For two years, I’d imagined what I would do when I could finally use magic.
I had plenty of ideas.
Very ambitious ones.
In the end, I sat on the edge of my bed with one hand outstretched, trying to make a light.
“Lumos.”
A spark appeared at my fingertips.
Small, bright, and so brief that I barely had time to widen my eyes before it went out.
I stared at my hand.
Then I slowly turned it over, as though I expected to find a hidden switch on the other side.
“Again.”
I focused on the same sensation.
Warmth moved from my chest along my arm.
It met no obstruction.
It didn’t retreat when I tried to direct it further.
“Lumos.”
This time, the light lasted a little longer.
A second.
Maybe two.
Long enough to illuminate my fingers and cast a faint glow across the blanket.
I laughed.
Then immediately looked at the door.
Silence.
I pressed my mouth against my bent arm, trying to contain my grin.
It didn’t work.
After so many evenings when absolutely nothing happened, even that pathetic spark looked like the greatest achievement in the history of wizardry.
Dumbledore could keep his phoenix.
I’d just lit up my finger.
Dawn found me making another attempt.
Not every one worked.
Sometimes there was only a flash; sometimes a weak light trembled for a moment before going out.
If I rushed too much, I got nothing.
But now I could feel the difference.
I knew when the magic was moving towards my hand and when I lost focus and let it slip away along the way.
Before, there had only been resistance.
Now, at last, I could do something wrong and try to improve it.
That was much more interesting than waiting.
When the first rays of sunlight reached the floor, I lowered my hand.
My fingers were numb from holding them in one position, my back ached from sitting, and my cheeks hurt from smiling.
I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.
I stood and stretched carefully.
The room looked ordinary.
The silver strands no longer filled the air as clearly as they had when I first woke, though something occasionally flickered at the edge of my vision.
When I tried to focus on it, my eyes began to itch.
For now, I left them alone.
The same face waited in the little mirror.
Black hair, thin cheeks, and eyes that definitely couldn’t be called blue.
I leaned closer.
The white points were small.
From a distance, someone might not notice them.
The blackness itself would be harder to miss.
“Maybe no one will ask,” I told my reflection.
My reflection didn’t look convinced.
Mrs Myra asked almost immediately.
She was standing by the pot of porridge.
When I approached with my bowl, she looked at me, scooped up a serving, and paused with the spoon above it.
“Oliver?”
“Good morning.”
She tilted her head.
“What’s happened to your eyes?”
So much for my plan.
“They don’t hurt,” I answered.
Not exactly what she’d asked, but at least it was true.
“Can you see properly?”
“Yes.”
Better than properly, in fact, though I preferred not to add that.
She studied me for another moment.
A second carer looked up as well, and I began to wonder how long it would take to assemble a committee around the porridge pot.
“Strange,” Mrs Myra murmured.
“Come and see me after breakfast. The light will be better by the window.”
I nodded and took my bowl.
At least no one was screaming.
At the nearest table, one of the boys stopped eating when I sat down opposite him.
He looked straight at my face, then quickly dropped his gaze to his porridge.
Another did exactly the same, only less discreetly.
I picked up my spoon.
For almost two years, it had bothered me that people didn’t look at me.
Apparently, I needed to be more precise about my wishes.
The boy opposite looked up again.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been staring very closely at nothing for the past few minutes.”
He flushed and went back to eating.
I wasn’t going to hold it against him.
I’d spent enough time in front of the mirror myself to understand the interest.
The unpleasant part was that yesterday, someone had simply invited me to play football.
Today, I was something strange again before anything else.
I ate a few spoonfuls and looked at my hand.
I could still feel magic beneath my skin.
It didn’t improve the taste of the porridge, but it certainly salvaged the morning.
After breakfast, I patiently let Mrs Myra examine my eyes by the window.
She asked about stinging, injuries, and whether I’d rubbed anything into them.
I said no.
She looked at me with growing bewilderment, as though trying to recall a detail she’d never paid attention to before.
Eventually, she told me to let her know if my vision grew worse or I felt any pain.
I promised.
Then I returned to my room.
I wanted to hold out my hand and try making light again immediately.
Instead, I stopped by the desk.
The sparks could wait.
Today, I wanted to see more than my own fingers.
Diagon Alley.
The thought alone was enough to send me to the wardrobe to find something to wear.
For two years, most of the London I knew had been the route to school.
Yet somewhere in this same city was a street full of magical shops.
Real ones.
With books that no fanfiction author had to invent.
With cauldrons, flying broomsticks, and wands.
Especially wands.
I looked at my hand.
I’d managed to produce a little light without any help.
What might I do with a tool designed to channel magic?
I didn’t want to spend another day sitting in my room wondering.
First, I needed money.
Gringotts should exchange Muggle currency for Galleons.
And since I was going there anyway, I could ask about the Peverells too.
An old family didn’t necessarily mean a fortune.
But I hoped my ancestors had left enough that I wouldn’t have to choose between a wand and a textbook.
As I buttoned my shirt, something else occurred to me.
The Potters were supposed to be descended from the Peverells as well.
Iolanthe Peverell.
Marriage to a Potter.
Ignotus somewhere earlier in the same line.
I frowned, trying to reconcile the genealogy I remembered with the story I’d heard on arriving.
I wasn’t sure what came from the books, what came from supplementary information, and what came from one of the hundreds of fanfics I’d read.
While it was all fiction, mixing up the versions hadn’t bothered me.
Now it made a difference.
Well.
Another thing to check once I had access to something better than my own memory.
For now, the shops were waiting.
A few old sheets of paper lay on the desk.
I looked at them, then at my empty pocket.
I had an idea.
It wasn’t particularly honest.
In theory, however, it solved the problem.
I remembered a spell from one of the stories I’d read that turned paper into money.
I had no idea whether it existed outside that author’s imagination.
On the other hand, Death had spoken to me last night.
The boundaries of probability had shifted a little.
I placed a sheet in the centre of the desk, smoothed it with my palm, and tried to picture a banknote.
Fifty pounds.
“Numismorphus.”
I moved my hand.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the paper trembled.
I leaned forward so abruptly that I nearly hit my chin on the desk.
Colour appeared on the surface.
Lines moved across the paper, joining into a familiar pattern.
One edge began to change shape.
Then everything stopped.
Half a banknote lay on the desk, attached to a piece of old paper.
I stared at it for a few seconds.
“Close.”
Not really.
But the paper had genuinely changed.
I touched it carefully.
Turned it over, examined the other side, and smiled again.
I shouldn’t have been quite so pleased by a failed attempt at counterfeiting.
Oh well.
I picked up another sheet.
The second attempt was worse.
So was the third.
The fourth time, I concentrated too hard on one section, and the rest remained ordinary paper.
On the next attempt, I lost the overall image while trying to correct a detail.
I was beginning to understand why Transfiguration textbooks might be thick.
Several hours passed.
Once, I had to stop and stretch my back.
Another time, I pushed everything aside because frustration was making me repeat the same mistakes.
But every time, I came back.
In my previous life, after this long, I would have found an excuse to start a game.
Here, I didn’t need one.
Paper was changing beneath my hand.
Even when it changed badly, it was hard to find the activity boring.
At last, a whole banknote lay on the desk.
For a moment, I kept my hand still, afraid that breaking my concentration would make it disappear.
It didn’t.
I picked it up.
Examined both sides.
Then examined them again.
“There.”
I leaned back in my chair.
One fifty-pound note.
Several hours of work.
A pile of failed attempts.
As a way of earning money, it wasn’t particularly impressive so far.
As magic—excellent.
The nearest bank was about fifteen minutes from the orphanage.
I set off with the money in my pocket, trying to act as though I wasn’t checking every dozen steps to make sure it was still there.
It remained a banknote.
A good start.
The bank itself didn’t look particularly interesting.
A few people waited at the counters, someone was filling in a form, and an employee behind the counter was moving documents around.
I stepped inside and immediately felt someone looking at me.
Apparently, a boy in worn clothes, alone in a bank, wasn’t a common sight.
At least no one stopped me at the door.
I approached a free counter.
“Good morning. Could you change this for me, please?”
I placed the note on the counter.
The cashier looked at me first, then at the money.
Suddenly, I remembered every reason this idea might fail.
None of them helped.
The man took the note and, a moment later, slid two twenties and a ten towards me.
“There you are.”
“Thank you.”
I pocketed the money and left.
Only once I was on the pavement did I breathe more easily.
For a moment, I stood outside the entrance, watching people pass.
No one ran after me.
Good.
If I remembered the exchange rate correctly, I had about ten Galleons.
I didn’t know how much that would buy.
It was enough to get going, though.
The Leaky Cauldron was supposed to be on Charing Cross Road.
It was a long way from the orphanage.
I could have taken a bus, but chose to walk.
After a morning at the desk, I wanted to move around and take my time finding the way.
I soon appreciated all those earlier runs.
Not because I intended to run through London.
An hour’s walk simply no longer sounded like an expedition requiring provisions and a last will and testament.
The closer I got, the more often I scanned the shopfronts.
A record shop.
A bookshop.
And between them, an old pub.
I stopped on the other side of the road.
The building looked exactly like the sort of place you could walk past even while looking at it.
Dark, unremarkable, not particularly inviting.
Muggles passed it, absorbed in their own affairs.
To me, it was currently the most interesting building in London.
I crossed the road.
Put my hand on the door.
For two years, I’d waited for proof that I was really in this world.
I’d had memories, the old man’s promise, and something trapped deep inside me.
Now all I had to do was press the handle.
I went in.
It was darker inside than I expected.
A few people sat at the tables.
Someone was eating, someone was talking over a tankard, and at the bar a wizard in robes was telling a story to a man I recognised almost immediately.
Tom.
The real Tom from the Leaky Cauldron.
For a moment, I wanted to smile and greet him as though I knew him.
Fortunately, I remembered in time that, from his perspective, that would be a little strange.
The landlord looked at me.
He opened his mouth, but instead of speaking, he studied my face more closely.
My eyes.
Again.
I nodded to him and walked on, trying not to look around too obviously.
I wasn’t doing very well.
People wore robes.
Things whose names I didn’t know stood on the tables.
A conversation I passed concerned a problem with some potion ingredient.
These were ordinary matters to these people.
To me, each was a reason to stop.
Tom watched me all the way to the back door.
For a moment, I wondered whether he wanted something.
He didn’t call out, though, so I stepped into the little yard.
A brick wall stood in front of me.
I moved closer.
“Three up… two across…”
I counted again.
Then looked at my empty hand.
In the book, you did this with a wand.
I still had to buy one.
For a moment, I considered going back and asking Tom for help.
Before I did, I pressed my fingers against the right brick, focusing on the now-familiar warmth.
The wall shifted.
I pulled my hand back.
One brick turned aside.
The next followed, then more.
With a dry clatter, the opening widened until a broad archway stood before me.
Voices drifted through from the other side.
I stood motionless.
I could see signs, shop windows, people squeezing past one another between the shops.
Somewhere, an owl hooted.
Someone called to someone else across the street.
I no longer had to imagine any of it.
“Holy shit,” I said quietly.
And stepped through the archway.
For a moment, Tom stared at the door to the yard.
“Everything all right?” asked the wizard at the bar.
The landlord blinked.
“Yes. Sorry. What were you saying?”
The man returned to his interrupted story.
Tom was only half listening.
He was trying to remember the face of someone he hadn’t seen in years.
The same unusual feeling when their eyes met.
A similar blackness.
Only that man had been an adult.
And the eyes of the boy who had just walked through his pub had seemed stranger still.