On the last night of the summer holidays, Kate made a point of inviting Katherine over for a proper meal, then dropped a few carefully veiled reminders about keeping safe before seeing her off to bed.
When Kate woke the next morning, Katherine had already gone.
She came all this way… couldn't she have waited just a little longer to say goodbye?
Kate grumbled about it inwardly, finished her breakfast, and then set off with the old butler for King's Cross Station, where she boarded the train.
After bidding Grandpa Rand farewell, she found an empty compartment without any trouble. She'd barely settled into her seat when a knock came at the door.
"Excuse me — is anyone sitting here?" Luna Lovegood, dressed in her usual gloriously chaotic fashion, tapped the compartment door open. The moment she saw who was inside, her drifting silver eyes seemed to flicker with a faint spark of recognition.
Kate smiled easily. "Please, sit down — you're my junior, after all."
And so Luna hauled in her collection of bags and parcels and took the seat across from her. Her carrot earrings had been swapped out for a pair shaped like dirigible plums, and the fact that she'd thought to put on her Hogwarts robes ahead of time gave her otherwise bewildering outfit a veneer of order.
That veneer, however, lasted only as long as it took to notice her wild cascade of blond hair and her silver eyes — eyes whose expression slipped through your fingers the moment you tried to read them.
She seemed born to be the living embodiment of disorder.
Kate found herself genuinely curious about the earrings and was just about to ask where Luna had bought them when Hermione walked straight in from outside, luggage in hand.
"I've been looking everywhere and I can't find Harry or Ron — they haven't missed the train, have they?" she said, dropping into the seat beside Kate as she spoke.
"They've probably just not arrived yet," Kate replied, keeping her voice low as she helped Hermione stow her luggage.
It was only once she sat down that Hermione noticed the unfamiliar girl sitting opposite. The ease she'd just settled into vanished in an instant, her posture going taut.
Kate caught the way her spine went rigid and offered a light introduction. "This is Luna Lovegood, a first-year. I ran into her near Knockturn Alley last time."
So this is the girl Malfoy made a point of mentioning.
Hermione studied Luna with a thoughtful look. "I'm Hermione Granger — second year, Gryffindor."
"Senior Granger," Luna answered softly. She held Hermione's gaze for a moment, then tilted her head slightly to one side. "You seem quite tense, Senior."
Her tone was perfectly matter-of-fact, as though she were simply noting down a fact.
"I'm — I'm not." Hermione's hands instinctively tightened on the fabric of her robes.
Luna gave a mild little shrug and picked up a copy of The Quibbler to read.
Under normal circumstances, Hermione would never interrupt someone who was reading. But there was something about this particular junior that unsettled her in a way she couldn't quite name, and she found herself speaking up anyway.
"What newspaper is that?"
"The Quibbler — my father founded it himself." Luna amiably tore off half and offered it to her.
Hermione took it and read a few lines, her brow visibly furrowing. "What on earth is a Blibbering Humdinger? I've never heard of such a thing in my life — Kate, do you know?"
As the apprentice of Newt, the foremost Magizoologist of their age, Kate had fully expected to be called upon.
She'd also long since anticipated exactly what kind of conversation would unfold the moment these two ended up in the same compartment. She calmly took the paper and skimmed a few lines.
"My teacher may be the greatest expert on magical creatures alive," she said, "but that doesn't mean every creature in existence has already been found. Take the Blibbering Humdinger, for instance."
To Hermione, this read as a polite admission that Blibbering Humdingers simply didn't exist.
To Luna, it read as Kate saying that the Blibbering Humdinger hadn't been discovered yet — not that it wasn't out there.
Both girls came away satisfied.
Kate quietly passed the paper back to Luna, then produced a Lockhart book from her bag and handed it to Hermione.
The compartment fell peacefully silent.
Mission accomplished. To forestall any further questions, Kate reclined against the seat and promptly fell asleep.
Time has a way of vanishing when you're not watching it. Kate woke to find the train already at a standstill. She glanced around the compartment — only Hermione remained.
"Lovegood already left with the other first-years," Hermione said, changing into her robes with the casual ease of someone long past caring about such things.
Kate blinked, then sat up and rolled the stiffness out of her joints. "How did you know I was going to ask about Luna?"
Hermione said nothing. She finished changing in record time and headed straight for the door. "I'll wait for you outside."
Kate stared at her retreating back, mildly baffled. She tilted her head. Was it her imagination, or was Hermione carrying some kind of invisible low-pressure system around with her today?
Probably just her imagination.
She changed quickly into her own robes and hurried after her, joining the stream of students heading out toward the streets beyond Hogsmeade station.
Second-years and above made the journey to school by road — not on foot, of course, but in a fleet of over a hundred horseless carriages.
Kate had been swept along in the press of the crowd the whole way; it was only once she reached the carriages that the mass of students finally began to spread out.
She spotted Hermione clearly — waving at her from a carriage already occupied by the Weasley twins.
She started toward it, but her gaze snagged on something else first: between the shafts of the nearest carriage stood a dark, still shape.
A Thestral. One of those magical creatures visible only to those who had witnessed death.
As she passed, the nearest Thestral raised its head and pressed it gently against her arm.
Kate had been rather hoping to pretend she hadn't seen it — but so much for that. She raised her arm slightly and gave the creature a careful stroke along its black, dragon-like head.
The Thestral made a soft sound. It was obvious, even to a casual observer, that it found Kate's touch very much to its liking.
"The carriage is about to leave — Kate, come on, hurry up!" Hermione called out loudly when she saw Kate standing rooted to the spot.
Kate withdrew her hand at last and jogged over to clamber aboard. "Sorry, sorry — I'm late."
She had expected Hermione to ask why she'd been standing there so long. Instead, Hermione seized her hand with an expression of deep worry.
"What do we do? Harry and Ron missed the train — what if they can't get to school?"
Kate's expression shifted. She glanced over at the Weasley twins, and found matching looks of poorly concealed schadenfreude on both identical faces.
Right. Their little brother getting into trouble — that would be quite the entertainment for those two.
"They'll be fine," she said, keeping her voice gentle. "Hogwarts isn't going to turn a student away just because they missed the train."
"That's not necessarily true," said George.
"Depends on how they get here, doesn't it," said Fred.
The twins delivered their lines one after the other.
"Another way?" Hermione murmured, and then something seemed to dawn on her. "Oh no — they're not going to drive that car here, are they?"
She'd heard Ron boast about it before the holidays — how he and his brothers had spent the summer driving that enchanted car to rescue Harry from his aunt and uncle's house.
Kate was momentarily at a loss for words. In the original, that was exactly what they did.
"Well… they could always send an owl to the school and have a professor come and collect them," she offered, not entirely convincingly.
Whether or not those two would actually think of that was, of course, another matter entirely.
"I suppose so," Hermione said, the worry on her face easing slightly — though only slightly. "I just hope they make the sensible choice."
The carriages carried them all the way to the entrance hall of Hogwarts, where the torchlight painted everything a warm, flickering red.
They climbed down one by one, crossed the flagstone floor, and passed through the doors into the Great Hall. At the threshold, Kate parted ways with Hermione and made her way to the Slytherin table.
She noticed, as she settled in, that Malfoy — seated directly across from her — hadn't glanced in her direction once since she'd sat down. Not even once, right up until the Sorting Ceremony began.
It was exactly the sort of look someone gives you after you've apparently offended them.
Except Kate was fairly certain she hadn't done anything to Malfoy. Not since the end of last term, and not today either.
Unless…
She studied, with careful consideration, the portion of the girl currently hidden beneath the table.
Ah. Right.
Every girl had a few days each month like that. Perfectly understandable.
"Let the Sorting begin!"
Professor McGonagall's voice rang out, and the line of first-years who had been waiting outside filed into the hall one after another.
Among them, Ginny's bright red hair stood out at once. Kate took note of her briefly, then let her gaze drift past to Luna, walking just behind.
Even across the distance, Luna seemed to sense Kate's eyes on her. Her luminous silver gaze rose through the crowd, met Kate's for just a moment, then dropped away again.
"Is that the junior you've taken a shine to?" Pansy leaned in close and murmured.
Kate blinked. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't try to hide it," Pansy said, with the air of someone who has already seen through everything. "Draco told us all about it on the way here — said you were very taken with that little blond girl."
What on earth was any of that supposed to mean?!
Kate turned to look at Malfoy, who was wearing an expression of studied indifference — while her eyes continued to dart toward Kate every few seconds.
Young lady, you'll go cross-eyed doing that.
Kate suppressed the urge to say exactly that, and instead raised her voice with patient deliberateness: "Well then, by all means — watch and see."
The Sorting continued. Most of the new students had already been placed, and Ginny, as expected, was called for Gryffindor.
Then Kate caught a small commotion and turned to look — Harry and Ron came sprinting in breathlessly from outside.
They'd barely dropped into their seats at the Gryffindor table before Snape, his expression dark as a thundercloud, appeared and led them away.
The unstoppable momentum of canon. Kate shook her head.
Just then she heard Professor McGonagall call Luna's name, followed a moment later by the Sorting Hat crying out "RAVENCLAW!" in a bright, ringing voice.
Luna trotted off to the Ravenclaw table and settled in quietly to wait for the Sorting to finish.
Kate turned back — and caught the thoroughly awkward glance exchanged between Pansy and Malfoy.
She crossed her arms and let her gaze settle pointedly on the culprit. "Now — who was it that said Luna was my favourite junior?"
Malfoy immediately looked away, straight ahead, as though nothing had happened at all. But the smile creeping across the edge of her profile suggested her mood was, in fact, rather good.
Kate gave a quiet snort and calmly took a sip of pumpkin juice.
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