Chapter 2: The Boy Who Lived

September 1, 1991, London, King’s Cross Station, Platform 9¾.

Today was the first day of term at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the only magical school in Britain.

A deep red steam locomotive stood beside the crowded platform, its thick smoke swirling above the bustling crowd, while owls of all kinds screeched from their cages and cats of every color darted beneath people’s feet.

From a compartment near the rear of the train came two coughs; a pale little hand reached out and pulled shut the window glass, seemingly to block out the thick smoke and noise outside.

A boy sat alone inside, withdrawing his gaze from the window.

The boy had short black hair, black eyes, and a large black mask covering everything below his eyes, stuffed with something that made it bulge prominently; compared to his peers, his frame appeared unusually slender.

He wore a worn, plain wizard’s robe, and beside him sat a battered suitcase; he turned his gaze to the open book before him and muttered, “Too good a sense of smell is a nuisance!”

But he couldn’t focus on the text; his thoughts drifted away.

Allen Finis had been left at the door of a Muggle orphanage in London when he was one year old, wrapped in swaddling clothes with only a note bearing his birthdate and name.

Unlike other Muggle-born wizards, Allen hadn’t learned about Hogwarts just one or two months ago—he had known he was a wizard since he was ten.

At age ten, he was bullied by older children at the orphanage; the intense emotional surge triggered a violent magical outburst, which the Ministry later assessed as the most powerful ever recorded.

The violent magical outburst severely damaged the orphanage and directly alerted the Ministry; the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes rushed out, erasing the memories of over a hundred Muggle witnesses to suppress the incident, while Allen himself suffered serious injuries and was sent to St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries for treatment.

After St. Mungo’s spared no expense in treating him, Allen’s life was finally saved—he remained unconscious for five months before waking. This incident gave Allen a small measure of fame in the magical world.

The magazine *Today’s Transfiguration* even conducted an exclusive interview with Allen, and several renowned wizards visited him, including the famous historian Bathilda Bagshot, the transfiguration master Emerick Swich, and Hogwarts’ Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall; even a woman named Nymphadora Tonks came to confirm whether he was a distant relative of hers.

All of this was because Allen was a natural Metamorphmagus, capable of changing his appearance at will—but due to the largest magical outburst in history and the subsequent magical treatments, his talent mutated and became uncontrollable.

Every morning Allen woke up, he found that the organs on his head had randomly transformed into those of some animal; astonishingly, these animal organs weren’t merely superficial like those of other Metamorphmagi—they possessed genuine animal organ functions, and Allen’s brain could still process the sensory input from them normally, yet these organs placed considerable strain on his small body; despite his large appetite, he remained thinner than his peers.

On the day he woke up, he randomly acquired the eyes of some animal—a colorblind one, so he saw only black, white, and gray; the next day, he randomly got a pair of cat ears—excellent hearing, yes… but also the ability to fold them.

The worst case was when he randomly got frog eyes—unable to perceive stationary objects, hyper-sensitive to moving ones—leaving him completely shut-in for an entire day, even struggling to eat; to see the bowls and plates on the table,

he eventually had to shake the table with his legs while eating, just to track the food’s position; though some spilled, he at least didn’t go hungry, and he began to reflect that the earthquake-eating gadget invented by Shou Gong Geng on Earth wasn’t so useless after all—at least, it was perfectly suited to this situation.

Something strange seemed to have intruded—yes, Allen had within him a Jing Tian, Da Mi Mi (a shocking secret—here, following the input method’s will).

He was a transmigrator; before his transmigration, he had been a low-level programmer at a small factory who went to see the grand opening of Universal Studios Beijing, got caught up in the crowd, and collapsed from heatstroke; his body, ravaged by 996, proved shockingly fragile—he died before the ambulance even arrived.

His soul transmigrated into the Harry Potter world, just as the native Allen’s soul had been destroyed by the magical outburst; he took over Allen’s body, fused with Allen’s soul fragments, and began his journey in the magical world.

Allen only realized he had transmigrated into the Harry Potter world when he met Dumbledore.

He had previously watched a short video about Dumbledore and retained some memory of the wizard who resembled Gandalf.

But he had never read the books or seen the films—he only knew the broad plot: a dark lord returns, only to be defeated again—and yet, that didn’t stop him from longing for the wonders of this world.

But after the initial excitement of entering the magical world, the harsh reality forced Allen to worry about his future here, since no one could explain how this unreliable ability worked, nor could anyone cure him.

Every night before sleep, Allen carried a thread of fear, terrified that the next day’s randomly assigned organ might cause permanent harm—like growing horns pointing the wrong way, piercing straight through his skull, leaving no chance for rescue; or randomly acquiring a fish’s brain, which would erase all memory in seven seconds, making life unbearable.

Though this ability had not yet inflicted major harm on Allen, he never let his guard down—he had lived once before, and cherished this life deeply.

This ability had drawn the attention of all in the field of Transfiguration; people tried to study it to advance Transfiguration magic, but after countless studies, they gained little.

Yet when Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall visited Allen, they brought with them an invitation to Hogwarts—to study magic and seek a cure for himself.

Allen accepted the invitation without hesitation; soon after, he received his official acceptance letter from Hogwarts, and boarded the train to Hogwarts.

Just now, Allen had seen the black-haired boy on the platform pushing a pure white owl, struggling to lift his suitcase aboard alone, while two red-haired twins rushed over to help.

“That’s Harry Potter! According to *The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts*, he should be eleven this year—this is where the story begins!” he thought silently.

The train began to move; Allen snapped back to attention and saw a red-haired girl on the platform chasing after it, waving frantically until the train accelerated and left her behind.

Only when the train turned a corner did the girl disappear from view; houses flashed past the window, and Allen’s mood gradually lifted.

He pulled out a notebook and a quill from his bag, dipped the quill in ink, and turned to a fresh page; though the large mask slightly obstructed his vision, he still wrote:

“Hello, world!”

After writing it, he studied it carefully and couldn’t help a bitter smile: “Such a stubborn occupational habit—I can’t shake it anywhere.”

Then he wrote beneath it:

“Hello, HarryPotter!”