31 Start of second year

"Noah!" blinking I look up from my book, "over here!"

Turning my head towards the sound I find myself looking out the window, finding amidst the crowd two familiar, red topped, faces. Turning back to the book I place a bookmark into it and put it back into my satchel, before sliding open the window and sticking my head out.

"Come on, there's no-one else in this compartment!" I shout back at Fred and George, getting two thumbs up back from them as they shuffled through the crowd towards the entrance to this section. Seeing that I pulled back into the compartment, flicking my wand at the sliding door to remove the privacy, locking and repulsion spells I'd placed on it.

About fifteen minutes later, when the train had begun moving, the compartment door slid open and the two red heads exaggeratingly dragged their book satchels behind them.

"Could use a bit a help here, this thing weighs a ton," I couldn't help but snort, before making a show of lifting the bags, with one hand each, and slinging them into the storage area above us, "bloody hell, what do they feed ya!"

"Nice to see you two haven't changed," the two gave a winning smile, "but did you two seriously drag those bags the whole way here?"

"Well excuse us for not being as muscular as you," they make a show of patting their biceps as they sit down, "some of us have to struggle with heavy things."

"You are quite skinny," I nod magnanimously while rubbing my non-existent beard and pretending to examine them, ignoring the middle fingers I got in response, "but yeah, it's good to see you two again."

"Well we for one didn't miss the smart mouthing, isn't that right Fred" he turns to his brother, " absolutely brother mine," and he's facing me again, "though I suppose it has it's charms…"

I couldn't help but roll my eyes, "yeah, yeah, I get it…"

With that the greetings were done and a companiable silence came into the compartment. Though it didn't last long, as I broke it to ask a very important question, "so… I heard that your family got into a fist fight with the Malfoys."

"Oh?" they both say, giving a synchronized single brow raise, before one of them continues "and who did you hear that from?"

"Just some fifth year, I didn't know the name of, who said that the 'Weasleys and Malfoys had a fistfight in the book store'," I 'clarified', using a pre-planned excuse for this exact question, "Why is it true?"

The two share a look, "…nah, as much as we wouldn't mind socking those gits in the face mum stopped the fight before it started."

"Huh, guess that fifth year only saw the part before your mum ended it" I remark lightly, keeping my disappointment out my voice.

"Probably, yeah. Would've been cool though, if dad knocked out that prick," another silence falls in the compartment as I nodded absently to his words, deep in my own thought.

I expected it, but I was still disappointed. I mean it's true that, as far as I could remember, Harry served as a major catalyst to begin that fight and, as far as I'd seen, he hadn't been seen in public with them at all. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean that Lucius hadn't slipped Ginny Voldemort's sentient diary. But since the event that resulted in him doing that in the books had not happened I was more mentally prepared for the slog that it may be finding the diary, if Lucius did indeed give it to someone else.

But that will only be relevant after I search Ginny's belonging to make sure she doesn't have it. For now, I was okay with breaking the silence, which was starting to become a bit stale, "so… our illustrious new defence against the dark arts teacher…"

The response to my words was as immediate as it was negative, "oh for Merlins sake, please don't say you like that blonde ponce too."

"What? Don't you find his heroic actio- okay I can't do this anymore," the deadpan looks as I spoke finally caused me to break down chuckling, "no, I don't like that idiot. Though I'm assuming someone in your house does?"

"Well at least we won't have to cut all ties with you for believing the tripe in those books," the two smirk, before grimacing in sync with each other, "can't say the same about mum and Ginny though. The two think that arse is a 'true hero'," the mocking tone the two used when saying 'true hero' made it obvious what they thought about that, "if he was such a 'hero' then he woulda given those books of his away at a discount or something. 'specially since he's the one who put 'em on the compulsory list."

"Ah yeah, those" I wince in genuine sympathy at that. Each of those books cost three galleons each, the equivalent to fifteen pounds now which would be thirty-ish pounds in the future, "and I'm guessing that you have to buy all seven of his books regardless of the year you were in."

"Yep," one of them replied, popping the 'p' with clear anger for the new teacher, "and, since Ginny's starting this year as well, we needed to get it all five times."

Doing the calculation in my head, I wince again as I realise that they'd spent the equivalent of a thousand pounds back in modern times.

"Yeah, that's exactly how we felt," apparently noticing my wince, the other twin spoke up, "what bout you? Like, we know your supplies are paid for by school but did they cover the cost for those garbage books? Hell, did he give you a discount?"

"Yeah, they covered the cost, and no, that asshole charged me full price. But it does mean that my debt's gonna be way bigger when I graduate since I have to pay it off at the end. Not as bad as your situation though," the annoyance in my voice as I told them that was in no way faked.

I mean, I knew that realistically I probably wouldn't be dealing with that debt, since I'd probably be in another world, and that if I did have to deal with it I could easily pay it off with access to the 'imperfect' philosopher's stone. But that didn't mean that I had to like the fact that I was going further into debt because of some frauds need to line his pockets.

Especially since that fraud not only lacked the ability to even perform the actions he's taking credit for but is also such a coward that he's afraid of second years and is a serial mind rapist. Really the only reason I wasn't planning his immediate removal from Hogwarts was because I, personally, was relatively safe from his mind wiping spells, thanks to my elementary Occlumency.

If he tried to mind wipe me, I'd have more than enough time to blast him back with a flurry of the nastiest spells I knew.

"Bloody hell, that bastards not even sparing the poor innocent orphans," turning my attention back to them I notice that the grins are back on their faces as they make fun of Lockhart, "truly he has no pride or morals."

"Well, I wouldn't argue with the morals bit but he's got pride in spades. I mean did you see the makeup on his face? I've never seen a man with that much makeup in my life, it was like he was wearing a full on mask or something," that got a laugh out of them.

"That's nothing, you weren't there but we saw him casting spells on his teeth to make them shine before taking a photo."

"Wait, seriously?" I couldn't help but ask, emotions somewhere between incredulity and amusement.

"Yup, ask Fred. He was there as well," and so the rest of the journey to Hogwarts was spent mocking Lockhart.

At some point, once we got really into it, we even made a bet about who could prank him the most.

------ At Hogwarts -------

You know, other than everything looking somewhat smaller, nothing really changed about Hogwarts from last year. The castle, the decorations, and even the way the food was arranged on the house tables, it was all the same.

Though, obviously one major difference was the foppish presence of the latest Defence against the dark arts teacher, and boy what a presence it was. Really, I'd never seen a face I'd wanted to punch more.

I mean, he looked exactly like the actor who played him in the movies and I'd always liked him. Sure his wavy blonde hair combined with his traditionally handsome face were unoffensive at worst and his clothes, while flamboyant, were surprisingly pleasing to the eyes. But all those things were trumped by the sheer air of 'fakeness' that wafted off him, making literally everything about him seem sleezy and making me wonder how the actual hell people didn't immediately realise he's a fake.

Or maybe it's all just my own bias against the guy afraid of pixies.

But regardless of that, not wanting to look at that fraud any further, I decided to spend the rest of the opening ceremony reading a disguised biology book and focusing on my food. Not that I was unique in doing that, seeing as at least a quarter of the Ravenclaw table was doing the same, but I was (somewhat) unique in that I continued to do so through Dumbledore's speech and the hat's song.

After all, there really wasn't any point in focusing on this years sorting ceremony other than that one moment to confirm which house Ginny was going to so I could confirm where I might need to break into.

At least that was the plan. Until someone squeezed into the space to the right of me, causing me and the person to my right to shift to accommodate that person and for me to look up in annoyance.

A pair of unblinking silver eyes stare back at me, "hello there."

Biting back the instinctive reply, I lean back to confirm who just talked to me. The waist-length, dirty blonde hair, the very pale face, the weirdly calm surprised expression on her face and her height, that barely reached my chin… yep, I was looking at Luna Lovegood.

"Uhhh…" moving my gaze to the person behind her, the one who'd also been pushed aside, only to find that he'd already stopped paying attention, causing me to look back at her.

"You're nice," before I can even question her she speaks.

"…thank you?" not really sure what more to say I just turn back to my food. Putting away my book due to the lack of personal space.

"You're welcome," I hear from my right, before seeing her start to eat from the corner of my eyes. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the welcoming feast was awkward, with me having very little personal space.

The lack of personal space even continued up till I reached my own room as she insisted on following me for little to no discernible reason than me being 'nice'.