Scratching his chin, Raphael couldn't help but wonder. It looked like he had been given false info... he'd have to go and sort that particular source out... For the first time in a while, though, he didn't want to be apart from people. Maybe he'd knocked his head quite hard after all... he grinned at Nathaniel and wandered over to Sarah.

"Hello again. You sorted things out a bit then?" said Sarah with a smile.

Nathaniel trailed behind Raphael, avoiding a commuter with more luggage than he possessed - which was quite impressive actually - and scooped up his coffee again.

Raphael couldn't help but give her a slightly downtrodden look, a half smile that was dying of embarrassment.

"Where's Nine and Three Quarters?" Nathaniel asked her, so that Raphael didn't have to answer.

Sarah pointed at the wall between the two platforms - "There"

Raphael glanced at Nathaniel. 'Thanks' he mouthed.

"Did you get coffee for me, Sarah? Where is it? Coffee sounds good..." Raphael mumbled into incoherancy.

"Uh.... okaaaaay...." Nathaniel said slowly. "Please tell me we don't have to magic it open....."

She handed Raphael a coffee

"Yeah, it looks a little..." said Raphael.

"Like a wall...?" Nathaniel supplied helpfully at the same time.

"Like a solid wall?" Sarah said at the same moment.

"I was going for solid, yeah. Very... er... solid..." Raphael finished.

"Wall." Nathaniel said bleakly.

"Well," announced Raphael, "the world can't get weirder. There are walls that are wall like. There are cats. Cats are nice."

"Well" she said, "I had a think about it."

Nathaniel almost choked on his coffee. "Cats are Not nice."

"I told you the universe was weird." Raphael nodded emphatically.

"About getting through." Sarah persevered.

"How does one do it... exactly?" Nathaniel questioned.

"And then, there is the fact that my wand droops..." Raphael seemed still to be talking about weird worlds.

"I wouldn't go around saying that too much at school." she said to him with a wink.

"Trust me," he replied, "I won't."

"One just does apparently. I never have mind you." She caught up with Nathaniel's question. "This is my first time to take the Express."

"You never have?" asked Raphael curiously. "What about last year?"

Nathaniel looked sideways at Sarah and said slowly, "So you don't know how it works, either?"

"If it works...?" Raphael added.

"I know how it works - I've just not gone through it before." she hastened to reassure them.

"So it works... how...?" Nathaniel prompted.

"So, I was thinking..." Sarah tried again.

Raphael sighed to himself. One of those days, he thought..."We link hands, click our heels together, and go home to Kansas?"

"We take the trolley, and you two just hold on to me. One on each arm." Sarah gave up on the rhetoric and just outlined her plan. "I push the trolley through the barrier. Hey presto we're through."

"Two brothers ramming their lil'sis into a wall. Sounds fun. It'll be believable."

"Sure." Nathaniel echoed weakly.

"Brothers? Metaphorically? Well, I'll be in front. Apparently the trick is just to not to stop. Just to go for it."

Raphael couldn't help but be glad for the fact she'd be in front ...although he had a sinking suspicion that if Sarah walked into a wall, he'd take the rap.

Nathaniel snorted laughter. "Either that or...." The expression of laughter died suddenly, and he looked bitter. "Yeah. Metaphorically."

Turning 'round, one green eyed guy looked at the other. 'what'? Raphael mouthed.

"Forget it. Let's ram our faces into the wall." Recklessly Nathaniel tucked his arm through Sarah's. "Lead on, fair maiden."

"I'm going to finish my coffee," Raphael announced, and promptly burned his tongue. But then, he followed suit, only after at least three words he should not have known passed his lips.

"So, we just walk. And crack into the wall." There was a word for this... Raphael thought... "Fun. Sounds... fun."

"Crazy teens." Sarah rolled her eyes a bit.

Raphael adjusted the straps on his backpack,tightened them a little, and looked heroic as he walked.

A few steps from the wall and the kitten began to squirm. "Not now, kitty." Nathaniel said irritably. Half a step from the wall the kitten came scrabbling out of his pocket and adhered itself to his arm with all its claws.

"You alright?!" spluttered Raphael.

Sarah looked ahead and thought of the magic that was real that pervaded her being.

"AAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHH!!" Nathaniel said eloquently for the second time that day, and let go of Sarah's arm to swat at the kitten. He totally missed the walking through the wall bit, he was so busy trying to remove the cat from his arm. By the time he extracted all its claws without hurting it or him more, there was a platform in front of him. "Damn..." he said, slightly panicked at the absence of the other two.

A shudder passed through Raphael. For a second... for a second... had he passed through? Falling out onto Nathaniel, Raphael coughed and spluttered as ice fell into his lungs. "Chr-Nath-Sar-" he choked

Sarah was right behind him. "That was interesting. Like flying high in the air."

"Cold," he forced, through a frozen jaw. "Why was that so ... brr... cold?"

"Hey..." Nathaniel caught the flailing Raphael in the crook of one arm. "Here, finish your coffee... it wasn't cold... I missed it totally."

"Passing through the barrier - have some coffee." Sarah confirmed.

To Raphael, it had felt like... only half of him had made it through... and then had ripped the other half through after....

The platform was quite busy with adult witches and wizards seeing off their kids.

Grabbing the coffee, and secretly making a wish for good old farmhouse scrumpy, Raphael downed it.

"Better," he said, with his neck locking a little. "I hate that," he commented.

"Hate what?"

"That wall," replied Raphael. "Once and I hate it."

"Come on you two lovely wizards-in-training." Sarah said. "Let's grab a carriage and make ourselves comfy."

"Twice a year will be enough for me. Once on the way there and once on the way back for summer." Nathaniel scowled at the kitten and tossed it casually up to his shoulder, where it landed neatly.

"Lovely?" replied Raphael, recovering a little in the face of praise.

"Yes." she said, slightly embarrassed.

"You," instructed Raphael to the cat, "have hidden talents."

Nathaniel caught onto what she'd said and stomped ahead, furiously blushing behind the curtain of long hair.

"Brilliant pet you have there, Nathaniel." Raphael shrugged to say: 'lovely, yeah, okay, we can deal with that...'

"I think you embarrassed him..." whispered Raphael to Sarah...

"It's a cat." Nathaniel said over his shoulder. "You didn't expect it to be Normal, did you?"

"Does it have any diabolical plans to rule the world and ban dog food?" Raphael tossed back.

Sarah giggled at that remark, before saying quietly to Raphael, "I didn't mean to."

"Doesn't matter," whispered Raphael back...

"Well," announced Raphael, catching up to Nathaniel, "we gonna leap on this train? This section looks empty."

"Hmmm?" Nathaniel suddenly realised he'd stomped halfway up the platform. "Yeah... about here looks good.."

"We need to stow this stuff away as well." Sarah added.

Something occurred to Raphael. "hey... are you allowed to show us magic yet?"

"Mind out, let me get to my gods awful trunk...." Nathaniel started heaving stuff off the trolley and up into the carriage.

"Yeah, it's kinda... heavy," Raphael told Nathaniel.

Sarah pointed at luggage trolley obediently following them now. Nathaniel promptly dropped a backpack and stared at the self-propelled luggage trolley.

"That looks useful. You did that? You can do fireballs too, can't you?" Raphael said enthusiastically to Sarah. "being that fireballs... ah, that's the best. They're like... fire, but a ball..."

Sarah blushed. "I'm not allowed to."

"Er..." Raphael looked confused.

"Fireballs." Sarah clarified.

Raphael stared at her. "Why ever not? What did you do?" he asked, grinning at the idea that Sarah had accidentally torched someone.

"Long story. My parents don't approve of that sort of thing."

"Raph, don't be rude." Nathaniel elbowed him in the ribs none too gently.

"Old man," grinned Raphael at Nathaniel.

Nathaniel shrugged. The kitten leapt up into the carriage and started poking around.

"Oh I've never torched anyone but I did some damage to some property when I was younger." Sarah admitted.

Raphael couldn't help it: he raised an eyebrow.

Sarah shrugged, "No big deal"

"I set fire to my mothers Persian rug when I was four." Nathaniel said brightly. "We've all done it to one degree or another."

"I haven't." Raphael looked from one to the other. "I haven't."

"Kids of today." Nathaniel threw his trunk up into the carriage with barely concealed anger at something.

"No? Never played with fire?" Sarah asked Raphael.

"Played with fire... ya, but... are you two talking about magic, yeah? Did you set fire to things by magic? By accident?" prompted Raphael.

"Matches." Nathaniel looked at Raphael. "Didn't you hear me earlier? I'm a Muggle."

"By accident - yeah." Sarah was obviously deeply embarrassed by the admission.

"I thought someone said that... like... you sometimes... er... before..." Raphael slumped. "Sarah - someone said... like... burnout. Without training you can burn out. So...like... it kinda... gets out. I dunno. It's not happened to me. Or if it has no-one ever commented..."

"Oh. Magic can be like a wildfire. Runs on life energy." Sarah seemed grateful for the chance to change the subject.

Raphael looked at Nathaniel. he hoped he hadn't embarrassed him. Twice in two minutes was a little excessive...

"If there's magic in me, it's buried deep and likely to stay that way." Nathaniel said flatly, throwing his backpack up into the carriage with rather more force than was necessary.

"A lot of serpent imagery in world mythology alludes to it." Sarah continued.

Gulping, and a frown stealing over his face, Raphael said: "I dunno."

"Let's face it, Hogwarts managed to miss me for four years.... " Nathaniel continued. "What, mythology alludes to me buried deep?"

"An inner fire which is activated by doing magic." she patiently explained.

"...Hogwarts managed to miss us for four years..." mumbled Raphael but only to himself.

"The only inner fire I have is fed by bitterness." Nathaniel said quietly, and got into the train.

Raphael looked at Sarah. He shrugged, but it was a question.

'What do we do about him?' he was asking her. 'What do we go?' he didn't want to say it out loud.

She gave him a look that conveyed her concern.

Nodding, Raphael followed Nathaniel on board, with Sarah not far behind.

Nathaniel found a corner seat in the compartment after kicking his trunk out of the way. A moment later the kitten dropped from the overhead rack into his lap, looking smug.

"That kitty is the coolest." said Sarah sitting by him.

Opening the door, and looking into the corridor, Raphael thought for a second about what he was gonna say. It had to be right.

"It is, huh." Nathaniel said disbelievingly.

Slamming the door, Raphael sat on the floor of the carriage under the window with his legs crossed. He didn't want a seat. Seats weren't fun.

"You could sit on the seat, you know." Nathaniel looked over the kitten at the boy on the floor.

"Nah," replied Raphael. "It's fun on the floor." The thought that it was weird didn't cross his mind...

"I'm looking forward to your sortings tonight." Sarah said brightly.

Nathaniel shrugged and absently fussed the kitten, which was looking around like it owned the compartment. "I'm glad one of us is."

"You'll be in Ravenclaw - I hope." Sarah continued. "It would be great if you both were."

Raphael rubbed his left hand against his left temple. The sorting... not good...

Sarah looked at Raphael. "Hey you OK?"

"I am afraid of it." Nathaniel said quietly, looking at the cat.

Raphael gulped, and sighed. "Nah. I... I just don't..." he shrugged and looked at the floor.

"I'm sure it will all be fine." she said reassuringly.