Okay, here's mine. Thedas will be a much duller place without him.
Anders had just turned seventeen last week and it meant very little to him besides another year of his life gone forever, wasted in this phallic prison. Even templar-taunting had largely lost its appeal after the first few months. It was truly pathetic but he’d been so completely and utterly bored lately that he was spending his time in the library. Admittedly, he’d been helpfully annotating the texts to make them more interesting, capturing the majesty of the great tiger Ser Pounce-a-lot and his templar-eating ways in the margins, and looking up obscure rituals.
He had usually been able to figure out at least a part of the ritual but the last one in the third book he’d looked through had left him puzzled for a few hours now. While he had never been simultaneously bored and confused, he had to admit that he rather preferred boredom. That was just his secret inner nerd that he’d never admit to having taking, though. Now, Anders was well aware that trying a ritual that he had no idea what it would do and was entitled only ‘Hogwarts’ was probably a bad idea. He was feeling just desperate and reckless enough to not care.
He had just thrown a pinch of smuggled lyrium sand into the flame to complete the ritual, reasoning that blowing himself up had to be more entertaining than staying here at the Tower. Ever since he’d made his escape attempt – the first of many, he’d promised himself – he’d barely been able to sneeze without the templars focusing their undivided and most certainly unwelcome attention on him. Fortunately for him, the templar on duty in the library at the moment wasn’t particularly attentive and had barely even registered Anders’ presence, let alone his illicit ritual. The man did start as a great wind began to form around Anders, faster and faster. Watching it was dizzying and his hair and robes were blowing everywhere.
When the wind finally died down, he found himself no longer standing in the library. Instead, he seemed to be in some sort of an office. There were moving portraits on the wall staring unabashedly at him, strange silver devices littering the desk, and a bird that didn’t seem to notice that it was on fire sitting on a perch. Anders blinked. Yep, it was still there.
He turned to the two bewildered occupants of the room who had both taken out a wooden stick and pointed it at him. How odd. One of them was the oldest man that Anders had ever seen and had a long white beard that easily put even the dwarven ones he’d seen to shame. He had half-moon spectacles and a strange twinkle in his eyes. The other man was much younger than the first but still several years older than Anders himself. This man had medium-length greasy black hair and suspicious black eyes.
“…Hogwarts?” Anders ventured a guess once it became apparent that they were waiting for him to speak.
“We’ve got a sharp one,” one of the portraits said dryly. Now the portrait was talking? Ander wondered briefly if it had somehow been possessed. As no one else seemed particularly concerned about it, he decided to just ignore it.
“You are indeed at Hogwarts,” the elder of the two men confirmed. “I am Professor Dumbledore, Headmaster, and this is Professor Snape. And who might you be?”
“My name is Anders,” Anders introduced himself. “This is probably a stupid question but…what
is Hogwarts? Some kind of a school, I take it?”
“Obviously,” Snape said derisively. “Why are you here if you didn’t know that? And how did you even get here?”
Anders shrugged. “I found a ritual called ‘Hogwarts’.”
“And you
performed it?” Snape demanded, his tone clearly implying that he questioned Anders’ intelligence. “Without even knowing what Hogwarts was?”
“I was bored,” Anders said, the words sounding lame even to his own ears.
Snape closed his eyes, looking almost pained.
“Perhaps you could give us some more information?” Dumbledore suggested. “You can do magic and yet you’ve never heard of Hogwarts? Hogwarts is very well-known among the magical community and so I find that to be quite remarkable.”
“It isn’t in the Thedas magical community,” Anders replied. “Or at least not in the Ferelden community.”
“Thedas?” Dumbledore asked politely. “Ferelden? I’m afraid I’ve never heard of those places.”
Anders raised his eyebrows, surprised. “You haven’t? I…actually don’t know what to say to that. Ferelden is a country in the land of Thedas and I don’t know anything about the geography outside of Thedas.”
“That is a puzzle,” Dumbledore said gravely, stroking his beard. “I’m sure that, given time, we shall be able to unravel it. Where did you study magic?”
“The Circle Tower,” Anders replied promptly. Realizing that that probably wouldn’t be enough information, he continued with, “It’s a Tower in the middle of a lake where everyone in Ferelden who has magic is taken the moment someone discovers this fact and where they are not permitted to leave without permission…which is only granted if they’re old enough and compliant enough.”
Snape looked horrified. “People where you’re from lock witches and wizards in a tower?!?!”
“We’re called mages,” Anders corrected. “And yes, yes they do.”
“The Dark Lord’s followers would have a field day with this,” Snape muttered. “Muggles imprisoning wizards. At least they aren’t
killing them.”
Anders had never heard the term ‘muggle’ before but he figured that it probably meant a non-mage. “Actually, when you reached adulthood, the templars – they’re our guards and can somehow neutralize our magic – put a demon in you and kill you if you can’t fight off your possession fast enough. And they kill you if you use the ‘wrong’ kinds of magic. And if you leave the Tower without permission they’ll probably kill you but they didn’t kill me that one time I did so it’s not exactly a guarantee.”
Dumbledore looked alarmed. “They put
demons inside of everyone? Why?”
Anders shrugged. “They claim it’s so no one who cannot fight off a possession won’t get possessed and start killing people without anyone noticing. And unless you want to lose not only your magic but, as a rather nasty side-effect, your emotions as well then you have to undertake this Harrowing.”
“Would I be correct in assuming that you have gone through this yourself?” Dumbledore asked shrewdly. “You seem to know an awful lot about it.”
Anders nodded. “Yeah, I did. I didn’t find it very difficult but then I can only speak for my own experience.”
“And you said that you only go through this ‘Harrowing’ when you become an adult. How old are you, Anders?” Dumbledore inquired.
“I just turned seventeen,” Anders announced.
Snape groaned. “Oh, of
course.”
“What’s so special about that?” Anders asked, confused.
“In Wizarding Britain, which is where Hogwarts is located, magical children are often sent to the school for seven years starting at the age of eleven. No one is forced to go and some are homeschooled but Hogwarts is a wonderful place to learn magic and to meet your peers. Hogwarts is in session for a little over nine months, from September to June, and there is a two-week break that children can return home during if they so choose in December and a week-long break that they may not leave school during in April.”
“I see,” Anders said diplomatically. It would appear that these people used a different calendar system than Thedas did as he was certain that he’d never heard of this ‘September’ or ‘April.’ Hogwarts certainly sounded more appealing than life at the Circle but it was difficult not to and he couldn’t really muster up much enthusiasm about a school. “And what happens after they’re done with their schooling?”
“Then they go out into the world. Children generally can’t control their magic when they’re younger and learn to use their wands here at-” Dumbledore began to answer.
“What’s a wand?” Anders interrupted.
Dumbledore’s eyes went wide and he gestured to the stick still in his hand. “Why – a wand is how a wizard focuses their magic and performs spells! Are you saying that you
don’t have one?”
“I never have,” Anders confirmed. “This ‘wand’ seems kind of like a crutch, to be honest.”
“Anyway,” Dumbledore said, continuing valiantly. “At the age of seventeen, a wizard becomes a legal adult and is free to do magic whenever and wherever they want instead of just here at Hogwarts. Be warned, though, that they are still not permitted to perform magic in front of those muggles that don’t know we exist…which are usually the immediate family of muggle-born wizards and those high up in the government.”
“I’m sure you’ll find the concept of muggles not knowing about magic to be very strange but given the barbarity they display where
you’re from, you might actually be the rare teenager to fully understand the need for this secrecy,” Snape told him, miraculously looking slightly less unimpressed than he had previously.
Anders stood frozen in shock and elation. Finally, he snapped out of it and a wide grin spread across his face. “Best. Ritual. Ever. Oh, I am
never going back. And does anyone know where I can get a burning bird like that?”
I love how well he handled it at the time and then later he was trying to pretend that he was fine even when he kept having nightmares about it. That's so typically him. 
Mmmm, maybe that girl will take care of an old soldier? ^____^
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