The Boy Who Lived I -- The Alchemist's Prize

Chapter One: The Hogwarts Express

Harry Potter glanced around furtively as he wheeled his heavily-laden cart through King's Cross station, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone who knew what they were doing. His ticket told him to go to platform 9¾, and while he knew how to get there in principle, having help from someone who had practical experience would be a great comfort. On his first day at school, he could imagine nothing worse than accidentally making a fool of himself.

Distressingly, he couldn't imagine not somehow making a fool of himself.

Not for the last time, Harry wished that Sirius or Hagrid could have come with him, or his parents... but he knew better than to dwell on might-have-beens.

Harry adjusted his pants again. Mother had bought them too large, as usual, and at the moment his belt seemed to be having problems compensating. Like Dudley's hand-me-downs, the clothes hung off him like bits of old elephant skin. Harry suspected that Mother had just read the measurements off his cousin's clothes before going shopping--he knew she never had time to take them herself. Fortunately, Hagrid had taken him to get his own tailoring done at Madame Malkin's a few weeks back, so that when he got to school his uniform, at least, would fit.

Harry glimpsed a commotion out of the corner of his eye and grinned. Now he would be able to get some guidance for sure. A small clan of red-haired children in muggle clothes were trundling through the station with their own carts, one of them surmounted by a cage with an owl in it. The woman leading them had equally fiery hair, touched with just a hint of silver, but had either forgotten to wear muggle clothes or had decided that plaid robes wouldn't look too out of place on her. Harry pushed his cart with renewed vigor, provoking a squawk from his own owl, Hedwig.

"Now you go first, Percy," the woman was saying to a tall, gangly young man of about sixteen. He nodded, stationed himself squarely behind his cart, and then charged towards the side pillar of the divider between platforms nine and ten. Rather than slamming into it and knocking all his luggage off in a rather ugly mess, he seemed to go straight through. The woman then turned to a pair of identical twins and urged them through, mixing their names up in the process.

Harry realized he still wasn't sure exactly what to do, so he walked over and tugged on the woman's arm before she could send the last boy through. "Excuse me, ma'am," he said, and was surprised to hear his voice echoed by another. He glanced at the arm he had grabbed, noticing another hand next to his own, and followed that hand up its arm to a pale boy who looked about his own age, with white-blonde hair and ice-blue eyes.

The woman did not seem at all surprised to see them. "Oh hello, dears," she said, with the air of a woman who talked to children all the time and genuinely enjoyed it. "Do you need to get onto the platform?"

Both boys silently nodded. "Yes, please," Harry said, for emphasis.

"It's Ron's first time, too," she said, smiling gently as she indicated the last red-haired boy. "Now, all you have to do is walk towards the arch, and you'll go right through. Best to do it at a bit of a run, though... that way you won't have to worry about losing your nerve."

Harry swallowed nervously as the red-haired woman squared him up behind his cart, then pushed him on his way. Hedwig squawked nervously at the approach, but nothing unfortunate happened. Instead Harry found himself outside on a sunny platform, facing a bright red train. He grinned and wheeled his cart down to the luggage compartment, pulling off a small satchel and swinging it over his shoulder.

Once there he ran into the red-haired twins again. One of them was calming their owl--no difficult task, for it seemed barely conscious--while the other slid their marked luggage into whatever spots were available. Harry managed to accomplish the same with his two small boxes of books, but frowned when he came to his trunk. The only spot it would fit was a shelf just above his shoulder, and his skinny arms were not even up to the task of lifting it off his cart.

After he managed to drop the heavy container twice onto the same foot, the twins came to Harry's rescue. "Here, let us give you a hand," one of them said, clapping Harry heartily on his back, and nearly sending him sprawling. Before the small boy could say a word, the two redheads had lifted the box into its spot without so much as a grunt of exertion.

"No need to worry about where you put it now," the other twin said, nudging the trunk a little more firmly into place. "The porters at Hogwarts will carry it up to your room for you."

"Oh," Harry said, his ears going warm at the sudden, familiar feeling that everyone in the world was stronger and wiser than him. "Thanks."

"No problem. Fred and George Weasley," one said. Harry had no idea how to tell them apart, and hoped it wouldn't become an issue.

"I'm Harry," he replied. "Harry Potter."

The twins' jaws dropped in unison, and inevitability their eyes flicked towards his forehead, where Harry knew his scar would be peeking out from under his bangs. They regained their composure relatively quickly, however. "Quite pleased to meet you," one said, then they clapped him on the back again. Moments later, they had left the car, and Harry situated Hedwig next to the sleepy owl the twins had brought. He hopped down out of the luggage compartment and then into the last passenger car, taking a compartment unobtrusively located near the middle.

Harry had not really known what to expect from a wizard train, but the forest-green seats and wooden floor were so ordinary he momentarily suspected he'd somehow gotten on the wrong one. He glanced out into the corridor, finding reassurance in the form of a dreadlocked boy who was levitating a tarantula down the passenger car, and then stepped into the small chamber and dropped his satchel onto one of the seats. He plopped himself down next to the window, sinking into the soft cushions, and leaned up against the glass, closing his eyes so that nobody would see the confusion in them. His other senses thus awakened, Harry heard a rushed conversation on the platform through the window.

"It's him, we really saw him... scar and everything!" This was Fred. Or perhaps George.

"Really? Cool!" an unfamiliar, girlish voice asked. "Didja ask him about it?"

"No..."

"And I forbid you to do so!" said the woman who'd helped him earlier. Harry presumed she was their mother, from the imperious tone. "Lord knows he has enough on his mind starting school without having to dredge that sort of thing up again."

"All right Mum, we promise."

"Now you be good," Mrs. Weasley admonished, in between sounds of kisses. "I'm tired of getting owls almost every day complaining about your behavior."

"We'll behave, Mum," the twins said in unison. The barely suppressed laughter in their voices left no doubt that they were entirely insincere.

"Mom, I wanna go," the girlish voice whined.

"You'll have to wait, dear," Mrs. Weasley said. "You're not old enough yet. Ron... Ron!"

"Yes, mom?" a new, more nasal voice said.

"You've something on your nose, dear. Let me get it off..."

"Mom, the train's leaving... I have to get on,"

"Well, make sure you get a wash before the ceremony then!" Mrs. Weasley called.

"Yes'm!"

With that, the train gave a few blasts of the whistle and started to move. Harry slouched down even further in his seat and started to gaze out at the scenery, but turned when a muffled grunt sounded outside his compartment, followed by two voices saying, "Sorry."

Ron Weasley was standing outside Harry's compartment, alongside the blonde boy he'd seen earlier. "Anyone sitting here?" Ron asked. The redhead was unusually tall, almost as tall as his twin brothers, with hands and feet that looked like they belonged to somebody even larger. His brown eyes had a gentle, accepting look to them--the look of someone used to putting up with anything--but one's attention was naturally drawn away from them by the black smudge on the boy's beakish nose.

Harry shook his head, and the two boys took seats across from Harry. After a moment, Ron said, "So is it true?"

"Hm?"

"Are you really him? Harry Potter?"

Harry felt himself blushing. He nodded silently, wishing that everybody didn't know his name.

"Can I... I mean, if it's not too intrusive... can I see it?"

Harry nodded again, then pulled his bangs back to reveal the scar. Lightning shaped, it zigzagged down from his hairline to right between his eyebrows. Both Ron and the blonde boy stared at it for a long moment before Harry let his hair fall again. Realizing what they'd been doing, the two boys looked away for a moment, rather sheepish expressions on their faces.

"I, uh... I'm Ronald Weasley," the redhead said at length, extending his hand. Harry took it and shook it calmly, remembering the instructions Sirius had given him about this sort of thing. It felt odd to touch someone he didn't really know, like he'd just peered in on some mystery. He wondered if there was something more to the warmth around his hand than blood and flesh, or if this was just the way everyone felt during a handshake.

The blonde boy looked up from his shoes, extended his own hand and said, "Draco Malfoy."

Ron coughed awkwardly, as if covering a laugh, then blushed deeply. "Sorry," he said as Harry and Draco shook hands. Harry noticed that Draco's hand felt different, cooler, as if the heat inside him had a longer journey to the surface, or a more difficult path.

"No, it's all right," Draco said, turning to shake hands with Ron. "It's a stupid name, and I hate it."

"I don't think it's so bad," Harry interjected, feeling like he should say something to prevent a down mood. "'Draco' sounds sort of... exciting. It means 'dragon', you know..."

"My brother works with dragons," Ron added hurriedly, apparently eager to have something to talk about. "Lives in Romania, he does--works with 'em year round."

Harry couldn't stifle a gasp. "You have four brothers?"

"Five," Ron corrected, rolling his eyes.

"Wish I had brothers," Harry said, frowning.

"'Least you've got parents," Draco retorted sullenly. "Mine got killed in the Dark Times."

After a pause, Ron quietly asked, "Did... You-Know-Who kill them?"

Malfoy's face twisted into a miserable frown as he slowly shook his head. "They... they were... on the wrong side," he admitted.

Harry froze for a moment in shock, started to say something, then stopped himself. Draco looked utterly forlorn, and his eyes were firmly directed towards the floor. "Well, I don't think it matters," Harry said. "Your parents don't decide who you are. You can be my friend no matter what they did."

Draco looked up, a shy smile on his face. "Really?"

"Yeah," Harry said.

Ron looked somewhat suspicious, but shrugged anyway and said, "Sure." After a moment, he added, "'Sides, havin' a big family isn't all it's cracked up to be. Just means a lot of hand-me-downs... and expectations. My oldest brother Bill was Head Boy here, and Charlie was Quidditch Captain. He could've played for England, but he went to work with those big-ass lizards instead. Percy's a prefect, and the twins are already on the Quidditch team. Everyone will get disappointed if I don't do those sorts of things, but if I do them, it won't matter, 'cause somebody else in the family already did 'em."

Their incipient conversation paused at the arrival of the sweets cart. "Want anything, dears?" the witch pushing it asked.

"No thanks, I'm set," Ron replied, glumly pulling out a bag of rather dry-looking sandwiches. Draco shrugged, though his hands twisted the fabric of his pants.

Harry could tell that both other boys were eyeing the sweets hungrily. "We'll take three of each," he said, grabbing some money out of his pocket. "You'll have to tell me what these are," Harry said as they divvied up their snacks.

Draco and Ron looked at him like he'd just grown another head. "Don't you know?" Ron asked.

Harry blushed in embarrassment, and decided to tell as much of the truth as he could. "We, um... my parents and I live... it's kind of isolated. I've never had many sweets."

"Really?" Draco asked. "How isolated?"

"There... there's nobody but us."

"Not even any muggles about?"

Harry shook his head. "Most times, no." Desperate not to think any more about his lonely homes, he picked up one of the boxes next to him on the seat. "So, what're these?"

"Bertie Bott's every flavor beans," Ron said, peeling open a package that claimed to contain a chocolate frog.

"You have to watch out with those," Draco said. "They mean every flavor. I got one once that tasted like salt."

"That's nothing. I once got a coal tar flavored one."

Harry frowned in disgust, but opened the box and bit into one of the jellybeans anyway. To his pleasant surprise, it tasted like lemons. "Not too bad," he said, and bit into another. "Though spinach seems a strange flavor for candy."

Ron finished unpeeling his frog, deftly catching it before it could jump out the window. "Drat, no Agrippa," he complained around a mouthful of thankfully quiescent chocolate.

"Hm?" Harry asked.

"Chocolate frogs come with wizard cards," Draco said as he peeled open his own frog. "Most kids collect 'em. I've got about seventy."

"I've got eighty-seven," Ron said, holding up the card. "All I need for a complete set of the great ancient wizards is Agrippa."

Draco glanced over. "Dumbledore, huh?" he asked. "I already got him."

"You take it," Ron said, flicking the card over to Harry, who glanced at the picture. He recognized Dumbledore, of course. The old wizard had visited his family several times. He flipped the card over and studied it, cocking his head in curiosity.

"I never knew Dumbledore worked on alchemy," he remarked, then tucked the card away in his pocket, which was much larger than it needed to be. Many things associated with Dudley had that property.

Ron and Draco continued to patiently explain to Harry about the finer points of the sweets he'd purchased, arguing good-naturedly about the proper way to eat a pumpkin pasty, and warning against eating a Fizzing Whizbees on an empty stomach.

At last, their supply of candy exhausted, the conversation turned to other things. "D'you suppose the Cannons have a chance this year?" Ron asked conversationally, stifling a satisfied belch.

"Chudley?" Draco asked. "Don't be ludicrous. They'll be lucky to win a game in their division."

Harry cocked his head to one side, trying to remember any sports team he knew called the Cannons.

"Aw, come on," Ron replied. "They've got that new seeker!"

"What, the American?" Draco asked in disbelief. "Everyone knows Americans can't play Quidditch worth a damn. They're better at that game with the sticks--lacrosse, or something like that."

"Well, maybe they can't get a full team together, but the Americans have one or two good players," Ron said, then turned and asked, "What do you think, Harry?"

Harry felt himself blushing. He stammered for a moment, then quietly admitted, "I've never heard of the Cannons."

To Harry's mortification, Draco seemed to find this utterly hilarious, and practically fell out of his seat laughing. Ron only stared in shocked disbelief for several moments. Eventually he said, "Surely you know about Quidditch!"

Harry nodded eagerly, glad to prove he wasn't a complete prat. "I've read about it a lot," he said, then paused, finally adding, "but I've never actually seen a game."

Draco chose this point to finally stop laughing. He picked himself up from the floor, wiping his eyes of tears. "It's not you," he promised as he took his seat again, "Just the silly way Ron was going on about the Cannons, and nobody outside their division's ever heard of them."

"Just you wait," Ron protested. "One of these years, they're gonna surprise everyone!"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Winning two games would be a start," he jibed, then turned to Harry. "You've got something to look forward to," he said. "Quidditch is great fun to watch, and even better to play. I'm hoping to make the team next year myself."

"I'd like to try out too," Ron said, "but I only ever get to play Chaser in family games, and I'm no good at it."

"How are you on a broom?" Draco asked. "I've good speed, but I don't maneuver very well."

"I've got the same problem," Ron admitted. "You, Harry?"

"I don't really know," Harry said. "I've got a broom, but I... don't usually get much chance to fly it."

"Well, nobody in our year gets to fly very much at Hogwarts," Ron said, frowning. "They put it on the note, in big bold letters, no less."

"Silly rule," Draco said. "I guess it's to cut down on accidents, but still..."

At that moment, the door of the compartment slid open and Ron's brothers reappeared. "Is our ickle Ronniekins enjoying his ridey-widey?" one asked in a singsong voice.

Ron rolled his eyes and asked, "What d'you want?"

"Nothing, really," the other twin said, leaning against the wall. "Percy's ruined our fun for the moment..."

"...took Lee's tarantula away..." the first one interjected. Harry decided to think of him as Fred for the moment.

"...Wasn't doing any harm just floating along, but no..."

"...perfect prefect Percy can't let anybody disturb the train," Fred finished.

The chamber was silent for a moment before Draco turned to Ron and asked, "How do you put up with that without going stark raving mad?"

Ron grinned. "It's not s'bad," he muttered. "You just have to ignore them. Makes the conversation more enlightening anyway."

Fred made as if to give Ron a vicious noogie, but stopped when George said, "Ooh, I see ickle Ronniekins has made some new friends!" The redheaded twins introduced themselves to Draco, and Harry realized he'd had them backwards. To their credit, they barely laughed at all when they heard Draco's name, and only stared at Harry for a moment when he thanked them again for their help in the luggage compartment.

At that moment the dreadlocked boy who'd had the tarantula earlier stuck his head in the door. "Come on, guys!" he called, "I'm gonna try a summoning charm to get it back!"

Ron shuddered. "Not in here, please," he murmured, but he need not have worried. The twins had already gone. "Can't abide spiders," he explained.

The conversation then drifted to speculation about classes and teachers, and the occasional comment about some feature of the pastoral landscape streaming by outside the window. As the sky turned a pinkish shade of orange, their talk was interrupted by a sharp rapping on the compartment door. A girl with brown, frizzy hair was standing outside, already in her Hogwarts uniform. "Has any of you seen a toad?" she asked. "A boy named Neville's lost his."

"A toad?" Draco asked. "Not a sign."

"Well, keep your eyes open for it," she said, then gave a slight shriek as something nosed its way out of Ron's pocket.

"What?" he asked, then glanced down at his lap. "It's just a rat... and not a very good one either."

"Four legs, mangy fur, tail," Draco said, touching his fingertips like he was going down a list. "Seems like a perfectly fine rat to me."

"Yeah, but Scabbers just sleeps all day," Ron said, half whining. "'Cept when he's eating. George gave me a spell to turn him yellow, but it was a dud."

"Try it anyway," the girl urged. "I haven't seen much magic."

"Really?"

"My parents are muggles, so I've seen hardly any, except for the fake kind. I'm Hermione Granger, by the way."

The boys introduced themselves, and Harry felt strangely gratified that Hermione barely gawked at him for any time at all. Ron agreeably pulled out his wand to try his spell on Scabbers, who was busily gnawing at a corner of a Bertie Bott's Beans box. The wand, like Ron's clothes, looked like it had seen better days--it had several scratches and dents, and something white was poking out the end of it.

Ron cleared his throat and chanted, "Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow!"

Nothing magical happened, though Scabbers twitched his whiskers in agitation and spit out the box. Harry idly wondered whether the Bertie Bott's company had flavored the cardboard.

"Told you it was a dud."

"Maybe you just need to learn some more," Hermione said. "I'm looking ever so forward to learning more about magic. I've read over our books for the year once already." The train whistled. "Oh, we must be close to the station. You should probably change into your robes."

Harry stood up to start undressing, but stopped himself when he realized Draco and Ron weren't moving. Those two were simply staring at Hermione, as if in amazement.

"What?" Hermione asked.

"So should we go one at a time," Draco drawled, wiggling his eyebrows, "or would you prefer to ogle us all at once?"

Hermione blushed a brilliant shade of red and scampered out of the compartment, slamming the door shut behind her. Ron and Draco apparently found this hilarious, and Harry halfheartedly joined in their laughter so as not to stand out. Draco reached up to close the blinds on the windows that faced the corridor, then grabbed his backpack from under his seat. "Hope it hasn't gotten too wrinkled," he muttered.

Harry grabbed his own satchel and pulled out his uniform. He quickly shrugged off his oversize shirt, then undid the belt and sent his pants tumbling down.

"Were you in prison?" Ron asked, snorting as he pulled off his own shirt.

Harry glanced up and quickly realized that both other boys were much more solidly built than him. His ears tingling with renewed embarrassment, he asked, "What do you mean?"

"I think he means that those clothes were meant for someone five times your size," Draco explained. "So either you lost a lot of weight, or you've been filching from a whale's closet."

"My cousin Dudley," Harry explained. "I get all his old clothes."

"Those look new, though. He outgrew them quickly?"

Harry shook his head. "Mother doesn't know much about shopping in muggle stores," he explained. "She always reads off his clothes to get the sizes." Now feeling somewhat self-conscious, he kicked off his shoes and started to pull on some slacks. To his relief, they fit snugly around his narrow waist. And of course, the robes he'd be wearing would disguise just how narrow that waist was from everyone else.

"See, even my robes are secondhand," Ron commented a few moments later, holding up the black garments for inspection. Though they seemed fine, a closer look revealed numerous patches and other signs of mending.

"Yeah, I avoided that fate at least," Harry said, buttoning up his shirt. "My cousin's a muggle, so I got to buy my own robes."

"You know," Draco commented as he shrugged into his own, top quality robes, "I heard you Potters were rich, what with the family fortune and the reward for killing Voldemort."

Harry frowned. "We do have a lot of money," he replied. "We just never have much opportunity to spend it."

"Wish we had money," Ron muttered, tucking his muggle clothes into his bag.

"You can have some of mine," Harry and Draco said simultaneously.

Ron stared at them for a moment. "Honestly," he said, "Wealth isn't some kind of disease."

Harry blushed again. "Just... we don't use it, so..."

"I do," Draco said, subconsciously tugging at his extremely well-tailored robes. "But since it came from my parents, I'd just as soon throw it away."

"Sorry guys," Ron said after another long pause. "Can't take charity. 'Tisn't right."

"Now who's making money sound like an illness?" Harry asked, as the train finally ground to a halt.