The Hogwarts Express

(….what more can I say?)

Mulder found himself sitting down in a train compartment, with the English countryside zooming by outside the window. "Whoa," he said again. But there was something wrong. His voice was too high…and too…too English.

"Is that you, Mulder?" said the little red-headed girl sitting next to him, in a cute little English accent.

"I – I think so," he said in his own too high, too English voice. "You're Scully, aren't you? You're cute!"

"What's happened to us, Mulder?" she said. Her green eyes were large and frightened.

"Well, as a first guess, I'd say we've turned into English schoolchildren," said Mulder matter-of-factly. "Wait a second. I'm wearing glasses." He slid them down his nose and looked at her over them. "I'm blind without them. That hasn't happened since I was twelve, and I had that laser surgery."

"Wait a minute, Mulder," said the cute little red-headed girl. "Laser surgery hadn't been invented yet when you were twelve."

"Oh, golly, you're right! I guess the aliens must have done it!" He paused. "Did I just say golly?"

"Yes, Mulder."

"If I do it again, slap me. Please."

There was a pause, and Scully looked out the window. "I wonder where we're going?" she said. "Look, there's luggage on the rack up there. Two suitcases. They must be ours." She hefted down the one closer to her. "Lily Evans," she read off the luggage tag. "Well, at least it's better than Laura Petri."

"Oh, now I've got to know what my name is. We can't go around being Mulder and Scully if everybody else here knows us by something different," said Mulder. He lifted down the other trunk. "James Potter," he read. "I wonder who James Potter is."

Scully looked at him. "Someone who doesn't comb his hair," she said. She opened her trunk. "Look, a letter," she said, holding up a parchment envelope with green writing on it. "Dear Miss Evans, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry…Mulder, what kind of kids are we?"

"Well, either we're messed up because our parents are occult freaks and send us to a witching school, or we have magical powers. Take your pick."

"I don't believe this. Mulder, I really don't believe this. We have had entire adventures where we were just hallucinating the whole time. Remember the man-eating mushrooms we found in that cave? That could have happened again."

"We've also switched lives with people, and things like that. Remember that guy who took over my body and redecorated my bedroom? I hated that guy."

"Well, these do seem like our bodies, just from a long time ago. I mean, except for the accent. That's just bizarre. Anyway, Mulder, can you remember a scar that you got before you were, say, eleven?"

"Yeah. There was this one time I fell off my bike, and I got this huge cut on my leg from a piece of corrugated iron…" Scully looked at him. "Don't ask. Anyway, it was right here." He lifted the cuff of his pants to show Scully a huge corrugated scar on his leg.

She winced. "Well, it looks like we're us, sort of," she said. She pinched herself. "Ouch. And if this is a dream, it's a really real one." She started rummaging through her trunk. "So what should I call you, Potter?" she said. She picked up a stick. "It's a stick," she said. "Kids sure collect some strange things." She waved it in his direction. Blue sparks shot out of it. "AAAH!" they both screamed. Scully put the wand down quickly.

"Watch where you point that thing, Evans," said Mulder.

"That's just weird," said Scully. "Then again, Lily would be weirder."

"I thought you were talking about the wand," said Potter.

"No, that's just a logical thing to find in a witch's suitcase," said Evans. "Oh, look! Books!" She took out A History of Magic, by Bathilda Bagshot, and began to read. A few minutes later, she said, "You know, Potter, this stuff is almost plausible. It certainly goes a long way to explaining this situation we're in." She rolled her eyes. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but there just doesn't seem to be any other explanation." She looked at Mulder. "Apparently, there is a global conspiracy. But it's not to cover up aliens. It's to cover up us." She swept her arm around to encompass the train and their suitcases. "Wizards. Witches. Magical beings. People and things with extraordinary powers. Did you know that the pictures in here move?"

"Let me see that!" said Mulder.

"You've got your own copy, it's on the required booklist," said Scully.

"I'd like to see you try to explain away that," he said, staring at the black-and-white photographs in the book.

"Simple. Light-activated electronic-paper screens. We could do it with modern technology."

Just then a boy with black hair and long black robes came in. "Hello, I'm Sirius Black," he said. "Are you first years too?"

"Um, yes," said Scully. "Hello, I'm Lily Evans."

Mulder started to reach for his badge, before he realized that it really wasn't there. "Um, James Potter?" he said.

"You sure about that?" said Sirius, smiling.

"Yes. Yes, I am," said Mulder, after glancing at his luggage tag again.

"James Potter – I've heard of your family. Very rich and influential, aren't they?" said Black. "Like mine."

"I guess," said Mulder.

The compartment door opened again. "Anything to eat, dears?" asked a witch pushing a cart. It was covered in foods he had never seen before.

"Great, I'm starved," said Sirius, and took a handful of coins out of his pocket.

Mulder wondered whether he had any money. He stuck his hand in his pocket. It came out full of the same coins. He had never seen anything like them before. He raised his eyebrows at Scully.

She said, "Can I see one of those?"

Mulder handed over one of each kind.

Black said, "So your parents are Muggles, Lily? Never seen wizard money before?"

"Yes," she said. She had picked up the vocabulary as she read. "I still don't know if I believe in magic."

Mulder had been buying food from the cart. He came back with his arms full. He set it down on the seat, and opened a package that said, chocolate frog. A small brown frog suddenly jumped out. Scully quickly caught it between her hands.

"Golly!" said Mulder.

Scully slapped him.

There was chocolate on his face.

"Thanks, Evans," he said.

"What was that all about?" asked Black.

"Oh, er…" they said.

"Hey, this is a strange thing to come in a candy wrapper," said Scully, changing the subject. "A frog that moves!" She dangled it by one leg and watched it squirm, but the chocolate was melting in her hands, and the leg popped off, dropping the remaining frog onto her lap, where it moved feebly. She decided it was really chocolate, or near enough, and popped the frog's leg in her mouth. "Potter, I've seen a lot of strange things, including rains of frogs falling from the sky. But I've never seen anything this strange."

"You grew up with Muggles and you've seen a rain of frogs?" said Black. "Few wizards ever see things like that. The Ministry must be slipping."

"Oh – er – I guess," said Scully, and tried to think of yet another subject.

By the time Mulder and Scully had finished 'investigating' the Chocolate Frogs, they were both covered in chocolate. Once Scully had completely dissected hers, and announced it had died of being made of chocolate, Mulder had found the Every-Flavour Beans. He chewed on a pepper-flavored one, said "Golly!" again, and got a bigger smudge of chocolate on his other cheek. He put the jellybeans down, and decided that the chocolate frogs looked good, especially all over Scully. He would have found it sexy, if they hadn't both been recently transformed into small children. As it was, she just looked really, really cute.

Black sat, looking amused, and eating some kind of pumpkin-flavored pastry. He decided he liked these strange people. "You'd better clean up and change into your uniforms. We'll be there soon, and you don't want to be covered in chocolate when you meet your professors for the first time." He grinned at their startled faces. "Here, use my handkerchief. It's always clean. My aunt put a spell on it."

Scully took it, looking at it suspiciously. It did, indeed, seem to be perfectly clean. She scrubbed frog remains off her fingers, then examined it again. It still seemed clean. She wiped her face, and the place on her skirt where the frog had landed. "Here, Potter," she said, handing him the handkerchief. "I don't know if I believe in magic, but it sure is useful."

"Oh, that's nothing!" exclaimed Sirius. "Wait till you see some serious magic!"

They looked in their trunks and saw that their uniforms were long black robes like Black's. They managed to get them on just as the train rolled into the station, then Mulder spent several minutes, as the train unloaded, trying to get his hair to lay flat. He hated it when his hair was messed up.

A huge man greeted them as they came off the train. He towered above them, and Mulder said, "Now that's something straight out of a fairy tale."

"It's probably just a combination of a thyroid disorder and the sudden change in perspectives," insisted Scully. "You're a lot shorter than you were the last time you checked."

"Do you have to keep doing that?" whined Mulder. "We're exploring the magic of recaptured youth. It's supposed to be fun."

As the little boats pushed off from the shore, seemingly under their own power, but with no motor and no one steering, Scully said, "The problem is, I've never believed in mass hypnosis, either."