An: Next chapter's the boggart so review with what you think our intrepid protagonist's will be, and leave any thoughts/suggestions on what you think it should be.
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Axel leaned back into his seat's worn upholstery as the skies rained down overhead. Across from him Hermione leant her head against loosely curled fingers. Beside her Ginny was leaning against the tiny window looking out at the grey sky overhead, watching the many turrets and towers draw near.
The ride up to the school was warm and dry, but outside rain was pelting down. Axel felt a little sorry for the first years who'd be crossing by boat.
The train ride had become a yearly tradition, though for Axel one of his own volition rather than enforced necessity. The other students couldn't just step through a swirling portal after all. His body, and more importantly, newly regained heart might not be able to take it if he tried to cross worlds but he had more than enough to get around.
Well his young body probably could, but his heart was much too unstable and fragmented to make it if he tried for anything longer than Malta to Cairo the long way.
Ginny and Hermione of course took the train with him, hence why it had become a tradition. He wasn't adverse to giving them free rides, something they both took advantage of since Hermione could only manage small jumps, and he hadn't got around to teaching Ginny yet –she wasn't quite old enough, and Hermione had only started recently. His newly acquired protégé was going to have to wait.
Mentorship, as he'd surprisingly found out during his Organization days, was something he rather enjoyed, and was surprisingly good at.
It was also a slight bonus that unlike Roxas and Xion who he'd occasionally attempted, key word being attempted, to teach a little subtlety and finesse when it came to their fire spells, and spell casting in general, Ginny didn't have a quite frankly ridiculous affinity for Light or suffer from occasional power surges and a lack of control for anything that rated under a mild explosion. Level a building but leave the one next to it standing? Sure, but light a birthday candle? Goodbye eyebrows and anyone standing in a ten metre radius.
Really it was ridiculous how terrible either of them had been for anything that didn't involve shooting out giant laser beams of light that wasn't ridiculously, and totally needlessly, pointlessly over the top and excessive in every way.
Quite frankly it was a little unnerving to not have to duck and drop anything he was carrying every time he felt the magic building up from someone he'd taught.
The train rides were usually spent playing card games and inventing strange rules for each match, like having to eat a random mix of mystery sweets, bought from the trolley, mashed together into a paste every time a card was drawn, or sharing the bizarre spells they'd found, like a variant of the Slug-vomiting Charm that instead of slugs made you vomit whole lemons.
This time though the conversation had somehow turned to magical transport, specifically the Express itself, and from there to the magical carriages that waited for them at Hogwarts and the beasts that pulled them.
The concept of a thestral's invisibility to those who hadn't seen death was rather interesting, which for Hermione of course translated too absolutely riveting, as did most any magical phenomena.
Of the beasts only Ginny remained blind to the sight –well now partially, Hermione had previously had the dubious pleasure of having seen off an aunt, and had come upon more than one unfortunate site in their traipsing.
Out of curiosity and slight boredom they'd spent most of the trip switching back and forth between the train and the parked carriages as they experimented with finding what exactly triggered the shift. It was commonly stated that all one needed was to witness death, what wasn't stated anywhere however was what kind of death. That left the question what exactly would count, a frog, a fly?
Did the death have to be that of a sentient; would something like an enchanted suit of armour or a portrait count? What about things like certain magical plants?
Of course they weren't going to try anything as grand as knocking off a fellow human to observe the difference, so a variety of small insects from roaches to gnats was where they started off. Unsurprisingly their various squashings hadn't done a great deal; none of them had been really expecting them too.
From there they'd gone on to small mammals, Ginny having volunteered her brother's rat after the conversion of Hermione's recently captured marsh toad to potion ingredients had failed to elicit a response; the thing had kicked up a storm when the grinning redhead offered it up to Axel's large and rather vicious owl who'd shared the dangling entrails with Hermione's new cat in a heart warming show of friendship.
None of them had felt particularly guiltily about it, Ron's lack of interest for it was a wide known fact, and it wasn't like they were just randomly butchering a rat for the fun of it; unfortunately unlike the toad rat's were rather lacking as prospective potion ingredients so to the owl it went.
They hadn't expected the disembowelling of Ron's rat via owl to do much either, or as they reasoned, if the death of a rat was enough there'd be a whole lot more thestral sightings giving how many students owned cats and various other pets that might find the furry critters to be a nice snack.
Bizarrely after Hedwig had finished gulping down the now deceased rat Ginny could now make out a distinct kind of shadowy blur where she'd previously perceived nothing.
Further experimenting with another rat, this time provided by the ever able Weasley twins the subjects of their second attempt –performed when they arrived, had failed to garner any reactions.
Since they didn't really care, and their allotted pointless-curiosities time was now spent they'd left the numerous questions to be answered whenever –if ever, they picked up the subject again.
Later seated at the Slytherin table for the Start-of-Term Feast Axel watched as the Malfoy boy recounted the search of The Hogwarts Express.
On October thirty-first Sirius Black broke into the Gryffindor Tower.
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An: Hedwig ate Pettigrew, the end. He's definitely not coming back; except in the form of pellets.
Either since he was in rat form, or because she didn't know/or mentally acknowledge/or think of him as human Ginny didn't get the full effect. So until she sees anyone else die her ability to see thestrals is sort of in limbo.
As for why they can use Dark Corridors even though it's been mentioned that Axel's body can't yet handle them, basically the gist is that using a corridor to travel short distances is a lot less of a strain than using them to tear pathways through the nothingness between worlds.