Chapter 6: Memories

After leaving Professor McGonagall’s office, Allen walked toward Gryffindor Tower, unable to help recalling the many memories from St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries...

Although Allen’s magical outburst a year ago was extremely powerful and severely damaged the orphanage, no Muggles died. The Ministry of Magic was thus able to cover it up. Since Allen was still a minor, he was not held financially responsible.

The problem was that the magical outburst inflicted severe magical injuries on Allen. After being urgently transported to St. Mungo’s, he was treated with various potions and barely survived. He then remained comatose for five months, during which he nearly had to drink potions daily to sustain life. Though the dosage and frequency gradually decreased after he awoke and his health improved, the total cost had already reached astronomical levels—paid upfront by the Ministry, and later converted into Allen’s debt.

Later, many wizards in the magical community became interested in Allen’s mutated talent and sought to study him to advance magical science. As the sole subject of these studies, Allen received substantial compensation.

Wizards also collected the products of Allen’s transformations—horns, hair, blood, and so on. Though the collection methods were sometimes crude, Allen was not generally mistreated.

Thinking of this, Allen rubbed his ears through his hat and muttered, “Professor McGonagall’s collection method really isn’t as rough as those earlier people’s!”

But as the wizards studying Allen made no real progress, fewer and fewer came to examine him. Eventually, the compensation from these studies was used to offset his medical expenses.

When Allen was discharged, after numerous deductions, his remaining medical bill still totaled over eleven thousand Galleons. The Ministry ultimately decided to round it down to a clean figure—ten thousand Galleons. Fortunately, the debt carried no interest.

Although the wizards’ research yielded no breakthroughs and failed to advance magical science, Allen himself deduced several rules governing his talent’s transformations:

1. Transformation spells work normally on Allen, but even after the spell is reversed, his innate transformation remains; for example, if his randomly acquired organ is a pig’s snout, he will appear as a normal dog when transformed—but once the spell wears off, he still retains the pig’s snout.

2. Products collected from his innate transformation vanish during his next random transformation. For instance, if Professor McGonagall collected some hair today, that hair will disappear when Allen transforms tonight while sleeping;

3. Transformation occurs when Allen is in his deepest sleep. If he stays awake, the transformation from the first day persists into the next, until he sleeps again;

4. The Disarming Charm has no effect on his innate transformation;

5. Other wizards’ human transfiguration spells have no effect on his innate transformation;

But these rules offered no help in treating his condition, and no wizard found a way to suppress his random transformations. Allen was left to undergo dangerous transformations every night in his sleep—a prospect that once filled the former shut-in programmer with terror. Yet over time, he gradually came to accept it.

The turning point came with the visit of Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall. As leading figures in British Transfiguration, they were naturally intrigued by Allen’s peculiar talent. Since he was nearing school age, the two professors came together to visit him.

After carefully examining Allen’s condition and consulting thoroughly with the St. Mungo’s wizards, Dumbledore proposed a hypothesis: if Allen learned human transfiguration himself—even became an Animagus—could he resolve his own condition?

Professor McGonagall, herself an Animagus, supported Dumbledore’s idea and told Allen that becoming an Animagus grants extraordinary control over one’s own body.

This might be the solution to Allen’s problem. To become an Animagus required exceptional skill in Transfiguration—and Hogwarts, as Britain’s finest magical school, was the best place to learn it. They urged Allen to consider attending Hogwarts.

It was because of this that Allen gladly accepted Hogwarts’ invitation, vowing to become a master of Transfiguration.

Knowing he would attend Hogwarts, Allen began preparing. Soon he realized that although Hogwarts charged no tuition and provided free lodging and meals, he could not afford the textbooks—magical books were still very expensive.

So, shortly before discharge, he agreed to an interview with the Daily Prophet. Afterward, he requested the newspaper to appeal to the magical community for donations of clothing and textbooks. That was how the scene in his dorm came to be.

After his discharge, the Ministry suddenly realized Allen had nowhere to go—he could never return to the Muggle world in his current state.

Many in the magical community would happily adopt orphaned young wizards like Allen. Even if ordinary wizarding families declined, there were numerous Squibs eager to take in a magically gifted orphan as their son. But Allen’s case was too unusual: whoever adopted him would inherit his ten-thousand-Galleon debt, and his condition required ongoing potion treatments. No one stepped forward.

Poor Allen’s guardianship still legally rested with the orphanage director—but he could never return. He was now officially a missing person in the Muggle world.

With four months left until Hogwarts’ term began, Allen had nowhere to stay. The Ministry, facing budgetary pressure, refused to spend more on him. In the end, they granted him special permission to become a legal child laborer and support himself.

Through the Ministry’s referral, Allen became a front desk clerk at the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley. Don’t ask why he didn’t wash dishes—he was not assigned such tasks because magic existed in this world; such chores required only a wave of the wand.

Allen settled in, living in the smallest room at the pub. He no longer worried about meals, but he saved little money.

His next major problem was the lack of a wand. A typical wand cost seven Galleons—and he could not possibly afford it.

After much deliberation, Allen mustered the courage to speak with Ollivander.

Fortunately, Ollivander was a kind old man. After learning Allen’s situation, he offered to provide a wand perfectly matched to Allen—but in exchange, Allen must work for him throughout the summer after his first year, during which Ollivander would provide food and lodging.

With the soul of an adult, Allen quickly realized this was Ollivander’s kindness—an offer of shelter for a first-year student who would have nowhere to go during the summer. What could a first-year, barely able to cast a few spells, possibly do in the precise craft of wandmaking? Gratefully, Allen accepted the arrangement.

“There are still good people in the magical world,” Allen sighed to himself.