Professor Vector told the matron she was here on “education business.” The matron smiled like she understood, like she could make sense of a woman in forest-green robes who walked like a bde sheathed in fabric. But she didn’t understand.

  None of them did.

  I did.

  She didn’t come to invite me to Hogwarts.

  I was seven. Far too young for that.

  She came because of the boy with the frostbitten hands. Because he screamed and cried about the cold light and because someone in the Ministry of Magic—someone behind the wall of the world—had noticed.

  Magic is loud when it breaks out early.

  Especially when it hurts someone.

  So she came to see if I was just another unstable Muggle-born… or something else entirely.

  Vector didn’t speak much on the way.

  We took a bck car. Enchanted. The driver blinked too slowly. A Ministry ckey, probably Obliviated hourly to forget his own name. Vector sat opposite me, her wand never far from her fingers. She didn’t threaten me with it. She didn’t have to.

  It was clear I was being transported, not invited.

  At one point, she asked, “Do you understand why I’m taking you to Diagon Alley?”

  I turned my head toward the window. The world outside blurred with gray fog and distance. “Because you’re trying to figure out what I am.”

  A pause.

  “No,” she said. “I already know what you are. The question is how much of you we’ll need to contain.”

  That was the first honest thing she’d said.

  The entrance to the Alley looked like nothing. Just another cracked alley wall behind a half-abandoned pub with a name that smelled like pipe smoke and lost memories.

  She tapped bricks in a specific pattern. The stone rearranged itself—not quickly, not violently, but like something old reluctantly waking up. The wall melted open, and the world beyond it breathed out.

  Diagon Alley.

  The epicenter of British wizarding commerce. The hub where old magic and new money kissed and spat in equal measure.

  I expected something ridiculous.

  What I saw was better.

  This was a living machine. Layers upon yers of sigils, gmours, sensory enchantments and surveilnce runes. I felt them prickling at my skin as I stepped through. The air tasted like dust and fire, and the buildings were bent like ideas made real—impossible angles, stacked chimneys, doors that blinked when you passed.

  “Don’t speak unless I ask you a question,” Vector said, her voice low and hard.

  I nodded. But I was already cataloguing.

  Power centers: Wandmakers, alchemists, potion vendors.Gatekeepers: Gringotts. The Unspeakable outpost masquerading as a stationery shop.Patterns of movement: Watch for who walks fast, who hides their face, who touches their wand when no one’s looking.

  And Professor Vector—my temporary handler. Her robes had discrete runes woven into the hem, passive shielding yered over diagnostic charms. A walking b kit.

  She wasn’t here to protect me.

  She was here to see if I needed to be contained.

  The wand shop came first.

  “Ollivanders,” she said, not bothering to eborate.

  The shop’s interior was narrow, shadowed, and filled with more silence than space. Every wand in every box sat like a bone in a tomb. Watching.

  A man appeared. His eyes were far too bright for someone who had lived in the dark this long.

  “Ah,” he breathed. “Caelius Williams… no, you’re using Cain now.”

  I didn’t respond.

  He smiled. “Of course you are.”

  Ollivander looked at Vector. She nodded once. “Evaluate him. Only evaluate.”

  I recognized the tone. He was being told not to sell me a wand. Not yet. Too dangerous. No license. No enrollment.

  But Ollivander was already moving, eyes glittering with the unspoken hunger of all true craftsmen.

  “Hold this,” he murmured, passing me the first wand. Birch. Unicorn hair. Eleven inches.

  It felt… dead.

  No spark. No tension. Nothing.

  The next was dragon heartstring. Then phoenix feather. Then vee hair.

  One by one, he handed me fragments of history.

  And one by one, they rejected me.

  The rejections got louder. One snapped with a loud crack, another scorched my palm with a smell like burned leather. Vector stiffened but didn’t interfere.

  Then he paused. Reached behind a row of stacked drawers. Pulled out a thin, unbeled box wrapped in cloth instead of paper.

  “This one was… experimental,” he said. “Not for sale.”

  He opened the box.

  Bckthorn. Thirteen and a quarter inches. Core: basilisk sinew.

  I touched it.

  And I felt the wand breathe.

  Not a welcome.

  Not a match.

  Recognition.

  The air warped faintly. A low vibration in my teeth. Something behind my thoughts turned its head and looked at me.

  Ollivander smiled. “That’s the one.”

  “It’s not his,” Vector snapped. “He’s seven.”

  “Still his,” he replied.

  Vector’s wand was in her hand. “Put it back in the box.”

  I let go.

  The hum vanished.

  I looked at Vector. “Why are you afraid of it?”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I’m afraid of what happens if the wand isn’t afraid of you.”

  The rest of the Alley passed in a blur of sensation.

  She let me observe. Touch. Ask a few questions. Her answers were clipped, but not cruel. She was still evaluating. Still weighing my profile.

  I made a show of being fascinated by the potion shop. She watched to see if I reached for anything dangerous. I didn’t. I knew what control looked like.

  We passed a bookshop. I looked at it for a second too long.

  “Next year,” she said. “You’ll get your books then.”

  That told me what I needed to know.

  They pnned to watch me until eleven. Until enrollment. Until they thought they had me boxed.

  Let them.

  I would study their world with both eyes open.

  And when I stepped into Hogwarts…

  I would already know how to bend its bones.

  That night, in the room she’d arranged above the Leaky Cauldron, she gave me a sealed envelope.

  “Open this when you turn ten. It contains your official registration.”

  She paused. “There will be tests. Magical, psychological. They’ll decide if you’re fit for formal education.”

  “And if I’m not?”

  She held my gaze.

  “Then we’ll find other uses for you.”

  A chill passed over the room. Not from fear. From confirmation.

  This world has shelves for people like me. They don’t always put us in schools.

  After she left, I stared into the mirror above the desk.

  My reflection stared back. Still. Waiting.

  In one hand, I held a sliver of stolen parchment I had lifted from Ollivander’s counter while he was distracted.

  It was a wand schematic. A failed prototype. Notes in code and numbers. A recipe.

  In the other hand, I held the bckthorn wand, wrapped and hidden inside my robes.

  They didn’t want me to have it yet.

  They were right to be afraid.

  Because now I knew what power felt like in my hand.

  And I wouldn’t forget.