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"Who left a trunk obstructing the corridor?" a voice behind Harry said. |
Harry spun around. A much older boy with a shock of red hair was standing at the door. He was already in his black Hogwarts robes, and a shiny gold badge was pinned to his chest. |
Harry recognized the badge from Hogwarts: A History—this boy was a prefect. And that meant— "I'm sorry," Harry said to the prefect. "I was carrying it when I saw these—" |
"We were just leaving," Draco Malfoy interrupted. He shoved past Harry and rushed out of the compartment, Crabbe and Goyle following behind. |
"No running in the corridors!" the prefect yelled, chasing after them. |
Harry grabbed his trunk and pulled it in, closing the compartment door behind him. He lifted it into the luggage rack, then sat down across from Hermione. |
She was staring at him with wide eyes. |
"Erm, sorry about that. I—" |
She launched herself across the compartment and into his lap, hugging him tightly. |
Harry stiffened in her arms. He had never been hugged before; Ellie was never a hugger, and he hadn't known anyone else before who might have wanted to. |
"Thank you," Hermione said thickly. |
Harry patted the back of her head. |
It was actually rather nice. |
Once Hermione had let him go, she quickly asked about his disappearing act in Diagon Alley. |
"It's an Invisibility Cloak, isn't it? Ignotius's Index of Occult Objects had an entry on them..." |
He showed her the Cloak, and they took turns trying it on for each other. As he were putting it away, Harry heard a knock on the door. Hermione opened it, and they found a food trolley with such an interesting assortment of candies, Harry instantly decided he'd erred in giving the sweets shops in Diagon Alley a miss. |
Hermione was reluctant to get anything, thanks to her dentist parents, but Harry ignored her, bought some of everything, and then coaxed her into trying a few things. Soon, they were tearing open packets with abandon. |
"You don't suppose they're actual frogs, do you?" Hermione said, peering at a boxed Chocolate Frog. |
"I doubt it," Harry said. "I mean, wizards in general seem a little barmy, but they're not Frenchmen." |
Hermione rolled her eyes. "I happen to like France," she said as she opened the box, and then she let out an "eep!" as the Chocolate Frog leapt into her lap. |
"Well, what's the problem, then?" Harry asked reasonably. |
Hermione giggled as she pinned the frog to her lap, waiting to see if it would stop moving. |
Later, they ripped open a bag labeled Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. |
"Mmm, peppermint!" |
"Yuck! I think this one's grass-flavored," Harry said. "Why in the world would they even make that?" |
"Maybe they use a spell and they can't control the flavors they get," Hermione suggested, and she bit into another jelly bean. "Oooh, I love a good curry..." |
When they'd just about finished the sweets, Hermione looked around ruefully. "Oh, Mum would kill me if she saw how much sugar I ate..." |
"You have your trunk with you," Harry pointed out. "You could just grab your toothbrush and nick down to the loo for a minute." |
"I suppose..." Hermione pulled out her trunk and started looking through it, then glanced over her shoulder at Harry. "Coming?" |
"You should brush your teeth, too." |
"My guardians aren't dentists. Uncle Vernon sells drills—he probably approves of tooth decay." |
He finally gave in, and they went off to brush their teeth. When they came back, they found a boy poking through their sweets wrappers. |
"Excuse me," Harry said loudly. |
The boy jumped and whirled around. He had a round face and a troubled expression. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to snoop! I lost my toad, and I can't find him! Have you seen him at all?" |
Harry shook his head, but Hermione started asking questions. "How big is he? Does he wander off often? Where have you looked?" The boy stumbled through the answers, and in a few minutes of whirlwind discussion, Hermione had somehow turned this Neville boy's search into a Quest for the Lost Toad, and conscripted Harry i... |
When she reached for the door to the compartment across from theirs, Harry had to remind her that Neville'd said he'd already checked the rest of their car. |
Hermione's cheeks turned pink. Neville slipped around her and opened the door to the next car for her—hapless or not, someone must have drilled manners into the boy—and the three of them headed to the first compartment. |
Hermione opened the compartment door and demanded, "Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one." |
Harry winced. Perhaps Neville would be a better spokesperson. |
There were three boys in the car. One of them had sandy-blond hair, and when he answered with a "No," it was with an Irish accent. Another was a black boy in a jersey from West Ham FC; he shook his head mutely. The last of them was a red-haired boy with lots of freckles; he was looking at Harry as though he'd never see... |
"That's what they told me to write on my homework," Harry grumbled. |
"Really?" Seamus sat up straighter, now peering at Harry. |
"Really," Harry said. |
The black boy, Neville, and Hermione all had surprised looks, but they were different sorts of surprise. The black boy looked at his two companions as though they'd suddenly revealed they belonged to a strange cult. Neville looked at Harry as though he hadn't really seen him before; apparently he didn't realize which "... |
"Do you—d'you have the scar?" the red-haired boy asked. |
"No, I left it back in my trunk." |
The Irish boy guffawed; the black boy looked even more confused; the redhead's ears started turning pink. |
"Look," Harry said, and he lifted his fringe. "There you go. World's worst Halloween trick. Now have you seen Neville's toad?" |
The red-haired boy was staring at Harry's forehead. "No," he finally said. |
"Well, if any of you see him, let Neville here know, yeah? We'd better try the next compartment." |
"R-right," Hermione said. |
But the next few tries weren't much better. Finally, after escaping from a compartment where he told four girls that his scar had been bought by the National Trust and was closed for restoration, Harry turned to Hermione and Neville. |
"Look, I'd like to help, but this will go a lot faster without the Boy Who Lived sideshow. Why don't you two keep going, and I'll wait for you in our compartment?" |
Hermione frowned, but finally assented. Neville politely thanked him for his help. |
"I'm not sure how helpful I really was, but you're welcome." |
Once back in their compartment, he lifted his and Hermione's trunks back into the luggage racks and carried all the empty candy wrappers to a rubbish bin in the corridor. Then he kicked off his shoes and stretched out on one of the benches, back propped against the wall. He reached into his mokeskin pouch, withdrew the... |
People had sent him a lot of photographs for a lot of different reasons. Each photo had a bit of parchment stuck to the back identifying the sender, receipt date, and subjects of the photos (along with some scribbles that Harry assumed were Gobbledygook), but without the original letters, sometimes Harry had to guess w... |
Between the children he'd met looking for Trevor and the stack of photos in his hands, Harry wondered if he had the patience to be popular. |
As he looked at each photo, he tossed the previous one on the floor next to his seat. He was starting to become frustrated when he came across a photo that stopped him cold. |
A man in fancy black robes lifted a witch in gauzy white. He twirled her around—they both laughed silently as her crimson hair trailed behind her—and set her on her feet with a kiss. They smiled to each other, and then both turned their heads to smile to the camera, cheeks and brows touching. |
The man looked just like Charles and Dorea. Just like Harry. |
And the woman had Harry's eyes. |
Hands trembling, Harry turned the picture over to look at the label. |
James and Lily Potter. Sent by R.J. Lupin, 31 July 1985. |
Someone had sent this to him for his fifth birthday. Somewhere out there, some kind wizard or witch had been thinking of him when he was still huddled in his cupboard. |
He turned the photo back over, staring hungrily at his mum and dad, and tenaciously held back his tears. |
"Who's the bird?" someone said behind him. |
Harry spun and reached into his pockets, and before they could even blink, each of a pair of redheaded twins had one of Harry's daggers pointed at his chest. |
The two looked at the blades, then at each other. |
"Wicked!" they said together. |
"Sorry," Harry said, pocketing the knives. "You startled me." |
"No worries, I do the same thing when Mum wakes me up before eight," the twin on the left said reasonably. "I'm Fred Weasley, by the way, and this is my brother George." |
"I thought I was Fred!" the other protested. |
"No, I'm Fred," the first said. "Fred is the handsome one, remember?" |
"Maybe you're both Fred," Harry suggested. |
The two boys looked at each other. "Then who's George?" they said together. |
"I guess I'm George," Harry said. |
"But Fred is the handsome one," the twin on the left said. "Nobody gives George pictures like this." And he turned around a photo in his hand—one of the naked witch photos. |
Harry turned red, but after a moment, he said, "Then I guess I'm Fred." |
The two boys laughed and clapped Harry on the shoulders. "You're all right for an ickle firstie," the twin on the right said. "Good luck with the Sorting!" |
"And if you decide you don't want to look at these," the one on the left said, giving the photo back to Harry, "I'm sure we can find someone in the upper years who would." |
The twins left. Harry gathered up the photos and pulled down his trunk; on reflection, he put the nudes in his secret compartment and the others in the main one. |
The photo of his parents, he put back in his mokeskin pouch. |
"Welcome to Hogwarts," Professor McGonagall said. She was sterner in person than she'd come across as in writing, but no less poised. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, wh... |
The Sorting. It seemed like everybody he'd met had mentioned it. Dumbledore had been the first, wishing him luck with his Sorting. So had the Weasley twins. He and Hermione had discussed it at Flourish and Blotts, and the people in his little boat had done the same: Hermione favored Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, Neville wa... |
Nobody seemed to have any idea what the Sorting involved. Hogwarts: A History had spoken vaguely of a test of character, and other than that, said that the Sorting process was traditionally kept secret from outsiders. Seamus had heard a half-dozen different claims from his mother, each one more outlandish than the last... |
Hermione was growing increasingly nervous, and even after Harry reminded her that they couldn't possibly expect her to know any magic yet, she kept reciting spells under her breath, as if she was going to forget them in the next ten minutes. Neville was fiddling with his cloak so much that the clasp had worked its way ... |
Outwardly, Harry was calm, but that was only because he was repeating Ellie's instruction as though it were a mantra: Always look like you know what you're doing. In truth, Harry hadn't been this nervous in years. It had been a very long time since something he actually cared about wasn't under his control. This Sortin... |
And Harry had no idea how it would go. |
From what he'd read, Gryffindor sought brave and chivalrous people; "chivalrous" here seemed to be a combination of both honorable and helpful to those in need. Slytherin sought cunning and ambitious students. Ravenclaw sought swots, and Hufflepuff sought the students you'd want to partner with in group projects. |
Maybe he'd end up in Slytherin—after all, tricking Vernon into giving him a day in Diagon Alley had been pretty cunning, hadn't it? Most of the former Death Eaters mentioned in The Ministry of Magnates had been Sorted to Slytherin, though, and Harry assumed Draco Malfoy and his muscle would end up there too. That would... |
Maybe he'd end up in Gryffindor—hadn't he just casually walked down Knockturn Alley the previous day? But despite her wishes, Harry was certain that Hermione would go to Ravenclaw; she was too smart to end up anywhere else. That would leave Harry alone in the house. He worried he'd end up in a dorm room full of Boy-Who... |
Maybe he'd end up in Ravenclaw with Hermione. He imagined that would be a peaceful, quiet group; his only worry would be that they would be excessively curious about his scar, which could lead to a lot of pestering, or to him waking up strapped to a table surrounded by instruments with strange spinning bits while a nee... |
A few people behind Harry screamed, and he whirled around, hand reaching into his pocket (though he fought the urge to actually draw). A group of pearly white translucent people had somehow floated into the room—and even as he watched, more passed through the wall. They conversed with each other about someone called Pe... |
"I say, what are you all doing here?" he said. |
"New students!" said the smiling ghost of a corpulent monk. "About to be Sorted, I suppose?" |
A few of Harry's new classmates nodded. |
"Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!" the ghost said. "My old House, you know." |
Maybe Harry would end up in Hufflepuff—but no, that was just silly. |
Professor McGonagall arrived again and shooed out the ghosts, then formed everyone into a line and led them into the Great Hall. |
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