"Next you'll tell us you did your summer homework." "Embarrassing."

"Wait, hang on a sec. George, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"On his forehead! Are you -"

"Bruce Potter?!"

Oh no, he didn't think to get a hat because the uniform has hats but of course he's not wearing his uniform yet. He turns bright pink.

"I--am, yeah."

"Wicked!"

"D'you remember what You-Know-Who looks like?"

"I don't remember anything, sorry."

"Oh." They deflate for about three microseconds, and then shrug and immediately tear off along the train corridor in search of somebody called Lee Jordan, who might possibly have a tarantula.

That's so reasonable; tarantulas are way more exciting than he is. He finds a seat and shoves his trunk under it and asks Curie if she promises to stay in the compartment and not cause any mischief if he lets her out of her cage for the trip.

Curie is perhaps not entirely clear on the technical definitions of the words "promise" or "mischief."

She understands "stay" and "out of cage," though, so she hoots encouragingly and shuffles her wings in a manner startlingly reminiscent of a human-shaped person politely holding their hands behind their back.

That was really all he was hoping for. She can come out and sit on one of the other empty seats. Bruce watches out the window for the moment the train starts moving; he didn't get any books on it but it's got to exit this cool magic platform space somehow and he bets it'll look super neat.

With the cage unlocked, she'll meander interestedly around the compartment for a little while and eventually settle right back into it, because it has the best perch.

When the whistle blows at 11 o'clock sharp, the outside doors all rush shut with an echoing click-click-click-click down the length of the train. The bone-deep bass rumble of the Hogwarts Express, smoother than any engine has any right to be, changes register sharply to a faster, almost electric hum, as though someone somewhere has toggled a very large switch from idle to go.

The train exits the platform in what appears, very briefly, to be a perfectly normal way, running adjacent to other tracks on their way out of the building. But these tracks only go a quite short distance away from the platform, where they dead-end abruptly into the brick wall that marks the edge of the extradimensional space (from this side, faintly shimmering); and as it gets up to speed, the Hogwarts Express, instead of going back through the wall like everyone on it did to get here, simply hops onto the Platform Nine track like a very long and graceful scarlet cat. From the inside, the motion doesn't feel any more dramatic than a car taking a gentle turn around a roundabout, and then they are on their way north.

He's on the train to HOGWARTS and it's the COOLEST train of ALL TIME. It feels so much more real all of a sudden. He takes a set of robes and a hat out of his trunk and puts them on, feeling about 30% like an awesome wizard and 70% like a stupid kid playing dressup, also grabs One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, and sits down for several hours of the most enjoyable imaginable activity.

Another child appears! It's the red-haired boy with the brothers he saw earlier.

"Hi! Mind if I sit here?"

"Sure. I mean, no I don't mind. Hi."

"I'm Ron Weasley. You first year too?"

"I'm Bruce. And yeah, first year. . . And I didn't know anything about magic until a month ago." There, now if he's going to decide Bruce shouldn't be here Bruce won't have time to get his hopes up first.

"You're in for a treat; magic's great. You know you don't need to read your books on the train, right? They'll assign you the first chapter of everything as homework the first week."

"It's interesting?"

Clearly in addition to never hearing about magic this kid has never heard of fun. This is a solvable problem.

"There's way more interesting things though. I bet you've never played exploding snap."

"I haven't, what's it like? . . . Does it actually explode?" Bruce would definitely like to make friends with this person but maybe not an exploding amount.

"Nah, only a bit. Worst it'll do is take your eyebrows off." He pulls a pack of cards out of a pocket and sets them on his trunk, where they set to shuffling themselves. "We'll do basic rules. You just slap the pile whenever you see two cards in a row with the same number, and whoever slaps first gets those cards. Goal is to get the most cards before it pops."

"Okay." Bruce gamely attempts to enjoy exploding snap.

He is absolute pants at it. He flinches when his hand slaps down on top of Ron's and flinches on the much rarer occasions when he's faster and Ron's hand slaps down on top of his, and when the deck goes off with a BANG like a cap pistol and puffs smoke everywhere he flinches so hard his hat falls off.