After guiding the judgmental owl away from the attic window, Tiera lay back down on her narrow bed. The adrenaline rush from receiving the acceptance letter was fading, replaced by a profound, settling calm. The parchment confirming her place at Hogwarts represented a lifeline—a safer, more established path of magical learning.
Why would she continue struggling to decipher the cryptic, chaotic arcana of Merlin's path, risking life and limb to figure things out on her own? Why risk accidentally losing another finger, or worse, when there were qualified professors ready to teach her spells that didn't involve cosmic horror?
Tiera laced her hands behind her head, allowing herself a brief moment of pure, hopeful daydreaming. I wonder if Hogwarts is truly as grand as the images in the movies, she mused. Which House would she be sorted into? If she landed in Gryffindor, perhaps she would indeed get a front-row seat to the drama of the boy who lived.
Harry Potter...
Harry...
Ha...
A cold knot tightened in her stomach.
Oh, blast it.
The year was 1991. That meant if this was truly J.K. Rowling's creation, she wouldn't just meet Harry Potter; she would be a contemporary, a classmate embroiled in the legendary chaos of the next seven years.
Tiera sat bolt upright, the weight of the future crashing down on her.
Year One: First-years fighting Voldemort over the Philosopher's Stone.
Year Two: Battling a soul-sucking Basilisk in the plumbing.
Year Three: A relative lull, dominated by the potentially dangerous, but ultimately kind, Sirius Black.
Year Four: The Triwizard Tournament and the full, horrifying resurrection of Voldemort.
Year Five, Six, and Seven: Open warfare, the rise of the Death Eaters, and the systematic extermination of Muggle-borns.
Muggle-born...
Tiera's biological parents in this life, and her entire family in her previous life, were non-magical. She was 100% sure of her origins. She was the definition of Muggle-born—it couldn't get any purer.
The threat was no longer theoretical; it was an active countdown. The very magical world that had just offered her a welcome now stood poised to reject and destroy her based solely on her birth.
The relief vanished. The terror returned, sharper and more immediate than the Herlis Potion's illusory pain. She had to learn more. She needed more power to protect herself from the inevitable darkness that was coming.
Tiera jumped out of bed and rushed back to her desk. She couldn't afford to waste time waiting for the train to Hogwarts. If she was going to be a participant in a war, she needed to be heavily armed.
Tiera picked up her pen again, returning to the blank parchment where the complex geometric arrays were half-finished. She needed to complete the construction of the second layer of the spiritual wall.
This formidable defense mechanism was a form of protective magic developed by Merlin late in his life—a way to ward off incursions by entities from other planes. By using the Herlis Potion to temporarily supercharge her mental strength, she could successfully imbue the mathematical configuration of the wall directly into her spiritual reality.
This spiritual fortress had seven total layers. The first three layers were designed to deepen the connection between her mental and spiritual realms, strengthening her control over her nascent magical abilities. Layers four through six were meant to increase her total spiritual dimension—the effective pool of magical power she could draw upon.
The final, seventh layer, according to Merlin's chilling notes, required direct, consensual assistance from an Old One to achieve a total qualitative change in one's being. Tiera still shuddered when she considered that ultimate, terrifying step.
To understand the construction, Tiera had to grapple with Merlin's profound, if archaic, theory of magic.
According to Merlin's notes and the explanation found in the Principles of Black Magic section of the Book of the Dead, the essence of magic was dimension.
In a physical sense, there were three axes of space: length, width, and height.
In a magical sense, there were three fundamental dimensions that defined sentient life:
The Material Dimension (the physical body).
The Spiritual Dimension (the source of magical power; what Hogwarts calls magical ability, or a cultivator's spiritual roots).
The Mental Dimension (the essence of all intelligent life and thought).
Wizards, according to Merlin, were three-dimensional beings, existing simultaneously in the material, spiritual, and mental dimensions. These three were interconnected and mutually influential.
Wizards typically used wands and incantations to cast spells. The wand was a specialized hybrid of the material and spiritual dimensions, designed to balance spells and channel spiritual power. The spell itself was merely a simplified model of magic.
Ancient ritual magic—with its shamanic dances, bonfires, stone arrangements, and blood sacrifices—was essentially constructing a magic model in the material world to activate the power of the spiritual dimension. Over time, these elaborate rituals were simplified until most spells could be performed simply by reciting a command and using a powerful, spiritual-realm-communicating wand.
However, neither the wand nor the incantation was strictly necessary. A powerful witch could cast spells silently, provided she could correctly construct the spell pattern in the spiritual dimension using only her mind.
While other ancient sorcerers favored long, complex arrangements of Ancient Runes, Merlin, having lived from the 11th to the late 18th century, chose a simpler method informed by his long life: mathematics.
His path intersected with that of Sir Isaac Newton. From that day forward, Merlin translated all his magical configurations into advanced multivariable calculations—differential calculus equations designed to precisely describe the flow and shape of magical energy.
Fortunately, Tiera was a former science student who had not forgotten her advanced mathematics. Coupled with the fact that Merlin's calculus formations were limited by his 18th-century understanding, the initial learning was manageable.
Over the past few years, Tiera had not only constructed the first layer of her mental wall but, by studying Merlin's translated notes, she had also created successful spell patterns for minor magics like the Illumination Charm, Fire-Making Spell, Mending Charm, and the Levitation Charm—using them to channel her spiritual power and deepen her understanding of the three-dimensional theory.
This theoretical work led Tiera to the terrifying implications laid out in the black magic section of the Book of the Dead.
The latitude of a being, it stated, was not fixed. Two-dimensional beings could evolve into three-dimensional ones, and three-dimensional beings could evolve into four-dimensional ones by "obtaining the coordinates of the divine dimension."
What wizards called Muggles were defined here as two-dimensional creatures: beings that exist only in the material and mental dimensions. They lacked the spiritual dimension—the source of magical power—and could, therefore, only influence the first two simultaneously, meaning they could not use magic.
Similarly, Muggles could not perceive magical creatures like Dementors, which exist only in the spiritual and mental dimensions, though Dementors could still absorb a Muggle's soul due to the properties of their mental dimension.
The process for a Muggle to acquire the spiritual dimension was frighteningly simple:
Create a magical construct on both the material and mental planes.
Resonate with a mysterious entity on the spiritual plane.
Connect with that entity to establish a link to the spiritual plane, thereby granting access to magical power.
This mysterious entity could be a powerful demon, a pagan god, an extraordinary sorcerer, or, most terrifyingly, a mad Outer God.
Such spiritual attachments were monumentally dangerous. Demons would seize the chance to possess your body; sorcerers would turn you into a powerless puppet; and the external gods...
Tiera had experienced this attachment firsthand. The permanently empty sensation in her left pinky finger was the terrifying souvenir of that encounter.
She strongly suspected that she had been a Muggle—a two-dimensional being—in this life, and that she only acquired her spiritual dimension by spiritually connecting with the entity behind the Seven Chapters of the Mysterious Lord Secret Scripture.
After all, she had never received an acceptance letter in her previous life, nor did she have any memories of unusual magical outbursts as a child in this life.
She wasn't just a Muggle-born witch; she was an engineered witch. And that meant she had a debt to pay to a power far greater and more immediate than Lord Voldemort.