Catching the Train
Harry
“I don’t understand why you’re so nervous all of a sudden, you were so excited yesterday. And every day before that.” My dads voice broke me away from the anxious pacing I had been doing for the last hour.
“That’s because every day before this I still had time left to be myself before I had to pretend to be someone else. I mean, come on dad. The only good part of Hogwarts will be being with dad every day, and even then it won’t be the same. You’ve both made it clear to me that I will have to be someone else during my time at Hogwarts. And I understand it, I really really do. Albus Dumbledore can’t know that I’ve been with dad for the last ten years, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it, or that it will be easy for me.” I hadn’t noticed that while ranting I had started pacing again, voice getting steadily louder, until my dad put his hand on my shoulder to stop me in my place.
“Come on Harry, you’re being dramatic. You’ll only have to act a little differently. I promise things will get back to normal after a while. All you have to do is pretend your dad is a stranger to you for a little bit, long enough for Albus to believe it, and then you’ll get to be like every other student.” My dad tried to reassure me with a gentle tone, but I knew he was sugar coating it, because not only did I have to pretend like I didn’t know the man who had raised me, I knew that he would be pretending to hate me at the same time. I wasn’t sure I could handle that.
But instead of voicing the rest of my fears, I just gave my dad a smile and pretended to be ok. (He doesn’t need the extra stress, and besides, I’m going to have to get good at pretending soon anyway.)
The look my dad gave me showed that he didn’t fully believe me, but thankfully he didn’t push it. Instead just encouraging me to finish my packing(that was supposed to be finished days ago) so that we could be on time for the train(having to ride the train with everyone else sounded terrifying, not that I would ever tell my dads that).
Packing went surprisingly fast when I was fueled by all of the anxiety I was feeling. Too fast actually, because almost as soon as I finished, we were out the door.
When we got to the train station I walked with my head held high, full of confidence(completely fake confidence, I mean, I was about to be in a new school, with new people and one friend, at the bottom of the food chain. Who in their right mind would be confident about that?), the only thing keeping me going was my dads hand on my shoulder, guiding me.
Dad’s support helped, of course, but the closer we got to the train the more I wanted to jerk away from him and make a run for it. I was seconds away from doing just that when I heard a very familiar whistle come from behind me.
I felt my face breaking out into a grin before I even realized who the sound came from. As I turned around, out of my dads grasp, I was sent stumbling backwards by another body impacting mine.
“Hey Nev.” I got my greeting out through batches of giggles, ones that I could hear being reflected back at me from the mouth of my best friend since forever.
As she pulled away from me Neville gave me a grin, “Hey Harry. I almost thought I was going to have to face this train ride alone. Seriously, what took you guys so long? I swear I was aging by the second.” A laugh was startled out of me, but before I could respond my dad spoke, rolling his eyes fondly at us.
“Please, you’re only 11. I swear, you two act older than your dad and I.” He nudged me playfully as he finished his statement, reaching over to do the same to Nev(my dads have been really good at treating Neville more like my sister than anything, it’d been that way for as long as I could remember) in response she gave him a bright smile.
Grabbing my hand she tugged me closer, “Well come on, we don’t have forever. Let's get this over with shall we, ma’am?” I giggled even harder than I had before, just being with her was already easing my fears of the upcoming year(dad could tell too, obvious from the way he was smiling at us when he thought we wouldn’t notice. Which we did, of course.)
Glancing at the train again before answering, I took a deep breath to avoid the anxiety trying to flood back in.
“Are you sure we can do this? I mean. Do you think you can successfully pretend we just met and haven’t been friends since like. Birth?” Nev and I exchanged another grin before she seemed to actually contemplate what I’d said.
“Look, I know this will be hard, and we’re both scared, and don’t even try to deny it. I know you better than anyone,” at this I looked away sheepishly(you know you were about to do exactly that) and she started speaking again, “but I know we’ll be fine. Come on, it’ll be an adventure. Who doesn’t like a good adventure?” (We were both terrified of the unknown, but making each other feel better about something we were both scared of? That was something we were very good at. So-)
“Well obviously. We’ve got each other, of course we’ll be fine.” With more smiling, and hugging, the both of us saying goodbye to my dad, we finally made ourselves get on the train. Finding a compartment that wasn’t already full was hard, but we finally did after a few minutes of searching. Popping down with a sigh, we both made ourselves comfortable, because we knew we probably wouldn’t get another chance to for a long while yet.