[Chapter Size: 2200 Words.]
Third Person POV
Cokeworth.
...
...
Severus arrived at the city's main street.
There was a big problem...
Cokeworth is a medium-sized industrial town in the interior of England.
Now the question was how he would get out of that place. What would he use? Would he take a Muggle transport? Maybe he could take one of those cars that carried passengers, called taxis.
Another thing Severus was fascinated by was the mechanics of this world; he began to see some cars passing down the street. He could not help but observe them with great interest. Mechanics was another subject he would very much like to study.
They did not work with magic, but with combustion, from what he remembered a little. Different from the runic magic of the other world, these objects worked with that other source of energy, something that even Severus before the awakening could not explain.
"I'll see that later." he murmured, eager to see it.
"Wait... the Knight Bus?!" Severus remembered something at that moment. In the wizarding world, there was a transport exclusively for wizards.
Severus immediately thought of that bus he had heard about. Some Slytherin students had described it as the purple double-decker vehicle necessary when a wizard is lost. All he needed to do was raise his wand and wave it in the middle of the street, while standing on the curb.
But he was in the interior of England. Would it work?
"Well... there's only one way to test it," Severus murmured, taking his wand.
There were few people walking down the street. The town was already quite quiet, and a Saturday was even worse, with most workers inside their homes.
Severus raised his wand, ignoring a few looks. He began to wave it pointing toward the middle of the street, but without casting any spell. Everyone who looked at Severus there only saw a young man waving a stick with a suitcase beside him.
After doing that three times, he lowered the wand and waited.
Maybe he should wait longer.
So he waited again, still with some people looking at him standing there with a suitcase, not even at a bus stop.
That was when he felt something coming toward him.
After five minutes of waiting, a vehicle at high speed rushed onto the main street, but so fast and heading directly toward him that he barely saw it arriving, only its blur and the bus itself stopping right in front of him suddenly, enough to make him take a step back, surprised at the sight of the enormous bus.
"What do we have here? A young wizard lost," said a man from the window itself, opening it, and no older than 30 years, wearing a captain's hat of a modern ship.
"Hello, this must be the Knight Bus?" Severus asked curiously.
The man smiled. "Of course, Knight Bus, at your service young wizard..."
"Read and follow the regulations, Charji!" A grumpy voice came from inside suddenly.
"Of course!" Charji, the man who had spoken to Severus from the window, stepped away from it and went to one of the entrances.
He took a paper from his pocket and began to read. "Welcome to the Knight Bus, the emergency transport for stranded witches and wizards. My name is Charji Umbelk and I will be your conductor today." He finished reading and put the paper away.
Severus stood there, staring at the man for a moment without saying anything. He had new expectations of this world, and some were quite strange to see.
In any case, he and the man stared at each other for a while and he decided to break the silence. "So, I would like you to take me to central London, if possible," he asked.
The conductor nodded. "Of course. That will be two silver sickles. You may come in!"
Severus took the coins from his pocket and tossed them into the man's hand, who caught them and opened a smile. He grabbed the crank on the machine he carried, lifted it and then lowered it; a paper came out and he handed it to Severus.
Severus read it quickly and put it in his pocket. The man went to his suitcase and began to lift it with difficulty, but Severus took it from his hand and lifted it with much more ease, with the man thanking him.
"You could use a levitation spell, couldn't you?" Severus asked while placing the suitcase on the bus platform.
"I could... but I wanted to strengthen my muscles, you know?" He gave an excuse while it was clear on his face that either he had forgotten or did not know how to perform a levitation spell.
In any case, Severus placed the suitcase to the side and examined the bus... It had empty beds and an open space across its three floors with an unlit chandelier in the middle...
"What a strange thing..." Severus couldn't help but murmur.
However, his feelings soon changed when he went to the cabin protected by glass... He saw the controls of that vehicle, the gear shift, the steering wheel, buttons all over the panel... This immediately made him want to know how such a thing worked.
"Ernesto! We're going to London!"
"Let's go, Ernesto!" Severus saw a head hanging from the rearview mirror for the first time, since he had been so fascinated by the machine.
The head spoke, another oddity, but this was the magical world, it should be normal...
He saw a man who had simply been sleeping begin to grab the keys below the steering wheel and turn them while the bus started for the first time.
Then the bus suddenly accelerated with force. The skull at the front began to laugh and Severus quickly grabbed onto a support, managing to steady himself without falling or losing balance.
The bus sped along at high speed, but Severus was not paying attention to the road; he was interested in its commands and mechanics. Watching the man move the steering wheel, the gear, and other buttons.
"How does this work?" Severus asked Charji.
The man looked at him strangely. "How should I know?" he said simply.
Severus blinked a few times. "You... don't know?"
"I just sell tickets and the old man over there just drives!" Charji replied, shrugging.
Severus remained silent for a few seconds, turning his attention back to the panel.
He tried to organize his thoughts. "This vehicle works through internal combustion, correct?"
It was the head on the rearview mirror that tilted toward Severus. "Combustion?"
"Yes. Some substance being burned to generate energy." Severus remembered something like that in this world.
"Ah… gasoline," Charji said this time.
Severus frowned. "Gasoline… And it is ignited inside the engine?"
"I imagine so."
"Imagine?"
Charji shrugged again. "I put it in the tank and it moves."
The head hanging from the rearview mirror started laughing.
"Hahaha! He thinks Charji understands anything!"
Severus ignored the laughter. He saw that he would get nothing from them, so he gave up on the questions, simply watching the bus speeding along, dodging cars, going the wrong way and cutting through places it shouldn't.
'He uses invisibility and reshapes the body of the bus to pass between the cars... This is incredible.'
"Have there ever been accidents with this transport?" Severus asked again.
"Accidents... A few years ago, about three died. My head flew off, but Ernesto and I survived!" said the head.
Severus frowned at that.
He also saw the man using the pedals below him. 'I'll have to see how this works later. I won't find anything about it in Diagon Alley, but in the Muggle world there must be information about this...' he thought.
"By the way..." Charji turned back to him, studying him for the first time. "What's your name?" he asked.
"Severus Snape," he said.
"Severus Snape... You have beautiful eyes, lad. You must be popular with the girls at Hogwarts, which house are you in?" he made small talk.
'If he knew he was with the worst pariah in the school...' Severus couldn't help but think. "I'm in Slytherin..." Severus replied.
"Slytherin..." the man said as if it were a curse.
"Don't worry, I'm not interested in that Voldemort..." Severus replied. 'At least not anymore...'
Ah, if he could punch his former self... going straight into becoming a slave to a monster... Imagine if there were a king who wanted to kill all the bastards of Westeros? Although a movement of the old faith would be more plausible.
"He said his name! He said his name!" The head seemed to become desperate.
"Don't say his name like that, lad! That brings bad luck..." Charji replied.
The bus continued for about five minutes. The head was making all kinds of jokes, the driver was driving like a madman, and Charji seemed already used to all of it...
Severus even saw the bus shrinking a few times, which fascinated him with the magic embedded in this transport...
Then, it finally stopped smoothly, with Severus almost hitting his head, but he held himself firmly.
"We're here, question boy!!" said the head, opening a grin. "We're in London, at the Leaky Cauldron!"
Severus nodded and stepped out, and the bus disappeared the next moment.
Severus turned his attention to the enormous city in front of him. There were cars and people walking from one side to the other, large buildings to the point of making him look at that entire scene with a certain admiration.
"Incredible..." Severus said, satisfied as he observed the modern world for the first time.
Not even he, who had changed the world in his 250 years of life, had reached a type of society like the one he was seeing before him.
Cars passed from one side to the other. People talked wearing completely strange clothes, things that Severus did not see much in the other world, from the past, or even in the wizarding world.
He had to admit that it was quite strange, but also liberating.
Since they had brought him to the Leaky Cauldron, which was at one of the entrances to Diagon Alley, why not check the place and get a room to organize things now that he was far away from his father?
Severus then entered the bar. There were several wizards talking among themselves. Some read books while moving their cups with just one finger, using some kind of spell. Others were hooded, trying not to show their faces.
Severus's entrance was noticed by a few, but seeing that it was just a boy, no one really cared. Some tried to find out who he was, but no one knew. It was difficult for an unknown boy to be there alone.
Even so, he went to the counter. "I need a room."
The man who was serving looked at him the next moment.
"You would be...?"
"Severus Snape," he replied, not seeing why he should hide his name. He was not anyone important.
Not yet.
"Of course... but you must be what? Fifteen years old? Shouldn't you be with a magical guardian?"
"I'm here just to do some shopping and I need a place to keep my things," Severus replied.
"I know this type, boy. There are many boys who run away from home. I just hope you know what you're doing," the man replied with a knowing look. Severus did not answer; he kept his face neutral, not because he was using Occlumency, but because he had experience dealing with many situations like that in his past life.
"Leave the lad alone. Tell me, you're a Muggle-born, right? Muggles don't deal very well with wizard children," another man replied.
Severus looked at him. "Half-blood. My mother died and my father is a Muggle, but he's a drunk who likes to think his son is a punching bag to relieve his frustrations in life," Severus replied, keeping his face neutral.
The one who asked the question and the owner of the bar fell silent immediately upon hearing that.
"Alright. There's a room over there, number four. That's five silver sickles," said the man, taking the keys.
Severus took the money and placed it on the table. Ironically, that was the money he had been saving to give a gift to Lily. 'What a fool...' He couldn't help but curse himself mentally.
He knew the money wasn't much, but at least it would allow him to do his things in Diagon Alley. He needed to study how magical commerce worked from a new perspective, not the one where he was just a grumpy boy.
Severus went to the room and placed his suitcase there. Then he took the bag of money and returned to the first floor.
As he entered the passage to Diagon Alley, a man was standing there in front, walking with another boy. They looked at Severus as they saw him approach and waved without giving it much importance.
Severus simply waited for him to tap the wall with his wand, which indicated that the boy's father was also a wizard.
As soon as the alley opened, they left, and Severus came right after, entering the place.
Now he needed to do some field research.