Dark Pasts { A Harry Potter Story }

Chapter 4 - Aboard The Hogwarts Express

I smiled to myself as my eyes landed on the familiar gleaming scarlet engine of the Hogwarts Express. The station was filled with clouds of steam through which the many Hogwarts students and parents on the platform appeared like dark ghosts. I hugged my dad goodbye before I set off to find a seat. I was halfway along the train when I found an empty compartment and decided it would do. Thick rain began to pour outside as the train began to move, then a voice sounded outside the compartment.

"Mind if we join you?" Hermione said.

I smiled. "Of course not," I said.

She, Harry and Ron placed their luggage in the bins above and sat down.

They smiled at me, but at once Hermione pointed toward outside the compartment as a familiar voice came into earshot.

". . . Father actually considered sending me to Durmstrang rather than Hogwarts, you know. He knows the headmaster, you see. Well, you know his opinion of Dumbledore — the man's such a Mudblood-lover — and Durmstrang doesn't admit that sort of riff raff. But Mother didn't like the idea of me going to school so far away. Father says Durmstrang takes a far more sensible line than Hogwarts about the Dark Arts. Durmstrang students actually learn them, not just the defence rubbish we do. . . ."

Hermione stood up and shut the door with a loud bang, blocking out Draco's voice.

"So he thinks Durmstrang would have suited him, does he?" she said angrily. "I wish he had gone, then we wouldn't have to put upwith him."

I caressed her arm soothingly as she sat back down beside me.

"Durmstrang's another wizarding school?" Harry said.

"Yes," she said sniffily, "and it's got a horrible reputation. According to An Appraisal of Magical Education in Europe, it puts alot of emphasis on the Dark Arts."

"I think I've heard of it," Ron said. Where is it? What country?"

"Well, nobody knows, do they?" I said with raised eyebrows.

"Er — why not?" Harry said.

Hermione sighed. "There's traditionally been a lot of rivalry between all the magic schools. Durmstrang and Beauxbatons like to conceal their whereabouts so nobody can steal their secrets," she explained matter-of-factly.

"Come off it," Ron said, starting to laugh. "Durmstrang's got to be about the same size as Hogwarts — how are you going to hide a great big castle?"

I gave him an incredulous look. "But Hogwarts is hidden," I said in surprise. "Everyone knows that . . . well, everyone who's read Hogwarts, A History, anyway."

Hermione nodded enthusiastically beside me, but Ron and Harry stared at us with vacant looks.

"Just you two, then," Ron said. "So go on — how d'you hide a place like Hogwarts?"

"It's bewitched," I said. "If a Muggle looks at it, all they see is a moldering old ruin with a sign over the entrance saying danger, do not enter, unsafe."

"So Durmstrang'll just look like a ruin to an outsider too?"

"Maybe," I said with a shrug, "or it might have Muggle repelling charms on it, like the World Cup stadium. And to keep foreign wizards from finding it, they'll have made it Unplottable —"

"Come again?"

"Well, you can enchant a building so it's impossible to plot on a map, can't you?" I said.

"Er . . . if you say so," Harry said.

"But I think Durmstrang must be somewhere in the far north," Hermione said thoughtfully. "Somewhere very cold, because they've got fur capes as part of their uniforms."