Hey! I have written fanfiction before, on other accounts, but am new to writing any Harry Potter fanfiction - after the release of The Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts, my love for Harry Potter has been rekindled. I am planning on writing a multi-chapter fiction, but I want to know whether people would read it. If you could read though this first chapter and let me know what you think of the pacing, wording, grammar, etc. etc.

"Bloody hell! Watch where you're going!"

Stumbling back a few steps, his natural reaction to anything nowadays, he looked up, finding himself straining his neck to look at a giant - fierce ginger hair shaped in a scruffy, unfashionable bowl-cut, falling across his forehead, orange freckles littered across his cheeks and long, pointed nose, piercing blue eyes staring, from a height, down at the young boy; he must have been at least 2 metres tall! He was thin, but not unhealthily, just very gangly, like Rob from back on the estate, and he had huge hands. The giant wore thick black robes that fell to the floor, and a uniform underneath them - a scruffy black pullover, with scarlet and gold trimming, grey trousers, humongous black boots, with scuffed toes, a not-so-pure white shirt and a wrangled tie - the uniform made the giant seem like a teacher, and even if he wasn't, he was definitely older than him.

"I'm really sorry, sir - I was looking for the toilets. You don't happen to know where they are, do you, sir?" he asked, almost as quietly as a mouse, wobbling, and, almost falling when the train hit a knot on the track.

"You don't need to call me sir. If you head to the end of the carriage, there should be one. You'd better change into your robes; we'll be arriving soon," the giant said, looking out of the window at the countryside view. Turning his head to see what the giant was looking at, he saw rolling hills, going on for miles, a line of trees on the horizon, the sun beginning to set behind them, causing the sky to turn a red, purple-blue sort of colour. So this is what the countryside was like - he hadn't seen much more than the grimy streets, covered in rubbish, of his estate, a number of homeless people more than frequently sitting on the street corners. There was once somewhere nicer from when he was younger, but, unfortunately, he couldn't remember what it looked like at all - after all, how could he remember somewhere from when he was really young, when he had lived in the dirt for over half his life?

He then realised something - robes - he had none any of them, any of his school supplies; not only did he not have any of his school supplies, though, he also had nothing more than what he was wearing, as well as a small bag with a single set of spare clothes, his mother's wand, a book he had found and an anchor on a chain that his mother had given him. Father swore that he was never going to involve himself with wizard freaks, so said his 'goodbye' in the car park of Swansea train station at 9:30 pm (which in fairness, meant that his Father ended up missing the match, which he had watched every Saturday since he was 11, which consequently meant he was in a very poor mood when he dropped Will off at the train station), handing him his belated wife's old wand along with some train tickets, speeding off, leaving the eleven-year-old to navigate the trains himself at night - the boy hadn't slept for two days precedently, but still, despite how much his eyelids protested, ended up staying up the whole night, in fear of missing his stop - father would have been terribly angry at him. Even when he was on the train to Hogwarts, he tried to stay awake - he was surrounded by hundreds of people he hadn't previously met; he wasn't risking anything, not to mention the possibility of everyone finding out about his nightmares? He'd be the joke of the school before the first day! As a result of this lack of sleep, he was walking around like a zombie, huge bags under his eyes, not a great deal of what was going on making sense to his sleep-deprived state.

The trains were quite a task considering he had never been on a train ahead of the occasion. Firstly, he was expected to be able to change over three times just to find King's Cross, and secondly, was then left in the dark on how to actually find the platform - no one had given him any information to where blooming platform 9¾ was, and the train guard thought he was messing around when Will asked him - he only figured it out when he saw a group of ginger haired people with trunks, animals, and what have you, heading to platform 9. Knowing he had none of what it said in the letter, as well as having no idea what he was doing, he ran through the wall, which was undeniably interesting, and made his way onto the train, praying he wouldn't be told off for his lack of preparation for the beginning of the school year.

"I don't have any, sir," he said in a whisper, hoping he wouldn't be shouted at by the ginger giant for being unprepared.

"You don't have any robes?" he asked, making a confused face at the younger boy, which made the small boy incredibly nervous, causing his heart rate to increase ever more, even though it had already been beating faster than Usain Bolt.

"Father never brought me any, sir. Said he'd have nothing to do with this, sir."

"You honestly don't need to call me sir," the giant said.

"I'm sorry, sir." The giant sighed, shaking his head.

"What about your mother?"

"Dead, sir."

"Oh. I'm sorry...what's your name?"

"William, sir."

"Well, Will. Can I call you that?" Will nodded his head. "Why don't you come with me - you can have a set of my robes - I'll shrink them down for you."

"I couldn't."

"Sure you could, and then I can owl my mother, see if she can buy you some school supplies. Does that sound like a plan?"

"Okay…" Will said, trailing off - he wasn't even aware of the man's name, but was still following him. All of his senses were telling him to run off - his heart was racing like the train they were currently on, his palms were all sweaty, as if he had just put them under a tap, his breathing was irregular as well as being somewhat loud, but contradicting his natural flight response, he followed the giant - wasn't like the giant could do anything while they were on the train.

Will was practically running to keep up with this man, with his incredibly long legs, striding down the train corridor as if he were on a mission. He suddenly stopped, meaning Will was forced to use all his power not to run into the back of the giant, but still managed to trip into him anyway, ending up landing on his backside. Shuffling away, he began mentally questioning what would happen next, scared of what would happen for accidentally running into the giant.

"I'm sorry, sir; I didn't mean to hurt you." The giant turned around, and Will half expected the muscular man to give him a shiner, but he alas. Contrarily, he bent down, saying that he didn't need to apologise.

The giant stood back up, opening the door to a compartment similar to his own, but as an alternative to his own compartment, where there was no one else inside, there were two other giants, a boy and a girl, in the same black, gold, and scarlet uniform as the original giant. The boy had scruffy jet black hair, bright green eyes, the colour not being fazed by the thick, wire glasses that sat on his, like the other giant's, long, pointed nose - although his nose was not nearly as pointy as the ginger giant's nose. He also had a lightning bolt scar, which he thought was peculiar - what on Earth would cause a scar to be the shape of a lightning bolt - he had had his fair share but none of them had been cool, like this giant's scar seemed to be. He was also very short, compared to the other two, and was even thinner than the ginger giant, almost to the same scale that Will was. The girl, on the other hand, seemed to be a bit taller than the other two, but not by much, and had a little bit more weight on her - by no means was she fat (she was anything but), but she looked like she had three square meals a day, compared to the other two. She had bushy brown hair that fell down just past her shoulders, and dark brown eyes. After observing the other two, Will sheepishly stood up, standing behind the ginger giant.

"Harry, could you pass me my trunk, please," the giant said.

"Yeah, sure Ron," the giant, whom Will decided was Harry, said. Harry stood up, reaching to grab the trunk from on top of the luggage rack.

"Who's that, behind you?" the girl said, as Ron took the trunk from Harry, putting on the corridor floor, opening it up, meaning no one could pass. Standing there, almost cowering behind Ron, was a boy who honestly looked about eight years old - he was about 4" something, looking about the same weight as a small bag of sugar with arms, no bigger than twigs - he had a mop of black hair covering most of his hollow face (which he would occasionally push his hair back behind his ears, only for it to fall forward once more). When his hair was pushed back, two large, icy blue eyes appeared, with rather large bags underneath them, a large scar on his forehead, near his hairline, was visible, as was a scar on his chin. A grey plain t-shirt that was about three sizes the wrong size hung loosely off of his small frame, tucked into a pair of black trousers that were the same, having to be rolled up to stop him tripping up, as well as having to be held up with a blood red belt, which showed how small he was even more

"This is Will; he doesn't have any robes so I said I'd give him mine," Ron explained.

"Have you seen the height difference, Ronald? They'll be twice the size of him!" the girl said.

"'Mione - I can do magic; I'll shrink them down for him."

"You sure about that?" Harry said, laughing to himself

"I'm not that bad at magic, but you can do it if you insist." Picking up his robes, Ron told Will to put them on over his clothes. As Hermione predicted they hung off him, the sleeves almost reaching the floor. After Ron whispered a few words , the clothes began to shrink, fitting Will a great deal better.

"Harry, he's smaller than you were," Hermione said, forgetting that Will was standing there.

"What about the house logo?" Harry asked. "What if he isn't put into Gryffindor?"

"I don't know - Hermione, any tricks?" Ron said, turning to the girl.

"A disappearing spell on the logo, as well as the house colours," the girl suggested.

"Okay, then," the ginger giant said, whispering a few words, pointing his wand at Will, making all the logos disappear.

"So you can do magic," Harry said, Ron giving him an evil stare.

"What do you want, sir?" Will asked, looking back at Ron.

"What do you mean?"

"How much do you want me to pay, sir?"

"Nothing at all."

"But I need to pay, sir."

"I promise you, it's fine. Look, why don't you head back to your carriage - I'll see you in the great hall."

"Okay, sir. Thank you very much, sir!" Will said, running off in his new robes, the pain that had been building up in his chest from fear subsiding.

Ron closed up his trunk and with the help of Harry, put it back on the luggage rack sitting down.

"Who was that?" Harry asked.

"Some first year I bumped into - said he had no robes," Ron said.

"What was with saying 'sir' every time he spoke?" Hermione asked.

"Honestly, I have no idea. He's probably from a pureblood family; just been trained to call his elders 'sir' or something - most families raise their children that way," Ron said, having the most experience on the pureblood front, out of the three of them.

"I wonder what house he'll be in?" Harry said.

"Slytherin," Hermione said.

"Likewise," Harry said.

"What on Earth makes you think that?" Ron asked.

"According to you, Ronald, he's a pureblood, and from a pretty high-up family too, and if that is true, it's quite likely that he'll end up in the pureblood-supremacist house. Also, I'm unaware of whether either of you noticed, but there's something not right about him; not bad, or anything, just, not good…" Hermione said, turning to look out of the window.

"Cryptic as always, 'Mione," Harry replied.

"We're going to need to be more cryptic this year, now that Voldemort is back - we can't risk anything, especially with Malfoy - his family will be at the centre of it all."

"What about everyone else? They all thought you were lying last year," Ron said.

"We'll just have to deal with their stubborn-headedness - there's not much more we can do if we have no evidence," Harry said.

"No evidence except Cedric Diggory's death, or the Dementor attack, or any of the attacks on both wizards and Muggles!" Ron shouted.

"There's no proof it was Death Eaters, or Voldemort - until there's rock solid proof that he really is back, we have no choice but deal with it."

It was less than an hour between Will and the giant's interaction before the train stopped at the station - it was now pitch black, except for the lights in the station.

"All first years join me!" Another giant shouted - this giant was different, though; he made everyone else look like dwarfs - he was very tall and very large, and he had a very bushy brown beard. Making his way through the large crowd, Will found himself with the other first years, crowding around this giant.

"My name is Rubeus Hagrid - I will be taking you to the boats to the castle - if everyone could group into four or five," he said. It was very quickly apparent that everyone had already met prior to the occasion, so whilst everyone else was in groups, Will stood in the middle, alone. "Just join that group over there," Hagrid said, pointing to a group of three, made up of a larger than life boy, who could have easily been two people, and a pair of identical twins, who were exactly the same, down to the same vacant expression they wore. "Follow me!" Hagrid shouted.

It was a rather long trip, just to reach the boats - they walked for about twenty minutes, which gave time for Will's nerves to build up; he had no idea what to expect, and although his nerves had laid dormant for the past two days, because he was more excited to finally be out of Trius, the council estate in Swansea, he was now rather terrified.

Once they had reached the boats, however, all his nerves disappeared once more - it was truly a magical sight - towering over the lake was a castle, that had a copious amount of towers, and statues littered across the building; it sat on top of what could only be described as a mountain - all the candle lights in the castle were lit, creating an orange glow around the castle. The masterpiece was reflected in the lake below, only adding to the magic.

"One group at a time into the boats - begin sailing ahead, but don't row too far until everyone is on the water." The boats that Hagrid was talking about were small wooden rowing boats that had certainly gone through a great ordeal, but weren't unsafe - at the front, there was a lantern hanging on a stick, and there seemed to be no oars. Then again, this was Hogwarts - they probably rowed themselves. Group by group, they stepped onto the six boats, Will's group being the last.

"If anyone falls in, we're not going back," said the snobby-looking, chubby boy who had an even higher pointed nose than everyone else Will had seen so far. He had a slicked back, trimmed head of white-blonde hair that was almost the same colour as his paper-white skin, the black robes only making his skin look even more transparent, and eyes that were unnaturally blue, standing out on his porcelain skin. "Especially you," he said, poking his fat finger into Will's thin chest, twisting his finger hard into the skin, though the clothes - Will knew that the single act would leave another bruise on his multicoloured chest. " You fall in and we'll leave you to the merpeople - they may look nice on the outside, but will eat you up in seconds," he spat, removing his finger from Will's chest, dramatically swooping his robes in a superior manner, as he turned round to board the small wooden boat, that Will thought would skin as soon as the boy stepped on it. Unfortunately, it stayed afloat.

"I won't fall in, sir," Will muttered to himself, even though none of the others had heard him, his nerves, which seemed to be fluctuating at the same rate as his heart was beating, returning - what if everyone was like the boy? His encounter with the group of nice-seeming giant was being pushed to the back of his brain because of his experience with this boy.

The group of four climbed into the boat, Will being placed at the back, so that, according to the pig-like boy, the group weren't forced to look at the back of his ugly head, and the boat began moving, joining the rest of the boats that began their journey to the ancient castle ahead of them. Even with everyone else on the boat, it seemed to stay afloat, almost floating above the water, like magic.