Harry took two slow steps back, hands raised in a defensive gesture. "You don't have to explain. Really, you don't. Everyone has their own... unique aesthetic. I totally under... understand! Hahaha!"
At first, Harry managed to maintain the facade of a serious person, but eventually, the dam broke. He doubled over, laughing so hard he nearly dropped his ice cream.
Kane's mouth twitched into a bizarre, semi-smiling, semi-grimacing expression of pure awkwardness. He needed to find out the exact progress of his Sanity regeneration as quickly as possible so he could rip this flower crown off his head and bury it in the deepest corner of his trunk.
Back in their room, he sat down and scribbled a brief, blunt message on a piece of parchment.
I need to learn a spell that lets me clearly see my own status attributes. Teach me!
...
He stared at the ink for a moment, feeling it was a bit too cold. After a brief hesitation, he added a line at the end:
Yours sincerely, Dear Professor Dumbledore.
He tied the letter to the leg of his raven and patted its warm back. "Fly, Raven! Go!"
The raven didn't even twitch. It just stared back at him with a judgmental, beady eye.
"Did Hagrid buy me a defective model?" Kane muttered.
Harry, who had just walked back into the room, saw the standoff between boy and bird. "Maybe it's because you haven't given it a name? If someone called me 'Human' and told me to deliver mail, I'd spit in their face."
"A name?" Kane looked at the jet-black bird. He thought for a second. "Fine. You're Hugin. Now, Hugin, please go deliver this letter... thank you."
This time, Hugin spread its wings immediately and flapped out the window, heading toward the distant silhouette of Hogwarts.
"Hugin? Does that mean I should rename Hedwig to Munin?" Harry glanced at Hedwig in her cage. The snowy owl shook her head vigorously and glared at Kane with visible indignation.
"Your master is the one who suggested it, why are you glaring at me?" Kane pouted, feeling unfairly maligned.
Dumbledore was a remarkably fast correspondent. By that afternoon, Hugin returned with an envelope clutched in its talons.
In the letter, Dumbledore wrote quite a lot. He started by asking why Kane needed such a spell and expressing concern about his health. He explained that since a wizard's power is generally considered unquantifiable, no one had actually invented a "status bar" charm.
However, he did teach him a trick: one could pulse their magic outward and then pull it back in, creating a sort of "magical sonar" effect.
While it wouldn't give precise numerical values, it would allow Kane to perceive the state of his soul—whether it was vibrant and strong or withered and weary.
Finally, the Headmaster warned him that this technique was notoriously difficult. If he couldn't grasp it, he shouldn't force it; they could go over it in the Headmaster's office on the night of the Welcoming Feast.
By the time September 1st rolled around, Kane had mastered the trick. It was actually quite simple once you got the hang of the resonance.
Through this method, he could see three distinct states: his physical Body, his Magic, and his Soul. The Soul was the clear parallel to his Sanity. Whenever he felt his nerves fraying and the shadow creatures lurking, his "soul-light" appeared dim and flickering.
Like right now.
Kane and Harry had finally found an empty compartment on the Hogwarts Express. The moment Kane hit the seat, he slapped the flower crown onto his head and shoved two squares of chocolate into his mouth.
Over the last few weeks, if Kane wasn't reading magic books in the Leaky Cauldron, he was reading them on benches in Diagon Alley. Consequently, because of the mental strain of learning new spells, his Sanity had never once been full.
"I need to upgrade my technology as soon as possible," Kane muttered, turning a page. "Otherwise, with the intensity of Hogwarts' curriculum, I'll be chased across the castle by Shadow Creatures by lunchtime on the first day."
Knock, knock, knock.
Harry slid the door open. The person standing there was a familiar face.
"Harry!" Ron said excitedly.
"Ron!" Harry grinned, hugging his friend before pulling Kane out of his book. "Kane, look who's here!"
"I don't care who's—" Kane looked up. "Ron!"
He shifted gears instantly, shouting with simulated enthusiasm. It wasn't that he was actually that excited, but it felt polite and fit the atmosphere.
Ron kept the energy up. "Kane! What the bloody hell is that on your head?"
"......A decorative accessory. Don't worry about it."
The small compartment now had a third member, but it didn't slow Kane's reading. He remained an island of academic intensity in a sea of Harry and Ron's bored chatter.
Well, they did interrupt him eventually.
"Kane, which house are you aiming for?" Ron asked. "You know about the four houses, right?"
"I know. To be honest, they all seem much the same to me," Kane said, turning a page.
"How can they be the same?" Ron shook his head. "Gryffindor is for the brave, Slytherin for the pure-bloods, Ravenclaw for the geniuses... you have to find the one that fits you best."
"They all just sound like different ways of excluding people," Kane said, finally closing his book. "I don't really care.
Even if I'd personally dug up the graves of a house's ancestors, I don't think they could do much to me. But if I have to choose..."
He looked at his two friends. "I'll go where you guys go. This is a boarding school, after all. If I'm not in the same dorm as my friends, there'll be no one to talk to after class. It'd be too lonely."
Thinking of the crushing, absolute loneliness he'd felt in the Constant made his skin crawl. In a school like this, if you didn't have friends, there was no motivation to do anything. You wouldn't want to go back to the dorm, wouldn't want to go to the Great Hall... just a ghost in the corridors.
"Then we should all go to Gryffindor! I bet we can all make it!" Ron said earnestly.
"Do we get to choose?" Harry asked.
"Erm... maybe a test? Or something else? I'm not really sure," Ron's face fell slightly. What if the entrance exam was too hard? What if the house didn't want him?
Knock, knock, knock...
"Come in," Kane said, reopening his book.
"I'm looking for a toad... oh, it's you. Remember me? Hermione Granger."
Hermione opened the door and immediately recognized the "Wizarding Elite" from Ollivander's. She froze.
Wait... what is he doing? The boy with a lineage so prestigious that the country's only wand-maker paid him to take a custom wand... was sitting on a train with massive dark circles under his eyes, buried in a textbook. And what was she doing? Helping someone find a toad?
The saying was true: Those better than you are also working harder than you.
Hermione, you fool! she thought. How could you waste time looking for a stupid toad when the elite are already studying for midterms?!
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