The Borough of Islington, London
July, 1988
"Waaaaaah!"
The loud crying of a child echoed across the park.
An eight year old blond boy stood there sobbing, his small hand still tightly gripping the stick of a lollipop even though the candy itself had already disappeared from his palm. The culprit behind all of this had already turned around and begun walking home, completely ignoring the child he had just robbed.
His name was Victor White.
Victor was an eleven year old boy with a thin figure and neatly styled silver hair that looked unusually tidy for someone his age. He wore a plain white T-shirt and blue jeans, the kind of casual clothing any ordinary child might wear while playing outside. He lived at No. 17 in the Borough of Islington, London, a quiet neighborhood where nothing particularly unusual ever seemed to happen.
In his hand, he was holding a rainbow-colored fan-shaped lollipop. It was the exact same lollipop he had just 'generously' given to the neighbor's child a moment earlier before calmly taking it back.
"Desserts really are the easiest way to make people happy," Victor muttered to himself as he walked. "It would be even better if they didn't cause cavities."
Victor licked the lollipop with obvious satisfaction. The pain of cavities was something too distant to matter for a child who lost teeth more frequently than he replaced drinking cups anyway.
Now that I've been reborn, Victor thought calmly, the first thing I should do is enjoy a carefree and happy childhood together with other kids.
---
A car accident had brought Victor White into this familiar yet strange world.
In his previous life, he had been a former soldier who was struggling to find work after leaving the military. Life had not been particularly kind to him, and his future had been uncertain at best until a sudden accident on the road abruptly ended everything.
When he opened his eyes again, he had already become a child in this new world.
At first, the environment around him seemed completely ordinary, almost identical to the normal human society he once knew. However, there were subtle differences that gradually revealed the truth.
For example, the Black family had once lived in the villa at Number Twelve next door, here in the Borough of Islington. For a long time, there had been two residents living there. Only a few months ago, however, one of them had disappeared, leaving only a single inhabitant behind.
Victor knew this not because he had spoken with them, but because he could feel them.
More precisely, he could feel their souls. In this cases, the souls he sensed did not even belong to humans but to something that can teleport which he think is house elves. It did not take Victor long to realize where he was. This was the world of the famous Harry Potter series.
As someone from Earth who had read the original novels several times, Victor knew perfectly well what kind of world this was. Magic existed here real magic. Objects could float through the air, things could vanish without leaving a trace, and wizards could even teleport from place to place.
In this life, Victor also had a pair of very loving parents. Both of them were ordinary Muggles without any magical abilities or at least, there had never been any sign of magic in Victor's memories of them.
However, the world of Harry Potter was not entirely friendly to Muggles.
Especially not after the final boss of the story 'Voldemort' returned to power. If Victor wanted to protect the safety of his parents, he really only had two choices. Either leave Europe as quickly as possible. Or eliminate Voldemort before he rose again. Victor almost laughed at that thought.
Me? Fight Voldemort? Seriously?
---
When Victor first arrived in this world, he could hardly believe that he possessed the strange ability to see the souls of all living creatures.
At first, he assumed it was nothing more than a hallucination caused by the shock of reincarnation. However, as he gradually began to explore the limits of his own body, a terrifying truth slowly revealed itself.
Victor discovered that he resembled a Dementor in human form.
He could clearly see the soul within other people, a faint presence that revealed their vitality and existence. Even worse, he possessed an uncontrollable hunger toward those souls especially when he stood close to another person.
Whenever someone approached him, Victor had to struggle to suppress the instinctive urge to draw their soul out of their body. It was an extremely dangerous ability.
Victor realized just how dangerous it truly was during one horrifying moment involving his father.
Edward White had been asleep at the time, resting after a long day of cooking and taking care of the house. Victor had been sitting nearby when the strange hunger inside him suddenly awakened. Before he even understood what was happening, something within him reached outward.
A faint thread of light began to drift out of Edward's chest.
Victor panicked and immediately stopped. Even so, he had already extracted something. Perhaps it was part of a soul or perhaps it was simply happiness, a strange substance that felt sweet yet not overwhelming.
That experience explained why Victor always carried candy with him. Eating sweets felt almost like consuming souls or emotion, he doesnt try the first one yet.
---
After taking some time to accept the terrifying reality that he possessed abilities similar to a Dementor, Victor began studying those abilities carefully.
First of all, he confirmed that his powers were not limited to simply seeing souls or absorbing them.
Victor could also observe the strength or synchronization between a body and its soul. When he focused his attention, the brightness and shape of a person's soul became clearly visible. The greater the resemblance between the soul's shape and the body's form. And the more luminous the soul appeared, the better it was synchronized with the physical body.
Victor began using this 'synchronization' as a standard to determine whether he could absorb someone's soul.
His father, Edward, had almost no synchronization between his body and soul. That meant Victor could theoretically absorb it. His mother, Rose, however, possessed much stronger synchronization. Because of that, Victor could not absorb her soul at all. Victor eventually discovered that his own soul was extremely weak. The reason was simple.
His soul was not whole.
It was formed from the fusion of two broken and fractured souls, awkwardly merged together. Because of that, the connection between his body and soul was extremely weak. Victor hoped that this synchronization could be strengthened. And the method for improving it might involve absorbing other souls.
When he accidentally absorbed part of Edward's soul earlier, Victor clearly saw the soul's integrity fluctuate. If he had not stopped in time, Edward's soul might have become part of Victor's own.
But Victor believed he was still a human with a good sense of morality. He would never do something as cruel as devouring the soul of his elderly father, a man who worked hard every day cooking meals for his family.
---
Emotions also seemed capable of strengthening Victor's synchronization.
One of the most effective methods was surprisingly simple: taking someone's happiness and turning it into sadness. Victor could not naturally generate despair or terror like a real Dementor. But he could replicate the emotional shift. For example. Giving a child a lollipop and then taking it back immediately.
By committing this small act of 'evil' repeatedly, Victor slowly collected fragments of emotional energy. Unfortunately, even after doing this for a long time, the integrity of his soul only improved slightly.
Fortunately, the condition of his soul did not seem to affect Victor's normal life. That meant he did not need to rush into doing anything truly terrible just to compensate for his incomplete soul.
It also meant he could still enjoy the final carefree moments of his childhood before Hogwarts eventually sent its acceptance letter.
---
Unfortunately, some unpleasant news appeared the moment Victor stepped into his living room. A small gray owl was flying frantically in circles near the ceiling.
There was only one possible reason for such a creature to appear inside his house. A letter had arrived from Hogwarts.
Today was Victor's eleventh birthday, and it was indeed the correct time for him to receive his acceptance letter. He had waited all morning without receiving anything, which was why he had spent the evening strengthening his soul instead.
But apparently the letter had finally arrived.
A middle-aged man with messy blond hair suddenly rushed toward him with a joyful expression, waving a piece of parchment with curled edges in his hand.
"Oh, Victor! My dear son, you're going to Hogwarts!"
Edward White, Victor's father, was a man in his forties who had been unemployed for quite some time. Over the past few months, Victor had always seen him as a simple stay at home father who handled household chores every day. Although his cooking was not bad, there had never been anything remotely magical about him.
Which made this situation completely unreasonable.
Why was he so excited about his son enrolling in Hogwarts, a 'special school' that should be completely unknown to the Muggle world?
Just a moment ago, Edward and Rose had been preparing a brand new school uniform for Victor.
And yet now suddenly everything had changed.
*******************************
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks. If you enjoy what I do, consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Ko-fi.com/lamurawhite Every little bit means the world!