Author's note: obviously, this is non-canon. So I have felt free to make a few changes to background: Ben was adopted by the Greenblooms when he was ten, not twelve (to explain why he gets an acceptance letter from Hogwarts rather than Durmstrang). Hiccup and Fishlegs live in the 1990s, or they couldn't be in this story. And the first wizard Harry met was a different member of the Hogwarts staff (no particular reason I had to change this, but I just felt like it).

Harry was trying not to panic. Just because he was standing in a London train station with no idea how to get to Platform Nine and Three Quarters was no reason to panic, was it?

At least the Hogwarts teacher who had come to visit him had talked Aunt Petunia into driving him to London in the first place. She hadn't been happy about it, as the family had no other reason to go there, but when the teacher had said, 'Of course, I could collect him from here by Side-Along Apparation. But a stranger holding onto your nephew's shoulder and disappearing with him in broad daylight might cause comment, might it not? What would the neighbours say?' Aunt Petunia had just glared at him.

It had been – interesting meeting a real wizard, to say the least. Harry had thought all wizards had long white beards like Merlin, but this one was beardless, with black hair, and quite young for a grown-up. Harry had also thought that wizards lived in cottages in the middle of a forest, but this one lived in Cokeworth, the Midlands town with the grotty hotel that Uncle Vernon had taken them to in an attempt to escape all the letters to Harry that had been arriving at home. The wizard had confronted them in the foyer before they had even had a chance to find their rooms, and Aunt Petunia had shrieked, 'You? You've got a nerve showing your face, after what happened to Lily! If it hadn't been for you, she'd never have found out she was a freak, never have gone to that freaks' school, and…'

This had led to a three-way shouting match between Harry's uncle and aunt and the wizard, which had been so full of invective that Dudley hadn't even complained about missing his favourite television programmes. By the end of it, the wizard, who turned out to be a teacher from a magical school, wasn't sure whether to be angrier at Aunt Petunia for calling Harry's mum a freak, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon jointly for not being good foster parents to Harry, or the Headmaster of the school he worked at when it came out that the Headmaster had dumped baby Harry on the Dursleys' doorstep in the middle of the night and disappeared without stopping to check whether Petunia and Vernon were actually going to take him in. At least the three of them could agree that Harry's dad had been an obnoxious, self-centred git, but Vernon and Petunia were highly indignant at the suggestion that they were bringing Dudley up to be exactly the same.

And so this had been the start of everything – finding out that he was a wizard, and that he had been offered a place at a magical school in a castle in Scotland, which could only be reached by a train which went from Platform Nine and Three Quarters, King's Cross Station. If he could work out how to get to Platform Nine and Three Quarters, that was. And if the train hadn't already gone. His aunt had already left. He didn't have any Muggle money or a phonecard, so he couldn't use a payphone to call Vernon and Dudley to tell them if he was stranded here. He wished he hadn't let Professor Snape talk him out of buying a pet owl when they'd shopped in Diagon Alley. At least that way he would have been able to send a message to Hogwarts.

Maybe he would just have to go out on the streets and busk? He could read up on a few of the simpler spells from his textbooks and try to make them look like conjuring tricks, until he could earn enough to buy food and a bed for the night. Or maybe he'd get arrested by some sort of magical police for doing underage magic. Well, if he was arrested, it would at least mean someone had found him.

He heard the sound of other people pushing trolleys laden with luggage like his own, and looked round to see a wrinkly old man smoking a pipe, and two red-haired boys who could have been his grandsons. They looked about Harry's age, but even skinnier and smaller for eleven than Harry. One of the boys had curly hair and thick glasses like Harry's, limped slightly and had a face half covered with eczema and half covered with acne, and was holding a box containing a cat. The other had wild hair that stuck up even more than Harry's, and was holding a box containing a small green reptile, who was complaining vigorously, though with a slight stutter: 'W-w-want to get OUT! Toothless does not b-b-belong in c-c-cat-carrier! Toothless is not a cat!'

'I know,' said the wild-haired boy soothingly. 'We can let you out when we're through the barrier. Only you mustn't eat other people's pets, and you mustn't poo in the train carriages. I need you to tell me when you need to poo, and I can take you to the toilet, okay?'

'Ssshhh!' hissed the curly-haired boy. 'If Muggles hear you speaking Dragonese…'

'Don't worry,' said the old man. 'The only person here who's paying any attention doesn't look like a Muggle to me. Are you looking for Platform Nine and Three Quarters, too?' he added, turning to Harry.

'Yes,' said Harry thankfully.

'Got any family with you?'

'No. My aunt dropped me off, but she's gone now.'

'People are always in a rush,' said the old man. 'My daughter and son-in-law didn't have time to come down to London, so I brought young Hiccup, and his friend Fishlegs. What's your name, lad?'

'Harry.'

'Really?' The old man blinked, as though 'Harry' was a very unusual name compared to Hiccup and Fishlegs.

'Yes, really. What's your name?'

'Most people just call me Old Wrinkly. Now, let's have a go at this barrier, shall we? Remember, if you just walk straight at it, it gives way easily. Much easier than facing a giant Sea Dragon, eh? Who wants to go first?'

The two red-haired boys looked at each other nervously. 'I'll go,' Harry offered, trying to sound brave and feeling stupid. He took hold of his trolley, closed his eyes, and ran forward, waiting for a crash and a sharp jolt of pain as he collided with the wall…

Instead, he collided with another boy who was standing with his parents and sister. At least, presumably they were his parents and sister, though he didn't look particularly like them. In fact, the tiny man with a long pointed nose and spiky red hair who was sitting on his shoulder looked more like the grey-haired, bespectacled man standing beside them than the black-haired boy with a friendly, open face did.

'Sorry,' said Harry.

'It's okay,' said the boy. 'Well, I'm not hurt. Are you all right, Twigleg?'

'Master, don't you think we should move out of the way?' suggested the tiny man worriedly.

'Yes, you're right, we should. Only can't you get used to calling me Ben, instead of Master all the time. You're my friend, not my slave!'

'Yes, Master Ben. But at school, I'm your familiar,' Twigleg argued.

Harry and Ben moved aside as first Hiccup, and then Fishlegs, appeared through the barrier. 'C-c-can I eat the little man?' asked Toothless. 'He's not a pet. He's not a cat or a rat or a toad or an owl. Can I eat him please-please-PLEASE?'

'No, he's a person, and you mustn't eat people, either,' retorted Hiccup. 'I've got some whelks, if you're hungry.'

'Is that a dragon in there?' exclaimed Ben, delighted.

'Yes, a very naughty dragon. He wants to eat your friend,' warned Hiccup. Twigleg had already understood this, and was hiding in Ben's jacket pocket.

Ben bent down to address the little green dragon through the walls of the cat-carrier. 'Twigleg is my friend. He is also a very brave and clever person who is a friend to dragons. He helped to defeat someone who was trying to hunt down and eat all the dragons in the world. So you're not to hurt him, okay?'

'Oh, p-p-please!' snorted Toothless. 'D-d-dragons don't do gratitude! We're not p-p-puppy-dogs!'

'Well, I've met much bigger dragons than you, and they know how to be kind and gentle, and don't eat anyone,' retorted Ben. 'Being kind doesn't mean you're weak. It means you're strong enough that you don't have to show off by hurting people, because you're not afraid.'

'Can you understand what he's saying?' asked Ben's sister, in English – which suddenly made Harry realise that the conversation that had been going on was in not-English, but a hissing, whistling tongue. 'I can understand what Firedrake and Maia say, just as if they were speaking German. But what language are you speaking to this dragon?'

'German – I mean English – I don't know! I was just talking to him in the same language he was using. But I thought all fabulous beings could talk to anyone, anywhere in the world. When I met Firedrake and Sorrell the first time, I didn't even know they'd come from Scotland, because they sounded just as easy to understand as if they were speaking German.'

'Many fabulous beings speak a common tongue, but some have their own languages as well,' explained Twigleg, cautiously poking his head out of Ben's pocket. 'This dragon is speaking the North Sea dialect of Dragonese. I don't taste good,' he added to Toothless. Harry laughed.

'Can you understand that language, too?' asked Fishlegs, looking curiously at Harry.

'Yes – it's not that different from snake language,' said Harry. 'I found out I could talk to snakes a few months ago, at the zoo, when I got chatting to a boa constrictor. My aunt and uncle were furious when I made the glass disappear, because they thought I'd set the snake on my cousin on purpose, to ruin his birthday. But I just felt sorry for it, being a Brazilian snake who was stuck in an English zoo and had never even seen South America, and I thought that was like me, being an orphan and not even remembering my parents.'

'I'm an orphan, too,' said Ben. 'I mean, I've got cool parents now, obviously – and a wonderful sister. And Twigleg is my family, too – and so's Firedrake, even if I don't get to see him much these days. But until I was ten, I didn't have anyone. And neither did Twigleg.'

'I'm a homunculus; I was created by an alchemist, hundreds of years ago,' said Twigleg. 'I was one of a group of twelve brothers, created to be slaves to the monster he had created, who ate him, and also ate my brothers. He let me live because he needed someone to polish his scales. I didn't manage to escape until last year, when I met Ben and decided to choose him as my master instead.'

'I don't have a family, but I don't know if I'm an orphan or not,' said Fishlegs. 'I was abandoned for being a runt. I think a dragon looked after me for a while when I was a baby, until Hiccup's granddad found me and took me in. He's a Seer, so that's probably where Hiccup inherited his magic from, but I don't know if I've got any magical ancestors. Maybe a grandmother who was a witch, or something.'

'It's interesting,' said Hiccup. 'I can speak Dragonese because I've learned it, because I used to spend hours listening to wild dragons calling to each other, before I got Toothless. And if Fishlegs had been brought up by a dragon for a bit longer, he'd probably have grown up speaking Dragonese as a first language. But I didn't know there were people who could instinctively speak to dragons or snakes. And dragons who can speak human language are quite rare. What sort of dragon is Firedrake?'

'He's big and silver, with golden eyes. He breathes blue fire that doesn't hurt, but can heal wounds and undo enchantments.'

'Curved horns?'

'Yes – young males like him have curved horns, and the females have straight ones. The older males have curly horns.'

'A Silver Moondance!' exclaimed Hiccup, delighted. 'I've only seen those once. There was a big migration of them, last year.'

'Yes. That was Firedrake's colony. It was in the Muggle newspapers, but most Muggles assumed they were birds or bats.'

Harry was still getting used to the wizarding world, but he had gathered from his trip to Diagon Alley that some wizards were snobbish about having magical ancestry, and that almost all wizards, regardless of their ancestry, didn't like to have much to do with the Muggle world. 'So – your parents – your adoptive parents – aren't Muggles, then?' he asked Ben. The way Ben and his sister and parents were dressed was casual and not especially fashionable, but they wouldn't look out of place in a Muggle street. Hiccup, Fishlegs and Old Wrinkly looked somehow awkward, as if they normally wore horned helmets or animal skins and had only dressed up as 20th century Muggles in order to be able to pass through London on the way to King's Cross Station.

'No, but we live in a Muggle town and work in a Muggle university,' said Ben's father. 'I'm an archaeologist – my name's Barnabas, by the way – and Vita is an art historian specialising in Asian temple art. Both jobs that give us a lot of cover for travelling the world studying magical creatures. We've moved around quite a bit, over the years, so we didn't know which school Guinevere – and Ben, once he came into our lives – would be going to once they turned eleven. But I'm glad it's the one which produced Newt Scamander.'

The train pulled in and the pupils had to scramble on board. Harry, Hiccup, Fishlegs, Ben, Guinevere and their assorted familiars found a carriage together, with Fishlegs calling through the window, 'Give my love to Horrorcow,'

Old Wrinkly called back, 'I will. You did say she's vegetarian, didn't you?'

'Yes. Worst hunting dragon ever. Don't let Newtsbreath and Hookfang hurt her, will you?'

'I'll keep an eye on them. But truly, she's safer than Toothless or Fiddlesticks would be. She may be gentle and peaceful, but she's big enough that Stoick's dragons can recognise her as a dragon and not a snack.'

'I didn't know you could bring dragons to Hogwarts – or homunculuses,' said Harry, as the train pulled away. He was sure his letter had only stated 'an owl OR a cat OR a toad' – but then, the letters were personalised, magically finding their way to wherever a pupil happened to be, so perhaps they magically filled in whatever creatures each pupil might bring?

'Our letters said we could bring any creature up to the size of a cat,' said Hiccup. 'Toothless is unusually small for a Garden Green, so he's allowed in, but Horrorcow is nearer the normal size for the breed – she's about the size of a field spaniel now, and she'll probably be about the size of a Labrador when she's finished growing. But my dad's hunting dragons are a good bit bigger, and vicious, and my dad doesn't try to stop them chasing smaller dragons or cats, so we needed to bring Toothless and Fiddlesticks with us. And obviously, we're not allowed to bring riding-sized dragons.'

'How did they come to live with you?' Ben asked. 'We've got several other magical creatures living with us apart from Twigleg, who moved in with us when they lost their homes: grass fairies and hobgoblins. I wish we lived somewhere we could start a proper sanctuary for fabulous beings, though – you can't hide a big dragon like Firedrake, or even a Pegasus, in Manchester without people noticing. So, did Toothless and Horrorcow move in with you like that?'

'Uh – not exactly. Where we live, there's a tradition that when you turn ten, you have to catch a young wild dragon and train it to hunt for you, or you get thrown out of the tribe. Fishlegs and I only just made it back alive with our dragons, but getting Toothless to do what I tell him was the hard part. That's still ongoing, isn't it?' he added to Toothless, who, let out of his cat-carrier to sit on Hiccup's lap, had decorated Hiccup's new Hogwarts robes with a steaming pile of dung.

Ben frowned thoughtfully. 'What do you think about living with Hiccup, Toothless?' he asked. 'Do you like it? Or do you miss living wild, without humans?'

'F-f-food's better, with humans,' said Toothless. 'Got any m-m-mackerel?' he added to Hiccup.

'No, last time I offered you mackerel, you said it was gross and you only liked whelks,' said Hiccup. 'So I brought whelks for the journey.'

'D-d-don't like whelks! W-w-whelks are yucky! Can I eat the c-c-cat? Or T-T-Twigleg?'

'No.'

'You're no fun,' grumbled Toothless. 'T-t-tell me a joke.'

Hiccup kept Toothless regaled with jokes and lots of tummy-tickles until the food trolley came past and they could buy refreshments. By now, Ben looked even more thoughtful.