He was awfully quiet. Sadie didn’t quite know what to make of that. Mum had bemoaned her inability to keep her voice down a thousand times this past summer. [i]”You’ve been screaming since you were born, Sadie, please give it a rest,”[/i] was a popular complaint of Brennan’s. She didn’t mean to be so loud, honest, but something about quiet made her deeply uncomfortable. Sadie resolved not to worry about it, her excitement for Hogwarts swiftly overwhelming any other thoughts.

“SIX HOURS,” she hadn’t meant to shout, but the thought was horrifying. She’d already waited [i]years[/i] for this! Now she had to sit through a six hour train ride? Couldn’t magic speed things up? Sadie had been reading her textbooks for weeks, and a little extra speed seemed perfectly within the realm of possibility! Of course, perhaps it was a safety thing, but she’d nicked her brother’s spellbooks and they had things like shield charms in them—Sadie finally remembered that shouting was rude. She winced. “Sorry. Just… that’s like, a million years.”

A beat of silence passed. Sadie tried not to fidget. The landscape blurred past, turning into rolling countryside. Somewhere out there, in a tiny little village that smelled of cows and cheese, her little dog would be waiting for mum and dad to come back home. That life felt a thousand miles away, almost unreal compared to the train. It was curious.

George offered her a sweet. Sadie blinked intelligently. A jelly bean? She was about to ask what was so scary about jelly beans when he mentioned vomit. Curiosity lit up her hazel eyes as she connected the dots.

“So, they’re weird… on purpose? Huh.” Sadie considered that for a moment, and waited as he tried one. A wild grin spread across her face as he mentioned toothpaste. “I have got to try this.”

She tipped out a bean, brown and shiny, popping it into her mouth enthusiastically. It took a moment for her to place the lemony flavor. She laughed brightly, even as she resisted the urge to spit it out. That was impressively disgusting. How had Brennan not shared these with her before? What a git!

“Wood Varnish.” She turned the box over in hand, examining the packaging. It looked unlike anything she’d ever seen before. “’Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans’. That is really the most accurate name for anything in the history of the world.”

She replaced the box neatly, impressed she hadn’t spilled it. His next offer made her eyebrows elevate and her grin grow wider. ‘Exploding’ was such a dangerous description, especially when it came to Sadie, but it was awfully exciting.

“Mum says I’m not to explode anything,” she admitted with a laugh, swinging her legs as her excitement built. Sadie had always been rather… competitive. “But I’m the reigning Queen of snap back home, and I will defend my title at all costs. How does the exploding part work? Is it like normal, non-blow-uppy snap?”