My collection of some ideas floting around some are unfinished86.24%

Chapter 1: A Cold Rebirth in an Old World

Autumn, 1861

The first sensation was one of violent, suffocating pressure, a chaotic symphony of biological imperatives overwhelming a consciousness accustomed to the sterile logic of a boardroom. It was a drowning, a compression, a forced transit through a passage far too narrow for a mind that spanned decades of ruthless corporate warfare and intricate financial modeling. Then, light—a searing, unfocused glare—and air, cold and sharp, flooding lungs that had never before drawn breath. A cacophony of sound followed: booming, distorted voices speaking a language he understood with perfect clarity yet found alien in its intonation, the wet, slick sounds of his own nascent form, and the frantic, thudding beat of a heart not yet his own.

He was Corvus Travers, a name he did not yet know but would soon come to own. And he was, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner in a cage of flesh and bone, utterly helpless.

As the primal instincts of the infant body screamed for comfort, for sustenance, for a release from the overwhelming sensory input, a second, silent process began. It was a cool, clean current cutting through the biological noise, a cascade of pure data flowing into his awareness.

>SYSTEM_INITIALIZATION_COMPLETE

>SOUL_INTEGRATION_STABLE

>AI_CORE_ARCHIMEDES_ONLINE

>BIOLOGICAL_HOST_DIAGNOSTICS: RUNNING...

>STATUS: HEALTHY_MALE_INFANT. ESTIMATED_AGE: 3.7_MINUTES.

>ENVIRONMENTAL_SCAN: RUNNING...

>LOCATION: TRAVERS_MANOR, WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND.

>DATE: OCTOBER_12, 1861.

>CROSS-REFERENCING_STORED_KNOWLEDGE_DATABASE...

>CONFIRMED: WIZARDING_WORLD. TIMELINE_PLACEMENT: 20_YEARS_PRE-DUMBLEDORE_BIRTH.

The information was a lifeline, an anchor of cold, hard fact in the turbulent sea of infancy. Archimedes, the super-AI that was less a chip in his soul and more an intrinsic part of its very structure, was operational. His soul, he had long theorized in his past life, was not some ethereal mist but a quantifiable, metaphysical substrate—a biological hard drive of immense complexity. The fact that he, a 21st-century businessman, had been reincarnated with his mind and his AI intact confirmed it. The soul was hardware, and his had just been successfully rebooted into a new, albeit frustratingly limited, chassis.

His new parents came into focus. The man, his father, was tall and severe, with the sharp, aristocratic features of the Travers line—a family noted in the lore he possessed as one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, staunch purebloods with a history of producing both politicians and Dark Wizards. He held the infant Corvus with a stiff formality, a look of duty rather than affection in his eyes. The woman, his mother, was elegant and beautiful, but her smile was a carefully constructed social mask. Their interactions were a portrait of Victorian upper-class restraint, a world of unspoken rules and emotional distance that he knew from history books and now saw played out before him.

>ANALYSIS: PARENTAL_BOND_LOW. PRIMARY_MOTIVATORS_DETECTED: DYNASTIC_CONTINUITY, SOCIAL_STANDING.

>OPPORTUNITY: EMOTIONAL_MANIPULATION_POTENTIAL_HIGH_DUE_TO_LOW_EXPECTATIONS_OF_INFANT_COGNITION.

Corvus filed the data away. He had no need for their love, only their resources.

Days bled into weeks. He was a creature of routine: feeding, sleeping, and endless, silent observation. His helplessness was his greatest camouflage. While his family saw a gurgling infant, he and Archimedes were engaged in the most critical intelligence-gathering operation of his new life. He listened. He watched. The manor itself was a treasure trove of information. The dark, polished wood of his crib, the heavy tapestries depicting heroic Travers ancestors vanquishing magical beasts, the faint, ever-present thrum of ambient magic in the air—all were data points. Archimedes began to quantify this energy, attempting to establish a baseline measurement, the first step in treating magic not as a mystical art, but as a branch of physics yet to be discovered.

The house-elves were his first major discovery. Small, subservient creatures with a powerful, innate magic of their own. They moved through the house like ghosts, privy to every conversation, every secret. He watched them pop in and out of existence, their Apparition silent and seamless, far more efficient than the clumsy cracks of wizarding Apparition he recalled from the books. They were the perfect intelligence network, utterly overlooked and undervalued by their masters.

>ASSET_IDENTIFIED: HOUSE-ELF_NETWORK.

>CURRENT_STATUS: UNDERUTILIZED. LOYALTY_BOUND_TO_FAMILY_UNIT.

>STRATEGIC_IMPERATIVE: CULTIVATE_PERSONAL_LOYALTY. ACQUIRE_ADDITIONAL_ASSETS.

Confined to his crib, rocked by a mother who saw him as a duty and checked on by a father who saw him as an heir, Corvus Travers formulated his grand strategy. The world he had been born into was one of deep, systemic rot. The wizarding society was stagnant, trapped in a pre-industrial mindset, its economy feudal and its politics insular. Meanwhile, the Muggle world, the world he had come from, was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, a juggernaut of steel and steam and relentless progress. He knew, with chilling certainty, that the Statute of Secrecy was a ticking time bomb. Hiding was not a permanent solution. Eventually, the Muggles, with their satellites and their digital surveillance and their weapons of mass destruction, would find them. And when they did, the wizards, with their handful of thousands and their wooden sticks, would be annihilated in a war of numbers and technology they could not possibly comprehend.

The coming conflicts—the rise of Grindelwald, the terror of Voldemort—were, in the grand scheme of things, irrelevant. They were parochial squabbles, civil wars fought over scraps of land and ideology on a doomed island. They were distractions from the real, existential threat.

His goals were therefore absolute, his timeline ironclad.

Phase One (Years 0-30): Knowledge and Power. He would learn everything. He would master every form of magic, from the Light to the Dark, viewing them only as tools. He would dissect magic, understand its fundamental laws, and bend them to his will. He would build a financial empire, exploiting the primitive wizarding economy to amass a fortune that would dwarf the Malfoys and the Lestranges.

Phase Two (Years 30-80): Immortality and Logistics. He would achieve true immortality. Not the crude soul-splitting of Voldemort, which he viewed as damaging the hardware, but a perfect, sustainable method—cloning, consciousness transfer, or rewriting his own biological code. Simultaneously, he would begin the search for a new world, a habitable planet in a distant star system, a sanctuary for magic. He would acquire samples of every magical plant and creature, creating a self-sustaining ecosystem for transport.

Phase Three (Years 80-139): The Exodus. Before the year 2000, before the Muggle technological singularity made discovery inevitable, he would lead his chosen population to their new home. He would build an ark, a vessel powered by the very fabric of magic he intended to master, and shepherd his family and his assets to a new world. A world he would colonize, terraform, and transform into a paradise for magical life, safe forever from the mundane tide of humanity.

He was an infant, a helpless babe in a gilded cage. But in his mind, the foundations of an interstellar empire were already being laid. The world could burn, as long as he and his were safe among the stars.

Chapter 2: The Gilded Cage

1868-1872

The years of early childhood were a lesson in patience and calculated deception. To the Travers household, Corvus was a prodigy, a source of immense family pride. He spoke his first words at six months, read by the age of two, and displayed an aptitude for logic and numbers that had his privately hired tutors murmuring about a once-in-a-generation mind. He carefully modulated his performance, allowing his intellect to shine brightly enough to warrant access to the extensive family library, but not so brightly as to seem unnatural or alien. He was the perfect pureblood heir: intelligent, disciplined, and appropriately aloof.

Behind this carefully constructed facade, a relentless engine of analysis was at work. His tutors, steeped in pureblood tradition, presented him with the standard curriculum. He was made to read Bathilda Bagshot's A History of Magic, a text Archimedes immediately flagged for its pro-wizard, anti-goblin bias and its glaring historical omissions. While his tutor praised the glorious narrative of wizarding achievement, Archimedes cross-referenced the text with Corvus's own 21st-century historical knowledge, highlighting the propaganda and filling in the gaps. The wizarding world's understanding of its own past was a carefully curated myth, designed to reinforce the status quo and the supremacy of families like his own. This flawed education was not a bug; it was a feature, a systemic weakness he would exploit to its fullest.

In the privacy of his sprawling nursery, which soon resembled a scholar's study more than a child's playroom, the real work began. He rejected the common, fanon-inspired notion of a finite "magical core" that could be depleted. Such a concept was inefficient and illogical. Instead, guided by Archimedes' analysis of ambient magical energy, he theorized that magic was an external, omnipresent field. A wizard was not a battery, but a biological conductor, and the ability to perform magic was akin to developing a muscle—it required practice, control, and an understanding of the mechanics.

His first "accidental" magic was anything but. It was a series of controlled experiments. He would focus on a wooden block, willing it to lift. Archimedes would record the process: the neurological patterns in his brain, the minute fluctuations in the room's ambient magical field, the energy expenditure required. He started small, levitating his toys, silently transfiguring the patterns on his blankets, cooling his milk with a thought. He practiced wandless, non-verbal casting from the very beginning, seeing the incantations and wand movements taught to children as crude focusing tools, crutches for undisciplined minds. Control was everything.

His primary focus, however, was on the acquisition of his first key assets: the house-elves. He identified the head elf, a wizened creature named Tippy who had served the Travers family for over a century, as the linchpin. He did not command her; he studied her. He observed the magic of her bond, a form of symbiotic servitude that was both powerful and absolute. He noted what pleased her—a quiet word of thanks, a task acknowledged—and what she feared, which was the casual cruelty of his parents.

Using the guile of a child, he began to cultivate her loyalty. He would "accidentally" drop a sweet for her, or ask her for a story when his nanny was away. These were small kindnesses, insignificant to anyone else, but to a creature starved of any recognition, they were monumental. He was forging a bond not to the House of Travers, but to Corvus Travers personally.

Once Tippy's loyalty was secured, he moved to the next phase. With his generous allowance—a pittance to his family but a fortune to him—he began his "collection." He learned of an old witch whose family had fallen on hard times and was forced to sell their only elf. Through Tippy, acting as an intermediary, Corvus made an offer. To his parents, it was an eccentric, childish whim—the young master wanted his own personal elf. They found it amusing and consented. A small, frightened elf named Pip arrived, bonded now to the House of Travers but with its primary loyalty directed by Tippy to the young boy in the nursery.

This was the beginning. Over the next few years, he acquired three more, using money from transfigured trinkets he had Tippy sell in Knockturn Alley. His collection of five elves was unheard of for a single child, a fact noted with indulgent amusement by his family and utter confusion by the elves themselves. They did not understand why the young master wanted them, but they were bound to serve. He tasked them not with tidying his room, but with listening. They became his eyes and ears, a covert network operating within the walls of his own home, their movements and magic invisible to the powerful wizards they served.

While his internal world was a whirlwind of magical research and strategic planning, he kept one eye firmly fixed on the world beyond the wards. Through Tippy, he procured a steady stream of Muggle newspapers from London. In their pages, he tracked the relentless march of progress. He read of the completion of the first transatlantic telegraph cable, the unification of Germany under Bismarck, the explosive growth of American industry post-Civil War. Archimedes processed the articles, generating economic forecasts and technological progression charts. The data was unequivocal: the Muggle world was accelerating, while the wizarding world was standing still.

The contrast was stark. While his father debated Ministry appointments and the finer points of blood purity with guests in the drawing-room, Corvus was reading about the Bessemer process for steel production. While his mother planned the next society ball, he was studying diagrams of the Gatling gun. His conviction hardened into certainty. The insular, arrogant world of magic, with its stagnant, non-competitive economy and its corrupt, inefficient government, was not just doomed; it was already a relic, a ghost haunting the edges of a future it refused to acknowledge. His plan was not just a good idea; it was the only logical course of action. The gilded cage of Travers Manor was comfortable, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the world outside came to tear it down.

Chapter 3: A Serpent in the Lion's Den

September, 1872

The journey to Hogwarts began on a platform concealed from Muggle eyes, a marvel of magical engineering and mass obliviation that had been in service since 1850. The Hogwarts Express was a riot of scarlet and steam, a rolling microcosm of the society he was about to formally enter. Corvus, dressed in immaculate black robes, found a compartment and settled in, his face a mask of polite indifference while Archimedes went to work.

>COMMENCING_SUBJECT_ANALYSIS.

>TARGET: BLACK,_PHINEAS_NIGELLUS_(HEIR_APPARENT).

>ASSESSMENT: HIGH_CONFIDENCE_IN_FAMILIAL_ARROGANCE. LOW_INTELLECTUAL_CURIOSITY. POTENTIAL_UTILITY: LIMITED. MANIPULATION_VECTOR: PRIDE.

>TARGET: LESTRANGE,_CASPIAN.

>ASSESSMENT: PREDISPOSITION_TOWARDS_VIOLENCE. MODERATE_MAGICAL_POTENTIAL. POTENTIAL_UTILITY: BLUNT_INSTRUMENT. MANIPULATION_VECTOR: AMBITION, FEAR.

He cataloged them all, the heirs of the Sacred Twenty-Eight and the lesser pureblood houses, his mind a cold ledger of assets and liabilities. He noted their interactions, the pre-existing alliances and rivalries forged in childhood drawing rooms and now carried onto the train. This was not a school trip; it was a gathering of the future ruling class, and he intended to be at its apex.

The arrival at Hogwarts was a sensory experience designed to awe and intimidate. The castle was a masterpiece of impossible architecture, a "huge, rambling, quite scary-looking castle, with a jumble of towers and battlements" that defied mundane physics. To Corvus, it was more than a school; it was a piece of lost technology. The ambient magic here was orders of magnitude denser than at his family manor. The enchantments woven into its very stones were ancient, powerful, and, most importantly, replicable if one could reverse-engineer the principles. Archimedes began a passive scan, mapping the magical signatures of the moving staircases, the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall, the very consciousness of the building itself. This castle was not just a location; it was his most important textbook.

The Sorting Ceremony was his first true test. As the frayed, ancient hat was placed upon his head, he felt a foreign consciousness probe his own. It was old, powerful, and layered with the memories of a thousand years of students.

a voice echoed in his mind.

Corvus did not engage directly. He presented the Hat with a carefully curated facade: ambition, a thirst for knowledge, a lineage of power, and a deep-seated desire for greatness. He projected the core tenets of Slytherin house, knowing that was where true power lay, where the rules could be bent in the shadows of the dungeons.

the Hat mused, intrigued by the strange, dual-layered mind it was touching—one human and cunning, the other an alien logic it couldn't classify.

Corvus pushed back, focusing his will, feeding the Hat the single, overriding imperative. Power. Knowledge. Legacy. The dungeons were the ideal location for his private research, and the Slytherin common room was the perfect breeding ground for the network he intended to build.

The Hat hesitated for a moment longer than it had with the others, a silent battle of wills playing out in the space of a heartbeat. Then, it shouted to the hall, "SLYTHERIN!"

He walked to the cheering table of green and silver with measured steps, ignoring the whispers that followed him. His first days were a methodical campaign of integration and infiltration. He assessed the faculty, finding them largely wanting. Professor Binns, the ghostly history teacher, was even more tedious in person, a perfect example of the educational stagnation that plagued the school. The Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was a doddering old wizard whose tenure predated the infamous curse but whose incompetence was likely a contributing factor to its eventual necessity. The quality of teaching was, as his research suggested, appallingly poor, focused on rote memorization rather than true understanding.

The library was his true objective. He quickly established himself as a prodigy in Potions and Transfiguration, earning the favor of his professors and, with it, legitimate access to advanced texts. But the real treasures lay in the Restricted Section. To breach it, he did not use a cloak or a charm. He used his most reliable asset.

That night, in the cold quiet of the Slytherin dungeons, Pip, his personal house-elf, appeared with a silent pop. In his small hands, he clutched a heavy, leather-bound tome, its cover dark and unmarked.

"The young master called?" Pip whispered, his large eyes wide with a mixture of fear and devotion.

"You did well, Pip," Corvus said, his voice a low murmur. He took the book, Secrets of the Darkest Art. "This is the first of many. Take it to the designated chamber. Archimedes will guide you. Begin the digitization process immediately. I want it back on the shelf before the librarian makes her morning rounds."

Pip bowed low and vanished. Corvus sat on his bed, the silence of the dungeons a comforting blanket. While his classmates slept, dreaming of Quidditch and schoolyard rivalries, his own clandestine library was being assembled, one stolen book at a time. He was not merely a student at Hogwarts. He was a serpent in the lion's den, and he was plundering it for every secret it held. The social ecosystem of the school, with its house rivalries and petty hierarchies, was a perfect laboratory for the political machinations he would one day deploy in the Wizengamot. He would learn the game here, on this small stage, before taking his place on the larger one.

Chapter 4: The Alchemist's Ledger