Christmas holidays begin with the train — an eternal axiom at Hogwarts.
Most, if not all, had decided to spend the festivities with family this year, though that hardly did away with the holiday feasts at the castle or the Christmas decorations throughout — the enormous tree alone, decked with ornaments and bright garlands, was worth something. Unfortunately, those heading home couldn't enjoy it for long. The small comfort was that returning in January, we'd still catch most of the decorations and some of the atmosphere.
The morning sledge ride across the ice of the Black Lake, the wind in your face, snow thrown up by the runners — it was a source of genuine joy for most, and practically guaranteed good spirits for the entire journey on the Hogwarts Express. Even I felt something childlike in it, smiling into the oncoming wind as it made a complete ruin of my hair.
Students, cheerful and rosy-cheeked from the ride, piled onto the train with their luggage in cheerful chaos, filling their compartments. I, along with the other prefects, had the less enviable task of making sure no one was left behind — we board last. Each prefect monitors boarding at a different carriage, and alone at that. There are rather more than one or two of them.
So I stood in the wind, watching carefully, memory sparing me the need for detailed lists or any real struggle to track the swirl of students in their various coats, cloaks, scarves and hats. Not that any of them were in a hurry to make themselves visible to me — they had other concerns.
Once everyone was aboard, I joined the other prefects in the first carriage, reserved for us specifically, and we quickly made our way there.
"I'm absolutely exhausted," Pansy sighed at once, settling herself with evident satisfaction onto the bench by the window.
The others were in complete agreement, taking seats wherever they found them. No one was in any rush to pour tea, pick up a book, or otherwise occupy themselves.
"Colleagues," Goldstein began with a smile, ruffling his curly blond hair — nearly catching Padma in the face as she sat down beside him — "we have a long journey ahead of us..."
"Stunning insight," Malfoy said drily, draping himself across an armchair.
I stood beside Hermione. My sister was performing a kind of leadership — the only one besides me still on her feet, standing near the cabinet of cups with a view of everyone in the compartment.
"What shall we talk about?" Goldstein, oblivious to Malfoy's jab, pressed on.
"The benefits of an afternoon nap," Draco said, waving a hand. "In case the hint isn't clear — I personally intend to sleep."
"Here?" Hermione said, surprised. "In the armchair?"
"If you think, Granger," Malfoy said, looking at us both, "that this is beneath the dignity of a pureblood, then I'll tell you that what is actually beneath one's dignity is appearing in public with glazed eyes and dark circles from lack of sleep."
"He's right," I said, smiling at my sister — an endorsement of Draco's very pointed observation about her current state. "You could do with a nap yourself. Your friends' compartment would do nicely."
"I'm a prefect, Hector," she reminded me, with a look. "As are you, incidentally. We ought to take our responsibilities more seriously."
"Yes, yes, far more seriously," I agreed, nodding along. "Now come on, let's find your friends. You can sleep there."
I made a show of yawning, and Hermione couldn't help herself. As someone I once knew used to say: herd instinct in action. After a rather spectacular yawn of her own, eyes barely managing to stay open, all attempts to suppress it or cover her mouth having failed, she conceded the point, and we went to look. The Gryffindor girls weren't hard to find — they'd brought hot chocolate and were talking quietly over it, unhurried and comfortable. I left my drowsy sister in their care and went to walk the train.
Having satisfied myself that no one was planning anything disruptive — even the Weasley twins and their perennial companion Lee Jordan were occupied with documents rather than mischief — I went looking for Daphne. Unsurprisingly, she was in a compartment occupied mostly by Slytherins. I knocked on the open door and smiled.
"Hello — am I interrupting?"
Inside, Daphne sat across from Astoria and Millicent. The younger Greengrass and Bulstrode were sharing a bag of sweets between them on the seat.
"Granger," Astoria said, reacting faster than anyone. "Don't you have your prefect-ing to attend to?"
"That's not a word," Daphne said, with a slight smile, aimed at her sister.
"It is now." The argument was plainly too weak to make any impression on the increasingly composed little blonde.
Astoria had almost entirely shed the roundness of childhood, her features sharpening into something that increasingly resembled Daphne's.
"Hello," Millicent said. "I don't mind either way."
"Of course you don't," Astoria said, with maximum elevation of nose. "As long as you have something sweet, you'd be comfortable in hell itself."
"That's rather the point of sweets," Millicent said, indifferent, reaching into her bag.
"Come in," Daphne said, and patted the seat beside her.
With the invitation extended, I came in and settled myself — comfortably, but not loosely. Millicent and Astoria, whatever their current occupation, maintained their posture and general bearing, which made anything too relaxed simply impolite.
"I see you're occupied with sweets," I said, with a genuinely easy smile, pulling off my rucksack and producing some provisions from the Hogsmeade trip alongside drinks I'd set aside for the journey — I'd rather thoroughly raided the house-elves, though they'd seemed only too pleased to play quartermaster.
I looked around and noticed the obvious absence of a table. As always. Wand out, I transfigured the air into one — a trick that no longer surprised any of my year-mates. Astoria, however, looked startled, though she did her best not to show it.
"Can you actually transfigure air?"
"Theoretically, Miss Greengrass," I said, "anything is possible. In this particular case, the key is localising the region of air you're affecting with the magic. With ordinary objects it's much simpler — you can see them, define their boundaries clearly, and so on. That's also, incidentally, why transfiguring composite or tightly joined objects — separately from one another — is so difficult."
"What do you mean?" Astoria said. She hadn't quite followed, but the question had caught her interest.
Once the sweets and drinks were on the table, I took a plain notebook from my rucksack — I'd accumulated rather a lot of them by now, though buying them was hardly necessary; you could create one and fix the transfiguration with Runes or formulae. This particular one was produced by more conventional means.
"For instance — it's generally assumed you can't transfigure part of an object."
"They say as much in first year," Astoria said, maintaining an air of great importance, with a mild disdain that didn't trouble me in the slightest.
"The thing is, our will directs the magic and the spell, and the area of effect is the object as it exists in our imagination."
The blonde girl's brows drew together almost imperceptibly, and out of the corner of my eye I caught a smile on Daphne's face. Millicent simply nodded, her attention more thoroughly invested in the careful and considered tasting of sweets.
"But if you know the structure of an object precisely, and you have sufficient control over your magic and your focus, restricting the area of effect isn't particularly difficult."
To demonstrate rather than merely assert, I pointed my wand at the notebook, ran through the necessary steps in my mind, and turned one of the pages from paper to cloth. Due to the way the notebook was bound, the result was a sequence: paper pages, then one of cloth, then paper again, then another cloth page on the other half — which I showed by leafing through it deliberately.
The demonstration sparked a discussion about magic and its various subtleties, in the course of which I learned, without making a point of it, what Astoria's interests and enthusiasms were — she was, like most teenagers, very happy to demonstrate her knowledge on subjects she cared about. Time passed without effort. Several times I stepped out for actual prefect duties, looking in on the prefects' carriage, where only Draco remained — asleep in his armchair — while the girls, Hannah, Pansy and Padma, were quietly absorbed in magazines. Quite the idyll.
And so we arrived in London. Prefects were expected, again, to confirm that all students had left the train — no forgotten luggage, no forgotten sleeping companions, and so on. The magical section of the station was busier with adult witches and wizards than I could recall seeing before. In places along the walls, wanted notices had been posted for particularly dangerous fugitives — though no one was paying them much attention. Anyone who wasn't a complete hermit knew those faces already.
Taking a trolley — they'd brought plenty over from the Muggle side — I helped my sister with her things, and we made our way out to the ordinary world, into the grey reality of the Muggle half of King's Cross, spare in colour and scale. Hermione, who'd managed to change into ordinary winter clothes, pushed her trolley briskly and with great self-sufficiency, leaving me simply to walk alongside. Had I changed? After a fashion. I'd put on the suit-fabric back at Hogwarts; it currently presented itself as trousers and a blue roll-neck, with a warm winter coat over the top.
The station car park met us with evening darkness, a spread of street lamps, snow underfoot, and fat soft flakes drifting slowly down from the sky. Not ideal for picking out one specific car, but we managed — Dad had parked close enough to be in direct line of sight.
As always, the reunion was warm, and I didn't bother concealing it — Dad and I clapped each other on the shoulders, and we loaded Hermione's things into the Range Rover.
"I'd started to think," Dad said, once we'd shut the boot, "that you'd stopped growing. Apparently not — you've put on another bit."
"Barely any."
"Still means new clothes."
"Some," I said. "But in case of sudden expansion—"
"What? Sudden expansion?" He laughed openly. "That's not bad. Sudden, especially."
"What can I say. The point is, I have a suit that will always fit."
"That doesn't change the fact that we're all going shopping tomorrow."
Settling into the car, I prepared to field Dad's questions about school — he usually saves the more interesting ones for home, so as not to repeat himself. But he didn't get in a single question. Hermione was eager to share everything she felt could be shared without causing undue worry. As a result, she talked for most of the journey. I, for my part, thought through tomorrow's itinerary. One day before Christmas — tomorrow — and a great deal to get done in it. It wouldn't be straightforward.
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