Chapter Three – Year One; The Hogwarts Express
When the morning of September 1st arrived, Harry found himself almost shaking with excitement. He had awoken hours before he had needed to, but couldn't fall back asleep. He had stared at the ceiling of the room, listening to the snores of his fellow occupants, and allowed his mind to drift.
What would Hogwarts be like? He would be walking the halls where his mother and father had once also walked. Knowing that they had been there in the past, made Harry feel as if an imprint of their ghostly selves would be watching over their son.
After the months of being on his own, Harry was eagerly looking forward to being a kid again. At Hogwarts, he would be housed and fed, with adults responsible for ensuring his safety and the safety of the other students. It was strange, he thought, that he had always imagined a world without adults, a world where he could do everything he wanted. But, he hadn't realized how stressful it was to know that there was no security blanket under him – that he was responsible for his own housing, food, clothes, and everything else needed for daily survival.
Yes, he was ever aware that the magical world was the world where this psychopathic Dark Lord was after him. But, that danger seemed remote, and a concern for a far distant future. Here and now, Harry was thinking how much fun it would be to focus for the next 10 months just on his studies and making friends.
Trying to be quiet so as not to wake his roommates, Harry finally climbed out of bed, dressed and carefully removed his trunk from the closet. He slid it across the room and down the stairs. His landlady was waiting for him to say goodbye and to tell him that, as he had requested, she had arranged for a taxi to take him to Kings Cross station.
The taxi driver helped Harry put his trunk into the cab and then, once they had arrived at the train station, had helped to put the trunk on a cart there as well. Harry thanked the man and, although Harry felt a pang about spending his limited funds, he gave him a generous tip.
When Harry arrived at the train platforms, he couldn't find Platform 9¾, where the Hogwarts Express was supposed to be. He stood between platforms 9 and 10 and wondered what to do. Harry remembered how Hagrid had touched the brick wall in back of the Leaky Cauldron in order to enter Diagon Alley. Was something similar required here? Did Hagrid forget to tell him some secret signal? There were a lot of muggles around here, though, and he wouldn't want to attract attention. Harry was just about to get out his wand to tap, surreptitiously, on a wall standing between platforms 9 and 10, when he saw the Weasleys. Breathing a sigh of relief, he hurried over to them.
"Mark!" greeted Ron, smiling at him. "How are you?"
Harry smiled back, and nodded his head in greeting at the whole group. "Hello. I'm glad I found you. I don't know how to get onto Platform 9¾. Hagrid never told me."
Fred immediately piped up, "You just have to jump up and down thee times and cluck like a chicken."
Mrs. Weasley tutted. "Just ignore him, Mark. It's very simple. Percy, here, will go first to show you."
Percy, who had scowled in disapproval over Fred's joke, immediately puffed up his chest. "Yes, just watch me, Mark. You'll see that you just need to walk through that wall separating platforms 9 and 10. It's important to take the walk at just the right speed. Too slow, and your cart might not make it through. Too fast, and you run the danger of tripping on the other side, or not be able to stop before banging into someone standing there. The speed is critical…" He would have continued on with his lecture, if George hadn't given Percy's cart a push toward the wall. "Hey!" Running after it, Percy was barely able to touch the handle of the cart before it reached the wall. Both the cart and Percy disappeared through it.
The twins, Ron and Ginny stood laughing at the sight of Percy running after his run away cart. Harry couldn't help smiling himself, although he could see that Mrs. Weasley was annoyed with the twins. She turned to them and started lecturing them not to get into trouble that year. "I don't want to hear about you blowing up a toilet or anything!"
Smiling wickedly, George said, "That's a great idea, Mum!" Without waiting to hear any
more lecturing, he and his twin took off for the wall, and were soon swallowed up as well.
"Let's do that, too, Mark," suggested Ron. "Let's take the wall together."
Harry nodded gratefully. He knew that Ron must have gone through the wall before, when seeing his older brothers off to school in previous years. He realized that Ron had suggested that they take the wall together because he had guessed that Mark was nervous. Gulping and taking a deep breath, Harry seized the handle of his cart and, side by side with Ron, went through the wall.
It was like walking through a curtain. Almost immediately, he appeared on the opposite side and Platform 9¾ was in front of him. The gleaming, red Hogwarts Express proudly puffed steam, as it waited on the tracks. Students filed in and out of the doors, as they loaded their trunks into the train and then leapt back onto the platform to say goodbye to parents or greet new arrivals.
"Cool, isn't it?" asked Ron.
Harry nodded vigorously in agreement. "Yes, it's awesome."
They loaded their trunks onto the train. The twins turned up briefly to give the boys a hand with their heavy trunks and then ran off again to seek out friends they had not seen over the summer. Harry thought that Ron was incredibly lucky to have such a loving family. Ron seemed irritated with his brothers half the time and took for granted that his brothers were there to help him. But Harry knew that casual kindness was not a given. Dudley would have stood by and laughed at Harry's struggling to put up his trunk and would never have thought to help.
The boys hopped back on to the platform to say goodbye to Mrs. Weasley and Ginny before the train pulled out. Harry hung back shyly, unsure what to do as he watched Mrs. Weasley hug Ron and then scrub at Ron's nose to remove some dirt. Harry's eyes met Ginny's and she smiled at him, silently sharing her amusement at Ron's struggles against his mother's nose scrubbing. Harry wasn't used to people smiling at him so easily and he didn't immediately know how to respond. By the time he registered that he should smile back, the moment had passed and Ron had escaped his mother's clutches.
Mrs. Weasley's attention had now turned to Harry and he wondered with alarm whether she was going to scrub his face too. His eyes wide behind his glasses, Harry watched anxiously as Mrs. Weasley approached him. But she simply smoothed down his hair with her hand, and smiled kindly at him. "Have a good year, Mark."
"Thanks," Harry whispered shakily over the lump in his throat. He could not recall ever having someone touch his hair with such kindness. Unexpectedly, a sharp stab of longing for his own mother had swelled up in his heart. He swallowed hard over the lump in his throat. Turning a bit blindly back to the train, he mumbled a quick goodbye over his shoulder to Mrs. Weasley and Ginny.
Ron was already a few steps ahead of Harry and was eagerly climbing back on to the train. Ron ran into the compartment he and Harry had staked out for their own and, opening the window, stuck his head out and called a loud goodbye to his mother and sister. Harry felt uncomfortable about joining him, and settled for giving a short wave from over Ron's shoulder.
The train gave a loud toot and started to pull out of the station, and Harry sat down hard in his seat, gripping the edges with his hands. Ron turned away from the window and looked at Harry, sitting rigidly, back straight, face strained and with his knuckles turning white from his death grip on the seat. Ron nodded in silent understanding and just said, "It's going to be a great year, Mark. Everyone loves Hogwarts."
Harry nodded but said nothing and the two boys sat in companionable silence as the train left Kings Cross. Minutes passed in silence and then Ron started talking about some of the wonderful things he was looking forward to doing at Hogwarts, chief among them was flying lessons. He then started to explain the intricacies of Quidditch, which sounded very confusing to Harry but which Ron assured him was a wonderful game.
When the food cart passed, Harry purchased a few treats to share with his new friend. He justified the purchase by thinking that the scholarship money was for school supplies but that he was using the money from his restaurant job to buy these little extras. If he had had parents, they would have given him some spending money surely? Besides, he needed to learn about the wizarding world and eating Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean or Chocolate Frogs was like doing research. Satisfied with his internal debate, Harry settled down to enjoy his treats.
To allay any feelings of guilt, Harry diligently studied all the information on the wizards in the Chocolate Frog cards that he had unwrapped. He stared intently at his first card, in which Dumbledore stood gazing back at him. So, this was the Headmaster of Hogwarts. He'd be meeting him in person soon. This was the man who had sent him to live with the Dursleys. Harry scowled down at the picture. But, when Ron asked him what was the matter, Harry lied and said "nothing" and turned back to continue chatting casually with Ron.
The time passed quickly as the boys chatted. Harry enjoyed every moment of simply sitting there talking with a friend. As the hours passed, the boys had a few visitors from time to time. Fred and George stopped by to say hi and to introduce their friend Lee Jordan, who showed Harry a tarantula. Percy also had had the same idea to check in on his brother, and Lee quickly hid the box holding the spider behind his back when he saw Percy in the doorway of the train compartment.
Percy looked suspiciously from his twin brothers to Lee, but they gazed back at him with innocent expressions. Percy had lived with Fred and George too long to be fooled but he couldn't see anything wrong, so he just turned his attention to his youngest brother. "Hi, Ron." Politely, he nodded to Harry too. "Hi, Mark. Both settling in okay? No problems?"
Both boys chorused that everything was fine. "I'm checking all the compartments to make sure that the first years have no questions. As a prefect, I think this extra bit of attention helps calm nerves."
Fred snorted at Percy's pompous tone. "You're just trying to see if Harry Potter is on the train." Harry had not been expecting the mention of his name and he jumped and gasped aloud. Luckily, no one was looking at him at the time and his gasp was not noticed under the exchange of conversation between the brothers.
"I don't know what you mean," said Percy stiffly.
"Give it up, Perce," said George. "Everyone knows that Harry Potter is not coming to Hogwarts this year. Even if he managed to survive leaving his aunt and uncle's house, no one knows where he is and he's not on the Hogwarts list of registered students this year."
The other boys looked sad and a short silence filled the compartment. "Who's Harry Potter?" Harry asked. He judged it safe to ask the question. Wouldn't any muggleborn ask this?
Immediately, all five boys tried explaining, happy to have a new audience for this thrilling story. The competing voices filled the air. Finally, Percy said, "Enough! I'll go first and you lot can finish the story." At their reluctant nods, Percy started, "Harry Potter is a boy who, as a baby, defeated the greatest Dark Lord the wizarding world has ever known. You-Know-Who killed his parents and tried to kill him, but, for a reason no one knows, the curse bounced off baby Harry and killed You-Know-Who instead. Harry was such a hero, there were loads of wizards willing to raise him in their family. I know our parents would have loved to have him! But, instead, Harry was sent to live with his aunt and uncle who are muggles. A lot of people were angry about this at the time. After all, muggles! But, Harry's parents had made no will and the law clearly states that an orphan needs to go to the nearest relative, unless the parents have provided for differently in a will."
Fred couldn't stay silent any longer and he took up the story. "Dumbledore was the one who placed Harry with his relatives. Over this summer, Dumbledore actually faced an inquiry at the Ministry about putting Harry with his relatives, because it turns out that they weren't a good family at all. The public is really angry and the Ministry wants to blame Dumbledore."
Percy stiffened at this criticism of the government. "They were just doing their job – trying to find out why such a mistake had been made! Anyway, even the Ministry had to admit that Dumbledore hadn't any choice really. The law is the law."
George piped up. "If they had known that the aunt and uncle were so awful, they wouldn't have left Harry with them of course. But, they didn't know until this summer, when the wards on the house mysteriously dropped one day."
At Harry's puzzled expression, Ron explained, "The wards are the protections that they had put up over the house where Harry was living; to protect him from Death Eaters,…" Ron's voice had lowered as he rolled the words "Death Eaters" in his mouth, as if telling a ghost story. In thrilling tones, he continued, "…the followers of You-Know-Who."
Lee, feeling left out, added to the story. "Everyone's looking for Harry now, but no one has any idea where he is. All tracking spells are failing and no owl has been able to find him. Some people think he's dead."
The Weasley boys all objected and, once again, a cacophony of voices filled the compartment. Finally, Percy restored order and continued, "Harry was supposed to start Hogwarts this year. There's still a possibility that he found a way to make his way to Hogwarts and will be there." At Fred's skeptical look, Percy said, stung, "I'm not the only one who thinks so! The Ministry is sending a representative to the sorting tonight. He'll be watching all the students, just in case somehow Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts."
As the other boys questioned Percy about his knowledge of the Ministry official, Harry considered the information he had learned. So, everyone was willing to forgive Dumbledore for sticking him with the Dursleys. They were quick to forgive because they hadn't been the ones forced to live with Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. Dumbledore or the Ministry or whoever should have checked up on Harry. He had been there for 10 years! But, never once as far as he knew had anyone bothered to find out if he was doing well. The Weasley boys and Lee Jordan might be talking about Harry Potter as if he were some sort of hero, but the wizarding world had turned their backs on him soon enough.
Harry was glad to know that a Ministry official would be at the school that night. He'd have to be careful not to do or say anything that might give himself away. But, well-prepared was well-armed. He would now be expecting someone to try to uncover his secret and he'd be ready to avoid disclosure.
It was strange hearing about his life from the other boys. Although Harry knew that they were recounting the events of his own life, it seemed like the story of someone else. Harry didn't remember killing the Dark Lord of course. It gave him a strange feeling to know that so many people thought of him as a hero. He was used to the Dursleys telling him that he was worthless.
"If," Harry thought, "I could just make sure that this Dark Lord is really dead, I'll be able to be Harry Potter again and everyone will love me."
Harry's daydreams about being welcomed as a hero by the wizarding world filled his head pleasantly for the next hour or two. He and Ron were left to themselves for most of the ride. They did say hello briefly to a muggleborn girl, Hermione Granger, who stopped by to look for a toad lost by another boy. Ron seemed to think she was a bit too pompous and reminded him of Percy. But, Harry thought she seemed nice.
Hermione had come bursting into the compartment, swinging her bushy hair and filled with slightly manic energy. Harry, used to feeling awkward in groups of his peers, quickly recognized Hermione's under-confidence. She was using her hunt for the toad to cover up her lack of friends, Harry thought. He noticed that she wasn't searching for "Trevor" with the owner of the toad or with any other friend, for that matter. She was wandering from car to car, pretending that she had an important job to do so that she didn't have to sit in a compartment either alone or with other children she probably felt didn't like her.
After both boys denied ever having seen a toad, there was an awkward silence and then, "I'm Hermione Granger. And you are?"
"I'm Ron Weasley," the boy said politely.
Hermione looked at his red hair and said, "Do you have any brothers on this train? I think I saw twin boys and a prefect who looked like they might be related to you."
Glumly, Ron admitted that yes, he was one of a number of Weasleys going to Hogwarts. Hermione said, "I'm an only. I didn't even know I was a witch or there was such a place as Hogwarts until I received my letter. I didn't have any older brothers or sisters already going."
Harry heard the underlying nervousness in her voice. He knew that Ron couldn't understand how scary it was for a muggleborn to attend Hogwarts. But Harry knew exactly how Hermione was feeling. So, he smiled kindly and offered his hand to shake hers. "Hi. I'm Mark Twist. Don't worry. I'm a muggleborn too. I think you'll find that we're not the only ones either."
Hermione shook his hand and smiled back. "Oh, I'm not worried," she said, although Harry thought he detected a hint of relief in her eyes. "I've been reading through the course work over the summer, and I think I have a good handle on it. Anyway, I better keep looking for Trevor. See you later."
Dutifully, the boys said goodbye. Ron was irritated by the fact that any student would study over the summer and seemed to hold this against Hermione. Harry, however, understood Hermione's need to try to gain some control over the situation. He had every intention of studying as hard as possible himself. He, too, wanted to "catch up" to the purebloods, who had grown up knowing and taking for granted so much of what he still had to learn. He also needed every advantage he could find if he were going to have to worry about Dark Lords and Death Eaters.
There was one very unpleasant encounter on the train. A few hours before they reached Hogsmeade station, where they would be disembarking, the door opened and a sharp faced, blond haired boy stepped inside, followed by two other, larger boys. The boy looked around the compartment and immediately determined that the two inside were not important. "I know who you are," he said to Ron with a nasty tone. "You're a Weasley!" With a haughty tone, he continued, pompously, "I'm Draco Malfoy." A beat passed and then he said, "My father is Lucius Malfoy." He waited, as if expecting Ron and Mark to be very impressed.
Ron muttered under his breath, "Big deal." Draco disregarded him, however, and turned his attention to Mark. "Who are you?" he demanded.
"I'm Mark Twist," said Harry. Reluctantly, he held out his hand to shake Draco's but Draco ignored him.
"Who are your family?" Draco inquired. At Harry's puzzled look, he continued, "Are your parents wizards?"
Harry shook his head. "No, I'm muggleborn," he lied.
Draco's eyes narrowed and he sneered at Harry. "Merlin! Hogwarts is going to the dogs! Half this train seems to be filled with mudbloods! I should've gone to Durmstrang, where they have the right idea about educating only purebloods."
Ron had jumped up at the word "mudbloods". Angrily, he clenched his fists and said to Draco, "Get out of here. I wish you had gone to Durmstrang too! Don't ever use the word 'mudblood' around me!"
Draco's bodyguards took a threatening step forward. Draco lazily waved them back. "It's okay. I'm going. I have no interest in staying here. My father says your whole family are blood traitors, Weasley, and I can see it's true. Hanging out with a mudblood," he said the word deliberately, obviously baiting Ron, "and the school year hasn't even started."
He left the compartment, taking his cronies with him. Ron's face was red and he was obviously holding on to his temper with difficulty. Turning to Harry, he said, "Just ignore him. Luckily, not all wizards are like him, but unfortunately there are other purebloods like him that think they're special just because their parents and grandparents were wizards. But, children born to muggles can be just as magical as children born to wizards," he assured Harry.
Harry savored the feeling of having a friend defend him. Draco Malfoy reminded Harry all too much of his cousin, Dudley. But, when Dudley had harassed him, no one had come to Harry's defense. He was used to being taunted and abused, so Draco didn't bother him. But, he could see that Ron was still upset. He tried to soothe him, "Don't worry. I won't let him bother me. He's just full of himself. But, what's a mudblood?"
Ron's face turned redder, if that was possible. "It's a foul word for muggleborns," he explained. "If a prefect had heard Draco using that word, he would have gotten detention, for sure." Ron was quiet for a minute, obviously savoring the thought of Draco in detention.
Finally, forcing himself to calm down, Ron sat again and said, "Anyway, if we're lucky, we won't have to see him too much. I'm sure that he'll be in Slytherin house and I'm probably going to be in Gryffindor. I sure hope you're in Gryffindor too."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, that's right. You don't know. Well, all the students are sorted into four groups, called houses. This is the group you sleep with, have dinner with and have classes with. Gryffindor is for the brave. My parents and all of my brothers were sorted into Gryffindor. If I don't get in there, I think that I'll be disowned!" Although Ron said this, it was clear to Harry that he wasn't really worried. It must be nice, was Harry's fleeting thought, to be so comfortable that your family loves you not to worry that they would ever abandon you.
Ron continued, "I really hope that we're both in the same house. Ravenclaw is for the brainiacs, Hufflepuff for the loyal and hardworking and Slytherin is for the sly and ambitious. Almost all of You-Know-Who's supporters came from Slytherin. Malfoy's dad was a known supporter of You-Know-Who, too. I bet Draco ends up in Slytherin."
Harry said, loyally, "Well, I hope we're in the same house too. Let's both be sorted into Gryffindor!"
Ron smiled. "We can't choose. There's some sort of test, or something, that determines what house we're placed in. Fred and George said we have to fight a troll, but I don't believe them." He looked a bit uncertain despite his words.
Harry now had a new worry to think about. What kind of test? What if he were placed in the same house as that awful Draco Malfoy? Had he finally made his first friend in the world to be separated from him?
Luckily, the boys couldn't spend too much time worrying because the train started slowing down and they realized that they still needed to get into their robes. The last few minutes passed in a flurry of activity, as the boys quickly pulled their trunks down from the overhead rack and changed into their school robes.
AN – Hope you're enjoying! If you only knew how much authors love to hear feedback on their stories, you wouldn't hesitate to click on the review button below. Even a simple message is very much appreciated. Thanks!
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