He woke with the sense that something in him had learned a second way to breathe.
Not lungs, not air. A quieter rhythm beneath both. He lay still to listen to it, the way Rowan once listened to the tick in the wall when the dormitory had gone too quiet—counting, matching, finding the seam of the sound.
There. A small inward turn where focus settled of its own accord. Not effort. Not strain. Just a shift, like squaring a picture frame with two fingers and feeling it click against gravity.
He didn't name it. Names make things stand up and argue back. He just turned toward it, as you turn toward heat in a room that isn't yours and stand there a moment longer than you need to.
The blanket carried the faint smell of last night's dust and soap. He slid out from under it, feet to the cool boards. Harris muttered in his sleep. Thomas had cocooned himself, only a knuckle showing where his fist pressed the sheet.
Rowan dressed with that second rhythm going—button, breath; tug, breath; the collar straightening itself under his fingertips as if it had decided to be helpful. When he washed, the water bit, then softened. He spun the tap shut exactly when the stream thinned. That felt right too. To stop where stopping belonged.
By the time he reached the corridor the house had its noises back: a hinge refusing to be good; a spoon touched twice to the edge of a pot; Mrs. Whittaker's foot the way it always landed, heel, then the ball, then a tap of the spoon again. He walked through it like a swimmer through lanes made of sound.
At breakfast he didn't notice the gap at the bench as much. Not because it was gone. Because the second rhythm made space wear differently. The spoon had weight and then, for a second, less. He could feel where to let it fall into the porridge so it would land without the tin ringing. Rowan didn't test it; he simply let it be, as if he'd always eaten that way.
After, with the broom, there was a small turn in his wrist that gathered dust as if it had already agreed to be gathered. He moved the pile into the pan and the bristles didn't snag where they usually did. Not magic performed at the world, but the world being asked in a voice it recognized.
He didn't say the word Lumos. He didn't need light. He didn't make the kettle boil or the hinge repent. He only felt the second movement living under the first and tried to walk in time with it. He had the sense he'd always been doing exactly this, only yesterday put a frame round it like a window does a view.
Rowan kept that feeling close as he folded his sweater and set it back the way he meant to come back to it, if the day let him.
By late morning he was on a train that smelled like old wool and newspapers. McGonagall had said "Eleven o'clock. The ticket office under the clock. Don't worry about the queue," and then the queue had worried about her instead, bending around the edge of her sharp-robed patience as if it had remembered manners.
Rowan walked beside her without needing to keep up. She set a pace that could be read from a distance: brisk enough to part a crowd; never careless of small feet.
"London is very proud of itself," she said, when King's Cross announced itself with a great yawn of glass. "We won't be sticking around to admire."
He didn't ask where they were going. The second rhythm in him sailed quietly toward whatever came next.
They crossed a pavement that had forgotten to be dry and stepped into a quieter street where the buildings leaned together to keep out the wind. McGonagall paused at a narrow arch that didn't look like an arch until you tried to walk past it and found yourself turning toward its shadow.
"Here," she said, as though the air needed her permission too.
The bricks beyond were ordinary until they weren't. She tapped—with the back of her wand, which felt like knocking politely—and the wall remembered the door it used to be. The bricks shifted—not loudly; the sort of sound a house makes when it gives up a secret. Cold gave way to a different air, warmer from breath and lamps and the friction of a market that had been bustling for three hundred years.
Rowan stepped through with her into a street that wasn't straight and didn't mind. Shopfronts leaned with their elbows on the day. Signs swung, painted letters offering wares you could smell and some you couldn't. Someone laughed not because anything was funny but because their pockets had been heavy and were now lighter in a way that felt like relief.
"This," McGonagall said, voice softer because places like this deserved softness, "is Diagon Alley."
He didn't say anything. He looked, and the second movement inside him looked too. Threads brightened and faded like breathing around the edges of conversation. Between a woman's hand and the owl on her shoulder there was a line so steady it felt like twine that had been used for years and never cut short. Between a boy and a broom in a window, a brilliant strand stretched and quivered, not grasping—just wanting. A shopkeeper touched his till and the thin pale line to it thrummed with the old comfort of counting.
"First, the bank," McGonagall said. "Then your list."
The building at the end rose up like it had been built by someone who wanted height to feel like an argument they had already won. Goblins stood at the door like punctuation marks: necessary, not ornamental.
Inside, Gringotts was colder. The floor kept your footsteps honest. Ledgers lay open like books that were sure of their endings.
McGonagall handled the words at the counter. Rowan watched the goblin's eyes narrow the way a screw tightens. The thread between the creature and the ledger was cut short, on purpose; a professional kindness to itself. When McGonagall produced the papers the line between her hand and the goblin's attention thickened, as if the world had added "there, see" in the margin.
A clink of coin. A weight in his palm that wasn't just money. He put the pouch in his pocket and the thread to it went taut for a moment as if checking he wouldn't insult it by being careless, then settled.
"Right," she said, once the door gave them back to the day. "Supplies first. Robes before books. It's easier to measure a boy before he is distracted by a shop full of things that will try to climb into his bag."
"Do they?" Rowan asked.
"If you pick them up and stare for long enough." Her mouth made the small shape it made for a private joke. "Come along."
Madam Malkin's smelled of chalk and steam and the patient heat of irons. Robes hung in well-behaved rows. Pincushions looked complacent and a little smug, as if they had opinions on straight seams and were never shy of sharing them.
"Up you hop," Madam Malkin said, and Rowan stepped onto a low stool that had held up a thousand boys and never dropped one. Her tape whispering around him was a language he didn't know but mostly understood. She pinned, she measured, she hummed. McGonagall watched with the look of someone who had supervised so many fittings that she could see a hem go crooked from fifty paces.
"What's the difference," Rowan asked, as the pins clicked, "between coaxing and commanding? With magic, I mean."
Madam Malkin's eyebrows went up. McGonagall answered without taking her eyes from the robe. "Coaxing assumes the world might prefer to do something else and asks nicely anyway. Commanding assumes the world is a door you have the key to." She paused. "Both work. Coaxing leaves fewer dents."
Pins slid. The robe settled against his shoulders, the weight honest and good.
"I have extras in the back," Madam Malkin said, voice already turning toward the storeroom. "Spare socks, if you're going to Scotland where they believe wind should enter buildings freely."
"We'll take two," McGonagall said. She paid without letting Rowan see the total. He caught the thread that ran from her purse to him and held very still until it softened into something that wasn't debt. Gratitude is a shy line. It holds, if you don't poke at it.
Back outside, Diagon Alley was louder and friendlier and somehow also older. Pigeons had never thought to claim it. Sunlight tried the cobbles and agreed to stay.
"Books," McGonagall said.
Flourish and Blotts opened like a yawn that had good manners. Dust motes performed in the beams of light as if auditioning for a very small ballet. The tables overflowed without apology. Some books hummed under their breath. One growled once and then looked embarrassed about it.
"First-year set," the clerk said, already reaching. "Standard Books of Spells, Grade One. Magical Theory. A History of Magic. Fantastic—"
"—Beasts," Rowan murmured, because the cover illustration had caught him staring and stared right back, pleased.
"Yes, well spotted," the clerk said, gratified as if Rowan had complimented his child. "You like creatures, do you?"
Rowan didn't answer right away. He watched a fine hairline thread tremble between the book and his hand as if considering whether to exist yet. Then it did—a small, steady line that felt like curiosity shaking hands with something older.
"We'll want a decent dictionary," McGonagall said. "Latin and Old English roots. Words are tools. If you cannot name a hinge, you'll always slam the door."
The clerk found a heavy volume that made the counter nod. McGonagall added it to the stack and, pretending it was nothing, slipped in a little green book about charms for household mending. "For when a professor isn't nearby and a sleeve refuses to be sensible," she said.
"Do threads ever show with books?" Rowan asked, as they wound through an aisle that smelled like leather, glue, and time.
"They show with choices," she said. "Books are a kind of choice that keeps choosing you back."
He looked down. The thread between his wrist and the little green book was lighter than the one to the dictionary but it was there, bright as twine in sunlight.
They carried the stack to the till. The clerk wrapped them in brown paper that sounded satisfying under string. McGonagall shrank the parcel to the size of a deck of cards with a polite, useful charm and handed it to Rowan. "You're less likely to leave it behind this way."
"Do people?"
"They get distracted by dragons on covers," she said. "Or by the smell of cinnamon at the apothecary."
Rowan did not yet know the apothecary smelled of cinnamon. He found out five minutes later.
Slug & Jiggers breathed out at them—cinnamon, sharp lemon, damp stone, a ghost of vinegar that had been told to wait its turn. Shelves climbed the walls, jar after jar, labelled in hands that had worked there long enough to forget any other script.
"Do not open anything you did not personally close," McGonagall said, without heat, the way one says "mind the step" when the step is always in the same place.
A man with eyebrows like soft bristles leaned his elbows on the counter. "First year," he said, as if admitting Rowan to a club whose secret handshake was "don't lick that."
"Standard set," McGonagall said. "And brass scales that don't take offence."
Rowan stared at a jar of stewed something that might once have been nettles but was now a color that nettles wouldn't admit to at a party. Threads webbed the room, light lines between ingredients that never wanted to meet but had polite nodding acquaintance anyway. Between the scales and the weights there was a bond like loyalty—tested, not flashy.
"Mortar and pestle," McGonagall added. "Non-reactive. He'll learn the difference."
Rowan held one. Stone met palm. The second rhythm in him nudged—just there—and the weight settled into a place that felt meant. The string to it lit, thin but certain.
"Powdered root of asphodel," the apothecary recited, dropping a packet into the basket as if beginning a story; "infusion of wormwood—no, we don't sell that to first years; silverweed, knotgrass, a little daisy root if he's tidy…"
"Tidy?" Rowan asked.
"If he's the sort of boy who knows what to do with a spill before it falls." The man looked at him, nodded as if answering himself. "He is."
McGonagall bought a stirrer with a handle shaped to fit a hand that intended to do this for years. She added a packet of cinnamon sticks at the till, and when Rowan looked at her she said, "Potions rooms can smell like frog's breath if you let them. This suggests other possibilities."
"Thank you," Rowan said, because gratitude is better said. The thread between them brightened without show.
They stepped back into the Alley where someone argued happily about broom bristles. A witch walked by with a stack of cauldrons that followed in an obedient queue. Rowan's eyes caught on them and McGonagall nodded towards the shop that had a window full of metal.
"Potage's," she said. "Cauldrons. Pewter, size two for first years. Collapsible are convenient, but not necessary."
The shop was a gleam of hammered surfaces and the deep thump of metal thinking about being useful. Rowan stood in front of a pewter size two and let his hand rest on the rim. The cauldron felt like it had expectations—not unreasonable ones. The line between his skin and the metal took shape very slowly, as if both parties were drawing breath.
"Pewter is forgiving," McGonagall said. "Iron sulks and burns if you're inattentive. Brass is proud. Pewter will tolerate a boy's first apology."
Rowan smiled with one corner of his mouth because the description felt true. The shopkeeper wrapped the cauldron in a charm that made it weightless without making it silly. It resigned itself to being carried like a good dog on a lead.
They skipped Quality Quidditch Supplies with McGonagall's look that said no in the kindest way. Rowan didn't mind. The thread between a boy in the window and the broom had been loud; it was good to leave it to them.
Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment was a confusing glitter of brass and glass and instruments that hummed quietly, as if they were practicing their parts before the performance. Telescopes waited like polite soldiers. Compasses pointed to arguments they would be happy to have. Hourglasses breathed sand at a rate that made Rowan aware of his own pulse.
"Brass scales," McGonagall said, "and a telescope that will let you see the moons and not much else while you are eleven. If you're clever with it, it will keep humbling you until you are fifty."
A small, well-soldered telescope came into Rowan's hands. The line to it did not flare. It settled, steady, as if both of them intended to be practical about their relationship.
"An orrery?" Rowan asked, looking at a model of the planets that spun like a thought that knows where it's going.
"Not yet," McGonagall said. "Better to meet the sky without toys. Toys are excellent later."
Scribbulus smelled of ink like a promise. Quills lay in rows like birds that had agreed to stillness. Parchment hissed when you turned a stack. The proprietor beamed at Rowan as if recognizing a boy who would not waste good paper.
"Two dozen sheets," McGonagall said. "A bottle of ink for writing and one for mistakes."
Rowan looked up.
"Erasing fluid," she clarified. "A wizard's best friend after tea. And—" she added a second bottle, its label a neat hand— "permanent, for when you mean it."
"Do threads change when you write?" Rowan asked, while he weighed a quill in his fingers.
"They thicken," she said, "if you choose the truth. They tangle if you choose a lie and then build furniture on top of it."
He nodded. The quill chose him by agreeing not to scratch when he tested it on the scrap. McGonagall paid for a penknife sharpener instead of a penknife because rules are rules. Rowan pretended not to notice the bag of boiled sweets she slid onto the counter and then into his pocket like contraband intended to cheer on trains.
They passed the Magical Menagerie and let the noise of fur and beaks wash over them without going in. McGonagall looked at him, measuring some private thing, and said, "If you find a creature, make sure it has also found you. Avoid anything offended by quiet."
"Are many creatures offended by quiet?" Rowan asked.
"More than you'd think," she said. "And fewer than will admit it."
Eeylops Owl Emporium breathed out feathers and dusk. "Not today," she said. "Owls are responsibility. We'll see how you carry your books first." He nodded, and the shop, having been noticed, nodded back with a soft rush of wings.
They ate pasties from a window ledge and watched a hat argue with its own brim in a display across the street. McGonagall poured him water from a flask that had been charmed to ignore the existence of dust. Rowan counted the threads, not all of them visible: between the baker and his oven; between two sisters measuring out ribbon; between a boy and the way the Alley made his shoulders drop from around his ears.
"Tell me when it goes too loud," she said casually, as if commenting on weather.
"It doesn't go loud," Rowan said. "It goes thick. Like walking through a room where everyone's knitting and you're afraid to step on the loops."
"Do the loops belong to the knitters?" she asked.
"Sometimes they belong to the day."
She turned that over like a coin and put it in a pocket for later. "There's a professor who will like you. She thinks the day itself is a pattern and we only learn to read the bits that repeat."
"Does the day like us back?" Rowan asked.
"On good days," she said. "On bad ones, it has other business."
They went to a little shop with bins of brass buttons and toggles and hooks that knew how to fasten without help. McGonagall bought a spare clasp for when cloaks lost their nerve. She dropped it in Rowan's pocket without comment. He felt the small sensible weight and decided to keep that pocket for things that made days behave.
A witch in a green hat tried to sell them a self-stirring teacup which stirred itself into a sulk when McGonagall said "No, thank you." Rowan watched the thread from the cup to the witch pull, slacken, pull again. Want is a fidgety line.
"Wands last," McGonagall said, when the shadow from the grating on the apothecary window declared the afternoon was turning. "They have their own ideas about when to meet a person. Ollivander's tomorrow. Today is for everything that doesn't choose you back."
Rowan looked at the stack of things that had, in their way, chosen. The little steady lines from robe and quill and scales. The shy twist of thread from the cinnamon packet to the part of him that preferred rooms to smell like kitchens and not like frogs. "Some of these chose," he said.
"They did," she agreed. "But they are choosing to help anyone who knows how to be helped. A wand is a partnership. It goes badly if either partner wants to win."
They sat on a low stone step where the Alley curved and watched the late shoppers begin to hurry, as if hurry would make the shopkeepers forget to lock their doors. McGonagall took out a list and ticked without vanity. "Robes, check. Books, check. Cauldron, check. Scales, telescope, parchment, quills, phials, mending book I don't remember buying, but I'm not sorry—check. Warm socks—check."
"You bought the mending book," Rowan said.
"Then I'm even less sorry."
"Professor?" he asked, and she looked up.
"Mm?"
"If a thread snaps between people, does it hurt both ends?"
"Sometimes only one notices," she said. "Sometimes both pretend not to. Sometimes the whole room hears it and everyone studies the ceiling."
Rowan nodded. The day had those sounds. He had been in rooms like that. "Can you mend them?"
"Not by yourself," she said. "You can hold one side out with both hands and hope the other person does the same. Or you can weave something new to tie around the gap, which is clumsy and shows. Or you can leave the room and buy socks."
He smiled then, properly, small and sudden, because the socks line was true in two directions.
"Come on," she said, tapping the list against her palm. "Two more stops."
The next shop had windows like spectacles and shelves of instruments that measured things without announcing themselves. A witch sold Rowan a little brass rule for drawing straight lines that stayed straight when you looked away. McGonagall added a blotting cloth; "In case your ink takes its time making up its mind," she said.
Finally, they stood again at the mouth of the Alley where the bricks remembered how to be a wall. McGonagall didn't rush the leaving. "There's a trick to going back," she said. "You step through and keep a little of the place in your pocket. Not objects. The way your shoulders felt. The way people looked at the sky. It helps when London forgets to be kind."
Rowan nodded. He had the second movement to carry with him. He had the cinnamon and the sharpener and the mending book pretending to be an accident. He had the idea of a wand that would not like being made to win.
They stepped through. The ordinary street swallowed its breath and went on being itself. A bus sighed at a stop. A woman argued into her scarf about potatoes. The sky over London decided it was not yet ready to rain.
On the train back, McGonagall gave him a boiled sweet and pretended not to notice when it stuck his cheek into a shape that would have made Thomas laugh. She watched him untangle the threads of the day without asking for a report.
"Tomorrow," she said, when the station clock made an announcement of its own importance. "Ollivanders."
Rowan nodded. The word made a soft sound in his head as if trying out the room.
"Do you think the wand will see your threads?" she asked, curious in the way that makes curiosity behave itself.
"If it's mine," Rowan said, "it already does."
"Good," she said. The corner of her mouth tilted. "That's the sort of answer that makes wands feel clever."
They walked back toward the arch that wasn't an arch until you needed it, and the second movement in Rowan kept in time with the step of a woman who, for all her iron lines and rules, bought cinnamon when a room needed mercy and socks when a boy would be cold.
Above the roofs, London invented a sunset that made pigeons look nearly golden if you didn't know pigeons. The day let go of itself, thread by thread. Not snapping. Not sorrow. Just untying what needed to be untied so tomorrow could tie it again in a better knot.
Rowan kept the feeling of Diagon Alley in his pocket like a small round stone: warm because he'd held it; smooth because countless hands had. Tomorrow would decide its own shape. For tonight, he had a stack of brown-paper parcels that had learned to ride light, a professor who matched her pace to boys without letting them dawdle, and the second movement in his chest taking practice breaths so it would be ready when a wand asked it for music.