This was way harder than learning magic.
Why was it so difficult? Wasn't he supposed to be exceptionally intelligent?
By the day before the new school term, Harry had all but given up.
At this point, he decided to deal with other matters first. Maybe there was some magic that could help him master Chinese quickly.
As planned, he recruited a few of his most loyal adult wizards as his followers, appointing them as his proxies in Diagon Alley.
At last, he had managed to establish the framework for his territory—
[Sphere of Influence: Diagon Alley]
[Special Structures: None]
[Power of the King: Zero (steadily rising)]
[Legion: Dedalus Diggle, Doris Crockford, Tom…]
Clicking into the Legion menu revealed each member's talent ceiling, which was, frankly, quite average. Harry had done his best to select the cream of the crop, and though things looked modest now, he was confident they'd improve in time.
As for the name of his faction, he went with Night's Watch. Harry didn't feel like coming up with something new.
All in all, he'd accomplished quite a bit. The summer hadn't been a total waste.
On the first day of September, Harry headed to King's Cross Station to catch the train to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Hogwarts, he mused, was surprisingly modern in some ways. Using a train instead of some magical artifact? That was unexpected.
He'd long noticed that some wizards seemed to live as if they were stuck centuries in the past. To them, a train might as well be cutting-edge technology. Of course, most weren't completely ignorant of Muggle inventions—they just didn't fully understand them. They'd take the most common ones, tinker with them, and add their own magical spin.
Take photographs, for example. In the wizarding world, photos were supposed to move. Their understanding was so warped that a moving picture, which required a special magical process, was considered normal, while a still photo—the original kind—was seen as the oddity.
Magic, Harry thought, was so subjective.
Hagrid had already given him his train ticket: Platform 9¾.
It wasn't a typo. From the name, it seemed to mean the third of four equal divisions between Platforms 9 and 10.
Muggles didn't have access to this platform, of course. Harry was used to it by now. Wizards, likely due to centuries of being hunted, had become masters of disguise, blending seamlessly into the world.
Spells like Muggle-Repelling Charms were probably born from that long history of persecution. Through sheer collective willpower—what Harry liked to call the "power of collective vibes"—wizards had developed magic to stay hidden.
These days, most wizards looked down on Muggles, even discriminated against them. The word Muggle itself, though a wizard-coined term, clearly came from an old British dialect for "fool."
If Harry knew Chinese and had read the Harry Potter books, he'd probably marvel at how perfectly the term Muggle was translated—accurate, elegant, and evocative.
Officially, wizarding society's political correctness frowned upon openly discriminating against Muggle-born witches and wizards, but discriminating against Muggles themselves? That was still fair game.
Harry thought this kind of retaliatory name-calling was reasonable enough. Wizards had been persecuted, and they hadn't exactly sought revenge. A few snide remarks were pretty tame, all things considered.
He had a lot on his plate. He'd only gotten through the Goblin Wars in his magical history studies, nowhere near the modern era where Grindelwald tried to establish his wizard-supremacist party and rule the world.
Not that it mattered much—Grindelwald hadn't succeeded.
Besides, whether a word was an insult depended on the speaker's intent. The difference between saying "damn" and "damn, you're cool" was vast. Most wizards didn't even think Muggle was derogatory.
Words, Harry reflected, were so subjective. It wasn't about their surface meaning but the intent behind them.
Breaking the thief in the mountains is easy; breaking the thief in the heart is hard.
At King's Cross Station, Harry arrived at his destination.
One platform bore a large plastic sign with the number 9, another with the number 10. Between them? Nothing.
This had to be it—three-quarters of the way.
Harry noticed that, unlike the Leaky Cauldron, where non-magical people simply couldn't see the entrance, here even those with magic couldn't see the platform.
Maybe it was because the station was so crowded, and Muggles might accidentally stumble in?
So the spell here likely allowed only those with magic to pass through, and the wall was a real, physical barrier.
Harry glanced around for other first-years. Just then, a group passed behind him, and a snippet of conversation drifted to his ears.
"—Of course it's full of Muggles—"
Harry turned. The speaker was a short, plump woman talking to four red-haired boys.
Each of them was pushing a trunk like Harry's, and they had an owl.
Wizards, no doubt.
They were moving away, but Harry's keen hearing didn't require him to get closer to eavesdrop.
"Now, which platform is it?" the mother asked.
"Platform 9¾!" a red-haired girl holding her mother's hand piped up shrilly. "Mum, can I go…?"
"You're still too young, Ginny. Now, hush. Percy, you go first."
The oldest-looking boy headed toward the gap between Platforms 9 and 10.
He vanished.
Next went a pair of twins named Fred and George, who did the same.
Harry confirmed the location matched his guess. Without waiting for the woman's youngest son to go, he strode toward the barrier between Platforms 9 and 10.
Harry was tough as nails—if he crashed, he'd probably break the wall down.
With fierce determination, he charged forward, the barrier looming closer…
Nothing happened. He kept running. He opened his eyes.
The world had changed.
"A kid?"
"Foreigner."
"Can you speak English?"
"Take him to the police station."
"This kid has no ID. Why isn't he talking?"
"The doctor says it's temporary aphasia. We checked—he's linked to that massive explosion case. Might've been kidnapped by an international crime ring."
"The boy who lived!"
"Poor thing. Can we adopt him?"
"Of course we can."
"Kid, are you okay with that?"
Harry felt like he was watching a movie, unable to participate in the opening act. He knew clearly that what was happening now had nothing to do with him. The system, with its staggering computational power, had forced its way into this world, and the world was fabricating a reason for him to fit in.
And so, with the heavens and earth conspiring in his favor, he was smoothly adopted by a couple with children.
Just like his last crossover into the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, he'd been given a convenient starting identity.
The line between illusion and reality blurred. His crossed-over body cast a shadow of his past into this new world…
Every world had its own main storyline. In this one, the nexus of all destinies was a school.
The intervals between his crossovers varied, and the triggers were unknown, but there seemed to be a subtle connection.
The system had named this world Chinese-Style Parenting—another bizarre title.
He'd been struggling with learning Chinese, lacking both time and the right environment. And now, here he was, dropped into a world like this… Who knew how long he'd stay?
Three months should be enough to learn Chinese, right?