Hey yall!
If you’ve stuck with the story so far I hope you are enjoying it.
I also apologize again for refraining from responding to comments.
If I do respond it generally saps my will to continue writing.
I do read them though.
The art is free to view, not behind a paywall.
Hope everyone has a nice day/night!
The first week of Hogwarts finished off strong with double Potions and double Herbology.
Leon decided that he’d dedicate his free time Friday to socializing and not being the complete reclusive loner, he’d been thus far.
It was difficult chatting with 11-year-old girls.
And only slightly less difficult chatting with Harry and Ron, whom he ended up hanging out with purely due to the fact that they were the only boys in the First Year.
It may be difficult to connect with 11-year-old children.
But Leon found that it was actually pretty easy to have fun with them.
His own 11-year-old body easily making what would have been tiresome games of tag and hide and seek around Hogwarts into an enjoyable activity.
Who knew that physically being an 11-year-old and doing the things that 11-year-olds do would actually be fun?
After the tag and hide and seek, the boys ended up in the Great Hall playing chess.
Playing chess with Ron was genuinely infuriating.
The books mentioned that he was a good chess player.
That he was naturally talented at the game was one of his greatest redeeming qualities.
Especially in the first year.
But they failed completely to show just how good he actually was.
Leon didn’t feel like he was playing against Ron Weasley, he felt like he was playing against Magnus Carlsen or something.
Not that Leon was particularly good at chess in general.
But it was very irritating to get wrecked by Ron Weasley of all people, five times in a row.
Ron even gave him a handicap the last two matches, removing his own queen and rooks from the board at the start of the match.
And Leon still lost.
“How are you so good at this?” Leon asked as he conceded once again.
Huffing as stretched and looked around the Great Hall where they had set up Ron’s wizards chess board.
Ron just waggled his eyebrows, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“You know, you are not quite like the rumors that are going on about you.” Harry said after they reset the board.
“There’s rumors about me?”
“The boy with a Phoenix?” Harry said pointing up at the rafters where Birdperson was perched and preening his feathers, “Of course they talk about you.
You’re almost as famous as me.”
“But they didn’t say anything about you being fun to be around.
Mostly that you like the sound of your own voice too much.” Ron blurted out then froze and looked over at Leon like he really hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud.
Leon, for his part, wasn’t offended by Ron’s social blunder.
He just cocked his head to the side before sighing as he looked down at the floor, “I do tend to… Monologue a bit.” He admitted.
“A bit might be underselling it mate.” Harry gave Leon a clap on the shoulder, “You don’t talk a lot, but when you do… you kind of just go off.”
“*sigh* I guess that’s fair.
I need to learn when to stop sometimes.” Leon rubbed his hands through his hair, “Most of the time, its that I feel the need to explain my reasoning for things.
And my reasoning is always interconnected with a whole bunch of seemi-”
“That right there!” Ron said, pointing directly at Leon, “You only needed to say the first part.”
At first, Leon was annoyed by the interruption.
He was about to retort but thought better of it.
Ron was right.
Most people were not like him.
They didn’t need reasons for literally every part of every thought process.
They just needed the basic parts, and they could figure out the rest themselves.
He always tended to forget that people actually had minds of their own that they actually used and didn’t need to be led by the hand to understand every conclusion he’d reached.
Leon pondered the problem as Ron and Harry started a round of chess between them.
How to address an issue of mental formatting.
He couldn’t rely on simply trying to be aware of his own natural tendency to over explain.
That was the way his thought processes worked.
He wouldn’t be able to just catch himself doing it because he never realized that he was doing it to begin with.
Now he knew why villains always monologued in movies.
They just didn’t realize that that was what they were doing!
“I need to fix this… it could get my avatars killed someday.” He muttered to himself under his breath.
“Hey Birdperson!” Leon called out to the phoenix that was perched up in the rafters, “If I start getting too wordy could you… I don’t know get my attention?
Peck me or something?”
Birdperson trilled in response, but remained in the rafters, still floofing his feathers and preening.
Leon sensed acknowledgement from the Dremora thought so he knew that it understood and would comply.
“You named your phoenix Birdperson?
That’s bloody mental mate!” Ron gasped, looking up at the bird in the rafters.
Harry burst out laughing at that shaking his head.
Leon just shrugged, “I’m bad at naming things ok?
Birdperson doesn’t seem to mind.”
“You think he’ll actually do it?” Harry asked.
“Do what?”
“Actually come and peck you because you are talking too much. This story is hosted at g.com.
How would he know?
He’s a phoenix.” Harry explained as he ordered one of his pawns forward.
“I guess we’ll find out.” Leon looked at Ron, “Want to test it?
Ask me something.”
Ron shook his in denial, “Nope, sorry mate.
Not looking to feel stupid while I play my favorite game.”
“Why would you feel stupid?
Not that I’m saying you are smart to begin wi-” Leon caught the pawn that was hurled at his face with a grin.
“Don’t worry you’ll find out if your Phoenix will do it soon enough, I’d wager.” Harry said as he lost yet another piece.
Leon stuck around with Harry and Ron until dinner was winding down before making his way back down to the Hufflepuff common room.
He felt conflicted about how he had spent his free time today.
In some ways, socializing and making friends felt like a complete waste of his time.
Leon was fairly solitary by nature and nurture.
He hadn’t bothered with being sociable in muggle primary school, he’d felt zero inclination to connect with random people who would be utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of his life.
Here at Hogwarts, Leon felt different about relationships.
Maybe it had been more difficult before because he genuinely had nothing in common with the children around him.
Here at Hogwarts, even if he struggled to find common ground and interests, the people themselves were already an interest.
Characters from a fantasy world made real.
Specifically, from a fantasy world that he had loved in his previous life.
In the grand scheme of things, his relationships here probably wouldn’t matter.
He was still going to steal the Earth.
He was going to live on for millennia; possibly forever if he didn’t run into something that was an equal or superior being to a Daedric Prince.
But it was fun to engage and to have friends.
Sure, it could be considered meaningless to establish temporary relationships with people like Harry and Ron and everyone else.
But… by that same logic, he could argue that charging forward, relentlessly pursuing progress without slowing down was equally meaningless.
As long as he didn’t do something stupid or encounter an eldritch god, Leon had forever to progress his own plans.
And no one avoided making friends simply because their friendships wouldn’t last forever.
Everyone was on the clock.
Everyone made friends, fell in love, had fun, and experienced life.
Even though the ending was inevitable.
Leon’s reluctance to make friends stemmed from the fact that he would live forever.
And he was getting hung up on the ‘forever’ part of it.
In his past life, Leon had had friends.
He’d even been engaged once.
Not that it worked out.
He was still here.
and those memories were a part of him.
But they didn’t define him, at least not completely.
“Ouch!” Leon jumped as a sharp pain in his shin pierced his thoughts.
Birdperson was perched on the ground beside him, eyeing him like he was thinking about whether or not to peck him again.
“What was that for?
I wasn’t even talking to anyone!” Leon complained.
Birdperson floofed up his feathers and gave Leon a trill before strutting across the floor and jumping up to the perch beside his bed.
Leon caught the Dremora’s meaning.
He was brooding.
Being too gloomy and thinking too deeply about life.
“Alright, you’re right.” Leon sighed as he turned and laid down.
“Thank you for being so… thorough, I guess.”
The Dremora Phoenix preened its feathers and looked absolutely smug.
It squawked once more before taking off and hiding up in the rafters.
As much as Leon wanted to actually sleep.
Something that he had found that he actually enjoyed doing.
Tonight was not the night for sleep.
This weekend he was going to acquire his very first addition to his planes of Oblivion.
Tasks to acquire new realms could only be completed in the Earthly realms.
He’d confirmed that by killing a few powerful creatures that were within the Vivarium.
And because of that, he needed to make sure that he fully understood Acromantula.
How to track them, how to fight them, how to kill them.
And most importantly, how to not die while trying to hunt them.
The Vivarium had significant populations of Acromantula as well as multiple other large magical spider species.
Leon was going to spend the entire night, and probably most of Saturday observing them in their natural habitats, looking at the signs they left, how to identify their territories, and studying their hunting tactics.
One thing to remember about Acromantula was that the adults of their species were just as smart as a human.
Leon wasn’t about to let his Earthly Avatar get killed because he was unprepared.
Leon did end up spending most of Saturday observing Acromantula and their habitats.
The biggest colonies containing literally millions of the giant spiders.
He learned quite a few things about their preferred environment, the traces that they left, and their hunting habits.
Especially that their habits changed as they got older and more clever.
The older ones built sophisticated web traps and tended to just let food come to them.
And all of them had seriously fast reflexes and explosive bursts of speed that they used to great effect.
There was only so much that Leon could learn over the course of a single day of observation.
But by the end, he was confident that he could at least spot the signs of their presence well enough that he wouldn’t be caught off guard during his little hunting trip.
Though Leon had spent the majority of his time Saturday observing Acromantula.
He’d taken breaks and gone to eat meals in the Great Hall and socialize for a little while throughout the day.
And once evening fell, Leon went to check on the new Dremora that were forming from the souls that he’d submerged in the Waters of Oblivion.
The new Dremora were very interesting.
The Goblins turned Dremora for instance, emerged from the Waters of Oblivion standing almost uniformly at 6 feet tall.
Their bodies were wider and thicker than Morty-1 by at least double sometimes more.
All of them had skin that was either silver or gold, with various shades of luster to them depending on the individual.
And a crown like growth of horns that matched their skin color.
Though out of the 122 Goblin souls that he’d thrown into the Waters of Oblivion, only six of them were silver, the rest were all gold.
And surprisingly, at least to Leon, the silver goblins turned dremora were actually Goblin mages.
The ones that had used those gloves to cast magic in their previous lives.
Then there was the very apparent sexual dimorphism.
The females didn’t have horns at all; they had long hair and were built a little more slenderly.
Though they were still six feet tall and seemingly made out of solid muscle.
Morty-1 had conjured up clothes for all the Dremora, robes that were loose and made their massive frames look almost like tents, but the solution would work just fine for now.
The Centaur turned Dremora had been warped into the stuff of nightmares, resembling a Nuckelavee that had pushed the horror aspect to an extreme.
The massive equine lower body alone stood nine feet tall at the shoulder.
The humanoid torso added another five feet, stretching to seven feet when including their horns.
Dozens of twisted, blade-like protrusions erupted from the humanoid back, mimicking a cluster of embedded swords and spears.
Their slender arms were so unnaturally long that the oversized hands dragged along the ground.
Uniformly pitch-black, these Nuckelavee Dremora were covered with pulsating, dim red contouring veins.
Beneath their skin, flesh wriggled randomly, as if giant worms were burrowing just under the surface.
Both the human face looked forged from solid ivory, frozen in an expression of eternal agony.
With every dim pulse of their red veins, dark mists seeped from their bodies to pool around their hooves.
Terrifying was the only appropriate descriptor for these creatures.
When Leon approached the gathered newly turned Dremora they bowed in a wave, knees hitting the ground as they prostrated themselves to Leon.
Even the Nuckelavee Dremora lowered themselves.
Leon could easily tell that almost all of them were struggling to control their bodies appropriately.
He acknowledged the Dremora and instructed them to rise before going to find Morty-1.
Morty-1 was in an extremely good mood.
Having people to boss around and occasionally torture was soothing to his soul apparently.
He was making good progress on the Translation spell that he was attempting to create.
Well, modify was more the appropriate term.
Voldemort already knew a spell that allowed him to translate various languages, the problem was that the spell translated specific languages and he wasn’t just aiming for a spell now.
Morty-1 had gotten ambitious and decided to develop a ritual that would permanently imbue anyone with a real time, two-way translator.
He wanted to break the very concept of language barriers existing.
Leon patted Morty-1 on the shoulder and left him to it before returning to Hogwarts.
He would spend a few more hours before dinner time exploring the castle grounds to look for a good place to enter.
Students got caught going into the forest all the time.
Leon couldn’t fathom how they were always getting caught though.
There was like twenty staff members max at Hogwarts, unless the house-elves were in on the surveillance of the students… That would make more sense actually.
As the thought of House-elves crossed Leon’s mind he realized that he was being stupid.
Exploring the grounds looking for a footpath to sneak into the forbidden forest was just dumb when he could call Gasket and have him teleport them into the forbidden forest.
House-elves really were the best thing ever.
After realizing that once again he was overthinking things and making everything more complicated than it needed to be, Leon turned right back around and headed into the castle.
For the rest of the day, Leon attempted to get to know his fellow Hufflepuffs.
There were 22 girls in his year group.
Hanna Abbott being the only one that he recognized from the books or movies.
Despite his attempt to be sociable, he didn’t really fit in with a bunch of 11-year-old girls.
He already knew this was the case, but he at least tried to be that friendly guy who hardly talked to them instead of ‘that weird kid with the Phoenix who sits alone brooding all day’.
He was fairly certain that he was succeeding at that.
But he was really bad at remembering names, so any time he talked to them he ended up using any term of address other than their names.
So far, none of them had noticed this behavior on Leon’s part, he knew it wouldn’t last forever though.
He was going to have to pay more attention during Roll Calls and actually memorize their names.
Now Leon was just waiting for nightfall.
Sneaking out of the castle and into the forbidden forest.
Tracking and hunting at least one Acromantula.
Then getting back into the castle without being caught.
That was the plan… but Leon couldn’t help the feeling that he was overlooking something.
Something obvious that he should be doing.
But he couldn’t figure it out.
So he just shrugged off the feeling and settled in to read a book while he waited for Operation Acro hunt to begin.