Naturally, they didn’t find the toad, but chatting along the way brought the young witches and wizards much closer together.
Ron, however, harbored a doubt.
“Neville, why don’t you like to talk?” Ron asked, turning to him.
They had walked from one end of the train to the other, checking dozens of compartments one by one.
But almost all the talking had been done by Hermione and Ron; Neville, the actual victim who had lost his toad, hadn’t uttered a single word.
“I… when I get nervous, I can’t speak,” Neville said timidly.
“When do you get nervous?” Harry couldn’t help asking out of curiosity.
“When… when talking to people…” Neville lowered his head, his chubby face flushing red.
“But you seem fine talking to us,” Hermione said, puzzled.
“Mm… once I get to know people, it’s a bit better. But if it’s strangers, I really can’t do it,” Neville said, his voice dropping even lower.
“That won’t do! Neville, you have to overcome this!” Hermione said, frowning.
“How do I overcome it?” Neville looked up at Hermione.
He actually envied her ability to converse so naturally with strangers.
“Well… I used to have a classmate who was also terrified of talking to people. He couldn’t introduce himself in class or answer questions without stammering the moment he opened his mouth. His situation was pretty similar to yours,” Hermione said after a moment’s thought.
“What happened later? Did he get better?” Neville looked at Hermione with a ray of hope.
Even Tris and Ron cast curious glances her way.
“He did!” Hermione nodded firmly.
“How did he do it?” Neville grew even more excited.
“Well… he specifically sought out crowded places to recite poetry—public squares, shopping malls, things like that,” Hermione said.
“Haha, that’s a great idea,” Tris chuckled upon hearing this.
“Neville, you should try it. Hogwarts has a Great Hall, right? You could block the entrance and recite your textbooks. It’ll boost your courage and raise your grades at the same time.”
“Mm, I think that’s a good plan,” Hermione agreed.
“After just one summer, my classmate had turned into a total chatterbox when I saw him again.”
Ron nodded in agreement, thinking it sounded like a solid idea.
As for Neville, his chubby face turned completely green…
“Alright,” Tris said after finishing his laugh.
“I don’t think we need to search the rest of the carriages. It’s unlikely a toad would travel this far. Could it be hiding in a corner of your compartment where you didn’t notice?”
“Hmm… that’s possible,” Hermione said, recalling their search, though she wasn’t entirely sure.
They had searched their compartment before coming out, but hadn’t found it.
Then again, they hadn’t searched every single nook and cranny.
Besides, everyone agreed Tris had a point.
They had already crossed several carriages, and there were doors separating them.
Humans could open them, but a toad probably couldn’t.
So the group returned to Hermione and Neville’s original compartment.
After a thorough search, they actually found the toad, Trevor, sitting right on top of Neville’s trunk under the seat.
“Trevor! You were hiding here all along! We searched everywhere for you!” Neville cried, clutching his toad, his eyes turning slightly red.
Tris watched Neville rub his cheek against the toad, rendered somewhat speechless.
…
Tris didn’t know where things had diverged, but Hermione had built a fairly good relationship with Harry and Ron much earlier than in the movies he remembered.
For the rest of the journey after finding the toad, Hermione and Neville even joined them in their compartment.
Hermione even played two games of Wizard’s Chess with Harry and Ron respectively.
She used Neville’s set—naturally quiet Neville liked playing chess by himself, so he brought Wizard’s Chess, including two sets of pieces.
She played the first game against Harry and lost.
Because of Neville’s mild personality, his pieces were surprisingly domineering and stubborn, demanding Hermione explain her tactics before they would agree to move.
But if she had to explain her whole strategy out loud, how on earth was she supposed to play?
Fortunately, after working things out in the first game, the pieces, though still grumbling during the second game, no longer required her to detail her plans.
Then Hermione won.
Next, she played against Ron and suffered a total defeat.
Refusing to give up, Hermione challenged him again, only to lose even faster.
Given Hermione’s intelligence, she quickly recognized that the gap in their chess skills wasn’t something she could overcome through sheer stubbornness, so she wisely stopped subjecting herself to further defeat.
“You look a bit goofy, but you’re actually really smart! I can’t believe you’re so good at chess!” Hermione said.
Ron broke into a cold sweat.
Was that supposed to be a compliment?
Seemed like it?
But who compliments people like that?
“I’ll just take that as a compliment,” Ron said, thoroughly rendered speechless.
The compartment lights had turned on earlier, and outside the window, darkness was falling.
Hermione checked her watch.
“We’re almost there. I suggest you three change into your robes.”
The “three” she referred to were Tris, Harry, and Ron.
She and Neville had already changed into their robes.
“Alright, could you step outside first?” Harry asked.
Hermione blinked, not catching his meaning for a moment.
“How are we supposed to change if you don’t step out?” Ron looked at Hermione with annoyance—having not yet been academically crushed by her, his two chess victories had made him feel like he held the moral and intellectual high ground.
“Tch, you’re just taking off your jackets and slipping robes over them. What’s the big deal? Why care if anyone looks? Is your physique really that impressive?” Hermione scoffed disdainfully.
Though Britain wasn’t quite as open-minded as America, teenagers started dating at a very young age there too.
While middle school—around thirteen or fourteen—was the norm, plenty of eleven- and twelve-year-olds dated.
In fact, if someone reached fifteen or sixteen without having dated, they might privately question if something was wrong with them.
In the past, Hermione had focused all her energy on her studies and had zero interest in boys her age—she found them far too immature—though she had overheard plenty of scandalous chatter from her female classmates.
What she couldn’t understand, however, was why Harry and Ron both turned to look at Tris the moment she said that.
Having known Harry for less than a month, Tris couldn’t yet decipher his thoughts from a simple look or expression.
But with Ron—his twin, with whom he had shared a bedroom for ten years—he knew what Ron was thinking before Ron even finished shifting his weight.
Ron’s look clearly said: *Quick, Tris, show this girl what a real build looks like.*
Tris possessed a physique that was practically unheard of for a boy his age.
Broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and abs that, while not bulging blocks, were distinctly defined.
This was the result of a month of following his system’s workout regimen.
Normally, a month of training—no matter how intense—wouldn’t yield such dramatic results.
But thanks to the System, Tris’s workout efficiency was extraordinarily high.
It wasn’t obvious with clothes on, but over the past month, Harry and Ron had bathed with Tris more than once and knew full well how fit he was.
Ron had even wanted to work out with Tris because of it, but after Tris dragged him out of bed at six in the morning for two days straight to go running, Ron gave up, realizing he wasn’t built for that kind of punishment.
Hermione didn’t notice their glances.
After uttering that defiant remark, she turned and left anyway.
Talking tough was one thing; actually staying to watch was another.
Although she was slightly—just a tiny bit—curious about Tris’s build, it was only a tiny bit.
Mere boys didn’t interest her in the slightest!
Hermione returned to her previous compartment, while Neville stayed in Tris and the others’ compartment, where he caught sight of Tris’s build.
September weather was still fairly warm.
Once Tris pulled off his light outer jacket, he was left wearing just a T-shirt.
Even through the T-shirt, Neville noticed his impressive physique.
“Um…” Having grown a bit more comfortable with them, Neville wasn’t as timid as before.
Looking at the defined chest muscles under Tris’s shirt and recalling Ron and Harry’s earlier expressions, he suddenly realized something.
“Tris, could I… could I…”
He had wanted to ask if he could take a look at his body, but suddenly felt that sounded a bit weird, so he trailed off mid-sentence.
“What?” Tris asked offhandedly, reaching up toward the luggage rack for his trunk, where his robes were stored.
Harry and Ron, however, instantly understood what Neville meant just by looking at his expression and eyes.
“Tris, I think Neville wants to see your awesome build,” Ron said.
“And maybe feel your pecs too,” Harry chipped in.
Spending a month with Harry had somewhat shattered Tris’s prior impressions.
He had remembered Harry as a well-behaved, soft-spoken, introverted boy.
But after actual interaction, he realized that wasn’t the case at all.
Harry was surprisingly talkative—and pretty sharp-tongued.
When complaining about his aunt and uncle’s family, his vocabulary was remarkably colorful.
His descriptions of his big cousin Dudley and Dudley’s gang of goons were especially incisive.
He enjoyed jokes and pranks just as much as anyone else.
Tris had previously wondered why the Weasley twins would hand over an ultimate prank artifact like the Marauder’s Map to Harry.
Turns out Harry was a little menace himself!
It was pure, unadulterated passing of the torch!
Hearing Ron and Harry’s comments now, Tris felt a chill run down his spine and a sudden clenching of his back passages.
He whipped around abruptly, only relaxing slightly when he saw that none of the three had crept up on him.
But seeing Harry and Ron eyeing his chest and waist, combined with Neville’s hopeful gaze, he couldn’t help sucking in a breath of cold air.
*Damn it, they say Britain is the land of bl-culture, and the wizarding world seems even worse for it.
Don’t tell me these three kids have those leanings—and I’m the one who awakened them?*
“Stop talking nonsense,” Tris said, deciding he had to nip this conversation in the bud.
British shipping culture ran deep and long.
In his past life, he had seen plenty of wild ships online, like Drarry, Dron, Harrmort, Dramort, Snarry, and Snamort.
Though he had never actually read any of it due to personal preference, such things couldn’t have been invented purely out of thin air by fangirls—there must have been real clues, right?
He’d better not take any risks.
If he accidentally unlocked some special orientation in these three, Tris felt he might be erased on the spot by the power of the realm—if such a force even existed.
“Hurry up and change. We’ll probably be there soon, so let’s not get caught in a scramble,” Tris said, putting on a stern face.
“Tch. Stingy!” Ron scoffed.
Turning to Neville, who looked slightly disappointed, he added, “Don’t worry, Neville. Once we get to Hogwarts, we can look all we want in the showers!”
Neville’s eyes brightened slightly, and he unconsciously nodded.
Realizing how that seemed, he frantically shook his head.
“Ron, don’t talk nonsense! I was just… just a little bit curious, that’s all!”
Tris felt a sudden throb of anxiety, his mind racing frantically as he contemplated the mathematical odds of a Weasley *not* being sorted into Gryffindor.