Gwyn Swann and the Goblet of Fire
by Lady Dawson
Chapter Ten: Onto the Hogwarts Express
The skies were dark and gloomy when Gwyn woke up the next morning with rain pattering against the windows. Groaning slightly, she ran her fingers through her blonde hair before she stumbled out of the cot that had been set up in Ginny's room, grabbing her clothes as she headed for the bathroom to get dressed and make sure that she had everything packed. Tabby was being extremely uncooperative as he had hidden underneath Ginny's bed and it took the combined efforts of Ginny and Gwyn to grab him, pulling him out and Gwyn forced him into his cage.
"Enough," she said sternly, peering at her cat reproachfully. "You know better than that. You're a grown cat, Tabby, and you'd better start acting like it. No," she said as he meowed, determined to be let out. "No, you're staying in there until we leave. I'm not going to chase you down again."
Setting the cage back onto the trunk and making sure that he had enough water and food, Gwyn headed downstairs, pulling her hair into a ponytail as she went.
By the time that she had gotten downstairs, Mr. Weasley was sitting in front of the fire, talking to . . .
Gwyn blinked and shook her head, trying to clear to make sure that she wasn't imagining things, but sure enough, when she looked again, Mr. Diggory's head was sitting in the fire.
Once she had gotten over this shock, she went into the kitchen to help Mrs. Weasley with breakfast while listening to the conversation between the two men. Apparently someone named Mad-Eye had caused a bunch of commotion the previous night when he thought that there was an intruder behind his house and set some dustbins on them. The police turned up eventually, alerted by the noise, and there was going to be a huge commotion with the Ministry.
Mr. Weasley hastily took notes of what had happened before he left to go take care of the mess. Gwyn looked towards Bill and Charlie as Mrs. Weasley left the room.
"Who is this guy?" she questioned, wracking her brains, but couldn't remember anyone named Mad-Eye and she was pretty sure that she would remember someone with that name.
"Mad-Eye Moody is an Auror," Charlie explained. "Or, well, he used to be, but he's retired now. He's an old friend of Dumbledore's. I met him once when Dad took me into work with him. Half the cells in Azkaban are full because of him. He made himself loads of enemies, though . . . families of the people he caught, mainly . . . he's been getting paranoid in his old age, though, from what I've heard. Doesn't trust anybody anymore. Sees Dark wizards everywhere."
"Hmm." Something about this made Gwyn feel as though there were something about this incident at Moody's than what they knew. Whatever it was, she wasn't entirely sure, but it made a chill go down her spine.
In order to get to the train station, they were loaded up into Muggle taxis, which was highly uncomfortable because not only were all of them jammed in the back with their trunks, but also a number of disturbances occurred during the journey, including one of the twins' fireworks going off halfway there.
Entering her fourth-year at Hogwarts, Gwyn was more than used to getting onto the platform to get to the Hogwarts Express, the train that they had to get on in order to get to the school. She, Harry, Ron, and Hermione went through first, because they were attracting the most attention—especially since Tabby had starting meowing ever so loudly, desperate to get out—and found a compartment halfway through the train and got back off to say goodbye to the others as they came through.
"I might be seeing you all sooner than you think," Charlie remarked as he hugged his sister. "Just don't tell Percy that I mentioned it . . . it's 'classified information until such time as the Ministry sees fit to release it,' after all."
"What are you talking about?" Gwyn queried, but he only grinned at her, his eyes twinkling mischievously.
"Yeah, I almost wish I was back at Hogwarts this year," Bill added.
"Why?" George demanded.
"You're going to have an interesting year," Bill replied. "I might even get time off to come and watch a bit of it . . ."
"A bit of what?" Ron demanded.
Gwyn glanced back at the train as the whistle blew, signalling that they were about to leave. "Come on, guys, we'd better go," she said before looking at the matriarch of the Weasley clan. "Thanks for having us stay, Mrs. Weasley."
"Yes, thank you," Harry agreed.
"Oh, it was my pleasure, dears," she said, beaming at them. "I'd invite you for Christmas, but . . . well, I expect you're all going to want to stay at Hogwarts, what with . . . one thing and another."
"Mum!" Ron complained. "What do you three know that we don't?"
"I expect you'll find out this evening," she answered her younger son, smiling secretively. "I daresay it's going to be very exciting—mind you, I'm very glad that they've changed the rules," she added, her expression changing to one of extreme relief.
"What rules?" Gwyn, Harry, Ron, Fred, and George asked.
"Professor Dumbledore will probably tell you all about it tonight. . . ." Mrs. Weasley assured them as she ushered them to the train, pushing them on board. "Now, behave, won't you? Fred, George?"
"Tell us what's happening at Hogwarts!" Fred protested, ignoring his mother's imploring. He was halfway leaning out the window and Gwyn and George were holding him back to prevent him from falling out and ultimately to his death. "What rules are they changing?"
When she had managed to haul him back into the train and was sure he wasn't going to try and leap out again—even though the station was far away by now—Gwyn headed back to the compartment with her friends, barely closing the door when they all heard Draco Malfoy's voice.
". . . Father actually considered sending me to Durmstrang rather than Hogwarts, you know. He knows the headmaster, you see. Well, you know his opinion of Dumbledore—the man's such a Mudblood-lover—and Durmstrang doesn't admit that sort of riffraff. But Mother didn't like the idea of me going to school so far away. Father says that Durmstrang takes a far more sensible line than Hogwarts about the Dark Arts. Durmstrang students actually learn them, not just the defence rubbish that we do here . . ."
Closest to the door, Hermione got up and shut the door so they wouldn't have to listen to him.
"So, he thinks Durmstrang would have suited him, does he?" she said fiercely, her brown eyes flashing dangerously towards the door as she stalked back to her seat and returning to her position. "I wish he had gone, then we wouldn't have to put up with him."
"Yes, but then we would have to deal with a Malfoy who actually knows Dark magic and can use those kinds of spells against us," Gwyn said placidly from where she was sitting half leaning against Harry. "Personally, I'd rather deal with him harassing us and being ignorant than have him go to another school where he can learn stuff that could make him dangerous."
"Durmstrang's another wizarding school?" Harry questioned, looking between the girls.
"Madeline mentioned it once," Gwyn said with a shrug. "She just said that it was a really bad school. My grandparents actually considered sending Mum there once they got wind that she was in Gryffindor. I don't know what happened with that," she mused. "But Madeline said that they're really into the Dark Arts."
"I think I've heard of it," Ron said carelessly. "Where is it? Which country?"
"Well, no one knows, do they?" Hermione said in her usual, well-informed tone. "There's traditionally been a lot of rivalry between all of the magical schools. Durmstrang and Beauxbatons like to conceal their whereabouts so nobody can steal their secrets."
Ron started to laugh at the very thought. "Come off it, Hermione. Durmstrang's got to be about the same size as Hogwarts—how are you going to hide a great big castle?"
"But Hogwarts is hidden," Hermione pointed out, arching her eyebrows towards him, surprise written across her face. "Everybody knows that . . . well, everyone who has read Hogwarts, A History, anyway," she added, naming the book that was a complete history on their school. Hermione had read it so many times that she could probably recite it by heart . . . of course, she could do that with so many books that it was amazing she could keep them all straight.
Gwyn glanced up at Harry, both of them trying to hide a smile as Hermione and Ron continued their friendly banter. So far, it hadn't turned homicidal, so she wasn't going to intervene.
"Go on, then," Ron said. "How do you hide a place like Hogwarts?"
"It's bewitched," she answered. "If a Muggle looks at it, all they see is a mouldering, old ruin with a sign over the entrance saying DANGER, DO NOT ENTER, UNSAFE."
"So Durmstrang will just look like a ruin to an outside, too?" Gwyn questioned.
"Maybe," Hermione said thoughtfully, "or it might have Muggle-repelling charms on it, like the World Cup stadium. And in order to keep foreign wizards from finding it, they probably would make Unplottable—"
"Come again?" Harry asked.
"Well, you can enchant a building so it's impossible to plot on a map, can't you?" Hermione said in her usual, exasperated tone that she usually got whenever the boys didn't know something. Gwyn was rarely on the receiving end of this tone, but it did happen on occasion. "But I think Durmstrang must be somewhere in the far north, somewhere very cold, because they've got fur capes as part of their uniform."
Ron got a dreamy look on his face when she said that. "Ah, just think about the possibilities. It would've been so easy to push Malfoy off of a glacier and make it look like an accident. . . . Shame his mother likes him. . . ." he added with a grin.
Gwyn snorted just as two figures past by the compartment and she glanced towards her cousins Alaric and Morgause Toren as they walked past, though the younger of the two siblings looked her way as she smirked at Gwyn, who only watched her go. She had long given up having any kind of relationship with either of her cousins or having a good contact with her mother's family. In fact, she was pretty sure that if Voldemort ever came back, then they would meet each other on the battlefield.
But still . . . during second-year when they were in the Chamber of Secrets and Gwyn had been knocked unconscious, she'd had a vision of Morgause and the Morgause in her vision hadn't acted at all like the girl that she was when she was awake. Gwyn wondered sometimes if that vision was just a false hope or if there was still hope for Morgause. It pained her to admit it, but she hoped it was the latter. It would be nice to have some family that acknowledged her. She loved her friends, but they just weren't the same as blood relatives.
The rain was coming down so hard and the skies were so dark that the lanterns were lit just a little after the lunch trolley came by. Gwyn, extremely partial to Chocolate Frogs, bought a stack of them. Not to mention, they came with cards with famous witches and wizards on them, which were helpful when it came to studying for History of Magic, which, along with Herbology, was one of the two subjects she was bad at.
Seamus and Dean came in sometime during the afternoon, followed by Neville Longbottom, another of their Gryffindor fourth-years. Gwyn liked Neville; they had always gotten along very well and he was also her Herbology tutor when it came to finals while she was his Charms and Potions tutor. Although he was dreadful at spells and potions and history, he excelled at Herbology. She probably could have gotten Hermione's help in studying, but she preferred to stick with Neville. Plus, she thought that having him tutor her was good for his self-esteem.
The minute the boys came in, the talk instantly turned to the World Cup, which Gwyn didn't mind so much, but when she glanced over at Hermione, she saw that her brilliant friend had buried her nose into her Standard Book of Spells, Grade 4.
"Gran didn't want to go," Neville said jealously. "Wouldn't buy tickets. It sounded amazing, though."
"It was," Ron said with a happy grin. "Look at this, Neville . . ." He dug out the figurine of Krum and let Neville take it. "We saw him up close as well. We were in the Top Box—"
"For the first and last time in your life, Weasley," a new voice said. Gwyn sighed as she looked around at Malfoy, flanked as usual by his two friends Crabbe and Goyle, two of the most dim-witted boys that Gwyn had ever laid eyes upon.
"You know, Malfoy, it's considered polite it most societies to be invited into a conversation and not just barge in," she informed him, stealthily making sure her wand was on her in case she needed to break up a fight.
Or join it. She wasn't too sure which one at this point.
Malfoy ignored her as his silver eyes fastened on something by Ron's trunk and a malicious smile formed across his face. "Weasley . . . what is that?" he asked, pointing. Gwyn caught sight of a hint of maroon as he grasped it easily and pulled it into view.
Gwyn grimaced as she saw the thing that was in Ron's trunk, which was a pair of dress robes that looked as though they were at least a century old, complete with lace collars and sleeves, to which the lace had turned brown due to age.
Malfoy was howling with delight as he held them up for everyone to see. "Look at this! Weasley, you weren't thinking of wearing these, were you? I mean—they were very fashionable in about eighteen-ninety. . . ."
"Eat dung, Malfoy!" Ron snarled, snatching them back as Malfoy continued to howl with laughter and even his cronies had begun to snicker. But that was really all they ever did; Gwyn wasn't even sure if she had actually ever heard Crabbe and Goyle speak.
"So . . . going to enter, Weasley? Going to try and bring a bit of glory to the family name? There's money involved as well, you know . . . you'd be able to afford some decent robes if you won . . ."
"What are you talking about?" Ron demanded as Gwyn and Harry exchanged bewildered looks, wondering what Malfoy could possibly be talking about.
"Are you going to enter?" Malfoy said slowly and carefully, as though Ron were not quite bright. "I suppose you will, Potter? You never miss a chance to show off, do you?"
"Malfoy, either explain what you're talking about or go away," Gwyn told him. "Because I for one would like to enjoy my last few hours where I don't have to put up with you living in the same castle as I am." Although the boys chuckled, Malfoy's grin became so huge that it was in danger of dropping off of the sides of his face.
"Don't tell me that you don't know," he said in delight. "You've got a father and a brother in the Ministry and you don't even know? Swann, isn't your guardian in the Department of Magical Sports and Games? She hasn't even told you? My god, my father told me about it ages ago . . . heard about it from Cornelius Fudge. But then, Father's always associated with the top people at the Ministry. . . . Maybe they're too junior to know about it . . . yes . . . they probably don't talk about important stuff in front of him . . ."
Malfoy was doubling over with laughter as he and his cronies left. Gwyn could hear their laughter all the way down the corridor.
Ron slammed the door so hard after they left that the glass shattered to pieces. Gwyn shifted her position to move her feet away from the floor so she didn't accidentally step on any glass.
"Ron!" Hermione said disapprovingly, drawing out her wand and flicking it towards the glass. "Reparo!"
Automatically, the glass shards lifted back into the glass pane and fitted themselves into the right place, sliding back together as though they had never been broken without a single nick in the glass.
"He's always making it look like he knows everything and we don't," Ron said, his temper getting the better of him. "Father's always associated with the top people at the Ministry . . . Dad could have got a promotion any time . . . he just likes it were he is. . . ."
"So what's the deal with you two?" Seamus asked, looking at Harry and Gwyn now, who were sitting in a very comfortable, very intimate position, with her wrapped in his arms and her head leaning on his shoulder. "Are you two an item or something?"
Harry grinned at him. "What do you think?" he asked mischievously and Seamus's eyes grew very big as the particular piece of information made its way into his brain.
"Congratulations!" Neville said happily, grinning at Gwyn and Harry.
Gwyn smiled at him. "Thanks, Nev," she said. Very quietly to her boyfriend, she whispered, "You know that they're going to tell Lavender and Parvati." Harry nodded, grinning. "And those two are going to have it all over the school before the end of the Feast."
"Oh, yeah," Harry agreed under his breath. "But at least it'll get it over with and we won't have people staring at us for weeks on end." Gwyn chuckled; being famous before he had even entered Hogwarts had pretty much guaranteed that Harry didn't want any more publicity than he already got.
As the day slowly started to descend into twilight and they approached the castle, they changed into their robes as the train came to a complete stop. Once they got off of the train, they ran through the rain for the carriages that would take them up to the castle, waving hello to Hagrid, gamekeeper and Care of the Magical Creatures teacher, as he collected the first-years and ushered them into the boats.
"Oh, I do not envy the first-years this year," Gwyn said, eyeing the boats as she climbed into the much drier carriages. "They'll be soaked through when they got to the castle."
She looked towards the castle as they approached it, feeling warm despite the cold rain. She was finally home.