London, England - August 1986
James Acton had always considered himself fortunate but not lucky.
Luck was for those who stumbled blindly through life.
Instead, James was prepared.
At almost seven years old, he had already mapped out the next fifty years of his existence with the kind of meticulous detail that would have impressed a Swiss watchmaker.
He sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor, surrounded by towers of books that would have shocked any visitor. Philosophy texts sat beside programming manuals. Japanese manga were stacked next to finance journals. Fantasy novels shared shelf space with scientific treatises and thick volumes on quantum mechanics. His room looked less like a child's bedroom and more like the personal library of an eccentric academic.
Which, in a way, it was.
James's gray eyes scanned the page before him, a copy of Introduction to BASIC that was far too advanced for someone his age. But then again, James wasn't really a child.
He was a reincarnator.
Those gray eyes held decades of accumulated experience, memories of a life fully lived before this one had even begun.
Blake Gaines 1983-2060, he thought, allowing himself a moment of reminiscence.
Died peacefully in his sleep after a thoroughly unremarkable life.
The irony wasn't lost on him. He'd spent seventy-seven years being average, making average choices, earning an average income, and dying with average regrets.
But November 1st, 1979, had given him something he never thought possible, a second chance.
The door opened without a knock, and his mother breezed in with the confident efficiency of a woman perpetually short on time. Yara Acton was a beautiful woman in her early thirties, her Indian heritage evident in her dark hair and light tanned skin. She still wore her hospital scrubs, having just returned from a double shift at the surgery ward.
"James darling, you've been up here for hours. Have you eaten anything?"
"Not yet, Mum," he replied.
"Your father won't be home until late. Another case." She sighed, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'll order something. Chinese?"
"That's fine."
Yara lingered in the doorway, her surgeon's eyes examining her son with the same precision she brought to the operating theater. James knew what she saw: an average-looking boy with his father's English features softened by her Indian blood, black hair that never quite lay flat, a slight build, and those distinctive gray eyes. Nothing remarkable on the surface.
But the Actons had learned to live with remarkable.
Their son had been speaking in full sentences by 16 months, and reading by age two shortly after. By four, he'd taught himself basic mathematics and was reading books meant for teenagers. By five, he was conversing in French. Now, at seven, he was fluent in Mandarin and Spanish as well, and his teachers had long since stopped knowing what to do with him.
Prodigy, they called him. Genius.
If only they knew the truth.
"Don't stay up too late," Yara said finally, retreating downstairs. "And James? Please try to read something age-appropriate occasionally. For my sake?"
He smiled at that. "I'll read some manga before bed."
"That's not what I meant," she called back, but there was affection in her voice.
James waited until her footsteps faded, then closed the programming book and stood.
His gaze drifted to the shelf where his Japanese manga collection sat. Those had been an indulgence, a connection to interests from his first life. But they'd also opened his mind to something he'd dismissed as pure fantasy during his first seventy-seven years: the supernatural.
Because if consciousness could transfer between lives, what else might be possible?
The philosophy books had been an attempt to understand his rebirth. Descartes, Kant, Eastern philosophies on reincarnation and karma. He'd devoured them all, searching for answers that never quite came. The supernatural fiction and fantasy novels followed naturally. If rebirth was real, perhaps other impossibilities existed too.
He'd thought it was all intellectual curiosity.
Until two years ago, when he'd discovered he was right.
The memory was seared into his mind with perfect clarity. He'd been five years old, crossing the street near their house in this comfortable upper-middle-class neighborhood. His parents had been distracted, arguing about something trivial. He'd stepped off the curb, and suddenly there was a car, too close, too fast, the driver looking down at something in their lap.
James had frozen. In that split second, his adult mind had calculated the trajectory, the speed, the inevitable impact. He was going to die. Again.
But his body, his new five-year-old body, had reacted on pure instinct. He'd thrown his arms up to protect his head, and something had burst out of him. Not from his hands, not from any physical source, but from somewhere deep inside him, from his very core. He'd felt it surge through his veins like liquid lightning, a power that responded to his desperate panic.
The car had veered. Impossibly, violently, it had jerked to the side as if struck by an invisible force, missing him by inches and slamming into a parked vehicle instead.
James had stood there, trembling, feeling that power slowly recede back into wherever it had come from. His hands had been shaking. Not from fear, but from the electric sensation still coursing through him.
What was that?
He'd spent the next two years trying to answer that question.
At first, he'd thought it was telekinesis. The ability to move objects with the mind. It was the most logical explanation, the most grounded in what little pseudoscience he'd encountered in his first life. And so he'd practiced in secret, treating it like any other skill to be mastered.
He'd started small. A pencil on his desk, focusing on it until it trembled, then rolled, then lifted. Those first successes had taken weeks of effort, leaving him mentally exhausted and physically drained. But he'd persisted, approaching it with the same methodical discipline he brought to learning languages or studying finance.
And slowly, inexorably, he'd improved.
Because the power was like a muscle. The more he used it, the stronger it became, the easier it was to access. After six months, he could lift books without breaking a sweat. After a year, he could manipulate multiple objects simultaneously. After eighteen months, he could feel the currents of electromagnetic energy flowing through everything around him, could push and pull on them like invisible strings.
It was fascinating, impossible and entirely unplanned.
James walked to his desk now, where a pencil lay waiting. He'd been about to test his limits, to see how much he'd progressed in recent weeks.
His parents were both occupied. His father, Michael, was probably still at the law firm, buried in case files and billable hours. His mother would be ordering dinner and then collapsing on the couch for a rare moment of rest.
He was alone, and safe.
He could push harder than ever before.
James focused on the pencil, reaching out with that peculiar sense that wasn't quite touch, wasn't quite sight. The pencil trembled, then lifted, hovering six inches above the desk. After two years of practice, this was effortless.
Time to push further.
He expanded his awareness, feeling for more objects. The books on his shelf responded, vibrating slightly. His manga collection rustled. The curtains stirred though the window was closed. He could sense the boundaries of his power expanding, reaching farther than ever before.
More. He could do more.
James pushed harder, pulling on every object in the room simultaneously. Books lifted from shelves. Papers swirled into the air. His desk chair scraped across the floor. It was exhilarating, intoxicating. The power flowed through him like a river, strong and wild and barely contained.
How far can I go? How much can I control?
He reached deeper, pulling harder, and suddenly, he lost control.
The sensation was like grabbing a live wire. Energy exploded outward from his small frame, a concussive wave of force that erupted in every direction. The pencil didn't just fall; it shot across the room and embedded itself deep into the wall. His window exploded outward in a shower of glittering fragments. The mirror above his dresser shattered. The light bulb burst. Books flew off shelves like missiles.
But it didn't stop there.
From downstairs came the sound of breaking glass, multiple crashes echoing through the house. His mother screamed. And beyond that, impossibly, James could hear more glass breaking, distant, cascading destruction spreading through the neighborhood like ripples in a pond.
Every window. Every piece of glass. Every electronic device.
All of it, destroyed.
The lights went out. The hum of electricity died. Everything went dark and silent except for the tinkling of falling glass and his mother's frightened, desperate voice downstairs.
"James! James, are you alright?"
James rushed to his doorway and stood frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs. What have I done?
Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs. "James!" His mother's voice, tight with panic. "James, answer me!"
But before she could reach his room, she stopped. James heard her gasp, heard her stumble backward.
"Who are you? How did you get in my house?"
A woman's voice, calm and authoritative: "Please remain calm, ma'am. We're here to help."
"Michael!" His mother shouted in panic, forgetting that Dad wasn't home yet. "Michael, there are people in the house! Call the police!"
"I'm afraid that won't be necessary," a man's voice said. "Stupefy."
Red light flashed in the hallway. His mother's shout cut off mid-note. Something heavy hit the floor.
"Mum!" James tried to move toward where he knew she fell, but his legs wouldn't cooperate. Terror and shock had frozen him in place.
"Check downstairs, Thomas. The father should be here after all the yelling. We need to contain this quickly."
"Already on it. And Susan? The parameters of this one are extraordinary. Six blocks of damage. Windows, electronics, the lot. Haven't seen an accidental magic burst this powerful in all my life."
James's mind, that carefully organized adult brain trapped in a child's body, struggled to process what he was hearing. Magic? The word should have been ridiculous but he'd just heard two people appear out of nowhere, and he'd heard that spell, that red light, that casual use of Latin-sounding incantations.
No. No, that's impossible. This is the real world. I died in 2060. This is 1986. This is...
But even as the denial formed, part of him, the part that had spent two years manipulating forces that shouldn't exist, knew better.
One of the robed figures entered his room, wand raised. This one was a woman, middle-aged, with sharp features and kind eyes that seemed at odds with her stern expression. She wore deep purple robes that seemed to shimmer in the darkness. She surveyed the damage: the shattered window, the destroyed mirror, glass covering every surface, books scattered everywhere, and the small boy standing in the center of it all, gray eyes too wide, too aware.
"Sweet Merlin," she breathed. "Thomas, you need to see this."
The second figure appeared beside her with a soft crack of displaced air. Thomas was younger, perhaps thirty, with sandy hair and worry lines around his eyes. His gaze swept the room and landed on James with obvious concern.
"The epicenter," Thomas said quietly. "It came from him."
"Seven years old, accidental magic, powerful enough to knock out electronics for six blocks and shatter every window in range. We need to document this. The Ministry will want a full report."
"We need to obliviate everyone first. The Muggles are in a right state. Half the neighborhood is outside, wondering what happened."
Muggles. The word triggered something in James's memory, something from his first life, from books he'd read casually decades ago.
James found his voice, though it came out smaller than he intended. "What... what are you doing? Where's my mother?"
The woman's expression softened. She lowered her wand slightly. "Your mother is just sleeping, sweetheart. She's not hurt. We put her to sleep so we could fix things. Do you understand?"
"Fix things?" James's mind was racing, his eidetic memory pulling up every fantasy novel he'd read, every impossible story about magic and wizards and...
"Fix what you did," Thomas said, not unkindly. He'd already turned away, waving his wand at the window. "Reparo."
James watched, transfixed, as the shattered glass flew back together, fragments fusing seamlessly until the window stood whole and intact, as if it had never broken. Thomas moved through the room with practiced efficiency, repairing the mirror, the light bulb, extracting the pencil from the wall, and smoothing the plaster like it was made of putty. Within minutes, his bedroom looked completely normal.
"Susan, I'll handle the rest of the house and the neighborhood. You take care of the family?"
The woman, Susan, nodded. "Go on."
Thomas disapparated with a soft crack, and then James was left alone with Susan and her wand.
She knelt down to his level, her expression gentle but firm. "Now then, sweetheart, I need you to listen carefully. What happened here wasn't your fault. Sometimes, children with special abilities have accidents when their emotions are strong. You're not in trouble. Do you understand?"
Special abilities. The euphemism was almost laughable. James's mind raced through everything he'd learned in his first life, every fantasy novel, every movie, and now, apparently, he was living in one.
"What are you?" he whispered.
Susan smiled. "We're called witches and wizards, sweetheart. And so are you. One day, when you're eleven years old, you'll receive a letter. It will explain everything about who you are and what you can do. You'll learn how to control your magic safely."
James wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or both. His entire plan, his carefully constructed second life, his preparations for a future built on knowledge and foresight, all of it was based on a reality that apparently didn't exist.
"I..." he started, but Susan was already raising her wand.
"Don't be scared," she said softly. "One day, you'll know all about magic. Magic is wonderful, James. You have a gift. But for now, for your safety and everyone else's, it's better if you don't remember this"
"Obliviate."
White light flooded James's vision. He felt something press against his mind, reaching for the memories of the last few minutes, trying to pluck them away like pages from a book. The spell was invasive, insistent, pushing against his consciousness with inexorable force.
But his memory wasn't normal. It never had been in this life. It was perfect, eidetic, every moment preserved with crystalline clarity. And as the spell washed over him, trying to erase, trying to bury, his mind did something unexpected.
It resisted.
The sensation was bizarre, like watching someone try to tear pages from a book only to find them laminated in steel. The spell slid around his memories, unable to gain purchase and delete what had been so perfectly preserved. James felt the magic recoil, confused, and then dissipate harmlessly.
His mind remained intact. Every memory, every detail, perfectly preserved.
But Susan didn't know that. She was already nodding, satisfied, lowering her wand.
"Sleep now, sweetheart. When you wake up, everything will be fine. Stupefy."
This time, James had no defense. The spell hit him like a hammer, and darkness claimed him instantly.