Julian returned to the orphanage in a surprisingly good mood after his first day of school, buoyed largely by his interaction with Harry.
I really hope Dumbledore does not decide to make trouble for me just because I chose to be friends with Harry, he thought, his lips pulling into a faint frown.
It was not paranoia. In the books, it had been heavily implied that the old wizard had deliberately nudged and manipulated Harry's life after he became an orphan, guiding him step by careful step toward the role of willing sacrifice. The idea made Julian's skin crawl. He would not be shocked in the slightest if, in this world, his own presence ended up being seen as an obstacle or an irritant.
On top of that, there was the whole matter of legilimency.
If Dumbledore truly used that kind of magic freely, then he was walking around with the ability to read people's minds or nudge their thoughts, like it was the most natural thing in the world. All the headmaster would need to do was slip a soft suggestion into Julian's mind, something about drifting away from Harry, and the problem of an interfering friend might quietly solve itself.
Jokes on him. I plan to fix that problem tonight with my smithing, Julian thought, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest as he pictured the old wizard's face twisting in frustration when he failed to pry his way into Julian's head.
He did not deny that Dumbledore was, broadly speaking, a good man. But Julian refused to forget that the man was also a war veteran, someone who had seen and done terrible things in the name of the greater good. People like that did not always draw clean lines between right and wrong. Sometimes they just weighed outcomes and acted, no matter who got hurt along the way.
...
The caretaker of Saint Mathews was waiting by the entrance when Julian and the other children arrived. She was a kind-looking woman, about five foot six, with medium-length brown hair and warm tan skin. She carried a bit of extra weight, enough to look comfortably plump rather than truly overweight, which somehow added to the soft, motherly impression she gave off.
"Welcome back, everyone," she called, her tone firm but not unkind. "I expect you all to do your homework and show it to me before the end of the day."
As she said this, she leveled a very pointed, stern gaze at a few specific kids, who immediately looked away, suddenly fascinated by their shoes.
Julian could not help a small chuckle. It seemed that in this version of Earth, kids hated homework just as much as they did in his old world.
He found it even more amusing when he walked straight up to the caretaker, held out his completed papers, and said quite calmly, "I already finished mine."
The woman blinked at him, genuinely taken aback. Suspicion flickered in her eyes as she accepted the pages and scanned through them, clearly expecting sloppy work or half-finished answers. Instead, she was met with clean, accurate responses. After a moment, she sighed, a little impressed despite herself, and handed the homework back.
Julian accepted the papers with a small nod. One benefit of being leagues beyond his classmates academically was that work like this cost him very little time. Half an hour at most, and most of that spent on physically writing, not thinking.
...
With the rest of the day effectively free, Julian knew he needed to plan carefully.
Obviously, I cannot just lock myself in my room and use the astral forge ticket. They will start asking questions if I skip dinner or vanish for too long, he thought, running through possible excuses and discarding them one by one.
I guess for now, I should focus on figuring out what is going on with my magic, especially since Harry and I apparently had an entire conversation in Parseltongue without noticing.
That particular revelation had rattled him.
He had not even known it happened until one of the other kids at the orphanage mentioned it to him. According to the kid, midway through a perfectly normal conversation, both Julian and Harry had suddenly shifted into speaking in strange hissing noises, like snakes arguing over something. The other boy had been frightened and fascinated in equal measure.
It is possible this body has some parseltongue-capable wizard ancestry hidden in the family tree, Julian reasoned, which would also line up with my unusual hair color. Now that I think about it, that ability might have been dormant and only awakened when the potion cleared my magic circuits.
The more he considered it, the more sense it made.
If the talent is tied to blood, then all pure-blood wizards might technically have the genetic potential to manifest these kinds of gifts. But over generations, their magic circuits could have degraded from disuse, blocking those abilities from surfacing. The potion cleared that gunk away for me, so the talent reappeared.
He could practically imagine the pure-blood elite having collective heart attacks if they could hear the line of thought running through his mind.
In a few strokes, Julian had stumbled on a theory that painted a brutally unflattering picture. Their supposed decline in power and rarity of magical gifts had nothing to do with maintaining blood purity, and everything to do with the fact that they and their ancestors had wasted their abilities. Their magic had atrophied. They were not noble guardians of tradition. They were, in effect, wizards who had let their own potential rot.
Meanwhile, this also neatly explained why half-bloods often turned out to be exceptionally talented. The sudden introduction of fresh, non-magical blood might bring in cleaner, less damaged circuits, which in turn helped repair or bypass some of the long-neglected ones.
...
Julian, of course, had no way of proving any of this and would not for a long time. Items capable of purifying or restoring magic circuits simply did not exist in known wizarding lore. As far as the world was concerned, such things were impossible.
Wait. If this is true, he realized suddenly, does that mean I might have other bloodline gifts too? Pure-blood families all intermarried at some point. Their traits must have passed all over the place.
That notion lodged itself firmly in his mind, and he spent the next few hours before dinner trying to test the idea. He experimented with focusing his magic, tried to reach for any unusual instinct or sensation, tried subtle things like enhancing his senses, reinforcing his body, or nudging objects without a wand.
Unfortunately, the ironic part was that most bloodline gifts needed a specific magical environment or event to truly manifest. He was stuck in the muggle world, surrounded by dull concrete, old wood, and cheap furniture.
No enchanted objects, no magical creatures, no spellwork lingering in the air. Just the faint hum of electricity and the distant sounds of cars.
By the time dinner rolled around, Julian was forced to admit that he could not draw any real conclusions. The possibility of hidden talents remained just that, a possibility. For now, he would have to be patient. The wizarding world, and all its opportunities for testing his theories, still lay ahead.