A/N: Ok, I have no idea what happened, but I couldn't
open this on my other disk to edit when I got it beta-read the first time. So here it is, all nice and corrected.
Disclaimer: Harry & Co. belongs to J.K.
Rowling. Tem, Alan, Alyssa, and Fay all
belong to ME!!!
And now…
HARRY'S
NEIGHBOR-PART 3
The
Hogwarts Express
Tem
woke before the sun on the morning of September 1st. While usually a very late riser, he could
not contain his excitement for what was coming later in the day. Today he was going to Hogwart's School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry.
While he waited
for his parents to wake up, Tem dashed around his room putting the finishing
touches on his packing. He had a trunk
full of everything he needed for school:
robes, books, quills, ink, parchment, and his wand. On top of all that, he set his owl, Ogilvy* (Gill for short). In another bag, aside from his quills and parchment, Tem carried
his current journal and about 20 other empty notebooks and pens. He always wrote in plain black spiral-bound
notebooks and black or blue pen. But
the pens couldn't be ballpoint. Those
just didn't have the same personality that the rolling-ball pens
did. Even though personality did have
the tendency to leak more.
Tem had already
filled two bookcases with these notebooks.
Some had everyday events in them, some with stories and poetry, and some
with sketches. Tem even had a section
of a bookshelf set aside for his more fragile books (i.e. the ones Dudley
caught him with on the playground and ripped up in defiance of
intelligence. These were painstakingly
taped together and tucked safely away).
He loved each and every one of them.
He also had a feeling he'd be writing home fairly shortly for some new
ones.
Excited and
nervous, Tem paced his room for a while after he was done packing. He watched the sun rise out his window and
waved to his neighbor Harry, who was already up too. Harry seemed just as excited (if not more) than him to get back
to school. Tem couldn't blame him, not after
seeing how the Dursley's treated him.
The worst thing was that Tem felt responsible for keeping Harry there
when he could easily have go to Ron's house for the last bit of summer. But Harry had stayed, insisting that it
wasn't just his promise to Dumbledore to watch over Tem that had kept him at
Privet Drive. Tem thought he was just
trying to make him feel better.
So here they
were, getting ready to go to King's Cross Station. It was finally time. The
Patterson's were taking Harry to the station because the Dursley's didn't want
anything to do with Hogwarts. (Needless
to say, they were now pointedly ignoring the Patterson family. Tem's parents didn't care, though. They had never liked their neighbors
anyway.)
Tem and Harry
piled their stuff in the car, squeezing their trunks in back and setting the
owls between them in the seat. Hedwig
gave Gill a suspicious look. She had
gotten used to Tem's attention and felt threatened by this new presence. Gill gave a friendly hoot, which appeared to
startle the older bird. She returned it
tentatively, then they settled into a comfortable silence.
As they drove,
Tem read over his Hogwarts letter for what seemed like the billionth time. This time, something caught his eye that he
hadn't noticed before. "Hey, what's all
this Nine and Three-quarters business?
I've been to King's Cross before and never noticed a platform Nine and
Three-quarters."
Harry
smiled. "You'll see when we get
there. It's kinda hard to explain. Just think of it as a part of the whole
Hogwart's experience."
************************************************************************
Half
an hour later they were there. Mr. and
Mrs. Patterson helped the boys toss their luggage onto trolleys, then rolled
their way to the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. "Ok," Harry instructed.
"It's really easy. Just run into
the wall."
"Uh…Harry…" Tem
stuttered, looking at the frighteningly solid barrier.
"Shh."
Harry silenced him, and pointed to the barrier. "Watch that kid. The one
with the owl." Sure enough, no sooner
had Tem seen the kid than he had vanished, right into the solid wall. "It's really easy," Harry said again, "just
lean against it, and when you're sure that no muggles are looking, turn to the
side and push. You'll fall right
through."
Tem
watched a few more kids do it before he got up his nerve to try. "Could you go first?" He was embarrassed to ask, but didn't feel
at all sure of even this menial magical task.
No matter what had happened at all this summer, he still didn't feel
like a wizard.
Harry just
smirked. "Don't worry. I'll be right behind you. Just watch out for Ron's older brothers as
you go in. They like to trip first
years sometimes." Tem didn't seem at
all relieved at the prospect of being embarrassed in front of Harry's
friends. Harry watched as he bade
good-bye to his parents, walked nervously up to the barrier, flitted his eyes
across the crowd of uncaring muggles, and sunk into the wall.
There was a
slight whooshing noise as Tem fell through.
He stumbled and fell flat on his face, looking up from the ground to two
pairs of beaten up shoes, which led to two robes, and finally two identical
redheads laughing hysterically.
Tem heard the
whooshing sound behind him again, and a familiar voice reprimanding the
twins. "Shut up, George," came Harry's
voice. "You, too Fred. Tem's off limits. He's a friend of mine.
Don't worry, there'll be many more first years where he came from." The laughter stopped and two pairs of hands
bent down to help Tem up.
"Sorry man,"
said one with a large "G" printed on his robe.
"We didn't know you were a friend of Harry's. I'm Fred, and this is George."
The other one, with a large "F" on his robe, looked down and examined
the letter branded on his chest and protested.
"Wait, I thought I
was Fred. Mum must have switched our
robes again. Can't she ever get us
straight?!" Tem looked in confusion
between the two. He had only been at the
station for a few seconds, and already older wizards were making fun of
him.
Harry whispered
in his ear as the two kept arguing about who was who. "Don't worry about them.
Like I said, those are Ron's brothers.
They're the biggest pranksters in school, but they're good friends when
it comes down to it. The one on the
left," he said, pointing to the boy with the "G" printed on his robe, "is
Fred. You can tell because his eye
always twitches a little when he tells a lie.
Which is almost all the time, so it's pretty easy to tell them apart."
Tem smiled his
thanks for the information and picked up the bags that had fallen when he
tripped. Luckily, Gill was ok, though a
bit ruffled. Tem turned at the sound of
footsteps behind him. "Harry! Tem!!
You'd better hurry up and get your stuff on the train. Same compartment as always!" Hermione came running up.
Tem greeted her
warmly; Harry smiled and hugged his friend that he hadn't seen since Diagon
Alley. "How's it goin', 'Mione? I missed you!"
Hermione smiled at
Tem, and then turned to Harry. "Good,
good! I visited Viktor a few weeks
ago. Bulgaria is really a beautiful country. Interesting culture, too. Anyway, we ended up breaking it off, but
don't tell Ron that yet. He's still
insanely jealous of the two of us." Tem
noted a sparkle of mischief in her eye as she continued in a lower voice (one
that Tem was probably not supposed to hear) "So, have you heard from Snuffles
lately?" Harry shook his head slightly,
and then frowned towards Tem, who tried to make it look like he hadn't been
listening.
"I'll tell you about
it later," Harry said through gritted teeth.
Hermione nodded, and they all set off for the great scarlet train in
silence.
***********************************************************************************************
Tem
followed the two through the crowded train into a nearly empty compartment
towards the back. The only occupant
leapt up at their entry. "Harry! I would have thought you were dead if it
weren't for the owls! How did you
survive a whole summer with the Dursley's?" Ron's words rushed out as he gave
Harry as warm a greeting as he could while still looking "manly".
Harry
laughed at his friend's worry for him.
"It was ok. Not like it was
great or anything, but I did have Tem to keep me company, so that was pretty
cool. Besides, I had to do it for
eleven years before school, so why not now?"
Tem couldn't help but feel proud that he had made Harry's summer
better. Ron turned to Tem, appearing to
notice him for the first time.
"Hey! How's it going? Excited to be on your way to Hogwarts? Wait'll ya see the Gryffindor common room! It's great!!" Ron gave him that big smile that Tem noticed as a characteristic
among all the Weasley's. He felt a
little intimidated at this assumption that he would be in the best house that
Hogwarts had to offer.
"You
don't know that he'll be in Gryffindor," Harry cut in, "even though that would
be great. But he's a really smart
kid. I could see him in Ravenclaw just
as easily." Tem felt the train lurch
forward as they finally got underway.
He also felt his stomach lurch, a little bit of motion sickness left
over from Gringotts. Running over to
the window, he quickly shut the screen.
He certainly hadn't felt brave enough for Gryffindor when he was getting
sick over the side of the cart.
"Anyway," Harry
continued, "We'll see tonight, eh?" He
nudged Tem with his elbow. Tem just
nodded numbly and edged away from the window.
At that moment,
the compartment door slammed and three older boys walked into the car. One of them was smaller with blonde hair and
what seemed like a permanent sneer marked across his face; the other two could
simply be described as brick walls. The
little rat-faced one spoke up.
"Well, well,
well. It looks as if Potter has himself
a new groupie," he looked pointedly at Tem.
"And what's your name, little one?
Think that following Potter around is going to make you more popular, or
did you just come for his autograph?"
The boy's voice was as nasty as his face. As he and his friends broke into a high-pitched laughter, Tem
felt his face flush. He wanted to
respond with a really biting comeback.
One that would send the kid out of the compartment, never to come back
again. He clenched his fists into balls
and screwed his face into the meanest look he could muster, and let the kid
have it…
"iii…ee…aaa…" The string of vowels that escaped his mouth
instead of the biting remark was almost as embarrassing as the laughter that
followed it. Luckily, (or not,
depending on the viewpoint,) Harry came to his rescue.
"Shut up,
Malfoy! What's the matter, you can't
find any good insults to throw at me, so you go for my younger friends? Tem isn't going to take any crap from you
this year, and neither am I. So why
don't you just go crawl back into that hole of yours and Leave. Us.
Alone." Malfoy stopped laughing,
and looked instead like he had been struck across the face.
"Fine. But you had better watch yourself this year,
Potter. And that little groupie of
yours, too," he shot over his shoulder before slinking out of the
compartment. His brick-like companions
thundered out after him.
When he was
gone, Tem breathed, "Wow. Who was
that? I mean really, I thought Dudley
was bad until I saw him."
"It's ok," Ron piped
up, "That's just Draco Malfoy, the most annoying kid the wizarding world ever
produced. He basically evil, but stupid
enough to not be that much of a threat."
"Yeah," Hermione
agreed, "Just ignore him and he'll go away most of the time. Come on, let's teach Tem to play Exploding
Snap!"
So, a few hours
and many fewer arm hairs later, Tem excused himself to find the bathroom. He worked his way through several
compartments before finding the one that the bathroom was located on. On his way back, he recognized the kid from
the robe shop talking to some other kids his age, and stopped to say hi.
"Hey," he
tapped him on the shoulder, "You're Alan, right?" Alan half-turned at his name, seeming annoyed at being disturbed
from his conversation. His eyes grew
wide at the sight of Tem, though, and he immediately stopped what he was doing.
"Hey," He
yelled, "Guys! It's that kid I was
telling you about!! The one that's
friends with Harry Potter!!" The rest
of the table turned their heads to look at him for the first time. *Well, * Tem thought, *Malfoy may have been
nasty, but he sure was right. If you
want to be popular in this place, just claim to know Harry. *
Outside of his
head, though, Tem was turning red again.
"Err…hi. I'm Tem. Tem Patterson." The group immediately broke out into a squabble of questions.
"Do you really
know Harry?"
"What's he like?"
"Is his scar really
gross looking?"
"Does he ever talk
about what happened last year?"
Tem couldn't
take it anymore. Along with motion
sickness, he was coming to find that he had an overwhelming
claustrophobia. He finally burst. "THAT'S IT!! What's so special about Harry, anyway?! He's just a normal kid, why does everyone treat him like he's
some sort of celebrity?!" There was a
collective gasp from the table, and then dead silence.
"I told you guys,"
Alan muttered under his breath. To Tem
he said, "You mean you really don't know?"
Tem shook his head. "Ok. Sit down, and we'll tell you about the real
Harry Potter."
Tem felt all
this was very strange and kind of ominous, but really wanted to know what
everyone kept making such a fuss about.
Harry never said anything about his past, and Tem had just figured that
it wasn't his business. But now he was
really curious. He sat down in a booth
along with two girls, one with short, bright red hair, and another with long
brown hair.
"First of all,
introductions," Alan began, "Tem, this is Alyssa and Fay," he said pointing to
his companions in turn. They nodded in
acknowledgement. "So how long have you
known Harry? I mean, you can't know him
and not know his story, can you?"
Tem stammered,
he wasn't used to being left out of the loop like this. "I met him this summer. He lives next door to me in the Muggle
world. "He's lived there longer than I
have, but I didn't know until I got my letter this year because our neighbors
didn't want us to know about him. He
never talks about his past or anything.
He always avoids anything that has to do with his parents."
Alan nodded,
and Tem was happy that this seemed like a satisfactory explanation. "Oh.
Ok. Well, basically, Harry
defeated the most powerful dark wizard that the world has ever seen when he was
a baby. You-know-who (don't ask me who,
because I won't say his name) killed his parents, and left that scar on Harry's
forehead. He's rumored to have come
back to power since last year, and Harry dueled him. And he only came out with a scratch on his arm! Another kid was killed, though." Tem's face darkened in anger.
"You're lying! That can't possibly be true, he would have
mentioned something about it!" He cried.
Alan just shook his head.
"Sorry, but I don't
lie about things like this. And that's
not all. Remember a few years ago, when
that convict, Sirius Black, escaped prison?"
Tem nodded, brow furrowed in confusion and fury. Alan continued. "He was after Harry.
Apparently, he helped You-Know-Who kill the kid's parents, and wanted to
finish him off. Don't know whatever happened
with that, though. It all just quieted
down after a while. Maybe it was just a
rumor. But the scar thing is definitely
true," he finished in a matter-of-fact voice.
The girls nodded in agreement.
"Whatever," Tem
said coldly, standing up, "I'm going back to talk to Harry. He'll tell me the truth." With that, he walked out of the
compartment. Alan just shrugged.
Tem picked his
way across loud kids; some fighting, some laughing, some places small
explosions popped up where some played Exploding Snap. He finally stopped outside of the
compartment that Harry and his friends were staying in and listened when he
heard them talking.
"So really," he
heard Hermione say, "What does Sirius say?
Has he found the others yet? Is
he coming back this year?"
"I don't know if he's
coming back," Harry said, "but I do know that he's staying with Remus for right
now. As for the others, I think they've
found one or two. Hagrid finally came
back, though. I think last week. They managed to make peace negotiations with
the giants so that they wouldn't go back to Voldemort's side." Tem didn't know why, but he felt himself
cringe at Volemort's name. Deciding he
had been gone too long, he opened the door to the compartment.
"Hey!" Harry
said, looking up in surprise, with a trace of guilt in his voice. "We thought you had fallen in! What took you so long?"
Tem tried to look
embarrassed and said he had gotten lost.
Harry looked at him skeptically, but didn't say anything. Finally, Tem had to say something. "Ok.
This weird kid I met in the robe shop at Diagon Alley told me this crazy
story about you and some dark wizard killing your parents, and how you got your
scar. And then he told me that
Sirius Black was trying to kill you! I
can't believe the lies he was telling!
It was disgusting!!!"
Ron and
Hermione gave Tem the same you mean you don't know look that the others
had. Harry looked disgusted, too. "I can't believe he said that about
Sirius!! I'll kill the kid!!" At Tem's confused look, he added, "Oh. But the other stuff's true. Sirius Black is my godfather. We helped him escape from the dementors a
few years ago, and now he's out trying to get together some friends to stop the
rise of that Voldemort again. But you
can't tell anybody," He said this airily, with an amused look on his face as if
he had just announced the arrival of dinner or something.
Tem sputtered
out a few words, but then collapsed in a chair, and shut his mouth. He honestly had nothing to say for once in
his life. Hermione shot a dirty look at
Harry, and came and sat next to Tem.
"Tem, I know it's a lot to take a first, but it's all true. I don't know why Harry didn't tell you, he
was probably just waiting for the right time," here she shot another What-on-Earth-were-you-thinking?
look in Harry's direction. "You just can't say anything about Sirius to
anybody, you promise?" Tem nodded. Hermione broke into a grin. "Great!
Now, you'd better hurry up and get changed into your robes. We'll be there soon."
Tem hadn't
noticed before, but all three of them had changed into their long black school
robes. He did so himself in a smaller,
empty compartment. So many things
rattled around in his brain. It was
like he had just been told he was a wizard all over again. It was all new information, sifting through
the cracks of his brain, trying to sink in.
How could Harry, the everyday boy-across-the-street have so many
secrets? He had so many questions he
wanted to ask, but didn't think he'd ever be able to put them all into
words. He finished changing just as he
felt the train slow, and finally come to a stop.
There was a
bustle of robes flocking everywhere, trying to get where they needed to
be. Tem faintly heard a deep voice
bellowing over the crowd. "Firs'
years!!! Firs' years this way!! Leave yer trunks on the train. Firs' years, this way!"
Tem followed
the general crowd that seemed to be going the same way that he needed to, and
swept toward a lake. He barely
registered the black forest that was to the left side as the castle came into
view. It was breathtaking. The soft glow from torches emanated from the
windows, reflecting the castle and mountains into the lake. In the lake itself, he could see dozens of
boats waiting to be filled. "Four ter a
boat!" the deep voice cried, "Only four ter a boat! Hurry up now! Four ter a
boat!"
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\That's it!!! On with the sorting! And don't forget to review when you're done!
