Harry waved away Hermione's concerns as he walked down the compartments of the train, trying to clear his mind. He needed to walk for a bit. Perhaps even more than a bit.

He tried to digest what Ron's dad, Mr. Weasley, told him before. It was quite the shock, really. Harry wished that he could have a single year to himself without a murder-attempt by a random adult. Or a kid possessed by another, older, more evil kid.

Especially since it would seem that someone wanted his blood so badly that they broke out of what Harry had learned was the world's worst prison. Which was supposed to have had no prisoner escape, ever.

Harry had read the papers too. Every single piece he saw all talked about how evil the man was, how he had murdered fourteen muggles in cold-blood and how he laughed like an utter maniac when the Aurors caught up to him, how he had laughed insanely through his-

"Hey, Harry, mate, you okay there?"

Harry snapped out of his thoughts to smile weakly at his best friend. Harry could do with a good distraction.

Before he could talk to his best friend and point out the smear of hot sauce dribbling from the side of his mouth, Harry was distracted by what would have to be a particularly odd sight, even for the world where little green people were the safest choice for gold and unicorn blood was silver.

Ron noticed immediately that he was being ignored and turned around to see what the source of Harry's distraction was, before shutting up himself.

The distraction, as Harry would call her, looked like a girl who was very probably his own age, if perhaps younger, armed with a comically huge walking staff struggling to hop aboard the Hogwarts Express, being held back by her teeny-tiny little carry on bag that had somehow gotten stuck at the space between the train's floor and the landing.

And that wasn't all. Even as the girl tried to disengage her baggage from a non-existent crevice, she would not stop arguing with the small white cat resting on her shoulders that mewled at her every response.

It was quite the sight, really.

"Hey, mate, you reckon we ought to go help her out?"

Harry jumped at that, turning to look at Ron, who was looking at the girl with the oddest sparkle in his eyes. Harry didn't know what to think of it, but Ron had already gone on ahead to help the girl out.

Harry heard the voice of Mr. Weasley in the back of his head, even as he laughed at his best mate, in his gallant efforts to help the girl, tripped over her huge stick right over to her cat, who somehow swatted him aside while looking royally miffed.

Harry didn't want to ever mess with that cat in his life. But that didn't stop him from chortling a little when the girl helped his very red best mate up.

But alas, that was the exact moment that the Express decided that it was time to go to Hogwarts, startling the redhead just enough that any hopes for his balance decided to jump ship.

Ron then grabbed the girl's shoulders to stop himself from epic embarrassment once more.

Yeah, that did absolutely bupkis. The dynamic dancing duo landed quite spectacularly on top of the girl's luggage, successful in at least dislodging it from the crack that had proven to be beyond her abilities alone.

Harry had the best laugh in ages watching the literal wreck-on-the-train and wiped the tears from his eyes as he offered a hand to his beet-red best mate. Ron took his hand with little fanfare, looking like the thing he wanted to do most in the world would be to turn into a butterfly and fly away.

Harry was pretty sure he could ask Hermione for a spell that would do that. He needed to make do with his promise, after all. Follow the butterflies.

The girl had already gotten up and had brushed herself off, apparently deciding to just magic her baggage in when Harry had helped Ron up, prodding at it with an unseen wand, murmuring under her breath all the while.

Harry watched, completely bemused as the girl walked right past him to check on Ron, smiling at him even as she checked his face for signs of injuries. "I'm sorry for being so clumsy, little redhead."

Harry noted, in the back of his mind, that the girl was at least half a head shorter than Ron. Harry also noted Ron's increasing competence in trying to wandlessly and wordlessly transfigure his face into a tomato.

Just a passing thought he'd mention to his mate when he did something stupid. Or wanted to follow the butterflies.

Harry held a bit of a sore spot about that. He owed his friend far too much…

Harry was surprised, when he snapped himself out of his weird thoughts, about how much he enjoyed watching Ron as the little girl fussed over him, tapping on various parts of his face to figure out if he was hurt seriously in his valiant tries to help her.

When it looked like Ron would burst open, as the girl seemed to grow ever closer to him, Harry popped by to introduce himself.

"Hello, I'm Harry. That little itsy bitsy redhead-and-face over there is Ron. Nice to meet you!"

The cat on her shoulders meowed ominously.

"And you too, Mis-"

"She's a girl."

Harry blinked. How did she know that he thought the cat was a he? He corrected himself, "miss-?"

The girl was prompt in introducing the regal cat, who looked every single bit as the live unicorn Harry had seen in his first year.

"Her name's Aithusa."

"Miss Aithusa." The cat jumped over to Harry as soon as he spoke her name. The name just sounded magical. It felt like forests and winds and flying and fun. He hadn't thought names could be like that.

"Oh dear."

The girl sounded concerned. That wasn't a tone of voice Harry heard from anyone other than his professors when they thought he'd done something inadvisable. Which was really not something he did that often!

Which honestly was something he could live with. He'd heard much worse earlier in his school year before. From scarier professors. Much as he hated to admit to himself that Snape was scary in any way.

But still, he had to ask.

"Why is that, exactly?"

The girl blinked, and smiled sadly at him. "Aithusa likes you."

Harry blinked at her, trying to parse why exactly that could possibly be bad.

The girl just smiled at him, looking far older than she looked, and continued, "Aithusa only likes people like her former best friend or me."

She got up, dusting herself off and whispered softly, so soft that Harry could barely pick out the words, close as he was, "And people like me or her never have the happiest of stories. I wish you the best of luck."

Her cat jumped out of Harry's lap to walk after her master. Harry had never thought about it before, but the term 'cat-walking' never seemed more appropriate.

"Mate?"

"Yeah, Ron?"

"Is it just me, or is that cat looking down at us?"

"It's not just you, Ron."

"Oh. Good. Did you catch her name, by the way? I don't remember anything after-"

Ron turned a bright red again and meeped. Before he could open his mouth, Harry smiled at him, jumped up, and walked off to find a cabin to sit in. And Hermione too, if he could find her.

She would probably know more about the girl than Harry would, after all. Probably.

As Ron pestered Harry to forget everything he saw on the train and start everything anew, he wondered if Hogwarts had a policy on transfer students. The girl had a really odd accent, one that he couldn't really place at all, but would probably call some kind of exotic.

Yeah, Harry wasn't good with geography. Exotic could mean pretty much anything.

Harry didn't have much experience with accents beyond what he had overheard in the telly when Dudley watched one of his ridiculous shows.

Harry managed to avoid Ron for a grand total of three cars before he caught up to him.

"So," Ron began when he caught up to Harry, "d'you manage to grab some sweets from the food trolley? Mum only gave me cornbeef sandwich again. And it's dry already. It's like she forgets that I hate it with the burning passion of the sun."

Harry smiled as Ron stumbled over his words in his haste to do something. "I reckon it's 'cause you keep forgetting to eat the things you do like that she makes for you. You always give me the corn beef sandwiches, and she thinks you like it more."

Ron stopped in his footsteps at that. "Huh. You might be onto something, mate. Now, gimme that back, I don't want another corn beef special when I get back home from her."

Harry frowned as his mate stuffed the sandwich into his pockets and protested, "Hey! I was eating that!"

They bickered, opening compartments to find one that was empty or had a friend or two in it as they did so, till they stumbled onto a compartment with Ginny, Hermione and some youngish looking raggedy man sleeping in the corner.

"Who's that?" Ron asked, while frowning down at his sandwich and nibbling at it like his pet Scabbers would.

I shot my mouselike friend a withering look and told him frankly, "You know that it'll be better if you just eat it all in one go, right? It's only going to get dryer the more you wait."

Ron seemed surprised at my deep insight, spending a second to think about it before nodding firmly, muttering, "yeah, makes sense" and gulped the sandwich in one go.

Hermione sighed at her redheaded best friend, but in the interest of changing the topic, pointed at the man. "He's our new DADA professor, his name is Professor Remus J. Lupin. He's been like that since before"

Harry blinked at that. "How'd you reckon that, Hermione? Did he write a book for the curriculum?"

Ron grinned at that, and continued for Harry, "yeah, is it called 'Sleeping Amongst the Saelie'? Does it tell us how he heroically jumped into a fairy lake to rescue a beautiful dame and-"

"His name's on the suitcase!" A very frazzled Hermione pointed at an old suitcase in the corner, that indeed said 'Property of Remus J. Lupin' on it. Ron sported a huge grin on his face, apparently forgetting every bit of how he ate the thing he hated most in the world.

Harry grinned. It was going to be a great day. His grin did slip when Ginny threw a pack of Exploding Snap at his face with a challenge, though.

Six hours later, Harry was enjoying his evening with his best mates for company when he felt a cold invade him.

All he could hear was a distant scream. No, not Harry!

All he could see was a green flash.

Harry woke up in the Hospital Wing, under a roof that was far too familiar to him.

"So, hello there, Harry. Sorry if I brought you here in such a great hurry. Isn't often that kids have pasts bad enough that Dementors knock them straight out."

Harry blinked and tried to focus on the source of the voice bothering him. It didn't sound like Madam Pomfrey, though something in the tone made Harry doubt his own memory.

He heard a sigh. "You can't see without your glasses, can you?"

Harry nodded as hard as he could.

"Alright, alright, no need to become a chicken-head, sheesh."

Harry blinked at that strange address before finding himself wearing his glasses once more. He brought his hands up to feel his face. "How…?"

"You don't know simple transportation magic?"

Harry blinked again. He had a feeling he was doing that a lot.

He heard a sigh again. "Yeah, now's a bad time to ask questions. Anyway, turn around, kid. Lemme introduce myself properly."

Harry did as he was told. He felt a little bit of fog in his head clear up and that he could think properly again.

He saw a little girl in front of him. It was the same little girl he had seen on the train.

"Hello," the girl smiled at him. When he saw that smile, Harry thought that, somehow, everything would work out just fine. Something about her made him want to trust her.

Her smile seemed to widen a bit at that. "There's still time for the Feast to start, so you'd want to head there if you feel fine."

Harry got up in a flash at that. The girl laughed a bit before stopping herself. "Ah, my apologies. You can call me Ariel."

She looked up at him and Harry could swear that she suddenly gained a couple of centimetres since the last time he had seen her, "Ariel E. Aeolus, at your service."

Harry was caught a bit on the flat foot with all the sudden formalities being offered to him. The girl simply chuckled. "You don't need to do anything, chicken-head. I know who you are. Now, go!"

Harry mindlessly followed her orders and went.

He met up with Ron and Hermione and the rest of the Weasleys and his other mates at the Great Hall. He had gotten there right as they had.

Harry turns towards the teacher's table to see the man who had probably saved his life, according to Ron and Hermione, before stopping at one seat in particular. One seat that had always been empty that Harry could remember.

One seat, where sat a little girl.

A little girl who had named herself Ariel to him not five minutes before.

Harry felt the sudden and extremely insistent need to take a nap.