A Young Girl's First Train Trip!
1 September, 1991 at 9 O'Clock
King’s Cross Station, London
Titania Erbe Silber Retterin Fee, Princesse of the Faeries, future Queene of all magical beasts, goblins, spirits and faeries, was early for her train. She had assumed that the Hogwarts Express would be at a reasonable time of the morning, considering that it was a full-day train and presumably carried students of all pre-teen and teen ages to Hogwarts.
Apparently it was the only feasible means of transportation from London to wherever the castle of Hogwarts resided, and would set off from a Platform Tania had never heard of before in King’s Cross Station, London.
Due to having finished all of her preparations the previous day, Tania had figured that she could get to the train at an earlier time and secure a good seat for herself. But her magic was sealed away for the foreseeable future and she had with her no map or feasible method to find her destination, the elusive Platform Nine and Three Quarters.
Tania located the Platform after a little brainstorming and using her ticket, which literally glowed and pulled her towards the place the train would arrive, where she was then rudely informed by an old man with a scrawny black cat that the train was not there yet, and made to sit at one of the many benches with her stuff and butler-cum-cat till it did arrive.
While she waited, Tania saw the area around her, mismatched blue-and-gold eyes twinkling in curiosity and the potential mischiefs she could create. In the future, of course. She knew no human magic and her natural magic, including her wings, had been sealed away by someone she should probably stand to care more about.
And thus, she sat down, talked to her cat, and waited for the train to arrive. She did not have to wait long, incidentally enough. Around half an hour into her wait, when she was particularly invested in an argument with Anthony, Tania felt a change in the air, literally.
After all, it was hard not to notice when half of her field of vision was shrouded in steam and smoke. The Hogwarts Express had arrived, and she was the first passenger.
Tania picked a cabin at random and sat down after giving her stuff to a very kind conductor, who magicked all the stuff, save her cat, away, handing said extremely docile and unusually silent cat back to her.
By the time she was properly settled in her seat, she could feel the exhaustion of her hectic three days without proper use of magic, and more importantly, flight, begin to hit her properly. The loss was almost enough to let a little girl with a heart of fire shed tears.
That would be bad. Even excluding the fact that the very moment she shed tears, her heart would be cooled, and the advent of winter would be nigh. And Tania did not want to see the white snow of winter just when she had begun to appreciate the golden rays of summer.
Thus, she placed her newly acquired big pointy hat that was just the right size for her face and about two sizes too big for her head that she was almost convinced was only to increase her cuteness factor over her face and drifted off to sleep, stroking her, coincidentally also sleepy, cat all the while.
When next she awoke, the train was letting out a loud whistle as it began to chug along on its path to her destination. A school for magic. A School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hogwarts.
Somehow, the name itself was magical, and caused shivers to run up her spine and goosebumps up her arms. It was not a sensation Tania had felt before, in such a context at least. She let herself be immersed in the feeling and recalled the massive pile of books she had been forced to buy just the day prior.
She remembered seeing a book with Hogwarts in its title in that pile, and felt a sudden itch to read the book. But Tania did not wish to wake up her cat, who she was certain had not slept a single bit in his worry over her when she had been princess-napped by a literal white-bearded wizard who wanted to take her to his tower.
Something within Tania rebelled fiercely against her idle thought and caused her mismatched eyes to glow, and for their glows to bleed into each other. She did not notice that, of course. All she wished to do was summon the book she wanted into her hand.
It took her fifteen minutes of half-hearted attempts at magick to remember that she had been forbidden from performing non-human magic for the time-being. It took her another minute to remember her wand, and another five of searching herself to find it from within her person.
By this time, kids had begun to arrive at her section of the train, talking to one another and making tall tales of their adventures over the spring break. It was around the time when two particular completely identical redheads walked past her that she finally managed to summon the book she wanted. The moment she did so, both the brothers stopped in perfect synchronicity.
“Did you feel that, brother?” The right redhead asked the one on his left. “Yes, brother. I think we have found a like-minded individual! I feel a great disturbance in the Prank Magic Force! We have finally found a worthy successor, at last!”
In perfect unison, the pair turned around, scanning the compartments around them, before landing their eyes on the completely-innocent seeming Tania. One of them seemed to dismiss her out of hand, accounting for the book in her hand, but the other, the one who claimed to feel the so-called ‘great disturbance’, stopped his brother and pointed at the girl’s wand and the book in front of her.
The first brother wiggled his eyebrows at his twin, who rolled his eyes at the stupidity of the one who happened to share his face and pointed at the overly large hat the child in front of them was wearing that obscured her head, along with the uniform she was wearing.
The first twin eye rolled back at his brother and muttered several unkind words under his breath and looked at the kid in front of him, who was casually using a floating charm to read a book while using her free hands to pet and snuggle with her cat.
He saw absolutely nothing wrong with that. His own mother frequently did the same, except instead of petting a cat, she knitted sweaters for the family. He had no choice, so he wiggled his eyebrows at his twin once more, and this time with an expression that screamed ‘I give up’.
The other twin rolled his eyes mockingly at his twin, not believing that his reflection could not see what was apparent right in front of them. The kid was using a relatively complicated Levitation Charm while having the presence of mind to pet her cat, just as he (somehow, the twins just knew that the cat was a he) wanted to be petted, and utilising the spell subtly enough to only shift the pages of the book, instead of the book itself.
The second twin explained so, if not so much by words but by expressions and gestures that nobody but himself and his twin would understand. The first twin, upon receiving the apparent context of why his brother stopped him from continuing his search for the source of the disturbance he felt, merely shrugged, the universal gesture among Hogwarts students for, ‘So what? That is obviously a Ravenclaw’, in response to which his twin smacked him upside the head, again, and pointed at her hat.
A hat that only first years wear…
The second twin helped his twin pick his jaw off the ground with great amusement, before what he just implied actually made its rounds around his head and made a proper impact.
When Tania finished her light reading session, she yawned widely and began to stretch. She waved her wand to send the book she had been reading back to where it belonged. While not being anywhere near the driest thing she had ever read, Tania found the book much too dry to be given to children that were her apparent age.
After all, it is a well known and well beloved fact of the Economic Theory that learners should fortify their basics before beginning to build towers. By this metaphor, Hogwarts, A History would be at least three floors too much for children her apparent age.
But, Tanya mused silently, it is wholly possible that children would mature differently if they had grown up in a place rich in magic as opposed to one without. Children have been known to be far more adaptable to new circumstances than adults. They are remarkable in that wa- Who are those two idiots standing at the front of my compartment? Why are their mouths acting as a far-too-good gateway for flies? More importantly, how long have they been standing there like that?
Tania, distracted by her new unwelcome guests, did not notice her wand shift and change subtly within her grasp, shrinking a tiny bit and morphing into a shade just a bit redder than before.
“Um, excuse me, are you alright? You, um, seem to be… hexed? Jinxed?” She then continued, under her breath, in swift Imperial, “Why did I not learn more Albish before? This is so awkward…”
Her speaking to the duo seemed to bring them out of their stupor, each simultaneously elbowing the other under their ribs, causing a great and unnecessary pain to their own twin for no discernible reason.
But it did quite effectively break the ice between them and Tania. At least, once she stopped snickering at their childish actions. First they were standing, apparently gobsmacked, outside her compartment, then they were elbowing each other back into their senses, and then, offended that the other had elbowed them, continued to elbow the other until they remembered her presence.
And then, sensing the time to be perfect for their little operation to begin, the twins entered Tania’s compartment with cheeky smiles on their faces. “Hey!” they chorused, upon which the first twin introduced himself, “I’m Fred!” and his brother too, before he could open his mouth, “And this is George! We’re twins, and are gonna be in our third year in Hogwarts! What about you?”
Unbeknownst to Tania at the time, this little introduction would cost Fred dearly. But that is not a tale for the present. Tania contemplated using her full name to introduce herself, but instinctively felt that that would not be right. So, she introduced herself by her full first name with a cheerful tone, just like Fred had introduced himself.“I am Titania, but I like being called Tania! I am going to be a first year at Hogwarts!”
It might have just been her imagination, but Tania had the feeling that her new partners in conversation’s smiles widened imperceptibly as she spoke. “So,” George began, “Is that hat a permanent fixture or are we not going to be able to see your face?”
Tania chuckled outwardly, although she felt absolutely mortified on the inside for the rudeness of her inaction, “Oh, sorry! I forgot I had it over my head. My godfather gifted it to me, and it sits so snugly over my head that I forgot about it.” Tania proceeded to remove the slightly oversized hat from her head and looked towards the again completely-gobsmacked redheaded twins.
“B-brother,” squeaked out Fred, to which his brother hesitantly replied, tearing his eyes away from Tania’s face to look at his brother, “Y-yes, brother?” with a stutter that had not been apparent before, to which Fred said, “You thinking what I am thinking George?” and began wiggling his various facial orifices at his twin.
Somehow, two thirteen year olds managed to send shivers up Tania’s spine. A feat never before achieved by fae and soldiers alike was accomplished effortlessly by an act that was objectively extremely funny to a third party observer.
Before their unspoken and completely encrypted conversation could be completed, they were interrupted by an insistent knock on the compartment door, which was immediately succeeded upon by a little curly-haired brunette girl entering the compartment, speaking empty apologies all the while.
“I am so sorry for this intrusion, but have you seen a palm sized toad coloured- Oh my. Oh my! I am so sorry! Um, so, um, why was I here again?” Her face seemed to cloud over for a second before she made a decision, “Yes! Can you please help me search for this frog that a yearmate of mine lost somewhere on the train? I think the search would fare much better with you at the helm!”
“What?” Before Tania could understand what was going on, under the behest of the new girl, the wins she had been talking to practically lifted her off her seat, taking care to not cause discomfort in any manner ot her cat (even human poltergeists knew better than to mess with sleeping cats) and paraded her around the train until they entered one particular compartment carrying one young redhead and one raven haired scrawny glasses-wearing kid with a peculiar lightning-shaped scar on his forehead that greatly repulsed Tania.
It was there that she, much to her own shock and anger of her ignorance of the history of the world, learned of the tale of Voldemort and of ‘The Boy Who Lived’. Of course, the tale almost caused her to say stuff even sailors would not dare say about things that frightened even Dumbledore. Almost.
Of course, some of the less offensive things she wished to say passed through her seal of common sense and rationality, much to the joy of Ron, George and Fred, who simply wished to learn more ‘muggle’ things, as well as to the horror of Hermione, who most definitely felt no want for the same. Harry, the subject of much of her cussing, however, was entirely nonplussed.
The thing she felt needed the most amount of cussing at was, without a doubt, the idiocy of wizarding society and the people who approved the ‘Boy Who Lived’ spiel.
It also came to be, that in a fit of righteous rage and a flareup of her motherly instinct, Tania hugged Harry tightly against her bosom. Thankfully, Tania, deprived of her magicks as she was, was still a faerie princesse.
It took but a little faerie dust to make everybody, except, for some reason, Harry, who resisted the charm of the dust, forget that interaction, and only that interaction, ever happened.
Harry was strictly warned of the consequences of whatever were to happen to him if he were to reveal what happened in the short period of time omitted out of everybody’s memories.