The portkey deposited Emer and the trunk behind a murky green catering van that smelled distinctly of burnt hot-dogs. Ignoring the immediate growl from her stomach, Emer peered around the van, her eyes scanning the crowds. It was cold that morning and a persistent drizzle pattered down on the backs of commuters as they scurried along, faces turned towards the ground and free newspapers held above their heads.
However several of the people hurrying towards the station doors were so plainly out of place it was a wonder the Muggles didn't ask questions. She spotted the dark heads of the Patil twins, Parvati and Padma were in her year at Hogwarts, walking with their mother who wore long robes of bright fuchsia pink decorated with golden stars and moons. Laughing a little to herself, Emer noticed an abandoned luggage trolley by the edge of the trailer she was hidden behind.
Darting out with her arms covering her head, she grabbed it and rolled it back to her trunk. It took a lot of effort to haul the heavy trunk onto the trolley, but once she had done so the task of boarding the train became a lot easier. Her ticket was in her rucksack with the letter Professor Sprout had sent, which was slung over her back. She pushed the trolley out into the scampering crowd, chuckling at the bewildered looks and cries of the beefy man inside the hotdog trailer.
Through the sliding doors Emer went, and immediately spotted another wizarding family, again recognisable by their robes, this time a rich forest green. The teenage girl slouching behind her mother also had dark hair, although hers was cut much shorter and tied in a high ponytail. She walked with a swagger, her trunk being pushed on a trolley by her father.
Pansy Parkinson was a Slytherin, and a repulsive one at that. Emer and she had found themselves at locker heads the year before after an unfortunate incident involving a jelly leg jinx that Pansy had never been able to prove Emer had anything to do with.
Emer held back a little as Pansy and her parents marched straight through the apparently solid barrier between platforms nine and ten. Those wizards who were wary, or respectful, of the Muggles ignorance to magic usually attempted this very public crossing in a more discreet way. However it was the nature and belief of many pure blood families, like the Parkinsons, that naturally inferior Muggles ought to wallow in misery and longing for the world in which they had no rightful place.
She pushed her trolley onwards towards the barrier. Not until she was so close she could almost feel the enchantment beside her did she stop and bend down as if to tie her shoelace, one foot hooked around the wheel of the trolley. As she stood back up, she neatly slipped through the wall and pulled the trolley behind her with her foot.
At once bleak Kings Cross Station with its express trains and coffee bars vanished, replaced by a platform surveyed by a single hanging sign that read Platform 9 . Hundreds of people were bustling in a crowd bigger than any she had seen in Diagon Alley. Children were calling for their friends and mothers were calling for their children, people were pushing trolleys hither and thither and hauling great trunks onto the brilliant scarlet locomotive that waited patiently on the tracks. Steam billowed from it, giving the impression that the people gathered on the platform were standing in a dense fog, their feet entirely hidden. Owls flew freely overhead, and a giant clock told Emer that she had fifteen minutes to board the train. She relaxed, and wheeled her trolley up the platform and away from the enchanted barrier, through which a harassed looking mother had just tumbled after her sons.
Emer recognised most of the students gathered in huddles with their families and friends as she weaved her way through them, waving to Hannah Abbot and Ernie McMillan, fellow Hufflepuffs, as well as Lee Jordan, a sixth year boy with dreadlocks and a gleam in his eye.
The steam thinned a little and a family to her right came into view, distinguishable by their bright ginger hair. Emer's face broke into a grin. Ginny spotted Emer first, hurrying to meet her and pulling her into a friendly hug.
"How are you?" she exclaimed as Emer rolled her trolley towards the rest of the Weasleys.
"Aye, I'm grand." Emer laughed "Sorry I didn't reply to your last letter, surprised you're still talking to me,"
"I considered not," Ginny said reproachfully, but she smiled all the same. They re-joined the huddle of red-headed Weasleys and Emer glanced around.
"Morning Ron," She said, nodding to the youngest Weasley son across the circle where he stood between a boy with glasses and a girl with very bushy brown hair, "Harry, Hermione."
They smiled. A tall, thin, and very good-looking, young man lounged at the edge of the party. His long hair was red as any of his siblings, and tied back in a ponytail. His clothes were black and his boots and jacket looked as though they were made of dragon hide. Emer guessed that this was Bill, the eldest of the Weasley children. Beside him was his mother, a plump woman with a round, jolly face and was nearly half as short as any of her sons.
There was a pointed cough from Emer's right. Lanky, ginger and with a mischievous glint in their dark brown eyes, Fred and George were identical to the last freckle.
"Paddy!" Fred said hugging her, as the rest of the family broke off into their own conversations. George did the same, whispering in her ear "Have you got the stuff?"
"What stuff?" A suspicious voice said, and as George pulled away Emer saw his mother glaring reproachfully at him.
"Mum," Fred interjected quickly, "Allow me to introduce our dear friend Emer McKinley…she's a Hufflepuff in Ron's year." He added the last few words intentionally, and they almost worked.
Mrs Weasley's scowl cleared a little, but there was still an accusatory note in her tone as she said, "Well then, good morning dear, it's so…lovely to meet you at last – I've heard, well…" She trailed off.
Sorted into Hufflepuff house, whose students were known for their hard work and loyalty, Emer was expected to toe the line. However her hard work and loyalty tended to aid fellow troublemakers, rather than her school grades. Never getting caught for her crimes, many of the more ignorant teachers and pupils thought Emer to be a prime example of a decent Hufflepuff student. Unfortunately, any titbits of information Mrs Weasley may have gathered would have been from the mouths of her children and were therefore likely to paint a worryingly accurate picture.
"Aye it's lovely to meet you too Mrs Weasley!" Emer beamed, her eyes sparkling, "And don't worry about what George says. It's just sweets see, Irish sweets. I don't get much money at the orphanage, but these two really like 'em and I can get them back home." The brief offhand mention of 'the orphanage' had had the desired effect. Mothers, especially those whose capacity for care extended beyond their own kin, would always take to the 'orphan' ploy.
"That's s-so sweet dear. Fred! George! Help Emer carry her trunk onto the train, goodness only knows how you managed to get it from Ireland all by yourself…I mean," she went a little pink.
"It's alright," Emer smiled lazily as the twins groaned under the weight of her trunk, "Don't worry about me, thank you Mrs Weasley." She glanced at Ginny before turning to follow the twins and winked. Ginny rolled her eyes and struck up a conversation with Bill. He was wearing a dragon tooth earring that Emer had to drag her eyes away from.
"You," said Fred, panting a little as he and George heaved the trunk through the crowds of students, "Are a right crafty git."
"If you can do that in a few minutes," George elbowed a second year out of his way, "She'll have adopted you by Christmas."
"Oh come on," She ducked around them and opened a door onto the train, hopping up and helping them steady the trunk. "It's a gift. Three solid years of general disruption without a single detention didn't happen without serious skill, so it didn't."
"Goody two shoes." Fred muttered. Emer waggled a finger at him.
"Now now Freddie, I prefer 'Sycophantic Genius'"
With a laugh and a great heave the twins pushed the trunk up and onto the train.
George massaged his hands. "What've you got in there? A couple of leprechauns?" He asked – one twin sticking out a hand and pulling the other up beside him.
"No, actually." Emer said in a lowered tone as a Ravenclaw seventh year pushed past them. "I've got all the crap you've been sending me this summer."
"So you have got it!" Fred cried, "Excellent!"
"Aye I've got it, now help me get it up here."
Together they lifted the trunk up onto the luggage rack and sat themselves down in the adjoining compartment. George opened the window and leaned out to talk to his family who were still gathered around on the platform. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny soon bundled in with them, exchanging goodbyes with those still on the platform.
"You know, I kind of wish I was going back to Hogwarts this year." Bill with the dragon earring said, gazing wistfully at the train.
"Why?" Fred cried, but his brother ignored him and carried on.
"Yeah, you're going to have an interesting few months."
"What do you mean?" George asked, irritated.
"I might even come and watch, Charlie will probably want to see a bit of it too,"
"A bit of what?" Ron moaned.
"Stop winding them up you." Mrs Weasley batted her eldest son with her handbag and they backed away, chortling. "Now, have a good year all of you and – behave yourselves." She stared pointedly at the twins who raised their eyes to the heavens in one movement. Ron was leaning so far out of the window now that Harry had one hand on the back of his shirt to stop him falling out of the train.
"Tell me what's happening at Hogwarts!" He demanded indignantly of his mother. But at that moment, a whistle blew and the train started to billow out even more steam. As it began to move forward, Mrs Weasley smiled and waved at her sons' scowling faces. Within seconds she and Bill had vanished, aparated in the dense fog.
Harry, Hermione, Ron and Ginny all said goodbye before trooping off to find friends in other compartments, whilst Emer and the twins made themselves at home. She sat opposite them and, after discussing all the twins had witnessed at the Quiddich World Cup, Fred and George pulled her trunk down from the luggage rack and settled it on the floor between them.
"So it was this Crouch fella's elf?" Emer asked for the umpteenth time, passing her rucksack to George who fumbled around inside it for the key. "An' he's a Ministry bloke?"
"Barty Crouch has almost as many people kissing his feet as Fudge." Fred said.
"And he's Percy's boss?"
"Boss, saint, I would've said fiancé until we met him."
"Turns out, Percy isn't quite as memorable as he might have hoped." George said smugly.
Fred and George rifled through Emer's trunk until the floor was littered with all the bags, boxes and tins they had sent her over the summer. There were nearly fifty packages in every shape and size. Bright red punching telescopes, trick wands in every variety and a couple of vivid purple top hats that had shot out of the trunk and were now zooming above their heads. One of the bags split open and a hundred miniscule snakes exploded from it, bouncing on their tail like a coiled spring. Sweets and toffees in every colour imaginable were bagged up, each with labels such as: DO NOT EAT – PROTOTYPE, CAUSES SEVERE DOG BREATH printed in the twins' untidy handwriting on the side.
"Whoa." It was Lee Jordan, standing in the compartment door with an impressed smirk on his face. Emer shuffled up to let him sit down as the twins exclaimed over their hoard in delight.
"We'll make a fortune out of this lot…" Fred said, poking Emer with a fake wand that promptly, with a puff of acid green smoke, turned into a cauliflower.
"The order forms are in the back pocket of my bag," Emer grinned at George, who ripped the backpack open and pulled out a wad of parchment titled: Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes in curling letters.
"Emer." He said, very seriously "We are forever in your debt."
She couldn't reply, having just bitten into a biscuit from a bag on top of the pile, and turned into a canary.