Crossworlds 1 - Harry Potter
Part 2
The Leaky Cauldron. The Wizarding World.
After getting my hands on a decent amount of cash I'd abandoned the orphanage and I'd made my way to Diagon Alley after taking on my adult form so that I could book a room here for the rest of the summer. I intended to explore the alley in great detail and to add to my research material by visiting the second hand book store many times.
That could wait until tomorrow as it was currently late into the night and now that I was out of the way of the muggles I was free to begin to explore what I could do with a magic wand and the reading materials that I had acquired so far.
"Lumos," I said.
The spell lit up the tip of my wand with a light much brighter than any that I had managed to produce before now and for a time I simply waited for something to happen. Only there was no owl from the Ministry to tell me off for performing magic outside of school nor had there been since I'd started practising. I'd even tested my wand back at the orphanage while in my child form and nothing had happened.
"The Trace detects magical activity around underage witches and wizards, so the Ministry of Magic knows when underage magic is performed"
I'd just read that part from my Magical Theory textbook, a subject which not only explained ideas on how magic could be used but also it speculated where magic might come from, they were just theories, no one knew for certain where magic came from or why it worked. The book also gave examples of how magic was used in society.
I didn't recall this in the books or the movies, however, it does make sense that there is a class like this that you can choose to take as an elective in the third year and onwards. The reason you buy the book in your first year is that some of the text covers how magic is used to create spells, as well as explaining why they have certain effects and this should be useful in other classes such as Charms.
For now I was trying to figure out if the Trace would ever even apply to me. All I knew of it was that The Trace was a charm which allowed the Ministry to know of any magic cast in the vicinity of wizards and witches who were under seventeen years of age, which technically I wasn't.
I just happened to look and sound like an 11-year-old boy. If it was just a matter of physical age then you could break The Trace with an ageing potion like how the Weasley twins tried to get past Dumbledore's age line to get at the Goblet of Fire. As such it must track your age another way and if it worked on the age of the soul for example then I was more than old enough and my mind was more advanced as well.
According to book, which I guess Harry Potter never bothered to read since he didn't know about The Trace, when any magical activity was performed in the vicinity of the underage individual, the Improper Use of Magic Office within the Ministry of Magic was alerted to the spell that was used, and to the location of the caster as well as the time it was cast.
The Charm allowed the Ministry to track underage magic, which was banned under the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery. The Trace automatically broke upon a wizard or witch's seventeenth birthday. It was impossible for the Trace to continue to function on a person over the age of seventeen, and it could not be placed on an adult, as such it might fail when it was cast on me.
If it could be cast on adults then tracking suspected Death Eaters would have been really easy since all anyone would have to do to prove that they were bad was place The Trace on them and record what magic they used and compare the location recorded to the sight of recent Death Eater attacks. Although you could still claim to be under the Imperius Curse at that point so it wouldn't have been a perfect method of sorting out who were the real Death Eaters.
The Trace doesn't seem to be applied before you get to Hogwarts as Hermione Granger admitted to successfully trying out 'a few simple spells' just prior to her first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, just as I was doing now, yet she never received any notification that this was banned even though, as a Muggle-born witch, it is unlikely that there were any other wizards or witches in her vicinity whom the Ministry could have believed cast the magic instead.
Perhaps the Ministry did not monitor pre-Hogwarts students, because their magic was normally uncontrollable, and therefore they weren't considered legally responsible for their magic. This did leave me to wonder what Muggleborns do if they accidentally inflate their aunts as Potter did in his third year. If they are not monitored the Ministry won't know and they can't just floo call the magical government. This seemed as if it could lead to many breaches of the International Statute of Secrecy that the magical folk depend on to keep themselves hidden from the non-magical people.
It also seemed that the Ministry must ignore when magic was used by underage wizards and witches of wizarding families because they can only detect magic done around underage wizards and witches, not who does the magic. Perhaps they expect the parents of magical households to discipline them, and to be fair the risk of exposure is minimal inside a wizarding home.
As a result of this, children born into wizarding households could practice magic under their parent's supervision before going to Hogwarts giving them an unfair advantage over Muggleborns such as myself. Yet despite this Muggleborn and those raised in the Muggle world seem to be able to keep up with their peers. I wondered if that was because younger children just couldn't learn magic very well or because the law was enforced more strictly than it might seem.
My concern was more on if The Trace would even work on me given that I was an adult. My thinking was that I should test this next summer and see if I get a warning. If not then I would be free to stay in the wizarding world and keep practising. If The Trace did work on me I would have to find a way to remove it.
There had to be a way around it because Tom Riddle murdered his muggle family before he turned 17 and framed his Uncle all without The Trace alerting anyone to the truth. If young Voldemort could figure it out then so could I.
"Lumos," I said.
Casting spells wasn't hard work, at least not spells like this, you just have to keep in mind four factors, these are wand movement, incantation, concentration and intention. The first two seemed like aids for the others, they put you in the right frame of mind, and without focus, you'd get nothing done right.
According to Magical Theory, a spell was a controlled manifestation of magic that supernaturally affected the world, such as levitating objects, conjuring fire, producing water, or stunning an individual. Most spells are cast by a witch or a wizard, and spells were often produced with an incantation and can appear as jets of light which strike their target. Because of this spells could often miss, be dodged, or blocked, either by an object or another spell.
Magical creatures don't use spells like witches and wizards do, or at least not in the same way, their power is more internal, although vampires can cast some spells, and the older they get the more cool stuff can do, like turning into bats, or fog, or control minds. Thankfully there were few vampires in Britain; they tended to live in old castles in mainland Europe for reasons of melodrama I assumed.
Werewolves were far more of a concern in this country, but they are only a danger during the full moon, although Fenrir Greyback might be an exception to this rule. If I ever saw that guy I would hopefully be able to put him down like the rabid dog he'd become.
I had an interest in wandless magic, which as the name suggests was the performance of magic without the use of a wand. Such magic was often difficult to perform and could have unexpected or volatile results if not done properly, however, I already had access to one spell that didn't require a wand since I was a red mage so perhaps I should keep the two separate and use a wand for the magic of this world so that if someone disarmed me they'd think that I was helpless because they wouldn't know about me being a Red Mage.
Usually, witches and wizards accustomed to using wands could only reliably perform wandless magic if they possessed great skill and Wandless magic was not taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. At least not to young students since there was no mention of it in my books. However, it might be possible to learn later on if I changed my mind.
Again these concerns were for later, for now, I needed to stay focused on mastering these simple spells while I had nothing other than time for study.
"Lumos" I said.
Every time I created light it became easier to do and so I would keep practising this spell and other simple ones until I mastered every spell in my books.
(Line Break)
Platform Nine and Three Quarters. The Wizarding World.
I was so getting into Ravenclaw House when I got to Hogwarts. I knew this because as soon as I went through the barrier that divided the muggle train station from the magical one I had so many questions. Like if I was still even in London? Was this platform part of the station?
I didn't think it could be because the train was facing the wrong way for this to be a platform squeezed between the others. Also as I looked down the track as far as I could see there were trees so my thinking was that the barrier was a gateway to a different location, or maybe this was something else and I simply didn't understand what I saw.
"Come on you lot, we'll be late!" a needlessly loud woman called out.
That would be Mrs Weasley, she was hard to miss given her gaggle of red-headed children, and her yelling about the Muggles getting in the way while on their side of the platform.
I and other fans had speculated that Dumbledore arranged for young Harry Potter to meet the Weasleys at the train station and to befriend Ron so that the boy would get to know some of his supporters. That's why the mother is going about Muggles and the platform number. Judging by what I'd heard while in the station and what she was going on about now, it had been no setup, she was just a loudmouth who ranted about stuff.
I did my best to avoid the banshee of a woman and placed my luggage with everyone else's, before heading into the train that had many empty compartments even though we would soon be leaving. So either Ron Weasley had indeed been ordered by Dumbledore to befriend Potter or Ron had just been trying to make friends on his own and had used a lame excuse to come and sit with Harry Potter.
"No Ginny, you can't go with them" I heard the loud woman say despite me now being inside the train "You'll go the year after Ron starts".
Little Ginny Weasley was rather adorable I thought. She looked a little smaller than in the Chamber of Secrets movie and to my complete lack of surprise tiny Ron was stuffing his face with something his mother must have given him to keep his mouth busy so that she couldn't hear his whining.
After finding somewhere to sit I took out a book which I had stored in my bottomless bag, something I'd brought on credit while at the mall in the Crossworlds, and I began to read. Since Cortana could access any information I'd read or heard I only needed to read a book once to have access to all that information, but I still needed to read every word of the text, and Cortana didn't grant me understanding of what I'd read so I still had to pay attention to the ext.
Because I'd had a month to read my textbooks I'd already absorbed all the information from the reading list. As such, I'd left my room at the Cauldron gone back into Diagon Alley, disguised myself again, changed Muggle money for wizard coins again, and then returned to the second-hand bookstore to obtain more reading material.
This included a book on the mind arts, which I was having trouble with because it's not something you can learn just from reading a book, yet I had a lot of information that I needed to hide, so I had to try and do my best.
I would need the help of a teacher, and the only staff member I knew for sure who had the right talents was Snape who was unlikely to help me just because I asked. Perhaps if I impressed him in potions he might try to read my mind and notice that I tried to protect myself, that might at least get him to bring up the subject and offer a few tips, or it could led to my exposer and that would cause me all sorts of problems.
Other than that all I could do was practise what the book advised and avoid making eye contact with people because unless you have something that connects your mind to theirs, such as Potter did with Voldemort, they need focus and eye contact to look into your mind.
I took little notice of the steam train as it pulled out of the station, and the parents cheered off their spawn as they went off to learn magic, no doubt they would miss offspring. As for me, no one had seen me off because no one in the muggle world should know where I was and no one in the magical world should care.
The train picked up speed as it started heading towards the distant school, a place that I guessed to be somewhere in Scotland. Given how long the journey was going to take and the speed of the train, it seemed to be going at a fair pace already, I figured that we'd get there sometime after dark as they did in the movies.
I sat back and let myself get lost in the pages of my books for the rest of the journey. Along the way, I did wonder if I'd acquire a best friend without trying, with them entering the compartment to start an awkward conversation, only that never happened and I felt glad as did need to fly below the radar for the first year at least. Since I didn't know the speed of the train or if the line was direct then I could only guess the distance travelled.
Thinking about the school led to me reminding myself that if I'd been followed here by the person who wanted the world-seed then they would be looking for someone who didn't fit in so I had to appear to be as dull as possible. I planned to prank some people in the hopes of appeasing Loki, but attention for that should go to the Weasley twins.
Once Potter had entered the school and interesting things started to happen I should be able to take some sort of action without drawing too much attention to myself since everyone would have their eyes on the Boy-Who-Lived, but until then it would be study and practice that took up my time. I had to safeguard the world-seed and prepare for the troubles ahead, which meant I would need to become a very powerful wizard.
I'd already decided against learning the dark arts because any villain I faced would know them better than me so my focus would be on defence and the mind arts, and that meant keeping my nose in a book.
This seemed as good a time as any to practice since we could use magic on the train it seemed, and I opened my charms book.
The Levitation Charm, known as (Wingardium Leviosa) was a charm used to make objects fly, or levitate. It was taught to first-years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry so it seemed like a good spell to practice
I'd already learned that the Levitation Charm was first developed in the sixteenth century, and warlock Jarleth Hobart is credited with its creation. On 16 July 1544, Hobart invited a large crowd of wizards, among which was the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, to witness his maiden flight at a public demonstration of his own revolutionary charm that he would place upon himself.
He climbed onto the roof of his local church and, after several speeches and a rousing performance of the national anthem he leapt, and having cast the spell successfully, he was left hovering in mid-air. At first, he seemed to have succeeded but, after having spent nearly three minutes watching him hanging in mid-air, the crowd grew impatient to see him move somewhere, and booed him.
In response to the catcalls, Hobart tried to move in mid-air, and started performing vigorous swimming movements, which produced no effect. Mistakenly believing that his clothes were making him heavier and impeding his movement, Hobart stripped thus making him fall ten feet onto the ground below, as it were the clothes that were holding him up in the air, they had been charmed by the Levitation Charm, not Hobart himself. He fell completely naked on the ground, breaking sixteen bones, and received a fine for 'outrageous silliness' from the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.
Hobart returned home, humiliated, where he realised that his spell could make objects levitate for varying lengths of time, depending on the skill of the spell-caster and on the weight of the object. He also concluded that small animals or even children could be levitated, but that they had no control whatsoever of their movement once airborne.
He thus made a second announcement, and an even larger crowd gathered to see his second demonstration of the spell, hoping for another laugh at his expense no doubt. Hobart's demonstration was, at first, far more successful than the first one: he showed the onlookers how he could easily levitate objects ranging from small rocks to fallen trees.
Hobart then decided that, for a finale, he would levitate the Chief Warlock's hat; what he managed to levitate, however, was the Chief's wig, exposing his bald head to the gathered crowd. The Chief was not amused and was determined to duel Hobart, but the Warlock levitated the Chief's robes over his head and ran for it.
This was also the first spell students learnt to cast during their Charms lessons in the first year. They would revise it in the second and their third year. If I recalled the books correctly, and of course I did thanks to my AI, The theoretical Charms O.W.L. The exam included a question on the Levitation Charm. I even recalled that Hermione Granger was the first student in her class to levitate a feather much to Ronald Weasley's annoyance, and that led to her nearly getting killed by a troll.
This was the downside to having so much information. It was hard to stop recalling it once I got going and it led to me spending far too much time on even the most simple of subjects. Most people my age had trouble staying focused on one subject I was going to have to learn to better divide my attention.
(Line Break)
Hogsmeade Station. Wizarding World.
As the train finally came to a complete stop I stepped off the outdated form of transport along with the other students and when Hagrid called for the first years I went with the rest. One of the things I noticed right away, aside from how big the half-giant was in real life, concerned the number of students, there couldn't be more than twenty of us.
Assuming that we get divided up fairly between the four houses, that would be five students per house, and twenty per year, spread over seven years, that's only a hundred and forty students, assuming that everyone stayed for all seven years. That seemed like too few students and I felt sure that Potter's year was larger with five boys and perhaps as many girls in just his house.
Perhaps it had something to do with Voldemort. It would make sense for people not to have children or to flee the county with their offspring if they were worried about Death Eaters knocking down their front doors. Yet the war would have still been going on when Harry Potter's classmates were born because Riddle's killing curse didn't backfire against baby Harry until he was already a year old.
There had to be some other factors involved, perhaps birth rates weren't stable in the magical world for some supernatural season, but I stopped caring about that as we first years all got into a boat and the boats began to sail us across the lake, as this was not my world and it didn't concern me.
Coming to the school this way gave us a great view of Hogwarts Castle, that was all lit up in the darkness, it would also give everyone else a chance to get seated before the Sorting could start, so this tradition was both fun and practical, not something I expected from the normally silly wand wavers.
No one fell in the lake or got attacked by the giant squid so we docked in the boat house without issue and then entered the castle via an underground passage, something I thought to be cool, and then we ended up outside the great hall.
"First years, Professor," said Hagrid to the deputy headmistress as he handed us over.
The cat Animagus quickly explained about the houses, house points, and the position of each table in the hall, so that we'd know where to sit once Sorted. She didn't explain how we would be Sorted which left students free to speculate as we were marched past the older trainee mages and made to stand before a hat that soon began to sing.
I was far more interested in the floating candles that weren't dripping any wax on us and how they lit up the entire room evenly as well as the ceiling which currently showed a cloudy night so the view wasn't great, and this was a shame. On the plus side, the song didn't last for very long.
Thoughts of the weather and annoying singing went away as I'd suddenly realised that the hat would be able to look into my head regardless of my limited training in the mind arts.
Since I was a Smith in this world I had to wait a while to be Sorted as it was done alphabetically, and when I was called upon I wondered if the Sorting Hat would tell people that I didn't belong here. I wondered how I could have forgotten about the Sorting Hat as I should have gone over everything that happens in a student's first year before even arriving.
Although to be fair I'd had a lot to deal with over the last few weeks. Cortana only provided information when I asked for it and she didn't read my mind; she only responded to me when I thought at her, I had to pretend as if was talking to her in my mind, something to do with how the brain processes speech.
"John Smith!" the teacher called out.
I sat down on the stool and prepared for the worst. I had my knife on me so I could escape this world if I really needed to and find somewhere else to study magic.
"Don't worry" assured the hat "Anything I see in your mind stays between us. Not even Dumbledore can compel me to speak of what I discover during the Sorting".
Well that was good. I had been worried and ready to cut open reality.
"You're not the first person from another world to come to this school and I doubt you'll be the last," said the hat.
I was surprised to hear this and the hat didn't explain further because it wasn't allowed to tell me about what it saw in other people's minds. I did wonder for a moment if other dimensional travellers would join the school in years to come or if one was here right now. That was all the more reason to keep my head down for the first year at least until I had some basic magical skills.
"No chance of me sending a muggleborn orphan to Slytherin" the hat told me "That would just paint a target on your back. You care little for kindness, fairness, and dedication. You have some courage to protect that seed, but you are a planner and a thinker, so it better be RAVENCLAW!".
That house gave me some polite applause and I soon got to meet my fellow first years in Ravenclaw House whose names I'd heard during the Sorting. They were Eddie Carmichal, a wizard who would years from now swear his success during some exams was sole as a result of Baruffio's Brain Elixir and attempt to sell it to younger students preparing for their exams, including Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley. However, Hermione Granger stopped him, confiscated the potion and poured its contents down a toilet because for some reason she wanted to be the most hated Hogwarts student of all time.
Also here was Marcus Belby, the nephew of Damocles Belby, the noted potioneer who developed the Wolfsbane Potion sometime in the late 20th century. For this reason, Horace Slughorn invited Belby to his Slug Club supper parties in the 1996-1997 school year, but given that he did not see much of his uncle in him, Slughorn was never seen giving him much in the way of attention.
Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecombe were the two girls in the group and were already chatting away with each other as the start of the year feast began.
Cho I knew something off without Cortans's aid since she was Potter's first crush. She was or would be, tenses were confusing at times like this, a Seeker for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team and a popular student. In Cho's fifth year, she began dating Cedric Diggory while he was a Champion in the Triwizard Tournament. Unfortunately, Cedric became one of the first casualties of the Second Wizarding War, when he was murdered by Peter Pettigrew on Lord Voldemort's order in June of 1995. His death greatly upset Cho and made her determined to fight against the recently returned Dark Lord.
In her sixth year, against her parents' wishes, she joined Dumbledore's Army, an organisation taught and led by Harry Potter. In the same year, she also began a romantic relationship with Harry. However, Cho's best friend Marietta Edgecombe betrayed the D.A. After her friend's betrayal, Cho and Harry's relationship fell apart. She remained loyal to her school and the D.A., even returning after she had graduated to participate in the Battle of Hogwarts.
Cho Chang survived the Second Wizarding War and eventually married some Muggle, and that was all I knew about her, and it was far more than I desired to know since I'd never cared for the character.
The others were mostly a mystery to me aside from Marietta Edgecombe who I knew to have snitched on Dumbledore's Army in book five. She looked rather innocent right now, but I knew not to trust her with anything important even if any betrayal she committed wouldn't really be her fault due to outside pressure.
"I'm Marcus" greeted my fellow Ravenclaw "Marcus Belby, and this is Eddie Carmichael".
We shook hands across the table before we all went back to eating.
"I'm John Smith," I told them.
Carmichel must have some experience with the muggle world because he gave me an odd look upon hearing name, most likely thinking that I was making it up.
"It's just the name they gave me at the orphanage" I explained "I don't know if my parents ever gave me a real one".
That shut them up quickly and before long Belby changed the subject.
"I grew up in the magical world so if there's anything about our world that you don't understand you can just ask me" he offered "If I don't know I can find someone who does".
While I had a few hundred questions I was dealing with an 11-year-old so I kept it simple and it gave the three of us something to chat about as we ate the fine food the House Elves had provided.
(Line Break)
Ravenclaw Tower. Hogwarts.
This tower, which is located on the west side of the castle, was not easy to get into as the entrance was a small door at the top of a tightly winding spiral staircase that leads up from the fifth floor so unless you knew where it was you might miss it.
The door has neither handle nor keyhole, but a talking bronze knocker in the shape of an eagle. Rather than asking for a conventional password, the knocker will ask a question; if answered correctly, the knocker will compliment the person on the answer and the door will swing open. This means that you can't figure out the question, you have to wait until someone does and since the question changes it doesn't help if you overhear how someone else gets in.
Beside the door was a plinth on which stands a life-size statue in white marble of Rowena Ravenclaw who was wearing her diadem.
Like the other House common rooms, this one was decorated in House colours, with blue and bronze wall hangings in this case, we had a dark blue carpet, and the ceiling decorated with stars. The common room was wide, circular, and very airy, with graceful arched windows that provided us Ravenclaw students with a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains.
There were bookcases, tables, and chairs all over the place, and opposite the entrance is another door leading to the dormitories which are divided by genders like in Gryffindor and the other houses as well it seemed safe to assume.
We didn't exactly have our own library here, but there were quite a lot of books scattered about that one of the older students told me were donated by former Ravenclaws who'd written the books. Some of which could be found in the library, but not all.
You couldn't remove them from the tower, but any Ravenclaw could read them and already a few had already caught my eye. However before I could examine any of them in detail Professor Flitwick, Charms teacher and head of our house began to address us.
"New students, welcome to Ravenclaw tower" he started by saying "Older students welcome back".
There was a polite round of applause for some reason.
"You'll be given your timetables at breakfast tomorrow" he went on to say.
I tuned him out for the most part, at least until he mentioned something about Ravenclaw's rising above the disagreements of other houses and not acting like bullies. He warned us that while the Hufflepuffs were easy for us to get along with, we should be careful about the Gryffindor and Slytherins who get into fights and bully other houses.
That might seem shocking since the Gryffindor students are supposed to be the good guys, but Fred and George are pranksters who like to test their products on people without any consent. Then there's Hermione Granger, who aside from being a homework tyrant and snitch, basically abducts Rita Skeeter and puts the reporter in a jar she can't escape from, that is really troubling behaviour. Sure Skeeter is a bitch, and a tabloid reporter, however that doesn't make it okay to illegally imprison the woman and then blackmail her. If Granger was a hero she should have gone to magical law enforcement and exposed Skeeter as an illegal Animagus after capturing her. Allowing the authorities to handle the matter.
I could also recall that Granger wasn't very nice to Luna Lovegood, who was already badly bullied. Ironically Flitwick had just mentioned how Ravenclaws should fly together and protect each other. Even mentioning how he would look out for us. For all his words he never seemed to notice anything about how Luna Lovegood was treated, or if he did then he did nothing about it as far as I knew.
Thinking of Luna made me think about how Pandora Lovegood was an extraordinary witch who liked to experiment with spells. Around about this time, the very early 1990s one of her experiments went wrong, killing her in a horrible manner in front of Luna, who was subsequently able to see Thestrals because of it.
I was wondering if it would be so bad if I sent a letter to Pandora Lovegood saying something about me seeing her die in a vision with her daughter watching. I couldn't imagine any decent mother not setting up some protections around their experiments if warned about something like that even if they didn't fully believe it.
Perhaps I could pretend to be a Seer, as those did exist, but I'd have to be very careful how I sent such a letter. I would have to sneak out of the school and send a letter written by one of those quills that write for you so that no one by chance would recognise my handwriting in the years to come.
Doing this would be risky, but I had a soft spot for Luna Lovegood and since Luna doesn't get involved in events for years to come it might go unnoticed if the person coming after the world-seed was here looking for any trace of me. I would need to minimise the risk, but I couldn't avoid making changes forever because I was already doing that simply by being here.
I decided that I would do that tomorrow. It had been a long day and I could do with some sleep.
