How Can You Insult Someone Like That?

How Can You Insult Someone Like That?

August passed quickly.

On the morning of September 1st, Ollivander sent Silvan to an alley outside King's Cross Station on the Knight Bus.

"How outrageous. It's your first day of school, yet Garian and Lila didn't even send a letter!"

This was already the third time Ollivander had complained about his son and daughter-in-law today. It was obvious that he was unhappy.

Silvan, however, did not mind.

"Botanists are all like that. They can spend months waiting for a flower to bloom. Haven't you gotten used to it by now?"

"I just think it's unfair to you." Ollivander sighed. "Today is such an important day."

"You're overthinking it." Silvan truly did not care.

"It's good that you can say that."

Just as Silvan was wondering how to comfort his grandfather, who was standing up for him, someone suddenly gave his shoulder a hard pat.

"Since that's the case, I'll leave you here." To Silvan's disbelief, Ollivander pulled out his wand.

"Mr. Drew wrote to me last night. He found a pine grove in a forest in Dorset inhabited by Bowtruckles. Every one of those pines is over three hundred years old, so I need to hurry over and take a look."

"Well then, good luck!"

Without giving Silvan any chance to speak, Ollivander vanished from the spot the moment he finished speaking.

"Meow—ow!"

It was Tom's first time seeing a wizard Apparate. Startled by the sudden change, his back arched high and all his fur stood on end.

Incidentally, Tom was the name Silvan had given his pet ginger cat. It had no special meaning; he simply felt, deep down, that foreign cats ought to be called Tom.

"It's all right, relax." Coming back to his senses, Silvan softly soothed his pet. "No wandmaker can resist the temptation of Bowtruckles, especially a newly discovered colony. This is a perfectly normal reaction."

More accurately, Ollivander was not interested in the Bowtruckles themselves, but in the trees they lived in.

Not just any piece of wood could be made into a wand. Magic was not that casual; there were many requirements involved.

The most important, and most indispensable, was the approval of the Bowtruckles.

Only branches from trees where Bowtruckles built their nests could be used to make wands. Otherwise, they were worthless, no matter how old the tree was... Oh, except for dragon bloodwood. That stuff had a one hundred percent chance of earning Bowtruckle approval; they just did not dare live in it.

At present, there were very few high-quality wand trees left in Britain. If Ollivander wanted materials, he could only look abroad.

That was why he had been in such a hurry to leave.

Silvan looked around. Fortunately, the alley they were in was rather secluded, and there were no Muggles nearby.

Seeming to understand Silvan's words, Tom gradually calmed down and curled back up on top of the suitcase.

Silvan entered King's Cross Station, found a trolley, and headed toward Platform Nine.

Although it was his first time here, Silvan was naturally familiar with a place as famous as Platform Nine.

It took him only ten minutes to find his destination... a small area between Platforms Nine and Ten that had been placed under a Muggle-Repelling Charm.

When he arrived, a round-faced boy was cautiously approaching one of the dividing walls. He moved very slowly, as if afraid of hitting his head.

However, this action annoyed an oddly dressed old woman beside him.

"Don't act like a coward, Neville. Run through it, and hurry up!" Mrs. Longbottom snapped. The boy jumped in fright, then charged at the wall and vanished.

No, rather than charging through it, Silvan thought he looked more like he had lost his footing from fright and fallen through together with his trolley.

But Mrs. Longbottom did not seem to notice. She appeared quite satisfied with the boy's decisiveness and nodded approvingly.

At the same time, she noticed Silvan beside her.

"You're taking the train to Hogwarts too, aren't you?"

Silvan nodded, thinking she was a little confused.

At this time of day, if someone came to King's Cross Station without going to Hogwarts, were they here to sightsee?

"What year are you in?"

"First year," Silvan answered honestly.

"Neville is a first-year too." Mrs. Longbottom looked Silvan over again before noticing that he was alone.

"By yourself? Another Muggle family that can't accept magic? Ha, this happens every year."

"All right, child, if you're looking for the platform..." She raised a hand and pointed at the wall in front of them. "Just run through it. If you're scared, close your eyes."

She had clearly misunderstood something.

Silvan opened his mouth, intending to explain, but after hesitating for a moment, he changed his words.

"Ah, thank you."

It was not a big deal. Silvan put on an expression of sudden realization and pushed his trolley toward the wall.

The instant he passed through it—

"I hope you and Neville both get sorted into Gryffindor. It's the best House."

Then the scene before his eyes changed instantly.

Silvan could not have cared less about any of that. Her words still echoed in his mind.

Sorted into Gryffindor...

That sounded awful!

Silvan felt terrible... He was a wandmaker. Whether he was engraving runes onto a wand or rolling materials into a wand core, it was all delicate handiwork.

When doing such work, patience, care, and composure were all essential. Sometimes, he would spend an entire day sitting in a room just to roll a perfect wand core.

But what kind of place was Gryffindor? Their bodies moved faster than their brains, and if three sentences did not go their way, they would pull out their wands and start fighting. Not everyone was like that, but calling it the headquarters of reckless brutes would not be wrong at all.

Putting him together with Gryffindor?

You could not insult someone like that. It was truly too awful!

Silvan turned to look at the wall, wanting to go back and ask her to change her blessing... He really could not go to Gryffindor, or his peers would laugh at him for sure.

But just as the thought surfaced, someone else came through from behind him. Silvan had no choice but to keep walking forward and make room for the newcomer.

"Oh, sorry. I didn't hit you, did I?" A trolley brushed past Silvan's arm.

"Ah, no." Silvan shifted slightly aside, then heard the other person continue.

"You're a new student, right? As a prefect, I must remind you not to stop at the platform entrance. You'll obstruct everyone else."

"I understand." Silvan looked at the redhead in horn-rimmed glasses before him, as well as the little habit of adjusting his prefect badge three times in half a minute.

Percy Weasley. An acquaintance, though he apparently had not recognized him.

Silvan said nothing.

Being insulted for no reason had already annoyed him, and then he ran into someone who constantly flaunted being a prefect. That annoyed him even more.

Arguing was out of the question. He was not that kind of rude person.

"Is prefect another name for Big Head Boy? Ha, if you like it, that's fine." Silvan raised an eyebrow at his badge, gave him a look as though he were a troll, then turned and walked away, just short of covering his nose.

He was only a new student who had not even started school yet. Not knowing what a prefect was was perfectly reasonable!

Besides, his badge really did say "Big Head Boy."

Percy's face immediately turned red. Worse still, his two younger brothers, Fred and George, saw the whole thing. They were right at the platform entrance, laughing so hard they bent over backward.

"You two must have tampered with my prefect badge!"

"Nonsense!"

"We didn't!"

"I'm telling Mum!"

The platform entrance instantly became boisterous, but none of that had anything to do with Silvan. By then, he had already carried his luggage onto the train.

(End of Chapter)