Discimer - I don’t own anything. As the corporations say these days, you will own nothing & be happy. I don't, and have never cimed to, own Marvel or Disney or any of its characters. With that out of the way, let’s goooo!

  Hogsmeade Train Station

  –Damian Hawthorne–

  He smiled as he clocked Harry’s magical signature, sitting with three other magical signatures, all of them much rougher compared to Harry's structured feeling magic, most likely due to the extensive training that Dumbledore put Harry through.

  The train had slowed down immensely, and judging by the distance, it should stop within the next few minutes. With a wave of his hand, his magic suffused his surroundings in a short spike as the small bag was retrieved from underneath his seat, floating in front of him as he looked out the window, waiting for the train to come to a halt.

  As he was looking at the quite archaic train tracks and the shoddy way they had tried to hide the enchantments on them, he paused, looking at the bag that was still floating in front of him, waiting to follow him when he got out of the train.

  Sighing, he let his magic recede as the bag sadly plopped itself on the floor. Crouching, he picked up the bag and kept it at his side, reminding himself that this was not his ir anymore. After the initial check that McGonagall did on his living circumstances and the interference that the Hawthorne family ran on the Ministry side to allow him to get out of that horrible and probably unsafe apartment, he had never lived in a mundane dwelling, living in either his ir or spending time moving about the country, exploring as much as he could without tipping anyone off.

  Due to that, he had seemingly forgotten that not only could he not dispy even a fraction of his current magical capabilities, he also could not remain completely clueless about magic because he was a member of the Hawthorne family, having come back from wherever he was.

  It did not help that his parents had raised quite a ruckus when they came to Hogwarts, demanding access to the Sacred Artifacts to look for him, becoming national news at the time, not that it was particurly hard to cross that bar, as it was frankly pathetic how the Daily Prophet worked and what their standard for news was.

  So, after today, for months at a time, he will be unable to use magic as freely as he did in the past. He would have to particurly look out for his enchantment trances, as he liked to call them, when he got a particurly interesting idea, and he just had to try it out, current circumstances be damned.

  It was very hard to resist that urge without a very good reason. If he was in the middle of something important, like making sure Harry Potter was not abducted by a pureblood vampire for his special blood or something, then, sure, he could easily ignore that urge. It remained to be seen if he could do the same if he was just sitting in a cssroom, learning about Goblin History. Most probably not.

  Ugh. Astral Projection would have been so useful in this scenario, but for him to learn that, he had to graduate. A circle, if you will.

  He leaned back into his seat, one hand on the bag, wondering for the tenth time if it was worth doing all this the right way instead of trying to find a magical domain not under the pseudo rule of Kamar Taj or the Ancient One, to learn Dimensional Energy Sorcery.

  Then, he remembered the portal he saw that was used by the Shepherd of all people to haul vampire thralls across the world and quickly shoved that thought down deep, as it made him realise that there were probably zero accessible pces on Earth that could help him learn Sorcery.

  His neck bobbed forward as the train slowly came to a halt, the steam engine creating a satisfying noise as the sound of cabin doors opening, luggage being shuffled, and people talking to each other as they got off the train reached his ears. His hand twitched as he quickly grabbed the luggage and got up, ready to open the cabin door, only to stop as he heard an announcement telling the First Years to keep their luggage in the cabin as it would be carried separately to the Castle.

  His eyes twitched as he stopped himself from using his magic to open the door, and extended his hand to open it. As soon as he did so, multiple gazes were attached to his standing form. They soon slid off as they probably realised that he was not the Golden Boy or the Boy Who Lived. He smiled slightly as the people just continued walking, probably seniors, as all of them were just as tall or a little bit taller than him.

  Once again, he tanked the ROB for this enhanced body as he was now 5 feet 7 inches at just 11 years old. Though, it remained to be seen whether his body just reached its optimal height sooner or if his height growth rate remained the same as a normal human, where he would reach his peak height around 18. If so, it might actually become inconvenient for him, seeing as he would be just over seven feet towards the end, making him a giant.

  Shrugging those thoughts off, he just began walking in between the students, keeping to himself as most of them were seniors and, as such, already had formed their own groups. Getting off the train was easy, and the station was a stark contrast to the ptform back in London. It was old, small, and could best be described as dingy and bare.

  It made sense since no Station Master was necessary for this pce and since the entire train ran on magic, maintenance and storage space were unnecessary. No security either, he thought to himself as he got out of the train, following the magical signature of one Harry Potter, who was already quite a bit further away from the station, towards the ke he saw, while the vast majority of the magical signatures he felt were heading the other way.

  Quite a x view towards security, he thought to himself as he spotted the small group of first years with the uniquely built Hagrid waving at them animatedly, with an honest to god ntern in his hands. God, these people really used such outdated tools, even when compared to the rest of the magical world, let alone the non magical world.

  Thoughts for security, for people management, for efficient transport, for emergency bunkers, for a more robust train system, for automated magical weapons, teleportation sequences, illusions, asphyxiation wards, and more fshed through his mind by the time he reached the now growing group of First Years, as Hagrid waited for the rest.

  Mentally noting those thoughts and reminding himself to actually implement those once he had a modicum of powers anywhere, he began going through the gathered group of First Years. He spotted Neville immediately, Ron and Hermione were immediately noticeable, gathered around Harry.

  Though, looking closely, he could see that Harry was maintaining distance from Ron even as the boy clung to the Boy Who Lived. His brows furrowed as he remembered a vast amount of fanfictions from his past life, painting Ron as this evil mastermind who only got close to Harry so that the Weasleys could get their hands on that sweet Potter Fortune. Some even went as far as to paint Hermione as a co conspirator, all in a bid to get that Potter Money.

  Shaking his head internally, he dismissed them for what they were, a fantasy picture painted for characters that the author did not like. For Merlin’s sake, the kids were 11, and even if magic helped wizards mature(both physically and mentally) far faster than non magical people, it was not to such an extent that 11 year olds could become gold diggers and traitors of the highest order.

  After the famous Trio, there were a bunch of other kids as well, but none that he could recognise immediately, aside from Luna Lovegood, not because he knew how she looked, because he did know Neville’s appearance from a newspaper clipping, but because of her magic. It was… unique, in ways that he could not accurately describe.

  It felt light, if magic could even be felt like that. It was the stark opposite of what he felt from Volde’s Horcrux from the Gaunt Shack. He still hadn’t found a way to reliably destroy that, aside from throwing it to the Sun, and even then, that action ran the risk of angering the Sun God or something equally absurd like that.

  He might have to look into her, or her family, to see if they had any history of a rare bloodline trait or something, like the Bcks have with their shape shifting.

  After Hagrid finally corralled the remaining two members of his css, Hagrid led them through a path that could be best described as cancelble. Yeah, any half decent parent would object to their children, especially 11 year olds, taking such a path with such clear tripping hazards in the way, with rocks, and pointy sticks id at the sides of the road. It was dark as well, with the only source of illumination being the tiny Lantern in Hagrid’s hands. Hands that were far too high for most kids here to reliably see what was on the road they were walking.

  “Mind the branches!” Hagrid said as he mentioned a branch that could have hit him in the face, the same branch that wouldn't hurt anyone here even if they magically doubled in size, which, well, could be a risk if the kids knew any magic at all, let alone the incredibly advanced field of self transfiguration.

  After a couple of minutes of walking through a path that would have led to schools in the future being shut down in the non magical world, especially since two kids actually did fall down and scrape their knees, they reached the Great Lake.

  He eyed the tiny, dingy, and clearly patched boats with suspicion, as Hagrid made sure that only 4 students boarded each boat. He was with three other kids, all of them likely pureblood as they made sure to eye him with disdain, as he was wearing his regur clothing, a T-shirt, and comfy pants.

  He ignored them as the boats were propelled forward in a smooth motion, as the roughly 11 boats sailed across the Great Lake, towards the giant, magical castle in the distance. Already, he’d felt them entering the wards’ area with a weak spell cast on his body. His eyebrows rose as the spell tried to take hold of his magic, to feed off of his own magic until such a time arrived that it dissolved automatically.

  So, this was the infamous trace. It was…pathetic. It was so bad he could barely control himself from flexing his magic and letting this waste of magic wash off his body as it was starved of magic. Ignoring the mediocre attempt by the government to try to track any magic usage around him, he looked at the Castle looming ahead, noting the senior students already entering the Castle ahead of them.

  If he was not wrong, they rode in carriages pulled by Theastrals. Fascinating creatures that needed a specific condition to be fulfilled to be visible to the eyes. He could sense their magic, faint and fleeting as it was, and he should be able to see them since he hadn’t just witnessed death but caused a fair number of deaths as well.

  He could also sense the Giant Squid swimming under them, as Neville, already a nervous mess, fell down into the ke and had to be put back into the boat by one of the Giant Squid’s limbs. The magical Giant Squid had very long limbs, capable of locating Neville and putting him back into the boat with its main body lying near the bed of the Lake.

  By its magic levels, it would not be a particurly dangerous creature, but its sheer mass and the measurability of its limbs made it an interesting creature, nonetheless.

  The boats stopped moving as they all entered an underground harbor of sorts, softly lit by magical nterns. The first two boats docked themselves first and the 8 kids got off, then the two boats veered off into the Lake as the second batch repeated the process, and so on and so forth.

  Soon, all 40 of them were standing out in the underground harbor, freezing cold as the boats disappeared into the distance, and they were corralled into a passageway that had stairs in them, presumably to enter Hogwarts for the first time.

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