It was getting dark. Ralph could see mountains and forests under a deep purple sky. The train did seem to be slowing down.
Sarnai and Viola left the compartment when a few Hufflepuff girls called them. Ralph and Altan took off their jackets and pulled on their long robes.
A voice echoed through the train: "We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes' time. Please leave your luggage on the train, it will be taken to the school separately."
The train slowed right down and finally stopped. People pushed their way towards the door and out on to a tiny, dark platform. Ralph shivered in the cold night air. He looked around to see Altan wasn't with him.
Suddenly, a small boy bumped into him. His silver hair shone in moonlight.
"I am sorry. I don't know where to go." he mumbled.
"Is it your first time in Hogwarts?" Ralph asked to get an immediate nod.
Just then, a lamp came bobbing over the heads of the students, and Ralph heard a familiar voice: "Firs' years! Firs' years over here!"
Hagrid's big hairy face beamed over the sea of heads.
"C'mon, follow me -- any more firs' years? Mind yer step, now! Firs' years follow me!"
"You see that giant over there. You just need to follow him." Ralph explained.
"Are you sure? My brother tells that he eats children."
Ralph let out a laugh. "I'm sure he told you a lie. Hagrid won't hurt a fly."
The silver haired boy took one last look at him and followed the giant down the narrow dark path.
He was shunted forwards on to the dark rain-washed road outside Hogsmeade Station.
Here stood the hundred or so horseless stage coaches that always took the students above first year up to the castle. Ralph glanced quickly at them, turned away to keep a lookout for Viola, Sarnai and Altan, then did a double-take.
The coaches were no longer horseless. There were creatures standing between the carriage shafts. If he had had to give them a name, he supposed he would have called them horses, though there was something reptilian about them, too. They were completely fleshless, their black coats clinging to their skeletons, of which every bone was visible. Their heads were dragonish, and their pupil-less eyes white and staring. Wings sprouted from each wither - vast, black leathery wings that looked as though they ought to belong to giant bats.
Standing still and quiet in the gathering gloom, the creatures looked eerie and sinister. Ralph could not understand why the coaches were being pulled by these horrible horses when they were quite capable of moving along by themselves.
"There you are." Altan's voice came, right behind Ralph.
He was followed by Viola and Sarnai.
"What are those things, d'you reckon?" he asked Altan, nodding at the horrible horses as the other students surged past them.
"What things?"
"Those horse things?" Ralph said, as he and Altan made for the carriage in which Sarnai and Viola were already sitting.
"What horse things?"
"Those horse things that are pulling the carriage." Ralph was impatient.
Altan was alarmed. "Are you alright? You know those carriages are horseless."
He blinked. "Umm... If say... let's get into the carriage."
He gave a last look at the horse before getting into the carriage.
Rattling and swaying, the carriages moved in convoy up the road. They passed between the tall stone pillars topped with winged boars on either side of the gates to the school grounds.
Hogwarts Castle loomed ever closer: a towering mass of turrets, jet black against the dark sky, here and there a window blazing fiery bright above them.
The carriages jingled to a halt near the stone steps leading up to the oak front doors.
The Entrance Hall was ablaze with torches and echoing with footsteps as the students crossed the flagged stone floor for the double doors to the right, leading to the Great Hall and the start-of-term feast.
The four long house tables in the Great Hall were filling up under the starless black ceiling, which was just like the sky they could glimpse through the high windows.
Candles floated in midair all along the tables, illuminating the silvery ghosts who were dotted about the Hall and the faces of the students talking eagerly, exchanging summer news, shouting greetings at friends from other houses, eyeing one another's new haircuts and robes.
Again, Ralph noticed people putting their heads together to whisper as he passed; he gritted his teeth and tried to act as though he neither noticed nor cared.
He sat down at Slytherin table while his friends drifted off to Hufflepuff table.