By the time the Hogwarts Express reached platform nine and three-quarters, several of those in the group decided to follow Daphne's example and fell asleep during the transition from Scotland countryside to London cityscape.
Hannah, having talked and laughed for nearly two hours eventually ended up falling asleep on her best friend's shoulder, her energy spent. Surprisingly, Susan, wasn't asleep, but did not seem to mind the blond pig-tailed girl using her as a pillow. Harry figured she must be used to the her friend's antics.
On Susan's right, Terry had also decided to get some shut eye. He leaned against the wall, his mouth hanging part way open, snoring. Thankfully, it wasn't very loud, so no one was actually bothered by the sound.
On the other side of the compartment, Tracey Davis slept like a log, or a rock. Much like her friend Daphne she, too, was leaning against the wall. Also much like her friend, she appeared so much more peaceful when sleeping. Or at least, that was Harry's perception of her. It may have had something to do with the fact that she wasn't talking anymore. The girl was very boisterous when awake.
The others had managed to stay awake for the whole train ride. Lisa had pulled out a book on the history of an ancient group of witches and wizards that used to live in Samaria. Much like the raven-haired girl, Hermione also decided to do some reading. The large tome she perused through let him know her choice in reading material was Hogwarts, A History. Next to her, Blaise and Neville were having a quiet conversation with each other, something about plants and potions.
For his part, Harry took to reading Self-Defense Spellwork, a book containing a list of spells used in self-defense, both of the offensive and defensive variety. Most of the spells listed were moderately difficult, such as the Protego, a shield charm that created a magical barrier that could block both physical entities and spells.
Personally, Harry didn't see himself using the Protego very much. It just didn't fit his style. But it would probably be good to learn nonetheless, if for no other reason than he may end up needing to protect someone else with it in the future.
Harry felt the train finally slow to a stop. Turning a little to look at Daphne, he canceled the Silencing Charm around her, and began carefully shaking her awake.
“Daphne. Daphne. We're here.”
The blond pureblood stirred. An almost inaudible groan escaped her lips as startling blue eyes blinked open. She looked around the compartment, her icy irises appearing just a tad groggy, before they settled on him.
“Are we there already?”
Harry's lips twitched into a small, amused smile.
“Already? Daphne, you've been asleep for five hours.”
“Oh can it, Potter.”
Directly opposite Daphne, the now awake Tracey Davis tiredly snickered at her friend, which ended with her receiving a small glare from the now fully awake blond.
“You too, Tracey.”
“Is it just me,” started Hannah as she stretched her hands above her head and yawned loudly, “or do these short naps just make you more tired than you were before falling asleep.”
“I think it may just be you,” Tracey teased with a smile, though she seemed even groggier than the other two. “And Daphne.” Her friend rolled her eyes. “Personally, I feel great.”
“Liar,” Daphne said. She seemed more alert now that she'd had time to regain her bearings. “Tracey's always had a problem getting up. I often have to shove her off her bed just to make her wake up. If it weren't for me, she would probably sleep until noon.”
“That's not true,” Tracey complained.
“Isn't it?” asked Daphne, the dry tone in her voice making it evident that the question was rhetorical. “Name one time you've gotten up before ten that didn't involve either myself or your parents waking you.”
Tracey opened her mouth to speak, then promptly shut it. Her face scrunched up as she tried to think of something to say, but slowly began to turn red when she realized that Daphne was right.
“And now you have just proven my point.”
Tracey flushed.
“Shut up, Daphne.”
Harry found the interaction between Daphne and Tracey absolutely fascinating. It was so different than what he was used to seeing when dealing with the oftentimes cold pureblood girl. Were it not for the evidence in front of his eyes, he would have never believed she was the person speaking. A part of him had to wonder if this was how they always acted when not around others. He hoped so, because it meant Daphne was comfortable enough with them to be herself, even if she still downplayed her emotions.
The group soon left the compartment, which shrunk back to its original size as they left, and exited the Hogwarts Express.
Much like when Harry had first arrived at platform nine and three-quarters at the start of the term, the place was a bustling zoo of people. Children were being hugged by their parents, siblings too young to go to Hogwarts greeted their bothers and/or sisters enthusiastically, and the students in question were telling their families of their time at Hogwarts. It was all very lively.
Hermione turned to them, her face uncertain as she bit her lip.
“I should probably get going. My parents are on the other side of the barrier.”
“Alright,” Harry and the others—minus a few like Blaise and Daphne who merely nodded—offered the girl a smile, putting whatever worries she had at ease and causing her to smile back. “Have fun on your family trip.”
“I will.”
The others said their goodbyes to the girl as well. Hermione offered them one final wave before making her way toward the barrier. A few seconds later she disappeared within the crowd of bodies.
“I should probably get going as well,” Daphne started, “My father is... probably looking for me within this crowd.” There was a small pause in her voice, Harry noticed, as if she had been about to say one thing and quickly changed it to something else. He wondered what she had been going to say originally, but felt he already had a good idea.
“Bye, Daphne!”
Tracey gave her best friend a big hug, which was returned much more hesitantly and with far less force. The blond then turned to Harry, biting her lip. After a single moments hesitation she held out her hand towards him.
It only took Harry a moment to realize what she was doing. But when he did, he recovered from his surprise admirably. He took her hand in one of his and brought it to his lips.
“I'll see you after the holidays,” she said softly.
“Of course.” He smiled at her, causing another hesitant one to be given in return. She took a step back after another moment, nodded at the others, then turned on her heel and left.
“Wow,” Tracey said after a moment. She turned to look at Harry, her eyes appraising. “I don't know what you did, but whatever it was, it must have really gotten through to her.”
Harry tilted his head to the side in a curiously endearing gesture.
“You mean she didn't tell you?”
“No,” Tracey pouted, cheeks puffing up like a squirrel with acorns stuffed into its mouth. “I've been asking her since she apologized to me, but she refuses to say a thing. So...” he suddenly looked at him with a sly smile. “Perhaps you can tell me what happened between the two of you.”
“Sorry.” Harry shrugged. “But it's not my secret to tell.”
Tracey crossed her arms, huffing at being rebuffed.
“There she is, mum! Look at who she's with!”
“Oh no,” Lisa moaned as she buried her face into her hands and gave a long suffering sigh.
“Your sister,” Harry guessed.
“Yes.”
Lisa turned with the others, a cheesy and obviously forced smile on her face. Harry peered at where she was looking to see three people, two women and one man. The youngest of the three, Lisa's sister, Harry guessed, looked a lot like Lisa, except instead of raven-colored hair she had light brown hair with honey-colored streaks running through it. The woman next to her was what he suspected his Ravenclaw friend would look like in the next few years: a beautiful woman with lustrous black hair and a warm smile. Standing beside the older woman was a man of fairly average height and build, with swept back light brown hair tinged gray, a small goatee, and gray eyes.
“Mum,” Lisa greeted, or tried to greet. She was interrupted by her sister.
“See! See!” The older sibling was saying as she pointed at Harry. “It's Harry Potter! She's friends with Harry Potter!”
Harry actually felt his eye twitching in minor annoyance. It was one thing to stare at him like he was the second coming of Merlin; he could ignore that. It was quite another to be so blatant and loud when pointing him out so everyone in the vicinity could hear it. This girl clearly didn't know the meaning of discretion.
“Wow, Lisa,” Tracey said, not even bothering to whisper. “You were right, she really is annoying.”
Lisa's older sister glared at the brunette.
“And who are you?”
“A friend of mine,” Harry said before Tracey could say something that would likely end with and the older girl arguing. “Just like Lisa is.”
He then purposefully ignored Lisa's sister and turned his attention to the parents. The first thing he noticed was they were looking at his scar. He expected that. It seemed to be the standard reaction most people had when first meeting him. Even Daphne's eyes had gone to his scar when they first met.
“It's a pleasure to meet you two. As your eldest daughter said, I'm Harry Potter.”
“Ah, nice to meet you!” Mr. Turpin enthusiastically shook Harry's offered hand. “The name's Micheal Turpin, and it's truly an honor to meet you at last, Mr. Potter!”
That was a standard reaction as well. At least it was only one person this time and he wasn't being mobbed by a horde of overly-enthusiastic fans.
“Oh, let go of the boy, Mike,” Ms. Turpin chided, “you look like you're about to rip his arm off with your enthusiasm.”
“Ah, ahem, yes, of course. Sorry.”
The now thoroughly abashed man let go of Harry's hand, allowing him to greet Lisa's mom in the standard customs dictated by pureblood etiquette. Ms. Turpin smiled beatifically as Harry kissed her knuckles. By her side, Lisa's sister, whose name he had not yet learned and didn't particularly care to learn, growled at her mom.
“As I have already introduced myself, may I know the name of the young lady?”
“Julie.”
“A pleasure to meet you. It's clear to me who Lisa get's her beauty from.”
Pay the lady of the house a compliment. That was one of the first lessons Andromeda taught him. It was very important because you were not only complimenting the female on their looks, but the husband on their taste in women. Harry didn't really get why it was a compliment to the men, but he definitely understood the benefit of endearing himself to the female of any marriage. After all, if Mrs. Crawft's relationship with her husband was any indication, it was more often than not the woman who was truly in charge of the house.
Julie Turpin smiled at the compliment while Lisa's face, for perhaps the first time since they had met, took on the same shade as Susan's hair. Beside the girl, Tracey snickered into her hand as the others showed varying degrees of amusement.
Lisa soon left with her family, her older sister complaining to the younger girl very loudly about how it wasn't fair that she was friends with a magical celebrity. Harry hoped to never see that girl again, but knew it to be a false hope—unless he wanted to stop being friends with Lisa, which he didn't.
Terry left next. The group was introduced to the boy's parents who, much like Lisa's father, had been ecstatic to meet the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry allowed the man his enthusiasm and greeted him and his wife cordially. They left a short while later, leaving only Blaise, Hannah, Neville, Susan and Tracey left.
The crowd began to thin as more people left. That made it much easier to see several people converging on their location.
“Mum! Dad!”
Tracey's shout directed Harry to the first group he observed. A pretty young woman who could only be Tracey's mother bent down to give her daughter a fierce hug. She, like her daughter, had brown hair, brown eyes, and a slightly mischievous smile warmed by motherly affection. The man Harry could only assume was her father had black hair, dark eyes and an easy going smile as he watched his wife's reunion with her daughter.
“Ooh, I've missed you so much, Trace!” the woman exclaimed. Tracey looked mildly embarrassed by her mother's open display of affection. Her face had taken on the same hue as a tomato.
“M-mum!”
While Tracey was being smothered with motherly affection, two other meetings took place.
“Susan,” greeted a somewhat stern voice that did little to hide the warmth behind it. Harry turned to see a square-jawed witch with close cropped gray hair and a monocle. This, he concluded, must be Amelia Bones, the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She reminded him of Professor McGonagall, in a way. The way she held herself, appearing stern, but fair, and not afraid to get her hands dirty should the situation require it, reminded him greatly of his Head of House.
“Aunty!” Susan moved toward her aunt and embraced the much older witch. The expression on Madam Bones' face softened and a smile etched itself onto her stern features as she hugged her niece.
“Gran,” Neville greeted his grandmother. Augusta Longbottom was a very formidable-looking witch despite her obviously old age. She was tall, thin and bony, but held herself with the kind of strength that many others would feel envious of. Harry noticed immediately the red hand bag held in her left hand, and the stuffed vulture hat she wore.
“Neville,” she greeted, “it is good to see you are well. I trust you've been having a good time at school and studying hard?”
“Neville is in the top ten of the school rankings for first years,” Harry told her, causing the woman to look his way. He flashed her a smile. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Dowager Longbottom, my name is Harry Potter.”
“Mr. Potter.” The Dowager Longbottom looked Harry up and down before nodding approvingly. “Neville has told me quite a bit about you in his letters, and I must say, if even half of it is true than I am impressed. You're father and grandfather, Charles, would be quite proud of you.”
Harry inclined his head politely.
“Thank you, ma'am.”
“Susan's said quite a bit about you as well,” Amelia said as she and Susan finished hugging. The girl in question started to flush as she looked from Harry to her aunt, then at the ground, seeming more interested in counting the cracks on the platform. “In fact, every letter I've gotten from her has been about you.”
“And my daughter can't shut up about you,” Mr. Davis said, stepping into the conversation as well.
“Dad!” Tracey complained in what sounded like embarrassment or humiliation. Maybe even a mixture of both.
“What? It's true,” her father said, “every letter I've received from you is always 'Harry this' or 'Harry did that' or 'Harry is so cool.' I don't even think you've mentioned anything else in your letters.”
Tracey sent her father a glare worthy of her Head of House. Unfortunately, because she was so young, it didn't have the affect she was probably hoping for, and her father easily ignored it. Fortunately for her, her mother had no compunctions when it came to giving her husband a playful swat to the back of the head and telling him to behave, which earned her a sheepish look.
Perhaps his earlier thoughts on woman wearing the figurative 'pants' in the relationship held some truth to them, after all.
Greetings were soon exchanged as Harry introduced himself and his friends to everyone else's friends respective parents and/or guardians. The only two who did not need to be introduced were Madam Bones and the Dowager Longbottom, who ran in the same social circles.
“Oh my, what an eclectic group we have here,” a voice spoke from Harry's left
Everyone turned around to see a woman walking up to them, a darkly mysterious yet elegant beauty with light olive-colored skin, dark raven hair hair that shone lustrously in the light and traveled down her back in gentle waves, and light blue eyes set on a regal face with dark red, cupid bow lips. Both her smile and her eyes shone with an air of amusement as she stopped in front of them.
“Mother,” Blaise greeted. Harry nearly choked on his own spit. This was Blaise's mother?!
The woman walked over to her son and gave him a gentle hug.
“Blaise, I see you have been making friends,” she said, dark, playful eyes roving over the many faces before landing on Harry. Her eyes went to his forehead, where she saw his scar on prominent display.
“Harry Potter.” Her lips curved into an even wider smile. Harry felt himself skip a beat. “It's a pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise, ma'am.” Harry quickly remembered his manners and suavely took the hand offered, letting his lips graze against her knuckles.
“Such a gentlemen too,” Ms. Zabini cooed, “You know, I would love to introduce you to my daughter.”
For some reason he could not discern, Harry felt like he had suddenly been dropped into a pool with a shark.
XoX
It was a slightly mentally exhausted Harry that walked through the front yard of the Crawft's residence. Dealing with Ms. Zabini had been difficult. Dealing with Ms. Zabini, Madam Bones and the Dowager Longbottom—who seemed to bear some hostility toward Blaise's mother—made him want to crawl into his bed and hide. Nothing, not his reading, nor his experiences with life, could have prepared him for that precarious predicament.
Sighing, exhaustion seeping into his bones, Harry stopped in front of the white-painted door, knocked twice, then waited.
It wasn't very long before the sound of footsteps reached him. The door opened, and Harry found Mrs. Crawft standing before him. The woman looked at him for a second, blinking, before a smile spread across her face.
“Harry!”
With surprising suddenness, Ms. Crawft knelt down and embraced the young boy in a motherly hug. Harry surprised himself by returning the hug without reservation. He was even more surprised to discover just how much he had missed her hugs.
“You should have told me you would be arriving today,” the woman exclaimed, holding the hug a few moments longer before releasing him. She did not let him go, however, and instead placed her hands on his shoulder and held him at arms length to give him a stern look that was broken by how happy she was to see him. “I would have come and picked you up.”
“I wanted to surprise Lisa,” Harry admitted before yawning. Ms. Crawft gave him a slightly worried look.
“Are you alright, dear?”
“Just a bit tired, Ms. Crawft. The ride over was long.”
“Oh, well, Scotland is quite a ways from here.” The woman's expression changed and she smiled at him again. Harry soon discovered that he had missed her smiles, too. “And I believe Lisa will most definitely be surprised to see you. She has been awfully depressed ever since you left. It will be nice to see her happy again.”
The news that Lisa was depressed caused Harry's face to adopt a worried look.
“Is she alright?”
“She's fine,” Mrs. Crawft said dismissively. She cast him a mischievous smile and a wink. “She's just been sulking a bit since you left. Now...” She stood back up. “Lisa's in her room. I suggest you go see her.”
“Of course.” Harry really was in a hurry to see his friend. He paused, however, and turned to look at the woman who had treated him as her own for the past five years. He smiled. “It's good to see you again... Anastasia.”
He left the surprised woman with a smile on his face. Walking down the hall he could hear the television on in the living room. It was on the news channel, which meant Lisa's father was probably watching it. Mrs. Crawft had no interest in watching the news, except to find out what the weather would be like.
Stopping in front of the door he knew to be Lisa's, Harry wondered how he should approach this. Should he knock? Or should he just walk in? He wanted to surprise her, but it was incredibly rude not to knock.
Sighing, Harry knocked on the door and waited.
“Coming!”
There was a thump, followed by the scraping of a chair. Lisa had been sitting at her desk then. The sound of padded footsteps soon followed, getting ever closer before they stopped. The door opened.
“Is dinner re.... ady....?” Lisa Crawft trailed off and her eyes widened as she stared into familiar emerald green orbs. “Harry?” She breathed, too shocked by his presence to move.
That was ok, though, as Harry moved for her.
Stepping forward, he closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around the girl in a fierce embrace.
“I missed you.”
Three words that seemed so small, but meant so much. They had been together for a little over five years now, and had never strayed far from each other until he left for Hogwarts. He had never truly realized just how big a role Lisa had played in his life until she'd all but disappeared from it, albeit, temporarily.
Suddenly, everything seemed right again. He forgot about how tired he felt; thoughts of school fled like the last snow of winter melting in the spring sun; all that mattered was the girl in his arms. His dearest friend, his sister in all but blood.
Lisa returned his hug. Her arms wound themselves tightly around his waist, and her face pressed into his shoulder. Harry was not surprised to feel the wetness of tears beginning to stain his shirt.
“I missed you, too.”
They would remain that way for nearly half an hour, until Mr. Crawft found them and nearly threw a fit at seeing his daughter being hugged by the boy he had hoped not to see for another several months.