Corby Winchcombe was quite an average fourteen year old girl. Five-foot-two, long, shiny, brunette hair, and big gray eyes. She took dance classes every other afternoon and loved to write in her journal. She had a baby brother she adored and an older brother she couldn't stand. And she had an obsessive love of trying to prove that a complete secret magical world lay right under her friends and family's noses.

Even though that part of Corby wasn't what you would call normal, it was complete true. Corby seemed to spend all day, everyday, thinking about how she could expose magic and witches and wizards to her friends and neighbors. In fact, she sometimes tried to expose her friends and neighbors as witches and wizards. Of course, this earned her quite a few bruised noises (from when her neighbors would slam there doors in her face) and many insults (from when her best mate Faylinn would use the dozens of swear words she had acquired from her four older brothers). But none of this seemed to slow Corby down.

Of course, it wasn't like Corby had no reason to be suspicious of the existence of magic. If she didn't have a reason, she would have been considered clinically insane. When she was a bit younger, perhaps eight or nine, she had been using her binoculars to spy on the next door neighbors when she had seen a rather unusual sight. A young, pudgy neighbor boy was being dangled from an upper story window of his house! Just when young Corby had opened her mouth to yell to her mother to call the police, the boy had been dropped two stories, but, amazingly, bounced off the ground and into the street unharmed. And he had seemed downright giddy about it! If that wasn't reason enough to spend the next six years of her life devoted to exposing the magical secrets, then Corby didn't know what was.

So when fourteen year old Corby had been strolling along in King's Cross Station with her mother and father, headed for Platform Ten to board the train that would take her to St. Kathleen's Preparatory School for Young Ladies for the start of term on September first, her mind was, of course, preoccupied with thoughts of magic. As she neared Platform Nine, Corby was passed by a strange group of people. Her eyes nearly bulged out of her head as she heard a plump red-headed woman at the front of the group say, "Have you all got your wands?" And then : "Fred, stop hitting George with your spell book!"

Spell book? Wands? Corby came to a complete halt. She looked around at the passing train passengers, but none of them seemed to have noticed what the woman had said. They didn't even seem to notice the group of strange looking people at all! Corby's eyes bulged farther still as she watched, incredulously, as a red headed boy who looked to be a few years older than her said, "He's not Fred, I am! Honestly woman, and you call yourself our mother!"* and then ran straight through a brick wall between Platforms Nine and Ten. Corby nearly fainted from excitement.

"Corby, come on!" her father yelled from Platform Ten. His voice shook Corby from her magic-red-haired-family induced semi-coma. She glared at him angrily. As much as she wanted to stay and watch these magic people go through the wall, she knew she would have to obey her father. There was no way he would let her miss the train to school if she gave the excuse, "But Dad! I want to watch the cute red head magic boys run through the brick wall!" She glanced at the group of magic people. There were quite a few. If she could ditch her parents and hurry back here quickly, they might still be there for her to watch. A smile slid across her face as she hurried to catch up with her father.

Her mother and father hurried Corby onto the boarding platform. Corby eyed the red haired family anxiously as she and her parents exchanged goodbyes. Her mother, emotional as always, burst into a fit of tears, and pulled Corby into a rib-cracking hug. Corby watched over her mothers shoulder as the youngest of the red haired children maneuvered her way through the wall. To speed her mother up Corby said, "Mum! I just remembered Ben's headmaster called yesterday and said that Ben threw a party in his dorm on the first day of term!"

"Oh, I left my cell in the car!" Corby's mother held her at an arms length, smiled at her through her tears, adding, "Be good at school!," and then hastily ran off towards the car to make a phone call that didn't need to be made. Well, considering that Corby was talking about her brother Ben, it probably did need to be made anyways. Ben was always getting into trouble.

Corby watched as her parents disappeared from view. Then, shoving her luggage cart through a group of angry parents and teenage girls, made her way back towards her new obsession. Some of the family members were still there, much to Corby's delight. The little girl and the two sons who had appeared to be twins were gone, but the plump lady and a man were still there, smiling at a dark haired, bespectacled boy and a red haired freckled boy. Corby watched as the two boys and the two adults disappeared into the wall.

An idea that had been growing in the back of Corby's mind suddenly popped into the front. What if she, Corby Winchcombe, were to, just for a moment, go through that magical wall, and see what was on the other side? The wonderfulness of the idea must have overpowered Corby's rational thinking because in the next instant, she had taken her luggage cart, positioned it directly in front of the wall, and ran.

Corby felt a strange sensation, like she was melting, when she passed through the wall. Every person who watched her come through the wall did nothing, like seeing a fourteen year old girl melt through a wall all by herself was perfectly normal. Corby looked up from her luggage cart, and air caught in her throat. There, standing in front of her, was a brilliant, gleaming, crimson train. In fancy gold lettering, the words Hogwarts Express were scrawled across the side.

Corby watched men and women pass by with children. The adults seemed to be able to do magic here in the train station, for many of them flicked there wands, fixing annoying squeaky tires on carts, and capturing runaway rats, cats, and toads their children let go of, among other sorts of spells. Corby inched closer to the train as she saw the children board it. How badly she wanted to climb on too, to see where all the magical children were headed.

But she knew she couldn't. Her parents would find out. She could just hear her mother's voice in her ear. "I can't believe you skipped school, young lady! How dare you!" Corby sighed as a clock struck eleven and the train whistled. She turned to the wall once again, only this time she was sad to pass through it. Corby backed up a few feet, got a running start and - her cart bounced off of it. It wouldn't allow her to pass through!

Corby knew that her train to St. Kathleen's left at exactly eleven. She'd missed it! And now she was stuck here in magic land, with no way to get home! Corby was surprised that she, of all people, would consider that a bad thing. "Well," Corby said under her breath, picking up the few loose articles that had fallen off her cart upon impact. "If you can't beat them, join them." She turned her cart around, walked briskly to the train, which was being bombarded with students who were trying to board before it left, and shoved her cart through a door.

The doors all closed by themselves. The people outside became a blur as the train gained momentum and speed. Corby, after six years of waiting and wanting, would finally have her proof that magic existed. She hurried down the corridor with her cart and watched the other students entering compartments. Following suit, she ducked into one, too, a huge grin etched across her freckled face.

As Corby settled back into her seat in the compartment she had chosen (which housed a girl with long blond hair and glazed over blue eyes who was reading an upside-down magazine intently), she realized the flaw in her plan. Yes, she'd managed to catch the train, but the uproar she would cause amongst the wizards and witches was already playing in her head. She'd hop from the train, no luggage or clean clothing or magic school supplies whatsoever, and the other children would instantly realize that something was different about her. They'd realize that she was just an average, non-magical child. They'd probably kill her, Corby concluded, to hide their secret. Or even worse, send her home. Her mother would have a conniption. She could barely breath as she thought of it and nearly fell from her chair when the blond girl spoke to her.

"I'm Luna," she said dreamily, her voice low and soft and slightly hypnotic, as though she had just noticed Corby was there. "Luna Lovegood. I'm fourteen. A fourth year." She held up her hand in a lazy, dreamy kind of wave, and Corby noticed that it was twined around a necklace that seemed to be made entirely of bottle caps.

"Corby Winchecombe," Corby managed to squeak out, noticing that Luna was very pretty, in a dreamy kind of way. Even though impending death was probably barreling towards her, she couldn't control her excitement; she was actually talking to a witch! In all her days, Corby had never imagined that she would be this close to anyone who could do magic. She could have reached out and touched Luna's hand if she wanted to. "Fourth year, too," she added, taking note that they were the same age, and that being a fourth year (whatever that was) would probably not be something Luna would question.

Luna was quiet for a very long time, as though she had just drifted out of the conversation involuntarily. Rain started trickling down the windows as the train traveled steadily farther, past rolling green mountains and over bridges, and Corby noticed boys and girls gliding up and down the corridor in black robes, each displaying a different symbol; a red and gold lion, a black and yellow badger, a blue and bronze bird, and a silver and green snake, all of which made absolutely no sense to Corby. A sweet old woman passed by once, pushing a cart loaded down with the strangest candies Corby had ever seen; she hadn't any of the odd money the sweets called for, so Corby went without. Then, suddenly, Luna folded her magazine intently, climbed to her feet and said, "We'll be there soon. We should probably change into our robes."

Luna brushed her fluffy hair out of her face and her large, delicate blue eyes bore into Corby endlessly. They seemed to make Corby want to scream, "I'm a fake! Turn me in! Kill me!", they were so innocent and naive and undeserving of her lies. She didn't know how to say, "I don't have any robes," without giving her secret away. She racked her brain for a moment and simply came up with, "I couldn't afford robes this year."

Great, Corby thought. I'm posing as a poor witch who doesn't even have clothes to wear. What a wonderful way to stay under the radar.

This didn't seem to phase Luna, for she said. "I have a set I could loan you. Daddy always says,'Share with a stranger, or the Nargles will nibble on your toes.'" Corby didn't even bother to ask Luna what a Nargles was or why they were toe-nibblers; she'd need these robes so she didn't get killed, so there was no way she was going to give Luna a reason to change her mind. She honestly tried to resist hugging Luna she was so thankful.

Luna pulled a thin, wooden stick from her pants pocket, and Corby barely stopped herself from gasping as the tip glowed a faint purple and made a low, whirling sound. A worn old trunk from a luggage compartment above them opened as Luna muttered a foreign-sounding word under her breath, and two black robes emblazoned with the small blue and bronze raven floated out and into Luna's outstretched arms. She tucked the stick (which Corby guessed to be a magic wand, even though it looked nothing like the black and white plastic thing the magicians she had seen used) back into her pocket, and turned to hand Corby a set of robes.

"Where did you put your luggage?"

"Oh..." Corby thought quick on her feet; it was one of her better qualities. "My dad's flying it up himself. He doesn't trust me to get it there." The thought of her father frightened her, for he would surely be roaring made when he heard of what she had done, but she
tried not to let her fright play on her face.

Luna didn't seem to have anymore questions (or perhaps she had just forgotten what they were talking about), for she turned around and pulled her robe over her head. Corby did the same, adjusting it so that the raven was on the front. "Are you in Ravenclaw, too?" Luna asked, pointing to the badge. "I can change it if you're not."

"No, it's fine, I'm in Ravenclaw." Corby had absolutely no idea what she was saying, but she thought it would be better to go along with what Luna was saying instead of taking a chance and being wrong.

The train came to a sudden halt as Luna shut her luggage trunk, and made it float alongside her with her wand. The corridor swelled suddenly with students, big and small, all in black robes, as if the train was spitting them up from no where. There was much pushing and shoving, along with the scrapes of trunks bumping into walls, and the crowd made Corby surge forward, separating her from Luna, who, even though she'd been kind of spacey, could have guided Corby to where she was supposed to go.

Corby made her way to the front of the pack with many, "Excuse me!"s and lots of "Sorry, sorry!"s. She stepped off the train into a small station, and hurriedly got out of the way so as not to be trampled. She spun around, looking at the brilliant castle glowing from what had to be a thousand lights in its windows across a deep, black lake.

Some students were going towards little boats in the lake with the hugest man Corby had ever seen, and others were climbing into small, white carriages pulled by just thin air. She had no idea which way to go, and other students were bumping into her, starring at her, and giving her weird looks. She had to go somewhere; she knew that much, and breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted Luna climbing into a carriage. Corby sprinted a few feet and pulled herself in the carriage next to Luna just before it started off down a long, winding path that led to the castle.

Inside the carriage, Corby put her hands to her forehead, and as she was taken up the path, shadows sliding off and on her face from the moonlight, she cursed herself for ever going through that brick wall in the first place.