(Mid October, 1990, Atterberry Ranch, Ireland)

Bureaucracy magic was such bollocks. Mom and I had to spend a whole afternoon, in the middle of summer, filling out paperwork. Only about a fifth of it was normal enrollment papers for school, the rest was… complicated.

I didn't legally exist, in fact I couldn't legally exist. Mom had broken a bunch of laws when she made me. I couldn't walk down Diagon Alley without every wizard in a kilometre either fleeing on sight— or for the braver ones, swarming me like a thousand angry hornets— much less attend school. So I would be in disguise as the aspiring young witch Artemis Artwork Atterberry. A lie by omission. But then that created whole new problems, such as ‘How and why are you in the country undocumented?’, and ‘If you are a natural born citizen, why didn't you have any proof of birth?’

Eventually we did some ancient verification thing that wizards of the past did with blood that ended up ‘confirming’ that I was a second generation magic user, with blood ties to Mom, and born on October 30th 1979. That was of course full of shit, but they didn't need to know that I could fake out their blood test.

Anyway, that was proof enough that Mom was my parent, and luckily Mom was a huge loner at the time so no one saw her not being pregnant. Thus, we successfully faked our way into thinking that I was six years older than I was!

But why did we do all of that? Why spend a warm and dry summer day dealing with bureaucracy instead of frolicking in a clover field? Well… I was bored. There was no way I was going to wait any longer. It sounded silly, I knew it did, but I couldn't stand it anymore. I craved new and Interesting things, that was a need every child had, a need to learn. At first I was sated by what was in front of me; Atterberry Ranch, the animals on it, the mundane biology of a pig, the lung structure of a bird, the language of a mother. Then I branched out; humans, people, muggles. Then into stories; tales, fables, fiction, classics.

Science was the longest, from the day of my hatching I had always tried to understand and grow. I had read every science book I could get my hands on. It took some time, but eventually that too ran out. Philosophy was a dead end in terms of entertainment, and I had long since accepted that my worldview would always shift and change as I gained more experiences.

So, I could either lose the careful shell of sanity that I had maintained over the years, or I could do a bunch of paperwork so that I could go to Hogwarts in the following 1991-1992 school year. I ended up having a minor breakdown in front of Mom when I explained it to her.

It's easy to joke about it now, but at the time it was a very real threat to my continued existence. And by ‘my’ I mean my ego, my current and continued… I don't know?! The bit of me that likes hugs, and flowers, and flying, and dry internal monologues that pretend to be witty.

I sighed heavily, holding the reason for all those anguishes in my hands. A letter, one addressed to me. It was so unfair that some people— like Mom— literally got these hand delivered to them without even knowing anything about any of this. Meanwhile I had to have Mom get me a compendium of all British magical law ever, sort through it, then do what had to be at least ten kilos of paperwork, just so that I could legally be who I was. Mostly.

I never thought I would measure paperwork by ‘number of kilograms left’ before this.

More noises escaped my mouth, this time it sounded like a groan, or maybe a low pitched whine. Meh, same thing.

I was sitting on the couch, Mom was standing behind me. The owl had arrived ten minutes ago. Mom had called me over, and I had been staring at the letter since.

It was a yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green to Ms. Artemis A. Atterberry, The Room at the end of the Hall, Atterberry Ranch, The Irish Fae Wilds.

“Well, go on! Open it!” Mom said encouragingly. I really didn't have a reason not. Even something absurd had happened and I got rejected— which I was fairly certain they couldn't even legally do— then the letter would be addressed to Mom, not me.

I still hesitated, thinking of everything that led me to this point, and everything that would come after.

I flipped the envelope over, the other side had a purple wax seal stamped with the crest of Hogwarts. I unsealed the stamp with my thumb nail, and pulled out the letter.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL

of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Ms Atterberry,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.

Yours sincerely,

~Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress

It was about what I was expecting. There was also a second page in the envelope that detailed the needed school supplies. After reading both pages over, I ate the letters whole, envelope included.

“Ha! Knew it! Those lazy bags of bones!” I shouted, my arms raised in victory after I analysed the letter.

They were manually typed out… by students! Then signed by Prof. McGonagall, before being stamped by Dumbledore. Such an odd creation process. And why have the students uses the typewriters when you could have them work automatically? Was it that hard to like their ID magic— which I knew was automated— to an enchanted typewriter? Maybe it was. From what I could gather, wizards were bad at understanding multi-step mechanisms.

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“So… did you get that list memorised, or…” Mom said. It was then that I realised she had been looking at me funny.

I chuckled lightly, and grew an exact copy— including hidden magical meta-data— from my arm. I grabbed it as it fell and handed it to her. She smiled gently as she received it, saying a quiet ‘thank you’.

She murmured off the items I would need. “Books, cauldron, phials, some sort of pet, and a wand…” she said. “I think you can make everything else. I'll show you my old robes and hat, I'm sure I have them around here somewhere.” She then beckoned me to follow her through her bedroom and into the attached closet. After a few moments of looking around, she pulled a box out from under an old set of shoes. She placed the box down on the floor in the middle of her room and opened it slowly. I crouched down on the floor with her and watched.

There were a variety of items in the box, all of them old. Several letters, a smushed hat, a broken wand, a notebook, academic robes with gold accents, a yellow and black striped tie. She took out the items one by one, laying them on the floor delicately. I looked at the robes and tie with extra attention, the smallest of the robes shared a… smell with the tie.

Not a real smell, in terms of real smell, all the items smelled like Mom. It was a whiff of magic, long since used. Colour changing enchantments I determined, more so by context than by any ability of mine to analyse the magic. I was perceptive, but time was strong and the box was not made for preservation beyond the normal.

“One tie, to key into their system.” I said. Mom looked at me like I said something silly, her brow slightly furrowed, and her head tilting to the side. “The colour changing upon house selection.” I specified.

She pondered that for a few moments before nodding.

“I think I can make a wand myself.” I said, quietly, almost a whisper. I had theories before, but the broken wand made me sure. From the looks of it, the wand had snapped in half after hitting a hard object with its tip. Like someone had tried to stab a rock with it. The insides of the wand laid bare, unicorn hair, 26cm(10.2in), maple wood, dead. The sight sparked an odd feeling in me, a melancholy that the past was in the past, never to be again. It was a flavour most perplexing.

Mom raised an eyebrow at me. There were reasons why wand making was a dedicated profession. It was never an easy feat. Ironically, Mom had explained all of that to me in the same conversation in which she had told me that she had made her current wand herself.

It had something of Mercy's as its core, probably a tail feather. She hadn't ever told me that, but I had used the wand a few times over the years, so I had picked up on the familiar feeling.

Wands worked because of their two basic components, a conductor, and a stabiliser. Also more commonly known as the core and the wood of the wand. There are two main challenges of wand making. The first is getting the two pieces to fuse together, like a lock and its key. The second is getting the right wizard for the wand.

Anybody can use most wands, but doing so would be ineffective. A wizard— or in my case, a witch. But because of sexism inherent to the English language, and wizarding society, the non-gendered default is masculine. Thus, ‘wizard’— needs a wand that fits them, else their spells will be slow to cast and lacking in power.

“Let's at least go outside before you start trying, Sweety.” Mom said. Ah, she must have recognised my ‘I am going to do something absurd and reckless’ face. Which, yeah, that's fair. The way that people find the right wand is by tossing uncontrolled bursts of magic until they find a wand that doesn't try to break something, which is not the type of experimenting that Mom would allow in the house.

⋇⋆✦⋆⋇

Later, Mom and I were sitting in chairs on the porch. I was using the grass as target practice! Not really, but it certainly felt like that. I had been trial and error testing for two hours now, Mom had went inside and made sandwiches halfway through.

Mmm, sandwiches… wait no, wand testing.

I had found a… functional wand that I could make. Unicorn hair, 33cm(12.9in), of oak wood. It worked… but I wasn't very happy with it. I found it in the first twenty minutes of testing, cycling through all the woods in combination with a unicorn hair core. I hadn't found anything better— aside from narrowing down the size— since. I was currently testing some more exotic combinations. For some reason they were less destructive towards their environment, and more destructive of themselves.

Cuddle-bug™ chitin with ash wood turned itself into bubbles, but with vine wood it melted into ants. Which was very creepy. I ate the ants.

Anything with thestral parts exploded in my hand. With varying shrapnel depending on the wood. Mom had already layered a bunch of protection charms onto herself, so she was fine.

Thunderbird heartstring with sycamore wood caught fire and released three lances of lightning, luckily they hit the grass and got grounded. I swung the wand through the air a few times to put out the fire. Funnily enough, the wand still worked, though the second time had only one Lance of lightning and more sparks. A third go finished the job, as it just let out a few sparks before turning to ash.

A replica of the tongue I bit off Titania— long story— with basilisk bone as a stabiliser made a blast of cold air… that was strong enough to leave a metre deep gash on the yard. I would have to fix that later, but at least that combination didn't try to kill itself.

Wyrm tail spike with hawthorn wood made four earth spikes spear out of the ground where I pointed it. It was not lost on me that the spikes were facing towards me before they crumbled.

Ămūrîn heartstone shard with blackthorn wood exploded into stone shrapnel.

Lindwurm fang with yew wood shot out a golden bolt that turned the grass in a 40cm radius of where it struck to salt. I collected the salt and examined it. The salt wasn't a temporary transmutation, nor was it permanent but reversible like many forms of petrification. It was real salt, even the magic stored in it— as all things had at least a wee bit of magic in them— said that it was completely ordinary, which was fascinating…

At some point Mom wished luck as she went inside, for good this time. At first she had been pretty impressed that I could actually make wands after literally no training, but eventually her excitement died down. I was quite certain she thought I was chasing ghosts at this point. I had made a wand that worked, why would I need something special?

I just-I could do better, I was sure of it. I thought that I could map it all out, not just the basic woods and cores, but the whole thing. If I just measured every speck and flake of magic. If I just looked in more detail, and at higher temporal resolution. If I just… just cross-referenced everything then I'd have to find the pattern eventually. I would have to. I had to-it would happen. It couldn't not happen! That's not how maths work, so it would happen!

I crushed a wand made of gold and flesh in my hand, its still beating heart pulsing out its blood onto the deck. I sighed. The wand burst into fire, and a few moments later a golden beetle the size of my foot crawled from the ashes. Why a beetle?! Why not a spider or a wasp or a moth or a crab, or any other invertebrate?! There had to be a reason. Somehow, somewhere, but it just wasn't here.

I wanted to know. My right hand was covered in blood— and how was that thing alive?! It should be dead. Why did it burn up like a phoenix? It shouldn't do that, it should be dead!

I clenched my hands harder. I was breathing heavily, my hands started holding my head tightly. I couldn't breathe right, the air I consumed was too small, the breaths too shallow. I was ravenous. Hungry, empty, I needed food. I needed air. I couldn't breathe.

I didn't know what was happening. ‘Rules,’ a thought was given name. My focus tilted as the word echoed in my head.

The beetle was crawling away from me. I couldn't let it escape. I lunged after it, pouncing from my chair. Its carapace burned when I touched it, but I held the beetle in my grasp as tightly as I could. I couldn't think straight but I couldn't let go. Its metallic brass carapace glowed red hot, the combination of colour and glow looking like radiant gold as its heat maimed my body.

My hands burned, I smelled the skin burning. My blouse caught fire, but I couldn't let the thing I had made go, and I couldn't think through the pain and panic. I held the beetle tighter and tighter until eventually it popped. I was covered in its ichor, and my whole body was now on fire. My hair, clothes, and skin, all turned to ash under the heat of the beetle's blood. I wanted to scream, but I still couldn't breathe. The deck near me caught fire.

The porch was on fire.

The house was in danger.

Mom was in the house.

Overrides activated, and the air around me exploded with frost. In just a couple seconds the fire was extinguished. Mom hadn't even noticed that anything had happened, she was in the library, reading on one of the library's couches. I felt… numb, and my cheeks were wet. A part of my mind said that both of those were to be expected. But at the moment I didn't want to hear it. At least I wasn't having a panic attack anymore. Was that a panic attack? I wasn't sure, I hadn't ever had one before.

That shouldn't've lasted so long. Clearly, I needed to update what qualified as me being in danger, maybe add tiers to the overrides.

A couple seconds of doing that later, and I was still curled up burnt on the porch. My hands were ash covered skeletons, burnt down to the bone, and the rest of my body wasn't much better. Everything was damaged, burnt to a fatal degree. Though that didn't mean anything catastrophic for me. I shed my human shape, shifting into a sludge of light blue slime. I ate and replaced the burnt bits of the deck, then replaced my body. If I didn't know better, I wouldn't even notice that anything was damaged to begin with.

I sighed, again. I stood up and walked inside, that was enough wand testing for one day. With a dismissive wave of my bare hand, the yard fixed itself. Holes were filled in, mounds were flattened, gashes repaired, and grass regrown.

I would figure out a better wand eventually, I had plenty of time before school started. But in the meantime I would cook dinner.

It was the least I could do for Mom after almost burning the house down.