𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤

❖

The thing about being two years old—and I say this with the benefit of hindsight, an unreasonable amount of experience, and the kind of exasperation usually reserved for much older, much balder men—is that people suddenly expect you to have opinions.

Not the useful kind, of course.

Nobody sat me down and asked, “Antares, would you say the Black family’s deeply entrenched ideology of blood purity is not only intellectually bankrupt but also a logistical nightmare?”

No, no. That would’ve been too much to hope for.

Instead, my opinions were expected to be small, harmless, and performative—stage props in the grand production that was pure-blood upbringing.

Did I like apples or pears? Wrong answer: Apples. Right answer: Whatever my mother preferred.

Did I want to wear the green robes or the slightly greener robes? Trick question. One was “distinguished,” the other was “acceptable,” and I had precisely no idea which was which.

Did I love my mother? Yes. Loudly. Enthusiastically. Preferably while looking cherubic and vaguely heartbroken if she so much as turned away for five seconds.

That was the sort of thing they expected from me.

But here’s what they didn’t know—the thing that turned my existence into a tightrope walk over a pit of very sharp, very metaphorical teeth: I had bigger opinions. The kind that didn’t fit neatly into the mind of a toddler.

Opinions like:

Knowing the future doesn’t automatically make you a hero. It doesn’t hand you a sword, a plan, or a conveniently timed monologue to rewrite history. Sometimes, it gives you the power to act. Other times, it lets you struggle, fight, claw at fate with everything you have—only to watch it snap back into place like a rubber band, leaving you right where you started. The worst part? Sometimes, you do everything right… and nothing changes at all.

Let me explain.

My meta-knowledge of the Wizarding World was the kind that could only come from years of obsessing over the original material, reading far too much fanfiction, and engaging in at least three online debates about wand mechanics that somehow ended in personal insults. In retrospect, that was a mixed blessing. I knew enough about the original plot to recognise the familiar beats—the broad strokes of destiny were there, but the details? Foggy at best, unreliable at worst.

Which was where the Player Forum came in.

Remember when I said you could strip away every other function of the System, leave only the Player Forum, and still—if you wanted to—effectively puppet-master the entire direction of any world?

Well, I meant it.

That wasn’t an exaggeration.

It was terrifying.

Like I told you before, the sheer breadth and depth of content was overwhelming—like stepping into a Library of Alexandria for multiversal nerds, except every book had been rewritten by a different overenthusiastic fan, cross-referenced with numerous, sometimes conflicting, theories, and aggressively debated in a thousand-thread-long flame war. A simple search for “Dumbledore” had once returned me numerous different versions of his life story, some more unhinged than others—ranging from ‘Secretly Evil Puppet Master’ to ‘Immortal Time-Traveling Merlin’ to ‘Benevolent but Grossly Incompetent Old Man Who Once Got Stuck in a Vanishing Cabinet for Three Days’.

Given the existence of other Players, I wasn’t so arrogant as to assume I was the only special person who’d found themselves in the Wizarding World. Or a variation of it. Far from it. According to the System’s designation, my reality was labelled 「JKR-HP-A-C773」—which, to me, sounded less like a name and more like a very specific brand of printer ink.

But even expecting that—prepared for it, even—I was still constantly blindsided by the sheer scope of knowledge at my fingertips.

The Player Forum didn’t just provide the full, unabridged original canon materials (which, apparently, counted as “public domain” in certain metaphysical circles). No, it had something even more absurd. Something that took my understanding of thorough documentation and punted it straight into the realm of obsession.

The Lorekeepers.

Now, I don’t know what kind of people wake up and decide, “Yes, my life’s calling is to aggressively document the smallest minutiae of reality with the kind of dedication normally reserved for religious scholars and conspiracy theorists,” but apparently, these people existed.

They called themselves Lorekeepers, and they didn’t just collect data—they excavated it. With an arsenal of Skills and abilities related to analysis, observation, and information retrieval, they had constructed a comprehensive, fully indexed, cross-referenced database on the Wizarding World so extensive it would have made real-life historians weep tears of joy, followed by an immediate war over access rights.

And that was just for this multiversal section of reality.

Entire world clusters—any reality where Players had a strong enough presence—were meticulously documented, categorised, and stored in the Forum, as if some omnipotent cosmic librarian had outsourced their job to a particularly obsessive internet community. Which, honestly, felt right. Because what was a “game” without its own Wikipedia?

Parsing through it all, though, was... a struggle.

It was like trying to drink the ocean through a straw—except the ocean was actively resisting, hurling conflicting information at me in different languages, and demanding I take a side in a decade-old argument about whether dragons were technically classified as magical poultry.

But if you were willing to put in the effort, and didn’t mind losing a few brain cells in the process, you could gain an incredibly thorough understanding of the world.

Theoretically.

As an aside, in much, much older versions of the System, there was an absolutely ludicrous feature where Players could train Skills and learn things like Spells and Martial Arts directly from information uploaded to the Player Forum. Imagine picking up resurrection magic the way you’d pick up a sourdough starter recipe—just search, read, and congratulations! You now have the ability to defy the natural order and raise the dead!

Naturally, this was deemed “far too overpowered” and was promptly nerfed in one of the System’s many Updates. Now, the Player Forum was just a repository for knowledge—a damn good one, sure—but not nearly as world-breaking as it once was.

According to old Patch Notes, the decision was made in an effort to promote “game balance.”

Which was hilarious. Really. Because if there was one universal truth about the System, it was that balance was a filthy, unapologetic lie.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a single Player—across any reality, in any version—who actually believed the System was fair. No, this was a ‘game’ where some Players spawned into a life of main-character privilege, showered in legendary bloodlines and destiny-bestowed cheat codes. Others? Others were handed a rusted fork, an obscure side quest, and a patronising tooltip that read: “Good luck.”

Skills and Perks weren’t exactly balanced either—some were absurdly powerful, the kind that could break entire worlds. Others were so useless they felt like the System Administrator’s idea of a joke.

So, if anything, the System removing that feature wasn’t about balance. It was about making sure things weren’t too easy.

Of course, knowing all that didn’t mean much if I couldn’t answer one crucial question: how closely my world aligned with the Sacred Timeline. The immutable origin, the first breath of canon—the foundation upon which all Wizarding World realities balanced before some splintered, others diverged, and more than a few careened headfirst into outright absurdity.

The reliability of all the Wizarding World information at my fingertips hinged on one thing: that I was in a world that hadn’t strayed too far from it.

The Lorekeepers, for all their obsessive cataloguing and good intentions, couldn’t always guarantee the accuracy of their information the further a world strayed from the original. After all, some realities were never meant to be exact copies of the Sacred Timeline. From the moment they branched off, they had their own rules, their own histories, their own logic.

It wasn’t a matter of one tiny butterfly flap causing a storm—no, these worlds had always been different. Some, so subtly you’d never notice until history reached a critical moment and veered sharply left. While others felt like someone had thrown canon into a blender, hit “purée,” and then reconstructed it from memory while blindfolded.

Somewhere out there was a world where Neville Longbottom was the Boy-Who-Lived, Snape had been sorted into Gryffindor, and the Dark Lord’s greatest weakness wasn’t Love or Ancient Magic, but a carefully aimed cheese wheel. Somewhere, Slytherin had been merged with Hufflepuff in a bold administrative decision that everyone pretended to understand, the Triwizard Tournament had been replaced with an inter-school bake-off, and Dobby had single-handedly overthrown the Ministry in a dramatic coup that ended with him declaring himself Minister of Magic and immediately passing a law against socks.

Of course, most divergences weren’t quite as dramatic as “Dobby, Minister of Magic.”

For example, in one world, the Weasley family barely even existed because Molly Prewett had decided she’d rather pursue a thrilling career in dragon-wrangling than settle down and have seven children. In another, the Statute of Secrecy had never been enacted, and wizards and witches lived openly among Muggles, complete with magical reality TV. And somewhere out there, Voldemort had, apparently, embarked on a journey of self-discovery and founded a support group for wayward Dark Lords.

Reality, it seemed, truly had an impressive creative streak.

Not that there wasn’t information on these variant realities—oh no, that would be absurd. The Player Forum had everything. It just wasn’t always reliable. Researching variant worlds was like trying to study for an exam where half the textbook was missing, the pages were out of order, and someone had scrawled conflicting notes in the margins.

Which meant that if I wanted reliable answers, I had to puzzle through the differences between my new world and the source material I’d once obsessively consumed.

Did I have an Evil Dumbledore, or was he still the eccentric, whimsical old wizard with a dubious sense of morality and an inexplicable love of sherbet lemons?

Were there magical cores, or was magic just a function of will, knowledge, and an absurd amount of Latin?

Was non-accidental wandless magic a rare, near-mythical ability, or something people could pick up with enough practice and a can-do attitude?

Did house-elves have infinite power but were magically enslaved into servitude, or were they just naturally gifted and, bafflingly, completely fine with their lot in life?

Was Hogwarts an educational institution, or was it a barely functional chaos generator that just happened to employ a handful of teachers?

Did Voldemort have a nose? (This was important. Canon divergence could start anywhere.)

These were the kinds of questions I needed to resolve to figure out exactly what kind of reality I’d landed in.

Tragically, a thorough investigation was somewhat hindered by my ongoing predicament. Namely: being a toddler. And toddlers, as it turned out, were woefully short on both agency and credibility. At that age, my investigative methods were limited to eavesdropping on adult conversations while pretending to be completely absorbed in the intricate embroidery of my absurdly expensive, custom-tailored robes—robes that, if I had to guess, had been charmed within an inch of their existence to ensure I exuded the appropriate level of aristocratic superiority.

They were so soft, I was immediately convinced that must be what clouds felt like.

When not conducting highly classified intelligence operations from my crib (or covertly maneuvering between people’s legs), I spent my time casually observing pure-blood dynamics from beneath the oversized Black family dining table, and—on more than one occasion—being unceremoniously toted around under an adult’s arm like a particularly inconvenient sack of potatoes.

Looking back, with my obvious lack of mobility, resources, and, frankly, credibility, there had never been much choice in the matter. I had to work with what I had. Which meant making assumptions.

Unless proven otherwise, I defaulted to the simplest solution—that the world I’d found myself in was canon-compliant. Or, at least, canon-adjacent. The broad strokes should hold. The fine details? That was a waiting game. I’d adjust as I got older, when I had more freedom, more access to information, and significantly fewer forced naps ruining my operational efficiency.

It was the easiest solution to live with. After all, statistically speaking, most Wizarding World variants didn’t deviate wildly—if they deviated at all. Some minor shifts, an unexpected personality swap, maybe a living person where there shouldn’t have been one.

Nothing too catastrophic. Nothing that required a complete reassessment of reality.

…Unless, of course, I had landed in one of those realities. The ones where, years later, Harry Potter would be born as a girl, secretly a descendant of Merlin, Morgana, and at least three ancient forgotten bloodlines, inexplicably soul-bonded to Draco Malfoy from infancy, and raised in secret by a rogue Order of Shadow Phoenixes.

By the age of five, she’d have mastered wandless Ancient Magic, tamed a Basilisk with the power of friendship, and discovered an ancient prophecy declaring her the True Heir of Hogwarts. By eleven, she’d be wielding dual-wands, casting silent multi-spells, and effortlessly defeating Voldemort with a single flick of her delicate, ethereally glowing fingers.

And, obviously, she’d spend the entire time being relentlessly pursued by every attractive male character in the series, including but not limited to: Draco Malfoy, Tom Riddle (mysteriously age-appropriate), Snape (redemption arc included), and, for some reason, Fenrir Greyback.

Which—hey, good for her! But if that was the future of the world I’d been dropped into, I was going to need a very different strategy.

Not that having a strategy always meant success.

After all, knowing the future—having all the answers before the test even starts—sometimes tricks you into thinking you have control.

It convinces you that just because you can see the disaster coming, you can sidestep it. That you can beat fate, rewrite the script, tilt the scales in your favour. That foreknowledge is a tool, a weapon, a cheat code that lets you break the game before the game breaks you.

And sometimes, it is.

It really is.

But sometimes—and here’s the kicker—it’s not.

Because seeing the problem coming doesn’t always mean you know how to stop it.

It doesn’t mean you’ve accounted for every moving piece, every stray variable, every single factor you should have thought about but didn’t.

Sometimes, it just means you get to watch yourself screw up in real time, with the added benefit of knowing exactly where you went wrong.

That was something I had to learn the hard way.

Nowadays, with all my wisdom, hindsight, and a frankly excessive amount of experience, I like to think I have a solid handle on the whole future-prediction thing.

Unfortunately, when I was two years old, even with all my reincarnated adult knowledge, I had yet to learn just how stupidly easy it was to be completely right about the future… and still get everything catastrophically, spectacularly wrong.

▣

1965 was an eventful year.

The British Ministry of Magic finally banned experimental breeding, attempting to put a merciful end to decades of questionable magical crossbreeding—including fire-breathing poultry and the short-lived effort to make Jarveys ‘less verbally aggressive.’

Meanwhile, the wizarding press sharpened their knives for the legacy of Former Minister Ignatius Tuft, whose baffling policy decisions continued to haunt British bureaucracy three years after his sacking. The Daily Prophet, always eager for blood, ran a scathing exposé on his failed directives, disastrous political blunders, and the lingering question of whether he had actually intended to breed Dementors or had simply misunderstood the phrase “increase national security.”

Across the Atlantic, America repealed Rappaport’s Law, ending nearly two centuries of strict magical and non-magical segregation. Some called it a progressive leap forward; others called it the beginning of the end.

None of which, at the time, had any bearing on my life.

What did, however, was the fact that Lucius Malfoy started his first year at Hogwarts—embarking on what I could only assume was a lifelong commitment to looking vaguely disappointed in everything.

And, of course, that Remus Lupin was bitten by Fenrir Greyback.

Or, at least, he was supposed to be.

As far as I was concerned back then, that part of the story wasn’t set in stone. Predetermined? Maybe. But inevitable? Not if I interfered first.

Not if I moved the right pieces, nudged the right people, changed the right variable.

The moon would rise, Greyback would strike, and a small boy would wake up screaming.

Unless I did something about it.

And so, I did.

Or, rather—I tried.

It’s a funny thing, really—what people choose to fix.

Ask a certain type of sentimentally-inclined Harry Potter fan what they’d change if given the chance, and Remus Lupin’s unfortunate lupine affliction is usually high on the list.

I wasn’t ashamed to admit I was one of them.

A ‘fix-it’ fan, the kind who, if handed the opportunity, would go out of their way to alter the parts of the story that made them sad.

Objectively? I had no real reason to care.

Remus Lupin was, to me, just another supporting character I admired through the pages of a book. Or a screen. A distant figure, an important name, but not someone I had ever met, spoken to, or had a single personal connection with.

He wasn’t family.

He wasn’t a friend.

He wasn’t anyone I was even remotely involved with in this new life.

And yet, I still found myself thinking—

But I could try, couldn’t I?

What kind of fan would I be if I didn’t at least make the effort?

I didn’t want to be the kind of person who saw a carriage hurtling toward a cliff and shrugged because, technically, it wasn’t my problem. Who watched a disaster unfold in real time, fully aware of the impending wreckage, and chose to do nothing because—

“Well, that’s just how things go, isn’t it?”

If you saw the accident coming, if you knew exactly when the wheels would come loose and send everything crashing into the abyss—didn’t you have an obligation to try and stop it?

Or, failing that, at least throw something in the road and hope for the best.

And so I convinced myself.

That it was my moral imperative.

My responsibility, even.

That out of all the things I couldn’t change—not yet, not at two years old, not when my tactical options consisted of eavesdropping and weaponized cuteness—this was different.

It wasn’t Voldemort gathering followers in the shadows or the slow, steady march of the British Wizarding World into another era of blood-soaked politics.

This was a single child.

In a single house.

On a single night.

A boy who, in another timeline, would go to bed as Remus Lupin and wake up as someone else.

A man with a monster lurking just beneath his skin.

And I could stop it.

My plan was deceptively simple: cosplay as a Seer.

A fitting choice, really—considering that I had access to a repository of multiversal foreknowledge so vast it would make the entire Department of Mysteries collectively weep, and a Game System that was more than willing to hand me reality-warping abilities like an overenthusiastic dungeon master trying to keep things “fun.”

Given that, around that time, my «Acting Mastery» Skill was already sitting comfortably at Rank 49, there was no question I could pull it off. I was practically born for the role. Add in some artfully distant stares, vague dreams, cryptic half-sentences, and just enough dramatic sighing to make people uncomfortable, and I’d probably have a reputation as an infallible oracle before I was tall enough to reach a doorknob.

And, honestly? It wasn’t even technically a lie.

In the future, I planned to eventually back it up with actual Divination Spells. So, it wasn’t like I’d always be regurgitating information I’d read from the Player Forum’s obsessively thorough documentation on the Wizarding World.

Truly, a foolproof scheme.

And best of all?

It let me make an impact.

Because here’s the thing: when you’re a two-year-old, or just a child, really, your ability to affect events is about as expansive as your legs are long. I could hardly march into my father’s study, slam my tiny fist on the desk, and demand to be taken seriously. I had no authority, no autonomy, and a tragically early bedtime.

But a Seer?

Oh, that was different.

A Seer didn’t need authority. A Seer didn’t argue. A Seer proclaimed—and the whims of fate were above mortal scrutiny.

As a child, my words were cute at best and ignorable at worst.

As a prophet, my words would be dangerous to dismiss.

Which, truthfully, if you thought about it, raised a far more interesting question.

The question wasn’t why I planned to fake supernaturally gifted foresight.

It was why more people weren’t doing it.

Anyway, like all of my best performances, I took it seriously—method-acting seriously. That meant extensive planning, preparation, and just enough self-awareness to know this was either a brilliant strategy or a slow, inevitable descent into madness. I couldn’t just blurt out a vague warning about Fenrir Greyback and expect people to fall over themselves in awe.

No—first, I needed a story.

A foundation for my future predictions to build upon. A paper trail of mystical accuracy, carefully crafted so that my increasingly detailed and unnervingly precise predictions would seem less like a miraculous coincidence and more like the inevitable conclusion.

The goal wasn’t just to be believed.

The goal was to make people afraid not to believe me.

And that meant a strong debut.

Something big enough to get attention, yet subtle enough not to trigger immediate skepticism. Something that would lodge itself into people’s minds, so that when I later whispered my foreboding cryptic nonsense about future tragedies, they wouldn’t scoff.

They’d remember the first time I was right.

And they’d listen.

(I hoped.)

Fortunately, I knew exactly how the tragedy of Remus Lupin would happen.

It all started with a man, a prejudice, and the single worst case of foot-in-mouth disease ever recorded in magical history.

Lyall Lupin—father of Remus and a world-renowned authority on Non-Human Spiritous Apparitions—would be called in by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

This, in and of itself, was not unusual.

Around that time, the Ministry was bringing in specialists on all manners of Dark creatures—even those as relatively minor as Boggarts and poltergeists—to assist in understanding and containing the recent surge in Dark creature attacks and sightings.

What was unusual was the part where Lyall, in his infinite wisdom, would decide to say out loud, in the presence of an actual werewolf, that werewolves were: “soulless, evil, and deserved nothing but death.”

Now, in Lyall’s defense, he didn’t know who he was talking to.

What he did know, however, was that the particular Muggle tramp-looking individual he was tasked with helping interrogate was a werewolf pretending not to be a werewolf—which, under normal circumstances, would be a compelling reason to keep one’s mouth shut and let the committee members handle it.

But no.

Lyall, in his boundless genius, did not remain quiet.

Instead, he blurted out his deeply held, passionately wrong opinions about lycanthropy to none other than Fenrir Greyback himself.

Which, obviously, went about as well as you’d expect.

Greyback—being Fenrir Greyback—took offense.

But rather than lunge across the table, snarl, or make a scene. He did something far worse: he remembered.

He took Lyall’s words, tucked them away, and let them fester—perhaps deciding, at some later moment, to weaponise them.

He shared what he’d heard with his werewolf associates (who I could only assume reacted with the werewolf equivalent of “bro, what?”), and together—or possibly entirely on his own—he hatched a plan.

A plan that, on the night of the full moon before Remus Lupin’s fifth birthday, would culminate in Greyback breaking into the Lupin household and making sure Lyall learned an unforgettable lesson about the true nature of werewolves.

Lyall would fight back, drive him away—but not before Remus was bitten, infected with lycanthropy, and consequently doomed to a lifetime of being a social outcast.

Knowing this, I had a timeline.

Thanks to the Player Forum—and provided there were no major discrepancies between my world and canon—I had a date, a location, and just enough forewarning to attempt the unthinkable.

Which meant, weeks before the fateful moment, I began the show.

▣

The first time I woke up screaming, I made sure to sell it.

I thrashed, I wailed, I flailed my tiny limbs like a particularly distressed octopus, and when my mother—half-dressed, wild-eyed, wand already in hand—burst into the nursery, I gasped out wet, hiccuping sobs and buried my face into the nearest stuffed dragon.

It was, quite frankly, some of my best work.

And the System agreed.

【 System Alert 】

You have gained +1,000 XP in your Skill: Acting Mastery!

Which was gratifying, of course. Always nice to be recognised for one’s contributions to theatrical excellence.

But that wasn’t the important part.

The important part was my mother’s reaction.

There was no hesitation.

One moment, I was thrashing, drowning in my own wails—the next, I was lifted into steady, secure arms, pressed tight against the familiar softness of silk and expensive perfume.

Warm. Solid. Immediate.

“My darling,” she breathed, real, actual concern bleeding into her voice, her hand already moving to smooth my black hair, fingers pressing lightly against my forehead—as if she could pull the fear out of me by touch alone. “What has frightened you?”

Not “What is the meaning of this?”

Not “Cease this noise at once.”

Not even “Are you unwell?”

No. She never even considered that this was some childish tantrum.

She never doubted that my distress was real.

And that—that was what two years had changed.

Gone was the woman I had once expected to find, the ice-cold matriarch with a rigid spine and a sneer for softness, the woman who existed only in my memories of canon and the resentful screams of a cursed portrait.

This was not that woman.

This was the mother I had made.

And oh, she was fierce in her love.

She held me close—not like a mother comforting her frightened child, but like a dragon securing its hoard.

Possessive. Unyielding. Absolutely certain that whatever had dared to make me cry would not survive the week.

Which, really, explained a lot.

It explained why she held me like I was a sacred relic of the Black legacy, rather than a two-year-old who had just conned his way into priority status.

It explained why she was currently radiating the kind of cold fury that made grown men reconsider their life choices.

It explained why I had the distinct, creeping sensation that if Walburga Black had any idea who or what was responsible for making me cry, they would not live to see another sunrise.

Honestly, it was an intensity of care I had never felt before.

Not the distant approval of a father, whose affection manifested in nods and the occasional “good.”

Not the stiff, measured affections of some parts of pure-blood society, where love was something acknowledged but rarely spoken aloud, implied through duty and lineage and the unshakable expectation of loyalty.

Not even in the half-remembered warmth of a mother from another life—one who had loved in the way normal people did.

Gently. Softly. Without the promise of bloodshed attached.

Truly, my new mother did not love quietly.

She loved like a marching anthem.

Like a war cry.

Like a woman who had been handed a child that embodied everything she had ever wanted the Black name to be, and instead of molding him into an ideal, she had simply decided he already was one.

I was her pride, it seemed.

Her proof.

Her declaration to the world.

And when I shuddered in her arms, still wrapped in false tears, her hold only tightened.

“My sweet boy,” she murmured, low and soothing, her hand stroking down my back in steady circles. “I am here. I have you.”

A pause.

Then, sharper.

“What’s wrong?”

【 System Alert 】

You have gained +450 XP in your Skill: Acting Mastery!

There.

The flicker of steel beneath the warmth. The hellfire beneath the velvet.

Not dismissal.

Not frustration.

But readiness.

She would find whatever had made me cry, and she would see it handled.

I hiccuped, clinging just a bit tighter, letting my breathing slow, but not quite steady.

Then, with all the limited vocabulary and toddler-like stumbling over words I was supposed to have, muffled into her shoulder—

“Dark.” A hiccup. A trembling breath. “Scary. Bad man. Teeth.”

【 System Alert 】

You have gained +250 XP in your Skill: Acting Mastery!

“A nightmare,” she said. Assessing. Not dismissing.

Better than I had expected.

Still, not quite enough.

I let out another shuddering breath, ensuring she could feel the faint tremor running through me—small, weak, the perfect imitation of a child lost in the lingering grasp of fear.

“Wolf. Bad. Big. Big teeth,” I whispered, uncertain. Hesitant.

Then, as if some deep, wordless unease was too much to contain, I shifted, burrowing even further into her warmth, letting my small fingers clutch at the silken fabric of her robes. My voice dropped to a fragile murmur, barely audible.

“Mama. Bad man. Scary.”

【 System Alert 】

You have gained +350 XP in your Skill: Acting Mastery!

She exhaled through her nose.

“Enough.” Her fingers brushed through my hair, smoothing it down as if that alone could ward off whatever she thought I dreamt of. “You are safe, Antares.”

I allowed myself to sag against her, my small body going boneless, breathing slowing with just the right amount of exhaustion.

Not too limp, not too stiff.

Like the effort of the ‘nightmare’ and speaking the words had drained me, left me fragile, clinging to her warmth for protection I could not name.

A delicate balance.

Too much, and she’d see through it.

Too little, and she’d write it off entirely.

For a long moment, she simply held me.

Her arms stayed locked around me, firm, reassuring, as if to physically shield me from whatever phantom had frightened me so. One hand stroked slow, steady lines down my back, the other cupped the back of my head, cradling me close.

She didn’t speak.

She just breathed.

Deep, slow, measured breaths, each one pulling me into the rhythm of her own steady control.

“Shhh, my darling,” she murmured, softer now, soothing in a way that lulled me deeper into the act. “You are safe. Nothing will harm you.”

A pause.

A faint hum of thought.

Then—

“Kreacher.”

I couldn’t see, but I guessed the ever-loyal house-elf popped into existence immediately, already bowing low.

“Mistress calls,” he rasped.

She didn’t move to release me, didn’t set me down or loosen her hold.

“Fetch me some potions,” she ordered, voice steady but lined with something deeper, something protective. “My son is fevered. And tell Orion to come here.”

Bingo.

▣

The next night, I did it again.

Only this time, it was worse.

Because this time, I wasn’t alone.

After a particularly insistent Sirius and Regulus had declared that we would all be sleeping in the nursery earlier that evening—(“Stop whining, Antares, it’s happening!”)—poor Narcissa, who had simply been visiting for the evening, found herself forcibly conscripted into the ordeal.

She had protested, of course.

Tried to argue that she was far too old, far too dignified to be crammed into a room with three unruly little boys, but Sirius—who had perfected the art of ignoring reasonable objections—had waved her off with an indignant scoff.

“You’re here anyway. Just tell a story and you can sleep in the chair.”

(Spoiler alert: she did not sleep in the chair.)

And so, with a sigh of deep, put-upon suffering, Narcissa had folded herself onto the most structurally sound section of our hastily assembled pillow fort, wrapped in the air of a tragic heroine resigned to her fate.

She told us a story, as requested.

And somewhere between the third book and an impassioned monologue about the virtues of bravery, we had all—one by one—drifted off to sleep, nestled among cushions and half-toppled fort walls.

In the end, the result was four Black children crammed into one room.

Which, to be fair, would have been fine.

Except that when I woke up screaming, it meant I had an audience.

A very unwilling, very traumatised audience.

Honestly? I considered calling it a wash.

After all, I wasn’t completely heartless. Sirius, Regulus and Narcissa certainly didn’t deserve to be collateral damage in my highly disruptive theatrical performance.

But, well, a performance was a performance.

And I couldn’t just throw away a perfectly good opportunity for the sake of minor details like inconvenience or minor discomfort from my brothers and cousin.

So, with the kind of dedication normally reserved for Shakespearean tragedy, I let it begin.

It started small.

A whimper.

Soft. Fragile. The kind of sound that barely registered, the kind that could have easily been mistaken for a breath of wind through the window, the rustle of sheets, the distant cry of an owl waking to the night.

Then—

A shuddering inhale.

Just enough to set the stage.

And then—

The scream.

Not the high, shrill wail of a child demanding attention, but something raw and jagged, the sound of lungs emptied in terror, of fear so overwhelming it didn’t even have the decency to remain human.

A cry that seemed too broken, too wounded to belong to someone so small.

A sound that didn’t just wake the room—

It tore it apart.

«Acting Mastery» took what should have been a simple night terror and wove it into something horrific, something drenched in primal fear—a sound meant to trigger something ancient in the brain, something instinctual, something that told you to run.

And it worked.

Oh, it worked beautifully.

【 System Alert 】

You have gained +1,250 XP in your Skill: Acting Mastery!

Sirius—who had spent the last few years of his life pretending he wasn’t afraid of anything—bolted upright with a strangled gasp, hands gripping whatever blankets or cushions were nearby so tight his knuckles turned white. His wide, unblinking eyes stared into the dark, body frozen in that perfect, instinctive moment of sleep versus survival.

Regulus?

Not much better.

He flinched so violently he lashed out on reflex, swinging an entirely uncoordinated childish punch that hit both Sirius and me square in the ribs.

And Narcissa—

Oh, Narcissa.

Narcissa, who had been sleeping peacefully, wrapped in the illusory safety of her aristocratic dignity, who had told us a bedtime story before curling into a picture-perfect ball of composure and grace—

She woke with a startled inhale.

And in doing so, triggered a pillow-based catastrophe of unprecedented proportions.

An avalanche of cushions, a cascade of misplaced structural integrity—and the next thing I knew, she was toppling off the pillow fort, landing in an unceremonious heap of silk, fluff, and bewildered gasping.

She hit the floor in a tangled mess of fabric and outrage, struggling to disentangle herself from the wreckage of our ill-fated fortifications.

Which, to be fair, was probably what drowning felt like.

For one long, horrified second, there was only silence.

And then—

Everything went straight to hell.

As my performance of fear and discomfort continued, it must have struck a deep, subconscious chord—because my brothers joined in.

【 System Alert 】

You have gained +1,155 XP in your Skill: Acting Mastery!

Sirius and Regulus.

Crying.

Panicking.

Wailing like their tiny, privileged lives depended on it.

And as any unfortunate caretaker of magical children would know, when emotions ran wild, oftentimes, accidental magic was not far behind.

Now, I had seen them both lash out before.

Once, while sharing a bath—(because Sirius insisted, and Regulus always followed)—I had used Shape Water to train a little, just bending the water around, minding my own business.

Except.

The moment Sirius and Regulus saw me do it, they wanted to do it too.

And, of course, when they couldn’t—

Sirius threw a tantrum.

Which dragged Regulus with him.

Which resulted in one flooded bathroom, an accidental levitation incident, and a very, very displeased Walburga.

That had been one magical temper tantrum.

But now?

Now, it was worse.

Now, they were both terrified.

And terrified magical children did not just cry.

They broke things.

Instantly, the room became a warzone.

A chair exploded into splinters.

A bookshelf snapped in half like a dry twig.

One of the wall sconces detached itself, drifted aimlessly for a moment, and then hurled itself at the opposite wall like it had been personally offended.

The nursery, that was once a guest room, shook.

And Narcissa—oh, poor Narcissa—was still on the floor, helplessly trying to claw her way out of the wreckage that now seemed to fight her, looking less like an elegant young lady of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and more like a disgruntled feral cat that had been unceremoniously dunked into chaos.

Then, quite suddenly—

The crib caught fire.

Not in a dramatic, cinematic way—no towering infernos, no roaring flames.

Just a small, unimpressive burst of bright blue fire that flickered politely on the side rail, like even it wasn’t entirely sure if it was supposed to be there.

I would have been more concerned, but at that precise moment, I was actively levitating a metre or so above the ground.

Which was suboptimal.

Truly, I had no idea which of my brothers was responsible for that.

For a brief, deeply inconvenient moment, I considered whether this would be my new reality—suspended indefinitely in midair, doomed to float like some sort of tragic balloon child.

But then, the door slammed open—

And my mother stormed in.

Followed immediately by my father.

And that was when I knew, without a doubt, that we had absolutely outdone ourselves.

The room was unrecognisable.

An absolute wreck.

Furniture destroyed beyond repair.

Feathers from obliterated pillows drifted through the air, turning the place into some kind of cursed winter wonderland.

The entire nursery bathed in the eerie, flickering glow of that inexplicably tiny, polite fire still burning on the crib tucked to the side.

Sirius was on the floor, kicking wildly, trying to fight off a blanket that had wrapped itself around his leg like a particularly aggressive snake.

Regulus was clutching onto a stuffed animal for dear life, eyes wide, looking half a second away from deciding that all life was suffering.

And Narcissa—

Narcissa looked furious.

Like a queen unjustly thrown into a pit of peasants, who had now decided that the only reasonable course of action was to execute everyone involved.

Mother took one look at us.

One long, silent, exceedingly judgmental look.

And then—very calmly, very steadily—raised her wand and extinguished the floating crib fire with a flick. Another flick and she also lowered me back to the ground with an almost insulting amount of grace.

Father, meanwhile, just surveyed the carnage with a blank expression, the exact same way one might stare at a natural disaster and come to terms with their own mortality.

For a moment, there was only silence.

Then, my mother took a slow, measured step forward.

“Explain,” she said, voice utterly devoid of emotion.

Sirius, the absolute menace, immediately pointed at me in between sniffles and sobs.

“Antares started it!”

Traitor.

But I had been preparing for this moment.

With all the delicate frailty of a child lost in a terrible, unspeakable nightmare, I hiccupped once—weak, trembling—and curled further into myself, eyes wide with exhaustion and leftover fear.

Then, in a small, barely-there whisper, I repeated what I had said the previous night.

“Dark. Wolf. Bad man. Teeth.”

【 System Alert 】

You have gained +1,375 XP in your Skill: Acting Mastery!

“Mama. Scary!”

Instant reaction.

Mother stiffened.

Father’s neutral expression faltered, just for a fraction of a second.

The sheer weight of significance behind those words settled over the room like a suffocating mist.

Mother’s gaze snapped back to me, sharp as a knife.

“Again?” she murmured, more to herself than to me.

I nodded, slow, deliberate, my small hands clutching the blanket around me like I was still afraid.

And just like that—

The destruction?

The mess?

The sheer, incomprehensible disaster that we had made of this room?

All of it became secondary.

Because now, she had bigger things to worry about.

Which was, of course, exactly what I wanted.

Poor Narcissa, though.

She hadn’t deserved any of that.

▣

Night three marked a significant change in my living arrangements.

By which I mean, I was evicted from the nursery and relocated to my parents’ quarters—a development that was, admittedly, both an inconvenience and an advantage.

The inconvenience? Constant scrutiny.

The advantage? Constant scrutiny.

After all, the more attention they paid, the more seriously they took me.

And that was the goal.

My mother and father were not fools, however. A two-year-old dreaming and babbling about a werewolf attack on a random child I had never met would raise far too many uncomfortable questions—questions I had no intention of answering.

So, I adapted.

Phase Two.

Instead of calling for my parents when I woke from my dreams, I started looking for Sirius.

It was a subtle shift—one that my mother noted, of course, because she noted everything.

And so, the next night.

And the night after that.

And the night after that—

I made sure to wake in distress.

But instead of reaching immediately for the parental figures who could actually do something about it, I sought out Sirius.

Sirius, who was five, turning six years old, and thought himself the most capable person in existence.

Sirius, who had the protective instincts of a particularly stubborn guard dog, despite his relative uselessness in a real crisis.

Sirius, who was just reckless enough to believe me without questioning it too much.

And, most importantly—

Sirius, who, one day, would eventually befriend Remus Lupin.

Or, at least, in another timeline he would.

Which meant that my “dreams”—however vague, however cryptic, however dramatic—became a lot more believable.

Because I wasn’t just talking about some random child anymore.

I was talking about someone who, one day, might matter to him.

By that point, I was fairly certain both my mother and father had figured out what was going on.

How could they not?

I was consistent.

Night after night, my vocabulary—as limited as it was—remained steady.

The same words. The same imagery. The same recurring theme.

A wolf.

Teeth.

Sirius’ friend.

Every time they pushed for more details, I stuck to the same angle—fumbling through my words with the kind of hesitant, uncertain phrasing only a two-year-old could manage.

That I “saw” things.

That I dreamed.

That, even if I didn’t understand, I just knew.

And oh, they noticed.

Because, for all her many, many flaws, Walburga Black was not an idiot.

And neither was Orion.

To them, the pattern was impossible to ignore.

I wasn’t just some child spouting nonsense in my sleep.

I was consistent.

I was certain.

And the fact that I had shifted my distress from some nameless stranger to Sirius’ “friend”?

That made it personal.

That made it impossible to dismiss.

And, best of all?

That made it something they might actually believe.

So, around a week after I had started the whole dramatic routine, I finally set out to complete my plan.

And honestly?

I felt a little bad for my parents.

A week of interrupted sleep was no small thing. I had always been a quiet, placid baby, a shining example of obedient pure-blood upbringing, and the sudden onslaught of nightly awakenings must have been a deeply unpleasant surprise.

And besides, I couldn’t leave them puzzling over the meaning of my dream forever.

I had to give them the final piece.

The one that would make the whole picture clear.

So, one day, I gave them the answer.

Quite literally handed it to them.

In the form of a memory.

How?

Well, throughout the past year, I had slowly and deliberately increased my use of magic—a careful drip-feed of miraculous toddler prodigy nonsense to acclimate my family to the idea that I was particularly gifted.

And it had worked.

Of course, I had help.

Not from a mentor, or some innate bloodline cheat code, or divine intervention—no, my real advantage came from something far less poetic.

A World Buff—essentially, a quiet, invisible boon woven into the very fabric of the world.

Not compensation. Not some grand reward for merely existing.

More like the way magic itself breathed differently here.

──────

— BUFFS AND DEBUFFS —

▼

R’owlynng’s Blessing

World Buff

•

Dost thou not hear it? The quiet song that stirs the air, the breath of magic dances ‘twixt thy fingers? Speak, and the world shall answer. Call, and power shall wend its way to thee, not as struggle, but as birthright.

Effects:

• Regenerate 0.7% of Total FP per second.
• All Spell FP Costs reduced by 25%.

▼

R’owlynng’s Curse

World Debuff

•

Immutable stand the laws of life and death; what once is lost, lost remaineth evermore. Though magic may stay the fleeting breath, knit the sundered flesh, or steal the years from Time’s grasping hand, yet may it ne’er o’erleap the Veil. The dead rise not, nor e’er return; naught but their spectres linger, wan and whispering, ‘til even memory itself doth fade.

Effects:

• Death is permanent. No power, ability, or force—be it mundane, magical, or divine—can truly undo death.
• All resurrection mechanics are blocked in this world.

──────

It was called R’owlynng’s Blessing—and, in practical terms, it made FP management an absolute breeze.

Regenerating 0.7% of my total FP per second?

A passive 25% discount on all spellcasting?

Yes, please.

Of course, there was a trade-off.

It was called R’owlynng’s Curse, and it blocked all resurrection mechanics.

No revives. No second chances. No accidental loopholes.

It wasn’t relevant now—I had no plans on dying anytime soon—but the sheer permanence of it sat in the back of my mind like a particularly ominous pop-up notification.

Still, for my purposes, the Buff far outweighed the Debuff.

Because, thanks to the FP regeneration, where I would normally have needed to Rest to recover lost FP, I had been able to grind my magic usage consistently, eventually reaching Rank 28 in «Ars Magica I».

Which meant—

I had two unallocated Spell choices.

I had been hoarding them.

Because, of course, I had.

For so long, Shape Water had been all I needed.

It was practical. Versatile. The perfect low-cost, high-efficiency tool for a magically-inclined toddler who wanted to practice without drawing too much suspicion.

And, frankly, it had served me beautifully.

But now?

Now, I needed more.

All it took was opening my available Spell List and making my choice.

──────

【 Ars Magica I • Rank 28 】

▼

New Spell Selections Available!

You have 2 unchosen Spells from your available Spell list. Would you like to choose your spells now?

[ Yes | No | View Spell List ]

▼

✧ New Spell Learned ✧

▾ ENCODE THOUGHTS

School: Enchantment

Tier: 0 (Arcane)

Components: S

FP Cost: 50

Duration: 8 hours

Range: Self

Requirements:

• Magic Mastery: Rank 1
• Ars Magica I: Rank 1

Description:

You pull a memory, an idea, or a message from your mind and transform it into a tangible string of glowing energy called a Thought Strand, which persists for the duration or until you cast this Spell again. The Thought Strand appears in an unoccupied space within 1.5 metres of you as a tiny, weightless, semisolid object that can be held and carried like a ribbon. However, unless moved, it remains stationary.

If you cast this Spell while concentrating on a Spell or an ability that allows you to read or manipulate the thoughts of others (such as Detect Thoughts or Modify Memory), you can transform the thoughts or memories you read, rather than your own, into a Thought Strand.

Casting this Spell while holding a Thought Strand allows you to instantly receive whatever memory, idea, or message the Thought Strand contains. (Casting Detect Thoughts on the strand has the same effect.)

──────

And just like that—

I had a Spell that would let me pull a memory from my own mind, transform it into a tangible Thought Strand, and present it like a toddler bestowing a particularly important scribble upon their parents.

So, one fine morning, after yet another tearful awakening and my parents’ usual attempts to soothe and question me, I finally gave them the answer.

I didn’t explain.

I didn’t need to.

Instead, after taking the time to prepare the memory, I simply held out the Thought Strand—one that carried a recollection far too vivid for a child to recall.

Because, of course, it wasn’t mine. Not truly.

It came from the Player Forum, pulled from archival recordings—detailed, documented, timestamped. Players who had been there, watching, observing, ensuring every grim second of history was preserved. But instead of viewing it passively through the System’s impersonal blue-box display, I had sunk into it, letting it take root in my mind.

«Occlumency» at Rank 19 had helped, too.

Where others might have simply watched, I had internalised—layering sensation over sensation, reinforcing every detail until it settled, seamless and unshakable, in the folds of my own memory.

Of course, there were inconveniences—little tells, details that might raise unfortunate questions, like the subtle distortions of recorded footage, the blue-box System markers helpfully labeling the scene like an overenthusiastic documentary, or the mildly alarming realization that the perspective occasionally shifted between observers like a particularly cursed stage production.

So, I fixed it.

I stripped away anything that didn’t belong, anything that suggested this wasn’t a raw, unfiltered glimpse of the future but rather a carefully curated, magically edited, and slightly plagiarised experience. The angles smoothed, the transitions settled, the unnatural detachment of an outside observer replaced with the immediacy of lived terror.

By the time I was done, it was flawless.

A vision, not a recording.

The kind that couldn’t be traced, couldn’t be disputed, and—most importantly—couldn’t be ignored.

It had unravelled from my temple, drawn out by my fingertips in a slow, silken pull—a thin thread of something half-memory, half-moonlight, drifting weightless between wakefulness and a dream. It shimmered—not bright, not blinding, just a quiet, pulsing glow, like it wasn’t entirely sure if it should be noticed or not. A thought, yanked from the recesses of my mind and given form. The magic had worked instinctively, effortlessly—the way all things do when they aren’t actively trying to ruin your day.

The strand curled in the air, delicate but insistent, waiting to be taken.

And, critically—my parents took it in stride.

Not immediately, of course.

First, there was a moment of silence, the kind that stretched just long enough to register as concerned, but not yet panicked. Breath held between disbelief and inevitability, as if they were waiting to wake from some elaborate, sleep-deprived hallucination.

Then, my mother’s fingers hovered, hesitant, before she delicately took the memory from my grasp. Not snatching, not recoiling—just careful, deliberate, the way one might accept a fragile, unfamiliar artifact that had just appeared in a child’s hands.

And why wouldn’t she?

By now, I had conditioned them for this.

A year of slow, steady acclimation—small displays of magic, carefully rationed, never too much, never too fast—had turned the extraordinary into the expected.

A prodigious child? Certainly.

A magically gifted prodigious child? Well, of course.

A magically gifted prodigious child who had a distressing vision and unconsciously used accidental magic to express it?

Entirely reasonable.

After all, wasn’t that what magic did?

It clung to need. It wove itself into the emotions of children, shaping itself to their fears and desires.

And what was more natural than a frightened child wanting to share the memory that haunted him?

It was, quite frankly, the perfect excuse.

Mother’s fingers curled around the strand, her grip careful but firm.

Father put down his tea.

And as Walburga Black took the softly glowing thread of memory from my tiny hands, her fingers careful but firm, I knew—

I had them.

▣

You might be wondering why I went through such a roundabout, needlessly theatrical method to get my point across.

Why hadn’t I just—I don’t know—pretended to have fallen into a trance, let my eyes roll back dramatically, and delivered some cryptic, foreboding nonsense? Wouldn’t that have been easier?

It certainly would have saved me a week of nightly sobbing and general property destruction.

And, yes. Technically, I could have sold it.

I had «Acting Mastery».

I had a flair for the dramatic.

I had a deeply concerning willingness to commit to a bit.

But here’s the thing—

I wasn’t stupid.

Because, as far as I could tell, in this particular whimsical, endlessly fascinating, and occasionally baffling Wizarding World, prophecies were recorded.

Automatically.

By magic.

Which, honestly, was brilliantly efficient and also mildly terrifying if you stopped to think about it.

And you know what that meant?

It meant that if I decided to dramatically collapse mid-sentence, start channeling my inner mystical oracle, and spout perfectly accurate predictions about a child I wasn’t supposed to know existed, someone—somewhere—could check.

And that?

That was an entirely unnecessary risk.

The Player Forum had been very clear about it. In most Wizarding World realities, prophecies made weren’t just casually forgotten. They were documented, tracked, and stored in the Ministry’s Hall of Prophecy—which, by the way, was an entire room dedicated solely to magical fortune-telling bureaucracy.

Because of course it was.

So imagine, if you will, some Ministry official bored out of their mind, filing endless reports about cauldron bottom thickness regulations, when suddenly—

Oh? What’s this?

A brand-new prophecy has been added to the archive?

From an unknown seer?

Who just happens to be two years old?

And is somehow delivering shockingly detailed insights about an attack that hasn’t even happened yet?

Or—worse—what if someone checked the records… and found that my so-called "prophecy" didn’t exist at all?

Because real prophecies got logged, tracked, and neatly shelved for future reference. A fake one? Even if it was completely true?

Wouldn’t leave a trace.

And those were the kinds of things that raised questions.

The kind of thing that encourages unwanted scrutiny.

The kind of thing that, if I were particularly unlucky, could result in some overly ambitious Unspeakable deciding that perhaps this pint-sized oracle should be studied extensively.

Possibly in a secured underground facility.

Possibly for the good of magical-kind.

(Which, conveniently, would also be for the good of the Unspeakable’s career prospects.)

So, no.

No trances. No cryptic pronouncements. No mystical fugue states that could be fact-checked by the magical equivalent of a government filing cabinet.

Far too much risk.

Was it excessively paranoid? Yes.

Did I care? Absolutely not.

Because, hey—better safe than mysteriously disappeared.

And even if—even if—I was in a variant world where prophecies weren’t automatically recorded, a trance-like state still seemed far less convincing than the clumsy, emotional, childlike distress I had deliberately constructed.

The thing about being two years old was that people didn’t expect precision. They expected messy, chaotic, emotionally-driven nonsense.

And that?

That was the foundation I wanted.

At least, in my opinion.

And, really—who was going to argue with me?

In the end, with all my careful planning, strategic sobbing, and masterfully executed toddler distress, the real question became—

Did it work?

Oh, absolutely.

Just… not quite in the way I expected.

When my parents conjured up a bottle to store the Thought Strand and promptly whisked it away, I had no idea what they did with it.

Did I know they could extract the memory? Reasonably confident.

Did I know how?

Not even slightly.

Maybe they sourced a Pensieve and poured it in like a bottle of fine vintage trauma. Maybe they used Legilimency and stared at it hard enough until the magic cooperated. Maybe there was some obscure Charm that turned memories into visually detailed presentations, complete with dramatic narration.

No idea.

All I knew was that they got exactly what I wanted them to get.

And my mother…

She had looked at me in a way she rarely did.

Not suspicious.

Not disbelieving.

Just—measuring.

Like she was reassessing the depth of something she’d already known, as if the pieces she’d long held in her mind had just shifted into a clearer picture.

Like I had just proven something she had always suspected.

Which, frankly, was something to think about.

But whatever conclusions my mother had drawn, she didn’t share them.

Instead, my parents reassured me.

In the way one would reassure a deeply troubled toddler, with all the gentle certainty and carefully chosen words meant to soothe rather than explain:

“It’s okay now.”

“You don’t have to worry.”

“Everything is being handled.”

Which was all very nice.

But I wasn’t about to drop the act just yet.

Not entirely.

Oh, I scaled it back—no more dramatic awakenings, no more catastrophic nursery-wide meltdowns. But the fear remained.

Lingering, subtle, ever-present.

I kept close to Sirius. I sought him out. Leaned against him. Clung, just a little too tightly. Let my shoulders sag, let my expression hold that quiet, childish melancholy that didn’t need words to be understood.

Because if I had been truly afraid—if my nightmares had been real, if I were just a child haunted by something I didn’t understand—wouldn’t I still feel uneasy?

Wouldn’t the fear linger, no matter what my parents said?

And with the date of the attack drawing ever closer, I wasn’t taking any chances.

Not when consistency was everything.

▣

Finally, the night of the attack came.

Then it went.

One night turned into two.

Then three.

Then four.

And still—nothing.

No grand announcement. No whispered discussions in the hallways. No “See? It’s all been taken care of, darling.”

Just silence.

Like nothing had ever happened.

For all I knew, I had failed.

Or succeeded.

Or changed absolutely nothing at all.

No one told me. No one explained. I was two years old, and whatever had come of my carefully crafted deception was apparently none of my concern.

I might have gone days without knowing—weeks, even—if not for a small, careless detail.

A copy of The Daily Prophet, left abandoned on a reachable surface one day.

An innocuous oversight.

Because no one expected me to be able to read.

It was my window of opportunity and I had to be fast.

Discreet.

I had only a brief window before someone noticed I was paying far too much attention to the newspaper—something that, to them, should have been nothing more than meaningless ink blots to a toddler.

I let my fingers trail absently over the paper, my expression blank, my posture slack—just a child entertaining himself, playing with the edges of the newspaper, pretending to mimic what the adults did every morning.

Meanwhile, my eyes scanned the page at a speed that would have looked outright demonic to anyone watching.

And there, on the front page, staring back at me—

FENRIR GREYBACK DEAD

Anonymous Wizard Intervenes in Midnight Werewolf Attack!

My breath hitched.

I kept reading.

‘…Acting on undisclosed information, a benefactor who wished to remain anonymous intervened—arriving just as Fenrir Greyback attacked a four-year-old boy…’

‘…Together with the child’s father, they had successfully fought off the werewolf…’

‘...Greyback had not survived…’

I almost didn’t care about the rest.

Almost.

But then I saw the other name.

REMUS LUPIN, AGE 4, CURSED IN WEREWOLF ATTACK.

I read it again.

And again.

And again.

Because surely, surely, I had misread.

Greyback was dead.

Which meant—he hadn’t infected Remus.

Right?

Except he had.

Somehow, despite everything, Remus had still been bitten.

And whereas in canon, his affliction had been a secret, a carefully guarded struggle, one that had still allowed him to eventually attend Hogwarts—

Now?

It was front-page news.

Public. Known.

Every household in wizarding Britain had probably woken up to read about the four-year-old werewolf.

My stomach lurched.

The consequences were immediate, unavoidable.

Because in this world, in this time, with public hysteria and laws that weren’t on his side—

How the hell was Remus ever going to go to Hogwarts now?

And then the final realisation slammed into me.

None of this had been an accident.

My mother and father had taken my nightmares very seriously.

And someone—some good Anonymous Wizard, some conveniently mysterious figure—had conveniently shown up to murder Fenrir Greyback just before he could disappear into the night.

Someone who had been tipped off.

Tipped off.

My pulse pounded in my ears.

I knew.

I knew what had happened.

I had seen the pieces. I had laid them out myself.

And now, I had just enough information to fit them all together.

Because the Black family didn’t just let things happen.

They handled things.

And given how my mother had been acting—ready to burn the world for my sake…

It only made sense.

Which meant that when their two-year-old son—whom they had now quietly accepted as a Seer—had repeatedly, consistently “dreamed” about a werewolf attack on a child…

They had hired someone.

An assassin. A Hit Wizard or Witch. Someone.

And Fenrir Greyback had died for it.

The newspaper in my hands trembled slightly.

For so long, my mind had been consumed with the fear of failure—what if I miscalculated, what if I missed something, what if I didn’t act in time?

Not once had I stopped to consider the fallout of succeeding. Catastrophically, at that.

My eyes locked onto the inked words, scanning them again, as if rereading them would somehow make them less real.

A slow, heavy thump echoed in my ears—my own heartbeat, steady and deafening.

Fenrir Greyback was dead.

Remus Lupin was still a werewolf.

And I had done this.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

I had spent so much time focusing on the message—on crafting my warning, on ensuring my dreams were believed, on selling the performance of a fragile, frightened child—that I had never stopped to think about the execution.

I had spent weeks agonising over how to deliver the information.

Not once had I considered what my parents would do with it.

And now, staring at the article, one thought slowly, horribly crept into my mind.

Did they let it happen?

My breath caught.

Because I had assumed—stupidly, naively assumed—that my parents, for all their cold pragmatism, had simply stepped in to prevent the attack.

And yet—Remus had still been bitten.

Greyback was dead, yes. But not before he had succeeded. A loose end that could have been prevented.

So why wasn’t it?

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry.

Remus Lupin was a half-blood.

His mother was a Muggle.

I hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t accounted for it. Hadn’t even considered it. Forgotten to.

Because I had been so focused, so consumed, so sure that if I just got the message across, things would change. That my parents would act.

And they had.

Just not for the reasons I thought.

My parents… did not care for half-bloods. They did not care for Muggleborns. They saw them as lesser. Unworthy. Not their problem.

So the question was—had they intervened because they cared? Because they wanted to stop it?

Or was it something else?

Had they simply… watched? Waited? Held back, let things play out, just to see if I was right?

No. No, that—

That was too much.

Wasn’t it?

The thought made my stomach turn.

Because I didn’t know.

And worse—I might never know.

For the first time since I had woken up in this body, something sank in my chest.

I had won. I had succeeded. And somehow, I had still lost. So utterly defeated.

Greyback was dead.

And yet, the thought didn’t fill me with relief.

Because I hadn’t meant to take a life. Not like this. Not indirectly, not as a side effect of my desperate attempt to fix something.

I had thought myself so clever. And yet, I had changed everything.

Not for the better.

Because while I had been so focused on preventing a tragedy, I had created another.

I had taken away Remus’ future.

His curse had been plastered across the front page of The Daily Prophet. Widespread. Notorious. Irrevocable.

A young boy, forever marked, forever watched, forever whispered about.

I had made things worse.

So much worse.

And what made it all the more unbearable—what made my stomach twist, my hands clench—was the ugly, undeniable truth sitting just beneath it all:

I had done this to help him.

And I had ruined him instead.

▣

The consequences didn’t stop there.

I noticed it a week or so later.

At first, it was subtle. A shift in Sirius’ routine. More lessons. More talks with Father.

Discussions on expectations. On propriety. On choosing the right company.

At first, I didn’t think much of it.

And then—it clicked.

It was because of me. Again.

Because Sirius had been the name I clung to. He was the one I sought out when I woke up crying, the one I sobbed to, the one whose name had been tangled up in the mess of my dreams.

And my parents, ever perceptive, had noticed.

How I trusted him. How I had woven him into my fear.

And—more importantly—they had listened.

They had listened when I whispered about Sirius’ friend.

They had heard the name, the context, the warning.

And instead of dismissing it, they had taken it as a lesson.

Not a prophecy. Not a threat.

But a cautionary tale.

A glimpse into a future they had no intention of allowing.

So now, they were correcting it.

Not punishing. Not scolding.

Just... guiding.

Steering him. Shaping him.

Ensuring that, when the time came, Sirius would never make the mistake of befriending a half-blood.

And I—I couldn’t stop it.

I could only watch. And feel sorry.

Because for all my scheming, my planning, my supposed intelligence—I had still gotten everything catastrophically, spectacularly wrong.

The rest of my second year dragged on, weighed down by the sheer force of hindsight. A constant, looping replay of everything that could have been done better, faster, smarter.

It haunted me in the way only an unresolved mistake could—lurking at the edges of my thoughts, surfacing when I was least prepared. During meals, when food sat pushed around my plate but barely touched. During playtime with my brothers, when I built towers out of blocks only to knock them down seconds later, dissatisfaction curled in my chest. During quiet afternoons, when I sat on my mother’s lap as she read, hearing the rise and fall of her voice but absorbing none of the words.

Even when I wasn’t actively thinking about it, my mind was running calculations in the background—What if I had done this? What if I had done that? What if I had just shut up and handled it myself?

It wasn’t even dramatic self-loathing—just cold, clinical analysis.

A debriefing of my own incompetence.

The verdict?

I had botched it.

Why hadn’t I accounted for Remus being a half-blood? I was supposed to be smart. Observant. Someone with meta-knowledge, a strategic mind, a literal System designed to optimize my survival.

And yet, I had walked straight into a fundamental miscalculation.

I had assumed my parents would act because the vision was true.

I hadn’t stopped to think that they might act only in the way that suited them.

It should have been obvious. It should have been the first thing I considered. But I had been so focused on the delivery—on convincing them—that I never questioned what they would do with the information once they had it.

Or worse.

If they would twist it.

Which brought me to the next damning realisation.

Why had I left it in their hands at all?

Skill Points. Unspent. Unused.

I often stared at them. At the neat little numbers, at the power I had let sit idle. They were right there, waiting. Waiting. Like an unlocked door I never bothered to open. Like a weapon I chose to leave sheathed.

A quick mental tap. A single allocation. That was all it would have taken. There had to be something—stealth, speed, magic, anything—that would have let me do it myself. Cleanly. Properly. And yet, I had hesitated. I had relied on persuasion, on subtlety, on acting instead of acting.

And people had suffered for it.

No more careless stumbles. No more half-measures.

I would be patient. Deliberate. I wouldn’t rush. Wouldn’t grab at power just because it was there. Because power, once spent, was gone. And if the need ever arose—if I ever found myself at a crossroads, where the right ability, the right Skill at the right moment meant everything…

Then I’d go all in.

Because next time, I wouldn’t let things spiral out of control.

Next time, I wouldn’t just react—I would act.

Remus Lupin’s future had been destroyed by my interference, so I would rebuild it.

If he couldn’t attend Hogwarts, I would make sure that changed.

A cure, a counter-curse, a solution that shouldn’t exist but would, because I said so.

That would be my apology.

▣

Time passed without incident.

I trained. I learned. I adapted.

The months blurred into a relentless loop of Skill grinding, magic training, and soaking up knowledge with the kind of intensity usually reserved for toddlers discovering that “no” is a negotiable concept. If there was a book being read to me, I clung to every word. If there was a spell demonstration, I stared so hard it was a miracle my eyes didn’t set something on fire. If there was a hint of something new, something interesting, something just beyond my reach—well, I reached anyway.

No more blind spots. No more hoping things worked out.

Next time?

I wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

If this world insisted on playing like a game, then I was going to Play to Win.

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— BASIC INFORMATION —

Name: Antares Orion Black

Sex: Male

Age: 3 years old

Race: Human (Variant: Magus)

▼

Level: 9

Experience: 3,275/27,000

Skill Points: 7

Perk Points: 1

HP: 100%

FP: 100%

Stamina: 100%

■

— ATTRIBUTE SCORES —

Strength (STR): 10

Dexterity (DEX): 10

Constitution (CON): 10

Intelligence (INT): 20

Wisdom (WIS): 14

Charisma (CHA): 10

Free Attribute Points: 0

■

— PERKS —

▼

▸ HUMAN ADAPTABILITY (VARIANT: MAGUS)

▸ REBORN SOUL

▸ FAST LEARNER

■

— SKILLS —

▼

▸ MAGIC MASTERY • Rank 6

▸ OCCLUMENCY • Rank 26

▸ ACTING MASTERY • Rank 72

▸ ARS MAGICA I • Rank 54

■

— SPELL LIST: ARCANE MAGIC —

▼

New Spell Selections Available!

You have 3 unchosen Spells from your available Spell list. Would you like to choose your spells now?

[ Yes | No | View Spell List ]

▼

▸ SHAPE WATER

▸ ENCODE THOUGHTS

▾ PRESTIDIGITATION

School: Transmutation

Tier: 0 (Arcane)

Components: V S

FP Cost: 25

Duration: Up to 1 hour

Range: 3 metres

Requirements:

• Magic Mastery: Rank 1
• Ars Magica I: Rank 1

Description:

This Spell is a minor magical trick that novice spellcasters use for practice. You create one of the following magical effects within range:

• You create an instantaneous, harmless sensory effect, such as a shower of sparks, a puff of wind, faint musical notes, or an odd odour.
• You instantaneously light or snuff out a candle, a torch, or a small campfire.
• You instantaneously clean or soil an object no larger than 30 cubic centimetres.
• You chill, warm, or flavor up to 30 cubic centimetres of nonliving material for 1 hour.
• You make a colour, a small mark, or a symbol appear on an object or a surface for 1 hour.
• You create a non-magical trinket or an illusory image that can fit in your hand and that lasts for 12 seconds.

If you cast this Spell multiple times, you can have up to three of its non-instantaneous effects active at a time.

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