Harry quickly met all sorts of people on board the train, which was called the Hogwarts Express. As he was struggling to put his trunk on one of the high racks, one of the older children from the redheaded family he had passed earlier, came and helped him, and said hello. Then he met that boy's twin, and learnt that they were called Fred and George Weasley. When they left, he turned to leave the luggage area of the train, and found a boy, who appeared to be about his age leaning against the other wall, and staring, impressed, at Harry's expensive trunk, whilst holding an identical one. The boy nodded at Harry, who smiled nervously back. He would have said hello, but someone else came in who clearly knew the pale, blonde boy, and put his trunk on the rack for him. Harry, felt he was intruding, and tried to slip past the blonde through the door, but the blond called him back, and the other, older, boy left.
"You're Harry Potter, aren't you?" the boy said, sharply, and with the air of someone who already knows that he is right.
Harry nodded again.
"I'm Draco Malfoy" he said, stressing his last name as if it should mean something to Harry, but it didn't, and this must have shown on Harry's face, because the boy went on to say, 'Father,' he began, stressing the word again, 'said they sent you to live with muggles? Is that true? Because you really are clueless aren't you?' This came across as rather condescending, and the blond boy, clearly eager to be Harry's friend, quickly tried to rectify his mistake 'But I can help you there." He said, and smiled sticking out his hand.
The only time Harry had ever seen anyone do this was when his Uncle Vernon had had men from his work, at the house. So, not quite knowing what to do, or how to refuse a handshake even if he wanted to, Harry shook the other boy's hand.
And that was the start of a friendship which, in the public eye, would be very brief, and for the two boys involved, would last forever.
Draco took Harry to a mostly full compartment, and introduced him to the others sitting there. Harry met Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe, who he thought looked absolutely terrifying, Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini, who sneered at him, and Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bullstrode, who seemed overly interested in him.
Crabbe and Goyle, this being what everyone seemed to call them, moved aside to make room for Harry to sit down, although they were easily each twice the size of everyone else in the compartment, and so Harry was confused as to why it was those two who were made to squeeze themselves into the smaller space, when any two of the other occupants could have moved and still remained in comfort.
Draco moved aside a robe which had been folded and placed on a seat, and took that seat for himself, paying no attention to Pansy's shrieks about how he was creasing her robe, and it was designer, and she had just been telling 'Millie' how much it had cost! He tossed her the robe, earning more shrieks, and turned to Harry, who was seated opposite him.
"So, Potter, what house do you think you'll be in?" Draco asked, and, again, Harry had no idea what he was talking about.
"House?" Harry asked in return, and suddenly the two boys sitting on Draco's right, Zabini and Nott, Harry remembered, sniggered.
They were about to comment on Harry's lack of wizarding knowledge, but the compartment door slid open, and a girl was standing there. She was easily smaller than any of them, even Pansy, but she had an untamed mane of brown curly hair, which made her seem almost as tall as Blaise, although nowhere near as tall as Crabbe or Goyle.
'Excuse me,' she said, 'but has anyone seen a toad? A boy called Neville's looking for one?' Despite her confidence, the girl looked pretty scared, in Harry's opinion, so he quickly offered to help her.
'No, sorry, but I'll help you look if you want?' he replied, but then he looked back at Draco, worried that his new friend thought he was abandoning him. Draco had his eyebrows raised and looked as though he could not believe that Harry Potter was actually offering to go and help some girl, clearly muggleborn from her clothes, look for a toad!
So Harry quickly went with the girl, as Draco had not yet protested, and as he left the compartment, Draco heard him say, 'I'm Harry, by the way who are you?'
Harry learnt that the girl was called Hermione Granger, and she rattled off the appearance of 'Hermione' in literature, although Harry never did learn whether she was named after Shakespeare's Hermione or the Hermione of Greek Mythology. He also learned that, like him, she had had a privileged but non-magical upbringing, as her parents were dentists, although Harry thought they sounded much nicer than the dentist which Uncle Vernon frogmarched him to once every six months. However, unlike him, neither of Hermione's parents could do magic. Despite this, Hermione seemed to have memorised all the set textbooks, as well as several others, as she quickly informed Harry that the correct term for someone like her was a 'muggleborn' and that a 'muggle' was a non-magical person.
He learnt all this, plus much more besides, as they walked down the train, looking for the toad, which was apparently called Trevor, although Harry personally thought that this was a strange name for a toad. It was only on the way back when Hermione asked about the people with whom Harry had been sitting when she arrived.
He told her that the blonde by was Draco Malfoy, and Hermione gasped, the name clearly meaning more to her than it had meant to him. Then, Hermione started rattling off quotes from 'A Recent History of Wizarding Britain and France', which seemed to be both relevant and important, but really meant nothing to Harry. They stuck their heads into a few other compartments on the way back down the train, asking the other students if they had seen Trevor the Toad. They avoided most of the compartments that seemed to only have seventh years in them, and they avoided the teacher's compartment. However, one of the compartments which they did enter contained most of the redheaded family who Harry had met earlier.
They asked the boys in the compartment, four in total; although one made a point of saying that he was a prefect and would actually be spending most of the train journey in the prefect's carriage. After he left, and only three of the redheaded boys were left, they had a short conversation, but, in Harry's opinion, the youngest of the three, seemed overly excited about meeting Harry Potter, and was rude about Draco and to Hermione, when Harry brought them up as friends he had already made. However, despite the rude remark, Hermione seemed rather cheered up by the fact Harry Potter considered her to be his friend!
They also popped into a compartment with only one boy in it, who Hermione claimed to be Neville, the boy whose toad they had been looking for. Unfortunately, they had to tell him that they could not find the toad, and the slightly chubby boy burst into a bout of sobs. Hermione quickly declared that she would stay with Neville, but that Harry should really go back to Draco and the others before the end of the journey, and it would be rude of him to not go. And so Harry went, but arranged to meet Hermione again on the platform when they arrived.
Harry had headed back to the platform via the luggage carriage, and had changed into his school robes while he was in there.
When he arrived back, all the others were also in their robes, and he noticed that they all had the more expensive robes, out of those which were both available and allowed, unlike many of the others who he had seen on the train.
Harry sat back down with the others, and joined in their talk of racing brooms, which Harry didn't know that much about, although he had seen a Nimbus 2000 in a shop window when he had been buying his school supplies, and that seemed to be all anyone was talking about anyway. Luckily, the conversation did not stray from that subject until the end of the journey, and so Harry did not have to reveal that he had absolutely no idea what quidditch was.
