Chapter 5: First Impressions of the Malfoys
(Seras Malfoy POV)
It has been about six months since I came to this world, currently sleeping in a room with Draco, my younger-by-a-few-minutes brother. Thank goodness for that—imagine being younger than a literal baby. I didn't think I was that petty, but I might be. Unlike me, he seems to be a genuine baby, with no cares in the world. He's been babbling for a while now. In my past life, children started this process as early as six months, so either he is a prodigy, or mana boosts the cognitive function of even babies. Hopefully, it's the second one; having an incredible prodigy in the family may make my own life more difficult. I am going to be a prodigy, no doubt about that. I have had years upon years of learning experience in a way that no child ever does. When children are young, many have short attention spans that don't allow them to pick up knowledge. Factor in their underdeveloped brains, and even child prodigies do not stand a chance against me.
When you compare a normal child with a supposed prodigy like myself, the prodigy may be able to do outlandish things, and it won't be that suspicious. On the other hand, you compare a baby who seems to be a prodigy with someone with their past lives' memories, and they may seem even more peculiar. I also haven't fully forgiven him for the kicking in the womb. Was I originally a grown woman who can't get over the actions of a baby? I don't think so, but the childlike part of my mind and the changes in body chemistry brought about by it may have affected me much more than I would like to admit.
My mother, Narcissa, has become a staple of my life in a way that I have never experienced before. There is a weird fight between my mind and body on what to do about maternal affection. I am an adult woman much the same as my mother. Hell, she is probably around the same age I was when I died. I'll have to fact-check that later. Mentally, we are probably on a similar level, and in all things not magic or child-rearing, I believe I may be superior. On the other hand, the amount of oxytocin released from childbirth and breastfeeding has made it so there is clearly love I feel for my mother. She is a very elegant and composed person, a true aristocrat in every manner of the word. She seems to truly love my father and has been doting especially hard on Draco. Draco's constant need for attention has led to what feels like an imbalance in motherly affection in his direction. Once again, as an adult originally, why should I care about this sort of situation? But I would be lying if I said it didn't matter to me in the slightest.
My feelings on my father are much easier to contextualize. He is a staunch disciplinarian who seems cold at times, which I can respect. It is also clear that he is incredibly rigid in his adherence to social traditions and a blood purity dogma that seems to stop the wizarding world from moving forward. Beneath his exterior, he is clearly deeply concerned for his family and has a strong affection for his wife and children. I don't think I can say I love him the same way I may feel for my mother, but I don't want to disappoint him.
The wizarding world is incredibly strange to me. At first, I thought I was living in the late 18th, early 19th century. This time period had been decided due to quite a few reasons. The first is that wizards seem to primarily use quills and parchment for writing instead of modern pens and paper. Communication is done via owls, which deliver letters, rather than through electronic means like email or telephones, and the only source of news I have seen is the Daily Prophet—not a hint of TV or radio. The fashion of wizards is also incredibly hard to place. They look to be stuck in Victorian fashion, but occasionally, they will wear robes that look like they belong to the Middle Ages for festive occasions. I know that transportation is incredibly varied. There is apparently a train to Hogwarts, a school that my dad mentions with both zeal and hatred for the headmaster, Dumbledore, and people fly around on brooms. The forms of entertainment in this world seem limited as well. There is one primary sport that everyone watches and then a form of chess where the pieces move through voice commands. Outside of the exciting novelty of it all, there was not much to keep people from being bored. That is, of course, outside of learning magic. There is no internet, and almost all information is simply stored in books of all degrees. Thankfully, my family is incredibly well-off and has a library where much of this was stored, but it would be a bit before I could walk over there.
So there I was, thinking that we must be living sometime in the early 1900s until one day when my mother left a newspaper in the nursery where my brother and I were kept. I was quite thankful that the area I was in spoke English. The familiar language made picking up the cues of what was around me much easier. Without it, I would have taken much longer to come to the conclusion that we are actually in the 1980s. There had been a piece in a Muggle-run column of the paper about the death of John Lennon, which had occurred on the 8th of December, 1980. I had been trying to figure out if the Wright brothers had flown yet, and now I had been made aware that humanity had landed on the moon 11 years before I was born. My plan had always been to learn magic first and foremost, but I had now been alerted that the wizarding and normal communities don't have much time left separated.
Sooner or later, normal humans, or Muggles as the wizarding world calls them, would invent all kinds of recording devices, so much so that some had even called the economic period approaching the age of surveillance. If Muggles were made aware of what my family and a few others had gotten up to under the guidance of He Who Shall Not Be Named, a predator missile would be sent with their names on it to the front doors of Malfoy Manor. Wizards constantly underplay the accomplishments of Muggles: "Who needs electrical lights when I can create fire out of air? Who needs a gun when I can kill someone with a spell? And who needs to be careful when I can quite literally brew luck and fame and put it up for sale at a reasonable price?" The problem is that the wizarding community is outnumbered 5,000 to 1 when compared to that of Muggles. A third of this minimal amount is discriminated against due to being born from Muggles, another third doesn't get along with my family due to some random Malfoy who lived a hundred years ago having offended them by not marrying their great-great-great-great uncle, and the final third are the retired Death Eaters who most likely will have their family homes blown off the map by weaponized freedom.
There is some hope, however. The first being that there are wizards born from normal people. If there is a way to somehow increase this number, when the eventual discovery of the wizard world by the wider public does occur, there may be some proof that wizards and Muggles have lived together for a long time. Influential individuals have children who are wizards, or most likely in this case, there's enough that getting rid of them would be a moderate amount of dangerous. The second hope comes from innovations in magical fields. If magic can progress far enough that things like the ability to cure cancer become widespread among wizards, the rich and powerful might be more than willing to keep them around for that purpose. A third hope comes from if magical technology can progress enough that it doesn't really matter if you are using your own mana or that of the machine to cast spells. If regular people could do some form of magic, they would never want to go back, hopefully allowing for peaceful cohabitation. The final hope is in just how powerful a wizard can become. If the average wizard's level were to become great enough, or a few choice ones were able to, then a war becomes too dangerous for Muggles to win. Of course, these are only preliminary calculations. Maybe the wizarding world is too screwed to reliably last 30 more years. If that's the case, I'll just become as strong as possible and use the stock market to become wealthy. If I were to invest 100 dollars in 2000 and fully reinvest into the best stock of each year, I would make a little over 6 trillion dollars at the end of 2020. My memories of the past are good enough that as long as no wizarding war starts before that, I should be able to make bank. Of course, as interesting as money is, power is much more. What would 100 million do against the speeding car that took my life, which started this crazy situation I find myself in?
Thankfully, the Malfoy family is one of the best places to start this journey. I not only have access to immense fortune—believing I will be given an allowance once I get a bit older—I also have access to the finest tutors and a library full of books a poorer wizard could never find. Additionally, my family has ties with many dark magic families, so working in a way that violates commonly held norms may be possible. I also contain knowledge much farther ahead than most wizards, whether that be the ability to calculate complex equations, a background in chemistry that, if applicable to potions, could be incredibly useful, or knowledge over my body that nobody but the greatest scientists 30+ years from now know. I remember what it feels like to not have mana, which allows for me to have much greater control over what would be a normal feeling for most wizards. Finally, I seem to be "blessed by Merlin." I had a large amount of mana going in, and the way that I have increased it by constant practice and circulation throughout my body in the womb and over the last six months puts me far above any peers I hope to have.
I'm still not so sure about the whole pure-blood thing. It is true that pure-bloods are much more likely to give birth to magical children; in that way, they seem to be better than those of Muggle-born wizards. There is also evidence that the top roster spots in the schools are apparently filled with pure-bloods, but that is most likely due to the fact they were given years of practice at home before attending school and competing against those who found out they were a wizard earlier that week. When I get old enough that I can get my hands on technology, I would like to see if there is any evidence in wizard and Muggle DNA. They are clearly stronger on average than a normal person, or else there would be 100 deaths per Quidditch season. The comprehensive increases given by mana are clear as day to me, but is it a gene that is in all humankind or just that of wizards? If it is just in wizards, then pure-blood ideology would have merits because if the gene is recessive, you would need parents to carry it. If it was dominant, then most of the population would probably have it now. If it expresses due to mana in the surroundings, then the pure-blood notion would have much less weight to stand on. Pure-bloods already have magic in their surroundings, so of course the gene is expressed in their kids. This world clearly leaves me with more questions than answers, and it will probably stay that way for a long time.
I continued to think and move my mana around my body. There was nothing else to do in this room except look at what Draco is doing. My first goal would be to try and stimulate the growth hormones within the pituitary gland. If I continue to eat an insane amount of calories and stimulate prolactin and maybe epinephrine, I wonder if the downsides can be mitigated through magic. I might be able to gain near-normal motor skills by next month. It should also boost my cognitive abilities to the point where my mouth would finally have the muscle needed to properly communicate with those around me. I will say magic as an excuse for why I don't act like a normal child will hopefully be effective enough that I don't find myself being burned at the stake before I reach the age of two.
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Author's Note:
Calculative stuff for $6 trillion in 20 years
Year: initial amount * (1 + percent increase/100) = amount at end of year. A 100% increase in a stock doubles your money, so that's why there is a 1 in front of the percent increase/100. The number might be a little off—I really suck at coding. The numbers I got for % increase may also be unnatural as a massive investment into a small company will result in changes to the market that are unforeseen.
2000: $100 * (1 + 2619.58/100) = $2,719.58
2001: $2,719.58 * (1 + 108.71/100) = $5,674.13
2002: $5,674.13 * (1 + 112.86/100) = $12,080.58
2003: $12,080.58 * (1 + 1800.00/100) = $228,530.98
2004: $228,530.98 * (1 + 106.00/100) = $470,773.81
2005: $470,773.81 * (1 + 227.22/100) = $1,544,522.32
2006: $1,544,522.32 * (1 + 153.75/100) = $3,921,779.16
2007: $3,921,779.16 * (1 + 1331.79/100) = $56,025,113.06
2008: $56,025,113.06 * (1 + 34.77/100) = $75,496,304.30
2009: $75,496,304.30 * (1 + 92.40/100) = $145,226,150.89
2010: $145,226,150.89 * (1 + 139.94/100) = $348,308,866.83
2011: $348,308,866.83 * (1 + 59.60/100) = $555,966,128.08
2012: $555,966,128.08 * (1 + 71.32/100) = $952,774,230.10
2013: $952,774,230.10 * (1 + 344.14/100) = $4,222,232,043.66
2014: $4,222,232,043.66 * (1 + 125.04/100) = $9,504,412,163.12
2015: $9,504,412,163.12 * (1 + 134.38/100) = $22,262,842,580.28
2016: $22,262,842,580.28 * (1 + 224.96/100) = $72,379,748,495.49
2017: $72,379,748,495.49 * (1 + 132.32/100) = $168,128,088,119.83
2018: $168,128,088,119.83 * (1 + 79.62/100) = $302,089,015,004.35
2019: $302,089,015,004.35 * (1 + 148.59/100) = $750,972,620,637.84
2020: $750,972,620,637.84 * (1 + 743.44/100) = $6,345,916,354,477.36
Weekly Power Status
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