She will show off a broad range of magic--turning more things into other things and back, temporarily animating a figurine, producing colored sparks and a steady light--and answer any theoretical questions for about fifteen more minutes and then she needs to leave to go brief the next ten-year-old.

Cy has lots of questions and he's inevitably going to think of a dozen more questions as soon as she leaves.

--

Once she does, he flops on his bed.

Okay. So. Magic. 

Clearly the things he thought of as being lucky-- people not noticing him, people believing him that he's supposed to be where he is-- are in some way magic. Probably some of the objects he randomly finds are magic too, although a lot of them are just having a bad memory. Therefore, while wands might help with magic, they're not strictly necessary. Therefore, he can get a head start on figuring out how to control the fundamental forces of the universe. 

How does magic work? When he's accidentally done magic before, the key thing was that he really really really wanted something to happen. So maybe he should try wanting something.

Professor McGonagall turned into a cat without using her wand. So that's something you can definitely do without a wand.

He sits on his bed and thinks very hard about how much he wants to be a cat. Cats. Excellent animals. Small and furry. Sacred to the goddess Bast. People pet them, which Cy is in favor of, no one's really petted him since halfway through primary school when it started to get weird that he was the only one who wasn't a girl. He's a big fan of how they always land on their feet. He wishes he always landed on his feet. Maybe magic means you always land on your feet? It seems like there ought to be a spell for that. Or an amulet. Like Feather Fall. He wonders how many D&D spells also exist in the real world. Maybe the guy who wrote D&D was a wizard. Maybe Jack Chick was actually right that D&D gave you magic powers and he would have found out about his magic powers way earlier if he'd actually managed to get a group together to-- focus. Cats. He's supposed to be thinking about cats. Cats purr. They kind of sound like motorcycles. He wants a motorcycle. Maybe he could have a flying motorcycle. Could you get some kind of amulet of Permanent Wingardium Leviosa and then fly around on your motorcycle? That would be really cool.

--Okay. Maybe he needs a different approach to magic. 

He crumples up a piece of paper and puts it in front of him on the bed. "Wingardium Leviosa," he says, staring at the ball of paper and wanting it to move. 

The ball doesn't move. 

Maybe he has to enunciate. He always read in books about the importance of properly pronouncing spells. "Wingardium Leviosa," he says clearly, copying McGonagall's intonation as best he can.

The paper does not move. 

Cy glares. He is not going to be defeated by a crumpled-up paper ball. He is a long-lost member of a secret race of wizards and the ball is made out of tree corpses. "Wingardium Leviosa."

The ball wobbles slightly. It could have been a gust of air, except that all the windows are closed.

Cy bounces on the bed with glee, dislodging the ball. He can do magic. He can do magic. He can do magic. Fuck you, paper balls, you will be decimated by the might of the glorious wizard Cyrus Wei, pointy of hat and swishy of robe. Phenomenal cosmic power lies at his fingertips. The atoms dance to his will. He is INVINCIBLE.

The ball does not respond.

All right. Back to work. He has to figure out of he can do it twice.

--

Cy spends the next two weeks learning magic. He eats so little that even Mrs. Irving notices and begins to make concerned comments about him being sick. He stays up until he collapses and then sleeps for twelve hours. His friends leave increasingly worried messages on Mrs. Irving's answering machine. The security guards at the mall double up on their rounds, convinced that he must be up to something. 

He can't go invisible reliably, maybe because he doesn't know the words, but it works as well as it always did if he just counts on it being there. He can produce colored sparks and a light and send them dancing about the room. He can change the color of the sparks. He can levitate a paper ball and send it dancing around the room. He cannot turn into a cat, which disappoints him. McGonagall didn't even need a wand to do it so it can't be that hard. He just needs to figure out the right state of mind. (He spends a lot of time trying to think catlike thoughts. Lying in sunbeams is nice. It is very important to torture mice to death. Meow.)

--

The day before his trip to London, Cy goes for a morning walk because he can't think when he's sitting down and teaching himself magic requires a lot of thinking. (It is morning in two senses: it is 3am and also he just woke up.) He's levitated a stone and is carrying it behind him for practice. 

He isn't looking where he's going and he runs into a car. Then he blinks.

Known magic expert Yoda says that size matters not. The Force is everywhere, and from the Force's perspective lifting up a rock is the same as lifting up an X-wing fighter. Cy is pretty sure Yoda would not lie about magic. And Cy can levitate a pebble.

Therefore, logically, Cy can levitate a car.

He puts his hands on his hips and glares at the car. This car is on the ground. This car is not supposed to be on the ground. What does this car think it's doing, being on the ground, when Cyrus Wei, the greatest wizard who has ever lived, thinks it should be floating in the air. This car should be ashamed of itself. The sheer nerve of this, being susceptible to gravity. This is outrageous. Cy has a right. What is it thinking. 

He says, using the pronunciation that worked best for him: "Wingardium Leviosa."

The car wobbles.

Absolutely unacceptable. Wobbling is for paper balls on Cy's first day of learning magic. Cy has been learning magic for nearly two weeks. What does the universe think it's doing. This car will fly. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

And the car floats.

Cy's face breaks into a grin. Nice. 

Belatedly it occurs to him that:

1. Magic is secret and he shouldn't levitate cars in a residential area.
2. He is very good at levitating things but hasn't yet learned how to drop them. 

This thought distracts him from his attitude of aggrieved entitlement.

The car crashes to the ground. The metal crumples. The windows shatter. The tires are in places they are really not supposed to be. 

Cy blinks and then starts to walk away in his patented fashion: he is very innocent and he has nothing to do with whatever went wrong and he just happens to be walking in the 'away' direction for totally coincidental reasons, and also he's moving very very very quickly. 

When he's far enough away that it seems likely he's not going to get caught by angry wizards or car owners, he starts to skip. He can levitate a car. He can levitate a car. He has magic powers and he can levitate a car and he is the coolest person in the world.

Still, it's probably a good idea to get to London sooner rather than later. He runs back to his house, leaves a note for Mrs. Irving ("Meeting for boarding school! Be back tonight!"), and packs up his backpack with money and snacks and Cosmos and River Out Of Eden and Asimov On Numbers and Magic's Pawn and Enchanters' End Game and Faust Eric. Then he walks to the truck stop (levitating pebbles and branches and not cars along the way), sneaks into the back of the truck fueling up whose route he knows heads to London, bounces a little bit about how he can do this and no one else can because he's magic, and takes a nap.

Once he's in London, he spends the morning bouncing between restaurants looking sad at waitresses until they give him tea and a snack, and then heads towards the Leaky Cauldron. It takes him a moment to find it but once he glares at the universe and tells it that there is a tavern here and it will show him the tavern the universe cowers and he can see it fine. 

He can also see McGonagall, who smiles and gestures him to go inside. Inside is a tavern with a old toothless bartender and a girl his age with brown hair like an unruly cloud and eyes like saucers and nervously excited parents, and a very serious-looking boy his age whose parents look really excessively posh, just the absolute most posh, and like they would not be caught dead admitting they weren't totally in control of any situation in which they happened to be.

"Hello!" says the girl. "I'm Hermione Granger. Are you going to Hogwarts too? What's your name?"

"I'm Cy Wei! Do I have to worry about you exiting pursued by a bear?"

"No, but we are definitely in a brave new world that has such people in it! I am so excited about magic, I can't wait to get my textbooks, I wish I had realized that what I could do wasn't just coincidences so I would have had more time to learn about it! I bet the magic-raised kids already know so much stuff and I'm going to have to work to catch up." She makes having to work sound like a mysterious novel activity she's never tried but would like to experience just the once.

"I've been practicing! I can levitate a car."

Maybe he shouldn't have said that. Oops.

"Oh wow. I haven't dared try anything that big because I heard we aren't supposed to practice outside of school, but I can make a ripped piece of paper mend itself and I can shake a bag of buttons and have them end up sorted by colour. Did you get in trouble for the car?"

"I haven't told any adults and I'm not going to."

"I think they have magic ways of finding out. So what class are you most looking forward to at Hogwarts? Transfiguration is really cool, but charms is a bit broader, and I haven't gotten to see any potions yet, and herbology sounds really exciting!"

"Transfiguration! I want to figure out how to turn into a cat. I couldn't figure it out on my own. --Also Astronomy, I think wizards could probably use their magic to figure out all kinds of things about space we don't know yet."

"That would be really neat. I asked Professor McGonagall whether the telescopes were magical or if I could bring my mum's and she said they're enchanted to never get damaged or fogged up and hold themselves steady and you can tell them to point at one part of the sky all night."

Bounce bounce bounce. "Awesome! --What have you been reading?"

(This is the most important question, according to Cy, for assessing friend potential.)

"Well, for the last two weeks I've really wanted to be reading about magical theory and the history of the magical world, but of course I don't have my books yet, so I've mostly been reading histories of other things, most recently steam engines, and also the memoirs of someone who went to Eton because I wasn't expecting to go to boarding school at all, let alone a magic one. And then for fiction I've been reading Alanna: The First Adventure; it's about a girl pretending to be a boy so she can train to be a knight. What about you?"

"I've been busy practicing magic so I haven't been reading much, but on the way up I was reading about math and evolutionary biology and, uh, I don't actually know what Cosmos is about, the universe I guess. And also I'm reading Eric which is about a guy who tries to summon a demon but ends up summoning an incompetent wizard named Rincewind who is terrified of everything and can't do magic, and Magic's Pawn which is about this guy who falls in love with another guy and also there are telepathic horses, and Enchanters' End Game which is like if you took every fantasy novel ever published and averaged them together. --I like Tamora Pierce, she's great. I don't know anything about steam engines. The memoirs of someone who went to Eton seems like a smart thing to read, I'm never that prepared for anything."

"Oh, Magic's Pawn is good; I love the Companions. Would you like to hear some things about steam engines or Eton?"

"Yes!"

She will happily talk about James Watt and coal mines for a while! She's not directly quoting a book, it's more summarized and colloquial than that, but her eyes flick back and forth as she talks like she's reading an invisible book floating over Cyrus's shoulder.

"We should be friends."

How commendably straightforward of him! "Yes we should." 

Eventually the last group arrives (a black boy who introduces himself as Dean Thomas, with his mother), and the serious-looking boy introduces himself as Justin Finch-Fletchley, and they can all go into . . . a dinky little trash alley. But then McGonagall opens a magic arch in the wall and they can all go into actual Diagon Alley, which is lined with shops selling all manner of things from the normal to the bizzare and bustling with shoppers who cover a similar range.

"This way, everyone. Our first stop is the bank where you will all change your money; on the way I will explain the currency." She walks backward at the head of the group with more confidence than most of the rest of them walk forward and explains the undeniably kind of stupid undecimalized wizarding currency and how you should not try anything funny with it because the goblins enforce the related laws and (she adds approvingly) goblins have no tolerance for funny business. 

A woman in a blue cloak complains about the price of dragon liver; a cluster of boys crowd around the window of a broom store; stray cats pick their way between shoppers; owls swoop overhead.

Cy is trying to pay attention. He is trying so hard to pay attention. Unfortunately, he would have a diagnosis of ADHD if any of his foster care parents were paying enough attention and cared enough to take him to a doctor about it, and Diagon Alley is distracting as hell.

Ice cream shop! Cy is hungry because he only had snacks so far today and ice cream is also not really a meal but it tastes really good. A sign advertises cauldrons that are COPPER, BRASS, PEWTER, SILVER - SELF-STIRRING - COLLAPSIBLE and Cy wonders how many other convenient magical things there are besides self-stirring cauldrons, can you get frying pans that flip the eggs for you. Also why would you want a silver cauldron? Is it just to show off? Owls hooting-- did wizards have pet owls? Why? Were they sapient? Cy wanted a sapient pet owl. He overhears "dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad" and-- apparently dragons exist. Fuck owls, Cy wants a pet dragon. They're going to be getting all Dragonriders of Pern up in here. He's going to bond with his dragon and soar through the air and breathe fire on people who are annoying. Brooms-- he overhears a boy his age say that the new Nimbus Two Thousand is the fastest ever-- so they fly? Do witches literally soar through the air on brooms? What else about the legends of witches is true? Can he turn people into frogs if he doesn't like them? Cy fancies himself Granny Weatherwax although he thinks that he's going to be better at levitating cars than at headology. Human psychology is not his strong point. Everyone is wearing robes. Cy is wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt but people don't seem particularly startled by this-- he guesses that they know the Muggle kids are going shopping at Diagon Alley. Is Cy going to have to wear robes? He guesses he shouldn't have predicted that wizards would wear the same clothes Muggles do, but it's still really weird to think that he's going to be in what is basically a dress.

And there are bat spleens and eels' eyes, quills and rolls of parchment (why don't wizards have pens? is Cy going to have to learn to write with a quill?), potion bottles, globes of the moon, wands, and tottering piles of books that Cy stares at for two minutes and then notices that everyone else has already left and runs through the crowd to rejoin the group. 

There's a bank! It's white marble and very banklike, except that it's labeled GRINGOTTS, and there are two guards by the door looking ceremonial yet alert, and those guards are four feet tall with pointy ears and very long fingers and shoes that imply very long feet and generally don't look human. Also there's a poem on the door:

Enter, stranger, but take heed

Of what awaits the sin of greed

For those who take but do not earn

Must pay most dearly in their turn

So if you seek beneath our floors

A treasure that was never yours

Thief, you have been warned, beware

Of finding more than treasure there.

Cy will NOT shoplift from the bank, got it.

"Do you think Neanderthals still exist?" he asks Hermione.