1 Death and Domain - Chapter 1

It was the derisive laughter that woke me.

I can usually deal with everything else. I've heard all the insults men with too much time in their hands and too little education can conjure up. You have to learn to ignore them if you want to grow gray and wrinkly in my line of work. Can't be too snappy over nothing. Only takes one guy with quicker fingers and you suddenly have a knife carving out your guts.

But there's something about that kind of laughter that sinks and twists at my stomach worse than any knife ever could. It wakes this primal need I have, this overpowering compulsion to prove I'm not a man to be mocked. Not anymore.

So when I opened my eyes to see those two boys looking down at me, all preppy uniforms and smug faces that oozed aristocratic superiority, I had violence in mind. And it was alone there too. Anger was the only emotion that could swim past the raging headache pounding inside my skull.

Still I tried to push myself up, ready to charge the boys like a mad bull. But my arms felt weaker than I ever remembered and my hands slipped on the wet tiles of the floor. I grunted when my face splashed back on the ground.

More laughter followed—those cunts.

When I looked up again this time, I finally saw the showers a few feet away, and the urinals just beside them. Oh. Oh, they were dead. It was a puddle I was face down on. A puddle in a bathroom. A man's bathroom.

Blood hammered in my ears, and neither the slick floor nor my weak arms stopped me when I jumped up to my feet in a single push. I damn near fell again instantly. My balance was all wrong, my limbs longer and gangly, eyes not quite as sharp; but by then I was a man running off of rage alone. Beat them up first, think later.

Spitting down at the floor, I raised both my fists up in a strong stance and advanced on the two boys. Weak arms or not, I knew where to hit a man. Didn't even need that much strength most of the time, just a solid knuckle coming up awfully quick against some soft cartilage. Besides, the kids looked like they'd never even seen a fight on the TV, much less scrapped against anything bigger than a toddler. I knew I had them.

But that's when the weird shit started. Instead of getting ready to fight back or take off like I expected, the two boys pulled out a pair of sticks from their pockets. Sticks they pointed straight at me. And before I got within five feet of them, a loud bang followed by a flash of glaring red and a bolt of green struck me in the chest like a hammer.

My reacquaintance with the bathroom floor knocked all the air out of my lungs. Before I could even get a breath in, something rose up in my throat. I scrambled to sit up before I choked, gagging. Slime suddenly gushed out of my mouth, filling my tongue with a foul earthy taste, then something soft and squishy and all-together disgusting plopped down on my lap.

Dazed, I stared down at the thing on my legs. My eyes threatened to pop out. I'd just vomited a whole slug as big as a tennis ball.

Something niggled at the back of my mind, but I ignored it.

A bark of laughter made me look up. "I don't know what's gotten into you today, baby Oc," the boy I could suddenly recall the name of—Cassius—said.

Why do I know his name? Hell, why do I remember seeing him for the last five years?

Smirking, he wiped at the gleeful tears in his eyes. "But we want the assignment before McGonagall's class."

"Better be an EE, too," the other boy said with a grunt. Justin, I knew. He was a brute of a youth, shoulders like a boulder and a sweeping brow you could use as a sledgehammer if you were so inclined. An unrelenting idiot, too—the obvious muscle of this little duo.

I frowned at all the information. My head was killing me. How did I know their names? And what had been those lights from their sticks?

In all the turmoil, something else stuck up from everything else. McGonagall. I knew that name. Knew it from two different sources of information that were butting up against each other and trying to smash the other one to bits, all of it inside my head.

Hearing some noise, I shook myself and looked up, but they were gone before I could mount any comeback. It didn't matter. A second later another slug came swimming up the canal. I glared at the empty doorway, feeling the slime sloshing in my mouth.

Bastards.

The slugs only stopped a few hours later, even if the headache didn't abate. Cassius had put some punch into that spell. Yes, spell. That had been something to reconcile. The world of Harry Potter—almost. There were too many inconsistencies with what I knew from reading the books and watching the movies.

They'd stuck me in a religious school for the so-called troubled youth after my parents died. And what better way to piss off the prissy teachers and priests of a religious school than reading about wizards and witches?

After a few minutes of suffering there on the bathroom floor, I had crawled my way into one of the cubicles and shut myself inside. With what the memories of this new life had provided, I didn't need to begin my journey here with another blow to my good name if anyone else came into the bathroom.

Octavian Prince. That was my name. And no, it was no good at all. Not since my father took the headship of the house, at least. Flavius Prince was a drunken fool who'd squandered the family wealth on whores and mounting gambling debts. If I ever wished to rise in this world, I would need to deal with him.

But worst of all was Octavian himself. The boy was a coward. Simple as that. His Slytherin housemates had walked all over him since his first year in Hogwarts, and it had not gotten any better now at the end of his fifth year.

Still, there was an upside to everything. Brushing my hand against my thigh, I felt the wand sitting inside my pocket, warming up at the slightest touch.

Cassius Warrington and Justin Travers weren't the only ones with magic sticks at their beck and call. I wished nothing more than to track down the shitheads and teach them a thing or two about fucking with the wrong person.

Then I grimaced. The memories were right there at the forefront, as if they were my own since birth. Unfortunately, Octavian also happened to be hopeless with a wand. Beyond the basic charms and the theory behind wand-waving, there wasn't a drop of talent for spell-flinging coursing through these veins.

If I tried confronting the two, I would end up on my back before the first syllable of expelliarmus left my mouth. Unfortunately, I would have to go about it differently.

Sighing, I pushed myself up and strode toward the nearest sink to clear the thick taste of slime from my mouth. The image in the mirror was a familiar one, now. Tall, gangly, and not particularly bad-looking for a kid of fifteen either. But Octavian had never exercised beyond walking from one class to another. I was all bones, pallid and sickly too, with a shock of black hair on my head that had seen better days. Or it hadn't, most likely. His mother died when he was young and his dad didn't care enough beyond sicking a grumpy house elf on Octavian and calling it a day.

It didn't matter, in the end. That was all in the past and I couldn't change it even with the new possibilities this new world provided. Right now, I needed to focus on the two bastards who thought they could bully me into working for them.

Well, they asked for their transfiguration final project, and they would get it.