Starting Here, Starting Now
Starting here, starting now
When we walk, we walk together
Year by year, starting here
Starting now
"Bye, Mum! Bye, Dad!"
"Goodbye! Goodbye!" Al and Rosie hung out of the windows of their compartment as long as they could, waving and waving as they watched their parents grow smaller and smaller, until the train turned a corner, and they were gone. Al sank down against the window, still staring out of it, while Rosie, never downhearted, clambered into her seat, sat down Indian-style, and pulled out a battered copy of a book called Hogwarts, A History.
"Mum gave me this," she told him, examining it. "I think it's really important to her, but I don't know why." She paused. "Al? Are you all right?"
He knew that she knew that he wasn't. They'd known each other since before they were born, when their Mums would sit side by side, their big pregnant tummies touching. Once Rosie had been born, Al, so Weasley family lore went, had been so anxious to join her that he was born three weeks early. Since then, they had scarcely spent a week apart, and apart from his Dad, she knew him better than anyone else in the world.
"Earth to Albus," Rosie grinned, reaching over and tapping his forehead. "We're going. To Hogwarts, we're going, so don't pull a face! I know you're going to miss-"
"That's not it," he lied, but she raised her eyebrows at him, and he relented. "All right, that's it a little bit, but…" He couldn't tell her, could he, about his worries, not her who had Gryffindor written on her forehead as clearly as James had. "Just drop it, okay?"
Rosie opened her mouth to argue, but then the compartment door slid open. The blonde, weedy looking boy the grown-ups had been talking about earlier, at the station, was standing there, red-faced from lugging his trunk down the train. "Hi," he said. "Can I sit here?"
Al opened his mouth to say "yes," but Rosie got there first. "What's your name?" She asked, suspiciously. Clearly, she had recognized him too.
"Scorpius Malfoy," the boy said with a mixture of pride and apprehension that reminded Al of the time Lily had made Granddad Weasley's lawnmower fly by accident.
"My Daddy says I'm to beat you in every exam!" Rosie blurted out. Al resisted the strong urge to kick her with some difficulty.
Now, the other boy –Scorpius- just looked confused. "Why would he say that?" Al noticed he had a strange, hard-to-place accent.
"I don't know," Rosie admitted. "I s'pose he was joking. Usually it's Mum who wants us to be top of everything, and Dad teases her about it a lot." She grinned at the boy, who was still standing unsurely in the compartment door, like an animal on display in a zoo. "D'you want to sit here? I'm Rosie Weasley, and this is my cousin, Al Potter."
"Thanks." The boy, looking heartened, sat down next to Al, looking at him with interest. "Potter, like Harry Potter? Is he your Dad?"
"Yeah," Al answered, dully. James had warned him that Potter was not the easiest surname to have when you were a First Year. "And before you ask, yes he really is married to the Ginny Weasley, the one who played for England for a while. But that was before I was born. They're just my Mum and Dad, okay?"
"Okay, okay, back off!" The boy laughed. "I didn't mean to bug you or anything, but you've got to admit your Dad's, like, really cool, right? I mean I didn't even grow up here and-"
"You didn't grow up here?" Rosie interjected, with interested.
"Duh," the boy said, causing Al and Rosie to shoot questioning looks at each other. "I'm from America. Well, my Mom is, and we lived there until last year, but then Dad made us move here because he wanted me to go to school at this place."
"Hogwarts," Al said, automatically. He ventured, "Do you know which house you'll be in?"
"I don't really care," the other replied, intriguingly. "I mean, who really does? We're all wizards, and I guess everyone will be nice at first anyway. Dad and Grandma really want me to be in Slytherin, but I just don't get why it matters." He seemed oblivious to the horrified stares both Rosie and Al were giving him.
"Why would your Dad want you to be in Slytherin?"
The boy shrugged. "He was, I guess. And Grandma and Grandpa of course- my Grandpa died a few weeks ago, and I think they're hoping I could be, like, a new him."
"I'm sorry," Al said in a small voice. He had dead grandparents too, of course, but that was different. The thought of his Grandad dying made him feel sick. "About your Grandfather."
"That's okay," the boy said, frowning now. "I didn't really know him anyway, and I wish he hadn't died this summer, because that's why we really moved here. I didn't want to go to school here, and Mom didn't want to leave her job, but we felt bad for Dad."
"You didn't want to go to Hogwarts?"
"And leave all my friends to go to a strange country where everyone else knows each other and people look at you weirdly when you call your jeans pants? Would you?"
Rosie started to laugh. This time, Al really did kick her, though not very forcefully. He loved his cousin very much, but she was a little insensitive sometimes. "Ignore her," he told Scorpius. "She's all right, but she can be a bit of a wart sometimes."
"Hey!" Rosie looked hurt. He knew she felt like had betrayed their special cousinship. Betrayal did not go over very well with the red-headed side of his family, Al knew. Lily and James hated telling tales more than almost everything else, including Brussels sprouts.
"Rosie," Al mumbled, "we should be nice to him."
"Oh, why don't you just go off with him if you're so keen on being nice?" She shot back angrily.
"Don't be so stupid," Al whispered back frantically. "I don't want to go off with him but you're being really rude-"
"You know, where I come from it's rude to talk about people when they're sitting right there," Scorpius piped up from next to Al. They swung round, Rosie's braids whipping through the air, both of them wearing identical, defensive faces. This was the unspoken rule of the Potter-Weasley cousinship: they could bicker at each other as much as they wanted, but if an outsider dared insult one, the other would stand by firmly. "And there's no need to look at me like that," Scorpius plowed on valiantly, his voice rather more wobbly then he would have liked. "I suppose you to think you've got it all figured out because you've got each other, but imagine being me. I don't have anyone."
Rosie and Al exchanged a look. He could tell that she was torn between irritation, amusement and pity for the strange boy sitting next to them, and she could tell that he was feeling the same way as when they had first met Caramel, their kitten, tiny and sopping wet on Granny's porch one stormy night. She gave a tiny, if-you-must sort of shrug, and he beamed at her in gratitude. Turning to Scorpius he said, unsurely: "You've got us, if you want."
The boy's eyes were round as galleons, and a smile so wide and happy that it didn't seem to fit with the rest of his appearance, was glowing on his face. "Really?"
"Really," Rosie said, smiling at him. "Want a chocolate frog?"
Now take my hand
For the greatest journey
Heaven can allow
Starting love
Starting here
Starting now...