11 The hole in the Hall

Upon returning to his room, Dan put on his new… ahem, school uniform and decided to seriously think about his life. He had black slacks on his feet, but he chose not to wear boots, his claws on his feet would have torn them apart. He wore a beige sweater with very long sleeves, which still couldn't completely cover his arms. But the most important addition, in Dan's opinion, was a pair of purple steampunk-looking goggles that eliminated even the slightest chance that anyone could look into his eyes directly. Mantis had found shelter on the back of his collar, where he now slept quietly.

Passing his hand over the bookshelf with his new textbooks, Dan silently read their titles, still not understanding what he needed to do – what he wanted to do. No, he wasn't thinking about something small like which book he should start studying, his thoughts were much more grandiose.

'I think you'll do better in the world with magic.' The Wanderer said a few days ago.

It was said with such certainty that even Dan believed it. And why would The Wanderer lie about his possible affiliation to magic? But questions were still swirling in Dan's head.

"{How can I be better? Why do I need to be better?}" Dan asked himself. Sitting down on the bed, he dragged his clawed hand across his face in frustration. Dumbledore escorted Dan to his room and left as soon as the opportunity presented itself, the teenager didn't even have time to ask anything. Now he was completely alone with his thoughts again.

"{Magic-shmagik…}" Looking down at his black, thin hands, he couldn't help but let out a low curse. If he looked like a human, then he would at least have the ability to slip under most people's radar and learn the secrets of magic in peace, alone. Like he already studied programming and drawing. But now…

"{Now what? Learn some magic and hide for the rest of my life?}" The very thought was repulsing to him. "{No. No, no, no. I will walk under the sun without fear of death. No need to hide, no need to run. The only barrier between me and the world is fear.}"

Clasping his hands, a fire of determination lit up in his eyes. Before changing his life, he needed to know what he was capable of. Teleporting out of his room, Dan found himself on the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest. He didn't know how far his teleportation abilities went, but he wasn't going to test it without proper support from wizards and healers.

"{Magic is part of every Endermen.}" He said to himself as he approached the tree with the thick trunk. "{Magic is a part of me.}" Dan put his hands on the tree and stopped. He didn't know exactly how to do what was in his mind, but that wouldn't stop him from trying. Taking a deep breath, he concentrated and the space in his arms collapsed.

Dan looked at the small cube in his hands with a terrifying smile. The tree was left hanging in the air, its trunk parted with perfect cuts, and the top part floating in the air. He put the block of wood back in place and nodded as he saw the shape of the tree recover and become whole again, just a lot squarer in the middle.

'It works. Do Endermen have an inventory or the ability to craft everything like in the game?' He thoughtfully took the log back into his hands and began to stare at it without even blinking.

"{Now, how do I do this?}" Dan asked himself, but got no answer.

He circled the log in his hands, mentally calling up an inventory or something, but nothing appeared. Tilting his head to the side, Dan tried to tear the log apart, and to his surprise, he succeeded. It split into four equal pieces and fell to the ground without spinning.

"{Huh,}" he sighed. The fact that the blocks didn't float a couple of centimeters above the ground was… unexpected. Given that right in front of him, a tree hung in the air.

Picking up the planks one by one, Dan looked at them like they were the rarest material in the world. Deciding to continue with the next step, he put them together and was disappointed when he saw that they didn't change.

"{That complicates things.}" He looked around and his eyes fell on the castle where he would most likely spend the next few years of his life. And wasn't that a terrifying thought? "{Hmm, does that work with walls?}"

It did.

-=-=-=-=-=-

The Forbidden Forest was stranger than usual.

Not many people could remember every tree that grew in the forest, and even fewer people could say at least something about the bushes around. So even if someone noticed the disappearance of a pair of trees, they didn't attach any importance to this.

What people have definitely noticed is a two-meter square hole in the higher half of the Great Hall's wall. Students from all the houses stopped at the doors to stare in confusion at the perfect square hole to the left of the passage. Moreover, the missing pieces of the wall were nowhere to be seen, as if the stone had decided to open itself. It was in this state that Harry and Ron found the wall when they came down for breakfast in the morning.

Professors McGonagall and Flitwick stood next to the hole and quietly discussed something, sometimes casting spells unknown to the students on the hole.

"Who would do such a thing? The walls of the Great Hall are warded, I don't remember the last time someone could scratch even one brick!" Flitwick said to McGonagall, staring at the hole as if spellbound. If it was one of his ravens, he would immediately reward them with a hundred points for such precise work! Right after he gives them detention.

"Looks like a very strange prank," McGonagall replied, "but without any joke in the end. As if the mere existence of the hole is enough for a laugh," she muttered. "Most likely it wasn't the Weasleys."

Harry and Ron looked at each other and quickly walked to their usual seats, Hermione was already sitting at the table, a book on Astronomy in her hands. The girl looked tired, with small black circles under her eyes and even more unruly hair than usual.

"Hermione, do you know what happened?" Harry asked, nodding towards the new passage.

The girl glanced at the hole without much interest and shrugged her shoulders. "I have no idea. Lavender says the ghosts got tired of walking through the walls and asked the Castle to open another passage," she rolled her eyes with a quiet huff. The very idea that the ghosts had made a hole in the wall was silly to her.

Harry looked at the hole, unsure what to think of it. Of all the strange things he had seen in the castle, this one was… not the strangest, to be honest, but one of the most useless. Somewhere at the level of false doors that hid smooth walls behind them.

Suddenly, like the devil in a snuffbox, Ron's brothers fell onto the bench on either side of Hermione. They were twins: Fred and George, two people who were considered the most successful pranksters in the castle today.

"Miss Granger, we are disappointed in your distrust of your fellow students!" The first brother said. "But we perfectly understand your position." The second continued. "To be honest, we are even disappointed in what is happening." "Such great opportunities and terrible execution." The brothers sighed in perfect sync. ""What a disappointment!""

"Someone found a way to break down the walls at Hogwarts and all they did was open a hole in the Great Hall!" "Why, I would tear down the wall between the boy's and girl's showers!" Presumably Fred declared, waving his arms so wide that Hermione had to dodge them.

Their strange match of verbal ping-pong came to an abrupt halt as Professor Lupin passed behind them. "I hope you don't try to repeat what someone has already done before you. It would be very unoriginal."

This caused all five of them to stop and just stare at the back of the departing Professor in disbelief.

"Did he just… admitted that someone at Hogwarts already managed to bring the wall down?" Ron asked in shock and received nods from his brothers.

"Now I'm really wondering how it happened." Fred said. "Agreed, oh, brother of mine. I wouldn't mind knowing how they did it." ""For research reasons, naturally."" They said together.

She slammed her book shut and hit Fred on the shoulder with it and then George – who, unfortunately, dodged. "You both are pigs." She hissed and stormed out of the Hall; her book clutched in her hands.

Ron shook his head, annoyed at his brothers. "Now she'll be irritated all day, thanks guys."

Harry just sighed heavily and put himself a couple of fried bacon on his plate, thoughts of the strange appearance of a hole left his head by the end of breakfast.

Hermione had been acting weird the last week and was more tired than usual, so she would be irritated today anyway. But the idea that the wall between the showers could disappear was actually interesting.

'Hermione in the shower…' Shaking his head vigorously to clear the sudden thought, Harry shoved a piece of bacon into his mouth. 'Nope. Not now.'

The Professors never found out who exactly left a huge hole in the wall. If one old Headmaster had a suspicion, then he didn't share it.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Dan – the cause of the confusion of several hundred students and dozens of Professors – was sitting on the roof of the Astronomy Tower and turning over new facts about his powers in his head. For starters, he could pick up any "block" that caught his eye. Wood, leaves, earth, stone, brick, tile, glass and more. He couldn't lift the water, whether it was because it hurt him or because it was liquid, Dan didn't know.

When he took parts from – for example – trees that were as straight as poles, they simply split in two. The upper part freezing in the air, denying at least two laws of physics.

With his first teleportation ability, he could be a perfect one-person moving company. Not that he was going to waste his time on such nonsense.

Unfortunately, he didn't have an inventory or the ability to craft new things in a blink of an eye, which was a disappointment, but Dan decided to enjoy whatever reality-breaking abilities he had.

But the last ability he noticed was the ability to exhale a cloud of sparkling purple smoke. It didn't hurt Dan in any way, but the grass around where he sat died as soon as the smoke touched it. He was unable to speak any language other than the Endermen after he used this ability. Dan assumed that he was subconsciously reshaping his throat like Dumbledore's spell had done.

This was not one of the Endermen's abilities in the original game. The Ender Dragon breathed death magic, but Dan doubted a regular Enderman would have the same ability.

In the end, Dan had a short mental list of his abilities: teleportation, death breathing (presumably), silk hands, and magic. See the weirdness in the last point? Could magic be considered part of his abilities, or were his abilities part of his magic? Dan only miraculously remembered that dragon breath was called death magic, did that mean he had actually been using magic all along?

'Well, that sounds logical. But I used them all without a wand…' Dan raised his hand in front of his face and wiggled his index finger.

"Lumos," he said and narrowed his eyes when nothing happened. Dan felt something move in his body towards his hand, but stopped right at the tip of his finger, not finding enough strength to get out.

"{Lumos.}" Now, his voice sounded like an order and magic rushed down his arm like lightning. Dan didn't know if this was the result of his intent or the use of the Endermen's language, but something had happened. Above the tip of his finger, a very small light began to float, so small that it would be impossible to see it in a well-lit room.

'That, I can work with.'

Dan didn't sleep again that night, only turning on and off the ball of light on his finger. It was white, looking more like a flashlight bulb than sunlight, but Dan didn't complain. He couldn't get his magic to cast other spells, but even so, he was content with his progress.

Today, for the first time, he consciously cast wandless magic.