𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤

❖

The truth of power seeps.

Not in the grand, theatrical way you’d expect. No thunderclaps. No spine-chilling laughter. No capes billowing dramatically in an unseen wind. That would be easy; at least you’d see it coming.

No, the consequences of power were quieter than that. Sneakier. A slow leak, not a flood. A drip-drip-drip behind the walls, barely noticeable—right up until the ceiling caves in.

It starts small. Simple. You solve a problem. Then another. And another after that. Each one a neat little fix. Maybe you bend the rules a bit, maybe you don’t—who’s keeping track? The job gets done. Efficiently. Cleanly. And if it feels too easy? Well. That’s just progress, right?

Until, one day, you look up—

And you’re the problem.

Not because you failed, but because you stopped caring. The terrifying part? You probably wouldn’t even know when it happened. Because it wouldn’t be a fall. No, it’d be a slow, comfortable slide—warm, seamless, almost right. And that’s what twisted in my chest, tight and cold: the question.

How do you catch yourself—when you don’t even feel yourself slipping?

At first, you count every cost. Feel every consequence. But eventually? You don’t. You just solve things. Instantly. Completely. Brutally. All without seeing who or what you’re fixing. Just whatever’s in the way. Then, suddenly, when something—or someone—breaks irreversibly right in front of you?

You don’t feel a thing.

Not even the absence of it.

Thankfully, I wasn’t there yet. Nowhere close.

But I often wondered.

Would I know if I was there?

I was five when I had this exact fear. Technically five years old, anyway. Spiritually? I was several decades and one death past my warranty. I should’ve been worrying about the Ministry’s inevitable collapse into infighting or how many pure-blood families would flock to the Dark Lord’s banner when—not if—he made his move.

Instead, I was losing sleep over my hypothetical villain arc.

Let’s be honest:

I hadn’t been afraid of the dark.

I hadn’t been afraid of Voldemort either. (Anxious, yes. But afraid? No. The Big Bad himself didn’t haunt my nightmares.)

I hadn’t even been truly afraid of dying—because I’d already done it once. Been there, done that, got the cosmic t-shirt. The afterlife wasn’t some great unknown; it was just... there. If, by some cosmic joke, my second run ended prematurely, well—at least I knew the punchline. Death, after all, had been remarkably straightforward: soft, like a curtain closing on a play you hadn’t realised was over. No judgment, no fanfare—just a gentle slide into something still and soundless. A rest so complete that, for one eternal, yet fleeting, moment, you almost understood why some people never wanted to wake up.

But terrifying? No. I’d seen it. Wore the souvenir. What waited beyond the veil wasn’t bright lights or fire—just quiet. Absolute. Indifferent. A sort of cosmic “…and that’s all, folks.” If anything, it was... polite.

So, if this miraculous second life got cut short? So be it. I’d already peeked behind the curtain. The oblivion didn’t scare me. I simply respected it. You don’t have to fear something to know better than to mock it.

But what about something I couldn’t escape? Something that didn’t wait beyond the veil but lived behind my eyes?

Yes. The real terror was something familiar. The thing that had once kept me up at night was something worse.

Me.

I was afraid of me.

Or, to be precise—what I was capable of.

I knew how villains started. I’d read their biographies. Heard their grand speeches. The cause didn’t always matter. Some never needed one—just the glow of the fire, the smell of ashes and the music of the screams.

But most? Most had an origin story. Power in one hand. Righteousness in the other. And, finally, a holy, burning need to fix something—usually the world. Often other people. Rarely themselves.

It always starts the same way: I can fix this. Then—I can fix everything. And somewhere between those two thoughts, you don’t cross the line—you erase it. By the time you finally notice the red flag, however, you’ve already trampled it.

Comforting thought, wasn’t it?

In truth, I don’t think power corrupts. Not really. I think it just makes you... honest. And what was better at forcing honesty than the near god-like potential the System handed me—packaged in glowing, blue-boxed holographic screens?

Frankly, the worst part of my fears was never about what I could do at five. It was what I knew I’d be able to do later. Because the abilities of the System?

It was—is—exponential.

The stronger I was, the faster I became stronger—power folding into itself, feeding its own fire, a chain reaction with no end. It wasn’t a climb; it was a freefall, momentum crashing into momentum. The more I gained, the easier it became to gain more. Every step forward shortened the path. Every shattered barrier made the next one flimsier. Every victory became fuel for the next.

Until, eventually—growth wasn’t something I did.

It was something I simply was.

Once I passed that horizon, the world could never catch me. It would already be so far behind. By then, people wouldn’t be obstacles. Just…

Well.

Outcomes.

I liked to believe I’d stay on the right path. But then I wondered—if I ever did slip… who would (or even could) stop me? Me, the person who had potentially every answer at his fingertips. Someone with every advantage, every shortcut. Someone who knew all the rules and could break them anyway.

And that was the problem at the end of the day.

If the only person who could stop me…

Was me.

What happens if I decide not to?

There’s no morality check in the System’s blue boxes. No warning pop-up. No “Are you sure?” confirmation screen before I crush a life into consequence. Before I trample the line between justice and cruelty. Before I solve a problem—by breaking a person.

I could solve everything, yes. End every conflict before it starts. Crush every threat in its infancy. Make the world neat. Orderly. Fixed.

And if someone got hurt along the way?

The System wouldn’t care.

And that, truly, was the part that chilled me.

Because I wasn’t sure that, one day, I would care either.

How could I be sure?

In my previous life—my small, mundane life—I thought morality was about choice—about intention. But morality was easier when you were small. When your reach was short. When there were still things you couldn’t do.

Now?

Now, the only limit was what I’d let myself do.

To be fair, the System sitting neatly at my fingertips wasn’t some great corrupter. It was simply a mirror. A cheat code wrapped in helpful tooltips and cheerful alerts—built to show me exactly who I was, without the usual inconveniences of effort, consequence, or restraint. It didn’t tempt me with things I didn’t already want. Didn’t conjure greed out of thin air.

No—what it did was simpler. And far more dangerous.

It removed the friction. Reduced every dilemma and obstacle to glass, all while handing me the hammer.

One swing.

One answer.

Every time.

It cut the costs. Stripped the brakes. Paved the road smooth and straight and said: Go ahead. Do it.

That was the trick, though. The trap.

The quiet lie.

Power never whispers, You must.

It purrs, You can.

And the question that follows—the one that knots your stomach if you are still human enough to care—is never about what you can do. It’s about what you’ll let yourself do.

Because the traitorous whispers always comes. Soft as breath, keen as a razor’s promise: Why shouldn’t I?

Why not solve the problem the quick way, the clean way, the permanent way? Why not make people listen—with or without their consent—if it gets the job done? Why not break a few things if the world needs fixing?

Like I said—the System wouldn’t object.

So why not?

There wouldn’t be a sudden “Corrupted” trait blinking on my Character Sheet. No flashing red warning that read Evil Alignment Detected. No ominous Status Effect marked Irredeemable. The System wouldn’t care if I burned the world or saved it. Its only metric was progress.

There was no morality meter. No cosmic referee waiting to blow the whistle and hand me a penalty card. Just me.

My rules.

My lines.

And guess what? I’ve kept them—those boundaries. On purpose.

Not out of fear.

Out of choice.

I’ve seen what happens when people stop choosing.

The Player Forum, bless its chaotic heart, is many things: a knowledge base, a strategy guide, a place where arguments about builds become personal. But it’s also a graveyard. A warning label slapped on reality. A hall of fame—and shame—where Players who stopped asking “Why shouldn’t I?” became cautionary tales.

I’ve read their stories.

Some fell fast. Power-drunk speedrunners and meta-gamers who thought the best route to victory was through a wall—preferably made of people. They saw every world as a loot table with a body count. Others slid slowly, one compromise at a time, until they couldn’t find their way back.

I still remember one thread: How I Became God-Emperor of This World (And Why It Sucks).

The Player? They’d chased efficiency. Min-maxed their build into a masterpiece of optimisation—every Skill, every Perk, every exploit wrung dry for maximum output. Unstoppable. Nigh invincible. And utterly alone.

The final line of their post read: “I won. I just don’t know what I won at.”

(Funnily enough, he’s a writer now. Good for him. And, yes—I’ve read his physical books. Back when I was five, though? I only had his Player Forum posts. Which, honestly, were terrifying enough. Min-maxed Skills and Perks for writing? Unreal.)

But the worst ones weren’t the monsters.

The worst were the self-proclaimed ‘heroes.’

The ones who started with good intentions—who wanted to save everyone—and ended with nothing left.

So, no. I hadn’t needed to guess what would happen if I stopped being careful. I’ve already seen the endings. Players—human or not—had a staggering capacity for wonder. But we also had an equally staggering capacity for the most horrendous things.

That’s why I set my rules before I needed them. Why I built fences where the ground was still solid. Because it’s easier to hold your line when it’s a wall, not a suggestion.

By the age of five, my Skills and unspent Points were proof of that. Perks and Spells, too. People like to think the System makes you powerful. But what it really does—if you were paying attention—is show you who you are.

I could have taken mind-control and compulsion Skills. I could have even unlocked the most violent, offensive abilities on offer immediately. I didn’t. Not because they were inefficient—because they were too efficient.

And that was the catch, wasn’t it? Efficiency without oversight was dangerous. It didn’t matter how clever I thought I was; give myself an easy out often enough, and it becomes the default. The System rewarded action, not restraint. If I’d started down that path—if I’d tasted that sheer, effortless power—well. I didn’t trust myself not to find excuses later.

Do you know how fast I could have power-levelled on unsuspecting Muggles if I’d been willing to run away from my family, toss morality overboard, and chase pure, unfiltered growth?

Neither do I.

I didn’t want to know.

Because if I’d gone there—if I’d crossed that line—I knew exactly what would’ve happened next. I’d start building bridges across every moral gap with the same slippery rationalisations: “Just this once.” “Just this target.” “Just until I’m strong enough.”

The slope wouldn’t have been steep. It would’ve been slick. And the side effects? Predictable. Stop seeing people as people, and you don’t just become more efficient—you become less human. Before long, every stranger’s face blurs into the same thing: Experience with legs.

I knew how that story ended—and I refused to star in a rerun.

No, it was easier to resist a weapon you never picked up. So I didn’t. Left it alone. Kept it clean. My conscience didn’t need the extra baggage.

And then there was Charisma—Merlin’s beard, Charisma.

You don’t need magic when your voice can nudge people’s hearts. You don’t need to lie when the truth likes you better. Charisma turns socialising into physics: apply pressure, observe results.

And that’s… useful. But was it fair? Was it a choice, or just influence with better packaging?

I used it. Of course, I used it. Still do, in fact. I lived in a family where “persuasion” was a blood sport. But I felt the edge of it every time—how easily I could stop asking and just... take.

And that was exactly why I kept watching.

I’ve done this from the start. Carefully. Intentionally. It was easier when I was younger—less power, less temptation. But the more I grew, the more options the System handed me. And the more I had to choose.

But that was the point.

I wasn’t walking that line because I’m afraid I’d fall. I walked it because I knew exactly where it would lead if I didn’t.

I wasn’t worried that I’d break.

I was making damn sure I would never stop bending.

Because someday, I’d surely face something that wouldn’t care about my lines—something that needs to be stopped, no matter the cost. And when that day came, I would choose.

But I’d choose because I decided to.

Not because I forgot how not to.

Anyway—don’t get me wrong. This isn’t some sad, brooding deep-dive into the hollow emptiness of power or my inevitable moral collapse at age five. It’s not. Really. I’ve read enough Player Forum posts to know the genre of ‘broody, edge-lord monologue.’ If I ever do spiral, trust me—you’ll know. There’ll be more ominous pauses and fewer jokes.

I mean, sure, even now, the slippery slope of power and its old friend, moral decay, are on a first-name basis with me—but we keep it professional. Casual. A handshake, not a hug.

But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t always there—just under the surface. That little prickle at the edge of every decision. The whisper behind every instinct. Because when you’re holding a cheat code that can break the world, the scariest part isn’t the power.

It’s how easy it is to stop questioning why you’re using it.

And that’s why I stay sharp. A question asked is a line held.

Not because I’m afraid of falling—

But because I know I could fall forever.

And the System wouldn’t stop me.

No.

It would cheer me on.

All while rewarding me for it.

And yet…

And yet—

I also needed to remember: shackles don’t care who forged them. It didn’t matter if they were rusted iron or polished gold, shaped by my own hand or locked in place by someone else’s. A chain was still a chain, no matter how responsibly it was welded. And restraint—especially the kind I tied around my own wrists—had a nasty habit of turning from precaution into prison if I let it.

Let me be clear: I never regretted the limits I’d set. They’d kept me steady, sure—like handrails on a narrow bridge. But handrails don’t teach balance; they only remind you where the drop is. And if you cling too tightly, for too long, the solid ground beneath your feet starts to feel... like walking on glass and hoping it doesn’t crack.

The lines I’d drawn had been necessary. Still were. Always would be. But maybe... just maybe... they needed to shift with me too. Not break. Not disappear. Just... loosen. Enough to let me stretch without slipping.

Because a boundary isn’t a cage—unless you start treating it like one.

I’d held my power close in those early years, white-knuckled and wary. I’d thought that was mastery. But mastery isn’t about locking power away like some wild animal, caged and half-forgotten for fear of what it might become.

It’s about knowing when to let it breathe.

And when to yank the leash hard enough to remind it who’s boss.

▣

One of the first cracks in my carefully constructed ‘restraint’ came from pressure. External, not internal. The world beyond 12 Grimmauld Place was shifting. You could feel it, if you knew how to listen. The weight pressed in at odd angles—testing seams, nudging against locked windows, slipping under doors like a breeze with bad intentions.

Before, it had been subtle. Background noise. That prickling instinct that made you check over your shoulder, even when you knew you weren’t alone. Most people probably ignored it; witches and wizards were remarkably good at dismissing anything that didn’t directly hex them in the face. But by 1968, even a housebound five-year-old with a System and a penchant for eavesdropping could tell: something was coming.

Something vast. Heavy. Hungry.

War hadn’t arrived yet—not officially. But it was practically already there, just behind us, breathing down wizarding Britain’s neck with the hot, damp persistence of a dog that had been licking itself for hours and now wanted to share.

I’d known it was inevitable. Voldemort’s rise wasn’t some twist ending—it was a historical footnote with a grim punchline. The villain wins the first war. Loses the second and dies like a chump. Simple. Clean. Straight from the timeline. But here’s the thing: knowing the shape of a storm wasn’t quite the same as feeling the wind slap you across the face.

And the wind? It was picking up.

The Daily Prophet ran with it all too easily—or maybe someone pointed them exactly where to go.

Fear sold papers—always had, always would. And the Prophet knew it. For years, they’d treated fear like seasoning: a sprinkle of dread here, a pinch of paranoia there—just enough to make readers swallow whatever came next. But sometime in late ‘67, something shifted. The fear stopped being garnish.

It became the main course.

The headlines grew sharper and gave up pretending everything was fine. They were edgier. More alarming. Or as they called it: “cautionary reporting.” Personally, I called it fearmongering. How could it not be? It wasn’t ‘mild public concern’ anymore. It was ‘civilisation teetering on the brink—please panic responsibly.’

Each issue peeled back another layer of society’s thin calm until anxiety wasn’t just background noise anymore. It was the headline:

“Dark Creatures Surge Across Britain—Is Your Home Safe?”

“Is Your Neighbour a Squib Sympathiser? Experts Weigh In.”

“Muggle-born Influence: Harmless or Hazardous?”

“Squibs Demand Rights: Should They Have Them?”

“Dementors: Protection or Peril?”

Even the lifestyle sections got in on the fun. The usual fare of robe trends, the latest self-stirring teapots and hex-resistant cookware gave way to articles that, on the surface, looked like harmless social commentary. But beneath the neatly typeset words was something uglier:

“Are Bloodlines Being Diluted Beyond Repair?”

“Tradition or Treason: Where Should We Draw the Line?”

“What Does It Mean to Be Pure?”

That’s when I knew the wheels were coming off. When the lighthearted columns started flirting with eugenics, it was probably time to acknowledge the iceberg dead ahead.

Because that’s how it starts, right?

First, it’s robe colours. Then it’s heritage. And before you knew it, your neighbour’s reading an article about “defending tradition” while casually asking if you’ve checked your family tree lately.

Of course, fear didn’t just demand headlines. It also demanded villains.

By the tail end of 1967, what probably started as sly headlines and slyer whispers had turned into Britain’s new favourite pastime: the blame game. Honestly, to me, it got so bad that if a wand misfired, if a brewing potion failed, if the Floo Network spluttered and sent someone two fireplaces too far—someone, somewhere, was clearly responsible. And if there wasn’t a culprit at hand, well… the papers were more than happy to point a wand and declare, “Them. It’s their fault.”

The specifics? Irrelevant. Fear didn’t need evidence. It just needed a name.

Muggle-borns. Half-bloods. Squibs. Dark creatures. Outsiders. If you didn’t have the right face or the right ancestors—or, occasionally, the right clothing—then congratulations: you were officially part of the problem.

That was the nature of fear. Give it a nudge, and it doesn’t politely stop at the boundary of common sense. It picks up speed. Finds excuses. Demands a sacrifice.

And by 1968, that demand was growing louder.

That said, however, not everything was doom and gloom—fear wasn’t the only force at play.

I want to make that clear.

Hope, stubborn thing that it was, still stirred in the background. Because of course it did. Hope’s a masochist like that. The voices were there—clear, persistent, occasionally a bit too fond of their own rhetoric.

Oh, I never actually heard them, mind you. Not first-hand. I was five. My sources were... limited. Eavesdropped conversations. Half-read Prophet columns. The occasional slip from an unsuspecting family member.

But the pattern was there. It had to be.

Wizards in the Wizengamot. Ministry clerks in committee rooms. Even the occasional columnist in the Prophet—buried beneath the sensational headlines, of course. They spoke of unity. Reason. Sanity.

But, unfortunately, volume mattered. And their voices? Too often drowned beneath the low, seductive whisper of fear.

Because fear didn’t have to shout to win.

It just had to sound convincing.

“Sure, sure,” it said. “But have you seen what the Muggle-borns are up to?”

Honestly, it was probably thanks to the newspapers that I finally gave myself a swift kick and actually looked at what I’d been doing. Or, more accurately, what I hadn’t been doing. Ironic, really. You’d think the thing that would finally shake me out of my comfortable little bubble would be something dramatic. You know—like Voldemort’s slow, inevitable rise or the System’s ever-persistent blue screens screaming, “Oi, idiot, look at all this wasted potential.”

But no. It had been the newspaper. The Daily Prophet, of all things.

Because, apparently, existential wake-up calls sometimes come with smugly typeset headlines and for just one Knut an issue.

That was when I realised there was a difference between being safe and feeling safe.

One’s a fact. The other’s a lie you tell yourself while you curl up under the blankets and pretend the shadows weren’t whispering your name. Or, in my case, while I sat self-assuredly behind heavily enchanted walls, convincing myself I was untouchable. And, at the time, I’d fallen for it. Hard.

Granted, it hadn’t happened overnight. No one burst into my room with a gold-plated plaque that read, “Congratulations! You’re Officially Complacent! Enjoy Your Complimentary Delusions of Preparedness!” No. It happened quietly. Comfort didn’t arrive with fireworks and party hats; it crept in through the cracks, wrapped around me like a warm blanket, and made itself at home. By the time I noticed, it was already there, feet up on the metaphorical coffee table, sipping tea and asking, “Why so tense, mate? Everything’s fine.”

And I’d believed it.

Stupid. So stupid.

Because here’s the thing: I hadn’t stopped training. I’d still been grinding Skills, pushing my magic, stacking XP like a good little Gamer. I’d even mastered the art of looking like a precocious genius while half my brain was off debating the finer points of wandless spellcraft. On paper, I’d been killing it.

But that had been the problem, hadn’t it?

I’d been too focused on looking prepared to realise I wasn’t. I’d become a spectator—observing the world, reading the signs, tallying risks like a nervous accountant watching the stock market crash and hoping to ride it out. I’d told myself that knowing the war was coming meant I was ready for it.

Spoiler: I wasn’t. Not even close.

I’d let the Black family’s cocoon lull me into mistaking preparation for progress. Routine for readiness. I’d convinced myself that caution was the same as control—that keeping one eye on the storm meant I understood how to weather it. But all I’d really been doing was pacing in circles. Grinding ‘stats’ while reality sped toward me like an out-of-control Knight Bus.

The truth, when I finally admitted it to myself, was simpler than I’d liked to believe: if the war had suddenly started the next day, I wouldn’t have been ready.

Hell, if anything big had happened the next day—if Voldemort’s first official “I’m Here, Bitches” press conference had hit the front page—I’d have been flat-footed and fumbling for my non-existent wand, wondering how I’d let it happen. The System had been prodding me all along. And I’d smiled, nodded, and gone right back to pretending that slow, steady grinding was a smart, sustainable strategy.

Clearly, it wasn’t.

I’d needed to get my shit together. Properly.

It wasn’t more visions I needed. Or more ominous headlines. Or yet another late-night existential spiral about the slippery slope of unchecked power. I’d already done the thinking. I’d dissected the danger. Measured the risks. Drawn the lines. I’d agonised over the fine print of my own morality until the ink bled through the page.

That hadn’t been the problem.

The problem was that I’d been so afraid of taking the wrong step, I’d stopped moving entirely. Locked myself in place. Staring at the ground. Waiting for… what, exactly? A sign? A guarantee? A pat on the head from the universe reassuring me that I wouldn’t wake up one day and find I’d become a villain with good intentions and bad execution?

Please. If I’d been holding out for certainty, I was in the wrong world.

I didn’t need more caution. I needed momentum.

What I’d failed to realise then—but saw clearly later—was that caution, unchecked, became paralysis. It tricked you into standing still under the pretense of safety. And standing still? That wasn’t preparation. It was surrender.

No more second-guessing every decision like I was playing chess against fate. No more hiding behind meticulous plans while life passed me by. I’d built my lines for a reason—and they were solid. But lines didn’t mean much if I was too afraid to step across the ones that were meant to be crossed.

That had been the moment I’d finally moved.

The war hadn’t waited. The world hadn’t paused. And the System? It had never stopped whispering.

“You could be more. You could be faster. You could be stronger.”

Well.

I’d heard it. I’d felt it. And, after all that time standing still, I’d finally decided to listen.

▣

Of all the shiny, tempting paths ahead, I picked potions.

Potions were like people—mysterious, sometimes temperamental, and prone to catastrophic meltdown if you failed to handle them properly. And, just like people, half the time the ingredients didn’t make sense.

Take Flobberworm mucus. A viscous, green sludge with the texture of despair and the nutritional value of an existential crisis. Who, exactly, had been the first to look at that glistening secretion dribbling from a fat, ten-inch worm’s sagging folds and think, ‘Yes. Let’s bottle that.’ Who had taken one whiff of that pungent, swampy aroma and declared to themselves, with all the confidence of an optimistic lunatic, ‘This is the future of modern healing.’

What sort of mind could squeeze a creature that spent its days chewing vegetable scraps and dirt, watch the mucus ooze out like the world’s saddest condiment, and feel anything but mild existential dread?

And Flobberworm mucus was one of the normal ingredients.

Occasionally—according to multiple books, lectures, and one exceptionally long-winded monologue from Grandpa Arcturus—its neighbours on potion shelves didn’t even pretend to play by the rules of mundane sanity.

Crushed scarab beetles, ground into a glimmering onyx dust that smelled faintly of old metal and bad decisions. Bubotuber pus, thick and glistening, promising unparalleled healing properties if applied correctly—and catastrophic acne if you sneezed while handling it. Pickled rat spleens, sure, but why stop there when you could also have powdered Chimaera tail, helpfully labeled with a tiny skull-and-crossbones and the handwritten note:

Do not inhale. Or think about inhaling. Or, ideally, exist near this jar without proper precautions.

Honestly, that wasn’t even the really weird stuff. Or so I heard.

Further back—often tucked behind innocuous tins of peppermint and dried rosemary—some of the true horrors lurked.

Powdered Re’em antlers that shimmered faintly when no one was looking. Thorned Creeper roots that twitched if you touched them for too long—and screamed if you touched them twice. Essence of Lunar Frog, harvested during a full moon, which came with the unnerving habit of croaking loudly if exposed to moonlight.

Because of course it did.

How does a liquid croak? Your guess is as good as mine. I didn’t know then. Still don’t know now. I’ve made peace with it.

Regardless, it was all perfectly customary.

Perfectly legal. Perfectly safe. And according to the countless volumes of textbooks, perfectly reliable—provided you didn’t blink at the wrong moment.

(Utterly, unapologetically insane too, in my opinion. But what did I know? Not a lot at five, truthfully. Most of my knowledge back then came from second-hand records and—let’s be honest—probably embellished stories. Courtesy of Bellatrix. And Uncle Alphard. Naturally.)

And yet—despite the absurdity, the inherent madness, and the occasional amphibious commentary—potions made sense.

Unlike the rest of the Wizarding World’s magic system, which operated on a volatile cocktail of knowledge, willpower, pronunciation accuracy, emotional state, intuition, and, frankly, whatever else magic felt like caring about that day, potions were governed by structure. Logic. Rules.

Follow the steps. Measure precisely. Stir clockwise, not counterclockwise. Add the right ingredients in the right order. Do that, and you’d get exactly what the instructions promised.

Probably.

Because, of course, there were exceptions. There were always exceptions. Magic loved exceptions. It practically hoarded them like a Niffler in a jewellery store. Temperature mattered. Humidity mattered. The phase of the moon mattered—and, honestly, why wouldn’t it? Merlin forbid you try brewing a Calming Draught under a waning gibbous without compensating with an extra sprig of peppermint.

And intent? Supposedly irrelevant. No room for willpower in potioncraft. Well, that was what theory said.

But theory had never met magic.

Because sometimes, even when you did everything right—measured, timed, and stirred with the diligence of a nervous Ravenclaw—the potion still curdled into a sullen, tar-like sludge. Or boiled over in a fit of cauldron-based rebellion. Or spontaneously turned the colour of brown regret and started hissing insults in Latin.

No one ever mentioned why that happened. Or how. Or whether the potion in question should be exorcised or simply discarded in the nearest clean sink.

Pro tip: Apparently, don’t do that. The pipes remember.

All the same, compared to wand magic’s unpredictable flair, potions were the closest thing this world had to ‘scientific consistency.’

And, well… that was a good place to start, wasn’t it? A discipline that punished shortcuts and rewarded the kind of dogged meticulousness I’d been coveting.

(Also, I owed it to Remus to undo the colossal cock-up I’d made of his life. But that sounded less motivational and more like the prelude to a guilt spiral, so… we’d go with the first reason.)

The problem, however, was that potion-making required more than just theoretical understanding. It required access. Equipment. Ingredients. And, most importantly, adult permission.

Unfortunately, my parents were of the opinion that potioneering should remain firmly off-limits to very young children—no matter how genius. “Four years old,” my mother had said, “was far too young to be boiling cauldrons of potentially dangerous substances.”

Which, in fairness, was not an unreasonable stance. But at five? That was practically ancient. Practically a scholarly sage by child standards. I’d worked hard on that act of prodigious intelligence, you know?

And yet, even after months of carefully curated enthusiasm—after performing the role of ‘precocious, responsible child with a mild academic interest in potion theory’ to near perfection—I was still restricted to the simplest of the simple.

Water purification drafts. Burn soothing salves. Basic digestive tonics designed to settle magical mishaps and poorly judged snack choices.

In other words: the kind of foundational drivel that Potion Primer for Young Witches and Wizards, Volume One considered the height of academic excellence. The single most patronising book I’d ever laid eyes on. The illustrations were so childishly vibrant that I half-expected the drawn cauldrons to wink at me and offer encouraging affirmations.

Still, it was fine. I played along. Stirred my harmless little concoctions under adult supervision, nodded gravely when told to always handle ingredients with care, and dutifully ignored the condescending tone of instructional text that warned me not to eat the powdered doxy wings.

I was five. Not brain-dead.

But, hey—small victories. I’d wedged my foot in the door. Now all I had to do was look patient. Look competent. Look like I wasn’t already plotting the systematic takeover of every cauldron in my future kingdom of potion-making.

All in good time.

──────

— BASIC INFORMATION —

▼

Name: Antares Orion Black

Sex: Male

Age: 5 years old

Race: Human (Variant: Magus)

▼

Level: 14

Experience: 33,475/42,000

Skill Points: 4

Perk Points: 0

HP: 100%

FP: 100%

Stamina: 100%

■

— ATTRIBUTE SCORES —

Strength (STR): 10

Dexterity (DEX): 10

Constitution (CON): 10

Intelligence (INT): 25

Wisdom (WIS): 19

Charisma (CHA): 13

Free Attribute Points: 0

■

— PERKS —

▼

▸ HUMAN ADAPTABILITY (VARIANT: MAGUS)

▸ REBORN SOUL

▸ FAST LEARNER

▸ TRUE GENIUS

▸ WHO’S THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL?

■

— SKILLS —

▼

【 Skills: Page 1 / 2 】

⏩

▸ MAGIC MASTERY • Rank 9

▸ OCCLUMENCY • Rank 37

▸ ACTING MASTERY ★ Rank 100

▸ ARS MAGICA I ★ Rank 100

▸ ARTES LIBERALES • Rank 36

▸ PHILOSOPHIAE • Rank 27

▸ PAINTING MASTERY • Rank 7

▾ POTIONCRAFT • Rank 3

Type: Feat

Requires:

• 10 INT
• 10 WIS

To understand potions is to understand the ancient pact between matter and magic. Every brew is a prophecy fulfilled: a promise made when the first drop of rain met the first crackle of lightning. You, the potion-maker, are both witness and weaver. With each Rank, the threads grow clearer; the patterns more distinct. Roots and reagents, herbs and humours—each sings its own note in the great symphony of transformation.

Brew with intent. Brew with wonder. And know this: what you create today may echo for lifetimes beyond your own.

Effects:

• Unlocks the ability to Learn, Research, Brew and Identify all manner and type of potion, allowing you to harness the latent potential of magical and mundane ingredients to produce a variety of effects. From restorative tonics to volatile brews, the possibilities are as vast as your imagination.
• As your understanding of potioncraft deepens, the soft bubbling of a cauldron becomes a familiar voice. Some brewers claim to hear faint whispers during brewing—like the ingredients themselves offering guidance. Whether this is magic or imagination remains debated in academic circles.
• Each Rank of this Skill enhances the potency, stability, and complexity of your potions. As your mastery increases, so too does the clarity with which you perceive the hidden mysteries within each ingredient—resulting in stronger, more reliable results.
• Each Rank grants a cumulative +1.5% bonus to all Potions-related Checks, with a particular focus on brewing, learning, and researching.

▾ THE ART OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY: POTIONS I • Rank 11

Type: Knowledge

Requires:

• Potioncraft: Rank 1

“Potions, dear child, are the only sensible form of magic. Wands, after all, rely on sentiment and theatrics—grand gestures to impress an audience. But potion-making? Ah, that is the art of perfection. A pinch too much, and you induce sleep eternal; a stir too few, and your intended cure becomes a curse. In the realm of potions, magic is distilled into truth: it either works… or it does not. And life, like potioncraft, rarely forgives carelessness.”

— Morgana of Mynydd Preseli (circa 400 AD), a lesser known potioneer from the Isles of Albion, whose theories laid some of the groundwork for modern British potioncraft. Often confused with the Arthurian figure of the same name.

Effects:

• Grants fundamental knowledge of Wizarding World potioncraft, with each Rank adding to your theoretical and practical understanding of different potions, ingredients, brewing processes, and magical interactions—mirroring the experience of a traditionally trained potioneer.
• Through the knowledge imparted by this Skill, the brewer gains access to contextual guidance while brewing.
• Each Rank grants a +1 bonus to all Checks related to brewing, researching, and learning all types and classifications of potions.
• Unlocks one Potion Recipe upon Skill acquisition. An additional Recipe is unlocked every 5th Rank

▸ THE ART OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY: CHARMS I • Rank 1

▼

【 Skills: Page 2 / 2 】

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▸ THE ART OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY: TRANSFIGURATION I • Rank 1

▸ THE ART OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY: DARK CHARMS I • Rank 1

■

— SPELL LIST: ARCANE MAGIC —

▼

New Spell Selections Available!

You have 7 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

▾ RESISTANCE

School: Abjuration

Tier: 0 (Arcane)

Components: V S

FP Cost: 25

Duration: 30 minutes

Range: Touch

Requirements:

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

Description:

You weave a subtle, protective energy into your target—an invisible ward that doesn’t block harm, but instead dulls its impact. When harmful magic or external forces attempt to breach the target’s defenses, this Spell manifests as a fleeting sensation of resistance—like a door holding firm against an unseen hand—granting a 1% universal bonus to Resistance against all harmful effects, as well as a 1% reduction in damage taken from all sources.

This can be made permanent with a Permanency Spell.

──────

Potion lessons were usually held one-on-one, rather than with my brothers—a precaution my parents attributed to “safety concerns” and “pedagogical effectiveness.”

But let’s be honest: it was mostly about Sirius.

He was going through a phase. A destructive phase. One fuelled by familial pressure, curiosity, boredom, and an uncanny knack for locating unsupervised magical objects. Wands, mostly. Specifically, unattended ones.

And, with the revolving door of family visitors traipsing through 12 Grimmauld Place those days—staying for meetings, lingering for dinners, occasionally nesting in the guest suites like aristocratic pigeons—there had been no shortage of unattended wands.

Wherever there was a wand left on a side table, jammed into the pocket of a cloak carelessly left lying around, or momentarily set down while its owner described, with painstaking detail, the exact sequence of charms an enterprising witch used to win a recent duelling tournament…

Well. Let’s just say wands don’t come with child-safety charms.

The fallout had been swift.

One of the guest rooms on the first floor still smelled faintly of charred peacock feathers and overripe fruit. No one knew how he’d managed that—not even Kreacher, who’d spent days pacing in front of the scorched silk wallpaper, wringing his ears and muttering about “the poor, noble house” being “shamed by wicked, unnatural flames.”

For the record, the wallpaper tried to fix itself. It really did. But after several attempts, the elegant floral pattern seemingly gave up entirely and reformed into what could only be described as a smoking crater in tasteful brocade. Kreacher took it as a personal betrayal.

Then there was the dining room chandelier, which shimmered a delicate shade of bubblegum pink for three consecutive days.

Mother nearly had an aneurysm.

“The chandelier!” she had shrieked, her voice reaching a pitch that could have shattered glass—or possibly summoned spirits. The walls had practically trembled with indignation. My ears were still ringing. Somewhere in the depths of the house, a portrait of some long-dead ancestor had definitely woken up just to roll over and die again. “Sirius! What have you done?!”

Which, honestly, was fair. The chandelier had also started humming. A low, warbling note. Off-key. Unsettling. At one point, it drifted into something suspiciously close to God Save the Queen.

Sirius, naturally, had been delighted.

Personally, I had no idea how he’d managed any of it. A handful of random swipes, a couple of ill-advised flourishes, and the kind of reckless enthusiasm that, by all rights, should have resulted in nothing but anticlimactic fizzling. Yet, somehow… someway, he made fantastically magical things happen. He had turned one of the most magically fortified homes in Britain into a prolonged domestic incident.

The strangest part? It really shouldn’t have worked.

I don’t think I could ever say that enough.

Sirius had no training. No technique. No strategy beyond wave and hope for the best. Even so, magic—normally a fickle, temperamental thing that demanded years of careful instruction, a dedicated professor, and at least one traumatic practical exam—listened to him anyway.

No incantations. No studied fastidiousness. Just a child, a stolen wand, and the unshakable, foolproof confidence of someone who had never once considered the possibility of failure.

That, if nothing else, raised an interesting question—was this what magic actually wanted?

Not a carefully measured craft, but an eager accomplice to mischief? Witches and wizards spent their entire lives trying to harness it, to smooth its edges, to coax it into behaving. But maybe that was the mistake, huh? Maybe magic had never been meant to be shackled by Latin verbs and impeccable wrist angles. Maybe it just wanted to play.

Maybe it just wanted to have a good time.

Food for thought.

Still, it proved one universal truth: wands and small children were a recipe for disaster.

The list of casualties went on. And on. And on.

Or, at least, until everyone finally learned a very important lesson. A lesson that should have been common sense, really. A lesson that should have been drilled into every pure-blood adult from the moment they had a child who could toddle across a drawing room unsupervised:

Never. Ever. Leave. A. Wand. Around. Sirius.

My older brother was, quite simply, a menace. And worse—he was ambitious about it.

After a certain point, the game of Find The Wand wasn’t enough for him. No, Sirius decided the next logical step was Take The Wand—whether or not it had actually been left unattended.

The sheer gall. The audacity.

It wasn’t even the recklessness that stunned me. It was the boldness. The absolute nerve of an eight-year-old who, despite already being personally responsible for at least three separate magical catastrophes, thought, ‘You know what? Let’s escalate.’

Naturally, I had to physically stop him. Which, in my opinion, was an act of both brotherly love and sheer self-preservation.

After all, while Sirius had a death wish—my mother’s wrath had a body count.

And if Sirius ever got caught trying to swipe a wand directly out of some unsuspecting family member’s hand or pocket, well… let’s just say I had no desire to be anywhere near that fallout.

Because, sometimes, in a great cosmic tragedy, innocent bystanders do get hit by flying shrapnel.

And I had no intention of being collateral damage.

Of course, I could hardly blame him for his behaviour. Not for the laughter, too sharp. Not for the bruises, too careless. Not for the way he hurled himself against the bars of the gilded cage, throwing all his weight against them, again and again, until it hurt, again and again.

Because it was never just about destruction. Or rebellion.

No.

It was about finding the gaps between them—the smallest pockets of air, the places where he could be something other than what the family needed him to be, even for just a little while. It was about shaking off the invisible ropes that cinched around his wrists, his shoulders, his throat—tightening, pulling, turning every breath into something he had to earn.

That was simply him pushing back more than usual.

Because the house had changed.

If houses had personalities, 12 Grimmauld Place had always been a dignified old man in an expensive suit—pressed to perfection, smelling of agarwood, black tea, and Sicilian mandarin, sharp against the weight of polished wood and decades-old enchantments. An old man with high standards and no patience, completely unimpressed with the world but too proud to move somewhere less draughty.

It was unyielding, yes, but honest in its unkindness, the way winter is honest about the cold. It had rules. You followed them. That was the trade.

But after the family had made their stance against Tom Riddle—an outcome orchestrated by yours truly—it changed.

Not obviously. Not in a way anyone could point to. 

But subtly.

A chair no longer sat where it should, its presence slightly wrong, just enough to make you pause before lowering yourself into it. The walls, always looming, seemed to lean in with a new kind of patience, as though they had taken to listening. The doors, once content to simply be closed, now settled into their frames, sealing in words that had no business leaving the room.

It was as if the house had started paying attention.

The house hadn’t fallen silent. No, that would have been preferable. Silence, at least, could be ignored. Instead, it had grown louder—just not in the way it should have.

There were more bodies in the halls, more voices lingering in the parlours, more quiet footsteps stepping up and down the staircases at odd hours.

More eyes watching.

More ears listening.

More rules.

More expectations.

Fewer places to hide.

And Sirius? Oh, Sirius was at the centre of it all.

The heir apparent to the House of Black was supposed to be flawless. Respectable. Poised. Immovable. A boy sculpted from marble, polished and blood-bound to the family name.

But Sirius Black was not made of marble.

He was all restless hands and reckless grins, too quick, too sharp, too alive to be carved into cold stone. There was something in his bones—something that rejected the weight of expectation like a curse that didn’t quite take.

He was the wind in a house that had no windows.

He was the question in a family that only spoke in answers.

And more than anything, he was a boy who bristled under the watchful eyes that demanded too much of him.

All the time.

Needless to say, however, not everyone fought the weight of expectation.

Regulus and I handled it better. We listened more. Spoke less. Played the part, polished the act. Good boys. Clever boys. The kind of boys who understood their role in the production long before the first curtain even rose. At least, for me. Regulus was more soft clay, pressed into shape before he ever had a chance to shape himself. He did not speak so much as echo; and he did not choose so much as inherit.

Sirius, though?

Sirius fought.

In the end, how could I ever blame him for it? No, seriously—how could I? If I did, I’d be a hypocrite of the highest order.

It seemed like every morning at breakfast, the collective weight of our family’s gazes always flickered over him—assessing, measuring, deciding. Our aunts, the very picture of graceful disapproval, would purse their lips at the slightest infraction. An elbow on the table. A piece of clothing slightly askew. A bite taken too quickly, too eagerly, as though good breeding could be undone by an ill-timed mouthful of toast.

Some members of the family had even taken to watching him the way one might assess a promising but unpredictable show dog—one with excellent pedigree but regrettable temperament that could no longer be excused as he grew ever older. One that, perhaps, could still be fixed.

If corrected early.

Honestly, how utterly maddening.

And Mother? Oh, she was watching too.

She loved him—us—in her own way. Fiercely. Unapologetically. The same way a storm might love the land it batters—shaping it, eroding it, forcing it into something new, something refined, something worthy. She would have torn the world apart for him if he had let her. Sadly, she would probably break him first, never quite realising that wasn’t how you made someone unbreakable.

Our mother never outright said anything. Not openly. Never openly. That would have been gauche. No, she corrected. Adjusted. A word here, a look there. A carefully timed sigh. A remark so precisely weighted it pressed into Sirius’ spine like the tap of a sculptor’s chisel.

And every day, she chipped away.

Because Sirius had to be perfect. A gleaming boy, polished like a mirror—not to see himself, but to reflect the family. Their name. Their expectations. Their hunger, layered in silk and velvet and gold. There was no question of it. No allowance for variation, no mercy in the matter. It was a simple, unspoken truth, so obvious, so inescapable, that it was barely acknowledged.

He was, in a way, an investment. A carefully cultivated thing. He wasn’t supposed to be loud. Or fast. Or messy. He wasn’t supposed to throw his head back when he laughed, or scuff his boots on cobblestones, or dare—dare—to exist in ways they had not pre-approved.

So, they watched him.

His laughter was measured against silence. His words were weighed like gold in the palm, heavy, examined, tested for authenticity. His faults—because there were always faults, always—were filed away like ledger entries in some great, endless audit of his worth.

Sirius was a star, they said.

But he was burning up.

At first, he tried. Earnestly, desperately… completely.

Merlin, he tried so hard.

Sat still as a corpse, hands folded like a prayer, voice a careful, clipped thing—polite, practiced, refined. Every lesson completed. Every rule obeyed. A boy sculpted to fit, his edges smoothed down to fine dust. Yes, Grandfather. Of course, Grandmother. A series of hollow echoes, a child mimicking the ghosts who came before him, hoping—stupidly, fiercely—to be made real in their eyes.

He thought, perhaps, if he was careful enough, still enough, perfect enough—they might be proud of him.

But perfection is a wound, not a cure.

He learned this when his voice slipped—just once, too sharp, too quick—when his laughter caught like a snare, and they frowned, because: “That was wrong, Sirius,” and “Not like that, Sirius.” When his hands fidgeted, just barely, just enough for them to notice, and the weight of their gazes pressed him back into place like a flower flattened between the pages of an old book.

And so, he cracked.

Not all at once. Not in some great, cinematic fracture.

But slowly, painfully—a splintering beneath the skin.

A remark too bold, a grin too wild, a storm rattling the bones of a boy who could never be still for long.

He did all he could.

And it didn’t work.

So, in the end, Sirius did what Sirius always did when pushed into a box too small for him. He broke out of it. Spectacularly. Loudly. And occasionally with mild property damage.

If they wanted him polished, he’d be reckless.

If they wanted him proper, he’d be loud.

If they expected a future Black Lord—composed, obedient, immaculately put-together—he would run barefoot through the corridors and steal wands and turn the bloody chandelier pink just to see the look on their faces.

Because if they were going to watch him, then they were damn well going to see him.

In a way, I admired that about him—the way he turned the family’s scrutiny into spectacle, their expectations into something to mock, to ruin, to reject with all the reckless bravado of a boy who, perhaps, didn’t fully understand why, only that he never would be enough for them. And so he decided—fine—he would be something else entirely.

Alas, admiration did nothing to slow the grinding inevitability of it all. It didn’t stop the train rattling toward the cliff’s edge, didn’t dull the hammer striking stone as they chipped at him—again and again—as though he were something to be sculpted, polished, remade into an heir worthy of the name Black.

I could see it happening. The cracks between him and the family deepening, fractures forming, splintering into fault lines, widening into chasms too vast to cross.

Until, eventually, there was no path left but rebellion—harder, faster, louder.

Truthfully, I thought I had eased off that future somewhat. Eased, not prevented, because I had no interest in forcibly turning my brother into the perfect heir the family wanted. That wasn’t the game I was playing.

And yet.

I had hoped—hoped, mind you—that our mother’s affection, the way it had softened at the edges, the way she held us closer, touched us more, let warmth slip into her otherwise steel-woven love, would be enough to keep the worst of it at bay. That maybe, just maybe, the weight of expectation would land on Sirius’ shoulders with a little less force.

That maybe the battle lines wouldn’t be drawn so early, so starkly.

But the cracks were already there. I could see them spreading, hairline fractures in glass—each expectation, each correction, each quiet, disappointed look a fresh tap of the hammer.

The only question was when he would finally snap. Properly. Not just in the childish tantrums of youth.

And if I was honest?

It was probably my fault.

Not directly, not deliberately—but undeniably, irreversibly mine.

Because there I was, the third son, the (technically) superfluous spare of a spare, the footnote to a legacy already written. But worse—oh, so much worse—I was what the family wanted him to be. I was the example. The prodigy. The effortless genius. The perfect little Black. And beside me, Sirius didn’t just stand out—he failed. He failed to match me. He failed to keep up. He failed to be what they thought he should.

He became lesser.

And I loathed it.

Hated that my existence made his life harder. Despised that I was held up like a mirror and he was forced to stare at everything he wasn’t. Detested that no matter what I did—how I twisted, how I tried to soften my own light—he would always be cast in shadow.

My shadow.

But what probably sickened me most—what curled in the pit of my stomach like something rotten, something I couldn’t purge—was that, once upon a time, I had considered fixing it.

I had thought, in the quiet arrogance of a child—not a man, because that level of foolishness required a specific breed of youthful, unearned certainty—that I could ease him into it. That I could make him fit, smooth his edges, Charisma-engineer him gently into the role he was meant to play.

That I could save him from the worst of it.

How disgusting.

How wrong.

Because how do you save a bird from the wind?

How do you tell the ocean to stop rising with the moon?

I had looked at him—this wild, burning thing, this boy full of laughter and sharp edges and something untamed in his bones—and thought to make him smaller. Thought to keep him safe by keeping him still.

But Sirius Black was never meant to be still.

Sirius Black was not marble. Not gold. Not a carefully cut gem waiting to be set into the family’s crown.

He was motion.

He was a storm rattling against the windows of a house that would never let him out.

And I had almost—almost—locked the doors.

Frankly, I don’t think I would have ever forgiven myself if I had gone through with it.

Because that was the thing about cages.

They don’t need bars.

They could be made of love, of expectations, of quiet, insidious rules whispered in the dark. They could be warm, soft, lined with silk and gold and promises of safety, and still—still—they would break you just the same.

And Sirius Black?

My dear brother would rather tear himself apart than let the walls close in.

It goes without saying that I still wanted to help him though. So, instead, I decided: if I couldn’t stop the storm, I would give it space to breathe.

Because if Sirius fought, he would break. And when he broke, they would sweep away the wreckage, wipe his name clean from the records, and move on. The House of Black would not mourn him.

But me?

I could make them hesitate.

I could be the one thing that changed the rules.

They wanted a perfect Black heir?

Fine.

I was no heir, but I could be better than perfect. I would be exceptional. I would shine so blindingly that they would never think to look past me, never dare let me slip from their grasp. I would give them every reason to hold onto me, to keep me, to make room for mistakes they could not afford to acknowledge.

I would carry the weight they placed on Sirius—on Regulus too—until it became me.

I would be the family’s precious little star, burning too hot for the sky to hold.

And hopefully, then—both my brothers could breathe.

Because any mistake, any flaw, any deviation would be overlooked—if only in their desperate hunger for the light I could give them.

I could do that. Yes, I could. For them. For all of them. And I would.

If only because someone had to.

But, regrettably, I could not save Sirius—dear, brilliant, disastrous Sirius—from himself.

Some battles simply weren’t worth fighting. I know, I know—shocking, scandalous, outright treacherous, even. But before you start clutching your pearls and composing a formal letter of concern regarding my commitment to familial heroics, let’s be very clear: I meant Sirius and potions.

(Still breathing? Good.)

Our parents had long since abandoned the notion that Sirius and “discipline” could share the same air without incident. After all, this was the same boy who had once, in a single afternoon, accidentally bewitched a chandelier into a humming monstrosity, transfigured a priceless Persian rug into something unsettlingly carnivorous, and conducted what Kreacher only ever referred to in hushed tones as “the Unholy Incident of the East Wing.”

Which was why potion lessons—mercifully, inevitably—became a one-student affair.

A wise decision, really.

It was also, if you asked Sirius, the single greatest betrayal in the history of betrayals.

The boy had a flair for drama, and I say that with all the love and exasperation of someone who had personally witnessed him hold a solemn funeral for a biscuit he dropped off the breakfast table.

Apparently, it wasn’t just that he had been shackled with yet another stuffy lesson—oh no. It was that he would have to suffer it alone. Without me or Regulus. Without a partner-in-crime. Without someone to dramatically groan at while enduring the endless torment of structured education.

So, upon learning that I had been the one who wheedled our parents into potion lessons—lessons that had not only sentenced him to more academic drudgery but had also sparked full-blown educational segregation—he wasted no time in declaring war.

A war against treachery. Against tyranny. Against all things dull and unfair.

He accused me of siding with the enemy (read: our parents), muttered darkly about conspiracies and betrayals, and, in a final, decisive act of defiance, swore upon his enchanted Gobstones that he would never speak to me again.

It lasted three days.

For three entire days, Sirius Black did not speak to me.

He did, however: sulk pointedly, exit rooms with unnecessary amounts of robe and cloak billowing, and exhaled deeply whenever I so much as looked in his direction.

Regulus, ever the diplomat, remained studiously neutral. He simply watched—calm, expectant, his tiny fingers steepled like a miniature Wizengamot judge presiding over the great Black Family Cold War of 1968.

I strongly suspected there was a betting pool. Possibly even a formal ledger.

Regulus certainly looked like someone expecting a very specific outcome.

And, sure enough—Sirius cracked first.

Because, despite all his righteous fury, he had the self-control of a Niffler in a Gringotts vault.

His surrender, when it came, was as dramatic as his silence. Sirius sighed the kind of sigh that suggested the burden of history itself rested squarely on his small, trouble-prone shoulders. It was the sigh of a man—well, a child—who had suffered greatly at the hands of tyranny, oppression, and, most crucially, an education system that dared to exist.

He shook his head with all the sorrow of a tragic hero, perhaps one who had just lost a kingdom, or—more likely—one who had been told that no, he could not, in fact, ride the house-elf like a small and disgruntled Abraxan.

“I forgive you,” he had announced, magnanimously, akin to a pope granting absolution. Then, in an act of divine retribution, he reached across the table and stole my toast.

And just like that, the Black Family Cold War of 1968 ended—not with treaties, not with compromise, but with a breakfast-based act of larceny. The world continued spinning, indifferent to our tiny war. Until, of course, Sirius eventually found something new to mourn.

But that was a battle for another day, another version of me—one slightly older, slightly wiser, and just as doomed to endure it.

▣

Potions demanded patience. The steady hand of an artist, the mind of an erudite, and the unshakable fortitude of someone who would not—under any circumstances—be distracted by the sheer ridiculousness of their surroundings.

It was, as I often argued, an elegant and beautiful fusion of art and science. A philosophy that had thus far earned me many, many snorts of derision from my brothers, a handful of dramatic eye-rolls from my cousins, and at least one perfectly innocent pastry hurled directly at my head.

The poor thing hadn’t deserved that.

Clearly, visionaries were rarely appreciated in their time.

I was five and already a revolutionary.

We were in the brewing room beneath 12 Grimmauld Place—a space of quiet industry, where flames burned steady, ingredients rested in perfect rows, and the rest of the world, for a time, did not exist.

The walls were lined with ancient shelves, dark-stained wood polished to a muted sheen, their contents arranged in meticulous, almost reverent order—glass jars gleaming in neat rows, ceramic containers sealed with wax, and airtight canisters of dried roots, each meticulously labelled in a hand elaborate enough to be considered a signature, or, at the very least, an exceptionally passive-aggressive statement about penmanship.

Shadows curled at the edges of the room, enchanted candlelight flickering against stone, turning walls into an impressionistic canvas of shifting shapes and dancing lights. The ambiance was, even I had to admit, perfectly dramatic—the ideal setting for an afternoon of mystical enlightenment and discovery.

That is, if you were the sort of person to enjoy such a thing.

Which I was. Obviously.

I, the proverbial visionary, had work to do.

The air smelled of earth and salt, of green things crushed under careful hands. The crushed Driftwood crumbled between my fingers, the scent damp and briny as I worked it into dust, feeling the brittle edges snap beneath my grip.

It was all very serious. Very methodical. Very dignified.

Which might have been more convincing had I not been standing atop a sturdy but deeply untrustworthy stool, perched at just the right height to allow me to peer into my small, pewter cauldron without toppling in headfirst.

The cauldron breathed, steam rolling over its rim in thin, ghostly ribbons, curling in the bright candlelight. It gurgled—a soft, rhythmic bubbling—not quite urgent, not quite demanding, but something gentler. Expectant.

Inside, the liquid had begun to shift—from translucent nothingness into the beginning of something. The pale white shade deepened gradually, rolling over itself as I stirred: counterclockwise, precise, deliberate, as instructed.

No deviations. No risks.

Nearby, the thick and glistening Flobberworm mucus sat in its round, spherical bottle, carrying the kind of damp, gelatinous presence that suggested it had opinions about its imminent fate. It waited. I waited. The room waited.

Mother watched.

Not hovering. Not interfering. Just there—mostly silent and observant, a presence felt rather than heard.

A pause. A beat. Then—

“Very good,” she murmured.

The words settled lightly, carefully, a touch against my shoulder—there, then gone, but lingering, like the last trace of warmth from a hand withdrawn.

And that, I thought, was magic too.

“You’re doing well, Antares.”

I looked up and let loose my most devastatingly brilliant smile—the kind that could have, without question, put the sun out of business. If the sun had any sense, it would have packed up and retired on the spot.

She remained, as always, the very picture of composure, draped in her customary black with brown hair twisted into an elegant chignon. Her face was all fine patrician angles, high cheekbones, and a sculpted mouth that rarely betrayed emotion. Except, perhaps, now.

After my smile, the corners of her mouth gave a little twitch, barely perceptible, yet the cold edge of her face softened just enough.

A victory.

I inclined my head in quiet acknowledgment, then turned back to the cauldron.

Slowly, I reached for the next ingredient—Calming Sage. A name both too grand and too simple for what it was. Salvia somnifera, if you wanted to be exact. A household remedy. A potion staple. The sort of thing Healers swore by and apothecaries overcharged for. A plant with enough historical documentation to fill a library and, if you believed certain medieval scholars, possibly grant deep metaphysical enlightenment. (Or possibly just really good sleep. The records were unclear.)

It had been ground into a fine dust and placed in a pristine porcelain dish—pale as old parchment, faintly bitter in the air.

I pinched a small handful, the powder clinging to the pads of my fingers. The texture was almost flour-light, but not quite. A little coarser. More stubborn. When I let it fall, the dust drifted in a slow, contemplative descent, settling over the potion’s surface before sinking soundlessly into the solution.

One, two, three, four, five…

The potion stirred to life.

Or, well—it considered it.

A sluggish green bled through the liquid, curling beneath the surface with the lazy indecision of a student realising they might be late to class, but also… might not care. It didn’t spread so much as hesitate—a mild ink spill with commitment issues. It looped and twisted in slow, uncertain spirals, taking its sweet time, as if waiting for permission to fully exist.

Clearly, it needed encouragement. And I gave it some.

I adjusted my stirring.

Clockwise. Three minutes. Thirty revolutions per minute.

Not twenty-nine. Not thirty-one. Thirty. Any faster and the potion would develop an attitude problem, thickening into something uncooperative—like a child deciding that, actually, they weren’t going to eat their vegetables today, and there was nothing you could do about it. Any slower and the infusion wouldn’t fully take, leaving me with something technically drinkable but about as effective as a well-meaning pep talk.

I had to find that perfect balance—that sweet, elusive moment where motion and magic met, where ingredients stopped being just things and became something else entirely.

And, of course, the System—my ever-faithful overseer—was watching.

It was excited.

I could tell.

Which was ridiculous, obviously, because the System didn’t have emotions. It wasn’t capable of excitement. And yet, somehow—somehow—it had cultivated the distinct energy of an overzealous librarian who had been given far too much responsibility and was now on a personal mission to make sure everyone knew it.

Because why else would the endless barrage of data and information be presented with the kind of blinding, near-manic urgency usually reserved for stock market crashes and cardiac monitors?

Seriously. Numbers and text shouldn’t loom like that—all expectant and judgemental. Trust me on this one.

The blue, holographic interfaces around me flickered—pulse-quick, jittery with anticipation. It was waiting. For me? For the potion? For some imperceptible shift in conditions only it could quantify? Hard to say. But then, as if making up its mind, the displays snapped into motion—figures recalibrating, graphs undulating in fluid succession, formulae adjusting themselves with the crisp, inarguable finality of a ledger being balanced.

──────

Current Step: Adding the Calming Sage

Time Remaining: 1 minute, 21 seconds

Potion Progress: 48%

...

Temperature: 72.3°C

Margin of Error: ±0.2°C

...

Cauldron Metal Resonance: 99.4%

Cauldron Integrity Deviation: 0.3%

Stirring Axis Adherence: 97%

Catalytic Equilibrium Stability: 96.5%

Potion Stability: 94%

...

Ingredient Integration Efficiency: 87%

Thaumic Resonance Factor: 92.8%

…

Chrono-Phasic Stability Drift: 0.04%

…

──────

Truthfully, the whole thing looked less like a potioneering analysis and more like the dashboard of a high-stakes aerospace mission—an absurd, borderline excessive level of data tracking that could have easily been mistaken for an elite economic forecasting simulator. Or, at the very least, the World’s Most Anxious Spreadsheet.

Did I understand all the graphs? All the charts? Every single complex diagram and detailed readout flashing in crisp, mathematical precision?

Not a chance. Not yet, at least.

But did they help? Absolutely. Even if most of the data felt distinctly… outside the standard. Not the sort of thing a British Potions Master would ever teach, let alone acknowledge existed.

(I could be wrong on that though.)

Had I been a reasonable person, I might have ignored it entirely. Turned off the HUD-esque screens, closed the tabs, and lived a peaceful, unburdened life free of live data feeds and progress bars.

After all, it wasn’t as if any of this information was truly necessary to brew a potion. Generations of witches and wizards had managed perfectly well without a real-time analytics dashboard whispering at them to mind their stirring axis adherence.

But the problem was: I wasn’t reasonable.

I was me.

And somewhere, deep in the back of my mind, some wretched, Spreadsheet-Gamer, stat-tracking part of me wanted to optimise. Wanted to track everything. Wanted to see exactly what kind of statistical gymnastics I could accomplish with all this beautiful, delicious data just sitting there, waiting to be exploited.

Not to min-max, per se. Not to break the game.

Just to…

Okay. Fine.

I had no excuses.

I just liked knowing things. To control. To manage. To fine-tune until I could be absolutely certain—without a shadow of a doubt—that I was doing everything I could possibly do within the parameters of my situation.

Which, as far as I could tell, was a perfectly reasonable desire.

So, I let the numbers, metrics, and arcane-technobabble wash over me and made no effort to stop it.

I continued stirring, eyes narrowed, tracking every shift and swirl, every faint undulation in viscosity, every slow, lazy breath of steam curling from the cauldron. Watching for signs of distress, instability, or any indication that I was about to botch the whole thing spectacularly.

There were none.

If anything, the potion seemed… pleased. Not in a sentient, will develop free will and demand voting rights sort of way, but in the quiet, contented manner of a soup left to simmer under the knowing hands of someone who actually read the recipe before starting.

A good sign.

Expected, even.

After all, this was a Salvebrew Draught—the bread and butter of beginner potion-making. The staple of wise old grandmothers, harried matrons, and exasperated parents who had long accepted that small children were incapable of passing a sharp corner without hurling themselves into it at speed.

It was, essentially, the plaster and a kiss on the forehead of the potioneering world. A simple, no-fuss healing draught, good for minor cuts, scrapes, and the occasional questionable decision involving broomsticks and gravity.

Not nearly as potent—nor as dramatically life-saving—as the Wiggenweld Potion, of course. That particular brew had grander ambitions, what with its ability to mend and sterilise injuries and wake the comatose from the most potent sleeping potions. But the Salvebrew Draught had history.

It was a traditional mother’s potion, a thing of hands and habit, old enough that no one remembered who made it first—only that it worked. A recipe passed from lip to ear, measured not in weights or ounces but in instinct, in memory, in the quiet certainty of those who had brewed it a hundred times before.

Before textbooks laid potioneering out in careful script, before precision and certification refined it into study, there were kitchens and spoons and steam curling into the rafters. There were grandmothers who measured in pinches and whispered old wisdom into the cauldron’s soft breath. And, always, there was the Salvebrew Draught—slathered over scraped knees, pressed into the palms of fretting parents, stirred into existence by generations who needed no name for what they already knew by heart.

Which was all very poetic. Beautifully sentimental, too—at least, according to my mother when she first taught me the process. Unexpected, coming from her, but sincere enough that she had paused, looking down at me with a slight, but definite, smile.

Still, sentiment alone hadn’t kept the Salvebrew Draught alive all this time. It wasn’t history for history’s sake. It was a lesson.

A foundation. A potion that had survived the centuries—millennia, really—not because it was grand or revered, but because it was useful. It distilled potion-making down to some of its rawest essentials: knowing the difference between ‘finely chopped or crushed’ and ‘this used to be precious herb, now it’s a crime scene.’ Walking the delicate line between ‘high heat’ and ‘contributing to arson statistics.’ Stirring with just the right rhythm, just the right timing, just the right balance of fidelity and ease—because nothing curdled faster than a potion that felt personally insulted by its maker.

And that was what made it brilliant.

Textbook. Reliable. Practically unbotchable.

Of course, if you knew anything about magic, it meant that someone, somewhere, had absolutely botched it before. Probably in spectacular fashion. Probably with an impressive lack of foresight and a great deal of smoke.

But I wasn’t just anyone.

And if this potion thought it was going to defy me?

Well.

It had another thing coming.

The green in the cauldron deepened—first sea-foam, then kelp-dark. A slow shift, like deep water settling into the shape of its own depth. I stirred, careful, measured, because potions knew. They knew when they were forced, when they were hurried, when they were met by hands that had not earned the right to shape them.

So I gave it no reason to doubt me.

The System HUDs around me continued to glow, blue-light sharp, whispering updates in the periphery of my vision. Temperature steady. Viscosity within range. Cohesion optimal.

No errors. No anomalies.

As needed, I adjusted my grip, my pressure, my speed, eventually tracking the only number that mattered—the timer to the next step.

0:34... 0:33… 0:32…

0:20… 0:19… 0:18…

0:10… 0:09… 0:08…

Round and round. Clockwise. Familiar.

One more turn. Two. Three. The potion thickened, folding into itself, taking shape as if it had always known how.

0:05.

0:04.

0:03.

I paused. Then reached for the Flobberworm Mucus.

The container was cool, smooth, reassuringly weighty in my hand—glass at its most respectable. Inside, the mucus pooled, glistening, sluggish, shifting in slow ripples. It had the air of something profoundly reluctant. A little unenthusiastic. Probably suspicious. As if, given the choice, it would very much prefer to stay put, thank you.

I twisted the lid loose.

The smell hit like a betrayal.

A damp, organic reek. Wet leaves decaying in the kind of place sunlight forgot and fungus thrived. The breath of something unseen, patient, watching from the underbrush. Not quite rancid, not quite tolerable—just there, in the way bad omens, unpaid debts, and bureaucratic summons were.

My nose wrinkled. I poured anyway.

A single, unbroken stream.

The mucus slithered into the cauldron, sinking into the bubbling depths with plodding inevitability—embracing its purpose at last. A ripple. A slow exhale. Then the potion thickened, darkened—settled.

I resumed stirring. Clockwise, slowly.

The texture shifted.

Thicker now. Hesitant. Resisting. It clung to the stirring rod with custard-like tenacity, stretching, folding, pulling back on itself as if reconsidering its entire existence.

The potion was changing.

It had realised what it was meant to be.

And so had I.

My mother let out a pleased hum from somewhere behind me, the soft, musical tone she always made when she was genuinely impressed. I didn’t need to turn to know the expression she wore. That brightness—subtle, but undeniable. The slight tilt of her head, the sharp glint of satisfaction in her gaze, like a jeweller inspecting a diamond and finding it perfectly cut.

“That’s excellent,” she murmured, stepping closer.

A hand settled atop my head, fingers threading absently through my black hair—an indulgence, an unconscious habit I had come to notice. From my mother, it was a gesture of possession, of quiet affection, of something not quite praise, but not far from it either.

She leaned in, gaze skimming over the potion, measuring it, assessing it, weighing my skill in the space between observation and approval.

“You really are a natural at this, my dear.”

I glanced up, met her eyes, and grinned—wide, pleased, all teeth and triumph.

“Thank you, Mama. You taught me well.”

“Your flattery is an art, too, it seems,” she mused. Dry, amused, but not dismissive. “But this is exceptional work. You truly do have a gift.”

“That’s what Papa said,” I told her, still stirring.

“And he is really not wrong.”

My hand never faltered. Round and round. Fifteen revolutions per minute. Exactly. The System, ever the diligent accountant, siphoned Experience into the relevant Skills with all the quiet efficiency of someone tidying up behind me before I even noticed the mess.

“I must admit, I had my doubts that you would manage alone,” my mother mused, tone light, thoughtful—the words chosen not to wound, but to make a point. “But look at you. Even the best of us, it seems, have underestimated you once or twice.”

I made a sound—something neutral and noncommittal, the kind of noise one might produce when asked to weigh in on a philosophical debate between two people who had already decided they were right. Then I returned to my stirring.

By all conventional logic, my arms should have given out several times by now. A child, nowhere near tall enough to reach the table without a stool, subjected to the repetitive labour of stirring a dense, potion-thick liquid with a pewter rod? Surely a recipe for imminent collapse, accompanied by tragic, wide-eyed gasping and an unceremonious flop onto the floor.

And yet, the grand narrative of my inevitable muscle failure stubbornly refused to unfold. My shoulders did not ache. My wrists did not tremble. My small, delicate, noble-born forearm—defying every law of repetitive strain injury—remained as fresh as the moment I started.

I was, as the children of my past life would have said, simply built different.

Quite literally. The System had seen to that.

Somewhere in its unfathomable, algorithmic wisdom, someone—some entity—had decided that potion brewing (or maybe just this potion) would not result in Stamina consumption.

And if my Stamina Bar refused to deplete, that meant one thing: no fatigue. No trembling muscles. No sense of effort beyond the motion itself.

Which also meant, hypothetically, I could do this forever.

Not literally forever, of course. I still needed to eat, drink, and occasionally acknowledge the slow, creeping passage of time lest I become some kind of eldritch potion-gremlin, eternally churning cauldrons in a forgotten basement, muttering about viscosity ratios.

But still.

It was the principle of the thing.

The System—my ever-faithful cosmic administrator—had granted me a body that played by slightly different rules than the average Homo sapiens. And the longer I lived with it, the more glaringly obvious it became that whatever I was, it wasn’t quite… human. Oh, I looked human, certainly. Moved like one. Smiled, frowned, blinked at the appropriate intervals. But fundamentally? Baseline humanity and I had long since parted ways.

This had been a subject of much debate in the Player Forum. The consensus, inasmuch as one could ever call anything in that often lawless intellectual wasteland a “consensus,” was that Players weren’t humans playing a game. No. Players were just that—Players. That was our species. A distinct, functional classification. Homo ludens, perhaps. Or Homo sapiens, but with debug privileges.

And the truly unsettling part?

Some of us had never been human.

Not before the System. Not after. Not ever.

Some had started as elves. Or gnomes. Or goblins. Or things with too many teeth and a fundamental disregard for Euclidean geometry. A few had been dragons. One particularly unhinged fellow had, allegedly, started as a sentient fog bank.

And yet, despite this staggering variance—despite the sheer, cosmic absurdity of our origins—we were still all the same species.

Players.

Not defined by biology, or culture, or history. Not by genetics or bloodlines or even time itself.

No.

We were defined by function. By classification.

By the presence of the System.

And that—if you thought about it too hard—was terrifying.

Because if our very species was determined by the System, if our entire existence hinged on its presence, then what exactly was the System?

Who had built it?

And more disturbingly—if the System was the framework of our existence, then what were we without it?

I tried not to think about all of that too much.

That way led madness. That way led cosmic horror. That way led to staring into a vast, uncaring void and coming to the deeply unpleasant conclusion that the void had been staring back the whole time.

And frankly, my blood pressure was often already high enough.

A thick, wet glorp broke the surface of the potion, dragging me back to the far more immediate reality of the task at hand.

The moment the System’s on-screen timer had neared its final seconds, the potion became… vocal. Not in any way verbal, of course. Potions didn’t talk—not this one, anyway. But it was making itself known. A deep, gelatinous burbling, the sound of something shifting, slithering, sucking in upon itself. It popped wetly. Then again. A series of mucous-laden, damp explosions, not unlike what one might hear if they violently yanked a squid free from a pane of glass. A sound that could only be described as unsettlingly biological.

The tell-tale scent followed soon after—humid, thick in the air and deeply organic. Not foul, thankfully. Just damp, earthy, the way an untouched grotto or a cave shrouded in mist might smell.

Right. Last step.

I plucked a long, thin-necked crystal phial from the worktable; its glass a deep, iridescent blue, like the ocean seen from above. It was an elegant thing. Excessively elegant, if I was being honest. The kind of glass that looked as though it ought to break at the slightest touch but, somehow, never did. Inside: Dittany leaf extract—an ingredient that had been quietly saving people from their own stupidity for centuries.

Holding it steady, I tipped the phial and started to let exactly twenty drops fall into the cauldron. One drop every five seconds.

The ornate glass, enchanted for faultless measurement, ensured that not a single drop deviated from the prescribed quantity—a fine alternative to Muggle pipette droppers that, under no circumstances, would my family ever be caught using.

Perish the thought.

Could you Imagine? A proud, pure-blood house like ours, reduced to wielding something as pedestrian as rubber bulbs and plastic tubes. What next? Rubber gloves and face masks? Plastic goggles and aprons?

Scandalous.

Each drop struck the surface with a faint hiss: an exhalation, an acknowledgement, a welcome. A drop. A fizzle. A second. A third. No splash, no resistance. Just liquid swallowing liquid, over and over, until nothing was left but the waiting.

By the tenth drop, the potion had decided it was bright green. A serious, no-nonsense green. The sort of green you’d find on well-fed moss in a forest that had never known a dry season. By the twentieth, it had re-evaluated its choices and opted for something classier: shiny, polished, perfectly translucent, the kind of green that would absolutely charge extra if bottled and sold in an apothecary.

Mother hummed her approval.

So did I.

I set the phial down and resumed stirring—counterclockwise for one minute, then clockwise for thirty seconds. Slow, gentle stirs at ten revolutions per minute.

One.

Two.

Three.

“Good,” my mother murmured. “Good. This is looking splendid, darling.”

The potion reacted immediately, almost too eagerly, silver streaks unfurling across the green-tinged surface, stretching into a delicate web of shimmering, liquid filigree. Then, just as quickly, the viscosity loosened—thick no longer, though still syrupy, just not excessive, like a rich sauce that had finally accepted its fate as pourable.

Gone was its earlier stubbornness, its determined resistance turning to basic cooperation. It had, at last, reluctantly agreed to the inevitable as it spiralled in a slow, hypnotic motion, settling into exactly the form it had always meant to take.

Transformation at its finest.

And, more importantly, a clear sign that I hadn’t, in fact, ruined it.

Eventually, I finished the last of my stirs, watching as the potion settled into its final appearance: a glossy emerald, faintly translucent, with hints of silver rippling across the surface. All the active steps were done. Nothing left but the cooling, the bottling, the last few flourishes that separated a mere brew from a proper potion—the difference between ‘functional’ and ‘worthy of being smug about.’

Not that I could rush ahead. The mixture needed to rest for thirty minutes, according to the Recipe, and potions were annoyingly strict about their beauty sleep.

A low, satisfied exhale escaped me as I set the stirring rod aside.

Sure, the System had streamlined a good chunk of the process—knowing the Recipe meant I wasn’t exactly reinventing the cauldron here. I had followed the steps, and the steps had led me here. But I had still done it Manually.

No reliance on the fugue-like state of Automatic Crafting, where time blurred and the System did all the work in a way that felt vaguely like cheating. (Let’s be real: It was absolutely cheating.)

No. This had been me. Hands-on. Present.

That counted for something, right?

“It’s done,” I announced, grinning as I turned to my mother. “Can you turn off the flame, Mama?”

Could I have done it myself? Obviously. A simple flick of Prestidigitation and it would be out.

But I hadn’t exactly demonstrated verbal, structured spellcasting yet, and now didn’t seem like the best time to casually reveal that I could cast magic beyond the usual inborn, “instinctual” set I had carefully gotten them accustomed to over the years.

Better to let that little revelation marinate. Let it age. Let it sit quietly in the pantry of secrets until I decided it was ready to be served.

“You did wonderfully, Antares.”

A warm, indulgent hand pressed over my head again, fingers threading absently through my hair. Then, with a flick of her wand, Mother extinguished the flame beneath the cauldron. The potion gurgled once, begrudgingly, as if adjusting to its new reality of not being actively boiled.

“Now we just have to wait thirty minutes,” she said. “We have time, then.”

Oh no.

“Shall we test your knowledge while we wait, my dear?”

Ah. The Quiz. Capital T. Capital Q.

I sighed theatrically, all resigned and dignified in equal measure. A tragic figure, really. But I was ready.

“I’m ready, Mama.”

She regarded me for a moment, fingers tapping lightly against her sleeve—a near-imperceptible pause, like a duellist considering their first move. Then, decision.

“Tell me, darling,” she began, “why precisely twenty drops of Dittany?”

I met her gaze solemnly.

“Because twenty-one would be a disaster,” I said gravely, “and nineteen would be tragic.”

A beat.

Her eyes narrowed.

I pouted, wrinkled my nose—then, as if bestowing ancient wisdom upon the world, I recited the answer in a perfectly reasonable, perfectly five-year-old ‘obviously, everybody knows this’ tone.

“Because anything fewer would make the potion too weak, and anything more would make it grumpy.”

A pause. A long one.

Mother gave me a look.

I relented.

“Because too little Dittany weakens the healing, and too much in-ter-feres with the in-fu-sion of the Calming Sage.”

She made a quiet, considering sound—something between amusement and satisfaction.

And so it went.

Every question, every test. The answer left my mouth with that strange, effortless certainty—not just because I had memorised them, but because the moment she asked, the answer was simply there. Neatly slotted into place; a book that had always belonged on the shelf but had only just been noticed.

Which, frankly, always quietly amazed me.

The points I had allocated to Intelligence and Wisdom had never been loud about it. There was no sudden enlightenment, no grand unlocking of the mind’s potential, no cinematic flash of clarity where numbers and equations began floating before my eyes.

No.

I still felt like... me.

Which, at first, was mildly concerning, because you’d think enhancing your own mental faculties would come with at least a little fanfare—some grand shift in perception, a sharpness, a speed, a feeling of new horizons opening before me.

But I had always woken up the same every day.

Same thoughts. Same internal monologue. Same capacity for terrible decisions.

And yet.

Despite that.

It was there, always. Subtle, quiet, patient. The extra layer of understanding, the almost unnatural ease of recall, the way information seemed to simply… click into place.

My thoughts didn’t move faster, they just… moved correctly. It wasn’t intelligence in the way I imagined it—the frantic scribbling, the midnight inspiration, the beautiful madness of it all. No, my mind had simply rearranged itself into neat, well-labelled drawers, where every fact sat patiently, waiting to be pulled open at a moment’s notice.

Sure, sometimes I had to pause—just for a moment—to cross-reference, pull a half-forgotten detail from the depths of memory, piece together a logical thread. But it was definitely easier than it should have been.

I wasn’t pulling ideas from thin air—I couldn’t summon knowledge I had never encountered—but everything I had been exposed to felt far too accessible, too structured, like a well-organised archive rather than the usual chaos of human memory.

And it wasn’t just facts either.

Patterns, logic, inference—all the moving parts of deduction and analysis—they fell into place like dominos, like a word hovering at the tip of my tongue that only needed the right nudge to spill forth.

I asked myself a question, and the answer came.

Not like a stroke of genius.

Not like a burst of inspiration.

Just a door swinging open, revealing something that had been sitting there the whole time.

Which, honestly, was its own kind of unsettling.

Because it didn’t feel like I was smarter.

It just felt like I was getting the answers from somewhere.

And I wasn’t sure where.

The last question faded, and for a moment, nothing followed. No words, no movement—just a pause, not empty, but weighted. A breath held. A thought forming.

I looked at my mother.

She looked at me.

“Antares?”

“Hm?”

Then—she smiled. A real smile. Not the polite, practised curve of aristocratic approval, nor the sharp-edged satisfaction of a plan unfolding as intended. Not even the quiet, measured, half-hidden fondness she often wore like a well-fitted glove.

No—this was something else. Something rarer.

Something, as far as I could tell, meant only for me.

“Perfect. Just perfect,” she said. “You did extremely… exceptionally well.”

A warm feeling unfurled in my chest, curling at the edges of my mouth, sliding into place with the ease of a well-practised motion.

“Really, Mama?” I asked, voice pitched just right—hopeful, but not needy. A touch of modesty, just enough to suggest humility. A dash of confidence, just enough to suggest potential. The perfect blend of obedience and self-assurance.

Her gaze flickered, taking me in.

“Yes, my dear. Indeed. You’re a very clever child.”

I let my smile widen—small, satisfied, appropriately pleased.

And, somewhere at the periphery of my awareness, the System chimed about my brew finally being complete, followed by a chunk of Experience being rewarded towards «Potioncraft» and «The Art of Witchcraft and Wizardry: Potions I».

▣

Later that day, as the sun sank lazily towards the horizon and the house settled into its usual nocturnal hum, I escaped—or, more accurately, retreated—to the sanctuary of my bedroom.

Once, it had been a nursery. The kind filled with overstuffed cushions, charmed mobiles, and furniture designed with the express purpose of ensuring a child did not immediately perish upon contact with it.

Now?

Now, after liberal applications of magic from my parents and an aesthetic sense that was still deciding what it wanted to be when it grew up, it had become something else entirely.

Not quite a study. Not yet a library. Certainly not a throne room (though I had considered it, briefly).

Instead, it was a work in progress, a reflection of a child on the cusp of taste and self-definition—a place where old world aristocracy warred with personal preference, where the lavish remnants of Black family heritage sat awkwardly beside the creeping influence of a mind that did not, strictly speaking, belong to a five-year-old.

Which, frankly, explained why half the walls still stood undecided.

Bare, empty spaces waited, holding their breath, poised for portraits that did not yet exist. Parts of shelves yawned open, scandalised by their own emptiness. The entire room had the air of a grand estate waiting for the furniture to arrive—eager to fulfil its purpose, yet suffering the deep indignity of incompletion.

Not unlike me, really.

I sat at my desk—an extravagantly carved piece of wood that had been forcibly shrunken and modified to accommodate my current… regrettable dimensions. It had once been a desk befitting a statesman, a scholar, perhaps a minor monarch. Now? It was a child’s desk in denial.

From one of its many drawers, I retrieved my latest and greatest treasure—the Everlasting Artbook gifted to me by Grandmother Melania.

It was, undeniably, one of the better gifts I had ever received, and not just because it had been given with the certainty of someone who knew I would cherish it, long before I did. No—this was the kind of present that could only come from a woman who had correctly deduced that, between expensive toys and an exquisitely crafted notebook, I’d choose the latter every time.

She really was a sensible woman who understood things—specifically, the kind of gift that would make a young, impressionable, artistically inclined mind the happiest. She knew that books—especially fancy, magically enhanced, leatherbound ones—were inherently superior to most other forms of material wealth, and that anything described as “everlasting” was an automatic win for someone like me.

It was beautiful. Vellum pages. Deep, supple leather. A notebook with weight—the kind that suggested great things should be drawn upon it, but would also quietly tolerate the occasional doodle of a smug-looking cat.

And, if I was being completely honest—

I was very attached.

Hard not to be, really.

When a book was indestructible by mundane means, eternally self-replenishing, and possessed the frankly miraculous ability to prevent ink and paint from bleeding through its pages, what choice did I have but to love it?

It was, quite possibly, the perfect object.

A thing of beauty. A thing of function. A thing that understood the simple luxury of a clean, empty page—ready for whatever came next.

And wasn’t that just the most wonderful thing?

The book was already filled, or at least, well on its way—hundreds of pages now bearing the evidence of my artistic experimentation, ambition, and, occasionally, hubris. A catalogue of triumphs, near-misses, and what could charitably be described as artistic misfires.

No outright Failures—not in the mechanical sense, nor the catastrophic, ‘burn the evidence and never speak of it again’ sense. But plenty of Poor and Inferior Quality pieces, with the vast majority of my work stubbornly entrenched at Common.

Uncommon paintings did exist. Rare, fleeting creatures that surfaced when the stars aligned, my brush obeyed, and—presumably—the System decided to take pity on me.

But those were few and far between.

Even then, none were what you’d call a masterpiece.

Still, I was getting better.

I could see the improvement. Feel it. In the finer brushstrokes, the shading that no longer looked like I’d smeared shadows around in a blind rage. The way depth and proportion made more sense now, as if some part of me—some distant, patient part—was finally catching up to what my hands wanted to do.

Small things, sure. But the small things were always the hardest.

And only paintings, unfortunately.

Sketches? Drawings? Anything not involving a brush and pigment? Not quite Skill-assisted by «Painting Mastery».

Which was frankly rude.

What was a painting if not a glorified, coloured-in drawing? Surely the System, in all its omnipotent wisdom, could connect those dots?

Apparently not.

I sighed, long and slow. Then, I flipped open a fresh page in my Everlasting Artbook.

Time to practice.

Reaching for another drawer—this one conveniently enchanted with an Undetectable Extension Charm—I pulled it open, the familiar contents greeting me as old conspirators. Inside, my carefully curated arsenal of artistic ambition lay neatly arranged, an act of order betrayed entirely by the frustrated chaos of its wielder.

Rows of oil paints, their metal tubes softened and crinkled with use. Brushes, some pristine, others worn into familiarity by countless strokes, their bristles shaped more by habit than by colour. A small jar of ink, dark, rich, and far less forgiving than the rest. Another filled with a potion for brush-cleaning, ensuring that pigment stayed where it belonged—on canvas, not clinging stubbornly to the tools of its creation. And finally, a selection of fine-pointed quills—the kind that promised precision but, on occasion, had delivered nothing but heartbreak.

I pulled out what I needed—paints, brushes, whatever instruments were required for today’s exercise in persistence—and laid them out with all the care of a man preparing for surgery. Or execution. The two were often indistinguishable, depending on the outcome.

Then, with the solemnity of a scholar at his desk or a general before battle, I began.

Potions had rules. Art had only me.

And, naturally, I almost immediately lost focus.

Only minutes after my brush made contact with the page, the hypnotic trance of painting began its slow, insidious takeover—that familiar rhythm, the steady repetition of motion that lulled the body into obedience and set the mind loose to roam unsupervised.

Which, of course, was a mistake.

My mind, when left to its own devices, was a chronic overthinker with too much access to information and no sense of self-preservation.

So, all too easily, it circled back.

Back to the cauldron. Back to potions. Back to the thing that had been bothering me all day—lurking at the edges of my awareness like a suspicious figure loitering outside a shop that definitely did not sell anything legal.

By now, the pride of my earlier success had begun to wane. What remained was an itch. A vague, nagging agitation that no amount of well-mixed pigment could drown out. Because, really, what was so impressive about brewing a Tier One potion when my number one goal—a permanent cure for Remus—was still laughably out of reach?

It was practically a mockery. A sadistic little joke.

Congratulations, child! You have successfully brewed a glorified first-aid kit. Now, if you could just skip ahead seven more Tiers, we might have something useful.

The reality of it soured in my stomach.

Because, no matter how I approached the problem… no matter how I reworked the numbers, the truth was an undeniable, bitter pill:

I’d never reach it in time.

Not unless something extraordinary was involved. And even then, the journey would still involve more grinding than a cursed millstone at full speed.

After all my research, if I stuck strictly to potioneering, the earliest possible cure for lycanthropy sat all the way at Tier Eight levels of Skill requirements.

If I limited myself exclusively to Wizarding World methodologies, it got even worse—Tier Ten.

And if I branched out? If I dragged Alchemy into the equation and threw every available discipline into the mix?

Tier Seven.

Oh, fantastic. Brilliant. Only one problem…

It. Was. Still. So. Bloody. Far.

I set my brush down with deliberate care, exhaling slowly, as if that would somehow exorcise my frustration along with the breath. It didn’t.

Much like «Magic Mastery» and «Painting Mastery», «Potioncraft» was classified as “Special” in terms of Experience gain—a category ludicrously slower than “Very Slow.”

Which meant grinding it would be…

Well.

Not impossible.

Just the sort of undertaking that required the dedication of a monk, the stubbornness of a goat, and the complete indifference to social interaction of a particularly determined cryptid.

Even then, I might not make it in time.

Because frankly? Even if I threw myself into it with the ruthless efficiency of a man pursued by tax collectors, there was still no guarantee I’d reach my goal before it was too late.

That would be a speedrun on a whole different level.

And that’s after factoring in how much more… forgiving «Potioncraft» was in potential Experience per hour compared to «Magic Mastery».

I sighed. Again. One that carried the deep, existential exhaustion of a man who had already solved a problem in theory but was now being forced to deal with reality. The brush moved almost without me—a motion more autopilot than artistry, my hands resigned to the task while my brain wandered off to scream into the void.

There had, of course, once been a loophole. A perfectly reasonable, sensible, elegant shortcut.

And it had long since been Patched out.

Because obviously.

Once upon a time—before the System Administrator took a wild, gleeful swing with the Nerf Hammer—I could have just told someone. Explained the technical information. Laid out the Recipes. Handed off everything I’d found in the Player Forum to someone not shackled by the System’s rigid mechanics.

Someone—preferably a well-connected, well-funded Potions Master who didn’t mind being compelled (or blackmailed) into groundbreaking medical research.

But no. That was far too convenient. Too abusable.

Which… fair.

I didn’t entirely disagree with the restriction.

I was just bitter that I’d missed out.

Because, now, if I wanted to pass on knowledge, I needed two things.

One: The Skill to actually teach. Apparently, simply knowing something wasn’t enough. I had to have the official badge, lest I commit the unspeakable crime of informal education.

And two: I had to personally have the professional, structured or technical knowledge unlocked somehow. Not just find it. Not just read it. Not just rip it directly from the Player Forum and hand it off like a considerate little oracle delivering prophecy from on high.

No.

I had to earn it first.

Otherwise?

Well.

That was when things got strange.

If I attempted to teach what I had not truly learned, if I dared to pass along wisdom I had not yet touched with my own hands, the result was neither ignorance nor confusion. It was not a forgetting or a failure of memory.

It was an unmaking.

Words stripped of meaning before they ever reached another’s ears. Thoughts falling apart mid-air, dissolving into sound without shape, knowledge without form.

A voice speaking, but nothing spoken.

Not error. Not misinterpretation. Not even refusal.

Simply absence.

And if I pressed too hard, if I tried to force the message through?

The mind of the listener would buckle beneath it. Their thoughts—clear before—would warp, crack, and shatter, leaving behind only dissonance.

If fate was merciful, they would forget.

If it was not?

Madness.

Inevitably, Players did what Players do—and immediately tried to weaponise it.

(Of course they did.)

Unfortunately, even after untold amounts of testing, convoluted spreadsheets, and an entire subforum titled “The Viability of the Madness Exploit,” no one ever figured out how to control it.

There were no rules, no patterns, no reliable methods—just pure, unhinged chaos.

Would the target receive nothing at all? A simple, baffled pause, like a man expecting words but receiving static?

Would they clutch their head, groaning in pain as a migraine took hold?

Or—and this was the real wildcard—would they simply start babbling in tongues and start bleeding from the eyes?

No one knew.

Which was exactly why, instead of becoming a highly tactical, game-breaking exploit, the phenomenon never moved past “lucky cheese strat” territory.

It wasn’t something you could rely on. It wasn’t consistently repeatable.

It was the equivalent of hoping for a critical hit in a fight you really shouldn’t have picked in the first place.

Technically possible. Wildly impractical.

So now?

It was nothing more than an unreliable gimmick, a cursed meme, and an incredibly stupid party trick.

Oddly enough, however, the System had absolutely no objections to the meta-knowledge I’d been using for my “Visions” to feed my Seer persona. Apparently, it only cared if I tried to teach someone how to make something. Or… something like that?

Honestly? I had no idea what the distinction was supposed to be.

The logic felt arbitrary at best, but hey—I wasn’t about to complain.

Maybe it only cared about Outside Context Knowledge but not Inside Context Knowledge?

Maybe it was just another example of cosmic micromanagement?

Maybe the System itself didn’t even know?

Either way, it was worth looking into.

An accidental flick of my wrist sent a rogue streak of crimson where no crimson should be. I swore, barely stopping myself from making it worse—because, of course, the second you tried to fix a mistake with wet paint, you only ever made it bigger.

I assessed the damage. Too prominent to ignore, too ingrained to simply wipe away. My options were limited: I could blend it out, dilute it into the background, pretend it was intentional—an artistic flourish rather than an error. Or I could lean into it, exaggerate the colour, reshape the composition so that what had started as a mistake became the focal point of the whole piece. A problem recontextualised into a feature.

A slow exhale left me as my fingers flexed around the brush.

A problem recontextualised into a feature.

Right.

Much like this damn painting, there was no undoing what had already been done to Remus. No way to simply erase the bite, the change, the thing that had fundamentally altered him. A streak of crimson where none should be.

But that didn’t mean there weren’t solutions.

There were always solutions.

The first and most obvious was Remove Curse—a clean, elegant fix. A Tier Three Abjuration Spell that, at a simple touch, ended all curses affecting one creature or object. It was neat, efficient, and—unlike potions—didn’t require tedious hours of grinding and brewing. A single spell cast, and poof—problem solved.

And it would work. That was the important part. Not a theory. Not hopeful speculation. Just fact.

Because while Remove Curse couldn’t reverse a natural-born lycanthrope, Remus wasn’t one. He wasn’t some ancient, eldritch werewolf blessed (or cursed) by moonlit ancestry. He was infected, bitten—cursed in the most literal, technical, System-recognised sense.

Which meant the spell would affect him.

The only hiccup?

…It required Rank 30 in «Magic Mastery».

And that—given my current progress—was going to be a problem.

Not impossible. Not entirely out of reach. But with less than three years left before the damage became irreparable, my current pace wasn’t cutting it.

The truth of the matter?

«Magic Mastery» progressed like a Muggle pension fund—slow, reluctant, and deeply unimpressed with my attempts to accelerate it.

I could push harder, of course. Train, refine, chase knowledge with a scholar’s hunger. I could kneel before the altar of progress, offering time, patience, effort like tithes to an indifferent god. But the numbers did not shift for longing alone.

Which left me with the most obvious answer. The path of least resistance. The simple, effortless, unpretentious solution that was sitting right in front of me, waiting to be used.

The one thing that made the entire process feel almost… farcically easy.

Just buying the damn cure from the Player Marketplace.

Power could be earned.

Or it could be taken.

And for the right price, it could be mine.

Because while I lacked the requirements to brew the potion myself, someone, somewhere, didn’t. Players were vast, varied, and—more importantly—mercenary. The kind of people who would part with a cure for a curse the same way others parted with old books or second-hand furniture.

My only problem?

I, tragically—and to no one’s surprise—was utterly impoverished in the System’s chosen currency.

Zero. Nil. Zilch. Not a single Gold Piece (GP) to my name.

But that was a simple problem. Easily fixed.

How?

Dungeon Raids.

Hunt. Kill. Loot.

Sell whatever the System deemed valuable enough to exist beyond the moment of death. How hard could it be?

The next stroke of my brush came faster, firmer—a confident, sweeping line of crimson.

For me? Very hard.

See, I wasn’t what you’d call combat-oriented. In my past life, I had been an absolute avoider of conflict—a man who could and would tactically retreat from any and all signs of aggression. Some would say a natural-born pacifist. Others would say an unrepentant wimp.

Both would be correct.

I had once been unlucky enough to partake in culling chickens.

I had not lasted long.

The squawking, the flapping, the blood—the horrible, wet finality of it. The way the grass went slick and red beneath my boots. The panicked, desperate sounds of the creatures trying to escape.

The stench.

The viscera.

My brush faltered.

Truthfully? The fact that I had played a direct role in Fenrir Greyback’s death still haunted me.

Yes, he had been a violent, unrepentant psychopath, but…

I hadn’t meant to kill him.

I hadn’t wanted that at all.

The only reason I could so easily push through the guilt was because, deep down, I could excuse myself. I hadn’t swung the axe. I hadn’t done the deed. I was removed from it. I had been a catalyst, but not the executioner.

I wasn’t even there to witness it.

And that made it easier to push aside.

But this? This would be different.

Because now, if I wanted that cure—if I wanted any of this to work—I would have to be the one doing the killing.

Not theoretically. Not indirectly.

Not at arm’s length, where morality blurred with technicality.

I would have to watch the light fade from the eyes of something living, breathing, reacting.

Watch blood and viscera spatter against the walls, the floors, my clothes, my skin—

I shuddered.

The brush nearly slipped from my grip.

Some claimed the creatures in the Dungeons weren’t real. They were constructs, they said—illusions made manifest, born only to die, flickering into existence as a candle flickers out. But did saying so make it true? Or did it only make the killing easier? They were made by the System, yes, but they thought. They feared. They fought not like illusions but like anything that wished to live. And if something could die, then had it not lived? Had it not, in some way, been real?

What did that make me, then, if I was the one to snuff its life?

There was a great difference between knowing something would suffer and watching it suffer.

One was a concept. The other was an experience.

A thing you could imagine was never the same as a thing you could not unsee. A word spoken was never the same as a wound inflicted. A creature dying far away was never the same as one dying beneath your hands.

Maybe I could turn off the part of me that flinched at their cries. Maybe I could learn to ignore the scent of blood, to let it fade into the background like an unpleasant but forgettable detail.

Maybe I could distance myself—detached, indifferent—the way people always did when something uncomfortable lurked too near.

But should I?

Wouldn’t that be worse?

To suffer a wound is painful, but to learn to wound without feeling? That is a different kind of loss.

The first step toward becoming something I never wanted to be.

And yet, at the same time, I knew—there was no moral purity in cowardice. No high ground in closing my eyes and pretending the weight of my choices didn’t exist. But even knowing that, could I allow myself to strike without thought? To kill without question? To follow a path simply because it had been laid before me?

Was that not the most dangerous thing of all?

I took a slow, deep breath and shook myself, forcing the thoughts from my mind.

For now.

The room was quiet. Still. Just me, my thoughts, and the distant ticking of the clock on the far wall.

Then, of course—

BANG. BANG. BANG.

I jumped, my brush jerking—an ugly, irredeemable streak slashing across my painting-in-progress.

BANG.

“Antares! Stop being boring and come play!”

The door rattled dangerously under the force of Sirius’ assault, each knock so profoundly unnecessary that I suspected he was actively trying to obliterate it through sheer force of will.

“Regulus and I found something fun!” he announced, voice booming with the wild confidence of someone about to make spectacularly bad decisions.

A pause. Then Regulus, grudgingly and with great resignation, clarified, “He means we stole Uncle Cygnus’ wand.”

I froze.

My lips parted. A single, preemptive sigh escaped me.

“Sirius,” I said, voice calm and measured—the kind of calm that only existed to contain deep, inevitable disappointment—”tell me you did not.”

Silence.

Then—

“…I did not?”

From the sheer magnitude of Regulus’ groan, I could only assume he had already accepted his fate as collateral damage in whatever disaster was about to unfold.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, inhaled deeply, and made a decision.

One problem at a time.

I set my brush aside, slid off my chair, and headed for the door—already deeply, deeply tired of whatever was about to happen next.