Back in Privet Drive, with the trunks locked safely in my room, I opened the first of Lily's journals. Grind can't stop.
The parchment smelled faintly of lilac, her handwriting precise and clean, every letter slanted in a patient curve. Zesty eh?
"Charms theory fascinates me. Most wizards think of magic as raw intent, but the wand channels emotion as much as words. Fear weakens spells. Joy sharpens them. I must test this more. Perhaps with a Patronus one day…"
I traced the ink with my finger. She wasn't writing for anyone else, just herself, pouring thought into paper. It felt… intimate. I feel like I am spying.
Another page:
"James laughed when I spent three nights awake sketching potion formulae. He said he'd marry me if I managed to brew one that cured his hangovers. Perhaps I will, just to spite him."
I closed the book gently, an ache settling in my chest. They weren't my parents. Not really. But reading their words, I couldn't deny I cared, Harry memories probably.
They were brilliant, flawed, and very, very human.
James's trunk was different. His handwriting was bold, messy, with inkblots splattered across the parchment. Reckless Gryffindor energy for sure.
His journal read more like a battlefield log crossed with a prank manual.
"Note: if you charm dungbombs to smell like roses until they explode, Slughorn doesn't suspect a thing until it's too late. Worth repeating."
"Defense practice with Sirius today. He's fast, but I'm faster. Tried combining a shield with a disarming curse, worked once, fizzled the next two times. Must refine the timing."
Beneath the humor, there were flashes of sharpness. Strategies. Experimentation. Notes from duels with the Order.
James Potter hadn't just been a jokester; he'd been a fighter.
One entry struck me harder than I expected:
"If the worst happens, if Lily and I fall, I only pray someone will teach Harry more than we had time to. He'll need strength. He'll need cunning. He'll need wisdom beyond trusting others blindly. Dumbledore means well, I think, but no one, not even him, should be followed without question."
I let the words sink in. James wasn't condemning Dumbledore. He was reminding himself, and anyone who came after, that even the wisest man alive wasn't infallible.
That caution mattered as much as trust. Smart for a Gryffindor.
It wasn't bitterness. It was pragmatism. And it made sense.
I dono know this world dumbles but ill keep my guard up, that's why I am training mind arts.
Closing the journal, I thought about what I had now: Lily's sharp intellect, James's boldness, their lessons written in ink for me to claim.
Not as a son, because I wasn't their son, but as the inheritor of their unfinished work.
I cared for them, in my way. Enough to honor what they left behind. Enough to use it.
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Nights became quieter once the journals were mine. After chores, training, and schoolwork, I would lock myself away, spreading their trunks across my desk.
Every page I turned was like stepping into lives I could never live, yet somehow carried with me.
Lily's handwriting was precise, almost mathematical in its rhythm. She saw magic like an engineer saw machines. An architect if you say.
"Arithmancy suggests a charm can be layered with micro-intentions, almost like braiding threads. Tried this with Lumos: one layer steady light, one layer heat. Results: palm slightly burned. Promising."
I smiled faintly at that. She was trying to reinvent structured spell craft before she was even out of Hogwarts.
The Ministry would have killed for these notes. only If they weren't racist on blood.
Her potions were no less brilliant.
"Peppermint stabilizes Wiggenweld, but I wonder if basil might interact better with sopophorous. Try brewing under moonlight for catalyst shift."
Every line was meticulous. Experiments recorded like a scientist, control, variation, outcome.
She wasn't just a witch; she was a researcher ahead of her time.
I traced her words, imagining the hours she must have spent in silence, ink smudging on her fingers. She hadn't written for anyone else, only herself.
But now, I was the one who would carry those discoveries forward.
James's journals, by contrast, were chaotic. Ink blotted, margins scribbled, spells doodled like they'd been scratched down in the middle of a duel.
Yet there was brilliance in the mess.
"Experiment: charm shield + disarming spell, cast in overlap. Shield holds, disarm leaks through. Calling it 'Guard-Breaker.' Timing crucial. Sirius nearly lost an eyebrow."
I tried it myself that night, wandless. The shield flickered, the disarm tugged faintly at a chair across the room. Raw, but real. I grinned.
James might have been sloppy, but he was inventive.
His notes weren't just magic. They were life.
"Sirius bet me ten Galleons I couldn't summon three butterbeers at once. Won. He owes me. Again."
"Lily pretends not to laugh at our jokes, but she does. I'm keeping score."
"If we survive this war, I'll build her the biggest library she's ever seen. She deserves more than hiding in grimy safehouses."
I closed that one with a tight chest. He was loud, reckless, maybe immature, but beneath it was loyalty, love, and hope for a future he never got.
I can respect that shi.
I sat back, letting the weight of it all settle.
They weren't my parents. I wasn't their Harry. But their words mattered to me anyway.
They were more than relics. They were teachers, voices echoing through ink and parchment.
Every new spell Lily built, I tested. Every charm James twisted, I refined. Their knowledge became mine, not through blood or birth, but through sheer will.
If they had lived, they would have raised a boy to carry their legacy. That boy was gone.
But I would honor them in my own way.
Not as a son. As an heir of intent.
Grind prevails.
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The idea came while I was rereading Lily's notes on layered charms. She described magic as threads that could be woven together, each intention a strand.
James, on the other hand, had scribbled about brute-force overlaps, smashing two spells into the same instant and seeing what stuck.
Their methods clashed. But where Lily saw order and James saw chaos, I saw possibility.
What if a shield didn't just block?
What if it answered back?
SOOOO I begin experimenting. Yea I know dangerous but I can handle that much.
Experiment One :
In the silence of my warded room, I began weaving. wandless obviously.
A primary shield construct, steady and wide.
A secondary disarming seed, nestled dormant inside the weave.
A thin trace thread, adapted from my Legilimency work, designed to follow hostile intent back to its source.
The weave felt unstable, twitching in my mind like a cord stretched too far. Still, I pressed on.
To test it, I conjured a hostile spark myself, wandless, just a sharp push of intent shaped into a jolt.
The shield absorbed it. The trace link flared. For an instant, the magic yanked back so violently I nearly flung myself across the room. The shock rattled my teeth, and the notebook on my desk flew off and hit the floor.
Unstable. Dangerous. But it worked.
Experiment Two — James's Old Wand
The next night I retrieved the old dueling wand from James's trunk. The wood was aged and scratched, but when I touched it, the connection was immediate.
The Trace wouldn't notice such an antique. I hope so.
This time, the hostile spark was cleaner, stronger. The shield shuddered into being, then retaliated.
The wand leapt from my hand with such force it struck the wall and clattered to the floor. My palm burned.
Not viable in combat. A shield that injured its own caster was useless.
But the principle was sound.
I'll refine it like walter white does his dru-*cough* I am 'medicines'.
Over the next week, I refined the weave, adjusting and rethreading until the braid held steady. Lily's notes became my guide to precision. James's timing notes gave me aggression. My own additions made it safe.
Added a Non Injury Clamp, so the trace released the wand gently instead of yanking.
Built in a Consent Lock, ensuring the retaliatory effect only triggered if I deliberately willed it.
Developed an Audit Echo, a faint mental ledger that recorded each activation so I couldn't lose control unnoticed.
When I tested again, the wand slipped free and landed softly at my feet. No shock, no backlash. Controlled. Predictable.
'I.AM.A.GENIUS' I thought gleefully. Spell developing before Hogwarts is really diabolical. Now its time for most important part, naming.
Wizards gave their creations names in Latin, elegant and commanding. If mine was to survive, it deserved no less.
The shield was more than a barrier, it was an echo, a reflection that answered aggression.
I turned the words over in my head until they fit:
"Scutum Resonare." a Resonating Shield.
A passive aggressive shield to counter every magic except unforgivables or well maybe very dark magic.
I whispered it as the shield shimmered in my room, faintly glowing, alive with its new identity.
The name settled into the magic, binding it, making it real.
I leaned back, sweating, heart still racing. I had created something wholly new, a spell Lily might have admired, James might have tested recklessly, and the rest of the world might never see until I chose to show it.
A shield that didn't just block.
It remembered. It answered.
And it was mine.
I AM HIM.
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My mindscape had shifted since the day Rob grilled out Voldemort's fragment. No longer a blank void, but a white plain threaded with floating pillers like grey fog in LOTM surrouneded by infinity castle building, walls i made to protect , each piller representing thoughts, memories, defenses.
When I cast Scutum Resonare here, it didn't shimmer like a physical shield. Instead, it became a translucent dome of thought, humming faintly as if tuned to my heartbeat. I tested it against simulated intrusions, intrusive voices, fractured memories, false images I conjured myself.
The shield didn't just block them; it bounced them back. When I pushed a false memory into it, the dome shivered and sent the projection spiraling outward, collapsing before it reached me. If an actual Legilimens attacked, this might buy me precious seconds.
It wasn't perfect , my defenses still leaked stray thoughts , but with each session, the dome became denser, steadier. Scutum Resonare wasn't just a shield for spells.
It was becoming part of my mind.
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