Snakeskins
The First Hogwarts Express
Platform 9 3/4s.
Platform 9 and 3/4s.
Platform nine and three quarters.
"Will you shut up about it!"
The irony was too much for Italy to let England get away with. England, perfectly logical and all about time-tables and appointments. England who had a form for every query and a time and date-stamp on every printed box. England who expected his post to arrive at the exact same minute every day (except Sunday, because there was no post on Sundays), all his trains set to rigid schedules...
That same England let his Wizarding community have a platform nine and three quarters.
"You couldn't have just given them the thirteenth?" The teasing started as they were leaving the house and continued until they were already at King's Cross station in London. England's temper was worth razing when his youthful face had no way to control the furious red blush creeping up his neck, flashing over his ears, and leaving him white-lipped and on the verge of whipping around and punching Feliciano in the face.
Without their respective charms in place, Feliciano might have been afraid of that punch, but it was a lot like teasing Germany: no matter how angry England got, he either wouldn't have the heart to hurt him or he'd try and get stopped by someone else. Someone like Scotland.
"Alright, we're here. Now get on with it I don't want a scene." Sadly, Scotland only brought them as far as the platform itself. He traded one last bit of snark with England about work matters, said goodbye, and before Feliciano could turn around and answer him the other nation was gone.
"That didn't take long." A little confused but not upset to see him leave so quickly, Feliciano just followed England through the crowds. There was white steam rolling off the great red body of the Hogwarts Express and clouding the platform as wizards and witches scurried around with trunks and suitcases. Strings of younger siblings following students and parents, owls hooting over the prevalent hiss of the train's steaming cries, cats yowling and more than a few cries of 'Don't forget your-!' and 'For the last time, behave yourself!'.
"He doesn't want to be recognized, you know." Their luggage was taken and stowed by a kindly old wizard wearing a blue conductor's suit whose white beard was parted and combed like a heart as he smiled and sent them on their way to the doors, whisking Gino's carrier away somewhere with the other animals. There was no one else to say goodbye to on the platform. Feliciano had said his farewells in Paris, England and Scotland were too proud for things like that. "I'm quite safe looking like this, but Scotland? There are veterans in this crowd."
"Like Potter?" Whose first name escaped him at the moment, but Feliciano knew he had the surname right.
The inside of the Hogwarts Express was a lot like any other train, if a bit wider on the inside than it should have been from the outside. Old carpets with nondescript patterns, beige walls, brass knobs on compartment doors- one of which shrieked when England tried opening it. The sound made both of them jump back before they heard teenage girls cackling behind the screen, and remembering that they were so small again when a pair of sixteen year old boys walked right over them. Feliciano found himself grabbing England's hand and restlessly searching the train car for any compartment that wasn't already full of students.
"Right then, let's go through everything one last time." Finding an abandoned one was a relief, and Feliciano was embarrassed by how hard it was to get up on the seat with his tiny legs. England seemed to think he was in charge, but since there was nothing better to do except peer out the window at the crowded station platform, Feliciano sat up straighter and answered.
"My name is Feliciano Vargas from House Vargas in Rome. My older brother works for the Italian ministry and he thinks Hogwarts is a waste of time, but, your family thinks it's good for me to be here!"
"Yes, meanwhile... There's every reason to believe someone at Hogwarts will recognize the name Kirkland, so if I end up getting pressured about it at all I'll simply say I'm a foster of theirs."
"With the same first name as the one in London?" A little more teasing just to get further under England's skin, and the way his lips twisted and he tried to snarl across the compartment at him.
"Arthur is a fine English name. Good stock. Never met an Arthur I didn't like."
It only took about another ten minutes before the loud scream of a steam whistle signaled their departure. Feliciano watched the crowds fade away as the train heaved itself from the platform and began to chug along in a blur of city buildings and London sunlight that faded much faster than it probably should have.
England looked like he was about to ask a question when their compartment door suddenly rattled open, but then froze half-way through with a startled looking boy and girl standing out in the hall.
"Oh- sorry." The boy's hair looked like an absolute mess, maybe he'd forgotten to comb the black mop back into place when he woke up that morning, but the girl behind him had her long red locks neatly tied back behind her head. The boy was the one who'd opened the door, and he tried to close it without another word when the girl reached past him and held it open for a moment, poking her head in to get a look at them and asking the obvious question:
"May we come in? The whole train's positively bursting."
For whatever reason, Feliciano decided to take point from England, who was looking at him with the exact same expression. They were off to a good start then.
"Of course you can, my-" Maybe the kids didn't hear the tone England used, but Feliciano did and he jumped up right away, making sure to give England a good kick before he could call them darlings or dears. They were all supposed to be the same age, right? No room for grandfatherly greetings here.
"Ve! Come right in! More people means more fun!"
The childrens' names were Albus Potter and Rose Weasley. Only the first surname meant anything to Feliciano, but he couldn't help but stare at the girl trying to remember where he'd heard Weasley before.
Ah-! The old wizard from England's office?
"My brother James and our friend Teddy kicked us out of their compartment..." Albus had a quiet way about him, he didn't seem like he wanted to look up at any of them as he stared either out the window or at his hands in his lap. "They're both in second year, but they put a Gryffindor Only charm on the door."
"Gryffindor?" Feliciano repeated.
"One of the four houses." England explained, and that seemed to brighten the Weasley girl up all at once. She was sitting next to Feliciano while Albus was across from him and next to England. She'd stared right at him every time Feliciano had spoken so far, but now finally came up with something to say to him.
"Where are you from, Feliciano?" Ah, the English accent was cute but it was making him regret a choice made almost two and a half thousand years ago. There was hard 'z' sound working its way into the middle of his name whenever any of England's children tried saying it properly. "Someplace far away, I imagine?"
"Si, I came from Roma!" All it took was a little bit of unnecessary Italian in his sentence to get England glaring at him. Feliciano making a face with his tongue out and fingers pulling at his eyes only made England's temper worsen until his face was completely red.
"Idiot."
"He doesn't like it when I speak in Italian." Feliciano snickered, kicking his feet where his legs were too short to reach the floor.
"No, I don't mind that!" Putting England on the defensive was so fun and easy sometimes, it was amazing he ever got anywhere at politics. "I mind you pretending you suddenly don't know your English anymore! Roma- honestly!"
Albus was laughing a little bit under his breath, opening up enough in his own way that Feliciano didn't feel like tearing into a linguistics debate he was sure he would win.
"Do you know about the four houses then?" Rose was good for bringing the conversation back around to her original point, and Feliciano was comfortable saying he couldn't remember anything except the names- bar one exception, of course.
"Slytherin seems interesting." This was the wrong thing to say. Albus and his cousin both flinched and made strange faces when he made the comment, the boy looked like something had set his stomach off, and the girl sniffed the air quietly like she could smell something foul.
"Slytherin's alright I suppose, but it's not exactly a nice place." Oh? "I mean, I don't know first-hand, but I remember what my mother and father always said about it."
"James says awful things about Slytherins... I heard two of them even died last year."
When the silence settled after Albus's softly spoken words, Feliciano looked around for the source of pain in his hand and found his own fingernails digging into his skin. England was watching him too, so he tried to put a good smile on his face and keep what he was feeling inside. He wanted to talk about why the cross under his shirt felt so cold against his skin, but not with children like these. He needed someone who had known them, not known of them.
"So you two don't want to be in Slytherin then?" He asked.
"Our family has always been Gryffindor on both sides!" Rose declared cheerfully, tapping one long pale finger against her lips for a moment as she thought, rolling her eyes like she was remembering something silly and then admitting: "My dad will be so mad if I don't get into Gryffindor, but mum said Ravenclaw's a wonderful house too."
"Gryffindor, I hope..." Albus answered quietly, and England was nodding to him as if it was the only answer that made sense to the nation. Albus was the son of a famous hero, it wasn't that big a leap to make.
"What about you, Vargas?" He expected England to give his own answer first. They hadn't really talked about it before now; there had been too much to worry about just getting into the school at all, nevermind being sorted. "Put any thought into it?"
"Whichever one will help me protect what's most important, I guess." His answer was vague, but it felt right when he said it and his smile relaxed a little bit. The two children they'd apparently made friends with were happy with his answer too.
"That sounds like a very Gryffindorish thing to say." Rose applauded, and maybe she could already see the four of them dressed in the same red and gold robes.
England's laugh made both of them jump and look at him.
"Vargas's too cowardly for a house like that!"
"Ve~ you just have a short memory." Very short.
"You'd be better off in Hufflepuff, I think. Have you ever tried taking something from an angry badger?"
"You should be careful about saying things like that." Rose was a lot more talkative than her cousin, and Feliciano felt a worrying tingle when she seemed to jump on the defensive before England's badger comment really settled in. For her information, Feliciano had once seen someone take something from a badger, and Prussia had needed three days to grow his fingers back afterwards. "If you don't mind yourself you'll end up in Slytherin before you know it."
"So?" England had a more colourful response to make, Feliciano went for the bare minimum.
"Well he should..." And his rebuttal seemed to cause a break in Rose's mind, because she just blinked and stared at him like she didn't know what he'd just said. "He should just..."
The door saved her from answering by sliding open again, and this time there was another shocked young face waiting on the other side that panicked and tried to disappear before Rose found her voice again.
"Scorpius Malfoy?" The boy was short and very thin, his skin pale and tight like he'd forgotten that young children were usually softer and baby-ish. He looked almost terrified when his name was called and it was just another surname ringing bells in Feliciano's head. He knew that one too!
"Rose Weasley," but then he tried to escape again and Feliciano had a brilliant idea.
"Arthur Kirkland!" He shouted, England stared at him and the boy at the door was confused.
"Feli...ciano Vargas?" England stuttered back.
"And Albus Potter!" Albus looked like he wanted to crawl under his seat. They were all looking at Feliciano now, which was much better than having everyone stare at their shoes. "There, now that everybody's been introduced, why don't we play a game of something? Did you bring your chess set, Arthur?" Feliciano didn't even know if England owned one, so didn't wait for an answer because he'd already seen one. "Scorpius? Scorpius! That looks like a brand new board! I haven't played chess in so long, can I see yours? Come sit down!"
"Definitely Hufflepuff." England snickered under his breath, but then he got right on board with encouraging the painfully awkward children around them to at least let the new boy Scorpius sit down between Rose and Feliciano with a polished redwood chess-board in his lap, the case opening up to show the velvet compartments for the white and black pieces on the reverse side of the actual board.
"My, um... My father gave it to me. And your name was..?" There were tense pauses and awkward glances for all, but Feliciano was more interested at poking the living pieces out of their places and listening to Scorpius tell him not to-
"Ow!"
"I just told you the white Knight has a temper!" and a tiny sword that was actually very sharp, which meant Feliciano sat out of the first round of chess so he could suck on the little cut next to his nail and wait for a chance to play with the black set instead. Each living piece was glossy and freshly enchanted, the weight of the resin making him rethink the material as England showed the other three how to randomly assign order with their wand tips all aglow, white or red to choose which piece set.
Going easy on the children was necessary, but not too easy- they weren't muggle children who had a million other games and electronics to keep them busy. Wizard's chess was still a staple pass-time in most magical households and England seemed baffled when Scorpius took his queen when the nation wasn't even looking.
Feliciano didn't do a good enough job covering his laughter as the white queen fainted and was dragged in distress across the board by a bishop and tossed to the floor. He sadly wore a shock of green hair on the front of his head for the next hour until England finally removed the curse he said he learned from a magazine clipping.
Rose destroyed Albus in only a few short moves and Feliciano let her chase him around the board for twenty minutes with England incessantly prodding him in the back with his wand to either end the game or just let her win. The nations avoided playing against each other, and Scorpius and Rose were still playing the final round of chess as the snack cart rolled by and the sky outside the train began to grow darker.
"All-in then, everybody pay the same amount and we'll see what we can get." A handful of bronze coins from Feliciano's pockets met the same number from everyone else, and some sweet chocolate frogs and stuffed pumpkin cakes were shared as awkwardly as the discarded chessboard had been. If the next six years were going to be this tense and awful, Feliciano was going to have to bully his brother into coming with him so he'd have someone to talk to that wasn't as stuffy as England.
Probably the brightest moment of the trip was when Albus groaned loudly from his side of the compartment, half a chocolate frog wriggling in his mouth, before he took the card from the candy wrapper and handed it to Rose so she could laugh at him.
"You always get Uncle Harry! I don't think you've ever found a single Dumbledore or Nicholas Flamel."
"What I really want is a Headmistress McGonagall." Feliciano could admit that his taste in sweets was limited and he didn't eat his entire share, but he was mimicking England and looking for the black school robe he'd bought and stuffed in a small backpack when he heard something even better come from Scorpius Malfoy.
"Do you want this one then? I- uh, I have two already."
Feliciano hadn't seen England looked so pleased in months, but he covered it up well by pretending there were wrinkles in his black robe that needed straightening out. When they felt the train beginning to slow down and the loud chatter of older students moving as shadows outside the compartment door, the nerves from the three children felt like they started giving way to the giddy, terrifying excitement of a new adventure, and he was fine with fading into the background as they started talking a bit more and chattering with less anxiety about houses and families.
"Is it true Professor Longbottom makes students climb the Whomping Willow in their first day?"
"I hope not! My father would never let me hear the end of it." Rose's next words made both her cousin and Scorpius wail out-loud:
"Uncle Harry once told me he and Professor Malfoy had detention in the Forbidden Forest." And that was where Feliciano had heard Scorpius' surname before. He shared a glance with England that tried to explain how he finally understood what everyone meant about England's Wizarding Elite all attending the same school.
"Ready, Vargas?"
"Hogwarts! Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! Next stop, Hogwarts!"
"Your robe's on backwards, Kirkland."
Originally I wanted Feli and Arthur to be a year behind Rose/Albus/Scorpius, but I can't count since summer of 2017 is actually a few months BEFORE the Deathly Hallows' epilogue, whoops. It doesn't change anything though and it makes it easier to actually show those characters right at the beginning, so I'm not gonna bother changing it.
Albus and Rose will fade out a little, Scorpius will stick around and hopefully not be too annoying!