Yeah but hear me out - Brooke Janey Mól (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📗

wizards, magic and familiars

Yeah but hear me out – Urban wizards AU

 

Anjo hastily made his way into the dark alley. His black hair was already soaked and droplets of water ran down his temple. The smell of trash was even worse with the humidity in the air and he scrunched up his nose as he made his way past the trash cans. Kater, who’d just stuck his fury head out of Anjos bag, made a noise that sounded pretty disgusted for a simple mreow and blinked with his yellow shining eyes accusingly up at his servant. Because cats didn’t have owners. They had slaves. Well, usually anyway. But Anjo was an okay kid, so Kater had ‘upgraded’ him to servant.

Said servant glanced down at him and rolled his eyes. “Yes, I know. It stinks that you have to come along,” he stopped in his tracks, “Quite literally, hah” While he was busy snorting at his own joke, Kater was not as amused. He was, in fact, even more displeased. And he let the young wizard know that.

 

In his own ways.

 

“Hey! Stop that. No. Nononono. No. Kater, you’ll keEP THAT FUR BALL IN YOU-” Anjo screeched as his cat began to activate its gag reflex. Kater did not keep the fur ball inside. But Anjo hauled him out of his bag just in time. “For the record: I am as disgusted by this as you are by my jokes, so…well played, Kater, well played. But seriously. If I could rely on you to follow the rules while I’m gone I wouldn’t have to drag you with me. But I can’t, because you always do…” he paused, “well actually I don’t know what you do,” Anjo frowned at his cat, who just send him a look that clearly said you don’t really want to know, and he couldn’t disagree.

“But whatever it is, it makes too much noise. You know there is a ‘no pets’ regulation at our apartment complex and the landlord already has his suspicions. And since your Highness doesn’t want to be transfigured so it’s the only solution.”

 

Kater huffed and flicked his ears as an especially big drop of rain plopped onto his head.

With another grumpy mreow he hid in Anjos bag aka his save haven where it was warm and definitely not raining.

“Well, aren’t you glad that this water-resistant spell I found yesterday works?” The young wizard asked rhetorically. More unfriendly mreows and low growls came from the depth of his bag. If Anjo didn’t know better he would’ve thought his cat had just threw a string of cusses at him.

 

Scratch that. He knew better.

 

“And aren’t I glad that the translating spell from last week only works with human languages,” he mumbled to himself. With one last look over his shoulder, to make sure no one had followed him and that there were no curious onlookers, he pulled the pencil from behind his ear. Which then, with a few murmured words, turned into a wand. After that he fiddled with the silver charms that clung to the bracelet on his left wrist.

A stack of books (advanced potions, transformation for beginners, Spells Volume 3), a feather quill (kinda old-fashioned but the magical society seemed to like the vintage vibe), a clover leaf (a literal good-luck-charm his grandmother gave him for save traveling) and finally the charm he was looking for. A small broom.

 

One touch with his wand and the small charm began to grow, the silver fading, wood forming under his fingertips instead, until Anjo held a normal sized broom in his hand (one would think wizards and witches had some more…advanced flying technology, like the flying car from HP 2, but they’d be wrong. Vintage vibe and all that.) He got on it and recited the flying spell, which he, by now, could do in his sleep. Then a tell-tale wind gusted trough his hair all the way down to his feet, where it swirled around and around until Anjo could feel himself getting lighter and lighter. This was his favourite part. The anticipation. The little voice in his brain that always told him that there was no way that he was gonna fly. Not with a broom or any other way. And then it would always have to shut its trap the moment Anjo took a deep breath, pushed himself off the ground and was, in fact, flying on a broom.

 

 

He flew out of the alley, up, up along the grey walls of the buildings around him. Higher and higher until the once tall city was only a little replication, the honking cars tiny ants, the busy people not even a speck of dust. The adrenalin in his veins pushed him further, pushed him to leave the rain behind and break through the clouds, where he was alone with a bright moon and dozens and millions of stars (and a plane or two but he tried to avoid them in general after…well).

This was probably his second favourite part. The part where he could finally breath. The part where the cold air cleared his mind off all that was waiting for him, down there, where his life was busy, stressful and where he felt like he didn’t belong. But up here he was free.

 

Up here he was Magic.

 

A year before he hadn’t even known about the existence of magic, much less that he himself was a wizard. Who was able to use said magic. He could still remember how his Grandmother had dropped the bomb. He had opened the door one day, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, to reveal his Grandmother Juliette standing in the doorway. She had showed up out of the blue, looked him up and down and said “You’re a wizard, Anjo” and the continued “Also, please stop smoking. It’s not healthy”, like she hadn’t just pulled The Hagrid Move on him. He promptly had a coughing fit and almost choked on his cigarette. Juliette had just raised an eyebrow as if to say See? I told you so.

 

The following events had looked somewhat like this: He had, naturally, not believed his Grandmother. Who in their right mind would? Magic only existed in someone’s fantasy. In fairy tales and movies but certainly not in reality.

But then Juliette had cast a spell to make objects move on their own, so she could make herself a coffee, since her grandson apparently still lacked manners, don’t you know to offer guests something to drink which had Anjo staring dumbly and stuttering nonsense.

 

Then his knees had buckled but he was luckily saved from falling by a chair, which had magically moved from its spot 6 feet away to catch him and- holy shit there where moving chairs and cups and sugar cubes and the fridge had opened to let the milk out since Juliette took a lot of it in her coffee and all that happened because magic and- holy fucking shit magic existed and his grandmother was Magic and now she asked him if he also wanted milk in his coffee and he just nodded because he couldn’t remember that he drank his coffee black, no sugar, beCAUSE HELLO? MAGIC WAS REAL!

 

His Grandmother had then proceeded to tell him about magic, how it came to be and the history of magical society and whatnot, but he hadn’t really listened. He had tried, really, he had but all he could hear in his head was a little voice that got louder with time until it screamed: Hoy shit magic is real. Holy shit magic is real. HOLY-

 

Sometime later Juliette had finally finished and had been looking at him expectantly. He had blinked out of his stupor. “So…” he had begun but not really known how to end. Or where to actually begin, for that matter. A few minutes passed. Anjo had taken a calming breath.

It hadn’t helped.

He had started again anyway.

 

“You…are a witch,” he said. He’d wanted for it to come out as a question but it somehow ended up as a statement.

“Yes” Juliette nodded.

“And I am too?” Now it was a question. Good job, Anjo, you’re getting there.

“Well, technically you’re a wizard. It’s an old gender role thing as I explained. But ultimately yes, you are Magic.”

 

 

Anjo had let the information sink in.

 

He was a witch. Or wizard.

 

Not that he really cared because gender roles sucked (magical or not) and he was fucking Magic apparently so he had other problems right now. For example, why no one had told him.

He would soon turn 21, for fucks sake.

He was an adult.

He had his own apartment (a fucking tiny one but his own home nonetheless)

He had a stable job (okay so maybe he had two part-time jobs but he had them since he left school so they were pretty stable in his opinion and two part-time jobs made one full time job anyway so…)

He had a normal (sometimes shitty) life and now Juliette showed up to tell him that all of that had been a lie?

 

But of course, she had an explanation for that.

She always had an explanation for everything.

Anjos Mother liked to call it The Juliette-Effect.

 

All people of the magical society had begun to hide since the dark ages. Magic had always been a bit dangerous for its user. In ancient civilizations using magic had not only been frowned upon but was also a crime who could get you into prison. But from there thing only got worse.

In medieval times the human race was highly afraid of basically everything. The dark, woods, big scary animals…dark woods with big scary animals in them. Practically everything that they didn’t know well or couldn’t predict. Too bad being Magic also fell under that pattern. People in dark woods who did unknown and unpredictable things?

Add these things together and boom: The witch hunting era is now a thing, people. Great job, everyone!

 

Fortunately, humans pretty much sucked at recognizing real magic and when they occasionally caught a witch or wizard (you know what they say: even a broken clock is right twice a day), it was a piece of cake to escape through one of many spells. Some members of the magical society even made a game out of it. Getting caught on purpose to see how man times they could escape. But after one or two centuries things got boring. Especially Europe seemed to be a place full of non-magic party poopers and so most Magic people emigrated. Too bad humans had the same idea. And with the colonists came the Salem Witch Trials…but that’s another story.

 

So, when running away didn’t help, hiding hopefully would.

 

And it did. Or more like blending in.

Magic was still secretly practiced, children taught by their parents or the next of kin, depending how many and what family members knew about the heritage.

Which was why Anjo was currently flying across the country like every weekend, away from his busy city life to the quiet town by the sea where his grandmother Juliette would teach him the art of spells (among other things).

His mother didn’t know. Of course, she didn’t. Anjos Father had never told her. Mixed families were not unheard of but very rare. Though most of the time the Magic person chose to keep it a secret and left everything behind. So, who knew how many people actually were a witch or wizard and just didn’t know about it. Maybe they felt kinda like Anjo, like they were different but couldn’t quite place it. Juliette had explained it like this: Magic wasn’t something you had or could obtain. It was what you were. Like humans were made of flesh witches and wizards were made of Magic. Not that they weren’t made of flesh, of course they were, but also Magic and not flesh, she had explained further, which had very much confused Anjo but