Ten months. It seems a small thing on paper, laughably brief measured against ledger balances or the age of old estates. Yet for me, it's been a near-lifetime compressed, enough to make the boy who stood in my bedroom last September, hand steady as he forged a bloodline by sheer force of will, feel like a distant relative. Someone I once knew, and have long since outgrown.
When I founded House Magus that night, the System responded with such calm inevitability that it nearly cheapened the moment. As if forging an entire future was no more than filing paperwork. But then, I've learned that the System's poise masks depths I've only begun to mine.
From there, everything accelerated.
I studied magical Britain with the same meticulous hunger that built my first ledgers.
Every time I returned to Diagon Alley, I asked questions.
Not openly, of course. Open questions earn suspicions. But a casual inquiry on Gringotts' banking system, an idle observation on which families seemed to own the better shops, and what departments were under the Ministry.
By winter, I could name the major pureblood lines, list their old alliances and the recent rifts between them. I could name the major lines, the Greengrasses, the Blacks, the proud but quietly indebted Lestranges, and chart their old alliances and the recent rifts between them. Which newly prosperous half-blood lines had begun to stir resentments in the Wizengamot's quieter halls.
I made it my private study to understand these tangled loyalties and grudges, knowing that one day I would exploit them, or at the very least ensure that none exploited me.
The Ministry itself fascinated me more as an institution than for any current power it might hold over me. Bureaucracies are predictable creatures, bound by precedent and paperwork. I noted the departments, traced recent scandals, including a quietly hushed hexing incident in the Department of Magical Games, and a bribery investigation still ongoing in the Office of International Magical Cooperation. Even a child could see where influence might slip in unnoticed.
The Magical Law Enforcement Department was the most staffed, whereas the Department of Muggle Relations was almost laughably understaffed.
Opening a vault at Gringotts proved remarkably easy.
Almost unsettlingly so.
The goblin teller barely spared me a glance as he filed my papers.
"New minor account. Initial deposit?"
"Twenty Galleons."
Ones I had snuck from people's pockets or ones I found on the ground.
He scratched it into a long ledger with claws that clicked against the parchment.
"Five Galleon monthly maintenance fee. Exchange of up to two hundred fifty Muggle pounds per month permitted at standard valuation, twenty-five Galleons. Rates non-negotiable."
I nodded, forcing calm even as my mind ran eager calculations, ideas, and schemes. Rupert's careful arrangement of my Muggle investments meant I could comfortably spare two hundred fifty pounds each month to feed this new magical limb of my empire. Enough to pay the fees and still bolster the vault by twenty Galleons monthly, even before other ventures bore fruit. It was small. But small things compound.
My company continued to thrive despite my growing preoccupations.
The Velcro patents had matured beyond even my optimistic forecasts, licensing revenues streaming steadily from the original contracts across Lancashire and the new partnerships in Italy and Canada.
By spring, I'd begun quietly funnelling larger sums into American ventures. The post-war boom there was inevitable; I was merely positioning myself to be swept along when it arrived in full. Some of those American firms were already showing promising quarterly reports, returns that made even Ellery's thin lips twitch into reluctant smiles.
The best deals came not from brilliance, but from quiet desperation.
A New York textile manager with three mortgages, a Florentine dyer caught bribing customs inspectors, these men signed away percentages in shaking hands, all while blessing me for the rescue.
I also targeted companies I knew, by faint echoes of memory from my first life, would flourish spectacularly. Small chemical firms are on the cusp of breakthroughs in synthetic fibres, and specific packaging manufacturers are poised to ride a wave of consumer mania for convenience. They didn't know they were on the edge of their golden eras, but I did.
But by late spring, I was deliberately receding from the helm.
Not because I grew bored. Not entirely.
Because I understood that soon, I would be gone for months at a time behind castle walls, unable to sign contracts in person or read daily telegrams by candlelight. The managers needed to stand on their own feet now, or the entire edifice would tumble the moment I set foot on Hogwarts grounds.
So I let them.
Ellery became the face for new contracts, Moran quietly enforced standards among the warehouses, and my most trusted junior clerks handled the day-to-day ledgers. I reviewed summaries weekly, but only summaries.
And each man, in his way, remained tethered to me by far stronger cords than salary: fear of failure, hope of further favour, the memory of gentle acknowledgements that still warmed them on cold mornings.
Which left me free to focus almost obsessively on my magic and my physical regimen.
I rose before dawn, running through my circuits until sweat pooled and my muscles burned with small, delicious agony. It was more than vanity. I would never again be the trembling child cornered in an alley by a stranger's grip. My body was my first fortress, and I kept its walls strong.
But my true obsession was Mind Arts.
My Emotional Sense evolved from raw scent to something far more elegant, delicate threads I could lay across another's thoughts, plucking here and there to draw out a smile, a doubt, a sudden certainty.
In Diagon Alley, I practised constantly, making sure I didn't target anyone who seemed strong. A shopkeeper found himself agreeing to a discount without knowing why, and a sour old man suddenly decided not to complain about my presence at the front of the queue.
With Rupert, I grew even subtler. My illusions hid my violet eyes well enough, but sometimes his expression would tighten, eyes narrowing as if trying to remember what exactly seemed out of place.
Sometimes his hand would pause halfway to his teacup, brow tightening. His eyes would fix on me just a fraction too long, like a man trying to place a half-remembered face in a crowd.
And so I would lean in with the faintest whisper of magic: 'You are tired, everything is as it should be,' and watch the confusion drain away, replaced by an embarrassed calm.
I continued the small bloodlettings over the egg in my drawer.
Careful cuts along my fingers, drops of blood sinking into the shell's runes that glowed faintly for seconds after. It was patient work, slow as any garden taking root. But I felt it, something old and quiet stirring each time, weaving tighter bonds through my veins.
I sometimes wondered if Nan would have wept to see me slice my own fingers so clinically. The thought faded before it could fully flower.
My new Trait Raperetongue has shown its worth.
I first tested the bloodline's promise on a brisk morning in early spring, with frost still crouching in the garden beds and my breath a ghost in the air.
I'd been watching a falcon for nearly a quarter hour, sleek plumage of dark brown and ash, circling lazily above the orchard beyond Rupert's hedges. At first, I simply admired the mechanics: the minor corrections of wing tilt, the way its head locked on distant movements. Precision was always a small pleasure.
Then the thought intruded, sly and quiet. Raperetongue. The Trait that was seeded into my bloodline when I forged House Magus.
Communication with birds of prey, but what did that actually mean?
No books I'd found in Diagon Alley offered any insight; it could be unique to my bloodline or just written somewhere else, nonetheless, I intended to explore it.
So I shouted up with all my will.
"Come down to me."
The falcon stuttered in its glide, wings flaring, head snapping to fix on me with sudden, razor interest. For a heartbeat, it simply hovered there in the air, then folded into a controlled dive that ended with a neat landing on the low stone wall ten paces from where I stood. Its claws scraped tiny white grooves into the stone, head weaving side to side with that unsettling, jerky precision that falcons have.
It regarded me coolly, pupils pinning and expanding, body held with wary readiness to launch again at the first sign of threat.
"Can you understand me?" I tried, low and careful, shaping the question with that same pulse of intent.
The falcon only blinked, head tipping slightly. Curious. Confused. Its claws flexed against the stone.
Of course. It was still a falcon, intelligent by animal standards, but no human conversationalist. I needed a simpler structure.
I exhaled, calming myself. Talking to the falcon, slow and deliberate:
"Nod"
I dipped my head down once, meeting its gaze.
"Shake"
I turned my head side to side, an explicit denial.
"Can you do that? Nod for yes, shake for no."
The falcon stared for a moment longer. Then, with almost comedic tentativeness, it bobbed its head down.
I felt a sharp spark of satisfaction bloom in my chest.
I began with simple questions.
"Is your nest nearby?"
It shook its head. No.
"Are there many of your kind in these parts?"
A nod, quick and definite.
"Would you come if I called again?"
Another nod. Slower this time, as though considering some instinctive calculus of risk versus benefit.
Good. That was more than enough to start.
I stepped a little closer, raising my hand to its head.
"I am Richard Magus," I said, voice low, careful. "My blood commands yours. If I call again, I want you to come. Bring others if you can. There will be food. Safe nesting."
It couldn't answer verbally, of course. But it watched me with that unsettling intelligence predators often held, as if weighing the trustworthiness of something far outside its usual experience. Then it gave a tiny nod, almost a dipping of the shoulders, then settled back on its feet.
I left it there, purposefully.
Too much force would have broken the fragile beginnings of understanding. Instead, I stepped back, turned and walked slowly away. I did not look over my shoulder, but I heard it launch from the wall a few breaths later, the air whispering under strong wings.
Strange, how simple creatures accepted authority more gracefully than men ever could.
Perhaps because they understood power on its truest terms: who could give safety, who could end them. No illusions of fairness to muddy it.
I allowed myself a tiny, private smile.
Eyes in the sky.
Even before Hogwarts knew my name, I was already laying the foundations for a far older, wilder network, one that cared nothing for galleons or blood purity. Only for the certainty of shelter, the promise of prey, and the cool authority of magic that resonated with its own hungry cunning.
And so time slipped by.
June dissolved into warm days and mild rains. Reports from my American ventures arrived with bright forecasts. The company remained stable, even growing under its own momentum. My vault at Gringotts climbed in cautious increments, month by month, each deposit a silent promise.
And on the first of July, it finally arrived.
A soft scratching at the window startled me from my ledgers. I turned, half-expecting a thrush or the neighbour's idiot cat. Instead, there perched an owl, elegant, severe, eyes like polished onyx. A thick envelope clutched in its beak, wax seal unmistakable even across the room.
Hogwarts.
My pulse did not race.
Instead, something deeper settled inside me, heavy and certain.
This was what I had prepared for, with every calculated withdrawal from Muggle affairs, every trip to Diagon Alley, every delicate experiment along the edges of another person's mind.
I crossed to the window, opened it with steady hands. The owl released the letter into my palm, then launched itself back into the bright summer sky without a single backwards glance.
I turned the envelope over once, twice, savouring its weight. My name, my new House name, elegantly inked.
Mr. Richard Anderson Russo Magus
Guest Bedroom, Second Floor
32 Harrow Lane
London
I exhaled, slow and measured. The next game was about to begin. And I intended to win it thoroughly.
I had not just prepared.
I had positioned myself, like a knife laid edge-up across velvet, waiting for a careless hand.
Let them come.
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