Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter

Written for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments): The Triwizard Tournament (Event 1)

Prompt: Hogwarts life is probably the most exciting, stressful, but generally the greatest time of a witch or wizards life. For the first task, you are to write about one of the following events that happen at Hogwarts.

Travelling via the Hogwarts Express

Also written for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments): Muggle Studies

Prompt: Write about someone who is travelling

Word Count: 1, 250 (ish)

Hogwarts is a reflection of the wider Wizarding world. Often, what happens in Hogwarts dictates what occurs in the ministry and vice versa. This is a 2nd person narrative, reflecting on the journey that is Hogwarts, through a brief summary of each year's journey on the Hogwarts Express. (The student was in the year below Harry and Co.)

First Year

You stare at the pillar trying to make yourself brave enough to run at it. A sudden surge of courage later and you're standing on the platform with your parents, holding tight onto their hands because you know you'll have to let go soon.

You climb aboard the scarlett coloured train and stare out of the windows, trying to see your family through the billowing steam.

It's so exciting, to be finally going to Hogwarts but then the train is moving and everyone is waving goodbye. You feel a little sick as you realise that it will be months before you see your family again.

Then, with butterflies in your stomach you make your way through the rowdy carriage, looking for an empty compartment. Hurrying quickly past the busy compartments as you start to panic. Everyone already seems to know each other, all the compartments are full. Finally you find one with a couple of seats spare and you slide open the door nervously.

The scenery whizzes by outside and inside you strike up a conversation with the others in the compartment. By the time it's time to change into your robes you're feeling more relaxed. You can't wait to see the school, to see if the Hall is as wonderful as everyone says it is, to explore all of the secret passageways and to learn to use your magic.

Second Year

This year you can't wait to see your friends again. You quickly hug your family goodbye and then climb eagerly aboard the train. You rush through the carriage until you find the compartment you agreed to meet in. As soon as they arrive you start exchanging stories about the holidays.

When the trolley comes round you buy a pile of sugary treats that your mother would almost certainly disapprove of and share them round. You show off the new spells you learnt over the holidays and give your friends the presents you brought back from your travels.

Then, suddenly, there's something in the window. A black figure, shrouded in a shimmering cloak. The air goes cold and suddenly you feel miserable, as if you can't remember the laughter you shared only moments ago. Then it passes and everyone resumes chattering, frowning as they try and figure out what that thing was. It bothers you, but only for a moment. It's not important right? They wouldn't let anything dangerous on the train.

Third Year

You wave goodbye to your parents and tease your brother as he stands on the platform looking longingly at the train. Next year he'll come with you, but for now he's stuck, left behind for another year.

You find your friends quickly and then settle down. As the train leaves the station you open your Charms textbook and begin reading. This year you have resolved to work harder, you can't afford to slack off anymore.

After about half an hour a boy quietly enters the compartment. You've seen him before- he was in your herbology class last year and he has gorgeous hair. Your eyes meet as he closes the door carefully behind himself. As you continue to work you can feel his eyes on you and you flush red.

Whilst you change into your robes your best friend teases you about it and you act annoyed but you're secretly pleased that for once something gossip-worthy has happened to you.

Fourth Year

A sense of doom hangs over the train. Your parents seem anxious as they wave goodbye, holding you close for longer than normal, making you promise that you'll look after your brother. You help him on, put his suitcase away and stand awkwardly while he shrugs you off, trying to look cool. You leave him, but you know you'll check on him later.

You can't be too careful these days.

Your parents tried to hide it from you but how could they when every newspaper claimed that Dumbledore is a maniac or was filled with pictures of Cedric Diggory's lifeless eyes?

All through the carriage that's all people can talk about. The names echo through the train like a whispered prayer. Cedric Diggory. Dumbledore. Harry Potter. You-Know-Who. It feels colder somehow, and everyone is wondering what will happen, how the school can carry on while the headmaster is accused of madness.

Fifth Year

Everybody knows now. He has returned. Everyone saw the pictures of the ministry, the destruction wrought by his Death Eaters. Last year Umbridge made the school hell, who knows what will happen this year?

Your parents hadn't wanted to send you back to school, but you had to be here. What else could you do? You can't trust anyone. The Ministry can't seem to decide what it believes, or what it wants to believe. Sirius Black is guilty, innocent, dead. Dumbledore is mad, or a hero. Harry Potter is a deluded delinquent one minute, and then they're begging him to help them.

You are cynical, disbelieving. Everyone is trying to keep their heads down, to stay out of harms way. You wish there was something you could do to help, something that wouldn't endanger your family.

Last year, there was some excitement, a stirring of something to come. This year everyone is afraid.

Sixth Year

They made you come back. Everyone knows it's just a way of keeping track of people, a way of controlling you and your family. As you step through the pillar onto the familiar platform, tightly clutching your brother's hand, you see the misery on the faces of the parents forced to say goodbye to their children.

Dumbledore is dead.

You've had a whole summer to get used to it, but you still can't quite believe it. You saw him buried, saw the white marble headstone, but it is still unbelievable. The look of numb shock on everyone else's faces tells you that they too cannot believe it.

This summer awful things have happened. Mysterious disappearances, murders, use of the unforgivables. Aurors and Ministry Officials have become a common sight.

The train is divided. It's not enforced, not official, but the Houses remain separate, and muggleborns stat away from the purebloods. To disobey these ubofficial rules is to inccur a thorough beating. It's quiet, everyone reflecting on what horrors await them.

Seventh Year

Finally. It feels as if aeons have passed since you were last here. The world has changed.

You climb aboard the train, wistfully remembering the first time you stepped aboard. Since then, a war has come and passed, people have died. The carriage is full of the laughter of friends who will never laugh again, their memories still rushing through the crowd.

The summer was spent rebuilding, piecing together the damaged world left after war. Now it is time to make a new life in this new world.

Sometimes it feels like a dream, and you will wake up any moment now and find yourself back in that compartment where you sat so long ago.

You never thought you'd be glad to be going back to school, but you realise that something as normal as homework is all that you need. Something to remind you that you're still a child, that the weight of the world should not rest on your shoulders.