author's notes/disclaimer
I have dyslexia, I am using speech recognition software to write this story, then I have Opera Web browser read it back to me.
If it sounds right in Opera then it sounds right to me. I am writing this as a way to improve my reading and spelling so please don't be too critical of my grammar. I will do my best to check my work.
this story is about myself I will try and write as I believe I would have coped if I discovered I was a wizard at 11 and with my dyslexia and other issues how I would have coped
this is NOT a superpowered self insert story it about me barely surviving
This will be set roughly in modern time I cannot really go looking up the 90s every time I wish to make an offhand reference to something
"The boy who cannot read"
chapter 1
prologue
My name is James Right , I'm in my fifth year of education at the fine and grand institution of Hogwarts cough cough.
seriously it isn't that bad compared to having no magical powers . in the next few chapters. I'm going to break down the odd key moments and memorable event of my first few years at Hogwarts then I will make a reasonable attempt into trying to keep a more up-to-date diary of events is of Lord James I might get the odd fact or two out of order as I never claim to have the best memory but this is roughly what happened for me gaining my Hogwarts letter to ruling the world oh wait I haven't done that yet but when I do I will certainly write about it here not that I expect anybody to read this as the book is enchanted to wipe your memory afterwards this is just for my amusement and writing practice so here goes
back when I was a little tiny 11-year-old
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when I was 11 years old we had a very strange encounter, when we were living in our house just outside Newport South Wales.
I can still remember parts of that day mainly down to retelling, as my memory of that age is hazy.
Basically one day an insane nutty woman came to our home and persuaded us to let her inside and then proceeded to inform us that there was a hidden magical Society etc etc and that I had a place in a School for witchcraft and wizardry. We all seemed quite excited until it was mentioned offhandedly that it was a boarding school but she did not use that word because when she was mentioning the term times we were livid, shocked and outraged as it is like somebody offering you the winning lottery ticket and then telling you to claim it you have to be gang rape by a group of elephants or at least that's how the sacrifice seem to me looking back. I didn't know how I would cope, I was nothing like other 11-year-olds with learning difficulties, I was severely dyslexic and shy and probably a bit autistic and my teacher was shocked that I wouldn't want to stay in a boarding school .Then my parents explained how basically I could not read, my reading age was of a 6 and a half year old and then the teacher was totally shocked like she has never heard of somebody who couldn't read or spell much more than their own name.
She seemed to lose it when my parents ranted at going through all the specialist help I have received, all the 1to1 teaching I had had and how the family was in the process of moving to Somerset , England where we would live in a village near a private boys school for dyslexics and how I was going to get the best education possible but we could all see the advantages, just a few seconds waving with that piece of wood she carried we felt torn the teacher said she wanted to try and persuade us so she offered to still carry out her tour to the magical shopping centre in London even if we were going to tell her to shove in up her ass we still wanted to see true Magic and so she got a length of rope and she explained to myself, my parents and my sister (two years younger) that by holding onto the rope it would teleport us to London. At this stage we knew she could have easily caused us pain and she hasn't so we at least trusted her that she wasn't going to teleport us some where already dangerous with the logic that if she wanted us dead we would already be so .
"activate"
I have never particularly liked rollercoasters and related ride so when we were teleported a few hundred miles in seconds it was the worst experiences so far of my young life,
Splat.
We landed on the floor in pain, my sister ,mother and father also was splattered too the ground , I was very concerned as my mother had bad legs. I felt very sick, some of the worst seasickness, car sickness and fear of heights, needles, dieing and being beaten up at the same time combined. I didn't stand up for a good minute, but I was one of the first on my feet and my father my mother landed nastily at this point. I was incredibly angry with this supposed teacher, she came over then and didn't seem sympathetic in the slightest.
couple of minutes later we were all back on our feet and looking ill more than ill she then wanted us to watch her open some magical gateway. She explained quite loudly we needed to tap a certain brick with a wand
Then we were shown one of the greatest feats of engineering we have ever seen until that point later revealed to be nothing more than a parlour trick and in we went
"Welcome," said the deputy head, "to Diagon Alley."
it was as though we stepped into a fantasyland the 18th-century Street and shop will quite brimming with mysterious magical items.
We walked along looking in all directions with wonder while she ranted a way about magical knows what.
she quickly had it impressed upon her that telling me something and not my parents was ludicrous especially calling me Mr Right after the fourth time me asking my parents who she was trying to talk to she got the hint my name was James or James Right and that she should always address my parents and if they felt it was something I needed to know they would explain it to me in a manner I would understand the batty old teacher still couldn't understand that I was probably the most mentally disabled child she had ever came across.
She led us to a bank trying to explain that non-magical financial systems didn't work and that we needed to exchange our currency so we reluctantly encounters a disgusting evil looking little green monster commonly referred to as goblin, certainly there was not any initial prejudice and on such a happy day we was all pretty jovial and the goblins didn't take much effort to be hated it was as though they were actively trying to lose business other than trying to actively eat us they wasn't particularly much else they could have done to have made us think worse of them.
Gave over £150 he ended up giving us six Golden galleons we were shocked 25 per galleons we then went back out into the alleyway where the teacher trying to explain that that was actually nothing he needed 9 just for a wand we were shocked not the fact that we were particularly poor it was more the fact that we are not wasteful individuals or at least me and my dad ain't and
9*£25=£225 just for a wand seemed initially very expensive.
On later Thought it actually was quite reasonable the direct interface between magic and a wizard for a mere £220 seemed quite cheap. I think the biggest shock for my family was the fact that the magical community never knew the concept of mass production they might have magic and it might speed up the processes and might make it a little bit easier but that is from an 16 century perspective and pretty sure in the 17th century they were still pretty cutting-edge and could undercut anything the rest of the country could bash out. it seemed individual quality was superior but you are never going to have anything produced cheaply produced and because of that everything appeared to be to bloodied expensive and only after several hours unable to find any cheaper shops we were forced to make a trip to Barclay's Bank back to the smelly goblin and the total we exchanged that day came to £1100.
she seemed to be flickering around a few different groups of first-generation families. We never really had the chance to interact with them when. then she wanted us to meet her at 2 o'clock in a private meeting room in the pub and so we attended.
we counted 4 other families that also attended and she gave a while rehearsed speech about what it means to be a wizard and my legal responsibilities.
it was made quite clear that wizards do not care about non-magical government. They're not the slightest bit scared by them, and that if the non-magical world became a problem. The wizards could easily with just a few spells have any non-magical army easily forget the ability to hold a weapon and so forth.
wizards Don't care about normal laws customs financial systems. it was repeatedly reinforced the culture was extremely different and that the wizards would fight pretty strongly to keep it.
it was made quite clear that wizards would easily kill to keep the secret and that there was entire departments of wizards regularly monitoring non-magical government that once or twice a decade a Stupid first-generation wizard would get into their mind to release the secret.
when she made a big point in trying to make it clear that magical Britain people and culture was to be left alone.
she wanted to make it really simple and clear that we need to respect the law's we don't have to believe in them or accept their fair
all we had to do was understand that magical cops were extremely powerful in that they are fully prepared to mind control remove memories or even kill you if you've endangered the magical community
she said a few years ago with the advancement of the non-magical world in the last century. A few first generation families became quite arrogant and thort they could take on and ignore the magical government just because they had 21st-century technology and guns and how it took a junior cop less than a couple of hours to destroy the whole operation
she then got out the paperwork and signed away.
The school would subsidise the majority of the school fees with the condition that when I leave I would have to start paying back at a pretty good interest rate and the nasty contract and it was nasty could have your wand confiscated until he started making repayments demonstrating 18th-century bailiffs were a lot more hands-on and I liked it I really felt I could get into this new lifestyle.
if you borrow money and you don't pay it back they should be bloody consequences of this modern day nonsense it is so easy to run away from debt in the normal world.
all I could picture was sending goblins after people I started to appreciate the bastards.
at 4 o'clock she would teleporters home and we explored and explored and the only major conclusion we could come to was start remortgaging everything and start by magical items like crazy.
we had the greatest hope for in a couple of years I should be able to make these items ourselves and save a lot of money.
and so we spent most of the time just focusing on general knowledge than anything else. even the books was expensive.
I really did not like the idea of boarding just like the idea of being gang raped by an elephant.
but holding my wand for the first time felt powerful and the fear it could be taken from me and my magic bound and banished was terrifying to taunt me with grand powers and then remove them seem be torture.
my sister had the bright idea that we should buy 4 chairs and so we luckily managed to make it back to the pub in time for 4pm.
we put them in a circle sat on them and at 4 o'clock she teleported us home while sat down and we didn't go splat into the floor she was quite shocked and surprised at our genius
chapter End