Disclaimer: These characters aren't ours because if they were, first we'd be either enormously rich or extremely pissed off that we weren't and second, we wouldn't be likely to take the piss out of our own characters.

Three is Company

They all go to Diagon Alley to buy their school things, possibly to Hogsmeade as well, where they have pointless but humorous escapades, or just boring escapades which allow a little more exploration of character. Ron and Hermione probably fall out at some point. Term starts, the sorting happens, there is a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher (big surprise there). It is Tonks, simply because making up a new character would take too much effort.

No-one cares about this section of the story. In fact, some of us would even say that reading out a list of names in alphabetical order, while a piece of cloth randomly shouted the name of a house in between each name was boring. Perhaps this is why Harry has only attended two sortings, or perhaps this has something to do with having to make up a new song.

One thing we can be grateful for is that there is no train ride necessary this year. The Hogwarts Express is one of the great mysteries of the Harry Potter books, right up there with why four supposedly intelligent people would name their school after mysterious lumps of dead skin on pigs.

To have a train, there needs to be railway tracks, and I'm sure that one of the railway companies, at one point during the long existence of the Hogwarts Express, would have noticed railway tracks going directly from King's Cross to some place which they never got to because they suddenly remembered they had left the oven on, or something. And if the railway tracks had anti-muggle spells on them, wouldn't someone notice that there was a mysterious line of land and no-one knew what it contained? Wouldn't the Ordnance Survey and other map drawing company people notice? It would be written about in tour guides – a section of England which no-one could get into. There might even be competitions on children's TV to see if someone could get into there, and if they could they would get a free t- shirt. What would children suddenly remember? That they hadn't turned off their plastic oven? And if this much magic went into disguising the train, why not just use a magical method of transport? WHY?!?!?!

I'm getting off topic.

Anyway, there may well be a seemingly random and pointless escapade, hidden somewhere in this section, which actually has relevance later on. Watch out for these, and remember, Hermione somehow knows everything. To save you the effort of sorting out the meaningful events from the pointless ones, the following event is meaningful.

"Oh look," Draco Malfoy drawled, because he knew of no other way to speak. "It's Potty, Weasel and the Mudblood." Pansy Parkinson, nearby, swooned at the ultimate wit and originality Draco had used in coming up with these hilarious nicknames.

Harry, Ron and Hermione had been on their way to charms. Unfortunately, Ron is uncommonly easy to anger, so even talking about supposedly neutral topics, like pencil sharpeners, one has to be careful about phrasing in case he takes it the wrong way. For example 'pencil sharpeners are really useful' can easily be seen as a threat, perhaps to sharpen his fingers, or maybe he could take it as a derogatory comparison to himself, as he is not as useful as a pencil sharpener.

This is another strange thing about Harry Potter – the use of quills and parchment. The reason that no muggles use either quills or parchment is because they are, in fact, inferior to biros and normal paper; this, amazingly, is the reason they are no longer in use. It's a bit like Harry suddenly saying 'forasmuch as' instead of 'but' simply because he's a wizard.

Getting back to Ron being uncommonly easy to anger, you can always tell if he's really mad because of the colour of his ears. In fact, Ron's whole emotional range, limited as it is, can be determined by the shade that his ears go; if he's embarrassed, it's a light pink, but if he's furious, they go all the way to crimson.

Harry is slightly different – he can usually withstand abuse, common and often justified as it is. But, (sorry, I mean, 'Forasmuch as this is true,') Draco Malfoy was a special case, and Harry utilised most excuses to fight him.

Hermione sighed as she watched the radiation from Ron's ears go down in frequency (this is Hermione – she's got to have a nerdy way of saying 'got redder', even if she hasn't done physics since she was 10). She was never sure why the got so angry the whole time; she had slapped Malfoy once, but that was once! In seven years! Not every five minutes that she spent in his company! Actually, to be fair, they could sometimes hold back their anger for 6 minute stretches.

"You make one more crack about my family/me being poor/my scruffy personal appearance (delete as appropriate), and I'll kill you!" Ron shouted.

"But I haven't said any of those things yet!" Malfoy protested after a stunned silence. Protesting in a drawl is quite a feat, but Malfoy managed it.

"Yeah," said Ron, simmering, his ears magenta, "but you were going to."

Draco could think of nothing to say to this, because he probably had been about to drawl some snide comment on one of the three topics Ron had just mentioned. Instead, he turned to Harry, pulled out his want, pointed it at Harry and laughed sinisterly. Obviously, these happened in chronological order, because no-one has the co-ordination to do all of them at the same time.

"Wait," Harry said, pathetically, "I don't understand. I thought you were insulting Ron, not trying to kill me."

"It's the customary fight scene, Draco drawled, exasperated, "I can't fight Ron – he only exists for comic relief. I have to fight you."

"He's got a point, you know," Ron agreed.

Just then, Filch ran up to them. "No fighting in the corridors!" he shouted triumphantly. "I'll see to it that you're hung upside-down in chains for this!"
"That would be so much more threatening if you hadn't already failed to do it several times," Harry commented.

"Yeah," Ron continued. "As we know you can't actually do anything to us, why don't you at least threaten something more gruesome, like chopping our fingers off and forcing us to eat them?"

"Or giving us third degree burns in sensitive areas?" Harry added, before turning to the younger readers, I mean, students, and assuring them, "By sensitive areas, I of course meant the face and nothing else at all."

Filch stalked off after this, muttering to himself about how kids today are never satisfied with they had and asking the world in general what had happened to the good old days of mild sadism?

"Right," said Harry, "so we're fighting because I'm the protagonist and you're the antagonist?" Draco nodded. Harry, who had only learned that the protagonist was the main character and the antagonist was the one who made the protagonist's life difficult a few days ago, was annoyed that no-one had mentioned something about his impressive use of vocabulary.

While he was pondering this, Draco hit him with a disarmament charm – 'Expelliaramus!' Harry, caught completely by surprise, was unable to do anything. Draco also seemed surprised, as if he hadn't expected the spell to work. He summoned Harry's wand and advanced menacingly on Harry.

"What are you going to do – kill me?" Harry asked. Draco didn't reply, but when he was about two metres away from Harry, he chucked his wand back at him.

"Oops!" he drawled, loudly, turning towards Crabbe and Goyle. "How strange – an involuntary muscle spasm in my arm has inadvertently allowed Harry to regain his wand. Well I am annoyed about that, because it definitely wasn't deliberate." He pronounced each word very carefully, as if to make sure that neither Crabbe nor Goyle missed anything he said. "What a shame," he continued in the same clearly-pronounced, loud drawl, "it is time for class so I do not have time to regain Potter's wand, which would have rectified my completely accidental muscle spasm." He paused, but, seeing that people still looked suspicious, he shouted "Mudblood!" at Granger and ran off.

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Hoped u liked it despite random long rants about trains and such things. If so, review and tell us. If not, review anyway, coz we have only got a grand total of one review so far, which makes us very depressed.

Here is a review song (to the tune of the Phones 4 You jingle (I don't care that probably no-one but English people know this jingle, and even then, only sad ones who watch too much TV))

To all our readers:

This is a song from me to you,

JK Rowling, please don't sue,

That goes for her lawyers too,

And the rest of you – please review!

Review, right now,

You know that you want to!

Next chapter only comes

If you review!

(and a little rhyming couplet to finish it off)

Actually, this is not true,

But please review.

Ahem...