Chapter 6
Alex opened the portal inside his father’s bag with a quick gesture at 11, not trusting the trio or others to not be spying on his room again, before going back to the piece he was working on. A few moments later, it was shaped to Alex’s satisfaction, and he plunged it into a bucket of water to cool down. He turned to a bemused Mr. Roberts, who was standing in the converted third floor bedroom he’d given to Alex, from the little he could see behind Mr. Roberts.
“That good, huh?” his legal guardian asked with a lilt of amusement and much concern. Alex didn’t often resort to smithing to work through his emotions, preferring to just enjoy the motions and let his dragon side be soothed by the amount of heat and precious metals.
“You have no idea. There are these three fifteen year-olds who will apparently be in my grade and have been interrogating me whenever they get the chance, going so far as to spy on me last night under this invisibility cloak they have. One of them is apparently uber-famous too, and has been targeted pretty much since his birth for something his mother did, as far as I can tell.”
“Why do I feel like that’s not all?”
“Because it isn’t.” Alex sighed. “Professor Dumbledore, the guy with the awkwardly long beard and questionable fashion sense, is apparently the most trusted adult in this society and is the headmaster of Hogwarts. Also, he and Professor Snape, who is almost universally hated and distrusted, were apparently supposed to explain a lot of things to me, not just kidnap me. Did you know that these people communicate by writing and sending letters by owl? They don’t even have pens or pencils either. They use quills instead!”
Mr. Roberts raised his eyebrows. “Owls cannot possibly be the most effective low-profile mail system an entire society of wizards could come up with. Owls are nocturnal, so seeing one swooping around in the daytime would arouse suspicion, nevermind something as obvious and bulky as a letter attached to it.”
“I know right? It gets better though.”
“I hesitate to ask.”
“They run their economy with these metal coins that are - get this - in a bank run by goblins.”
Mr. Roberts groaned.
“The goblins recognized me and kidnapped me as soon as I walked into the bank. Not only did that send the group I was with into a tizzy because I’d disappeared without a sound, but the goblins also had me agree to come work with them in order to be released. I put conditions on it, of course, but still. If I’d been anyone else, I couldn’t have escaped the cuffs binding me and would have been left to rot in the caves below the bank.”
“Are you sure you want to stay there?”
“Oh, just you wait. It gets even better. Wizards use those little sticks to access their magic, and I couldn’t buy one because of my staff. I’m either going to grab a stick off of the ground or figure out how to shrink my staff in order to dispel the suspicion not having one would raise. Beyond that, there’s systemized slavery and repression of all non-human or wizard beings. They’ve actually enslaved High Brownies, kind of the ruling class of the people you ran into on that one adventure of yours, with a twisted bond that forces them to hurt themselves if they disobey any order, no matter how unreasonable, and call them House Elves. No one’s bothered by this other than a single member of the trio of teenagers I mentioned earlier, and not a single one of the kids or adults here could tell me how this system started.”
“Please tell me that’s it,” Mr. Roberts pled.
“The unfortunate cherry on top -” Alex ignored Mr. Roberts burying his face in his hands and groaning again “- is that someone’s been going around tearing pieces off of their own soul and forcing them into various artifacts, unfortunately including the famous teenager I mentioned before. Whatever his mother did protected him from dying but splintered the unstable soul just enough for a piece to take up residence in him.”
Mr. Roberts sat down heavily in a rolling desk chair, too bothered to be privately amused or startled by it shifting under him. “I’ll ask again. Are you sure you want to stay there? You could just go back to the known lands.”
“I could, but I’ve promised to help the High Brownie I freed upon arriving at this place with whatever is necessary, including cleansing the tainted soul pieces from their containers. So far, I’ve destroyed two, but we have no clue where any of the others are beyond the one in Harry that I need to remove last in order to not kill him before I get to the main soul piece.”
Mr. Roberts just looked at him.
Alex hastily switched the topic of the conversation. “So the paper glowed blue?”
“I’m going to trust you to know what you’re doing and not get yourself killed,” Mr. Roberts said, still giving him That Look. He sighed and shifted, focusing on the knowledge that even though the man in front of him looked sixteen, he was actually a fully mature adult, and a powerful one used to danger to boot who was experienced in both magical and non-magical fighting with a brain for figuring out the least harmful and most practical way out of pretty much any situation. “Yes, the paper glowed blue this morning. That means that the monitoring magic is still there and is possibly spying on me, right?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, I can’t take it down without drawing suspicion. Did anything out of the ordinary happen after you sent and received the geeb?”
“I didn’t sense anything,” Mr. Roberts replied. He might not have magic, but adventurers tended to be more aware of their surroundings, especially when suspicious that something was already happening.
“Then using geebs to send letters is probably safe. These people don’t seem to know anything about the known lands and don’t have anything at all to do with them, from what I’ve seen, so they might not know to scan for the geebs’ magic.”
Mr. Roberts nodded and checked his watch. “I have to get back downstairs, but send me a letter if anything else happens and you need my presence or something from home.”
“I will,” Alex promised. “Tell me if anything odd happens that seems like it might be related to this strange dysfunctional society or the known lands.”
“I will. Talk to you later.”
“Bye,” Alex said. He closed the portal and exited his bag. He flopped down onto his bed and didn’t move for a full minute. Eventually though, Alex sat up and grabbed his book, readying his notepad on the side. He decided to study for a few more hours before possibly sleeping for a few more hours. Alex started reading, simultaneously performing the body-resting techniques he’d picked up while journeying to Neplee. When he felt like he had enough questions and clarifying points to ask Ginny about, Alex happily closed his book and settled in to sleep. Learning about the way this system of magic worked was fascinating, even if the rest of his experience had been rather abysmal so far.
The next few weeks were thankfully less odd than his first two days, barring the drama over who’d been chosen as prefect. Alex continued to dodge questions if he felt the need to and ask his own questions about the word he’d found himself in. He and Ginny had started working through the fourth year material despite the fact that she hadn’t learned it yet, though Alex was certain that if he didn’t already have a solid grasp on magical theory and practice, he would have had no chance to learn the necessary material or survive in this society. Again, Alex didn’t want to be interrogated by Hermione while she ‘helped’ him, and Ginny could get ahead on her material this way. They couldn’t practice the magic, but they could at least go over the theory Alex didn’t understand once quickly before school started. Alex had also been placed in the same extracurriculars as Harry and Ron, no matter that he actually wanted to learn Runes and Arithmancy. Apparently, that was where they drew the line at having him catch up on material. Of course Alex was still going to self-study the material and seek help from the teachers if necessary, but the point remained that he would have liked to select his own classes instead of having them picked for him.
Alex was most excited for his Potions class. Of all of the core classes offered, potions seemed to be the only one he was enrolled in that he couldn’t already replicate with ease through his own innate magic. The potions he’d read about had more breadth and potential applications than the few he already knew, though he hadn’t exactly pursued potion making in his journeys. The only downside to the class was that Professor Snape taught it. Hopefully the man would put aside his apparent dislike for all people enough to at least answer questions, but Alex wasn’t counting on it. He was also intrigued to see what passed for Care of Magical Creatures to these people, and the idea and implementation of Runes and Arithmancy, again, was a fascinating subject that didn’t have much of a parallel in the known lands, to Alex’s knowledge. He’d keep studying the books in his library, but neither they nor Whalen had been able to tell him much about such a system of magic.
From what he understood so far, magic in the known lands was far freer and less structured, more willing to respond when called and follow the intentions of the caster. Having yet to actually experience more of this magic than the few spells used on or around him, Alex wasn’t completely certain of this working theory. He needed to do more research. He’d made plans to study with Ginny once the school year started too, so that she could help him understand things and they could continue hanging out. Fred and George would probably drop by when they weren’t causing mayhem elsewhere, though he understood the possibility of them not actively acting as sources of chaos on the daily was unlikely, to say the least. Those three were the only ones he’d given permission to use his nickname, and all three of them were just mischievous and bitter enough over the trio’s treatment of Ginny to keep it from their knowledge. The last thing Alex needed was the three of them pretending to be his friends even more than they already did in addition to finally taking time to sort through his complicated feelings about the various things he’d done on his quests and the various people he’d done them with, not to mention his feelings for the people he’d traveled with, especially Arconn who’d mentored and befriended him back when Alex was actually fifteen and sixteen.
The morning of traveling to Hogwarts arrived with chaos. Ginny swung by Alex’s room to make sure he was awake and to remind him to finish packing his bag, which the twins and Ginny had privately figured out was a hand-me-down bag from his mysterious father that had powerful undetectable extension charms on it, though they didn’t ask him about it out of desire not to seem like the terrible trio. She was not expecting him to answer the door shirtless and with sleep-mussed hair, eyes blinking blearily open after so many weeks of little sleep despite the techniques he was using to lessen the impact. Ginny snapped her eyes up from his well-defined chest, stammered out her message through a burningly bright blush, and fled before Alex could do much more than blink at her. It was one thing to think someone might be well-muscled, and entirely another to see proof of it fresh out of bed! Ginny didn’t know how she’d ever thought Harry was the most attractive person she’d ever seen.
A bemused Alex closed the door as Ginny ran down the hall; he’d honestly forgotten he wasn’t wearing a shirt when he opened the door. When he wasn’t on an life-threatening adventure, Alex preferred to sleep shirtless, and these people had yet to enter his room while he was sleeping beyond the trio the night he arrived. Honestly, he was lucky he’d been wearing pants when he answered the knock on his door because his sleep-addled brain had not been working that fast. Alex double-checked that everything was where he’d placed it the previous night, books in a newly dedicated bookshelf and clothes hanging next to them with the rest of his school supplies next to the rack in effort to keep the mess in one area of his library, threw on a T-shirt, and headed downstairs. He’d put on the Gringotts ring after examining it a few days ago and removing the magic-monitoring and location-tracking spells placed on it that were set to activate and attach to the person when worn on a finger. He’d left the transportation magic on the ring to decrease the goblins’ suspicion of how he arrived in the bank, but everything else had been removed. He’d also added a spell to make the ring intangible unless he willed otherwise - he did not want to deal with the changes wielding a weapon - should he ever need to in this realm - with a ring on would cause. He planned to take it off whenever he entered the rest of the known lands.
They were late leaving the house. Alex shouldn’t have been surprised, honestly. Fred and George had explained how to get on the Hogwarts Express, and only copious reassurances from Ginny had convinced Alex that they weren’t very convincingly having him on about needing to run through a brick wall to get onto the platform. It was a completely normal- looking station that they arrived at, and Alex felt his doubts suddenly resurface. Molly’s hustling left no room for questions though, which Alex could just add onto the veritable mountain of times adults had ignored what he was feeling, saying, and/or doing since arriving in the place, so Alex ran through the wall when it was his turn. It had at least helped to see the evidence of illusory and attention diverting charms on it for himself instead of just trusting that he wouldn’t crash straight into a wall.
Alex emerged onto Platform Nine and Three-Quarters still running a bit. It was even more chaotic than he’d expected, and Alex was suddenly very glad that he didn’t have to deal with the big carts everyone else seemed to be struggling with or anything more than a nearly weightless bag. He followed the steam of redheads to the train and boarded behind them. Harry, Ron, and Hermione - who Alex was still not overly impressed with despite their determination to survive - split off from the group without a backward glance. This didn’t raise his opinion of them at all, though it was interesting to watch the other students give way in front of Harry and his friends with no prompting. Surely someone else must realize that wasn’t normal?
“We’re off to find our friend Lee-” Fred started.
“-and his tarantula,” George finished.
“Can’t forget about the tarantula!” Fred exclaimed.
“Be good you two!” George admonished as he and his twin disappeared down the train.
Ginny sent a glare after them and turned to Alex. “Wanna go find a compartment?”
“Sure! I don’t think I want to know what those two have planned with the tarantula,” Alex responded.
Ginny mock shuddered, and the two of them walked the opposite direction as they laughed. Eventually, the two found a compartment that only had one person in it. The blond girl was reading a magazine upside down with oddly colored glasses perched on her nose. Alex didn’t even blink at the sight, having seen much weirder things than a magazine possibly written partially in invisible ink. He heaved Ginny’s trunk onto the shelf for it, ignoring her protests that she could do it, and sat down next to her. The blond girl was smiling curiously now and staring directly at Alex. He got the sudden feeling that she knew him somehow, despite having never met him before. Her vivid, colorful, yet somehow blurred aura, unlike any he’d seen before, didn’t help him determine anything about her.
“Alexander Taylor,” she sung dreamily a moment later. “You have traveled far.”
“Madame Seer,” Alex responded, nodding in respect. To know his name and perhaps some of how long he’d traveled meant that she had to be a seer of some kind, though he suspected that there was more to her than simply a powerful gift of Sight.
“My mother and her mother before her were blessed by those of the unknown lands. They Saw me well enough to give me something extra,” Luna responded dreamily, answering the unasked questions without a second thought.
“Well met,” Alex said as he stood and bowed. Little was known about the unknown lands in the known lands, though rumors and stories, often involving beings called ‘fae’ could be sniffed out. “Should you ever require assistance, you may call on me.”
“We will be great friends,” Luna declared dreamily before turning her attention back to her upside down magazine.
Ginny knew that she’d probably never get answers to the questions she wanted to ask of Luna or the boy sitting next to her. She definitely wouldn’t get any if she asked now, having only known Alex for a few weeks. Ginny could be patient, so she answered a different question that he might have. “This is Luna Lovegood, one of my best friends and neighbors while we were growing up. She’ll be a fourth year too, and she’s in Ravenclaw. She could probably study with us, if she wanted to.”
“I’ll find you, don’t worry,” Luna said serenely before turning back to her magazine.
The conversation turned to the pranks Fred and George were thinking about then, with Luna occasionally piping in with helpful tips such as what day to do a specific thing because the nargles would be particularly dense around this teacher or that statue. Alex had no clue what a nargle was, but he trusted Luna enough to accept what she said and make a mental note to tell the twins all of her little comments. Ginny had thrown him a bit of an odd look at the lack of scorn he had for the odd creatures which was utterly unlike most of the other students at their school, but she, unlike a certain trio, seemed set on not pushing him for answers, instead trusting him to tell her what he wanted to, if anything, on his own time. It only made him appreciate her friendship more.
Eventually, the train ride came to a close. Alex split off from the girls to change into his own robes before knocking tentatively on the door to alert them to his presence in case they were still changing. When he got the go-ahead, Alex walked back into the compartment and sat back down, shifting uneasily in his robes. The things were not practical in the slightest, and the thought that he would have to worry about his robes in any sort of fight made him slightly anxious. Ginny blushed when she saw him, so Alex figured he probably had at least put them on right if she and Luna hadn’t corrected him. He also thought she probably had a crush of some sort on him. Alex honestly didn’t really know how to feel about that, considering that there was so much of him she didn’t and couldn’t know about even though he thought she was pretty and a great friend. Besides, he still had to fully sort out his feelings for Arconn and the damage of the mess with Lupo had caused to his perception of himself.
The three of them chattered easily on their way up some winding forest path, Alex understanding their destination when a small clearing with carriages came into view. He pulled Luna and Ginny’s trunks out of his bag and placed them on the top of the carriages after the girls had chosen where they wanted to sit. He then walked around to the front of the carriages to greet the horse-like creatures pulling them. Black leather seemed wrapped around them, and Alex ran a careful hand along one of the creatures’ necks after making sure the creature itself was okay with the contact. Indeed, it leaned into the touch, and Alex wondered if no one else bothered to pay them any attention based on the fact that most people were looking at him like he’d grown an extra head. He took his time stroking the beautiful creatures before joining the girls in the carriage.
“What are the creatures pulling the carriages?” Alex asked when he got in.
“What creatures?” Ginny asked curiously.
“The gorgeous winged horses that seem to have black leather in place of hair,” Alex answered easily. Ginny looked confused, and Alex had a sudden moment of doubt. “Can you not… see them?”
Ginny shook her head, but Luna’s eyes focused on him for a moment.
“I can see them too,” the blond said, sounding oddly wistful.
Alex gathered that that was not exactly normal and perhaps had come about unfortunately for her based on both of the girls’ reactions. He struck up conversation with Ginny again, asking if and how Quidditch was played at Hogwarts. She started talking enthusiastically, going into a short explanation of the try-outs each House had before explaining more about the rivalries and House Cup. Ginny seemed completely thrown when he asked why there weren’t reserve players or why people didn’t play on their own. Alex listened to her brainstorming how to start pick-up games of Quidditch for a while, glad that he’d avoided the topic of the giant-man with a lantern that was apparently taking care of the youngest students at the school.
Alex almost missed his first glimpse of Hogwarts, too busy laughing with Ginny at one of her funnier suggestions about how to make people spontaneously play the complex game and possibly break out into song. Luna alerted him though, and Alex’s words fell right out of his mouth at the sight of the literal castle in front of him. It appeared to be glowing softly in the evening light, and Alex stared at the stones for a long moment before he realized that the castle actually was glowing slightly. Its motherly aura got stronger the closer he got to it, and Alex realized with a start that the building was sentient. He got out of the carriages in a daze, just staring at the beautifully intricate magic and gentle architecture around him. Alex came to himself long enough to lift the girls’ trunks off of the carriage and follow Ginny’s directions to go stand by a stern woman before parting with the girls and basking in the magic again. The castle herself seemed glad for his presence, and Alex could feel her asking him to share his magic with her. He did so gladly.
The distraction of the sentient castle almost made him miss the start of the stern woman’s speech. He’d gathered by the confused looks of everyone but the woman - Professor McGonagall - that he was an odd and unexpected spectacle of a new student, but Alex didn’t let that bother him. He listened to her speech attentively, narrowed his eyes curiously at the ghosts that floated through the wall into the little room and then caught sight of him and rushed away, probably due to his duty as guardian of the wall, and followed the line of small children into the large banquet hall close to the small room they had waited in. Alex stood against the wall, ignoring the stares sent his way, and watched with great interest as a ragged but magically powerful hat opened up a rip on its brim and began to sing, distracting him from wondering if Hogwarts ever got transfer students based solely on the others’ reactions. His eyes narrowed again at the clear theme of House unity in the song. Apparently his friends had not been exaggerating the poor social situation and division of a large portion of the students. Alex would have to observe to see if things were dire enough that people were only friends within their own House, though the very idea seemed ridiculous. He and Ginny got along well enough with Luna, and the girls were part of different Houses, though they had been friends before getting to Hogwarts.
The play of magic around the hat as it was set on each child’s head was fascinating to witness. He could see the protections placed on the hat to prevent it from being able to tell anyone about what it found in any given child’s head, and that reassured him more than almost anything else had since he’d entered this strange society. He did not need Dumbledore knowing any or all of his secrets. Alex made sure to clap for every single student, no matter where they were placed by the hat. He’d decided that it was not right for only a quarter of the students to applaud any given student’s placement, especially the chilly welcome any new Slytherin received. Alex himself got a number of odd looks from the older students, but he clapped anyway. Snobby sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds were not going to deter him from wanting every child to feel happy and welcomed by their new peers.