two.
As Platform 9 3/4 disappears, the train turning to follow its track and leaving London behind, Eloise turns away from the doors - and so, it seems, does everyone else on the Hogwarts Express. El freezes in place, centering all of her weight and standing still while the rest of her new classmates scramble for compartments.
Once the corridor is deserted, she struggles down the length of the scarlet train, dragging her trunk and Storm's cage awkwardly behind her, casting hopeful glances into each compartment she passes. All of them appear to be full (can there really be that many witches and wizards on the journey to Hogwarts?) and El's face falls a little more with every step she takes. She's nearing the end of the train now; what if she's stuck in the hallway for the whole train ride, tugging her things from one car to another, reduced to viewing her new home from the windy platform between carriages?
The thought that she might actually be lonely here hasn't occurred to her until now. Eloise hasn't been faced with the task of making new friends since kindergarten. What if she can't do it?
For a moment, the girl stands, paralyzed by fear, in the corridor, looking around desperately. She pictures classrooms where she sits alone, a dormitory - Grandma said there were dormitories, didn't she? - where she doesn't talk to anyone, a full year of being on her own. She imagines Nicole and Cheyenne, safe at home in Eloise's old school, making new friends to replace her. A single tear forms in the corner of her eye and slides down her cheek without her permission.
"Blondie!"
She spins around (even though her hair is more dirty-blonde than anything else), wiping the stupid tear away with the back of her hand. A boy with messy black hair - the one from the platform - is poking his head out of a compartment she's already passed. "Yeah?"
He points through the door he's just come out of. "We've got an extra seat in here, if you want it." Eloise doesn't say anything, but the relief that suddenly washes over must show on her face, because he strides down the corridor towards her easily. "Here, I'll help you with your trunk."
And that's how she finds herself sitting in the corner of a compartment with Storm's cage at her feet, her trunk having been swung easily into the rack above her seat. The dark-haired boy is holding out his hand formally for her to shake. "James Potter," he says cheerfully, and El gingerly takes his hand and he gives it two enthusiastic pumps before letting go.
"Eloise Underwood," she answers. Her name annoys her; it's such a mouthful. She quickly amends, "El," and then leans back in her seat as a number of other names are thrown at her - Rose Weasley from the redheaded girl sitting across from her, Albus Potter from the younger brother of the black-haired boy, and Annie Miller from the blue-eyed, brown-haired girl in the opposite corner.
James sits down briefly next to El and is halfway through suggesting some kind of card game when the door of the compartment slides open and three other boys appear in the doorway. "Bloody hell, James, what are you doing in here?" says one, grinning, and just like that, James is disappearing.
"But," protests Albus loudly at his brother's back, "James - you said you'd tell us where we're supposed to go, and -"
James only waves a hand dismissively over his shoulder. "You'll figure it out, Al. Follow the crowds. Watch out for Thestrals." And with that, he turns around just to wink at all of them as Al's face whitens; then he slides the door shut again and is gone.
Rolling her eyes, Rose leans back in her seat and kicks Al's knee to get his attention. "Don't listen to him. Thestrals are invisible, remember? He's just trying to scare you, it's what he does." Al looks at her as if she's not helping much, but doesn't answer, and the girl turns to Eloise. "So - you're going to be a first-year, right? Like us?" El just nods, wondering if it's that obvious. "What House do you want? I'm hoping for Gryffindor," she adds dreamily. "Where dwell the brave at heart. That's where my parents were."
Eloise looks at her blankly. "House?"
"The four houses!" Annie interjects eagerly. "Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin." She launches into an explanation of the house system at the school; all that El really retains by the end is that there's four of them, it involves points, and there's a House Cup at the end. She's worried that if she doesn't know anything about these four houses, it will be entirely too obvious that she's not really a part of this world. Will everyone be able to tell that she's the first witch in her family since her great-grandparents? What if she's a freak? But Rose, Albus and Annie don't seem to think that she's altogether too weird for them to talk to, and they spend their time explaining various parts of the wizarding world to her as the sky outside grows darker.
There's a knock on the compartment door around the time when Eloise's stomach is beginning to growl in protest of the lack of food, and an older boy pokes his head inside. "Annie, we're almost there, you should probably get your robes on," he advises, and the four of them stand up on their seats to reach their trunks.
"Thanks, Jake," Annie calls after him, and he just slides the door shut again, grinning and muttering something that sounds a lot like, What are big brothers for?
The four of them slip their black robes on over their regular clothes; Eloise can feel the excitement building in the pit of her stomach as the train slows to a full stop. She tries to peer out the window at her surroundings, but she can't see anything past the lights around the platform they've stopped at. Annie's brother is patrolling the corridor, and she can hear him telling everyone to leave their things in their compartments and head for the doors. She joins the queue of students shuffling down the length of the train, Rose in front of her, Albus behind her, Annie somewhere to the side.
"Firs' years this way!" a gruff voice calls from her right as she half-climbs, half-falls off the Hogwarts Express. "Firs' years over here!"
"Come on, it's Hagrid!" exclaims Al, beginning to push his way through the crowd and forming a crooked path for the rest of them. He's scrawny, but he doesn't seem to be against using his elbows to force people into moving, and they reach the group of first-years forming at the corner of the platform rather quickly. "Hi, Hagrid!" Al calls up at a large man, twice the height of Eloise's father.
The man chuckles and waves with one gigantic hand. "All righ' - we all here? C'mon, then." He begins to lead them down a shallow sort of slope, in the complete opposite direction from the way that everyone else seems to be going. El stumbles twice on the slightly-uneven ground, but makes it to the bottom unscathed. The smooth, glassy surface of a lake rolls out before her, and on the opposite shore, the silhouette of a castle is rising into the darkening sky. "Four ter a boat," announces Hagrid, but Eloise is too busy staring at the castle to move. Grandma never said that Hogwarts was a castle; it's breathtaking. Butterflies are fluttering in her stomach, hundreds of them, as she looks wide-eyed at her new home. "Four ter a boat," Hagrid calls again, "no more'n four!"
"El! Eloise!" She's brought back to earth by the shouts from the nearest boat; she's the second-last person to leave the shore and nearly falls into the rowboat next to Albus just before the boats begin to float away from the edge of the lake.
The journey across the water is slow-going but smooth; she barely feels as if she's moving, and she spends the majority of the ride with one hand dangling over the side, trailing the tips of her fingers in the cool water. The castle looms larger above them, stone towers reaching up endlessly into the night sky, and as the boats finally become still underneath a large tree that stretches her branches protectively over them, Eloise follows Rose, Al and Annie onto the grass. Hagrid beckons to all of the first-years - Albus eagerly pushes up to the front of the crowd, utilising his elbows again - and leads them up a wide set of stone steps. The tall, wooden double doors push themselves open and El stands on her tiptoes to try to see over everyone else's heads; a tiny man with white hair and miniature glasses stands in the doorway.
"Here they are, Professor Flitwick," Hagrid announces with a wave of one of his massive hands.
The little man - Professor Flitwick - smiles appreciatively. "Thank you, Hagrid," he says squeakily. "Come this way, first-years!" With tiny steps that force the crowd of students following him to walk very slowly, he leads them to a large room; it looks like a disused classroom, a few desks stacked on top of each other, the blackboard wiped clean. "Welcome to Hogwarts! In a few moments, we will enter the Great Hall, where you will all be sorted into your houses. Now, your house is your family while you are at Hogwarts. You remain in the same house over all seven years at school. Good deeds earn your house points towards the House Cup, which is awarded in June; breaking the rules will result in penalized points." He nods, apparently satisfied with himself. "Good, good - I will be back in a moment."
And then he's gone, the wooden door falling shut with a loud click behind him. Almost immediately, the room breaks into a nervous sort of chatter.
"I wonder what House I'll be in?"
"I want to be in Gryffindor."
"I don't care what House I'm in, as long as it's a House!"
"How do they choose what house you're in?"
"I heard you have to fight something."
"A troll, that's what my brother told me."
"Nonsense, it's a hat."
"You fight a hat?"
"No, you wear a hat."
Eloise wraps her arms around herself and remains silent, trying to follow six different conversations at once. The maybe-friends she made on the train are throwing in their input, too, sharing their extensive knowledge, and she just feels as if she doesn't know what's going on, doesn't know anything at all. She keeps quiet as Professor Flitwick returns, announcing that the rest of the school is ready for them. She follows in silence as they all cross the hall and squeeze through a set of wide doors into a room with a high ceiling (is it a ceiling if it looks like the starlit sky, though?) and four tables with bare tops, crowded on all sides by older students, half of them talking amongst themselves, half of them watching as they move down the length of the room towards a fifth table. It's raised above the others by ten low steps, and filled with teachers. Behind the table, a large banner depicts a shield, a large H in the center, each corner occupied by different colours, different animals.
"How does the ceiling do that?" she asks, speaking for the first time in several minutes, aiming the question at no one in particular.
"Magic," hisses Rose from somewhere to her left. "Mum says it's enchanted."
As they reach the top of the steps, El turns to face the rest of the room; each of the four tables, she sees now, has its own banner at the opposite end. A silver snake curls across a green banner; a badger over a yellow background; a lion roars in front of a red backdrop; an eagle spreads golden wings across a blue sky. Hundreds of candles hover several feet above the wooden tabletops, lighting the hall in shades of bright gold. Everyone in the hall hushes, turning their gazes to something in front of the group of first-years; El leans to the side to try to spot what everyone is looking at, and is startled to find just how unexciting it is - a low four-legged stool and, sitting neatly on top of it, one raggedy black witch's hat, its pointed tip leaning to one side instead of pointing straight up at the enchanted ceiling.
Professor Flitwick clears his throat importantly, pulling a lengthy scroll of parchment from his robes. The sound echoes across the room as he unrolls it; everyone is silent now, faces turned expectantly at the tiny white-haired man. "Adams, Elisabeth," he calls, and a girl with dark auburn curls steps forward, trembling with what looks like half-excitement and half-fear.
Carefully, she sits down on the wooden stool, placing the hat neatly on top of her head; it slides down over her curls and covers her eyes. The entire room is quiet, seeming to hold its breath, and then the hat yells out, "Gryffindor!" The shout is loud enough to make Eloise's heart skip a beat, but nearly everyone else seems to have been expecting it; the table with the lion banner erupts into cheers as Adams, Elisabeth runs to the nearest empty seat.
"Appel, Tanya," says Professor Flitwick - the hat calls, "Slytherin!" - and "Brody, Jordan," who's declared a "Hufflepuff!" Annie becomes a Hufflepuff, too, racing off to join her brother at the badger's table, and Albus ends up sitting next to Elisabeth Adams at the Gryffindor table.
And then, finally, she hears her own name: "Underwood, Eloise!"
She steps forward, trembling the same way that everyone else has, and sits down, hesitating for just a moment before pulling the hat down over the top half of her face. She closes her blue eyes as a voice begins to whisper in her ear. "Hmm," says the voice thoughtfully. "You're all over the place, aren't you?" El frowns in disagreement, but the voice is already hurrying on. "Smart, yes; brave, yes. A little dash of cunning, and you're a hard worker, too. I think you could do well in any of the Houses, really - but I suppose" - here, the voice cut off and, louder, continued - "Ravenclaw!"
The table with the eagle cheers and claps, and Eloise is alone at their table for a few moments, sitting between two older girls who smile at her and then turn back to their respective friends. She's not on her own for long, though; Rose is sorted into Ravenclaw, too, and El cheers with the rest of her new house. She can't help but feel glad that the redhead hasn't gotten Gryffindor, the way she was hoping.
As the last boy - Zeran, Marcus - is sent to the Hufflepuff table, the hat and stool are cleared away together and the tall, strict-looking woman at the center of the staff table stands up. What little chatter has started up since the end of the Sorting quiets down again quickly. Someone across the table whispers, "Shut up, McGonagall's talking," before the woman even opens her mouth.
"Good evening," starts the McGonagall woman. "To our new students, welcome to Hogwarts - and to our old students, welcome back!" She lists a few rules, saying that the most important one is that the forest in the grounds was forbidden. She finishes off with, "Enjoy the feast!" and claps her hands once as she sits down - and, very suddenly, the tables are filled with dishes of steaming food, more food than Eloise thinks she's ever seen in her life.
Everyone digs in eagerly, piling their plates with food; El eats until she doesn't think she can take another bite, and that, of course, is when the dishes disappear and are replaced with desserts - puddings, pies, cakes, tarts, everything that El can think of. She's too busy trying to get a slice of pie down on top of everything else to talk to anyone; luckily, Rose seems to be doing the same, and conversation is scarce.
The Headmistress stands up as the last of their students push their plates away from them, launching into a second speech that mostly consists of, "Now! Off to bed with all of you!"
As the entire student body makes to stand up all at once, two older students begin to call for the first-years, waving their arms. El and Rose are joined by eight other first-year students before them. The older students introduce themselves as Lorcan and Makayla, the seventh-year prefects of Ravenclaw, and lead the group of eleven-year-olds out of what they call the Great Hall (which fits the room a lot better than room with enchanted ceiling, as far as Eloise is concerned) and up a spiral staircase. It ends after five flights, though El can see from the landing that they crowd onto that, down the corridor, another staircase continues to stretch upwards.
"The entrance to Ravenclaw Tower is locked with a riddle," explains Lorcan over the heads of all of them, running his fingers through sandy blond hair. "You knock here, and you'll have to answer a question to get in."
Eloise stands on tiptoes again to watch as the girl, Makayla, raises one hand for a bronze, eagle-shaped knocker on a door with no doorknob or keyhole. Knock, knock, knock. A cool female voice speaks musically from the door knocker, the tone nearly emotionless. "Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?"
Makayla turns to the ten first-years behind her. "Anyone have any ideas?" she asks.
A hand shoots up next to El - Rose. She speaks before anyone calls on her, hand still wavering in the air. "The flame," she says practically, "because otherwise, how could the phoenix grow out of the ashes?"
"No," snaps someone else that Eloise can't see, "it was the phoenix!" And with that, everyone begins to speak at once, trying to figure out the answer; Eloise stays on the sidelines, unsure why they're talking about phoenixes to begin with. She read a book on Greek mythology once in class, but she doesn't remember much about the phoenix except that, of course, it's a myth.
Then again, if magic is real, why can't a phoenix exist, too?
Sighing, Makayla turns back to the door and speaks loudly, sounding bored, over the chatter of everyone else. "It's a circle without a beginning," she answers, and as the door opens to reveal a wide, circular room, she adds over her shoulder, "Come on, people, that one was easy!"
"Girls to the left, boys to the right," instructs Lorcan, beckoning to the five first-year boys and heading across the room. It's perfectly circular, with arched windows around the walls to reveal the stars outside, framed with midnight-blue and bronze silk curtains. A domed ceiling stands high above a dark blue carpet; dark wooden tables with comfortable-looking chairs are scattered around the room, bookcases lining the walls between each window.
Lorcan leads the boys through a door on the opposite side of the common room; they trail after him up another spiral staircase as Makayla points out a white marble statue in between the two doors, naming the beautiful woman portrayed there as Rowena Ravenclaw, founder of Ravenclaw House. The staircase through the door on the left side of the statue leads down, and Eloise follows the prefect and the other four girls down to the seventh and final landing.
"This is your dormitory for the next seven years," announces the older girl, gesturing to the door. "Your things should all be by your beds. Breakfast is at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Good night!"
She starts back up the stairs again as the five girls file into the dormitory; it's round, a perfect circle like the common room, but smaller. Five beds with dark blue sheets and curtains pinned back around them are evenly spaced around the walls. Storm's cage sits on top of El's trunk at the foot of the closest bed, and she sits down on the edge of the mattress, looking around interestedly.
Home, sweet home.
AUTHOR'S NOTE / Sorry about the wait on this one, guys! I've had this half-written for a while, but I was busy and didn't have time to type it up or finish it off. This has been crazy! I was sick for a while, my brother graduated from high school (which made me feel really old, even though I'm only a year older than him), and (most importantly), I got to see TAYLOR SWIFT! She's awesome. She's, like, one of my biggest idols. I love her! I may or may not have spent $160 on tour merchandise. And I cried a lot. I don't think it's normal to start crying when someone says, "Hello, Vancouver, I'm Taylor!" But I definitely did. It was amazing. I want to go back. I want to follow her around and go to all her shows until December when the tour ends. Oops. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed chapter two!