Time Rewound

Homework Forgotten

8th of August, 2025:

According to Jamie's dad, their family home number twelve Grimmauld Place, had once been a dark, gloomy, depressive house when he was his sons age, a house holding the figurative ghosts of its previous inhabitants, the ghosts of pureblood supremacy, disownment, and child abuse, but then he decided to renovate the horrible place and turn it into a proper home, not just a house people happen to live in.

When strolling through one of the many long, winding, painted beige corridors of the house, it wouldn't cross your mind, unless someone had told you, that dozens of atrocities could have been committed in the house. And at the moment, Jamie Potter was walking down one of these corridors toward his dads study, where he had left his summer homework that his dad had helped him with the previous night. He turned a corner and there was the door.

He took out a sewing needle from a small bag in his pocket. He pricked his finger, and placed the bleeding finger on the door. He heard it unlock. He staunched the blood and walked in. The scarlet walls were lined with mahogany bookcases matching the desk and chairs, and there was a plush grey rug that covered most of the floor.

His homework wasn't on the desk, but his dad probably just put it in one of the desk drawers by accident, after all, he had seemed a bit stressed last night, and today mum, dad and many of Jamie's aunts and uncles were called into the ministry of magic for "urgent business", as Mum had put it. uncle Oliver, aunt Angelina, and aunt Fleur were at Grimmauld as none of them had connections to the ministry.

Jamie walked to a bookcase at the end of the room and opened the book practical defensive magic and its use against the dark arts, volume 1, to page 27. Inside the book lay the key to the desk drawers. Jamie took it and walked back to the desk. He searched through the drawers, but when he got to the last drawer, he noticed something beneath the desk. There was the outline of a trapdoor, a very faint one, but it was there. Jamie was curious, but he had one thing to do in this room, and that was to get his homework, dad would get mad if he looked through his things without a good reason, and Jamie didn't fancy spending the whole summer grounded.

In the final drawer was his homework, and he took it out and turned to leave, but he just couldn't help his eyes wandering to the trapdoor. He moved his hand toward it, not to open it, of course, he just wanted to try and sense the magic around it. Professor McGonagall taught him to feel, and identify spells last school year, it's very advanced magic, so Jamie wasn't that good at it, but by the end of the year he knew most of the basics. The trapdoor was probably protected by so many spells he'd never be able to open it if he wanted to.

Jamie stood up. He took a deep breath and counted to ten. In his minds eye, he visualized himself, and the magic flowing through his body. It looked like blue electricity, and was spread evenly across his body. He focused on gathering the magic to his chest, his forehead sweating. The magic felt like static as it congregated toward his heart. He started pushing it toward his right hand, his head aching. He sat himself down on the floor, moving his hand to the trapdoor, his head straining as he concentrated on keeping the magic from dispersing from his hand. He pushed the magic from his hand with a gasp, and pulled it back in. He felt a warm, heavy weight in his hand, and could almost feel the iron taste of blood on his tongue.

He knew this type of magic, it was blood magic, like the door, that made it so that it only unlocked when either yourself, a blood descendant, or a person you've made a blood oath to, willingly put their blood on it. Blood magic is one of the most ancient, and most powerful types of magic, but it wasn't widely used anymore as it was heavily associated with dark magic since the war with Grindelwald, the association was only reinforced by the second war with Voldemort, as their regimes both used the magic extensively. Jamie knew he could very easily open the trapdoor, if dad was protecting it with layer of blood magic along with the magic on the study's door, than something incredibly powerful must be hidden inside, and dad was going to be at the ministry for a while, and it wasn't like Jamie wouldn't return whatever was in there, or use it for something bad, he'd just show it to Sam, and study it with him for a couple of hours, figure out what it could do. Dad couldn't really blame, after all he was the one to teach Jamie about blood magic in the first.