011 // MC does some soul searching.

Months following the kidnapping incident were hard for Sirius. He turned 9 in October, about 3 months after the incident had occurred. He was treated like he would disappear anytime by his mother and Governess; his grandfather had never coddled him before that day, and he didn't start doing so after it, but his father's attitude changed a bit towards him. His father allowed him access to the second floor of the library, which was usually done when a child receives their Hogwarts letter at the least. He still wasn't allowed on the 3rd or 4th floor of the library but still, even access to the 2nd floor was a sign of trust his father had shown towards him. He was considered responsible now.

He had a hard time spending time with his siblings like before the incident. Those days they were under the potion were hard on them as well but gradually they had found a new normal. While he lost himself in his studies, Phineas and Elladora grew closer. Miss Allen was removed from her post due to her failure at protecting her charges, so Another Governess was hired for younger children as well as an unseen guard was allotted for whenever they left the bounds of the manor.

Their captors were never seen or heard from again and no one really cared about them. They didn't deserve to be glorified for their actions, but their actions nonetheless affected a few important noble magical families that were still active in the muggle world.

His grandfather had told the family about the meeting that he attended consisting of all the old magical families still involved in the muggle world on the British Isles. They had decided to slowly distance themselves from muggle monarchs and their government due to various reasons, which were brewing since the statute of secrecy, but the loss of their children was the final nail in the coffin. These families had also increased in introducing Muggleborn oppression laws in wizengmort. Sirius suspected that his grandfather had manipulated a lot of families by fudging the truth about the kidnapping but that was already done now.

Sirius couldn't do anything about this at this age, but he knew that he was witnessing the history of the harry potter wizarding world. These families were some of those which were considered dark in future and supported Grindelwald and Voldemort during wars. He needed to grow and create his own power base soon. He couldn't let his new world move towards doom.

There was burning hate for muggles in wizarding folks as muggles had forced them to go into hiding. An average witch or wizard didn't even consider muggles above animals, and it reflected in their day-to-day life. Still, that was for later, Sirius was a wizard now. He would see what he could do for his people when he had power, for now, he needed to focus on his personal development.

On the thought of his personal development, he had started practising occlumency with fervor after the incident. He had already gone through a Bloodline ritual on his 7th birthday and his mind was strong enough to handle some stress now. He was on the second stage which was creating the shields before the incident and only hose shields had kept his mind safe during his eye contact with Murray. He needed to finish on that and move to 3rd stage before the beginning of his formal education.

His family had started him on beginner's occlumency when he was 4 when Mr Edward had started playing chess with him and guided him through meditation required for protecting his mind without mentioning it. As he had guessed at that time, it was the first stage of protection and chess was a way to stimulate his mind to think critically. Too bad he was a chess master in his last life and was leagues ahead in chess than Mr Edward who had continued to play with him even after multiple defeats parting his wisdom in every session. Relating chess to the world in a way that opened Sirius's eyes towards new possibilities.

Sirius needed to accelerate his plans now when he had relative freedom to move around if only inside the home. He was given sole ownership over kint after the incident as a 'reward' and hidden protection by his grandfather. He had warded his room with a rune chain, he had spent a month creating and a week perfecting for privacy and then emptied the pouch full of things he had taken from that place.

Yes, he had learnt the value of 'Ancient runes' or started developing his own runic language a while ago with Klingon as the base. He had learnt Klingon in his previous life for some reason which eluded him right now, but it was fulfilling its purpose now. Until someone else who knew Klingon transmigrated to this world, or star trek universe was true, or the books came into existence, his new runic language was private. (A/N - I won't go into detail about creating a runic language as it would take a few thousand words and would be boring for people reading for the plot.)

He sorted all the parchments and rolls which were related to Hogwarts education, which his captor had apparently received. His prize was underneath all the scrolls and parchments, a Gringotts vault key and the books on advanced Mind arts and potion-making. As per the interrogation results, Damon lynch Murray was a beast in potions and mind arts, the best Hogwarts had seen in a century or so according to a small article published in Daily prophet of August 1847, which he had kint look for. He needed to know about the man who had unnerved him even for a moment and history was the best way to look for clues.

Sirius begins developing his Shields with the intention of being proficient at them by the time he started school, which was almost 4 years away in 1857. He would start a year late as his birthday fell in October, So He had some time and a lot of ground to cover. He wanted to be on at least stage 4th of occlumency by the time he was 11. He was nearing the end of stage 2 right now and soon begin with stage 3.

According to even Murray's personal notes, he had achieved the 2nd stage only after his first maturity, so Sirius was leagues ahead of a supposed mind magic master.

He sent a disguised kint with an empty extended bag to Gringotts to empty Murray's vault and then close it, he didn't want to leave any loose links. Murray and Moody's wands were hidden in a hollow book on his bookshelf, he didn't want to limit his wandless magic by using a wand right now. His magic came to him with some difficulty and stopping his growth at this point would be just stupidity as he knew that if he picked a wand, his control on his magic would disappear gradually.

Kint came back after half an hour with whopping 3,844 galleons, 12 sickles and 4 knuts as well as a few more things that were apparently stored in Murray's vault. There were 2 wands, some jewellery, documents of a residential plot in the horizontal alley, a genealogy test, some rare scrolls on alchemy, a tiny bottle of golden luck potion, Felix Felicis which was invaluable, and a few more rare potions with good shelf life which were properly labelled and dated including Polyjuice potion. He had found another 150 galleons and some sickles and knuts in the bag he had taken, so he had now about 5k galleons of his own, which included money his family had given him over the years for one thing which included 4k galleons worth of Murray's wealth.

He was set for his own projects, hidden from his family. He had a few things going on which he knew no child would get approval.

His uncle Philips as promised had begun his potions education at age of 9 and he had excelled at potion-making his uncle sing his praises. He had learnt a few important potions first while focusing on learning important subjects from the tutors hired by his family.

His magical education had begun when he was 7 after his bloodline ritual and continued until he was 10. They covered the first 5 years of Hogwarts syllabus in condensed mode and focused more on theory as he wasn't allowed a wand yet.

What they didn't know was that after the incident Sirius had forced himself to perform magic windlessly and had excelled after he had an epiphany while meditating to calm himself down after one too many failures.

Sirius had spent hours every day controlling his magic and casting magic. His results paid off when he was tired after another yule ball he had to attend.

He was at gardens hiding from the annoying children he had been forced to entertain and stumbled upon the ritual site some way away from the Castle. He realised how far he was but didn't care now.

'Those annoying entitled brats, always demanding one thing or another.' Was running in his mind when he was running away.

The ritual site looked abundant now; his family had performed the winter solstice with Abbotts that year at their manor, so their own ritual site looked bare.

He transfigured a leaf in a candle after concentrating hard, wandless magic that didn't come naturally to him and then lit it with a burst of flame from his palm. He had a light sheen of sweat in the middle of the white winter of that year. Still, he preserved and sat in the ritual circle, uncaring towards his fancy clothes and focused on the candlelit in front of him.

He got lost in his mind and had an epiphany, a eureka moment that night. He could see his magic for the first time in his body, it was a Golden fog thing spread in his body. He tried to capture it, but it eluded him. He could see what he was doing wrong while trying to perform wandless magic. He was trying to force golden fog which was his magic to obey him.

He gently coerced his magic in melting the snow that was near him and to his amazement, his magic listened to him and vanished the snow a few feet around him leaving a barren wetland underneath. He had never performed wandless magic with such ease before that day. It had been a battle of dominance till that day, him trying to force his magic and his magic resisting.

He had treated magic like a tool and never a part of him, he had his knowledge from previous life let hamper his progress. He realized why he had so many accidental magic incidents in childhood, his magic wanted to be free, and he was suppressing his magic every waking moment, trying to force it to follow his will. He now knew that he just needed to create a harmony between his mind and magic.

He Tried a tempus charm and saw it was late and his parents must be expecting him to be already asleep. He needed to sneak in and think about what he had concluded tonight. He had finally cracked the secret of wandless magic.

Sirius felt invincible and slept with a content smile on his face after a long time.