Aaron walked down the train corridor, his pace neither fast nor slow.
His old leather suitcase swayed at his left side, its brass latches clicking softly to the micro-vibrations of the train before departure.
The glass doors of the compartments on either side were half-open, packed with noisy first-years and upper-year students.
In every compartment he passed, the pets fell silent.
It wasn’t the large-scale worship that had happened on the platform; he had already suppressed the overflow of the Resonator to the absolute minimum.
The current effect was more like an instinctive silencing, similar to rabbits on a grassland sensing a shadow passing in the distance—not knowing what it was, but choosing to stay quiet first.
The owls in their cages folded their wings, stopped flapping, and lay motionless on their perches.
A gray cat cradled in a boy’s arms had been scratching his sleeve, but the moment Aaron walked past, the cat froze.
It tucked its four paws under, flattened its ears, and curled its entire body into a tight ball.
The boy looked down at his cat in confusion.
“What’s wrong with you?”
The cat ignored him.
Only after Aaron had walked about ten paces away did the gray cat prick up its ears again and resume scratching its owner’s arm as if nothing had happened.
*Acceptable.* This level of fluctuation wouldn’t attract too much attention.
Aaron continued forward.
The train corridor wasn’t wide, barely allowing two people to pass side by side.
Aaron was slender and small, and with his deliberately suppressed presence, most of the upper-year students walking from the opposite direction didn’t notice him at all.
Even when someone’s gaze occasionally swept over, it was only a brief glance.
Their vision seemed to bounce off him, and in the next second, they forgot what they had just seen.
Divine Shielding.
This passive ability had become far more refined after merging with the Resonator.
It didn’t make him invisible; rather, it made people “not care” about him.
Their eyes could land on him, but their brains would automatically categorize him as “unimportant background information” and quickly forget him.
Unless someone sought him out with an extremely strong, specific purpose, in the minds of the vast majority of people, Aaron Klein was just a blurry, faceless stranger brushing past them in the corridor.
This was exactly the effect he wanted.
Make a quiet fortune, cultivate in low profile.
At Hogwarts, his identity was merely that of an ordinary half-blood freshman.
Parents deceased, a modest inheritance left in Gringotts, slightly above-average grades, quiet personality, keeps to himself.
Beyond that, he didn’t need anyone to remember him.
Aaron passed through the middle section of the train.
At the junction of the two carriages ahead, a few upper-year students in school robes were blocking the corridor, chatting.
They wore red-and-gold Gryffindor badges on their chests, spoke loudly, and were discussing Quidditch.
“Oliver Wood is definitely going to go crazy this year. After losing to Slytherin last term, he spent the entire summer writing up training schedules.”
“He was writing them last summer, too.”
“It’s different this time. He sent me three rolls of parchment. My mum thought they were summer homework from school.”
The group burst into laughter.
Aaron walked past them, and not a single one spared him a glance.
But his attention wasn’t on these people. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
As he crossed this carriage, his Sensory Network captured an abnormal signal.
About three compartments ahead, there was a cluster of extremely dense, almost physical…
karmic luck.
It wasn’t magic.
Aaron could tell the difference.
Magic was the energy inside a wizard; every wizard had it, differing in strength but identical in nature.
But what he was sensing now was different.
It was a higher-tier wave of power colored by “destiny.”
It was as if the karmic lines of the entire world were swirling around that single point.
Aaron stopped walking.
He turned his head and glanced in that direction.
The glass door was half-ajar, and two people were sitting inside.
A small, black-haired boy with round glasses on the bridge of his nose was looking down, flipping through a book.
Sitting opposite him was a red-haired boy with his mouth stuffed full of food, his cheeks bulging as he spoke indistinctly.
The black-haired boy looked up to reply, revealing his forehead.
A lightning-shaped scar.
Harry Potter.
The red-haired one must be the Weasley kid he had startled when passing him on the platform.
Ron Weasley.
Aaron retracted his gaze.
The Child of Destiny.
The Savior.
The “Chosen One” of prophecy.
The absolute core plot node of the entire wizarding world was sitting just three compartments away from him.
If it were any other transmigrator, they would probably walk over to strike up a conversation, find a way to make friends, lay down an early layout, and secure an advantageous position in the main storyline.
But Aaron had no intention of doing so.
The reasons were simple.
First, he didn’t need to.
His golden finger was the Creator Godhead, and his path of growth was to recruit believers and expand his Divine Kingdom.
This path had absolutely zero intersection with Harry Potter’s main storyline.
He didn’t need to get involved in the Chamber of Secrets incident, the Triwizard Tournament, or face Voldemort head-on.
He only needed to stay quietly in his corner when these events occurred, recruit the believers he should recruit, and take the talents he should take.
Second, getting too close was risky.
The density of destiny on Harry Potter was too high.
People like him were natural trouble magnets; wherever they went, disasters followed.
Third, and most importantly.
Albus Dumbledore was watching Harry Potter.
The entire security system of Hogwarts, the attention of the professors, and the hidden agents of the Order of the Phoenix all revolved around this Savior.
Getting close to Harry Potter meant entering Dumbledore’s field of vision.
The last thing Aaron wanted to do right now was draw the attention of that old man.
Therefore, there was no need to get close.
He turned around and walked in the opposite direction.
Behind him, in the compartment, Ron’s rat, Scabbers, let out a low whimper in its cage and tucked its head under its paws.
Harry looked up at the cage.
“What’s wrong with your rat?”
Ron glanced at Scabbers and waved his hand dismissively.
“Don’t mind him. The old thing is always like this, playing dead at the drop of a hat.”
“Oh,” Harry nodded, looking back down at his textbook.
Neither of them noticed the figure that had flashed past the corridor.
***
Aaron walked all the way to the very end of the train.
This section of the train was noticeably quieter than the front.
The lighting was dim, a layer of dust had accumulated on the corridor carpet, and the moving portraits hanging on the walls were too old to move much, their subjects leaning half-asleep against the frames.
The glass door of the last compartment was shut, and through the dusty glass, it was clear that no one was inside.
The velvet seats had faded from deep red to a dull rust color, and there were several noticeable scratches on the armrests.
Aaron slid the door open, stepped inside, and placed his suitcase on the luggage rack above the seats.
Then, he sat down.
Sparse footsteps still echoed from the corridor.
A few sweating first-years rushed past the carriage, dragging their trunks.
“This side is completely full!”
“Go look up front.”
“The front is full too!”
Three first-years shoved and jostled each other as they passed the door of the last compartment.
One of them, a tall, thin boy, clearly swept his gaze across the glass door.
Only one person was sitting inside, and there were plenty of empty seats.
But his eyes seemed to slide right off, ignoring the door completely as he kept running forward.
“Wait, there seemed to be…” He stopped and looked back.
But by the time he turned around, he could no longer remember why he had done so.
“What are you doing?” his companion nudged him.
“…Nothing,” the tall boy shook his head and followed his friends.