The Unknown: A Harry Potter Story

Chapter 4: Arrival

The train ride was a blast. Harry, Ron, and Jason were having a lot of fun eating their snacks and talking when suddenly there was a knock on the compartment door. When the door slid open, there stood a round-faced boy who looked like he was on the brink of tears.

"Sorry," he said, "but have you seen a toad at all?"

The three of them shook their heads, and the boy wailed, "I've lost him! He keeps getting away from me!"

"He'll turn up," said Harry.

"And we'll keep an eye out," added Jason.

"Yes," said the boy miserably. "Well, if you see him..." the boy called as he left.

"If I'd brought a toad, I'd lose it as quick as I could," Ron teased after the boy left. "Mind you, I brought Scabbers, so I can't talk."

The three of them all looked at the fat, grey rat that was sleeping on Ron's lap.

"He might have died, and you wouldn't know the difference," said Ron in disgust.

Ron then began to talk about how he knew a spell to turn Scabbers yellow and began rummaging through his trunk to find his wand. The wand was chipped all over with a glistening white thread pointing out of the end. That wand is in terrible shape, Jason thought to himself the unicorn hair is poking out.

Ron raised his wand to perform the spell, but before he could begin, the compartment door slid open once more. The toadless boy was back, and this time he was not alone. Next to the boy stood a girl already in her Hogwarts robes with bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth.

"Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one," she said in a loud and bossy voice.

Ron told her that we had already told Neville that we hadn't seen his toad, but she was not paying attention to anything he said. Instead, her brown eyes were focused solely on the wand in Ron's hand.

"Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see it then."

She sat down next to Ron, who looked very confused.

"Er - all right."

He cleared his throat and began to recite the most ridiculous spell Jason had ever heard. The spell was so obviously made up that Jason had to fake a cough to cover his laughter. When Ron finished reciting his spell, he waved his wand over Scabbers, who remained asleep and unaffected.

"Are you sure that's a real spell?" said the girl. "Well, it's not very good, is it?"

She then started to talk about how she's tried a few practice spells on the train, and they all worked for her. The girl explained that she was from a muggle family and didn't know anything about magic until she got her acceptance letter. From then on, she dug into everything she could find about it, even memorizing all of their course books by heart.

"I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?" she added as an afterthought.

"I'm Ron Weasley," Ron muttered.

"Jason Fortescue, nice to meet you," Jason said.

"Really?" she said, "I've read about you when I was learning about quidditch."

"Harry Potter," said Harry when Jason failed to respond.

"Are you really?" said Hermione. "I know all about you."

She then burst into an explanation about how she had gotten more than just the course books, and she quickly listed off some books that Harry is mentioned in, leaving him looking dazed. Before any of the three boys had the chance to recover, Hermione started talking about what house she hoped to be in, listing Gryffindor as her first pick, partly because it was the house that Dumbledore himself was in, and Ravenclaw as her second. Finally, she said that she should return to looking for Neville's toad and practically dragged the boy out of the compartment.