It took me an almost embarrassingly long time to pull myself together. “Merlin’s beard, focus Hydrys!” I swore internally. I was Hydrys Sirius Black, seventeenth of my name, scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. I could trace my ancestry back eighteen centuries through fifty-nine generations of pure-blood wizards.

Throughout all of British history, a Black was there in the thick of the action. Blacks fought both for and against the Roman legions, were present for the founding of Hogwarts and the first meeting of the Wizard’s Council. A Black studied alongside Merlin himself and served within the court of Camelot.

We had survived wars, plagues, and witch hunts, had faced countless trials and always clawed our way to the top. It was not by chance that the House of Black was one of the largest, wealthiest, and most magically powerful families in all of Europe, but rather the product of generations of hard work and scheming.

This was just another trial to overcome. Another mountain to climb. Another dragon to slay.

I could do this.

I just wished I knew what the hell was going on.

Hydrys Black the fourth hadn’t gone in blind into his first dragon hunt. Hydrys Black the ninth had known exactly what he was doing when he hit Merwyn the Malicious in the back with a blood-boiling curse. Hydrys Black the thirteenth hadn’t lived through twenty-seven separate assassination attempts by being unprepared.

I took a deep breath. Well then, it seemed that my next step was clear. Panic solved nothing. It was a weakness that had to be excised before it could poison the mind, like burning out a squib line before it could damage the family.

A flickering candle flame bloomed within my mind and I fed it with my panic, my fear, and all the other emotions threatening to overwhelm me. Thoughts were sorted and categorized, useful information stored away for later review and extraneous nonsense was burnt into fertile ash.

I exhaled and pinched the candle flame out, leaving my mind a blank, dark void empty of all things. I luxuriated in the sensation of everything and nothing all at once, my magic thrumming softly in my ears. Everything was going to be alright. I was going to get through this.

I inhaled again and with the ease of long practice––no Black was ever allowed out of their home before they could demonstrate at least a basic level of proficiency in defending their minds––my tattered occlumency shields, damaged by the rush of panic and overwhelming emotions, reformed.

Walls and wards snapped into place, giving order and structure to the dark nothingness that was my mind. Thoughts and memories appeared from the darkness, swiftly flowing into their appropriate places. Magic rose up to fill in cracks left for it, reinforcing and locking into places the well structured interior of my consciousness.

I exhaled and opened my eyes. That had been…significantly easier than I remembered it being. In fact, over the past few days I’d noticed that a lot of things were easier than I’d expected. I’d succeeded in creating an Inferius on my first attempt even though it really should have taken me a half-dozen or more tries to get a complex spell like that to work. My apparition had felt smoother, faster, and less strenuous than I remembered. And now this––it usually took me well over an hour to fix my occlumency shields if they ever got damaged, but here I’d done it in what, ten minutes maybe? And they felt stronger than ever.

I pushed the thought aside for the moment, setting it with the other odd magical phenomenon I’d experienced recently. That pile was starting to get concerningly large, but I still had no idea how it all fit together, nor what the root cause of it might be.

Actually, there was another thing to add to that pile. During my minor breakdown, I’d gained another one of those spell-like points of understanding, though this one was not another powerful zombie, but rather an item. An artifact. My precious yew wand that I’d purchased from Olivander years ago.

Though it was useless to me now, it came as a huge weight off my back. Just days ago I had come terrifyingly close to losing it forever. The prospect of being without my wand was just too awful to consider. There was only a tiny handful of magic that I could use without a wand, rendering me a veritable muggle without it in hand.

Now, if I ever lost it, I could recreate it from scratch, a perfect replica manifested from raw mana. I would need one more mana before I could do so, I currently could only access one mote at a time from Slaughter Swamp, but I felt like it was only a matter of time. I would never be wandless again, a huge source of reassurance in a world that's suddenly felt terrifyingly unfamiliar.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I sat up and looked at my hands. My wand was still clenched tightly in my first, thin rivulets of blood leaking from where my long nails had cut into my palm. I uncurled my fingers one by one and gently picked up my wand in my left hand. I was much less proficient in casting left-handed, but fortunately this spell did not require any particularly finicky wand movements.

I drew a small circle in the air, then tapped my palm and whispered, “Episkey.” Skin knit back together in an instant, leaving my hand feeling very warm and slightly tingly.

I flexed my fingers all together, made a fist, then wiggled them one by one. Transferring my wand back to my right hand, I twirled it through a number of complex motions that some NEWT level and beyond spells required, then spun it around each of my fingers, tossed it up in the air, and caught it by the carved grip. A fountain of red and silver sparks shot from the tip of my wand and hung in the air like a cloud of stars.

“Oooh, pretty!” a soft voice exclaimed, and my head jerked around to look at Zatanna, who had just reentered the room. She’d changed since I’d last seen her and was now wearing an outfit reminiscent of what I’d seen her father wearing, but modified to fit her figure.

She had replaced her previous top with a three-layered combination that consisted of a black blazer, white corset, and a low-cut yellow vest. She wore a white bowtie like a choker, drawing the eye to the swath of pale skin between the top of her corset and her neck. Her long white pants were gone as well, replaced by a tiny pair of tight black shorts that could have passed for undergarments and hugged her wide hips.

Her thighs were left nearly completely bare, covered only by a black netting that hid nothing at all and only served to accentuate her figure further. Finally, the outfit was completed by knee-high black leather boots with a considerable heel, giving her several inches of additional height, and white silk gloves that covered her hands and vanished into her sleeves.

Whatever I thought I was going to say was cut off as my mouth suddenly went very dry and a renewed wave of very different emotions battered against my occlumency shields from the inside. Zatanna was very beautiful, easily the match of any witch in my year at Hogwarts, and even the best-fitting, most scandalous dress robes were considerably more concealing than what she was wearing now.

There were no ifs or buts about it, Dorea would have been grounded for life if Uncle Cygnus had ever seen her wearing any part of Zatanna’s outfit, much less all of it at once. Women's pants made from fish nets…the future certainly was filled with many fantastical inventions.

Zatanna walked over towards me and looking up to meet her eyes as she approached felt like wrestling with fiendfyre. “I’m glad you’re looking better,” she told me quietly. “People are starting to trickle in and dad’s setting up for our first act, so we have to keep our voices down, okay?”

I nodded, not fully trusting my voice, and Zatanna smiled. “Good. Um, so we’re going to be starting soon. You can stay back here and rest if you promise to be quiet, or, if you’re feeling up for it, I can show you how to get to the audience from here. You have a pretty good spot near the front and dad is really good at this stuff. Don’t tell anyone, but like, he likes being a hero and saving people and everything, but performing on stage like this is his real passion.” ]

Before I could answer, she quickly added, “Oh, and dad said he’d be happy to help you after the show. He just doesn’t want to skip this one for something that isn’t super urgent––he had to cancel most of his shows in June and he’s been itching to get back up on stage. Plus, this way we can invite Uncle Kent over and he knows about all sorts of crazy magic phenomena. I’m sure that he and dad will be able to figure out what happened.”

I personally considered my issues rather urgent, but then again if his usual problems included a dark wizard trying to blot out the sun like I’d heard about on Monday, perhaps his attitude was understandable. In any case, it had already been more than two days, a few more hours probably didn’t matter that much,

“I…” I shook my head to clear it, “You’re going to be on stage, right?” She nodded. “Then I think I’d like to watch the show. I bet you’re going to be amazing.”

The lights in the room suddenly dimmed, but not fast enough to fully hide Zatanna’s blush, visible even through her makeup. “Thanks,” she whispered, then grabbed my non-wand hand and pulled me to my feet. My hand felt very warm against the smooth silk of her glove as she turned around and began to tug me along back into the maze of hallways.

I tried to memorize where we were going, but it was a futile effort. I didn’t have the best sense of direction––it had taken me four years at Hogwarts before I finally felt at all confident navigating the ancient castle on my own––and not only was it kind of dark and everything looked the same, but I also had something very distracting and partially covered in black netting that kept drawing my eyes instead.

I really liked robes––they were comfortable, had a lot of room for pockets, and could be imbued with an impressive number of enchantments due to the large surface area. Cousin Dorea always looked stunning at balls, and there was something magical about dozens of couples twirling together on the dance floor in elegant robes embroidered with gold and gems and glowing with enchantments.

However, as Zatanna pulled me along behind her, I decided that perhaps robes were not the be-all and end-all of clothing as I’d always believed them to be. I hadn’t thought much of what I’d seen all the muggles wearing, but the clothing of the future certainly had its own appeals.