That morning Hilary woke up early again and began to get ready. She left her hair naturally in her brunette curls, made perfect and de-frizzed with potions. She wore a pair of dark blue skinny jeans, a green tank-top that matched her eyes and showed off her figure, and a long, white cardigan, paired with high-heeled brown leather boots that increased her height to 5 ft. 1". She wore her mother's gift on her neck, and carried her favourite Coach bag, with her iPod inside, and the ear-phones trailing out of the bag and into Hilary's ears.

After saying many tearful goodbyes to her parents, Mitchell, Matty, Dana, and Bree, and promising to write every day, Hilary stepped into the fireplace at Bree's house. She clutched her two suitcases, owl cage with her golden owl Gwen, and cat carrier with Elly inside, and was sent hurling to Platform 9 and 3/4 at King's Cross Station. Immediately, she was shocked. The Hogwarts Express stood belching sooty steam over a platform packed with departing students and their families. As Hilary walked slightly nervously towards the train, she was tackled from behind, landing face-first on the platform. Somewhere behind her she could hear sniggering. Swearing loudly, she rolled onto her back to see what had tackled her, and saw a large black dog, which was sniffing her and barking excitedly. Standing above her chuckling, was who she could only assume to be her long-lost friend, Harry Potter. God, he's gorgeous. I make pretty damn good friends.

"Hey!" she said quickly. Hilary felt like a gigantic bubble inside her chest was going to burst with happiness.

"Hi. Sorry about that. I have no idea what he's doing." He bent over to help her up. The large black dog was now running around in frantic circles, as if trying to tell Harry something. "What's your name?" Now that they both were standing, Hilary felt rather small compared to her long-lost friend.

"Hilary."

"Hilary…what?"

Hilary let out a long sigh, and recited in one breath, "Hilary Ardelle Isabella Maria Tatiana Demi-Praesentia." The dog let out a loud bark as she left out the Carter bit. "What about you?" Even though she already knew his name, she assumed that he would not remember her and be freaked out by her knowing his name. She forgot of course, that everyone knew his name.

Harry looked taken aback, probably at the fact that he was actually asked his name in the Wizarding World.

"Harry."

"Harry…what?" She said, in imitation of his earlier question.

"Harry James Potter."

Hilary grinned. "I may have heard of you before. Well, I have to go find a seat on the train, see you later." And with that, Hilary walked off with an odd air of dignity, considering the fact she had just been tackled by an enormous black dog, leaving Harry staring at the place where she had been, and the black dog looking back and forth from Harry to Hilary, and wagging his tail and wearing a wolfish grin.

Harry looked at the tiny brunette in wonder. She wasn't really like other girls he had ever met before. Sure, she was pretty, but something else had made her stand out. But Harry could not figure out why he was so intrigued by this girl. It wasn't exactly the first time that a girl had sworn upon meeting him, but in her case it was different. Rather than Hilary swearing because she was meeting The-Boy-Who-Lived, she was swearing because Harry's godfather and a convicted murderer in the animagus form of a large, black, shaggy dog had tackled her from behind. Harry found this a quite reasonable excuse to swear. Of course, not a very good excuse, as she had not known he was a convicted murder.

It felt as if he had known her forever, and he felt rather comfortable with her, and while she had made his face flush slightly, he did not have to fear looking like he was catching fire in front of her. But Harry was shaken out of his thoughts when Ginny came to find him, and told him that he would miss the train if he didn't hurry the bloody hell up. When he realized that Ron was off with the prefects, he felt an odd sense of loss. He had never traveled on the Hogwarts express without Ron before.

"Come on," Ginny told him, "If we get a move on we'll be able to save them places."

"Right, said Harry, picking up Hedwig's cage in one hand and the handle of his trunk in another. They struggled off down the corridor, peering through the glass-paneled doors into the compartments they passed, which were already full. Harry could not help noticing that a lot of people stared back at him with great interest and that several of them nudged their neighbors and pointed him out. After he had met this behavior in five consecutive carriages he remembered that the Daily Prophet had been telling its readers all summer what a lying show-off he was. He wondered dully now whether the people now staring and whispering believed the stories.

In the very last carriage they met Neville Longbottom, Harry's fellow fifth-year Gryffindor, his round face shining with the effort of pulling his trunk along and maintaining a one-handed grip on his struggling toad, Trevor.

"Hi Harry," he panted. "Hi Ginny…everywhere's full …I can't find a seat…"

"What are you talking about?" said Ginny, who had squeezed past Neville to peer into the compartment behind him. "There's room in this one, there's only that new girl and Loony Lovegood in here…"

Neville mumbled something about not wanting to disturb anyone.

"Don't be silly," said Ginny, laughing, "Luna's alright, and we can get to know the other girl, she looks nice enough, and like she's in your year."

She slid the door open and pulled her trunk inside. Harry and Neville followed.

"Hi," said Ginny, "is it OK if we take these seats?"

One girl on the right next to the window looked up. She had straggly, waist-length, dirty-blonde hair, very pale eyebrows and protuberant eyes that gave her a permanently surprised look. Harry knew at once why Neville had chosen to pass this compartment by, and why his new acquaintance Hilary was looking at her as if she feared for her life. The girl gave an aura of distinct dottiness. Perhaps it was the fact that she had stuck her wand behind her ear for safe-keeping, or that she had chosen to wear a necklace of Butterbeer corks, or that she was reading a magazine upside-down. Her eyes ranged over Hilary who immediately looked away, Neville, and came to a rest on Harry. She nodded.

Harry turned to get a better look at Hilary. She was dressed slightly different fashion than Ginny (Luna wasn't a fair comparison), and had curly dark brown hair, green eyes, wore silver hoops on her ears, and was listening to what Harry recognized as something Dudley used to have, an iPod. She had a tiny white fluffy kitten on her lap who gave the appearance of sleeping, but kept sneaking glances at Luna. He looked back up at Hilary's face, and gave her a small smile, which she returned.

"Go ahead, it's a pretty large compartment." she gave them all a look which clearly said 'please don't leave me alone with her!'

"Thanks," said Ginny, smiling at her.

Harry and Neville stowed the three trunks and Hedwig's cage in the luggage compartment and sat down, Ginny beside Hilary, and Neville and Harry beside Luna. Hilary looked relieved that they had decided to stay.

"Hi Harry, who are all your friends?"

"Well, this is Neville, his girlfriend and my best mate's little sister Ginny, and over here is…" Harry broke off, unsure of whether or not to introduce the strange girl.

"Luna Lovegood" she supplied from behind her magazine entitled The Quibbler.

"Right…" he trailed off.

"Well, hey everyone, I'm Hilary. I'm in fifth year, and I'm transferring to Hogwarts from Salem. I live in Canada."

Ginny turned towards Hilary. "Harry and Neville are in your year then, Gryffindor, I'm a fourth year Gryffindor, and Luna's in my year but in Ravenclaw.

"Wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure." said Luna in a sing-song voice.

She raised her upside-down magazine high enough to hide her face and fell silent. Harry and Neville exchanged glances with raised eyebrows, and Ginny was suppressing a giggle, while Hilary was much less successful. Her head was in her lap and her brown curls were quivering with silent laughter. She appeared to be struggling for breath, and finally let out a long sigh and took in a breath of air when she was done her long, laboring, silent laughing fit.

The train rattled onwards, speeding them out into open country. It was an odd, unsettled sort of day; one moment the carriage was full of sunlight and the next they were passing beneath ominous grey clouds.

A Ravenclaw boy took this opportunity to open the compartment door.

"Hello there." he said directly to Hilary, in a thick voice. This made Harry slightly anxious and angry, but looking at Hilary he calmed himself. She had a look on her face similar to one which you might find on a person in the process of regurgitation. He let out a small snort of laughter, but stopped when the boy plopped himself down in their compartment. Then, the compartment door opened, revealing Fred and George. Harry anxiously introduced them, so that his thoughts of murdering the Ravenclaw boy might wander off while he was talking.

"Hilary, err, Luna…this is Fred and George. You haven't met my best friend yet, Ron, but they're his older twin brothers."

"Cool, I'm a twin too." Hilary spoke up.

The Ravenclaw looked at Hilary in a dreamy way, as Harry quite expected him to start drooling. "There are two of you?" he asked incredulously, his eyes open wide.

Seizing the moment, Hilary opened to mouth and snarled. "Oh yes, feel free to have my twin. He might be a little hairier, but it's nothing you won't get used to!" The boy immediately left and Fred and George, laughing, sat down beside Ginny.

"I like this one. Neville, as much as we'd love you to marry Ginny to make you a part of the family, we could just adopt you, and you could marry her. We might prefer for another prankster to marry into the circle." Neville turned scarlet, but steadily replied.

"Oi, I don't think I'll have to. Harry's as good as family to you, and it seems that he got pretty angry at that poor bloke for putting the moves on Hilary over there. All we've got to do is get You-Know-Who to do the same, and that'll be the enthusiasm Harry will need to get the killing job done." Now it was Harry's turn to blush, and Hilary's turn to look disgusted.

"Oh, leave him alone. If old Moldy Cracker ever hit on me, I'd kill him myself. Besides, how do you know I won't marry one of you?"

"Because then definitely, if we ever had babies, they would be twins." George said.

"And you don't seem like a very tolerant person, which you would have to be to have twins." Fred finished for him

"Well, I was just talking about us getting married. Not about the baby-making process." Now the final two males in the compartment flushed, and looking around at the blushing boys, Ginny and Hilary burst out laughing.

Still very red in the face, Fred and George got up. "Well, we'll just be leaving now." and off they went. Getting over the embarrassment of the mention of the 'baby-making process', Neville cheerfully changed the conversation.

"Guess what I got for my birthday?" said Neville.

"Another remembrall?" said Harry, remembering the marble-like device Neville's grandmother had sent him in an effort to improve his abysmal memory.

"No," said Neville. "I could do with another one though, I lost the old one ages ago …no, look at this…"

He dug the hand that was not keeping a firm grip on Trevor into his schoolbag and after a little bit of rummaging pulled out what appeared to be a small grey cactus in a pot, except that it was covered with what looked like boils rather than spines.

"Mimbulbus Mimbletonia" he said proudly.

Harry stared at the thing. It was pulsating slightly, giving it the sinister appearance of some diseased internal organ.

"It's really, really rare." said Neville, beaming. "I don't know if there's one in the greenhouse at Hogwarts, even. I can't wait to show it to Professor Sprout. My Great Uncle Algie got it for me in Assyria. I'm going to see if I can breed from it."

Harry knew that Neville's favourite subject was Herbology but for the life of him he could not see what joy he could find in this stunted little plant.

"Does it – er – do anything?" Hilary asked in the silence after Neville's oral essay on his little organ-plant.

"Loads of stuff!" said Neville proudly. "It's got an amazing defense mechanism. Here, hold Trevor for me Harry…"

He dumped the toad into Harry's lap and took a quill from his schoolbag. Luna Lovegood's popping eyes came appeared over the top of her upside-down magazine again, to watch what Neville was doing. Neville held the Mimbulbus Mimbletonia up to his eyes, his tongue between his teeth, chose his spot, and gave the plant a sharp prod with his quill.

Liquid squirted from every boil on the plant; thick, stinking, dark green jets of it. They hit the ceiling, the windows, and spattered Luna Lovegood's magazine; Ginny and Hilary, both of who had flung their arms in front of their faces merely looked at if they were wearing slimy green hats, but Harry, whose hands had been busy preventing Trevor's escape, received a faceful. It smelled like rancid manure.

Neville, whose face and torso were also drenched, shook his head to get the worst of it out of his eyes.

"S – sorry," he gasped. "I haven't tried that before…I didn't realize it would be quite so… don't worry though, Stinksap's not poisonous," he added nervously as Harry spat a mouthful onto the floor and Hilary began to frantically try to rid her hair of the stinksap, forgetting that she was a witch. A large blob of the stinksap slid off of her curls, and down Hilary's face and she made a disgusted noise.

At that precise moment the door of their compartment slid open. "Oh…hello Harry," said a nervous voice. "Um… bad time?"

Harry wiped the lenses of his glasses with his Trevor-free hand. A very pretty girl with long, shiny black hair was standing in the doorway smiling at him: Cho Chang, the Seeker on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Harry half expected his face to turn furiously red and for his stomach to do flip-flops, but nothing of the sort happened.

"Here Harry, let me get those for you." Hilary took his glasses and scourgified them, and proceeded with Ginny to clean up each other's hair, and the rest of the compartment. Now, rather than feeling fondly towards Cho, he felt himself get slightly annoyed as Cho Chang shot a dirty glare at Hilary.

"Um... hi." Harry said blankly.

"Who's that?" Cho said pointing to Hilary and she handed Harry his glasses back, scourgified Harry and took Trevor from him to do the same.

Hilary looked up at the girl, pretending to be friendly. She wasn't an idiot; she could tell from that girl's voice that she didn't like her. "Hi, I'm Hilary. I'm new here. I just transferred here from Canada."

"Oh, well, that's nice…" Cho broke off, and Hilary could also tell she was just trying to be polite. "What's it like there?"

Hilary grinned very convincingly. "Oh you know, pretty much the same as England except over there we live in igloos, and eat whale blubber to keep us warm through the long winter months. We like hunting moose."

Cho looked at Hilary as if she was the strangest thing she had ever seen, which seemed to be Hilary's goal. "O, how…lovely. Well, bye Harry, I have to be going now…bye." And with that she left, and the fake grin slid off Hilary's face, like stinksap.

"I don't like her."

"Why?"

"Because I could tell she doesn't like me. And plus, she must be unbearably stupid. She actually believed me when I said that I eat whale blubber and live in an igloo. Do I look like an Eskimo to you? No I don't think so."

Now there was silence.

"Oh god, did you guys take me seriously too? Is that what people actually think of Canada?" Hilary let out a frustrated sort of scream.

"Well," said Ginny haltingly. "You did sound very convincing.

"Yes but do I look like I eat whale blubber?"

"Well, no, but…"

"Then there we go. Moving on – Oh it's food!" Hilary exclaimed as she saw the brightly coloured trolley stop in front of the compartment door.

Ron and Hermione didn't turn up for another hour or so, by which time Harry Ginny, Neville, and Hilary had finished their pumpkin pasties (which Hilary thought sounded revolting but decided were delicious), and were busy swapping Chocolate Frog Cards when the compartment door slid open and they walked in, accompanied by Crookshanks and a shrilly hooting Pigwidgeon.

"I'm starving," said Ron, storing Pigwidgeon next to Hedwig, grabbing a Chocolate Frog from Harry and throwing himself into the seat next to him. He ripped open the wrapper, and bit off the frog's head. "Who're you?"

"Hi, I'm Hilary; I just came this year…"

"Oh you're Hilary!" Hermione exclaimed. "Hi, I'm Hermione Granger, and that's Ron. All the prefects are supposed to help show you around this year, we're the 5th year Gryffindor prefects."

"Hey…What's a prefect?"

Ron turned to looked at Hilary for an instant, and then sent a pleading look towards Hermione. "Don't tell her, please. Then she can't judge me for being one."

"Oh don't be silly Ronald, she won't judge you." she turned to face Hilary again. "A prefect is like the equivalent to being a class president in Muggle school, someone that's smart, well rounded, and trustworthy. We patrol corridors, looking out for people who are..."

"Snogging in broom cupboards." Ron finished for her.

Hilary sighed. "Snogging?"

"Kissing."

"Oh. I don't think you'll like me much then..."

There was an awkward silence, which Harry broke.

"So, who are the other prefects?"

"Malfoy" Ron said, stuffing another Chocolate Frog into his mouth.

"And that complete cow Pansy Parkinson." said Hermione viciously. "How she got to prefect when she's thicker than a concussed troll…"

"Who are Hufflepuff's?" Harry asked, as he noticed Ginny and Hilary talking among themselves, and from what he could hear Ginny was telling her all about what evil gits the Slytherins were, and how Gryffindor was the best house to be in.

"Ernie Macmillan and Hannah Abbott," said Ron thickly.

"And Anthony Goldstein and Padma Patil for Ravenclaw," said Hermione.

"You went to the Yule Ball with Padma Patil," said a vague voice.

Everyone turned to look at Luna Lovegood, who was gazing unblinkingly at Ron over the top of The Quibbler. He swallowed his mouthful of Frog.

"Yeah, I know I did," he said, looking mildly surprised.

"She didn't enjoy it very much," Luna informed him. "She doesn't think you treated her very well, because you wouldn't dance with her. I don't think I'd have minded," she added thoughtfully, "I don't like dancing very much"

She retreated behind The Quibbler again. Ron stared at the cover with his mouth hanging open for a few seconds, then looking around at Ginny for some kind of explanation, but Ginny had stuffed her knuckles from one hand in her mouth to keep from giggling, and was leaning on Hilary for support, which didn't help much as she was shaking with silent laughter at Ron's blank expression. Ron shook his head, bemused, and then checked his watch.

"We're supposed to patrol the corridors every so often," he told Neville and Harry, "and we can give out punishments if people are misbehaving. I can't wait to get Crabbe and Goyle for something…"

"You're not supposed to abuse your position Ron!"

"Yeah, right, because Malfoy won't abuse it at all," said Ron sarcastically.

"So you're going to descend to his level?"

"No, I'm just going to get his mates before he gets mine."

"For heaven's sake Ron –"

"I'll make Goyle do lines, it'll kill him, he hates writing," said Ron happily. He lowered his voice to a low grunt and, screwing up his face in a look of pained concentration, mimed writing in midair. "I… must… not… look… like… a… baboon's… backside.

Everyone laughed, but no one laughed as hard a Luna Lovegood. She let out a scream of mirth that caused Hedwig to wake up and flap her wings indignantly and Crookshanks to leap up into the luggage compartment, hissing. Luna laughed so hard her magazine slid out of grasp, slid down her legs, and onto the floor.

"That was funny!"

Her prominent eyes swam with tears as she gasped for breath, staring at Ron, utterly nonplussed, who looked around at the others who were now laughing at the expression on Ron's face and at the prolonged laughter of Luna Lovegood, who was rocking back and forth, clutching her sides. Everyone was laughing that was, except for Hilary who seemed to have a confused look about her face, which was to be expected as she had no idea what they were talking about. She finally spoke in a quite audible voice,

"What are Crabbe and Goyle?"