Clank Clank.
Clank Clank.
Clank Clank.
The sound that had lulled me to sleep was now what woke me. I opened my eyes slowly and glimpsed a strange sight from underneath my hat's brim.
For a moment, I had no idea where I was. I stared blankly at the wall that seemed to have a big window on it. The countryside was rushing past in a blur of green and brown, broken occasionally by a farmhouse, a distant road, or a cluster of trees.
I slowly lifted a hand and pushed my pointed hat away from my eyes before sitting up in the train compartment.
The train. Right.
I turned my head towards the window and for a while just watched the scenery rush past me.
Clank Clank.
Clank Clank.
Clank Clank.
The rhythmic noise of the train seemed almost hypnotic.
The year was over now. I was alive and sane.
Well, mostly anyway
My first year at Hogwarts had somehow managed to feel both longer and considerably shorter than I had expected, or it had any right to.
After the Forbidden Forest, I had changed my training somewhat. I did not stop entirely exactly.
That would have been absurd, but I had stopped pushing myself quite so hard.
The amount of raw mana I had forced through my wand that night had been… concerning.
I still wasn't entirely sure how much I had actually released. I had simply reached for everything I had and pushed it out in one furious burst.
It worked, lucky for me, but my arm was sore for a week after. Like I had pulled a magical muscle.
So, instead, I had spent much of the remaining year working with my ring foci.
It was a whole other ball game. There were no incantations or wand movements. You could shape the mana with your hands if you wanted to, but that wasn't necessary for the spell to manifest. It was more useful for fiddling with the details.
I experimented with how to make use of the spells I already knew how to cast with a wand and how to translate them into ring spells, like I started to call them in the privacy of my own mind.
My mind was the exact thing that finally cracked the code on how to do it.
During one of my evening meditations, which I had started in the autumn to build up the foundations for mind magics, I came across a memory of myself reading the banned book called Foundational Magic Theory.
I had gotten the book from Scribner's Exchange, and in that book there was a part about how a proper wizard should have a representation of their spells in their minds as symbols, sigils or abstract forms. This should strengthen his connection to his magic and the spells itself. Guiding him closer to the mastery of said spells.
That got me excited, after months of trying to focus and manipulate mana through the ring alone I had finally somewhere to start now.
First I did as the book said, and created something in the galaxy that was the representation in my mind for the spells I knew.
I made or imagined an asteroid and imagined a Hawthorn tree on that asteroid. The tree was to signify my wand and through that spells I had mastered or learned with said wand.
I was just about to start imagining the spells, when silvery things started to appear around the tree. They floated around the tree in all different ways. Just by looking at one I could immediately tell which spell it was and that seemed to make the representation even stronger. They looked like letters or notes yet neither. They reminded me of runes too but they weren't quite runes either. or if they were, they were not known to me.
I was satisfied with that, then I repeated the exercise of making an asteroid and adding a wooden ring just like the one I had on my finger. I made it stand on its edge which made it look like a round door to an invisible hobbit home. It made me chuckle.
Soon I was trying to encourage one or another symbol around the tree to come with me to the other asteroid to get to know the ring, and even then I was very sure it was mad behavior to negotiate with my own spells.
It was not as easy as that,of course not. Getting one of them to the ring asteroid, as it turned out, was just the bare minimum to start even trying to convert it to use with a ring. I sat hours with one spell in my metaphorical hands trying to "feel" how it should be cast without a wand.
In the two months left after the Forbidden Forest incident, I only managed to convert or understand four spells to the ring.
I'm embarrassed to admit it took me the first two to realize that my own familiarity with the magic was the factor on how quickly I understood it.
I have to admit though ring foci uses so much less mana when I cast anything at all with it. Since from the four spells I managed to convert two were my " Bolthole spell" that was previously so mana hungry, now done with a ring it cost barely the same as a knockback jinx done with a wand.
Another one was naturally my " predatory stalking charm" which was what finally clued me in on what made them easier to learn.
There was something satisfying about getting more out of the same amount of mana simply because I had stopped wasting it.
I looked down at my hand and smiled down at the ring in my left index finger and twisted it with my thumb. Then I looked outside again.
The exams I had expected to be difficult were, unfortunately, almost insultingly easy
Most of the written papers were little more than an opportunity to demonstrate that I had, in fact, been reading the books I had spent most of the year reading.
Transfiguration was the only one that required anything approaching effort.
That was largely because it was so mana-intensive.
Under normal circumstances I probably could have forced my way through some of the more demanding practical work.
After the Forest, I wasn't willing to do that.
So I had been considerably more conservative with my mana than I might otherwise have been.
It had made the subject slightly more difficult. Which, I suppose, was a healthy thing altogether. The most difficult part was to stay in the middle and not overdo things, I was holding firm on my decision to stay out of the limelight as much as possible.
Even if I had failed miserably for the most parts, my school records showed me to be a pretty average student as planned.
Good thing at least some plans go without a hitch.
There was one other thing I had done before the year ended, After Professor Quirrell disappeared and the rumours about our resident saviour started
I had gone to see Harry.
I had no reason to be sneaking into the Hospital Wing after hours.
But I wanted answers, and I wanted them straight from Harry not from the rumour mill, or from overheard conversations.
Not even from my personal spymistress, who was beside herself with worry since someone had put her hero in the Hospital Wing. So I went.
Harry had been sitting up in bed doing something wildly uncharacteristic of him. He was reading a book when I slipped into the Hospital Wing. He also looked at me with far more suspicion than he did before.
"What are you doing here?" he whispered as I approached.
"I have questions." I said calmly and stepped into a darker corner next to his bed, mainly to maintain my image rather than actually hide.
Harry had stared at me for a few seconds since I did not say anything,then he just sighed.
"Fine. What do you want to know?" he said tiredly.
"The truth of course, about the third-floor corridor." I said jovially and his expression had darkened immediately.
"What about it?"
"What was behind the trapdoor?"
Harry hesitated for a few silent seconds, then he took a deep breath and just told me. He told me everything he could remember.
The trapdoor and the Cerberus named Fluffy guarding it. The Devil's Snare beneath it and how they had gotten past it.
The flying keys,the chessboard and the room after that where a mountain troll was already knocked out, and finally a Snape's potion riddle.
Then he told me about a peculiar mirror he had seen at Christmas and how it was waiting for him in the last room. Then he spoke about Professor Quirrell.
I listened without interrupting.
Quirrell hadn't simply been involved as a proxy, and he wasn't merely trying to steal the stone.
There had been someone else, or something else.
Someone who had been controlling him, using him, speaking through him.
Voldemort.
The name itself meant very little to me at first. I had heard it of course. when I made a nuisance of myself and kept asking Hagrid who it was, the one we weren't supposed to name.
That and when he said you-know-who and I went "no! I don't know, please tell me" Apparently it got really tiresome, fast.
Harry paused at this point, looking at me waiting for something.
"what?" I asked puzzled
" well I did not think you would believe me," He admitted honestly.
" oh why would you lie about something like that? you don't really seem like the type." I said amused
Then Harry told me about the unicorn blood.
It had been Quirrell who drank it or rather
Voldemort. Then he finished how he had with his touch alone killed Quirrell.
I had gone very quiet after that. I remembered the Forbidden Forest and the unicorn.
its side and immediate surroundings painted silver with its own blood.
I had had a month of wondering what sort of person could do that.
Apparently, I had already met him,or something close enough to him.
Though it made me a little ill.
Harry had looked at me with concern.
"Are you all right? I did not mean to kill him" He said with concern evident.
"No, I don't blame you one bit Harry, the thing deserved worse. Also no I'm not okay and I'm pretty sure I won't be in a while but eventually perhaps" I answered with an honesty I wasn't used to showing.
He had frowned but his lips twitched as he suppressed a relieved smile.
"I thought you might say that, also to be honest I didn't feel much of anything about it" He whispered looking down.
"good that's how it should be when getting rid of vermin, just don't make a habit of it." I said flippantly
For a while, neither of us had said anything.
"Thank you." I finally said.
Harry blinked.
"That's it?"
"For now." I confirmed and started at the door.
"oh, here's a get well present for you." I put an envelope of assorted tarot cards on the table at the end of his bed, already full of other presents.
" I took the liberty of adding a note on how to use them in case you haven't done so before. Now get better, Hero." I smirked over my shoulder and walked off at the sound of his chuckling.
The countryside outside the window blurred into another stretch of green hills and farms.
I leaned my head against the cool glass.
The year had been strange. Dangerous and educational definitely.
Occasionally ridiculous in wildly different ways,I had made friends as well as something that could charitably be called enemies.
I had acquired several injuries, none that I reported except the curses I could not undo myself. One detention that put me back on straight and narrow for good and a growing collection of questions about the world I had joined.
Last but definitely not the least I acquired one extremely opinionated house-elf who had gone full on spy on me just for kicks, or so I assume.
I had also learned something rather important.
Knowledge and power were certainly useful.
But neither was worth much if I didn't understand what I was doing with them or how to properly apply them.
I closed my eyes again.
Clank Clank.
Clank Clank.
Clank Clank.
England was somewhere ahead and, apparently, I had six more years of Hogwarts waiting for me when I returned in the fall.
Bang!
The door was yanked open even though I specifically locked it with magic and two redheads barged in.
"Aha! I told you Fred oldboy,did I not?"said the first one with a deerstalker hat on his head waving a magnifying glass on his right hand as he pointed accusingly at me with his left" Did I not tell you this must be the compartment our broody Slytherin partner is surely brooding in!?"
He demanded to know from his twin who followed him in with a cane and what was hopefully a fake mustache since it was very much black not red like his hair.
"I'm George today old bean, you're Fred. Also my good fellow you said the very same about six other compartments we already broke into and intruded so it was bound to happen at some point" he pointed out helpfully as they sat opposite me with beaming smiles while the one claiming to be Fred closed and magically locked the door once more.
I sighed " Fred assumed George assumed. How may this brooding one be of assistance?" I asked tiredly
Fred assumed dropped a small leather pouch onto the seat beside me which landed with a surprisingly satisfying clink.
I looked at it, then Fred assumed.
"What's this?" I asked not at all my usual sharp self.
"Your ill-gotten gains," George assumed said smugly and twirled his mustache like a cartoon villain.
"Our ill-gotten gains," Fred assumed, corrected immediately.
"Your portion of our ill-gotten gains." They chorused in unison.
I picked up the pouch and loosened the cord.
Gold gleamed inside.
"Five Galleons? that much from a few months?" I asked.
"Its just your share old boy," Fred corrected.
"We sold that many?" I was a bit surprised while George made a face.
"That's not that many."
"People remain tragically incapable of recognising genius before everyone else has already done so" Fred explained with a headshake.
"Give them time."
I rolled one of the coins between my fingers. It reminded me from the last time I did so and showed a girl a muggle magic trick. I decided to give twins something to gawk about.
"Is this real gold?" I asked with as casual a tone as I managed and put the coin in my left fist and pretended to squeeze it as hard as I could.
"But of course it is, we wouldn't cheat our partner no matter how mad of a hatter he.." George said then his voice trailed off as I opened my fist and he saw that the coin was gone.
I felt around my palm with my other hand looking confused then looked up at the twins gobsmacked expressions" you sure?" I asked, barely hiding my amusement as they spluttered and went to dig through their pockets and proceeded to bite and squeeze their coins to check their authenticity.
Meanwhile I casually rolled the coin on my knuckles once more waiting for them to realize I was just joking.
"Aah this one is real too George," Fred said then glanced at me and stopped for a second eyes going from the coin on my hand to the bag in my lap" George..since our resident hatter seemed to be rolling a coin on his hand and I can see the bag open in his lap and only four coins in residence I believe we have been bamboozled brother o mine"
George who was fishing yet another coin from his boot this time paused his mustache hanging from his lip and looked up owlishly
" ah, yes I knew that" he said with a nod as he went to put his shoe back on.
Fred nodded knowingly to his brother" Element dairy my dear weasley, I was just pretending to see if you knew"
I almost laughed at that.
It seems someone has introduced them to Holmes and Watson, poorly I might add.
George finally managed to get the shoe on and looked at Fred annoyed as he corrected his mustache. " Fred quit adding the cow line to every sentence you start. It's definitely not proper, besides I'm almost certain you got the line wrong. It should be a sediment fairy. something to do with rocks"
I chuckled at that " yes but to get back in business boys, we made money did we not? so congratulations to us" I said with a wide smile offering a hand to each crossed one over another and twins took them with enthusiasm and shook simultaneously.
" You still must tell us how you did that trick with the coin, but let's move on to the future of our venture shall we partner of ours? So maddest of hatters the halls of Hogwarts has had since Dumbledore ran the halls as a kid"
I smirked " Well Tweedledum and Tweedledee, we first need to make them better I think, and when I say we, I mean you."
The twins looked at each other and laughed " haha got you there tweedledum! hey your Tweedledum I'm Tweedledee!" they said at the same time ignoring the real point.
Suddenly they got serious and nodded at each other as George got up and leaned against the compartment door.
"Which brings us to summer."
I looked up at him a bit puzzled, then turned to look at Fred who grinned.
"Keep yours on you. We want to know if they still work when we're nowhere near Hogwarts. If yes then what kind of issues do they have if any"
Ah. I hadn't considered that. Or rather, I had considered range eventually. I simply hadn't realised we were about to acquire the perfect opportunity to test it.
"Absolutely."
I pulled my journal from my bag.
George groaned theatrically
"There he goes." He said to Fred
"Quiet. This is important." I buffed him and wrote DISTANCE TESTING across the top of a fresh page.
"Where are you staying?"
"The Burrow." They said immediately
"I don't know where that is. Or what it is, is it a hobbit burrow or a rabbit burrow?"
"Ottery St Catchpole." They said looking confused by the hobbit and rabbit question but I had no time or patience to educate these poor fools now.
I wrote it down.
"I'll be in London."
Fred leaned forward.
"So we send something every week?"
"At predetermined times initially. Then randomly. Record when you send it and when it appears."
"Different lengths?"
"Different amounts of information, yes. Symbols as well as words. Drawings if they'll take them. We should also test simultaneous messages."
George's grin slowly widened.
"Now you're talking."
"And don't keep the book in one place. Take it around with you occasionally. If distance matters, we need to distinguish distance between books from distance between the books and wherever they were originally made."
Fred stared at me.
"Have you been thinking about this?"
"I am now."
"Dangerous past time, or so I've been told." George sniggered and I ignored him.
"We also need to improve the enchantment." Fred added similarly ignoring George who shrugged and muttered " everyones a critic"
"They're selling already. Why bother when it works"
"At Hogwarts." I said and both twins looked at me questioningly.
I tapped the card.
"Hogwarts is useful because we have hundreds of people living inside one relatively contained area. That's excellent for testing. It tells us very little about whether these are actually useful outside it."
Fred's expression changed.
He understood first his eyes lighting up with an unholy glee.
"How far?" he whispered
"Eventually?" I asked and he nodded so I thought about it.
"Anywhere, think big boys. This is our ticket and we have years to freely tinker with it and test it" I said waving my hands around like I was painting a picture for them.
There was a brief silence.
George sat down.
"Anywhere anywhere?"
"If the underlying sympathetic connection doesn't decay with distance—and honestly, why should it?—then yes."
Fred and George exchanged one of those looks that suggested an entire conversation had taken place without involving me.
"Alex," Fred said slowly.
"Yes?"
"How much do you reckon the Ministry would pay for something that lets them send writing instantly from London to Scotland?"
I smiled.
"Wrong question."
George's eyebrows rose.
"What's the right one?"
"How much would the ICW pay for something that lets them send writing instantly from London to America?"
The silence of the room seemed to be pressurised and building up to an explosion. Fred's grin slowly appeared first. Soon George followed.
"International Confederation," George said.
"Eventually."
"Aurors."
"Possibly."
"Gringotts."
"Different security requirements."
"Businesses."
"Definitely."
Fred leaned back, looking delighted.
"And here we were selling them to second-years so they could ask each other what was for dinner."
"Which is precisely what we should continue doing."
That confused both of them.
"Why?"
I held up the card.
"Because if these survive several hundred Hogwarts students abusing them for completely stupid reasons, we'll know we have a good design."
George considered that.
"Hogwarts was meant as a testing environment all along?"
I nodded simply and Fred looked wounded.
"That sounds much less fun."
"The test environment has already produced five Galleons just for me alone." I pointed out
"Fair point."
I tucked the pouch into my robes. Five Galleons today and potentially considerably more someday.
Money wasn't really the interesting part anymore.
If we could make the connection stable across hundreds of miles, strengthen the protections, authenticate individual users and eventually make the books accept more than one kind of magical signature…
Then we hadn't made enchanted cards.
We had made the beginning of a communications system.
Clank Clank.
Clank Clank.
Clank Clank.
Soon the train started to slow down and twins rushed to their compartment to get their things.
I reluctantly put my hat away in my suitcase size trunk and pulled the muggle long coat out along with a newsboy that Madam Malkin had sent me after exams.
I had complained to her that I had gotten used to wearing the hat and the robes. So I would be needing to buy a proper long coat and a hat of some kind that would at least feel a bit normal and would help me to blend in the muggle world.
Two days later the package arrived with approval and the two items, apparently it was unsightly run around without a hat. I pulled the coat on and put the Newsboy on my head and looked outside hoping to see Malkin or Tom and I did see them standing next to each other. Sadly standing next to them was a Daphne Greengrass copy, just a few decades older.
Oh right, I almost forgot.
I sighed but it was time to face the music.
Perhaps I could still reveal Tweak and save myself ? No, I'm almost certain she isn't going to eviscerate me just for something like this, besides it happened in the privacy of their home, not in the school where everyone would have seen and speculated.. Perhaps I will live to see another day.
I thought hopefully as I stepped out of the train to the spring sun and walked towards them with my much improved fake smile that I could almost swear was getting more and more genuine the closer I got.
"So this is the young man vying for the hand of my daughter in marriage."
I heard a smooth but surprisingly deep voice coming from the Daphne copy as she looked at me from head to toe.
"No ma'am I'm not suicidal" my mouth had gained autonomy and apparently my brain had registered the elder Greengrass as her daughter because I have no idea why would I say something like that to her mother.
Her face went from surprise to laughter immediately discarding her stern facade and was still laughing as Daphne stopped next to me looking at her mother puzzled.
"What did I miss?" She asked " Mother? did we not agree you would do your best to have Alex sweat a bit!" she asked, confused and a bit annoyed Tracey giggling next to her.
"Oh honey, I think I just found you a husband" her mother purred, still chuckling as she gave me a predatory smirk and I could practically feel the blood draining from my face.
Oh, oh no.