One month.
That's how long it's been since I woke up in this broken shell of a house, confused, starving, and reborn in the body of a child.
It's amazing what desperation and experience can do in thirty days.
The house isn't just rubble anymore. I've patched the roof with boards stripped from collapsed rooms. Covered the windows with old curtains and nailed-down planks to keep out the cold. Moved all the salvageable furniture into two rooms: one for sleeping, one for living.
The rest? Condemned. Too unstable to fix. I left them to rot.
The fire pit in the kitchen is now a proper hearth, built from bricks I pried loose from the garden wall. There's always a pot warming with water or stew. It's not much, but it's mine.
My shelter.
My fortress.
I've even rigged a crude alarm system—tin cans and strings by the door and window frames. If someone tries to sneak in, I'll hear them. Might not stop them, but I'll know.
I survive.
No, scratch that.
I will live.
And I eat regularly.
Not because food magically appeared, but because I made it happen. I studied the area, mapped it out in my head. There are houses further down the block, scattered and mostly abandoned. But a few? A few still have signs of life—vegetable gardens, storage sheds, groceries left on doorsteps.
And at night, I become a shadow.
Silent. Quick. Precise.
No one sees me. No one hears me. I take just enough to avoid suspicion—some apples here, a loaf of bread there. I found a chicken coop two blocks down and took a few eggs, careful not to leave a pattern.
Old instincts, new tools.
Even in this small, untrained body, I make it work.
And between the raids, I've been learning.
A week ago, I broke into a house at the edge of the neighborhood and found something priceless: a stack of old newspapers. Moldy, damp, but still readable.
The Daily Telegraph.
Date: August 1991.
Location: London.
That stopped me cold.
I sat in the empty kitchen of that house for hours, staring at the word like it would bite me.
London.
The name echoed in my head, distant and unfamiliar in the worst possible way.
Because the year… and the country… didn't match what I remembered.
Before I died, it was 2018.
And I was in Ukraine.
Fighting in a war I didn't start. Wearing a uniform I didn't choose. Killing men I'd never met.
I was an orphan, raised in barracks, trained to shoot before I could even read. My life was regimented, cold, stripped of warmth or wonder. I barely interacted with the outside world. Civilians were myths. Peace was a lie. Compassion was weakness.
All I knew was war.
Fight.
Kill.
Survive.
Repeat.
That was the only rhythm my heart knew—until it stopped.
And now?
I was here.
In a child's body.
In 1991.
In London.
Time, geography, identity—everything had shifted.
I wasn't just reborn.
I was relocated.
Across decades.
Across borders.
Across time itself.
And I had no idea why.
It was late afternoon. The sky had dulled to a lifeless grey, and the smell of impending rain hung thick in the air. I was in the living room—if you could call the hollowed-out, half-repaired shell of a room that. A patchy old rug and a crate I used as a table made up the décor. My knife sat nearby, within arm's reach.
I was halfway through gutting an old transistor radio I'd scavenged the day before. No power, no signal, but I liked the gears. Mechanical puzzles calmed me.
That's when I heard it.
Tap.
Tap.
Three soft knocks at the front door.
No one knocks around here. They either barge in or stay away.
I reached for the knife instinctively.
Tap. Tap.
Slower this time. Polite. Intentional.
I stood, blade in hand, body low. Silent.
The door creaked as I slowly opened it.
There stood an old woman. Tall, severe, and immaculately dressed in emerald-green robes that looked like they belonged in a stage play or a Renaissance fair. Her hair was drawn tightly into a bun. Perched on her nose was a pair of square spectacles that made her eyes look sharp as razors.
She looked at me like a librarian about to scold a noisy student.
But I said nothing. Just stared.
She lifted a thin wooden stick and tapped it gently on the air. A soft chime rang out, and I felt something shimmer across the threshold—like a warm breeze brushing my skin.
The fuck was that?
She smiled faintly.
"Mr. Ryan, I presume?"
I didn't answer. My grip on the knife tightened.
"I'm Professor Minerva McGonagall," she continued. "Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
A beat passed in silence.
I blinked slowly.
Then blinked again.
"…What?"
She didn't falter. "I've come to formally welcome you to the magical world. We sent your letter by owl a month ago, but it seems there was… a mishap."
I looked her dead in the eye.
Then looked down at her wand.
Then back up at her.
"…Oh," I said, voice flat. "You're one of those."
She tilted her head. "One of what?"
"Delusional types," I said plainly, stepping back and gesturing toward the broken furniture like it was a therapist's office. "Come in, have a seat. I've seen your kind before. Thought the war cracked them. Turns out it just rattled the screws loose."
Her eyebrow twitched at that.
For a long moment, she just stood in the doorway, eyeing me like one might a misbehaving brat.
"I assure you, young man," she said with clipped precision, "I am neither delusional nor lying."
I tilted my head mockingly. "Mm. Sure you're not."
Her lips thinned. "You're holding a knife."
"I'm talking to a woman in robes claiming she works at a school for wizards," I replied. "We all make choices."
To my surprise, she didn't storm off or explode in righteous fury. She just sighed through her nose and entered, the door closing softly behind her with a flick of her wand. No hand. No touch.
Just movement.
I noticed. I filed it away. Still didn't believe it.
McGonagall stopped near the hearth, her sharp gaze sweeping over the room I'd cobbled together from scrap and instinct. She examined the broken chairs, the cracked walls, the soot-streaked fireplace still warm from last night's fire.
Then she looked at me.
Skinny. Underfed. A little dirty. A tattered shirt hanging off a frame that hadn't seen comfort in weeks. Her brow furrowed slightly—not with pity, but concern masked behind discipline.
She raised her wand.
"Wait—" I started, backing up instinctively.
Flick.
The wand swished through the air with grace and precision.
And the room transformed.
Dust evaporated in an instant. The grime on the windows vanished, replaced by glistening glass that let in clean daylight. The floorboards mended themselves with faint cracks of wood reshaping. The soot-stained hearth became polished stone, and the rotting armchair in the corner straightened and reupholstered itself with a puff of gold thread.
The air even smelled cleaner.
My mouth fell open.
My brain struggled to catch up.
My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
"…Was that…?"
"Magic," she said calmly, turning to me as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world. "Yes."
I stared.
Not blinking.
Not breathing.
"Holy shit."
Her lips thinned. "Language."
"I just watched a rotting corpse of a chair come back to life," I said, pointing at it. "You cleaned the smell out of the air. There's no correct language for this."
She arched a single, perfectly shaped eyebrow. "I assure you, you'll see much stranger things at Hogwarts."
I shook my head slowly, jaw still slightly slack. "Lady… chairs don't fix themselves. Windows don't mend. That's not just strange that's science calling in sick and reality filing for early retirement."
McGonagall gave a faint smile. "And yet, here we are."
I turned in a slow circle, taking in the now-immaculate room that, minutes ago, looked like a war zone. My chest rose and fell, breath short.
Everything I had built the rough shelter, the scavenged life was gone in a wave of a wand.
It wasn't just power.
It was effortless.
I felt small.
"I… I did all that," I said softly, gesturing to the now-gone filth, the patched boards, the barricaded window. "By hand. With nails and teeth and—hell—I used the guts of a toaster to keep rats out."
"You survived," she said gently. "That matters. But now it's time to learn how to live."
I didn't know what to say.
Because this wasn't the battlefield.
This wasn't Ukraine. This wasn't 2018. This wasn't even the world I knew.
This was something else entirely.
And for once, I didn't know how to fight it.
So I did the only thing I could.
I laughed.
Low. Disbelieving.
A short, bitter chuckle escaped me. "You're telling me I've got magic."
"Yes," McGonagall replied calmly.
"Magic," I repeated. "Like, abracadabra, fireball-out-of-my-hands type magic?"
"You'll learn more precise terminology at Hogwarts," she said, not missing a beat.
I snorted, shaking my head. "And that owl?" I gestured toward the hearth, where charred bones and stray feathers had long since turned to ash. "That was supposed to deliver the letter? The invite to Wizard Camp?"
Her face fell slightly. "Yes. That owl was assigned to deliver your Hogwarts acceptance letter. It should have returned once the message was delivered, but…" she trailed off, her brow creasing with concern. "It didn't."
I frowned, my stomach turning cold. "Was that the bird from a month ago? amber eyes and snow-white feathers., had a rolled-up paper in its beak?"
Her gaze snapped to mine. "Yes. That would be the owl sent to all Muggle-born or orphaned magical children."
My mouth went dry.
"Was that bird… important?" I asked slowly, a cold sweat forming at the back of my neck.
"Yes, dear," she said, with the kind of gentle finality people used when discussing the recently deceased.
I went stiff.
"…Fuck."
McGonagall's eyebrow arched at my language, but before she could speak, I cut in:
"I ate the bird."
Silence.
Thick. Suffocating. Hanging between us like fog.
Her expression froze. Not angry. Not sad.
Just… stunned.
"I—what?" she asked, blinking rapidly.
I cleared my throat, eyes darting toward the floor. "I was starving, okay? It flew at me with a letter in its mouth, and I thought it was diseased or trying to attack me. I panicked, stabbed it, and… yeah."
McGonagall stared at me like I'd just confessed to eating the royal corgi.
"Oh, and I burned the letters too," I added quickly, as if saying it faster made it hurt less. "Used them to start a fire. Wasn't trying to be dramatic, I just… didn't know they were invitations to a Magical School."
McGonagall slowly, slowly, sat down on the nearest reupholstered armchair, her movements precise, her lips pressed into a thin line.
She exhaled through her nose like she was trying very hard not to scream.
"Well," she said at last, voice dangerously calm. "That is… certainly a first."
"I didn't mean to!" I defended, holding up my hands. "I was half-dead from hunger! It was either eat the bird or start gnawing on the floorboards!"
She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Ryan… that owl was a trained, Ministry-assigned delivery familiar. They are very expensive. And very rare."
I winced. "...You want me to pay for it?"
"No," she said dryly. "But I imagine the Owlery staff will weep when they hear this."
There was a long pause.
Then she added with a faint grimace, "Did you at least cook it properly?"
"Define properly," I said slowly. "It wasn't pink in the middle, if that's what you're asking."
She made a sound—somewhere between a sigh and a whimper—and rubbed her temples.
"This may be the strangest Hogwarts recruitment I've ever done," she murmured to herself.
I rubbed the back of my neck, embarrassed. "So... am I still allowed in?"
McGonagall looked up, and to my surprise, a small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
"You burned your invitation, ate your owl, and still managed to survive entirely alone for a month in a collapsing house… Yes, Mr. Ryan. I think Hogwarts will manage."