chapter one
There was a spike in heat, unbearable, unwelcoming heat which was threatening to burn me to ash, to eradicate every atom of my being with merciless anger. The fire tore through my gut, ripping apart my innards. With unquestionable power, it took me apart, piece by bloody piece, my flesh regrowing just to be shredded away again and again and again, as though paper made soggy, weak and without resistance. Pain crawled up my veins, ripping flesh, blood and bone alike, till, at the very end, when fire met my skull and was near promising to end my suffering, when ultimately, it stopped. Burning agony was gone, washed away with the soothing crispness of sweet, calming nothingness. My being was laid to rest in eternal darkness, without a body to call my own, without any senses to fall back to.
The fire had cleansed me of my skin to feel, my mouth to taste, my eyes to see, my ears to hear and my nose to smell.
I was alone, in endless darkness, left lone to my thoughts and wondering what was happening.
Was I dead?
If so, where was I now? The good place? It did not feel good, just empty. The bad place? The fire would suggest so but then why did it stop?
Mayhaps this was something in between, limbo so to speak. Endless nothingness, neither good nor bad.
Some part of me dreaded that, an eternity of nothingness, dull and grey. I would rather have back the fire than stand an eternity of this. With the heat, I’d at least have something to keep my mind occupied, to keep insanity at bay, however painful the wall between me and it might’ve been. It hadn’t been all too long in that abyss of naught, but even so, I could grasp my consciousness thinner than it was before.
In panic of losing myself, I forced my thoughts away from the nothingness and towards what vestige of feeling I had left, my memories, a tinted glass from which to view existence. My family, my late mother and father, taken from this world far too soon. Their smiles, bright as the sun and their laughter lighter than any feather.
Dad died when I was ten, my mother falling soon after.
My siblings didn’t take it well, my sister, several years older than me, lost herself in drugs and memories, taking our brother, sweet Georgie, with her, so impressionable, so easy to tempt with an escape.
I- I fared better. It wasn’t as though I felt nothing but my emotions were always less pronounced than those of others, like a cloudy mirror, through which I could gaze into my sadness, my happiness, my anger. I felt crushed beneath the realization that my parents wouldn’t return ever again but I got past it eventually, which was why I was the only one of my siblings not to crash into abyss known as addiction, though seeing as where I was now, mayhaps that abyss would’ve been nicer than the one I found myself in now.
Pondering this very question, I felt something, after an eternity of nothing but my thoughts, there was a feeling, warmth.
Not the ruthless heat which plagued my existence when I first came to but a comforting warmth, worming its way through my brain, ever sneaky, slowly, but ever so surely planting memories into my head, memories of a life I hadn’t lived.
A life in which Hogwarts was real and I was a student in it. They were the memories of someone called Marcus Belby, a soon-to-be third year at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, sorted the year before Harry himself.
With a sudden jump, I awoke, in the body of thirteen year old Marcus. I felt nauseous, my senses having suddenly re-appeared out of nowhere. Going from nothing to everything was a pain, literally, as in it hurt A LOT.
Looking down, I could see marcus’- my fingers. I was drenched in sweat.
“What- what’s happening?”, I managed to croak out, my throat was dry, why did talking hurt this much?
Immediately, I saw someone charging at me. It was a man, marcus’ father, he looked so worried, sprinting at me, “son! Are you okay? Do you remember where you are? Do you recall what happened?”
He shook me, I felt like throwing up. Everything was so hazy. My voice refused to work for a good few seconds, too dry was my throat, before I could wheeze out, between the shaking,” water-”
I was handed a glass of water, which I chugged down near instantaneous. After a good few seconds of regaining my composure, I got to answering, his- my father’s question, “I- think I’m fine? I-”, looking around and into these new memories, I knew where I was, “am in my room and- and… we were at flourish and blotts when-”
“A stack of books fell on you”, completed a healer which I just now noticed standing next to my bed.
“You scared us, Mark”, my new father said, looking forlorn, lost in memories far beyond his own sight.
The next few days I had to spent under the watchful eyes of the healers my father gathered, not given an ounce of privacy, even after my near instantaneous recovery. In this time, I managed to gather myself and my deep knowledge of Harry Potter, which left me with a few discoveries. First of all, Marcus, whom I now was, was indeed a canon character, though not a very well known one. He only appeared once or twice, if I remembered it right. His name was mostly in conjunction with his uncle.
My uncle, as little as Marcus -and I by extension- met him, was a rather famous man, having invented the Wolfsbane potion a mere day after my own birth. However, my father wasn’t on very good terms with him. I didn’t know why but they never saw eye-to-eye with one another. From my memories -both of marcus’ life and my knowledge of the books- Marcus wasn’t too outstanding in any one field.
In the end of term exams, he’d achieved mostly A’s and EE’s, landing him within the norm school wide and slightly below average in his house, ravenclaw. In his second and most recent year, he’d even managed to get an Outstanding in Transfiguration, for which he’d been praised to no end by his father, whom himself had a talent for the subject.
My next, and more pressing revelation was that the soon to start school year of 1992, was the one in which the basilisk was to be released upon the school, a very frightening prospect. One wrong turn, and I could die.
In the story, no one had died during the basilisk’s reign of terror but with me here, the butterfly effect could see to it that that was changed, meaning that death could quite literally be stalking behind every corner.
With the threat of instantaneous death ever present, I got to the one thing that I could think of in order to be prepared, reading.
Children had a far quicker learning speed than adults and with my adult concentration, that quick learning of my young body was amplified tenfold. Over the next month, I ate up all the knowledge I could get my hands on, starting with my school textbooks and finishing with my dad’s personal library, which I’d only been able to read three books of before the time came in which I was forced to go to Hogwarts, where death came ever closer.
On the day of departure, my father brought me to kings cross, waving me off as the steam train slowly tuckered away towards hogwarts.