La Blue Wizard
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

Disclaimer: Not my characters, no money being made, etc., etc.

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Chapter 7 – All Aboard the Hogwarts Express

Hermione Granger’s new-found belief in magic didn’t keep her eyes from closing tightly as she gave her cart a strong push through the fake wall that divided the Muggle and magical portions of King’s Cross Station.  She couldn’t see, and didn’t anticipate there being a crowded platform on the other side.  Fortunately for her, James Potter had predicted her actions, and kicked his son’s cart to the side just before the young witch barreled onto the platform.

“Hold on, there, Miss,” James exclaimed, as he grabbed Hermione by the waist with one hand, and stopped her cart with the other.

“Oh, my…I’m so sorry…didn’t think…really is…isn’t it?”

“No worries, Miss Hermione,” Harry’s father said with a disarming smile.  “Blind intersections like this one should be marked.” He then waggled a finger at Harry and added, “Or at least cautioned against by those who know better.”

“Hey, it’s my first time too,” Harry protested.

James snorted, and recalled his wife’s plea that their son be allowed to act his age, and given allowance for his relative inexperience within the wizarding world.  After all, it had been their decision to raise their children in a Muggle city, and send them to Muggle primary schools…not Harry’s.

“That it is, son…that it is,” the Auror Captain therefore said with a smile, as he tussled Harry’s hair.  

“Hey, stop that,” Harry protested. “I spent a good ten minutes trying to get it to lay down.”

“Could’ve spent ten hours and it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference,” James replied with a smirk, as he ran his fingers through his own black bird’s nest.  He then turned back to the two women that they had escorted through the barrier and waved his arm out wide towards the steam engine train and platform.  

“Welcome to Platform 9 ¾!” he announced.  “Best clear the gate for all of the other last-minute stragglers.”

“But it’s almost eleven now,” Hermione observed.

“Exactly,” James said with a smile, as he guided Hermione’s cart away towards the train.  

Sure enough, a few seconds later a large group of red-haired witches and wizards popped through, one by one.  But as Harry’s small party was facing the opposite direction, they never saw the Weasley family’s rushed arrival.

“Excuse me, Mr. Potter,” Hermione’s mum asked, “but why is everyone dressed so strangely?”

James scanned the crowd and frowned.  “You mean the fact that everyone is dressed in Muggle clothing?”

“Well, yes, I guess,” Emily admitted, as her eyes flashed towards the Auror’s frilly white shirt.  “But I was thinking more about the style of Muggle clothes...there’s so much…color contrast.  And the fashions are all so…vintage.”

Harry chortled as Mrs. Granger’s carefully phrased response.

“I can try to answer that, Ma’am,” he replied.  “The average witch or wizard rarely spends time in the Muggle world.  Our magic also extends our life spans…it’s quite normal to see witches and wizards reach ages beyond the century mark.  Put those two facts together, and you get wizarding world wardrobes filled with outfits that would moisten a costume designer’s…”

“Harry?” his father interrupted.

“What…I was going to say ‘lips’?” the young wizard protested.

“Sure you were,” James said dismissively.

“But why are you dressed so smartly, Harry?” Hermione blurted out (before covering her mouth and blushing).

Harry snorted, and glanced down at his blue button-down shirt, crisply-pressed khaki trousers, and brown leather loafers.

“Well, I wish I could say ‘Like father, Like son’, but as you can see…”

“Hey!” James protested.

A blast of the train’s whistle truncated this line of questioning.

“Right, we need to get you aboard,” James stated, as he lifted Hermione’s trunk onto the steps of the nearest car.   Harry followed suit, allowing for just enough time to give his father a manly hug while Hermione said her goodbyes to her mum.  The two Hogwarts-bound students then climbed up onto the open stairs of the passenger car, and waved as the train started to move away from the platform.  

James and Emily waved back, and smiled when a sudden lurch in the train’s movement caused Hermione to lose her balance and fall into Harry’s arms.  Neither made mention of it though, as each were lost in their own thoughts.

Emily Granger had all of the uncertainties of the unknown magical world that her only child was entering bearing down upon her, on top of any mother’s “normal” worries about sending her child off to boarding school for the first time.

James, in turn, shared the same concerns that his wife Lily was experiencing as she watched her office clock strike eleven from her desk at the Department of Mysteries…

“How safe will our son be at Hogwarts Castle, where he will fall under the control of its Headmaster?”

It was a question that both felt justified in worrying about.  There had been peace and prosperity within the Wizarding World during Harry’s entire lifetime…ever since the Dark Lord was defeated by “The-Girl-Who-Lived.”  Voldemort’s organization had gone into disarray soon after that fateful night, and there hadn’t been a Death Eater attack since the revenge killings of the entire Greengrass Clan one week later.

Almost the entire clan, that is…for Dumbledore had never given the infant back into the care of her kin.  Many said that it was a miracle that “The-Girl-Who-Lived” had once again defied death, and not been in harm’s way when every single relative was brutally murdered in their sleep, but there had always been lingering doubts in James’s and Lily’s mind about the Headmaster’s role in those events.  

It had almost been too convenient…Dumbledore wasted no time in having himself appointed the child’s guardian.  Within days the Greengrass Clan’s potion’s business was being managed by Severus Snape and a hand-picked Board of Directors, while the heiress they were presumably working for the benefit of was placed within the home of a Light-side family closely allied to the Headmaster.  

Or so he said…the identity of the Girl-Who-Lived’s adoptive family and her exact location had both long been protected by Fidelius charm.  

And all the while, the Headmaster had privately expressed his doubts to Order members that the Dark Lord had been “vanquished,” or that Daphne was “The One.”  He never bothered to explain the basis for those doubts, though, which made Lily nervous…nervous that Dumbledore was still looking for “The One with the power,” and would find a way to work around the Fidelius charm that protected knowledge of Harry’s true birthday.  The last thing that they needed was for the old man to decide that their son should be more of a focus of his manipulative meddling than the girl who was supposed to be now riding aboard the Hogwarts Express with Harry.

It had been a large enough concern for Lily to want Harry to enroll at Beauxbatons or Salem, rather than Hogwarts.  But between James’s high rank within the Ministry’s Auror Corps and his seat on the Hogwarts Board of Governors, that was just as impractical an idea as had been leaving the country all those years past.  There was nothing the three of them could do, but to plan, to pray, and prepare their son as best they could for the life ahead.

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Harry and Hermione stood on the stairs of the moving car and waved back towards their parents.  Each was lost in their own thoughts, until they spotted a younger girl with straight red hair who was running down the platform, alongside the moving train.  She wasn’t watching where she was going and slammed face first into a sign post, bounced off like a rubber ball, and crumpled to the ground.

“Ouch, that had to have hurt!” Harry noted.

“I hope she isn’t injured too badly,” said Hermione, as they opened the car door and entered its center aisle.

“She’ll be fine,” said Harry.  “Dad’s trained in first aid, and magic provides an amazingly well-cushioned safety net for amazingly dumb witches and wizards.”

“Or for amazingly ignorant Muggleborns?” Hermione asked.

“Not so long as you keep asking questions, and stick by someone willing to provide answers,” the black-haired wizard replied with a smile.  He lightly touched Hermione’s back and said, “My friends promised to save a compartment towards the back of the train.”

“Oh, then you should go and sit with them, then,” Hermione said quietly.  “I can find a spare seat somewhere.”

“Trying to get rid of me already, Bach?” Harry teased.  “There’ll be room for you with us, if you want.”

“But is it what you want?”

“Why wouldn’t I want to sit with you during the trip?” Harry asked with a smile. “Us outsiders have to stick together out amongst the English.”

“Why outsiders?” Hermione asked.  “Your parents are both magical, right? And I am English.”

“No you’re not, Bach,” Harry said with a grin.  “English is a Specky Git’s state of mind, and you’re no Specky Git.”

“I’ll assume that’s a good thing, then?” Hermione asked.

“Of course it is, Bach,” Harry replied.

Hermione frowned.  “Why are you calling me Bach?”

“Because Mozart’s phone was busy?” Harry asked cheekily.  When Hermione huffed a bit, he added, “It’s Welsh slang…would you rather I use the English and call you Luv?”

The bushy-haired witch blushed at the question.

“Thought not,” Harry said with a smirk.

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The journey towards the back of the train took more than a half-hour to complete.  It seemed to Hermione that every third compartment door that Harry looked into in search of his friends opened soon after they passed, and somebody popped out to either give Harry a hug, or to invite him inside, or both.  

It would have been impossible for Hermione to know that some of the hugs offered by some of the girls were making his inhaler superfluous, even if she hadn’t been focusing on just how much older, and curvier, and flirtier than she was.  But she also was pleased to note that Harry looked a bit uncomfortable with all of the attention, and was apologetic to her for it.  He explained that the students they were meeting generally fell into two groups…those whose parents worked in the Ministry like his did (and met him at holiday gatherings and picnics), or those that knew Harry and his family as fellow countrymen (and had met him at holiday gatherings and picnics).  It was fairly easy for Hermione to tell the difference, as the latter group tended to banter or flirt in Welsh.

One of the encounters were memorable than the others.  Hermione learned the definitions of both “Mudblood,” and “Specky Git,” after a confrontation with a pureblood boy named Malfoy and his two goonish friends.  When the blonde wizard called her the former, Harry bloodied the boy’s nose and called him the latter (describing a Specky Git as “the worst kind of bigoted, upper-class English shite”).

Harry and Hermione made a beeline towards the back of the train after this incident, and finally found his friends sitting rather close to each other in an otherwise empty car.

“Well look, Susan,” a handsome young brown-haired boy announced. “His Lordship finally decided to grace his friends with his presence.”

“Oh, sod off, Nev.”

“Does your mum know you talk like that out of her earshot?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the black-haired wizard retorted.  He then stepped to the side and gestured towards his traveling companion, and said,

“Hey Susan, Neville, meet my new bra…Hermione Granger.”

“Bra?” the witch quickly asked.

“Don’t mind Harry,” Neville said, as he stepped forward and offered his hand.  “He slips the odd bit of Welsh into the mix just to annoy his friends and confuse his enemies…I’m Neville Longbottom.”

Hermione took the hand of the muscular boy that stood not that much shorter than Harry, and smiled.  

“Pleased to meet you,” she said.

A big-boned, but pretty strawberry-blonde haired girl stood next to Neville and offered her own hand.  “My name is Susan…Susan Bones.  Why don’t you ask your bra to lift your trunk up and join us?”

Hermione smiled at the other girl’s kindness and turned to Harry, who was already hefting her trunk up onto the overhead shelf.

“Thank you…br….well, is there a masculine form of bra?” she teased.

“Ooh, I like her, Harry,” Susan beamed, as she pulled Hermione down onto the bench next to her.  “It’s about time I had some help matching wits with you twits.”

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It didn’t take very long at all for Hermione to suss out that Harry, Neville and Susan were close childhood friends, and that Harry’s and Neville’s mums were lifelong friends, and that their fathers both worked for Sue’s Auntie, who had raised her from a very young age.  

Susan’s parents had been killed when she was still a newborn, and her Aunt had made a very strong effort to see that her niece was exposed to more of a family environment that she might provide as a spinsterish career officer within Magical Law Enforcement.  As a result, Susan had spent a lot of time visiting the Potters in Wales, and Longbottom Estate outside of Oxford.  And spent enough time around Lily Potter to pick up on her biting wit, occasionally caustic sarcasm, and sparing use of invective.  

Although truth be told, the three children spent most of their time together ruling over the Potter family’s lands up in the mountains.   There were hundreds of acres of woodlands to romp through, and grassy fields to fly broomsticks over, and hills streams to splash through during the summer holidays.  Frank and Alice Longbottom were happy for their son’s time spent there, as their careers as Aurors frequently left their son in the care of his overprotective and coddling grandmother…the Longbottom Matriarch who ruled the house her son’s family lived in with a sharp tongue and iron fist.

Just how close Neville and Susan were became clear when it was revealed, through Harry’s teasing, that they had been betrothed to each other from the age of three. Neither Neville nor Susan knew much (if any) of this back story, so all they could tell Hermione was that they weren’t all that upset about the arrangement…it was the way things were done in their world (or so they’d been told), and while neither of them was ready to consummate the marriage, they had grown to become close friends (and were pleased that the contract allowed them to develop that friendship in a relatively chaperone-free environment).  

To say that Hermione was overwhelmed by the story would be understatement.  It underscored her uncertainty about the world she was jumping into, and fears that it might all spiral out of control.  Most of the rest of the train trip was spent trying to assuage those concerns.  Harry was quick to point out that his own parents would never try to arrange his marriage (although he failed to mention that one of the primary reasons for this was that his demon heritage would make it impossible for him to comply with a marriage contract’s fidelity clauses).  He also was quick to answer Hermione’s many questions about magic in general, which served as an effective distraction.  

Other distractions were provided by a lost toad, and visits by the sweets trolley and a pair of prefects.

The trolley came around first, and Harry thought that Hermione’s refusal to try magical sweets was worthy of a belly laugh.  But then he made up for it by explaining that the pumpkin juice found within every wizarding household’s cool box was fortified by a magical supplement that completely eliminated tooth decay.  That was enough to allow the young witch to enjoy both the chase and the kill when the chocolate frogs got loose (although she couldn’t understand why both boys scowled when they both got Albus Dumbledore cards, and threw them out the wind0w).  

Then Trevor got loose, and there was a mad dash to find him.  Hermione knocked on every single door in three different cars during this hunt…save for the door that was warded by a powerful “notice-me-not” charm…behind which sat a red-haired boy, a fourth-year Hufflepuff, and his adopted eleven-year-old sister.

Finally, just a few minutes before the train pulled into Hogsmeade Station, the four soon-to-be sorted students were visited by a pair of older boys who each had a shiny badge pinned to their robes that was adorned with the letter “P.”

“Are you Harry Potter?” demanded one of the Prefects, after slamming open the compartment door.

“Could be…are you a Weasley?” Harry asked. “You’ve certainly got the hair-color for it.”

The older boy huffed.  

“We’re the ones asking questions here,” he said icily.  “That said, I am Percy Weasley, the Fifth-Year Gryffindor Prefect, and this is Adam Connah, the Seventh-Year Slytherin Prefect.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Harry said with a smile.

“How do you respond to the very serious charge that you struck another student in the face with your fist?” Percy demanded.

“How would you like me to respond?”

“With a confession, of course!”

“Judge, jury and executioner?” Harry asked.

The Gryffindor grew red in the face.  “This is a very serious situation!  Draco Malfoy’s father is on The Board of Governors!”

“And so is my father,” Harry replied calmly.  “So is Neville’s grandmother, for that matter.”  He turned and said, “Hey Nev, why don’t you pull her into this and they could make it a threesome?”

“Wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, mate.”

“Oh, so Draco’s daddy almost qualifies, then?” Harry said with a smile.  He then turned back towards the prefects and waited for them to say something.

The Gryffindor prefect was speechless, and was now sporting a complexion that matched his hair coloring.  So it was up to the other boy to act.  

“Let me handle this, Percy,” he said.  “You and I both know that Malfoy will be sorted into my house, so it’ll be more of my concern soon enough.”

“Very well,” Percy sputtered, before he walked off, muttering about the insolence of youth.

Once the Gryffindor was out of earshot, the Slytherin Prefect surprised Harry when he switched from English to Welsh, and asked him to step out into the aisle for a private conversation.  

“So what really happened, boyo?” the older student asked, once they were alone.

Harry shrugged.

“Meh, the blonde-haired English ponce had his nose so high up in the air and was so busy calling my buttie a mudblood…he didn’t notice my fist and walked straight into it.”

The Prefect snorted, and swore.

“Mun…you are going to make my life difficult, aren’t you boyo?”

“Far less than that poofy scrut…unless of course, I’m sorted in with your lot.”

“Think that’ll actually happen?”

“Probably not,” Harry admitted. “The hat can suss out those from the Hollow.”

“Gryffindor, then?”

“Smart money would go there,” Harry replied.

“It’d be a pity for you to have to have to put up with that Weasley and the broomstick that’s stuck so high up his English arse,” the Slytherin admitted. “Although, we’re short on Cymry in the Tower right now.”

“There you go, then,” Harry replied with a nod.  “Look if it’ll help you any, I’ll take a detention…so long as it isn’t with Snape.”

The prefect arched an eyebrow.

“Volunteering for a detention?  Are you daft?”

Harry chuckled.  “Well if I’m to have any chance of breaking my father’s detention record, there’s no time to dawdle.”

The prefect laughed.  “You are a cocky one, Potter!”

“Says the valley-loving trog!” Harry replied.  He then held out his hand and said, “Cymru am byth!” (Wales forever!)

The older boy clasped Harry’s arm up close to the elbow and declared, “Y Ddraig Goch ddyry gychwyn!” (The Red Dragon will show the way!).  They parted on good terms, and Harry returned to his compartment for a relatively peaceful end to a very long train ride.