The Boy Who Wasn't Sorted as a Child
The brick pillar between platforms nine and ten looked exactly as ordinary as Dante's father had promised it would, which somehow made the whole thing worse. Dante stood before it with his trunk digging into his palm, watching families disappear through solid stone like smoke drawn into a chimney, and felt his stomach perform a slow, miserable somersault.
"You just walk at it," his father said, for the third time, as if repetition might conjure courage from thin air. Marco Cera had the rumpled, distracted look of a man who had crossed an ocean two months ago and still hadn't quite landed. His robes, new and stiff, didn't sit right on him yet. "Don't think about it too hard. Thinking's the enemy here."
"You've said that already, Dad."
"Has it helped?"
"Not even a little."
Beside them, Ava tugged at their mother's sleeve, her eyes wide beneath a fringe of dark hair that refused to behave no matter how many charms their mother tried on it. She was eleven, small for her age, and trying very hard not to look as terrified as Dante felt.
"What if I end up somewhere awful?" Ava whispered. "What if nobody talks to me?"
"You won't," Dante said, crouching so he was level with her.…
