Trevor's escape
As Neville sat back down disappointedly he loosened his grip on Trevor. Trevor jumped at the chance to get away from hi clumsy, forgetful owner and jumped out of Neville's hands, and hiding underneath the bench of the compartment in which he and one other girl was sitting.
"OH NO!", Neville cried, thinking how disappointed hid Gran would be in him for already causing chaos.
"What?", Said the girl looking up from here book.
"I've just lost my toad!", said Neville, looking around alarmingly for Trevor.
"You're toad", asked the girl with a confused expression on her face.
"Yes my toad, you know the small green warty things", said Neville beginning to get annoyed and exasperated at the girl.
"I KNOW WHAT A TOAD IS!", she said, obviously quite offended, "I just didn't know anyone actually owned them"
"yea well I do and he's-", but just then Neville spotted a flash of green as Trevor jumped out of the open compartment door, "GONE", said Neville even more exasperated then before.
Neville burst out of their compartment and into the compartment in front of him and. "Sorry", said Neville, "but have you seen a toad at all?"
When they shook his head no he lost it, his Gran was going to freak out! "I lost him!", he wailed "He keeps getting away from me!"
"He'll turn up" said a rather ragged looking boy on the right.
"Yes well," said Neville already losing hope, "if you see him"
Neville then went back into his cabin looking hopeless, "is that all you're going to do?", asked the girls.
"Well it's hopeless anyway", said Neville
"Oh please", said the girl, in a bossy sort of tone "come on", she said and with that she turned and walked into the other compartment
"Has anyone seen a toad? What's your name?", she asked in an undertone to Neville to where the other two could not hear them.
"Neville" he replied
"Neville's lost one", she said, still maintaining her bossy air.
"We've already told him we haven't seen it", said the red haired boy to the left.
"Oh, are you doing magic?", asked the girl, and for the first time Neville noticed that he was holding a wand.
"Er – all right." Said the boy as the girl sat down. Neville was getting rather tired of standing there, he needed to find Trevor, but before he could mention this the red headed boy began to say a spell.
"Sunshine, daises, butter mellow
Turn this stupid fat rat yellow"
Neville supposed that the spell was supposed to turn the rat sitting in the boys lap yellow, however when he waved his wand nothing happened.
"Are you sure that's a real spell?" asked the girl. Well it's not very good is it? I've tried a few simple spells just for practice and it's all worked for me. Nobody in my family's magic at all", but Neville didn't hear the rest of what she said. Wait until Gran heard about this a muggle born.
"I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?"
At this point Neville was getting extremely irritated he didn't have time to listen to her brag about how good at magic she was, he needed to find Trevor.
"I'm Ron Weasley" said the red headed boy
"I'm Harry Potter" said the ragged looking boy. At this Neville stopped thinking of Trevor right away, his eyes shot up to his forehead, where his scare was just visible through the curtain of hair over them. This was Harry Potter. The Harry Potter, the boy who lived. Neville had known all about Harry ever since the day he had defeated Voldermort.
That's just it isn't it, he defeated Voldermort. Neville didn't know the details, few do. What he did know was that Harry and his parents had been in Godric's Hallow when it happened. Voldermort showed up and murdered Harry's parents, and attempted to kill Harry. That was the word that stood out attempted the Dark Lord had been rising to power for eleven years already, and if he wanted you dead, you died, yet he couldn't kill a one year old boy. The spell instead back fired and killed Voldermort instead.
His Gran however had a different idea. She thought Voldermort was still alive, that he had just gone into hiding. Neville was somewhat skeptical of this, seeing as only one person had ever survived the killing curse preformed that night, and he was sitting right in front of Neville. However his Gran had said "What makes this Potter boy better than Voldermort? I bet he's just ashamed, biding his time until he can make a full return, that's what Dumbledore said."
That was another thing Dumbledore. He had never been wrong before, and was undeniably the brightest Wizard of all time. Neville wasn't sure what to think, all he knew was that Harry Potter was sitting in front in him, was in his year, he would be having classes with.
"Any way, we'd better go look for Neville's toad" Hermione said, and with that she turned to leave, with Neville following her
"You go that way" ,she said pointing down one side of the hall, obviously comfortable in taking the lead, "and I'll go this way", she said while stepping out of the compartment and turning down the other hall.
Neville continued down the hall, bursting into every compartment and asking if they had seen the toad. Some were very sympathetic, saying they hoped they found him and offering help (which he declined), Others had had the same reaction as a girl, inquiring why he had a toad in the first place, a few even sniggered and made jokes about it, saying "uh yea I bet he's hiding behind those enormous ears of yours", Neville ignored these people as he was desperately trying to find the toad.
Finally after searching for hours he decided to return to the compartment where the girl was already sitting in her robes. "Any luck", she asked clearly seeing how distraught Neville was.
"None", replied Neville in a half hearted way, his Gran would never let him live this down, just one more way he was not as good as his parents.
"I'm sorry", she replied, sounding genially sympathetic towards Neville, "I'm sure he'll show up"
"Yea, probably when the trains back in London", replied Neville gloomily
"I'm sorry" said Hermione again. "Can you believe that Ronald Weasley, I wouldn't be surprised if he was put in Hufflepuff, but then again I doubt he's a very good friend, that's what Hufflepuff's are supposed to be you know, I'm not even sure if that spelled he used was real."
Neville, however, wasn't really paying attention to the girl he was busy running over the facts in his mind. A) He had lost his toad, B) Harry Potter was on the train C) His Gran would undoubtedly compare him to Harry, seeing as he too had been affected by Voldermort and his minions, and finally D) He would never live up to his Gran's expectations.
"So what house do you think you'll be in?", asked Hermione, pulling Neville out of his thoughts.
"I don't know", said Neville, which was a lie, he was pretty sure he would be put into Hufflepuff, seeing as that house usually contained the worst Wizards, but seeing as Hermione had just made Hufflepuff out to be just that, he decided not to make her think worse of him before he even preformed any magic.
"Well I hope I'm in Gryffindor, that's where the brave kids go, but I wouldn't mind going into Ravenclaw that's where the smart kids go, I do not want to go into Slytherin though, there isn't one student who didn't go bad that was in Slytherin", said Hermione rather quickly.
"I know what the houses are, and what they're supposed to be, my Gran told me all of them, my Mom was in Gryffindor. So you're a muggle born?"
"What about you, are you a half-blood or what?"
"Pure", replied Neville, and he could see the fear rise in Hermione's face, pure bloods were usually awful to muggle borns, "but I don't care what kind of blood you have", Neville was quick to reply, Hermione was the only friend he had made and he didn't want her to think he didn't like her.
"Oh, well that's good, I think that blood shouldn't matter either, I mean Weasley is a pure blood name, but that Ron is about as good a wizard as a six year old.
This hurt Neville, though she had inadvertently done it, she had yet again pointed out how bad a wizard he was, seeing as he hadn't done anything magical until the age of eight.
"Well", said Neville finally pulling on his robes, "I think we're about that". He was in fact correct he could see the small wizarding village of Hogsmeade in the distance.
Just then they heard a loud yell from the compartment next to them were Harry Potter and his friend were sitting.
"Ugh", said Hermione "what are they doing?", with this she got up and began to open the door, and Neville could just see a glimpse of three boys walking out of the compartment before Hermione shut the door.
A few seconds later Hermione came back in, and the conductor's voice echoed through the train telling them to leave their luggage on the train, and that they would be arriving soon. Neville felt a wave of terror as he thought about the sorting, and how his Gran would feel when he was undoubtedly put into Hufflepuff.