A/N: I do not own Harry Potter. And I love reviews. That is all.

Courtney wasn't the only one affected by the stink bomb.

Kathleen Mockridge kept her lips clamped tightly together to keep from screaming out every hex she'd managed to learn already. She felt as though she should have known better than to assume wizarding children would be any different from Muggle children. Well, they sort of were. After all, Muggle children didn't have quite this caliber of stink bombs. She wasn't even anywhere near the bomb, how could its range be this far? The thought was punctuated by a strong waft of rotten eggs and, what, old meatloaf? This called for one of her father's favorite swears.

"Merlin's. Balls," she hissed, making a snap decision. Throwing her entire body suddenly to the side, she blasted into a compartment that seemed empty, dragging her trunk inside and behind her, perching her owl's cage onto it, and whipping the door shut. It slammed satisfyingly, and the noise level from outside dropped considerably. Behind her, her great horned owl, Proserpine, hooted an alert. Kathleen turned, suddenly wary.

Sitting on the seat near the window was… someone already sitting on the seat near the window. "Er." Kathleen couldn't think of anything to say, which was a first. In the following silence, she wondered why she'd only ever had run-ins with girls so far. One idiot, one brat, and one person whom she had rudely intruded on.

The girl looked at her mildly, almost disinterestedly. "I'm Keely. I'll be a first year. You can sit down."

"Oh. Right, thanks," Kathleen shot a look to Proserpine through the bars of her cage, who looked infuriatingly smug at her faux pas. Ignoring this, she plucked up Proserpine's cage and shoved her trunk onto the overhead shelf. Now, where to sit? She finally plunked herself down next to Keely, just to show she didn't feel stupid. She'd be damned if she'd allow Proserpine to give her that stupid look again.

"Sorry I slammed your door shut and barged in, I'm Kathleen Mockri-"

"KATHLEEN, I THOUGHT I SAW YOU RUN IN HERE!" The door banged open to reveal the idiot herself standing there. She smiled alarmingly, thrusting forward the arm a barn owl perched on. "This is Eldin, you guys, he's my owl! He's really smart!" Without waiting for an invitation, she dragged her trunk into the compartment, stored it above their heads, and threw herself lengthwise along the empty seat across from the girls. The owl hooted softly down to Proserpine from where he perched near Aileen's trunk. She beamed across the aisle at Keely. "Hi, who're you?"

"Keely," the girl said simply.

"Alright." Aileen accepted this, nodding amiably. "I'm Aileen McMartin."

Kathleen, somewhat annoyed, went and slid the door shut again. "Shouldn't your owl be in a cage?"

"Should he?" Aileen glanced up to her owl, surprised. "I don't think so." She looked at Kathleen as though she were a bit dull. "I already told you, he's really smart."

Kathleen cocked an eyebrow just slightly, leaning back in her seat. "Fine." This would just be what she'd have to deal with. Besides, it could be worst. She could be sitting with Quin. That would be the worst bloody thing. She glanced at Keely. The other girl had brown hair like Aileen's, but it was a touch darker and longer. She appeared bored. Or perhaps she was just naturally quiet. When she looked back to Aileen, she found the girl staring at her. "Er-"

"My parents aren't magic, so I don't know, but… does this train fly or something?"

Kathleen was starting to feel that this girl didn't stare out of a judgmental nature. She stared because she was curious. Kathleen supposed she could let her guard down; she didn't seem to be a threat. Just sort of dumb.

"It does not," she replied resignedly. "The magical world is fantastic, but it's still very practical. Try to think of it as the Muggle world, only individual people have…" she searched for the words, "more literal talent."

Aileen furrowed her brow, thinking. "So… Could I make this train fly?"

Kathleen barely cut off a sigh. "At your level, no. But in general, yes. You could. Think about minor things right now. You're a first year, so we'll be learning things like levitating feathers. We'll probably Transfigure small objects into other small objects. The potions we make will be simple ones with effects that aren't too horrible. As we progress in years, we'll be able to affect the world around us more and more. See? The more dangerous the magic gets, the harder it is to do."

At the phrase, "affect the world," the Muggle-born girl's eyes were practically popping out of her head, so Kathleen added quickly, "Unless affected by very powerful enchantments in limited areas, physics are the same. Gravity is the same. Relativity is the same. Magic isn't terrifying, it's just useful. Really, really useful."

"I didn't say I was scared!" Aileen said quickly. Yet Kathleen noticed that she'd crossed her arms, each hand gripping the material of her jacket sleeves tightly. "So, nothing really bad is going to happen." She said this more to herself than to Kathleen or Keely.

The dark-haired girl looked at her, thinking. Aileen appeared deep in thought. Really deep in thought, though, not "You shout at books, right?" thought. Her eyes were focused inward, probably not even registering herself, Keely, or any of the compartment. For a moment, Kathleen really imagined what it would be like to live a Muggle's life, perfectly free of anything supernatural. And then one day, something in the post -the ordinary non-magical post- comes and you're completely changed. Of course, she reflected, you already would have had the magical ability. The letter didn't decide that. It was the same with almost every other thing, she thought. Cause and effect was a very misunderstood business. Basic concepts like that were strange enough. Top that off with magic, and you've got… Kathleen suddenly remembered something Aileen said in Florish and Blotts. "I thought I was going crazy because weird stuff happened sometimes, you know, to me, and the letter was like, 'Oh, no, you're just a magic person,' and I liked that idea better than the idea of being crazy."

"Can… people, when they've died, can they come-"

"No." Kathleen cut across her before she could even finish the thought. "Death is still final. Of course, there are some ways you can prolong life."

"How?" Aileen asked, pulling her knees to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her legs with an expression both worried and fascinated.

"It sort of goes into Dark Magic from there. And, I don't really know much about it." This was a lie, of course. Kathleen probably knew more about Dark Magic than most of the fifth years on the train. It wasn't because she was a dark person. She just liked to know everything she could. And the fact that it was a sort of taboo subject just made it that more delicious.

She used to childishly think she knew everything, devouring the spellbooks and historical tomes in her family's library. Her world was magic before she ever showed her first spark of the stuff. The entirety of her existence was swimming in strange characters, unpronounceable incantations, weird and exotic plants, and magnificent beasts. She couldn't do everything in the books, of course. She didn't have the means. But she read and reread until she grasped at least a very rudimentary understanding. By the age of eight, she figured herself a renaissance man in a good size of the different manifestations of magic. Until that fateful day when she idly picked up the copy of Hexes of Scandinavia. Leafing through the old books with the tattered, stained pages passed many afternoons in the Mockridge estate. The spells in them were old, with harsh-sounding names that she wouldn't even try to whisper. Coupled with the illustrations, it was something to make her pause. There were things here she hadn't even heard of. Honestly. She never knew magic could be used in this way. Normally she spent her time reading and reviewing spells and potions she already knew of. But to come across something that wasn't even in her mind at all… That was something else. This particular book, even… felt alive. Like there were still residual wisps of some insidious magic imbued in the old words. They had probably been used to perform the spells and curses they described. When she fully realized this, she'd slammed the book shut in horror. It had sat untouched on the table where she'd left it for months after that.

But then she'd gone back to take one more peek. Then another. Then another. It was awful, yes. Terrible, grotesque, heinously unnatural magic. But what was it about it that made it unnatural? Nothing, she decided. It was simply magic used in a certain way. Like how some spells were designed for levitating an object, there were potions designed, when coupled with an elaborate ceremonial enchantment, to lace one's own blood with certain rare plants to allow the user to split their consciousness between their own body and one host, living or dead. It was just another way to work things out with magic. Reading the steps of these complicated, cultish procedures, Kathleen had to agree that the practicality was still there. One thing would augment another, something counterbalanced something else, and it all made sense according to the fundamental laws of magic that she already knew. Really, Dark Magic wasn't dark at all, just… less tasteful than spells you'd normally cross in society.

She wasn't an idiot though, and knew better than to go prattling them off to the first person she came across. She watched Aileen struggle to retie an undone shoelace.

Not that they'd even understand a word.