5 Chapter 05
The next morning, it was a slightly apprehensive McGonagall who approached her newest student in the hospital wing. To the growing concern and, frankly, terror of their resident mediwitch, the last of Milo's injuries had vanished completely.
"So," he said brightly, "What's the plan, then? Travel by horseback, Teleport, Wind Walk, Phantom Steed, or something else?" The boy's rat was sitting on his shoulder, mimicking Milo's every hand gesture and expression in a most disconcerting way.
"We'll walk to the edge of Hogwarts grounds and Apparate there directly," she explained.
"Apparate, eh? What's that?" Milo asked. He was getting very concerned at the number of Knowledge (Arcana) checks he'd been failing recently. It was most unlike him.
"We will be transported directly to Diagon Alley in London," she explained. "From the point of view of those watching, we will appear to disappear."
"Oh, so we'll teleport?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes."
"Why can't we just do it from here?" Milo asked, gesturing around the hospital wing.
"You can't Apparate or Disapparate on the Hogwarts grounds," McGonagall explained.
Milo frowned.
"That really makes a lot of sense, actually. I can see how dark wizards teleporting—sorry, 'Apparating—'" he said with finger-quotes "—into your school would be a problem. Well, let's be off, then." Milo had woken up an hour early to memorize his spells for the day and as a result felt like he was practically buzzing with magic.
The castle, Milo decided, was pretty cool. There were moving staircases and talking portraits (he wasn't sure how they pulled that off, Animate Object was a Divine spell after all), suits of armour (the value of that many suits of full plate set Milo salivating again. He wondered if they'd notice if a few went "missing"), and the castle was, on the whole, apparently larger on the inside than the outside (what was it, an entire Castle of Holding? The cost of something like that would be astronomical, not to mention that it would drain enough XP to de-level an epic Wizard), they even had—
"Holycrapghost! Glitterdust!" Milo shouted, reaching for the only spell he thought would affect it.
"Mister Amastacia-Liadon!" Professor McGonagall barked, "At Hogwarts, we do not blind history teachers! I'm dreadfully sorry, Professor Binns."
"He…he… he's a teacher?" Milo asked, stunned. "Cool! So sorry about that, Professors. I was startled."
"No matter, no matter," Binns said distractedly, floating past them with a trail of golden dust falling off of him in his wake.
"It's considered impolite to draw attention to Professor Binns'… condition," McGonagall said quietly. She sighed. Milo had somehow, apparently, achieved an unusually high degree of control over his accidental magic (or so she thought). Hopefully, that should stop once they got him a proper wand and training.
As they walked out of the castle's huge front gates, Milo soaked in the castle's grounds. There was an evil forest. An animated tree (a disguised Treant, possibly?). A lake with mermaids.
"This place is awesome," he said. The amount of XP he could get just from random encounters in the school grounds alone… it suddenly made sense to him how such a school could be an effective way to gain power. This place was clearly, really, incredibly, obviously, brilliantly dangerous. With all the adventure and monster fighting that must be happening between classes, not to mention the magical brawls that naturally occur when you give an eleven-year-old untold arcane power in a practically unsupervised environment (it would take a staff of thousands to keep an eye on all of Hogwarts at once), these kids would be leveling up like crazy.
Milo grinned happily, thinking about all the XP he was about to gain.
McGonagall smiled, thinking about how happy Milo looked now that he had found a home.
"This should be far enough," McGonagall said. "Hold on closely, a Side-Along Apparition can be somewhat startling at first."
As it turned out, that was putting it rather lightly. It felt, roughly, like someone had buffed his Escape Artist bonus to +70 and forced him to crawl through a lengthy stretch of lead pipe, backwards.
"I think I failed a Fortitude save," Milo said somewhat queasily.
He looked around to find himself in a dark, somewhat shabby tavern. He felt, like all adventurers the world over (despite being under-age in all civilized nations) simultaneously at home and somewhat homesick. Everyone they passed gave McGonagall a respectful nod. Milo hadn't realized she was a retired adventurer, but it made sense. Who better to teach at a school for wizards?
"Good Lord," said the barman, peering at Milo. "Is this—can this be—"
"Tom, I thought I asked you to stop doing that to every student who passes through here?" McGonagall said sharply.
"Sorry, Professor," the barman mumbled, somewhat sheepishly.
"I remember you when you were this tall," she said, gesturing to about her waist. "A wide-eyed, innocent young Hufflepuff, not that that's anything to be ashamed of, in my Transfiguration class," (a-ha, thought Milo. She's a Transmuter; no wonder everyone respects her) "such promise. Such potential." She shook her head slowly. "And what do you do with it? Prank every little boy who comes your way into thinking they're secretly the Boy-Who-Lived. Honestly, I don't know how you sleep at night."
"Sorry, Professor."
"It's a good thing for Hufflepuff House that you've already graduated, young man," (Milo noted that Tom already had graying hair. Just how old is McGonagall?) "or your antics would seriously handicap the students of that poor House (bless their little, hardworking, earnest hearts) in their chances at winning the Cup. If I ever hear of you pulling this on the actual Harry Potter, why… Well, I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise by saying what I'll do." She led Milo off, making soft tut-tut sounds to herself. The barman, Milo noted, looked somewhat sick. Milo was impressed. He'd never met a Wizard (or witch, as the people here seemed to think that witch was the feminine form of Wizard, for some reason) who put cross-class ranks into Intimidate before.
"Merlin!" she said as they left the pub. "I've wanted to do that for years." She reached out and tapped a seemingly-innocuous brick wall, and a hole appeared in the wall which rapidly grew larger. In a manner of seconds, they were standing before an archway into a bustling alley.
"Cool, if somewhat showy," Milo said, gesturing to the wall. "Wouldn't keep anyone out who held the mysterious and cosmic power of a heavy sledge, though."
McGonagall was amazed by his blasé reaction. Milo seemed to be astonished by the most innocuous things, and completely shrugged off what most unfamiliar with the wizarding world practically fainted at. After the boy's reaction when they asked him about his parents, however, McGonagall decided to keep questions about his past to a minimum.
"Ah, it's just like home," he said as they walked past rows of magical shops. At that point, she had to ask.
"Where, exactly, was home for you?" McGonagall asked him.
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