Scum 5 (Patreon)

Scum

Chapter 5

-VB-

So Ravenclaw, huh? 

Well, I supposed that it fit me. A hermit who wanted to go stick around in the booneys to advance his magic continuously while keeping away from the politics and nastiness of the world… 

Yeah, Ravenclaw fit me well. I think.

-VB-

It was my first day in Charms class, and I sat in a seat of my choice in the exact middle on the right of the class and in the middle row of the raised pews. 

I was … excited.

I was going to meet Professor Flitwick, after all! 

The classroom got a little bit louder as the professor walked in. He walked in, a little humpy dumpy awkward goblin walk, and then he got behind the podium.

“Students! Welcome… to your first ever Charms class.”

And then as the class progressed, I was disappointed.

There were no lectures. Why would there be? Professor Flitwick taught children, not university students. There was nothing profound. In fact, most of what I started hearing sounded like a dumbed down primitive pseudoscience.

Like … I expected chemistry, even a little bit, but what I got was a lecture on alchemy. The non-functioning one. 

And then he started teaching us our “first” spell.

Wingardium Leviosa. 

I picked up my wand, cleared my throat, and then -.

“Wingardium leviosa.”

I stared at the feather as it started floating up. 

And I was disappointed. 

It was too easy. Too simple. It was … It was just the basic essences of mana concentrated through a medium. 

“Well done, Mister Marris! Well done!” 

I jolted in my seat and looked down at the professor, who was looking at me with pride. But then he saw the disappointment in my eyes. 

Professor Flitwick looked like he wanted to call me aside and ask what was wrong but maybe it was first day and all, so he didn’t. And probably forgot about it afterwards.

But yeah.

… I was disappointed.

-VB-

Learning new spells was actually fun. 

Learning new spells that were so pathetically simple that I could learn them in under half an hour was not fun. 

It wasn’t the professor’s fault. He really did a lot of good things. He made sure each student understood the assignment, didn’t slow down the 

So between classes and minimum effort homework, I spent the rest of my time away from halls and even the dorms. I commandeered one of the unused classrooms on the fifth floor and made it my personal room, complete with Bounded Fields and personal draperies suited to my taste. 

So I was more than a little surprised when I heard a knock. 

"... come in," I yelled from the front of my room, where I was experimenting with a particularly dangerous reaction between the Light and the Void, my two probably more prolifically used magics. 

Right now, though, I was more surprised by the fact that Albus Dumbledore managed to pierce through my Bounded Field to notice the door and knock on it. I mean… who else could it be?

The well-oiled hinges of the door made nary a sound until the door closed behind the headmaster who had just entered. 

I isolated the essence of light and the essence of the void into two separate inner bounded fields, and once I made sure they remained stable, turned around to see him. 

"Ah, Headmaster!" I grinned as if I hadn’t guessed who entered my new sanctum without so much as an iota of trouble. I did respect the man for his power, after all. If one forgot to respect dangerous things in life, then they died a rather stupid death.

And the most dangerous person in all of Hogwarts was currently dressed in a rainbow robe and a top hat with the red missing from the rainbows.

Albus Percivle Wolfric Dumbledore stared at me and the experiment behind me with incredulity. 

"Mister Marris… what a dangerous experiment you are performing," he remarked before looking around the room. "And what a cozy little room you've made of the unused classroom. Rather ingeniously, too, as there are no rules against it."

I blinked. Huh, I hadn't thought about that. I just did it because I thought it would be cool to have my own room where no one could easily steal my shit. 

"Thank you," I said. "I did try to recreate the feeling of home, but since I'm not over there on the American coast, it just ain't the same, you know?"

He nodded. "Home is always where our heart is. And the experiment, Mister Marris?"

I grinned. "It's really cool, actually! I already knew that the Light and the Void, as magics, could co-exist, but that was in balance within people. I thought that if I let them at each other in vacuum, they would explode. But they don't. No, they just mingle with each other. Wanna come look?"

"... I'd like to see this experiment, yes."

He seemed rather subdued. I wondered why. 

-VB-

The magical field that kept most wizards and witches from noticing the door and the room wasn’t strong enough to obscure itself from him. It was a rather good work for a child who hasn’t graduated from school yet.

But what caught his attention right now was the thing on the other side of the classroom. 

A bomb. 

The entire room was a bomb ready to go off at the slightest change, and despite such slight changes happening constantly, the room had yet to explode, implode, both, or collapse into nothingness.

He only felt it when he opened the door, and Minerva nearly froze when the colliding energies slipped out of the room. 

The room was still about to explode as far as his mind and core was concerned, but the focal point of it was at the front of the classroom. 

It was also there that one of the first years wa playing with magic.

It hurt to look at both of these energies, supposedly the Light and the Void according to Mister Marris. The former burned his eyes and the latter threatened to suck what Light there was within him out and into itself. 

He initially thought it was sunlight and shadow, but both paled in comparison to Light and Void. 

It was a new discovery to him, and yet Mister Marris tinkered with them while possessing absolute certainty that what he did was alright. Unlike the happily humming boy, Albus felt his body and magic begging him to distance himself from the dangerous magic in the room before something horrible happened. 

"They look rather dangerous."

"They're mere essences. Basically harmless," Mister Marris dismissed the claim. "They're only really dangerous when you let something with will or a significant lack of it get in touch with them, because both of them want to influence you.”

“The Light wants to influence you?”

“Of course,” the boy replied. “The Light makes you want more of it just like the Void makes you want more of the Void, and the two are diametrically opposed, despite the fact that one cannot exist without the other.”

Albus watched as the inner barriers holding the “essences” back dissipated after a single, dismissive gesture from the boy. 

The energies quickly went to touch each other and just sat there.

“Look closer,” the boy urged. “Right at where the energies meet.”

He did.

And then his eyes widened in alert as he watched the Light convert the Void where it was weak and the Void did the same where the Light was weak, but because no one side had the advantage, it seemed like they were just sticking to each other with no change. 

“It’s fascinating to see these fundamental natures of reality interacting, isn’t it?”

Albert had to agree, if reluctantly. “It is. Is it not dangerous?”

“It isn’t behind the barrier here,” Alan replied as he tapped the barrier, which physically repelled the boy’s tapping as if it was a solid object. “And the quantity of the essences inside are small enough that even if I got exposed to them, I can dispel them without a problem.”

“And you know this how, my boy?”

“Experiments I did over the past year,” he hummed without looking up at him. “But I did my experiments in a mana-poor environment in Newfoundland. I’m just repeating the same experiment I did at the start to see if being in a mana-rich environment changes the experiment result. If you want to look at the mana-poor experiment, then you can read it inside the folder marked ‘Newfoundland Experimentation Journal - Six Essence Experiments’ in the bottom shelf over there.”

Albus glimpsed at the notes the boy had in front of him instead of the one he gestured to and noted how meticulously he wrote down everything. 

“You are very studious, aren’t you, my boy?”

“I try to be,” he replied without any emotion rising to meet the praise. 

"Please keep me informed of your … studies. It is happening inside the castle, and I would hate to lose a talented student like yourself."

"... you're going to let me keep doing this?" the boy asked incredulously after a moment, turning around to face him fully for once. 

"I am."

He looked confused. "Normally, adults around me all tell me to stop. Why aren't you?"

Despite the still unnerving need to leave the room pulling at his mind, Albus smiled. "Is it not better to have you near teachers so that if something goes wrong, you can get help?" 'And keep an eye on you in the meantime.'

Mister Marris's boyish face twitched, betraying the irritation the boy felt (but why?), but it quickly disappeared under a polite smile. 

"Thanks then, Headmaster. You're a swell guy."

Albus left the room .. and when the door closed, he let out a deep sigh of relief. “Why did you let him continue?" Minerva asked, nearly shrieking in shock at the lack of action. She probably heard everything; it wasn’t as if the door and the classroom was particularly well insulated.

"Because I would rather not have a genius being a paranoid hermit doing who knows what. If we can help him, we can keep him from doing… unfortunate things."

Albus already heard from the Aurors about the boy. While displeasing the boy was not a concern for Albus, he felt that there was a chance that he could make the boy feel more connected with his peers and thus become invested in joining their community. It would certainly have a better result than what happened with Riddel, who never grew close to anyone. 

Minerva frowned. "Albus, that boy is doing something dangerous. Surely, you don't mean to let him continue!"

"The boy will do it whether he is at Hogwarts or not. He loves magic too much to just stop because someone said so. No, we should encourage Mister Marris to find more interest rather than hamper him. He is at the age where rebellion is not too far away."

Her frown didn't leave but her silence was an agreement that she would go along with this. For now. 

"Very well, but you better keep an eye on him more than you work on your paperwork, Albus!" she said as she walked ahead of him. 

He chuckled. "It was only one stack I misplaced!"

"That stack had the school budget, Albus!"