The San Erico orphanage had the faded charm of places that were once cared for but had long since been forgotten.
At first glance, it looked like an abandoned building—bricks worn down by rain, window fras rotted through, and an iron gate that groaned each ti soone entered or left. There were no vibrant colors, no well-kept gardens. Inside, it slled of saltless soup, damp clothes, and old dust. A place where ti seed frozen, trapped between old books and creaking beds, thin blankets, and nights filled with the sighs of children learning to fall asleep without anyone to say goodnight.
Aurelian had never been a crybaby. Nor a loud or aggressive child. He was just another boy. Pale, quiet, dark-eyed and soft-spoken. Observant. Always on the edges, but never truly isolated. He didn't get into trouble, didn't mock others, didn't stand out in any particular way. He played when invited, ate in silence, and smiled politely if soone spoke to him.
To everyone else, he was simply Aurelian.
But long before he could walk, Aurelian rembered another life. A different bed. A family that no longer existed. A love for stories, books, and ani that had once comforted him in his childhood. Above all, he rembered having been a frustrated, introverted teenager whose dreams had died in a ridiculous accident.
Then ca darkness—until Elaine, his mother.
Her first and last smile in this life.
She had died bringing him into the world. Aurelian rembered the warmth of her skin, the tremble of her hands, the barely audible words that sealed his na:
"Your na will be Aurelian Riddle. You will beco soone worth rembering."
Aurelian hadn't cried. He didn't know how. Even as a newborn, sothing inside him was too old to break. It was as if grief arrived in layers, too complex to fall all at once.
That na was both a wound and a promise.
To be the son of Voldemort in the Harry Potter universe was a cruel irony. As a child in his previous life, he had dread of living in this world. He'd wanted to attend Hogwarts, fly on a broomstick, cast spells. Now he had the chance.
But not as a hero.
Not even as a spectator.
As the descendant of the most feared man of all.
"Then I'll rewrite the script," he promised himself one day, facing the cracked mirror in the second-floor bathroom. "I want to live a life worth living. A life where I'm free and can enjoy everything it has to offer—and more"
He was shy by nature. Speaking in groups was difficult. He didn't like to be touched without permission, or forced into loud gas. But he wasn't hostile. If a kid invited him to play hide and seek, he said yes. If soone needed help with howork, he offered it. The others knew him as "the weird kid who reads" or "the one who stays quiet even when everyone else is screaming."
_________________________
By the age of two and a half, he began to notice patterns that didn't fit normalcy—just like in the books.
The first ti an object moved at his will, he was in the kitchen. He was tired of always eating cold soup. In a mont of silent frustration, the bowl heated up—not boiling, but noticeably warr. No one noticed but him.
It kept happening. Spoons trembled when he was anxious, lamps flickered with his emotions, a flower leaned toward him without wind, a leaf slowly spun across the floor for no reason. Once, when he had a fever, the water in his cup began to boil—without anyone touching it.
He understood. It was accidental magic.
And he was no ordinary child. He had lived before.
Inspired by Rudeus Greyrat, the protagonist of Mushoku Tensei, he adapted that thod to his own path: training his magic with no external support. No branches. No pretend wands. His body was the channel. His mind, the engine. His soul, the catalyst.
Aurelian couldn't cast visible spells, but he could develop magical sensitivity. And that's exactly what he cultivated.
Each morning, before sunrise, he would sneak into the orphanage's old abandoned chapel. In silence, he sat cross-legged and began his practices:
Visualization: he imagined streams of energy moving within him. At first, it was just a warm light along his spine. Later, branching paths extending to his limbs.
Emotional control: he realized magic intensified with emotion. He learned to provoke subtle internal reactions—fear, wonder, desire—and channel them to a physical point in his body.
Environntal manipulation: he focused on light objects. A feather. A leaf. A drop of water. He never used a wand, not even a fake one. That was his rule—he had to learn to feel magic as part of himself, not as a tool.
And then ca the most important part: creation.
He didn't want to just use spells from this world.
He wanted to invent his own.
In a handmade notebook, he wrote everything down:
Theory No. 27: "Non-verbal spellcasting — comparison with Dumbledore's silent magic."
Theory No. 32: "Formation of electric energy using spiral magical vibration. Inspired by Chidori and Rasengan from Naruto. Channel energy into the palm via internal rotational impulse. Result: not visible yet, but wrist buzzing was real."
Theory No. 40: "Modification of fire magic using dragon-breath technique. Can energy follow breath flow instead of gestures? Possible non-verbal spell with hot-air compression. Result: mild burn on index finger."
Theory No. 44: "Channeled slicing force. Inspired by Rasenshuriken. Test rapid dispersion of magical particles around an axis. Still unstable."
Each idea was madness.
But it didn't matter.
Because unlike the world he'd left behind—here, he had magic.
And that changed everything.
He rarely used magic in front of others. Only in subtle gestures: closing a window with wind, warming his tea when no one watched, calming a sleeping child's nightmare with a single touch to the forehead.
_____________________
The orphanage caretakers began to notice sothing odd.
They didn't say he was dangerous, but they knew he was… strange.
"That child never gets sick," whispered a nun. "I've never seen him cough."
"He always seems… to know more than he should," another replied. "Sotis I feel like he's watching as if he can read ."
Three-year-old Aurelian heard them from the hallway.
He didn't get upset.
He simply reaffird his decision to stay unnoticed.
But in secret, he was preparing.
He knew soone would co eventually. The magical world wouldn't ignore his existence for long. And when that ti ca, he didn't want to be a helpless child who could barely wave a wand.
He wanted to be sothing more.
At age four, he practiced under the dusk sky, focused on breathing and visualization. He'd nearly perfected a heat-concentration technique in his palm without touch—based on interdiate fire magic from Mushoku Tensei. As he concentrated, he saw it: a thin, black snake coiled at the base of the wall, eyes as dark as his own.
He stepped back—not out of fear, but surprise.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said instinctively.
The response ca as a hiss.
One he understood.
"You don't hurt . You ... speak like us. You're ... like the old ones. Never seen one so small."
His chest froze.
He hadn't spoken English.
He had spoken Parseltongue.
And the most surprising thing?
He liked it.
It didn't feel like a cursed accident. It felt … natural. Like a part of him, long asleep, was waking with gratitude. The reptilian tongue felt like it belonged—not as a dark inheritance, but as a powerful tool.
He spoke with the snake for nearly half an hour. Asked what it ate, why it was there, how it perceived the world.
And when it slid away into the shadows, Aurelian knew he'd found a unique ability.
Not a defect.
That night, he wrote:
"I can speak Parseltongue. I understand it. I feel it. And I like it. There is knowledge in serpents. Ancestral mory. I may be able to use this. I want to investigate how to channel magic through non-human sounds. Hypothesis: Can a magical language alter the vibration of the environnt better than a human one? Can spells be cast in Parseltongue? Explore."
He would no longer see it as a curse from his father.
He would make it part of who he was.
The orphanage library beca his greatest ally. The books were old, mundane, and magicless—but filled with knowledge. He read about philosophy, biology, architecture, ancient languages, engineering. Every subject was reinterpreted through a magical lens.
Were ancient alchemists wizards?
Could fractal patterns be used as runes?
Could DNA explain magical inheritance?
He filled pages with diagrams: magical energy circuits, lists of potential spell words, phonetic combinations that might resonate with reality.
He had no guide. No teacher.
But he didn't need one.
Because he had conviction.
___________________________
As his fifth birthday approached, his progress was clear.
No fireworks. No levitating furniture. But he had control. Precision. When his emotions surged, he could close his eyes and feel his magic align—like a muscle obeying his will. It was no longer accidental.
It was intentional.
One stormy night, the static in the air made him feel magic tingling across his skin. He locked himself in the bathroom and trained for hours, trying to replicate Chidori. Not the sound or flash—but the lethal intent behind the hand.
He managed a build-up of heat and vibration in his palm, ending in a burst of blue sparks that scared the orphanage cat.
Not perfect.
But real.
His fifth birthday passed quietly. A candle in a muffin. A song sung by children who didn't know the words. A pat on the shoulder from Mrs. Thorn, the cook.
That night, he climbed to the chapel like always.
He lit his candle. Opened his notebook. Reviewed his notes.
And then, for the first ti, he tried sothing new.
He sat cross-legged. Closed his eyes. Focused not on a spell, but on his soul.
Who he was.
Who he wanted to beco.
He visualized his body, his energy. A fla in his chest—trembling, but real. He fed it with mories. With dreams. With the promise that he would not let the na Riddle an darkness forever.
"I don't want to be a villain. Or a hero. I just want to be free," he whispered.
He spoke in Parseltongue.
Sang a lody he made up.
Moved his energy from his chest to his arms, channeled it into his left palm.
Buzz. Heat. Light.
Then, finally—a blue spark.
Flickering in his hand.
A mont later, it vanished.
Aurelian opened his eyes and smiled.
It was beautiful.
Distant.
But not unreachable.
For the first ti in his short life, Aurelian Riddle truly believed that everything he imagined was possible—not just to survive in this story, but to build sothing new.
A different story.
A path of his own.
A life worth living.
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