21st February 1986 – Stranglehold Manor.
I awoke with a panicked start, cold sweat thick on my brow and a scream dying in my throat as I reclaimed control over my mind. Several slow and deep breaths later, I managed to slow my heart to the point it was no longer thumping in my chest.
“I am Victor Thorneheart. The year is 1986. I am in Scotland.” I repeated to myself between breaths as the memories of sand and blood faded from my mind.
It had been over eight years since I, Jack, had been born again in the wizarding world, now called Victor. Only that wasn’t quite right, there was more to Victor, to me, than just a new name. I groaned as I felt a headache forming behind my eyes.
In all those years I had been dreaming of a past life in a world without magic, memories that came in fits and starts, but the last 12 months had been especially intense. It almost felt like they were speeding up, gathering momentum to some grand conclusion.
Nearly all of Jack’s life and knowledge was clear to me now. His time in the orphanage and his almost obsessive love for the fantastical and magical that was his escape from his cruel circumstances. The same childlike curiosity, now grounded in reality, that drove him to study physics, hoping to feel the same wonder at the secrets of his own universe. The utter disappointment and disillusionment during his time in university when it proved to be a false hope. The compromise of seeking adventure in the military even if it could not be as magical as his childhood dream. The single-minded determination and impressive self-control that pushed him through the royal marines with little trouble, and those same qualities that eventually landed him in the Special Boat Service.
I’d witnessed his deployments with the marines in the past, and though they had been intense, even seeing some real combat in Afghanistan, they were almost forgettable next to his service in the special forces.
He, I, had killed, nearly been killed, seen his comrades and brothers injured and bleeding, witnessed more death and terror than anyone should see in one lifetime and dealt out almost as much in return, both in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. I began to get the impression that his, my, death would be a violent one. The events were becoming more ordered and coherent, as though the stress Jack had felt during those times brought with it more clarity.
So too was it becoming more difficult to identify where Jack ended, and Victor began. I wasn’t even sure if that was a good or a bad thing.
Worst of all, the post-traumatic stress that Jack had never gotten the chance to feel was catching up to me now, and I found my usually airtight grip on my emotions slipping in recent months at seemingly random times, getting unreasonably angry at the oddest things. I did my best to keep such outbursts out of sight of Emelia, but I knew my parents had noticed. It didn’t help that it was occurring at precisely the same time as my identity crisis.
Not especially worrying for an 8-year-old from an outside perspective, except for the fact I was in the wizarding world and was a burgeoning wizard in my own right. That had been a monumentous, and joyous, revelation about a year ago.
Apparently, my self-control had quashed the usual magical outbursts that children have, and my parents were beginning to think I was a squib, an individual with magical parents without the gift of magic. That was until a few days after my more vivid nightmares slash memories had begun, I was out with Emelia, playing as siblings do, around the forest. I had been distracted, caught up in my own thoughts when I heard her yelp, turned around and saw a small green snake latched onto her ankle.
My memory of the moment was still a little fuzzy, but I recall a sudden surge of anger and adrenaline, a sensation of something welling up from within, and then I blinked, and the snake’s body had been blasted away from its head in a spray of red mist. Of course, the damned thing was still fang-deep in my sisters’ ankle, which had been a slightly panic-inducing and slightly amusing challenge to remove it. Fortunately, even in a magical forest, it had just been a grass snake and was without venom.
That evening had been cause for celebration, and that old, repressed but never extinguished ember of obsession that Jack had once possessed for the magical and fantastical found itself flared into new life as a roaring flame as I dared to hope that I could truly become a wizard.
Up until that point I had, rather pessimistically, assumed I would be without magic, so it was a pleasant revelation. It was tempered, however, when I had another outburst that same evening and shattered one of the stained windows during an impromptu magical firework show that brought back some unpleasant memories.
So, I made a promise to myself. I would hold off on delving into magic, even though the itch to do so was almost unbearable now that I knew it was possible, until such a time that I had resolved whatever was going wrong in my head.
And I had held to that promise for the most part, holding the temptation at bay by satisfying it with magical history. Though I still wasn’t allowed access to the library, no matter how much I pleaded with mother or father, the latter did relent to bring me some ‘harmless’ volumes, such as ‘Fantastic beasts and where to find them’ and ‘A History of magic’ that were first-year Hogwarts textbooks. I refreshed my memory on most of the events of the last hundred years. The global wizarding war against Gellert Grindelwald and the first wizarding war against Voldemort, otherwise known as Tom Riddle. There was much redacted from the version I read against some of the things I knew had happened. Reading about ‘Sirius Black’s’ betrayal, which had provoked the attack on my home, had brought about an episode of magical destruction. Of course, Sirius was innocent, rotting in Azkaban for a crime he didn’t commit whilst one Peter Pettigrew kept his freedom as the Weasley family pet.
I swore that the moment I had the chance I would kill that traitorous rat. Mother had never been the same after that night, sure she kept up a smile, still kissed us goodnight and told us bedtime stories. She still functioned, yet she hadn’t left the family compound in five years. I knew she still couldn’t sleep and would often hear her sneaking out to the library in the middle of the night. Every chance she got she was either creating new protective enchantments for the home and forest, tearing down the old and ineffective or researching superior ones.
She wasn’t depressed or unstable as far as I could tell, at least not any more than I was, but that night five years ago had left scars that ran deep. It didn’t help that her torturer, one Bellatrix Lestrange, was still alive, albeit rotting in Azkaban after torturing the Longbottoms into insanity almost a year ago. That news had been devastating to mother, and I could tell it only reminded her of her own ordeal. Bellatrix was another life I intended to snuff out when I got the chance. Not out of revenge like Pettigrew, at least not entirely, but because I believed it would give my mother a measure of closure, which was far more important.
As I had been lost in my thoughts, my body had gone through the motions of getting me dressed. I had grown used to the strange, almost Victorian attire that I was expected to wear yet I still couldn’t look at myself in the mirror without thinking it looked a little silly, not that I had one in my room. The blinds to my room were closed, yet no light peeked through the gaps between them. It was still winter, and a Scottish winter at that, and the sun had yet to rise. There was, rather frustratingly, no electricity and so I had instead navigated my room by candlelight. I couldn’t say it was entirely a bad thing though, it was the little things like that that reminded me where I was, and that magic was real, so it never failed to bring a smile to my face. I had seen the same look on my father’s face on many occasions as well, his parents were muggles but even after thirty years of magic I knew he still saw it with the same wonder he had as a kid.
Leaving my room, I saw the light coming from the bottom of the stairs and was unsurprised that I wasn’t the only one up. The smell of Paff’s cooking, Lotti’s successor, hit my nostrils and made me salivate. Pork sausages, fried eggs and bacon, staple breakfast foods irrelevant of magic.
As I hurried down, my stomach rumbling, I heard the muttering of two voices cease as I descended low enough to see my parents sat eating their breakfast at the dining table. Mother took the seat at the head of the table with father sitting just to her side. Both were already dressed, illuminated by both the candelabra they had lit on the table and the roaring fireplace, one notably smaller than the one in what was now mothers’ office.
Mother had her dark hair tied back into a bun as was usual, her classically beautiful features curling into a smile as she saw me and gently placed her cutlery back down on the sides of her plate. She was the very picture of a noble witch, wearing a frilly black dress not out of place in some Victorian court and fine white gloves over her hands.
In contrast, father kept on shoving food in his mouth, his knife and fork held in fists rather than the delicate grip of his wife. “Mornin’ Victor.” He said through a mouthful of food, drawing a glare from mother. Unlike the classic posh English accent of my mother, father had grown up in rural York and had the accent to show for it.
He was the polar opposite of the typical Thorneheart look. Curly and messy straw blonde hair rather than the straight and black of the rest of us, his eyes a deep blue instead of the emerald green that mother had given both me and my sister. His attire could have been mistaken for muggle fashion; a buttoned white shirt with its top button undone and a pair of black suit trousers, were it not for the particularly gaudy high-collared crimson overcoat that hung over his chair, waiting to be donned when he sat up. He was clean-shaven, revealing a more than impressive jawline that did as much for his duelling career as his wand did.
One could look at them and wonder how they had ever ended up together, and I often did. All they would tell me was that they had met at Hogwarts, both had been sorted into Gryffindor and by the time they left, they were madly in love. I knew her parents had disapproved of a ‘mudblood’ in the family, I distinctly recall Isaac using that word in an argument before the attack, yet he certainly embodied the Thorneheart values if nothing else, and old dead Ivan apparently approved of him. Not that we were considered one of the ‘pureblood’ families in the first place, I had checked, so I could only conclude my grandfather was caught up in the stigma of having a muggle-born wizard marry his daughter. I hoped they had resolved the issue before he died, but I doubted I’d ever know.
“Good morning,” I replied with a yawn as I walked up and took a seat opposite father.
Before I could so much as blink, a third plate of food appeared on the table in front of me alongside a steaming hot cup of tea. I mentally thanked Paff and wasted no time digging in. Elf magic was truly something else, and not for the first time I wondered just how powerful the little creatures truly were. From what I had later learned, Lotti, that brave little bastard, had put up one hell of a fight before succumbing, very possibly saving my mother's life when father arrived with Alastor Moody and several more auror's shortly after the fact.
I pushed the thought from my mind with conscious effort, remembering that I had greater concerns for the time being.
“Did you have your nightmares again?” asked mother, a look of concern on her face.
It was almost comical in a morbid way. She believed I had nightmares from hearing her screams on that fateful night and I could tell she felt guilty about it, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t, but I had come to terms with what had happened, and it didn’t bother me except on rare occasions. My nightmares slash memories were more horrifying than terrifying, and I was confident I could come to terms with them in time too, but I couldn’t exactly tell her that, and there was nothing else that came to mind that would ease her guilt, so I did what I always did.
“No, I just went to bed early last night.” I lied. I particularly disliked dishonesty, but I had to admit there were occasions when a white lie was for the best. She had spent the evening in the library again, so I knew she didn’t know otherwise, but father had been the one to put Emelia and I to bed and he knew for a fact that we had bullied him into staying up far later than usual. He was soft like that.
He frowned at me but thankfully didn’t call me out. More often than not we found one other thinking on the same wavelength, especially when it came to mother and Emelia. I got the impression that, had we met in my previous life, we would have been fast friends.
“That is good to hear.” She paused for a moment in thought, pursing her lips as she looked at me as though weighing her next words with care. “Your father and I were just discussing if we should ask someone to help with your… outbursts. You don’t show signs of magic for years and then all of a sudden, you are blowing up half the family heirlooms!”
I cringed at her words, it had only been the one heirloom; a marble bust of Ivan that had unfortunately drawn my eye at precisely the same time father was practising his duelling spells in the courtyard and one of them happened to crack and echo in the exact cadence of a rifle round.
She must have mistaken my look for something else because her face softened, and she looked into my eyes. “If you do not want to then that is fine Victor, but I would like for you to try talking to him. Mr Mudoil is good at what he does, he has helped me in the past. I really think this would be for the best.”
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My gut instinct was to instantly decline. I could deal with my own problems thank you very much, and I didn’t need any therapist’s help to do so. Especially considering I was in a world of magic, and legilimancy was a thing. I didn’t know if it was used for such a purpose, but I could see how it would be useful in such a profession and I didn’t want to particularly find out.
However, reluctantly, after thinking about it for a moment and receiving a very pointed look from my father, I conceded that it would be worth it just to put my mother's mind at ease.
“Alright.” I acquiesced with a shrug. “When?”
Mother looked taken aback and how quickly I had agreed, and she glanced over to father with a bright smile on her face.
“Excellent!” She said, lightly clapping her gloved hands. “I’ll give the good wizard a floo call once the sun is up.”
Father gave me a small nod before furrowing his brow. He held up his hand and a moment later a wand shot from his coat pocket and into his grip. It was unusually long at around 14” and was made from pale aspen wood, well suited to his 6ft 6 figure and occupation as a professional duellist.
“Tempus.” He cast with a flick of his wrist, and a small illusory clockface appeared at the end of his wand, appearing the wrong way around from where I was looking. It wasn’t too challenging to read it backwards and see the time was twenty-five past six.
“Bugger.” He cursed, dropping the fork with a half-eaten sausage impaled on it in his other hand. “Sorry you two, I’ve got to run, I’m already late for today's meeting as is. Remind me to smack whoever’s idea it was to do the damned thing at dawn.”
Standing up, he abruptly kissed my mother on the cheek, to which she both scowled and failed to hide the upturn in her lips, then donned his coat from the chair with a twirl.
“Wish me luck.” He said with a cheeky grin and winked at me before he wordlessly disapparated before us in a blast of warping matter and sound. Stranglehold was absolutely covered in anti-disapparition jinxes, but from what I could tell mother had built in workarounds for both herself and father over the years.
Not for the first time, and I doubted it would be the last, I hungered to learn how to do such a thing. Instant transportation over a distance as great as the length of England, if one was skilled enough. It brought about all sorts of questions about thermodynamics and the speed of information, though I doubted I’d find any answers except for my own, and that was still a long way away. Nevertheless, it remained one of the single most useful and fascinating spells I could think of in the wizarding world.
Yet again, however, I reminded myself I would have to be patient. Honestly, it sometimes felt like part of me was a hound pulling at a leash, strong and full of boundless energy, desperate to be released to charge ahead into the wild and unknown, and the rest of me was just trying to keep it on the right path. It occurred to me that I couldn’t tell whether that was a trait of Jack’s, Victor’s or both.
Before I could ponder further, I heard the clanking as mother gently laid down her cutlery over an empty plate. Turning, I saw her dabbing delicately at her face with a napkin. “Finish your breakfast Victor dear. I need to finish up some work and then we shall be having our usual lessons at nine. Oh, and please wake up your sister beforehand, I don’t want a repeat of last time.”
With that, she stood up, gave me a pat on my shoulder and walked away to her office, leaving me alone with the food and very briefly Paff as he cleared away the used plates. Showing affection was not her strong suit, but I hardly minded. I knew she loved us and that was all that mattered.
It didn’t take me long to finish the plate and then some, though I took my time with the tea. House elf cooking was, as ever, exceptional. My appetite of late had been growing, which I hoped heralded a growth spurt. I was getting tired of being so short whilst having memories of being so tall, it had given me a bad habit of misjudging distances and making me look clumsy.
I had time to kill before I would need to wake Emelia up. Our lessons were mostly on etiquette, which was decidedly boring, basic arithmetic and literacy, which was laughable, and surprisingly Russian. Our ancestors had been from the country and there was a branch of the Thornehearts that lived there, not to mention many of the books in the library were in Ivan’s mother tongue.
Jack had not been multi-lingual unless you counted some phrases in Arabic and French, so it proved an interesting challenge and an adequate distraction for my obsessive mind.
So, before all that, I decided to go on a walk of the grounds. The forest was mostly safe and would turn me away from anything threatening, though the opposite was true for any not of the family. Leaving the manor, I turned to behold it.
It was, if I was honest, a gothic monstrosity. More intimidating than beautiful, stone gargoyles guarded its roofs, walls and gardens, their mouths full of teeth and twisted into varying frozen screams and malicious grins. Other than the gardens that surrounded the manor, which were full mostly of varying types of roses, the house was predominantly black and grey; dour and uninviting. Standing at three stories, it was far from the biggest home I had ever seen, but it certainly gave an impression of wealth and grandeur. Enclosing the manor, the large courtyard that was situated behind the manor, and the gardens was an ornate stone wall about as tall as mother was, with a large black metal gate before the main entrance that opened on its own volition when I approached.
Once one left the walls Stranglehold Forest was a stone’s throw away. It gave the impression of an isolated manor, but that was just an illusion. Only a short walk away was the library tower and a little further than that was the family graveyard. They couldn’t be seen through the magical forest; however, the towering pines had a tendency to loom together and give the illusion that the gloomy forest spread on forever in every direction.
Like most of Stranglehold, it was uninviting and mildly eerie, especially in the low dawn. I strangely liked it, however, having grown up in a city in my past life, Jack’s life, being so close to nature was refreshing and peaceful. So long as one ignored the occasional howling, skittering and growling that could be heard echoing off the bark that is.
I didn’t have a particular destination in mind when I set off into the forest, but I didn’t worry about getting lost. It would spit me out right back at the manor when I wanted it to, even if I had been walking for hours.
Walking alone helped me gather my thoughts, and the beauty of the flickering and filtered rays of dawn hitting the forest floor kept me away from boredom. As I was doing so, an hour or so later as the sun fully rose above the horizon, I found myself startled by a branch cracking behind me.
This was not a usual occurrence in the forest, and it immediately set me on edge. A flash of a memory of myself in another, more temperate, forest set my heart thumping in my chest and adrenaline flooding my veins. Ducking down and spinning around in one fluid movement, I felt a familiar burst of energy welling up and extended my arm on some strange instinct to channel it away from myself. I was operating purely on reaction and instinct, from muscle memory of muscles not my own.
Before the signals from my eyes reached my conscious brain to be processed, I felt on the verge of another magical outburst, old yet potent stress and fear overpowered my self-control and rationality in one sickening moment as my lizard brain took over.
But all that disappeared in an instant when I realised what it was I had just laid eyes on.
Even the wild, formless magic at my fingertips seemed to shy away from the magnificent creature before me and calm from a raging storm to a silent lake. My self-control returned, and I clamped down hard on the rampant emotion, reinstating the ironclad domination of rational and conscious thought.
Before me lay a creature I once had only dreamed was real, its silver eyes staring into my own with an intensity that betrayed its intelligence. Its coat of the purest white, unmarred by even a speck of dirt, its hooves golden and majestic, and most of all its spectacular ivory horn that rose almost half a metre from its head.
A unicorn in the flesh, standing not three metres before me, its head raised proudly as it met my gaze.
Words and thoughts left me as I took in its beauty. I lowered my hands into an unthreatening pose, palms upturned, as if on instinct. Ever so slowly, I rose from my squat position back to standing up straight, deeply worried I might scare it off and thankful when it remained where it was.
There was no part of me that didn’t appreciate the magical creature, caught in a beam of sunlight as the definition of elegance. For the first time in almost a year, I felt of one mind, my soul united in admiration. Lingering images of death, blood and war that had hidden behind closed eyes for months seemed so insignificant and far away as though its radiance smote from the memories the bite of their pain.
It took me a moment to realise I had been holding my breath, but when I finally exhaled the unicorn decided to move. With no great alacrity or panic, it turned around and trotted away into the forest. I felt the urge to chase it but knew it was an action unworthy of the elegant creature, not that I imagined I could ever catch it.
I stood there for an incomprehensible amount of time, staring after it, wishing it would return but knowing it would not. What brought me back to reality was the odd itching at my fingertips that had been growing in intensity.
It took me a moment to realise the feeling of power had not faded as it did after every one of my outbursts, likely, I realised, because I had yet to give it an outlet.
But unlike those other times, I felt no desperate urge to release it, just a euphoric sense of serenity. The itching was mildly unpleasant, but I could ignore it easily enough.
I stared down at my fingers, wondering what to do. I conceded quickly that I would have to use it in some manner, lest I return home and accidentally break something again if, or when, I could no longer hold it back.
To be honest, I was stumped at what to do, but I knew I wanted to do something with it. Wandless magic was quite literally at my fingertips, and I instinctively knew I could control it this time, it felt calm, pliable. It just needed something to give it form, to breathe it into life.
I searched my mind and recalled the fire-making spell. At least, I recalled the rather uninspired incantation, not the wand movement. I wondered, however, if wand movement was even necessary without a wand.
I subconsciously glanced around, as if expecting someone to be watching me, ready to tell me off for doing what I had promised myself I wouldn’t. And yet, it was a perfect opportunity with little risk.
The hound was tugging hard at its leash, foaming at the mouth to be released, to do what it has wanted to do from the beginning. I worried that despite my promise if I let it off once I would never be able to leash it again, so strong was the desire.
Weighing the pros and cons was a fight between my discipline and my inner hound, and its outcome was inevitable even if I didn’t want to admit it.
It’s dangerous, and I’m still at war with myself. I would be breaking my own promise. I would tell myself.
Not any more dangerous than my other outbursts. Is this not evidence that my crisis has been resolved? Would come the immediate counterargument.
The longer it went on, the more the itching grew and the more I relented until finally, I gave in to the desire. I did, in fact, feel far better than I had at any point in the last year. If not entirely resolved, I felt my crisis of identity was at least close to its conclusion. As a compromise, I promised myself I would make an effort to finally put an end to it with the help of this Mr Mudoil.
My resistance gone, I finally let the grin that had been hiding climb high onto my face. My heart thumping in excitement, I held my arm at its full extension lest my experiment blow up in my face.
“Incendio,” I said aloud in a firm voice, and as an afterthought clicked my fingers. In my mind's eye, I imagined the friction of my skin sparking a flame that the magic would fuel, like a pocket lighter, and then willed it to be so with all the mental strength I could muster.
“It worked. IT WORKED! Hahahahaha! YES! MAGIC!” I said without conscious thought, my breathless, almost disbelieving, tone quickly turned into an ecstatic shout and particularly manic laugh.
Sat, hovering gently above the thumb of my right hand, was a small yet bright orange flame, flickering slightly with the breeze but burning strongly, nevertheless.
I took a moment to just look at it in amazement. To ensure it wasn’t just a trick of my eyes, I brought my other hand up and over it, sure enough, I flinched back as I felt the scalding heat it released, which strangely didn’t bother my right hand.
Closing my eyes, I tried to feel how the magic felt, how it flowed, attempting to capture the sensation so that I might be able to repeat it in the future. An experiment is not useful if it is not reproducible, after all, I had to remind myself not to get caught up in the wonder at the expense of missing out on an opportunity to learn.
I started by visualising the flow of magic at my fingertips and began trying to trace it back to its source. It was easier said than done, every time I tried to follow the thread it would seemingly branch off into dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller threads that were incredibly difficult to focus on.
In the five minutes or so I spent doing that, I felt myself tiring. It wasn’t a physical sensation, nor really a mental one, but something in-between that was difficult to describe but easy to just feel. My little flame was more tiring than I had anticipated, which in hindsight was obvious considering what I knew about wandless magic and the fact I was only eight years old.
So, I changed tactics and decided to see what else I could do with it before I eventually ran dry. Following my first instinct, I took a deep breath and blew into the flame, imagining a roaring cone of fire originating from my hand. In reality… I just made it flicker a bit.
Happy no one had seen me do that, I continued to experiment. I tried to throw the flame, to no success. I tried to move the flame to my other hand and only succeeded in burning my left thumb. I imagined the flame growing in size, which worked actually, albeit only slightly, going from a candle flame to maybe about twice that size. I similarly succeeded in shrinking the flame back to its original size and kept going until it was about as small as a fairy candle flame.
By then I was really feeling the strain. Whatever reserve of magic I had was on its last legs and I broke out into a sweat as I fought against it. I knew instinctively that I could turn it off at any time just by willing it to be so, but my last experiment was seeing how long I could maintain it past the point of exhaustion.
About 20 seconds later I was biting my cheeks in pain, a sensation akin to simultaneous heartburn and headache that only got progressively worse as I maintained the flame, but I continued to will it into existence.
10 seconds after that I was physically shaking, both from the exhaustion I felt and the now intense pain. Fortunately, I was no stranger to either and both could be, and were, ignored with enough self-control.
Another 10 seconds and the edges of my vision were darkening. Relenting to my better judgement telling me that falling unconscious in a dangerous magical forest was far from a good idea, enchantments or not, I finally cut off the magic to my very first spell, and the flame flickered into nothingness an instant later.
It gave me an odd sense of melancholy seeing it disappear, but the feeling was nothing against the absolute surge of euphoria and excitement that made me want to immediately try it again.
By now, however, the hound was leashed, and my more rational thoughts were back in control. Trying it again could well drop me unconscious, and I didn’t want to find out. Especially considering I still had to go and wake Emelia up.
I took one last look in the direction the unicorn had disappeared, perhaps hoping to catch one last glimpse, but it was not to be. As I turned to leave, keeping my destination clear in my mind, I realised that, for the first time in a long time, I felt like a child again. My heart was full of hope, and I was invigorated with a bone-deep excitement to see what fresh wonders tomorrow would bring.
As the forest led me back home in short order and the manor came into view, I walked onwards with a smile from ear to ear and a spring in my step.