Actually, both Harry and Ron were quite smart.
In the month before school started, under the oppression of the system, Tris had practiced diligently.
Combined with his accumulation over the past few years, he had pretty much mastered the basic spells.
Yet Harry and Ron had only practiced casually during the holidays and had already mastered two basic spells.
Their talent was practically overflowing!
Tris knew Harry was talented; his magical talent had always been good.
The things holding him back had always been tedious, dry courses like History of Magic, Astronomy, and Potions.
Especially in Defense Against the Dark Arts, his talent was exceptionally outstanding.
But the talent of his brother Ron caught Tris somewhat by surprise.
Compared to Harry, Ron was lazier.
Rather than practicing magic, he preferred to lie around, or play a couple of games of wizard chess or cards.
Yet even so, he only needed two or three attempts to master two basic spells.
Tris estimated that the difference between this Ron and the one in the movies he remembered was probably caused by the wand.
Now that Ron had a wand that suited him, casting magic was smoother than silk.
In addition, Tris had secretly used Charlie’s old wand and felt that his previous constraints had vanished, further confirming Ollivander’s theory.
Before this, Tris hadn’t believed that a basic magical item would actually choose its master, but now he had no choice but to believe it.
Before the train departed, the twins popped in to take a look and introduced their mischievous friend, Lee Jordan, to them.
Lee Jordan also came from a wizarding family and had grown up hearing stories about Harry, so he was incredibly excited to meet him.
However, his way of showing excitement was to present a giant spider to Harry like a prize.
Harry broke into a cold sweat, while Ron immediately scrambled as far away as possible.
Tris knew Ron was afraid of spiders.
But as for why Ron was afraid of spiders, he really hadn’t known before.
Now, he could only say that Fred was truly a terrible brother.
The station announcement sounded, warning that there were ten minutes left before departure.
The train was already getting noisy.
Many young wizards pushing their luggage poked their heads into the compartments, seemingly looking for one with fewer people.
Seeing that there were already three of them here, none of them showed any intention of coming in.
Tris kept his eyes on the door, hoping to see if he could recognize any story characters.
Unfortunately, the Hogwarts Express had more than one entrance, and the compartment they chose was closer to the front.
He watched for a long time but didn’t see anyone familiar.
Meanwhile, Harry and Ron had pulled out a chessboard and started playing again.
Back at The Burrow, Harry had fallen in love with wizard chess.
This game, which had rules similar to chess but added the need to communicate with the pieces, was not difficult for him to grasp.
He was using Tris’s pieces—Tris had stopped playing after realizing he couldn’t beat Ron and couldn’t gain any points from playing against others.
Harry had been using them for the past month, but no trust had been built between them.
Because when the pieces were in Harry’s hands, they were always mercilessly slaughtered by Ron.
The personality of wizard chess pieces would take after their Number One owner.
Tris was an irritable guy; when he was being brutally beaten by Ron, he didn’t have the face to pressure Ron, so he took his frustration out on his own pieces instead.
The pieces had learned well, and now they were relentlessly nagging Harry.
“Do you even know how to play? Sending me to my death like that?”
“I’m not going. Tell the castle to go instead. It’s not like you know how to use it anyway.”
“Keep yapping and I’ll break your knight’s legs!”
Harry wasn’t used to it at first, but he was quickly influenced.
Tris noticed another detail that differed from his impression.
In his memory, Harry was a sweet, cute little angel.
Now, it seemed that wasn’t quite the case. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
When Harry babbled back at the chess pieces, although he wasn’t as foul-mouthed or sarcastic as Tris, he was still quite sharp-tongued.
With a dull whistle, the train slowly started and pulled out of the platform.
Seeing that his game was already at a disadvantage, Harry swept the pieces aside, scattering them across the board, and looked out the window.
“We’re moving, we’re moving. Eh? This doesn’t look like London, does it?”
As the train left the platform, it immediately entered an open countryside.
This was clearly unusual.
Although King’s Cross Station wasn’t in the city center, it wasn’t on the edge of the city either.
Normally, after leaving the station, they would still need to travel through the city for a while.
But that wasn’t the point.
The point was the scattered chessboard.
“Harry, you’re cheating again.” Ron grumbled as he gathered the pieces, but he too was drawn to the view outside.
Turning to Tris, he asked, “Tris, what’s going on here?”
“King’s Cross Station is just the entrance. The Hogwarts Express isn’t actually inside a London train station,” Tris explained with a smile.
“It’s just a simple, fixed Portkey mechanism.”
Ron had never used a Portkey, but he knew what it was.
Harry didn’t know, so Tris explained it to him.
“Then why don’t we just use that to go to Hogwarts?” Harry asked in confusion.
“They did use Portkeys before the nineteenth century, but those things aren’t as easy to use as you think,” Tris explained.
“Placing them where they’re easy to find but won’t be accidentally touched by Muggles is a real pain.
“And using a Portkey has some side effects. It’s very uncomfortable, and many young wizards can’t stand it. That’s why they changed it to what it is now.”
Ron trusted Tris completely.
Since Tris said it was very uncomfortable, it must be very uncomfortable, and he immediately lost interest in Portkeys.
Although Harry nodded, Tris could tell from his expression that he was still very curious.
As the curious Harry was wondering if there was any way to experience a Portkey, the slightly ajar compartment door was pulled open from the outside.
A platinum-blonde head poked in.
“Ha, found you.” The person at the door said, his eyes lighting up when he saw the three inside.
Tris looked at the person at the door with a strange expression.
The newcomer was, of course, Draco Malfoy.
From what he said, he had obviously been looking for them compartment by compartment.
The train had barely started moving.
Had he started searching even before it departed?
“Malfoy?” When Ron saw Malfoy, his cheerful expression immediately soured.
“What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing? Naturally, I’m here to teach you a lesson.” Draco pulled the door wide open, allowing the people inside to see the situation outside.
Following behind him were three other people.
Two of them were stout boys, not very tall but very wide—probably wider around the waist than they were tall.
Behind them was a short-haired girl with black hair and delicate features, though her chin was tilted up in a haughty, nose-in-the-air pose.
Oh?
Tris raised an eyebrow.
Draco and his two useless lackeys?
He didn’t have a very deep impression of these two chubby boys initially.
Thanks to the special effect of his Memory Palace, he was able to pull information about them from the movies he had watched in his previous life.
Crabbe and Goyle.
Because their parents followed Lucius Malfoy, their children followed Draco at school as well.
Both came from pure-blood families, and whether it was due to inbreeding or something else, they didn’t seem particularly bright.
Given their situation, they would highly likely be bullied at Hogwarts, especially in Slytherin.
But with Draco as their boss, although Draco scolded them often, at least far fewer people would outright bully them.
As for the girl, Tris also pulled her identity from a corner of his memory.
Pansy Parkinson.
A Slytherin girl who liked Draco, a very typical pure-blood supremacist Slytherin.
But in the end, it seemed she didn’t end up with Draco?
“Teach us a lesson? With just you?” Ron glanced at Draco and the two stout boys behind him, then at their own side, feeling they weren’t at a disadvantage.
Tris worked out every day; that couldn’t have been for nothing, right?
Thinking of this, Ron felt full of confidence.
“Aren’t you the same guy who fled in panic with your dad back in Diagon Alley?”
“You’re lying!” Draco was furious.
After fleeing Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions with Lucius that day, neither father nor son had brought up the matter again.
Both felt it was rather embarrassing.
At the time, Draco had been hot-headed and reckless.
But after calming down later, he realized: wouldn’t they have definitely suffered a loss if they had fought then?
There was only him and his father on their side.
On the other side, there were a whopping eleven people.
Even if there was one little girl with no combat power, the opponent’s fighting strength was still many times theirs.
Especially that Hagrid, who looked like a savage, a bear, or a gorilla.
For a Draco who hadn’t mastered any decent magic yet and could only rely on physical brawling, he had absolutely no idea how to defeat someone like Hagrid.
Although he had been dragged away by his dad that day, Draco still felt extremely disgruntled.
Thinking about how the Weasleys and Harry had all bought new robes that day, which meant they were all first-years, he wanted to find an opportunity to get even.
Just before school started, his dad’s two associates had introduced their own sons to Draco as sidekicks, and Draco felt he now had a chance to reclaim his pride.
So the moment he boarded the train, he began searching for Harry and the others.
He didn’t expect that before he could even show off his forces, he would be mocked by Ron.
Ron looked at Draco’s pale face, which he had found quite irritating before.
Seeing it flush with anger now, Ron was delighted and said with a grin,
“Whether I’m lying or not, Harry saw it too. Harry, didn’t he and his dad run away miserably that day?”
Harry already had a bad impression of Draco due to his arrogance and the bad things he had said about Hagrid that day.
Having stayed with the Weasleys for the past few days, he had received their warm care, so his loyalties were crystal clear.
He would stand by his friends regardless, not to mention Draco and his side were in the wrong anyway.
He immediately nodded in agreement.
“That’s right. You and your dad ran away miserably that day. What, do you want to run away again?”
“Hmph, I hope you can still talk this big in a moment.” Draco was utterly furious.
“What, you want to fight?” Ron stood up with a smirk.
Harry immediately followed suit.
Seeing this, Tris stood up as well, even though he thought kids brawling was just a fun show to watch.
*Hiss!*
Draco gasped.
He suddenly realized: why were Ron and Tris so tall?
That day in the robe shop, his attention had mostly been on Hagrid and Harry—the former was too massive and eye-catching, while the latter was the object of his focus.
Although his attention had briefly landed on Tris later, Tris had been standing next to Hagrid, which made him look quite small by comparison.
But facing them directly at close range now, Draco realized they were nearly half a head taller than him!
“If you want to fight, then let’s fight! As if we’re afraid of you!” Although he felt a bit nervous inside, Draco refused to lose face.
He spoke loudly, while simultaneously taking two steps back, putting Crabbe and Goyle in front of him…