Devon, the village of Ottery St Catchpole.
The Burrow was the dwelling of the Weasley family. It was at least four stories high and built in a crooked, lopsided fashion.
From the outside, it appeared that the owner had attempted to mimic Muggle architectural styles when constructing the house.
However, Muggle architecture proved far less simple than he had imagined. In the end, he had been forced to rely on magic to hold the structure together, resulting in its distinctive, askew aesthetic.
Four or five chimneys perched atop the red roof. A sign stuck into the ground at a slant in front of the house read: The Burrow.
A pile of high-top boots and a very rusty cauldron lay abandoned by the front door. Several fat, brown chickens were pecking for food in the yard.
A giant, triple-decker bus came to a halt outside the yard. Gold lettering on the windshield spelled out the words: The Knight Bus.
Soon, the doors opened, and Kyle, dressed in casual Muggle attire, stepped off with an air of calm composure.
Perhaps due to his past experience of using the Entrail-Expelling Curse on chickens, ducks, and geese, Kyle possessed a specific aura of fear that was effective only against poultry.
As he crossed the yard, the fat chickens scattered in panic.
Carrying a bag of gifts, Kyle knocked on the door of the Burrow.
Footsteps quickly approached from behind the door. It was opened by a somewhat short, plump woman with a kind face.
"Hello, Mrs. Weasley. I'm here to see George and Fred."
"You must be Kyle," Mrs. Weasley said, her tone filled with genuine delight. "Welcome to the Burrow."
She smiled warmly. "George and Fred talk about you constantly. Have you had breakfast yet?"
"I have, Ma'am."
Hearing Kyle's reply, Mrs. Weasley looked toward the staircase beside the living room and shouted at the top of her lungs, "George! Fred! Kyle is here!"
Two redheads instantly appeared at the top of the stairs.
Ron, along with another slightly smaller head, also poked out from their rooms to peek.
"Kyle!"
The brothers immediately bounded down the stairs, laughing and joking. Naturally, their lack of decorum earned them a scolding from Mrs. Weasley.
Kyle placed his gifts on the living room table while observing the interior of the Burrow.
On the wall opposite hung a strange clock. It had only one hand and no numbers. Instead, written around the face were phrases like "Time to make tea," "Time to feed the chickens," and "You're late."
It looked like a magical version of a task reminder app.
On the other side stood a grandfather clock. If one wanted to know the time, it was completely useless, but it provided a wealth of other information.
There were nine golden hands on the grandfather clock, each inscribed with the name of a Weasley family member.
There were no numerals on this face either. Instead, it displayed locations such as "Home," "School," and "Work." Where the number twelve would typically be on a standard clock, it read: "Mortal Peril."
Stacked three deep on the mantelpiece nearby were books with titles like Charm Your Own Cheese, Enchantment in Baking, and One Minute Feasts — It's Magic! These were clearly Mrs. Weasley's cookbooks.
It appeared Mrs. Weasley was quite proficient in the culinary arts. After all, as the matriarch and head chef of a nine-person household, her cooking skills couldn't possibly be poor.
Indeed, Mr. Weasley could be described as henpecked; in this house, Mrs. Weasley was the true head of the family.
Right next to the living room was the kitchen.
The kitchen was small and quite cramped. In the center stood a scrubbed wooden table and several chairs.
Judging by the stack of plates and bowls in the sink, the Weasley family had likely just finished breakfast not long ago. Mrs. Weasley was currently washing up.
She tapped the dishes in the sink casually with her wand, and they began to wash themselves, the clinking sounds acting as a sort of background music.
By this time, the twin brothers had come down from the third floor to the ground floor.
They immediately flanked Kyle, each draping an arm around his shoulders.
"Hey! Brother!"
"Long time no see!"
Kyle looked at them with disdain, removed their paws from his shoulders, and cast a Scourgify on himself.
He didn't know what the two had been tinkering with upstairs, but their hands were filthy with soot and ash, which they had just smeared all over him.
"Long time my foot, it's only been a week."
Mrs. Weasley's voice drifted out from the kitchen. "Boys, do you want some snacks, or are you going outside to play?"
"Mum, we're going with Kyle to find Cedric," George turned and replied.
"Remember to be back before lunch!"
Cedric's house was several miles away from the Burrow.
Because quite a few Muggles lived in this small village, Kyle and the others couldn't exactly ride their broomsticks and fly openly over the Muggles' heads.
Kyle had no intention of walking several miles just to call Cedric out of his house.
Standing in the small yard outside the Burrow, Kyle mobilized his magic power. He slammed his right hand heavily onto the ground, and black, tadpole-like runes spread out from his palm.
"Summoning Technique!"
A puff of white smoke burst from the center of the rune circle, and the bewildered figure of the crow, Itachi, appeared before them.
This magic was, in reality, just an ordinary Summoning Charm.
Its foundation was the very charm that Professor Flitwick frequently cited as a cautionary tale in his Charms class—the one involving the wizard Baruffio, who mispronounced the incantation and ended up summoning a buffalo.
Kyle had modified the buffalo-summoning spell, mainly adding some visually impressive but useless special effects—such as the black runes and the puff of white smoke.
As long as an item was inside his "Bag End" suitcase, Kyle could use this Summoning Charm to call it forth.
Of course, the suitcase couldn't be too far away from him.
Otherwise, Kyle would have loved to build a magical zoo inside his suitcase, allowing him to summon magical beasts to fight for him anytime, anywhere.
The crow, Itachi, took the letter to Cedric, while Kyle began a tour of the Burrow led by the twins.
The yard outside the Burrow was full of trees twisting along the walls, overgrown grass, and unruly turf.
Troops of ugly gnomes were bouncing around in the garden.
Further out lay a dense patch of reeds and a shimmering pond.
Kyle's gaze landed on a large, rusty corrugated iron shed beside the house.
"Come here, I've got something good to show you." Fred led Kyle toward the iron shed.
George slid open the shed door.
What met Kyle's eyes was——
One, two, three, four, five, six...
Okay, not five pairs of road wheels.
The wide, army-green chassis conveyed an immense sense of security. The bullet marks on the thick armor revealed the scattered fires of war it had witnessed, and the long, thick barrel radiated a terrifying deterrence...
As a semi-military enthusiast, Kyle recognized it at a glance: a Centurion Main Battle Tank.
It was the first generation of main battle tanks designed and manufactured by the British in the mid-1940s.
It seemed Mr. Weasley had really followed his suggestion and gone to that tank graveyard in Northern England for some archeology.
Kyle patted the tank's hull excitedly. "Does this thing work?"
George and Fred looked a bit embarrassed.
"No, it's just an empty shell." Fred scratched the back of his head.
Next to George sat a Ford Anglia with its hood popped open, and a loose engine lay scattered nearby.
"Dad intended to take the engine out of this car and install it in the tank," George said, spreading his hands.
Kyle could guess what had happened. In the next second, Fred's words confirmed his suspicion.
"However, after he took it out, he didn't know how to install it."
Kyle rubbed his chin. "I know how to handle this thing. I can help."
His life as a vagrant had forced him to learn many things; operating machine tools was one, and auto repair was another.
Before the brothers could speak, Kyle offered another suggestion.
"I think, aside from installing the engine into the tank, we can do something else." Kyle's gaze shifted back and forth between the tank and the sedan.
If it stayed in tank form all the time, this thing would be a bit too conspicuous to take out in public.
"What?" the twins asked curiously.
"With just a simple Transfiguration spell and some alchemy, we can fuse this tank and this car together, allowing it to possess two forms simultaneously."
The only issue was that the original car engine wouldn't be able to move the heavy tank body; they would need to rig up something new.
Or use a Levitation Charm to reduce the tank's weight.
"Like Transformers?" George's eyes lit up.
The brothers had read quite a few comic books inside Kyle's Bag End; besides Transformers, they also knew about Marvel and DC.
Otherwise, why would George's first-generation war machine puppet look so strikingly similar to a certain wisecracking War Machine?
It was the comic books that gave him the inspiration.
Kyle waved his hand. "Don't dream about a robot mode. At most, it will switch back and forth between a tank and a sedan."
If George improved his puppetry technology to a certain level, building a Gundam, a Jaeger from Pacific Rim, or Mechagodzilla might not be difficult.
But right now, it was absolutely impossible.
————
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