Dr. Elias Mercer had always envisioned death as a quiet phenomenon sterile, perhaps. Predictable, at least in principle. It was not something he feared. He approached it with the same clinical detachment he applied to quantum anomalies or subatomic decay as an eventuality to be observed, understood, and, ideally, categorized.
In the final moments of his life, as the resonance chamber collapsed inward under the pressure of unstable energy fields his own creation, no less he did not panic. The catastrophic failure was instantaneous. One moment, he was studying fluctuations in exotic matter behavior the next, the world dissolved into a blinding, all consuming light.
There was no pain. Only silence.
Then, stillness.
And then continuity.
Consciousness persisted, despite the obliteration of biological infrastructure. Detached from physical form, Elias floated in a void that defied spatial reference. No sight. No sound. No markers of dimension or passage of time. Yet his awareness endured. This alone fascinated him. The persistence of self, absent of sensory input or neurochemical activity, suggested that identity or at least cognition could function independently of the biological substrate.
"So the mind survives the death of the body," Elias mused, though the thought carried no sound. "Fascinating."
However, the void was not static.
Something moved.
Or rather, he was moved dragged by a force that bore no resemblance to any gravitational field, electromagnetic pulse, or spacetime curvature he had ever encountered. It was not force in the traditional sense. It was directional intent, ancient and absolute.
And he was powerless against it.
Sound returned gradually, muffled as though submerged in viscous fluid. At first it was meaningless a distorted collage of rhythms and tones. But then, faintly, came the cadence of human speech.
"Push, Lily. Just one more. He's nearly there!"
A woman screamed, the sound primal and piercing, followed immediately by gasps and cries of exhilaration. Air thick, unfamiliar filled his lungs. He convulsed, coughing, and then a high, piercing wail escaped him.
He recognized it as his own.
The realization came crashing in, absurd and overwhelming.
I'm being born.
It was a thought so outrageous that, for a moment, he dismissed it outright. But the empirical data the pressure, the pain, the utter helplessness corroborated the hypothesis.
"I see him!" a woman sobbed joyfully. "James, he's here! He's here!"
A man's voice answered, breathless with awe. "He's perfect, Lily. Absolutely perfect."
Lily. James.
The names struck like electrical charges through a flooded circuit. Familiar. Fictional. Resonant.
And the woman the red hair, the green eyes was unmistakable.
Lily Potter.
Which meant the infant she held his infant body was named Harry.
No. No, this can't be. This is fiction. Fantasy.
And yet, even as panic threatened to disrupt the fragile coherence of his reincarnated consciousness, Elias Mercer renowned physicist, man of science recognized the data for what it was. His senses told him this was reality. And until evidence to the contrary emerged, he would treat it as such.
The first week was torture.
Not physically though the limitations of an infant's body were deeply frustrating but cognitively. He was surrounded by phenomena that defied the laws of physics, yet his capacity to interact was practically nonexistent. He observed passively, like a camera recording footage he could not analyze in real time.
He watched Lily levitate objects with a flick of her wand and a murmur of soft syllables. He saw James summon fire, banish it, conjure light with casual imprecision. The air shimmered sometimes with unseen currents. Books turned their own pages. Quills moved without touch.
Magic, they called it.
Elias called it the manipulation of a non inertial energy field responsive to linguistic command structures and emotional intent. He could see the patterns forming already.
"I think he's watching you again," James whispered one morning, crouching beside the cradle with a lopsided grin.
Lily chuckled. "Of course he is. He's a baby, James."
"No, seriously. He's not just watching. He's analyzing." James leaned closer, narrowing his eyes. "Like like he's judging me."
Elias wanted desperately to roll his eyes.
Instead, he gurgled softly.
Lily leaned over and brushed her hand gently through his hair. "Maybe he's just curious."
Correct, Elias thought, wishing telepathy were among his new faculties. Curious, and entirely unimpressed by your lack of scientific rigor.
By the time two months passed, Elias had developed an internal rubric for how magic interacted with the physical world. Observations had revealed three consistent variables
Verbal Command Structure Spells required precise pronunciation and often followed phonetic rhythms. Mispronunciations produced erratic results or failure.
Conduit Amplification Wands were not merely tools they functioned as channeling devices, perhaps akin to a lens focusing light into a laser.
Psychic Intent Vectoring Emotional states and intent altered spell output, sometimes dramatically.
He began compiling what he termed the Mercer Field Model, a theoretical framework positing that magic was an interaction between latent psychic frequencies and an external, responsive field of unknown energy density.
He wanted to test this theory whenever possible.
One evening, as Lily read aloud from a magical storybook, he focused all his awareness on the pages. Her humming accompanied the motion of the floating book, the page turning with each cadence.
Elias focused.
He visualized the page slowing.
And at that briefest moment, Nothing happened.
Wishing for Just a flicker. A stutter in the rhythm he wanted.
Something Insufficient to prove influence conclusively but not enough to suggest the possibility of innate magical sensitivity. Or A wandless initiation yet. He documented the moment mentally and began devising a series of increasingly subtle experiments he could attempt within his current limitations.
One morning, Lily carried him into the study. Books lined every wall. Magical tomes. Some hummed with energy. One snarled when she walked past.
"Don't touch that one, Harry," she whispered, amused. "Daddy bought it on a dare."
I will absolutely touch that one, Elias thought.
"Here, sweetheart," Lily said, settling into a chair. "Let's read something gentle today."
She summoned a soft covered book with her wand. It floated toward her and opened midair. Elias observed the spell form Lily's lips barely moved, but her hand when gripping her wand twitched subtly an encoded gesture, perhaps?
The book he wanted it too trembled momentarily as Elias focused. His will pressed outward, untrained and feeble, like a child attempting to move an arm newly awakened from sleep.
The book didn't twitched.
"Awww, is my little man trying to be like his mom" said lily
"Maybe my body is limited still" he said frustrated
Occasionally, flashes of the narrative surfaced. The story behind this world the orphaned boy, the lightning scar, the dark wizard. But the details were hazy. Fictional recollections lacked the clarity of memory.
That didn't matter.
He wasn't here to follow a plot.
He was here to define the system. To map it. To recontextualize magic not as mysticism but as physics. The physics of a different paradigm, yes. But physics nonetheless.
His name had once been Elias Mercer. Now, the world would know him as Harry Potter.
But beneath the soft blankets, behind the Emerald green eyes and the innocent smile, the mind of a scientist remained alert.
Calculating. Testing. Planning.
And one day, when he could walk and speak and cast, he would begin his real work.
Not to defeat evil.
Not to fulfill prophecy.
But to conquer it.
To master.
Because magic, as the world called it, was not a miracle.
It was a system.
And systems could be solved.