As the Hogwarts Express rushed through the green landscapes of Scotland, the children aboard laughed and talked happily, catching up with each other after the months they'd spent apart. The new students looked around with apprehension and awe in their eyes, all eager to meet new friends and finally get away from their parents. It was the sense of adventure and wonder that made them reach out to other soon-to-be first years and slowly come out of their shells. Everyone seemed to be having fun, some in the company of new and old friends, some with their noses in their books, trying hard to learn all the things that they were supposed to have learned during the summer.
For one particular new student, however, everything wasn't fun.
For Susan Bones, everything went completely wrong. She entered the train with hopes of meeting new amazing friends and somehow ended up alone, in the bathroom.
"I'm pathetic," she whispered to herself, looking at her injured knee with a grimace. "I can't believe this is happening." Earlier, when she was looking for a compartment, she tripped and fell to the ground, landing painfully on her knee. "Out of all the moments to be clumsy…" She sighed and looked at her reflection in the small mirror.
"You can do it, Susan, you can do it," she whispered, straightening her shoulders and taking a deep breath. "There must be some friends waiting for me, I just need to find them," she said and nodded as if to agree with herself. And befriend them, she thought as she finally left the small bathroom and resumed her search for a compartment with some other first-years that still wasn't full.
After a few minutes, she found what she was looking for. She took another deep breath ("You can't faint now, Susan!") and knocked on the door gently. After a moment, the doors slid open, revealing a scrawny young boy with jet-black hair and oval-shaped glasses that haven't been fixed properly.
"Hello, can I sit with you?" Susan asked, her voice wavering slightly when she noticed the scar on the boy's forehead.
He didn't seem to mind, as he smiled and gestured for her to come inside. With a barely restrained grimace, she noticed that the compartment was full of sweets ("How can they even eat all of this?") and a ginger-haired boy was already sitting inside, eating an enormous lollipop with animated drawings of wizards on its sugary surface.
Well, I guess it could've been worse, she thought as the boys offered her a chocolate frog.
As Susan had soon learned, nothing could start a new friendship quite as fast as a free chocolate frog. After the initial awkwardness, the unusual trio began to chat, sharing their stories, talking excitedly about Hogwarts ("Surely we won't have to wrestle a troll!"), and laughing. Susan learned about the lonely childhood of the young wizarding hero and the always busy Weasley household.
Their good-humoured chat ended suddenly, as a voice carried throughout the whole train, "We'll be arriving shortly, please put on your robes and make sure you look… presentable."
The two boys stepped out of the compartment to let Susan change and after she was done, they did the same while she was waiting outside. When they managed to get into their robes, the trio sat down again with a few minutes of the journey still remaining. Susan eyed the boys carefully, shook her head slightly and sighed.
"You two can't go out looking like that," she said and the boys eyed each other in confusion.
"What do you mean?" Ron asked.
Susan pointed at his nose and giggled. "You have chocolate on your nose, Ron," she said and the boy immediately wiped it off with the sleeve of his robes. Harry laughed and Ron flushed bright red from embarrassment. "Ugh, I'm not going to comment on that," said Susan.
"You just did!" Ron said, trying to hide his dirty sleeve somehow.
"No, I didn't," Susan replied.
"Yes, you did!"
Susan let out a sigh and turned her eyes to Harry. When he noticed, he quickly tried to find any possible mistakes in his appearance, but he couldn't think of anything worth pointing out.
"Harry, we need to do something about your hair," she said, staring at the monstrosity that covered the boy's head. She didn't think any brush was capable of fixing that.
"I can't," he said. "When I try to style it, it just goes back to how it was. Nothing helps."
Susan smirked, remembering that her new friend lived in the Muggle world. "And that's what magic is for, Harry," she said and grabbed a peculiar-looking bottle out of her bag. Harry stared at it with curiosity, and to Susan's horror, so did Ron. "For magical hair, you need magical shampoo."
She opened the yellowish bottle with a click, and glowing liquid flew out of it, flying around their heads as if to assess which one of them needed some shampooing. After a moment, it seemed to settle on Harry's hair and began to clean the boy's head on its own. Harry seemed to panic for a second, but his cries of protest were silenced when the shampoo began to massage his head and the boy exhaled, satisfied.
"It has a massage option." Susan giggled and Ron stared at Harry's head in amazement.
And as Susan left the train and stepped onto the platform with her two new friends, one of them with a dirty robe, the other with an amazing haircut that smelled of vanilla, she thought that maybe her life at Hogwarts wouldn't be so bad.
A/N: This was written for the fourth round of the Houses Competition, year 4.
Also, if you haven't noticed, this is an AU story in which Susan joins Harry and Ron in their compartment before the first year begins. Also, there's magical shampoo. Honestly, I don't know if any kind of shampoo is ever mentioned in the books, but there you go. I've been told it's necessary to write this, sorry. Thanks for reading.
House: Gryffindor
Year: 2
Category: Drabble
Prompt: [Object] Shampoo Bottle, [Character] Susan Bones
Word Count: 943