A/N Wow, this took a ridiculously long time, probably because I have so much trouble writing Terezi. I'm sorry if it's OOC but I tried my best! In case it's not clear, she has vision-taste synaesthesia, which is really rare but still possible.
Terezi glanced around, wondering whether she could have misunderstood where she was supposed to be. Platform 9 ¾, the ticket had said, yet there was no platform between nine and ten. Worse yet, she couldn't see a sign of her best friend, who said they'd meet right outside the platform. Letting out an exasperated sigh, she wheeled her enormous cart over towards the barrier between the two platforms and went to lean against it.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." The voice came from the other side of the barrier, and Terezi jerked her head around and looked at the girl, who was now grinning in superior way.
"Vriska!" she exclaimed, pausing before adding, "You taste like blueberries." Vriska's blue shirt and denim jeans were just the colour of a blueberry, and the cerulean makeup she wore just added to the concept.
"Right this way," Vriska said, looking smug. She gestured toward the barrier, and Terezi looked at her in confusion. She stuck out one hand and it seemed to pass straight through the solid stone. Terezi grinned, deciding firmly that if brooms could fly and dragons were real, as she'd been told, there was no reason to be weirded out by anything going on. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and strode with a false air of confidence through the, clearly solid stone, barrier.
She knew she'd never admit it, but her eyes shut involuntarily moments before she knew she'd crash headlong into the barrier. When the crash didn't happen, she opened one eye tentatively, then the other as she found herself facing an enormous, scarlet train and a station crowded with people holding trunks like hers. Glancing backwards, she saw that where the barrier had been before was an archway, topped with the words Platform 9 ¾. In front of her stood Vriska, gesturing dramatically at the clock, which read 10:49.
With her trademark grin, Terezi wheeled her trolley up to the train, grunting involuntarily as she attempted to get her enormous trunk up. Once she'd done so, shaking out her arms somewhat reproachfully, she glanced around for an empty compartment, gesturing for Vriska to follow as she flopped down onto the booth. As her friend made herself comfortable by taking off her jacket and slouching in an already-bored manner, Terezi opened her trunk and rummaged around, attempting to keep the disorganised mess of clothes from spilling all over the floor. Moments later, she triumphantly pulled out a box of sidewalk chalk.
She began drawing crude, childlike stick figures and dragons stomping around and breathing fire all over the walls of the compartment, Vriska only sighing and attempting to look irritated and mature, though every once in a while she looked on with interest instead of annoyance. Terezi had just finished drawing an enormous yellow dragon, dubbed 'Lemonsnout', when the door slammed open. A short, angry-looking boy with pale hair, paler skin, and a bright red lightning scar standing out on his forehead stomped in, with a girl literally clinging to him, her green coat and blue fabric cat tail dragging on the ground behind them.
"Everyone else is being complete idiots and yelling stuff at me so all of you will not be fucking ANNOYING, understood?" He plopped down a few feet away from Terezi and glared at them all. Snorting with laughter at how he was trying to look intimidating with someone hugging him to death, Terezi slid up next to him and stuck out her tongue, causing him to shove her away, practically snarling. She laughed and leaned over him, addressing the girl whose arms were wrapped tightly around his waist.
"Got a crush on someone?" Terezi teased, her eyebrows raised just above her glasses.
"N-no, of course not!" the girl exclaimed, immediately unlatching herself from the glowering boy. "But I mean... he's Karkat Vantas!" The boy – Karkat – rolled his eyes.
"No shit, Sherlock! You've told me that at least fifteen fucking times already. Either you're too fucking ecstatic about my pathetic existence to rub your few brain cells together and use some common fucking sense, or you're just some autistic cat girl who lives in a cave and has her tail shoved so far up her ass it interferes with your thinking!"
Impressed by this outburst, Terezi cut in the moment he took a breath, his face already starting to turn red.
"Now, Karkles, I can see you're pleased about this, but let's not get too ecstatic or the driver'll want to know who died," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. He turned towards her, swelling like an angry bullfrog.
"Are you fucking serious? Don't you dare call me fucking 'Karkles' EVER AGAIN, do you fucking UNDERSTAND?!"
"What, isn't that your name?" Terezi asked innocently, clamping her hand over his mouth just as he opened it to respond. Speaking somewhat loudly over the muffled yells emitting from Karkat, she talked to the girl.
"So what's this idiot done to make you get all huggy with him?" The cat-girl stared at her as if she'd said that she didn't know what colour red was.
"He's Karkat Vantas! You know, the Boy Who Lived? He defeated..." She lowered her voice dramatically, "You-Know-Who."
"No, who?" Terezi asked glancing to Vriska in hope of a straight answer.
"Greatest Dark Wizard ever to live," she replied shortly. "Right, I'm going to leave you losers to draw dragons and yell your heads off, I've got a toreadumbass to torment." Vriska stalked out of the compartment with this vague comment, slamming the glass door shut behind her.
"Fine!" Terezi called after her, "but you're missing the rainbow rumpus party!" Remembering that she was still covering Karkat's mouth, she removed her hand and grinned wickedly at him, before grabbing her red chalk and ignoring him completely. Motioning for the girl to grab some chalk, she asked her name.
"I'm Nepeta Leijon!" She pronounced her last name oddly, like 'Lay-on' or something. Sounded kind of like lion, which was exactly what she was drawing, making Terezi giggle.
"Terezi Pyrope, dragonyy'yd and legislacerator, at your service," she said, sketching the outline of a dragon hanging from a tree.
"What's a dragon-ih-id?" Nepeta asked, "And fur that matter, what's a legislacerator?" Terezi gave her a sceptical glance - did she say for, or fur? – and responded with a simple "That's for me to know and you to find out!"
A gentle knock on the compartment door interrupted their silliness, and a short, elderly lady pushing a cart piled with boxes of pumpkin-shaped pastries and cakes that looked like cauldrons stuck her head into the compartment.
"Anything from the trolley, dears?" Nepeta practically pounced from her perch on the seat, pulling some silver coins out of her pocket.
"I'll have a sugar quill and two chocolate frogs please!" she said, tossing two of the coins at the witch and jumped back to her seat, happily sucking on the tip of the spun-sugar quill. Terezi pulled the little pouch given to her by what's his face – Dumbledore, out of her pocket; it still had a gold coin and a few bronze ones left from school supplies shopping.
"Everything!" she proclaimed loudly, placing the gold coin dramatically on the trolley. Smiling affectionately, the lady picked out for her a little cauldron-cake-thing, a box of jelly beans, some bubble gum, some gummy worms, and several five-sided boxes that had Chocolate Frog on the front, along with handing her six silver coins in return.
The candies were all satisfyingly sweet, but what really intrigued Terezi was the jelly beans. Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, they were called, and they were colours that made her taste odd things like earwax and spinach. Upon eating them, she found that they really were those flavours, and it wasn't just her synaesthesia messing with things again. She shared them with Nepeta, whose favourite was, oddly, fish, and Karkat even grudgingly agreed to try one, immediately spitting it out and giving her a death glare when he realised it was onion.
She absolutely refused to let either of them have any of the cherry ones, though, instead hoarding them all at the bottom of the box and eating them one by one, ecstatically trying to look at them and eat them at once for double taste experience. (She actually just ended up crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue.)
After several minutes of roleplaying, teasing Karkat, and enjoying the candy-red jellybeans, Nepeta glanced out the window and noted that they should purrobably change into their robes. Nodding in agreement, Terezi gave Karkat a meaningful glance. Completely oblivious, he just sat there glaring out the window.
"Karkles, I know I'm irresistible," insert wink here, "but you'll just have to be leaving while we change."
"What the fuck, I'm leaving goddamnit, there's no need to get all," he mimicked her wink with an overly cheesy look in his face. He left, disgruntled and trying to hide the obvious blush that was creeping up his face. As the train slowed to a stop, the two girls, both grinning in excitement, put away their street clothes.
A loud, deep voice from outside the train called out, "Firs'-years! Firs'-years over here!"
Kawaiider-Phantaku: Thanks! That one was a really fun chapter to write, haha.
tealPatrician: Thank you! I definitely don't think there are enough of them.
Vatala Darkmist: Someone noticed! Yes, the wands are not random; I actually spent like an hour in total picking them out for each character. Noo, not the hamsters! *cowers*
undead3: -.- Twilight...