The world spun.
I could no longer feel the chair or my own body.
The white vanished, taking the old man with it.
For a moment, silence surrounded me.
Then the words came.
I didn’t hear them with my ears.
They were simply there in my head, like the memory of a story no one had ever told me.
Long ago, when magic was still young, three brothers named Peverell stood before a river that could not be crossed.
I knew this story.
A bridge.
Death.
Three gifts.
The wand, the stone, and the cloak.
Except the story didn’t end where it should have.
For many years, the youngest brother evaded Death beneath his cloak.
Before he willingly went to meet her, however, he left behind a son.
The boy grew up in the shadow of the cloak, learning from his father to be cautious and to respect the things that strength alone could not overcome.
When his father departed, Death turned her gaze upon him.
She had not forgotten being deceived.
“I will not take you today,” she said.
“But I will see that your descendants pay for the pride of your bloodline.”
And so the Peverell curse was born.
In each generation, only one male descendant was born.
An heir whose eyes bore a gift known as Death’s Sight.
He saw what others could not: spirits, traces of passing, the lies of life and the truths of death.
But the gift came at a price.
The eyes drew upon more than magic.
They consumed the life of the one who looked through them.
None of the heirs lived to old age.
None left behind a large family.
The line that had once outwitted Death dwindled with each generation, until little remained but a name in an old tale.
But blood does not forget.
Neither does magic.
I opened my eyes.
For a few seconds, I stared into the dark, waiting for more.
Nothing came.
Wood creaked softly nearby, and wind rustled outside the window.
The sounds were strangely distinct.
Not louder, exactly.
Easier to pick out from the silence around them.
“That wasn’t in the books,” I muttered.
My voice came out too high.
I stopped and swallowed.
Right.
Eight years old.
For a while, I sat still, trying to make sense of what I’d just learned.
The Peverells were cursed.
Every generation had an heir whose eyes drained his life.
And I had just very specifically asked to become one of them.
Brilliant.
I could have chosen any surname, and I’d picked one that came with an expiry date.
I should probably have panicked.
Instead, the longer I thought about it, the harder it became to keep from smiling.
I’d been given a new life.
Magic really existed.
Somewhere in this world stood Hogwarts, and the old man had promised me a talent other people could only dream of.
The curse was a problem.
But a problem I could work on.
I didn’t know how yet.
For now, I couldn’t even tell where I was.
Even so, for the first time in ages, I wanted to tackle something that would take effort.
Apparently, a limited lifespan motivated me better than an upcoming test.
Besides, the eyes themselves sounded…
Well.
Bloody interesting.
Death’s Sight.
I was supposed to end up in Harry Potter, and instead I’d been given something out of a Chinese cultivation novel.
All I needed now was a unique physique, a golden soul core, and a young master I would offend merely by breathing in his vicinity.
Except this wasn’t an ability described on a page.
These were going to be my eyes.
Ghosts on their own weren’t particularly impressive.
One taught History of Magic at Hogwarts, while the others wandered freely around the castle.
Ordinary wizards could see them without any hereditary gift.
My eyes were supposedly meant to see more.
Traces of passing.
The lies of life.
Nice phrases, but what did they actually mean?
Would I see things even ghosts couldn’t?
Something left behind by a dead person?
Something hidden beneath the ordinary appearance of things?
I wanted to find out immediately.
First, though, I ought to look at the rest of me.
I raised my hands.
They were small, pale, and slender, with the smooth skin of a child.
I spread my fingers, curled them into fists, then held them further away to get a better look.
Everything worked.
Only the size was wrong.
My legs were too short as well.
When I swung them off the bed, the floor was further away than I expected.
My feet searched for it for a moment.
“I’ll get used to it,” I said quietly.
The child’s voice still sounded unfamiliar.
I stood carefully.
My shirt hung loosely from me, and the floorboards felt cold beneath my feet.
The room was small.
Pale moonlight came through a single window, partly covered by a torn curtain.
It was enough to reveal scratches on the floor and dark stains whose origins I preferred not to investigate just yet.
Paint peeled from the wall in several places.
A desk and wooden chair stood beside the metal-framed bed.
Across the room was a wardrobe, warped by damp, its doors hanging crookedly.
It smelled of dust, old wood, and damp fabric.
I studied the thin mattress I’d just climbed off.
“An orphanage. Figures.”
Then the memories hit.
I doubled over before I understood what was happening.
Images piled on top of one another.
Faces I didn’t know.
Corridors, meals, voices calling my name.
A hand straightening my clothes.
Rain outside a window.
Children at a long table.
I couldn’t hold on to any of the memories or separate one from the next.
I clutched my head.
My knees hit the floor.
I gritted my teeth, trying not to scream, though for a moment I could no longer remember why I needed to be quiet.
The pain built too quickly for me to be frightened.
Then it vanished.
I remained on my knees, hands at my temples, my breath catching in my throat.
The room was the same.
Except now I knew it.
I knew which floorboards creaked the most.
I remembered how to open the wardrobe without yanking at its sticking door.
I knew where the corridor led and where I had to go downstairs for breakfast.
“So that’s how it works…”
I lowered my hands.
Oliver Peverell.
Eight years old.
An orphanage in London.
They had found me on the doorstep, wrapped in old, worn clothes.
Beside me was a note bearing my first and last name.
No one knew who my parents were or who had left me there.
The simplest explanation had taken hold on its own: my mother hadn’t wanted a child and had made sure she couldn’t be found.
The name Peverell led to no one they could trace through Muggle records.
For eight years, I had been a quiet, withdrawn child.
I hadn’t formed any close relationships.
Nor could I recall a single incident that might have been accidental magic.
That last part surprised me a little.
The other children’s behaviour was stranger still.
They didn’t pick on me.
They didn’t steal my things or try to start fights.
They simply kept their distance.
There was almost never a place for me in their conversations or games, as though they easily forgot I was standing nearby.
I moved from the floor to the edge of the bed.
Should that worry me?
Maybe.
For now, though, it meant I wouldn’t have to explain to a group of eight-year-olds why their friend had suddenly started behaving differently.
I’d already moved to another world.
Making friends could wait.
Magic couldn’t.
It was quiet beyond the door.
My memories told me that most of the orphanage’s residents were asleep at this hour.
No one should disturb me as long as I kept the noise down.
I held out a hand.
I didn’t have a wand, but children could use magic without one.
They did it by accident, driven by emotion, without the slightest understanding of what was happening.
I had knowledge from my previous life and the exceptional talent I’d been promised.
A simple light shouldn’t be much of a problem.
“Lumos.”
I wiggled my fingers.
Nothing.
I examined my hand, as though it might have misunderstood the instruction.
“Lumos,” I repeated, more clearly this time.
Not even a spark.
I lowered my hand.
Perhaps waving an empty hand and saying a word I’d heard in a film wasn’t enough after all.
Disappointing.
I shifted back on the bed and thought about where to start.
In fanfiction, you generally had to close your eyes, concentrate, and find the magic somewhere inside yourself.
Sometimes a core.
Sometimes warmth.
Sometimes something else, depending on how much the author enjoyed making up rules.
I didn’t have a better idea.
I lay on my back.
A spring immediately dug into my shoulder blade.
I shifted a little, and the mattress creaked in response.
Luxury could wait along with friendship.
I closed my eyes and tried to focus on my breathing.
At first, all I could feel was my own body: the pressure of the springs, the chill around my feet, the tension in my neck.
My thoughts kept returning to the old man, the curse, and the memories that hadn’t belonged to me until a few moments ago.
Each time, I started again.
In.
Out.
I searched for anything that wasn’t a muscle, a heartbeat, or ordinary warmth beneath my skin.
Time passed.
Several times, I nearly fell asleep.
I’d jolt awake, annoyed, adjust my position, and try again.
Eventually, something stirred.
I opened my eyes.
For a moment, I was certain I’d imagined it.
The sensation was faint and disappeared almost immediately, but it was unlike anything I knew.
As though a thin thread had moved somewhere inside me.
I focused on it.
It stirred again.
This time, I felt resistance too.
Something stopped the movement before it could develop.
It didn’t hurt.
It felt more like tugging on a taut cord whose other end was tied fast.
I lay still, trying not to lose the sensation.
“Strange.”
I didn’t remember that from the books either.
I tried again.
Carefully, without tensing my whole body.
For a brief moment, I thought something responded.
Then I encountered the same obstruction.
The magic was there.
Or at least something I very much wanted to believe was magic.
I sat up and held out my hand.
“Lumos.”
The room remained dark.
This time, however, I felt a tug.
Weaker than before, shorter, but clearly connected to the attempt to cast the spell.
I slowly lowered my hand.
It wasn’t that there was nothing inside me.
Whatever was there couldn’t get out.
I rested my elbows on my knees and studied my fingers.
Not long ago, I’d expected to say a spell and have the entire room light up.
Now I was more interested in the obstruction.
It felt as though my magic had been bound.
As though someone had tightened restraints around it and left me with power I couldn’t reach.
I didn’t know whether that was true.
But I’d found somewhere to start.
I wanted to try again.
All it took was straightening my back, however, for my head to spin.
Only then did I realise how exhausted I was.
I hadn’t produced so much as a spark, and I felt as though I’d run several kilometres.
Add a new body, someone else’s memories, and everything else about this absurd day.
“All right. Enough for today.”
I lay down, avoiding the spring I’d already learned to hate.
Magic existed.
It was somewhere inside me.
Tomorrow, I would try to reach it.
This time, I fell asleep before I could adjust the pillow.
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