Harry stared around until his eyes watered, thinking, come on, mage-sight, come on, mage-sight, but absolutely nothing appeared to him. He thought about taking out his wand and waving it, but Professor McGonagall had warned him against using his wand. Plus if there was another shower of multicoloured sparks that might lead to being arrested for setting off fireworks inside a train station. And that was assuming his wand didn't decide to do something else, like blowing up all of King's Cross. Harry had only lightly skimmed his schoolbooks (though that skim was quite bizarre enough) in a very quick effort to determine what sort of science books to buy over the next 48 hours.
Well, he had - Harry glanced at his watch - one whole hour to figure it out, since he was supposed to be on the train at eleven. Maybe this was the equivalent of an IQ test and the stupid kids couldn't become wizards. (And the amount of extra time you gave yourself would determine your Conscientiousness, which was the second most important factor in scholarly success.)
"I'll figure it out," Harry said to his waiting parents. "It's probably some sort of test thingy."
His father frowned. "Hm... maybe look for a trail of mixed footprints on the ground, leading somewhere that doesn't seem to make sense -"
"Dad!" Harry said. "Stop that! I haven't even tried to figure it out on my own!" It was a very good suggestion, too, which was worse.
"Sorry," his father apologised.
"Ah..." Harry's mother said. "I don't think they would do that to a student, do you? Are you sure Professor McGonagall didn't tell you anything?"
"Maybe she was distracted," Harry said without thinking.
"Harry!" hissed his father and mother in unison. "What did you do?"
"I, um -" Harry swallowed. "Look, we don't have time for this now -"
"Harry!"
"I mean it! We don't have time for this now! Because it's a really long story and I've got to figure out how to get to school!"
His mother had a hand over her face. "How bad was it?"
"I, ah," I can't talk about that for reasons of National Security, "about half as bad as the Incident with the Science Project?"
"Harry!"
"I, er, oh look there are some people with an owl I'll go ask them how to get in!" and Harry ran away from his parents towards the family of fiery redheads, his trunk automatically slithering behind him.
The plump woman looked to him as he arrived. "Hello, dear. First time at Hogwarts? Ron's new, too -" and then she peered closely at him. "Harry Potter?"
Four boys and a red-headed girl and an owl all swung around and then froze in place.
"Oh, come on!" Harry protested. He'd been planning to go as Harry Verres at least until he got to Hogwarts. "I bought a sweatband and everything! How come you know who I am?"
"Yes," Harry's father said, coming up behind him with long easy strides, "how do you know who he is?" His voice indicated a certain dread.
"Your picture was in the newspapers," said one of two identical-looking twins.
"HARRY!"
"Dad! It's not like that! It's 'cause I defeated the Dark Lord You-Know-Who when I was one year old!"
"WHAT?"
"Mum can explain."
"WHAT?"
"Ah... Michael dear, there are certain things I thought it would be best not to bother you with until now -"
"Excuse me," Harry said to the redheaded family who were all staring at him, "but it would be quite extremely helpful if you could tell me how to get to Platform Nine and Three Quarters right now."
"Ah..." said the woman. She raised a hand and pointed at the wall between platforms. "Just walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don't stop and don't be scared you'll crash into it, that's very important. Best do it at a bit of a run if you're nervous."
"And whatever you do, don't think of an elephant."
"George! Ignore him, Harry dear, there's no reason not to think of an elephant."
"I'm Fred, Mum, not George -"
"Thanks!" Harry said and took off at a run towards the barrier -
Wait a minute, it wouldn't work unless he believed in it?
It was at times like this that Harry hated his mind for actually working fast enough to realise that this was a case where "resonant doubt" applied, that is, if he'd started out thinking that he would go through the barrier he'd have been fine, only now he was worried about whether he sufficiently believed he'd go through the barrier, which meant that he actually was worried about crashing into it -
"Harry! Get back here, you have some explaining to do!" That was his Dad.
Harry shut his eyes and ignored everything he knew about justified credibility and just tried to believe really hard that he'd go through the barrier and -
- the sounds around him changed.
Harry opened his eyes and stumbled to a halt, feeling vaguely dirtied by having made a deliberate effort to believe something.
He was standing in a bright, open-air platform next to a single huge train, fourteen long carriages headed up by a massive scarlet-metal steam engine with a tall chimney that promised death to air quality. The platform was already lightly crowded (even though Harry was a full hour early); dozens of children and their parents swarmed around benches, tables, and various hawkers and stalls.
It went entirely without saying that there was no such place in King's Cross Station and no room to hide it.
Okay, so either (a) I just teleported somewhere else entirely (b) they can fold space like no one's business or (c) they are simply ignoring all the rules.
There was a slithering sound behind him, and Harry turned around to observe that his trunk had indeed followed him on its small clawed tentacles. Apparently, for magical purposes, his luggage had also managed to believe with sufficient strength to pass through the barrier. That was actually a little disturbing when Harry started thinking about it.
A moment later, the youngest-looking red-haired boy came through the iron archway (iron archway?) at a run, pulling his trunk behind him on a lead and nearly crashing into Harry. Harry, feeling stupid for having stayed around, quickly began moving away from the landing area, and the red-haired boy followed him, yanking hard on his trunk's lead in order to keep up. A moment later, a white owl fluttered through the archway and came to rest on the boy's shoulder.
"Cor," said the red-haired boy, "are you really Harry Potter?"
Not this again. "I have no logical way of knowing that for certain. My parents raised me to believe that my name was Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, and many people here have told me that I look like my parents, I mean my other parents, but," Harry frowned, realising, "for all I know, there could easily be spells to polymorph a child into a specified appearance -"
"Er, what, mate?"
Not headed for Ravenclaw, I take it. "Yes, I'm Harry Potter."
"I'm Ron Weasley," said the tall skinny freckled long-nosed kid, and stuck out a hand, which Harry politely shook as they walked. The owl gave Harry an oddly measured and courteous hoot (actually more of an eehhhhh sound, which surprised Harry).