Mother led Draco through the barrier and into the Muggle part of King's Cross. It looked…normal. Parents, children, businesspeople, commuters, all sorts of individuals from all walks of life went about their business. They weren't hitting people with sticks. They weren't burning witches at the stake. They were just…living. It was surreal. Of course, they were obviously inferior…though by looking at them, Draco would be hard pressed to tell how.
Draco couldn't help but look at the items in the shops of the station with wonder. He was glad his father wasn't there; Father would have hit him with his cane just for the expression on his face. "What are those things that woman has in her ears?" Draco asked, pointing at a woman with strange, bud like objects in her ears.
"Those are earphones," Mother said, as if that was any sort of explanation. "They connect to a device known as a cassette player, which can play music that can be heard through the earphones."
"Remarkable," Draco said. "What kind of spell is that?"
"Muggles do not have magic, remember," Mother reminded him. "As such, they have had to harness the other natural forces of the earth to do some of the things we use magic for. This cassette player is powered by electricity. Think of it as miniaturized lightning."
"I don't understand," Draco admitted.
Mother gave him a gentle smile. "And that is quite acceptable, Draco. I am not asking you to understand every aspect of the Muggle world. I, frankly, do not understand many aspects of Muggle science myself. But it is important you understand that many of your preconceptions of Muggles are wrong. I will explain more later."
Mother led Draco down a moving staircase – though it was very different than the ones at Hogwarts; here the steps themselves moved – into what she referred to as an tube station. It seemed the Muggles dug tubes underground and then ran trains through them. As alien a thought as it was, Draco was starting to admire the Muggles for their ingenuity. Mother and Draco spent a very awkward twenty minutes on the Tube, during which time Mother insisted Draco be silent; the risk of breaking the Statute with careless talk was too great.
The surprises continued after they left the station. Muggles, it turned out, had access to horseless carriages which Mother said were called automobiles or cars, which could go at roughly the same pace as the trains. As they walked through the streets of London, Mother pointed out all the technological wonders around him. The magical world, of course, had superior wonders, but Draco reluctantly had to concede the Muggles hadn't done too badly for themselves.
Mother pointed at a rectangular shaped object, attached to a building, a bank by the looks of it. And that was another strange thing – the Muggles had many different types of banks, not just one. "Do you know what that is, Draco?" she said softly. Draco shook his head. "That is a closed circuit television. It's constantly recording people outside the bank. If someone tries to rob it, the footage would be sent to the police."
"But…but what if it records someone doing a spell?" Draco asked. "Can it be confounded?"
"It doesn't have a brain, so no," Mother said, looking proud of Draco for coming to that conclusion. "There are elements inside the Muggle government that work to cover up breaches of the Statute, but technology such as this makes it easier than ever to breach it. If the Statute is ever broken, then it will be through technology such as this." Draco shuddered at the very thought.
Finally, after what seemed forever but was really only around fifteen minutes, they arrived at their destination, a large building whose sign showed it to be the Imperial War Museum. Draco couldn't imagine what interesting things there were to see inside. The rocks Muggles hit each other with? Maybe they'd developed bigger rocks over the centuries.
Draco was in awe as soon as he stepped inside the museum's atrium. There were strange looking Muggle contraptions hanging from the ceiling. Mother said they were airplanes, and Muggles flew on them at speeds even faster than the train to get to far off locales. Naturally, they weren't as instantaneous as Portkeys, but one could still get across the ocean in less than a day in one of them. It was truly astonishing.