The nearly month-long stay with the Weasley family was the happiest month Harry had experienced in the past ten years.
If anything had made it slightly less than perfect, it was probably Mr. Arthur undoing Dudley's pig-tail Transfiguration when he came to pick Harry up, and Tris dragging him out to exercise every day.
Tris was downright terrifying.
Harry regretted agreeing to exercise with Tris in the first place, but as a boy, he still had an earnest streak of pride.
He had given his word, so he had to follow through.
And so, for nearly a month, Harry and Tris endured more than twenty days of intense training while the other Weasley children watched with grins on their faces.
Now, at last, it was almost time for school to start.
Harry felt happy from head to toe.
Tris felt rather differently from Harry. He was suffering and enjoying himself at the same time.
The enjoyment came from his system finally activating.
After twenty-eight consecutive days of exercise, the system activated as promised, bringing him plenty of tangible benefits. The suffering came from the fact that, once it activated, the exercise requirements not only remained, but increased in intensity by ten percent.
Tris was getting a little nervous.
A ten-percent increase might not seem like much, but it had been less than a month! How would it increase from here? If it kept rising by ten percent in under a month, things would get ugly!
With compound growth, it would double in just over half a year and increase tenfold in two years!
He could handle jogging one kilometer now, but if that really became ten kilometers in two years, well, wouldn't he be running all day?
Grind Dog System, you can't grind me down like this.
With those anxious thoughts on his mind, September first arrived.
Starting on the twenty-eighth, Tris had everyone going to Hogwarts that year make a checklist. They had to list everything they needed to bring.
They checked and rechecked them repeatedly. Then, on the morning of their departure, everyone went through their own checklist item by item to make sure it was complete.
"Why is Tris so strict?" Harry whispered to Ron.
Although Tris had made the best impression on Harry in Diagon Alley, Ron turned out to be the easiest to get along with once he arrived at the Burrow.
The reason was simple: Ron wasn't such a relentless grinder.
Harry was certainly willing to learn, especially magic, which he found fascinating. But he still felt there was no need to push himself as hard as Tris did.
Running with him every day was one thing, but there was reading on top of that.
Harry wanted to learn about the wizarding world, but books weren't his favorite way of doing it. He much preferred hearing about it from Ron, Fred, and the others.
Ron, in particular, was a great storyteller.
Gradually, Harry grew closer to Ron.
At Harry's question, Ron lowered his voice. "Tris is a bit strict, but it really is necessary. You don't know this, but in previous years, we had to turn back several times on the way to the station. Last year, Tris told Fred and the others to make a plan... well, that was the first time I can remember us reaching the station before half past ten."
A giant question mark seemed to appear over Harry's head.
"You have no idea." Seeing Harry's expression, Ron shrugged. "The one I remember best was the year before last, when Fred and George first went to Hogwarts. We made five trips back and forth. By the time we reached the station, there was less than a minute before the train left."
"Five trips?" Harry was stunned by the number.
"Yeah. Charlie, Percy, Fred, George, and Mum each forgot something once. Actually, Dad forgot his hat too, but Mum said he could do without it..."
Harry's mouth fell open.
His little mind was thoroughly blown.
He glanced to the side. Fred and George were grinning, as though Ron wasn't talking about them at all. Percy turned away, pretending he hadn't heard.
Harry felt he might have misunderstood Percy.
At least until now, he had always thought Percy was meticulous and serious. Forgetting things shouldn't have been something he did.
But apparently, that wasn't the case.
"So, Tris might be a bit annoying, but listening to him usually does more good than harm." Ron shrugged.
Ever since Tris had suggested writing to Dumbledore and helped Charlie get into the French Dragon Reserve, his words had started carrying weight at home and earning everyone's trust.
"I think I heard my name." Tris happened to come in from outside, where he had taken Arthur to inspect the Ford.
They needed to take that car to London tomorrow, and he certainly didn't want it breaking down halfway there.
"No, I was praising you," Ron said with a perfectly serious face.
As if I'd believe that.
Tris rolled his eyes and walked inside.
Thanks to Tris's preparations, the Weasley family and Harry reached King's Cross Station on time without a hitch and boarded the train early.
"Won't ordinary people notice the entrance to that platform?" Harry asked excitedly once they were in their compartment.
Although his month at the Burrow had given him plenty of time to accept that he had entered the wizarding world, the moment he passed through the stone pillar and stepped onto Platform Nine and Three-Quarters still felt like crossing into another world.
"That pillar has a Muggle-Repelling Charm on it. It's a spell that makes Muggles overlook the place," Tris explained as he helped Ron and Harry lift their trunks onto the luggage rack.
"The spell makes people who can't use magic unconsciously ignore anything unusual happening at the entrance."
"That's amazing," Harry said excitedly.
"Harry, Tris, I'm a bit nervous." Ron sat down and shifted in his seat.
"Nervous? Why?" Tris asked in confusion as he sat down after stowing the luggage.
"The Sorting Ceremony," Ron blurted out. "Everyone in our family is in Gryffindor. If the two of us don't get in, I won't even know how to explain it to Mum and Dad."
"What is there to explain?" Tris spread his hands. "We'll go wherever we're sorted. But if you ask me, you're worrying for nothing. Every member of the Weasley family has gone to Gryffindor for nearly two hundred years. Do you think you're that special?"
"Um... probably... not?" Tris's words reassured Ron a little.
"I read about the four houses in a book," Harry said hesitantly. "But how do we choose one?"
Tris had bought a few books at Flourish and Blotts, including the famous Hogwarts: A History.
Normally, people like Harry and Ron wouldn't read a book like that. In fact, before the Chamber of Secrets incident, practically nobody except Ravenclaw students ever opened the copy in the Hogwarts Library.
Oh, no, there was Hermione too. She even memorized it.
The workings of an academic genius were beyond everyone else, and nobody dared ask.
But the Weasley family had produced Tris, and he was a transmigrator. That clearly took things outside the bounds of normality.
Tris unfailingly read for at least two hours every day-deep reading didn't count just because he looked at a book; he had to actually absorb it.
With an example like that around, Harry and Ron had read a little themselves.
Yet none of the books explained how Hogwarts sorted its students.
"I don't know either." Ron shook his head in frustration. "The books don't seem to mention it."
"Right, they don't." Tris nodded firmly.
He had wondered about that before too. Why did it seem as though no young witch or wizard knew how Hogwarts sorted its students before starting school? Even Hermione, who had practically memorized Hogwarts: A History, didn't know.
After personally going through quite a few books, he discovered that the information really had been concealed, whether deliberately or otherwise.
Even stranger, while he didn't know what other families did, everyone in the Weasley family, from his parents down to his older brothers, refused to explain the Sorting Ceremony.
Simply keeping quiet would have been fine.
But those two unreliable troublemakers, Fred and George, deliberately gave evasive answers that made the Sorting Ceremony sound terribly dangerous.
Tris, who knew what was going on, felt nothing in particular, but Harry and Ron were nervous wrecks.
They'd been caught in the rain themselves, so now they had to tear up everyone else's umbrellas?
What a bunch of twisted pranksters.
That was what Tris thought, but he had no intention of revealing what he knew either.
Well, traditions ought to be preserved to some extent.
"Fred said something about having to show courage to get into Gryffindor," Ron said, scratching his head. "George made it sound like we'd have to fight a troll. Tris, could you beat a troll?"
Under the current customs of Britain's wizarding world, families didn't take the initiative to teach young witches and wizards magic before they started school.
But if a child was particularly eager to learn and wanted to practice independently, the family generally wouldn't stop them.
Neither Ron nor Harry was especially enthusiastic about studying. After the novelty of their newly purchased textbooks wore off in the first couple of days, neither had opened them again.
Harry did, however, thoroughly enjoy the few secondhand Lockhart novels Molly had bought.
He even admired Lockhart a little.
Tris found that fascinating to watch, and wondered what would happen next year when Harry met the real Lockhart.
Harry and Ron hadn't practiced any spells, but they had watched Tris practice basic spells every day for that entire month. At least in their eyes, he was already very proficient.
"Of course not." Tris glanced at Ron as though he were looking at an idiot. "Even adult wizards can't confidently claim they could beat a troll head-on unless they've had combat training. Never mind underage wizards."
"What's a troll?" Harry asked curiously.
"Look at the second-to-last chapter of your Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook. It explains them," Tris reminded him.
"Oh, come on, Tris, just tell us. I don't want to dig out my textbook," Harry wheedled.
For some reason, although Tris was the same age as them, he always seemed more dependable. Harry wasn't actually in the habit of wheedling-he had never had the chance growing up.
But when he was with Tris, he inexplicably felt as though he were facing an older relative, someone he could coax a little.
Even with that feeling, Harry should have found acting that way rather embarrassing.
Unless...
"Exactly, Tris. Please just tell us." Ron gazed pitifully at Tris, his tone even more pleading than Harry's.
He paid no mind whatsoever to the fact that he was the sixth child in the family and Tris was the seventh, making him the older brother.
Yes, Harry had only copied Ron after seeing him behave this way.
Sigh...
With Harry and Ron both gazing pitifully at him, their faces full of longing, Tris was utterly speechless.
How had he suddenly come to understand what Hermione felt like, being the one genius carrying two deadweights?