Hi all! Sorry about the two+ year delay… eheh… Anyway, I'm back now, so I hope you enjoy!
Chapters will be a bit longer from now on :)
Part 2: Adventures of the Tic Fic Bic
Chapter 19: The Hogwarts Express
Tabitha had only ventured into the Muggle world on two occasions since assuming her identity as Rosamund Malfoy. The first was her brief stint at Wool's Orphanage two-and-a-half years previously. The second was when she and Tom had ditched Walburga in Diagon Alley and gone off to ride bikes all over Muggle London.
The next time was on the first of September, 1938, when Lysander and Aurora accompanied their children to King's Cross Station to board the Hogwarts Express. The entire family had apparated to Diagon Alley, and from there they walked the twenty minutes from the Leaky Cauldron to King's Cross.
Abraxas was in front, his trunk and falcon in tow, and was followed by Rosie and Tom, who were having much more difficulty carrying their trunks than their older brother because they were both insufferable bookworms and had brought half the Malfoy library along with them. Rosie had attempted to place an Undetectable Extension Charm on her suitcase (you didn't need a license to do so in this era), but had botched it up, and though she had been able to fit as many books as she wished in the trunk, it was extremely heavy. Tom had done pretty well at the charm himself, but the sheer volume of books he had brought along with him had overloaded the charm, and his trunk was just about as heavy as Rosie's. Blue screeched repeatedly anytime Rosie's trunk hit a bump, while Tom's falcon Swift glared at innocent passerby as if they had personally offended him.
At the back of the procession were Aurora and Lysander Malfoy in all their blonde, filthy rich glory. No one in the family had bothered to put on Muggle clothing, and were instead dressed in their usual sweeping silk robes of black, silver and emerald green. The children were already dressed in their Hogwarts uniforms and robes, and if Rosie and Abraxas' startlingly blonde heads weren't eye-catching enough, there was Tom to top off the whole ordeal: black-haired, brown-eyed, stoic, and obviously either an adopted son or the product of an extramarital union.
In short, Rosie was more than relieved when they finally escaped the baffled stares of the Muggles and reached the familiar brick pillar in King's Cross. A wave of nostalgia made her lips curve upward into a bittersweet smile. The first time she'd left for Hogwarts she'd stood for five minutes refusing to go through the pillar, until Professor McGonagall, who had accompanied her and her parents to the station, had finally lost her patience and physically dragged her onto Platform 9¾.
Abraxas went first, and Rosie and Tom followed soon after. Their parents strolled at a leisurely pace through the pillar behind them, and the whole Malfoy family emerged onto Platform 9¾. Abraxas immediately shot a salute of farewell in the direction of their parents and scampered off in search of his friends. He had been named a Slytherin prefect that year - as if the house's reputation wasn't bad enough already - and had been flaunting the gleaming prefect's badge he'd received in the mail to anyone and everyone who would listen for the past three weeks. Now he puffed out his chest proudly and cast stern looks at the younger children as he disappeared into the crowd to locate his friends.
Rosie rolled her eyes and exchanged a long-suffering look with Tom as they came to a halt and began to hug their parents goodbye. Tom seemed a bit surprised when their parents hugged and kissed him as well, but not necessarily opposed to it. He had kept to his word of sneaking into Rosie's room to sleep next to her every night for the last week before they left, and during that time she'd realized he was the most cuddle-crazed maniac she'd ever met. For some reason he'd decided that the best person to cuddle with was her. She'd tried convincing him multiple times to go sleep by their parents or something, but he'd refused. The third time she'd tried this argument, he'd let slip a frankly appalling remark about their parents' sex lives, and that had shut her up completely. How did he know about that stuff, anyway? He was eleven!
Pushing the thought aside and reassuring herself that he would never be able to sneak past the anti-boy wards in the girls' dormitories - assuming the Slytherin dormitories had anti-boy wards - Rosie returned her parents' embraces.
Her father moved to help her get her trunk into the train, and upon attempting to move it, he shot her an amused look, pulled out his wand, and flicked it at the trunk to complete Rosie's failed charm. Rosie gave him a sheepish look and motioned to Tom's trunk, and Lysander laughed and fixed his charm, too, his eyes sparkling. "You'd think you two were preparing for your O.W.L.s along with Abraxas, with all the studying you do," her father remarked.
Rosie flushed happily at the comment. Beside her, Aurora was finally pulling back from showering Tom in affection, as she'd done with Rosie minutes before. Their goodbyes completed, Lysander helped Rosie and Tom lift their trunks into the train and stepped back. Tom disappeared down the corridor, searching for an empty compartment or people they knew, and Rosie offered a last wave to Aurora and Lysander before following after Tom with her now much light trunk.
After some searching, they located a mostly-empty compartment about halfway down the train. There were two students already sitting in the compartment, a girl and a boy with black ties that labeled them as first years.
Rosie smiled broadly when she recognized the boy from Ollivander's. "Riordan!" she exclaimed.
He looked up and grinned as he waved at her. "Rosie! How nice to see you again!" he said. "Looking for a compartment?"
She nodded. "There are actually four of us," she added. Augusta and Felix, also first years, had joined them in their search, whereas Hugo, Lucretia, and Valeria had already found seats and were catching up with their friends from previous years.
The girl across from Riordan laughed. "Don't worry. We're not waiting on anyone else." She motioned to the window as Rosie entered the compartment and levitated her trunk onto the luggage rack above their heads. "We've been moving for five minutes," she said.
Rosie sat down next to Riordan and rolled her eyes. "Yes, my mother does so love to be fashionably late," she said. "I'm Rosamund Malfoy by the way - just Rosie will do - and this is my brother Tom, our cousin Augusta Selwyn, and our friend Felix Lestrange."
"Marissa Lupin," said the girl with a smile.
"Riordan Ollivander," said Riordan for Augusta and Felix's benefit.
Augusta smiled and waved and Felix nodded a bit stiffly in greeting. Tom offered a brief nod of hello at the both of them and levitated his trunk onto the luggage rack, earning a raised eyebrow from Riordan. "I see you and your sister have been practicing," he remarked. "I guess you really took a liking to your wands. Which ones did you end up with?"
Rosie noticed Augusta glancing with dismay between her heavy luggage and the rack, and pulled out her wand again to assist her and Felix before handing it to Riordan. "9½ inches, beech wood." Her eyes twinkled. "I'll buy you five galleons' worth of sweets if you can guess the core within… let's say five tries."
The chestnut-haired boy smirked. "You'll regret that bet," he informed her, no doubt thinking the wand was one of his father's. He examined the wand closely, then flicked it at the window, but nothing happened.
"Curious…" he mumbled, squinting at the wand, back at Rosie, then back at the wand in a way that reminded her so much of the eldest Ollivander that she couldn't resist exchanging a roll of the eyes with Marissa.
"Unicorn tail hair, maybe? Or phoenix feather?" Riordan asked. "It's not responding to me at all."
"No, and no," Rosie chimed. "And you have three more guesses by the way."
The boy let out a frustrated grunt and began to turn the wand this way and that for a closer look, muttering different wand cores under his breath, because apparently it "couldn't be dragon heartstring: that would have bonded with me immediately!"
Rosie giggled, and Marissa smiled. "I suppose you know Riordan from his father's shop?" the girl asked.
Rosie nodded. "Yes. He did my measurements, although I'm afraid it took me a while to settle on a wand to buy…"
"Veela hair? Who the hell made this wand anyway?"
"Nope. And it was your great-great-grandfather, apparently."
"I've known him since we were little," said Marissa. "Our parents are good friends."
"Mermaid scale? They're known to be difficult to manage…"
"No."
"Which house do you all think you'll be in?" asked Marissa, and immediately Augusta, Tom, and Felix halted their conversation about which version of Exploding Snap was the most fun.
"Slytherin," put in Tom and Felix, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Rosie rolled her eyes at them. "Slytherin, I suppose," she answered. "The Malfoys have been in Slytherin for generations, or so says my mother. I'd hate to be the one to break the trend."
Augusta snorted. "You're about as Slytherin as I am, Rosie," she informed her. She turned to Marissa. "My father thinks I'll be put in Slytherin, since he's unwilling to face the facts, but my mother and I both know I'll be in Ravenclaw."
"What a very Ravenclaw thing to say," said Marissa. She tapped her finger to her chin thoughtfully. "I think I'll probably be in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff myself. I'm not really cunning or bookish, but I'm quite friendly and I've been told I'm strong-willed." She raised an eyebrow at Rosie. "So where do you really think you'll be placed, since you're so very un-Slytherin?"
Rosie shrugged and grinned slyly at Tom, who was frowning at her. "Hufflepuff, probably," she said, "or perhaps Ravenclaw. Although I don't really 'thirst for knowledge' unless it's practical. I can't stand History of Magic and the like."
"Oh, don't write it off already," Marissa said. "You've never had a History of Magic class at Hogwarts before. It might be more interesting there!"
Not if Binns is already teaching, which I suspect might be the case. Instead of what she actually thought, Rosie just said, "Maybe…"
"Oh for Merlin's sake, what else could it be?" Riordan finally exploded. "Thestral tail hair, or something equally absurd? Perhaps basilisk horn? Or is it dittany stalk, and it's just so weak it won't respond to anything? Hippogriff feather? Sphinx claw? Erumpent intestine? I know it's not dragon heartstring!"
Rosie glared at him and snatched her wand back, acutely aware that he had in fact guessed correctly within the allotted five guesses. "You knew what it was all along!" she accused, feeling a bit cross. "You were just pretending not to know!"
Riordan gave her a baffled look. "What? Oh tell me it's not actually dragon heartstring…"
Or maybe he hadn't known…? She tucked it back in her pocket. "Thestral tail hair," she told him.
His eyes widened. "Are you serious? That's so creepy though."
She crossed her arms and raised a brow at him. "No it's not," she said stubbornly. "It's quite nice."
"Yeah, if your definition of 'nice' is an undead creature," he said. "Apparently you have to be willing to face death to use one of those things. Are you sure you don't belong in Gryffindor?"
She chuckled, remembering the very Gryffindor-ish stunt she'd pulled with the time machine eleven years ago.
"Face death? Sounds perfect for me, doesn't it?" Tom drawled, and when Rosie turned to give him an exasperated look she noticed he was smirking at her with an amused glint in his dark eyes.
"He said you have to be willing," she pointed out, "but you're welcome to try it." She passed him her wand, and he examined it closely for a few seconds before flicking it at the window to their compartment.
Nothing happened, and he handed it back to Rosie with a scowl.
"Why would that be perfect for Tom?" asked Augusta curiously.
Rosie pursed her lips and gave her "brother" a warning look. "He's just being stupid," she announced, "and obviously it isn't perfect for him after all, seeing as it didn't work." Not wanting to discuss Tom's "brush with death" any further, she decided to redirect the conversation. "What are all your wands made of? Maybe Riordan can make some judgments on your character, now that he's decided I belong in Gryffindor."
Riordan grinned. "And earned us all five galleons' worth of candy in the process, might I add."
The others pulled out their wands and passed them to Riordan one by one. Riordan told Augusta that she, along with all other sycamore wand owners, would undoubtedly be sorted into Ravenclaw. Felix was informed that if he didn't end up in Slytherin, it'd most likely be Hufflepuff for him. The boy scowled and snatched his wand back, eyeing it suspiciously. Riordan confirmed Marissa's thoughts about Hufflepuff or Gryffindor. When Tom handed over his wand, Riordan gave him a disbelieving look, and glanced between Tom and Rosie once before shaking his head and handing Tom his wand back.
"You two are the most morbid pair I've ever met," Riordan announced.
Tom raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
Riordan wrinkled his nose. "Yew wands are notorious for a propensity for the Dark Arts, and for duelling in general," he said. "Although you could just be a very protective individual." He looked Tom over and gave a toothy grin. "I'd say Slytherin or Gryffindor, depending on how evil you are."
Rosie grimaced, but luckily no one noticed. Riordan was already brandishing his own aspen wand and claiming he would be the best duellist Hogwarts had ever seen.