Chapter 7: An Unexpected Journey
27th August 1989, New York City, New York
(Jasmine POV)
It didn’t take long for me to get sick of the orphanage. Oh, it was a nice place, all things considered, but it just didn’t allow me the freedom of experimenting with magic at my leisure. I loved the caretakers in a detached sort of way, still unable to let go of the mistrust I had towards adults thanks to the Dursleys’ actions towards me.
The truth is, as content as I was before experimenting with magic, I was bored out of my mind. There was just no intellectual stimulation, and I knew for a fact that letting the outside world know how smart I really was would be an easy way for me to get kidnapped and experimented on. After all, this was the Marvel Universe, and evil organizations are a thing.
The answer was simple, I needed to get myself adopted into a place where I would be free to do whatever I want without any kind of supervision. Normally, that would have been impossible, but you would be surprised how easily things happen when you’re a telepath.
At first, I needed money. A couple of applications of telepathy over some gang members ended up with me getting a small fortune at my disposal. Honestly, I didn’t really care about money all that much, I just needed to have enough to live without worrying about it. With money in mind, all it took was a small trip to city hall, and a new invisibility spell I was experimenting with, to create a new identity for the woman that would adopt me. After that, I only needed to change a few memories of the caretakers of the mystery woman, Morgan Evanshade, asking to adopt me and arranging all the paperwork necessary. I even bought a small manor in the suburbs as proof of residence. I needed a nice place to live in and enough place and privacy to experiment using magic.
As for Morgan Evanshade, I made her into this author of fantasy books that I wrote a few times based on works in my previous life. Things like a song of ice and fire, even the DC comics, were written by her and gained a lot of popularity with the masses, which provided me with a great source of income. For a time, everything was amazing. I had my independence, with enough money to not really care about it, and an active income from Evanshade’s written works. As much as I did feel shame in ripping off the works of other authors, I was technically giving them a bigger reach, allowing millions more to enjoy their works. The money is nice too, I guess.
With that done, I had all the time in the world to experiment with my magic, something that I found immense joy in doing. It was abnormally easy, and I knew it. Wizards and witches could be illogical at times, but the study of the stabilization of the magic of children has been done because of the complications that can have it.
Technically, until my eleventh birthday, my magic should have been wild and chaotic, which is why children, no matter their birth, began their magical education at the age of eleven. There were a select few exceptions, like Tom Riddle, that could direct the chaos, in a way, but it didn’t come closer to what I could do.
I was able to cast spells, channel my magic without a wand to act as a focus and be under the age of eleven. The only justification I could find was that my magic stabilized with the maturity of my second soul, but even then, I didn’t understand how that would have been possible.
Still, for the first time in my life, I was truly free, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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5th May 1991, New York City, New York
It was a couple of years later, that I discovered that I was lonely. First, it turns out that dedicating my entire time to mastering my magic was an endless endeavor and I forgot how to interact with people altogether.
Honestly, it was disturbing how I chose to deal with it. Instead of just going out and meeting people my age, I just bought a painting from the New York magical district. I owl ordered it, that and a house elf called Tilly to clean and cook my meals. He was quite enthusiastic, but I could not complain about his efficiency.
As for the painting, it was that of a wizard British economist called Alfred Marshal who dies sometime in the 1920s. He was a tad rude and obsessive and had pretended to be a muggle economist after the Goblin nation started a campaign against him for his radical ideas. Lucky for me, I had learned a few spells that I altered to modify the personalities of paintings. My prodigal gifts over the mind arts helped me immensely in making sure that the painting is still functional. It wasn’t anything really unethical. A painting isn’t alive, even if it can think. It doesn’t have a soul. It’s just some magical artifact filled with memories like a pensive that pretends to be the owner of these memories.
Wizards, normally, tended to choose which memories to include and remove. This way, their secrets would not be extracted after death, and they still would have the ability to instruct the next generation with their wisdom. Lucky for me, no one cared about a muggle loving wizard that was practically banished away from the magical world. They didn’t understand the sheer prodigal intellect the man had when dealing with economics and trade. Plus, it would be really fun to have a British butler called Alfred – Don’t judge me, Alfred Pennyworth is awesome.
After making sure the portrait was subservient (Although, he still retained some of his sass), I gave him access to pretty much all economic and law books that I could find, and I let Tilly follow his orders to build me a company that would publish my books without my input. I just wrote as much of my works as I could for a few months, and I let him deal with them and publish them at his leisure. He created a company in my name called Marvel Media, and I gave him a budget to do as he pleases, as long as he made me money and that it wouldn’t be illegal.
Wasn’t it a pleasant surprise that I discovered that in the span of a single year, Alfred had built a media empire that published the works of thousands of authors from all over the world, had hundreds of employees that worked in public relations, agents, Accountants and even lawyers. That’s not mentioning the proofreaders, reviewers, and publishers. He was buying companies left and right, turning my little nugget I gave him into an actual media empire. Last I heard, he was trying to build an entire news station, and maybe even a filming studio. I stopped looking into it a while back, but with how strained he was becoming, I couldn’t allow him to just take up so much of Tilly’s time. So, I chose to make him a present.
It took the better part of a year, but I was able to transform Alfred into virtual intelligence (Basically a low-grade AI). Well, I didn’t really do it, as much as I created runes that allowed him to interact directly with computer programs, as well as splitting his consciousness to deal with multiple tasks. I was a good programmer and a decent mathematician in my spare time, but I don’t think I had the technical capability to build an actual virtual intelligence without the painting as a base. How Tony Stark was able to do it, I had no idea. That guy must be something else when it came to tech.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Alfred was very grateful towards my help, and even Tilly seemed relieved that she won’t be called in to help the former portrait this much, and I practically washed my hands of the company, leaving Alfred to do whatever he wanted. I wasn’t that interested in it, to be honest, I just didn’t want to need money for a second in my life.
As for my magic, I will be honest and say that the magical education, at least what is available to the public, just felt lacking. I tried using a wand and it just felt unnecessary. It just helped me focus my spells, and for some reason, my control was practically impeccable even without it. As for the magic itself, it seems to be summarized into the equation: SPELL = INCANTATION + WAND MOVEMENT. Which works for them but allows no flexibility with these spells. Imagine magic as a sound, the spell can be considered the frequency of the sound. In its simplest form, a spell is just a small wave of magic with a certain frequency. Casting a spell by simply replicating its frequency is like using gold to wipe your ass after shitting. Yes, it works but it's definitely a waste of magical potential. Sure, arithmancy expert could alter their spells, and weave them as they go, but these were a fraction of a fraction of the entire population of wizards and witches. The average magical only learnt a few spells that they cast during their lives. No wonder it was so easy to conquer them. All it would take is an above average wizard that’s ambitious enough to actually learn about magic, and they would have a new dark lord with ‘fearsome abilities’ and ‘unlimited power’.
Magic was oddly easy, but I found it lacking. There was just something missing there, something that everyone neglected when casting magic, and it was driving me insane. Even the magical branches were restricted to what is taught in Hogwarts normally, like Charms, transfiguration and the like. Any information on the Dark Arts, Blood Magic, Soul Magic and Rituals is nonexistent in the USA in general. There were only faint warnings with morbid details of damning your soul into hell or whatever, and practitioners were hunted down should their spells be detected.
My favorite magical field was honestly the runes, and it wasn’t just because I practically mastered the entire field in a month because of my language perk – while it made things a lot easier, runes were on another level when compared to a normal language; there were some intricacies that come with abstract meanings and certain interactions that made my learning of them to be quite a lot harder than it was learning any other mundane language. What excited me the most was the fact that they allowed me to do anything with enough preparation and a large enough runic array. It was a magic system on its own that could perform miracles that people wouldn’t have been able to cast with a wand. I was probably going to be the foremost expert on runes in the magical world before my majority, and that’s not me being arrogant, that’s a fact.
Honestly, my skill in magic put me off from going to magic school. I was invited to attend Ilvermorny, and I honestly didn’t know whether to go or not. For one thing, I knew that I needed to start meeting people and stop living like a hermit in my mansion, but I would just be so bored out of my mind if I go.
At the thought of my magical schooling, I couldn’t help but think of Hogwarts. My birth parents would have probably wanted me to go there, and for all the brilliant things that may come with going there, like discovering the castle’s many secrets, or just visiting the Room of Requirements, I still didn’t want to deal with the hassle. I thought that I was an orphan like Harry Potter, at first, but I discovered that the Potters were alive and well, and even had two other children without any mention of me.
Honestly, I didn’t care why they abandoned me, and I didn’t really care. I don’t think any decent parent would ever knowingly give me away to a place like Privet Drive, and if they didn’t know how I was treated, they were definitely neglectful. Either way, they were in the past now, and I stopped thinking about them long ago. I wasn’t going out of my way to antagonize them, or even join them, I’ll just leave them be, with an ocean between us. This isn’t some revenge story about me getting back at my neglectful parents who abandoned me. Guilty or not, I decided to move on. It would be better for both of us. They could forget the child they left behind like they probably wanted to, and I could forget about their existence and live my life as I saw fit.
Speaking of living my life, a few months back, to make my decision about my schooling, I just decided to enroll myself for a semester in Muggle school, just to see how I could interact with children my own age. It was honestly, horrible. I forgot how bratty eleven-year-old children really were. The very thought that I would deal with other kids, with magic no less, was frightening. It wasn’t my fault I was much more mature than the other children.
Still, I decided to brace myself and attend the entire semester, and I was able to stomach not seriously injuring any of the kids, although I came very close to lashing out at some of the bullies that kept annoying me because of my grades.
Today was actually a field trip to a museum. It was a nice place with enough exhibits, and as a person capable of reading any text, it was interesting to see what was actually written by the people in the past. I left the group, unwilling to deal with their stupid questions and set out on my own.
After a while, I notice something that gains my interest, as I can feel the magic coming from the other end of the room. I haven't had much experience with magical sensing, I just know the basics. Still, it's one of the skills I would like to learn but never had the time to do it as I needed to practice every type of enchantment to get myself familiar enough to recognize them later. I, of course, practised sensing dark magic, in case someone sends me a cursed item or so. But this doesn't feel dark, it feels vast, strong, endless really, and confusingly familiar. I can't put my finger on it. It's like it's calling me. I slowly move towards it. It's probably a bad idea, but it's definitely a bad idea. I shouldn't go near an ancient artifact without knowing what it does. I check my mental barriers and nothing is influencing my mind. Then why do I want to go find out what it does? Before I contemplate the issue, the artifact is inches in front of me.
I looked down to see the description. The artifact is apparently called the Wadjet eye or the eye of Horus, which is a concept and symbol in ancient Egyptian religion that represents well-being, healing, and protection. It derives from the mythical conflict between the god Horus with his rival Set, in which Set tore out or destroyed one or both of Horus's eyes but was then healed by the Wadjet, also known as the Serpent Goddess, and given an amulet with her symbol which was believed to have protective magical power. The symbol was reused in ancient Egypt as a way to worship the goddess and pray for her protection.
That's all well and good but the issue is that while to everyone else this amulet takes the appearance of an eye, it looks like something a lot different to me. The eye resembles the symbol of the deathly hallows. I've seen drawings of the Wadjet eye before and while this amulet does resemble it, it's not the same symbol. I can clearly see the eye shaped like a triangle, the pupil being the circle and a vertical line cutting the triangle in half.
Did the symbol come from that far back? Were the Peverells that ancient? I know the ancient Egyptian sorcerers were obsessed with immortality but did the tale of three brothers come from that far back? As I lose myself in my pondering, I realize that my hand is almost touching the eye. As I bring my hand back, someone bumps into me, I can see a rune light up on the symbol. Just one rune, that I don't understand. Usually, you use multiple runes for the array to make sense, otherwise, it can do many random things by itself. Not the time, I can't let go of the amulet, like it's stuck on my finger. I can feel my magic being drained by the rune and I think if it was anyone else, they would have died from magical exhaustion by now. My lightning bolt scar on my forehead is also glowing. I'm almost out of magic, and I'm really panicking, suddenly I feel myself pulled by the navel, like a portkey, I see the world turn white for a second and close my eyes. I let go of the amulet that dissolves into ash upon contact with the ground. I look around me and I see a beautiful beach. I feel lightheaded for a moment and then the world turns black.
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Back at the museum, a woman in her thirties witnessed the entire affair. She was pale, with long wavy black hair and brilliant emerald eyes that were far too old for her age. She smiled softly, "I wish you good luck, dear girl. You’re going to need it."