"Now you're sure that you've got everything?" Hermione fussed. "Coat? Wand? French-English dictionary?"

Holly rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mum, we went over the list a thousand times. I'm sure I have everything I need." She reached over to give her mother a reassuring hug. "Except you, of course."

"Oh Merlin, Hol, don't make me cry." Hermione sniffed and set her at arm's length. "You'll write as soon as you're settled? Let me know how everything is going?"

"Yes, Mum, now I've got to go or I'm going to miss the train." The navy steam engine wasn't as large as the Hogwarts Express, but it was hidden in the Gare du Nord in similar fashion. She still had nearly fifteen minutes before the train was due to depart, but that was already pushing the boundaries of punctuality in the Granger household, and Holly was anxious to get going. The only downside so far to the French school was that, aside from her wand and a few other basic necessities, they hadn't been able to get any of her required supplies in America, which meant that Holly had had no time yet to start reading her textbooks.

With a final wave to her mum, she boarded the train and found an empty compartment, immediately settling in with Charmes pour les Débutants - Première Année.

The train had just started moving when another student poked her head into the doorway. "Bonjour, ce compartiment, c'est libre?" Holly let the girl's rapid words flow through her head for translation before she nodded in answer, and the girl dragged her trunk inside.

"Je m'appelle Holly," she introduced herself, suddenly very aware of the very not-French sound of her voice.

"Oh. You are ze americaine?" The girl sat down across from her. "I heard zat we would have one in our year. I'm Emilie."

"So nice to meet you," Holly said, relieved for the brief respite to her native language, but making a mental note to work on her pronunciation. She should have known her accent would make her stick out like a sore thumb.

"And you. It's so hard to find a quiet place to read on zis train." Holly and her new friend shared a smile as Emilie pulled out the first-year potions textbook, and the two of them shared a quiet ride toward the mountains.


"No, no way, you're completely wrong!" In absolute opposite fashion, at the other end of the train, Rose's compartment was packed to the point of overflowing as a lively Quidditch debate had broken out among a large group of students. Aside from her fear that Aunt Fleur and her cousins hadn't taught her enough French over the years to get by, Rose's greatest worry about Beauxbatons was that the French students wouldn't be as into Quidditch as she was, and she was relieved to get that one out of the way early. "McNully is the best seeker in Britain. And after next year's World Cup, everyone will see he's the best seeker in the world."

Her new friend Marc, who Rose had got on with immediately despite his sub-par taste in Quidditch teams, rolled his eyes. "DuPont will catch ze snitch before your McNully kicks off ze ground."

"You're barking," Rose retorted, then corrected in response to the blank looks from around the compartment, "Tu es fou."

"Barking?" Pauline repeated with a giggle. Pauline was the other first-year that Rose had met on the platform. They were both making a run for it, nearly late to the train, and Rose knew instantly that they would be friends. "That's a funny thing to say. Barking, like a dog."

One of the older girls—a mousquetaire, Rose had learned, which was a very funny word but the equivalent of a Hogwarts prefect and not to be trifled with—scoffed and glanced at her watch. "You English. Best get your robes on, tout le monde. Nous arrivons tout de suite."

The other students headed back to their own compartments, and Marc excused himself to the loo, leaving the two girls alone to change into their periwinkle robes. Rose put hers on quickly and then couldn't stop fiddling with it. She had seen Aunt Fleur's pictures from school but had vastly underestimated how uncomfortable the frilly uniform would be. "So, do you know what house you're going to be in?" Rose ventured in an effort to distract herself from a vague longing for the practical warmth of a Hogwarts jumper.

"House? Mais non. We are sorted on arrival, no one knows, do zey?" Pauline replied.

"You mean…" Rose thought of the seemingly endless parade of Weasley Gryffindors, of which she certainly would have been another had she gone to Hogwarts, and asked, "Your family's not all in the same house?"

Pauline shook her head. "Is it like zat, at 'ogwarts? You are sorted by surname?"

"Well no, not exactly, it just usually works out that way." The train ground to a halt, and Rose looked out the window. The mountains were beautiful, and she could just make out the twinkling lights of the castle in the distance. "Come on, let's go catch up with Marc."

They rode from the train station to the castle in carriages pulled by the largest horses Rose had ever seen, and then the mousquetaires separated the first years from the rest of the students to wait outside the dining hall. Eva, the one Rose had met the train, explained the sorting ceremony, in which they would cast a simple charm and the color of the sparks would indicate their house. Rose hadn't practiced any magic before coming and was starting to wonder if she should have. What about muggleborns? What if they couldn't do the charm? Rose mulled the incantation over in her head and gripped her wand tight in her pocket, determined not to embarrass herself in front of the whole school.

She was so focused on getting the spell right that she had completely zoned out as they marched into the dining hall, and was paying no attention to the sorting ceremony until Marc and Pauline jabbed her from either side with their elbows. "Ow," Rose hissed irritably. "What?"

"You didn't tell us you had une soeur," Marc said. Rose shook her head in confusion.

"I don't. I'm an only child." It hadn't ever felt that way, with a family as big as hers, but at the end of the day, it was just her and her dad.

"Okay, zen...qui est-ce?" Pauline nodded up to the front of the room, to the girl confidently holding her wand aloft beneath a shower of blue sparks, and Rose nearly fainted. The girl had her same bright blue eyes, her same unruly red hair...it was like looking into a mirror.

"I have no idea." Rose watched, still in shock, as the girl was welcomed to the table by her new fellow students of Papillonlisse. "But I'm going to find out."