Chapter 8 : Enter! Aftermath

April 1. 1986

Antares POV

When I woke up I expected an empty room. But that wasn't the case. Instead I saw my mother who was stricken with grief.

"Mom" was the only thing I managed to rasp out.

My throat was still sore from previous night and I had troubles with speaking.

Her eyes slightly widened and before I could react I was in a warm embrace. I heard her choking down sobs and reacted on instinct.

"D'n't w'ry. 'ryth'n' 's fi..ne. 'm 'kay. 'm n't goin' 'nyw'ere. D'n't w'ry. 'lea..se d'n't cry."

I was surprised I managed to, if barely, talk for so long. My throat really hurt after that.

We stayed like that for some time. Five minutes or twenty minutes, it didn't matter.

"Are you really fine?" she asked with clear hesitation in her voice.

"Thr't h'rt" I tried to reply.

Mom immediately ordered one of our house elfs to fetch a throat soothing potion for me.

The potion tasted surprisingly sweet. It tasted like honey.

After a while I didn't feel the soreness in my throat anymore. It was time to start acting.

"Mom, it hurts. It hurts inside of me. Like there is half of me missing." my voice was trembling and I adopted distressed expression.

She looked at me with pity. Then the second part sunk in. Her brows furrowed and after a moment she asked.

"A half?"

"Mmm" I nodded "There was something inside before. Now there's only half of it"

She stared at me and then reached for her wand.

"Can I try something" I nodded again. She pointed her wand against me and muttered some spell I didn't catch the incantation of. There was a sharp inhaled.

"What, what's wrong?" I already knew what she found, but I wanted to hear it directly from her.

*sigh* "When you were born, a healer diagnoses you with a rare condition. People usually died because of it. If they didn't, then they became squibs. It can start on one of three different times. When you're seven, eleven or seventeen. Your started at seven. Your core was supposed to leave your body."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"We didn't want you to worry"

There was a moment of silence between us.

"So, what happens now?" That was part I really didn't need to play.

"I, I don't know"

"Who else knew about my condition?"

"Only I, your father and the healer"

"Then..can we just act like nothing happened?"

"Why? We should take you to the healer to check if everything is fine and learn what happened"

"I don't want people to know"

"The healer will have to swear an oath"

"But it's, it's still better if we tell nobody"

*sigh* "I can do nothing to convince you, huh"

"No, you can't"

"Fine then, but if anything happens then we are going straight to St. Mungo's"

"Thank you"

( AN : He convinced her because author bullshit. I don't see a way where 7 yrs old can convince his parent not to take him to hospital after something like this. I really didn't know how exactly I wanted to write the hospital scene, so, author bullshit it is. Deal with it. )

As the days progressed I tried spending more of my time with my family. But I still meditated and visited library. After a consulting with Felix I decided to wait with wandless magic for at least three months.

As I've gotten to know Draco better, my relationship with him turned pretty interestingly. Unlike his counterpart in books or movies he was pretty resourceful, as a five years old soon to be six could be. The little shit, the title surprisingly now held some kind of brotherly affection, only listened to me when there was something good for him in it. After a while I realized that I changed him more than I thought.

He was not as brash as a Gryffindor, he still was but it was noticeably better. He was more subtle, observant and definitely smarter.

It was a month later when Lucius came back home and I immediately noticed how the Mark on his arm felt.

"Your arm is disgusting" I couldn't help but to point out.

"Pardon?" he looked slightly offended.

"I said that your arm is disgusting. It feels like something died there, but it's still alive." After I elaborated he looked pretty pale.

"I thought it was you. So I wanted to say sorry for treating you badly before" And now he looked surprised.

"I...see"

After that confrontation we still didn't talk much but we were on better terms than before.

My learning rate skyrocketed after I remembered that Felix is awake when I'm sleeping. I simply asked mom to charm some book to read itself out loud every night before going to sleep. He listened and when I meditated he transferred all the knowledge to my head. It was effective as hell.

With this in regard I expanded my study interests. Among the other things I'm now learning more about potions and herbology.

When I was presented with an opportunity to learn new language I took it without hesitation. As long as it isn't German I will gladly learn it, god how I hate that language. I picked Latin.

It was three months later that I finally felt ready to start with wandless magic.