All three jumped and spun around, clearly not even aware that I'd been lurking behind them for a minute. "Who the hell are you?" demanded Flint. From the front, he looked like someone shaved a caveman and dressed him in modern clothes. All three of their hands were straying to pockets, and I shook my shield bracelet free of my sleeve just in case.

Flint was burly, but he was shorter than me, and I was able to get a good look at the girls who'd been backed against the side of the train behind him. I grinned at what I saw and met his eyes, "I'm the guy that yells 'Hey assholes!' to give the girls you were messing with a chance to get wands out and pointed at your backs." They glanced over their shoulders and saw I was telling the truth, and started to grab for their own wands before I interrupted with, "Uh-uh! How sure are you those 'little girls' don't know any good curses they're really motivated to use right now?"

"Imagine the fun we could have the rest of the afternoon after some body binds," one of the girls suggested.

The bullies were obviously trying to think of a comeback, so I stepped out of line of the doorway and said, "This is the part where you run off before you make it any worse."

After another moment trying to work up the courage to do or say something that didn't get them hexed, they growled and left. Once the last one had cleared the doorway and line of fire from the girls, Flint snarled back over his shoulder, "Watch your back, new kid."

I snarked after him, "You know, the last guy that said that to me hadn't just been run off by thirteen-year olds, so it had more authority. You need to work on your timing." While that probably just made it more likely they'd come after me at some point, I'd never been good at keeping my mouth shut. Fortunately, they kept going into the next train car. "Sorry about that, ladies," I said to the three quidditch players. "I don't like to butt in uninvited on someone else's showdown, but…"

They looked like they were coming down from their own adrenaline surge after the confrontation, and one of the older girls allowed, "No, it's appreciated. You can distract bullies for us any time you want." She suddenly realized I was wearing Gryffindor robes and asked, "Who are you?"

"Harry Dresden: new transfer student. I'm rooming with Percy and Wood. I haven't actually met Wood yet, but the twins said he might be sitting with you three."

"I'm Angelina Johnson, this is Alicia Spinnet, and she's Katie Bell." I nodded, trying to remember the names. "I think Oliver said he was getting a compartment toward the back of the train. We… umm… didn't want to talk quidditch strategy for all nine hours of the trip. Which we would, if we were sharing a compartment with Oliver." She realized how that sounded, and explained, "He's very nice. But it's hard to get him to talk about anything but quidditch, especially if you're on the team."

"I'll take my chances, I guess. Sad that the twins sent me in exactly the wrong direction, but I guess it worked out. See you ladies at school," I nodded, and set out.

Behind me, Alicia muttered, "That's weird. They're usually spot-on when you ask them where someone is."

I wove my way back down the train, and found the twins again in their car. A little dark-haired boy was in with them asking, "You haven't seen Trevor, have you?"

"Your toad?" asked one of the twins. "No, sorry Neville."

"No worries. He'll turn up, eventually. Gives me an excuse to meet people, at least," the boy admitted. "Speaking of which," without missing a beat, he turned to me, sized me up, and gave a little bow that somehow didn't come off completely pretentious, "Neville Longbottom, pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Harry Dresden," I acknowledged, still amused at how tiny the first years were. Since that didn't appear to be quite enough social nicety, I asked, "What house are you hoping for?"

The twins chuckled, and one explained, "If Neville doesn't get Gryffindor, his family is going to go spare."

"Not as bad as if Ron doesn't get it," Neville demurred. "I think they're half expecting Hufflepuff, though, so I have a fallback." He shrugged, "Well, needs must with more toad-assisted gladhanding. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dresden." He nodded and continued back up the train, poking his head into the next car and asking, "Excuse me, have you seen a toad…"

"Cute kid," I said, then noted, "Girls say Wood's the other way. They didn't want to talk about quidditch for nine hours."

"Interesting," one considered.

"Usually younger kids to the back," the other explained.

"Let's go check it out," the first continued.

"I don't want to talk about quidditch for nine hours, either," the girl, Patricia, admitted. "I think I'll go find Alicia and Angelina."

"You coming, mate?" they asked Lee.

"Nine hours of quidditch or compartment of girls all to myself," their friend pretended to consider. "You have fun looking for Wood." Everyone else had been using my roommate's name normally, but for Lee it was clearly a euphemism. He and Patricia then headed out.

Heading toward the back of the train, it wasn't long before we bumped into a lady with a snack cart, leaving no room in the aisle to get by. We all had to awkwardly crush into a random compartment, muttering apologies to the group of older kids whose room we'd invaded.

The twins seemed to recognize one of them, a guy that looked a little bit like a bulldog, and the first said, "Oh, hey, Tinwhistle. We never got a response from you about that proposal we sent."

"We could be great together," said the other, trying to sweeten whatever deal they were referencing.

"I'll think about it, now get out of my car," the boy they were talking to grumbled in a Cockney accent.

We squeezed around the snack lady's cart and continued. As we walked, they felt the need to explain what I'd seen. "Tinwhistle is an amazing conjurer."

"Barely scraped by on his other OWLs, but if you need something created from nothing…"

"...he's your guy. We're hoping to get him involved in pranking this year."

"But he doesn't take us seriously yet."

"He will, though!"

Finally, they seemed to recognize Wood in one of the compartments in the final train car, sitting talking to the youngest Weasley boy, Ron. My other roommate was pretty burly for a 15-year-old, with hair that was nearly buzzcut, which was interesting with so many other wizards going for longish hair. He was using hand gestures while describing some kind of aerobatic maneuver in a Scottish accent that would put McGonagall's to shame. He caught sight of us through the window and pointed out, "Oi! Fred and George! You left my replacement keeper alone back here."

Ron puffed up at that description, and then gushed, "We were talking about how Ireland managed a shut out at the last playoffs!"

"Our brother's as nutty about quidditch as Oliver," a twin told me, sotto voice.

"If we'd known they were together, we'd have gone and sat with the girls, too," the other groaned.

"Don't you two play quidditch?" I asked, as we slid into the compartment and closed the door behind us.

"Sure. But we have an eclectic and varied slate of other interests," the first said, louder, trying to get the jocks to cool it.

The second took that as his cue to introduce me, "Oliver Wood, Harry Dresden. You're roommates now."

"Transfer student," I explained to Oliver's raised eyebrow.

"Fair enough," the Scotsman allowed. "Do you play quidditch?"

I shook my head, "The flying teacher. Moonshine, I think?" Everyone but Ron snickered, as I remembered, "No, Hooch. Anyway, after I took a placement test she said I wasn't allowed on a broom again without Madam Pomfrey on standby and everything within sight covered in cushioning charms."

Disappointed, Oliver said, "That's a definite no then." He turned to the twins and asked, "Do we have any possibilities for a seventh? I'd rather play Katie as chaser, but she could do seeker if we absolutely can't find anyone better…"

After what had to be two hours of quidditch talk, I finally thought I had assembled enough context clues to ask a very important question. "So the game doesn't end until the seeker catches this golden ball, and that's worth 150 points?" Off of their nods, I asked, "Won't that always decide the game unless one team is just drastically better than the other one?"

"Charms on all the balls," Oliver explained, clearly having fielded this question before. "They're designed to create a kind of runaway winner effect. The more points you get up, the more the quaffle and bludgers will help your team out. A team that's slightly better will tend to pull away dramatically, if they can keep their lead for long enough. And the snitch tries to hide until a team is close to 150 points ahead, so it becomes a last-second race to see if you can get it to keep your team from getting shut-out."

"I think our equipment is broken though," one of the twins grumbled.

"That almost never happens at school matches," the other explained.

Oliver shrugged, "We play with what we have, just like the school brooms. New gear is expensive, and a lot of the budget goes to getting a new snitch for every game. It's good practice for the professional leagues, where it does usually work properly."

He was about to launch into an even more technical explanation, when Neville showed back up, being led by a tiny girl with bushy brown hair. She asked without formality, "Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one."

"We've already told him we haven't seen it," said Ron.

"Us too," said one of the twins.

Neville just shrugged, apologetically, as the girl seemed to have noticed the distinctive Weasley hair. "Oh, are you brothers? That must be helpful. Nobody in my family's magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased of course, I mean—"

Before she could get going on a sentence that might not ever finish, Neville whispered, "Breathe, Hermione." He then introduced her to the rest of the compartment. "This is Miss Hermione Granger. She's a muggleborn, but has already read all of her textbooks. She's hoping for Gryffindor too."

We introduced ourselves around the compartment, not sure what to think of the high-strung young witch, when she had a thought, "While it's far too advanced for me, of course, I had read about something called the summoning charm, and that it was taught in fourth year, and I thought that maybe if one of you already had fourth year, it might work to find Trevor?"

"Did that have any full stops?" I chuckled at the girl. I looked at Oliver and he shrugged. I looked at Neville and he shrugged. "You said his name was Trevor? How big is he?" Neville nodded and made a gesture to describe what had to be a hard toad to lose. "What do you think the chances are that he's not on the other end of the train?" He gave me the so-so hand gesture. I gave him a warning look that this was risky. We both looked at how excited Hermione was to see magic. I shrugged, focused on my intention, charged magic into the effect, and said, "Accio, Trevor!"

I felt something catch hold onto the other end of the magical probe and stuck my hand into the aisle just in case. After a few moments, Ron, curious, stuck his head out into the aisle to look, just precisely in time to get smacked in the face by a flailing, flying, four-pound frog as it completed its journey into my hand. I handed the distressed but seemingly whole familiar to Neville as Fred and George laughingly dragged Ron off the floor and back into the compartment.

"Did you just do that without a wand?" Hermione nearly shrieked, "Only I heard that wandless magic wasn't taught until NEWT level and even then it was extremely difficult to do with advanced spells, and it looked like you didn't even need do the wand gesture—"

Neville again politely tapped the girl on the arm to get her to breathe, but also seemed impressed. I shrugged, "Apparently the way I learned is a lot different than the normal Hogwarts curriculum…"

I hadn't expected my ride to Hogwarts to be crammed seven into a compartment explaining magical theory to two 11-year-olds while four other people alternately talked incessantly about quidditch and broke into the other conversation when something actually interested them.

Oliver seemed like a classic jock, only interested in maintaining good enough grades that he was in no threat of getting disqualified for sports. He did seem competent magically, and admitted he was hoping I would help him study because Percy was hard to follow.

Hermione was a tiny magical prodigy waiting to explode into the school. Everyone, particularly his brothers and roommate, planned to force Percy to mentor the awkward little girl that was so much like him in so many ways. We had to keep her from rushing to go get paper to take notes, promising that this was just a conversation, but we'd go over it again for her later.

Neville seemed to have had a pretty well-rounded elementary magical education, including a frankly impressive understanding of plants for a first year, but was hopeless when it came to things muggle. I suggested the pureblood wizards and the muggleborn witch consider a culture swap. While the boy had a pretty good polite mask, I thought he was secretly thrilled to not be alone on the train. I could relate.

Ron seemed like the opposite of Percy. Where the older brother clearly had a lot of coping strategies for the twins' antics and seethed about being picked on, the younger brother just seemed resigned to the abuse. I'd never had brothers, so I couldn't exactly decide how much I'd hate so much attention from a family member, or just appreciate being included in any way. Other than being really interested in quidditch, which he probably couldn't even play until Oliver graduated if he was sorted Gryffindor since there wouldn't be a spare position for him to fill, he seemed not to have anything that really excited him.

The twins were a lot.

It was getting fairly late in the day when the platinum-haired little boy I'd seen at the station walked down the aisle, flanked by two fat boys who might make for intimidating muscle once they finished puberty, and boldly opened the door into our compartment. "I thought my Gryffindor count was low, introducing myself down the train. I'm Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. This is Crabbe and Goyle."