Nick Kane
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Gateway 32
🕑 Added 2025-03-13 19:28:17 +0000 UTCAfter much teasing from everyone, I let them finish their dinner while I showered.
I still felt Luna’s heartbeat through the locket, so I let my worries wash away with the water.
As I did so, I checked to see how much time, if any, was taken out of my cooldown to Luna’s world and I almost slipped when I saw the answer.
Ten seconds. That’s all that I needed to go there again, thirty minutes if I didn’t use the incantation, and two hours if I didn’t use a physical door.
I didn’t even stop to think, I just rushed through my shower, put on whatever clothes I had easily on hand, and faced my room’s door.
"This is the Doorway that heralds all of the beginnings! Who's opening brings forth the new era! Open! Heavenly Doorway of Transmigration!"
With the incantation done, I opened the door to Xeno’s place, where I found him sitting alone at the kitchen table, a book in hand and drinking a cup of tea.
“Hey Xeno, just trying something out. Be back soon!” I quickly said as I turned around, recited the incantation again, and passed through.
Checking the cooldown again, I noticed that, while using a physical door and incantation hadn’t noticeably decreased, the other forms did, although only marginally.
But it was something, and as I recited the incantation and stepped through to Xeno’s place again, I wondered if the requirement for a permanent Door was for me to have a strong connection to the world I wanted.
“Alex! What’s going on!?” Xeno frantically asked.
“I’m close to a breakthrough in making a permanent Door between our worlds, give me a few minutes to try things out and think things through,” I said, already turning back, reciting the incantation, and stepping through.
It would make sense, especially considering how little each round trip was taking out of my cooldown compared to the other times. From half on the first and almost all of it on the second, this incremental decrease seemed more like the standard every Campione got when they spammed an Authority that Doni told me about.
I could be wrong and the cooldown reduced by two weeks every time I stayed a certain amount of time there, but that didn’t really fit my Authority. A Gateway or Doorway didn’t exist so you could go somewhere for a predetermined amount of time and then come back, it existed to connect two places together.
The first time, I spent an entire month living with Xeno, Luna, and to a lesser extent Severus. We connected a lot during that time, especially after the World Cup fiasco.
But the second time was all about connecting with Luna at a deeper level. I didn’t expect our romantic relationship to start the way it did, at least not so soon, but our feelings for each other were clear as day during the Ball. After that, we spent my entire stay deepening our emotional connection, especially during our research, where our shared love for acquiring knowledge let us find a balance where we didn’t feel the need to be alone together all the time and where we could do other things without losing ourselves to each others presence.
It was easy, comfortable.
I stopped. I had been coming and going from my bedroom to Xeno’s kitchen on autopilot, mumbling my Authotiriy’s incantation without stopping throughout.
“So, figured it out?” Doni asked from where he was leaning on the far wall.
“I guess I did,” I said, and with some focus I stepped into Xeno’s kitchen, not bothering with the door behind me.
___
“I’ll ask him when he comes back,” Doni said with a sigh, moving out of the room to get some more rice and stew from the kitchen.
___
“Alex!” Xeno exclaimed in surprise. “Did you get it?”
I smirked at him before stepping away into the Ravenclaw common room.
___
“Ah, young love,” Xeno snorted to himself, settling back down to enjoy his book.
___
The place was exactly as on the day of the Ball, with only a couple of students still awake working on their assignments.
I spotted an older, brown-haired girl with what I knew to be a Preffect’s badge and approached her.
“Excuse me, can you go fetch Luna Lovegood please?” I quietly asked.
She was slightly startled by my voice but quickly composed herself before looking at me.
“And you are?” She asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
“I’m-” I started only for her to raise her hand for me to stop.
“The boyfriend, I remembered,” she said with a nod. “Weren’t you supposed to be leaving today? And how did you get inside? I didn’t hear the common room door opening.”
“Something came up so I came to fetch Luna,” I said. “And you just weren’t paying attention to the door,” I rolled my eyes. “So, could you please?”
“Fine,” she said with a sigh, getting up and moving to the stairs.
As I waited, I realized that I had come straight into Hogwarts, mindlessly bypassing the wards without a care.
Thankfully, it didn’t cause any noticeable damage, so I put it off of my mind to focus on what actually mattered.
It took a few moments, but soon enough the prefect girl came down the stairs with a sleepy Luna in tow.
Luna was dressed haphazardly and rubbing her eyes as she came down. But upon seeing me she rushed down the stairs to hug me.
“Alex, how are you here?” She asked before pulling back to look me in the eyes. “Did something happen?”
“Kinda, but nothing bad,” I said pulling her closer and slightly lifting her off her feet, and with another step we were back to Xeno’s kitchen. “I’m pretty sure I figured out permanent Doorways and I wanted this done now instead of leaving it to tomorrow.”
I lowered her back onto her feet as she gave me one of her radiant smiles.
“I figured that’d be what you were doing,” Xeno said from his spot at the table.
“And now what?” She asked, looking at me curiously.
“Now you and your dad find a door to put a Door on while I go back home and do the same,” I said.
“Already done,” Xeno said, and as I looked toward him, I saw him pointing to his left, where I saw a new door installed in a place where there was only a wall previously.
“It’s much better to just add a new door to the house than to lose space, don’t you think?” He smirked.
“Huh, good point,” I nodded. “I should be done in a few minutes, be right back!” I said as I stepped back home.
I quickly left my room as I searched for a good spot for a Door, passing by Doni who was eating some beef stew with rice and some farofa on the side.
“So, what did you figure out about your Authority?” He asked while settling his fork down.
“How to make permanent Doorways,” I said, carefully examining an empty stretch of wall in the dining room. “My parents?”
“Watching TV in the living room,” he said, leaning back on his chair to look at me.
“And when did you get here?” I asked, discarding the wall as an option and finally turning to him.
“New Year’s Eve, I was getting bored back home and Andrea said you should be getting back around this time,” he shrugged.
“You already found a place to train?” I asked, wondering why he wasn’t asking for the fight I knew he wanted.
“Plenty of rainforest in the outskirts of the city, so don’t worry about it,” he answered casually.
I narrowed my eyes at him. He was planning something, he’d already have asked for a fight otherwise, I just needed to figure out what before it was too late.
“Fine,” I rolled my eyes. “I’ll find my mom, she’ll know where to put the Door.”
___
Half an hour later, I finally had the door ready.
It took ten minutes for my mom to choose where to put it, and twenty for her to be happy with the design, but we were now the proud owners of a second door in our entrance hall.
With a relieved sigh, I pulled out Janus’ Key from my expanded pocket, putting all of my focus on the door I wanted to connect to.
I slowly inserted the key into the keyhole, feeling my Authority’s magic mixing with the Key’s magic and spreading throughout the door.
As I turned the Key, I chanted the incantation for the last time that day.
"This is the Doorway that heralds all of the beginnings! Who's opening brings forth the new era! Open! Heavenly Doorway of Transmigration!"
A flash of light and a gust of strong wind later, I was left facing Luna and Xeno in their kitchen.
___
Introductions came and went. My parents adored Luna, and while a little early to tell, I could see they getting along with Xeno just fine.
Doni had made himself scarce the second things started happening, he was definitely up to something.
The adults kept talking, and we moved to the living room. As the minutes passed and Luna fell asleep on my shoulder, I noticed they didn’t seem like stopping anytime soon, so I poked her awake and started leading her out, telling Xeno and my parents that we were going to sleep.
I noticed my parents cautiously eyeing each other, but Xeno waved them off and told us to go sleep in the nook we had made the previous year.
Brightening up at the idea, Luna and I quickly settled down there, with Luna falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
I sighed, I knew what those looks meant, and I couldn’t say I didn’t think about it, especially in a situation where we were sleeping together.
But if Luna thought about it, she didn’t show, and I wasn’t about to push.
I’d let her bring it up when she was ready. And until then, I’d just enjoy being close to her.
As I let myself be lulled to sleep by Luna’s soft breathing, I wondered once again what the hell was Doni planning.
___
A/N: Shorter chapter than usual, but the next section was shaping up to be a chapter unto itself and this was the best stopping point before that.
As always, thank you all for supporting me, and I’ll see you next week!
