Hadrian Black: The Abandoned Prodigy

Hadrian writhed in pain for 20 minutes, from Hadrian's perspective it felt like it was never going to end.

Finally, the bright light began to reduce and Hadrian was left on the floor, unconscious.

Rosewood used the reviving spell, "Rennervate!", and Hadrian slowly stirred into consciousness.

Hadrian looked around his body for any new runes and frowned when he couldn't find them.

"What kind of Artifact is it?", said Hadrian

"My Grimoire.", he said, a smug look overcoming his features.

Hadrian and Rosewood's mouths dropped to the floor. This was MERLIN'S GRIMOIRE. The most powerful wizard in history had just given his book of spells to a kid!

Rosewood scowled, 'If only I was that lucky.' she thought.

"It contains all of my self created spells as well as useful regular spells written in reptilian speak; the most powerful of which are the Parseltongue spells and the Dragonic spells.", Merlin continued.

"How do I call upon the grimoire?", said Hadrian as he tried calling upon the grimoire the same way he willed his wand to appear.

"There is a reason for that of course. You see, these Artifacts are 'growth-type' artifacts. They will get stronger as you get stronger and in turn, also make you stronger. Another way to explain it would be, 'You feed it your magic and it feeds you back.' It also means that you are not strong enough to use the Grimoire at the moment.", said Merlin.

"What are the requirements for using the Grimoire?", asked Rosewood.

"Occlumency, as well as a larger, developed core and better control of your magic. We wouldn't want others to know of the spells, even though they would never be able to read the Grimoire. It assimilated with you Hadrian, only you can read it and use it." Merlin noticed Rosewood's frown, "However, you can still teach certain people the spells, that is, the self-made spells that aren't in a magical language of course."

Hadrian nodded and Rosewood began to perk up. The area became silent as Hadrian and Rosewood thought about what happened. Eventually, it was Hadrian that broke the silence.

"What about my Creature Inheritance? I don't think I've gone through that yet...", he said with a frown.

"You will go through your Creature Inheritance during the night of your first Magical Maturity, which I believe is on the 11th year since your birth.", replied Merlin.

Hadrian nodded.

"Well, If that is all of your questions, I suggest you quickly shrink me and put me in your pocket so we can escape on your vessel!", he cried out, voice echoing throughout the room.

Hadrian smirked and looked at Rosewood expectantly, she nodded and cast the shrinking spell, 'Reducio'.

She handed him over to Hadrian who put him inside the pockets of his black, capris shorts.

They made their way into the submarine and thought about how today's events might affect them.

To Rosewood, it was an enlightening experience. She had met the strongest wizard to exist, there was a fountain of knowledge to attain just by speaking to the portrait!

To Hadrian, it was a major blessing. He now had another means of getting stronger and a greater mentor to help him. He was also pondering about the main reason he needed to get stronger, Voldemort.

He had tried to put him off but he knew that thought was inconceivable, Voldemort will be returning sometime in the future. Dumbledore had declared it so. Even though Dumbledore was wrong about who the real 'Boy-Who-Lived' was, he couldn't just dismiss the 'prophecy', on the off chance that it was valid.

Hadrian knew he had to tell Merlin, he would be stupid not to, he was the one to slaughter the Dark Lady Morgana Le Fay. If anyone had any experience in slaughtering Dark Lords it would be Merlin!

And of course, Dumbledore...

Hadrian scowled, 'If Dumbledore could kill Grindelwald then why couldn't he kill Voldemort?'

Unless he didn't kill Grindelwald.

Unless he lied...

Hadrian shook off the thoughts about Voldemort and returned to the present. He often found himself reliving the memory of his near-death and he cursed his Eidetic Memory for it too.

"The painting...Where will it go?", asked Rosewood.

"Floo it over to my grandparents. I'll ask them to keep it in my room.", replied Hadrian.

Rosewood looked at him for a few seconds before nodding.

Thankfully, they reached the school before lessons had begun.

Hadrian had a small chat with his grandparents and they too couldn't hold in the shock. Charlus nearly fainted!

Dorea was, of course, shocked when she found out but schooled her features very quickly as if it was customary for Hadrian to do things that shocked her.

He had also told them about the Creature Inheritance that Merlin said he would undergo on his 11th birthday, while they weren't worried about him not being a complete human, they were worried about him having - inhuman features.

Merlin, of course, quelled their worries, which helped to relieve them of their stress.

Hadrian was glad that his livelihood wasn't threatened anymore by random bouts of pain. Merlin had said that the Artifacts were keyed for Dragonlord blood. Evidently, it had detected that Hadrian had the blood of dragons in him, even though he hadn't gone through his Creature Inheritance. It could sense the dormant blood within him.

Hadrian made his way to his second class, Charms.

Hadrian knocked and waited for Professor Vinchetti to open the door. When she did and Hadrian opened the door, the reaction he received was varied.

Hadrian watched his friends' faces brighten up, especially Daphne's. She let out a sigh of relief and smiled warmly at her friend's arrival.

On the other hand, the rest of the class had curious expressions, well nearly all of them. All of them except from one, Sammie Primrose.

Sammie had been the 'top student' while Hadrian was gone for the remaining lessons yesterday. She was also ready for another day of the spotlight being on her and she was hoping it would stay on her.

She glared at Hadrian, teeth grinding against each other and fists clenched. She was not happy.

Hadrian was taken aback by the intense gaze she was serving him but quickly recovered once he remembered that she had hated him from the get-go. He also took great pride in beating her at every lesson.

Hadrian smiled right back at her.

This annoyed her more as she began turning red. And then purple. And then red again.

Hadrian thought she was the one that needed to visit the Healers, not him!

"Ah, Hadrian. How nice of you to join us, back from the Healers?", she asked, her face softening as she spoke to Hadrian.

The teachers had been quite worried for Hadrian when Rosewood had told them that Hadrian needed to go to the Healers.

"Yes, whatever it was that was affecting me has subsided and will not be coming back.", he replied.

"Yes. Good. Find a seat and we will continue with the lesson.", said Vinchetti.

Hadrian nodded and took his seat beside Daphne. She was quite adamant about being in the seat the closest to the door. Not that she would tell them why though...

Vinchetti explained that they would be continuing the Levitation charm until they could lift heavier objects.

She explained that the reason for that was, "You are young right now, none have you have reached your first Magical Maturity. This means that your core has not developed into the size or solidity it would have reached if you were 11. What we are doing right now is teaching you to get used to the flow of magic and assimilating you with your core. Stimulation of the core when young has been proven to create more magically competent wizards.", she lectured.

Hadrian had read up on this already in the Black Library.

If his grandfather hadn't enrolled him into Aunriton, he probably would have been practicing wandless magic.

'Wait a minute...Who's to say that I couldn't practice wandless magic?' he thought, 'Instead of learning new spells, I should just learn how to use the spells wandlessly after all, what is a greater stimulus for your core than wandless magic?'.

With that, Hadrian had made up his mind. He would begin to practice wandless magic during the winter break.

The lesson ended with some of the less competent students finally learning how to levitate the feather and even with some moving on to the weights. Hadrian's friends had learned the charm as well.

All of them had moved on to weights, none heavier than 2kg but it was still a greater effort than the rest of their peers.

Hadrian had levitated 5kg weights the previous lesson and had now slightly increased it to 6kg.

Hadrian was now looking happier, his schooling life had reverted to normalcy.

The other lessons such as Duelling and Defence were just as normal too.

Hadrian had made more progress in his countering and was getting better at casting Flipendo.

His first lesson on Potions, he had found himself slightly behind his peers. Not that they were doing any brewing at the moment.

His teacher was a large dark-skinned man with a short buzzcut. His name was Professor Musa and at first glance, Hadrian was intimidated by the huge man.

His personality though countered his intimidating physique. Dear Merlin did the man seem happy! It was if he found everything amusing with the way he had a smile permanently fixed on his face.

They had all moved on to preparing ingredients while Hadrian was being walked through the safety procedures and the functions of all the different equipment.

Primrose took p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e in Hadrian being behind in potions, much to his chagrin. She shot him smug looks of self-satisfaction.

At the end of the lesson, Hadrian was handed a test on what the Professor had walked him through, to gauge how well he understood.

Safe to say he was thoroughly impressed! Hadrian had gotten everything right. Professor Musa sang praises about how he had gotten everything perfectly correct and how well versed he was in the safety procedures, etc.

Hadrian shot smug looks over to Primrose who found herself revisiting the 'purple-red face' all over again.

Hadrian realized he took p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e in seeing her angry, probably because she had decided to try and one-up him in every lesson.

The next lesson, however, Hadrian quickly decided was his favorite. The teacher had attempted to try and walk Hadrian through the runes but Hadrian declined to say that he knew the basic ones already.

Professor Miyoshi, not believing Hadrian, had decided to test him and was impressed.

Hadrian impressed her by naming every rune that she pointed in his face.

The class was also impressed, he knew all of the runes that they had learned yesterday and he wasn't even in the class!

After the test Hadrian began ranting about runes, bombarding Professor Miyoshi with questions such as,

"Are we going to learn to make rune cl.u.s.ters?"

"Are we going to learn how to make wards with runes?"

"Are we going to learn how to deactivate rune cl.u.s.ters?"

"Are there spells that aid in rune creation?"

Everybody in the class sweatdropped at the boy's enthusiasm towards runes, he talked about them for a full 5 minutes.

Hadrian's Potter ring was also pulsing lightly, no one noticed, of course, they were too busy listening to the boy going on and on about runes.

Once Hadrian had calmed down, he asked if he could attempt to make one of the basic runes.

Miyoshi had refused, claiming that her reason to do so was that they were going to learn calligraphy sometime in the future and without calligraphy, it would be futile to attempt creating runes.

He, of course, responded by boasting of his calligraphy talents, something which Miyoshi once more decided to test by conjuring parchment and a brush.

Hadrian wrote the rune for Fire on the parchment perfectly. When Miyoshi saw this, her eyes widened and she became ecstatic.

"A Rune savant!", she exclaimed.

She didn't explain what she meant but everyone now knew that Hadrian had somehow managed to convince her otherwise because he had just begun making the fire rune he had demonstrated before. Only now, it was on a blank rune stone!

The rest of the class was still working on remembering which symbol was which.

If Hadrian wasn't so engrossed in the lesson, then he would have noticed the most intense glare he had since received from Sammie being served at him at full force!

But alas, it was in vain...