HP : A Wizard's Dream

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"Speaking"

"SPEAKING LOUDLY

"Speaking in a magical language" (Parseltongue or Ancient Runes)

"...*Quotes*..." 

*Sound effects*

'Thoughts'

##### = Scene break 

Time and place where the story is happening 

Enjoy the chapter ! 

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He felt his soul leaving his body and he started to float above it, before he started to disintegrate into little specks of light. This disintegration didn't feel painful at all, on the contrary, he felt at peace during the entire process, even feeling a comfortable warmth toward the end.

Arthur Polaris was completely erased, leaving only an empty, electrocuted husk of flesh and blood behind as the only reminder of his existence in this world.

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The Afterlife

His soul, now looking like little specks of light, reappeared in a completely different place, one filled with other colorful specks of light, sometimes forming clouds of various sizes, or flowing streams and even some solid abstract forms. The Afterlife was a white expense, warm and full of colors because of the specks of light that can be seen everywhere, this strange world was encapsulated by the void and time seemed to flow strangely.

In this form of scattered specks of light, Arthur's consciousness still existed, yet he somehow felt incomplete. Most importantly he felt like he was really high, acting mostly on instincts, not on conscious thoughts.

There, he absent-mindedly noticed that some of the other clouds and streams of light were constantly on the move, and they would sometimes aggregate, forming a stream and eventually a multi-colored solid shape. Once the solid shape was big enough, it would then mysteriously start sinking under the void bordering this colorful world, until it completely disappeared.

He quickly understood that all the colorful inhabitants of the Afterlife were souls, just more or less fused with other souls. The newly arrived souls looked like scattered specks of colorful light, and when fusing with a similar soul they would take a gaseous form, looking like a cloud. And clouds could fuse with newly arrived souls or other clouds to change to a liquid state and become a stream of colorful light, which could finally become solid through the same process. 

The other souls around him showed a huge variety of colors, sometimes darker colors and sometimes lighter ones, with very few of them being mostly made out of a singular color.

They could be further divided into 2 categories, no matter the color, there is a dim version of it and a vibrant version as well, the vibrant color being apparently pretty rare in souls.

Most of the other dim souls would relentlessly chase the rare few souls with vibrant colors, trying to merge with them, as if they knew deep down that it would bring them immeasurable benefits. 

Arthur however didn't try to, despite feeling the same urges. After all, fusing with other souls might not be the smartest move. Since he still has his memories, it's only fair to assume that the other souls have theirs as well. Before doing anything, he chose to do what he does best : observing and analysing the situation before acting.

And he realised that the souls with mostly dark colors tended to harass other souls and tried to swallow everything in sight, obviously not fighting their instinct of fusing with other souls and even doing their best to accomplish it. 

The souls with mostly light colors on the contrary were mostly peaceful, floating around, often ending as a snack for the tyrannical darker souls.

What surprised him the most was the fact that the darker souls who fused with the lighter ones often changed to a lighter color themselves and became less obsessed with eating other souls.

Both dark and light souls seemed to agree on one point though, if a soul with vibrant color was within reach, they would try to swallow it at all cost to become a vibrant soul themselves.

Arthur concluded that darker souls were *bad* souls with no morality and the lighter one were *good* souls with too much of it, he was pretty sure that fusing with another soul would merge the personalities of both and possibly their memories as well. He didn't wish to become a serial killer or a goody two shoes in his next life in case sinking into the void led to reincarnation, so he set out to absorb souls with similar colors to his.

That's when he noticed that his own soul was made of silver and royal blue, with a hint of light blue, on some specks of light composing him, a faint, brain-like symbol could be seen, as if engraved in the very light.

So, like a few others, he simply started to roam around, looking for a compatible soul, preferably one made of vibrant colors. 

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Arthur thus started exploring every corner of this strange world, time and time again, until finally, a soul sporting exactly the same colors, yet more vibrant than his, materialized close to him.

They fused and this process seemed to slightly change Arthur on a fundamental level, yet they couldn't identify what had changed. Except the new set of memories that appeared in their mind and the fact that the hourglass-like symbol engraved some of the specks of light of the other soul was now present alongside the brain-like symbol of Arthur. So they started to roam around in the afterlife once again, still searching for other compatible souls to merge with.

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They finally managed to fuse with a few other vibrant souls and some dim ones of similar colors, almost reaching a solid state, which was needed to cross the void, after an innumerable number of attempts. 

They had even seen a few souls so powerful that simply being in their presence was a torture, even for a soul almost solid like they were when they had seen them, forcing them to go as far away from them as they could.

They had long realised that fusing with another soul would give them their memory and create multiple personalities, each one having a bit of authority on the movements and decisions of the whole soul, something that was bothering them quite a lot. 

Also, they had realized that most souls are made of specks of light with one or more symbols engraved on them, after the fusion, the new soul possesses the symbols of both souls fused, yet they haven't managed to identify what it does or what they mean.

Though fusing with souls that have a similar personality didn't change their overall thinking process much, having to share a soul body between a few dozen individuals was starting to annoy more than one of these personalities. Yet, at the same time, they felt bored staying in this world, and wanted to see what happened to the souls that managed to become solid, and what lies beyond the void, prompting them to fuse with new souls to explore this mysterious place.

Being a few souls away from becoming solid, they became able to faintly perceive what lies beyond the void…only to mysteriously forget what they had seen immediately after, along with some other memories. 

This discovery started an internal war between all the personalities. Since looking at the void erases memories, if they could find a way to selectively delete memories, they could either eliminate all the other personalities or find a way to delete the most useless part of each personality and only keep the best of each to become *perfect*.

Unfortunately, at their core, all of them only care about themselves before caring about others, and all of them are pretty crafty. 

So they couldn't trust each other at all not to use underhanded means to completely delete a personality. 

They all knew that setting aside their differences would give better results but the fear of being deleted pushed them all to fight until only one remained.

When that happened, Arthur had been trying to seize control of the soul for a long time, since he fused with the first soul in fact. 

He had been looking for a way to become the *administrator* among all the personalities to have the final say in everything. Although he hadn't succeeded before they all tried to kill each other, he still had some experience and ideas. He used them to do the opposite of his initial goal : hiding himself behind everyone else in their shared mind, instead of being at the front of it... and letting everyone else take the brunt of the memory erasing properties of whatever was beyond the void.

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It took a lot of effort and luck for Arthur to manage to bury his own memories in the deepest part of their mind while the other personalities erased each other.

But in the end, he was the only one left, all the other memories had finally been erased, and so were the personalities that came with them. 

He had lost some of his own memories in the beginning of this mental war, but it was a small price to pay to finally gain some peace of mind after all this time with strangers inside his soul. A small price to pay to be finally sane again.

And he hadn't noticed, but his brain-like symbol was looking a bit brighter than before…

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Arthur was now a liquid soul, one soul away from becoming solid, made of royal blue, light blue, silver and grey colors. 

Numerous symbols can now be seen, engraved on his specks of light, such as a brain, a tongue, a wand, a teacup with a rat tail, an hourglass, a snowflake and a wing; some symbols were even present in multiple copies.

In the beginning, after he finally managed to get rid of his undesirable mental roommates, he continued to look for compatible souls, who he then erased with the same method he had used before.

After much speculation, he was thinking that the void probably isolated all the souls from an entity or place capable of erasing all their memories before allowing them to reincarnate. 

But he now had two problems :

- Finding the last soul needed to solidify his soul and go beyond the void 

- Finding a solution to keep his memories after reincarnation, in order to have a headstart on all the other souls and have the best life possible.

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He had spent a lot of time pondering these problems and trying to find one last compatible soul without success.

But in a way he was extremely lucky as fate helped him solve both problems at the same time. 

He never managed to find another compatible soul again. At least, not before a little black hole suddenly formed near him, sucking in its almost solid form entirely, away from this warm and colorful world.

He was extremely confused as he had never seen anything similar during the long time he spent in the Afterlife and also because of just how sudden it was. He hadn't even detected it until it swallowed him, as if this black hole was completely natural, a literal part of the Afterlife, and had every right to be in this place when it clearly doesn't. 

But he wouldn't complain because this little black hole solved both of his problems : it was a way out of the Afterlife and he still had his memories (though not intact since he lost some in the multiple personalities war).

Being sucked into this black hole felt like he was being squeezed in a tube and before he knew it, he was somewhere else, somewhere warm and he could faintly hear a male voice say : "...a true miracle !" in English, before passing out.