"Y-you... you'd better not say that... name." A rather timid voice spoke up. A round-faced, black-haired boy stood in the doorway, dragging a trunk more than half his height and cradling a... toad?
The acceptance letter had mentioned that new students could bring pets.
They had to be non-magical creatures, with owls, cats, and toads recommended.
Hagrid, however, had said that rats, ferrets, bats, ravens, spiders, snakes, lizards, scorpions, and dogs were fine too. As for magical creatures, Hagrid had told Harry that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was a good book, with descriptions of magical creatures inside.
That book was among the ones the school required them to buy, so Harry had leafed through it-and had his entire worldview blown apart. This world actually had so many bizarre things, every bit as many as the world called Aegean in Neil's memories.
According to Hagrid, of course, the book was not a first-year textbook, but young wizards needed to learn about magical creatures as early as possible, because wizards considered most of them dangerous.
Harry could tell that Hagrid very much disagreed as he said this. It sounded as though he were reciting the official line.
Their later conversations confirmed Harry's impression. Hagrid had mentioned more than once that he wanted to keep a dragon.
When Harry later leafed through Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, he found dragons among the pages at the back marked as particularly dangerous. Well, judging by the description, this was definitely not something suitable to keep as a pet.
Harry was certain that dragons were unsuitable pets. But he did not think the other creatures were necessarily suitable either. Leaving snakes and lizards aside for the moment, a few of Harry's classmates did have older siblings, or even parents, who might have had some peculiar tastes and liked keeping strange creatures.
Harry had indeed seen pet snakes and lizards when visiting his classmates' homes.
To be fair, albino Burmese pythons were quite beautiful. Leopard geckos did look pretty cute when they stared with those big eyes, too.
But what on earth was with the rats, bats, spiders, and scorpions? And toads were actually one of the three recommended pets?
Harry had once thought that was a joke. Yet here before him was an actual boy holding a toad... and the toad even seemed quite well behaved... that was just...
All right, that was magic for you.
Harry reassured himself.
"Oh, why?" Unlike Harry, Hermione paid no attention at all to the toad. The girl seemed even more accepting of such things than Harry, a boy. Of course, it was also possible that the round-faced boy's words had caught her attention. She asked curiously:
"In the books, about Vol..."
"Don't say that person's name." The round-faced boy interrupted Hermione. When he said "don't," his voice was slightly louder than a normal speaking voice, but it grew quieter and quieter until it was almost inaudible.
Hermione frowned, but remembering that the books also seemed to avoid using the word Voldemort directly whenever possible, she nodded.
"All right, that person. The descriptions of that person in the books are very vague. They mostly emphasize how dark the period of his brutal rule was. But there's precious little about the man himself... hmm, of course, they do say something about his disappearance, but that's just as vague..."
At this point, Hermione glanced at Harry beside her. "Even more unfortunately, the person involved doesn't seem to remember much about it either."
"Nobody wants to mention that name-or rather, nobody dares." The round-faced boy lowered his head and said very quietly, "There was a time when anyone who dared mention his name would die. Even their whole family might die..."
"Hmm. I think I read something like that in a book." Hermione's interest was piqued. "Why don't you come in and sit down? Let's talk properly. I'm very curious!"
"C-can I?" The boy raised his head, looking at Hermione, then at Harry beside her.
"Of course." Harry smiled and nodded, only for his croaking voice to give Neville a fright...
After a brief round of introductions, Harry and Hermione learned that the round-faced boy's name was Neville Longbottom.
When Neville learned that Harry was actually Harry (what a bizarre way to put it), astonishment covered his face, and the toad in his hands fell to the floor. The toad was well behaved enough: it stayed down right where it had fallen, lying there without a sound.
Over their brief conversation, the three got to know one another a little.
Hermione came from an ordinary family. She was the first witch in at least three generations. Of course, she could not be certain whether any of her distant relatives were wizards, since they rarely kept in touch. Her parents were both dentists, which made hers a fairly comfortable family by British standards.
Neville, on the other hand, came from an entirely wizarding family.
According to Neville, everyone in his family was a wizard, and he did not know of any non-magical members. His parents were both Aurors-Harry understood that to mean law enforcement officers in the wizarding world-but they had been badly injured in the struggle against Voldemort and were still receiving treatment at St. Mungo's, a wizarding hospital in London.
Harry's situation was the most unusual. He was something of a combination of the other two.
First of all, Harry had learned from books that his father came from a wizarding family, with almost all his ancestors having been wizards. His mother, like Hermione, had been a witch born into an ordinary family. Under those circumstances, Harry could also be considered to have come from a wizarding family, provided the definition was not too strict.
Yet because his parents had died when he was very young, he had grown up in an ordinary family. As a result, before receiving his acceptance letter, he had never had any contact with the wizarding world.
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