King's Cross Station

After returning from Diagon Alley, Ye Ting shut himself in his room and began researching the magic of this world.

Through experimentation and study, he roughly came to understand the principles behind the magic in the Harry Potter world. It was a kind of spellcraft that used magical power to influence rules. Magical power originated from living beings themselves, so only wizards and magical creatures possessing it could cast spells.

Casting spells in this world required firm will, proper pronunciation, and gestures. Firm will determined a spell's target and effects, while pronunciation and gestures were indispensable catalysts. Through them, magical power could directly achieve results by influencing rules.

Compared to crudely using magical power to directly affect reality, magic was like using a console in an RPG to complete quests directly. Not only was it more effective, but it could also produce spells such as Reparo and Accio that utterly violated fundamental principles like the conservation of energy and entropy increase.

As for wands, as everyone knew, magical creatures in the Harry Potter world possessed stronger magic than wizards. Wands were made from materials taken from these magical creatures, along with certain special woods, and served as organizers and converters of magical power.

When a wizard understood a certain kind of magic well enough and was sufficiently skilled in casting it, they could omit both incantations and wands, casting spells through silent recitation and bare hands. This was silent and wandless casting. It made spells faster and harder to guard against, but because silent recitation had a weaker catalytic effect than speaking an incantation aloud, and bare hands were less efficient than wands at processing and converting magical power, the results were far poorer and much less efficient.

With Ye Ting's talent, he quickly learned relatively simple and commonly used spells such as Lumos, Wingardium Leviosa, and Reparo. However, he could not learn much more in his room. On one hand, knowledge such as Incendio and Potions required suitable venues and materials. On the other, overly complicated spells could not only cause accidents that were difficult to undo, but might also alarm Mrs. Gary and the other children at the orphanage.

With no other choice, Ye Ting could only suppress his curiosity about magic and look forward to the first day of term.

Waiting was always long. At last, September 1 arrived.

Ye Ting arrived at King's Cross Station at nine o'clock. He hoped to board the train early so he could freely choose a compartment and avoid staying with people who did not interest him—in Hogwarts, aside from the main cast, only the Weasley twins, Cedric Diggory, and pretty girls could catch his attention.

There were quite a few people passing through the station at this hour. Standing between Platforms Nine and Ten, Ye Ting could only carefully look around, hoping to find a moment when no one was watching so he could enter Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

Soon, several wizards in strange robes came before him. Right in front of him, they foolishly walked straight into the wall and vanished one after another.

Ye Ting gritted his teeth, forcibly suppressing the urge to complain inwardly, and followed them into the wall leading to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. In the blink of an eye, he felt himself pass through a "door," and the view before him suddenly opened up.

Before him stood an old-fashioned red steam locomotive, bearing a sign that read "Hogwarts Express."

With Ye Ting's talent, he could clearly sense that he was in a special space, a phase overlapping with the space occupied by the original King's Cross Station.

"This is completely unscientific. Magic can actually do this much," he sighed, following the crowd onto the train.

At this time, there were not many people in the train cars yet, but Ye Ting still chose an empty compartment in one of the later cars. He had noticed that the older wizards tended to sit farther toward the front, while the first-years were all gathered in the last few cars.

After putting away his luggage, Ye Ting opened his backpack and let out Himari, who had been cooped up inside for quite some time. Then he took out a copy of Hogwarts, A History and began reading. Wizards his age might find such a book tiresome, but for him, it was fairly decent entertainment.

Himari meowed and rubbed herself against his legs, acting cute. Ye Ting knew she was behaving that way because she wanted to play with her master, but he was enjoying his reading at the moment. He casually pulled out a fragrant dried grilled fish from his bag and stuffed it to Himari, then roughly patted her head. That was enough to dismiss her.

Himari could only carry the dried fish in her mouth and wander out of the compartment in grievance.

Ye Ting was completely at ease about this. After all, Himari was a cat demon. Though still rather young, she was intelligent enough to take care of herself.

After quite some time, she hurried back into the compartment and threw herself into Ye Ting's arms, as though someone were chasing her.

No, someone really was chasing her.

It was a girl who looked to be Ye Ting's age, with thick brown hair and a pair of prominent front teeth. She was already wearing the Hogwarts uniform, and Ye Ting recognized her at once—she bore a seventy-percent resemblance to the young Emma Watson.

Hermione Granger, the female lead of the Harry Potter series, the clever Miss Know-It-All who had long held the top spot in her year. Yet J. K. Rowling had actually arranged for her to end up with Ron Weasley, which was deeply regrettable.