In the Granger living room, Robert and Emma sat on the sofa. The television was on, but the volume was at minimum. It was practically midnight, according to the wall clock.
"I doubt," Robert began, hugging Emma, "that this idea with the school is a good one."
"Don't worry so much."
"Aren't you worried?"
"More than you know," Emma rested her head on her husband's shoulder. "But I also see the absurd speed with which he learns everything new. Less than a month has passed, and from a boy who spoke poorly, held a fork badly, and understood nothing around him, Hector has turned into a boy who calmly navigates everything."
"That is true."
"He mastered your computer in twenty-four hours. From awkwardly studying the keyboard and those, what are they…"
"I get it. I get it."
They were silent for a minute, watching some late-night show on TV.
"The doctor from Hogwarts, Madam Pomfrey," Emma spoke up. "Passed a note with Hector. She also notes our son's very high learning ability. And very high brain activity."
"By what percentage?"
Emma turned her head slightly, looking into her husband's eyes with reproach.
"What percentages? You're a doctor."
"Yes, yes," Robert waved it off. "I know the brain is active one hundred percent, and one must consider areas of simultaneous activity. Just all these stereotypes… Just like with the tongue."
"You mean that different areas on the tongue taste different flavours?"
"Exactly. Foolishness from an incorrectly formulated but correct thought in an ancient study. But we digress. What did their doctor write?"
"That right now, while brain activity is high, the best solution would be to burden Hector with various activities. Immersion in a social environment would be best for him right now."
"But…"
"No 'buts'," Emma looked at her husband sternly, reinforcing her point by lightly tapping his chest with her palm. "After so many years… I myself would very much like to watch my son finally start developing every day. But for his own good, we should hold back our selfish impulses. Moreover, the Professor said that by the laws of the magical world, a Muggle-born wizard is obliged to undergo training. And he will undergo it."
"Yes, yes, otherwise, judging by the hints, a completely legal spell will be applied, and we ourselves will happily run to give our son to Hogwarts. I don't like such coercion and hopelessness. And where is the government looking?"
"As if everything is fine with us. And, darling, do you really think the government isn't aware of wizards?"
"I just wouldn't want to force Hector into anything."
"Then let's ask him tomorrow?"
. . .
The morning sunbeams persistently broke through the cracks between the curtains, shining directly into my eye—that was how my day began. Getting out of bed, I looked once again at the boards with my notes made while in a vegetative state—nothing was understandable. Dressing and getting to the bathroom on the second floor, I washed and went down to breakfast—everything was already ready.
Of course, it didn't go without the standard conversations about the weather, but the meal and tea drinking ended with a question completely different from the one I expected to hear.
"Hector, son," Father spoke up; he was already ready for the trip to work. "Do you want to go to Hogwarts yourself? To learn magic?"
Reflecting on the answer for a split second, I decided to resort to a visual demonstration and picked up one of the buns remaining on the table.
"As I understand it, magic is not just beautiful miracles," I began, shifting my gaze from Mother to Father, who continued to sit at the table listening to me with interest. "It is subject to emotions, mood, and excitation of the nervous system."
"Even so?" Father was surprised once again, hearing a phrase one wouldn't hear from every adult.
"Read it in biology books."
Such an answer seemed to surprise and simultaneously touch my parents.
"So. Imagine that I wasn't taught to control this. Emotions, resentment, stimulation of the nervous system, some person…" I demonstratively shook the bun in the air. "…offended me greatly. Just for a brief moment, in a fit of resentment, bitterness, and teenage hatred, I wished for him to disappear."
The neutral magic of my new body responded easily, and the bun crumbled into ash on the table.
"And he is no more. And I didn't want to, no. I succumbed to emotions."
Volitional magic is not what the elf from the memory shards practiced. Not at all. Therefore, my maneuver was by no means easy for me, although the concept itself was known to him, and now to me.
My parents, judging by their slightly pale faces, saw the other side of magic.
"This needs to be learned. To learn control. I am obliged."
Of course, this isn't entirely true, since I have basic magic control, or rather, an understanding of how to achieve it. Right now, my control is merely echoes of the past. Like these memory shards…
The doorbell distracted us from a topic so important to my parents. As if their consciousness returned to this world, they unfroze, and Father went to open the door. I understand them. The elf's memory, and indeed the memory of other wizards from whom I inherited almost nothing except their strongest experiences, is full of moments where parents said goodbye to children who were facing training. Reluctance to let go, grief, misunderstanding, and fear bordered on joy, because fully removing children sometimes had to be done from families that couldn't always feed themselves. Those people were afraid and happy at the same time. Afraid of what they didn't understand, but happy that the child would have a chance to get out of the gutter.
Shaking my head and driving away untimely thoughts, I met the gaze of Professor McGonagall entering the house. Like in a couple of vague memories from the time when I was in a vegetative state, this lady looked slightly over fifty, wore a strict black floor-length dress, and an emerald cloak over it. A stern look, neat glasses.
"Mr. Granger. Glad to see you in good health," she spoke dryly, smiling almost imperceptibly. "I'm afraid we haven't been introduced. Minerva McGonagall, Professor of Transfiguration and Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"A pleasure, ma'am," I stood up and, clasping my hands behind my back, nodded decorously.
Seeing a slight misunderstanding, but also acceptance of the gesture, I checked myself. The primness of this madam pulled out elven reflexes regarding etiquette, and the gesture itself demonstrated a lack of trust, but at the same time politeness and the inevitability of acquaintance and further cooperation.
"I assume you are ready to go shopping for school?"
"Undoubtedly, Professor."
I had clothes, so now, in simple jeans, sneakers, a T-shirt, and a grey thick windbreaker, I rode with the Professor on a very strange magical bus, in which I was mercilessly tossed around the cabin. I was given money in excess, and I would need, as I understood, to exchange it at the goblin bank.
We reached the Leaky Cauldron in literally half a minute. Inside, as last time, were not the most pleasant people. The Professor led me to the backyard of the establishment, straight to a dead end in the form of a brick wall painted white. Taking out her wand, the Professor tapped on certain bricks, opening a passage. Interesting. This is not folded space—this is a transition to another plane. I wonder if there are many such islands in other dimensions, or is this a stable passage to the nearest material world? That could very well be. Elves indulged in such things, although they preferred to unfold spatial anomalies and grow their Forests there. Looking like a grove of a couple of dozen trees, but inside—half a continent.
"Welcome to Diagon Alley, Mr. Granger."
"Thank you, Professor."
The street was indeed diagonal. A winding cobblestone road, crooked wooden and stone houses with multi-coloured cladding. On the ground floors of the houses were various shops or stalls next to the house. Wizards in various baggy clothes, robes, cloaks, gowns, and dresses scurried here and there. It was hard to find a common style of clothing, but one obvious feature was visible in all—often only the face and hands were open, and skirts were necessarily long, as were dresses. Men were also dressed diversely, and people in business suits of various styles and colours were not uncommon.
First, the Professor led me to a large white building at the end of the street. It divided the street in two, like a ship parting waves. Outside stood typical goblins in cuirasses and with halberds—small, awkward, with long pointed ears and hooked noses.
The bank hall was spacious, high, and monumental. Rich and seeming solid, but dwarves do it many times better, and the richness of the decoration of bearded underground smiths is not pretentious, looking very harmonious. Here, everything literally "stank" of superficial importance. Small goblins scurried back and forth with carts or folders of papers. Along the sides of the hall stood very tall wooden counters, behind which goblins imitated extremely useful activity.
"Tell me, Professor," I spoke up while we stood in the shortest queue to the counters. "Why is the financial system of the wizarding world managed by goblins?"
Several wizards in long but light clothes, despite the light noise in the hall, paid attention to the nascent dialogue.
"Because, Mr. Granger, after numerous rebellions, finance is one of the few things available for goblins to engage in under the peace treaties."
"I studied Hermione's books for the first and second years. Now a question consumes me. What prompted wizards not only to leave alive a race of intelligent and bloodthirsty predators but also to hand over the management of financial flows to them?"
McGonagall looked at me clearly studying me. It seems she did not expect such thoughts and phrases from someone who, just a month ago, emerged from a vegetative state for the first time in his life.
"You ask very serious questions that not every wizard is capable of answering. Since you approached this question from a cruel but pragmatic side, allow me to answer in a similar vein. Since the last rebellion, as far as I know, the conditions of their surrender were reviewed very strictly. Not in favor of the goblins, as you understand, Mr. Granger."
I nodded understandingly, and a goblin in a tailcoat passing away from us grinned predatorily. Involuntarily, my hand reached for the dagger on my belt, which, of course, I didn't have—memory of shards, reflexes not biological, but mental. My gesture did not go unnoticed by the goblin, and he grinned even more. If the elf's memory is to be believed, there is a solution regarding this evil race, and it is the only correct one—genocide. For the greater good, of course.
Our queue advanced, and we were one step closer to the customer service counter. A very high counter—even in this trifle, the unreasonable arrogance of the bloodthirsty shorties can be traced.
"Besides that," McGonagall continued to speak. "Goblins make magnificent magical cold weapons, as well as other products from various types of metals and steel. The powers that be at that time decided that losing such masters was not in anyone's interest."
"And was the last goblin product created long ago?"
"Strangely enough, almost nothing new has appeared since the last rebellion. But, it is worth noting, Mr. Granger, that their works cost a lot, and the intended purpose is combat. In our time, this direction of magic is fading due to uselessness."
Uh-huh, sure. I believed that. It's just that these shorties, if I remember correctly, apply their truly serious magic through mass sacrifices of sentients with a magical gift. No opportunity to rebel—no opportunity to capture wizards and other gifted ones in large enough quantities. Well, that is if you believe the elf's memory shards, and there is no reason not to believe them—the similarity between those and these goblins is striking. That is if you don't count the clothes.
"Clear. The threat of another, but more bloody rebellion was calculated as insignificant, given the possible, but equally ephemeral benefit in the form of artifacts."
"There are a number of other reasons, Mr. Granger, but they are not so significant. And consider," McGonagall looked at me sternly as we advanced in the queue. "That I am by no means an expert in history and politics. I cannot even assume what actually guided the wizards of those times, but it certainly wasn't pity. Those were not the times."
We finally reached the counter and quickly agreed on the currency exchange. The rate was one Galleon to five pounds. The financial system here was as the English love—a bunch of coins with denominations not multiple to each other. Gold, silver, and bronze. Galleon, Sickle, and Knut. Of course, the meager memories of the dwarf helped to easily see a magical alloy, not gold, and in the precious stones being sorted by goblins nearby—fakes. Everything here is entourage and props, a theater of one people.
The next item on the shopping list was a student trunk. A good functional thing in local realities. Can be a table, a wardrobe, a chest, a suitcase. Divided compartments with space expansion, ease of use, cheapness. The Professor immediately shrank the trunk with some spell and took it with her. Must not forget to enchant the backpack with space expansion.
Next, we bought sets of textbooks for the first three years and put everything in the same trunk, momentarily enlarging it back. Ingredients for potion-making were purchased and sent to Hogwarts. Also for three years—I have practice ahead of me.
All sorts of consumer trifles in the form of parchments, quills, ink, various tools, and a telescope we bought in a shop of all sorts of trifles, and a school uniform with several robes—in a shop with the appropriate name: "Robes for All Occasions."
Selection of a wand—complete nonsense. More precisely, the procedure is nonsense, but the concept is mostly correct—a wizard cannot choose any ready-made magical instrument if it is not made specifically for him in advance. This is especially true for a magical instrument made of organic components. Wood that looks identical can differ structurally so much that it will impart almost opposite properties to energy when passing through it.
In general, in the slightly dusty shop of a certain master Ollivander, I stood for a long time in the middle of the dimly lit hall and pointlessly waved wands handed by a strange grey-haired old man in a brown old-fashioned three-piece suit. The old man was simply bored, although I saw perfectly well in his gaze, sometimes looking deeper, perhaps… I saw that he could pick a wand without sorting—he felt and understood the slightest shades of energy. And so I wasn't surprised when I got a thirteen-inch acacia wand with a unicorn hair core. As soon as I took it in my hands, a bright sheaf of multi-coloured sparks broke from the tip of the wand, and Ollivander literally glowed with joy.
"A wonderful wand, Mr. Granger! Strong and versatile, though it does not accept dark magic, yes. What a pity that you lost two years of the wonderful time of the first childhood discoveries in the world of magic."
Thanking master Ollivander, the Professor and I left his shop and headed back to the Leaky Cauldron, or rather—to the passage to the ordinary world. At its very border, I turned around, peering intently at Diagon Alley, the wooden houses, signs, and strangely dressed people.
"Mr. Granger?" Professor McGonagall stood next to me and waited for me to cross the border first. "Did something happen?"
I watched and compared what I saw with what was deposited in memory. Magical cities, high white towers of the human academy of magic with its shining spires, perfect cleanliness, magnificent roads, impressive but unpleasant architecture to an elf, a healthy and joyful population. Even towns and villages far from the capital or trade centers seemed no worse than modern megacities in terms of quality, perhaps. And here? Infantile ruin…
"Refugees."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Wizards are refugees. I see before me a hastily cobbled-together gypsy camp that shows off its uniqueness, as if proud of its disastrous situation."
"I do not recommend voicing this thought among wizards," the Professor looked at me sternly when I turned to her. "Even if it is to some extent true."
She sighed, and quickly making sure there was no one nearby, continued.
"We wizards desperately cling to the false idea that we were not driven into a corner, but that we ourselves withdrew from the world. The truth is that we withdrew ourselves, but was it of our own free will?"
We moved back the same way—pub, bus, home. Parents were still at work, but this has been normal recently. As I understood, almost immediately after I was transferred for treatment to the Hogwarts Hospital Wing two years ago, my parents frantically began working in their dental clinic, and now it is expanding quite quickly and there are even branches. Well, I have things to think about and work on.
As I planned recently, I need to conduct the so-called initiation with the dimension of Life. To do this, I leaned out the window and plucked a couple of leaves from a tree branch growing by the house. Next year it will already be tapping on the window in a strong wind.
Easily "folding" my bony little body into the lotus position, placing a leaf on my knees and taking a leaf in my hands, I concentrated on my internal energy. Easily finding the "string" that needs to be pulled to transfer energy, I poured crumbs of it into the leaves. This is necessary because the leaves themselves carry almost no energy—you need to force these crumbs to resonate, decompose the leaves into energy, and absorb it.
Having coped with this stage, I realized that the body is hardly ready to accumulate energy in itself. Ninety-five percent, so to speak, my body is a conductor and capable of projecting energy from the soul, but not storing it. It was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar to concentrate attention on such an abstract concept as energy and hold it, trying to contain it and keep it where there is no place.
The next stage is the visualization of the "Accumulation-Transfer" seal inside the body. A simple spherical seal of three identical runic circles, attempts to recall which caused me quite real stabbing pain in the temples. The seal needs to be activated with accumulated energy. I directed Life energy mixed with neutral into the seal. My body glowed slightly green.
Now the hardest part—imagination and visualization. Between the soul and the body, there is no energy transmission channel as such, but at the same time—there is. Every cell of the body, organelle, molecule—everything has a connection with the soul. But in the normal state, this energy connection is almost completely one-way—from the soul to the body. You need to either build reverse seals around each separate channel and activate them simultaneously for a brief moment, or build one large one around the body. The first is practically painless but unfeasible without complex artifacts or, as they say, "level eighty" intelligence. Strange phrase, wonder where it's from? Neither is available, which means we will go the difficult, painful way.
Mentally, I began to build a sphere of many runic circles in different planes to each other around myself. It took about twenty minutes. I was worried that a brain unprepared for such loads on imagination and rigid fixation of images would simply give up. There was a risk of passing out. But, to my surprise, I felt no discomfort—the brain digested the load with a bang. Did the experience of assembling the soul from particles play a role? Possibly. Exactly! The brain helped the mind and soul at the maximum of its capabilities for thirteen years! Clear…
Having finished building the sphere, I connected the "Accumulation-Transfer" seal to it, in which the resonance of energies caused an exponential growth in the power of Life energy. Three seconds until activation. Energy leakage—absent. Chance of detection of sorcery by locals—minimal. Going into meditation to disconnect the mind from the body is permissible.
Pain. Sharp and strong, unbearable. Bodily and spiritual. It prevents consciousness from "floating," impossible to pass out from shock, only endure. Disconnecting the mind from the body eliminated the response reaction to pain—the body didn't scream or twitch, but it didn't make it easier for me.
Interminable two seconds of hellish pain, and everything returned to normal. The seals went out, and the mind returned to a body aching in every subatomic particle. Phantom sensations are terrible, but pass quickly. After ten minutes, I was again sitting on the floor in the lotus position and trying to feel my energy. Judging by the sensations, everything went as it should—Life energy walked in the soul. The sensations are correct and unmistakable; it's like understanding—it exists, and that's it.
The next stage is the formation of a magical construct that has no name. It is formed in the body and activated by any energy—specially designed for universality. After activation, the construct merges with the soul and begins to search for the energy needed by the wizard in it. Having found the necessary energy, the spherical construct pulls it all around itself and, by brute-forcing characteristics, tries to cause resonance in the resulting surface. This causes a spasmodic growth of indicators purely characteristic of this energy, and a mechanism of self-defense against destruction inherent in absolutely all souls is activated in the soul—ejection of excess energy. But the vector of energy movement is already set, and the soul will not be able to eject it through the body.
However, the soul is indestructible. This is a law of the universe, proven by elves. The decay effect I experienced after death requires special conditions that no one in my memory managed to recreate, and even if it is possible to destroy the soul, its core, the essence of the soul, will always remain intact. Such energy pumping will not cause harm—the stronger the resonance, the stronger the soul will become, and the limit is defined only by the mind's ability to "digest" sensations and changes. True, after the resonance subsides, everything will return to the initial state with a slight adjustment for a slightly increased density of the soul, but this is a pleasant bonus, the practical benefit of which escapes my understanding.
The essence of these manipulations is that the entire infinity of the multiplicity of dimensions is in one, so to speak, plane. The soul and the spiritual plane of the world are closest to the energetic dimensions, which is why one has to work through it. When the energy load in the soul from the work of the magical circuit becomes sufficient, for a brief moment the soul will be able to "touch" the necessary energy dimension to release pressure into an identical environment. Like is drawn to like, as if bending, pressing the universe to the necessary dimension. But such manipulations with reality do not pass without a trace, and therefore, between the soul and the energy dimension—in my case, Life—a weak but practically unbreakable connection will be established. My task will be to stabilize and secure the connection.
The problem is that this can happen in five minutes, or maybe in an hour. I can just go to bed and sleep—you won't oversleep the moment of establishing the connection…
Reaching the bed, I simply collapsed on top of the made blanket. I wanted to close my eyes, when I felt a sharp tremor, and a viscous wave of various sensations passed through my whole body. The connection is established. Fast, but not phenomenal—it's a matter of chance.
Strengthening and stabilization of the connection happens in a simple way. You need to use the dimension's energy evenly and for quite a long time. Evenly and for a long time. Usually, for this, they simply give an amulet with a storage crystal and a magical circuit for even pumping of the necessary energy. However, I don't have one. I don't have a lot of things, but it's not a matter of poor preparation—I don't know where to get anything magical and familiar here, and storage crystals have always been expensive. Moreover, I can manage on my own, because Life energy isn't fire or anything; there is always an application. For example, my body.
Diagnostics say it is in order, but that doesn't mean it is perfect. There is always something to clean, improve, optimize, and in the memories of the elf who walked the path of a wizard and healer, there are a couple of techniques and methods for improving the body to a state of ideal—a mandatory procedure for infant elves. They are born as ordinary children, except maybe with good heredity. But until the age of twenty, so many various manipulations of a preventive nature are carried out that after this age bar of twenty years and with periodic preventive cleaning and body care, the elf turns into a non-sick and unaging creature with abnormally high sensory characteristics and a clear mind. And many years, sometimes lasting for centuries, of self-perfection of both mind and magic, as well as the body, make elves so visually ideal as well. And some think, they say, born an elf—that's it, a handsome man. Naive, although elves are not ugly by nature either.
And now I am using one of the magical constructs on my body. Minor Purification. The name conveys the essence—the genome and body are cleaned of garbage a little. But I understand this not with the memory of an elf, but of those few people who lived during the times of space expansion. True, their memory is quite useless—a consumer structure of society. These shards gave me mostly only dissatisfaction with the backwardness of the world around me, but their understanding of the genome turned out to be useful—it showed exactly what elves changed with magic. Funny how meager knowledge of different eras fuses into something whole.
The human genome, unlike the elven one, is simply monstrously clogged with garbage, traces of virus activity, and similar useless but not harmful mutations. However, they cannot be removed so simply either. For example, human and chimpanzee DNA are more than ninety-eight percent similar. It is these two percent that determine the difference between these species of living beings. But not only the ratio of genes is important, but also the location relative to each other. The slightest thoughtless change can lead to both incredible success and grandiose failure, and the second is most likely. So, what to do? Memory of shards—give a hint?
And memory hinted—don't meddle in this for now. No necessary knowledge. Following the confidence acquired from the elf in my own healer experience, I almost made a mistake. Maybe everything would have gone normally, but it is better to gain knowledge. Okay, time to activate the construct.
Now, for a week, I will have to go to the toilet more often, drink more water, and eat well. The first week—cleaning the body, removing various micro-cysts and other obscenities. Then, for another week, a smooth restructuring of the genome from obviously harmful genes capable of causing diseases if not in me, then in future generations, will take place. Nothing super-radical, and just radical too—junk is removed and instead, based on existing genes, something useful is selected. Some minor improvements will of course be there. Vision that won't deteriorate with age, a wider hearing range, and so on. Increased endurance and muscle strength-to-volume ratio, but completely insignificant, can be neglected. Slightly stronger bones, slightly more efficient body work in general. A sort of Captain America on minimum settings, if only I knew who that is…
After this, the construct will turn off and disappear. In two weeks, the channel with the Life energy dimension will stabilize, while I will undergo an initial course of treatment. The genetic changes themselves will take effect, god willing, in two or three years. External changes most likely won't happen at all—maybe proportions will change a tiny bit, but everything can be attributed simply to growing up. The only thing that will need to be done every week is to reactivate the Minor Purification complex. And so on until all changes pass, and then, until the age of twenty—once every three months. Otherwise, there won't be much sense from all my manipulations.
And now to sleep…