Chapter 2 : The Gift
Summon Manor — September 15, 1987
Something was different before he opened his eyes.
A warmth bloomed behind his sternum — not the warmth of blankets or fever, but deeper, structural, like a second heartbeat finding its rhythm for the first time. His bones hummed. The air against his skin had texture, weight, and he could feel the Manor itself pressing against his awareness: stone and wood and centuries of accumulated enchantment, breathing.
Matt sat up. His hands tingled.
Magical core stabilisation.
A year of reading every text in his grandmother's library had given him the vocabulary. Seven was the age. Every wizarding child's core crystallised at seven, shifting from wild ambient potential into something channelled, usable.
He clenched his fists. Opened them. The tingling persisted, warm and restless.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOUNG MASTER!"
The door exploded inward. Cork — the youngest house-elf, barely two feet tall, with ears that stuck straight up like a startled rabbit's — hurtled across the room carrying a cake nearly as wide as himself. Behind him, Pip floated candles into formation while Tilly supervised from the doorway with her arms crossed and the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth.
"Seven candles!" Cork squealed. "Cork counted three times to be sure!"
The cake was lopsided. The frosting — pink, for some reason — had been applied with the enthusiasm of a toddler and the precision of an earthquake. HAPY BRTHDAY MATT was piped across the top in letters that wandered uphill.
"Cork made the frosting himself," Pip noted quietly.
Matt looked at the cake. At Cork's enormous eyes, shining with hope and terror in equal measure.
"It's perfect," Matt said.
Cork burst into tears. Happy ones, based on the way he was simultaneously crying and bouncing. Pip caught the cake before it hit the floor.
They set up at the small table by the window — the one Matt had claimed as his during the year he'd spent mapping this life. Tilly cut the slices. Pip poured tea. Cork vibrated on a stool, too excited to eat.
Matt bit into cake. Too sweet. The frosting clung to the roof of his mouth like sugary cement.
"Delicious," he told Cork, and meant it in every way that mattered.
He was reaching for his tea when the world stopped.
Not metaphorically. The steam above his cup froze mid-curl. Cork's bouncing halted mid-bounce. A house finch outside the window hung motionless in the air, wings spread against a sky that had become a photograph.
Matt's heart slammed once, hard.
Blue text materialised in his vision — sharp, luminous, floating at a fixed distance as though projected onto glass that didn't exist.
[MAGICAL CREATURE BOND SYSTEM]
[ACTIVATION SEQUENCE INITIATED]
[HOST CONFIRMED: MATTHIAS ALDRIC SUMMON]
[SOUL-BOUND ENTITY: ONLINE]
[72-HOUR CALIBRATION: COMPLETE]
[MAGICAL CORE STATUS: STABILISED — SUFFICIENT FOR SYSTEM INTEGRATION]
His breath caught. A year of waiting. A year of suspecting something was embedded in him — strange dreams of blue light and clinical text, fragments that dissolved on waking. And now —
[SYSTEM INTERFACE: ACTIVE]
[HOST LEVEL: 1]
[BOND SLOTS: 1]
[CREATURE SENSE: 10M RANGE]
[BOND ENERGY (BE): 100/100]
[SOUL STRAIN (SS): 0]
[SYSTEM POINTS (SP): 0]
More text scrolled, faster now, and Matt's eyes tracked it with the hungry focus of a man reading his own medical results.
The Magical Creature Bond System. A power anchored to his soul — not inherited through blood like traditional Summon magic, but evolved from it, restructured into something with levels and metrics and quantifiable progression. He could sense magical creatures within ten metres. He could bond one to start. The bond would grow through mutual trust and shared experience, granting him access to traits, abilities, and eventually fusion with the creature itself.
Three principles governed everything. Mutual Growth — neither host nor creature could advance alone. Earned Power — nothing came free. Balance of Nature — every gift demanded payment.
The text pulsed once and faded. Time resumed.
Steam curled. Cork bounced. The finch flew on.
"Young Master?" Pip's head tilted. "You went still for a moment."
"Just thinking," Matt said. His voice was steady. His pulse was not. "About being seven."
He finished the cake. Every bite. Cork deserved that much.
---
Summon Manor Gardens — 10:14 AM
Matt stepped onto the terrace and activated Creature Sense.
The sensation was peculiar — a ripple expanding outward from his chest, invisible but tangible, like dropping a stone into a pond he could feel but not see. Ten metres of awareness unfurled in every direction.
The house-elves registered immediately. Three warm signatures inside the Manor — distinct, tightly bound to the household's magic.
[HOUSE-ELF. TIER 1. HOUSEHOLD-BONDED. NOT AVAILABLE FOR PERSONAL BOND.]
[HOUSE-ELF. TIER 1. HOUSEHOLD-BONDED. NOT AVAILABLE FOR PERSONAL BOND.]
[HOUSE-ELF. TIER 1. HOUSEHOLD-BONDED. NOT AVAILABLE FOR PERSONAL BOND.]
Expected. House-elves served houses, not individuals. The system confirmed what the books had taught him.
He took a step. Another. The gravel path crunched under his boots as he walked deeper into the garden. Rose beds gone wild. A stone bench furred with lichen. The old oak tree at the garden's centre, thick-trunked and gnarled, branches spread like arthritic fingers against the overcast sky.
At the edge of his range — faint, flickering, almost lost in the ambient hum of the Manor's own magic — something.
Small. Green. Alive.
[CREATURE DETECTED]
[SPECIES: BOWTRUCKLE]
[TIER: 1 — COMMON]
[COMPATIBILITY: 72%]
Matt stopped walking. His breath clouded in the September air.
A Bowtruckle. Living in the old oak, hidden in the bark, probably surviving on woodlice and fairy eggs. A guardian species — they protected the trees that housed them, and in return, the trees gave them shelter. Symbiotic. Gentle, unless threatened. Most wizards considered them unremarkable.
Most wizards had never bonded one.
My first creature.
He took a step toward the oak. The Creature Sense signature pulsed — agitated, pulling tighter against the trunk.
Slow. Patience. Don't spook it.
Matt stopped. Lowered himself to the grass, ten metres from the tree, and sat cross-legged. The dew soaked through his trousers immediately. Cold seeped into his thighs.
He could wait.
A veterinarian learned patience before anything else. You didn't rush a frightened animal. You didn't force trust. You made yourself small and still and consistent, and you let the creature decide.
The Bowtruckle's signature trembled once, then steadied.
Matt sat in the wet grass and watched the oak tree. Above him, clouds drifted east. The Highland wind carried the scent of heather and coming rain.
His system hummed, waiting.
One step at a time.
He was going to need woodlice.
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