Is This Love?

In the swaying train corridor, Hannah, her face full of anxiety, led Cedric back the way they had come.

Thud!

Perhaps because she had been running too fast, or perhaps because of the train's rocking, Hannah accidentally tripped and fell.

Hearing the commotion beside him, Cedric turned back and helped Hannah up. "Are you okay?"

Thinking of how Kyle and Draco's group had been at each other's throats when she left, Hannah shook her head firmly. "I'm fine. Go find Kyle and the others, Cedric!"

Cedric gave Hannah a glance. After confirming that she was not seriously hurt, he turned and ran off.

After Cedric left, Hannah sat where she was, her little face nearly twisted into a knot from the intense pain.

"Hiss—" Hannah sucked in a breath and carefully rolled up her pant leg. Just as she had expected, her left ankle was already badly swollen. "It hurts so much!"

The blonde little girl rubbed her ankle with teary eyes.

Meanwhile, Cedric crossed the connection between two carriages and ran straight into the three who had come back to look for Hannah.

"Cedric?" Kyle had not expected to run into his old acquaintance here.

"Kyle? Are you all right?" Cedric looked Kyle over from head to toe. "Hannah told me you got into a conflict with the Malfoy boy."

Kyle patted him on the shoulder. "We're fine. The Malfoys are the ones with problems. Where's Hannah?"

"She fell down just now. I'll take you to her."

The four of them hurried off to find Hannah again.

Before long, Kyle and the others found Hannah bracing herself against the carriage wall and slowly limping forward.

"Hannah!" Hermione hurried over to support her.

Since Hannah had sprained her ankle, they did not continue looking for Neville's toad. Instead, they found a nearby compartment and sat down.

After helping Hannah onto a seat, Kyle crouched down. "Let me see how badly you're hurt."

Eh?

Before Hannah could react, Kyle had already rolled up her pant leg.

Seeing her foot held in Kyle's hand, the blonde little girl's face instantly turned bright red, steam practically pouring from her head.

A fluorescent green glow lit up in Kyle's palm. Hannah felt as if her sprained left foot had been soaked in warm water, and the pain gradually began to fade.

"Mmm~" The blonde little girl let out a comfortable little moan.

What an embarrassing sound...

The moment she realized it, she covered her mouth.

Fortunately, the others in the compartment did not give her any strange looks.

As Hannah watched Kyle treating her with his head lowered in concentration, she gradually became lost in thought.

In just a few dozen seconds, the little girl had already picked out names for their children.

A moment later, Kyle raised his head.

"I'm not very skilled with healing magic, so this is all I can do. It'll still hurt a little when you walk."

"Hannah? Hannah? Hannah!" Hermione waved her hand back and forth in front of Hannah's face three times. Only then did Hannah, still immersed in her romance fantasy, wake from her beautiful daydream.

"Eh, what is it?" Hannah looked dazed.

Hermione, who had already changed out of her Muggle clothes, pointed irritably out the window. The sky outside had already grown quite dark.

"The train's about to arrive, and you still haven't changed into your wizard robes."

The other three boys in the compartment had long since gone to other compartments to change. Only Hannah, the dazed fool still lost in her thoughts, had not changed yet.

"Oh, right." Hannah finally came to her senses and hurriedly pulled out her uniform from her trunk to change into.

The Hogwarts Express gradually slowed down before finally coming to a stop at a tiny, pitch-black platform.

The darkness and cold outside the carriage stood in stark contrast to the warmth of the train compartments.

In September, the temperature in Britain had already dropped quite low, especially now that it was nighttime.

The night chill made them shiver the moment they stepped out of the carriage, and they pulled their robes tightly around themselves.

Only Kyle, a Taijutsu expert, remained perfectly calm.

"See you in the Great Hall, then." Cedric waved to the other four. As a third-year student, he would not be going with the first-years. Instead, he would enter the castle through Hogwarts's main gates by carriage.

After Cedric left, the other three stuck close behind Kyle, their backbone.

They were only eleven-year-old children. It was only natural for them to feel afraid and nervous after leaving home alone to study at Hogwarts, hundreds of kilometers away.

Fortunately, with veteran Kyle leading them, their nerves eased somewhat.

A light swung above the students' heads. It was the lantern held by Hagrid, who stood over three meters tall. He shouted through the crowd, "First-years! First-years, over here!"

"Hey! Hagrid!" Kyle waved at him.

"Oh! Kyle! Have a good summer?" Hagrid spotted Kyle easily.

Among a group of first-years with an average height of barely over 1.3 meters, Kyle stood out like a crane among chickens.

"Pretty good," Kyle answered.

Hagrid was busy maintaining order on the platform and making sure no first-years had been left behind, so after greeting Kyle, he hurried away.

Kyle noticed that after walking away, Hagrid greeted a small, skinny boy. Beneath the boy's messy black bangs, a faint lightning-shaped scar was barely visible.

That should be Harry Potter.

Looking over the sea of bobbing heads and the chattering little wizards around him, Hagrid smiled beneath his thick beard.

"Come on, follow me. Any more first-years? Watch your step!"

Hagrid led the first-years onto a steep, narrow path.

The road was uneven and the ground slippery. Dense branches on both sides of the path blocked the already weak moonlight, making the difficult trail even harder to traverse.

Not to mention that the little wizards were wearing robes that somewhat hindered their movements.

Kyle turned to look at little Hannah, who was still limping. "Can you walk by yourself?"

"Um, I can manage," Hannah answered softly.

Seeing the girl putting on a brave front, Kyle crouched down. "Forget it. Get on. I'll carry you."

Eh?

Could she really?

Hannah tried her best to hide her excitement and obediently climbed onto Kyle's back.

Feeling the boy's broad, warm back, Hannah happily buried her face in the crook of her arm.

Is this love?

If Kyle knew what she was thinking, he would definitely throw her off his back.

Kyle was not some pervert obsessed with little girls. There was no way he would like an eleven-year-old flat little girl like her.

What he liked were curvy older women.

Like Tsunade, Mei Terumi from Naruto: Shippuden—Boruto's version could get lost—as well as Konan, Hinata, Nami, Robin, Hancock, and so on.

For some reason, Hermione suddenly felt a little sour inside. Clearly, she had been here first...

No, clearly, she had known Kyle first...

Hermione turned around and walked at the front of their group of four. Out of sight, out of mind.

There were no lights on the path. They relied entirely on Hagrid's lantern for illumination, and the ground beyond its reach was littered with vines and obstacles. From time to time, they heard little wizards slipping and falling nearby.

Hermione frowned. Did none of these little wizards know to take out their wands and use Lumos to light the way?

Just as Kyle had said, the quality of these newly enrolled little wizards was truly worrying.

"Lumos." Soft white light spread from the tip of Hermione's wand.

Once the uneven mountain path was lit by the wandlight, it became easier to walk on.

"Nicely done, Hermione," Kyle praised.

Being praised by Dumbledore—though not the Headmaster Dumbledore—was still enough to make Hermione happy.

But even with Lumos lighting the way, the clumsy Neville still slipped, just as expected.

Just as his face was about to make intimate contact with the ground, a hand reaching in from the side caught him in time.

"Watch your step, Neville."