Justin looked at the clock, sighed slightly at the steady green lights reading 3:13. It's a good thing I don't have work or school tomorrow, he thought, and shook his head a little. All right. Between left-over adrenalin and curiosity, it looks like I'm not getting to sleep right now. So...

He carefully moved away from Alex on the bed, watching to make sure he wasn't waking her up, got to the edge and swung one foot down onto the floor, waited ten seconds before bringing the other one down and standing. He waited again then, watching his sleeping sister, smiling a little at her. After a few more seconds, he moved to the bedroom door, opened it carefully, then slipped out into the main room of the tiny apartment, closed the door carefully behind him, crossed to the desk and turned on the lamp there.

I shouldn't be doing this... but I have to know if it's true. He looked through Alex's art supplies, carefully separated a piece of paper from her drawing pad, selected a pen. Drawing the diagram was easier than expected, his arm naturally making the circles, then writing in the characters with an ease that bespoke previous practice.

Justin had to set the pen down for a moment at that realization. I've never drawn this. But it's all here. God, this is crazy. Or I'm going crazy. Tremors suddenly ran through his body, and he gripped the corners of the desk, fighting to get them under control, concentrating on taking slow breaths in and out. When the tremors had gone, and he felt sure enough that they weren't going to return, Justin completed the diagram, then got up and went to the kitchen, came back with a knife and a few pinches of herbs from the spice rack, mixed and placed into a ceramic bowl.

He had to go back again, then, to get the long lighter he used for their candles, stopped to disable the smoke alarm on his way back. Don't think it should be enough to trigger it, but don't want to wake up Alex with this.

With everything in place, he sat down, then changed his mind, picked it all up and moved into the kitchen. Justin sat the bowl with the herbs on the stove, smoothed the diagram down on the counter beside it, double-checked that none of the lines had smeared. He turned on the fan in the stove's hood, took a deep breath, then began to recite the spell, lighter in hand as he did.

He lit the herbs partway through, concentrated on not coughing from the bit of smoke that made its way to him. Thankfully, most of it went into the hood, and there wasn't really a lot to begin with.

Reaching the crucial step, Justin repeated it once, twice, then the third and final time. In fascinated horror, he watched as wisps of the smoke pulled themselves into the space above the diagram and arranged themselves, becoming the thing he had conjured. Dizzily, he gripped the edge of the counter. It works. Oh my God, it works. I - he was right. There is more than one way to do magic.

Mechanically, he went through with the rest of it. The hardest part - not the worst, merely the hardest - was cutting his hand to get the blood that was needed, but he wiped the blade down with an alcohol wipe, closed his eyes, and somehow managed it. All the while, in the back of his mind, Justin reflected on what he was doing. I should have realized it sooner - the magic power plant, the competitions, all of it - it all had to be established in the first place somehow. Of course there has to be another way to empower magic. More than one, probably.

And then it was done. If what the other Justin believed was correct - and so far, they seemed to be, in every detail - he'd be able to do magic for about fifteen minutes. A short time, for what was involved, and the power was limited. Yet still...

He tried a few spells, quickly, testing the limits of what he could do, keeping what he was doing small, not sure if the power would run out more quickly if he did bigger things. It works. But... Justin sighed, frowned. This is forbidden magic. Really forbidden. If the Council should find out...

The Council. The other Justin's memories fell into place with his own, and he swallowed, realizing what they would do. They didn't care about right and wrong - he'd seen that himself, with Tootietootie's reaction to his - no, the other Justin's - killing Max in the competition. As long as magic was kept secret, and the few limits they set on what wizards could do were obeyed...

They don't care. They let leprechauns be enslaved. They let people kill and capture dragons. They let wizards run around loose, doing whatever they want, as long as no one reveals the existence of magic. But this they can't allow. A source of magic they don't control. They'd kill me if they knew. They'd kill Alex if they thought she might know too.

This is too dangerous. Justin made his decision, nodded to himself, quickly cleaned up the evidence of what he'd done, put the battery back into the smoke alarm, turned off the kitchen light, then went back to the desk. If I stay awake, I'll keep thinking about it. But I can fix that problem, now. "This is all just too creepy, in a minute I want to be sleepy," he said, felt the familiar feeling of the spell working.

That should take care of me not being able to sleep. As for the rest... Justin concentrated on when he'd woken up and what he'd done since, then took his hand and held it to his face. The Council can't find out from me that I've done this if I don't even know it. So….

"Cerebellum erasus," he murmured, and then looked around the room, frowning. What the... what am I doing up? He smelled something from the kitchen. I must have been hungry, and... whoa. A wave of tiredness hit him, and he blinked and yawned, feeling like he could fall asleep right there at the desk. Getting up, Justin half-stumbled to the bedroom door, then realized he'd left the desk lamp on.

Man, I'm tired. There was something I was thinking about. Something important. What was it? He concentrated for a few moments, found himself yawning again, then rubbing at his drooping eyes. Well, it was a really long day, and a lot happened. If it's important, it'll come to me later.

Justin went back, turned off the lamp, then slipped into the bedroom, climbed into bed and moved against Alex. She stirred a little, and he gave her a kiss on the cheek, settled against her, and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

Author's Note:

Well, that's it for Fun and Games. I hope you've enjoyed the ride! The next story in this series will be Normal Life, starting in a few days.