The Hogwats Gaijin

London. July.

The air shimmered above the scorching asphalt, carrying the scent of petrol and freshly cut grass. Kieran was nine, and the headphones around his neck felt like a heavy but necessary anchor, keeping him tethered to this understandable Muggle world. The cassette in his Walkman had ended, but he didn’t bother flipping it over.

He stood at the gate of the Grangers’ house, toeing a crack in the concrete with his trainer. Hermione stood opposite him. She wore a light blue dress with a floral pattern and sandals that showed her tanned toes. She was ten, and in her eyes — usually so serious and knowing — there now swam open, childish hope.

‘You will come back for Christmas, won’t you?’ she asked, fiddling with the hem of her dress. ‘Mum promised to bake ginger biscuits. Lots of them!’

Kieran swallowed the thick lump in his throat. He knew the truth. The first two years had been introductory — they took him away only briefly, allowing him to live at home. But now… now the real training was beginning. The House of Morgan did not tolerate half-measures.

‘It won’t work,’ he shook his head, trying not to meet her eyes. ‘The programme’s getting harder. It’s… it’s a closed academy, Hermione. Strong maths focus, you understand. They’re very strict about attendance.’

The lie tasted bitter on his tongue, like spoiled potion. He couldn’t tell her about Mahoutokoro, about wands, about the fact that what awaited him was not mathematics but rigorous discipline on the other side of the world.

Hermione drooped. Her shoulders sagged, and the sun seemed to dim a little.

‘Oh,’ was all she said. ‘Mathematics. Of course. That’s important.’

‘I’ll write,’ Kieran promised, knowing that owls could not fly across the ocean often. ‘Honestly.’

‘Wait!’ she suddenly exclaimed, spun on her heels and dashed back into the house.

Kieran remained alone in the middle of the humming street. He wanted simply to disappear.

She returned a minute later, breathless, with tousled hair. In her hand she clutched something small and colourful.

‘Here,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Give me your wrist.’

It was a bracelet. A simple friendship bracelet woven from multicoloured embroidery floss — red, yellow and green. Clumsy, slightly crooked, but bright. Hermione concentrated hard as she tied the knot on his wrist, her brows furrowed with effort.

‘So you won’t forget me while you’re learning all those formulae,’ she said, stepping back.

Then she suddenly threw her arms around him, smelling of sunshine and vanilla.

‘I’ll wait for you, Kieran. Come back clever.’

He watched her until the front door closed, feeling the threads of the bracelet sit strangely but warmly against his skin.

Minami Iwo Jima. September.

The walls of the Jade Palace were always cold. That cold seeped through the thick fabric of the training kimono, settled as frost on his eyelashes, and sank into his bones. There was no sun here, no smell of petrol. Only the wind from the ocean and the scent of sulphur from the volcano.

Kieran sat on a stone balustrade, looking down at the training ground far below where tiny figures of students practised synchronous bows. He felt so lonely he wanted to howl. He felt like a grain of sand caught between the millstones of a gigantic machine.

‘Oi, shorty!’ A bright, cheerful voice sounded right by his ear, scattering the silence.

Strong hands grabbed his shoulders and gave him a firm shake.

Kieran turned. Beside him stood Tristan.

His cousin. His brother. The only person in this stone prison who still remembered how to smile. Tristan was only two years older, but to Kieran he seemed like a demigod. Tall, slender, with a mop of unruly light-brown curls that always escaped the strict topknot. His wand appeared in his hand faster than the eye could follow, and his laughter was the only warm sound in Mahoutokoro.

‘What’s with the long face?’ Tristan plopped down beside him, swinging his legs over the drop. ‘Did the sensei ride you about kanji again?’

‘I want to go home,’ Kieran confessed quietly, staring at his hands, already covered with the first grazes from boken training. ‘I won’t become like you, Tris. I’m too slow.’

‘You will,’ Tristan declared flatly, bumping his shoulder. ‘And you’ll overtake me yet. Morgans take a long time to get going, but then they move mountains. You just think too much, little brother.’

Tristan had that gift — taking something huge, black and crushing and turning it to dust with a single phrase. Next to him the cold retreated.

His cousin suddenly narrowed his eyes, noticing the colourful Muggle bracelet peeking out from under Kieran’s sleeve.

‘Ah,’ he drawled with a sly grin. ‘Missing your bushy-haired friend? What was her name again… Hermione?’

Kieran flushed, trying to tug his sleeve down lower.

‘Shut up.’

‘Come on!’ Tristan laughed, throwing his head back. ‘Don’t mope, shorty! You’ll see — in a couple of years you’ll return to Britain a mighty wizard with a katana on your back and marry her! Imagine her parents’ faces!’

‘Tris!’ Kieran protested, feeling his ears burn, but his lips curved into a smile despite himself. ‘She’s just a friend!’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Tristan winked, ruffling Kieran’s hair. ‘A friend you’re willing to put up with mockery from the locals for, all because of that bit of string on your wrist. Come on, you sad onion. Dinner’s soon, and I think I know where to get an extra portion of rice.’

Dormitories of Mahoutokoro. Night.

The hard futon didn’t yield under his weight. There were no soft mattresses here, no bed curtains. In the junior dormitories perfect geometry reigned: rows of sleeping bodies, regulated breathing, the scent of bamboo mats.

No one whispered before sleep. No one told stories or rustled sweet wrappers. Discipline in Mahoutokoro did not end at sunset.

Kieran lay on his back, staring at the dark ceiling. Outside the wind howled, but inside there was a ringing, cotton-wool silence. Loneliness here was physical — like the pressure of water at depth.

He carefully pulled out the thin silver chain from under the collar of his nightshirt.

On it, beside the heavy antique pendant — a black raven clutching a dagger in its talons, the crest of the ancient House of Morgan — hung a cheap, woven friendship bracelet made of embroidery floss.

Kieran had transferred it here when the threads began to fray from constant training. Silver and cotton floss. Ancient magic and childhood friendship.

He clenched both symbols in his fist, feeling the metal bite into his palm while the threads tickled his skin.

‘I’ll come back,’ he whispered soundlessly into the darkness. ‘I promise.’

And he closed his eyes, falling into sleep beneath the silent watch of the jade walls.

Dojo of Mahoutokoro. Dawn.

His knees burned like fire. The seiza posture — sitting on one’s own heels with a perfectly straight back — felt like an exquisite torture invented especially for European barbarians. But Kieran did not move.

Around him two dozen students in training kimono the colour of pale cherry blossoms sat motionless. They were statues. Kieran was learning to be stone as well.

‘Listen to the emptiness,’ the sensei’s voice, dry and rustling like autumn leaves, drifted through the hall. ‘Magic is not words. It is blood. It is breath. Feel it flowing through you, from the tips of your toes to the crown of your head.’

Kieran closed his eyes, trying to imagine magic in his toes. It seemed ridiculous. In Britain magic was a formula, a flick of the wand, a result. Here magic was a state of being.

But he did not stir. He feared disgrace more than the pain in his joints. He had to return home worthy. Not as someone who had given up.

The silence in the hall was dense, smelling of old wood and sweat. Kieran breathed shallowly, absorbing that silence, dissolving into the row of identical backs.

Black Beach. Sunset.

‘Elbow higher, shorty! You’re not swatting flies!’

Tristan stood knee-deep in the water, his robe hitched up and his trousers splashed with salty foam. He was laughing, and that laughter drowned out even the sound of the surf.

Kieran exhaled, adjusted his grip on the wand and sent another shower of red sparks into the sky. Crooked, weak, but brighter than the last time.

‘That’s more like it!’ his cousin approved, climbing onto the sand and flopping down with his hands behind his head.

Evenings with Tristan were the only time Kieran felt alive. Letters to Hermione went out rarely — owls struggled with the distance, and there was no time anyway. His parents wrote dry, instruction-filled reports. His sister Samantha, if she sent a line at all, did so only to tease him about his “Japanese eccentricities”.

Only Tristan understood.

They lay on the cooling volcanic sand, watching the first stars appear.

‘Bet it’s raining in London right now,’ Tristan said dreamily, hands behind his head. ‘You know what I want? A proper pint of butterbeer and a walk down Diagon Alley. And for some Beauxbatons girls to come on exchange!’

Kieran smiled, listening to his chatter. It didn’t matter what Tristan talked about — girls, Quidditch or a new robe. The important thing was that he spoke to him as an equal. Not as a child, not as a burden.

Tristan was his anchor. The only reason not to howl with homesickness in this jade hell.

Upper Terrace. Day.

The wind up here was ferocious. It whipped the older students’ robes, turning them into something like wings.

Kieran sat in the shadow of a column, trying to remain unnoticed. He was tolerated here. The Japanese upper-year students — the elite of the school, with their colour-changing robes and elaborate greeting rituals — only allowed him into their circle because of Tristan.

But Kieran didn’t care. He watched.

Tristan was in the centre. He moved as though dancing on hot coals.

‘Ectus!’ his opponent shouted — a tall boy with slanted eyes.

Tristan dodged without even breaking rhythm. A light twist of the body, an elegant flick of the wand — and the counter-spell was already flying, scattering golden sparks.

‘Too slow, Satoshi!’ he taunted, laughing. ‘Your grandmother moves faster!’

Shields flared, spells collided in the air with the sound of ripping cloth. Tristan was magnificent. A living god of duelling. He was faster than everyone, brighter than everyone, braver than everyone.

Tristan caught Kieran’s admiring gaze, winked at him and dived under another curse again, graceful as a cat. Kieran felt pride swelling in his chest: that was his brother. His blood.

Upper Terrace. A second later.

The wind grew stronger, tearing foam from the waves far below.

The duel was playful. They were laughing. Everyone was laughing.

Tristan stood at the very edge of the platform, his back to the carved stone balustrade. He had just deflected a complex series of strikes and turned towards Kieran again, ready to toss off another joke or simply check that the little one was still watching.

He winked. A wide, cocky, sunny smile shone on his face.

‘Depulso!’

The opponent’s voice rang out cheerfully, eagerly. He meant no harm. It was just a push. A normal school jinx.

Tristan didn’t have time to turn.

The spell struck him in the chest. His feet, standing on stone slick with sea spray, slipped.

Everything happened too fast and too slowly at once.

Tristan flew backwards. The dull, wet sound of the back of his head striking the stone tooth of the balustrade was quiet. Much quieter than the howl of the wind.

He slid to the floor like a broken doll. The smile was still on his lips, but in his eyes — wide, surprised eyes — the sky had frozen.

‘Tristan?’ Kieran’s voice sounded foreign to him. Thin. Childish.

Chaos erupted around them. Someone was shouting. Coloured beams of healing spells struck the fallen body, but they only fizzled out helplessly, unable to take hold.

The boy who had cast the spell fell to his knees. He was shaking Tristan by the shoulders, howling something in Japanese, his face twisted with horror.

Kieran didn’t move. He stood pressed against the cold column.

A scream was tearing at his lungs, but no sound escaped. He stared at his brother’s frozen smile. At the unnaturally twisted neck.

And he felt the cold — that same jade, sepulchral cold of Mahoutokoro — pouring into him, filling the emptiness where his heart had been a second earlier. Now he was alone. Truly alone. And the silence became eternal.

Back courtyard of the dojo. Six months later.

The sound of the blow was dull and wet. Thud.

His knuckles had long since turned into raw meat. The skin had split, exposing flesh, and the hemp rope wrapped around the makiwara was stained brown. But there was no pain. There was only a saving, deafening emptiness.

Thud.

Tristan had been taken away a day after his death. His uncle, tall and straight as a blade, hadn’t even come to Kieran’s room. He had been busy — arranging documents for the transport of the body, arguing with the Japanese Ministry, packing the coffin. He had no time for his living nephew.

Only at the very gates, when the black carriage was already waiting, did his uncle briefly squeeze Kieran’s shoulder. A heavy hand in a leather glove rested like a weight, not support.

‘Hold on here, you hear?’ he said, looking somewhere above the boy’s head. ‘You’re a Morgan. Don’t forget it.’

And he left. No one came to take Kieran home. No one came to save him from the silence. He was left alone with the ghost of his brother’s smile and the roar of the ocean.

Thud.

Blood spattered onto the wooden post. Kieran struck again, putting into the blow all his hatred for himself, for magic, for this island.

‘Oi, Shiro.’

The voice was mocking, with a rough accent.

Kieran froze, breathing hard. He turned slowly, clenching his bleeding fists, ready to throw himself at anyone.

In front of him stood a boy his own age. Short, stiff hair in a crew cut, a broken nose twisted to one side, and sharp, narrow eyes. It was Kenji. The one from the yakuza clan whom even the older students avoided.

‘Shiro,’ he repeated, nodding at Kieran’s pale face. ‘White. Suits you. You look like a ghost right now.’

Kieran said nothing, feeling blood drip from his knuckles onto the sand.

Kenji spat to the side and stepped closer. There was no pity in his gaze — only cold, appraising interest, predator to predator.

‘I see how you look,’ he said. ‘And I see you’re always alone. You’ve got spirit, but zero technique. You’re just ruining good meat.’

He nodded at the bloodied makiwara.

‘If a white boy likes pain so much, come to us. Lower Beach. We’ll teach you to hit so that bones break, not your own hand.’

Kenji held out his palm — broad, calloused, dirty.

Kieran looked at it. Then at his own ruined hands. He had nothing left to lose. He was Shiro — a blank space, a white sheet.

He reached out and clasped Kenji’s hand. The handshake was sticky with blood, but as firm as an oath.

Corridor of Hogwarts. The Present.

Reality returned with a jolt, along with the scent of lavender and stone dust.

Kieran realised he was shaking. A violent, uncontrollable tremor ran through his whole body, and his vision swam. He gasped for air, each breath hurting his ribs.

He was no longer standing against the wall. He had buried his face in Hermione Granger’s shoulder, clutching her robe as though he were falling into an abyss. And she — small, fragile, smelling of books and medicine — was holding him. Her hand stroked the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair, soothing, rhythmic.

‘Shh, Kieran… Shh… I’m here.’

‘If I hadn’t been there…’ The words tore out of him in a hoarse whisper, mixed with sobs he was ashamed of but couldn’t stop. ‘He would still be alive. He was showing off for me, Hermione! He turned to look at me! It was me who killed him. I distracted him!’

Tears streamed down his cheeks, hot and angry, washing away the mask of indifference he had worn for four years. He was once again that boy on the terrace, screaming soundlessly as he stared at his dead brother.

‘It was me…’ he breathed one last time and fell silent, feeling his strength leave him.

Hermione slowly pulled back, but she didn’t let go. She looked him straight in the eyes — red-rimmed, full of pain and guilt.

Her gaze slid lower.

The collar of his shirt had come undone, revealing a heavy silver chain. On it hung the black raven with a dagger — the Morgan crest, cold and ominous. And beside it, tied with a simple knot, dangled the old, faded friendship bracelet of embroidery floss.

Red, yellow, green. The colours had faded from sea salt and sweat, the threads were frayed, but the knot held firm.

Hermione’s eyes widened. Recognition flashed in them, mixed with a piercing, sharp tenderness. She remembered. And she saw that he had kept it close to his heart all these years, amid darkness and loneliness.

Hermione raised her hands. Her palms, still smelling of healing ointment, cupped his cheeks. They were warm and surprisingly strong. She made him lift his head and look directly at her.

‘Kieran Morgan,’ she said firmly, enunciating every word so it would pierce through the fog of his guilt. ‘Do you hear me? You are not alone anymore.’

His lips trembled.

‘I will never leave you,’ she said with such determination in her brown eyes that it could not be argued with. ‘I promise.’

Kieran looked into her attentive, serious eyes. In that moment there was no magic, no war, no dead brothers. There was only her. And for the first time in four years of endless winter, he felt the ice inside him beginning to thaw.

He believed her. Looking at her, he simply could not not believe her.