Muggle World

5: Anarchy on the Train

...And then Harry Potter woke up.

“Attention, all passengers on the 12 o’clock to Manchester. Due to construction purposes, the 12 o’clock will be delayed. I repeat, due to construction problems, the 12 o’clock to Manchester will be delayed. That is all.”

Once again, Harry Potter learned that windows of large vehicles did not make for comfortable pillows on which to sleep.

He sat near the front of the train in an open alcove. Smatterings of adult business-travelers, reading newspapers and drinking coffee and tea, surrounded him. Outside, throngs of people his age and a bit older were funneling past his window, into the cars at the back of the train.

A lady with a cart wheeled up.

“Lipton tea? Lemonade? Mars Bar, dear? Right before the train starts?”

“Uh – no, I don’t have any money, thanks.” Harry looked down at his feet. The word ‘dear’ had made him blush. “Do I have to move to the back? I saw these separate cars, and, err, I’m with Hogwarts...my ticket doesn’t say, um...”

“You don’t have to move an inch until we get to Edinburgh. From there we go straight to the school.” Oddly, she winked. “I’ll let you stay up here ‘til then.”

“Right.” Harry felt a lump in his throat.

The lady wheeled on down the aisle.

Harry had – and he knew this sounded stupid – never been on a train before. He hadn’t even been anywhere outside of Little Whinging without the Dursleys! But Harry didn’t feel excited about this at all – just weird. And horrible. And sick. And like he was about to--

Into the little alcove came two heavy thuds, and Harry looked up. A couple of troll-like beings his age loomed above, small, round heads on top of their mountainous bodies.

“Can we sit here?”

The question was from a third, much more normal-sized boy with a pointed, pale face and slicked-back blond hair. Harry had a feeling it wasn’t really a question, at least the way he put it. They didn’t wait for an answer, anyway: all three sat down across from him, the bigger ones on the heels of the smallest.

Harry looked them over. Their clothes were expensive looking and clean – nothing like Harry’s baggy hand-me-downs, which were crisped with fresh-from-the-cupboard-floor wrinkles. The blond boy’s hair was neatly combed, and, well, Harry had never been very friendly with a brush.

“Are you going to Hogwarts? I’m Harry Potter.” He blurted out.

Until then, the blond boy had been staring dully out the window. His icy eyes turned toward Harry. “Draco Malfoy. Father’s sending me to Hogwarts mostly because all the private schools won’t take me. He said Hogwarts used to have a better reputation,” he drawled on. “This is Crabbe and Goyle.”

“Um, yeah, well,” Harry wanted to impress them – desperately. “My aunt and uncle are sending me here to get rid of me, I mean--y’know--” he laughed a little louder than he meant to. A couple adult passengers looked up.

Harry went ahead regardless, and started to brag about his “misadventures”, trying hard to proudly relate the incidents that had made him infamous at Stonewall. ...Accidentally setting a trashcan on fire counted as arson, right?

Malfoy regarded Harry’s words with mute interest. Crabbe and Goyle didn’t pay much attention. The train started, and Malfoy suddenly smiled as Harry finished. He ignored him splendidly and turned toward his muscled henchmen.

“My dad told me about people like him – a track record dirtier than his face!” Crabbe and Goyle snickered, now in rapt interest. “He belongs here – probably going to go raving mad the first week! He’ll be bumping off teachers and idiot students like himself left and right… No breeding, you know. Just a sociopath and a waist of blood and guts. He’s not worth the clothes he’s in, if you can call those clothes. I don’t.”

Harry’s face was burning as he got up. He couldn’t listen to another word. His fist was clenching and unclenching, shaking from anger, and ready to knock the snot out of Malfoy. But Harry couldn’t do that. Wasn’t he on the way to an institution, already? He had to hold it in, the steaming red-hot inside his belly. He had to get away…

Moving by themselves, Harry’s feet carried him to the back of the train. Compartments and closed doors; carpet colored vomit-yellow. No lady with a wheeled cart, Mars Bars, and Lipton Tea. He made his way down the thin aisle, passing compartments full of anonymous chattering and yelling, or rather, future classmates. Harry shivered.

At last, he came to a door that was slightly ajar. He glanced in, seeing only a boy his age leaning dully against the window, through which telephone wire raced past. Harry’s anger still ached inside his stomach. Deciding to risk it, he went in and sat across from the other boy, which was a horrendous idea. His new train mate was in an equally bad mood.

Neither one said anything for a long time, nor bothered to acknowledge the other’s existence. Trees and countryside sailed past, now, and the telephone wire eventually disappeared. Several brief stops were made to empty out the adults, and the rustling outside the compartment told Harry some students besides himself were being moved from the front. The train continued to puff its way to Hogwarts.

“What’s your name?” The other boy suddenly asked. His face was straight and grim.

Harry glared through his glasses. He was trying to contain his temper, for goodness sake! “Potter,” he spat. “Harry Potter.”

The other boy scowled up at him. “What’s that on your forehead?”

Harry reached up to touch his hairline, feeling a familiar shape carved into his skull. “None of your business, idiot.”

“Looks like a tattoo. And don’t call me idiot, idiot!”

“I’ll call you whatever I want! And it’s a scar.”

“It looks like a lightnin’ bolt, wuss!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

Both Harry and the other boy knew they each sounded pretty stupid. Yet, the two of them sat very still for a moment, silent and unmoving. The train clicked away beneath them.

“…Still an idiot…” Harry mumbled.

The other boy lunged at him, and, admittedly, Harry lunged right back. Both were immediately at each other’s throats, fighting violently, kicking and pounding mercilessly. Harry ground his teeth, a hard fist beating into his stomach. His fist repeatedly met the other boy’s face. But the other boy was far stronger, and it wasn’t long ‘til Harry was the one on the defensive, blocking his glasses with both his fists.

The door slid open. “Excuse me, can I sit…? Hey!” yelled a girl’s voice, high and piping. Raccoon-make-up – and he saw her feet – steel-toed Doc Martens. “Stop that! Stop that, right now, the both of you! Do you want to get in trouble? Stop it!”

More were gathering outside, freeing themselves from their compartments. The Doc Marten-girl was still shouting. Harry was being thrashed, but was going down fighting. He landed a messy kick in the boy’s stomach just as his own jaw collided with the other boy’s elbow. More shouting.

“…What’s the racket, here? ...Ahhhhh! Moody!! We have a fight!” Harry looked up for an instant to see a familiar looking young woman with short, raspberry red hair tipped in white spikes. He’d seen her talking to his bus driver at Hogwarts. She was wearing a brown security guard uniform and had a black walkie-talkie in her belt. Next to some handcuffs. And a gun.

Harry wasn’t much for caring, at this point.

Octopus arms reached down to pry them apart. The shouting turned to boos. Harry Potter found the spiky-haired woman and a man had taken both of his arms. Bluish white hair fell to the sides of the man’s terribly scared face and part of his nose was missing.

Caught between the two of them – his arms restrained, his cheeks colored red, the adrenaline pumping through his veins – Harry was pulled even further back into the train. The blaze in his belly cooled, slightly. For some reason, dread came at the back of his stomach, and sounded a lot like Uncle Vernon:

“You’re marked, boy – bet you that you won’t come out of this school alive. I told him everything I could think of – right from diapers to Stonewall and back again... You’re marked, boy. You’re marked.”

In the reflection on the inside of his glasses, Harry saw the other boy (his tuft of red hair, his mercilessly freckled face) downcast. He was sadly wedged between two other security guards that held him at bay. He didn’t seem to want to be there, either.