The Runaway Toad Strikes Again
September 1st comes too quickly.
She leaves at eight o’clock, dragging her trunk behind her up to the bus stop, and doesn’t bother giving the Dursleys her goodbyes. They hadn’t said a word about her departure, too busy gloating about Dudley’s own school, so she concluded they assumed she’d take herself out like she always did that summer.
It's a quiet drive to London, a sharp contrast to the loud buzz of the train station. The wheels of her trunk make a ra-ta-ta-ta-ta behind her, somehow avoiding her heels completely despite bumping into her calves whenever she craned her neck to catch sight of the station signs.
Professor McGonagall had told her that the magical station was behind the third pillar of Station 9, that she could simply walk through and she’d appear on the ‘other side’. It didn’t work for muggles, so muggleborns had to hold their parents’ hands if they wanted to come through, not that the Dursleys would have wanted to enter a magical place. Especially if they had to touch Annie’s creepy hands for it.
The buzz of King’s Cross seems to simultaneously hush and increase when she steps through. The enormous red locomotive right in front of her lets out a constant gush of steam, hissing loudly in the station. Annie spares a few looks at the emotionnal families exchanging hugs and goodbyes and then pointedly heads for the train.
She has a father. McGongall said he loved her. She bets he would have loved to be here with her, if he could. He totally would.
Wouldn’t he?
The wheels of her trunk bump into the small step between the station and the train, but don’t wrench her shoulder when she pulls it up, like she expects it to. The carpet inside the train doesn’t snag them, either, and Annie quickly finds herself a compartment, following Professor McGonagall’s advice and immediately changing into her uniform.
Then she goes to push her trunk up into the luggage rack over the seats. The first attempt ends up with her nearly getting flattened under the trunk. The second leads to a twisted finger that forces her to wait a little before attempting it for the third time.
She has to climb on the opposite seat to finally lift it far enough to get it into the rack, nearly falling over when it slips in and leaves her bent over the foot space, but she does manage it. She doesn’t know how she’ll take it out, but that’s a concern for later.
She dusts her footprints from the seat, picks her bookbag from where it fell on the floor, then curls herself next to the window with The Ministrial Guide of Self-Defence, which somehow managed to be even more boring than History of Magic. How could anyone manage to write a book about magic and make it boring?
At one point, Annie considers closing the doors when the noise from the station gets louder. Students run across the hallway, screaming, yelping and laughing, not a single one paying her any attention as they pass her compartment, only looking at her when checking if the place is empty.
A voice comes from unseen speakers and warns everyone that the train would leave in thirty minutes, fifteen minutes, five minutes…
“Annie?”
Annie looks up, blinking in shock at the sight of Justin Finch-Fletchey in the door of her compartment. He's the violonist who won First Place at the London Amateur Festival two years ago, and with whom she did a team-up for the end-of-summer Junior Talent Show after Justin’s partner dropped out at the last minute.
Mrs Finch hadn’t liked that Annie had taken the bus to London on her own, or that she always came to practice by herself. After they won the Junior Talent Show, Mrs Finch had driven Annie back to Privet Drive and asked to have a talk with the Dursleys with the kind of face that people usually reserved for Annie.
But the talk had gone poorly, and Annie had been forbidden to talk to Justin again. She hadn't really listened, because it wasn't like the Dursleys had any way to know that she did, so she kept meeting with Justin whenever they saw each others at events. However, Annie had never agreed to another team-up again, nor had she accepted another lift from Mrs Finch or Mr Fletchley, which sucked because playing music with Justin had been fun and his parents had been nice.
But this is different. They're going to Hogwarts togheter. Annie doesn't think Aunt Petunia would ever ask about anything that happens at Hogwarts, including Annie's friends.
“Hey, Justin,” Annie greets, waving at him and the sandy-haired boy at his side. They’re already in their uniforms, just like her. “I thought you were going to Eton?”
A large smile spreads on Justin’s face and he walks inside, dragging both his trunk and his friend along. “I was! I was even accepted! But then McGonagall came and I was a wizard and then I had to go to Hogwarts, you know? What about you? Did you know you were a witch?”
Annie blinks again. “No,” she admits. “My parents were magical, but my aunt never told me.”
Justin makes a face. “That sucks,” he decides, before turning to his friend. “Right! This is Nick, he’s a muggleborn like me! We met when Mum brought me back to Diagon Alley and McGonagall was showing him and his dad around. And since his dad worked today Mum said we could take him with us! We almost got late because we couldn’t find the station and Mum had to call my grandfather, Dad’s dad – who apparently already knew about magic? But he couldn’t tell us because of some law.”
Annie had forgotten how much Justin could talk. Not that it’s a bad thing.
“Hi, Nick,” Annie says when Justin stops to breathe. “I’m Anemone Potter, you can call me Annie.”
“Hi,” Nick replies. “I’m Nicholas Colt, but, er, call me Nick.”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to be shy, she’s really nice,” Justin tells Nick, who turns red. “I met her at a musical contest, she plays the piano – and she’s really good! I asked Professor McGonagall if Hogwarts had music rooms, and they do, so we can even show you later! I mean,” and there Justin turns to look at her, slightly wide-eyed, “if you want!”
“Sure,” Annie agrees. She hadn’t know that Hogwarts had music rooms. That’s good – it means she won’t get rusty over the years and humiliate herself at tea parties.
“Great!” Justin beams. He’s jolted when the train starts, Nick tripping against his trunk and into the wall. “Right, we should put those away.”
The train ride now looking a lot more interesting, Annie puts her book back into her bag and goes to help the boys lift their trunk into the racks. They manage with Justin’s luggage, but they’re inretupted before they can move on to Nick’s, an older student with a yellow tie and a prefect badge levitating the trunk and telling them to go find him if they need help with anything else.
An older witch with a candy tray rolls up sometime around three o’clock, and Annie buys enough candies for everyone to share, much to Justin and Nick’s delight. Annie discovers that she really likes Sugar Quills, while Nick takes a second Cauldron Cake. They all make faces when Justin spits out a jelly bean and says it tastes like vomit, only for the box to confirm that the claim of ‘every flavours’ wasn’t just a promotionnal thing. They mostly leave the jelly beans aside after that.
Their exploration of wizarding candy is interupted when a girl in uniform stops in their doorway, briefly knocking on the wall and immediately asking :
“Have you seen a toad? A boy named Neville's lost one.”
“A toad?” Nick repeats, wrinkling his nose. “Someone really brought a toad?”
“He’s allowed to,” the girl says in a defensive voice. “It’s written in the acceptance letter. Students may bring an owl or a cat or a toad.”
“I know that,” Nick retorts. “I just didn’t think anyone would.”
“It wouldn’t be in the letter if people wouldn’t bring toads,” the girl continues. “Well? Did you see one?”
“We didn’t,” Annie speaks up before Justin can shrivel up in his seat – he really doesn’t like it when people fight or argue. “You should go ask a Prefect for help.”
Justin suddenly lights up, happy to be able to help. “Yeah!” he agrees eagerly. “They should be patrolling the train, they said? They have these badges—”
“I already told the Prefects,” the girl declares, sounding offended. “That’s the first thing I did! But the train is big so I’m helping, too!”
“Oh,” Justin says quietly, sinking back into himself.
He’s the nicest and friendliest person Annie has ever met. This girl doesn't get to talk bad to him.
“Justin was just trying to be nice,” she snaps, and the girl turns to look at her again. “You don’t have to be mean about it.”
“I just said I already did that,” the girl insists. “I wasn’t mean.”
“It’s okay,” Justin says, because he hates people arguing for him even more than he does arguments in general. “You weren’t mean.”
The girl nods, looks at them one last time, and then leaves.
The compartment door slides close with a soft clack.
“You didn’t have to say that,” Nick says. “Now she thinks she was right.”
“It’s fine,” Justin assures. “I didn’t want to argue, and now she’s gone.”
Well, he’s not wrong. But he still looks uncomfortable, so Annie looks at their piles of candy and quickly offers Justin a Chocolate Frog.
They all shriek when the frog leaps out of its package, and Justin laughs at her when it leaps at her and she slaps it, sending it flying into the window. Nick manages to catch it before it falls to the ground, so Justin can still eat it, and the thumbs up they get after he pops it whole into his mouth has them digging for more of them.
It’s not as terrible of a train ride as Annie first expected.