Fred Weasley x Reader (slow and Steady)

Ch 31: Intrusion

The sound of the roaring train echoed loudly as we walked towards the station, large crowds of upcoming first years and returning students and their parents flooded the station; their conversations shouting over one another. We had left early that morning, packing our bags and heading out of the door. It was an odd sensation, our usual routine over the countless years had always been having Mrs. Weasley escort all of us the entire way, eagerly giving her farewells; this year she did not come along. It felt empty, and alien.

Originally, we had been sent out with the inclination of having someone shadow us guarding in case anything drastic happened; oddly enough though, when we arrived our original guardian for the transport seemed to be missing. It had brought a little panic among the adults while we stood around panicked, to the common eye we probably looked like lost children that walked too far from our parents; our eyes wide and searching. In the end our shadows had ended up originally being Mad eye, he never stayed around us, but just far enough that you would catch small glimpses of him in the corner of your eyes to then disappear when you turned to look for him. There was one small mishap in the transport process to the trains, Sirius had tagged along.

They had originally forbidden him from coming along out of fear he would be caught, with this in mind he still came along, much to their displeasure. Thankfully, Sirius had put in extra thought in his plan to escort his god son to the train. Dashing through the flood of people, a black shagged dog trotted eyes wide and searching panting in the late summer heat.

Blinking in confusion, we watched him happily trot after Harry, none of the crowd paid any mind to him, to any other person on the street he looked no different than a common street dog. Shaking our heads, we gathered our bags and continued off to the trains as Harry and Sirius dashed into an enclosed room while Moody stood guard, holding his large cane to help him walk, his eyes glowered in annoyance as he nodded towards us to move on while we stood in confusion.

Nodding our heads, we turned our backs to them and continued pushing past the crowd, the sound of the people getting louder as we pushed ourselves further into the dense mass of people. After a few minutes, turning my head as I attempted to scan over the crowd as best as I could, I noticed two familiar heads bouncing in the crowd; people moved with ease to get out of the way of Moody as we got closer. A third familiar red head pushed through the crowd alongside them suddenly as they got closer, Mr. Weasley.

I tilted my head in confusion, waiting for them to meet up with us. After we gathered around, I finally asked "I thought we were supposed to meet someone?"

Mr. Weasley nodded "You were, but something came up, so we are here instead" I nodded, the others just as confused. "There are a few things we do need to discuss with you children before you leave, whenever you send owls ensure that you do not bring up anything about the order whatsoever, we want to make sure no one finds out if they intercept your owl"

The group of us nodded in unison, I looked around in the crowd as he talked looking to see if Sirius had still been around in his dog form, but it had been hard to spot him with this many people. There was one thing I did notice though, Harry had something he did not come along this trip with originally; whatever it was, he held it tightly against his pantleg in his hand. It looked like an old paper folded tightly, the edges were beginning to turn yellow from age and were jagged. I had been curious, sure; I had no plans on badgering him about it.

We all nodded in agreement with Mr. Weasley's warning and piled onto the train, saying our goodbyes. We walked down the familiar red carpeted walkway of the train as the doors closed behind us, the train lurching forward as it continued its slow crawl to Hogwarts. A familiar feeling. Ron and Hermione ended up splitting off to the Prefect carts, something they'd need to do at the beginning of every year. I was proud of them.