DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN OUAT OR HARRY POTTER. CHARACTERS AND STORY ORIGINATE FROM THE CREATIVE MINDS OF J.K. ROWLING AND ADAM/EDDY


Extended Summary: For Emma Swan, the idea of a family and a home has never strayed further than her own mind. The possibility of a place where people can rest their heads and hearts to welcome safety seemed almost ludicrous to think about. A new foster home traverses her to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It soon appears that the castle walls begin to hold another Triwizard Tournament before giving Emma time to take everything in about her new school. But there are dangers that lurk beyond the restrictions of the cup's cruel games and most of these dangers submerge Killian Jones, a Hufflepuff prefect who seems blind to it all. His ceruleans appear to take more notice of the Swan girl than the consequences of his beginnings.

Alongside the Triwizard cup, Emma has her heart locked away as Killian starves a dark danger within the castle being chosen by the Triwizard cup. This is a tale of a Hogwarts year of mischief, heartbreak and bittersweet discovery. [Harry Potter and Once Upon a Time: Captain Swan au]

a/n: i'll attempt to post weekly (at the latest) unless i say otherwise!


Chapter one | "Train Tracks"

Emma Swan's owl blinked at her with its tawny eyes as she finished tucking away one of her books into her shabby suitcase. The cage seemed to have outgrown Cygnus, but the snowy owl nestled herself comfortably behind the round captivity's bars.

Emma looked at the bare bedroom around her without much thought.

"Come on, Cygnus," she took her things in one hand and Cygnus' cage in the other. She glanced briefly at her new robes, failing to suppress her nerves. "There will be plenty of new mice and open space where we're headed."

For an owl like Cygnus, home was anywhere with a meal as long as she had Emma next to her to blink at from time to time. But Emma had her own ideas of 'home'. She came to know that there were four kinds.

One. Home is a structured shelter. It is a place with a front door and a peephole for safety. It is the smell of homemade apple pie in the oven, the sound of soup bubbling as it boils, strawberries wrapped in cling film to be placed in the fridge. It is a fridge shelf dedicated to chocolate milk no matter what age the people in the house are. Home is where one lies in warmth and tranquility when there's a storm yelling at the world outside in fury. Home is a sheltered sanctuary and a place to sleep and wake up in. Home is a house.

Two. Home is a human. It is a walking, conversing, breathing person who has oxygen pumping through their bloodstream, a heartbeat alluding to the sound of rain dripping from the corner of a roof onto the surface of an umbrella. Patter. Patter. Patter. Lipdub. Lipdub. Lipdub. Home is a person with veins mapped out like train lines. It is the warmth and security from another soul. It is a human who causes high spirits and more cheer than a taker of a winning lottery ticket. It is emotion, words, and feeling all strung in a line to be given to someone. It is the looks irises give one another and it is comfort paired with silence. Home is a person.

Three. Home stretches out from being confined into an interior atmosphere. It strives beyond the limitations of the peephole in a door. It is an unlocked door, one that enters into the shadowed outside world. It includes the birds in the morning and the crickets conversing at night. It is the thrilled buzz of bumblebees fumbling in the air for honey. Home is the way the stars hover over people despite what colour of the spectrum the sky is. Home is a greater scale than an individual's eye. Home is earth.

Alas, four.

Emma wasn't sure how to define this one.

Home.

Home meant being alive. Home meant her own heartbeat beating to the sound of her own drums, in and out of tune. Home meant surviving and having her own lovely thoughts to herself for safekeeping. Home is putting her utmost trust in herself. Home is when she talks to an owl for comfort. Home is transferable and follows wherever she goes. Home is being alive and goes no further than herself, but she never felt the need for it to. Emma Swan wouldn't necessarily define herself as homeless. Nor would she say that she had a home. What a peculiar thought 'home' was. Home was nothing more than a thought to her.

It happened to be the morning of the 1st of September, five minutes to eleven, when she managed to find her way to King's Cross Station hurriedly. Cygnus remained quiet in her cage, chirping once in a while and fluffing her feathers from time to time whenever Emma accidentally stumbled. The train would leave at eleven o'clock sharp and she now had less than five minutes to figure out where Platform 9¾ was.

Previously attending the Salem Witches' Institute, she had gotten used to forests and greenery. How peculiar it was that the way to the Hogwarts Express was simply a run-in with a baggage trolley and a brick wall. Nevertheless, questioning the rules of magic would be unnecessary. What was necessary was catching the train on time.

Perceptive as always, Emma was sure her gut told her that someone just disappeared around a corner with an owl on his or her baggage trolley. The glint of silver from its cage from the corner of her eye made her footsteps follow the stranger. Not far from turning the corner, Emma heard the rattling of the trolley and sure enough, just as she reached the area of suspicion, the stranger had vanished through the wall. The muggles seemed oblivious to it all, carrying on with their usual commute. Emma took a deep breath and ran ahead, feeling the wind sway her hair to brush past her ears. The uncertainty of where she'd end up didn't linger for long. Before she could get the jest of it all, a gorgeous red steam engine stood beside a train platform.

The compartments on the train were something Emma wasn't used to. Lead astray from Cygnus and having her luggage dealt with, she wanted to take refuge alone in an empty compartment and fall into a deep slumber until they were there. Unfortunately, this was not going to happen. The train was crowded and compartments were filled rather quickly. Excited first-years chattered away at what they knew the castle looked like or what house they'd be sorted in. Emma could understand their excitement to an extent. Students were occasionally sorted into their houses during first-year. Emma still hadn't been informed on the events surrounding her sorting experience. She was a stranger to this school after all. Everything lead back to the hunger of curiosity. Alas, she reached a near-empty compartment at the end of a carriage and opened the door to see a wide-eyed girl focusing on the snow flurries in the air around her.

"Sorry," Emma cleared her throat. "All the other places were taken. Do you mind if I…?"

The girl looked up at Emma and at once, the snow disappeared.

"Oh, hello! No, not at all," she fiddled with a loose strand of her ice-blonde hair. "I was just in a wintery mood."

"I like winter," Emma closed the compartment door and settled by the window across from the girl.

Ice-blondie adjusted her braid, "I'm Elsa. Sixth-year."

"Emma. Emma Swan," Emma replied lightly. "Sixth year, but I'm transferring here from Salem so everything's pretty new."

"Salem?" Elsa cradled her hands. "I heard all the muggle stories about the place. Is the Institute anything special?"

"As far as I know," Emma felt the words trail off her tongue as she thought briefly for a moment. Apart from the breathtaking scenery, Salem had what every school had to offer her—a temporary stay.

"Every school seems different," Emma settled with.

Elsa nodded. She had always considered Hogwarts to be permanent mark of home. It seemed absurd to think of any other possibilities of settling elsewhere for school.

"So you've been to the other schools?"

Emma wore a coy smile and laughed quietly, "Enough of them to know that Beauxbatons Academy was far too elegant for my clumsiness."

With Emma's constant quirk of noticing things, she realized Elsa had traversed from cradling her hands to clutching them. But it had to be noted that Elsa was perceptive too and noticed Emma noticing. She managed to change the topic of conversation.

"Are you going to be sorted with the first-years or do you have other arrangements?" She smoothed out her Hogwarts robe.

Emma frowned. She hadn't thought about that. Sure, she had been to most of the wizarding schools around America as well as the rest of the world, but she wasn't sure what exactly to expect at Hogwarts. How were people sorted at Hogwarts? Curiosity had seeped into Emma's nerves when Elsa gently placed her hand on Emma's wrist.

"If it helps to know," she said, "I'm in Hufflepuff."

Emma graced a thank you with her smile, "I guess we'll see."

Endless rows of greenery and serrated hillsides loomed in the distance as the train chortled and huffed its steam along the train tracks. The air outside was thick with water vapour waiting to patter down onto the earth. Aside from the ragged clouds, Emma and Elsa managed to brighten up their small space. Emma had been giggling at one of Elsa's heartwarming stories about her sister, Anna as they shared Pumpkin Pasties from the Honeydukes Express trolley. Elsa made it known that her sister was a muggle and that she missed her very much. The apples of her cheeks became tinged with a light pink shade of embarrassment when the compartment door slid open with an arrogant click!

"There you are! Have you seen m—"

A brief silence interrupted the boy when he noticed Elsa wasn't alone, along with the awkward silence she greeted him with.

"Ah. Talking about Anna again?" He grinned. "There's no need to be ashamed of missing family."

Elsa rolled her eyes at him.

"If Liam were a muggle, I'd have had the initiative to do the same," the boy said with a lacquered joking tone.

Emma couldn't help but notice how infuriatingly handsome he looked, even if the popped collar bothered her slightly. The boy had dark tousled hair, as if he had just been fumbling around for something. She also caught sight of the vague hint of stubble framing his impeccable jawline. A hardly noticeable scar lightly dented the left of his face as the dimples in his cheeks accompanied his infectious grin. Emma could see that he was perhaps the same age as Elsa and herself, a sixth year, which explained the friendly banter between him and Elsa whilst Emma took time to arrange her thoughts.

She could feel her face heating up as the boy's cerulean irises met her green ones.

Don't let your guard down, she traced a subconscious reminder to herself and felt herself tense up. She managed to recollect herself and drink in the rest of the conversation in front of her.

"What makes you think that I would have it?" Elsa asked when Emma resumed listening.

"Well, we're both prefects," The boy tilted his head, which strangely reminded Emma of a puppy.

"Perhaps you took my badge by mistake."

Emma could see that Elsa was faced with this accusation too many times. It was written all over her face.

"You need to stop losing your prefect badge, Killian."

Killian. Emma noted. It was an exasperatingly pretty name. She could feel the apples of her cheeks tinting pink with heat. As the train turned, Emma came to a quick realization that she was thinking about him too much. Wordlessly, she got back to consuming the rest of her Pumpkin Pasty.

"Losing it would be the last wanted occurrence on my agenda, wouldn't you think?" Killian sighed and took a glance at Emma.

Elsa crossed her arms. "I'm sure it will turn up soon. Preferably somewhere obvious," she retorted with.

Similar to how Emma noticed Killian, Killian noticed her. He noticed the softness of her light golden locks that waved past her shoulders and framed her face. He noticed the furrowing of her eyebrows, as she seemed to have conjured up something conflicting in her thoughts—thoughts that Killian wish he could hear. He noticed the calming of her evergreen eyes despite the faint frown she wore.

And most of all, he noticed how he never noticed her at all, which was odd considering how perceptive he thought of himself as. She couldn't be a sixth year. He never saw her around before, nor was she in any of his classes. Transfers at Hogwarts weren't often heard of and were rare. But then again, she appeared to fit into the category of rare happenings.

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Of course," Killian rolled his eyes and sighed, "I'll go check my compartment again."

Emma secretly smiled to herself when she realised she could tell that Killian was lying. He left them just as they were and with frustration, Elsa slid the door closed and sat back down. "Sorry about that."

"Who was he?" Emma asked with curiosity.

"His name is Killian," Elsa shook her head, "he's my friend."

"Is he a Hufflepuff?"

"Quite so," Elsa smiled, "though he does have the nerve and chivalry of a Gryffindor."

Emma hummed, wanting to get lost in her thoughts. Something in her gut told her that Killian Jones would present several problems to that wall of hers throughout her time at Hogwarts.

"I'm sure you'll do fine in the house you're sorted in, Emma," Elsa reassured, "Hogwarts is always there to welcome anyone home."