Chương 4: Accidental Magic

"Tyson, I wish you had waited a single day before getting in trouble again," Mike said as they climbed into the car. The door closed with a heavy, final-sounding thunk. He didn't start the engine immediately. His hands rested on the steering wheel, knuckles tight. Tyson slumped into the passenger seat, letting his head fall back against the headrest.

"Believe me, pops. I wish I'd avoided it too." He shrugged helplessly as he continued, "Those kids were trying to bully another boy. I probably should have just let them get on with it. But you know me, bullying is one of the things I absolutely cannot stand." Another sigh drifted through the car.

"Son, when you say things like that," his father muttered, eyes fixed on the road, "it genuinely worries me." Tyson closed his eyes.

"... Sorry."

"I'm used to it." His father replied. Tyson winced. The answer stung more than it should have. Mike wasn't trying to wound him. That was almost worse. The man was simply stating a fact. At some point during the years after his reincarnation, Tyson had become painfully aware of something his adoptive parents probably understood too: the bond between them never fit neatly into the shape of mother and son or father and son. He cared about them. Respected them. Over time, he'd even come to love them in his own way.

But it wasn't the instinctive familial attachment they deserved. To him, they felt closer to companions fate had shoved into his life. A family he'd found rather than one he'd belonged to. Real affection still existed, yet the mismatch created an invisible tension neither side quite knew how to address.

"I'll apologize," Tyson said, opening his eyes.

"Can't promise it'll be sincere. But I'll say the words."

"That's all I can ask for," his father's voice carried the weary resignation of a man who had long since learned to take what he could get. Guilt clouded Tyson's heart. Mike and Tessa had given him nothing but patience and affection and he repaid them with emotional distance and sarcasm. Some days he felt less like a son and more like a particularly ungrateful tenant. Not wanting to confront his flaws, Tyson forced his attention elsewhere.

As the streets began to scroll past the window, his mind drifted toward the future. Even if he didn't have magic, the wizarding world existed and that meant every one of its horrors existed too. Dragons. Dementors. Werewolves that hunted children. Spiders the size of automobiles. Magical carpets that could, apparently, swallow a grown man whole. And the worst part?

If the wrong wizard discovered he knew about the magical world, even the supposedly "good" side would happily dig through his skull and erase memories like they were cleaning graffiti off a wall. Basically Mind-rape him as bureaucratic procedure. Truly delightful people. He needed some sort of protection ASAP! Firearms immediately came to mind.

'Ah back to the roots.' The American in him approved. Despite what diehard Potterheads liked to claim online, muggles were hardly helpless against wizards. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Magic held overwhelming advantages, yes, and Wizards were powerful—terrifyingly so, in the right circumstances—but a bullet traveling at supersonic speeds was a surprisingly effective equalizer.

Voldemort would still need a whole army, but the average joe you'd run into wasn't immune to small bits of metal at high velocity. By the time the car pulled into the driveway, Tyson's thoughts had spiraled into full survivalist paranoia. He barely registered the car stopping. His thoughts still racing, cataloguing, contingency plan after contingency plan and worst-case scenarios. He quickly needed to get to his room and write everything down. Tyson slammed the car door open and stepped out without looking.

"TYSON!" His father shouted in horror. Tyson's head snapped up. A black van barreled toward him. It was large, its grille was a chrome rectangle eating the afternoon light. And it was moving extremely fast, definitely above the speed limit allowed in a residential street. Ten feet. Eight. Six. Tyson could see the driver's face frozen in panic, hands locked uselessly on the wheel. Time did not slow down. That was a myth told by people who had never faced real death.

His hands jerked upward instinctively, as if he could push the two tons of steel and glass away through sheer gesture. His earlier paranoia crystallized into a single, diamond-hard point of clarity.

'So this is how it's going to en—' He fell face first onto his bed!

"Guh!" Blankets wrapped around his body in a smothering cocoon. His shoulder slammed into the floor with a force that drove the air from his lungs. Fabric tangled around his legs, his arms, his throat. Tyson thrashed, kicking, clawing, his heart pounding violently in his chest.

"Holy Fuckin Shit!" he gasped, trying to fight his way free.

"Noooo! Tyson!" His father's scream rang from outside. Tyson finally tore himself loose from the blankets and lunged for the window. His fingers fumbled with the latch, clumsy and shaking, before he managed to shove the pane upward. Mike was crouched beside the van's front bumper, his head swiveling frantically as he scanned beneath the vehicle. His hands were shaking and his face had gone completely pale.

"Pops!" He shouted.

"Tyson!?" When he heard his son's voice, Mike's eyes darted wildly before landing on the bedroom window. When he looked at him, safe and sound, relief hit the man so hard he looked moments away from collapsing.

"How in God's name did you get up there? What happened?" Mike asked, his voice still a bit shaky. Tyson opened his mouth but nothing remotely believable came to mind. He had been in front of a speeding van one moment and tangled in his bedsheets the next. There was no logical way to explain that.

"…I really needed to use the bathroom?" he offered weakly.

"Can you grab my bag?" While his father and the van driver struggled to process that answer, he pressed a trembling hand against his chest and tried to calm his violently pounding heart breathing. Teleportation. Apparition. Accidental magic. Magic. The realization sent another wave of adrenaline through him. In some ways, this situation was infinitely better than he'd feared. In other ways? It might be much, much worse.... By evening, as Tyson sat on his bed, he had pieced together a rough theory.

Magic, according to every scrap of canon knowledge he possessed, responded to emotions. The stronger, the better. Accidental magic was simply what happened when those emotions crossed a certain threshold, somehow resonating with a wizard's magic power and allowing them to briefly make physics their little bitch. And children were little grenades of emotions. They experienced feelings with terrifying intensity at all times. Dropping an ice cream cone was the literal end of the world.

Getting a new toy changed the world. Your crush not liking you back was the ultimate heartbreak. And that was exactly the reason why Tyson hadn't shown any signs of it in nine years of his life. He wasn't a kid. He was a grown man and he saw the world from a grown man's perspective. Since arriving in this world, he had never truly lost control over his emotions, not to the extent a kid would.

Having lived through the world of adults and experiencing genuine loss, Tyson understood that most childhood catastrophes were, in the grand scheme of things, pitifully trivial. He sucked it up when he had to do things he didn't want, knowing full well that the world wouldn't bend to his whim just because he wanted to. So he never triggered any accidental magic. Until today. Until he realised that he was in a world that might not even be real. Add in the near death experience in the equation, and boom. Magic.

He had magic. He was a wizard. Tyson leaned back, resting his back against the bed frame, as his mind raced again. Was it some kind of energy? Did he always have it? If so, then why had he never noticed it before? Well, on second thoughts, he had never fallen sick. And in any physical activity, he always tended to have much more gains than others and improved the fastest.

It hasn't even been a year since he started learning martial arts, and he has already left behind most of the people in the dojo in his weight class. Tyson had always dismissed it as some sort of side effect of having an adult consciousness inside a child's body. Now he wasn't so sure. Was it all because of magic? Did magic in this universe even work that way?