Chapter Two: The Boy Who Lived
The first time Ellie Weasley met Harry Potter it was underwhelming, to say the least. When it came down to the truth of things, he was — after all of the stories and the theories the wizarding world had come up with — just a boy.
Just a boy, in too-big clothes and taped glasses. That was what she saw the very first time, that day on the train station from within the sheltered bubble her older siblings made around herself, Ron, and Ginny. Ellie had never been taken with the tall tales the way the other children were. She'd always found herself unimpressed somehow, like there was something missing or something else that she was waiting to hear but never did. At the end of each story she'd ever heard about the great Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, she had always been left with the same question ringing in her mind: that's it?
When she met him at King's Cross on September 1st, 1991, she thought the same thing. That's it?
And so, even as her little sister squealed and her brothers muttered excitedly about scars hidden under fringed hair, Ellie pushed the strange boy to the back of her mind and focused instead on the train and everything awaiting her at Hogwarts. It wasn't a difficult thing to do; she found herself swept up into her mother's arms in a teary send-off to school, and all thoughts of Harry Potter slipped from her mind just like they had the first five or six hundred times she had heard the story of The Boy Who Lived.
It was harder when they got to Hogwarts. When they were sorted into the same house, destined for seven years living in the same tower and attending the same classes. When her own twin brother left the spot by her side that he'd always occupied beforehand, and became the strange boy's closest friend instead.
He was around every corner, it seemed. Everywhere she went, just the whisper of Harry Potter's name echoed off the walls and took up as much space as a dragon's roar. And always there was her closest brother, right in step beside him. And always, it left a strangely bitter taste in her mouth and a strange ache behind her eyes.
Ellie wasn't jealous, see. Truly, she wasn't — though she came to understand over the years that many people assumed that she was whenever she did her best to ignore Gryffindor's most reckless trio, and she would seemingly never be able to convince them otherwise. As a matter of fact, even at eleven she had been happy for her brother, making friends of his own, friends that — for the first time in their shared lifetime — were not related to them and therefore not obligated to spend time together. Sure, she'd felt a bit left out when Ron headed off without her, but in the end that wasn't the reason for the distance she chose for herself.
And chose it, she certainly did. The distance Ellie Weasley put between herself and the notorious trio was entirely intentional; she carved out a space for herself in Gryffindor house that was all her own, and she didn't encroach upon what was her brother's and his friends' spaces. Throughout the chaos of their first two years at Hogwarts, she discovered that life was much easier that way.
It wasn't that she didn't want to interact with them, or even that she didn't like them. From what she knew of them in passing as housemates, Harry and Hermione were very nice if you didn't mind their knack for stirring up serious trouble by accident. No, Ellie avoided Gryffindor's golden trio for one very specific reason, which was this: every time she interacted with Harry James Potter, she felt like a troll was taking a broomstick to her skull. If she so much as looked at him, or even just thought about him too long or too hard, a dull throbbing would start in the back of her head. And when they spoke? It felt like someone was jabbing their quill deep into her brain. It didn't make any sense.
She'd thought it was a coincidence, at first. That very first day at King's Cross, she'd felt the ache for the first time as she watched him talk with her mother about how to get through the magical barrier to the Hogwarts Express, and she'd blamed it on the din of the platform, the shrieks of other children and their pets, or maybe the shrill whistle of the train. After all — why on earth would one person be to blame for a headache? (In the literal sense, at least; she'd blamed plenty of other headaches on her brothers in the years previous, but those had certainly been less serious situations than this.)
Ellie had entered the train for the very first time step-for-step with her twin brother, and they'd gone in search of the trunks that the elder twins had oh so helpfully loaded for them… in an entirely unknown location. By the time they finally found their things, they'd found themselves in a compartment at the very end of the train, and the haggard-looking famous boy was already sitting there quietly all on his own.
"Erm… is anyone sitting there?" Ron had asked somewhat awkwardly.
"Our brothers put our trunks up there," Ellie rushed to clarify, feeling strangely out of sorts, like she had something to prove in order to justify her presence there.
She gestured up above their heads, where their initials could be seen stamped in still-fresh paint on the sides of the aged trunks they'd received for their first year of schooling. One of the hinges on hers was rusty, and she'd covered it up with an unmoving Muggle sticker of a dragon that Charlie had gifted her. She could just barely see the edge of its wing on the corner of the trunk furthest from her.
Potter, seeming a bit overwhelmed, shook his head and made a sweeping gesture at the seat that could only be interpreted as go ahead.
"I'm Ellie, this is my brother Ron," she said, waving slightly from across the compartment.
The strange boy met her eyes for the first time, and smiled tentatively.
"I'm Harry," he said quietly.
Their eyes met — green on green — and a span of roughly two seconds was all it took for both of their expressions to drop. Ellie's was the first to go, as a response to the sharp pain that lanced through her skull the moment the boy had introduced himself, leading to a rather dramatic grimace on her face.
"Nice, er… nice to meet you," Ellie said, kneading her forehead with her knuckles.
And Harry, who had hunched in on himself in response to her pained expression upon merely hearing his name, attempted unsuccessfully to smile at her before his eyes darted away in a panic.
Such was the introduction of the eldest Weasley girl and the famed Boy Who Lived: painful, stilted, and awkward. The third inhabitant of their compartment — whose attention had been on ensuring that all of his things had made it onto the train undisturbed by their brothers — returned his focus to the other children just in time to completely miss all of the awkwardness, and he struck up a conversation with the other boy with an innocent obliviousness that helped the brunette regain his courage enough to speak.
Ellie was grateful for it, because she wasn't feeling much like speaking, herself. Instead, she settled on the seat with her knees drawn up to her chest and her forehead pressed against the cool glass of the window, seeking some kind of relief from the throbbing in her skull that only seemed to be getting worse as the minutes flew by.
The longer the boys talked, the worse she felt, and by the time the witch with the trolley full of sweets stopped by she was already feeling a bit nauseous and only vaguely registered the conversation occurring beside her. At least, until her brother smacked her on the shoulder.
"Oi, Ellie, you're missing out!" Ron cried around a mouthful of candies.
Groaning, the young witch shoved him away from her.
"I'm not hungry, Ron..."
"But Harry got chocolate frogs," the boy argued, completely missing the way she flinched as he waved one under her nose.
"Oh, I'm going to be sick," Ellie exclaimed, darting up off the bench and making a beeline for the compartment door.
Harry yanked his feet up out of her path just in time to avoid a collision, and she saw him shoot an alarmed look at Ron out of the corner of her eye.
"Is she... alright?" The brunette asked.
"Pfft, it's Ellie," Ron scoffed. "She's always been weird."
And then the girl was gone, dashing down the corridor in a desperate search for a loo she didn't even know the location of. Thankfully, her mad scramble took her past an older girl wearing a prefect's badge, who took one look at the first year's pale face and guided her in the right direction.
Ellie spent the better part of twenty minutes in that small compartment, leaning against the counter over the sink. She hadn't ended up being sick after all, but she still felt unpleasant. The cool water she kept splashing on her face seemed to be helping immensely, and she would have been content to remain there for the rest of the trip if not for the irate tapping which had begun on the door behind her.
With a regretful sigh, she cut the water off and was practically dragged out by an older blonde witch the moment she set a toe outside.
Ellie fixed a scowl on the slammed door, blowing a tendril of damp red hair out of her face with a huff. After a long moment of hesitation, she began a reluctant march back toward her brother and his new friend. The closer she got to the compartment, the more the dull ache began again behind her eyes, and her stomach began to churn. As she approached the last section of the walkway before their compartment, she began seriously debating if she should turn right back around and head for the loo again in case her breakfast decided to make a comeback after all.
In the end, her direction was decided for her by the presence of two complete strangers blocking the path before her.
"You said you had him on the train, so he's got to be here somewhere. We'll find him, don't worr— oh! Hello, I didn't see you there!"
A curly haired girl was speaking to a miserable looking boy next to her, only to cut off abruptly as she set eyes on the newcomer.
"I'm Hermione Granger, and this is Neville Longbottom," the girl said smartly. "What's your name?"
"Er- I'm Ellie," the redhead said, slightly taken aback. "Weasley, that is."
"Oh," the girl exclaimed. Then she paused, looking vaguely off foot before she nodded her head toward the compartment behind her. "He's your brother, then?"
"Yeah, he is. He's not the only one you'll meet, there's rather a lot of us," Ellie said, rather more shortly than was probably considered polite.
An awkward silence fell, and she rubbed at her forehead again, feeling far more exhausted than she ever would have expected to be before ever arriving at school.
"So, er, what is it you're looking for?" Ellie asked after a moment.
"Neville's toad, Trevor — he's lost him," Hermione piped up.
"I had him when I got on the train but now we can't find him anywhere," the boy said, staring down at the floor in shame.
"He's got to be somewhere, Neville, we'll find him," Hermione insisted. "We should work our way back toward the front agai—"
"I'll help you look," Ellie interrupted quickly.
The other two looked at her, surprised, and she shifted a little in embarrassment.
"If you want the extra help, that is," she said awkwardly.
"Of course," Hermione chirped after only a moment's hesitation. "Another set of eyes can only be helpful. Let's go!"
The girl hurried forward, determination written all over her face, and Ellie exchanged a bemused glance with the quiet boy; Neville, Hermione had called him.
"I'll help, but I won't move that fast," she said after a moment.
Neville's lips twitched — just a tiny hint of a grin. The two of them set off down the aisle side by side, and the further they got from the end compartment, the more comfortable Ellie felt. In the end, Trevor the toad was found unharmed in the space behind a toilet, and then presented to Neville unceremoniously by an extremely unhappy looking older boy who didn't even stick around long enough to acknowledge Neville's enthusiastic expressions of gratitude.
"Well," Hermione said, after they'd all stared down at the amphibian in silence for a few moments. "I'd better find my compartment again, I need to finish reviewing the Standard Book of Spells before we arrive, I don't want to forget anything before the sorting. I'll see you both at school!"
She hurried off in a flurry of hair and flapping robes, and Neville immediately whipped a panicked expression up to Ellie's face.
"Were we supposed to practice spells for the sorting?!"
"No," Ellie said, tilting her head curiously as she watched the other girl's figure disappear down the row. "I think she must be Muggleborn, if she thinks she had to study first."
"So it's… it's not a test? To be sorted? Gran's only told me about the houses, not the sorting itself," Neville said, worrying his lip with his teeth.
"Nope. My brothers Fred and George told me you have to fight a troll," Ellie started, oblivious to the way the boy's eyes widened in panic at her words. "But Charlie said they're full of it and that it's just a hat you have to wear for a minute and then it decides where to put you."
"Oh," Neville exhaled in relief. "That… doesn't seem so bad."
"You'll be fine," the girl encouraged. "Hey, do you have a compartment? Do you mind if I sit with you?"
The boy nodded hesitantly, looking surprised.
"Sure," he said quickly. "It's just me and Trevor though…"
"Well now it's the three of us," Ellie said decisively, linking her arm through his and tugging him down the aisle.
"Er… Ellie, you're, um… you're going the wrong way," Neville said.
The redhead stopped instantly, flushing slightly in embarrassment — and then she glanced at the boy's anxious expression, and she began to laugh so hard it was more than slightly hysterical. Her new friend looked somewhat perplexed by the outburst, but Ellie didn't mind. It was the first moment she'd felt truly relaxed since she'd set foot on the train.
AN: More groundwork here! Plot really kicks off next chapter, and I'm actually really excited for it. Let me know what you think!
DATE POSTED: 5/22/2021