Victoria

IV

First Friends

The trip to Diagon Alley for Victoria had been quite the awe-inspiring one, and even as depressing as it was for an eleven-year-old kid like her to shop for school supplies all alone, lugging the heavy bags along with her, she was rather happy to have enjoyed the experience all by herself.

When she had arrived back at the orphanage with all her belongings, Victoria had found on her table a silky piece of snow-white paper, silvery golden ink decorating its borders with 'London to Hogwarts for ONE WAY travel' written on the top in black and 'Platform 9 3/4' written in the middle in the same silvery gold. Next to the ticket was a small note, asking her to arrive at the King's Cross station for the 11 a.m. train to her new school.

Immediately packing up after that, Victoria said her heartfelt and teary goodbyes, to her very few friends and one parent figure at the Wool's Orphanage. Too excited to be able to cry, she smiled through the farewell as Miss Catherine shed parting tears enough for the both of them, clutching the little girl tightly to her chest and sobbing her heart out.

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, even before the earliest of the early birds raised at Wool's, Victoria was up and out, all ready and excited to reach the train station, board the train, and find a nice empty seat for herself to sleep in.

This is how, when he finally managed to get to the unevenly placed platform and find himself a carriage that wasn't packed full, Harry Potter found a girl comfortably sleeping and gently snoring, stretched across the entirety of the seat on the right. Her short blonde hair fell over her face, covering it almost completely, as her whole body shook with the movement of the train. The girl had taken off her shoes and placed them under her berth, her grey and yellow socks now on complete display. She had taken off her jacket and tucked it tightly under her arms like a pillow and was resting her head on her bag pack.

Harry didn't want to disturb the girl, but seeing as there was practically no other free spot available anywhere else on the train, he didn't have much choice. 

As quietly as possible Harry tried to squeeze in his belongings through the door of the carriage, glancing at the girl every time he would make a noise to check whether the girl had woken up because of him. However, all his efforts were in vain when he was suddenly and violently shoved out of the way of a few fourth years running rampant across the passage that was hardly wide enough for walking, knocking the poor boy off his feet and sending him tumbling inside, the loud crash of him falling over with his belongings jolting the sleeping girl awake.

"Blimey!" Victoria exclaimed as soon as the sleep in her vision cleared up and she saw the young boy sprawled across the floor, groaning in agony as he tried to release his foot that was stuck between his suitcase and the berth on which she had been sleeping.

Without a second thought, Victoria rushed to Harry's side, trying and finally succeeding in freeing his foot and helping the poor boy sit down comfortably on his seat.

"Are you alright?" She asked, examining his face for any injuries before taking a look at his foot.

"I-I'm okay," Harry said before wincing when Victoria tried to remove his shoe to take a better look at his ankle.

"You're definitely not okay," She muttered, looking at him with a raised brow before huffing slightly, "That's a pretty bad sprain if you ask me, and it's going to swell up like a balloon if you keep insisting you're fine. If you're lucky, it might even turn purple like one."

Harry's eyes slightly widened at the girl's words before he tried moving his foot, only to flinch and hiss in pain, "You don't think I've broken the bone, do you?" He asked reluctantly, afraid that he was going to spend his first day at Hogwarts in the hospital because of a stupid fracture.