By the time Professor Flitwick left, dusk had fallen.
Will closed the door, his expression settling back into its usual indifference.
Returning to the living room, he glanced at the framed photograph on the wall.
The woman was beautiful, and the boy in her arms wore a smile that looked somewhat forced.
Will’s thoughts began to drift.
On May 16, 1980, a baby boy was born in a private room at St.
Mary’s Hospital in London.
His mother, Dorothy Behrens, named him Will Howard.
It’s worth noting that the current Duke of Norfolk is named Mylts Fitzland Howard.
Will’s biological father was Edward Fitzland Howard, the Duke’s son, the Earl of Arendl.
On May 27, 1980, Dorothy Behrens’ dream of marrying into wealth was shattered.
The Earl of Arendl did not marry her, and her son did not inherit the Howard name.
Under his influence, Will Howard became Will Behrens.
Two months later, Dorothy Behrens was given a house in London for herself and her child.
The Duke’s son wasn’t entirely heartless.
He sent a generous monthly allowance and agreed to support the mother and child, but only on the condition that Will’s identity be kept quiet.
Dorothy wasn’t satisfied with that arrangement.
After a string of failed negotiations, she grew increasingly unstable and turned to drinking and smoking.
Young Will didn’t understand why he was locked in a dark room, and hidden wounds began to appear on his body.
His personality turned introverted and timid, until a magical upheaval changed everything.
During that upheaval, little Will was crying loudly in the dark room.
The surge of magic threw him into chaos, and to his shock, he found himself outside his own body, a pale, unseen shape watching himself lie still in the darkness.
He didn’t yet know the word for what this was.
It was death.
Then another consciousness, from a distant world, descended into the boy’s body.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in a new world, carrying all of Will’s memories.
His previous life already felt like a half-remembered dream.
But one thing from that life would matter more than anything else: a series of novels he’d once read, called Harry Potter.
He was Will Behrens now.
A chosen one with a cheat code.
A natural wizard who could see the flow of magic itself.
After realizing a classmate at his old Muggle school was named Hermione Granger, he began deliberately searching for the wizarding world, and eventually found it.
The pounds his drunken mother left lying around were more than enough, once exchanged for Galleons at Gringotts, to fund a growing collection of spellbooks.
The system inside him turned every hour of study into something closer to a reward loop, and combined with his own hunger for magic, the feeling of it flowing through him, shaped and drawn out through incantations, left him blissfully lost in his work.
For Will, chasing knowledge and truth wasn’t a hobby.
It was closer to a physical need, no different from eating.
Dorothy never noticed how much time he spent buried in magic, even as the beatings and the hours locked away continued.
To Will, none of it mattered much next to the spells.
He held no attachment to his wand beyond its use, and felt nothing in particular about using an Obliviate or a basic exorcism charm on his own mother when it suited him.
A year and a half ago, Dorothy died in a car accident.
Will felt nothing much at that either.
To give birth without raising is a debt that a severed finger could settle, he remembered the saying.
As far as he was concerned, the debt was paid.
He wasn’t sad.
If anything, every scar and wound left on his body was proof enough of what sadness he had a right to.
After that, with nothing left tying him down, Will threw himself into magic entirely, barely sleeping, barely eating.
He learned fast, and learned well.
In just over a year he’d worked through the entire third-year spell curriculum.
The material that required memorization gave him no more trouble than anything else.
Beyond the school syllabus, he’d also gathered a substantial private library of spellbooks.
His talent was rare.
He could see magic move, and to some degree, see how it changed shape.
He found the whole process endlessly interesting: magic was the raw material, and spells worked like a kind of language, giving that raw material form and pushing it out into the world.
Will blinked, pulled himself out of the memory, pushed open the study door, and slid back a hidden section of bookshelf, revealing a much larger collection of spellbooks behind it.
The Strange Wizard.
Analyzing Your Brain: An Introduction to Occlumency.
The Secrets of Black Magic.
The Most Poisonous Magic.
The “Sinful” Magic: An Analysis of Dark Arts.
Herpo’s Amazing Creations: Horcruxes.
Are Werewolves Born or Made?
Soul Transplant: The Talking Goat.
Professor Flitwick’s instincts hadn’t been wrong.
Will’s interests ran wide, and dark.
He pulled The Most Poisonous Magic from the shelf and started reading, its contents absorbed almost instantly.
[You have acquired new knowledge of Dark Magic.
Dark Magic Experience +1]
[You have acquired new knowledge of Dark Magic.
Dark Magic Experience +1]
[You have acquired new knowledge of Charms.
Charms Experience +1]
[You have acquired new knowledge of Charms.
Charms Experience +1]
[You have acquired…]
[Your Charms progress has reached LV4.
Choose one additional ability.]
A.
Spell Speed: Your spellcasting speed is permanently increased by 20%.
B.
Spell Burst: Your spell effects are permanently increased by 10%.
C.
Spell Vision: You can more easily perceive the flow of magical energy in spells.
All three were solid, but Will ruled out C right away.
He could already see magical energy without help, so the ability felt redundant.
Could faster casting help with silent spellwork, though?
That was worth considering.
“Spell Burst, then.”
[Your spells have gained the additional ability: Spell Burst]
That was Will’s real cheat code.
Not talent.
This panel.
Host: Will Behrens
Talent:
Wizard’s Eye: You can actively activate “Vision” to see the flow of magic and its manifestations.
Skills:
[Transfiguration LV2 (151/200)]
(LV2 Bonus: Inquisitive Mind, increases Transfiguration experience gain by 10%)
[Dark Magic LV3 (13/300)]
(LV2 Bonus: Mental Fortitude, your emotions resist the negative effects of studying Dark Magic more easily; LV3 Bonus: Unyielding Malice, increases the duration of your Dark Magic effects by 10%)
[Potions LV2 (17/200)]
(LV2 Bonus: Keen Eyes, you can more easily read the state of a potion as it changes)
[Charms LV4 (1/400)]
(LV2 Bonus: Spell Replicator, your spell learning rate increases by 10% to 30% depending on the source; LV3 Bonus: Spellcaster, your spells cost 5% less mana; LV4 Bonus: Spell Burst)
[Astronomy LV1 (59/100)] (No bonus yet)
[Herbology LV2 (11/200)]
(LV2 Bonus: Herbal Affinity, you can tend magical plants more easily)
[Curse Studies LV1 (56/100)] (No bonus yet)
[Stamina LV1 (66/100)] (No bonus yet)
[Mana LV?] (Cannot be viewed, due to the unusual nature of this world)
[Charm LV3 (118/300)]
(LV2 Bonus: Dazzling Star, people notice you more, and their feelings toward you, good or bad, run stronger; LV3 Bonus: Art of Language, your words carry more weight)
[Cooking LV3 (223/300)]
(LV2 Bonus: Heat Sense, you can precisely feel changes in cooking temperature; LV3 Bonus: Magic Tongue, your sense of taste sharpens, letting you pick out magical ingredients in food)
[Note: Abilities reach their full potential only at special thresholds, or at their peak level.]
Once he’d chosen his Charms bonus, Will went back to studying, and the notifications kept coming.
The study light stayed on well past midnight before he finally stopped.
The aftereffects of the magical surge still lingered in him, and every so often he’d lose himself in a book for a day, sometimes two, without sleeping at all.
The days that followed settled into a quiet rhythm: read, practice magic, eat, sleep.
Time slipped by, and September arrived almost without warning.
That particular morning was unusually bright.
Will threw together a breakfast that didn’t quite come out as planned.
His attempt at breakfast had failed.
He’d tried to fry an omelette one-handed while reading, book propped open against the sugar jar and predictably ended up scorching one side before he noticed the smell.
Burnt edges aside, it was still edible enough and went down fine alongside toast and coffee.
Good enough, even if half his attention had clearly been somewhere else.
He cast a Levitation Charm on the small trunk waiting by the door, the same one he’d already enchanted to float, and carried it out of the house he’d called home for the past eleven years.