Certain Dark Things || Book Two

xvii. welcome back

At precisely ten o'clock the next morning, Harriet and Elara stepped through the Floo at Grimmauld Place to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and were both quite pleased when nothing went amiss. Harriet had expected something to go terribly wrong somewhere and thus bring the Wrath of Snape down on their heads.

"All right, Elara?" she asked as the dark-haired witch swayed in place, looking green.

"'Ine," she grunted—and Harriet wrinkled her nose when she spat out half a peeled ginger root. Elara tossed it in the bin to be Vanished and rolled her eyes. "It's for nausea, Harriet."

"Oh, right."

Given the train had another hour before departure, few students had arrived and most that had still mingled on the platform with their parents, going through their trunks to check if they'd missed anything or trying to calm fussy, caged familiars. Elara and Harriet went in search of a compartment and found one they liked in the back of the train, settling in to wait for Hermione.

It didn't take long for the final member of their trio to arrive; both girls saw Hermione walk onto the platform with the Malfoy family and Jamie Ingham, looking eager to be going back to school and also eager to escape her handlers. The bushy-haired witch nodded quickly to something said to her by Mrs. Malfoy, and then dashed off when the older witch turned her head.

Elara stood. "I'll go find her."

A few minutes later, Elara returned with Hermione in tow, the latter ranting in a low, furious undertone about how much she despised Draco Malfoy.

"—little toad uprooted half the Affable Azaleas in the greenhouse and has the gall to blame it on me! Me! Of course, Mrs. Malfoy didn't believe him for an instant, but he still earned us all an hour-long lecture on respecting the gardens—and in the middle of Malfoy Senior's tirade, he leans back and crushes the Highlander Ivy! I got told off for not stopping him—! Oh, hello, Harriet."

"Hi, Hermione."

"How are you then?"

Anxious. Nervous. A bit scared. "Err—good, I guess. Sounds like you've had better days, though."

Hermione let out an aggrieved huff as she sank into an empty seat. "It'll be a relief to get back to school. I've missed you both terribly. How was living at Elara's house?"

"Er, pretty great."

Elara scoffed as she sank onto the bench across from them. "Most everything is still cursed, broken, or otherwise out of order. Should it be visible to Muggles, I would fully expect to arrive home at Yule to find a condemned sign on the door."

"Surely it isn't that bad."

They chatted about the grim—and often fascinating—secrets to be found inside of Grimmauld Place while the train and the platform slowly filled, the volume of voices increasing as departure time neared. Harriet kicked her feet while Elara and Hermione argued, thinking about their trip to Hogsmeade last year. A lot, and very little, had changed since then.

The conversation eventually turned to the letter Harriet had received from Nicholas Flamel, and she pulled down her trunk long enough to fish out the French book for Hermione to flip through. The other witch went into instant raptures, rattling off fluid French paragraphs that fairly boggled Harriet's mind and earned a reproving tut from Elara. By then, the train had begun to move, and Hermione whipped out a Self-Inking Quill from her own satchel and a fresh roll of parchment to start translating the author foreword.

"It's about recognizing Dark magic, defining it and understanding its origins. Oh, books like these aren't really popular in England anymore—not after Grindelwald and, well, You-Know-Who. Fascinating. Do you mind if I keep this while I work on the translation? But you really should learn a few of these phrases—they come up in other branches of magic, and it'll be beneficial in the long run. I'll just be sure to make a note here...."