6 CH6 - Boarding the Hogwarts Express
'Today's the day,' Edmund thought as he finished packing his trunk full of all the books he had removed from it throughout the week.
As he exited the room and wandered through the hallways meanderingly to the entrance of the orphanage, he thought about how quickly time had passed.
When he got outside, he saw that a cab was already present, and the matron was looking at him irately.
"Well get in lad; I haven't got all day," she grumbled.
Edmund hastily moved forth and tucked his baggage into the trunk, before jumping into the backseat. Not five seconds later, the taxi screeched and lurched into motion. All the while, the matron continued to complain.
"You best be thankful to that professor of yours, now that was a nice woman. Her giving me the money for a cab is the only reason I'm escorting you here," the matron explained as if she was doing him a great favour.
Edmund had decided to ignore her as soon as he got in, his mind on what he had managed to learn about magic in the short week and a half that he had been given.
First-year students at Hogwarts were enrolled in seven courses. The wanded courses included Transfiguration, Charms, and Defence Against the Dark Arts. On the other hand, the practical hands-on courses were only Potions and Herbology. There were also two purely academic courses, in the form of History of Magic and Astronomy. Alongside these seven courses, there was also a short course on flying to get children acclimated to one of the most popular forms of transport in the wizarding world.
Edmund had somehow managed to stop himself from diving straight into the wanded subjects, electing to first learn about the foundations of the magical world through History of Magic.
Despite what he had expected from hearing about the banality of Professor Binns' classes, the textbook was a perfect primer for any student, muggle-born or otherwise.
The first focus of the book was on the history of Hogwarts itself, before moving on to the Ministry of Magic, along with the Statute of Secrecy and its enforcement. After that, it recapped recent important events, namely Grindelwald's war, and Voldemort's rise to power. Finally, there was a short section on the Ministry's relationship with non-human magical beings, introducing the goblin rebellions, treaties made with centaurs, and laws around house elves and other such creatures.
After slogging through the monotonous work, Edmund allowed himself to indulge in the exploration of true magic.
He began by breaking up the Potions, Herbology, and Astronomy textbooks into manageable chunks so that he would have read through each of them once before boarding the Hogwarts Express.
He knew that Astronomy would be useful for when he eventually got into more complex potions and rituals.
He learned that potions were incredibly broad in their usage, and much less costly magic-wise while being much more long-term in their application. Edmund had seen that one of the first potions he would be brewing was the Boil Cure, and was excited to finally be rid of his pimples.
... Plus, he wanted to stay on Snape's good side.
Herbology would be a fun breather for him, but he had to remember that he was tasked with exploring the Forbidden Forest, so identifying and eliminating harmful magical plants was key, even if learning to care for the plants was less important for him.
Then, there were the wanded subjects. Although he could not practice magic due to the Statute of Secrecy, Edmund had read extensively on wand movements, spell pronunciation, origins, and identification.
He realized Charms was the easiest of the three subjects, with the least amount of structure. Because of the multitude of uses and origins behind charms, the class was generally scaled simply by difficulty. His first year was focused more on functional charms, including Lumos/Nox, Alohamora, and Wingardium Leviosa. That was not to say that there weren't some goofy charms interspersed between them, like the dancing feet spell, Tarantallegra, which he wasn't keen on being hit by.
Defence against the Dark Arts was a mishmash of a bunch of different things, but the course's existence spoke to the dangers of being a wizard. The first year of DADA was dedicated to learning how to identify dangerous situations (using the Ministry's creature X rating system), how to run away from a fight, and how to inform someone more qualified of the danger. The spells taught included Verdimillious, Fumos, and Flipendo.
Transfiguration, however, was the subject that truly fascinated Edmund the most. Transfiguration was much more rigid, but it had incredible complexity within it. His first year was primarily focused on inanimate-to-inanimate transformation. The difficulty of transfiguration in the early stages depended on two variables: material composition, and shape/size change.
Material composition simply meant that the more different the desired transfiguration is from the original material, the harder it will be. For example, it would be easier to transfigure chromium into manganese (difference of one on the periodic table) than to transfigure chromium into iron (difference of two on the periodic table). The periodic table was not the only chemistry principle used in Transfiguration. For example, graphite and diamonds are both made of carbon. However transfiguring graphite, (each carbon atom is two-dimensionally linked to three other carbon atoms) into diamonds (each carbon atom is three-dimensionally linked in a cage structure to four other carbon atoms), is something that has only been theorized to be possible till now.
Shape/size change was much more obvious. Transfiguring something big into something small, or vice versa is incredibly power intensive. The same applies to turning something spherical into a cube, or any extreme changes in shape.
Not to mention, Edmund had seen that later years would introduce further complications as well, but he decided not to focus on those for now, although he was tempted.
Needless to say, magic was vast and incredibly confusing, but strangely linked in a massive, interconnected web. It was beautiful, and Edmund had full intentions of unravelling all the secrets he could. He hadn't even yet looked into arithmancy, runes, enchanting, rituals, warding, alchemy, and Merlin knows how many other subjects that were out there.
Lost in thought, it took Edmund two shakes from the irritable matron before he realized they had arrived at King's Cross Station. Muttering a terse goodbye and thank you, he wandered off before she could get in another word.
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King's Cross was busy. In the Wednesday morning rush of September 1, Edmund could see countless men and women rushing past one another wearing suits, blazers, and other professional attire.
That was expected in his mind.
What he wasn't expecting, and neither were the muggles at King's Cross based on their reactions, was a flood of LARPers invading the station.
Edmund was bumped out of the way by a man wearing a bright yellow plaid skirt matched with a sheer mesh top. He saw a woman rush by clothed in a Victorian-era gown, complete with extravagant gold accessories that he suspected might actually be real. Many children accompanied by these adults seemed like they were dressed up for Halloween, with one even wearing a sheet over her head with eye-hole cutouts as if she was a wannabe ghost.
'.... Maybe I was wrong about wizards not being braindead,' Edmund thought.
As he followed the strangely dressed strangers to what he hoped was platform 9 3/4, he saw a commotion happening over to the side.
"After all these years of service at the Ministry, they still don't do anything to accommodate us seniors now do they," an elderly woman complained as she stumbled around in —were those Louis Vuitton high heels?
"Those lazy bums still haven't installed a Floo entrance at the train station, forcing us to dress like we're a rabble of muggles. Disgusting!" she spat.
A younger man with grey highlights in his hair, who Edmund presumed was her son, attempted to calm her down, shushing her to keep her voice low.
"Mother! You know they can't install Floo entrances in magically expanded spaces! You're causing a ruckus! Let's go before the Aurors get involved," he pleaded.
A small girl had her hand firmly clasped in the young man's hand, preventing her from running away. That still couldn't hide her complete mortification, as her face blushed red and she tried to disappear in on herself, her hands on her face.
"Bah," the elderly woman dismissed. "I'd like to see them try. 66 years I gave to the ministry. I deserve some respect. Hmmph! I need to sit down, but these filthy muggle benches..."
The lady promptly pulled out her wand and cast a cleaning charm on a bench, plopping down and shifting around to get comfortable.
...All in front of a small family of three muggles who were watching with their eyes popping out of their skulls.
In an instant, a brunette woman in black robes appeared out of nowhere, her wand already in her hands.
Edmund jumped, not having noticed her prior to that. He watched as she muttered something under her breath and pointed her wand in the direction of the three muggles. As if in a daze, the family of three's faces went blank, and they kept walking on as if none the wiser.
The brown-haired woman, clearly with the ministry, sighed miserably, loathing the conversation to come. Before speaking, she waved her wand around a few times, probably for privacy.
"You do realize that the use of magic in front of muggles is incredibly illegal and dangerous," she lectured.
The old woman snorted in response.
"I know better than you girly. You think you can tell me what to do just because you're an Auror? I am Lady Ava Burke, daughter of Belvina Burke, granddaughter of Phineas Nigellus Black, former headmaster of Hogwarts," she began imperiously
"You don't have to introduce your entire family every time, Lady Burke," the Auror cut her off tiredly. "We worked on the same floor of the ministry. I know who you are."
"I will do what I wish. And I am Dowager Burke, not the Lady Burke. That title belongs to my daughter-in-law. Though, I wonder every day how my buffoon of a son convinced her to marry him," she corrected while pulling on the young girl's cheeks. "Thank Morgana he did though, for it gave me this gem of a granddaughter."
As the young man spluttered and the little girl desperately tried to pull her cheeks from her grandmother's iron grip, Edmund continued to pay attention to who he now knew as Dowager Ava Burke.
'That woman might pretend to be a typical old lady,' he observed, 'but her eyes tell me she enjoys causing chaos.'
'This is my type of grandma,' he concluded, before realizing his thoughts could be misinterpreted crassly.
He shook his head.
"All right. You know I have to go through the formalities," the Auror informed as she pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill that hovered in the air next to her.
As she began to speak, the quill wrote down her words exactly.
'A dicta-quill with an ever-ink enchantment,' Edmund recognized immediately.
"Auror Hestia Jones obliviated three muggles to protect the Statute of Secrecy due to the use of a cleaning charm in open view by Dowager Ava Burke. Per standard procedure, the fine is ten galleons for each muggle exposed, for a total of thirty galleons. Will you accept the charge or do you wish to request a trial?" Auror Jones droned as the quill furiously scratched.
"Accept the charge, Benedict," Dowager Burke commanded as she harrumphed. "There are more and more mudblood lovers in the Wizengamot every year; we won't get justice there."
Standing up, Ava, Benedict, and the unknown female Burke child continued to make their way to the platform, with Edmund right behind, his mind lingering on the incident he had just witnessed.
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When it finally came his turn to run through the barrier, Edmund did so with a frown on his face. The people around him didn't know it, but Edmund was aware of Dobby's tampering with the barrier only a year prior.
He held his breath subconsciously as he approached the wall, screwing his eyes shut. Thankfully, he felt nothing, and when his eyes opened next, they were greeted by the Hogwarts Express.
However, not much of it was visible as the crowd of people standing at the station obscured his view.
Deciding that he couldn't get anything useful done standing around, he decided to board the train and find a compartment. Thankfully, the time was still a quarter to eleven, and many compartments of the train were still empty.
Edmund walked around the train and observed which students were sitting where.
'It seems like there's an unspoken rule that the older you are, the further back in the train you get to sit. Just like muggle schoolbuses,' he thought, amusing himself with what the purebloods would think of that.
Edmund quickly found an empty room near the front of the train and stowed away his luggage overhead after retrieving his potions book from within.
Cracking open the book, Edmund heard the train horn signalling ten minutes to departure, before he became too absorbed with his readings to notice his surroundings any longer.
