–– Clara Ali Ollivander POV ––
I had accumulated few regrets up till now, three major ones and two of those were interlinked. Rituals, prayers and believes.
Originally, I wanted to hold a ritual every Samhain after I had started, joined by Beltane, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon, Wassailing and a few others as needed. In the end I did not even endure the Samhain ones, not to speak about the others.
Rituals themselves were a very delicate subject, as even doing two rituals could have catastrophic outcomes, not to mention doing dozens each year or even moth if it was not your main profession.
The best example would be the ladies ritual, where the next six children would be boys. It naturally had a lesser known equivalent for only girls and if you did both of those… Well, your next six children would have both genders. It was one of the tamer side effects of such mishaps but it could still lead to complications. Especially for the children, as it could lead to fractured minds, dissonance between soul, mind and body, split personalities and a host of other problems. It you mix in another ritual which guarantees twins or triplets though, it would have no adverse reaction, as long as your body can endure the stress.
But, there is always a but. If you are a grandmaster of the mind arts and had a master healer at hand, you could negate the side effects before they became a problem. A mad scientist could even try to built upon those negative side effects and aim for a similar thing as I had gone through with my splits. And so forth. The possibilities were endless and the only question in the end was, what would you allow yourself to go through.
Some mothers would do this just to give their child the option to choose their gender for themself, while others just made a mistake and others just had an uninformed bet about the outcome and yes, there are such idiots out there.
But back on topic. While I realized that I would neither have the time, knowledge or dedication in the near future to hold huge rituals in such a capacity which I had hoped for, I had to slim down my list.
I would try to hold one ritual at Samhain each year and would be cautious about using one which required a follow up the next years. This means that it would have no devastating effects if I missed one due to a mishap in cultivation or other matters.
The other was believes. I had already decided a long time ago, which goddess I would pray to:
Metis, goddess of wisdom, intelligence and good advice.
It was irrelevant if I knew that she was just another being, which started out the same as I did, or that I knew that there did not exist something like omnipotent gods as even people of their power would need to bow before the raw laws of the world. As a matter of fact, the term gods was wrong, as there did in fact exist gods, though they were just another race best compared with high humans. They were just different, but not what most people associated with the word gods, even though they had their fare share of powerful people.
They were indeed at war with earth due to this brainless reason too which did not make this thematic any better. The members of their race had one thing in common, misplaced pride and arrogance, together with a lot of narcism and egoism. Well, which race did not have that, but for them it was literally written in their DNA and bloodlines.
Metis though, was not one of them. Metis was a okeanine, in fact birthed by the above mentioned conflicting rituals. She was also a metamorphmagus and animagi, probably the second best after a Ollivander.
She was in fact one of the easier beings to believe in, as she only expected one thing. A drive for knowledge in her name. Plain and simple. And I had more than enough drive for knowledge and associating it with her name is even easier, only requiring the offer of one piece of knowledge each year, which was new to me. Not new to her, but new to me and due to my passion that was a piece of cake. This would not change anything in the short term, but after a long time I could also request her help if I stumble upon a problem I cannot overcome on my own.
Even though I had no plan to go the believe power route in a capacity where a patron would affect me negatively, she also had the habit of granting leave to anyone who no longer wants to worship her which could be a huge game changer down the line if I have the need to change that.
Another thing I regretted deeply was designing my sphere for pure not attuned mana. Due to this, I had changed and improved the ward to segregate the inner space into different chambers for differently attuned mana, so that I could have mana from any attunement, but as I wanted to replace the wardstone, my instincts stopped me. I was deterred from doing it and even though I did not know exactly why, it was probable that my current ward was way better than the new one.
I debated on this but ultimately decided to not change the ward and to instead build multiple other spheres for different attunements, as soon as my pocket dimension was big enough, which would take millennia. And all that due to a single miscalculation, that I only needed pure not attuned mana for my mana body as I had previously not though that I would build another mana body with a different attunement.
Well, I will see in the future if it was a blessing in disguise or my biggest mishap up to day.
My probably biggest regret and mistake though was Luna Lovegood, my passion in regards to her most importantly. Not only that it nearly killed me, it resolved itself afterwards without much participation of my humble self. It all boiled down to a simple lesson, which was the only reward I gained from it. I never was neither will be perfect. It is as simple as that and being shown in such a way and more importantly so early in my life was very important.
I naturally knew this already and also kind of lived by that knowledge, but one thing I did not do was second guess myself. I thought Luna Lovegood would come to me if there were any problems, but she did not. She did not even see those things as problems and I never stopped a moment to consider that or similar limitations. Simple shame about it would have also been enough, though I thought our friendship beyond that.
All in all, I got slapped awake by my bloodline, especially to the fact that she was in fact not my soulmate as I previously believed, before I could see the bonds between people.
Despite these morbid thoughts, I was looking forward to this years winter break, to seeing Gabrielle again, without her being in either a rush or unconscious. There was also another factor.
This year we finally travelled to Germany, which had previously fell into the water due to more important things. We did not interact much with the local magical community and instead preferred the mostly non magical Christmas fairs, taste testing different types of punch and glühwein, eating hot sausages or roast on buns, crepes, which were not as good as French ones, and a host of other hearty and sweet food and drinks. At one of those someone even sold ice cream! And as stupid as that sounds, selling ice cream when the snow on the ground is centimeters thick, the booth was the most visited attraction of that particular fair and it was not that everything else was bad, it was in fact better than average. The ice cream was just that heavenly.
While we were eating our seventh batch of ice cream, talking about her current progress at Hogwarts, Gabrielle sprang a question upon me, hitting me completely unprepared: „So, when did you want to tell me that wer are soulmates?" Her innocent eyes blinking, while my mind short circuited and my mouth agape, tongue hanging out.
I knew, I knew the first moment she entered my potion laboratory, but I was more similar to Lupin than I liked. I tried to explain, failing miserably: „You were a child, years younger than me. I guess I did not want to burden you with the knowledge, that your romantic partner is already set in stone. No eight year old should have knowledge about such things, especially my soulmate."
She continued to stare, so I continued: „And maybe, just maybe, I myself was just not ready yet", I relented, after which a long time of silence began, broken by Gabrielle, whispering nearly imperceptible: „Just kiss me already you idiot", before her patience ran out and she initiated the kisshug, our ice cream falling to the ground, a mistletoe hanging above our heads.
It was perfect, better than perfect in fact. It felt nice, warm and secure, the whole world fading into the background of one feeling one pure feeling: Love. I did not know how lang my first kiss lasted. I was completely absorbed in it, just finally enjoying something. I now knew that I was craving this since years, hell since the first time I had met her and finally, due to her boldness, my own inner barrier crumbled, leaving behind only one thing: Love.
Both of us snapped back to our senses, as a huge applause had formed during the time we were spaced out. We broke our first kiss, still holding hands, before pretty much every single person on this small quaint fair congratulated us, in a time I very well knew that our type of relationship was heavily frowned upon in the non magical world.
–– Observer POV ––
A small quaint fair it was, but what Clara Ali Ollivander and Gabrielle Delacour did not realize was, that it was a privat event, a political event even and that their single act of public unbridled and pure love would go on to change the non magical worlds progression from that very moment forward, resulting in a huge cultural upheaval which would result in a better world for anyone, no longer plagued by misconceptions and prejudice.
It would also start a search for their identities with no one able to find them. A few rare photographs while they were on a trip to non magical sites surfaced and continued to appear over the next years. Even decades later there was an ongoing scavenger hunt for who those two mysterious people were.
–– Author POV ––
Welcome to my first real author note ;)
The first volume ends with this chapter and a total of 108.989 words. I myself do not like how the passion in regards to Luna Lovegood played out, as I originally held a bit more hope and other ideas for the two of them but realized mid way through that it would just not click to make everything so easy and seamless due to which I now have another two characters to plan more for but the main POV will still stay with Clara Ali Ollivander even if I try to diversify it a bit more.
The goal of this first volume was trying my hand at writing, to introduce my vision/version of this Harry Potter fan fiction, the characters backgrounds, bonds and dynamic. Originally I wanted to focus a bit more on fighting, but even though it may seems as if she is very strong, she is not. No combat experience and no versatility yet. The only thing she has is a huge amount of mana/energy storage and control with nearly no fighting power apart from some common NEWT spells.
Fun fact: I like second chances :D
Even though Luna Lovegood's „screentime" was relatively low, she (hopefully) will be relevant in the future, though it will take a bit of time until the world gets there due to multiple reasons.
I look forward to any comments there may be and I also may answer questions about the future of this story but only if I already know the answer to it. I will take one of my favorite Q/A questions out of the picture though: There will be no harem in this story and a soulmate bond is unbreakable, even beyond death.
I wanted to write a lot more but I decided against it so as to nt spoiler too much and cement my way forward with unfinished ideas.
Good day to all of you and read you soon :)