Shortly before the train was about to leave, I spotted the Weasleys, their red hair distinctive even among a couple hundred other witches and wizards. The twins and the youngest boy headed toward the rear of the train, while Percy split off to head toward the front, since he was the only one I actually knew my own age, I headed that way as well. With my longer strides, I caught up to him as he was about to climb up into one of the first train cars. "Percy," I greeted, catching his attention.

"Wha– Dresden. I mean, Harry. Hello." He looked awkward for a minute, glancing behind him at the car, realizing I might be his responsibility. As an extreme introvert, he probably wasn't looking forward to being my social connection. Somewhat lamely he explained, "I actually have to meet with the other prefects." He absently polished the shiny badge pinned to his robes, while thinking. "You should meet with Wood. He's one of our other roommates. If you find the twins, they'll be able to find him. I'll be by on rounds later."

I let the kid off easy. "Fair enough, thanks Percy. Enjoy your prefect meeting." He nodded, grateful to have been released, and leaped up the stairs into the compartment. Since it looked like the train was about to get moving, I climbed up into the next car, and started heading down the aisles, expecting the Weasleys to only be slightly harder to find on the train than they were off.

The trains I'd been on previously, in my admittedly limited experience, had been set up more like airplanes or buses, with open-air carriages of rows of seats and an aisle in the middle. Some of them might have been especially fancy, with the seats alternating back and forward so groups could face each other, maybe with a table in between. I hadn't actually been on one with this style, where the aisles ran down one window and most of each car was enclosed compartments for around six people (maybe more, if they were very friendly).

I wondered if they actually had enough cars for all the cliques. Based on the kids that already had robes on with their house colors displayed, everyone seemed to be grouping pretty heavily based on house. There didn't seem to be a lot of mixing between ages, either. With apparently an average of ten kids per house per year, that would be too many for one compartment even if everyone was comfortable squeezing in. In fact, the cars were probably exactly the right size to make it obvious who was extraneous to the in groups. Could school administrators even do math?

Importantly, for someone like me who had precisely zero friends but liked to affect an aloof and unconcerned air, was there space to sit if I gave up on trying to insert myself into this fraught hierarchy? There were a lot of reasons that Elaine and I hadn't mixed with the other kids even when we attended public schools. But this kind of thing was dramatically easier to deal with when you had at least one friend who also didn't have a clue.

By the time I had twisted myself up into a ball of anxiety about how this was a bad idea, I spotted the twin redheads in a compartment surrounding a black boy their age, peeking into a cardboard box he had on his lap. A girl their age sat across the compartment, trying not to look interested. One of the twins happened to see me stop and look curiously, suddenly changing his point of interest, "Oi! It's Dresden."

"He might have killed a guy," confided the second twin to the other two.

"Has aurors confronting him in the Alley and everything. It's very noir," the first embroidered the tale.

"He's in fifth year, so even if it's not true that room will hopefully have more to talk about than studies and quidditch this year," the second explained, finishing the thought.

Annoyed that they were so casually spreading rumors that I was a murderer, especially due to how close to home they hit, I decided to step in, "All exaggerations. I'm actually quite boring. I'm sure Percy's shiny prefect badge will remain the talk of the room for months."

"And he's American?" asked the girl, clearly barely sidetracked.

"He might be Canadian, Patricia," insisted the boy with the dreadlocks. "Say 'about' and 'poutine.'" Wonderful. The twins had another friend that was just like them. No wonder Percy had hidden himself up in the front with the other responsible kids. When I just smirked, not about to out my nationality for his amusement, he asked, "Want to see my spider? It's enormous."

"Does it talk?" I asked, deadpan. Everyone looked at me trying to decide if I was stupid or crazy. "The ones that tried to eat me in the Forbidden Forest a couple weeks ago talked."

That stunned them all into moments of blissful silence as they considered all the implications. Point, Harry Dresden. Hopefully that would be the rumor instead of me killing my mentor. The beautiful moment was ended when Patricia asked in an awed tone, "Are you a cowboy? You should have a hat."

"Don't really like hats," I replied instantly, out of reflex. Before they could continue grilling me, I asked, "Percy said I should find one of our other roommates, Wood, and that you two might know where he is?"

"We haven't seen him yet," one of the twins considered.

"But he might be with the girls," the other suggested.

"Katie Bell is going to be on the Quidditch team this year, so Angelina and Alicia went up the train to find her."

"You probably passed right by them."

The boy with the spider realized that I had no idea who any of those people were and explained, "Look for the two black, athletic girls talking about sports with a brown-haired white girl."

I nodded at him in thanks and headed away, hearing the twins thank their friend, "Good save, Lee. We never want to be like, 'you know, the black girls' but it's okay if you explain it. Why are you looking at us like that?"

I remembered passing a group of that description in the previous car. They did, in fact, stand out among the otherwise pasty collection of British witches and wizards. When I got back to the compartment they'd been sitting in, the door was closed and the windows were blocked by three boys who probably thought they were being quiet enough to not be heard in the aisle.

"Fresh meat this year, huh, Bell?" growled the middle boy. "Wood have you trying to fill Charlie Weasley's broom, or you going to join these two and get outplayed by me?"

"Yeah, right, Flint," one of the girls responded. "All your chaser line is good for is trying to drag things out long enough for Higgs to find the snitch. When's the last time Slytherin beat us on goals?"

"It's going to be this year," Flint countered. "Copper was a mudblood ponce, but he could take a hit. Nothing but you three little girls, now? It's going to be like getting run over by this train."

"You're certainly as slow as this train," one of the girls snarked.

"Just watch your back for bludgers, you snotty bitch," one of the other boys asserted, "be a shame for one of those pretty faces to get knocked into the pitch at 80 miles per hour. You know what 'degloving' means?" I did, and my adrenaline started to flow as I thought back to the boggart of Elaine.

"Big talk from someone that can't even hold his bat properly."

"Maybe we'll just show you right now," said Flint, leaning what appeared to be a not-inconsiderable bulk away from the window and, presumably, into the girls' faces.

I'd been content to let the girls dominate in the battle of insults, but I couldn't take the chance that this was going to go as far as Flint was implying it was about to. I flung open the cart door and yelled, "Hey assholes!"