Capítulo 66: Grandfather and Grandson Talk
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George West looked around the room he was in. It was a plain room that clearly been cleaned recently to make it presentable. Presentable to whom? His best and probably correct guess was for him. He owned the building of which the room was part. Actually, this building was owned by the West family business, and he was the owner of said business, so technically, he owned this building.
Back to the room, he was in; It had a single wooden table and two chairs, sitting opposite to each other on opposite sides of the table. On the table rested a pitcher of water with two glasses, courtesy of the manager of the small, West-financed ventures operated in the building.
There was no decor on the walls, and the walls were painted in a simple white color that looked dull because of the time it had been since the room was given a coat of paint. Other than the table and the chairs, the room was bare.
He got and walked to the window and looked outside the window. Through the glass, he could see the view of the all-wizard Hogsmeade village. People who lived in the settlement went on with their lives as George watched them from above. Not knowing that the richest man in the country was looking at them.
George thought of the reason he was here. Quinn, his younger grandchild, had sent him a mail through the machine they were calling MagiFax.
The MagiFax was a big hit in the offices of the West business. In the past year, MagiFax was introduced to almost all of the West family offices and ventures. And as it was expected, the addition of the machines was a big hit everywhere. The memos were being sent faster than ever before.
Just by employing the instantaneous feature of the MagiFax, the business all around the world had gained major profits. The information was being exchanged much faster than their local competitors, that West business was faster and better at everything because they had more time to plan and act.
George smiled when he thought about the profits that the MagiFax brought them. Soon, the MagiFax would be rolled out for all to buy and bring in more profits.
His grandson, Quinn, didn't know it, but George had opened an account for him that would hold a part of the profit for every MagiFax sold. His grandson didn't know it, but he was about to get very rich in the coming future.
George walked back to his chair and sat down. He didn't know why Quinn had called him here at the Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop at Hogsmeade, but the letter said that he needed to get here as quickly as possible even if it meant to drop everything he was doing.
George did what he was asked for and immediately replied that he would meet him the next day, and here he was, sitting in a room in Hogsmeade, waiting for his grandson to arrive.
"But, today isn't a Hogsmeade weekend," murmured George. He had asked the shop manager, and he was told that today (a Saturday) wasn't marked as a Hogsmeade weekend. "I wonder how Quinn will get out of the castle."
George didn't know that there were hidden passages to get in and out of the castle, and Quinn knew every one of them.
He picked up a glass from the tray and placed it on the table, took out his wand, and cleaned it himself with magic before pouring himself a glass of water. Just as his glass was full, the door to the room opened.
George looked up to see his grandson, Quinn, standing at the door.
"Grandfather," greeted Quinn. George noticed the flat tone in which Quinn spoke and the slump in Quinn's shoulders, and the tiredness in his posture.
"Quinn, you look..." George greeted back but couldn't finish his sentence as there was something off about Quinn. George couldn't know what it was, but something about Quinn looked unnatural.
Quinn sat down on the opposite chair and looked at George. When the eyes met each other, George's widened when the unnatural feeling disappeared, but what remained wasn't what George was expecting.
George saw Quinn's face distort, and gone was the unnatural feeling and what remained was heavy bags under Quinn's eyes and sickeningly pale skin. His tired face didn't have an expression on it.
"Quinn!" George exclaimed in worry as he reached out his hands towards Quinn's face and held it against his cheek. "Oh my dear child, what happened to you?"
Quinn stared at George with the same expressionless face he had on since the last two days and spoke monotonously.
"I got into trouble. I am in big trouble and need help."
George frowned in worry as he noticed the monotone in Quinn's voice and no expression.
"Quinn, why are you using occlumency to hide your emotions?"
After another stare, Quinn spoke, "Please, step back and keep your wand at ready."
"What?" George was confused. Quinn's words didn't answer his question. His words only confused him more and caused more worry.
"If you push your chair back and make some distance between us, I would be properly able to explain what is happening," The flat tone seemed to be the only tone that Quinn spoke in. "And, please keep your wand ready to protect yourself."
He stared into George's eyes and asked, "Do you understand?"
George observed Quinn with a critical eye before following his grandson's instruction. He pushed his chair away from the table and readied his wand to defend himself.
"I am going to undo my occlumency." Quinn's voice cracked a little. "Be ready."
George didn't know what to expect, but what happened blew his mind.
A pained expression appeared on Quinn's face. It was the first facial expression he had shown since entering the room.
Then it all started.
The walls of the room changed. Some of the patches of the wall turned into liquid and dripped. Spikes jutted out from other patches. Paint on the wall caught on fire, but at the same time, the walls became whiter than ever.
George gripped his wand as he felt the room getting colder and colder, but when he looked up at the ceiling, it was on fire. The table shook violently before floating up in the air. Deep gashes and horrid laceration tortured the floor.
George removed his eyes from the bizarreness around, looked at Quinn, and saw multicolored veins all over his face.
The rampant magic stopped after ten seconds, leaving a panting Quinn, who slowly went back to becoming expressionless within the following few seconds. The room, on the other hand, didn't go back to normal. It remained damaged from Quinn's magic.
"Please do damage control," came Quinn's request in the same monotone.
George didn't respond for several seconds and just stared at Quinn before he finally used magic to extinguish the fires, repairing the destroyed table and fixing the walls to a certain degree. The room didn't go back to before Quinn's magic bruised it, but it was much better than the mess when Quinn cut the emotional connection from his magic.
"What happened," George pulled his chair towards the table and put his hand on Quinn's hand, which was shivering. "What was that?"
Quinn held George's hand. George felt the nervousness in the grip.
"Then, I should start from the beginning."
Quinn pulled his hand back and took out a wooden cuboid from his clothes, and placed it in the middle of the table. The cuboidal box had crude runes carved on its surface.
"What is this?"
Quinn stared at the box with a blank expression, but no one but him knew what was going inside his mind.
"Inside that wooden block is my wand."
George frowned as he asked, "Your wand?" He couldn't comprehend why Quinn would keep his wand in a wooden box.
He wasn't expecting the answer that Quinn gave him.
"Grandfather, I have only held my wand two times since the day I bought it. The first time was on the day we bought the day and the second time was before this week. Other than those two times, I haven't touched the wand with any part of my body."
"That doesn't make sense," George spoke, not believing what Quinn said because his situation didn't allow Quinn to leave his wand. "Child, you are learning magic; you can't perform magic without a wand."
Quinn's hands were palm-faced down on the table. He slightly raised his index finger on his right hand, and immediately George's wand expelled from his hand and twirled in the air before falling over the table.
"I don't need a wand to use magic."
George looked at his wand on the table, which was snatched from his hands. He couldn't believe that an unarmed child had just disarmed him.
Then came the story that explained to George what just happened.
"Grandfather, if you remember, I showed my first sign of magic when I was four." there was a pause before Quinn continued again, "When I fell from my room's window, and that triggered the accidental magic to save my life."
George, of course, remembered the day. All the people had a scare followed by joy because of Quinn's fall.
"It was exactly one year after that I gained deliberate control over my magic," Quinn narrated the event where he first used magic. "It was frustration-induced, accidental magic. I sent a rubber ball across the room. That allowed me to control my magic on smaller levels."
Quinn remembered the days he would play with glass marbles and rubber balls.
"I moved small objects by using magic for an entire year before I got my hands on one of Lia's books." If Quinn didn't have a tight grasp on his occlumency, he would have smiled. "From that day onwards, I learned about magic theory and how it worked."
George recalled the days when Quinn would carry Lia's book with him all around the house.
"Then came the time when he left for the world tour. That was the start of my magical journey. Lia had given me books of my own as a gift, and I had you buy books from every country we visited. Unlike what everybody thought I didn't buy them because I enjoyed reading, I bought them because I wanted to learn more about my magic."
George's eyes widened at the revelation. He couldn't believe that his grandson had been doing wandless magic since he was five years old.
"I learned on that trip. To this day, I consider those years were the best time of my life. I traveled the world while learning magic. At that time, it was everything I wanted from my life."
"I never stopped practicing magic after that." Quinn stared at George's face and continued, "I have over eight years, closer to nine years of experience with wandless magic. I can use magic without a focus with no problems. I don't even notice it anymore."
Quinn stopped talking to let George absorb the information. After a while, George put up a question.
"Why didn't you use your wand after we bought it for you?"
Memories of the day he bought his wand passed through Quinn's mind, "As I said, I had been using magic without a focus since I was five years old. That was six-year of experience of wandless magic. By that time, I had a solid connection to my magic. But when I held the wand, what it did was try to divert the connection between me and my magic through the wand. Meaning that if I kept using my magic, then there would come the point where I would reach a point where I would have to use the wand as a link between me and my magic."
Quinn did a robotic shrug as he explained, "I didn't want my solid connection to my magic to wither away with time. But the wand made me feel so powerful. Just holding the wand in my hand increased my magical capabilities by several levels. I struggled with the temptation of the power it made me feel, so to escape it, I locked the wand in a woodblock and threw it in one of the rooms in my suitcase."
George couldn't understand what Quinn was talking about as magic theory wasn't his forte.
But, George did have another question for Quinn.
"Quinn," he looked at his grandson with a slightly hurt look on his face. "Why did you think you needed something like this hidden from me or anyone in the family?"
Seeing the hurt look on George's face shook Quinn. He almost lost control over his occlumency. The look of vulnerability was not something he had seen on George's face. The older man always had a stern and stoic exterior. Quinn knew that George was a caring person, but the hurt expression on his face something Quinn had never seen before.
There was a long pause before Quinn replied.
"I didn't tell anyone because I thought you would stop me from using magic."
Quinn was grateful for the occlumency that kept his magic at bay because it made his voice sound absolutely flat with no emotion in it. If Quinn wasn't using occlumency right now, he wasn't sure if he would have been able to lie to George.
It was a complete lie when Quinn said that he thought they would stop him from using magic.
The real reason was something entirely different.
The five-year-old Quinn didn't consider the Wests as his family.
He didn't trust them even a single bit.
He didn't see George West as his grandfather, nor did he see Lia West as his sister.
He was dropped in this world with no warning. He had suffered from a panic attack within minutes of coming to this world.
Quinn found himself in an unfamiliar body and lived in a house with the original Quinn's family. At that point in time, they were complete strangers to him. And, they weren't any strangers, who were family to the original owner of this body, who was now dead.
He didn't dare to reveal that he could do magic without a magical focus because it scared him that they would somehow know that he wasn't their family and just somebody possessing their family member's body.
If they ever found out, he was sure that he would be dead, with no one ever finding of his death.
It was the reason why he acted as the perfect child so that they won't get suspicious. Quinn did what every child would do and behaved as a well-behaved child so that they won't have any reason to become suspicious.
For the first two years, Quinn wore a permanent mask of a perfectly behaved child. A method actor as he had once called himself.
It was all an act to maintain his life in this world.
It took time before Quinn learned to see them as his family. It took spending years with them to finally see them as his family. To finally look at George West as his grandfather, Lia West as his sister, Elliot Dalton and Ms. Rosey as his all-but-in-blood family, and Polly as the dependable house-elf who completed his family.
It took time to finally consider himself as a genuine member of the West family and not some imposter.
But by the time he finally accepted them, it was already had been years since he started practicing magic. He felt guilty for not telling them and decided to keep it a secret until he got a good chance to reveal that he could do magic without a wand.
Losing control over his magic wasn't the lemon he imagined about, but it was the one that life gave him, so he made lemonade with it.
There was a long silence between George and Quinn as they stared at each other. Neither of the two said a single word.
"I am sorry," spoke Quinn. He apologized for being so late. "I am sorry for hiding it this long."
"I will not lie and say that it didn't hurt me to see that you thought I would stop you from doing something you so clearly loved," George spoke, his voice softer than Quinn had ever heard from the man. "But I am glad that you told me about this. And Quinn, I would say this: I would never ever stop you from doing what you love."
"Thank you," said Quinn.
"But, this still doesn't explain why you are in this condition," asked George. While his talk with his grandson had brought them together, it said nothing about the condition Quinn was currently in. "What happened to you that you lost control of magic."
Quinn poured himself a glass of water from the slightly deformed pitcher before continuing.
"There exist a few secret mysteries in Hogwarts that not many know about." Quinn was starting the cursed vaults explanation to his grandfather. "The castle is a thousand years old with generations of magical humans starting their magical journey with Hogwarts. So, it is not strange that there are unidentified areas in the castle. I just so happened to come across one of those mysteries."
Quinn reminisced about the day he met Friar and how it changed his life in Hogwarts.
"In my second year at Hogwarts, I found that there are these five vaults hidden across Hogwarts. Only the ghosts remember about them because some of them have been here for centuries. The Hufflepuff ghost, Friar, shared with me the knowledge about these vaults."
George listened to Quinn, who spoke with a flat tone and blank expression, but George could see how these vaults would have excited Quinn.
"I cleared the first vault last year." There was a pause in which Quinn thought if he should tell George about how he got hospitalized for ten days because he almost died. Quinn decided that if he was going to tell George about the vaults. Then he should just opt for full disclosure, sort off. "I got hospitalized for ten days, had to grow most of my skin, all of my hair, heal my bones and plenty of organs."
"What?!" George screamed. "Why wasn't I told about this?!"
Quinn expected that reaction. He was just glad that he didn't use the words like death or almost died in his sentence.
"It was nothing to worry about." Quinn lied to lessen his grandfather's worries. "Madam Pomfrey fixed me up in no time. Plus, she is a great company."
"Moving on, I solved the first vault and found what was behind it. No problems, it just took a lot of time and effort." Quinn looked George in the eyes. "The problem started this year when I found the second vault, and in my first and only exploration of the vault, I fell unconscious."
George sharply inhaled. He didn't like where this was going.
Quinn took a deep breath before continuing.
"Something happened to me that day. And whatever happened was undone before this week because I now have no control over my magic." Quinn's hand shivered as some emotions started leaking. "I went from feeling on the top of my game to having no control over my magic. It actively tries to escape my body and cause rampage."
George could feel that Quinn was struggling because he could feel the slight temperature dropping in the room, and there were small glimmers of facial expression on Quinn's face.
He took Quinn's hand in his and spoke.
"But, you just used magic when you disarmed me."
Quinn shook his head and explained,
"I can still do minor magic that I find easy. My magic is seriously limited right now. Plus, right now, I feel stifled when I use magic. Using magic without a connection to my will feels extremely wrong."
He pointed to the time just a few minutes ago.
"You remember when I come into this room, I was hiding my face with magic? That was illusion magic, at least a physical illusion, not a mental illusion. I am not in the condition to perform much mental magic, and your occlumency defenses are too much for even the normal me to use a mental illusion."
Quinn looked at George's face and realized that he had gotten off the point. "Ah, anyway, I saw your face and noticed that you found something wrong. The current me wasn't able to pull off a physical illusion with my magical capabilities. I am not having a good time with my magic. I don't feel good."
"It is alright, Quinn," George spoke in a comforting voice. "Everything would be alright. I will find a way to fix whatever is wrong with you. So, don't worry. Everyone in the house would help."
George meant it as he already started to plan to hire the best healers money could buy. He needed to find the best in the fields and provide his grandson with the best healthcare.
"Help! Yes, help." Quinn's eyes shined, and he gripped George's hands. "I need help with this, and you can help me with this."
"Of course, anything you want, Quinn." George didn't deny any request. While he couldn't see any expression on Quinn's face, he could tell that something was wrong with Quinn. His emotions were all over the place.
"I want you to call someone," Quinn said. "I want you to get them to West manor the day I return home."
The request confused George. He didn't know who his grandson wanted to meet so eagerly.
"Who is it?"
Quinn took another deep breath before speaking in a flat monotone.
"I want you to call Alan D. Baddeley."
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Quinn West - MC - More stone-faced than a certain blonde.
George West - Grandfather - Extremely worried about his grandson.
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