Kieran was over the following months slowly finding his limits within his capabilities.
He consistently drained his magic reserves as he has done every day since he awoke his magic; now with the added ability of watching his mental magical landscape in the form of a forest surrounding a lake, slowly growing as his magic reserves grew with him.
He recalled being able to use basic illusions for 50 minutes at age five.
Now as he neared his ninth birthday he was capable of using basic illusions for eight hours.
The advanced illusions or experimenting with his sound magic was more costly, but that made sense.
It was shortly after his eight birthday he finally finished A Study of Sound in Magical Practice, by Euphemia Whistlethwaite.
It was a very dry and rough book to get through, he had to read it several times and took many notes before he properly understood the content, but despite how dry it was, it was inspiring.
Up until now, his illusions had largely been a trick against the sense of sight, with the emotions tricking the magical senses.
He had been greatly inspired to create sound illusions to trick the sense of hearing.
He remembered the question of the Sonorus spell he gave to Mr.
Craig years ago, the question that led to Mr.
Craig acquiring the book he finished around sound magic.
The question of what would happen if you inverted the concept of amplifying your voice but lowered your voice to inaudible frequencies, beyond the normal Quietening Charm.
He still recalled the original intention behind that question; he was wondering if it was possible to manipulate sound magic to create a sound frequency that would cause happiness for the target, since healing with sound magic was possible.
With the book now finished, he had ideas.
Just like his current illusions that could be imbued with emotions that caused certain reactions to people that saw the illusions, it should be theoretically possible to imbue emotions to sound magic and then attach the sound magic to an illusion to fix it in a place.
The final result would in theory be a layered illusion, the first layer being the trick for the sense of sight, with the secondary layer being the trick for the sense of hearing.
The concept of layering illusions was not completely foreign to him.
It was similar to the emotional imbuement, except the emotions was part of the foundation, rather than being a direct layer.
When he thought of emotional imbuement, he thought about an idea he had been wanting to try.
Is it possible to make an illusion be considered a natural part of a wizard’s senses, rather than something suspicious?
The current way he used to avoid Aunt Abi’s magical senses, was sacrificing the quality of the illusions by imbuing the illusions with emotions unrelated to it.
Emotions like normalcy or shyness.
They didn’t support the illusion itself; they merely were there to trick the magical senses of wizards and the perception of muggles.
If he could find a way to make the magical senses ignore the illusions, then he could spend more emotional imbuement into making the illusion greater quality… He knew the concept existed for muggles with the muggle-repelling charm; he wondered if the concept existed for wizards.
He opened his eyes and looked out into the back garden from where he was sitting, his meditation spot, now surrounded by several potted plants.
He looked at the potted plants.
His mum added them to his spot following the trip to Scandinavia, and now it was as if they were always there, like they belonged at his meditation spot.
It was as he sat watching a potted plant, seeing the wet leaves with dripping water that he sat up straight.
Familiarity!
If I could find a way to make the illusions be familiar to the target, to the point that the illusions become a natural part of the background, I won’t need the external emotional protections!
…
Over the next few days, he experimented with attaching sound magic to his illusions.
He managed to create a layered illusion, using the invisibility concept with a secondary layer containing the sound of a fresh breeze.
In a moment of inspiration, he attached the illusion to his mum’s earring and made the illusion with a large investment of magic to ensure it would last for a while, while ensuring that the secondary layer was inactive, kept alive by the first layer but not being supplied enough magic to supply sound.
It was extremely taxing.
All new experiments were, but this one required a direct nap afterwards.
He had essentially attached a layered spell to his mum’s earring.
His goal was not to annoy his mum with the sound of a breeze; his goal was allowing his sound illusions to go undetected and become a natural part of his mum’s background noise.
Over the next weeks, he kept experimenting with various approaches, even trying to attach the sound illusions onto himself, seeing what worked and what didn’t.
Attaching them to himself and tricking his senses seemed impossible for now, however.
Since he knew they were there, he could not think of a way that would make him forget about them.
Craig, as usual offered to babysit him.
Kieran enjoyed hearing about the various jobs Mr.
Craig did in relation to his work as part of the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee.
His job may sound boring, but it was anything but.
Kieran was even getting better at chess, he was becoming better at predicting several moves ahead, and out of 10 games, he managed to win 2 of them against Mr.
Craig.
As reward for winning, he asked Mr.
Craig if he could test illusions on him, and after getting his consent, placed his wandless sound illusions on Mr.
Craig just by looking at him, and without saying anything.
It was an hour later that he saw Mr.
Craig jerk is head.
“Huh…that was…unusual,” Mr.
Craig said as he shook his head.
“What did you feel Mr. Craig?” Kieran asked curiously.
“All of a sudden, my senses picked up something wrong near my left ear. It disappeared after I jerked my head,” Mr.
Craig answered.
Kieran nodded understandably, the jerk of his head broke the illusion.
He created it with as little magic as possible to make it near undetectable but seemed as if he used a wrong approach since Mr.
Craig felt it after an hour.
I wonder why?
On the 20th of February, his ninth birthday passed and he continued his experiments with sound magic and sound illusions, wanting to prank Aunt Abi this year with sound illusions, something completely new.
It was near the end of February he got a breakthrough.
When visiting Mr.
Craig, Kieran managed to keep an active, ongoing sound illusion near Mr.
Craigs ear active for an entire day.
He discovered why it failed the first time.
An ongoing illusion that was being worked into the targets background noise, needed a constant supply of magic, periodically applied.
Like a plant that needed water every day.
It was at the mid of march he started his masterplan.
He applied an ongoing sound illusion to the insides of his aunts’ ears, almost draining his magic dry when he focused on making the illusions as durable as possible.
They needed to handle the daily life of his aunt.
The next day he applied a similar sound illusion to her mouth.
All three sound illusion had the second layer inactive; the focus was that Aunt Abi detected nothing wrong.
Over the next two weeks, whenever Kieran saw his aunt, he would hug her and sneakily water the illusions, reinforcing them and enhancing the inactive secondary layer.
Finally at the day of April Fool’s, Aunt Abi and Kieran were home alone.
It being Saturday, his mum and dad were visiting some family friends.
It was when Aunt Abi was about to take Kieran grocery shopping, that Kieran prepared for everything to go wrong.
In theory, since this illusion had been part of Aunt Abi’s magical senses for two weeks, it should have become part of her background noise.
Kieran activated the secondary layer, feeling himself getting tense…
Aunt Abi showed no reaction.
As Aunt Abi talked to him, he kept a poker face and responded back smoothly. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
The fact that his aunt wasn’t reacting right now was a proof of concept.
It was possible to make illusions become part of a witch’s background noise, as long as they don’t discover the illusions during the assimilation process.
Hearing his aunt talk, Kieran couldn’t help but notice the various muggles glance at her weirdly.
She likely assumed it was due to her colourful attire, but the truth was… His prank made her voice sound like a chipmunk through the sound illusion near her mouth, and the two sound illusions in her ears turned the chipmunk voice back into her real voice.
Everyone else heard her chipmunk voice, but she would only hear her own voice.
Kieran decided to tempt fate and took his aunt on several long walks, talking with her a lot, especially around other people.
Giving himself a huge motivation for hiding well later, because this embarrassing situation he was creating was going to have his aunt turn into a very vengeful witch.
His aunt likely assumed he was going to do something, but since they left the house constantly the entire day, she likely couldn’t figure out what it was.
Likely assuming he was waiting for his parents to get home.
Which was true.
He was going to hide the moment they were home, because no way in all that was good, would his dad stay silent when he heard Aunt Abi’s voice.
While Aunt Abi finished the dinner, and Kieran was done setting the plates, he heard the sound of car doors slamming.
“Aunt Abi, I am going to the bathroom to wash my hands before dinner,” Kieran said as he headed to the bathroom.
Then he walked past the bathroom and headed to his parent’s bedroom.
Climbing on top of their table, he sits in its corner, leaning against the wall.
Finally, he casted his perfect invisibility illusion and calmed down his beating heart while conjuring a ball of light to keep his magic drained.
…
“Oh, this smells lovely, knew asking Abi to prepare dinner for us was a good idea!” Hector exclaimed as he side hugged his wife while they headed toward their house after a long day with their friends.
“It was nice seeing Althea and John again, their new baby is keeping them so busy. I don’t remember Kieran ever causing us to lose sleep,” his wife said as she breathed a sigh of relief.
Something Hector could only agree with, their son had always been a very quiet baby, only ever crying when he needed to get changed or he was hungry…or when he wanted to be taken outside.
When he heard Abi mention that Kieran possessed some rare kind of affinity for nature magic, Hector could honestly admit it came as no surprise.
They headed inside where Abi greeted them.
“Welcome home Hector and Victoria, I made meatloaf, Kieran is washing his hands, so I hope you are hungry. I am mentally preparing for whatever prank the brat decides to pull, but he has been wonderfully quiet all day, except wanting to go on constant walks…” Abi said.
Hector felt his mouth twitch, his shoulders shaking the more Abi talked, to his side he saw his wife gaping with wide eyes at Abi.
Hector realized, she had no idea!
He watches Abi process their reaction and slowly narrowing her eyes.
“Okay Hector, spill it. What’s so funny?”
Hearing the chipmunk voice again, he couldn’t hold it back anymore.
He bended over, leaning on his knees as he laughed harder than he ever remembered laughing, which broke the floodgates as he heard his wife join in on the laughing, with Abi standing there confused.
“Abi…sis…you sound like a chipmunk whenever you speak…” Hector said inbetween laughs, watching the horror appear on his surrogate sisters’ face as she likely realized, like he did, that this chipmunk voice had likely been active all day; and considering she mentioned them going on constant walks amongst other people.
They have all heard the chipmunk voice.
My son is devious!
I hope he hid VERY well!
He watched Abi slap her own ears, seeing the magical light appearing on her ears, signalling a broken illusion.
He is really getting better at those!
When Abi spoke again, he saw her eyes go wide, likely hearing the chipmunk voice herself, before going red in the face, likely out of pure embarrassment.
“KIERAN, WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU…” Abi yelled as she stormed through the house.
Hector and his wife sat eating dinner, while the thunderstorm called Abi used every magic trick in the book to find her nephew.
When they were done eating, he packed two portions of meatloaf for later, one for his son who was likely hiding fearing being found, and another for the soon to be tired Abi that will either find her nephew before bedtime or officially falling for the most embarrassing prank she had ever been victim to in her entire life.
Step into the Restricted Section
You-know-where/Murtageyra
The first volume which I called Pre-Hogwarts, is finished in there ^^