Chapter 29

One: The arithmetic trap in the leaden downpour

In July, a leaden downpour pounded Privet Drive into a patchwork of puddles. The asphalt gleamed black and oily, like a chocolate mousse trampled underfoot. Harry Potter crouched in the shadow of the garage at number four, using a twig to scratch arithmetic problems into the pooled water. It was the two-digit multiplication he had just learned at Smeltings Primary School. The rain kept washing his calculations away, just as the Dursley family suppressed all his "improper thoughts." Suddenly, a gust of wind hurled bean-sized raindrops against the line beneath "12×7." The water surged over his ankles in an instant, sweeping the twig out of sight.

In the attic of Leicester Manor, Hailey was watching Privet Drive through a modified magical telescope. In the lens, Petunia Dursley wore rubber rain boots and poked a clothes prop up the chimney, splattering black mud over half her face. "The thirty-seventh Hogwarts letter is stuck in the bend of the chimney," she muttered, her fingertips absently rubbing the copper bracelet around her wrist. "Aunt Petunia's clothes prop is nearly bent from all that poking."

Mr. Leicester wore magically modified Muggle goggles as he adjusted a modified electromagnetic locator. "Embed magnet fragments in the wax seal on the envelope," he said over the walkie-talkie, his voice mechanically precise. "Muggle electromagnetic induction is cheaper than magical tracking." Beside him, Mrs. Leicester used a sewing machine to make waterproof cloth bags, stuffing them with ordinary moisture-absorbing silica gel. Several small holes had been poked in the silica gel surface, with food desiccant bought from a Muggle supermarket inside. "Eileen's mother says coarse salt keeps moisture out," she said, turning a bag inside out to reveal fine, close stitches. "Just the right size for letters, and more reliable than the biscuit tin Petunia hid in the oven."

Two: The gold-stamped avalanche in the oven drawer

When the first gold-stamped envelope slipped through a crack in the chimney, Petunia Dursley's scream shattered the glass stickers on the kitchen window. She picked up the envelope as though it were a pair of red-hot tongs, leaving white marks with her nails on the flourished lettering of "Harry Potter." Finally, she shoved the letter into the deepest part of the oven drawer, under a stack of moldy baking trays. But every morning, Hogwarts owls flew at the chimney in flocks, stuffing letters into the gaps between the bricks. In just one week, the drawer was packed with thirty-seven envelopes, like a stack of overdue bills.

Harry knew nothing about any of this. He only felt that the kitchen was unusually damp, and the rusty smell from the oven, mingled with mold, reminded him of the stinking trainers in his school locker. Then, one evening, he was helping Petunia get a baking tray when the drawer suddenly jammed. Dozens of letters poured out like an avalanche, and the gold-stamped word "Hogwarts" dazzled him in the dim light.

"What's this?" Harry picked up a letter. The moment his fingertip touched the sealing wax, his heart gave a violent leap. It was as hard as stone, yet strangely warm after being soaked in rainwater.

Petunia's scream was more piercing than an alarm. She knocked the letter from Harry's hand with a spatula and swept all the envelopes into the rubbish bin, muttering, "Frauds! They're all frauds!" When Harry tried to argue, she grabbed a jar of pickles and upended it over his head, taking the opportunity to move the letters into the washing machine's spin drum. "No questions! Say one more word about it, and I'll send you back to sleep under the stairs!"

Three: A thousand diving pigeons and the sprinkler maze

At the breakfast table in Leicester Manor, Hailey frowned at the magical telescope's monitor. On the screen, Petunia was stuffing letters down the drain while Dudley shot at pigeons with a slingshot. "We need to speed things up," she said, poking her fried egg with a fork. "If she keeps hiding them, rats will drag them all away."

Nini appeared carrying a ceramic bowl full of mixed grains: ordinary pigeon feed blended with a little fluorescent powder. "Miss, I mixed the Muggle pigeon feed as you said. It smells like toast." Hailey nodded in satisfaction and poured the grain into a modified bicycle pump. "Aim at the Dursleys' windowsill and set the angle to thirty degrees. Imitate a baseball pitcher, but be gentle. Don't break it."

At three that afternoon, a thousand pigeons suddenly swooped down on Privet Drive, their beating wings sounding like a downpour. Vernon Dursley was so startled that he rolled off his lawn chair and into a flower bed. "My hydrangeas!" He charged at the flock, waving his garden shears, but knocked over the cast-iron mailbox, and the letters slid into the drain as if down a slide. Dudley lay on the ground and fished with a twig, but brought up only half a leather shoe and a rusty key.

"Clumsy oaf!" Petunia shrieked, striking at the pigeons with an umbrella. She failed to notice a letter floating with the water toward the manhole cover in the middle of the road. In the attic, Hailey stamped her feet anxiously, while Mrs. Leicester quickly adjusted the sprinkler timer. "Try watering at midnight," she said calmly. "Set the Muggle timer for midnight, turn the water pressure up to maximum, and aim it at the upstairs bathroom window."

So, when Petunia got up in the middle of the night to turn off the tap, a jet of water sprayed her nightgown. She shrieked and rushed for the water valve, failing to notice the envelope washed onto the windowsill. Woken by the noise, Harry pushed open the window and saw a soaked letter lying on the sill, the Hogwarts crest on its wax seal glowing dark red under the streetlamp.

"Harry Potter..." He read out the name, and the moment his fingers touched the paper, it was as though he were touching the frozen slide at Smeltings Primary School: cold and rough, yet with a hidden hardness. Outside, the downpour had turned to drizzle, and a streetlamp flickered through the rainy mist, illuminating the gold-stamped words "school of magic" on the letter.

Four: A magic cake and pink-haired Dudley's arithmetic disaster

Harry spent his eleventh birthday in the hut on the rock, because the Dursleys had still been unable to stop him from receiving a letter. The remains of Dudley's chocolate cake sat on the hut's dining table, with crooked words of happiness drawn in chocolate sauce on the cream. When Hailey learned about it, she was so angry that she squeezed tooth marks into the copper wrench in her hand. "He can't spend his birthday in a place like that!"

Mr. Leicester was adjusting a modified power-cut device made from an ordinary fuse box. "Don't worry, Nini is already in position." While the Dursleys weren't looking, the House-elf placed a vanilla cake in the center of the table. "Happy birthday" was written on its frosting in food coloring, and each sugar pearl contained a tiny speck of fluorescent powder, making them look like fireflies in the dim room.

Dudley's eyes grew as round as ping-pong balls. He grabbed the cake and bit into it, smearing cream all over his face. Hailey laughed so hard in the attic that she rocked back and forth. Mrs. Leicester handed her a cup of hot cocoa. "Just wait."

Sure enough, as soon as Dudley swallowed his third bite, his hair began turning pink, from roots to tips, until it looked like he had cotton candy on his head. He howled at his reflection in the cutlery, and Petunia fainted, hitting her head on the refrigerator door. At that moment, Mr. Leicester pressed the power-cut button, plunging the hut into darkness.

"Who's there?" Vernon groped for a candle, and the light of a match revealed his terrified face. The kitchen door burst open, and Rubeus Hagrid's enormous figure appeared, the boar's tusk in his hand gleaming white in the moonlight. "Harry Potter! Happy birthday!"

Dudley was still wailing, frosting dripping from his pink hair onto the carpet like a string of crooked arithmetic symbols. Vernon tried to stop Hagrid, but a gentle shove sent him into the wall. Watching through another view on Nini's magical telescope, Hailey felt her blood race and high-fived Eileen. "It worked! Dudley's hair is even pinker than a scarf dyed with food coloring!"

Hagrid bent down and picked up Harry. His cloak swept across the dining table, making the remaining cake jump and scattering sugar pearls over Dudley's pink hair like misplaced decimal points. "Come on, Harry, it's time to buy your school things."

Five: Reunion in Diagon Alley and knowing smiles

As soon as Harry stepped into Diagon Alley, the sweet aroma of freshly baked Rock Cakes caught his attention. Before he could make out the sign of the wand shop, he heard a familiar, clear laugh coming from the direction of Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. Hailey Leicester came out carrying a brand-new set of dark yellow wizard's robes, the turmeric-yellow hair clip in her hair swaying gently as she walked. Eileen Ronier was stuffing a bag of steaming magical sweets into her pocket.

The moment Harry turned his head, he saw Hailey Leicester coming out with a roll of dark yellow fabric in her arms. The turmeric-yellow hair clip in her hair swayed gently with her steps, and sunlight shone on it as though it had been sprinkled with frosting. The edges of her dark blue cloak were embroidered with a Muggle-world dandelion pattern, while a faint silver-blue gleam flickered in and out of sight at the collar—a detail Harry had never seen in the Privet Drive park.

"Harry!" Hailey's eyes shone like lights in a Muggle shop window. She hurried over, her boot soles making little scuffing sounds on the cobblestones. "It really is you! Last time I saw you doing multiplication with breadcrumbs in the park, I thought you were making a maze!"

Harry instinctively gripped the hem of Hagrid's coat. The Hailey before him overlapped with his memory of the girl crouching beneath a bench and drawing equals signs on the pavement with a twig, yet there was an indescribable unfamiliarity about her now. "What are you doing here?" His voice was a shade lower than usual. "Didn't you say you were going to your grandmother's in the countryside for the summer?"

"Grandma's house is in Scotland," Hailey said, blinking and deliberately shaking the fabric in her arms. "The wool here is much nicer than the stuff in Muggle supermarkets. Oh, have you finished your math homework? Last time I saw you working out twelve times seven, the pigeons had carried off your breadcrumbs three times."

Eileen couldn't resist chiming in, her nautilus earrings jingling. "She told me just last week that she saw you using a twig to write out a calculation beside the rubbish bin, frowning like a little old man!"

Six: Resonating gears and Muggle comparisons at Ollivander's

Hagrid followed the group of young friends, who were chatting happily, to the Ollivander Wand Shop. When the shop's bell jingled, Harry was already dizzy from looking at the walls full of wand boxes. The dark brown wooden boxes were arranged like shelves in a library, yet barely perceptible pulses of magic seeped through the gaps, reminding him of the damp textbooks in the Dursleys' attic.

"Don't be nervous." Hailey gave his shoulder a gentle push. A notebook bound with a Muggle rubber band peeked out from her cuff, its cover bearing a crooked map of ant trails. "Choosing a wand is like buying shoes. You have to find one that fits. My dad says the first time he held a wand, it felt as uncomfortable as wearing a pair of rain boots that pinched his feet."

When Ollivander finally placed the Walnut Wood wand in Harry's hand, he suddenly smelled a fresh scent like the earth in the Privet Drive park. The instant he took the wand, warmth shot from his fingertips to his heart, like drinking hot cocoa made by Petunia in winter—but richer, with a hint of grass after rain. Beside him, Hailey was springing her own cedar wand out of her necklace when silver-blue sparks suddenly burst between the two wands. Within the sparks were intricate gear-shaped lights and shadows, just like the winding mechanism inside a Muggle clock that Hailey had drawn in her notebook.

"Oh my!" Ollivander's silver beard trembled as he leaned closer, his breath smelling of cedar shavings. "How rare! This resonance is just like the sound of gears clashing in the Diagon Alley clock tower when the prophecy came that year!"

Harry looked sharply at Hailey. She put her wand back into her necklace, tapping her copper bracelet lightly with her fingertips, a perfectly measured look of confusion on her face. "The clock tower? The old grandfather clock at my grandma's goes off at three every day. It's so loud I have to cover my ears with a pillow." But Harry noticed that the rhythm of her tapping was exactly the same as the warning gesture she had made in the park before Dudley came riding toward them on his bicycle: three short taps and one long, quick and regular.

Seven: A Muggle parting gift and everyday warmth

When they came out of the wand shop, sunlight slanted through the archway into Diagon Alley, turning the cobblestones the color of honey. Hailey crouched down, pretending to adjust her bootlaces, but pulled a rectangular object wrapped in dark green velvet from inside her boot and carefully pressed it into Harry's palm. "This is for you. I've always seen you using twigs to do arithmetic on Privet Drive. At least Dudley won't be able to snap this when you write with it."

Harry squeezed the velvet package. It was firm to the touch, and he could feel the metal inside. Puzzled, he unwrapped it. Inside was a pencil case made from a Muggle chocolate biscuit tin. Faded Victorian-style patterns were printed on its sides, and the edges had been carefully reinforced with black electrical tape to keep the metal from cutting his hands. Inside the lid was a slip of paper bearing a line of small writing in pen: "12×7=84. Next time you get it right, I'll treat you to a Butterbeer." Even more surprising, three sharpened 2B pencils were neatly arranged inside, their tips protected from breaking by transparent plastic caps. There was also half an eraser bearing a Mickey Mouse design, evidently "borrowed" from Eileen's pencil bag.

"The tin is an old biscuit tin my mum used to keep brown sugar in," Hailey hurriedly explained when she saw him staring, her fingertips absently rubbing the copper bracelet around her wrist. "The electrical tape was left over from Dad fixing the radio. It's three times more waterproof than ordinary tape. I bought the pencils at a Muggle supermarket. I tried them, and the writing didn't fade after three days in a notebook."

Eileen couldn't resist cutting in. She pressed a piece of hard candy wrapped in foil into Harry's other hand. "This is Muggle fruit candy, lemon-flavored. Whenever Dudley snatches this kind of candy, he always tears the wrapper to shreds. If Slytherins corner you in the corridor, hold the candy in your hand. The metallic wrapper will reflect light and dazzle them." The foil gleamed silver in the sunlight, and the candy had been worn somewhat round, evidently carried by Hailey for a long time before she could bear to give it to him.

Harry held the tin and the candy, his fingertips touching the sweet trace of chocolate left on the metal. He remembered countless evenings on Privet Drive, when he crouched beside the rubbish bin scratching out calculations with a twig, and Hailey and Eileen always pretended to feed the sparrows while quietly arranging breadcrumbs into numbers to play with him. The tin pencil case before him carried the warmth of everyday life. Tiny traces of frosting still clung to the creases in the tape at its corners; Hailey had evidently "stolen" it from the kitchen and altered it. It was considerably heavier than the old tin the Dursleys had thrown him, yet warm as embers in a fireplace. Those traces of clumsy reinforcement with Muggle tools were more tangible than any magic.

"Thank you." His voice was a little tight as he looked down at the faded pattern on the tin. "But... how did you know I needed this?"

"Because you're always hiding behind the rubbish bin, and you don't go to the secret base much anymore, do you?" Hailey straightened, her copper bracelet glowing softly in the sun. She deliberately kept her tone light to conceal the seriousness in her eyes. "There's a fireplace in the Hufflepuff Common Room at Hogwarts, and the cupboard beside it always has whole-wheat biscuits. If you get lost, just tell a House-elf you're 'looking for someone who can do two-digit multiplication.' They bake biscuits with numbers on them at three every afternoon. I'll be waiting for you there."

Eileen waved the shopping bag in her hand, the corner of a Muggle notebook sticking out of it. "We still have to buy quills. They're much faster for writing magic! Next time we meet, I'll show you how to draw an equals sign in ink. I guarantee it'll be straighter than the ones Dudley draws with a marker!"

As he watched Hailey and Eileen turn and disappear into the crowd, Harry suddenly remembered the first time he had met them in the park. Hailey had been crouched under a bench, drawing complicated geometric shapes with a twig, while Eileen stuffed "ant food" made from flour and honey into a hollow tree. Their retreating figures flickered in the light and shadow of the magical signs, while the tin in his palm still held the warmth of chocolate and Hailey's hand. It mingled with the coolness of the lemon candy, just like the air on Privet Drive after rain-damp, with a barely perceptible hint of sweetness, heralding that a story about arithmetic and friendship had only just begun.