Hogwarts for the Marauders

Chapter 6 Aboard the Hogwarts Express

When James Potter entered the Hogwarts Platform, he could feel his insides churning with excitement. Everywhere around him, the station was alive. Families seeing off their children and scared eleven year olds looking about, clutching their parents robes. He could see some of the elder boys carrying their broomsticks around, girls swarming around them as they show off their new models. One day, there will be girls around me like that too. I will be the ruddy best flier in the century! James thought.

"Come along, honey. We need to find you a compartment too." Cooed Euphemia from behind him.

"Mother it's all right. I can find one myself. I am grown up now." He argued as he shrugged her hands off from his hair, which she was trying to tame. On the other side of the platform, the Blacks stood with poise and vigour. Young Regulus was hopping around excited to be on the magical platform for the first time. Beside him the tiny house elf quivered, behind his mistress's robes. Walburga was standing ruefully without saying anything to her son. Sirius tried apologising then and again but Walburga deemed ignorance the best way to punish him for his mistake. Yesterday during the dinner, when Sirius and Regulus were goofing around, they wondered what the common rooms there at Hogwarts would be like. That is when Sirius expressed his desire to be in Gryffindor. And when Walburga heard the imbecile wish of his son, her wrath was enough for Sirius to know that he better be in Slytherin and not any other house. He was punished severely. Locked into the attic with a boggart, Sirius had cried all night long facing his worst fears in the dark. That was always how Walburga punished them. This punishment which they rightly earned was for their own well-being afterall. When the train's whistle sounded for the first time, the students scurried towards the train and Sirius Black looked at his mother once again and went on to climb the train which will take him away from this peculiar place he called home.

James found an empty compartment with just a small girl at the window. He sat down in front of her and waited that maybe somebody else will come and he could get away from the awkward position he was in. After several moments and door opened and a boy with long dark hair and a well structured face walked in followed by a perky looking blond boy with chocolate brown eyes. They all looked at each other, all shy and about to begin an entirely new journey of their lives.

Finally, "Hi, I am James Potter. First year." Remus looked up at the messy haired boy and smiled. He was new to so many people. Sirius, however, wasn't about to just sit there, and appear like a coward and stay lonely. No matter what his background was like, he would make friends. Friends who would like him no matter what his blood status is and which house he's sorted into. "Sirius Black. And this is Remus Lupin. We are firsties too. I just met him in the hallway. We were trying to find a compartment together. And mind you, he doesn't speak much." Sirius spoke in a very matured way, his words laced with heavy french accent.

They all now turned to the girl, expecting that she would introduce herself too. But instead, the compartment door slid open and a boy with greasy black hair and pointy nose came in and sat down opposite Lily. She glanced at him and then looked back out of the window, tears returning to her eyes.

"I don't want to talk to you," she said in a constricted voice.

"Why not?"

"Tuney h-hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore." Petunia, who had been so disappointed that she wasn't the one getting to go to magic school, had written to the headmaster of Lily's school. When Lily told about this to Severus, he had been shocked as to how a muggle was able to contact the magical world. He had insisted that they open the letter before Petunia does. When Tuney found out that Lily had been interfering with her things, she threw a great tantrum and refused to speak to Lily at all.

"So what?" Severus asked, clearly not liking the talk being stirred towards Lily's sister.

She threw him a look of deep dislike.

"So she's my sister!"

"She's only a- " He caught himself quickly; Lily, too busy trying to wipe her eyes without being noticed, did not hear him.

"But we're going!" he said, unable to suppress the exhilaration in his voice. "This is it! We're off to Hogwarts!"

She nodded, mopping her eyes, but in spite of herself, she half smiled.

"You'd better be in Slytherin," said Snape, encouraged that she had brightened a little.

"Slytherin?"

James, who had shown no interest at all in Lily or Snape until that point, looked around at the word, and Severus, whose attention had entirely been on Lily until that point, looked up at James: slightly, black-haired like Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that Snape so conspicuously lacked.

"Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?" James asked the boy lounging on the seats opposite him, but Sirius did not smile.

"My whole family have been in Slytherin," he said.

"Blimey," said James, "and I thought you seemed all right!"

Sirius grinned.

"Maybe I'll break the tradition. Where are you heading, if you've got the choice?"

James lifted an invisible sword.

"'Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!' Like my dad."

Snape made a small, disparaging noise. James turned on him.

"Got a problem with that?"

"No," said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. "If you'd rather be brawny than brainy..."

"Where're you hoping to go, seeing as you're neither?" interjected Sirius.

James roared with laughter. Lily sat up, rather flushed, and looked from James to Sirius in dislike.

"Come on, Severus, let's find another compartment."

"Oooooo..."

James and Sirius imitated her lofty voice; James tried to trip Snape as he passed.

"See ya, oh what was his name again, oh yeah, see ya, Snivellus!" a voice called, as the compartment door slammed shut.

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*This part of the story has some extracts from J.K. Rowling's 'Deathly hallows'.