It had been about a month, and things had gone pretty smoothly for Eric. The potions professor hated him for some strange reason, but other than that the other classes were fine. He had become friends with Ron and Hermione. He remembered their names, he had practiced.
For actual casting of magic Eric discovered that he only had tiny amounts of intrinsic magic compared to everyone else. It seems that Harry’s soul had taken most of it along for the ride when he was reborn in the hellish realm. But Eric had very good control of his magic, and channeling his spells through his wand helped increase his power. So he was able to do fairly well even if he became quickly tired after casting for a full day during classes.
He had joined the dancing club, and it was a lot of fun. It had helped suppress his… urges to do something drastic to make things more interesting for himself. He wasn’t in hell with the demons anymore, he couldn’t just order people to let it go if he went too far in seeing how far he could push their limits. But the students at the dance club had even had fun with him pushing them farther, so it was all working out. He was glad he hadn’t stayed in that Hell with Harry. This life was much better.
Eric paused as he heard voices around the corner. He creeped around and peeked around the corner. There was the odd defense against the dark arts teacher, Quirrell. He was standing there, muttering to himself, his massive purple turban wrapped tightly around his head.
He went to leave before he was spotted, before smiling as he suddenly had an excellent idea. The man always wore that turban wherever he went, people said that he kept garlic cloves in it to scare off vampires that he was afraid would attack him at any moment.
Eric should try to get it to come off. He put away his wand into his pocket and carefully moved his magic in the form he wanted. People here could detect what spells had been used by wands recently, so if he did the magic wandlessly he should be able to get away with it even if he got caught by the professor.
The spell finished stabilizing between Eric’s hands in an invisible ball and he waited for a second and glanced around. The place was empty except for him and the teacher. But it would be worth it if the man really did have a stack of garlic under there.
He launched the invisible spell and watched eagerly as it flew towards the man. Just before it hit his head, the man flinched. But it was too late. Eric’s spell had already latched onto him and created a burst of wind pushing out from his skin, blasting the turban off of his head like a bottle cap.
Eric froze as he saw what was underneath the turban. There was another whole face sticking out of the back of the man’s head. It looked angry as hissed words at Quirrell that Eric couldn’t understand. Quirrell turned towards Eric with rage in his eyes and brandished his wand. Eric dived around the corner as the teacher launched a curse at him.
“Harry Potter! You’ll pay for that!” Quirrell shouted and Eric heard the man running towards him from around the corner. Eric ran for it. After a few minutes, he made it to a crowded hallway and Quirrell stopped following him. It seems he didn’t want anyone else seeing the extra head on the back of his own.
What should he do? Oh, he knew. His head of house, McGonurtat or McGlighten or something, would know what he should do. Quirrell was a teacher, so he would have to get some defensive adults lined up before he stormed up and tried to punish Eric for what had happened.
He ran to where he knew the woman’s office was. He knocked on the door, and waited. Glancing around in case Quirrell tried to ambush him when he was exposed. The door swung open and the head of house was in there, staring up at him from her desk.
She let out an audible sigh when she spotted him.
“Eric Potter. What can I do for you today?”
“Professor McGalaga, I saw Quirrell just now! I knocked off his turban by accident with a spell and he got really upset. He had another guy inside of him on his head. I caught the two of them when the turban came off.”
“Inside? What?” McGalaga said as her eyebrows rose as high as they could.
“Yeah, all the way in. It was super gross, the two of them were yelling at me and I ran away. I think they were embarrassed about it, I think. Quirrell even cast a curse at me. I only just got away.”
“W-What?!”
“Anyway, I think they were stuck together. We’ve got to go get the headmaster to help them separate from each other. It can’t be very comfortable to be forced to be like that for so long. No wonder why they were so embarrassed when I saw them.”
“Ooooh. Myyy,” She said, a faint tinge of red entering her cheeks as she blinked rapidly at him, “Who was it you said was with him?”
“I don’t know. I was too busy trying to run away to ask any questions. His face was rather ugly.”
“Well, I… Uhm. I suppose that’s their business if that’s what’s happening,” McGalaga said, seeming rather shocked by the revelation. Eric was shocked too. No wonder Quirrell’s turban had been so big, he had to fit a whole extra face under there!
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“But they were out in a hallway, and Quirrell will be furious with me when he finds me. He’s on the warpath after me even now, I’m sure.”
If possible, McGalaga’s eyebrows rose even farther upwards, “They were in the hallway together? You just stumbled on them out there? How long ago was this?”
“About five or ten minutes ago. What should I do, Professor McGalaga?”
“It’s McGonagall for the last time, Potter!” The woman snapped. Oh, right. Eric had forgotten again. She was just so forgettable of a person. Always so stiff and strict. Not exciting at all.
“Well, you stay here, Potter,” She said as she stood, “I’ll call the headmaster, and we can deal with the uh, *Cough* situation. Don’t you worry.”
Eric sat at the chair across from McGonatall’s desk and settled back to wait. Hopefully running to McGonarall’s office so soon would make sure he could avoid getting punished too much by Quirrell…
— — —
McGurten seemed oddly annoyed with Eric when she returned. And told him to better communicate next time. He was confused. He thought he had been pretty clear. If she hadn’t understood him then that was her fault and she should have asked something to clarify.
The next day of classes, Quirrell was no longer teaching and they had a substitute from the Ministry, the wizarding government. Everyone gossiped about what happened but it was soon announced by Headmaster Dumbledore that Quirrell had chosen to retire early to travel abroad.
What an odd time to choose to do something like that, in the middle of the school year. Hopefully he had removed the extra face from the back of his head first before he went. Eric was not punished, and McGobonall never talked about it again, so presumably she had handled it.
After that, Eric had a rather normal, enjoyable year. He became a key member of the dance club, and was still friends with Hermione and Ron. No one particularly hated him except that one potions teacher. Even Draco the blonde boy was more weirded out by Eric than disliked him at all. That was fine, Eric was glad he hadn’t been put in Slytherin. He realized he probably would have been rather annoyed having to deal with Draco’s pompous attitude after his first few rounds of taunting him. The hat was right, he was doing much better off in Gryffindor.
Final exams were fine. Eric felt shaky on the written tests, but he did excellently on the practicals so hopefully the two would somewhat balance themselves out to a good score.
Oh, he almost forgot. He had used all the LSD that Hagrid had given him. He had been spiking random people’s drinks all year at the great feast and then lurking around to watch as they started feeling the effects. He had used wandless telekinesis to float a pill or two at a time when no one was looking. It was always really funny when whoever it was began freaking out and hallucinating.
The older years could cure it with a quick spell or two, but there was one unexpected benefit to using non-magical drugs for it. The standard spells that people used to check their food for tampering checked for residual magic. So Eric’s LSD slipped right through their spells and led to them thinking it was safe. People had started using the broader spell that could detect non-magical poisons now, but it was more complicated and was much more intensive to cast. So Eric was still able to strike some targets of opportunity even after the majority of the older years changed over to the better spell.
It was amazing he hadn’t been caught the whole year, and he had managed to empty the whole big bag of pills that Hagrid had given him. He just got to sit there and smile as everyone speculated on who it could be. He smiled a lot, so people didn’t seem to notice when his grin widened a fraction more when they discussed it. It was especially amusing when it was Hermione and Ron discussing and Eric could throw in his own absurd guesses into the discussion to throw them off track.
— — —
Eric went back to the orphanage for the summer and listened to some more radio and new music. It gave him ever more inspiration, and he decided to find a spell that could create music when he went back to school next year. He should have music to back him up when he was dancing. It was only fair to other people, they couldn’t enjoy his performance properly if they couldn’t hear the tune Eric was dancing to that he heard in his head.
Sadly, there was no spell that seemed able to correct his malformed eyeballs from what he had read at Hogwarts. All of them required ‘rituals’ to do anything similar, none of which were contained in the books anywhere Eric could find them. So he was stuck with glasses for now. He had learned a spell that bent light a little to act the same to let him see clearly, but it was energy intensive. So while useful in a pinch if he lost his glasses, it wasn’t a good solution for normal life.
Especially considering he still had very little intrinsic magic to work with. It was getting a little better as time passed, it seems that using the magic over and over was stimulating his intrinsic magic to grow more to compensate. So maybe in the future it would be less of a problem than it was right now. He could only hope.
The summer passed quickly and slowly at the same time, the only sour note was that he was unable to perform magic over the whole time. The Trace, as it was called by the wizarding government, was placed on magical children attending school. It was unclear to Eric how exactly they had put it on them, but he was assured that it was definitely there. When they were out and about, especially in the muggle world like Eric’s orphanage, the Trace could detect magic being used around you and alert the government. And magic was banned being used in the muggle world at all by the magical children. Eric hadn’t used all that much magic at all in the two years after he arrived at the orphanage. He had little need for it, so he didn’t mind too much that he wasn’t using it too much.
But not being able to use magic at all was a bit stifling. He probably wouldn’t have done much magic. But he would have done something. There was nothing he could do about it though, so Eric focused on other things and ran around outside playing with the other orphanage children.
He had been writing letters to his friends Ron and Hermione over the summer. He forgot often, but he needed to send the letters to maintain their friendship, so he made sure to write letters at a steady pace to both of them.
It was early August, and nearly time to buy the next year's round of school supplies. It was decided that Hermione, Eric, and Ron and his family would all go on the same day to do a combined trip together.
Eric didn’t mind, because it would be interesting to finally see a true wizarding home. They would be going to the Weasley’s home first before traveling to Diagon alley from there.
The red haired man was talking with Matron Claire even now. Eric picked up his magical expanded trunk and started walking downstairs. It wouldn’t do to be late.