(Where Brains Get Stored)
Author's Note: Contains numerous creative liberties
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Jane Yu realized she had transmigrated into the world of Harry Potter while sitting on the sorting stool.
Just moments before, she had been lying in bed reading some rather questionable manga, thoroughly enjoying herself, and her mind hadn't quite caught up with the sudden change.
"Heavens above! What is this! Werewolves... captivity... non-consensual... tentacles? Pure romance... masterpiece?"
"What on earth do S and M mean???"
With the Sorting Hat's brim covering her eyes in darkness, the voice continued screeching in her ear:
"Oh my! My eyes! Everything's turned yellow! My thoughts are completely corrupted!"
"Az... SLYTHERIN!"
She yanked off the musty old hat and leaped from the stool, freezing in place.
Before her stretched four long tables, each filled with students.
In her previous life, Jane had never read Harry Potter. Everything she knew came from her college roommate's constant chatter about "GGAD"... "You-Know-Who"... "Snape supremacy"... and such.
In short, her knowledge of this world was purely superficial, leaving her completely clueless about everything else.
So now she faced an immediate dilemma: Which table belonged to Slytherin?
However, her hesitation appeared to the whole school as dissatisfaction with the sorting result.
At the green-draped Slytherin table, numerous students had already furrowed their brows in disgust.
"What's her surname?" someone inquired.
"Yu. Jane."
"Yu? Never heard of that surname among pureblood families," Pansy Parkinson remarked, admiring her freshly manicured nails.
"A filthy mudblood? Has the Sorting Hat lost its mind?" Draco Malfoy's face contorted with revulsion.
"Calm yourself, Draco. Slytherin doesn't accept Muggles. She must be half-blood," Blaise Zabini drawled from across the table, his smile not reaching his eyes.
He had been sorted just before her, as Jane was the last student this year due to her foreign surname.
"She doesn't belong here," Blaise concluded.
Up on the platform, Jane still stood by the stool when Professor McGonagall reminded her disapprovingly, "Miss Yu, I believe you should take your seat at the Slytherin table."
She pointed toward the dark green table.
Jane murmured an apology and sat at the far end where several empty seats provided welcome distance from the crowd—perfect for someone with social anxiety like herself.
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Only then did she notice her back was drenched in cold sweat. For someone with social anxiety, being the center of attention was absolutely terrifying!
Her inner self was screaming and flailing in panic, her toes curling with embarrassment.
Worse still, she suddenly realized her mediocre English skills only allowed her to understand half of what was being said, mostly through context and guesswork!
None of this inner turmoil showed on her face. To others, her long black hair veiled her ears, forehead, and eyes, her lips pressed into a thin line, facial muscles taut, appearing cold and expressionless—completely rejecting any social interaction.
"What's her problem?" Draco slammed his fist on the table, his face flushing with anger. "Does she think she's above pureblood families?"
At the staff table, Professor Snape cast a cold glance their way, his eyes lingering on Jane momentarily before looking elsewhere.
Jane remained oblivious to having already earned the entire house's animosity.
She was contemplating her future.
Should she drop out, drop out, or perhaps... drop out?
She vaguely recalled her roommate mentioning a great battle where countless people died. And her green-themed house apparently joined some dark wizard's ranks, only to face defeat in the end.
Following the typical 80-20 rule of transmigration stories, she would likely end up among the 80% cannon fodder, dying in the great battle.
That simply wouldn't do. She had to survive.
She shuddered at the thought.
Fortunately, the bearded headmaster's speech lasted mere seconds. Though she couldn't understand a word, she knew it was time for the feast.
Golden plates before her filled with roast beef, chicken, pork chops, lamb chops, and various preparations of potatoes.
She cut a piece of beef and took a bite—terrible mistake. The meat had an overwhelming gamey taste. Clearly, the cattle here hadn't been castrated, making it far more pungent than what she was used to.
She tried the pork chop next, only to be assaulted by an unpleasant odor—the pigs evidently hadn't been castrated either, causing her to spit it out immediately.
Among all the dishes, only the fish and chips proved edible.
British cuisine truly deserved its notorious reputation.
She set down her cutlery.
However, the ingrained Chinese virtue of never wasting food made her conscience uneasy.
So she wrapped the three partially-bitten meat chops in a napkin and tucked them into her robe, planning to deal with them later in her dormitory.
"These need some biscuits to help them go down," she thought, adding several cookies to her napkin bundle.
To eventually taste proper food again, she resolved to drop out.
However, a troublemaker had already approached.
A tall, bulky girl with a thick chin suddenly dropped into the seat across from her and spoke menacingly: "Listen here, little mudblood, you'd better request a transfer out of Slytherin yourself, or you're dead!"
This was Millicent Bulstrode, Pansy's loyal follower who believed those who tainted pureblood honor should be expelled from the house.
Jane looked up, and Millicent felt as if she'd been fixed in the gaze of a predator. Those dark, empty eyes devoid of emotion were certainly not what one would expect from a typical mudblood.
Her muscles tensed involuntarily, her instincts screaming at her to flee—she fought to suppress this panic, knowing that running away would make her the laughingstock of the entire house.
Being frightened off by a mudblood would destroy her pureblood reputation!
Jane just found it odd that the girl's voice was so rough and deep, like gravel in her throat, making it even more challenging for her poor English comprehension.
She could only carefully study the chubby face, trying to decipher meaning from the expressions.
Unfortunately, throughout the entire exchange, she only caught one word clearly: "mudblood."
What could that mean? Placed at the beginning of the sentence, perhaps it was a special magical greeting in British wizarding society?
So she confidently employed her broken English:
"Mudblood, jail!"
Jane intended to first return the greeting, then introduce herself as Jane Yu.
Knowing her Eastern name might challenge these British folks, she thoughtfully translated it phonetically to "jail."
"I'm being so considerate," she thought to herself.
But Millicent's face transformed dramatically. She shot up from her chair, glared fiercely at Jane, and hurried back to her original seat, even stumbling over the chair leg in her haste.
What just happened? Jane was thoroughly confused.
"She threatened me!" Millicent complained to those around her after returning to her seat.
"I told her to leave the house, and she called me a mudblood and threatened to throw me in jail!" Her fat cheeks quivered with indignation, the folds of flesh on her face bunching up.
Never in her life had she suffered such humiliation.
Pansy just sneered, "Useless, getting scared by a mudblood like that."
Seeing everyone's contemptuous looks, Millicent wanted to argue but, remembering her lower social status, reluctantly kept quiet.
"Now that everyone has eaten and drunk their fill, I have a few more words to share," Dumbledore stood up again at the staff table, tapping the table edge, making all the food vanish.
Jane understood this meant start-of-term notices and listened intently.
She knew that in normal schools, the first day always included explanations of rules and regulations. Violating them would result in disciplinary action or expulsion.
And that was exactly what she wanted—preferably to be sent straight out of the magical world.
She could return to her previous occupations, making a living as a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner or fortune teller. By 1991, Chinese people had already established acupuncture clinics in London, and Chinatown even hosted feng shui shops.
Besides, having been an orphan in her previous life, she had no compelling reason to return to that world. She might even make more money here, she reasoned.
However, no matter how carefully she listened, her weak English comprehension couldn't be overcome.
"Forbidden... students... what forest?"
"Don't what?... enter fourth-floor corridor... surprise?"
She had an epiphany—she needed to enter something called a forest, and visit the fourth-floor corridor for a surprise.
Entering this forest would violate school rules and get her expelled, but before leaving, she still wanted to experience the surprise on the fourth floor. After all, this was her first time in the magical world, and once she left, she wouldn't have another chance to experience magical surprises.
Then the students inexplicably began singing, and since Jane couldn't understand the lyrics, she could only watch the teachers' lips and try to mouth along.
Afterward, the crowd filed out, with Jane trailing at the end of the line, ignored by her classmates.
This brought her relief.
Not being questioned was the greatest respect one could show to someone with social anxiety.
The crowd was heading downstairs, the staircases were moving, people were pushing and shoving, and in an unguarded moment, she lost sight of the group.
But she wasn't worried at all.
Wasn't this the perfect opportunity to visit the fourth-floor corridor and find that surprise?