Diagon Alley

Li Weide and Tom walked silently along the muddy streets of London.

Still shaken, Tom pressed down on his newsboy cap, surprised that the oversized hat had not been lost in the sewers.

Li Weide, meanwhile, tightened the backpack holding their money, secretly relieved that the gold had not been lost.

"That snake... said she used to be a human woman, and that my Parseltongue had drawn her here... But how could that be?" Once Tom had recovered somewhat, he was the first to break the silence.

"Tom, you have to admit that this world is full of many wondrous things... Just because we don't know about something doesn't mean it doesn't exist," Li Weide said calmly.

In truth, Li Weide knew Nagini's story very well, but he had no way to tell Tom, because he could not explain how he knew any of it.

Nagini had originally been a kind and gentle woman, but unfortunately, she was a Maledictus.

Due to the Blood Curse passed down through the maternal line of her family, she had been born cursed, able to shift back and forth between human and snake forms.

But as she grew older, the curse would eventually cause her to completely lose her humanity, forget all her memories as a human, and become a beast for good...

Of course, the current Nagini was not yet the savage giant snake Voldemort would turn into a Horcrux decades later.

Li Weide guessed that Nagini was now on the verge of completely becoming a beast, only able to regain her senses occasionally.

And just now, Nagini's true consciousness had awakened in time during that moment of danger.

Tom fell silent for a while before saying, "I have a feeling I'll meet her again someday."

Li Weide looked at Tom, surprised to catch a flicker of pity in his eyes.

"Maybe... But we need to become stronger quickly. Otherwise, the next time you meet, she might swallow you whole."

As Li Weide spoke, he jumped onto a tram that had just stopped, and Tom hurriedly followed him aboard.

Since they no longer had to walk, the two of them reached their destination quickly this time.

Li Weide watched the pedestrians ahead of them take a strange route to avoid a certain stretch of road.

Beside that stretch stood a tattered sign—the Leaky Cauldron.

Li Weide and Tom exchanged a glance, then hurried over.

Tom nervously brushed the dust from his clothes. After falling into the sewers and struggling around, both of them looked rather bedraggled.

More importantly, they carried a faint but lingering stench...

Just as Tom frowned and began wondering where they could change clothes,

he suddenly felt a slight chill wash over his body, as though a gentle breeze had brushed past him.

Then, to his surprise, he discovered that all the dust and smell on him had vanished!

Tom immediately turned to look at Li Weide.

At that moment, Li Weide was looking at his own clothes and silently reciting an incantation in his heart.

"Scourgify!"

The next second, he too became spotless from head to toe.

"Weide, I've actually wanted to say this for a long time. Did you already know that you were a..." Tom glanced around, and only after making sure no one was paying attention did he continue in a low voice, "Did you already know you were a wizard? And did you learn how to use magic somewhere?"

"No, I figured all this out through experiments... Haven't you realized yet that the power of magic is shaped by the mind?"

Tom's suspicion did not surprise Li Weide, but of course he would not admit anything.

In fact, even without getting the Spellbook, he really could have experimented his way into discovering many magical effects...

"Magic is shaped by the mind..." Tom repeated, deep in thought.

"All right, we should go in. A new world is beckoning us." Li Weide patted Tom on the shoulder, then entered the Leaky Cauldron first.

The inside of the Leaky Cauldron was exactly as Li Weide had expected: filthy and cramped.

Even so, the pub was still bustling with activity, though its patrons looked like quite a mixed bunch...

Li Weide approached the bar, where a somewhat balding middle-aged man was polishing a glass.

"Hello, could you tell us how to get into Diagon Alley?" Li Weide asked.

The middle-aged man set down the glass and lowered his head to inspect Li Weide and Tom.

"Oh... You're this year's Hogwarts Newborns, aren't you? Never been to Diagon Alley? All right, follow me."

Tom and Li Weide exchanged a glance and followed him.

Along the way, people kept greeting the man.

"Tom, is there anything to eat? Get me a serving of flatbread! I'm hungry enough to eat a cow! Oh, and bring me a glass of sherry too!"

"Please wait a moment, Chom. I still need to take these two Newborns to Diagon Alley."

"Oh? Young Wizards from Muggle families?"

"Yes, yes..."

As they spoke, the Leaky Cauldron's owner, Tom, led Li Weide and the other Tom to the small courtyard behind the pub.

Suppressing his discomfort, Tom asked the owner who shared his name, "What does Muggle-born mean?"

"Hm? It seems the professor who explained things to you didn't make it very clear. Muggle is the general term for people who don't understand magic. Muggle-born means a wizard born into a Muggle family. Hm... Aren't you? If you came from a wizarding family, there's no way you wouldn't have been to Diagon Alley before." Owner Tom looked suspiciously at the two boys before him.

"No, we are indeed Muggle-born. We were just curious about what the word Muggle meant," Li Weide explained.

"Oh, I see..." Owner Tom did not dwell on it. He turned, took out his wand, and pointed at the wall beside a rubbish bin. "Starting from this rubbish bin, count three bricks up, then two across, and knock..."

Tap!

The next second, the brick wall began to move rapidly. One brick after another jumped aside, and then an entrance appeared before the three of them.

Li Weide stepped through first, and a long cobblestone street appeared before his eyes.

The first things he saw were all sorts of strange shops lining both sides of the street, along with the bustling crowd flowing through it.

The whole of Diagon Alley was extraordinarily lively.

"All right, now that you know how to enter and leave Diagon Alley, I should head back."

"Oh, right. Don't leave the main street. If you accidentally wander into Knockturn Alley, that could be dangerous." After giving them this warning, Owner Tom left.

Once the entrance behind them had turned back into a wall, Tom suddenly said, "I don't think I'm Muggle-born. I think my father must have been a wizard, while my mother wasn't. Otherwise, she never would have died so easily outside the Orphanage..."

"No matter what, we're from the Orphanage now... That counts as Muggle-born too."

"All right... But sooner or later, I'll find information about my father!" Tom took out the shopping list and did not mention his father again. "What should we buy first?"

"Of course, a wand. But... we need to exchange some money first." Li Weide patted his backpack.

Several kilometers away from the Leaky Cauldron, police officers had gathered outside a small detached house.

The two-story house was now tilting slightly, as though it could collapse at any moment.

"Chief, we found those tied-up Human Traffickers, but..."

"But what?" asked the chief, who had a pair of thin mustaches above his lip.

"Well... For some reason, the floor in the house collapsed. Several of those Human Traffickers fell through and were injured, and... they all seem to have been frightened out of their minds!"

"That really is strange..."

A tall, thin man suddenly stepped out from the crowd. The police officers beside him acted as though they did not see him at all, allowing him to walk into the building that looked ready to collapse at any moment.

Dumbledore frowned at the grim scene inside the house, his brow furrowing slightly.

He closed his eyes and carefully sensed the surroundings, because he had noticed that the traces of magic at the scene felt somewhat familiar...

Suddenly, Dumbledore opened his eyes, his face filled with confusion. "It was them? How could it have been them?"

A trace of worry flashed across Dumbledore's face. He then followed the large hole and jumped down into the sewers.

Ignoring the foul stench, Dumbledore conducted a thorough search before suddenly bending down and feeling around in a corner of the sewer.

When he straightened up, there was a dark green scale in his hand...

"This is... Nagini?! Has she finally completely fallen? Wait! If they encountered Nagini..."

The worry on Dumbledore's face deepened. He slipped the scale into his pocket.

Pop!

Dumbledore vanished from the sewers.

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