(Arcane Tinker) Chapter 3: Heart of Stone

Chapter 3: Heart of Stone

4 June 1991, London, England

As foreign, yet strangely familiar, memories invaded his mind, and his body felt even more drained and tired than it ever was in his life, everything slowly turned to blissful darkness.

When Dean’s woke up, he was in a small bedroom, notably not his own, yet it seemed familiar for some reason. The world itself was wrong, hazy. As he walked around, all the soreness in his body was gone. There were certain sides that were even more hazy than usual, and when he tried to look out of the window, he only saw pure blurriness.

It was odd. He tried to get his head out of the window, only for it to be blocked by an invisible barrier of some sort.

Where the hell was he?

His thoughts were interrupted when he saw a small boy, around his age, waking up at the sound of an alarm. The scariest thing was that the boy had walked through him, “Hey!”

He also didn’t seem to have heard him, which was also weird, “What the fuck is going on?”

The boy slowly got up and walked out of the room, the details getting clearer with every second. A familiar voice spoke up, “Nathan! You’re finally up. You were almost going to be late.”

Huh, so the boy’s name was Nathan... However, Dean didn’t really care about that little fact because the moment he saw the woman speaking up, he froze on the spot. Nathan’s mother, whatever her name was, looked eerily like his mother, the woman who had raised him on all her own, and had just held him while she was dying just before passing out. Or was he dead? He didn’t know. For some reason, the panic he expected never came. It was like everything was muted, cold, like his heart was made of stone.

And yet, when he looked at the woman, an almost perfect copy of his mother, he felt the grief overwhelm whatever was stopping his feelings, like a crack in his heart. She just looked so similar.

She had the same dark skin, the same hazel hair colour, even if it was styled differently, and the same dark eyes that he had inherited. He suppressed a sob as he tried to run and hug her, only to pass through her as if he were a ghost.

He fell down to his, and started to sob, “I’m so sorry, mum.”

He didn’t know how long he had spent like this, but his mother’s doppelganger moved as if she didn’t see him, and that probably hurt more than he ever expected it. When she went out of the room for a few minutes, Dean shook his head, wiped his tears, and decided to distract himself by looking at his surroundings, starting with Nathan, a proper look this time. He was also very similar to him, but still not a perfect copy. What the hell was going on?

He didn’t have the time to pursue this train of thought as the boy practically swallowed his breakfast, ran to give his mother a quick hug, before running out to the bus. Dean didn’t follow him, not wanting to leave the woman who looked so much like his mother that it hurt. Unfortunately, the world became hazier as Nathan ran further away, before suddenly an invisible barrier pushed away from his mother’s lookalike. No, it pushed him towards Nathan, he realised.

He quickly realised what was going on, even if he didn’t exactly understand it. For some reason, he was bound to this boy, to Nathan, like some sort of ghost, unable to really interact with the world or make himself known. He had no way to stop it, no way to change anything around him. It should have turned him mad, and yet, it didn’t, his mind feeling strangely resilient, for some reason. Instead, he’d been forced to watch, day after day, as that boy who had everything Dean had ever wanted got to live his own life.

He spent was must have been years just following around Nathan, like some kind of invisible ghost. Or maybe it was just a few days. He didn’t know. Time just behaved weirdly in this place. Sometimes it passed in the blink of an eye, sometimes it just slowed down to a halt.

He followed Nathan for years of his life. It was enough to have a good idea of the boy’s personality. He wasn’t really a bad guy. He was quite smart, even if he was very lazy, but he managed some of the highest grades in his class. But he was also spoiled. Well, spoiled wasn’t the right word; it was just that his mother coddled him so much that he had a pretty narrow view of the world.

Like Dean, Nathan had no father figure in his life, but unlike Dean’s, Nathan’s father had died and left a small nest egg for his family, enough for them to live comfortably. Honestly, Dean would have loved to be in Nathan’s situation, to do what he wanted without the pressure of succeeding and financial responsibility. He would have been free to become an artist, and probably not some banker or doctor amongst thousands of others, without any sort of individualism.

As the years passed, Dean watched Nathan grow, and he learned with him. It was mostly out of boredom. Nathan wasn’t really all that interesting. He decided to just learn in class, read whatever Nathan was reading, and watch whatever he was watching. He couldn’t exactly move anything, and things got hazier the further they were from Nathan.

He watched as Nathan grew up. He was a pretty nerdy guy, really, but he had enough friends to pass the time. He graduated with good enough grades to get accepted into a good university and studied to become an engineer. He passed without any trouble; well, it wasn’t exactly easy. Dean himself could attest to that since he did his best to follow along. He did understand it a bit faster than he expected, as if Nathan’s experiences were helping him along.

Of course, Nathan didn’t get to enjoy his time after graduating, since his mother got sick, and he returned home to stay with her. Since his mother needed constant supervision and they didn’t have the funds to hire a caretaker, Nathan decided to bite the bullet and just find a way to get a job that would allow him to work from him. He studied for a bit on his own and ended up working at a programming company from his home. They didn’t care where he worked from as long as he delivered what he had to do. The salary wasn’t that great, but it was enough to keep them afloat. The private medical insurance that his company provided allowed him to put his mother on the plan, and that saved them more than enough to compensate for a competitive salary without these benefits.

Honestly, in Dean’s opinion, Nathan’s life was somewhat boring. Even when he got promoted to a consultant, he lived a monotone life. Just waking up, working from him whilst taking care of his mother and checking on her every hour or so, cook and maybe go shopping or buy some groceries, and then go to bed. He barely got out of his home, if only to meet a few clients, and that was only a couple of times a month.

Sure, it was sweet and all, but it was driving Dean mad. Being forced to watch the endless repetition, especially with the woman who looked so much like his mother, was visibly suffering from her condition. He didn’t blame her, she was just as stuck in the monotony as Dean was, only she was in pain with her every move.

In Dean’s opinion, seeing her like this, weak and all, was horrible. It wasn’t a shock, but a slow decline, that she slowly accepted. It was so hard, watching someone with so much heart, so much life, wither away.

Anyway, that fateful day arrived, and Nathan’s mother died in her sleep. Just like that, she was gone, just like his mother, and yet it hurt just the same. Dean didn’t realise just how attached he had gotten to the woman.

Very few people came to her funeral, just some old friends of hers that she hadn’t spoken to in years, and a few of Nathan’s former classmates who had heard about it. It was all empty platitudes, really. A few weeks later, and not a single one of them had even tried to call him or check up on him.

Nathan ended up spending a few years continuing the same monotony, not even thinking about leaving their home. It was probably his grief, trying not to move past his mother’s death. Dean didn’t blame him; the thoughts of his mother still made his heart ache as well. Every day, the world that Dean saw lost its colour, an obvious show of Nathan’s grief.

Until one day, Nathan just spontaneously quit his job and started travelling. Dean couldn’t exactly read his mind, but if he had to guess, it was some kind of mid-life crisis. Probably.

Anyway, Nathan toured around Europe, with Dean following his every move, then he went to the Americas, a couple of countries in Asia. It was fun, really and a balm to Dean’s soul after being forced to stay in a single house for years, doing absolutely nothing, experiencing very little.

Dean watched as, for the first time in his life, Nathan fell in love, in France of all places. It was a quick thing, and it wasn’t exactly obvious. Dean only noticed because when the girl in question was near, the entire world turned hazy, the entire world but her. By some miracle, she found Nathan’s awkwardness endearing, and they started dating. The man brushed off on what little French he learned in school, and it was so terrible that the woman just kept laughing at him whenever he tried to say anything and decided to teach him instead.

Dean had known for a while that what he was experiencing was Nathan’s perspective on things. He was watching the world through him. And the way the world shifted around that girl was something that Nathan had obviously never experienced before.

After a lot of uncomfortable moments for Dean, which he had no intention of ever thinking about, let alone mentioning out loud, Nathan decided to go back to Britain for a while to visit his mother’s grave in a while. He sat there and spoke of the wonderful girl he met, how much he loved her, that he wanted to marry her someday, only for the world to blur and fall down, unconscious.

He woke up in a hospital, with a few sympathetic doctors telling him that he was diagnosed with the same disease as his mother, that there was a time bomb in his head, which could erupt at any time. Nathan, surprisingly, declined treatment and just put his affairs in order, and moved permanently to France with the love of his life. He didn’t want to slowly wither away like his mother. He wanted to live even if it wasn’t for long.

Five years later, Nathan passed away in his sleep. He didn’t look as if he was in pain. And with that done, Dean’s world turned dark, before brightening once more, without any of the haziness that plagued his view of Nathan’s life.

He looked around and saw an unfamiliar white ceiling and got up with a groan. Everything hurt. Every movement, every twitch, every breath he took, was accompanied by pure pain. Was all of this a dream? Was Nathan’s life not real? He didn’t think he could imagine something with such details, especially things that he hadn’t known when he fell asleep.

Was this one of those weird reincarnation stories because he didn’t feel like anyone else. He was just himself but after watching a very long movie. He was never in Nathan’s mind, never knew what he was thinking. He was an observer for an entire life, and mundane one at that.

Maybe it was all some weird dream, maybe even what happened to his mother wasn’t real. People sending bolts of light from their sticks could easily be a dream.

Right as he sat up, he was immediately accosted by a woman in a nurse’s outfit, “Ah, Mr. Thomas, you’ve been in quite the ordeal. I recommend that keep lying down until I finish my examinations.”

“What happened? My mother?” he asked in a tone filled with hope and despair.

“I’m sorry. Your mother did not survive the attack. Do you remember what happened?”

Dean froze when he heard the confirmation of his worst fear and all the despair that he had been stifling for decades in his dream, yet it had only been just barely more than an hour come back. He released everything with a loud sob, and everything around the room kept shaking. At least they did until the woman waved her stick and stopped everything.

That made him stiffen. Was she one of the attackers? Was he captured or something? He needed to know, “Are you with them?”

“With whom, my dear?” the woman calmly responded.

“The men who fought in the street, with their weird sticks and explosions.

“Oh, so there was a fight on the streets?”

Dean nodded, “Yes, two sides kept blasting each other. There were explosions everywhere. The side that won had a boss or something. He was wearing some red robes and a hood. He told them to clean things up and to take care of the witnesses. They just walked around killing everyone. One of them was going to kill me, then I don’t really know what happened.”

The nurse gave him a pitying look, “Well, that explains why the Aurors want to talk to you. You’re likely going to have to go to the orphanage until then.”

“I thought orphanages stopped being a thing years ago. I think you mean foster care, right?”

“I’m sorry, Dean, but things are about to get even more complicated.”

She handed him a weird letter which was made of parchment of all things. Dean shrugged, opened it and started to read.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorcerer, Chief Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confederation of Wizards)

Dear Mr Thomas,

We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all the necessary books and equipment.

The term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.

Minerva McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress

Dean froze with a stunned expression on his face. The sticks, the blasts of lights. It was all so strangely familiar. He remembered one of Nathan’s favourite book series when he was younger, one that his mother liked to read to him, and that he picked up after she died, out of nostalgia more than anything.

He gave the nurse and incredulous look, “This is a fucking joke, right?”

AN: I tried to do a different take on the whole self-insert genre, that’s more like being in a Pensieve for decades than getting a bunch of memories of an old life. I don’t think I’ve seen it done before, so I don’t know if you guys will like it or not, but I decided to go for it. This marks the end of the first batch of chapters for the new story. I’ll upload a new batch in a few days, and there will be an Enchanting Melodies chapter tomorrow. So, please let me know what you think of this story so far, and if you have any suggestions.