Chapter 3—Meeting Ben Coley
September 1st rolled around quicker than she would have believed. Every morning after her first visit to Diagon Alley, she would wake up, roll over, and re-read her letter, just to make sure none of it was a dream. She would also spend her spare time holed up in her room, poring over the various spell-books she had been assigned, though she was too scared to actually take up her wand and try them. But soon, after mere repetition, she had already begun to remember the incantations, though she couldn't keep straight which spell they went to, and she would mouth them to herself at idle moments: alohomora, wingardium leviosa, and so many more…
Platform 9 ¾, Hogwarts Express, 11:00. Platform 9 ¾, Hogwarts Express, 11:00. It became her mantra. She would pace around the house, slightly anxious with anticipation. Platform 9 ¾, Hogwarts Express, 11:00.
On September 1st, she helped her mother pull her trunk downstairs, opening it once again to ensure that she had all her robes and spellbooks and various other odds and ends she had packed along, then ran down Tabitha and stuffed her into her kennel. Tabitha had always hated her kennel, and made her unhappiness known to all by yowling loudly. Several people on the underground gave her an odd look, as though she was purposely torturing her cat by transporting her so.
She came to the station and wheeled her trunk-and-tabby-laden trolley to the barrier between Platforms 9 and 10, both of which were devoid of trains. Her mother looked around, puzzled.
"Where's your train, dear?" Ryan pointed to the solid barrier with one hand, and pulled out her letter in the other.
"Through there. It says it all right here: 'To board the platform, please walk through the dividing barrier to Platform 9 and 10.' Simple."
"That sounds dangerous, are you sure you're reading that correctly?"
"Can I come, too?" asked Jon excitedly. Her mother held him back with a firm hand.
"Absolutely not. We'll just say good-bye to Ryan out here. Good luck, honey. Study hard, do exactly as your professors tell you, and don't forget to write!" Ryan nodded and gave her mother and brother a last hug and kiss. Then she faced the barrier square-on and took a deep breath. Steeling herself, she set off somewhat timidly. To her amazement, she passed right through, as though under an archway, with no difficulty at all. The first sight to greet her eyes was a large, maroon train engine, belching smoke. Above it was a sign bearing the words "Hogwarts Express, Platform 9 3/4." Grinning gleefully, she wheeled her trolley to the nearest car, but encountered her first difficulty. Her trunk was heavy, far too heavy for an eleven-year-old to lift on her own. She gave a valiant effort at it, however, heaving and pulling, getting it inch by painstaking inch into the car. Her palms, growing increasingly sweaty, lost their grip half-way up, and the trunk began to slide. Ryan panicked and tried to get a better hold, but it was useless. Just as she was about to mourn the loss of her hard work, the trunk steadied, pausing in its descent. Confused, she looked up for the source of this.
Two bulky boys had caught it, one on each corner, and were holding it in place. In the very middle of her line of vision stood a coldly elegant boy, perhaps a year or two older than she herself was, with slicked-back blonde hair and a pointed face.
"Do you need help?" he asked, his voice as cold as his face. She disliked his manner, but had to admit that help would be very beneficial. She obviously couldn't do it herself. She stepped out of the way and wiped sweat off her forehead, nodding gratefully. The boy nodded once. "Crabbe, Goyle, get her trunk." The two boys obeyed mutely, lifting her trunk up and pushing it in the car with strength Ryan envied. Unsure as to what his motive was for helping her, she put on her best polite face.
"Um, thank you very much."
"First year, are you?" Not so much as a "You're welcome." Her mother would have disapproved greatly. But she nodded, not wanting to give a lecture.
"Yes. Are you?" He laughed, though Ryan didn't see what was so funny.
"No, I am a second-year. My name's Draco Malfoy."
"Uh, nice to meet you, I suppose. I'm Ryan Laptiske." The boy, Draco, frowned thoughtfully at that.
"You don't say? My aunt knew a wizard by the name of Lapitske. Any relationship, perchance?" Ryan shrugged, highly doubtful.
"I don't know," she said uncertainly, "It might have been my grandfather…"
"But what about your parents?" he asked bluntly.
"My mother's a Muggle. I don't know about my father." Malfoy's halfway-friendly air dropped like a lead balloon.
"You're a half-blood. Crabbe, Goyle, let's go. I have better things to do." Ryan frowned. Now that was just flat-out rude. What was half-blood, anyway, and why was it so important? Crabbe and Goyle shoved rudely past her, and that was the last straw. She yanked off her shoe and threw it in a fit of temper. It nailed one of the brutes—she wasn't sure which—lightly in the middle of his back. He turned, but she had already slammed the door shut. He started yanking on the door as though his goal was to rip it from its hinges.
"Crabbe," called Malfoy, "come here. Don't waste your strength on the likes of her. The mudblood." He spat out the last word as though it were poisoned. She could hear Crabbe laughing thuggishly as he ripped her sandal to pieces. Hurt and confused, she slowly made her way to a vacant compartment. Once inside, she let Tabitha out for a stretch and looked through her trunk for any of the toys she had packed. Unfortunately, she had put them all on the bottom, so she merely balled up a pair of socks, knowing that would keep her cat amused for hours. Then she found another pair of shoes to wear and debated what to do with her single sandal. She finally just tossed it in her trunk, preferring to sort it out later. She sat for a moment, restless, still thinking about Malfoy's words. They didn't mean anything to her, but the tone in which they were said made her suspect that they were meant as the worst insult he could think of.
Finally, to get her mind off of it all, she made sure the compartment door was securely closed, then pulled the first spellbook that came to hand: A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration by a fellow named Emeric Switch. She opened it and flipped through the bewildering series of spells, etymology, and background information before finding a spell that didn't look terribly difficult: Matches into needles. But she didn't have any matches. She flipped through again, and stopped at one that she actually had the materials for: Transfiguring hairpins into quill feathers. She pulled a hairpin out of her own hair and laid it on top of the trunk, then consulted the book again for the incantation. Pinnula transformus. She tapped the hairpin and said the words. Nothing happened. She frowned and poked it again with her wand, as though that might help. Still nothing. She hadn't really expected that to work anyway. What was she doing wrong? Another check to the book told her.
"Oh! Tap two times, then you say the words. I get it!" So she did so. She tapped two times. "Pinnula transformus!"
She now had a semi-feathery hairpin. The transfiguration hadn't been complete. Instead of being disappointed, she inspected her creation and giggled. "Wicked." She inserted it into her hair again, and opened the trunk to replace the spellbook when several things happened at once. Tabby's socks, which she had been playing with happily, were batted into the trunk. She dove after them. Before Ryan could rescue her cat, the train started with a jerk, slamming the trunk shut, and a boy ran into her compartment and locked the door, completely oblivious to her presence. All of this had taken place in the space of about two seconds.
Tabby's indignant hissing and scratching signaled to the boy that he was no longer alone. He turned around and nearly jumped out of his skin to find her standing there.
"Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry! I thought—I thought this compartment was empty! I—why is your trunk meowing?" he asked curiously. She sighed and kicked it open, freeing her irate feline. "Oh."
"Do you care to give an explanation as to why you just barged in?" she demanded, hands on hips.
"What? Oh, that." Yes, that, she thought, but let him continue. "My older sister and her friends were trying to curse me. I swear, if I have to put up with her in Slytherin for three terms, I'll drown myself in the lake." Ryan cocked her head. It was as though her new companion had suddenly begun speaking a new language.
"Excuse me? What's Slytherin?" she asked, confused. He eyed her, askance.
"Muggle-born, are you?" She nodded mutely. "That explains it. There are four houses in Hogwarts, where you stay for the whole seven years. Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. My older sister's in Slytherin, and the only reason I love is her is because she's family. My entire family was or is in Slytherin, so I suppose I will be, too. But Hufflepuff doesn't sound bad, or even Gryffindor. It might be nice not to be in Slytherin." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "You know, they say You-Know-Who was in Slytherin. That's scary, isn't it?" It might have been scary to him, but Ryan was left in the dark once more.
"You-Know-Who? Huh?" He sighed wearily, but looked slightly shocked.
"Oy, you Muggle-borns! Apparently you don't know who. Here, read this, why don't you?" He pulled out a well-read book from his cloak pocket entitled The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts. "Chapter 20. This author's better than that Gilderoy Lockhart bloke." Ryan recognized the name.
"Isn't he the fellow who wrote most of our textbooks?" she asked, flipping through the book.
"The same. But this book is better, if you ask me. No, you've gone a hair too far—yes, that's it, there. Go on, read it!" She did. She read about the evil wizard Voldemort who ran amok for eleven years, gathering followers and killing wizards and Muggles alike with great brutality. Her eyes widened as she read about the atrocities he committed, until just the thought of his name sent chills even down her back. No wonder that wizards didn't like to say his name. But he was vanquished, a year before she was born, by a baby named Harry Potter. She looked up at the boy.
"That's…interesting. Well, not interesting, but…you know what I mean."
"Yeah, and that Harry Potter boy? He goes to Hogwarts, too! Maybe we'll get to see him! I hear he's in Gryffindor; maybe we'll be in Gryffindor, too!" Ryan flipped to the front cover, and realized that she still didn't know the boy's name. Just as she thought, there was a name written behind the cover: Daniel Coley. She looked up at him.
"Daniel? Is that your name?" He snatched the book out of her hands.
"No, that's my older brother's name. I nicked this book from him."
"Well…what is your name?" He fidgeted slightly, as though embarrassed.
"Ben," he said finally, "Benjamin Coley." Ryan ran her fingers through her hair, confused once more.
"What's wrong with that name? I think Ben is a perfectly good name."
"Well, I don't. It was my uncle's name, and my uncle supported You-Know-Who. What's your name, then?"
"Ryan."
"That's a boy's name."
"You're quick."
"Ryan what?"
"Ryan Laptiske." They shook hands. "And this," she continued, picking up her cat with a grunt of exertion, "is Tabitha. Or, just Tabby." Ben gave Tabby a few pats on the head and a scratch behind the ears.
"I've got an owl named Horatio, but he's in my sister's compartment. Barn owl, he is, only half-grown. My sister's owl, Myra, was the mother."
"What's your sister's name? How old is she?" Ryan was suddenly very curious about her new friend's background. It would be nice to make friends with someone who grew up a wizard.
"Regina, and she's a fourth-year. Or you could call her Satan, I suppose, I doubt you'd find a difference. Her life is devoted to making mine hell, after all. What about you? You got siblings?"
"One. A younger brother named Jonathan. He's seven. He's okay, as little brothers go, I guess. He was the only one that believed me about Hogwarts. My mother thought it was all a joke right until we walked into Diagon Alley, but Jon believed me from the start."
"What about your father?" asked Ben. Ryan shrugged.
"He'd probably know; we think he was a wizard, because the man in the wand shop said my grandfather was a wizard. But my dad moved to America for business, and my mum wanted Jon and me to stay in the British school system, so we stayed here. She'll probably write him about it, and maybe he can tell us more." There was a knock on the door. She stopped and stood, walking over to the door and unlocking it. A plump witch wreathed in smiles poked her head inside.
"Anything off the cart, dears?" All conversation was immediately halted in favor of hunting down spare Knuts.