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"WHAT'S UP WITH THE POTIONS TEACHER?"
Julian Black stands by a window, his trunk next to him as he watches the train pull out of the station. He waves at his Mum, even though he doubts he can see her. His Mum, he winces at the thought. He had always been terrible with goodbyes, he was either too eager to leave or didn't want to go and hid in a closet with whoever he was playing with. In his defense, it works. No one checks the closet, they always assume he's outside.
He guesses that makes sense because he is always outside, but he's fucking smart and can outthink almost every adult except his mother. Most adults are stupid in his humble- said no one ever ( julian isn't very humble )-opinion. He sucked at goodbyes.
Which was why he stared at his mother as the train sped off, wishing he had the words to explain how much he was going to miss her, how excited he was for Hogwarts but at the same time how much it scared him. She would know what to say, she always did but Julian couldn't find the words. So he just hugged her and like an idiot walked awkwardly onto the train.
Asteria is worse though when it comes to goodbyes. His mother seems to understand, sometimes he thinks she knows them better than they know themselves. Something happened, Julain knows that much though, some goodbye was too much because now, his sister doesn't say goodbye, she just let's go.
He drags his trunk, which is twice his size, and his backpack down the hallway, trying to find a place to sit. They had been late, he wanted to have waffles for breakfast and they take forever to cook. He doesn't regret but maybe if he had more time he could've said all the things he wanted to.
No one ever has enough time. Ask anyone who was alive in the seventies.
Julian's arms hurt already and every compartment he passed was full. He still doesn't regret the waffles but he really wishes his Mum was there. She would help carry his trunk and help find a compartment. She would force him to go invite someone to sit with him and hopefully they would be nice people. But she isn't there.
It's just him. But he can do this, he can meet people. There have to be people out there who don't care about Sirius and who he is in relation to him. There have to be people who get to know others before they judge them, the world has to have some semi-decent people.
He wonders if he needs all his scales, it'd make his trunk ten times lighter because scales weigh a hundred pounds but he figures he does. He doesn't want to fail Potions and the times he's tried so far have shown his skills are less than satisfactory. So far he hasn't found a way to not make Potions explode but whoever the Potions Professor is, has to be really good. They teach every kid in Hogwarts, all the witches, and Wizards in Britain. If he can't learn from them, who can he learn from?
He's lost in his thoughts, debating if it's okay to drop his trunk and sit down on top of it to read. It's not like anyone will really care. Who's gonna stop having fun with the friends they haven't seen all summer to go ask some random blue-eyed boy why he's reading in the hallway.
