A/N: So, I suddenly had this idea and I felt the need to write it. I've already planned out what general problem they're going to face each year, as well as who is in school at what time and everything. So hopefully this story doesn't fall apart. But be warned - there will be absolutely no Harry Potter characters. It's completely Supernatural or original characters in the HP setting. And please forgive me if I don't do some characters justice, but for the most part they're all significantly younger and it's an AU and there are twenty-eight Supernatural characters that will make an appearance at some time, last time I checked. So please forgive me.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Supernatural characters or any Harry Potter settings or concepts. I do own the general ideas and any original characters, but that's really about it.

Chapter One

It was five minutes until the train departed, the large clock on the wall reading ten fifty-five. By now, a majority of this year's students had boarded the scarlet train, speaking to or waving at family members from the windows. However, a few remained on the platform, delaying their boarding until literally the last minute. Dean Winchester was one of those students.

The eleven-year-old stood in front of one of the doors, a caged horned owl on the ground by his feet. His arms were wrapped around his little brother's small frame, seven-year-old Sam's tousled hair brushing his chin. A man stood nearby, politely averting his eyes to allow the two children to say goodbye with some degree of privacy.

Finally, Dean drew back and gripped his brother by the shoulders, his freckled face worried. "Be careful, okay? I'll write to you once a week, but tell me if anything bad happens. I'll be back here as soon as I can if something goes wrong," he promised, and Sam flashed him a small smile.

"Do you really gotta go?" Sam asked, his eyes misting over and his lower lip trembling as he looked up at his older brother. Normally this look would change Dean's mind, make him do anything to keep his brother from crying. This time, the eldest of the two just gave a slow shrug, though he felt bad doing so.

"It won't be for that long, Sammy. I'll come home for Christmas and Easter and for all of summer. And you'll still have Dad and Pastor Jim," Dean reassured, glancing at the man behind Sam, who smiled and nodded. It looked like the older Winchester boy was about to say something else when the train's whistle blew and smoke started to billow out more heavily. Dean scooped up his owl's cage and gave Sam another, one-armed hug before scrambling onto the train before the door closed.

Opening the window on the door, Dean gave his little brother a wave and what he hoped was a confident smile. Sam quickly scrubbed at his face to dry it before waving back. "Don't forget about me," he called in as stern a voice as any seven-year-old could muster.

"I won't!" Dean promised, lurching suddenly as the train started moving. As the train pulled away, Sam continued to wave while Pastor Jim placed a hand on the small boy's shoulder and raised his other in his own farewell. After a minute, the train rounded a corner and the platform receded from view. Still, Dean remained at the window for a few more minutes before closing it and heading into the actual corridor.

With the amount of students, and taking in the fact that he was amongst the last to find a spot, Dean knew it would be impossible to find an empty compartment. He decided to simply settle for one with few kids in it who would allow his presence.

It was a lot harder for Dean to find a spot than he had originally thought, however. In any compartment he stopped at that looked to have enough room, its occupants insisted it was full, and he moved on. By the time he got halfway down the train, Dean was growing frustrated. He passed one compartment with five older, rather loud boys. The next compartment had only two boys who looked to be Dean's age or a little older. One of the boys was lying on his back, tossing a ball up in the air so it hit the ceiling and then catching it again. The other simply stared out the window, his chin propped up by his hand.

When Dean opened the door, the boy with the ball sat up, catching the ball again as he did so, while the other boy simply glanced over his shoulder. "You mind?" Dean asked, nodding toward one of the empty seats. His question had rapidly gotten shorter as more and more people denied him and it was close to turning into simply one word.

"Nah, feel free," the boy with the ball said, gesturing grandly to the seats by the other boy. Dean was pleasantly surprised and took a seat with a nod of thanks. "I'm Balthazar, by the way. Balthazar Gassagen," the boy added, offering his hand to Dean. "And that's my older brother, Castiel." Glancing over at his brother, Balthazar stage-whispered, "He's not nearly as much fun to be around as I am."

Castiel frowned at his little brother and stated simply, "I am too fun to be around." Then he looked over at Dean and nodded with a rather small smile. "Hello."

Taking Balthazar's hand, Dean gave it a quick, firm shake and said, "My name's Dean Winchester."

"Winchester, huh? We've heard of your family before. Your dad's like an Auror or something, isn't he?" Balthazar asked, his interest practically visible. Castiel tilted his head curiously but allowed his younger brother to do the speaking instead of piping up himself.

"Or something," Dean answered vaguely, fiddling with the latch on his owl's cage. Once it was open, the horned owl flapped its wings once, landing on his shoulder and nipping affectionately at a little fringe of hair.

The vague answer only served to peak Balthazar's interest, instead of thwarting it as Dean had intended. "So what's he do? I've only heard that he's like an Auror, but he helps Muggles, too, right? Aurors don't do that." Dean opened and closed his mouth a couple times at first, debating whether or not to explain what his father did. He had quickly discovered that even amongst wizards, people going around and chasing myths and legends and killing them was rather strange. At least, no one did it that hadn't been employed to do so, which his father definitely hadn't, as John didn't care to work solely for witches and wizards.

Before Dean made up his mind, Castiel spoke up from his little corner of the compartment. "Quit pressing, Balthazar. If he doesn't want to tell us, he doesn't have to." The younger of the two boys pouted a little but accepted it, lounging back on his stretch of seats and tossing his ball between his hands. There was a brief moment of silence before a loud thud came from the compartment next door, causing all three boys to jump. Dean's owl ruffled its feathers and left his shoulder for a moment before settling again, giving Dean an indignant hoot in protest.

Castiel opened his mouth to speak, his attention drawn to the wall, but as soon as the first syllable left his throat, the compartment door opened and then closed again quickly. The three young boys turned their attention away from the wall and toward the door as an older boy flopped into a seat at Balthazar's feet, causing the boy to quickly draw his legs away. The older boy was rather tall and gangly, with dark hair that fell in front of his face and dark eyes. He was sucking on some kind of sucker, the stick protruding from the corner of his mouth.

"That was fast," Castiel commented, frowning as he looked between the newcomer and the wall that separated the two compartments. "I thought it would take longer for Michael to kick you out."

"I did too. But you can't be too surprised. I myself was only expecting to stick around for another few minutes at the most," the older boy said around his sucker. After moving it around in his mouth for a moment, he pulled the sucker out of his mouth. A Blood Pop. "Who's your new friend?" he asked, gesturing toward Dean with his candy on a stick.

Dean made to answer, but Balthazar beat him to it, saying quickly, "That's Dean. And Dean, this is our brother Lucifer." Lucifer raised his hand in greeting, sticking the Blood Pop back in his mouth. By now, Dean had placed him as being one of the loud boys in the compartment next door, where the loud thud had come from. He couldn't help but wonder what had been going on over there.

"How many brothers do you have?" Dean asked, directing the question to all of them collectively. What worried him was that they all had to briefly consider the question before answering, in unison.

"Five more," the three boys said, and Castiel added, "And one sister." Dean blinked, astonished. He thought it was bad dealing with just Sam sometimes, let alone eight, other siblings all in the same house. His next thought was, damn, they must live in a huge place! He wasn't used to living anywhere with more than two bedrooms, and anything bigger than that seemed gigantic enough in comparison. Forgot about the size a building needed to be in order to house nine children.

Digging into his pocket, Lucifer suddenly withdrew a handful of Chocolate Frogs and wrapped Cauldron Cakes and Pumpkin Pasties, holding them out to Dean, Castiel and Balthazar. "Candy, anyone?" he asked, and while Balthazar and Dean accepted and took what they wanted, Castiel just looked at the sweets skeptically, not moving from where he sat.

"It's too early for the snack trolley. Where'd you get those?" he asked suspiciously, simply watching as Dean stuffed half a wriggling Chocolate Frog in his mouth. Lucifer grinned, offering the last Pumpkin Pasty to his brother.

"Oh, come on. Gabe's got enough sugar without me snitching a little bit. He can live without ten sweets," Lucifer said around his Blood Pop, which was quickly turning his tongue, teeth and lips bright red. Castiel frowned and pushed the sweets away from his face and Lucifer shrugged, pocketing it for himself. He was used to his little brother's strict adherence to the rules and was at least grateful that it wasn't as bad as Michael's rule obsession.

"I'm assuming Gabe is another brother," Dean said as soon as he swallowed his mouthful of chocolate. Balthazar nodded, licking black frosting from his fingers before wiping his hands on his jeans. The wet icing left smears across the denim where his fingers had touched the fabric.

"Yeah, Gabriel. I think he has an actual addiction for sugar," Balthazar confided, tearing open his own Chocolate Frog. He grabbed the chocolate in one hand and nibbled idly on one of the frog's legs while turning the trading card over in his hand. "There's also Michael, a great big stick in the mud." To this, Lucifer snorted and smiled with a nod while Castiel rolled his eyes. "And Uriel and Rafael, who are both bookworm-y. And then Zachariah is the oldest, though he's not on the train, and neither is our little sister Anna."

Dean tilted his head and wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve, setting the rest of his candy aside for later. "Did your oldest brother graduate already?" he asked. He completely understood why their little sister wasn't around, if she wasn't eleven yet, but there could have been a couple reasons for the oldest brother to not be around. Some clarification was needed on that point.

This time, Castiel answered, nodding as he said, "Yes. Two years ago. He started teaching just last year. Kind of weird, really, having a class taught by your older brother."

"Yeah. But he's at least a pretty good Potions teacher. Be glad Zach came along just as you started school, Cas - you didn't have to put up with the scatter-brained idiot who taught before," Lucifer said, pointing his mostly-eaten sucker at his little brother. "I don't think that professor could have told you the difference between a bezoar and newt eyes, even if he had the ingredients and a list of their properties right in front of him." At the younger boys' skeptical looks, Lucifer quickly defended, "Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating a little. But still, he had the worst memory in the world and was hard to follow."

Just then, the compartment door opened yet again, and the occupants turned to see who the newcomer was. Or rather, Dean and Balthazar whipped their heads around while Castiel and Lucifer simply turned their heads, the latter casually resuming sucking on his Blood Pop. In the doorway stood a rather tall young man with somewhat long blonde hair, at least for a boy. His eyes were bright blue, and there was a shiny silver badge with a 'P' on it attached to the front of his shirt.

Looking around at the people in the compartment, the newcomer offered the younger boys a smile and nod before his eyes fell on Lucifer. Immediately, his smile turned into a suffering look and he sighed loudly, slouching against the doorway and crossing his arms. "I can't believe I'm stopping by to tell you this, but there's a girl who wants to see you a few compartments down, Lucifer. Says it's urgent," the boy said, jabbing his thumb down the corridor and rolling his eyes. It was obvious that he considered the level of 'urgency' to be very little.

Sitting up so he was resting his elbows on his knees, Lucifer asked, "What's she look like?" The other boy just shrugged, looking about ready to leave, but Lucifer reached out and snagged the edge of his shirt. "Come on, Mike. You know I've seen more than one girl before." This time, Castiel and Balthazar both joined the boy, who Dean assumed was their older brother Michael, in a collective eye roll. "You've gotta be a little more descriptive than 'there's a girl'."

With a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a groan, Michael levered himself up so he was standing upright and gestured vaguely down the corridor. "She's about fourteen or fifteen, black hair, already dressed in Ravenclaw robes, about as tall as Gabriel," he said quickly before letting his arms fall to his sides. "Alright, now you know what she looks like. I'm off now. Don't get in trouble." To the younger boys, he added, "See you around, and don't fill up on sweets yet - you'll definitely want to eat later tonight at the feast." With that, Michael let the compartment door slide closed and headed off, as Lucifer stood up, crunching on the rest of his sucker and tossing the stick onto the seat he'd just left.

"Well, then. I'll leave you kiddos to do...whatever it was you were doing before I arrived. I have somewhere to be." Pulling open the door, Lucifer did some sort of gesture that was somewhere between a wave and salute, disappearing into the corridor with a quick, "Later, kids."

Once the door closed again, Dean slowly turned to look at the other two. Castiel was still looking at the door, and Balthazar was picking up the discarded sucker stick with a look of disgust before burying it in his small pile of candy wrappers. "Does this happen often?" Dean asked, looking between the two brothers and the closed compartment door.

"Fairly often," Castiel answered with a nod, grabbing a left over chunk of Cauldron Cake from amongst Dean's candy wrappers and offering it to the horned owl on the Winchester boy's shoulder. The owl stared at it for a moment before nipping it up and giving a happy hoot. "At least now. A couple years ago it wasn't as bad."

"Lucifer suddenly started dating the whole school just last year. Didn't matter what house they were in - if they were female, they were in trouble. I only heard about this second hand, from my brothers, but apparently it was pretty bad," Balthazar said, and Castiel nodded gravely. Dean smirked a little, rather glad he didn't have to put up with Lucifer chasing after girls. And he wouldn't have to put up with anything like it for a while, should his own brother ever feel the need to chase after girls, since Sam was only seven. His age had to practically double before there was even a possibility that the younger Winchester would do something like that.

After a short silence, Dean spoke up again, turning to face Castiel who had pulled his attention back to the window, where the scenery flashed past so fast it was a blur. "So you're a second year, then?" he asked and Castiel nodded, looking away from the window once more.

"Yes, I'm in my second year. Michael is in sixth, Lucifer and Rafael are in fifth, Uriel is in fourth, Gabriel is in third, and Balthazar is starting his first," Castiel answered, listing his brothers off on his fingers as he went.

"And Anna's gonna be able to come in another two years," Balthazar added before once more looking at Dean with interest. "What about you, are you also a first year like me?"

Dean nodded, settling back in his seat. His owl shifted positions so her tail wasn't smashed up against the seat and he idly reached up and stroked the feathers on her head. "Yeah, I am," he confirmed. This led to him and Balthazar discussing what their first years might be like, with Castiel chiming in every now and then to disprove some falsehood that Lucifer or Rafael had apparently fed to their youngest brother. They also discussed possible house choices (Balthazar was dead set on getting into Gryffindor, and Dean was right there with him) and who some of the professors were, and whether or not they would be good professors.

The boys' conversation ended with Balthazar pulling out a deck of Exploding Snap cards, and they cleared of space in which to play. Castiel very wisely opted out of having cards explode in his face, but the other two didn't mind - they were more than happy to simply play a one on one game. Michael stopped by once more to check up on them, but he didn't stick around long before returning to where he had been with his other brothers. It was in this fashion that they passed the time until they had to change into their school robes.

While the boys had wasted time, darkness had fully fallen, and the train was starting to slow. Dean had to coax his owl into her cage, promising that she would be let out again pretty soon. She stared at him for a long moment before obeying, sidling into the cage and allowing the door to get latched behind her. As soon as the train came to a complete stop, Balthazar threw open the compartment door and practically ran for the exit, Castiel and Dean following at a calmer pace.