Finally, September 1st came and we were officially leaving the moldy old place. We had to leave at eight in the morning, which wouldn't have been bad except that Paige insisted I be up by five thirty even though I had already finished my packing. The room was back to looking exactly the way it had before I had come as if I had never been there. We took another train to Kings Cross Station and the Cliffords and I ignored one another as had become our habit. I doubt most people even realized we were traveling together. "Come on, you two, we are going to be late!" Paige bossed when we stepped onto the station. Each unloading onto trollies, we pushed through the crowd until we neared the section between stations 9 and 10.
"Finally," Mason sighed with the first hint of a true smile I think I had ever seen on his face.
"Go on, Mason, you first," Paige nodded, seeming just as relaxed as her brother. I looked back and forth between them and the wall they were staring intently at. What were they thinking? We were supposed to be at station 9 ¾ wherever that was, which certainly wasn't here, and it was already 10:40.
"What's going on?" I started to say, but before I could finish, Mason ran with his trolley straight at the wall… and vanished. Into thin air, he was just suddenly gone. Paige started to follow and I tried to stop her, but she shrugged me off and just went right at the wall. She walked slower, though she still picked up pace as she neared the bricks, and then, just like her brother, she was gone. I stared at the spot in confusion then looked at the people around us who hadn't seemed to notice. Not sure what to do, I pushed my cart toward the same spot they did, slowly. When my cart should have been stopped by the wall, it just kept going. And then, I felt something tug me through. I thought at first that it was part of the magic, perhaps why they hurried through, but when I came out on the other side, of what, I wasn't sure, Paige was holding the edge of my cart.
"What took you so long?" she demanded.
"You didn't exactly tell me what to do!"
"God, Yankee, you're so stupid," Mason growled and shrugged away, his sister following quickly with a parting scowl for me. Yankee? I don't even like baseball. It had sounded like a slur coming off his lips, and though he had never said it to me, it rolled confidently enough off his tongue that it must have been common and I wondered how often he and his sister referred to me as such.
I pushed my cart through the crowd toward the crimson train that waited, steaming and ready to go. The crowd was full of friends calling to one another, parents lecturing children and wishing them luck and animals protesting the ruckus by adding their own sounds. It was so freaking loud I just wanted off. Reaching the train, I tried to move the cumbersome trunk Paige had made me get, but it was too heavy and awkward. Giving up, I used a simple levitation spell to make it hover in front of me. Why couldn't we use duffle bags like normal people? They were easier to move. The train was almost full already as friends claimed seats with one another and others sat shaking hands with someone new. Finally, there was a car on my left that had an available seat and I stuck my head in. "Do you mind?" I asked pointing to the seat. The three boys weren't paying much attention as they poked fun at each other and talked about a celebrity two of them had supposedly run into, but they nodded that I could sit. "Thanks," I muttered trying to stay out of their way. I levitated my trunk up to the rack above the seats and curled up into the corner with a novel the librarian had given me as a parting gift, one that people never really read, but was surprisingly good. I tried to lose myself in the novel, but the boys' conversation was as distracting as the boys themselves. Two were twins, identical in every detail and did the whole twin thing, finishing each other's sentences and everything. The third boy was black with dreads. All three boys were quite obviously tricksters and jokesters as they plotted and laughed and I couldn't help but be entertained. The black boy had a box sitting next to him that kept wiggling closer to me though, so I kept pulling away from them.
They were working on something that looked like a wingless, beakless, purple penguin. Maybe not so much a penguin then, but a fat bowling pin. It was also squawking and running around the compartment, sounding like a kazoo combined with a horn. They kept poking it with their wands, but it didn't react other than to change direction. "We could ask Percy if he knows anything," the black boy suggested.
"The perfectly prefect Percy won't help us," one of the twins disagreed. "What about Jenkins, he helped us some last year."
"I asked him already," his twin reported, "He's got nothing. All he can offer is that we put a silencing charm on it then hide around and take it off when it gets to their carriage."
"I don't even know how to do a silencing charm," the black boy complained.
"What about a timer charm on top of the silencing charm?" I asked and they all fell silent. They looked at me and blinked realizing for the first time I think, that I occupied the corner seat of their compartment.
"Huh?" they asked as one. I hadn't meant to speak—that was one of my greatest embarrassments, speaking before I thought—but now that I had, I couldn't take it back. I was sure I was blushing down to my toes as I said, "Oh, you know, just a silencing charm and then a timer charm on top of it. When the timer charm finishes, the silencing charm will wear off and the… whatever that is… can start honking again." The stared at me again, probably thinking I was an idiot.
Finally, one of the twins spoke. "We don't know either of those charms though."
"Oh," I said awkwardly, then pulled out my wand and pointed it at the noisemaker. "Fifteen seconds okay?" I set the silencing charm with a swish of my wand and then set the timer with a quarter turn of my wrist as if I were setting an egg timer. The boys stared as the purple pin abruptly stopped making noise though it continued bopping around the car. They all jumped though when, after fifteen seconds, it resumed squawking as if it had never stopped. I watched three very mischievous grins grow as they turned toward me and the twins said as one, "You're perfect!"
Ignoring the loud pin, they all moved closer to me, the black boy thankfully moving the wiggling box off the seat and away from where it had been.
"So what's your name?"
"Where you from, are you American?"
"What year are you?"
"Which house are you in?"
"Why haven't we meant you before?"
I held up my hands in a defensive motion. "Slow down, slow down." I took a deep breath before answering as best I could. "I'm Skylar French. I'm from America, but I don't live there anymore and honestly I don't even know what records England would have on me. I'm a second year I guess, but I just transferred so I don't know what house I'm in, I thought it was just randomly assigned when you got there." I knew that both Cliffords were Ravenclaws and that the other houses consisted of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Slytherin, but other than that, I knew nothing.
"Oh," they said, much too innocently, and I sensed a trick. One twin continued, "No, it's not random, it's based off a test."
"Oh yeah? What kind of test?"
"Well, they make you fight an animal. Nothing too especially dangerous, but people have been known to suffer… maladies when they're not careful." All three of them had perfectly straight faces that I didn't trust for a second, so I decided to play along.
"Oh, yeah, we do that in the states too," I told them as straight as I could.
"Really?" came from three different sides.
"Yeah, but not for first years and not to determine houses or anything—we just have randomly assigned dorms. The fight determines your career."
"It determines your job for your entire life?" the black boy gasped.
"Well, mostly. It determines your educational training path, and of course you're free to drop out or anything, but how you fight the beast is very telling."
"How do you mean?" one of the twins asked.
"Well," I began, trying to make something up quickly. "The way you fight shows how you think. If you dive right in and try to finish it with force, you generally end up in law enforcement, or maybe athletics. If you use your brain or what you know about it to find its weakness, you go into a more scientific field—inventions, that kind of thing. If you just try to appease it, you go into hospitality, service-y oriented fields. And if you try to trick it, you go into politics." I was quite proud of myself for coming up with all that so quickly. They all just stared at me, completely blank. I wondered if they already knew I was lying, but none of them contradicted me so I figured not. But, I've never been all that great at bluffing so I finally busted up then- I just couldn't keep my ruse going. They looked at me in confusion for a moment before understanding lit their eyes simultaneously.
"You were fooling us!" one twin laughed out loud looking a little shocked. I wondered vaguely if no one ever joked with them; they obviously joked on everyone else. He looked at his brother and asked playfully, "Can we keep her?"
"You make her sound like a lost puppy," he responded. I couldn't deny the fact that I really was little more than a misplaced mutt so I stayed silent waiting on the answer. "Of course we're keeping her! We need her smarts." He winked at me and I smiled weakly back. "By the way, I'm Fred Weasley and this moron here is my brother, George."
"Oh please," George rolled his eyes mockingly. "He's just jealous that I'm the more attractive one." Before either of them could continue, the black boy interrupted.
"And you'll never be able to tell them apart by the way. Don't even try." The twins laughed and I was surprised; I would have been offended in their places, if no one cared to distinguish me from another person, even if that person was my best friend and identical twin. "And I'm Lee Jordan," he added.
"Nice to meet y'all," I waved as if we hadn't been in the same train compartment for at least an hour and a half. Fred rubbed his hands together in a distinctly mischievous way.
"Now that we're all introduced, I suggest we get this show on the road." He pointed to the little penguin thing that despite its constant noise, I had all but forgotten.
"What do you call it anyways?" I asked.
"We haven't really named it yet," George admitted. "But it does what it's supposed to name or no." I smiled and nodded in understanding. "Could you do the timer thing again?"
"But of course," I said grandly.
"Good. It's time to send this gift to those Slytherins down there."
"If it's a gift, it needs a bow," I told them as if that were the only way to do it. A flurry of loops later, and a fluffy pink bow sat on its head. I ripped one of those useless blank pages from my book and pulled a pen from my purse. 'Just for you.' I scrawled and tucked it securely under the bow. "Presentation is everything," I told the boys. If my step-mother had taught me anything, it was that.
They grinned and George declared, "I like you," before getting back to business. "What do you think? A minute to get down to their compartment and another thirty seconds to make sure it's in there?"
"Probably a minute and a half to get it down there, just to be safe," Lee argued, "Two minutes total."
"Agreed," the twins said in unison. "Alright," Fried continued. "Skylar, work your magic." I nodded and repeated the charms as before, only this time drawing two small circles when setting the timer. As I finished, George pushed the little thing into the hall and it the direction of the compartment. It promptly fell over, but righted itself instantly and set off bumbling down the hall. Fred flicked his wand once to redirect the bauble when it started to pass the compartment and flicked it again to make it knock itself against the compartment door. We all pulled our heads back in when the compartment door was pulled open by a girl with silver blond hair. We sat in careful silence at the edge of our seats for thirty-three seconds before we heard the squawking resume in full force followed quickly by the startled and outraged cries of alarm the Slytherins emitted. The boys burst into victory cheers and I laughed hard enough I cried, which honestly didn't need that much laughter on my part. I felt for the first time in a long time that I belonged somewhere. I couldn't really remember the last time I had felt that way. I had come close at Salem, but the feeling had never settled there.
And then I had an awful thought: what if I ended up in the wrong house, say Slytherin, and the boys hated me too? "Why do you hate the Slytherins?" I ventured to ask.
"Slytherins are slimy little creeps!" Jordan proclaimed and the twins nodded in agreement.
"The slyest little weasels you ever met," Fred added.
George took pity on my confusion and explained. "See, each of the houses stand for something, whatever their founder valued most," he explained. "Gryffindor, our house, values courage and bravery. Hufflepuff stands for loyalty and tolerance. Ravenclaws care about intelligence. Slytherins don't care about any of that. They care about their bloodline and getting their way no matter what."
"Bloodline?" I asked. Blood couldn't really be that important.
"Yeah," Fred said. "You know, Pureblood, Half-blood, or Muggleborn?" Those had all been mentioned at my school, but they weren't important. It was America, the melting pot of the world. Purebloods were practically nonexistent. "What are you, by the way?" he asked me.
"Muggleborn," I answered chin up. That was nothing to be ashamed of and I didn't care if they thought it was. At least, that's what I told myself.
"Good," George answered. "That gives you a significantly lower chance of getting into Slytherin." The boys seemed to relax slightly and I did as well.
"Practically impossible," Lee assured me. "She's too sweet anyways," he added then. "She couldn't be one of those snakes." I wasn't necessarily sweet as they would soon find out, but it was so common a misconception when I first met people that I didn't try to correct him. A lady tapped on the half open door then, a little old woman pushing a candy cart. "Anything for you dears?" she asked in the sweet and a little bit trembling voice of an old lady. I was broke so I shook my head. The twins did too as they pulled out sandwiches, but Jordan got up, buying a couple handfuls of something. Sitting down, he tossed some to the twins and some to me.
"Thanks. What are they?" I asked reading the packaging.
"Haven't you ever had a chocolate frog before?" George exclaimed.
"Um… no." I pulled pointed to myself with a smile. "Muggleborn American, remember?"
"What's the point of that colony, if they don't have chocolate frogs?" Jordan asked through a chocolate filled mouth.
I rolled my eyes as I answered, "Freedom from taxing tyrants." Over the course of the next few hours, they asked me about America and Salem, I asked them about England on Hogwarts. Eventually conversation turned to family, as it inevitably would. Jordan was an only child, the twins had four other brothers and a little sister and I again felt especially sorry for their mother even as I envied them. I gave a watered down, "My parents don't care for magic," and passed the subject on. At one point, a round boy, whose insecure posture made him look especially young, came in looking for a lost pet toad. Plenty of people stopped by to say 'hi' to the boys and it was obvious they were popular and liked. Again, I envied them. As it grew dark, I went to change into my school robes, missing my jeans more than I should, and when I got back, found that the boys had changed as well.
An announcement came through the speakers, in what I assume was the conductor's voice, "We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes time. Please leave your luggage on the train; it will be taken separately." The train slowed and we joined the others leaving their compartments to gather by the doors.
"Who's Hagrid, by the way?" I asked. "I'm supposed to find him at the station."
The boys looked at one another in a conspiring way and I knew not to trust the answer that would come from their lips. "Oh, that might be a bit hard," Fred warned innocently. "He's a pretty short guy. Hard to spot in a crowd."
"Yeah, completely bald too," George added.
"And very mean," Jordan finished. I knew they were lying, but I didn't know how much until I stepped off the train.
"Oh, c'mon," I rolled my eyes at them. "He's not quite as short as you said. Don't you guys know its mean to pick on people smaller than you?"
"Sorry, midget," Fred teased patting my head softly and pushing me toward the big man calling for 'firs' years'. He laughed when I called back that I hadn't meant me. Continuing toward the big man, I was pushed and shoved every which way in the crowd. When I finally made it to him, I practically had to yell to be heard.
"Hagrid?" I asked, tugging on his jacket when I couldn't get his attention the first time.
"Ye'?" he turned toward me and asked. He really was quite huge.
"Um, I'm Skylar, the second year? They told me to find you."
"Ah, ye', Dumbledore said to look for yeh'. Jes' come on up with the firs' years an' you'll be fine." He was friendly enough and I nodded, following his directions when he pointed me over to where first years seemed to be gathering. I joined them, eyeing them as they eyed me. As the older kids disappeared in carriages that rolled up a path, Hagrid motioned us to follow him as we began walking down a narrow path, pitch black on all sides. I imagined a first year hazing would be successful here. "You'll get yer first sight of Hogwarts in a sec, jus' 'round this bend here." As we came around a corner where the forest protruded, we were greeted by the sight of a castle that had been hidden. An "ahhhh" went through the group of first years and I couldn't hold back my own sound of awe. Salem had been a series of short, squat building, half underground, in order to avoid muggle detection. Either these people didn't care if muggles found them or they had taken impressive measures to hide this. The castle that had to Hogwarts was grand with all the grandeur of an ancient monarch. In the night, with all the windows lit by candlelight, it shone on the hill like a beacon. I had seen spells and charms performed, but this castle, on a still and silent night, embodied all that was Magic.
"No more 'en four to a boat," Hagrid called and pointed us toward the shore of the lake we stood at the edge of, where little boats bobbed waiting for us. I figured that with my luck, I would topple over the side, but I made it in anyways. Two first years joined me, but they looked so nervous, to be honest, I probably did too, that we didn't talk. "Everyone in?" Hagrid called over the boats. When no one spoke to the contrary, he said, "Right then, forward!" and the boats began moving, obeying his command. As we rode forward in the self-propelled boats, I considered the castle; it was magnificent. Whoever planned it out had obviously been a master architect. Towers stood tall and turrets and battlements line the place. At one point, before I found out I was a witch, I had wanted to be an architect; with places as grand as this, that must still an option. Something nudged our boat and the girl next to me shrieked softly. I heard the boy behind us whisper that it was probably just the giant squid his brother had told him lived in this lake and really wasn't all that dangerous, but I wondered how much that actually calmed the girl.
"Heads down!" Hagrid said as the boats farthest up from reach a cliff. Those ahead of me ducked under ivy and as I ducked and passed through as well, I saw that the ivy had hidden a hole in the cliff that created a passage way for our little boats. There were no torches as we floated through, long enough that I almost wondered if we had gone under and past the castle entirely. I heard a few girls whimper as unseen bats were heard flying over our heads, but the winged-rats never bothered us. Eventually, we reached the end where the boats lined up against a natural rock dock, putting us close enough that we could easily get out. "Oi, you there, is this you toad?" Hagrid asked the round boy from before as he inspected the boats.
"Trevor!" the little boy exclaimed eagerly collecting him from Hagrid. I would never understand why the boy loved this toad so much—it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. And so slimy looking. We followed Hagrid through the rocky shore, climbing a little until we reached a grassy area that sat in Hogwarts's light. Hagrid led us up stone steps which ended at an enormous wood front door, engraved with intricate carvings.
"Everyone here?" Hagrid asked, looking over us as if we were ducklings. "You there, still got your toad?" Answered by only silent nods, Hagrid smiled down at us as if he were getting ready to unveil a prize and knocked on the oak doors. The doors opened immediately and a tall, thin woman with black hair and green robes stood, waiting for us. She looked at us, treating each of us to a look that told us that this woman would not be messed with. "Firs' years, Professor McGonagall," Hagrid said.