Welcome to Hogwarts
The ground beneath him was muddy and rising quickly. Too quickly.
He was disoriented and confused as lights flickered through the metal caging surrounding him and whispering voices filled his head.
“James. James. James. James. James.”
He tried to stand up but the box he was in only allowed him enough room to crouch and find his way to a corner. There were no thoughts in his head as the box sped up, just his own name circling round and confusion on the emptiness. He knew he had a life so where was it? Why couldn’t he see it?
He tried to stare up but the blurriness revealed no shapes, until finally he saw a ceiling when the lights flashed. But the box made no indication of stopping, faster and faster.
“Hey! Help…someone, help!” James’ voice was much quieter than he had anticipated and painfully raw, like he hadn’t drank for days. Like in the past, which he couldn’t remember, he’d been screaming for hours already.
He curled down on his side as the ceiling got too close to mistake and held his arms over his head, scared and miserable with his minute of awareness.
James screwed his eyes shut and waited for the crash.
Until light filled the gaps between his arms and the box jumped to a stop as the metal screamed in protest.
For a moment there was silence.
Then the voices of hundreds of people started yelling down at him.
“He looks like he threw up on his way up.”
“Hey, what’s your name squib?”
“You scream like a girl, Newbie. We heard you.”
“Shut up, Barty.”
James backed up quickly, sitting back in his corner, arms reaching out and letting his eyes try and adjust to the darkness.
Suddenly a thud came from beside him and a tall boy with a lanky outline stood beside him reaching his hand down.
“Ignore all of them. You got a name, Squib? Welcome to Hogwarts, home to all us little lost boys and girls.”
The boy's voice was familiar but different from his own. ‘He has a Welsh accent’a, his mind provided him but he couldn’t remember if he’d ever been to Wales before. And he should remember, he just should. He could feel the absence of knowledge in his head, like the scratching feeling you get when you try to remember how to spell a word. The answer was on the tip of his tongue but he just didn’t know.
And James didn’t like that.
So he grabbed the stranger's hand and used it to lift himself off the floor before climbing up the metal box and pulling himself onto the ground it was buried within.
He felt hands grabbing his shoulders and slapping it back and he felt dizzy in the business around him. He tried to blink his eyes clear, to get a good look around but the fuzziness in his vision wouldn’t lift. The hands kept grabbing at him and voices kept yelling at him from the crowd and James could feel himself choke on his breath.
He felt panic, scared, uneasy and nothing made sense. He felt like he was sugar surrounded by hundreds of buzzing bees, all tightly claustrophobic. He needed to get out, he needed to get away.
He started to shove his way through the group, floaty at first but then with more fast-paced desperation as he managed to find an exit. His legs started moving faster than his thoughts and through his smoke-screen vision he started running towards the trees. Away from all the noise, away from the buzzing crowd, away from the coffin box in the ground.
His legs pulsed and beat against the ground, pushing him forward and making his vision blur more and more until he closed his eyes and let his legs move him forward.
And he was flying. The wind whipping and curling against his face and arms and feet slapping the floor to quickly for him to keep count of. His movement was natural and well-practised even if he couldn’t remember it, his body could. He was so fast that nothing could stop him.
Until something did.
A hand grasped his bicep and with his speed and the sudden force pulling at him from behind his feet came up and his body slammed into the ground.
James felt his breath stutter and get lost in his throat as someone quickly rolled him onto his back, hover above him and an arm pressed tightly against his throat.
“You ran off without your glasses, Hotshot.”
He felt the metal frames roughly get shoved onto his face and finally the blurred fuzz stopped and the sight above him cleared.
And what a sight it was, James thought. The man above him must have been around 20, with sharp features that looked like cut marble, eyes just as stoney: filled with stormy clouds. He felt like he’d seen them before, he must have because he knew the feeling of looking into them and being seen back by them. His hair was black and soft looking and slightly messy, no doubt caused by the chase. And freckles too, which felt new and delicate, deliberate like they’d been painted on. He looked like a statue of an angel
He stayed resting above him, face barely an arms reach away. He felt the man watching him just as intently as he was watching him. There was something in those stormy eyes, the clouds swirling round in them. He looked confused, uncomfortable like he was trying to find something in James’ face. Looking for something he’d forgotten.
‘Oh’, James’ thoughts went silent all of a sudden as his focus shifted completely, ‘I’m in love.’
Then other footsteps got louder and the face above him and the arm against his throat disappeared.
“You’re fast, Newbie. Almost thought Reggie wasn’t going to catch you up for a second.” A new voice emerged from his right as he slowly sat up to watch the statue man walk away.
‘Reggie’, his brain repeated back unhelpfully.
The unfamiliar person approached him, a big smile on his face that looked similar to the mysterious “Reggie’s”.
“I’m Sirius. Sorry about that big group of useless Squibs over there. Still haven’t learnt any tact. Anyway, Remus, that big lanky guy,” he waved his thumb behind him carelessly pointing to half the crowd that was still slowly walking over, “was saying before you freaked out back there, welcome to Hogwarts.”
James shifted his glasses and looked around at the sight around him, a forest no more than a few hundred feet ahead of him, some vegetable patches, a large dark lake and huts with billowing smoky chimneys and in the middle of the circle of trees a grand castle, with towers and turrets.
His head slowly tilted back to the guy in front of him, Sirius, who was still smiling brightly but with a mysterious glint, like he knew something that James didn’t know. Like he knew his future or his past.
Sirius bent down slightly and offered out his hand to help James off of the ground.
“Make yourself at home, Newbie. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”