May 1988
Aaron,
Forbidden Forest. 6 am.
Tell no one.
M
It was dark when Aaron left the castle. Eni had the training wand and he didn't want to wake Bill or Charlie up to borrow one, so he took the lantern from the storage closet and headed for the forest.
Aaron walked with the lantern swinging in front of him. When he entered the forest, he ignored what sounded like something moving in the branches above his head. The sound stayed with him until he found Moody standing in a clearing a half mile into the woods. Aaron set the lantern down on the ground between them. Even after sunrise, there wouldn't be much more light this far into the forest.
Moody took a vial out of his coat and handed it to Aaron. "Drink this. The taste leaves a lot to be desired, but it will remove your trace for a few hours so The Ministry doesn't lose their shite."
Aaron removed the cork and upended the vial. The flavor was battery acid mixed with milk that had turned. It smelled worse. He gagged twice, but he got it down.
"Good," Moody said, "now we can get some work done."
Aaron reached for the shackle and Moody stopped him, covering Aaron's hand with his own.
"When I met you, I planned on giving you the same speech I give all the young Aurors who think they can apparate all over the goddamn place without consequences," Moody said. "You've experienced some of the consequences, so I don't think I need to go into detail about apparition killing wizards and witches and splinching off body parts."
"No," Aaron said, "you don't."
"Then we'll move on to control and endurance," Moody said. "From what I saw last time, your constant state of flux between locations drains your energy fast. You're making hundreds, maybe thousands, of micro-jumps."
"It's exhausting," Aaron agreed.
"Endurance comes from magic and your physical fitness. Since your magic apparently leaves something to be desired, you're going to spend a lot of time running. Whenever you have time, and even when you don't, I want you pounding the gravel or whatever is around the castle. Got it?"
"Yeah, ok, I'll run."
"And eat," Moody said. Aaron's last growth spurt had left him skinny. "A lot."
"Fine, yeah," Aaron said.
"Alright," Moody said. He waved his wand and Aaron's shackle came off and fell on the ground. "I want you to keep yourself here as long as you can. Let yourself see the . . . what did you call them?"
"Layers," Aaron said. "It's just the way the locations look when they're superimposed."
"Right. Let yourself see the layers," Moody said. He picked up the shackle and handed it to Aaron. "When you reach the point where you can't control it anymore and you're going to either apparate or pass out, put this back on."
Twenty minutes later, nothing had happened. Aaron started pacing around the clearing, his shadow moving across the trees around them and flickering over the ground. Moody stood with his arms folded over his chest, watching him.
"You think all the moving will help or something?"
"I told you I'm shite at magic," Aaron said, walking. "You shouldn't have come all the way out here."
"What? You want to try this again when I'm not here? So they can send you back to St. Mungo's or you can lose a body part?"
"I know," Aaron said. "I'm trying. I've never been able to just pull magic out of the air like everyone else."
Moody stepped in front of Aaron to stop him from pacing. "You think you're the only wizard who has ever struggled with accessing magic? Magic is its own monster, Aaron. It's erratic. It's not always going to let you reach out and grab it; you have to make it work for you. Sometimes, you have to force it to respond and do what you want it to do."
What's wrong, mudblood? Scared of magic?
Am I?
"Every time I use magic, it feels like I'm grasping at the edges of a fog that dissolves as soon as I try to take more," Aaron said.
"It doesn't dissolve when you fucking apparate," Moody said. "That's no small amount of magic you're playing with. Stop trying to grab for something that isn't there and tap into whatever it is you feel when your body is trying to tear itself apart."
"How exactly do I do that?"
"You stop waiting for magic to like you and start making it your bitch."
It was the first time Moody saw Aaron smile. It was a refreshing change from the serious looks of frustration.
"Hogwarts is a good school," Moody said, "but they don't teach enough real-world magic. It's why The Ministry has a fucking shortage of Aurors. Most of the students who end up here can just pull out a wand and turn tricks the first day on the fucking train. The basics come easy and they don't spend a lot of time struggling with magic, or learning how to mutate it into something that works for them instead of the other way around. The professors aren't any better. They've all gotten too fucking comfortable. They forgot how to teach students the side of magic that takes grit."
Moody continued, "And they sure as shite didn't know what to do with you."
"Yeah, they did," Aaron said. "They took me out of classes that required me to use magic. It was easier. For them and for me."
"Like I said, too fucking comfortable," Moody said. "Are you ready to get uncomfortable?"
"Yes."
"I know you are," Moody said. He took a few steps back. "Now, make it do what you want. Fucking summon it."
Aaron stood still. The first thing he thought of was broken glass. He fixated on it until he could feel a shard tearing through the skin on his arm. He un-clenched the part of his stomach he held in a knot and let himself get a little dizzy, and a little nauseous, until the back of his throat tasted bitter.
He didn't wait for the layers to surprise him. He summoned the Gryffindor common room, pulling at the parts of his brain where the strongest memories of it were stored; where the smell of fireplace soot mixed with parchment and spilled ink and the sound of Charlie's laugh. It took its time and faded into his vision slowly, lapping over the trees, the lantern, and Moody. He heard the fire crackle. The common room pulled on him, but he pushed back against it, feeling for the forest and making his hold there stronger.
The city street Is it Glasgow? Is it even a street I've been on or is it from someone else? Does it fucking matter? came without being summoned. He saw the pavement that had torn his palms apart last summer. He heard traffic and saw cars just ahead of where he stood a few steps off a curb. The street threatened and pulled on him.
The familiar cold energy shot up his spine. Fine, you want to play, magic?
Aaron summoned the dark library from a school that wasn't Hogwarts. He summoned the hallway outside his hospital room at St. Mungo's. The sounds overlapped; voices, traffic, the fireplace, and dead silence. The traffic was sharp; the voices rose and fell. He made himself take his hands off his ears. He hadn't even noticed he was using them to block the noise.
He looked through the layers and saw Moody. I'm still here. I can fucking do this.
The common room, street, and the library pulled at his skin. It burned.
The park came out of nowhere. The sudden, crushing pull of it shook him. Seeing the park made bile rise in the back of his throat. He shifted toward it, stopped, and made himself look for the crushed leaves and dirt that was the forest floor. He pulled on the forest as hard at the park and the rest of the locations pulled on him, shifting somewhere between all of them.
Moody watched Aaron's body blur.
Aaron shook, from the micro-jumps and now exhaustion.
"How many . . . you see?" Moody asked, the man's voice cutting through the traffic and the rest of the noise.
"Five," Aaron said, his voice fading in and out.
"Try for more."
Aaron wiped sweat off his forehead. He was dizzy and sick. He didn't know if he could pull in any more layers, but he had gotten this far. It was the first time he felt like he was in control, and he wanted to get drunk on the sensation.
He summoned one of his third grade classrooms, picturing it before another layer had a chance to take over on its own. When it was there, he summoned the Charms classroom. He summoned Moody's flat. And the clearing where the dragon had died. The last one pulled hard, but he pulled harder.
"Nine now," Aaron said, "ten including the forest."
Moody raised his wand and cast what looked like a shield. He projected it over Aaron. The edges of the shield disintegrated on impact; the rest warped, tangled, and tore apart.
Moody watched. Holy shite.
Aaron collapsed on his hands and knees, dripping sweat. His arms shook from exertion. He grabbed the iron shackle and clasped it around his wrist. Everything stopped.
Aaron fell forward. He choked and coughed, dry heaving wile saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth.
Moody stood over him. "That was fucking good work."
Aaron nodded and spit onto the ground.
"You summoned magic like the fucking wizard you are."
It was good to hear it. Aaron wiped the sweat off his face with his shirt.
"The Archimedes Field worked," Moody said.
"Was that the shield?"
"Yes," Moody said. "We use Archimedes Fields to locate illegal portkeys. They are used to detect displacements in space. And you tore it apart."
Aaron wiped his mouth. "I'm displacing space."
"You're directly manipulating space; warping and layering it over itself; folding it until it pulls you through."
Aaron had read a book like that once. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line. He wasn't folding time, but it was the closest analogy he could think of. "Like a tesseract?"
"Call it whatever you want," Moody said. "It explains why wards do fuck all to stop you. The wards are either bypassed or torn apart at the interface of your body and the layers."
"It's not apparition," Aaron said, "not technically."
"No, it isn't," Moody said. "But let's not tell anyone that."
