The journey to King's Cross station went smoothly in the metaphorical sense only.

"Yes, we are," Sherlock insisted.

Belinda's stare didn't waver.

"You have no faith in me."

Belinda subjected the moth-eaten carpet in his arms to the look of total disdain that only cats and extraordinarily talented professors can manage. Sherlock sighed. He didn't have much faith in it either.

"I think I'd rather fall out of the sky halfway across London if Plan B is the only alternative."

The look Belinda gave him this time was strikingly reminiscent of Aunt Petunia the time he'd set the parlor curtains on fire. Bad-temperedly, Sherlock conceded that she was probably right; he had no idea how strong his Hover charm was, and steering would be touch-and-go at best. Besides, the carpet kept flickering in and out of sight.

Plan B was simpler and altogether more sensible, but on the upside, it involved stealing from Uncle Vernon. It was almost worth it, thought Sherlock, slipping half a dozen twenty-pound notes—hardly a month's worth of Mycroft's allowance—from the "secret" hiding place under his uncle's mattress. Even Muggle transportation was better than walking.

"There'll be people," he grumbled to Belinda, who had followed him. "Mindless chatter everywhere. I won't be able to think."

Better than crashing into Big Ben.

"Shut up." Sherlock flung a few notebooks and a brass telescope into his trunk. "I knew I should've bought you a cat carrier."

Belinda looked suitably annoyed and Sherlock turned away to hide one of his rare smiles. His familiar didn't relish the idea of taking the bus anymore than he did. But what choice did they have? It was worth any price to escape Privet Drive.

After several tries, Sherlock had indeed succeeded in lightening his trunk to a fraction of its original weight. But it was still large and unwieldy and had no wheels, and by the time he had wrestled the thing through the front door he didn't fancy dragging it the six blocks to the bus stop on his own. Especially not while carrying the old bookbag in which Belinda hid, curled warmly against his back.

With a surreptitious glance around the neighboring houses, Sherlock pulled his wand out of his sleeve.

"Reducio," he whispered, and after a trembling moment the trunk shrank down a few centimeters.

Sherlock employed a few of Uncle Vernon's choicest swear words and was about to try again when a heavy weight pushed off his shoulder.

"Belinda!"

She sprang into the street before him, and as Sherlock moved to go after her, one of his too-large trainers caught on a corner of the trunk and he sprawled, wand clattering into the street.

"Belinda, what the—?"

There was no time to finish the question; the predatory breathing of an engine had materialized from nowhere and wheels were bearing down on him. With hitherto unsuspected reflexes, Sherlock shoved himself sideways, rolled. The next second he found himself in the gutter, brushing dried leaves out of his hair. Belinda was perched on his abandoned trunk wearing an expression that could only be described as self-satisfied, while an enormous vehicle lumbered to a stop next to them. Sherlock sat up and hastily retrieved his wand, trying to quell the surge of adrenaline still shooting through his limbs.

"Attempted murder?" he spat furiously at Belinda, when he had caught his breath. "Not even Mycroft has ever…"

He trailed off as a skinny, acne-ridden youth in a conductor's cap leapt down from the brilliantly purple bus with a flourish. Purple. Surely, no sane ([seyn], adjective, free from mental derangement, see also 'boring') adult would drive a vehicle like that unless…

"Welcome aboard the Knight Bus, transportation for any stranded witch or wizard!"

Belinda looked at Sherlock. Sherlock looked back.

"You could have just told me," he complained.

He paid his fare as the Knight Bus slowed at King's Cross station, giving his name as "Mycroft Dursley" as a joke; he didn't care for a repeat of Diagon Alley. Thankfully his curls were long enough to hide his scar. Belinda led the way onto the platform, tail waving, and Sherlock, heaving his trunk onto a trolley, caught up in time to see a ginger-haired teenage boy disappear into the brick column separating platforms 9 and 10.

It brought him to a halt, smiling furiously. Despite what Hagrid had told him, despite all he'd seen in Diagon Alley, and his dozens of little experiments in the month since, successful and unsuccessful, it was a shock and a relief to watch someone else doing magic. Purposeful magic.

It was illogical, Sherlock knew; nothing more than his mind playing psychological tricks on him, but it had begun to feel, over the past lonely month, that the magic world was nothing more than a hallucination—that he, and all of his experiments, existed in a dreamy state that would vanish the moment he woke up. Or, more accurately, that the magical world was real but extended no further than the four walls of his small bedroom. That here, as in everything that had ever interested and enchanted him, there was no companionship and never would be.

A second teenager had slipped through the brick wall while he had stood paralyzed, watching. Sherlock shook himself out of his daze and hurried up to it, glancing around surreptitiously. Belinda, in the meantime, had leapt precariously onto his trunk. She ignoring the rattling as Sherlock bumped his way along; her green eyes were fixed on the brick barrier. Sherlock slowed as he neared it.

A rather dumpy woman stood there holding the hand of a brunette girl a few inches shorter than Sherlock. The woman's flaming hair that proclaimed a family relationship with the boys he had seen entering the barrier. She was saying something to the girl. Presumably, in a moment, they too would vanish; Sherlock intended only to watch long enough to see what technique they used. But the woman heard his trolley coming and turned to face him with a wide smile.

"Hello, dearie. Hogwarts too?" she asked, eyes darting from his face to Belinda's. Sherlock confirmed with a nod.

"We're here to see off our boys," the woman told him. "They're a handful, especially the twins; I expect you'll notice them stirring up trouble everywhere, though they shouldn't give you any. You just tell me or Percy if they do. Gryffindors through and through, my boys, though we don't know about Ronald yet…But what's your name?"

All of this in one breath.

Sherlock blinked at her. It occurred to him briefly to use the same joke he had on the Knight Bus, but there was a high probability of future encounters the woman and her unknown quantity of children. And there would be no chance of concealing his identity at Hogwarts. Sherlock was in for the limelight, for better or for worse, all because of something which had happened before he was born and which he didn't completely understand yet. It seemed he was properly a part of the Wizarding World now.

Besides, the woman was kind, and she had seen him right off for what he was. Sherlock liked her face, with its wide freckled cheeks and smile lines, and the chestnut-haired girl standing beside her had reached out a shy hand to stroke Belinda in her favorite spot behind the ears. It was very infrequent that anyone regarded either of them with something other than a scowl.

"I'm Sherlock Potter," Sherlock said, giving in. The reaction wasn't as bad as he'd feared. The girl did give a slight jump when she heard his name, hand covering her mouth. Belinda mewed in indignation at the lost attention, but the stout woman only beamed more broadly.

"Molly and Molly Weasley," she introduced, with a kind of laugh. "It's wonderful to meet you, Sherlock."

Sherlock wondered whether he'd heard correctly, and Mrs. Weasley addressed his confusion.

"Molly is my niece by blood, but my daughter now. She's been with us since my poor brother died in the war." She looked at Sherlock sympathetically, but covered the glance with a cheery, "I don't suppose he ever foresaw the confusion that naming his daughter after me would cause."

The younger Molly let out a quiet huff of laughter, but looking at the light way she swung her adoptive mother's hand, Sherlock didn't think she really minded.

"I see," he murmured, wondering what it would be like to have parents, even adopted ones—and then realizing, with a bit of a jolt, that technically he did. It had never really occurred to him to think of the Dursleys in that light.

Molly was a lucky girl, Sherlock decided, giving her a bit of a nod. It was a relief to realize that he wouldn't be the only student at Hogwarts impacted by this Wizarding War. Maybe there were loads of orphans. Maybe plenty of parents were war heroes, and famous, and no one would pay him much mind. Maybe…

Molly the Younger took this opportunity to spoil his delusions by blurting out, "Are you really Sherlock Potter?"

She was already turning red by the time she said it, but too engrossed in staring at Sherlock to notice her mother's disapproving nudge.

"I am," said Sherlock, grateful that his own pale skin was not prone to flushing. This was going to be precisely as bad as he feared. And to think that a month ago he had bristled at even Mycroft sitting in on what had seemed then the very personal revelation of his parents' deaths and his own part in defeating Voldemort. It didn't seem right that at eleven years old Sherlock was still reeling with information about himself that everyone else in the Wizarding World had known for a decade.

He would have to get used to everyone knowing more than he did about this new world into which he had emerged. But that didn't mean he had to put up with it for long.

"We're both very pleased to meet you, Sherlock," Molly Weasley was telling him, doing her best to cover her daughter's gaffe. "Now, I expect you would like to know about getting onto the platform?"

"Yes," Sherlock said, relieved. And, "please," a moment later.

"It's very simple," instructed Mrs. Weasley. "Nothing to it; no wand-waving or anything like that. You simply walk toward the barrier, confident as you please. Best do it at a bit of a run if you're nervous."

Sherlock cleared his throat. This was unexpected—the fact that no conscious magic was involved, that is. It seemed there were materials in the world that physically reacted (or could be enchanted to react) to one's inner magic in a way that it would not to non-magical peoples. Either that, or anyone brushing against the barrier fell through and there were a lot of very confused Muggles wandering around on the other side.

With this improbable image in his mind, Sherlock directed his trolley at the barrier and pushed through.