Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts...

Older students were mulling about and being generally boring people. Natalie hoped she never grew up to be like them, she didn't ever want to be quite such a boring mcborington. The corridor started to clear as people were finding compartments, leaving Natalie enough room to cartwheel down the hall, her favorite mode of transportation. Not surprisingly, she ran into what turned out to be the door to an almost empty compartment. She slid the door open and smiled at the person inside. "Hi, can I join you?" she asked cheerily.

Ethan didn't want to sit awkwardly by himself in a compartment, but as Ethan looked around he realised that he was in fact the only one in the compartment; what a depressing thought. Hearing a noise, Ethan looked up to see a girl standing at the compartment door. His face split into a grin.

"Course! Take a seat! I'm Ethan!" Ethan said rather enthusiastically. He really was ecstatic that he finally had a chance to talk to someone on the train, as opposed to sitting on his own looking like a loser with no friends.

"Hi Ethan, I'm Natalie!" she replied cheerily. It wasn't often that she met someone who was as generally happy as she was, which he seemed to be. If he was, they were going to get along great.

"Are you a first year?" she asked curiously. She hadn't seen him at school the previous year, but it would have been easy to miss him since Natalie was usually off in her own little world, oblivious to everything happening around her.

Ethan wanted to grin again, but felt as though he would crack his face in two if he didn't stop acting like a crazed person. He opted for a smile instead.

"Nice to meet you, Natalie!" he said, quite chipper still, even though he wasn't grinning so insanely. She didn't seem to fazed by his positivity, which was a good thing.

"Yup Yup! First year! Super nervous, but excited all the same," he told her, feeling comfortable talking to her, even though he had only just met her 30 seconds ago.

"Feel free to slap me if I'm talking at beyond human comprehension levels. Really, I'm not kidding." He tried to straighten out his smile, but just ended up looking like he was constipated. Fail.

"I am kidding, but you're more than welcome to abuse me in any form you wish. My favourite is verbal. Easily disguised, you see."

Ethan was well on his way to becoming the infamous crazy first year. Oh well... Ethan thought. I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!

Something about being around someone who was just as silly and quirky as she was made Natalie happy. And Landon wasn't around, so she wasn't trying extra hard to stay calm and act like a normal person. "That's how everybody is their first year," she said back just as quickly.

If he thought that she was going to slap him, he was sorely mistaken. If anything, he would have to slap her before she would slap him. "I'm a third year," she said with a bright smile. "A word of advice for you, don't play armor tag in the first floor corridor. Professor Hamilton thinks it's too noisy," she shook her head gravely. She didn't think that the potions professor ever did anything fun. He was a stick in the mud, but Ethan sure didn't seem to be.

"Tell me, Ethan, are you familiar with the Gagglehopper?" she asked, needing to test the waters a bit with this kid before she got too excited to know him.

Ethan placed an expression on his face which he hoped was a Yes-I'm-Paying-100%-Attention-To-What-Your-Saying-Whilst-Really-Thinking-About-My-Shoelaces type of facial expression.

"Right! No Armour tag first floor corridor. Although I am rather interested in how one would play Armour Tag. Perhaps you could show me far away from this Professor Hamilton."

Ethan felt like a puppy high on something illegal, but kept his hands firmly on his head, as though he was trying to protect his hair from a Gagglehopper. "Yes! Oh yes! I've read about them in a magazine. Fascinating creatures, although I am rather attached to my hair."

Natalie's excitement at meeting someone as nutters as her was increased exponentially by the fact that Ethan actually knew what a Gagglehopper was and she didn't have to draw him a picture of it. Not knowing how to express her excitement, she hopped up and gave him a big hug. He was already turning into the little brother that she always wished that she had but never actually got.

"You're alright kid," she grinned. "You and me are going to get along great."

Since it was alreayd something that they had in common, she kept talking about the Gagglehopper. "You know, there's one that lives in Centenary Park in London. Me and this girl named Liz went looking for it."

Ethan, still with his hands covering the majority of his hair, was suddenly hugged. He couldn't particularly move his hands, due to Natalie's body being in the way, so he did a sort of body sway, type thing to reciprocate the hugging that was going on.

"Awesome," he said. "I enjoy getting along with others. It's the moment when people decide that they'd rather not get along with you, that I start to feel sad."

Ethan's eyes widened. "Aww! I was just near that park the other day! I can't believe I missed it! Bugger!"

"Well those people are no fun and we don't like them anyway," Natalie replied, making herself comfortable on the seat next to him.

"Ethan, Ethan, Ethan, Ethan, Ethan, Ethan," she said each one in a different accent and with a different tone of voice, like she was experimenting with how she liked to say it the best. "So what house do you want to be in, Ethan? I'm in Hufflepuff!"

Ethan laughed at the different ways Natalie was pronouncing his name. "I like the Australian version. Very bogan!" he said, using an Australian term he recently learnt.

The youth shrugged. "I really don't know much about the houses. I saw some strange names in the Robe shop when I was in Diagon Alley, but I didn't know, at the time, what they were about." He shrugged again. " I haven't met very many people yet so I guess I'm hoping for Hufflepuff then, if you're in that house."

Ethan thought about the actual word 'house'. "Do we have to live in separate places or something? That would be weird."