255- Muggle Magic
"You're Aladdin Ali?"
The staff mber at the business class check-in counter frowned as he looked at the boy in front of him.
Rhys: "…"
He braced himself and replied, "Yes."
Staff mber: You're telling you're eighteen?!
Seeing the suspicion written all over the man's face, Rhys knew he couldn't stall any longer.
He stared into the middle-aged man's eyes and said, "Yes, I am Aladdin Ali. I would like to be seated with Miss Jasmine and Miss Elsa."
While casting the Confundus Charm to cloud the airport worker's mind, Rhys couldn't help but grumble inwardly: What kind of ridiculous nas are these? Anyone would be suspicious!
Fortunately, the Confundus Charm was strong enough—the staff mber's eyes glazed over, and he chanically typed a few keys before printing out three boarding passes.
Rhys didn't want to linger. He grabbed the tickets and led Daphne and Astoria straight to the boarding gate. At customs, Rhys used the sa trick, casting another Confundus Charm to get them through smoothly.
After that, they encountered the checkpoint the driver had called "security."
Watching the Muggles place their carry-on luggage into a strange alchemical contraption one by one, a sense of unease rose in Rhys's heart: Even personal pouches have to go through that?!
Judging by the looks of the Muggle security guards, it seed that this alchemical contraption could see inside the luggage.
Would his little pouch be exposed?
Or rather—what would they see?
A small bag "stuffed" with a massive amount of potion ingredients?
He suddenly beca curious. This was, after all, one of the reasons he had ultimately chosen to travel via Muggle airplane.
Unlike most wizards, Rhys didn't reject learning about the Muggle world. He made an effort to study Muggle technology and life, instead of sticking his head in the sand like most modern wizards.
As they went through this entire process, Rhys felt as if he were the Muggle stepping into the "magical world."
The Muggle society of a thousand years later was terrifyingly unfamiliar, and now that he, a wizard, had stepped into it without preparation, he found obstacles at every turn.
Gaps in common knowledge couldn't be filled just by reading one or two Muggle-published books.
For example, he had known Muggles had airplanes—but only now, by experiencing it firsthand, did he realize how many complex steps ca before boarding one.
Everything he saw and heard at the airport even gave Rhys a strange impulse—to leave Hogwarts behind and live in the Muggle world for a few years.
When the small pouches the three of them carried went through the security machine, sothing unexpected happened:The machine couldn't display the contents of the bags.
"Is it malfunctioning?" one of the Muggle guards muttered as he walked over—only to be promptly Confunded again by Rhys.
After the three of them sat down on a bench near the boarding gate, Astoria couldn't help but sigh, "So complicated… We finally made it this far…"
Daphne didn't respond. She was still imrsed in all the fascinating sights and experiences along the way. For soone who had grown up in the magical world, everything that had just happened felt so unfamiliar.
Rhys, anwhile, was observing the travelers shopping at the airport's duty-free stores. He noticed that modern Muggles no longer used tal coins for paynt. Instead, they used colorful pieces of paper and small cards.
So this is the currency Muggles use now?
Rhys recalled a conversation he had once had with Hermione, where he learned that Muggles and wizards used different forms of currency.
At the ti, he hadn't gone into the details of how Muggle money worked, but now that he was seeing it with his own eyes, he was genuinely shocked.
Why are custors able to trade re paper for a rchant's goods? Paper is apparently more valuable than gold? Aren't they afraid of people forging this stuff?
At that thought, Rhys suddenly realized sothing important.
"Did you two bring any Muggle money?" Rhys asked Daphne and Astoria.
Daphne, Astoria: "…"
"We forgot."
"Can't we use Galleons?"
Rhys let out a sigh, stood up, and wandered around the departure hall for a bit—then they had Muggle currency.
He, Daphne, and Astoria huddled together in a corner of the terminal, studying the colorful pieces of paper.
"This one says '5,' so it must be worth less than this one that says '10.'"
"Then by that logic, is this coin with '50' on it the most valuable?"
"Probably? It's tal, after all."
"But I saw that Muggle use a piece of paper to exchange for a bunch of these coins."
The two sisters bickered noisily, arguing without end, and even by the ti boarding began, they still hadn't reached a conclusion.
Once on the plane, they were t with yet another completely new experience.
Daphne and Astoria were utterly baffled—why did pressing a single button make the light above their heads turn on?
Was this so kind of "Muggle magic"?
"Muggle" and "magic"—two words that should have been opposites—suddenly blended together in an oddly fitting way aboard this miraculous machine.
Rhys watched coldly from the side, thinking that Muggles must have mastered a new thod of harnessing energy over the past thousand years.
Its essence was the sa as magic—or perhaps it was simply another manifestation of magic itself.
Maybe he should write a letter to Hermione, or have a long conversation with her when the term started—this kind of thing could only be properly understood by soone like her, a young witch from a Muggle family.
Even when the plane finally landed in Egypt, the sense of novelty it had brought Daphne and Astoria hadn't worn off.
In the end, the two of them agreed that they would definitely sign up for the Muggle Studies elective next term.
"And Ancient Runes too. I strongly recomnd you take that one—it's an extrely useful course."
Hearing Rhys say that, Daphne blinked. "But isn't that the knowledge of those fake Norse gods? What's the point of us learning it?"
Rhys gave her a look full of disappointed frustration. "Those fake Norse gods may not have been anything good, but the runes they left behind are the real essence of it. There's no harm in studying them."
The image of the god-king Odin spitting out rune letters and forcibly tearing open a divine domain—Rhys would never forget it for the rest of his life. If even one of the Norse gods had grasped runes to the level Odin had—even just seventy percent of it—the outco of that battle would've been completely different.
Rhys was definitely going to enroll in Ancient Runes. He wanted to see what kind of progress the wizarding world had made in runic studies over the past thousand years—though, to be honest, he was quite pessimistic about it.
Wizards had even lost the fundantal technique of sensing magical flow. How could they possibly have taken the ti to delve into the knowledge of their once-defeated foes?
Rhys had a nagging feeling that, in the modern magical world, Ancient Runes might have been reduced to nothing more than the literal anings of the symbols.
As the three of them discussed course selection for the upcoming term, they walked toward the exit of the plane. The mont they stepped outside, a wave of heat rushed at them.
Egypt in the sumr was unbearably hot! But Rhys and the girls were unfazed—their wizard robes were top-quality, enchanted with temperature-regulating spells that kept them cool even in the blazing heat.
Even better, wearing robes in Egypt didn't seem strange at all, so they could walk around in them openly and confidently.
As they exited the airport, Rhys narrowed his eyes.
The journey to seek out Hufflepuff had officially begun.
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