Platform 9 and 3 Quarters

Lindsley Martins brushed a strand of black hair out of her face, but the action was useless because the hair just fell right back into place. She didn't pay it any notice the second time, preoccupied with looking around at the other people crowding around the station. Whenever an eye looked up to meet hers, she quickly looked away in the opposite direction, flushing slightly until she felt the gaze move away or until she deemed it long enough for the person to have moved on. Thankfully, those encounters were few and far between, since everybody was bustling about busily. There were kids of all ages, then adults of all professions still. Her father was stood a few paces away, talking to an old colleague, classmate, workmate, buddy or all of the above. Since it seemed like he was pre-occupied with that and taking care of Lind's little brother James, who had also come along, Lind decided that she should depend on her own devices and get things done herself. Since she probably wouldn't gain any friends until a few days after she settled into the school, the black-haired girl knew that becoming more independent would help her.

She spotted the train conductor start to call out orders, and the whistles started blaring, and she hurriedly gathered her bag and cage where her cat Cake was sleeping in on a rather comfortable fluffy pillow. The cat opened one blue eye when the cage started moving, before closing it again and falling back asleep. It seemed like the noise and commotion didn't bother her much at all, something that Lindsley envied. Waving to her dad who had looked up, Lind joined the bustle towards the nearest train door. Her dad called something out to her, but she didn't catch it over the distance, though she figured that it was something along the lines of 'good luck'. With a shrug, Lind clambered onto the train and looked around for a place to sit. She saw a girl that looked her age sitting alone in a compartment, so after a brief hesitation Lind sat down across from her.

She didn't say anything, her eyes focused on her feet as she settled down, placing Cake's cage between her feet as she tried to heave her bag over into an overhead compartment. Shutting her eyes, she tried to push it up, but something that looked like a book was pressing against the other side of her bag and making it hard to push. Feeling herself reddening, Lind pushed on it some more, hoping that it would go in. Naturally, it didn't even budge. So much for a nice, calm first impression.



Flynn apologized profusely to the grey-haired man that he accidently bumped into somebody when he first entered the station of 9 and 3/4. He had paused to apologize right in front of the entrance, and a second later he nearly got knocked over by another person who was entering. Growing slightly irritated by the mess he had caused, Flynn quickly moved out of the way. His brother had taken the liberty of coming with him to the station, their parents were currently busy at work with the Grizzly Bear Stan that lived near their house. Flynn's father had tried to turn him into a mushroom, but had accidently mis-said a word and changed him into an anteater instead. Flynn wasn't exactly sure how that had worked, but now the couple were trying to figure out had happened and how to reverse it.

So he was stuck with Matthew, who had seemed to have forgotten how the Hogwarts train worked. Even though he had only graduated from the school the previous year, settling into his new job had apparently taken up too much brainpower for the moment. Flynn looked around for him, instantly finding him in the crowd. Tall and broad, it was hard not to spot the man. He was carrying Flynn's bags, and the younger sibling had to run to him and grab his possetions as he heard the train's whistles start to wail. "I think it's leaving soon!" He snapped as he passed his elder brother, but the tall youth just grinned. "They have never left on time in all my years coming here. Don't worry." He said with a smile, ruffling Flynn's hair before pushing him off towards the train. "Better not be late anyways though, you might get dish duty." He teased.

Matthew's last words were lost on Flynn as he walked towards the train, trying to keep hold of his rather large bag that was quite full of books. Snare was perched on his shoulder, having made a make-shift rat's nest from Flynn's hoodie. The rat didn't like all the noise, and was making indignant squeaks in his owner's ear, but the boy ignored him for the moment. He stepped onto the train, managing to find an empty compartment near the back of the train. Sitting down with a relived sigh, Flynn pushed his bag under his seat with the backs of his feet, looking out into the corridor of the train to see if anybody would come into his compartment.

Flynn had taken his eyes of the door for a second to look outside the window on the other end of the carriage, and since he had been preoccupied with looking at the train opposite the one that he was on he totally missed the girl that entered. Snare bit his neck from where he was sitting to warn him, but Flynn just ignored the rat for the moment, planning to see what was going on later. That was right about the time when somebody sat on him. Yelping in surprise, he nearly threw a punch but managed to restrain himself when he saw that it was a girl. He might not have been the -most- considerate of people, but he did know not to punch girls. That never lead to anything good. At all. Once, he had lost his temper at one of his neighbors and made an attempt at a physical blow, but that had only lead to him getting grounded, yelled at and forbidden from eating anything sweet for the rest of the month. Not to mention that he had been assigned the task of cleaning the house as well.

When you shared a house with a toad and an owl, you learn to resent the job of cleaning the house. Toads on a whole were quite unsanitary, and his father's toad Snapper was no exception. He left droppings everywhere, as did his mom's owl. Owl droppings were significantly easier to clean up than toad poop though. All that had added up to Flynn's decision in getting a rat. Rat droppings came in a more pellet-like substance, which was easy to clean up. That and the fact that Flynn had always liked rodents, he thought that they were considerably endearing. He could never wrap his head around how people thought that rats looked disgusting and dirty.

Glaring at the girl who had now whipped around and apologized profusely, Flynn smoothed down his hoodie and making sure that Snare hadn't gotten squished at all. He winced marginally at her squeaking voice, but when it went away he relaxed more. Taken off-guard by her casual reaction to the events and light-hearted manner, Flynn searched for something to say. She seemed to talk a lot, saying all the introductions before he could get a word in. "Uh, yeah. It's... Nice to meet you too." He managed, shaking the proffered hand once before letting it drop. "I'm Flynn Nelson. This is Snare." He added, gesturing to the rodent with a small gesture of his hand.

"I suppose you should sit." He said slightly awkwardly, gesturing to the chair across from himself. "Though preferably not on top of me." He couldn't resist but put that little tease in there, he just hoped that she wouldn't take it the wrong way and get all flustered about it. "It's Olivia right? Or was it Allivia? Luni? Lumi?" He questioned, trying to remember what she had said. "I'm really bad with names, as you can probably tell." He said with half a grin. Which came out looking more like a smirk.

Flynn registered the name. He would probably go with Alluvia for the time being, unless he got to know the girl enough to call her by a nickname. If that happened, since he wasn't exactly sure how long the train ride would be, or if she would stay in this carriage. Or if he would stay in the carriage, for that matter. But seeing that he had all but settled in, he figured that he would. The rest of her excited chatter was lost on Flynn as he concentrated on trying to remember her name, blinking as she waved her hands around in the air unexpectedly. That got him listening again, wondering what she had been saying, but a few notches too prideful to ask her to repeat the whole speech. He looked at the owl (was it Wisly? He couldn't remember, as always) with a bit of sympathy, before turning his gaze back onto Alluvia.

"So I take it that your parents are wizards? Or at least one of them?" He asked, picking up the detail curiously. Then he shrugged. "I am excited, yes, but I'm not really one to squeal." He said with a smile. "That and I've already worn myself out, running around after an anteater." He rolled his eyes before realizing that Alluvia would probably have no idea what he was talking about. "My parents turned our pet bear into an anteater by accident, and he ran off into the woods. I had to get him back before getting to the station." He elaborated with a laugh. That probably sounded very weird indeed, but that was his family for you. Not-to-smart, but liked experimenting anyways.

"Anyways. What interests you most about magic?" He asked, his mind easily flitting off their previous subject.

"That's cool! I'm very much the same. What houses does your family usually get sorted into?" He asked, picking up some more enthusiasm as he warmed to the subject. "Mine are Ravenclaw all the way down the line as far as anybody can remember. I do hope I'm not going to be the one to break the trend, though I don't feel like I'm very smart at all." He said, scrunching his nose a little bit. It was interesting talking about magic to somebody he hadn't known all this life, he had talked about it before (in depth actually) but that had only been with neighbors who had seen him grow all the way from when he was a tiny little baby. Most of their talk had gone straight over his head, no matter how hard he tried to comprehend it.

"For me, learning magic would be getting to finally understand what all my family and neighbors are talking about." He said with a lopsided grin. "I suppose my reasons are very much like yours I guess." He commented, seeing what she meant with her point. "Though it hasn't always been competitive in my family, you just go with the flow." Flynn grew slightly bored with the topic, not saying anything more though he had a few ideas still floating around in his brain. He had been told many times before that he had a short attention-span, and he supposed this was what people meant by it. The inability to think about one thing for too long. Or rather, he didn't have the drive to think about one subject for too long. And when he wasn't motivated, things didn't really get done.

"I'm more of a... Charms and potions guy I think? It sounds really typical, but they appeal to me." He chuckled. "I guess waving a wand around and mixing a bunch of things together sounds appealing to people like me."

"My family usually ends up in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff since we're usually not Slytherin material or smart enough to make it into Ravenclaw." Alluvia rolled her eyes, tapping her head and smiling reassuringly at Flynn.
"And there's nothing wrong with not making it into Ravenclaw, you'd get to be the first of your line which sound pretty cool to me! I'd hate to follow someone else's footsteps just because it's expected of me." She stuck her tongue out playfully at that.
"I'm sure that even if you don't get into the house you want it wouldn't be all that bad, there's no rules saying that you can't hang out with people from other houses."

She picked up her owl and stroked his feathers absentmindedly as she continued talking.
"People like you are good at potions, huh? Guess I know who I can rely on to keep me from blowing my cauldron and all of Hogwarts to rubble. I'm...not exactly known for my ability to follow instructions and that may or may not end up in me exploding everything in the room." She grined good naturedly at him. "Oh yes, Potions is going to be exciting this year for the people around me!" she laughed, cheekily. "Did I mention to you that my siblings are all pranksters and have raised me up to be one too?"

Alluvia returned Flynn's grin with one of her own. "Oh, I'll try my best not to blow you up, but I won't be able swear an unbreakable vow on that. Unless the teachers decide to hover over me so much that they'd basically be doing potions for me, I'm not sure how much they could help. My mum's pretty good at potions but even she used to joke that trying to control my potions making was like trying to contain a natural disaster. No matter how hard I try, something always seems to go awry." She rolled her eyes.

"Your brother sounds better than my siblings at least. They liked to 'teach me how to prank' by pranking me so I could 'learn from them'." She pouted. "And I sure showed them how well I learnt. One of my favourite bursts of accidental magic was when I managed to transfigure their beds into bathtubs full of icy cold water. While they were sleeping in it."

(OOC: I'm Australian! Meaning I use Australian English which is based off of British English. I'll try to avoid using words I know will be confusing but just ask if you don't know what one means. )

Alluvia blinked in response to Flynn's questioning over where she was from. She'd thought he was the one who sounded like he wasn't from England.
"Me? My family's your typical line of English purebloods with an ancestry that probably goes back to the stone age with how old they say we are." She pulled a face. "My parents got it in their minds that when my siblings were born it would be good to let them 'experience the world'. 'The world' being only other English speaking countries since they thought it would be too much trouble to learn another language. So I don't really have any one connection to a single country." She paused, before curiosity got the better of her. "Where are you from? You don't sound very English to me. Are you American? Canadian?"

Alluvia grinned at his next comment. "It's almost more fun when things go wrong! You have to think on your feet and all that. Although not so great when your family gangs up on you and gives you a taste of your own potion." She pretended to gag. "Blegh. Almost as bad as that off oyster and cheese flavoured bertie bott's flavoured bean I had. It's only my Gryffindor brother who'll eat them now in my household because he's the 'brave' one." She snorted. "Of course that mean we swapped all the good ones for toad flavoured ones."

Alluvia's smile seemed like it couldn't get any wider before she pulled a muscle. "Oh, that was one of my favourite pranks. My family thinks that just because I'm the little one I wouldn't know enough to get back at them. As for your brother, sounds he expects you to read his mind, huh?" She smiled, raising an eyebrow at him. "Tell him that I'm pretty sure that would be illegal and that you're probably don't want to go to Azkaban because your brother wanted you to say, be as smart as Merlin and didn't tell you. That really sucks though, when people have expectations a mile high."