Lin Yue's idea won the unanimous agreement of the young wizards present. They waited at the entrance to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters until the Hogwarts Express departed.
After confirming they still couldn't get through, the seven of them walked out of King's Cross Station and into a nearby alley.
Harry wrote a short letter explaining the situation to Headmaster Dumbledore. After handing it to Hedwig, they waited where they were.
As she watched Hedwig disappear into the sky, Lin Yue's mind instinctively began to analyze the situation.
The Ministry of Magic regularly maintained the enchantments at the entrance to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.
Not to mention, it was the start of term at Hogwarts. The Ministry must have inspected the platform entrance in advance.
The professors at Hogwarts should have checked it too.
Therefore, nothing had gone wrong with the platform before today. No—
Lin Yue crossed out that conclusion in her mind and moved on to another set of facts.
Aside from the seven of them, there were no other young wizards lingering at King's Cross Station.
So the platform entrance must have been working normally before they arrived.
That led to the correct final conclusion: the entrance had been sealed specifically to keep the seven of them out.
And among the seven of them, only Harry had previously been warned by a house-elf not to return to Hogwarts.
The scope narrowed further. The entrance had been sealed because of Harry. Following that line of reasoning, the "mastermind" behind the sealed platform was obvious.
The house-elf that had tried to stop Harry from going to Hogwarts.
The enchantments at the platform entrance were maintained jointly by the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts. There couldn't be many wizards in the entire UK Wizarding World capable of affecting them—
let alone