Owls and School

Before Aya had even opened her eyes, she heard a bird calling right beside her.

It was closer and clearer than any other bird, and it startled her into sitting bolt upright, nearly falling out of the tree. A brown owl was perched in front of her, tilting its head and studying her with wide eyes.

Breakfast today?

That was Aya's first thought as she looked at the plump owl.

She had never eaten a bird before. Would it taste better than rabbit?

The owl seemed to sense the strange, somewhat hungry look in Aya's eyes. Its feathers slowly puffed up, and it flapped back two steps before extending a talon, a letter attached to its leg.

"...For me?" Aya blinked in confusion. Looking at the very human object, she hesitantly reached out and took it. The envelope was made of yellowed paper of some material she didn't recognize, and an exquisite wax seal held it shut. Beneath the seal, the address was written in green ink: Galloway Forest, northern area, middle-to-upper reaches of the river, in a Scots pine, to Miss Friendly Aya.

Aya propped herself up and glanced at the ID on her character panel-Friendly Aya. Players had told her an ID like that would increase the drop rate of blind boxes. Once she had settled into a better sitting position, she reached out and opened the envelope.

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?" Aya looked at the elaborate emblem at the top of the page. It was made up of four colors, and the text beneath it was written in English.

Aya didn't understand English, but she had the system's language plugin, so she read on without difficulty.

"Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, Supreme Mugwump, Grand Sorcerer, First Class, Order of Merlin, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot... Sorcerer? Wizard? School?" Aya felt as though question marks were about to pop up over her head.

She had heard the word "school" before. After all, players ranged widely in age, from students to corporate drones. Aya had been conscious for over two years and had encountered players who went to school, but she had never thought going to school would have anything to do with her. She was a game character! A mage, and not even human!

Where she came from, people were born directly into sects. With the system's help, everyone quickly learned all the knowledge they needed. As long as they had enough to keep themselves entertained when their players were offline, most people didn't want to learn much more, and they didn't need much more either.

So when she received the letter and saw the sentence further down, "We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," she blinked and thought nothing of it.

She didn't need to go to school.

Aya looked up at the owl waiting obediently for her, feeling a little tempted. It really did look rather plump.

Just as Aya was about to reach out with her wicked hands, the game system, which had been unresponsive ever since she arrived in this unfamiliar place, popped up with a quest-

[Enrollment: Life in another world begins with learning about this world. Please enroll at Hogwarts on September 1.]

The quest came out of nowhere, but Aya's eyes lit up. Player!

Would her player come too?

Aya tapped the quest list several times, but every prompt that appeared said, "Please complete enrollment."

There was no sensation of being controlled, no notification that her player had logged in, nothing at all.

Aya waited for two hours. Even the owl, which her gaze had frightened away, impatiently pecked her several times before she slowly unfolded the letter again and saw the request for a reply at the bottom. Had she become a player?

She had no pen, so she laboriously broke off a twig and burned part of it. Using the freshly made charcoal, she wrote a few large words, copying them stroke by stroke. She looked at the system prompt, found the two words for enrollment, and wrote them at the bottom of the page, leaving a few smears of charcoal dust as well.

She returned the letter to the owl, which flapped away without looking back. Aya sat in the tree feeling sad for a while before climbing down with Xiaohua. The bird was gone, but she could still catch fish.

The sudden letter had given her empty quest list a purpose, and Aya was in a fairly good mood now. She was used to doing things with a goal in mind: making money, running dungeons, completing quests, enhancing equipment... These were all things her player taught her to do every day. She had been like this since she was born. From the first second she opened her eyes until she came to this world, her quest list had never been empty.

So this one lonely quest gave Aya a sense of security.

Watching Xiaohua jump into the water to catch fish, Aya built a fire by the river. The damp wood crackled and popped, but Aya kept her eyes fixed on Xiaohua in the water.

"Got one!" Aya cheered, though her expression still barely changed.

Xiaohua tore the head off the struggling fish before placing it in front of Aya. Aya took it happily, skinned and gutted it as she had the rabbit, then rinsed it where the river water was clear and set it over the fire to roast.

The fishy smell was already making Aya's mouth water. Before, she had not only been unable to eat those beautiful-looking delicacies, she hadn't even been able to smell them.

Once the aroma of cooked fish began to spread, Aya carefully placed it on a clean leaf and paced back and forth beside it, anxiously waiting for it to become cool enough to eat.

She tested the temperature with her finger. It seemed ready, so Aya carefully separated a piece of fish with her clean hands and popped it into her mouth.

Delicious!

She loved it!

She wanted more!

Before she had finished the fish, Xiaohua was back in the water.

By the time Aya was eating her second fish, she realized her stomach didn't seem to have room for any more. It felt uncomfortably full. Xiaohua had grown smaller and was warming herself by the fire, trying to dry her soaking wet fur.

Aya put the third fish, which was still roasting, and the fourth, which had already been beheaded, into her backpack. She stretched and caught the fishy smell on her hands. After a moment's thought, she decided to jump into the river for a bath. She didn't actually think she was dirty; after all, she had never needed to bathe before. It was mainly because she had noticed that her ears and tail felt uncomfortable, covered in dust from the past few days of surviving in the wild, and she planned to wash them.

"If I were you, I wouldn't choose to get into a river out in the wild." A cold voice sounded behind Aya. Her eyes widened in fright, her tail puffed up, and she spun around to see a person dressed entirely in black standing behind her.

People like that were all villains where she came from!

The thought that she was only level five made Aya instinctively turn and run, but she had only gone a few meters when she felt herself lift into the air. Then someone caught her by the back of her collar.

"Let go of me!" Aya struggled and shouted, "Xiaohua!"

The gray-and-white tabby cat, who had been crouching motionless by the fire, suddenly grew enormous. Standing nearly as tall as the man, she charged at him.

A summoner normally wouldn't have been afraid of this kind of control skill. In Aya's view, only red names struck first. But half her skill panel was grayed out now, and she had no skills to break the control effect, so she could only have Xiaohua attack him.

Sharp claws slashed fiercely at the man. His eyes widened slightly, and he quickly pulled a wand from inside his robes. "Protego!"

The claws struck an invisible barrier, throwing sparks. The attack didn't break the shield, but that was all right. Xiaohua's second swipe followed quickly.

"Call it off! You fool, I'm the professor here to fetch you!" the man snarled, maintaining a steady output of magic.

"What professor?" Aya frowned and strained to look up, seeing black hair and black eyes like her own. "Put me down!"

"Snape, the Potions Class professor at Hogwarts." Snape released his grip and put down the struggling, black-haired Half-blood. She had beastfolk features; perhaps she was another product of a failed experiment?

Snape thought maliciously.

"Potions?" Once on the ground, Aya hurried over to Xiaohua before turning back to glare at the newcomer. "You attacked me first!"

"I attacked you?" Snape frowned and looked around. "Enough. Stop wasting my precious time with nonsense. I have to take you to buy your school supplies."

"What school supplies?" Aya wondered. Was he talking about the owl she had just sent off?

"Your school supplies." Snape twirled his wand, unwilling to say more. If Dumbledore hadn't asked him to come and fetch her personally, he wouldn't have wanted this assignment either. The old bee had said that most of the school's professors were getting on in years and weren't suited to an off-road challenge.

So the task had fallen to Snape, the only one who was still reasonably young. His schedule had already been full today, and because of this assignment, he had even had to ask Sprout to keep an eye on his cauldron!

He sized up the little mud-covered child, whose face was expressionless but whose eyes were full of wariness. Mud spots and stains covered her clothes, along with traces of plant sap. She wasn't even wearing shoes!

"Hogwarts? The owl this morning?" Aya relaxed a little and looked up to ask. The system quest had produced a small subquest: follow Severus Snape to Diagon Alley to buy school supplies.

This professor was really tall, though. Aya felt she had to tilt her head about as far back to look at him as she did with those tall, thin humans.

"Yes, Miss Friendly Aya. What is your surname?" Snape raised an eyebrow. Looking at the filthy child, he didn't know where to begin for a moment, so he asked whatever came to mind.

The Book of Admittance at Hogwarts recorded students' true names, so when this strange name had suddenly appeared a few days ago, Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall had both noticed it at once. A name with no surname and an adjective attached to it-how unusual.

"Surname?" Aya was confused. "That's just my name. Everyone calls me Aya. Is my surname... Friendly?"

"Better not." Snape took a few steps forward and reluctantly persuaded himself to place a hand on Aya's shoulder, which was covered in cat hair. "If you're bringing your cat, hold it properly." He glanced several times at the cat, who seemed remarkably intelligent. But from her appearance, she looked entirely like a Muggle pet, with no trace of a magical creature. Still, she could grow and shrink, and her claws were very sharp, which interested him somewhat.

Xiaohua shrank, gripped Aya's clothes, and climbed up to perch on her shoulder. "Ready."

"I expect you to address me as Professor or sir," Snape said coldly.

"Ready, Professor." Aya understood. It was a job title, just like the raid leader they had when running dungeons. Snape was a squad leader at the school.

The world spun around her. Aya felt as though she was about to throw up the roasted fish she had just eaten, but she couldn't bear to, so she covered her mouth and fought back the nausea. It took quite a while for her to recover. When she looked up again, she saw a street bustling with people.

So many NPCs!

Aya watched curiously.

This place was very different. Aya hadn't seen a single thing that was exactly the same, so she stared at the pedestrians coming and going along the street, studying their appearances. None of them were the same either!

"Very well, your-oh, right, you sent your acceptance letter away." Snape looked with distaste at the little nuisance glancing around in every direction. "Stay close. I don't want to get you to our destination, only to turn around and find you've been swept away in the crowd."

"All right, Professor." Aya was especially obedient when someone was giving her instructions.

She followed closely at Snape's heels. As they passed Gringotts, he paused. "I think you might need the school's allowance?"

It was an allowance Hogwarts provided for students whose families were in severe financial difficulty. They only had to pay it back after graduation. It was usually a hundred Galleons, covering the cost of all their books for the next seven years.

"Allowance?" Aya asked in confusion, turning her head in the direction he was looking. She saw a snow-white building that stood out strikingly on the somewhat old-fashioned street.

"Money. Gold coins. Galleons." Snape turned toward the bank, only to find his robes being tugged. He looked down and saw a gleaming Galleon in the little mud-covered child's hand, along with a muddy handprint on his black robes.

"Is it this?" Aya asked.

"...Where did you get that?" Snape took the Galleon and examined it. It was genuine.

"From my backpack!" Aya said. Everyone had one, and she gave Snape a puzzled look.

"How much do you have?" Snape didn't think much of it, assuming she had a pocket with an Undetectable Extension Charm on it. He tossed the coin back to her and asked, "School supplies will cost somewhere between twenty and fifty Galleons. How much do you have?"

Aya opened her backpack and glanced inside. "One hundred and fifty-eight gold coins, eighty-two silver coins, and fifty-three copper coins."

"That's enough. Come on."

With Snape efficiently leading the way, the dusty little Aya went back and forth through Diagon Alley, but no one paid her any attention. Whenever Snape bought something, he tossed it to her, and she promptly put it in her backpack. The two made their way along with ease, until Madam Malkin stopped them at their second-to-last stop.

"Merlin! Child, you really should clean yourself up!" exclaimed the short, plump witch in purple robes. "Professor Snape, you've let her run around Diagon Alley with you barefoot for all this time?"

"...I was accompanying her." Snape's face darkened.

"Well, perhaps that doesn't matter. Come along..." Madam Malkin beckoned to Aya. She readily accepted the cat ears on Aya's head; after running a shop in Diagon Alley for so long, what hadn't she seen? "Come round the back and have a wash. Poor thing, child, how did you get into such a state?"

At a loss, Aya looked back at Snape. She didn't know whether she should go.

"Go," Snape said through gritted teeth.

Completely satisfied, Aya obediently followed Madam Malkin toward the back of the shop. Before leaving, Madam Malkin told Snape he could go out and look around. "Some of the mud on this little one has even caked on!" Her expression was reproachful.

Snape turned away in resentment, planning to buy some Potions ingredients at the materials shop at the end of the street. He could have gotten rid of that little mudball in another fifteen minutes at most!