Take me home, what are you waiting for?
The door to his compartment opened, and the freckled, red-headed younger brother of the twins stuck his head inside, looking embarrassed.
“Hiya, uh- name’s Ron. Listen, uh, all the compartments are full. Mind if I sit here?” he asked, pointing to the seat next to Hedwig’s cage.
Harry waved him in, taking the cage with a mildly annoyed Hedwig and putting it on the luggage deck above his own head. Ron sat opposite him in silence for a moment, looking as if something was on his mind, his eyes turning to Harry every now and then.
“Sorry, can I-... mind if I ask you something?”
“Sure.” He already got questioned by his brothers if he was Harry Potter, what was another time, when in a few hours or so he’d probably get asked a hundred more times?
“How come you didn’t know how to go through the gate? Your mum’s a witch, isn’t she?”
“That’s not my mum.” Harry answered, amused. “She’s not from here. She-”
Before he could continue, the door opened, and the twins entered. What would be the odds that Charlie Weasley’s family - who contained, among others, two twins, one named George, another named Fred, and a youngest brother named Ron, and a little sister- would be a completely different family from the one he had just met at King’s Cross? Surely, this had to be Charlie’s family.
“Oi Ron. There you are!” George stuck his head in the compartment, before Fred pushed him inside, following him.
“Listen, we’re going to the middle of the train. Lee Jordan’s got this tarantula we just have to inspect.”
“Giant thing.”
“Right.” Ron’s embarrassed color faded from his cheeks, and he gave Harry a furtive look, as the twins looked at each other amused, before introducing themselves to Harry.
Harry opened his mouth to say that he knew who they were - he knew they were Fred, George, and Ron, and that was Percy in another carriage or compartment, and their sister back on the platform was Ginny, and… however, he simply nodded as the twins introduced themselves and Ron, before going back outside to search for the promised tarantula.
Ron waited for them to close the door, before turning to Harry.
“Are you really Harry Potter?”
“Are you really Ron Weasley?” Harry answered, and Ron chuckled to himself, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.
“I guess you get that all the time - must be tiring.” he said in a small voice. Harry agreed, and shrugged.
“You get used to it.”
“Sorry I called the witch your mum. Is she, like, your nanny then?” Ron blurted, and Harry couldn’t help but laugh.
“She’s uh… like an aunt.” Well, more of an aunt than his own aunt Petunia was to him. Which reminded him. For an entire month, he had completely forgotten to ask Lena about the gift his aunt brought him, and it was now a bit too late to turn around. He rummaged through his pockets, and eventually found it. “Ron, uh, do you know what this is?”
“It’s broken is what it is.” Ron took it in his own hand, and examined it closely. “Beats me. Maybe if you fix it you can figure it out?”
“Do you know how to fix it?” Harry asked with a glimmer of hope, “I haven’t learnt any spells.” Well, what he wanted to say was that Lena refused to teach him any.
“No, sorry. Fred and George only taught me this spell to turn this old lazy thing another color, but I swear I’ve been doing it for a week with no luck.” From the pocket of his jacket, Ron pulled out a giant, sleeping rat. “Wish I could make him look more alive. His name’s Scabbers… he doesn’t do much. My brother Percy got an owl when he was made Prefect, but my dad said-” Ron stopped for a moment, weighing Scabbers in his hand before putting him back.. “Well, anyway, I got Scabbers from Percy.”
The two sat in an uncomfortable silence, staring at the pastures through the other side of the window, until Harry broke it, asking what was for him an embarrassing question. He thought he knew about Hogwarts - the Houses, the subjects he’d be doing, but he’d never heard that word before.
“What’s a Prefect?”
“They’re chosen by Dumbledore in their fifth year, Percy got his badge a few weeks ago. You know who Dumbledore is, right?”
Harry nodded, and Ron continued.
“They’re chosen because - well, I don’t know, I guess because of their grades maybe. Percy always has the best grades. And they get extra duties, apparently they can give you detention. Although maybe Percy was joking about that - ” Ron pondered for a moment, before shrugging. “All my brothers were Prefects. I mean, Fred and George probably won’t be, but they’re funny and people love them. But Percy was one, my brothers Bill and Charlie were Prefects too.”
“Oh, Charlie never mentioned it.”
Only when he saw Ron’s confused face did he realise what he had actually said, and covered his mouth.
“You know Charlie?”
“I- uh… well. Yeah. Me and, well.” It was this time to be flustered. Harry closed his eyes, and a flurry of thoughts went through his head. Great job, Harry. Superb. Way to go in keeping your life private and everything a secret. Not even an hour and you broke. Way to go. “I went to a Dragon Sanctuary this summer, talked to him.” Lying by omission is not lying, it’s just omission, and there’s nothing wrong with that. “He’s working in a Dragon Sanctuary, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but that’s in Romania.”
“Biggest one in Europe.” Harry shrugged, as if excusing himself. “It’s really cool. Charlie’s cool too. Knows a lot about dragons.”
“Yeah, he was always interested in that. Him and Bill got cool jobs - did he tell you about Bill?” Harry shook his head, and Ron continued, with a grin. “He’s a Cursebreaker for Gringotts, he’s in Egypt. I think Bill made Charlie leave, his stories were always cool. Can’t imagine living that far, though.”
The two boys continued talking about Ron’s elder brothers, and Bill’s wild stories during his travels in northern Africa. At some point, shaking his head in disbelief at one of Bill’s adventures in Morocco, he saw through his window a pale, pointy face he recognised. He turned his head as soon as he caught the boy’s eyes, hoping he wasn’t seen, but that’s when the boy opened his compartment, sticking his head in.
“So it is you.” he narrowed his eyes, looking straight at Harry and appearing to ignore Ron. “They’ve been saying around that Harry Potter is here. If I were you, I’d take heed to who I’m seen around with. First with Muggles, now with-” he stopped, instead gesticulating wildly towards Ron.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ron jumped from his chair, Scabbers falling from his lap onto the bench with a lazy plop.
“You’re a Weasley, aren’t you? My father told me about your lot. Red hair, freckles, robes that look-... well, I don’t have to say it, do I?” the pale boy turned to Harry with a grin.
Harry instead gripped his wand, feeling his feet itch. He wished he could jinx, hex, do anything to just get him out of their compartment. He got on his feet, and put one foot in front of another, remembering a trick Gavril taught him.
“Can’t teach you magic, Magdalena’ll have my head. But I can teach you this. You ever seen a duel?” Harry had his image clear in his head as he put himself in the same position he remembered Gavrl taught him. A lanky boy with dark hair curling around his shoulders, putting one leg in front of another, and aiming his wand straight in front, arm outstretched. “Right when you get your wand, yeah? ‘Fore you learn what to do with it, if you need it. Put it between the eyes. No sane wizard’ll wait to see if you can actually do anything with it. Worst case, poke ‘em in the eye. Thing won’t break.” “How do you know?” Harry asked, and Gavril slightly bent his wand, showing its flexibility. “...Ran out of stupider questions?”
He extended his hand and put his wand between the boy’s eyes, hoping and praying that the threat of possibly using spells would be enough, and the boy would not retaliate. His mouth clenched as he saw him put his hand behind his back, most likely looking for his wand - and he realised, even if he knew a spell, he probably would not have the guts to use it. No, he did not even have the guts to ‘poke him in the eye’.
“Hey! What are you doing there?” a voice called out, and Harry put his wand down, seeing the other boy quickly move his hand, empty, from behind his back.
“That’s Percy-” Ron whispered, and as he said that, Harry indeed saw the tall figure he watched first disappear at the platform, now dressed in his school robes, with a red and gold badge affixed at his chest, appeared behind the boy.
“You do anything like that next year, when you’re already Sorted, and I don’t think your future Head of House would like you having points docked before you even step inside Hogwarts.” Percy said in an authoritative tone, hands crossing across his chest, almost highlighting his badge.
“He started it-”
Percy turned to look in the direction the pale boy pointed, and Harry couldn’t help but notice Percy’s eye widen for a moment in surprise, before he cleared his throat and turned towards him again.
“Both of you then. Is this your compartment?”
“No.” Harry and Ron said at the same time, before looking at each other with the hint of a smile.
“Well let me escort you to your compartment then, make sure you reach it safe.” Percy extended his hand, asking the boy to follow him, and looked disapprovingly towards the two.
They sat back down in silence, and Harry watched Ron put Scabbers back in his pocket, before looking back through the window, across fields and pastures. This train ride, one hour in, was already more eventful than the dozens of days-long rides he’d take across Europe.
“Were you really going to use a spell on him? I thought you didn’t know any magic.”
“Oh, I… I don’t. Someone I know told me to pretend I do. Said, worst case I can just stab them in the eye.”
“Were you going to?”
“I mean, I was thinking about it-”
The two boys looked at each other for a moment, both of them etching smiles and trying to stifle a chuckle, before giving up and bursting into laughter. And with each gasp of air, Harry was more and more sure that this was indeed the place for him, and each breath, as he looked at Ron, removed the last fragments of apprehension of having left what he considered his home.
Until next summer, he was going towards a new home, and as Ron assured him he would have done the same, Harry knew he would be going towards a new home armed with a friend.