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This was perhaps a sentiment she expressed a little bit too often, and she swore up and down that she was trying better to keep her mouth shut – but suffice to say, Feferi Peixes was excited.
She’d tried her hardest not to make too much of an impression she didn’t want, walking down the train that was now making noises that indicated it was leaving Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters very soon. Huge round glasses with pink frames made her big eyes look even bigger, and the huge auburn-coloured mass of hair almost hid most of the circlet around her forehead, which was great. (Her mother had a fit when she said she didn’t want to wear any jewelry, any at all, and eventually they came to a compromise. One piece of glittery golden jewelry and one piece that Feferi liked – it turned out to be a genuine shell necklace. Feferi could still picture her beloved (s)mother’s scowl.) As all the students shuffled up and down, peering into the windows to check which cars could accommodate their circle of friends, the first-year-to-be couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.
Sure, it was great to meet new people and get along with them, she loved that. And there were even some kids she already knew on the train… but she was sure that both Jade Harley and her own sister, Meenah, had better people to hang out with than a fledgling freshman. Feferi would hate to ruin their trips. Even though she honestly loved that girl Latula that Meenah hung out with sometimes – she was so funny! Still, depending on other people to gain bearings in a new place was no way for a Peixes to behave. Feferi had to forge her own way and make her own friends. And besides, it wasn’t as if that was hard.
Feferi was sure she could just bust into any compartment if she wanted to, and immediately become chummy with the people there – that was one of her few gifts, her mother said, her charisma. It made people like her. That was important for a future Minister of Magic. (Now if only she could learn to make it not so genuine.) Maybe she could do that. But the first ride to Hogwarts was important, dead important, and the friends you made there were supposed to have a massive impact on your future at the school – or at least, that’s what they had said in the Kelpie section of the Daily Prophet’s annual ‘Hogwarts Horoscope’ feature, which Feferi followed almost religiously. She read all of the predictions every year, though. Mostly she was just excited to come to Hogwarts.
The seats were filling up fast. Thinking on her feet, Feferi decided she had to be charitable. That was what famous important witches were supposed to do, according to people who were not her mother. So after much peering, she eventually decided that she would just pick the next person she found who was sitting alone.
“Hi there!” Feferi chirped, opening the door. “Do you mind if I sit down here?” It occurred to her too late that she hadn’t registered much about the residents of the car except that there was only one of them. The boy sitting there was staring out the window, and in fact his entire body was curled towards it, as if he were trying to put a wall between him and the vacant air around. His hair was black, and it rested somewhere in that uncomfortable area between short-curly and just plain overgrown. It was easy to predict that when he turned, the expression on his face would be a dark scowl. (‘Someone doesn’t want to be here,’ Feferi thought.) She also noticed that he had glasses and two-coloured eyes – one blue, which wasn’t so bad, and the other bright red.
Oh.
Well.
Suddenly, the decision to pick the next car she saw wasn’t looking like such a good one, but there was no sense in backing out now. That would be rude. And besides, it wasn’t like she actually believed what the Daily Prophet’s horoscope said…
It was at this precise moment she realized that, in direct contrast to the Daily Prophet, the black-haired boy hadn’t said anything at all.
“Um, hello?” Feferi waved a little bit, thinking that perhaps she hadn’t gotten his attention. “Are you waiting for someone? I can go.”
“Well then go,” he said, turning back to the window.
“Oh…” Feferi sunk back towards the edge of the door, maybe going to move on to the next corridor. “Okay—”
“If you’re gonna get in, get in,” a raspy voice grunted from outside. “I gotta check the rest of this damn train for open spots. —Actually, you know what? Never mind.” Feferi squeaked and pressed herself against the back wall as a small boy of Indian descent elbowed his way through. “Fuckin’… there isn’t anything good on the other side of the train, is there?”
“If there was,” said Feferi with a growing amount of uncertainty, “it isn’t there now.”
The heterochromatic boy sighed darkly. Not that that came as much of a surprise, because to Feferi, everything he did seemed to have a luminosity level of late twilight at the absolute most.
Unceremoniously, the newcomer pushed Heterochrome’s bags onto the floor and occupied the space they once used, so that the two boys were sitting across from one another. He then turned to look at Feferi. “Well? What’re you waiting for?”
With nowhere else to turn, Feferi slid in next to the heterochrome, choosing the lesser of two evils. He shivered and made a noise that sounded alarmingly close to a growl. She imagined that the three of them would look like an odd pair to outsiders – one unusually miserable pale boy, the shortest and loudest first-year this side of King’s Cross, and then the “tall, tanned, blonde bombshell” (as Meenah’s friend had once described her) that was Feferi.
Suddenly, she felt as if it was her obligation to break the silence, as the short one had stopped talking. “Well, uh, let’s all go around and introduce ourselves, okay?” she asked. “It would be good to at least know each other’s names.”
She waited a second.
“Go on, tell us your life’s story,” remarked the heterochrome, and for the first time Feferi noticed that he had quite the lisp.
“Um. Well, first of all, my name is Feferi Peixes—” the Indian boy looked up in alarm— “and I don’t really think my life’s story is worth telling! Besides, I never even asked for that.”
“That was beautiful,” Shortstack drawled. “I’ve never heard anything so inspiring in my life.”
“I aim to please.” Feferi smiled, knowing full well that he was being sarcastic. But optimism was often the best weapon when dealing with these kinds of people… she just didn’t know how long she could keep it up.
“Well, anyway, I’m Karkat.” The-boy-recently-identified-as-Karkat swiped something off of his robes. “And that leaves the emo kid.”
“Fuck off,” the only remaining student said.
“Nice to meet you too, Fuck,” Karkat nodded. “I’m sure we’ll all have a nice and fulfilling time at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”
“Or we could never see one another again,” Fuck piped up. “That could be it too.”
Feferi leaned her head on her hand. Honestly, if these were the people she was supposed to spend the rest of her schooling career with, she wouldn’t mind the alternative.
The door opened again; Feferi and Karkat looked up to greet the newcomer. It was a woman in a nice, clean-pressed uniform, driving a trolley. “Any of you kids want food?” she asked. Feferi’s eyes lit up eagerly, and she turned to the other two.
“What do you guys like? I’m starved!”
“I don’t need any,” Karkat said, looking off to the side.
Fuck continued to regard the countryside with indifference.
“Well then I’ll just buy some and you two are free to take it if you want.” Feferi then turned to the trolley girl and bought several varieties of sweets, intentionally getting more than she thought she’d need; it wasn’t very often you met a first-year who could resist the siren song of sugar on a long train ride. Everything was placed in the center of the table. And after the trolley girl left, Karkat stared at the pile and grunted, “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Feferi smiled. She turned to the third boy. “Do you want any?”
“No!” The volume made them both jump.
Feferi turned back to her sweets and frowned. “Okay then.”
Gradually, the two of them got to talking. Feferi soon learned why Karkat had been so reluctant to accept her sweets – his family, unfortunately, came from a very poor background. His single father had tried very hard to send both Karkat and his big brother to Hogwarts, and he’d started planning for that even before Vantas the elder had turned two.
“…But wouldn’t you know it, I guess the gene pool crapped out on both of us.” Karkat finished his story with a growl. “Kankri’s nothing special, but at least he has magic.”
Feferi gasped. “You don’t mean…”
“No,” Karkat said, folding his arms. “I don’t mean. But I’m very close to meaning. Nooot quite a Squib, just good enough to get into Hogwarts, but I ain’t an awful lot past that.”
Feferi put a hand over her mouth. “That’s horrible!”
Desperate for something else to look at, Karkat’s eyes eventually drifted to Fuck. “Funny how the only one who ain’t taking the goodies is the one who needs it the most,” he said casually, seeing the remarkable scrawniness of the boy who still hadn’t dressed in his robes. “Don’t suppose we have the luck of two poor boy sob stories in one car, do we?”
“I don’t think he’s listening,” muttered Feferi.
Karkat smiled at her and took a Chocolate Frog. But after opening it, he took the little twitching frog in his hand and – instead of beheading it like a normal person does – he tossed the thing onto their moody neighbor.
It made contact with his cheek. Immediately, he began screeching and flailing like a maniac – it was a true miracle that the cursing from his mouth didn’t prompt a Prefect to come storming into their car.
While Karkat was doubled over laughing, Feferi just sat there with her head on her hand again. “That wasn’t very nice,” she said.
“Worth it.” The boy regained control of himself. “I feel a little bad that I can’t eat that, though.”
“What the fuck even is this thing?!” Fuck announced, finally spinning around in his seat, clutching the frog between his fingers. It was beginning to melt.
“It’s a Chocolate Frog,” Feferi said. “Were you even paying attention?”
Fuck stared at his Frog distrustfully. “I… If you want this, take it back.” And he tossed the magicked confection back Karkat’s way.
He caught it in his mouth and crunched.
“Mother of god,” Fuck said, scrunching his face up. “Ew.”
“Ew?” Feferi repeated. “But it’s just a…”
Chewing slowly, Karkat stared at Fuck for quite a long time. He then glanced to Feferi; and when she didn’t seem to be making heads or tails of the situation like he did, he swallowed the Frog and wiped his mouth.
“You’re a Muggleborn, aren’t you?”
Fuck took a sharp intake of breath.
“It’s perfectly okay that you’re a Muggleborn!” Feferi threw in. “In fact, a lot of the students on this very train are other first years who have never…”
“Shut the fuck up.” Fuck scowled at her. “I don’t even want to be on this damn train. There’s nothing at your stupid magic school I need – I want to go home!”
Having spoken more than he planned to the entire year, Fuck turned back to the window.
“Oh,” said Feferi, shuffling books around in her bag. “Well, uh… can you at least tell us your name?”
“Since I’m going to hightail my ass right out of the Magic Kingdom as soon as I get off the train, you might as well.” Night had fallen outside, and a million lights illuminated a dark castle in the distance. “My name is Sollux Captor.”