Life

For summoners, a profession exclusive to the spirit race, there were two weapons: giant cats that served as summons, and the staffs they wielded.

As summons, giant cats were weapons that acted as their summoners wished. They could be offered up or sacrificed and were beings of pure energy. The strength of their attacks and defenses depended entirely on the summoner's own power. They were the purest manifestation of power.

"A weapon?" Dumbledore's eyes widened slightly in surprise. He had thought that, if not a pet, he might receive an innocent child's answer like a companion or a friend.

"That's right. Xiaohua is my most important weapon, but my level isn't high enough for me to use her fully right now," Aya said. She wasn't making it up. Her level had dropped from one hundred and twenty-five to just the last digit, and more than half of the skills she could once use had grayed out. Apart from a few basic attacks, she couldn't use any of them. Otherwise, when Snape caught her yesterday, she could have used a skill to escape.

After all, summoners had more crowd-control escape skills than most other professions. Moreover, after arriving in this world, Aya had found that her skills no longer had cooldowns. The only thing still stopping her from using them was the amount of internal energy she had.

"Would you mind telling me about your, your companion?" Dumbledore conjured a handful of sweets and offered them to Aya, looking rather like someone trying to trick a child.

Rejecting free things wasn't in Aya's vocabulary. She accepted the sweets curiously and, after examining them, realized they were edible. They looked much like the quest items from the system's old large-scale events.

She unwrapped the pretty paper and put the sweet in her mouth. A sweet, fragrant flavor greeted her. She gave it a little bite and found it rather hard, so she obediently held it in her mouth and waited for it to melt. Her answer to Dumbledore came out muffled. "Xiaohua was the one the sect leader let me choose when I was studying at the sect. She was also the only living thing I took with me when I left."

"A living thing?" Dumbledore repeated the phrase noncommittally. "What about the others in your sect?"

"They all died."

"...I'm sorry." Dumbledore lowered his voice.

"It's nothing," Aya said mildly. She was actually in a fairly good mood, with something so delicious in her mouth, and she didn't take it to heart at all. Besides, it was something every character went through; it wasn't special. "Most people where we're from are like that." Most of the people she encountered were other characters controlled by players, and their experiences were the same as hers. The NPCs' backstories weren't much better, either.

Dumbledore was genuinely shocked. What sort of place could have so many orphans?

"Where you're from..." Dumbledore paused. "How did you live before?" He still wanted to find out more about Aya's life.

"How did I live?" Aya sounded puzzled. "Fighting, running around, working hard for quests and gold coins? Sometimes the person controlling me wasn't there, and I could relax a little."

Dumbledore's pupils trembled. What did she mean, the person controlling her?!

Was there somewhere so dark in the wizarding world?

She was still a child!

Fighting—was that something a child should be talking about?

Aya wasn't someone who could read people's expressions. After all, the NPCs she used to know only opened and closed their mouths; they never had expressions to begin with. So she paid Dumbledore's strange reaction no mind.

"I think it's really nice here! I've been here for days, and I haven't experienced a single casualty!" Aya said brightly. The creatures she had met in the forest were all ordinary animals, and none of the humans she had encountered had made a move to hurt anyone. That was incredibly rare where she came from. "Now this is living~"

"C-casualties?!" Dumbledore's expression darkened. "Child, where did you come from?" If there were casualties every day and they had been concealed so thoroughly that no one had discovered them, then the culprit's influence was certainly not to be underestimated.

"I don't know." Aya shook her head. "Maybe I was abandoned? When I woke up again, I was already in the forest. It's very different from where we're from." She remembered her guess. It was the only idea she had that could explain why the player had stopped controlling her.

"..." Dumbledore was speechless, unsure how to continue questioning her. He silently watched Aya play with the sweet wrappers. There was little expression on the young witch's youthful face, but her eyes were clear and full of innocence. He grabbed another handful of sweets for her.

"Thank you, sir." Aya cupped both hands to receive them, curiously turning each sweet over for a look.

Dumbledore's thoughts raced. He guessed that Aya might be a war orphan who had been forced to take up arms before a kind person sent her away from the battlefield. By some special means, she had acquired an identity recognized by the British wizarding world, which was why she had appeared in Hogwarts' Book of Admittance.

Such a young child.

Dumbledore sighed.

"May I take you home, Miss Hawthorne?" Dumbledore stood, his tall figure blocking some of the sunlight as he looked down and asked.

"Thank you?" Aya hesitated. She still wanted another ice cream. "I don't want to go home yet."

"As the headmaster of Hogwarts, I think I ought to fulfill my duty to look after my students, don't you?" Dumbledore said with a smile.

Aya was a little confused. She had never been to school, so she wasn't sure whether this was a necessary part of the process. After hesitating for a while, she looked at the enrollment quest on her list, then got up and led Dumbledore home.

Dumbledore had to turn sideways to squeeze through the gap between the two houses at the end of the alley. Looking at the house hidden among the abandoned buildings and protected by concealment charms, he thought, for once, that Severus could be rather considerate.

"We're home." Aya's tail swished. This was her own house, and that knowledge put her in a good mood.

"Sorry to intrude." Dumbledore was tall, and his entrance made the little house feel even more cramped. He looked around at the furniture, all of it left behind by the previous owner.

"You are intruding a little," Aya replied, sitting down on the sofa.

Dumbledore chuckled and examined the little house. He cast several strengthening charms on it and added a few more protective spells, then left a bag of sweets on the coffee table in the living room before saying goodbye and departing.

Aya didn't know what the eccentric headmaster had done in her house. All she saw was the old headmaster waving his wand, then teleporting away with a smile.

Still, since he had given her sweets, Aya's opinion of him was currently second only to her opinion of Snape and Madam Malkin.

Now that she was home, though, Aya didn't plan to go straight back out. Thanks to the sweets and ice cream, she wasn't hungry at all. She looked at the calendar on the cabinet, a free gift she had received when she bought daily necessities yesterday. It was August 2, a month before school started.

Xiaohua stretched and lay down in a sunny spot, purring lazily. Aya counted the days, wondering how many more delicious things she could eat in Diagon Alley.

Over the next month, Dumbledore came several more times. He noticed that Aya lacked some common sense and sent a House-elf over to teach her.

"Headmaster, are you staying for a meal today?" Aya asked. Duoduo, the House-elf, was frying steak in the simple kitchen on the first floor.

"Miss Hawthorne, you should use the respectful form of 'you' when addressing Headmaster Dumbledore," Duoduo corrected her in a shrill voice.

"All right. Respectful you, are you staying for a meal today?"

"No, no!" Duoduo shrieked. "It's 'Headmaster, are you staying for a meal today?' with the respectful form!"

"All right, you respectables are really troublesome," Aya obediently corrected herself.

"No-!" Duoduo tugged at her ears and thumped her head against the floor. "It's just 'you'! There's no plural respectful form!"

Aya scrunched up her face and turned to Dumbledore, who was watching her with a smile.

"Oh, Miss Hawthorne, you can use the respectful form of 'you' when addressing your elders. It's a way to show respect," Dumbledore said.

Aya didn't want to speak anymore. She sat down on a stool in a huff and waited for the steak for lunch to be cooked and served.

"I won't stay for a meal," Dumbledore said with a smile. "After all, an old man like me may have rather different tastes from children like you. Duoduo will look after you during the holidays. Is that all right?"

Aya stared at him for a while before saying softly, "All right, sir. Thank you."

"That's it!" Duoduo clapped her hands and brought out the steaming steak. "Please enjoy, Miss!"

Dumbledore smiled and left.

Life with a House-elf to look after her was very comfortable. Duoduo even bathed and groomed Xiaohua. She seemed to love the cat, who neither resisted nor refused to be petted. Whenever Xiaohua grew big and slept with Aya, Duoduo even wanted to defy her instincts and cuddle up to them.

Aya didn't mind, but Duoduo always kept within bounds. Though her eyes shone whenever she looked at Aya and Xiaohua, she never overstepped beyond grooming Xiaohua.

Aya's common knowledge grew rapidly as well. She hadn't encountered any invisible walls in this world, so for a long while afterward, she spent her time slipping out of Diagon Alley and roaming the Muggle streets. Of course, Duoduo made her wear a hat and hide her tail, and followed Aya invisibly as they roamed the Muggle world together.

Aya's favorite thing was to squat outside a television shop and watch Tom and Jerry playing in the window. She kept it up for three days, stopping only after she had watched the entire series. The shop owner thought Aya was cute and gave her biscuits; even Xiaohua got two little dried fish, though Aya ended up eating them.

Aya absolutely loved the food in this world. She liked every single thing she tried.

"Miss Hawthorne, you mustn't accept food from strangers. It isn't safe," Duoduo nagged at Aya's side. "Bad people might poison the food and then hurt children!"

Duoduo's words went in one ear and out the other. What danger could there be in food? Aya still had antidotes in her backpack!

Food had done nothing wrong!

"Miss Hawthorne, you mustn't rummage through rubbish heaps. That's bad behavior," Duoduo called anxiously, following her.

"But I want to eat at a restaurant here. If I don't search the rubbish, I won't have any money," Aya explained. After coming out, she had discovered that the people outside were called Muggles, as opposed to wizards. Muggles were humans who couldn't use magic. They didn't know the wizarding world existed, and their currency was different from wizards', so she couldn't spend Galleons here.

"You won't find pounds in the rubbish either!" Duoduo wanted to pull Aya away, but her nature made her unable to disobey the young witch's orders.

"Didn't I just find some?" Aya had searched five glowing spots before finding Muggle currency. She held it up for Duoduo to see. To Duoduo, it looked as though Aya had pulled perfectly clean pounds out of the rubbish heap, leaving her momentarily dumbfounded.

"I need to find a few more. Then I'll have enough." Aya continued looking for glowing spots. Duoduo stopped trying to stop her and merely cast Scourgify on her several times in distress whenever she got her clothes dirty.

Thanks to her skill at rummaging through rubbish, Aya's gold coins hadn't increased, but she now had a slot in her backpack for Muggle currency. She took Xiaohua and Duoduo on a feasting spree through the Muggle world. But the Muggle world was so vast that several times Aya couldn't find her way back to Diagon Alley, and Duoduo teleported her back. She said it was a teleportation spell called Apparition, which young witches and wizards couldn't learn until they were nearly adults.

Aya was a little disappointed that she hadn't found any teleportation points in this world, but with Duoduo around, it didn't make much difference.

On the last day of August, Aya leaned against an enlarged Xiaohua and played with a Muggle toy while watching Duoduo bustle around packing her luggage. Her only clothes were her school uniform, but she also needed to prepare some warm things, textbooks, notebooks, parchment, quills, and ink. Aya had left them at home while playing in the Muggle world because they took up too many backpack slots. Duoduo packed them all into the trunk, along with a large box of daily necessities.

"I'll put it in my backpack and take it with me," Aya said.

"There's no need. Duoduo can take it back to school for Aya." After Aya had asked repeatedly, Duoduo had finally agreed to call her by the name she was most used to.

"Will you still look after me at school?" Aya asked. She had grown rather fond of the thoughtful House-elf. Most importantly, she liked the feeling of being cared about.

"Perhaps I can, Aya. Headmaster Dumbledore told me to look after you until you come of age. I think I can put you first at school too," Duoduo said happily. Being needed was what made House-elves happiest.

"Do you work for Dumbledore?" Aya tilted her head and asked.

"Yes, and there are many other House-elves like me," Duoduo said, recalling life at school. "Most of the time, we stay where people can't see us. This is the longest I've spent with a person since I was born. I like Aya."

"Where people can't see you?"

"The kitchens, washrooms, and boiler room. We have to wait until all the young witches and wizards are asleep before we can clean those rooms and take away their dirty clothes." Duoduo listed them one by one, finding the train ticket Aya had forgotten all about among the luggage. "Apart from the young witches and wizards who come into the kitchens of their own accord, hardly anyone sees House-elves in the castle."

Aya took the ticket to Hogwarts that Duoduo handed her and put it separately in her backpack.

On the last evening before school started, Duoduo prepared a lavish dinner: roast chicken, a platter of roasted vegetables, and creamy potato soup, followed by pudding and a small piece of velvet cake for dessert.

Aya ate to her heart's content. No matter how many times she ate, she couldn't resist delicious food.

After Aya had washed up and lain down on the bed, hugging the sweet-smelling, soft Xiaohua, Duoduo turned off the bedroom light for her.

"Good night, Aya."

"Good night-"