Hello again.

So I got a pretty great cast of characters, so I'm going to go ahead and call this closed for now. A few things I'd like to address:

First of all, I'm sorry about how long this took, and that it so short. Normally, for such a long period of time, I put out much better chapters, but I was having a little trouble with this one.

Second, I tried to get into contact with everyone who submitted, and I think I did, but if you didn't get a message it's not because I didn't feel the need to talk to you, I probably just didn't realize I hadn't responded yet. It would be the first time I've done that. Anyways, so if you submitted and didn't get a response, just send me a message and let me know.

Okay, last thing. I will not be introducing every character at the beginning of the story. Seriously, nobody's got time for that. I will introduce the characters when I feel like it's a good place for them to be introduced. Not because I don't like your character, or your characters just going to be thrown to the side, just because their time has come yet. Okay? It's a more realistic feeling story if the introductions are more spread out. So I'm sorry in advance if it takes some time to get around to your character, but if I told you I would use them then I will. Promise.:)

Okay, I'm done talking. Here we go.

I own only what my own mind creates. Credit for Aries, Dawn, and Courtney go to Shiranai Atsune. Credit for Harry Potter goes to J.K Rowling.

~Ready For This~

King's Cross was crowded, as it always was, and it took what Arabella thought could only have been hours to find a parking spot. Her mother, a frail woman with grey hair, helped them load their belongings into a trolley, and as soon as they had finished, Anabelle began to stroll away, but Arabella was pulled back by her mother.

"Promise me you'll write," she said, big eyes searching her daughter desperately. She was trembling. "Your sister, well, she always says she'll write, but she never does."

Arabella smiled at her, and traced an x over her heart. "I'll write. Promise."

Her mother wrapped her bony arms around her in an awkward hug. Well, it was only awkward because Arabella was hopeless with things that required contact. She patted her mother's back uncertainly, feeling hot tears soaking her shoulder. "Promise me," her mother cried, "That you won't let those people convince you that I am any less of a person because I wasn't blessed with the same gifts as the rest of you."

At this, Arabella heart sank. This irrational fear was all Anabelle's fault. Anabelle, who had spent one year amongst other magical folk and turned her back on her mother. Anabelle, who had allowed the wizarding world to convince her that their mother was less, because of her status as a squib.

Anabelle, who was as fickle as a breeze's blow, and she was nothing like Anabelle.

"I won't," she promised, pulling away, and squeezing her mother's shoulder. They were almost at eye-level because her mother was so short. "I'll write to you as soon as I can and tell you what house I'm in."

Her mother's mouth twitched up into a smile. "You'll be in Hufflepuff," she decided, pushing a piece of dirt-colored hair behind Arabella's ear, "Where they are just and loyal. Just like your great-grandmother. She never changed her opinion of me either."

Arabella smiled, but didn't get to say anything in return, because at that moment, Anabelle reappeared beside her. "What are you doing?" she demanded. "You're going to make us late, and I have responsibilities now!" she grabbed Arabella's arm, and began dragging her away, and leaving the younger girl to attempt to wave goodbye to her mother and pull her trolley with her only free hand. She thought she must have looked awfully silly.

"Honestly," Anabelle was saying as they entered the station. "You would think someone was dying the way you two were carrying on. You'll see her again when we come home for summer." She stopped a few feet from the barrier between platforms nine and ten, and said, "You go first."

Arabella glanced around, then looked back at Anabelle uncertainly. "Go where?"

Anabelle made an exasperated noise. "Through the barrier!" she hissed, "Don't you pay attention when I talk?"

But Arabella didn't hear the second part, because at that moment she had gasped and repeated, "Through it!"

Anabelle clapped a hand over her mouth, shushing her harshly. "What is wrong with you? Are you trying to give us away?" She took a deep breath, and watched Arabella carefully, as though she were a bomb that might explode, removing her hand slowly. "Through it," she confirmed. "You had better do it at a run."

Arabella turned her head to the wall, with her mouth hanging open slightly. It looked very solid to her. "You go first so I can see," she told her sister, swallowing hard.

"Why, so I can come back through and collect you when you wimp out? No way, I'm staying here until you have gone through," then, as an afterthought, she added, "Or I have to push you through it."

"You planning on going, or are you just gonna stand there all day?"

Arabella jumped, and Anabelle's head snapped up to focus on the person behind her, frowning. "Who are you?" But Arabella knew the answer before he gave it. There was no mistaking that smooth, playful voice. It was Conner.

That, however, was not how he introduced himself. "Just a lowly first year preparing for his first journey from platform nine-and-three-quarters." When Arabella turned to look, she saw that he had swept into a low bow, and in a hand that he was flourishing by his ear, was waving his ticket for the Hogwarts Express. She had the strong urge to laugh, but shoved it away because Anabelle was already in a bad temper.

Sure enough, the older girls ears went pink, and she snapped, "Watch what you say around all of these muggles!"

Conner caught Arabella's eye, tucking the ticket back into his pocket, and his blue ones were sparkling. He knew as well as she did that the new color of her sister's ears was not due to his mention of the abnormal platform. "Sorry," he apologized, no trace of regret in his voice, and then he held out a hand. "I'm Conner. Your sister," the note of question was clear in his voice, and he looked to Arabella for confirmation, which she offered in form of a nod, "and I met in Diagon Alley, and I couldn't resist coming over to say hello."

Anabelle crossed her arms, unimpressed, and asked, "Where are your parents?"

"Could ask you the same question," Conner told her, stuffing his hands inside the pockets of his jeans, "but I won't. My parents had to get back to work, so they just dropped me off. We said our goodbyes at home."

"Did they even tell you how to get onto the platform?"

"'Course they did," and for the first time, Arabella saw irritation flash in the boy's eyes. "What? Do you think I came from a family of idiots?"

"No, but I do think you have rather irresponsible parents."

"Says the girls who's here alone as well," Conner countered, and didn't wait for a response from Anabelle. Instead, he turned to Arabella, and asked, "Why don't we go through the barrier together?"

She smiled, relief washing over her, and said, "Okay."

So Conner led her away from her sister, and they lined themselves up with the barrier that didn't seem so solid with Conner standing beside her, strong and confident. "On three," he told her, then preceded to count. "One." She braced herself, ready to run without thought into the bricks. "Two." If her sister and Conner both thought it was safe then it had to be. "Three!" She was running, the barrier growing closer and closer.

She closed her eyes as the front of her trolley reached the brick, and kept running. When she opened them again, she was looking at a crowd of robed witches and wizards, bustling about with animal cages, and school robes, and odd magical items she couldn't place, and behind all of them was a scarlet engine billowing smoke.

"Wow," she murmured.

"This beats Diagon Alley by a long shot," Conner commented, grinning as he watched a paper bird flutter past him. "Someone's going to teach me how to do that!"

"It's a basic charm." Anabelle had followed them through the barrier, and was giving Conner her most superior glare. "It's in the Standard book of Spells if you bother to read." Then she disappeared into the crowd.

"You know, for all of her talk about irresponsibility she isn't exactly all that responsible herself," Conner whispered darkly to Arabella, beginning to make his way through the crowd. "I mean, this is twice now that she has gone off and left you in a big crowd of people."

"Well, at least this time she left me with someone," Arabella pointed out with a small shrug.

"With the boy she just criticized for being here with no parents?" Conner turned towards her, raising one eyebrow as he stepped up onto a ledge to see over the heads of the crowd.

"Okay," Arabella admitted, "So that's not the best defense in the world."

"It's not a defense at all. There." He pointed over the crowd towards the back of the train. "It looks like there are a few empty compartments that way." So he hopped down, and cleared a path for them through the crowd with a lot of "Excuse me."s and "Sorry"s.

He had been right. They found an empty compartment at the back of the train with ease, and after a long argument, Conner managed to convince a sullen-looking boy who must have been in his sixth or seventh year, to help load his and Arabella's things onto the train.

By the time they finally slid the compartment door shut and sat down, the conductor was warning everyone to get loaded up. The train would be leaving in less than a minute.

"So, no pets?" Conner asked as he unlocked the cage of a small tabby kitten, who meowed loudly and scrabbled up onto his shoulder. As it settled down importantly, the train began to pull out of the station, students leaning out of windows to wave goodbye to the people still on the platform.

"Um, no," she replied, watching the crowd vanish behind a corner, and feeling nerves begin to kick in. "My family can't really, well, afford them."

"That's too bad," Conner told her mildly, scratching the cat behind the ear. "My family owns a farm back in America, so I grew up with all sorts of pets, but when we moved to London for my parents work I only got to bring a couple of the dogs and Oliver here."

"You're from America?" Arabella asked, interested.

Conner nodded, smiling a little. "Couldn't tell by my accent?"

She smiled a little. "I noticed it, but I couldn't tell where it was from."

Conner tilted his head forwards slightly, raising his hands. "Well," he said, "Now you know."

She sat on the edge of her seat, and looked at him curiously. "What's it like? Over there, I mean."

Conner considered the question a moment, then cracked a grin. "Everyone's fat and senseless." Then as though on an afterthought, he added, "And we love to vote, even if we have no idea what we're voting for."

Arabella laughed a little. "I'm sure there are some good things about it, too."

"Well, our quidditch team is undefeated three years running," Conner replied with a grin, blue eyes sparkling. Arabella grinned back, and opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, the door to their compartment slid open, and a blond head poked in.

"Excuse me," the girl said pleasantly, stepping into the compartment as though she owned it. Arabella looked at her hands, half-annoyed by the disturbance, and half-wishing she could be that confident. "Sorry to bother, but everywhere else is either full, or occupied by ink blots that think they need an entire compartment to themselves."

"Ink blots?" She could help herself.

The blond girl smiled a little, and the way she held herself, all the way down to the slight backwards tilt of her head, so she was looking down her nose; reminded Arabella of her sister. "People who think they're more important than they are. Just like a blot of ink that takes up space on parchment."

Arabella's mouth twitched into a smile. It was clever. "Anyways, we were wondering if you would mind us staying here," a new voice put in, and another girl came into the compartment, this one slightly taller, and already wearing her black Hogwarts robes. Her raven hair fell into neat curls down to her shoulders, and her dark brown eyes glinted with an intelligent light. Ravenclaw for sure, Arabella thought, then realized what she was doing and pinched the skin on her wrist hard. She had been trying to break herself of profiling people for nearly a year.

"It won't bother me," Conner said with a shrug, then looked to Arabella. "What about you, Red?"

Arabella opened her mouth, said nothing, then closed it feeling ridiculous. After repeating this show twice, she just turned towards the window, and gestured to the spot next to her, hoping that would convey her approval.

Apparently it did, because one of the girls took a seat beside her. She saw a flash of blond beside Conner and figured the dark-haired girl must be seated next to her.

"My name is Aries, by the way," the blond girl said. "And that's Dawn. We're both first years."

"Have the two of you been friends long?" Conner asked in his friendly tone, a smile on his face.

"We're not friends," the girl beside her, Dawn, corrected. "We're acquaintances. We met outside in the corridor." She turned to look at Arabella, who looked away quickly. "What about you two? Did you just meet?"

"Actually we met in Diagon Alley," Conner replied. "A few weeks ago."

"Well that gives you a one-up on us, huh?" Aries joked, smiling. Then she said, "I like your cat. He's really cute." reaching out to scratch it behind the ears. Oliver purred.

"Thanks."

"You haven't introduced yourselves," Dawn observed, wrestling a copy of the Standard Book of Spells from the bag sitting on the seat beside her.

"Right," Conner removed Oliver from his shoulder, and allowed Aries to transfer him to her lap. "My name's Conner, and she's Arabella."

"Arabella's a pretty name," Aries commented, pulling back when Oliver tried to lick her nose.

"Thank you." Then, not wanting to sound rude, she added, "I like yours, too."

Aries laughed a little. "That's a lie, but I appreciate the effort."

Arabella chewed on her lip, but before she could think of a response, the door to the compartment slid open again, and another girl stuck her head into the compartment, this one older. The resemblances between this girl and Dawn slid together in Arabella's mind like puzzle pieces. They had the same nose that slanted up slightly, and the same soft curve to their brow line, and the same pale lips and fair skin.

"There you are," she said, finding Dawn.

"Here I am," was Dawn's bored reply.

The girl slid the door open wide, and stepped into the compartment. "Just making sure you got settled in." Everything about her was unkempt, from her pixie-cut hair, to her ill-fitting, black robes- one shoulder of which was marked with a patch of scarlet and gold, featuring a lion reared back on its hind legs, roaring. The same patch was on Anabelle's school robes. "I'll be at the front of the train if you need me. Hadley's got a Steak'60."

Conner sat straight up, eyes bright. "A Streak'60! Those are worth a fortune."

"I know!" the girl said excitedly, then froze as her eyes wandered from Conner to the girl sitting next to him placing the kitten gently back onto his shoulder. "You," she said, taking in the pale skin, and neatly kept clothing and long platinum blond hair held back my a green hair pin with her initials carved with silver sparkles, catching the the light. "'AM'? That stands for Aries Malfoy, doesn't it?"

"It does," Aries replied mildly, turning back to face her and folding her hands in her lap. "And you might be?"

The older girl pulled herself up to her full height, swelling like a bullfrog. "You have no right to speak to me, you filthy, dark-magic-loving-"

"Courtney," Dawn warned.

"Don't give me that!" Courtney snapped, rounding on her. "What do you think you're doing? Associating with someone like that?"

"Her last name being Malfoy doesn't make her like the one from the stories. That was something like five generations ago," Dawn responded mildly.

"Four, actually," Aries corrected. "My family's not perfect, but neither is yours depending on who's doing the talking."

Courtney looked as though she were going to explode. "What does that mean?"

"It's time for you to leave," Dawn decided, standing and shoving her sister from the compartment. Courtney attempted to say that she couldn't do that, but before she could, Dawn shut the door definitively in her face. She then turned Aries. "I'm sorry about my sister. Her mind is rather narrow."

"It's all right," Aries assured. "I've grown up with encounters like that. When your family name is among the most hated in the wizarding world you get used to the negative attention."

"Well, it's wrong." Dawn slumped back into he seat. "You haven't committed any crimes against wizard kind. Some relatives did it before you were born and are dead now, so you shouldn't have to pay the price."

"What did you mean?" Aries, who had her mouth open to reply to Dawn's comment, paused and turned her eyes instead to Arabella. She looked down sheepishly and babbled, "Before-when you said, 'but neither is yours depending on who's talking'? What did you mean?"

"Blood traitors," Aries replied simply.

"Blood traitors?" Arabella and Conner repeated together, sharing an uncertain glance.

"Blood traitors," Dawn confirmed. "Witches and wizards who didn't support making the wizarding world for pure bloods only during the Dark Days."

"The Dark Days?" Conner interrupted.

"When Lord Voldemort was in power." Areis looked at them curiously. "Are the two of you from muggle families or something?"

"Conner's from America," Arabella explained quickly. "They're ambassadors from the ministry of magic."

"Really?" Dawn asked, sitting up straighter. "You're from America?"

So Conner answered endless questions about his old home, and all talk of blood traitors, or the Dark Days, or Arabella's own family was forgotten.

The sky was turning an inky black, and Conner was in the middle of sharing the history of the most renowned American magical school, Delwhick School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, when the door to their compartment slid open again. This time it was Anabelle who stood in the doorway, the prefect badge shining as bright as ever underneath the Gryffindor patch.

"The conductor says we'll be arriving soon," she said, giving Arabella's muggle cloths a distasteful look. "You should change into your school robes. Don't know why you haven't done it already. I mean honestly, you would think by eleven..." her voice trailed off as she slammed the door, and made her way back down the corridor.

"My sister," Arabella explained sheepishly as the other three looked at her curiously.

Dawn giggled, and managed, "Crazy older sisters. Must be the new trend." The rest of the compartment fell into laughter along with her.

Arabella had just pulled on her robes when the train began to slow. She slipped into the corridor to join Conner, Aries, and Dawn. Conner turned to her, smiled, and said in a low voice. "You ready for this?"

She shook her head quickly, hissing, "No!"

He laughed. "Neither am I."

She gave him a grateful smile.