Umbrus Shade, The Incredibly Annoyed Ravenclaw

It all began with a dark room, a hooting owl, and a letter in front of me.

The room had no features I could parse. The owl was motley brown. The letter looked handwritten in a really difficult cursive. My room was gone. My surroundings were gone. The letter itself glowed with a light of its own, and the contents seemed to shift under my sight.

{HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,

Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)​

Dear Mr. Umbrus,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress}

The letter had also something written on its back; it was the list of provisions. Something dreadfully heavy settled at the bottom of my stomach. This couldn't be what I thought it was, could it? Perhaps an alien race had kidnapped me. It would explain the dark room. Maybe I was in a coma. That too was an acceptable solution. My surroundings shifted, the darkness leaving the place to blurs and to forms.

They took on clearer shapes a bit at the time, revealing figures moving back and forth on rails. In front of me, a luggage on wheels with my stuff rested. An owl hooted from its perch, staring right at me with an inquisitive glance. I looked around, seeing no familiar figures. There was little I could do, but swallow my nervousness and walk towards the platform I still remembered would lead on the way to Hogwarts' train.

Platform Nine and Three Quarters was hidden within a pillar, and as I walked through it, my eyes closed by reflex, I came out in a realm of robes and strange hat-wearing people. I had no cellphone in my pockets. I had no Ipod. I had a wand, actually, a shiny dark thing that was probably twelve to thirteen inches in length. It was a bit hard to hide the thing, and I could feel it poke against my sides, strapped to the left side of my chest in a wand-holder reminiscing of a revolver's holster.

There were families tearfully waving goodbye to their sons and daughters, some with more emphasis than others. I simply pulled my luggage on the train without a word.

"I am a wizard," I muttered. Then, I realized that pulling the luggage up was more of a challenge than previously thought, and the sinking feeling in my guts materialized even further.

Shit.

I was an eleven year old kid. My height was gone, my strength too, and all I had was a lousy wand and stuff I had no idea how it had made its way into my possession. This looked every bit like a coma-induced feverish dream. Perhaps I shouldn't have eaten whatever I ate the night before. What was it again? It was a pizza. No, pizzas couldn't be so evil as to give me such vivid and vibrant nightmares.

Thus, I climbed on while quietly cursing my weak self. I settled in the first carriage I could find, since I needed more than one trip to empty the trolley on which my luggage rested. By the time I was done, I sighed and slumped against the creaking armchair.

I yawned, not out of tiredness, but out of nervousness. There had to be a mistake. I couldn't be a wizard. The wand I pulled out from my wand holster felt warm in my hand, my children finger looked so eerie compared to what I was used to. Still, as I swished the wand back and forth, I expected something to happen. Well, no, I expected nothing to happen. I was rewarded with some sparks instead. They fluttered about, wheezing out of the tip of my wand in a myriad of pretty colors. I offhandedly mused about the colors of the sparks, watching them range from crimson to green, then through blue, violet, mauve and as I thought about it, they changed into yellow too.

There was no muscle-pulling involved, no strange back-end feeling. It was bizarre. I couldn't feel some kind of magical mana resource, or some form of twirling warmth in my chest. There was literally nothing telling me I was depleting mana, or that magic had a cost of some sorts. I should have felt more excited. I could do magic. At the same time, that feeling of elation was dulled by the sheer weight of the situation at hand.

What the hell was I doing in the Harry Potter world? Why was I even here? What was the point? Hell, if I had been born in the world, I could at the very least come up with some chalked up shitty explanation like parallel worlds existing; you die, you get reborn in another world. Rinse and repeat enough times, you're bound to become a genetic defect where you keep the memories of your past life.

It was a shitty explanation for something that couldn't really be explained, but it would make more sense than me appearing in a dark room in my eleven year old form. This felt like I had been placed in such a situation. Magic did it seemed the most viable answer, but if magic 'did it' then I had to ask myself why it did such a thing.

The train car's door swung open as some unknown students filtered in, and I quietly sheathed my wand once more, ashamedly looking at the window without a second thought. The students began to animatedly chat about their lessons, transfiguration with McGonagall, their hate for potions with professor Snape, the amount of work with Charms...and I couldn't help but ask.

"I'm sorry," I said, catching the trio of older students' attention, "I heard about Defense Against the Dark Art having a different professor every year...who's the one this year?"

"Ah," one of the older students said, his tie marking him as a Hufflepuff. "It's Professor Quirrell. He used to do Muggle Studies," he grinned. "He's a nice professor."

Good, then I was in the year of the lord one thousand nine hundred ninety-one. The year in which Harry Potter frequented Hogwarts. The year in which the Philosopher Stone was at Hogwarts. The year in which Voldemort was at Hogwarts.

It was going to be a nice year, as long as I kept my head low and did absolutely frigging nothing.

It eased me a bit to know that I hadn't been thrown in a random year, in a random setting, in a random parallel world.

"You're a first year, so you have it easy," the older Hufflepuff said. "There's a lot of hard work once you hit the electives," he added. "Enjoy your school life while you still can."

I will, filler-type character. I swear I will. "I'll do my best," I answered in turn. "What are the professors like?" I asked next.

It wouldn't do to grow quiet and keep my gaze centered at the sights beyond the train car's window. If I socialized, at the very least I'd be able to learn more about things, and maybe even catch stuff that I had once read, and that I didn't remember any longer. It had been years, perhaps even decades, since I had last read the books.

Still, the hours passed in relative peace. I even pulled out one of the school books to get a head start, but closed it after no more than half an hour, a dull headache from reading while in movement the main cause. With a dreary sigh, I closed my eyes and rested.

I was woken up by the rattling of the door, a blond figure popping in briefly, glancing around, and then looking at me for the briefest of instants. "I am looking for Harry Potter."

"I lack a scar on my forehead," I replied, pointing at my pristine and clear forehead. The blond sneered, and then left.

"Oh yeah, Harry Potter's supposed to be on the train!" another of the older years said with a gush to his voice. "The Boy-Who-Lived! He'll definitely be a Gryffindor." The fact the teen's tie had the colors of Gryffindor meant that his judgment was clearly biased, but it was also the truth, though he wouldn't know it.

I grew quiet, until at a certain point the older students began to shift into their robes, and I did the same with mine. "You can leave the luggage on the train," one of the older students told me, "They'll send the house elves to fetch them."

I nodded and thanked him.

Then, I stepped outside to face the chilly September month of Scotland and the cold, freezing waters of the Hogwarts' lake upon a boat.

The castle's lights in the far off distance glittered, giving it a very magical appearance.

The cold wind biting into my skin dug deep into my chest, however.

The malaise clung to me like a shroud, the stomach bottomed at my feet.

Congratulations, Shade Umbrus...

...you have become a wizard, destroyer of physics.