In the heart of London, on a bustling commercial street, stood a pub invisible to ordinary people.
This was a gathering place for wizards—the Leaky Cauldron. Inside, the lighting was dim, the walls were chipped, and the air hung heavy with the smell of cheap butterbeer.
Sean Grills, an 11-year-old boy, carried two brimming mugs of butterbeer toward a table.
"Poor little Sean, fetching beer for Old Tom again," a bald wizard took the mugs and called out toward the bar.
"Damn it, Jamie, don't make me sound so harsh!" Old Tom shot back. "Sean lives under my roof and eats my food—what's wrong with asking him to help out in his free time?"
"If Dumbledore finds out you're using the Boy Who Lived as a waiter, he'll be furious," Jamie retorted.
Sean grinned. "I'd rather help out down here than be cooped up in the storage room upstairs."
Old Tom nodded, a satisfied smile on his face. He was fond of the boy—not just because Sean was sensible, but also because his fame had brought the pub a steady stream of customers.
Sean Grills—like Harry Potter, he was a renowned "Boy Who Lived," one of only two survivors of the Killing Curse. But the one who had cast the curse on him was not the Dark Lord Voldemort, but his fanatical follower: that madwoman Bellatrix Lestrange. She had tortured the Longbottoms, and later, in Harry's fifth year, had murdered her own cousin, Sirius Black.
As for why she'd tried to kill Sean, that story began with his small wizarding family.
The Grills were a minor wizarding clan—nowhere near the ancient pure-blood families that had endured for centuries. Sean's grandfather had been the first wizard in the Grills line; his father was also a wizard, but his uncle Hearns was a Squib.
During the ten dark years of Voldemort's reign, fear had gripped the wizarding world. Sean's grandfather, once an employee at the Ministry of Magic, had defected to the Death Eaters out of terror of Voldemort. Ironically, Sean's father—secretly a Death Eater—had betrayed Voldemort in 1980 and joined the Order of the Phoenix.
Death Eaters never showed mercy to traitors. Bellatrix, that madwoman, had led a group to kill Sean's parents, then coldly cast the Killing Curse on the infant Sean. The baby had died instantly—his mother knew no ancient protective magic. But the Sean who existed now carried the soul of another person, one who had traveled from the 21st century.
In his previous life, Sean had just finished his college entrance exams. During summer break, after getting his driver's license, he'd died in a car accident. The next time he opened his eyes, he'd become a two-year-old child in this world.
The reawakened Sean was rescued by arriving Aurors and taken to the Leaky Cauldron, to his Squib uncle Hearns. Hearns worked as a cook at the pub and was now Sean's legal guardian.
Sean was hidden away at the Leaky Cauldron; Bellatrix had no idea the child she'd personally cursed was still alive. It wasn't until a year later, when Voldemort tried to kill Harry and his family—only to have the Killing Curse rebound, leaving Voldemort gravely injured and the Death Eaters scattered—that word of Sean's survival spread. Bellatrix had been shocked and desperate to kill him again, but by then she'd already been locked away in Azkaban.
When Sean was five, he awakened his magical talent. His Squib uncle Hearns was overjoyed.
"Sean, you're the hope of the Grills family," Hearns said, hugging him tightly and covering his cheeks with kisses.
Sean felt a chill. He couldn't have cared less about the Grills family—what truly bothered him were his own eyes.
One day, Sean noticed that everyone he looked at was surrounded by a faint white glow.
"Ever since my magic awakened, my eyes have been acting weird... Do I have glaucoma?" He quickly dismissed the thought.
Having read the Harry Potter books in his previous life, Sean's knowledge of the wizarding world—while not exhaustive—was far greater than that of most Hogwarts students.
It took Sean a month to figure out what was wrong with his eyes: the white glow only appeared when he looked at wizards, magical creatures, or magical objects. And when he watched other wizards cast spells, he could even see the magical frameworks on their wands.
After living in this world for several years, Sean realized that casting magic was far more complex than just reciting incantations and waving a wand. In his understanding, magic had three core components: the magical framework, the incantation, and mental power.
The magical framework was the intricate, three-dimensional pattern of lines he saw on other wizards' wands when they cast spells. Mental power, meanwhile, encompassed emotion and will.
Sean already had decent magical talent—and with these eyes that could "see" magic, he knew he had a huge advantage.
"With these magic-seeing eyes, learning spells later will be twice as easy," he thought.
The Leaky Cauldron drew all kinds of wizards; sometimes they'd cast small spells to amuse themselves, and Sean would memorize the magical frameworks on their wands. He'd once watched the bald Jamie cast a very basic Levitation Charm—a spell that would be taught to first-years at Hogwarts. Sean carefully memorized the spell's framework and incantation.
After that, he asked Hearns for copies of the Hogwarts first-year textbooks. Even though he was only five and a half, and still years away from school, Hearns agreed without hesitation. To Hearns, Sean would go to Hogwarts eventually—there was no harm in letting him preview the material early.
The Leaky Cauldron stood just before Diagon Alley, so Hearns had no trouble tracking down a few tattered, probably ninth-hand first-year textbooks.
"These pages are so worn they've developed a patina—he must have dug them out of a junk shop," Sean thought. But he didn't mind; he only wanted to use the spells in the books to test his theory.
He flipped through the textbooks and soon found the chapter on the Levitation Charm. It spanned four pages: the first two covered the spell's origin, which Sean skipped. He turned directly to the section on casting.
The first paragraphs described the incantation and wand movements; only at the very bottom was there a description of the Levitation Charm's magical framework, along with a 3D diagram.
"Damn, that's so complicated," Sean muttered. "If you had to learn this from a textbook, you'd have to be a know-it-all like Hermione. Regular students would never pick it up in a day or two."
He felt grateful—a diagram with a few notes was nowhere near as simple as seeing the magical framework in action. The Levitation Charm framework Jamie had used was something Sean had seen twice; it hadn't been that hard to remember. But he knew more advanced spells were made up of several, even a dozen, overlapping frameworks. Even with his ability to see them, memorizing those would be a huge challenge.