It turned out that the Weasleys didn't actually pack until the morning of September 1st. After a lovely last evening at the Burrow, where Mrs. Weasley cooked an amazing meal, the twins shot off fireworks, and Harry went to bed feeling more at home than he had anywhere in his life, he woke at dawn to pure chaos. Items were scattered all over the house. Mrs. Weasley was trying to get everyone to eat breakfast. Scabbers was still missing. And then three other boys remembered Harry's inventory.

"I don't have time to fold these," Ron said, shoving clothes into a sack so they'd count as one item and then thrusting them into Harry's arms.

"These won't fit in our trunks," Fred announced, handing him their brooms.

"And Filch might search our trunks, so take these," George added, handing him a box of contraband.

"Guys, I have a limit," Harry insisted, but obligingly put the items into inventory while trying to figure out whether he could fit all of his own stuff into his trunk. He had also been relying on the inventory rather than careful packing.

Somewhere in the chaos, he didn't notice that he'd taken enough large items that his grid had filled up, Ron handed him a pewter cauldron full of socks, and Harry got a message.

OVERFLOW ITEMS SENT TO VAULT

"Uh oh," Harry said.

"What uh-oh?" Ron asked, realizing that Harry was looking at him like his socks and cauldron were gone.

"The inventory filled up and it said it sent that to a vault," Harry admitted. Then a second inventory window opened that said Vault at the top, and there was Ron's cauldron of socks. Harry breathed a sigh of relief. "Nevermind, apparently I have a vault, too."

"You can get to your Gringott's vault from anywhere?!" Ron asked.

"No, I bet it's just part of the game…" Harry began, then noticed that, indeed, in addition to the seemingly-endless grid of new squares and Ron's socks, the vault window had its own money readout on the top. A very large money readout on top. "...no, yeah, you're right, this must be into my Gringott's vault."

Ron just shook his head and handed Harry even more stuff, then went to tell the twins.

"Then get in here!" George yelled.

As soon as Harry exited Ron's door to go over to the twins' bedroom, the vault window closed. "That's weird," he said, trying to open it back up.

CAN ONLY OPEN VAULT IN SLEEPING AREA OR BANK

"Oh, well that makes more sense, I guess," Harry said, having been wondering why he had a limited inventory if he could just put stuff in and out of his Gringott's vault at any time. "I don't think I'm going to be able to get the rest of this stuff out until we get to the dorms," he explained to the boys in Fred and George's room. "I have to be in something it considers a bank or my bedroom to open my vault."

"Fair enough," Fred shrugged, and continued to shove belongings at him.

Mrs. Weasley looked suspiciously at the four boys, fully packed and seemingly having no trouble with their trunks while even Percy wasn't ready yet. "Are you sure you got everything?" she insisted.

"Plenty of time to do another sweep," Ron shrugged.

They even had time to help Ginny get packed, though Harry helped best by staying out of her line of sight so she wouldn't get embarrassed. He kind of felt bad not telling her about his powers. Maybe when he knew her better.

From inside her room, he heard Ron ask, "Did you want that diary?"

"Oh! Yes! I'd have forgotten it. Thanks, Ron," she said, clearly going to get a book that she'd left out.

"Where'd you get that anyway?" her brother asked. Both boys had seen the girl writing in the thin black book over the last week or two.

"Diagon Alley," she said, and Harry could tell, without seeing her, that she was shrugging. "I think that's everything."

"Did you look under your bed?" Harry asked, from outside. Ron had found like five things under his bed after declaring himself done. Harry had found even more, but at least he'd been on a folding camp bed, so he found them when the bed was stowed anyway. Ron's bed was a permanent fixture and against the wall, so had deep, secret recesses beneath where books and clothing could disappear.

"Eep!" Ginny squeaked, then took a moment and said, "Oh! Thanks, Harry!" There was another thump of her trunk lid. "Ron. Sit on this so I can latch it. Okay, and now really done!"

Ginny's trunk was much heavier than Ron and Harry's nearly-empty ones as they helped her get it downstairs.

Mrs. Weasley had gone back into the kitchen to finish cleaning up when they got back downstairs, and as they hoisted their trunks into the eye-wateringly-space-expanded storage of the car, Mr. Weasley insisted, "Don't tell Molly the boot is charmed."

"Can't she see that we all shouldn't be able to fit into an Anglia?" Harry checked. The car was so small that, without magic, there probably wouldn't even be space for Ginny in between the Weasley parents, let alone all five boys in the back seat.

Mr. Weasley shrugged, efficiently conveying that his wife saw what she wanted to see, and got mad about what she wanted to get mad about, and that he'd long ago ceased trying to figure those things out.

"You're sure you all have everything?" she insisted, as she bustled up. This was the earliest they'd gotten out of the house for Hogwarts since Bill had started. She'd had no expectation that the first year she had to manage five kids' packing (six, counting Harry!) would be the fastest.

Everyone looked at each other, thought about it, and nodded. Harry just hoped that the goblins didn't do random spot checks on vaults and wonder why his vault—previously nothing but coins—was suddenly full of Weasley laundry, school supplies, and prank items.

It was good that they'd packed so quickly. The drive from Ottery St. Catchpole to King's Cross station was only a little short of 300 kilometers, and should have been a four- or five-hour trip on a busy Tuesday morning. That they did the trip in under three hours made Harry think that Mr. Weasley had built even more charms onto the car than he'd admitted to, including something to keep the police from noticing the tiny turquoise car barrelling along the straightaways at well above the speed limit.

Several of the other wizarding families on Platform 9 ¾ looked frankly shocked that the Weasleys were showing up at 10:00 rather than at the last possible second.

"We need to tell Lee," Fred told Harry, quietly, as they reached the platform.

"We'll find you to discuss," George nodded.

"Fine. But nobody else. And make sure he keeps it a secret," Harry requested. He'd figured that the twins would have no secrets from Lee Jordan, their roommate, co-conspirator, and quidditch announcer.

Both twins tapped their noses simultaneously, declared, "Bye Mum! Bye Dad!" and got onto the train.

Mrs. Weasley was fussing over Ginny and acknowledged the twins with a wave. "Write to us to let us know what house you get."

"It'll be Gryffindor, mum," Ginny insisted.

"Even if it's not, we'll be happy all the same," she told her daughter. "Are you going to sit with Ron and Harry?"

"I think I'll find Luna," Ginny said, blushing.

"You can sit with us if you want," Harry offered, still nonplussed by the girl being so embarrassed around him. "Is Luna the girl that sees things?" he checked with Ron, who nodded.

"S'okay," Ginny said. "But you can help me get my trunk on?" she managed to get out.

"Sure. Bye Mrs. Weasley. Mr. Weasley," Harry insisted.

"It's Molly and Arthur, dear," she corrected him for about the fiftieth time, giving him a big hug after embracing her other two children. Percy had already long departed for the prefects' car. "Have a wonderful year, all of you!"

They got Ginny's trunk stowed in an empty compartment after the girl determined that they'd managed to beat her friend, and then Harry and Ron found the compartment that Hermione had already claimed a little further back in the train.

"Good!" she said, greeting both boys. "I've had some thoughts for how to tackle the library efficiently once we get to school…"

Before Hermione could expand on her strategy for Harry trying to fit the entirety of the Hogwarts library into his head, they caught her up on the parts of the last couple of weeks they hadn't included in their letters.

"A dedicated connection to your Gringotts vault sounds like a security flaw that the goblins wouldn't like," Hermione pursed her lips. "We probably should keep this from becoming general knowledge, as much as I want to ask the teachers all about it. Maybe we can find information in the histories about whether this has happened before."

"Did you get a MENSA session?" Harry asked, remembering she'd mentioned having a proctored IQ test.

She grinned, "Yes. They demanded I join when I scored a 170. And I rather think that I should have been higher, but their test is geared toward adults so I think I could have scored higher if I'd had more of the context they expected."

"Higher like 200?" Harry checked.

"Exactly," Hermione answered. "Though I suppose it's possible that the IQ test ratings aren't exactly measuring whatever your game system is. But it would be a lot easier if we could assume that your game score multiplied by 10 is your IQ. What is that little person next to the Malfoys?"

At the apparently non-sequitur, Harry and Ron followed Hermione's gaze out of the train to the platform, where Draco, his father, and probably his mother had entered.

NARCISSA MALFOY
Warlock, Level 11
[SLYTHERIN]

Momentarily distracted by how Draco's mother wasn't a Death Eater, he almost missed Dobby following the family. But the little elf seemed to know Harry was looking at him, met his eyes, nodded, and then disappeared. "That was Dobby. Guess he works for the Malfoys," Harry explained.

"Figures," Ron snorted.

"I suppose we'll have to keep a close eye on Draco this year. If his father is up to something dangerous, he might have Draco carrying it out," Hermione figured. "Or at least he would know."

"Yeah," Harry nodded, absently. Now that he was looking out at the crowd, the sea of names, classes, levels, and guilds was a little overwhelming. Previously, the most densely-packed location he'd been to was out to eat with the Grangers, which was nothing like so many adults and children swarming around a train platform. He was trying to see if any useful information popped out, but with so many it was mostly noise. That is, until he realized he should check out the families that talked to the Malfoys and look for one particularly-useful piece of information.

Sure enough about half of the parents of Slytherin students he recognized were tagged as Death Eaters.

"Goyle, Crabbe, and Nott for sure. Oh, and Mr. Parkinson," Harry started explaining to his friends. "Death Eaters. Huh, not Greengrass' or Davis' parents. Or Zabini's mum. I don't see the Bulstrodes anywhere."

"Any of them high level?" Ron checked.

"Most of them look about the same as the Malfoys," Harry nodded. "Eleven or twelve. But Mr. Nott is fifteen. He seems pretty old, though, so that makes sense."

"Anyone not in Slytherin?" Hermione checked.

"I don't know," Harry shrugged. "It's hard to pick them out if I don't know who to focus on. It's like when a typewriter gets stuck. Just names on top of names out there. Hard to pick them apart."

"Be a great skill for an auror, though," Ron mused.

"I think we're about to head out," Hermione said, checking her watch to see that it was 11 as the train started to shudder with movement and the last kids on the platform rushed aboard.

They'd pulled out of the station by the time Fred, George, and Lee made it to their compartment.

LEE JORDAN
Mage, Level 4
[GRYFFINDOR]

"Colloportus. We've sworn him to secrecy," George explained as they closed the door behind themselves and cast a locking charm.

"But he needs to see the show before he really believes," Fred nodded.

Harry nodded, but added, "First off, Lee Jordan, do you want to join the Marauders?"

"Isn't that the guys on the map?" Lee asked. "Sure."

LEE JORDAN HAS JOINED THE MARAUDERS

"Then let me call this guild meeting to order," Harry grinned, brain churning with ideas for how to make use of his father's legacy to prank the Death Eaters into oblivion…