Hidden Wings - Part I

The Feast

The weather remained undecided as they travelled further and farther north. Rain spattered the windows in a half-hearted way, then the sun put in a feeble appearance before clouds drifted over it once more. When darkness fell and lamps came on inside the carriages, Luna rolled up The Quibbler, put it carefully away in her bag and started having a conversation with Neville.

Mioha was sitting with her forehead pressed against the train window, trying to get a first distant glimpse of Hogwarts, but it was a moonless night and the rain-streaked window was grimy.
The others had looked at her questioningly when she had returned, but she'd have to tell them later. After all, Mioha couldn't quite understand herself what had happened.

"We'd better change", said Hermione at last, and all of them opened their trunks with difficulty and pulled on their school robes. She and Ron pinned their prefect badges carefully to their chests. Mioha smirked as she saw Ron checking his reflection in the black window.

At last, the train began to slow down and they heard the usual racket up and down the corridor as everybody scrambled to get their luggage and pets assembled, ready to get on. As Ron and Hermione were supposed to supervise all this, they disappeared from the carriage again, leaving Mioha and the others behind.

They shuffled out of the compartment, feeling the first sting of the night air on their faces as they joined the crowd in the corridor. Slowly, they moved towards the doors. Mioha could smell the pine trees that lined the path down to the lake. She stepped down onto the platform and looked around, listening for the familiar call of "firs'-years over 'ere . . . firs'-years . . ."

But it did not come. Instead, a quite different voice, a brisk female one, was calling out, "First-years line up over here, please! All first-years to me!"

A lantern came swinging towards Mioha and by its light she saw the prominent chin and severe haircut of Professor Grubbly-Plank, the witch who had taken over Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures lessons for a while the previous year.

Where's Hagrid?, she thought confused and pushed herself through the crowd.

Outside the Hogsmeade station, Mioha made her way to the stagecoaches that always took the students above first year up to the castle. As always, thestrals pulled the coaches, and Mioha made sure to keep her distance from them.
The fleshless horses, with their black coats clinging to their skeletons, snorted agitatedly when they caught her scent. Their dragon-like heads turned left and right, and the one nearest to Mioha stared at her with its pupil-less white eyes.

They still didn't like her. And they probably never would.

Mioha carefully walked around a thestral, and found Harry, Luna, Hermione and Ron sitting in one coach. Waving at them, she joined Neville and Ginny in another one, although they didn't seem to see the thestrals.

Rattling and swaying, the carriages moved in convoy up the road. When they passed between the tall stone pillars topped with winged boars on either side of the gates to the school grounds, Mioha and Ginny leaned forward to try and see whether there were any lights on in Hagrid's cabin by the Forbidden Forest, but the grounds were in complete darkness. Hogwarts Castle, however, loomed ever closer: a towering mass of turrets, jet black against the dark sky, here and there a window blazing fiery bright above them.