Celebwen Telcontar: Here's one that's a bit longer for all of you!
Balrog: Longer? Goodie. Now I have to stay here longer. You know that my bath is getting colder and is starting to crust over!
Celebwen Telcontar: Well, I'm not the one with a bath in Kilauea!
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Horace and Dudley wheeled their trolleys towards the barrier between Platforms 9 and 10. Both were rather young, about eleven or thereabouts. The Horace nodded at a flock of people, about seven all told, all with red hair and rather shabby robes. The eldest looking one was holding a cage with an owl in it.
"Perfect Prefect Percy!" one of the two clones said loudly. The other mentioned something about a toilet seat, which caused Horace to look strangely at the group.
"Are you like, a crazy person?" Dudley asked the clone who spoke about the toilet seat.
"I'm sure many people would believe so," the clone responded.
"Oy, Gred, stop tormenting the ikle Firstie!" the other one called. Then the one who spoke up began to badger the two of them. "You're First Years, are you? Well there are some things you need to know about Hogwarts."
"First," the one called "Gred" began, "You have to know the Sorting process. It includes a long and involved battle of wits with a fully-grown mountain troll, and then an intellectual discussion with one of its cave-dwelling relatives."
"Then you have to get a giant to make friends with you, and speak to you on behalf of his leader."
"Then, and only then, can you fight the mountain troll in a battle to the death."
"If you win, and only if you win, you get chosen for your House by the Professors."
"Fred, George! Behave yourselves!" the matronly woman with them scolded. Horace's eyebrows were now in his hair, having risen sometime after the intellectual discussion with a cave troll was discussed. Dudley looked rather frightened. "I'm sorry, dears. Do you need to know how to get onto the platform?"
"No, thank you, madam. I appreciate your willingness to aid us," Harry said, almost doing his impression of a rather old-fashioned courtly bow. The mother of the children looked rather impressed. Dudley ran at and through the barrier.
"Go on, then, Percy, you first." The oldest boy walked primly towards the barrier, his back ramrod straight and his nose probably touching the stratosphere. He vanished behind the barrier, and Harry waited for the others. "Now you, Fred."
"I'm not Fred, I'm George," the boy replied, sounding thoroughly miffed.
"I'm sorry, George. You go next."
"Just kidding, Mum, I really am Fred," Fred replied, going through the barrier, followed half a second later by George. The woman grumbled beneath her breath, and Harry stifled a laugh. Then, the youngest boy, Ron, ran at the barrier and disappeared, followed by the girl and the woman, and finally by him.
"Harry, where were you?" Dudley asked.
"Being civil and letting them go first," Harry explained. A boy with brown hair and Muggle clothes ran through the gateway, looking around, obviously a Muggleborn. With a yell, he crashed his runaway cart into Harry's, sending it flying. The boy squawked, trying to pull himself off of the ground.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! Can you forgive me? I'm sorry!" the boy stammered. Harry set him upright, brushing off the dust that got on the boy's clothes.
"I'm fine. Don't worry. You can come with us. My name's Harry, and this is my cousin Dudley. What's your name?"
"Anthony. Anthony Goldstein. I've read so much about Hogwarts, but this isn't what I expected, but it's just so interesting, don't you think?" The boy's eyes gleamed, and his stance practically screamed "Ravenclaw!" to Harry. The boy was obviously a bookworm.
"It is. Come on, let's get a compartment!" The three of them walked towards the train. It whistled loudly, and Tiger screamed, beating the cage with his wings.
"Easy, Tiger! It's alright!" Dudley called to his frantic owl. One of the twins came galloping over, and helped Anthony with his trunk, then Dudley and finally Harry.
"Hello. Who are you three?" he asked.
"I'm Harry, this is Anthony and Dudley. And you are?"
"Gred Weasley. Good to meet you! Are you from Wizarding families?"
"I am. My full name is Horace James Evan McGonagall McPhaerson, the Heir of the McGonagall Line."
"How are you the Heir to the McGonagall's if your last name is McPhaerson?" the clone asked.
"Because my grandmother, Minerva McGonagall, is the Lady of the McPhaerson's. My parents are dead, and so I'm the next in line. You're from the Weasley clan, I know, but how far up are your parents in their hierarchy?"
"You know… I really don't know. I think the Prewetts, my mother's family, asked for asylum from the Weasleys a few decades ago, but I don't know for certain. Good question, Harry. Maybe Bill would know…" Gred said softly. "Well, more ikle Firsties to torture!" The red-haired obvious troublemaker did a cartwheel out the door, leaving the three of them there. A few minutes later, the train started moving. The momentum toppled Dudley onto a seat, and Anthony fell on top of him and then struggled to the opposite seat, blushing.
The door opened, admitting the youngest red-head from the platform.
"Hi. Can I sit here? Everywhere else is full."
"Certainly," Anthony said. The boy brought in his trunk, holding a rat in his hand. The sight of the creature caused Tiger to go mad, screeching and beating at the cage, clawing at it with his feet.
"Tiger! Calm down! You already had breakfast!" Dudley cried to his owl. The creature didn't listen, still beating the cage like mad, and Dudley finally threw his robes over the cage, finally silencing the mad bird. The fourth boy looked startled at the Tiger's reaction, eyes wide. "Sorry bout that. I'm Dudley; this is my cousin Harry and our friend Anthony. Come on in."
"Er… Yah. I'm Ron, Ron Weasley, and this is Scabbers." Ron sat on a seat as far from Tiger's cage as possible. Hedwig looked reproachfully at the covered owl cage, then glared at Ron, or possibly at the rat sleeping in his hand.
"Don't look at him that way, Hedwig," Harry said to her. "You've had breakfast." The white owl hooted at Harry, hissed at Ron, then turned her back on them and fell asleep. "Sorry about that. She's usually very good-tempered." Harry was confused as to his owl's reactions to his new friend. When Ron looked at her, she was fine with him, however when she looked at Scabbers, she hissed and seemed violent. She obviously didn't like the rat.
"I don't know what's wrong with Scabbers, but he's been in my family ten years."
"Ten years?" Harry asked.
"Rats usually live about two to three years, don't they?" Anthony asked.
"Then he's probably some magical sort of rat, isn't he?" Ron replied with a question. Harry shrugged, and Hedwig screeched at the ancient rodent. Harry smacked the rat with his wand. Specialis revilio!, he cried, making the rat squeak and run into an unused part of the compartment, then running out with a rather large common toad chasing after him, croaking impatiently.
"Where'd that come from?" Dudley asked. The door opened, and a round faced boy peeked in.
"Trevor! There you are! I've been looking for you!" The boy snatched the toad up, and held him close. The boy's foot came close to Scabber's tail, and the rat squeaked then ran up to the benches, only to be screeched at by Hedwig. The boy, after introducing himself as Neville Longbottom, came into the apartment to keep from being run over by the sweet trolley. Harry bought a goodly amount of sweets for everyone there, and everyone began to eat and speak at the same time, speculating on what Hogwarts was going to be like.
Suddenly, the compartment door slid open.
"Hullo. What have we here?" a cold voice asked. Harry and his friends looked up to see a boy with a pointed face and white blonde hair. "Word's going up and down the train that the McGonagall Heir is here. So it's you then, is it?"
"Yes, that's me."
"I see. Well, I've some advice for you. You don't want to be going around with the wrong sort, they can't help you lead your family. I'm Draco Malfoy, the Heir to the Malfoy name, and I can help you there."
"I think I can figure out the right sort myself, thank you," Harry replied just as coldly, ignoring the boy's outstretched hand.
"You'll pay for that, McGonagall. You insulted my mother, and we don't stand for insult," Malfoy hissed. A pair of overlarge thugs came into the room. "We've already had our sweets, but we're still hungry, aren't we lads?" The leftmost thug reached for a Caldron Cake, and was thwarted by Scabbers, who latched onto his knuckle.
"Ah! It's a rat! It's rabid! It's a rat! Get it off, get it off!" he shrieked, shaking the strong-jawed rodent around until momentum forced the rat to let go. The rodent smacked the robes around Tiger's cage, and the savage owl tried to bite the rat. The three bullies left, Malfoy sneering. Ron picked up his rat, and checked him over for injuries.
"I don't believe it, he's asleep! Hey, my brothers told me a spell to change his fur color!" Ron announced, raising his wand. The compartment door slid open again, and a bushy-haired girl poked her head in.
"Have any of you seen—Oh, you have him. Good. Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see it then!" The girl came in, and Ron blushed.
"Sunshine, Daisies, Butter-mellow, turn this stupid fat rat yellow!" Ron declaired, smacking the rat with his wand. The rat squeaked and his whiskers caught fire slightly, and then went out on their own. The rat glared up at Ron, then looked at Harry with an odd expression in his beetle black eyes. Hedwig shrieked.
"Are you sure that's a real spell?" the girl asked. "I've tried loads of magic, and its all worked for me. Anyways, I was just up at the conductor's station, and we're almost there. You'd better put on your robes or you'll be late. It looks like yours don't fit," she said, indicating Ron, who blushed. Anthony shivered.
"Something's wrong. I don't feel all that well…" the boy said softly.
"I'm sure it's just having too many sweets," Dudley said. "I used to have sweets all the time, and would get stomach aches every day, until my Mum found out that I was a Wizard. She kicked me out of the house then."
"Sorry," Anthony grumbled. His complexion was slightly paler than it should have been. "It's probably the sweets." The train soon began to slow down, and the girl, after introducing herself as Hermione Granger, left to get her own stuff and get into her robes.
Professor Joshua Schmidt walked gingerly through the hallways. Something was wrong here, something that should be fixed. His back was one big chill lately, ever since the new Potions Master was hired. He had sent off a few letters to his grandmother, who had replied with some cryptic yammerings about storms and "The President rising again", whatever that meant. Sometimes it was a pain to have a Seer in the family, especially one who had been through the Muggle holocaust. Half the time, his grandmother, Raquel Fritz, would talk about unknown things, her prophecies only revealing themselves after the prophecy was finished.
He hoped that he wasn't getting inklings of his grandmother's Gift. She hadn't had a decent night's sleep since she developed her Gift, often yelling in the middle of the night and waking everyone up. She had been born in 1901. When she had been thirty five, she had been found with her family, all Jewish, in 1936. On her birthday, April 29, of 1945, when she was turning 44, she was released by the Americans. Her husband was dead, she was rail thin, and her children were all dead as well. She had been a Muggle, but a cocktail injected into her in Dachau had somehow made her a witch. Thus her lastborn child, born from a marriage to an American officer who decided to live in Germany, was a Half-Blood witch, or perhaps a Muggleborn, and thus Joshua was also magical.
But that wasn't what he was here to do. He was here to teach the Hogwarts students Transfiguration. He was an Animagus himself, and he was able to teach more than most people would be.
A flare of a black robe caused Joshua to look up. The new Potions Professor was striding down the hall as if he owned the place, his moustache trying unsuccessfully to hide his gleeful grin, and his dark eyes snapping behind thin lenses. The fair and unmarred face of the new Professor caused Joshua to go cold. Whoever he was, Joshua didn't trust him as far as he could throw the blasted castle! Who was this man? He made Joshua want to run and hide, in a cesspool if necessary, to get away from this man! He described the man to his grandmother in the last letter, hoping she would be able to identify him. If not, then he would just have to use his own independent study to find out who this man was.
Raquel Anderson nee Fritz, Dachau survivor, stared at the page of parchment. She rubbed the blue numbers tattooed into her left forearm, her blood running cold. Joshua's descriptions were perfect. How the Hell did Heinrich Himmler get a teaching post at Hogwarts?! She had developed magical powers after she had been injected by some serum in Dachau, and now Himmler was a teacher. How many children would die this time? How many teachers would be tortured to death because of their ties to the Light? Would the school even survive? Raquel folded up the letter, and heard the owl screech in panic. It pounded at the glass windows, which were inexplicably closed. A bitter scent wafted into the room, coloring the air a light purple. The 91 year old woman gasped her shock as her lungs began to seize up. Someone found this out, and was now killing her with poison gas. How very ironic. She was dying the way she very well could have died in her 30's. God, please watch out for Joshua, and for those children. They need Your help, she prayed as she breathed her last.
Celebwen Telcontar: Well, how was that?
Balrog: Poor Raquel.
Celebwen Telcontar: I agree. Well, death is a section we all have to go through. Please review, people! Thank you for your continued support, Fibinaci and Airlady!
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