Since the beginning | Deamus |

(fourth year) Ch. 34 Triwizard Tournament

Lav decided to go to Platform 9 3/4 with us so Mrs. Thomas had to drive the three of us there. Most people hate going back to school but I was looking forward to it. Something about just being at that school always made me feel better. Driving with my friends definitely wasn't bad either.

The three of us were loud and honestly very annoying on that ride, but Mrs. Thomas didn't seem too bothered. In fact she joined in when we were singing The Dancing Queen.

King's Cross was as crowed as always. Muggles everywhere you looked. Since Platform 9 3/4 was in a brick wall we had to try to get through without making it obvious that we were going through a brick wall. Muggles have a way of forgetting the weird things that they see, mostly the weird Wizard things. But every now and then there's a child or some tired business man who actually sees us doing some magical stuff. Because of this, we like to be careful whenever we go through these magical entrances. Luckily for us we had Mrs. Thomas, who was one of the only muggles I have heard of who could see through tall of this magical stuff. This made it easier to get through to the Platform since she knew how muggles were seeing us go through the wall.

On this occasion, Lavender and I had a bet. Whichever one of us could convince Dean to run into the wrong wall you win three galleons. Lavender ended up winning easily. ("Hey! What was the meaning of that?!" "It's funny! You just ran into the wall!!")

The Platform was chaotic, and I couldn't wait to get into the train to get out of the crowd. Mrs. Thomas was almost in tears, wishing us all goodbye as if we were all her children. She was more of a mother to me then anyone.

"Goodbye! You guys have fun in school. Be good, and don't get in trouble. If I get a letter home about any of you, you will be grounded for life!"

Dean laughed and gave his mom a hug, showing off just how tall he was. "We'll be good! I promise."

"You better." She pulled Lav and me into a hug suddenly, almost making me trip over my own feet in the process. "I love you all! Now get onto that train!"

~~~

Unlike most Hogwarts cliches, we found a compartment with relative ease and didn't have to sit near any people that we didn't know.

There was nothing too remarkable about the train ride, in all honesty I forgot half of what we did as soon as it ended. What I can remember is that I banged my head on the overhead storage and while I was groaning in pain and clutching my head Lav and Dean snorted at my misfortune. Those jerks.

The carriages that pulled us to Hogwarts seemed a little strange to me that day. I thought I heard some sort of horse snorting and I could have sworn I saw something eating a chicken nugget one student dropped on the ground.

With the Sorting Ceremony over, and the usual beginning of the year speech drawing to a close, I wanted nothing more then to dig into the food I knew was waiting in the Kitchen below. Sadly, Dumbledore could talk like his life depended on it. I zoned out near the beginning of the speech and was currently entertaining myself by pretending my knife and fork were characters in a play and I was just getting to the part where Fork yelled at Knife for cheating on them and a huge sword fight would have broken out when Dean shook my arm and forced me back into the present.

"Stop playing with the knives!" He hissed. "Dumbledore's talking about something with other schools."

I decided that this might be worth my time, and I knew that if I didn't listen Dean would kill me, so I put the utensils down and started to pay attention.

"... a pleasure to host these two schools for this year's Triwizard Tournament!"

Personally, I had never even heard of what this tournament thingy was, but Merlin did it sound fun.