“Uh… yeah, sure, if you want to.”

She sits. "I'm Miranda, what's your name?"

“Matt.”

"It's nice to meet you. What House are you hoping for?"

"Oh, are you - okay, in regular schools there's often houses, right, to subdivide the students? But I think in Muggle schools they don't mean anything; in Hogwarts they mean things. There's four. Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, and Slytherin. If you're Muggle-born you'd probably want to stay out of Slytherin - or not tell anybody if you wind up there anyway."

“Oh. I’ve never been in a school that’s had houses. What things do they mean?”

"Er... I've been out of the country for a couple of years and I have strong opinions anyway, so some of the things I say might just be stereotypes, right? But the quick version is that Ravenclaw is for intelligence and Hufflepuff for hard work and loyalty and Gryffindor for bravery and Slytherin for ambition but there's also a lot of blood prejudice and such mixed in with Slytherin in the last several decades so you don't want to go there if you're Muggleborn. I want Ravenclaw, like my mum."

“Hmm… I like to think I’m intelligent, so I guess I’d want Ravenclaw, though Hufflepuff sounds okay too.”

"You don't get to pick your own house. A magic hat does it, Mum said, but if you're not really obviously one thing it will sort of talk to you for a bit and let you help it pick. It gets final say though."

“I see. Well, then, I just hope it puts me in a house I’d want.”

"Yeah. Anything else you want to know and don't yet because of being Muggle-born? I don't know how much they tell you in your versions of the letter."

“Well, nothing really springs to mind immediately. I have trouble thinking of something I don’t know unless it becomes noticeable that I’m missing something.”

"Okay. You can ask me if you want, I know enough about Muggle things not to be confused. Probably, anyway. It's going to be really different, Muggle London and wizarding London are more different than Muggle London and Muggle Melbourne."

Miranda apparently isn't that great at making conversation either, or she's done trying for the time being. She pulls out One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi and starts reading from a bookmark partway in.

Matt looks confusedly at the chocolate frogs. “Those aren’t living frogs made of chocolate, are they?”

"No, they're just enchanted to move around. They're really tasty. You can have one of mine if you don't want to buy six."

Smiling slightly, he takes the chocolate frog, bites it, seems to deem it palatable, then sets about eating the rest.

"I don't collect them. You can have the other five too after I've eaten my frogs, if you want, or if you don't care you can just throw it out."

The door to their compartment opens. "Oh, you've got space," says the girl who opened it, "can I sit here?"

"Uh - sure." Miranda scoots. "You didn't like where you were sitting before?"

"I sat with my cousin's friend because I sort of know him, but his friends are not great company so I said I was following the trolley to get more Cauldron Cakes."

"Well, I'm Miranda, and that's Matt, what's your name?"

"I'm Karen. Nice to meet you."

"Likewise. What House do you want?"

"I don't know if it's really much of a matter of want, I don't think I could get anything other than Ravenclaw even if sauntered in already wearing another house's colors with a live pet instance of their mascot and reciting poetry about their virtues. Ravenclaw should be good though."

"I really want Ravenclaw, but I might have to wheedle the hat."

Matt smiles at Karen’s statement, but continues to say nothing.

"What's your owl's name?"

"I haven't thought of anything good yet! Do you have an idea?"

"Hmmmm. I'd think I'd be good at naming animals but I have nothing."

"My mum thought I should call her Cloud, but I'm not really seeing her as a Cloud. Even though she's soft." She reaches through the bars of the cage to pet her owl.

"Can I pet her?"

"Yeah, sure."

"I'm not sure if owls even really learn their names, so it probably doesn't matter if I think of anything very soon."

"You could just give her a person sort of name. Julianne. Demeter. Calpurnia."

"I kind of like Demeter. It'd be awkward if then there was a person at school with us named that, though, wouldn't it?"

Matt seems vaguely confused about Karen’s definition of “a person sort of name”, but continues to say nothing.

"Does... he talk?" Karen asks Miranda.

"Yeah, just not a lot."

“I haven’t had anything to say.”

"You don't have to talk if you don't want."

Karen shrugs.

“It’s not really that I don’t want to, just… like I said, I didn’t have anything to say.”

"Why not?"

“I just couldn’t think of anything to say.”