Harry, Susan, and Violet squeezed their way down the corridor. The train had come to a stop, and now students were spilling off the train and onto the Hogwarts platform.
Susan's voluptuous body pressed up against Harry in the stream of people leaving, and he shamelessly grabbed the redhead by her hips and kissed her neck. Susan smiled and gave a sigh of enjoyment.
A shrimpy second year accidentally elbowed Violet as he tried to squeeze past, and Harry let go of Susan's thick hips and squeezed past her to get to Violet.
"You alright?" Harry checked. The petite strawberry blond nodded.
"I'm fine." Violet said, "He just pushed past me a little."
Harry gave Violet a small smile and glanced back over his shoulder, where Susan was following. Harry grabbed Susan by the waist and tugged her up to stand beside him, his arm slid around her as the trio made their way up to an exit. Violet got off first, closely followed by Harry and Susan.
"Firs' years this way!" Hagrid, the castle's gamekeeper, shouted.
"That's you." Harry told Violet gently, "You're going to go on a boat ride across the lake, and then enter the Great Hall, where we'll all be."
"Ok." Violet nodded, looking a little fearful at Hagrid's immense size. He towered over even the tallest men, and Harry was not alone in suspecting the gamekeeper of having some giant blood.
"Hagrid's not half as scary as he looks." Susan told Violet with a kind smile, "Don't judge a book by its' cover."
"Right." Violet visibly steeled herself, and Harry grinned. Something in her expression right now looked a lot like Lily.
"See you in the Hall." Harry nodded his head.
Violet went over to Hagrid, and Harry slipped his hand into Susan's as they walked, his head on a swivel looking for any familiar face.
"You didn't tell Violet to go for Slytherin." Susan noted.
Harry shrugged.
"If she went in with an expectation, then there's a 3/4 chance she'd be disappointed. I sort of was when I didn't get Gryffindor." Harry revealed.
Susan smiled.
"You and her are adorable together." Susan said.
"Sue!" Harry said in mock protest, "She's my cousin!"
"I meant you two looked like siblings, perv!" Susan laughed, and Harry tugged the busty redhead in for a kiss.
"You know, you look a lot like my sister, too. And you know how my mother adores you, after all, she's seen you naked." Harry pointed out, reaching up to gently tug on a strand of red hair. Susan flushed darkly.
"Shh!" Susan said, and Harry chuckled, and he and the redhead walked in together, two heads in a seemingly endless stream of students.
When Harry and Susan reached the Great Hall, they unfortunately had to separate. Slytherin's table was on the far left, and Hufflepuff's on the far right.
Harry and Susan diverges paths with a quick goodbye, and then Harry walked to his fellow serpentine emblazoned students.
"There you are." Harry said, sitting down beside Daphne and giving his betrothed a long kiss, "I couldn't find you on the train."
"Sorry," Daphne replied, "I wasn't on the train."
"You weren't? Why not?" Harry frowned.
"It's… complicated." Daphne tilted her head back and forth.
"Were any of you on the train?" Harry asked, "I only sat with Susan."
"There's been a pretty big complication. I almost didn't come to Hogwarts this year." Daphne confessed, and Harry took in the appearance of his betrothed, really took it in for the first time. Her eyes looked red, as if she'd been crying, and her hair was far from its' usual lustrous gold.
"Daphne… are you OK?" Harry asked worriedly.
"I'm OK." Daphne nodded, but the way she stressed the first word made Harry wary.
"Daphne, where's Storey?" Harry asked. Daphne's eyes teared up.
"She's… she's not doing very well." Daphne explained.
Harry opened his mouth to ask what had happened but Dumbledore rose to his feet, and the entire Hall was silenced as if by magic, and Harry and Daphne had to postpone their conversation. Harry squeezed Daphne's hand, and she leaned miserably against him.
The doors to the Great Hall opened and Minerva McGonagall led in this year's group of first years.
McGonagall stepped up onto the elevated platform and spoke a little bit about the attributes of each house, and then she began to call names.
Harry spotted his strawberry blond cousin in the slowly thinning crowd of first years, but she was looking at Lily, and Harry suspected Violet's mum must look very similar to Lily.
"Evans, Violet." McGonagall announced, and Lily's head whipped up in shock.
Violet went to sit on the stool, and McGonagall placed the Sorting Hat on Violet's blond head.
"Gryffindor!" the Hat proclaimed after quite a lengthy pause, and Violet looked very embarrassed to have taken so long getting Sorted and went swiftly to the Gryffindor table.
Harry rose to his feet a little and caught Ginny's eye over at the Gryffindor table and pointed at Violet.
Ginny waved Violet over, and Violet sat down between Ginny and Parvati.
McGonagall kept going until "Vane, Romilda" became a Gryffindor, and then Dumbledore gave some remarks that felt way too long for Harry's taste, and then the spell of silence seemed to lift.
"So what happened?" Harry turned to Daphne instantly.
"I don't want to talk here." Daphne said. Harry promptly took Daphne's hand and the two of them walked towards the exit of the Hall. Many eyes followed them as they walked, but Harry didn't give a damn.
"So, what's going on?" Harry asked out in the quiet hallway once the tall door to the Great Hall slammed closed. Daphne broke down in tears, and Harry's heart ached as Daphne sobbed.
He wrapped his arms around the blond and her tears dampened Harry's school clothes, but he didn't care.
"Tell me what's going on." Harry said gently, but there was an unmistakable sternness in his voice. It was an order, really, a soft-spoken order, but one nonetheless.
Daphne took a shuddering breath and tried to pull herself together.
"Storey was perfectly fine until three days ago. You saw her at Diagon Alley, she was perfectly healthy. But she woke up three days ago feeling a little under the weather, but she's gotten steadily worse. Last night, she started having seizures. She's in St Mungo's right now, with Mum and Dad." Daphne managed in a quavering voice, "I should be there."
Harry nodded.
"Do they know what caused the illness?" Harry asked.
"Well, yes and no. The symptoms aren't uncommon in the Greengrass family, down Dad's side of the family. It's some kind of blood curse, and it's impossible to predict which Greengrass family members inherit the curse. But the symptoms have never appeared so early in a Greengrass woman. The men usually get it early and it destroys them, but the women typically survive well into adulthood." Daphne tried to explain.
"You're telling me there's a blood curse on Astoria?" Harry asked, stunned.
"Yes." Daphne whispered.