Adrian woke before the alarm.
For a few seconds he stayed where he was, staring at the ceiling while the house remained quiet around him.
Then he remembered what day it was.
Hogwarts.
He sat up.
His trunk had been packed the night before, and Edmund had already warned him that if the wand came out of its box before they reached King’s Cross, it was going straight into his father’s pocket.
Adrian checked the trunk anyway.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was near the top where he could reach it on the train.
His wand was still in its box.
The ticket was tucked safely inside his coat.
Satisfied, he went downstairs.
Marisol was making breakfast while Edmund sat at the table with tea and the morning paper.
Adrian reached for the coffee.
His mother caught the movement without turning around.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“I was getting a cup.”
“You were getting into mine.”
She poured some into a smaller mug, added milk, and pushed it across the counter when he came closer.
Adrian took it without complaint.
Edmund glanced at the clock.
“We’ve got about forty minutes, so eat before we leave.”
Adrian sat down with his coffee while Marisol put a plate in front of him.
He made it through most of breakfast before the nerves settled in properly.
They weren’t bad enough to make him want to stay home.
He just couldn’t stop thinking about what came next.
He knew Hogwarts, at least in pieces.
He remembered the Great Hall, the moving staircases, the Houses and more than a few familiar faces.
None of that told him what the castle would actually be like once he was standing inside it.
Cedric was proof enough of that.
Adrian had known his name long before they met, but the boy he’d grown up with was far more real than anything he remembered from a film.
Whatever waited for him at Hogwarts would probably be the same.
Marisol sat across from him and watched him move the same piece of egg around his plate.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.
Just nervous, I guess.”
“I’d be more worried if you weren’t.”
Edmund folded the paper and set it aside.
“Once you’re there, listen to the professors, don’t go wandering somewhere just because a door looks interesting, and for the love of Merlin, don’t assume every creature you meet wants to be your friend.”
Adrian took another drink of coffee.
“You’ve told me that one a few times.”
“And I’ll keep telling you until I’m convinced you’re capable of remembering it while standing in front of something with teeth.”
“I know animals can be dangerous.”
Edmund looked at him.
Adrian held his gaze for a moment, then looked back at his breakfast.
“Yeah, okay.
Keep reminding me.”
“I plan to.”
King’s Cross was busy enough that Adrian stopped worrying about Hogwarts for a while and concentrated on not losing sight of his parents.
His trunk was heavy even with a trolley, and the owl cages carried by other families kept drawing his attention.
One tawny owl had been complaining since they entered the station.
Another was asleep.
A third watched everyone passing with the exhausted patience of something that had been dragged out of bed far too early.
Adrian resisted talking to any of them.
Mostly because Edmund was watching him.
Platform Nine and Three-Quarters was easier to find with a wizard for a father.
Edmund waited until the area around the barrier had cleared.
“Straight through.”
Adrian looked at the wall.
He remembered this.
Seeing it in person still made the instruction seem ridiculous.
Marisol touched his shoulder.
“Your father went first the last time we did this.”
Adrian looked at her.
“You’ve been through?”
“Of course I have.”
He’d forgotten that there was no reason she couldn’t.
Edmund pushed one trolley through and disappeared.
Marisol followed.
Adrian looked around once, adjusted his grip and pushed forward.
The barrier vanished.
Steam rolled across the platform.
Adrian stopped.
The Hogwarts Express filled most of his view, red against the crowded station.
Families moved around him with trunks, cages and last-minute instructions.
Students leaned out of windows farther down the train while parents shouted things they had apparently forgotten to say at home.
For the first time that morning, Adrian forgot to be nervous.
Marisol pulled his trolley aside before another family came through behind them.
“Keep moving.”
“Right.”
Adrian followed her farther onto the platform before someone called his name.
“Adrian!”
Cedric stood several yards away with his parents.
He left his trolley beside his father and came over.
“Morning.”
“Hey.”
Cedric glanced at Adrian’s trunk.
“Everything survive the journey?”
“So far.”
“We’ve only been here about ten minutes.
Dad wanted plenty of time before the train.”
“That makes two of them.”
Edmund was already exchanging greetings with Cedric’s parents while Marisol joined them.
Amos Diggory looked between the boys and smiled.
“First day at Hogwarts.
That’s something you’ll remember.”
Cedric shifted the bag on his shoulder.
He had clearly heard some version of that already that morning.
More students were boarding now, and the platform was steadily disappearing beneath steam and moving bodies.
Edmund glanced towards the train.
“You’d better find a compartment while you still can.”
Marisol turned to Adrian and straightened his collar.
“Write to us.”
“I will.”
“Before Christmas.”
Adrian smiled.
“I will.”
“And eat properly.”
“I can manage that.”
She pulled him into a hug before he could say anything else.
Adrian hugged her back.
She held on for a few seconds longer than usual before letting him go.
Edmund stepped forward.
Adrian expected another warning about forbidden corridors, dangerous creatures or listening to his professors.
Instead, his father rested a hand on his shoulder.
“Enjoy it.”
Adrian looked at him.
“Hogwarts wasn’t always easy for me, but there were good years too.
Don’t let what happened to me decide what it’s going to be for you.”
That caught Adrian off guard.
“Okay.”
Edmund squeezed his shoulder once and let go.
“Now get on the train.”
Adrian took hold of his trolley.
“I’ll write.”
Marisol pointed at him.
“You’d better.”
He and Cedric boarded together.
They found an empty compartment halfway down the train and managed to get their trunks stowed without dropping either of them.
Once they were settled, the platform outside was already difficult to see through the steam and the crowd.
Cedric leaned towards the window.
“There they are.”
Adrian looked.
Both families were still outside.
Marisol waved when she saw him.
Adrian waved back.
The train whistle sounded.
Something tightened briefly in his chest.
Then the Hogwarts Express began to move.
King’s Cross slid past the window as steam drifted along the platform.
Cedric stayed there until their families disappeared from sight, then dropped back into his seat.
Adrian watched the platform fall away behind them.
Beyond it, the tracks stretched ahead between long stretches of trees as the train gathered speed towards Hogsmeade.
“So this is it.”
Cedric smiled.
“Bit late to change your mind.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Adrian settled back as the train gathered speed.
Whatever Hogwarts turned out to be, they were on their way now.
They spent the next several minutes talking about the Houses.
Cedric expected Hufflepuff, mostly because his father had been there and because nothing he’d heard about the House sounded particularly bad to him.
Adrian was less certain.
His father had been a Slytherin, but Edmund had never spoken as though Adrian ought to follow him.
Beyond that, Adrian knew enough about the Sorting to know there wasn’t much point trying to predict it.
The compartment door slid open.
Two red-haired boys stood in the corridor with trunks behind them.
“Room in here?” one asked.
Cedric looked around.
“Yeah.”
They dragged their things inside.
One of the boys tried to get his trunk onto the luggage rack, managed to lift it to shoulder height, and then had to stop before it came back down on him.
Adrian stood.
“Here.”
He caught the other end, and together they shoved it into place.
The second trunk was easier once all four of them helped.
“Cheers,” the red-haired boy said.
“No problem.”
They sat down.
There was a brief silence while everyone settled, the sort that came when four children had suddenly found themselves sharing a compartment and none of them quite knew who was supposed to speak first.
The boy nearest the window did.
“Fred Weasley.”
His brother pointed to himself.
“George.”
Fred glanced at him.
George kept a perfectly straight face.
Cedric looked between them.
“Are you actually?”
That broke it.
Both twins grinned.
Adrian did too.
The surname had caught at something in his memory, and seeing the two of them together finished the job.
Weasley twins.
He remembered them older, mostly in flashes: red hair, a joke shop, fireworks and trouble.
Right now they were eleven and arguing over which of them had introduced himself correctly.
Cedric gave up trying to settle it and introduced himself.
Then Fred looked at Adrian.
“Adrian Clarke.”
George tilted his head.
“You’re American.”
“Yeah.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About four years.”
Fred seemed to consider that before asking, “Do Americans actually have pancakes with bacon?”
“Sometimes.”
George nodded as though that answered something important.
Cedric looked between them.
“We have bacon.”
“That’s not the interesting part,” Fred said.
Adrian smiled and left them to it.
Before long they were talking about Hogwarts.
Most of what Fred and George knew had come from their brothers.
Percy had apparently spent much of the summer explaining rules, Charlie had talked about Quidditch whenever anyone let him, and Bill had been more willing to tell them about the castle itself.
That eventually brought them to secret passages.
“You’ve never even been there,” Cedric said.
“We’ve heard things,” Fred replied.
“From your brothers?”
George looked at him.
“It sounded better before you worked that out.”
Adrian had been reading Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them while they talked.
Fred noticed the cover.
“You like creatures?”
“Yeah.”
“Any in particular?”
Adrian thought about it.
“Depends what I can actually get near without being eaten.”
“That rules out some of the interesting ones.”
“Not all of them.”
George leaned over to look at the book.
“Dad likes Scamander.”
Adrian glanced up.
“Really?”
“He reads all sorts,” George said.
“Mostly Muggle things.”
Fred nodded.
“He brought home a plug once.”
Cedric frowned.
“Why?”
Neither twin seemed to have an answer for that.
Adrian laughed and went back to his book while the conversation wandered somewhere else.
By midday, the trolley came along the corridor.
Cedric had food from home, and so did Adrian, but that didn’t stop him from buying a Chocolate Frog and a packet of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans.
He handed over the coins, took his change and dropped it back into his pocket before returning to the compartment.
The coins still felt strange compared with pounds.
Seventeen Sickles to a Galleon.
Twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle.
Adrian had spent part of the previous week doing conversions in his notebook before Edmund told him to stop trying to impose decimal logic on a currency designed by people who clearly had no interest in making arithmetic pleasant.
Fred watched him count the change.
“You’re slow.”
“Your money is ridiculous.”
“Our money?”
“Yes.”
George looked at Cedric.
“He really is American.”
Adrian put the coins away.
“Pounds make more sense.”
Fred considered that for a moment.
“How many pence in a pound?”
“A hundred,” Adrian said.
Both twins looked at him, while Cedric laughed from across the compartment.
Adrian only nodded, as if that settled whatever strange comparison Fred had been trying to make.
They shared the sweets after that.
George drew a pepper-flavoured bean and spent the next minute regretting it, while Fred found one he insisted tasted like boiled cabbage.
Cedric declined to take another after watching both of them.
Adrian tried one next and stopped after the first bite.
George noticed.
“Bad?”
“Coffee.”
“Is that good?”
Adrian finished chewing.
“Yeah, actually.”
That was enough encouragement for Fred to reach into the packet.
His turned out to taste like soap, and the beans stayed closed for a while after that.
Some time later, Fred noticed that Adrian had returned to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
“You’ve been reading that most of the trip.”
Adrian looked up.
“I like it.”
“We noticed,” George said.
Fred leaned across far enough to see the open page.
“What are you reading about?”
“Bowtruckles.”
George moved closer.
“Those the little stick things?”
“Pretty much.
They live in wand-quality trees and get territorial if you bother them.”
Fred glanced at his brother.
“Useful.”
Adrian caught the look between them.
“For what?”
“Nothing yet.”
Cedric looked over from the window, already suspicious.
Adrian went back to the page.
“Right.”
Fred ignored him.
“What else is in there?”
Adrian turned a few pages and showed them some of the illustrations.
The twins were interested in anything that sounded dangerous, difficult to catch, or capable of causing property damage, although George seemed genuinely fascinated by Nifflers once Adrian explained what they did.
“So they just steal anything shiny?” George asked.
“Anything they think is valuable.”
Fred considered that.
“Could you train one?”
“Probably, but you’d spend half your life getting your stuff back.”
“That still sounds useful.”
“To you.”
They talked creatures for a while after that.
Adrian knew more than either of them expected, though he was careful not to make guesses sound like facts when all he had was something he’d read.
Cedric filled in a few things he’d heard from his father, and the conversation wandered naturally from magical creatures to Hogwarts grounds, then to what might actually be living around the castle.
The conversation eventually drifted back to Hogwarts, and the Forbidden Forest came up somewhere between Quidditch and the grounds.
Fred leaned forward.
“Charlie’s told us about that.”
“Mostly that we’re not to go in,” George added.
“Which Percy also mentioned.”
“Several times.”
Cedric looked between them.
“Maybe because you’re not supposed to.”
“We know,” Fred and George said together.
Adrian smiled into his book.
Fred caught it.
“You’d go in.”
Adrian looked up.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” George said.
Cedric turned towards Adrian.
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about.”
Adrian glanced up.
“I haven’t said I was going anywhere.”
Fred pointed at him.
“No, but you’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one people get when they’re pretending—”
“—they haven’t already started thinking about it.”
Adrian considered denying it, then decided against wasting everyone’s time.
The twins grinned.
By late afternoon, he’d learned enough about Fred and George Weasley to understand why Cedric had started keeping an eye on the three of them whenever the conversation wandered somewhere questionable.
The twins rarely needed to explain an idea all the way through to one another.
Fred would start a thought, George would pick it up halfway, and sometimes both of them arrived at the same conclusion at once.
Adrian’s own curiosity worked differently, but once something caught his attention he was no better at leaving it alone.
That became obvious when Fred noticed a loose latch beneath one of the seats.
He crouched to examine it.
“What’s that for?”
George was beside him almost immediately.
“Could open something.”
“Or hold something shut.”
Adrian leaned over from his seat and spotted the hinge tucked farther underneath.
“There’s more hardware back there.”
Both twins looked at him.
Cedric sighed and opened his book.
Nothing about the latch suggested anything particularly exciting, but that did not prevent the three of them from spending several minutes working out how the seat had been assembled and whether the compartment concealed anything underneath it.
It didn’t.
Fred sat back.
“Disappointing.”
“Very,” George agreed.
Adrian returned to his own seat.
“At least now we know.”
Cedric lowered his book just enough to look at them.
“You could’ve known by leaving it alone.”
The twins exchanged a glance.
“That sounds unlikely,” Fred said.
“Very unreliable method,” George agreed.
As the afternoon wore on, the light outside softened and students began changing into their school robes.
Adrian pulled his on over his clothes and studied his reflection briefly in the compartment window.
The robes were perfectly serviceable, even if they weren’t something he would have chosen for himself.
He could worry about style later.
Fred had somehow decided that wearing his tie incorrectly might influence the Sorting Hat.
“It sits on your head,” Cedric said.
“I don’t think your tie is going to matter.”
Fred looked unconvinced.
“You don’t know what it looks at.”
George leaned over to inspect Fred’s crooked knot.
“Could be judging the whole presentation.”
Adrian adjusted his own collar.
“Then you’re in trouble.”
Fred pointed at him.
“See?
Clarke understands the importance of preparation.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It was the spirit of it,” George said.
Cedric gave up and turned back towards the window.
A few minutes later, the train began to slow.
The change was subtle at first, just enough to make the compartment quiet as everyone noticed it.
Adrian put Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them back into his bag and checked that his wand was secure before moving closer to the window.
Night had settled outside.
Trees passed in dark stretches beyond the glass, broken occasionally by patches of open ground before the brakes began to sound beneath the carriage.
Fred noticed Adrian watching.
“Nervous?”
“A little.”
George glanced at Cedric, who was straightening his tie again.
“He’s worse.”
Cedric immediately dropped his hand.
“I’m fine.”
Fred and George looked at one another.
“Course you are,” they said together.
Cedric ignored them.
The train slowed further until it finally stopped, and the quiet inside the compartment vanished almost at once.
Doors opened along the carriage, voices filled the corridor, and students began gathering bags and pushing towards the exits.
Fred stood first.
“Right, then.”
George was already reaching for his things.
“Let’s go find out where they put us.”
Cedric followed them into the corridor, and Adrian went with him.
Cold air met him as he stepped down from the train.
Steam drifted beneath the lamps, students crowded the platform in every direction, and somewhere beyond the darkness waited a castle he had never seen with his own eyes.
Adrian smiled and followed the others.