It had to be the school trunks, it's all I could think of. Nobody trusted kids to hang onto a box as big as them going through the floo, and hardly anyone felt confident side-along apparating a little kid and their trunk. It was the only explanation for the inefficiencies, unless floo outages like what had happened when Maeve forced her way into our reality were more common than I thought.
It was all I could think of for why we'd been packed into enchanted Ministry sedans to whip through traffic to get to the train station (starting less than a mile away!) to get on a train for eight hours to get to Hogsmeade, when I could have been there in less than a minute by just stepping into the inn's floo.
I had to admit, the crazy space-bending cars were pretty fun to ride in. We navigated through traffic by folding space to let the cars simply squeeze through gaps between other vehicles. The enchanting to get them to do that at all—much less not be immediately obvious—had to be immense.
Of course, we were on Weasley time, so even with the special cars we got to the train much later than my usual. Fortunately, the rest of the crew had already staked out essentially every cabin on one of the train cars. Given that I didn't really have a home address to come back to this year, I'd probably be spending both holidays based out of the castle, so this might be my last train ride to school.
It was weird to be getting nostalgic about my last year at a school I'd originally basically been forced to go to.
The seniors compartment was made plausible only because half of us were prefects so it wasn't six-people-full the whole time. As the train set out, Percy, Penny, and Alexis were all in the prefect meeting in the front car, so it was just Oliver, Mathilda, and me, busily sharing our last week as if it had been a million years since we'd last seen each other.
"...so we're basically working under the assumption that Sirius Black is an animagus that can turn into a giant, mangy-looking black dog," I finished.
"Like that one!?" Mathilda asked, her position closer to the door meaning she was looking out the train's window while also facing me.
I looked up just in time to see the black dog perched like a gargoyle on one of the last road overpasses over the train tracks before we left London, probably barely twenty feet above the top of the train. I couldn't be completely sure, but it looked a lot like the one we'd seen, and it was almost certainly unusual for any dog to get up on the wall around a road to stare intently at passing trains. "Stars and stones! Exactly like that one."
Pivoting to try to get a look, the train was going around a curve and I couldn't have seen anything behind us even if the width of the overpass weren't in the way. But we were close to the front, so there was plenty of space behind us if the dog wanted to drop down and stow away. Long-distance apparition was still not completely fixed after Maeve cracked the Veil months earlier, and he might have problems stealing someone's floo, so maybe this was the most efficient way for him to get to the school.
Or maybe he planned to go after his target while there was a severe limit of adults, wards, and dementors to stop him. "I need to go inform the prefects," I told them. "Keep an eye on the kids." At least we'd gotten our cabins all close together, so everyone in the photo was on the same train car rather than spread out. Draco was the only member of the trip who wasn't nearby, but he'd also skipped the photo so as to avoid being associated with the Weasleys, and, thus, was unlikely to be the target.
It was still probably worth warning him.
The first car was a more traditional open arrangement, with an aisle down the middle and no individual compartments (though it looked like the front was closed off into storage for the snack trolley). It probably would have been impossible for the two-dozen prefects to meet if they had to deal with individual four-person cabins.
I knocked my staff politely against the door between cars before stepping in, clearly interrupting Jake Flinton in the middle of some long-winded planning speech for the year. While I liked the guy well enough the little I'd interacted with him in classes, I suspected the Head Boy and Girl positions were basically designed to make petty tyrants of teenagers who had never before really engaged in any form of student government.
"Sorry to interrupt," I said before he could yell at me for doing so. "And, not to panic anyone, but there's a decent chance Sirius Black just jumped off an overpass to stow away on the train." I saw a bunch of faces ready to enact their power over adolescents suddenly filled with fear at having to take on a crazed escaped convict. Well, Percy, Penny, and Alexis just looked annoyed at the interruption as if this kind of thing was par for the course for them these days. My fault, I was sure.
Oh, also Maeve didn't seem bothered. I hadn't even realized she'd finagled her way into a prefect position. I wondered what she'd done to the poor girl that originally held it for her year. I tried to completely ignore the white-dreadlocked sidhe princess.
"He may be an animagus that turns into a big, black dog," I explained, to those that hadn't gotten the memo. "Unless anyone objects, I'm going to inform the aurors," I continued, "But you might want to go ahead and start patrols?
"But we don't have a way to inform the aurors!" one of the new fifth-year prefects exclaimed, on the verge of panic. I thought she was from Ravenclaw, maybe? I didn't know her name. Oh, man, if I was going to help Remus with his classes I'd probably actually have to learn the names of a bunch of the students. Being a grown-up was rough.
Nobody actually objected, though few seemed to know what I had in mind, so I just grinned pleasantly and incanted, "Expecto nuntius!" and, as the messenger version of Mouse appeared, an oversized lion-like dog made of silvery light, I told him, "Tell Tonks: Black dog spotted on a bridge overpass as the train went underneath. May have jumped aboard." The instruction delivered, he ran off through the walls of the train, back in the general direction of London.
I still hadn't confirmed whether that was super cheatery and would let me triangulate to track people that I didn't have a sympathetic link for. It was at least risky, because anyone I wanted to track down might start running when they started getting repeated messages from my patronus. Fortunately, I was pretty sure pure muggles couldn't see a patronus any more than they could see a dementor, so I at least wouldn't be breaking the Statute of Secrecy doing it in muggle areas.
"One of you want to inform the headmaster?" I asked. That spell took a lot out of me, and I had to maintain it until it reached its target. I didn't want to admit in front of Maeve that throwing out a second one would leave me unable to do much else for a while. In fact, "Ms. Malfoy? Heard you're a dab hand at charms. Want to show off?"
I actually wasn't totally sure whether the lady of the Winter fae could actually cast spells like a wizard. I suspected she'd been faking everything with the closest equivalent glamor and ice magic that she could create. And I'd eat my hat, if I had one, if she had enough of a soul to cast a patronus, regardless.
"I don't actually know the Headmaster very well," she shrugged dismissively. "Doubt I could get a fix on him. He doesn't really make time for Slytherins like he does for Gryffindors. I'm sure one of you is more than capable, though."
Alexis just shook her head at the elf once more wriggling out of a social confrontation and quickly had her silver fox bounding off north with a similar message for Dumbledore.
"Right! Let's get patrolling," Flinton took control of the meeting back. "Don't get separated, just in case. Everyone stay on shift for a half hour past your original cut off time so we have plenty of coverage. Call for help if you see him: don't be a hero." He gave all the Gryffindors a very Hufflepuff look at that statement.
As they all headed out, I ignored Maeve and told the Head Girl, Gemma Farley, "I don't think Draco is a likely target, but you should probably warn him just in case." I'd had a fair number of classes with Gemma over the last couple of years, and she was one of the only Slytherins in my year that I thought were good people.
She nodded, but told me, "Get back to your compartment, please, Dresden. Let us handle the patrols. I'm sure you'll come charging in if there's screaming." It was mostly good natured, so I grinned and let it slide, following her instructions and heading back.
Patrols were by house rather than relationship status, so Penny was off the first patrol shift while Percy and Alexis wandered the train, and we caught her up on what had been going on. By the time she had to start her own patrol, we were a ways into the countryside, and half an hour later, our house prefects finally finished and headed in. It was starting to look like miserable weather outside.
"Nothing that we can find so far," Percy explained, sinking into a seat.
Alexis leaned against Oliver, visibly annoyed, "I said the best fliers should borrow racing brooms and fly around to check the roof and undercarriage, but Jake wouldn't go for it. You should have taken the Head position, Percy."
"I probably would have said the same thing, to be fair," Percy admitted. "If Black has obtained a wand, he could shoot you out of the air. On a moving train, with limited backup, I could not justify the risk. At least if we encounter him in the train, we have cover."
We tried to keep the conversation light until Penny finally got back from her patrol, the room getting especially cramped as three couples tried to sit together in a space designed for four adult-sized people. "Some kids in the third car from the end thought they might have heard something land on the roof at about the right time," Penny explained. "But they're second-years and the rumors have already gone all up and down the train, so they were freaked out and may have just been imagining it."
By now, even though it was still early afternoon, it was nearly fully dark outside from the storm clouds. Every time the train went around a curve, I peered out, trying to get a glimpse of a darker shadow clinging to the roof. Maybe I just wanted to use a Shatner-voice, "There's… something on the wing!" quote. But if he was on the Express, he had found somewhere less obvious to hide than clinging to the top of the train for eight hours.
We eventually solved the space issue by Oliver and Mathilda taking the seats on one side of the room, Percy and Penny taking the other, and Alexis and I sitting on the floor below our significant others so the research team could talk spells while Oliver and Mathilda played cards quietly. Over the summer, we'd decided to invite Alexis to help with spell development. Spending so much time with her, we realized it was weird we hadn't included her before. She'd already had a couple of ideas about places in the arithmancy we'd been stuck.
Around five, though it was dark enough outside to seem like midnight under the driving rain, it was time for Percy and Alexis to go back on patrol. Penny excused herself to go spend some time checking up on the Ravenclaw lower-years. And Oliver went next door to have a quidditch team meeting.
"Alone at last!" Mathilda grinned, leaning against me as I reclaimed my seat after a couple of hours on the floor.
We'd been making out for less than a minute before the door to our compartment banged open and Hermione and Draco trooped in, followed by Crookshanks. "Ugh. It's like their faces are some kind of magical magnets or something," the boy drawled.
"They can't help it, they're full of hormones," Hermione defended and insulted us at the same time. "You will be soon, too. I'm sure Pansy's just waiting for your face to have a magnet."
Though he was good at controlling his reactions, the slight blush was very visible on Draco's pale skin. "Are we studying or what?"
"Are you studying?" I asked. "And if so, why here?"
"Quidditch," Hermione answered.
"Slytherin," Draco answered, gesturing to indicate that Hermione probably wouldn't be especially welcome in his part of the train.
They both got out Numerology and Grammatica books, taking the seats opposite ours in the compartment. "I thought you were taking magical creatures class instead of arithmancy?" I asked Draco.
"I got advanced word who was teaching it and changed my elective. I'd rather learn about creatures through independent study," Draco shrugged. He saw the three Gryffindors had no clue so explained, "Your gigantic friend Hagrid? He didn't tell you lot?"
"Good for Hagrid!" Mathilda cheered. "I knew he was trying to keep a big secret!"
"Must have been the longest he's ever managed to keep a secret," Hermione mused, absently, trying to find the page she wanted in her book.
"Ummm… Do we think he's going to start on a reasonable curriculum or have the third-years on class triple-X creatures from day one because he thinks anything less dangerous than that isn't worth anyone's time?" I wondered.
Mathilda's eyes got wide and she said, "I'll talk to him! First thing!"
"Anyway, I started having trouble on chapter 8, you?" Hermione asked Draco.
The two overachievers helped each other with arithmancy for a while, with a little input from me when they got stuck. There were hardly any arithmancy students from Slytherin in my year, so it wasn't a surprise that Draco was having a hard time finding kids in his own house to study with. I was proud of him that he'd gotten to the point that he was willing to treat Hermione as a valid study partner, even though he was still pretty chilly to her in their non-academic interactions. It was a shame that she hadn't been able to make it for the whole Egypt trip: he'd gotten almost chummy with Neville, Luna, and Ginny, and could get along with Ron for several minutes at a time (which was real progress).
Mathilda had gotten bored and nodded off to sleep snuggled against me after a while, and I couldn't help but notice that Draco's sideways glances weren't really disgust at the PDA, but curiosity. He was probably feeling the hormones more than he wanted Hermione to know. Crookshanks had decided the two of us were acceptably-respectful humans who made a nice warm spot, and sprawled across our laps. It was past time for Percy and Alexis to show back up, but maybe they'd found their own SOs elsewhere on the train. I was quietly answering a question the kids had about when to total numerological values by word and when by syllable when the train's brakes suddenly went on, and the deceleration caused us to jolt and the luggage racks to sway dangerously.
"We there already?" Mathilda asked, sitting up, upsetting the cat who gave a bit of a grumbling hiss before flopping to the ground and rejoining Hermione on the other seats.
"Not unless someone really kicked up the throttle," I said, glancing at Hermione for confirmation.
She checked her wristwatch and nodded, "We should still be at least an hour out."
A few moments after the train fully shuddered to a stop with the sound of poorly secured luggage falling in the other compartments, pounding rain still hammering against the roof and windows, all the lanterns went out at once. "I don't like that," I said. I slid my arm out from behind Mathilda and stood up, retrieving my staff from the luggage rack.
"I think something's moving out there, maybe coming aboard," Draco said, peering into the darkness. Personally, I didn't think anyone's eyes could adjust that fast, particularly with how pitch black it was outside.
I could hear the kids in the other compartments bumping into each other in the dark, and a wince of pain as Hermione bumped Draco also trying to look out the window. "Lumos," I said, lighting up my mother's amulet where it hung around my neck.
"Why's it so cold all of a sudden?" Hermione asked. I didn't feel cold exactly, but more like the memory of being cold, stuck in a cell in Azkaban, starting to remember the death of Justin and…
"Dementors," I said, realizing. I quickly stuck my head into the corridor and yelled, "Dementors searching for Black! Stay in your compartments!" I saw a tall, black-cloaked figure coming in from the next car. It wasn't so much illuminated by my amulet-light as it was a perfect black silhouette against the end of the corridor where my light could reach. I yanked my head back in and slammed the door, leaning my staff against the wall and reaching into my belt to retrieve my unicorn horn focus.
"I don't like this," Draco muttered. "Why are they here? If he was inside the train, we'd have found him."
I felt Mathilda grasping for my hand, as if to reassure herself that I was there and she wasn't alone. "I hate them, but we have to let them search," I quietly told everyone.
But then the blackness eclipsed the window into our compartment and stopped. Maybe it was the light. Maybe it remembered me from my brief stay at the prison and wanted another taste. I was starting to fall down a well, and only my girlfriend's hand in mine was keeping me present. "He's not in here!" I yelled at the creature.
"Draco!" Hermione choked out.
I glanced and the boy had slumped, seemingly unconscious, into his seat. Probably too quietly for even Hermione to make out, I could barely hear him whimper, "Aunt Bella, please! I don't want to learn to resist the cruciatus! Please! No!"
And the compartment door began to creak slowly open, corpselike fingers translucent in the spell light reaching in to drag it open as Crookshanks puffed up and hissed. I was back in the prison. Everyone around me died, and it was my fault. I'd be alone forever. The looming specter assured me, implicitly, that I'd watch everyone around me die and then I'd die alone.
"Sirius. Black. Isn't in here!" I choked out, barely defiant, clutching desperately at Elaine's… no… Mathilda's fingers in mine. Draco continued to whimper in his trance. Hermione was clutching Crookshanks for protection and comfort. Mathilda whispered something about wolves. It would be so easy to let the cold claim me, just give up, and let the monsters win.
But the fingers twined in mine were far more real than anything the undead abomination forced into my mind. I hadn't made all these friends just to let them die, and I hadn't spent two years studying soulfire to forget it in the moment I'd learned it for. And no creepy undead lethifold too stupid and vicious to even do its one job was going to stop me.
"Expecto patronum!"