Chapter 33 - Leaving Orphanage and Holidays

When the train reached King's cross station I quickly went to an empty alley and called Sherry who then popped me to my house.

I needed to learn apparating soon as I could not count on Sherry every time I needed to travel somewhere. When Sherry apparated taking me along, the distance she could travel was shortened and the process was quite taxing on her magic. It was okay for the short distance we travelled now but for large distances it would cause many problems. I was postponing learning apparition as I wanted to make sure that I did not accidentally splinch myself while apparating and was waiting to become proficient enough in healing so that I could fix the mistakes myself in case something happens. I could not go to healers to treat this as it would lead them to know what I was trying to do and apparating without licence while being underage would cause me a lot of problems with the Ministry of Magic. For now, I was just doing research on apparating and how to make it more comfortable and silent.

First thing on my list to do after reaching London was to leave the orphanage. I stayed at the orphanage till now as it was more convenient for me to attend school while staying there otherwise it would have been difficult to even get admitted to a school. A lot of troublesome paperwork and magic was avoided due to my stay there and I also saved a lot of money too through the many scholarships I won for my studies. Another reason for my stay was that I wanted my Hogwarts letter to be addressed to the orphanage.

But now staying there would cause a lot of problems for me. Staying there was going to limit the time I had for my activities, I would also have to be careful while practicing magic so as to be not seen and would need me to ask permissions from the matron for all my outdoor trips. So I wanted to leave the orphanage. But it was going to take some planning. There was no way the matron was going to let me leave the orphanage at my age to live on my own. Getting emancipated early was also out of option. The courts would not allow some 11-year-old to get emancipated even though he had completed school.

I concluded that the only safe way out was to get adopted by Sherry disguised as my relative. I let her disguise as my aunt from my father side after looking at his photos and created fake papers to prove her identity. After everything was ready, we popped to the orphanage.

We both then went towards the Matron's office and knocked.

Matron "Come in."

We both slowly entered her room.

Matron "Back from school already Charles? Tell me about your year. I hope you had lots of fun. Who is this young lady?"

"I arrived in London just this morning. School was good. I found out who my parents were there. They were alumni of the school and through the school I was able to find a lot about my family history. I also learned that I had a relative alive. This is my Aunt. She had no knowledge of my birth and after learning about me, she wants me to live with her. So she came here to thank you and then try to adopt me."

Sherry "Good Evening, Matron. I am Elizabeth Falken. His father was my brother. I was studying in France when I heard about the death of my brother and by the time I came back to London I could not locate my sister-in-law. I searched for her for a couple of years until finally giving up hope. I was so happy when Charles contacted me through a letter. He is just like his father and has grown up to be a fine young man. I thank you for that."

Matron "I am happy you found your Aunt, Charles. Since you are closely related you just have to show some proofs and sign some papers and Charles can go live with you. We all will be sad about Charles leaving us and miss him but it was bound to happen. I wish you well and I am sure you will be some one great in the future."

Then all we had to do was sign some papers and show some identity proofs. It was quite easy to confound the matron into believing that the documents were real. It took about an hour in total and I was finally free to live on my own. I made sure that nothing in the papers would cause suspicion when the Matron checked them later in the future. Since I was getting adopted by a relative, not much work was needed.

Sherry took out my check book and wrote a check for 50,000 pounds for the orphanage. It was all the money I had balance in my account which included the dividends I got from my investment. It also included the money that was deposited into my trust vault on my birthday this. Sherry exchanged 4500G into pounds and deposited it into my bank account. This was all the free cash I had for now which I could donate. I will donate some more after I reach my majority.

"Matron, accept this donation from me for the orphanage. It is a small token of my appreciation for taking care of Charles for these many years. Use this to make more children as happy as Charles was when living here." Sherry said while she handed her the check.

She tried to refuse but after a little persuasion from me she accepted the check and thanked Sherry.

Finally I stood up and said, " Well Matron, Thank you for everything. Goodbye. I will drop by whenever I am nearby."

I went to my room packed everything and vacated it. After saying goodbyes to all the caretakers I left the orphanage and Sherry popped me to my house. She had already cleaned up my parent's room for me.

After unpacking I made a schedule for my holidays. I had two months and I was going to make use of every day of it. I did not plan going on a vacation until I was sure that I could protect myself as I wanted to tour the magical part of different countries. I decided to wait until I was NEWT level in all subject atleast before going to other countries.

I spent the holidays mainly finishing potion studies till NEWT level in the two months that I had. I did this because I needed various ingredients for my advanced potions and I could not get those easily while I was in Hogwarts. Here Sherry would just pop and buy them for me. Potion making was very simple if you learned it the right way. Instead of memorising recipes one must understand the ingredients thoroughly first. Once you know what is the effect of a specific ingredient, you must understand what happens when two of them are mixed together. In this way you can experiment and learn potions very easily. The various cutting and dicing practises are used depending on the potency of ingredients required in the potions. Once you totally understand the various magical ingredients and their intermixing you can make any potion that you want.

When I am not practising potions, I was meditating to find my inner animal. It was a slow process but after two months of trying I was able to find my inner animal. It was a Peregrine Falcon. Quite fitting as it was the spirit animal of my family. I couldn't control my happiness after learning about it. My requirement for my inner animal was it should not be something like tiger and wolf which cannot be found in cities. It would be easy for others to guess that something is wrong and you cannot sneak around using it. The Peregrine falcon is known for its exceptional eyesight and its speed. So with it I could spy on others from high up in the sky and could sneak attack on my enemies by diving from the sky at very high speeds. I can also say for sure that each person can only have one animagus transformation since you can have only one inner animal.

These were the important things I did during the holidays. Rest of the things I did were not worth mentioning.