Taming Werewolves

King's Cross

...your heart will lie in Gryffindor...

Grace pondered the Sorting Hat's words, as she often did. She was sat upright in her bed, the sky outside still black, although it was illuminated by the street lamps of the city of London. Even the stars had been wiped out by the artificial orange glow.

She sat back, resting against the cheap wooden headboard and looking over at her sleeping mother and sister.

With the morning would bring September the First, and Grace would be traveling to King's Cross to catch the train to Hogwarts. Usually people hated going back to school, but Grace was almost too excited to sleep. It was probably this excitement that triggered her to dream of her Sorting Ceremony.

She settled back down into her bed, trying her hardest to sleep. The lumpy hotel mattress didn't make it easy, but eventually Grace managed to pick up where a dream left off, reliving her first few days in Hogwarts as she slept.

***

King's Cross looked the same as always; full of stressed, late commuters who were battling their way through crowds of tourists and other Londoners to get to their desired train, and therefore far too busy to notice their surroundings. Only to the trained eye would anything look different today, as today was September the First.

The trained eyes mentioned would be able to pick out groups of oddly dressed people carrying rather strange luggage. For example, one fresh faced boy was attempting to push a trolley almost as tall as him, carrying a large metal cage in which a screech owl resided. Another woman had a dark purple cloak hanging on her shoulders, and she was pulling a screaming toddler along by the hand, muttering he was too young to go to Hogwarts.

Grace was amongst all the noise and confusion, calmly pushing her luggage whilst her mother and sister walked either side of her. The three stopped in front of a red brick pillar and waited as the crowd in front of them thinned. Today would be Grace's fifth year of running through that barrier, but it still made her feel sick. She couldn't get the thought of crashing headlong into a brick wall out of her head.

The last of the cloaked strangers vanished and it was now Grace's turn. She went before her family as they would be lost without her there, being Muggles and everything. She lined herself and her trolley up and slowly pushed herself forward, gaining speed until the nose of the trolley was touching the wall, but instead of crashing and making a whole lot of noise, the trolley simply glided through the bricks and onto a new platform.

Platform Nine and Three Quarters was briefly hidden by a cloud of steam emitted from the bright red engine waiting on the track, but it soon cleared to reveal a platform even more crowded than the ones on the other side of the gateway. An iron sign hung above the heads of five hundred students; a wooden plaque set into the metal filigree read '9 3/4'.

Grace's family joined her seconds later and the three of them set off towards the train, battling their way through chaos to reach the carriages.

Men stood at the open doors of the carriages, leaning over the heads of students to pull luggage onto the train. Grace managed to squeeze to the front and began loading her stuff onto the train, helping a man with her heavy black trunk. Once her belongings were safely inside the carriage, she picked up the wicker carry-case containing her fluffy grey cat off the top of the trolley and jumped off the train to say goodbye to her family.

"Have a good year," Elaine, Grace's sister, said cheerfully as they both squeezed each other in a hug. When they released each other, Grace stared into her sister's honey coloured eyes - the eyes that were an exact replica of her own. She was going to miss her little sibling, as she did every year.