It's Finally My Turn to Transmigrate and Be Reborn

Between closing and opening her eyes, the sound of breathing all around her, some deep and some shallow, sent chills down her spine.

Lin Er held her breath and listened carefully.

The good news was that they were all the long, steady breaths of sleeping people, with the occasional grinding of teeth and sleep talking to prove it.

The bad news was that she could make out more than ten of them.

Good heavens, where had she been sent?

How had she not known there were so many people living in her little rented room of just over ten square meters? And not one of them was splitting the rent with her!

The wonderful dream she had just been having vanished from her mind. Despite it being the middle of winter, she broke out in a sweat.

Her hair stuck to her neck. She lay flat on the bed, unable to move, not daring to pull her hands out from under the covers. For the first time, the highway outside, usually busy with traffic, was silent.

At some point, she fell asleep again, until a piercing bell woke her.

"Oh my god, is it eleven already?"

With her eyes closed, she reached out to feel for her phone. The bedside table was gone, and the memories of last night came rushing back. Only then did she realize the bell was coming from outside the room.

She snapped her eyes open. The girl beside her was carefully folding her bedding. She didn't seem surprised to see Lin Er suddenly sit up, only saying in a small voice, "Lin Er, hurry up. The wake-up bell already rang."

Lin Er turned to look at her. This roommate looked pretty young, only twelve or thirteen. She had no idea how the girl had squeezed into her tiny rented room, either.

But it was already daylight, so why hadn't her hallucination gone away?

Thoughts raced through her head like a stampede of horses. Once she finally got a clear look at her surroundings, they fell silent, leaving her mind completely blank.

That day, twelve-year-old Lin Er went to class without washing her hair or face, her bedding rolled into a bundle and her body clad in a sweaty long-sleeved shirt.

After the morning reading session, which sounded like a chorus of muttered incantations, Lin Er raced straight for the cafeteria like a starving ghost reborn.

Then she went right past it without looking back and returned to the dormitory she had woken up in that morning.

In middle school, students weren't allowed back to the dorms except at noon and after evening study. Getting caught meant losing points.

Perhaps the dorm supervisor hadn't expected a student to break the rules on the second day, so she hadn't locked the door.

Lin Er went straight to the last room on the sixth floor. Its door was locked, but she had the key. She had been the last to leave that morning, and the dorm head had given it to her for fear of being late.

She opened the door, and there before her was the twenty-one-person dormitory with its communal beds, a sight she would never forget for the rest of her life.

Wonderful. The great god of rebirth had finally called her name.

She didn't need to figure out which patterned bedding and suitcase were hers. Her family held on to things for a long time; the split-crotch pants she had worn as a child were still piled up on the second floor of their house before her rebirth.

She recognized them almost at a glance.

When she opened the suitcase, she wasn't surprised to find two brightly colored changes of summer clothes that looked completely out of place on a student.

What did surprise her was the black magic book and two wooden sticks, each half an arm's length long, nestled among four bottles of well water, two bottles of pickled vegetables, and two apples.

"Birch, thirteen and a half inches, Dragon Heartstring."

Now this was a surprise: the golden finger she had drawn in her dream last night.

The dream itself wasn't unusual. She often dreamed at night about things she had thought about during the day. She had read Professor Snape fanfiction only yesterday, so it was perfectly normal to dream of becoming a witch.

But tripping over her shoelaces that morning and falling had really hurt, too.

A little blood had even seeped from the wound on her knee. Pressing it now still made her bare her teeth in pain, tears streaming down her face.

"It hurts this much, so it can't be a dream!"

She picked up the magic book. She loved the solid, heavy feel of it so much she could hardly bear to put it down. Recalling the spells she had chosen in her dream last night, she set the book aside, picked up the wand, and pointed it at her clothes, softly calling out:

"Scourgify."

A pale blue light swirled from her head to her feet. The smell of sweat and every stain disappeared. Even her hair seemed to have been tugged and scrubbed, the strands becoming fluffy again.

The other wooden stick was less a stick than a little broom. After taking it out of the suitcase, she instinctively cast an Engorgement Charm.

Purple light fell from the wand onto the little broom. With a bang, a hole burst through the family's old suitcase, the broomstick piercing straight through it.

"Okay, it really is a magic broom, all right, but what am I supposed to do about my mom's dowry suitcase? I didn't choose the Mending Charm!"

Freaking out was no use. Lin Er took the broom out.

As soon as she sat on it, an invisible cushion supported her firmly. With a push of her toes, an unseen wind lifted her, and the broom carried her into the air.

At last, the footsteps of a second rule-breaking student sounded in the corridor. Lin Er lowered the broom handle and, as soon as she landed, shoved the broom under the bed.

Luckily, it was only a roommate from next door.

Hugging the magic book and taking an apple and some water, Lin Er slipped the wand into her sleeve and headed back to the classroom with a spring in her step.

Thank goodness she had arrived right as class was starting. Although the teacher shot her a look, she didn't have to search for her seat: the only empty one was hers.

Today was September 2, 2009, her second day of middle school.

When she had registered yesterday, her dad had thought she would be coming home and hadn't brought her luggage. But when they went to claim a place in the dorm, they had discovered there were only twenty beds in the bunks for twenty-one students.

The homeroom teacher had been at a loss and had finally made the ten students on the lower bunks squeeze together. That was why Lin Er had felt so cramped that morning: only the two students on either side of her had been willing to make a little room.

One was Xu Duoduo, who had come from the same elementary school as her. The other was Shi Meng, the first person to show her kindness.

Xu Duoduo had an intellectual disability. If not for the nine years of compulsory education, she might never have had the chance to go to school. Her mother treated her very well, though. Throughout elementary and middle school, Lin Er had never met anyone with more pocket money than her.

Shi Meng had once been her best friend. In the end, they had gradually drifted apart and lost touch.

There had been no melodramatic falling-out. They had simply made different choices, and they hadn't crossed the line between excellence and mediocrity. And so, over time, they had gradually drifted apart.

An apple naturally wasn't enough to fill her up at an age when she was still growing, but there was nothing she could do. Once mealtime was over, there was no food left in the cafeteria.

She had run off too quickly that morning and forgotten to tear out a meal ticket. By the time she came back and went there again, the woman at the serving window had already packed up.

At the front of the classroom, the teacher explained what the author had meant to convey. At her desk, Lin Er felt the wand in her sleeve.

The golden finger she had drawn in her dream was a wizard set: a broom, a magic book, and a wand.

The broom could fly, the magic book recorded the spells she entered, and the wand could cast only the spells in the book, which she herself had entered in the dream.

She had enjoyed reading the books, but there were only so many spells she had actually remembered and could recall on the spot.

The Chosen One trio: Transfiguration, Expelliarmus, Lumos, Warming Charm, Scourgify, Levitation Charm, Engorgement Charm, Shrinking Charm, Alohomora, Protego, Petrificus Totalus, Finite Incantatem, Finite Incantatem, Expecto Patronum.

The villains: Stupefy, Bone-Vanishing Spell, Obliviate, Avada Kedavra, Cruciatus Curse, Imperius Curse.

The parents' generation: Levicorpus, Liberacorpus, Sectumsempra.

The strongest mom: Diffindo.

Most wanted: Undetectable Extension Charm, Summoning Charm, Disillusionment Charm.

Of course, the wand couldn't use all of those.

Among them, it said she couldn't use Expecto Patronum, the Unforgivable Curses were restricted, and Sectumsempra was unavailable because there was no counter-curse.

In the end, just over twenty remained.

She had no magic of her own, and the magic the magic book supplied to the wand was limited. Once used up, it needed a night to recover, so on average she could cast only three spells a day.

But had anyone noticed what her wand was made of?

If a wizard were chosen by the same kind of wand, she could borrow that wizard's magic with their permission.