King's Cross Station

On September 1st in London, a thin mist hung in the morning air, as though someone had spread a translucent veil across the River Thames.

London, King's Cross Station.

Su Yu's current state was not much better than that of Muggles who were drunk and still caught somewhere between dreaming and waking.

He walked through the main hall of King's Cross Station, his steps unsteady as if he were treading on a flimsy floating board. His eyes were half-open, half-closed. His black robe hung loosely from his shoulders, its collar unbuttoned and sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. He looked as though someone had dragged him straight out of bed and thrown him here.

In fact, that was exactly what had happened.

Carson followed three steps behind Su Yu, pushing a trolley piled high with luggage. Several enormous leather trunks bore the full name "Yu-Su-Fuli" in golden cursive, with a smaller name beside it engraved in Eastern Continent seal script; an owl cage—no, not an owl cage, but a jade-green bamboo birdcage. Inside stood an Azure Phoenix, currently dozing with its head tucked beneath its wing.

"Young master," Carson's voice came from behind him, as steady as ever, "you've gone the wrong way. Platform Nine is on your left."

Su Yu paused. He turned his head blankly, looked to the left, then to the right, and stood there as though waiting for his brain to reboot.

"...Which side is left?"

Carson fell silent for a second—his usual way of expressing helplessness.

"Young master, raise your left hand."

Su Yu raised his left hand.

"That is the left side."

"Oh." Su Yu lowered his hand, turned halfway around, and headed in the right direction. After three steps, though, he began drifting right again.

Carson said nothing more. He simply adjusted the trolley's course and followed behind, like an old helmsman who always knew the right bearing, patiently waiting for his muddled captain to find the way on his own.

The Nine-Tailed Fox gave a meaningful snort in the soul space. "Are you sure you're fit to go to school in this state? You can't even tell left from right."

"Shut up," Su Yu replied vaguely in his mind. "I just didn't sleep well last night."

The Nine-Tailed Fox snorted again but said nothing else. After living with Su Yu for so many years, she had long learned when to stop arguing—especially when the boy was clearly half-asleep. In that state, Su Yu's logic was a mess, but his stubbornness remained perfectly intact. Reasoning with someone stubborn and sleep-deprived was like playing chess against a wall—meaningless, and you would never win.

The two of them—and one invisible fox—crossed the main hall of King's Cross Station in that strange rhythm. Su Yu swayed along in front like a scarecrow blown by the wind, while Carson followed steadily behind. Passersby occasionally glanced at the overloaded trolley, but their attention was soon drawn elsewhere—Londoners possessed an inborn talent for turning a blind eye to anything unusual.

At last, they reached the entrance to Platform Nine.

Su Yu stopped.

"This is it?" Su Yu asked.

"Yes, young master." Carson steadied the trolley and took a pocket watch from his coat to check the time. "There are still forty-seven minutes until departure. You have plenty of time."

Su Yu nodded. Just as he was about to walk toward the wall, a voice came from beside him.

"Oh, little one, are you still not awake?"

The voice carried a warm, maternal quality. Su Yu turned and saw a middle-aged red-haired woman walking toward him. A scattering of freckles dotted her face, and deep lines marked the corners of her mouth—the traces of a lifetime spent smiling.

"You shouldn't walk like that." The woman had already reached him and took his hand without hesitation. "You could get hurt. What if you walk into a pillar? What if you trip over a luggage trolley? Look at you, child, your eyes are practically closed."

Her hand was warm. There were rough calluses on her palm, marks left by years of housework.

Led forward by her hand, Su Yu stumbled two steps before rubbing his face hard. The warmth and firmness of her palm finally dragged his mind out of sleep. He blinked, and his vision cleared a little.

Only then did he see the whole family clearly.

The middle-aged red-haired woman—whose identity Su Yu had already determined—was clearly Molly Weasley. Behind her stood two identical boys, undoubtedly George and Fred. Beside them was a boy slightly shorter than Su Yu, also red-haired, with even more freckles than his mother. He held a plump rat with a rather shady appearance in his arms, his expression caught somewhere between nervousness and excitement. That had to be Ron.

And on the other side of Mrs. Weasley stood a little girl.

She looked younger than everyone else. Her hair was also red, though darker than her brothers', like autumn maple leaves soaked through by rain, hanging heavily over her shoulders. Her eyes were bright brown, and she was currently tilting her head up slightly to look at Su Yu with curious eyes.

"This child is so handsome." Mrs. Weasley held Su Yu's hand and looked him over, her voice full of admiration. "Look at those features—he looks as if he stepped straight out of a painting. Which family are you from? Why are you here by yourself? Where is your family?"

Before Su Yu could answer, George—or perhaps Fred—spoke from behind him.

"Did you see how cool he looked walking just now?" one of the twins exclaimed, his voice overflowing with exaggerated admiration.

"Yeah, yeah, his eyes half-closed, swaying around like he was doing some dance we haven't learned yet!" the other immediately added.

"I'm going to walk like that next time! It'll look amazing!"

"Right, right! Tomorrow we'll walk to breakfast like that. Everyone at school will be so surprised!"

The twins exchanged a glance, then both half-closed their eyes and began imitating Su Yu's dazed walk. George—if the one on the left was George—held both hands out in front of him and felt his way forward like a blind man. Fred tilted his head to one side, his mouth slightly open, his expression somewhere between sleepwalking and drunkenness.

They made it about five steps.

Then Fred's trolley crashed into a pillar.

The trolley was piled with six trunks, a cage, and a large bag of who-knew-what. After the impact, the entire thing wobbled as though drunk, then—with a crash—toppled to the floor. The trunks sprang open and clothes spilled everywhere. The cage door flew open, and an owl shrieked as it shot into the air, circled beneath the hall's vaulted ceiling, then landed on a beam and stared down at the mess with a look of deep reproach.

"George! Fred!" Mrs. Weasley's voice abruptly rose by several octaves, like an alarm suddenly going off. "You two—I have told you how many times! In public, you must—you must—good heavens, look at the mess you've made!"

The twins immediately snapped out of their "sleepwalking" act, their expressions switching from mischievous to we-are-very-sorry in an instant—a transformation so practiced that one had to suspect it had become muscle memory.

"Sorry, Mum—"

"We were just joking—"

"We'll clean it up right away—"

"Right away! Immediately! We're cleaning it up now!"

The two bent down and began stuffing things back onto the trolley in a frantic mess. Fred chased the owl halfway around the hall, but in the end Ginny simply held out an arm and gave a soft whistle. The owl obediently landed, looking at Ginny with injured eyes as if saying, It wasn't my fault. They started it.

"All right, all right." Mrs. Weasley drew a deep breath and turned back to Su Yu, her expression changing from fury to gentleness almost as fast as her sons' had. "I'm sorry you had to see that, child. Our family... well, you can see for yourself. With so many people, things get lively."

"It's all right," Su Yu said. His voice still carried a trace of sleep-roughness, but he was much more awake now. "Mrs. Weasley, right?"

Mrs. Weasley froze for a moment. "You know me?"

"Your family is one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight." Su Yu gave a slight bow, lazy but not impolite. "Carson, the Fawley family's butler, has mentioned you before. My name is Yu-Su-Fuli, but you can call me Su Yu."

"Fuli?" Mrs. Weasley's eyes brightened. "You're a child of the Fawley family? Oh my, I haven't seen anyone from the Fawley family in a long time. Your mother... I remember seeing her once when she was still a little girl. It was at a Malfoy family banquet. She wore a blue dress and stood quietly in a corner, like a—like a..."

Her words trailed off. Her expression shifted subtly—Su Yu could tell that she was recalling further details about his mother. Though the Fawley family was one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, they had almost completely vanished from the wizarding world's social circles over the past decade or so. Some said the Fawley family's last heir had eloped with an Eastern immortal, while others said there was still a child left in the family, though no one knew what that child looked like.

Mrs. Weasley clearly belonged to the group that knew something, but not everything. She opened her mouth as if she wanted to say more, but in the end she merely patted the back of Su Yu's hand and changed the subject. "Did you come alone? No one saw you off?"

"Carson is behind me." Su Yu pointed over his shoulder. "He helped—Carson?"

He turned around and found Carson standing three steps away, his expression completely unchanged, as though all the chaos that had just unfolded—the overturned trolley, the escaped owl, the twins' imitation show—had been entirely expected and perfectly normal. After all, it was nothing compared to the young master...

"Young master." Carson gave a slight bow.

"This is Carson," Su Yu introduced him to Mrs. Weasley. "The Fawley family's head butler. He takes care of everything."

Mrs. Weasley looked Carson over. With her eye—a mother's eye, honed by raising seven children—she immediately saw certain qualities in the butler. His quiet composure, his perfectly measured sense of distance, his restraint that never became discourtesy before anyone, yet never crossed into excessive familiarity either—he was a true old-fashioned British butler, and the sort that was nearly extinct.

"Hello, Mr. Carson." Mrs. Weasley nodded. "Thank you for taking care of this child."

"It is my duty, madam." Carson gave a small bow. "Although 'taking care of' would not be accurate. The young master is a very independent person. I merely handle the luggage."

Mrs. Weasley smiled, then turned to Ron beside her. "Ron, this is a child from the Fawley family. You should be in the same year."

Ron held his rat, and his freckles seemed even more obvious in his nervousness. He nodded at Su Yu, his lips moving, but no proper words came out. His rat—Scabbers, the plump rat—poked its head out from his arms, glanced at Su Yu with its small black eyes, then quickly tucked itself back in.

Su Yu noticed the rat.

He said nothing. He merely looked at it once, then shifted his gaze away.

Just then, another voice came from nearby.

"Excuse me... sorry to bother you..."

It was a boy's voice, carrying a hint of hesitation and nervousness.

Everyone turned.

A black-haired boy stood there. He wore a T-shirt obviously too large for him, the loose collar hanging open to reveal a thin stretch of neck. His hair was a mess, as though it had never met a comb—or perhaps it had, but the hair itself refused to cooperate. Round glasses sat on his nose, and behind the lenses were bright emerald-green eyes, currently looking with confusion and expectation at the seemingly ordinary brick wall before him.

He was pushing a trolley too, though it carried pitifully little luggage—just an old leather trunk that looked as though it had been used for years, and a cage tied with rope. Inside stood a snow-white owl, observing everything around it with elegant indifference.

That was Harry Potter.

Mrs. Weasley reacted faster than anyone. She stepped forward and warmly took Harry's hand.

"Oh, dear," she said, with even more warmth in her voice than she had shown Su Yu, "is this your first time at King's Cross Station? Do you not know how to get onto the platform?"

Harry nodded, some of the tension leaving his face. "I... yes. I've been looking for ages, but I still couldn't figure it out. I saw a lot of people walk up to that wall and then... disappear, but..."

"That's Platform Nine and Three-Quarters." Mrs. Weasley smiled. "See, that wall there. You just run straight at it. Don't be afraid, don't stop, and don't run too fast."

She turned to Ron. "Ron, show him."

Ron's face reddened. Holding Scabbers, he pushed his trolley up to the wall and took a deep breath—then walked forward at an unhurried pace. The instant he touched the brick wall, he vanished, like a drop of ink falling into water, silent and without a trace.

"See?" Mrs. Weasley patted Harry's shoulder. "Go on, child. Don't be afraid."

Harry nodded. He gripped the trolley handle and walked toward the wall. His steps were hesitant at first, but by the third step, they had become firm—and then he disappeared as well.

"All right." Mrs. Weasley turned to Su Yu. "You should get over there too, child. Ron and Harry are waiting for you on the other side."

Su Yu nodded. He turned to Carson.

Carson had already pushed the trolley in front of him. He took out a list from his pocket and began checking it item by item—with the utterly situation-blind seriousness unique to butlers.

"Young master, all of your larger luggage trunks have already been checked in. Your wand is in the concealed pocket on your right. The Azure Phoenix's cage is on top of your luggage, covered with a light-blocking cloth. Remember to remove it after you arrive at school."

"All right, Carson." Su Yu began rolling his eyes.

"Your Hogwarts acceptance letter is in the left pocket of your outer robe. You will need to present it when you register. Your—"

"I know, Carson."

"—Galleons and Sickles have been placed in three separate pouches. The heaviest pouch contains the Galleons. Please—"

"All right, Carson."

Carson raised his head and looked at Su Yu. Su Yu looked back at Carson. The two held each other's gaze for around three seconds.

"Young master," Carson said, "whenever you say 'I know,' it usually means you know the least."

"This time, I really know, Carson."

"You said the same thing last time, young master."

"This time is different."

Carson fell silent for a while, then folded the list and put it back in his pocket. He took one step back and gave a slight bow.

"Then I wish you all the best at Hogwarts, young master."

"Mm." Su Yu gripped the trolley handle. "Go back, Carson. Don't stand around in the station. It'll be boring."

"As you command, young master."

Carson straightened, turned, and walked toward the station hall. He took three steps, then stopped and looked back.

"Young master."

"Mm?"

"...Remember to eat on time."

Su Yu froze for a moment. Then he smiled.

"I know, Carson."

This time, when he said "I know," his tone was different from before.

Carson seemed to hear the difference too. He said nothing else, turned around, and disappeared into the crowd.

Su Yu took a deep breath. Just as he was about to push his trolley toward the wall, a voice came from beside him.

"—Hermione! How many times have I told you? Don't forget a young lady's manners just because you're too excited!"

It was a woman's voice, helpless, trying to sound stern but unable to manage it. Su Yu turned and saw a scene that made him look twice.

A little girl with a thick mass of bushy brown curls stood not far away. Her hair was like a cloud scattered by the wind, puffed out in every direction. Her dark brown eyes sparkled as though someone had lit two little lamps inside them. She held a thick book in her arms—Su Yu glanced at its cover. It was Hogwarts: A History.

In front of her stood a middle-aged woman—clearly her mother—while beside her stood a middle-aged man with his hands spread, his expression perfectly embodying the phrase there's nothing I can do either.

"But Mum," the little girl said in a voice full of curiosity, "I'm only excited..."

"Hermione," her mother interrupted, "walk over quietly. Don't stand there shouting."

"But—"

"Hermione."

"...All right, Mum."

The little girl—Hermione Granger, without question—finally closed her mouth, though her expression clearly showed that while her mouth had stopped, her brain was still racing along at a hundred miles an hour.

She pushed her trolley toward the wall. Halfway there, she seemed to sense something and turned around.

Her eyes met Su Yu's in the air.

Su Yu did not look away. He merely stood there with one hand holding the trolley handle.

Hermione looked at him for two seconds—and during those two seconds, Su Yu could feel her bright brown eyes swiftly inspecting him from head to toe. Then she did something that surprised him slightly.

She turned around and walked toward him.

She stopped in front of Su Yu and held out a hand.

"Hello," she said, her voice as clear as a crystal glass being tapped. "My name is Hermione Granger. Are you going to Hogwarts too?"

Su Yu looked down at her outstretched hand, then reached out and shook it.

"Yu-Su-Fuli," he said. "You can call me Su Yu."

"Su Yu," Hermione repeated, pronouncing his name with surprising accuracy. "Are you from Eastern University? Your name sounds Eastern. I saw an introduction to Eastern University's magical system in the appendix of A History of Magic. It was only three pages long, but I thought those three pages were far too brief. Do you know how Eastern University's magic differs from ours? What are their wands made of? Are their spells based on Latin too? Do they—"

"Hermione!" her mother called from behind, her voice filled with a helpless warning.

Hermione stuck out her tongue—that motion finally made her look like an eleven-year-old girl—but she showed no intention of stopping. She lowered her voice, though her speaking speed did not slow in the slightest.

"Sorry, my mum always says I shouldn't ask too many questions at once, but I just can't help it. You see, this is the first time I've met an—an Eastern person connected to magic." She paused, apparently choosing her words. "I mean, no one I know has ever been to Eastern University, and no one knows what its magic is like. I read in Hogwarts: A History that several Eastern University wizards once came to Hogwarts as exchange scholars, but that was more than two hundred years ago. Do you know anything about those exchange scholars? Have you—"

"Hermione," Su Yu finally said. His voice was not loud, but it stopped her cold. "You're asking so many questions that I can't answer them all at once."

Hermione's face reddened slightly. "Sorry, I—"

"However," Su Yu continued, "I can tell you a few things. First, Eastern University's magical system really is different from ours. They place more emphasis on the use of qi rather than the chanting of spells. Second, their wands... well, they don't use wands. That might differ somewhat from Mr. Ollivander's ideas. Third, their spells aren't in Latin. Most are in ancient Chinese, or in some even older oracle-bone symbols."

Hermione's eyes lit up as if someone had flipped a switch. Her mouth fell slightly open.

"You really—you really know all that?" Her voice trembled slightly with excitement. "Have you studied Eastern University's magic? Did you—"

"Hermione!" her mother called again, this time with genuine sternness in her voice. "You haven't even entered the platform yet! Stop pestering the poor boy with questions!"

Hermione's face went completely red. She turned and waved toward her mother. "Coming, Mum! I'm coming right away!" Then she turned back to Su Yu with an expression that clearly said, We aren't finished talking yet.

Su Yu smiled. He noticed the Nine-Tailed Fox rolling her eyes dramatically in the soul space.

"That human is noisy and annoying," the Nine-Tailed Fox's voice rang through Su Yu's mind, with undisguised disdain. "How is she even louder than you?"

"She's just enthusiastic," Su Yu replied in his mind.

"Enthusiastic?" The Nine-Tailed Fox sneered. "That's called babbling. I spent a thousand years inside the seal, and the noisiest sounds I ever heard still weren't as bad as what she said in those five minutes. She says more by herself than Carson says in a month."

"That's because Carson doesn't like talking."

"No, it's because normal people don't act like her—like—" The Nine-Tailed Fox seemed to search for the right word. "—like her little mouth just keeps yapping!"

"We should get inside quickly," Su Yu said to Hermione, his tone gentle but firm. "If the train leaves soon, we won't be able to get to school."

Hermione's eyes instantly widened.

"Oh! You're right!" She turned and ran toward her parents, speaking so fast it sounded like a tongue twister. "Mum Dad I'm going in now don't worry I'll write to you you don't need to see me off I'm going in!"

Pushing her trolley, she charged at the wall without looking back. Her mother called out something behind her, but Hermione had already vanished into the brick wall like a stone shot from a slingshot—fast, accurate, and carrying an air that said no one could stop her.

Su Yu shook his head and pushed his trolley toward the wall at an unhurried pace.