Hermione gave me a curious look as I took back the... my... glasses, and I shrugged, sliding them on.

"What happened, anyhow?" she asked. "I was helping Neville look for his toad, you'd just been no help at all, and then right after we left, Ron started yelling something and I came back to find you on the floor. Neville's gone off to find a prefect or something." she finished absently.

I shook my head carefully. When it failed to fall off, I shook it again, just for good measure.

"I don't know what happened." I said, perfectly truthfully. "I just woke up doing a close inspection of the carpet."

Ron snorted, and even Hermione looked briefly amused as she claimed a seat. At the back of my mind, I could almost hear Murph making snide comments about my humour finally finding an audience immature enough to appreciate it.

I hesitated for a moment, but then continued "I'm still feeling a bit..."

Of course, at that moment, a kid that looked like an aristocratic blonde weasel barged in, flanked by a pair of prepubescent goons.

"Is it true?" he said. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?"

I just sighed and nodded. This kid was sizing me up like a piece of meat. It was kind of an unsettling sensation, especially since Malfoy wasn't even old enough to have his voice crack yet. I gave Crabbe and Goyle a quick glance. Knowing the plot in advance was starting to weird me out a little, and it really didn't help that I kept wanting to call the pair mini-Hendricks-one and -two.

Draco, apparently misunderstanding my look, introduced the pair, then himself.

Ron made a choking noise that was probably a stifled snigger, but before the visibly-bridling Malfoy could say anything, I interrupted.

"Draco?" I said incredulously. "I think that's Latin for 'bloody hell, the birth control failed', isn't it?" I looked at Crabbe and Goyle again. "And... you seriously have goons? You're not even twelve yet! Why do you need goons?"

Malfoy had stiffened to the point that I was seriously tempted to try and tip him over. Furious pink marks had appeared on his pale cheeks, making him look a bit like he was wearing clown makeup. Crabbe and Goyle just looked kind of confused, much to my lack of surprise. Before they could do anything, though, I abruptly stood and faced Malfoy down.

I'm not totally sure what I planned to do- I'm not much of a fighter. Murph could probably dismantle me with both hands tied behind her back, but I had been paying attention to the self-defense lessons she had tried to drill into my thick skull.

Lots of people (and for that matter, things that aren't exactly people) might want to kill me, but I don't plan on making it easy for them. And if Crabbe or Goyle went for me, well, it wouldn't be the first time that something bigger and stronger than me had tried to grind me into the floor.

Yeah, that was probably a dumb play. I knew that the Harry that originally inhabited this body didn't like Malfoy either, but I had a feeling I was escalating things a lot faster than they would have otherwise. But... Hell's bells. I don't like bullies.

Draco sputtered a little, then made to grab for his wand. Apparently he'd gotten mad enough that he'd forgotten his goons. He was new at this, wasn't he?

I just cleared my throat.

"You pull your wand, and I'll take it away and ram it so far up your nose that you'll be sneezing pixie dust out your ears." I growled squeakily.

Stars and stones, I sounded ridiculous with this little-kid voice. Surprisingly, though, Malfoy actually hesitated. His goons looked at me, then at him. I leaned forward aggressively, more to hide the shaking in my knees than anything else.

At that point the inner voice that had been trying to warn me that I knew was coming next got externalized.

"You really shouldn't fight, you know." Hermione declared sanctimoniously. "You'll get in trouble before we even see the school."

" Not now, Hermione!" Ron and I blurted out simultaneously.

Malfoy, sensing an out, rounded on the girl. His paired goons moved to flank him again, and Hermione shrank back a little on her seat as the trio loomed over her.

"And what do we have here?" Draco sneered.

"Hermione Granger." she managed to say.

My eyes narrowed. Once again, I knew what was coming next.

"Granger... Granger..." Draco mused. "I don't think I recognize the name from any of the old wizarding families... are you sure you're a proper witch?"

Crabbe and Goyle snickered, apparently on cue. Or maybe they thought they were contributing, I'm not sure.

Hermione gave them a wary look, but said "I'm muggle born."

"Hmm... perhaps we should go. I don't want to be sharing the car with a mudblood. Or worse still, a Weasley." Draco commented, curling his lip. The two goons sniggered.

Hermione looked blank, Ron looked outraged, but I ignored both of them. If there's anything I hate more than bullies, it's bullies who go after girls.

"Can't handle the boy who lived, so you have to go after a girl, huh, Drakey?" I sneered, stepping forward.

Then I blinked. Ron was in Malfoy's face, his own face nearly as red as his hair. I'm not even sure how he got around me. Malfoy simply gave him a cool glare, confident in the fact that even one of his goons made nearly two of Ron. And, indeed, Crabbe... or maybe Goyle... grabbed Ron's arm as the smaller boy wound up to slug Malfoy in his smug face.

"It's not hard to know who you are, Weasley. My father always said that all Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford." Draco sniffed, doing his best to look like he hadn't flinched when Ron started to swing.

The cool stare was transferred to me. "And I don't need to 'handle' you, Potter. You would have been a convenience, but you're hardly as vital as you seem to think you are."

He turned to sweep out, and that probably would have been the end of that, at least for the moment. Or at least, it would have been, if I hadn't burst out laughing.

"Did you rehearse that, or are you imitating something you heard your father say?" I managed to stammer out between howls of laughter.

Stars and stones, he sounded silly! A little boy imitating... I don't know, Dr. Doom or something. Unfortunately, this time, he remembered his goons. Still in full-blown mini-Lucius mode, he snapped his fingers imperatively.

Fortunately, the only effect this had was to make mini-Hendricks-one and -two stare at him blankly. Well, that and to make me laugh harder.

"Get him, you pair of idiots!" Malfoy snapped after a moment of fuming.

I shook my head, still chuckling, although I kept a wary eye on the pair of goons. I didn't really need to say anything. Like that's ever stopped you before. my subconscious noted. Shut up. I retorted wittily, settling into what Murphy called a 'modified' aikido stance. When she was feeling charitable, anyhow. When she wasn't, she called it a 'mangled' aikido stance.

Crabbe and Goyle hesitated in their advance, though, when the traincar door slid open. Again. A kid who looked like a taller, dorkier version of Ron stuck his head in. Kid? my subconscious echoed. He's a good six years older than you. Well, than you are now, anyhow.

I really wish my subconscious wasn't quite so smug.

"Everyone alright, he... oi, what's going on?" he demanded.

Crabbe and Goyle lowered their arms a bit too late and looked uncertainly at Malfoy. I could almost see the options flickering through his brain. After a moment, he apparently decided on the 'untouchable child of priviledge' option.

"Don't strain yourself, Weasley." he sneered. It seemed to be his default expression. "We were just having a... discussion... with Potter, here."

I traded glances with Ron, who shook his head slightly, his expression clearly asking me not to get his older brother involved in this. I nodded a little in return, thinking fast.

"Yes, we were just talking." I said, then hesitated. "Only... well, I grew up in the Muggle world, and there's still some things I don't understand."

Percy nodded encouragingly. And pompously. I could see why Ron didn't want him involved. Ron was giving me a worried stare, Malfoy a wary one. Hermione was giving Percy a calculating look. And Crabbe and Goyle were staring blankly into space, apparently waiting for the next thought to turn up.

"What's a mudblood?" I asked innocently. "Only," I continued over Percy's shocked intake of breath, pointing first at Malfoy, then Hermione, "he called her one, and I don't think I really underst..."

There was quite a bit of shouting after that point, teachers were brought in, Malfoy and cronies were hauled out, and it was carefully explained to me that 'mudblood' was a bad word in a lecture that was only cut short by Percy wanting to lecture Draco even more than he he wanted to lecture me.

Once things settled down a bit, and Ron, Hermione and I were able to return to our seats, Ron gave me a look. It was familiar. Half-admiring terror with a generous helping of disbelief.

"I can't believe you just did that!" Ron blurted. "I'm not sure if that was brilliant or completely stupid."

"I hear that a lot." I said.

Then Hermione finished whatever train of thought she was pursuing, and half-turned to Ron.

"That was your brother, then?" she asked. "And a prefect, too." she continued, without bothering to wait for a response.

Ron was looking increasingly pained. Then again, thinking about it, depending on how much the books got right, he really did have some self-esteem issues from being the youngest.

Hermione turned the rest of the way towards Ron and pursed her lips thoughtfully. "He's a complete tit, isn't he?"

Ron and I exchanged stunned looks. Well, at least we did once I finished trying not to choke, anyhow. Then Ron returned his stare to Hermione and just nodded mutely.

"That's very strange." Hermione continued as matter-of-factly as she could with her voice shaking a little. I was only half-listening while some part of my brain reminded me that 'tit' had a completely different meaning here in Britland.

"Hogwarts is the very best school of witchcraft and wizardry there is. So it would stand to reason that their teachers would be the very best also." Hermione paused, drawing in a breath. "Then why would they appoint someone who is clearly not in touch with what the other students are thinking as Prefect, when the whole point of a Prefect is to have someone who is better-able to understand the students' mindset to help with discipline? It doesn't make sense for them to have made a mistake like that!"

"Percy's always been good at sucking up." Ron muttered darkly.

" But that shouldn't matter!" Hermione nearly wailed.

"Teachers are still people too, Hermione." I said bluntly. "They're going to make mistakes sometimes."

She gave me a look that suggested as clearly as a five-page essay (neatly printed and single-spaced, of course) that this was something she considered about as likely as the train abruptly forming a conga line and dancing the rest of the way to Hogwarts. But I was pretty sure that there had been some seeds of doubt planted.

I didn't worry about it too much. I was busy running over in my mind everything I could remember about the book series. I wished, once again, that Lash was still lurking in my head. The constant temptations I could live without, but it was damn handy having someone with perfect recall living in there.

For a quite literal value of 'damn' handy, I reminded myself with a sigh. So, priority one is to get myself a secure spot to write all this down while it's still fresh and not garbled by living through bits of it. Priority two, I think, is going to be getting in to see Dumbledore and getting him to believe any of this.

Of course, with my luck, the only result I'm likely to get is for people to start thinking the 'boy who lived' has a brain that didn't. I finished glumly.

The rest of the train ride was spent in silence, staring grimly out the window as I strained to remember every detail I could. Ron tried to say something a few times, but was eventually reduced to listless nibbling on the pile of candy I'd never even really registered was there. Well, except to nibble absent-mindedly on it myself.

My most immediate worry was what the Sorting Hat was going to make of me. I didn't like the idea of a magical artifact dredging around in my cranium at the best of times, and being magically stuffed into the skull of a small boy who wound up being the focus of pretty much every major event in the country for the next seven years didn't exactly qualify as the 'best of times'.

Also, I'm really not looking forward to going through puberty again. The first time was bad enough. I thought.

So I wasn't really in the best frame of mind when the announcement came that the train had arrived at Hogwarts. Both Ron and Hermione looked in my direction at my sudden intake of breath when the announcement came, and I was vaguely relieved to see that Ron was a bit pale under his freckles, and even Hermione looked troubled.

There wasn't much to be said, though, and no time to say it, so we gathered our robes about us and sallied forth. I'm not sure what's up with wizards and their seemingly instinctual attraction to robes, but apparently it's a multiversal thing. I had been a bit confused as to why Ron kicked Hermione out for us to put our robes on, given that all we did was slide them on over our clothes, but whatever. She rejoined us soon enough, wearing her robes as well and watching the two of us speculatively.

As the train jolted to a stop, Ron blurted "Oh! The sweets!" and started shovelling candy into his pockets. For lack of anything much better to do, I joined in. I knew we were headed to a feast anyhow, but there didn't seem to be a lot of point in wasting them. You never know where your next junk food is going to come from, after all.

I followed Ron and Hermione out of the train and onto a tiny dark platform that was thronging with students. It was nearly pitch black, and miserably cold. Part of me was half-expecting a Wilhelm scream as some nameless student plummeted off the edge of the platform into the darkness below.

Then a lantern bobbed into view, and I had a brief flash of paranoia as I realized that it was much too high for a human to be carrying it.

Then a booming voice rang out, and I remembered Hagrid. "Firs' years! Firs' years over here! All right there, Harry?"

I nodded, even though there was probably no way Hagrid could see me, but maybe he did, because he continued "C'mon, follow me – any more firs' years? Mind yer step now! Firs' years follow me!"

A string of kids straggled after the bearded giant, stumbling down the steep path in the thick darkness. I could feel trees pressing in on either side, and shuddered., Nobody said anything, although there was the occasional sniffle from somewhere near me.

"Yeh'll get yer firs' sight o' Hogwarts in a sec, jus' round this bend here." Hagrid called, and there was a collective "Oooooh!" from almost everyone. Have to admit, I was one of them.

An absolutely magnificent castle clung to the crags, windows glittering in the starlight as we came out from under the trees. Even Arctis Tor hadn't been quite this stunning. Of course, Mab's sense of aesthetics was... interesting... so that might be moot.

"No more'n four to a boat!" Hagrid called, waving his lantern over a fleet of little boats bobbing gently in the lakewater.

There was some scrambling and quiet muttering as the flock of eleven-year-olds jostled and jockeyed for position. I joined Ron in a boat, more or less on autopilot, and Hermione and Neville followed after me. I kept a wary eye out for Draco Malfoy, but the little weasel was lost somewhere in the crowd.

"Everyone in?" Hagrid yelled. "Right then – Forward!"

And with that, the small fleet scraped loose in one smooth motion, cruising off into the darkness. The only light was Hagrid's lantern and the blazing stars reflecting off the glassy-smooth lake. It was unnervingly silent. No-one spoke, as all the students gazed nervously at the imposing castle that slowly loomed over us. The little boats moved closer and closer to the cliff that formed the base of the mountain the castle stood on.

I was jerked from my worries by Hagrid's voice booming "Heads down!" as the first of the boats reached the overhang of ivy and slid into the wide, low tunnel that lay hidden behind them. I'm not sure why we all ducked- Hagrid was the only one tall enough to be even mildly inconvenienced by the lip of the cave.

The boats glided onwards through still more darkness... I'm not sure why they scheduled things so that we spent most of our time in pitch blackness. I wonder how many first-year students needed a change of shorts after this particular magical mystery tour?

Eventually (around the time I started remembering Undertown and uneasily noticing similarities between there and here), the tiny flotilla hit a stony beach that formed a natural underground harbour. I scrambled out of the boat, followed rapidly by the other three (I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one who was glad of at least some light), nearly taking a header into the drink. The only thing that salved my pride was that both Hermione and Neville nearly did as well.

"Oy, you there! Is this your toad?" Hagrid called. He didn't seem to have much in the way of an indoor voice. Probably not all that surprising, I guess.

"Trevor!" Neville yelled happily, scrabbling over the rocks towards the reptile... er, sorry, amphibian... that Hagrid was holding up.

The thing was looking at him, too. Although if it had that much affection for him, I have no idea why it kept getting away. Maybe it just had an even worse direction sense than the kid did.

Hagrid's lantern bobbed away in the darkness, and the rag-tag batch of kids clambered up the passageway after it. After still more time stumbling through the dark on a steep pathway... were we having fun yet?.. we emerged under the starry sky once more, looking out over an expanse of soggy lawn at the castle. It still looked pretty damn impressive, even up close... maybe even more than before, actually, now that it was blotting out half the sky.

The group shuffled across the lawn and clustered in the torchlight that cast long, flickering shadows over the lawns, coming to a halt in front of the enormous, iron-clad oak doors. If they were trying to impress upon the new kids that magic was serious business, they were doing a bang-up job of it. And if they were trying to scare the crap out of them, well, they were doing a pretty good job of that, too.

Hagrid paused in front of the doors. "Everyone here? You there, still got yer toad?"

Then he raised on ham-sized fist and bashed on the door three times.