'I still have no clue what House I'll be in.'

'I reckon you'll be a Gryffindor. You'd better be Gryffindor.'

'Why though? Why would I be a Gryffindor?'

'Because you're adventurous. You…. Well, anyway, Gryffindors are the best.'

'You're only saying that because you're one.'

Iris Fawley was sitting with her family in their rented Muggle car on their way to King's Cross station. Her brother Matthew had been Sorted into Gryffindor two years previously, and was convinced his sister would be one. Iris, however, wasn't too sure. She didn't think that any of the four Houses would be too bad, but she couldn't categorize herself into one.

True, she had been leaning towards Ravenclaw for the past few days, but now she wasn't too sure. Sure, she was creative, and loved reading and writing, but she was also slightly ambitious, and kind, and, as Matt had said, loved a good adventure.

They'd been having this kind of conversation every day for weeks. Their parents had been Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, so maybe Iris would be Hufflepuff, like her mother. No, she was always sneaking this and that out of the kitchen and reading those last few chapters after bedtime. So maybe Slytherin? Her brother was always saying her dark hair was a Slytherin trait, but Iris knew he wasn't being truthful.

That wasn't her only worry – like all first year students, she worried about fitting in. She only had two nearby best friends, Melissa and Eliza. But what if they were Sorted into different Houses to her? They'd definitely stay in touch but…. Iris mentally slapped herself awake. She was being silly. Of course they'd be in the same House. After all, they did everything together.

'Well, I think that you're a mix of all the Houses, and we'll never actually know until we get there,' said her mum from the front. 'Anyway, I'm not really interested in your House – you are who you are, after all. I want to know how you'll do in lessons.'

'Yeah. Charms sounds by far the best. Or Potions.'

'Oh, no, Potions is awful with Professor Slughorn.' Said Matthew. 'He's annoying, he has huge favouritism.'

'Really? Mum and Dad say it was a great subject. I guess they never had your teacher.'

This surprised Iris. Her dad had always loved Potions, and he said that a really nice teacher taught it. She'd always looked forwards to meeting her parents' teachers – maybe they remembered them – but now she thought about it, surely the would've retired by now.

Once they'd parked the car and gotten through the platform, Iris hugged goodbye to her parents and promised to write. She then began searching for her two best friends. She'd known Liza since she was just past one, and Mel joined them at the age of six. They had always laughed at how their families were so similar. Matthew was in the same year as Mel's sister, Lucile, and Liza's younger sister was the same age as Melissa's brother Zen.

She eventually spotted Liza's trademark curly, white-blonde hair, and they began looking for Melissa. She turned up just before the train left.

Mel was the fierce, adventurous one. She was always encouraging the other two to 'do this, or you'll regret in the later'. She was the only one Iris wasn't sure would be in the same house – unless they all turned out to be Gryffindors, Iris was fairly sure they'd be separated. It was funny, because everyone thought Iris and Melissa were related – though their only common feature was their blue eyes. Liza thought they did have kind of similar face shapes as well. Iris liked Mel's sense of humor – the kind of clever puns and sarcastic jokes that made you roll your eyes.

Liza, on the other hand was the creative, kind one who was very sarcastic once you got to know her. She was almost the reverse of the others, as she had blonde hair and brown eyes that complemented her heart-shaped face nicely. She was also quite short, whereas the others were just above average. Iris had known Liza since the age of one and, except for the babyish wailing fights over who would get the pink lollypop when they were toddlers, they had never really fought.

As the three friends boarded the scarlet train, waving frantically at their parents as it pulled away from the station, they once again discussed how awesome Hogwarts was, and generally the sort of thing that first years would talk about. They walked down the somewhat legendary train, excited and nervous at the same time; they couldn't seem to be able to find any compartments. Eventually they found one at the very end, empty all apart from someone's trunk up on the shelf.

"Should we just take this one?" asked Liza. "After all, there are no more compartments, and we are going to have to make friends, aren't we?"

Her point made, the others followed Liza into the compartment, and they began packing their luggage onto the rack. Just as the girls had sat down and were watching the station getting further and further away, the door slid open, and a girl with flaming red hair and beautiful emerald eyes stepped cautiously into the compartment.

"Hello, um… I left my stuff here – so can I sit with you? I can move if you want, but there's no more space," she said anxiously.

Mel jumped in. "No, no, don't worry! We'd love to have you here!" she said, shooting a meaningful look at her friends. Clearly Mel was keen to make friends.

As Iris watched the girl take a seat, she thought that she seemed quite nice – though there was an air about her that suggested a fiery side to this seemingly shy girl.

"So, er…what's your name?" said Liza apprehensively. Talk about awkward starts…

"I'm Lily Evans. I don't really know much about Hogwarts. I'm a Muggle-born," she added, in response to the inquisitive looks from the other three.

"Oh! Right," said Iris. "Well, I'm Iris Fawley. This is Melissa Burdin and Eliza Lloyd."

There were a few moments of silence in which Iris twirled her dark hair around her fingers, wondering desperately what to say. They ended up quizzing Lily on family and what it was like to live a Muggle's life. It turned out Muggles didn't really have too much of a hard life. Contrary to the beliefs of most wizards, Muggles had somehow found a way past most of the obvious problems that would occur without magic. Apparently they used something called electriky to power everything, and they had these things called telephones that let people talk with each other from the other side of the world! The things Muggles achieved without magic astounded Iris and Mel, though Liza was quite knowledgeable in the Muggle world. To be honest, the two purebloods were shocked they hadn't asked earlier – Liza had Muggle grandparents, after all.

Conversation only got better. They talked about their pets, wands, families, the Houses, they introduced Lily (who, they later discovered, wasn't really that shy at all) to all sorts of magical sweets, everything, really! As the four got to know each other, the landscape smoothly went from blocks of flats in the city to rolling fields. The new students grew excited as the hills slowly began to turn into tall, jagged mountains. After another hour of chatting and laughing, the train began to slow down. They had finally arrived.