range was only 2 meters), I felt a tugging and as I followed, I found a trunk. I tried to open it, but it was locked. It suddenly clicked open and I saw Garrick lowering his wand out of the corner of my eye. Inside were a lot of weird cores, fangs, bones and feathers of animals I didn''t recognize. I couldn''t help but ask. "Why do you only use phoenix feathers, unicorn hairs and dragon heartstrings?" I asked and watched him shrug. "Those are some of the most powerful magical creatures and with the most general coverage of adaptability towards wizards. If I didn''t I would have to spend a much longer time matching wands to people." That didn''t directly answer the question. Whatever, if he didn''t want to say he didn''t have to. My hand touched something round and smooth, I felt a smooth burn run through my body. I took out the object. It was a glass orb with with what looked like muscle inside. Dragon heartstring. I looked at my teacher questioningly. "I didn''t put it with the rest of the dragon heartstrings because the dragon this was removed from was a tad, weird..." "Well, it looks like you found your wand core. The pine wood is suited for transfiguration and while dragon heartstring is usually known for its combat magic, I think this one might be more inclined towards the mind arts." He looked at me, "What are you waiting for, get to work." The first thing I had to do was a small ritual that would turn the pinewood incorporeal so I could insert the heartstring inside it without cutting a hole in the wood. That was easy enough. The second step was to cut away pieces of pinewood around the wand core until I found the right size and shape. The catch was, you had to chip away wood the size of a grain of sand or you could quickly find yourself starting over. After making miniscule progress, I went home. Bill was in Egypt and would come back in a few weeks. I sat on my bed looking at the potion bottles before me. Aging potion. Me and Bill lived in the muggle world so it would be necessary for me to look older if I wanted anything done. He had probably meant it for me to go shopping or maybe actually being able to cook without standing on a chair. I was going to use it to get laid.
chapter 16 (Why do you have blue hair?)
I looked around my room as I undressed myself. Bed, bean bag chair, closet with mirror on the door and a lot of drawings plastered on the walls. I had to tear my eyes away from those, I had become slightly above average of an artist in the last years. I enjoyed watching my work. I looked at myself in the mirror. Fairly tall for a nine year old, physique of a runner and shoulder length hair. I drank the potion and grimaced, as expected, it tasted disgusting. Honestly when I actually learn something about potions I swear the first thing I will do is find a way to make them taste better. I hunched over from the sudden pain, clutching my stomach, watching my body grotesquely bulge, twitch and shudder in the mirror. When the transformation ended, I looked like a 23 year old. I would be fairly tall in the future, almost two meters, that was nice, I''d been much smaller in my last life. I took out a leather band and bound suddenly waist-length, flaming orange hair into a ponytail. Dressing myself in some of Bill''s clothes, I checked my status screen. Ron Weasley The Immortal Str: F Agi:F+ Vit: E Reg: E Magic: E Magic reg:G+ No stat gain in the physical stats because of my now adult body, expected but still disappointing. I watched as the clothing ensemble slowly started coming together. A pair of loafers, sadly I hadn''t found any good sneakers, pants the colour of earthy brown, a soft green shade shirt and over that a black leather jacket with an Ace of Spades logo on the back. I looked, ok, I guessed, I hadn''t really been a part of popular culture for a few decades now. Being a internationally sought criminal usually put a damper on things like fashion and a social life. I left the run down apartment. There were some strong wards on that thing, for all that I made fun of my brother, he was a talented wizard. I stopped in my tracks, I didn''t know any good clubs in 1989, I was fairly sure Trash wasn''t around yet. "Wait a bloody second." Today was the 26th of 1989. I couldn''t help but grin, sure I wasn''t really dressed for the rave scene at the moment but who cared. I didn''t have a car so there was only one way to arrive there. I pulled out my city map and went over to the road leading to the field where one of the most legendary festivals ever was going to start and started hitchhiking. 30 minutes later I was in a car with Darren-call me Ren Mcsquire, who had recently heard about the dance festival about to go down. And a half hour later we were there, I heard someone shouting. "Tickets 20 quid!" I bought two tickets gave one to Ren as a thanks for bringing me here and told him I wouldn''t need a ride back. I had a ring on my finger that served as an emergency portkey home that could be recharged. I didn''t really have words to describe it, oh wait, I did. "Fucking awesome." We were about 20.000 people which was a lot, sure if you heard that number you wouldn''t be impressed but the moment you were dancing in a human mass that big you couldn''t help but think Holy shit. -/-Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. I woke up hugging a delightfully warm and soft body the next morning, I almost sneezed due to the hair tickling my nose. I immediately snapped to attention. Something was wrong, I remembered having gone to bed with a woman. The person lying next to me had the body structure of a teen, I put my hands on my sleeping partner and fondled her a bit. Yes definitely smaller than yesterday, she moaned and started yawning and generally entering a state of wakefulness. I didn''t know what was going on here, but I didn''t like surprises, opening my eyes I was almost blinded by the hair colour of the girl lying next to me. Honestly I didn''t even know that there was a way to make your hair colour, if this could be called a colour, see-in-the-dark-neon-blue. Well the second thing I noticed was that we were in my room, so I had the field advantage so to say, but this meant we were in a magical household and I didn''t know if the girl next to was a muggle or a witch. I groaned, I really did not want to have to call the obliviators and explain the situation to them. A loud thump was heard as blue hair fell of the bed, after some groaning she righted herself with closed eyes and asked. "Did anyone get the license plate of the truck that hit me?" A rhetorical question if I ever heard one, I couldn''t help but answer. "I don''t think drugs have a license plate or can be called trucks but I''m sure we shall catch the evildoer someday." I watched her freeze, open her eyes and stare at my naked 23 year old body lying on the bed. "Like what you see?" She meeped and threw herself on the ground, I leaned over seeing how she pulled a wand out from under her panties. Thank god, no obliviators needed. What wasn''t that good was the way she was pointing her wand at me, her hair having turned an angry red. "Tell who you are and where I am and your mother might be able to recognize you after i''m done with you." She almost snarled, it would have been intimidating if she wasn''t approximately 5 foot tall and naked. I deadpanned at her and stretched out my hand, I saw her tense and almost complete the incantation for the body locking spell, but I wandlessly summoned her wand out of her hand mid word. "Second left door down the corridor is the, shower go clean yourself up and think about what went down last night, I''ll clean your clothes." She had the look of a deer frozen in the headlights. Turning around she almost sprinted out of the room. I heard her tripping outside. "Fucking metamorphmagus." I was making breakfast when Tonks timidly entered the kitchen wearing my bathrobe. "Anything you have to say for yourself?" She looked down and muttered something. "Can''t hear you." I was feeling a bit sadistic, she had inadvertently made me into a pedophile, sort of. She couldn''t be a day over 17, and I, muggle that I was, still considered 18 to be the cut off between good job bro and that''s a kid man. She mustered her courage and looked me in the eyes, I could only glimpse a feeling of shame before she sunk her head again. "I said I''m sorry okay." She truly did look sorry in a way, finding you had in anger pointed a loaded gun, which a gun was honestly, at an innocent person would do that to someone who had a moral compass. "It''s alright sit down, your clothes are on the couch over there." I pointed to the couch. "I''m making some eggs right now." She went over to the couch took her clothes and almost fled the room. Once I''d finished breakfast she came back and tried to sit down on one of the chairs, keyword tried. The second she let her bodyweight down onto the chair she winced and stood up again. She looked at me to find a mocking grin on my face she blushed and went to lay on the couch. "So am I a pedophile now or are you actually over 18?" "I''m 17, can I please have my wand back." I could understand the sentiment, even a suboptimal wand like Voldemort''s made me feel safe. "As long as you promise not to point it at me again." I said, but was already throwing it towards her. She didn''t say anything. I looked at her, she was gripping her wand and looking at the floor. I scoffed. "Teenagers, come on we had sex get over your awkwardness and eat something." I told her as I brought her a plate with eggs and bacon. She became even redder in the face took the food wordlessly and started eating. Then she said something. "Can you please put on some clothes." Oh, I knew there was something I was forgetting this whole time. I summoned some pants and a wifebeater from Bills closet and put them on. Almost as an afterthought I summoned Voldemort''s wand and tucked it away in my pocket. The draw would be really awkward from a pocket, I would have to get a wand holster when I finished my wand. "So what were you doing at the festival, its a muggle thing, so i didn''t think I would find anyone magical there. Hogwarts also starts in a few days." I had to wait a few seconds for the answer. "A few of my friends convinced me it would be a good idea, it was fun but then they ditched." That was kind of dumb. "Not really great friends then." That just made her look more depressed. "I know." She was probably waiting to be scolded, in my experience that is what most children expected when they did something stupid in the presence of an adult. So I imagine she was quite surprised when I sat down next to her and hugged her. I couldn''t quite help it, she was just so cute, and depressed. My two favourite things in a girl. She tensed for a moment and then relaxed while I started to rub her back "It''s alright, do you want to floo home now or do you want some time to think of an excuse for your parents." Her hair changed into what I imagined to be the standard bubblegum pink. "Do you mind if I stay a bit?" I did actually. But Tonks would later become an auror, no need to antagonize her. "Not really." I threw a fireball into the fireplace to light it up and summoned the floo powder into my hand laying it down next to the young girl on the couch. "How do you do that?" She blurted out. I looked at her questioningly. "The wandless magic I mean I heard only really powerful wizards could do it, like Dumbledore." She looked embarrassed for her outburst, cute. "Wandless magic is easy, you just have to train it, and honestly," I gave her an impish grin,"you must not have seen much of what the magical world has to offer if you think Dumbledore is a powerful wizard." With those words I left for the shower. I personally thought of Dumbledore as the epitome of a powerful wizard, insanity and all, but the urge to mess with the kid was just too strong. When I came back she was gone and on the table was a note saying ''Really sorry''.
Chapter 17 (Your libraries are shit, shittttttt)
One fucking year, it had taken me one year to complete my wand. Sure, I helped Garrick around the shop for a bit as well, but this was ridiculous. I couldn''t help but let a true smile appear on my face. It was ridiculous and so utterly worth it. There wasn''t a word that was capable of describing the feeling of the 11 inch wand in my hand, so I wouldn''t even bother. Not being very experienced at carving I hadn''t gone out of my way to try make the wand have any interesting engravings. I tucked the soft brown stick into my brand new wand holster on my wrist and turned to the man who had been my mentor for the last years. "Thank you." Two simple words that sometimes had more meaning than entire sentences. "No problem at all, teaching such an attentive pupil was simply a pleasure." He looked like he really meant it. It would be rude to use legilimency to check if that was true. "I have a way of repaying you for your tutelage as well, what do you think about a vacation." By the twinkling in his eyes he wasn''t entirely adverse to the idea. Then he looked like he just remembered something. "There is only one problem Ronald, you are 10 years old no one will take you seriously, sadly when one considers your actual maturity." He really looked sad, But became curious when I started grinning at him. I pulled out a bottle labeled aging potion and he matched my grin as well. "Wait a moment, I''ll pack my stuff." He said, to which I spluttered. "Don''t leave now, I''m not mentally prepared yet!" But he was already gone, for an old man he sure moved fast when he wanted to. I turned my attention to the messages I had gotten. Trait gained Trait: Wandmaker A bonus of 10% towards learning wand magic, 20% if equipped with selfmade wandStolen novel; please report. Created item: Pinewood wand with dragon heartstring Would you like to name your creation? Why yes I did. "Wand1." Uninspired but fitting. You have gained access to your inventory Note that the size is directly proportional to the size of the soul "Jackpot." I immediately started testing the inventory. I willed the old pocket watch I found in the Weasley basement to disappear, I still had no idea what the thing was actually used for. It was frustrating, so I wouldn''t be sad if I lost it. It was gone, I felt it in the back of my mind, a slight tickling letting me know that I could summon it back anytime. I willed it into my hand. One moment It wasn''t there, the other it simply was. I looked forlornly at my wand holster. Wasted money. Sighing I proceeded to put my most important stuff in the inventory. My wand, money pouch and You-Know-Who''s wand. I got the feeling it was full, so I didn''t even try to put my knife into it. That thing would simply have to stay strapped to my leg. I waited until Garrick came back and made out the time I would start working without him. He would stay for one more week to show me the ropes so to say and then he would leave for, wherever he felt like going honestly. He was a wizard he could apparate. My next destination was the library. Yes, the wizarding world had a public library, it was a small pathetic thing with more fantasy stories than actual magic and any magic above grade XX was forbidden but the only thing I was searching for were some cantrips. Over the years I had noticed how much time I actually lost doing mundane things. Brushing teeth, cooking, washing dishes, laundry and folding clothes. Well guess what, there were spells for all of that, and now that I actually had a functioning wand to do the spells. I would learn them all. One of the great things about making your own wand, was the fact that you could ''forget'' to apply for a ministry employee to come over and apply the trace to it. I sat at a rickety desk transcribing useful spells into one of my blank journals thinking about the relationship the ministry of magic had with actual magic. This was the only public library in the entirety of England, if people wanted to learn magic they either had to make an appeal to the ministry to visit Hogwarts library during the summer break, simply buy the relevant books or ask a richer family, like the Malfoys if you could access their library. In the process of getting access to Hogwarts you could get lost in the paperwork quite easily. I would know, I had tried six times in the last year alone. I had no influence whatsoever, so there wasn''t even a point in talking to people who had private libraries. Books were expensive, you couldn''t really spend the money you needed to pay for your household on such frivolous things. Which brought up the question of why magicals had to pay for houses, food or anything not enchanted really. One could easily make those things themselves. If one had the necessary magical knowledge. What an interesting coincidence. Chapter 18
was practicing my fire sorcery while leaning on the chair behind the counter of Ollivander''s shop. The dark mark above my hand formed right as the bell jingled and a customer entered the shop. I waved my hand to get rid of the apparition before I got arrested for being a dark wizard and faced my the new arrival. Well, two arrivals. A young woman with pink hair that was quickly turning red along with her face, and an old man who looked like he was a survivor of more wars than i''d ever heard of. Alastor Moody was scowling at me, I sighed. "I guess you saw my little light show with that stupid looking magical eye of yours." If it was possible Moody''s scowl deepened and Tonks was starting to look more apprehensive than embarrassed. I clapped my hands as if the simple gesture had the power to dispel the heavy atmosphere. "But where are my manners, you are paying customers, allow me to introduce myself." At this point I stood up and gave a flourishing bow. Looking upwards I stared directly into Moody''s one functional eye and brushed him with just the intent of legilimency. Enough for him to notice, not enough for him to actually arrest me. I had a plan. "I am Ergarth." I righted myself and took a look in Tonk''s direction but a blue opaque shield sprang into existence before I could read any of her thoughts. Courtesy of Moody "A bit twitchy aren''t we." I gave the man an indulgent smile. "I forgive you for your senility." The man suddenly stopped scowling and took on an unnaturally calm face. Nymphadora however was gaping at me. "Where is Ollivander lad?" "Ah, Ollivander suddenly felt the need for a prolonged vacation." I intentionally made it sound a bit malicious. I needed to goad him after all. And he apparently recognized my attempt and refused to start anything. "Me and this auror trainee are here to check our wands, the trainee also requires a secondary wand, here is the paperwork." He pulled out a stack of papers out of his trench coat. I summoned them wandlessly from his hand and flew through them, it was written quite simplistic, but still managed to take up nine papers. It basically said, we the ministry of magic, allow Nymphadora Tonks, as is her right as an auror, the purchase and usage of a secondary wand. "Everything seems to be in order, your wands please."The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Alastor calmly stepped forward and dropped his wand on my table, I noticed that he was channeling magic into his staff as if preparing for a spell. "The rumours didn''t exaggerate, you really are paranoid." He grinned at me, his face was too ugly to really make it into a pleasant expression. I smiled back at him pleasantly and then turned to his wand and started examining it. After few minutes I was done, but I saw Tonks was fidgeting so I kept staring at the stick as if it would reveal the secrets of the universe to me. "Oh my, this thing has seen quite some use, have you been polishing it properly as well?" I put on my best innocent expression and used my magical sense directly on his magical eye trying to sense what made it tick. I heard Tonks snort, Moody sent her a glare that shut her up fairly quickly. "Aye I have lad, is everything fine with it?" I saw that by this point the only thing he wanted to do was get out of here. "Yes everything is quite alright." I started twirling his wand in my hand. He stepped forward and ripped it out of my grasp. I gave him the look usually reserved for naughty children. "Trainee, i''ll wait outside you will manage on your own." Tonks stepped forward and tried to put on a jovial face. "Fancy meeting you here. coincidence much?" She said nonchalantly I gave her my best confused look. "Sorry am I supposed to know you?" Her eye twitched "I''m Tonks." I gave her a blank look. She hadn''t actually told me her name back then. "You will have to be more specific." She growled. "I''m the girl you took the virginity off at the summer festival 1989, do you remember now!?" I grinned at her. "Did you know that Alastor can read lips?" She paled, groaned and put her head in her palms. "You''re a dick." "Thank you I like to think of it as one of my more redeeming qualities." She gave me the look women gave men when they were unimpressed by their immaturity. "Your wand please." I said stretching out my hand. She held it out to me, I took it. "Just no sexual innuendos." "I don''t know about innuendos but I wouldn''t mind something sexual." She sputtered, didn''t actually look disgusted by the suggestion though. I looked her in the eye and gazed at her mind. Then I blinked violently. She had projected some heavy metal into my mind. "I see your music taste has deteriorated since we last met." Now it was her turn to give me a smug grin, which turned into an awed one when she noticed I had both of my hand on the table before me and that her wand was laying next to them pointed at the wall. "Is there anything you can''t do wandlessly?" The question should have been, was there actually much I could do with a wand? Not really, but was working on changing that. She would most likely not be very impressed by my ability to fold all of my laundry with a single spell. I gave her my patented superior sneer #46 and said in my best drawl. "If I remember correctly, I already told you that wandless magic is easy, it is simply the fact that other people are too inferior to use it that prevents it from being more widespread" Incue deadpan. "Any relation to Severus Snape?" "No I am actually capable of taking care of my hair." As if on cue, my hair unraveled from the ponytail it had been in before and fell down to my shoulders in a wave of fabulousness. I smiled at her and projected before my teeth a sparkle with my fire sorcery. Her eye twitched and then we both laughed. A human was a social creature, it needed contact to other people, Bill was gone most of the time. Sure, we tried to have twice as much fun when he was there. But he alone wasn''t enough. Garrick was vacationing, he had been sending me postcards of the places he''d visited. Suffice to say his owl looked mightily exhausted. In other words, I was feeling lonely. I turned to the 18 year old woman standing before me. "Go on a date with me." I would need more aging potions. And a lawyer if she ever found out the real age of my body. chapter 19
"Go on a date with me." Tonks froze for a few seconds as she heard the words, biting her lip. It looked like she was thinking hard. Ergarth looked at her amused. "Now now don''t strain your noggin too much I almost see the smoke coming out of your ears." He was grinning again, the smug bastard. Tonk''s had noticed that he always seemed to have a smile on his face. "I''ll go on a date with you, but any funny stuff and you''re toast." She puffed herself up. " I''m an auror trainee, I know my way around a wand." The only thing her words gained her was an indulgent look. She huffed. "When and where?" "I''ll pick you up on sunday morning." That was a bit vague, she had only met him twice but she was fairly sure he was a nice guy. Handsome too. "Here is your wand, it''s in decent enough condition just try to not let it fall on the ground so much." Ergarth said, and looked professional for once while saying that. "And here is your secondary wand 9 ? inches maple and unicorn hair." He gave it to her it felt tingly in her hand. She looked at him as if asking, anything else? "Don''t worry you will get your third wand hand delivered to you in a few days." Was his only comment. Tonks put on her disapproving face. She was an auror trainee, this sort of humour was beneath her.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. She turned around and left saying a goodbye and hearing a ''see you'' from behind her. Moody was waiting outside. After they had apparated back to the auror facility he started speaking. "He''s dangerous." Moody gruffed out. Which of course, was something she already knew, anyone powerful enough to throw around that kind of wandless magic had to be dangerous. She had researched the topic after witnessing him it so effortlessly two years ago. He said wandless magic was easy and that anyone could learn it. Tonks called bullshit. Wandless magic was the thing of people like Dumbledore or You-Know-Who, not some 23 year old looking pretty boy. She remembered waking up at his house back then he''d been nice, comforting in a way most adults weren''t. "I think he''s good man." She answered her mentor. "Lass you''re 18 years old, sorry if I don''t trust your judgement of someone you''ve only met once." She looked at him weirdly, hadn''t he lip read that they had met two times by now. She stopped in her tracks. "That bastard."
Bill just came home from Egypt and entered his house, well his and his brother''s house. The first think he did was crash on the couch. International portkeys were exhausting. Then he noticed his youngest brother. Oldest brother? He noticed Ron stirring madly in a cauldron mumbling to himself. Bill blinked and couldn''t help but ask. "What are you doing?" The answer to that was. "Magic." Bill let his head hit the pillow and groaned. He loved Ron, really, but the man had made an art out of being obnoxious. He was fairly sure that was the guys only hobby actually. "I''m trying to create an aging potion that requires an antidote to reverse the changes." Ron shared after a few moments, making he Curse Breaker creased his brows. "Isn''t modifying potions really hard, like potions master stuff." He was fairly sure that the only lecture on modification he''d ever gotten from Snape had been. ''Don''t'' Bill looked at the cauldron suspiciously and then sighed. "As long as you know what you''re doing." Ron''s answer to that. "Don''t worry, rituals are easy." Bill really loved his brother but sometimes it was just better to groan and try to pretend he didn''t exist.
Ollivander was enjoying himself. "Ah lying on the beach, drinking cocktails, this is the life." He saw a particularly pretty lady and wolf whistled. Chapter 20 (Blood-traitor, Mudblood and scar-head) I was standing before a house. Now this wasn''t just any house. This was the house Tonks shared with her parents. I had taken the knight bus here to preserve my stamina, one of my new skills took quite a lot of mental effort after all. Saying one of my new skills implied I had more than four, heh. Apparition (active) lv. 1 exp: 4% user cannot do this soundlessly, can decrease noise created by concentration and time. Distance increases magic required. I had struggled for almost two years to get this skill, oh, I had been making progress. But simply nothing compared to the one week it took me to get the skill using the wand made for myself. In a way I had completed 20% of the process in seven days. Apparition was weird in a way. It had no Incantation, no wand gesture. It was like sorcery but channeled through the wand. I had tried using fire sorcery through my wand, which hadn''t worked. I often saw glimpses of the thing that was magic but I didn''t think I would ever understand the whole thing. I didn''t really think magic was meant to be understood. Remaining a mystery, never losing it''s magic in a way. I knocked on the door. It was opened half a minute later by Tonks who had forgone her usual attire in favour of a a skirt and cardigan combo. She looked quite fetching and by the expression on her face she didn''t think the same about me. Dressed in green shorts, sneakers and a brown linen shirt one noticed I did not dress to impress. Tonks would probably start thinking I hadn''t put any effort in the date because I didn''t appreciate her. Women. We sat there looking at each other for what I felt about a minute her face growing redder and redder just as she opened her mouth to say something I interrupted her. ¡°You ready?¡° I held out my hand, grimacing she took it and I apparated us away with a gigantic crack that probably woke her parents. We found ourselves standing on top of a mountain in the scottish highlands, that alone drained me entirely but looking at her brightening face was worth it. I watched as she took in the scenery. It really was an amazing one, nature in its unaltered form. For those that had never witnessed it before it was quite breathtaking. People often said that they didn''t really want to visit these places, that they could just watch some photos. Fools, muggles often lamented the lack of magic but completely ignored the magic right before their eyes. ¡°It''s beautiful.¡° Tonks interrupted my inner ramblings and turned to me. When she saw what I was sitting on she burst out laughing. I knew it was funny seeing a grown man lying a bright pink picnic blanket but that was a bit of an overreaction. I let her know of my thoughts about her behaviour by pouting and turning away. I felt more than I felt her sit down next to me. She was quite fetching, in more than just one way, ever changing magic swirling inside of her body ready at any moment to change its shape. ¡°Why did you ask me on a date anyway, you barely know me?¡° She sounded genuinely curious, kids these days, they took all the romance movies at face value. ¡°A first date is simply a way to get to know each other and find out if one wants to start a relationship.¡° She hmmed. ¡°Proper articulation would help me understand your thoughts, I need eye contact to actually read your mind.¡° She turned her heart shaped face to me and looked me in the eyes with a blank face. ¡°What does articulation mean?¡° I groaned and she started giggling. ¡°Honestly I know Hogwarts doesn''t actually have any classes on the english language but that is simply ridiculous.¡° She gained a thoughtful expression.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. ¡°Did you go to Hogwarts?¡° She asked. A question I was prepared for. I had prepared an entire backstory. ¡°No I learned most of what I know in different places in the U.S.A.¡° She looked annoyed that she didn''t know what the hell kind of a magical community the United States actually had. The thing about the magical side of american was that no one actually knew what the hell happened there. The magicals there had been simply ignoring their non magical counterparts since basically the beginning of time. And when the colonization of the americas started, not many magicals actually went there. Why would they? Later for the sake of upholding the statue of secrecy and to gather the muggleborns the colonists produced the I.C.W established a Ministry of Magic there, formed mostly from the german, british and french immigrants. Controlling and keeping track of only those. But the so called european magicals were only approximately 10% of america''s magical population. ¡°Are you american then?¡° ¡°No i''m Yugoslavian.¡° I watched as she grew even more annoyed at the name of another country she knew basically nothing about. ¡°Why are you in Britain then?¡° I gave her a grin. ¡°Work.¡° Mount Tonks was about to explode, I saw it by they way her hair changed to an angry shade of red. I put on a serious face and looked her in her brown eyes. She calmed down and stared back questioningly. ¡°Something you should know if you want to start anything with me is that I can not tell you anything about what I actually do, I have summer and christmas vacation and I can visit a few times per month but otherwise I will be very busy.¡° She didn''t look particularly worried about that. ¡°Aren''t you a wandmaker, well I''m starting the auror academy this september anyway we basically have the same schedule.¡° My answer to that was. ¡°No i''m not a wandmaker.¡° She looked annoyed again so I took her hand and entwined our fingers. Looking into her brown eyes I slowly lowered my face to hers giving her time to pull away if she wanted to. She didn''t, we kissed. Kissing was something I hadn''t actually done in a while, sure occasionally I had sex with different people just to unwind. But kissing wasn''t really involved. Her lips were soft, I pulled up my hand to cup the side of her face. I opened my eyes and watched as she slowly did as well. We moved aways from each other but didn''t break eye contact. She initiated the kiss this time. -/- Harry Potter entered my shop on one of the last days it would actually be my shop. He was a small kid, messy hair, brilliant green eyes that were hiding behind a pair of ugly glasses and dressed in clothes fit for a beggar. He had a more powerful connection to magic than I did at my rank of D-, the little shit. Whatever, time to make an entrance. I apparated right in front of him, he of course jumped away like a frightened cat staring at me with widened eyes. ¡°You here for a wand boy?¡° I gave him a disinterested look. That actually seemed to comfort him, probably because I wasn''t trying to get a look at his scar or maniacally shaking his hand. ¡°Y-yes.¡° This stuttering kid was supposed to beat a dark lord who had almost taken over a country?. Prophecies. I stared at him, he averted his eyes to the ground almost immediately. I think we stood in that position for more than ten minutes before he seemed to muster his courage and spoke. ¡°Do you need something first sir?¡° Damn, I hadn''t been referred to as sir in a very long time. ¡°No.¡° I just continued to stare at him. He fidgeted opened his mouth closed it again, I heard the bell jingle signalling another customer when the boy finally opened his mouth to say something. ¡°Can I please have a wand?¡° I didn''t stop staring at him as I wandlessly summoned the 11 inches holly and phoenix wand that chose Harry in the series. Red sparks flew out of the thing as soon as he grasped it and almost set fire to the carpet. I extinguished it before it could start. ¡°Interesting, that will be nine galleons.¡° He shoved the money in my left hand took the wand out of the other and literally fled the shop almost bumping into the frankly intimidating woman standing behind him. The woman came forward and revealed a bushy haired girl standing behind her. That would be Hermione Granger I guess. Mcgonagall opened her mouth but I rudely interrupted her. ¡°A wand for the young lady?¡° The teacher narrowed her eyes at me probably wondering if she had ever seen me at Hogwarts. ¡°Yes, do you happen to be a Weasley young man?¡° She had taught five Weasleys at this point, she would recognize the resemblance. ¡°No, you wouldn''t be the only one that has made that connection in Britain though. We do look alike I guess, I''ve met William but i''m Yugoslavian so I don''t know how a relation would be possible.¡° She suddenly looked at me with pitying eyes. Yugoslavia had a bit of a history in the magical world. ¡°I understand.¡° I nodded in acknowledgment at her words and wandlessly summoned Hermione¡¯s wand. ¡°10 ? inches vinewood and dragon heartstring.¡° She stared at me with widened eyes and blurted out. ¡°How did you do that?¡° I gave her an evaluating look as if considering if she was worthy of this arcane knowledge. ¡°In the magical world you will find that hard work is rewarded far more often than in the muggle one.¡° Cryptic, I loved being cryptic you could say complete bullshit but if no one understood it in the first place they would simply nod along trying to look like they knew what I was talking about. The girl didn''t immediately blurt out another question like I almost expected her too. She thought about what I had said and asked what I considered one of the smartest questions ever. ¡°Why?¡° ¡°Because in the magical world your reward for hard work is the ability to reprogram reality itself, in the muggle world however, the rewards are not so high.¡° She looked like she would think carefully about that once she got home. Great, a bit of good old thinking never hurt anyone. Mcgonagall shoed her outside before she could ask more questions, but turned to me one last time with an inquisitive look on her face. ¡°I''ve never seen anyone match a wand to a witch so fast.¡° To which I gave her a pleasant smile. ¡°The only wandmaker in britain is Ollivander, that is not a really big enough pool to form an opinion on, Goodbye.¡° -/- After closing hours I wandered the streets of london. I had a theory, I knew legilimency for almost two years now, but I hadn''t gotten a skill. But I had also never used the spell to its fullest potential. Always reading surface thoughts, breaking shields. I''d never accessed deep memories. Today I would do that. I was simply walking through the small alleys waiting to be mugged. And there was test subject 1#, before he even said anything I pointed my wand at him and cast the spell. Born too a middle class family in Kent. Finished school at the age of 19. Couldn''t find a job got pulled into crime and now 43 years old he haunts the streets robbing drunks. He also liked ponies. I blinked at that last piece of information. The Mind Arts (active) lv. 1 Exp: 67% Delve into things unseen Legilimency used by someone average at it like me almost always left traces, but nobody would care if the victim was some criminal hobo. I walked over to the catatonic muggle and knocked him out with point blank stunner. I apparated home and looked at the time. It was fairly late but still too early to go to sleep so I went and sat on my couch just to notice Tonks sleeping on it. She had probably fallen asleep waiting for me, she had been spending more and more time at my place recently, we did only have a few more weeks together. I gently picked her up and carried her into my bed, when I wanted to leave her there I noticed that she apparently didn''t want that. I did some mental gymnastics with my inventory to undress myself and went to bed as well. Sleeping with someone in your arms was cathartic. chapter 21 I stood on platform 9 ? looking at the Hogwarts express, the train was simple looking, if not even a bit archaic in comparison to it''s muggle counterparts. But I didn''t care how it looked, I cared about what it meant. The train was a symbol for the start of my journey, a journey to magic even further beyond what I had learned up till now. A journey to become the greatest Wizard to ever live. I would have access to many useful books at Hogwarts, no way would I be able to read them all in seven short years. I would have to find a way to take their knowledge with me when I left. It was odd looking down at the crowd when boarding the express, and knowing so many of the people present. If not by name, then by appearance. I had sold them their wands after all. I found an empty compartment at the end of the train and started practicing some cantrips, no use in socializing before I was sorted. To be honest, I was apprehensive about befriending anyone at all, they were children after all. But some human contact at least, would be needed, maybe a professor? Time passed. I exhausted my magic and started reading the potions book. I had decided early on that I would not try not to go beyond my yearmates in most subjects. After all I had to sit at classes even if I knew the material. There was no reason to make my magical education any more boring than it had to be. There were many interesting magicks available that were not actively taught in class. Alchemy, healing, mind arts, enchanting, warding and many more. I would have to decide what to focus on when I had a feeling for the library. No use in starting to study something but then have to stop because they didn''t have any good books on the subject. Someone knocked on the door and opened it, before I said anything even resembling a come in. How rude. "Have you seen a toad." Granger looked at me weirdly, as if she had seen me before but couldn''t remember. Behind her a chubby blond was nervously shifting on his feet.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. "You will have to be more specific I have seen a great many toads in my life." I looked at them expectantly. "Well his name is Trevor." That was a very unhelpful description of the toads bodyform, colour and race but it would do. I took out my wand. Just as expected, the only girl in the compartment had something to say about that. "Are you going to do magic?" I gave her an exasperated look and just shook my head at her. "Point me Trevor the toad." The wand I had balanced precariously on my palm span until it settled into pointing in a specific direction. I simply left, not waiting to see if the other two were following the sound of their frantic footsteps behind me they were. I found Trevor hiding behind a trash dispenser in the boy''s restroom. Neville beamed as I gave him the slimy thing and thanked me. Hermione on the other hand wanted to know how I had done the spell and was babbling about how it wasn''t in any of the books she had bought. I don''t know why, but they followed me back to my compartment. Where I promptly took out my drawing book and started drawing the train. I guess they now realized I didn''t want to be disturbed, I didn''t really want to befriend anyone outside my future house so I had decided to wait until then to start being social. "We''re almost there you should put on your robes." Grangers voice ripped me out of my concentration. I thanked her and took down my trunk. The robes I had bought were a bit special. The sleeves were almost twice as long as actually required, I had deduced that people would find it weird if I kept pulling my wand out of thin air everytime I cast a spell. It was slightly against regulations but I was fairly certain no one would care. I took up a boat with the toadless duo and a brown haired boy that introduced himself with a completely forgettable name. The thoughts running in my head, as I was getting out of the boat were along the lines of, Goodbye side character B3 we hardly knew you. And then I saw Hogwarts for the first time. I breathed out and I breathed in, slowly. I was fairly sure that if I hadn''t done that I would have forgotten to do it at all. The castle was magnificent and when I exited the boat and finally felt it. Well I almost started foaming at the mouth at how much magic there was in even the pier of this thing. Over the last millenia thousands of people had cast magic in this place seven years a piece. That had left a huge imprint. I wrestled with my magical sense and managed to shut it down just in time as the doors to the great hall opened and I was carried inside by the gaggle of children around me. I stared at the sorting hat, I wasn''t quite sure how it would manage to well, sort me. But I had a plan. "Ronald Weasley." I went up when my name was called and legilimised the hat after sitting myself on the stool. I didn''t delve into it''s mind as much as I simply hovered there. "Interesting, Ambition so much ambition. And what is this, even more ambition." I heard some chuckling in my mind." A mind older than the body and a thirst for knowledge as large as the black lake." "Not Slytherin please." I added before the hat could actually sort me. The hat''s voice was weird in a way that you couldn''t really describe. "Well alright, I guess your willingness to work hard and the loyalty to your goals also qualifies you for." "HUFFLEPUFF." The hat was way to fast! I wanted to ask it some questions, the thing had been in the castle for a very long time maybe it knew some sort of secret library? But sadly the only question I managed to ask was. "What''s your name?" "Alistair." Hermione Granger was sitting with the Ravenclaws, weird. chapter 22 (Supreme Leader)
My new house welcomed me with claps on the back and cheering. I put on my best smiling face, sat next to Susan Bones and started making some small talk. Just the usual stuff, what''s your name, dream for the future, hobbies, oh and I truly hope we can enjoy our time at Hogwarts together. Repetitive and boring but social norms had to be followed. Sadly it became even more boring due to them all being children. The feast was delicious, I didn''t allow myself to eat much since a fair amount of magic was used to heal you every time you became unhealthy, but I continued to chat with the other Puffs. After about 30 minutes of conversation, I had decided which students I would befriend. Susan Bones, niece of Amelia Bones, fairly strong magic and had a pleasant if a bit ditzy personality. (Also politically powerful through familiar relations) Hannah Abbott, she was nice, but I mostly picked her so that Susan didn''t have to decide between me and her. This early on, I was pretty sure I would be the loser in that one. Wayne Hopkins, quiet guy, a bit of legilimency showed that he was consistently quiet, and not only shy. A good friend to have if one did not want to deal with incessant childishness. I used the term friend loosely, I simply wanted some people to talk to while walking from classroom to classroom and doing homework. I saw them more as, school comrades. But children were generally incapable of understanding the difference, between a friend who you spent your genuinely free time with, and a friend of convenience who you simply kept around to kill the boredom of school with. Having more than four friends was a waste of time, I would of course do my best to have a healthy relationship with my other yearmates but other than that I just didn''t see the point. After the atrocious insult to music itself that was the Hogwarts anthem we were led to the Hufflepuff common room by a prefect. The password was "unity", people from my time would have had a seizure at that one. The only thing I remember from the introduction round we had to do, was that Susan liked charms and that most people in this house were fairly shy. It soon came to be my turn. "My name is Ron Weasley, I like drawing, Magic in general and having some good friends I can rely on. I dislike broccoli and boredom." The kids looked happy to have someone excited and generally in a happy mood, they also laughed about the broccoli part. They immediately stopped when I opened my mouth again. Man these guys were the canadians of Britain. "AND I''M GOING TO BE THE GREATEST WIZARD OF ALL TIME." I shouted with the loudest voice I could muster. The people I was surrounded with looked shocked, if by my volume or my proclamation I didn''t know. Some smiled at me, mostly the older years, my yearmates thought it was funny. Professor Sprout who had been happily watching my introduction decided this was the time to step forward and send us all to bed. I shared a room with three boys Ernie Macmillan, Justin Finch- Fetchley and the aforementioned Wayne who if he liked it or not was going to be my closest friend, in Hufflepuff at least. Before the others could go to sleep I took out my sketchbook and asked with a voice filled with mischief. "Anyone want a drawing of themself." Suffice to say we only went to sleep two hours later exchanging stupid stories of our childhood all the while.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. My goal in Hufflepuff was to set myself up as the leader. Authority felt good, it was fun to gain when the stakes were as low as they were in school, and being respected was always a good thing. I did not foresee a whole lot of difficulties in gaining that leadership status. -/- I woke up at exactly six in the morning the next day. I dressed myself in some ratty old clothes that I had only kept for the purpose of exercising and started doing some light callisthenics and running outside. Ron Weasley The Immortal Str: E- Agi:E+ Vit: D- Reg: E+ Magic: D- Magic reg: F+ Happily whistling I went back to my dorm room, where my roommates were slowly leaving their slumber and shouted. "Well Good Morning my fellow sufferants and what a fine morning it is!" They started groaning at my apparent inability to use and indoor voice and Wayne even threw a pillow at me. I smiled at them and said something that would actually get them out of the bed. "I know it''s hard waking up by a schedule, but we have class in one hour and we don''t want for all the bacon to be gone." After some more good-natured grumbling they started rising. I liked showering and bathing, it was relaxing and the only bathroom activity I did not use magic for. I left the bathroom in my Hogwarts robes, threw myself on the bed, opened my potions book and waited for my roommates to finish up with their morning grooming as well. 20 minutes later they were sitting at the breakfast table babbling away, while I mostly abstained, and occasionally interfered to guide the conversation to topics I was actually interested in. When the girls came down, their counterparts immediately told them about my drawing prowess and so I found myself sketching out my female housemates through almost the entire morning. I didn''t mind, I enjoyed doing it. Something I couldn''t let them know of course, so I openly lamented on my misfortune a bit. When Sprout came and gave us our schedules she gave me a blinding smile. I grinned back at her. I think she liked me. The first lesson was potions with Snape, I wondered if he was as bad as the books depicted him as. I stood up and addressed my year. "Guys I heard Professor Snape is really strict from my brothers." Some students near enough to hear nodded or voiced their assent. "He has to be really, potions is a class where you can really hurt yourself by simply being distracted for a second." I looked them all in the eyes gravely, trying to impress on them the gravity of the situation. Comfort was something to be enjoyed. And an unpleasant classroom environment, be it stemming from the students or the teacher, was to be avoided. "Onwards we march!" I took point and led them to the potions classroom. It was quite easy taking control in social situations when all others involved were eleven years old. I made sure that we came five minutes early, subtly, but not so subtly that they wouldn''t notice, I guided everyone into their chairs in a way that someone who knew at least something about the subject was sitting next to someone who didn''t. I saw the more perceptive of them smile at me gratefully. I myself sat next to Wayne and we continued to exchange some comments on the state of the classroom and the subject itself, until Professor Snape swooped in. I had sat myself in the front of the class, so that everyone, even the now present Ravenclaws saw me immediately shut up, sit straight and look respectfully at the Professor. The Hufflepuffs immediately followed suit, I had already established myself as the leader after all. The Ravens noticing that the classroom was only half as loud as before, swiftly noticed what was going on and we managed to turn a fairly disorganized looking class into a class willing to work with the teacher in less than four seconds. What can I say. I was just too good. Snape looked at us oddly for a second and then addressed the class as a whole. "Good morning class, put your wands away we will be starting with some theory today." No speech for us. Maybe it was reserved for Potter? -/- We were wandering the corridors towards our charms classroom after our surprisingly pleasant potions class. I already knew quite a lot about the subject, having brewed the ageing potion before, and being able to abstract quite some knowledge from that alone. But I had learned a few new things nonetheless. The only thing everyone, could seem to talk about was the fact that Snape wasn''t as bad as everyone had told them. Through the fringes of Wayne''s black hair, I saw Susan''s dark brown eyes glancing at me. I smiled at her, she blushed and looked away. Her aunt was a politician, she had probably recognized how I had manipulated everyone in Potions. I wasn''t worried about that. She was just a kid. What I was more worried about was what Snape might think of the fact that I didn''t have a mind in my head if he ever decided to try and use legilimency on me. chapter 23 (Dont pet the cat) The next class we had was transfiguration, again with the Ravenclaws. I didn''t know whose idea it had been to put the Gryffindors and the Slytherins together for most of their classes. They mixed like water on an oil burn. Oh wait, I did know whose idea it had been, Dumbledore''s. It was the first day of school and I was already wondering if our headmaster was senile. How dreadful. I led my yearmates, the claws and the puffs towards the transfiguration classroom. When we entered I saw a cat sitting on the table with the most un-catlike posture I had ever witnessed. When Hannah went over to pet the ''cute kitty'' I laid a hand on her shoulder and whispered into her ear. "Mcgonagall is a cat animagus." I watched her turn mortified and run to a desk. Girls. I ended up sitting next to Granger and Wayne Hopkins, who I had decided would be my partner in crime this year, at least in class. I turned to the girl next to me, intending to start a conversation, but was rudely interrupted by the cat sitting on the desk leaping down and mid turning into our Professor mid-jump. Wow that was cool. I suddenly had the urge to become an animagus, but sadly, I did not have the necessary knowledge, yet. We all got our matchsticks and started our attempts to change their minds about wanting to be matchsticks, and making then want to be needles. Some were daunted by this task but not I, the genius that I was. I slaughtered the efforts of my fellow classmates with my blade of magical superiority. "10 points to G-Hufflepuff." I was pretty sure I didn''t just imagine the blush on our teachers face when she almost awarded points to the wrong house, well I couldn''t really fault her. Weasleys did have a long tradition of being Gryffindorks. "How did you do that so fast?" Granger asked, sounding mad. I turned to her and smiled. "I read ahead in the books and practiced a bit this morning." She nodded grudgingly. Damn the books had nailed her annoying personality. Sadly. I spent the rest of the time we had helping my housemates and after that was done, just chatting with Susan.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. "Argh why are we changing matchsticks into stupid needles, we''ll never need this!?" Some kid had apparently gotten mad at his inability to do a successful transfiguration and was now taking his anger out on our eardrums. Mcgonagall stayed quiet for a while then turned to the class. "Does anyone know the answer to Mr Goldsteins question?" Free points, I raised my hand, so did Granger. We were the only ones. I didn''t really feel like waiting for her to choose who to pick so I just started talking. "We are doing this to become more familiar with wood to metal transfiguration. Transfiguration does not have specific spells to change one object into another just spells that affect the material of the object." I could hear Granger fuming next to me, sheesh I know not being picked in class because someone just started speaking was annoying, but I''m fairly sure grinding your teeth that hard was unhealthy. "Five points to Hufflepuff for a very good answer that also leads to your homework." The class groaned. "I want a one-foot long essay on the process of transfiguring metal back to wood. Class dismissed."I was the first one to stand up and leave, the other puffs following me. We had one free period before lunch started and after that we were free for the day. "Come on guys let''s go do the homework so we don''t have to do it later." I said, to which Wayne, Susan, Hannah and Justin followed me, while the rest decided they preferred playing some exploding snap. I sat down on one of the library tables, a thick book in my hand, laying it down on the table I smiled at the people present. They started sweating, probably having no idea how to write an essay. I opened the book, looked at the index found the page with metal to wood and lay it before them. "Just write what you read in your own words. Try to do it well, this is the first impression the teachers will have of your work." After seeing them start I did as well. I was finished in five minutes and started massaging my hand. Using quills was hard, but I couldn''t really force myself to use a dicta-quill, this was good training for hand dexterity after all. I started hovering over my housemates shoulders and correcting their mistakes. Not the style, just the mistakes. A good teacher would notice if someone had help writing their work and our goal was to give prof. kitty a good first impression. After we were all done I told them of my desire to stay for a bit and familiarize myself with the library. They all left, expect for Susan who wanted to do the same thing as me. I simply had to laugh a bit at her behaviour when she went over to the first literal wall of books and looking through the titles. She turned to me and huffed. "Do you have a better idea?" I gave her a grin and puffed myself up speaking with my best politician voice. "I think it might be prudent for the continued existence of our free time if we simply ask Ms. Pince for an explanation of this glorious sorting system." My attempt at comedy was rewarded with a giggle and I heard her following me to the librarians desk. Before I even started speaking, the woman shoved a plan of what appeared to be the library at me and told me not to be so loud next time. "Thank you." I gave her a smile turned around and started exploring. The library of Hogwarts was big, and I was saying that excluding the restricted section. After a few hours of work I finally understood the system. At the left there were the books that first years needed and so on. Stuff that wasn''t on the curriculum was on the right, pretty simple. At least until you realized that some books liked moving on their own and some refused to open at certain times of the day. Typical. Chapter 24 I was trying to decide which field of magic to start my independent study on. There were quite a few subjects available in the library, and I had been able to narrow it down to four choices. Alchemy, healing, enchanting or warding. Which was sadly still too much. I turned to the bored out of her mind Susan, whose brown eyes had been staring into nothingness for the past dozen minutes or so. I had no idea why she had stayed behind with me, but I could use her presence. "Hey Susan, do me a favour and give me a number between one and four." I said. To which she shook like a wet dog and expressed her confusion through a very articulate. "Wut? Oh ok, two then." Healing. There weren''t really many books about healing in the library, but I had included it due to the presence of our resident healer Madam Pomfrey. I would have to go speak to her soon. I went to leave the library "Come dinner is starting soon." Susan looked shocked at the amount of time we had spent researching the sorting system, or shocked that it was so little? "Wait what was with the numbers." "Just a decision I had to make." -/- After dinner I went to the hospital wing, alone for once. Not that I minded my classmates, I just didn''t want to spend the entirety of my time at Hogwarts with them. I found the strict looking medi-witch sitting behind a desk in her office. She looked up at my entrance and muttered a question about how someone managed to injure themself on the first day. Her gaze swept over my analytically. "What is it, you don''t seem injured, headache?" She asked, to which I flipped my shoulder length hair out of my face, and gave her my best charming smile. "Oh no, I was just wondering if Hogwarts offers courses on healing." The shock value value of a 11-year old trying to appear sauve was not to be underestimated. She blanked out for a moment, then started inspecting me. "You look to be in first year, isn''t it too early to start deciding on a career?" Giving her my best confused look and trying to look innocent at the same time wasn''t easy, but I think I managed.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it "What do you mean Madam, I just think it''s interesting." I said with my best innocent voice. Which she seemed to swallow hook line and sinker, since her facial features relaxed and she started speaking with more warmth. "Well I do sometimes offer courses to people who know they want to become healers, but I''m not quite sure if I should take you on and risk your grades suffering." She brought up a valid concern, where would we be in life without good grades? Probably dead. Giving her my best sincere smile, I simply offered to wait until christmas so the professors could get a better grip on my student behaviour. She could then consult them to see if I could survive a bigger workload. Nodding her assent she shooed me off outside, saying she had work to do. Which I somehow doubted, given the empty infirmary. On my way back to the Puff common room I found an abandoned classroom and started practicing my stunning spell. I had actually hoped to use the room of requirement for my training, but I had decided to delay visiting any places I really had no business knowing about, at least until I could use magic to detect anyone spying on me. Excluding the third floor as one of the places I wouldn''t visit of course. I hardly had no reason to not know about it. Immortality I already had, but unlimited gold, now that, was tempting. Not because I was in need of money really, but simply because I enjoyed the feeling of having things. I was actually fairly well-off for my age, the few weeks spent as a wandmaker having grown my Gringotts account to a bursting 56 Galleons. But back to the spell I was trying to learn. Basically, Stupefy was the best spell at ending one on one duels, expect the killing curse. Petrification, hexes, heck even transfiguration, you could reverse all these things if you had enough will or magical power. But unconsciousness, now that was a state that one couldn''t easily get out of. Due to well, not being conscious enough to even try. Learning spells wasn''t as easy as people thought though. Oh sure first year spells were easy, but that was because they were first year spells. A spell of average power and complexity, like the stunning hex and the shielding charm, took two weeks each to learn. Something like spell deflection, a technique every fighter needed, took months to acquire and years to master. Until I could do that, I would simply have to do with my slowly improving shield charm. Exhausting myself several times with the stunning spell, I decided to go visit Fluffy the three-headed dog. It was almost curfew, so I hurried up to the third floor corridor and unlocked the door. Opening it slightly I peeked in. Yep, the cerberus was there. It would have been a real waste to spend an entire year training to pass the obstacle course that was the third floor, only to find out I was in an alternative universe or something. On the staircase between the third and second floor I saw Snape, the verb was apparently mutual. Giving me a suspicious look he passed by me. Just when I though I would get off without having to interact with the man, he called my name. "Weasley." I turned to him pointing a finger at myself. You mean me? "It''s almost curfew, hurry up." Blinking from the weird encounter I entered the Hufflepuff common room a few minutes later, only to find all of the housemates in my year waiting for me there. "Where have you been Ron? We were getting worried." All of their faces were turned towards me in a very creepy manner. "Ugh I got lost?" Hufflepuffs. chapter 25 ¡°And after Gnarlok the gnarly took up his axe against the brotherhood of steel...¡± I don''t think there existed words in the english language that described how boring Binns was. I really didn''t. It was Halloween for fucks sake, the day where almost everyone in Britain celebrated the defeat of Voldemort. If there was a day for Binns to not drone about boring stuff, it would be this one. But he didn¡¯t, of course. After the most boring class in the world was over, we headed the halloween feast. Aka the troll infestation. Looking at the Ravenclaw table, I saw Hermione and decided that no, there probably wouldn''t be any need for heroics this day. Not that there would have been had she not been present. It would have simply led me to telling the teachers about her absence and have them look for her. Letting my gaze sweep over the other tables, I observed the other people I had a mild interest in. Malfoy was just gloating about something. I hadn''t really had much interaction with him at all, so I didn¡¯t have a good grasp of his character, although he was still undoubtedly a prat. Potter was looking sad, I had noticed that he hadn''t really made many friends in Gryffindor. I had initially thought he would go to Slytherin without the influence of the original Ron, but I was wrong, apparently. Kid probably wanted to have some connection to his parents. I took a look at the staff table, Quirrell naturally wasn''t there. Our Defense professor was odd. For one, he didn''t stutter, and even weirder was the fact that he was actually able to teach us something. Oh sure he only taught us the knockback jinx flipendo and some standard rules about what to do in certain situations. But still, the man had surprised me. It drove home the fact that these weren¡¯t the characters of a modern fairy tale, they were real people, with personalities and thought processes. This meant that I couldn¡¯t completely trust in canon being reproduced in reality. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Speak of the devil and he shall come. Quirrell ran into the hall, his turban flopping madly and after warning us of a troll, promptly fainted in a very anticlimactic way. After we were herded through the halls of Hogwarts towards our homey common room. I noticed how everyone was just kind of sitting there, busy being scared. I pulled out my sketchbook jumped on a table and shouted. ¡°THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO BE DRAWN BY THE FUTURE GREATEST WIZARD IN THE WORLD SINCE EVER.¡± Suffice to say, that broke the gloomy atmosphere. Some laughed, some started chatting with their friends and some came to me wanting to get sketches of themselves. After some partying that had broken out for whatever reason, I was finally alone. I had noticed fairly early on, that as my body aged, I required less and less sleep, so I used the time where almost everyone else was resting to practice some harmless magic in the common room. I was just practicing my transfiguration when I heard someone coming downstairs. Sadly leaving the tortoise I had been practicing on looking like it had been crossbred with a rabbit. I turning to Susan. ¡°Couldn''t sleep?¡± I asked, to which she shook her head and sat down on the couch opposite of me. ¡°Nightmares.¡± Was her answer. Which technically was having trouble sleeping, so I was nonplussed as to why she¡¯d shaken her head. She looked bleary eyed and just generally tired, so I didn''t pry as much as I simply encouraged. ¡°I find that it helps if you talk about it.¡± She looked contemplative. I refused to say anything more and went back to turning the tortoise into a rabbit. ¡°That''s pretty advanced transfiguration.¡± She commented.. Third year stuff to be exact, a requirement of becoming an animagus was that you had to be good at animate to animate transfiguration. I simply hummed in agreement. ¡°You know I''ve actually seen a troll before, they were ugly and aggressive, I don''t think I''ll ever forget it.¡± Children, she probably would forget it. ¡°I dreamed about what would have happened if it had found me.¡± Thankfully I knew the perfect response to that. Giving her a goofy grin I said. ¡°Don''t worry I would have been there to protect you.¡± She giggled at me. I hung around Wayne and Susan quite a lot. More Wayne than Susan, she was after all also friends with Abbott, who for some reason didn''t like me, but still that was a lot of my free time. ¡°You act like a politician.¡± She commented, to which I raised a brow at her. ¡°You make that sound like a negative aspect.¡± She apparently didn''t find my joke funny since she furrowed her brows at me and tried to look intimidating. She looked like a furious chipmunk. ¡°That''s what I mean, you don''t give out direct answers often, always skirting around things using words that could be interpreted in different ways.¡± I gave her a grin. ¡°Everything I say is a truth, but how you interpret those truths will determine your understanding of the situation at hand.¡± I thought that would brighten her mood. It didn''t, she just scowled at me and left. I went back to practicing transfiguration. At the rate I was going I would be able to start the process of becoming an animagus in less than a year. Maybe it seemed like I didn''t really care about the Susan¡¯s thoughts. That wasn''t true, I did. I enjoyed spending time with almost all of my Puffs (when in class, and therefore having no other options). Not only because I enjoyed having minions but simply because they were nice kids. It was just the fact that I knew Susan would forget all about our argument in a few days as long as I didn¡¯t bring it up. I went to bed not wanting to be tired the next day, it would after all be the first time I would ride a broom. chapter 26 (Fly) I let the wind blow through my open hair as I swooped down to brush my fingers along the surface of the black lake. Then I heard the blow of a whistle, signaling the lesson to be over. I looked forlornly at the rickety old school broom I was leaving behind. Flying was freedom, the exhilarating feeling of your body accelerating to speeds thought to be impossible. The way you just wanted to Shout to let the world know how alive you felt. ¡°Mate are you okay?¡± Wayne was acting concerned, he was concerned often, he and Susan knew me best from all my yearmates by now. ¡°Have you ever wanted to just start shouting to let the world know how alive you felt?¡± I said, to which he gave me a quizzical look. ¡°Can''t say that I have, what brought this on?¡± He asked. I gazed into the sky, I couldn¡¯t believe I had went 11 years in the magical world without ever flying on a broom. ¡°Flying. It was my first time.¡± Wayne nodded sagely. ¡°The first time is always a bit special.¡± We laughed at that one. Just because it was immature didn''t mean it wasn''t funny. ¡°Weren''t almost all of your brothers Quidditch players?¡± Susan this time, I gave her a questioning look. ¡°I mean if all of them played Quidditch why have you never flown before.¡± Susan was still a bit mad at me, time to remedy that. It was time for the guilt trip. I grinned maliciously, on the inside of course, on the outside I put on my best sad face. ¡°Me and my family never really had a great relationship.¡± I saw my two friends perk up, it wasn''t often that I shared something about my home life. ¡°They thought I was a squib so they were probably distancing themselves emotionally before I was cast out of the family.¡± I saw them both gape at me and say almost in unison. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. ¡°The Weasleys do that!?¡± Susan exclaimed, shocked. To which I shrugged. ¡°We have a squib relative we try really hard not to talk about, I assumed the same would have happened to me if I turned out to be one.¡± Susan had an affronted mien about her. ¡°That''s barbaric!¡± Before she could enter full blown rant mode, Wayne thankfully interrupted her with a question. ¡°So if you like flying so much, will you try out for the Quidditch team next year?¡° He asked. I gave the question a bit of thought. Just because I enjoyed flying did not mean I would enjoy the sport. One negative aspect was that Quidditch would be a time drain, on the other hand it would probably be bloody fun. And wasn''t that what I wanted out of eternity. Fun? It wasn¡¯t like I couldn¡¯t leave the team after joining. ¡°Sure I will, I think I have enough money for a new broom actually.¡± ¡°Which position?¡± I stopped in my tracks. ¡°I have no idea¡± -/- Later in the Hufflepuff common room I approached Cedric. With approach I mean I sat myself next to him on the couch, ripped the book he was reading out of his hands and slapped him on the back so hard he almost fell on the floor. He looked almost exactly like his actor, which annoyed me. ¡°Hey Cedric.¡± He sighed, then turned to me. ¡°Hey Ron what''s up?¡± Wow this guy was polite. I started picking my nose. He watched with disgusted fascination as I pretended to pull out a booger and smear it on the couch. ¡°Oh nothing much, I want to join the Quidditch team next year and can''t decide which position to take.¡° He beamed at me. ¡°That''s great! It''s always nice to have some new players on the team. Meet us monday on the pitch at noon and you can fly a bit to decide ok?¡° I nodded my assent, ruffled his hair, made sure to mimic smearing some imaginary booger in it and left. -/- And that''s how I found myself standing on the Quidditch pitch, school broom in hand trying to decide if I wanted to throw balls, catch balls, look for balls or hit balls. I immediately threw out seeker and keeper. If I wanted to float around doing a whole lot of nothing, I could do that without joining the school team. Some guy whose name I already forgotten handed me a Quaffle and told me to throw it back too him. I threw the ball at him. The guy standing 20 meters behind him fell on the ground from the quaffle impacting the back of his head. The guy before me smiled nervously, I think he was the captain. He looked almost unwilling to hand me the bat, so I walked over to him and took it out of his hand. I had played baseball in my last life, I dare say that I had actually been a pretty good batter. The bats were only a bit differently shaped and you had to swing them around while flying. How hard could it be. The Quidditch captain, from now on simply referred to as guy, threw a deactivated bludger at me. Old instincts activated and I hit the thing with all of my E+ strength aiming for a Home run. ?AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.¡° A flyer that I recognized as Diggory fell out of the sky and impacted the ground with a loud thud. I cringed hearing the distinct sound of bones snapping. The guy turned pale. ¡°Well you could be a pretty good beater I guess?¡° How cute, he didn''t want to reject me even after I almost killed two people. After we were done practicing that day I went to the hospital wing to apologize to Diggory. And that''s how I started my beater training every friday afternoon. Later I would find out that Hufflepuff had really bad beaters, something about Puffs being too nice and refusing to hurt people, which was one of the reasons I wasn¡¯t told to fuck right back off. chapter 27 ( A champions duel) Filius watched with joy as the first year class he was teaching finally started mastering the animation spell. Well if you considered making fruits dance a sign of sufficient mastery. He looked at one particular student who, to absolutely no one''s surprise at this point, had managed the spell on his first try. The diminutive professor still didn''t know if the boy practiced the spells before class to show off, or if he was really just that talented. His essays were quite good too. Too good for an eleven year old. Watching smilingly as the students left his classroom with grins on their faces, he almost startled as he heard a cough. Turning around, he saw that one of his favourite and most interesting students had stayed behind. ¡°Yes what can I do for you Mr. Weasley?¡± Filius asked. To which he boy smiled, as if embarrassed at being referred to as mister. ¡°I''m ashamed to admit, that I have only found out about your duelling mastery a few days ago. Since I¡¯m interested in competing in the under ¨C 17 championship someday, I was wondering if you could maybe recommend some books or training exercises for me?¡± The Weasley was still smiling awkwardly, as if it was weird he had come to the resident former duelling champion for advice on duelling. ¡°Not to worry Mr. Weasley, a lot of students approach me when they realize that fact and I endeavor to help them all.¡± Well, expect those who would only use his lessons to bully others. ¡°I could recommend some books, but.¡± He watched as his students face fell at the apparent rejection. Filius smiled at him and finished his sentence. ¡°I find that often personal tutoring helps more than a dusty tome, how does a meeting this sunday sound?¡± ¡°Thank you very much professor!¡± Weasley exclaimed and almost ran out with how excited he was. ¡°Ah youth, I didn''t even tell him where and when we would meet.¡± He would use sunday to assess the boy and to, if he was still interested by then, make a study plan for him during christmas break. Filius started mendearing towards the staff meeting they had today. Wayne was hanging out with Susan and Hannah by the black lake.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! It was a surprisingly sunny day for the climate and they were enjoying just laying there with some warming charms. ¡°What did Ron want with Flitwick?¡± Susan asked, to which Wayne shrugged. ¡°He''ll probably tell us when he finally comes.¡± He looked towards the castle. ¡°There he is.¡± Ron was indeed coming towards them, his long sleeves flapping dramatically in the wind, the ever present smile on his face somehow even brighter. Wayne would be annoyed at someone being this perpetually happy, if the guy wasn''t one of his best friends and just so darn likeable. ¡°What kept you?¡± The only answer he got for the moment was a grin, Ron pulled out a basket, out of somewhere and laid it on the ground before them. ¡°I asked Flitwick for duelling lessons, he agreed.¡± Wayne noticed he wasn''t the only one gaping at the overachiever. ¡°Don''t you already have Quidditch practice, healing with Pomfrey after christmas and the Hufflepuff study group. Now you want to learn how to duel of all things?¡± He himself was aghast at the workload. The red haired idiot only smiled and nodded. ¡°I know, isn''t it great?¡± Wayne let his head fall back on the ground and groaned. Unbelievable I was standing before the classroom that Flitwick had said would be our meeting room. I entered it to find the half goblin sitting on a podest that took up almost the entire room. No chairs no tables. Blinking I walked up to the professor. ¡°Was this the room the dueling club used to practice in?¡± ¡°Yes yes, but let''s not talk about that. What do you think about a little test duel, just to warm up of course.¡° He didn''t wait for me to reply, he righted himself to his impressive height of four feet and walked to one end of the duelling platform. ¡°Well what are you waiting for?¡± He asked. I hopped on and walked to the other side of the podest. I looked at him questioningly looking for an explanation of what we were about to do. ¡°Just a small duel to see what we have to work on if you want to continue down the path of the duelist.¡± He assured me. ¡°First we bow.¡± We did just that. ¡°At the count of 1 feel free to start casting, 10, 9, 8.¡± I had noticed that he hadn''t drawn his wand yet, probably because he didn''t see I had drawn mine due to my long sleeves. This was something I could take advantage of. I put myself into the standard duelling pose, knees slightly bent my right arm facing Flitwick, my left positioned behind my back. This pose was useful to present a smaller target to your opponent. By the approving nod Flitwick sent me, I assumed I had done it right. When he reached one, I immediately revealed that my wand had been simply hidden by my sleeve the entire time. ¡°stupefy.¡± I sent the red bolt at him as fast as I could, only saying the incantation, not shouting it like some people did. I was too far away to see if he was surprised. But even if he was, it didn''t matter, since he apparently had a wand holster that spat out his wand faster than I could see and simply deflected the spell I had spent one month training with a swat of his hand. He sent some lights at me silently, I wasn''t sure if they were even real spells but in this situation they probably were meant to be treated as such. I sidestepped a red light, and threw myself on my knees dodging the other two. I pointed my wand at the man watching my reaction and cast the knockback jinx. The goblin simply stepped aside letting the spell ruffle his robes a bit. Then he turned to me and sent a barrage lights at me in one single sweep of his wand. Cheater. The bright blue shield I had managed to summon just in time flared up everytime it was hit. Sadly I wasn''t powerful enough to let it last long, so I simply jumped out of the way of the few lights that broke through and put my hands in the air. ¡°I surrender.¡± I wasn¡¯t meant to win in the first place, this was of course clear from the beginning, so I stopped now before I overstrained my magic. ¡°Very well done.¡± My teacher had hopped over to me beaming all the way. ¡°First things first let''s work on your stance.¡± Chapter 28 It was christmas holiday and therefore I wasn¡¯t at Hogwarts spending my time with a bunch of preteens. Rather, I was laying on my back on my couch, running my hands through Tonks'' silky hair. After a while I extracted myself from her embrace and started making breakfast, at some point she got up as well and came over to sit at the table. ¡°Anything special you want to do this christmas?¡± I asked, at which she winced. ¡°My parents invited you to spend boxing day with us actually.¡± She admitted. Nodding I sat myself next to her. ¡°Alright Nym.¡± A scowl. ¡°I only don''t hex you for that because you''re you.¡± She muttered, receiving a pleasant smile. ¡°So do you want me to meet your parents Nym?¡± I asked. Another twitch from her. ¡°You look cute when you''re angry Nym¡± I breathed into her ear. That was the point where she started growling and I fled to the bathroom for a shower, fearing for my life. When I finally came out I found her sitting on the couch, dressed in clothing that indicated she wanted to go out today. I nodded approvingly at her choice of clothing. Goth was so out, instead she simply wore trousers, military boots and a fluffy blue jacket. ¡°I see you¡¯ve improved your fashion sense during my absence.¡± ¡°Come on wiseass, you''re taking me on a date today.¡± She informed me while rolling her eyes. ¡°No I don''t have a plan, it''s your turn to decide.¡± She added after I looked at her questioningly. I shrugged at her and held out a hand. By the way her face twisted in disgust, I managed to deduce that she did not like the feeling of my apparition. I smiled, pleased at myself. My deductive ability was quite high up there, I admitted modestly. Apparition (active) lv. 3 Exp: 1% Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Taking pity on my far-away look she took my hand and nudged me in the side, signalling that she was ready to go. A loud crack heralded our surroundings having changed. We were standing beneath a clear blue sky atop a mountain, looking down on a quaint little town surrounded by a lake with the most beautiful shade of blue and green. ¡°Ergarth, Where are we?¡± Tonks asked breathlessly. I glanced at her to see that she looked mesmerized by the beauty of this place. Also slightly put out that she had no idea where we were. ¡°Welcome to Hallstatt, Austria one of the more beautiful places in Europe.¡± ¡°Isn''t intercontinental apparition illegal?¡± She asked. I deadpanned. ¡°How should I know, you''re the auror trainee here.¡± ¡°The only thing we were taught about the subject was, and I quote. ¡°To not fuck with anyone powerful enough to apparate intercontinentally.¡± She admitted, looking at me. She was quite wonderful to look at as well. Short purple hair flying around frantically in the wind, smile tugging at her lips. She had blue eyes today, and freckles. I gave her a peck on the cheek. I put on a smug look afterwards, but inside I was wondering. Coming here had drained me almost completely, sure. But with D being the average strength of a wizards magic... Theoretically almost anyone could do what I¡¯d just done. I narrowed my eyes, I had noticed when learning legilimency that I found it easier to use the skill wandlessly than the books said I should have. On the other hand I had trouble learning to summon objects wandlessly when I had tried it all those years ago. I suspected that every magical was best suited for a specific element of magic. An affinity so to say. Or several really. If I had an affinity for apparition, which fell under spatial magic. Well that would be a huge boon. Tonks was shaking me. ¡°Ergarth you there?¡± She looked slightly worried, how long had I spaced out? I gave her my patented calm down smile #3. ¡°Sorry for making you worry, I was just thinking about something.¡± I took her hand and started leading her down the mountain, towards the small town. After some wandering around in the place we sat down in a quaint caf¨¦ and I ordered some drinks in german. Tonks was looking at me with that surprised expression again. ¡°I didn''t even know you spoke german.¡± ¡°Do you want to hear about all the places I''ve traveled?¡± I offered, at which she immediately brightened up and nodded. A few stories later we were wandering around the lake. I simply went over to her, put my arm around her waist and let her think. ¡°You''ve traveled a lot, it must be kind be kind of pathetic that this is the first time I''ve actually left Britain.¡± She said with hunched shoulders.¡± Ah yes, young people were prone to insecurities when in relationships. ¡°Life is like a book, staying in one place only lets you write a certain amount of pages. I decided early on, that I wanted to experience all that I could and write a bigger than average book.¡± ¡°Why are you in Britain then? Shouldn''t you be traveling around the world?¡± She asked, not sad, but curious. I kissed her. ¡°It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end.¡± She started laughing in my arms. I held her hands. Slightly cold. Hmm. I warmed them up by creating a few streams of heat on my palms. ¡°You sound like an old man! Like Dumbledore even!¡± I laughed from the bottom of my heart at that. ¡°Old, I¡¯ll have you know I¡¯ll never be old, old is someone 20 years older than me!¡± We both laughed. Some people looked at us funny, but I saw some older couples glance at us, with a reminiscing look in their eyes. Later when it was already night out we laid on the ground, looking up at the sparkling stars. ¡°I love you.¡± She said suddenly. I started running my fingers through her hair. ¡°I love me too.¡± ¡°Prat.¡± chapter (29) Spatial magic was a peculiarity. I was fairly certain wizards didn''t even know they could categorize it as such, which lead to almost no research being made about it. The few pieces of magic that fell under the category, that I knew about, were, space-extension charms, apparition and switching spells. The switching spell was interesting. I had heard it was pretty hard to learn, but I had managed it in a week giving even more credence to the possibility I had an affinity for spatial magic. My first clue having been the fact that I could apparate intercontinentally with my paltry connection to magic. Truly, being talented in an unknown branch of magic was a weird situation to be in, on one hand, if you used it in combat, no one would know what the hell was going on. I sighed, on the other hand, you basically had to create spells from scratch. I could take arithmancy in third year, it was a subject that I honestly did not want to attempt on my own. I would just have to study already existing spatial magic. I balked at practicing the space extension charm though, it was almost notoriously difficult, and any failures at applying it could be disastrous. Instead I was practicing the switching spell. ¡°Permuto¡° Watching as two almost identical rocks switched places was fascinating from a magical perspective. They were there. And suddenly they were somewhere else. A funny thing about the switching spell was that depending on your mindset, it was either a transfiguration spell or a spatial spell. If a wizard believed, that the way the objects switch places was that the spell copied the molecular build of one object and vice versa. Well that was what would happen. If however, you went in with the mindset of switching the objects by swapping their location in the dimensional grid. That would happen, at about 10 times the magical cost. The imagery for the spatial casting of the spell was interesting as well. You imagined the two two objects you were attempting to switch, the more identical properties the better. Their name started with the same letter, they had the same composition or even the same use in society. Stuff like that.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Then you bound a string between the objects, grabbed the middle of the string and pulled. Expect that there was no string, the identity of the objects was completely subjective and you had to change the wand gesture to the infinity symbol. I thought about the similarities between a rock and air. Both made out of atoms, part of the greek elements and something that was in the same dimension. ¡°Permuto¡° I watched in complete glee as the rock appeared where the air had been. This would be very helpful, and then I blacked out. -/- I was laying in an unfamiliar bed. I immediately flared out my magical sense, calming down after feeling Tonks¡¯ signature sleeping in a sitting position next to me I wondered what I had done to land myself in a hospital. ¡°You know the robes of the patients here are enchanted to glow slightly when they wake up.¡° A voice I didn''t recognize. Snapping my eyes open I looked at the woman standing at the door. I had to ogle her a bit. She looked almost like a more put together version of... ¡°Bella?¡° Seeing the woman freeze and a cold mask slowly settle on her face I realized my mistake. ¡°Have you met my sister?¡° She was looking at me like she would kill if I said something wrong. Time to bluff myself out of this. ¡°Babe you know I''d never cheat on you.¡° By the rapid blinking, my tactic was succeeding. ¡°Have we met?¡± The woman asked in an unsure voice. I gave her my best seductive smile, that I knew made me look like a retard. ¡°Uhhhh Melissa?¡° The woman I had identified as the mother of my girlfriend blinked. ¡°That''s not my name.¡° ¡°Uh Oh, Samantha right, you look very similar to a uuhhhhh cousin of mine got confused for a moment.¡± Andromeda blinked at me in confusion. So I raised my hammer for the final nail in the coffin. ¡°Ok, I just want you to know that whatever you got, definitely wasn''t from me, I always use protection and I have a clean bill of health.¡° ¡°We haven''t had sex!¡± Growling the elder Tonks. ¡°We haven''t?¡± I gave her my best confused look then widened my eyes in realization. ¡°Ohhh, well I''ve never been approached so fast before, but sadly I can''t at the moment.¡± I looked to my girlfriend sleeping on the chair. ¡°My uhh, sister is right here and I just woke up after who knows long. The nurse outfit is very hot and any other time I''d be willing to let you ''take care'' of me. Maybe next thursday?¡± Andromeda shrieked in frustration and stomped out of the room. The woman who had apparently been pretending to sleep on the chair next to me started laughing so hard she fell on the floor and would have started rolling on it if not for oxygen deprivation. ¡°That was the most brilliant thing I''ve ever heard!¡± She slowly righted herself up despite still giggling, but contrary to her giggling she gave me a look promising death. ¡°Now where do you know my aunt from?¡± I sat up ramrod straight pointed behind her and shouted. ¡°Death Eater.¡± She deadpanned at me causing me to shrug my shoulders. ¡°Was worth a try.¡± ¡°Don''t try to worm out of this one, if you don''t answer the question we''re done.¡± I gave a resigned sigh. ¡°Can we just keep it at the fact, that your aunt was in fact, a quite pretty, not crazy witch once upon a time?¡± She narrowed her eyes at me. What, it was the first excuse that came to my mind. ¡°How old are you exactly.¡± I touched my pointer fingers together and mumbled. ¡°43.¡± She gave me her best ''wtf'' face eliciting another shrug from me. ¡°Well you never asked.¡± Chapter 30 I leaned against the cold glass of the Hogwarts express watching the rain fall down from heaven. Me and Tonks had broken up, I felt pretty bad about that basically five month relationship. We hadn''t broken up with fire, brimstone and explosions. Just a silent whimper signifying the death of a flower that hadn''t even had the chance to bloom yet. I don''t think I''d ever forget her crying form laying on her back telling me that she just couldn''t deal with the secrecy. ( I probably would, being immortal and all, but it was the thought that mattered.) I still remembered her last words to me. ¡°Is it weird that I can love a person with so many attributes I absolutely despise?¡± I had of course known that we wouldn''t stay together forever. You couldn''t create a healthy relationship built upon lies. I had originally started dating her because I simply needed someone who would give me the physical and emotional contact I needed to stay a functional human being. Somewhere in between I''d fallen in love. I sighed. Truly, tragic. ¡°You look sad.¡± I deadpanned at Granger, who for some reason had decided to sit with me. ¡°Really how did you deduce that Sherlock?¡± She just looked at the ground at my rebuke, her self-confidence was at a really depressing state, having absolutely no friends would do that to you. I didn''t know how the girl could be sorted into the house of the nerds yet not make a single friend. Maybe she was just socially retarded? Screw it, I''d befriend her, she was talented, desperate and friendless, prime minion material. ¡°Sorry for snapping at you, I just had a bad week I guess.¡± She nodded trying to appear sympathetic but obviously wondering how I could be sad at christmas. Susan and Wayne finally burst in. ¡°Ron what the hell, you haven''t replied to any of our letters.¡± They looked more worried than mad.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it ¡°I was in a coma for a week.¡± They both gasped, sufficiently dramatic. ¡°What happened mate?¡± ¡°Magical exhaustion.¡± Now they looked intrigued, well expect Susan she still looked worried. I gave a forlorn sigh. ¡°Remember this kids, trying to transfigure a christmas tree into santa is a bad idea.¡± I pulled out my deck of exploding snap cards. ¡°Anyone wanna play.¡± -/- After a few hours of play and visits from almost every Hufflepuff, all of them inquiring if I was ok, the question I had been expecting for quite a while dropped. ¡°So what did you get for christmas?¡± Coming from Granger weirdly enough. ¡°Well I got a lot of candy from my yearmates, my brothers old comet 360, a book about dueling techniques, some thick woolen socks, a book about household charms from Wayne and Susan sent me a pouch charmed to hold more than it should.¡± I stared at the ceiling. And a leather bracelet from Tonks with the words ''traveler'' engraved on a steel plate woven into it. Tonks I had gifted a ring created by myself through my fire sorcery. It was a simple thing made out of iron. I wasn''t sure what she had done with it. ¡°It''s not charmed.¡± Susan said, to which I replied with an eloquent ¡®huh?¡¯ ¡°It''s enchanted.¡± I had to sit back and marvel at that. ¡°Wow thanks.¡± The difference between a charmed and an enchanted object was simple. The charmed object would do what the charm commanded until it ran out. Enchanting meant the attributes of an item were changed, by example of the leather pouch, it was brown, made out of leather and it was bigger on the inside. One more thing you should know about enchanting was that it was hard as hell. There were maybe eighteen enchanters in the entirety of Britain. Well actually competent ones that is. Therefore of course enchanted objects were expensive. Sometimes more expensive than a wand. If I had to take a guess the pouch Susan had given me would be worth about 10 galleons. I would have to make sure to thank her appropriately later. ¡°If you were in a coma, have you done your homework?¡± Hermione''s words made me groan and put my head in my hands. -/- Later at Hogwarts, I was looking at Potter while eating. He looked happier, not as thin and was talking happily with my twin brothers. Interesting, him being friends with them. Would probably make it harder for me to steal his invisibility cloak but hey, good for him. I had mixed feelings about the deathly hallows. Artifacts that had more legends woven around them than some gods. The original story said that by uniting them you would become the master of death, which was honestly quite dubious. But worth a try. Even if it didn''t work, every individual hallow was quite the powerful item. Potter, an invisibility cloak that could hide you from magic itself. Dumbledore, a wand so strong it almost enabled one dark lord to take over a continent. Voldemort, a stone that let you talk to the deceased. Definitely things worthy of being in my collection. Just like the Mirror of Erised and the Philosopher''s stone. And maybe with my new skill in spatial magic I''d be able to pull it off. Spatial Magic(active) lv. 1 Exp: 87 Manipulate the very fabric of existence. One of the true Magicks. Trait: True Magician Through your experience with the forces making up reality you are able to learn true magic at a faster pace. (20%) Chapter 31 "Healing is the art of turning someone¡¯s body back into its healthy condition. It is split up into healing spells and potion making." Madam Pomfrey said, looking me in the eyes. "You will only be learning spells. Potions are too complicated." She was pacing before me like a university professor. Reminded me of the good old days. "Healing spells have two categories, those that heal flesh and those that heal everything else. You will be learning the flesh healing variety first, because it¡¯s easier. Do not worry, flesh healing spells make up about 10% of all healing spells and are all in all quite simple, you should be finished with them in four years if you study diligently." At this point she sighed. "Sadly most Hogwarts books on healing are in the forbidden section, so you will have to go through me if you wish to acquire one." She gave an expectant look. "Any questions?" I gave her my best grin, by the softening of their eyes it worked. "When do I start?" I circled around a pair of stunners that had been haphazardly thrown at me and retaliated with a few knock-back jinxes. One thing I had learned fairly early on in duelling, was that you did not shield unless you absolutely had too. Being on the defensive in magical combat was stupid position to be in, since you then had problems with actually counterattacking. Shields that you didn''t have to sustain and guide were quite hard to use as well. Sadly my transfiguration was not good enough to make animated shields in the form of animals on the fly, yet. Sidestepping a sickly yellow hex, I did not step back, but stepped forward ducking under the spell by a hair''s breadth and aimed kick at my diminutive opponents head. He of course jumped backwards, right into the flipendo I had sent over his head a moment earlier. Scowling I watched Flitwick tumble in the air like an astronaut, having apparently cancelled all gravity on himself.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. "Now that is just unfair." I lowered my wand, I didn''t feel like continuing for the day, this was the fourth duel already anyway. My teacher did a pirouette and landed on his feet bowing to an invisible audience. He was watching me from under the fringes of his dark hair. He was curious about me, I was too good, too smart and too practiced at fighting for him to think I was just another first year. "You''ve improved once again." He commented, at which I smiled smugly. "Still not tournament material though, you need to master spell deflection." He added quickly. I didn''t, in fact, need to master spell deflection to participate in the under 17 European duelling tournament. He was only testing my ''talent'', I mock pouted at him. I was okay with it as long as I got personal tutoring in difficult skills from an absolute master. One weird thing I had unlocked while duelling with Flitwick was unarmed combat, it had popped up the first time I''d successfully acquainted the little bugger''s face with the sole of my shoe. He had praised me for my unorthodox tactics and then proceeded to hand me my ass so thoroughly I started trying to kick him every single round, out of spite. Having a powerful enemy made you grow stronger faster after all. "How was dueling?" I gave Wayne who had waited outside for me a delighted grin. "Managed to kick him in the face twice today." My friend looked worried. "Don''t worry he''s used to it at this point." I said, trying to reassure him. Wayne deadpanned. "That''s not what I''m really worried about, but whatever, you up for actually going outside today or do you want to hole up in the library again?" Looking out of the heavily ornamented windows of Hogwarts I determined that it was actually pretty nice weather for april. Shrugging my shoulders I answered his question, "sure, but let''s go get the girls first ok." It really showed how good I was with kids when Wayne simply nodded. He had been in his ''Girls have the magical version of cooties'' phase when I''d first met him, but I had managed to cure him of his unfortunate belief. He would thank me later when he entered puberty, and hadn''t alienated every female yearmate we had. -/- A lonely willow sitting next to the water of the black lake was our spot. I sat my 12 year old ass on the grass and started rubbing my sore muscles. I heard more than I saw Susan arrive, her and Hermione immediately falling into their usual chatter. ¡°Boys, Ugh some-.¡± I stopped listening at that point. Pulling out my wand out of my long sleeves, I started the incantation for the first healing spell I''d ever learned. "Episkey" It was the first time I had actually used the spell on a human being, Pomfrey had some rather realistic dolls you could practice on. I watched fascinated as the bruises I had accumulated over the day simply disappeared. No skill sadly. I was still a bit confused why I had gotten unarmed combat after simply kicking Flitwick in the face once. Unarmed Combat(active) lv. 2 Exp: 43% You don''t need a weapon if your entire body is a weapon. "Hey Ron what do you think about professor Sinistra?" Well I couldn''t really tell my 12-year-old friends how I wanted to shove the woman against a wall and fuck her till we both dropped, so I just started bitching about how we had to be up way too early for her practical lessons. Having friends was nice. Chapter 32 Sixteen people sat at a round table, none of their faces visible, hidden in the darkness as they were. Some were twirling what looked like wooden sticks in their hands, while others were simply staring bored at some point in the room. ¡°Oh bloody hell, can someone turn the tossing torches on.¡± The man at the head of the table grumbled at the request, but did what he was told, revealing the faculty of Hogwarts. Some sighs of relief were had. ¡°So, how are the first years settling in?¡± Mcgonagall was the first one to speak. ¡°I was a bit worried about Harry Potter in the beginning, but at least he''s made some friends now, even if they are the Weasley twins.¡± She said, slightly apprehensive. Que sneer from Snape. ¡°Should we perhaps expectthe return of the Marauders?¡± The man bit out. Every teacher that remembered that particular quartet groaned. The general consensus appeared to be. ''I hope not.'' ¡°I''m a bit worried about Goyle, all of the homework he has turned in until this point was simply a piece of parchment with food smeared on it and some illegible writing in what appears to be troll.¡± Everyone but Severus chuckled at Flitwick¡¯s joke. Exceptof course, for Dumbledore who was transfiguring his chair into a muggle wizarding hat. When it was Sprout''s turn she shrugged. ¡°Everyone has settled in well, a lot of that thanks to Ronald, honestly if it was my decision I would make him a prefect next year.¡± She frowned a bit after that though.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°I''m a bit worried about his schedule though, he has training with the Quidditch team, dueling with Filius and healing with madam Pomfrey.¡± Mcgonagall glowered at the table. ¡°Maybe that''s why he''s always asleep in my class, though he knows every answer and seems to get every spell on his first try. Honestly the boy would have probably won the house-cup by now if he actually participated.¡± The next voice to be heard was Flitwick''s squeaky one. ¡°He once told me that transfiguration was the only subject he actually read ahead in.¡± ¡°When we are talking about him, anything to say about your dueling lessons?¡± The headmaster finally decided to say something. ¡°The little shit keeps kicking me in the face.¡± Flitwick answered quickly. After saying that he got red in the face and muttered an excuse me. Everyone had to blink at that one. ¡°Well that¡¯s a fairly unorthodox dueling style¡±. Dumbledore commented At which Sinistra smirked at the half-goblin,¡°Is it working?¡± The man just morosely nodded his head. ¡°Sadly yes, if it wasn''t, he would have stopped doing it by now. I guess I''m just really not used to unarmed combat in wizarding duels.¡± Dumbledore noticing that Snape wasn''t glowering for once asked the man. ¡°Anything to add Severus?¡± The man in question stared into his coffee mug. ¡°He doing fine in potions, keeps the other dunderheads in line.¡± Worried looks were exchanged by the professors at Snape actually saying something nice about a non-Slytherin. ¡°Anyone have any idea what kinds of tests we¡¯ll be having this year.¡± Everyone groaned. I couldn''t help but smile sitting on the couch before the roaring fireplace in the Hufflepuff common room. I sensed people talking about me. I hissed. ¡°Yessss, feed my ego.¡± Wayne who had been blathering something about his sister in my ear, gave me a questioning look. ¡°Nothing I just felt some people talking about me.¡± A confused ¡°How?¡± was his response. I ignored him and took out my chess set. ¡°Game?¡± The boy sitting beside me knew he wasn''t getting an answer to his question, so he just took the white pieces resigning himself to getting absolutely crushed at another game of chess. After defeating Wayne twice it was time for bed. Noticing that everyone was asleep, I crept out of the room into the halls of Hogwarts. Today was the day Harry and whoever he managed to convince to help him would smuggle out Norberta. I calmly walked through the halls of the castle heading towards the astronomy tower where the exchange would happen. It was only luck that I heard my twin brothers before I saw them due to an unexpected wind carrying their voices to me. ¡°Who is this Ergarth fellow and what is he doing here at this time of night.¡± I didn''t know which one spoke. What, sue me, their voices are identical. ¡°I don''t know, I think he''s a first year Puff though, I always see him hanging around with them.¡± ¡°Well he stopped, maybe he was just taking a walk.¡± The other commented. I turned around and headed back to my dorm, not hearing the twins commenting upon me walking away. Ok change of plan, first the map, then the cloak. chapter 33 It was the first of april, I ran through the halls of Hogwarts, Wayne maniacally giggling and trailing after me. Our destination, the kitchen. I tickled the pear and entered, the package in my hand gripped tightly under my arm. "What can Popsy do for misters." This was my first time seeing a house elf, they looked like malformed goblins. "My brothers Fred and George Weasley have their birthday today, I baked them a cake with a well wish letter." I said innocently. The house elf looked unamused. Students probably came here often trying to prank their friends/enemies with the assistance of the food delivery system. "And you woulds be wanting mes to give it to them at dinner." The elf said flatly, to which I nodded. "I would guesses that would teach them a lesson about their prankses." She said with a grin giggling maliciously. I took that as my queue to leave, so I did, leaving the cake I had transfigured from water on one of the tables. The thing should hold for another few hours. More than enough time. "So what''d you put in the water." Wayne asked, I gave him a wicked smile. "A wonderful thing called laxatives." Getting a nonplussed look from my wizarding raised friend, I explained to him what that was. Suffice to say, at the end of the explanation we were both grinning madly. Susan being the one most familiar with us at this point asked us with a long suffering sigh. "What are you two fops up too this time?" I leaned over to her, brushed her hair aside and started whispering into her ear. Once I was done she looked at me as if she were gazing upon a cockroach. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. "You disgust me." She commented and turned back to her food, frowned at the mashed potatoes on her plate, and pushed them away, slightly green in the face. The cake of course would come later, with the desserts. I turned my attention to my own food and to my yearmates. Asserting your dominance constantly sure was hard. After eating some quite scrumptious steak, medium, with a helping of raw vegetables and mashed potatoes it was finally time. The desserts appeared. The shrieking coming from the Gryffindor table five minutes later was music to my ears. -/- My two Hufflepuff friends and Granger were sitting in an abandoned classroom one hour before curfew drinking some butter beer, I had, liberated from some older students. Wayne and I couldn''t hold it anymore, we started laughing like a pair of donkeys, even Susan who had inherited her sense of justice from her aunt cracked a smile. Hermione just looked confused. The surprising thing was that after we explained it too her, she just smiled and told us. "They''ve been pranking everyone for months now, it''s about time they got something back," She got a curious look on her face after saying that. "How did you do it though, I don''t think they would have just eaten a cake that came out of nowhere without checking it first." "You planning of pranking them yourself?" I asked, grinning. After some vehement denial from her side, I managed to calm her down enough to explain what I had done. "Ok what I did was transfigure water mixed with laxatives into a cake." I started, she nodded. "The usual spell for checking malicious magic and foreign substances only indicates something if the result is directly harmful. If I had transfigured the cake out of blades, it would have shown up on the radar so to say, but since it was just water, and the spell doesn¡¯t consider minor forceful defecation as inherently evil, it got through." "There is of course a spell for checking transfiguration, and one showing any substance in the object you use it on, created by a paranoid muggleborn wizard in the Grindelwald conflict." I shook my head before continuing, ¡°but it''s impossibly hard to use, since to understand the results you need to have a functioning understanding of chemicals or alchemy." I looked at my friends who were all deadpanning at me. The consensus was apparently that I was a. "Nerd." After curfew I snuck carefully out of the common room using my stealth skill to the fullest. My robes were charmed with the colour changing spell and my footsteps silenced, so I certainly did not expect someone to notice me. "Out after curfew are we." A gravelly voice said. I turned around in what I thought to be a millisecond and pointed my wand at the silvery form of the bloody baron. I sighed in relief. "Oh it''s just you, thank god." I was certain I wasn''t imaging his raised eyebrow. "Oho, most students are rather afraid of meeting me anywhere, especially after curfew, what makes you so different?" He asked, looking at me, and analyzing. Slytherins. "Well you wouldn''t have stayed Slytherins¡¯ house ghost for long if you started blabbing out secrets randomly." I said "Good deduction, first time I''ve seen an intelligent Hufflepuff though, I think I like you." I gave him a haughty look. "Please your lordship, we all know the true Slytherins are in Hufflepuff, no one suspects the badger." He left after that one, chuckling slightly. I sneaked some more and entered the hospital wing. I found Fred and George¡¯s bed and moved over to the cabins where their stuff was locked in. Due to my healing lessons I was fairly familiar with the hospital wing, so I managed to steal the marauder''s map quite easily. Later in my bed, I opened it. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." Writing and sketches unfurled in a dizzying display of sight and magic. I blinked, this was really advanced. Impressive. In the Hufflepuff dorm next to the bed of Wayne Hopkins I found myself. ''Ergarth Grimm'' "Oh bother." chapter 34 With the marauders map in my possession I didn''t have to worry about missing the point when Quirrell went for the stone, this caused me to spend slightly more time with my friends and just being more relaxed in general. Life at Hogwarts had become a routine. Sometimes I even started thinking about magic as something mundane, but I always managed to stop myself quickly enough. Magic was nothing but magical, this was a belief I was willing to defend in a duel of honour. I was sitting in the hospital wing listening to Pomfrey rant at me at the moment though, not slaughtering heretics with my broadaxe. I didn''t even know why the woman was so brought up, I had only suggested hurting myself to progress my healing skills faster. Well, I guess that''s what criminal muggles were for. I could train my legilimency on them as well. I had thought of an interesting spell pertaining the mind arts, I was itching to test it out. My teacher suddenly went deathly still. "You''re not listening are you?" She asked calmly, calm before the storm. My sigh was answer enough. "Ronald Weasley I will tell you this, you are incredibly talented, but I cannot teach you unless you mature and rescind your flippancy in regards to healing.¡± Her gaze softened, probably remembering that I was only a first year, and that being immature was par of the course. I wasn¡¯t actually a first year if you could believe it, but just an adult with a macabre sense of humour and priorities. I could milk the fact that others saw me as a strapping young lad though. ¡°You can come and continue lessons in a few years. If you can convince me you have grown." She added. Giving her a slightly betrayed look I left the hospital wing, unwilling to argue the issue. It had been my fault really, I had forgotten to filter my words around her, having grown to trust her in my time spend studying under here. But I¡¯d forgotten that adults took it very seriously when children suggested with a deadpan that they could cut themselves up to practice healing spells. Sometimes I fancied myself a protagonist of some story that always had things go his way. Obviously that was not the case. -/- This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Back in the common room Wayne cracked bad jokes at me until I came out of my funk, I thanked him and left for Quidditch practice. Thanks to the comet 360 Bill had gifted me I had become able to participate in practice matches, finally. Next year I would definitely become a beater for my house, one of our sixth years was leaving to concentrate on his NEWTS. I even got to practice my healing on the beat up members of my team after training. Fun times. Just because I had lost access to formal healer training did not mean my journey along that path was over. I took a glance at the map, it was awkward lugging that thing around everywhere, especially fitting it in my quidditch robes, but it was necessary. Quirrell¡¯s footsteps were moving in the first room of the third floor parkour course. I looked for Dumbledore but didn¡¯t find him. "Sorry guys, I have to go." The only one I hadn''t healed yet was Diggory, who was too nice to say anything. Meh it would toughen him up, maybe he wouldn''t have died during the triwizard tournament if he wasn¡¯t such a pansy. -/- Transfiguring my school tie into Gryffindor colours I ran up the stairs towards the red and gold tower. The fat lady probably knew I wasn''t a Gryffindork, but she had to let me in with huff due to her programming. The password by the way was ''adventure'', slightly ironic considering my situation. A glance at the map assured me that everyone that could recognize me, but for FInnegan was elsewhere, and that Potter was talking with Mcgonagall at the moment. Huh, I honestly hadn''t thought that scene would repeat itself with how different Wonderscar boy''s experience at Hogwarts had been. I entered the first year dorm. "Hey, who are you!?" shouted Seamus Finnigan, who was already standing up and pulling out his wand. Dude, we shared half our classes, come on. Was this what being a Hufflepuff was like? I rolled my eyes, honestly, the only offensive spell the boy probably knew was the knockback jinx. "Stupefy" A flash of red and he was lying on the floor. I considered him for a moment and took a firewhiskey flask out of my inventory. I used it as a disinfectant only, trust. I knelt by his unconscious body, splashed some in his face and into his mouth and put the thing into his right hand, as a final act I stuck the hand not holding the bottle in his pants. I grinned, now this, was art. "Accio invisibility cloak" It didn''t work, why would it. According to legend the thing was immune to such spells, but it had been worth a try. I quickly determined which bed was Potter¡¯s due to it having a glasses cleaning kit on the night table. Running over to it I pulled his trunk out of under his bed and started rummaging in it. Socks, a bong, some meth, and finally, a shimmering cloak, I detected some spells that I assumed were tracking ones. Probably from Dumbledore. Although I wondered how the hell he had applied them. "Finite" An overpowered dispelling charm wiped them out of existence. The cloak probably helped, I was fairly sure no first year should have been able to dispel any of Dumbledore¡¯s spells. The cloak felt powerful when I picked it up, the magic surrounding it gave of a feeling of death and invincibility, it was one of the most beautiful things I¡¯d ever felt. I heard a feminine giggle. I spun around and was already casting the stunning charm when I noticed nobody was there. I took a look at the map, nobody. Potter and my twin brothers were in the second room of the corridor. No Time! I put on the cloak and started running. When I arrived at the entrance of the first room the map said Scarface was already in the second to last one. I stared at the door with all of my senses. The wards I had felt all those months ago scouting this place were gone. This was the reason I had had to wait for Quirrel to make his move. Ward breaking while a very useful branch of magic, was not something I could have mastered in the time I had. No more hesitation. I opened the door. chapter 35 I hadn''t really appreciated how gigantic the three headed dog was when watching the movies in what seemed like a lifetime ago. It was overly gigantic. The thing took up almost the entire room. Honestly why was this hellspawns¡¯ name ''Fluffy''. Six predatory eyes looked at me and thankfully closed as I played a flute I had transfigured from a pebble on the ground. I had always found the challenges had been too easy in the books, made to test Potter. Or simply to delay the thief until Dumbledore came. In the end only he knew. Opening the trapdoor I cast a spell to determine that the plant down there was in fact the devil''s snare and not some other eldritch abomination. "sphaera lucis" A sphere of light manifested and I was able to see that yes, it was indeed the devil¡¯s snare. I jumped and let the green thing break my fall, then I created fireball and used it as a guiding light towards the next chamber. The key chamber was quite interesting from a magical perspective.Trust Flitwick to enchant each and every key personally. Thankfully the door was already open so I could simply stride through. The chess chamber was next. It was quite intimidating how every statue turned to me as one, sadly I didn''t have time to figure out how they were capable of gazing through the invisibility cloak I was wearing. A pressure plate maybe? The map showed Potter in the second to last chamber already. If things happened the same way as in the books the stone would be destroyed if I dawdled. The gazes followed me as I moved. Honestly was even the floor here enchanted to feel and relay to the chess pieces when someone was walking on it. I suddenly felt a change of atmosphere. The statues had risen up and were walking towards me. Not particularly fast but still.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. To open the next door I had to kill the king. Sadly he was staying right in the middle of his respective forces. I stopped moving and threw one of the rocks in my inventory to the other side of the chamber. They stopped stopped moving and looked in that direction as if confused. So, pressure plate then, in magical form. I continued throwing stones as I made my way towards a better vantage point, the magical chess pieces seemingly confused did not react to my movement. Once I reached a spot where I could aim at the king, through a crowd of soldiers, I concentrated on my magic and gathered my fire, a flash of bright green flames filled the room. The stone statue of the king was a piece of molten stone on the ground. Smirking I went around the now hysterical statues and went through the now opened door leading to the next room. Why had this door reset, and not the previous one? Questions questions. The troll was still knocked out thank god, the smell was quite unbearable though. A glance at the map told me I had to hurry up. Dumbledore had just arrived at Hogwarts and was, looking at his speed, sprinting through the halls. I wondered why he didn''t have his phoenix flame flash him here. The thing was probably in it''s burning phase, thankfully. In the next room I found my twin brothers, apparently there wasn''t enough potion for more than one person. Or there was and Quirrell had already taken half. This was the point where I definitely needed the cloak. It should protect me from the black flames. I wasn''t quite sure though. Running towards the entrance to the final chamber I shrugged, I was immortal, who cared. I jumped through. The first thing I focused on when reached the other side was Voldemort''s parasitic face on the back of Quirrell''s head. It would have been comical how ugly it was, if I wasn''t in danger of dying by simply being in its room. A look on the map showed me that Dumbledore was in the first room. Sadly I would have to move the cloak to my inventory or risk having it taken from me when the Headmaster came. I watched in satisfaction as how both Quirrel and Potter flinched in surprise when I simply appeared out of nowhere. I shouted at harry, who was still standing there gobsmacked, the little moron. "ATTACK HIM!" and cast my own spell right afterwards. "Incendio" My DADA Professor visibly relaxed once he saw the new enemy was just another first year, scoffed and wordlessly cast a shield to block the flames. "If that''s all yo-" He started. I rudely interrupted him by throwing a fairly big stone at him at the same time Potter finally managed to cast a flipendo. I didn''t believe a wizard of Quirrell¡¯s caliber to be capable of blocking a physical and a magical attack at the same time with one shield and I proved to be correct. He was forced to transfigure a wall to block my stone throw. His paranoia was funny, it was just a stone after all. While the Professor was coming out from behind his transfigured defence, I ran over to Potter and shoved both my hands into the pockets of his jeans before he could stop me. "When I shove you towards him, grab his face." The second I felt something even resembling the philosopher¡¯s stone I whisked it away into my inventory and shoved the boy towards the emerging from behind his stone wall Quirrel. Casting a red beam of unconsciousness at the man for good measure, making sure he couldn''t block the boy missile coming towards him. I ran for the mirror. By the adult male screams coming from behind me it appeared that Scarface had listened to me. I tried putting the mirror in my inventory, but it was too big! Being able to steal it as well would have been hoping for too much anyway. I saw that the face of my former teacher in the mirror, future corpse resembled more a screaming fireplace than an actual face. I pointed my wand at my head. My work here was done. "Stupefy" chapter 36 The first thing I did upon waking up, instead of opening my eyes as usual, was try to move my body. I couldn¡¯t. My wand was gone as well. I still had Voldemort¡¯s in my inventory but my connection to it wasn''t strong enough to dispel the thing making the bed sheets hold me down. I heard an old voice talking with a young one. Probably Dumbledore congratulating the hero of the day. I had not been exhausted physically or magically the day before, but mentally was quite another story. I started to spread out my magic sense and waited, it took 785 seconds until the aura of controlled power that was Dumbledore entered my range. I opened my eyes and looked at the ceiling. I heard the old man shuffle and sit down next to my bed. "My b-" He was interrupted by me starting to scream like a person being crucified, I had practiced, the mirror had told me it was very convincing. I had recently determined the use of the old pocket watch I had found in the Weasley basement all those years ago. After having been unable to open the thing with conventional measures for several years, I had resorted to more drastic ones. Like seeing if the required key was Weasley or Prewett blood. After learning some healing spells I had slashed open my arm, letting my blood fall on the thing. It only opened slightly. That''s where my idea of hurting myself to train healing had come from by the way. After a month of bloodletting the thing opened completely and I found a broken watch on the inside. Engraved on the cover was one sentence. ''I tell not the time but the essence of your existence'' Testing it a bit told me that the thing stored memories. The kind of memories you put into glass bottle and watched inside a pensieve. Where was I? A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Oh yes, I was screaming my lungs out. I slightly opened my inventory above my head. Due to a few weeks of practice, screams weren''t the only things leaving my mouth, I also ejected the silvery strands of memories, which wafted upwards being pulled towards the memory watch. For all those unable to see my inventory, it was as if the memories were disappearing into thin air. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw Dumbledore pull out the elder wand and start chanting something in a language I did not know. This meant he had a way of catching the memories. I had of course planned for this, but it would make things more complicated. I dredged up some memories I had refreshed through drawing recently. The mask of Corvo Attano, the protagonist of one of my favourite games in my youth. Dishonoured. A figure I considered frightening enough to turn its fictitious existence into reality in the mind of one old man. Due to me putting more magic into ejecting a memory of the mask the memory came out more like a silvery worm than an actual strand. Therefore it was understandable how it was the only memory drawn to the elder wand. While I had been concentrating on making the memory that size, the old man had conjured a glass flask that now held the two second memory of a man in a mask out of a video game. I blacked out. When I woke up I saw Dumbledore sitting on a chair next to my bed. I frantically looked around the room, not knowing where I was. "Where am I!?" I ignored the old man and delved into my memories. There I found a particularly strong memory of a letter. A letter addressed to myself. Ergarth The yellow crow has flown away and has taken the contents of the ship with him. Do not try to retrieve what is lost until you are grassing on the meadow. Dishonoured mask, possesed, blame. On the letter was a drawing of a pocket watch that looked oddly familiar. Wasn''t that the thing I had found in the Weasley basement? "-nald!" I turned to Dumbledore and simply stared at him with blank eyes. The man continued in a soft voice. "Can you tell me what happened." I remembered a memory that always made me weep. The corpse of my real mother flashed before my eyes and I started crying. Not the manly crying you often saw in movies, a few solemn tears and that was it. No. What I did was the crying befitting a twelve year old kid, snot running down my nose and my face becoming red and puffy. It was odd sharing the moment with someone I didn''t really know, thankfully he simply let me finish bawling my eyes out, waiting for an answer. "It happened on christmas." I said. Dumbledore nodded, encouraging me to go on. "I was making a snowman when this man came towards me, he had an ugly mask, I didn''t have my wand with me." I stared deprecatingly at my hands, my hands that weren''t basically chained to my bed anymore. "There was nothing you could have done." I nodded solemnly at Dumbledore''s words. "When I woke up I couldn''t control my body, I could only watch, for a time, then it all turned black." I chuckled bitterly. An old and gnarled hand laid my wand on my night table. I nodded in thanks. "Do you remember anything else?" He asked, to which I shook my head. "It''s like, like I know that I should know something, but I don''t." Words that described the feeling of missing a memory, due to ejecting it from your mind, in one of the books I had read on the subject. "Do you need anything Ronald?" I just let my head sink into my pillow. "No, I just want to sleep." chapter 37 I was sitting in a compartment in the Hogwarts express after having regained my memories of my heist, destination, London. ¡°How are you feeling?¡± Susan asked warily. I had only woken up this morning, so this was the first chance my friends had to interrogate me about what had happened. ¡°I guess I''m just glad it''s over.¡± I said, causing the three students to exchange confused glances. ¡°Happy that what''s over?¡± I grinned at them. ¡°The nightmare.¡± I put on a serious face and they immediately stopped chattering at me and snapped to attention. I wasn''t serious often around them, but when I was I always said something important. ¡°I won''t be in the country during the summer.¡± I raised my hand to quell their protests. ¡°I can''t talk about what happened.¡± I gave them my serious, serious look. ¡°But I want you too prepare for what might just be the second wizarding war¡± Struck silent by my words they just sat there and stared at me with wide eyes. Wayne and Hermione hadn''t been really affected by the war, but Susan had lost almost her entire family. She was shaking her head, unable to deal with my revelation. I was more surprised that she wasn¡¯t denying it. Then I remembered that I¡¯d crafted myself into a charismatic if eccentric leader whose predictions always came through and who tried to be as helpful as possible, right. ¡°Snap out of it!¡± Startling at my loud voice they turned their attention to me again. ¡°We have time to prepare and it might not happen, do you know how the trace works?¡± Susan was the only one who didn''t shake her head. I nodded at her, urging her to explain. Breathing in deeply looking as if she was holding back tears she started talking. ¡°A wand is enchanted to report any magic cast with it to the ministry if the owner is under 17 years of age and there are no other magicals present in close proximity.¡± I nodded. ¡°Yes, purebloods thus usually borrow the wands of their parents if they want to try something out, or they just do it with their own, there being no chance of detection if they¡¯re in the same house as their parents.¡± My wand of course had no such thing. As if I would let myself be controlled by the ministry of all things.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The expected outburst from Hermione didn''t come, was she less of a social justice warrior due to being in Ravenclaw? I gave her a quizzical look. She just smiled at me in a tired way. ¡°You have a solution?¡± She asked. I pulled out Voldemort''s wand, I had painted it a dark brown colour so that nobody would recognize it and handed it to Hermione who took it and stared at it. ¡°It''s quite long.¡± Wayne apparently couldn''t help himself. ¡°That''s what she said.¡± Replied Hermione. ¡°I think you¡¯re switching long and short again.¡± The joke wasn¡¯t as good as it could have been due to Hermione being a girl, but we had more important things to be doing anyway. I interrupted their exchange before it could continue. ¡°Try a spell.¡± I pointed a pebble I had dropped onto the ground I could see her concentrating and after a few practice wand motions she cast the levitation charm. ¡°Wingardium Leviosa¡± The pebble rolled over. Seeing the disappointed expression on her face I put her at ease. ¡°It''s almost impossible to get a reaction from a wand not suited for you, I''m surprised you even managed something on the first try.¡± After a bit of chatting about how Gryffindor had stolen the house cup from us I pulled out three pieces of parchment. ¡°What are those?¡± The bushy haired girl finally turned away from her practice and focused on me again, I was impressed that she could make the pebble levitate a few inches of the ground already, even if it fell down almost immediately. ¡°These are some of the most useful spells I know for fighting, you will be learning all of them.¡± Wayne was the only one who groaned theatrically, the other two stayed silent. Boys. ¡°Don''t see it as homework, see it as something that might save your life or the life of your family in the future.¡± My best male friend nodded. ¡°You only have five spells to learn. Accio, the summoning charm and it''s counterpart Depulso the banishing charm.¡± ¡°Why do you think I find these two important?¡± I asked. They looked thoughtful, good. Surprisingly it was Wayne that answered. ¡°Well if there is something behind the enemy you could summon it distracting him.¡± I nodded. He shrugged. ¡°And the banishing thing I guess is the same but from the front.¡± ¡°Correct, the next spell is Protego the shielding spell.¡± I said with a scowl. ¡°Honestly, shielding is one of the stupidest things you can do in a fight since you''ll be hard pressed to actually start the offensive again, but, you need it to protect others as well.¡± ¡°The last spell is the stunning charm, also known as stunner, incantation Stupefy, counterspell is Rennervate.¡° They looked a bit overwhelmed by the torrent of information, so I handed them their parchments and let them soak it in. -/- On arrival at King¡¯s cross I said my goodbyes to basically everyone in my house, exited the train and apparated after turning a corner to make sure no one saw me. chapter 38 ¡°What happened?¡° I asked as I sat myself down next to a depressed looking Bill. He ran his hands through his hair that was almost as long as mine. ¡°I got fired.¡± He replied. I nodded understandingly, but still, odd timing. ¡°Well at least you''ll have more time to help me break into Azkaban.¡± My brother fainted, he did this fairly often really, so I was used to the reaction by now. It never failed to amuse me watching a grown man just collapse from a sitting position into one where he was lying on the floor. I went and made myself something to eat. -/- Sitting at the table eating my casserole I heard groans coming out of the living room and heard Bill hauling himself onto his feet. My brother stumbled into the kitchen, dressed immaculately as ever, in his preferred house wear of pants and shirt. ¡°Oh you''re there Ron, man I had this weird dream.¡± He mumbled. I stared at him blankly. His face became pale. ¡°That wasn''t a dream was it.¡± He squeaked out. Burying his head in his hands he threw himself on the chair next to mine. ¡°Tell me the whole story or I ain''t helping.¡± He said, sounding actually demanding for once. I shrugged. ¡°Well it all started with Dumbledore hiding the philosopher''s stone in Hogwarts to lure out the not quite dead You-Know-Who afte-...¡± ¡°...-nd now I have to do something public and evil, wearing a mask to make sure nobody suspects anyone but the alter ego that I made Dumbledore think was the one behind stealing the philosopher''s stone.¡± Bill looked at me with dead eyes, the eyes of someone so done with my shit he was going to jump out a window to not have to hear another word of it. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°What do you wanna do in Azkaban exactly?¡± He asked me after a few minutes. ¡°Kill death eaters so that when You-Know-Who comes back, he won''t just have to break them out to basically regain ? of his forces.¡± ¡°Alright.¡± It was my turn to look at him weirdly. ¡°Huh I thought you would be more against killing.¡± I said, receiving a shrug. ¡°It''s a good plan, eliminate You-Know-Who''s army while we still can, I¡¯ve lived through the war, enough to know I would do anything to prevent it from happening again.¡± ¡°Good, with the stone I can threaten the dementors into compliance, but we are still only two men against probably five to six aurors.¡± ¡°I''m sure you''ll think of something.¡± I gave him a smile. ¡°You know me too well.¡± -/- Bernon Snagger, born on the twelfth of november 1964, a petty criminal that enjoyed raping young women and today my test subject. I sent another cutting curse at his bound and whimpering form. After the man was almost in delirium from blood loss, I cast the spell I had invented the month before. ¡°Festucam animo¡± I felt a piece of my mind detach itself and latch onto the muggle¡¯s. I felt less intelligent somehow. I dissolved the connection my splinter had with the muggle man and it suddenly flew back to me reattaching itself joyfully. Doing it again I surmised that It would take some getting used to. After a few days of practice, I concluded that I couldn''t hold more than three splinter mind spells at the same time. It all got incredibly disorienting, very, very fast. The second thing I wanted to train was apparition. Combat apparition to be exact. I had finally managed to teleport without taking some time to focus, but while fighting for my life I wouldn''t have that luxury. That is why I started fighting with Bill, preparing us for the probable confrontation with Azkaban''s auror guards in a few months or so. Sadly I couldn''t simply murder them in their sleep. I had to beat them, let them see me and then incapacitate them, this ''break out'' wasn''t there to just kill the death eaters, it was there to distract people from Ronald Weasley stealing the philosopher''s stone by giving them an obvious villain. The mask was finished, I had made it myself. It looked intimidating, grotesque and most of all evil. It would do. ¡°That is one scary mask.¡± I turned to my brother and thanked him for the compliment. ¡°I don''t think we will manage to stage the break out this summer.¡± He nodded, we both knew we weren''t ready. The fighting style I had developed was fearsome in its simplicity. A splinter mind making enemies unable to cast overly complicated magic like apparition and then me simply abusing that fact. It had weaknesses though. If there was a ward to prevent apparition, I would be screwed, if there were more than two opponents I would be screwed, if they were better than average with occlumency I was screwed, and if the philosopher''s stone was unable to turn a dementor into gold I was absolutely fucked. I only had four weeks weeks until school. I had wanted to start on my animagus transformation, but I simply didn''t have the time. What I needed was experience fighting to see if my style actually worked and after that some more time dedicated to mastering my apparition and mind arts more. ¡°Hey Bill how do you feel about being a mercenary for a few weeks?¡± chapter 39 I conjured a pebble in the path of a killing curse that would have hit my brother in the back and retaliated with a stunner. The wizard with a badly trimmed goatee standing before me simply snarled a shielding spell, but wasn''t ready for my wandless accio summoning a tree branch into his back. I apparated behind the man and swiftly slit his throat with a knife. Turning around I saw that reinforcements had arrived in the form of three more unkempt wizards, members of a revolution they fancied themselves, I just called them target practice. ¡°Festucam animo¡± Using the time my three enemies were distracted by my splinters screaming into their minds, I took a look at how my brother was faring. Another wall of the tavern had fallen victim to his blasting curses. Exchanging spells at a furious pace with two enemy wizards he seemed fine, but I transfigured a broken chair into a dog and sent it into his enemies just in case anyway. The location directly behind the strongest looking enemy still in mind I apparated behind him the moment I felt magic approaching my previous location and cast a stunner at the back of his head. He dropped like a fly and I managed to shove my trusty knife in the back of another one''s head, before being forced to apparate away due to a sickly looking yellow spell flying towards me. Me and my last standing enemy were facing off in a battle of stares, which we couldn''t really determine the winner of since we were both wearing masks. He a ugly leathery thing covering the upper half of his face and me wearing the mask of my ''Dishonored'' persona. I felt the splinter that had been attached to his mind return to me. This meant he had at least some skill in the mind arts. Thankfully Bill was finally finished with his two opponents and the masked guy fled from the one on two fight he would have surely lost. Suddenly six or so albanian auror¡¯s appeared screaming something in their language. Apparently we weren''t quite done yet. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. I let a tendril of Legilimency touch Bill¡¯s mind, he recognized my signature and let me convey my message. I raised my wand and cast the strongest lumos of my life. Due to the modifications I had done to my mask I wasn''t blinded and neither was Bill since he was also wearing a mask, white porcelain with slits for eyes. Only two of the aurors managed to shield themselves from the light somehow, both of them looking like old veterans. I fucking hated old veterans, they were really hard to kill. ¡°Festucam animo¡± My splinters managed to latch themselves onto the four idiots screaming and covering their eyes, I sent a cutting curse wide enough to potentially hit both veterans making the shield themselves. Meaning they weren''t able to protect the slowly recovering, blinded aurors from the massive incendio my brother sent their way. They died screaming, one who must have been skilled in occlumency had already thrown out my splinter, but had splinched himself straight down the middle due to not being concentrated enough to apparate away from the approaching fire. I sent a stunner at one of the remaining aurors, looked at the space to his right, and was suddenly stabbing him in the side while he was dodging my stunner. Sadly he had dodged to the left so I only grazed him. ¡°N?se ju dor?zohen tani ne do t? jet? i but?.¡± I had no idea what the gray haired man was babbling on about so I pointed my wand at him and shouted a spell I had become fairly proficient at. ¡°Legilimens¡± He was trying his hardest to throw my invasion off, suddenly feeling a sharp pain in my side I tried to apparate away, but apparently Bills enemy had somehow managed to raise an anti apparition ward or jinx at the right time. I blasted away the transfigured dog, the one I had created no less and threw myself in the ground to prevent myself from experiencing the cruciatus. Honestly, albanian aurors were worse than british death eaters in regards to dark magic, my side flaring up in pain I rolled even further away to dodge a cutter. The auror facing me apparently grew tired of my dodging and cast a gigantic fireball at me, his mistake, he couldn''t see what I was doing because of the fire blinding him. I transfigured a wall of earth in the path of the fireball and swiftly put on my invisibility cloak and silenced myself. An almost unhearable noise sounded and I fell on the ground clutching my ears. Some kind of sonic attack? The man lumbered over to where I was lying but didn''t see me. Scowling he cast a homenum revelio but that spell didn''t work due to the properties of my cloak. He turned towards where Bill and his opponent were trading spells at a maddening pace, making sure that if I had epilepsy I would be laying twitching on the ground. Whatever you said about Bill, he was definitely a talented wizard, also my brother, so I could hardly let my enemies gang up on him. The gray haired auror still had a slight stab wound on his torso, but decided that he apparently didn''t give a shit and started moving towards my brother¡¯s fight. Well we couldn''t have that. Pointing my wand at him I cast a silent stunner. The man apparently having magical sense or simply unnatural reflexes spun around and deflected the spell just to get my completely non magical knife lodged in his throat. My hand wobbling and my world still spinning from the sonic attack I lowered my outstretched arm and almost collapsed on the ground before I blurrily remembered Bill was still fighting for his life. I sent a small tendril of legilimency to him and told him to hunker down and break the ward stopping any apparition. I received a mental nod just as he suddenly stopped throwing spells and transfigured the ground around him into a metal half dome protecting him from the last auror giving him the precious two seconds he needed to break the ward. The moment I felt the ward shatter with my magical sense I apparated behind the remaining auror and stunned him. I felt Bill walk up to me. ¡°Man the bastard was tough, should we kill him?¡± I shook my head. ¡°No let''s go home I think we had learned enough about mortal combat for now.¡± ¡°Thank god, the food here sucks ass, Dishonoured.¡± The portkey activated and we were both pulled to our living room in London where we collapsed from exhaustion. chapter 40 Before we went to sleep I mixed Bill an elixir of life, curing the rotting curse affecting his left foot, honestly, if I didn''t have access to the philosopher''s stone we would have died several times over already. It was the only reason I¡¯d ever considered the aggressive stance we were taking in regards to gathering combat experience however. I sat myself on the couch. healing myself to grind the skill I had gotten after a few skirmishes, where we couldn''t just pause life and drink our health potions. Healing (active) lv. 4 Exp: 65% Regenerate, heal and defy death. The first thing that had to go was the damage done to my inner ear from the aurors sonic attack. Hurt like a bitch, everything was wobbly, I hated inner ear injuries. After that I healed my bruised organs, who had not enjoyed their too close acquaintance with a particularly vengeful flying rock. "Man that hits the spot.¡± I glanced at Bill at his exclamation, perfectly fine now, I noted. Good stuff Flamel, good stuff. "Yes you do look better, sadly the elixir of life doesn''t heal ugliness.¡± I said before I got serious. "We won''t be able to rely on the stone for much longer, it''s slowly losing its power.¡± It had been quite the blow to realize the philosopher''s stone I had stolen needed to be recharged like a fucking smartphone. I of course, having no idea whatsoever about alchemy, didn''t know how I was supposed to do that. Bill shrugged. "Bloody sucks I know, but hey it did save our life a few times so who cares." Sighing I finished healing the small bruises I acquired by hugging the ground once too often. No use in keeping them when I could simply magic them away. "I guess, how''s the Saint Mungo''s job application working out." A grin was my answer, I took that as his way of saying it was going good. "Make sure to stay out of the way of one Andromeda Tonks, I think I traumatized her from redheads for life." I added. Que questioning look. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. I didn¡¯t even get a chuckle after I told the story, honestly some people had no appreciation for a good prank. "I''m bummed I''m going to bed." Bill said. I waved him off. "Going to go get laid, really need it after that night." "You just don''t want to admit you''re addicted to sex." Huffing I flipped him off. "Bugger off It''s not like I''ll have much opportunity at Hogwarts and christmas we''re breaking into Azkaban, not really a place you go too to get laid." Bill gave me a contemplative look. "I wouldn''t know about that, from what I remember I got laid quite a lot due to being a star Quidditch player." I rolled my eyes. "This body is twelve years old, I sure as hell am not going to stick my dick into someone that goes after twelve year olds." "Oh right, G''night then." -/- The next morning I woke up to some hung over blonde, after making her breakfast I left her apartment in Edinburgh and apparated home. "Ron we''re in the newspaper." Freezing I turned to Bill. "Please tell me we''re in the albanian one and not in the british one." All I got was a happy look, causing me to groan. "Apparently the auror we let live wasn''t as unconscious as we thought and heard us speaking english." He threw the newspaper to me. British dark wizard terrorizes Albanian ministry of magic On the night of 28th August a british wizard wearing a white porcelain mask attacked and killed five aurors that had been summoned to the tavern due to a distressed floo call over the fighting noises erupting from it. The culprit appears to have had a sidekic- "Are you fucking serious, sidekick?" The former curse breaker grinned at me. "Well to be fair I am a better fighter than you at the moment." "Respect your elders, nurse Weasley." His grimace announced me as the victor of that short exchange. "That was a low blow." -/- I was sitting in Hermione''s room along with the aforementioned person. It was a normal looking room, blue walls, bed, closet the only abnormal thing was the gigantic fucking bookcase attached to the wall. "Why do you have such a big bookcase, honestly just go to a library." Seeing her red face and remembering her problems with self-confidence I quickly changed the topic to something she would be more comfortable talking about. "So how''s the wand?" I asked. She grimaced. "I''m pretty sure the thing hates me, when I tried to learn the stunner it kept spewing fire all over the floor, our house almost got burned down. Other than that it was a productive summer, Only spell I haven''t learned is the shielding one, I only half managed the Stunner so I didn''t have time to start on it." "Good prioritization, if someone is knocked out then you won''t need to block any spells from them." I said. Deadpanning at me she commented on my unafflicted tone of voice. "Is it bad that I honestly don''t know if you''re being sarcastic or not?" "Who cares, let''s go downstairs, we wouldn''t want your parents to think we''re doing something improper, oh and gimme the wand." She didn''t look as perturbed by the implication as I thought she would be and simply handed me You-Know-Who''s wand without saying anything. chapter 41 "So how was the summer?" I asked and through the usual noises of the train watched in fascination as Wayne¡¯s and Susan¡¯s faces pulled into exactly the same grimace. They looked at each other, silently asking who would start the lamentations. A nod from Wayne signified he would. "I only managed to learn the shield spell." Looking a bit ashamed at that I reassuringly patted his shoulder. "Well it is a fifth year spell, don''t worry about it, can you show me?" He suddenly lost his gloomy exterior and giggled. "I''ll show you mine if you show me yours." I felt more than I saw Hermione roll her eyes next to me. I definitely heard her muttering "boys." though. Shrugging I stood up and pulled out my wand from my sleeve, cough, inventory, cough. Honestly my wand was probably the luckiest wand in existence, it got to chill in the same place as the wand of a powerful dark lord, a stone of immortality and an artifact said to be created by death itself. I was fairly certain I didn''t imagine the occasional purring coming through my bond to the stick. Raising my hand I completed the entire wand motion for the shielding spell, I could do it without the motion but it would be weaker. "Protego" A shimmering opaque shield sprang up before me, only fitting in the compartment due to my newly learned space extension charm. Wait if you could make a space bigger than it was could you also make it smaller? Narrowing my eyes I shelved that thought for later. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. A bright red spell that I identified as a stunner splashed onto my shield, I gave Susan a smug look. "Come at me bro." My shield held up too a dozen stunners and five knock back jinxes, Wayne joined Hermione and Susan in attacking me after a while. My shield didn''t break as much as it shimmered slightly and disappeared. Dodging an errant flipendo I glared at Waynes innocent expression and sat down again. "Your turn." Sighing my only male friend, I didn''t consider Garrick a friend more of a mentor and Bill was my brother, stood up and prepared himself mentally. "Protego" Interestingly his shield actually felt more powerful than mine, sure he used about half his reserves for it instead of my fourth but still. Maybe this was his specialisation. Susan and Hermione had taken it upon themselves to start throwing spells at the shield, I watched Wayne¡¯s face turn smug as they all splashed away harmlessly. Stealthily I picked up the book I had been reading, ''Magical Me¡¯, Lockhart''s books were actually quite entertaining to read, the writing style was humorously descriptive and the content was interesting enough. I wassurprised it wasn''t complete garbage. Where was I? Oh yes I threw the book in Wayne¡¯s face, it slapped into him and sent him sprawling onto the ground shrieking like a little girl. "One thing I should probably note, is that the shielding spell does let non-magical objects pass through.¡± Wayne groaned from his position on the floor. "Couldn''t you have just told me?" He asked. I gave him a blank look, "That wouldn''t have been even half as fun now would it." "You''re a dick." I nodded, "And don''t you forget it." At this point Susan interrupted the conversation between me and the snail on the ground. "Do you want to see mine as well?" After realizing what she''d just said she went beet red in the face and meeped causing all of us to start laughing. Shaking my head I cast a tempus. "No, we¡¯ll be arriving at Hogwarts in a few minutes, we don¡¯t want to start rumours by exiting the cabin all red-faced and panting." Without waiting for anyone to leave or turn away I started undressing. I felt the magic representing my friends turn away hastily, innerly I sighed, kids, the human body was something completely normal. One day I would manage to hammer that thought into their heads. This time we were taking the carriages to the school, apparently boats were only for first years. Approaching one of the thestrals I started petting it. It might be skeletal and generally seen as an evil dark creature because its connotation to death but they were still simply animals. Proven by the fact that the thing leaned it''s head into my hand wanting to be pet more after I stopped. I gaveit the corned beef I''d taken out of my sandwich,which it happily munched down and turned towards my friends while it was distracted. Hermione was gaping at me, as was Susan but Wayne looked fairly bored. "You can see them too?" I spun around wondering how someone had snuck up on me and found myself looking down into a pair of beautiful silver eyes. I gave Luna Lovegood a nod. "I can indeed." Chapter 42
I suddenly blinked at Luna, a thought came to my head. I tilt my head just a bit as I look at her. "Aren''t First years supposed to take boats?" I asked, in response to which Luna''s eyes widened and she ran off. We stared after her. "Weird girl." I said as I turned to Wayne. Luna, she was an odd character. I had never really understood her. Was she a seer gone mad with her visions, unable to comprehend what she saw? A traumatized child? Straight out schizophrenic? Or maybe just pulling everyone''s leg? Well the girl would probably be sorted into Ravenclaw with Hermione, so I wouldn''t really have much of a chance to interact with her and find the method to her madness. It''s not like she was actually that important, so I could easily suppress my curiosity. "I guess. Come on let''s go, before the carriages are all gone." Wayne said. Once I was seated inside and we slowly started rolling towards Hogwarts, I turned to Susan. "What about you?" She gave me a questioning look. "What spells did you manage?" I clarified, and she immediately brightened in understanding. Her face then turned red and she glared at me. "My aunt found the parchment with the spells and forced me to learn them all. You turned my vacation into Auror boot camp," I gave her a pleasant smile and reached over to take her hand in mine. "And If that means you''ll live to spend yet another day amongst us, I will gladly do the same next summer." I said in a way formulate to elicit an amusing response. She blushed, muttering something as she leaned away. -/- Later in the great hall, I sat down with all the people I hadn''t seen in a month and started exchanging pleasantries. I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Diggory. "Tryouts are next week. Saturday afternoon," he crisply informed me. "I''ll be the¡ª" Clink, Clink, Clink. The sound of Dumbledore using a combination of a spoon and a goblet interrupted me. I watched the door slowly creak open and assumed that he wished for us to quiet down for the sorting of the First years.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Once fully open, in came the First years. Hair the colour of fire¡ªoh hey, it''s Ginny. The Ginny that did not have the diary. I''d sought her out on the train under my invisibility cloak to make sure. But the absence of the twins and Potter meant that Dobby had interfered with the platform, which he would only do if a ''dastardly plot'' was going on at Hogwarts. I watched as Ginny was sorted into Gryffindor and Luna into Ravenclaw. Turning back to the table I started eating keeping watch on our new Defense against the Dark Arts professor, Gilderoy Lockhart, out of the corner of my eye. He was the only new addition after all. The man was dressed in dark plum robes with perfectly coiffed hair and was also seemingly talking quietly with Mcgonagall who actually seemed to be enjoying the conversation. I hadn''t had my first lesson with the man yet but something told me he wasn''t as incompetent as I had expected. -/- "Mr. Weasley stay behind for a moment," Mcgonagall called after Transfiguration class finished. I signalled my friends to wait for me. I had actually wanted to teach them some dueling, due to Transfiguration being the last subject of the day, but who was I to deny the will of the professor. Turning to Mcgonagall, curious about her reason for keeping me here, I asked. "What can I do for you Professor?" "Ahem I''m well aware that you are ahead of your year-mates. The staff and I were quite curious as to precisely how far," she said stiffly, and somewhat uncomfortably, she was probably just unused to someone as smart as me. That was actually a question I had to think about a bit. I had mostly concentrated on animate to animate Transfiguration, neglecting everything else. Hmm, well, I had no doubt that my level was already, at minimum, mid-Fourth year. "I read ahead. From just the the spells, I think I''m mid-Third year. A bit further with the theory." The woman nodded approvingly. "I''m happy to see promising students so enthralled in my subject." She then gave me a pointed look. "Yes¡ªit''s been quite clear to me how bored out of your mind you''ve been, Mr. Weasley" Aaand this is the part where I make myself wince. I hope that''s what she wanted. Man, acting is getting annoying. Next, I pull my face into a grimace marred by guilt. "I can''t help it, I just did this stuff already, last year even." I explain. Now I should look at my feet¡ªoh look, my feet are so important. Can''t look at the professor. Oh, the guilt. How it weighs on my conscience. "It''s not your fault Professor. It''s mine, for reading ahead." Adults loved it when children took responsibility for their actions. Even if it wasn''t really their fault. I should know, I was one myself. As predicted, Minerva smiled proudly. "It is possible, for those that are as studious as yourself, to test out of a subject for a year. Sadly, with my schedule, I am only able to meet on Sundays. What say you, Mr. Weasley?" She peered at me over the rim of her glasses. I got the distinct feeling that this wasn''t an offer I could opt out of. "I would grateful for such an opportunity, Professor," She gave a nod, so I made to leave, but I couldn''t help throwing in some last words. "That said, I''m going to crush Gryffindor in our Quidditch match next month," I heard a muttered ''rascal'' as I closed the door to the Transfiguration classroom, to find my group of friends waiting for me. "So what did she want?" Wayne asked. I shrugged."Nothing much. Just testing out of Second year Transfiguration." I turn to my bushy-haired friend¡ªoh, Hermione, shalt thou grace me with an outburst? Guess not. She just gave me a small smile. "Weird coincidence. I''m testing out of Second year Charms." she said. Ah, so that''s why she wasn''t mad at me. Wayne and Susan groaned. "I''m surrounded by overachievers." Susan said. Wayne just gave her pat on the back, before turning to the rest of them. "Come on let''s go, Ron said he wanted to show us the dueling room today." chapter 43 "Mcmanus passes the bludger to Weasley. Weasley knocks it straight at Wood!" I watched in satisfaction as my bludger caused Wood to lose concentration and fail to block Applebee¡¯s shot, making the score 20:10 in favour of Hufflepuff. Flying around the pitch, trying to keep track of Potter and the bludger, I watched as the game progressed. The twins, being unused to playing against such aggressive beaters like Mcmanus and I, weren''t really having a big impact on the game. Sadly, the same could not be said about the Gryffindor chasers. Only due to my interventions were we still in the lead. Using yourself as a body block against chasers wasn''t against the rules after all, as long as you didn''t actually touch them. Seeing another opportunity, I did just that. I knock away a bludger the twins had prepared to trip up our keeper. It would return after a while, being aggressive was its purpose after all. Swooping down, I flew along my beater buddy Micheal until we reached the ''flying foxes of Gryffindor''. I saw Michael fly alongside Angelina screaming something about big butts and not being able to lie, god I loved that guy. I had told him that distracting others with your voice was allowed as long as you weren''t shouting spells and the teen had decided to hit off his singing career. Speeding along finally reaching Katie who had the quaffle I intersposed myself between her and her last teammate forcing her to throw at the goals without any of the confusing maneuvers that they preferred. "Bugger off Weasley!" She must have been mad that Ferley our keeper had blocked her shot that easily, blowing her a kissy face I left her to stew with one last remark. "Sorry babe the gravity field of your behind attracted me, wasn''t intentional I assure you." I said whilst I imagined hearing the hamster making her brain function work overtime to understand my insult. The pain in my eardrums a few seconds later told me that her shriek of frustration was not my imagination. "What''s this, has Potter spotted the snitch!?" Shouted the announcer. Mentally thanking Lee Jordan I turned towards Potter to see him flying centimeters above the grass following a small flying golden ball. I was higher up than him, my Comet 360 was inferior to his Nimbus and he was slowly gaining on the snitch. Predicting the pathway the snitch would take, I stopped all functions in my broom and started free falling towards where I thought the golden thing would be at the moment of impact.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. The adrenalin in my body reached unheard of levels, I could actually appreciate the fact this time, the high not being achieved by fighting for my life. Grinning I saw my prediction had been right, swinging my leg over my broom I spun with the momentum of my fall and hit the ground with my beater bat swirling up a storm of earth and grass directly in the spot the snitch flew through making the enemy seeker lose sight of it. "That has got to be against the rules! In one of the most disgusting displays of foul play ever witnessed from a Huffl-" That was the point where Mcgonagall interrupted him. "Jordan!" Giving Potter a smug grin, that I''m sure he saw by the clenching of his hands on the Nimbus I flew away to rejoin the game. While the Gryffindor team had been busy cheering at their perceived win we had scored two goals bringing the score to 40:10. That was the point where I saw how tilted the enemy team was. If anyone had seen my face in that moment, I would have probably ended up in a mental asylum due to my maniacal smile. You see an enemy being on tilt means they were playing badly being influenced by their emotions. This was the point where they were the most susceptible to even more tilt. There were many ways to tilt. Doing impossible maneuvers as a chaser, fancy blocks as a keeper and interrupting plays as a seeker. But there was one tactic that had been the number one in my heart since I started playing video games about thirty years ago. Focusing down one enemy until they were nothing more than an accumulation of nerves, failure and despair. Letting my eyes sweep over my opponents of the day like a serial killer looking for his next victim I found her. Alicia Spinnet, a third year Indian looking girl who was flying a bit shakily, from nerves or from one of my bludgers to the stomach at the start of the game, I didn''t rightfully know. Noticing my gaze she gave my a quizzical look. I almost burst out laughing, a casual brush of legilimency told me she was on her period as well, I probably wasn''t able to suppress my giggles as well as I thought, because Spinnet scowled at me and flew off towards her team. Raising my hand I gained my partner-in-crime¡¯s attention, my fellow beater grinned at me as I signalled our next tactic. He had a brutal mindstyle that I enjoyed playing with, oh nothing cruel or sadistic, he just enjoyed winning way too much to not resort to some, frowned upon tactics. Hufflepuff had just scored another goal and all the chasers were taking a bit of a break when I intercepted one of the twins bludgers to Michael who happily hurled it at Spinnet who was catching her breath from the fierce flying she''d done seconds before. The aggressive ball hit her directly in the right shoulder making sure that any of her future throws would not be as good as some Gryffindor fans hoped. Mcmanus and I were on the receiving end of more than a few glares after that play, but meh, I could live with myself. And that''s how it continued. Everytime we got the bludger in our possession we would hurl it at Spinnet girl with all our might, even in situations where another target would have been better to go after. The twins at some point had to intervene and one of them permanently put himself at her side to deflect any bludgers. The twins had been losing the battle of the beaters already, well now that we only had to fight one twin... Mcmanus and I took complete control of the match. After the split of Fred and George, Gryffindor had maybe twenty percent possession of the bludgers. The number would have been even lower but I had to occasionally stop Potter from catching the snitch. Honestly what was Diggory doing. I sighed, not really being able to fault him, Harry just had the better broom and the build of seeker. The game ended after two hours with the score being 470:210 for Hufflepuff. Potter had caught the snitch. I looked over at the Gryffindor team to see Alicia Spinnet being surrounded by her teammates seemingly having a nervous breakdown, several heavy bruises probably splattered all over her body and what I was sure was a dislocated shoulder. Had I gone to far? Nah. Being carried towards my common room by the Quidditch team hearing the call of "Weasley is our king!" I couldn''t really bring myself to feel bad. It''s just a game brah. In hindsight spending the entirety of the summer honing my killer instinct wasn¡¯t really the best idea. chapter 44 Sitting in the great hall chatting with my friends, I could feel the glares of literally every Gryffindor on my back. Honestly those guys took Quidditch (incidentally also the only thing the morons were actually good at) way too seriously. I wouldn''t say I enjoyed hurting them, but I won''t say I wouldn''t do it again. Quidditch was actually quite a brutal sport, magicals could only afford to play it due to their near miraculous healing magic. If muggles played it, the sport would be abolished after a few weeks due to the high rate of injury. I looked at the time and shunted thoughts of Quidditch out of my mind, turning to the Ravenclaw table I saw Luna pale and withdrawn sitting alone at the edge, ignoring her and turning to Hermione I saw her chatting with a few other second years. Raising my eyebrow I wondered if the girl had finally made some friends, who knew, sending a probe of legilimency at her I made her subconsciously glance in my direction. My hand before my chest I flashed all five fingers three times, my other hand making a circling motion, receiving a nod I stood up and left towards our training ground. Swiftly walking through the halls of Hogwarts I was just passing a corner when I heard someone call out to me. ¡°Hey Weasley.¡± Turning around I found a random seventh year Slytherin a few meters behind me wand raised. A brown light left his wand heading to me, I blinked in surprise, I hadn''t expected the attacks to start so soon, the match with the snakes was in a week. Shrugging mentally, I sidestepped the spell walking towards the seventh year, dodging spells and deflecting some I was finally before the quickly panicking aggressor. Him not being ready for my unarmed combat, he was entirely unprepared for me simply plucking his wand out of his hand and kneeing him in the genitalia. He bent over gasping in pain as I knocked him unconscious with a, in my opinion, brilliantly performed spinning heel kick. I was left there standing above an unconscious body, not a good situation to be caught in, by anybody really.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Taking out the marauders map out of my inventory I muttered, ¡°I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.¡± I should change the password to something shorter, but changing an already existing enchantment was very hard. I wondered if I could copy this masterpiece. Glancing at my position next to the statue of Burnanble the bloodthirsty, I found myself and my attacker with nobody else in the vicinity. I chuckled a bit at the guys name. ¡°Honestly, Butt Barmy the third, poor guy.¡± I wondered about what do with him. After four duelling sessions my friends were slowly losing their enthusiasm, the projected attack on Halloween hadn''t come. Maybe Malfoy Senior hadn''t planted the diary, but then why had Potter been unable to cross to the platform at the start of the year? Had they simply been too late? No, the Weasleys left for the express together, Percy and Ginny had made it on time, maybe this unknown holder of the diary had stronger mental defenses or had simply thrown the thing away. Quite likely actually, not everyone was stupid enough to write in a book that answered back and whose purpose was unknown. Damn that sucked, I had expected the opening of the Chamber of Secrets to be the motivation my friends needed to suck up the bruises and learn to defend themselves. I guess I couldn''t count on that now. But who said that the motivation my friends needed could only be provided by Tom Riddle''s old diary? Honestly he hadn''t even killed anyone, maybe he hadn''t wanted to, or someone had been acting from the shadows making sure that all victims only saw the basilisk in some reflection. I would probably make a better villain, and the practice for Christmas would be useful, I didn''t really want to wander into Azkaban and then not know how to appear evil. Evil was a mindset, a mindset that could be trained. Decision made I turned to the still unconscious snake pointed my wand at him and didn''t do anything. Biting my lip I started thinking. I needed something non lethal, at least for now, or the school might actually close, something that wasn''t easy to reverse. Maybe a botched obliviate? I had heard the spell was quite scary when done improperly, maybe this was an opportunity to finally learn it? I shook my head, no I had a much better idea, and more practice in my mind splinter spell would be good. At this point I still could only infect four people and anyone with a basic understanding of occlumency could remove it after at least a minute. ¡°Festucam animo¡± I worked slowly, no rush, establishing a connection to someone who had his eyes closed, ergo unconscious was harder but manageable. Once I had a connection, I let as much of my mind seep into the cracks I forcefully created in Butt¡¯s own mind as I could. Nestling it in deep inside, I channeled a great part of my magic into this action trying to make the effect as long lasting and powerful as possible. I no longer had an effect on the piece of my mind now nestled in the boy¡¯s head, it was after all, detached from my own. A simple thread connected us, I had discovered I could sever that thread and the mind would still return to me. I scowled at the cost though, a day long magical exhaustion with a pounding headache. It had to be done, someone who could sense magic could see the thread, of that I was sure, sighing I disconnected it receiving a painful twinge in return. It was all in the hands of me now, I giggled at my joke, I was truly wondering what horrors my splinter could inflict on the boy. Normally I wouldn''t have done this, but hey, he attacked me first. I would have to go after someone with no connection to me next time, would be fairly awkward if everyone who ended up a victim was one of my attackers. Entering the circular room my friends and I had decided to practice in, I found them lazily trading spells, I sighed, honestly was this what it felt like to have children? They truly needed to develop some dedication, and put some effort into this. chapter 45 Warning: Depictions of violence/gore I was sitting on a circular couch, the colour of beige, in the room my friends and I had refurbished into our club room, my drawings and some posters hanging on the walls. The perfectly square water surface before me rippled. Divination was a hard branch of magic, but you could make it easier for yourself if you had a connection to what you were attempting to see. A splinter of my mind was a fairly significant connection. Butt Barmy appeared in his hospital bed muttering to himself as he had been doing for the last four days. Discovered by Gilderoy Lockhart of all people. Him trying to claw his ears out had stumped our defense teacher though, from what I heard the man stunned Butt and rushed him to the hospital wing, I had researched the mind arts thoroughly in my summer vacation so it was no surprise that Pomfrey was unable to do anything for the boy. Rushed into Saint Mungo''s he didn''t seem to get any better. As if Butt wanted to confirm my thoughts he opened his mouth in a scream I couldn''t hear. A scream that nobody could hear. The grandfather clock in the corner of the club room struck two in the morning, a time I was most likely to finish it. Butt stilled, his spindly fingers started twitching uncontrollably it was like watching a spider have an epileptic attack, eyes snapping open he started looking around the room feverishly. Chest rising rising in hyperventilation an unnatural calm seemed to spread over his face. Man this was scary to watch, and I was the one causing it. Standing up Butt looked around his hospital room as if searching for something. Well whatever it was he apparently hadn''t found it. An aura of almost palpable magical power started surrounding him. Raising my brows I realized what he was doing, he was initiating a death curse, an act that any magical could do, flash frying their connection to magic they could, for a few moments achieve feats usually impossible for them.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Watching in fascination I watched as a knife appeared in the young man¡¯s hand, wandless conjuration, even with the death curse, was impressive. Well I was fairly good at transfiguration. Slicing open his arms, Butt started writing on the wall with his blood, after a few minutes I saw what he had written, and I couldn''t help but feel amused. A glimpse into the future revealing our fate the void is coming oblivion awaits How terribly foreboding, I wondered what I meant with that, well I would know soon enough, the splinter couldn''t stay in one host for particularly long so it would return to me. My train of thought was interrupted by Butt slicing open his stomach with one fluid motion, I could imagine the sounds that accompanied the act of ripping out your own intestines that followed shortly thereafter. That was fucking disgusting, it would send a very powerful message sure, but still, eeewwww. As Butt started mutilating his face I wondered about my next victim. It couldn''t be someone from Hogwarts, I wasn''t sure if this one gruesome death would motivate my friends but I couldn''t attack another student, the school might actually close. I quickly came to the thought of Lucius Malfoy and other free roaming Death Eaters, Grandpa did always say you should be proactive in war. Looking at the body laying on the ground I almost puked, intestines splayed across the floor, ears, eyes and tongue cut out and laid across the floor like some ritual offering and the throat split in a huge bloody grin. I had to chuckle at the meaning despite the, horrificness of the act. Had my splinter mind gone insane from the isolation? Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil indeed. -/- Everyone in the Great Hall was sitting with hunched heads in the minute of mourning Dumbledore had declared. The only thing anybody could talk about was Butt¡¯s death. The teachers had tried to spare us the details, but the Daily Prophet had provided a pretty graphic description rendering that point moot. No pictures sadly. Looking at the pale faces of my friends I wondered what they were thinking, using legilimency would have been terribly rude. Hermione''s wild hands got my attention, she stretched out all of her fingers four times and made a circle. 40 minutes clubroom. Nodding confirming the message I watched curiously as she immediately rushed off, probably looking for something in the library. Honestly the girl had no priorities, we hadn''t even eaten dinner yet! Turning to my two close Hufflepuff friends I saw that Susan was pale in the face and close to hyperventilating, sitting myself closer to her I silently put my arm around her shoulder, Wayne doing the same from the other side, even if he himself looked like he was going to hurl. Dinner done we started heading towards our club room when everybody still walking before us stopped. Getting a bad feeling about the situation I shoved my way forward my friends following in my wake. There encircled by the student body around us lay the unmoving body of Hermione Granger, petrified. On the wall behind written in blood as if to mock what I had done last night were the words. The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir beware. Looking at the tears starting to appear on Susans face and Waynes statuesque form the only words I could think of were. Well, shit. chapter 46 Head pounding I lay on my bed in the Hufflepuff bedroom. The feeling of my skull practically vibrating with the beat of my heart wasn''t capable of containing my anger. Tom had made things personal. I couldn''t have given less of a shit about Voldemort before, but now I was well and truly pissed. Making it all the more galling that I wouldn''t be able to do anything for a while. Looking out of the window at the snow covered grounds of the castle I wondered how December had come so fast. The attack on Azkaban was planned out and couldn''t wait, not even for my revenge against the diary. "Ron are you feeling well enough to practice dueling?" Wayne had spent a few days being sad and then as if a fire ignited within his soul started badgering me about our self-defense club. I had been forced to decline for the last three days due to my abyssal physical condition, but I felt mostly alright now, good enough to supervise at least. Breath in, breath out. Nodding I stood up sending a jolt through my mind, I mentally sneered at the pain, this was nothing compared to how it had been immediately after my splinter reattached itself to me. "Get Susan." Seeing him hesitate I sighed, Susan had entered a state of depression. I was unable to help her due to my ailing health and Wayne was not really being empathic enough to deal with her, so we hadn''t been able to spend much time with her in the last few days. The door clicked shut as Wayne left, my headache decreased as I walked towards our club room distracting myself by creating a hellish training regime. Having just finished up the dummies used to practice some offensive spells on, I heard the door open, turning around I saw my remaining female friend standing there listlessly with deep bags under her eyes, looking more like a corpse than a living human. Her eyes were very alive though, and also very very angry. "What is this, she hasn''t even been petrified for three days and you''re already ignoring the fact she ever existed!" Throat hoarse from crying she still shouted at me pretty loudly.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Walking over to her I noticed how her fists were clenched together and the droplets of blood running down her fingers. I think she was confused by me not having an answer to her anger so she didn''t stop me as I gently unclenched her fists and pulled her into a hug. Her unwashed red hair pressing into my cheek and her hands trying to free her from my grip. One of my problems was that when I became angry I stopped showing as much emotion, mine was a cold rage, lacking the explosiveness of other men. I moved my lips to her ear and whispered in what I hoped was a despairing voice. "It¡¯ll be okay, everything will be alright. Expect for the person who did this, for them, nothing will be alright, ever again.¡± At my words the waif in my arms started a series of heart wrenching sobs. I picked her up princess style and carried her to the couch. Sitting down on it I let her body rest on mine as she wept. Mentally sighing I wondered what it was about me and making women cry. Hearing the door opening again I looked to Wayne and raised my eyebrow, silently asking why Susan had arrived before him. "She told me she wanted to speak to you in private." He said. The body pressed against mine sniffled a bit and sat up. "I was just so angry at you Ron, one of our best friends gets petrified and you just act like you don''t care, hiding in your bed for three days. I guess I wanted to scream at you, but I just didn''t know what to say." Taking her hand in mine I reassured her that I was there for her and turned to Hopkins. "Come over, group hug." It was a testament to how well he was trained that he just walked over to us and let us embrace him. After we were done, simply relaxing my friends started speaking. "We''re sorry," at my quizzical look Wayne continued," You''ve been trying to teach us how to fight for three months now, we never really took it seriously, we apologize." Looking at the way his brown eyes tried to express his remorse reminded me of a kicked puppy. "I will accept your apology if you actually learn properly now." My friends exchanged a look and spoke simultaneously. "Don''t worry we will." Creepy. Dark diaries dastardly deeds A powerful destroyed dark artefact has been brought before the auror corps of the ministry by Albus Dumbledore. Taking the form of a diary, the ministry experts were able to confirm it was the cause of Muggleborns Hermione Grunger''s ( for more information go to page 7) petrification, stopping the closure of Hogwarts, the standing of which was highty perilous after the death of one student, Butt Barmy. How the thing still dripping vile magic four days after its destruction was able to petrify someone still boggles everyone¡¯s mind. I didn''t read any further, apparently Tom Riddle petrifying someone right after a death had occurred, made Dumbledore feel threatened enough with the closing of his school that he actually got off his ass and did something. Wondering why he hadn''t done so in the books, I looked past my friend¡¯s enraged faces and glanced at the man sitting at the staff table. There probably never was going to be a person capable of understanding the powerful wizard. Letting my gaze sweep over the rest of the still subdued great hall I noticed that Luna Lovegood was missing confirming my suspicion of her having been the carrier of the diary. Not important at all indeed. chapter 47 Bill and I were sitting in our apartment gearing up Strapping the knife to my shin, putting on the mask and so forth. ¡°I can''t believe we''re actually doing this." Bill said. He didn''t sound worried, just weirded out. To be quite honest, this wasn''t what I imagined doing with my immortality either, my plans had been to use my intellect to become an independent worker doing something I liked and just living out life lazily and enjoying myself. Then magic happened. I would say it was a nice trade off, who needed peace and contentment when you had the ability to bend reality to your will. "Me neither, to be honest, but still I think writing a will was going a bit overboard." My words ignoring the fact that I had written one myself. If only to explain everything to my remaining two friends. Well, almost everything. Bill sighed and stood up. "Whatever, time to go, it''s almost two in the morning." I took his hand and apparated us to the spot we had previously scouted, suddenly we were being sprayed on by foaming sea water and standing on a small rock protrusion looking out at the small island inhabiting one of the most miserable places in the world. Azkaban, a dark tower rising into the heavens, or as most people in Britain would describe it, hell.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Since Bill had a stronger connection to magic and would therefore not tire as fast it was his job to transfigure the rock around us into a boat. Sailing towards the prison I was finally able to feel the wards surrounding it. Anti-Apparition and anti-Portkey, that was it? Narrowing my eyes I looked closer, no, there was something else, hidden between the two was a slight shimmer of blue. A slight shimmer if blue that would alert the object connected to the thing to scream out alerting the aurors if someone passed it. Good thing I had a solution to that then. Gesturing Bill towards me I pulled out my invisibility cloak and draped it over the both of us, we had to squat a bit to make it work. . We weren''t far away from the prison now. I was able to discern its state of shabbiness, cracks on the outer walls, water leaking in through holes and the rotten wooden door that served as the entrance. But the most important thing I saw were the dementors. Hundreds of them swarming around the tower like angry hornets, and it looked like they noticed us as well. A group of three monstrosities were floating leisurely towards us. Shivering and hearing the chattering teeth of my brother I noted that I had severely underestimated the effect dementors would have on me. One probably wouldn''t have been a problem, but the quantity seemed to correlate strongly with the amount of despair felt. Thank god we had masks on, making us capable of activating the self destruction spells on ourselves before they were able to suck out our souls. I liked being in possession of my soul thank you very much. The things were drawing closer now, close enough that I was able to truly appreciate how ugly they were. "My god these things are ugly, bloody hell." Thank you Bill. "Well no matter how ugly, I''m sure there is someone in this world whose fetish they prescribe to perfectly." Almost casually I pulled the philosopher''s stone out of my inventory, and through the mental agony I was going through touched it to the grasping hands of the closest dementor. Channeling magic through it I watched in fascination as the thing ever so slowly from the point of contact started turning golden. It moved its arm a bit cracking the thin layer of gold across it''s arm but the ancient artifact would not be denied. At the pace of a snail the arm turned golden, perhaps noticing it''s approach into non existence the thing started shrieking making me glad I had some noise regulating charms on my mask. I leaned over to it and whispered into its ear. "Don''t worry too much, life after death isn''t too bad." Strangely the thing stopped shrieking and if it didn''t have eyes I would have been sure it was using them to stare directly into mine. The golden curse started accelerating and before I knew it I was left looking at the greatest work of modern art in history. A golden statue of one of the most dreadful beings in all of existence. Only Bill and I would know it wasn''t simply a statue chapter 48 Silence, an absence of sound. The dementors were frozen in place from fear or from surprise, I didn''t know, I was just wondering how silence could be so deafening. Looking at the crashing waves noting that I couldn''t hear them, I turned to the dementors frozen behind the golden statue of their fallen comrade. "Leave." As if the word would break the deathly grasp something impossible as killing an immortal creature had on the world. The dementors didn''t move. "Leave!" I didn''t know what I was expecting, would the attack, stay frozen, flee? They left. I could understand that. Being immortal and finally meeting someone who had the power to kill you was scary, even if the person wielding that power was friendly, which I wasn''t, my actions proved that. "That was anticlimactic, come on let''s do what we came here for." Bill said. Watching his back as he walked towards the entrance to Azkaban, I once again wondered if he was emotionally challenged. I shook my head, no, no one could be so bad that the hadn''t felt the tense atmosphere a few moments before. I followed him.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. We stood before the door to Azkaban. More precisely the door to Azkaban that was devoid of any magic. Azkaban itself had very little magic. Only an enchantment in the stone to make it last longer and some wards which I presumed were on the doors of the prisoner¡¯s cells to warn the guards if something ever happened. I couldn''t believe the Ministry''s arrogance. I pointed my wand at the rickety wooden door and opened it. Our footsteps were silent as we entered the tower. "First order of business, eliminate the aurors, second kill death eaters." Bill shrugged. "Sounds simple enough." We followed the path with the least dust towards what we knew to be the auror barracks, not knowing how many of them there were sucked, but it was Christmas, honestly at this point I wouldn''t be surprised if there simply weren''t any aurors. I found myself standing before another door and feeling the presence of three humans inside. Turning to my brother I enlightened him to the plan. "Blast the door open and stun the auror leaning on the wall on the left and I will stun the one sitting on the right, leave the middle one for interrogation and for making sure that at least someone can inform people what we did today." Nodding Bill pointed his wand at the door and sent an overpowered bombarda at it. Rushing in besides him I immediately focused the sitting guard who was nursing a cup of coffee, something else in his other hand that I couldn''t see and sent a stunner at him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bill do the same to his target, the guards still being disoriented by the blast it wasn''t particularly hard. Finished we both turned to the middle one only to see him breath his last breath with a sharp piece of wood lodged in his chest. I glared at Bill. "Nothing to be done now, lets just reenervate one of the stunned ones." I sighed, he was right. I turned to the one my brother had stunned only to find him lying on the floor with a broken neck. I glared at Bill harder. He averted his gaze and scratched the back of his head. Turning to the one I had stunned, I prayed to all gods willing to listen for him to not have died as well. What greeted my sight was a grisly sight of the third guards corpse resting his head on the table a knife stuck directly under his chin so it would cut through his cerebellum. Apparently I had stunned the guy while he had been using a knife to cut some bread still on the table. My eye twitched. I heard Bill giggle. My eye twitched harder. "Don''t worry, I bet there are some prisoners you can show yourself too so that the Ministry knows who did this." He was right. I calmed down and started looting the corpses. If there was something every gamer loved it was loot. chapter 49 The loot was disappointing, a watch, two rings and three wands being the only items of any value. I didn''t necessarily need the gold, I just liked collecting things that were significant to my life. One day I would pull out this watch, the rings and the three wands and tell my grandchildren how they once belonged to the guards I killed in my first prison breakout. Good times. "I don''t know how you can bear touching corpses so much." Bill said. I sighed at his comment. "Your loot-fu is weak young padawan, but worry not, we shall take care of that." Standing up and dusting myself off, I started walking towards the prison tract wondering how many Death Eaters we would find. The criminals on the first floor were simple offenders, such as thieves, dabblers in the dark arts and con-artists. They looked at me with fearful faces as I strode past them not aware of the fact that I was using mind magic to make a lasting impression on them and furthering their terror. They were so afraid that they didn''t even dare speak, except for a ratty looking woman who seemingly ignored the killing intent I was projecting and leaned towards us showing her blackened teeth as she asked. "Any chance of letting me out friends?" I noted that she had striking blue eyes as I delved into her mind to see why she seemed unafraid, and was disappointed by what I found. Ah, this is why she had not been afraid. A junkie, an abuser of mind altering substances, she went so far she was unable to differentiate between emotions. I hmmed at her. Not afraid to kill to get her next fix, was too bad at potions to make the drug "Yellow Hummy" herself. I had actually contemplated breaking out all of Azkaban''s Prisoners to cause chaos and gain an even bigger reputation.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. There were two reasons why I would not do that. One, due to all aurors being dead, I had checked their ledgers there were supposed to be only three today, I needed the prisoners to tell the ministry about Dishonoured or the entire point of this charade would be moot. I was after all only doing this to redirect Dumbledore''s attention away from Ron. Second, if Azkaban was emptied overnight the dementors would have no food. Because of that the Ministry would either have to imprison a lot of innocents to make sure the dementors didn''t simply leave the prison. Or the creatures would leave and bring chaos to Britain, killing who knows how many people. I didn''t really care much either way, but uncontrolled chaos was a hindrance I''d rather avoid. I turned away from the woman who was now gasping on her filthy floor clutching her head and entered the second floor. No Death Eaters here either. Sure, murderers, rapists and all around assholes, but they weren''t important to the objective. This meant all of Voldemort''s followers were in the high security wing, the top floor. I had expected as much.. There weren''t many records of the justice brought to Death Eaters after the war but I had discovered that a lot of people had been executed. The low level Death Eaters that is. The Ministry couldn''t execute the high level ones because of the simple fact that all high level Death Eaters except maybe for Snape were prominent purebloods. This was the reason why they were in Azkaban and not flying through the Veil of Death. Once I entered the corridor filled with now shrieking apes finally noticing something was happening I gestured Bill to put up a ward so that the prisoners below wouldn''t hear anything. Looking into the cells I made sure that these were the people we were looking for. They were. Flashes of bright green light filled the prison. A healing spell made to stop the heart, not the killing curse mind you, the Death Eaters were too weak and malnourished to resist the spell that would normally have no effect on a healthy wizard. Once the only surviving one was Sirius Black I wandered over to him and squatted so I was on eye level with his sitting self. "Here to kill me too. Can''t really say I care that much these days." He was not as I expected him to be, sure he was emaciated and filthy with a raspy voice. But his eyes were clear and his magic was strong, untainted. Maybe because he was an animagus or because he was a Black. I hadn''t really bothered looking at Bellatrix too much. What use was watching a dead woman. Hmm, if being an animagus gave more benefits than I was previously aware of, it might be prudent to speed up the process. Not giving any indication what I was about to do I ripped into Sirius¡¯ mind like a chainsaw through wood. I didn''t need long to ascertain what drove the man. Guilt. Self hatred. He blamed himself for the death of his best friends. Understandable, he had been the one who suggested using Pettigrew as the secret keeper after all. I left his mind making his body shudder and eyes blink from the suddenness. Raising my voice I made sure Bill heard me, as consumed as he was with transfiguring the Death Eater corpses into beads for a necklace. "This one''s innocent!" I stood up and placed my hand on the cell gate of Black¡¯s cell. I made it disappear. Transfiguration, mind arts and spatial magic, the holy trinity. "Merry Christmas, Mr. Black."