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The night sky was aglow with the bright lights of the stars, shining upon even the most remote places. The pale crescent moon shone like a silvery claw among the blanket of stars that stretched to infinity.
Quinn was standing on his favorite outdoor place in all Hogwarts; the Astronomy Tower. The tallest tower. The calm wind of the night stroked Quinn's face, making his skin tingle with a slight cold. He liked the Astronomy Tower because of the unique peace it had.
"A couple more minutes," said Quinn while looking at his new pocket watch. "Just a little more to September Eighth."
In a couple of minutes, the day would turn to September Eighth, that is, the day Quinn had arrived in this world. Eleven years of living in the magical world of Harry Potter. He sighed; how long had it been since he had thought of this world as the world of 'Harry Potter.' It had been a while since he had stopped looking at the world he lived in as a fantasy world of fiction and had come to recognise it as something real.
He had lived in this world seven years before coming into contact with the Potters. He had gained a new family, formed new relationships, and made a place for himself in this world. He had found something he loved from the bottom of his heart and had developed close connections with people he cared about.
All those elements had made this world go from something he had read about in books and enjoyed as movies to something real and genuine. A thought that didn't seep through him until now that he was thinking about it. A part of him still couldn't believe that it had been so long; he had been living in a world of magic for over a decade.
He moved to the side and started to remove his clothes till he was in a simple white tee and white shorts before returning to the center of the tower. He stood there waiting for it to happen.
Four years ago, he had experienced a late transition to the stage of magic development that children from eleven to seventeen years old enjoyed. They would enter a state of magical flux and have a better focus ability and an increase in the quantity of magic in their core. Using magic would accelerate and boost their results.
Quinn wasn't sure if it would happen again, but he hoped that it would, as he would gain lots of benefits. He had tried to research on this subject matter, but upon extensive reading in his personal library, the Room of Requirements, and the few days of access to the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library that he had been able to get from multiple Professors (stating that he needed research material on their subjects), hadn't given him anything conclusive.
"I'm prepared... if it happens, then good. If it doesn't, I will go on with my life."
Quinn would have no qualms about spending eleven years in this world even if they went unrewarded. After the day four years ago, Quinn had already mapped out how much magic he would have at his eighteenth birthday, which was the day the flux state would transition into maturation. He knew how much work he would have to put to get maximum gains from the seven years and had planned short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals for achieving the best he could.
The boost from the Sin vault had been an unexpected blip in his plan, and he had had to redraw the development plan to assimilate the bizarre year and the changes it had brought.
'As long as I keep working hard, I will come out as the world's most magically powerful eighteen-year-old at the end of this. Better than Dumbledore, Grindelwald, Voldemort, or any other magical that has walked on this planet,' thought Quinn. These were the gains he would naturally get in his life; thus, Quinn wanted to be the person who took the most advantage of it by the time his life ended.
A sound resembling a tuning fork being hit broke the silence of the night and caused Quinn to look at a corner where his neatly folded outer garment with his new pocket watch sat.
"It's time."
It was already September 8. Quinn closed his eyes... seconds passed, and Quinn stood still with no movement, and all he noticed was the sound of crickets in the background.
He opened one eye and looked left and right. '... What? Is it happening? No…? Let's wait a bit more' He closed his eyes once again and waited for a while. But nothing happened. Eventually, an hour passed, and nothing happened.
"... Was it wishful thinking? I seem like a fool. Yeah, an idiot," said Quinn, smacking his lips. He picked up his clothes, got dressed, and went back to the Ravenclaw common room after wasting one hour.
"That was stupid!" complained Quinn in his bed as he pulled up the sheets. He went to sleep feeling irritated with himself.
Sleep took over Quinn after half an hour of silent bitching and moaning. The second Quinn entered REM sleep, inside Quinn, his soul started to thrum and vibrate in a space outside of the physical plane. The foreign soul that chanced upon a different world and resided in a body, not of its world, started to go through a transformation.
The soul that had nothing to do with magic was able to access it through the native body. Through the years of being in contact with the mystical energy known as magic, the soul had been slowly changing, transforming to gain access to magic. After eleven long years, the transformation was complete. The soul had normalised being in contact with magic. It now held the same properties as any other soul that could be found in a magical.
And as Quinn slept, the soul finally went through a qualitative change.
The 「BODY」 had always been from this world, had always been able to access magic.
The 「MIND, through its connection to the brain, which was a part of the 「BODY」, also could access magic and, with ample training and daily use, had become enabled with magic.
Now that the 「SOUL」 was going to get direct access to magic, "Quinn" would finally be one.
The magic from the soul plane crossed over to the physical plane, and the dorm room that had three fifth-year boys lit up. The light was so bright that it passed right through the bed curtains. A window that shone with a bright light could be visible from Hogwarts, and anyone looking from the outside would wonder what the hell was happening. The common room down the stairs was getting light from up above, and even the other dorm rooms along the staircase had bright light coming through the doors.
The owner of the soul slept through the entire process along with the whole Ravenclaw student body.
Mind, Body, Soul.
The ultimate trifecta was now complete. Working in a symbiotic union to function as the magical human known as Quinn West.
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- (Scene Break) -
.
Quinn lay on his back, looking at the ceiling. After waking up at six in the morning for years, his internal body clock made him wake up at six o'clock. He sat upon his bed, his hands stretching above his head. As always, his sheet slipped off his body and started to fold itself, and as he stood up, the bed cover would fix itself, and the pillows would become fluffy once again.
He then walked to the bathroom the three had to brush their teeth. With a sway of his hand, he made his toothbrush magically move. Quinn's eyes were staring down, still a little drowsy from the late last night. He breathed through his nose and stood up straight. He closed his eyes and stretched his body to shake off his lethargy.
His eyes opened up with sleep out of them and peered at the mirror in front of him. For a second, the toothbrush kept brushing, but what Quinn saw surprised him so much that he lost control of the brush. The toothbrush with lathered paste fell down, but before it could touch the floor, it stopped, hovering a bit.
Staring back, Quinn had his handsome face, with a mild case of bed hair. But instead of his usual stone-grey eyes, his two orbs were a vivid purple in color.
"What the hell," said Quinn with toothpaste in his mouth. He leaned closer to the mirror, left hand on the edge of the sink, while the right pulling down the lower eyelid to get a better look at his eyes.
"Why are they purple?" But before Quinn could get an answer, he blinked, and his iris were back to their usual stone-grey.
"What?!"
He spat out the paste into the sink, and twisted the tap to let out water for gargling. Quinn felt the usual control he had over water when he touched the tap, but then he found himself staring at the running water. The running water stream thrummed, disturbing the flow. As he stared at the water, Quinn's ears picked up the sound of his heartbeat. As that sound got louder, the thrum in the water started to match with the heartbeat, eventually coinciding with each other. Every beat of his heart matched a thrum in the water.
His eyes went up from the tap to the mirror, but this time he wasn't looking at his image, but the water pipes behind that carried water to the faucet. Quinn slipped into the feeling and found that he could feel every water pipe in the bathroom. The sense of water inside the walls became stronger as he sunk deeper into the state.
Quinn felt like he could squeeze the water out of the metal pipes, the bricked walls, painted surfaces or simply force the water to burst out, ravaging everything in the way between the water and him.
He didn't do any of that.
"Something happened last night." Quinn was sure of it. "I didn't have this level of control last night." Quinn's control over water was top-notch, but this level of sense where he could sense it through layers of obstruction hadn't been in his skill set.
The young magical dove deep into his body and snooped around his magic control, but there were no changes. With him just waking up, the magic core was full, and it was as full as yesterday. His mind immediately went to last night.
"Something definitely happened," repeated Quinn and flexed his magic to test out if something was different. Everything in the bathroom, from the mirror to the showerhead to the far right, rattled.
But he wasn't expecting the sudden yell from outside, and Quinn knew exactly who yelled and why. He ran out to see Eddie on the floor beside his bed and Marcus standing up on his bed, looking alert in confusion and surprise at being woken because of the sudden sound and shake of his head.
"What? What? Was it an earthquake?" said Marcus.
"I don't know! Ugh, my elbow hurts," groaned Eddie as he held his elbow, which contacted the ground when he fell off the bed.
"I didn't feel anything," said Quinn, lying, as he was the reason behind everything. Inside his mind, the thoughts were running at the speed of light, 'Holy shit! It just came pouring out.'
Quinn had to pull out the magic from his core every time he wanted access to it. As his focus ability increased, the process got more accessible, faster, and he could pull out more and become more precise with the measurements. Right now, he had wanted to pull an amount to rattle everything in the bathroom, but the amount that had come out had been enough to shake everything in their dorm.
"Whatever, now that you guys are up don't go to sleep. You are both coming with me to run," he said, ignoring the groans.
He went back into the bathroom and threw up a silencing ward.
"For the love of magic! I. AM. AWESOME!"
The rapturous laughter echoed inside the bathroom, staying inside the four walls, as the silencing ward did its job. Quinn then walked out and found that both of his friends had gone back to sleep.
"Marcus! All you can eat at the Three Broomsticks at the next Hogsmeade weekend; it's on me. Eddie, you too, I will buy you enough butterbeer so you can bathe with it if you want. The response he got was two pillows to his face.
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- (Scene Break) -
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For an entire week, Quinn's mood had been at an all-time high. Experimenting with his new magical capabilities had been exhilarating. His control now was so smooth that Quinn felt he had been running with weights around his ankles.
That entire week he busied himself with going over every piece he had ever learned and performing them one after another. He found that not only his control over them got better, but his magic regeneration was also faster.
If before he could call upon one unit of magic out of his core, now it was more precise to say he could call a third of that amount as the minimum. An ability that helped him out immensely with delicate applications of magic like transmutation with great details and alchemic procedures that required a tight grip on magic flow.
Right now, he was sitting in his workshop looking over a cauldron inside. In it there was a bubbling poison that turned the stomach acid into a corrosive liquid capable of burning through the stomach and other entrails. A bubble-head charm laid over his face for protection from the fumes.
His concentration was interrupted when he heard a voice inside his workshops.
"Quinn..."
Looking up from the cauldron, Quinn saw a half-transparent, fat ghost dressed in monk robes sticking out of his glass wall.
"Friar, fancy seeing you here," said Quinn. At the same time, he thought about researching for some wards to keep ghosts out. Which was difficult, as a ghosts' existence was tied to the very magic of Hogwarts.
"Aye, you didn't visit me, so I decided to come to you," said the Ravenclaw ghost.
"Oh, sorry about that, Friar. I was going to visit you but got a bit distracted," said Quinn, as he continued to stir the cauldron.
"... I wondered whether you want to challenge the next vault," said Friar, studying Quinn's reaction.
"I will challenge it, Friar. It's one per year for me," answered Quinn. "Now that you're here to give me the next clue... Heh, with you here, I'm getting excited for the next vault, Friar. Come on, tell me about it."
Last year, Quinn and Friar had a talk about the results, and Quinn's performance was all Friar needed to see to believe he had completed the vault. Friar thought that Quinn had found secrets to some ancient magics that had allowed him to perform feats not possible for a child of his age.
"If that's what the challenger desires, then that will be what he gets," nodded Friar. He came out of the wall and floated above the cauldron. His greyish body turned a slimy yellow.
.
[
Dark is the forest and deep, and overhead
Hang stars like seeds of light
In vain, though not since they were sown, was bred
Anything more bright.
And evermore mighty multitude ride
About, nor enter in;
Of the other multitudes that dwell inside.
Outside is white and gold,
Inside is for brave and bold.
Venture through the deep and treacherous mines
Pointless all it would seem;
But persist through the endless vines
The reward is grand, I deem.
]
.
"Huh," said Quinn as he sat down on a barstool. "Friar, did you work on the rhyming?"
"That I did," said Friar feeling proud. "I got tips from the sorting hat. It taught me from its millennia of experience."
That made Quinn laugh. He could imagine the hat and Friar talking to each other about poems, rhymes, and songs. A magical artifact with a personality and an imprint of a departed soul exchanging notes on building music and riddles. Quite bizarre, indeed.
"It definitely worked," he said, noting down the fourth riddle, "... a-and done. That's it, Friar." Quinn looked up and smiled, "I'm ready for the challenge."
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-*-*-*-*-*-
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Quinn West - MC - I am not a computer; I don't need to shut down to install an update.
Friar - Hufflepuff ghost - Music... is mighty!
