The iron coin sat on the wooden hall table like a dead weight.
Arthur Flower paced back and forth across the narrow hallway, his slippers making a soft slap-slap sound against the floorboards. "We are calling the council. Or the police. Or a doctor. You don't just let a man in an orange suit walk into your house, make the key bowl float, and give you an ultimatum!"
"Arthur, quiet," Sarah said softly. She was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. Her eyes hadn't left the brass key bowl since it dropped back onto the table ten minutes ago. "You saw it. We both saw it."
Magnus stood near the front door, his hands shoved deep into his jeans pockets. The slip of parchment he’d pulled out of the flowerpot was crumpled inside his right fist.
They are measuring your latency, not your strength. Tell no one.
He didn't know what latency meant in magic terms—back in 2026, latency was just bad ping when playing online games. But if Wilkins dropped that note on purpose, it meant the guy wasn't just a cold Ministry bureaucrat following a checklist. He was testing Magnus before the official test even started.
"Magnus," his dad stopped pacing, pointing a finger at him. "Did you do something to that bowl?"
"No," Magnus said truthfully. He hadn't touched magic. He didn't even know how to touch it on purpose.
"Right. Well, tomorrow morning at eight, nobody is taking you anywhere," Arthur declared, rubbing his forehead. "I'll stay home from the shop. We'll lock the front gate."
Magnus looked down at his own small, eleven-year-old shoes. Locked gates weren't going to stop wizards who could make key bowls float and leave magical portkeys on the doorstep. Besides, he didn't want to stay locked in a suburban house in Surrey. He wanted to get to Hogwarts. He wanted to figure out how his strength and two-second future visions worked. And, if he was being totally honest with himself, he wanted to meet Hermione Granger before some other kid did.
"I'm going to sleep," Magnus muttered, turning toward the stairs.
"Sleep? How can you sleep right now?" his dad called after him.
"I'm tired," Magnus said without looking back.
He walked up the creaky wooden stairs to his bedroom, shut the door, and locked it. He walked straight to the small window that looked out over the back garden.
He uncurled his hand and smoothed out the crumpled note on his desk. The ink was dark purple, slightly raised off the paper, exactly like the ink Wilkins had used downstairs.
Magnus sat on his bed, crossing his legs. He held out his right hand, staring at his palm.
Latency.
If Wilkins meant his vision power, Magnus needed to figure out how to trigger it without waiting for an accident. So far, the two-second flashes only popped up when something was about to happen—a spoon snapping, ink spilling, a floorboard creaking, a paper dropping in a flowerpot.
He picked up a heavy glass paperweight from his bedside table—a cheap souvenir his parents had bought in Blackpool three years ago. He tossed it lightly into the air with his right hand and caught it with his left.
Nothing. No flash. Just normal gravity.
He tossed it again, higher this time, almost touching the ceiling plaster.
Still nothing.
"Come on," Magnus whispered.
He leaned back, held the heavy glass ball directly over his face, and let go.
For a split second, his brain panicked. The glass ball fell straight down toward his nose.
Flash.
A fraction of a second before the impact, his vision twitched. He didn't see the ball in mid-air—he saw a stark, crystal-clear snapshot of his nose bleeding and his dad bursting through the locked door because of the noise.
Two seconds in the future.
Magnus snatched his hand out instantly, catching the glass ball an inch from his face. His heart slammed against his ribs, but his grip was so tight he heard the glass make a faint, stressed creak under his fingers.
He let out a slow breath, setting the paperweight back on the nightstand.
He had to be in actual danger or making a real decision for the vision to kick in. It wasn't a passive passive cheat code—it was a survival reflex.
He laid back on the thin mattress, staring at the ceiling light fixture. Outside, the quiet streets of 1991 Surrey were dead silent. No hum of modern electric cars, no notifications pinging from a phone on his nightstand. Just the slow tick of a plastic alarm clock on his desk.
He closed his eyes, holding the crumpled note tight in his palm until he finally drifted off.
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