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Welcome back
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"Yeahhh, well I'm glad that's over" Ron Weasley stepped off the Hogwarts Express and stretched with a yawn. Hermione rolled her eyes and shared a silent laugh with Ginny Weasley as they too disembarked.
"You know, I remember those compartments being a lot bigger when we were first years," Harry observed as he also stretched his cramped muscles.
"I am just glad you two won't miss the Sorting ceremony…again!" Hermione teased. The boys shouted protests that circumstances were well beyond their control in the previous years, but Hermione and Ginny waved off their excuses as trivial with small laughs and flicks of the wrist.
"Firs'years! 'on now! Follow me!" The unmistakable voice of their friend Hagrid, the Games Keeper at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry called the new students to the shore.
'I wonder what he'll have us dealing with this year," Ron wondered, shoulders drooping slightly. Harry patted him on the shoulder and they began walking towards the carriages that the older kids took to the school instead of the boats.
"He means well Ron. Anyway I don't think anything can be as bad as those 10-legged fire-snits" Harry said. Ron winced. The snits had looked disturbingly like spiders and Ron HATED spiders.
"11 legged fire-snits would be worse!" Ron protested as he climbed into the carriage.
"Say, aren't they awfully tall for first years?" Ginny piped up suddenly. An older, blonde girl was sitting in a boat with a quaking first year student.
"I see more than one," Harry remarked. She definitely looked older than the other students in the fleet of boats on the lake, and there were three other taller shapes among the first years in the boats. Hermione got up from her seat and peered out the window.
"I saw her on the train sitting with some Ravenclaws, but now that you mention it I haven't seen her before," she admitted, "But I don't know who the others are. The first years at the station seemed to be normal height to me,"
The coach suddenly lurched forward, sending Hermione into Ron's lap.
"Hey! Watch it!" Ron exclaimed.
"Sorry," Hermione apologized and slid into her seat.
"S'ok. Well, I guess we'll see at Sorting," Ron said with a shrug.
"I heard on the train that we have a new Defense against the Dark Arts teacher!" Ginny Weasley said.
"Yeah, something about her not being human? Some Slytherins were grousing about it," Ron said. Then his eyes lit up, "D'you think maybe she's a veela?" The others rolled their eyes. "What?" he asked.