The next day. September 1st.
Leon stood in the main concourse of King's Cross Station, pushing a luggage trolley.
People moved back and forth through the hall. Families pushing carts, mothers carrying children, office workers hurrying past with briefcases. The announcements repeated train information over and over: Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh.
Hogwarts, of course, was never mentioned.
Platform Nine and Three-Quarters was, naturally, between Platforms Nine and Ten. All Leon had to do was push his trolley straight into the barrier.
He broke into a run and drove the trolley into the wall.
A cold wind brushed his face, and when he opened his eyes again, he was standing beside a steam locomotive. The scarlet Hogwarts Express was breathing out white steam, wrapping the platform in a hazy mist. The crowd bustled all around him, owls flapped inside cages, and a toad leapt from its owner's hands, setting off a burst of startled cries.
That probably wasn't Neville. If Leon remembered correctly, by fifth year Neville's pet had been replaced by a cactus-like plant called Mimbulus mimbletonia.
Leon dragged his trunk forward, his eyes sweeping over the carriages one by one.
Inside the windows, students gathered in little groups. Some were sharing snacks, some were trading magazines, and some were excitedly talking about the last days of summer. His gaze passed over all those lively scenes as he continued toward the rear.
The farther back he went, the quieter it became.
When he reached the middle-rear section of the train, he spotted an empty compartment. Just as he was about to slide the door open, he noticed someone inside.
A girl sat by the window with her face pressed to the glass, staring outside. She had waist-length dirty-blonde hair, messy and tangled, as if it hadn't been combed in a long time. Her eyes were large, her gaze slightly unfocused, as though she were looking at the people on the platform and at the same time at things no one else could see.
Leon hesitated, then opened the door.
"Excuse me, is anyone sitting here?"
The girl slowly turned her head. Her silvery-blue eyes stared at him for a few seconds, then she shook her head. She moved slowly, as if she were underwater.
"No," she said in a dreamy voice. "I was waiting for the Nargles to drift away."
Leon paused, then dragged his trunk into the compartment and lifted it onto the rack. When he sat down, he realized the girl was staring at him.
"You don't have any Nargles on you," she said seriously. "Are you new?"
"Yes. My name is Leon. I transferred to Hogwarts this year, into fifth year," Leon said.
The girl tilted her head as though thinking.
"Fifth year?" she asked. "Then why are you in this carriage? The back ones are mostly for younger students."
"Probably because I came late and most of the front compartments were already full," Leon said with a shrug.
That answer seemed to satisfy her. She nodded and turned to look out the window again.
"My name is Luna Lovegood," she said, still in that airy voice. "You can call me Luna."
The train let out a long whistle and slowly began to move. The platform outside gradually slid backward. The people waving farewell grew smaller and smaller before disappearing from sight.
Leon leaned back in his seat and studied the girl opposite him. She wore a pale blue robe, faded from many washings. Around her neck hung a strange necklace made of Butterbeer corks strung together. A pair of radish-shaped earrings dangled from her ears.
"What are you looking at?" Luna suddenly asked. She didn't turn her head and kept staring out the window.
"Your necklace," Leon answered honestly. "It's unique."
At last Luna pulled her face away from the glass, looked down at the cork necklace, and let the corners of her mouth rise slightly.
"It keeps away Nargles," she explained. Then she pointed at Leon's ears. "You'd better wear a pair too. Nargles muddle people's thoughts. Since you're new here, they might be more likely to target you."
Leon had no idea how to respond to that.
Even after reading the original books and watching the films, he still didn't really know what Nargles were supposed to be.
Well, the books and the films...
Leon took a careful look at Luna.
In the original story, Luna's looks were actually on about the same level as Hermione's, but her scruffy appearance and bizarre style sealed away most of that beauty.
She usually wore her long dirty-blonde hair in a messy tangle down to her waist. Her eyebrows were very pale, and her eyes bulged slightly, giving her a constant expression of surprise, while her gaze sometimes looked dreamy and distant.
That was why, in Half-Blood Prince, when she dressed normally, she gave Harry the same kind of pleasant shock Hermione did in Goblet of Fire after fixing her teeth and smoothing her hair.
But the Luna sitting in front of Leon was different.
Her beauty was absurdly striking—ethereal and almost unreal, with the airy grace of someone untouched by the ordinary world. Even the way she spoke, light and drifting, was enchanting.
Compared with the original description, she looked much closer to Evanna Lynch from the films.
This was great.
Luna didn't mind Leon's silence. She was probably used to it.
She stood up from her seat and reached onto the luggage rack for a canvas bag. It was stuffed full, as though it held quite a few things. She tugged it down, sat back in her seat, rummaged through it for a while, and finally pulled out a magazine and handed it to Leon.
"Here," she said.
Leon took the magazine. Its cover was made of thick parchment, with large letters printed across it: The Quibbler. On the cover, a moving picture showed a man with a long beard winking at him, and beside it was a large headline: Exclusive Revelation: Is the Ministry of Magic Controlled by Goblins?
Moving pictures themselves weren't that unusual. GIF technology had been invented long ago, and in Leon's original era, rapid advances in AI had even made it possible to animate still photographs.
But a picture printed on a magazine that could move and even react to you was truly rare.
"My father publishes it," Luna said, with a trace of pride in her voice. "This issue is very interesting. There's an article saying Cornelius Fudge is actually a troll in disguise."
Leon opened the magazine. The contents were even more outrageous than the cover. A dragon hidden beneath Gringotts, the Department of Mysteries researching the power of time, St Mungo's secretly creating swamp people, Cornelius Fudge actually being a troll in disguise, and a shadow government controlling the Ministry of Magic from behind the scenes...
Every single one of them looked like the kind of wild story no sane person would believe at first glance.
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