Chapter 15: Diagon Alley

Li Weide and Tom walked silently through the muddy streets of London. Tom, still shaken, pressed down on his newsboy cap, surprised that the oversized hat hadn’t ended up in the sewer. Li Weide tightened the backpack slung over his shoulder, quietly relieved that the gold was still safe.

“That serpent… it said it used to be a human woman, drawn here by my snake language… But how is that possible?” Tom finally broke the silence once he had regained his composure.

“Tom, you have to admit there are many wondrous things in this world… Just because we don’t understand them doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” Li Weide said calmly.

In truth, Li Weide was well aware of Nagini’s story but couldn’t tell Tom, as he couldn’t explain how he knew it.

Nagini had once been a kind and gentle woman, but unfortunately, she was a blood-cursed shapeshifter. Due to a hereditary blood magic curse passed down through her maternal line, she was born with a curse allowing her to shift between human and serpent forms. However, as she aged, the curse would eventually strip her of her humanity, erasing all memories of her life as a human and transforming her entirely into a beast.

Of course, this Nagini was not yet the ferocious serpent turned Horcrux by Voldemort decades later. Li Weide suspected that she was presently on the brink of losing herself completely to the beast within, only occasionally regaining her human consciousness. Just now, it was her true awareness that had awakened in a moment of crisis.

Tom was silent for a while before saying, “I have a feeling I’ll meet her again.”

Li Weide looked at Tom, surprised to see a fleeting glimmer of compassion in his eyes.

“Maybe… but we need to get stronger quickly. Otherwise, the next time you meet her, you might end up swallowed whole,” Li Weide warned, then jumped onto a tram that had just stopped. Tom hurriedly followed.

Without having to walk, they soon arrived at their destination. Li Weide watched pedestrians ahead as they took a strange detour around a certain stretch of road. Beside that path hung a tattered sign—the Leaky Cauldron.

Li Weide and Tom exchanged glances before briskly walking toward it. Tom nervously brushed dust off his clothes; their ordeal in the sewer had left them both disheveled. Most troubling was the faint lingering stench clinging to them.

Just as Tom frowned, about to find somewhere to change, a sudden cool breeze lightly brushed over him. To his astonishment, the dust and foul smell vanished entirely from his clothes.

He immediately turned to Li Weide, who was examining his own clothing while silently chanting a spell.

“Spotless!”

In the next moment, Li Weide was immaculate from head to toe.

“Vade, I’ve been wanting to ask for a while… Did you know you were a wizard all along? And that you somehow learned how to use magic somewhere?” Tom whispered after ensuring no one was listening.

“No, I figured it out through experiments… Haven’t you realized magic is all about belief?” Li Weide responded calmly.

Tom’s suspicion wasn’t unexpected, but Li Weide wouldn’t admit it. In fact, even without a spellbook, he had managed to replicate many magical effects through experimentation.

“Magic is a matter of the mind…” Tom repeated thoughtfully.

“Alright, let’s go in. A new world is beckoning us,” Li Weide said, patting Tom on the shoulder as he led the way into the Leaky Cauldron.

Inside, the bar was exactly as Li Weide had imagined—filthy and cramped. Yet despite the squalor, the place buzzed with activity, though the patrons all seemed to be a motley crew.

Li Weide approached the bar where a balding middle-aged man was polishing a glass.

“Hello. Could you tell us how to get into Diagon Alley?” Li Weide asked.

The man set down the glass and scrutinized Li Weide and Tom.

“Oh… You must be first-year students at Hogwarts this year? Never been to Diagon Alley before? Alright, follow me,” he said.

Tom and Li Weide exchanged a look and trailed behind him. Along the way, several people greeted the man warmly.

“Tom, any food left? Get me a meat pie! I’m so hungry I could eat a whole bull! And a glass of sherry too!”

“Hold on, Jorm, I have to take these two newbies to Diagon Alley first.”

“Oh? Muggle-born little wizards, huh?”

“Yes, yes…”

The man named Tom led Li Weide and the other Tom to a small courtyard behind the bar.

Suppressing his discomfort, Tom asked the bartender, “What does ‘Muggle-born’ mean?”

“Hmm? Looks like your professor didn’t explain properly. ‘Muggle’ is a general term for people who don’t understand magic. ‘Muggle-born’ means a wizard born into a non-magical family. Hmm… Aren’t you guys? If you came from wizard families, you wouldn’t be new to Diagon Alley,” the bartender said skeptically.

“No, we really are Muggle-born. Just curious about the term,” Li Weide explained.

“Oh, that’s fine,” the bartender said, unfazed. He pulled out his wand and pointed at the wall above a trash bin. “Count three bricks up from the bin, then two bricks across, and tap...”

“Tap!”

The brick wall swiftly shifted, stones sliding aside to reveal an entrance.

Li Weide took the lead and stepped inside. Before him stretched a cobblestone street lined with shops of all manner of peculiar shapes and bustling crowds.

The entire Diagon Alley was vibrant and lively.

“Well, now you know how to enter Diagon Alley. I should be going,” the bartender said.

“Oh, and be careful not to stray off the main street. If you accidentally wander into Knockturn Alley, that can be dangerous,” he warned before leaving.

Once the entrance sealed back into the wall, Tom said, “I don’t think I’m Muggle-born. I believe my father was a wizard, my mother wasn’t—otherwise, she wouldn’t have died so easily in front of the orphanage…”

“No matter what, we’re both from the orphanage now… That counts as Muggle-born too.”

“Alright… but I’m determined to find out about my father sooner or later!” Tom pulled out a shopping list, changing the subject. “What should we buy first?”

“Of course, a wand. But first, we need to exchange some money,” Li Weide said, patting his backpack.

---

Several kilometers from the Leaky Cauldron, a small detached house was surrounded by police. The two-story building leaned precariously, as if ready to collapse at any moment.

“Chief, we found those tied-up kidnappers, but…” one officer reported.

“But what?” asked the chief, sporting a distinctive mustache.

“Well… for some reason, the floor inside collapsed. Several kidnappers fell and were injured. Also… they all seem to be terrified out of their minds!”

“That’s truly bizarre…”

From the crowd, a tall, thin man stepped forward. The nearby officers ignored him as he entered the unstable house.

Albus Dumbledore frowned deeply at the grim scene inside. He closed his eyes to focus, sensing a familiar magical trace lingering at the site.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes with a puzzled expression. “It’s them? How could it be them?”

A shadow of worry crossed Dumbledore’s face. He then jumped down through the large hole into the sewer.

Ignoring the foul stench, Dumbledore carefully investigated before bending down to search a corner of the sewer tunnel. When he straightened up, a dark green scale rested in his hand.

“This is… Nagini?! Has she truly fallen completely? Wait! If they encountered Nagini…”

Dumbledore’s worry deepened. He pocketed the scale.

With a sharp sound, his figure vanished into the sewer’s depths.