Side effects and awkward socialising

I stare at the singular black feather sprouting from my scalp.

The consequences of my own action.

Really it was my own fault as well. I had decided to continue to use the essence creation array even though I had no reason to after my conditions were cured while dismissing th colour change in my eyes and hair as unrelated, since they weren't related to any of the animals I got the essences from.

I had gotten greedy.

Once I got back with my wand and, after confirming that the trace wasn't on it yet, learnt the Full body-bind curse I had begun capturing birds by the dozens and had drunk glassfuls of bird lung essence every day.

Initially it had all gone well. I had began being able to run for longer and longer and the running itself had gotten easier as I'd begun feeling lighter…

Waking up on the third day with the feather, that I was currently looking at, was when that made me realise that the feeling of being lighter may not have just been a feeling, something I had confirmed later with a scale.

"Well, you're lighter. What's the problem with that?" someone who doesn't know about rituals would ask me, to which I'd agree. Being lighter wasn't really the problem but to explain the problem I'd have to explain the some of the essence creation array and the specifics of how I made it first.

See, the core part of the array is the 'meta trait extraction', which I based off the ritual to make something less salty without removing the salt.

It did exactly as named and extracted the metaphorical traits, though not magical traits since according to the book magic should resist the extraction. These traits of course aren't meant to cause biological changes, since the ritual it was based on didn't have a physical effect, and instead took the 'concept' of those traits.

The clearest example would be how me consuming the salamander regeneration essence, which contained the trait of 'recovering from damage', sped up my healing without increasing my metabolic trait to the point where I have a constant fever.

Of course, there are other parts of the array but all of them can be summarised as creating a medium, that's the red fluid produced, through which I can absorb those traits and so they aren't the problem here.

The problem here is that the 'meta trait extraction' apparently isn't as clean as I thought it would be and seemed to be extracting small amounts of biological traits as well.

Thankfully the biological traits were only in trace amounts compared to the metaphorical traits, that took up the majority of the essence, and so the changes weren't as fast. But that still didn't change the fact that if I drank too much of an essence then I'd start mutating.

So now I had no choice but to reshuffle my plans to focus on improving my ritual skills to make sure the next iteration of the essence extraction array didn't take any biological traits and try and create a ritual to undo all the changes already done.

"Really this is the last thing I needed to get hit with two weeks before leaving for Hogwarts," I say to my mirror self as I grab the feather.

One sharp tug later and I'm back to my normal self with a feather in hand, which I immediately burn with a lighter I 'borrowed'.

"Well, might as well get started on my other project," after wiping away the small bit of blood from my scalp I pull out the wandlore book.

Hopefully, with me not having to hunt down birds for my daily essence, I have enough time to figure out something about the trace.

- two weeks later –

Wandlore was a frustrating subject.

Maybe it was because of the fact that I didn't have 'prodigous' talent in it, like I did with the rituals, or maybe it was the fact that I had been going through all the other magical subjects as well as trying to improve my ritual skills but over the past two weeks I had completely failed in finding out a way to bypass the trace.

Hell, I'd only managed to confirm that the trace gets put on me when I get to Hogwarts and that too because I got no letter while I was practicing spells!

Really it was a shame since the failure completely ruined the experience of seeing the legendary Hogwarts express for me and even now as I sat in the, surprisingly luxurious, carriage I couldn't help but remember that I still haven't learnt anything substantial on the trace.

Regardless of my annoyance though, the train soon gave the last boarding call and with a small lurch began moving. However, no sooner had it done so that the door to my carriage opened and three heads looked in.

One red head, one blonde and one brunette stood there, large trunks behind them, as they realised that the carriage was occupied.

"… do you mind if we sit here?" the red head, who seemed to be the leader, asked while pointing to their collective trunks, "we really don't want to drag these any further."

"Sure," not like there wasn't enough space in the carriage, especially since they seemed to be around my age and hence just as small, "actually let me help you with those."

"Thank you for the help," the red-haired girl said from her comfortable seat as me and the blonde girl heaved her trunk into the compartment above, "we really appreciate it."

"No problem," I wheeze as, with one final bit of effort, the trunk goes onto the compartment. Once that was done I took my seat again… only to awkwardly sit there as the three girls chatted to each other, completely ignoring my existence.

… and they're still not even acknowledging my presence.

"So… I'm Noah, Noah Adams. Nice to meet you," I eventually introduce myself.

"Nice to meet you too," the blonde girl is the one who talks this time, pointing at herself, the redhead and the brunette who both greet me when pointed at, "I'm Hannah Abbot, that's Susan Bones, that's Lisa Turpin."

"Nice to meet you." "Same, and thanks for the help with the trunks a well."

Then they're back to ignoring me…

You know what? Fine. I'll go back to reading my book I was reading before you came in.

Which is how the rest of the eight hours journey went, with me reading and the three of them chatting and giggling with each other.

The only notable things to occur during the whole trip was when Malfoy looked into the carriage, leaving the second his eyes landed on Susan, and when Neville came around asking for his toad, whose name I had forgotten by the end of the journey.

… you know, looking back on it now, I feel like the two years of minimal social contact may perhaps have played a hand in this.