"Hello world." – speech in English.
'Hello world.' – thoughts.
[Hello world.] – writing.
"{Hello world.}" – speech in another language.
-=-=-=-=-=-
The sun shone from the sky on the streets of Moscow, heating the asphalt almost to the boiling point. People walked lazily in the shade of houses and trees, cars flashed along the roads, stray animals tried to get into the basements of houses to find at least some cold air. It was the hottest day of the year and everyone could feel it.
It was on this day that a brother and sister couple went to the park next to their house for a walk. The girl dragged the guy by the hand so that he walked faster, but he barely moved his legs.
"{Come on! You can't spend the whole summer staring at the monitor,}" the girl giggled.
The boy rubbed his eyes, trying in vain to get rid of the black circles around them, and sighed heavily. "{Some of us have to work, Kat.}" Katya turned, opening her mouth to protest, but he beat her to it. "{And I won't let you work until you finish school, runt.}"
"{Hypocrite,}" she huffed.
These two are Katya and Danil Khromov, a sister and brother who lost their parents at a young age. After their death, the children were looked after by their grandfather, a strict but kind man under thick skin. Kurt took care of an eight-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl as well as his old age would allow. But three years ago, he lost his leg in an accident and since then his health has gone downhill.
Dan was only eleven years old at the time and he saw the truth in their situation. They were in a tight place. If their grandfather dies, what will happen to them? Will they be sent to an orphanage? Will they get lost in a sea of paperwork? Can they be left to deal with themselves?
An uncertain future made Dan think and mature much earlier than everyone else. He wondered for a long time what exactly he could do to help and settled on getting money to the house. There was a little problem, because who in their right mind would hire a child? Excluding the illegal parts of the world and the good Samaritans.
After a few weeks of thinking, he turned to the one thing in the world that had the most answers to his questions: the internet. It had mixed results, but he found something that could give him a steady income so they at least had some money. Digital art.
It was a difficult thing to learn, but his options were this or becoming a drug runner. Well, or a programmer, but he decided that learning programming languages is better left for later. Over the course of three years, he learned to juggle his studies, painting – where he discovered an amazing talent within himself, both in physical painting and online – with a nearly non-existent personal life and trying to keep his body in shape. In some things he was more successful than in others.
Now Dan was fourteen, and Katya was twelve. Dan has become quite good at art and has recently started selling his works. Small influencers who wanted fanart, random people who found his page and asked him to draw something, his clientele was small, but the money started coming in.
Katya didn't do anything so grand, but she chose to start seriously studying marketing and psychology. She was so good that she earned the title of "little manipulator" from Dan. To be precise, he started calling her that after she broke the nose of one of her classmates and HE got suspended after that. Of course, it only worked because the asshole was… well, an asshole to everyone around him and didn't have many friends in class, but it still counted.
"{Why today? TV couldn't wait until tomorrow?}" Dan asked, wiping sweat from his face. "{I swear this heat will kill me.}"
"{We're going to the edge of the forest that I found a couple of days ago. You need to get out of the house more, or you'll start looking like a vampire.}" She replied with confidence, but Dan just chuckled.
"{More than I am now?}"
To tell the truth, Dan wasn't the palest person in the world, but it was pretty close. Days spent in the dark of a room in front of a computer did not help his life. Combined with his ice-blue eyes and black hair, he actually looked like a vampire.
"{Yes. Now stop dragging your feet and walk like a man.}"
Rolling his eyes, Dan took her advice – more like an order – and now they just walked hand in hand.
"{How's school been for you?}" Dan asked, looking at the trees around. He never got to draw them just right.
"{Meh, 's alright. Some dude smashed the bathroom on the third floor, did you hear? Painted fake blood on the walls too."}
"{Yeah, it was Marat. Yulievna checked the cameras.}"
The siblings continued to chat about various things going on in their lives. But Katya felt that something was wrong with her brother. He staggered more and more with each step, his pupils were much larger than they should have been under the sun. Dan was breathing heavily and sweating like a pig.
"{Danil? You need to get into the shade. Now.}"
He didn't even protest and let her lead him into the shadows. Not that he could, his head was killing him.
"{I think I have a heatstroke.}" Dan said with difficulty.
Katya put him under the shade of a tree and took the phone out of her pocket. "{Well done Sherlock, you figured out what was wrong with you. Why didn't you say something sooner?}"
"{Everything was alright.}"
Katya was saying something about an ambulance, but Dan couldn't listen to her. His thoughts tangled with each other, intertwined in a strange web of colors and sentences. For some reason, his thoughts always returned to the trees, which was one thing right in front of his eyes, so he closed him. Usually drawing leaves was not so easy for Dan, but now everything seemed so right.
A fast stoke of a brush, starting firm but going lighter. All the leaves that he painted were not natural. Too thick, too long, too big or too small. Leaves were the easiest part of a tree to draw, trees were very simple, to tell the truth, Bob Ross proved it with no problem. But with the detailed drawings, everything was different.
"{Son? Hey? Can you tell me your full name?}" An unfamiliar male voice asked him.
"{Danil Grigorievich Khromov,}" he said.
"{Do you know where you live?}"
Dan chuckled. Of course, he knew where he lived.
"{Why do you need to know? Mom said not to give my address to strangers.}" He slurred out.
Strong arms lifted him up and placed him on the stretcher, but that didn't matter right now. Where does he live? For some reason, his memory refused to work with him. Dan was sure he knew where he lived, who doesn't know where they live? Little children, he'd imagine.
"{Do you know who you're studying to be?}" Another question was heard.
"{Huh? No, I'm still in school, it's too early for me to choose a spealizion,}" he stopped, that word didn't sound right. "{Specalizion. Secialization. How do people pronounce this word?}"
No one answered him.
The world became blurry over time. Dan sometimes saw his sister's face, the faces of unfamiliar masked nurses, the ceiling of an uncomfortable ambulance, sometimes he saw something... different. Strange. Unnatural.
A creature made of pure blackness hovered only at the edges of his vision. It didn't do anything, was just… watching.
"{I think I'm hallucinating.}" Dan said and in the next moment the world lost colors.
He was confused. Everything around was black or shades of gray, sounds disappeared and time seemed to stop. Dan couldn't move, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't hear his own heartbeat, but he was still alright.
The world just refused to move.
"You can see me." The faint voice felt like it was scratching at his eardrums was coming from above.
The black creature creeped towards him, crawling across the ceiling. The movements were not quite correct, reminding Dan about his leaves. Something that the artist couldn't draw correctly and just left the work as it is.
"You're weird," the creature continued. "Many people with a will stronger than yours trembled before me. Soldiers, poets, rulers and even gods knelt before me. The madmen gained enough sanity to fear me, the sane ones lost their minds from fear. You are not afraid of me." It didn't speak the language Dan knew, but the teen could still understand it.
Dan wanted to answer, but his mouth refused to move. 'What should I be afraid of?' he thought.
The creature craned its neck, most likely to get a better look at Dan, but it didn't have eyes. "Death at my hands. Unexplainable things going on around you. Even my appearance is enough to frighten mortals."
If Dan could move, he would nod. 'It's logical. People are afraid of death, whoever they are, but that's just not for me. I realized long ago that my time is not infinite and that sooner or later I will die and only memories will remain behind me. Right now, I can die and I don't feel fear, only regret that I'll leave my family.' The fog in his mind dissipated a little, but didn't completely leave him. 'I've never been afraid of the unknown, if I don't know something, it just means that I just have to learn or remain ignorant forever.'
The creature made a sound, like an echo of a scratched vinyl recording. "And my looks?"
'I drew worse.' The thought flashed through his head before he could stop it.
"Not only are you weird, you're also funny." An emotionless voice sounded and a long silence reigned in the ambulance.
'What are you?' Dan thought after a while. It was strange to think that time had passed when the world didn't move.
"I don't know," the creature replied. "I have been around for a long time, but no one can tell what I am, who I am. Most call me The Wanderer." The black body fell off the top of the car and landed on Dan's left. "I look at things. At people and their lives. Change a couple of things sometimes. Always the curious kid, they say."
'Sounds interesting, are you looking at my life?'
The Wanderer raised a clawed hand, brushing a few stray hairs from Dan's face. "No. You're just a lucky find. Few mortals can see me, let alone understand me." It stopped, thinking about something. "Do you want to live?"
'Yes.' Dan answered right away. 'I can't leave Katya and Kurt alone.'
It made that strange sound again. "Interesting, but impossible. Your lifestyle isn't the healthiest, the heat didn't help it. Death is now just a matter of seconds or hours for you. Your heart is ready to fail at any moment. You won't get a replacement."
The Wanderer's words were brutally honest, cold and completely devoted of empathy. Dan was grateful for that, too many people in his life were trying to sugar-coat things.
'Can't you let me live?'
"I can. I just don't want to."
Dan's thoughts flashed through a couple of not quite censorship words addressed to the Wanderer. "If you can save my life, why not?! You can make the gods 'kneel,' so why the hell can't you save me?!" Dan stopped abruptly, the sound of his voice resounding in the complete silence of the world. His heart was beating again and his lungs took in air, but his head was melting.
The Wanderer didn't even twitch from his unexpected movements, only leaned even closer. "Even more interesting. Your brain is ready to explode, like it's the price you paid for being able to move in this space. Your life is so ordinary it's ridiculous, but you're capable of breaking into my realm, if not unharmed. So much talent in a world without anything supernatural. It's so… boring."
Dan was breathing heavily, not even feeling the pain that was trying to take over his body. He just felt under incredible pressure. "You're a cruel bastard, you know that?" He muttered, looking for his sister. Tears streamed down the girl's cheeks and she clutched the phone in her hands – most likely she was talking to Kurt.
"That's what they called me too, yes." The Wanderer nodded. "But no one can call a child's interest cruel. After all, that's who I am, at least in the words of others. I think you'll do better in the world with magic."
The nurses took out cold packs of the boxes and placed them around his body. His clothes were either taken off or torn to make it easier for him to breathe. "Why do I feel better and worse at the same time?"
"Ah. It's because your previous traumas affect your physical body, not your astral projection." The Wanderer answered.
Astral projection was a rather strange use of magic. The soul left the body to explore the non-material world, leaving the body almost defenseless. Despite this, many have used astral projection for a variety of different reasons.
Dan blinked, raising his hand in front of his face. He wasn't too surprised when he found it translucent. "A world without the supernatural, where can I do something like that? Where you can do something like that?"
The Wanderer's clawed arms again reached out to Dan's face, but it stopped himself a couple of centimeters from the target.
"I never said that what you're doing now is impossible to do."
Dan pushed himself up on his elbows and sat up on the bed, leaving his body behind. "Why are you here, other than because I'm interesting? What are you looking for here?"
The Wanderer crouched in front of Dan, and he only now noticed how tall this creature was. "I think you'll do better in the world with magic," it said again. "Maybe with a few changes it would be even better."
Taking a deep breath, Dan decided to try his luck. "Will you tell me what these changes are?"
"No."
Dan didn't blink, trying to find any hint of emotion in the Wanderer's pose. If what the creature was saying was true, he had no choice in the matter. "Can I leave a message for my family before you send me to a new world?"
Dan's soul was torn at the knowledge that he would leave his family behind. That he would just die from something as stupid as heatstroke. That he would hurt his sister again, even if it wasn't his fault. He just knew that Katya would blame herself for his death – or disappearance, he did not know what would happen in this world.
The Wanderer shook his head. "No, you won't need it. I will create an exact copy of you and leave it in this world. He will survive this heat stroke and live a happy life, forgetting about meeting me."
It already sounded much better than a simple death, but Dan had a question.
"... Why can't you send my copy to the new world? Just leave me here," he pleaded, but was denied.
"No. The talent of the soul is not something that can be simply copied." The Wanderer's claws dug into Dan's chest and a black hand squeezed his heart. He gaped at how his astral projection began to acquire the same black color as the Wanderer. "I will watch over you, mortal."
And like that, the world started moving again. This time without one Danil Grigorievich Khromov. His place taken by another.
The final thoughts of the original were that The Wanderer hadn't asked a single question, but had come to the conclusion that it didn't need to. It already knew all the answers.
Oi.
I finally worked up the courage to write a somewhat SI character in the world of Harry Potter. How many such fanfics even exist in the world? To be honest, I'm scared to even think about it.
In any case, I need your Stones. I need to eat something, after all.
And no, I won't stop making jokes about eating stones.
In a forest somewhere in Scotland, something truly extraordinary was happening. Dan fell to the floor, his back hitting the cold ground. His lungs greedily sucked in short bursts of air, trying to pump more oxygen into his blood. He was still in pain, his head throbbing with every beat of his heart, his muscles coiling like snakes under his skin.
His eyes were wide open, darting from side to side, taking in new information. Trees with thick trunks towered around him, blocking almost all the light from the sun, orange leaves covered the ground like a blanket, but they did nothing to soften his fall. Dan rolled over on his side with difficulty, noticing that there were no bushes on the ground, which didn't surprise him, with such lighting it would be difficult for anything to grow.
Dan looked down at his body and his breath hitched. His clothes were still torn and pulled to the sides, showing the world once pale, smooth skin, now looking more like Wanderer's.
Slowly getting to his feet, Dan leaned against the tree to keep himself from falling over. He was taller than before, but he wasn't sure by how much, there wasn't anything around that he could compare himself to.
His clawed hands now dropped almost to the floor, barely touching the ground, and his legs flexed with suspicious ease. His skin was stretched over his ribs, showing every bone in his body. He was still slightly hunched over in pain, so it wasn't even his full height, but judging by how far the ground was from his view, he was very tall.
"{The Wanderer made me look like him?}" Dan wanted to say, but only warping sounds escaped his throat. Unlike the Wanderer's voice, his sounded more like rewinding a cassette.
Standing between dozens and hundreds of trees, Dan slowly caught his breath. He heard birds chirping, insects fluttering, leaves rustling. The forest lived its own life and Dan was an outcast here.
'Wait... I don't give a shit about that. Just go with the flow, don't worry about anything too much. If you can't change something – adapt,' he told himself and took a deep breath.
"{Gods, help me,}" he vwhooped.
He didn't sit still for long and began to explore the forest around him, drawing a mental map of this place at the same time. But it quickly became clear that his clothes were too small to walk comfortably in. He took off his shorts and T-shirt, remaining completely naked and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his genitals where they should be. After thinking for a moment, he tore the shirt on one side and wrapped it around his waist like a loincloth. His shorts may be needed for something later, so he hung them on his shoulder. All he had were clothes on his back, the rest of his personal belongings were left in the ambulance, so he would preserve whatever he had.
Dan walked in a random direction, looking around and scratching at some trees, leaving marks, trying not to get lost even more. His claws were surprisingly sturdy. Each tree in the forest was similar to another, differing from each other in almost nothing, so he made his own differences.
Along the way, he noticed a couple of things. The first thing that caught his eye was that purple particles were flying around his body under the sunlight. In the shadows, he was almost invisible, but if even a ray of light fell on him, purple lights began to fly around.
He was ready to bet money on something that had already seen it somewhere.
The second was the animals in the forest. He expected to see wolves, foxes and snakes. He did not expect to see traces of unshod hooves. 'Cows? Not in the forest without grass, most likely this is the path that wild horses often take. It would be helpful to know what time period I'm in.'
Dan lifted his gaze from the ground and went to another tree to make another mark, but as soon as he approached it, a strange green mantis-like insect fell on his hand and bit his palm. Well, it tried to bite him, but it's teeth couldn't puncture Dan's skin.
"{And what are you?}" He raised his hand to his face and took a closer look at the "praying mantis."
The little dude looked like a combination of a young Groot and an ordinary praying mantis. It was a strange creature, moving on three small legs and having huge fingers on its hands. On a tiny head with small black eyes, a formation resembling two leaves flaunts. "{I'll leave your tree alone if you stop biting me.}"
The guy stopped trying to take a bite out of Dan and looked into his eyes. For some reason, this annoyed the not-quite-human a lot, but he chose to ignore the feeling. The mantis stood up on its three legs and nodded slowly. This surprised Dan, even he couldn't understand his speech, but somehow this mantis was able to understand and respond to his words, even if in its own way.
"{I suppose you can't tell me where we are?}" Dan asked, getting a negative shake of mantis' head. "{That's bad. You live here then?}" A nod. "{Any humans around here?}"
The mantis paused to consider his question, but finally nodded. It looked around and pointed to the side where the sun shone brighter.
Dan made an inhuman sound again. "{Do you want to come with me, or should I put you back on the tree?}"
Instead of answering, the mantis pointed to his shoulder – where his shorts were – and Dan placed it there. Now that he had a guide, Dan felt a little better. He wasn't sure if this creature was magical or simply highly intelligent, but decided not to worry about it right now.
They continued walking in silence, slowly approaching civilization and Dan didn't know what to think.
He only hoped he didn't get shot in the face. Or worse.
The mantis was squeaking something in his ear – or in the place where people usually have ears – pointing to the trees around and Dan nodded intelligently, as if he understood what it was talking about. Gradually, different trees began to appear in their path. Instead of tall sequoias, oaks and willows have begun to replace them, making the forest seem much denser.
Although the sun used to shine brightly, it was already getting dark, letting Dan know exactly where the west was. The little mantis led him towards the northwest.
Dry leaves crunched under his feet with every step. Dan didn't bother to cover his tracks, he didn't think that the animals would hunt him and as far as he could tell, there were no humans in this part of the forest.
Gradually, the sun went completely below the horizon and Mantis – Dan decided that since the dude clearly didn't have a name, he would just call him Mantis – hid in his shorts pocket to sleep. Dan felt stronger than ever, as if the moon itself gave him the energy to move. Even the darkness dispersed before his eyes, making the world as bright as it was in daylight.
But in the end, Dan stopped. Without Mantis, he couldn't know if he was taking the right path, and the idea of continuing into the night wasn't the wisest. 'Now to find a place to sleep. The crown of one of the trees should be high enough that wolves or foxes couldn't get me, and all the birds will simply be scared away by my appearance. With my claws, it will be easy for me to climb a tree.'
As soon as the thought flashed through his mind, Dan immediately found himself on one of the thickest branches of the nearest tree, purple sparks pouring from his body. He blinked a couple of times, trying to figure out what had happened when it dawned on him that he had just teleported with just a thought.
Dan sat down, leaning against the thick tree trunk and closed his eyes, leaving his legs hanging down. 'Well, that's good to know. Apparently, The Wanderer made me into a knock-off Enderman.' Dan thought about it and left the panic to his future self.
-=-=-=-=-=-
At Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry – located somewhere in the mountains of Scotland – Headmaster Albus Too-Many-Names Dumbledore looked at the Book of Acceptance in confusion. It was an artifact that wrote the names and dates of birth of all the potential British-born students at the school, and now the book was doing something strange.
Dumbledore was an old man over one hundred and fifty years old. He was tall, with long gray hair and a beard down to the bottom of his belly. Many will say that he was the most senile old man they have ever seen, especially after considering his fashion choices. Bright yellow robes with lemon embroidery on the sleeves, a blue pointing hat and half-moon glasses on his once-broken nose.
The parchment sheets turned so quickly that they almost merged into one image, sometimes flickering with colors that were inaccessible to the human eye. Finally, the book opened to one particular page and the quill rose from the table. It dipped a couple of times in the ink and began to write between the names of the students.
[Danil Grigorievich Khromov – 18.09.1979] cursive letters filled the yellowish paper and Dumbledore frowned.
The Book of Acceptance was not supposed to work this way, that much was obvious. 'Fidelius charm to hide the student's identity? It's like what a paranoid parent who fled the Soviet Union would do.' Many people did something like that, the Magical Soviet Union was not the best place to live. Dumbledore scratched his long beard as he thought about the new incident. "But then the quill would write his name, it would just become invisible to the eye," he muttered.
One of the many strange devices on his shelves clicked, announcing that someone was standing at the door to his office. A look at these shelves gave him an idea of who exactly was standing there. Severus Snape, not Dumbledore's rare visitor, but not on the first day of school.
"Come in, Severus," he said calmly, already trying to guess what had caused the Potions master to come so early. Maybe someone from the fourth years melted another cauldron? No, it must be something more serious.
A middle-aged man with greasy black hair and a hocked nose entered the office, his robes were exclusively black, and his skin was pale as a sheet. Severus wasn't the kind of person who cared about his public image, at least not at first glance.
"Headmaster," he started. "My students reported that Hagrid's third year class had a... unfortunate incident."
'Ah, so that's why he's here.' Dumbledore nodded. "Yes, I already heard the report from Poppy, young Malfoy got scratched, didn't he?"
Severus looked like he wanted to roll his eyes. "I wouldn't call a Hippogriff's attack a scratch, but yes, I'm here because of it. What will be done with the beast now?"
Dumbledore sighed heavily and sat down in his chair, but still kept his back straight, manners a man's face, after all.
"The school will take no action against an animal that doesn't know better. Buckbeak will continue to live under Hagrid's care."
Severus furrowed his brows as he looked at the Book of Acceptance, which was still open to the page with the new student's name on it.
"Maybe I'll accept that explanation, but Lucius will definitely demand the head of his son's assaultiant." Severus read the words on the paper and frowned even more. "Khromov? We don't have a student by that name and from what I can see, he's not dead and doesn't attend other schools."
When a potential student dies, the quill strikes their name from the register, forever remaining a memory of the child's death. If the student chooses to study at another school, the name of the school will be written next to the name. When expelled, the child's name simply disappeared from the book, as if it wasn't even worthy to be written inside.
But there were no marks next to Khromov's name, Dumbledore wasn't sure exactly how something like that was possible, but he had a couple of ideas.
"No, we don't." Headmaster easily agreed. "I dare say I've never even heard of a magical family with that last name. Though it's not surprising given our new student's Russian roots."
Severus raised an eyebrow questioningly. "Are you going to offer him a place at Hogwarts? Wouldn't it make more sense to find him and send him back to Sov– Russia?" He quickly corrected himself.
Not even two years have passed since the announcement of the demise of the Soviet Union, but most people have already got used to the new world, which could not be said about the Wizards. The wizarding community in Britain was much more backward compared to others, so Dumbledore wouldn't be surprised if people continued to believe that Russia was still under the control of the Communist Party.
"If Mr. Khromov wants, we will provide him with a way to return home. But if he chooses to stay here, then I think the Ministry will let him." Dumbledore spoke with confidence, knowing full well that the Ministry wouldn't have much choice if he used all his positions.
Magical Russia was far from the best place right now, especially for children, and Albus had no intention of sending the child to certain death.
I don't know if I ever said that, but I love the beginning of different stories. The first time someone sees magic, unknown creatures, or even new worlds. I always liked how the characters discovered something new for themselves.
On another, completely unrelated note, I know full well that Dan doesn't react like a normal person. He simply accepts everything that happens around him as a fact and moves on. Don't worry, the emotional breakdown will be later.
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