Harry had lost count of the nights he spent hunched over his notebook, eyes burning from exhaustion and candlelight. His notebook was no longer neat — half the pages were smeared with ink, scratched out diagrams, and notes scrawled so fast they blurred together.
It was starting to feel like madness.
No matter how many times he drew his models with ink, the result was the same: nothing. He could stare at them for hours, focus his intent on the shapes, even whisper the ideas under his breath, and the page would sit there like it was mocking him.
Just ink.
Just paper.
No magic.
Harry rubbed his temple and muttered to himself, "This is just… pretty diagrams. Nothing more."
In his old life — the engineer's life — he had run into the same wall with projects. A blueprint without current was just paper. A circuit diagram wasn't a machine until you put power into it.
He jabbed his pencil into the notebook, hard enough to nearly snap the lead.
"I need… a conductor," he whispered. "Something that carries my magic."
The answer came by accident.
Harry had been doodling another useless schematic when the pencil slipped and jabbed his finger. A sharp sting, and a bead of red welled up.
"Great," he muttered, sucking at the cut. The drop smeared across the page, right onto the half-finished circle of a Lumos Burst model.
Harry froze.
The line glowed faintly. Just for a heartbeat. A flicker, but real.
He stared, breath held, then hurried to grab a pin from the desk. Another prick, another drop of blood — this time, he deliberately traced the circle with it.
The model hummed faintly under his touch, like the paper had become part of his magic itself. When he focused, the blood-red diagram gave the faintest shiver of light before fizzling out.
Harry grinned, wild and sharp.
"Blood," he whispered. "It's me. It carries my magic."
He scribbled in the margins with trembling hands:
Medium Identified → Blood anchors models.
That night, he stayed up transcribing his best diagrams with blood. It was messy, the pages sticky and metallic-smelling, but it worked. The diagrams reacted when he pushed magic into them.
Not automatic, not fast, but real.
He had created his first Tome — not just a notebook, but a true grimoire.
Over the next week, Harry tested his Tome again and again.
Draw a model in blood. Place his hand on it. Push magic in.
The spell would activate — a glow, a beam, a burst.
Consistent. Reliable.
But painfully slow.
It was fine when he was calm, sitting at his desk. But he imagined trying to do this while someone was punching him in the gut.
The thought made him wince.
"No good," he muttered. "Not for combat. Tome is for research. Permanent archive."
The Tome was valuable, but it wasn't enough. He needed something else. Something faster.
Harry flipped to a blank page and drew a big circle.
"If spells are formulas," he muttered, "then what I need is a capacitor. A battery. Something that holds magic until it's needed."
He began experimenting with storage sub-models.
Overcharge a blood circle until the paper caught fire. Failure.
Undercharge until it fizzled out uselessly. Failure.
Tried charging diagrams with too much energy at once — the blood splattered, the lines burned. Failure.
Night after night, he scribbled equations, containment rings, feedback loops.
Finally, after weeks of frustration, he found it.
A circular containment loop, reinforced with layered lines of blood, could hold a charge of magic without leaking too fast. He could feel the paper hum faintly under his fingers, warm like a living thing.
Harry leaned back, sweat dripping down his temple.
"This… this is it. Storage. The engine."
He wrote furiously in the margins:
Sub-Model Discovered → Magic Storage.Principle: Containment loops stabilize energy.Application: Pre-charged spell activations.
This was it. The foundation of everything. Not just scrolls — but future artifacts, enchanted items, maybe even weapons. All of it depended on this.
Now came the test.
He tore a page from the back of his notebook and carefully inscribed the Lumos Burst (001-C) model with blood. Around it, he added the storage containment loop.
Then he fed magic into it. Slowly. Carefully.
The lines pulsed faintly, absorbing his energy.
Harry grinned, his hands trembling.
He set the page aside, let it rest. Hours later, when the charge had stabilized, he pressed his fingers to the activation point.
The scroll exploded in a burst of blinding light, filling the orphanage room with a white-hot flash.
Harry staggered back, laughing, eyes watering.
"It works. It actually works!"
He fell back onto the bed, scroll ash crumbling between his fingers.
Scrolls created. One-time use. Pre-charged with stored magic.
Harry scrawled the distinction in his Tome:
Tome → Permanent archive, requires manual activation.
Scrolls → Pre-charged, disposable, instant.
Storage sub-model → Core of all future enchantments.
For the first time, he felt like a real sorcerer.
By day, Harry kept playing the role of the quiet, weird kid.
But Midoriya noticed.
At lunch, they sat together more often. Harry asked strange questions, and Midoriya — delighted to have someone actually listening — answered eagerly.
"What do pros use to stop a crowd without killing anyone?" Harry asked one afternoon.
Midoriya's eyes lit up. "There are heroes with sound-based quirks — they disorient enemies with high-frequency blasts. Others use flashes of light, or shockwaves. The idea is to overwhelm senses without lasting harm."
Harry scribbled notes furiously. Light. Sound. Combined.
Midoriya tilted his head, curious. "You're… really into this, huh?"
Harry gave a lopsided smile. "Something like that. It's… research."
Midoriya didn't press. If anything, he seemed to admire Harry's focus.
Two quirkless boys, two notebooks. Outcasts, but not alone.
But the bullies didn't stop.
They shoved him into lockers, tripped him in hallways, mocked his scar.
Harry clenched his fists every time, scrolls burning a hole in his pocket. He could blind them with a flash, stun them with light. But if anyone saw him use blood magic? He'd be branded a freak, maybe worse.
So he endured.
Bruised, humiliated, but unbroken.
Because he had a plan.
That night, Harry sat at his desk, Tome open to a blank page. The candle flickered, casting long shadows across his scrawled diagrams.
The Tome was working. The scrolls worked. Storage worked.
But light alone wouldn't save him.
He flipped to the margin where Midoriya's ramblings about sound quirks were scribbled. His lips curled into a grin.
"Light blinds. Sound stuns. Together…"
He sketched two concentric circles, one labeled Light Burst, the other Sound Wave. He added a containment loop around them.
The heading read:
Spell Model 002 – Flashbang.
Harry sat back, eyes gleaming in the candlelight.
"This one won't just glow," he whispered. "This one will fight back."
And for the first time, he felt the thrill of possibility — the idea that maybe, just maybe, he could build himself into a hero.