Next came Flourish and Blotts, where Alister had to physically restrain Astra from buying the entire history section.
"You don't need Hogwarts: A History in three different editions, Astra."
"But this one has footnotes! And this one has illustrations! And this one was annotated by Bathilda Bagshot herself before she went senile!"
"You're getting one. Choose."
Alister cleared his throat, trying very hard not to look at the translucent blue notification blinking in the corner of his vision—the Apex Chat.
Right.
If Astra only knew that she was currently active in the Global Admin Channel, roasting Nicolas Flamel for his "poorly optimized" Alchemy potion recipes
In the end, she chose all three by putting two in her robes when she thought he wasn't looking. He pretended not to notice and paid for them anyway.
They also picked up required textbooks for both of them, plus The Standard Book of Spells Grade 3 and a frankly concerning tome titled The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection that she swore was for "academic purposes only."
By the time they left, Alister had to spend a long time sorting and putting all the books in his pocket which was enchanted with Extension charm.
And finally, the Magical Menagerie.
The moment Astra saw the hand-painted sign—a phoenix and a unicorn flanking ornate golden letters—her entire face lit up.
"Kneazle time!" she declared, grabbing Alister's sleeve and practically dragging him down the cobblestone street, narrowly avoiding a collision with a wizard levitating a trunk full of cauldrons.
The smell hit them the moment they opened the door.
Cages lined every available surface and hung from the ceiling on brass chains that creaked gently with movement. Screeching owls ruffled their feathers, hooting indignantly at the intrusion. Orange puffskeins rolled around in a large glass tank like ambulatory balls of fluff, occasionally bouncing off the sides with soft boing sounds.
"Kneazles are in the back," the shopkeeper grunted, barely looking up from a magazine titled Caring for Your Crup: A Monthly Digest. "Mind the Jarvey on the way. He's in a mood."
"When is he not?" muttered a witch browsing newt eyes.
They navigated past cages of suspicious-looking ravens whose eyes tracked them and a tank of purple toads.
In the back, while Astra cooed over a basket of standard Kneazle kittens—adorable fluffballs with lion-like tails, tumbling over each other and mewing for attention—Alister activated his System interface with a subtle gesture.
[Scan: Local Entities]
Most of the animals registered as standard and common. Kneazles (Intelligence: High). Owls (Various species). Puffskeins (Harmless).
Then a faint purple glow caught his eye near the back, atop a high scratching post that wobbled precariously.
It was a kitten—or what looked like one. It had sleek, ink-black fur that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. Oversized ears with distinctive tufts of silver hair at the tips. Paws that were too large for its body, promising considerable future size. And eyes - golden, luminous, impossibly intelligent eyes.
[Entity: Half-Kneazle / Half-Shadow Grimalkin Hybrid]
[Rarity: Extremely Rare - Natural crossbreed]
[Trait: Mana Sensitive - Can detect hostile intentions, dark magic, and dimensional disturbances within 50-meter radius]
[Trait: Shadow Step - Can teleport short distances through shadows (instinctive, untrained)]
"That one," Alister said, pointing upward.
Astra looked up from the basket of regular kittens. The black kitten stared down at her with those intelligent, golden eyes.
For a long moment, they simply looked at each other.
Then the kitten blinked—once, slowly, deliberately.
Without warning, it simply stepped off the six-foot-high scratching post.
The kitten seemed to float down, landing on Astra's shoulder with impossible grace and barely any impact, as if it weighed nothing at all. Its claws extended just enough to grip her robes without puncturing skin.
"Oh," Astra breathed, freezing in place. "Oh, he's perfect."
"He's heavy," she added a moment later, laughing as the kitten settled more firmly on her shoulder, beginning to purr. She reached up carefully to scratch behind his ears. The purring intensified. "I'll call him... Asher."
"Asher?" Alister repeated, raising an eyebrow. "A bit dramatic, isn't it?"
"Says the boy who named our house-elf 'Legion,'" Astra shot back without missing a beat, grinning at him.
Alister opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Touché," he finally conceded. "Asher it is."
"How much for the Shadow Grimalkin crossbreed?" Alister asked the shopkeeper, who had wandered over to see what the commotion was about.
The wizard's eyebrows shot up. "You've got a sharp eye, lad. Most folk can't tell the difference. That one's been here three months—won't let anyone near him. Fifteen Galleons."
"Fifteen?" Alister pulled out his money pouch. "That seems low for a Shadow Grimalkin hybrid."
"Aye, well, can't sell what won't be bought. He's clawed six potential owners. You're the first he's even looked at without hissing." The shopkeeper peered at Astra, where Asher was now draped across her shoulders like a very smug scarf. "Looks like he's made his choice, though. That breed bonds for life, you know. Can't be sold to anyone else once they've chosen."
"Good," Astra said firmly, cradling the kitten protectively.
Alister paid the fifteen Galleons, plus another five for a reinforced traveling basket, premium food formulated for magical feline hybrids, an enchanted collar that would resize as he grew, and a thick manual titled So You've Adopted a Shadow Grimalkin: A Survival Guide.
The cover featured a wizard with multiple bandaged limbs and a very smug-looking black cat.
"Reassuring," Alister muttered, flipping through pages with titles like "Understanding Territory Marking" and "Why Your Familiar Brought You A Dead Banshee."
"He's perfect," Astra insisted, letting Asher nuzzle her cheek. The kitten's purring could probably be heard from the street.
Looking at the faint purple glow of magic that clung to his fur—Alister had to admit, she might be right.
Shadow Grimalkins were guardian spirits in feline form. Having a protective familiar that could detect dark magic and teleport through shadows seemed... prudent.
"Come on," he said, holding open the door as they left the shop. "Let's get home before you convince me to adopt a dragon."
"They had a baby Norwegian Ridgeback in the back," Astra said innocently. "Just saying."
"No."
"It was cute."
"No."
Asher made a sound that could have been feline laughter.
August 31st
Alister sat in his study, the window open to the late summer night. The air was cool but not cold, carrying the scent of night-blooming jasmine from the garden below. London glowed in the distance, a smear of orange light against the dark sky.
The System interface was open, hovering in his vision, scrolling through the latest data from the global Mana Tide monitoring network.
[Global Mana Density: 4% increase this month]
[Awakened Individuals: +10000 this month]
[System Users: 9,98,734 active accounts]
[Knowledge Archive: 12,45,000 entries uploaded]
[Total Transactions (30 days): 28,47,932]
The world was stabilizing. The economy was booming thanks to the Gringotts integration.
Memory Metal was revolutionizing construction. He'd seen reports of the Department of Mysteries rebuilding their entire security infrastructure using it.
Everything was going according to plan. But there is something that's worring him.
Alister pulled up the World Core's deep diagnostic logs—the ones that tracked spatial anomalies, dimensional fluctuations, and other reality-threatening phenomena that kept him awake at night.
There, buried in the data stream from three days ago.
[Alert: Spatial Distortion Detected]
[Location: Northern Scotland, Highlands Region]
[Severity: Unknown]
[Possible Causes: Unable to determine.]
It shouldn't be possible.
The System was grafted onto the World Core. It was the nervous system of the planet's magic. If magic existed there, the System knew it. For the System to return a result of "Unknown" meant only one thing—it wasn't magic at all.
Alister frowned, pulling up a map overlay. He zoomed in on the coordinates. The distortion was located in a valley known as the "Glen of Silence," roughly fifteen miles from Hogsmeade. It was rugged terrain, uninhabited, historically insignificant.
But around that specific coordinate in the Highlands? The lines didn't just fade. They bent. They curved around the empty spot like water flowing around a stone in a stream.
"The magic is avoiding it," Alister realized, watching the flow. "The World Core isn't blind to it. It's afraid of it."
He sat back in his chair, the silence of the manor pressing in on him.
He thought he knew every piece on the board. But now, looking at that black void on the map, Alister realized there were some things out of his reach too.
He pulled up the historical database, cross-referencing the location against every magical event, artifact recovery, and Ministry investigation for the past two centuries. Nothing. The Glen of Silence was aptly named—it appeared in exactly three documents, all of them survey maps from the 1700s noting it as "barren ground, unsuitable for habitation."
Alister drummed his fingers on the desk, thinking.
The World Core's avoidance wasn't random. Magic didn't just curve around things for no reason. It was reactive, almost instinctive like a living organism recoiling from poison or heat. Which meant whatever was in that glen Possibly predated organized magic itself.
He could send a drone. He had several modified Muggle devices enchanted for magical reconnaissance. But if this thing disrupted magic, the drone would probably fall out of the sky the moment it crossed the boundary.
He could go himself. But Hogwarts started tomorrow. And bringing Astra along to investigate a potentially reality-threatening anomaly seemed like poor parenting, even by his admittedly relaxed standards.
He could ignore it.
Except.
Alister pulled up the historical data again, this time looking at the three-month trend.
The distortion had grown. Not by much maybe three meters in diameter. But it was growing. Slowly. Steadily.
And the World Core's avoidance radius was expanding with it.
"Wonderful," Alister muttered, closing the interface with a gesture. "A magical dead zone that's getting bigger. Just what I needed."
A soft knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.
"Come in," he called.
The door opened, and Astra poked her head in, still in her nightgown, Asher draped over her shoulder like a very fluffy stole. The kitten's golden eyes blinked at Alister with lazy contentment.
"Can't sleep?" Alister asked.
"Nope." She padded into the room, settling into the armchair across from his desk. Asher immediately repositioned himself across her lap, purring loud enough to rattle the teacups. "Too excited. Also, Asher won't let me roll over without complaining."
Alister smiled despite himself. "Shadow Grimalkins are notoriously particular about sleeping arrangements. You'll get used to it."
"Are you working?"
"Just reviewing some data," he said carefully. "Nothing urgent."
Astra stared at him for a moment.
"You're doing the face," she noted, scratching Asher behind the ears.
Alister blinked, minimizing a graph showing the fluctuating mana density of the Scottish Ley Lines. "What face?"
"The 'I am Atlas holding up the sky' face," she said, quoting a book he had given her on Greek mythology. "You get that little wrinkle between your eyebrows."
Alister sighed, swiping his hand through the air to dismiss the interface entirely. The blue glow vanished, leaving the room lit only by the warm, flickering lamplight.
"It's not the sky, Astra. Just... logistics. Ensuring Potter Innovations runs smoothly while I'm away at school."
Astra giggled. Then, her smile faltered slightly. She looked down at the kitten in her lap. "Alister? What if I'm... you know. Bad at it?"
"Bad at what? Magic?" Alister raised an eyebrow. "You blew up a vase just by holding a wand. You have plenty of power."
"Not power. The other stuff. Making friends. Being... normal." She picked at a loose thread on her robe. "Everyone expects me to be this hero. The Girl-Who-Lived. But I'm just..."
"You're just Astra," Alister finished firmly. He stood up and walked around the desk, leaning against the edge so he was at eye level with her. "And that is more than enough."
He reached out, ruffling her hair, ignoring her indignant squawk.
"Listen to me. You don't have to save the world, Astra. You don't have to live up to the books, or the rumors, or the expectations of people who haven't met you. That's my job."
Her eyes widened slightly. "Your job?"
"My job is to handle the heavy lifting," Alister lied smoothly, a warm smile masking the cold truth of his mission. "Your job is to go to school, learn some cool spells, eat too much treacle tart, and try not to get detention in the first week."
"I make no promises about the detention," she grinned, the shadow finally passing from her face.
"Fair enough." He straightened up. "Now, go to sleep. If you're tired on the train, you'll miss the trolley witch, and I am not sharing my cauldron cakes."
Astra scrambled out of the chair, clutching Asher to her chest. "You're the worst."
"I'm the older brother. It's in the job description. Goodnight, Astra."
"Night, Alister."
She padded out of the room, the door clicking softly behind her.
Alister stood in the silence for a long moment.
He turned back to the window, looking at his reflection in the dark glass.
Alister rested his forehead against the cold glass, closing his eyes.
"If only it were that light," he whispered.
He exhaled, and the fog on the glass obscured his reflection for a brief second. Then, with a wave of his hand, he sealed the study, extinguished the lights, and went to bed.
(END OF CHAPTER)
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