She has to wait a bit to squeeze through, but she can get on. There's still students in the halls looking for compartments - all of the ones in this car already have students, and it sounds like a lot are full.

She'll keep looking for an empty one.

Not in the next car she checks... Or the one after that... In fact, none of the cars seem to have an empty compartment, and the compartments are getting more crowded as everyone else finds somewhere to sit. Almost all of them have more than two students.

Then she'll stop at the next one with space.

Here's one! Containing a single student, actually, by her unadorned uniform probably a first year. She's humming to herself, swinging her legs, and reading a book.

Knock knock.

"Mind if I join you?"

"Not at all!" she says, looking up and grinning. 

She enters and takes a seat opposite the other girl.

Her book's title is now visible as Curses and Counter-Curses. She lowers it a bit though, smiling at Ellie. "First year too?" she asks.

"Yeah. My name's Ellie."

"I'm Anathema!"

"Anathema... Canta?"

"...Why do you know my name?"

"The wandmaker mentioned you," she says, taking out her black walnut wand.

"...Huh. Didn't know he gossiped."

"Our wands are paired, apparently."

She pauses for a couple moments, then: "Oh. He did say my wand had a brother with one of our professors..."

"Apparently the phoenix gave three feathers, which is quite rare."

"Huh." Shrug. "I dunno much about wand lore stuff."

"Me neither. It takes a long time to get anywhere useful with it and there's a bunch of other stuff I'd like to learn."

She grins. "Yeah! Magic is so cool."

"Yeah."

"What's your favorite thing?"

"That I can do or that I've heard about?"

"That you're trying or wanting to learn, I guess!"