VIII. Tricking Hogwarts

🙞 1 February 1990 | Carmarthenshire, Wales 🙜

The moon hung in the sky, its light pervading inside the old cottage. Inside, Harry now occupied a spare room, freely given by Aldrik for him to sleep. If he were to learn Human Transfiguration before Hogwarts started, he would have to do it in a place undetected by the Underage Arrays.

Human Transfiguration, like Apparition, was a highly complex spell. It wouldn't stay out of the Arrays' radar, camouflaged with all the other accidental magic in the country. If someone linked it to the recent Apparitions he did, it wouldn't take long before Aurors finally located him.

Not to mention, Aldrik had told him he would need all the time he could get to learn Human Transfiguration. That included the nighttime when he would usually sleep elsewhere.

'Bloody spell,' Harry couldn't help but curse.

To say it was a complex spell would be an understatement. It didn't even begin to compare with Scourgify.

Unfortunately, there were no alternatives. Polyjuice, even if it lasted longer than Human Transfiguration, wasn't a foolproof solution. Traces of the potion - such as smell and stash of ingredients - could be found by a faculty member, and his disguise unmasked. Not to mention, Harry would have to impersonate a living person in that case, which came with its own problems.

Should he become adept in Human Transfiguration, however, his disguise wouldn't be so fallible.

His skin prickled, a headache starting to form, and he narrowed his eyes at the mirror. Slowly, he let his magic permeate his skin. He imagined it as water sifting in clay, turning it more malleable. It was a slow process, and he had found that magic was, if anything, not keen on staying put.

It was chaotic, and sifting it through his skin was a task that required finesse - control - something which he lacked. It was a battle of wills, where he turned a force of nature into a tool he could use.

And, with all failed attempts, alongside the headaches, came the loss of determination. Harry was used to it by then, the feeling almost negligible compared to his first attempts in Apparition. Regardless, like shifting the tide of a river, such a task was an uphill battle.

Focusing on the mirror, his eyebrows slowly, inch by inch, became more pronounced, sharper. After one month of practice, this was all that he could achieve. It didn't inspire much confidence in him, but there was nothing he could do other than practise more.

Aldrik had warned him from attempting to change his eye colour in the meantime. Any magical mishaps in that area could be disastrous compared to other regions. Harry would have to grow accustomed to the spell before doing so.

'My scar, facial structure, hair, and eyes,' he listed, in order of priority, 'I need those changed until then.'

🙞 Aldrik Roth Friedmann | [ REDACTED ] 🙜

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was created in the 10th century, known now as the oldest school of magic. Older even than the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, the school predated a time when magical communities were still not yet centralised.

Rowena Ravenclaw, Salazar Slytherin, Helga Hufflepuff, and Godric Gryffindor, the Four Founders - according to a few of Aldrik's old contacts - were responsible for constructing and idealising Hogwarts.

Unfortunately, the Founders' ingenious planning was detrimental to Aldrik and Harry's plan of infiltrating Hogwarts under a different alias. In creating the school, they had devised a unique way of admitting students - the Quill of Acceptance and the Book of Admittance.

Together, these artefacts registered any wizard under eleven years old as a student in Hogwarts. Curiously, as they predated the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, they didn't rely on Underage Arrays to track new students. Despite being relics, their enchantment was somehow even more complex.

How to fool such strong enchantment was the crux of Aldrik's consternation.

The Book of Admittance wasn't the problem - it only served as a foolproof to the Quill of Acceptance. It closed shut, refusing to let the Quill write in it until sufficient evidence of a child's magic appeared. In all of its history, it kept a perfect success rate, never allowing squibs to enter the school.

The problem, instead, was the Quill of Acceptance.

How was Aldrik supposed to fool it into writing a fake name?

He thought more, mulling over the details of the process. Minutes passed, him none the wiser. Then, suddenly, a spark lit inside his head.

The Quill of Acceptance wrote the name of any magical child in the Isles - it mattered not whether the kid was born there or had recently resettled.

His theory, the more that he thought about it, became tangible. Hopefully, when Harry had his disguise complete, they could test if he was right in his hunch. Maybe then, Aldrik could fool himself into believing he did a good deed for once in his long life.

🙞 26 December 1990 | Calais, France 🙜

The smell of salt intermixed with fish, and people crowded the port as they embarked and disembarked the ferry to Dover, UK.

Harry stood by his side, his face unrecognisable. The boy's hair was strawberry blonde, almost a dirty ginger palette. His eyes were amber, like Aldrik's own, and his cheekbones slightly different in position.

To think the boy took only a year to master such spell to that high of a degree - it never ceased to amaze Aldrik. While they needed to stop his classes on Potion-Making to invest more time in Transfiguration, it still was a remarkable feat.

It even brought Aldrik a small amount of pride to see how far the boy had come with his pieces of advice concerning the spell.

"Will you explain it to me already?" Harry complained by his side, eyeing the forged documents of birth, and schooling, in Aldrik's hands.

"No, it wouldn't work then," he said, refusing to explain it any further. Then, realising the ferry was about to leave, he noticed it was time.

"Do you trust me?" Aldrik suddenly asked, his wand already prepared inside his long coat's pocket.

Harry didn't need much time to think about the answer, "Yes."

"Sehr gut," He muttered, then pointed the wand at Harry.

'Legillemens,' He channelled, instantly diving into the boy's memories. Arriving there, however, he was stunned.

A Mind Palace, at that age, he distinctively noted with shock.

The beginnings of a small cottage sat on the crest of a lone hill. In the far distance, barely connected to the rest of the boy's Mind Palace, he could also see a lone, old tree. Before he could wonder what that meant, however, he had to remind himself of the time constraints.

He did not pry into Harry's memories. Instead, Aldrik added to them. An entire artificial lifetime of memories formed like a bubble in the recesses of Harry's mind.

Harry was now, for a brief moment, not himself. The spell, of course, wasn't perfect. Even though Aldrik spent the better part of that year creating a fake lifetime of memories, if someone were to dive too deep, they would soon realise discrepancies.

Obliviators often did the same when erasing magical vestiges from the memory of No-Majs, replacing the blank spots with artificial creations. Though, it was on a much smaller scale. And, unlike Aldrik, Obliviators replaced the original memories.

Aldrik had merely created a bubble around Harry's consciousness. To the outside world, he wasn't Harry.

It was no wonder that Mental magic was Aldrik's bread and butter, even more so than Potion-Making.

It wasn't perfect, by no means, but he believed it was enough to fool the Quill of Acceptance. After all, it wouldn't be the first enchantment he tricked in his lifetime.

Their only challenge would be maintaining the persona intact afterwards.

Before long, the ferry had crossed the border in the Strait of Dover between England and France. In enters Konrad Barak, son to Isaac Baldrik Schwarz and Anne Böhn Schwarz.

Aldrik already had a fake identity in the United Kingdom by the name of Isaac, so he took advantage of it. Using his extensive network of contacts, it wasn't hard to alter a few papers to add one son to the mix. Even more so when Aldrik's story already aligned with what they needed for Konrad.

Father and son, distraught by the death of Anne Böhn - who never even existed - decided to relocate to the United Kingdom, wanting to start anew. It benefitted Aldrik as well, as no one would question whether Harry was his son. No fake identity went to that extent, after all, thus adding credibility to his existing alias.

Still, he wasn't entirely happy. Both name and middle name that Harry had chosen were a bit too much on the nose.

Konrad Barak Schwarz. Konrad meant bold counsel, while Barak - a German name with Hebrew origins - had the meaning of 'lightning'. It just so happened that the family name Aldrik had chosen in the past was Schwarz, meaning 'black-haired'. An unfortunate coincidence, he thought.

Bold, black-haired, and lightning - to say it was a daring choice would be an understatement. Still, Aldrik eventually conceded to the boy's wishes, believing no one could draw such a parallel. And, although he wouldn't admit it, he also found it slightly funny.

"So... will you explain why we came to France only to turn back immediately?" Harry asked beside him, frustrated with the needless suspense.

"Home, explain it then," Aldrik replied, unconcerned, "You have to sharpen your German."

"What-" Harry couldn't even finish, however.

"And start to learn Occlumency," Aldrik continued, "Explain at home."