Chapter 4: Escape from St. Catherine's
September twentieth, nineteen ninety-one. The last day Adam Wright would spend as anyone's prisoner.
He lay in his narrow cot, listening to rain drum against the dormitory windows and the soft breathing of sleeping children. The ancient radiator wheezed in the corner, fighting a losing battle against autumn's chill. Everything was exactly as it had been every night for eleven years—except for the invisible interface floating in his vision and the weight of stolen hope sitting heavy in his chest.
His escape bag was ready. Hidden beneath the cot where Mrs. Brennan's prying eyes couldn't find it: stolen food wrapped in newspaper, a change of clothes that might keep him warm for a few days, and every coin he'd managed to pilfer over the years. Seventeen pounds and thirty-six pence. A fortune to an orphan, poverty to the wider world.
But poverty with magic was still better than comfort without it.
Adam opened the System interface with practiced thought. His SP total glowed softly: 430 points. Enough to purchase Alohomora with a safety margin. The spell that opened locks. The spell that would open his cage.
Around him, the other children slept on in blissful ignorance. Jenkins muttered something about treacle tart. Sarah kicked at her blankets, lost in dreams that didn't involve gray walls and institutional neglect. None of them knew that their fellow prisoner was about to break free.
"They wouldn't care if they did."
The thought carried no bitterness. These children weren't his friends—they were just fellow victims of a system that warehoused unwanted lives. He felt no guilt about leaving them behind. Survival was an individual sport.
Adam navigated to the Shop tab and found his target: Alohomora - 300 SP. His mental finger hovered over the purchase option. Once he bought this, there was no turning back. He'd be committed to escape, to homelessness, to whatever came after.
But the alternative was staying here until he aged out or went mad. Neither option held much appeal.
Adam confirmed the purchase.
Knowledge exploded through his consciousness like lightning through water. Not just the mechanics of the spell—wand movement, incantation, magical theory—but the feeling of it. The sensation of reaching out with invisible fingers to touch tumblers and springs, convincing metal to yield through pure force of will.
He understood locks now. Their weakness, their purpose, the fundamental truth that any barrier created by human hands could be undone by human will. Given enough power, enough knowledge, enough determination.
Adam tested his new ability on the footlocker beside his bed. "Alohomora," he whispered, focusing on the cheap padlock that protected his meager possessions.
Click.
The lock fell open with mechanical obedience. Adam stared at it, momentarily overwhelmed by the casual ease of it all. Years of being locked in punishment rooms, locked out of private conversations, locked away from anything that mattered—and now barriers were just suggestions he could choose to ignore.
His euphoria lasted exactly as long as it took to check his MP: 160/200. Wandless casting had cost him 40 points instead of the normal 20. Without a proper focus, every spell would drain him twice as fast.
The System Shop offered a Basic Training Wand - 500 SP, but five hundred points might as well have been five thousand for all the good it did him now. He'd have to make do with what he had: 200 MP, five possible casts, and a route that required perfect execution.
Adam sat up in his cot and began planning with the cold precision of a strategist. Five locks stood between him and freedom: the dormitory door, the stairwell access, the office hallway, the back entrance, and the gate to the street. Five casts. No room for error.
"Better to try and fail than never try at all."
At two in the morning, when even the night staff had settled into their routines, Adam moved. Three days of practice had taught him which floorboards creaked, how to shift his weight without making the bed springs sing, how to breathe so quietly that even the boy in the next cot wouldn't stir.
His escape bag went over his shoulder—light enough to carry, heavy enough to contain his entire future. The stolen money clinked softly in his pocket. Everything he owned in the world, ready to follow him into the unknown.
The dormitory door loomed in the darkness. Adam placed his palm against the lock, feeling the metal's cold reality beneath his skin. But underneath that surface chill, his new magical senses detected something else: the mechanism's inner workings, waiting to yield to his will.
"Alohomora," he breathed.
MP drained like blood from an open vein—40 points gone in an instant, leaving him dizzy with sudden exhaustion. But the lock clicked with satisfying finality, and the door swung open on hinges that someone had obviously oiled recently.
The corridor beyond stretched empty and gray. Security lighting cast everything in sickly yellow, creating pools of visibility separated by deeper shadows. Adam crept forward, his bare feet silent against cold linoleum.
Three more barriers fell in quick succession. The stairwell access surrendered with barely a whisper (40 MP). The office hallway yielded after a moment's resistance (40 MP). The back entrance gave up its secrets with mechanical resignation (40 MP).
Each spell left Adam weaker. Fatigue clouded his thoughts, making it hard to focus on the route ahead. His MP pool had dropped to 80 points—enough for two more casts, assuming he didn't collapse first.
The back courtyard opened before him like a moonlit arena. Twenty feet away, the gate that led to freedom waited behind one final lock. But between Adam and his goal sat Mr. Davies in his usual chair, back turned, cigarette glowing in the darkness.
The night guard was half-asleep, but any sound would wake him fully. The Alohomora incantation wasn't loud—barely above a whisper—but in the pre-dawn quiet, even breathing seemed to echo.
Adam scanned the courtyard for options. There—a loose piece of brick near the fence. He picked it up, weighed it in his palm, then hurled it as hard as he could toward the far corner of the yard.
The brick clattered against the wall with satisfying volume. Davies jerked upright, muttering something unprintable about "bloody cats" and "goddamn vermin." He stood up slowly, bones creaking, and wandered toward the source of the sound.
"Alohomora," Adam whispered, pouring his last reserves of concentration into the gate lock.
The barrier fell open. Adam slipped through the gap and ran.
Freedom tasted like exhaust fumes and garbage. Like rain on concrete and the electric charge of city air before a storm. Like everything terrible and wonderful about the world beyond institutional walls.
Adam ran until his lungs burned and his legs trembled with exhaustion. Three miles from St. Catherine's, following routes he somehow remembered from his transmigrated knowledge, he finally collapsed in an alley behind a shuttered bakery. The city stretched around him in all directions—vast, indifferent, and utterly without rules.
His magical reserves sat at a pathetic 40 MP. Enough for one more spell if absolute desperation required it. But he was out. He was free. He was—
[MISSION COMPLETE: LEAVE ORPHANAGE PERMANENTLY] [REWARD: 1,000 SP]
Adam started laughing. Hysterical, desperate laughter that echoed off the alley walls and probably woke half the neighborhood. One thousand System Points! He was rich beyond his wildest dreams! He could buy spells, equipment, knowledge—
The laughter died in his throat as reality reasserted itself with brutal clarity.
He was eleven years old. Homeless. Alone in London with 1,130 SP, two spells, and the clothes on his back. Winter was coming, and he had no plan beyond "escape from orphanage."
"What the hell have I done?"
But as dawn broke over the city, painting the eastern sky in shades of pink and gold, Adam Wright found himself smiling. For the first time in his short, miserable life, he'd made a choice that mattered. Whatever came next—starvation, freezing, getting caught by police and dragged back—it would be on his terms.
The System chimed softly in his mind:
[NEW DAILY MISSION AVAILABLE] [OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE 24 HOURS ON THE STREETS] [REWARD: 50 SP]
Adam accepted without hesitation. He found an abandoned building three blocks away—broken windows, graffitied walls, the lingering smell of squatters who'd moved on to warmer prospects. The second floor offered a corner room with decent sight lines and multiple escape routes.
Home sweet home.
As he settled into his new life, spreading newspaper across the floor for insulation and unpacking his meager supplies, Adam began planning his next move. The System offered abilities beyond anything the magical world had shown him. Knowledge, power, the tools to carve out a place in a society that had rejected him.
He hadn't escaped just to survive on the streets. He'd escaped to find his way into the wizarding world through the back door, the side entrance, whatever route they'd left unguarded.
And nothing—not Dumbledore, not the Ministry, not the entire magical establishment—was going to stop him.
The first week passed in a blur of small victories and crushing defeats. Adam learned to steal food without getting caught, to find shelter that wouldn't collapse on him, to complete the System's daily missions for precious SP rewards. Ten points here, twenty there. Each success built his confidence and his abilities in equal measure.
But every night, as he huddled in whatever shelter he'd found, Adam planned for bigger things. The System Shop contained wonders beyond imagining, and now he had the freedom to pursue them.
The magical world had locked him out. Soon, he'd break down their door.
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