Dear Tristan,
I'm at Hogwarts. I did everything exactly as Father instructed.
Do you remember our first weeks on Minami Iwo Jima? Do you remember how the ringing silence broke us, the cold of the jade, the endless bowing? I thought we'd been dropped into another world, one we could never get used to. But now, looking at Hogwarts, I realise — there was order there. Here... here there is chaos.
The sensations are even sharper than they were then. The walls, the air, even the very flow of magic feels different. At Mahoutokoro we knew our place, we knew distance. Here there is none. The students shout and shove; there is no formation, no restraint. The Gryffindor common room is so noisy I can scarcely hear my own thoughts, and the armchairs are so soft you sink into them and lose all vigilance. I feel more of an outsider here than I did when I first set foot on Japanese soil. There I was gaijin among the Japanese; here I am gaijin among my own.
But the maddest thing happened even before that — on the train. You won't believe who I ran into.
Hermione Granger.
Yes, that Hermione. The girl from the house with the white picket fence. The dentists' daughter — the one whose practice Mother invested in. The same bushy-haired swot we spent our entire childhood sitting on the carpet in her living room, reading encyclopaedias while our mothers drank tea in the kitchen.
She woke me in the compartment. In those first seconds, when I opened my eyes and saw her face bending over me, I was convinced it was delirium. Some surreal dream that was about to twist into nightmare. Hermione — on the wizarding train, in robes, with a wand? She had always seemed inseparable from the Muggle world, from that calm, comprehensible world I left behind.
I recognised her instantly. She's grown up, changed... become much prettier, far prettier. But that look — sharp, clever, admonishing — it's still the same Granger. We've ended up on the same House. Fate appears to have decided to have another laugh at my expense.
I'll miss you here. Surviving this circus without your advice won't be easy. But I'll manage. I'll do everything Father expects, however hard it proves. I am a Morgan, after all, and I won't let anyone down again.
Your brother,
Kieran Kai Morgan