Hope you all liked the last chapter. Thanks for all the great reviews! Again, I'm sorry about the short chapters. I really am trying to make them longer, but when I get to a place that would make a good ending, I don't like to keep it going after that.
Anyway, enjoy!
Chapter 2
It wasn't long before summer was over, and Harry was heading back at Hogwarts. He had never been so excited to go back. He had never really liked it there much, but he appreciated the school significantly more after being stuck at home for the entire summer with only his parents and his psychopathic little sister for company.
Harry said goodbye to his parents, as always, and his mother cried, because, as she put it, "This will be the last time I'll ever watch you go away on the train. Soon you'll be done with Hogwarts and then you'll leave us forever!" His father had shook his hand, but Harry could tell that despite his attempts to be manly, James Potter was thinking along the same lines as his wife. His sister had cried too, but Harry hadn't taken any notice of this, as she cried every year.
He sat down in an empty compartment, just like always, and looked out the window, watching all the first years' frightened faces as they hugged their parents goodbye. Scanning the platform one more time, his eyes fell on Neville Longbottom. He was looking around slowly, looking almost out of place. It was in that moment that Harry realized Neville had never had the chance to wave nervously at his parents as the Hogwarts Express pulled out of the station. Neville didn't have parents. But maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.
*
"Can I sit here? Everywhere else is full," a tall, gangly-looking boy with flaming red hair asked Harry. Harry nodded, looking quite puzzled, and the boy added, "I promised Neville I would save him a seat."
Just then, Hermione Granger, Harry's best friend, slid open the door of the compartment, and sat down, sighing, "Harry, I've looked everywhere for you! Do you always have to sit at the very last compartment?" she paused, and then added, "or maybe I should have started looking in the last compartment first already."
Harry laughed, but awkwardly, as Ron was now eying him suspiciously. "Are you alright?" Harry asked him slowly.
Ron gave a quick glance to Hermione, who was sitting across from Harry, smiled nervously, and said, "I'm sorry, but would you mind moving over one seat? You see, once Neville gets here, he'll want to sit next to the, er, window."
Harry frowned slightly, but nodded, and moved over one seat. Hermione was also frowning. "You're that boy who practically worships the ground Neville walks on, aren't you?"
Ron looked up and down slowly as if he were much better than she was, and then chuckled loudly, and turned his head, as if deigning not to speak to her. But then he leapt up from his seat as if he had sat on some hot coals, because the door to the compartment had opened again, and Neville was walking in with his nose in the air.
"Ah, Ronald!" Neville boomed. "I had asked you for an empty compartment (he looked pointedly at Harry) but I suppose this will do." He sat down across from Hermione, and looked at her predatorily. "Why hello, Hermione," he purred. "What a pleasure."
Harry had expected her to look at him like something nasty on the bottom of her shoe, but instead, she actually blushed, and… giggled? This really was too much. It was going to be a long trip.
*
Harry collapsed onto his bed. It really had been a long trip… and a long sorting, and a long feast, and now that he was finally up in his room on his bed, all he wanted to do was be anywhere else. Everyone was acting so strangely. And everything felt wrong somehow. After the summer everyone was so much more… different? Even Hermione wasn't the same, and she wasn't one to change, even in the seven years Harry had known her.
He could hear Neville talking to Ron on the other side of the room. ("And when you bring my breakfast to me in the morning, don't forget to cut the crusts off my toast and don't even think about the pumpkin juice with bits in it.) but he ignored him, and tried to focus on the raindrops falling outside his window. And with that, he drifted off to sleep.
Hope you liked it!
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