The Australian Way

Disclaimer:- I do not own Harry Potter and related stuffs, they belong to whoever they belong to and that's not me. I swear it isn't me.

First of all, I never really intended to finish this. And I have no idea what's going to happen in coming chapters. I'm open to suggestions. The chapters will be short, so if you don't like it, don't read it. But they should come out fairly regularly.

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I stood in the middle of Kings' Cross Station in a suburb I'd rather not be in this late at night. Kings' Cross. Always rumoured to be the hang out of drunks, drug addicts, abusers, dealers, prostitutes, rapists and any other sort of not-so-good person. Perhaps this wasn't true. Were these really witches and wizards posing like this so that no muggle in their right mind would disturb them? Looking around, I wasn't sure where to go. An eleven-going-on-twelve year old girl is not someone you'd normally find at ten o'clock at night in a bad suburb. My mum was standing nearby, trying to talk to one of the gate assistants. Then I spotted her. Another girl was on the station with a huge trunk in front of her, a small smirk and an owl in a cage.

"Excuse me," I asked as politely as I thought necessary.

"What is it?" You could have added the word 'worm' onto her sentence. The tone suggested just that; that I was a worm. Or worse than a worm.

"Are you going to Hogwarts?"

"What's it to you?" she said, narrowing her eyes at me. The sooner this conversation ends the better.

"I'm going and I wanted to know if you knew how to get onto the train." My voice was stiff and rigid like I never knew it could be.

"You're a mudblood, aren't you?" she said, looking at me like I was worse than a worm. My expression must have answered that question for her. "Okay," she said slowly. "You walk that way in between those two poles and keep walking straight."

She purposely spoke clearly and politely and slowly as though I couldn't understand proper English.

"Thanks," I said, indicating to my mum that I knew where to go.

"Wait," she said, calling after me. I stopped and shot her an inquiring look. "Let me go with you. You might get lost."

I shrugged. "Mum! This girl knows where to go."

"I'm Kinara," she said.

"Jennifer," I replied. "Mum!"

"Muggles aren't allowed on the platform," she said to me.

"What's a muggle?"

"I forgot how much you don't know. Someone who doesn't have magic is a muggle. Your mum is one. She can't get onto the platform."

"Oh," I said. I turned to my mum and quickly explained to her about the no muggles rule. "Okay," I said, turning back to Kinara. "Let's do this."

The trip onto the platform was simple. Any person over the age of eleven with magic or from a wizarding family could pass through and into the magical world. They had to be careful to avoid the entrance if they didn't want to attract attention by suddenly disappearing when talking to a muggle companion.

Kinara led me onto the train and introduced me to two of her friends, Kleio and Kalos. All Greek names, I soon found out. If I went by my middle name, Keleos, we'd all have Greek names beginning with K. The train went all over the country picking up students from each of the capital cities. The train was taking students from Australia to Scotland where Hogwarts School of Witchcraft was situated. Because there weren't all that many people in Australia, they didn't have their own school of witchcraft and wizardry. The wizarding population was quite small, less than a thousand people, and the occurrence of muggle-borns was quite rare. At least, that's what Kinara told me after she managed to work out that I wasn't completely stupid like the Australian wizarding populations seemed to think muggles were.

The four of us shared a sleeping compartment. We'd be arriving in London the next day and staying for a week before going to Hogwarts. I'd missed half a year of school already, just to go to this school. All my friends have been worrying about me. I've just been telling them I'm going to a private boarding school in England. And that it is… only problem is it's a school of magic.

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a/n: anyone notice all my lovely mistakes? Review, please.