Disclaimer: I don't own Harry potter. Well I don't own the intellectual property, fairly sure I have some of the books lying around, same goes for Bleach. I just own this plot. All rights go to their respective owners.
POV change: harry potter, 1st person
I walked through kings cross with my trolley of equipment, subconsciously fiddling with my left sleeve. The Armschienen was actually rather easy to hide in plain sight, simply removing the ginto fuel capsules gave the illusion of a normal, if elaborate glove. Honestly I was more excited to start playing around with its unique features. Urahara was a genius.
Hearing someone talk almost loud enough to be considered a shout, I turned to bemusedly stare at a group of clearly related redheads. The only adult, who I presumed to be the mother, was using wizarding world exclusive terms while being almost surrounded by muggles. I mean sure the general din should drown out most of the perception, but really?
Shaking my head, I swivelled back and walked through the barrier, although I have to wonder; how did no-one notice at least fifty odd people phase into and out of a platform pillar at the start and end of the school year? Regardless, thinking about people I wasn't likely to interact with much would help no-one, so I got on the train, passing someone with a toad for a pet. I wasn't going to judge, maybe they wanted to be an info broking illusionist?
Setting up shop in one of the smaller compartments at the back, I finally got a chance to release my own animal companion, the snowy owl I got from Hagrid that after some deliberation I named Harribel. She of course took the opportunity to hit me over the head with her wing for keeping her in that cage. "Ow. Sorry girl, but unless you wanted to explain why I had a random free owl perched on my luggage…" hooting, she took a seat on one of the luggage racks.
I had to laugh at her sulking, but decided to practice with the Armschienen. Rolling up my sleeve revealed what looked like an armoured, fingerless bowman's glove in the typical Quincy white and blue. There were a couple of changes however. First were the six points, three on each side, that seemed to act as ports. The second were the eight concentric dials around two semicircle buttons.
The setup to use the Armschienen was simple, you just had to attach Ginto capsules to the ports. They weren't necessary for wizard magic, but could supplement energy for a spell in a pinch. Their real purpose was to do with the dials and buttons. The two buttons were also pretty simple, one acted as an activator for an instant version of Uryu's Quincy ritual that he used against espada eight, basically a giant laser. The cost for having no setup was that it used all of the fuel.
The other button however activated the powers of the dials, bar the outermost one which controlled the supplementary power for wizard magic. Each dial granted access to a different concept to use, with every setting on a dial determining the speed at which it burned energy. It worked in halfs, with the highest power output burning through a full Ginto capsule in a minute, with each lower setting being half as powerful but lasting twice as long.
The one I was planning on testing out the Cloud dial of propagation on the weakest of eight settings. It would let me experiment for the entirety of the train ride, and the automatic gradual refilling feature of my Armschienen (truly a godsend Urahara) meant that I likely wouldn't even go through more than three capsules.
"Alright, test one. Matter replication." Taking out two pencils, a mostly empty book and a stopwatch I set everything except one pencil to one side. Then, setting the indigo dial to 'one', I launched a bolt of reiatsu in the same colour at the writing implement and hit the start on the stopwatch just as a new pencil popped into existence. The next couple of hours were spent documenting how the propagation dial worked at the first setting. The letter implied that more effects come at higher settings.
It was as I was testing the lifespan of a quadrupled object that my compartment door opened. "Excuse me, is it alright if we sit here? We got kicked out of ours by this prick Malfoy and his bookends." Asked a voice. Turning, I came face to face with two girls, other first years by the look of their robes. The one that spoke was blonde, while her shorter friend was a redhead.
Not wanting to be rude, I said, "sure, come on in but mind the owl," causing them to notice Harribel. They were just sitting down when my Cloud constructs burst into indigo flames and disappeared. "Huh, 14 minutes. Figured it would be less, but it working linearly benefits me more." Getting a chill down my spine as I recorded the results, I looked up to see my companions staring at me.
"Was that conjuration!?" The redheaded girl exclaimed. "I thought it wasn't taught until third year at least!" The blonde remained quiet, but nodded with wide eyes. Weird, based on the quality of their robes they were purebloods, surely they've heard of people manifesting unique abilities?
Shrugging, I saw no harm in explaining. "Only by technicality. Conjuration is actually transfiguring the air, which is why it doesn't normally last long, there's only so much bullshit the world can stand." This got some giggles. "What I did was apply the concept of propagation to the pencil. The world sees this, goes 'oh, well it can multiply, that's fine.' and carries on allowing it until the propagated constructs run out of energy."
Raising my left arm up so they could see the Armschienen, I continued. "This is the reason why I can do that. I mistook my magic for something else when I was younger, and because of it I have trouble reaching for my own power. This was made to both help and act as a wand, but…" here I grinned sheepishly. "The inventor went overboard when making it. Oh, how rude of me, I went on that whole rant and didn't introduce myself! I'm Harry Potter, it's a pleasure to meet you."
Ah, shit. It appeared that I had mildly short-circuited their brains with that info dump. Still, the blonde was able to reply, however slightly. "I'm Daphne Greengrass, this is my friend Tracy Davis." The other gave a little wave as they recovered. Soon enough, the three of us became embroiled in a normal conversation when Daphne's curiosity made her ask a question. "So what are you writing in that book?"
"Hm? Oh, my research log! Well I use this to store ideas and experiments." Handing it to her, I gave a bit of a summary for what I was working on. "I think I've figured out most of the propagation's first setting. It has a maximum of a four times multiplication, and can increase the properties of weight and velocity by that amount too. It also can't multiply living instances like you or me, but it can propagate properties in a living creature." A slight ding sound went off. "Oh hey, I unlocked the next concept!"
"Next concept?" Tracy inquired.
"Yeah, when I said my focus' inventor went overboard, I meant really overboard. He placed seven concepts in these dials, and said that I could act as the tester for this system. Each dial has eight settings to use, each one building off the last." The girls directed stupefied looks at my arm. "Thing is, the human body just isn't made to handle that much power, not naturally anyway."
"So, what? You'll never be able to use the full power?" Daphne asked.
"Oh I will, it will just take ridiculous amounts of training. The way it works is the dial is connected to a mechanism which drains a certain amount of energy from these canisters," I gestured to the ginto, "every minute depending on the setting. This energy then gets filtered to give it an aspect and funnelled into me to use. The strain of foriegn energy is something I have to work on."
"Right, but what do you mean by the next concept?" the two pressed.
"Well in order to make sure I learn how to use each dial correctly, he put restrictions on it. First is that the first dial I activate I'm stuck with. From there, I have to unlock the first setting of a different dial, which I'll be given access to upon saying the parameters of the most recent dial setting within earshot of it."
"On top of that, I have to unlock all other dials of a setting to use the orange one. Finally, to gain access to a regular dial's next setting I need to have achieved at least a basic version of everything that particular concept can do."
"Oh, my head hurts!" Tracy complained.
"Indeed, that sounds incredibly complicated. However this is a remarkable artefact, who's to say it won't be stolen like the elder wand of story?" Daphne pointed out.
"Well that's easy. It was made in such a way that I'm literally the only person on the face of the earth who can use the dial features. Anyone else would likely be burned from the inside out, or drained of energy that they can't replenish fast enough. However its creator, Urahara, said that as the idea had been laying on the back burner for so long he'd let me try and make single dial versions that he could maybe refine for the public."
Just as Tracy breathed in to say something the compartment door was opened again, this time by a brunette girl with a dark blonde haired boy standing nervously off to the side. "Excuse me, have any of you seen a toad? Neville's lost his." the new person asked.
"A toad? Bit of an odd choice for a pet, but you do you I guess. And no, but I think I have something to help." without waiting for a reply I used spirit ribbons. This was a technique that I still had problems with due to the titular ribbons taking my own reiatsu to form, but time at Hogwarts will theoretically help with that.
Looking through the different reiatsu constructs, I found a uniquely coloured ribbon and handed it to the befuddled boy outside the compartment. "Now I'm not certain, but going on the assumption that your pet is the only toad on the train," here I pointed at the ribbon, "this will get longer the closer you are to your toad. Wrap it around your wrist and have fun."
Then I closed the door in their faces. Rude, I know, but the almost predatory look I'd gotten from the girl creeped me out. Plus she wasn't polite enough to introduce herself, so I considered it fair game. Frankly I just wanted to sit down and read because I couldn't experiment more. Urahara put a 24 hour lock on using the non-wizard abilities whenever I unlocked something new. Unless it was an orange 'sky', then it was a week. Damn that shinigami and his reasonable limitations
"So…" Tracy started leadingly. "Why would someone get burned? I mean it's just magic, and we have that in our bodies regularly, so why would those dials of yours be any different?" she asked. At this point I figured, 'in for a penny in for a pound' and started settling down so I could give a grossly oversimplified explanation. This was still going to take a while.
"FIRST YEARS!" a voice roared. "FIRST YEARS OVER HERE!" said voice turned out to be hagrid, carrying a lantern and rounding up the new children. As Harry stepped off the train, subtly hiding his ginto canisters, he chuckled at the faces his two companions during the journey were making. They seemed to be completely neutral, but minor ticks showed the break-neck speeds their thoughts were going at.
Following the exceptionally tall groundskeeper was fairly easy, what with him carrying the only proper light source, and the group of forty odd children plus one keeper of the keys were soon at a bank, the of a river kind. Not the monetary storage kind. Along the sand were a number of boats. "No more than four to a boat!" Hagrid ordered.
Harry got on one, as did the still on autopilot Daphne and Tracy and a redheaded boy who wouldn't shut up about something called quidditch. With a cry of 'forward!' from their guide, the boats moved as one to sail along the river towards their school. Along the way the two girls came out of their fugue states and glared at Harry, much to his amusement.
Rounding a corner, the new students of Hogwarts finally got to see where they'd be staying for the majority of the next seven years, and it was (very much pun intended) magical. The glow from the moon reflected off of the water, giving it an ethereal light, and beyond that the architecture was like a giant middle finger to physics, something that shouldn't have been possible at this scale but was.
What struck Harry, though, was the sheer power that the castle exuded. It was like one giant, living, breathing person made out of stone, more power than any one quincy could hope to normally wield. He imagined this would be what it was like for a Quincy in one of the realms, such as soul society or hueco mundo.
"Mind your heads now!" Hagrid called as they got to the boat docks. Despite that, no one needed to so much as duck slightly due to the sheer height of the waterway entrance. Getting out of their transport, the new first years began the arduous trek up the stone stairs to the castle, with a minor interruption when Hagrid found Neville's lost toad.
After five solid minutes of walking (whose bright idea was it to put the actual school so far up? Harry only wanted to talk, honest), the group arrived in the entrance hall where they were greeted by professor Mcgonagal. As they now followed her, the basic explanation that was given regarding the houses was that they were apparently separated by personality traits and you were supposed to treat them as family.
Harry personally thought that was bullshit. Not the family bit, camaraderie is important after all, the personality traits part. After all, there was no way that the teachers thought it was a good idea to group a bunch of children together by arbitrary characteristics that they'd ordinarily grow out of, right? That was a disaster waiting to happen, and also possibly why snake face had been able to get magical Britain in such a death grip!
When the doors to the great hall finally opened, the muttering was heard from all of the other students. The new children were told to stand single file, merely drawing attention to everyone individually. While logically it was a good idea, it didn't account for people with social anxiety or low self esteem, such as Neville Longbottom, nor was there any guarantee that they would be in alphabetical order.
That second part became important as Mcgonagal started reading names off a list for people to wear a telepathic hat. It ruined the line, and also seemed like a massive breach of privacy. More the second one than the first really. As kids were called up, the muttering slowly raised, peaking at a round of cheers whenever the student was sorted into a house.
Finally, it was Harry's turn for his privacy to be casually backhanded. Ignoring the whispers at the relatively tall (he is eleven after all) figure, as opposed to the almost undernourished, thin character from the books, he walked up and calmly placed the ratty looking headwear on his head.
"Ah, a spiritually aware wizard. Your kind is so rare, it's always a treat to sort you." were the hat's first words to the Quincy.
'Huh, so there've been other spiritually aware beings at hogwarts. They must have kept out of the spotlight then. Out of curiosity, which type has appeared more, feel free to use my knowledge if it helps.' Harry countered calmly. He had figured that his situation wasn't nearly as original as it first seemed after meeting Ollivander, but confirmation was nice.
"Hahahaha! Your ability to maintain a straight face at such knowledge is impressive! Truly a poker face Salazar would be proud of! Ah, but to sate your curiosity there have been mostly fullbringers as they're called. Now enough distractions, hm?" the sorting hat chuckled. He got a sheepish mental laugh in response.
"Now let's see here… you are quite the conundrum Mr Potter. You have the desire to help and save people, but those instincts are tempered by rationality and cunning to prevent reckless self endangerment. Your ambition and work ethic are second to none, it has to be if you hope to surpass Yhwach, but you'd sacrifice all your progress if it meant helping an innocent or someone you care for. What to do, what to do?"
The hat deliberated for a moment, before coming to a conclusion. "Ah, how silly of me, the solution for sorting a balanced individual was staring me right in the face! I'll simply sort you based on whose abilities you resonate with most! Well then, better be RAVENCLAW!"
Even as Harry got off the stool and walked over to the cheering table, only one thought was going through his brain.
'Who's abilities I resonate with most?'
Word count: 2969
What's this!? Two uploads in less than a week!? It must be the end times! But seriously, this chapter just hit me with whiplash from how fast it was written! And a word count increase of more than a thousand words too! At this rate I might end up with chapter lengths that kinda justify (emphasis on kinda) the average wait between uploads by the end of the year!
So this was a bit of an experiment, not going to lie. First of all, the majority of the chapter was in first person. I don't really know how I feel about it, on the one hand it seemed to fit the chapter, on the other hand I found it hard to stay 'in character' so to speak, and I feel like I kept on infodumping which I'm not a big fan of doing. It also felt like the conversation in the first part was kind of stilted, but that might be (read: is probably) just from my general inexperience in writing.
Yeah, so you remember the fullbring oneshot where I said that the Armschienen wouldn't be as OP? Yeah, so short term, that stands. I have a bunch of different limits in my head that I'm putting on a different document to keep track. God, this one piece of gear is going to give me a migraine at this rate. Hey did I mention that the other idea I had for it was a gun as opposed to a bracer/glove? Yeah, that's going to come into play. Not any time soon, god no, but it will at some point.
And some worldbuilding for extra fun! There have in fact been other spiritually aware kids go to Hogwarts, with most of them being Fullbringers or thereabouts. The reason for that is mostly accidental magic much like Harry, but they anchor a spirit (normally a close relative) to themselves and the exposure to reiatsu in the way they have results in the ability to manipulate it, the spirit acting like a sentient fullbring. It might sound like a zanpakuto, but these (to my knowledge) original fullbring types are far more similar to something outside of bleach and potterverse canon. One might say it's bizarre, even.
What could the hat have been talking about? Who knows! Well I do, but I'm not going to provide more context till book three material. By that point I should have the entirety of the group sorted, and just because I feel like messing with you, I have a new guessing game! Dick move, I know, but do I care? No! Anyway this is going to be fun. See, each member of the group is going to have two classifications in terms of spirit entity. If you think you can, please guess who I'll use, and what classifications they are, if that makes sense.
Anyway, please comment on any areas that have mistakes or don't make sense, and I'll try and change it without it making even less sense. And if someone wants to volunteer to act as a beta for my chapters, that would be much appreciated but also potentially unnecessary, I'll confirm if I need a beta next time. But uh, I think that about covers it.
Ja ne!