The Hidden Hero

Chapter-3 The Hogwarts Express

When the morning of September 1st arrived, Harry found himself almost shaking with excitement. He had awoken hours before he had needed to, but couldn't fall back asleep. He had stared at the ceiling of the room, listening to the snores of his fellow occupants, and allowed his mind to drift.

What would Hogwarts be like? He would be walking the halls where his mother and father had once also walked. Knowing that they had been there in the past, made Harry feel as if an imprint of their ghostly selves would be watching over their son.

After the months of being on his own, Harry was eagerly looking forward to being a kid again. At Hogwarts, he would be housed and fed, with adults responsible for ensuring his safety and the safety of the other students. It was strange, he thought, that he had always imagined a world without adults, a world where he could do everything he wanted. But, he hadn't realized how stressful it was to know that there was no security blanket under him – that he was responsible for his own housing, food, clothes, and everything else needed for daily survival.

Yes, he was ever aware that the magical world was the world where this psychopathic Dark Lord was after him. But, that danger seemed remote, and a concern for a far distant future. Here and now, Harry was thinking how much fun it would be to focus for the next 10 months just on his studies and making friends.

Trying to be quiet so as not to wake his roommates, Harry finally climbed out of bed, dressed and carefully removed his trunk from the closet. He slid it across the room and down the stairs. His landlady was waiting for him to say goodbye and to tell him that, as he had requested, she had arranged for a taxi to take him to Kings Cross station.

The taxi driver helped Harry put his trunk into the cab and then, once they had arrived at the train station, had helped to put the trunk on a cart there as well. Harry thanked the man and, although Harry felt a pang about spending his limited funds, he gave him a generous tip.

When Harry arrived at the train platforms, he couldn't find Platform 9¾, where the Hogwarts Express was supposed to be. He stood between platforms 9 and 10 and wondered what to do. Harry remembered how Hagrid had touched the brick wall in back of the Leaky Cauldron in order to enter Diagon Alley. Was something similar required here? Did Hagrid forget to tell him some secret signal? There were a lot of muggles around here, though, and he wouldn't want to attract attention. Harry was just about to get out his wand to tap, surreptitiously, on a wall standing between platforms 9 and 10, when he saw the Weasleys. Breathing a sigh of relief, he hurried over to them.

"Mark!" greeted Ron, smiling at him. "How are you?"

Harry smiled back, and nodded his head in greeting at the whole group. "Hello. I'm glad I found you. I don't know how to get onto Platform 9¾. Hagrid never told me."

Fred immediately piped up, "You just have to jump up and down thee times and cluck like a chicken."

Mrs. Weasley tutted. "Just ignore him, Mark. It's very simple. Percy, here, will go first to show you."

Percy, who had scowled in disapproval over Fred's joke, immediately puffed up his chest. "Yes, just watch me, Mark. You'll see that you just need to walk through that wall separating platforms 9 and 10. It's important to take the walk at just the right speed. Too slow, and your cart might not make it through. Too fast, and you run the danger of tripping on the other side, or not be able to stop before banging into someone standing there. The speed is critical…" He would have continued on with his lecture, if George hadn't given Percy's cart a push toward the wall. "Hey!" Running after it, Percy was barely able to touch the handle of the cart before it reached the wall. Both the cart and Percy disappeared through it.