"Finally finished!"
Allen slumped over his desk, his face pale.
On the desk lay the last page of the manuscript he had written:
["They don't know we're not allowed to use magic at home. This summer, I'm going to have a lot of fun with Dudley..."]
That was right. It was none other than the first installment of the famous Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
Allen Vane.
He was actually a transmigrator.
Ten days earlier, he had transmigrated to London, Great Britain, in 1991.
And he had awakened the [Harry Potter Plagiarism System].
Although he himself could not remember every single word of Harry Potter,
the system would transmit the entire contents of one installment into his mind each year.
And once he finished writing it, the system would help him publish it.
After successful publication, the system would reward him based on the response.
[Successfully detected the "creation" of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone] [Publish?]
"Yes!"
Allen spoke without hesitation.
He had not dared slack off for even a moment over the past ten days, writing more than twenty thousand characters a day. It had practically worked him to death.
But once this book was published, the royalties would surely earn him a fortune.
Not to mention the mysterious reward from the system.
Just thinking about it made him a little excited.
The next moment, the manuscript on his desk turned into a streak of white light and vanished.
[Successfully published Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (first half)]
"Huh? Only half?"
Allen did not understand.
[The second half will be published at an appropriate time]
The system replied.
Allen nodded. Too tired to give it any more thought, he flopped onto his bed and began snoring away.
Meanwhile, a solitary lamp still burned in Christopher Little's office.
Fifty-seven-year-old Christopher rubbed his aching brow. The coffee in front of him had long since gone cold.
More than thirty submissions were piled on his desk. He had spent the entire afternoon reading, and not one had kept him going as far as the third page.
He sighed and began preparing to pack up and go home.
Just then, he suddenly caught sight of an unfamiliar manuscript at the corner of his desk.
Huh? Have I read this submission?
He slowly put on his reading glasses and examined the manuscript.
The top page was a cover, bearing only a single line:
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (first eight chapters)
Christopher frowned. He really did not remember seeing this manuscript.
"...Interesting."
Muttering to himself, he sat back down.
He had intended to toss the manuscript straight into the wastebasket along with the other submissions, but a quick look would not take much time anyway.
Out of his love of literature and his professional integrity as a literary agent, he casually turned to the first page, intending to skim a couple of lines before putting it down.
[The Dursleys, who lived at 4 Privet Drive, were always proud to say that they were a perfectly normal family, thank you very much...]
He raised his eyebrows. The opening introduced the main characters, but it was nothing remarkable.
[They had never had anything to do with strange and mysterious things, because they did not believe in any of that nonsense.]
Oh? This contrast seems to suggest that they're bound to encounter something strange.
The cover says "Philosopher's Stone," so this story should have something to do with magic.
Drawing the reader in with the very first paragraph? This author has some skill.
Christopher sat a little straighter and continued reading.
The third sentence, the fourth, the fifth...
Before he knew it, Christopher had turned to the second page, then the third...
By the time he finally looked up from the manuscript, the rain outside had stopped at some point.
Beside his cup of cold coffee sat a fresh cup of hot coffee. His assistant had come in at some point to replace it, and he had not noticed at all.
"Merlin's beard!"
Christopher murmured words he himself had not even realized he was saying.
He had become so engrossed in the book that he had unconsciously picked up the characters' exclamation of astonishment.
His fingers trembled slightly, and an unprecedented surge of excitement rushed through his mind.
The last time he had felt anything like this had been more than a decade ago.
A boy living with his aunt received an acceptance letter delivered by an owl on his eleventh birthday...
A magical world hidden between platforms nine and ten at a London railway station...
Moving portraits, a talking Sorting Hat, wizards casting spells with wands...
It all seemed to have been plucked straight out of a child's dream.
But what struck Christopher most was the way the book told its story.
There was not a trace of affectation. The language was as clean as the air after rain, every word landing exactly where it belonged.
This simply did not seem like something a novice author could write!
He turned to the final page of the manuscript. The story stopped at a gripping moment-
[Harry felt that after an afternoon of tea with Hagrid, he had far more to think about than he had during the past few days of classes:
Had Hagrid retrieved that little package in time? Where was it now? Did Hagrid know something about Snape that he was unwilling to tell him?]
"That's it?"
Christopher blurted out, his voice carrying a hint of irritation.
He turned over the last page to make sure. There really was nothing more, only a line of small writing on the back:
"Author: Allen Vane. Contact information: none at present. Please send royalties to-13 Baker Street."
Christopher stared silently at the words "Contact information: none at present."
No telephone? Could this author be very poor?
But someone truly poor could never have written so many of the scenes in this book. Perhaps this Allen Vane is an author whose family has fallen on hard times?
He had no way to contact Allen except for an address he had never heard of, and that address did not even sound like a real place.
Baker Street? He doubted there was a place by that name anywhere in Great Britain.
That meant contact could only go one way. He could not reach out to the author himself.
But this book-
He had to sign this book.
Christopher stood and paced back and forth across his office.
He had been a literary agent for twenty years and had handled more than a hundred books, including Booker Prize nominees and bestsellers, but he had not been this excited in a very long time.
So long that he had almost forgotten how it felt, like opening a good book for the first time and being drawn into it completely, until everything around him ceased to exist.
This book possessed that peculiar magic.
He sat back down at his desk, picked up a pen, and swiftly scribbled several lines on a sticky note before pressing the intercom button.
A moment later, his assistant poked her head in, still looking very sleepy.
"Cancel all my appointments for tomorrow morning," Christopher said without looking up.
"Then contact Barry Cunningham at Bloomsbury Publishing. Tell him I have a book he needs to see. It's extremely urgent."
His assistant blinked. "Barry Cunningham? But it's the middle of the night-"
"Oh, right. Never mind, I'll go and see him myself tomorrow," Christopher interrupted her, a faint smile finally appearing on his face.
"Also, look up an address for me. 13 Baker Street."
"I know you may never have heard of it, but I need you to use every resource you have to find it, even if it doesn't exist on the map."
Looking bewildered, his assistant wrote down the address. She was about to leave the office when he called her back.
"One more thing."
"Sir?"
Christopher tapped his fingers lightly against the stack of manuscript pages on his desk, looking thoughtful.
"If someone named Allen Vane calls," he said slowly, "put him through immediately, no matter what I'm doing."
"Allen Vane?"
"You'll know that name," Christopher said, picking up the manuscript again and turning back to the first page.
His gaze seemed to settle on the little boy in the book, the one with round glasses and a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, as he said softly:
"Very soon, the whole world will know it."
After his assistant left, Christopher sat alone in his office, looking out at the deep darkness beyond the window.
"Allen Vane," he murmured to himself, his voice carrying a measure of curiosity and a barely perceptible trace of awe. "Who exactly are you?"