Potter Professions

Carlos stared at his father with a mixture of impatience and reproach. "So what about our going shopping?" he asked. "Who's going to take us there?"

The reproach, well hidden, was an almost involuntary reaction to a previously unwavering source of support suddenly causing trouble. Harry, who should have been Carlos and Esmeralda's escort on their shopping trip for Hogwarts, had hinted that he oughtn't be seen like that in public.

Like that meant as he looked now, with a beard and hair cropped short and this ridiculously big spot on his forehead.

Carlos' impatience, unlike his reproach, wasn't hidden at all. It had grown since his father's vague answer to the same question a few minutes earlier, and his failure to clear the issue in the meantime.

Maybe his father had nourished the hope their mother would take them. Maybe Harry had hoped one of his older children would come down to the breakfast table in time to offer help. But no such luck. Cho, between looking sourly in the general direction of her husband, claimed urgent business in the Groucho headquarters. Sandra and Gabriel, both having returned just yesterday, were sound asleep. They could hardly be expected among the living before eleven o'clock.

"All right," sighed Harry. "Just a minute." The air popped, and the place where he'd been sitting was empty.

Carlos exchanged a glance with Esmeralda. Their father apparating inside Carron Lough - and in the presence of Bolo - was a sign of his bad mood. Normally Harry avoided apparating inside the castle because the German shepherd got upset from people disappearing suddenly.

And true enough - the dog breathed noisily and could barely suppress an angry bark.

Reflexively, Esmeralda put her hand down to soothe the dog.

The thought struck Carlos that someone ought to do something similar to his mother. She looked as upset as the German shepherd, except that her lips were shut tight - two thin lines, suppressing what otherwise might have been the same noisy breathing. Carlos regretted having started this discussion at a time without Gabriel sitting at the table as well; his older brother could make Cho smile in almost any situation.

His father came back, this time through the door. He walked to his seat and sat down. Then he looked at Carlos and said, "If you're willing to go with me like this, we can go."

The hair, a few minutes ago still short, looked almost normal. The coloured patch on the forehead was gone, as were the additional marks - the double scar resided there alone. The beard, neat and classy before, now looked wild and untidy.

"Now that's an improvement!" exclaimed Cho.

"Depends on the perspective," replied Harry - maybe even with a grin, except that it was difficult to discern expressions under this beard. "It's just another mask, a means to protect my real mask from premature discovery ... We have all quite different methods of slipping into new roles, haven't we?"

Carlos had been busy thinking about the term premature discovery, so he was somewhat unprepared when his mother suddenly slammed her napkin on the table. Pale with suppressed fury, she rose from her seat and left the room.

Harry watched her leave, then turned to his children. "She doesn't like the idea of me playing a teacher at a French school. I guess that's the main reason for this - er, accentuated exit."

The joke fell on the table and died unrewarded.

---

Shopping in Diagon Alley was nothing new to Carlos or Esmeralda. They left Bolo with his sad look behind to follow their father's summoning. As they walked down the street, passing the shop windows, he told them how in his student days the shopping list would have been much longer, filled with entries as weird as potion ingredients. Today, the school provided supplies for all students.

Also, the dress regulations had changed since then. A normal school had none whatsoever, while Hogwarts still demanded the traditional wizard's or witches' robe, though only for formal occasions. Carlos and Esmeralda's robes were waiting at home; their mother had taken care of that already before.

So as far as Carlos knew, there were only two items on today's official agenda - their schoolbooks and their wands. He expected that this list would be enhanced by something more informal, like a visit to an ice cream parlour.

Reaching two large shop windows with a huge sign above that read 'Quality Quidditch Supplies,' their father stopped to examine the display. Then he sighed and said, "Ah, well, we might come back to that once we know how you two get along in Flying and Quidditch."

Carlos exchanged a glance with his sister. For Esmeralda, like himself, a broomstick was an uncomfortable way of travelling short distances. They couldn't care less when a new Firebolt Something was released, an event that might send their father into rapture.

Sobering up, Harry moved on and led them to the bookstore, Flourish and Blotts. Inside, a large pile blocked their path after a few steps. It contained book packages, wrapped in something like cardboard strips that formed a box with a handle. Altogether, a package resembled a suitcase - and only after another moment of staring, they became aware that each of these packages was what a Hogwarts first-year needed.

All they had to do was grab two of these packages and pay for them, then they could have left the shop. In summary, that was pretty much what they did, only it took another thirty minutes of peering here and scanning there before they met again near the cash register, to look at each other and notice empty hands all around.

Spending half an hour in a bookstore without choosing something was unprecedented. For himself, Carlos blamed it on the task lying ahead, the purchase of wands. As for the others, he didn't know why they hadn't - maybe it was the same reason for Esmeralda, while their father ... Probably that strange task which he was looking forward to.

Taking a cardboard box from the pile, Carlos looked surprised - these books seemed to weigh almost nothing. The mystery was solved a moment later, when the sales clerk said, "This carrying box is magically enchanted to take most of the weight. You might want to use it for classes, too."

Carlos nodded, mostly to be polite. That cardboard would hardly survive a sharp pull, not to mention the stresses of regular schooldays. If the books really weighed more than what felt comfortable, he would ask one of his older siblings to put a clever enchantment on his bag.

---

They reached Ollivanders, the wand shop. It was so narrow inside that the three of them seemed too many people in this tight space. And the smell - a book shop smelled of paper and a shoe shop smelled of leather, so why didn't this shop smell of wood?

Dust, mostly ... Just when Carlos had come to this conclusion, the shop owner appeared as if materializing out of nowhere. But the air hadn't popped, Carlos would swear.

Mr Ollivander took a short look at Carlos' father, then greeted him with his name and a smile. In Carlos' opinion, this casual behaviour even added to the impression of weirdness; any normal person would at least have made a remark about Harry's beard.

The man extracted a tape measure, which turned out to be magical because it measured Esmeralda and Carlos on its own. Meanwhile, Harry asked Mr Ollivander how he was getting along with the huge numbers of magical children.

"Not at all, Mr Potter, not at all," answered the wandmaker. "My circle of customers hasn't grown considerably in the past years, for which I might be grateful. Although you wouldn't believe how all these young wizards and witches get equipped with their first wands. It's a shame what some of my fellow entrepreneurs offer. But still worse, there's even a mail order wand shop. Imagine that - mail order! How would those students ever find their true wand, if they have to make do with the next best wand that was shipped to them through - "

"Sir," interrupted Carlos, "excuse me, sir, but do you really need to know how long my sister's hair is?"

Mr Ollivander shifted his gaze from Harry to Esmeralda, on whom a somewhat overzealous tape measure had tried to pull a streak of her hair upward to measure it from root to tip. He said, "No, that's enough," and the tape measure let go of Esmeralda's hair.

Carlos watched as Mr Ollivander rummaged through his shop to present one wand after the other to Esmeralda. He listened as the man commented in a low voice on what he was doing and also on Esmeralda's attempts, expressing more than once the opinion Carlos had heard before, that the wand selected the owner, rather than the other way around.

He had his doubts - in particular because Esmeralda flatly refused to try certain wands. However, Mr Ollivander seemed more pleased than offended by this behaviour - an attitude that raised Carlos' opinion of him.

Fifteen minutes later, as she swooshed yet another wand through the air, Esmeralda created a sparkling stream of colour spots. Witch and wand had found each other, no doubt about that. A piece of acacia with a magical core of dragon heartstring, ten and a half inches, had won the race for which Mr Ollivander had done most of the running.

Now it was Carlos' turn to wave wands.

While he never had developed an opinion of how his wand should look, he felt quite expectant nevertheless. Without having revealed the thought to anyone, he believed that a comparison of his wand with Esmeralda's would be a first indication of whether or not they would be sorted into the same house.

Maybe it was superstition. After all, the wands of his father, his uncle Ron, and his father's old friend Mrs Krum had little in common, and yet all three of them had been Gryffindors.

Carlos knew that the wand size was determined mostly by the owner's height, rather than by magical power, as many people believed. The longest wand he'd ever heard of was that of a certain Hagrid, a former friend of his father who died in the Battle of Hogwarts. Hagrid's wand had measured sixteen inches, appropriate for a half-giant who never had shown outstanding magical power.

On the other hand, there were his father's wand and those of Sandra and Gabriel. All three of them had a phoenix feather as their magical core, and all three feathers came from the same phoenix. Sandra's and Gabriel's wands were both twelve inches, cedar wood the former, ebony the latter. So all considered, Carlos saw no reason to worry about different woods, only about magical cores.

Coming back from his last trip, Mr Ollivander had two wands in his hands, one greyish-yellow, the other almost white. Without even thinking, Carlos snatched the white one and rushed it through the air.

Had someone asked him why, he might have answered that this wand seemed the right counterpart to his older brother's almost black wand, totally ignoring the fact that the wand in Mr Ollivander's other hand greatly resembled Esmeralda's. At any rate, Carlos' movement produced a glittering ribbon of silvery sparks.

It was pine - more exactly pitch pine, sometimes also called Californian pine, which pleased Carlos considerably. Ten and a half inches, same size as Esmeralda's, which pleased him still more. "Is it also dragon heartstring?" he asked expectantly.

"Not this one. It's Unicorn hair."

While his father paid, exchanging final remarks with the shop owner, Carlos tried to reason with his own imagination. Like, this was the only core that would balance out because with his wand, the Potter family employed all three core types manufactured in Ollivander wands. Like, it took the gentle unicorn to compensate for the fierce dragon. Because it was all about balancing, wasn't it?

Well, maybe so.

---

Outside, his father sent him a thoughtful glance. To Carlos' relief, Harry didn't ask him about his lack of excitement, maybe also because Esmeralda, in sharp contrast, was beaming with the anticipation of future wand magic.

After some steps down the street, Harry again turned to Carlos and asked, "What do you think about a pet?"

"Erm ..."

The question hit Carlos unprepared. He never had given this idea a second thought. His older sister had Nagini, the snake. His younger sister had Bolo, the dog. His older brother had no pet, so it seemed only natural to follow this pattern.

"No," he said eventually. "Bolo's enough for both of us."

His father said, "Well, in this case ..."

As Carlos knew, this half-finished remark was a polite way of asking, Are you sure? Such a question was unlikely to pass Harry's lips, not after he'd been in touch with Goblins and Giants for such a long time.

Well, maybe Carlos wasn't sure, but for sure he wasn't in the mood to wander through a pet shop. The ice cream parlour, to which their father now led them, was more to his taste.

They had been back at Carron Lough for a while already when a visitor arrived. It was Rahewa Stein, Harry's goddaughter. This visit struck Carlos as a strange coincidence because it had been Rahewa, six years ago, who had appeared down at the beach with Bolo, except that the dog had received his new name only later that day.

As if feeling the same synchronicity, the German shepherd greeted Rahewa with an unusual excitement.

Rahewa patted him, a broad grin on her face. "That's a clever dog, really. Remember how I brought him here?"

Carlos nodded, while his sister stared at Rahewa with a wondering expression, as if unable to figure out how someone could ask such a stupid question.

Rahewa seemed not to notice, or not to mind. "All the time," she said, "I planned to come with a companion for Bolo, because a single dog is nonsense - dogs are pack animals. But somehow it never worked."

Bolo became more insistent. Totally ignoring the gentle pushs from Rahewa, he tried to come closer, with an obvious interest in her bag.

As if the bag held some special treats, thought Carlos, although it was strange - Bolo had never been particularly greedy. Next moment, he saw how Esmeralda's eyes were getting bigger and bigger.

"Until today - your last day at home before travelling to Hogwarts." Rahewa's glance turned to the dog. "Yes my boy, I know, and you're totally right ..." Her both hands went into the bag and came out holding something that was small and furry and timidly meowing.

A kitten! Carlos watched how Bolo, calmer than a moment ago, sniffed the kitten from whiskers to tail. Apparently satisfied with his inspection, the dog sat on his hind legs, looking expectantly at the small bundle in Rahewa's hands.

Rahewa met Carlos' eyes. She said, "It's a she. When I came with the dog, it went to Esmeralda, so it's clear who's in charge of this little cat, right?" With these words, she made a step toward him and put the light-grey bundle into his hands, which had opened almost by themselves to form a tray.

Bolo had watched the movement. He came up and made a step like Rahewa before, then sat down again in front of Carlos - looking expectant, ears erect and bigger than ever.

"He's a shepherd," said Rahewa. "That's what he's been waiting for - to shepherd his own pet. Try it - put her down."

Carlos knelt down and moved his hands to the floor before opening them.

The kitten examined the location, made a tentative step, then another. Then she marched straight to the dog in front of her, tail up in the air. Reaching the dog, the small cat rubbed herself against Bolo's leg, then made another step between the two front legs. When she finished her next round around the other leg, the German shepherd's head sank down and a large pink tongue appeared to caress the new playmate.

The kitten sat down at once, holding still while the tongue worked over the small body again and again.

Enthralled, Carlos watched the scene. When the dog was satisfied with his work and laid down right next to the kitten, Carlos looked up and met his father's glance.

What he saw there made him wonder if Rahewa really had come on her own impulse.

* * *

Harry felt ridiculous. Carrying a heavy suitcase uphill was simply nonsense for a wizard with his apparition skills, one of the reasons why he could barely remember travelling with more than a light bag. Yet as a student he had dealt with more luggage - strange how the topic "school" as the common denominator brought back not only memories but also unpleasant duties.

He was walking toward the Ecole des Etudiants Magiques Gênés. Determined to create the smallest footprint possible, he had decided to reveal as little of his capabilities as he could manage. For the average person that he was trying to present, coming with a suitcase when moving into his small teacher's apartment seemed normal.

A real person with such limitations probably would have used a cab, while Harry, after exploring the area some days before, had apparated to a spot farther downhill. The former Navy cadet school, which today hosted the school for the magically handicapped students, was located at the topmost point of Brest, rather than near the harbour or somewhere else closer to the water.

Still, the weight of the suitcase wasn't enough to put him out of breath, or pull his arm numb, not after all his exercises in the past weeks. He was fitter than he had ever been in the last six years.

And more nervous too, to be honest. But this state matched well with his adopted personality.

He reached the gate that separated the school grounds from the street. It was locked.

Only after a few seconds of glancing around did Harry notice the intercom on the wall. He pressed the button below the speaker opening. Waiting and staring at the peeling paint on the gate, he wondered if the system was really operative. If not, he could -

"Yes?" A female voice.

"Er - my name is Terry Pritchard, I'm the new teacher."

"As if we'd only one ..."

A buzzing sound from the middle of the gate informed Harry that he'd better move to reach the handle and push. However, the woman who owned the voice apparently knew that it took a second to open the gate because it didn't lock again before he could reach it.

Walking on the path toward the building in which he expected to find this woman and other members of the school staff, Harry recollected the relevant facts of his assumed identity. He had used the name "Terry Pritchard" twenty years ago, when he and Remus Lupin had helped two FBI agents to catch some assailants that turned out to be Dementors. The name was well selected, could even cover an accidental lapse into "Harry," and it wouldn't break a French tongue bone.

---

He reached the building, found the door open, and entered. As he walked along a corridor in which every step echoed dramatically, he heard the voice from a moment ago calling, "I'm here!"

It came from a room with an open door; when Harry reached the door, he saw that he'd found the office of the school secretary, the woman with the voice he'd heard twice before.

"Thierry Pri'chard? Salut, I'm Jeannette, Jeannette Clouzot, but we're on first names here, of course with the exception of Monsieur le Directeur Fresnel." A glance went to his suitcase. "You have an apartment here, right? Then I'll give you the keys and show you the way, so you can settle there yourself. Monsieur Fresnel isn't here today, only tomorrow, so your official introduction will be tomorrow, after he has spoken with you."

The woman stood up and walked to a map at the wall, apparently showing the school estate. She motioned him to come closer and to watch.

"We're here, in Brest ..."

Only after a moment of examining the map did Harry understand that Jeannette was talking about buildings. Every building in this former Navy cadet school bore the name of a French harbour. Basically, this was a good idea and certainly better than using the names of admirals, the version Harry would have expected from a British school with the same history.

"... your apartment is there, in Cayenne. Let me check the number and get your key."

While the secretary walked back to her desk to look up his assignment, Harry continued examining the map. The Cayenne building stood in a distant corner of the school grounds; the distance to Brest, the office building, couldn't have been longer. Cayenne was one building in a group of two; the other one was named 'Fort-de-France.'

From years of adventure travelling with his children, Harry's knowledge of geography was far above average. So he could identify one of the two names at once, and with this information, tracking down the other was a matter of seconds. The harbour of Cayenne could be found in French Guiana, at the north-east coast of South America. From there, it wasn't far to Fort-de-France, the capital of the French island Martinique in the Lesser Antilles.

So the usage of French harbour names wasn't limited to the homeland, a fact that wouldn't worry a normal British citizen. A more suspicious mind, though, might wonder if these colonial names implied a social rank.

"Number twenty-seven. That's the seventh apartment on the second storey."

The secretary walked to a cabinet. She extracted a key ring and held it up, apparently waiting for Harry to come over and fetch it.

---

Business as unusual - that was how he would summarise his encounter with the school administration while walking from the Brest building to the Cayenne building. Jeannette Clouzot hadn't been overly excited to meet him, giving no more conversation than the bare minimum.

Maybe it had to do with his pending first visit to the headmaster, Monsieur le Directeur Fresnel. Maybe his assumed identity was to blame - Ron had taken great pains to add the proper hints of bad reputation in Harry's official papers. Or the social climate on this school was simply as poor as it looked.

The apartment offered two rooms, a bedroom and an office. Both of them were quite spacious, and this seemed the only good news Harry could detect. No kitchen, not even a kitchen corner - teachers participated in the school's official system of nourishment with fixed times for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Still worse was the second shortcoming - no bathroom, no toilet; sanitary demands were satisfied in a big washing room with urinals, toilets, and showers at the end of the floor.

Harry sat down to inhale deeply, to swallow, and to tell himself that renting this apartment had been an important part of his task as well as his role. Teachers could of course live somewhere else outside the school, but Harry as well as Ron had thought it mandatory to live inside for the time of this secret investigation project. Also, the fictitious Terry Pritchard wasn't exactly famous for spending lots of money in such matters, so the school offer for a cheap place to live would have, and had, been accepted gladly.

Well, a bathroom worth the name was an apparition jump away, Harry told himself by way of encouragement.

Thanks to Ron's warnings, he had arrived with a recently improved knowledge of cleaning spells. Using them, he removed dust and some traces of previous inhabitants from the two rooms. Then he emptied his suitcase, storing the items in cabinets and drawers.

Afterwards, his apartment looked hardly more inviting.

He gave the keys on the key ring a closer examination. Four keys, with two of them already identified - one for the Cayenne building, another one for the apartment number twenty-seven. The Ecole des Etudiants Magiques Gˆnés wasn't modern enough, or rich enough, to offer a state-of-the-art key system in which the same key would work downward in a hierarchy of locks. So the third key probably fit the gate lock.

Then which lock would open when using the fourth?

Harry decided to squeeze the school secretary a bit more about school details, including the answer to this question. But when reaching the Brest building again, he found the door locked. Apparently, Jeannette Clouzot had finished for today, leaving it to anyone's guess whether his own arrival had sped up her departure.

One question, though, could be answered. The fourth key opened the Brest building, as Harry found out simply by trying. This was the administration building, except that everything useful or informative was hidden inside rooms with locked doors.

This school was so unbearably inviting ...

Well, a few days from now, things would look different. Terms at the Ecole Gêne, as Harry privately called it, started a few days later than other schools. Ron had explained this difference with a hint that these days - at other schools - were sufficient to figure out which students would be candidates to be sent to Brest.

From what he'd heard while walking twice across the school estate, Harry concluded that he was alone - not only in the Brest building but in the entire school. For his own floor in the Cayenne building, he could be sure about that; his senses had told him that the other apartments were empty. It didn't mean they had no inhabitants, it only confirmed that other teachers with an apartment there had the good sense not to return earlier than necessary, whether from holidays or from a more comfortable home base.

Harry decided to use the opportunity, and to start an inspection tour that would lead through quite a number of closed doors, using a skill he'd learned long ago.

And besides - should anyone catch him entering rooms for which nobody had offered him entry, it would only confirm the picture as drawn in his personal file, the one sent to Monsieur le Directeur Fresnel.

* * *

Esmeralda opened the door to the compartment. Knowing from experience which sequence worked best, she ordered the dog to take a seat first.

Without hesitation, Bolo bounded onto the window seat to Esmeralda's right. In a family in which apparating was the norm, he'd had few opportunities to watch passing landscapes, though he'd had enough to know what the seats meant, and how to use this chance at once.

Watching how the dog stared out of the window, Esmeralda had to smile before she stored her luggage in the rack above the seats. It was pretty much the first smile on this journey, a journey that looked more like a mistake with every minute passing.

Their father had expressed the idea first. Using the Hogwarts Express once, for their first travel to Hogwarts, had indeed sounded like a romantic idea. The train was hopelessly outdated; today's travellers on the Hogwarts Express were either romantics - or the children of them, like Esmeralda and Carlos - or students from families for which even the portkey journey with Magical Tours was a financial issue. The train was free.

She sat down next to her dog's seat, leaving the other side and the other window seat to her brother Carlos and his own pet, the kitten from Rahewa. The little cat was twice as curious as Bolo for sure but too small to find a position from where she could look through the window by herself. She needed a cushion, preferably in human shape, and Carlos was the most natural candidate.

However, Carlos hadn't yet finished storing his own stuff in the luggage rack when the small grey animal used his shoulder as springboard to jump into the rack. Finishing that fluid movement, the cat climbed onto the bag there, the only footing more solid than the metal bars that were spaced every few inches. From the top of the bag, she looked in the dog's direction as if to make clear how inferior Bolo was compared to her, because he couldn't reach her.

Bolo, unimpressed, continued staring out the window.

For a few minutes, Esmeralda sat there listening to the noises of a train about to depart, staring back when other students outside their compartment peeked through the window in the compartment door. There weren't many, and without exception, they dismissed the idea of entering the compartment in search of company - apparently, a large German shepherd was a bit more company than they liked.

Then someone blew a whistle, and the Hogwarts Express, slowest journey around, started to move.

Esmeralda watched her dog. Bolo seemed to tremble in excitement. Not only was this journey the first opportunity in a while to watch moving landscape, not only was the view through the compartment window much better than that through the rear window of a car, but the railroad track passed along places that were totally different from a country road, and much more interesting. People didn't seem to care about train passengers observing their backyards.

Glancing up to the cat, for whom the pushing and rattling of the train was similarly exciting, Esmeralda asked, "So did you find a name for her?"

"Hmmm ..." There was a few seconds pause. "No, not yet."

The answer sounded as though Carlos had a very clear idea how to name the cat but didn't like yet to go public with his idea - not even within the confines of this compartment. This was quite unusual, but then, so were the events.

"Want some suggestions?"

"Er - no."

Carlos' smile at his reply had confirmed her suspicion - he had a name, was mulling it over in his head, and would tell her when he felt like it.

"Then what else can we do to pass the time in this stupid train?"

---

Her question came dangerously close to blaming her brother for the shortcomings of this journey with the Hogwarts Express. Unfair as it seemed, he was in charge of smoothing the world's sharp edges for her, such was the unspoken agreement between them. However, the glance from Carlos was neither apologetic nor reproachful when he said, "Do you think it would have been better to hang around at home? To wait there till the evening, when it was time to jump by ourselves?"

Her brother's reply referred to their porties. In preparation for their time at Hogwarts, their father had extended the list of stored targets by a new one - the train station between Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. This station, the destination of the Hogwarts Express, was the landmark closest to the protection zone over Hogwarts that prevented apparition. Just pressing the right button of their porty would have been the alternative to this train.

Her brother's reply also referred to the situation in Carron Lough. This morning, they had seen their father for a few minutes before he returned to his new job in that French school. The air between their parents was still cooler than during the past weeks; saying "Brest" was enough to make Cho's mouth a thin, straight line. Under these circumstances, every minute longer might indeed have been worse than sitting here, not knowing what to do.

"Well," she said, "before we get bored to death here, we can use our porties to jump from the train."

Carlos bolted upright, an alarmed expression on his face. "No! Don't you remember the story about how Daddy was chasing this guy in a car, and how they were flying over the beach dune?"

In this story, their father had found out that apparition did nothing to alter the velocity of a body at the moment of apparition. When apparating from within a car that was driving at hundred miles per hour, the person would reach the destination with a velocity of hundred miles per hour, and in such a situation, most likely it didn't matter in which direction this velocity pointed. Their father had apparated with a body speed of fifty or sixty miles per hour, coming out on top of a large beach dune that dampened the fall and slowed down the body softly enough to avoid getting hurt.

Esmeralda pointed upward with a grin. "See these emergency brakes? If bad comes to worse, we can stop the train first and jump then."

Carlos grinned back - both of them knew well that Esmeralda would never do something as stupid and selfish as that.

However, asking what if and inventing actions and reactions in such a situation was a nice game. They played it for quite a while, ending with a scene in which the other students on the train, arriving at Hogwarts in an almost starved state, spotted Bolo, remembered the dog, and chased after Carlos and Esmeralda as the culprits of their near-starvation.

Talking about hungry students made them hungry. When the lady with the sweets trolley arrived at their compartment - one of the attractions on the train, according to their parents - Carlos bought a large collection while Esmeralda pacified the dog; Bolo hadn't taken well to the lady's totally unauthorized opening of the door.

---

No sooner had Carlos sat down again, the paper bag with his shopping in his lap, that he was hit by a cat landing on his shoulder. Apparently, she needed the hold from her talons for this manoeuver because Carlos let out a soft squeak.

Esmeralda grabbed the bag. "You need your hands for that cat of yours, don't you?"

"And you need your hands for that dog of yours," retorted Carlos, who had plucked the cat from his shoulders and now saw that the German shepherd had lost interest in the moving landscape in favour of a bag full of sweets.

Bolo and his sweet tooth ... Esmeralda knew very well that she shouldn't feed him any sweets. But the people who had told her so hadn't known what a heart-breaking look could come from two amber eyes.

She extracted a small cake in the shape of a cauldron, broke it in two halves, one for herself and the other for Bolo.

The dog, as it turned out, could appreciate the piece more, while Esmeralda felt a bit disappointed. The cake wasn't on par with what she was used to from Winky and Dobby, the house-elves in Carron Lough.

Carlos made his own first try, closely watched by the cat. The ball-shaped cake he'd tried offered a filling, and the cat came as far as dipping a small, rosy tongue into the half-fluid matter before she lost interest, her whole body expressing contempt on such a boring food.

"The round ones taste okay," said Carlos.

Did they really? Esmeralda wondered, suspecting her brother caught in his habitual task of cheering her up. Her suspicion was fed when, after another bite, Bolo inherited the rest of the ball.

The dog devoured the piece without hesitation. But then, he was a bit indiscriminate in this regard; for him, getting sweets was as rare an occasion as watching the landscape flow past.

Esmeralda unwrapped one of the chocolate frogs; pure chocolate should be a safe bet. At the frog's base, she found a small picture card - she nearly had taken it for a simple piece of cardboard because she had looked at the back side first. The picture showed a figure who looked somehow out of proportion, dressed like a farmer or shepherd und looking friendly but unsmiling.

Turning the card around, Esmeralda learned that this was Lleyrin the Fist, a Giant and the chief of a Giant tribe. She had heard the name before; this Lleyrin was an old friend of her parents, and about once a year, one of them said something about a visit they should pay Lleyrin and his wife, after all these years.

Reading further, she also learned that the current series of collector cards that came with these chocolate frogs was entitled "The Battle of Hogwarts" and that the cards in this series showed the heroes and villains of this encounter that had taken place twenty-two years ago, a time period twice her own age.

"Hey," she said, "have a look in these frogs, you might get a picture of Dad, or Mum. Or Uncle Ron." She showed her brother the Giant's picture because at first, Carlos had taken her words for a joke.

Carlos peeked into the bag. "We've got just three more," he said. "If I had known ..." He extracted a frog, unwrapped it, and took the card to examine it.

"It's a Goblin," he explained after a moment. "Gurin the Gentle was his name, the only Goblin who died in the battle."

Esmeralda opened her second frog, the last of her own share, to find another Giant - or so she thought until reading the card. It was a picture of Rubeus Hagrid, a half-giant, the one who had gathered the Giants who'd fought with the school in that battle. He was also one of the three human casualties from the poison attack against the four dragons that defended Hogwarts.

She looked expectantly at her brother, then at the bag.

Carlos offered the bag to her. "You take it."

"No, it's yours."

"No, I'll get my share with these licorice wands, you don't like licorice anyway."

"Okay, then - thanks." Esmeralda pulled the last frog out of the bag. A moment later, she snorted, "I knew it! ... You should have opened that frog, then it would have been another picture." It was a second card with Lleyrin, the Giant chief.

While emptying the bag - after all, not being as delicious as sweets from the house-elves didn't mean the cakes in there tasted bad - they discussed whether there would truly have been another card had Carlos opened the frog. They both considered it unlikely though not entirely impossible because these were magical pictures. Then they thought about a method to test it, only to realize that whatever they did, the question would be left unanswered.

They fell silent. Some minutes later, they fell asleep.

---

A noise woke Esmeralda. Opening her eyes, remembering where she was, she realized that the train had changed its rhythm, that the Hogwarts Express was slowing down.

Her brother came awake, looked around, and peered through the window. Then he turned to her. "Are we there?"

Esmeralda shook her head. "I don't think so. It's too early, according to what Dad told us. And there was no announcement."

Well, that was what she believed, assuming such an announcement would have awakened her as well. Then a thought crossed her mind. "When we come to a stop, we can use our porties and apparate to the destination. I've been sitting in this train long enough, Bolo too."

The dog, hearing his name and something in his mistress' voice, came to full alert.

Carlos looked alarmed. "Why can't we just sit here until the end of the journey?"

"Why should we? And I bet Bolo has to pee. It was a stupid idea from the beginning. In a car, you can tell the driver to have a break, but here?" She reached for her bag.

Carlos, looking unhappy, followed her example.

They sat there for some moments, waiting for the final jolt that would indicate that the train had come to a halt. Esmeralda didn't know why the Hogwarts Express would stop before having reached its destination but she didn't care either, felt content to get the opportunity for an apparition jump.

Then Carlos spotted something outside and turned to her. "Railroad workers! The train only slowed down because there's a railway construction site - we aren't going to stop at all." He looked happier than moments before, still more so when a pull went through the train that signaled the start of another acceleration.

Esmeralda felt a wave of fury inside her. She snarled, "That's slow enough - come on!" With her right arm around Bolo, she pressed the button on her porty for Hogwarts, or as close as one could get.

A short moment of a feeling words couldn't describe, then she found herself on a train platform, Bolo in front of her. An irresistible impulse pushed her forward; she flew over the dog, came down hard on the concrete, and rolled over twice more.

Coming up with a moan, she saw her brother materialize, a bag in his hand.

Carlos might have managed to balance his momentum just by stepping quickly on his own legs, had he found the presence of mind to drop his bag. But he didn't, and the bag's weight made him stumble and fall down headlong, a split second after his cat had released herself from his hold, to scuttle over the platform, meowing reproachfully.

Esmeralda hurried to her brother. "Are you all right?"

"If so, then it's not your work," came the angry reply. "You really did what you could to get our bones broken."

She giggled in relief to see him in this mood. Carlos could be angry at her only if nothing serious had happened, and he could hold his anger only for a few minutes. The momentum at the instant of arrival had surprised her more than she would like to admit; after all, the train had looked slower than a pedestrian.

Carlos stood up. "You think that's funny, huh? But it's not, and if you - "

Her hand on his mouth interrupted the planned sermon. "I'm sorry," she said, "but I couldn't stand it any longer on the train. Now let's go to that lake down there, so Bolo can drink some water."

They left their luggage on the platform.

When they reached the lakeside, both animals drank at once, the cat in a very affected style, as if every droplet had to be savoured individually.

"Look at her," said Esmeralda, "like a princess who just noticed that the tableware isn't golden."

"Yes, sure," said Carlos. "That's Dona Gata, after all."

"So that's your name for her? Dona Gata?" It simply meant Lady Cat.

He nodded. "Yes, or Dona Minina, if she's pretentious and cute at the same time."

Dona Minina meant Lady Kitten, which Esmeralda considered a joke in itself. She said, "Let's see how Dona Gata can keep her dignity if her big friend is really wet." She gained Bolo's attention, then threw a tennis ball, which she always had in per pockets while together with Bolo, into the lake.

The dog jumped into the water, swam after the ball, reached it, snapped it with his mouth, and turned. All the time, the cat had watched in fascination.

Then Bolo reached the shoreline and climbed out. When all of his four legs had found dry ground, he shook himself, sending water everywhere.

Dona Gata twitched, made a jump, tripped a few more steps. Then she turned, sat down, and stared for a moment at the dog before she started to clean herself.

---

Sitting by the water, they enjoyed the late afternoon of a hot summer day. Still sitting by the water, no longer enjoying it, they waited for the train to arrive, and Esmeralda was fighting with herself whether she should admit loudly that it had been a mistake to leave the train.

Then, after a seemingly endless time, unmistakable sounds told them that the Hogwarts Express was closing in. They climbed the steep path up to the train platform, waiting for the other students, ready to behave as if they'd been in the train all the time.

It worked. The first students coming out looked at them curiously; however, since the train was just one method to reach Hogwarts, they didn't ask questions, and what was happening there in the first dark of the summer night took all of their attention anyway.

A voice gathered all first-years and ordered them to follow down the path. They knew from their parents that the voice belonged to a Mr Loew, Keeper of Keys and Grounds. He guided them to a small fleet of boats, where they had one to themselves.

Reaching the underground harbour, they climbed out, waited a moment until the last boats had arrived, then followed Mr Loew to a door where another man expected them. He introduced himself as Professor Snape, Deputy Headmaster and Head of the Slytherin house, and explained what Esmeralda already knew and of what she'd been afraid all day long - the Sorting.

Esmeralda watched, exchanging nervous glances with her brother every now and then, as the first years were called by the Deputy Headmaster in alphabetical order, from "Adlon, Matthew," to "Painter, Lucille."

And suddenly: "Potter, Carlos!"

Her brother marched forward and sat down on the three-legged stool, the Sorting Hat over his head. Esmeralda heard some remarks without registering a word - here at Hogwarts, the name Potter apparently raised comments no longer heard in the outside world.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

Shouting and applause came from one table, shouts of surprise and disappointment from another. While Carlos was walking toward the first table, Esmeralda heard her own name called, walked forward, and sat down.

"Well," said a small voice in her head, "what we've got here might be Ravenclaw as well as Gryffindor. There is a sharp - "

"Forget it," said Esmeralda, "I want to be Hufflepuff, like my brother."

"Your brother? What brother?"

"Carlos, who else? The boy before me." It took her some efforts to keep politeness.

"That was your brother? But he had totally different parents, so how can you - "

"That's none of your business, but if you really need to know, he's my adopted brother, or I'm his adopted sister. And now, if you please - "

"Certainly not," said the small voice with a hint of amusement. "There's too much stubbornness and defiance inside you to put you into Hufflepuff, and with every second - "

"You stupid hat!" Esmeralda felt a deep desire to strangle the fabric over her head. "Now put me into Hufflepuff, or else - "

"Or else what?" There was almost laughter in her head while she desperately tried to find a threat that might impress the hat enough to fulfill her request.

"You dare me? Well, then - GRYFFINDOR!"

As if in a trance, Esmeralda removed the hat, stood up, and walked to the table from where shouts and whistles tried to welcome her. She couldn't release her gaze from her brother's at the other table as she tried to cope with the facts.

The hat, not the least bit reasonable, had sorted herself and her brother into two different houses.