DIY Wizard

[WP] You've loved magic your whole life but since your family is poor you've had to teach yourself. you're overactive imagination has helped you invent spells all your own. eventually you get a scholarship to a prestigious magic college but quickly find out everyone seems to lack your imagination.

*****

I remember the joy I felt eight months ago when I first received the envelope in the mail. I knew I had gotten it the second I saw it since it was a big envelope. If I hadn't gotten it, Woodsworth wouldn't have bothered to send a whole pamphlet. I remembered hurrying into the kitchen, a lopsided grin plastered on my face, ripping open the letter and looking at what I knew was there. My mom was thrilled too, she actually jumped with joy. The next few days were a blur of packing and spreading the news.

I remember how grand and wonderful the campus seemed, and how shocked I was when I saw the Woodsworth Griffin reserve. Griffins, the rare, majestic beasts, there, in the flesh, right in front of me! It had felt like a dream. Everything was so full of life and color, tinted with hope and adrenaline. For the first few days of classes, it had been hard to sit still. I was at Woodsworth! I would polish off my magic skills, then work as an inventor and an artificer, spending the rest of my days working with a team of magicians who wanted to improve and advance this world just as much as I did.

I remember the moment my hope began to ebb. It receded and eventually left as the months slid by.

I realized how far I had fallen when I visited home during winter break. Being in my old room, looking at my journal of old spells. My notes about magic now vs then had drastically changed. Hours reading in the library and experimenting in the backyard had been replaced with listening to lectures and trying to transcribe every little detail. When I used to occupy my mind with ideas and creativity, now I was full of memorization and tests.

I continued flipping through my old journal, looking at my messy, barely legible handwriting, wild, crazy drawings, and diagrams, the words I had written looked more like scribbles since I was writing so fast and so enthused. Slowly, reluctantly, I reached into my backpack and took out my most recent notebook. Neat, tidy handwriting I didn't recognize as my own filled the pages.

I did one of my old spells titled 'time capsule'. An image of me appeared in my mirror. I looked about 10 years old. I was wearing a Woodsworth hat and my signature lopsided smile.

"Hi! if you're seeing this then that means you got into your dream school Woodsworth! Maybe you even got to pet one of the Griffins too! Anyway, this is a time capsule I made, I'm 11 and one-quarter now, and this is the time capsule spell I'm making! I'm going to open it way in the future when I'm super old when I go to college! I want to be a doctor and come up with a cure for every sickness in the world, and then I-" With a wave of my hand I shut off the time capsule.

I should have realized then during winter break. I should have left then. But it might be too late now. I have mentally been gutted and emptied out, then stuffed full again with multiple-choice questions and document-based essays. What happened to that creative magician, so full of passion and light? What mental castle had been turned into a cavern? What used to be beautiful had been defaced and eroded away. I sat on the floor of my dorm and cried.

***

It wasn’t until I arrived back at the college proper that life returned to “normal.” Bland learning, regurgitating knowledge… more of the same old of the same old of the same old…

I had awoken to a chilly, frozen January day, where the outside world was so cold that it felt like even time had frozen for all that had gone into the preceding night unprotected by a building. It was now the weekend, a slight break from the grey, and from looking out my window, I could make out that apparently some moderate amount of snow had fallen as I was slumbering away.

Something about this felt… nostalgic, almost.

I wasn’t sure if it was even me doing it, but I found myself putting on a coat and boots, before casting a warming spell and heading outside.

Even through the warming spell and coat, the air outside immediately bit at my extremities as I walked out the main door of the dorms. I didn’t have much with me outside of my trusty wand by my side and the aforementioned equipment…

Except for my mind.

I wandered aimlessly outside, legs moving on their own. Initially, as grey and standardized as my current life, my pace slowly began to increase in speed as my mind wandered with my body, if imperceptibly so.

The white blanket coated everything on the campus. The roads, lawns, parks, commons… all blanketed in a blank white. Clouds overhead cast a grey shadow over all… but were slowly beginning to part.

Where am I going? My conscious mind was baffled at the sudden excursion, at first trying to excuse itself, before giving up and trying to wrangle back control through reason. There’s nothing out here! Everything’s dead and dormant, like every winter! You’ll freeze if you stay out here! Where… no, what the hell is this supposed to end up as?

And yet, my legs trundled on. Through snowdrifts shallow and deep, through coated paths and unused trails.

I watched up towards the sky as the clouds parted. As the sun began to peek through the grey, and as the snow began to brighten.

My conscious mind finally gave up on trying to regain control and delved into the rest of my mind to figure out what the hell it was trying to accomplish.

And there, inside my mind… was a lost spark. A flicker in the black… a black that was not native to here. An invasive creature feasting on the spark’s remnants.

I delved deeper. Into the tiny spark’s core, shrinking down and peering at it through a microscope. It was still dancing… no, protecting. It was protecting something from the black, even if it was clearly losing the battle against the black.

And the thing it was protecting…?

Me.

I saw… me. 11-years-and-a-quarter-old me, smiling. Smiling despite the darkness around.

”…Maybe you even got to pet one of the griffins, too…!”

My voice echoed around me, even as my smile remained static. Not creepily… but… wholesomely. Looking towards a brighter future, filled with hope.

And finally, my mouth moved, even as I still smiled.

”You actually got to pet the griffins! How cool is that?!”

I found myself taken aback slightly. It… it was cool. Awesome, even.

I stared at myself, my young smile undeterred.

I suddenly looked to the side, my innocent hand reaching out to my… left, I thought. Or was it my right?

The hand produced a small flame, making me giggle. I watched as it turned azure blue, then cherry red, the blindingly white, and then even glowing black. But that last one was an impossibility according to the teachers, right…?

But I had done it. I had even gotten dad to take a picture for my notebook.

And there he was. Dad, standing by my young self’s right shoulder.

He’d died just before I graduated middle school. Sudden magical illness that didn’t have a cure. I told myself at the time that it wasn’t my fault… and yet, I felt like it was anyways. Like I could have created a cure. But I couldn’t.
And I fucking cried like a baby as he laid still on his deathbed. Apologizing for jack shit.

I felt like Woodsworth was even more important then. Maybe then, armed with the right knowledge, maybe I could save someone else.

Where the FUCK had that gotten me?!

I could tell I was crying all over once more.

I stared Dad in the face. He looked so awesome, as he always did.

”Hey, champ…”

I wanted to look away.

I couldn’t. Not now.

”D-dad…”

He reached out and patted an invisible shoulder. Mine.

I was absolutely broken, every emotion flooding through. The darkness outside began to flicker before the tiny spark.

He smiled, as he always did.

”You know what ya gotta do.

Go out and show em’.”

I came back to reality with my legs burning, eyes streaming tears that quickly crystallized into ice, and snow gleaming in the sunlight. I was running full-speed now through the powder, my boots moreso leaving streaks than prints. Ahead of me was a railing above a giant frozen lake at the center of the campus, with tourist plaques scattered about the perimeter.

My arms hit the railing, and I stopped.

Frozen eyes gazed at the landscape, blue skies above and glistening snow below.

I looked down at my hand, and brought it up to eye level.

”…Phlogisto Negrenia…” I mumbled.

A glowing black flame appeared above my open palm, casting a slight heat towards my ice-caked face.

Closing my palm, I looked out towards the lake once more.

My lungs took in a deep breath. My mind settled on the grandest of my homebrewed spells, one that I had never gotten the opportunity to test the true limits of.

“PHOENAIA AEROTI IGNIS!”

Above the lake, a massive set of flames suddenly appeared in the shape of a phoenix, and began to dance about the air. The sheer heat of the display immediately started to melt the icy lake, and blasted me straight into summertime. It squawked, chirped, and soared up into the sky, higher than any of the buildings around.

And at a certain height… it stopped mid-air, roared out a deafening eagle call, and dove straight for the ground.

When the flames connected, I was forced to look away for a solid second or two… before returning my gaze to the now near-boiling lake, devoid of snow on its shorelines.

The flames had disappeared into the water, extinguishing on contact.

I smiled, ice on my face now melted, as I now cried tears of joy.

I knew what I had to do.

I knew how to bring magic back.

*****

THE END.