The train had already pulled out of the station, and the London city views outside the window were slowly being replaced by countryside.
Not long after Flins and Harry sat down in an empty compartment, the door was pushed open.
A red-haired boy poked his head in, looking hesitant and curious.
He froze for a moment when he saw the scar on Harry’s forehead, and then clumsily introduced himself.
Ron Weasley, the younger brother of those twins.
After sitting down in the compartment, his chatterbox opened up quickly, and he seemed to admire Harry quite a bit.
After lunch, the two boys naturally began talking about the house sorting.
Ron said almost his entire family had been in Gryffindor.
His words carried a worry of “what would happen to me if I don’t go to Gryffindor,” and he threw in a few complaints about Slytherin along the way.
“Which house do you think you’ll go to, Kyryll?”
Harry turned to Flins after listening, clearly curious about where his new friend might end up.
“Slytherin.”
Flins was holding a copy of Magical Theory, the margins dotted with small ink notes, looking like casual markings made by the owner.
Ron nearly choked on the Chocolate Frog in his mouth: “Merlin!
Why?
You don’t look like someone from a pure-blood family.”
He looked Flins up and down again, his expression full of confusion:
“I thought you’d go to Ravenclaw; you’ve been reading this whole time.”
Flins closed the book in his hands, his eyelids dropping slightly, looking somewhat lazy, but his tone left no room for doubt:
“No.
Slytherin suits me better.”
“But…”
Just as the mood was stiffening, a knock sounded at the compartment door.
A round-faced boy stood outside, his eyes red and the tip of his nose red too:
“Sorry…
I wanted to ask, have you seen my toad?”
Both Harry and Ron shook their heads.
Flins did not speak, only looking up at the boy—round-faced, rather pitiful, looking as if he were trying hard not to cry.
The boy sniffled, turned, and walked away, faint sobbing drifting back from the corridor.
Ron set the rat from his lap onto the table, as if trying to change the subject:
“Did you bring any pets?
Honestly, how could anyone like toads?
This is Scabbers.
Percy, he’s my brother, gave him to me.
He’s been alive for eleven years.
Look, he’s even losing his hair…”
The fat gray rat crouched on the table, squinting its eyes, lazily licking its paws.
Flins looked up from between the pages, taking an interested look at the rat.
For once, he took the initiative to speak:
“I did not bring a pet, but Mr.
Weasley, your rat looks very interesting.”
Ron gave a shudder, looking as if he had eaten an earwax-flavored Bertie Bott’s Bean:
“Oh, Kyryll, of course you can see him.
But stop calling me Mr.
Weasley, it sounds weirdly old.”
He made a face.
“Just call me Ron.
Honestly, even though you don’t look like pure-blood folks, the way you talk is pretty much like them.”
His voice carried a clear tone of “I don’t really care for that style,” his eyebrows squeezing together.
Flins blinked his eyes:
“Very well, Ron.”
Ron placed Scabbers on the table, and Flins reached out to pick up the rat.
Not particularly gentle, but not rough either, his long fingers stroked down the rat’s spine with slow, steady movements, as if running an inspection.
Scabbers did not struggle, merely squinting and resting in his palm, a dull gray lump.
Flins’s fingertips paused for a second.
He noticed an interesting detail.
Since coming to this world, he had slowly worked out a unique method—blending his leftover elemental energy slightly with the magic of this world, which sharpened his senses greatly.
In this state, he could faintly “see” the colors of different people’s magic.
His own was dark blue; Harry, sitting across from him, had a layer of magic that was golden.
Harry was also the only human he had seen so far with golden magic.
And right now, this dusty gray rat in his palm possessed magic as well.
A wizard’s magic.
Flins’s brows drew together so slightly it was almost unnoticeable.
The magic on Scabbers was extremely murky, a dull gray, like a bowl of stirred-up dirty water—heavy and rotten.
That magic came from deep within the soul, yet it was wrapped in layer upon layer of grime.
Keeping his eyes lowered, Flins returned Scabbers to Ron without a change in expression, lightly rubbing his fingertips as he pulled his hand back.
“A very fine rat,” he said in his usual tone, a faint smile even playing at the corner of his lips.
“Right?!”
Ron took Scabbers back and scratched the rat under the chin.
“I tried turning him yellow yesterday to make him more fun…
but the spell didn’t work.”
He pulled a battered wand from his trunk, pointed the tip at the rat, and cleared his throat to try again.
Thud.
The compartment door was pushed open again, quite hard, the wood hitting the wall with a dull thud.
Flins frowned slightly and looked toward the door—a young girl with thick brown hair stood there, with the round-faced boy from earlier right behind her.
“Has anyone seen a toad?
Neville’s lost a toad.”
The girl spoke briskly, her eyes sweeping across the compartment.
“We already told him, we haven’t seen it,” Ron said, a hint of annoyance in his voice, likely disliking being interrupted in the middle of a spell.
The girl paid him no attention at all.
She walked right in, sat down in an empty seat, and her eyes lit up as they landed on the wand in Ron’s hand:
“Are you doing magic?
Let’s see it then.”
Flins quietly closed his book, swept his gaze slowly across the children, and then silently summoned his wand from his pocket into his palm, holding it hidden beneath the edge of the table.
“Oh…
alright.”
Ron raised his battered wand, his face a mix of excitement and nerves.
“Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow!”
As the final word fell, Flins’s wand gave an extremely faint flick under the table, and an almost invisible dark blue glow silently wrapped around the rat.
It was his modified Transfiguration spell, which only worked on wizards and was useless against magical creatures.
Under the eyes of the five young wizards, that dusty gray rat actually began to change color.
The gray retreated from the tip of its tail, and a bright yellow spread from its spine.
Two seconds later, Scabbers had turned into a fat rat of bright yellow all over, so glowing it could almost shine in the dark.
The rat seemed terrified by its own transformation, spinning in circles on the table, its paws slipping as it squeaked loudly.
Ron stared dumbly at the yellow rat in front of him, looking both confused and in complete disbelief.
“Wow!”
The brown-haired girl’s eyes sparkled, looking as if she had discovered a new continent.
“There is actually a spell like that!
You’re really amazing!”
She looked at Ron with deep admiration, talking as fast as pouring beans from a jar.
“It seems I really haven’t read enough books.
I’ve tried a few simple spells at home, and I’ve memorized all the textbooks.
But it seems I still can’t match up to you all.
I’ll keep working hard!”
An invisible fire seemed to burn around her, her seriousness almost glowing.
She sat up straight, remembered something, and added:
“I’m Hermione Granger.
By the way, what are your names?”
Ron was still staring blankly at the yellow rat in his hands, only mumbling a reply after quite a while:
“I…
I’m Ron Weasley.”
“Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins.”
Flins tucked his wand away, giving his name in a flat tone.
“Harry Potter.”