For Harry, the rest of the summer passed very quickly. For the first time, except when Uncle Remus came to see him, the boy spent too much time locked in his room reading his textbooks and those that Remus had allowed him to buy in excess. He really wanted to start practising magic with his own wand, but for fear of attracting the attention of his parents and that they would force him to give it to Brian (who would do everything in his power to break it), he didn't. In fact, his parents hardly acknowledged his existence, except when comforting Brian because Harry was going to Hogwarts. The only time he had been lent some attention had been when he returned from Diagon Alley, at which point his parents and brother had looked at his purchases and had asked what the core of his wand was.
His study of textbooks gave him a greater understanding of magic; after all, they were the foundations of this art. He came to understand even the basics of the concept of spells, even forming what could be new spells. It was a fun hobby, that and his potions. Now that he had ingredients, he could try to perform some of the simplest. It was a complete satisfaction when they came out correctly, knowing that at any moment he could use them and get the desired effect.
In reality, he was dying to be able to start. He was dying to have something similar to the freedom that Hogwarts offered. In addition, he was really curious to know how they were going to be classified. After all, if the four houses were divided according to the personalities of the people who lived in them, there had to be great amounts of powerful magic involved in all this, and it intrigued him. It was also true that he had fantasised about the house in which he was going to be placed, and the truth was that if they didn't put him in Gryffindor, the home of his parents and surely his brother, he would be happy.
"Dad?" Harry asked a few days before September 1st.
"Yes?"
"Can you take me to King's Cross on the first?" Harry asked, and for a few seconds watched as his father frowned concentratedly, as if trying to remember something.
"Ah... yes... The day the train leaves." So he had forgotten when his son started school. "I'm sorry, but I made a commitment to take Brian to the zoo... but we can ask Remus or Sirius..." Harry did not answer; typical of Brian to make him do one of those things.
The next few days, Harry did not make any further comment on his upcoming departure for school; a departure that was not going to evoke any sorrow or longing during the school year. He was finalising the last details for his departure, preparing his trunk, his books, and anything he wished not to leave behind (or in other words, anything he didn't want Brian to destroy during his absence), so that by the night of the thirty-first, everything was ready. Despite his nervousness, he prepared to rest well and as early as possible so Uncle Remus could take him to King's Cross. Uncle Sirius hadn't even noticed that he was leaving.
The dawn of the first day of September found Harry ready to leave for the station under his own power, when the fire in the hearth turned green and Remus Lupin appeared in the Potters' living room with a smile at the sight of Harry next to his trunk, ready to go to school by himself.
"I know you too well, Harry... I assumed that after what your father said about today, you'd want to go to King's Cross. Come on, go to the Leaky Cauldron, I'll take your trunk and I'll follow you."
Harry smiled, amused by the situation. He had decided during the night that he didn't want to bother the werewolf and it was best to go by his own means, but it was typical of Remus to go and look for him before he did something like what he had planned. Before the noise might get the attention of his family, Harry stepped into the fireplace and said in a clear voice where he wanted to go. Then, he just hoped he could get out as quickly as possible: he hated travelling by Floo.
The Leaky Cauldron was practically empty at that time; therefore, when Harry came out of the chimney, there was no way to prevent Tom, the waiter, and the few customers who were there from staring at him in surprise when they saw him emerge from the fireplace. Knowing that Remus would be about to leave from the same fireplace and also with the load of a heavy trunk of luggage, he moved away as quickly as possible. Not two seconds later, Remus came out of the fireplace along with the trunk.
"Remus! What a joy to see you!" exclaimed Tom as soon as he saw him. "What are you doing here so early?"
"I'll accompany Harry to catch the train to Hogwarts... James and Lily couldn't and asked me if I could do it," he replied, putting an arm around Harry's shoulders.
"James? Do you mean James Potter?" asked Tom, and when Remus nodded, he added, "I didn't know he had another child besides Brian... As always they come with him..."
"Harry is his eldest son," Remus said with a sad smile; he knew that there would be a lot of people who would react like Tom. "Do you serve breakfast, Tom? We haven't eaten anything yet."
"Sure, sure! Of course!" replied the waiter with a smile before getting to work. Not long after, the two were having a hearty breakfast.
It would be approximately nine-thirty in the morning when they left the Cauldron and drove in a Muggle taxi to King's Cross. It was still quite early, but taking into account the complicated Muggle traffic, it was much better to be safe. They didn't say much during the taxi ride lest they say something inappropriate in front of the taxi driver, but when they both got out of the car, the conversation continued freely. They still had plenty of time; the train would not leave for forty-five minutes, and for that reason, the two took their time both to enter platform nine and three-quarters and to place their luggage in a compartment in the middle of the train.
"How's everything for now, Harry?"
"Magnificent," he laughed. "All this almost seems unreal to me. I have the feeling that I'm going to wake up at any moment."
"It's all very real, Harry," Remus laughed. "And it will be even more so during the school year."
"Me too..."
"Do you have everything you need? Haven't you forgotten anything?"
"No, Uncle Remus."
"What about your inhaler? Do you have it too?"
"Yes, I do."
"Not bad... Don't forget to write to me, have fun, and learn a lot..." the werewolf said to him as he accompanied him to one of the Express tickets. "Good luck tonight in your sorting... you'll see how everything will go very well." Here Harry cast a look that clearly wondered about his healing, but he nodded and got on the train, then ran to the window of his compartment.
"Goodbye, Uncle Remus."
"Until Christmas!" said the man before disappearing.
Harry watched as all the students ran to the different windows to say goodbye to their parents, and in a way, he felt sad. It wasn't that he didn't like that Remus had brought him, on the contrary, but he would also have liked his parents to have come. A slight noise at the compartment door made him turn away from his negative thoughts and turn to the door to find out what had caused it... meeting a child of his age or less. Of course, it was a first-year because he still had no house emblem.
"Hello," said the boy.
"Hello."
"My name is Terry Boot, I sit in the next compartment."
"I'm Harry Potter." Harry didn't know how to react; he had never had more company than his brother and Uncle Sirius's son, but as none of them liked to be with him...
"Do you mind if I come to your compartment?" asked Terry. "Both you and I are alone, and I thought that this way we would be more comfortable."
"Okay..."
"Yes? Wait a minute!"
Terry disappeared for a moment, to reappear two minutes later carrying his trunk, which he placed on the luggage rack without any effort. Obviously, one of his parents was magical and had placed a charm on the trunk to make it lighter.
"Well, Harry... Can I call you Harry?"
"Yes."
"Not bad! Tell me, how long before the train left did you arrive?"
"What?"
"It's just that when I arrived twenty minutes to eleven, you were already here, and I was one of the first to arrive... I'm curious."
"At a quarter past ten. We left very early."
"I see, you also want to start," the other laughed. "I have been awake almost all night... This morning at six o'clock I was already stumbling around, the thing is that my parents didn't let me get ready until half past seven. What time did you get up?"
"At half past five... I wanted to come by myself, but Uncle Remus caught me... We went to breakfast at the Leaky Cauldron and then we came here."
"Do you live with your uncle?"
"Oh, no! With my parents and my younger brother, but sometimes I would like to live with him."
Terry went silent after Harry's comment; it didn't take a genius to see that his new friend did not have a good relationship with his parents. For a moment he wondered if he was the son of Muggles and their parents were intolerable towards magic. Not wanting to deal with that subject, and trying to encourage the other boy, he changed the subject.
"And tell me... which house do you think you will be in? I think I'll be in Ravenclaw; I love books and I like to learn."
"I also like books and learning... But the truth is I don't know what my house will be... My parents were Gryffindors and I guess they expect me to be too... but that matters little to me."
"Bah, that has little to do with it; my parents were a Hufflepuff and a Slytherin. Can you imagine anything weirder?" the amused boy laughed. "You say you like books... What was the last one you read, not counting those at school?"
"Oh... A book on Occlumency. Uncle Remus gave it to me for my birthday."
"About Occlumency? Wow! The last one I read was about the key concepts about the creation of potions... 'Perfect Perfection: How to Achieve What's Better in Your Potions'."
"Christopher White's?" Harry asked.
"Yes! Do you know him?"
"Yes... I read it three years ago; it was very interesting, especially the section on medicinal potions," the boy said.
From that moment on, the two of them engaged in a conversation about the concepts that book dealt with for the creation of potions, as if it was what they had to take into account at all times for its creation. Both boys were delighted at the possibility of talking to someone so focused on such a "boring" subject for the rest of his classmates at elementary magical school, or in Harry's case, someone who didn't consider that there was anything more interesting than spending time messing with others.
At the same time, Terry was astonished. Harry seemed to have been reading complicated magic books throughout his life, and he understood them in a way that many scholars were unable to understand. Harry had said that he did not know what his house at Hogwarts would be, but the truth is that from his point of view, the boy couldn't be anything but a Ravenclaw; no one else could have as much love for books as he was showing... and if by chance, he did not enter the same house as him, he was very clear that he did not intend to abandon their friendship, even if it meant house rivalry.
Not long after that, they would leave behind inhabited places and the landscape would change from city to country. Harry began to hear a sound from his compartment that made him a little nervous; it seemed like a croak, but that was not possible because neither Terry nor he had any animals on the train. After a few moments, the boy put aside his conversation to look for the origin of the sound throughout the compartment. Terry, at first, looked at him in surprise, but not long after, he also heard the insistent croaking and helped his new friend in his search... which lasted for a few more minutes, before finding what appeared to be a toad from under Harry's seat.
"What's a toad doing here?" asked Terry, surprised. "Is it yours?"
"No, I don't have pets, and it's not because I don't like toads, but if I could choose, I would choose a kitten," Harry replied while caressing the toad's head.
"I wonder whose it is... Do you think we should look for its owner? They will surely be looking for it."
"If they're looking for it, it won't take long before they leave their compartment, and then we will never find it."
After that, the two also kept an eye on people in the corridors, to see if there was someone who was looking for a toad, and at the same time, stayed engaged in their conversation and kept an eye on the toad, lest it try to escape again. They were starting a conversation about different magical animals when the door of the compartment opened, revealing a girl with bushy chestnut-like hair and a somewhat chubby blond boy.
"Excuse me, have you seen a toad?" asked the girl. "Neville has lost his."
Neville was obviously the boy who accompanied her, as he seemed to look everywhere eagerly, although he had not said a single word.
"Yes," said Harry, "a little while ago we found this toad in our compartment." He said, showing them the toad in his hands.
"Trevor!" exclaimed Neville, running to catch him and murmuring affectionately. "Don't run away again, will you?"
"It's a rather mysterious toad," Terry laughed. "It has snuck into our compartment, and we still don't know how. My name is Terry Boot, and he's Harry Potter... what's your name?"
"My name is Hermione Granger, and he's Neville Longbottom."
"Longbottom?" asked Terry. "Are you the son of Frank and Alice Longbottom?"
"Yes," Neville said very quietly.
"Wow, your parents are so famous for everything they fight against He Who Must Not Be Named..."
"I know," the boy laughed proudly. "They're very good Aurors."
"Hmm... though I don't recognise the name Granger, are you the daughter of Muggles?"
"Yes, is something wrong because it is?" Hermione asked angrily.
"What's wrong! My grandfather was the son of Muggles."
"And so is my mother," Harry added.
"Ah... It's just that some kids used to say that Muggle children shouldn't come to Hogwarts."
"Don't pay attention to them; they are pure-blood fanatics... half of them are completely stupid, and the other half are so conceited they can't move from what their ego weighs on them," Harry said with anger.
For what was left of the journey, Hermione and Neville remained in their compartment, talking about everything they expected for their sorting or their classes, at the same time informing the witch about the current situation: Voldemort. Despite everything, the journey was very pleasant, especially when they introduced the witch to wizards' sweets (and Harry too, since sweets had always been a fun experience), taking into account that among the sweets they had bought Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans and had a mini competition to see who was braver to try the dragees.
When it began to get dark, Hermione and Neville said goodbye to Harry and Terry to go to their own compartments and change clothes; after all, they were about to arrive at school, and they had to put on their uniforms. Then both wizards looked with fascination at the lights of Hogsmeade as they approached the station, and then the train stopped completely. The two of them ran to vacate their compartment and go out to the platform where, for a few moments, they looked everywhere without knowing where to go.
"First year! First years, follow me!"
The two of them observed what looked like a giant (although they knew it wasn't possible because giants were huge, much bigger than him), with a lantern that called them. Once all the first years were with him, he began to lead them along a wooded path, full of stones and potholes, forcing them to be completely careful not to fall.
"If you look to the right, when we pass that curve, you can see Hogwarts," said the giant.
Harry looked to the right with excitement, waiting to see the school where he would live for seven years. When they could see it, Harry's breath was cut off. It was beautiful! It reminded the boy of the castles from the fairy tales that his mother had read to his younger brother. Moreover, he had such a sensation... a feeling that came from the castle, welcoming him like a mother to her child.
Not much later, they found an immense lake, where there were about ten or twelve boats waiting to cross it. The giant entered one of them and shouted that no more than four children should enter per boat. Then he touched his with a pink umbrella, and as one, all the boats began to move across the dark waters. Harry, accompanied by Terry, Neville, and Hermione, watched with fascination the image of the castle reflecting against the black waters.
The journey ended somewhat abruptly when they entered a cave where there was a kind of port where the boats were docking and allowing the children to disembark. After that, the group was walking almost in complete darkness, before reaching immense stairs and a large door. The big man raised his hand and called, making the sound echo throughout the cave. Then they waited...