The letter did not arrive with thunder or fire or any dramatic flourish worthy of the panic it carried; instead, it appeared the way all oppressive things did in this world, quietly and with absolute confidence that it would be obeyed. Steve noticed it first because the wards reacted, a subtle tightening in the air around the house that his artificial mana lattice translated into pressure rather than sensation, like a calculation resolving into an answer he already disliked. By the time Clara reached the door, wiping her hands on her apron and frowning as if she already knew what waited on the other side, Steve had finished reading the signature through the paper without opening it, recognizing the structured authority embedded in the ink itself and the way traditional magic leaned on lineage and institution rather than logic. Ministry letters always assumed compliance; they were written not to ask, but to declare reality as already decided.
Clara read it slowly, lips thinning with each line, while Edmund stood behind her in silence, his posture rigid in the way of a man who had spent his life yielding not because he agreed, but because resistance had never once ended in his favor. Steve watched them both, cataloguing reactions the way he would environmental variables in a hostile biome, noting the tremor in Clara's fingers, the pause Edmund took before exhaling, and the subtle shift in how the house itself seemed to draw inward, as though it had learned fear alongside its occupants. The letter did not accuse, not directly; it spoke of evaluation, of classification, of educational placement "for the good of the child and the stability of the magical community," a phrase so vague and self-justifying that it might as well have been an axiom.
"I don't need to go," Steve said eventually, not in defiance, but in analysis, because from a purely functional standpoint the institution offered nothing he could not already build himself given time, materials, and uninterrupted experimentation. "Nothing they can teach applies to how my magic works."
Clara flinched, not because he was wrong, but because truth had never once protected anyone like them. "That doesn't matter," she said quietly, folding the letter with careful precision, as if sharp edges might cut her otherwise. "They don't send letters because they're curious. They send them because they've already decided what happens if you don't comply."
Steve nodded, because that at least followed logic, and because he had already simulated the outcome trees in his head, most of which ended in escalating interference, restriction, or forced containment, outcomes that were inefficient and risked collateral consequences he had no desire to trigger yet. Hogwarts was not a reward or an opportunity; it was a choke point, a place where the system attempted to normalize anomalies by pressing them into existing frameworks until either compliance or fracture occurred.
He did not fear the school. He assessed it.
-Preparation Without Celebration-
The days that followed were not filled with excitement or anticipation in the way wizarding children supposedly experienced them, but with a muted tension that seeped into everything, turning even mundane tasks into weighted actions. Clara packed his things carefully, pausing too often, folding and unfolding the same robes as though repetition might delay the inevitable, while Edmund took to repairing small things around the house that did not need fixing, anchoring himself in labor because it was the only language the world had ever allowed him to speak without punishment. Steve helped where he could, not because he needed to, but because presence mattered more than efficiency here, and because he was beginning to understand that optimization without regard for emotional systems created instability rather than order.
At night, when the house finally slept, Steve sat cross-legged on the floor of his room and adjusted glyph threads in silence, not crafting spells, but tuning the lattice itself, compressing mana flow, improving efficiency, and reinforcing containment so that nothing he carried would leak outward and provoke reaction. He was not limiting himself out of fear; he was sandboxing his power, isolating variables so that when conflict came, it would do so on terms he understood. Destruction remained an option, but it was the last resort of those who lacked imagination, and Steve had always preferred solutions that persisted after the problem was gone.
He tested inventory access again, confirming mass thresholds and anchor stability, embedding fail-safes that would collapse stored constructs into inert patterns if external magic attempted forced extraction, a precaution that would have horrified wandmakers and enchanters alike had they known it was possible. Wizards trusted objects because they inherited tradition; Steve trusted systems because they behaved consistently when designed correctly.
-Platform Between Worlds-
King's Cross was louder than it needed to be, a chaos of motion and noise that Steve immediately identified as intentional camouflage, a social obfuscation layer designed to hide magic in plain sight by overwhelming the senses rather than concealing anomalies directly. He walked between Clara and Edmund, aware of how many eyes slid past him without truly seeing, how many magical signatures flickered at the edge of perception, children brimming with untamed cores, and parents radiating pride, anxiety, and ambition, all of it raw and unfiltered in a way that made Steve acutely conscious of how artificial his own presence was by comparison.
The barrier between platforms was exactly what he expected: a symbolic threshold reinforced by collective belief rather than structural necessity, the kind of construct that worked only because everyone agreed it should. He could have dismantled it in seconds, rewritten its rules, turned it into a door, or erased it entirely, but he didn't, because breaking something fragile in front of those who depended on it would not teach them anything except fear. Instead, he walked through when Clara did, matching her pace, letting tradition have its small victory, because there were battles that did not need to be fought to be won.
The train waited on the other side, ancient and proud and inefficient, a marvel of outdated engineering upheld by enchantments that compensated for design flaws rather than correcting them, and Steve felt something close to fondness despite himself. It reminded him of early builds, of contraptions held together by redundancy and stubbornness rather than elegance, working not because they were perfect, but because someone had cared enough to make them function.
-Clara's Fear, Edmund's Silence-
The goodbye was not dramatic. Clara hugged him too tightly, as if trying to memorize a shape she feared would change, and Edmund placed a hand on his shoulder and said nothing at all, because there were men who spoke when they were confident and men who stayed silent because words had failed them too many times before. Steve accepted both gestures without analysis, because not everything needed to be optimized, and because he was learning that some systems were maintained by ritual rather than logic and still functioned all the same.
"I'll be fine," he said, and for once he did not mean it as reassurance but as a statement of fact, because Hogwarts was not a threat, only an environment, and environments could be mapped, understood, and eventually reshaped.
The whistle blew, sharp and final, and Steve stepped onto the train without looking back, not out of detachment, but because builders looked forward, not because they forgot what they left behind, but because they carried it with them in quieter ways.
-As the Train Moves-
As the train lurched forward and the platform slid away, Steve found an empty compartment and sat alone, listening to the rhythmic clatter of motion, feeling the world shift beneath him, not geographically, but contextually, as variables rearranged themselves into a new configuration. Hogwarts awaited, not as destiny, but as a test, not of power, but of whether a system built on inheritance could survive contact with one built on understanding.
He opened his inventory just enough to confirm stability, closed it again, and rested his head against the window, watching the countryside blur into patterns that reminded him of chunks loading in, of worlds generating ahead of the player, indifferent to expectation but rich with possibility.
This was not the beginning of a school year.
It was the beginning of an incompatibility.