The midday sun was filtering through the curtains of the living room, casting long, golden rectangles across the carpet. Albert handed a glass of iced bubble tea to Nia, who accepted it with a grateful hum before taking a long, contented sip. He sank into the sofa beside her, his own glass sweating in the heat, and took a deep, refreshing gulp of the sweet, chewy concoction.
Learning the art of tea-making from Perenelle Flamel hadn't just been a masterclass in French sophistication; it had left him with a legitimate skill that transcended basic culinary knowledge. The black tea he brewed now—using a specific ratio of leaves he'd sourced with some difficulty—was a leagues ahead of his past attempts. Even Daisy, who had stumbled upon his secret notes and tried a hand at the craft herself, had seen a marked improvement in her brewing, though she still lacked that final, ethereal touch that only someone with six centuries of practice could provide.
Bubble tea had become a staple in the Anderson household over the last few days. It was a bizarre, imported concept, but in the heat of a British summer, it was pure bliss. Finding the sticky rice flour for the tapioca pearls had been an odyssey through half the supermarkets in the county, but the result was worth every second of the hunt.
A soft, insistent weight pressed against his leg. Albert looked down to find Tom, his ginger cat, weaving a pattern of fur and purrs around his ankles. He bent down and scooped the cat up, sighing as he felt the sheer mass of the animal.
"Nice try, you orange meatball," Albert muttered, scratching the cat under his chin as he deposited him on the sofa. "A hug isn't going to get you an extra snack. You're pushing nine kilos, Tom. You're officially a household appliance, not a predator."
Tom blinked lazily, unimpressed by the critique of his physique. Albert had started him on a strict weight-loss program, terrified that if he brought the cat to Hogwarts, he'd either be bullied or simply roll away down the corridors. It was hard enough managing his own survival at school without having to worry about his cat becoming a rolling hazard.
"I can barely lift him anymore!" Nia complained, reaching out to stroke Tom's thick, soft fur. "Grandpa Luke keeps telling me Tom looks 'healthy' when he's round, but I think he's just trying to justify sneaking him bits of roast chicken when no one is looking."
"He's not 'healthy,' he's a spherical hazard," Albert retorted.
Nia looked at the cat, then up at her brother, her expression softening into something more hesitant. "If you take him to school, is he going to be okay? What if he wanders off? You know how he is—he'll probably follow the scent of food all the way into the Forbidden Forest."
Albert pulled a small leather pouch from his pocket and shook out a custom-made tag. It shimmered with a faint, iridescent light. "I didn't leave anything to chance. Nicolas Flamel was kind enough to enchant this. It's not just a tag; it's a localized tracking charm linked to a compass. As long as Tom is within the castle grounds, I can find him in seconds."
He retrieved a small, ornate compass from his desk. When he placed the tag near it, the needle spun wildly before locking onto the tag's magical signature with a satisfying click.
Nia grabbed the compass, watching in amazement as the needle pivoted to follow Tom's every movement on the sofa. "Magic is actually useful, isn't it?"
"It's a convenience," Albert said, shaking his head. "Don't get too attached to the idea. Electronics are better, honestly. If we could bring phones to Hogwarts, I'd have GPS on him by now. But, you know—the castle hates electricity. It turns perfectly good technology into expensive paperweights."
Nia's eyes wandered to the open book on the table. It was titled Illuminating the Future, a dense, somewhat pretentious tome on the art of scrying and crystal ball divination. "What are you doing now? Practicing to be a fortune teller?"
"I'm trying to see if I have any aptitude for the Oracle path," Albert admitted. He'd been staring at the chapter on crystal balls for three days, trying to coax the swirling white mists within the glass into something resembling a coherent vision. So far, the mist had been as stubborn as a donkey in the rain.
"Can you actually see the future?" Nia leaned in, peering into the glass. "Because all I see is a weird, cloudy mess."
Tom reached out a paw, his claws gently batting at the glass sphere. Albert moved it aside before the cat could knock it onto the floor. "I'm just learning. If I could actually predict the future, I wouldn't be sitting here drinking bubble tea—I'd be on a private island, drinking something significantly more expensive."
Daisy walked into the room, setting a plate of cookies down on the table. She caught the end of their conversation and let out a dry laugh. "If fortune-telling worked the way you're hoping, every wizard in Britain would be a multi-millionaire. They'd just bet on the horses and retire. Why work at the Ministry when you can just manifest the lottery numbers?"
"Because," Albert said, grabbing a cookie, "wizards with genuine prophetic vision are rarer than honest politicians. Most of them are just guessing and calling it 'divination.'"
Daisy's gaze drifted to the cat, who was now aggressively vibrating his purr-motor in her direction to beg for a cookie. "He's on a diet, Albert. Don't look at me like that, Tom. You're not starving."
"By the way," Daisy asked, turning back to her son, "didn't you used to have plans about going into finance? What happened to the business mogul career path?"
"I found a much more efficient way to generate wealth," Albert said with a grin.
"Predicting lottery winnings?"
"Cough, cough, let's keep that between us," Albert said, though his mind was already turning toward the potential of his new skill. It wasn't about the lottery; it was about the stock market, or perhaps predicting the outcome of major international events. But he knew that explaining the nuances of financial foresight to his mother was a losing battle. She still viewed his time at Hogwarts as a confusing, dangerous blur of impossible things. She was still reeling from the revelation that he'd met a man who had been alive since the Middle Ages.
He refocused his attention on the crystal ball. It was a high-end model—a twenty-Galleon piece of craftsmanship—and it hummed with a subtle, resonant energy that a cheaper, toy-store orb wouldn't have.
He stared into the pearly, swirling mist. It was supposed to dissipate, leaving behind a clear image, but it just felt like watching a fog machine work overtime. He felt a sting of frustration. Was the author of this book a fraud, or was his own talent simply non-existent?
He opened his system panel. The Divination skill tab was there, glowing faintly. He had enough spare experience points. With a decisive mental nudge, he poured them into the skill, leveling it up to two.
The effect was instantaneous.
The mist inside the crystal ball didn't just swirl—it thinned. It felt like the difference between looking through a frosted window and a clean pane of glass. Albert leaned in, his pulse quickening. The white vapor began to coalesce into a shape.
He saw it: a hand. A hand, aged and steady, holding a quill. It was moving across a piece of parchment, scratching out a series of numbers that looked eerily like the winning results for the upcoming charity raffle in the village.