The Marauders: Year Two | #Wattys2016

Ilvermorny's Arrival

Ilvermorny's Arrival

"Blimey!" James whispered as the little dot in the sky he was pointing to became bigger and bigger and the shape more defined. He could scarcely believe his eyes - so much so that he grabbed onto Sirius and hissed, "Will you look at that?!"

"I am looking!" Sirius answered, equally in awe as James was.

For in the sky, where there'd once been naught but a dot amongst the clouds, was the quickly descending form of a powder blue Volkswagen bus, spiraling toward the ground. Dumbledore moved out of the way of the vehicle as it righted itself, stopping, hovering a few feet from the ground. The bus slowly lowered until its wheels touched down and Dumbledore clapped heartily. The sound of his palms hitting together was the only one that could be heard besides the rumbles and ticks of the engine as the little VW bus vibrated, and then shuddered into silence.

The door in the back of the bus opened up, and a tall, very skinny man climbed out, wearing long purple wizard robes, a small beanie of a cap with a silver tassel that hung over the side. He had round glasses - Sirius couldn't help but to think of John Lennon at the sight of the glasses. The man was older, though not bearded, but the hair that stuck out in curls beneath the beanie was white as snow. The man hastened to Dumbledore, a grin upon his face, and he extended his palm, taking hold of Dumbledore's own extended hand, and vigorously shaking it.

"Welcome to Hogwarts!" Dumbledore said happily.

"Great to be here finally!" said the man, still shaking Dumbledore's hand, "Put an extendable charm on her, but there's only so much you can do to make it comfortable and we were wicked cramped, packed in like sardines as they say! Glad to have made it to Hogwarts!" He spoke with a very distinct dialect, one which seemed to pronounce the secondary R's softer, or possibly not at all, so that he sounded as though he'd said 'sah-deens' and 'hahg-wahts'.

"You're right," James hissed to Sirius, "They do have funny accents." Sirius nodded.

"That's Randy Temple," Remus whispered to Sirius and James, "He's the principal of the school, which is sort of like a headmaster, I guess."

"And he talks like that? All improper and such?" asked Peter, wrinkling his nose, clearly judging the man for it.

"They're a lot less formal in the States," said Remus, "My mum was like that when she got excited." His eyes looked far off for a moment, and then he shook himself back to the present as Principal Temple moved on through the line of faculty waiting to greet him, starting with Professor McGonagall, who looked quite taken aback by the roughness of the man's handshake.

Next out of the back of the bus was a student - a boy, who wore a dark blue robe, open at the front, with a pair of jeans that were ripped at the knee and a plain white t-shirt beneath them. He had sandy blonde hair and a smattering of freckles across his face and appeared to be about Derek Bell's age. This, James guessed, was the Ilvermorny team captain. Sure enough, the boy held out a hand to Dumbledore and announced, "I'm Jack Scout, captain of the Ilvermorny team." He, too, had an accent, but it was very different than Randy Temple's had been, it was thicker and twangier.

The boys exchanged glances. "Do they all talk different?" asked James.

"There's a lot of dialects in the States," answered Remus.

Jack Scout was followed by a girl with frizzy-curly red hair that hung about her face as though it were spun like cotton candy, clashing horribly with her purple robes. She introduced herself as Meg Johnson, Seeker. Next was another girl, this one with platinum blonde hair that hung to her waist. She looked much nicer in the purple robes than Meg Johnson had and she smiled with perfectly straight teeth that seemed to glow they were so white. She was a chaser and her name was Dawn Gleason and half of the boys of Hogwarts were instantly in love with her.