"We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented"
Christof, The Truman Show
Chapter 1: Transported
No orphanage can ever be a ideal place to be raised in, even if it were to have infinite funds and perfectly qualified, highly motivated staff. The reason for this is that no matter how hard it tries, or what policies it implements, an orphanage is by nature a bureaucracy, and therefore not a family. The Little Whinging Home for Young Men was no different. It wasn't crammed full with bullies, or staffed by cold-hearted matrons, or severely underfunded, but the boys there always saw more bullying, less love and mentorship, and less and worse quality of the necessaries and conveniences of life than what a regular, fostered, or adopted child saw.
Having no other option, the boys at the Little Whinging Home either accepted their second-hand pajamas and cheap bars of soap, and adapted, learning to not expect too much from others; or did not, and lost themselves to pride, resentment, or other delusions. John Acton was happy to count himself among the first type, which was why he hadn't been upset when his only birthday gift had been a pair of cheap tennis shoes—they might have been cheap, but they were new.
John was eleven today, and even though he would be headed off to secondary school when the summer holidays were over, being eleven felt pretty much the same as being ten. He'd always held the opinion that the date on the calendar changing to June 17th couldn't change who he was as a person.
Because of his indifference, John spent the day in about the same way as he would have spent any other, besides opening the gift-wrapped tennis shoes left outside his door that morning and the song and cupcake he was expecting in the evening: in the morning he worked on his summer assignments, and when it warmed up he headed outside with some others to kick a football around, and then when the summer sun drove him back inside, he picked up a book on the construction of the London Underground, more because it was what the orphanage had than because of personal interest.
Later, just as the shadows of buildings and trees started to lengthen and the weaknesses of the cut-and-cover method of tunnel building started to bore him, a knock came at his door.
"Mr. Acton?" It was Mrs. Higgins, the by-the-books director of the orphanage. "Are you in there? You have a visitor."
'A visitor?' he wondered. They certainly couldn't be family, unless they were distant relatives—his had died when he was five, in a car accident. He'd been too young at the time to remember, though.
"Just a minute!" John called, tidying his room a bit. He wasn't horribly messy like some of the others at the orphanage, but shirts and pants sometimes got lost on their way to the hamper, and he hadn't made his bed that day. His roommate, Sammy Fitzgerald, looked up curiously from his GameBoy, but didn't say anything.
When the room was more or less presentable, John gave it one last look before swinging open the door. Beside the heavyset frame of Mrs. Higgins was a tall, gaunt man with pale, yellowish skin. He was dressed in all black, and because of the dark color he mistook the man's clothing at first to be a trench coat, but on second glance he seemed to be wearing something more like the robes of a monk from medieval times.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Acton," said the stranger. "I am Professor Severus Snape. Mrs. Higgins, I need to speak with Mr. Acton in private. Please leave us."
"I'm afraid I can't, Mr. Snape. It's our policy—some of our residents have difficult backgrounds, you see, and of course there's other concerns that are better left unspoken."
Snape folded his hands together, and his sleeves wrinkled together over them.
"Your concern is unnecessary. You will leave us at once."
Mrs. Higgins looked confused for a second, blinking repeatedly.
"My concern—is unnecessary, and I will leave you at once," she repeated.
John felt a bit nervous as he watched Mrs. Higgins leave. She was such a stickler for the rules that he couldn't help but wonder if Snape was some sort of shady character. Had he bribed Mrs. Higgins, or was there maybe a knife or a gun in the wide sleeves of his robes?
"May I come in, Mr. Acton?" Snape asked, though it didn't sound like a question at all.
John stepped aside, and as Snape crossed the threshold, a strange wave of dizziness hit him. The walls started shrinking, and the floor wobbled underneath him. He grabbed hold of the doorframe. Distantly, he felt himself swinging until his back thumped against a nearby wardrobe.
His vision turned purple, then green. He blinked, and his eyelids smelled like coffee, and sounded like a fire truck. Through the noise of his eyelids he heard Snape saying something, then footsteps passed in front of him and out the door, then down the hallway.
A horrible coldness started growing in his stomach, and his vision started turning from green to black. Am I dying? John wondered. He felt light-headed. His breathing turned heavy and slow.
And then, for John Acton, eleven year old orphan, all sensation stopped.
I didn't expect to die when I did, but neither do most people, unless they're old, sick, or suicidal.
I was headed out of the grocery store with a carton of eggs that I'd needed last-minute for a birthday cake when a middle-aged man walked up to me.
"'Scuse me," he said. "I have a quick question."
"I don't want to take any surveys."
"No, it's not that. It's just—do you know what the capital of Thailand is?"
The question sounded familiar, like I had heard it somewhere before, and I stopped.
"The capital of Thailand?"
The man grinned excitedly.
BANG!
The sound of a gunshot clapped into my ears and I felt a massive pain tear through my crotch. I screamed and fell to the asphalt, my eggs flying out of my hands and their carton and breaking all around me when they landed. I stared, wide-eyed, at the dark red puddle spreading across my white sweatpants. My hands wavered around the bleeding area as I panicked, not understanding what was happening.
'There's a hole in my sweatpants,' I thought for some reason, 'There's blood on my white sweatpants. They're going to stain if I don't wash them soon.'
My head whirled around confusedly and I saw that the man who had stopped me had a pistol in his hand. He was still grinning.
"It's Bangkok! The capital of Thailand is Bangkok! Get it?"
He pointed at his gun. "Bang—"
He pointed between my legs. "Well, you get the rest. Hey, do you know what they call fans of heavy metal music?"
"What—what—what are you—" I could hear the words he was saying, but I was still panicking and so they didn't make any sense.
"Headbangers!" he said, his eyes and teeth glinting crazily. "They call them headbangers! So, you know, head—"
He pointed the pistol at my head. I tried to scramble back, but I was weak from the pain and I ended up flailing in place.
"Wait—wait—nonono—"
And then all sensation stopped.
Consciousness jolted through me unnaturally fast, and I sat up with a gasp.
The last five minutes had been very strange, almost dreamlike. I, John Acton, on the day of my eleventh birthday, had seen the stickler director of my orphanage break the rules for a sketchy stranger who called himself Professor Snape, and then experienced a sudden episode of dizziness and synesthesia. Then I had died.
Except that that was all wrong. I had never been John Acton. My name was Jared Williams, and I was nineteen, and had never seen an orphanage in my life. And I'd died when a nutcase outside a grocery store shot me. Or I thought I had. I'd seen him pull the trigger, at least. I hadn't heard the gunshot, but most bullets go faster than sound, and if they went through your skull, your brain was turned to goo before the sound waves touched your ears.
The problem was, I wasn't outside a grocery store, and I wasn't dead. I was on the floor in an orphanage, and somehow that made total sense to me, even though it shouldn't have.
"I hope you don't make a habit of fainting, Mr. Acton," Snape said, looking down his nose at me. He was holding a long, thin stick in his right hand.
"No, sir. I'm not sure what came over me."
"To business, then." Snape raised his stick and started waving it around. I stared warily, getting to my feet. Clearly, Snape was insane. I could only hope he wasn't violently insane, like the grocery store guy had been.
When he was satisfied with his stick-waving, Snape disappeared the stick back into his sleeve and pulled out a letter, handing it to me.
"The reason I am here is to inform you that you have been accepted into Hogwarts, a boarding school for wizards like yourself. If you use your time there well, you will gain a deep and complex understanding of magic that will enhance you with power and enrich you with wisdom. If you act as much a half-wit as you have today, you will—hopefully—manage to learn enough to not kill yourself while trying to heat a teapot."
As soon as he said Hogwarts, everything suddenly clicked. This was the Professor Severus Snape, of the Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and I had somehow been transported to the world of Harry Potter. Or it was some sort of weird, over the top prank. I wasn't sure which I was hoping for.
"I imagine that a half-wit such as yourself will need a demonstration, despite having performed enough accidental magic for Hogwarts to accept you."
Snape's stick came out of Snape's sleeve again. His wand, I corrected myself.
"Langlock," Snape muttered, flicking his wand at me. Remembering what that spell was supposed to do in the books, I opened my mouth to test it, and I found that my tongue was immovably stuck to the roof of my mouth.
I was convinced. This was some sort of version of J. K. Rowling's Wizarding world that had me in it. I grunted frustratedly and gestured at my mouth, trying to ask Snape to release his spell.
"Yes, Mr. Acton, I am aware that your tongue and palate have been bound together. I find this to be the most effective way to prevent unnecessary questions or talking in class, as well as when making introductory visits such as this one. Now, grab your coat. We have much to do."
I did as he asked and followed him out the door, down the stairs, and out onto the street. As we walked, he spoke, keeping his voice quiet so that no one would hear.
"I will tell you now that it is highly illegal to perform acts of magic that reveal its existence to Muggles—that is, those who do not have magic—except in emergencies. It is also illegal for minors to perform magic outside of magical districts, again with the exception of emergencies. Do not test this. The Ministry will instantly know through a ward called the Trace. You should also note that the age of majority in Wizarding Britain is seventeen, not eighteen, as with Muggles.
"There are many methods of transportation for the magical, but for your age and situation, the one you should most concern yourself with is the Knight Bus. The Bus can take you anywhere in the United Kingdom. Simply step to the edge of any public road, stretch out your wand hand, and—"
BANG!
As Snape suck out his hand, a bright red triple decker bus slammed into existence. Snape stepped aboard, tossing some coins and muttering something at the conductor. I followed close behind him.
"You needn't worry about revealing magic to Muggles through the Knight Bus, since their eyes cannot see it," Snape began again once we were seated. As he continued to lecture, I marveled at how Snape was able to keep his concentration while the bus flung us around on our chairs slid every few dozen seconds.
"You might have noticed that the coins I paid with are not Muggle currency. The magical have their own, global currency." Snape pulled out three coins: one gold, one silver, and one bronze. Each was about two inches in diameter and a quarter inch thick. "There are three coins: the gold are Galleons, the silver are Sickles, and the bronze are Knuts. There are 29 Sickles to a Galleon, and 17 Knuts to a Sickle. A Galleon can be purchased for around forty Muggle Pounds—ask the Goblins or maybe a shopkeeper for an exact exchange rate.
"You will not need to concern yourself about tuition, room and board, or supplies for Hogwarts. Hogwarts pays for itself, and also provides a scholarship for orphans. You will receive your 30 Galleon fund at the end of each school year, excluding your seventh, which will be your last. Your first disbursement is in this pouch."
Snape handed me a black cloth pouch that seemed to weigh and contain much less than 30 coins of Wizarding currency in the size that Snape had shown me, but when I peeked inside, it seemed to contain the correct amount. It was Extended and had some kind of featherlight charm, I thought, but then, with a bit of embarrassment, realized that I didn't really know what those words meant, and probably shouldn't have been using them—even if I'd only done so in my head.
At the Knight Bus' next stop, Snape stood up quickly and started for the exit. Off the bus, Snape pointed to an old and slightly dingy pub with a signboard that read The Leaky Cauldron.
"This is the entrance to Diagon Alley, the largest magical shopping district in the United Kingdom."
We made our way through the pub to a back alley, where Snape showed me the pattern of bricks to be tapped in order to open up the wall. I watched, fascinated, as the bricks folded to the sides, and then took in the view of the Alley beyond. Or at least, I tried to, but Snape grabbed me by the shoulder and frog-marched me down the street until I kept up with his pace. He shoved me into Madam Malkin's, a clothing store, and told me to make myself decent, which I assumed meant he wanted me to dress myself like a wizard.
"Hello, dearie," said a plump older woman. "Hogwarts?"
I nodded.
"What's the matter, cat got your tongue? You shy?" she asked as she stood me on a stool. I shook my head and pointed at my mouth, opening it.
"Oh, looks like someone's put a Tongue-Sticking hex on you. I'll get that right off. Finite Incantatem!"
My tongue popped away from my palate and I breathed a sigh of relief. "You're a lifesaver," I thanked her.
Madam Malkin mostly left me in silence as she took my measurements, allowing me to gather my thoughts for the first time since being John Acton had started seeming strangely normal.
I had been shot twice as Jared Williams, a 19 year old undeclared undergraduate just out of his first year of college. I had probably died, but if not, I was in a really weird coma where I was having vivid hallucinations of being in the world of the Harry Potter books—I had been obsessed enough with Harry Potter that that sort of coma might not be impossible. The environment I was experiencing, though, was very convincing, and seemed to follow consistent logic, and passed all of the tests that I remembered were supposed to tell you if you were having a dream: the mirrors in Madam Malkin's worked correctly, written words and the time on clocks didn't change when I looked away and looked back, and my hands looked normal.
As far as I was concerned, if something appeared to be reality well enough that you couldn't tell if it was or wasn't, you might as well treat it as if it was and save yourself the stress.
Therefore, I decided to accept that I had been transported across dimensions and into the body of John Acton, an 11 year old orphan, on his birthday, no matter how ridiculous that seemed. Based on the few minutes of memory I inherited, he seemed to have died either just before, or as a consequence of my possession of his body. Besides those few minutes of memory and his body, I seemed to have also inherited some of John's impressions—his name and body felt natural, when I saw people that John had known I understood what John had thought of them, and I knew important personal information like his birthday, when his parents died, and the street address of his orphanage.
I also knew that it was the year 1991, which meant that I would be in the same year at Hogwarts as Harry Potter. Fat chance that canon was going to stay the same for very long, with the butterfly effect and all (not that I really understood it that well—I was no Ian Malcolm), unless the timeline worked like Time-Turners had in canon. Since I was in the same year as Harry Potter, though, and he was fated to war with Voldemort, Voldemort would probably be returning during my school years. He'd be focused on Harry, of course, but he wouldn't care if a random probably-a-Muggleborn orphan ended up dead as collateral damage. Equally, though, he wouldn't care if I lived, which meant that as long as I stayed away from him, he wouldn't be too much of a danger to me. What that meant to me was that I had three goals: one, stay out of Voldemort's sights as much as I could; two, get strong enough to defend myself from Voldemort's followers, who probably cared more about blood purity than he did; and three, make Harry Potter as strong as possible so that Voldemort didn't take over the world.
Not that I was sure I was capable of helping Harry to that level, but I was a fan, so who could blame me for wanting to be personally involved with the storyline?
Later, when the shadows had melded into twilight and the shops of Diagon had begun to putter down for the day in favor of the restaurants' dinner rush, Snape sent me back to the Little Whinging Home on the Knight Bus, alone this time. We had finished my school shopping in an efficient forty-five minutes, ending at Ollivanders, where I used my first magic and bought my wand—16¾ inches, elder and phoenix feather, reasonably springy. Trying to say exactly what it had felt like to cast magic was like trying to describe a new color, but vaguely, it had felt something like the distant lightning of a summer thunderstorm zapping through the nerves of my arm and into the wand. There was a lot of synesthesia involved.
After my shopping was done, Snape had sat me in a booth at the Leaky Cauldron and instructed me on the culture, lifestyle, and recent history of the Wizarding world while we ate a light dinner. Much of what he talked about I already knew from canon, but there were many things that were new to me.
The Wizengamot, which I had assumed to be either an elected body or hereditary, was apparently somewhere in between and also sideways. The votes available in the Wizengamot were redistributed every year among "qualified" families by an old enchantment, according to a number of factors which included public opinion, but also things like shrewdness, magical talent, and strangely, random chance.
When he talked about the civil war that had given Harry Potter his scar, Snape's analysis of the sides was different enough from canon that it made me wonder if this was the same world as canon, but I also realized that Snape was a complicated individual and it was never totally sure in canon whether he was entirely aligned with the ideals of Dumbledore's faction.
Much of the conflict that had led to the war had been related to the Wizengamot vote distribution process—one of the factors needed for a family to be qualified was that it had had to have existed purely in the Wizarding world for at least three generations of firstborns, which meant that a Muggleborn or Halfblood could only obtain a vote if they were a great-grandparent, or had disowned their Muggle family and were also a grandparent.
These difficult conditions for representation sometimes produced civil unrest from those who didn't qualify, which had created an easy foothold for the Dark Lord Voldemort to construct the Knights of Walpurgis, a very private political society, and its brother organization, the paramilitary group called the Death Eaters. Both had disbanded with the death of the Dark Lord.
Besides the large-scale political and civil rights history of the Wizarding world, there were also a number of differences from the Muggle way of life that surprised me.
Though the shape of modern Muggle toilets was becoming more popular, more cauldron-shaped chamber pots were still very common. Regardless of the shape of a Wizard toilet, none of them were connected to plumbing systems, and were instead enchanted to vanish waste. Wizards also didn't use toilet paper; instead, they used the Waste-Vanishing charm, which Snape taught me immediately. It was one of the few spells that the Trace didn't track, he told me.
Most wizards chose to construct their own homes either by themselves or with the help of family and friends, and almost all of them lived on space-expanded patches of land that let the majority own orchards, farms, and ranches, which they cared for using bewitched tools.
All in all, it seemed like there was a lot for me to learn about the Wizarding world, and as Snape finished up his introduction to general magical life with a warning not to meddle with magics that I didn't understand, and to stay away from what older, wiser wizards warned me away from, lest I be pulverized into a greasy puddle of John Acton Purée, I was struck by the vastness of this new world I had been thrown into. I had always thought that good authors wrote stories and great authors wrote worlds, but the realization that the extensive world-building of the Harry Potter series had been extended even further for me, to the point that complete knowledge of it would inevitably be impossible, gave me chills of amazement.
No longer was the Wizarding world a story that only felt like a world; now, it was a world of its own.
It seemed completely absurd, that a fan of a work of fiction should be transported across realities into a world identical to that fiction. It was something more fitting for a fanfic than real life. I knew, however, that a refusal to accept reality as you experienced it was delusion, and inevitably led to insanity.
As I carried my trunk and all the purchases inside back into the room at the Little Whinging Home for Young Men, the stark contrast of the Muggle and Wizard worlds seemed more vivid than ever before. The creaks and stains of the floors, the accumulated scratches and stains on the walls—none of it would ever have been seen in any but the most disreputable Wizarding establishment, not when fixing those sorts of things only took a half-second. But above all, the contrast was obvious in the dull mundanity of everything around me. Nothing gave the impression of quasi-sentience, nothing acted on its own, and there was no magic in the air to spark and sizzle synesthesia across my senses.
The closest thing to magic here was my roommate Sammy's GameBoy, quiet electronic music playing as he tapped away at Super Mario or something.
"Where've you been?" Sammy asked as I pushed my school trunk under my bed.
"Out shopping—turns out, my parents signed me up for this boarding school when I was born. I needed some uniforms and textbooks."
"Neat. What's it called?"
I paused. "Hogwarts School for Gifted Students."
"Gifted students? Didn't your parents sign you up when you were born? How could they have known?"
"Dunno. Maybe they just had a friend there. Maybe I've been a genius since birth. I just know it gets me away from your smelly toes," I joked.
"Hey—they're not that bad!"
"They absolutely are. I could smell them from the road."
Sammy chucked a pillow at me good-naturedly. I chucked it back, then grabbed my pajamas and shower things, heading for the showers.
The orphanage showers were communal sets of stalls, each one a tiny square of floor, slanted towards a drain to keep water from going everywhere, with only a curtain for privacy.
While I was washing up, I tried not to look at my new junk too much, not because I felt weird that it was an eleven year old's, but because I felt weird about how weird I didn't feel about it. It was a consequence of John's impressions, I realized, but it was still strange to feel normal about tiny balls and not having pubes.
After my shower, I stood in front of the mirror with a towel wrapped around my waist and looked at my new body closely. Looks had always been important to me—the better you look, the better people unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, treat you. I'd known that for a long time.
My body had the wiry look of an athletic child, and John's impressions told me that I was slightly tall for my age. My face still had the rounded childishness natural for my age, but its bone structure seemed to be good, promising handsome looks when I was older. My hair was black and wavy, and slightly messy, but with the casual, combed-back hairstyle that John had adopted, it was out of the way and comfortable.
My eyes, surprisingly, were almost identical to when I had been Jared Williams, an intelligent blue, though the shade was slightly darker.
'I guess the eyes really are the windows to the soul,' I thought. It made sense in a lot of ways—eyes were the most sensitive sensory organ, and also the most mobile, and so who you were as a person, and therefore the things you paid attention to, would dictate how you used and moved around your eyes, and therefore what they looked like through the development of the musculature, the posture of the lids and brows, etcetera. Since my mind was the same as when I had been Jared Williams, my eyes were the same, too.
I kept taking in the reflection of my new body for a little while longer, until—
DING!
The sudden sound of a bell surprised me, and I jumped. Within easy reaching distance in front of me, a floating blue rectangular panel had appeared. Text in a white font typed out across the panel as I watched:
Alert:
#### ##### ## #####,
##### #### #######,
## ## ###### ###.
#### ##### ## #####,
##### #### ######,
## ## ###### ####.
I stared for a few seconds, confused, until the bell DING!-ed again, and the panel disappeared for a fraction of a second before a new one appeared in its place:
Alert:
Skill: [Analysis (lv. 1)] generated.
Alerts? Skills? Floating panels with text? It seemed absurd to think it, but it seemed like this might have been some sort of Gamer system. I decided to test it, preparing myself to feel like an idiot if I was wrong.
"Status!" I commanded. The alert panel disappeared, and a new one replaced it.
John Acton*
Age: 11*
Lvl: 8
XP: 418/9000
HP: 109/110
MP: 10,589/11,428
Stats: STR: 10, DEX: 7, SNS: 6, FCS: 16, LUK: 1
Points: 0
Skills: Analysis (Lvl. 1)
Attributes: Displaced Soul, Mage, Growth
Seeing the asterisk by my name, I tapped it. A small panel appeared in front of my stats panel, saying:
Name:
John Acton, formerly Jared Williams
I closed it. 'Nothing I didn't know there, I guess,' I thought. 'Might as well try tapping everything, just to see what pops up.'
Age:
Physical Age: 11 years
Total Age: 19 years
Lvl:
Level generated from completing Experience milestones. Gain +5 Points per
Level.
—Current Level: 8
XP:
Experience generated from successful (and sometimes unsuccessful) Feats.
Gain +1 Level when a Milestone is reached.
—Current Milestone: 9000 XP
—Feats: Accomplishments of overcoming opponents or reaching new points of prowess.
HP:
Health Points. Describes the health and max health of the physical form. Gain
+1 max HP per STR. Gain +5% current health per hour. Adolescents and Adults
have 100 base HP. If HP = 0, Death will arrive.
—Current Max HP: 110
MP:
Mana Points. Describes the Fill and Max of the Mana Reservoir. Gain +1% of
Max as Fill per hour. Gain +1 Max per 100 Fill used.
—Current Max MP: 11,429
I stopped to work out the math. At a growth rate of +1 per hundred used, that meant that I would grow the 'Mana Reservoir' by 1% of the mana I used. Since I refilled 1% of my Mana Reservoir per hour, and there were 24 hours in a day, that meant I refilled 24% of my mana per day, so if I used an entire day's worth of mana every day, I could grow my mana by only .24% per day. It seemed pathetically slow, but using the rule of 72, it would take me just 300 days to double my reservoir's capacity.
Einstein once said that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. In my dimension, I hadn't been too sure, but here, that kind of a growth rate explained how wizards like Dumbledore, Voldemort, and all the other famous ones could be so incredibly powerful relative to everybody else. That and knowledge, obviously—Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.
Stats:
Variables describing important and manipulable attributes. May be increased
through practice or using Points. May be consumed for temporary bonuses.
May decrease permanently if HP is at less than ten percent for an extended
duration.
Current Stats:
—STR: Strength; ability to exert force using the body.
—DEX: Dexterity; ability to move body precisely.
—SNS: Sense; ability to detect occurrences in the environment.
—FCS: Focus; ability to maintain attention.
—LUK: Luck; shifts probability for positive results.
Points: Points generated from Level increases. Gain +1 in one Stat per Point
expended.
Skills: Abilities generated and leveled up by Growth. Activated to utilize
abilities beyond natural proficiencies. Activation may or may not require
consumption of XP, HP, MP, or Stats.
—Analysis (Lvl. 1): Quantifies and defines attributes of objects in your
perceptual range. Information generated varies according to MP used, prior
knowledge, and Analysis level. May be resisted by #####, #####, or
certain Skills, Attributes, and natural proficiencies. (#####).
After bringing up the Analysis panel, I stopped. Parts of the description were hidden. There were probably conditions I had to meet to reveal them, but if the panels I was seeing were because of the Analysis skill, I might only need to raise its level in order to see the hidden parts. I checked my MP.
MP: 5,630/11,478
'Wow,' I thought. 'That's way down from earlier. If it's not the Analysis skill eating away at it, something's really wrong.'
I tapped the last section on my Status panel—the Attributes section. Because I was paying attention this time, I felt it flowing out of me, a sudden pulse of magic through my body that was matched by a tick down in my MP:
MP: 4,630/11,478
'A thousand mana for a single Analysis?' I thought. 'That's absurd.'
But based on what the Analysis panel had said, it seemed like if I knew more about what I was using Analysis on, it would cost less mana to get the same amount of information. Maybe it wasn't a total ripoff, I decided, but a thousand mana for a single panel of information was definitely still a ripoff.
I checked the Attributes panel that I'd just pulled up.
Attributes:
Characteristics that affect Stat values and other Characteristics.
—Displaced Soul: Your soul is not in its original body. Name is recorded
twice. Age is recorded twice.
—Mage: You can manipulate magic. You have a Mana Reservoir. Characteristic:
MP is generated.
—Growth: You randomly grow faster than normal. Additional Characteristics
may be randomly generated when you try to grow. Stats may randomly gain
bonuses during practice. Abilities may randomly improve during use.
(#####).
Growth seemed like it might be overpowered, but the panel said that its bonuses were random, so I couldn't be sure. I would just have to see how things played out.
"Close," I said, and the panels disappeared.
I looked back at my reflection, like I had been doing when the strange panels had started appearing, and all of a sudden, I realized that I had been standing in front of a mirror in nothing but a towel for several minutes. Embarrassed, and relieved that nobody had walked in on me, I quickly dressed and hurried back to my room.
Current Status:
John Acton*
Age: 11*
Lvl: 8
XP: 418/9000
HP: 109/110
MP: 4,630/11,488
Stats: STR: 10, DEX: 7, SNS: 6, FCS: 16, LUK: 1
Points: 0
Skills: Analysis (Lvl. 1)
Attributes: Displaced Soul, Mage, Growth
A Message from me to YOU! Yes, YOU!
First: sorry about the wall of text for the System introduction, though I'm sure you skimmed it. I just don't really like it when the protagonist takes eight chapters to tap all the buttons and read all the instructions. Seems dumb, and unrealistic.
Second: Gamer!fiction has always annoyed me a bit (though not nearly enough to stop reading it) with how it includes manipulable stats like Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom, because authors never recognize or have their characters react sensibly to how alarming it should be that the System can forcibly alter their mind, their brain, the basis of their consciousness. Even if it's to, or supposedly to your benefit, something that can alter your mind should never be taken lightly. It should be incredibly disturbing to characters and unsettling at least to the readers, but somehow authors never seem to recognize their significance in-work.
That's the main reason why the stats system is as unique as it is in this fic. The other reason is that I tend to see a lot of works that implement CHA, INT, and WIS stats and then promptly forget them—characters with high CHA will be unconvincing, and characters (often the main character or his allies) with low INT and WIS will outsmart characters much higher in those stats. Of course, stupid and foolish people do sometimes outsmart intelligent and wise ones in real life, and children often trick adults, but the trouble is how often what happens in the stories contradicts what the stats say about the characters.
If you come up with a quantification of intelligence but results don't follow, there's something wrong with your quantification.
And third: please review, I've been locked in a basement and forced to write this story, and if I don't get enough reviews I'll get the hose again.