"meum officium est annihilare"
Time passed quickly; what was meant to be months turned into two years living in the Winter mansion. Cassandra was silent and obsessed with her routine - every day she did the same things without fail and without delays.
Living with her is easy, much easier than at Potter Manor where I was forced to deal with cold stares. It was comfortable; Of course, the mansion is isolated and dark, but oddly enough, this environment doesn't make me uncomfortable – in fact, it's quite the opposite, I feel much more comfortable.
However, not everything is perfect. Sam Potter, the boy who lived, turned three years old, and his birthday party was attended by various figures from the wizarding world. During the party, a new pregnancy was also announced. That announcement was something difficult to swallow, after all, he had been discarded, and now his former parents had found a replacement for him.
After that day, Cassandra decided to train me to be excellent in everything - after all, a Winters cannot be mediocre. She wasn't interested in playing the role of a loving mother; far from it, Cassandra is a harsh and cold teacher, always pointing out my mistakes, even minimal ones, and the punishment was to repeat the exercises until exhaustion. It could be brutal and cruel, but it was efficient, and his growing power showed that this form of teaching worked. Of course, some nights all I wanted was to give up and leave that place, but where would I go? Everyone I could know doesn't care about me, and remembering this was the fuel to keep that fire burning.
Cassandra decided that I had to make friends, or rather allies, so she withdrew from seclusion and decided to attend the meeting of noble houses. There were various families and many children, but almost none of them were good enough, or at least that's what I thought until I met them - Daniel Malfoy and Robert Blackwood.
They were different, clearly more intelligent and observant than the others. We talked about subjects that children shouldn't know about, like dark magic theory and other not-so-positive subjects.
The three became friends in no time; it was as if they were destined to meet...
Upon waking that morning for his daily lessons, he imagined he would do physical exercises and theories, but Cassandra had other things in mind for that lesson.
"Harry, what I'm going to teach you today is something extremely dangerous and almost illegal in Europe; it's an ancient type of old magic," Cassandra says with a cold and strong voice, emphasizing the power and danger that accompany this lesson. "It's called Arkshara; it's magic created to obtain esoteric powers, far beyond typical magic. This energy is so strong that it can even be used without wands." That seemed to excite Harry, who paid attention to every word spoken by Cassandra, every explanation and application of dark magic.
Arkshara was difficult to understand; it was like looking at the sky and trying to count the stars, but despite being difficult to understand, Harry felt that energy very well, and it was much stronger in him than in Cassandra - she had reserves that seemed like buckets while Harry was an ocean.
That day was heavy; using that energy was like trying to grab the sun with your hands. After all that training, all Harry wanted was a good night's sleep. During sleep, he was bombarded with words in an unknown language, and when he woke up in the morning, he felt as if the world was different - the colors were more vivid, the smells stronger and distinct, his hearing had improved greatly. Rising from bed, he went directly to the large mirror in the room and then noticed that one of his eyes now bore the color yellow.
Without any fear or concern about the change in his appearance, the boy got ready and headed to his teacher's office, knocking three times until he heard her confirmation.
The first thing Cassandra noticed were the eyes, then the different behavior, and finally the rigid posture of the boy, and she decided to ask, "Harry..." but before finishing the question, she was interrupted by him. "You said you didn't like the name Harry, and asked me what name I would like to take as my own, didn't you?" Cassandra looked at him strangely, after all, until yesterday, the boy was reluctant to abandon his birth name, but she decided to ignore these sudden changes. "Yes, that name is not suitable for my family," and after this declaration, the office fell silent until the boy said...
"Then from today on, I am abandoning that ridiculous name as well as definitively cutting ties with that fake and disgusting family. From now on, I will be..."
Cain Winters