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Chapter 4: Vasilisa's Doll
🕑 Added 2024-12-01 16:29:23 +0000 UTC"Um... I think Privet Drive is... it's in the direction close to London," Harry muttered hesitantly, feeling nervous that his non-magical identity might be uncovered.
The people in this house were all peculiar, and living in a place surrounded by mist reminded Harry of the fairy tales he had read.
In those stories, witches and wizards with magic were not portrayed as good people.
While they were chatting, Grandma Yaga placed a plate in front of him, filled it with some stewed beef, freshly sliced garlic bread, and a few pieces of delicate, freshly baked cookies.
"Thank you," Harry said once again, feeling guilty for his earlier thoughts.
Beside him, Victor's dark eyebrows furrowed slightly, looking confused.
"London? The Muggle settlement?"
"...I told you this child isn’t from the wizarding side," Grandma Yaga said as she set the plate down. "He mentioned his cousin bullying him with his fists—what wizard would use such a crude method?"
"Tsk, that complicates things," Victor shook his head. "I’ve never been over there. How do you find your way around that place? I heard wizards say something about... road pathways?"
"Subways," Grandma Yaga corrected.
"Fine, subways," Victor said, looking dissatisfied.
"But I’ve never been. Never mind, we’ll take him to the Ministry of Magic and ask there. Who knows what the magical schools here are thinking, letting a magical child live this long in a Muggle settlement without supervision."
After speaking, he moved his fingers again. A spoon floated up in front of Harry’s eyes, scooped up a ladle of soup from the right-side plate, and poured some into each of the three plates.
Harry stared, wide-eyed, watching the spoon perform its task.
"...You might be mistaken. I don’t have magic," Harry said dejectedly.
"Impossible," Victor interrupted carelessly, without explaining why.
After finishing this, he lowered his hand, commanding all the utensils to float back to their places, then picked up his own meal.
"...Alright, let’s eat."
The three of them were seated at three sides of a square table. Harry sat to Victor's left, Grandma Yaga to his right, in front of a delicate ceramic plate resting on the corner of the checkered tablecloth.
Questions erupted like fireworks in Harry’s mind, but he couldn’t decide which one to ask first. Eventually, he decided not to ask any of them—Victor didn’t seem inclined to answer.
He could only start eating.
When he took his first bite of the oatmeal porridge with beef, Harry couldn’t help but open his appetite, feeling as if he might even devour his fingers. The beef was tender, the broth perfectly seasoned, and he had never tasted anything so delicious.
At the Dursleys', getting an entire slice of bacon in a day was a luxury.
Nor had he ever lived in a house this nice or slept in a bed as comfortable as the one he had woken up in earlier.
As he ate, Harry felt everything about this place was so wonderful it seemed unreal, as if he were dreaming. But even as he ate, he couldn’t help thinking about magic.
Magic—could he learn magic too?
Would he be able to make a house grow chicken legs?
He glanced at Victor, who was directing bread even while eating, then at Grandma Yaga, old and mysterious, and felt he was nothing like them.
But as he turned to observe other things, he suddenly noticed a peculiar doll on a nearby bookshelf.
It was a doll with braided hair, sitting on a classic wooden shelf surrounded by thick books. Its button eyes were intricate, and it wore a finely stitched little dress. Yet, for some reason, seeing it sent a chill down Harry’s spine, an inexplicable sense of dread.
He then realized the doll’s hair seemed to be made from real human hair.
The hair was brown, with slightly split ends at the bottom—no wig could look that real!
...No, he couldn’t keep staring at someone else’s things. That would be impolite.
Although curious, Harry forced himself to divert his attention from the doll and lowered his gaze to the breakfast on his plate.
He picked up his fork.
But before he could resume eating, he suddenly felt something touch his ankle.
Harry quickly looked down and found that the spot where the bookshelf had been was now empty—the doll had somehow appeared at his feet, looking up at him with its button eyes fixed intently on his face!
Harry: !!
From this close, he could clearly see the stitching on the button eyes. The doll, though aged—its white dress slightly yellowed at the edges—was impeccably clean. Its lifelike appearance made Harry feel as though he were looking at a real little person.
That only made it more terrifying.
What’s more... a normal doll couldn’t just appear at someone’s feet out of nowhere!
At that moment, a sharp, eerie female voice came to his ears, soft and melodic:
“Jerry small, oh so small,
A mouse could swallow him whole,
From his hat down to his toes...”
The voice was thin and strange, with a slight tune. After finishing the unsettling rhyme, it let out a sharp, eerie laugh.
"Ah!"
Harry shuddered violently, leaning back hard in his chair and quickly pulling his foot away.
The table shook with his movement, immediately drawing puzzled looks from the two adults nearby.
"What’s wrong?"
Grandma Yaga raised her head from her plate, looking at Harry with concern.
It was then Harry noticed she was eating a peculiar, individual dish—a sticky, red substance with bones sticking out. Her face and mouth were already stained red, and as she spoke, he glimpsed the mushy red and white mixture in her mouth.
“Crunch, crunch.”
With each bite, a bone-snapping sound came from Grandma Yaga's mouth, chilling Harry to his core.
...What was she eating? Could it be raw meat?!
Suddenly, countless stories about witches flashed through Harry’s mind—tales of child-eating werewolves and deceptive sirens. He couldn’t help but wonder if he had wandered into a real witch’s lair.
Had he discovered a witch’s secret? Was he going to be eaten?!
Grandma Yaga, however, seemed unaffected.
After a few moments, she narrowed her wrinkled eyes, spotting the conspicuous doll on the floor. Realization dawned on her.
"Oh! It’s Vasilisa’s doll! Silly me, I almost forgot."
She laboriously rose from her chair, walked over to the delicate doll, and kindly picked it up.
"Don’t worry. This is another child’s doll. It doesn’t mean any harm and sometimes even grants small wishes, like moving you to the roof or changing your position. Because of the influence of Vasilisa’s late mother’s soul, it often sings nursery rhymes and likes to keep children company."
"As long as you don’t stay with it too long, you won’t have any trouble."
"Come to think of it, that child was a lot like you."
She placed the doll back on the bookshelf, without elaborating on what "trouble" might mean, and instead began recounting Vasilisa’s story.
"Her stepmother and stepsisters often bullied her, so she came to me for help. After I taught them a good lesson, she happily stayed and studied magic with me for many years."
"Oh... oh."
Harry stared at her blankly. The inexplicable fear lingering in his heart hadn’t entirely dissipated, leaving him both dazed and curious.
Vasilisa’s experience did indeed sound a lot like his own.
However, while he disliked Dudley, Aunt Petunia, and Uncle Vernon, he had no intention of teaching them a lesson. After all, they had spent money raising him.
His focus shifted to the last thing she said.
"...Can I learn magic too?"
Harry couldn’t help but look at Grandma Yaga.
Victor answered, "Of course you can."
"Judging by your age, you should be about to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You’ll start learning magic systematically there soon enough."
"They’ll probably send you an acceptance letter in a few days and might even send a teacher to explain everything to you."
