Chain 024: Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them

Chain 024: Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them
Location: Hogwarts, 1915
Age: 11
Identity: Drop-In, Slytherin
Drawbacks: [+300] Off To School, The Long Haul, Murtlap Poisoning
(Abilities: Savant, Alchemist, Achron, Sorcery Savant, Lifting Yourself Up, Supernatural Savant, The Stars Shine Upon Me, One Of The Wise)

[Free]      Draco Dormiens Nunquan Titillandus
[Free]      Actor
[100/1000]  Do You Think You Can Hold Me?
[300/1000]  Legilimens
[700/1000]  Apparition Ace
[1300/1300] Duelist Champion
[Free]      Wand: Blackthorn and Phoenix

Murtlap poisoning before my first day of Hogwarts... with the symptoms lasting for thirty years. What a nightmare.

No, seriously. You think sweating and being lightheaded sometimes isn't worth three hundred points? You try it for a decade or three. Going to Hogwarts was wonderful, up to the point that my appearance was a thing people constantly made fun of. Explaining that I was (apparently) thrown into a lake at a tender young age, winding up up covered by murtlaps... ugh. Regardless, despite plenty of socially awkward times in magic boarding school, I graduated. And in fact did fairly well. Newt Scamander had been expelled by the time I started school, bit of a shame but it's simply the way things are. I did well enough in Slytherin, though I didn't particularly excel in terms of schoolwork. But then, learning a great deal of things without letting on that you're a genius is itself a daunting task, is it not? After all, who would suspect that I, of the somewhat comical appearance, was in the position I was?

(Over the years, though, I became a master of charming my clothing to keep me cool, comfortable, and quite instantly evaporate any sweat.)

There weren't a lot of people who thought I was really in such a position, but some things are hard to fake. Transfiguration is definitely one of those, unfortunately, but once I explained things to the teacher who was instructing me... he just rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath about Slytherins always overcomplicating things. Which I cheerfully agreed with him on, and asked if I could perhaps get some private tutoring from him at some indeterminate future point. Bemused, he agreed on condition that I achieved at least an Exceeds in his class and one other of his choosing. He was vaguely perplexed when I managed to get straight E's - nothing higher, nothing lower.

After third year, this expanded to my receiving tutoring from Albus Dumbledore, at the time the Defense teacher. He was clear that he wouldn't teach me any of the dark arts themselves, but I found this to be certainly acceptable - I wasn't interested in harming people, but rather protecting myself and others from harm when the situation warranted. By the time I'd hit seventh year, my schedule was packed with NEWT-level classes, and I was extremely careful not to publicly expose myself. I'd explained it to Professor Dumbledore and Headmaster Black thus: "If a child is able to do as a well trained adult can, they are precocious. If a child can press the boundaries, there are doubts as to whether they would be taken seriously or if they're a stand-in for someone else's purposes. If an adult can prove himself, then he has earned the right to make his mark. It would be wrong to overshadow my peers until I have earned the right."

(Still, Dumbledore's class was the only one wherein I achieved an O, in my final year at Hogwarts.)

After Hogwarts I went abroad; the Muggles were told that my profuse sweating was due to a weak constitution after an unfortunate foray with His Majesty's Army, late of the recent unpleasantness, as it was easy enough to simply lie about my age. It certainly stopped people from asking other questions secondary to that, as well. Otherwise... well, my plans were to travel the world and learn magic, and publish my own research. Not so much for my sake, but others'.

Of course, plans seldom survive first contact with the enemy. My experiences in North America were quite decidedly interesting, though I discovered a great deal, studied magics other than those of Britain, got involved in a massive dust-up in New York in 1926 which was resolved in the absolute strangest way... and after that, pursued Gellert Grindelwald to the European continent. The magics I used to track him weren't all local, but I made more than one breakthrough in the local magics in order to continue the pursuit under the guise of continuing my studies. And throughout, I kept in touch with Albus Dumbledore.

I dueled Grindelwald two times. Despite my abilities in manipulating time... I did not turn out to be the victor either time. Neither the first, when I crossed wands with him in Paris, or the second in Berlin when he came for me in my sleep, botched my recruitment, and nearly killed me. Oh, I escaped intact, but he cheerfully crossed lines in fighting that I was unwilling to do. And as his star rose, taking muggle Germany with it, I elected to return to London and pursued my own spell research. Some streamlined a few existing spells and left them obsolete, while others were better termed enchantments. None of them necessarily would revolutionize the world of course, but rather... expand its horizons. Upward. Downward. Surely someone would eventually have an interest in exploring the sea in a magical bathysphere, or visit nearby planetary bodies in a more refined version. Certainly such charms were curiosities, but others took them and expanded them. They seemed to work quite well, for instance, on wooden ships.

In 1935, I took a position at Hogwarts, teaching Charms during the year, left to my own devices in the off-season, and became more familiar with the other staff there. Friends, even, I dare say - not to mention the amusement of pursuing alchemy in the off-time with Dumbledore. This went well, but Dumbledore mentioning a certain incoming student piqued my interest in 1938 - and so I rewound time for myself and offered to go with him, since he was going to visit a student in an orphanage. It raised certain warning signs to me, I told him, considering my upbringing. And when the young Mr. Riddle professed what he did, what he was capable of... I placed a hand on Albus' wrist in hopes of calming him, and instead reacted with cautious enthusiasm. Positive reinforcement, as I later explained to Albus, could hold open more doors than negative.

After that meeting, I came clean to Dumbledore. I laid it all bare - I was honest about who and what I was, why I traveled between worlds and the fact that this one hadn't been on the usual schedule for reasons unknown to me, the whole of my past, the powers I could use, everything at my disposal. It seemed quite unbelievable to him until I had a Raptor land and take us to Hyperion, floating invisibly in orbit. He got a kick out of needling me after that - "ah, right on time!", to which I would inevitably quip, "A wizard is never late, Albus, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to." Though more often merely abbreviated to "A wizard is never late." This amused us perhaps more than it ought to have - especially me, as it would be years before Tolkien's works would even be published. Well, perhaps not me as much as he, when he pointed out that a witch may very well indeed be late

When the school year came to a close and he begged to remain at Hogwarts, I offered him another option: I told him what I did, and offered to take him with me. It was hardly a formal arrangement, but spending a handful of weeks at the orphanage per year weighed against seeing the world for three months a year... that was interesting. It would have been far more interesting had we not run into Grindelwald that year, mind you, but when you see the Dark Lord of the era in Baghdad... you tend to grab everything important to you and run. And when you face him down for the third time in order to protect your charge, and he realizes the kid gloves are off... well. Our third duel was a true draw, as opposed to the narrow escapes I'd made before.

Tom still was a troubled child, but he at least had some support that he didn't manipulate into place. Couldn't, in fact. Certainly he tried with most other teachers, but he could rely on me to give him the truth - whole, unvarnished, untainted by my personal views (though he'd certainly hear my views separately from the subject).

One day he asked me about the concept of a horcrux. "Immortality, of a sort," I told him. "I strongly recommend against it. Not only are you limited to years you were born to, but a price is taken from you, and not only with the act itself. Certainly, with a strong will you would survive the ritual and carry on with fatal wounds, but one might be hard-pressed to truly call it living. If it worked as it was meant to, one would still see Egyptian pharaohs to this very day. Better to embrace the next great adventure whole and hale, rather than with a shattered soul."

Alas, for him, it proved to be good enough. But I never knew; Myrtle Warren died on a Sunday, and I was in London until Monday morning, so I wasn't able to prevent her death nor discover who had been behind it. All we had was a suspicion, but nothing concrete, and Tom never broke in any timeline that I tried and aborted. All we knew is that he grew steadily more antisocial and cold, but he wouldn't talk about anything that happened.

The day he graduated from Hogwarts, I abruptly found my time at an end, unexpectedly.