POV of Parvati Patil

For about the fifth time that night, I opened my eyes and nervously glanced at the clock radio on my nightstand, which told me it was only 5:30. Today was September 1st, and I was more excited than ever before in my life. When I'm excited, it's hard for me to sleep through the night.

Nevertheless, today would be a long day, and I needed to be well-rested. So I closed my eyes again and tried to relax.

Seemingly a minute later, I opened my eyes again. 6:58. As usual, I had outsmarted the alarm clock set for 7 AM. I smiled: in the morning, only terrible music played on the radio anyway. So I quickly turned off the alarm and jumped out of bed, wide awake.

On my way to the door, I bumped my right leg against my already upright, fully packed suitcase, nearly knocking it over. I winced in pain. Such things happened to me constantly.

When I was finally fully dressed and standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I looked at myself. I was of average height for my age, with long, dark brown hair that was hard to tame, which is why I almost always wore it braided. Like today. I looked into my reflection's light brown eyes, which, if you looked closely and in the right lighting, had a slight greenish tint. I sighed as my gaze fell on my dark under-eye circles, which no one knew the origin of. After all, I actually got enough sleep.

Mum was just loading my suitcase into the car when I remembered that the cage with Jenna, my barn owl, was still on the kitchen table. I rushed back to get her. As I got into the car, my mother looked at me questioningly. I knew this look and knew the question was whether I had thought of everything now and if she could drive off. I just nodded in response.

We arrived at the station over half an hour before the Hogwarts Express was due to depart. Excited, I was pushing my luggage trolley in front of me and heading purposefully towards the barrier between platforms 9 and 10 when I saw a girl my age standing in front of it. In a calm tone, she was explaining to her parents:

"You can't come to the platform. I've already told you that."

Her parents seemed to say goodbye to her with a heavy heart. When they finally left, she waved to them until they disappeared into the crowd.

Then she visibly nervously eyed the barrier. No wonder! Even I was nervous about having to run through the barrier for the very first time. For a Muggle-born like her, the whole thing was probably even more exciting!

After a brief hesitation, I walked up to her and greeted her shyly with a "Hi!".

"Hello", she greeted me back kindly.

"So... Mum always says it's easier with a running start", I said.

The girl nodded with relief, and we silently agreed to run side by side towards the barrier between the two platforms. As soon as we were through, my mother followed with my twin sister, Padma.

The scarlet Hogwarts Express nearly took my breath away. Of course, I knew it from pictures, but seeing it there in real life was really fascinating.

Mum said goodbye to Padma and me with a hug and wished us lots of fun. She would stay on the platform until the train left to wave us off. But before she let us find a free compartment, she made me promise to write to her in the next few days about how we were doing and which houses we had been sorted into.

Padma had already boarded the train while Mum was talking to me, so I set off with the girl I had just met to look for a free compartment.

While we were pulling our heavy suitcases through the train, I learned that the girl with the brown hair was named Hermione Granger.

Relieved, we pushed open the door of an empty compartment, stowed our suitcases, and sat down across from each other.

We hadn't found Padma, but I figured I would see her at the house sorting ceremony, so I didn't worry about it any further.