Platform 9 And ¾, Huh? Think You're Being Funny, Do Ya?

Chapter 4

The Leaky Cauldron

When Dean's alarm started buzzing madly, he hit ignore and returned to his slumber. He finally crawled out of bed after Sam's alarms rung through both rooms (and several others, judging by the knocks on the walls when they scrambled to find the vexatious sound). As expected, Castiel was already awake. He was sitting cross legged on the bed next to a large pile of books of various size and shapes. The one he was currently reading was titled, "The Monster Book Of Monsters" and Dean noticed that everytime a page was turned, the book growled.

Once they got downstairs to the pub, they ordered a breakfast of cream and treacle porridge as well as kippers and eggs. Cas was on another book by then, this one bearing the title of, "Hogwarts, A History". He had barely looked up from whatever book we was currently reading, his nose almost touching the inside pages.

"So Cas," Dean started, his mouth full of eggs. "Whatcha reading there?"

"The complete history of the school we are about to teach at." The dark haired man answered simply, still not tearing his eyes away from the book.

"Oh, is that all?" Dean joked. He wanted to know about the school, but he knew he wouldn't be able to sit there and read the piles upon piles of books Cas mysteriously had. "So tell us about Hogwarts."

Castiel closed his book, having finished the last one. "It appears to be a large castle with a forest and a lake populated with merpeople."

Dean looked over to his brother and smiled. "Mermaids." Sam rolled his eyes.

"Yes Dean. Mermaids." Cas sighed. "As well as goblins, Animagi, werewolves, house-elves, giants, veelas, and dementors. And a lot more, but that looks like the most prominent."

Before Dean could make anymore comments about magical folk, Professor McGonagall rushed into the Leaky Cauldron looking very perplexed.

"What's up teach?" Dean asked casually as he took another bite of his breakfast. Instead of showing annoyance as she normally would, she just sighed.

"I apologize for my lateness, but something has come up and I will not be able to take you to the train station. There is a cab waiting outside to take you, and here are your tickets," She handed to tickets to Sam, who looked at them with a confused face." It should be simple, just follow the other students and their families. Agian, I apologize, but I must be going now." And with that, she disappeared again. The three of them turned their attention back to the tickets in Sam's hand.

"King's Cross, Platform- 9 ¾. Train Departure Time- 1 September, Exactly 11AM"

"Wow, the British are weird. They have platforms with fractions, all fancy like." Dean laughed, clearly impressed. Sam however, did not look as sure as his brother, and neither did Castiel.

They brushed off the hesitant feelings as they went upstairs to go get their belongings. After ten minutes of lugging heavy bags down the many flights of stairs and out to the cab, they were finally on their way to King's Cross. Sam kept sticking his face out the window to look at various things that Castiel would say the name and history of. Dean had to admit that being in a foreign place like this was interesting and he started to look forward to this job, even if he didn't know what or how to teach. He was always the muscle and Sam was always the brain, so Dean came to the conclusion that he would take Sam's lead on this one.

The cab ride went by faster than they'd thought, and soon the driver was helping to get their bags out of the trunk. Or "boot" as the driver called it, much to Dean's delight. Castiel noticed that whenever they used British slang for a word, Dean would smile excitedly and insist on using that word from then-on.

Tickets in hand, the trio marched through the busy train station looking for their platform. As Sam feared, there were no ½s or ¾s with the train numbers, so they stood around awkwardly near the 9th and 10th platform trying to figure out a solution.

"Any ideas, Cas?" Dean asked hopefully, but the response was just a shake of the head. Sam looked to his phone to find that the time was 10:30, and thought Hopefully we can sort this all out in 30 minutes. As he looked around worryingly, he noticed three teens pushing a trolley piled high with suitcases. One of them had an owl in a cage perched carefully on top, flapping its spotted brown wings to steady itself when the cart tipped too much. Sam watched with interest as the teens looked around, then disappeared one by one through the brick partition between the large 9 and 10 labelled paths.

Sam looked to Dean and Castiel, who were also watching this odd entrance. The three looked at each other and the barrier as boy, no older than fourteen, disappeared just the same as the others.

"So…" Sam started, but Dean cut him off with a wolfish-grin as he took his trolley and ran straight through the partition. Cas looked at Sam and shrugged his shoulders, running right after Dean. Sam, being the last one, took a deep breath before closing his eyes and sprinting towards the barrier.