Chapter 5: The Merging

19th June 1989 (2 years later), New York City, New York

(Jasmine POV)

It’s been two years since my escape from the Dursleys, since my death, since my birth. Damn, it was so complicated to put it into words. Even after I accepted my existence as the combination of two people, it was weird thinking about my existence. Two years ago, Jasmine Potter was abandoned by the Durselys, Morgan Evans died alone, in a hospital, and Morgan Smith, my new identity, was born.

I was kinda stuck with Morgan, since it was the name that I said to the nurse, absentmindedly when she asked me about myself, and since I pretended to be an average seven years old kid, it was easy to seem ignorant of my last name, my takecarerer’s name, or even where I lived before. They just gave up and put Smith, as my last name to get started with the paperwork.

Apparently, they didn’t find anything, and after a small stay in the hospital to deal with my malnutrition, I was sent away to a nice little orphanage in the suburbs, where I stayed until today.

It was a nice place, where I had my own room, was given good food and was offered a plethora of opportunities that I never even dreamt of during both of my previous selves’ lives. Jasmine Potter was never offered the chance to truly shine during her education, and Morgan Evans was never offered extracurricular activities that didn’t involve studying.

It was nice to have some carefree years, without anyone pressuring me with chores or grades. Morgan’s memories helped me go through school without even paying attention, and helped me focus on my biggest problems, one of which happened to be the appearance of my telepathy.

I thought I might have been a natural legilimens but I didn’t seem to need eye contact to see the minds of others. I just called it telepathy because it seemed like a suitable name for what my powers appeared to be. Well, calling it reading minds wasn’t an apt description of what I was doing. Yes, human beings had a voice in their heads that they used for surface thoughts, but it was barely the surface of what made up the human mind. It was more like a web of memories and feelings, each connected by abstract reasons that didn’t need to make sense at all. After all, human beings were mostly irrational beings.

It didn’t take long for me to learn how to turn off my telepathy. It was surprisingly instinctive, but I still didn’t risk using it in a crowded place like a hospital; I would be easily overwhelmed. Afterwards, when I went to the orphanage, I did start using my telepathy on one of my teachers, who I once heard think that he killed his wife who was caught cheating on him. I didn’t have any evidence, and I definitely wouldn’t risk my own life to gather any of it, so I just decided to use him to develop my telepathy accordingly.

Honestly, over the years, what I have learnt would have given me a degree in Psychology at the very least. I started to realize how broad my powers even were. I learnt how to navigate the minds of others, as well as my own, I slowly learnt how to use compulsions, to see through my target’s eyes. By the time I was done, months later, I just used a mental compulsion on my teacher to confess and give himself up. It was quite the scandal, I remember.

With my progress in telepathy being borderline prodigal, while scanning minds in the playground, I found something odd, even for me. I will admit that I was getting bored with normal minds. The human mind itself was incredibly complex, but once I understood one of them, every other mind became so predictable, so bland, so uninteresting. People always had the same motivations, greed, anger, revenge, lust, and their ambitions were always the same, money, and power.

It was so weird to see someone who looked like he vibrated on another frequency. I followed him and was able to breach his mind without too much of an issue. He had a little instinctive shielding but it was very basic, and I was able to circumvent it easily.

It didn’t take long to be able to figure out how this mind was just different. For some reason, it was able to infer the meaning of any word or symbol that it can see. I could see him using it heavily in his work in a museum, where he translates ancient artefacts for a living.

It was such an odd skill, that relied on some sort of divination where he used scrying to the past to the instant the text was written and understood the intent behind it. It allowed him to quite literally learn new languages after looking at a few sentences. It was magic, one that I had never heard of before, which solidified the fact that this world was different from the one Morgan had read about during her lifetime.

I used a mental technique of my invention, where I siphon the knowledge from my targets. Truthfully, it wasn’t even a properly working technique since pure knowledge doesn’t exist in the mind. When a man or a woman learns something, they associate it with memories, like when you use math, you remember the school lessons and apply them. I couldn’t instantly become a doctor, for example, without steeling my target’s entire medical education. It was dangerous, to be able to download years of someone’s life in an instant, you could be overwritten if the target had a stronger mental presence, and it could even change your behaviour somewhat. I didn’t risk doing it on something until I was far more experienced with my telepathy.

But here, the languages that the man, whose name was Douglas Ramsey, was reconstructing were not actually associated with any memories, just pure knowledge that’s been scryed. It was a convenient target, and I copied the entire repository of languages in my mind.

It was very painful, and the man had passed out in the middle of the street, but for some reason, I didn’t just copy the languages, but the ‘spell’ he was using to look back. I could now, translate any written and spoken language that has ever been created.

It was a very useful skill, and I would have been very happy if I wasn’t shocked by the thoughts I heard from the man when he woke up. He was thinking about a meeting with a professor called Xavier.

The moment I heard that name, I blanched and return home just to take a breather. It never occurred to me, that I lived in a world that wasn’t a variation of the Harry Potter universe that I have seen in one of my past lifetimes. No, the name, Professor Xavier, was a well-known one in the Marvel Universe, which is far more dangerous and deadly than that of Harry Potter. And now, I lived in an ungodly mixture of both of them.

I did my best of verifying that it wasn’t just a random name. I looked up the professor online and found nothing pertaining to mutants whatsoever, only that he ran a school in Bayville. I didn’t let things go, whatever, and kept searching for any sign that this was the Marvel universe, and it barely took a few minutes to figure out that Captain America was a thing. Hydra was a thing, maybe it still even is, in secret. With how many possible permutations there were of the Marvel Universe, I wasn’t sure what to believe.

This was a wake up call. I needed to plan what I was going to be doing. I was living comfortably in the US since I thought that whatever mess Voldemort and Dumbledore end up doing, it wouldn’t involve me in the slightest. But now, I’m in New York, one of the most active cities in terms of superpowers in every Marvel Universe, where threats that make Voldemort look like an attention-seeking child, are fought every year.

I needed to keep my head low and develop ways for me to defend myself in case I’m attacked. I decided to focus on my strongest asset so far, outside my telepathy, and that was my magic.

Although, for some reason, my magic seems to power my telepathy, and the man that I stole the whole language thing from was using magic, even if he identified as a mutant. Were mutants just different magical people? I had no idea, and it’s not really a question that I was pressed to answer, at this moment.

I needed to ensure my security, and that meant, having money and power. At this moment, it was better to just focus on my magic, until I am self sufficient enough to live on my own. As much as the orphanage has been amazing in the last few years, it’s not a place I could use to grow in such a ruthless world.

My newfound Omnilingual translation spell was a very lucky break. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to just steal powers with my telepathy without giving myself an aneurysm first. It was a reckless move, one that worked out for now, which is something I can’t rely on, in the long run.

Now, I knew practically nothing about my powers, other than the fact that modern wizards and witches relied on wands. I didn’t think that it was a necessary thing, especially since I’m perfectly capable of controlling my magic without a focus. It’s not particularly draining. That’s not to mention the fact that magic was somewhat instinctive to me. I just focus on the intent of my spell, summon my magic, direct it outwards, and it tended to do its job. Although, for every type of magic, it felt somewhat different. Of course, I didn’t dare risk anything too dangerous or too obvious, afraid of being discovered by the muggles in the orphanage.

To be honest, I can’t consider my situation to be normal. I don’t think anyone’s ever been a combination of two people before. Perhaps my unique situation gives me some sort of advantage when it comes to magic. I didn’t want to rely on guesses, so I decided that the next step would be to enter the New York version of Diagon Alley and get some answers.

It took months of scanning surface thoughts until I found a witch walking by the orphanage. She was a relatively young ministry worker, and she was meeting a friend of hers in a wizarding café. I followed the memory until I found the entrance to the Magical district in New York, which happened to be in Manhattan.

The very next day, I used a compulsion on one of the matrons to drive me there and I was left alone to explore the district. It didn’t take long for me to find a library, where I was completely shocked at what I found out.

I knew that I was special, but I didn’t think that I was this abnormal. Children my age are not supposed to be even able to direct magic, apart from a few very skilled children who could at most do half a dozen things by themselves. Before the age of eleven, a child’s magic is simply too chaotic to cast anything. It was a proven concept made from centuries of research that confirmed it. I was an impossibility. That was before even taking into account my intent-based casting.

Apparently, wizards and witches never really take intent into account when casting, preferring to rely on the arithmancy that’s involved in creating a spell, which expressed themselves in the incantations and wand movements necessary to cast a spell. The closest thing I found to intent-based casting was Dark and Light magics, where you try to channel a certain emotion alongside the usual incantation and wand movements. But that was it. What I was doing wasn’t in any books.

I needed to take a closer look at everything to make sure. I grinned to myself, it seems like my magical education was starting early.