Chương 5: What is Wandless Magic?

His memories of the source material were frustratingly incomplete. The Harry Potter books had been filtered almost entirely through Harry's perspective, and Harry had been rather famously unobservant about a great many things. As far as he could recall, Wizarding World's magic was best described as... lax. Not that it didn't have rules. Just that those rules didn't make logical sense. If magic systems existed on a spectrum between soft and hard, this one felt like steel concealed beneath silk.

There were hard rules, but they were weird. Take owls, for instance. Wizards could teleport. Apparition was a mature, widely practiced skill that allowed instantaneous transport across vast distances. And yet, the entire magical world conducted its postal communications via a bird. Sure, owls were impressive creatures. Majestic, even. But they weren't exactly nature's premier delivery service. And even if magic enhanced them somehow, why bother? You can teleport! Just apparate the damn letter!

Why maintain an entire owl-based postal infrastructure when any adult wizard could personally deliver a letter in the time it took to turn on the spot? Fuck it. There were entire fandoms dedicated to tearing apart Wizarding World's internal logic in his previous life—people with too much time and too many opinions. There was no point joining that debate now. In this life, the inconsistencies were no longer academic fodder. They were his daily reality. The universe was what it was. He had to deal with it.

He had, what, two years? He was nine now, approaching ten. Harry would leave for Hogwarts at eleven. Since Tyson lived in England and his name had presumably been inscribed in some magical registry at birth, he would receive a letter as well. Now that he knew he had magic, it was better to go. Attending Hogwarts offered several undeniable advantages. He already knew most of the castle's layout. They would teach him how to control his magic, which was a skillset he desperately needed.

More importantly, he knew the location of all the horrifying death traps scattered around the campus, and could avoid them. The third-floor corridor. The Chamber of Secrets. The Forbidden Forest, which was not so much forbidden as passively discouraged, despite containing creatures that actively hunted children. Seriously, what kind of educational institution contained literal death traps? The entire school was a liability lawsuit waiting to happen!

The wizarding world desperately needed a health and safety inspector. Still, magic represented opportunity. An absurdly powerful opportunity. He could absolutely incorporate it into his existing plans. Maintain his physical health. Build wealth for his family. Get married someday. And now? Become a powerful wizard who knew the ins and outs of magic. Preferably without getting pulled into Voldy's anti-Potter tour. Unfortunately, that introduced another issue.

He was a muggleborn and muggleborns had an absolutely miserable track record throughout the series. The attacks started becoming serious around Harry's second year and escalated into full-scale genocide in seventh year. What could he say? It was simply wonderful. He hadn't even properly entered the wizarding world yet, and he already had a target on his back for attributes he absolutely had no control over. Not that it was an unfamiliar experience.

In that regard, humans were pretty much the same, whether they were wizards or muggles. Tyson let out a sigh. Atleast he had magic. He could figure things out. After all, Wizarding worlds magic was known to be one of the most versatile magic systems in all fiction. The only downside was mastering it required a wand first. Without one, he had no practical way to start learning control.

"Wait, does it really require a wand though?" Tyson paused. He leaned back against the headboard, narrowing his eyes as he ransacked his memory of the books. If he remembered correctly, Little Tom could use magic even before he knew about the wizarding world. Like levitating objects, manipulating snakes to do his bidding, and implicitly torturing other kids at the orphanage. Heck, it was implied that the dude could even read minds. The question was: was it wandless magic or accidental magic? Reading on this site?

This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Which led him to another question. What was the difference between the two?

"Hm." Tyson fell into thought. He was pretty clear about the latter. After all, he had just experienced it himself a few hours ago. But accidental magic only manifested under intense emotional states—fear, anger, desperation. It used emotion as both fuel and catalyst, brute-forcing magic into reality and allowing even children to perform feats far beyond what their skill in magic and knowledge should have permitted. It was mostly uncontrollable.

Wandless magic, on the other hand, was intentional, reproducible, and controllable. In canon, it was explained as an extremely advanced form of magic that only some exceptionally powerful, talented, and experienced wizards could do. Given the ease with which he performed the feats, what Tom Riddle used was most likely wandless magic.

"Truly a generational talent," Tyson muttered, almost glazing the Dark Lord. Being able to do what most adult wizards couldn't at eleven years of age was beyond prodigious. No wonder he became the most dangerous dark wizard of the century. Tyson wasn't particularly fond of giving Voldemort compliments, but facts were facts. If the dude hadn't gotten brain damage by mutilating his soul into Swiss cheese, he might have truly won the Second Wizarding War. Now, could Tyson do it?

"Well, I won't know without trying," Tyson muttered, shifting his posture. He swung his legs over, crossing them on the mattress so he directly faced his lumpy blue cotton pillow resting at the foot of his bed.

"Now, what was the incantation for the levitation charm? Hm, right. Wingardium Leviosa." He took a deep breath, extended his right hand, pointed his index finger like a makeshift wand, and uttered the incantation.

"Wingardium Leviosa."

"..." Nothing happened. The room remained profoundly silent. The blue cotton pillow sat there, entirely unmoved by his dramatic flair. Tyson cleared his throat, feeling embarrassed despite being entirely alone. He tried again, putting a bit more bass in his voice and executing a crisp imaginary swish-and-flick with his wrist.

"Wingardium Leviosa." Nothing.

"Well, what the hell did I actually expect?" Tyson dropped his hand, letting his posture collapse as he looked at the ceiling. Apparently, he wasn't the protagonist. The universe wasn't going to bend over backward just because he knew how to read a wiki page. Though he would be lying if he said he wasn't disappointed. For the next ten minutes, Tyson racked his brain to recall the core mechanics of standard spellcasting. There were three pillars of spellcasting. The incantation. The wand movement. The intent.

There was also the matter of belief, which could be counted as an additional component or an extention of the third component. A wizard had to trust, without a flicker of doubt, that their spell would work. The moment doubt crept in, the spell would most certainly fail. And this was canon by the way. Neville longbottom was the prime example what lack of self confidence could do to a budding wizard. Poor guy remained at the bottom for so long.

Fortunately, that was never a problem for Tyson, for he was the epitome of self confidence. Back to the topic, he didn't know what role each of these components played exactly, but all three were crucial for a charm to work. And the wand brought them all together, acting as a focus. But since he didn't have a wand, the second component was completely out of the picture.

That meant for wandless magic to work, he had to cast the charm with only two components, incantation and intent, and they somehow had to compensate for the lack of focus as well as the second component. Not much could be done about the incantation apart from speaking it louder or pronouncing it more accurately. Which left him with the last component. Intent should be the most crucial component for wandless magic, or perhaps the only one. But what was intent? Tyson sneered.

He really hated these annoyingly vague words that fantasy tropes tended to throw around. Just be straightforward for once, dammit. In the end, he could only make his own interpretations and hope he got it right. And intent could also be interpreted as what he wanted his magic to do and how determined he was to do it. So what did he want? To levitate the pillow. Was he determined to do it? Obviously. That's why he was staring at it like a maniac. Did he believe it would lift?

Well, it was a first-year charm meant for eleven-year-old kids. If they could do it, surely he wouldn't be stumped by it either. Could he do it wandlessly like Voldemort? Well he—"Ahh, I see. That's where the problem lies," Tyson sighed. Logic told him he could. Just a few hours ago, he had performed literal teleportation. Apparition was only taught to sixth- and seventh-year students at Hogwarts, with wands and strict supervision. He not only did it without a wand but flawlessly, without splinching a single hair.

The circumstances be damned. He did it. In comparison to that, floating a pillow was hardly world-defying. The magic was already inside him. It wasn't a matter of bloodlines; it was a matter of state of mind. But... was it truly? The only person in canon close to his age who had performed something remotely similar had been Voldemort, and Voldemort was a descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself, carrying a bloodline practically saturated with centuries of magical refinement.

Tyson was, for all intents and purposes, a simple muggleborn wizard with no connection to any long-lost ancient magical family. (Or is he?)"So I'm feeling insecure?" he thought and realised, in his heart, that he truly was! Fucking hell. He had just called himself the epitome of self confidence and Neville Longbottom the bottom G. He suddenly felt like laughing.

Tyson had thought he had left all that normal human-from-modern-times shit far behind after his reincarnation, but it seemed he wasn't so different after all. He chuckled despite himself. Now what was the best way to overcome an insecurity? By proving it wrong! Tyson closed his eyes and dragged himself back to that exact moment on the asphalt. He recalled the fear of death, and the absence of doubt. When that truck was bearing down on him, there had been no room for "Am I talented enough?"

or "Is this canonically accurate?" There was only a single thought in his mind: Move or die. He had to get out of the way, get to safety, or he would die. There was no time for uncertainty, only fear of death and the desperation to live. And the magic—his magic—listened to him, and the miracle happened. He opened his eyes. The blue pillow was still there. He extended his arm, palm up, treating the gesture not as a tool to cast a spell, but as a natural physical extension of his will.

He didn't imagine the space between his palm and the cotton fabric as an empty void, but as an extension of his own nervous system. He didn't hope the pillow would levitate. Magic was a part of him. When a person wants to lift their own arm, they don't chant an incantation or ponder the biological complexity of muscle synapses; they simply decide to move it, and the body complies because it is an absolute truth of their existence.

"Wingardium Leviosa," he murmured, his voice low, projecting the absolute certainty in his heart.

"..." Nothing.

"Well, what a diss—" The pillow suddenly trembled. The left-corner fabric twitched violently, bucking against the mattress for a fraction of a second before it went still as if it had never moved. But Tyson saw it. He had really...

"Holy fucking shit!"