The moment consciousness returned to me wasn't like waking from sleep. It was violent—a flash of green light, searing pain, then darkness before awareness flooded back. Not into the body I remembered, but something smaller, weaker, with limbs I couldn't control and a voice that could only wail.
I was reborn.
The memories of my previous life remained intact: thirty-two years in another world, another time, where magic existed only in fiction. Where Harry Potter was just a story in books and films. Yet here I was, crying in the arms of a witch with heavy-lidded eyes and aristocratic features that I recognized with terrifying clarity.
Druella Black. My mother. Which meant I had been born into one of the most ancient and notorious pureblood families in wizarding Britain.
"He has the Black eyes," she murmured, studying me with a coolness that was neither affectionate nor rejecting. Simply assessing, as one might appraise a valuable object. "Cygnus, come see your son."
A tall man with dark hair stepped forward, his face a mask of pure-blooded superiority. Cygnus Black III looked down at me with approval. "A boy at last. The heir to continue our line."
I already knew I had sisters. Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa. The mad one, the disowned one, and the Malfoy matriarch. Which meant this was the 1950s or early 1960s, years before Harry Potter would be born.
"What shall we name him?" Druella asked, adjusting the emerald-green blanket wrapped around me.
Cygnus placed a hand on my head, his signet ring cold against my skin. "Corvus. Corvus Cygnus Black."
A raven. How appropriate for a soul reborn with forbidden knowledge of things to come.
Years passed with excruciating slowness. The constant vigilance required to maintain the façade of a normal wizarding child was exhausting. By five years old, I had established a careful balance—showing enough magical aptitude to please my parents without revealing the unnatural awareness behind my eyes.
Black Manor was a monument to pure-blooded excess, with cavernous halls lined with portraits of ancestors who watched me with suspicious eyes. Did they somehow sense I didn't belong? That I carried knowledge that could upend their precious traditions?
My sisters treated me with varying degrees of interest. Bellatrix, already showing signs of the instability that would define her, alternated between smothering affection and cold indifference. Nine years my senior, she would sometimes ruffle my hair with surprising gentleness before demonstrating a hex that made me flinch.
"You must learn to embrace pain, little raven," she told me once, after showing me how to make a garden gnome twist in agony. "Power means being the one who causes suffering, not the one who feels it."
Andromeda, seven years older and the family's quiet rebel, slipped me books from hidden corners of the library when our parents weren't watching—histories and stories that presented a more nuanced view of the wizarding world than the pure-blood propaganda that dominated our household.
Narcissa, five years my senior, remained distant but protective, intervening when Bellatrix's "lessons" grew too intense.
"He's just a child, Bella," she would say softly. "Father won't be pleased if you damage the only male heir."
The constant battle between pretending to be a normal child while carrying an adult's awareness wore at me. I was an impostor in this family, a cuckoo in the nest of one of wizarding Britain's most dangerous families.
When I was seven, Uncle Orion and Aunt Walburga visited with my cousins, Sirius and Regulus. Sirius, three years older than me, already showed signs of the rebellion that would eventually see him sorted into Gryffindor and disowned.
We were in the manor's east garden when Sirius pulled me aside, away from the watchful eyes of our parents.
"You're different," he said bluntly, studying me with keen eyes so similar to my own. "You don't act like them."
I froze, my careful façade threatening to crack. "What do you mean?"
"When they talk about Muggles and blood traitors, you get this look." He mimicked a quick eye roll. "Like you think it's all rubbish too."
For a moment, I considered denial, but something about Sirius—this boy who would someday break away from the toxic legacy of our family—made me reconsider.
"Maybe I do," I said carefully.
A slow grin spread across his face. "I knew it! Regulus just follows along with whatever Mother says, but you..." He lowered his voice. "We could be allies, you know. Against all this pure-blood mania."
It was a dangerous proposition. Sirius would have the luxury of Hogwarts as an escape, but I was years away from that reprieve. Still, the idea of an ally within the family was too tempting to reject.
"Allies," I agreed, offering my hand.
Our kinship would be short-lived; within four years, Sirius would be sorted into Gryffindor and begin his gradual estrangement from the family. But in that moment, our small rebellion felt significant.
My father's study was forbidden to us children, which naturally made it the most fascinating room in the manor. One rainy afternoon when I was nine, with my parents attending a function at the Malfoy estate and my sisters occupied with their own pursuits, I slipped inside.
The room smelled of leather, parchment, and the faintly metallic scent of dark magic. Shelves lined the walls, filled with books bound in materials I didn't want to identify. Glass cases displayed artifacts with labels written in my father's precise hand: "Mongolian Strangling Beads (14th century)," "Egyptian Flesh-Melting Scarab," "Aztec Blood Chalice."
But what drew me was the case behind his desk, where a wand lay on a velvet cushion. Unlike most wands I'd seen—warm wood in organic shapes—this one looked almost like a miniature sword, with a crystalline chamber near the hilt and a blood-red stone embedded in the pommel.
"The Serpent's Fang," read the placard. "Commissioned from Gregorovitch, 1925."
I shouldn't touch it. I knew that. Wands were deeply personal tools, and this one radiated dangerous energy even through the glass. But some compulsion drew my hand forward, as if the wand itself beckoned me.
The instant my fingers touched the glass, it vanished—not shattered, but simply ceased to exist—and the wand leapt into my hand.
Power surged through me, intoxicating and terrifying. Images flashed in my mind: a duel at midnight, green light flashing from the wand's tip, the faces of enemies contorted in fear. The wand had a history, bloody and dark.
"What are you doing, Corvus?"
I spun around, the wand still clutched in my hand. Narcissa stood in the doorway, her pale eyes wide with shock.
"I was just looking," I said, cursing my carelessness.
"Father will be furious." Her gaze locked on the wand. "That's not meant for you. It's a family heirloom—it belonged to Grandfather Pollux."
I tried to replace the wand, but it seemed to resist, clinging to my palm as if reluctant to part from me. With effort, I placed it back on the cushion.
"Please don't tell," I said.
Narcissa studied me for a long moment. At fourteen, she was already cultivating the cool detachment that would serve her well as Lucius Malfoy's wife.
"The glass case," she finally said. "What happened to it?"
I looked back at the wand. The case remained gone, the wand exposed on its cushion.
"I don't know. It disappeared when I touched it."
A flicker of something—concern, perhaps?—crossed her features. "That's old magic. Recognition magic." She stepped closer, lowering her voice. "The wand recognized you as its master."
"But it's not my wand. I haven't even been to Ollivander's."
"Sometimes wands choose wizards before they're meant to," she said. "Father says the old ways of wandlore are more complex than what they teach at Hogwarts."
I looked back at the wand, its blood-red pommel stone seeming to pulse with inner light. "What do I do?"
"Leave it," Narcissa said firmly. "Pretend this never happened. When it's time for you to attend Hogwarts, Father will either give you this wand or take you to get another." She touched my shoulder, a rare gesture of affection. "I won't tell, but don't come in here again, Corvus."
I nodded, but as we left the study, I could feel the wand's pull, like an invisible thread connecting us across the room, across the manor, a magical bond already forming.
That night, I dreamed of the wand. In my dream, I stood in a vast chamber lined with towering serpentine statues, water pooling around my ankles. The Chamber of Secrets. At the far end, coiled in shadow, waited the Basilisk—not the monster from the books I remembered, but a sentinel, a guardian of knowledge.
"Speaker," it hissed, though I understood perfectly. "You carry memories not your own."
"I was someone else before," I admitted. "In another world."
"A fractured soul," the Basilisk observed. "Dangerous. Powerful. Like the wand that calls to you."
"The Serpent's Fang," I said. "It's not meant for me."
"All things find their true master eventually." The massive serpent slithered closer, its scales gleaming in the dim light. "The venom in my fangs flows through that wand's core. It recognizes kindred power in you."
"I'm not dark," I protested.
The Basilisk's laugh was a dry rasp. "Dark. Light. Such simple terms for complex magic. The question isn't whether you are dark, young speaker, but whether you will use the darkness within you with purpose."
I woke with a gasp, sweat-soaked sheets tangled around me. Through my bedroom window, the constellation Corvus—my namesake—shone brightly against the night sky.
Purpose. What was my purpose in this second life? To change the terrible events I knew were coming? To save those who would die in the wars against Voldemort? Or simply to survive in a world that would soon be torn apart by dark magic and prejudice?
The truth was, I didn't know. But as I drifted back to sleep, one thing became clear: knowledge was my only advantage, and I would need every weapon at my disposal—including, perhaps, a wand named for a serpent's deadly fang.
Two years passed. My eleventh birthday approached, bringing with it the anticipated Hogwarts letter and the question of where I would fit in this world of blood purity and approaching darkness.
The family gathered for breakfast on the morning of my birthday, a formal affair even for such an occasion. House-elves served platters of food at the long table where my father sat at the head, my mother at the foot, and we children arranged by age along the sides.
"Your letter should arrive today," Father said, buttering a piece of toast with precise movements. "We've already informed Slughorn to expect you in Slytherin, of course."
All three of my sisters had been Slytherins. It was not merely expected but demanded of a Black. Yet I knew the Sorting Hat considered one's choices as well as one's qualities.
"And if I'm sorted elsewhere?" I asked, unable to resist testing the waters.
Silence fell over the table. Bellatrix, home from Hogwarts for the summer before her final year, narrowed her eyes. Andromeda, who had graduated the previous year, suddenly became very interested in her tea. Narcissa, entering her fifth year, shot me a warning glance.
My father lowered his knife. "There is no elsewhere for a Black," he said softly, dangerously. "You will be in Slytherin, or you will not be a Black at all. Ask your cousin Sirius how that choice ended for him."
Sirius had been disowned the previous year after running away to live with the Potters. His name, blasted off the family tapestry, had become a cautionary tale within our household.
"I was only curious about the process," I said smoothly, retreating behind the mask I had perfected. "Of course I'll be in Slytherin."
Father studied me for a moment longer before nodding. "Good. After breakfast, come to my study. I have something for you."
My heart raced. I knew what waited in that study—the wand that had called to me two years earlier, the wand I still dreamed about.
When breakfast concluded, I followed my father to his study. The room remained as forbidding as ever, but now I entered with permission, standing straight-backed as he moved behind his desk.
"Every Black has carried a wand worthy of their heritage," he said, opening a drawer and removing a long box of polished ebony. "Some go to Ollivander's, but the truly special wands find their masters through family legacy."
He opened the box. Inside, nestled in black velvet, lay The Serpent's Fang. Up close, I could see intricate details I had missed during my brief encounter years ago—the crystalline chamber contained what looked like a viscous green-tinged fluid, and the blood-red pommel stone was carved with tiny runes that seemed to shift under my gaze.
"This wand belonged to your grandfather Pollux," Father continued. "Elder wood, thirteen and two-thirds inches. Its core contains the venom of a Basilisk, harvested during an expedition to Greece in 1923. Gregorovitch himself crafted it—his last commission before retiring."
He lifted the wand from its box, holding it reverently. "It's a temperamental wand. Volatile. Ambitious. Discerning in its choice of master. It rejected both me and your uncle Orion." A flicker of old resentment crossed his face. "Perhaps you will prove worthy of it."
He extended the wand, handle first. The moment my fingers closed around it, warmth flooded through me, along with a sense of rightness that was almost overwhelming. Red and gold sparks erupted from its tip, showering the study in light.
Father's expression mingled surprise with satisfaction. "It seems Grandfather's wand has chosen you, Corvus. Use it well, and uphold the traditions of the House of Black."
I nodded, feeling the wand's power resonating with my own magic. This was no ordinary wand—its strength in combat magic and dark arts would be exceptional, if the lore detailed in my dreams held true.
As if reading my thoughts, Father added, "This wand has a particular affinity for certain branches of magic. I will teach you spells not covered in the Hogwarts curriculum—spells a Black should know."
He moved to a bookshelf and removed a leather-bound journal, placing it on the desk between us. "My notes on The Serpent's Fang—spells it performs with particular effectiveness, brewing techniques for potions that complement its properties."
I opened the journal, recognizing my father's handwriting detailing spells I had seen in my dreams—Bombarda, Confringo, Protego Diabolica, and dozens more, including the three Unforgivables.
"This knowledge stays within the family," Father said gravely. "The Ministry has become increasingly... restrictive about what they consider acceptable magic. But we Blacks have always known that magic itself is neither dark nor light—it is intent and power that matter."
I closed the journal, processing what this meant. In my previous life, I had read about Harry Potter's world from the perspective of the protagonists, where dark magic was almost uniformly evil. But standing here, in the reality of this world, the lines seemed far less clear.
"I understand, Father," I said, and in that moment, I meant it. Not that I embraced the pure-blood ideology or dark arts for cruelty's sake, but I understood that survival in the coming war might require knowledge of magics beyond what Hogwarts would teach.
As we left the study, my new wand secure in a wrist holster and my father's journal tucked under my arm, an owl swooped through an open window, dropping a parchment envelope at my feet.
My Hogwarts letter had arrived. The next chapter of my second life was about to begin, and I was armed with knowledge no first-year should possess—of the future, of dark magic, and of a wand with the power to shape both.
In the distance, thunder rumbled as storm clouds gathered over Black Manor. I picked up the letter, breaking the Hogwarts seal as the first drops of rain began to fall.