The next day came fast.
Professor McGonagall had answered most of their questions the evening before, and they'd agreed she would escort Kevin and Director Hope to Diagon Alley in the morning for school supplies. Money was a non-issue — there were loans available for first-years, secured against the letter itself.
After breakfast, Director Hope buttoned his long robes, straightened his hat, and walked Kevin into the city to the agreed meeting point: the Leaky Cauldron.
Except she couldn't find it.
"Director, it's right there," Kevin said, pointing directly at the weathered facade wedged between a bookshop and a record store.
"Where?" Director Hope squinted, tilting her head. "I don't see anything."
Kevin looked at her, then back at the pub, then back at her. Some kind of Muggle-Repelling Charm, he suspected — the sort of quiet magic that simply convinced non-magical minds there was nothing worth looking at. The pub sat in plain sight and was, for all practical purposes, invisible.
He took her hand and walked her straight up to the door.
It materialised around them as they crossed the threshold. Director Hope stopped dead, staring back at the street they'd just come from, then at the suddenly-solid building surrounding her.
"Good lord," she muttered. "I thought my eyesight was going."
Inside, the Leaky Cauldron bustled with the particular energy of a place that never quite slept — witches and wizards coming and going, a few hunched over pints in the corner despite the early hour. Kevin and Director Hope drew a glance or two: a Muggle woman and a child, turning up around back-to-school season. The conclusion was obvious to everyone who saw them.
Professor McGonagall was already waiting. She spotted them at once and led them through to the back — a small, dim courtyard behind the pub, enclosed by a high brick wall.
"Mr. Kevin," she said, drawing her wand, "this is how you enter Diagon Alley. Watch carefully, and remember it."
She tapped a precise sequence of bricks. Three up, two across, then one that seemed unremarkable in every respect.
The wall shivered. The bricks drew back, rotating outward in a slow spiral, until a wide archway stood open in front of them, sunlight flooding through from the other side.
"Welcome to Diagon Alley."
Director Hope made a sound that might have been a word and wasn't.
Kevin stepped through.
He'd seen it in films — a narrow, cobbled street bursting with colour, noise, and wonder, magical shop signs swinging in a breeze that seemed to come from nowhere in particular. The reality was bigger than that. More crammed, more alive, more real. Robes and cauldrons and potion ingredients in jars. Owls in cages. A child dragging her father toward a window display of broomsticks.
The moment Kevin's foot hit the cobblestones, the System — silent for eleven unbroken years — spoke.
[Ding! Detected that the host has officially entered the wizarding world. Panel unlocked. Magic unsealed.]
The effect was immediate. Something that had sat locked and pressurised in his chest since early childhood cracked open all at once. Magic flooded out, uncontrolled — warm and wild, spilling off him in a brief, visible shimmer.
Professor McGonagall stopped mid-stride. She turned back to look at him with sharp eyes.
"There's no need to be alarmed," she said, her voice careful. "You're in the wizarding world now. This is where you belong."
She'd read it as nerves — a Muggle-raised child overwhelmed by first contact with real magic, his dormant power flaring at the shock of it. Kevin let the assessment stand. He reeled the magic back in, slowly, steadily, until it settled beneath the surface like a river returning to its banks.
"Thank you, Professor. I'm fine now."
McGonagall held his gaze for a moment. Her expression shifted — something thoughtful moving behind her eyes. A child who could simply rein that in after it broke loose? She filed that away without comment and turned back toward the alley.
"Very good. Let's carry on."
Director Hope caught up, still slightly wide-eyed, and they walked.
Kevin pulled up the System panel as they moved.
[Name: Kevin Croft][Attributes — Average adult: 10][Constitution: 15][Magic: 7][Intelligence: 10][Inventory: None][Available Attribute Points: 0]
He looked it over. Constitution at fifteen for an eleven-year-old. Magic at seven — higher than most his age, according to the System's own note. Intelligence at ten, which the System had helpfully described as extraordinarily normal. Kevin was choosing to find that funny.
Gringotts came into view ahead: white marble gleaming in the morning light, the burnished bronze doors catching the sun. Just as he remembered it. He had a brief, irrational moment of wondering whether Harry Potter was somewhere nearby on his own first visit, and pushed the thought aside.
One thing at a time.
Inside, the goblin tellers worked with brisk, complete indifference to the humans queuing before them. McGonagall presented Kevin's acceptance letter to a teller with a nose like a hawk's beak and the expression of someone who had never once been impressed by anything. The loan was approved without ceremony. A leather pouch of gold clinked into Kevin's hands a few minutes later.
He was eleven years old and already in debt. He felt oddly unbothered by this — Director Hope had always made sure there was food and a roof, but fretting over money had never been part of Kevin's particular emotional landscape. You got what you had and you worked with it.
McGonagall organised the shopping with military efficiency. She would handle certain items herself; Director Hope was to accompany Kevin for robes, his wand, and first-year books.
They split off.
"Robes first," Kevin said, which seemed to slightly surprise Director Hope, who had been expecting to lead. He didn't know Madam Malkin's exact address but there was only the one main thoroughfare and the sign wasn't hard to spot.
The robes were quick and painless. Madam Malkin measured him with tape that moved on its own, made several comments about his posture — good — and his cheekbones — apparently noteworthy — and had him fitted and out the door in under twenty minutes.
Then: Ollivanders.
Kevin pushed open the narrow door. A bell chimed. The shop was precisely as cramped and extraordinary as he'd always imagined — thousands of slim boxes stacked in columns from floor to ceiling, filling every wall and reaching back into a dimness that seemed deeper than the building had any right to contain.
A shuffle from somewhere in the back. Then old Mr. Ollivander appeared, silver-haired and bright-eyed, moving with the faintly bouncing energy of a man who had never once lost enthusiasm for his work.
"Good morning, young man. A new Hogwarts student, I take it?"
"That's right, sir. First year. I need a wand."
"Of course you do. They all do." He moved close, studying Kevin with those pale eyes. "Right hand?"
"Right hand."
Ollivander disappeared into the stacks and returned with a long box, which he set on the narrow counter and opened with the care of someone presenting something genuinely precious.
"Red sandalwood — from the east. Ten and a quarter inches. Phoenix feather core. Firm, responsive, rather direct in its manner. Give it a wave."
Kevin lifted it. It sat in his hand with a weight that felt immediately correct — smooth grain under his fingers, a solid, unhurried heft.
He gave it a careful flick.
Light bloomed around him in a slow arc, a small orb of gold drifting once around the room before fading.
"Perfect," Ollivander said quietly. He looked pleased in the way of a craftsman watching his work do exactly what it was built to do. "Ten Galleons."
Kevin paid, tucked the wand into his jacket, and walked back out into the alley. He gave it one experimental twirl between his fingers. His wand. The one he'd carry through everything that was coming.
Right then.
They found McGonagall at the bookshop, already assembled beside a considerable pile of supplies: a pewter cauldron, a set of glass phials, brass scales, and a handsome cage containing a snowy-feathered owl that blinked at Kevin with enormous amber eyes.
"These are yours," McGonagall said simply. "Consider them a gift."
Kevin looked at the assembled pile, then at her. She held his gaze with the composure of someone who had made a decision and was not interested in debating it. A clever, well-mannered orphan, presenting himself to Hogwarts on a loan and without a family name behind him — Professor McGonagall was not a sentimental woman, but she was a just one, and she knew a disadvantage when she saw it.
"Thank you, Professor McGonagall," Kevin said. "Genuinely."
She ruffled his hair once — brief, businesslike, not unkind — and turned back to the books.
She'd selected his required texts and added several extras: introductions to wizarding history, a pocket guide to Hogwarts, an overview of the magical world for those coming in fresh. Kevin took them without argument. More reading was never a problem.
The shopping done, they made their way back toward the Leaky Cauldron. At the archway, McGonagall turned to face him.
"September the first. You'll receive your ticket by owl the day before, along with any additional information. On the morning itself, take your trunk to King's Cross Station — Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. The Hogwarts Express departs at eleven o'clock precisely." A pause. "I look forward to seeing you there, Mr. Croft. Use the time you have left. Those books will serve you well."
She held his gaze for just a moment longer — something in her expression that wasn't quite a smile but was adjacent to one. Then she stepped back into the crowd and was gone.
Kevin stood at the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron with a trunk, a wand, an owl, and a strong feeling that something had, at long last, properly begun.