The train journey to Hogwarts would take an entire afternoon, about six hours of travel through the British countryside as they made their way north from London toward the Scottish Highlands.
Morris had plenty of time to chat with the enthusiastic upperclassmen, and they seemed equally eager to engage with him.
"Hogwarts has four houses," Lee Jordan began a orientation speech delivered to every confused first-year he encountered.
"Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. But between you and me, Gryffindor is obviously the best house. We've got the most Quidditch Cup wins in the last decade, the most interesting students, and the best common room location. Plus, nearly every famous witch and wizard you've heard of was a Gryffindor."
Fred snorted from across the compartment. "Lee's a bit biased, but he's not entirely wrong."
"Mostly right, actually," George added with an identical grin.
Lee Jordan ignored the interruption and continued in a whisper as he said what was clearly meant as a shocking information. "By the way, your house sorting exam involves facing a two-headed troll that's ten feet tall and smells like a sewer that's been fermenting for a century.
You'll need to defeat it single-handedly to officially enter Hogwarts for your studies. They keep it in the dungeons specifically for testing first-years. Lost a few students that way over the years, but that's just the price of magical education..."
He maintained his serious expression for exactly three seconds before Fred and George burst into laughter, unable to keep up the pretense any longer.
"Your face!" Fred gasped between laughs, pointing at Morris. "Priceless!"
Lee Jordan seemed to be quite the chatterbox, and was constantly introducing Morris to things about Hogwarts.
Lee Jordan seemed to be quite the chatterbox, and was constantly introducing Morris to different things about Hogwarts.
However, Morris's expression hadn't changed at all. He didn't believe those last few sentences for a second. If Hogwarts actually killed students during the sorting process, the school would have been shut down centuries ago regardless of how Britain's laws operated.
Besides, he'd read about Hogwarts during his preparation. He'd purchased "Hogwarts: A History" in Diagon Alley along with his textbooks and had skimmed through the relevant sections about school traditions and the four houses.
Morris didn't particularly care which house he'd be sorted into, honestly.
Even if he did have a strong preference, it wouldn't matter much—house placement wasn't something he could control anyway. He'd simply have to adapt to wherever he ended up, making the best of whatever circumstances he was given. That had always been his approach to life.
"You're no fun," Lee Jordan complained cheerfully, seeing Morris's completely unchanged expression. "Most first-years at least look worried for a minute."
During this exchange, George reached into his robe pocket and pulled out a small paper bag. From this bag, he extracted what appeared to be a ordinary toffee wrapped in bright purple foil.
"Here, Morris," George said with a friendly smile, offering the candy. "Try one of these. They're delicious—butterscotch flavor. Consider it a welcome gift from us upperclassmen."
Fred's grin widened fractionally, and Lee Jordan suddenly became very interested in the passing scenery outside the window, his shoulders were shaking.
Morris accepted the toffee with polite gratitude, noting the suspicious behavior but deciding that whatever prank they were pulling was probably harmless.
He was curious to see what would happen.
He unwrapped the purple foil carefully and popped the golden-brown candy into his mouth.
The taste was genuinely good as it began to dissolve on his tongue. For a brief, pleasant moment, Morris thought perhaps it really was just a normal candy after all.
Then the effect kicked in with alarming speed.
His tongue began to swell.
Not gradually or gently, but rapidly, inflating like a balloon being pumped full of air at high pressure. Within seconds, his tongue had expanded to several times its normal size, becoming ridiculously, absurdly large—too big to fit comfortably in his mouth, pushing his cheeks out like a chipmunk storing nuts, making it absolutely impossible to close his jaw properly.
Morris tried to speak, to ask what the hell they'd given him, but all that emerged was completely garbled mumbling: "Wha' di' you—mmmph—mmmrgh?"
The effect lasted nearly half a minute before his tongue finally began to deflate, shrinking back to its normal size with a sensation like air slowly leaking from a tire.
Watching this hilarious sight unfold, George and Fred clapped their hands together in synchronization, their faces were lit up with triumphant joy, looking like mad scientists whose experiment had produced exactly the desired results.
"Success!" Fred cheered, pumping his fist in the air. "The effect is stable and consistent!"
"And the duration is precise!" George added with equal enthusiasm. "Thirty seconds exactly, just like we calculated! The last batch lasted forty-five seconds, which was too long."
Even Lee Jordan was laughing now, no longer pretending to look out the window.
"Sorry, mate," he said between chuckles, though he didn't sound particularly sorry. "But you have to admit, that was brilliant. Your face when your tongue started swelling—"
Morris worked his jaw experimentally, relieved to find everything had returned to normal functionality. He ran his tongue around his mouth, checking that all the sensation had returned properly.
"What kind of candy is that?" he asked, his tone was more curious than annoyed. He smacked his lips a few times, noting that despite the dramatic side effects, his mouth still carried a pleasant hint of butterscotch sweetness.
George's grin widened even further. He pulled another toffee from his bag and held it up like a jeweler displaying a precious gem. "Ton-Tongue Toffee,"
"It's a prank product we invented ourselves. Well, we're still perfecting it, technically. You've already experienced the effect firsthand—arguably the best way to understand what it does."
"Completely original design," Fred added with pride beneath the playfulness. "Based on some principles from Engorgement Charms, but modified to target only the tongue and with a strict time limit. Took us months to get the formula right."
"So, what's it used for?" Morris asked, genuinely curious now about the applications.
Hearing this earnest, practical question, the twins exchanged glances.
George shrugged, answering in a completely matter-of-fact tone: "For pranks."
Fred leaned forward philosophically. "Honestly, Morris, it doesn't have much practical use in the traditional sense. It won't help you pass your Potions exams or make your wand shine brighter during dueling practice, won't improve your grades or win you house points or accomplish anything conventionally useful..."
He paused for effect, then spread his arms wide in a gesture that encompassed everything. "But it's fun, isn't it? And that's worth something. Maybe worth more than passing Potions, honestly."
"Definitely worth more than Potions," George agreed with feeling.
Fred's expression turned to one of sudden inspiration, and he pointed at Morris with enthusiasm. "So, Morris want to join our Prank Club? We're always looking for new members, especially clever first-years with the right attitude. You've got the perfect temperament for it—you didn't even get angry about the tongue thing."
Lee Jordan looked genuinely confused. "Hogwarts has a Prank Club? How have I never heard about it? Where do you meet?"
"That's not important," Fred said with utterly righteous conviction, waving off the question as irrelevant. "We literally just decided to establish it this very moment. Right now. You're witnessing history, Lee."
"You're the founding members," George added, gesturing grandly to include everyone in the compartment. "Consider yourselves honored. This will be legendary someday."
Lee Jordan decided immediately to ignore these two idiots and their spontaneous organizational decisions.
He turned away from the twins and lowered his voice, leaning closer to Morris with a hint of schadenfreude.
"Don't look at how smug and successful they are now with their candy inventions. These two absolute fools spent the entire last term's final exam period—you know, when normal students are studying and revising, working obsessively on perfecting their Ton-Tongue Toffees."
He paused, his grin widening. "As a result, their actual academic grades were almost all 'P's and 'D's. Poor and Dreadful, the two lowest passing grades. Professor McGonagall nearly had an aneurysm when she saw their Transfiguration scores."
Although Lee's voice was soft like a whisper, the twins' sharp ears seemed to catch the keywords of their academic humiliation. Their expressions changed from proud to indignant in an instant.
"Slander!" Fred declared, launching himself across the compartment.
"Defamation!" George added, following his brother's lead.
They began playfully wrestling with Lee Jordan, all three of them laughing even as they grappled and shoved each other around. Tin-Tin, still resting on Morris's lap, opened one eye to observe the chaos with what might have been disapproval before closing it again and returning to its sleep.
Morris watched the roughhousing with amusement, careful to keep Tin-Tin secure on his lap as the older boys tumbled around the compartment.
'They really are three interesting people,' He thought.
The wrestling match eventually softened into breathless laughter, all three boys returned to their seats with disheveled hair and crooked robes.
"Plop, plop..."
The sound of something wet and fleshy hitting the floor cut through their laughter.
At some point, a toad had appeared in their compartment. It was hopping continuously across the floor in random directions.
"Hey, whose toad is this?" Lee Jordan asked in surprise. "Did one of you bring it in when I wasn't looking?"
Morris looked up from where he'd been absently stroking Tin-Tin's cold fur, his expression was puzzled. "Uh... didn't you guys bring it in? I assumed it belonged to one of you. It's been hopping around here for at least ten minutes now. I noticed it a while ago but figured you'd claim it eventually."
"We would never keep something as ugly as a toad for a pet," Fred retorted, his nose wrinkling in disgust. "These animals have no use except as experimental subjects for spell practice—and even then, they're not particularly good for that."
"Plus, they cost nearly as much as owls!" George added, sounding personally offended by the economic injustice. "Same price for an infinitely less useful animal. Who pays five Galleons for a toad?"
Poor toad, Morris reflected. Its status in the magical creature hierarchy really was quite humble. The animal equal of the kid nobody wanted on their team during games.
George, apparently deciding they couldn't just leave a random toad hopping around their compartment indefinitely, made a move to catch it. He crouched down and reached out with both hands, moving slowly and carefully like someone approaching a skittish cat.
However, the moment his fingers came within inches of the toad's slick skin, the creature reacted with shocking speed. The originally clumsy-looking toad suddenly kicked off with its powerful hind legs, launching itself through the air with the trajectory precision of a guided missile.
It sailed in a perfect arc and landed directly on top of George's head with a wet "plop" that made everyone wince.
"Ugh! Get it off, get it off!" George yelped, waving his hands around his head but somehow never quite managing to grab the toad, which seemed to be enjoying its higher perch.
Then the toad kicked off again, and what followed was absolute chaos.
The creature began bouncing wildly around the compartment with nimble movements. It ricocheted off walls, used the luggage rack as a launching platform, bounced off Fred's shoulder, landed briefly on Lee Jordan's knee before anyone could react, and generally treated the enclosed space like its personal obstacle course.
Even three third-year students working together, all of them reasonably coordinated and experienced with catching magical creatures, couldn't catch the agile amphibian. Every time one of them got close, the toad would leap away at the last possible second with what seemed like deliberate mockery.
"Whoa," Morris exclaimed in admiration, watching the display with the appreciation of someone observing a master at work. "That's actually impressive."
Truly a magical world toad—definitely different from the sluggish mundane ones he'd occasionally seen in parks and gardens. This thing moved like it had been trained by ninja warriors.
The toad completed another circuit of the compartment, bouncing off the window, the ceiling, Lee Jordan's head, and then—
Suddenly, with what seemed like targeted aggression, the toad changed direction mid-leap and flew straight toward Morris's face at high speed!
Morris's response was purely instinctive, driven by surprise more than rational thought.
"Wailing Curse!"
In his momentary panic, without conscious decision, he attempted to use one of the spells he'd mastered on the incoming toad.
One of the key advantages of curse-type spells that Morris had discovered through experimentation was that they would automatically select and lock onto targets within range according to the caster's will and intent.
Facing a high-speed moving target like toad, this auto-targeting feature was absolutely the best choice.
Almost the instant Morris finished the incantation, before the toad could complete its trajectory toward his face, the creature suddenly dropped from the air like a stone. It hit the floor with a "splat,".
The toad's entire body trembled violently. Its limbs twitched uncontrollably, jerking at random angles as if its nervous system had completely short-circuited. Thick white foam continuously poured from the corners of its wide mouth, bubbling and frothing in a deeply unpleasant way.
Its bulging eyes now stared blankly at nothing, still retained a trace of bewilderment from suffering a massive mental shock.
Morris stared at the incapacitated toad with a mixture of surprise and interest.
Although the target was only a toad, the effect of the Wailing Curse had significantly exceeded his expectations based on previous testing.
When he'd used this same curse on Tin-Tin and Sparkles during practice sessions, the results hadn't been nearly this dramatic.
Could it be that his two pets, as undead creatures, had naturally higher resistance to mage book's magic?
That would make sense.
Lee Jordan's eyes widened. He looked at the still-twitching, foam-covered toad on the floor, then at Morris's remarkably calm face and couldn't help but exclaim in a voice pitched high with excitement:
"Cool, dude! That was absolutely brilliant! What magic did you just use? I've never heard of that spell before. Where did you learn it?"
He paused for breath, then noticed something else that made his eyes widen even further. "Wait—did you not use a wand? You just held out your hand and—"
His questions came rapid-fire, tumbling over each other in his eagerness to understand what he'd just witnessed.
Fred and George immediately abandoned their positions and gathered around Morris. Their earlier playfulness had been replaced by curiosity mixed with something approaching awe.
Morris hadn't anticipated the three would react with quite this level of shock and interest. He'd known wandless magic was considered advanced, certainly, but their expressions showed he'd just performed something closer to miraculous than merely impressive.
He needed to downplay this, and quickly, before word spread through the school that the weird first-year could do wandless casting. That kind of attention would be nothing but trouble.
"Uh..." Morris carefully arranged his expression into one of innocent confusion. "It's just a strange spell I saw in an old book I found. Nothing special, really. I just wanted to test its effect. Looks like it worked well, though maybe too well. Is the toad going to be okay?"
He paused, then deliberately changed the subject before they could press further about the spell itself. "By the way, is not using a wand supposed to be a strange thing? I thought wizards could do magic however they wanted."
The three upperclassmen were momentarily rendered speechless by this display of either incredible ignorance or incredibly dry humor—they couldn't quite tell which.
George recovered first and said seriously. "Let me explain something to you, Morris, Only the most powerful and experienced wizards can use spells without relying on a wand."
"It requires incredible magical control and power," Fred added, his voice equally serious.
"Maybe it was just a lucky shot?" Morris suggested with a casual shrug, his tone was intentionally uncertain. "Like, the magic just happened to work that one time because I was panicked and the toad was coming at my face? Adrenaline or something?"
Fred's became energetic at this suggestion, clearly finding it a more comfortable explanation.
"I like that comparison," he said with a chuckle. "Accidental magic under stress—that makes sense."
"Still impressive though," George insisted. "Even as a one-off."
"But Morris," Fred said, his eyes glinting with mischievous curiosity, "can you try again? Deliberately this time? Let us see if you can reproduce it."
All three of them were now staring at Morris with expectant expressions, clearly eager to witness another demonstration of impossible first-year magic.
Morris looked down at the poor toad on the floor, which had just stopped its violent twitching and now lay still, breathing shallowly, still looking rather listless and traumatized.
"Oh, of course," Morris said agreeably, pretending not to notice their intense scrutiny. "Let me try again. I'll concentrate really hard this time."
He made a show of taking a deep breath and centering himself, then extended his palm toward the unfortunate toad once more. His face changed into an expression of intense concentration while making up a nonsense incantation.
"Upsy Daisy Makka Pakka!" Morris chanted with perfect seriousness,.
Morris pulled this jumbled phrase from some corner of his brain and recited it.
Naturally, the toad on the floor had absolutely no reaction to this "spell." It continued lying there in its bewildered state, occasionally blinking its large eyes. After a moment, it even let out a weak, questioning croak as if asking what the hell this strange human was doing.
"Hmm..." Morris put on a regretful expression. "Seems like it doesn't work."
This result or rather, this lack of result seemed to make the twins and Lee Jordan more accepting of the whole situation.
"As expected," George said with a knowing nod. "Wandless magic isn't that simple."
"Yeah," Fred agreed readily. "If you could do it reliably, you'd be the most powerful first-year in Hogwarts history. That would be absolutely mental."
Lee Jordan laughed, the sound carrying some of his earlier nervousness. "For a second there, I thought we'd discovered some kind of prodigy. But nah—just a lucky panic-cast. Still cool though, Morris. Most first-years can't even do accidental magic that useful."
Morris nodded along with their rationalization, keeping his expression appropriately humble and slightly confused by the whole experience.
A first-year student who could perform stable wandless magic would be far too shocking.
He timely ended the discussion about his spellcasting abilities by redirecting their attention elsewhere.
"So," he said, gesturing toward the toad that was now attempting to crawl weakly toward the corner of the compartment, "whose toad is this anyway? Is it wild?"