Darius sat back and relaxed as he waited for his friends to show up. He was already in the train, having set out pretty early today. Though, frankly speaking, the one he was waiting for the most was Mione.

It was just past 10 and the students had only just started trickling in. Shortly after though, he caught sight of the distinctive straight pale blonde hair of Daphne. She was wearing her customary ice queen expression and persona as she glanced around the platform. She must have caught sight of his sign though, as she started heading straight towards his compartment. Behind her, he could see Astoria and someone who could only be the sisters’ mother, with the similarities between them.

About the sign, it was an idea that Tracey had in their last train journey. In the same way that Slytherins generally kept a carriage or two of them to themselves, she suggested that the DA do the same. This particular carriage had a paper stuck to the window outside with the letters, DA on it in large print. He had also gained sufficient proficiency in space expansion charms and made good use of them to make the one compartment sufficient for the DA members.

One by one, the members of the DA trickled in and all of them were very impressed by the expanded compartment. Especially Fred, George and Lee, who were seniors and were the only ones who could truly appreciate the difficulty involved here.

“Darius, you got even further ahead, damnit. Leave some face for us seniors at least. That’s NEWTs level, at the very least. Higher if you can do it permanently.”

“What can I say, I aim to please. And no, these are not permanent, just temporary expansion charms. But I should be able to do the permanent one soon enough now that I’ve got the basics down. And it is a very handy spell, to say the least. I also plan on going on a world tour after I’m done with my studies and this will be extremely useful then.”

The others also paired up and started chatting while Darius and the twins discussed spatial charms and their various uses, both in academic terms and for tricks!

Harry was also getting along extremely well with Daphne, Darius was glad to notice. It was certainly a better choice than being stuck with a fangirl. Not that there was anything wrong with Ginny, she was a pleasant girl to be around, but no stable relation can be formed from such a lop-sided relation.

“Hey Harry, what are your plans for this year?””

“Nothing great, I’m going to focus a bit more on my studies than earlier though. I really wasted the first couple of years here. Its magic after all, I don’t know why I wasn’t more enthused about it. And Daphne also helped explain how important the basics were going to be in my future. I still have no clue what I’ll do after school though.”

“Don’t worry about that for now. You have nearly two years before you have to make a decision and even then, you can change it later. Stressing about it now isn’t going to help you in the least. Just focus on doing the best you can right now. And thank god, you have a decent set of electives. It would have been rather dull of you had been one of those slackers who picked divination just to skate by.”

“Haha! Now why would I do that?”” He gave a rather sheepish smile as he glanced at Daphne. It must have been her who knocked out those stupid notions from his head. Darius would have to thank her later.

The Patil twins were completely different from their canon selves. Instead of being an introvert, Padma was much more open with others since she had been part of a like-minded group from the start of her school years and Parvati was not as much of a gossip queen as she was in canon.

In fact, the hat was rather right to put Padma in Ravenclaw and she was brilliant when it came to spell creation. She had not made anything grand yet, but her foundations were rock solid. Even Darius was able to draw inspiration from her work and spell models. Not that she didn’t take anything in return. She managed to wring out a good part of his spell notes and copies of restricted books that he had, in order to fuel her learning.

Parvati on the other hand, was rather similar to Luna in how they came up with the most innovative spell chains. While Luna focused on unpredictable spell chains which used cumulative effects of spell to the best effect, Parvati was more of an ingenious user of minor and auxiliary spells. One example of that was the water charm, followed by the freezing charm and finishing with the slipping jinx. None of them were very powerful and could easily be turned aside by any shield charms but their combined effect allowed her to change enemy terrain to her advantage. Aguamenti would work as a knock back and buy her time, along with flooding the floor with water. Glacius would freeze the water, slowing the opponent down using the cold air and frost and making footing dangerously unstable. While the last, glisseo, would make getting a solid footing near impossible and render the opponent into a sitting duck for whatever spells were used thereafter.

Neville had come a long way. Just like in the fifth canon year, when he had truly bloomed in the DA, he did so here as well. Even his grandmother was mighty pleased with Neville and had even passed on a message of thanks to Darius via Neville. Though Neville’s main interest was still in Herbology and not the good fight. It was understandable though and he was and absolute genius when it came to Herbology. Darius even encouraged him to look deeper into the old Herbology magics. There were vitality rituals, terraforming spells, some elemental magic and a lot more. Like every other branch of magic, Herbology had its own little secrets and he was sure to make good use of them.

Darius was an even better teacher with a wider repertoire of spells than Harry. He had turned most of these 14 and 15-year-old into the equivalent of Junior Aurors at the very least, if not in magical power then dueling ability. Madam Bones would snap them up in her Auror department in a moment if she could. Good thing she didn’t know about this or she would have been after Darius from now itself to induct him in the forces after his schooling was over. And while he respected the Aurors, or at least most of them, he wasn’t too happy about the idea of being one of them.

Luna had the customary Quibbler in her hand along with all the weird accoutrements that she wore. That girl was beyond doubt one of the most powerful or rather, potentially powerful people in the room. From what Darius made out from talking to her, learning about her mother, Pandora Lovegood’s experiments and her being caught up in the incomplete last experiment, Luna had a much deeper level of mage sight and capable of seeing some things that Darius could only describe as shatterpoint or nexus. It made her a seer of sorts. But unfortunately, the experiment, likely to induce a deeper level of mage sight was left unfinished and the energies in the failed experiment formed what could be called a direct path between Luna’s brain and the surrounding magical fields. This also had the negative side-effect of burdening her young mind and she turned to vague abstractions to categorize and classify the things she saw. Something which had carried on to this day and is the reason for the bullying her in her house. But the DA had given her a significant amount of help in overcoming that and her bullying had come to a full stop after a rather overtly enthusiastic beat down by the members of the DA on the students responsible.

Ginny was a little spitfire, just as always. She was the single most offensively powerful female member of the DA. Even Mione couldn’t match her in sheer destructive power though Mione was far ahead when it came to control and versatility. Ginny picked up offensive spells nearly as easily as Darius though she took much longer to properly control them, not to mention trying to do them silently. She was also rather quick on her feet and her reflexes were nearly as good as Harry’s.

Mione was of course, the uncrowned queen of the DA. She had the largest spell repertoire, next to Darius and was very proficient with the majority of them. This was something which took Darius a lot of time to beat into her head. It was much more important to be proficient in the spells you do know rather than trying to learn a hundred more. He himself had ignored this in the beginning and only realized it when he was training against Mione. He took a couple of hits he could have easily avoided just because it took him longer to cast the spells he was unfamiliar with. He had made it up though. Both, he and Mione had started training to have a ready repertoire of spells he could fire off at short notice and were all the more lethal with it.

The last news was that Darius had finally perfected his Aegis this summer. He had managed to meld all the disciplines of magic required for it and pull of a perfect Aegis. Just this single spell alone helped him raise his chances of getting out of the situation alive if he was faced with Voldemort, by several folds. Voldemort’s go to spell were the Unforgivables and this spell was the arch-nemesis for them. The constantly swirling debris and stones in the way would render most spells useless. Darius was rather proud to have managed this spell and that too, at such a young age. The youngest known user of the spell was about seventeen when he managed it.

The rest of the train journey went rather well, and Darius enjoyed being with his friends. Mione was snuggled up against his side and he found it really difficult not to kiss her right then and there. She would be fifteen in less than a month and was really growing up to be a beautiful woman. The rest of the students also enjoyed the ride. More than one of them had learnt the joy of teaching from when they had t teach the younger students and they were looking forward to starting with the next batch when they were back. Darius himself was looking forward to the Triwizard tournament. Though not for the reason anybody else might have been, he was waiting to spoil Voldemort’s plans as much as possible. He may have let Voldemort know about it through Pettigrew to buy him and Harry some time but by no means did he want the event in the graveyard happen as they had in canon. He was already making so many waves in the HP world, why not a few more?