Chapter Three

The day after that, Gramps sent me a very long letter—he always knows—about wandering Diagon Alley alone and how disappointed he was that I would leave Mr. Shacklebolt and Leah like that without telling them.

“I would send a Howler, but Kingsley is quite sensitive, and he still thinks that Lucius Malfoy stole you away, not that you left,” Gramps had written. “If he heard it, his feelings might get hurt. But know that if my vocal chords were what they used to be, I would have sent a Howler otherwise.”

I still hadn’t told him, though, about the wand situation. After I had written a letter explaining it, he thought it was such an important matter that he came in person to the Shacklebolt house in London to discuss it with me. After lightly scolding me—his written words have always been sharper than his spoken ones—he sat down to talk.

“That Ollivander! Always dropping unbelievable secrets on children about their wands before they’re ready to hear it,” he said, more peeved than I’d ever seen him before. “He’s a strange, strange fellow. He should have known better before telling you something like that.”

“What do you think, Gramps? Do you think he’s telling the truth?” I asked, chewing on my nails. The wand was in the hands of Gramps, who was studying it intently.

“It’s a beautiful, elegant wand. I must say, I haven’t seen anything like it for decades,” he remarked, almost in awe. “But I feel as though it doesn’t want me in its hands any longer.” He handed it back to me with a smile. It rested perfectly in my fingers.

“Ollivander isn’t one to tell tall tales,” Gramps mused. “That family has an extraordinary memory. Even if it were a tale passed down between generations, it has likely kept most of its truth.”

I bit my tongue. In my life experience, whenever Gramps says something is true, it always has been, without fail.

“It looks as if it is of Japanese origin. I attempted to do research on who this terrible wizard might be, but I’ve had little luck in our own libraries,” Gramps said. “I may have to make a trip to Mahoutokoro to inquire about it. I am sorry for the lack of answers, Carina.”

“It’s okay, Gramps.”

“I did want to give you some advice, however. Promise me you will not let this affect your school year,” he gazed at me through his half-moon glasses, smiling a little. He knew how excited I was to finally be a student. “For all intents and purposes, you are a regular student at Hogwarts. You don’t have to be special if you don’t want to be.”

I nodded. Gramps always knows how to make me feel better.

The rest of the summer was relatively uneventful. I never did see Draco again—Mr. Shacklebolt didn’t let me, which I thought was incredibly unfair, because Leah got to go to her friends’ houses. Still, we exchanged letters all the time—we wrote to each other about our home lives and what Hogwarts Houses we wanted to be in and who we wanted to be friends with. 

“I heard Harry Potter was in our year, reckon he’d be a good person to make friends with,” Draco wrote in one of his letters to me. “If it doesn’t work out, it’s his loss.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get dinner with your family on that last day,” I wrote in another. “I would’ve preferred that a hundred times over to this. I mean, it’s not bad here, but it’s not good either. You know what I mean?”

“I really want to be in Slytherin House. Everyone from my family’s in it, and Father says that if they don’t place me in there, the Sorting Hat’s wrong.”

“I know the Sorting Hat! He lives in Gramps’ office, so we talk sometimes.”

And so these were the things we corresponded about. In bed, before I fell asleep, I’d get so giddy with excitement of seeing Draco, Fred and George—oh, Fred and George!—and the prospect of meeting new witches and wizards. Gramps suggested that I start reading up on all the topics that I never went to classes for in the beginning, which was most of them. I studied everything aside from Charms, Transfiguration, and Defense Against the Dark Arts, though I found History of Magic a snooze fest. Of the subjects that were new to me, Astronomy and Herbology seemed the most fun. There was no official Astronomy textbook, but Gramps was able to send me a book from the library that seemed to cover most of the basics.

“I saw in the book that there’s a constellation named after me,” I wrote in one of my letters to Gramps. “And one named after Draco, too! I can’t wait to see the stars in real life.”

Since we were living together, I think I also got a little bit closer to Leah over the summer, but unlike me, she had a lot of friends, and she often preferred to hang out with them. There were a lot of days when she would spend afternoons at the Abbotts or someone else’s home. I didn’t mind it, because then I could stay in and write letters to my own friends, or read books. I got the sense that we probably wouldn’t be spending very much time together at Hogwarts.

When September 1st finally came, Mr. Shacklebolt, Leah, and I arrived at King’s Cross Station by Muggle subway. We wore Muggle clothes and our strange-looking carts were concealed by magic—being a part of the Ministry of Magic, Mr. Shacklebolt was quite strict about our maintaining the Statute of Secrecy. We ran our carts through the pillar between Platforms Nine and Ten successfully, while he supervised us carefully. I could see that he was getting a bit teary.

“My girls—all grown up!” He said, hugging us both adieu. He had Ministry business, and he only had the time to drop us off at the platform. “Have a wonderful time at school!”

I expressed my gratitude to Mr. Shacklebolt for letting me stay for the summer, and Leah and I were off.

The station was so crowded with Hogwarts students and parents and carts that I had no idea where to look first. Leah had already said goodbye to me, since she wanted to join some friends she already knew. I, on the other hand, was scanning the crowds for any familiar faces I could find, and I had absolutely no luck. 

That was until I spotted a boy around my age with red hair who looked strikingly similar to Fred and George—maybe a brother? I suddenly remembered that when we met during finals season, Fred had mentioned having a little brother named Ron.

Yes—that was it! I hurriedly started pushing my cart towards the boy’s direction, because where he was, Fred and George probably were nearby. Or maybe they had already boarded the train, and I was making a fool of myself. A million thoughts raced through my head, and it finally dawned on me that I was about to see Fred again. The one who had this annoying ability to make my heart pound. The one who constantly made jokes that made my cheeks blush obnoxiously red. 

I stopped in my tracks. Maybe I was walking myself towards my own demise.

Too late. 

I heard George’s voice shout, “Carina! Over here!”

I gulped and whirled around, spotting two very familiar figures pushing their own carts towards me. At their heels was an anxious red-headed woman who I could only assume was their mother. She was lecturing them at two million miles per hour on how to behave in school.

“Fred and George Weasley, you listen to me now, I am not afraid to send you more Howlers if you continue pulling pranks like that this year. School isn’t the time for pranks!” 

“You got it, Mum,” George said, though I knew that was a complete lie.

 “We’ll be golden boys for the rest of the year,” Fred promised jokingly. Their mother rolled her eyes, as if she already knew they would never heed their advice to begin with. She ran off to tend to who I assumed was Ron, their little brother.

“Hey, Carina!” They both gave me a big hug, and when Fred hugged me my heart bounced a little. 

“It’s been a long time,” George said.

“A summer’s worth of happenings to catch up on,” Fred added, smiling. Oh, that smile did something to me! “Want to sit with us on the train? Lee Jordan’s coming, by the way. He brought a giant tarantula.” 

“Hope you don’t mind,” said George.

I gladly took their invitation. How could I ever mind?

When we had finally unloaded all of our things and sat down in our compartments, the train started to move. This felt like my real first day as a true witch, and better yet, I was spending it with Fred and George and Lee Jordan, who I had just learned was in their year and was a chronic prankster like the two of them. The three of them were going into their third year while I was just starting out, so I asked them for advice.

“Professor Binns teaches History of Magic. No need to pay attention,” said George. “Old chap didn’t even realize he died in his own lecture!”

“And Snape’s a real piece of work,” Fred told me. “No point studying for that, either. Unless you’re in Slytherin, everyone gets horrid marks anyway.”

“Guys!” I laughed. “Telling me not to study? That’s horrible advice!”

“What did you expect, asking us?” Lee Jordan said. The rest of us laughed heartily, though I did make a mental note not to ask them for advice going forward. 

“So, Carina, what was it like to live in Hogwarts?” Lee asked, studying a Chocolate Frog card. 

“So fun,” I said, remembering all the strange rooms I encountered by accident. “Once, I was running away from Filch and his stupid cat on the seventh floor, but I tripped and fell. But then the wall next to me opened up and led to a room where I could hide, and—get this—it led to a corridor straight back to Gramps’ office!”

“Definitely could’ve used that when George and I caught you in the halls, right, Carina?” Fred laughed, and my cheeks turned just as red as the day when I first met him.

“Hey! I almost got away,” I protested, even though I knew it wasn’t true. 

“Carina’s got an Invisibility Cloak, you know,” George said to Lee Jordan, who looked surprised.

“I haven’t seen any Invisibility Cloaks that work any good, even in Madam Malkin’s,” Lee said in awe. “Was that how you got around when you were taking classes illegally?”

I nodded. Soon, I noticed that the 11 o’ clock sun had begun to sink into the horizon, and the terrain changed drastically—we were far from civilization as we knew it now. It was strange, leaving Hogwarts and seeing it from the point of view of a train. When I left Hogwarts to see Gramps at different places or to visit friends, I always used the Floo network— I never saw the intermediate space between Hogwarts and my destination. And now, seeing the long stretches of forest, lakes, and large and mighty plains below the track, I realized that I had missed out on a lot. The sunset was a sight to behold.

Soon, we heard a voice echo in the train: “We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes’ time. Please leave your luggage on the train, it will be taken to the school separately.”

Excitement flooded my limbs, and I couldn’t help but start grinning ear to ear. This was it. It was the first year of my new life. A new life where I could go where I pleased and explore the greatest wizarding school in the world. My first year of Hogwarts.

“So green,” sighed Fred.

“So fresh.” George agreed.

“Don’t worry, it won’t last for long,” Lee Jordan said.

“Let me have my moment,” I retorted. 

I had to part ways with Fred and George as we exited the train, because immediately after we got off, I saw Hagrid’s giant silhouette in the dark, waving his arms: “Firs’ years! Firs’ years follow me!”

“Hagrid!” I exclaimed. I could see him beam at me from further down the train station, and I ran over to give him a hug.

“Carina, yer been well?” He laughed heartily, patting my shoulders with his humongous hands as I wrapped myself around him. 

“Good as ever, Hagrid,” I said, beaming. 

“Just wait here with me as I gather all the rest of yer year,” he said, looking up and returning to his duties as First-Year Corraller. 

Eventually, I witnessed as the crowd around us began getting bigger and bigger, and I was having more trouble moving around trying to find Draco, the one person I really wanted to be with at the moment as I felt more and more claustrophobic.

“Draco!” I cried upon spotting him, and we jostled through at least a dozen people to stand together. I let out a long-held sigh of relief upon finally finding someone I knew.

“Carina,” he said with a small smile.

“I would ask how your summer went, but you already told me all about it in your letters.”

“Same to you.” 

“Was your train ride fun? I sat with Fred and George Weasley and Lee Jordan. They’re the funniest people alive.”

Draco’s face turned into one of slight disgust upon hearing their names, which concerned me a little, but it faded as quickly as it came. “I was with my friends Crabbe and Goyle. I couldn’t find them now, the big oafs, so I think I’ll just stand here with you.”

I grinned. “I can’t wait for Hogwarts, don’t you think?”

The crowd started moving, Draco and I with it, and Hagrid led us through a series of dimly-lit paths where the forest around us was so thick we could hardly see through it. The cold air bit at my skin, which was filled with goosebumps. Scared of the cold and the dark, I grabbed Draco’s hand, my teeth chattering.

His POV

The hair on the back of Draco’s neck stood up as the crowd of what looked like over a hundred students walked together on this scarily narrow, dimly-lit path in the dead of night. He wasn’t going to admit it to the girl he was walking with, but he was slightly terrified. The crowd moved in relative silence. Given the environment they were in, they were all probably fighting off the same fears.

That was, until Carina suddenly, almost without a thought, took his hand in hers. His cheeks grew pink—the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life, the one who he’d had to steel himself to talk to even after his parents had told him that she was an important person to make friends with, had just taken his hand. She was slightly in front of him as they walked—he watched as the waves in her long black hair, illuminated only by moonlight, bounced behind her as they continued, parts of it lightly tossed by the chilly wind. He didn’t think there was anyone who pulled it off as well as she did.

What irked him, though, was that he wasn’t the only one to have noticed how pretty she was. Clearly, she was oblivious, but he could hear people all around them commenting on her eyes. 

So what if her eyes are lavender and they look like they’ve been sculpted onto her face! Draco fumed. I know her way better than the rest of these plebeians.

And he was the one holding her hand, after all.

Draco let his smug sense of superiority take over him, sneering at the people who were clearly gossiping as the two walked past. One of them was that annoying Ron Weasley, who looked over at him with disgust. 

Of course, Carina didn’t see or notice any of this. Dodging low-hanging branches and stepping over large rocks, she hadn’t looked back once and almost seemed to be dragging Draco forward with her cold hand. Gazing at her delicate fingers, his heart skipped a beat. How could anyone be this perfect?

Draco and I marched forward in the cold night for what seemed like an eternity, until Hagrid went around a bend and the view of Hogwarts over the Black Lake suddenly became incredibly clear. I let out an audible gasp—I was never allowed near the Black Lake without Gramps’ supervision, and suddenly I was on the other side, gawking at the reflection of the Hogwarts lights on the water. 

Hogwarts had been my home for as long as I could remember, but here, I felt just as stunned and starstruck as everyone else. 

All of a sudden, I heard Hagrid’s voice boom from above me: “No more’n four to a boat!” To our right, I noticed a fleet of small wooden boats by the rocks. All the students around us got into single-file lines while Hagrid helped students get into their boats. Sadly, it just so happened that Draco’s boat had gotten full before I could board, so I had to board with some strangers. I stayed relatively quiet after Hagrid yelled, “FORWARD!” and we all got moving. I had so much else to pay attention to anyway, like the beauty of the towering castle and the serenity of the Black Lake water. 

After a smooth ride to the underground docks of Hogwarts—another restricted area for me until now—Hagrid again got out of his boat, which he had to himself, and once again helped the rest of us onto the dock, made of pebbles and stones and gravel. When I got out, I again couldn’t find Draco, but there was no time to be looking, because we had to go right into the school.