Luna Lovegood

Dean woke up early in the morning, quickly followed by Sam who was eager as ever to get back to school. They were both downstairs, trunks ready to go, eating breakfast by the time everyone else began to awaken, and listening in amusement as Mrs Weasley shouted at everyone to get up, waking Mrs Black in the process.

Fred and George bewitched their trunks to fly down the stairs, but knocking Ginny down at the same time. Harry hastily put Hedwig into her cage, and Hermione struggled to shove a squirming Crookshanks into his basket.

Nobody bothered to close the curtains over Mrs Black, despite her screaming. The noise in the hall was bound to rouse her again anyway.

Once they were done with their breakfast, Sam and Dean waited by the front door, watching all the rushing around. Sirius transformed himself into a huge black dog right at the last minute to accompany them to King's Cross, so Mrs Weasley wouldn't have time to argue.

'Leave your luggage,' she shouted over everyone. 'Alastor will sort it out, now let's go!'

At last, they left the house, following Mrs Weasley.

John took a deep breath of the fresh air. 'I'm never going back in that house,' he muttered to Sherlock.

'As you wish,' Sherlock chuckled.

They met up with Tonks a few streets away, disguised as an old woman wearing a pork-pie hat. Dean followed close behind, determined to get to King's Cross as quickly as possible; the only thing slowing him down was not knowing the way.

It took them twenty minutes to reach the station, but they had to wait for a little longer, until Mad-Eye appeared, pushing their luggage on a trolley.

They quickly unloaded their trunks, and made their way to the barrier between the platforms.

Dean went first, impatiently waiting for the right moment to slip through to platform nine and three-quarters. He stepped through, into the crowd of students and their parents milling around on the platform. He didn't wait for Sam, they would just catch up on the train, he told himself, and pushed through the crowds. Craning his neck, and standing on his toes, Dean looked around for Cas. 'He's gotta be here somewhere,' he muttered. Then, he saw a slight gap in the crowd, then Cas's messy hair, and his coat hanging from his shoulders. Dean grinned and hurried over.

'Hey, Cas!' he shouted. 'Where've you been, man? We were all worried about you.'

Cas turned around, and Dean gasped. Whatever weight he'd gained over the last year had completely melted away. Everything about him was sharp and uncomfortable. His cheekbones stuck out, he was pale and sickly looking, and he stared at Dean with dead eyes, sunken into deep purple shadows. There was a blue and bronze badge pinned to the front of his baggy robes, but that wasn't what caught Dean's eye. As Cas turned, his collar shifted to reveal bruises on his neck that were suspiciously finger shaped.

'Oh God, Cas,' Dean breathed. 'What the hell is that?' He reached out a hand, but Cas stepped backwards.

Cas raised his wand and healed the bruises, and before Dean could stop him, he disappeared into the crowd.

'Wait!' Dean shouted. He tried to follow, but there were too many people in the way, and he lost sight of Cas.

Then Sam pushed his way through and grabbed Dean's arm. 'Did you find him?'

'Yeah, but…' Dean trailed off, momentarily shocked out of words. 'That's it, we're going straight to Dumbledore the second we get back to Hogwarts. He should have done something about this weeks ago.'

'About what?'

Dean didn't answer, too angry to put it into words. He climbed onto the Hogwarts Express. Sam found a carriage full of his own friends, and Dean stamped onwards down the train, seething until he sat down in the very last one. He didn't even notice anyone else was in it until Sherlock and John joined them.

'Oh hello, Luna,' John said with a friendly smile.

Dean turned and saw a girl with waist-length, dirty blonde hair sitting by the window.

'Hello,' she said vaguely, reading her copy of The Quibbler upside down.

John and Sherlock sat opposite her, curling up in the corner together. John himself looked quite nauseous, but in good spirits. They were soon joined by Harry, Ginny and Neville.

'Where are Ron and Hermione?' Dean asked.

Harry shrugged. 'The prefect's carriage. They said they have to get instructions from the Head Boy and Girl.'

'Right,' Dean nodded. 'That's where Cas'll be then.'

Suddenly John grimaced and tensed, as though he'd been electrocuted, then held his head, eyes unfocused. 'He - he doesn't look good,' he said queasily. 'Sherlock, gimme the…'

Sherlock passed John his crystal ball.

'Should you be doing that?' Dean asked.

John squinted. 'Everything about Cas is really… is intense the word? But I just saw him… maybe I can keep going.' John stared intently at it, one of his eyebrows twitching.

Sherlock too had tensed, but instead of looking at the crystal ball, he was watching John closely, his eyes darting over John's face.

John's mouth tightened, then he went limp, Sherlock only just catching the ball before it hit the ground.

'Anything?' Dean asked.

'No,' Sherlock said sharply, holding John to his chest. 'He needs to rest.'

'All right, I'll find out later,' Dean said, rolling his eyes. 'By the way, Neville, what is that supposed to be?' He nodded at what appeared to be a small grey cactus in a pot that Neville was holding, except that it was covered with boils instead of spines.

'Mimbulus mimbletonia,' said Neville, beaming. 'It's really, really rare. I don't know if there's one in the greenhouse at Hogwarts. I can't wait to show it to Professor Sprout, I'm going to see if I can breed from it.'

'Cool,' Dean smirked.

'Does it - er - do anything?' Harry asked.

'Loads of stuff!' Neville said proudly. 'It's got an amazing defensive mechanism. Here, hold Trevor…' He dumped Trevor into Harry's lap and took a quill from his schoolbag. He held the plant up to his eyes, carefully choosing the right spot, then giving it a sharp prod with the tip of his quill.

Liquid squirted from every boil on the plant; thick, stinking, dark green jets of it. They hit the ceiling, the windows, and spattered Luna's magazine.

Ginny and Dean flung their arms over their faces, but Harry received a faceful, his hands too occupied by Trevor.

John started awake as it hit him, and Sherlock avoided getting any on him, John taking the brunt of it.

'S-sorry,' Neville gasped, wiping his face. 'I haven't tried that before… didn't realise it would be quite so… don't worry, Stinksap's not poisonous,' he added nervously.

'Wonderful,' Dean said, examining liquid all over the arms of his jacket,

Just then, the door to their compartment opened, and a pretty girl with long black hair stood in the doorway.

'Hi, Dean,' she smiled.

'Hey, Cho,' Dean grinned back.

'I thought I'd come and say hello… Is this a bad time?' she said, watching Harry wipe the lenses of his glasses with his Trevor-free hand.

'Oh… hi,' said Harry blankly.

'Um…' said Cho. 'Well… bye then.'

Rather pink in the face, she closed the door and departed. Harry slumped back in his seat and groaned. Dean did his best to suppress a laugh, but couldn't quite contain a snort.

'Never mind,' said Ginny bracingly. 'Look, we can easily get rid of this - Scourgify!'

The Stinksap vanished.

'Sorry,' Neville said again, in a small voice.

It was almost an hour before Ron and Hermione returned, in which time the lunch trolley had already been and gone. They'd polished off almost all their food when the compartment door opened.

Dean's head snapped up, but frowned when he saw it was only the two of them. 'Where's Cas?' he asked.

Ron turned around. 'He was right behind us…'

Hermione bit her lip. 'He looked just awful, Dean…'

'I knew we should have gone to get him,' Dean raged. 'I'm gonna go find him.' He stormed out of the compartment and began making his way up the train, barging into every compartment along the way.

Past Fred, George, and Lee, whose compartment was filled with an odd purple smoke. Past a compartment full of Hufflepuffs, including Sam, who gave him a concerned look.

'No, we haven't seen him,' Sam said, worry lines creasing his forehead.

Dean moved on and found another compartment of Ravenclaws. 'Have any of you seen Cas?' he asked.

A boy he didn't know answered, 'No, we thought he was with you.'

Dean groaned and left. 'He's gotta be on this train somewhere,' he muttered.

Then he approached some compartments containing Slytherins. He'd never really understood the rivalry between Slytherin and just about everyone else, but he doubted any of them had seen Cas anyway.

'What do you want, Winchester?'

Dean groaned again. 'Wouldn't you like to know, Malfoy.'

Malfoy looked at him haughtily, and lightly pressed a finger to his prefect badge.

'You don't own the train, you can't take any points from me. I'm allowed to walk.'

'We'll see about that.'

Dean rolled his eyes. 'Why do you have to be such a slime all the time, really?' He pushed past Malfoy and continued on. Cas wasn't in the prefects' carriage either, and neither the Head Boy or Girl had seen him since giving out their instructions.

Beyond that was only an empty carriage, but for the lunch trolley, and a door leading to the driver's room.

'Are you still hungry, dear?' the trolley witch said. 'Perhaps a nice pumpkin pie.'

'No thanks,' Dean sighed, sitting in a chair opposite her.

'What's wrong?' the witch asked, with a friendly smile.

Dean shrugged. 'It's just… I'm worried about a friend of mine. Something's happening to him, and now I can't find him, and it's not like he can be far, this is a train. Maybe he's hiding? But I don't know how you could do that on a train.'

The witch just smiled. 'No one can get off the train. He's here somewhere, don't worry.'

Dean didn't return the smile, instead leaned back in his chair.

'Is there something still on your mind?'

Dean hesitated, then shook his head. 'Nah, it's stupid.'

'It's not if it's upsetting you.'

Dean rubbed the back of his neck. 'It's kinda selfish though,' he said. 'I mean, obviously he's got stuff to deal with, but he said he'd help me with something, and I… I can't do it without him. What if I did something wrong and he doesn't want to help me anymore?'

'I don't think you have to worry about that,' said the trolley witch. 'He'll keep you in mind, I'm sure.'

Dean looked up and she gave him a knowing wink. Dean grinned, the ball of nerves inside him loosening. 'I guess that's okay,' he said, standing up.

'Are you sure you won't have something to eat?'

'Maybe I'll take a Chocolate Frog,' said Dean.

He munched on it on his way back down the train, very nearly losing it on the first jump. He bumped into Malfoy again on the way back, but ignored him in favour of the last bit of his Frog.

He reached the last carriage to see Luna crying with laughter, Sherlock sighing irritably, and Trevor had somehow found his way into Dolly's tank. Dean tossed the card he'd got with his Frog to Ron and threw himself down.

'Did you find him?' Hermione asked.

Dean shook his head. 'I guess he just doesn't want to talk to anyone right now.'

The weather remained undecided as they travelled further and further north. Rain spattered the windows half-heartedly. Darkness fell, and the lamps along the train flickered on. They all changed into their robes, and still Cas did not appear.

At last, the train began to slow down and they heard the usual racket up and down the train, as everyone scrambled to get their luggage and pets assembled, ready to get off. As Ron and Hermione were supposed to be supervising this, they were the first to disappear from the carriage, leaving the rest of them to look after Crookshanks and Pigwidgeon.

Dean held Pigwidgeon's cage at arm's length, his incessant hooting getting on Dean's nerves, and Luna ended up with Crookshanks' cage, narrowly avoiding a swipe.

Slowly, they moved towards the doors, Dean pushing himself ahead of everyone, hoping to catch a glimpse of Cas helping to herd the first-years in the right direction, and smiling at the thought.

Dean was surprised to hear Professor Grubbly-Plank's voice instead of Hagrid's calling for the first-years, but he already had one missing friend to deal with. His eyes swept the platform twice, but still no sign of Cas, so he stepped up to a carriage, patting the Thestrals pulling it as he did so. Ron, Hermione, and Ginny eventually joined him in the carriage. 'Here,' he said, dumping Pigwidgeon's cage into Ron's lap. He looked hopefully at Hermione, but she shook his head.

'I couldn't find him anywhere,' she grimaced. 'I hope he's all right.'

'Me too,' Dean muttered, leaning back in his seat, staring out at the grounds bathed in moonlight. As the carriages trundled up to the castle, Dean thought he saw a flash of light out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look, there was nothing there.

Welcome back everyone! Thanks to Morgan Teri Befan and Morgause Pendragon for the reviews! See you again soon!