With another nervous glance at his watch, Harry heard squealing tires and looked up to see the Evans family car peeling around the corner. It came to an abrupt halt just a few feet from where Harry was standing out in front of King's Cross, and the back front door opened long enough for Mark's father to push him out of the car and onto the pavement. Harry hurried forward to pick up his friend, and Mr. Evans pointed at Harry through the open window. "Does that school of yours let you stay over holidays?"

Harry nodded mutely, trying to hold his tongue and not bite out an insult at the scrawny man. Harry wasn't as afraid of him as he was uncle Vernon, but nonetheless, Mark was, and whatever Harry said might have an impact on the way Mark was treated in the future.

Mr. Evans narrowed his eyes at Harry and said, "You take him and you take his trunk, and don't think that he'll be returning for the holidays or any of that nonsense, understand? If I see him before next summer, it's you that's going to get the beating, understand?"

Harry nodded, and bit down on his tongue hard. He desperately wanted to pull out his wand and hex the man senseless, perhaps to say only kind words. He knew how it felt to be so unwanted, and hated to see the pain on his friend's face as his father sped off, leaving Mark and his trunk of new things on the sidewalk.

"Are you ok?" Harry asked.

Mark held up his elbow to show a long, bleeding scrape down part of his arm, but he nodded, and hearing a whistle of a Muggle train, Harry looked down at his watch again and panicked.

"Come on!"

Mark's trunk on top of Harry's along with Hedwig's cage, Harry and Mark ran through the busy Muggle station, and Harry didn't even give his friend a chance to flinch as they ran right through the solid barrier and onto platform nine and three quarters. Sure enough, the scarlet steam engine was blowing steam, and groaning as it promised to leave them behind if they didn't hurry.

"Hurry Harry dear! It's pulling out!" Shouted Mrs. Weasley as they ran past, and Harry shouted a hurried thanks. Somebody's father that they didn't know hurried to help Harry haul the two heavy trunks onto the train just as it gave a menacing lurch and began to pull forward, Harry and Mark just barely inside.

The train door closed, Harry leaned against the wall in the narrow short stairwell leading up into the train, and he and Mark looked at each other before laughing out loud together.

"Are we really going Harry? Is it real?"

Harry grinned, and placed a hand on his younger friend's shoulder. "We're going. You're going. C'mon."

Harry used his wand to make the two trunks feather light, and then levitated them ahead of them as they looked for Ron, Hermione, and Ginny.

"You haven't told me much about your friends," Mark said nervously as they searched and Mark became worried that Harry might reject him now that they were in the magical world.

"Sorry," Harry commented quietly, peering into yet another compartment, only to find it full of Slytherins. It was true. Harry had tried hard to separate his school and home life, the only connection being his letters to Mark. He didn't usually let Ron and Hermione in on his life, but especially not Hermione. Ron had seen the bars on his window, and it was a secret between Harry, Ron, Fred, and George.

"They're nice," he said. "You'll like them. Promise."

Mark tried to let himself feel reassured, but there was nothing for it. He was still nervous, and he wiped his sweaty palms on the sides of his best pair of pants as Harry said, "Here they are," and pulled open a compartment door.

"Harry, mum was worried sick about you," Ron said, standing up to help Harry heave the two trunks in and up onto a rack above their heads.

"Yeah, she shouted at me as we ran past."

Hermione stood to give Harry a tight squeeze, and so did Ginny before any of them noticed Mark standing there nervously in the doorway, wringing his hands.

"Who's the first year?" Ron asked, plopping back down onto the blue train seat and picking up a comic book titled, Sly The Seeker.

The girls turned to see Mark, and Harry, suddenly nervous himself said, "This is Mark Evans. He lives a street over from me, and we sort of grew up together."

"Wow," said Ginny, "that doesn't happen very often where kids in a Muggle neighborhood end up going to Hogwarts together.

"Hi Mark," Hermione said, moving forward to shake his hand. Mark took it nervously, and Harry made introductions all around before they sat down.

"Are you going to be in Gryffindor then?" Ron asked, thumbing through the comic to find where he'd left off, and Mark shrugged. "I hope so."

"Me too," said Ron. "You seem nice. Wouldn't want to spoil it by ending up in Slytherin now, would we?"

Hermione nudged him painfully in the ribs and Ron swore before saying, "What?"

"Not every person in Slytherin is the same Ronald," she scolded him.

Ron snorted and dared her, "Name one."

She held up a finger and said, "Terrance Higgs is very studious. He's very well rounded and I've yet to hear an unkind word from him in study group in the Library."

"Ha," Ron said, "one case, and he was nasty to Harry when he was a Seeker Harry's first year."

Hermione held up another finger and said, "Theodore Nott is quiet and he doesn't make jokes or pull faces like the others." She had a smug look on his face and Ron sputtered.

"I'll bet he's the one who hexes people's shoes to tie themselves together in the halls."

"You know that's Fred and George," she challenged and held up yet another finger and began to list off others who had not been cruel to them, starting an argument between the two of them.

"Don't mind them," Ginny said to Mark as he listened intently to the fight. "They're in love."

Suddenly Ron and Hermione got very quiet and both went red before Ron scolded Ginny, and picked up his comic book, acting like he was ignoring everybody.

"Is the fighting between houses that bad?" Mark asked Harry quietly, and he shrugged.

"Sometimes. It depends on the people. Mostly our lot gets into it with Malfoy and his lot, the others in our year. Malfoy and his cronies are the wizarding equivalent to Dudley, Piers, and the others."

"Oh," Mark said. Well, there had gone all his hopes of living a bully free existence in the magical world.

"No worries," Ron said over the top of his comic book. "Just about everybody will stick up for you if Malfoy gets on your case. No one really likes him. Thinks he's God's gift to the world because he's so rich."

Hermione cleared her throat, and struck up a conversation with Ginny about charms, and Harry engaged Mark and Ron in a conversation about Quidditch, and who Ron thought would go to National's this year.

When the trolley came by, Harry bought lunch for himself and Mark, and a bag of every flavor beans for Ron. Hermione had taken care of hers and Ginny's lunch, and Mark watched curiously, wondering why the red headed brother and sister didn't buy their own food. Their clothes were nicer than his and Harry's and he made a mental note to ask Harry about it later when they were alone.

Several other people from Gryffindor popped in to say hello to them and were introduced to Mark before the train ride was over, and as it grew dark, Mark grew more and more nervous.

Used to seeing the slight differences between Mark's moods, Harry felt his eleven year old friend tense beside him, and as Ginny and Hermione went to another compartment to change into their robes, and Ron disappeared to find a bathroom, Harry said quietly, "You'll be fine. Promise."

"What if I'm picked on here?"

Harry shrugged. "I'm picked on too. But I have friends. And so do you."

With a deep breath, Mark thought to himself about the deep dislike these people had shown for people in Slytherin house. He supposed they got on well enough with kids from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, but what if he got put into Slytherin?

When the train finally came to a stop in the dark, Harry was forced to separate from Mark, and gave him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder before telling him to follow Hagrid, and disappearing into the darkness with his friends. Feeling uncertain about separating from the friend he'd clung to for dear life for the last fourteen years, Harry reassured himself that he'd see him in the Great Hall after the sorting, and save him a seat at Gryffindor table.

"Your friend is quiet," Hermione observed as they rode the horseless carriage up to the castle in the chill night.

Ron and Ginny pretended not to be listening, and Harry said quietly, "He's been picked on a lot."

"Like you?"

Hermione's question was anything but innocent. She was prying. Harry glanced at Ron nervously, but Ron gave a very tiny shake of his head to tell him silently that he had not told about the bars on Harry's window or the cat flap in the door the previous summer. Hermione was smart though, and had picked up on things over the years.

"Forget it Hermione," Harry said quietly, and stared off into the darkness as they rode on up the bumpy drive.

With Ron and Hermione sitting across from him at Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, he made Ginny scoot over and make a space for Mark for after he was sorted, and they waited quietly as the long line of first years was lead into the hall and up to the platform where the staff waited. They were arranged alphabetically, and Mark was the tenth person back.

Several people were separated off into Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, with two into Ravenclaw before it became Mark's turn. He sat down on the stool, and even from this distance Harry could feel the boy's apprehension from the way he sat rigid and unflinching.

The hat deliberated for a few minutes, as it did with most students, and when the wide rip opened up, Harry's heart sank as it shouted gleefully, "Slytherin!"

Slytherin table cheered loudly at their first new first year that year, and Mark looked stricken as he hurried of the platform with a panicked glance at Harry. Harry tried to give him a reassuring look, but he didn't feel reassured himself, especially not with the way Ron was looking at him, as if he had already befriended an enemy.

"You met him," Harry said with a challenge to his friend. "He's not like that."

Hermione kicked Ron under the table hard to be sure he would not be rude, and Ron grunted. "Well, he will be after being with that lot for the year."

Harry shook his head. He didn't want to believe it was true, but for all of Hermione's insistences that there were decent people in Slytherin, he looked over at Draco across the hall, who gave him a sneer, and he was not reassured.

* * *

Severus eyed the hall of joyful students with an eagle eye, already sure that he had picked out the new troublemakers. There was a small girl with mousy brown hair at Hufflepuff that was using her fork as a catapult for carrots, a boy with flaming red hair at Ravenclaw who was overly loud and receiving unhappy looks from his new peers, a blond girl at Gryffindor table who had just set her plate on fire, and then there was his own house. Most of the new Slytherins seemed acceptable, but there was the scrawny blond whelp with messy hair from Little Winging that had gone to Diagonalley with Potter over the summer, ignoring the letter's instructions to wait for a professor from Hogwarts to chaperone him. Mark Evans was his name, and he was sitting at the very end of the table, staring down at his plate of food and not eating, ignoring the other first years around him who seemed properly excited to be accepted into Slytherin. It was of course a possibility that he was already homesick, as first years often became, especially Muggle-borns, but as dinner ended, he had the feeling that this was not the case.

Students began to rise, and Prefects beckoned for the first years to follow them from the hall and warned them not to get separated. Malcolm Greengrass, the sixth year Slytherin Prefect was giving instructions, but Evans wasn't listening. Severus was appalled to follow the boy's gaze and realize that the brat was trying to get Harry Potter's attention as the boy rose from Gryffindor table. Brilliant, he thought, suddenly angry. Another member of Potter's fan club, and in his own house.

McGonagall said something to Severus as she returned from putting out the fire at Gryffindor table, but he only half listened as she ranted about students using magic at the dinner table, and without any instruction. Instead he watched as the first year Slytherins were lead towards the Entrance Hall, and Evans lagged behind when he neared Potter, saying something frantically to the Gryffindor golden boy. Potter said something before quickly scribbling something down on a piece of paper and then handing it to him and then shoving him in the direction of the other Slytherins. Of all the gall, giving autographs to a Slytherin! He was outraged, and rubbed his eyes hard with one hand.

"Why Severus, what on earth is wrong? You can't be this stressed on the first night?" Minerva seemed genuinely concerned.

"This is going to be a long year," he muttered. "Potter is already giving out autographs to my Slytherins."

She raised her eyebrows and followed his gaze to where Harry hurried along behind his friends, head low as he tried to avoid stares. She had never known him to give an autograph, and knew from three years of watching him hurry between classes that he did not like attention as Severus thought he did.

"I'm sure that wasn't the case," she said, but Severus wasn't convinced, and stalked off towards Slytherin through the throng of students, set on grounding house unity into the firstlings before the night was done. United we stand, divided you die. Yes, that was what he would tell them.