[A/N:Might feel a bit rough around the edges since I had to write this chapter in many parts because I didn’t have enough time to write in a sitting or two.]

---

“Sev….will it really work?” Lily asked with a nervous expression on her face.

 

“Don’t worry it will as long you utter the incantation perfectly.” I reassured her.

 

“Okay...here goes.” she pulled her wand out and pointed it at a rock on the ground.

 

She gave her wand a twirl and uttered the magic words, “Wingardium Leviosa.”

 

The rock started floating in the air gently.

 

“It worked Sev! I did it on my first try!” Lily said and waved her wand around and the rock moved along with it before dropping to the ground.

 

“Yes...you did good.” I praised her.

 

It seemed that Lily had some talent in charms just like canon. I wasn't gifted in all fields of magic so having Lily who was good at charms by my side would prove helpful in the future.

 

After a few sessions of teaching, I bid her goodbye and headed back.

 

I had gotten close to her these few months. It was a bit annoying to deal with her initially as I was still an adult inside a young body but over time I had relaxed a little and I could tolerate her.

 

Things had settled down now and I wasn’t under any pressure. I still have some nightmares about the void but Occlumency helped me get dreamless sleep.

 

It was only a few weeks ago that Lily had asked me if I could teach her and I had agreed.She was sad that I was going to move but after I showed her the floo powder, she was happy.

 

Speaking of the floo powder, it was another mystery of the wizarding world. I tried looking for information about its composition but in the end, I found very little.

 

The Floo powder was invented somewhere in the 13th century by a witch named Ignatia Wildsmith. Its manufacture to this date is regulated and the only licensed producer in Britain was the Floo-pow company.

 

It was located in the Diagon Alley but no one ever answered the door. No shortage of Floo powder had ever been reported. No one even knows who makes it.

 

The price has remained constant for the past two hundred years at 2 sickles a scoop. No wonder even the Weasleys used it.

 

The main ingredient was Floo but the precise composition of it was unknown. Many had tried to make their own Floo but no one had succeeded yet. 

 

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t fascinated by this mystery. This was basically the coke of the wizarding world. I wanted to study it when I was older. Who knew what else it could do?

 

Coming back to the networking of it, the Ministry regulated it again and made sure that no muggle fireplaces were joined up. They even had a department dedicated to it called the Floo Network Authority.

 

Eileen registered our soon to be shop for the Floo network and even helped the Evans set up theirs. Since Lily was a witch, it made their muggle house eligible for the Floo.

 

She got the hang of it after the first few uses. Their parents were a bit wary about me appearing in their fireplace but they got used to it and even kept it empty and clean.

 

We used the head only transport to check on each other and if convenient, we would visit the house.

 

I did meet Petunia a few times and she was unpleasant to say the least. I just did my best to ignore her and it infuriated her. I didn’t want to interact with her, she just seemed too annoying to deal with.

 

She freaked out because of the Floo powder transport and complained to her parents but fortunately they didn’t listen to her. Rose didn’t listen at all as she had become quite close to Eileen and wanted to keep in touch with her. 

 

Eileen had gotten her some beauty potions and Rose taught her cooking. Rose had convinced Eileen to make these and after she learnt that we were gonna open a shop, she suggested selling Muggle cosmetics too and wanted to see if they could be modified to be better by magic.

 

I was intrigued by this idea and decided to give it a try. There were not many shops that catered to this and most of the ones that did usually only sold magical potions and whatnot which took effect immediately but would wear off in a short time.

 

Well there were permanent ones like the cure for boils which removed boils from one’s body but they don’t prevent more boils from popping up. Moreover potions were not so cheap that everyone could afford them so selling cheaper alternatives would sell well.

 

So I discussed with Eileen about this and in the end decided to start a small cosmetics section where we would sell muggle cosmetics but in a different packaging and see how it went.

 

Using the same packaging meant it was only a matter of time before some muggleborn noticed it and then it might turn messy and they might even try to copy us.

 

That said I wanted to increase their potency with magic and see if they could be made more efficient and maybe even reduce the time they took to change the face. I could see those at a higher price by making them ‘premium’.

 

I got more ideas of selling Muggle items in the wizarding world but first I would wait and see how these did and then if it was a success as I hoped, I could bring in more things.

 

Like pencils for example, I could even add self sharpening charms with some other charms. A pencil was something simple and was not electronic so charms would work easily on them.

 

Not only pencil I could think of so many other things like it. I jotted them all down and made some plans on the charms and enchantments used on them.

 

I felt giddy thinking about exploiting this empty market with no competition. Sure some people might catch onto it and try copying me but they won’t be able to as I could go get a patent and then have complete monopoly. 

 

It won’t be illegal as well since we are modifying it and not selling them raw and besides half the companies and stores that have stood for centuries all did the same.

 

Diagon Alley is filled with such shops which enables them to have near monopoly in Britain.

 

Muggleborns who get this idea in the future might despise me but they will be helpless to do anything about it. Maybe if Hermione became Minister again and made better laws for Muggleborns but with me here, canon is pretty much fucked.

 

As for the ones who might have had this idea before me, they probably didn’t succeed as starting a business as muggleborn was hard. I hadn’t seen a single shop run by a muggleborn till now.

 

The only jobs they got was either in the Ministry or they worked for other businesses.

 

Still I had to be careful since the Icw forbade buying stuff from the muggle world and selling in the wizarding world on a large scale. 

 

That said we could just start making our own products by magic so this wasn’t a big issue. 

 

Lily’s dad Harold basically accepted me with open arms after I showed him a magic camera. He took a lot of pictures and seemed pleased with the magic equivalent of a gif.

 

I did  have some ideas about upgrading the outdated cameras the wizarding world used and even get teles in there but that would have to wait for a while since I had to figure out how to make it work with the electric parts or make it work without them.

 

And also make sure that I don’t get thrown in azkaban for some obscure law I didn’t know existed. I will have to ask  Eileen to get me a book on wizarding laws at this rate.

 

…….

Coming back to Lily, she visited me a few times by Floo, she loved Hogsmeade and was fascinated by the magic village and people. In fact, she seemed reluctant to leave.

 

I showed her around the place and I even took her out to some places to eat. I showed her the Hogwarts Castle and she became awed by it.

 

She was much more eager to start her term there.

 

Eileen and I lived in the potions shop now.Tobias’ house had been put up for sale and we had moved here. The shop itself was a small building with two storeys. The ground floor was where we displayed potions and other items we wanted to sell and the second floor was where we lived. 

 

Eileen got expansion charms cast on this floor. It was slightly expensive but the large space was worth it. We had space for two rooms there instead of the original one.

 

The shop was ready to open but needed to get approved by the Potion’s Association.Fortunately they weren’t as slow as the Wizengamot so this should be done soon.

 

There was also the Prince manor in Godric’s hollow that we could have moved into but Eileen didn’t want to live there yet as she needed to manage her shop and she would get lonely there when I went to Hogwarts. She did say we could move in there later when her shop settled down.

…..

Over these few months I had made some decent progress in my magic. After getting my wand,spells became much easier to cast. I could see why wands were so preferred. They basically did all the work while you had to only say the spell incantation and wave it. 

 

I tested out all the spells I could and they all worked well. The same spells that I could do wandless were now better when performed with a wand.

 

Before long the wand which I had considered as a mere tool had become an extension of my arm. After studying the spells, I could finally cast some chantlessly and wandlessly. 

 

They were basically like my own magic now. I did have to make some gestures though like snapping my fingers or pointing in a direction but I felt that I could cast them without them too just that my accuracy would be reduced.

 

The same gestures could be used to cast other spells too like by snapping my fingers, I could cast lumos and incendio.

 

I couldn’t get all spells to this proficiency but I was satisfied with the ones I did get up to this level. 

 

My training with Aberforth was also coming along well, I hadn’t known what to expect when he had agreed to teach me. I just knew a little about him from canon and had known that he was strong so I had asked him to teach me.

 

Well it turned out to be a good idea as he did teach me some useful things. At first, he checked what I could do. He was a bit surprised by my progress but wasn’t too phased after all he grew up with Dumbledore who must have been better than me. After that he made me do all spells by wand and then made me learn some other spells that were related to them.

 

For example, the levitation charm was basically an improved version of the floating charm, the hove charm and to some extent the rocket charm.

 

It could do all the things the other three could do. These spells were not in curriculum so Aberforth taught me the spells himself and eventually he made me learn similar versions of different spells.

 

This played a big role in me mastering these spells thus being able to cast them chantlessly and wandlessly. Honestly mastering these spells was not that hard but it would only get harder from here on out as the other spells didn’t have as many variations or similar spells from which I could comprehend from.

 

As for my part of the trade, I just gave him some ideas for goat milk based recipes. I actually didn’t know recipes for these but all I had to was ask Lily’s mother who looked it up for me.

 

He seemed pleased with the goat milk recipes and they were doing moderately well. I didn't think they would do well in the muggle world but they did well in the wizarding world.

 

Other than training my magic, I also helped Eileen out in brewing potions. I had finally begun brewing potions and it was coming along well.

 

Eileen was not a potion’s master but she was not too far from it. Watching her brew potions was a valuable experience. I noted the important points and even began looking for ways to reduce production cost. 

 

I just had to find cheaper ingredients with similar properties and then by trial and error swap them out.

 

I believed that Severus in canon also did something similar as he was able to improve the recipes of the potions. I also focused on learning chemistry and other muggle subjects albeit I was taking it slow as I didn’t enjoy it as much as magic.

 

And lastly there was Occlumency. I did make some progress in it and my mind palace was a bit more refined now.

 

I could also change memories but only Severus’ set of them. The book stated that doing it hastily might affect the user and they might fool themselves into believing the fake ones but since the memories were not mine to begin with,it didn’t affect me at all.

 

I still couldn’t make big changes and I couldn’t change my memories yet but I was content for now. As for the mind palace, I made some other structures within it and changed the library layout as I felt it was too small and gathering all memories in one place felt dangerous so I made a maze based on a horror game from my previous life.

[A/N: Dark deception lvl 2]

 

The maze was basically a manor with lots of corridors and rooms with most rooms having hidden bookshelves within bookshelves with normal books which I had read.  It took quite some time to print them based on suppressed memories and looking for them was hard too since to print a book word to word from memory was not easy.

 

This would not only serve as a distraction,I could also come back and read them in here. Most books were just scribbles now as it took a lot of time to get one book “printed” but for now I made some copies of some books I reread.

 

I could write and publish them but I didn’t have any plans on doing so until I was older.

 

Coming back to the maze, its layout was ever shifting and only highly skilled legilimens would be able to sense it changing but even then they wouldn't be able to navigate it easily.

 

All this was just a setup for more. Once I got better at Occlumency and reached Advanced level. I could place traps in the entire layout. For now the only ‘traps’ were getting locked in a room or running into a dead end with the wall closing around you.

 

This didn’t harm the legilimens and would only delay them but if they couldn’t figure out a way to escape, they would be forced to leave.

 

Overall I was quite pleased with it. It's a good thing that Occlumency didn’t have any age limit. While starting early was considered good, it wasn’t a requirement. Anybody could be skilled at it with the right mindset but after that it was a mixture of talent and dedication.

 

Anyway I was currently in a good position and was waiting eagerly to start Hogwarts.

---

[A/N: Phew...finished this quicker than expected. Just tossed in a few ideas for future development. Next chapter will finally have Hogwarts.]