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Chapter 1

Albus's Hero

Albus was in a state of extreme elation, from the moment he started loading his suitcases into the train car until the moment he sat down, finally, on it's suede covered upholstery.

He had worried for weeks over the terror of finding himself in the wrong house in Hogwarts, largely being Slytherin, and having to find out that he was actually mean, or cowardly deep down because of it. He wanted to be in Gryffindor!, the house of the heroes, the saints, and the thought of not getting into that high place had haunted him.

Albus stood up in his train seat, above the accumulation of suitcases and bags around him and leaned his neck out of the window, putting his hand to his brow.

"Hey! It's Albus! Over here!"

Albus waved.

His sister Lily staggered forward slightly as she waved through the smoke left behind from the engine and Albus' parents stood still talking to his uncles and aunts behind her. Even Lily had lost his place on the train by that point and had been waving, really Albus guessed at no one. But, once she caught his eye again her hand started moving more fiercely, and she called out to him loudly. Albus smiled and waved back, while the rest of his family looked away from the people they were talking to and started to stretch out their necks like turtles to search for him. Albus's father caught his eye, Albus thought, and Albus grinned again, feeling a rush of excitement well up inside of him.

The sorting hat would consider his wishes, his father had said. He might have a much more fair chance of getting into a house besides Slytherin, maybe even Gryffindor.

Albus would make sure to thank the man later.

Albus saw Lily turn to look at her mother as they got smaller and smaller, and he saw his parents resume talking. Then he slipped back into his train seat uncomfortably.

Everyplace around him was filled with books, bags and animal enclosures, some of which belonged to Albus, some to his cousin Rose, some to a family friend Lysander, and some to James, Albus' brother. James had begun to call Albus Salazar, the founder of Slytherin, when their parents weren't around, and he had said this offhandedly to Albus before he had left the cabin. —

"Shut up," Albus had answered, drolly. He was tired of it, obviously, and did not want to deal with an argument at the moment. Rose however had gotten up in her seat.

"Go away James." she spat loudly.

"As you wish Buttercup." James replied, bowing grandly. He then put his hand to his stomach and pretended to puke theatrically.

"That is-" Rose started to say, but then James stood up straight, wiped his mouth and laughed with that weird girlish smile of his, before bolting down the hallway before she could finish.

"Sorry about that. I'll tell him something when I catch up with him." Lysander had assured them with a suspicious grin on his face, and then followed James.

James that prick. Albus would remember to thank, Rose too, later.

Albus moved his cousin Rose's toad's terrarium off the seat next to him, and put his legs up on the space left there, moving his cousin's toad's tank on top of them.

The cousin in question, or Rose, now no longer miffed about the earlier ordeal, exactly, sat stiffly between two open books and underneath a different one, looking a bit frazzled, as a lighter way of putting it. Her eyes seemed like they were trying to follow the path of a cup with a stone under it, like in the old army game, or whatever they called it.

Albus bent over towards his toes while holding the terrarium on his knee with one hand, and started rummaging through the the book bag near his shins. What he was looking for wasn't food, but he found some, along with something else in his hand as he sat up again.

"Are you hungry?" asked Albus.

"No."

Rose said this loudly and with intonation as if she was annoyed, her eyes shooting up in his direction and then back down at her books as she started flapping through the pages again.

Albus looked up at Rose with his eyes narrowed and pulled out a sandwich his mother had made him before he'd left out of the bag, along with his new wand which he had kept in a pocket at the bottom.

"Fine." he replied coldly.

Albus fixed himself in his seat slightly, feeling a bit irritated, and mulled over what had happened in his head.

There was no reason to be rude. he thought.

He turned his head backwards to look out the window.

Outside, mountains had started to bump up like ripples. Most of them were round topped or jagged. There was an abundance of trees too below them, which thankfully, were not close enough to obscure the view, since the train was on a mountain itself.

They had came from the middle of the city to somewhere in the countryside, probably Scotland.

Nothing unusual here, he thought.

He wondered what it had been like for his father.

The man might have still been wary about magic at that point, since he had only found out it existed maybe a week before, and he had probably been astounded by almost everything around him. It made Albus smile to think of his father's reaction, having his shoes tie themselves for the first time. As Albus looked backward out of the window behind him, he tapped his wand on the glass, watching it spark up suddenly, in annoyance maybe? He chuckled again as he remembered the wand was supposedly a reflection of his own character, a response which told him either that he had a temper, or that he was excitable. He wondered, or at least pretended to wonder, with his face all scrunched up in mock hard thought, which of the traits it had shown although he knew already, and he snickered to himself slightly.

He wondered if wands were alive like people in moving wizard pictures were alive or alive as in human alive. This question intrigued him, and he spent a few minutes thinking about it.

Albus felt relieved of his previous annoyance for a moment as he looked at the landscape, and when he heard Rose let out a sigh of exhaustion Albus looked up at her, no longer feeling any irritation. Rose was bent over, her large hair all afloat about her, and she was now writing quickly and feverishly. Rose was a pretty girl Albus thought. She was black, like her mother, but not only somewhat black, but really black. The traits are passed down like this sometimes, where you can be usual black, even with a white parent. It was partly because she was black that she was beautiful, Albus thought.

Although Albus could say Rose's harried behavior was due to nerves, an understandable explanation considering both she and Albus would be going to wizard dorm school for the first time, Albus supposed it was more likely Rose's irritability was due to something a bit more complicated. In fact it nearly, most definitely was.

Albus remembered, what happened just before he and Rose had boarded the train, when the two had been talking about whether or not they would be willing to adopt a Runespoor, a three headed magical, beautiful creature, and Rose's father, uncle Ron had pointed a boy out in the crowd. Ron quickly leaned over and smiled, looking at them, and told Rose a little in a joking way to make sure to beat this boy in any tests at school. Then, after a few seconds of silent confusion from both his daughter and Albus, who had been listening, he stood up looking at the other parents, and stopped talking to Rose completely. He did not continue to explain why Rose should beat this boy in class, or who the boy was, but instead smiled cheekily at Albus's father while Rose's mother chided him for his preemptive ostracism. Albus' parents laughed slightly in reply, as if it was a joke to them somehow, while Rose still in a sort of shock, looked over at the boy, and then back at her father incredulously. Then Albus, following her gaze looked over as well.

The boy was pale, very pale, like bone china cups, and his hair was whitish blonde. He held a resemblance to the man next to him in the crowd, who was probably his father, and a woman who was probably his mother stood next to him telling him something. Albus had only a glimpse at the boys eyes, and they were grey, like storm clouds.

He did not know the boy either.

Neither Albus, nor Rose decided to ask about it. The story probably was a bit too uncomfortable for the parents to tell, and the parents probably did not feel like the story was worth telling them. Rose maybe felt this way too since she never asked the adults anything about it either.

The incident was still strange however, and after that, Albus and Rose buzzed out like an old television, or at least it looked like they did from the outside. Rose quickly stopped talking to Albus and stared into space like she was thinking, while Albus, like a M16 operative or an auror, he thought, and which he decided he might be one day, watched the strangers through his peripheral while he was waiting for the signal from his parents to get on the train. That was probably when Rose first started acting strangely, although Albus guessed he would have seemed a bit strange too if he had seen himself too from the outside, zoning out alongside Rose like that, but Albus knew Rose better of course, and Rose knew Albus. They were not strange. They, just like everyone else, Albus thought, had their own kind of 'perfect' functioning.

The family Albus had been spying on seemed quite normal Albus noted, as Albus thought they should. Just because they shared some history with Rose and his family would not mean they were publicly rambunctious. He might have been working up the situation into a bigger conspiracy than it actually was, looking back on it. However one odd thing he did notice was that the father of the boy kept looking in Albus's family's direction, or at least he kept looking at Albus's father. This would be somewhat normal, seeing as Albus's father was famous, and Albus knew that, from having visitors from the ministry every few years or so come to his house all in a dither, exclaiming their honor at finally meeting the great Harry Potter, the wizard who had defeated, his father told him to say it, Voldemort. However, the father of the boy seemed to only make nervous, quick glances, and he looked desperate somehow, like he wanted to tell them something. This made Albus even more curious, but by the time he had decided that maybe the family was worth asking about, it had been time to get on the train.

Whatever Rose was worried about probably did not have to do directly with who the boy was in particular. Rather it was the fact that her father had reminded her that she now had a rival, which was only a newer, more invasive way of telling her to study harder, like a starving kelpie for a man to drown. This cue was probably what had started Rose on her ardent studying streak, probably. Albus didn't ask.

Albus hoped Rose didn't think he was annoying from earlier, and he dug his nail against his palm nervously. Then, thinking of something else, Albus placed his half eaten sandwich back into his pack on the floor and dug his hand in it again to fetch out a change of clothes. Once he had found them he got up out of his seat, placing the terrarium which had been on his lap back onto the seat, and maneuvered around to the door.

"Going to change already?" Rose asked.

Albus turned to look at her and paused as if he had just heard something phenomenal, yet quiet, and needed to listen to hear more.

"Umm. Well. . . Yes. And I also thought of just going out somewhere I guess. Nowhere specific."

"Ok." Rose replied to him. She then smiled quickly and turned back to what she had been working on, as if the day had been sunshine and roses to her.

Albus stepped out and closed the door behind him a bit bewildered to say the least. Was that an apology? He smiled slightly as he started to walk forward, glad the argument was over really, and headed toward the lavatory to get dressed.

Luckily, the place wasn't a normal lavatory. The space inside had been distorted and expanded so that it was only large on the inside, and as big as a closet from the out. There were several changing rooms in it too, like he was in a clothing store, and this made it easier for him to get in and out in a hurry. He wondered what they had done with all of the toilets, if there had been any. He wondered why the whole train hadn't been expanded into a giant flying magic powered mansion, but knew the answer to this already, and that was because magic was hard.

Albus decided to walk down the hallway towards the control room, with the conductor, and he thought that maybe, he might actually be able to go there, although there was not any other destination Albus thought he could consider. However, Albus felt he did not want to go back to the room with Rose either, after feeling the refreshing wind swirl through the train hallway.

Albus looked into the rooms as he went past them, and tried to see if he could recognize any of his cousins. There was a Albus passed about eight cabins, all seemingly first years and second until he came to one room that, unusually, was empty with no one in it. It was peacefully quiet inside the bright place, although Albus could hear noise from all the cabins around him, and this made the room seem like a little calm cove at the beach with the ocean raging around it.

Albus sat in one of the seats in the cabin and started to play with his wand. It wouldn't make any sparks this time, no matter how much he twirled it, but he was too afraid to tap it on the window again, lest it hate him, so he just kept making his arm move about wildly, hoping it would do something. He wanted to act out something, so he decided to pretend he was at the scene where his father first met Voldemort at the battle of Hogwarts, and where his father had pretended to die. Albus got up and stood in what he thought was a dueling position. He sent a spell. He sent another. Whack! Whack! He could see the enemy, the brute falter! They were stepping back, stepping back. Albus swung back his arm for his last blow, and then wham!. . . The evil man had got him. Albus fell backwards onto the seat again, his eyes closed in mock of mock death, and laughed slightly at the ridiculousness of this scenario. Then Albus opened his eyes.

There was a boy in the grate above him.

A/N: Sometimes I have trouble uploading things to this site. If a while passes and there are no updates check the tumblr blog mistafelees.