Draco and Tris’s conflict didn’t end up turning into a fistfight.
Hearing the commotion, the door to the opposite compartment slid open, and Fred and George poked their heads out.
Seeing three more people on the other side, Draco immediately grasped the Eastern wisdom of “two fists can’t beat four hands” and “a wise man knows when to yield.”
“Hmph, a bunch of savages and paupers! The noble Malfoys wouldn’t stoop to your level!” Draco blurted out a parting insult before turning and slipping away.
As for Crabbe and Goyle, whom Draco had been using as shields, they stood there dumbfounded for another two seconds.
When they looked back and saw Draco and Pansy almost out of the carriage, they foolishly jogged after them.
“Hey, where are you going?” Ron shouted at the top of his lungs, watching Draco flee in panic.
“Is that all the noble Malfoy family has got? Hey, coward!”
Draco didn’t even look back.
*Pfft, so what if I’m a coward?*
*Generations of Malfoys have gone to Slytherin.
We’re not foolish Gryffindors—we’ve never glorified courage.*
Harry still hadn’t fully processed what happened.
Watching Draco run off, he turned hesitantly to Tris, who had already sat back down.
“Tris, is that really the current leader of the pure-blood families you talked about—the Malfoy family?”
During his month at The Burrow, he had learned quite a lot about the wizarding world.
That included the pure-blood debate and the so-called Sacred Twenty-Eight.
“Just a bunch of washed-up dinosaurs who can’t keep up with the times,” Tris said dismissively.
“All that talk about pure-blood heritage and glory is just a cover for losers who can’t compete with half-bloods and Muggle-born wizards. They hide behind blood status because they’re too weak to face reality.”
He truly held the pure-blood theory in utter contempt.
Even though he was a direct descendant of the Weasley family, making him a textbook pure-blood wizard who had lived with that identity for eleven years, a person’s worldview is usually formed before they turn twenty.
For Tris, this life was mentally a continuation of his previous one.
As an Easterner raised under the red flag and in the spring breeze, he looked down on things like bloodlines and noble families with total disdain.
They were nothing more than decadent, backward relic-mongers clinging to past glory, blind to the march of time and the future.
Harry was left a bit bewildered by Tris’s sharp commentary.
“Umm, Tris…” Ron looked at his twin brother, who didn’t look like him at all, and said in a somewhat speechless tone, “I mean, sure, but… our family is actually a pure-blood family too.”
“I know,” Tris replied, side-eyeing Ron.
“But we don’t look down on others just because of blood status, do we? Or are you saying you’d look down on Harry because his mother wasn’t a pure-blood?”
“Of course not!” Ron denied instantly.
Over the past month, he had come to see Harry as his best friend, closer to him in some ways than his own brothers.
You couldn’t blame Ron.
His brothers really weren’t the most dependable or approachable bunch.
His oldest brother, Bill, was ten years older; by the time Ron was old enough to remember things, Bill was at Hogwarts most of the time.
His second brother, Charlie, was good at looking after his younger siblings, but his honest, straightforward nature made him a reliable big brother rather than a close confidant.
Percy…
the less said about Percy, the better.
Fred and George…
considering the spider incident, they were even worse than Percy!
And his twin brother Tris felt like a fake twin altogether!
As for his little sister Ginny, Ron couldn’t really hang out with her either.
So he cared deeply about Harry, a friend who matched his personality and whom he could actually hang out with.
Tris’s words just now had broken him out in a cold sweat.
“Why so nervous?” Tris chuckled at Ron’s reaction.
“I was just giving an example.”
Though he had learned a bit about the wizarding world at The Burrow, he still had no real concept of blood discrimination.
“Hmph.” Ron shot Tris an annoyed glare.
See, there was a reason he hadn’t liked his twin brother before!
And it wasn’t just because Tris was better-looking than him!
“So, as you can see,” Tris continued, “our family is pure-blood, but mostly because the marriages in our family just happened to be between wizards—like Mum and Dad falling in love when both happened to come from pure-blood families.
“That doesn’t mean our family discriminates against non-pure-bloods or Muggles. You’ve seen how obsessed Dad is with Muggles.”
Ron thought of the Ford car they had ridden in and the pile of junk in the yard that only Merlin knew where Dad had scavenged.
He nodded in agreement.
The train chugged along for a while longer before the trolley witch pushed her cart past the door, asking if they wanted to buy anything.
Before they left, Molly had prepared lunch for all three—corned beef sandwiches.
Thanks to Tris reminding her in advance, she had plenty of time, so the sandwiches tasted quite good, leaving no need to buy lunch.
But when Ron’s eyes landed on the colorful Chocolate Frogs on the cart, he couldn’t tear his gaze away.
“Twenty Chocolate Frogs, please.” Knowing what Ron was looking at, Harry pulled a handful of Gold Galleons from his pocket.
Back at The Burrow, Harry had seen Ron’s wizard card collection and envied it immensely.
Now that he saw them, he definitely wanted to buy some.
Ron turned a pitiful look toward Tris.
Truth be told, the Weasleys’ financial situation had improved quite a bit under Tris’s influence.
At the very least, Ron and Tris both had new wands and new robes.
But when it came to pocket money, the brothers were still quite strapped.
While it wasn’t non-existent, extravagant purchases like Chocolate Frogs were hardly suited for a first-year like Ron.
Molly gave pocket money on a tiered scale: older boys got more, younger ones got less.
Ron had a few silver Sickles in his pocket, enough to buy a couple of Chocolate Frogs if he really wanted to.
But he was saving up for a Chudley Cannons poster, so he was hesitant to spend them.
But new Famous Witches and Wizards cards were released every September and December, and there was a high chance this batch on the trolley contained new figures.
It was impossible for Ron not to crave them.
He had already collected over five hundred cards.
Though most weren’t bought outright but traded by Charlie and the others or passed down when they got tired of them, assembling such a collection was still no small feat, showing just how much he loved them.
Thus, his hopes rested squarely on Tris.
Unlike the other brothers, Molly didn’t give Tris pocket money.
Her reason was somewhat unreasonable yet entirely solid: Tris already had money!
Molly clearly still harbored a bit of resentment over that un-surrendered royalty money.
Stared down by Ron’s pitiful, reproachful look, Tris was exasperated.
He pulled a few Gold Galleons from his pocket and said, “We’ll take ten as well. And three cups of pumpkin juice, please.”
Ron knew Tris had zero interest in Chocolate Frogs or wizard cards, so this was definitely for him!
Instantly overjoyed, Ron looked like a husky that would be wagging its tail furiously if you stuck a feather duster on it.
“Tris, you’re the best! Next time we play chess, I’ll handicap myself another pawn for you.”
Tris rolled his eyes hard.
*Handicap games don’t count toward real records anyway.
Who wants to play chess with you?*
Seeing Tris order three cups of pumpkin juice, Harry felt a bit embarrassed and quickly bought several more snacks to share.
Sitting between two big spenders—generous ones at that—Ron grinned so wide his already small eyes squeezed into slits.
Soon, a giant stack of Famous Witches and Wizards cards was laid out on the seats. This story is hosted at novelping.com.
Ron was thrilled because among the ten Chocolate Frogs Tris bought him, there happened to be a new card he didn’t own, which he was currently admiring with delight.
Harry was equally thrilled.
He suddenly had over twenty cards—Ron had handed all his duplicates over to Harry.
Having gotten only one duplicate himself, Harry felt his luck was pretty good.
“Dudley collected a bunch of trading stickers,” Harry said excitedly, carefully turning a card in his hand.
“A lot of them he stole from kids at school, and he’d never let me touch them. But honestly, these are way cooler than stickers.”
“Trading stickers? What are those like?” Ron asked curiously.
Harry described them, and Ron sounded intrigued, while Tris just twitched his lips in exasperation.
*So gacha games—that source of all evil—were already being played in Europe back then.*
Watching Harry eagerly read the biographical blurbs on the back of the cards, Tris chuckled teasingly.
“I don’t get it. I have *Modern Famous Wizards* and *Ancient Famous Wizards* back home, and I’ve never seen either of you read them this intently.”
“How is that the same?” Ron pouted.
“These have collectible value! A lot of them are rare cards with real scarcity. Like the Andros card I don’t have—one of those can easily go for two hundred Gold Galleons right now!”
Tris was about to point out that scarcity was entirely controlled by the publishers and couldn’t be trusted.
But he opened his mouth and swallowed his words.
*Didn’t I foolishly pour money into 648-yuan gacha pulls in my past life too?
Who am I to preach to others?*
At the thought, he shook his head, pulled a book out of his bag, and began flipping through it.
Just then, the compartment door opened once more.
“Has anyone seen a toad? Neville’s lost one,” a slightly shrill, somewhat bossy voice called out from the doorway.
*Here she comes!*
Tris’s eyes lit up, and he immediately looked toward the doorway.
Two people stood at the door.
In front was a girl with bushy brown hair.
She had fair skin and delicate features, dominated by striking, unusually bright eyes.
She was already wearing her school robes, and when she spoke, she revealed two front teeth that were noticeably larger than the rest.
Hermione Granger!
Tris identified the young girl almost instantly and breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
*Thank goodness it’s movie Hermione, not the Latina version from the TV show reboot they were promoting before I crossed over.*
Although he didn’t like to admit it, Tris was probably a tiny bit biased when it came to race casting.
At least he couldn’t stand things like a Black Snow White, a dreadlocked Little Mermaid, or a dark-skinned Helen of Troy…
Standing timidly behind Hermione was a round-faced boy with black hair—naturally, the future Sword Saint of Gryffindor, Neville Longbottom.
At the moment, he cowered meekly behind Hermione, looking almost as if he were trying to shrink into the floorboards—a rather comical sight.
“What did you say? A toad?” Ron, who was feeding leftover sandwich crumbs to Scabbers, looked up with a blank expression at Hermione.
“Neville, that’s him.” Hermione yanked Neville out from behind her.
“His pet toad is missing, and I’m helping him look for it. Have any of you seen a toad come in here?”
“Unless you count Chocolate Frogs, there haven’t been any other frogs or toads in this compartment,” Ron said, waving his hands.
“Sorry to bother you then.” Hermione frowned and made to close the door to keep searching elsewhere.
“Do you need any help?”
To Tris’s surprise, Harry actually stood up and offered.
*Huh?*
Tris looked at Harry, then at Hermione.
*Wait, this isn’t right…
Harry, my boy, don’t tell me you’ve got eyes on my future sister-in-law?*