The Hogwarts Express

Just as the train was about to depart and people were waving to their parents someone knocks on my cabin door. I recognize him by his scar immediately… it's Harry Potter, James's son and the entire reason I came to Hogwarts.

He looks kind of nervous "Mind If I sit?" He asks politely.

I motion my hand at the seat in front of me "Please, go ahead".

As he sits down he extends his hand "Harry Potter"

I shake his hand "I know, you are rather famous. I'm Soren Black, a pleasure to meet you."

"The past day has been quite... incredible, finding out I'm a wizard, becoming rich overnight, and turning out to be famous, it's pretty unbelievable." He says with a wry smile.

"Oh yeah, I nearly forgot that the savior was raised by muggles, how was that experience?" I ask genuinely curious about how the Dursleys raised him in Sirius's absence.

"My Aunt and Uncle are… well, let's just say not the kindest of people, if it gives you an idea, my bedroom is a crawl space... was a crawlspace. They left the house when my letters from Hogwarts came. They just moved back so I don't have a room till I return." He looks kind of embarrassed as he says that.

My eyes narrow "So where are all your things?"

He smirks and shrugs "Everything I own is in my trunk."

Now that he mentions it I notice that he is wearing hand-me-downs with holes in them. My brows furrow, I quickly close my eyes and concentrate on Harry in front of me. It's worse than I thought his soul is a dark grey with only a few speckles of white…

There also seems to be a small black ball attached to his soul. 'What the hell ' My blood is fucking boiling, not only does the boy have something wrong with his soul but he has been abused his whole life.

"Are you okay?" He asks snapping out of my thoughts.

I open my eyes and fake a smile with gritted teeth "Yeah sorry, was in thought. Hey, I've been practicing Divination lately... do you mind if I try to look into pieces of your past?"

He looks uncertain but still agrees "Great give me a hand." He puts out a hand that I grab as I make sure to set a tracking charm on him...just in case, then I peer into his third eye.

I saw everything… the neglect, the slave work, the missed childhood… Sirius NEVER should have trusted Dumbledore's opinion letting him leave Harry with the Dursleys.

'I'm going to fucking throat punch that old fool…. I'm going to fuc-' I feel the darkness in the back of my mind trying to push forward. I zone out as I try and control my anger.

Harry abruptly pulls his hand away, apparently, I had started to squeeze too hard. I quickly squash my anger looking back up at him apologetically.

"Sorry, I got a little emotional, you may not know this but my father was a friend of your father's. So seeing you mistreated like that made me a bit angry." I had a wry smile on my face, it was the best I could give.

"Thank you… for being mad on my behalf." He looked a bit embarrassed "So you said our fathers were friends, what was he like? My father I mean."

I smile "I don't know much... My father wasn't around much either, but a word of advice, be careful with Professor Snape, our fathers used to bully him so I'm sure he'll try to return the favor."

*Knock Knock*

Harry and I turn to the cabin door and see a ginger kid wearing worn-down clothes standing there. His clothes are worse than Harry's. Not because they are hand-me-downs, but because they are cheap and low quality. That being said the person who patched it did a wonderful job.

"Mind If I sit in here? Everywhere else is full," he asks.

Harry and I look at each other, I shrug. Harry looks at the kid "Not at all."

He sits next to Harry "I'm Ron by the way, Ron Weasley."

"I'm Soren, Soren Black" I introduce myself

"I'm Harry, Harry Potter" Rons eyes go wide staring at the both of us.

"You're from house Black?" He looks at me with a bit of distaste, without giving me time to answer "and you're Harry Potter?... Is it true, do you have... the scar?"

Harry just smiles and brushes away his hair a little.

"Wicked" Ron says staring a bit too hard.

Rattling comes from the hallway, we turn to see a kind-looking old woman is pushing a trolley full of candy. There are at least fifteen different types of candy on her small trolley.

"Any Candy off the trolly dears?" the nice old lady asks.

My eyes light up, wizard candy has become one of my favorite things over these last few months. I even started collecting the chocolate frog cards. I have learned from them that I have AWFUL luck.

I pull some galleons out of my pouch, "We will take a little of everything, and 5 chocolate frogs!" I say with a wide grin.

Ron just looks at me with a dropped jaw, "You really are from 'that' family aren't you?" I don't reply since I'm too busy gathering my treasures.

--------

As I open my fifth chocolate frog I catch it as it tries to hop away. I stuff the frog in my mouth and turn it over to check the card.

"Really? That makes five Dumbledore in a row, what kind of luck is that? " Ron laughs at my complaining.

"Yeah, I have about five of him as well, rotten luck to get five in a row though."

I turn to see Harry making a rotten face while eating the Every Flavor Jellybeans. I laugh at the twisted face he is making.

"Yeah, the Jellybeans can be pretty brutal, I heard of some unlucky sap who got a vomit-flavored one once," I say laughing.

After saying that we hear a loud squeaking coming from Ron, he has a rat peaking over his lap eating out of a jellybean box…. I hate rats.

As I look at the rat I realize… it looks really familiar, like really familiar. It reminds me of that image Sirius burned into my mind. Then it dawns on me and my face breaks out into a smile a very, very big smile, I'm positive I probably look wicked right now.

Luckily they aren't looking at me right now, Ron is looking at Harry and Harry is staring at the rat. I can feel the darkness itching to rush forward. My desire to rush forward and squish this 'rat' with my bare hands. But I easily repress it, I wish to savor this kill. Pettigrew.

"This is Scabbers by the way, pathetic isn't he?" Ron says looking at his rat.

I tone down my grin a bit "He is indeed, pathetic." I accidentally spit my last word out of hate.

They both stare at me, probably creeped out, 'Am I being creepy? Probably.'

Ron looked back at Harry "Fred gave me a spell to turn him yellow, would you like to see?"

'"Yeah"' Harry and I say in unison.

Ron pulls out his wand, obviously a hand-me-down wand. He starts to clear his throat and raises his wand; before he can chant a girl with light brown hair and dark brown eyes appears in the doorway of our cabin.

"Has anyone seen a toad? A boy named Neville seems to have lost one." She asks

We all shake our heads and Ron replies "No?" I give her a bit of an annoyed face as I want to see Ron experiment with his pet rat.

"Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see then."

Ron clears his throat again he waves his wand and says. "Sunshine daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid fat rat yellow." the spell just makes a pull of smoke and the box of jellybeans falls off its head. My excitement is quickly killed as the rat quickly hides just around Ron's back.

I put my palm on my forehead. 'Holy shit, this boy believed that was a spell.'

"Are you sure that's a real spell?" the girl asks. 'It certainly freaking isn't' I say to myself.

"Well it's not very good is it, of course, I've tried only simple spells but all of them have worked for me." she continues

'A bit stuck up, huh?' I think to myself focusing on her slightly large front teeth.

She steps in front of me and motions me to move over; I gesture for her to sit and move over. She sits where I was sitting straight across from and facing Harry.

She pulls out her wand "For example' she points her wand at Harry only a few inches from his face. "Oculus Repairo" as she finishes chanting the taping around Harry's glasses comes off and the crack seems to be fixed.

"That's better now isn't it?" she asks with a smug smile.

'That was okay... but if this is going to be a wand measuring contest.'

I nudge her with my elbow a bit, "Would you like to see some more interesting magic?" I ask with a mischievous smile. She just nods her head with a bit of interest.

As I pull out my wand I hear Ron remark "looks expensive" obviously a little jealous, I just smile at his comment. I gently wave my wand and chant "Incendio Laminus Irroro" as I wave down embers of fire rain from the top of the cabin.

I'm only able to chain offensive spells, and I'm not the best at it, but this is more of just a 'for show' spell... It is still painful if it hits you though. If you look close you can see the flames look like flower petals, however, the flames fade before they touch anyone… except "Scabbers".

While everyone is distracted with the beautiful falling flames I quickly mutter 'Silencio' muting the rat so Ron can't hear "Scabbers" cry out in pain as he gets burned by the falling flames. I watch as "Scabbers" shrieks and runs away out of the cabin, I want to close the door to keep him here to suffer but then they would notice.

Since the rat is gone there is no reason to keep the flames going so I end the spell.

"Wow that was beautiful, how did you do that?" the still unknown girl says.

"Yeah, that was awesome/wicked!" both Harry and Ron say with glowing eyes.

I just smile at them. "My older sis is an Auror in training, she has taught me a thing or two." that wasn't a lie I did indeed learn Incendio with sis Dora's help, just not the entire chain spell.

"That's amazing, I'm Hermione Granger by the way." She offers out her hand with a smile that hides her teeth.

I shake her hand with a soft smile "Soren, Soren Black" I think I am getting better at pretending to socialize.

Her jaw drops "You're the son of that man in Azkaban, Sirius right? I read about you in the "Most Likely To Be The Next Dark Lord" catalog!"

I scowl about to answer but Harry chimes in "I'm Harry, Harry Potter"

"THE Harry Potter? As in the boy who lived? This cabin is just full of celebrities." she turns to Ron "And you are?" she looks hopeful.

"I'm Ron, Ronald Weasley." he looks kind of awkward since he was just stuffing his face full of chocolate.

'At least he is a Noble?' I think in Ron's defense, so he is at least a bit interesting.

She gives a forced smile, "Pleasure…" She stands up taking her leave, "You had all better change, we are getting close to Hogwarts."

As she walks out I turn to Ron and Harry, "She is kind of stuck up huh?" they both just nod. Even saying that we all start to get changed into our robes.