The Hogwarts Express
On September first, with a heartfelt goodbye and more than a few tears from the children, Harry made his way to the train station, via bus.
At kings cross station, Harry confidently walked through the barrier between station nine and ten, passing seamlessly through the metal bars. On the other side, he was confronted with a ginormous, red locomotive which was bellowing hot, white smoke and strew ambers atop of it, the engine clearly already running hot. There were relatively few people already there, just a handful of fifth and sixth years who got here without their parents to make sure they got good seats. Heaving his heavy trunk onto the train, Harry made his way to get himself into a compartment. He found one, soon after entering, red seats invitingly empty. He wasn’t strong enough to get his trunk up above the seats, so he instead put it under his seat, pulling out his copy of Hogwarts: a History.
It was a fantastic book. He bought it on his second trip ever to Diagon alley and just never seemed to have read all of it -he suspected there was some sort of charm on it, for a book so slim to have so many pages-, he kept on finding new and interesting factoids, like the fact that Harry was a descendent of Salazar Slytherin, since he was a parselmouth -which he learned on a school trip to the london zoo- or that some of the stairs moved to different parts of the castle depending on the weekday you took them. Right now, he was reading about the enchanted roof of the great hall, which was magically charmed to show the sky above it, even when it was covered from the outside with snow, which was what made it superior to a glass roof.
There was a knock at his door. Looking up, there stood a boy his age, with dark hair and hazel eyes. Like himself, the boy was already dressed in his Hogwarts robes, which wasn’t the case with most of the students, bustling outside, most of them wearing muggle clothes or casual robes in different colors.
“Are these seats free?”
“Sure are”, Harry smiled, offering him to take a seat.
“Thanks, I’m Nott, Theodore Nott”, the boy offered a hand, which he eagerly took, “no problem, I am Potter, Harry Potter”
It was as if he had shot a gun in the air, everyone in hearing distance stared at him, which was mainly Theodore and a couple of third years in the hallway next to his compartment. Theodore, with wide, shocked eyes, asked, “are you really?”
“Yep”, he nodded happily, this attention, he could get used to it. To prove his status, he pushed his shoulder length, curly black hair out of his face, revealing his scar, which took up most of his forehead in bolts of arcing lightning.
Once Theo -as he took to call Theodore in his head- got over his shock -and the 3rd year’s hurried away, no doubt spreading the word he was here- he sat down and took up conversation once again, “So, what house do you think you’ll be in?”
“Not sure”, he mused, flipping over to the houses in ‘Hogwarts: a History’, “I think Ravenclaw, what about you?”
“Slytherin”, Theo proclaimed proudly, “though I guess I could be in Ravenclaw, my mother was a Ravenclaw”
“My parents were in Gryffindor but I don’t see it for me”, Harry said, “not really the bold guy, not that there’s anything wrong with Gryffindor. My Grandpa was in Ravenclaw and my Great Grandma was a Slytherin, so really, it could be any of the three. None in Hufflepuff in recent history though”
“Yeah, my family is mostly slytherin, though an uncle of mine was in Hufflepuff, I think”, Theo mused, “That reminds me, I think your grandma was a Nott at birth right? That makes us cousins- I think… though really, most of the big families are related”
“Huh- I didn’t think about that”, Harry admitted, “But yeah, I must have many cousins with how intermarried the Wizarding world is”
“Dozens at the least”
Idle chatter continued between the two as eventually the hogwarts express began its long drive and through the hours of conversation -only interrupted by the Trolley witch and from time to time to onlooker, wanting to see Harry- he learned a lot about Theo, he was an only child, he liked potions and transfiguration the most, he also wished to get on the school quidditch team later on. Theo also learned some things about Harry, he told him that he was most interested in Charms and DADA, that he grew up in an Orphanage and so on and so forth.
Some three or four hours into their ride, a young girl their age came into their compartment, asking empirically, “Have any of you seen a toad named trevor? A boy called Neville lost his”
“Nope”, was Theo’s answer but Harry answered a bit longer, “We haven’t seen Neville’s toad but maybe try asking the prefects to summon him for you, they have a few apartments at the front where they hang out. They should know a summoning charm or two”
Harry knew a summoning charm too but he only knew the weak tutaj charm, which only worked on things you could see. Better summoning charms were only in books that even he hadn’t read yet, those of the fourth year onward.
“A fantastic suggestion”, the girl said rather stiffly, “I’ll be on my way then, have a good ride”
“We will”