Loud.
That was the first thing he noticed.
Not thoughts, not feelings — just sound.
It hit like thunder, not because it was violent, but because it existed.
After silence so deep it made him doubt that it ever existed, any noise felt like violence.
Then came the light. Bright, blurred, and wrong. Too sharp. Too close.
He squinted and wiggled — or tried to — only to realize he didn't have control yet.
Everything felt... wet. Cramped. Warm.
And then—pain. Not sharp. Not burning.
Just... cold air in lungs that had never breathed before.
He gasped. He cried. Pure instinct.
And that's when he knew it was real.
He had been reborn.
It all went faster then he could even barely process what was happening around him.
"Congratulations Miss Vane, it's a boy.", were the first words that he could completely process, while he was wrapped into cloth.
As he focused onto the female nurse, he only saw her lips and realized that she seemed to be trying to maintain a forced smile.
He couldn't even make out the face of the women who he made out to be his new mother in this life.
"My son Alaric..." she softly whispered, loud enough for the nurse to instantly write it down as she knew it was only a matter of time now before the women passed away.
"What is wrong with his arm?" the woman asked with an incredibly tired undertone, uneasiness and panic seeming to spread on her facial expression.
"That..., we don't know yet, but we will find out shortly" the nurse answered.
The tired mother seemed to slowly fall asleep, and the nurse instantly took Alaric and put him away onto a separate crip.
As he was laid down, he seemed to hear the noise of a shrill static line signaling death for a patient.
1986, 6 years later, London, St. Galfric's.
"Alaric, wanna play tag with us ?" one young girl with a hopeful undertone in her voice asked a boy who was sitting in the corner of the playing yard under a tree reading a book.
"No thanks Clara, you know that the others don't really like to play with me, and it would just ruin the fun for you all." The boy said in a collected slow-paced tone.
"Okay, maybe another time." Clara said before leaving him alone, going to the others.
"Leave him be Clara, you know he's weird and only reads books." said a boy who was in the group.
And indeed, compared to all the other kids in the orphanage Alaric was indeed the weird one out of all the bunch.
White hair, something truly unique about him.
Blue eyes that are somehow eerie and putting off towards most kids in the orphanage.
A calm character that most kids mistook for disdain.
And the birth scar on his left hand that looks like a Lichtenburg figure, that started between his thumb and index finger and spanned up towards his elbow. Something the doctors simply explained as a visual defect with no lasting physical damages. The doctors thought it would be better to leave it since operating on a small child simply for a visual defect was not really something they would recommend.
Something truly horrifying for little kids that have never really seen anything all too extraordinary in their life beside the little playing field and their home.
Alaric honestly found it esthetically pleasing in a way. It didn't even affect him in any way, since it was pretty much only superficial.
It also made his live way easier since he really found it bothersome to play the little silent kid in the corner in order to make no one suspicious about him.
"Back to reading" he mumbled to himself.
It was a german book, to learn the language. His 3rd Language to newly learn.
After all, while he had been reborn with his memories intact, his skills — whether motor functions or language — hadn't carried over fully. He had to reteach most things again and a lot of stuff completely.
After all although one may not forget most stuff that one has done, but often enough one needs a small time to get back into it. Especially after one has wandered the darkness as long as he had, where just staying focused on a topic was hard enough.
But it doesn't sound as bad, since after he was reincarnated, he realized really quickly that he was extraordinarily smart this time. No need to sit and think over a problem for hours on end and brood over it.
Simply look at it once, think intensively about it and it solves itself in your head. It was a truly indescribable feeling, when he first realized it. It felt like his mind had simply opened up. As if he was suddenly using 100% of his mental capacity instead of the 10% that he had previously and apparently everyone around him has.
Since the day that he did realize how incredibly generous fate has been with him, his ambition went from the extreme of a burning inferno to the brightness and calamity of a roaring star. An unquenchable desire to do better this time and find out all about the world and its many mysteries.
That was before the incident 3 months ago.
On a weekend a woman arrived in the orphanage, posing as a doctor for a regular checkup for the newborn kids under 6 moths of age, which was nothing all too impressive or exciting.
Until he realized that on her way out that older lady had a wand holstered along her belt, which he managed to see as she was walking the staircase down as he was going up.
At that moment it send him into a deep inner shock because he thought he was in Harry Potter, which was maddening him to a crazy degree.
First because he wasn't sure that he really was, and it would be a crazy disappointment if he suddenly got his hopes up only for the reality of it to smash his worldview.
Second because what if it was real and he wasn't a wizard but just a stinky muggle, destined to rot among his own ordinariness.
So obviously he tried to test it. A whole week long. Everything he could think of.
Running till he fainted of exhaustion, mental gymnastics of trying to decipher and explain reality itself in his mind (which more or less meant just letting his mind drift looking for inspiration), meditating like a monk, weaving a stick from one of the brushes like a wizarding gesture while clearly speaking "Levioso" at a raven feather he had found on the playground. The last one obviously in the middle of the night while nobody was awake so he wouldn't be declared a crazy kid.
It was so maddening to him that by the end of the week he thought that it was not real, which send him into a deep spiraling hate towards the void for not sending him to the right place and time in existence. After all who wouldn't do so, when being reincarnated.
But by the end of his inner monologue of loathing at the forces of the universe and its unfair treatment of him to die and having to potentially be just a normal guy again after getting his hopes up for an extraordinary world, he noticed something.
The water in his glass near his nightstand started to float.
"This.." was the only word he got out before it instantly dropped.
"I am a wizard" he whispered to himself with a wide grin and his eyes bulging into the direction of the glass of water that he just made levitate.
That was the day, that he realized he cannot just run around like a child anymore and be just a bit smarter, no he needed to prepare for the wizarding world. A world with unlimited potential that is only held back by the idiocy of backward minds.
Languages, Mathematics, Physics, Medicine, History, Geography, Archeology.
As much as possible would have to be learned before he went to Hogwarts so that he could fully abuse the gigantic library and knowledgeable teachers that would be available at that point for him.
So here he is now, reading an English Textbook for learning German. The third language of a multitude of languages he had to fully learn in the future, instantly having started it after learning French.
He was probably the only kid in the orphanage being able to get books.
Undoubtedly since he was the smartest one and started asking for books after having thought himself to read again after just 2 weeks, perk of being a thing he already understood.
That was after he turned 4.
His caretakers instantly knew that he was something special, after all they took care of nearly 400 kids permanently and knew what the average kid was capable of.
So, the first thing they did was to organize a library pass for him, which would be paid by them. It obviously helped that the library was just 2 dozen houses down the road.
Apparently because of some politician who opened the orphanage thinking to himself that kids should learn more and that it would happen just by virtue of the building being closer to a library.
Obviously, that wasn't the case for anyone but Alaric, and older kids who needed it for school but who was he to complain about the great decision that a great man had done for him in the past.