The Hogwarts Express
September 1rst 1971
Remus could feel his mother's hands on his shoulders, loving and protective.
He could also feel her checking her watch every few seconds.
“Mum,” he sighed, as he felt her wrist twist for the hundredth time. “I’ll be fine. You can go to work.”
“Oh, Remus, are you sure?”
“Yes, ma. Dumbledore told me exactly wha’ to do.”
With a last goodbye hug, his mum’s eyes shining with tears, Remus gently pushed Hope towards the exit of King’s Cross.
After her silhouette disappeared, Remus brought his trolley up to the wall between platforms 9 and 10.
I’m not thick, Remus thought to himself, walking up to the barrier, and I’m not running at these bricks unless I know they won’t bash my teeth in.
Remus gingerly put his hand against the wall - and immediately pulled it back when it disappeared through the concrete.
“Blimey,” he whispered to himself. He quickly grabbed his trolley and strode through the barrier with confidence.
On the other side, Remus’ eyes widened. He was staring right at a bright crimson train. And not like the ones he took to get to the museum for a school trip; this was a proper massive thing, triple the size of any other vehicle Remus had encountered.
Hanging out of one of the train windows was a boy who looked to be about Remus’ age, with unruly black hair, bright hazel eyes hidden behind thin glasses, and one of the biggest grins Remus had ever seen. He was waving manically, at what seemed to be in Remus’ general direction. For a split second, Remus thought it was him the boy was greeting. After looking behind him though, at an older couple waving cheerfully back, he realized it was most definitely not.
A snort came from his left. He turned and saw another black haired boy looking straight back at him, his face set in an expression of humor. Remus’ mouth twitched downward, feeling as though he was being made fun of.
But then the boy waggled a singular eyebrow and waved at him enthusiastically, suddenly grinning, in a near perfect impression of the bespectacled boy. This immediately made Remus go from frowning to snickering and the boy was smiling back, genuinely this time.
Just as the boy was about to speak, a younger one came up to him. The second one looked very much like the first, Remus noticed. They both had angular faces, pale skin and silky black hair. The bigger boy had hair down to his shoulders and piercing gray eyes, almost silver in color. They were very different from Remus’s, which were so amber, they were almost gold.
The younger boy had gray eyes, too, but much less sharp. More like dull concrete.
“Sirius,” the younger boy hissed at his brother, tugging his sleeve urgently.
“Yeah, Reg?” Sirius said gently.
“She’s looking for you. I tried to distract her, I did, but she wasn’t having it today.”
“Bugger.”
With that, Sirius and Reg turned away and quickly strode off. Remus followed them with his eyes, wondering who ‘she’ was, when a girl bumped right into him.
He caught her by the elbow before she could fall.
“I-I’m so s-sorry,” she said, sobbing. Remus was quickly alarmed. He wasn’t very good with girls or crying.
“Hey, iss okay, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“N-no, that’s not why I’m crying.”
“Oh… well, what’s wrong then?”
“I-it’s nothing. Just my sister, we had an argument.”
“Uh- okay, then. She’ll come around. Sisters always do,” Remus was now just reciting what he had read in his English books before. He took a good look at the girl. She had wavy red hair that came down to just past her collarbones, and freckles to match. Her eyes were a lovely green, like clovers.
“I… I suppose,” she said now, calming down somewhat. “Oh, but how embarrassing. My name’s Lily. Evans. Lily Evans.”
“Er- Remus,” Remus didn’t add his last name. It was often a point of attack. The boys in his neighborhood attached all sorts of mean nicknames to it.
“Lily,” said a boy, slinking up to them quietly. He had black hair down to his chin, styled in a way that hid his eyes. When he looked up, though, Remus saw that they were such a dark brown, they looked black. They were actually quite nice, if you focused on them, and not his unfortunately hooked nose.
“Is this boy bothering you?” he continued, glaring at Remus angrily. “What’s wrong, why are you crying?”
He had a strange mix of a received pronunciation accent and a west midlands one. Remus had never really heard the likes of it before, and couldn’t tell whether the boy was posh or poor.
“No, Sev,” Lily said softly. “Just Pet stuff. Remus was standing here innocently, and I bumped into him.”
“Oh. Okay,” Sev said, retreating a bit. He gave Remus a judgemental once-over, from his messy tawny locks to his second-hand shoes. “Anyways, Lily, I’ve found us a compartment, if you’d like.”
With a sweet goodbye to Remus, Lily headed off with Sev, the latter not sparing Remus a single other word.
“Knob,” he muttered to himself, already strongly disliking Sev.
The train suddenly blew its whistle, and Remus quickly grabbed all his stuff and pushed it onto the steam engine, thanking his werewolf strength for the ease. He kept walking until nearly the end of the train, where there was an empty compartment. There was a sign on the door reading “Beware,” but Remus blatantly ignored it, unconcerned. What could be such a danger if the rest of the train wouldn’t be affected by it? Besides, he was pretty confident nothing in this train could be more dangerous than Remus himself.
Satisfied with his solitude, Remus shoved his fraying trunk to one corner. He rummaged inside it for a second, looking for the only article of clothing he still had of his dad’s - a massive blue jumper with a bronze eagle on it. He didn’t know why his dad had picked it, but he didn’t care - it was big and warm, and Remus could even still smell his dad’s musky scent on it with his enhanced nose.
Suddenly exhausted, Remus stumbled over to the bench, lay down using the hoodie as a pillow and closed his eyes.
Not barely five minutes later, the compartment door was slid open, and two red-headed boys walked in, murmuring excitedly between themselves.
They stopped dead in their tracks when they saw Remus, now sitting up.
“Gid… someone ignored our sign,” the one on the left said flatly, shocked.
“Yeah, Fab. I, uh. I see that.”
The only difference Remus could find between the two of them was their height (Gid was slightly shorter than Fab) and their hair (Fab’s was longer, down to his Adam's apple.)
“Why’d you ignore the ‘Beware’, eh, kid?” Gid asked, eyeing Remus.
Remus’ shoulders drew back automatically. He was used to posh boys trying to tell him what to do, and especially what not to do.
“‘Cause I knew it was bollocks,” he said a little loudly, hackles raised a bit.
Fab whistled and Gid grinned wide.
“You a first year?” Fab asked, eyes sparkling with something Remus didn’t try and comprehend.
“So what if I am? The compartment isn’t yours, so you can piss off if that’s what you want to tell me.” So apparently his hackles were still raised very high.
Gid’s grin expanded to a full on laugh, and Remus’ shoulders loosened a little when Fab joined him.
“Oi, we like you. What’s your name, then?” Gid said nicely.
“Remus,” he replied, a little taken aback by the abrupt turn of events.
“Well, I’m Fabian, and that’s Gideon. Fab and Gid, to our friends,” Fab said with a wink.
“You, obviously, get to call us Fab and Gid. Any eleven year old with language like that has gotta be a riot,” Gid continued, wicked grin shining again.
Remus chuckled a little, slightly embarrassed.
The rest of the ride to Hogwarts went pretty smoothly. Remus found out that the two boys were 6th years, notorious troublemakers, and in Gryffindor house. The school had four houses, and every student was assigned one in their first year.
They also told him that the sweater he had, his dads, was emblazoned with the Ravenclaw colors and logo. That made Remus kind of want to be in Ravenclaw, but he put the sweater away, not wanting to draw any attention to it from other students.
Finally, after hours of trying strange candy, a lot of cool magical joke supplies and a weird but hilarious game called Exploding Snap, the train slowed to a stop, and Remus nearly gasped at the sight of the beautiful, humongous castle he saw out the window.
“Blimey, mate,” Gid said, laughing. “You look like you’re about to cry!”