Hogwarts’s “Mr.
Messenger” drifted away into the distance, carrying Soren’s bright hopes for the future along with him.
The two people left in the director’s office fell into a brief silence.
After a while longer of conversation, Soren politely excused himself.
Director Brent’s thoughts were in disarray and needed time to sort through them too.
Leaving the office, Soren’s mind was heavy.
He racked his memory for every detail from the Harry Potter books, hunting for opportunities and treasures that hadn’t yet been claimed.
Without realizing it, the surroundings grew dim and the path ended at a somewhat cluttered room.
He snapped back to the present and found himself back at the dormitory, guided by pure habit.
The room was quiet.
Empty.
Just him.
Not because the others were avoiding him.
Summer break meant every kid his age was outside burning off energy from dawn to dusk, returning only for dinner and sleep.
He didn’t mind the solitude.
The silence was a rare luxury.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, his gaze drifted across the familiar furnishings.
The thought of living in Hogwarts castle come September, feasting on banquets prepared by house-elves, made his stomach betray him with an audible growl.
If he had to name the two worst things about being reborn:
First, being an orphan.
No family backing meant life started on nightmare difficulty.
Everything took twice the effort for half the result.
Second, the godforsaken British diet.
Reborn in a culinary wasteland, stuck in an underfunded private orphanage, his stomach had been brutalized by “authentic” English cooking until he was borderline malnourished.
Thankfully, the tide was turning.
Hogwarts was waiting, with three buffet meals a day.
Mid-daydream, his eyes swept past the bedside cabinet and froze.
The cabinet door sat slightly ajar.
The strand of hair he’d tied to the handle was gone.
Someone had definitely been inside.
Which brat had a death wish now?
Had he been too lenient lately?
Let certain people’s bad habits creep back?
Swallowing his irritation, Soren pulled the door open.
He wouldn’t keep valuables in something this insecure.
Not that he had valuables to begin with.
What he did keep in this particular cabinet, the one closest to his bed, were the experimental animals he’d caught from the barn.
He’d left them food and water just last night.
The door swung open and an unfortunate smell wafted out.
Fresh droppings.
Black, pellet-shaped, scattered across the floor of the hamster cage.
Rat droppings.
Because what he’d caught in his traps were, of course, rats.
He’d been keeping them as experimental specimens.
Now the cage door hung wide open and its tiny occupants had vanished.
The culprit had stolen them.
No, eaten them, those poor little things.
A single feather, caught inside the cage, gave away the identity of the guilty party.
The letter-delivering owl, without a doubt.
“Well.
Guess that ‘hoo’ wasn’t ‘no thank you’ but ‘already eaten.’ Not the cleanest pair of claws on you, Mr.
Messenger.”
Somehow, knowing the truth made the annoyance fade.
A few wild rats was fair postage for an owl courier.
Besides, he believed in the principle of equivalent exchange.
The theft forgotten, his thoughts churned again, threads tangling faster than he could unravel them.
Then something crucial resurfaced.
Soren scowled and squeezed his eyes shut.
System.
Get out here!
A holographic panel silently unfolded before him, its pale glow cutting through the darkness.
[Achievement System]
An unassuming name.
This was Soren’s transmigrator cheat.
Compared to the premium packages other transmigrators seemed to get, his system was decidedly basic.
It couldn’t talk, couldn’t allocate stat points, couldn’t issue quests.
Strictly speaking, it had zero interactivity.
For a while he’d assumed it was broken.
Then he realized it wasn’t broken.
Just useless.
As the name implied, its sole function was to light up an achievement whenever he accomplished something, occasionally tossing in some half-baked commentary.
It hadn’t even been there from the start.
It appeared the year he turned seven, right after his “special ability” awakened.
Which he now knew had been a magical outburst.
The system had popped up out of nowhere, flooding him with a sense of destiny.
That feeling hadn’t lasted long.
His thoughts wandered briefly before Soren pulled them back, seething inwardly.
Look at other people’s systems.
Then look at you.
You’re all systems.
How are you this useless?
[…]
The system said nothing.
Silent as ever.
I’m in the bloody Harry Potter world and you couldn’t even give me a heads-up.
What good are you?
[…]
Still nothing.
Unmoved.
Unbothered.
You…
ugh.
What am I even supposed to do with you.
Soren shook his head, exhausted by the one-sided rant.
Whatever.
The useless system had always been like this.
About as responsive as a brick.
If the achievement rewards hadn’t kept working all this time, he genuinely would have written the whole thing off as a hallucination.
But if the system was real, why hadn’t it warned him about the true nature of this world?
Years of wasted effort, all because it couldn’t be bothered…
His brooding was interrupted by a change on the system interface.
The display blurred, and two new icons materialized at the top.
Could it be?
Had the system finally activated for real?
Soren sat bolt upright, barely stopping himself from shouting the classic line he’d been dying to use: System, allocate my stat points!
After an agonizing ten-second wait, both icons fully loaded and their labels became readable.
Left: Muggle World Achievements.
Right: Wizarding World Achievements.
The default view showed the Muggle World page.
Soren already had those achievements memorized.
He selected the other icon and switched to the Wizarding World Achievements page.
System!
Show me your true pow…
pow…
that…
ah!?
His excitement was guillotined mid-sentence.
The page was empty.
A single line of text floated in the void: [Insufficient data.
The Achievement System cannot create subcategories.
Please collect magical world information independently to help the system complete its update.]
“Ah…”
Soren’s brain stalled.
Then, for reasons he couldn’t explain, the corners of his mouth twitched upward and he pressed both palms against his face.
So people really did laugh when they were too exasperated to function.
“Fine.
Same as always.
Can’t even gather its own intelligence.
Gotta do everything myself, you useless piece of junk.”
Three years of coexistence had cured him of all expectations.
Let it be.
Being a little brain-dead wasn’t the worst thing.
After all, this was the magical world.
What was that famous wizarding proverb?
Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.
Soren reined in his wandering thoughts and stopped sulking at the system.
Magical world intelligence was vital to him personally.
And soon, very soon, he’d be able to gather it firsthand.
All he needed was a little patience.
Hogwarts moved faster than expected.
A reply arrived at the director’s office before dinner that same evening.
Soren was invited to read it together and gladly complied.
Dear Mr.
Reed,
We understand that the sudden mention of magic may cause concern for both you and your guardian.
To demonstrate that our words are genuine, and to better prepare for enrollment, a member of our staff will visit in person to address your questions.
If acceptable, our representative will arrive at the Director’s Office tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp.
Please reply if there are special circumstances.
Otherwise, simply be ready and wait.
Yours sincerely,
Deputy Headmistress: Minerva McGonagall
Soren would have preferred them to come today, but naturally had no objections.
Director Brent moved through the rest of the afternoon in a daze, tidying her desk on autopilot, preparing for the mysterious visitor from the magical world.
Soren helped with the straightening up, keeping quiet and useful until the dinner bell rang and he headed to the dining hall.
That evening, his mind never left the matter at hand.
Time slipped by unnoticed.
The question that consumed him: who would come for him tomorrow?
Professor McGonagall?
Hagrid?
Flitwick?
Sprout?
Madam Hooch?
Surely not Dumbledore.
Soren didn’t think he rated that kind of VIP treatment.
Oh, and it probably wouldn’t be the Potions professor either.
Given his personality, escorting new students didn’t seem like his kind of work.
Thoughts churned as the night deepened.
It felt like the blink of an eye before the next day arrived.
Soren, rarely one for early rising, forced himself to sleep a full six hours and showed up at the director’s office looking sharp and alert.
Director Brent had changed into proper formal attire and steeped the best tea bags she had on hand.
Then the two of them, old and young, just sat there staring at each other through an endless wait.
Minutes crawled past.
Nine o’clock drew closer.
What tested Soren’s patience most was that the staff member, whether painfully punctual or motivated by something else entirely, insisted on arriving at exactly nine.
Not a second before.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Polite.
Somewhat heavy.
Soren rose and straightened his posture.
Director Brent shot him a quick glance and gave a subtle nod before calling out in her most gracious tone, “Please come in.”
The wooden door swung open and a dark figure swept inside.
Soren kept his head bowed respectfully, eyes tracking upward from the floor.
Black boots.
Black trousers.
Black shirt.
Black robes.
Black eyes.
Black hair.
Everything black, except the face, which was white.
A sickly, sun-starved white.
The visitor strode into the room like a bat gliding through the night, wearing an expression that combined gloom, weariness, and irritation into one spectacularly sour mask.
Soren’s vision darkened for an entirely different reason.
He knew that look intimately.
In his previous life, plenty of wage slaves wore the same standard-issue dead-inside face.
Past eleven at night, camp outside any large office building and watch the exhausted overtime workers drag themselves out.
Nine out of ten wore exactly this expression: “barely alive but also kind of dead.”
He understood now.
This staff member wasn’t particularly punctual.
He was particularly reluctant to escort a new student.
The question was…
why?
Why did it have to be him?
Professor Snape!