The One With All The Slytherins

Chapter 25: Year 3

The Hogwarts Express was my favorite time of the first day back to school. I had already been to two years of the feast and it was nothing special. However, this time, everyone was talking about how this year was going to be particularly different.

"Did you hear?" Neville asked me on my way to find an open seat. "We're going to a different school!"

I looked at the Trio cautiously and continued on walking down the corridor of the train. We got on the train at a relatively good time compared to the past so we got a good selection of compartments we could choose to sit in. Lainey went and sat with the Slytherins as soon as we got on since Harry said he had something important to tell me, Hermione and Ron.

"I had a dream the other night, the night before the World Cup," Harry continued.

"Like, a...sexy dream?" I asked. Ron giggled.

"No," Harry snapped. "Like a nightmare. About Voldemort- at least, I think it was him. He wasn't even a human being, just a small creature with arms and legs."

"It was just him sitting there? That's all you saw?" Hermione asked as she leaned toward him more in this intriguing conversation.

"No, Wormtail-er, Peter Pettigrew was there. There was another man there but I didn't know who he was."

"Where were they?" I asked.

"The Riddle Mansion," I said. "Tom Riddle's parents' house. That would make sense why Voldemort was there."

"Were they talking?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah, the man I didn't know kept saying something about not failing him and that he'd be there for whatever he needed."

"That's odd," Hermione commented.

"Did Voldemort say anything?" Ron asked.

"He said that he's doing something this year can't be done without the boy," he said quietly. "I think he's going to try to come back and kill me again."

His comment created a wave of soberness across the compartment. So, Voldemort really was back. None of us said anything for the next half hour, we just picked at the seats and stared out the window with the thought that Harry might actually get killed by Voldemort and the terrifying thoughts of the unknown that the future would bring. Part of me was excited but the other part of me dreaded it.

"I should go see Lainey now," I told them, interrupting the extremely long awkward silence that followed Harry's comment. They all nodded as I stood up and opened the door. I turned back around to say good luck to Harry with his future nightmares but I was interrupted so I just chose not to say anything at all.

"Anything from the trolley, dears?" The food trolley lady asked us. I quickly darted across the corridor so that she could get past and Harry and Ron could get some candy but I wasn't too fast so that I didn't see the look Harry gave the girl in line beside me. I winked at him, giggling at his new crush but he just waved me off.

It wasn't hard to find my Slytherin friends since they were so obnoxiously loud in the very back of the train so when I opened a door to find all of them in one carriage, I wasn't surprised as to why it was so loud. Everyone was trying to rudely talk over each other and be the louder, better person. There were people who were actually fighting over who was better at interrupting the other one. Sometimes, I wonder why I was put into this house.

"Hey," Lainey said to me as I sat down next to her.

I smiled and looked around the rest of the carriage to see who else was here. It was mostly the older students so it forced me to be mature. I spotted Malfoy not far from me with Pansy, Blaise, Crabbe, and Goyle but when he looked up at me and we made eye contact, I quickly looked away, embarrassed that I was caught staring at him.