He was eternally thankful to have kept one book out of his trunk, instead of having to root around in the luggage compartment for something to do. Harry wasn't entirely sure how long he'd been on the Hogwarts Express, but it already felt like an age. The straight back of the benches were uncomfortable no matter how he sat, the window was whistling slightly and he couldn't tell where that was coming from - and he actually was, just a little, nervous.

Sitting alone on the long ride gave him too much time to think about school.

The brown and beige (it might've been white once) pattern of the bench cushions across of him distracted him from the words on the page. Each time he tried to focus on Vexing Hexing! (A sure 'fire' way to incite rage), the subtle patterning would draw his eye again. And then his mind would wander... each scenario more horrific than the last. Firstly, that he would be denied from Hogwarts, which was ridiculous. Harry had done accidental magic. A bit too much, really, if anyone were hard pressed to ask.

Then he would imagine being sorted into Slytherin, and Sirius would never come by the house again and his father would be very upset about that. But he knew that was ridiculous as well - all they said of their schooldays was long in the past. His mum in particular thought that House rivalry is stupid and childish. Sirius was childish, to be fair, but Harry had some faith in him.

He also imagined another horrible possibility - perhaps the realest - and that was that everyone would watch him because of who his brother was, and what their family was famous for. Harry knew this wasn't ridiculous. After all, his brother had killed the Dark Lord Voldemort when he was only a year old. A freak accident, maybe. But still, it had happened, and Harry was now released into a world that had so carefully dogged their steps his entire childhood.

He didn't want to talk about Archie. It seemed all other kids wanted to talk about was how cool Archie was. They couldn't help it, they just gravitated to him. Maybe it didn't help that most of the kids from his parents' friends were younger than him, closer to Archie's age, but still. Even Fred and George, who would be in his year, didn't care much to talk to him.

This was a secret of Harry's. He wasn't sure if Archie was just more famous and likeable than him, or if really he was just no good to be friends with. He'd taken with tutors like most wizarding kids did, and hadn't connected with much of anyone in those small groups.

But, he decided, being alone was better than being bothered about his little brother.

And as if his thoughts had come to life, the compartment door began to slide open.

"Hey there," said the intruder. "Who are you?" Harry felt a little affronted, if it weren't for the boy's absentminded tone.

"I'm Harry," and this is my compartment, he didn't say.

"I'm Lucian," he said, holding out a hand to shake. Harry stood and did so. "Lucian Bole. If you call me Lucy I'll string you up from the Astronomy Tower in your pants."

"What year are you?" Harry asked, vaguely impressed by the threat.

"Going into my first, you?"

"Me too," Harry said, eyeing Lucian Bole skeptically. He wasn't just tall, but rather large in all directions. Harry wouldn't say fat, he's just got a lot. A lot of himself. That's all. If a brick wall could be an eleven year old child, that would be Bole. Harry wouldn't be surprised if he suddenly sprouted some lonely hairs on his chin already this year.

"I know, I'm as big as a Yeti," he rolled his eyes to Harry's staring. "Just as strong, too. Only thing is I haven't got white fur all over."

"Can fix that," Harry gestured to his book with solemnity that had Bole narrow his eyes at him.

"What house you going for, Harry?" He asked, again very airy like he'd been when he first opened the compartment door. Standing awkwardly in the middle of his compartment, Harry sat back down and gestured for Lucian to do the same. Maybe this boy was feeling a bit awkward, too.

"I don't know... depends on how we're sorted, I guess."

"I know how," Lucian said smugly.

"Do not," Harry said.

"Do too."

"Do not."

Their riveting conversation was interrupted. The compartment door opened once more, and the girl doing so instantly starting talking. "Don't be angry, Luce, Graham just wanted to ask. It's not the end of the world, you know."

"Well he shouldn't have," Lucian said back, his large face twitching. Harry watched the back-and-forth with interest. He did so enjoy knowing that which wasn't really his business.

"Well he did, so get over it," the girl said. Then she eyed him. "Hello, you are?"

"Harry," he said. "You?"

"I'm Lucinda." He looked between the two of them. "Lucinda Nott, we aren't related we've just got terribly similar names. Our parents likely thought it was funny. My mum's his godmother and his dad is my godfather."

"Right then," Harry said.

"Lucian is hiding," Lucinda told him.

"I am not," he said. And Harry believed him, of course, or else he might be strung up from the Astronomy Tower in his pants. It was... just something in Bole's eyes.

"You are not," Harry said.

"This is my new friend, Harry," Bole said crossly. Harry nodded to Lucinda and that was that. Harry had made his first friend, who hated silence and really liked Harry's Vexing Hexing!, and they spent the rest of the ride trying out the spells on unsuspecting students, and when the other wasn't looking, each other.

Most of them didn't work too well, or at all, but still, it was terribly fun. The Weasley twins, Fred and George, were all the way at the front of the train, and Harry even said hello. It wasn't so scary to be social with the hulking Bole at his back, whispering ideas of spells they couldn't really cast yet.

"Who's Graham?" Harry asked as the sky gave way into blackness outside the window. They had grown tired of traipsing around and had retired with an assortment of chocolates and candies to the compartment again.

"Montague," he said. As if that would explain anything. "We were all under the same tutors growing up - Lucinda, Graham, me, and Miles. I mean it switched around, depending, but I've known them a long time." He shrugged as he fiddled with a wrapper. "He's just doing what his dad says, like usual."

"Do you not like his dad?" Harry hedged.

"I don't care," Lucian said. "It's just... it's stupid rumours and his stupid dad wants him to ask me if it's true. Graham can shove it."

"You can dangle him out a tower," Harry offered.

Bole snorts. "Yeah."

"...So, what rumours?"

Bole glared venomously at him.

"Never mind."

Harry wasn't sure if this was actually the start of being friends with someone, but it was alright. He wasn't thinking about the cushion patterns or how horribly awful the Sorting could go. It was frightening, but talking about it with Lucian made it sort of exciting as well.

Lucinda returned shortly after the announcement was made: they would be pulling into Hogwarts Station shortly. Hogsmeade Station was one stop further, and only ten minutes to go. Harry had only been to Hogsmeade four or five times before. It was amazing.

"Good you've got your school robes on," Lucinda said as she came back in. "You know, I saw a boy with muggle clothes on in the hall, told him to change right away and he laughed at me... laughed... Oh, can't you ignore how Graham's been, Lucian?"

"If he can ignore his father," Bole said.

"I don't know anyone who can just ignore their father," Lucinda said. "That's silly, Luce. He was only asking. Everyone wants to know, don't they?"

"Everyone can piss off," Lucian said.

"Oh, alright then," Harry said.

"Not you," he said. "Obviously."

"Why not him?" Lucinda sniffed.

"Because I haven't the foggiest what you all are talking about," Harry said. "I imagine."

"Yes, exactly," Bole said. "Very nice, that."

"Well if you don't know, you will soon enough," Lucinda said ominously, and left.

"You've got to tell me," Harry said solemnly. "Else someone else is going to anyway." The train lurched into the station and whistled three times as they disembarked.

"It's just rumours," Bole insisted. "It's all because my dad supported some stupid Ministry Act and now people think they can just make up lies about us. That's what they do."

"Who?" Harry asked.

"People like Graham's dad," he said. "I guess."

The students flowed from the train onto the platform and over the bridge that wound itself above, a stone aid to the sea that they made up. The owls set to the sky, likely for some evening hunting before heading to the castle themselves.

"Firs' years!" The thickest accent Harry had ever heard in his short life boomed over the station, and suddenly he wondered why he hadn't noticed that man right away. He stood as tall as two - or maybe three - of Harry's father. He held a lantern in his hand that was larger than Harry's head but looked terribly dainty in his grasp. His mouth was dry.

"What is that?" He asked Lucian.

"The largest man I have ever seen," he said.

"I think he's calling for us - first years," a boy with slick black hair said. He was one of the boys from the compartment that Lucian had left, Harry thought. It wasn't Graham though, not likely, because Lucian was actually speaking to him. If Harry had to guess, Graham was the tan boy with long hair, who was shooting looks at Lucian every other word he said to Lucinda beside him.

"Follow me - come 'ere, move along!" He was beckoning them... not over the bridge where the majority of students seemed to go, but instead towards a dark wood.

"I'm not going in there," Lucinda said from behind him.

"Don't be such a baby," Lucian said.

"I'm not."

"Are too."

"Am not!"

The woods were really dark, and they did indeed go inside... slipping and stumbling in the night led only by the swinging light of the giant man's lantern.

"He's the groundskeeper," someone said. Maybe to him, maybe to the group at large. "My mum says he's an alcoholic who lives in a hut by the Forbidden Forest."

"Why's it forbidden if we're not meant to go in?" Harry muttered.

"Calling it that," the boy with the slick black hair said. "Now I've got to see what's the matter with it." Harry nodded sagely, although he realised after doing so no one could see him all that well.

They stumbled so far that when the woods opened up again the dark waters nearly captured the first students behind the groundskeeper, not realising he had waded into the lake and thus gotten a bit shorter too.

"No more than four to a boat!" He boomed, and Harry imagined the trees shivered from it.

He'd ended up with a girl, Lucian, and that boy with the slick black hair from earlier. "Hi, I'm Miles," that boy said. "You are?"

"Harry," said Harry. "And you?" He asked the girl. She looked at him in a way he couldn't describe.

"Have you got a family name, Harry?" She asked. "Mine's Richmond, Viola Richmond. And I know you - Bole - and you - Bletchley. So what's your name?"

"Potter," he said, and he did indeed get a reaction out of that.

"No, you aren't!" Miles exclaimed. "I did read that Archibald Potter had a brother," he told Lucian, as if Harry wasn't right there next to him.

"Has," Harry corrected. "I'm not dead."

"Brill," Miles said.

Viola Richmond is really staring now. She scoffed at Miles and asked Harry, "Aren't you a half-blood then? Your mum's a muggle, isn't she?"

"No she isn't!" He exclaimed. "She's a witch."

"A muggleborn but a witch, Vi," Miles said, still looking at Harry as if Archie was going to pop up from behind him.

"Good as muggle," she said. "They can't even brew a potion right, isn't that so, Potter?"

Harry stared at her. "My mum works part time at an apothecary. She makes potions."

Viola scrunched up her nose and said, "Ew. They let - "

"What's he like?" Miles interrupted their moment. "Your brother? Does he really fly around everywhere without a broom like in those children's books?"

Before Harry could say 'no, my brother is a very normal, annoying sort of brand of brother', Viola was scoffing again. She did this a lot, it seemed.

"The Dark Lord could fly with nothing but magic, Miles. Not the kid of some mudblood," she shot a look at Harry. "It's insulting for you to say that."

Harry felt something terrible happening in his fingers. A latent fear arose in the back of his mind. He hadn't even made it to the castle yet. He couldn't break anything here except for the boat but that would be dire indeed. All the same his magic didn't listen to logic; he was getting angry. Something was going to have to give.

"I think it's a crying shame they let the muggleborns in Hogwarts," Viola was saying. "I suppose you can't help what your father gets up to, really, but imagine coming out mixed - "

Without a single sound of warning, Lucian Bole threw Viola Richmond into the glassy, black waters.

She came up far too fast for Harry's liking, sputtering angrily. "What the hell, Bole? I guess the rumours are true, then, aren't they - about your fil- "

And still, Harry had no idea what these rumours were, but he leaned precariously over the edge of their small, rocking boat and pushed her head under water as hard as he could. He looked at Bole, too.

"You really would string me up, wouldn't you?" He asked, struggling against Viola as she pushed against him.

"Dunno," Bole said, a bit wide-eyed as Viola finally was up for air. Harry felt the anger, the magic in his veins, subside after this. That was good. He didn't really want to blow up the boat.

They'd fallen behind the others. She was hiccuping and looking at them like they'd just killed her bunny or something. "My mum's a witch," Harry repeated.

"Okay," she said, as if he was the problem.

"Row," Harry commanded her as they helped her back in. "You're not just sitting back and talking shite this time."

She still looks ready to argue, a simmering anger, older than both of them, in her eyes. But she takes her oar this time and they row along to the others around the bend. Hogwarts is upon them in all its glory - but Harry keeps a wary eye on the girl they'd dumped in the water in case she'd return the favour.

"And don't talk about my mother," he said for added effect, in case the point of his involvement in that wasn't clear. He didn't know why Lucian had dumped her over the side, except in a solidarity with Harry (which he greatly appreciated). Whether or not this was true was irrelevant, their bond had deepened into actual potential.

It was really nice that Miles knew how to dry clothes and hair. Harry only knew the charm for drying hair, and he'd never tried it himself. This helped to hide the evidence of their scuffle quite well. As they docked at a lichen covered boathouse, Viola nearly fell back in the water trying to scramble out first. She muttered something nasty under her breath, Harry was sure before ducking into the crowd.

"Reckon she'll tell?" Miles hedged.

"Why do you care," Lucian said. "You didn't do anything."

"She called my mum a mudblood," Harry said. "I don't care if she does tell." This wasn't entirely true, but he hoped it impressed the other boys anyway.

Miles and Lucian walked with Harry, blissfully the topic of his family left behind. He especially noticed Lucian hadn't asked a thing about Archie. Much appreciated. Lucinda came back to them.

"Viola told me you lot tried to drown her," she asked, looking a little too excited at the prospect.

"Did not," Harry said. "She's a filthy liar who fell out of the boat."

"She wasn't helping to row and was calling Harry's mum names," Miles added. "He told her off. Vi needs to learn to stop running her gob." Regardless of blood purity politics, calling someone's mum names was death in the world of eleven year olds. Lucian and Harry sent Miles an appreciative look at his seamless lying in their name.

"Sorry," she said to Harry. "Vi's been... different, since the trial. Her gran's really strict, I heard."

"Okay," he said. As if that mattered or meant anything to him. Miles explained as they lined up inside the Great Hall.

"Her parents were sent to Azkaban in April, I think. Or a little after that. They were caught smuggling stuff to prisoners inAzkaban."

"Cool," Lucian said.

"I hope it was my dad that arrested them," Harry said.

Miles snorted. "I mean, maybe it was."

The line shuffled forward as more names passed under the brim of what had to be the world's dirtiest hat. "I'd like to be together," Miles said bravely, as he went up (he was Bletchley, and that meant Lucian (Bole) was shortly after).

"That'd be great," Harry said, stomach turning. "As long as Richmond isn't in my House, I don't care."

"R's after P," Lucian said. "I'll ask Merlin for you."

She turned and glared at them from a couple rows up. Perhaps they were louder than they realised.

"What're you looking at, lake monster?" Lucian said. A couple others laughed, but Harry just glared as Lucian was called up.

Both Slytherin.

"He's Archibald Potter's brother," Viola Richmond was telling just about anyone who would listen. "Mum's barely even a witch - " She had to be joking? She had to be. How could someone be so foul, and not learn from the consequences of it? He tried his best not to get angry, but he was angry, as everyone began to see him... watch him in the line as the news spread among the first years... a Potter was here.

But just Archibald Potter's brother.

When Harry eventually moseyed up to the Hat himself, he had something very strange happening in his head. He sort of wanted something - something he thought (knew) was a bit selfish.

"SLYTHERIN!"

He joined Miles and Lucian, and all three cheered inappropriately when Viola Richmond got sorted Gryffindor.