Chapter 3

I met Gregory and Vincent regularly. Play dates as they were, shut in a pen, room, or yard with the two idiots. I was forced to play with them several hours a piece while they babbled away. Now, playing with children wasn't that bad. They were capable of following the rules of games such as pétanque and gobstones (only with parental supervision). The problems arose when they opened their mouths to attempt conversation.

Suffice to say my ears and linguistic capacities suffered greatly. At those times, I would wistfully stare at the adult table, where my parents and the parents of my two future minions would be chatting. I once eavesdropped on one of their conversations. Unluckily enough, I had only the time to hear about the finer points of torturing muggles from my father.

Maybe Greg and Vince weren't too bad. I decided to go with what I had. I was unwilling to intentionally alienate an allied family. It never occurred to me that I could gain anything from the time spent with the two, so it came as a surprise when I felt a small buzzing in the back of my head when Vince performed a feat of accidental magic.

We had been flying around on children's brooms. Unable to go more than a few feet above the ground, or accelerate faster than walking speed, it still must have been an intimidating fall for a five year old. And thus, when Vince fell, he didn't.

Well, he didn't completely stop falling; he just decelerated, I observed silently. The buzzing in the back of my head tried to distract me, as Vince's fear turned into elation, his body slowly lowering itself onto the ground. The buzzing stopped.

I was slightly distracted by the following jubilation of our small gathering by the fact that it was the first time I'd sensed magic. I sat down under the shade of a tree, concentrating on the area of feeling that had encompassed the sense. I idly watched as my father patted the older Crabbe on the back in congratulations.

The sense had been an irritation somewhere in the head. An itch that buzzed unpleasantly around. I wondered why it was accidental magic that had led to finally discovering the sense.

Because accidental magic, no matter the power, was more unrestrained than trained magic. I imagined it was a comparison between of water spilled on the floor, and water sitting snugly in a bottle. You would notice one over the other. The spilled water took up a larger surface. But the magic necessary to fuel something that was basically a simple arresto momentum was incomparable to the magic in the wards around our manor. So then why could I not feel those?

The answer was obvious. Because I was inside them. I was used to them. Would you be able to realize that you were submerged in water if you'd been so for the last five years? Obviously not.

I shouldn't get ahead of myself theorizing. I still had a play date to finish.

-/-

Later that day, alone in my room, I thought of the issue further. If the reason why I was incapable of sensing the magic of my home was that I was too used to it, to a part of it, then I would simply have to be a part of it no more.

Dissociation from my own magic, achieved by spending decades in a body without it, had let me clearly feel the connection I had to it. Now I had to disassociate from this house, all the magic present within it. I was not a part of it, I was simply a void, observing it all from within.

A switch was flicked in my head and I could suddenly feel. Ironic, that to further myself as a Malfoy, one of the first things I needed to do was to mentally remove myself from it. I shut down the feeling before I got overwhelmed. Training to keep it up constantly could come later.

I hoped that the year or so I'd spent trying to sense magic in other ways had contributed to my new ability. Like a bottle being filled to the brim, Vince's display of accidental magic simply the one drop too much. It would be pretty shitty if it hadn't contributed in any way. It would mean I'd wasted a lot of time.

Being able to read and understand the language, but having no access to the tomes that held the knowledge one needed. Frustrating. It seemed that the adage 'knowledge is power' held true even more in the wizarding world that it did in the muggle one. Well, hopefully soon I would be resourceless no more.

I now had access to the skill that would let me learn the skill I had set out to learn all that time ago. Convoluted, but true. I simply hoped that there was a spot in my room that remained unaffected by the danger-sensing ward. I could leave it, sure. Unlike back then, surely there was an unwarded place somewhere in this manor.

But it was a thing of principle now. The challenge had been put forth and accepted. It was an exercise in vanity, arrogance, and impracticality, to waste my time on an intangible challenge put forth by myself, but I had all the time in the world, didn't I?

I revved up the magic sensing engines again.

And stared dumbfoundedly at the... what could best be described as a popup message appearing before me.

You have learned the skill "Magic Sense."