My Name Is Albus Dumbledore's Brother; You Can Also Call Me Aberforth

"May I ask who you are?"

"Move aside, please. Yes, I mean your butt." The man who had suddenly inserted himself into the conversation acted as though he had not heard Nelson's question at all. Like he owned the place, he plopped down heavily in the empty chair beside the table, shoving Tom's chair aside in the process. "Whoa! Are you two on a date? I ran all the way here—I'm bloody hot."

His sudden appearance, lively manner, and greasy remarks put Nelson and Tom on edge. They simultaneously dropped their spoons and reached for their wands.

"Take your hands out of your pockets. You really are Albus's students, sneaking around just like him." Though it was the dead of winter, he looked overheated. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with one sleeve, shrugged off his khaki coat with one hand, and shouted rudely at the busy shopkeeper, "Fortescue, bring me a lemonade with lots of ice. Hurry up!"

"Sir, may I ask who you are?" Nelson did not withdraw his hand as instructed. Instead, he drew his wand, watched the man warily, and asked the same question again.

"Me?" He raised his head with a look of surprise. "You're asking who I am? Oh, sorry. I didn't expect anyone to be curious about who I was. I thought you were asking someone else, Fortescue or something."

"Does it matter who I am?" He looked utterly unconcerned. Taking the lemonade the shopkeeper brought over, he tossed him several Silver Coins, took a vicious pull through the straw, and answered his own question casually. "No. Not at all. Who cares who I am? I've forgotten my own name, so naturally no one cares what I'm called. They all call me the brother of the genius Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. If you insist on calling me by a name, you can call me Aberforth."

"Oh! Mr. Aberforth Dumbledore." Watching the increasingly agitated man before him, Nelson understood. He put away his wand, not expecting Professor Dumbledore to have invited his own brother to serve as a substitute teacher.

"Call me Aberforth, thank you." He seemed deeply resistant to the surname Dumbledore. "Don't call me Aberforth Dumbledore. That name sounds a little disgusting."

"All right, Aberforth. This is what Mr. Dumbledore asked me to pass on to you." Nelson nodded helplessly and took the small package Dumbledore had given him before the holiday from his pocket. "Also, the two of us are not on a date."

"Sorry," Aberforth replied dryly, without looking the least bit apologetic. "Maybe I've become too jumpy. These days, whenever I see two men walking down the street, they look like they're on a date."

He took the package, opened a small gap to peek inside, then carefully tucked it into a zippered pocket on his right. Suddenly, he looked up and stared at Nelson with interest. "Did Albus not teach you how to tell whether someone is genuine? What if I were a Dark Wizard in disguise? Then when you two reached for your wands just now, you'd already be dead."

"Mr. Aberforth, I don't care about that." Nelson picked up the spoon that had fallen onto the table, wiped it with a napkin, and stirred his now-cold hot drink. "Professor Dumbledore said that as long as a chestnut-haired man came, I was to give him the package."

"Chestnut hair, haha." He laughed a little nervously. "That really is the thing I'm proudest of about myself... the only thing that differs from the genius Albus Dumbledore."

"Besides, anything Dumbledore would entrust to students like us probably isn't very important." Tom had always harbored an inexplicable wariness toward Dumbledore, which had somehow given rise to an even more inexplicable trust. Picking up where Nelson had left off, he said, "This package presumably isn't important either. And even if something really went wrong, he would protect us."

"Whoa! Boys, I've got some advice for you." Aberforth lifted his cup and sucked fiercely through the straw until it made a sound of air driving the ice cubes into one another. Only then did he slowly speak. "You'd better spend less time around Albus. Everyone says only he can defeat Grindelwald, but do you know why he won't act? Because he understands Grindelwald's most famous piece of nonsense—'For the Greater Good'—better than anyone!"

As he spoke, Aberforth's tone gradually rose. That reckless, boorish air vanished, and his words became impassioned and forceful. Diners around them turned to look at him, then turned away upon hearing talk of the Dark Lord, watching the red-faced man only from the corners of their eyes.

He lifted the cup, now containing only ice, tipped his head back, and poured every cube into his mouth. He chewed them hard, making crunching sounds. After chewing for a long while, he swallowed the crushed ice in one gulp as though completing some ritual, groaned in satisfaction, and spoke softly again. "Albus is not the great good man you imagine him to be. He loves giving the most dangerous tasks to the weakest people. He only knows how to hide behind others, take cheap shots, and pretend to be a good man."

Aberforth snorted heavily, thumped the cup onto the table, and looked over the two thoughtful boys with interest.

"We're not weak." Tom snorted as well. He glared at Aberforth, disgusted at being described as "the weakest people." But he could not imitate Aberforth's coarse tone; he sounded more like a prefect looking down on a student who had broken school rules.

Aberforth neither agreed nor disagreed. He shifted his gaze to Nelson, who was looking straight at him, and heard him speak slowly, one word at a time.

"Mr. Aberforth, I'm not interested in these matters." Nelson clasped his hands together on the table and rested his chin on them. "Besides, I believe Professor Dumbledore is not that kind of person."

At those words, Aberforth was beside himself with delight. He first burst into an impolite fit of laughter. Soon, the laughter stopped abruptly. He leaned forward and fixed his eyes on Nelson's utterly unchanged expression, asking in a low voice, "Oh? Do you think you understand Albus better than I do?"

Nelson recalled Dumbledore's visit to the orphanage months ago. He recalled the news he had read in the Daily Prophet about Dumbledore's academic achievements. He recalled the aged, remorseful, frail, liberated, courageous Dumbledore he knew. Nelson leaned forward as well and looked directly at the man before him—at his tangled, unkempt chestnut hair and beard, at his weather-beaten face that looked even older than his brother's, at those brilliant blue eyes identical to Dumbledore's, as though they possessed the power to see through people.

Nelson nodded and spoke gravely. "I believe I understand Professor Dumbledore better than you do."

Aberforth looked straight into Nelson's eyes as well. From those sapphire-blue pupils, he could see nothing—not even a trace of what the boy was thinking, only his own reflection. He could sense that the boy had said those absurd words with absolute conviction. He even wanted to use Legilimency to see what the brat was thinking. Yet amid his wild thoughts, this man who could duel Gellert Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore was the first to look away.

"I like you, kid. For the next while, I'll teach you properly." He shook his head with a bitter smile, grabbed the coat hanging over the back of his chair, and stood. "I'm not one to gossip either. I just hope Albus doesn't lead you astray."

"Professor Dumbledore also told me to explain to the substitute teacher how to take the train—" Nelson hurriedly got to his feet to see him off. Tom dawdled in his chair for a long time; he did not seem particularly inclined to be polite to such a vulgar man.

"Enough. My home is in Hogsmeade. Albus really takes me for an idiot." Aberforth slung his coat over his shoulder, pulled a cigarette from his pocket and put it between his lips, then turned to stare at Tom. "And you, kid. I hope that after school starts, I'll get to see what an 'unweak person' looks like."

Then he squeezed sideways through the crowd and disappeared.

"He's really cool, isn't he?" Fortescue, who had come to clear Aberforth's cup away, suddenly said gloomily beside Nelson's ear. Nelson jumped. Seeing the shopkeeper beside him, he reached into his pocket to pay the bill before leaving.

"He paid for you. There was even a little left over." Fortescue opened one hand, several copper coins lying in his palm, and spoke sentimentally. "Back then, I wanted to become a Wizard like that... Actually, I used to be a Wizard like that, until I..."

"Keep the extra as a tip, thank you!" Nelson and Tom quickly left the cold drink shop. Looking up at the sun, they saw that the great clock above Gringotts' gate pointed a little past eleven. They planned to find somewhere to eat first, then continue wandering around in the afternoon.

"Nal, what should we eat?"

"Anything is fine with me. You?"

"Same as you."

"..."

December 26, 1938, was destined not to be an ordinary day. Two extraordinarily gifted young Wizards walked hungrily through Diagon Alley, nearly starving themselves to death because they could not decide what to eat. The magical world had nearly lost two legendary tales.

"Eat with us." Augusta, whom they had met that morning, suddenly appeared behind Nelson and Tom as they hesitated outside a French restaurant. She patted them both on the shoulder, then pointed to an inconspicuous little shop behind her when they turned around. "You've circled this place several times already. We've been watching from inside and were about to die of anxiety. Come on, eat with us."

The two had almost completely lost the ability to think. They followed Augusta into the little shop, and the moment they entered, they smelled the rich, sweet scent of cream. At a table by the window, a harmonious yet bizarre scene was unfolding: opposite the tiny Flitwick sat an enormous boy who looked at least two meters tall, while McGonagall, who usually wore a stern expression, was animatedly talking beside them.

Regarding some character settings:

The protagonist, Nelson Wiltening Williams, was born one day after Tom Riddle.

According to the official Pottermore novels, Minerva McGonagall had already been working steadily at Hogwarts for some time by 1945. Before that, she had worked at the Ministry of Magic for two years and had an unsuccessful romance. No exact date could be found, and the original work never mentioned any connection between her and Voldemort during his student years. However, working backward from 1945, she probably graduated around 1940, so she was set as the protagonist's upperclassman.

Filius Flitwick, like McGonagall, made the Sorting Hat deliberate for a long time between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw during the Sorting Ceremony. Since he was also friends with McGonagall, he was set as being in the same year as her.

Rubeus Hagrid was one year below Voldemort. There was not much else to say.

Moaning Myrtle, namely Myrtle Elizabeth Warren, was in the same year as the protagonist and belonged to Ravenclaw.

As for why the protagonist did not like Slytherin: it could be understood that although he did not like Slytherin, when he took the Pottermore test, he was sorted into Slytherin. Furthermore, Slytherin had produced Dark Wizards since ancient times because, within the United Kingdom, powerful Dark Magic was generally passed down through pure-blood families; it was not something Voldemort created single-handedly. No offense intended toward any Slytherin students; the author is also a Slytherin.

Spell: to maintain a consistent format, the Levitation Charm is "Wingardium Leviosa," not a phonetic transliteration.