Two - All Aboard
It was a good thing he was excited at the prospect of what the day would hold because otherwise, he wasn’t too sure that he would be very awake at five in the morning. Sev had to get to Hogwarts to help with preparations, a job that came with being a professor, and a head of house. And so, to make sure he got to platform nine and three-quarters Sev was taking him early.
Which meant he was going to be waiting for a while before anyone else turned up, let alone the train left. But Sev believed if left to his own devices he wouldn’t make it to the platform before the train left. And Sev might have had a point.
“You ready,” he gave a nod in response to Sev as he placed his trunk down beside the fireplace. The trunk had been packed the night before thanks to Sev forcing him to do it. And he had double-checked to make sure he had everything he would need, his books included much to his disgust.
He was sure most of the other kids that came from wizarding families had been waiting for this day to come for years as Draco had. But not him. He had only really been thinking about it since he had started packing the night before. He might have gone through the process of buying his equipment months ago, but he’d had other things to focus on then. Like finishing primary school and the cricket season. But now the day was here, and he couldn’t help but be full of excitement.
Not only would he have an entirely new place to explore, but he would also be going to school with Draco. Something he had always liked the prospect of. Together he and Draco could wreak unimaginable chaos.
And Sev would be there as one of his teachers. Most kids would probably dread having a parent as a teacher, but he couldn’t help but look forward to it. Not because Sev would be teaching him things. Sev had already taught him a lot. But because Sev had always called his job at Hogwarts his well-deserved break from him and now Sev wasn’t going to get that.
Although he would have to be careful not to call him Sev in front of anyone but Draco. Especially since they were had decided to keep the fact Sev was his godfather on the down low. He was positive it was because Sev didn’t want any of the other students to know he had a heart. So only Draco knew, and it was going to stay that way.
Sev messed up his already dishevelled hair, “I got you something,” in Sev’s hand was a small neatly wrapped box with a green ribbon on it.
He wasn’t expecting any gifts. Not after Sev had given him a new cricket bat the day before for winning his final. Said bat, which they had broken in with a few balls in the backyard, was currently stored comfortably in his trunk. As he took the gift from Sev he smiled “thanks”
Sev urged him to open it and inside he found a very familiar watch. It was Sev’s. Or it had been. For Sev’s birthday earlier in the year he had bought him a sleek silver watch and since then his old gold one with the leather wristbands had been left on his dresser. But now it was in the box in front of him. He knew the inscription on the back off by heart, ‘Stay patient and trust the journey’.
He flung his arms around Sev. Never in the world did he expect Sev to give him his old watch. Sev hugged him back as he stated, “my mother gave me that the day I left for Hogwarts, I think it is about time I passed it down to you”
It was well worn, and he imagined Sev likely wore it ever since he had turned eleven. Until it had been replaced by the silver watch in January, he had only ever seen it leave his wrist a small number of times. And now it was his. He smiled “thanks Sev, you couldn’t have gotten me a better present”
Sev had a teasing smile on his face as he asked “not even a hedgehog”
There was no doubt he would have loved a pet hedgehog for a present, but it still would not have been better than the watch. He shook his head, “although I wouldn’t be opposed to getting a hedgehog”
“So, I have heard once or twice,” he grinned knowing the chances were, he wouldn’t be getting any more presents for a while. Probably until Christmas on account of within the last week he got a watch, a cricket bat and his birthday presents. And even if he did get a present Sev wasn’t about to buy him a hedgehog. No matter how many times he asked for one.
Sev knelt in front of him taking the box with the watch still inside from his hand. As Sev took the watch from the box and put it on his wrist he looked up at him and smiled, “now you have no excuse for being late to my class”
He laughed as Sev finished doing it up, “yeah but we both know I’ll be late anyway”
To no surprise, Sev nodded and joined in on his laughter, “Corv you are going to be the reason Gryffindor loses the House Championship”
It was pretty much a guarantee that whatever house he was in wasn’t going to finish the school year with the most points. Even if he tried to stay out of trouble he was sure he would still manage to end up in it. And he never bothered to try and stay out of trouble. That ruined all life’s fun. He stated “hey I might not be in Gryffindor”
That just got more laughter out of Sev who squeezed his shoulder, “yes you will, you are smart enough for Ravenclaw, but the fact we had to go back to get your books after you used them as kindling says enough, Slytherin’s off the table too, you don’t have nearly enough self-preservation and we both know you’d probably make the entire Hufflepuff house cry before the end of the first night, Gryffindor’s where they put oddballs like you”
Maybe he could have come up with an argument if he didn’t see the logic in those words. But he didn’t mind where he ended up. Just so long as there was someone there that was willing to sneak out in the middle of the night with him. He smiled “I could plead for Hufflepuff, make the hat put me there”
“I don’t doubt you’ll try,” Sev probably already knew he was going to try and get the hat to listen to him and put him somewhere he really shouldn’t be, “we best be going before Dumbledore has my head”
He laughed as he grabbed some of the floo powder from above the fireplace as well as his trunk. Then he stepped into the fireplace and stated, “platform nine and three quarters”
Seconds later he stepped out of the fireplace onto the completely deserted platform. The Hogwarts Express was there and looked exactly like it did in the pictures he had seen of it but there was no one else around. Or wasn’t until Sev stepped out of the fireplace seconds after he did.
He placed his trunk down on the platform ground as Sev brought him in for another hug. Sev messed up his hair yet again and stated, “try not to get expelled before you get to Hogwarts”
As he stepped out of the hug he grinned, “I don’t make any promises”
Sev shook his head and laughed. Sev waved a hand and the previously closed doors of the train opened. Sev stated “good luck and I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you but have fun, I’ll see you tonight at the feast”
“Unless I manage to burn the castle down before we make it, or Dumbledore has your head for being late,” Sev stepped into the fire laughing as he threw the floo powder and spoke his destination. He stood there waving until Sev was gone.
The second Sev was gone he picked up his trunk and headed onto the train. He chose the furthest back compartment in the furthest back carriage to put his trunk in. This way it would be easy to find again. Then he set off to explore the train and see if there was a way to get up onto the roof. Which shouldn’t be too hard considering he had well over five hours before the train was set to leave the station.
As it turned out getting into the train’s cab was a simple affair. All he had to do was slither in threw the opened window. It took him less than ten seconds to pull on what turned out to be the string that made the horn sound. But the rest of the trains cab didn’t have anything that was all that interesting.
After his adventure in the cab, he walked over just about every inch of the platform. There was nothing too exciting about it and was just like every other railway platform he had been on. Then he came up with a plan to get on the roof of the carriages. If he was to climb into the coal cart, he should then be able to pull himself up onto the roof of the first carriage.
Climbing into the coal cart was his first struggle. There was a ladder, but it only went up halfway leaving him trying to get a hold of the edge of the cart so that he could pull himself up. However, eventually, he got a good grip and was able to haul himself up and on top of the coal.
He pocketed a piece of coal as a souvenir for his hard work before turning his attention to the roof of the first carriage. He was too short to reach the roof without jumping and when he did, so he nearly slipped off the roof, but he got his hand to the edge of it and pulled himself up onto the roof.
Since the roof was mostly flat, he didn’t have to worry about losing his footing. He took a few seconds to appreciate his surroundings before he began walking all over the different carriages’ roofs, jumping between them and looking down to the platform below.
The first person arrived at ten to nine, by which point he had found himself walking along the metal roof supports of the station. The man headed straight to the cab, leaving him to assume he was the driver. In the twenty minutes that followed a few more workers arrived. But none of them looked up to see him walking along the support beams.
From about nine thirty students and their parents began to trickle in. None of which bothered to look above them and none he recognised. But he sat on the beams and swung his legs through the air, keeping himself occupied by watching everyone on the platforms.
When he finally spotted the platinum blonde hair that could only belong to Draco and Lucius, it was ten and the platform was already quite busy. He made his way back over the train carriages and dropped down on one of the roofs. He sat down on the edge of the carriage roof, his legs hanging over the edge, as he watched Draco say his goodbyes to Lucius and Narcissa.
From his new position, he was managing to gain attention. Narcissa was the first of the three to spot him and he gave her a small wave. Narcissa didn’t bother to wave and instead just shook her head turning back to Draco. However, Narcissa must have mentioned something because soon enough both Lucius and Draco turned and looked up towards him. Lucius gave much the same reaction as his wife, but Draco broke out into a small grin and nodded towards him.
It was clear Draco was doing what he could to not stray from what his parents as the correct stance for a pureblood heir. But as he held no such ideologies, he didn’t taper back his grin as he waved to his best friend. Draco just spun around to his parents presumably to finish with his goodbyes.
Draco took his sweet time saying goodbye to his parents not that he could really fault him for it. Sure, he and Sev might have had a quick goodbye, but he was going to see Sev at the end of the day. Draco wasn’t going to see his parents for months.
Finally, Draco turned away from his parents and picked up both of his trunks. Both the same size as his trunk. Clearly, Draco had found more to bring than him. And knowing Draco as he did, he already knew one would be full of his clothes whilst the other held everything else. Likely neatly organised.
Draco turned and looked up at him as he walked closer to the train. He jumped to his feet and when Draco was within what he took as shouting distance, he pointed to the back of the train, “last carriage, end compartment, I’ll meet you there”
Everyone in the vicinity looked up to him. But having a crowd’s attention was nothing new to him and so he just ignored the looks he was on the receiving end of. Draco just nodded towards him but gave no more of a response than that. As Draco turned to head to the last carriage, he walked back along the carriage roof to get back to the end carriage and see if he could open the roof grate that he was sure would lead him into the roof cavity, then he should be able to find a manhole cover and climb down.
The roof grate looked like it hadn’t been moved in years and when he knelt beside it, he was sure it wouldn’t budge open. But after a few good tugs, he was able to pull it up. The loud squeak it made as he did was just more proof it hadn’t been touched in years. With the grate up he could see into the roof cavity. It went approximately half a metre down and then there was the ceiling. Easily enough space to crawl through.
He jumped down into the roof cavity, except when his knees touched the wood of the ceiling, he heard it crack and he didn’t stop. Which left him falling, only to collide with what he assumed to be the floor of the train mere moments later. His knees were definitely going to be bruised later. Looking up he found he was in the middle of the train’s corridor, bits, and pieces of the now broken ceiling laying scattered around him. Above him where there used to be a ceiling there was instead a gaping abyss.
Standing up he brushed himself off, ignored the fact his knees were screaming at him, and waved his hand as he muttered a few words. The pieces of the ceiling flew back up and stitched themselves together as he spun around to head towards his carriage. Standing there laughing were Draco and Theo, who out of all of Draco’s friends was the one he liked the best. He waved towards the pair, “hey Theo, how was your summer”
Theo got his laughter under control as he stated, “good,” Theo gestured to him, a wide smile on his face, “you have some roof in your hair”
He just shook his head and ran his hands through his hair time and time again to hopefully get whatever dust or parts of the ceiling in it out. None of them said anything more, all too busy laughing to even try and get words out. He couldn’t imagine what he looked like falling from the roof but there was no doubt that it had been hilarious.
“Did you just crash through the ceiling,” instantly he spun around to see a boy standing at the door to the compartment he was standing in front of, shock clear on his features.
The boy looked to be around his age and was wearing thick black framed glasses that covered deep blue eyes. He smiled at the boy as he stated, “I prefer to look at it as a controlled fall”
Glancing towards Draco and Theo, he found them laughing harder and leaning against each other for support. A grin broke out on the boy's face, “if that’s the case, I’d hate to see what an uncontrolled fall looks like”
Instantly he was grinning back at this boy, as he gestured to Draco and Theo, “I suppose I could push one of those two off the roof, give you a demonstration,” Draco sent him a glare, but Theo just kept laughing uncontrollably. He held his hand out to the boy, “I’m Corvus Black”
The boy immediately took his hand and shook it, his face breaking out into a wider smile, “Oliver Rivers”
He gestured down the corridor to Draco and Theo who had finally got their laughter under control and began walking towards them, “those two are Draco Malfoy and Theodore Nott, we’re all first years”
Draco responded by giving a nod towards Oliver, probably partly because he had a trunk in each hand and partly because Draco very rarely did anything else as a greeting. Theo gave a small wave to which Oliver responded with a wave of his own as he stated, “I’m a first year too”
“Well, we were heading to our compartment, you are more than welcome to join us,” as far as he was concerned the more the merrier.
Oliver’s smile stayed firmly on his face as he stated, “as fun as that sounds I already promised another boy I’d sit with him and his brother”
He gestured down the train’s corridor to the end, “If you change your mind, we’re in the end compartment”
Oliver nodded and so he spun around and walked towards the end compartment. As he walked, he spun around so he could talk to Theo and Draco at the same time. Draco nodded towards the watch, “you steal that”
Draco clearly recognised it as the one Sev used to wear. Theo on the other hand had never met Sev, nor did he even know that he was his godfather, so he had no chance of recognising it. He rolled his eyes, “no, I got given it this morning”
He got a raised eyebrow in response from Draco. Theo took one look at it and whistled, “it’s nice, way too nice for you considering your track record at keeping things intact”
Considering he had only minutes before fallen through a ceiling Theo made a very good point however, he was not about to just accept that, so he instead he gave Theo the finger as he walked into their compartment and dropped himself down onto the seat. Theo stepped in seconds later a smirk firmly in place.
The three of them settled into the compartment, conversation flowing easily between the three of them. As always when Theo was concerned, they talked like they hung out a lot more regularly than the five or so times they had.
In the middle of listening to one of Theo’s many stories from the summer the train whistle sounded. It was only minutes later that Draco’s friends, Crabbe and Goyle showered up at the open door to their compartment. As a principal he never hated anyone, that took too much effort for his liking, but he did dislike people. Two of those people he disliked were Crabbe and Goyle. And the feeling was very much returned by the pair. That was clear from the few times he had met them.
The two were always spurting out pretentious pureblood ideologies and were seemingly committed to pushing these upon other people from magic families and condemning anyone who didn’t come from a magic family. He didn’t care for that sort of thing and made it clear to the pair which didn’t exactly lead the pair to be his biggest fans. Not that he would want them to be. But they were Draco’s friends and so he was happy to put his opinions to the side and be civil towards the pair.
Even though he was hanging upside down from the chair and all the blood in his body had seemingly all rushed to his head he could see the look of disdain that flashed across Theo’s face as he looked towards the pair. It was yet another reason why out of all Draco’s friends he liked Theo best.
Crabbe and Goyle for their part didn’t look at all bothered to see either him or Theo with Draco. Nor did they look like they would mind sharing a compartment with them. And he didn’t mind sharing with them. Drac nodded at the pair, “Crabbe, Goyle, come in, sit down”
The two stepped inside their compartment and Theo got up from the spot across from him next to Draco to move and sit down beside him, clearly not wanting to have to sit next to either of the pair for the entire journey. As Theo did so he pushed his legs, which left him to drop down onto the floor with a thump.
A mixture of his own and Theo’s laughter filled the compartment as Crabbe and Goyle sat down across from them. Draco lightly kicked him, “how many times are you going to end up on the floor before we get there”
The chances were a lot more considering they had a long way to go before they got to Hogsmeade. And so, he just shrugged as he pulled himself up off the ground.
“When are you going to grow up Corvus,” he looked over at the door to see Pansy step into their compartment.
Pansy was another of Draco’s friends he’s met at Draco’s birthday parties. For the first few she had treated him like he was going to give her cooties if she walked too close to him, but at Draco’s most recent party she had gotten over that, and instead now they just threw insults at each other. Not that any of their insults were meant as anything more than banter between two people who could be considered something akin to friends.
He dropped himself down onto the seat beside Theo as he looked back to Pansy and smirked, “what’s the fun in that, just because you’re allergic to having fun doesn’t mean the rest of us are”
Seconds later he was dodging a slap from Pansy and Draco let out a laugh. Beside him, Theo was clearly covering up a grin. Probably in fear he would be slapped himself. Pansy stated “thank god you’re going to be in Gryffindor, I don’t think I could deal with having to be around you all the time”
There wasn’t a single person in the compartment other than him that was destined for anywhere other than Slytherin. Theo might have been a contender for Ravenclaw considering he was one of the most intelligent people he knew if he wasn’t so cunning. Draco like Theo could have possibly gone to Ravenclaw due to his intelligence, but he embodied every aspect of Slytherin. So, there was no doubt about where Draco was going. He stated “for all you know I could be placed in Slytherin”
That got everyone to shake their heads in disagreement. Pansy sat down beside him as Draco stated “Corvus sorry but we all know that would be as likely as Crabbe or Goyle lasting an entire day without food”
The entire compartment fell into comfortable laughter. Even Crabbe and Goyle, who did not seem to mind that it was at their expense. It was one thing that went to show Crabbe and Goyle weren’t completely bad. Anyone who could laugh at themselves clearly had some redeeming qualities. Plus, he didn’t think he could go an entire day without food either so he couldn’t judge either of them for that.
As it stood Draco was probably right. He probably wasn’t going to end up in Slytherin. But he still had an entire train ride to go before he would need to worry about the sorting ceremony and what house he would end up belonging to.