2

After waking up I just laid in bed and stared at the ceiling, going through yesterday's events. 'What have I done?' I thought fully comprehending the extent of my mother's injuries. 'What now?' The longer I thought about the incident the angrier I got. I thought about how I could have prevented everything, if only I had kept my cool. My anger kept rising, until I heard a sudden "POP." Startled by the sound I turned to its origin, only to find a broken light bulb. Instantly all the anger I felt vanished and one word popped up in my mind.

"Magic", I mumbled. That's it, magic.

Magic can surely fix her injuries.

Thus, I wanted to start my magic training as soon as possible. So I got the next best small objext I could find, a rubber ball, and put it on the floor in the middle of my room. I sat back down besides it and concentrated on the feeling of my magic flowing through my body. In silence I stared at the ball, willing for it to move.

But nothing happened. Not contnent with my failure I tried again. Now with my eyes closed I imagined the ball rolling towards me and chanted 'move' alongside of it. Again nothing. So I thought back to the light bulb and came to the conclusion that I am missing something.

And that something is a strong emotion

I chose to give anger a try. The reason being my earlier outburst. I just recalled mom's burned arms and her whimpering, I instantly felt very angry at myself. I transfered this hatred to the ball in front of me and just as I thought, the ball hit the wall opposite of me with a loud thud. I excitedly jumped up, screaming, "I did it!"

While celebrating I heard footsteps rushing to my room. The door was slammed open and my mother burst into the room. "What happened", she asked. I turned to her and was about to reply, but stopped, because I was too shocked to see her arms without any injury.

Like yesterday never happened. I speechlessly walked up to her to inspect her arms more closely. From the shoulders downwards everything looked completly fine, until I reached her Hands. They were scarred, with five longer scars streching from the back of her wrist to the tip of her fingers on each hands.

"How?", is all I could muster.

My mother grabbed my hands and looked me in my eyes, "You healed me"

"But how?", I repeated.

"I have no clue, but you did it.", she said happily. I just looked at her flabbergasted. "Just promise me one thing, don't tell anyone what happened, alright? You are smart enough to know that what happened yesterday isn't normal." I just nodded slowly. "Come, I bought breakfast", my mother then led me to the kitchen.

We ate our breakfast in silence. In that time I ocasionally looked at my mom and every time we locked eyes, I felt a warm feeling in my heart.

'I swear to protect you. It doesn't matter if its Voldemort, a Death Eater or some other powerful wizard.' Suddenly the warm feeling disappeared, replaced by a weak sense of shock. My mother abruptly stood up, exclaiming "I forgot the mail" Hearing that I froze 'Could it be ? I have to test this.'

After she came back I asked her, "Mom can you tell me again how you and dad met?".

My mother looked at me a little questionably, "Sure."

While she retold her story, I stared directly into her eyes and with every part of her story I could feel the corresponding emotion, like I experienced it myself. Their schooldays as friends, who made eachother laugh. Her anxiety at their first date and the love she started to develop therafter.

I speechlessly listened to the story. After finishing it I got so excited I gave my mother a quick hug before sprinting to my room. Closing the door behind myself I said trough my ragged breathing "A natural legilimens!"

After lucas left the room Sophia said to herself, staring outside the window, "He is such a good boy, I wish you would still be here."

Unknown to both, beeing a natural legilimens has some rather unpleasant ramifications, because being able to manipulate emotions and thoughts, inevitably will lead you down some dark paths, especially without a teacher who can stop you when you went too far.

It also means you start to rely more on your power, to the point where you couldn't live without it. You would eventually stop trusting other people's words, because why would you, when you can know exactly how they feel and what they think. Eventually you stop trusting everyone whose thoughts you couldn't control and emotions you couldn't change.

The question is how far will Lucas go?

----

A little over 2 years later

In the evening in one specific apartment room you could see a 6 year old struggling with one last Push-up. He dragged his exhausted body to his bed and just layed there thinking, 'I have come a far way from 2 years ago.

Now I can push the ball with only my thoughts. For larger objects or faster and or more precise movements I still need to incorporate emotions. Additionally I found out that my magic capacity increases with my stamina and every time I empty my magic.

That is why I started to release all the exessive magic that I did not spent throughout the day shortly before going to bed. Which turns out has a neat little side effect of increasing my release speed of magic. Additionally I did some push-ups, sit-ups and squads, nothing extreme.

With Legilimency I did not want my mother to be a test subject, so I was restricted on how much I could practice. The area in which I did improve was picking up, understanding and manipulate emotions.

I also started my Occlumensy training, in which I invested most of my time. I divided it into three parts the memory, the emotional and the processing part. The first thing I did with the memory part was memorising every little detail of our apartment, which was not that big. And because of its inadequate size, I started to learn the ins and outs of our local library, which is an old three story church-like building, because I needed a place, where I can store and organize every memory.

The emotional part was easier to pick up, because of me being a natural legilimens. It felt normal and instinctual, like breathing. It's just something I can do.

The processing part is just the speed and amount of information I can understand and process. It's hard to measure how much I improved in this.'

With these last thoughts I let sleep embrace me.

----

The next day Sophia woke her son up earlier than usual, because it was his first day of elementary school. Being the mentally advanced person he was, he wasn't particularly enthusiastic. Almost falling asleep multiple times on the car ride, they eventually made it. Lucas didn't really pay attention to anything except where his classroom was and when classes would start.

"... and now for a short introduction, if everyone would please introduce themselves. It doesn't have to be long, but why don't we start with our names and what we want to be in the future, alright?", the class teacher, Mr Cruson, finished with a smile, "Let's do it alphabeticall, shall we."

Not caring about the other kids, because after his 11th birthday and his admission to hogwarts he wouldn't see them anyway, so he did not see a point in interacting with them, let alone learn personal details except for their names and appearances.

After a few kids it was finally his turn. "My name is Lucas Foster and I want to be a scientist" Although him wanting to be a scientist was in the faintest sense true he didn't want to be a muggle scientist, instead he desired to become more knowledgable and more powerful in terms of magic.

The teacher waited a moment, to see whether Lucas wanted to add something else or not. Not seeing any indication of him doing so Mr Cruson said, "Short and precise, wonderfull. I believe you will make a phenomenal scientist. The next one is." Looking down on his student list, he turned to a little girl with a long mane of bushy brown hair and large front teeth. Taking the gesture as a cue she began, "My name is Hermione Granger, I like to read and learn new things and I want to be a scientist as well."

Every thought vanished in lucas' head the moment he heard her name. The next moment everything he knew about her came back; a part of the golden trio, the bookworm of Gryffindor, a know-it-all and a stunning woman in the future. In short: somebody he needed.

Disregarding the teacher again, Lucas spent the rest of the class contemplating how he should approach her. In the end he chose to just go with the flow and try becoming her friend normally. So, after Mr Cruson dismissed the class he walked over to her, struck out his hand for a handshake and said, "Nice to meet you, Hermione." She looked a little baffled at the formal greeting, but remembered quickly that Lucas was the one that wanted to be a scientist as well.

"Ah, yes Lucas right? Have you also read all of our textbooks for this year?", she asked excitedly. Taken aback at her overwhelming enthusiasm, which he could feel thanks to his Legilimency, Lucas replied, "No, I can't say I have." Now a little less excited but without missing a beat Hermoine followed with, "How do you expect to become a good scientist, if you don't go the extra mile? I can give you my books with my notes if you want."

Hesitating a little whether he should use Legilimency on her like he normally does when confronted with an unpleasant situation he eventaully made up his mind. 'Worst case I don't befriend her'

'But that doesn't mean I can't forcefully change her mindset about me if everything goes down the drain.' The constant use of Legilimency for the last 2 years had already began to take roots, opening his mind to less friendly solutions to his problems.

Lucas politely declined her generous offer and at the same time reached out to her emotions, what he didn't expect, was to stumble upon some sort of resistance.

'Now that's interesting' he thought.

Up until now he could toy with anyones feelings without hitting any form of defencive mechanism. Usually when Lucas controlled other peoples' feelings it felt like a walk in the park, effortless, but now after connecting with Hermione's emotions it instead felt like wading through water. Unfortunately for her it was not a strong enough deter.

Not discouraged, but with a little bit more effort than usually he weakend her feeling of disappointment and strengthened her enthusiasm again.

He also planted a minor feeling of comfort in her, which Lucas slowly increased while they were talking. After conversing for a while about all sorts of things, but mainly school related, Lucas ended the conversation with the excuse that he should look for his mother, because she said she would be waiting outside to pick him up.

Shortly after saying their goodbyes Lucas sharply decreased her comfort level, back down to the standard before their conversation. Turning away from Hermione he collected his things and made his way towards the exit. She just mindlessly looked after him.

Once Lucas arrived at the door he stopped, turned around and waved her goodbye, at the same time he evoked a smaller spike of joy in her to sort of deliver a last hit, which should be enough to once and for all consolidate their forced friendship.

Hermione waved back with a huge grin on her face. Overjoyed at making such a nice friend who has the same goals she has. But most importantly she made a friend in whose presence she felt safe and comfortable. A friend she could trust and someone she could ask for advice.