Chapter 1: Slipping Through His Grasp
The silent, black clothed, malnourished young man stepped throught the barrier guarding the entrance to Platform 9 3/4. His shiny, smooth, straight black hair was pulled back into a braid that fell nearly to his waist. Around his neck curled a tattoo of an emerald green snake. An ice blue snake tattoo curled softly around his tiny wrist.
When he looked up, you could see equally icy blue eyes stare deeply into yours. He seemed familiar, though.
The wizarding robes he wore swished as he walked calmly to the Hogwarts Express, trunk and empty owl cage floating behind him.
He searched for almost five minutes until he found what he was looking for.
His best friends.
"Hermione!" The young man's voice was deep, but eager.
"Who are you?" She whispered back, her wand held ready, her boyfriend Ron standing behind him.
"Hermione!" The voice said again, "Who do you think I am?"
"Harry?" The young woman's voice held an amount of surprise; she had not been expecting him.
He whispered a small Aguamenti, his wand pointed at his forehead. The light bit of a scar, the only proof left that he had ever been connected to Voldemort, even in Voldemort's death, showed up. The infamous lightning bolt.
Both Ron and Hermione rushed at Harry, grabbing him in an enormous bear hug.
"What happened, mate?" Ron spoke up for the first time since Harry got on the train.
"I needed to change. I wouldn't let the Dursleys cut my hair, and on my seventeenth birthday I got the two tattoos," Harry laughed.
"Why snakes?" Hermione asked.
Harry beckoned them over to where he had sat down, and then carefully set wars around the place, "Guys, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I've been going out with Professor Snape for almost two years. We are going to announce it at the Sorting Feast, since I am officially seventeen. But I like snakes. I did one of them for him, the other for me. I was to tell no one of the relationship, lest I get expelled, and Severus got fired."
They nodded, a bit shocked, but okay with it.
"You make your own choices," Ron said wisely, "We won't hold those choices against you."
He smiled softly at them, and dismantled the wards.
Hogwarts Express soon slowed, and everyone stepped off of the train. The older ones stepped into the waiting carriages, while the first years went over to Hagrid and the waiting boats.
Everyone arrived at the Great Hall, and the Sorting was taken care of.
It was time for an announcement, right after Dumbledore's annual speech ended.