Rose Weasley was sulking in a corner of her compartment, watching the trees and the white English houses speed away, cities becoming towns, towns becoming villages, villages morphing into small, scattered groups of houses, and finally becoming an occasional farm distanced from the civilized world by fields and fields of crops. Not that she cared much about the scenery. She just didn’t feel like caring about the other people in her compartment, who were behaving quite childishly, if she may say so herself.

Maybe it’s time to revert to the parents. As they waved their kids goodbye, they were left, like every summer, standing alone on the platform, and sighed. Their kids were gone for the year. Well, at least until Christmas. Then they would all be back, laughing, singing, making messes, eating long prepared meals, mucking up the kitchen, disorganizing the books, injuring each other on broomsticks, attacking them with snowballs…
Well, maybe the parents could wait a bit. For now, they regrouped among their friends, talking seriously about what was brewing out there.

“Did I say it again?” She asked.

He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Yes. And it's just as somber, apocalyptic, and incomprehensible as usual. Did you tell my father about it like I told you to?”

“Of course not. He'd think I was crazy, or worse, making it up. Then, he'd stop me from using your—rather extensive and awesome—library, saying that all that reading has gone to my head, like it did my mother before me.” She said with a small smile.

“You think he was killed?” She asked him questioningly. His death had been put to a mistake in wand use, basic and mundane, from what the Prophet said. It was one of the only two deaths that had been mentioned. For the rest of the wizarding world, Hannah Longbottom was sick, the Carrs on vacation, and Michael Corner had never existed.

He turned to look at her, and found something in her eyes, a spark of knowledge that was meant to stay hidden, a spark that made him trust her.

James Potter was desperately looking for the snitch, hoping that Scorpius was having as hard a time as he was. He tried to make abstraction of his teammates’ yells, but one particular cry struck his heart. His head snapped up, and his eyes focused on two blurs of colour, one red and one green, zooming upwards at breakneck speed.

The black-haired boy shifted nervously from one foot to the other, knowing full well who he would be telling about this. McGonagall’s eyebrows furrowed and her eyes narrowed as she looked at the skitterish boy.

“Is there anything you would like to tell me, Albus?”

Albus bit his lip. She had to be a sixth year, she didn’t seem to be older nor younger than him, and a quick look at the front of her sweater showed him that the number VI was indeed embroidered under the badger, not unlike his own VI below the eagle. He probably had classes with the girl, maybe she played Quidditch, or was in the Gobstones club, or ate on the table opposite him every day. For the past six years, she had probably been there, and he had never noticed.

Fern, her name was. In a world full of Roses, Lilies, Daisies and Violets, he wondered at the small green plant that had been so well hidden. Fern. Fern what? He wondered. Before he could turn to ask the two Delacour bi-products what they thought, the car had smoothly landed on the London pavement, unseen by the Muggles (Who never seemed to notice anything).