The morning after receiving the acceptance letter, Aaron was awakened by whispered murmurs in the hallway.
“Did someone really come for him?”
“Looks like a woman. She’s dressed so weirdly—wearing green robes.”
“The old hag wants him to go to her office.”
Aaron swung out of bed, pulled on the standard-issue gray cloth shirt from the orphanage, and pushed the door open.
Tommy and three or four other squirts were standing in the hallway, all clinging to the stairwell to peer downstairs.
The moment Tommy saw Aaron, he sidled over and lowered his voice.
“Hey, holy preacher, a weirdo’s here for you.”
“What kind of weirdo?”
“An old lady in dark green robes with a pointed hat, looking just like a witch,” Tommy said, eyes wide.
“She isn’t some distant relative of yours, is she? You’re not actually in some cult, are you?”
“Maybe.”
Aaron withdrew the aura of the Divine Kingdom deep into his Godhead, appearing completely ordinary on the surface.
He went downstairs, walked up to the matron’s office door, and knocked.
“Come in.”
Pushing the door open, he saw Mrs.
Cole, the matron, sitting behind the desk.
In the chair opposite her sat a woman dressed in dark green robes.
Her graying hair was pulled back into a neat bun, square spectacles sat upon her straight nose, and her lips were set in a thin line—poised and stern.
Professor McGonagall.
“Aaron, this is…” Mrs.
Cole stopped halfway, unsure of how to introduce her.
“My name is Minerva McGonagall,” McGonagall said, standing up and extending her hand to Aaron.
“I am the Deputy Headmistress of a boarding school. I’m here today to…”
Her voice cut off.
The moment they shook hands, a subtle shift passed over McGonagall’s expression.
The boy’s hand before her was small and lacked warmth, yet the moment she grasped it, a powerful instinct made her entire body tense up.
The feeling was difficult to describe—like standing before a presence that far transcended her understanding.
Aaron noticed her reaction and voluntarily released his grip.
“Please sit, Ms. McGonagall.”
McGonagall composed herself and sat back down.
Watching the demeanor and mannerisms of this ten-year-old boy, her lips twitched slightly.
“You are… far more composed than I imagined.”
“No one told me I ought to be surprised,” Aaron said, sitting down opposite her with his hands resting neatly on his knees.
“Does the boarding school you mentioned have something to do with yesterday’s letter?”
McGonagall and Mrs.
Cole exchanged a glance.
“Mrs. Cole, I may need to speak with Aaron privately regarding what follows,” McGonagall said politely.
“It involves certain… inheritance arrangements left behind by his parents.”
Though filled with doubts, Mrs.
Cole sensibly stood up.
“Very well, I’ll leave you to chat and wait outside.”
Once the door closed, McGonagall drew her wand from an inner pocket of her robes and traced an arc toward the doorway.
“Now only the two of us can hear what is said in this room.”
She turned back to look at Aaron.
“Your father was named Edmund Crane, and your mother was Evelyn Crane. They were both wizards.”
Aaron said nothing.
“They passed away in an accident when you were three years old, and you were brought to this Muggle orphanage.”
“Muggle?”
“Ordinary people without magical ability.”
“And I have it?”
“Of course you do,” McGonagall said.
“The Hogwarts enrollment list is written automatically by a magical quill. It never makes a mistake. You are a born wizard.”
Aaron leaned back against his chair, his expression far too calm for a ten-year-old who had just learned he could do magic.
McGonagall noticed this.
“Are you not surprised?”
“A little,” Aaron mused.
“But I’m more curious about what inheritance my parents left behind.”
“They opened a vault for you at Gringotts, containing a rather substantial sum of money.”
“What is Gringotts?”
“The wizarding bank, run by Goblins—the safest place in the world,” McGonagall said, standing up.
“Come along. I will take you to Diagon Alley to purchase your school supplies. You will understand everything once you see it for yourself.”
Aaron stood up as well.
Just as McGonagall turned to pick up her gloves from the corner of the desk, something strange occurred.
She suddenly found herself unable to recall what the person standing before her looked like.
A haze veiled her cognition, as if some force were interfering with her memory, erasing Aaron’s presence from her mind bit by bit.
As a Master of Transfiguration with a mind far firmer than ordinary people, McGonagall detected the abnormality almost instantly.
She whipped her head back.
Aaron was still standing right where he was, quietly gazing at her.
His face snapped back into clarity.
“Is something wrong?” Aaron asked.
“…Nothing.”
McGonagall’s fingers tightened slightly around her gloves as countless conjectures churned in her mind.
She had taught for decades and seen all kinds of exceptionally gifted young witches and wizards, but she had never encountered anything like this.
There was something about this boy that she could not see through.
When the two walked out of the orphanage gates, Tommy and a group of squirts were plastered against the second-floor window, watching them.
“He’s gone, he’s gone! He really got taken away by a witch!”
“Is he really going to learn witchcraft?”
“Stop talking nonsense, there’s no such thing as a wizard.”
Aaron looked up at the second-floor window and waved at Tommy.
Tommy froze, involuntarily waving back before catching himself and hurriedly pulling his hand back.
“Who’s waving at him?! I didn’t!”
McGonagall led Aaron through several London streets, finally stopping before a dingy little pub.
The Leaky Cauldron.
“Keep close to me,” McGonagall said, pushing the door open and stepping inside.
Aaron followed her across the threshold.
Inside, the pub was shrouded in Fumos, filled with all kinds of wizards squeezed around long tables drinking and chatting, creating quite a racket.
Someone was playing Exploding Snap in a corner, while another was haggling with the bartender.
Yet the moment Aaron stepped inside, the hands of several wizards nearest the door froze mid-drink.
A short, hooded wizard heading toward the door made eye contact with Aaron, froze in his tracks, and immediately hugged the wall to skirt around him without a word.
The noise in the pub died down layer by layer.
No one knew why, nor could they pinpoint a specific reason, but every single person present felt the same primal instinct at that exact moment.
Give way.
McGonagall noticed the unusual silence behind her and glanced back at Aaron.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing at all,” Aaron said with an innocent expression.
“Perhaps everyone is just very polite.”
McGonagall stared at him for three seconds without pressing further, then turned to tap open the brick wall behind the pub leading to Diagon Alley.