I looked up from my book as an owl flew through the open window and dropped a letter on the desk in front of me. I picked up the letter and conjured a stand with a wave of my wand for the owl to rest. After making sure the owl had some water I opened the letter, and as my eyes scanned it my smile widened. "Alright, Finally!! Hey Ari, ole Dumbles finally got approval for our class." A crash was heard from the ceiling before a herd of elephants came crashing down the stairs. "Ow.. ow.. ow, shit that hurt'' I tried to stop myself from laughing but a snort escaped before I could ask if she was ok. "Stubbed my toe." My wife limped around the corner with a glare and I smiled, "It's about time, I wish he would actually throw his weight around sometimes."

I looked at Illari, my wife of two years, as she walked over. She had black hair braided with feathers and tattoos running along her arms. She noticed my staring and gave me a smirk, "Not right now hon, we have to get ready for our class." I shook my head, "Fine. Do you want to put together the tests or the lessons?" She cocked her hip and thought, "I'll do the lessons, you can work on your puzzles." She waved me off and I smiled, she knew I would love to put together the puzzles. I walked forward and gave her a hug and kissed her on the cheek, "Thanks, what do you want to use tonight?" Her cheeks pinked a little from the unexpected affection, but she returned the hug.

She smiled, "Can we have the magic density tonight?" I stared for a moment with a raised eyebrow and she gave that smirk that drives me wild. I smirked back before nodding, "Alright, should be fun." We walked to our work area and started on the projects while conversing, "So, what do you have planned for the tests?" I gave her a smirk, "You're gonna have to figure it out yourself." She pouted and turned away, making sure to add a sway to her hips as she walked to the storage area. I watched her walk away, yeah tonight should be fun, after shaking my head to snap out of it I went over some ideas for the exams.

Once I had a firm idea of what to do for the third year exams I headed to the spell creation room. It was a completely isolated room made from materials that were specifically attuned to calm chaotic magic. Runic scripts were engraved to protect me from unexpected results, something my wife insisted I update regularly after hearing about some of the odder effects I had come across. I changed into a tunic with no enchantments and performed a cleansing ritual before I even entered the room. Over the next few hours I made the puzzle that the students would be expected to solve by the end of their third year.

After I finished with the first puzzle I started on my wife's request, I headed to the storage area to grab a few ingredients before I made my way to the ritual room. In the ritual room I performed the ritual that we had become famous for. During my travels around the world I made sure to learn from every community I came across. During my time in America I met with some of the surviving Native American shamans. They taught me to look beyond the surface, magic at its core is chaos so any magical item doesn't not have only one effect. Something that could be used in a potion for healing an upset stomach also had the effects of turning someone's hair green and their sweat neon purple.

This diluted the intended effect it was used for. Potions was an art that used contradicting effects to cancel each other out. Towards the end of my time with the shaman I met my wife, and with her understanding of magical effects we created the ritual that would eventually surpass the philosopher's stone as the single greatest magical creation. During the process of designing the ritual we grew closer, she had a way of looking at the world that I envied. She saw the potential of our world while I had started to think the people were too entrenched in their ways to change.

Eventually she managed to share our creation with the world and we made our plan to do so. This was revolutionary because with the dissemination of this ritual the magical world entered a renaissance era. Now instead of randomly mixing ingredients to produce a desired effect you could use the ritual to use a single ingredient and produce whatever effect you want. While magic would never truly be controlled it could be shaped into a desired effect. This ritual combined magic and science, specifically the law of conservation of energy and the law of equivalent exchange. That allowed more control in shaping an object's magic and navigating the chaotic maze of its magical effects.

The essence of dittany had four ingredients that were used to cancel out the extra effects so only the healing abilities of dittany were left. If even one ingredient was left out it would do anything from becoming a flesh eating poison or produce spores that would give some vivid hallucinations of left socks that flew through the sky piloted by turtles. Imagine if instead of using different materials to cancel out unneeded effects you could use a single ingredient to suppress the unneeded effects and amplify the desired one. You could then use that object in a ritual that would amplify another object, and so on and so forth.

I looked at the mixture of herbs at the center of my desk. This particular mixture was used to increase our magical density, it had an interesting side effect too. As magic was tied to emotion, anything directly messing with a person's magic had an effect on the mind. I stored it into a stone bowl and made my way to the living room. My wife was sprawled on the couch, she heard me approach and perked up. "Are you ready to eat?" I nodded and we made our way to the kitchen, "Nox can you serve dinner?"

At my words a few pops were heard and a house elf dressed in a tunic appeared. "I have made miso soup and edamame, I also made Chicken Katsu and raspberry sherbert for dessert. Please enjoy." After he finished he popped away, most likely to take care of the creatures we had in artificial biomes and the plants in the greenhouses. I sat down at the table and dug in, I almost moaned at the taste, another effect of my ritual was enhancing the flavor of food. My wife and I never spoke during dinner as we were too busy inhaling our food, but once we finished the dishes disappeared and we headed back to the living room. Once we sat on the couch I reached over to the end table, "How strong do you want it tonight?"

She thought for a moment, "We'll probably be too busy to do this again for a while, so let's go for it." I looked back at her before grabbing two short sticks made of purple metal and covered in runes. I cast a spell on the bowl holding the mixture, after a few seconds smoke started to fill the bowl but it did not spill over the edge. I gave one of the sticks to Illari and we both pressed our sticks through the smoke, a bubble formed on the top as the smoke was drawn into the bubble. Once the bowl was empty we started to breathe in the smoke a little at a time.

By the time the bubbles had shrunk to half their size the side effect started to manifest. Sweat started to gather on my forehead, I could see that my wifes pupils had dilated and knew that mine would match. My breath started to get harsher and my heart started to pound. After another minute we both started to fidget, taking less and less time between each inhale, before long we took the last couple breaths in one go. Once we finished she jumped on my lap and I stood, lifting her by the ass and made my way back to our bedroom for the rest of the night.

The next morning we took a little longer to rouse from our slumber, "Mmm, honey I really love that stuff, why can't we do that more?" I looked at her and moved, she flinched at the moving bed. "Ah, yeah I remember now." she said with a grimace. I smirked, "If you smoked the body version more than we could do the magic density more. But someone doesn't like them." She made a face, "I know, but can't you change the side effect." I shook my head, "It's not only an effect on the body but the mind as well, if your mind believes you are under a massive pressure your body will resist, that way it strengthens the whole body." She nodded and got up to take a shower, "I know, I know. But it still feels weird."

Time passed and over the next few weeks we continued to prepare for class. My wife and I were going to try to have as little book work as possible, experience is the best teacher after all. My wife was working on the day to day lessons, some would only take a single class to complete but as the students learned more the lessons became longer. The summer passed and two days before the school year began we finally finished. I collapsed on the couch, "Man, I wish Dumbledore gave us a bit more of a warning." I complained as my wife curled into my side, "Dumbledore may be too passive, but it was the ministry that caused the approval to be delayed as long as it has been."

I rolled my eyes, "Can't you just let me complain." She giggled and stood holding my hand, "Why don't we have an early night, that way we can get the most out of our last day of freedom." I laughed and let her lead me to the bedroom, we simply held each other as we drifted off. We rose early the next morning and made our way to Diagon Alley, eager to enjoy a whole day of relaxation after all the work we had to do. Stepping into the alley was a sight to see these days. When I was introduced to the magical world almost 20 years ago I was disappointed how run down and non magical the alley looked. But with the most used invention in the world stepping into the alley was like stepping into a fantasy world.

The Realms, a world you can do anything in but unable to affect the real world. It was the invention I made 3 years after I met my wife, and it elevated me to the rank of grandmaster illusionist. The grandmaster title is awarded to a wizard or witch that performs a feat of magic that is seen as the peak of that magic. I made the realms affect all of a person's senses, overlaying illusions on a person's surroundings or a deep dive for games that allowed a person to enter a connected dream state. Over the years many games and applications have been made for the realms and even teaching at Hogwarts is vastly different than it was before.

To my left there was a magical biosphere, it was an overlay of magical animals and plants that were too dangerous for regular people to even be near. Like dragons and Nundu, or bewitching flowers and spore spewing mushrooms. Anything could be found in this new world I designed. We walked past some children playing a card game based on famous myths from both the wizarding and muggle world. By the time we made it to our destination we had smiles spread across our faces, this new world we helped create. We stopped at our favorite cafe and ate breakfast before we explored the rest of the alley.

The realms allowed a person to create anything they could possibly imagine, like a pet shop that was made to look like a vast jungle. With space expanding charms a matchbook could contain a house if enough magic could be gathered. However, the downside of that magic was when space was expanded past a certain point it played havoc on a person's senses. Thanks to the realms that was no longer a problem and the wizarding world expanded a thousand times. It helped with muggle hatred too, now that wizards had more than enough space to live how they liked without being afraid of being seen.

Now that wizards could fit entire worlds in a single room there was no need to spread out. After we finished our breakfast we decided to head to a new attraction in the Realms, The Arena. A giant colosseum where people could design monsters and have them fight in a duel. Regular events included everything from navigating a labyrinth in a team, to full scale simulated war. There were not any scheduled fights happening this early in the morning so we decided to have a duel. It only took a few minutes as we had fought in the arena before. I chose my favorite creature, An Ent. A troll sized creature made of a magical Redwood tree with vines attached to its arm that were as strong as spider silk. I made a few adjustments for surprises and activated the deep dive.

When my vision switched I stood in my new body, and made a few moves to get used to being so tall. Once I was ready I walked towards the entrance of the arena, I saw my wife walking out of the opposite entrance. She had decided to go with a water elemental that looked like flowing water in the shape of a woman, steam spiraling around her limbs. We met in the middle and took our stances, I released the vines that were coiled in my arms and she absorbed the steam into her limbs. There was a moment of absolute stillness before she made the first move.

The steam inside her legs was ejected through the bottom of her foot, blasting her towards me. I met her charge with a punch of my own, while my vines tried to entangle her arms. As soon as the vines touched the water that made up her body it started to drink it in, that inturn made the vines bloom flowers. Her punch on the other hand blasted out steam on contact. The steam in turn boiled the water within my wooden body and added it to her own reserves. We clashed back and forth, she attacked with light movements only needing a single touch to do damage and unable to stay in one place, lest my entangling vines consume her completely.

I on the other hand stayed in one place, not wasting energy on moving much as I was well aware of the difference in our speed. We made a point to participate in The Arena as often as we could, it helped open our minds to the possibilities of simple magics. But as all things must, our fight came to an end and while I had reduced my wife by more than half her original size, her steam dried me out enough that eventually the heat caused me to burst into flames. Once we finished our fight we spent the rest of the day simply walking around and seeing all the new things people had come up with. My favorite was a walk through simulated environments, as they could be filled with the most creative views.

Eventually evening rolled around and we headed back home, once there we finished packing for tomorrow and headed to bed. We laid in bed when a thought occurred to me, "I just realized, tomorrow is the first day of a new age." My wife snorted and rolled over looking at me through half lidded eyes, "You are such a drama queen." I balked at the accusation and she started to laugh, I waited until she gained control of herself and I asked her a question. "Do you think they are ready for this?" My wife sobered and observed my face for a moment before reaching up and brushing my cheek, "I think that we can not advance the world on our own, if we are to change the world then we will need help."

I looked down and closed my eyes, "But what if we fail?" my wife tilted my chin up to meet her eyes. "Do you remember what you said to me at our first meeting?" I shook my head at her question. She gave a soft smile, "You said we were like two sides of the coin, the scientist and the spiritualist." I remembered now, but was still confused about the point. "Not many think about it, but a coin actually has three sides. You are one side and I am another, I trust you to keep me balanced just as you can trust me to do the same for you. Together we can find that balance and keep that coin rolling."

I laughed a bit at her metaphor but it made me feel better, "You are my guiding light. Thank you." My comment made her cheeks pink a little but she still smiled and gave me a kiss before settling back in. I wrapped my arms around her and relaxed. She was right, as long as we balanced each other we would continue on our path and there was nothing that we couldn't overcome. As I drifted off to sleep I dreamt of the world we were going to build, a world I would be proud to live in. And maybe there were a few more little additions to our family.