(September 1st, 1991, King's Cross Station, London)

My dream had been oddly accurate in its depiction of London. Mom and I'd visited Dublin twice, but she hadn't shown me London yet. We went to Diagon Alley some time ago— because I couldn't make things in standardised sizes, if I didn't know the sizes yet— but that was by the Floo Network, so we didn't get to see anything outside of Diagon Alley.

London was stinky, filthy, and filled with people. Luckily it was a Sunday, so the train station wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. It was a moderate 23°C, but both Mom and I wore grey travel coats anyway. We were walking side by side, I was pushing a cart full of my school trunks. Perched atop my head was a phoenix I had made instead of getting an owl. Her name was Olea, and she was my first independent creation.

The look on Mom's face when I told her she was a grandma was… underwhelming. I was hoping for her to be surprised, but she was just mildly confused for a few seconds before it clicked that I was making a creature to bring with me to school.

I had made Olea with some more instinctual magic than phoenixes’ normal had, currently relevant was a beefed up anti-muggle aura that let her ride atop my head out in the open. Soon to be relevant was a similar ability that would make most wizards just think of her as some unspecified bird. A ‘probably owl, I didn't look real hard’ if you will.

If I were any less pure I would find the lack of Occlumecy funny, as an easy trick I could leverage for whatever end I desired. As it was however, it was worrying, but not immediately frightening. Mom was about as paranoid as one could get without actually going off their rocker, and I was so alien that anything that I didn't want to get through would just splash off of me harmlessly. So Mom and I were safe, and it wasn't like there were a lot of Legilimencers in the first place.

We walked through the station— which was a very nice display of utility mixed with style. Faded red bricks just looked so good with wrought iron— up to Platform Nine, and then stopped by the arch that led to Platform Ten.

I looked at the inside of the archway that divided the platforms. I could see it, on the south— closer to the station's entrance— leg of the arch was the most complicated spatial warp I had ever seen. It didn't shift, stretch, or move space, it inverted a lack of space into an abundance of space. Merlin's beard, whomever had designed those enchantments had clearly lost a chunk of their sanity in doing so. Literally. I could see a non-insignificant amount of soul had been put into this work of fucking art.

“It's beautiful,” I whispered quietly to Mom, my voice filled with a noticeable amount of awe.

“... Hmm, yes that's some brilliant brick work.” Mom said, as she nodded sagely.

“Mommm,” I groaned. “The portal, it's magical.”

“Yes, dear. That's how portals work.” She deadpanned.

“No-”

“It's not?!” she whisper-shouted.

“Mummm,” A few seconds of silence later, and we both devolved into giggles. Olea jumped from my head to perch atop my cases, and Mom hugged me from behind, as I pointed my trolley at the disguised portal.

I took a deep breath before I walked forward, and Mom trailed quietly just a step behind me. My cart went through the brickwork, and I followed right after. It was near seamless, but I could just barely make out a shear, a shove, and a twist. And then I was walking out onto Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. The platform was much the same as the muggle ones, but the crowd was so very different. The Hogwarts Express in all its shining red glory was a beautiful antique in comparison to the rest of the trains in King's Cross Station, and the platform sign was ornately made from wrought iron, which put 9¾ in contrast with the outside's modern plastic signs.

The area was already bustling with wizards and witches of all shapes and sizes. Most of the lot wore light travel clothes, but spotted a singular teen that simply must have been muggle-born considering his spiked leather jacket. That young man needed a little less radio in his life. About one in seven of the adults were wearing more traditional wizard garb, large hats and colourful robes. The rest were wearing more mundane clothing.

“Mom, has wizarding fashion significantly changed since you became a hermit?” I ask. “I always imagined that there were a higher number of people who wore colourful robes than this.”

“Huh, apparently it has,” she said.

We made our way over to the luggage area. I only had one carry on, but I had several other trunks filled with stuff. The luggage area was largely automated, we just placed my stuff on the ground and then watched it float itself off into a storage car. It was then that Olea dove into the edge of the Fae Wilds. With a single little hop she had covered the distance from my trolley to the roof of the train. To everyone else, she was literally nonexistent, but I could still make out a ghost of her form even if she was a few centimetres into another dimension.

I could probably get up to a bunch of shenanigans by exploiting my own ability to do exactly what the phoenix was, but it was kinda cheaty, and cheating was rarely more fun than succeeding in a more legitimate manner. Me being me was almost enough cheating in the first place, I hardly had to cheat more.

After my luggage was stored and my carry-on case was in my hand, Mom did some anti-transfiguration to shrink our cart back down, and hooked it onto her keychain. That was such a cool spell, but according to Mom it wasn't taught until fifth year. I bet I could find it in the library before then, and then fashion some painted wooden minis over winter break. That would be a fun side project, and it would have some nice utility. Loads of spells could substitute any tool, but few people actually had both the time and desire to master seventeen different spells just to have all their bases covered. Which was probably why most wizards didn't have all of their bases covered.

Personally, I blamed poor parenting for the lack of respect that wizards had for their phenomenal cosmic power. Muggles did the exact same thing, taking for granted their country’s wealth and technological development.

Mom snapped her fingers in front of my face a couple of times, and I quickly realised that I had been auto-talking through her trying to start saying goodbyes. I blushed a little from the embarrassment. Why did I even make that subroutine?

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Oh right, kids my age— or, well, the age I pretended to be— fucking sucked. They were all completely rubbish at being respectable human beings, so I made an automated subroutine so that I wouldn't have to put in the effort to talk to them. It was also made to be aloof and overly formal most of the time, so that the kids would be weirded out and leave me alone.

Also I liked how Mom always put in the effort to talk to me any time that I spaced out, thus I didn't have much motivation to break the habit.

I pushed Mom's fingers out of my face, and pulled her into an almost bone crushing hug. I rested my head on her collarbone, as she brought her left hand around my shoulders, and her right hand gently held onto the back of my head.

“I'll miss you,” I whispered towards her bosom. I wished we were better at words. Both of us were fairly bad at finding the words to say, our conversations usually ended up being very minimalist, progressing slowly as we both deliberated on what would be best to say. I knew what normal conversations of all kinds were like. Even if I didn't let myself experience most of my sensory data, I still processed it. I still knew stuff from it. So, I pushed myself to say more. “I- I'll miss your cooking, and your cuddles, and the sound of your heartbeat, and the feel of your hair. And I'll miss reading together, and wearing the same outfits, and braiding each other's hair! I promise to write to you all the time, and- and I'll learn tons of stuff at school, and make all of the friends, and- and- and learn to use less ‘and’s when talking!”

Mom took a deep breath into my hair, and kissed the top of my head, before speaking. “I'll miss you too, Cuddlebug.” she said. Both of our cheeks were wet with emotion, so I took a second to force vaporise any leakages. She had a soft chuckle when she felt that. “I'm so proud of you, and I always will be. I love you, Art.”

We didn't separate until a full minute of hugging later. I picked up my dark grey dragonhide leather travel case, and turned to walk away with one last “Goodbye Mom,” as I forced my eyes to stop being red and puffy from crying.

I would likely have to meet and interact with my new peers soon, and I wanted to have a first impression that was more ‘mature’ than that. This was why I disliked kids my own age, they thought so highly of themselves, yet lacked the simple wisdom to see that what I had done was in fact a perfectly normal sign of having healthy family relationships. Kids were such, stupid, arrogant, and hypocritical little brats. I was glad that I made Olea better than that, actually raising a child to be as good as her would have been such a pain.

⋇⋆✦⋆⋇

After saying my goodbyes, I let my feet guide me to an empty compartment. Mom and I had arrived a little before the middle of the pack, so I settled in for a small wait. The inside of the train carriage was carpeted a dark blue, with glossy reddish wood walls, and green padded couches as the seating. Each compartment could fit six people, if they sat three to a bench.

I couldn't help but notice the lack of Hufflepuff representation. Was the brass doorknob meant to be the yellow? It looked more like off coloured steel than yellow to me. Perhaps I was looking too far into completely arbitrary colour choices?

I lounged on the—

Actually what were these things called? It was a seat on a train, but it was also a bench, yet it's padded like a couch despite not being as stuffed as one. So annoying!

—I breathed out a puff of smoke through my nose. I was just going to keep calling it a couch. I lounged on the couch for someti—

—Knock fucking knock. I gritted my teeth from the back-to-back annoyance, but I pushed my building frustration into the depths of my mind. It wasn't the fault of whomever was knocking, they didn't deserve any of my anger. The boy had opened the door after knocking, he didn't even wait for a response before he did so.

Stay in focus, talk to him, manually, like a normal kid his age would.

“Hello,” I said with a neutral expression. The kid was incredibly average looking. Brown hair, grey blue eyes, a normal height, and plenty of meat on his bones, yet not excessively so.

“Uhmm, do you- can I, um, sit here?” he said. Blimey, his voice was even more average than his looks. It was almost impressive.

“Yeah, sure. I don't own these seats,” I replied. My expression became a little friendlier at his tact, as clumsy as it was.

“Hehe, yeah- thanks,” He closed the door behind him and lifted his travel case into the carry-on compartment above his seat. He noticeably struggled due to his height. I was a little tall for an eleven-year-old, at 150cm(4ft,11in), so I hadn't had any trouble. However, this kid was a little below average height, and he wasn't nearly as flexible as I was, which meant that he wasn't fully utilising the length of his arms when pushing.

I flicked one of my fingers to send a small telekinetic push to assist him. He seemed slightly confused, staring at his carry-on for a second, before he brushed it off, and took a seat on the couch across from me.

He leaned forwards in his seat, and offered me a hand to shake. “Thorsen. ‘m a first-year.” he said. Okay, I understood what he had tried to say just now, but that… that was just- it was so bad.

I took his hand and shook it anyway. “Artemis Atterberry. I too am a first-year. Regardless, I suppose that we will be together for a few hours, so I hope we can both find each other's presence tolerable.” I said.

“Yeah,” Truly, this was the peak of conversatability. Sigh. Conversatability was most certainly not a word. I could already feel the headache forming. It was a little weird that I chose to let myself get a headache, but small pains like that were very humanising. They helped me feel a little more like a person, which made such things appropriate for the current situation.

“Would you like to make small talk?” I asked. It was very direct, but a good foundational question. No point in talking if he didn't want to.

“Huh? Are- are we not already?” Thorsen… answered? Did he simply not realise that I was talking about the future, or was he telling me that he wished to continue as we already were? Likely the latter, but just to be safe.

“Yes, but I'm asking if you would like to continue.” I specified.

“Um, y-yeah, sure,” he said. He started to stare at my face, which was just a smidge odd, but I supposed that it makes sense for him to look at who he's talking to. Even if the way he was doing it was off putting. He was making the ether taste weird, but I didn't blame him. He had no control over his affect on the ambient magic around us, so I focused on his physical actions, which he was— mostly— in control of. He was, at the very least, trying to be cordial. Even if he wasn't very good at it. Nobody this young was. Ugh.

We spent some time lounging on the couches as we made small talk, and after ~40-ish minutes of doing so, the train gave a big whistle as it began to leave the station. Both Thorsen's— last name Quintes— and my parents had already left. Some families made a spectacle of waving their students off, but given the number of total students, it was impractical for most families to perform in such a manner. Thus our families had said goodbye once as we boarded the train, and then they had left, making the platform less crowded for those who came after.

The train left exactly on schedule, at eleven o'clock sharp. I did some quick maths, and cross referenced it with an off handed remark that Mom had made about first-years crossing a lake at night. “Shit,” I rather eloquently blurted out.

“Hmm? Did ya forget that you left the cauldron boiling, or somethin'?” Thorsen asked. We had both been looking out the window, but now he had turned to face me.

“No, much worse,” I replied, as I looked away from the window, staring him right in the eyes.

“Oh- well, go on then, do tell.” he encouraged. He had a little grin on his face that matched his tone.

“I… I think we're going to be on this train for at least another eight hours, if not more.”

Thorsen blinked at me, before saying “That can't possibly be right!” with clear exacerbation. “What makes you think that?” he continued.

“The distance from London to Scotland, speed of the train, and the fact that first-years have to boat across a lake at night. So given that we left the station at eleven, and the sunset is a little before eight this time of year, that corroborates the speed and distance calculation. Thus, I think we're going to be on this train for at least another eight hours, if not more.” I explained.

“Blimey,” He took a deep breath in, before he lightened up a bit. Not much, just a wee bit. “I guess that means we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other real well.”

“( •`_´•)” I said.

‘( ._.)’ he clearly thought. Wow, that was… I didn't know that I could even say something like that. What category of magic even was that? I think I saw something similar in that library dream, weird.

“Or, we could get to know our classmates a tad.” I said, ‘proposing’ an alternative.

“Y-yeah, that sounds like a, ah, plan. Sure,” he agreed.

Sigh. One of these days I would build up more resistance to my peers.

One of these days.

In the meantime, I had a lot of first impressions to make. I may have hated it now, but I knew it would pay off later.

The power of friendship was not to be underestimated.