DPASW: The Foundation of Power

The First Year's Train Dance

Platform Nine and Three-Quarters was a marvel of magical space folding. The enchantments surrounding this icon of the British magical world had to hide not only the platform, but also the rail track, which snaked out of the station and cut its way straight through a city of eight million muggles. After it left the city, the rail line had to stay hidden for the entire eight-hundred-kilometre journey, all the way to Hogsmeade station. A thin slice of magic, indelibly cutting the country in two.

Muggle-repelling charms and standard ruin-illusions would do no good here.

Figuring out a way to hide such a conspicuous tract of Wizarding World territory was to be one of the greatest engineering feats of the arithmancy revolution — or rather, that's what the 1827 minister of magic, Ottaline Gambol, told her contractor, Lord Woodson Hawking. To which Lord Hawking deadpanned, "You're havin' a jape, Gambol."

Nevertheless, after nearly twenty years of work, the Noble House of Hawking did crack the problem. The solution was in reverse-expansion charms. Instead of creating more space where there was none, Woodson figured out how to create no space where there was some.

All the way up and down the country, whenever anyone crossed the five-metre-wide slice of land that contained the Hogwarts Express line, they bent through an undetectable, space-contraction ward, none the wiser of what just happened. New muggleborns on the Hogwarts Express would shriek in fear and delight as motorway cars barrelled straight towards the train, only to disappear mere inches from the track and instantly reappear on the opposite side.

This all required one of the largest warding projects of all time, because while it's relatively easy to ward a four-square-kilometre circle, it's a lot harder to ward a four square kilometre strip that's five metres wide and eight hundred kilometres long. In all, 320,000 miniature ward stones were needed. Two every five metres. These stones were housed below the Hogwarts Express line, in an eight-hundred-kilometre subterranean passageway called a ward tunnel. Because the failure of even a single stone could endanger the whole line, regular checks were required to ensure the stones were all in order.

Not many people knew this. Also, not many people knew that Platform Nine and Three-Quarters was sealed off anytime there wasn't a train in service. More people knew that Hogsmeade station was not sealed off when there wasn't a train, but few considered it of any huge import. This only goes to show that while the Wizarding World may not be as silly as many people would like to believe, it does still tend to overlook small details.

Harry James Potter, current Lord Slytherin, future Consort Lovegood, time-traveller, former Azkaban resident, and most definitely the boy-who-lived, sped down the ward tunnel on his trusty Nimbus 1700 broomstick. The walls held no lights. This didn't worry him. In the hand not gripping the broomstick, he held his newest toy, a back-mirrored hand of glory. The shrivelled appendage cast a bright light in front of him, illuminating some sixty metres of tunnel. At one hundred kilometres per hour that gave him about two seconds to react should something block his way.

This also didn't worry him. He'd always been amazing on a broomstick. In fact, he suspected that if the whole parents-dumping-him-at-the-Dursleys' thing hadn't happened, he'd probably have been a quidditch player. Yes, he could fly without one, but it just wasn't the same.

He passed yet another maintenance floo and checked the time. One o'clock in the morning. He'd been flying for nearly eight hours now. He should be nearly... ah. He slowed down and stopped as the tunnel opened out into a much wider space. The ward stones here were larger, more powerful, and more numerous. He could feel the thrum of magic seeping off them.

Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out his shrunk trunk. A quick rummage produced the Potter invisibility cloak, which he donned. He re-pocketed his trunk, padded over to the stairs, and examined the door at the top of them. The door was warded, just like it had been for Tommy-Boy when he'd explored down here. The underground room was also warded against apparition, but, and this was the important bit, the platform above wasn't. He looked up to the roof, some four metres overhead and slowly floated up to meet it. It also seemed that the warders working on this stretch of the project hadn't been as thorough as they should have been. You couldn't apparate into the platform when it was sealed, but once you were inside.... He reached the very top and pressed himself flat against the ceiling. He smirked. Destination, determination, deliberation. There was a faint crack and he found himself less than one metre from where he'd started, but this time on the platform.