I was four when I first used magic. I was mid-tantrum, I've been told, not wanting to finish my greens but really wanting to eat the chocolatey goodness that had been promised for pudding.
I supposedly worked myself up, full on toddler meltdown, and in one outraged scream, managed to turn all the food in the house into cake.
I am very proud of this story.
My father had calmed me down and explained about how vegetables were healthy and then went on to explain about magic and the wizarding world, but I was only little so none of it really stuck. But that was the beginning, a story told every birthday and Christmas.
I had several other bouts of uncontrolled magic until, as everyone does, until my ninth birthday when my father finally agreed to teach me and I got my first lesson in power and meditation.
The generally accepted method of teaching seen throughout the wizarding world revolved around the practice of channeling one's magic through a wand, a powerful method but limiting. Unfortunately most of the other methods of teaching and channeling methods have been lost to time.
My father was an archaeologist and a philosopher. He believed that this practice of channeling magic in a uniformed and overly controlled way might be damaging and limit the witch or wizards power greatly.
He believed magic could be controlled through other methods and had spent many years meditating and training only to become one of very few magicians to perform wandless magic.
Unfortunately he got overconfident, overstretched himself and seemed to exhaust his magical ability. He lost his honor and his life's work and his respect in the magical community.
He spent a year or two in mourning until he began to view his loss in a new light.
He turned back to meditation, not for personal gain and exploitation of power but for healing and knowledge.
After a while he met my mother and fell in love, having me, hello.
But, as you would expect with this very fanciful tale, my mother died. Tragically. Boring old unpreventable disease.
I was two, and yes it still stings a bit. But we move.
Me and dad get on quite well and I am his new prodigy.
At nine, as I've mentioned, he decided I was old enough to teach and so he tested his theory.
I would like to clarify that as much as his work was important to him, my father was not some sort of crazy scientist experimenting on a kid, in fact everything he did was in no way dangerous or irreversible in the slightest, he was just challenging the norms.
Usually a young witch or wizard would be brought up by their family until the age of eleven, or thereabouts, and then they would be sent off to school and would learn all the magic they would need for a lifetime in seven short years.
From the first day, first years are given wands and taught to use them and channel their power through this sparkly little stick.
Theory wasn't even in the curriculum until fifth or sixth year, and even then was incomplete and marginally optional.
I knew all this because my father complained about it day in, day out, and he was very well informed.
Our lessons were a little different.
We would wake up at eight/ nine ish and make breakfast and discuss 'laws' and other theories, debating different points and 'expanding our minds'.
After breakfast, father would guide me and help me find the magic inside me.
He taught me to control the magic inside me, before it even reached out to affect the material world.
We did this for a year or so.
By the time I was ten I was incredibly confident with my magical ability and was trusting in myself in a way that my father was baffled by, all this without using a single 'spell' or trying to affect the world outwardly.
One day, father seemed to decide I was ready.
"Focus your mind, find that energy within you-"
"The big red bubble?"
"The big red bubble, that's right."
I had performed the exercises as normal but then he had asked something new;
"Put your hands out." he had told me, and I had followed his instructions, "what do you want to happen?" he asked me.
I remember being confused.
"What?"
"What do you want to happen? Anything in the world?"
"Umm..." I remember my mind going blank, like when you're asked your favourite book and every book you've ever read just falls out of your head.
But that was one of our rules, you could always take your time to answer with my father. He always said he preferred late answers with thought and attention than rushed panicked ones with empty, automatic replies. Preferred talking and sharing rather than 'robots'.
So I took my time and centered myself and thought.
Ice cream, I realised.
It was hot in the greenhouse. Icecream.
He'd laughed when I told him, but accepted it and let me focus.
I remember feeling strange with my hand out but I did as he recommended, focusing like before but channeling it out, into my hand.
It took a while but I felt something tingling, then something cold.
I opened my eyes, and there was the ice cream.
Father told me it had flown all the way from the house.
And there it was, my first bit of magic, wandless. It only took two years of preparation; a breakthrough in the ideas of teaching magic.
But father let it be. He didn't print it anywhere, didn't show me off to philosophers or professors, he just let me learn.
I knew he had a diary somewhere, where he documented things, work yes but birthdays as well and holidays and funny moments of the day.
I liked my dad very much.
At eleven, my Hogwarts letter arrived.
I declined it, easily. My studies were fun and I got to eat every ice cream I summoned to me and I do not regret that decision, but now I'm fifteen. Fifteen years old and have about two friends that I see once a month? And no other excitement or real-world-stuff.
That was when the idea of Hogwarts got real interesting.
A/n
Thankyou for reading! And it's all gonna be original photography btw xxx
