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Ian is lost.
Okay, that’s not necessarily true. He’s on a train, so he can’t really be lost, he just… Doesn’t know where Lip and Fiona went. They’d been late—they’re always late—and had scrambled onto the train with the rest of the students who had taken too long with their goodbyes. It’s no surprise that Ian got separated. Even with his red hair, he’s still tiny and easy to lose sight of.
He stands in the corridor, looking up and down at all the closed doors, hums of conversation coming behind most of them. He doesn’t even know where to start looking. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to sit down, if he has to, if he’ll get in trouble for just standing there and waiting for his brother or sister to come and find him.
It’s his first day, he does not want to get in trouble already.
He picks a door at random, one of the quieter ones because it doesn’t feel quite so scary, and slides it open.
No Lip or Fiona. There’s only one student inside, reclining over half the seats on the compartment, eyes closed like maybe he’s asleep. Ian can’t stop the sliding door in time, and it makes what feels like a really loud sound (but is probably only really loud because the compartment is so quiet).
The guy is sitting faster than Ian’s eyes can track, wand pulled and pointed straight at him. Ian stares, wide eyed, clutching the edge of the door.
“S-sorry,” Ian manages. “I got separated from my brother and sister, and I was just looking for them, I didn’t—“ He’s rambling, and he snaps his mouth closed before it gets him in trouble. It always gets him in trouble at home.
The guy slowly lowers his wand, the tension in his shoulders disappearing as he reaches up and rubs at his eyes, yawning simultaneously. He must have been asleep, then.
“You a first year?” He asks Ian, and Ian just nods his head. “I got a sister your age,” he continues, and Ian should move on, should keep looking, but his feet are glued to the floor.
“I—what year are you?” Ian finds himself asking, and the boy looks at him. He has pretty blue eyes.
“Third.”
Older than Lip. Ian bites his lip and stares down at the floor.
“You gonna shut the door or what?”
Ian’s eyes flash up again, and he looks at the door, then back at where the guy is sitting, and blurts out, “Can I sit here?”
He’s stared at for a very long time, before he’s motioned silently towards the empty bench. Ian doesn’t move for a few seconds, but as the guy’s expression starts to turn impatient, he scrambles into the compartment and let’s the door slide behind him with a much quieter clack than it had made the first time.
Ian sits, trying to make himself as small as possible, and wondering how long it takes to get to Hogwarts. He never thought to ask his siblings. He wonders what it’s like there. He wonders if he’ll make any friends. He wonders if he’ll be any good at Charms, or Potions, or anything, really. Ian’s never really been very good at anything, so he hopes that magic is different.
Magic has to be different.
Mostly he wonders about what house he’ll be in. Stares out the window at the blurring countryside and chews his lip and worries. It’s not like he has anything to live up to—Fiona is in Gryffindor, Lip is in Ravenclaw—but it still makes nerves pile up in his stomach.
“You got a name, kid?”
Ian’s eyes flash over to his compartment companion, who is watching him with an amused look on his face that Ian doesn’t really understand. He feels a little annoyed at being called a kid, though. Third years aren’t that much older than first years.
“Ian.”
He sort of expects a name in return, but he doesn’t get one. Ian pushes his lips together and pulls his legs up onto the seat, hugging them close and staring at the window, willing the train to go faster so he doesn’t have to think too hard about what’s waiting for him at the other end.
It’s weird to share a space with someone and not talk at all. Ian wonders why he sat there, why he isn’t out looking for Lip (why isn’t Lip looking for him? why isn’t Fiona?), and presses his cheek to his knee.
“You nervous?” The guy asks after another long round of silence. Ian picks his head up, chews his bottom lip, shrugs. “‘Course you are, you’re a first year.”
Ian prickles at that, letting his legs down and sitting up a little straighter.
“I’m not nervous,” Ian replies indignantly, even though he is. Even though he’s more nervous than he’s been in his entire life, except for when he thought he’d never get his letter. When he convinced himself that he wasn’t magic, that he wasn’t special.
“Look at that, a future little Gryffindor on our hands,” the guy sneers in response, and it makes Ian deflate a little bit. Is he a Gryffindor? He doesn’t know. His head dips down with the weight of his doubt. “That what you’re hoping for?”
“What?”
“Gryffindor?” The way the guy says it is in an almost mocking tone, and Ian wonders what house he’s in.
“I don’t know? Maybe?” Ian sinks in his seat with the need to be small again. Like if he takes up the least amount of room possible, it will make all the nerves smaller, too.
He knows it doesn’t work that way, but it doesn’t stop him from trying.
There’s quiet again after that, and Ian thinks he really should leave. He doesn’t have any of his stuff. He doesn’t know where any of it is. It’s easy to convince himself not to leave when leaving just leads to more uncertainty, more confusion.
“You’re gonna get put in a house, you know.”
Ian looks over again in surprise.
“I felt that way too, my first year. Like they made some mistake. Like they’d put that fucking hat on my head and tell me that I had no magic.” As the guy speaks, Ian finds himself uncurling, stretching out again, kind of amazed at the way the doubts he was feeling and couldn’t put words to are being spoken out loud. “Guess what? That didn’t fucking happen. And it’s not gonna happen with you, either.”
Ian opens his mouth to say something—anything. He doesn’t know who this guy is, can’t even find the courage to ask for his name, and somehow he said everything that Ian needed to hear. Ian has to thank him. Has to say something.
There’s a knock on the compartment door, and when it slides open, Lip is standing there, hair pulled in a hundred different directions that way it gets when he runs his hair through it too much. Ian looks at him in surprise, and Lip sighs heavily with relief.
“There you are.” Lip sounds annoyed, but in that fond, brotherly way, and he’s smiling, so Ian doesn’t think he’s in too much trouble. Even if it wasn’t his fault that he got lost. Lip’s eyes scan the rest of the compartment, and then still when they reach the guy. “Mickey.” Lip’s tone is cold, threatening, and he’s grabbing Ian by the arm and pulling him up.
“Gallagher,” the guy—Mickey?—responds just as cooly. “You a Gallagher, Red? Never would have guessed.” Mickey smirks in amusement, and Ian kind of smiles back, even if looking different from his siblings has always been something that bothered him.
“Let’s go, Ian.” Lip throws another glare at Mickey before ushering Ian out of the compartment, but not before Mickey can throw in a, “Good luck, Freckles!”
Ian presses his lips together so that his brother doesn’t see him smiling.
*
Ian is at Hogwarts. Ian is sorted. Ian has a house.
Ian is magic.
And he realizes that he hadn’t really believed it before, not even with his whole family being magic. Ian always thought that, for some reason, he would be the outlier. He would be the exception.
But he’s not.
As the Hufflepuff table cheers and applauds his arrival, Ian’s eyes dance around the room—to a proud, tearful looking Fiona in red and gold, to a hollering Lip in blue and bronze… And to a green and silver clad Mickey, who is smiling with smug knowing.
All Ian can do is beam as he’s welcomed with open arms.