Along a street in Barnet District, north London, there weren't many pedestrians, but those passing by kept glancing at a boy's stall on the roadside.
The boy looked about eleven or twelve. He had platinum-blond hair and was dressed very smartly.
He looked like a young gentleman.
His smart clothes and gentlemanly appearance weren't the main reasons people stared. The real reason was the stall in front of him.
Britain's Children and Young Persons Act, Section 20, stipulated that children were, in principle, prohibited from street trading.
The 1963 Children and Young Persons Act raised the minimum age for independent street trading from sixteen to seventeen.
The Employment Act also included a special provision: young people aged fourteen to sixteen could engage in only very limited auxiliary trading, and only when accompanied by a parent, with special permission and a license from the local authority, and within restricted hours and locations.
That meant selling lemonade outside your own home was generally fine, but setting up a stall on the street and running a business was absolutely forbidden.
That might have been what the law said, but Britain had its own circumstances.
Children might go out and set up stalls to make a living in other districts, but did anyone know what kind of place this was?
This was Barnet District, a proper wealthy neighborhood.
The wealthy gentlemen living in Barnet District were kindhearted and couldn't bear to see poor people or vagrants in their neighborhood.
So, in cases like this, the young stallholder would usually be chased away at best and arrested on the spot at worst.
If you'd never seen anything like it, of course you'd take a closer look as you passed by.
As they watched, a patrol officer from Scotland Yard arrived.
"What are you doing here?" The officer came up to the boy. Perhaps because he was so smartly dressed, the officer's tone wasn't particularly harsh.
"Street performance, sir." To the officer's surprise, the boy showed no sign of unease or fear. Instead, he calmly handed over a permit.
"This is a performance permit approved by the Barnet District Council. It specifically allows me to put on a street performance involving 'Divination and Prophecy Experiences' on the streets of Barnet District.
"Would you two gentlemen like to give it a try?"
After checking the boy's performance permit, the two patrol officers didn't take him up on his offer.
No other reason—they were short on cash.
In London, a typical street fortune-telling session cost around ten pounds.
At popular tourist attractions, the price went up by five pounds.
But the price clearly displayed at the boy's stall read: Divination and Prophecy Experience: £30 per person, per session.
The patrol officers' monthly salaries were only a little over a thousand pounds before tax.
In that situation, asking each of them to shell out thirty pounds to "humor" some rich young gentleman playing at being an ordinary person...
They'd have to pass.
After the two officers left, the boy leisurely sat back down on the little chair behind his stall and waited for someone destined to come along.
His destined visitor arrived soon enough.
"May I know your name, little Seer?" The visitor was a young woman in a dark blue coat. She held the hand of a girl with thick, unruly brown hair—an astonishing amount of it.
It was worth noting that the girl had a particularly prominent pair of front teeth and brown eyes.
Isaac—the boy—let his gaze linger on the girl's head for a moment. After suppressing a hint of envy, he turned to the young woman and replied formally,
"Of course, madam. Isaac Waldore at your service. Perhaps you'd like to experience a pleasant Prophecy?"
It was only then that Mrs. Granger, who had brought her daughter along, noticed that besides his platinum-blond hair, Isaac also had a rare pair of eyes of different colors.
The unusual sight made Mrs. Granger instinctively tighten her grip on her daughter's hand.
Hermione Granger felt her mother's grip tighten, but she said nothing. She only pressed her lips together nervously.
"So... you really can tell the future? I mean, see things that haven't happened yet, all for thirty pounds?"
Mrs. Granger's words came out somewhat incoherently. Even Hermione could sense how flustered her mother was.
Hermione understood her mother perfectly.
Something as unbelievable as receiving an admission letter from a magic school had happened to her. When people stepped through the door to a new world, it was only natural to feel both excited and apprehensive.
As the person at the center of it all, Hermione was actually the calmer one.
She picked up where her mother had left off and asked Isaac, who had been wearing a smile the whole time, "My mother means, you can tell the future for just thirty pounds?
"There's no greater price to pay?"
In the Grangers' simple understanding of the world, cheap things weren't good.
For the two patrol officers just now, thirty pounds was an expense they'd have to budget carefully for.
But for the Granger family, who ran a private dental practice together, thirty pounds was nothing.
After listening to the mother and daughter, Isaac said, "There's no greater price. What I reveal to you is only one possibility, not an unchangeable future."
"Any number of factors could change the future. For example, the fact that you're standing at my stall right now might change it.
"I can only reveal the future that seems most likely."
Isaac's words left eleven-year-old Hermione rather confused, but Mrs. Granger understood.
Wasn't that the standard "disclaimer"?
I don't guarantee that what I say is true. If it turns out to be wrong, then something must have changed the future.
Mrs. Granger had thought she'd run into a real little wizard and Seer, but it seemed she'd been getting ahead of herself~
Even though this boy named Isaac wasn't the "real deal," Mrs. Granger had no intention of exposing him.
The patrol officers hadn't driven him away, which proved he belonged here.
Anyone who lived in Barnet District wouldn't care about thirty pounds.
And what did it matter if she spent thirty pounds to hear a young gentleman like him say something auspicious?
She could think of it as a tip for the boy~
Mrs. Granger immediately decided to have Isaac "tell her daughter's fortune."
Before she could say anything, Isaac spoke up. "In the future, your daughter should accomplish something remarkable in a niche field.
"As for the near future... I think you might need to be a little more patient.
"After all, haven't you already sent a reply?"
At Isaac's first sentence, Hermione pursed her lips. Then she abruptly turned to look at Mrs. Granger.
At his final words, Mrs. Granger's eyes widened slightly. Had Isaac said all that by chance, or had he really figured something out?!
Not long ago, an owl had delivered a letter to her daughter: an admission notice from a magic school.
At first, the Grangers had assumed it was some kind of prank. But after trying a few things to verify it, they found that it didn't seem like a prank after all.
They had written back as the letter instructed, and now they were waiting anxiously!